Universe 03 - [Anthology] Read online

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  Universe 03

  Edited by Terry Carr

  Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  CONTENTS

  introduction, by Terry Carr

  the death of doctor island, by Gene Wolfe

  the ghost writer, by Geo. Alec Effinger

  many mansions, by Robert Silverberg

  randy-tandy man, by Ross Rocklynne

  the world is a sphere, by Edgar Pangborn

  the legend of cougar lou landis, by Edward Bryant

  free city blues, by Gordon Eklund

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  INTRODUCTION

  The golden age of science fiction is now. When aficionados of this field get together, that’s a standard topic of discussion: When was science fiction’s golden age? Some people say the early forties, when John W. Campbell and a host of new writers like Heinlein, Sturgeon and van Vogt were transforming the entire field; others point to the early fifties, to H. L. Gold and Anthony Boucher and to such writers as Damon Knight, Alfred Bester and Ray Bradbury. Some will lay claims for the late sixties, when the new wave passed and names like Ballard, Disch and Aldiss came forward.

  There are still people around, too, who’ll tell you about 1929 and David H. Keller, E. E. Smith and Ray Cummings.

  The clue in most cases is when the person talking first began to read science fiction. When it was all new, all of it was exciting. Years ago a friend of mine, Pete Graham, tersely answered the question “When was the golden age of science fiction?” by saying, “Twelve.” He didn’t have to explain further; we knew what he meant.

  But it isn’t totally a subjective matter; there are such things as real standards of quality, tricky as they may be to assess. You can tell a good writer when he brings to life a scene or an idea you’ve seen so often before that you thought it was used up. (“You can have him, all the thrill’s gone out of him,” said the man to Kenneth Patchen, handing him a dead mole.) You can recognize a good story when it makes you feel things you’re not used to—even if they’re old things: if it’s been a while since you’ve felt them, old things get new again. And when enough good writers and good stories appear in the field, we have a “golden age.”

  All right, consider the science-fiction field today. When before have we had so many first-rate talents writing at once? Philip K. Dick, R. A. Lafferty, Poul Anderson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Samuel R. Delany, Alexei Panshin, Avram Davidson, Larry Niven, Clifford D. Simak, John Brunner, Robert Silverberg, Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Brian W. Aldiss, Roger Zelazny, D. G. Compton, Kurt Vonnegut . . . I’m sure you could name a dozen more. And there are remarkably good new writers coming into the field all the time.

  If we had had these writers and their stories in 1950, or 1940, or 1929, we’d have considered them giants, and many of the works of those previous golden ages would have paled to insignificance by comparison.

  But of course we couldn’t have had all these writers then; science fiction evolves, it builds on the ideas and stories that have gone before. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch couldn’t have been written in 1929; it would simply have been unthinkable. That’s also true of Stand on Zanzibar, And Chaos Died, Lord of Light, Slaughterhouse-Five, Camp Concentration or The Einstein Intersection. Clifford Simak was active in science fiction in 1940, but he was writing Cosmic Engineers, not Why Call Them Back From Heaven?

  Time offers progress, and new possibilities emerge. We live in an increasingly exciting world and amid larger realities than we dreamed of when science fiction was young. (If we date modern science fiction’s birth from the founding of the first sf magazine, then science fiction was thirteen years old at the beginning of 1940.) The boundaries of scientific knowledge expand almost exponentially, and we’re beginning to understand that there are other kinds of knowledge, too.

  It’s all here to be wondered at, and written about, and science fiction has developed the vocabulary for it. This is the literature of our infinite universe; is it any wonder that so many strongly talented writers should be drawn to it?

  So the golden age is now. Part of it is here, in this book: enjoy, enjoy.

  —terry carr

  Oakland, California

  June 9,1972

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  THE DEATH OF DOCTOR ISLAND

  by Gene Wolfe

  This fascinating novelette by Gene Wolfe is the story of a strange young boy who moved his head continually from side to side, as certain reptiles do, and of what happened between him and two others on a man-made satellite circling Jupiter. It may be the oddest sequel in science fiction: two years ago Wolfe wrote a short story titled “The Island of Dr. Death ,” which was nominated for a Nebula Award; Wolfe wondered what kind of story he might devise if he turned the themes and character types upside down, and the result was the tale below. It’s totally unconnected with the earlier story in any conventional sense; it’s complete in itself and has no characters, background or situation from the other story. It might be regarded as a fugue-sequel on earlier themes ... or you could ignore such quasi-technical jargon and read the story purely for itself: a richly inventive tale of people in an intriguing new environment.

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  I have desired to go

  Where springs not fail,

  To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail

  And a few lilies blow.

  And I have asked to be

  Where no storms come,

  Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

  And out of the swing of the sea.

  —Gerard Manley Hopkins

  A grain of sand, teetering on the brink of the pit, trembled and fell in; the ant lion at the bottom angrily flung it out again. For a moment there was quiet. Then the entire pit, and a square meter of sand around it, shifted drunkenly while two coconut palms bent to watch. The sand rose, pivoting at one edge, and the scarred head of a boy appeared-a stubble of brown hair threatened to erase the marks of the sutures; with dilated eyes hypnotically dark he paused, his neck just where the ant lion’s had been; then, as though goaded from below, he vaulted up and onto the beach, turned, and kicked sand into the dark hatchway from which he had emerged. It slammed shut. The boy was about fourteen.

  For a time he squatted, pushing the sand aside and trying to find the door. A few centimeters down, his hands met a gritty, solid material which, though neither concrete nor sandstone, shared the qualities of both sand-filled organic plastic. On it he scraped his fingers raw, but he could not locate the edges of the hatch.

  Then he stood and looked about him, his head moving continually as the heads of certain reptiles go back and forth, with no pauses at the terminations of the movements. He did this constantly, ceaselessly always-and for that reason it will not often be described again, just as it will not be mentioned that he breathed. He did; and as he did, his head, like a rearing snake’s, turned from side to side. The boy was thin, and naked as a frog.

  Ahead of him the sand sloped gently down toward sapphire water; there were coconuts on the beach, and seashells, and a scuttling crab that played with the finger-high edge of each dying wave. Behind him there were only palms and sand for a long distance, the palms growing ever closer together as they moved away from the water until the forest of their columniated trunks seemed architectural; like some palace maze becoming as it progressed more and more draped with creepers and lianas with green, scarlet, and yellow leaves, the palms interspersed with bamboo and deciduous trees dotted with flaming orchids until almost at the limit of his sight the whole ended in a spangled wall whose predominant color was blackgreen.

  The boy walked toward the beach, then down the beach until he stood in knee-deep
water as warm as blood. He dipped his fingers and, tasted it-it was fresh, with no hint of the disinfectants to which he was accustomed. He waded out again and sat on the sand about five meters up from the high-water mark, and after ten minutes, during which he heard no sound but the wind and the murmuring of the surf, he threw back his head and began to scream. His screaming was high-pitched, and each breath ended in a gibbering, ululant note, after which came the hollow,- iron gasp of the next indrawn breath. On one occasion he had screamed in this way, without cessation, for fourteen hours and twenty-two minutes, at the end of which a nursing nun with an exemplary record stretching back seventeen years had administered an injection without the permission of the attending physician.

  After a time the boy paused-not because he was tired, but in order to listen better. There was, still, only the sound of the wind in the palm fronds and the murmuring surf, yet he felt that he had heard a voice. The boy could be quiet as well as noisy, and he was quiet now, his left hand sifting white sand as clean as salt between its fingers while his right tossed tiny pebbles like beach-glass beads into the surf.

  ”Hear me,” said the surf. “Hear me. Hear me.”

  ”I hear you,” the boy said.

  ”Good,” said the surf, and it faintly echoed itself:

  ”Good, good, good.”

  ”The boy shrugged.

  ”What shall I call you?” asked the surf.

  ”My name is Nicholas Kenneth de Vore.” ‘

  ”Nick, Nick . . . Nick?”

  The boy stood, and turning his back on the sea, walked inland. When he was out of sight of the water he found a coconut palm growing sloped and angled, leaning and weaving among its companions like the plume of an ascending jet blown by the wind. After feeling its rough exterior with both hands, the boy began to climb; he was inexpert and climbed slowly and a little clumsily, but his body was light and he was strong. In time he reached the top, and disturbed the little brown plush monkeys there, who fled chattering into other palms, leaving him to nestle alone among the stems of the fronds and the green coconuts. “I am here also,” said a voice from the palm.

  ”Ah,” said the boy, who was watching the tossing, sapphire sky far over his head.

  ”I will call you Nicholas.”

  The boy said, “I can see the sea.”

  ”Do you know my name?”

  The boy did not reply. Under him the long, long stem of the twisted palm swayed faintly.

  ”My friends all call me Dr. Island.”

  ”I will not call you that,” the boy said.

  ”You mean that you are not my friend.”

  A gull screamed.

  ”But you see, I take you for my friend. You may say that I am not yours, but I say that you are mine. I like you, Nicholas, and I will treat you as a friend.”

  ”Are you a machine or a person or a committee?” the boy asked.

  ”I am all those things and more. I am the spirit of this island, the tutelary genius.”

  ”Bullshit.”

  ”Now that we have met, would you rather I leave you alone?”

  Again the boy did not reply.

  ”You may wish to be alone with your thoughts. I would like to say that we have made much more progress today than I anticipated. I feel that we will get along together very well.”

  After fifteen minutes or more, the boy asked, “Where does the light come from?” There was no answer. The boy waited for a time, then climbed back down the trunk, dropping the last five meters and rolling as he hit in the soft sand.

  He walked to the beach again and stood staring out at the water. Far off he could see it curving up and up, the distant combers breaking in white .foam until the sea became white-flecked sky. To his left and his right the beach curved away, bending almost infinitesimally until it disappeared. He began to walk, then saw, almost at the point where perception was lost, a human figure. He broke into a run; a moment later, he halted and turned around. Far ahead another walker, almost invisible, strode the beach; Nicholas ignored him; he ` found a coconut and tried to open it, then threw it aside and walked on. From time to time fish jumped, and occasionally he saw a wheeling sea bird dive. The light grew dimmer. He was aware that he had not eaten for some time, but he was not in the strict sense hungry-or rather, he enjoyed his hunger now in the same way that he might, at another time, have gashed his arm to watch himself bleed. Once he said, “Dr. Island!” loudly as he passed a coconut palm, and then later began to chant, “Dr. Island, Dr. Island, Dr. Island,” as he walked until the words had lost all meaning. He swam in the sea as he had been taught to swim in the great quartanary treatment tanks on Callisto to improve his coordination, and spluttered and snorted until he learned to deal with the waves. When it was so dark he could see only the white sand and the white foam of the breakers, he drank from the sea and fell asleep, on the beach, the right. side of his taut, ugly face relaxing first, so that it seemed asleep even while the left eye was open and staring; his head rolling from side to side; the left corner of his mouth preserving, like a death mask, his characteristic expression -angry, remote, tinged with that inhuman quality that is found nowhere but in certain human faces.

  When he woke it was not yet light, but the night was fading to a gentle gray. Headless, the palms stood like tall ghosts up and down the beach, their tops lost in fog and the lingering dark. He was cold. His hands rubbed his sides; he danced on the sand and sprinted down the edge of the lapping water in an effort to get warm; ahead of him a pinpoint of red light became a fire, and he slowed.

  A man who looked about twenty-five crouched over the fire. Tangled black hair hung aver this man’s shoulders, and he had a sparse beard; otherwise he was as naked as Nicholas himself. His eyes were dark, and large and empty, like the ends of broken pipes; he poked at his fire, and the smell of roasting fish came with the smoke. For a time Nicholas stood at a distance, watching.

  Saliva ran from a corner of the man’s mouth, and he wiped it away with one hand, leaving a smear of ash on his face. Nicholas edged closer until he stood on the opposite side of the fire. The fish had been wrapped in broad leaves and mud, and lay in the center of the coals. “I’m Nicholas,” Nicholas said. “Who are you?” The young man did not look at him, had never looked at him.

  ”Hey, I’d like a piece of your fish. Not much. All right?”

  The young man raised his head, looking not at Nicholas but at some point far beyond him; he dropped his eyes again. Nicholas smiled. The smile emphasized the disjointed quality of his expression, his mouth’s uneven curve.

  ”Just a little piece? Is it about done?” Nicholas crouched, imitating the young man, and as though this were a signal, the young man sprang for him across the fire. Nicholas jumped backward, but the jump was too late-the young man’s body struck his and sent him sprawling on the sand; fingers clawed for his throat. Screaming, Nicholas rolled free, into the water; the young man splashed after him; Nicholas dove.

  He swam underwater, his belly almost grazing the r wave-rippled sand until he found deeper water; then he surfaced, gasping for breath, and saw the young man, who saw him as well. He dove again, this time surfacing far off, in deep water. Treading water, he could see the fire on the beach, and the young man when he . returned to it, stamping out of the sea in the early .t light. Nicholas then swam until he was five hundred meters or more down the beach, then waded in to shore and began walking back toward the fire.

  The young man saw him when he was still some distance off, but he continued to sit, eating pink-tinted tidbits from his fish, watching Nicholas. “What’s the matter?” Nicholas said while he was still a safe distance away. “Are you mad at me?”

  From the forest, birds warned, “Be careful, Nicholas;”

  ”I won’t hurt you,” the young man said. He stood up, wiping his oily hands on his chest, and gestured toward the fish at his feet. “You want some?”

  Nicholas nodded, smiling his crippled smile.

  ”Come then.”

  Ni
cholas waited, hoping the young man would move away from the fish, but he did not; neither did he smile in return.

  ”Nicholas,” the little waves at his feet whispered, “this is Ignacio.”

  ”Listen,” Nicholas said, “is it really all right for me to have some?”

  Ignacio nodded, unsmiling.

  Cautiously Nicholas came forward; as he was bending to pick up the fish, Ignacio’s strong hands took him; he tried to wrench free but was thrown down, Ignacio on top of him. “Please!” he yelled. “Please!” Tears started into his eyes. He tried to yell again, but he had no breath; the tongue was being forced, thicker than his wrist, from his throat.

  Then Ignacio let go and struck him in the face with his clenched fist. Nicholas had been slapped and pummeled before, had been beaten, had fought, sometimes savagely, with other boys; but he had never been struck by a man as men fight. Ignacio hit him again and his lips gushed blood.