Universe 1 - [Anthology] Read online

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  Universe 1

  Edited By Terry Carr

  Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  WEST WIND, FALLING

  by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund

  GOOD NEWS FROM THE VATICAN

  by Robert Silverberg

  JADE BLUE

  by Edward Bryant

  NOR LIMESTONE ISLANDS

  by R. A. Lafferty

  TIME EXPOSURES

  by Wilson Tucker

  MINDSHIP

  by Gerard F. Conway

  NOTES FOR A NOVEL ABOUT THE FIRST SHIP EVER TO VENUS

  by Barry N. Malzberg

  POOR MAN, BEGGAR MAN

  by Joanna Russ

  THE ROMANCE OF DR. TANNER

  by Ron Goulart

  THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE VILLAGE MONSTER

  by Edward Bryant

  MOUNT CHARITY

  by Edgar Pangborn

  ALL THE LAST WARS AT ONCE

  by George Alec Effinger

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  INTRODUCTION

  Universe1 inaugurates a series of anthologies of science fiction stories that have never before appeared in print anywhere. It’s by no means the only such series in science fiction—aside from Damon Knight’s ORBIT, Robert Hoskins’ INFINITY, Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker’s QUARK and others, there was the pioneering original-stories anthology series STAR SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Frederik Pohl twenty years ago and still fondly remembered by those who read it. But UNIVERSE will be a bit different, I hope.

  Well, all of these series are different, if for no other reason than that they’re edited by different people with varying tastes. Some editors like to think of what they’re publishing not as science fiction but rather as “speculative fiction,” a label which gives them considerably more leeway in the kinds of stories they can print. Delany and Hacker in QUARK are experimenting with portfolios of drawings, and by not printing authors’ bylines at the head of their stories, only at the ends; other editors, like Knight in ORBIT, decline to bother with either graphics, special type for story titles, or even introductory remarks to stories.

  UNIVERSE is a science fiction series first and foremost; you’ll find an occasional fantasy story here, but it will be one I bought because I liked it so much I couldn’t bring myself to reject it—and there’ll be no “speculative fiction” at all. I understand the use of the term by others, I respect their urge to break through boundaries and I’m impressed by a number of the stories which land in the “speculative fiction” safety-net; but I also think that boundaries and labels exist for a very simple basic purpose, to let people know the kind of stories they’re buying.

  I chose the title UNIVERSE because it can apply to fantasy as well as science fiction: the stories you’ll read in this series will take place in the universe of stars, the universe of time, the universe of magic. Each story is, of course, its own universe; it defines the natural laws that are at work, the time when things are happening, the culture which affects its characters’ actions. Thus there are twelve universes in this initial volume; some are universes of science (West Wind, Falling), some are universes that encompass rather peculiar ghosts (Poor Man, Beggar Man),some are satiric universes (All the Last Wars at Once). . . and so on. In short, this is a book of worlds.

  In the use of graphics I’m trying an experiment with this series. For one thing, the cover paintings will always illustrate one of the stories inside. Normal practice in paperback publishing is for the cover of an anthology to be a vague, all-purpose kind of painting, suggesting science fiction in general rather than any particular scene or story. But why shouldn’t the cover painting be more directly tied in with the contents?

  And why not have interior illustrations for each story? I like the idea of presenting attractive and intriguing graphics in addition to a book’s fiction content, but why not use art that acts in counterpoint with the stories? Thus we introduce in this book Alicia Austin, whose illustrations here are her first professionally published science fiction art, to my knowledge, though she’s very well known through her exhibitions at science fiction art shows and the like. Alicia Austin will be the regular illustrator for the UNIVERSE series, and I believe you’ll enjoy her work as much as I do.

  Here, then, is the first number of the series: UNIVERSE 1. A rather special book: announcements of its forthcoming publication were made to published science fiction writers only, with the result thatall the stories submitted for this volume were from writers who had proven their ability to write sf of professional caliber. (Normally an editor works from two very different groups of submissions, those from the pros and the “slush pile,” manuscripts sent by beginning writers. UNIVERSE had no slush pile.) Nonetheless, I read well over a hundred stories in order to select the twelve that make up this book.

  I’m reading and buying stories for the second volume, UNIVERSE 2, now: I hope to have that book on the stands by November 1971. After you’ve read this first number, I hope you’ll watch for the second.

  — terry carr

  March 29, 1971

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  * * * *

  Gregory Benford is a physicist who writes science fiction on the side; his first novel, DEEPER THAN THE DARKNESS, was published by Ace Books in 1970. Gordon Eklund has been working full-time as a writer for about a year, and his first novel, THE ECLIPSE OF DAWN, was an Ace Science Fiction Special earlier this year. Both live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they’re friends, which made it natural that they should collaborate on a story. Collaborations are strange affairs: most of the time the product is less than the sum of the parts. West Wind, Falling is one of the exceptions, I think.

  WEST WIND, FALLING

  Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund

  He rested: floating.

  Zephyr lay ahead—a black dot in Sol’s eye, haloed by the soft light of the coma: red, methane orange, divine. The tail was only beginning to stream and twist now—they had crossed the orbit of Mars—but no one on Zephyr would see the threads of ionized gas dance as they poured from the head of the comet, their pace quickening as the sun neared; Zephyr was too close. The comet tail furled out for half a million miles, directly behind the rock in which Paul had lived all his days, and to be properly studied a comet must be seen from the side. Earth would get a fine view. If they cared.

  His shuttle clicked, murmured, shifted under him; the mass sensors had locked on Zephyr and were dutifully considering the tumbling rock as a source of new metals. Any zinc, for ion exchange plates?No. Copper? —good conductors are always useful.No, none.

  “Idiot machine,” Paul said, and thumbed the controls over from automatic.

  The sensors found nothing because the outer two miles were ice: water hydrates of ammonia, methane and sundry impurities (andah, but the impurities tell the tale, add the zest). A snowball with a rock at the center: home. Zephyr.

  The west wind; so said the dictionary when, at nine, Paul looked it up. Or:something light, airy, or unsubstantial, a second definition. (Why have more than one meaning for each word? he had thought. It seemed inefficient. But he was only nine.) Yes, the second definition fit it better now. Comets are unsubstantial; Zephyr was a lukewarm scarf of gas clinging to a jet black stone, all falling into the grinning sun.

  Now it fit, that is. Twenty-seven years ago, when Paul was born, the billowing gas was dead ice drifting in company with the stone, exploring utter blackness beyond Pluto. It had been cold then even deep inside Zephyr, but Paul could not remember it.

  His search was over. He nudged the shuttle into synchronization with Zephyr’s rotation, found th
e main entrance tube and slipped the craft down it. The tube walls were rigid plastaform that transmitted some of the watery light of the ice mantle. The two miles passed quickly. He guided the shuttle into its berth, helped a lock attendant secure the pouch of metallic chunks he had found, and cycled through the lock.

  The attendant came through after him. “Hey,” the man said. “See it?”

  “What?”

  “Earth.”

  “Oh. . .. Yes.”

  “Well? What’s it like?”

  “Beautiful. White, mostly. Couldn’t see Luna.”

  The older man nodded enthusiastically. Paul could see he wanted to hear more, but there just wasn’t more to say. Earth was a bright point, nothing more. The attendant looked sixty at least; Paul thought he recognized him as the elder Resnick. To a man that old, Earth meant something. To Paul, born in Zephyr, Earth was a dull, disembodied voice which gave frequent orders and occasional help.

  * * * *

  “That’s all,” Paul said, and turned away.

  A corridor clock told him it was time for the meeting. Feh—more diatribes. He had been hearing them from all sides lately. Everybody had turned into a political theorist. Still, his position in the first family more or less required him to put in an appearance. And at the very least, Elias was worth a few laughs.

  Down chilly passages with a low coasting gait; murmur of distant conversations; oily air—filtration sacs saturated (MyGod, was he going to have to speak to those dopes again?) and faint tang of cooking; slight lessening of apparent gravity as he trotted up three levels (inward, toward Zephyr’s center); smile from passing friend; quickening pace; and he arrived at the meeting five minutes late.

  Paul found an empty chair in the front row and flopped down in it. He looked around the room. There they were—the third generation—nearly fifty men, all younger than forty, and an almost equal number of women. Elias stood at the front, wrapped in his own dignity, and he smiled at Paul.

  “We may begin now,” Elias said, looking up. “Paul is here, and we all know how essential he is to our cause.”

  Huh, Paul thought, his attention drifting. He glanced idly at the girl who sat next to him. She was petite, with incredibly red hair—who in the second generation carried those genes?—and freckles that danced across her pale cheeks. Fitting a hand to his mouth, he whispered, “Aren’t you Melinda Aurten?”

  The girl nodded at him and he smelled his tenseness. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen and he’d never spoken to her before. As he leaned over to say something more he felt a twinge of conscience.One more time, eh? For practice.Being an important man always had its advantages, whether one deserved them or not.

  “I say we must make our demands now,” Elias was saying, his voice a shade too shrill. “And they must be met. We are the third generation. We have the most to lose, the longest to live. The first is too old—most of the best of them are dead. The fourth is too young.”

  To Melinda, Paul whispered: “Why haven’t I seen you before? Is my luck always this bad?”

  “I’ve been here,” she said. “You just haven’t . . . looked.”

  A girl’s voice from the back of the room said, “Can we not wait to—”

  “Wait,” Elias said scornfully. “Wait? The ships from Luna will reach us within a month.One month.”

  “Why?” said the voice. “Did Randall tell you that?”

  “I’m afraid he didn’t have the time,” Elias said with mock wryness. He glanced quickly down at Paul, who smiled back at him and reached over to clasp Melinda’s hand.

  “But there has to be some reason we’re to be picked up on the inward slope of the orbit, instead of the outward as was planned,” the girl said. Paul knew her— Zanzee, a brown-skinned girl he’d shared a room with seven years before. He remembered the bubbling way she laughed. Um. But then, there was Melinda.

  “Randall says it was an administrative decision on Earth. They want our detailed data tapes for the whole seventy-three year orbit. Randallsays rendezvous on this side of the orbit is slightly cheaper, too. Can anyone check that?”

  “I have,” Paul said, his eyes still fixed on Melinda. She gave him an up-from-under look, using the eyelashes. “Ran it through, just pure ballistics. It’s cheaper, but not by much.”

  “So it’s a blind,” Elias said. “They want to get us away from Zephyr before we, the third generation, have time to organize. Randall knows our feelings better than we do.”

  Paul leaned close to Melinda, lips against ear, and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Now? But-”

  “Now,” he said.

  Elias’s voice had shifted to a warmer, more confident tone. “We have no alternatives. The question is really quite simple. Do we stay in this world which is ours, or do we go to our so-called mother world? I have my own answer to this question, but I cannot speak it for you. What doyou say?”

  Paul got to his feet, dragging Melinda up with him. A hundred pairs of eyes blinked and flashed.

  “Paul?’ said Elias. “Where are . . . You can’t—”

  Laughter.

  “I’m tired,” Paul said, turning and grinning. “Like an old log. Got to get to bed.”

  More laughter, and Elias blushed, dropping his eyes to the cold floor. As Paul moved up the corridor, right arm warm against Melinda’s thin waist, he heard: “Stay. Stay. Stay.” And he thought: Elias owns the mob; too bad he’s such a plimb.

  Within an interval which lasted one hour, twenty-six minutes:

  “Do you have the measles?”

  “No. Silly. You know.”

  “But they run all the way . . . down to . . . here.”

  “Ye- Ah.”

  A pause, and

  “Why don’t you lie back down? Or are you...through?”

  “No. Little nervous—”

  “About us? I mean.”

  “Uh. Not likely. It has happened before, you understand.”

  “Well.”

  “No, relax.”

  “I wonder what Elias was planning to do?”

  “Him? Nothing. He can’t get his shoes on without a guide book.”

  “His speeches are—”

  “A cataract of lies and omissions, as some poet said.”

  “I think he—”

  “Let’s see, this arm goes here; a leg there, and . . .”

  * * * *

  For a while he wandered, corridors moving like slow glaciers, passing the viewing rooms; on impulse, he paused to watch. The mammoth 3D mounted on one wall had been scrounged out of spare parts several years after the Zephyr expedition was launched. Paul had spent hours here, watching Neptune sweep majestically by, or simply studying the stars. Now he looked instead at the void, letting its black hands clutch at his stilled senses.

  This was the only way to see the void without going out in a shuttle. The life of the expedition depended upon the layer of methane and ammonia snow that sealed them into the rock. The snow itself was covered with a flexible plastaform coat that prevented most gas from escaping. The society inside the rock core melted the snow for raw materials—nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen—that fed the hydroponics farms and fueled the fusion reactors. We live off the west wind itself, Paul thought. And the void feeds on us.

  Paul turned to the image of Earth. Thick white clouds; past them, brilliant blue seas and glimpses of brown, barren land. Seeing it, he failed to understand. It was lovely, beautiful, shining with human life. But the 3D tapes he’d seen: people jammed together like dogs in a kennel; food rationed; wars and riots; shades of bleak, shades of gray.

  Most of the people in the 3D room were first generation, and they looked at the screen with something that approached hunger. Paul watched them stare. Then he left.

  Remembering corners and turns in the warren men had carved from rock. Places where he’d studied—friends made and lost—sweaty games with a first young girl. And hadn’t she trembled when he’d touched her? And hadn’t he trembled,
too?

  And here—yes—where Randall had faced down a mob of rebels, angry over the numbing hours required when the hydroponics tanks went sour.

  The old days. As he lightly walked the corridors, he remembered them.

  He rapped at the door and heard Randall’s crisp voice answer. He stepped into the large room (reproductions of the twisted hells of Bosch; green wallpaper with red tulips) and closed the door quietly behind him.

  Randall was seated at a large desk, speaking slowly into a hooded microphone. When he finished, he turned, smiling, mass of white hair, eyebrows like fur, and said, “I think I remember you. Aren’t you my grandson?”