Universe 4 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Yes, I’ll get with it,” Barnaby said. “Where is that Austro? He’s never here when we want a refill.”

  “He’s down in that funny room over the garages, the one that rumbles,” Mary Mondo expressed. “He lives there now.”

  “Can you tell him to come here, Mary?” Barnaby asked.

  “I just have,” Mary expressed. “He says there’s no great hurry. He says he’ll be along by and by.”

  “Thank you, Mary,” Barnaby said. “Ah, you slipped one over on me that time.”

  (Barnaby Sheen ordinarily did not recognize the presence or existence of the schizo-ghost Mary Mondo, but she was handy at communicating at a distance.)

  * * * *

  “Gentlemen,” said Barnaby then, “there are very many cases of archives and libraries exploding; cases that seem incredible. Some of them were libraries whose books were tablets of hewn stone, some of baked brick, some of glazed tile, some of flaky clay, some of papyrus rolls or other split reeds made into near-paper, some of parchment or thinned sheepskin, some of vellum or scraped calfskin or kidskin, some of velum or the palate membrane of the common dragon (‘vellum’ and ‘velum’ are sometimes confused by the ignorant; just remember that the latter is fire-resistant), some of paper of the modern sort”

  “Some of the libraries consist of trunks filled with pulp-paper funny papers and comic books,” the sawdust-filled doll named Loretta conveyed.

  “These collections,” said Barnaby (not having received the message his daughter had given), “being of such diverse material, would seem to have nothing in common to make them explode. But the annals and decades and centuries that were excised from them did very often force their way back in with great power. Nothing is forgotten forever. The repositories very often did explode.”

  “How, Barney, how?” Harry O’Donovan challenged.

  “I believe that it always begins with an earth-rumble, with a cavern-rumble,” Barnaby said.

  “With a room-rumble,” contributed a sawdust-filled doll, but Barnaby did not attend the message.

  “Decades and centuries refusing to be suppressed!” said Barnaby.

  “Poor relations refusing to be suppressed,” said Harry O’Donovan with sudden insight.

  “A million years refusing to be frozen out,” expressed Mary Mondo. “Say, do you know the real process responsible for the ice ages? Oh, never mind. A thrice-repeated boyhood refusing to be suppressed. A group ghosthood refusing to give itself up. They all build power.”

  “Fortunately my own library is quite small and quite technical,” Barnaby said. “I carry so much in my head, you see. Were it not so, I could almost feel the rumble of a coming explosion now.”

  “Oh, brother! Cannot we all?” Dr. Drakos cried in sharp-eared comprehension.

  * * * *

  4

  “Kabloom, kabloom!”

  Said McCrocky’s room.

  —Motto taken from the rubble and dust

  of Loretta Sheen

  It was that old room over the garages that now rumbled fearfully as though to illustrate Barnaby’s words. This was no ordinary rumble. We were all white-faced with fear. Then it exploded Kabloom!!

  It stunned ears, it paralyzed throats, it singed eyes. It buckled the floor of the study where we were, even though the exploding room was in a building apart. It shook sawdust out of Loretta Sheen. It gave Harry O’Donovan a nosebleed, and it knocked Barnaby Sheen out cold. It is believed that it moved a small mountain over behind us, a small mountain known as Harrow Street Hill.

  * * * *

  A little while, a little while, and the dazed Austro came in, singed but laughing. He was a tough one. “Carrock, carrock, we bust the crock,” he said. It was the first complete sentence that he had ever spoken. He winked; he winked crookedly; he would never wink straight again. One of his eyes had been blasted askew. But he had salvaged an armload of blackened patio blocks and he was drawing on them with happy abandon. And what he was drawing was the million-year-long saga of Rocky McCrocky.

  We remembered now. John Penandrew used to draw Rocky McCrocky when we were boys. But Austro was Rocky McCrocky. No wonder he had always looked familiar.

  “Cousin, rock-cousin,” said Harry O’Donovan, “you have given me back the lost two thirds of my boyhood. You have intruded a lost million years into a small room. We will never remember it all, but we have remembered part of it that we thought lost forever.”

  “It could not have happened,” Barnaby muttered, still out, still overpowered. “That room was not library, that room was not annals.”

  It was, though.

  Somewhere there is the true full story about man and his kindred (Austro winked crookedly; Loretta dribbled sawdust and a profound written motto fell from her open throat), about their origins and destinations (Mary Mondo, that schizo-ghost, laughed in that way they have: she had remembered it all the time), about who and what they are.

  How is it that this story has become so forgotten?

  * * * *

  Well, you see, it has a tendency to explode when—

  <>

  * * * *

  MY SWEET LADY JO

  by Howard Waldrop

  In the nineteenth century, when H. G. Wells and a few other pioneers were first exploring ideas like time travel and immortality and invasions from other worlds, the term “science fiction” hadn’t yet been coined. The usual designation for such stories was “A Scientific Romance,” the latter word referring not to love but to the literary style known as Romanticism (the influence of Rousseau in The Time Machine, for instance). Today we seldom hear of “scientific romance”—but Howard Waldrop’s short tale here might fit that term in all interpretations.

  * * * *

  HIS NAME, according to the birth certificate, was Edward Smith. He was left at the hospital by “Mrs. Smith” when she left for parts unknown. He was raised in the Sylacauga Home on 12th Street in Birmingham, Alabama.

  The child was precocious, else he wouldn’t have been noticed. Psychologists were led to believe that his mother and father were both of genius level. He hadn’t gotten his brains behind a truck-stop café. What led “Mrs. Smith” to leave a newborn child alone in the maternity ward of a great metropolitan hospital was unknown.

  Suffice it to say that by the age of twenty-seven, Edward NMI Smith was appointed director of public information of the Space Science Services Administration. The youngest, and brightest, man ever placed so high within the government. At the time, he was unhappily married, the father of one child; a very lonely man.

  The year he took the directorate, the first men came back from the stars. They had gone to Alpha Centauri twenty-six years before, accelerating to near-light speeds for the middle third of their journey. They got there in twelve years. Sixteen years after the first ships left, a message dropped out of the clear sky one night.

  Seven of the original nine ships made the trip. For the duration, the crews remained awake like any other spacecraft crew. They guided the great craft through the darkness, monitoring those colonists they carried frozen in hopes of finding a new world orbiting the nearest star.

  Alpha Centauri IV, named Nova Terra (of course), had been found in short order. Less gravity, more sunlight, less oxygen, more nitrogen. A good world.

  The message came from the new transmitter on Nova Terra. The radio station had been broadcasting four years when its first message reached the Earth, and it would be another four before they knew whether Earth had received it. The distances immense, the blackness deep, the stars bright.

  Meanwhile, two and a half years after the settlement of Nova Terra, an expedition headed back. Due to the time lag between broadcast and reception, the message of their departure from Nova Terra was received eighteen and a half years after the ships left Earth.

  Someone quickly figured that the ships had been on their way back four years already, and would arrive in another eight.

  The message said, “Two ships to return to Earth.
Methods developed here allow crews to sleep in shifts. Some colonists returning. See you in twelve years.”

  Eight years later the ships coasted into solar orbit a few hundred miles above the Earth. At night, they were brighter than Venus, brighter than the space stations wheeling near them; two new stars on the zenith.

  Ed Smith, the new director of information of the Space Science Services Administration, and his team were on Station No. 3 to meet the first men and women to return from the stars.

  * * * *

  “Mom Church! Any time now,” said Newton Thornton, looking at the clock on the wall.

  “Easy, Newton,” I said. “This is the Station’s moment of glory. First they’ve had since the starships left almost three decades ago. You can’t blame them for taking a little longer in decompression than they have to.”

  “I know that, Mr. Smith,” he said, “but damn, they’re sure taking their time.”

  “Well, well have them long enough,” I said.

  The doors opened and out they came, the station’s director striding before them like head lion of the pride.

  His glad hand came out almost automatically. “Mr. Smith, the head of Space Services information, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Smith, the crew and colonists from Nova Terra.”

  I made an impatient little bow. Several of the crewmen returned the bow, stiffly, formally. Two of the women curtsied.

  We all broke into smiles.

  * * * *

  Commander Gunderson was breathing smoke from the cigar as if it were air. “You’d be surprised to know,” he said, “that tobacco will not grow well on the areas of Nova Terra we settled. Most of the soil is too acid. Of course, that was . . . what? twelve years ago. Place may have more tobacco than North Carolina by now.” He breathed more of the cigar smoke.

  “I hope so,” said Newton. “Carolina doesn’t have any.”

  “What?”

  “Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, lost more than three quarters of their crops eleven years ago. New fungal disease. Spread quickly. Spores in the ground so thick the land still can’t be used for years. What tobacco is raised is now done in Arizona, New Mexico and parts of the California plains . . . still partly desert land when you left,” said Newton.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Gunderson. Weariness crossed his face. “It’ll take a while to get used to things . . . you know.” He stared at the burning ash of his cigar. “I went out as a colonist. Twenty-six years ago. That’s a long time. Decided that, even with my Services training, it’d be better for me to go out asleep. Just in case they ever wanted to come back, and the crews didn’t want to make another twelve-year trip.” He rubbed his graying hair.

  “The crewmen who went out . . . they aged. I didn’t. I thought I’d be like them on this trip back. That was before we developed the rapid cryogenics that allowed the crew to sleep in shifts. I’ve only been up seven months, since we left Nova Terra.

  “I knew there’d be people who’d want to come back. It’s not adventure out there, you know. It’s hard work.”

  He put out the stub of the cigar very carefully.

  “Hell, I’ve only aged three years and seven months since I left Earth twenty-six years ago. Course, I was old when I left”

  Thornton laughed.

  Commander Gunderson became serious. “There are some people who only aged three years,” he said. “Some of the colonists went out asleep. They’ve come back asleep. They were only up three years. They didn’t like what they found there any more than they liked what they left.”

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “I guess that’s why I went out asleep, rather than as a crew member. I knew there’d be people like that who’d need to get back more than they needed to leave. I guess that’s why.”

  After he left, Newton Thornton looked at me. “How are they ever going to make it?” he asked.

  “Like everybody else does,” I said, remembering. “They just get along, one way or another.”

  * * * *

  The debriefings lagged. The reports occupied a small room. Birth and deaths, arability, mineral deficiencies; all the things that tell you what a planet is so you can decide how to make it what you want it to be. We still had twelve returning colonists to interview, and Captain Welkins. Welkins had gone out as a crewman and had come back as one. Remaining awake the whole time. The psychologists were questioning him first. We would talk to him later. The colonists and crewmen were anxious to get down to the planet that they had left twenty-six years before. We were going as fast as we could and still get all the information we needed. And we were as tired as they were. We could all use a rest.

  * * * *

  Sometime that second week I called my wife and boy.

  Me: Hello, Angie.

  AN: Is that you? Ed?

  Me: Yes. How’re you? How’s Billy?

  AN: Oh. We’re fine. Just fine.

  Me: Tell him I don’t know when I’ll be back. But it shouldn’t be too long. A

  week at most

  AN: He misses you. He asks about you all the time.

  Me: Well, I miss both of you, I guess.

  AN: You guess?

  Me: Hell, you know what I mean.

  AN: Well, I guess I hope you get home soon.

  Me: Dammit, Angie. It’s just that I need a rest. I’m beat. I’ve got a lot of work

  here.

  AN: Then maybe you can take Billy to the mountains in a couple of weeks.

  Me: I don’t want to take Billy anywhere. I just want to rest.

  AN: Pardon me.

  Me: Look, Angie. Just tell Billy I’ll see him soon.

  AN: What about me? Me: What about you?

  AN: Can’t you even try to be nice sometime?

  Me: I quit a long time ago. I’ll see you soon.

  AN: Are you sure it won’t cut into your valuable time?

  I hung up. Damn. Damn.

  * * * *

  Her name was Jo Ellen Singletary. She was one of the people Commander Gunderson had spoken about. She was very pretty. Sometimes, as she talked, small lines formed around her mouth. Tiny lines. She looked twenty, maybe twenty-five.

  I had her partial records out. I never looked at anybody’s until I had to write up the finished reports. I worked from the bio Newton wrote on each person. I still hadn’t interviewed Welkins. The psychologists were holding us up.

  “You’re one of the special cases,” I said.

  “Special? Oh. You mean turnaround.”

  “Yes. Turnaround.”

  “I suppose I am, then. Special,” she said.

  “What made you decide to come back?” I asked.

  “I ... I didn’t especially like it out there.” She shifted her weight in the chair. Newton had gone to get us some sandwiches. She looked around the room. “So I came back. I want to start over again, here. On Earth.”

  “You realize that things have changed in the twenty-six years you’ve been gone,” I said.

  For an answer, her eyes started to water up. I didn’t like women crying. I started to get up out of my chair, then decided against it. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” I said. “I only meant it as a question.”

  “No. No, you didn’t.” Her face tensed. “You meant it won’t be any easier living here now than it was when I left. Didn’t you?”

  I looked down at the papers on my desk. “No. It’s been a busy week. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. There is no excuse.”

  “I know you’ve been busy,” she said, still staring at me. She started to cry again. “There’s no excuse for me crying, either.”

  She really began crying now.

  I put my pen down, walked around the desk, then stood like a dummy beside her while she cried. Her hair smelled musky. She wore a new perfume which she must have bought at the station. Angie had some of the same at home.

  It was then I realized what she faced. She returned to Earth, aged only three years more than when she left. She came back to an entirel
y different world. What she must have seen outside the station windows was not the familiar Earth, but another blue planet where they happened to speak the same language. Culture shock waited with trapjaw mouth. Technological shock lurked behind every street corner, in every new sound. And she had not touched down yet.

  I put my hand on the back of her head. I patted it. “I can get one of the doctors to get you something,” I said.