Universe 5 - [Anthology] Read online

“Why?” asked Shavna.

  “Walk around the tower. The green light on the Mother’s temple will shift closer to the white light on the University, and then shift back again.”

  Shavna was silent a moment. “I have seen it,” he said

  “The wise man taught them how to observe the stars; he gave them a scrying mirror, and told them how to watch by night, and how to make metal plates to record what they had seen. He told them that if they found anything they should tell him, and he gave them money with which to live; but he died old with no reward, and so did your Ancestor Caltai.

  “The story would have ended there, but Caltai and his wife had taught their children—all but the blindthings, of which they had many—and their children taught theirs. Out of reverence for their parents they watched, though they lost hope after a time and the family was cursed with blindthings, as if the stock had become tainted. Finally the duty to parents strove against duty to the Mother of All. My brother was the first to defect; he entered the priesthood. Of my children, none followed me. My wife died long ago. Now I watch alone.”

  “Do you think your work has reason?” Shavna said.

  “Yes, I do. Most of the time. Why should a goddess watch over us? Why, if she watches, does she not prevent evil? Why did she not keep my wife from dying in the healers’ temple? Why were my nephews all blind-things?”

  The youth stood. “I wonder too. Show me what you do, and how. Show me how you make the records on the metal plates, and how you watch the sky. Tell me the names you have given the stars, and where they live.”

  The old one looked at him. “You really want to learn?” His voice was shaking.

  “I want to understand if this is madness or a new knowledge.”

  * * * *

  Inar showed him the scrying mirror, the same as the diviners used, but ground perfect and smooth. He told how the wise man had helped his great-great-grandparents construct it. He showed him the tower, and how it pointed at the sky and kept the lights of the city from the mirror. He climbed stiffly up to his desk to show him the metal plates and the blackening chemicals; he told him how the bright stars made black streaks on the plates. And sometimes when he was discouraged, even he looked up at the night sky, and instead of shrieking empty space, saw the jewel-studded cloak of a protecting Mother.

  He edged down the ladder toward the shelf where he kept the collected records of generations. He took measuring instruments, selected a streaked plate from the records of his grandfather, and crouched on the ground. He wanted to be certain; he measured and re-measured, and finally closed his eyes in defeat.

  The same, always the same, made with the same instruments, readings taken night after night, lifetime after lifetime, and yet there was no shift among the stars. They rose earlier each night, but in the same fixed patterns. The earth did not move.

  He slumped discouraged on the live-earth floor, holding the metal plates in his stiff and tired hands. Why go on? Why not go back to Asdul, sleep at night and wake during the day as other people did? Why not enjoy the brief time he had left? Why give up the world for an ancient dream, an old delusion?

  As he sat, the sky grew redder and the shadows lengthened. His mind was numb.

  * * * *

  Had he slept, or had he merely stared entranced as shadows fell across the metal plates? When the knock came, he was startled, and the plates clattered to the floor.

  He rose on aching limbs and shuffled toward the door. It was Shavna who stood there, with one other, a young female. Shavna’s cape swirled carelessly about him; he stood close to the young woman.

  “I have thought all day, Grandfather,” he said. “I do not believe Ancestor Caltai was mad, nor do I think you are mad. There is a mystery here, and you are trying to solve it as best you know. That does not make you mad.”

  The last glow faded from the sky; one by one the brightest stars came out. The twin stars, the Eyes of the Lover, were the brightest of all.

  The young woman spoke. “Shavna told me of your watching, and how you and your ancestors have watched for generations to see any change among the stars, the change that would mean the world moves.’

  “Yes,” said Inar. He was tired, and he had lost hope. The young woman reminded him of his long-dead wife.

  “I have noticed,” she said, “that if you walk around Asdul the city lights shift position, but if you look at the mountains beyond the city, the mountains themselves do not appear to change, though that does not mean you are standing still. If you travel for many days, you can see a change even in the mountains.

  “What if the stars are very far away, farther than we can imagine? We might not be able to see a shift even if there is one. There might be other ways to tell if the world moves, ways we ourselves can measure. I would learn what you know.”

  Inar looked up at the Mother’s cloak. It was no longer warm, no longer enveloping. There was no cloak, nothing but endless distances and tiny scattered suns. There was no one there to shield the world from harm. What difference does it make if the world moves? he wondered. But it was too late for such thoughts.

  The Eyes of the Lover stared blindly down; they did not see him. He shivered and took Shavna and the woman inside out of the empty night

  <>

  * * * *

  MYSTERIOUS DOINGS IN THE

  METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

  by Fritz Leiber

  When critics discuss the evolution of science fiction, they speak of the writers who brought real literary values into what began, in this country, as an almost exclusively pulp-oriented genre; the names Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury and, Kurt Vonnegut are usually invoked. Yet the writer who has won more awards in this field than any other, at last count, is Fritz Leiber. Maybe it’s because he’s been more versatile than the others, his output ranging from adventurous sword-and-sorcery tales (the Fafhred-Grey Mouser series) to grim warnings of possible futures (“Coming Attraction”) to pungent satires on our world (A Spectre Is Haunting Texas).

  Or maybe it’s simply because Leiber is a man of strong personal vision who has the literary tools with which to express himself forcefully year after year. His present story for Universe is a short one, a preposterous jape about a convention of bugs, but it shows Leiber at his irrepressible best—there’s not a single human character in the story, yet it manages to say more about humanity’s foibles than most sf novels filled with struggling, soul-searching men and women acting out troubled destinies against starry backdrops. (Besides—and not at all incidentally—it’s a wickedly funny piece.)

  * * * *

  The top half of the blade of grass growing in a railed plot beside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan said, “Beetles! You’d think they were the Kings of the World, the way they carry on!”

  The bottom half of the blade of grass replied, “Maybe they are. The distinguished writer of supernatural horror stories H. P. Lovecraft said in The Shadow Out of Time there would be a “hardy Coleopterous species immediately following mankind,’ to quote his exact words. Other experts say all insects, or spiders, or rats will inherit the Earth, but old H. P. L. said hardy coleopts.”

  “Pedant!” the top half mocked. “‘Coleopterous species’! Why not just say ‘beetles’ or just ‘bugs’? Means the same thing.”

  “You favor long words as much as I do,” the bottom half replied imperturbably, “but you also like to start arguments and employ a salty, clipped manner of speech which is really not your own—more like that of a death-watch beetle.”

  “I call a spade a spade,” the top half retorted. “And speaking of what spades delve into (a curt kenning signifying the loamy integument of Mother Earth), I hope we re not mashed into it by gunboats the next second or so. Or by beetle-crushers, to coin a felicitous expression.”

  Bottom explained condescendingly, “The president and general secretary of the Coleopt Convention have a trusty corps of early-warning beetles stationed about to detect the approach of gunboats. A Coleopterous Dew-l
ine.”

  Top snorted, “Trusty! I bet they’re all goofing off and having lunch at Schrafft’s.”

  “I have a feeling it’s going to be a great con,” bottom said.

  “I have a feeling it’s going to be a lousy, fouled-up con,” top said. “Everybody will get connec. The Lousi-con—how’s that for a name?”

  “Lousy. Lice have their own cons. They belong to the orders Psocoptera, Anoplura, and Mallophaga, not to the godlike, shining order Coleoptera.”

  “Scholiast! Paranoid!”

  The top and bottom halves of the blade of grass broke off their polemics, panting.

  * * * *

  The beetles of all Terra, but especially the United States, were indeed having their every-two-years world convention, their Biannual Bug Thing, in the large, railed-off grass plot in Central Park, close by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, improbable as that may seem and just as the grassblade with the split personality had said.

  Now, you may think it quite impossible for a vast bunch of beetles, ranging in size from nearly microscopic ones to unicorn beetles two and one-half inches long, to hold a grand convention in a dense urban area without men becoming aware of it. If so, you have seriously underestimated the strength and sagacity of the coleopterous tribe and overestimated the sensitivity and eye for detail of Homo sapiens—Sap for short.

  These beetles had taken security measures to awe the CIA and NKVD, had those fumbling human organizations been aware of them. There was indeed a Beetle Dewline to warn against the approach of gunboats— which are, of course, the elephantine, leather-armored feet of those beetle-ignoring, city-befuddled giants, men. In case such veritable battleships loomed nigh, all accredited beetles had their directives to dive down to the grassroots and harbor there until the all-clear sounded on their ESP sets.

  And should such a beetle-crusher chance to alight on a beetle or beetles, well, in case you didn’t know it, beetles are dymaxion-built ovoids such as even Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright never dreamed of, crush-resistant to a fabulous degree and able to endure such saturation shoe-bombings without getting the least crack in their resplendent carapaces.

  So cast aside doubts and fears. The beetles were having their world convention exactly as and where I’ve told you. There were bright-green ground beetles, metallic wood-boring beetles, yellow soldier beetles, gorgeous ladybird beetles and handsome and pleasing fungus beetles just as brilliantly red, charcoal-gray blister beetles, cryptic flower beetles of the scarab family with yellow hieroglyphs imprinted on their shining green backs, immigrant and affluent Japanese beetles, snout beetles, huge darksome stag and horn beetles, dogbane beetles like fire opals, and even that hyper-hieroglyphed rune-bearing yellow-on-blue beetle wonder of the family Chrysomelidae and subfamily Chrysomelinae Calligrapha serpentina. All of them milling about in happy camaraderie, passing drinks and bons mots, as beetles will. Scuttling, hopping, footing the light fantastic, and even in sheer exuberance lifting their armored carapaces to take short flights of joy on their retractable membranous silken wings like glowing lace on the lingerie of Viennese baronesses.

  And not just U.S. beetles, but coleopts from all over the world—slant-eyed Asian beetles in golden robes, North African beetles in burnished burnooses, South African beetles wild as fire ants with great Afro hairdos, smug English beetles, suave Continental bugs, and brilliantly clad billionaire Brazilian beetles and fireflies constantly dancing the carioca and sniffing ether and generously spraying it at other beetles in intoxicant mists. Oh, a grandsome lot.

  Not that there weren’t flies in the benign ointment of all this delightful coleopterous sociability. Already the New York City cockroaches were out in force, picketing the convention because they hadn’t been invited. Round and round the sacred grass plot they tramped, chanting labor-slogans in thick Semitic accents and hurling coarse working-class epithets.

  “But of course we couldn’t have invited them even if we’d wanted to,” explained the Convention’s general secretary, a dapper click beetle, in fact an eyed elater of infinite subtlety and resource in debate and tactics. As the book says, “If the eyed elater falls on its back, it lies quietly for perhaps a minute. Then, with a loud click, it flips into the air. If it is lucky, it lands on its feet and runs away; otherwise it tries again.” And the general secretary had a million other dodges as good or better. He said now, “But we couldn’t have invited them even if we’d wanted to, because cockroaches aren’t true beetles at all, aren’t Coleoptera; they belong to the order Orihoptera, the family Blattidae—blat to them! Moreover, many of them are mere German (German-Jewish, maybe?) Croton bugs, dwarfish in stature compared to American cockroaches, who all once belonged to the Confederate Army.”

  In seconds the plausible slander was known by insect grapevine to the cockroaches. Turning the accusation to their own Wobbly purposes, they began rudely to chant in unison as they marched, “Blat, blat, go the Blattidae!”

  Also, several important delegations of beetles had not yet arrived, including those from Bangladesh, Switzerland, Iceland and Egypt.

  But despite all these hold-ups and disturbances, the first session of the Great Coleopt Congress got off to a splendid start. The president, a portly Colorado potato beetle resembling Grover Cleveland, rapped for order. Whereupon row upon row of rainbow-hued beetles rose to their feet amidst the greenery and sonorously sang— drowning out even the gutteral blats of the crude cockroaches—the chief beetle anthem:

  “Beetles are not dirty bugs,

  Spiders, scorpions or slugs.

  Heroes of the insect realms,

  They sport winged burnished helms.

  They are shining and divine. T

  hey are kindly and just fine.

  Beetles do not bite or sting.

  They love almost everything.”

  They sang it to the melody of the Ode to Joy in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth.

  The session left many beetle wives, larval children, husbands and other nonvoting members at loose ends. But provision had been made for them. Guided by a well-informed though somewhat stuffy scribe beetle, they entered the Metropolitan Museum for a conducted tour designed for both entertainment and cultural enrichment.

  While the scribe beetle pointed out notable items of interest and spoke his educational but somewhat long-winded pieces, they scuttled all over the place, feeling out the forms of great statues by crawling over them and reveling inside the many silvery suits of medieval armor.

  Most gunboats didn’t notice them at all. Those who did were not in the least disturbed. Practically all gunboats—though they dread spiders and centipedes and loath cockroaches—like true beetles, as witness the good reputation of the ladybug, renowned in song and story for her admirable mother love and fire-fighting ability. These gunboats assumed that the beetles were merely some new educational feature of the famed museum, or else an artistry of living arabesques.

  When the touring beetles came to the Egyptian Rooms, they began to quiet down, entranced by art most congenial to coleopts by reason of its antiquity and dry yet vivid precision. They delighted in the tiny, toylike tomb ornaments and traced out the colorful murals and even tried to decipher the cartouches and other hieroglyphs by walking along their lines, corners and curves. The absence of the Egyptian delegation was much regretted. They would have been able to answer many questions, although the scribe beetle waxed eloquent and performed prodigies of impromptu scholarship.

  But when they entered the room with the sign reading scababs, their awe and admiration knew no bounds. They scuttled softer than mice in feather slippers. They drew up silently in front of the glass cases and gazed with wonder and instinctive reverence at the rank on rank of jewel-like beetle forms within. Even the scribe beetle had nothing to say.

  * * * *

  Meanwhile, back at the talkative grassblade, the top half, who was in fact a purple boy tiger beetle named Speedy, said, “Well, they’re all off to a great start, I don’t think. This pr
omises to be the most fouled-up convention in history.”

  “Don’t belittle,” reproved the bottom half, who was in reality a girl American burying beetle named Big Yank. “The convention is doing fine—orderly sessions, educational junkets, what more could you ask?”

  “Blat, blat, go the Blattidae!” Speedy commented sneeringly. “The con’s going to hell in a beetle basket. Take that sneaky click beetle who’s, general secretary— he’s up to no good, you can be sure. An insidious insect, if I ever knew one. An eyed elater—who’d he ever elate? And that potato bug who’s president—a bleedin’ plutocrat. As for that educational junket inside the museum, you just watch what happens!”

  “You really do have an evil imagination,” Big Yank responded serenely.

  Despite their constant exchange of persiflage, the boy and girl beetles were inseparable pals who’d had many an exciting adventure together. Speedy was half an inch long, a darting purple beauty most agile and difficult for studious gunboats to catch. Big Yank was an inch long, gleaming black of carapace with cloudy red markings. Though quick to undermine and bury small dead animals to be home and food for her larvae, Big Yank was not in the least morbid in outlook.