The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2 Read online

  “Oh, that,” she said scornfully. “Yes; every now and then. It doesn’t bother me. I just think of all the work I have to do. How I must stamp out the dreadful, soul-destroying advocates of meat-eating, and chemical fertilizer, and fluoridation. How I must wage the good fight for occult science and crush the materialistic philosophers. How I must tear down our corrupt and self-seeking ministers and priests, our rotten laws and customs—”

  “Lieber Gott,” the professor marveled as she went on. “With Norris it is spiders. With me it is rats and asphyxiation. But with this woman it is apparently everything in the Kosmos except her own revolting self!” She didn’t hear him; she was demanding that the voting age for women be lowered to sixteen and for men raised to thirty-five.

  We plowed through flies and mosquitoes like smoke. The flies bred happily on dead cows and in sheep which unfortunately were still alive. There wasn’t oil cake for the cows in the New Lemuria. There wasn’t sheep-dip for the sheep. There weren’t state and county and township and village road crews constantly patrolling, unplugging sluices, clearing gutters, replacing rusted culverts, and so quite naturally the countryside was reverting to swampland. The mosquitoes loved it.

  “La Plume,” the Duchess announced gaily. “And that’s Miss Phoebe Bancroft’s little house right there. Just why did you wish to see her, Professor, by the way?”

  “To complete her re-education…” the professor said in a tired voice.

  Miss Phoebe’s house and the few near it were the only places we had seen in the Area which weren’t blighted by neglect. Miss Phoebe, of course, was able to tell the shambling zombies what to do in the way of truck-gardening, lawn-mowing and maintenance. The bugs weren’t too bad there.

  “She’s probably resting, poor dear,” said the Duchess. I stopped the car and we got out. The Duchess said something about Kleenex and got in again and rummaged through the glove compartment.

  “Please, Professor,” I said, clutching my briefcase. “Play it the smart way. The way I told you.”

  “Norris,” he said, “I realize that you have my best interests at heart. You’re a good boy, Norris and I like you—”

  “Watch it!” I yelled, and swung into the posture of defense. So did he.

  Spiders. It wasn’t a good old world, not while there were loathsome spiders in it. Spiders—

  And a pistol shot past my ear. The professor fell. I turned and saw the Duchess looking smug, about to shoot me too. I sidestepped and she missed; as I slapped the automatic out of her hand I thought confusedly that it was a near-miracle, her hitting the professor at five paces even if he was a standing target. People don’t realize how hard it is to hit anything with a hand-gun.

  I suppose I was going to kill her or at least damage her badly when a new element intruded. A little old white-haired lady tottering down the neat gravel path from the house. She wore a nice pastel dress which surprised me; somehow I had always thought of her in black.

  “Bertha!” Miss Phoebe rapped out. “What have you done?”

  The Duchess simpered. “That man there was going to harm you, Phoebe, dear. And this fellow is just as bad—”

  Miss Phoebe said: “Nonsense. Nobody can harm me. Chapter Nine, Rule Seven. Bertha, I saw you shoot that gentleman. I’m very angry with you, Bertha. Very angry.”

  The Duchess turned up her eyes and crumpled. I didn’t have to check; I was sure she was dead. Miss Phoebe was once again In Utter Harmony with Her Environment.

  I went over and knelt beside the professor. He had a hole in his stomach and was still breathing. There wasn’t much blood. I sat down and cried. For the professor. For the poor damned human race which at a mile per day would be gobbled up into apathy and idiocy. Goodby, Newton and Einstein, goodby steak dinners and Michelangelo and Tenzing Norgay; goodby Moses, Rodin, Kwan Yin, transistors, Boole and Steichen....

  A redheaded man with an Adam’s apple was saying gently to Miss Phoebe: “It’s this rabbit, ma’am.” And indeed an enormous rabbit was loping up to him. “Every time I find a turnip or something he takes it away from me and he kicks and bites when I try to reason with him—” And indeed he took a piece of turnip from his pocket and the rabbit insolently pawed it from his hand and nibbled it triumphantly with one wise-guy eye cocked up at his victim. “He does that every time, Miss Phoebe,” the man said unhappily.

  The little old lady said: “I’ll think of something, Henry. But let me take care of these people first.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Henry said. He reached out cautiously for his piece of turnip and the rabbit bit him and then went back to its nibbling.

  “Young man,” Miss Phoebe said to me, “what’s wrong? You’re giving in to despair. You mustn’t do that. Chapter Nine, Rule Three.”

  I pulled myself together enough to say: “This is Professor Leuten. He’s dying.”

  Her eyes widened. “The Professor Leuten?” I nodded. “How to Live on the Cosmic Expense Account?” I nodded.

  “Oh, dear! If only there were something I could do!”

  Heal the dying? Apparently not. She didn’t think she could, so she couldn’t.

  “Professor,” I said. “Professor.”

  He opened his eyes and said something in German, then, hazily: “Woman shot me. Spoil her—racket, you call it? Who is this?” He grimaced with pain.

  “I’m Miss Phoebe Bancroft, Professor Leuten,” she breathed, leaning over him. “I’m so dreadfully sorry; I admire your wonderful book so much.”

  His weary eyes turned to me. “So, Norris,” he said. “No time to do it right. We do it your way. Help me up.”

  I helped him to his feet, suffering, I think, almost as much as he did. The wound started to bleed more copiously.

  “No!” Miss Phoebe exclaimed. “You should lie down.”

  The professor leered. “Good idea, baby. You want to keep me company?”

  “What’s that?” she snapped.

  “You heard me, baby. Say, you got any liquor in your place?”

  “Certainly not! Alcohol is inimical to the development of the higher functions of the mind. Chapter Nine—”

  “Pfui on Chapter Nine, baby. I chust wrote that stuff for money.”

  If Miss Phoebe hadn’t been in a state resembling surgical shock after hearing that, she would have seen the pain convulsing his face. “You mean . . .?” she quavered, beginning to look her age for the first time.

  “Sure. Lotta garbage. Sling fancy words and make money. What I go for is liquor and women. Women like you, baby.”

  The goose did it.

  Weeping, frightened, insulted and lost she tottered blindly up the neat path to her house. I eased the professor to the ground. He was biting almost through his lower lip.

  I heard a new noise behind me. It was Henry, the redhead with the Adam’s apple. He was chewing his piece of turnip and had hold of the big rabbit by the hind legs. He was flailing it against a tree. Henry looked ferocious, savage, carnivorous and very, very dangerous to meddle with. In a word, human.

  “Professor,” I breathed at his waxen face, “you’ve done it. It’s broken. Over. No more Plague Area.”

  He muttered, his eyes closed: “I regret not doing it properly…but tell the people how I died, Norris. With dignity, without fear. Because of Functional Epistemology.”

  I said through tears: “I’ll do more than tell them, Professor. The world will know about your heroism.

  “The world must know. We’ve got to make a book of this—your authentic, authorized, fictional biography—and Hopedale’s West Coast agent’ll see to the film sale—”

  “Film?” he said drowsily. “Book…?”

  “Yes. Your years of struggle, the little girl at home who kept faith in you when everybody scoffed, your burning mission to transform the world, and the climax—here, now!—as you give up your life for your philosophy.”

  “What girl?” he asked weakly.

  “There must have been someone, Professor. We’ll find someone.”
r />   “You would,” he asked feebly, “document my expulsion from Germany by the Nazis?”

  “Well, I don’t think so, Professor. The export market’s important, especially when it comes to selling film rights, and you don’t want to go offending people by raking up old memories. But don’t worry, Professor. The big thing is, the world will never forget you and what you’ve done.”

  He opened his eyes and breathed: “You mean your version of what I’ve done. Ach, Norris, Norris! Never did I think there was a power on Earth which could force me to contravene The Principle of Permissive Evolution.” His voice became stronger. “But you, Norris, are that power.” He got to his feet, grunting. “Norris,” he said, “I hereby give you formal warning that any attempt to make a fictional biography or cinema film of my life will result in an immediate injunction being—you say slapped?—upon you, as well as suits for damages from libel, copyright infringement and invasion of privacy. I have had enough.”

  “Professor,” I gasped. “You’re well!”

  He grimaced. “I’m sick. Profoundly sick to my stomach at my contravention of the Principle of Permissive—”

  His voice grew fainter. This was because he was rising slowly into the air. He leveled off at a hundred feet and called: “Send the royalty statements to my old address in Basle. And remember, Norris, I warned you—”

  He zoomed eastward then at perhaps one hundred miles per hour. I think he was picking up speed when he vanished from sight.

  I stood there for ten minutes or so and sighed and rubbed my eyes and wondered whether anything was worthwhile. I decided I’d read the professor’s book tomorrow without fail, unless something came up.

  Then I took my briefcase and went up the walk and into Miss Phoebe’s house. (Henry had made a twig fire on the lawn and was roasting his rabbit; he glared at me most disobligingly and I skirted him with care.)

  This was, after all, the payoff; this was, after all, the reason why I had risked my life and sanity.

  “Miss Phoebe,” I said to her, taking it out of the briefcase, “I represent the Hopedale Press; this is one of our standard contracts. We’re very much interested in publishing the story of your life, with special emphasis on the events of the past few weeks. Naturally you’d have an experienced collaborator. I believe sales in the hundred-thousands wouldn’t be too much to expect. I would suggest as a title—that’s right, you sign on that line there—How to be Supreme Ruler of Everybody....”

  The Country of the Kind (1956)

  DAMON KNIGHT

  DAMON KNIGHT (1922–2002) was one of the preeminent writers in the science-fiction field. He was also one of its preeminent editors, critics, anthologists, historians, translators, and teachers. His many books include Why Do Birds; Humpty Dumpty: An Oval; In Search of Wonder; Creating Short Fiction; and The Futurians. Among the many works of short fiction he published are several classic short-short tales, such as “The Handler,” “Not with a Bang,” and “To Serve Man.” Another story with a strong idea at its core, “The Country of the Kind,” remains a bracing tonic.

  HE ATTENDANT AT the car lot was daydreaming when I pulled up—a big, lazy-looking man in black satin chequered down the front. I was wearing scarlet, myself; it suited my mood. I got out, almost on his toes.

  “Park or storage?” he asked automatically, turning around. Then he realized who I was, and ducked his head away.

  “Neither,” I told him.

  There was a hand torch on a shelf in the repair shed right behind him. I got it and came back. I kneeled down to where I could reach behind the front wheel, and ignited the torch. I turned it on the axle and suspension. They glowed cherry red, then white, and fused together. Then I got up and turned the flame on both tires until the rubberoid stank and sizzled and melted down to the pavement. The attendant didn’t say anything.

  I left him there, looking at the mess on his nice clean concrete.

  It had been a nice car, too; but I could get another any time. And I felt like walking. I went down the winding road, sleepy in the afternoon sunlight, dappled with shade and smelling of cool leaves. You couldn’t see the houses; they were all sunken or hidden by shrubbery, or a little of both. That was the fad I’d heard about; it was what I’d come here to see. Not that anything the dulls did would be worth looking at.

  I turned off at random and crossed a rolling lawn, went through a second hedge of hawthorn in blossom, and came out next to a big sunken games court.

  The tennis net was up, and two couples were going at it, just working up a little sweat—young, about half my age, all four of them. Three dark-haired, one blonde. They were evenly matched, and both couples played well together; they were enjoying themselves.

  I watched for a minute. But by then the nearest two were beginning to sense I was there, anyhow. I walked down onto the court, just as the blonde was about to serve. She looked at me frozen across the net, poised on tiptoe. The others stood.

  “Off,” I told them. “Game’s over.”

  I watched the blonde. She was not especially pretty, as they go, but compactly and gracefully put together. She came down slowly flat-footed without awkwardness, and tucked the racket under her arm; then the surprise was over and she was trotting off the court after the other three.

  I followed their voices around the curve of the path, between towering masses of lilacs, inhaling the sweetness, until I came to what looked like a little sunning spot. There was a sundial, and a birdbath, and towels lying around on the grass. One couple, the dark-haired pair, was still in sight farther down the path, heads bobbing along. The other couple had disappeared.

  I found the handle in the grass without any trouble. The mechanism responded, and an oblong section of turf rose up. It was the stair I had, not the elevator, but that was all right. I ran down the steps and into the first door I saw, and was in the top-floor lounge, an oval room lit with diffused simulated sunlight from above. The furniture was all comfortably bloated, sprawling and ugly; the carpet was deep, and there was a fresh flower scent in the air.

  The blonde was over at the near end with her back to me, studying the autochef keyboard. She was half out of her playsuit. She pushed it the rest of the way down and stepped out of it, then turned and saw me.

  She was surprised again; she hadn’t thought I might follow her down.

  I got up close before it occurred to her to move; then it was too late. She knew she couldn’t get away from me; she closed her eyes and leaned back against the paneling, turning a little pale. Her lips and her golden brows went up in the middle.

  I looked her over and told her a few uncomplimentary things about herself. She trembled, but didn’t answer. On an impulse, I leaned over and dialed the autochef to hot cheese sauce. I cut the safety out of circuit and put the quantity dial all the way up. I dialed soup tureen and then punch bowl.

  The stuff began to come out in about a minute, steaming hot. I took the tureens and splashed them up and down the wall on either side of her. Then when the first punch bowl came out I used the empty bowls as scoops. I clotted the carpet with the stuff; I made streamers of it all along the walls, and dumped puddles into what furniture I could reach. Where it cooled it would harden, and where it hardened it would cling.

  I wanted to splash it across her body, but it would’ve hurt, and we couldn’t have that. The punch bowls of hot sauce were still coming out of the autochef, crowding each other around the vent. I punched cancel, and then sauterne (swt., Calif.).

  It came out well chilled in open bottles. I took the first one and had my arm back just about to throw a nice line of the stuff right across her midriff, when a voice said behind me:

  “Watch out for cold wine.”

  My arm twitched and a little stream of the wine splashed across her thighs. She was ready for it; her eyes had opened at the voice, and she barely jumped.

  I whirled around, fighting mad. The man was standing there where he had come out of the stairwell. He was thinner in the face than most, bronz
ed, wide-chested, with alert blue eyes. If it hadn’t been for him, I knew it would have worked—the blonde would have mistaken the chill splash for a scalding one.

  I could hear the scream in my mind, and I wanted it.

  I took a step toward him, and my foot slipped. I went down clumsily, wrenching one knee. I got up shaking and tight all over. I wasn’t in control of myself. I screamed, “You—you—” I turned and got one of the punch bowls and lifted it in both hands, heedless of how the hot sauce was slopping over onto my wrists, and I had it almost in the air toward him when the sickness took me—that damned buzzing in my head, louder, louder, drowning everything out.

  When I came to, they were both gone. I got up off the floor, weak as death, and staggered over to the nearest chair. My clothes were slimed and sticky. I wanted to die. I wanted to drop into that dark furry hole that was yawning for me and never come up; but I made myself stay awake and get out of the chair.

  Going down in the elevator, I almost blacked out again. The blonde and the thin man weren’t in any of the second-floor bedrooms. I made sure of that, and then I emptied the closets and bureau drawers onto the floor, dragged the whole mess into one of the bathrooms and stuffed the tub with it, then turned on the water.

  I tried the third floor: maintenance and storage. It was empty. I turned the furnace on and set the thermostat up as high as it would go. I disconnected all the safety circuits and alarms. I opened the freezer doors and dialed them to defrost. I propped the stairwell door open and went back up in the elevator.

  On the second floor I stopped long enough to open the stairway door there—the water was halfway toward it, creeping across the floor—and then searched the top floor. No one was there. I opened book reels and threw them unwinding across the room; I would have done more, but I could hardly stand. I got up to the surface and collapsed on the lawn: that furry pit swallowed me up, dead and drowned.

  While I slept, water poured down the open stairwell and filled the third level. Thawing food packages floated out into the rooms. Water seeped into wall panels and machine housings; circuits shorted and fuses blew. The air conditioning stopped, but the pile kept heating. The water rose.