The Year's Best Science Fiction 5 Page 7

  The two doctors worked over Rogov. One of them gave Rogov an injection. Then all of them stood back from the bed.

  Rogov writhed in his bed. He squirmed. His eyes opened, but he did not see the people. With childishly clear and simple words Rogov began to talk, “... that golden shape, the golden stairs, the music, take me back to the music, I want to be with the music, I really am the music ...” and so on in an endless monotone.

  Cherpas leaned over him so that her face was directly in his line of vision. “My darling! My darling, wake up. This is serious.”

  It was evident to all of them that Rogov did not hear her.

  For the first time in many years Gauck took the initiative. He spoke directly to the man from Moscow. “Comrade, may I make a suggestion?”

  Karper looked at him. Gauck nodded at Gausgofer. “We were both sent here by orders of Comrade Stalin. She is senior. She bears the responsibility. All I do is double check.”

  The deputy minister turned to Gausgofer. Gausgofer had been staring at Rogov on the bed; her blue, watery eyes were tearless and her face was drawn into an expression of extreme tension.

  Karper ignored that and said to her firmly, clearly, commandingly, “What do you recommend?”

  Gausgofer looked at him very directly and said in a measured voice, “I do not think that the case is one of brain damage. I believe that he has obtained a communication which be must share with another human being and that unless one of us follows him there may be no answer.”

  Karper barked, “Very well. But what do we do?”

  ”Let me follow-into the machine.”

  Anastasia Cherpas began to laugh slyly and frantically. She seized Karper’s arm and pointed her finger at Gausgofer. Karper stared at her.

  Cherpas restrained her laughter and shouted at Karper, “The woman’s mad. She has loved my husband for many years. She has hated my presence, and now she thinks that she can save him. She thinks that she can follow. She thinks that he wants to communicate with her. That’s ridiculous. I will go myself!”

  Karper looked about. He selected two of his staff and stepped over into a corner of the room. They could hear him talking, but they could not distinguish the words. After a conference of six or seven minutes he returned.

  ”You people have been making serious security charges against each other. I find that one of our finest weapons, the mind of Rogov, is damaged. Rogov’s not just a man. He is a Soviet project.” Scorn entered his voice. “I find that the senior security officer, a policewoman with a notable record, is charged by another Soviet scientist with a silly infatuation. I disregard such charges. The development of the Soviet State and the work of Soviet science cannot be impeded by personalities. Comrade Gausgofer will follow. I am acting tonight because my own staff physician says that Rogov may not live and it is very important for us to find out just what has happened to him and why.”

  He turned his baleful gaze on Cherpas. “You will not protest, comrade. Your mind is the property of the Russian State. Your life and your education have been paid for by the workers. You cannot throw these things away because of personal sentiment. If there is anything to be found, Comrade Gausgofer will find it for both of us.”

  The whole group of them went back into the laboratory. The frightened technicians were brought over from the barracks. The lights were turned on and the windows were closed. The May wind had become chilly.

  The needle was sterilized. The electronic grids were warmed up.

  Gausgofer’s face was an impassive mask of triumph as she sat in the receiving chair. She smiled at Gauck as an attendant brought the soap and the razor to shave clean a patch on her scalp.

  Gauck did not smile back. His black eyes stared at her. He said nothing. He did nothing. He watched.

  Karper walked to and fro, glancing from time to time at the hasty but orderly preparation of the experiment Anastasia Cherpas sat down at a laboratory table about five meters away from the group. She watched the back of Gausgofer’s head as the needle was lowered. She buried her face in her hands. Some of the others thought they heard her weeping, but no one heeded Cherpas very much. They were too intent on watching Gausgofer.

  Gausgofer’s face became red. Perspiration poured down the flabby cheeks. Her fingers tightened on the arm of her chair. Suddenly she shouted at them, “That golden shape on the golden steps.”

  She leaped to her feet, dragging the apparatus with her.

  No one had expected this. The chair fell to the floor. The needle holder, lifted from the floor, swung its weight sidewise. The needle twisted like a scythe in Gausgofer’s brain.

  The body of Gausgofer lay on the floor, surrounded by excited officials.

  Karper was acute enough to look around at Cherpas.

  She stood up from the laboratory table and walked toward him. A thin line of blood flowed down from her cheekbone. Another line of blood dripped down from a position on her cheek, one and a half centimetres forward of the opening of her left ear.

  With tremendous composure, her face as white as fresh snow, she smiled at him. “I eavesdropped.”

  Karper said, “What?”

  ”I eavesdropped, eavesdropped,” repeated Anastasia Cherpas. “I found out where my husband has gone. It is not somewhere in this world. It is something hypnotic beyond all the limitations of our science. We have made a great gun, but the gun has fired upon us before we could

  fire it.

  ”Project Telescope is finished. You may try to get someone else to finish it, but you mil not.”

  Karper stared at her and then turned aside.

  Gauck stood in his way.

  ”What do you want?”

  ’To tell you,” said Gauck very softly, “to tell you, comrade deputy minister, that Rogov is gone as she says he is gone, that she is finished if she says she is finished, that all this is true. I know.”

  Karper glared at him. “How do you know?”

  Gauck remained utterly impassive. With superhuman assurance and calm he said to Karper, “Comrade, I do not dispute the matter. I know these people, though I do not know their science. Rogov is done for.”

  At last Karper believed him.

  They all looked at Anastasia Cherpas, at her beautiful hair, her determined blue eyes, and the two thin lines of blood.

  Karper turned to her. “What do we do now?”

  For an answer she dropped to her knees and began sobbing. “No, no, not Rogov! No, no, not Rogov!”

  And that was all that they could get out of her. Gauck looked on.

  On the golden steps in the golden light, a golden shape danced a dream beyond the limits of all imagination, danced and drew the music to herself until a sigh of yearning, yearning which became a hope and a torment, went through the hearts of living things on a thousand worlds.

  Edges of the golden scene faded raggedly and unevenly into black. The golden dimmed down to a pale gold-silver sheen and then to silver, last of all to white. The dancer who had been golden was now a forlorn white-pink figure standing, quiet and fatigued, on the immense white steps. The applause of a thousand worlds roared in upon her.

  She looked blindly at them. The dance had overwhelmed her, too. The applause could mean nothing. The dance was an end in itself. She would have to live, somehow, until she danced again.

  * * * *

  THE SHORELINE AT SUNSET by Ray Bradbury

  from A Medicine for Melancholy (Doubleday, 1959)

  By definition, the only “formula” for science fantasy is no-formula; a genre of speculation and extrapolation can exist only in a state of flux. But even flux, over a period of time, trends to a preferred shape. Against a background of the inevitable ninety per cent of inept or hackster trash, the better stories, as they emerge each year, always show some very definite—and different from the year before—emphasis on one area of speculation or another.

  This time the focus is summed up in the title of the editorial reprinted some pages farther on from John W. Campbell Jr.’s e
rstwhile Astounding, now—take a deep breath— retitled Analog Science Fact and Fiction: “What Do You Mean .. . Human?”

  In a rather different sense, this is of course the query underlying all fiction, and all art. But the stories in this book, almost all, treat the question also in the special science-fiction sense as well—exploring with postulated answers and what if’s the boundaries of distinction by which we define ourselves.

  Ray Bradbury, who needs no introduction in or out of the science-fiction field (even Mr. Amis knows his name!) selects a delicate and haunting legendary boundary to explore.

  * * * *

  Tom, kneedeep in the waves, a piece of driftwood in his hand, listened.

  The house, up toward the coast highway in the late afternoon, was silent. The sounds of closets being rummaged, suitcase locks snapping, vases being smashed, and of a final door crashing shut, all had faded away.

  Chico, standing on the pale sand, flourished his wire-strainer to shake out a harvest of lost coins. After a moment, without glancing at Tom, he said, “Let her go.”

  So it was every year. For a week, or a month, their house would have music swelling from the windows, there would be new geraniums potted on the porch-rail, new paint on the doors and steps. The clothes on the wire-line changed from harlequin pants to sheath-dresses to hand-made Mexican frocks like white waves breaking behind the house. Inside, the paintings on the walls shifted from imitation Matisse to pseudo-Italian Renaissance. Sometimes, looking up, he would see a woman drying her hair like a bright yellow flag on the wind. Sometimes the flag was black or red. Sometimes the woman was tall, sometimes short, against the sky. But there was never more than one woman at a time. And, at last, a day like today came…

  Tom placed his driftwood on the growing pile near where Chico sifted the billion footprints left by people long vanished from their holidays.

  “Chico. What are we doing here?”

  “Living the life of Reilly, boy!”

  “I don’t feel like Reilly, Chico.”

  “Work at it, boy!”

  Tom saw the house a month from now, the flowerpots blowing dust, the walls hung with empty squares, only sand carpeting the floors. The rooms would echo like shells in the wind. And all night every night, bedded in separate rooms, he and Chico would hear a tide falling away and away down a long shore, leaving no trace.

  Tom nodded, imperceptibly. Once a year he himself brought a nice girl here knowing she was right at last and that in no time they would be married. But his women always stole silently away before dawn, feeling they had been mistaken for someone else, not being able to play the part. Chico’s friends left like vacuum cleaners, with a terrific drag, roar, rush, leaving no lint unturned, no clam unprized of its pearl, taking their purses with them like toy dogs which Chico had petted as he opened their jaws to count their teeth.

  “That’s four women so far this year.”

  “Okay, referee.” Chico grinned. “Show me the way to the showers.”

  “Chico—” Tom bit his lower lip, then went on. “I been thinking. Why don’t we split up?”

  Chico just looked at him.

  “I mean,” said Tom, quickly, “maybe we’d have better luck, alone.”

  “Well, I’ll be god-damned,” said Chico, slowly, gripping the strainer in his big fists before him. “Look here, boy, don’t you know the facts? You and me, we’ll be here come the year 2000. A couple of crazy dumb old gooney-birds drying their bones in the sun. Nothing’s ever going to happen to us now, Tom, it’s too late. Get that through your head and shut up.”

  Tom swallowed and looked steadily at the other man. “I’m thinking of leaving—next week.”

  “Shut up, shut up, and get to work!”

  Chico gave the sand an angry showering rake that tilled him forty-three cents in dimes, pennies, and nickels. He stared blindly at the coins shimmering down the wires like a pinball game all afire.

  Tom did not move, holding his breath.

  They both seemed to be waiting for something.

  The something happened.

  “Hey… hey… oh, hey… !”

  From a long way off down the coast a voice called.

  The two men turned slowly.

  “Hey… hey… oh, hey… !”

  A boy was running, yelling, waving, along the shore two hundred yards away. There was something in his voice that made Tom feel suddenly cold. He held onto his own arms, waiting.

  “Hey!”

  The boy pulled up, gasping, pointing back along the shore.

  “A woman, a funny woman, by the North Rock!”

  “A woman!” The words exploded from Chico’s mouth and he began to laugh. “Oh, no, no!”

  “What you mean, a ‘funny’ woman?” asked Tom.

  “I don’t know,” cried the boy, his eyes wide. “You got to come see! Awfully funny!”

  “You mean drowned?”

  “Maybe! She came out of the water, she’s lying on the shore, you got to see, yourself… funny…” The boy’s voice died. He gazed off north again. “She’s got a fish’s tail.”

  Chico laughed. “Not before supper, thanks.”

  “Please,” cried the boy, dancing now. “No lie! Oh, hurry!”

  He ran off, sensed he was not followed, and looked back in dismay.

  Tom felt his lips move. “Boy wouldn’t run this far for a joke, would he, Chico?”

  “People have run further for less.”

  Tom started walking. “All right, son.”

  “Thanks, mister, oh, thanks!”

  The boy ran. Twenty yards up the coast, Tom looked back. Behind him, Chico squinted, shrugged, dusted his hands wearily, and followed.

  They moved north along the twilight beach, their skin weathered in tiny lizard folds about their burnt pale-water eyes, looking younger for their hair cut close to the skull so you could not see the gray. There was a fair wind and the ocean rose and fell with prolonged concussions.

  “What,” said Tom, “what if we get to North Rock and it’s true? What if the ocean has washed some thing up?”

  But before Chico could answer, Tom was gone, his mind racing down a coast littered with horseshoe crabs, sand-dollars, starfish, kelp, and stone. From all the times he’d talked on what lives in the sea, the names returned with the breathing fall of waves. Argonauts, they whispered, codlings, pollacks, houndfish, tautog, tench, sea-elephant, they whispered, gillings, flounders, and beluga the white whale and grampus the sea-dog… always you thought how these must look from their deep-sounding names. Perhaps you would never in your life see them rise from the salt meadows beyond the safe limits of the shore, but they were there, and their names, with a thousand others, made pictures. And you looked and wished you were a frigate-bird that might fly nine thousand miles around to return some year with the full size of the ocean in your head.

  “Oh, quick!” The boy had run back to peer in Tom’s face. “It might be gone!”

  “Keep your shirt on, boy,” said Chico.

  They came around the North Rock. A second boy stood there, looking down.

  Perhaps from the corner of his eye, Tom saw something on the sand that made him hesitate to look straight at it, but fix instead on the face of the boy standing there. The boy was pale and he seemed not to breathe. On occasion he remembered to take a breath, his eyes focused, but the more they saw there on the sand the more they took time off from focusing and turned blank and looked stunned. When the ocean came in over his tennis shoes, he did not move or notice.

  Tom glanced away from the boy to the sand.

  And Tom’s face, in the next moment, became the face of the boy. His hands assumed the same curl at his sides and his mouth moved to open and stay half open and his eyes, which were light in color, seemed to bleach still more with so much looking.

  The setting sun was ten minutes above the sea.

  “A big wave came in and went out,” said the first boy, “and here she was.”

  They looked at the woman ly
ing there.

  Her hair was very long and it lay on the beach like the threads of an immense harp. The water stroked along the threads and floated them up and let them down, each time in a different fan and silhouette. The hair must have been five or six feet long and now it was strewn on the hard wet sand and it was the color of limes.

  Her face…

  The men bent half down in wonder.

  Her face was white sand sculpture, with a few water drops shimmering on it like summer rain upon a cream-colored rose. Her face was that moon which when seen by day is pale and unbelievable in the blue sky. It was milk-marble veined with faint violet in the temples. The eyelids, closed down upon the eyes, were powdered with a faint water-color, as if the eyes beneath gazed through the fragile tissue of the lids and saw them standing there above her looking down and looking down. The mouth was a pale flushed sea-rose, full and closed upon itself. And her neck was slender and white and her breasts were small and white, now covered, uncovered, covered, uncovered in the flow of water, the ebb of water, the flow, the ebb, the flow. And the breasts were flushed at their tips, and her body was startlingly white, almost an illumination, a white-green lightning against the sand. And as the water shifted her, her skin glinted like the surface of a pearl.

  The lower half of her body changed itself from white to very pale blue, from very pale blue to pale green, from pale green to emerald green, to moss and lime green, to scintillas and sequins all dark green, all flowing away in a fount, a curve, a rush of light and dark, to end in a lacy fan, a spread of foam and jewel on the sand. The two halves of this creature were so joined as to reveal no point of fusion where pearl woman, woman of a whiteness made of cream-water and clear sky, merged with that half which belonged to the amphibious slide and rush of current that came up on the shore and shelved down the shore, tugging its half toward its proper home. The woman was the sea, the sea was woman. There was no flaw or seam, no wrinkle or stitch; the illusion, if illusion it was, held perfectly together and the blood from one moved into and through and mingled with what must have been the ice-waters of the other.

  “I wanted to run get help.” The first boy seemed not to want to raise his voice. “But Skip said she was dead and there’s no help for that. Is she?”