We opened fire. Only Clem the Ox did not take cover. He took out the knife John had given him and stooped, and slashed at the cord holding the log the girl and the old man had got into position. It rolled away as the water pushed and sucked at it. With it went the other two logs. They seemed to wave us goodbye and danced away. I think I know what was in his heart just then. Fastening those three sticks together was great work.
Beatrice said to me, “John is dead?”
I said, “Yes, but he thought of you, and he told me to give you this.” I took from round my neck where I had hung it the little bloodstained book with the bullet hole, and although it was the most precious thing I had—or because it was—I gave it to her. And although the free people never lie except to the enemy, I said, “He sent it to you with love.”
She said, taking the book, “And this is his blood?”
“That hole is where the bullet went through. He had only two things, his knife and that book. He gave Clem his knife, but, the book is for Beatrice with my love.’”
She asked, “And nothing for you, Martin?”
“He smiled at me,” was all I could say.
Then I had to turn away. Clem, who had sharp ears and had heard what I said, patted my shoulder with his torn right hand and said, “Well done, kid. Spoken like a free man!” Then he unbuckled John’s knife and gave it to me, saying, “This is for you. I’ve got a knife of my own.”
Thomas said, “Well, let’s get going.”
“Quite right,” said Clem, “you’re in command.”
So we got the fuses and stuff to wreck Bridge K16. There five of us died and I got the wound I am going to die of pretty soon. This is the end of my story.
I mentioned earlier the prevalence of war-theme stories: war-and-diplomacy-and-sovereignty stories, that is, as distinct from calamity stories. There were four at least besides the several included here that are worth special mention: Jesse Bier’s “Father and Son” from a book full of remarkable stories, A Hole in the Lead Apron (Harcourt Brace & World); Joseph Green’s “The Decision Makers” (Galaxy); Mack Reynolds’ “Time of War” (If); and William Sambrot’s “Substance of Martyrs” (Rogue).
Meanwhile, back in the laboratory, the world of science has not forgotten about war problems either. One of the news items emanating from the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Berkeley last year concerned investigations into “a strange drug” which might prevent the lethal effects of shock.
What made me notice the piece particularly was the headline: PRE-COMBAT INJECTIONS MAY BAR FATAL SHOCK. Sort of mode me wonder whether it was the boys in the back room at the newspaper, or at the lab, who forgot that civilians die of shock too.
What makes me mention it now is Roald Dahl’s story. This one is a calamity story, and if you happen to have any adrenochrome semicarbazone around, I suggest you lake a pre-reading injection.
IN THE RUINS
ROALD DAHL
Somewhere among the bricks and stones, I came across a man sitting on the ground in his underpants, sawing off his left leg. There was a black bag beside him, and the bag was open, and I could see a hypodermic needle lying there among all the rest of the stuff.
“Do you want some?” he asked, looking up.
“Yes, please,” I said. I was going crazy with hunger.
“I don’t mind giving you a bit so long as you will promise to produce the next meal. I am quite uncontaminated.”
“All right,” I said. “Yes.”
“Caudal injection,” he said. “Base of the spine. You don’t feel a thing.”
I found a few bits of wood, and I made a fire in the ruins, and started roasting a piece of the meat. The doctor sat on the ground doing things to the stump of his leg.
A child came up, a girl of about four years old. She had probably seen the smoke from the fire or smelled the smell of cooking, I don’t know which. She was very unsteady on her feet.
“Do you want some, too?” the doctor asked.
She nodded.
“You’ll have to pay it back later,” the doctor said.
The child stood there looking at the piece of meat that I was holding over the fire on the end of a bent curtain rod.
“You know something,” the doctor said, “with all three of us here, we ought to be able to survive for quite a long time.”
“I want my mummy,” the child said, starting to cry.
“Sit down,” the doctor told her. “I’ll take care of you.”
Well, I warned you.
The next story is also a war story, but a very different war, in a radically different time—and Time is the key word, not just for “Traveller’s Rest,” but for a good deal of the s-f you will be reading in the next few years. I am not talking about time-travel, or time-paradox, or parallel-universes-in-time,- these are tried and true devices of s-f, used to establish a sufficiently remote, yet credible, cultural context. The stories I am talking about are not manipulating time in order to look at some other aspect of human experience— they are trying to look at the nature of Time itself, or at least at the nature of the human experience of the phenomenon we call “Time.”
The trend was beginning to be strongly evident in the British magazines in 1965: Collyn’s “Singular Quest of Martin Borg,” Moorcock’s “Escape from Evening,” Harness’s “Time Trap,” in New Worlds/ Aldiss’ “Man in his Time,” Ernest Hill’s “Joik,” in Science Fantasy. (And here again, one sees the pervasive influence of Ballard, all of whose early work was obsessed with Time. And not just the early work: Time, encapsulated, is the topic of The Crystal World.) Also from England—although I do not know whether to consider George Langelaan a British, French, or American author—a collection. Out of Time, was published by Four Square.
In this country, the stories are just beginning to emerge. The only really notable examples in 1965 were Harlan Ellison’s prize-winning “ ‘Repent, Harlequin,’ Said the Ticklockman” (from Galaxy, and reprinted in both the SFWA anthology and World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966); and the second short story in the November 13, 1965, installment of William Maxwell’s “Further Tales About Men and Women” in the New Yorker. (You would have thought that he would sooner or later have realized that the time he was spending so freely was next month’s, and that if he had already lived through the days of this month before it was well begun he was living beyond his means.)
Nor is it only in fiction that Time is the big upcoming topic. The same themes are burgeoning in a slightly different area. A four-day Interdisciplinary Conference on Perspectives of Time, conducted by the New York Academy of Sciences, included panels on “Concepts of Time”; “The Fabric of Biological Time”; “Man, the Timed, and Man, the Timer”} “Experiential Aspects of Time.” An impressive anthology of discussions called Voices of Time was published about the same time by Braziller. And in an article in the winter, 1965, Daedalus, “The Future as the Basis for Establishing a Shared Culture,” by Margaret Mead absorbed the underlying concept, of time-as-tool and time-as-phenomenon, into a philosophy of social change.
As does David Masson, who has supplied only this much information about himself: In my view the finished story is important or of public interest, but not the man. The symbolic overtones are also important but it is better if the reader discover these for himself. I will however say that my age is between forty-five and fifty, that I have a university post, and that I am married with a family.