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 as Hopedale’s west-coast agent I’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.”
“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 worth while. 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 pay-off; 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 FAR LOOK
by Theodore L. Thomas
The true science-fiction story is a highly specialized form which very few writers can handle adequately. Most of what appears under the label is either space opera (essentially a transplanted Western or jungle or fight yarn) or—at the other extreme—just dramatized essay, minus action or credible characterization.
To be good science-fiction, a story must contain a rare blend of intellection and emotion; puzzle and plot must be integrally related in such a way that the human problem arises out of the idea-extrapolation, and the resolution of the one is impossible without the solution to the other.
Two further requirements for the good science-fiction writer: to be a good writer; and to have at least enough scientific background to avoid contradicting currently accepted “facts.”
Perhaps in part due to the training provided by his profession (the author is a patent attorney, who also writes highly entertaining articles about his own field under the pseudonym of Leonard Lockhard), Mr. Thomas’s story achieves the same intense quality of realism that may be found in a Bonestell moonscape: the product of painstaking detail-work plus a thorough awareness of underlying structural realities, and an imagination that can visualize in technicolor.
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick,
Like a madman on a drum.
- Oscar Wilde
Ballad of Reading Gaol
The ship appeared first as a dot low on the horizon. The television cameras immediately picked it up. At first the ship did not give the impression of motion; it seemed to hover motionless and swell in size. Then in a few seconds it passed the first television station, the screaming roar of its passage rocking the camera slightly.
Thirty miles beyond, its belly skids touched the packed New Mexican sand. An immense dust cloud stirred into life at the rear of the ship and spread slowly across the desert.
As soon as the ship touched, the three helicopters took off to meet it. The helicopters were ten miles away when the ship halted and lay motionless. The dust began to dissipate rearward. The late afternoon sun distorted the flowing lines of the ship and made it look like some outlandish beast of prey crouched on the desert.
As the lead helicopter drew within a mile of the ship, its television camera caught the ship clearly for the first time. Telephoto lenses brought it in close, and viewers once again watched closely. They looked admiringly at the stubby swept-back wings and at the gaping opening at the rear from which poured the fires of hell itself. But most of all they looked to the area amidship where the door was.
And as they watched, the door swung open. The sun slanted in and showed two figures standing there. The figures moved to a point just inside the door and stopped. They stood there looking out, motionless, for what seemed an interminable period. Then the two figures looked at each other, nodded, and jumped out the door.
Though the sand was only four feet below the sill of the door, both men fell to their knees. They quickly arose, knocked the dust from their clothes, and started walking to where the helicopters were waiting. And all over the country people watched that now-familiar moon walk—the rocking of the body from side to side to get too-heavy feet off the ground, the relaxed muscles on the down step where the foot just seemed to plop against the ground.
But the cameras did not focus on the general appearance or action of the men. The zoom lenses went to work and a close-up of the faces of the two men side by side flashed across the country.
The faces even at first glance seemed different. And as the cameras lingered, it became apparent that the difference was in the eyes: a level-eyed expression, undeviating, penetrating, probing, yet laden with compassion. There was a look of things seen from deep inside, and of things seen beyond the range of normal vision. It was a far look, a compelling look, a powerful look set in the eyes of normal men. And even when those eyes were closed, there was something different. A network of tiny creases laced out from both corners of each eye. The crinkled appearance of the eyes made each man appear older than he was, older and strangely wizened.