Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 24

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

"All of a sudden, you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." She was refer-ring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around Geerge's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while."George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't notice it any more. It's just a part of me."

"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead b.a.l.l.s. Just a few."

"Two years in prison and a two-thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. "I don't call that a bargain."

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. "I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around."

"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd get away with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I'd hate it," said Hazel.

"There you are," said George. "The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?"

If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel.

"What would?" said George blankly.

"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?"

"Who knows?" said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and gentlemen-"

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

"That's all right," Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what G.o.d gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

"Ladies and gentlemen-" said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extrordinarily beautiful, be-cause the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous., timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompet.i.tive.

"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and is extremely dangerous."

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right-side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. n.o.body had ever borne heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick, wavy lenses besides. The spectacles were intended not only to make him half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Sc.r.a.p metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three-hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

"If you see this boy," said the ballerina, "do not-I re-peat, do not-try to reason with him."

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set.

The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have-for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My G.o.d!" said George. "That must be Harrison!"

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the cen-ter of the studio.

The k.n.o.b of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians and announcers cowered on their knees before him,expecting to die.

"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor!

Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

"Even as I stand here," he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened-I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison's sc.r.a.p-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the G.o.d of thunder.

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment pa.s.sed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous deli-cacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

"Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand. "Shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harri-son stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."

The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison s.n.a.t.c.hed two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again, and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weight to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girl's tiny waist, let-ting her sense theweightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gam-boled and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.

They kissed it.

And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Clampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Clampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handi-cap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying?" he said to Hazel, watching her wipe her tears.

"Yup," she said.

"What about?" he said.

"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."

"What was it?" he said.

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Hazel.

"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head."Gee-I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.

"You can say that again," said George.

"Gee-" said Hazel, "-l could tell that one was a doozy."

____________________________.

It was said in the countryside that the village was haunted, and Barin came to research a magazine article. But when he met the girl whose face was identical with that on his old cameo, everything somehow shifted for him ... and the village pressed in...

THE HAUNTED VILLAGE.

by Gordon R. d.i.c.kson

He came to the hill overlooking the village and braked to a halt. Below him the still town lay, caught like a mirage of the hot air in a shallow cup of the enforested earth. He stared at it as he might have stared at a mirage, not quite certain even now as to how he had found it, for the in-structions of the boy at the filling station had been vague and he had seen no one along the way who could give him directions. He had taken County Road number twelve and hunted at random through the small, twisting and rutted trails of dirt that snaked back from it among the pines and birch. Now, as twilight was dimming the hollows with the long rays of a red sunset glancing across the rolling hills of soft, glaciated earth, he had come upon it.

He looked down. In the still, late afternoon, the heat waves still beat and shimmered in the narrow streets and above the dark housetops, giving the town a twisting, insub-stantial look. Still as a dream, it lay; and no people were visible about it.

He released the brakes and the car rolled forward down the hill, and the first houses, building quickly to a wall on either side of his car, trapped the sound of his car's motor, and magnified it, so that it seemed to clamor in the stillness. He went slowly, searching for a stopping place, until he saw to his right a high, weathered building of brown clapboard with three steps leading up to a dusty porch that bore a HOTEL sign upon its overhang. He stopped his car beside the porch and got out.

A tall dark man with gray eyes large in a thin face ap-peared out of the porch's deeper shadow, walking toward him.

"Can I help you?" he asked. His voice was deep, but muted, as if a sort of weary sadness in him made it a special effort to speak.

"Why, yes," said Barin, mounting the three steps. I'm looking for a room."

"Oh," said the tall man. "You'll have to ask inside, then."He waited until Barin had pa.s.sed him, then followed half a step behind.

And Barin thought he felt the slight breath of a sigh on the back of his neck, but it was so light he could not be sure.

He opened the door and stepped into a dim lobby, lit only by the fading light from a bay window. To the left a shadowed pa.s.sage led away into the gloomy depths of the hotel and about the lobby heavy leather chairs sat cracked and withdrawn. Ahead was the desk. He walked toward it, the tall man behind him.

"Mikkelson?" It was a heavy voice from behind the desk, hoa.r.s.e and mechanical as the grating of a spade on concrete.

"There's a guest," answered the tall man from behind Barin's shoulder, in his sad, tired voice.

Beyond the counter of the desk, a cubbyhole reached back into obscurity. At the counter, a pale patch of light from the distant window fell on the grained wood and the stiff white pages of an open guest book-just turned, evi-dently, to a new page, for there were no signatures upon it.

There was the squeak of a chair from the darkness and the heavy, creaking steps of a large man; a thick form loomed up out of the cubbyhole to stand with belly pressed against the worn inner edge of the counter. Barin looked into a wide face, the face of a man past middle age, heavy-lipped and broad-nosed, above a thick, coa.r.s.e body loosened only slightly from a younger strength.

"For how long?" The hoa.r.s.e voice was now directed at Barin.

"A couple of days-maybe three." Again Barin thought he caught the trailing wisp of a sigh from the man behind him. He added quickly, to forestall questions, "I'm a photog-rapher. A writer. I'm doing a piece on the woods up here. I'd like to explore a bit-for a day or two."

"Sign." One thick hand swiveled the guest book toward him. Another pa.s.sed him the stub of a pencil on the end of a string. He took it and signed. He laid it down and looked up into the face of the man behind the desk.

"I'll be eating my meals in town," he said. "Any idea where-" He left the question hanging, but the man behind the desk did not take it up and a long silence drew itself out between them.

"Certainly you-Rosach-" The voice of the tall man again.

"We can take care of you," said Rosach, abruptly. "Not now. Too late.

Breakfast."

"Oh," said Barin; and he tried to sound disappointed, al-though he did not feel hungry. "Any place else in town?"