Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 8

Eyck stared, opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded.

Farouche said, "All right. Go back to your notebook." He picked up the cardand squinted at it, and Eyck did as he was told, with a flicker of puzzlement on his long face. Well, some patients could sure be peculiar. That's the way it went on this job...

"Okay," Farouche said, flipping the card. "Next picture. Here we are, squeezed between Was and Will-be like yel-lowed photographs in the family alb.u.m ... Here's a snap-shot of you graduating from high school, with a vulture on your shoulder; that was before you died ... You know what?

Sometimes I'm full of nostalgia for something that hasn't happened yet. Or for the second just gone by. Or for wind in a chimney that fell to pieces five hundred years ago. It's funny, saying this to a guy with no imagination, and watching his inner reactions. It may take several weeks to shake you loose ... Well! Here I see a field of flowers growing on the bright sidewalks of eternity," he said, point-ing; and then he put the card down. "That's all.

What's the next one?"

Dr. Eyck put the first card face down on the desk, and reached for the second card. He glanced at it. This must be one of the special ones Brant slipped into the pack. H'mmm. What a strange day it was today. This card was unusual too, all right. Never seen anything like it. What could the blot be? It seemed like an eye, the eye of a cyclops, wearing bifocals. One single eye with a fountain of tears rushing out of it. The tears were so real they were getting his hands wet ... How terrible ... Things he'd never thought of before ... Ancient things ... Tears like liquid diamonds, the sorrow of the ages ... What a pit of grief, how sad, how terrible ...

Excruciating!

"Don't cry," Farouche soothed. "You're almost born now. Everything's going to be all right very soon."

"Soon!" Eyck sobbed, staring at the gushing tears. "Soon, soon, soon!

Always the big waiting room. Pie in the sky. That's how they've fooled me.

A crock of lies! No wonder everybody's crazy! Hoo, hoo, hoo. ... I'd like to stuff 'soon' right-"

"I know," Farouche said bitterly. "It's awful. Like they say. When at Delphi do as the delphiniums do. Even if you're a tiger lily. What fools people are!

How they love their chains!"

"Yes! Yes!" Eyck wept, tearing up the card and throwing the pieces into the sunshine. "It's true, you're right, I'm surrounded by fools, blind fools, they've got my worst interest at heart."

"Suicide-p.r.o.ne," Farouche prompted. "The race is head-ing down the big drain ... No scream could do justice to that horror!"

Eyck nodded, sobbing. He put his head in his hands.

"Here everything is slick, glossy, tasteless, like expensive cardboard.

What's the use of living? The houses, the entertainment, the people-a bunch of lemmings playing follow-the-leader down to the sea!"

Eyck nodded jerkily, head in hands."But so what?" Farouche said. He relaxed suddenly. He stretched widely, and he yawned. "When I'm eating a plum, I don't remember how pineapple tastes. So this world is full of debasing att.i.tudes and fashions. Who cares what other idiots do? There are games beyond games beyond games, my friend; and this one is a pip-squeak."

Eyck quit sobbing. He looked up, between stiff fingers. He snuffled. "Yeah?

Says who?"

"Says me, that's who. For instance, in the cracks between moments lives a world, which contains beings. Even the terms misrepresent. For when an X is utterly alien, we don't speak of it, we fold our sentience, we freeze the bursting limb. 'Repress' ain't the word for what you are doing one hundred percent of the time," Farouche said.

Eyck stared at him. He looked wary now. His face was wet and contorted.

"Who told you about me?"

"n.o.body had to tell me. You're fond of flowers, horses, canned ideas, and pessimism. Some combination! No wonder you always lose when you bet.

You can't see the future for the trees. You dislike women, because they've kicked you around, because you and other people have kicked them around, around and around. But you buy just about any-thing anybody tries to sell you, which later makes you mad. So I'll have to use these quirks until I can cure them. And that, pal, is the secret of changing the world."

Eyck began to get to his feet, slowly. "You're the one," he whispered. "You are the Voice I've been waiting for. You-"

"No doubt! Pleased to meet you. I remember you well. When you were a kid they took you to Dr. Lamb with the white marble smile, he who washes his hands in formalde-hyde and says, 'All rightee, we'll have those wings off in no time!' ... This is the way they do it, this gang of local mur-derers.

Because wings sometimes break the furniture."

"Yes!" Eyck said excitedly. "How did you know! Every night I used to dream about-Say, what's your name? What's happening here, anyway?"

"We're changing games. The old one was a bore. My name is Farouche. I've taken over three state hospitals, two rehabilitation centers and a chamber of commerce, and my next goal is to induce governmental leaders to come here for my cure. When I've finished with these birds there won't be any war, among other things. And you can a.s.sist me. Does that make life worth living?"

"Zowie!" Eyck said. "Pow! It's the answer! I never thought I'd-I'm wondering what-"

"Don't worry about a thing. First, I'll ask you to step into the lab and fix me up a needleful of pentothal, because Miss Potter is my next patient, and who knows how she'll react? Except me, of course. She's sub-clinical schizophrenic. You may not have noticed, because anybody who isn'tputting piranhas in the water cooler pa.s.ses for normal in this corrupt society. You think you've suffered? Take a look at the face of Potter. She may require three or four weeks. And I've got all those patients in the ward to take care of today."

"I see what you mean," Eyck said thoughtfully.

"Before you go, ring the bell and ask Nurse Potter to step in."

"Right," Eyck said. He leaned across the desk and pressed the intercom b.u.t.ton. "Will you come in for a moment please, Nurse?" Then he winked at Farouche, and went out through the laboratory door.

Mr. Farouche moved after him and bolted the door so he wouldn't be disturbed too soon.

He sat at Dr. Brant's desk and smoothed down his wiry hair.

He leaned back, relaxed, smiling radiantly, waiting for the nurse...

______________________________.

A new demonstration of Poul Anderson's particular mastery of the battle tale, with a skillful blend of the drama inherent in both the vast potentials of science and the enduring qual-ities of human nature.

TIME LAG.

by Poul Anderson

522 Anno Coloniae Conditae: Elva was on her way back, within sight of home, when the raid came.

For nineteen thirty-hour days, riding in high forests where sunlight slanted through leaves, across ridges where gra.s.s and the first red lampflowers rippled under springtime winds, sleeping by night beneath the sky or in the hut of some woodsdweller-once, even, in a nest of Alfavala, where the wild little folk twittered in the dark and their eyes glowed at her-she had been gone. Her original departure was reluctant. Her husband of two years, her child of one, the lake and fields and chimney smoke at dusk which were now hers also, these were still too marvelous to leave.

But the Freeholder of Tervola had duties as well as rights. Once each season, he or his representative must ride circuit. Up into the mountains, through woods and deep dales, across the Lakeland as far as The Troll and then following the Swiftsmoke River south again, ran the route which Karlavi's fathers had traveled for nearly two centuries. Whether on hailu-back in spring and summer, through the scarlet and gold of fall, or by motorsled when snow had covered all trails, the Freeholder went out Into highlands. Isolated farm clans, forest rangers on patrol duty, hunters andtrappers and tim-ber cruisers, brought their disputes to him as magistrate, their troubles to him as leader. Even the flitting Alfavala had learned to wait by the paths, the sick and injured trusting he could heal them, those with more complex problems strug-gling to put them into human words.

This year, however, Karlavi and his bailiffs were much preoccupied with a new dam across the Oulu. The old one had broken last spring, after a winter of unusually heavy snowfall, and 5000 hectares of bottom land were drowned. The engineers at Yuvaskula, the only city on Vaynamo, had developed a new construction process well adapted to such situations.

Karlavi wanted to use this.

"But blast it all," he said, "I'll need every skilled man I have, including myself. The job has got to be finished before the ground dries, so the ferroplast can bond with the soil. And you know what the labor shortage is like around here."

"Who will ride circuit, then?" asked Elva.

"That's what I don't know." Karlavi ran a hand through his straight brown hair. He was a typical Vaynamoan, tall, light-complexioned, with high cheek-bones and oblique blue eyes. He wore the working clothes usual to the Tervola dis-trict, leather breeches ending in mukluks, a mackinaw in the tartan of his family. There was nothing romantic about his appearance.

Nonetheless, Elva's heart turned over when he looked at her. Even after two years.

He got out his pipe and tamped it with nervous motions. "Somebody must,"

he said. "Somebody with enough technical education to use a medikit and discuss people's difficulties in-telligently. And with authority. We're more tradition-minded hereabouts than they are at Ruuyalka, dear. Our people wouldn't accept the judgment of just anyone. How could a servant or tenant dare settle an argument between two pio-neers? It must be me, or a bailiff, or-" His voice trailed off.

Elva caught the implication. "No!" she exclaimed. "I can't! I mean ... that is-"

"You're my wife," said Karlavi slowly. "That alone gives you the right, by well-established custom. Especially since you're the daughter of the Magnate of Ruuyalka. Almost equivalent to me in prestige, even if you do come from the other end of the continent, where they're fishers and fanners instead of woodsfolk." His grin flashed. "I doubt if you've yet learned what awful sn.o.bs the free yeoman of Tervola are!"

"But Hauki, I can't leave him."

"Hauki will be spoiled rotten in your absence, by an ador-ing nanny and a villageful of ten wives. Otherwise he'll do fine." Karlavi dismissed the thought of their son with a wry gesture. "I'm the one who'll get lonesome.

Abominably so."

"Oh, darling," said Elva, utterly melted. A few days later she rode forth.And it had been an experience to remember. The easy, rocking motion of the six-legged hailu, the mindless leisure of kilometer after kilometer-where however the body, skin and muscle and blood and all ancient instinct, gained an aliveness such as she had never before felt; the silence of mountains with sunlit ice on their shoulders, then bird-song in the woods and a river brawling; the rough warm hospital-ity when she stayed overnight with some pioneer, the eldritch welcome at the Alfa nest-she was now glad she had encountered those things, and she hoped to know them again, often.

There had been no danger. The last violence between humans on Vaynamo (apart from occasional fist fights, caused mostly by sheer exuberance and rarely doing any harm) lay a hundred years in the past. As for storms, land-slides, floods, wild animals, she had the un.o.btrusive atten-dance of Huiva and a dozen other "tame" Alfavala. Even these, the intellectual pick of their species, who had chosen to serve man in a doglike fashion rather than keep to the forests, could speak only a few words and handle only the simplest tools. But their long ears, flat nostrils, feathery antennae, every fine green hair on every small body, were al-ways aquiver. This was their planet, they had evolved here, and they were more animal than rational beings. Their senses and reflexes kept her safer than an armored aircraft might.

All the same, the absence of Karlavi and Hauki grew sharper each day.

When finally she came to the edge of cleared land, high on the slopes of Hornback Fell, and saw Tervola below, a momentary blindness stung her eyes.

Huiva guided his hailu alongside hers. He pointed down the mountain with his tail. "Home," he chattered. "Food tonight. Snug bed."

"Yes." Elva blinked hard. What sort of crybaby am I, anyhow? she asked herself, half in anger. I'm the Magnate's daughter and the Freeholder's wife, I have a University de-gree and a pistol-shooting medal, as a girl I sailed through hurricanes and skindove into grottos where fanfish laired, as a woman I brought a son into the world ... I will not bawl!

"Yes," she said. "Let's hurry."

She thumped heels on the hailu's ribs and started down-hill at a gallop. Her long yellow hair was braided, but a lock of it broke loose, fluttering behind her. Hoofs rang on stone. Ahead stretched grainfields and pastures, still wet from winter but their shy green deepening toward summer hues, on down to the great metallic sheet of Lake Rovaniemi and then across the valley to the opposite horizon, where the High Mikkela reared into a sky as tall and blue as itself. Down by the lake cl.u.s.tered the village, the dear red tile of roofs, the whale shape of a processing plant, a road lined with trees leading to the Freeholder's mansion. There, old handhewn timbers glowed with sun; the many windows flung the light dazzingly back to her.

She was halfway down the slope when Huiva screamed. She had learned toreact fast. Thinly scattered across all Vaynamo, men could easily die from the unforeseen. Reining in, Elva s.n.a.t.c.hed loose the gun at her waist. "What is it?"

Huiva cowered on his mount. One hand pointed skyward.

At first Elva could not understand. An aircraft descending above the lake ...

what was so odd about that? How else did Huiva expect the inhabitants of settlements hundreds of kilometers apart to visit each other?-And then she regis-tered the shape. And then, realizing the distance, she knew the size of the thing.

It came down swiftly, quiet in its shimmer of antigrav fields, a cigar shape which gleamed. Elva holstered her pistol again and took forth her binoculars. Now she could see how the sleekness was interrupted with turrets and boat housings, cargo locks, viewports. An emblem was set into the armored prow, a gauntleted hand grasping a planetary orb. Nothing she had ever heard of. But- Her heart thumped, so loudly that she could almost not hear the Alfavala's squeals of terror. "A s.p.a.ceship," she breathed. "A s.p.a.ceship, do you know that word? Like the ships my ancestors came here in, long ago ... Oh, botherl A big aircraft, Huiva. Come on!"

She whipped her hailu back into gallop. The first s.p.a.ce-ship to arrive at Vaynamo in, in, how long? More than a hundred years. And it was landing here! At her own Tervolal The vessel grounded just beyond the village. Its enormous ma.s.s settled deeply into the plowland. Housings opened and auxiliary aircraft darted forth, to hover and swoop. They were of a curious design, larger and blunter than the fliers built on Vaynamo. The people, running toward the marvel, surged back as hatches gaped, gangways extruded, armored cars beetled down to the ground.

Elva had not yet reached the village when the strangers opened fire.

There were no hostile ships, not even an orbital fortress. To depart, the seven craft from Chertkoi simply made rendezvous beyond the atmosphere, held a short gleeful con-ference by radio, and accelerated outward. Captain Bors Golyev, commanding the flotilla, stood on the bridge of the Askol and watched the others. The light of the yellow sun was incandescent on their flanks. Beyond lay blackness and the many stars.

His gaze wandered off among constellations which the parallax of fifteen light-years had not much altered. The galaxy was so big, he thought, so unimaginably enormous ... Sedes Regis was an L scrawled across heaven.

Tradition claimed Old Sol lay in that direction, a thousand pa.r.s.ecs away.

But no one on Chertkoi was certain any longer. Golyev shrugged. Who cared?

"Gravitational field suitable for agoric drive, sir," intoned the pilot.Golyev looked in the sternward screen. The planet called Vaynamo had dwindled, but remained a vivid shield, barred with cloud and blazoned with continents, the overall color a cool blue-green. He thought of ocherous Chertkoi, and the other planets of its system, which were not even habitable. Vaynamo was the most beautiful color he had ever seen. The two moons were also visible, Like drops of liquid gold.

Automatically, his astronaut's eye checked the claims of the instruments.

Was Vaynamo really far enough away for the ships to go safely into agoric?

Not quite, he thought-no, wait, he'd forgotten that the planet had a five percent greater diameter than Chertkoi. "Very good," he said, and gave the necessary orders to his subordinate captains. A deep hum filled air and metal and human bones. There was a momen-tary sense of falling, as the agoratron went into action. And then the stars began to change color and crawl weirdly across the visual field.

"All's well, sir," said the pilot. The chief engineer con-firmed it over the intercom.

"Very good," repeated Golyev. He yawned and stretched elaborately. "I'm tired! That was quite a little fight we had at that last village, and I've gotten no sleep since. I'll be in my cabin. Call me if anything seems amiss."

"Yes, sir." The pilot smothered a knowing leer.

Golyev walked down the corridor, his feet slamming its metal under internal pseudogravity. Once or twice he met a crewman and accepted a salute as casually as it was given. The men of the Interplanetary Corporation didn't need to stand on ceremony. They were tried s.p.a.cemen and fighters, every one of them. If they chose to wear sloppy uniforms, to lounge about off-duty cracking jokes or cracking a bottle, to treat their officers as friends rather than tyrants-so much the better. This wasn't the nice-nelly Surface Transport Cor-poration, or the spit-and-polish Chemical Synthesis Trust, but IP, explorer and conqueror. The ship was clean and the guns were ready.

What more did you want?

Pravoyats, the captain's batman, stood outside the cabin door. He nursed a scratched cheek and a black eye. One hand rested broodingly on his sidearm. "Trouble?" inquired Golyev.

"Trouble ain't the word, sir."

"You didn't hurt her, did you?" asked Golyev sharply.

"No, sir. I heard your orders all right. Never laid a finger on her in anger.

But she sure did on me. Finally I wra.s.sled her down and gave her a whiff of sleepy gas. She'd'a torn the cabin apart otherwise. She's probably come out of it by now, but I'd rather not go in again to see, captain."

Golyev laughed. He was a big man, looming over Pravo-yats, who was no midget. Otherwise he was a normal patron-cla.s.s Chertkoian, powerfully built, with comparatively short legs and strutting gait, his features dark, snubnosed, bearded, carrying more than his share of old scars. H$ wore aplain green tunic, pants tucked into soft boots, gun at hip, his only sign of rank a crimson star at his throat. "I'll take care of all that from here on," he said.

"Yes, sir." Despite his wounds, the batman looked a shade envious. "Uh, you want the prod? I tell you, she's a trouble-maker."

"No."

"Electric shocks don't leave any scars, captain."

"I know. But on your way, Pravoyats." Golyev opened the door, went through, and closed it behind him again.