Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (200 page)

Still, a tenderness was within Kreega’s heart, and he whispered gently in the language that was not a language,
You will do this for us? You will do it, little brother?

* * * *

Riordan was too tired to sleep well. He had lain awake for a long time, thinking, and that is not good for a man alone in the Martian hills.

So now the rockhound was dead too. It didn’t matter, the owlie wouldn’t escape. But somehow the incident brought home to him the immensity and the age and the loneliness of the desert.

It whispered to him. The brush rustled and something wailed in darkness and the wind blew with a wild mournful sound over faintly starlit cliffs, and it was as if they all somehow had voice, as if the whole world muttered and threatened him in the night. Dimly, he wondered if man would ever subdue Mars, if the human race had not finally run across something bigger than itself.

But that was nonsense. Mars was old and worn-out and barren, dreaming itself into slow death. The tramp of human feet, shouts of men and roar of sky-storming rockets, were waking it, but to a new destiny, to man’s. When Ares lifted its hard spires above the hills of Syrtis, where then were the ancient gods of Mars?

It was cold, and the cold deepened as the night wore on. The stars were fire and ice, glittering diamonds in the deep crystal dark. Now and then he could hear a faint snapping borne through the earth as rock or tree split open. The wind laid itself to rest, sound froze to death, there was only the hard clear starlight falling through space to shatter on the ground.

Once something stirred. He woke from a restless sleep and saw a small thing skittering toward him. He groped for the rifle beside his sleeping bag, then laughed harshly. It was only a sandmouse. But it proved that the Martian had no chance of sneaking up on him while he rested.

He didn’t laugh again. The sound had echoed too hollowly in his helmet.

With the clear bitter dawn he was up. He wanted to get the hunt over with. He was dirty and unshaven inside the unit, sick of iron rations pushed through the airlock, stiff and sore with exertion. Lacking the hound, which he’d had to shoot, tracking would be slow, but he didn’t want to go back to Port Armstrong for another. No, hell take that Martian, he’d have the devil’s skin soon!

Breakfast and a little moving made him feel better. He looked with a practiced eye for the Martian’s trail. There was sand and brush over everything, even the rocks had a thin coating of their own erosion. The owlie couldn’t cover his tracks perfectly—if he tried, it would slow him too much. Riordan fell into a steady jog.

Noon found him on higher ground, rough hills with gaunt needles of rock reaching yards into the sky. He kept going, confident of his own ability to wear down the quarry. He’d run deer to earth back home, day after day until the animal’s heart broke and it waited quivering for him to come.

The trail looked clear and fresh now. He tensed with the knowledge that the Martian couldn’t be far away.

Too clear! Could this be bait for another trap? He hefted the rifle and proceeded more warily. But no, there wouldn’t have been time—

He mounted a high ridge and looked over the grim, fantastic landscape. Near the horizon he saw a blackened strip, the border of his radioactive barrier. The Martian couldn’t go further, and if he doubled back Riordan would have an excellent chance of spotting him.

He tuned up his speaker and let his voice roar into the stillness: “Come out, owlie! I’m going to get you, you might as well come out now and be done with it!”

The echoes took it up, flying back and forth between the naked crags, trembling and shivering under the brassy arch of sky.
Come out, come out, come out
—

The Martian seemed to appear from thin air, a gray ghost rising out of the jumbled stones and standing poised not twenty feet away. For an instant, the shock of it was too much; Riordan gaped in disbelief. Kreega waited, quivering ever so faintly as if he were a mirage.

Then the man shouted and lifted his rifle. Still the Martian stood there as if carved in gray stone, and with a shock of disappointment Riordan thought that he had, after all, decided to give himself to an inevitable death.

Well, it had been a good hunt. “So long,” whispered Riordan, and squeezed the trigger.

Since the sandmouse had crawled into the barrel, the gun exploded.

* * * *

Riordan heard the roar and saw the barrel peel open like a rotten banana. He wasn’t hurt, but as he staggered back from the shock Kreega lunged at him.

The Martian was four feet tall, and skinny and weaponless, but he hit the Earthling like a small tornado. His legs wrapped around the man’s waist and his hands got to work on the airhose.

Riordan went down under the impact. He snarled, tigerishly, and fastened his hands on the Martian’s narrow throat. Kreega snapped futilely at him with his beak. They rolled over in a cloud of dust. The brush began to chatter excitedly.

Riordan tried to break Kreega’s neck—the Martian twisted away, bored in again.

With a shock of horror, the man heard the hiss of escaping air as Kreega’s beak and fingers finally worried the airhose loose. An automatic valve clamped shut, but there was no connection with the pump now—

Riordan cursed, and got his hands about the Martian’s throat again. Then he simply lay there, squeezing, and not all Kreega’s writhing and twistings could break that grip.

Riordan smiled sleepily and held his hands in place. After five minutes or so Kreega was still. Riordan kept right on throttling him for another five minutes, just to make sure. Then he let go and fumbled at his back, trying to reach the pump.

The air in his suit was hot and foul. He couldn’t quite reach around to connect the hose to the pump—

Poor design
, he thought vaguely.
But then, these airsuits weren’t meant for battle armor.

He looked at the slight, silent form of the Martian. A faint breeze ruffled the gray feathers. What a fighter the little guy had been! He’d be the pride of the trophy room, back on Earth.

Let’s see now—He unrolled his sleeping bag and spread it carefully out. He’d never make it to the rocket with what air he had, so it was necessary to let the suspensine into his suit. But he’d have to get inside the bag, lest the nights freeze his blood solid.

He crawled in, fastening the flaps carefully, and opened the valve on the suspensine tank. Lucky he had it—but then, a good hunter thinks of everything. He’d get awfully bored, lying here till Wisby caught the signal in ten days or so and came to find him, but he’d last. It would be an experience to remember. In this dry air, the Martian’s skin would keep perfectly well.

He felt the paralysis creep up on him, the waning of heartbeat and lung action. His senses and mind were still alive, and he grew aware that complete relaxation has its unpleasant aspects. Oh, well—he’d won. He’d killed the wiliest game with his own hands.

Presently Kreega sat up. He felt himself gingerly. There seemed to be a rib broken—well, that could be fixed. He was still alive. He’d been choked for a good ten minutes, but a Martian can last fifteen without air.

He opened the sleeping bag and got Riordan’s keys. Then he limped slowly back to the rocket. A day or two of experimentation taught him how to fly it. He’d go to his kinsmen near Syrtis. Now that they had an Earthly machine, and Earthly weapons to copy—

But there was other business first. He didn’t hate Riordan, but Mars is a hard world. He went back and dragged the Earthling into a cave and hid him beyond all possibility of human search parties finding him.

For a while he looked into the man’s eyes. Horror stared dumbly back at him. He spoke slowly, in halting English: “For those you killed, and for being a stranger on a world that does not want you, and against the day when Mars is free, I leave you.”

Before departing, he got several oxygen tanks from the boat and hooked them into the man’s air supply. That was quite a bit of air for one in suspended animation. Enough to keep him alive for a thousand years.

* * * *

Copyright © 1951 by Love Romances Publishing Company, Inc.

(1913–1987)

Even though Alfred Bester won one of the first Hugo Awards (for
The Demolished Man
in 1953) I didn’t much appreciate his writing when I was young. He was the opposite of writers like Heinlein and Poul Anderson where individuals could change the universe; Bester’s characters were more often cogs in vast bureaucracies, or in complex and ironic situations beyond their control. No matter how thought-provoking the stories were, they made frustrating reading for a teenager. It wasn’t until I accepted my first editorial job and the senior editorial staff were palpably excited about developing a graphic novel version of Bester’s
The Stars My Destination
that I reread his work. As an adult I could appreciate how funny and cynical and on target Bester’s stories were, even if the characters weren’t likely to end up as galactic overlords (and might not even live through the story). The characters were funny and (when he wanted them to be) sympathetic, and the situations they found themselves in were more resonant to an adult who has to deal with bureacracies on a daily basis than to a teenager who naively thinks his life will be less bureaucratic once he’s out of high school.

Bester was a New Yorker for nearly all of his life. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe (his mother eventually became a Christian Scientist) though Bester was as cynical about religion as everything else. He was an Ivy League graduate—studying the humanities and psychology and becoming captain of the fencing team at Penn—but later dropped out of law school.

Bester’s wife, Rolly, was an actress (on Broadway, radio, and then television) who became an advertising executive in the 1960s, and Bester’s writing career was similarly varied. He made his first SF sale in 1939, when he won a contest sponsored by
Thrilling Wonder Stories
, then continued to write science fiction in varying amounts while working in the comics industry in the early 1940s. He switched to writing radio scripts, and then to writing for television series such as
Tom Corbett: Space Cadet
, which left little time for other fiction, then returned to SF in the 1950s, writing most of his best-known works. (His cynicism about religion caused him to switch from
Astounding
to
Galaxy
magazine when John W. Campbell became preoccupied with Dianetics.) In the late 1950s Bester began working for
Holiday
magazine (where he eventually became senior editor) and writing more for television again. He wrote SF intermittently until failing eyesight and worsening health caused him to stop writing entirely 1981.

He was named a SFWA Grand Master shortly before his death in 1987. His wife had died in 1984 and the Besters had no children; Bester left everything to his bartender, Joe Suder.

Like many Bester stories, “Fondly Fahrenheit” asks many uncomfortable questions. Perhaps the most compelling of them is “Is insanity contagious?”

First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, August 1954

He doesn’t know which of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death…or else you will die another’s.

The rice fields on Paragon III stretch for hundreds of miles like checkerboard tundras, a blue and brown mosaic under a burning sky of orange. In the evening, clouds whip like smoke, and the paddies rustle and murmur.

A long line of men marched across the paddies the evening we escaped from Paragon III. They were silent, armed, intent; a long rank of silhouetted statues looming against the smoking sky. Each man carried a gun. Each man wore a walkie-talkie belt pack, the speaker button in his ear, the microphone bug clipped to his throat, the glowing view-screen strapped to his wrist like a green-eyed watch. The multitude of screens showed nothing but a multitude of individual paths through the paddies. The annunciators uttered no sound but the rustle and splash of steps. The men spoke infrequently, in heavy grunts, all speaking to all.

“Nothing here.”

“Where’s here?”

“Jenson’s fields.”

“You’re drifting too far west.”

“Close in the line there.”

“Anybody covered the Grimson paddy?”

“Yeah. Nothing.”

“She couldn’t have walked this far.”

“Could have been carried.”

“Think she’s alive?”

“Why should she be dead?”

The slow refrain swept up and down the long line of beaters advancing toward the smoky sunset. The line of beaters wavered like a writhing snake, but never ceased its remorseless advance. One hundred men spaced fifty feet apart. Five thousand feet of ominous search. One mile of angry determination stretching from east to west across a compass of heat. Evening fell. Each man lit his search lamp. The writhing snake was transformed into a necklace of wavering diamonds.

“Clear here. Nothing.”

“Nothing here.”

“Nothing.”

“What about the Allen paddies?”

“Covering them now.”

“Think we missed her?”

“Maybe.”

“We’ll beat back and check.”

“This’ll be an all-night job.”

“Allen paddies clear.”

“God damn! We’ve got to find her!”

“We’ll find her.”

“Here she is. Sector seven. Tune in.”

The line stopped. The diamonds froze in the heat. There was silence. Each man gazed into the glowing green screen on his wrist, tuning to sector seven. All tuned to one. All showed a small nude figure awash in the muddy water of a paddy. Alongside the figure an owner’s stake of bronze read: VANDALEUR. The ends of the line converged toward the Vandaleur field. The necklace turned into a cluster of stars. One hundred men gathered around a small nude body, a child dead in a rice paddy. There was no water in her mouth. There were no fingermarks on her throat. Her innocent face was battered. Her body was torn. Clotted blood on her skin was crusted and hard.

“Dead three-four hours at least.”

“Her mouth is dry.”

“She wasn’t drowned. Beaten to death.”

In the dark evening heat the men swore softly. They picked up the body. One stopped the others and pointed to the child’s fingernails. She had fought her murderer. Under the nails were particles of flesh and bright drops of scarlet blood, still liquid, still uncoagulated.

“That blood ought to be clotted, too.”

“Funny.”

“Not so funny. What kind of blood don’t clot?”

“Android.”

“Looks like she was killed by one.”

“Vandaleur owns an android.”

“She couldn’t be killed by an android.”

“That’s android blood under her nails.”

“The police better check.”

“The police’ll prove I’m right.”

“But andys can’t kill.”

“That’s android blood, ain’t it?”

“Androids can’t kill. They’re made that way.”

“Looks like one android was made wrong.”

“Jesus!”

And the thermometer that day registered 92.9° gloriously Fahrenheit.

* * * *

So there we were aboard the
Paragon
Queen
en route for Megaster V, James Vandaleur and his android. James Vandaleur counted his money and wept. In the second-class cabin with him was his android, a magnificent synthetic creature with classic features and wide blue eyes. Raised on its forehead in a cameo of flesh were the letters MA, indicating that this was one of the rare multiple-aptitude androids, worth $57,000 on the current exchange. There we were, weeping and counting and calmly watching.

“Twelve, fourteen, sixteen. Sixteen hundred dollars,” Vandaleur wept. “That’s all. Sixteen hundred dollars. My house was worth ten thousand. The land was worth five. There was furniture, cars, my paintings, etchings, my plane, my—And nothing to show for everything but sixteen hundred dollars. Christ!”

I leaped up from the table and turned on the android. I pulled a strap from one of the leather bags and beat the android. It didn’t move.

“I must remind you,” the android said, “that I am worth fifty-seven thousand dollars on the current exchange. I must warn you that you are endangering valuable property.”

“You damned crazy machine,” Vandaleur shouted.

“I am not a machine,” the android answered. “The robot is a machine. The android is a chemical creation of synthetic tissue.”

“What got into you?” Vandaleur cried. “Why did you do it? Damn you!” He beat the android savagely.

“I must remind you that I cannot be punished,” I said. “The pleasure-pain syndrome is not incorporated in the android synthesis.”

“Then why did you kill her?” Vandaleur shouted. “If it wasn’t for kicks, why did you—”

“I must remind you,” the android said, “that the second-class cabins in these ships are not soundproofed.”

Vandaleur dropped the strap and stood panting, staring at the creature he owned.

“Why did you do it? Why did you kill her?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“First it was malicious mischief. Small things. Petty destruction. I should have known there was something wrong with you then. Androids can’t destroy. They can’t harm. They—”

“There is no pleasure-pain syndrome incorporated in the android synthesis.”

“Then it got to arson. Then serious destruction. Then assault…that engineer on Rigel. Each time worse. Each time we had to get out faster. Now it’s murder. Christ! What’s the matter with you? What’s happened?”

“There are no self-check relays incorporated in the android brain.”

“Each time we had to get out it was a step downhill. Look at me. In a second-class cabin. Me. James Paleologue Vandaleur. There was a time when my father was the wealthiest—Now, sixteen hundred dollars in the world. That’s all I’ve got. And you. Christ damn you!”

Vandaleur raised the strap to beat the android again, then dropped it and collapsed on a berth, sobbing. At last he pulled himself together.

“Instructions,” he said.

The multiple android responded at once. It arose and awaited orders.

“My name is now Valentine. James Valentine. I stopped off on Paragon III for only one day to transfer to this ship for Megaster V. My occupation: Agent for one privately owned MA android which is for hire. Purpose of visit: To settle on Megaster V. Fix the papers.”

The android removed Vandaleur’s passport and papers from a bag, got pen and ink and sat down at the table. With an accurate, flawless hand—an accomplished hand that could draw, write, paint, carve, engrave, etch, photograph, design, create, and build—it meticulously forged new credentials for Vandaleur. Its owner watched me miserably.

“Create and build,” I muttered, “And now destroy. Oh God! What am I going to do? Christ! If I could only get rid of you. If I didn’t have to live off you. God! If only I’d inherited some guts instead of you.”

* * * *

Dallas Brady was Megaster’s leading jewelry designer. She was short, stocky, amoral, and a nymphomaniac. She hired Vandaleur’s multiple-aptitude android and put me to work in her shop. She seduced Vandaleur. In her bed one night, she asked abruptly, “Your name’s Vandaleur, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I murmured. Then: “No! It’s Valentine. James Valentine.”

“What happened on Paragon?” Dallas Brady asked. “I thought androids couldn’t kill or destroy property. Prime Directives and Inhibitions set up for them when they’re synthesized. Every company guarantees they can’t.”

“Valentine!” Vandaleur insisted.

“Oh come off it,” Dallas Brady said. “I’ve known for a week. I haven’t hollered copper, have I?”

“The name is Valentine.”

“You want to prove it? You want I should call the cops?” Dallas reached out and picked up the phone.

“For God’s sake, Dallas!” Vandaleur leaped up and struggled to take the phone from her. She fended him off, laughing at him, until he collapsed and wept in shame and helplessness. “How did you find out?” he asked at last.

“The papers are full of it. And Valentine was a little too close to Vandaleur. That wasn’t smart, was it?”

“I guess not. I’m not very smart.”

“Your android’s got quite a record, hasn’t it? Assault. Arson. Destruction. What happened on Paragon?”

“It kidnapped a child. Took her out into the rice fields and murdered her.”

“Raped her?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’re going to catch up with you.”

“Don’t I know it? Christ! We’ve been running for two years now. Seven planets in two years. I must have abandoned fifty thousand dollars’ worth of property in two years.”

“You better find out what’s wrong with it.”

“How can I? Can I walk into a repair clinic and ask for an overhaul? What am I going to say? ‘My android’s just turned killer. Fix it.’ They’d call the police right off.” I began to shake. “They’d have that android dismantled inside one day. I’d probably be booked as accessory to murder.”

“Why didn’t you have it repaired before it got to murder?”

“If they started fooling around with lobotomies and body chemistry and endocrine surgery, they might have destroyed its aptitudes. What would I have left to hire out? How would I live?”

“You could work yourself. People do.”

“Work at what? You know I’m good for nothing. How could I compete with specialist androids and robots? Who can, unless he’s got a terrific talent for a particular job?”

“Yeah. That’s true.”

“I lived off my old man all my life. Damn him! He had to go bust just before he died. Left me the android and that’s all. The only way I can get along is living off what it earns.”

“You better sell it before the cops catch up with you. You can live off fifty grand. Invest it.”

“At three percent? Fifteen hundred a year? When the android returns fifteen percent on its value? Eight thousand a year. That’s what it earns. No, Dallas. I’ve got to go along with it.”

“What are you going to do about its violence kick?”

“I can’t do anything… except watch it and pray. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing. It’s none of my business. Only one thing…I ought to get something for keeping my mouth shut.”

“What?”

“The android works for me for free. Let somebody else pay you, but I get it for free.”

* * * *

The multiple-aptitude android worked. Vandaleur collected its fees. His expenses were taken care of. His savings began to mount. As the warm spring of Megaster V turned to hot summer, I began investigating farms and properties. It would be possible, within a year or two, for us to settle down permanently, provided Dallas Brady’s demands did not become rapacious.

On the first hot day of summer, the android began singing in Dallas Brady’s workshop. It hovered over the electric furnace which, along with the weather, was broiling the shop, and sang an ancient tune that had been popular half a century before.

Oh, it’s no feat to beat the heat.

All reet! All reel!

So jeet your seat

Be fleet be fleet

Cool and discreet

Honey…

It sang in a strange, halting voice, and its accomplished fingers were clasped behind its back, writhing in a strange rumba all their own. Dallas Brady was surprised.

“You happy or something?” she asked.

“I must remind you that the pleasure-pain syndrome is not incorporated in the android synthesis,” I answered. “All reet! All reet! Be fleet be fleet, cool and discreet, honey …”

Its fingers stopped their writhing and picked up a heavy pair of iron tongs. The android poked them into the glowing heart of the furnace, leaning far forward to peer into the lovely heat.

“Be careful, you damned fool!” Dallas Brady exclaimed. “You want to fall in?”

“I must remind you that I am worth fifty-seven thousand dollars on the current exchange,” I said. “It is forbidden to endanger valuable property. All reet! All reet! Honey…”