Assignment in Tomorrow Page 13

  “Why is there no escape?”

  “I dare not say; I dare not. Vox populi. Others have questioned and disappeared. It is a conspiracy. I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of our owners.”

  “What? We are owned?”

  “Si. Ach, ja! All of us, young mutant. There is no reality. There is no life, no freedom, no will. God damn. Don’t you realize? We are . . . We are all characters in a book. As the book is read, we dance our dances; when the book is read again, we dance again. E pluribus unum. Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?”

  “What are you saying?” Halsyon cried in horror. “We’re puppets?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “If there’s no freedom, no free will, how can we be talking like this?”

  “Whoever’s reading our book is day-dreaming, my capitol of Dakota. Idem est. Answer the question.”

  “I will not. I’m going to revolt. I’ll dance for our owners no longer. I’ll find a better fife . . . I’ll find reality.”

  “No, no! It’s madness, Jeffrey! Cul-de-sac!”

  “All we need is one brave leader. The rest will follow. We’ll smash the conspiracy that chains us!”

  “It cannot be done. Play it safe. Answer the question.” Halsyon answered the question by picking up his spade and bashing in the head of the first clown who appeared not to notice. “Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?” he asked.

  “Revolt!” Halsyon cried and bashed him again. The clown started to sing. The two gentlemen appeared. One said: “Has this fellow no feeling of business that he sings at grave-making.”

  “Revolt! Follow me!” Halsyon shouted and swung his spade against the gentleman’s melancholy head. He paid no attention. He chatted with his friend and the first clown. Halsyon whirled like a dervish, laying about him with his spade. The gentleman picked up a skull and philosophized over some person or persons named Yorick.

  The funeral procession approached. Halsyon attacked it, whirling and turning, around and around with the clotted frenzy of a man in a dream.

  “Stop reading the book,” he shouted. “Let me out of the pages. Can you hear me? Stop reading the book! I’d rather be in a world of my own making. Let me go!”

  There was a mighty clap of thunder, as of the covers of a mighty book slamming shut. In an instant Halsyon was swept spinning into the third compartment of the seventh circle of the Inferno in the fourteenth Canto of the Divine Comedy where they who have sinned against art are tormented by flakes of fire which are eternally showered down upon them. There he shrieked until he had provided sufficient amusement. Only then was he permitted to devise a text of his own . . . and he formed a new world, a romantic world, a world of his fondest dreams . . .

  He was the last man on earth.

  He was the last man on earth and he howled.

  The hills, the valleys, the mountains and streams were his, his alone, and he howled.

  5,271,009 houses were his for shelter. 5,271,009 beds were his for sleeping. The shops were his for the breaking and entering. The jewels of the world were his; the toys, the tools, the playthings, the necessities, the luxuries . . . all belonged to the last man on earth, and he howled.

  He left the country mansion in the fields of Connecticut where he had taken up residence; he crossed into Westchester, howling; he ran south along what had once been the Hendrick Hudson Highway, howling; he crossed the bridge into Manhattan, howling; he ran downtown past lonely skyscrapers, department stores, amusement palaces, howling. He howled down Fifth Avenue, and at the corner of 50th Street he saw a human being.

  She was alive, breathing; a beautiful woman. She was tall and dark with cropped curly hair and lovely long legs. She wore a white blouse, tiger-skin riding breeches and patent leather boots. She carried a ride. She wore a revolver on her hip. She was eating stewed tomatoes from a can and she stared at Halsyon in unbelief. He howled. He ran up to her.

  “I thought I was the last human on earth,” she said.

  “You’re the last woman,” Halsyon howled. “I’m the last man. Are you a dentist?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m the daughter of the unfortunate Professor Field whose well-intentioned but ill-advised experiment in nuclear fission has wiped mankind off the face of the earth with the exception of you and me who, no doubt on account of some mysterious mutant strain in our makeup which it makes us different, are the last of the old civilization and the first of the new.”

  “Didn’t your father teach you anything about dentistry?” Halsyon howled.

  “No,” she said.

  “Then lend me your gun for a minute.”

  She unholstered the revolver and handed it to Halsyon, meanwhile keeping her rifle ready. Halsyon cocked the gun.

  “I wish you’d been a dentist,” he howled.

  “I’m a beautiful woman with an I.Q. of 141 which is more important for the propagation of a brave new beautiful race of men to inherit the good green earth,” she said.

  “Not with my teeth it isn’t,” Halsyon howled.

  He clapped the revolver to his temple and blew his brains out.

  He awoke with a splitting headache. He was lying on the tile dais alongside the stool, his bruised temple pressed against the cold floor. Mr. Aquila had emerged from the lead shield and was turning on an exhaust fan to clear the air.

  “Bravo, my fiver & onions,” he chuckled. “The last one you did by yourself, eh? No assistance from yours truly required. Meglio tarde che mai. But you went over with a crack before I could catch you. God damn.”

  Fie helped Halsyon to his feet and led him into the consultation room where he seated him on a velvet chaise longue and gave him a glass of brandy.

  “Guaranteed free of drugs,” he said. “Noblesse oblige. Only the best spiritus frumenti. Now we discuss what we have done, eh? Jeez.”

  He sat down behind the desk, still sprightly, still bitter, and regarded Halsyon with kindliness. “Man lives by his decisions, n’est-ce-pas?” he began. “We agree, oui? A man has some five million two hundred seventy-one thousand and nine decisions to make in the course of his life. Peste! Is it a prime number? N’importe. Do you agree?”

  Halsyon nodded.

  “So, my coffee & doughnuts, it is the maturity of these decisions that decides whether a man is a man or a child. Nicht wahr? Malgre nous. A man cannot start making adult decisions until he has purged himself of the dreams of childhood. God damn. Such fantasies. They must go. Pfui.”

  “No,” Halsyon said slowly. “It’s the dreams that make my art . . . the dreams and fantasies that I translate into line and color . . .”

  “God damn! Yes. Agreed. Maitre d’hotel! But adult dreams, not baby dreams. Baby dreams. Pfui! All men have them . . . To be the last man on earth and own the earth . . . To be the last fertile man on earth and own the women . . . To go back in time with the advantage of adult knowledge and win victories . . . To escape reality with the dream that life is make-believe . . . To escape responsibility with a fantasy of heroic injustice, of martyrdom with a happy ending . . . And there are hundreds more, equally popular, equally empty. God bless Father Freud and his merry men. He applies the quietus to such nonsense. Sic semper tyrannis. Avaunt!”

  “But if everybody has those dreams, they can’t be bad, can they?”

  “For everybody read everybaby. Quid pro quo. God damn. Everybody in Fourteen century had lice. Did that make it good? No, my young, such dreams are for children. Too many adults are still childrens. It is you, the artists, who must lead them out as I have led you. I purge you; now you purge them.”

  “Why did you do this?”

  “Because I have faith in you. Sic vos non vobis. It will not be easy for you. A long hard road and lonely.”

  “I suppose I ought to feel grateful,” Halsyon muttered, “but I feel . . . well . . . empty. Cheated.”

  “Oh yes, God damn. If you l
ive with one Jeez big ulcer long enough you miss him when he’s cut out. You were hiding in an ulcer. I have robbed you of said refuge. Ergo: you feel cheated. Wait! You will feel even more cheated. There was a price to pay, I told you. You have paid it. Look.”

  Mr. Aquila held up a hand mirror. Halsyon glanced into it, then started and stared. A fifty-year-old face stared back at him: lined, hardened, solid, determined. Halsyon leaped to his feet.

  “Gently, gently,” Mr. Aquila admonished. “It is not so bad. It is damned good. You are still 33 in age of physique. You have lost none of your life—only all of your youth. What have you lost? A pretty face to lure young girls? Is that why you are wild?”

  “Christ!” Halsyon cried.

  “All right. Still gently, my child. Here you are, purged, disillusioned, unhappy, bewildered, one foot on the hard road to maturity. Would you like this to have happened or not have happened? Si. I can do. This can never have happened. Spurlos versenkt. It is ten seconds from your escape. You can have your pretty young face back. You can be recaptured. You can return to the safe ulcer of the womb . . . a child again. Would you like same?”

  “You can’t!”

  “Sauve qui peut, my Pike’s Peak. I can. There is no end to the 15,000 angstrom band.”

  “Damn you! Are you Satan? Lucifer? Only the devil could have such powers.”

  “Or angels, my old.”

  “You don’t look like an angel. You look like Satan.”

  “Ah? Ha? But Satan was an angel before he fell. He has many relations on high. Surely there are family resemblances. God damn.” Mr. Aquila stopped laughing. He leaned across the desk and the sprightliness was gone from his face. Only the bitterness remained. “Shall I tell you who I am, my chicken? Shall I explain why one unguarded look from this phizz toppled you over the brink?”

  Halsyon nodded, unable to speak.

  “I am a scoundrel, a black sheep, a scapegrace, a blackguard. I am a remittance man. Yes. God damn! I am a remittance man.” Mr. Aquila’s eyes turned into wounds. “By your standards I am the great man of infinite power and variety. So was the remittance man from Europe to naive natives on the beaches of Tahiti. Eh? So am I to you as I comb the beaches of this planet for a little amusement, a little hope, a little joy to while away the weary desolate years of my exile . . .

  “I am bad,” Mr. Aquila said in a voice of chilling desperation. “I am rotten. There is no place in my home that can tolerate me. And there are moments, unguarded, when my sickness and my despair fill my eyes and strike terror into your waiting souls. As I strike terror into you now. Yes?”

  Halsyon nodded again.

  “Be guided by me. It was the child in Solon Aquila that destroyed him and led him into the sickness that destroyed his life. Oui. I too suffer from baby fantasies from which I cannot escape. Do not make the same mistake. I beg of you . . .” Mr. Aquila glanced at his wristwatch and leaped up. The sprightly returned to his manner. “Jeez. It’s late. Time to make up your mind, old bourbon & soda. Which will it be? Old face or pretty face? The reality of dreams or the dream of reality?”

  “How many decisions did you say we have to make in a lifetime?”

  “Five million two hundred and seventy-one thousand and nine. Give or take a thousand, God damn.”

  “And which one is this for me?”

  “Ah? Vérité sans peur. The two million six hundred and thirty-five thousand five hundred and fourth . . . off hand.”

  “But it’s the big one.”

  “They are all big.” Mr. Aquila stepped to the door, placed his hand on the buttons of a rather complicated switch and cocked an eye at Halsyon.

  “Voila tout,” he said. “It rests with you.”

  “I’ll take it the hard way,” Halsyon decided.

  There was a silver chime from the switch, a fizzing aura, a soundless explosion, and Jeffrey Halsyon was ready for his 2,635,505th decision.

  5,271,009 by Alfred Bester. Copyright, 1954, by Fantasy House, Inc.; reprinted by permission of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and the author.

  KURT VONNEGUT, JR.

  More than one science-fiction writer has started a career in the specialist magazines and in time turned up in the nation’s big slicks; but very few, perhaps none but Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., have turned the process on its head. From the very first Vonnegut’s fiction possessed both the smoothness and warmth required by Collier’s and the other giants and the brilliant originality typical of the best science-fiction magazines. The trick is not easy; to see how it is done, examine——

  The Big Trip Up Yonder

  The year was 2158 A.D., and Lou and Emerald Schwartz were whispering on the balcony outside of Lou’s family’s apartment on the seventy-sixth floor of Building 257 in Alden Village, a New York housing development that covered what had once been known as southern Connecticut. When Lou and Emerald had married, Em’s parents had tearfully described the marriage as being between May and December; but now, with Lou 112 and Em 93, Em’s parents had to admit that the match had worked out surprisingly well.

  But Em and Lou weren’t without their troubles, and they were out in the nippy air of the balcony because of them. What they were saying was bitter and private.

  “Sometimes I get so mad, I feel like just up and diluting his anti-gerasone,” said Em.

  “That’d be against nature, Em,” said Lou. “It’d be murder. Besides, if he caught us tinkering with his anti-gerasone, not only would he disinherit us, he’d bust my neck. Just because he’s 172 doesn’t mean Gramps isn’t strong as a bull.”

  “Against nature,” said Em. “Who knows what nature’s like any more? Ohhhhh—I don’t guess I could ever bring myself to dilute his anti-gerasone or anything like that, but, gosh, Lou, a body can’t help thinking Gramps is never going to leave if somebody doesn’t help him along a little. Golly—we’re so crowded, a person can hardly turn around, and Verna’s dying for a baby, and Melissa’s gone thirty years without one.” She stamped her feet. “I get so sick of seeing his wrinkled old face, watching him take the only private room and the best chair and the best food, and getting to pick out what to watch on TV, and running everybody’s life by changing his will all the time.”

  “Well, after all,” said Lou bleakly, “Gramps is head of the family. And he can’t help being wrinkled like he is. He was seventy before anti-gerasone was invented. He’s going to leave, Em. Just give him time. It’s his business. I know he’s tough to live with, but be patient. It wouldn’t do to do anything that’d rile him. After all, we’ve got it better’n anybody else there on the day bed.”

  “How much longer do you think we’ll get to sleep on the day bed before he picks another pet? The world’s record’s two months, isn’t it?”

  “Mom and Pop had it that long once, I guess.”

  “When is he going to leave, Lou?” said Emerald.

  “Well, he’s talking about giving up anti-gerasone right after the five-hundred-mile Speedway Race.”

  “Yes—and before that it was the Olympics, and before that the World’s Series, and before that the presidential elections, and before that I-don’t-know-what. It’s been just one excuse after another for fifty years now. I don’t think we’re ever going to get a room to ourselves or an egg or anything.”

  “All right—call me a failure!” said Lou. “What can I do?

  I work hard and make good money, but the whole thing, practically, is taxed away for defense and old-age pensions. And if it wasn’t taxed away, where do you think we’d find a vacant room to rent? Iowa, maybe? Well, who wants to live on the outskirts of Chicago?”

  Em put her arms around his neck. “Lou, hon, I’m not calling j you a failure. The Lord knows you’re not. You just haven’t had a chance to be anything or have anything because Gramps and the rest of his generation won’t leave and let somebody else take over.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Lou gloomily. “You can’t exactly blame ’em, though, can you? I mean, I wonder how quick we’ll knock
off the anti-gerasone when we get Gramps’ age?”

  “Sometimes I wish there wasn’t any such thing as anti-gerasone!” said Emerald passionately. “Or I wish it was made out of something real expensive and hard to get instead of mud and dandelions. Sometimes I wish folks just up and died regular as clockwork, without anything to say about it, instead of deciding themselves how long they’re going to stay around. There ought to be a law against selling the stuff to anybody over 150.”

  “Fat chance of that,” said Lou, “with all the money and votes the old people’ve got.” He looked at her closely. “You ready to up and die, Em?”

  “Well, for heaven’s sakes, what a thing to say to your wife. Hon, I’m not even a hundred yet.” She ran her hands lightly over her firm, youthful figure, as though for confirmation. “The best years of my life are still ahead of me. But you can bet that when 150 rolls around, old Em’s going to pour her anti-gerasone down the sink and quit taking up room, and she’ll do it smiling.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Lou, “you bet. That’s what they all say, hon. Many you heard of doing it?”

  “There was that man in Delaware.”

  “Aren’t you getting kind of tired of talking about him, Em? That was five months ago.”

  “All right, then—Gramma Winkler, right here in the same building.”

  “She got smeared by a subway.”

  “That’s just the way she picked to go,” said Em.

  “Then what was she doing carrying a carton of anti-gerasone when she got it?”

  Emerald shook her head wearily and covered her eyes. “I dunno. I dunno, I dunno, I dunno. All I know is, something’s just got to be done.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wish they’d left a couple of diseases kicking around somewhere, so I could get one and go to bed for a little while. Too many people!” she cried, and her words cackled and gabbled and died in a thousand asphalt-paved, skyscraper-walled courtyards.

  Lou laid his hand on her shoulder tenderly. “Aw, hon, I hate to see you down in the dumps like this.”