Nova 2 Read online

  And so. She wears her amulet; we are inseparable; I have no contact with my other selves. In handling my investments I merely consult my file of newspapers, which I have reduced to mini cap size and carry in the bezel of a ring I wear. For safety’s sake Selene carries a duplicate.

  We are very happy. We are very wealthy.

  Is only one dilemma. Neither of us uses the special gift with which we were born. Evolution would not have produced such things in us if they were not to be used. What risks do we run by thwarting evolution’s design?

  I bitterly miss the use of my power, which her amulet negates. Even the company of supreme Selene does not wholly compensate for the loss of the harmoniousness that was:

  (now—n)

  (now)

  (now + n)

  I could, of course, simply arrange to be away from Selene for an hour here, an hour there, and reopen that contact. I could even have continued playing the market that way, setting aside a transmission hour every forty-eight hours outside of amulet range. But it is the continuous contact that I miss. The always presence of my other selves. If I have that contact, Selene is condemned to oscillate, or else we must part.

  I wish also to find some way that her gift will be not terror but joy for her.

  Is maybe a solution. Can extrasensory gifts be induced by proximity? Can Selene’s oscillation pass to me? I struggle to acquire it. We work together to give me her gift. Just today I felt myself move, perhaps a microsecond into the future, then a microsecond into the past. Selene said I definitely seemed to blur.

  Who knows? Will success be ours? I think yes. I think love will triumph. I think I will learn the secret, and we will coordinate our vanishings, Selene and I, and we will oscillate as one, we will swing together through time, we will soar, we will speed hand in hand across the millennia. She can discard her amulet once I am able to go with her on her journeys.

  Pray for us, (now + n), my brother, my other self, and one day soon perhaps I will come to you and shake you by the hand.

  Two Odysseys in the Center

  by Barry N. Malzberg

  Barry Malzberg is a tall and brooding conscience for us all. He has certain doubts about the meaning and motives of the space race that he presents here in “The Conquest of Mars”—the first of this pair of odysseys. Then, not satisfied with rattling this science fiction holy of holies, he turns around in “Some Notes Towards a Useable Past” and shakes up dear old science fiction itself in a most delightful and acid way.

  THE CONQUEST OF MARS

  I

  Descending with the other man in the landing crate, Blake risks one last appalled look at the space beneath him and then gasps to himself the admission that he can no longer restrain. The scientists have made a terrible mistake. Mars does not exist. They are heading toward nothing.

  II

  The other man is named Williams. He is four years younger than Blake and did almost as well in all of the selection tests, thus guaranteeing him the role of second in the landing party. Blake has always liked him and they have, up to a point, gotten along fine. But this is all moot. Williams seems to have disappeared, or in any event he is no longer huddled shoulder-to-shoulder with Blake in the craft. Instead there is a grotesque creature with a rather dour expression on what Blake takes to be the face, although strictly speaking the creature does not have a face. “Excuse me,” the creature says, “I didn’t mean to unsettle you.”

  “What is this?” Blake says. “What is this?” It occurs to him that this dialogue like all the rest is being picked up by transceivers in the landing craft, and undoubtedly his words are being heard by thousands of employees at the main base—to say nothing of the possibility of other millions digging it through the media. But still, this is disconcerting; they will have to see his point. “What are you doing? Who are you?”

  “I’ll make this quick and reasonable,” the creature says. Its speech is slightly accented; not exactiy Russian but one of those exotic satellites. Above all it is precise. “I am a representative of the Martian people. We have been observing you for many centuries as you prepared yourselves for this expedition and, quite frankly, we want no part of you. You are a dangerous race: aggressive and self-destructive and our civilization, although it is a bit on the decadent side, is pleasing to us more or less as it is. We have therefore arranged to move our planet away from your line of descent until such time as you give up this foolishness and return. We have very great scientific resources although we are primarily an artistic culture. You will turn around please, and go back to your ship.”

  “That’s impossible,” Blake says. He has scored higher than any other man in the history of the program in tests simulating all possible catastrophes and he finds it easy to be as reasonable as the alien. “We’re committed to the line of descent.”

  “No, you are not. Surely your devices have prevent mechanisms which will reverse the descent. Please use them.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Blake says. “Where is Williams? How do I know that you haven’t killed him?” He does not even consider the possibility of hallucination or breakdown, realizing that he is too highly qualified by the program for any kind of psychic difficulty. “I want to know where he is.”

  “Williams is a hostage,” the creature says blandly. “He is being held safely until such time as you reverse descent and return to your ship. He will then be given back to you in perfect condition. He is in complete stasis; he does not even realize that he has been abducted. I assure you that we will not hesitate to kill him, however, if you do not cooperate.”

  “This is ridiculous. I demand you release him.”

  “Of course it’s ridiculous. You people are invading our territory. You never gave a moment’s thought to the possibility that Mars was inhabited and that we might not want you.”

  “There was never any evidence—”

  “You are such an arrogant people,” the creature says sadly, “so convinced of your own acumen. I am getting very bored with this discussion, which is rapidly approaching uselessness. You have five minutes to reverse the descent; if you do not, we will kill the hostage. Also, we will kill you. Also, we will kill the creature in your mother ship. Additionally, we shall commence plans to kill everyone on your planet. The stakes are a bit too high,” it says, “don’t you think?” and vanishes or at least appears to vanish. Perhaps it is still there, lurking behind a wall, observing. In any event, Blake finds himself alone in the capsule.

  III

  Blake decides to think the thing through. As the result of rigorous mental and physical training he can approach any situation logically, even illogical ones. It is a pity that he must do this alone, but his one attempt to make contact with the transmitter is unsuccessful and he accepts at once the fact that the Martians have cut him off. This is reasonable.

  “Let me see,” Blake mutters. He always found it best, particularly as his responsibilities in the program increased, to talk out his thoughts for the sake of objectivity. “If I send the craft back to the ship they’ll release Williams and allow us to return to Earth, and surely we won’t get into any trouble because I’m sure that the base heard every word of this on the transmitters. On the other hand, if I insist on going ahead with the landing they’ll kill Williams, kill me, kill MacGregor up there in the ship and arrange to kill everyone else on Earth. Four and a half billion people. But I don’t have any assurances that they won’t do it anyway. But then again on the other hand I can hardly go on with the landing because there’s nothing to . . . well . . . land on. That’s a point to be considered. But I have to consider that maybe they shut off the transmitters so nobody knows what’s going on in here, in which case if I turn around we’ll return home in disgrace and I might even get jailed. That’s a point to think about. But you have to think that there’s about ten billion dollars tied up in this program, which is ten years behind schedule anyway, and it’s going to look very bad if I don’t even try to make a Mars landing and anyway the whole thing ma
y be a bluff. They may have no powers at all, even if they did make Mars vanish and take Williams away and put some kind of monster in his place. Yes, I’ll take that into account too, when I make the decision.”

  There seems nothing more to say. All the variables have been charted in; now Blake, as commander of the mission, must make his choice. According to his chronometer he has two minutes left. He decides to take both of them. He closes his eyes and leans his head heavily upon his chest, an old childish habit the project psychiatrists were not interested in disabusing him of since it served a symbolic need. He thinks.

  IV

  In the action-adventure science fiction stories which he read as a boy, long before he became interested in the program, Blake remembers that human beings were often threatened by aliens with one kind of terrible fate or another . . . but always were able to get out of it because of some kind of cleverness, some aspect of the situation that the aliens, in their stupidity, had missed. The humans were cunning crafty beings, usually outnumbered, always with the odds against them, but they had won because essentially they were better and smarter than the aliens and that was all that counted.

  Unfortunately this recollection cannot help him much now; the alien seems to have covered all the elements of the situation and if there is something that Blake has missed he cannot seem to bring it to mind. True, the alien’s speech has been a little distorted and rambling, and toward the end its hostility had given a clue that it might for some reason or another be frightened . . . but in a minute and half or less (one minute now, Blake sees on his chronometer) it would not be easy to spot the alien’s weak point and turn it against him.

  Still, you had to have hope. The heroes in the action-adventure pulp stories always had that, even in the last seconds, and one way or the other, something had come to them at the last instant. The important thing was to keep on thinking and fighting all the way through. Blake squeezes his eyes even more tightly shut, balls his hands into fists, and concentrates. Something will happen. In the pulp stories it always did. Besides that, the program had never, in all of their training, programmed in even the possibility of something as embarrassing as this. He has faith in the program. It will not fail him now.

  V

  “Well?” the creature says, returning, settling easily in the space near Blake, “have you made your decision? Will you reverse?”

  “You can’t fool me,” Blake says quietly. He checks his chronometer. “I have thirty seconds left.” He opens his eyes, measuring the alien to see if there is any change in its aspect, but there is not. The hell with it. He closes his eyes again.

  “That’s quite true,” the creature admits, “but we have to have a little warning as well. Right now we’re scheduled to kill Williams, you and the man in the ship in, uh, twelve seconds. We have to have a little room for reversal. You now have eight seconds.”

  “All right,” Blake says, his head between his knees. “That’s all right, I’ve made my decision. I believe you’re bluffing. Anyway, there’s no way that you could go ahead and do it; if you do we’ll send another ship with nuclears and blow up Mars. See? I’ve got a bigger threat, topping yours, and that’s the secret.”

  “I’m sorry,” the creature says. It pokes Blake so insistently in his ribs that at last he must open his eyes and confront it. Indeed there does seem to be genuine sorrow painted on the horrid, random features. “We’re a gentle race. I regret this. I really do. But there must be an end to this, you see.”

  It goes away again and one second later, or maybe it is two or three (Blake is not counting), something dreadful happens inside him and there is a feeling of implosion; then he is descending even more rapidly than the ship itself and quite shortly there is nothing whatsoever, Blake’s last feeling is rage. That the Martians would make threats is understandable (they must protect their own options), but that they would have the gall—

  VI

  When he comes to he is in another kind of small room and two old scientists who he all at once remembers (along with everything else) are looking at him, and they are beaming and nodding and smiling and touching one another, and at last one says to the other (and Blake knows that he will remember this as long as he lives; he is that proud), “He’ll do, he’ll do, he’ll do; he’s your Captain, do you understand that? This is the kind of man we need to send to Mars.”

  SOME NOTES OF THE USEABLE PAST

  FIRST NOTE:

  The universe is large, bigger than hell that is to say; and man is small, a bare specter in the endless, ravening reaches of the cosmos. But there is pride in man and dignity too, an acceptance of that essential humanity which is the core of his individuality and which also foreshadows the roots of his destiny. In all those bleak uncharted wastes reaching, perhaps, to the very lip of heaven itself, the unspeakable womb of our origin, men can voyage out and out (and out and out) until one is reminded of those splendid words of the prophet: Hemeni o mahatov menachem heil (in matter is form; in structure is content). So it is spoken and as the eyes of men reach toward the stars their hearts are truly in finite qualification with the older, the better, the more meaningful parts of themselves.

  SECOND NOTE:

  They touched down on the planet at 1400 hours, making three large dents in the earth. The landing was a difficult one because—well, because the spaceship was out of commission and it was a forced landing. Smith and Jones, the two highly individuated cosmic scouts, came out cautiously into the cool strange air of the twilight and Smith tapped his helmet, inhaling the pure sweetness of an earth-type atmosphere.

  “Wow, Jones,” he exclaimed reverently, “it’s the real thing: just like home. Crack your helmet.”

  And that is exactly what Jones did on the spot and he found the air fine but somehow disturbing because it all seemed too good, too peaceful, like in WEIRD TALES it was too much like a dream and his ferocious, barbarian, cunning earth-type impulses warned him and so he told Smith to watch out for the possibility of dangerous natives but Smith laughed and said that Jones was merely being the most corrupt kind of earthman: he could not apprehend the possibility of pure beauty. Now that is too bad, Smith thought and said, “Look, this is an oasis, we have found a true oasis Jones and everybody reveres us for what we have found or will as soon as we report the good tidings back to earth. Consider what we have! An earth-type planet, only the sixteenth ever discovered in this region of the Crab Legs Galaxy located in the diurnal west of the star cluster of the Diomedes turning left for direct exposition at the intergalactic directional point of origin.”

  “That’s true,” said Jones, “but how will we ever back out of here? Our ship is wrecked and we are stranded on this earth-type planet.”

  “You tell me. You’re the technological part of this team, I’m only the poet.”

  “Well, then,” Jones said, “being at least a man of practical nature I’ll try to make some kind of repair,” and they shook hands on it but before they could really get going on the repair and the consequently triumphant return to earth they were discovered and eaten alive by the strange monsters of Willingston 7 who thought that they were the only true inhabitants of the universe and who were too primitive to have yet evolved interstellar travel or the intricacies of an earth-type conscience. I forgot to say that they were killed with trans-fixed matter displacements. So Willingston 7 remains untapped to this day which is too bad as earthmen seek in the lonely wastes but then again the basic conflict as established between these two will certainly live as long as the ages can praise solid characterization and a solid, well-plotted story line.

  THIRD NOTE:

  THE TECH ROOM RATINGS FOR JULY

  1/8 Starmen Run, by P. F. Glade 2.245

  2 The Violent Monster by G. F. Pay 2.371

  3 The Chessmen of Socrates by G. P. Plade 3.4

  4 Moon Yarn (IV) by Glade Paf 3.6193

  5 Pathetic Fallacy by Paf G. Pade 3.6194

  A tight one this month! But those yams all came in around where they should b
e! Incidentally, Moon Yarn will be having a sequel just as soon as “Tech” Paf finishes up at the factory and can give the new yarn his fullest attention! I think you’ll like this one; it’s about metal, chromium, tensors, ultrasonic punishment and the Hierony-mous Chain and there isn’t a woman in it!

  FOURTH NOTE:

  The time machine took Martin back to the twelfth century A.D. where he slew his father’s great-ancestor to say nothing of uprooting the earth on which Carthage would have stood, then came back to his own time, 2012 A.D., expecting not to be there but he was. “Oh ho!” Martin screamed, “time is not continuous but an alternate series of parallel conceptions which diverge at the moment of consequentiality to produce a series of parallel lives. Therefore, none of us is truly of anything but himself.” And was much gladdened by this insight but, nothing if not energetic, went back to 44 B.C. and encountered the Emperor Nero in his private gardens, fucking a slave chastely under filaments of garments which concealed their genitals to say nothing of the (female) slave’s large, ponderous, delicious breasts. “What the hell are you doing here?” Nero queried in familiar fashion and taking note of Menachem’s peculiar garb and the peculiar aspect of the time machine in the doughty traveler’s left hand, added, “It’s 44 B.C.; we don’t want any twenty-first-century interlopers and besides, time’s an individual, not a constant and I never heard of this before, therefore it never happened.” Nero vaulted from the slave, making sure that her body was still covered, and moved toward Martin menacingly with a sword in his right hand; Martin turned on the power of his time machine in an attempt to make a hasty exit but found that something had happened to the solidifier-condensing coils which, instead of passing smoothly through the dimensional trap, quasi-lasered through an infinitesimal warp and contrived to explode negatively through the carborundum. This meant that he was trapped and had to fight the menacing Roman potentate! Seizing his own weapon from a rear pants-pocket—it was a German luger he had captured during the invasion of Normandy sixty-eight years ago when he had been a very young man—he pulled the trigger and blew a neat hole in the tyrant’s chest which resulted in the depraved idiot falling through himself and deep into the twenty-first century where he rose to a position of power and ascendancy and even became an important producer in the realie-feelies. Martin, meanwhile, stayed in Rome with the slave—her name was Roxanne and he discovered to his delight that she had no nipples—and took over the chores and duties of the Emperor Nero. No one knew the difference because Martin was a just and wise despot who had a career in violin-adjustment somewhere in his past so when the time came for him to fulfill the myth he did it very nicely although for the first time. Time, therefore, proved to be a closed cycle: he and Nero had merely swapped roles. This proved that the universe was totally orderly and that there is no madness in it.