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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a04109e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #51115 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51115) diff --git a/old/51115-8.txt b/old/51115-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0701427..0000000 --- a/old/51115-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1450 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Transfer Point, by Anthony Boucher - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Transfer Point - -Author: Anthony Boucher - -Release Date: February 2, 2016 [EBook #51115] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRANSFER POINT *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - TRANSFER POINT - - BY ANTHONY BOUCHER - - Illustrated by Paul Piérre - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Galaxy Science Fiction November 1950. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - - - - It was a nasty plot Vyrko was involved in. - The worst part was that he constructed it - himself--and didn't get the end right! - - -There were three of them in the retreat, three out of all mankind safe -from the deadly yellow bands. - -The great Kirth-Labbery himself had constructed the retreat and its -extraordinary air-conditioning--not because his scientific genius had -foreseen the coming of the poisonous element, agnoton, and the end of -the human race, but because he itched. - -And here Vyrko sat, methodically recording the destruction of mankind, -once in a straight factual record, for the instruction of future -readers ("if any," he added wryly to himself), and again as a canto -in that epic poem of Man which he never expected to complete, but for -which he lived. - -Lavra's long golden hair fell over his shoulders. It was odd that its -scent distracted him when he was at work on the factual record, yet -seemed to wing the lines of the epic. - -"But why bother?" she asked. Her speech might have been clearer if her -tongue had not been more preoccupied with the savor of the apple than -with the articulation of words. But Vyrko understood readily: the -remark was as familiar an opening as P-K4 in chess. - -"It's my duty," Vyrko explained patiently. "I haven't your father's -scientific knowledge and perception. Your father's? I haven't the -knowledge of his humblest lab assistant. But I can put words together -so that they make sense and sometimes more than sense, and I have to do -this." - -From Lavra's plump red lips an apple pip fell into the works of the -electronic typewriter. Vyrko fished it out automatically; this too was -part of the gambit, with the possible variants of grape seed, orange -peel.... - -"But why," Lavra demanded petulantly, "won't Father let us leave here? -A girl might as well be in a ... a...." - -"_Convent?_" Vyrko suggested. He was a good amateur paleolinguist. -"There is an analogy--even despite my presence. _Convents_ were -supposed to shelter girls from the Perils of The World. Now the whole -world is one great Peril ... outside of this retreat." - -"Go on," Lavra urged. She had long ago learned, Vyrko suspected, that -he was a faintly over-serious young man with no small talk, and that -she could enjoy his full attention only by asking to have something -explained, even if for the _n_th time. - - * * * * * - -He smiled and thought of the girls he used to talk _with_, not _at_, -and of how little breath they had for talking now in the world where no -one drew an unobstructed breath. - -It had begun with the accidental discovery in a routine laboratory -analysis of a new element in the air, an inert gas which the great -paleolinguist Larkish had named _agnoton_, the Unknown Thing, after -the pattern of the similar nicknames given to others: _neon_, the New -Thing; _xenon_, the Strange Thing. - -It had continued (the explanation ran off so automatically that -his mind was free to range from the next line of the epic to the -interesting question of whether the presence of ear lobes would damage -the symmetry of Lavra's perfect face) it had continued with the itching -and sneezing, the coughing and wheezing, with the increase of the -percentage of agnoton in the atmosphere, promptly passing any other -inert gas, even argon, and soon rivaling oxygen itself. - -And it had culminated (no, the lines were cleaner without lobes), on -that day when only the three of them were here in this retreat, with -the discovery that the human race was allergic to agnoton. - -Allergies had been conquered for a decade of generations. Their cure, -even their palliation, had been forgotten. And mankind coughed and -sneezed and itched ... and died. For while the allergies of the ancient -past produced only agonies to make the patient long for death, agnoton -brought on racking and incessant spasms of coughing and sneezing which -no heart could long withstand. - -"So if you leave this shelter, my dear," Vyrko concluded, "you too -will fight for every breath and twist your body in torment until -your heart decides that it is all just too much trouble. Here we are -safe, because your father's eczema was the only known case of allergy -in centuries--and was traced to the inert gases. Here is the only -air-conditioning in the world that excludes the inert gases--and with -them agnoton. And here--" - - * * * * * - -Lavra leaned forward, a smile and a red fleck of apple skin on her -lips, the apples of her breasts touching Vyrko's shoulders. This too -was part of the gambit. - -Usually it was merely declined. Tyrsa stood between them. Tyrsa, who -sang well and talked better; whose plain face and beautiful throat were -alike racked by agnoton.... This time the gambit was interrupted. - -Kirth-Labbery himself had come in unnoticed. His old voice was -thin with weariness, sharp with impatience. "And here we are, safe -in perpetuity, with our air-conditioning, our energy plant, our -hydroponics! Safe in perpetual siege, besieged by an inert gas!" - -Vyrko grinned. "Undignified, isn't it?" - -Kirth-Labbery managed to laugh at himself. "Damn your secretarial hide, -Vyrko. I love you like a son, but if I had one man who knew a meson -from a metazoon to help me in the laboratory...." - -"You'll find something, Father," Lavra said vaguely. - -Her father regarded her with an odd seriousness. "Lavra," he said, -"your beauty is the greatest thing that I have wrought--with a certain -assistance, I'll grant, from the genes so obviously carried by your -mother. That beauty alone still has meaning. The sight of you would -bring a momentary happiness even to a man choking in his last spasms, -while our great web of civilization...." - -He absently left the sentence unfinished and switched on the video -screen. He had to try a dozen channels before he found one that was -still casting. When every erg of a man's energy goes to drawing his -next breath, he cannot tend his machine. - -At last Kirth-Labbery picked up a Nyork newscast. The announcer was -sneezing badly ("The older literature," Vyrko observed, "found sneezing -comic...."), but still contriving to speak, and somewhere a group of -technicians must have had partial control of themselves. - -"Four hundred and seventy-two planes have crashed," the announcer -said, "in the past forty-eight hours. Civil authorities have forbidden -further plane travel indefinitely because of the danger of spasms at -the controls, and it is rumored that all vehicular transport whatsoever -is to come under the same ban. No Rocklipper has arrived from Lunn for -over a week, and it is thirty-six hours since we have made contact with -the Lunn telestation. Yurp has been silent for over two days, and Asia -a week. - -"'The most serious threat of this epidemic,' the head of the Academy -has said in an authorized statement, 'is the complete disruption of the -systems of communication upon which world civilization is based. When -man becomes physically incapable of governing his machines....'" - - * * * * * - -It was then that they saw the first of the yellow bands. - -It was just that: a band of bright yellow some thirty centimeters -wide, about five meters long, and so thin as to seem insubstantial, -a mere stripe of color. It came underneath the backdrop behind the -announcer. It streaked about the casting room with questing sinuosity. -No features, no appendages relieved its yellow blankness. - -Then with a deft whipping motion it wrapped itself around the -announcer. It held him only an instant. His hideously shriveled body -plunged toward the camera as the screen went dead. - -That was the start of the horror. - -Vyrko, naturally, had no idea of the origin of the yellow bands. Even -Kirth-Labbery could offer no more than conjectures. From another -planet, another system, another galaxy, another universe.... - -It did not matter. Precise knowledge had now lost its importance. -Kirth-Labbery was almost as indifferent to the problem as was Lavra; he -speculated on it out of sheer habit. What signified was that the yellow -bands were alien, and that they were rapidly and precisely completing -the destruction of mankind begun by the agnoton. - -"Their arrival immediately after the epidemic," Kirth-Labbery -concluded, "cannot be coincidence. You will observe that they function -freely in an agnoton-laden atmosphere." - -"It would be interesting," Vyrko commented, "to visualize a band -sneezing...." - -"It's possible," the scientist corrected, "that the agnoton was a -poison-gas barrage laid down to soften Earth for their coming; but is -it likely that they could _know_ that a gas harmless to them would -be lethal to other life? It's more probable that they learned from -spectroscopic analysis that the atmosphere of Earth lacked an element -essential to them, which they supplied before invading." - -Vyrko considered the problem while Lavra sliced a peach with delicate -grace. She was unable to resist licking the juice from her fingers. - -"Then if the agnoton," he ventured, "is something that they imported, -is it possible that their supply might run short?" - -Kirth-Labbery fiddled with the dials under the screen. It was still -possible to pick up occasional glimpses from remote sectors, though by -now the heart sickened in advance at the knowledge of the inevitable -end of the cast. - -"It is possible, Vyrko. It is the only hope. The three of us here, -where the agnoton and the yellow bands are alike helpless to enter, -may continue our self-sufficient existence long enough to outlast the -invaders. Perhaps somewhere on Earth there are other such nuclei, but I -doubt it. We are the whole of the future ... and I am old." - - * * * * * - -Vyrko frowned. He resented the terrible weight of a burden that he did -not want but could not reject. He felt himself at once, oppressed and -ennobled. Lavra went on eating her peach. - -The video screen sprang into light. A young man with the tense, lined -face of premature age spoke hastily, urgently. "To all of you, if there -are any of you.... I have heard no answer for two days now.... It is -chance that I am here. But _watch_, all of you! I have found how the -yellow bands came here. I am going to turn the camera on it now ... -_watch_!" - -The field of vision panned to something that was for a moment -totally incomprehensible. "This is their ship," the old young man -gasped. It was a set of bars of a metal almost exactly the color of -the bands themselves, and it appeared in the first instant like a -three-dimensional projection of a tesseract. Then as they looked at it, -their eyes seemed to follow strange new angles. Possibilities of vision -opened up beyond their capacities. For a moment they seemed to see what -the human eye was not framed to grasp. - -"They come," the voice panted on, "from...." - -The voice and the screen went dead. Vyrko covered his eyes with his -hands. Darkness was infinite relief. A minute passed before he felt -that he could endure once more even the normal exercise of the optic -nerve. He opened his eyes sharply at a little scream from Lavra. - -He opened them to see how still Kirth-Labbery sat. The human heart, -too, is framed to endure only so much; and, as the scientist had said, -he was old. - - * * * * * - -It was three days after Kirth-Labbery's death before Vyrko had brought -his prose-and-verse record up to date. Nothing more had appeared on -the video, even after the most patient hours of knob-twirling. Now -Vyrko leaned back from the keyboard and contemplated his completed -record--and then sat forward with abrupt shock at the thought of that -word _completed_. - -There was nothing more to write. - -The situation was not novel in literature. He had read many treatments, -and even written a rather successful satire on the theme himself. But -here was the truth itself. - -He was that most imagination-stirring of all figures, The Last Man on -Earth. And he found it a boring situation. - -Kirth-Labbery, had he lived, would have devoted his energies in the -laboratory to an effort, even conceivably a successful one, to destroy -the invaders. Vyrko knew his own limitations too well to attempt that. - -Vrist, his gay wild twin, who had been in Lunn on yet another of his -fantastic ventures when the agnoton struck--Vrist would have dreamed -up some gallant feat of physical prowess to make the invaders pay -dearly for his life. Vyrko found it difficult to cast himself in so -swash-buckling a role. - -He had never envied Vrist till now. _Be jealous of the dead; only the -living are alone._ Vyrko smiled as he recalled the line from one of his -early poems. It had been only the expression of a pose when he wrote -it, a mood for a song that Tyrsa would sing well.... - -It was in this mood that he found (the ancient word had no modern -counterpart) the _pulps_. - - * * * * * - -He knew their history: how some eccentric of two thousand years ago -(the name was variously rendered as Trees or Tiller) had buried them -in a hermetic capsule to check against the future; how Tarabal had -dug them up some fifty years ago; how Kirth-Labbery had spent almost -the entire Hartl Prize for them because, as he used to assert, their -incredible mixture of exact prophecy and arrant nonsense offered the -perfect proof of the greatness and helplessness of human ingenuity. - -But Vyrko had never read them before. They would at least be a novelty -to deaden the boredom of his classically dramatic situation. He passed -a more than pleasant hour with _Galaxy_ and _Surprising_ and the rest, -needing the dictionary but rarely. He was particularly impressed by one -story detailing, with the most precise minutiae, the politics of the -American Religious Wars--a subject on which he himself had based a not -unsuccessful novel. By one Norbert Holt, he observed. Extraordinary -how exact a forecast ... and yet extraordinary too how many of the -stories dealt with space- and time-travel, which the race had never yet -attained and now never would.... - -And inevitably there was a story, a neat and witty one by an author -named Knight, about the Last Man on Earth. He read it and smiled, first -at the story and then at his own stupidity. - -He found Lavra in the laboratory, of all unexpected places. - -She was staring fixedly at one corner, where the light did not strike -clearly. - -"What's so fascinating?" Vyrko asked. - -Lavra turned suddenly. Her hair and her flesh rippled with the perfect -grace of the movement. "I was thinking...." - -Vyrko's half-formed intent toward her permitted no comment on that -improbable statement. - -"The day before Father ... died, I was in here with him and I asked if -there was any hope of our escaping ever. Only this time he answered me. -He said yes, there was a way out, but he was afraid of it. It was an -idea he'd worked on but never tried. And we'd be wiser not to try it, -he said." - -"I don't believe in arguing with your father--even post mortem." - -"But I can't help wondering.... And when he said it, he looked over at -that corner." - - * * * * * - -Vyrko went to that corner and drew back a curtain. There was a chair of -metal rods, and a crude control panel, though it was hard to see what -it was intended to control. He dropped the curtain. - -For a moment he stood watching Lavra. She was a fool, but she was -exceedingly lovely. And the child of Kirth-Labbery could hardly carry -only a fool's genes. - -Several generations could grow up in this retreat before the inevitable -failure of the most permanent mechanical installations made it -uninhabitable. By that time Earth would be free of agnoton and yellow -bands, or they would be so firmly established that there was no hope. -The third generation would go forth into the world, to perish or.... - -He walked over to Lavra and laid a gentle hand on her golden hair. - - * * * * * - -Vyrko never understood whether Lavra had been bored before that time. A -life of undemanding inaction with plenty of food may well have sufficed -her. Certainly she was not bored now. - -At first she was merely passive; Vyrko had always suspected that she -had meant the gambit to be declined. Then as her interest mounted and -Vyrko began to compliment himself on his ability as an instructor, they -became certain of their success; and from that point on she was rapt -with the fascination of the changes in herself. - -But even this new development did not totally rid Vyrko of his own -ennui. If there were only something he could _do_, some positive, -Vristian, Kirth-Labberian step that he could take! He damned himself -for having been an incompetent aesthetic fool, who had taken so for -granted the scientific wonders of his age that he had never learned -what made them tick, or how greater wonders might be attained. - -He slept too much, he ate too much, for a brief period he drank too -much--until he found boredom even less attractive with a hangover. - -He tried to write, but the terrible uncertainty of any future audience -disheartened him. - -Sometimes a week would pass without his consciously thinking of -agnoton or the yellow bands. Then he would spend a day flogging himself -into a state of nervous tension worthy of his uniquely dramatic -situation, but he would always relapse. There just wasn't anything to -do. - -Now even the consolation of Lavra's beauty was vanishing, and she began -demanding odd items of food which the hydroponic garden could not -supply. - -"If you loved me, you'd find a way to make cheese ..." or "... grow a -new kind of peach ... a little like a grape, only different...." - -It was while he was listening to a film wire of Tyrsa's (the last she -ever made, in the curious tonalities of that newly rediscovered Mozart -opera) and seeing her homely face, made even less lovely by the effort -of those effortless-sounding notes, that he became conscious of the -operative phrase. - -"If you loved me...." - -"Have I ever said I did?" he snapped. - -He saw a new and not readily understood expression mar the beauty of -Lavra's face. "No," she said in sudden surprise. "No," and her voice -fell to flatness, "you haven't...." - -And as her sobs--the first he had ever heard from her--traveled away -toward the hydroponic room, he felt a new and not readily understood -emotion. He switched off the film wire midway through the pyrotechnic -rage of the eighteenth-century queen of darkness. - - * * * * * - -Vyrko found a curious refuge in the _pulps_. There was a perverse -satisfaction in reading the thrilling exploits of other Last Men on -Earth. He could feel through them the emotions that he should be -feeling directly. And the other stories were fun, too, in varying ways. -For instance, that astonishingly accurate account of the delicate -maneuvering which averted what threatened to be the first and final -Atomic War.... - -He noticed one oddity: Every absolutely correct story of the "future" -bore the same by-line. Occasionally other writers made good guesses, -predicted logical trends, foresaw inevitable extrapolations. But only -Norbert Holt named names and dated dates with perfect historical -accuracy. - -It wasn't possible. It was too precise to be plausible. It was far more -spectacular than the erratic Nostradamus often discussed in the _pulps_. - -But there it was. He had read the Holt stories solidly through in order -a half-dozen times, without finding a single flaw, when he discovered -the copy of _Surprising Stories_ that had slipped behind a shelf and -was therefore new to him. - -He looked at once at the contents page. Yes, there was a Holt and--he -felt a twinge of irrational but poignant sadness--one labeled as -posthumous. - - This story, we regret to tell you, is incomplete, and not only - because of Norbert Holt's tragic death last month. This is the last - in chronological order of Holt's stories of a consistently plotted - future; but this fragment was written before his masterpiece, The - _Siege of Lunn_. Holt himself used to tell me that he could never - finish it, that he could not find an ending; and he died still not - knowing how _The Last Boredom_ came out. But here, even though in - fragment form, is the last published work of the greatest writer - about the future, Norbert Holt. - -The note was signed with the initials M. S. Vyrko had long sensed a -more than professional intimacy between Holt and his editor, Manning -Stern; this obituary introduction must have been a bitter task. But his -eyes were hurrying on, almost fearfully, to the first words of _The -Lost Boredom_: - - There were three of them in the retreat, three out of all mankind - safe from the deadly yellow bands. The great Kirth-Labbery himself - had constructed.... - -Vyrko blinked and started again. It still read the same. He took firm -hold of the magazine, as though the miracle might slip between his -fingers, and dashed off with more energy than he had felt in months. - - * * * * * - -He found Lavra in the hydroponic room. "I have just found," he shouted, -"the damnedest unbelievable--" - -"Darling," said Lavra, "I want some meat." - -"Don't be silly. We haven't any meat. Nobody's eaten meat except at -ritual dinners for generations." - -"Then I want a ritual dinner." - -"You can go on wanting. But look at this! Just read those first lines!" - -"Vyrko," she pleaded, "I _want_ it." - -"Don't be an idiot!" - -Her lips pouted and her eyes moistened. "Vyrko dear.... What you said -when you were listening to that funny music.... Don't you love me?" - -"No," he barked. - -Her eyes overflowed. "You don't love me? Not after...?" - -All Vyrko's pent-up boredom and irritation erupted. "You're beautiful, -Lavra, or you were a few months ago, but you're an idiot. I am not in -the habit of loving idiots." - -"But you...." - -"I tried to assure the perpetuation of the race--questionable though -the desirability of such a project seems at the moment. It was not an -unpleasant task, but I'm damned if it gives you the right in perpetuity -to pester me." - -She moaned a little as he slammed out of the room. He felt oddly -better. Adrenalin is a fine thing for the system. He settled into a -chair and resolutely read, his eyes bugging like a cover-monster's with -amazed disbelief. When he reached the verbatim account of the quarrel -he had just enjoyed, he dropped the magazine. - -It sounded so petty in print. Such stupid inane bickering in the face -of.... He left the magazine lying there and went back to the hydroponic -room. - -Lavra was crying--noiselessly this time, which somehow made it worse. -One hand had automatically plucked a ripe grape, but she was not eating -it. He went up behind her and slipped his hand under her long hair and -began stroking the nape of her neck. The soundless sobs diminished -gradually. When his fingers moved tenderly behind her ears, she turned -to him with parted lips. The grape fell from her hand. - -"I'm sorry," he heard himself saying. "It's me that's the idiot. Which, -I repeat, I am not in the habit of loving. And you're the mother of my -twins and I do love you...." And he realized that the statement was -quite possibly, if absurdly, true. - -"I don't want anything now," Lavra said when words were again in order. -She stretched contentedly, and she was still beautiful even in the -ungainly distortion which might preserve a race. "Now what were you -trying to tell me?" - - * * * * * - -He explained. "And this Holt is always right," he ended. "And now he's -writing about us!" - -"Oh! Oh, then we'll know--" - -"We'll know everything. We'll know what the yellow bands are and what -becomes of them and what happens to mankind and--" - -"--and we'll know," said Lavra, "whether it's a boy or a girl." - -Vyrko smiled. "Twins, I told you. It runs in my family--no less than -one pair to a generation. And I think that's it--Holt's already planted -the fact of my having a twin named Vrist, even though he doesn't come -into the action." - -"Twins.... That _would_ be nice. They wouldn't be lonely until we -could.... But get it quick, dear. Read it to me; I can't wait!" - -So he read Norbert Holt's story to her--too excited and too oddly -affectionate to point out that her long-standing aversion for print -persisted even when she herself was a character. He read on past the -quarrel. He read a printable version of the past hour. He read about -himself reading the story to her. - -"Now!" she cried. "We're up to _now_. What happens next?" - -Vyrko read: - - The emotional release of anger and love had set Vyrko almost at - peace with himself again; but a small restlessness still nibbled - at his brain. - - Irrelevantly he remembered Kirth-Labbery's cryptic hint of escape. - Escape for the two of them, happy now; for the two of them and for - their ... it had to be, according to the odds, their twins. - - He sauntered curiously into the laboratory, Lavra following him. He - drew back the curtain and stared at the chair of metal rods. It was - hard to see the control board that seemed to control nothing. He - sat in the chair for a better look. - - He made puzzled grunting noises. Lavra, her curiosity finally - stirred by something inedible, reached over his shoulder and poked - at the green button. - - * * * * * - -"I don't like that last thing he says about me," Lavra objected. "I -don't like anything he says about me. I think your Mr. Holt is a very -nasty person." - -"He says you're beautiful." - -"And he says you love me. Or does he? It's all mixed up." - -"It is all mixed up ... and I do love you." - -The kiss was a short one; Lavra had to say, "And what next?" - -"That's all. It ends there." - -"Well.... Aren't you...?" - -Vyrko felt strange. Holt had described his feelings so precisely. He -was at peace and still curious, and the thought of Kirth-Labbery's -escape method did nibble restlessly at his brain. - -He rose and sauntered into the laboratory, Lavra following him. He drew -back the curtain and stared at the chair of metal rods. It was hard to -see the control board that seemed to control nothing. He sat in the -chair for a better look. - -He made puzzled grunting noises. Lavra, her curiosity finally stirred -by something inedible, reached over his shoulder and poked at the green -button. - - * * * * * - -Vyrko had no time for amazement when Lavra and the laboratory vanished. -He saw the archaic vehicle bearing down directly upon him and tried to -get out of the way as rapidly as possible. But the chair hampered him -and before he could get to his feet the vehicle struck. There was a red -explosion of pain and then a long blackness. - -He later recalled a moment of consciousness at the hospital and a -shrill female voice repeating over and over, "But he wasn't there and -then all of a sudden he was and I hit him. It was like he came out of -nowhere. He wasn't there and all of a sudden...." Then the blackness -came back. - -All the time of his unconsciousness, all through the semi-conscious -nightmares while doctors probed at him and his fever soared, his -unconscious mind must have been working on the problem. He knew the -complete answer the instant that he saw the paper on his breakfast -tray, that first day he was capable of truly seeing anything. - -The paper was easy to read for a paleolinguist with special training -in _pulps_--easier than the curious concept of breakfast was to -assimilate. What mattered was the date. 1948--and the headlines -refreshed his knowledge of the Cold War and the impending election. -(There was something he should remember about that election....) - -He saw it clearly. Kirth-Labbery's genius had at last evolved a time -machine. That was the one escape, the escape which the scientist had -not yet tested and rather distrusted. And Lavra had poked the green -button because Norbert Holt had said she had poked (would poke?) the -green button. - -How many buttons could a wood poke poke if a wood poke would poke.... - -"The breakfast didn't seem to agree with him, doctor." - -"Maybe it was the paper. Makes me run a temperature every morning, too!" - -"Oh, doctor, you do say the funniest things!" - -"Nothing funnier than this case. Total amnesia, as best we can judge by -his lucid moments. And his clothes don't help us--must've been on his -way to a fancy-dress party. Or maybe I should say fancy-_un_dress!" - -"Oh, _doctor_!" - -"Don't tell me nurses can blush. Never did when I was an intern--and -you can't say they didn't get a chance! But this character here ... not -a blessed bit of identification on him! Riding some kind of newfangled -bike that got smashed up.... Better hold off on the solid food for a -bit--stick to intravenous feeding." - - * * * * * - -He'd had this trouble before at ritual dinners, Vyrko finally recalled. -Meat was apt to affect him badly--the trouble was that he had not at -first recognized those odd strips of oily solid which accompanied the -egg as meat. - -The adjustment was gradual and successful, in this as in other -matters. At the end of two weeks, he was eating meat easily (and, he -confessed, with a faintly obscene non-ritual pleasure) and equally -easily chatting with nurses and fellow patients about the events (which -he still privately tended to regard as mummified museum pieces) of 1948. - -His adjustment, in fact, was soon so successful that it could not -continue. The doctor made that clear. - -"Got to think about the future, you know. Can't keep you here forever. -Nasty unreasonable prejudice against keeping well men in hospitals." - -Vyrko allowed the expected laugh to come forth. "But since," he said, -gladly accepting the explanation that was so much more credible than -the truth, "I haven't any idea who I am, where I live, or what my -profession is--" - -"Can't remember anything? Don't know if you can take shorthand, for -instance? Or play the bull fiddle?" - -"Not a thing." Vyrko felt it hardly worth while to point out his -one manual accomplishment, the operation of the as-yet-uninvented -electronic typewriter. - -"Behold," he thought, "the Man of the Future. I've read all the time -travel stories. I know what should happen. I teach them everything -Kirth-Labbery knew and I'm the greatest man in the world. Only the -fictional time travel never happens to a poor dope who took for granted -all the science around him, who pushed a button or turned a knob and -never gave a damn what happened or why. Here they're just beginning -to get two-dimensional black-and-white short-range television. We had -(will have?) stereoscopic full-color world-wide video--which I'm about -as capable of constructing here as my friend the doctor would be of -installing electric light in Ancient Rome. The Mouse of the Future...." - -The doctor had been thinking, too. He said, "Notice you're a great -reader. Librarian's been telling me about you--went through the whole -damn hospital library like a bookworm with a tapeworm!" - -Vyrko laughed dutifully. "I like to read," he admitted. - -"Ever try writing?" the doctor asked abruptly, almost in the tone in -which he might reluctantly advise a girl that her logical future lay in -Port Saïd. - -This time Vyrko really laughed. "That does seem to ring a bell, you -know.... It might be worth trying. But at that, what do I live on until -I get started?" - -"Hospital trustees here administer a rehabilitation fund. Might wangle -a loan. Won't be much, of course; but I always say a single man's got -only one mouth to feed--and if he feeds more, he won't be single long!" - -"A little," said Vyrko with a glance at the newspaper headlines, "might -go a long way." - - * * * * * - -It did. There was the loan itself, which gave him a bank account on -which, in turn, he could acquire other short-term loans--at exorbitant -interest. And there was the election. - -He had finally reconstructed what he should know about it. There had -been a brilliant Wheel-of-If story in one of the much later pulps, -on _If_ the Republicans had won the 1948 election. Which meant that -actually they had lost; and here, in October of 1948, all newspapers, -all commentators, and most important, all gamblers, were convinced that -they must infallibly win. - -On Wednesday, November third, Vyrko repaid his debts and settled -down to his writing career, comfortably guaranteed against immediate -starvation. - -A half-dozen attempts at standard fiction failed wretchedly. A matter -of "tone," editors remarked vaguely, on the rare occasions when they -did not confine themselves to the even vaguer phrases of printed -rejection forms. A little poetry sold--"if you can call that selling," -Vyrko thought bitterly, comparing the financial position of the poet -here and in his own world. - -His failures were beginning to bring back the bitterness and boredom, -and his thoughts turned more and more to that future to which he could -never know the answer. - -_Twins._ It had to be twins--of opposite sexes, of course. The only -hope of the continuance of the race lay in a matter of odds and -genetics. - -Odds.... He began to think of the election bet, to figure other angles -with which he could turn foreknowledge to profit. But his pulp-reading -had filled his mind with fears of the paradoxes involved. He had -calculated the election bets carefully; they could not affect the -outcome of the election, they could not even, in their proportionately -small size, affect the odds. But any further step.... - -Vyrko was, like most conceited men, fond of self-contempt, which he -felt he could occasionally afford to indulge in. Possibly his strongest -access of self-contempt came when he realized the simplicity of the -solution to all his problems. - -He could write for the science fiction pulps. - -The one thing that he could handle convincingly and skilfully, with the -proper "tone," was the future. Possibly start off with a story on the -Religious Wars; he'd done all that research on his novel. Then.... - -It was not until he was about to mail the manuscript that the full -pattern of the truth struck him. - -Soberly, yet half-grinning, he crossed out KIRTH VYRKO on the first -page and wrote NORBERT HOLT. - - * * * * * - -Manning Stern rejoiced loudly in this fresh discovery. "This boy's -got it! He makes it sound so real that...." The business office was -instructed to pay the highest bonus rate (unheard of for a first story) -and an intensely cordial letter went to the author outlining immediate -needs and offering certain story suggestions. - -The editor of _Surprising_ was no little surprised at the answer: - - ... I regret to say that all my stories will be based on one - consistent scheme of future events and that you must allow me to - stick to my own choice of material.... - - * * * * * - -"And who the hell," Manning Stern demanded, "is editing this magazine?" -and dictated a somewhat peremptory suggestion for a personal interview. - -The features were small and sharp, and the face had a sort of dark -aliveness. It was a different beauty from Lavra's, and an infinitely -different beauty from the curious standards set by the 1949 films; but -it was beauty and it spoke to Norbert Holt. - -"You'll forgive a certain surprise, Miss Stern," he ventured. "I've -read _Surprising_ for so many years and never thought...." - -Manning Stern grinned. "That the editor was also surprising? I'm used -to it--your reaction, I mean. I don't think I'll ever be quite used to -being a woman ... or a human being, for that matter." - -"Isn't it rather unusual? From what I know of the field...." - -"Please God, when I find a man who can write, don't let him go all -male-chauvinist on me! I'm a good editor," said she with becoming -modesty (and don't you ever forget it!), "and I'm a good scientist. I -even worked on the Manhattan Project--until some character discovered -that my adopted daughter was a Spanish War orphan. But what we're here -to talk about is this consistent-scheme gimmick of yours. It's all -right, of course; it's been done before. But where I frankly think -you're crazy is in planning to do it _exclusively_." - -Norbert Holt opened his briefcase. "I've brought along an outline that -might help convince you...." - -An hour later Manning Stern glanced at her watch and announced, "End of -office hours! Care to continue this slugfest over a martini or five? I -warn you--the more I'm plied, the less pliant I get." - -And an hour after that she stated, "We might get some place if we'd -stay some place. I mean the subject seems to be getting elusive." - -"The hell," Norbert Holt announced recklessly, "with editorial -relations. Let's get back to the current state of the opera." - -"It was paintings. I was telling you about the show at the--" - -"No, I remember now. It was movies. You were trying to explain the Marx -Brothers. Unsuccessfully, I may add." - -"Un ... suc ... cess ... fully," said Manning Stern ruminatively. "Five -martinis and the man can say unsuccessfully successfully. But I try to -explain the Marx Brothers yet! Look, Holt. I've got a subversive orphan -at home and she's undoubtedly starving. I've _got_ to feed her. You -come home and meet her and have potluck, huh?" - -"Good. Fine. Always like to try a new dish." - -Manning Stern looked at him curiously. "Now was that a gag or not? -You're funny, Holt. You know a lot about everything and then all of a -sudden you go all Man-from-Mars on the simplest thing. Or do you...? -Anyway, let's go feed Raquel." - -And five hours later Holt was saying, "I never thought I'd have this -reason for being glad I sold a story. Manning, I haven't had so much -fun talking to--I almost said 'to a woman.' I haven't had so much fun -talking since--" - -He had almost said _since the agnoton came_. She seemed not to notice -his abrupt halt. She simply said "Bless you, Norb. Maybe you aren't a -male-chauvinist. Maybe even you're.... Look, go find a subway or a cab -or something. If you stay here another minute, I'm either going to kiss -you or admit you're right about your stories--and I don't know which is -worse editor-author relations." - - * * * * * - -Manning Stern committed the second breach of relations first. The fan -mail on Norbert Holt's debut left her no doubt that _Surprising_ would -profit by anything he chose to write about. - -She'd never seen such a phenomenally rapid rise in author popularity. -Or rather you could hardly say _rise_. Holt hit the top with his first -story and stayed there. He socked the fans (Guest of Honor at the -Washinvention), the pros (first President of Science Fiction Writers of -America), and the general reader (author of the first pulp-bred science -fiction book to stay three months on the best seller list). - -And never had there been an author who was more pure damned fun to work -with. Not that you edited him; you checked his copy for typos and sent -it to the printers. (Typos were frequent at first; he said something -odd about absurd illogical keyboard arrangement.) But just being with -him, talking about this, that and those.... Raquel, just turning -sixteen, was quite obviously in love with him--praying that he'd have -the decency to stay single till she grew up and "You know, Manningcita, -I _am_ Spanish; and the Mediterranean girls...." - -But there _was_ this occasional feeling of _oddness_. Like the potluck -and the illogical keyboard and that night at SCWA.... - -"I've got a story problem," Norbert Holt announced there. "An idea, and -I can't lick it. Maybe if I toss it out to the literary lions...." - -"Story problem?" Manning said, a little more sharply than she'd -intended. "I thought everything was outlined for the next ten years." - -"This is different. This is a sort of paradox story, and I can't get -out of it. It won't end. Something like this: Suppose a man in the -remote year X reads a story that tells him how to work a time machine. -So he works the time machine and goes back to the year X minus -2000--let's say, for instance, our time. So in 'now' he writes the -story that he's going to read two thousand years later, telling himself -how to work the time machine because he knows how to work it because he -read the story which he wrote because--" - -Manning was starting to say "Hold it!" when Matt Duncan interrupted -with, "Good old endless-cycle gimmick. Lot of fun to kick around, but -Bob Heinlein did it once and for all in _By His Bootstraps_. Damnedest -tour de force I ever read; there just aren't any switcheroos left." - -"Ouroboros," Joe Henderson contributed. - -Norbert Holt looked a vain question at him; they knew that one word per -evening was Joe's maximum contribution. - -Austin Carter picked it up. "Ouroboros, the worm, that circles -the universe with its tail in its mouth. The Asgard Serpent, too. -And I think there's something in Mayan literature. All symbols of -infinity--no beginning, no ending. Always out by the same door where -you went in. See that magnificent novel of Eddison's, _The Worm -Ouroboros_; the perfect cyclic novel, ending with its recommencement, -stopping not because there's a stopping place, but because it's -uneconomical to print the whole text over infinitely." - -"The Quaker Oats box," said Duncan. "With a Quaker holding a box with a -Quaker holding a box with a Quaker holding a...." - -It was standard professional shop-talk. It was a fine evening with the -boys. But there was a look of infinitely remote sadness in Norbert -Holt's eyes. - -That was the evening that Manning violated her first rule of -editor-author relationships. - - * * * * * - -They were having martinis in the same bar in which Norbert had, so many -years ago, successfully said _unsuccessfully_. - -"They've been good years," he remarked, apparently to the olive. - -There was something wrong with this evening. No bounce. No yumph. -"That's a funny tense," Manning confided to her own olive. "Aren't they -still good years?" - -"I've owed you a serious talk for a long time." - -"You don't have to pay the debt. We don't go in much for being serious, -do we? Not so dead-earnest-catch-in-the-throat serious." - -"Don't we?" - -"I've got an awful feeling," Manning admitted, "that you're building up -to a proposal, either to me or that olive. And if it's me, I've got an -awful feeling I'm going to accept--and Raquel will _never_ forgive me." - -"You're safe," Norbert said dryly. "That's the serious talk. I want to -marry you, darling, and I'm not going to." - -"I suppose this is the time you twirl your black mustache and tell me -you have a wife and family elsewhere?" - -"I hope to God I have!" - -"No, it wasn't very funny, was it?" Manning felt very little, aside -from wishing she were dead. - -"I can't tell you the truth," he went on. "You wouldn't believe it. -I've loved two women before; one had talent and a brain, the other -had beauty and no brain. I think I loved her. The damnedest curse of -Ouroboros is that I'll never quite know. If I could take that tail out -of that mouth...." - -"Go on," she encouraged a little wildly. "Talk plot-gimmicks. It's -easier on me." - -"And she is carrying ... will carry ... my child--my children, it must -be. My twins...." - -"Look, Holt. We came in here editor and author--remember back when? -Let's go out that way. Don't go on talking. I'm a big girl, but I -can't take ... everything. It's been fun knowing you and all future -manuscripts will be gratefully received." - -"I knew I couldn't say it. I shouldn't have tried. But there won't be -any future manuscripts. I've written every Holt I've ever read." - -"Does that make sense?" Manning aimed the remark at the olive, but it -was gone. So was the martini. - -"Here's the last." He took it out of his breast-pocket, neatly folded. -"The one we talked about at SCWA--the one I couldn't end. Maybe you'll -understand. I wanted somehow to make it clear before...." - -The tone of his voice projected a sense of doom, and Manning forgot -everything else. "Is something going to happen to you? Are you going -to--Oh, my dear, _no_! All right, so you, have a wife on every space -station in the asteroid belt; but if anything happens to you...." - -"I don't know," said Norbert Holt. "I can't remember the exact date of -that issue...." He rose abruptly. "I shouldn't have tried a goodbye. -See you again, darling--the next time round Ouroboros." - -She was still staring at the empty martini glass when she heard the -shrill of brakes and the excited up-springing of a crowd outside. - - * * * * * - -She read the posthumous fragment late that night, after her eyes had -dried sufficiently to make the operation practicable. And through her -sorrow her mind fought to help her, making her think, making her be an -editor. - -She understood a little and disbelieved what she understood. And -underneath she prodded herself, "But it isn't a _story_. It's too -short, too inconclusive. It'll just disappoint the Holt fans--and -that's everybody. Much better if I do a straight obit, take up a full -page on it...." - -She fought hard to keep on thinking, not feeling. She had never before -experienced so strongly the I-have-been-here-before sensation. She -had been faced with this dilemma once before, once on some other -time-spiral, as the boys in SCWA would say. And her decision had -been.... - -"It's sentimentality," she protested. "It isn't _editing_. This -decision's right. I know it. And if I go and get another of these -attacks and start to change my mind...." - -She laid the posthumous Holt fragment on the coals. It caught fire -quickly. - - * * * * * - -The next morning Raquel greeted her with, "Manningcita, who's Norbert -Holt?" - -Manning had slept so restfully that she was even tolerant of foolish -questions at breakfast. "Who?" she asked. - -"Norbert Holt. Somehow the name popped into my mind. Is he perhaps one -of your writers?" - -"Never heard of him." - -Raquel frowned. "I was almost sure.... Can you really remember them -all? I'm going to check those bound volumes of _Surprising_." - -"Any luck with your ... what was it...? Holt?" Manning asked the girl a -little later. - -"No, Manningcita. I was quite unsuccessful." - -... _unsuccessful_.... Now why in Heaven's name, mused Manning Stern, -should I be thinking of martinis at breakfast time? - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Transfer Point, by Anthony Boucher - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRANSFER POINT *** - -***** This file should be named 51115-8.txt or 51115-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/1/1/51115/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/51115-8.zip b/old/51115-8.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 38ad1da..0000000 --- a/old/51115-8.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/51115-h.zip b/old/51115-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index fecec46..0000000 --- a/old/51115-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/51115-h/51115-h.htm b/old/51115-h/51115-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index f0982f9..0000000 --- a/old/51115-h/51115-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1571 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Transfer Point, by Anthony Boucher. - </title> - - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1, .ph2, .ph3, .ph4 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } -.ph1 { font-size: xx-large; margin: .67em auto; } -.ph2 { font-size: x-large; margin: .75em auto; } -.ph3 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } -.ph4 { font-size: medium; margin: 1.12em auto; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Transfer Point, by Anthony Boucher - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Transfer Point - -Author: Anthony Boucher - -Release Date: February 2, 2016 [EBook #51115] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRANSFER POINT *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="352" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>TRANSFER POINT</h1> - -<p>BY ANTHONY BOUCHER</p> - -<p>Illustrated by Paul Piérre</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Galaxy Science Fiction November 1950.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph3">It was a nasty plot Vyrko was involved in.<br /> -The worst part was that he constructed it<br /> -himself—and didn't get the end right!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>There were three of them in the retreat, three out of all mankind safe -from the deadly yellow bands.</p> - -<p>The great Kirth-Labbery himself had constructed the retreat and its -extraordinary air-conditioning—not because his scientific genius had -foreseen the coming of the poisonous element, agnoton, and the end of -the human race, but because he itched.</p> - -<p>And here Vyrko sat, methodically recording the destruction of mankind, -once in a straight factual record, for the instruction of future -readers ("if any," he added wryly to himself), and again as a canto -in that epic poem of Man which he never expected to complete, but for -which he lived.</p> - -<p>Lavra's long golden hair fell over his shoulders. It was odd that its -scent distracted him when he was at work on the factual record, yet -seemed to wing the lines of the epic.</p> - -<p>"But why bother?" she asked. Her speech might have been clearer if her -tongue had not been more preoccupied with the savor of the apple than -with the articulation of words. But Vyrko understood readily: the -remark was as familiar an opening as P-K4 in chess.</p> - -<p>"It's my duty," Vyrko explained patiently. "I haven't your father's -scientific knowledge and perception. Your father's? I haven't the -knowledge of his humblest lab assistant. But I can put words together -so that they make sense and sometimes more than sense, and I have to do -this."</p> - -<p>From Lavra's plump red lips an apple pip fell into the works of the -electronic typewriter. Vyrko fished it out automatically; this too was -part of the gambit, with the possible variants of grape seed, orange -peel....</p> - -<p>"But why," Lavra demanded petulantly, "won't Father let us leave here? -A girl might as well be in a ... a...."</p> - -<p>"<i>Convent?</i>" Vyrko suggested. He was a good amateur paleolinguist. -"There is an analogy—even despite my presence. <i>Convents</i> were -supposed to shelter girls from the Perils of The World. Now the whole -world is one great Peril ... outside of this retreat."</p> - -<p>"Go on," Lavra urged. She had long ago learned, Vyrko suspected, that -he was a faintly over-serious young man with no small talk, and that -she could enjoy his full attention only by asking to have something -explained, even if for the <i>n</i>th time.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He smiled and thought of the girls he used to talk <i>with</i>, not <i>at</i>, -and of how little breath they had for talking now in the world where no -one drew an unobstructed breath.</p> - -<p>It had begun with the accidental discovery in a routine laboratory -analysis of a new element in the air, an inert gas which the great -paleolinguist Larkish had named <i>agnoton</i>, the Unknown Thing, after -the pattern of the similar nicknames given to others: <i>neon</i>, the New -Thing; <i>xenon</i>, the Strange Thing.</p> - -<p>It had continued (the explanation ran off so automatically that -his mind was free to range from the next line of the epic to the -interesting question of whether the presence of ear lobes would damage -the symmetry of Lavra's perfect face) it had continued with the itching -and sneezing, the coughing and wheezing, with the increase of the -percentage of agnoton in the atmosphere, promptly passing any other -inert gas, even argon, and soon rivaling oxygen itself.</p> - -<p>And it had culminated (no, the lines were cleaner without lobes), on -that day when only the three of them were here in this retreat, with -the discovery that the human race was allergic to agnoton.</p> - -<p>Allergies had been conquered for a decade of generations. Their cure, -even their palliation, had been forgotten. And mankind coughed and -sneezed and itched ... and died. For while the allergies of the ancient -past produced only agonies to make the patient long for death, agnoton -brought on racking and incessant spasms of coughing and sneezing which -no heart could long withstand.</p> - -<p>"So if you leave this shelter, my dear," Vyrko concluded, "you too -will fight for every breath and twist your body in torment until -your heart decides that it is all just too much trouble. Here we are -safe, because your father's eczema was the only known case of allergy -in centuries—and was traced to the inert gases. Here is the only -air-conditioning in the world that excludes the inert gases—and with -them agnoton. And here—"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Lavra leaned forward, a smile and a red fleck of apple skin on her -lips, the apples of her breasts touching Vyrko's shoulders. This too -was part of the gambit.</p> - -<p>Usually it was merely declined. Tyrsa stood between them. Tyrsa, who -sang well and talked better; whose plain face and beautiful throat were -alike racked by agnoton.... This time the gambit was interrupted.</p> - -<p>Kirth-Labbery himself had come in unnoticed. His old voice was -thin with weariness, sharp with impatience. "And here we are, safe -in perpetuity, with our air-conditioning, our energy plant, our -hydroponics! Safe in perpetual siege, besieged by an inert gas!"</p> - -<p>Vyrko grinned. "Undignified, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>Kirth-Labbery managed to laugh at himself. "Damn your secretarial hide, -Vyrko. I love you like a son, but if I had one man who knew a meson -from a metazoon to help me in the laboratory...."</p> - -<p>"You'll find something, Father," Lavra said vaguely.</p> - -<p>Her father regarded her with an odd seriousness. "Lavra," he said, -"your beauty is the greatest thing that I have wrought—with a certain -assistance, I'll grant, from the genes so obviously carried by your -mother. That beauty alone still has meaning. The sight of you would -bring a momentary happiness even to a man choking in his last spasms, -while our great web of civilization...."</p> - -<p>He absently left the sentence unfinished and switched on the video -screen. He had to try a dozen channels before he found one that was -still casting. When every erg of a man's energy goes to drawing his -next breath, he cannot tend his machine.</p> - -<p>At last Kirth-Labbery picked up a Nyork newscast. The announcer was -sneezing badly ("The older literature," Vyrko observed, "found sneezing -comic...."), but still contriving to speak, and somewhere a group of -technicians must have had partial control of themselves.</p> - -<p>"Four hundred and seventy-two planes have crashed," the announcer -said, "in the past forty-eight hours. Civil authorities have forbidden -further plane travel indefinitely because of the danger of spasms at -the controls, and it is rumored that all vehicular transport whatsoever -is to come under the same ban. No Rocklipper has arrived from Lunn for -over a week, and it is thirty-six hours since we have made contact with -the Lunn telestation. Yurp has been silent for over two days, and Asia -a week.</p> - -<p>"'The most serious threat of this epidemic,' the head of the Academy -has said in an authorized statement, 'is the complete disruption of the -systems of communication upon which world civilization is based. When -man becomes physically incapable of governing his machines....'"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was then that they saw the first of the yellow bands.</p> - -<p>It was just that: a band of bright yellow some thirty centimeters -wide, about five meters long, and so thin as to seem insubstantial, -a mere stripe of color. It came underneath the backdrop behind the -announcer. It streaked about the casting room with questing sinuosity. -No features, no appendages relieved its yellow blankness.</p> - -<p>Then with a deft whipping motion it wrapped itself around the -announcer. It held him only an instant. His hideously shriveled body -plunged toward the camera as the screen went dead.</p> - -<p>That was the start of the horror.</p> - -<p>Vyrko, naturally, had no idea of the origin of the yellow bands. Even -Kirth-Labbery could offer no more than conjectures. From another -planet, another system, another galaxy, another universe....</p> - -<p>It did not matter. Precise knowledge had now lost its importance. -Kirth-Labbery was almost as indifferent to the problem as was Lavra; he -speculated on it out of sheer habit. What signified was that the yellow -bands were alien, and that they were rapidly and precisely completing -the destruction of mankind begun by the agnoton.</p> - -<p>"Their arrival immediately after the epidemic," Kirth-Labbery -concluded, "cannot be coincidence. You will observe that they function -freely in an agnoton-laden atmosphere."</p> - -<p>"It would be interesting," Vyrko commented, "to visualize a band -sneezing...."</p> - -<p>"It's possible," the scientist corrected, "that the agnoton was a -poison-gas barrage laid down to soften Earth for their coming; but is -it likely that they could <i>know</i> that a gas harmless to them would -be lethal to other life? It's more probable that they learned from -spectroscopic analysis that the atmosphere of Earth lacked an element -essential to them, which they supplied before invading."</p> - -<p>Vyrko considered the problem while Lavra sliced a peach with delicate -grace. She was unable to resist licking the juice from her fingers.</p> - -<p>"Then if the agnoton," he ventured, "is something that they imported, -is it possible that their supply might run short?"</p> - -<p>Kirth-Labbery fiddled with the dials under the screen. It was still -possible to pick up occasional glimpses from remote sectors, though by -now the heart sickened in advance at the knowledge of the inevitable -end of the cast.</p> - -<p>"It is possible, Vyrko. It is the only hope. The three of us here, -where the agnoton and the yellow bands are alike helpless to enter, -may continue our self-sufficient existence long enough to outlast the -invaders. Perhaps somewhere on Earth there are other such nuclei, but I -doubt it. We are the whole of the future ... and I am old."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Vyrko frowned. He resented the terrible weight of a burden that he did -not want but could not reject. He felt himself at once, oppressed and -ennobled. Lavra went on eating her peach.</p> - -<p>The video screen sprang into light. A young man with the tense, lined -face of premature age spoke hastily, urgently. "To all of you, if there -are any of you.... I have heard no answer for two days now.... It is -chance that I am here. But <i>watch</i>, all of you! I have found how the -yellow bands came here. I am going to turn the camera on it now ... -<i>watch</i>!"</p> - -<p>The field of vision panned to something that was for a moment -totally incomprehensible. "This is their ship," the old young man -gasped. It was a set of bars of a metal almost exactly the color of -the bands themselves, and it appeared in the first instant like a -three-dimensional projection of a tesseract. Then as they looked at it, -their eyes seemed to follow strange new angles. Possibilities of vision -opened up beyond their capacities. For a moment they seemed to see what -the human eye was not framed to grasp.</p> - -<p>"They come," the voice panted on, "from...."</p> - -<p>The voice and the screen went dead. Vyrko covered his eyes with his -hands. Darkness was infinite relief. A minute passed before he felt -that he could endure once more even the normal exercise of the optic -nerve. He opened his eyes sharply at a little scream from Lavra.</p> - -<p>He opened them to see how still Kirth-Labbery sat. The human heart, -too, is framed to endure only so much; and, as the scientist had said, -he was old.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was three days after Kirth-Labbery's death before Vyrko had brought -his prose-and-verse record up to date. Nothing more had appeared on -the video, even after the most patient hours of knob-twirling. Now -Vyrko leaned back from the keyboard and contemplated his completed -record—and then sat forward with abrupt shock at the thought of that -word <i>completed</i>.</p> - -<p>There was nothing more to write.</p> - -<p>The situation was not novel in literature. He had read many treatments, -and even written a rather successful satire on the theme himself. But -here was the truth itself.</p> - -<p>He was that most imagination-stirring of all figures, The Last Man on -Earth. And he found it a boring situation.</p> - -<p>Kirth-Labbery, had he lived, would have devoted his energies in the -laboratory to an effort, even conceivably a successful one, to destroy -the invaders. Vyrko knew his own limitations too well to attempt that.</p> - -<p>Vrist, his gay wild twin, who had been in Lunn on yet another of his -fantastic ventures when the agnoton struck—Vrist would have dreamed -up some gallant feat of physical prowess to make the invaders pay -dearly for his life. Vyrko found it difficult to cast himself in so -swash-buckling a role.</p> - -<p>He had never envied Vrist till now. <i>Be jealous of the dead; only the -living are alone.</i> Vyrko smiled as he recalled the line from one of his -early poems. It had been only the expression of a pose when he wrote -it, a mood for a song that Tyrsa would sing well....</p> - -<p>It was in this mood that he found (the ancient word had no modern -counterpart) the <i>pulps</i>.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He knew their history: how some eccentric of two thousand years ago -(the name was variously rendered as Trees or Tiller) had buried them -in a hermetic capsule to check against the future; how Tarabal had -dug them up some fifty years ago; how Kirth-Labbery had spent almost -the entire Hartl Prize for them because, as he used to assert, their -incredible mixture of exact prophecy and arrant nonsense offered the -perfect proof of the greatness and helplessness of human ingenuity.</p> - -<p>But Vyrko had never read them before. They would at least be a novelty -to deaden the boredom of his classically dramatic situation. He passed -a more than pleasant hour with <i>Galaxy</i> and <i>Surprising</i> and the rest, -needing the dictionary but rarely. He was particularly impressed by one -story detailing, with the most precise minutiae, the politics of the -American Religious Wars—a subject on which he himself had based a not -unsuccessful novel. By one Norbert Holt, he observed. Extraordinary -how exact a forecast ... and yet extraordinary too how many of the -stories dealt with space- and time-travel, which the race had never yet -attained and now never would....</p> - -<p>And inevitably there was a story, a neat and witty one by an author -named Knight, about the Last Man on Earth. He read it and smiled, first -at the story and then at his own stupidity.</p> - -<p>He found Lavra in the laboratory, of all unexpected places.</p> - -<p>She was staring fixedly at one corner, where the light did not strike -clearly.</p> - -<p>"What's so fascinating?" Vyrko asked.</p> - -<p>Lavra turned suddenly. Her hair and her flesh rippled with the perfect -grace of the movement. "I was thinking...."</p> - -<p>Vyrko's half-formed intent toward her permitted no comment on that -improbable statement.</p> - -<p>"The day before Father ... died, I was in here with him and I asked if -there was any hope of our escaping ever. Only this time he answered me. -He said yes, there was a way out, but he was afraid of it. It was an -idea he'd worked on but never tried. And we'd be wiser not to try it, -he said."</p> - -<p>"I don't believe in arguing with your father—even post mortem."</p> - -<p>"But I can't help wondering.... And when he said it, he looked over at -that corner."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Vyrko went to that corner and drew back a curtain. There was a chair of -metal rods, and a crude control panel, though it was hard to see what -it was intended to control. He dropped the curtain.</p> - -<p>For a moment he stood watching Lavra. She was a fool, but she was -exceedingly lovely. And the child of Kirth-Labbery could hardly carry -only a fool's genes.</p> - -<p>Several generations could grow up in this retreat before the inevitable -failure of the most permanent mechanical installations made it -uninhabitable. By that time Earth would be free of agnoton and yellow -bands, or they would be so firmly established that there was no hope. -The third generation would go forth into the world, to perish or....</p> - -<p>He walked over to Lavra and laid a gentle hand on her golden hair.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Vyrko never understood whether Lavra had been bored before that time. A -life of undemanding inaction with plenty of food may well have sufficed -her. Certainly she was not bored now.</p> - -<p>At first she was merely passive; Vyrko had always suspected that she -had meant the gambit to be declined. Then as her interest mounted and -Vyrko began to compliment himself on his ability as an instructor, they -became certain of their success; and from that point on she was rapt -with the fascination of the changes in herself.</p> - -<p>But even this new development did not totally rid Vyrko of his own -ennui. If there were only something he could <i>do</i>, some positive, -Vristian, Kirth-Labberian step that he could take! He damned himself -for having been an incompetent aesthetic fool, who had taken so for -granted the scientific wonders of his age that he had never learned -what made them tick, or how greater wonders might be attained.</p> - -<p>He slept too much, he ate too much, for a brief period he drank too -much—until he found boredom even less attractive with a hangover.</p> - -<p>He tried to write, but the terrible uncertainty of any future audience -disheartened him.</p> - -<p>Sometimes a week would pass without his consciously thinking of -agnoton or the yellow bands. Then he would spend a day flogging himself -into a state of nervous tension worthy of his uniquely dramatic -situation, but he would always relapse. There just wasn't anything to -do.</p> - -<p>Now even the consolation of Lavra's beauty was vanishing, and she began -demanding odd items of food which the hydroponic garden could not -supply.</p> - -<p>"If you loved me, you'd find a way to make cheese ..." or "... grow a -new kind of peach ... a little like a grape, only different...."</p> - -<p>It was while he was listening to a film wire of Tyrsa's (the last she -ever made, in the curious tonalities of that newly rediscovered Mozart -opera) and seeing her homely face, made even less lovely by the effort -of those effortless-sounding notes, that he became conscious of the -operative phrase.</p> - -<p>"If you loved me...."</p> - -<p>"Have I ever said I did?" he snapped.</p> - -<p>He saw a new and not readily understood expression mar the beauty of -Lavra's face. "No," she said in sudden surprise. "No," and her voice -fell to flatness, "you haven't...."</p> - -<p>And as her sobs—the first he had ever heard from her—traveled away -toward the hydroponic room, he felt a new and not readily understood -emotion. He switched off the film wire midway through the pyrotechnic -rage of the eighteenth-century queen of darkness.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Vyrko found a curious refuge in the <i>pulps</i>. There was a perverse -satisfaction in reading the thrilling exploits of other Last Men on -Earth. He could feel through them the emotions that he should be -feeling directly. And the other stories were fun, too, in varying ways. -For instance, that astonishingly accurate account of the delicate -maneuvering which averted what threatened to be the first and final -Atomic War....</p> - -<p>He noticed one oddity: Every absolutely correct story of the "future" -bore the same by-line. Occasionally other writers made good guesses, -predicted logical trends, foresaw inevitable extrapolations. But only -Norbert Holt named names and dated dates with perfect historical -accuracy.</p> - -<p>It wasn't possible. It was too precise to be plausible. It was far more -spectacular than the erratic Nostradamus often discussed in the <i>pulps</i>.</p> - -<p>But there it was. He had read the Holt stories solidly through in order -a half-dozen times, without finding a single flaw, when he discovered -the copy of <i>Surprising Stories</i> that had slipped behind a shelf and -was therefore new to him.</p> - -<p>He looked at once at the contents page. Yes, there was a Holt and—he -felt a twinge of irrational but poignant sadness—one labeled as -posthumous.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>This story, we regret to tell you, is incomplete, and not only -because of Norbert Holt's tragic death last month. This is the last -in chronological order of Holt's stories of a consistently plotted -future; but this fragment was written before his masterpiece, The -<i>Siege of Lunn</i>. Holt himself used to tell me that he could never -finish it, that he could not find an ending; and he died still not -knowing how <i>The Last Boredom</i> came out. But here, even though in -fragment form, is the last published work of the greatest writer about -the future, Norbert Holt.</p></blockquote> - -<p>The note was signed with the initials M. S. Vyrko had long sensed a -more than professional intimacy between Holt and his editor, Manning -Stern; this obituary introduction must have been a bitter task. But his -eyes were hurrying on, almost fearfully, to the first words of <i>The -Lost Boredom</i>:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>There were three of them in the retreat, three out of all mankind safe -from the deadly yellow bands. The great Kirth-Labbery himself had -constructed....</p></blockquote> - -<p>Vyrko blinked and started again. It still read the same. He took firm -hold of the magazine, as though the miracle might slip between his -fingers, and dashed off with more energy than he had felt in months.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He found Lavra in the hydroponic room. "I have just found," he shouted, -"the damnedest unbelievable—"</p> - -<p>"Darling," said Lavra, "I want some meat."</p> - -<p>"Don't be silly. We haven't any meat. Nobody's eaten meat except at -ritual dinners for generations."</p> - -<p>"Then I want a ritual dinner."</p> - -<p>"You can go on wanting. But look at this! Just read those first lines!"</p> - -<p>"Vyrko," she pleaded, "I <i>want</i> it."</p> - -<p>"Don't be an idiot!"</p> - -<p>Her lips pouted and her eyes moistened. "Vyrko dear.... What you said -when you were listening to that funny music.... Don't you love me?"</p> - -<p>"No," he barked.</p> - -<p>Her eyes overflowed. "You don't love me? Not after...?"</p> - -<p>All Vyrko's pent-up boredom and irritation erupted. "You're beautiful, -Lavra, or you were a few months ago, but you're an idiot. I am not in -the habit of loving idiots."</p> - -<p>"But you...."</p> - -<p>"I tried to assure the perpetuation of the race—questionable though -the desirability of such a project seems at the moment. It was not an -unpleasant task, but I'm damned if it gives you the right in perpetuity -to pester me."</p> - -<p>She moaned a little as he slammed out of the room. He felt oddly -better. Adrenalin is a fine thing for the system. He settled into a -chair and resolutely read, his eyes bugging like a cover-monster's with -amazed disbelief. When he reached the verbatim account of the quarrel -he had just enjoyed, he dropped the magazine.</p> - -<p>It sounded so petty in print. Such stupid inane bickering in the face -of.... He left the magazine lying there and went back to the hydroponic -room.</p> - -<p>Lavra was crying—noiselessly this time, which somehow made it worse. -One hand had automatically plucked a ripe grape, but she was not eating -it. He went up behind her and slipped his hand under her long hair and -began stroking the nape of her neck. The soundless sobs diminished -gradually. When his fingers moved tenderly behind her ears, she turned -to him with parted lips. The grape fell from her hand.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry," he heard himself saying. "It's me that's the idiot. Which, -I repeat, I am not in the habit of loving. And you're the mother of my -twins and I do love you...." And he realized that the statement was -quite possibly, if absurdly, true.</p> - -<p>"I don't want anything now," Lavra said when words were again in order. -She stretched contentedly, and she was still beautiful even in the -ungainly distortion which might preserve a race. "Now what were you -trying to tell me?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He explained. "And this Holt is always right," he ended. "And now he's -writing about us!"</p> - -<p>"Oh! Oh, then we'll know—"</p> - -<p>"We'll know everything. We'll know what the yellow bands are and what -becomes of them and what happens to mankind and—"</p> - -<p>"—and we'll know," said Lavra, "whether it's a boy or a girl."</p> - -<p>Vyrko smiled. "Twins, I told you. It runs in my family—no less than -one pair to a generation. And I think that's it—Holt's already planted -the fact of my having a twin named Vrist, even though he doesn't come -into the action."</p> - -<p>"Twins.... That <i>would</i> be nice. They wouldn't be lonely until we -could.... But get it quick, dear. Read it to me; I can't wait!"</p> - -<p>So he read Norbert Holt's story to her—too excited and too oddly -affectionate to point out that her long-standing aversion for print -persisted even when she herself was a character. He read on past the -quarrel. He read a printable version of the past hour. He read about -himself reading the story to her.</p> - -<p>"Now!" she cried. "We're up to <i>now</i>. What happens next?"</p> - -<p>Vyrko read:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The emotional release of anger and love had set Vyrko almost at peace -with himself again; but a small restlessness still nibbled at his -brain.</p> - -<p>Irrelevantly he remembered Kirth-Labbery's cryptic hint of escape. -Escape for the two of them, happy now; for the two of them and for -their ... it had to be, according to the odds, their twins.</p> - -<p>He sauntered curiously into the laboratory, Lavra following him. He -drew back the curtain and stared at the chair of metal rods. It was -hard to see the control board that seemed to control nothing. He sat -in the chair for a better look.</p> - -<p>He made puzzled grunting noises. Lavra, her curiosity finally stirred -by something inedible, reached over his shoulder and poked at the -green button.</p></blockquote> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"I don't like that last thing he says about me," Lavra objected. "I -don't like anything he says about me. I think your Mr. Holt is a very -nasty person."</p> - -<p>"He says you're beautiful."</p> - -<p>"And he says you love me. Or does he? It's all mixed up."</p> - -<p>"It is all mixed up ... and I do love you."</p> - -<p>The kiss was a short one; Lavra had to say, "And what next?"</p> - -<p>"That's all. It ends there."</p> - -<p>"Well.... Aren't you...?"</p> - -<p>Vyrko felt strange. Holt had described his feelings so precisely. He -was at peace and still curious, and the thought of Kirth-Labbery's -escape method did nibble restlessly at his brain.</p> - -<p>He rose and sauntered into the laboratory, Lavra following him. He drew -back the curtain and stared at the chair of metal rods. It was hard to -see the control board that seemed to control nothing. He sat in the -chair for a better look.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" width="399" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>He made puzzled grunting noises. Lavra, her curiosity finally stirred -by something inedible, reached over his shoulder and poked at the green -button.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Vyrko had no time for amazement when Lavra and the laboratory vanished. -He saw the archaic vehicle bearing down directly upon him and tried to -get out of the way as rapidly as possible. But the chair hampered him -and before he could get to his feet the vehicle struck. There was a red -explosion of pain and then a long blackness.</p> - -<p>He later recalled a moment of consciousness at the hospital and a -shrill female voice repeating over and over, "But he wasn't there and -then all of a sudden he was and I hit him. It was like he came out of -nowhere. He wasn't there and all of a sudden...." Then the blackness -came back.</p> - -<p>All the time of his unconsciousness, all through the semi-conscious -nightmares while doctors probed at him and his fever soared, his -unconscious mind must have been working on the problem. He knew the -complete answer the instant that he saw the paper on his breakfast -tray, that first day he was capable of truly seeing anything.</p> - -<p>The paper was easy to read for a paleolinguist with special training -in <i>pulps</i>—easier than the curious concept of breakfast was to -assimilate. What mattered was the date. 1948—and the headlines -refreshed his knowledge of the Cold War and the impending election. -(There was something he should remember about that election....)</p> - -<p>He saw it clearly. Kirth-Labbery's genius had at last evolved a time -machine. That was the one escape, the escape which the scientist had -not yet tested and rather distrusted. And Lavra had poked the green -button because Norbert Holt had said she had poked (would poke?) the -green button.</p> - -<p>How many buttons could a wood poke poke if a wood poke would poke....</p> - -<p>"The breakfast didn't seem to agree with him, doctor."</p> - -<p>"Maybe it was the paper. Makes me run a temperature every morning, too!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, doctor, you do say the funniest things!"</p> - -<p>"Nothing funnier than this case. Total amnesia, as best we can judge by -his lucid moments. And his clothes don't help us—must've been on his -way to a fancy-dress party. Or maybe I should say fancy-<i>un</i>dress!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, <i>doctor</i>!"</p> - -<p>"Don't tell me nurses can blush. Never did when I was an intern—and -you can't say they didn't get a chance! But this character here ... not -a blessed bit of identification on him! Riding some kind of newfangled -bike that got smashed up.... Better hold off on the solid food for a -bit—stick to intravenous feeding."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He'd had this trouble before at ritual dinners, Vyrko finally recalled. -Meat was apt to affect him badly—the trouble was that he had not at -first recognized those odd strips of oily solid which accompanied the -egg as meat.</p> - -<p>The adjustment was gradual and successful, in this as in other -matters. At the end of two weeks, he was eating meat easily (and, he -confessed, with a faintly obscene non-ritual pleasure) and equally -easily chatting with nurses and fellow patients about the events (which -he still privately tended to regard as mummified museum pieces) of 1948.</p> - -<p>His adjustment, in fact, was soon so successful that it could not -continue. The doctor made that clear.</p> - -<p>"Got to think about the future, you know. Can't keep you here forever. -Nasty unreasonable prejudice against keeping well men in hospitals."</p> - -<p>Vyrko allowed the expected laugh to come forth. "But since," he said, -gladly accepting the explanation that was so much more credible than -the truth, "I haven't any idea who I am, where I live, or what my -profession is—"</p> - -<p>"Can't remember anything? Don't know if you can take shorthand, for -instance? Or play the bull fiddle?"</p> - -<p>"Not a thing." Vyrko felt it hardly worth while to point out his -one manual accomplishment, the operation of the as-yet-uninvented -electronic typewriter.</p> - -<p>"Behold," he thought, "the Man of the Future. I've read all the time -travel stories. I know what should happen. I teach them everything -Kirth-Labbery knew and I'm the greatest man in the world. Only the -fictional time travel never happens to a poor dope who took for granted -all the science around him, who pushed a button or turned a knob and -never gave a damn what happened or why. Here they're just beginning -to get two-dimensional black-and-white short-range television. We had -(will have?) stereoscopic full-color world-wide video—which I'm about -as capable of constructing here as my friend the doctor would be of -installing electric light in Ancient Rome. The Mouse of the Future...."</p> - -<p>The doctor had been thinking, too. He said, "Notice you're a great -reader. Librarian's been telling me about you—went through the whole -damn hospital library like a bookworm with a tapeworm!"</p> - -<p>Vyrko laughed dutifully. "I like to read," he admitted.</p> - -<p>"Ever try writing?" the doctor asked abruptly, almost in the tone in -which he might reluctantly advise a girl that her logical future lay in -Port Saïd.</p> - -<p>This time Vyrko really laughed. "That does seem to ring a bell, you -know.... It might be worth trying. But at that, what do I live on until -I get started?"</p> - -<p>"Hospital trustees here administer a rehabilitation fund. Might wangle -a loan. Won't be much, of course; but I always say a single man's got -only one mouth to feed—and if he feeds more, he won't be single long!"</p> - -<p>"A little," said Vyrko with a glance at the newspaper headlines, "might -go a long way."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It did. There was the loan itself, which gave him a bank account on -which, in turn, he could acquire other short-term loans—at exorbitant -interest. And there was the election.</p> - -<p>He had finally reconstructed what he should know about it. There had -been a brilliant Wheel-of-If story in one of the much later pulps, -on <i>If</i> the Republicans had won the 1948 election. Which meant that -actually they had lost; and here, in October of 1948, all newspapers, -all commentators, and most important, all gamblers, were convinced that -they must infallibly win.</p> - -<p>On Wednesday, November third, Vyrko repaid his debts and settled -down to his writing career, comfortably guaranteed against immediate -starvation.</p> - -<p>A half-dozen attempts at standard fiction failed wretchedly. A matter -of "tone," editors remarked vaguely, on the rare occasions when they -did not confine themselves to the even vaguer phrases of printed -rejection forms. A little poetry sold—"if you can call that selling," -Vyrko thought bitterly, comparing the financial position of the poet -here and in his own world.</p> - -<p>His failures were beginning to bring back the bitterness and boredom, -and his thoughts turned more and more to that future to which he could -never know the answer.</p> - -<p><i>Twins.</i> It had to be twins—of opposite sexes, of course. The only -hope of the continuance of the race lay in a matter of odds and -genetics.</p> - -<p>Odds.... He began to think of the election bet, to figure other angles -with which he could turn foreknowledge to profit. But his pulp-reading -had filled his mind with fears of the paradoxes involved. He had -calculated the election bets carefully; they could not affect the -outcome of the election, they could not even, in their proportionately -small size, affect the odds. But any further step....</p> - -<p>Vyrko was, like most conceited men, fond of self-contempt, which he -felt he could occasionally afford to indulge in. Possibly his strongest -access of self-contempt came when he realized the simplicity of the -solution to all his problems.</p> - -<p>He could write for the science fiction pulps.</p> - -<p>The one thing that he could handle convincingly and skilfully, with the -proper "tone," was the future. Possibly start off with a story on the -Religious Wars; he'd done all that research on his novel. Then....</p> - -<p>It was not until he was about to mail the manuscript that the full -pattern of the truth struck him.</p> - -<p>Soberly, yet half-grinning, he crossed out KIRTH VYRKO on the first -page and wrote NORBERT HOLT.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Manning Stern rejoiced loudly in this fresh discovery. "This boy's -got it! He makes it sound so real that...." The business office was -instructed to pay the highest bonus rate (unheard of for a first story) -and an intensely cordial letter went to the author outlining immediate -needs and offering certain story suggestions.</p> - -<p>The editor of <i>Surprising</i> was no little surprised at the answer:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>... I regret to say that all my stories will be based on one -consistent scheme of future events and that you must allow me to stick -to my own choice of material....</p></blockquote> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"And who the hell," Manning Stern demanded, "is editing this magazine?" -and dictated a somewhat peremptory suggestion for a personal interview.</p> - -<p>The features were small and sharp, and the face had a sort of dark -aliveness. It was a different beauty from Lavra's, and an infinitely -different beauty from the curious standards set by the 1949 films; but -it was beauty and it spoke to Norbert Holt.</p> - -<p>"You'll forgive a certain surprise, Miss Stern," he ventured. "I've -read <i>Surprising</i> for so many years and never thought...."</p> - -<p>Manning Stern grinned. "That the editor was also surprising? I'm used -to it—your reaction, I mean. I don't think I'll ever be quite used to -being a woman ... or a human being, for that matter."</p> - -<p>"Isn't it rather unusual? From what I know of the field...."</p> - -<p>"Please God, when I find a man who can write, don't let him go all -male-chauvinist on me! I'm a good editor," said she with becoming -modesty (and don't you ever forget it!), "and I'm a good scientist. I -even worked on the Manhattan Project—until some character discovered -that my adopted daughter was a Spanish War orphan. But what we're here -to talk about is this consistent-scheme gimmick of yours. It's all -right, of course; it's been done before. But where I frankly think -you're crazy is in planning to do it <i>exclusively</i>."</p> - -<p>Norbert Holt opened his briefcase. "I've brought along an outline that -might help convince you...."</p> - -<p>An hour later Manning Stern glanced at her watch and announced, "End of -office hours! Care to continue this slugfest over a martini or five? I -warn you—the more I'm plied, the less pliant I get."</p> - -<p>And an hour after that she stated, "We might get some place if we'd -stay some place. I mean the subject seems to be getting elusive."</p> - -<p>"The hell," Norbert Holt announced recklessly, "with editorial -relations. Let's get back to the current state of the opera."</p> - -<p>"It was paintings. I was telling you about the show at the—"</p> - -<p>"No, I remember now. It was movies. You were trying to explain the Marx -Brothers. Unsuccessfully, I may add."</p> - -<p>"Un ... suc ... cess ... fully," said Manning Stern ruminatively. "Five -martinis and the man can say unsuccessfully successfully. But I try to -explain the Marx Brothers yet! Look, Holt. I've got a subversive orphan -at home and she's undoubtedly starving. I've <i>got</i> to feed her. You -come home and meet her and have potluck, huh?"</p> - -<p>"Good. Fine. Always like to try a new dish."</p> - -<p>Manning Stern looked at him curiously. "Now was that a gag or not? -You're funny, Holt. You know a lot about everything and then all of a -sudden you go all Man-from-Mars on the simplest thing. Or do you...? -Anyway, let's go feed Raquel."</p> - -<p>And five hours later Holt was saying, "I never thought I'd have this -reason for being glad I sold a story. Manning, I haven't had so much -fun talking to—I almost said 'to a woman.' I haven't had so much fun -talking since—"</p> - -<p>He had almost said <i>since the agnoton came</i>. She seemed not to notice -his abrupt halt. She simply said "Bless you, Norb. Maybe you aren't a -male-chauvinist. Maybe even you're.... Look, go find a subway or a cab -or something. If you stay here another minute, I'm either going to kiss -you or admit you're right about your stories—and I don't know which is -worse editor-author relations."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Manning Stern committed the second breach of relations first. The fan -mail on Norbert Holt's debut left her no doubt that <i>Surprising</i> would -profit by anything he chose to write about.</p> - -<p>She'd never seen such a phenomenally rapid rise in author popularity. -Or rather you could hardly say <i>rise</i>. Holt hit the top with his first -story and stayed there. He socked the fans (Guest of Honor at the -Washinvention), the pros (first President of Science Fiction Writers of -America), and the general reader (author of the first pulp-bred science -fiction book to stay three months on the best seller list).</p> - -<p>And never had there been an author who was more pure damned fun to work -with. Not that you edited him; you checked his copy for typos and sent -it to the printers. (Typos were frequent at first; he said something -odd about absurd illogical keyboard arrangement.) But just being with -him, talking about this, that and those.... Raquel, just turning -sixteen, was quite obviously in love with him—praying that he'd have -the decency to stay single till she grew up and "You know, Manningcita, -I <i>am</i> Spanish; and the Mediterranean girls...."</p> - -<p>But there <i>was</i> this occasional feeling of <i>oddness</i>. Like the potluck -and the illogical keyboard and that night at SCWA....</p> - -<p>"I've got a story problem," Norbert Holt announced there. "An idea, and -I can't lick it. Maybe if I toss it out to the literary lions...."</p> - -<p>"Story problem?" Manning said, a little more sharply than she'd -intended. "I thought everything was outlined for the next ten years."</p> - -<p>"This is different. This is a sort of paradox story, and I can't get -out of it. It won't end. Something like this: Suppose a man in the -remote year X reads a story that tells him how to work a time machine. -So he works the time machine and goes back to the year X minus -2000—let's say, for instance, our time. So in 'now' he writes the -story that he's going to read two thousand years later, telling himself -how to work the time machine because he knows how to work it because he -read the story which he wrote because—"</p> - -<p>Manning was starting to say "Hold it!" when Matt Duncan interrupted -with, "Good old endless-cycle gimmick. Lot of fun to kick around, but -Bob Heinlein did it once and for all in <i>By His Bootstraps</i>. Damnedest -tour de force I ever read; there just aren't any switcheroos left."</p> - -<p>"Ouroboros," Joe Henderson contributed.</p> - -<p>Norbert Holt looked a vain question at him; they knew that one word per -evening was Joe's maximum contribution.</p> - -<p>Austin Carter picked it up. "Ouroboros, the worm, that circles -the universe with its tail in its mouth. The Asgard Serpent, too. -And I think there's something in Mayan literature. All symbols of -infinity—no beginning, no ending. Always out by the same door where -you went in. See that magnificent novel of Eddison's, <i>The Worm -Ouroboros</i>; the perfect cyclic novel, ending with its recommencement, -stopping not because there's a stopping place, but because it's -uneconomical to print the whole text over infinitely."</p> - -<p>"The Quaker Oats box," said Duncan. "With a Quaker holding a box with a -Quaker holding a box with a Quaker holding a...."</p> - -<p>It was standard professional shop-talk. It was a fine evening with the -boys. But there was a look of infinitely remote sadness in Norbert -Holt's eyes.</p> - -<p>That was the evening that Manning violated her first rule of -editor-author relationships.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They were having martinis in the same bar in which Norbert had, so many -years ago, successfully said <i>unsuccessfully</i>.</p> - -<p>"They've been good years," he remarked, apparently to the olive.</p> - -<p>There was something wrong with this evening. No bounce. No yumph. -"That's a funny tense," Manning confided to her own olive. "Aren't they -still good years?"</p> - -<p>"I've owed you a serious talk for a long time."</p> - -<p>"You don't have to pay the debt. We don't go in much for being serious, -do we? Not so dead-earnest-catch-in-the-throat serious."</p> - -<p>"Don't we?"</p> - -<p>"I've got an awful feeling," Manning admitted, "that you're building up -to a proposal, either to me or that olive. And if it's me, I've got an -awful feeling I'm going to accept—and Raquel will <i>never</i> forgive me."</p> - -<p>"You're safe," Norbert said dryly. "That's the serious talk. I want to -marry you, darling, and I'm not going to."</p> - -<p>"I suppose this is the time you twirl your black mustache and tell me -you have a wife and family elsewhere?"</p> - -<p>"I hope to God I have!"</p> - -<p>"No, it wasn't very funny, was it?" Manning felt very little, aside -from wishing she were dead.</p> - -<p>"I can't tell you the truth," he went on. "You wouldn't believe it. -I've loved two women before; one had talent and a brain, the other -had beauty and no brain. I think I loved her. The damnedest curse of -Ouroboros is that I'll never quite know. If I could take that tail out -of that mouth...."</p> - -<p>"Go on," she encouraged a little wildly. "Talk plot-gimmicks. It's -easier on me."</p> - -<p>"And she is carrying ... will carry ... my child—my children, it must -be. My twins...."</p> - -<p>"Look, Holt. We came in here editor and author—remember back when? -Let's go out that way. Don't go on talking. I'm a big girl, but I -can't take ... everything. It's been fun knowing you and all future -manuscripts will be gratefully received."</p> - -<p>"I knew I couldn't say it. I shouldn't have tried. But there won't be -any future manuscripts. I've written every Holt I've ever read."</p> - -<p>"Does that make sense?" Manning aimed the remark at the olive, but it -was gone. So was the martini.</p> - -<p>"Here's the last." He took it out of his breast-pocket, neatly folded. -"The one we talked about at SCWA—the one I couldn't end. Maybe you'll -understand. I wanted somehow to make it clear before...."</p> - -<p>The tone of his voice projected a sense of doom, and Manning forgot -everything else. "Is something going to happen to you? Are you going -to—Oh, my dear, <i>no</i>! All right, so you, have a wife on every space -station in the asteroid belt; but if anything happens to you...."</p> - -<p>"I don't know," said Norbert Holt. "I can't remember the exact date of -that issue...." He rose abruptly. "I shouldn't have tried a goodbye. -See you again, darling—the next time round Ouroboros."</p> - -<p>She was still staring at the empty martini glass when she heard the -shrill of brakes and the excited up-springing of a crowd outside.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She read the posthumous fragment late that night, after her eyes had -dried sufficiently to make the operation practicable. And through her -sorrow her mind fought to help her, making her think, making her be an -editor.</p> - -<p>She understood a little and disbelieved what she understood. And -underneath she prodded herself, "But it isn't a <i>story</i>. It's too -short, too inconclusive. It'll just disappoint the Holt fans—and -that's everybody. Much better if I do a straight obit, take up a full -page on it...."</p> - -<p>She fought hard to keep on thinking, not feeling. She had never before -experienced so strongly the I-have-been-here-before sensation. She -had been faced with this dilemma once before, once on some other -time-spiral, as the boys in SCWA would say. And her decision had -been....</p> - -<p>"It's sentimentality," she protested. "It isn't <i>editing</i>. This -decision's right. I know it. And if I go and get another of these -attacks and start to change my mind...."</p> - -<p>She laid the posthumous Holt fragment on the coals. It caught fire -quickly.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The next morning Raquel greeted her with, "Manningcita, who's Norbert -Holt?"</p> - -<p>Manning had slept so restfully that she was even tolerant of foolish -questions at breakfast. "Who?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Norbert Holt. Somehow the name popped into my mind. Is he perhaps one -of your writers?"</p> - -<p>"Never heard of him."</p> - -<p>Raquel frowned. "I was almost sure.... Can you really remember them -all? I'm going to check those bound volumes of <i>Surprising</i>."</p> - -<p>"Any luck with your ... what was it...? Holt?" Manning asked the girl a -little later.</p> - -<p>"No, Manningcita. I was quite unsuccessful."</p> - -<p>... <i>unsuccessful</i>.... Now why in Heaven's name, mused Manning Stern, -should I be thinking of martinis at breakfast time?</p> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Transfer Point, by Anthony Boucher - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRANSFER POINT *** - -***** This file should be named 51115-h.htm or 51115-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/1/1/51115/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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