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    Robert F. Young Super Pack
    Robert F. Young Super Pack
    Robert F. Young Super Pack
    Ebook863 pages14 hours

    Robert F. Young Super Pack

    By Robert F. Young

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    About this ebook

    Here is the Robert F. Young collection you’ve been waiting for: over 200,000 words and more than 600 pages long, making it the largest collection of Young’s work ever released. Robert F. Young was a Hugo-nominated author known for his lyrical and sentimental prose. His work appeared in Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories, Startling Stories, Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Galaxy magazine, and Analog Science Fact & Fiction. Included in this collection are:



    • Audience Reaction




    • To See Ourselves




    • The Grown-Up People’s Feet




    • Collector’s Item




    • Pilgrims’ Project




    • The Courts of Jamishyd




    • Structural Defect




    • The Leaf




    • Operation Peanut Butter




    • The Magic Window




    • Acre in the Sky




    • Mr. and Mrs. Saturday Night




    • Passage to Gomorrah




    • Star Mother




    • The Last Hero




    • The Wistful Witch




    • The Stars Are Calling, Mr. Keats




    • 40-26-38




    • Doll-Friend




    • Robot Son




    • Bruggil’s Bride




    • Impressionist




    • The Forest of Unreason




    • The Girls From Fieu Dayol




    • Deluge II




    • The Star Fisherman




    • A Drink of Darkness




    • The Blonde from Barsoom




    • Boy Meets Dyevitza




    • The Servant Problem




    • Neither Stairs Nor Door




    • Jupiter Found




    • The Girl in His Mind




    • The Deep Space Scrolls




    • A Knyght Ther Was




    • Redemption




    • Boarding Party




    • The House That Time Forgot




    • Let there be Night




    • Sweet Tooth


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateJun 25, 2020
    ISBN9781515446385
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      Robert F. Young Super Pack - Robert F. Young

      Audience Reaction

      In Science Fiction, of the many things an author can do is to take an established trend and carry it on to extremities. Such stories are rarely good prophecy, since they cannot foresee other developments of the future which are most likely to modify the trend with which they are dealing. But such stories make good reading nonetheless, and can be delightfully unpleasant as in the present instance.

      While the first mass-produced telempathy sets represented a tremendous jump in the evolution of mass-media, they were handicapped by a number of serious technical flaws. It is one of the paradoxes of our civilization that those very flaws led to a form of art Which remains unparalleled, even to this day. The first sets, for example, while they were able to focus the fictitious background and general narrative trend of the sensual, proved inadequate in the more exacting field of characterization, The participator had to fill in the characters himself, give them names, and supply them with sufficient detail to bring them to life.

      (Virgith’s All The World’s A Stage)

      The Mesmerizer whirled faster and faster. It became a wild kaleidoscope, a vertiginous swirl of interblended colors. There was the usual transitory blankness that preceded identication, then—

      He was an escaped prisoner. He was somewhere in the deserted section of the City of the Red Sands, Mar3s. His name was—His name was—

      Richard Forrester!

      He relived a brief flashback: he had been born on Earth. Not long after the death of his mother, his father had been convicted of illegal experimentation and sentenced to the Martian penal colony for life. His father had fled to the moon, taking the boy with him, and found sanctuary with the Interworld Scientist League in their Leibnitz mountain fortress.

      When he was twenty, he was captured in the same encounter with the Interplanetary Police that cost his father’s life, and sentenced to ten years in the Martian penal colony. He served three of those years without hope in the grim labor-camps of the Red Sands sector. At the end of the third year, the underground agents of the League finally located him. Then he had undergone six months of surreptitious pre-escape conditioning, and had waited six more for the exacting details of his escape to be arranged.

      The desert was still vivid in his memory. The desert at night, with the searchbeams of the alerted guard-cruisers stalking whitely all around him, the ventral guns waiting impatiently above him, eager to speak their short staccato sentences. He had run wildly through the night to the deserted outskirts of the city, and he had pounded through the silent labyrinth of streets to the intersection where his contact was supposed to meet him. And the intersection had been empty—as utterly empty as he had become, standing all alone in the yellow light of the corner streetlight.

      He cowered now in the shadows of the corner building, out of range of the light, clinging stubbornly to the hope that his contact might still show up. His bitterness surfeited him. Four years, he thought. Four years with nothing but a promise to keep me alive. And now they’ve broken the promise!

      The facades of the ugly tenements loomed on either side of the street. The hollow windows were blurs of blackness in the pale darkness of the night. Through the broken banks of the rooftops he could see a ragged river of sky and stars.

      He shuddered, wondered how long he had to live.

      He was safe enough for the moment. The guard-cruisers could not leave the desert; Interplanetary Law not only forbade their loosing their guns into an alien city; it also forbade their even approaching an alien city beyond a designated perimeter. The alarm, of course, had gone out to the Interplanetary Police, and very shortly he was going to have the ferrets to deal with. But in the labyrinthine streets and alleys of the tenement-section, he could elude them for a long time; with luck he could elude them altogether.

      Richard Forrester began to feel better. He stood up straighter in the shadows. He felt the hard, sinewy strength of his young body. He remembered his marvelous condition—the result of four years of hard labor in the desert prison-camps. He felt so good that he almost shouted with joy when he saw the prow of the levitator-car nose into the yellow circle of the street light. They had kept their promise after all! Then, beyond the prow, he saw the scarlet crested helmet of the Interplanetary Police, and the malevolent glitter of the ferret’s eyes beneath it.

      He shrank back; flattening his body against the warped siding of the building. It was unbelievable. The ferret couldn’t be there; there simply had not been time enough for any police-force, no matter how efficient, to scour an entire section of a city and unerringly track down one single individual.

      Then he saw the ferret raise his arm and study a small, luminescent object attached to his wrist. That was when Richard Forrester remembered—

      Remembered his I. E. P.

      He leaned limply against the building, felt the sudden coldness of his perspiring body. He smelled the Martian desert smell, dry and faintly flavored with oasis spices, coming in on the light cool wind. He thought: I should have let the guard cruisers get me. It would have been easier, dying out there on the desertThis is a hell of a hole to have to die in. This is a hell of a way to have to die.

      The system of recording and indexing the individual emotional-patterns of criminals resembled, fundamentally, the obsolete system of fingerprinting, and was nearly infallible for the same reason fingerprinting had once been infallible: no two individuals possessed the same pattern. But the scope of I. E. P. detection went far beyond simple identification; far beyond merely establishing a person’s guilt by means of certain idiosyncrasies in his emotional behavior.

      For an individual not only possessed a singular emotional pattern: he transmitted it also. Unconsciously, of course and, in the case of fugitives, unwillingly. But as long as he lived he transmitted it without respite, whether he slept, worked, loved, or played. That much had been common knowledge for a long time before the detector was devised. It had been impracticable knowledge, but with the advent of the detector it instantly became the most effective weapon any police had ever possessed.

      With the I. E. P. of the quarry a known factor the ancient game of Cops and Robbers became the regenerated game of Hide the Thimble. The quarry was the thimble and the ferrets, their detectors attuned to the quarry’s I. E. P., were the searchers. A simple graduation of numerals on the detector-dial informed them whether they were hot or cold. Since the device functioned effectively up to a maximum radius of two kilometers, once the I. E. P. of the quarry was picked up within that limit his chances for survival were negligible. There was one way, and only one way, for him to escape: he had to alter his I. E. P.

      And there was only one way to alter an I. E. P.

      Richard Forrester’s pre-escape conditioning had paved the way for that. His contact was to have consummated it. His contact! he thought bitterly. His idealized blue-eyed contact! His long-limbed, lovely, deus ex machina of a contact who couldn’t fulfill the single function she had been specifically conditioned for! Then he was astounded. For instead of the hatred and resentment his thoughts should have provoked he felt only tenderness, and a strong proclivity toward forgiveness once an excuse any excuse would do were offered for her lateness.

      He was even imbued with a new will to live, to find his contact. The two were synonymous. He began to think more clearly. First he had to find his contact; more accurately, he had to remain alive till his contact found him. He knew that the League would never deliberately desert him; that if his contact had failed to meet him as planned there must have been an excellent reason why.

      The ferret had finished studying his detector. Shadows softened the lean brutality of his oddly-familiar face but Richard Forrester feel those cold, implacable eyes. Presently the levitaor-car began to inch forward out of light and into the shadows.

      Forrester edged his body careful1y along the tenement-front. When he came to the rachitic porch he rolled over upon it, and crawled to the door. His extended fingers touched the rotten wood of the sill, then the warped panels. He pushed tentatively, praying that it was not locked, that the rusty hinges would not squeak. The door swung inward soundlessly and he crawled over the threshold. He straightened and swung the door shut just as the ferret, anticipating the garish finale of the hunt, switched on his dual search-beams and drenched the street with glaring light.

      He waited, leaning against the door, till his eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness. Directly before him he made out the darker blur of a spiral stairway. Cautiously he began to ascend it. He paused at each landing, listening. Quiet cloyed the corridors and the empty tiers of rooms. Presently he discerned the pale darkness of the sky showing through a square aperture in the roof and he hastened his steps.

      He had reached the top landing before he saw the silhouette. Simultaneously he head the relieved sigh: It’s really you! Without pausing he leaped up the intervening steps, grasped the figure in the aperture and dragged a surprisingly yielding body down beside him. Then, when he felt the softness of a woman, he dropped his arms in consternation.

      I’m here to help you! she said. He was still too dumbfounded to speak.

      Darling, don’t you understand? I’m your contact!

      Her hand found his in the darkness. She led the way and he followed willingly, up the stairs to the roof. Her levitator-car was a tapered blur in the starlight. They hurried toward it. When they reached it she stopped and faced him.

      Her bobbed hair was the exact shade of blonde he had known it would be and her face was just as he had visualized it. He could not see the color of her eyes but he knew they must be blue.

      His contact! There was a tightness in his chest, a slow throbbing in his temples.

      Her voice was husky. Darling, she said, did you forget? You’re supposed to kiss me.

      Another flaw which seriously handicapped the fist TE: sets was their inability to attain cross-sexual identification. Fundamental physical conformity is prerequisite in rudimentary empath-existence. When the lead-character of a sensual is male, the male participator alone can integrate himself; the female participator is unaffected. She is unable, even temporarily, to abnegate her own sex and become a member of the opposite. Consequently, even in the early sensuals, we find the intriguing formula which (while it was originally devised to circumvent the flaw) proved so popular that it has been retained to this day: two provocative lead-characters, each of equal importance to the story, one of them male, the other female.. and the double narrative progressing along parallel lines, the lines merging whenever possible and parting only when necessary, always coming ultimately together to achieve the standard empatha- ending.

      (Virgith’s All The World’s A Stage p. 23-4)

      The memorizer whirled faster and faster. It became a wild kaleidoscope, a vertiginous swirl of interblended colors. There was the usual transitory blankness that preceded identification, then—

      She was an agent of the Interworld Scientist League. She was in the downtown section of the City of the Red Sands, Mars. Her name was Her name was—

      Rhonda Forrester!

      She relived a brief flashback: after her mother’s death, she had spent a lonely childhood in her father’s crumbling mansion near the ruins of Chicago. She remembered her father as a vague little man who spent nearly all of his time in the laboratory. She remembered the day the Interplanetary Police had come. She saw her father shuffling down the stairs to meet them. She saw him stop, bewildered, and then she saw him become a brief flaming pyre before the light-lances of the ferrets.

      She could not recall how long she had remained in the house, silently screaming; there was a gray blank in her memory. Following the blank was the warm remembrance of the luxurious underground-fortress of the League and of the kind people who had rehabilitated her. Then there was the memory of the absorbing years spent at espionage school.

      A year ago she had begun training for her first assignment, and nine months later she had arrived in the City of the Red Sands on her first mission. She had lost track of the long slow days awaiting her alert and then, when her alert finally had come through, it had been late and her mission, precarious at best, now verged on the impossible.

      She cursed the heavy downtown traffic. Her foresight in selecting the fifth level permitted her to move along at a semblance of speed, but she could not attain even half the velocity she needed to reach her rendezvous on time.

      She glared at the clouds of levitator-cars surrounding her. Some were so close they nearly touched the sleek sides of her Sky Dream special.

      Of all the times to get my alert! she thought. Just when every sniveling little Martian in the city is poking home from work! She knew, of course, that the escape had been planned with the home bound traffic as an integral factor, but the knowledge only infuriated her further. If the traffic had been part or the plan, then double care should have been taken to alert her on time.

      Gradually, the cars began thinning out around her and see breathed more freely. She risked rising to the sixth level and swiftly devoured three blocks before the crimson headlights of a fire-launch forced her back to the fifth. Grudgingly, she readjusted her speed.

      Below her, the neon arteries of the city straggled out into thinner and thinner capillaries. The clouds of cars dwindled to an occasional suburban commuter. Tentatively she exceeded the fifth level limit, then doubled it. The Sky Dream soared through the deepening night. The cool wind eddied around her, bringing the exotic scent of Martian desert-oasis to her nostrils. Her anger subsided before the sheer enchantment of the adventure. The industrial district rushed up, then flowed swiftly past beneath her; and presently, far ahead, she could discern the ramshackle jungle of the tenement-section. Finally she cut her lights and drifted over the jumbled rooftops.

      She retained altitude only long enough to orient herself, then descended slowly to street level. The Sky Dream came to rest on rough pavement in the dark interval between two wan street lights. There was the brief grating sound of contact, and then silence. Complete, terrifying silence. Rhonda Forrester shuddered. She had visited the section a dozen times, familiarizing herself with its every street and alley, but she had always come during the day. It had never occurred to her that night could make such a demoralizing difference.

      She noted her position on her eidetic map and calculated how far she had to go to reach the contact point. Then she looked at the luminous dial of her I. E. P. detector. The indicator registered 79.6. She took a deep breath. The distance checked; therefore the fugitive must be at the contact point now. But, more important, the mere fact that the indicator registered at all proved beyond doubt that he was still alive.

      He was probably waiting for her, she thought excitedly. Impatiently waiting. Angrily waiting. She could feel the accelerated pounding of her heart, her mind seeing him tall and strong, and dark from the desert sun; his gray eyes alert for the slightest movement in the shadows; crouching like a splendid beast at bay, ready to spring like a Martian desert-cat upon the first unwary ferret to come his way. And then, returning to reality, she remembered that all ferrets carried light-lances and loved to use them, and that if anything even remotely resembling a Martian desert-cat were to spring out of the darkness at them, they would coldly and efficiently incandesce it.

      She lifted the Sky Dream a short distance above street-level, accelerating as much as she dared. She followed her eidetic map, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine streets. At intervals she cast anxious glances at her detector, willing it not to drop irrevocably to zero. When she reached the street she wanted the indicator registered 88.1.

      She knew then that he must be very close, for the dial was only calibrated up to 100. 100 was maximum intensity—attainable only through actual contact.

      Far down the street she could see the lonely street-light illuminating the intersection. But there was no sign of movement around it; no sign of life. Her heart slowed. He had to be there!

      She started moving toward the light. Her indicator climbed steadily. 90, 91. She was almost to the intersection, when she saw the other car moving at right angles to her own. At first her eyes rejected the sight. It was too cruel to be true. Then, when she saw the hateful scarlet crest of the ferret, she braked desperately, and swerved into the shadows of the corner building.

      For awhile she could not function at all. She could only sit there numbly, staring at the oddly familiar figure of the ferret. As she watched, the ferret finished studying his detector, raised his eyes and coldly regarded the street before him.

      She had failed her mission. The words arranged themselves condemningly in her mind. They flashed on and off, like a vindictive neon sign. She had let the ferrets get between her and the fugitive. She, the key figure, the only person in the system who embodied just the right physical properties to scramble the fugitive’s I. E. P.; the only person who could save his life. She felt sick. For a moment she felt like giving up, like waiting there in the street till the exultant sirens of the ferrets announced that the hunt was over; till the tiny indicator of her detector dial dropped to zero.

      But only for a moment. Then her training reasserted itself. She drew her light-lance, but before she could focus it the ferret had set his craft in motion. In an instant the shadows had engulfed him; in another he had disappeared beyond the corner building.

      Rhonda Forrester swore. Then she touched the controls and the Sky Dream began to rise slowly. She was impatient, but she realized that a gradual movement in the darkness would be less noticeable than an abrupt one, and she did not doubt for a moment that there were other ferrets in the vicinity. Her best chance, she knew, lay in gaining the roof. From there she might be able to hold the ferrets off till the fugitive got clear. And if he did not get clear, she would at least be in an excellent position to avenge him.

      Halfway up she checked her detector. The indicator still registered 91. She was puzzled. The count should have receded, since the distance between them had to increase with each millimeter she gained in altitude. It didn’t figure at all.

      When she was level with the roof she checked the detector again. The indicator had not moved. She drifted over the coping and brought the Sky Dream down on the roof. She sat in the control seat, breathing hard, watching the indicator desperately. She willed it to recede, willed it to behave normally. The indicator perversely climbed to 91.1. Then, raising her eyes and examining the roof, she made out the dark blur of the aperture, and a realization of what might be happening flooded her, leaving her nearly exhausted with relief, and aflame with sudden, delirious anticipation.

      She left the car and crept over to the aperture. She looked down into the throat of the stairwell. The darkness was impenetrable. But there was a reassuring sound of nearing footsteps. Her breath came faster. Her fingers clutched the frame of the aperture, sinking into the soft rotten wood.

      Presently she saw the vague outline of him, and then she made out the familiar contours of his broad shoulders, the familiar line of his neck and head. That was when he looked up and saw her.

      It’s really you! she sighed.

      She saw him leap up the intervening stairs and she felt his hands grasp her waist. She permitted herself to be dragged through the aperture, into the darkness of the stairwell. Then she heard his indrawn breath and felt his hands fall away from her.

      I’m here to help you! she saidDarling, don’t you understand? I’m your contact!

      She found his hand in the darkness and led the way up the stairs to the roof. The Sky Dream was a tapered blur in the starlight. They hurried towards it. When they reached it she stopped and faced him.

      His hair was dark and curly just as she had known it would be and his face was just as she had visualized it. She could not see the color of his eyes but she knew they must be gray.

      There was a tightness in her chest, a slow throbbing in her temples.

      Her voice was husky. Darling, she said, did you forget? You’re supposed to kiss me.

      Empatha-existenoe encompasses all the senses: auditory, visio, olfactory, tactile, and kinesthetic. In a modern sensual, this involvement is not injurious, for modern sensuals are made with the Three Ideals (Relaxation, Enjoyment and Sex) continually in mind. Unfortunately, there was no ideology behind the lint sensuals. While they did accentuate sex, they were made primarily fo thrill their audience—to imbue them with a sense of romantic adventure.

      In this connection, an interesting parallel can be drawn between early TV and early TE. The former repeated the blood-and-thunder western-sagas of the 2-D’s, while the latter repeated the blood-and-thunder space-sagas of the 3-D’s.

      Obviously the first participators unable to endure a full hour of such involvement without some respite. It is not surprising, therefor, that the first sensuals were broken up into four ten minute sequences. Neither is it surprising that the interval between those sequences were utilized for commercial purposes. (Virgith’s All The World’s A Stage p. 36-7)

      We will return to ‘Hide· The Thimble’ in just a few moments, the caressing voice in their suddenly-empty minds said. In the meantime there will be a few important words from our sponsor

      Richard Forrester stood up. I can stand a drink, he said, Anybody Second the motion?

      I’ll say, Rhonda Forrester said.

      I’ll help you mix them, Anita Esmond said, getting up and following him into the kitchen.

      He got the liquor and glasses from the cupboard, and she got the seltzer and ice cubes from the refrigerator. He lined up the glasses on the white kitchen table and she plunked an ice cube into each of them. He caught her eyes as he was pouring the liquor. How about a special just for us? he asked.

      Okay, she said.

      He got two more glasses and poured them one third full. Straight?

      You’re the doctor.

      They raised their drinks, looking at each other. Here’s to us, Anita Esmond said.

      They clinked glasses.

      Hurry up! Rhonda Forrester called from the living room. The commercial’s almost over.

      They set their empty glasses down and carried the drinks into the darkened living room. They resumed their seats on the twelve foot divan before the TE set.

      Everyone drank hurriedly.

      And now back to ‘Hide The Thimble’, the announcer’s voice crooned

      Since the participator invariably identified himself with the main character of the sensual, the other characters became people he knew—people he liked or disliked, depending on whether they abetted or obstructed the solution of the problem. This reaction intensified the already-violent objections of the old-school psychologists. The participator, they warned, by identifying the characters with the incorrect real people (a husband, for example. identifying the heroine with his neighbor’s wife and vicariously realizing his latent desires) would become less and lese integrated in his real existence and eventually become incapable of accepting reality at all.

      (Virgith’s All The World’s A Stage; p. 51)

      Anita Esmond’s voice was husky. Darling, she said did you forget? You’re supposed to kiss me.

      Richard Forrester’s pre-escape conditioning had prepared him perfectly: his emotional pattern stood at maximum susceptibility. Everything dissolved around him except the star-lit figure of the woman whose image had been implanted in his mind a year ago; who had become for him the incarnation of both life and love. He took her into his arms. He felt the soft pliancy of her tall body and in a blinding climax he discovered the cool hotness of her lips.

      There was a violent shift in his emotional pattern as it readjusted itself to embrace a force it had never experienced before: the overwhelming force of Love.

      Then he heard the grating of the levitator-car upon the coping. He whirled, trying to shield the girl’s body with his own. The ferret was standing up in the control-seat and for the first time—as the identification completely resolved itself—Richard Forrester recognized the familiar hateful features. Then he flinched before the bright rapier of the light-charge. Its closeness seared his cheek. Behind him a tindery tenement leaped into sudden flaming brightness.

      Anita Esmond had her own light-lance focused by then. He saw the thin bright rapier reach out and touch the ferret. He saw the ferret become the shrieking flame-etched caricature of John Esmond, topple grotesquely from the control seat of the still rising car and fall flaming into the street below.

      He felt Anita Esmond’s hand tightly gripping his arm. He heard her words, Quick! My apartment. It’s the only place in the city where we’ll be safe! He followed her into the Sky Dream and they rose together into the cool, star-sequined night.

      Below them the flames began their crackling repast of tenements

      Rhonda Forrester’s voice was husky. Darling, she said, did you forget? You’re supposed to kiss me,

      Her conditioning had prepared her perfectly: she was ready to respond with the maximum intensity needed to consummate the first phase of her assignment. Everything dissolved around her except the starlit figure of John Esmond, whose image had been implanted in her mind a year ago; who had become for her the incarnation of both life and love, she found herself in his arms, scarcely able to breathe. Then, in a blinding climax, she discovered the crushing warmth of his lips.

      And she knew that his emotional pattern was violently shifting, readjusting itself to embrace a force it had never experienced before: the overwhelming force of Love

      Then she heard the grating of the levitator-car upon the coping. She whirled, her right hand dropping instinctively to her belt, her fingers curling around the hilt of her light-lance. The ferret was standing lip in the control seat and for the first time—as the identification completely resolved itself—Rhonda Forrester recognized the familiar hateful features, Then she flinched before the bright rapier of the light-charge. Its closeness seared her cheek. Behind her a tindery tenement leaped into sudden flaming brightness.

      She focused her own light-lance. She saw the thin bright rapier reach out and touch the ferret. She saw the ferret become the shrieking flame-etched caricature of Richard Forrester, topple grotesquely from the control seat of the still rising car and fall flaming into the street below.

      She gripped John Esmond’s arm. Quick! she said, My apartment. It’s the only place in the city where we’ll be safe! She stepped into the Sky Dream and he crowded in beside her. They rose together into the cool, star-sequined night.

      Below them the flames began their crackling repast of tenements

      The old school psychologist were mistaken about a number of things, and there absurd prognoses of the effect of the sensual upon the mass-audience is merely another example of their bungling attempts to understand humanity. Their perspective was hopelessly warped by the rigid reality of their day.

      The ancient conception of reality seems fantastic in retrospect. It is difficult to believe that reality could ever have been arbitrarily confined to the narrow field of objective perception. For there are realities, and realities; ad there are valid only in ratio to the intensity of the pleasure with which they are experienced. If the Simulated reality transcends the actual reality, then the simulated reality is more valid than the actual reality—and justifiably enjoys a higher calibration on our scale of values.

      The old reality was little more than a fixation, a stubborn precept forced upon mankind by successive generations pseudo-intelligentsia. It is a part of the jetsam of our culture. It is an obsolete word and has no more meaning to our civilization than Wife, Husband, Love, Honor, or Friend.

      (Virgith’s All The World’s A Stage; P. 51-2; Decadence Literature Files, Reintegration Center # 12, New America, Earth)

      To See Ourselves

      As Immanuel Kant put it: What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility is quite unknown to us.

      Transcript of John P. Willoughby’s report of the first Terran-Martian meeting:

      Mare Erythraeum Sector, Mars, Jan. 16, 1990—They are like us!

      That one amazing fact stands head and shoulders above all the others facts this expedition has amassed, Martians are not green; they are not multi-pedal; they are not Lilliputian-in short, they possess none of those outre characteristics accredited to them by the impulsive science fiction writers who thrived several decades ago.

      Martians are human!

      We landed on the fringe of one of the geometric agricultural tracts (once referred to as canals by those same writers!) that crisscross the habitable areas of Mars; the Martians arrived a short time later. I obtained permission from Captain Berg, first, to return to the ship and transmit this report. In a moment I shall rejoin the others, who already have boarded the Martian aircraft and are awaiting me.

      More later!

      *

      Transcript of Slissir Tsis’ report of the first Martian-Terran meeting:

      Most Hallowed Ososososo, Four, the 63rd rotation of 10,000th orbit, 21st cyc1e—I was delegated to accompany His Most Sacred Highness, Thisis-Ssis, first Administrator to our Most Hallowed City, and His Sacred Highness, Ptitus-Ris, Second Administrator to our Most Hallowed City, on their mission of contact with the inhabitants of the first third planet ship-entity. The information I have to report is incredible.

      They are like us!

      Such a statement is difficult to assimilate. We of Most Hallowed Ososososo have been overly influenced by the spate of speculative fiction that has invaded our literature during the past several orbits and have come to regard our third planet neighbors as being anything but human.

      But they are human.

      Second Administrator Ptitus-Ris landed the tifft some distance from the ship-entity and we extended to the ground. Then we watched while the humans from Three extended to the ground. At first we could not accept our retinal images, for despite our determination to be objective we had expected some teratological form of life with far too few limbs and eyes, and of a color ranging from white to black. One of the more sensational of our speculative fiction writers has predicated a race of bipeds on Three, and that, more than anything else, tended to pervert our better judgements.

      And all we saw were four tentacled, elongated humans!

      We extended rather slowly across the field which separated us from the ship-entity, fearing that a too pronounced rapidity of movement might frighten our visitors. They were not at all frightened, however, and when first Administrator Thisis·Ssis extended forward, tentatively projecting his sanctified tentacle, one of the Thirds, undoubtedly a First Administrator, extended himself forward, projecting his sanctified tentacle, and the two humans proceeded to entangle feelers in the cycle-old gesture of affiliation to Ososososo!

      I believe that what first Administrator Thisis·Ssis articulated is worth recording for future generations, and I am happy to be able to recall it verbatim:

      Welcome to Four, men of Three. Most Hallowed Ososososo, greatest of the City-Entities, awaits you.

      The Third articulated something in an odd fang, totally lacking in euphonious sibilance. He retracted his tentacle, then, stiffening his body in an attitude of striking humility, he raised the same tentacle to his hood, held it there briefly, then retracted it again.

      I could sense that First Administrator Thisis-Ssis was as astonished as I was. Not so much because of the Third’s uncanny familiarity with our religion, but because of his almost unbelievable devotion to a City-Entity he had never served—a devotion so profound that it would lead him to dedicate himself and his companions for consumption before any of them had reached the compulsory age-limit! First Administrator Thisis-Ssis recovered quickly, however, and authorized the dedication by a similar symbolical gesture.

      The dedication being thus consummated, nothing remained but for the two Administrators to fulfill it. So the four Threes were immediately transported to an available alimentary apartment and Most Hallowed Ososososo began the leisurely process of assimilating them.

      I hope that I am not being sacrilegious in wishing that our first visitors from space had been less fanatically observant of their religious obligations. We have long been curious about our neighbors on Three, and this would have been an excellent opportunity to study them.

      But perhaps more will come.

      The Grown-Up People's Feet

      There are things we remember because we can't forget them and there are things we remember because we don't want to forget them, and there are a few very special things that possess both qualifies.

      It was late in September of that last year, and Mary Ellen had driven in to town to pick me up from work. She pulled over to the corner of Main and Central where I was waiting and I got into the car. Laurie was standing on the front seat, her blue eyes enormous with the marvel of a new discovery.

      Dad, I can read! she shouted the moment she saw me. I can read now Dad!

      I pinched her button nose but she hardly noticed. She had a small red primary reader in her hands, opened to a brightly colored picture of a little girl in a swing with a little boy pushing her. Beneath the picture was a series of short paragraphs in large clear print.

      Listen to me, Dad! Listen: ‘Jane is a girl. John is a boy. I see Jane. I see John!'

      What do you think of our little Edna St. Vincent Millay? Mary Ellen said, watching the red light.

      I think she's just wonderful!

      The light turned green and we went up the big hill that led out of the little town on 30. It was late in September, as I said, but the hills and the fields along the highway were still brushed with the faded green of summer and the sky was hazily blue. Houses were a washed white and the violet shadows of elms and maples made unpremeditated patterns on close-cropped lawns. An empty tandem rumbled past us, touching the shoulder and whirring up a cloud of dust.

      ‘Oh, look at Jane. Oh, look at John.'

      You can read ‘Bed in Summer' to me now, Laurie, I said.

      She looked up from the book. I still can't forget the way her eyes were. They made you think of deep blue lakes with the sun sparkling in them for the first time.

      Sure, Dad, she said. I'll read it to you.

      Mary Ellen turned off 30 and started up our road. Don't you think Stevenson might be a little difficult for her, dear?

      Oh, no, Laurie said. You don't understand Mother. I can read now!

      You can help her over the rough spots, Mary L., I said...What's for supper, by the way?

      Roast beef. It's still in the oven. She turned into the drive and braked by the forsythia bush.

      Our house was on a rise and you could look down and see the highway with the cars hurrying back and forth like busy metallic beetles. Beyond the highway there was a fine view of the lake. On clear days you could see Canada. It was hazy that day though, and all you could see was the milky blueness of the lake interblending with the misted blueness of the sky. An intermittent wind kept rustling the big maples in the yard.

      I got the evening paper out of the roadside tube, went over to the verandah and sat on the swing. Laurie was already there, the primary reader opened on her knees. We drifted gently back and forth.

      ‘I see Jane,' Laurie read. ‘I see John.'

      The wind kept ruffling the paper, making the headlines crawl. They were concerned with the bomb, as usual. Beneath them was the same old dismal story of potential megaton and potential megadeaths. After awhile I let the paper slip from my hands and listened to Laurie and the wind, and the sounds Mary Ellen was making as she set the dining room table.

      I can still hear the pleasant clatter of dishes, and I can still hear the soft rushing sound of the wind; but most of all I can hear Laurie's sweet child's voice saying over and over: ‘Jane is a girl. John is a boy. I see Jane. I see John...

      A boy and a girl and a bomb, and presently Mary Ellen calling, Come to supper!

      What I remember most, though, was the last light of day, and the three of us sitting on the porch swing. Laurie sat in the middle, a Child's Garden of Verses on her lap, opened to Bed in Summer.

      ‘In—' she read.

      ‘In winter,' Mary Ellen prompted.

      ‘In winter I get up at night—'

      ‘And—'

      ‘And dr—'

      ‘And dress by yellow candlelight.'

      ‘In—'

      ‘In summer, quite the other way—'

      ‘I have to go to bed by day!'

      Why that's wonderful, darling. ‘I have—'

      ‘I have to go to bed and see the—'

      ‘birds still hopping—'

      ‘The birds still hopping on the tree—'

      ‘Or hear the—'

      ‘Or hear the grown-up people's feet—

      ‘Still going—'

      ‘Still going past me in the street—'

      *

      As I say, there are things we remember because we can't forget them and there are things we remember because we don't want to forget them, and there are a few very special things that possess both qualities.

      Laurie is a big girl now, but she does not know how to read. There would be little point in her knowing how since there is nothing to read. But once upon a time she could read a little bit, though of course she has forgotten how by now and perhaps it is just as well. There is no need for the printed word in the simple village we have built here in the hills, far from the radioactive shore of the lake; there is need for nothing here except strong backs that will not tire after long hours in the fields.

      The long winter nights are empty, of course, and at first thought it might seem that books would help to fill them; but the books would be old books and they would only fill the nights with the past, and the past is better the way it is, half-forgotten, a way of life we are not quite sure we experienced at all—except for those little things we keep remembering, sitting before the hearth, the wind howling in the bitter darkness outside, shrieking in the distances as it scatters the ashes of cremated cities over the barren land.

      Collector’s Item

      Very trivial things can go into the weaving of a nest. The human race, for instance—

      The Condensation of the histories of ten thousand races into a text concise enough to fit into a single volume had been a task of unprecedented proportions. There had been times when the Galactic Historian had doubted whether even his renowned abilities were up to the assignment that the Galactic Board of Education had so lightly tossed his way, times when he had thrown up his hands—all five of them—in despair. But at last the completed manuscript lay before him on his desk with nothing but the final reading remaining between it and publication.

      The Galactic Historian repeatedly wiped his brows as he turned the pages. It was a warm night, even for Mixxx Seven. Now and then, a tired breeze struggled down from the hills and limped across the lowlands to the Galactic University buildings. It crept into the Galactic Historian’s study via the open door and out again via the open windows, fingering the manuscript each time it passed but doing nothing whatsoever about the temperature.

      The manuscript was something more than a hammered-down history of galactic achievement. It was the ultimate document. The two and seventy thousand jarring texts that it summarized had been systematically destroyed, one by one, after the Galactic Historian had stripped them of their objective information. If an historical event was not included in the manuscript, it failed as an event. It ceased to have reality.

      The responsibility was the Galactic Historian’s alone and he did not take it lightly. But he had a lot on his minds and, of late, he hadn’t been sleeping well. He was overworked and over-tired and over-anxious. He hadn’t seen his wives for two Mixxx months and he was worried about them—all fifty of them.

      He never should have let them take the Hub cruise in the first place. But they’d been so enthusiastic and so eager that he simply hadn’t had the hearts to let them down. Now, despite his better judgments, he was beginning to wonder if they might not be on the make for another coordinator.

      Wives trouble, on top of all his chronological trouble, was too much. The Galactic Historian could hardly be blamed for wanting to see the last of the manuscript, for wanting to transmit it to his publishers, potential hiatuses and all, and take the next warp for the Hub.

      But he was an historian—the historian, in fact—and he persisted heroically in his task, rereading stale paragraphs and checking dreary dates, going over battles and conquests and invasions and interregnums. Despite his mood and despite the heat, the manuscript probably would have arrived at his publishers chronologically complete. So complete, in fact, that schoolteachers all over the galaxy would have gotten the textbook they had always wanted—a concise chronicle of everything that had ever happened since the explosion of the primeval atom, a history textbook that no other history textbook could contradict for the simple reason that there were no other history textbooks.

      As it was, they got the textbook, but it did not contain everything that had ever happened. Not quite.

      Two factors were responsible for the omission. The first was an oversight on the part of the Galactic Historian. With so much on his minds, he had forgotten to number the pages of the manuscript.

      The second factor was the breeze.

      The breeze was the ultimate archfiend and there can be no question as to its motivation. Nothing short of sheer malice could have caused it suddenly to remember its function after neglecting that function all evening.

      All evening it had been tiptoeing down the hillsides and across the lowlands as though it was afraid of disturbing a single blade of grass or a single drooping leaf. And then, at the crucial moment, it huffed and puffed itself up into a little hurricane, charged down upon the Galactic University buildings and whooshed through the Galactic Historian’s study like a band of interstellar dervishes.

      Unfortunately, the Galactic Historian had begun to wipe his brows at the very moment of the breeze’s entry. While the act was not a complicated one, it did consume time and monopolize attention. It is not surprising, therefore, that he failed to witness the theft. Neither is it surprising that he failed to notice afterwards that the page he had been checking was gone.

      He was, as previously stated, overworked, over-tired, and over-anxious and, in such a state, even a Galactic Historian can skip a whole series of words and dates and never know the difference. A hiatus of twenty thousand years is hardly noticeable anyway. Galactically speaking, twenty thousand years is a mere wink in time.

      The breeze didn’t carry the page very far. It simply whisked it through a convenient window, deposited it beneath a xixxix tree and then returned to the hills to rest. But the choice of a xixxix tree is highly significant and substantiates the malicious nature of the breeze’s act. If it had chosen a muu or a buxx tree instead, the Galactic Historian might have found the page in the morning when he took his constitutional through the university grounds.

      However, since a xixxix tree was selected, no doubt whatever can remain as to the breeze’s basic motivation. Articles of a valuable nature just aren’t left beneath xixxix trees. Everybody knows that squixes live in xixxix trees and everybody knows that squixes are collectors. They collect all sorts of things, buttons and pins and twigs and pebbles—anything at all, in fact, that isn’t too big for them to pick up and carry into their xixxix tree houses.

      They have been called less kind things than collectors. Thieves, for example, and scavengers. But collectors are what they really are. Collecting fulfills a basic need in their mammalian makeup; the possession of articles gives them a feeling of security. They love to surround their little furry bodies with all sorts of odds and ends, and their little arboreal houses are stuffed with everything you can think of.

      And they simply adore paper. They adore it because it has a practical as well as a cultural value.

      Specifically, they adore it because it is wonderful to make hammocks out of.

      When the two squixes in the xixxix tree saw the page drift to the ground, they could hardly believe their eyes. They chittered excitedly as they skittered down the trunk. The page had hardly stopped fluttering before it was whisked aloft again, clenched in tiny squix fingers.

      The squixes wasted no time. It had been a long while since the most cherished of all collector’s items had come their way and they needed a new hammock badly. First, they tore the page into strips, then they began to weave the strips together.

      —1456, Gut. Bi. pr.; 1492, Am. dis.; 1945, at. b. ex. Almgdo.; 1971, mn. rchd., they wove.

      —2004, Sir. rchd.; 2005-6, Sir.—E. wr.; 2042, Btlgs. rchd.; 2043-4, Btlgs.—E. wr.

      They wove and wove and wove.

      15,000, E. Emp. clpsd.; 15,038, E. dstryd.; Hist. E., end of.

      It was a fine hammock, the best the two squixes had ever wove. But they didn’t sleep well that night. They twisted and turned and tossed, and they dreamed the most fantastic dreams—

      Which isn’t particularly surprising, considering what they were sleeping on. Sleeping on the history of Earth would be enough to give anybody nightmares.

      Even squixes.

      Pilgrims’ Project

      A man under sentence of marriage would be lucky to have a girl like Julia assigned to him—or would he?

      CHAPTER I

      I’d like to apply for a wife, I said.

      The Marriage Administration girl inserted an application blank into the talk-typer on her desk. Her eyes were light blue and her hair was dark brown and she was wearing a Mayflower dress with a starched white collar. Name and number?

      Roger Bartlett. 14479201-B.

      Date of birth?

      January 17, 2122.

      What is your occupation, Mr. Bartlett?

      Senior Sentry at the Cadillac Cemetery.

      She raised her eyes. Her hair was combed tightly back into a chignon and her face looked round and full like a little girl’s.

      Oh. Have there been any exhumings recently, Mr. Bartlett?

      Not at Cadillac, I said.

      I’m glad. I think it’s a shame the way the ghouls carry on, don’t you? Imagine anyone having the effrontery to rob a sacred car-grave!

      Her voice sounded sincere enough but I got the impression she was ridiculing me—why, I couldn’t imagine. She could not know I was lying.

      Someday they’ll rob one grave too many, I said flatly, and earn the privilege of digging their own.

      She lowered her eyes—rather abruptly, I thought. Last place of employment?

      Ford Acres.

      The longer I looked at her, the more she affected me. The little-girl aspect of her face was misleading. There was nothing little-girlish about her lithe body, and her stern, high-bosomed dress could not conceal the burgeoning of full breasts or the breathless sweep of waist and shoulders.

      Illogically, she reminded me of a landscape I had seen recently at a clandestine art exhibit. I had wandered into the dim and dismal place more out of boredom than curiosity, and I had hardly gone two steps beyond the cellar door when the painting caught my eye. It was called Twentieth Century Landscape.

      In the foreground, a blue river flowed, and beyond the river a flower-flecked meadow spread out to a series of small, forested hills. Beyond the hills a great cumulus formation towered into the sky like an impossibly tall and immaculate mountain. There was only one other object in the scene—the lofty, lonely speck of a soaring bird.

      An impossible landscape by twenty-second century standards; an impossible analogy by any standards. And yet that’s what I thought of, standing there in Marriage Administration Headquarters, the stone supporting pillars encircling me like the petrified trunks of a decapitated forest and the unwalled departments buzzing with activity.

      Can you give us some idea of the kind of wife you want, Mr. Bartlett?

      I wanted to say that I didn’t want any kind of a wife, that the only reason I was applying for one was because I was on the wrong side of twenty-nine and had received my marriage summons in yesterday’s mail. But I didn’t say anything of the sort. It wasn’t wise to question Marriage Administration procedure.

      But I didn’t take it lying down. Not quite. I said: The wife I want is a pretty remote item from the one I’ll probably get.

      "What we want consciously is invariably different from what we want unconsciously, Mr. Bartlett. The Marriage Integrator’s true benefit to humanity arises from the fact that it matches marriageable men and women in accordance with their unconscious rather than with their conscious desires. However, any information you may care to impart will be entered on your data card and might influence the final decision."

      I don’t know, I said.

      And I didn’t. The celibacy I had endured rather than apply for a wife before reaching the maximum age of twenty-nine had resulted in the total sublimation of my sexual desires. Women had lost reality for me—at least, until this morning.

      I looked around the huge chamber in search of inspiration. The various departments were cramped with desks and marriage officials, enlivened here and there by gray- or black-garbed secretaries. The department next to the one in which I stood constituted the headquarters for the Marriage Enforcement Police and less than ten feet away from me a gaunt MEP captain brooded behind an austere marble desk.

      Apparently he had been fasting, for his charcoal gray coat hung loosely on his wide shoulders. His cheeks were cadaverous, his thin lips pale. His thin nose jutted sharply from his narrow face, giving him a bleak, hungry look, and his deep, somber eyes intensified the impression.

      Those eyes, I realized suddenly, were gazing directly into mine.

      So far as I knew, there was nothing about my appearance to pique the interest of an MEP official. My Roger Williams suit was conventional enough; I had doffed my black, wide-brimmed hat upon entering the building and now held it at my waist in the prescribed manner; I was above average in height, but not noticeably so, and if my yellow hair and gray eyes failed to match the dour decorum of my clothing, I could hardly be held responsible for the defection. Nevertheless, there was something about me that the MEP captain found disagreeable. The disapproval in his eyes was unmistakable.

      Do you have any ideas at all, Mr. Bartlett?

      The girl’s cool blue eyes were a relief after the somber brown ones. It was like returning from Milton’s Paradise Lost to the carefree L’Allegro of his youth. Abruptly, the inspiration I’d been searching for materialized—almost at my fingertips.

      Blue eyes, I said. I’d definitely want her to have blue eyes—and dark brown hair to go with them. And then I’d want her to have a round, full face, and shoulders that look good even in a Mayflower dress.

      I saw the telltale pinkness come into her cheeks and I caught the tiny fluttering of a pulse in her white temple. But all she said was: What else, Mr. Bartlett? I presume she would hare intellectual as well as physical qualities.

      Naturally. I knew I was being presumptuous, that I was probably violating some of the law-enforced mores of the Age of Repentance. But for once in my life I felt reckless.

      I concentrated on the piquant face before me. I’d want her to be a little on the sophisticated side, I said softly (the MEP captain had big ears). Well-versed in the Five Books of course—and perhaps acquainted with one or two of the forbidden ones. And then I’d want her to like children and maybe be willing to have three—or even four—instead of one or none. But most of all I’d want her to be able to freeze any wrong thoughts a man might have about her, not by recourse to the law, or by saying or doing anything; but just by looking the way she does, by being the way she is—if you know what I mean.

      The pinkness of her cheeks had darkened to deep rose. Is that all, Mr. Bartlett?

      I sighed. My recklessness had netted me nothing. Yes, I said.

      She withdrew the application from the talk-typer and initialed it. She raised her eyes. I censored your reference to the forbidden books, she said. It would have rated you at least two years in Purgatory if the Marriage Administrator had seen it. You really should be more careful about what you say, Mr. Bartlett.

      I’d forgotten all about the meticulous little machine tap-tapping silently away on the desk. I felt like a fool. Thanks, I said.

      One of the reverend psychiatrists will interview you on the top floor. You’ll find a waiting room at the head of the staircase.

      I started to turn, then paused. I didn’t know why I paused; I only knew that I couldn’t let it end like that.

      I wonder, I said.

      Yes?

      You obtained a lot of information from me but I don’t know a single thing about you. Not even your name.

      The blue eyes had become arctic lakes. Then, suddenly, they filled with the sparkling warmth of spring. A smile dawned on her lips and her face became a sunrise.

      Julia, she said. Julia Prentice.

      I’m glad to have known you, I said.

      And I, you, Mr. Bartlett. And now if you’ll please excuse me, there are other applicants waiting.

      There were—a whole benchful of them. I walked past them glumly, hating them, hating myself, hating a society that would not permit me to choose my own mate; but most of all hating Big Cupid, the mechanized matchmaker that would choose for me.

      I paused at the foot of the stone staircase, turned for a final look at Julia. She was interviewing the next applicant. She had forgotten me already.

      But someone else in the departmented chamber hadn’t. The gaunt MEP captain was more absorbed in me than ever. And, judging from his expression, he no longer merely disapproved of me—he despised me.

      Why? Had he overheard my conversation with Julia? I did not think so. With the confused murmur of hundreds of other voices all around him, he could scarcely have singled out mine, especially in view of the fact that I had spoken softly.

      But perhaps not softly enough. In any event, he was looking at me as though I were a hopeless habitué of Vanity Fair desperately in need of an Evangelist. I felt like walking over to his desk and asking him the way to the Celestial City. But I didn’t. You don’t make flippant remarks to MEP officers, particularly when those remarks involve one of the Five Books. You don’t, if you want to stay out of Purgatory.

      Instead, I turned and started up the stairs to the eyrie of the reverend psychiatrists.

      CHAPTER II

      It was late afternoon by the time I got out of the Marriage Administration Building. The sun, red and swollen from the spring dust storms, was just disappearing behind the distant elevators of the plankton conversion plant, and the sky was beginning to lose its coppery haze. I hailed a rickshaw, leaned back in the plastic chair and let the June wind cool my face.

      The street murmured with the whir of rickshaw wheels and the rhythmic pounding of runners’ feet. The Marriage Administration Building faded into the lengthening shadows. The Cathedral drifted grayly by, the tiny windows of its serried chapels glinting red in the final rays of the sun. Then the massive pile of the Coliseum, silent and somber and brooding. In the distance, the hives towered darkly into the sky.

      The Coliseum gave way to the parsonage apartments. Prim facades frowned down on me with narrow-windowed righteousness. I shifted uneasily in my rickshaw seat. If my surreptitious reading of the forbidden books had given me a new perspective on the Age of Repentance, it had also given me a troubled conscience.

      Just the same, I knew that as soon as the next book collection got under way, I would offer my services to the Literature Police just as I’d done a dozen times before. And if my luck held, and I was assigned to sentry duty in the book dump, I would read just as many forbidden volumes as I could every time I got the chance. Moreover, this time I would risk Purgatory and try to save a few of them from the flames.

      The parsonage apartments petered out and the noisome market area took their place. Rickshaw traffic densened, competed with hurrying pedestrians. Plastic heels clacked and ankle-length skirts swished in the gloom. The hives occluded the sky now, and the stench of cramped humanity rode the night wind.

      I dropped a steel piece into the runner’s hand when he pulled up before my hive. I tipped him a plastic quarter when he handed me my change. I could feel the loneliness already, the crushing loneliness that comes to all men who live in faceless crowds.

      But I didn’t regret having come to the hives to live. They were no lonelier than the YMCA had been. And three rooms, no matter how small, were certainly preferable to the cramped little cubicle I had occupied during the years immediately following my parents’ suicide.

      A long time ago—a century perhaps, maybe more—the hives bore the more euphemistic name of apartment houses. But they had corridors then instead of yard-wide passageways, elevators instead of narrow stairways, rooms instead of roomettes. Those were the years before the metal crisis, before the population upsurge; the years that constituted the Age of Wanton Waste.

      Deploring the appetites of one’s ancestors is a frustrating pastime. I did not indulge in it now. Climbing the four flights of stairs to my apartment, I thought instead of my imminent marriage, hoping to take the edge off my

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