 The Day of the Boomer Dukes by Frederick Poehl. There was a silvery aura around the kid. The cop's guns hit him. But he didn't notice. Section 1. For a Minnifera-9. Pap-taste utterly. Sem-ped, Sem-semp-des-havu-qued-schmeirs. Excuse me, I mean to say that it was like an endless diet of days. Boring. Tidious. No, it loses too much in translation. Expleat my reasons, I say. Do my reasons matter? No, not to you, for you are troglodytes, knowing nothing of causes, understanding only acts, acts and facts. I will give you acts and facts. First you must know how I am called. My name is For a Minnifera-9 Hart-Bailey's Bean, and I am of adequate age and size. If you doubt this, I am prepared to fight. Once the T to T of life, as you might say, had made itself clear to me there were, of course, only two alternatives. I do not like to die. So that possibility was out, and the remaining alternative was flight. Naturally the necessary machinery was available to me. I aggregated a small viewing machine and scanned the centuries of the past in the hope that a sanctuary might reveal itself to my aching eyes. Co-well T to T that was, back. Back I went through the ages, back to the century of the dog, back to the age of the crippled man. I found no time better than my own. Back and back I peered back as far as the numbered years. The twenty-eighth century was boredom unendurable. The twenty-sixth was a morass of dullness. Twenty-fifth, twenty-fourth, wherever I looked, T to D, was what I found. I snapped off the machine and considered. Put the problem thus. Was there in all of the pages of history no age in which a nine-hark Bailey's beam might find adventure and excitement? There had to be. It was not possible, I told myself, despairing that from the dawn of the dreaming primates until my own time there was no era at all in which I could be happy. Yes, I suppose happiness is what I was looking for. But where was it? In my viewer I had fifty centuries or more to look back upon. And that was I decreed the trouble. I could spend my life staring into the viewer and yet never discover the time that was right for me. There were simply too many eras to choose from. It was like an enormous library in which there must, there had to be, contained the one fact that I was looking for, that, lacking an index, I might wear my life away and never find. Index. I said the word aloud, for, to be sure, it was the answer. I had the freedom of the learning lodge, and the index in the reading room could easily find for me just what I wanted. Splendid, splendid, I almost felt cheerful. I quickly returned the viewer I had been using to the keeper and received my deposit back. I hurried to the learning lodge and fed my specifications into the index as follows. That is to say, find me a time in recent past where there is adventure and excitement, where there is a secret, colorful band of desperados with whom I can ally myself. I then added two specifications, second, that it should be before the time of the high radiation levels, and first, that it should be after the discovery of anesthesia, in case of accident, and retired to a desk in the reading room to await results. It took only a few moments, which I occupied in making a list of the gear I wished to take with me. Then there was a hiss and a crackle, and in the receiver of the desk a book appeared. I unzipped the case, took it out, and opened it to the pages marked on the attached reading tape. I had found my wonderland of adventure. Hours and days of exciting preparation. What a round of packing and buying. What a filling out of forms and a stamping of visas. What an orgy of injections and inoculations and preventive therapy. Merely getting ready for the trip made my pulse race faster and my adrenaline balance rise to the very point of paranoia. It was like being given a true blue new chance to live. At last I was ready. I stepped into the transmission capsule, set the dials, unlocked the door, stepped out, collapsed the capsule, and stored it away in my carry-all, and looked about it, my new home. Pee-ew! Co-well smell of staleness, of sourness, above all of coldness. It was a close matter, then, if I would be able to keep from a violent, eruptative stenosis, as you say. I closed my eyes and remembered warm violets for a moment, and then it was all right. The coldness was not merely a smell. It was a physical fact. There was a damp grayish substance underfoot, which I recognized as snow. And in a hard-surfaced roadway there were a number of wheeled vehicles moving, which caused the liquefying snow to splash about me. I adjusted my coat controls for warmth and deflection, but that was the best I could do. The reek of stale decay remained. Then there were also the buildings, painfully almost vertical. I believe it would not have disturbed me if they had been truly vertical, but many of them were minutes of arc from a true perpendicular. All of them covered with a carbonaceous material which I instantly perceived was an inadvertent deposit from the air. It was a bad beginning. However, I was not bored. I made my way down the street, as you say, toward where a group of young men were walking toward me five abreast. As I came near they looked at me with interest and co-well respect, conversing with each other in whispers. I addressed them. Sirs, please direct me to the nearest recruiting office, as you call it, for the Dread-Kamora. They stopped and pressed about me looking at me intently. They were handsomely, though, cruelly dressed in coats of a striking orange color and long trousers of an extremely dark material. I decreed that I might not have made them understand me. It is always probable. It is understood that a quick-nick course in dialects of the past may not give one instant command of spoken communication in the field. I spoke again. I wish to encounter a representative of the Kamora, in other words, the Black Hand, in other words, the cruel and sinister Sicilian terrorists named the Mafia. Do you know where these can be found? One of them said, Nay, what's that jive? I puzzled over what he had said for a moment, but in the end decreed that his message was sense-free. As I was about to speak, however, he said suddenly, Let's rove, man! And all five of them walked quickly away a few yards. It was quite disappointing. I observed them conferring among themselves, glancing at me, and, for a time, proposed terminating my venture, for I then believed that it would be better to return home, as you say, in order to more adequately research the matter. However, the five young men came toward me again. The one who had spoken before, who I now detected was somewhat taller and fatter than the others, spoke as follows. You're wanting the Mafia? I agreed. He looked at me for a moment. Are you holding? He was inordinately hard to understand. I said slowly with a patience. Keska! That holding, say! Money, man! You going to slip us something to help you find these cats? Certainly! Money! I have great quantities of money instantly available. I rejoined him. This appeared to relieve his mind. There was a short pause, directly after which this first of the young men spoke. You're on, man! Yeah! Come with us! What's to call you? I queried this last statement, and he expanded. The name! What's the name? You may call me Foreminifera IX, I directed, since I wished to be incognito, as you put it, and we proceeded along the street. All five of the young men indicated a desire to serve me, offering indeed to take my carry all. I rejected this politely. I looked about me with lively interest, as you may well believe. Co-well dirt, co-well dinginess, co-well cold. And yet there was a certain charm which I can determine no way of expressing in this language. Acts and facts, of course. I shall not attempt to capture the subjectivity, which is the charm, only to transcribe the physical datum, perhaps even data. Who knows? My companions, for example, they were in appearance overwrought, looking about them continually, stopping entirely and drawing me with them into the shelter of a door, when another man, this one wearing blue clothing and a visored hat, appeared. Yet they were clearly devoted to me at that moment, since they had put aside their own projects in order to escort me without delay to the mafia. Mafia! Fortunate that I had found them to lead me to the mafia, for it had been clear in the historical work I had consulted that it was not ultimately easy to gain access to the mafia. Indeed, so secret were they that I had detected no trace of their existence in other histories of the period. Had I relied only on the conventional work, I might never have known of their great underground struggle against what you term society. It was only in the actual contemporary volume itself that curiosity titled U.S.A. Confidential by one lay and one mortimer, that I had described that. Throughout the world this great revolutionary organization flexed its tentacles, the plexus within a short distance of where I now stood, battling courageously, with me to help them. What heights might we not attain? Co-well dramatic delight! My meditations were interrupted. Boomers! asserted one of my five escorts in a loud frightened tone. Let's cut it, man! He continued, leading me with them into another entrance. It appeared as well as I could decree that the cause of his ejaculative outcry was the discovery of perhaps three, perhaps four other young men in coats of the same shiny material as my escorts. The difference was that they were of a different color, being blue. We hastened along a lengthy chamber which was quite dark, immediately after which the large heavy one opened away to a serrated incline leading downward. It was extremely dark, I should say. There was also an extreme smell. Not like that of the outer air, but enormously intensified. One would suspect that there was an incomplete combustion of perhaps wood or coal, as well as a certain quantity of general decay. At any rate, we reached the bottom of the incline, and my escort behaved quite badly. One of them said to the other four in these words, Them jumpers follow us sure. Yeah, there's much trouble. What's to prime this guy now and split? Suddenly they fell upon me with violence. I had fortunately become rather alarmed at their visible emotion of fear, and already had taken from my carry-all a Stolgrat-16, so that quickly I turned it on them. I started to replace the Stolgrat-16 as they fell to the floor, yet I realized that there might be an additional element of danger. Instead of putting the Stolgrat-16 in with the other trade goods which I had brought to assist me in negotiating with the Mafia, I transferred it to my jacket. It had become clear to me that the five young men of my escort had intended to abduct and rob me, indeed had intended it all along, perhaps having never intended to convey me to the office of the Mafia, and the other young men, those who wore the blue jackets in place of the orange, were already descending the incline toward me, quite rapidly. Stop! I directed them. I shall not entrust myself to you until you have given me evidence that you entirely deserve such trust. They all halted, regarded me in the Stolgrat-16. I detected that one of them said to another, That cat's got a zip. The other denied this, saying, That's no zip, man. Yeah, look at them leopards. Say, you bust them flunkies with that thing? I perceived his meaning quite quickly. You are correct, I rejoined. Are you associated in friendship with them flunkies? Hell no. Yeah, they're the leopards, and we're boomer-dukes. You cool them, you do us much good. I received this information as indicating that the two socio-economic units were inimical, and unfortunately lapsed into an example of the bivalent error. Since P implied not Q, I sloppily assumed that not Q implied R, with, you understand, R being taken as the class of phenomenon pertinently favorable to me. This was a very poor construction, and of course resulted in certain difficulties, Qed, after all. I stated, them flunkies offered to conduct me to a recruiting office, as you say, of the Mafia, but instead tried to take from me the much money I am holding. I then went on to describe to them my desire to attain contact with the said Mafia. Meanwhile, they descended further and grouped about me in the very little light, examining curiously the motionless figures of the leopards. They seemed to be greatly impressed, and at the same time very much puzzled, naturally. They looked at the leopards, and then at me. They gave every evidence of wishing to help me, but of course if I had not forgotten that one cannot assume from the statements, not leopard implies boomer-duke, and not leopard implies foremanifera nine, that Qed, boomer-duke, implies foremanifera nine. If I had not forgotten this, I say, I should not have been deceived, for in practice they were as little favourable to me as the leopards. A certain member of their party reached a position behind me. I quickly perceived that his intention was not favourable, and attempted to turn around in order to discharge at him with the Stolgrat-16, but he was very rapid. He had a metallic cylinder, and with it struck my head, knocking me unconscious. SECTION 2 SHIELD 8805 This candy store is called Chris's. There must be ten thousand like it in the city, a marble calendar with perhaps five stools, a display case of cigars, and a bigger one of candy, a few dozen girly magazines hanging by clothespins sort of things from wire ropes along the wall. It has a couple of very small glass-topped tables under the magazines, and a juke. I can't imagine a place like Chris's without a juke. I had been sitting around Chris's for a couple of hours, and I was beginning to get edgy. The reason I was sitting around Chris's was not that I liked coax particularly, but that it was one of the hanging out places of a juvenile gang called the Leopards, with whom I had been trying to work for nearly a year. And the reason I was becoming edgy was that I didn't see any of them there. The boy behind the counter. He had the same first name as I, Walter in both cases, though my last name is Hunter, and his, I believe, is something Puerto Rican. The boy behind the counter was dummying up, too. I tried to talk to him, on and off, when he wasn't busy. He wasn't busy most of the time. It was too cold for sodas, but he just didn't want to talk. Now, these kids love to talk. A lot of what they say doesn't make sense, either bullying or bragging or purposeless swearing. But talk is their normal state. When they quiet down, it means trouble. For instance, if you ever find yourself walking down 35th Street and a couple of kids pass you talking, you don't have to bother looking around. But if they stop talking, turn quickly. You're about to be mugged. Not that Walt was a mugger, as far as I know. But that's the pattern of the enclave. So his being quiet was a bad sign. It might mean that a rumble was brewing. And that meant that my work so far had been pretty nearly a failure. Even worse, it might mean that somehow the Leopards had discovered that I had at last passed my examinations and been appointed to the New York City police force as rookie patrolman, Shield 8805. Trying to work with these kids is hard enough at best. They don't like outsiders, but they particularly hate cops. And I had been trying for some weeks to decide how I could break the news to them. The door opened. Hawke stood there. He didn't look at me, which was a bad sign. Hawke was one of the youngest in the Leopards, a skinny, very dark kid who had been reasonably friendly to me. He stood in the open door with snow blowing past him. Walt, out here, man. It wasn't me he meant. They call me champ. I suppose because I beat them all shooting eight ball pool. Walt put down the comic he had been reading and walked out, also without looking at me. They closed the door. Time passed. I saw them through the window, talking to each other, looking at me. It was something all right. They were scared. That's bad, because these kids are like wild animals. If you scare them, they hit first. It's the only way they know to defend themselves. But on the other hand, a rumble wouldn't scare them. Not where they would show it. And finding out about the shield in my pocket wouldn't scare them either. They hated cops, as I say, but cops were part of their environment. It was strange and baffling. Walt came back in, and Hawke walked rapidly away. Walt went behind the counter, bled a cigarette, wiped at the marble top, picked up his comic, put it down again, and finally looked at me. He said, some punk busted Feyo and a couple of the boys. It's real trouble. I didn't say anything. He took a puff on his cigarette. They're chilled, champ. Five of them. Chilled? Dead? It sounded bad. There hadn't been a real rumble in months. Not with a killing. He shook his head. Not dead. You're wanting to see. You go down Gomez's cellar. Yeah, they're all stiff. But they're breathing. I'd be along soon as the old man comes back in the store. He looked pretty sick. I left it at that, and hurried down the block to the tenement where the Gomez family lived. And then I found out why. They were all sprawled on the filthy floor of the cellar like winos in an alley. Feyo, who ran the gang, Jap, Baker, two others I didn't know as well. They were breathing, as Walt had said, but you just couldn't wake them up. Hawke and his twin brother Yogi were there with them, looking scared. I couldn't blame them. The kids looked perfectly all right, but it was obvious that they weren't. I bent down and smelled, but there was no trace of liquor or anything else on their breath. I stood up. We'd better get a doctor. Nay, you call the meat wagon and the cop comes right with it, man, Yogi said, and his brother nodded. I laid off that for a moment. What happened? Hawke said, you know that witch Gloria goes with one of the Boomer Dukes? She opened her big mouth to my girl. Yeah, opened her mouth, and much bad talk came out. Said Feyo primed some jumper with a zip and the punk cooled him, and then a couple of the Boomers moved in real cool. Now they've got the punk with the zip and much other stuff. Real stuff. What kind of stuff? Hawke looked worried. He finally admitted that he didn't know what kind of stuff, but it was something dangerous in the way of weapons. It had been the zip that had knocked out the five leopards. I sent Hawke out to the drugstore for smelling salts and containers of hot black coffee. Not that I knew what I was doing, of course, but they were dead set against calling an ambulance, and the boys didn't seem to be in any particular danger. Only sleep, however. Even then I knew that this kind of trouble was something I couldn't handle alone. It was a toss-up what to do. The smart thing was to call the precinct right then and there, but I couldn't help feeling that that would make the leopards clam up hopelessly. The six months I had spent trying to work with them had not been too successful. A lot of other neighborhood workers had made a lot more progress than I, but at least they were willing to talk to me, and they wouldn't talk to uniformed police. Besides, as soon as I had been sworn in the day before, I had begun the practice of carrying my thirty-eight at all times, as the regulations say. It was in my coat. There was no reason for me to feel I needed it, but I did. If there was any truth to the story of a zip knocking out the boys, and I had all five of them right there for evidence, I had the unpleasant conviction that there was real trouble circulating around East Harlem that afternoon. Champ! They're all waking up! I turned around, and hawk was right. The five leopards all of a sudden were stirring and opening their eyes. Maybe the smelling salts had something to do with it, but I rather think not. We fed them some black coffee, still reasonably hot. They were scared. They were more scared than anything I had ever seen in those kids before. They could hardly talk at first, and when finally they came around enough to tell me what had happened, I could hardly believe them. This man had been small and peculiar, and he had been looking for, of all things, the mafia, which he had read about in history books. Old history books. Well it didn't make sense, unless you were prepared to make a certain assumption that I refused to make. Man from Mars, nonsense. Or from the future, equally ridiculous. The five leopards reviving began to walk around. The cellar was dark and dirty and packed with the accumulation of generations in the way of old furniture and rat-inhabited mattresses and piles of newspapers. It wasn't surprising that we hadn't noticed the little gleaming thing that had apparently rolled under an abandoned pot-belly stove. Japp picked it up, squalled, dropped it, and yelled for me. I touched it cautiously, and it tingled. It wasn't painful, but it was an odd, unexpected feeling. Perhaps you've come across the buzzers that novelty stores sell, which concealed in the palm give a sudden surprising tingle when the owner shakes hands with an unsuspecting friend. It was like that, like a mild electric shock. I picked it up and held it. It gleamed brightly with a light of its own. It was round. It made a faint droning sound. I turned it over, and it spoke to me. It said in a friendly, feminine whisper, Warning! This portotron attuned only to Bailey's bean percepts. Inquiescent until the adjuster comes. That settled it. Any time a lit-up cue-ball talks to me, I refer the matter to a higher authority. I decided on the spot that I was heading for the precinct house, no matter what the leopards thought. But when I turned and headed for the stairs, I couldn't move. My feet simply would not lift off the ground. I twisted and stumbled and fell in a heap. I yelled for help, but it didn't do any good. The leopards couldn't move, either. We were stuck there, in Gomez's cellar, as though we had been nailed to the filthy floor. Section Three Cal When I see what this flunky has done to them leopards, I call him a cool cat right away. But then we jump him, and he ain't so cool. Angel and Tiny grab him under the arms, and I'm grabbing the stuff he's carrying. Yeah, we get out of there. There's bulls on the street, so we cut through the back and over the fences. Tiny don't like that. He tells me, Cal, what's to leave this cat here? He must weigh 18 tons. You're bringing him, I tell him, so he shuts up. That's how it is in the Boomer Dukes. When Cal talks, them other flunkies shut up fast. We get him in the loft over the R&I Social Club. Damn, but it's cold up there. I can hear the pool balls clicking down below, so I pass the word to keep quiet. Then I give this guy the foot, and pretty soon he wakes up. As soon as I talk to him a little bit, I figure we had luck riding with us when we see them leopards. This cat's got real bad stuff. Yeah, I never hear of anything like it. But what it takes to make a fight, he's got. I take my old pistol and give it to Tiny. Hell, it makes him happy, and what's the cost to me? Because what this cat's got makes that pistol look like something for babies. First, he don't want to talk. Stomp him, I tell Angel, but he's scared. He says, nay, this is a real weird cat, Cal. I'm for cutting out of here. Stomp him, I tell him again. Pretty quiet, but he does it. He don't have to tell me this cat's weird, but when the cat gets the foot a couple of times, he's willing to talk. Yeah, he talks real funny, but that don't matter to me. We take all the loot out of his bag, and I make the cat tell me what it's to do. Damn, I don't know what he's talking about one time out of six, but I know enough. Even Tiny catches on after a while, because I see him put down that funky old pistol I gave him that he's been loving up. I'm feeling pretty good. I wish a couple of them chicken leopards would turn up so I could show them what they missed out on. Yeah, I'll take on them, and the black dogs, and all the cops in the world all at once. That's how good I feel. I'm feeling so good that I don't even like it when Angel lets out a yell and comes up with a wad of loot. It's like I want to prime the US mint for chicken feed. I don't want it to come so easy. But money's on hand, so I take it off Angel and count it. This cat was really loaded. There must be $1,000 here. I take a handful of it and hand it over to Angel real cool. Get us some charge, I tell him. There's much to do, and I'm feeling ready for some charge to do it with. How many sticks do you want me to get, he asks, holding on to that money like he never saw any before. I tell him, sticks. Nay, I'm for the real stuff tonight. You find four eye and get us some horse. Yeah, he digs me then. He looks like he's pretty scared, and I know he is, because this punk hasn't had anything bigger than reefers in his life. But I'm for busting a couple of caps of H. And what I do, he's going to do. So he takes off to find four eye, and the rest of us get busy on this cat with the funny artillery until he gets back. It's like a million miles down Dream Street. Hell, I don't want to wake up. But the H is wearing off, and I'm feeling mean. Damn. I'll stop my mother if she talks big to me right then. I'm the first one on my feet, and I'm looking for trouble. The whole place is full now. Angel must have passed the word to everybody in the dukes. But I don't even remember them coming in. There's eight or 10 cats lying around on the floor now, not even moving. This won't do, I decide. If I'm on my feet, they're all going to be on their feet. I start to give them the foot, and they begin to move. Even the weirdie must have had some H. I'm guessing that somebody slipped him some to see what would happen, because he's off in cloud number nine. Yeah, they're feeling real mean when they wake up. But I handle them cool. Even that little flunky sailor starts to go up against me, but I look at him cool, and he chickens. Angel and Peter real sick with the shakes and the heaves. But I ain't waiting for them to feel good. Give me that loot, I tell Tiny, and he hands over the stuff we took off the weirdie. I start to pass out the stuff. What's to do with this stuff, Tiny asks me looking at what I'm giving him. I tell him, point it and shoot it. He isn't listening when the weirdie's telling me what the stuff is. He wants to know what it does. But I don't know that. I just tell him, point it and shoot it, man. I've sent one of the cats out for drinks and smokes, and he's back by then. And we're all beginning to feel a little better. Only still pretty mean. They begin to dig me. Yeah, it sounds like a rumble one of them says after a while. I give him the nod, cool. You're calling it, I tell him. There's much fighting tonight. The Boomer Dukes is taken on the world. Section 4 Sandy Van Pelt The front office thought the radio car would give us a break in spot news coverage, and I guessed as wrong as they did. I'd been covering City Hall long enough, and that's no place to build a career. The press association is very tight there. There's not much chance of getting any kind of exclusive story because of the sharing agreements. So I put in for the radio car. It meant taking the night shift, but I got it. I suppose the front office got their money's worth because they played up every lousy auto smash the radio car covered as though it were the story of the second coming, and maybe it helped circulation. But I had been on it for four months, and wouldn't you know it, there wasn't a decent murder or sewer explosion or running gunfight between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. any night I was on duty in those whole four months. What made it worse, the kid they gave me as a photographer, while Detweiler, his name was, couldn't drive worth a damn, so I was stuck with chauffeuring us around. We had just been out to LaGuardia to see if it was true that Marilyn Monroe was sneaking into town with Ollie Kahn on a night plane. It wasn't. And we were coming across the tri-barrow bridge heading south toward the East River Drive when the office called. I pulled over and parked and answered the radio phone. It was Harrison, the Night City editor. Listen, Sandy, there's a gangfight in East Harlem. Where are you now? It didn't sound like much to me, I admit. There's always a gangfight in East Harlem, Harrison. I'm cold, and I'm on my way down to Nightcourt, where there may or may not be a story, but at least I can get my feet warm. Where are you now? Harrison wasn't fooling. I looked at Saul on the seat next to me. I thought I had heard him snicker. He began to fiddle with his camera without looking at me. I pushed the talk button and told Harrison where I was. I pleased him very much. I wasn't more than six blocks from where this big rumble was going on, he told me, and he made it very clear that I was to get on over there immediately. I pulled away from the curb wondering why I had ever wanted to be a newspaper man. I could have made five times as much money for half as much work in an ad agency. To make it worse, I heard Saul chuckle again. The reason he was so amused was that when we first teamed up, I made the mistake of telling him what a hot reporter I was. And I had been visibly cooling off before his eyes for better than four straight months. Believe me, I was at the very bottom of my career that night. For five cents cash, I would have parked the car, thrown the keys in the East River, and taken the first bus out of town. I was absolutely positive that the story would be a bust. And all I would get out of it would be a bad cold from walking around in the snow. And if that doesn't show you what a hot newspaper man I really am, nothing will. Saul began to act interested as we reached the corner Harrison had told us to go to. That's Chris's, he said, pointing at a little candy store. And that must be the pool-hole where the leopards hang out. You know this place? He nodded. I know a man named Walter Hunter. He and I went to school together until he dropped out a couple of weeks ago. He quit college to go to the police academy. He wanted to be a cop. I looked at him. You're going to college? Sure, Mr. Van Pelt. Wally Hunter was a sociology major. I'm journalism. But we had a couple of classes together. He had a part-time job with a neighborhood council up here, acting as a sort of adult advisor for one of the gangs. They needed advice on how to be gangs? No, that's not it, Mr. Van Pelt. The councils try to get their workers accepted enough to bring the kids into the social centers. That's all. They try to get them off the streets while he was working with a bunch called the leopards. I shut him up. Tell me about it later. I stopped the car and rolled down a window, listening. Yes. There was something going on all right. Not at the corner Harrison had mentioned. There wasn't a soul in sight in any direction. But I could hear what sounded like gunfire and yelling and, my God, even bombs going off. And it wasn't too far away. There were sirens, too. Squad cars, no doubt. It's over that way, Sol yelled, pointing. He looked as though he was having the time of his life, all keyed up and delighted. He didn't have to tell me where the noise was coming from. I could hear it for myself. It sounded like D-Day at Normandy. And I didn't like the sound of it. I made a quick decision and slammed on the brakes, then backed the car back the way we had come. Sol looked at me. What? Local color, I explained quickly. This is the place you were talking about, Chris's? Let's go in and see if we can find some of these hoodlums. But, Mr. Van Pelt, all the pictures are over where the fight's going on. Pictures, mixtures, come on. I got out in front of the candy store, and the only thing he could do was follow me. Whatever they were doing, they were making the Devil's Zone racket about it. Now that I looked a little more closely, I could see that they must have come this way. The candy store's windows were broken. Every other streetlight was smashed. And what had at first looked like a flight of steps in front of a tenement across the street wasn't anything of the kind. It was a pile of bricks and stone from the false front cornice on the roof. How in the world they had managed to knock that down, I had no idea. But it sort of convinced me that after all, Harrison had been right about this being a big fight. Over where the noise was coming from, there were queer flashing lights in the clouds overhead, reflecting exploding flares, I thought. No, I did not want to go over where the pictures were. I like living. If it had been a normal Harlem rumble with broken bottles and knives or maybe even homemade zip guns, I might have taken a chance on it. But this was for real. Come on, I yelled to Saul, and we pushed the door open to the candy store. At first there didn't seem to be anyone in, but after we called a couple of times, a kid of about 16 coffee-colored and scared-looking stuck his head up above the counter. You, what's going on here, I demanded. He looked at me as if I was some kind of two-headed monster. Come on, kid, tell us what happened. Excuse me, Mr. van Pelt, Saul cut in ahead of me and began talking to the kid in Spanish. It got a rise out of him. At least Saul got an answer. My Spanish is only a little bit better than my Swahili, so I missed what was going on except for an occasional word. But Saul was getting it all. He reported. He knows Walt. That's what's bothering him, he says. Walt and some of the leopards are in a basement down the street and there's something wrong with them. I can't exactly figure out what, but the hell with them? What about that? You mean the fight? Oh, it's a big one, all right, Mr. van Pelt. It's a gang called the Boomer Dukes. They've got hold of some real guns somewhere. I can't exactly understand what kind of guns he means, but it sounds like something serious. He says they shot that parapet down across the street. Gosh, Mr. van Pelt, you'd think it'd take a cannon for something like that, but it has something to do with Walt Hunter and all the leopards too. I said enthusiastically, very good Saul, that's fine. Find out where the cellar is and we'll go interview Hunter. But Mr. van Pelt, the pictures. Sorry, I have to call the office. I turned my back on him and headed for the car. The noise was louder and the flashes in the sky brighter. It looked as though they were moving this way. Well, I didn't have any money tied up in the car so I wasn't worried about leaving it in the street and somebody's cellar seemed like a very good place to be. I called the office and started to tell Harrison what we'd found out, but he stopped me short. Sandy, where have you been? I've been trying to call you for... Listen, we got a call from Fordham. They've detected radiation coming from the east side. It's got to be what's going on up there. Radiation, do you hear me? That means atomic weapons. Now you get the silence. Hello, I cried and then remembered to push the talk button. Hello, Harrison, you there? Silence. The two-way radio was dead. I got out of the car and maybe I understood what had happened to the radio and maybe I didn't. Anyway, there was something new shining in the sky. It hung below the clouds in parts and I could see it through the bottom of the clouds in the middle. It was a silvery teacup upside down, a hemisphere over everything. It hadn't been there two minutes before. I heard firing coming closer and closer. Around the corner a bunch of cops came. Running, turning, firing, running, turning and firing again. It was like the retreat from Caparetto in miniature. And what was chasing them? In a minute I saw. Coming around the corner was a kid with a lightning blue satin jacket and two funny looking guns in his hand. There was a silvery aura around him. The same color as the lights in the sky. And I swear I saw those cops' guns hit him 20 times in 20 seconds. But he didn't seem to notice. The saw and the kid from the candy store were right beside me. We took another look at the one man army that was coming down the street towards us, laughing and prancing and firing those odd looking guns. And then the three of us got out of there, heading for the cellar, any cellar. Section five, Priam's Maw. My occupation was short order cook, as it is called. I practiced it in my locus entitled The White Heaven, and established at Fifth Avenue, New York, between 1949 and 1962 Common Era. I had created rapport with several of the aboriginals who addressed me as Bessie, and presumed to approve the manner in which I heated specimens of minced ruminant quadruped flesh, deceased to be sure. It was a satisfactory guise, although tiring. Using approved techniques, I was compiling anthropometric data, while I was, as they say, brewing coffee. I deemed the probability nearly conclusive that it was the double duty, plus the datum that, as stated, I was physically tired, which caused me to overlook the first signal from my portatron. Indeed, I might have overlooked the second as well, except that the aboriginal named Lester stated, hey, Bessie, you got an alarm clock in your pocketbook? He had related the annunciator's signal of the portatron to the only significant datum in his own experience which it resembled, the ringing of a bell. I annotated his dossier to provide for his removal in case it eventuated that he made an undesirable intuit, as proved unnecessary, and retired to the back of the store with my carry-all. On identifying myself to the portatron, I received information that it was attuned to a Baileys beam, identified as Foraminiferin IX heart, who had refused treatment for systematic weltschmerz and instead sought to relieve his boredom by adventuring into this era. I, thereupon, compiled two recommendations which are attached. Two, a proposal for a reprimand to the keeper of the learning lodge for failure to properly annotate a volume entitled USA Confidential. And one, a proposal for reprimand to the transport executive for permitting Baileys beam class personnel access to temporal transport. Meanwhile, I left the store by a rear exit and directed myself towards the locus of the transmitting portatron. I had proximately left when I received an additional information, namely that developed weapons were being employed in the area towards which I was directing. This provoked that I abandoned guys entirely. I went transparent and quickly examined all originals within view to determine if any required removal, but none had observed this. I rose to perhaps 75 meters and sped at full atmospheric driving speed toward the source of the alarm. As I crossed a park, I detected the drive of another adjuster, whom I determined to be Aleph Plex-Prime's maw, that is, my father. He bespoke me as follows. Harry B. Splex-Prime's maw, that crazy foramenophera has been captured by aboriginals and they have taken his weapons away from him. Weapons, I inquired. Yes, weapons, he stated. For foramenophera nine heart brought with him more than 43 kilograms of weapons ranging up to and including electronic. I recorded this datum and we landed, went opaque in the shelter of a doorway and examined our percepts. Quarantine, asked my father, and I had to agree. Quarantine, I voted, and he opened his carry-all and set up a quarantine shield on the console. At once appeared the silvery quarantine dome and the first step of our adjustment was completed. Now to isolate, remove, and replace. Quiried Aleph Plex, an adjuster, I observed the phenomenon to which he was referring. A young dark aboriginal was coming towards us on the street driving a group of police aboriginals before him. He was armed, it appeared, with a fission throwing weapon in one hand and some sort of tranquilizer. I deem it to have been a Stolgrat 16 in the other. Moreover, he wore an invulnerability belt. The police aboriginals were attempting to strike him with missile weapons, which the belt deflected. I neutralized his shield, collapsed him, and stored him in my carry-all. Not an adjuster, I asserted, my father, but he had already perceived that this was so. I left him to neutralize and collapse the police aboriginals while I zeroed in on the portatron. I did not envy him his job with the police aboriginals, for many of them were dead, as they say. It required the most delicate adjustments. The portatron developed to be in a cellar and with it were some nine or 11 aboriginals which it had immobilized pending my arrival. One spoke to me thus. Young lady, please, call the cops. We're stuck here, and I did not wait to hear what he wished to say further, but neutralized and collapsed him with the other aboriginals. The portatron apologized for having caused me inconvenience, but of course it was not its fault, so I did not neutralize it. Using it for DF, I quickly located the culprit for him in a fair and nine-hard Bailey's beam nearby. He spoke despairingly in the dialect of the locus. Beastplex-Prime's Mall, for God's sake, get me out of this. Out, I spoke to him. You'll wish you never were born, as they say. I neutralized, but did not collapse him, pending instructions from the central authority. The aboriginals who were with him, however, I did collapse. Presently arrived a left plex, along with four other adjusters who had arrived before the quarantine shield made it not possible for anyone else to enter the disturbed area. Each one of us had to abandon guise so that this locus of New York 1939 to 1986 must require new adjusters to replace us, a matter to be charged against the guilt of four minifera nine-hard Bailey's beam ID. This concluded steps three and two of our adjustment, the removal and the isolation of the disturbed specimens. We are transmitting same disturbed specimens to you under separate cover herewith in neutralized and collapsed state for the manufacture of simulacra thereof. One regrets to say that they number 3846, comprising all aboriginals within the quarantined area who had firsthand knowledge of the anachronisms caused by four minifera's importation of contemporary weapons into this locus. Aleph Plex and the four other adjusters are at present reconstructing such physical damage as was caused by the use of said weapons. Simultaneously, while I am preparing this report, I am maintaining the quarantine shield which cuts off this locus, both physically and temporally from the remainder of its environment. I deem that if replacements for the attached aboriginals can be fabricated quickly enough, there will be no significant outside percept of the shield itself or of the happenings within it, that is, by maintaining a quasi-stasis of time while the repairs are being made. An outside aboriginal observer will see at most a mirror flicker of silver in the sky. All adjusters here present are working as rapidly as we can to make sure the shield can be withdrawn before so many aboriginals have observed it as to make it necessary to replace the entire city with simulacra. We do not wish a repetition of the California incident after all. End of The Day of the Boomer Dukes by Frederick Poll. The Good Neighbors by Edgar Pangborn. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. The Good Neighbors by Edgar Pangborn. You can't blame an alien for a little inconvenience as long as he makes up for it. The ship was sighted a few times, briefly and without a good fix. It was spherical, the estimated diameter about 27 miles and it was in an orbit about 3,400 miles from the surface of the earth. No one observed the escape from it. The ship itself occasioned some excitement, but back there at the tattered end of the 20th century, what was one visiting spaceship more or less? Others had appeared before and gone away discouraged or just not bothering. Three dimensional TV was coming out of the experimental stage. Soon anyone could have Dora the Doll or the grandson of Tarzan smack in his own living room. Besides, it was a hot summer. The first knowledge of the escape came when the region of Seattle suffered an eclipse of the sun, which was not an eclipse but a near shadow, which was not a shadow but a thing. The darkness drifted out of the Northern Pacific. It generated thunder without lightning and without rain. When it had moved eastward and the hot sun reappeared, wind followed, a moderate gale. The coast was battered by sudden high waves, then hushed in a bewilderment of fog. Before that appearance, radar had gone crazy for an hour. The atmosphere buzzed with aircraft. They went up in readiness to shoot, but after the first sighting reports only a few miles offshore, that order was vehemently canceled. Someone in charge must have had a grain of sense. The thing was not a plane, rocket or missile. It was an animal. If you shoot an animal that resembles an inflated gas bag with wings and the wings spread happens to be something over four miles tip to tip and the carcass drops on a city. It's not nice for the city. The office of Continental Defense deplored the lack of precedent, but actually none was needed. You just don't drop four miles of dead or dying alien flesh on Seattle or any other part of a swarming homeland. You wait till it flies out over the ocean. If it will, the most commodious ocean in reach. It or rather she didn't go back over the Pacific, perhaps because of the prevailing Westerlies. After the Seattle incident, she climbed to a great altitude above the Rockies, apparently using an updraft with very little wing motion. There was no means of calculating her weight or mass or buoyancy. Dead or injured, Drift might have carried her anywhere within one or 200 miles. Then she seemed to be following the line of the Platte and the Missouri. By the end of the day, she was circling interminably over the huge complex of St. Louis, hopelessly crying. She had a head drawn back most of the time into the bloated mass of the body, but thrusting forward now and then on a short neck, not more than 300 feet in length. When she did that, the blunt turtle-like head could be observed, the gaping toothless suffering mouth from which the thunder came and the soft shining purple eyes that searched the ground but found nothing answering her need. The skin color was mud-brown with some dull iridescence and many peculiar marks resembling wheels or blisters. Along the belly, some observers saw half a mile of paired protuberances that looked like teats. She was unquestionably the equivalent of a vertebrate. Two webbed-footed legs were drawn up close against the cigar-shaped body. The vast rather narrow inflated wings could not have been held or moved in flight without a strong internal skeleton and musculature. Theorists later argued that she must have come from a planet with a high proportion of water surface, a planet possibly larger than Earth, though of about the same mass and with a similar atmosphere. She could rise in Earth's air and before each thunderous lament she was seen to breathe. It was assumed that immense air sacs within her body were inflated or partly inflated when she left the ship, possibly with some gas lighter than nitrogen since it was inconceivable that a vertebrate organism could have survived entry into atmosphere from an orbit of 3,400 miles up. It was necessary to believe that the ship had briefly descended, unobserved, and by unknown means, probably on Earth's night side. Later on the ship did descend as far as atmosphere for a moment. St. Louis was partly evacuated. There is no reliable estimate of the loss of life and property from panic and accident on the jammed roads and rail lines. 1,500 dead, 7,400 injured is the conservative figure. After a night and a day she abandoned that area, flying heavily eastward. The droning and swooping gnats of aircraft plainly distressed her. At first she had only tried to avoid them but now and then during her eastward flight from St. Louis she made short, desperate rushes against them without skill or much sign of intelligence screaming from a wide open mouth that could have swallowed a four-engine bomber. Two aircraft were lost over Cincinnati by collision with each other in trying to get out of her way. Pilots were then ordered to keep a distance of not less than ten miles until such time as she reached the Atlantic, if she did, when she could safely be shot down. She studied Chicago for a day. By that time civil defense was better prepared. About a million residents had already fled to open country before she came and the loss of life was proportionately smaller. She moved on. We have no clue to the reason why great cities should have attracted her, though apparently they did. She was hungry perhaps or seeking help or merely drawn in animal curiosity by the endless motion of the cities and the strangeness. It has even been suggested that the life forms of her homeland, her masters, resembled humanity. She moved eastward and religious organizations united to pray that she would come down on one of the lakes where she could safely be destroyed. She didn't. She approached Pittsburgh, choked and screamed and flew high and soared in weary circles over Buffalo for a day and a night. Some pilots who had followed the flight from the West Coast claimed that the vast lamentation of her voice was growing fainter in Horser while she was drifting along the line of the Mohawk Valley. She turned south, following the Hudson at no great height. Sometimes she appeared to be choking. The labored inhalations harsh and prolonged like a cloud in agony. When she was over Westchester, headquarters tripled the swarm of interceptors on observation planes. Squadrons from Connecticut and Southern New Jersey deployed to form a monstrous funnel, the small end before her, the large end pointing out to open sea. Heavy bombers closed in above, laying a smoke screen at 10,000 feet to discourage her from rising. The ground shook with the drone of jets and with her crying. Multitudes had abandoned the metropolitan area. Other multitudes trusted to the subways, to the narrow street canyons and to the strength of concrete and steel. Others climbed to a thousand high places and watched, trusting the laws of chance. She passed over Manhattan in the evening between 8.14 and 8.27 p.m., July 16, 1976, at an altitude of about 2,000 feet. She swerved away from the aircraft that blanketed Long Island and the sound. Swerved again as the Southern group buzzed her instead of giving way. She made no attempt to rise into the sun-crimsoned terror of drifting smoke. The plan was intelligent. It should have worked, but for one fighter pilot who jumped the gun. He said later that he himself couldn't understand what happened. It was court-martial testimony, but his reputation had been good. He was Bill Green, William Hammond Green of New London, Connecticut, flying a one-man fighter jet, well aware of the strictest orders not to attack until the target had moved at least 10 miles east of Sandy Hook. He said he certainly had no previous intention to violate orders. It was something that just happened in his mind, a sort of mental sneeze. His squadron was approaching Rockaway, the flying creature about three miles ahead of him and half a mile down. He was aware of saying out loud to nobody, well, she's too big. Then he was darting out of formation, diving on her, giving her one rocket burst and reeling off to the south at 840 miles per hour. He never did locate or rejoin his squadron, but he made it somehow back to his home field. He climbed out of the cockpit, they say, and fell flat on his face. It seems likely that his shot missed the animal's head and tore through some part of her left wing. She spun to the left, rose perhaps a thousand feet facing the city, side-slipped, recovered herself and fought for altitude. She could not gain it. In the effort, she collided with two of the following planes. One of them smashed into her right side, behind the wing. The other flipped end over end across her back like a swatted dragonfly. It dropped clear and made a mess on Bedlow's Island. She too was falling, in a long slant, silent now, but still living. After the impact, her body thrashed desolately on the wreckage between Lexington and Seventh Avenue's. Her right wing churning, then only trailing in the East River. Her left wing, a crumpled, slowly deflating mass concealing Times Square, Harold Square and the Garment District. At the close of the struggle her neck was extended, her turtle beak grasping the top of Radio City. She was still trying to pull herself up as the buoyant gases hissed and bubbled away through the gushing holes in her side. Radio City collapsed with her. For a long while after the roar of descending rubble and her own roaring had ceased, there was no human noise except a melancholy thunder of planes. The apology came early the next morning. The spaceship was observed to descend to the outer limits of atmosphere very briefly. A capsule was released with a parachute timed to open at 40,000 feet and come down quite neatly in Scarsdale. Parachute, capsule and timing device were of good workmanship. The communication engraved on a plaque of metal, which still defies analysis, was a hasty job. The English slightly odd with some evidence of an incomplete understanding of the situation. That the visitors were themselves aware of these deficiencies is indicated by the text of the message itself. Most sadly regret inexcusable escape of livestock. While petting same, one of our children monkey spelling with airlock will not happen again. Regret also imperfect grasp of language, learned through what you term television, et cetera. Animal not dangerous, but observe some accidental damage caused. Therefore hasten to enclose reimbursement, having taken liberty of studying your highly ingenious methods of exchange. Hope same will be adequate, having estimated deplorable inconvenience to best of ability. Regret exceedingly impossibility of communicating further as pressure of time and prior obligations forbids. Please accept heartfelt apologies and assurances of continuing esteem. The reimbursement was in fact properly enclosed with the plaque and may be seen by the public in the rotunda of the restoration of Radio City. Though technically counterfeit, it looks like perfectly good money, except that Mr. Lincoln is missing one of his wrinkles and the words $5 are upside down. End of The Good Neighbors by Edgar Pangborn. The Hills of Home This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Giles Baker. The Hills of Home by Alfred Koppel. Normality is a myth, where all a little neurotic and the study of neurosis has been able to classify the general types of disturbance which are most common. And some types, providing the subject is not suffering so extreme a case as to have crossed the border into psychosis, can be not only useful, but perhaps necessary for certain kinds of work. The river ran still and deep, green and gray in the eddies with the warm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. Madrone and Birch and Willow limp in the evening quiet and the taste of smoldering leaves. It wasn't the Russian River. It was the Sacred Isse. The sun had touched the gem-encrusted cliffs by the shores of the Lost Sea of Chorus and had vanished, leaving only the stillness of the dusk and the lonely cry of the shorebirds. From downstream came the faint sounds of music. It might have been a phonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly Ann Roost and Patches and Seventh Heaven. But to Kimmy it was the hated cry of the Father of Therns, calling the dreadful plant-men to their feast of victims born into this valley-door by the mysterious Isse. Kimmy shifted the heavy Martian pistol into his left hand and checked his harness. A soft smile touched his lips. He was well-armed. There was nothing he had to fear from the plant-men. His bare feet turned upstream away from the sound of the phonograph toward the shallows in the river that would permit him to cross and continue his search along the base of the golden cliffs. The sergeant's voice cut through the pre-dawn darkness. Oh, three hundred, Colonel! Briefing in thirty minutes. Kimble tried to see him in the black gloom. He hadn't been asleep. It would have been hard to waste this last night that way. Instead, he had been remembering. All right, Sergeant, he said, coming up. He swung to his feet to the bare boards and sat for a moment, wishing he hadn't had to give up smoking. He could almost imagine the textured taste of the cigarette on his tongue. Oddly enough, he wasn't tired. He wasn't excited either, and that was much stranger. He stood up and opened the window to look out into the desert night. Overhead the stars were brilliant and cold. Mars gleamed russet-coloured against the sable sky. He smiled, remembering again. So long a road, he thought, from then to now. Then he stopped smiling and turned away from the window. It hadn't been an easy path, and what was coming up now was the hardest part. The goddamn psychs were the toughest, always wanting him to bug out on the deal, because of their brainwave graphs and word association tests and the rushard blots. You're a lonely man, Colonel Kimball. Too much imagination could be bad for this job. How could you sit there with pentothal in your veins and wires running out of your head and tell them about the still waters of chorus, or the pennons flying from the twin towers of greater helium, or the way the tiny, slanting sun gleamed at dawn through the rigour of a flyer? Bill snapped on a light and looked at his watch, O310, 0-150. He opened the steel locker and began to dress. The water swirled warm and velvety around his ankles. There, behind that madrone, Kimmy thought, was that a plant man? The thick white trunk and the grasping blood-sucking arms, the radium pistol's weight made his wrist ache, but he clung to it tightly, knowing that he could never cope with a plant man with a sword alone. The certainty of coming battle made him smile a little, the way John Carter would smile if he were here in the valley door, ready to attack the white therns and their plant men. For a moment Kimmy felt a thrill of apprehension. The deepening stillness of the river was closing in around him. Even the music from the phonograph was very, very faint. Above him the great vault of the sky was changing from pink to gray to dusty blue. A bright star was breaking through the curtain of fading light. He knew it was Venus, the evening star, but let it be earth, he thought, and instead of white, let it be the colour of an emerald. He paused in mid-stream, letting the water riffle around his feet. Looking up at the green beacon of his home-planet, he thought, I've left all that behind me. It was never really what I wanted. Mars is where I belong, with my friends, Tars, Tarkas, the great green jeddak, and Carter, the war-lord, and all the beautiful brave people. The phonograph sang with Valleys voice, Cradle me where southern skies can watch me with the million eyes. Kimmy's eyes narrowed, and he waded stealthily across the sacred river. That would be Matai Shang, the father of the holy therns, spreading his arms to the sunset, and standing safely on his high balcony in the golden cliffs, where the plant men gathered to attack the poor pilgrims this had brought to this cursed valley. Sing me to sleep, lullaby of the leaves. The phonograph sang. Kimmy stepped cautiously ashore, and moved into the cover of a clump of willows. The sky was darkening fast. Other stars were shining through. There wasn't much time left. The symbol now stood in the bright glare of the briefing shack, a strange figure in blood-coloured plastic. The representatives of the press had been handed the mimeographed releases by the P.R.O., and now they sat in silence, studying the red figure of the man who was to ride the rocket. They were thinking, why him, out of all the scores of applicants, because they are always applicants for a sure death job, and all the qualified pilots, why this one? The public relations officer was speaking now, reading from the mimeo to release, as though these civilians couldn't be trusted to get the sparse information given them straight, without his help, given grudgingly, and without expression. Kimball listened, only half aware of what was being said. He watched the faces of the men sitting on the rows of folding chairs, saw their eyes like wounds, read from the early morning hour, and the murmuring reception of the night before in the officer's club. They are wondering how I feel, he was thinking, and asking themselves why I want to go. On the dais, nearby, listening to the P.R.O., but watching Kimball, sat Steinhart, the team analyst. Kimball returned his steady gaze, thinking, they start out, burning with desire to cure the human mind, and end with the shadow of the images. The words become the fact, the therapy, the aim. What could Steinhart know of longing? Well he thought, I'm not being fair. Steinhart was only doing his job. The big clock on the back wall of the briefing shack said, three fifty-five, zero minus one hour and five minutes. Kimball looked around the room at the pale faces, the open mouths. What have I to do with you now? he thought. Outside the winter night lay cold and still over the base. Floodlets spilt brilliance over the dunes and the scrubby earth, high fences casting laced shadows across the burning white expanses of ferro-concrete. As they filed out of the briefing shack, Steinhart climbed into the command-car with Kimball. Chance, or design, Kimball wondered. The others, he noticed, were leaving both of them alone. We haven't gotten on too well, have we, Colonel? Steinhart observed in a quiet voice. Kimball thought. He's pale, skinned, and very blond. What is it that he reminds me of? Shouldn't there be a diadem on his forehead? He smiled vaguely into the rumbling night. That's what it was. Odd that he should have forgotten how many rocket-pilots he wondered were weaned on Burrow's books, and how many remembered now that the thern priests all wore yellow wings and a circlip of gold with some fantastic jewel on their forehead. We've done as well as could be expected. He said. Steinhart reached for a cigarette and then stopped, remembering that Kimball had had to give them up because of the flight. Kimball caught the movement, and half smiled. I didn't try to kill the assignment for you, Kim, the psych said. It doesn't matter now. No, I suppose not. You just didn't think I was the man for the job. Your record is good all the way, you know that, Steinhart said. It's just some of the things. Kimball said, I talked too much. You had to. You wouldn't think my secret life was so dangerous, would you? The colonel said, smiling. You were married, Kim. What happened? More therapy? I'd like to know. This is for me. Kimball shrugged. It didn't work. She was a fine girl, but she finally told me it was no go. You don't live here, was the way she put it. She knew you were a career officer. What did she expect? That isn't what she meant, you know that. Yes, the psych said slowly. I know that. They rode in silence across the dark base, between the concrete sheds and the wooden barracks. Overhead the stars, like dust, across the sky. Kimball swayed in plastic, a fantastic figure, not of earth, watched them wheel across the clear, deep night. I wish you luck, Kim, Steinhardt said. I mean that. Thanks, vaguely, as though from across a deep and widening gulf. What will you do? You know the answers as well as I, the colonel said impatiently. Set up the camp and wait for the next rocket, if it comes. In two years. In two years, the plastic figure said, didn't he know that it didn't matter? He glanced at his watch, zero minus fifty-six. Kim, Steinhardt said slowly, there's something you should know about. Something you really should be prepared for. Yes. Disinterest in his voice now, Steinhardt noted clinically. Natural under the circumstances, or neurosis building up already. Our tests showed you to be a schizoid. Well compensated, of course. We know there's no such thing as a normal human being. We will have tendencies towards one or more types of psychoses. In your case the symptoms are overly active imagination and in some cases an inability to distinguish reality from, well, fancy. Kimbel turned to regard the psych coolly. What's reality, Steinhardt? Do you know? The analyst flushed. No. I didn't think so. You lived pretty much in your mind when you were a child, Steinhardt went on doggedly. You were a solitary, a lonely child. Kimbel was watching the sky again. Steinhardt felt futile and out of his depth. We know so little about the psychology of space flight, Kim. Silence. The rumble of the tires on the packed sand of the road, the murmur of the command car's engine, spinning oilily and lit by tiny sun-bright flashes deep in the hollows of the hot metal. You're glad to be leaving, aren't you? Steinhardt said, finally. Happy to be the first man to try for the planets. Kimbel nodded absently, wishing the man would be quiet. Mars, a dull rusty point of light low on the horizon, seemed to beckon. They topped the last hillock and dropped down into the lighted bowl of the launching site. The rocket towered, winged and monstrously checkered in white and orange, against the first flickerings of the false dawn. Kimmy saw the girls before they saw him. In their new, low-waisted midis and skirts they looked strange and out of place standing by the pebble shore of the river Isse. They were his sisters, Rose and Margaret, older than he at fifteen and seventeen, but they walked by the river and into danger. Behind him he could hear the rustling sound of the plant men as the evening breeze came up. Kimmy! They were calling him. In the deepening dusk their voices carried far down the river. Kimmy! He knew he should answer them, but he did not. Behind him he could hear the awful plant men approaching. He shivered with delicious horror. He stood very still, listening to his sisters talking, letting their voices carry down to where he hid from the dangers of the valley door. Where is that little brat anyway? He always wanders off just at dinner time, and then we have to find him, playing with that old faucet. Mimicry. My radium pistol. Cracked, just cracked. Oh, where is he anyway? Kimmy! You answer! Kimmy died in him. It wasn't a faucet. It was a radium pistol. He looked at his sisters with this may. They weren't really his sisters. They were therns with their yellow hair and their pale skins. He and John Carter and Tars Tarkas had fought them many times, piling their bodies for barricades and weaving a flashing pattern of skilful swords in the shifting light of the two moons. Kimmy! Mum's going to be mad at you. Answer us! If only Tars Tarkas would come now, if only the great green jeddak would come splashing across the stream on his huge throat, his two swords clashing. He's up there in that clump of willows, hiding. Kimmy, you come down here this instant. The valley door was blurring, fading. The golden cliffs were turning into sandy river-worn banks. The faucet felt heavy in his grimy hand. He shivered, not with horror now, with cold. He walked slowly out of the willows, stumbling a little over the rocks. He lay like an embryo in the viscera of the ship, protected and quite alone. The plastic sack contained him, fed him, and the rocket silent now coursed through the airless deep like a questing thought. Kim was measured by the ticking of the telemeters and the timers, but Kimmel slept insulated and complete. And he dreamed. He dreamed of that summer when the river lay still and deep under the hanging willows. He dreamed of his sisters, thin and angular creatures as he remembered them through the eyes of a nine-year-old. And his mother, tall and shadowy, standing on the porch of the rented cottage and saying exasperatedly, Why do you run off by yourself, Kimmel? I worry about you so. And his sisters, playing with his wooden swords and his radium pistol and never wanting to take his nose out of those awful box. He dreamed of the low-beamed ceiling of the cottage, sweltering in the heat of the summer nights and the thick longing in his throat for red hills and a sky that burned deep blue through the long, long days and canals clear and still. A land that he knew somehow never was, but which lived for him through some alchemy of the mind. He dreamed of Mars and Steinhardt. What is reality, Kimmel? The hours stretched into days, the days into months. Time wasn't. Time was a deep night and a star-shot void and dreams. He awoke seldom. His tasks were simple, the plastic sack and the tender care of the ship were more real than the routine jobs of telemetering information back to the base across the empty miles, across the rim of the world. He dreamed of his wife, You don't live here, Kim. She was right, of course. He wasn't of earth, never had been. My love is in the sky, he thought, filled with an immense satisfaction. And time slipped by, the weeks into months. The sun dwindled and earth was gone. All around him lay the stunning, star-dusted night. He lay curled in the plastic womb when the ship turned. He awoke sluggishly and dragged himself into awareness. I've changed, he thought aloud. My face is younger, I feel different. The keening sound of air over the wings brought a thrill. Below him a great curving disc of red and browns and yellows. He could see dust storms raging and the heavy darkened lines of the canals. There was skill in his hands. He righted the rocket, balanced it, began the tricky task of landing. It took all of his talent, all of his training. Ponderously the ship settled into the iron sand. Slowly the internal fires died. Kimble stood in the control room, his heart pounding. Slowly the ports opened. Through the thick quartz he could see the endless plain, reddish-brown, empty, the basin of some long-ago sea. The sky was a deep, burning blue, with stars shining at midday at the zenith. It looked unreal, a painting of unworldly quiet and desolation. What is reality, Kimmy? Steinhart was right, he thought vaguely. A tear streaked his cheek. He had never been so alone, and then he imagined he saw something moving on the great plain. He scrambled down through the ship, passed the empty fuel tanks, and lashed supplies. His hands were clawing desperately at the dogs of the outer valve. Suddenly the pressure jerked the hatch from his hands and he gasped at the icy air, his lungs laboring to breathe. He dropped to one knee and sucked at the thin, frigid air. His vision was cloudy and his head felt light, but there was something moving on the plain. A shadowy cavalcade. Strange, monstrous men on fantastic war-mounts, long spears and fluttering pennons, huge golden chariots with sighs flashing on the circling hubs and armoured giants, the figments of a long-remembered dream. He dropped to the sand and dug his hands into the dry, powdery soil. He could scarcely see now, for blackness was flickering at the edges of his vision, and his failing heart and lungs were near-collapse. Kimmy! A huge green warrior on a grey monster of thoat was beckoning to him, pointing towards the low hills on the oddly near horizon. Kimmy! The voice was thin and distant on the icy wind. People knew that voice. He knew it from long ago in the valley-door, from the shores of the lost sea of Chorus, where the tideless waters lay black and deep. He began stumbling across the empty, lifeless plain. He knew the voice. He knew the man. And he knew the hills that he must reach, quickly now, or die. They were the hills of home. End of The Hills of Home by Alfred Koppel Recording by Giles Baker