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3 Weird SF Stories by Fritz Leiber - Fritz Leiber · 3 Weird Science Fiction Stories by Fritz Leiber

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Speaker 1: Story one of three science fiction stories by Fritzliber. This
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Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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Speaker 1: public domain. For more information nor to volunteer, please visit
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Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Three s F stories by Fritz Liber
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Speaker 1: Story one pipe Dream. This story was first published in
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Speaker 1: Worlds of IF Science Fiction February nineteen fifty nine. It
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Speaker 1: wasn't until the mermaid turned up in his bath tub
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Speaker 1: that Simon grew seriously began to wonder what the Russians
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Speaker 1: were doing on the roof next door. The old house
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Speaker 1: next door, together with this spacious, tar papered roof, which
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Speaker 1: held a sort of pint shack, a cylindrical old water tank,
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Speaker 1: and several chicken wiring closures, had always been a focus
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Speaker 1: of curiosity in this region of Greenwich Village, especially to
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Speaker 1: whoever happened to be renting Simon's studio. The north window coombs
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Speaker 1: skylight of which looked down upon it if you were
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Speaker 1: exceptionally tall, or if like Simon, you stood halfway up
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Speaker 1: a step ladder and peered. During the nineteen twenties, old
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Speaker 1: timers told Simon the house had been owned by a
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Speaker 1: bootlegger who had installed a costly pipe organ and used
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Speaker 1: the water tank to store hooch. Later there had been
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Speaker 1: a colony of shaven headed Buddhist monks who had strolled
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Speaker 1: about the roof in their orange and yellow robes, meditating
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Speaker 1: and eating raw vegetables. There had followed a Comedia del art,
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Speaker 1: theatrical group, a fencing salon, a school of the organ.
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Speaker 1: The Bootleggers Organ was always one of the prime renting
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Speaker 1: points of the house, an Arabian restaurant, several art schools
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Speaker 1: and silver craft shops, of course, and an existentialist coffee house.
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Speaker 1: The last occupants had been two bony cheeked Swedish blondes
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Speaker 1: whose sun bathed in permitably, and had built the chicken
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Speaker 1: wire enclosures to cage a large number of sinister, smoke
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Speaker 1: colored dogs. Simon decided they were breeding werewolves, and one
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Speaker 1: of his most successful abstractions, Gray Hunger, had been painted
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Speaker 1: to the inspiration of an eldritch howling. The dogs in
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Speaker 1: their owners had departed abruptly one night in a closed van,
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Speaker 1: without any of the dogs ever having been offered for sale,
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Speaker 1: or either of the girls having responded with anything more
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Speaker 1: than a raised eyebrow to Simon's brave Greenings of Skull.
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Speaker 1: The Russians had taken possession about six months ago, four
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Speaker 1: brothers apparently, and one sister who never stirred from the
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Speaker 1: house but could occasionally be seen peering greamily from a window.
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Speaker 1: A white card with a boldly inked Stuleinkov Gorovich had
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Speaker 1: been thumbtacked to the peeling green painted front door. Love
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Speaker 1: Kadio Smith's, the interior decorator, told Simon that the newcomers
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Speaker 1: were clearly white Russians, he could tell by their bushy beards.
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Speaker 1: Lester Fliggums maintained that they were red Russians passing as white,
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Speaker 1: and talked alarmingly of spying, sabotage and suit case bombs. Simon,
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Speaker 1: who had the advantages of living on the spot and
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Speaker 1: having been introduced to one of the brothers of Vlassi
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Speaker 1: at a neighboring art gallery, came to believe that they
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Speaker 1: were both red and white and something more solid complete Slavs,
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Speaker 1: in any case, double Dostoevsky Russians, if one may be
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Speaker 1: permitted the expression. They ordered vodka caviare and soda crackers,
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Speaker 1: by the case. They argued interminably loudly in Russian, softly
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Speaker 1: in English. They went on mysterious, silent errands. They gloomed
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Speaker 1: about on the roof. They made melancholy music with their deep,
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Speaker 1: harmonious voices and several large guitars. Once Simon thought they
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Speaker 1: even had the Bootleggers organ going, but there had been
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Speaker 1: a bad storm at the time, and he hadn't been sure.
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Speaker 1: They were not quite as tight lipped as the Swedish girls. Gradually,
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Speaker 1: a kurt front sidewalk acquaintance developed, and Simon came to
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Speaker 1: know their names. There was Vlassi, of course, who wore
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Speaker 1: thick glasses, the most scholarly looking of the lot, and
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Speaker 1: certainly the most bibulous. Simon came to think of Lossi
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Speaker 1: as the vodka breather. Occasionally he could be glimpsed holding
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Speaker 1: early in Mayer flasks, trays of cultured dishes and other
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Speaker 1: pieces of biological equipment, or absent mindedly wiping off a
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Speaker 1: glass slide with his beard. Then there was Ivan, the
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Speaker 1: dowerist of the four, though none of them, save Lossi,
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Speaker 1: seemed very amiable. Simon's private names for Ivan were the
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Speaker 1: Nihilist and the bomber, since he sometimes lugged about with
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Speaker 1: him a heavy globular leather case with it, and his
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Speaker 1: beard a square, black one. He had more than once
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Speaker 1: created a mild sensation in the narrow streets of the village.
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Speaker 1: Next there was Mikael, who wore a large crucifix on
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Speaker 1: a silver chain around his neck and looked like a
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Speaker 1: more spiritual resputant. However, Simon thought of him less as
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Speaker 1: the religious than as the whistler, for his inverterate habit
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Speaker 1: of whistling into his straggly beard, a strange tune that
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Speaker 1: obeyed no common harmonic laws. Sometimes Mikael seemed to carry
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Speaker 1: a chili breeze around with him, a hermanent cold draft,
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Speaker 1: so that Simon had to check himself in order not
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Speaker 1: to clutch together his coat collar whenever he heard the
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Speaker 1: approach of the eerie piping. Finally, there was Love, beardless,
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Speaker 1: sharper by several inches, and certainly the most elusive of
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Speaker 1: the brothers. He always moved at a scurry, frequently dipping
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Speaker 1: his head, so that it was some time before Simon
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Speaker 1: assured himself that he had the Dulnkov Guroovich face. He
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Speaker 1: did unmistakably. Lev seemed to be away on trips, a
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Speaker 1: good deal. On his returns, he was frequently accompanied by
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Speaker 1: furtive but important looking men, a different one on each occasion.
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Speaker 1: There would be much bustle at such times, among other things,
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Speaker 1: the shades would be drawn, then in a few hours
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Speaker 1: Lev would be off again. And it's mad about town
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Speaker 1: companion too, And of course there was the indoors keeping sister.
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Speaker 1: Several times Simon had heard one of the brothers calling Grushenka,
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Speaker 1: so he assumed that was her name. She had these
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Speaker 1: Stolnikov Guroovich face too, though on her almost incredibly it
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Speaker 1: was strangely attractive. She never ventured on the roof, but
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Speaker 1: she often sat in the pent shack. As far as
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Speaker 1: Simon could make out, she always wore some dark Victorian costume.
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Speaker 1: At least it had a high neck, long sleeves, and
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Speaker 1: puffed shoulders. Pale faced in the greenish gloom, she would
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Speaker 1: stare for hours out of the pinch shack's single window,
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Speaker 1: though never in Simon's direction. Occasionally she would part and
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Speaker 1: close her lips, but not exactly as if she were speaking,
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Speaker 1: at least aloud. He thought of calling her the bubble blower.
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Speaker 1: The effect was as odd as Mikhail's whistling but not
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Speaker 1: as unpleasant. In fact, Simon found himself studying gushinka for
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Speaker 1: ridiculously long periods of time. His mild obsession began to
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Speaker 1: irk him, and one day he decided henceforth to stay
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Speaker 1: away altogether from his north window and the step ladder.
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Speaker 1: As a result, he saw little of the alterations the
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Speaker 1: Russians began to make on the roof at this point,
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Speaker 1: though he did notice that they lugged up, among other things,
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Speaker 1: a length of large diameter, transparent plastic piping. O much
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Speaker 1: for the Russia, now for the mermaid. Late one night,
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Speaker 1: Simon started to fill his bath tub with cold water
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Speaker 1: to soak his brushes and rags. He was working with
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Speaker 1: that kind of calcamine at the time, experimenting with portable
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Speaker 1: murals painted on large plaster faced wooden panels. Heavily laden.
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Speaker 1: He got back to the bathroom just in time to
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Speaker 1: shut off the water and to see a tiny fish
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Speaker 1: of some sort splashing around in it. He was not
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Speaker 1: unduly surprised. Fish up to four or five inches in
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Speaker 1: left were not unheard of apparitions in the cold water
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Speaker 1: supply of the area, and this specimen looked as if
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Speaker 1: it displaced no more than a teaspoon of water. He
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Speaker 1: made a lucky grab, and the next moment he was
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Speaker 1: holding in his firmly clenched right hand the bottom half
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Speaker 1: of a slim, wriggling creature hardly two inches long, And
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Speaker 1: now Simon was surprised. Indeed, to begin with, it was
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Speaker 1: not greenish white, nor in common fish color, but palely
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Speaker 1: pinkish flesh colored in fact, and it didn't seem so
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Speaker 1: much a fish as a tadpole. At least, its visible
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Speaker 1: half had a slightly oversized head, shaped like a bullet
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Speaker 1: that was mushroomed a little, and two tiny writhing arms
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Speaker 1: or appendages of some sort, and it felt as if
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Speaker 1: it had rather large hips for a fish or even
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Speaker 1: a tadpole. Equip a two month human embryo with a
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Speaker 1: finny tail, give it, in addition a precocious feminine sexiness,
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Speaker 1: and you'd get something of the same effect. But all
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Speaker 1: that was nothing. The trouble was that it had a face,
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Speaker 1: a tiny face, of course, and rather goggly, ghostly like
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Speaker 1: a planarian's, but a face, nevertheless, a human looking face.
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Speaker 1: And also here was the real trouble, a face that
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Speaker 1: bore a grotesque but striking resemblance to that of Grushenkastulikov Gurovitch.
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Speaker 1: Simon's fingers tightened convulsively. Simultaneously, the slippery creature gave a
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Speaker 1: desperate riggle, yet shot into the air in a high
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Speaker 1: curve and fell into the scant inch of space between
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Speaker 1: the bathtub and the wall. The next half hour was hectic,
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Speaker 1: in a groveling sort of way. Retrieving anything from behind
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Speaker 1: Simon's ancient claw footed bathtub was a most difficult feat.
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Speaker 1: There was barely space to get an arm under it,
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Speaker 1: and at one point the warping of the floor boards
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Speaker 1: prevented even that. Besides, there was the host of dust
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Speaker 1: shrouded objects it had previously been too much trouble to
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Speaker 1: tease out, an accumulation of decades. At first, Simon tried
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Speaker 1: to guide himself by the faint flopping noises along the
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Speaker 1: hidden base of the wall, but these soon ceased. Being
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Speaker 1: on your knees and your chest with an ear against
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Speaker 1: the floor and an arm strainingly outstretched is probably not
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Speaker 1: the best position to assume while weird trains of thought
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Speaker 1: go hooting through your head, but sometimes it has to
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Speaker 1: happen that way. First came a remembered piece of neighborhood
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Speaker 1: lore that supported the possibility of a connection between the
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Speaker 1: house next door and the tiny, pink aquatic creature now
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Speaker 1: suffering minute agonies behind the bathtub. No one knew what
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Speaker 1: ancient and probably larce any minded amateur plumber was responsible,
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Speaker 1: but the old timers a sure Simon there was a
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Speaker 1: link between the water supply of the Russian's house with
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Speaker 1: its aerial cistern, and that of the building containing Simon's
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Speaker 1: studio and several smaller apartments. At any rate, they maintained
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Speaker 1: that there was a time during the period when the
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Speaker 1: bootlegger was storing hooch in the water tank, that several
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Speaker 1: neighborhood coal water taps were dispensing a week but nonetheless
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Speaker 1: authoritative mixture of bourbon and branch water. So thought Simon
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Speaker 1: as he groped and strained if the Russians were somehow
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Speaker 1: responsible for this weird fishletch, there was no insupperable difficulty
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Speaker 1: in understanding how it might have gotten here. But that
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Speaker 1: was the least of Simon's preoccupations. He scrabbled wildly and
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Speaker 1: unsuccessfully for several minutes, and then realizing he would never
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Speaker 1: get anywhere, in this unsystematic manner. He began to remove
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Speaker 1: the accumulated debriathe piece by piece, dark cracked ens of soap,
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Speaker 1: wash rags, dried out in tortured attitudes, innumerable dark dyed
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Speaker 1: cigarette stumps, several pocket magazines with bleached wrinkled pages, empty
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Speaker 1: and near empty medicine bottles and peel vials, rusty hairpins,
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Speaker 1: bobby pins, safety pins, crumpled toothpaste tubes and a couple
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Speaker 1: for oil paint, a gray toothbrush, a fifty cent piece
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Speaker 1: and several pennies, the mummy of a mouse, a letter
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Speaker 1: from Picasso, and last of all, from the dark corner
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Speaker 1: behind the bathtub's inside claw. The limp pitiful thing he
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Speaker 1: was seeking. It was even tinier than he'd thought. He
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Speaker 1: carefully washed the dust and flug off it, but it
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Speaker 1: was clearly dead, and its resemblance to Grushenka, Stulnikov, Korovitch
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Speaker 1: had become problematic. Indeed, Simon decided that someone seeing it
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Speaker 1: now for the first time would think it a freak
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Speaker 1: meadow or monstrous tadpoland nothing more. Though mutation or disease
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Speaker 1: had obviously been at work, the illusion of a miniature
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Speaker 1: mermaid still existed in the tapering tail and armlike appendages,
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Speaker 1: but it was faint. He tried to remember what he
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Speaker 1: knew about salamander's almost nothing. It turned out. He thought
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Speaker 1: of embryos, but his mind veered away from the subject.
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Speaker 1: He wandered back into the studio. Carrying the thing in
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Speaker 1: his hand. He climbed the step ladder by the north
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Speaker 1: window and studied the house next door. What windows he
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Speaker 1: could see were dark. He got a very vague impression
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Speaker 1: that the roof had changed. After he had strained his
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Speaker 1: eyes for some time. He fancied he could see a
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Speaker 1: fat path of greenish luminescence streaming between the pent shack
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Speaker 1: and the water tank, but it was very faint indeed,
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Speaker 1: and might only be his vision swimming. He climbed down
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Speaker 1: the step ladder and stood for a moment weighing the tiny,
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Speaker 1: dead thing in his hand. It occurred to him that
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Speaker 1: one of his friends at the university could dig up
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Speaker 1: a zoologist to pass on his find, but Simon's curiosity
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Speaker 1: was more artistic than scientific. In the end, he twisted
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Speaker 1: a bit of cellophane around the thing, placed it on
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Speaker 1: the ledge of his easel, and went off to bed
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Speaker 1: and to a series of disturbingly erotic dreams. Next day,
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Speaker 1: he got up late, and, after breakfasting on black coffee,
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Speaker 1: gloomed around the studio for a while, picking things up
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Speaker 1: and putting them down. He glanced frequently at the step ladder,
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Speaker 1: but resisted the temptation to climb up and have another
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Speaker 1: look next door. Sighing, he thumb tacked a sheet of
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Speaker 1: paper to a drawing board and half heartily began blocking
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Speaker 1: in a female figure. It was insipid and lifeless. Stabbing
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Speaker 1: irritably at the heavy curve of the figure's hip, he
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Speaker 1: broke his charcoal. Damn, he said, glaring around the room.
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Speaker 1: Abandoning all pretense, he threw the charcoal on the floor
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Speaker 1: and climbed the step ladder. He pressed his nose against
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Speaker 1: the glass. In daylight, the adjoining roof looked bare and grimy.
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Speaker 1: There was a big transparent pipe running between the water
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Speaker 1: tank and the shack, braced in two places by improvised
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Speaker 1: looking wooden scaffolding. Listening intently, Simon thought he could hear
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Speaker 1: a motor going in the shack. The water looked sallow green.
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Speaker 1: It reminded Simon of those futuristic algae forms where the
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Speaker 1: stuff is supposed to be pumped through the transparent pipes
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Speaker 1: to expose it to sunlight. There seemed to be a
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Speaker 1: transparent top on the water tank too. It was too
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Speaker 1: high for Simon to see, but there was a gleam
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Speaker 1: around the edge. Staring at the pipe again, Simon got
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Speaker 1: the impression there were little things traveling in the water,
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Speaker 1: but he couldn't make them out. Climbing down in some excitement,
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Speaker 1: Simon got the twist of cellophane from the ledge of
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Speaker 1: the easel and stared at its contents. Wild thoughts were
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Speaker 1: tumbling through his head. As he got back up on
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Speaker 1: the step ladder. Sunlight flashed on the greenish water pipe
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Speaker 1: between the tank and the shack, but after the first
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Speaker 1: glance he had no eyes for it. Grushen got Stolnikov
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Speaker 1: Gurovitch had her face tragically pressed to the window of
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Speaker 1: the shack. She was wearing the black dress with high
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Speaker 1: neck and puffed shoulders. At that moment she looked straight
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Speaker 1: at him. She lifted her hands and seemed to speak imploringly.
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Speaker 1: Then she slowly sank from sight, as if it horribly
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Speaker 1: occurred to Simon into quicksand Simon sprang from his chair,
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Speaker 1: heart beating wildly, and ran down the stairs to the street.
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Speaker 1: Two or three passers by paused to study him as
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Speaker 1: he alternately pounded the flaking green door of the Russian's
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Speaker 1: house and leaned on the button. Also watching was the
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Speaker 1: shirt sleeve driver of a moving van emblazoned Stoolnikov Guerovitch Enterprises,
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Speaker 1: which almost filled the street in front of the house.
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Speaker 1: The door opened narrowly, a man with a square black
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Speaker 1: beard frowned out of it. He topped Simon by almost
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Speaker 1: a head. Yes, Ivan, the bomber asked in a deep
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Speaker 1: exasperated voice, I must see the lady of the house immediately.
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Speaker 1: Simon cried, your sister. I believe she's in danger. He
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Speaker 1: surged forward. The butt of the bomber's right hand took
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Speaker 1: him firmly in the chest, and he staggered back. The
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Speaker 1: bomber said coldly, my sister is a haw taking a bath.
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Speaker 1: Simon cried, in that case, she's drowning, and surged forward again,
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Speaker 1: but the bomber's hands stopped him short. I'll call the police,
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Speaker 1: Simon shouted, flailing his limbs. The hand at his chest
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Speaker 1: suddenly stopped pushing and began to pull gripped by the
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Speaker 1: front of his shirt. Simon felt himself being drawn rapidly inside.
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Speaker 1: Let go help, I'll kidnapping, he shouted to the inquisitive
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Speaker 1: faces outside, before the door bangs shut. No police rumbled,
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Speaker 1: the bomber assisting Simon upstairs. Now look here, Simon protested futilely,
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Speaker 1: and the two story high living room to his right,
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Speaker 1: the pipes of an organ gleamed golden from the shadows.
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Speaker 1: At the second landing, a disheveled figure met them, glasses twinkling. Vlassi,
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Speaker 1: the vodka breather. He spoke querulously in rushing to Ivan,
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Speaker 1: who replied sharply. Then Vlassi turned and the three of
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Speaker 1: them climbed up the narrow third flight to the pent shack.
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Speaker 1: This housed a small noisy machine, perhaps an eert or
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Speaker 1: of some sort, for bubbles were streaming into the transparent
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Speaker 1: pipe where it was connected to the machine, and under
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Speaker 1: the pipe, Sitting with an idiot smile on a chair
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Speaker 1: of red plush and gilt, was a pale, black mustached man.
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Speaker 1: An empty clear glass bottle with a red and gold
19:42
Speaker 1: label lay on the floor to feet. The opposite side
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Speaker 1: of the room was hidden by a heavy plastic shower curtain.
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Speaker 1: Rushenka Stolnikov Gurovitch was not in view. Ivan said something explosive,
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Speaker 1: picking up the bottle and staring at it. What God,
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Speaker 1: He went on, I have told you not to mix
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Speaker 1: the pipe and the vodka. Now see what you have
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Speaker 1: done to be it seemed hospitable, said Vassi with an
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Speaker 1: apologetic gesture. Besides only one bottle. Ducking under the pipe
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Speaker 1: where he crossed the penshack, Ivan picked up the pale
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Speaker 1: man and dumped him crosswise in the chair, with his
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Speaker 1: patent leather shoe sticking up on one side and his
20:25
Speaker 1: plump hands crossed over his chest. Let him sleep first,
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Speaker 1: we must take down all the apparatus before the capitalistic
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Speaker 1: police arrive. Now, what to do with this one? He
20:38
Speaker 1: looked at Simon and clenched one large and hairy fist.
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Speaker 1: Ny'ait nyit nyet, said the vodka breather and went to
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Speaker 1: whisper in Ivan's ear. Fabo stared at Simon, who felt
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Speaker 1: uncomfortable and began to back toward the door, but Ivan
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Speaker 1: ducked agile under the pipe and grasped him by the arm,
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Speaker 1: pulling him effortlessly toward the roof exit. Just calm this way,
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Speaker 1: if you please, mister Gruyere, said Vlassie, hurrying after. As
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Speaker 1: they left the shack, he picked up a kitchen chair.
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Speaker 1: Crossing the roof, Simon made a sudden effort and wrenched
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Speaker 1: himself free. They caught him again at the edge of
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Speaker 1: the roof where he had run with nothing clearly in mind,
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Speaker 1: but with his mouth open to yell. Suspended in the
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Speaker 1: grip of the two Russians, with Ivan's meaty palm over
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Speaker 1: his mouth, Simon had a momentary glimpse of the street below.
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Speaker 1: A third bearded figure, Mihail the Religious, was staring up
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Speaker 1: at them from the sunny sidewalk. The melancholy face, the
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Speaker 1: deep socketed, tormented eyes, and the narrow beard tangle with
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Speaker 1: the dangling crucifix combined to give the effect of a
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Speaker 1: toll story novels dust jacket. As they hauled Simon away,
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Speaker 1: he had the impression that a chilly breeze had sprung
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Speaker 1: up and the street had darkened. In his ears was
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Speaker 1: Mikail distant, oddly discordant, whistling, grunting. The two brothers set
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Speaker 1: Simon down on the kitchen chair and slid him across
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Speaker 1: the roof until something hard but resilient touched the top
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Speaker 1: of his head. It was the plastic pipe through which,
22:16
Speaker 1: peering upward, he could see myriads of tiny Pollywok shapes
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Speaker 1: flitting back and forth. Do I say kindness not to
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Speaker 1: make noise, said Ivan, removing his palm. My brother VLOSSI
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Speaker 1: will now explain. He went away. Curiosity as much as
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Speaker 1: shock kept Simon in his chair. Vlassi, bobbing his head
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Speaker 1: and smiling, sat down tailor fashioned on the roof in
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Speaker 1: front of him. First, I must tell you, mister Gruet,
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Speaker 1: that I am specialist in biological sciences. Here you see
22:54
Speaker 1: results of my most successful experiment. He withdrew a round,
22:59
Speaker 1: clear glass bottle from his pocket and unscrewed the top. Ah,
23:04
Speaker 1: said Simon, tentatively. Indeed, Yes, in my researches, mister Grue,
23:11
Speaker 1: I discovered a chemical which will inhibit growth at any
23:14
Speaker 1: level of embryonic development, producing a viable organism at that point.
23:20
Speaker 1: The basic effect of this chemical is always towards survival
23:23
Speaker 1: at whatever level of development. One cell, a blast, july worm,
23:28
Speaker 1: a fish, shave, four legger. This research, which Lysenko scoffed
23:33
Speaker 1: at when I told him of it. I had no
23:35
Speaker 1: trouble in keeping secret, though at the time I was
23:38
Speaker 1: working as the unhappy collaborator of the godless Soviets. But
23:43
Speaker 1: perhaps I am being too technical, not at all, Simon
23:46
Speaker 1: assured him, good, Vlasi said with simple satisfaction, and gulped
23:51
Speaker 1: at his bottle. Meanwhile, my brother Mikhael was a religious
23:56
Speaker 1: brother at a monastery near Mount Athos. My nelus brother
24:00
Speaker 1: Ivan was in Central Europe, while my third brother Lev,
24:04
Speaker 1: who is of commercial talents, had preceded us to the
24:07
Speaker 1: New World, where we always felt it would some day
24:10
Speaker 1: be our destiny to join one another. With the aid
24:13
Speaker 1: of brother Ivan, I and my sister Grushenka escaped from Russia.
24:18
Speaker 1: We picked up Mikhail from his monastery and proceeded here,
24:22
Speaker 1: where Lev had become a capitalist business magnate. My brothers
24:27
Speaker 1: Ivan especially were interested in my research. He had a
24:31
Speaker 1: theory that we could eventually produce hosts and men in
24:33
Speaker 1: this way, whole armies and political parties, all nihilist and
24:38
Speaker 1: all of them. Stulnikov Gurovitch's why assured him that this
24:44
Speaker 1: was impossible, that I could not play cadmus for free swimming,
24:47
Speaker 1: farms or one thing we have the way to feed
24:50
Speaker 1: them in the aqueous medium. But to make fully developed mammals,
24:55
Speaker 1: placental nourishment is necessary that I cannot provide. Yet, to
25:00
Speaker 1: please him, I began with, pardon me the egg of
25:04
Speaker 1: my sister. That was as good a beginning as any,
25:07
Speaker 1: and perhaps it intrigued my vanity. Ivan dreamed his dreams
25:12
Speaker 1: of nihilist Stulnikov Gurovitch humanity. It was harmless, as I
25:16
Speaker 1: told myself. Simon stared at him, glassy eyed. Something rather
25:23
Speaker 1: peculiar was beginning to happen inside his head. About an
25:27
Speaker 1: inch under the point where the cool water filled plastic
25:31
Speaker 1: pipe pressed down on his scalp, little ghostly images were
25:35
Speaker 1: darting delightfully, wispy little girl things, smiling down at him impudently,
25:42
Speaker 1: then flirting away with the quick motion of their mermaid tails.
25:46
Speaker 1: The sky had been growing steadily darker, and now there
25:49
Speaker 1: came the growl of thunder against the purple gray clouds.
25:54
Speaker 1: Simon could barely make out the semi transparent shapes of
25:57
Speaker 1: the pollywogs and the pipe over his head, but the
26:00
Speaker 1: images inside his mind were growing clearer by the minute. Ah,
26:05
Speaker 1: we have a storm, Vlassie observed as the thunder growled again.
26:10
Speaker 1: That reminds me of Mikael, who is much influenced by
26:14
Speaker 1: our finished grandmother. He had the belief as a child
26:18
Speaker 1: that he could call up the winds by whistling for them.
26:21
Speaker 1: He even learned special wind music from her. Later he
26:25
Speaker 1: became a Christian religious There are great struggles in him.
26:29
Speaker 1: Mihail objected to my researches when he heard I used
26:32
Speaker 1: the egg of my sister. He said, we will produce
26:35
Speaker 1: millions of souls who are not baptized. I asked him,
26:39
Speaker 1: how about the water they are in. He replied, this
26:42
Speaker 1: is not the same thing. These little swimmers will wriggle
26:46
Speaker 1: in hell eternally. This worried him greatly. We tried to
26:51
Speaker 1: tell him I had not used the egg of my sister,
26:53
Speaker 1: only the egg of a fish. But he did not
26:56
Speaker 1: believe this. Because my sister changed greatly at the time.
27:01
Speaker 1: She no longer spoke. She put on my mother's bathing costume.
27:06
Speaker 1: We are a family people, and retired to the bathtub
27:09
Speaker 1: all day long. I accepted this. At least in the water,
27:13
Speaker 1: she is not violent, Mikhail said, See, her soul is
27:19
Speaker 1: now split into many unredeemed sub souls, one each for
27:23
Speaker 1: the little swimmers. There is a sympathy between them, a
27:28
Speaker 1: hypnotic vibration. So long as you keep them near her
27:33
Speaker 1: in that tank on the roof, this will be If
27:36
Speaker 1: they were gone from there, far from there, the sub
27:39
Speaker 1: souls would reunite and Grushenka's soul would be won again.
27:44
Speaker 1: He begged me to stop my research, to dump it
27:47
Speaker 1: in the sea, to scatter it away, but leave an
27:51
Speaker 1: Ivan demanded, I keep on. Yet Mikhail warned me that
27:55
Speaker 1: works of evil end in the whirlwind. I am torn,
27:59
Speaker 1: and On decided. He gulped at his vodka. Thunder growled louder.
28:06
Speaker 1: Simon was thinking dreamily that if the soul of Grushenka
28:09
Speaker 1: Stulnikov Gurovich were split into thousands of subsouls vibrating hypnotically
28:16
Speaker 1: in the nearby water tank, with at least one of
28:18
Speaker 1: them escaping as far as his bath tub, then it
28:21
Speaker 1: was no wonder if Grushenka had a strange attraction for him.
28:26
Speaker 1: But that is not yet the worst Vlasi continued. The
28:31
Speaker 1: hypnotic vibrations of the free swimming ones in their multitude
28:36
Speaker 1: turn out to have a stimulating effect on any male
28:39
Speaker 1: who is near there some minds induced, dreams of the
28:44
Speaker 1: piquant sort. Lev says that to make money for the work,
28:47
Speaker 1: we must sell these dreams to rich men. I protest,
28:51
Speaker 1: but to no avail. Lev is maddened for money. Now,
28:55
Speaker 1: besides selling the dreams, I find he plans to sell
28:58
Speaker 1: the creatures themselves, sell them one by one, but keep
29:01
Speaker 1: enough to sell the dreams too. It is a madness.
29:07
Speaker 1: The darkness had become that of night. The thunder continued
29:10
Speaker 1: to growl, and now it seemed to Simon that it
29:13
Speaker 1: had music in it. Visions swam through his mind to
29:17
Speaker 1: its rhythm, Hordes of swimming pygmy soles, of unborn water babies,
29:22
Speaker 1: migrations of miniature mermaids. The pipe hanging between water tank
29:27
Speaker 1: and pent shack became in his imagination a giant umbilicus,
29:32
Speaker 1: or a canal for a monstrous multiple birth. Sitting beneath it,
29:36
Speaker 1: helpless to move, he focused his attention, with increasing pleasure,
29:40
Speaker 1: on the active supple. Ever more human girl bodies that
29:44
Speaker 1: swam across his mind, now more mermaid than tadpole, with
29:49
Speaker 1: bright smiling lips and eyes, long lorell hair trilling behind them.
29:55
Speaker 1: They darted and hovered caressingly. In their wide cheeked o faces.
30:01
Speaker 1: He discovered, without shock, there was a transcendent resemblance to
30:05
Speaker 1: the features of Grushenka Stolnikov Gudovich, a younger milk skinned
30:11
Speaker 1: maiden of the steps, with challenging eyes and fingers that
30:14
Speaker 1: brushed against him with delightful shocks. So it is for
30:20
Speaker 1: me the great problem, Vlassi's distant voice continued, I see
30:25
Speaker 1: in my work only the pure research, the play of
30:27
Speaker 1: the mind. Love sees money, Ivan sees dragon teeth Foller
30:34
Speaker 1: for his political canon, Mikhael sees unshriven souls. Grushenka sees
30:40
Speaker 1: who knows madness? It is indeed one great problem. Thunder
30:47
Speaker 1: came again, crashingly. This time the door of the pinch
30:51
Speaker 1: shack opened. Framed in it stood Ivan, the bomber Lassie.
30:56
Speaker 1: He roared, do you know what that idiot is doing now?
31:01
Speaker 1: As the thunder of his voice trailed off together, Simon
31:05
Speaker 1: became aware at last of the identity of the other sound,
31:08
Speaker 1: which had been growing in volume all the time. Simultaneously,
31:12
Speaker 1: Vlossy struggled to his feet the organ, He cried, Mikhaiel
31:18
Speaker 1: is playing the whirlwind music. We must stop him. Pausing
31:23
Speaker 1: only for a last pull of the bottle, he charged
31:26
Speaker 1: into the pinhack. Following Ivan Wend was shaking the heavy
31:30
Speaker 1: pipe over Simon's head, tossing him back and forth in
31:33
Speaker 1: the chair. Looking with an effort toward the west, Simon
31:38
Speaker 1: saw the reason, a spinning black pencil of wind that
31:42
Speaker 1: was writing its way toward them in wreckage across the
31:45
Speaker 1: intervening roofs. The chair fell under him. Stumbling across the roof,
31:51
Speaker 1: he tugged futilely at the door to the pinch shack,
31:54
Speaker 1: then threw himself flat, clawing at the tar paper. There
31:58
Speaker 1: was a mounting rule. The top of the water tank
32:02
Speaker 1: went spinning off like a flying saucer. Momentarily as if
32:06
Speaker 1: it were a giant syringe, the whirlwind dipped into the tank.
32:11
Speaker 1: Simon felt himself sliding across the roof, felt his legs lifting.
32:16
Speaker 1: He fetched up against the roof's low wall, and at
32:19
Speaker 1: that moment the wind let go of him, and his
32:22
Speaker 1: legs touched tar paper again. Gaining his feet numbly, Simon
32:28
Speaker 1: staggered into the leaning pinshack. The pale man was nowhere
32:32
Speaker 1: to be seen, the plush chair empty The curtain at
32:36
Speaker 1: the other side of the room had fallen with its rods,
32:39
Speaker 1: revealing a bathtub more antique than Simon's. In the tub
32:44
Speaker 1: under the window sat Grushenka. The lightning flares showed her
32:49
Speaker 1: with her chin level with the water, her eyes placidly staring,
32:54
Speaker 1: her mouth opening and closing. Simon found himself putting his
32:59
Speaker 1: arms around the black clad figure. With a straining effort,
33:03
Speaker 1: he lifted her out of the tub, water sloshing all
33:06
Speaker 1: over his legs, and half carried, half slid with her
33:09
Speaker 1: down the stairs. He fetched up, panting and disheveled at
33:13
Speaker 1: the top, landing his attention riveted by the lightning illuminated
33:17
Speaker 1: scene in the two story high living room below. At
33:21
Speaker 1: the far end of it, a dark robed figure crouched
33:24
Speaker 1: at the console of the mighty organ like a giant bat.
33:27
Speaker 1: At the base of the portico of a black and
33:29
Speaker 1: gold temple in the center of the room, Ivan was
33:33
Speaker 1: in the act of heaving above his head his globular
33:36
Speaker 1: leather case. Mikhaiel darted a look over his shoulder and
33:40
Speaker 1: sprang to one side. The projectile crashed against the organ.
33:45
Speaker 1: Mikhael picked himself up, tearing something from his deck. Ivan
33:50
Speaker 1: lunched forward with a roar. Mikhaiel crashed a fist against
33:54
Speaker 1: his jaw. The bomber went down and didn't come up.
33:59
Speaker 1: Mikhaiel unwrapped his crucifix from his fingers and resumed playing
34:03
Speaker 1: with a wild cry. Simon heaved himself to his feet,
34:07
Speaker 1: stumbled over Grushinska's sodden garments, and pitched headlong down the stairs.
34:13
Speaker 1: When he came to the house was empty and the
34:15
Speaker 1: Stolnikoff moving van was gone. At the front door, he
34:19
Speaker 1: was met by a poker faced young man who identified
34:22
Speaker 1: himself as a member of the FBI. Simon showed him
34:26
Speaker 1: the globular case Ivan had thrown at the organ. It
34:29
Speaker 1: proved to contain a bowling bamb The young gentleman listened
34:32
Speaker 1: to his story without changing expression, thanked him warmly and
34:36
Speaker 1: shoot him out. The Stolnikoff Gudovitch's disappear for good, though
34:42
Speaker 1: not quite without a trace. Simon found this item in
34:46
Speaker 1: the next evening's paper, the first of many he accumulated
34:49
Speaker 1: yearningly in a scrap book during the following months. Mermaid
34:55
Speaker 1: rained a hoax, scientists, declares Milford Pennsylvani the mermaid rain
35:02
Speaker 1: reported here has been declared a fraud by an imminent
35:06
Speaker 1: European biologist, Vlasi Stulnikov Gurovich, formerly professor of genetics at
35:12
Speaker 1: Peer University, Lafia, passing through here on a cross country trip,
35:16
Speaker 1: declared the miniature mermaids were albino tadpoles, probably scattered about
35:22
Speaker 1: as a hoax by schoolboys. The professor added, I would
35:26
Speaker 1: like to know where they got them. However, there is
35:29
Speaker 1: clear evidence of mutation, due perhaps to fall out. Doctor
35:34
Speaker 1: Stilnikoff directed his party in a brief but intense search
35:37
Speaker 1: for overlooked specimens. His charming, silent sister, Grushenka Stolnikoff, wearing
35:43
Speaker 1: a quaint Lotvian swimming costume, explored the shallows of the Delaware.
35:49
Speaker 1: After collecting as many specimens as possible, the professor and
35:52
Speaker 1: his assistants continued their trip in their unusual camping car.
35:57
Speaker 1: Doctor Stilnikoff intends to found a biological research center in
36:01
Speaker 1: the calm and tolerant atmosphere of the West Coast, he declared,
36:07
Speaker 1: end of Pipe Dream, story number two of three science
36:17
Speaker 1: fiction stories by Fritz Leiber. This liveryvox recording is in
36:22
Speaker 1: the public domain. X marks the Pedwalk. This story was
36:27
Speaker 1: published in April nineteen sixty three in Worlds of Tomorrow
36:35
Speaker 1: X Marks the Pedwalk, based in material in chapter seven,
36:39
Speaker 1: First Clashes of the Wheeled and Footed Sex, a Volume
36:43
Speaker 1: three of Burger's monumental History of Traffic, published by the
36:48
Speaker 1: Foundation for twenty second Century Studies. The raggedy little old
36:52
Speaker 1: lady with the big shopping bag was in the exact
36:55
Speaker 1: center of the crosswalk when she became aware of the
36:58
Speaker 1: big black car bearing down on her. Behind the thick
37:02
Speaker 1: bulletproof glass. Its seven occupants had a misty look like
37:07
Speaker 1: men and a diving bell. She saw there was no
37:11
Speaker 1: longer time to beat the car to either curb. Veering remorselessly,
37:15
Speaker 1: it would catch her in the gutter. Useless to attempt
37:19
Speaker 1: to faint and double back, such as any venturesome child
37:22
Speaker 1: executed a dozen times a day. Her reflexes were too slow. Polite,
37:28
Speaker 1: vacuous laughter came from the car's loud speaker over the
37:31
Speaker 1: engine's mounting roar. From her fellow pedestrians lining the curbs
37:36
Speaker 1: came a sigh of horror. The little old lady dipped
37:40
Speaker 1: into her chopping bag and came up with a big
37:43
Speaker 1: blue back automatic. She held it in both fists, riding
37:48
Speaker 1: the recalls like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronco,
37:52
Speaker 1: aiming at the base of the windshield, just as the
37:54
Speaker 1: big game hunter aims at the vulnerable spine of a
37:57
Speaker 1: charging water buffalo over the horny armor of his lowered head.
38:00
Speaker 1: The little old Lady squeezed off three shots before the
38:04
Speaker 1: car chewed her down from the right hand curb. A
38:08
Speaker 1: young woman in a wheelchair shrieked at obscenity at the
38:11
Speaker 1: car's occupants. Smythe de Winter, the driver wasn't happy. The
38:18
Speaker 1: Little Old Lady's last shot had taken two members of
38:21
Speaker 1: his car pool. Bursting through the laminade glass, the steel
38:25
Speaker 1: jacketed slug had traversed the neck of Phipps mcneith and
38:29
Speaker 1: buried itself in the skull of Harvin dyl Harker, breaking viciously,
38:35
Speaker 1: smite the Winter rammed the car over the right hand curb.
38:39
Speaker 1: Pedestrians scattered into entries and narrow arcades, among them a
38:43
Speaker 1: youth bounding high on crutches. But smythe de Winter got
38:48
Speaker 1: the girl in the wheelchair. Then he drove rapidly out
38:52
Speaker 1: of the slum ring into the suburbs, a shred of
38:55
Speaker 1: ratan swinging from the flange of his right floor bud
38:58
Speaker 1: guard for a trophy. Despite the two for two casualty lists,
39:03
Speaker 1: he felt angry and depressed. The secure, predictable world around
39:08
Speaker 1: him seemed to be crumbling. While his companions softly keened
39:13
Speaker 1: a dirge to Harvey and Phipps and quietly mopped up
39:16
Speaker 1: their blood. He frowned and shook his head. They oughtn't
39:20
Speaker 1: to let old ladies carry magnums, he murmured. Witherspoon Hobbs
39:26
Speaker 1: nodded agreement across the front seat corpse. They oughtn't to
39:30
Speaker 1: let him carry anything. God, how I hate feet, he muttered,
39:35
Speaker 1: looking down at his shrunken legs wheels forever, he softly cheered.
39:41
Speaker 1: The incident had immediate repercussions throughout the city. At the
39:46
Speaker 1: combined wake of the little old lady and the girl
39:48
Speaker 1: in the wheelchair, a fiery tongue speaker inveighed against the
39:52
Speaker 1: white walled fascist the suburbia, telling to his hearers the
39:56
Speaker 1: fabled wonders of old Los Angeles, where pedestrians were sacro
40:00
Speaker 1: sanked even outside crosswalks. He called for a hobnail march
40:05
Speaker 1: across the nearest lawn bowling alleys, and perambulator traversed golf
40:09
Speaker 1: courses of the motorists. At the Sunnyside Crematorium, to which
40:14
Speaker 1: the bodies of Phipps and Harvey had been conveyed, an
40:17
Speaker 1: equally impassioned and rather more grammatical orator reminded his listeners
40:22
Speaker 1: of the legendary justice of old Chicago, where pedestrians were
40:26
Speaker 1: forbidden to carry small arms, and anyone with one foot
40:30
Speaker 1: off the sidewalk was fair prey. He broadly hinted that
40:34
Speaker 1: a holocaust, primed if necessary, with a few tankfuls of gasoline,
40:39
Speaker 1: was the only cure for the slums. Bands of skinny
40:43
Speaker 1: youths came loping at dusk out of the slum ring
40:46
Speaker 1: into the innermost sections of the larger doughnut of the suburbs,
40:50
Speaker 1: slashing defenseless tires, shooting expensive watchdogs, and scrawling filthy words
40:56
Speaker 1: on the pristine panels of matrons runabouts which never been
41:00
Speaker 1: more than six blocks from home. Simultaneously, squadrons of young
41:05
Speaker 1: suburban motorcycles and scooterites roared through the outermost precincts of
41:10
Speaker 1: the slumbering harrying children off sidewalks, tossing stink bombs through
41:15
Speaker 1: second story tenement windows, and to face in hovel fronts
41:18
Speaker 1: with sprays of black paint. Incident a thronbrick, a cut corner,
41:25
Speaker 1: monster tax in the portico of the Auto club were
41:28
Speaker 1: even reported. From the center of the city, traditionally neutral territory.
41:34
Speaker 1: The government harvidly acted, suspending all traffic between the center
41:38
Speaker 1: and the suburbs and establishing a twenty four hour curfew.
41:41
Speaker 1: In the slumbering government agents moved only by centipee car
41:46
Speaker 1: and pogo hopper to underline the point that they favored
41:49
Speaker 1: neither contending side. The day of enforced non movement for
41:54
Speaker 1: feet and wheels was spent in furtive, vengeful preparations behind
41:59
Speaker 1: lie locked garage doors. Machine guns that fired through the
42:03
Speaker 1: nose ornament were mounted under hoods illegal scythe blades were
42:07
Speaker 1: welded to oversize hubcaps, and the stainless steel edges of
42:11
Speaker 1: flange fenders were honed to razor sharpness. While nervous National
42:17
Speaker 1: guardsmen hopped about the deserted sidewalks of the slumb ring,
42:21
Speaker 1: grimmed facemen and women wearing black armbands moved through the
42:25
Speaker 1: web work of secret tunnels and hidden doors, distributing heavy
42:29
Speaker 1: caliber small arms and spiked studded paving blocks, piling cobblestones
42:34
Speaker 1: on strategic rooftops, and sapping upward from the secret tunnels
42:38
Speaker 1: to create cart traps. Children got ready to soap intersections
42:42
Speaker 1: after dark. The Committee of Pedestrian Safety, sometimes known as
42:46
Speaker 1: robes pierres Rats, prepared to release its two carefully hoarded
42:50
Speaker 1: anti tank guns at nightfall. Under the tireless urging of
42:55
Speaker 1: the government. Representatives of the pedestrians and the motorists met
42:59
Speaker 1: on a huge safety island at the boundary of the
43:02
Speaker 1: slumbering and the suburbs. Underlings began a noisy dispute as
43:06
Speaker 1: to whether Smith's de Winter had failed to give a
43:09
Speaker 1: courtesy hawk before charging, whether the little old lady had
43:12
Speaker 1: opened fire before the car had come within hawking distance,
43:16
Speaker 1: how many wheels of smith Do's car had been on
43:19
Speaker 1: the sidewalk when he hit the girl in the wheelchair,
43:21
Speaker 1: and so on. After a little while, the high pedestrian
43:25
Speaker 1: and chief motorists exchanged cautious winks and drew aside the
43:30
Speaker 1: red writhing of one hundred kerosene flares and the mystic
43:34
Speaker 1: yellow pulsing of a thousand firefly lamps mounted on yellow
43:38
Speaker 1: sawhorses ranged around the safety island illuminated two tragic, strained faces.
43:45
Speaker 1: A word before we get down to business, The chief
43:48
Speaker 1: Motorists whispered, what's the current sq of your adults? Forty
43:52
Speaker 1: one and dropping? The high pedestrian replied, his eyes fearfully
43:57
Speaker 1: searching from side to side for eavesdroppers. I can hardly
44:01
Speaker 1: get aids who are halfway. Compost mentis our own sanity.
44:05
Speaker 1: Quotion is thirty seven, the chief Motorists revealed. He shrugged helplessly.
44:11
Speaker 1: The wheels inside my people's heads are slowing down. I
44:14
Speaker 1: do not think they will be speeded up in my lifetime.
44:18
Speaker 1: They say, the government's only fifty two. The other said,
44:21
Speaker 1: with a matching shrug, Well, I suppose we must scrape
44:25
Speaker 1: out one more compromise, the one suggested hollowly, though I
44:29
Speaker 1: must confess there are times when I think we're all
44:31
Speaker 1: the figments of a paranoid's dream. Two hours of concentrated
44:36
Speaker 1: deliberations produced a new wheel foot articles of agreement. Among
44:41
Speaker 1: other points, pedestrian handguns were limited to a slightly lower
44:45
Speaker 1: muzzle velocity and to thirty eight caliber and under, while
44:49
Speaker 1: motorists were required to give three hanks at one block
44:52
Speaker 1: distance before charging a pedestrian, and a crosswalk two wheels
44:57
Speaker 1: over the curb change a traffic kill from third to
45:00
Speaker 1: remanslaughter to petty homicide. Blind pedestrians were permitted to carry
45:04
Speaker 1: hand grenades. Immediately the government went to work, the new
45:09
Speaker 1: wheel foot articles were loud, speakered and posted. Detachments of
45:13
Speaker 1: police and psychiatric social hoppers set pedaled and pogoed through
45:18
Speaker 1: the slumbering, seizing outsize weapons and giving tranquilizing jet injections
45:23
Speaker 1: to the unruling. Teams of hypnotherapists and mechanics scuttled from
45:28
Speaker 1: home to home in the suburbs and from garage to garage,
45:32
Speaker 1: enchanting a conformist serenity and stripping illegal armaments from cars
45:37
Speaker 1: on the advice of a rogue psychiatrist who said it
45:40
Speaker 1: with channel off aggressions. A display of bullfighting was announced,
45:44
Speaker 1: but this had to be canceled when a strong protest
45:47
Speaker 1: was lodged by the Decency League, which had a large
45:50
Speaker 1: mixed wheel foot membership. At dawn, curfew was lifted in
45:54
Speaker 1: the slumbering and traffic reopened between the suburbs and the center.
45:59
Speaker 1: A few uneasy moments, it became apparent that the status
46:02
Speaker 1: quo had been restored. Smythe de Winter tooled his gleaming
46:08
Speaker 1: black machine along the ring. A fixed steel bolt with
46:12
Speaker 1: a large steel washer on either side neatly filled the
46:15
Speaker 1: hole a little old lady slug had made in the windshield.
46:19
Speaker 1: A brick bounced off the roof. Bullets pattered against the
46:22
Speaker 1: side windows. Smythe to Winter ran a handkerchief around his
46:28
Speaker 1: neck under his collar and smiled a blockhead. Children were
46:33
Speaker 1: darting into the street, cat calling and thumbing their noses behind.
46:37
Speaker 1: One of them limped a fat dog with a spiked collar.
46:41
Speaker 1: Smythe's de Winter suddenly gunned his motor. He didn't hit
46:45
Speaker 1: any of the children, but he got the dog. A
46:48
Speaker 1: flashing light of the dash showed him the right front
46:51
Speaker 1: tire was losing pressure. Must have hit the collar as well.
46:56
Speaker 1: He thumbed the matching emergency air button and the flashing stopped.
47:00
Speaker 1: He turned toward Witherspoon Hobbs and said, with thoughtful satisfaction,
47:05
Speaker 1: I like a normal, orderly world where you could always
47:08
Speaker 1: have a little success. But not Champagne. Had he a
47:12
Speaker 1: little failure, but just enough to brace you. Witherspoon. Hobbs
47:17
Speaker 1: was squinting at the next crosswalk. Its center was discolored
47:21
Speaker 1: by a brownish stain ribbon tracked by tires. That's where
47:26
Speaker 1: you bagged the little old ladies, mister, he remarked, I'll
47:29
Speaker 1: say this for her now. She had spirit. Yes, that's
47:34
Speaker 1: where I bagged her. Smytheda agreed flatly. He remembered wistfully,
47:39
Speaker 1: the witch like face growing rapidly larger, her jerking shoulders
47:43
Speaker 1: in black bombazine, the wild white circled eyes. He suddenly
47:48
Speaker 1: found himself feeling that this was a very dull day.
47:54
Speaker 1: End of X marks The Pedwalk story three of three
48:03
Speaker 1: science fiction stories by fritzliber This LibriVox recording is in
48:08
Speaker 1: the public domain. Later than You think. This story was
48:15
Speaker 1: first published in Galaxy Science Fiction October nineteen fifty. Obviously,
48:22
Speaker 1: the archaeologist's study belonged to an era vastly distant from
48:27
Speaker 1: to day. Familiar similarities here and there only sharpened the
48:31
Speaker 1: feeling of alienage. The sunlight that filtered through the windows
48:36
Speaker 1: of the ceiling had a wan and greenish cast, and
48:39
Speaker 1: was augmented by radiation from some luminous material impregnating the
48:44
Speaker 1: walls and floor. Even the wide desk and the commodious
48:48
Speaker 1: hassocks glowed with a RESTful light. Across the former were
48:53
Speaker 1: scattered metal backed wax tablets, styluses, and a pair of
48:57
Speaker 1: large and oddly formed spectacles. The crammed bookcases were not
49:02
Speaker 1: particularly unusual, but the books were bound in metal, and
49:06
Speaker 1: the script on their spines would have been utterly unfamiliar
49:10
Speaker 1: to the most aerudite of modern linguists. One of the books,
49:14
Speaker 1: lying open on a hassock showed leaves of a thin, flexible,
49:18
Speaker 1: rustless metal covered with luminous characters. Between the bookcases were
49:23
Speaker 1: phosphorescent oil paintings, mainly of sea bottoms and somber greens
49:28
Speaker 1: and browns. Their style, neither wholly realistic nor abstract, would
49:33
Speaker 1: have baffled the historian of art. A blackboard with large
49:37
Speaker 1: colored crayons hinted equally at the school room and the studio.
49:43
Speaker 1: In the center of the room, midway to the ceiling,
49:46
Speaker 1: hung a fish with iridescent scales of breathtaking beauty. So
49:51
Speaker 1: invisible was its means of support that also, taking into
49:54
Speaker 1: account the strange paintings of the greenish light, one would
49:58
Speaker 1: have sworn that the object was to create an underwater scene.
50:03
Speaker 1: The explorer made his interests in a theatrical swirl of movement.
50:08
Speaker 1: He embraced the archaeologist with a warmth, calculated to startle
50:12
Speaker 1: that crusty old fellow. Then he settled himself on a hassock,
50:16
Speaker 1: looked up and asked a question in a speech and
50:18
Speaker 1: idiom so different from any we know that it must
50:22
Speaker 1: be called another means of communication rather than another language.
50:27
Speaker 1: The import was, well, what about it? If the archaeologist
50:32
Speaker 1: was taken aback, he concealed it. His expression showed only
50:36
Speaker 1: pleasure at being reunited with a long absent friend. What
50:40
Speaker 1: about what? He queried about? Your discovery? What discovery? The
50:47
Speaker 1: archaeologist's in comprehension was playful. The explorer threw up his arms.
50:52
Speaker 1: Why what else but your discovery here on earth of
50:56
Speaker 1: the remains of an intelligent species, the find of the age?
51:01
Speaker 1: Am I going to have to coax you out with it?
51:06
Speaker 1: I didn't make the discovery, the other said, tranquility. I
51:10
Speaker 1: only supervised the excavations and directed the correlation of materials.
51:15
Speaker 1: You ought to be doing the talking. You're the one
51:18
Speaker 1: who's just returned from the stars. Forget that, the explorer
51:23
Speaker 1: brushed the question aside. As soon as our spaceship got
51:27
Speaker 1: within radio range of Earth, they started to send us
51:30
Speaker 1: a continuous newscast covering the period of our absence. One
51:34
Speaker 1: of the items, exasperatingly brief mentioned your discovery. It captured
51:40
Speaker 1: my imagination. I couldn't wait to hear the details. He paused,
51:45
Speaker 1: then confessed, you get so eager out there in space,
51:50
Speaker 1: a metal filmed droplet of life lost in immensity. You
51:55
Speaker 1: rediscover your emotions. He changed color, and then finished rapidly.
52:01
Speaker 1: As soon as I could get decently away, I came
52:04
Speaker 1: straight to you. I wanted to hear about it from
52:06
Speaker 1: the best authority, yourself, The archaeologist regarded him quizzically. I'm
52:13
Speaker 1: pleased that you should think of me and my work,
52:15
Speaker 1: and I'm very happy to see you again. But admit it, now,
52:20
Speaker 1: isn't there something a bit odd about your getting so
52:22
Speaker 1: worked up over this thing? I can understand that after
52:25
Speaker 1: your long absence from Earth, any news of Earth would
52:28
Speaker 1: seem especially important. But isn't there an additional reason? The
52:33
Speaker 1: explorer twisted impatiently. Oh, I suppose there is disappointment for
52:39
Speaker 1: one thing. We were hoping to get in touch with
52:42
Speaker 1: intelligent life out there. We were specially trained in techniques
52:46
Speaker 1: for establishing mental contact with alien intelligent life forms. Well,
52:51
Speaker 1: we found some planets with life on them, all right,
52:54
Speaker 1: but it was primitive life, not worth bothering about again,
52:58
Speaker 1: he hesitated, embarrassedly. Out there you get the thinking of
53:03
Speaker 1: the preciousness of intelligence. They are so little of it,
53:08
Speaker 1: and it's so lonely, and we so greatly need intercourse
53:12
Speaker 1: with another intelligent species to give depth and balance to
53:15
Speaker 1: our thoughts. I suppose I set too much store by
53:19
Speaker 1: my hopes of establishing a contact. He paused. At any rate,
53:24
Speaker 1: when I heard that what we were looking for you
53:26
Speaker 1: had found here at home, even though dead and done for,
53:30
Speaker 1: I felt that at least it was something. I was
53:33
Speaker 1: suddenly very eager. Ah. It is odd, I know, to
53:37
Speaker 1: get so worked up about an extinct species, as if
53:41
Speaker 1: my interest could mean anything to them now, But that's
53:44
Speaker 1: the way it hit me. Several small shadows crossed the
53:49
Speaker 1: windows overhead. They might have been birds, except they moved
53:53
Speaker 1: too slowly. I think I understand, the archaeologist said softly,
54:00
Speaker 1: So get on with it and tell me about your discovery.
54:03
Speaker 1: The explorer exploded, I have already told you that it
54:07
Speaker 1: wasn't my discovery, the archeologist reminded him. A few years
54:12
Speaker 1: after your expedition left, there was begun a detailed resurvey
54:16
Speaker 1: of Earth's mineral resources. In the course of some deep
54:19
Speaker 1: continental borings, one party discovered a cache, either a very
54:24
Speaker 1: large box or rather small room, with metallic walls of
54:28
Speaker 1: great strength and toughness. Evidently its makers had intended it
54:32
Speaker 1: for the very purpose of carrying a message down through
54:35
Speaker 1: the ages. It proved to contain artifacts, models of buildings,
54:41
Speaker 1: vehicles and machines, objects of art, pictures and books. Hundreds
54:45
Speaker 1: of books, along with elaborate pictorial dictionaries for interpreting them.
54:51
Speaker 1: So now we even understand their languages languages, interrupted the explorer.
54:58
Speaker 1: That's queer. Somehow one thinks of an alien species as
55:02
Speaker 1: having just one language, like our own. This species had several,
55:08
Speaker 1: though there were some words and symbols that were alike
55:11
Speaker 1: in all their languages. These words and symbols seem to
55:15
Speaker 1: have come down unchanged from their most distant prehistory. The
55:20
Speaker 1: explorer burst out, I'm not interested in all that dry stuff.
55:24
Speaker 1: Give me the wet What were they like, how do
55:27
Speaker 1: they live? What did they create? What did they want?
55:32
Speaker 1: The archaeologists gently waved aside the questions, all in good time.
55:37
Speaker 1: If I am to tell you everything you want to know,
55:39
Speaker 1: I must tell it in my own way. Now that
55:42
Speaker 1: you are back on Earth, you will have to reacquire
55:45
Speaker 1: those orderly and composed habits of thought which you have
55:48
Speaker 1: partly lost in the course of your wild interstellar adventures.
55:53
Speaker 1: Curse you. I think you're just trying to tantalize me.
55:57
Speaker 1: The archaeologist's expression showed that this was not altogether untrue.
56:02
Speaker 1: He casually fondled an animal that had wriggled up onto
56:06
Speaker 1: his desk, and which looked rather more like an eel
56:09
Speaker 1: than a snake. Cute little brute, isn't it, he remarked.
56:14
Speaker 1: When it became apparent that the explorer wasn't to be
56:17
Speaker 1: provoked into another outburst, he continued, it became my task
56:22
Speaker 1: to interpret the contents of the cash, to reconstruct its
56:26
Speaker 1: makers climb from animalism and savagery to civilization. There rather,
56:31
Speaker 1: rapids spread across the world's surface. Their first fumbling attempts
56:35
Speaker 1: to escape from the Earth. They had spaceships. It's barely
56:40
Speaker 1: possible I rather hope they did. Says it would mean
56:43
Speaker 1: the chance of a survival elsewhere, though the negative results
56:47
Speaker 1: of your expedition rather less than that. He went on.
56:52
Speaker 1: The cash was laid down when they were first attempting spaceflight,
56:55
Speaker 1: just after their discovery of atomic power, in the first
56:58
Speaker 1: flush of their youth. It was probably created in a
57:03
Speaker 1: kind of exuberant fancifulness, with no serious belief that it
57:07
Speaker 1: would ever serve the purpose for which it was intended.
57:11
Speaker 1: He looked at the explorer strangely. If I am not mistaken,
57:15
Speaker 1: we have laid down similar caches. After a moment, the
57:20
Speaker 1: archaeologist continued, my reconstruction of their history is subsequent to
57:25
Speaker 1: the laying down of the cache has been largely hypothetical.
57:29
Speaker 1: I can only guess at the reasons for the decline
57:32
Speaker 1: and fall. Supplementary material has been very slow in coming in,
57:37
Speaker 1: though we are still making extensive excavations at widely separated points.
57:42
Speaker 1: Here are the last reports. He tossed the explorer a
57:46
Speaker 1: small metal leaf pamphlet. It flew with a curiously slow motion.
57:53
Speaker 1: That's what struck me so queer right from the start.
57:56
Speaker 1: The explorer observed putting the pamphlet aside, after a if
58:01
Speaker 1: these creatures were relatively advanced, why haven't we learned about
58:05
Speaker 1: them before? They must have lessed so many things, buildings, machines,
58:10
Speaker 1: engineering projects, some of them on a large scale. You
58:15
Speaker 1: think we'd be turning up traces everywhere. I have four
58:19
Speaker 1: answers to that, the archaeologist replied. The first is the
58:24
Speaker 1: most obvious time, geologic ages of it. The second is
58:30
Speaker 1: more subtle. What if we should have been looking in
58:33
Speaker 1: the wrong place. I mean, what if the creatures occupied
58:36
Speaker 1: a very different portion of the Earth than our own. Third,
58:40
Speaker 1: it's possible that atomic energy, out of control, finished the
58:45
Speaker 1: race and destroyed its traces. The present distribution of radioactive
58:49
Speaker 1: compounds throughout the Earth's surface lends some support to this theory. Fourth,
58:55
Speaker 1: he went on, it's my belief that when an intelligent
58:58
Speaker 1: species begins to to retrogress, it tends to destroy, or
59:03
Speaker 1: rather debase, all the things that has laboriously created. Large
59:08
Speaker 1: buildings are torn down to make smaller ones. Machines are
59:12
Speaker 1: broken up and worked into primitive tools and weapons. There
59:15
Speaker 1: is a kind of unraveling or erasing a cultural. Second
59:20
Speaker 1: law of thermodynamics begins to operate, whereby the intellect and
59:24
Speaker 1: all its works are gradually degraded to the lowest level
59:27
Speaker 1: of meaning and creativity. But why, the explorer sounded anguished,
59:34
Speaker 1: Why should any intelligence species end like that? I grant
59:37
Speaker 1: the possibility of atomic power getting out of hand, though
59:41
Speaker 1: one would have thought they'd have taken the greatest precautions.
59:45
Speaker 1: Still it could happen. But that fourth answer, it's morbid.
59:51
Speaker 1: Cultures and civilizations die, said the archaeologist evenly. That has
59:57
Speaker 1: happened repeatedly in our own history. By not species, an
1:00:02
Speaker 1: individual dies. And is there anything intrinsically more terrible in
1:00:06
Speaker 1: the death of a species than in the death of
1:00:09
Speaker 1: an individual? He paused, With respect to the members of
1:00:14
Speaker 1: this one species, I think that a certain temperamental instability
1:00:19
Speaker 1: hastened their end. Their appetites and emotions were not sufficiently
1:00:23
Speaker 1: subordinated to their understanding and to their sense of drama,
1:00:27
Speaker 1: their enjoyment of the comedy and tragedy of existence. They
1:00:31
Speaker 1: were impatient and easily incapacitated by frustration. They seem to
1:00:36
Speaker 1: have been singularly guilty in their pleasures, behaving either like
1:00:40
Speaker 1: gloomy moralists or gluttons because of taboos and an overgrown possessiveness,
1:00:46
Speaker 1: he continued. Each individual tended to limit his affection to
1:00:51
Speaker 1: a tiny family. In many cases, he focused his love
1:00:54
Speaker 1: on himself alone. They set great store by personal prestige,
1:00:59
Speaker 1: by the seeing of wealth and the exercise of power.
1:01:03
Speaker 1: Their notable capacity for thought and manipulative activity was expended
1:01:07
Speaker 1: on things rather than persons or feelings. Their technology outstripped
1:01:12
Speaker 1: their psychology. They skipped fatally when it came to hard
1:01:17
Speaker 1: thinking about the purpose of life and intellectual activity and
1:01:20
Speaker 1: the means for preserving them. Again, the slow shadows drifted overhead,
1:01:27
Speaker 1: and finally the archaeologist said they were a strangely haunted species.
1:01:34
Speaker 1: They seem to have been obsessed by the notion that
1:01:36
Speaker 1: others greater than themselves had prospered before them and then died,
1:01:41
Speaker 1: leaving them to rebuild a civilization from ruins. It was
1:01:45
Speaker 1: from those others that they thought they derived the few
1:01:48
Speaker 1: words and symbols common to all their languages. Gods, mused
1:01:53
Speaker 1: the explorer. The archaeologist shrugged, who knows Flora? Turned away.
1:02:01
Speaker 1: His excitement had visibly evaporated, leaving behind a cold and
1:02:05
Speaker 1: miserable residue of feeling. I am not sure I want
1:02:10
Speaker 1: to hear much more about them, he said. They sound
1:02:13
Speaker 1: too much like us. Perhaps it was a mistake by
1:02:17
Speaker 1: coming here. Pardon me, old friend. But out there in space,
1:02:21
Speaker 1: even our emotions become undisciplined. Everything becomes indescribably poignant. Moods
1:02:28
Speaker 1: are tempestuous. You shift in an instant from Zenith to Nader,
1:02:33
Speaker 1: and remember, out there you can see both. I was
1:02:38
Speaker 1: very eager to hear about this lost species, he added,
1:02:40
Speaker 1: in a sad voice. I thought I would feel a
1:02:44
Speaker 1: kind of fellowship with them across the eons. Instead, I
1:02:48
Speaker 1: touch only corpses. It reminds me of win. Out in space,
1:02:53
Speaker 1: there looms up before your prow, faint in the starlight,
1:02:56
Speaker 1: a dead son. They were a young race. They thought
1:03:01
Speaker 1: they were getting somewhere. They promised themselves an eternity of effort,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: and all the while there was wriggling toward them out
1:03:10
Speaker 1: of that future for which they earned. Oh, it's so
1:03:13
Speaker 1: completely futile and unfair. I disagree, the archaeologist said spiritedly. Really,
1:03:21
Speaker 1: your absence from Earth has unsettled you even more than
1:03:24
Speaker 1: I first surmised. Look at the matter squarely. Death comes
1:03:29
Speaker 1: to everything in the end. Our past is strewn with
1:03:34
Speaker 1: our dead, that species died, It's true, but what they achieved,
1:03:39
Speaker 1: they achieved, what happiness they had, they had, what they
1:03:44
Speaker 1: did in their short span, is as significant as what
1:03:47
Speaker 1: they might have done had they lived a billion years.
1:03:51
Speaker 1: The present is always more important than the future, and
1:03:55
Speaker 1: no creature can have all the future. It must be shared,
1:03:59
Speaker 1: left to others. Maybe so, the explorer said slowly. Yes,
1:04:06
Speaker 1: I guess you're right, But I still feel a horrible
1:04:10
Speaker 1: wistfulness about them, and I hugged to myself the hope
1:04:14
Speaker 1: that a few of them escaped and set up a
1:04:16
Speaker 1: colony on some planet we haven't yet visited. There was
1:04:20
Speaker 1: a long silence. Then the explorer turned back, You old devil,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: he said, in a manner that showed his gayer and
1:04:30
Speaker 1: more boisterous mood had returned, though diminished. You still haven't
1:04:34
Speaker 1: told me anything definite about them, so I haven't, replied
1:04:39
Speaker 1: the archaeologist with guileful innocence. Well, they were vertebrates, oh yes,
1:04:48
Speaker 1: And what's more, they were mammals. Mammals. I was expecting
1:04:55
Speaker 1: something different. I thought you were the explorer. All this
1:05:02
Speaker 1: matter of evolutionary categories is pretty cut and dried. Even
1:05:07
Speaker 1: a knowledge of how they looked doesn't mean much. I'd
1:05:10
Speaker 1: like to approach them in a more intimate way. How
1:05:13
Speaker 1: did they think of themselves? What do they call themselves?
1:05:17
Speaker 1: I know the word won't mean anything to me, but
1:05:19
Speaker 1: it will give me a feeling of recognition. I can't
1:05:24
Speaker 1: say the word the archaeologist told him, because I have
1:05:28
Speaker 1: the proper vocal equipment. But I know enough of their
1:05:31
Speaker 1: script to be able to write it for you as
1:05:33
Speaker 1: they would have written it. Incidentally, it's one of those
1:05:37
Speaker 1: words common to all their languages that they attributed to
1:05:40
Speaker 1: an earlier race of beings. The archaeologists extended one of
1:05:45
Speaker 1: his eight tentacles toward the blackboard. The suckers at its
1:05:49
Speaker 1: tip firmly grasp a bit of orange crayon. Another of
1:05:53
Speaker 1: his tentacles took up the spectacles and adjusted them over
1:05:56
Speaker 1: his three inch protruding pupils, like glittering pet drifted back
1:06:01
Speaker 1: into the room and knows curiously about the crayon as
1:06:05
Speaker 1: it traced are a t rat end of Later than
1:06:17
Speaker 1: You Think, end of three science fiction stories by Fritz Laber.
1:06:22
Speaker 1: These stories recorded by Phil shineverin October twenty twenty one
1:06:26
Speaker 1: in Baton Rouge Louisiana,