The Third Science Fiction Megapack Read online

  But for the most part Mr. Leverett maintained his mood of happy serenity.

  When the break in that mood came, it did so suddenly, though afterwards Mr. Scott realized there had been one warning note sounded when Mr. Leverett had added onto a rambling discourse, “By the way, I’ve learned that power electricity goes all over the world, just like the ghost electricity in radios and phones. It travels to foreign shores in batteries and condensers. Roams the lines in Europe and Asia. Some of it even slips over into Soviet territory. Wants to keep tabs on the Communists, I guess. Electric freedom-fighters.”

  On his next visit Mr. Scott found a great change. Mr. Leverett had deserted his rocking chair to pace the patio on the side away from the pole, though every now and then he would give a quick funny look up over his shoulder at the dark muttering wires.

  “Glad to see you, Mr. Scott. I’m real shook up. Reckon I better tell someone about it so if something happens to me they’ll be able to tell the FBI. Though I don’t know what they’ll be able to do.

  “Electricity just told me this morning it’s got a world government—it had the nerve to call it that—and that it doesn’t care a snap for either us or the Soviets and that there’s Russian electricity in our wires and American electricity in theirs—it shifts back and forth with never a quiver of shame.

  “When I heard that you could have knocked me down with a paper dart.

  “What’s more, electricity’s determined to stop any big war that may come, no matter how rightful that war be or how much in defense of America. If the buttons are pushed for the atomic missiles, electricity’s going to freeze and refuse to budge. And it’ll flash out and kill anybody who tries to set them off another way.

  “I pleaded with electricity, I told it I’d always thought of it as American and true—reminded it of Franklin and Edison—finally I commanded it to change its ways and behave decent, but it just chuckled at me with never a spark of love or loyalty.

  “Then it threatened me back! It told me if I tried to stop it, if I revealed its plans it would summon down its savage brothers from the mountains and with their help it would seek me out and kill me! Mr. Scott, I’m all alone up here with electricity on my window sill. What am I going to do?”

  Mr. Scott had considerable difficulty soothing Mr. Leverett enough to make his escape. In the end he had to promise to come back in the morning bright and early—silently vowing to himself that he’d be damned if he would.

  His task was not made easier when the electricity overhead, which had been especially noisy this day, rose in a growl and Mr. Leverett turned and said harshly, “Yes, I hear!”

  That night the Los Angeles area had one of its very rare thunderstorms, accompanied by gales of wind and torrents of rain. Palms and pines and eucalyptus were torn down, earth cliffs crumbled and sloshed, and the great square concrete spillways ran brimful from the hills to the sea.

  The lightning was especially fierce. Several score Angelinos, to whom such a display was a novelty, phoned civil defense numbers to report or inquire fearfully about atomic attack.

  Numerous freak accidents occurred. To the scene of one of these Mr. Scott was summoned next morning bright and early by the police—because it had occurred on a property he rented and because he was the only person known to be acquainted with the deceased.

  The previous night Mr. Scott had awakened at the height of the storm when the lightning had been blinding as a photoflash and the thunder had cracked like a mile-long whip just above the roof. At that time he had remembered vividly what Mr. Leverett had said about electricity threatening to summon its wild giant brothers from the hills. But now, in the bright morning, he decided not to tell the police about that or say anything to them at all about Mr. Leverett’s electricity mania—it would only complicate things to no purpose and perhaps make the fear at his heart more crazily real.

  Mr. Scott saw the scene of the freak accident before anything was moved, even the body—except there was now, of course, no power in the heavy corroded wire wrapped tight as a bullwhip around the skinny shanks with only the browned and blackened fabric of cotton pyjamas between.

  The police and the power-and-light men reconstructed the accident this way: At the height of the storm one of the high-tension lines had snapped a hundred feet away from the house and the end, whipped by the wind and its own tension, had struck back freakishly through the open bedroom window of Peak House and curled once around the legs of Mr. Leverett, who had likely been on his feet at the time, killing him instantly.

  One had to strain that reconstruction, though, to explain the additional freakish elements in the accident—the facts that the high-tension wire had struck not only through the bedroom window, but then through the bedroom door to catch the old man in the hall, and that the black shiny cord of the phone was wrapped like a vine twice around the old man’s right arm, as if to hold him back from escaping until the big wire had struck.

  TIME BUM, by C.M. Kornbluth

  Harry Twenty-Third Street suddenly burst into laughter. His friend and sometimes roper Farmer Brown looked inquisitive.

  “I just thought of a new con,” Harry Twenty-Third Street said, still chuckling.

  Farmer Brown shook his head positively. “There’s no such thing, my man,” he said. “There are only new switches on old cons. What have you got—a store con? Shall you be needing a roper?” He tried not to look eager as a matter of principle, but everybody knew the Farmer needed a connection badly. His girl had two-timed him on a badger game, running off with the chump and marrying him after an expensive, month-long buildup.

  Harry said, “Sorry, old boy. No details. It’s too good to split up. I shall rip and tear the suckers with this con for many a year, I trust, before the details become available to the trade. Nobody, but nobody, is going to call copper after I take him. It’s beautiful and it’s mine. I will see you around, my friend.”

  Harry got up from the booth and left, nodding cheerfully to a safe-blower here, a fixer there, on his way to the locked door of the hangout. Naturally he didn’t nod to such small fry as pickpockets and dope peddlers. Harry had his pride.

  The puzzled Farmer sipped his lemon squash and concluded that Harry had been kidding him. He noticed that Harry had left behind him in the booth a copy of a magazine with a space ship and a pretty girl in green bra and pants on the cover.

  * * * *

  “A furnished…bungalow?” the man said hesitantly, as though he knew what he wanted but wasn’t quite sure of the word.

  “Certainly, Mr. Clurg,” Walter Lachlan said. “I’m sure we can suit you. Wife and family?”

  “No,” said Clurg. “They are…far away.” He seemed to get some secret amusement from the thought. And then, to Walter’s horror, he sat down calmly in empty air beside the desk and, of course, crashed to the floor looking ludicrous and astonished.

  Walter gaped and helped him up, sputtering apologies and wondering privately what was wrong with the man. There wasn’t a chair there. There was a chair on the other side of the desk and a chair against the wall. But there just wasn’t a chair where Clurg had sat down.

  Clurg apparently was unhurt; he protested against Walter’s apologies, saying: “I should have known, Master Lachlan. It’s quite all right; it was all my fault. What about the bang—the bungalow?”

  Business sense triumphed over Walter’s bewilderment. He pulled out his listings and they conferred on the merits of several furnished bungalows. When Walter mentioned that the Curran place was especially nice, in an especially nice neighborhood—he lived up the street himself—Clurg was impressed.

  “I’ll take that one,” he said. “What is the…feoff?” Walter had learned a certain amount of law for his real-estate license examination; he recognized the word. “The rent is seventy-five dollars,” he said. “You speak English very well, Mr. Clurg.” He hadn’t been certain that the man was a foreigner until the dictionary word came out. “You have hardly any accent.”

  “Thank
you,” Clurg said, pleased. “I worked hard at it. Let me see—seventy-five is six twelves and three.” He opened one of his shiny-new leather suitcases and calmly laid six heavy little paper rolls on Walter’s desk. He broke open a seventh and laid down three mint-new silver dollars. “There I am,” he said. “I mean, there you are.”

  Walter didn’t know what to say. It had never happened before. People paid by check or in bills. They just didn’t pay in silver dollars. But it was money—why shouldn’t Mr. Clurg pay in silver dollars if he wanted to? He shook himself, scooped the rolls into his top desk drawer, and said: “I’ll drive you out there, if you like. It’s nearly quitting time anyway.”

  * * * *

  Walter told his wife Betty over the dinner table: “We ought to have him in some evening. I can’t imagine where on Earth he comes from. I had to show him how to turn on the kitchen range. When it went on he said, ‘Oh, yes—electricity!’ and laughed his head off. And he kept ducking the question when I tried to ask him in a nice way. Maybe he’s some kind of a political refugee.”

  “Maybe…” Betty began dreamily and then shut her mouth. She didn’t want Walter laughing at her again. As it was, he made her buy her science-fiction magazines downtown instead of at neighborhood newsstands. He thought it wasn’t becoming for his wife to read them. He’s so eager for success, she thought sentimentally.

  That night while Walter watched a television variety show, she read a story in one of her magazines. (Its cover, depicting a space ship and a girl in green bra and shorts, had been prudently torn off and thrown away.) It was about a man from the future who had gone back in time, bringing with him all sorts of marvelous inventions. In the end the Time Police punished him for unauthorized time traveling. They had come back and got him, brought him back to his own time. She smiled. It would be nice if Mr. Clurg, instead of being a slightly eccentric foreigner, were a man from the future with all sorts of interesting stories to tell and a satchelful of gadgets that could be sold for millions and millions of dollars.

  After a week they did have Clurg over for dinner. It started badly. Once more he managed to sit down in empty air and crash to the floor. While they were brushing him off he said fretfully: “I can’t get used to not—” and then said no more.

  He was a picky eater. Betty had done one of her mother’s specialties, veal cutlet with tomato sauce, topped by a poached egg. He ate the egg and sauce, made a clumsy attempt to cut up the meat, and abandoned it. She served a plate of cheese, half a dozen kinds, for dessert, and Clurg tasted them uncertainly, breaking off a crumb from each, while Betty wondered where that constituted good manners. His face lit up when he tried a ripe cheddar. He popped the whole wedge into his mouth and said to Betty: “I will have that, please.”

  “Seconds?” asked Walter. “Sure. Don’t bother, Betty. I’ll get it.” He brought back a quarter-pound wedge of the cheddar.

  Walter and Betty watched silently as Clurg calmly ate every crumb of it. He sighed.

  “Very good. Quite like—”

  The word, Walter and Betty later agreed, was see-mon-joe. They were able to agree quite early in the evening, because Clurg got up after eating the cheese, said warmly, “Thank you so much!” and walked out of the house.

  Betty said, “What—on—Earth!”

  Walter said uneasily, “I’m sorry, doll. I didn’t think he’d be quite that peculiar—”

  “—But after all!”

  “—Of course he’s a foreigner. What was that word?”

  He jotted it down.

  While they were doing the dishes, Betty said, “I think he was drunk. Falling-down drunk.”

  “No,” Walter said. “It’s exactly the same thing he did in my office. As though he expected a chair to come to him instead of him going to a chair.” He laughed and said uncertainly, “Or maybe he’s royalty. I read once about Queen Victoria never looking around before she sat down, she was so sure there’d be a chair there.”

  “Well, there isn’t any more royalty, not to speak of,” she said angrily, hanging up the dish towel. “What’s on TV tonight?”

  “Uncle Miltie. But…uh…I think I’ll read. Uh…where do you keep those magazines of yours, doll? Believe I’ll give them a try.”

  She gave him a look that he wouldn’t meet, and she went to get him some of her magazines. She also got a slim green book which she hadn’t looked at for years. While Walter flipped uneasily through the magazines, she studied the book. After about ten minutes she said: “Walter. Seemonjoe. I think I know what language it is!”

  He was instantly alert. “Yeah? What?”

  “It should be spelled c-i-m-a-n-g-o, with little jiggers over the C and G. It means ‘Universal food’ in Esperanto.”

  “Where’s Esperanto?” he demanded.

  “Esperanto isn’t anywhere. It’s an artificial language. I played around with it a little once. It was supposed to end war and all sorts of things. Some people called it the language of the future.” Her voice was tremulous.

  Walter said, “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

  * * * *

  He saw Clurg go into the neighborhood movie for the matinee. That gave him about three hours.

  Walter hurried to the Curran bungalow, remembered to slow down, and tried hard to look casual as he unlocked the door and went in. There wouldn’t be any trouble—he was a good citizen, known and respected—he could let himself into a tenant’s house and wait for him to talk about business if he wanted to.

  He tried not to think of what people would think if he should be caught rifling Clurg’s luggage, as he intended to do. He had brought along an assortment of luggage keys. Surprised by his own ingenuity, he had got them at a locksmith’s by saying his own key was lost and he didn’t want to haul a heavy packed bag downtown.

  But he didn’t need the keys. In the bedroom closet the two suitcases stood, unlocked.

  There was nothing in the first except uniformly new clothes, bought locally at good shops.

  The second was full of the same. Going through a rather extreme sports jacket, Walter found a wad of paper in the breast pocket. It was a newspaper page. A number had been penciled on a margin; apparently the sheet had been torn out and stuck into the pocket and forgotten. The dateline on the paper was July 18th, 2403.

  Walter had some trouble reading the stories at first, but found it was easy enough if he read them aloud and listened to his voice.

  One said:

  TAIM KOP NABD: PROSKYOOTR ASKS DETH

  Patrolm’n Oskr Garth V thi Taim Polis w’z arest’d toodei at hiz hom, 4365 9863th Suit, and bookd at 9768th Prisint on m——. tchardg’z ’v Polis-Ekspozh’r. Thi aledjd Ekspozh’r okurd hwaile Garth w’z on dooti in thi Twenti-Furst Sentch’ri. It konsist’d ’v hiz admish’n too a sit’zen ’v thi Twenti-Furst Sentch’ri that thi Taim Polis ekzisted and woz op’rated fr’m thi Twenti-Fifth Sentch’ri. Thi Proskypot’rz Ofis sed thi deth pen’lti wil be askt in vyoo ’v thi heinus neitch’r ’v thi ofens, hwitch thret’nz thi hwol fabrik ’v Twenti-Fifth-Sentch’ri eksiz-tens.

  There was an advertisement on the other side:

  BOIZ AND YUNG MEN!

  SERV EUR SENTCH’RI!

  ENLIST IN THI TAIM POLIS RSURV NOW!

  RIMEMB’R—’V THI AJEZ! ONLY IN THI TAIM POLIS KAN EU PROTEKT EUR SIVILIZASHON FR’M VARENS! THEIR IZ NO HAIER SERVIS TOO AR KULTCH’R! THEIR IZ NO K’REER SO FAS’NATING AZ A K’REER IN THI TAIM POLIS!

  Underneath it another ad asked:

  HWAI BI ASHEEMPD UV EUR TCHAIRZ?

  GET ROLFASTS!

  No uth’r tcheir haz thi immidjit respons uv a Rolfast. Sit enihweir—eur Rolfast iz ther! Eur Rolfast metl partz ar solid gold to avoid tairsum polishing. Eur Rolfast beirings are thi fain’st six-intch dupliks di’mondz for long wair.

  Walter’s heart pounded. Gold—to avoid tiresome polishing! Six-inch diamonds—for long wear!

  And Clurg must be a time policeman. “Only in the time police can you see the pagean
t of the ages!” What did a time policeman do? He wasn’t quite clear about that. But what they didn’t do was let anybody else—anybody earlier—know that the Time Police existed. He, Walter Lachlan of the Twentieth Century, held in the palm of his hand Time Policeman Clurg of the Twenty-Fifth Century—the Twenty-Fifth Century where gold and diamonds were common as steel and glass in this!

  * * * *

  He was there when Clurg came back from the matinee. Mutely, Walter extended the page of newsprint. Clurg snatched it incredulously, stared at it, and crumpled it in his fist. He collapsed on the floor with a groan.

  “I’m done for!” Walter heard him say.

  “Listen, Clurg,” Walter said. “Nobody ever needs to know about this—nobody.”

  Clurg looked up with sudden hope in his eyes. “You will keep silent?” he asked wildly. “It is my life!”

  “What’s it worth to you?” Walter demanded with brutal directness. “I can use some of those diamonds and some of that gold. Can you get it into this century?”

  “It would be missed. It would be over my mass-balance,” Clurg said. “But I have a Duplix. I can copy diamonds and gold for you; that was how I made my feoff money.”

  He snatched an instrument from his pocket—a fountain pen, Walter thought.

  “It is low in charge. It would Duplix about five kilograms in one operation—”

  “You mean,” Walter demanded, “that if I brought you five kilograms of diamonds and gold you could duplicate it? And the originals wouldn’t be harmed? Let me see that thing. Can I work it?”

  Clurg passed over the “fountain pen.” Walter saw that within the case was a tangle of wires, tiny tubes, lenses—he passed it back hastily.

  Clurg said, “That is correct. You could buy or borrow jewelry and I could duplix it. Then you could return the originals and retain the copies. You swear by your contemporary God that you would say nothing?”

  Walter was thinking. He could scrape together a good thirty thousand dollars by pledging the house, the business, his own real estate, the bank account, the life insurance, the securities. Put it all into diamonds, of course and then—doubled! Overnight!