Selected Stories of Alfred Bester Read online

  "I thought I was the last human on earth," she said.

  "You're the last woman," Halsyon howled. "I'm the last man. Are you a dentist?"

  "No," she said. "I'm the daughter of the unfortunate Professor Field, whose well-intentioned but ill-advised experiment in nuclear fission has wiped mankind off the face of the earth with the exception of you and me who, no doubt on account of some mysterious mutant strain in our makeup which it make us different, are the last of the old civilization and the first of the new."

  "Didn't your father teach you anything about dentistry?"

  "No," she said.

  "Then lend me your gun for a minute."

  She unholstered the revolver and handed it to Halsyon, meanwhile keeping her rifle ready. Halsyon cocked the gun.

  "I wish you'd been a dentist," he said.

  "I'm a beautiful woman with an I.Q. of 141 which is more important for the propagation of a brave new beautiful race of men to inherit the good green earth," she said.

  "Not with my teeth it isn't," Halsyon howled.

  He clapped the revolver to his temple and blew his brains out.

  He awoke with a splitting headache. He was lying on the tile dais alongside the stool, his bruised temple pressed against the cold floor. Mr. Aquila had emerged from the lead shield and was turning on an exhaust fan to clear the air.

  "Bravo, my liver and onions," he chuckled. "The last one you did by yourself, eh? No assistance from yours truly required. Meglio tarde che mai. But you went over with a crack before I could catch you. God damn."

  He helped Halsyon to his feet and led him into the consultation room where he seated him in a velvet chaise lounge and gave him a glass of brandy.

  "Guaranteed free of drugs," he said. "Noblesse oblige. Only the best spiritus frumenti. Now we discuss what we have done, eh? Jeez."

  He sat down behind the desk, still sprightly, still bitter, and regarded Halsyon with kindliness. "Man lives by his decisions, n'est-ce pas?" he began. "We agree, oui? A man has some five million two hundred seventy-one thousand and nine decisions to make in the course of his life. Peste! Is it a prime number? N'importe. Do you agree?"

  Halsyon nodded.

  "So, my coffee and doughnuts, it is the maturity of these decisions that decides whether a man is a man or a child. Nicht wahr! Malgré nous. A man cannot start making adult decisions until he has purged himself of the dreams of childhood. God damn. Such fantasies. They must go."

  "No," Halsyon said slowly. "It's the dreams that make my art. . . the dreams and fantasies that I translate into line and color. . . ."

  "God damn! Yes. Agreed. Maître d’hôtel! But adult dreams, not baby dreams. Baby dreams. Pfui! All men have them. To be the last man on earth and own the earth. ... To be the last fertile man on earth and own the women . . . To go back in time with the advantage of adult knowledge and win victories. . . To escape reality with the dream that life is make-believe. . . To escape responsibility with a fantasy of heroic injustice, of martyrdom with a happy ending. . . And there are hundreds more, equally popular, equally empty. God bless Father Freud and his merry men. He applies the quietus to such nonsense. Sic semper tyrannis. Avaunt!"

  "But if everybody has those dreams, they can't be bad, can they?"

  "God damn. Everybody in fourteenth century had lice. Did that make it good? No, my young, such dreams are for childrens. Too many adults are still childrens. It is you, the artists, who must lead them out as I have led you. I purge you; now you purge them."

  "Why did you do this?"

  "Because I have faith in you. Sic vos non vobis. It will not be easy for you. A long hard road and lonely."

  "I suppose I ought to feel grateful," Halsyon muttered, "but I feel . . . well . . . empty. Cheated."

  "Oh yes, God damn. If you live with one Jeez big ulcer long enough, you miss him when he's cut out. You were hiding in an ulcer. I have robbed you of said refuge. Ergo: you feel cheated. Wait! You will feel even more cheated. There was a price to pay, I told you. You have paid it. Look."

  Mr. Aquila held up a hand mirror. Halsyon glanced into it, then started and stared. A fifty-year-old face stared back at him: lined, hardened, solid, determined. Halsyon leaped to his feet.

  "Gently, gently," Mr. Aquila admonished. "It is not so bad. It is damned good. You are still thirty-three in age of physique. You have lost none of your life. . . only all of your youth. What have you lost? A pretty face to lure young girls? Is that why you are wild?"

  "Christ!" Halsyon cried.

  "All right. Still gently, my child. Here you are, purged, disillusioned, unhappy, bewildered, one foot on the hard road to maturity. Would you like this to have happened or not have happened? Sí. I can do. This can never have happened. Spurlos versenkt. It is ten seconds from your escape. You can have your pretty young face back. You can be recaptured. You can return to the safe ulcer of the womb . . . a child again. Would you like same?"

  "You can't."

  "Sauve qui peut, my Pike's Peak. I can. There is no end to the 15,000 angstrom band."

  "Damn you! Are you Satan? Lucifer? Only the devil could have such powers."

  "Or angels, my old."

  "You don't look like an angel. You look like Satan."

  "Ah? Ha? But Satan was an angel before he fell. He has many relations on high. Surely there are family resemblances. God damn." Mr. Aquila stopped laughing. He leaned across the desk and the sprightliness was gone from his face. Only the bitterness remained. "Shall I tell you who I am, my chicken? Shall I explain why one unguarded look from this phizz toppled you over the brink?"

  Halsyon nodded, unable to speak.

  "I am a scoundrel, a black sheep, a scapegrace, a blackguard. I am a remittance man. Yes. God damn! I am a remittance man." Mr. Aquila's eyes turned into wounds. "By your standards I am the great man of infinite power and variety. So was the remittance man from Europe to naïve natives on the beaches of Tahiti. Eh? And so am I to you as I comb the beaches of the stars for a little amusement, a little hope, a little joy to while away the lonely years of my exile. . . .

  "I am bad," Mr. Aquila said in a voice of chilling desperation. "I am rotten. There is no place in my home that can tolerate me. They pay me to stay away. And there are moments, unguarded, when my sickness and my despair fill my eyes and strike terror into your innocent souls. As I strike terror into you now. Yes?"

  Halsyon nodded again.

  "Be guided by me. It was the child in Solon Aquila that destroyed him and led him into the sickness that destroyed his life. Oui, I too suffer from baby fantasies from which I cannot escape. Do not make the same mistake. I beg of you. . ." Mr. Aquila glanced at his wristwatch and leaped up. The sprightly returned to his manner. "Jeez. It's late. Time to make up your mind, old bourbon and soda. Which will it be? Old face or pretty face? The reality of dreams or the dream of reality?"

  'How many decisions did you say we have to make in a lifetime?"

  "Five million two hundred and seventy-one thousand and nine. Give or take a thousand. God damn."

  "And which one is this for me?"

  "Ah? Vérité sans peur. The two million six hundred and thirty-five thousand five hundred and fourth . . . offhand."

  "But it's the big one."

  "They are all big." Mr. Aquila stepped to the door, placed his hand on the buttons of a rather complicated switch and cocked an eye at Halsyon.

  "Voilà tout" he said. "It rests with you."

  "I'll take it the hard way." Halsyon decided.

  * * *

  Adam & No Eve

  Krane knew this must be the seacoast. Instinct told him; but more than instinct. the few shreds of knowledge that clung to his torn, feverish brain told him; the stars that had shown at night through the rare breaks in the clouds, and his compass that still pointed a trembling finger north. That was strangest of all, Krane thought. Though a welter of chaos, the Earth still retained its polarity.

  It was no longer a coast; there was no longer any sea. Only the fain
t line of what had been a cliff, stretching north and south for endless miles. A line of gray ash. The same gray ash and cinders that lay behind him; the same gray ash that stretched before him. Fine silt, knee-deep, that swirled up at every motion and choked him. Cinders that scudded in dense mighty clouds when the mad winds blew. Cinders that were churned to viscous mud when the frequent rains fell.

  The sky was jet overhead. The black clouds rode high and were pierced with shafts of sunlight that marched swiftly over the Earth. Where the light struck a cinder storm, it was filled with gusts of dancing, gleaming particles. Where it played through rain it brought the arches of rainbows into being. Rain fell; cinder storms blew; light thrust down—together, alternately and continually in a jigsaw of black and white violence. So it had been for months. So it was over every mile of the broad Earth.

  Krane passed the edge of the ashen cliffs and began crawling down the even slope that had once been the ocean bed. He had been traveling so long that all sense of pain had left him. He braced elbows and dragged his body forward. Then he brought his right knee under him and reached forward with elbows again. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee— He had forgotten what it was to walk.

  Life, he thought dazedly, is wonderful. It adapts itself to anything. If it must crawl, it crawls. Callus forms on the elbows and knees. The neck and shoulders toughen. The nostrils learn to snort away the ashes before they inhale. The bad leg swells and festers. It numbs, and presently it will rot and fall off.

  "I beg pardon," Krane said, "I didn't quite get that—"

  He peered up at the tall figure before him and tried to understand the words. It was Hallmyer. He wore his stained lab jacket and his gray hair was awry. Hallmyer stood delicately on top of the ashes and Krane wondered why he could see the scudding cinder clouds through his body.

  "How do you like your world, Stephen?" Hallmyer asked. Krane shook his head miserably.

  "Not very pretty, eh?" said Hallmyer. "Look around you. Dust, that's all; dust and ashes. Crawl, Stephen, crawl. You'll find nothing but dust and ashes—"

  Hallmyer produced a goblet of water from nowhere. It was clear and cold. Krane could see the fine mist of dew on its surface and his mouth was suddenly coated with dry grit.

  "Hallmyer!" he cried. He tried to get to his feet and reach for the water, but the jolt of pain in his right leg warned him. He crouched back.

  Hallmyer sipped and then spat in his face. The water felt warm.

  "Keep crawling," said Hallmyer bitterly. "Crawl round and round the face of the Earth. You'll find nothing but dust and ashes—" He emptied the goblet on the ground before Krane. "Keep crawling. How many miles? Figure it out for yourself. Pi-R-Square. The radius is eight thousand or so—"

  He was gone, jacket and goblet. Krane realized that rain was falling again. He pressed his face into the warm sodden cinder mud, opened his mouth and tried to suck the moisture. He groaned and presently began crawling.

  There was an instinct that drove him on. He had to get somewhere. It was associated, he knew, with the sea—with the edge of the sea. At the shore of the sea something waited for him. Something that would help him understand all this. He had to get to the sea—that is, if there was a sea any more.

  The thundering rain beat his back like heavy planks. Krane paused and yanked the knapsack around to his side where he probed in it with one hand. It contained exactly three things. A pistol, a bar of chocolate and a can of peaches. All that was left of two months' supplies. The chocolate was pulpy and spoiled. Krane knew he had best eat it before all value rotted away. But in another day he would lack the strength to open the can. He pulled it out and attacked it with the opener. By the time he had pierced and pried away a flap of tin, the rain had passed.

  As he munched the fruit and sipped the juice, he watched the wall of rain marching before him down the slope of the ocean bed. Torrents of water were gushing through the mud. Small channels had already been cut—channels that would be new rivers some day. A day he would never see. A day that no living thing would ever see. As he flipped the empty can aside, Krane thought: The last living thing on Earth eats its last meal. Metabolism plays its last act.

  Wind would follow the rain. In the endless weeks that he had been crawling, he had learned that. Wind would come in a few minutes and flog him with its clouds of cinders and ashes. He crawled forward, bleary eyes searching the flat gray miles for cover.

  Evelyn tapped his shoulder.

  Krane knew it was she before he turned his head. She stood alongside, fresh and gay in her bright dress, but her lovely face was puckered with alarm.

  "Stephen," she cried, "you've got to hurry!"

  He could only admire the way her smooth honey hair waved to her shoulders.

  "Oh, darling!" she said, "you've been hurt!" Her quick gentle hands touched his legs and back. Krane nodded.

  "Got it landing," he said. "I wasn't used to a parachute. I always thought you came down gently—like plumping onto a bed. But the gray earth came up at me like a fist—And Umber was fighting around in my arms. I couldn't let him drop, could I?"

  "Of course not, dear—" Evelyn said.

  "So I just held on to him and tried to get my legs under me," Krane said. "And then something smashed my legs and side—"

  He paused, wondering how much she knew of what really had happened. He didn't want to frighten her.

  "Evelyn, darling—" he said, trying to reach up his arms. "No dear," she said. She looked back in fright.

  "You've got to hurry. You've got to watch out behind!"

  "The cinder storms?" He grimaced. "I've been through them before."

  "Not the storms!" Evelyn cried. "Something else. Oh, Stephen—"

  Then she was gone, but Krane knew she had spoken the truth. There was something behind—something that had been following him all those weeks. Far in the back of his mind he had sensed the menace. It was closing in on him like a shroud. He shook his head. Somehow that was impossible. He was the last living thing on Earth. How could there be a menace?

  The wind roared behind him, and an instant later came the heavy clouds of cinders and ashes. They lashed over him, biting his skin. With dimming eyes, he saw the way they coated the mud and covered it with a fine dry carpet. Krane drew his knees under him and covered his head with his arms. With the knapsack as a pillow, he prepared to wait out the storm. It would pass as quickly as the rain.

  The storm whipped up a great bewilderment in his sick head. Like a child he pushed at the pieces of his memory, trying to fit them together. Why was Hallmyer so bitter toward him? It couldn't have been that argument, could it?

  What argument?

  Why, that one before all this happened.

  Oh, that!

  Abruptly, the pieces fit themselves together.

  Krane stood alongside the sleek lines of his ship and admired it tremendously. The roof of the shed had been removed and the nose of the ship hoisted so that it rested on a cradle pointed toward the sky. A workman was carefully burnishing the inner surfaces of the rocket jets.

  The muffled sounds of an argument came from within the ship and then a heavy clanking. Krane ran up the short iron ladder to the port and thrust his head inside. A few feet beneath him, two men were buckling the long tanks of ferrous solution into place.

  "Easy there," Krane called. "Want to knock the ship apart?"

  One looked up and grinned. Krane knew what he was thinking. That the ship would tear itself apart.

  Everyone said that. Everyone except Evelyn. She had faith in him. Hallmyer never said it either. But Hallmyer thought he was crazy in another way. As he descended the ladder, Krane saw Hallmyer come into the shed, lab jacket flying.

  "Speak of the devil!" Krane muttered.

  Hallmyer began shouting as soon as he saw Krane. "Now listen—"

  "Not all over again," Krane said.

  Hallmyer dug a sheaf of papers out of his pocket and waved it under Krane's nose.

  "I've been up half the night," he
said, "working it through again. I tell you I'm right. I'm absolutely right—"

  Krane looked at the tight-written equations and then at Hallmyer's bloodshot eyes. The man was half mad with fear.

  "For the last time," Hallmyer went on. "You're using your new catalyst on iron solution. All right. I grant that it's a miraculous discovery. I give you credit for that."

  Miraculous was hardly the word for it. Krane knew that without conceit, for he realized he'd only stumbled on it. You had to stumble on a catalyst that would induce atomic disintegration of iron and give 10 X 1010 foot-pounds of energy for every gram of fuel. No man was smart enough to think all that up by himself.

  "You don't think I'll make it?" Krane asked.

  "To the moon? Around the moon? Maybe. You've got a fifty-fifty chance." Hallmyer ran fingers through his lank hair. "But for God's sake, Stephen, I'm not worried about you. If you want to kill yourself, that's your own affair. It's the Earth I'm worried about—"

  "Nonsense. Go home and sleep it off."

  "Look"—Hallmyer pointed to the sheets of paper with a shaky hand—"no matter how you work the feed and mixing system you can't get one hundred percent efficiency in the mixing and discharge."

  "That's what makes it a fifty-fifty chance," Krane said. "So what's bothering you?"

  "The catalyst that will escape through the rocket tubes. Do you realize what it'll do if a drop hits the Earth? It'll start a chain of iron disintegrations that'll envelope the globe. It'll reach out to every iron atom—and there's iron everywhere. There won't be any Earth left for you to return to—"

  "Listen," Krane said wearily, "we've been through all this before."

  He took Hallmyer to the base of the rocket cradle. Beneath the iron framework was a two-hundred-foot pit, fifty feet wide and lined with firebrick.

  "That's for the initial discharge flames. If any of the catalyst goes through, it'll be trapped in this pit and taken care of by the secondary reactions. Satisfied now?"

  "But while you're in flight," Hallmyer persisted, "you'll be endangering the Earth until you're beyond Roche's limit. Every drop of non-activated catalyst will eventually sink back to the ground and—"