SFF Short Stories

Youth by Isaac Asimov
Public Domain
Download “Youth” at Project Gutenberg.
Illustrations from the original publication in Space Science Fiction, May 1952.

Red and Slim found the two strange little animals the morning after
they heard the thunder sounds. They knew that they could never show
their new pets to their parents.

There was a spatter of pebbles against the window and the youngster
stirred in his sleep. Another, and he was awake.

He sat up stiffly in bed. Seconds passed while he interpreted his
strange surroundings. He wasn’t in his own home, of course. This was out
in the country. It was colder than it should be and there was green at
the window.

“Slim!”

The call was a hoarse, urgent whisper, and the youngster bounded to the
open window.

Slim wasn’t his real name, but the new friend he had met the day before
had needed only one look at his slight figure to say, “You’re Slim.” He
added, “I’m Red.”

Red wasn’t his real name, either, but its appropriateness was obvious.
They were friends instantly with the quick unquestioning friendship of
young ones not yet quite in adolescence, before even the first stains of
adulthood began to make their appearance.

Slim cried, “Hi, Red!” and waved cheerfully, still blinking the sleep
out of himself.

Red kept to his croaking whisper, “Quiet! You want to wake somebody?”

Slim noticed all at once that the sun scarcely topped the low hills in
the east, that the shadows were long and soft, and that the grass was
wet.

Slim said, more softly, “What’s the matter?”

Red only waved for him to come out.

Slim dressed quickly, gladly confining his morning wash to the momentary
sprinkle of a little lukewarm water. He let the air dry the exposed
portions of his body as he ran out, while bare skin grew wet against the
dewy grass.

Red said, “You’ve got to be quiet. If Mom wakes up or Dad or your Dad or
even any of the hands then it’ll be ‘Come on in or you’ll catch your
death of cold.’”

He mimicked voice and tone faithfully, so that Slim laughed and thought
that there had never been so funny a fellow as Red.

Slim said, eagerly, “Do you come out here every day like this, Red? Real
early? It’s like the whole world is just yours, isn’t it, Red? No one
else around and all like that.” He felt proud at being allowed entrance
into this private world.

Red stared at him sidelong. He said carelessly, “I’ve been up for hours.
Didn’t you hear it last night?”

“Hear what?”

“Thunder.”

“Was there a thunderstorm?” Slim never slept through a thunderstorm.

“I guess not. But there was thunder. I heard it, and then I went to the
window and it wasn’t raining. It was all stars and the sky was just
getting sort of almost gray. You know what I mean?”

Slim had never seen it so, but he nodded.

“So I just thought I’d go out,” said Red.

They walked along the grassy side of the concrete road that split the
panorama right down the middle all the way down to where it vanished
among the hills. It was so old that Red’s father couldn’t tell Red when
it had been built. It didn’t have a crack or a rough spot in it.

Red said, “Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure, Red. What kind of a secret?”

“Just a secret. Maybe I’ll tell you and maybe I won’t. I don’t know
yet.” Red broke a long, supple stem from a fern they passed,
methodically stripped it of its leaflets and swung what was left
whip-fashion. For a moment, he was on a wild charger, which reared and
champed under his iron control. Then he got tired, tossed the whip aside
and stowed the charger away in a corner of his imagination for future
use.

He said, “There’ll be a circus around.”

Slim said, “That’s no secret. I knew that. My Dad told me even before we
came here–”

“That’s not the secret. Fine secret! Ever see a circus?”

“Oh, sure. You bet.”

“Like it?”

“Say, there isn’t anything I like better.”

Red was watching out of the corner of his eyes again. “Ever think you
would like to be with a circus? I mean, for good?”

Slim considered, “I guess not. I think I’ll be an astronomer like my
Dad. I think he wants me to be.”

“Huh! Astronomer!” said Red.

Slim felt the doors of the new, private world closing on him and
astronomy became a thing of dead stars and black, empty space.

He said, placatingly, “A circus would be more fun.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m not. I mean it.”

Red grew argumentative. “Suppose you had a chance to join the circus
right now. What would you do?”

“I–I–”

“See!” Red affected scornful laughter.

Slim was stung. “I’d join up.”

“Go on.”

“Try me.”

Red whirled at him, strange and intense. “You meant that? You want to go
in with me?”

[Read more…]

Multivax Logo

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

This is one of those interesting golden age stories that’s part joke the way it’s built around a weird religious belief. Kind of like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld except Discworld is predicated on a gonzo reality where all of humanity’s weird beliefs are true.

Image by insspirito - Public Domain

Scientific American partnered on a writing contest for science fiction short stories inspired by the realm of quantum physics

Here is a link to the winner, “Ana” by Liam Hogan. You can read it online.

2015 Winner - “Ana”

Here is a link to all entries.

Quantum Shorts 2015

The bizarre quantum rules that govern the microscopic universe sometimes seem more like fiction than fact, even to physicists.

Pulse Trace, Public Domain, downloaded from pixabay.com
—
Library Of Man
by Larry Heyl CC BY-SA

My com buzzed. “There’s been a breakthrough down at the lab. Come at once. Our subject is dying”.

Fortunately I was on my way already. In less than a minute I flew through the door. My assistants were attaching electrodes to the subjects temples. He was 117 years old, his life force diminishing by the minute. We weren’t killing him. He was just dying. It happens to all of us.

Everthing was ready and we were waiting, drinking coffee. Then he flatlined. There was nothing for us to do except monitor our equipment. The recorder kicked in. Everything seemed to be working. Within minutes it was over. He was gone.

“Now for the test”, I said. My assistants hit the play button. In a darkened corner the hologram started. Everything was fuzzy. “Fast forward a few years”, I said.

It looked like a birthday party. Kids were sitting around the table with a birthday cake on it candles ablaze. The cake got big and the candles were extinguished. One of my assistants said, “I hope he made a wish”.

Fast forward again and we saw a soldering iron touching a circuit board. I said, “That must be his workshop where he modernized our com units.

“Bring us up to yesterday”, I said. We saw feet on a gurney being wheeled through a door. It was eerie seeing the lab appear. The very room we were standing in was duplicated by a hologram and we were looking at it.

“It worked”. We cheered. Time for some champagne.

At the time of his death his life flashed before him in a second. And we just recorded it. All of it. Now we can start building the library of man.

The EFF organized this anthology of sf short stories about the electronic frontier.
All stories are licensed with Creative Commons licenses.
“I’ve Got The Music In Me” is CC BY.
Download “Pwning Tomorrow” from the Internet Archive.

—

I’ve Got The Music In Me

by Charlie Jane Anders

“Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head, and couldn’t get it out?” The woman asking the question wore one of those new frogskin one-pieces, with false eyelashes that looked fiberoptic. She leaned on the bar in my direction.

I shrugged and drank. “Maybe, I don’t know.” I was busy obsessing about my sick dog. Moxie was my best friend, but they’d said the tests alone would cost hundreds, with no guarantee.

The woman, Mia I think, kept talking about brains that wouldn’t let go of songs. “You know how a song loops around and drowns out everything else in your skull?” I nodded, and she smiled. “Sometimes it’s like a message from your subconscious. Your brain blasts sad lyrics to wake you to a submerged depression.”

“I guess.”

“Or you could be overworked. Or sexually frustrated. It’s like an early warning system.” She beckoned another drink. The mention of sex jumped out of her wordflow like a spawning salmon. I forgot all about my dog, turned to face her.

“I see what you mean,” I said.

“They’re funny, songs. They drill into your head and form associations.” She batted those shiny lashes. “They trigger memories, just the way smells do.”

“You’re absolutely right.” I was thinking, do I have condoms?

She asked me about my past loves, and whether there were pieces of music that came unbidden to mind when I thought of them. I struggled to dredge up a memory to please this woman, her taut body so close to mine I could feel the coolness of the tiny frogs whose hides she wore.

“Yeah, now that I think about it, there was this one song…”

From Section 1923, Mental copyright enforcement field manual.
Subsection 1, Probable Cause:

Do not bring in suspects without an ironclad case, and avoid any appearance of entrapment. Do not apprehend someone merely because he/she whistles under his/her breath or bobs his/her head to music nobody else can hear. To demonstrate that someone has stored copyrighted music in his/her brain in violation of the Cranial Millenium Copyright Act, you must obtain a definitive statement, such as:

• 1) “Whenever I see the object of my smothered desire I hear “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream in my head. This is the full album version, complete with trademark guitar solo and clearly articulated rhythm track.”
• 2) “I always tune out my boss when he talks to me, and instead conjure up a near-digital-quality playback of “Bring Tha Bling Bling” by Pimpstyle in my mind. The remix with that Madonna sample.”
• 3) “Following the death of my loved one, I listened to the Parade album by Prince so many times I know the whole thing by heart now.”

Note: the above examples are illustrative and not all-encompassing. Other utterances also could prove the suspect is guilty of keeping protected music in Cranial Audio File format, as prohibited by law.
Subsection 2, Apprehending the suspect:

As soon as I admitted that yeah, that “Pimp Your Bubba” song wouldn’t stop infesting my mind no matter how much good music I fed my ears, the woman went violent. She pulled out a badge and twisted my arm behind me. Steel cinched my wrists, turned me into a perp. “You have the right,” she said.

In her car, she talked to me through a rusty mesh cordoning the back seat. “I’d put on the radio, but you might steal again.”

“What have I done?”

“Don’t pretend. Your mental piracy is blatantly illegal.”

“But everyone said that law was unenforceable—”

“I got your confession right here on tape. And we’ll get more out of you. The brain’s a computer, and yours is jam-packed with stolen goods.”

I was terrified. I could be held for days. What would happen to Moxie?

“Take my advice, kid.” We turned onto a driveway with a guard post and tilting arm. The woman showed a card and the arm rose. “Just relax and tell them everything. It’ll be fun, like a personal tour through your musical memories. Like getting stoned with a friend and digging some tunes. Then you just plea bargain and skip outta here.”

Subsection 3, Questioning the suspect:

Ask questions like:

• What sort of music did you listen to in high school?
• Here is a piece of your clothing which we confiscated. We’ll give it back if you tell us what song it brings to mind.
• I can see you’re angry. Is there an angry song in your thoughts?
• Complete this guitar riff for me. Na na na NAH na na…

I kept asking over and over, whom have I hurt? Who suffers if I have recall of maybe a hundred songs? They had answers—the record companies, the musicians, the media, all suffered from my self-reliance. I didn’t buy it.
“This whole thing is bullshit,” I said.

The two guys in shades looked at each other. “Guy’s got a right to face his accuser,” one said.

“You figure it’s time to bring in the injured party?” the other said.

They both nodded. They took their gray-suited selves out of the interrogation cube. I squirmed in my chair, arms manacled and head in a vice.

They were gone for hours. I tried to relax, but the restraints kinked my circulation.
I heard noises outside the door. A scrawny guy with a fuschia pompadour and sideburns wandered in. He wore a t-shirt with a picture of himself, which made him easier to recognize because I’d seen that picture a million times.

“You’re Dude Boy,” I said.

“Pizzeace,” said Dude Boy. “You been ripping me off.”

“No I haven’t.” I fidgeted in bondage. “I don’t even like you.” I remembered when Dude Boy was on the cover of every magazine from Teen Beat to Rolling Stone, and that fucking song was on the air every minute. “Your song sucked aardvark tit. They played it so often I started hearing it when I brushed my teeth, which really—” Oh. Shit.

“See? You admit it. Thief.”

“But—”

“And you never bought a copy, ya?”

“Yeah, but—It sucked, man.”

“It was just so catchy and hooky, ya? You had to have it, Mr. Sticky Fingers.”

“Catchy’s one word for it. You could also try, ‘annoyingly repetitive.’ How many times can you say ‘You’re So Cute I Wanna Puke’ in one song?”

“That’s the hook, bo.”

“So I always wondered what happened to you after that one hit. You dropped out of sight.”

The agate eyes I remembered from VH1 came close. “You killed my career, bo. You and all the others who used my song for your skull soundtracks until you got sick of me. I didn’t ask to have my creation overexposed in your noggin. It’s all your fault.”

“So now you’re working for these creeps?”

“It’s a job until reality TV calls.”
He kept staring. He’d always looked goofy, but never before scary. “We’re like intimate, ya know. I seduced ya with my hookitude, and in return you copped a feel of the DB while I slept. It’s good to be close at last.” For a moment I feared he’d kiss me. I tried to turn away, but no dice.

Then at the last second he whipped around and kicked the wall. “You kidnapped my baby!” He turned back. Spit painted my cheeks. “So here’s the deal. We take this thang to court, I nail your colon to the wall. Or you cop a plea. Small fine, plus an implant. You get off lightly, bo.”

“Implant?”

“Yes or no?

“What implant?

“Last chance. Yes or no?”

Most of the time, the implant doesn’t bother me. If I get emotional, like when I buried Moxie, it kicks in just as a tune swells inside me. Then instead of the music, I hear Dude Boy screaming, “Thief!” for like thirty seconds. It really screwed me up this one time I was giving a presentation at work. I was one of the first to get implanted, but now they’re everywhere. It’s become such a cultural phenom that a new hit song samples the sound the implant makes. They had to pay Dude Boy royalties, of course.

—

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All the Birds in the Sky, a novel coming in early 2016 from Tor Books. She is the editor in chief of io9.com and the organizer of the Writers With Drinks reading series. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Tin House, ZYZZYVA, and several anthologies. Her novelette Six Months, Three Days won a Hugo award.

Illustration from the 1918 edition of “The Madman: His Parables and Poems” by Kahlil Gibran

I’ve always been mad, I know I’ve been mad, like the most of us are…very hard to explain why you’re mad, even if you’re not mad…

Nick Mason has been given credit for this group of words, but in all honesty it could have been me that said these words and as a matter of fact I have said them on more that one occasion.

I am, of course, a madman. Not from across the water but from right here in this state of Arkansas, in this state of confusion. But how is it that a man becomes a madman? A madman has no apparent attachments.

The story by the author of “The Prophet”, Kahlil Gibran tells us a story of a madman it goes like this.

How I Became A Madman

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

Read The Madman: His Parables and Poems by Kahlil Gibran at Project Gutenberg.

Introduction by Rick Bowen. CC BY-SA

Photo by Michael Palmer - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Roast Goat
by Larry Heyl
CC BY-SA

Mikhael ran swiftly through the dawn, knees lifted high, feet barely
tapping the ground. He swerved quickly avoiding rocks and sticks
without thinking or looking. The cold air cut his lungs as he gasped
deeply.

He entered the house running through the kitchen door and was brought
up short by the table. He leaned on it unable to catch his breath or
speak. His wife, Elena, brought him some water. The children ran down
the stairs sleepybugs still in their eyes. One look at their mother
told them they’d best be still.

“I saw them. The soldiers. Over the hill.” he panted out. “We’ve got
to hide the goats. They’ll be here soon.”

Elena spoke sharply to the eldest boy. “Jackson, you and Kelly take
the dogs and herd the goats into the back woods. You know where to
hide them in that thicket.”

“Leave the old billy,” said Mikhael. “If the soldiers find him they
might not look for the others. I’ll tell them we had to eat the others
because of the hard winter.”

Jackson and Kelly flew out the door and were gone in a flurry of
waving hands, barking dogs, and running goats. Elena set the younger
children down at the table and pulled out her largest pot quickly
filling it with water, turnips, and potatos. Mikhael went out to the
barn where he hurriedly hit the feed bags and his newer tools under
the hay. He took the billy into a stall and fed him from the remaining
bag of feed what he feared would be his last meal. The winter had been
hard and the soldiers would be hungry.

Back in the house the water was barely boiling when the soldiers came
over the top of the hill. They weren’t marching smartly and looking
sharp like they had a few years back. Before the battles they bristled
with pride and spit and polish. Now they looked a ragged bunch with
hunger in their eyes.

There were less then a dozen men led by a Sargeant. No officers. That
worried Mikhael.

He met them in the yard. “It’s been a hard winter.”, he said to the Sargeant.

The Sargeant didn’t respond ignoring Mikhael and signaling his troops
to check the barn. He walked to the house and into the kitchen.
Mikhael followed.

Elena met them at the door. “You must be hungry.” she said. “I am
fixing soup for my family but you are welcome to it.”

The Sargeant snapped his bayonet off his rifle and stabbed a potato.
It was still raw but he ate it anyway. “Don’t you have any real food.”
he said. “We need to camp and recuperate.”

Mikhael thought fast. “The other soldiers wiped us clean. You know the
ones.”, he said and he spat on the floor.

“When were they here?” asked the Sargeant glancing out through the door.

“Just last week. They said they’d be back. I wish you would stay and
protect us.”, Mikhael answered. The sargeant gave them a worried look.

Out in the yard a soldier shouted, “We found this old goat. Should we
start a fire and roast him?”

“We can’t stay long enough for that.”, ordered the sargeant. “You!”,
he pointed at Elena, “Take that soup out to the men.”

“Can I feed my children?” asked Elena.

The Sargeant snapped his bayonet back onto his rifle. “Your children
can eat after we’ve gone.”, he said.

Mikhael stood by his wife in front of the children. “You’d best do as
he asks.”, he said.

Elena took the half cooked soup out into the yard and then retreated
back into the kitchen scared by the ravenous soldiers. The sargeant
went out to eat with the men.

Mikhael went and stood by the Sargeant. “Can you stay then. I’m afraid
those other soldiers will be coming back. If you want me to I’ll kill
this goat.”

The Sargeant ignored him. After the last potato was gone he led his
men out of there.

“Let’s make some time.” he shouted. “They are expecting us in
Springfield in the morning.”

Mikhael watched them leave scratching the old billy’s ears. He
whispered to the goat, “I’m glad you can’t understand what I just said
old boy or you wouldn’t be so trusting.”

Elena sent the younger children off to the back woods for Jackson and
Kelly. Then she came and stood beside Mikhael watching the soldiers
trudge off in the distance.

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCRIMSHAW ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber’s Note:

This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction September
1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note. Subscript
characters are shown within {braces}.

The old man just wanted to get back his
memory–and the methods he used were
gently hellish, from the viewpoint of the
others….

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by Freas

Pop Young was the one known man who could stand life on the surface of
the Moon’s far side, and, therefore, he occupied the shack on the Big
Crack’s edge, above the mining colony there. Some people said that no
normal man could do it, and mentioned the scar of a ghastly head-wound
to explain his ability. One man partly guessed the secret, but only
partly. His name was Sattell and he had reason not to talk. Pop Young
alone knew the whole truth, and he kept his mouth shut, too. It wasn’t
anybody else’s business.

The shack and the job he filled were located in the medieval notion of
the physical appearance of hell. By day the environment was heat and
torment. By night–lunar night, of course, and lunar day–it was
frigidity and horror. Once in two weeks Earth-time a rocketship came
around the horizon from Lunar City with stores for the colony deep
underground. Pop received the stores and took care of them. He handed
over the product of the mine, to be forwarded to Earth. The rocket went
away again. Come nightfall Pop lowered the supplies down the long cable
into the Big Crack to the colony far down inside, and freshened up the
landing field marks with magnesium marking-powder if a rocket-blast had
blurred them. That was fundamentally all he had to do. But without him
the mine down in the Crack would have had to shut down.

The Crack, of course, was that gaping rocky fault which stretches nine
hundred miles, jaggedly, over the side of the Moon that Earth never
sees. There is one stretch where it is a yawning gulf a full half-mile
wide and unguessably deep. Where Pop Young’s shack stood it was only a
hundred yards, but the colony was a full mile down, in one wall. There
is nothing like it on Earth, of course. When it was first found,
scientists descended into it to examine the exposed rock-strata and
learn the history of the Moon before its craters were made. But they
found more than history. They found the reason for the colony and the
rocket landing field and the shack.

The reason for Pop was something else.

The shack stood a hundred feet from the Big Crack’s edge. It looked like
a dust-heap thirty feet high, and it was. The outside was surface
moondust, piled over a tiny dome to be insulation against the cold of
night and shadow and the furnace heat of day. Pop lived in it all alone,
and in his spare time he worked industriously at recovering some missing
portions of his life that Sattell had managed to take away from him.

He thought often of Sattell, down in the colony underground. There were
galleries and tunnels and living-quarters down there. There were
air-tight bulkheads for safety, and a hydroponic garden to keep the air
fresh, and all sorts of things to make life possible for men under if
not on the Moon.

But it wasn’t fun, even underground. In the Moon’s slight gravity, a man
is really adjusted to existence when he has a well-developed case of
agoraphobia. With such an aid, a man can get into a tiny, coffinlike
cubbyhole, and feel solidity above and below and around him, and happily
tell himself that it feels delicious. Sometimes it does.

But Sattell couldn’t comfort himself so easily. He knew about Pop, up on
the surface. He’d shipped out, whimpering, to the Moon to get far away
from Pop, and Pop was just about a mile overhead and there was no way to
get around him. It was difficult to get away from the mine, anyhow. It
doesn’t take too long for the low gravity to tear a man’s nerves to
shreds. He has to develop kinks in his head to survive. And those
kinks–

The first men to leave the colony had to be knocked cold and shipped
out unconscious. They’d been underground–and in low gravity–long
enough to be utterly unable to face the idea of open spaces. Even now
there were some who had to be carried, but there were some tougher ones
who were able to walk to the rocketship if Pop put a tarpaulin over
their heads so they didn’t have to see the sky. In any case Pop was
essential, either for carrying or guidance.

* * * * *
[Read more…]

The thing that got me loving some R. A. Salvatore is that like Fritz Lieber his work reminds me of Dungeons and Dragons quests. Fritz Lieber was inspirational for Gary Gygax while he was creating D&D. R. A. Salvatore wrote Forgotten Realms novels and his work is inspired by game play.

Read a pdf of The Ministry, Chapter One of Luthien’s Gamble hosted on R. A. Salvatore’s website. Although this is Chapter One it is also a self contained short story.

There are more excerpts from Salvatore’s novels also available on his home page, including some featuring his most famous character Drizzt Do’Urden.

Dragon In Cave from Sintel CC-BY
© copyright Blender Foundation | www.sintel.org
colorized by Gimp GPL

Gimcrack’s Cup
by Larry Heyl
CC BY

There it was, spread out in front of me. The dragon’s horde. So beautiful, all the gold and jewels. It would be perfect if it wasn’t for the giant red sprawled across the treasure snoring.

Focus, I told myself. Where’s the cup? The dwarves were paying me for one thing and one thing only, Gimcrack’s Cup, their holy chalice, and of course it was made of gold so of course the dragon stole it.

I knew from experience that I could spend through any treasure I could steal and I made my share of enemies learning this. The dwarves were offering an annuity and safe harbor. I had to get that cup.

I crept slowly, keeping in the shadows around the edge of the cave. How can I see one cup piled amongst all that gold? Sharp eyes, I thought. Stay focused. Move slowly.

When I got to the far side of the cave I was looking right up the sleeping dragons nostrils. One puff and I’d be toast. But there it was. About half way up the mound. Shining with its own light and cracked right down one side. If you poured ale into Gimcrack’s Cup it should leak right out but instead it stayed everful as long as you were drinking from it. No wonder the dwarves worshipped it.

But how do I get it from the dragon? I’ll draw my magic sword and cut his head off. But I’m no warrior and I have no magic sword. I’ll cast an illusion and distract him. But I’m no illusionist and I know no spells. I know! I’m a thief. I’ll creep up there and steal it from under his nose. But that might lead to a fiery death. I stood paralyzed looking right at the dragon, scared shitless.

He opened one eye. “Human, how good to see you. Just in time for breakfast. Not much of a bite but so tasty, roasted”.

“Wait!” I cried. “Don’t kill me. The dwarves sent me.”

“Dwarves” shouted the dragon. “Even less of a morsel and kind of tough. I’d rather eat you.”

Impending death and the thought of dwarves gave me an inspiration. “I tell you what. Before breakfast how about a little drinking competition? Since dwarves sent me we’ll have a quaffing contest. We can each quaff a cup of ale and then another. I’m sure I can outdrink you.”

“Ho, ho, ho.” laughed the dragon. “Puny human you will never outdrink a giant red. All that alcohol will only tenderize you. So I say yes! A quaffing contest.”

I reached down at me feet and grabbed a bejeweled chalice. “I’ll drink from this.” Walking boldly through the treasure toward the dragon I scooped up Gimcrack’s Cup. “And you’ll drink from this.” I handed him the cup.

“Ho ho ho.” laughed the dragon. “You’re going to get me drunk with a cracked cup?” He dragged up a barrel of lager and topped of my chalice the ale running down the sides and soaking my sleeve. “You first human.”

I looked him in the eye and said, “This is how you quaff. Turn it up and don’t turn it down until it’s empty.” I turned up the chalice and went glug, glug, glug swallowing most of it but letting some run down my beard for good form.

The dragon was ready. He topped off Gimcrack’s Cup not even noticing that the ale didn’t even leak. He turned it up and started pouring it down his throat. It kept pouring and pouring the fine strong ale. Some of it started running down his muzzle but he wouldn’t give up. He drank and he drank until he fell over sideways. When he stopped drinking Gimcrack’s Cup emptied onto his face.

The giant red was so out of it that he wasn’t even snoring. I carefully pried the cup from his talons. I threw it and the chalice into my pack. On the way out I added a few choice items.

Even with an annuity I’m going to need a little bit of spending money.

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXILE FROM SPACE ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber’s Note:

This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe November 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

[“They” worried about the impression she’d make. Who could
imagine that she’d fall in love, passionately, the way others of her
blood must have done?]

Exile From Space

by … Judith Merril

Who was this strange girl who had been born in this
place–and still it wasn’t her home?…

* * * * *
I don’t know where they got the car. We made three or four stops
before the last one, and they must have picked it up one of those
times. Anyhow, they got it, but they had to make a license plate,
because it had the wrong kind on it.

They made me some clothes, too–a skirt and blouse and shoes that
looked just like the ones we saw on television. They couldn’t make me
a lipstick or any of those things, because there was no way to figure
out just what the chemical composition was. And they decided I’d be as
well off without any driver’s license or automobile registration as I
would be with papers that weren’t exactly perfect, so they didn’t
bother about making those either.

They were worried about what to do with my hair, and even thought
about cutting it short, so it would look more like the women on
television, but that was one time I was way ahead of them. I’d seen
more shows than anyone else, of course–I watched them almost every
minute, from the time they told me I was going–and there was one
where I’d seen a way to make braids and put them around the top of
your head. It wasn’t very comfortable, but I practiced at it until it
looked pretty good.

They made me a purse, too. It didn’t have anything in it except the
diamonds, but the women we saw always seemed to carry them, and they
thought it might be a sort of superstition or ritual necessity, and
that we’d better not take a chance on violating anything like that.

They made me spend a lot of time practicing with the car, because
without a license, I couldn’t take a chance on getting into any
trouble. I must have put in the better part of an hour starting and
stopping and backing that thing, and turning it around, and weaving
through trees and rocks, before they were satisfied.

Then, all of a sudden, there was nothing left to do except go. They
made me repeat everything one more time, about selling the diamonds,
and how to register at the hotel, and what to do if I got into
trouble, and how to get in touch with them when I wanted to come back.
Then they said good-bye, and made me promise not to stay too long,
and said they’d keep in touch the best they could. And then I got in
the car, and drove down the hill into town.

I knew they didn’t want to let me go. They were worried, maybe even a
little afraid I wouldn’t want to come back, but mostly worried that I
might say something I shouldn’t, or run into some difficulties they
hadn’t anticipated. And outside of that, they knew they were going to
miss me. Yet they’d made up their minds to it; they planned it this
way, and they felt it was the right thing to do, and certainly they’d
put an awful lot of thought and effort and preparation into it.

If it hadn’t been for that, I might have turned back at the last
minute. Maybe they were worried; but I was petrified. Only of
course, I wanted to go, really. I couldn’t help being curious, and it
never occurred to me then that I might miss them. It was the first
time I’d ever been out on my own, and they’d promised me, for years
and years, as far back as I could remember, that some day I’d go back,
like this, by myself. But….

Going back, when you’ve been away long enough, is not so much a
homecoming as a dream deja vu. And for me, at least, the dream was
not entirely a happy one. Everything I saw or heard or touched had a
sense of haunting familiarity, and yet of wrongness, too–almost a
nightmare feeling of the oppressively inevitable sequence of events,
of faces and features and events just not-quite-remembered and
not-quite-known.

I was born in this place, but it was not my home. Its people were not
mine; its ways were not mine. All I knew of it was what I had been
told, and what I had seen for myself these last weeks of preparation,
on the television screen. And the dream-feeling was intensified, at
first, by the fact that I did not know why I was there. I knew it
had been planned this way, and I had been told it was necessary to
complete my education. Certainly I was aware of the great effort that
had been made to make the trip possible. But I did not yet understand
just why.

Perhaps it was just that I had heard and watched and thought and
dreamed too much about this place, and now I was actually there, the
reality was–not so much a disappointment as–just sort of unreal.
Different from what I knew when I didn’t know.

The road unwound in a spreading spiral down the mountainside. Each
time I came round, I could see the city below, closer and larger, and
less distinct. From the top, with the sunlight sparkling on it, it had
been a clean and gleaming pattern of human civilization. Halfway down,
the symmetry was lost, and the smudge and smoke began to show.

Halfway down, too, I began to pass places of business: restaurants and
gas stations and handicraft shops. I wanted to stop. For half an hour
now I had been out on my own, and I still hadn’t seen any of the
people, except the three who had passed me behind the wheels of their
cars, going up the road. One of the shops had a big sign on it, “COME
IN AND LOOK AROUND.” But I kept going. One thing I understood was that
it was absolutely necessary to have money, and that I must stop
nowhere, and attempt nothing, till after I had gotten some.

Farther down, the houses began coming closer together, and then the
road stopped winding around, and became almost straight. By that time,
I was used to the car, and didn’t have to think about it much, and for
a little while I really enjoyed myself. I could see into the houses
sometimes, through the windows, and at one, a woman was opening the
door, coming out with a broom in her hand. There were children playing
in the yards. There were cars of all kinds parked around the houses,
and I saw dogs and a couple of horses, and once a whole flock of
chickens.

But just where it was beginning to get really interesting, when I was
coming into the little town before the city, I had to stop watching it
all, because there were too many other people driving. That was when I
began to understand all the fuss about licenses and tests and traffic
regulations. Watching it on television, it wasn’t anything like being
in the middle of it!

Of course, what I ran into there was really nothing; I found that out
when I got into the city itself. But just at first, it seemed pretty
bad. And I still don’t understand it. These people are pretty bright
mechanically. You’d think anybody who could build an automobile–let
alone an atom bomb–could drive one easily enough. Especially with a
lifetime to learn in. Maybe they just like to live dangerously….

It was a good thing, though, that I’d already started watching out for
what the other drivers were doing when I hit my first red light. That
was something I’d overlooked entirely, watching street scenes on the
screen, and I guess they’d never noticed either. They must have taken
it for granted, the way I did, that people stopped their cars out of
courtesy from time to time to let the others go by. As it was, I
stopped because the others did, and just happened to notice that they
began again when the light changed to green. It’s really a very good
system; I don’t see why they don’t have them at all the intersections.

[Read more…]

Cinema Usher by Dave Meier

Picography is another good source for public domain photos. I found Dave Meier’s “Heron In A Boat” photo there and I couldn’t pass up this photo by Dave, “Cinema Usher”. Thanks to Dave Meier for making his photos public domain and thanks to Picography for hosting them.