The Second Fredric Brown Megapack: 27 Classic Science Fiction Stories Read online

  The Doberman said, “So you can see that it is not purely coincidence that we Bems should manifest ourselves to you who are a writer of what I see you call science-fiction. We studied many minds and yours was the first one we found capable of accepting the premise of visitors from Andromeda. Had Four here, for example, tried to explain things to the woman whose mind he studied, she would probably have gone insane.”

  “She sho would,” said the squirrel.

  A chicken thrust its head through the hole in the screen, clucked, and pulled its head out again.

  “Please let Three in,” said the Doberman. “I fear that you will not be able to communicate directly with Three. He has found that subjectively to modify the throat structure of the creature he inhabits in order to enable it to talk would be a quite involved process. It does not matter. He can communicate telepathically with one of us, and we can relay his comments to you. At the moment he sends you his greetings and asks that you open the door.”

  The clucking of the chicken (it was a big black hen, Elmo saw) sounded angry and Elmo said, “Better open the door, Toots.”

  Dorothy Scott got off his lap and opened the door. She turned a dismayed face to Elmo and then to the Doberman.

  “There’s a cow coming down the road,” she said. “Do you mean to tell me that she—”

  “He,” the Doberman corrected her. “Yes, that will be Two. And since your language is completely inadequate, in that it has only two genders, you may as well call all of us ‘he’; it will save trouble. Of course, we are five different sexes, as I explained.”

  “You didn’t explain,” said Elmo, looking interested.

  Dorothy glowered at Elmo. “He’d better not. Five different sexes! All living together in one spaceship. I suppose it takes all five of you to—uh—”

  “Exactly,” said the Doberman. “And now if you will please open the door for Two, I’m sure that—”

  “I will not! Have a cow in here? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “We could make you so,” said the dog. Elmo looked from the dog to his wife.

  “You’d better open the door, Dorothy,” he advised.

  “Excellent advice,” said the Doberman. “We are not, incidentally, going to impose on your hospitality, nor will we ask you to do anything unreasonable.” Dorothy opened the screen door and the cow clumped in.

  He looked at Elmo and said, “Hi, Mac. What’s cookin’?”

  Elmo closed his eyes.

  The Doberman asked the cow, “Where’s Five? Have you been in touch with him?”

  “Yeah,” said the cow. “He’s comin’. The guy I looked over was a bindlestiff, One. What are these mugs?”

  “The one with the pants is a writer,” said the dog. “The one with the skirt is his wife.”

  “What’s a wife?” asked the cow. He looked at Dorothy and leered. “I like skirts better,” he said. “Hiya, Babe.”

  Elmo got up out of his chair, glaring at the cow. “Listen, you—” That was as far as he got. He dissolved into laughter, almost hysterical laughter, and sank down into the chair again.

  Dorothy looked at him indignantly. “Elmo! Are you going to let a cow—” She almost strangled on the word as she caught Elmo’s eye, and she, too, started laughing. She fell into Elmo’s lap so hard that he grunted.

  The Doberman was laughing, too, his long pink tongue lolling out. “I’m glad you people have a sense of humor,” he said with approval. “In fact, that is one reason we chose you. But let us be serious a moment.”

  There wasn’t any laughter in his voice now. He said, “Neither of you will be harmed, but you will be watched. Do not go near the phone or leave the house while we are here. Is that understood?”

  “How long are you going to be here?” Elmo asked. “We have food for only a few days.”

  “That will be long enough. We will be able to make a new spaceship within a matter of hours. I see that that amazes you; I shall explain that we can work in a slower dimension.”

  “I see,” said Elmo.

  “What is he talking about, Elmo?” Dorothy demanded.

  “A slower dimension,” said Elmo. “I used it in a story once myself. You go into another dimension where the time rate is different; spend a month there and come back and you get back only a few minutes or hours after you left, by time in your own dimension.”

  “And you invented it? Elmo, how wonderful!”

  Elmo grinned at the Doberman. He said, “That’s all you want—to let you stay here until you get your new ship built? And to let you alone and not notify anybody that you’re here?”

  “Exactly.” The dog appeared to beam with delight. “And we will not inconvenience you unnecessarily. But you will be guarded. Five or I will do that.”

  “Five? Where is he?”

  “Don’t be alarmed; he is under your chair at the moment, but he will not harm you. You didn’t see him come in a moment ago through the hole in the screen. Five, meet Elmo and Dorothy Scott. Don’t call her Toots.”

  There was a rattle under the chair. Dorothy screamed and pulled her feet up into Elmo’s lap. Elmo tried to put his there too, with confusing results.

  There was hissing laughter from under the chair. A sibilant voice said, “Don’t worry, folks. I didn’t know until I read in your minds just now that shaking my tail like that was a warning that I was about to—Think of the word for me—thank you. To strike.” A five-foot-long rattlesnake crawled out from under the chair and curled up beside the Doberman.

  “Five won’t harm you,” said the Doberman. “None of us will.”

  “We sho won’t,” said the squirrel.

  The cow leaned against the wall, crossed its front legs and said, “That’s right, Mac.” He, or she, or it leered at Dorothy. It said, “An’ Babe, you don’t need to worry about what you’re worryin’ about. I’m housebroke.” It started to chew placidly and then stopped. “I won’t give you no udder trouble, either,” it concluded.

  Elmo Scott shuddered slightly.

  “You’ve done worse than that yourself,” said the Doberman. “And it’s quite a trick to pun in a language you’ve just learned. I can see one question in your mind. You’re wondering that creatures of high intelligence should have a sense of humor. The answer is obvious if you think about it; isn’t your sense of humor more highly developed than that of creatures who have even less intelligence than you?”

  “Yes,” Elmo admitted. “Say, I just thought of something else. Andromeda is a constellation, not a star. Yet you said your planet is Andromeda II. How come?”

  “Actually we come from a planet of a star in Andromeda for which you have no name; it’s too distant to show up in your telescopes. I merely called it by a name that would be familiar to you. For your convenience I named the star after the constellation.”

  Whatever slight suspicion (of what, he didn’t know) Elmo Scott may have had, evaporated.

  The cow uncrossed its legs. “What tell we waitin’ for?” it inquired. “Nothing, I suppose,” said the Doberman. “Five and I will take turns standing guard.”

  “Go ahead and get started,” said the rattlesnake. “I’ll take the first trick. Half an hour; that’ll give you a month there.”

  The Doberman nodded. He got up and trotted to the screen door, pushing it open with his muzzle after lifting the latch with his tail. The squirrel, the chicken and the cow followed.

  “Be seein’ ya, Babe,” said the cow.

  “We sho will,” the squirrel said.

  It was almost two hours later that the Doberman, who was then on duty as guard, lifted his head suddenly.

  “There they went,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Elmo Scott.

  “Their new spaceship just took off. It has warped out of this space and is heading back toward Andromeda.”

  “You say their. Didn’t you go along?”

  “Me? Of course not. I’m Rex, your dog. Remember? Only One, who was using my body, left me with an understanding
of what happened and a low level of intelligence.”

  “A low level?”

  “About equal to yours, Elmo. He says it will pass away, but not until after I’ve explained everything to you. But how about some dog food? I’m hungry. Will you get me some, Toots?”

  Elmo said, “Don’t call my wife—Say, are you really Rex?”

  “Of course I’m Rex.”

  “Get him some dog food, Toots,” Elmo said. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s all go out in the kitchen so we can keep talking.”

  “Can I have two cans of it?” asked the Doberman.

  Dorothy was getting them out of the closet. “Sure, Rex,” she said.

  The Doberman lay down in the doorway. “How about rustling some grub for us, too, Toots?” Elmo suggested. “I’m hungry. Look, Rex, you mean they just went off like that without saying good-by to us, or anything?”

  “They left me to say good-by. And they did you a favor, Elmo, to repay you for your hospitality. One took a look inside that skull of yours and found the psychological block that’s been keeping you from thinking of plots for your stories. He removed it. You’ll be able to write again. No better than before, maybe, but at least you won’t go snow-blind staring at blank paper.”

  “The devil with that,” said Elmo. “How about the spaceship they didn’t repair? Did they leave it?”

  “Sure. But they took their bodies out of it and fixed them up. They were really Bems, by the way. Two heads apiece, five limbs—and they could use all five as either arms or legs—six eyes apiece, three to a head, on long stems. You should have seen them.”

  Dorothy was putting cold food on the table. “You won’t mind a cold lunch, will you, Elmo?” she asked.

  Elmo looked at her without seeing her and said, “Huh?” and then turned back to the Doberman. The Doberman got up from the doorway and went over to the big dish of dog food that Dorothy had just put down on the floor. He said, “Thanks, Toots,” and started eating in noisy gulps.

  Elmo made himself a sandwich, and started munching it. The Doberman finished his meal, lapped up some water and went back to the throw rug in the doorway.

  Elmo stared at him. “Rex, if I can find that spaceship they abandoned, I won’t have to write stories,” he said. “I can find enough things in it to—Say, I’ll make you a proposition.”

  “Sure,” said the Doberman, “if I tell you where it is, you’ll get another Doberman pinscher to keep me company, and you’ll raise Doberman pups. Well, you don’t know it yet, but you’re going to do that anyway. The Bern named One planted the idea in your mind; he said I ought to get something out of this, too.”

  “Okay, but will you tell me where it is?”

  “Sure, now that you’ve finished that sandwich. It was something that would have looked like a dust mote, if you’d seen it, on the top slice of boiled ham. It was almost submicroscopic. You just ate it.”

  Elmo Scott put his hands to his head. The Doberman’s mouth was open; its tongue lolled out for all the world as though it were laughing at him.

  Elmo pointed a finger at him. He said, “You mean I’ve got to write for a living all the rest of my life?”

  “Why not?” asked the Doberman. “They figured out you’d be really happier that way And with the psychological block removed, it won’t be so hard. You won’t have to start out, ‘Now is the time for all good men—’ And, incidentally, it wasn’t any coincidence that you substituted Bems for men; that was One’s idea. He was already here inside me, watching you. And getting quite a kick out of it.”

  Elmo got up and started to pace back and forth. “Looks like they outsmarted me at every turn but one, Rex,” he murmured. “I’ve got ’em there, if you’ll cooperate.”

  “How?”

  “We can make a fortune with you. The world’s only talking dog. Rex, we’ll get you diamond-studded collars and feed you aged steaks and—and get everything you want. Will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Speak.”

  “Woof,” said the Doberman.

  Dorothy Scott looked at Elmo Scott.

  “Why do that, Elmo?” she asked. “You told me I should never ask him to speak unless we had something to give him, and he’s just eaten.”

  “I dunno,” said Elmo. “I forgot. Well, guess I’d better get back to getting a story started.” He stepped over the dog and walked to his typewriter in the other room.

  He sat down in front of it and then called out. “Hey, Toots,” and Dorothy came in and stood beside him. He said, “I think I got an idea. That ‘Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of Elmo Scott’ has the germ of an idea in it. I can even pick the title out of it. ‘All Good Bems.’ About a guy trying to write a science-fiction story, and suddenly his—uh—dog—I can make him a Doberman like Rex and— Well, wait till you read it.”

  He jerked fresh paper into the typewriter and wrote the heading:

  ALL GOOD BEMS

  FIRST TIME MACHINE

  Dr. Grainger said solemnly, “Gentlemen, the first time machine.”

  His three friends stared at it.

  It was a box about six inches square, with dials and a switch.

  “You need only to hold it in your hand,” said Dr. Grainger, “set the dials for the date you want, press the button—and you are there.”

  Smedley, one of the doctor’s three friends, reached for the box, held it and studied it. “Does it really work?”

  “I tested it briefly,” said the doctor. “I set it one day back and pushed the button. Saw myself—my own back—just walking out of the room. Gave me a bit of a turn.”

  “What would have happened if you’d rushed to the door and kicked yourself in the seat of the pants?”

  Dr. Grainger laughed. “Maybe I couldn’t have—because it would have changed the past. That’s the old paradox of time travel, you know. What would happen if one went back in time and killed one’s own grandfather before he met one’s grandmother?”

  Smedley, the box still in his hand, suddenly was backing away from the three other men. He grinned at them. “That,” he said, “is just what I’m going to do. I’ve been setting the date dials sixty years back while you’ve been talking.”

  “Smedley! Don’t!” Dr. Grainger started forward.

  “Stop, Doc. Or I’ll press the button now. Otherwise I’ll explain to you.” Grainger stopped. “I’ve heard of that paradox too. And it’s always interested me because I knew I would kill my grandfather if I ever had a chance to. I hated him. He was a cruel bully, made life a hell for my grandmother and my parents. So this is a chance I’ve been waiting for.”

  Smedley’s hand reached for the button and pressed it.

  There was a sudden blur… Smedley was standing in a field. It took him only a moment to orient himself. If this spot was where Dr. Grainger’s house would some day be built, then his great-grandfather’s farm would be only a mile south. He started walking. En route he found a piece of wood that made a fine club.

  Near the farm, he saw a red-headed young man beating a dog with a whip. “Stop that!” Smedley yelled, rushing up.

  “Mind your own damn business,” said the young man as he lashed with the whip again.

  Smedley swung the club.

  Sixty years later, Dr. Grainger said solemnly, “Gentlemen, the first time machine.”

  His two friends stared at it.

  BLOOD

  In their time machine, Vron and Dreena, last two survivors of the race of vampires, fled into the future to escape annihilation. They held hands and consoled one another in their terror and their hunger.

  In the twenty-second century mankind had found them out, had discovered that the legend of vampires living secretly among humans was not a legend at all, but fact. There had been a pogrom that had found and killed every vampire but these two, who had already been working on a time machine and who had finished in time to escape in it. Into the future, far enough into the future that the very word vampire would be forgotten s
o they could again live unsuspected—and from their loins regenerate their race.

  “I’m hungry, Vron. Awfully hungry.”

  “I too, Dreena dear. We’ll stop again soon.”

  They had stopped four times already and had narrowly escaped dying each time. They had not been forgotten. The last stop, half a million years back, had shown them a world gone to the dogs—quite literally: human beings were extinct and dogs had become civilized and man-like. Still they had been recognized for what they were. They’d managed to feed once, on the blood of a tender young bitch, but then they’d been hounded back to their time machine and into flight again.

  “Thanks for stopping,” Dreena said. She sighed.

  “Don’t thank me,” said Vron grimly. “This is the end of the line. We’re out of fuel and we’ll find none here—by now all radioactives will have turned to lead. We live here…or else.”

  They went out to scout. “Look,” said Dreena excitedly, pointing to something walking toward them. “A new creature! The dogs are gone and something else has taken over. And surely we’re forgotten.”

  The approaching creature was telepathic. “I have heard your thoughts,” said a voice inside their brains. “You wonder whether we know ‘vampires,’ whatever they are. We do not.”

  Dreena clutched Vron’s arm in ecstasy. “Freedom!” she murmured hungrily. “And food!”

  “You also wonder,” said the voice, “about my origin and evolution. All life today is vegetable. I—” He bowed low to them. “I, a member of the dominant race, was once what you called a turnip.”

  THE LAST MARTIAN

  It was an evening like any evening, but duller than most. I was back in the city room after covering a boring banquet, at which the food had been so poor that, even though it had cost me nothing, I’d felt cheated. For the hell of it, I was writing a long and glowing account of it, ten or twelve column inches. The copyreader, of course, would cut it to a passionless paragraph or two.

  Slepper was sitting with his feet up on the desk, ostentatiously doing nothing, and Johnny Hale was putting a new ribbon on his typewriter. The rest of the boys were out on routine assignments.