The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack Read online

  But I’m not as sad as you might think. I knew she would die pretty soon anyway and this is a better way than in bed looking at the ceiling, maybe in pain. If that had happened, she wouldn’t have complained. She’d not have said a word, trying not to be a bother. Nobody would have known about the pain except me. I would have had to grit my teeth against her pain the whole time.

  I haven’t told anybody partly because I’m waiting to figure things out. I’m here all by myself, but I’m good at looking after things. There are those who check on us every weekend—people who are paid to do it. I wave at them. “All okay.” I mouth it. The president of the Town and Country Bank came out once. I told him Grandma wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t exactly a lie. How long can this go on? He’ll be the one who finds out first—if anybody does. Maybe they won’t.

  I’m nursing my jackrabbit. We’re friends now. He’s getting better fast. Pretty soon I’ll let him go off to be a rabbit. But he might rather stay here with me.

  I’m wearing Grandma’s costume most of the time now. I sleep in it. It makes me feel safe. I’m doing my own little rescues as usual. (The vegetable garden is full of happy weeds. I keep the bird feeder going. I leave scraps out for the skunk.) Those count—almost as much as Grandma’s rescues did. Anyway, I know the weeds think so.

  THE GIFT BEARER, by Charles L. Fontenay

  It was one of those rare strokes of poetic something-or-other that the whole business occurred the morning after the stormy meeting of the Traskmore censorship board.

  Like the good general he was, Richard J. Montcalm had foreseen trouble at this meeting, for it was the boldest invasion yet into the territory of evil and laxity. His forces were marshaled. Several of the town’s ministers who had been with him on other issues had balked on this one, but he had three of them present, as well as heads of several women’s clubs.

  As he had anticipated, the irresponsible liberals were present to do battle, headed by red-haired Patrick Levitt.

  “This board,” said Levitt in his strong, sarcastic voice, “has gone too far. It was all right to get rid of the actual filth…and everyone will agree there was some. But when you banned the sale of some magazines and books because they had racy covers or because the contents were a little too sophisticated to suit the taste of members of this board…well, you can carry protection of our youth to the point of insulting the intelligence of adults who have a right to read what they want to.”

  “You’re talking about something that’s already in the past, Mr. Levitt,” said Montcalm mildly. “Let’s keep to the issue at hand. You won’t deny that children see this indecent statue every day?”

  “No, I won’t deny it!” snapped Levitt. “Why shouldn’t they see it? They can see the plate of the original in the encyclopaedia. It’s a fine copy of a work of art.”

  Montcalm waited for some rebuttal from his supporters, but none was forthcoming. On this matter, they apparently were unwilling to go farther than the moral backing of their presence.

  “I do not consider the statue of a naked woman art, even if it is called ‘Dawn,’” he said bitingly. He looked at his two colleagues and received their nods of acquiescence. He ruled: “The statue must be removed from the park and from public view.”

  Levitt had one parting shot.

  “Would it solve the board’s problem if we put a brassiere and panties on the statue?” he demanded.

  “Mr. Levitt’s levity is not amusing. The board has ruled,” said Montcalm coldly, arising to signify the end of the meeting.

  * * * *

  That night Montcalm slept the satisfied sleep of the just.

  He awoke shortly after dawn to find a strange, utterly beautiful naked woman in his bedroom. For a bemused instant Montcalm thought the statue of Dawn in the park had come to haunt him. His mouth fell open but he was unable to speak.

  “Take me to your President,” said the naked woman musically, with an accent that could have been Martian.

  Mrs. Montcalm awoke.

  “What’s that? What is it, Richard?” she asked sleepily.

  “Don’t look, Millie!” exclaimed Montcalm, clapping a hand over her eyes.

  “Nonsense!” she snapped, pushing his hand aside and sitting up. She gasped and her eyes went wide, and in an instinctive, unreasonable reaction she clutched the covers up around her own nightgowned bosom.

  “Who are you, young woman?” demanded Montcalm indignantly. “How did you get in here?”

  “I am a visitor from what you would call an alien planet,” she said. “Of course,” she added thoughtfully, “it isn’t alien to me.”

  “The woman’s mad,” said Montcalm to his wife. A warning noise sounded in the adjoining bedroom. Alarmed, he instructed: “Go and keep the children out of here until I can get her to put on some clothes. They mustn’t see her like this.”

  Mrs. Montcalm got out of bed, but she gave her husband a searching glance.

  “Are you sure I can trust you in here with her?” she asked.

  “Millie!” exclaimed Montcalm sternly, shocked. She dropped her eyes and left the room. When the door closed behind her, he turned to the strange woman and said:

  “Now, look, young lady, I’ll get you one of Millie’s dresses. You’ll have to get some clothes on and leave.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me my name?” asked the woman. “Of course, it’s unpronounceable to you, but I thought that was the first thing all Earth people asked of visitors from other planets.”

  “All right,” he said in exasperation. “What’s your name?”

  She said an unpronounceable word and added: “You may call me Liz.”

  * * * *

  Montcalm went to the closet and found one of Millie’s house dresses. He held it out to her beseechingly.

  As he did so, he was stricken with a sudden sharp feeling of regret that she must don it. Her figure…why Millie had never had a figure like that! At once, he felt ashamed and disloyal and sterner than ever.

  Liz rejected the proffered garment.

  “I wouldn’t think of adopting your alien custom of wearing clothing,” she said sweetly.

  “Now look,” said Montcalm, “I don’t know whether you’re drunk or crazy, but you’re going to have to put something on and get out of here before I call the police.”

  “I anticipated doubt,” said Liz. “I’m prepared to prove my identity.”

  With the words, the two of them were no longer standing in the Montcalm bedroom, but in a broad expanse of green fields and woodland, unmarred by any habitation. Montcalm didn’t recognize the spot, but it looked vaguely like it might be somewhere in the northern part of the state.

  Montcalm was dismayed to find that he was as naked as his companion!

  “Oh, my Lord!” he exclaimed, trying to cover himself with a September Morn pose.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” apologized Liz, and instantly Montcalm’s pajamas were lying at his feet. He got into them hurriedly.

  “How did we get here?” he asked, his astonished curiosity overcoming his disapproval of this immodest woman.

  “By a mode of transportation common to my people in planetary atmospheres,” she answered. “It’s one of the things I propose to teach your people.”

  She sat down cross-legged on the grass. Montcalm averted his eyes, like the gentleman he was.

  “You see,” said Liz, “the people of your world are on the verge of going to space and joining the community of worlds. It’s only natural the rest of us should wish to help you. We have a good many things to give you, to help you control the elements and natural conditions of your world. The weather, for example…”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small cloud appeared above them and spread, blocking out the early sun. It began to rain, hard.

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and the cloud dissipated. Montcalm stood shivering in his soaked pajamas and Liz got to her feet, her skin glistening with moisture.

  “You have a problem raising food f
or your population in some areas,” she said.…

  A small haw-apple tree near them suddenly began to grow at an amazing rate of speed. It doubled its size in three minutes, put forth fruit and dropped it to the ground.

  “These are only a few of the things I’ll give to your planet,” she said.

  At her words, they were back in the bedroom. This time she had been thoughtful. Montcalm was still clad in wet pajamas.

  “I don’t know what sort of hypnosis this is,” he began aggressively, “but you can’t fool me, young lady, into believing…”

  * * * *

  Millie came into the room. She had donned a robe over her nightgown.

  “Richard, where have you been with this woman?” she demanded.

  “Why, my dear…”

  “You’ve been roaming around the house somewhere with her. I came in here a moment ago and you were gone. Now, Richard, I want you to do something about her and stop fooling around. I can’t keep the children in their room all day.”

  It hadn’t been hypnosis then! Liz was for real. A vision rose before Montcalm of mankind given wonders, powers, benefits representing advances of thousands of years. The world could become a paradise with the things she offered to teach.

  “Millie, this woman is from another planet!” he exclaimed excitedly, and turned to Liz. “Why did you choose me to contact on Earth?”

  “Why, I happened to land near your house,” she answered. “I know how your primitive social organization is set up, but isn’t one human being just as good as another to lead me to the proper authorities?”

  “Yes,” he said joyfully, visualizing black headlines and his picture in the papers.

  Millie stood to one side, puzzled and grim at once. Montcalm picked up the house dress he had taken from the closet earlier.

  “Now, Miss,” he said, “if you’ll just put this on, I’ll take you to the mayor and he can get in touch with Washington at once.”

  “I told you,” said Liz, “I don’t want to adopt your custom of wearing clothing.”

  “But you can’t go out in public like that!” said the dismayed Montcalm. “If you’re going to move among Earth people, you must dress as we do.”

  “My people wouldn’t demand that Earth people disrobe to associate with us,” she countered reasonably.

  Millie had had enough. She went into action.

  “You can argue with this hussy all you like, Richard, but I’m going to call the police,” she said, and left the room with determination in her eye.

  The next fifteen minutes were agonizing for Montcalm as he tried futilely to get Liz to dress like a decent person. He was torn between realization of what the things she offered would mean to the world and his own sense of the fitness of things. His children, the children of Traskmore, the children of the world…what would be the effect on their tender morals to realize that a sane adult was willing to walk around in brazen nakedness?

  There was a pounding on the front door, and the voice of Millie inviting the law into the house.

  “Now I’m afraid you’re due to go to jail,” said Montcalm mournfully. “But when they get some clothes on you, I’ll try to explain it and get you an audience with the mayor.”

  Two blue-clad policemen entered the room.

  One policeman took the house dress from Montcalm’s lax fingers and tossed it over Liz’ head without further ado.

  Liz did not struggle. She looked at Montcalm with a quizzical expression.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “My people made a mistake. If you Earth people aren’t tolerant enough to accept a difference in customs of dress, I’m afraid you’re too immature.”

  With that, she was gone like a puff of air. The astonished policemen held an empty dress.

  Montcalm didn’t see the flying saucer that whizzed over Traskmore that morning and disappeared into the sky, but he didn’t doubt the reports. He debated with himself for a long time whether he had taken the right attitude, but decided he had.

  After all, there were the children to consider.

  I, ROBOT, by Cory Doctorow

  Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, Police Detective Third Grade, United North American Trading Sphere, Third District, Fourth Prefecture, Second Division (Parkdale) had had many adventures in his distinguished career, running crooks to ground with an unbeatable combination of instinct and unstinting devotion to duty.

  He’d been decorated on three separate occasions by his commander and by the Regional Manager for Social Harmony, and his mother kept a small shrine dedicated to his press clippings and commendations that occupied most of the cramped sitting-room of her flat off Steeles Avenue.

  No amount of policeman’s devotion and skill availed him when it came to making his twelve-year-old get ready for school, though.

  “Haul ass, young lady—out of bed, on your feet, shit-shower-shave, or I swear to God, I will beat you purple and shove you out the door jaybird naked. Capeesh?”

  The mound beneath the covers groaned and hissed. “You are a terrible father,” it said. “And I never loved you.” The voice was indistinct and muffled by the pillow.

  “Boo hoo,” Arturo said, examining his nails. “You’ll regret that when I’m dead of cancer.”

  The mound—whose name was Ada Trouble Icaza de Arana-Goldberg—threw her covers off and sat bolt upright. “You’re dying of cancer? is it testicle cancer?” Ada clapped her hands and squealed. “Can I have your stuff?”

  “Ten minutes, your rottenness,” he said, and then his breath caught momentarily in his breast as he saw, fleetingly, his ex-wife’s morning expression, not seen these past twelve years, come to life in his daughter’s face. Pouty, pretty, sleepy and guile-less, and it made him realize that his daughter was becoming a woman, growing away from him. She was, and he was not ready for that. He shook it off, patted his razor-burn and turned on his heel. He knew from experience that once roused, the munchkin would be scrounging the kitchen for whatever was handy before dashing out the door, and if he hurried, he’d have eggs and sausage on the table before she made her brief appearance. Otherwise he’d have to pry the sugar-cereal out of her hands—and she fought dirty.

  * * * *

  In his car, he prodded at his phone. He had her wiretapped, of course. He was a cop—every phone and every computer was an open book to him, so that this involved nothing more than dialing a number on his special copper’s phone, entering her number and a PIN, and then listening as his daughter had truck with a criminal enterprise.

  “Welcome to ExcuseClub! There are 43 members on the network this morning. You have five excuses to your credit. Press one to redeem an excuse—” She toned one. “Press one if you need an adult—” Tone. “Press one if you need a woman; press two if you need a man—” Tone. “Press one if your excuse should be delivered by your doctor; press two for your spiritual representative; press three for your case-worker; press four for your psycho-health specialist; press five for your son; press six for your father—” Tone. “You have selected to have your excuse delivered by your father. Press one if this excuse is intended for your case-worker; press two for your psycho-health specialist; press three for your principal—” Tone. “Please dictate your excuse at the sound of the beep. When you have finished, press the pound key.”

  “This is Detective Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg. My daughter was sick in the night and I’ve let her sleep in. She’ll be in for lunchtime.” Tone.

  “Press one to hear your message; press two to have your message dispatched to a network-member.” Tone.

  “Thank you.”

  The pen-trace data scrolled up Arturo’s phone—number called, originating number, call-time. This was the third time he’d caught his daughter at this game, and each time, the pen-trace data had been useless, a dead-end lead that terminated with a phone-forwarding service tapped into one of the dodgy offshore switches that the blessed blasted UNATS brass had recently acquired on the cheap to handle the surge of mobile telephone calls. Why couldn
’t they just stick to UNATS Robotics equipment, like the good old days? Those Oceanic switches had more back-doors than a speakeasy, trade agreements be damned. They were attractive nuisances, invitations to criminal activity.

  Arturo fumed and drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel. Each time he’d caught Ada at this, she’d used the extra time to crawl back into bed for a leisurely morning, but who knew if today was the day she took her liberty and went downtown with it, to some parental nightmare of a drug-den? Some place where the old pervert chickenhawks hung out, the kind of men he arrested in burlesque house raids, men who masturbated into their hats under their tables and then put them back onto their shining pates, dripping cold, diseased serum onto their scalps. He clenched his hands on the steering wheel and cursed.

  In an ideal world, he’d simply follow her. He was good at tailing, and his unmarked car with its tinted windows was a UNATS Robotics standard compact #2, indistinguishable from the tens of thousands of others just like it on the streets of Toronto. Ada would never know that the curb-crawler tailing her was her sucker of a father, making sure that she turned up to get her brains sharpened instead of turning into some stunadz doper with her underage butt hanging out of a little skirt on Jarvis Street.

  In the real world, Arturo had thirty minutes to make a forty minute downtown and crosstown commute if he was going to get to the station house on-time for the quarterly all-hands Social Harmony briefing. Which meant that he needed to be in two places at once, which meant that he had to use—the robot.

  Swallowing bile, he speed-dialed a number on his phone.

  “This is R Peed Robbert, McNicoll and Don Mills bus-shelter.”

  “That’s nice. This is Detective Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, three blocks east of you on Picola. Proceed to my location at once, priority urgent, no sirens.”

  “Acknowledged. It is my pleasure to do you a service, Detective.”

  “Shut up,” he said, and hung up the phone. The R Peed—Robot, Police Department—robots were the worst, programmed to be friendly to a fault, even as they surveilled and snitched out every person who walked past their eternally vigilant, ever-remembering electrical eyes and brains.