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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781627550567 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wilder Publications |
| Publication date: | 04/22/2013 |
| Pages: | 44 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.11(d) |
About the Author
Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985), born Edward Hamilton Waldo, was an American science fiction and horror writer and critic. He was a prolific short story writer, but is most well known for his novel More Than Human, which won the International Fantasy Award in 1954 and in 2004 was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award. In 2000 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Read an Excerpt
1
RONNIE DANIELS
I was fourteen then. I was sitting in the car waiting for Dad to come out of the hospital. Dad was in there seeing Mother. It was the day after Dad told me I had a little sister.
It was July, warm, and I suppose about four in the afternoon. It was almost time for Dad to come out. I half opened the car door and looked for him.
Someone called, "Mister! Mister!"
There was a red squirrel arcing across the thick green lawn, and a man with balloons far down the block. I looked at them. Nobody would call me Mister. Nobody ever had, yet. I was too young.
"Mister!"
It was a woman's voice, but rough; rough and nasty. It was strong, and horrible for the pleading in it. No strong thing should beg. The sun was warm and the red of the brick buildings was warm, too. The squirrel was not afraid. The grass was as green and smooth as a jellybean; Mother was all right, Dad said, and Dad felt fine. We would go to the movies, Dad and I, close together with a closeness that never happened when things were regular, meals at home, Mother up making breakfast every morning, and all that. This week it would be raids on the ice box and staying up late sometimes, because Dad forgot about bedtime and anyway wanted to talk. "Mister!"
Her voice was like a dirty mark on a new collar. I looked up.
She was hanging out of a window on the second floor of a near ell of the hospital. Her hair was dank and stringy, her eyes had mud in them, and her teeth were beautiful. She was naked, at least to the waist. She was saying "Mister!" and she was saying it to me.
I was afraid, then. I got in the car and slammed the door.
"Mister! Mister! Mister!"
Theywere syllables that meant nothing. A "mis," a "ter"--sounds that rasped across the very wound they opened. I put my hands over my ears, but by then the sounds were inside my head, and my hands just seemed to keep them there. I think I sobbed. I jumped out of the car and screamed, "What? What?"
"I got to get out of here," she moaned.
I thought, why tell me? I thought, what can I do? I had heard of crazy people, but I had never seen one. Grown-up people were sensible, mostly. It was only kids who did crazy things, without caring how much sense they made. I was only fourteen.
"Mister," she said. "Go to--to ... Let me think, now ... Where I live. Where I live."
"Where do you live?" I asked.
"In Homeland," she said. She sank down with her forehead on the sill, slowly, as if some big slow weight were on her shoulderblades. I could see only the top of her head, the two dank feathers of her hair and the point of an elbow. Homeland was a new residential suburb.
"Where in Homeland?" It seemed to be important. To me, I mean, as much as to her.
"Twenty," she mumbled. "I have to remember it..." and her voice trailed off. Suddenly she stood bolt upright, looking back into the room as if something had happened there. Then she leaned far out. "Twenty sixty five," she snarled. "You hear? Twenty sixty five. That's the one."
"Ron! Ronnie!"
It was Dad, coming down the path, looking at me, looking at the woman.
"That's the one," said the woman again. There was a flurry of white behind her. She put one foot on the sill and sprang out at me. I closed my eyes. I heard her hit the pavement. When I opened my eyes they were still looking up at the window. There was a starched white nurse up there with her fingers in her mouth, all of them, and eyes as round and blank as a trout's. I looked down. I felt Dad's hand on my upper arm. "Ronnie!"
I looked down. There was blood, just a little, on the cuff of my trousers. There was nothing else.
"Dad..."
Dad looked all around, on the ground.
He looked up at the window and at the nurse. The nurse looked at Dad and at me, and then put her hands on the sill and leaned out and looked all around on the ground. I could see, in the sunlight, where her fingers were wet from being in her mouth. Dad looked at me and again at the nurse and I heard him draw a deep quivering breath as if he'd forgotten to breathe for a while and had only just realized it. The nurse straightened up, put her hands over her eyes and twisted back into the room.
Dad and I looked at each other. He said, "Ronnie--what was--what..." and then licked his lips. I was not as tall as my father, though he was not a tall man. He had thin, fine obedient hair, straight and starting high. He had blue eyes and a big nose and his mouth was quiet. He was broad and gentle and close to the ground, close to the earth. I said, "How's Mother?"
Dad gestured at the ground where something should be, and looked at me. Then he said, "We'd better go, Ron."
I got into the car. He walked around it and got in and started it, and then sat holding the wheel, looking back at where we had been standing. There was still nothing there. The red squirrel, with one cheek puffed out, came bounding and freezing across the path. I asked again how Mother was.
"She's fine. Just fine. Be out soon. And the baby. Just fine." He looked back carefully for traffic, shifted and let in the clutch. "Good as new," he said.
I looked back again. The squirrel hopped and arched and stopped, sitting on something. It sat on something so that it was perhaps ten inches off the ground, but the thing it sat on couldn't be seen. The squirrel put up its paws and popped a chestnut into them from its cheek, and put its tail along its back with the big tip curled over like a fern-frond, and began to nibble. Then I couldn't see any more.
After a time Dad said, "What happened there just as I came up?"
I said, "What happened? Nothing. There was a squirrel."
"I mean, uh, up at the window."
"Oh. I saw a nurse up there."
"Yes, the nurse." He thought for a minute. "Anything else?"
"No. What are you going to call the baby?"
He looked at me strangely. I had to ask him again about the baby's name.
"I don't know yet," he said distantly. "Any ideas?"
"No, Dad."
We rode along for quite a while without saying anything. A little frown came and went between Dad's eyes, the way it did when he was figuring something out, whether it was a definition at charades, or an income tax report, or a problem of my school algebra.
"Dad. You know Homeland pretty well, don't you?"
"I should. Our outfit agented most of those sites. Why?"
"Is there a Homeland Street, or a Homeland Avenue out there?"
"Not a one. The north and south ones are streets, and are named after trees. The east and west ones are avenues, and are named after flowers. All alphabetical. Why?"
"I just wondered. Is there a number as high as 2065?"
"Not yet, though I hope there will be some day ... unless it's a telephone number. Why, Ron? Where did you get that number?"
"I dunno. Just thought of it. Just wondered. Where are we going to eat?"
We went to the Bluebird.
I suppose I knew then what had gotten into me when the woman jumped; but I didn't think of it, any more than a redhead goes around thinking to himself "I have red hair" or a taxi-driver says to himself "I drive a cab." I knew, that's all. I just knew. I knew the purpose, too, but didn't think of it, any more than a man thinks and thinks of the place where he works, when he's on his way to work in the morning.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | ix |
| Quietly | 1 |
| The Music | 18 |
| Unite and Conquer | 20 |
| The Love of Heaven | 63 |
| Till Death Do Us Join | 78 |
| The Perfect Host | 92 |
| The Martian and the Moron | 141 |
| Die, Maestro, Die! | 167 |
| The Dark Goddess | 201 |
| Scars | 215 |
| Messenger | 223 |
| Minority Report | 235 |
| Prodigy | 257 |
| Farewell to Eden | 269 |
| One Foot and the Grave | 283 |
| What Dead Men Tell | 324 |
| The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast | 353 |
| Story Notes | 362 |