The Best of Science Fiction 12

He dropped in a groaning heap on the grass. "Lilas, Shan, forgive me. I didn't know." But he must have known. All along.

And now his mind began to swing like a pendulum, faster and faster, finally oscillating in a weird rhythm of patterns so bewildering and contradictory that he could hardly follow them. His mind said to him, they escaped. It said to him, they did not escape. It said to him, they were there. It said, nothing was there. And then it started again. His throat constricted, his teeth bit the turf, and by brazen command his thoughts slowed their wounded flailing. He ceased to ask, to wonder. And finally he refused to think at all.

He heard Cord's firm voice. Somebody found the light switch. There were querulous whispers. And then there was something on his back. Some of them had dropped their jackets on him. A man's hand lingered briefly on his shoulder. It was a gentle, even affectionate gesture, and he recognised the touch as that of a man accustomed to tucking small children into their beds at night. He had used the same touch, many times, and long ago.

And now the sound of footsteps facing. And then, motors starting. And finally, nothing, just the splash of the little falls, the crickets, and far away, the whip-poor-will.

He did not want to move. He wanted only never to have been born.

He closed his eyes, and sleep locked him in.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which, as men, of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto.

— Francis Bacon, Preface to Maxims of the Law

It was early morning, and with the pink of dawn on his cheek, waking was instantaneous. His mind was clear and serene as he threw the jackets aside and got to his feet. He rubbed his eyes, stretched with enormous gusto, and walked over to the lily pond. A green frog was sitting on a pad of the yellow lotus, but jumped in as Patrick bent over to splash water on his face. He dried his face on his shirt-tail, which was flopping out over his belt.

The sun was now barely over the little hill, and a shaft of light was slicing into the pond. Patrick considered this phenomenon briefly, then peered into the bottom of the pool for the refracted beam. There was some kind of rule of optics — law of sines. Somebody's law. Check into it. Meanwhile, there was work to be done. Important work.

He walked into the arbour, picked up the overturned iron chair, sat down at the stone table, and pulled a pencil and paper pad out of the drawer. After a moment, he began to write; slowly, at first.

"Ex parte Gulliksen revisited. The typewritten college thesis as a prior printed publication. This decision from the Patent Office Board of Appeals in ... "

Then faster and faster. " ... essential, of course, that the thesis be available to the public. This requirement is satisfied by ... "

Now, he was writing furiously, and the pages were accumulating.

He was going to make it. Just a question of staying with it, now, and it would give him complete protection. No need to worry about what to work on after this article, either. He knew he could turn out a text. No trouble at all. Or even an encyclopedia. Patrick, 'Chemical Patent Practice', four volumes. He could see it now. Red vinyl covers, gilt lettering.

The stack of sheets torn from his pad was now quite bulky. He pushed the pile to the table corner, and in. so doing knocked the bottle and candle unheeding to the ground and into the withering lilacs. Already he could visualise his 'Preface to the First Edition'. It should be something special, based perhaps on a precisely apt quotation. What was that thing from Bacon? He frowned, puzzled. No. There was something not quite right about that . But never mind. Plenty of others. Somehow, somewhere, there would be a word for him.

... In English the word 'supernatural' must do service as both adjective and noun; there is 'nature' but no 'supernature' Perhaps this is a real, and not merely a linguistic truth, ... By the supernatural we mean those instincts and perceptions about the universe that make no sense in rational terms but that, ewer many centuries and in many countries, have never been lost or eradicated. ...

Jung saw the unconscious as composed of several 'levels': the barely subliminal level of unconscious memories ... temporarily forgotten or ignored, which could as easily become conscious; the level of the personal complexes and repressed wishes, fears and so on; and finally ... on the collective level, common to the entire race throughout history, exist the deep instinctual tendencies, that produced in primeval man (probably through dreams, among other means) his concrete belief in the supernatural. And these same unconscious collective tendencies, which Jung called the archetypes, exist in us today, (Douglas Hill and Pat Williams, The Supernatural, Hawthorne, 1966)

In the year 1893, land allotments in severalty were made to the remaining eight hundred and twenty-one Pawnee Indians. Each would receive one hundred and sixty acres of land and no more, and thereafter the Pawnees would be expected to pay taxes on their land, the same as the White-Eyes did.

"Kitkehahke!" Clarence Big-Saddle cussed. "You can't kick a dog around proper on a hundred and sixty acres. And I sure am not hear before about this pay taxes on land."

Clarence Big-Saddle selected a nice green valley for his allotment. It was one of the half dozen plots he had always regarded as his own. He sodded around the summer lodge that he had there and made it an all-season home. But he sure didn't intend to pay taxes on it.

So he burned leaves and bark and made a speech:

"That my valley be always wide and flourish and green and such stuff as that!" he orated in Pawnee chant style, "but that it be narrow if an intruder come."

He didn't have any balsam bark to burn. He threw on a little cedar bark instead. He didn't have any elder leaves. He used a handful of jack-oak leaves. And he forgot the word. How you going to work it if you forget the word?

"Petahauerat!" he howled out with the confidence he hoped would fool the fates.

"That's about the same long of a word," he said in a low aside to himself. But he was doubtful. "What am I, a White Man, a burr-tailed jack, a new kind of nut to think it will work?" he asked. "I have to laugh at me. Oh well, we see."

He threw the rest of the bark and the leaves on the fire, and he hollered the wrong word out again.

And he was answered by a dazzling sheet of summer lightning.

"Skidi!" Clarence Big-Saddle swore. "It worked. I didn't think it would."

Clarence Big-Saddle lived on his land for many years, and he paid no taxes. Intruders were unable to come down to his place. The land was sold for taxes three times, but nobody ever came down to claim it. Finally, it was carried as open land on the books. Homesteaders filed on it several times, but none of them fulfilled the qualification of living on the land.

Half a century went by. Clarence Big-Saddle called his son.

"I've had it, boy," he said. "I think I'll just go in the house and die."

"O.K. dad," the son Clarence Little-Saddle said. "I'm going in to town to shoot a few games of pool with the boys. I'll bury you when I get back this evening."

So the son Clarence Little-Saddle inherited. He also lived on the land for many years without paying taxes.

There was a disturbance in the courthouse one day. The place seemed to be invaded in force, but actually there were but one man, one woman, and five children. "I'm Robert Rampart," said the man, "and we want the Land Office."

"I'm Robert Rampart Junior," said a nine year old gangler, "and we want it pretty blamed quick."