The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

As Vandervell walked back along the road two of the villagers approached.

“Guide,” he said to them. “Ten dollars. One hour.” He pointed to the lip of the crater but the men ignored him and continued along the road.

The surface of the house had once been white, but was now covered with gray dust. Two hours later, when the manager of the estate below the house rode up on a gray horse, Vandervell asked: “Is your horse white or black?”

“That’s a good question, senor.”

“I want to hire a guide,” Vandervell said. “To take me into the volcano.”

“There’s nothing there, senor.”

“I want to look around the crater. I need someone who knows the pathways.”

“It’s full of smoke, Senor Vandervell. Hot sulphur. Burns the eyes. You wouldn’t like it.”

“Do you remember seeing someone called Springman?” Vandervell said. “About three months ago.”

“You asked me that before. I remember two Americans with a scientific truck. Then a Dutchman with white hair.”

“That could be him.”

“Or maybe black, eh? As you say.”

A rattle of sticks sounded from the road. After warming up, the stick-dancer had begun his performance in earnest.

“You’d better get out of here, Senor Vandervell,” the manager said. “The mountain could split one day.”

Vandervell pointed to the stick-dancer. “He’ll hold it off for a while.”

The manager rode away. “My respects to Mrs. Vandervell.”

“Miss Winston.”

Vandervell went into the lounge and stood by the window. During the day the activity of the volcano increased. The column of smoke rose half a mile into the sky, threaded by gleams of flame.

The rumbling woke the woman. In the kitchen she spoke to the house-boy.

“He wants to leave,” she said to Vandervell afterwards.

“Offer him more money,” he said without turning.

“He says everyone has left now. It’s too dangerous to stay. The men in the village are leaving for good this afternoon.”

Vandervell watched the stick-dancer twirling his devil sticks like a drum major. “Let him go if he wants to. I think the estate manager saw Springman.”

“That’s good. Then he was here.”

“The manager sent his respects to you.”

“I’m charmed.”

Five minutes later, when the house-boy had gone, she returned to her bedroom. During the afternoon she came out to collect the film magazines in the bookcase.

Vandervell watched the smoke being pumped from the volcano. Now and then the devil-sticks man climbed out of his hole and danced on a mound of lava by the road. The men came down from the village for the last time. They looked at the stick-dancer as they walked on down the road.

At eight o’clock in the morning a police truck drove up to the village, reversed and came down again. Its roof and driving cabin were covered with ash. The policemen did not see the stick-dancer, but they saw Vandervell in the window of the house and stopped outside.

“Get out!” one of the policemen shouted. “You must go now! Take your car! What’s the matter?”

Vandervell opened the window. “The car is all right. We’re staying for a few days. Gracias, Sergeant.”

“No! Get out!” The policeman climbed down from the cabin. “The mountain—pfft! Dust, burning!” He took off his cap and waved it. “You go now.”

As he remonstrated Vandervell closed the window and took his jacket off the chair. Inside he felt for his wallet.

After he had paid the policemen they saluted and drove away. The woman came out of the bedroom.

“You’re lucky your father is rich,” she said. “What would you do if he was poor?”

“Springman was poor,” Vandervell said. He took his handkerchief from his jacket. The dust was starting to seep into the house. “Money only postpones one’s problems.”

“How long are you going to stay? Your father told me to keep an eye on you.”

“Relax. I won’t come to any mischief here.”

“Is that a joke? With this volcano over our heads?”

Vandervell pointed to the stick-dancer. “It doesn’t worry him. This mountain has been active for fifty years.”

“Then why do we have to come here now?”

“I’m looking for Springman. I think he came here three months ago.”

“Where is he? Up in the village?”

“I doubt it. He’s probably five thousand miles under our feet, sucked down by the back-pressure. A century from now he’ll come up through Vesuvius.”

“I hope not.”

“Have you thought of that, though? It’s a wonderful idea.”

“No. Is that what you’re planning for me?”

Cinders hissed in the roof tank, spitting faintly like boiling rain.

“Think of them—Pompeiian matrons, Aztec virgins, bits of old Prometheus himself, they’re raining down on the just and the unjust.”

“What about your friend Springman?”

“Now that you remind me . . .” Vandervell raised a finger to the ceiling. “Let’s listen. What’s the matter?”

“Is that why you came here? To think of Springman being burned to ashes?”

“Don’t be a fool.” Vandervell turned to the window.

“What are you worrying about, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Vandervell said. “For once in a long time I’m not worrying about anything at all.” He rubbed the pane with his sleeve. “Where’s the old devil-boy? Don’t tell me he’s gone.” He peered through the falling dust. “There he is.”

The figure stood on the ridge above the road, illuminated by the flares from the crater. A pall of ash hung in the air around him.

“What’s he waiting for?” the woman asked. “Another dollar?”

“A lot more than a dollar,” Vandervell said. “He’s waiting for me.”

“Don’t burn your fingers,” she said, closing the door.

That afternoon, when she came into the lounge after waking, she found that Vandervell had left. She went to the window and looked up towards the crater. The falls of ash and cinders obscured the village, and hundreds of embers glowed on the lava flows. Through the dust she could see the explosions inside the crater lighting up the rim.

Vandervell’s jacket lay over a chair. She waited for three hours for him to return. By this time the noise from the crater was continuous. The lava flows dragged and heaved like chains, shaking the walls of the house.

At five o’clock Vandervell had not come back. A second crater had opened in the summit of the volcano, into which part of the village had fallen. When she was sure that the devil-sticks man had gone, the woman took the money from Vandervell’s jacket and drove down the mountain.

Ten years ago, when the first of these Annuals was being prepared, I delighted in writing about the authors: There were only five (out of eighteen) whom I did not know personally, or at least by fluent correspondence. And they were, generally, fascinating people.

Within a few years, half the entries were by writers with whom my only contact was in the formality of securing permission—sometimes that was done through an agent or previous publisher. With many, I did not have even the previous acquaintance of reader-and-writer. (Some had written in other fields, but often as not I did not get around to the back-reading till after the anthology was finished.) There was more to discuss in what was happening to science fiction as a whole: the change in range of interests, the broadening area of publication, the refinement of techniques.

Over the last two years, certain patterns began to appear in what I did know about the backgrounds and special interests of the new names. (Comparatively few were “new young writers” in the usual sense; a good many were journalists, teachers, and writers already established in other fields.) It occurred to me that the motivations and objectives of writers newly attracted to the field might offer some insights into the overall direction and form of (what used to be “science fiction” and is now) whatever it is to which we apply the loose label S-F.