The Best of Sci-Fi-5

Ben took a step forward. “Don’t move,” the little man said. He shifted his weight to one leg, looking relaxed, and put his hand on his hip near the pistol. “Where you got the gas to get you home? Maybe we’ll come with you and you might lend us a little of that gas you got there at your house. Where’d you hide the stuff to get you back, or I’ll let my boys play a bit with your little one and you might not like it.”

Littleboy, she saw, had edged down, away from them, and he crouched now, watching with his wide-eyed stare. She could see the tense, stringy muscles along his arms and legs and he reminded her of gibbons she had seen at the zoo long ago. His poor little face looks old, she thought, too old for three years. Her fingers closed over the blanket-covered wrench. They’d better not hurt Littleboy.

She heard her husband say, “I don’t know.”

“Oh, Ben,” she said, “oh, Ben.”

The man made a motion and the two youths started out, but Littleboy had started first, she saw. She pulled at her wrench and then had to stop and fumble with the blanket, and it took a long time because she kept her eyes on Littleboy and the two others chasing.

She heard a shout and a grunt beside her. “Oh, Ben,” she said again, and turned, but it was Ben on top attacking the other, and the small man was trying to use his pistol as a club but he had hold of the wrong end for that, and Ben had the hammer and he was much bigger.

He was finished in a minute. She watched, empty-eyed, the whole of it, holding the wrench in a white-knuckled hand in case he needed her.

Afterward, he moved from the body into a crouching run, hammer in one hand and pistbl, by the barrel, in the other. “You stay here,” he shouted back.

She looked at the sea a few minutes, and listened to it, but her own feelings seemed more important than the stoic sea now. She turned and followed, walking along the marks where the feet had swept at the soft sand.

Where the bushes began she saw him loping back. “What happened?”

“They ran off when they saw me after them with the other guy’s gun. No bullets though. You’ll have to help look now.”

“He’s lost!”

“He won’t come when you call. We’ll just have to look. He could be way out. I’ll try that and you stay close and look here. The gas is buried under that bush there, if you need it.”

“We’ve got to find him, Ben. He doesn’t know his way home from here.”

He came to her and kissed her and held her firmly across the shoulders with one arm. She could feel his muscles bunch into her neck as hard almost as the head of his hammer that pressed against her arm. She remembered a time four years ago when his embrace had been soft and comfortable. He had had hair then, but he had been quite fat, and now he was hard and bald, having gained something and lost something.

He turned and started off, but looked back and she smiled and nodded to show him she felt better from his arm around her and the kiss.

I would die if anything happened and we would lose Littleboy, she thought, but mostly I would hate to lose Ben. Then the world would really be lost altogether, and everything would be ended.

She looked, calling in a whisper, knowing she had to peer under each bush and watch behind and ahead for scampering things. He’s so small when he huddles into a ball and he can sit so still. Sometimes I wish there was another three-year-old around to judge him by. I forget so much about how it used to be, before. Sometimes I just wonder about him.

“Littleboy, Littleboy. Mommy wants you,” she called softly. “Come. There’s still time to play in the sand and there are apples left.” She leaned forward, and her hand reached to touch the bushes.

Later the breeze began to cool and a few clouds gathered. She shivered in just her shorts and halter, but it was mostly an inner coldness. She felt she had circled, hunting, for well over an hour, but she had no watch, and at a time like this she wasn’t sure of her judgment. Still, the sun seemed low. They should go home soon. She kept watching now, too, for silhouettes of people who might not be Ben or Littleboy, and she probed the bushes with her wrench with less care. Every now and then she went back to look at the blanket and the basket and the pail and shovel, lying alone and far from the water, and the body there, with the red leather cap beside it.

And then, when she came back another time to see if all the things were still there, undisturbed, she saw a tall, two-headed seeming monster walking briskly down the beach, and one head, bouncing directly over the other one, had hair and was Littleboy’s.

The sunset was just beginning. The rosy glow deepened as they neared her and changed the colors of everything. The red plaid of Ben’s shorts seemed more emphatic. The sand turned orangeish. She ran to meet them, laughing and splashing her feet in the shallow water, and she came up and held Ben tight around the waist and Littleboy said, “Aaa.”

“We’ll be home before dark,” she said. “There’s even time for one last splash.”

They packed up finally while Littleboy circled the body by the blanket, touching it sometimes until Ben slapped him for it and he went off and sat down and made little cat sounds to himself.

He fell asleep in her lap on the way home, lying forward against her with his head at her neck the way she liked. The sunset was deep, with reds and purples.

She leaned against Ben. “The beach always makes you tired,” she said. “I remember that from before too. I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

They drove silently along the wide empty parkway. The car had no lights, but that didn’t matter.

“We did have a good day after all,” she said. “I feel renewed.”

“Good,” he said.

It was just dark as they drove up to the house. Ben stopped the car and they sat a moment and held hands before moving to get the things out.

“We had a good day,” she said again. “And Littleboy saw the sea.” She put her hand on the sleeping boy’s hair, gently so as not to disturb him and then she yawned. “I wonder if it really was Saturday.”

What is human? How different can it be, and still seem “one of us”? How much can one of us change, and not be one of them? (And who are they? Or are they what?

Earlier selections here have approached the line of definition in a variety of ways. Mr. Langart, an author new to science fiction (so far as I have been able to determine from his tight-lipped agents), here presents an exceptionally thoughtful and convincing examination of one of the potentialities for human development.

There is no lie so totally convincing as something the other fellow already knows-for-sure is the truth. And no cover-story so convincing…

The building itself was unprepossessive enough. It was an old-fashioned, six-floor, brick structure that had, over the years, served first as a private home, then as an apartment building, and finally as the headquarters for the organization it presently housed.

It stood among others of its kind in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington, Virginia, within howitzer range of the capitol of the United States, and even closer to the Pentagon. The main door was five steps up from the sidewalk, and the steps were flanked by curving balustrades of ornamental ironwork. The entrance itself was closed by a double door with glass panes, beyond which could be seen a small foyer. On both doors, an identical message was blocked out in neat gold letters: The Society For Mystical and Metaphysical Research, Inc.