Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

Horowitz said gently, “Heri Gonza, what’s with you and kids?”

“I like ‘em.” He buttoned his coat. “Good night, Dr. Barran. Please accept my apologies again, and don’t think too badly of me.”

“I don’t,” she said smiling, and gave him her hand.

“But why do you like kids that much?” asked Horowitz.

Heri Gonza shrugged easily and laughed his deadpan laugh. “Never had none,” he chuckled. He went to the door and stopped, facing it, suddenly immobile. His shoulders trembled. He whirled suddenly, and the famous carven face was wet, twisted, the mouth tortured and crooked. “Never can,” he whispered, and literally ran out of the room.

The weeks went by, the months. Iapetitis cases underwent some strange undulations, and a hope arose that the off-world virus was losing its strength. Some of the older cases actually improved, and a blessing that was, too; for although overall growth was arrested, there was a tendency for the mobile side to grow faster than the other, and during the improvement phase, the sides seemed to equalize. Then, tragically the improvement would slow; and stop.

Incidence of the disease seemed to be slackening as well. At the last, there had been only three new cases in a year, though they caused a bad flurry, occurring as they did simultaneously in a Belgian village which had had no hint of the disease before.

Heri Gonza still did his weekly stint (less vacation) and still amazed his gigantic audiences with his versatility, acting, singing, dancing, clowning. Sometimes he would make quiet appearances, opening and closing the show and turning it over to a theater or ballet group. During the Old Timer’s Celebration he learned to fly a perfect duplicate of a century-old light aircraft with an internal combustion engine, and daringly took his first solo during the show, with a trideo camera occupying the instructor’s seat.

At other times he might take up the entire time-segment alone, usually with orchestra and props, once—possibly his most successful show—dressed in sloppy practice clothes on a bare stage, without so much as a chair, and with no assistance but lights and cameras and an occasional invisible touch from the hypnos and the scent generators. Single-handedly he was a parade, a primary schoolroom, a zoo in an earthquake, and an old lady telling three children, ages five, ten, and fifteen, about sex, all at the same time.

And in between (and sometimes during) his shows, he faithfully maintained I.F. He visited his children regularly, every single one of the more than four hundred. He thrilled with their improvements, cheered them in their inevitable relapses. The only time he did not make one of his scheduled shows at all was the time the three cases appeared in Belgium, and then the slot was filled with news-items about the terrifying resurgence, and a world tour of I.F. clinics. He was a great man, a great comic, no question about it, right up to his very last show.

He didn’t know it was his last show, which in its way was a pity, because with that knowledge he would have been more than good; he’d have been great. He was that kind of performer.

However, he was good, and was in and out of a vastly amusing variety show, using his old trick of standing offstage and singing with perfect mimicry while top vocalists stood center stage and mouthed the words. He turned out to be one of the Japanese girls who built body-pyramids on their bicycles, and, powered by a spring device under the water, joined a succession of porpoises leaping to take fish out of a keeper’s hand.

He played, as he preferred to do, in a large studio without an audience, but playing to the audience-response sound supplied to him. He made his cues well, filled in smoothly with ad-libs when a girl singer ran a chorus short on her arrangement, and did his easy stand-up comedy monologue to close. A pity he didn’t smile on that show. When the on-the-airs went out and the worklights came on, he threw a sweatshirt around his shoulder and ambled into the wings, where, as usual, the network man, Burcke, waited for him.

“How’d it look, Burckee ol’ turkey?”

“Like never before,” said Burcke.

“Aw, you’re cute yourself,” said the comedian. “Let’s have a look.” One of his greatest delights—and one reason for his fantastic polish—was the relaxed run-through afterward, where he lounged in the projection room and looked at the show he had just finished from beginning to end. He and Burcke and a few interested cast-members, backstage people, and privileged strangers got arranged in the projection room. Beer was passed around and the small-talk used up. As usual they all deferred to Heri Gonza, and when he waved a negligent hand everybody shut up and the projectionist threw the switch.

Title and credits with moving cloud-blanket background. Credits fade, camera zooms toward clouds, which thin to show mountain range. Down through clouds, hover over huge misty lake. Water begins to heave, to be turbulent, suddenly shores rush together and water squirts high through the clouds in a thick column. Empty lake rises up out of clouds, is discovered to be Heri Gonza’s open mouth. Pull back to show full face. Puzzled expression. Hand up, into mouth, extracts live goldfish.

Gonza: Welcome to the Heri Gonza show, this week “As you lake it.” (beat) Which is all you can expect when you open with a punorama. What ho is (beat) What ho is yonder? A mountain. What ho is on the mountain? A mountain goat. What ho is the goat mountain? Why, another moun— Fellers, keep the lens on me, things are gettin’ a little blue off camera. Now hear ye, Tom, now hear ye, Dick, now hear ye, hairy Harry, Heri’s here. Hee hee, ho ho, here comes the show.

Soft focus and go to black. Long beat.

Heri took his beer away from his mouth and glared at the wall. “God’s sake, you send all that black?”

“Sure did,” said Burcke equably.

“Man, you don’t do that for anything but the second coming. What you think they expect with all that black? It sucks ‘em in, but boy, you got to pay off.”

“We paid off,” said Burcke. “Here it comes.”

“The horse act, right?”

“Wrong,” said Burcke.

Dark stage. Desk, pool of light. Zoom in, Burcke, jaw clamped. In a face as sincere and interested as that, the clamped jaw is pretty grim.

Burcke: Tonight the Heri Gonza show brings you a true story. Although the parts are played by professional actors, and certain scenes are shortened for reasons of time, you may be assured that these are real events and can be proved in every detail.

“What the hell is this?” roared Heri Gonza. “Did you air this? Is this what went out when I was knocking myself out with that horse act?”

“Sit down,” said Burcke.

Heri Gonza sat down dazedly.

Burcke at desk. Lifts book and raps it.

Burcke: This is a ship’s rough log, the log of the Fafnir 203. How it comes to be on this desk, on your wall, is, I must warn you, a shocking story. The Fafnir is a twelve-cabin luxury cruiser with a crew of twelve, including stewards and the galley crew. So was the 203, before it was rebuilt. It was redesigned to sleep four with no room over, with two cabins rebuilt as a small-materials shop and a biological laboratory, and all the rest taken up with power-plant, fuel and stores. The ship’s complement was Dr. Iris Barran, mathematician—

Fade in foredeck of Fafnir, girl standing by computer.

Dr. George Rehoboth Horowitz, microbiologist—