Judith Merril: The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2

Professor Leuten and I knew better, of course. For knowing better we were thrown out of offices, declined interviews and once almost locked up as lunatics. That was when we tried to get through to the President direct. The Secret Service, I am able to testify, guards our Chief Executive with a zeal that borders on ferocity.

“How goes the book?” Professor Leuten asked abruptly.

“Third hundred thousand. Why? Want an advance?”

I don’t understand German, but I can recognize deep, heartfelt profanity in any language. He spluttered and crackled for almost a full minute before he snarled in English: “Idiots! Dolts! Out of almost one third of a million readers, exactly one had read the book!”

I wanted to defer comment on that, “There’s a car,” I said.

“Obviously it stalled and was abandoned by a refugee from Scranton.”

“Let’s have a look anyway.” It was a battered old Ford sedan halfway off the pavement. The rear was full of canned goods and liquor. Somebody had been looting. I pushed the starter and cranked for a while; the motor didn’t catch.

“Useless,” said the professor. I ignored him, yanked the dashboard hood button and got out to inspect the guts. There was air showing on top of the gas in the sediment cup.

“We ride, professor,” I told him. “I know these babies and their fuel pumps. The car quit on the upgrade there and he let it roll back.” I unscrewed the clamp of the carburetor air filter, twisted the filter off and heaved it into the roadside bushes. The professor, of course was a “mere-machinery” boy with the true European intellectual’s contempt for greasy hands. He stood by haughtily while I poured a bottle of gin empty, found a wrench in the toolbox that fit the gas-tank drain plug and refilled the gin bottle with gasoline. He condescended to sit behind the wheel and crank the motor from time to time while I sprinkled gas into the carburetor. Each time the motor coughed there was less air showing in the sediment cup; finally the motor caught for good. I moved him over, tucked my briefcase in beside me, U-turned on the broad, empty highway and we chugged north into Scranton.

It was only natural that he edged away from me, I suppose. I was grimy from working under the gas tank. This plus the discreditable ability I had shown in starting the stalled car reminded him that he was, after all, a Herr Doktor from a real university while I was, after all, a publisher’s employee with nebulous qualifications from some place called Cornell. The atmosphere was wrong for it, but sooner or later he had to be told.

“Professor, we’ve got to have a talk and get something straight before we find Miss Phoebe.”

He looked at the huge striped sign the city fathers of Scranton wisely erected to mark that awful downgrade into the city.

WARNING’ SEVEN-MILE DEATH TRAP AHEAD. SHIFT INTO LOWER GEAR. $50 FINE. OBEY OR PAY!

“What is there to get straight?” he demanded. “She has partially mastered Functional Epistemology even though Hopedale Press prefers to call it ‘Living on the Cosmic Expense Account.’ This has unleashed certain latent powers of hers. It is simply our task to complete her mastery of the ethical aspect of F.E. She will cease to dominate other minds as soon as she comprehends that her behavior is dysfunctional and in contravention of the Principle of Permissive Evolution.” To him the matter was settled. He mused: “Really I should not have let you cut so drastically my exposition of Dyadic Imbalance; that must be the root of her difficulty. A brief inductive explanation--”

“Professor,” I said, “I thought I told you in the train that you’re a fake.”

He corrected me loftily. “You told me that you think I’m a fake, Mr. Norris. Naturally I was angered by your duplicity, but your opinion of me proves nothing. I ask you to look around you. Is this fakery?”

We were well into the city. Bewildered dogs yelped at our car. Windows were broken and goods were scattered on the sidewalks; here and there a house was burning brightly. Smashed and overturned cars dotted the streets, and zombies walked slowly around them. When Miss Phoebe hit a city the effects were something like a thousand-bomber raid.

“It’s not fakery,” I said, steering around a smiling man in a straw hat and overalls. “It isn’t Functional Epistemology either. It’s faith in Functional Epistemology. It could have been faith in anything, but your book just happened to be what she settled on.”

“Are you daring,” he demanded, white to the lips, “to compare me with the faith healers?”

“Yes,” I said wearily. “They get their cures. So do lots of people. Let’s roll it up in a ball, Professor. I think the best thing to do when we meet Miss Phoebe is for you to tell her you’re a fake. Destroy her faith in you and your system and I think she’ll turn back into a normal old lady again. Wait a minute! Don’t tell me you’re not a fake. I can prove you are. You say she’s partly mastered F.E. and gets her powers from that partial mastery. Well, presumably you’ve completely mastered F.E., since you invented it. So why can’t you do everything she’s done, and lots more? Why can’t you end this mess by levitating to La Plume, instead of taking the Lackawanna and a 1941 Ford? And, by God, why couldn’t you fix the Ford with a pass of the hands and F.E. instead of standing by while I worked?”

His voice was genuinely puzzled. “I thought I just explained, Norris. Though it never occurred to me before, I suppose I could do what you say, but I wouldn’t dream of it. As I said, it would be dysfunctional and in complete contravention of the Principle of Permissive “

I said something very rude and added: “In short, you can but you won’t.”

“Naturally not! The Principle of Permissive “ He looked at me with slow awareness dawning in his eyes. “Norris! My editor. My proofreader. My by-the-publisher-officially-assigned fidus Achates. Norris, haven’t you read my book?”

“No,” I said sharply. “I’ve been much too busy. You didn’t get on the cover of Time magazine by blind chance, you know.”

He was laughing helplessly. “How goes that song,” he finally asked me, his eyes damp, “‘God Bless America’?”

I stopped the car abruptly. “I think I feel something,” I said. “Professor, I like you.”

“I like you too, Norris,” he told me. “Norris, my boy, what do you think of ladies?”

“Delicate creatures. Custodians of culture. Professor, what about meat eating?”

“Shocking barbarous survival. This is it, Norris!”

We yanked open the doors and leaped out. We stood on one foot each, thumbed our noses, and stuck out our tongues.

Allowing for the time on the train, this was the 1,961st time I had done it in the past two months. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times the professor had arranged for spiders to pop out at me from books, from the television screen, from under steaks, from desk drawers, from my pockets, from his. Black widows, tarantulas, harmless (hah!) big house spiders, real and imitation. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times I had felt the arachnophobe’s horrified revulsion. Each time I felt it I had thrown major voluntary muscular systems into play by drawing up one leg violently, violently swinging my hand to my nose, violently grimacing to stick out my tongue.

My body had learned at last. There was no spider (his time; there was only Miss Phoebe: a vague, pleasant feeling something like the first martini. But my posture of defense this 1,962d time was accompanied by the old rejection and horror. It had no spider, so it turned on Miss Phoebe. The vague first-martini feeling vanished like morning mist burned away by the sun.

I relaxed cautiously. On the other side of the car so did Professor Leuten. “Professor,” I said, “I don’t like you any more.”