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

by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

There is nothing I can say about Walt Miller’s work that I haven’t already said (enthusiastically) in several previous anthologies; nothing except that there has been far too little of it published recently—and that, like Abernathy, he has become an (anthology) editor’s nightmare. Of the four stories that appeared this year, one (“The Darfstellar”) took the Novelette Award at the annual S-F Convention, and two more have already appeared in other anthologies.

Here is the other one, the story of a man who did go out into the Cave of Night, and then came back—back to the real cave, the Cave of Earth.

THEY ALL KNEW he was a spacer because of the white goggle marks on his sun-scorched face, and so they toler­ated him and helped him. They even made allowances for him when he staggered and fell in the aisle of the bus while pursuing the harassed little housewife from seat to seat and cajoling her to sit and talk with him.

Having fallen, he decided to sleep in the aisle. Two men helped him to the back of the bus, dumped him on the rear seat, and tucked his gin bottle safely out of sight. After all, he had not seen Earth for nine months, and judging by the crusted matter about his eyelids, he couldn’t have seen it too well now, even if he had been sober. Glare-blindness, gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were excuses for a lot of things, when a man was just back from Big Bottomless. And who could blame a man for acting strangely?

Minutes later, he was back up the aisle and swaying giddily over the little housewife. “How!” he said. “Me Chief Broken Wing. You wanta Indian wrestle?”

The girl, who sat nervously staring at him, smiled wanly, and shook her head.

“Quiet li’l pigeon, aren’tcha?” he burbled affectionately, crashing into the seat beside her.

Two men slid out of their seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder. “Come on, Broken Wing, let’s go back to bed.”

“My name’s Hogey,” he said. “Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding about being a Indian.”

“Yeah. Come on, let’s go have a drink.” They got him on his feet, and led him stumbling back down the aisle. “My ma was half Cherokee, see? That’s how come I said it. You wanta hear a war whoop? Real stuff.”

“Never mind.”

He cupped his hands to his mouth and favored them with a blood-curdling proof of his ancestry, while the fe­male passengers stirred restlessly and hunched in their seats. The driver stopped the bus and went back to warn him against any further display. The driver flashed a deputy’s badge and threatened to turn him over to a constable.

“I gotta get home,” Big Hogey told him. “I got me a son now, that’s why. You know? A little baby pigeon of a son. Haven’t seen him yet.”

“Will you just sit still and be quiet then, eh?”

Big Hogey nodded emphatically. “Shorry, officer, I didn’t mean to make any trouble.”

When the bus started again, he fell on his side and lay still. He made retching sounds for a time, then rested, snor­ing softly. The bus driver woke him again at Caine’s junc­tion, retrieved his gin bottle from behind the seat, and helped him down the aisle and out of the bus.

Big Hogey stumbled about for a moment, then sat down hard in the gravel at the shoulder of the road. The driver paused with one foot on the step, looking around. There was not even a store at the road junction, but only a freight building next to the railroad track, a couple of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road, and, just across the way, a deserted filling station with a sagging roof. The land was Great Plains country, treeless, barren, and roll­ing.

Big Hogey got up and staggered around in front of the bus, clutching at it for support, losing his duffle bag.

“Hey, watch the traffic!” The driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome compassion he trotted around after his troublesome passenger, taking his arm as he sagged again. “You crossing?”

“Yeah,” Hogey muttered. “Lemme alone, I’m okay.”

The driver started across the highway with him. The traffic was sparse, but fast and dangerous in the central ninety-mile lane.

“I’m okay,” Hogey kept protesting. “I’m a tumbler, ya know? Gravity’s got me. Damn gravity. I’m not used to gravity, ya know? I used to be a tumbler—huk!—only now I gotta be a hoofer. ‘Count of li’l Hogey. You know about li’1 Hogey?”

“Yeah. Your son. Come on.”

“Say, you gotta son? I bet you gotta son.”

“Two kids,” said the driver, catching Hogey’s bag as it slipped from his shoulder. “Both girls.”

“Say, you oughta be home with them kids. Man oughta stick with his family. You oughta get another job.” Hogey eyed him owlishly, wagged a moralistic finger, skidded on the gravel as they stepped onto the opposite shoulder, and sprawled again.

The driver blew a weary breath, looked down at him, and shook his head. Maybe it’d be kinder to find a constable after all. This guy could get himself killed, wander­ing around loose.

“Somebody supposed to meet you?” he asked, squinting around at the dusty hills.

“Huk!—who, me?” Hogey giggled, belched, and shook his head. “Nope. Nobody knows I’m coming. S’prise. I’m supposed to be here a week ago.” He looked up at the driver with a pained expression. “Week late, ya know? Marie’s gonna be sore—woo-hoo!—is she gonna be sore!” He waggled his head severely at the ground.

“Which way are you going?” the driver grunted impa­tiently.

Hogey pointed down the side-road that led back into the hills. “Marie’s pop’s place. You know where? ‘Bout three miles from here. Gotta walk, I guess.”

“Don’t,” the driver warned. “You sit there by the cul­vert till you get a ride. Okay?”

Hogey nodded forlornly.

“Now stay out of the road,” the driver warned, then hurried back across the highway. Moments later, the atomic battery-driven motors droned mournfully, and the bus pulled away.

Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nice people,” he said. “Nice buncha people. All hoofers.”

With a grunt and a lurch, he got to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t work right. With his tumbler’s reflexes, he fought to right himself with frantic arm motions, but gravity claimed him, and he went stumbling into the ditch.

“Damn legs, damn crazy legs!” he cried.

The bottom of the ditch was wet, and he crawled up the embankment with mud-soaked knees, and sat on the shoulder again. The gin bottle was still intact. He had himself a long fiery drink, and it warmed him deep down. He blinked around at the gaunt and treeless land.

The sun was almost down, forge-red on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked sky faded into sulphurous yellow toward the zenith, and the very air that hung over the land seemed full of yellow smoke, the omnipresent dust of the plains.

A farm truck turned onto the side-road and moaned away, its driver hardly glancing at the dark young man who sat swaying on his dufflebag near the culvert. Hogey scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just kept staring at the crazy sun.

He shook his head. It wasn’t really the sun. The sun, the real sun, was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in the dead black pit. It painted everything with pure white pain, and you saw things by the reflected painlight. The fat red sun was strictly a phoney, and it didn’t fool him any. He hated it for what he knew it was behind the gory mask, and for what it had done to his eyes.

With a grunt, he got to his feet, managed to shoulder the duffle bag, and started off down the middle of the farm road, lurching from side to side, and keeping his eyes on the rolling distances. Another car turned onto the side-road, honking angrily.