Альфред Бестер - Star of Stars [Anthology]

“No. Don’t forget, they don’t need sleep. They don’t need food. They are not lying. They’re going back in time all right. They’re eating and sleeping back there.”

“But you just said their stories don’t stand up. They’re full of anachronisms.”

“Because they travel back into a time of their own imagination. Nathan Riley has his own picture of what America was like in the early twentieth century. It’s faulty and anachronistic because he’s no scholar; but it’s real for him. He can live there. The same is true for the others.”

Carpenter goggled.

“The concept is almost beyond understanding. These people have discovered how to turn dreams into reality. They know how to enter their dream realities. They can stay there, live there, perhaps forever. My God, Carpenter, this is your American dream. It’s miracle-working, immortality, Godlike creation, mind over matter... It must be explored. It must be studied. It must be given to the world.”

“Can you do it, Scrim?”

“No, I cannot. I’m a historian. I’m noncreative, so it’s beyond me. You need a poet . . . a man who understands the creation of dreams. From creating dreams on paper or canvas it oughtn’t to be too difficult to take the step to creating dreams in actuality.”

“A poet? Are you serious?”

“Certainly I’m serious. Don’t you know what a poet is? You’ve been telling us for five years that this war is being fought to save the poets.”

“Don’t be facetious, Scrim, I—”

“Send a poet into Ward T. He’ll learn how they do it. He’s the only man who can. A poet is half doing it anyway. Once he learns, he can teach, your psychologists and anatomists. Then they can teach us; but the poet is the only man who can interpret between those shock cases and your experts.”

“I believe you’re right, Scrim.”

“Then don’t delay, Carpenter. Those patients are returning to this world less -and less frequently. We’ve got to get at that secret before they disappear forever. Send a poet to Ward T.”

Carpenter snapped up his intercom. “Send me a poet,” be said.

He waited, and waited . . . and waited . . . while America sorted feverishly through its two hundred and ninety millions of hardened and sharpened experts, its specialized tools to defend the American Dream of beauty and poetry and the Better Things in Life. He waited for them to find a poet, not understanding the endless delay, the fruitless search, not understanding why Bradley Scrim laughed and laughed and laughed at this final, fatal disappearance.

Star in its history was able to draw on the services of a clear majority of the best writers in the science fiction field; but there were, too, a sizable number of first-rate contributions by "mainstream" writers, drawn to science fiction because they had something to say that could not be said elsewhere. There were half a dozen of these—Gerald Kersh, Jessamyn West, one or two who elected the protection of pen names—and there is Mrs. Borgese, who is not only the daugh­ter of one of the greatest writers of all, but in her own right a talented artist with words. Have no doubt of this; discover it for yourself in—

When he first said, "It is not Martha's fault, why, any Martha would have done it; he got her to be that way; I too had a Martha like that," people simply thought he was crazy. But after he had pieced the facts together, patiently and humbly, they made sense. People began to wonder about the sense they made and wanted to hope for the best, wish them well, Phil and Martha, whoever they were. Somehow it seemed the toll was paid; what for, no one could quite discern, but a toll was paid. They could go ahead now, Phil and Martha.

Vanyambadi, April 24, 1918.

Today James christened them. Willoughby and Theophil. Willoughby, after Dad. "Willy" just suits him, the cute thing. And if one is Willy, it is nice that the other be Philly. We thought of Philip, too; but, come to think of it, it doesn't make much sense, in our family. "Theo­phil" augurs well. Let him be dear to God.

June 6 .

Will always has to be on the left side, Phil always on the right, in the crib and in the buggy too. If you put them the other way, they'll cry. It's really easier that way to tell them apart. Dr. Edgecomb says to separate them. They would grow better, he says. But it can't be done. They'll cry: Will keeps his left arm under his head, Phil the right one. And when people stare at them—they have never seen a pair of twins here; they stare at them as if they were monsters—they both start crying at the same time. And when I rock the buggy they are quiet and begin to suck their thumbs: Will the right one, Phil the left. It's always like that. One is always the mirror image of the other.

July 24.

The kind of service you've got to put up with! I am frankly scared of Yoshi, but if I fire her the next one may be worse yet. Yoshi says they want to be two but the dasus prevent it. Chewing a parrot feather for a toothpick, she says if they cannot be two they'll bring on the earthquake, a terrible earthquake.

November 11.

They both spat out their spinach. They have the same likes and the same dislikes. They wet their diapers at the same time. Woe, if I changed Phil without changing Will! And Will must always be first.

May 1.

Yoshi says, and she wears an old stocking of mine on her head for a turban, help them be two. She says: Do shave Will's hair and sacrifice it to Shiva-with-the-Four-Arms that he sever them into two times two. Burn Will's hair. But Phil's hair should be done up with cow dung. That will help them be two.

November 9.

Will's cold is hanging on. We still kept him indoors today. He's rather cross and a bit run down. Got himself badly scratched up, along the left leg, while playing in his play-pen with some train tracks. When Phil came home I'll be darned if he hadn't his leg scratched up too. The right one. He had crawled off towards the garden fence and fallen against the barbed wire.

December 13.

Yoshi said, in a magical singsong voice not her own: Don't bathe them in water, which makes for sameness. Will should be rubbed with the fat of a hilsa, but for Phil you should get the twice-chewed hay of a sacred cow and boil it in palm oil, with leaves of sandalwood and minusops. That you should rub on Phil. It will make them different.

February 12.

There is a Peter Toledo and a Peter MacGregor among the boys down at the Mission Nursery. Peter Toledo is small and dark and flabby, and Peter MacGregor is tall and blond and springy. They haven't got a thing in common but their name. And that Phil is picking on Peter Toledo and Will is bothering Peter MacGregor. Today Phil took Peter Toledo's cookies, up in the dining room, and bit him when he cried, while Will kicked Peter MacGregor off the swing, down in the backyard, and rocked himself wildly and burst with laughter when he saw that Peter had got hurt.

Christmas.

It seems so strange, these two children who are really only one. And you don't know where one ends and the other begins. Will is for Phil, Phil is for Will, and there seems to be no room for anybody else. The space between them seems different from the space around, permeated by invisible communications. I've looked it up in the books, and it seems to be all perfectly normal the way it is. James says each one has a soul, each one of them is alone before God. But sometimes I wonder.

May 5.

Phil has grown faster than Will. He is almost an inch taller now. But Will is getting so bossy. Phil—"My Phil"—he has to do everything just the way Will wants him to. Phil is such a good boy. He does not mind. This morning Will wetted Phil's bed. I know he did, because Phil's bed was dry when I picked him up for his bath. But Will said: "Phil made wettywetty in his beddy. Bad Phil." And Phil looked at us so sorrowfully with guilty eyes. I really think he believed he did it.