Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

“Here is food,” Harper repeated softly. “Here is water.” The old woman sighed. She plodded wearily across the ground, paused, shaking with fear, and then flung herself down at the food and the water.

“The Joint Board for Research has just won the first round,” Hill said. Anscomb nodded. He jerked his thumb upward. Hill looked.

Another head appeared at the cliff. Then another. And another. They watched. The crone got up, water dripping from her dewlaps. She turned to the cliff. “Come down,” she cried. “Here is food and water. Do not die. Come down and eat and drink.” Slowly, her tribes-people did so. There were thirty of them.

Harper asked, “Where are the others?”

The crone held out her dried and leathery breasts to him. “Where are those who have sucked? Where are those your brothers took away?” She uttered a single shrill wail; then was silent.

But she wept — and Harper wept with her.

“I’ll guess we’ll swing it all right,” Hill said. Anscomb nodded. “Pity there’s so few of them. I was afraid we’d have to use gas to get at them. Might have lost several that way.”

Neither of them wept.

For the first time since ships had come to their world, Yahoos walked aboard one. They came hesitantly and fearfully, but Harper had told them that they were going to a new home and they believed him. He told them that they were going to a place of much food and water, where no one would hunt them down. He continued to talk until the ship was on its way, and the last Primitive had fallen asleep under the dimmed-out vapor-tube lights. Then he staggered to his cabin and fell asleep himself. He slept for thirty hours.

He had something to eat when he awoke, then strolled down to the hold where the Primitives were. He grimaced, remembering his trip to the hold of the other ship to collect Senior, and the frenzied howling of the convicts awaiting the females. At the entrance to the hold he met Dr. Hill, greeted him.

“I’m afraid some of the Yahoos are sick,” Hill said. “But Dr. Anscomb is treating them. The others have been moved to this compartment here.”

Harper stared. “Sick? How can they be sick? What from? And how many?”

Dr. Hill said, “It appears to be Virulent Plague… Fifteen of them are down with it. You’ve had all six shots, haven’t you? Good. Nothing to worry—”

Harper felt the cold steal over him. He stared at the pale young physician. “No one can enter or leave any system or planet without having had all six shots for Virulent Plague,” he said slowly. “So if we are all immune, how could the Primitives have gotten it? And how is it that only fifteen have it? Exactly half of them. What about the other fifteen, Dr. Hill? Are they the control group for your experiment? ”

Dr. Hill looked at him calmly. “As a matter of fact, yes. I hope you’ll be reasonable. Those were the only terms the Joint Board for Research would agree to. After all, not even convicts will volunteer for experiments in Virulent Plague.”

Harper nodded. He felt frozen. After a moment he asked, “Can Anscomb do anything to pull them through?”

Dr. Hill raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps. We’ve got something we wanted to try. And at any rate, the reports should provide additional data on the subject. We must take the long-range view.”

Harper nodded. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.

By noon all fifteen were dead.

“Well, that means an uneven control group,” Dr. Anscomb complained. “Seven against eight. Still, that’s not too bad. And it can’t be helped. We’ll start tomorrow.”

“Virulent Plague again?” Harper asked.

Anscomb and Hill shook their heads. “Dehydration,” the latter said. “And after that, there’s a new treatment for burns we’re anxious to try… It’s a shame, when you think of the Yahoos being killed off by the thousands, year after year, uselessly . Like the dodo. We came along just in time — thanks to you, Harper.”

He gazed at them. “ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ” he asked. They looked at him, politely blank. “I’d forgotten. Doctors don’t study Latin any more, do they? An old proverb. It means: ‘Who shall guard the guards themselves?’… Will you excuse me, Doctors?”

Harper let himself into the compartment. “I come,” he greeted the fifteen.

“We see,” they responded. The old woman asked how their brothers and sisters were “in the other cave.”

“They are well… Have you eaten, have you drunk? Yes? Then let us sleep,” Harper said.

The old woman seemed doubtful. “Is it time? The light still shines.” She pointed to it. Harper looked at her. She had been so afraid. But she had trusted him. Suddenly he bent over and kissed her. She gaped.

“Now the light goes out,” Harper said. He slipped off a shoe and shattered the vapor tube. He groped in the dark for the air-switch, turned it off. Then he sat down. He had brought them here, and if they had to die, it was only fitting that he should share their fate. There no longer seemed any place for the helpless, or for those who cared about them.

“Now let us sleep,” he said.

Ever cut a diamond? Talk to a diamond-cutter sometime. They’ll tell you that, sure, size matters — but by itself it doesn’t make a good gem. Color’s important, too. The whiter a stone, the purer and more transparent, the more valuable it is. And after color, clarity. Look at a diamond under a jeweler’s loupe or, better still, beneath a ’scope. Imperfections stand out, and some of them shout, disrupting the play of light inside the crystal. Dispersion, it’s called.

Anybody can take an idea, throw it at the reader, wrap a few quotes and exclamation points and adjectives around it, and call it a story. Might even be a big idea, flashy and impressive at first read. But dig into most stories and it won’t take long to find the imperfections and discolorations.

Take a small idea, now, and hone it perfectly, so that there are no wasted words, no endless and unnecessary expository phrases, no participles dangling off the edges of otherwise well-cut sentences. That’s much more difficult to do. Most writers achieve modest results with grandiose effects. In this regard, fantasy fiction is particularly guilty. Flying horses, gigantic djinn, sorcerers throwing lightning bolts at one another — effective at first, but after a while reduced to a kind of literary mendacity.

But a bunch of guys sitting around talking about their lives — ordinary people, with everyday problems. How do you reach out and grab the reader with that? How do you travel from a discussion of personal problems to a conclusion that stops a reader dead in his or her tracks, maybe just a little out of breath?

The same way an old diamond-cutter takes a tiny lump of dull, misshapen, milky crystal and turns it into an ornament that dazzles and overpowers the eye, that’s how. Avram Davidson was a master shaper of small stories. “Or the Grasses Grow” is a prime example of his ability to, well, facet, what at first appears to be a small idea, and turn it into something brilliant.

ABOUT HALFWAY ALONG THE narrow and ill-paved county road between Crosby and Spanish Flats (all dips and hollows shimmering falsely like water in the heat till you get right up close to them), the road to Tickisall Agency branches off. No pretense of concrete or macadam — or even grading — deceives the chance or rare purposeful traveller. Federal, State, and County governments have better things to do with their money: Tickisall pays no taxes, and its handful of residents have only recently (and most grudgingly) been accorded the vote.