The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 6

  But—there were right guesses, too, often tremendously insightful ones, and it was to J.W.C.’s everlasting credit that he always spoke his mind, and never soft-pedaled what he honestly believed. There was no evasiveness or self-aggrandizing pretense in him at all.

  He excelled as an editor in his almost instant appreciation of new and exceptionally original ideas, and encouraged writers to enlarge on what they had written by freely offering ideas of his own for improving a story if he felt it needed strengthening at one or more vital points.

  He was the last writer I spoke to before the astral communicator broke down. Just how or why it happened I simply do not know, even to this particular day and hour in 1985. It happened last October and could well become a subject of interest to the soon forthcoming World Fantasy Convention in the Southwest, and the eerie All-Hallows Eve spirits which stalk the shadows at that particular time of the year.

  CHAPTER 5

  I have never actually seen a ghost or had what is commonly referred to as an “occult experience.” Whenever I mention this to one of my friends who are firmly convinced they have had such an experience they shake their heads in disappointment or stare at me reproachfully, as if such an admission on the part of a supernatural horror writer verges on the unforgivable.

  HPL, of course, was a total disbeliever in the supernatural as a realistic possibility, but the cosmic vistas in his stories create so overwhelming an impression in the opposite direction that a great many readers prefer to go on thinking of him as possessing a key that could unlock undreamed-of portals in every direction and that he is inwardly smiling still, in some other segment of space-time, at the tremendous deception he preferred to indulge in for some whimsical reason known to himself alone.

  I am quite sure that nothing could be further from the truth. I am equally sure that in the entire course of my life I have practiced no such deception, even on a self-deceiving plane. I possess no keys whatever beyond a very speculative small one that might conceivably have dropped out of a small rusty lock that would turn more than it has if I worked over it painstakingly enough, with just the right kind of oiling.

  I am thinking here of what Jung calls synchronicity and what surrealists prefer to think of as “objective chance.” The occurrence, in close association, of two or more events with striking features in common, can, in many instances, be accepted without puzzlement as no more than normally coincidental. But when the similarities are very striking, and the coincidental factor does violence to the law of averages or seems to involve an ESP factor as well, the aforementioned lock becomes less resistant to my turning effort.

  What it suggests, to me at least, is that in some strange, incredible way everything in the universe may be mysteriously linked to everything else; and if you pluck a beetle from a planet in a summer garden, the better to examine it, another beetle, in some other segment of space-time, perhaps an anti-matter beetle, will be stirred to much the same kind of resentful activity. If you wish to think of this as an occult event or manifestation of the ghostly, I am prepared to go along with it.

  There are events of this nature that are simply prophetic in some unusual way, and the unusualness does not become apparent until years later. To group them all under one heading or label—Jungian synchronistic or whatever—would be a mistake in logic. But I am less concerned with logic here than with the simple fact that they have served, more than anything else in the realm of the inexplicable, to keep me from becoming the kind of dogmatic scientific materialist that turns thumbs down, as did HPL, on the possible intrusion of something very close to the supernatural into our everyday lives.

  I have discussed in The Dreamer four or five such occurrences which seemed to bear a close relationship to the many talks I had with HPL in the ten years following the first time I met him in person—talks and walks that took place in regions as scattered as Brooklyn, Providence, Newburyport and the tip of Cape Cod. A Hudson River Valley occurrence of much the same general nature I described several years ago in Whispers magazine, “A Day in the Life of H. P. Lovecraft.”

  What is perhaps most curious in that respect is the HPL-Providence associational nature of the next to last one, for it took place during—rather, immediately following—the First World Fantasy Convention at which the assembled guests included Robert Bloch, H. Warner Munn, Fritz Leiber, Jr., and Willis Conover. Perhaps there is something about the invocation of the Mythos that can hardly fail to take place when inner-circle Lovecraftians assemble on such an occasion that breaks down all barriers between the known and the unknown and permits synchronicity to come fully into its own.

  The incident I have in mind was, in a sense, a thing apart, and bears no direct relationship to the Convention. But it did take place in Providence and would not have taken place if I hadn’t decided to go roaming about the city for the first time in years after the Convention broke up.

  I was curious concerning its possible bookstore “finds,” particularly several out-of-print volumes I had been unable to secure in New York. As I approached a very modern, well-stocked bookstore not far from the Ancient Hill, I went over in my mind a brief article I was writing about HPL. In it I had dwelt on some length on Henry James and H. Rider Haggard. It would not, I felt, be possible to imagine two widely read novelists more unlike, Henry James was a major literary figure, and Haggard, despite the fame which She, King Solomon’s Mines and a host of other books had brought him in a popular readership sense, was in a different category entirely.

  The instant I stepped into the bookshop I saw that it presented a browsing temptation of a superficial sort, for there was a gigantic rack of recent paperbacks close to the door. I stopped for a moment to look over the titles and a recent reprint of an H. Rider Haggard novel caught my eye. On the cover there was a ten-or twelve-line blurb, praising the book in the highest terms, and the author of that turn-of-the-century blurb had been—you’ve guessed it—Henry James!

  This occurrence was not exactly of a spectacular nature and if it rips the law of averages to shreds it does so in a rather quiet, unobtrusive way. But for some reason, perhaps because of that very unobtrusiveness, it made a deeper impression on me than most of the others in recent years.

  There was one so extraordinary in a threefold way that I must, however, relate it here, and then I am through. (To the profound skeptic who regards synchronicity as a delusion and a snare that “through” could take on another, unintended meaning and provoke a chuckle! But I shall go on undaunted notwithstanding.)

  This one has nothing whatever to do with HPL, the Mythos or Providence. Six or seven years ago my wife and I were invited to a party in the Village, and were so late we feared the Martinis would have to be put back in the refrigerator. So we hailed a taxi at random in the neighborhood, even though the distance still to be covered was short, and settled back with sighs of relief. The driver almost immediately began to talk and he was good at it.

  He was, it seems, an artist of considerable talent—he had even been on TV several times, once on prime time—and he specialized in the drawing of hands, chiefly of theatrical celebrities. He passed a sketch book back to my wife, because her interest had been aroused in an easily understandable way. She was for a number of years in the theatrical promotion field—and still is, but in combination with other involvements—and had only the week before been in the office of one of the celebrities whose hands were in the sketch book. She had also talked with at least a dozen of the others.

  We were both impressed by the coincidence but I didn’t think too much about it, because occurrences of that nature happen more often than is commonly supposed, and are not synchronistic to a very pronounced extent. Besides, I can be a little impatient at times with extraordinary things which happen at the wrong time, when one’s mind is on something else and I was still concerned with being late for the party.

  My wife took down the artist’s addre
ss, but later lost it, and when we arrived at our destination and I paid the cab fare he drove off, and we never saw him again. The party, despite our late arrival, was wholly a success and we did not depart until the small hours. On descending the stairs—it was on the third floor—we encountered on the second floor landing a huge painting, just a little on the crude side, of two hands, interlocked!

  There were several artists in the huge brownstone and I was sure then—and I’m still convinced—it was put out into the hallway by its unsatisfied creator to be carted off by a garbage disposal truck later in the morning. I should, of course, have checked on this, but I never did.

  THE LAST MEN

  Originally published in Astounding Stories, August 1934.

  Maljoc had come of age. On a bright, cold evening in the fall of the year, fifty million years after the last perishing remnant of his race had surrendered its sovereignty to the swarming masters, he awoke proud and happy and not ashamed of his heritage. He knew, and the masters knew, that his kind had once held undisputed sway over the planet. Down through dim aeons the tradition—it was more than a legend—had persisted, and not all the humiliations of the intervening millenniums could erase its splendor.

  Maljoc awoke and gazed up at the great moon. It shone down resplendently through the health-prism at the summit of the homorium. Its rays, passing through the prism, strengthened his muscles, his internal organs, and the soft parts of his body.

  Arising from his bed, he stood proudly erect in the silver light and beat a rhythmic tattoo with his fists on his naked chest. He was of age, and among the clustering homoriums of the females of his race which hung suspended in the maturing nurseries of Agrahan was a woman who would share his pride of race and rejoice with him under the moon.

  As the massive metallic portals of the homorium swung inward, a great happiness came upon him. The swarming masters had instructed him wisely as he lay maturing under the modified lunar rays in the nursery homorium.

  He knew that he was a man and that the swarming masters were the descendants of the chitin-armored, segmented creatures called insects, which his ancestors had once ruthlessly despised and trampled under foot. At the front of his mind was this primary awareness of origins; at the back a storehouse of geologic data.

  He knew when and why his race had succumbed to the swarming masters. In imagination he had frequently returned across the wide wastes of the years, visualizing with scientific accuracy the post-Pleistocene glacial inundations as they streamed equatorward from the poles.

  He knew that four of the earth’s remaining continents had once lain beneath ice sheets a half mile thick, and that the last pitiful and cold-weakened remnants of his race had succumbed to the superior sense-endowments of the swarming masters in the central core of a great land mass called Africa, now submerged beneath the waters of the southern ocean.

  The swarming masters were almost godlike in their endowments. With their complex and prodigious brains, which seemed to Maljoc as all-embracing as the unfathomable forces which governed the constellations, they instructed their servitors in the rudiments of earth history.

  In hanging nursery homoriums thousands of men and women were yearly grown and instructed. The process of growth was unbelievably rapid. The growth-span of the human race had once embraced a number of years, but the swarming masters could transform a tiny infant into a gangling youth in six months, and into a bearded adult, strong-limbed and robust, in twelve or fourteen. Gland injections and prism-ray baths were the chief causal agents of this extraordinary metamorphosis, but the growth process was further speeded up by the judicious administration of a carefully selected diet.

  The swarming masters were both benevolent and merciless. They despised men, but they wished them to be reasonably happy. With a kind of grim, sardonic toleration they even allowed them to choose their own mates, and it was the novelty and splendor of that great privilege which caused Maljoc’s little body to vibrate with intense happiness.

  The great metallic portal swung open, and Maljoc emerged into the starlight and looked up at the swinging constellations. Five hundred feet below, the massive domed dwellings of Agrahan glistened resplendently in the silvery radiance, but only the white, glittering immensity of the Milky Way was in harmony with his mood.

  A droning assailed his ears as he walked along the narrow metal terrace toward the swinging nurseries of the women of his race. Several of the swarming masters were hovering in the air above him, but he smiled up at them without fear, for his heart was warm with the splendor of his mission.

  The homoriums, sky promenades, and air terraces were suspended above the dwellings of Agrahan by great swinging cables attached to gas-inflated, billowing air floats perpetually at anchor. As Maljoc trod the terrace, one of the swarming masters flew swiftly between the cables and swooped down upon him.

  Maljoc recoiled in terror. The swarming masters obeyed a strange, inhuman ethic. They reared their servitors with care, but they believed also that the life of a servitor was simply a little puff of useful energy. Sometime when in sportive mood, they crushed the little puffs out between their claws.

  A chitin-clad extremity gripped Maljoc about his middle and lifted him into the air. Calmly then, and without reversing its direction, the swarming master flew with him toward the clouds.

  Up and up they went, till the air grew rarefied. Then the swarming master laid the cool tips of its antennae on Maljoc’s forehead and conversed with him in a friendly tone.

  Your nuptial night, my little friend? it asked.

  Yes, replied Maljoc. Yes—yes—it is.

  He was so relieved that he stammered. The master was pleased. The warmth of its pleasure communicated itself to Maljoc through the vibrations of its antennae.

  It is well, it said. Even you little ones are born to be happy. Only a cruel and thoughtless insect would crush a man under its claw in wanton pleasure.

  Maljoc knew, then, that he was to be spared. He smiled up into the great luminous compound-eyes of his benefactor.

  It amused me to lift you into the air, conveyed the master. I could see that you wanted to soar above the earth; that your little wingless body was vibrant with happiness and desire for expansion.

  That is true, said Maljoc.

  He was grateful and—awed. He had never before been carried so high Almost the immense soaring wings of the master brushed the stratosphere.

  For a moment the benevolent creature winged its way above the clouds, in rhythmic glee. Then, slowly, its body tilted, and it swept downward in a slow curve toward the sky terrace.

  You must not pick a too-beautiful mate, cautioned the master. You know what happens sometimes to the too beautiful.

  Maljoc knew. He knew that his own ancestors had once pierced the ancestors of the swarming masters with cruel blades of steel and had set them in decorative rows in square boxes because they were too beautiful. His instructors had not neglected to dwell with fervor on the grim expiation which the swarming masters were in the habit of exacting. He knew that certain men and women who were too beautiful were frequently lifted from the little slave world of routine duties in the dwellings of the masters and anaesthetized, embalmed, and preserved under glass in the museum mausoleums of Agrahan.

  The master set Maljoc gently down on the edge of the sky terrace and patted him benevolently on the shoulder with the tip of its hindermost leg. Then it soared swiftly upward and vanished from sight.

  Maljoc began to chant again. The Galaxy glimmered majestically in the heavens above him, and as he progressed along the sky promenade he feasted his gaze on the glowing misty fringes of stupendous island universes lying far beyond the milky nebulae to which his little race and the swarming master belonged.

  Nearer at hand, as though loosely enmeshed in the supporting cables, the po
le star winked and glittered ruddily, while Sirius vied with Betelgeuse in outshining the giant, cloud-obscured Antares, and the wheeling fire chariot of the planet Mars.

  Above him great wings droned, and careening shapes usurped his vision. He quickened his stride and drew nearer, and ever nearer, to the object of his desire.

  The nursery homorium of the women of his race was a towering vault of copper on the edge of the cable-suspended walk. As he came abreast of it he began to tremble, and the color ebbed from his face. The women of his race were unfathomable, dark enigmas to him—bewildering shapes of loveliness that utterly eluded his comprehension.

  He had glimpsed them evanescently in pictures—the swarming masters had shown him animated pictures in colors—but why the pictures enraptured and disturbed him so he did not know.

  For a moment he stood gazing fearfully up at the massive metal portal of the homorium. Awe and a kind of panicky terror contended with exultation in his bosom. Then, resolutely, he threw out his chest and began to sing.