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    Alpha 7
    Alpha 7
    Alpha 7
    Ebook460 pages5 hours

    Alpha 7

    By Robert Silverberg

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    About this ebook

    The seventh in a series of superb science fiction.

    The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality and importance to the science fiction genre.

    Since its inception in 1970, the Alpha series has been dedicated to the proposition that science fiction can be a literature not only of stimulating and unfamiliar ideas but also of skilful and vigorous writing. Thus far Alpha has offered sixty-odd stories that exemplify the best of science fiction: challenging, provocative views of the universe, presented in crisp, sparkling prose. The volumes in the series offer some of the liveliest work produced in the short-story form anywhere in the world, and not just of the science-fiction category.

    Alpha serves a secondary purpose: to rescue from oblivion stories that might otherwise be undeservedly forgotten. Herewith, the seventh feast of outstanding fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherReAnimus Press
    Release dateAug 27, 2022
    ISBN9781005882433
    Alpha 7
    Author

    Robert Silverberg

    <p>Robert Silverberg has won five Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and the prestigious <em>Prix Apollo.</em> He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels -- including the best-selling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics <em>Dying Inside</em> and <em>A Time of Changes</em> -- and more than sixty nonfiction works. Among the sixty-plus anthologies he has edited are <em>Legends</em> and <em>Far Horizons,</em> which contain original short stories set in the most popular universe of Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy and SF writer today. Mr. Silverberg's Majipoor Cycle, set on perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one of the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.</p>

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      Book preview

      Alpha 7 - Robert Silverberg

      ALPHA 7

      Edited by

      ROBERT SILVERBERG

      Produced by ReAnimus Press

      Other books by Robert Silverberg:

      The Gate of Worlds

      Conquerors from the Darkness

      Time of the Great Freeze

      Enter a Soldier. Later: Another

      The Longest Way Home

      The Alien Years

      Tower of Glass

      Hot Sky at Midnight

      The New Springtime

      Shadrach in the Furnace

      The Stochastic Man

      Thorns

      Kingdoms of the Wall

      Challenge for a Throne

      Scientists and Scoundrels

      1066

      The Crusades

      The Pueblo Revolt

      The New Atlantis

      The Day the Sun Stood Still

      Triax

      Three for Tomorrow

      Three Trips in Time and Space

      Alpha 1

      Alpha 2

      Alpha 3

      Alpha 4

      Alpha 5

      Alpha 6

      Alpha 8

      Alpha 9

      © 2022, 1977 by Robert Silverberg. All rights reserved.

      All stories are published by permission of their authors.

      https://ReAnimus.com/store?author=Robert+Silverberg

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      INTRODUCTION

      DUNE ROLLER - by Julian May

      SHAPE - by Robert Sheckley

      TRANSFER POINT - by Anthony Boucher

      A GALAXY CALLED ROME - by Barry N. Malzberg

      REJOICE, REJOICE, WE HAVE NO CHOICE - by Terry Carr

      ORPHANS OF THE VOID - by Michael Shaara

      THE LUCKIEST MAN IN DENV - by C. M. Kornbluth

      FOR LOVE - by Algis Budrys

      WORLD WAR II - by George Alec Effinger

      THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN - by Richard McKenna

      ABOUT THE EDITOR

      INTRODUCTION

      Since its inception in 1970, the Alpha series has been dedicated to the proposition that science fiction can be a literature not only of stimulating and unfamiliar ideas but also of skilful and vigorous writing. Thus far Alpha has offered sixty-odd stories that exemplify to me the best of science fiction: challenging, provocative views of the universe, presented in crisp, sparkling prose. I think the six volumes in the series thus far offer some of the liveliest work produced in the short-story form anywhere in the world in the past thirty years, and I speak now not just of the science-fiction category.

      Alpha serves a secondary purpose: to rescue from oblivion stories that might otherwise be undeservedly forgotten. Hence the frequency with which stories of the early 1960s, the 1950s, even the 1940s, appear in this series. There is a myth, which I perhaps have helped to foster, that most science-fiction writers were illiterates until 1965 or so, turning out crude and clumsy stories in which dazzling ideas were smothered by hackneyed situations and tin-eared locutions; I hope Alpha, by reprinting scores of stories that have lost none of their freshness after twenty or thirty years, has begun to lay this myth to rest. There is much being done in science fiction today that would never have been written or published in earlier times, and Alpha has tried to maintain contact with the new SF as well—the Malzberg and Effinger stories in this volume are good examples of what is being accomplished now out on the pioneering edge. But the main business of Alpha has been, from the beginning, to restore to print the stories that created and fostered today’s SF. Not necessarily the best known ones, either, the classic Asimov and Heinlein and Bradbury and van Vogt stories that seem to form the backbone of most anthologies, but rather the ones that had brief moments of glory, were applauded by readers and studied closely by young writers, and then somehow slipped from sight again. Jack Vance’s Moon Moth, Damon Knight’s Dio, William Tenn’s Down Among the Dead Men, Edgar Pangborn’s Angel’s Egg, and Philip Jose Farmer’s The Shadow of Space, among many others, are examples of stories that have taken on new life since Alpha restored them to print. I hope to go on in this way for many years, rummaging in the files of old magazines while keeping in touch with the best current work, in order to present this annual feast of outstanding fiction.

      —Robert Silverberg

      DUNE ROLLER

      by Julian May

      Dune Roller appeared, without fanfare, in the December, 1951 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, under the previously unknown byline of J.C. May. The story—intelligent, sensitive, powerful—made an immediate impact in the science-fiction world, and there was much speculation about the identity of this remarkable new author. A few months later the truth began to circulate through the s-f community: J.C. May was the same person as Julian Chain, who had had a couple of well-received stories in Astounding earlier in 1951, and both were pseudonyms for Julian May Dikty, the wife of the widely-known anthologist and book publisher, Ted Dikty of Chicago. Mrs. Dikty—who was not yet of voting age when she wrote Dune Roller—did not, unfortunately for us, go on to have the spectacular career in science fiction that readers of her first few stories predicted; she turned instead to writing books for young people, mainly about science, and only now, after a lapse of more than twenty years, is thinking about doing some s-f again. The Diktys now live in Oregon, where they operate Fax Collector’s Editions, a specialty fantasy publishing house.

      There were only two who saw the meteor fall into Lake Michigan, long ago. One was a Pottawatomie brave hunting rabbits among the dunes on the shore; he saw the fire-streak arc down over the water and was afraid, because it was an omen of ill favor when the stars left the heaven and drowned themselves in the Great Water. The other who saw was a sturgeon who snapped greedily at the meteor as it fell—quite reduced in size by now—to the bottom of the fresh water sea. The big fish took it into his mouth and then spat it out again in disdain. It was not good to eat. The meteor drifted down through the cold black water and disappeared. The sturgeon swam away, and presently, he died....

      Dr. Ian Thorne squatted beside a shore pool and netted things. Under the sun of late July, the lake waves were sparkling deep blue far out, and glass-clear as they broke over the sandbar into Dr. Thorne’s pool. A squadron of whirligig beetles surfaced warily and came toward him, leading little v-shaped shadow wakes along the tan sand bottom. A backswimmer rowed delicately out of a green cloud of algae and snooped around a centigrade thermometer which was suspended in the water from a driftwood twig.

      3:00 P.M., wrote Dr. Thorne in a large, stained notebook. Air temp 32, water temp—he leaned over to get a better look at the thermometer and the back-swimmer fled—28. Wind, light variable; wave action, diminishing. Absence of drifted specimens. He dated a fresh sheet of paper, headed it Fourteenth Day, and began the bug count.

      He scribbled earnestly in the sun, a pleasant-faced man of thirty or so. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and shorts of delicious magenta color, decorated with most unbotanical green hibiscus. An old baseball cap was on his head.

      He skirted the four-by-six pool on the bar side and noted that the sand was continuing to pile up. It would not be long before the pool was stagnant, and each day brought new and fascinating changes in its population. Gyrinidae, Hydrophilidae, a Corixa hiding in the rubbish on the other end. Some kine of larvae beside a piece of water-logged board; he’d better take a specimen or two of that. L. intacta sunning itself smugly on the thermometer.

      The back-swimmer, its confidence returned, worked its little oars and zig-zagged in and out of the trash. N. undulata, wrote Dr. Thorne.

      When the count was finished, he took a collecting bottle from the fishing creel hanging over his shoulder and maneuvered a few of the larvae into it, using the handle of the net to herd them into position.

      And then he noticed that in the clear, algae-free end of the pool, something flashed with a light more golden than that of mere sun on water. He reached out the net to stir the loose sand away.

      It was not a pebble or a piece of chipped glass as he had supposed; instead, he fished out a small, droplike object shaped like a marble with a tail. It was a beautiful little thing of pellucid amber color, with tiny gold flecks and streaks running through it. Sunlight glanced off its smooth sides, which were surprisingly free of the surface scratches that are the inevitable patina of flotsam in the sand-scoured dunes.

      He tapped the bottom of the net until the drop fell into an empty collecting bottle and admired it for a minute. It would be a pretty addition to his collection of Useless Miscellanea. He might put it in a little bottle between the tooled brass yak bell and the six-inch copper sulfate crystal.

      He was collecting his equipment and getting ready to leave when the boat came. It swept up out of the north and nosed in among the sand bars offshore, a dignified, forty-foot Matthews cruiser named Carlin, which belonged to his friend, Kirk MacInnes.

       ’Hoy, Mac! Dr. Thorne yelled cordially. Look out for the new bar the storm brought in!

      A figure on the flying bridge of the boat waved briefly and howled something unintelligible around a pipe clamped in its teeth. The cruiser swung about and the mutter of her motors died gently. She lay rocking in the little waves a few hundred feet offshore. After a short pause a yellow rubber raft dropped over the stern.

      Good old Mac, thought Thorne. The little ex-engineer with that Skye terrier moustache and the magnificent boat visited him regularly, bringing the mail and his copy of the Biological Review, or bottled goods of a chemistry designed to prevent isolated scientists from catching cold. He was a frequent and welcome visitor, but he had always come alone.

      Previous to this.

      Well, well, said Dr. Thorne, and then looked again.

      The girl was sitting in the stern of the raft while MacInnes paddled deftly, and as they drew closer Thorne saw that her hair was dark and curly. She wore a spotless white play suit, and a deep blue handkerchief was knotted loosely around her throat. She was looking at him, and for the first time he had qualms about the Hawaiian shorts.

      The yellow flank of the raft grated on the stony beach. MacInnes, sixty and grizzled, a venerable briar between his teeth, climbed out and wrung Thorne’s hand.

      Brought you a visitor this time, Ian. Real company. Jeanne, this gentleman in the shorts and fishing creel is Dr. Ian Thorne, the distinguished writer and lecturer. He writes books about dune ecology, whatever that is. Ian, my niece, Miss Wright.

      Thorne murmured politely. Why, that old scoundrel. That sly old dog. But she was pretty, all right.

      How engaging, smiled the girl. An ecologist with a leer.

      Dr Thorne’s face abruptly attempted to adopt the protective coloration of his shorts. He said, We’re really not bad fellows at heart, Miss Wright. It’s the fresh air that gives us the pointed ears.

      I see, she said, in a tone that made Thorne wonder just how much she saw. Were you collecting specimens here today, Dr. Thorne?

      Not exactly. You see, I’m preparing a chapter on the ecology of beach pool associations, and this little pool here is my guinea pig. The sand bar on the lake side will grow until the pool is completely cut off. As its stagnation increases, progressive forms of plant and animal life will inhabit it—algae, beetles, larvae, and so forth. If we have calm weather for the next few weeks, I can get an excellent cross section of the plant-animal societies which develop in this type of an environment. The chapter on the pool is one in a book I’m doing on ecological studies of the Michigan State dunes.

      All you have to do is charge him up, MacInnes remarked, yawning largely, and he’s on the air for the rest of the day. He pulled the raft up onto the sand and took out a flat package. I brought you a present, if you’re interested.

      What is it? The mail?

      Something a heck of a lot more digestible. A brace of sirloins. I persuaded Jeanne to come along today to do them up for us. I’ve tasted your cooking.

      I can burn a chop as well as the next man, Thorne protested with dignity. But I think I’ll concede the point. I was finished here. Shall we go right down to the shack? I live just down the shore, Miss Wright, in a place perched on top of a sand dune. It’s rugged but it’s home.

      MacInnes chuckled and led the way along the firm damp sand near the water’s edge.

      In some places the tree-crowned dunes seemed to come down almost to the beach level. Juniper and pines and heavy undergrowth were the only things holding the vast creeping monster which are the traveling dunes. Without their green chains, they swept over farms and forests, leaving dead trees and silver-scoured boards in their wake.

      The three of them cut inland and circled a great narrow-necked valley which widened out among the high sand hills. It was a barren, eery place of sharp, wind-abraded stumps and silent white spaces.

      A sand blow, said Thorne. The winds do it. Those dunes at the end of the valley in there are moving. See the dead trees? The hills buried them years ago and then moved on and left these skeletons. These were probably young oaks.

      Poor things, said the girl, as they moved on.

      Then the dismal blow was gone, and green hills with scarcely a show of sand towered over them. At the top of the largest stood Throne’s lodge, its rustic exterior blending inconspicuously into the conifers and maples which surrounded it on three sides. The front of the house was banked with yew and prostrate juniper for sand control.

      A stairway of hewn logs came down the slope of the dune. At its foot stood a wooden bench, a bright green pump, and an old ship’s bell on a pole.

      A dunes doorbell! Jeanne exclaimed, seizing the rope.

      Nobody home yet, Thorne laughed, but that’s the shack up there.

      Yeah, said MacInnes sourly. And a hundred and thirty-three steps to the top.

      Later, they sat in comfortable rattan chairs on the porch while Thorne manipulated siphon and glasses.

      You really underestimate yourself, Dr. Thorne, the girl said. This is no shack, it’s a real home. A lodge in the pines.

      Be it ever so humble, he smiled. I came up here to buy a two-by-four cabin to park my typewriter and microscopes in, and a guy wished this young chalet off on me.

      The view is magnificent. You can see for miles.

      But when the wind blows a gale off the lake, you think the house is going to be carried away! It’s just the thing for my work, though. No neighbors, not many picnickers, not even a decent road. I have to drive my jeep down the beach for a couple of miles before I can hit the cow path leading to the county trunk. No telephones, either. And I have my own little generating plant out back, or there wouldn’t be any electricity.

      No phone? Jeanne frowned. But Uncle Kirk says he talks to you every day. I don’t understand.

      Come out here, he invited mysteriously. I’ll show you something.

      He led the way to a tiny room with huge windows which lay just off the living room. Radio equipment stood on a desk and lined the walls. A large plaster model of a grasshopper squatting on the transmitter rack wore a pair of headphones.

      Ham radio used to be my hobby when I was a kid, he said, and now it keeps me in touch with the outside world. I met Mac over the air long before I ever saw him in the flesh. You must have seen his station at home. And I think he even has a little low-power rig in the cruiser.

      I’ve seen that. Do you mean he can talk to you any time he wants to?

      Well, it’s not like the telephone, Thorne admitted, the other fellow has to be listening for you on your frequency. But your uncle and I keep a regular schedule every evening and sometimes in the morning. And hams in other parts of the country are very obliging in letting me talk to my friends and colleagues. It works out nicely all the way around.

      Uncle Kirk had represented you as a sort of scientific anchorite, she said, lifting a microphone and running her fingers over the smooth chrome. But I’m beginning to think he was wrong.

      Maybe, he said quietly. Maybe not. I manage to get along. The station is a big help in overcoming the isolation, but—there are other things. Shall we be getting back to the drinks?

      She put down the microphone and looked at him oddly. If you like. Thank you for showing me your station.

      Think nothing of it. If you’re ever in a jam, just howl for W8-Dog-Zed-Victor on ten meters.

      All right, she said to him. If I ever am. She turned and walked out of the door.

      The casual remark he had been about to make died on his lips, and suddenly all the loneliness of his life in the dunes loomed up around him like the barren walls of the sand blow. And he was standing there with the dead trees all around and the living green forever out of reach....

      This Scotch tastes like iodine, said MacInnes from the porch.

      Thorne left the little room and closed the door behind him. It’s the only alcohol in the house, unless you want to try my specimen pickle, said Thorne, dropping back into his chair. As for the flavor—you should know. You brought the bottle over yourself last week.

      The girl took Thorne’s creel and began to arrange the bottles in a row on the table. Algae, beetles, and some horrid little things that squirmed when she shook them. Ugh.

      What’s this? she asked curiously, holding up the bottle with the amber drop.

      Something I found in my beach pool this afternoon. I don’t know what it is. Rock crystal, perhaps, or somebody’s drowned jewelry.

      I think it’s rather pretty, she said admiringly. It reminds me of something, with that little tail. I know—Prince Rupert drops. They look just like this, only they’re a bit smaller and have an air bubble in them. When you crack the little tail off them, the whole drop flies to powder. She shrugged vaguely. Strain, or something. I never saw one that had color like this, though. It’s almost like a piece of Venetian glass.

      Keep it, if you like, Thorne offered.

      MacInnes poured himself another finger and thumb of Scotch and scrupulously added two drops of soda. In the center of the table, the small amber eye winked faintly in the sunlight.

      Tommy Dittberner liked to walk down the shore after dinner and watch the sand toads play. There were hundreds of them that came out to feed as soon as dusk fell—little silvery-gray creatures with big jewel eyes, that swam in the mirror of the water or sat quietly on his hand when he caught them. There were all sizes, from big fellows over four inches long to tiny ones that could perch comfortably on his thumbnail.

      Tommy came to Port Grand every August, and lived in a resort near the town. He knew he was not supposed to go too far from the cottage, but it seemed to him that there were always more and bigger toads just a little farther down the shore.

      He would go just down to that sand spit, that was all. Well, maybe to that piece of driftwood down there. He wasn’t lost, like his mother said he would be if he went too far. He knew where he was; he was almost to the Bug Man’s house.

      He was funny. He lived by himself and never talked to anyone—at least that’s what the kids said. But Tommy wasn’t too sure about that. Once last week the Bug Man and a pretty lady with black hair had been hiking in the dunes near Tommy’s cottage and Tommy had seen him kiss her. Boy, that had been something to tell the kids!

      Here was the driftwood, and it was getting dark. He had been gone since six o’clock, and if he didn’t get home, Mom was going to give it to him, all right.

      The toads were thicker than ever, and he had to walk carefully to avoid stepping on any of them. Suddenly he saw one lying in the sand down near the water’s edge. It was on its back and kicked feebly. He knelt down and peered closely at it.

      Sick, he decided, prodding it with a finger. The animal winced from his touch, and its eyes were filmed with pain. But it wasn’t dead yet.

      He picked it up carefully in both hands and scrambled over the top of the low shore dune to the foot of the great hill where the Bug Man lived.

      Thorne opened the door to stare astonished at the little boy, and wondered whether or not to laugh. Sweat from the exertion of climbing the one hundred and thirty-three steps had trickled down from his hair, making little stripes of cleanness on the side of his face. His T-shirt had parted company from the belt of his jeans. He held out the toad in front of him.

      There’s this here toad I found, he gasped breathlessly. I think it’s sick.

      Without a word, Thorne opened the door and motioned the boy in. They went into the workroom together.

      Can you fix it up, mister? asked the boy.

      Now, I’ll have to see what’s wrong first. You go wash your face in the kitchen and take a Coke out of the icebox while I look it over.

      He stretched it out on the table for examination. The abdomen was swollen and discolored, and even as he watched it the swelling movement of the floor of its mouth faltered and stopped, and the animal did not move again.

      It’s dead, ain’t it? said a voice behind Thorne.

      I’m afraid so, sonny. It must have been nearly dead when you found it.

      The boy nodded gravely. He looked at it silently for a moment, then said: What was the matter with it, mister?

      I could tell if I dissected it. You know what that is, don’t you? The boy shook his head. Well, sometimes by looking inside of the sick thing that has died, you can find out what was wrong. Would you like to watch me do it?

      I guess so.

      Scalpel and dissecting needle flashed under the table light. Thorne worked quickly, glancing at the boy now and then out of the corner of his eye. The instruments clicked within the redness of the incision and parted the oddly darkened and twisted organs.

      Thorne stared. Then he arose and smiled kindly at the young face before him. It died of cessation of cardiac activity, young fellow. I think you’d better be heading for home now. It’s getting dark and your mother will be worried about you. You wouldn’t want her to think anything had happened to you, would you? I didn’t think so. A big boy like you doesn’t worry his mother.

      What’s a cardiac? asked the boy, looking back over his shoulder at the toad as Thorne led him out.

      Means ‘pertaining to the heart,’  said Thorne. Say, I’ll tell you what. We’ll drive home in my jeep. Would you like that?

      I guess so.

      The screen door slammed behind them. The kid would forget the toad quickly enough, Thorne told himself. He couldn’t have seen what was inside it anyway.

      In the lodge later, under the single little light, Thorne preserved the body of the toad in alcohol. Beside him on the table gleamed two tiny amber drops with tails which he had removed from the seared and ruptured remains of the toad’s stomach.

      The marine chronometer on the wall of Thorne’s amateur station read five-fifteen. His receiver said to him:

      I have to sign off now. The missus is hollering up that she wants me to see to the windows before supper. I’ll look for you tomorrow. This is W8GB over to W8DVZ, and W8GB is out and clear. Good night, Thorne.

      Thorne said, Good night, Mac. W8DVZ out and clear, and let the power die in his tubes.

      He lit a cigarette and stood looking out of the window. In the blue sky over the lake hung a single, giant white thunderhead; it was like a marble spray billow, ponderous and sullen. The rising wind slipped whistling through the stiff branches of the evergreen trees on the dune, and dimly, through the glass, he could hear the sound of the waves.

      He moped around inadequately after supper and waited for something to happen. He typed up the day’s notes, tidied the workroom, tried to read a magazine, and then thought about Jeanne. She was a sweet kid, but he didn’t love her. She didn’t understand.

      The sand walls seemed to be going up around him again. He wasn’t among the dead trees—he was one of them, rooted in the sand with the living greenness stripped from his heart.

      Oh, what the hell. The magazine flew across the room and disappeared behind the couch in a flutter of white pages.

      He stormed into the workroom, bumped the shelves, and set the specimens in their bottles swaying sadly to and fro. In the second bottle from the end, right-hand side, was a toad. In the third were two small amber drops with tails, whose label said only:

      YOU TELL ME—8/5/57

      Interest stirred. Now, there was a funny thing. He had almost forgotten. The beads, it would seem, had been the cause of the toad’s death. They had evidently affected the stomach and the surrounding tissues before they had had a chance to pass through the digestive tract. Fast work. He picked up the second bottle and moved it gently. The pale little thing inside rotated until the incision, with all the twisted organs plainly visible inside, faced him. Willy Seppel would have liked to see this; too bad he was across the state in Ann Arbor.

      Idly, Thorne toyed with the idea of sending the pair of drops to his old friend. They were unusual looking—he could leave the label on, write a cryptic note, and fix Seppel’s clock for putting the minnows in his larvae pail on their last field trip together.

      If he hurried, he could

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