In the Beginning: Tales From the Pulp Era Read online

  “New York remains paralyzed by the unknown alien monster in its midst,” a staccato voice said. “The animal is still somewhere in the building in the heart of the business district that it took over late yesterday, and a fearsome range of artillery is waiting for it to emerge. Do not panic. The situation is under study by our foremost experts on extraterrestrial life.

  “And now, for the first time, we can show you what this monster looks like. Zoo officials have supplied a photograph of the animal.” The photograph appeared on the screen. Kalainnen reached to turn off the set, then stopped as the features of the beast behind the bars registered.

  It was a bruug.

  He sat back in his chair, startled. His first thought was one of incredulity. The whole city terrorized by a bruug? They were the most peaceful, the most—

  Then he thought of calling the video station. They would be interested in learning the identity of the monster, the planet it came from, all the data that the zoo officials had misplaced or (more likely) forgotten.

  Then he realized he was the ace in the hole.

  At the rate he was going, he would never come to the Terrans’ notice, and, just as Trask was a forgotten backwater of the Galaxy, he would remain in this hotel, forgotten by Terra and, eventually, by Trask.

  But there was one thing he could do. He was of vital importance to Terra, though they didn’t realize it. The bruug, the familiar red beast, was virtually a domestic animal on Trask; every Traskan could handle one like a pet. It was all a matter of understanding animals, and this the Traskans did superbly. No bomb would do any good—not on an animal with a hide like that. No; it was understanding. A few gentle words from a Traskan and the animal would lie down placidly. Understanding.

  And who understood the bruug? Kalainnen. His way seemed perfectly clear to him.

  Of course, the bruug might not be red. It might be blue. The only way he could tell was by close examination. And if the bruug were blue—but he preferred not to think about that.

  Anyway, it would be good to see something from home again.

  The streets were deserted. No Terran cared to venture out into the night while the bruug was loose in the city, no matter how many guns were trained on it. The spectacle of an immense city completely terrorized by an animal of which he himself had no more fear than of a butterfly amused Kalainnen as he walked down to the building where they bruug was.

  It was a long walk, but the city was intelligently planned and he had no trouble finding his way. He enjoyed the walk; the air was clean and fresh at night, almost like Trask, and there were no people in the streets to snicker at him.

  Finally, in the distance, he glimpsed some big guns and a group of soldiers. He began to trot a little. When he reached the guns, the soldiers stopped him.

  “What do you want?” said a very tall man in a very resplendent uniform. In the dim light Kalainnen saw that his hair was dyed a flaming bronze-red. “Are you crazy, walking right in here?”

  “I’m from Trask,” Kalainnen said. “We know how to handle these animals. Let me through, please.” He started to walk on.

  “Just a minute!” The big soldier grabbed him; Kalainnen twisted loose. Two other soldiers dove for him and caught him, and he found himself looking up at an even taller and more resplendent one.

  “This guy says he’s from Flask, sir,” the first soldier said. “Says he knows how to handle the animal.”

  “That’s right,” Kalainnen said. “They’re domestic animals on Trask.”

  The officer looked at him—he was more than a foot taller than Kalainnen—and laughed. “Domestic animal, eh? Pet for the kiddies? Take him away—anywhere, just out of my sight.”

  As the first soldier reached for Kalainnen, a mighty roar erupted from the office building. Kalainnen felt a thrill of familiarity; knowing there was a bruug in the vicinity—even a blue one—was a comforting feeling.

  “All hands to battle stations!” the officer roared. “Prepare to fire!”

  The bruug roared again from somewhere inside the building. The soldiers dashed to the gun installations, and suddenly Kalainnen found himself standing alone and ignored. He looked briefly around and began to run as fast as he could for the entrance to the building, ignoring the outraged and amazed yells of the soldiers who watched him.

  The building was unlighted and very big. Kalainnen wandered around in the dark for a moment or two, hoping the bruug would not appear before he had acclimated his vision to the darkness. From somewhere on an upper floor, he heard the deep-throated roar he knew so well. The poor beast was hungry.

  Bruugs were docile animals. But the blue bruugs of Kandarth, the deserted island in South Trask, were hardly so. And they refused to be understood.

  As he wandered through the darkened building, he began to wonder whether or not he was biting off more than he was going to get down his throat. If the bruug were blue, well, that was it. But even if it were the domesticated kind, it had, after all, been captured (or, more likely, given away by the Traskans) centuries before. Perhaps it had forgotten.

  The roaring grew louder. Kalainnen mounted the stairs.

  It was dark, but he was growing accustomed to the darkness and could see fairly well. Not well enough to discern the color of the bruug’s skin at a distance, though; he would have to look under the thick fur, and by the time he got that close it no longer mattered much.

  On the fourth floor he came across the bruug, sprawled out in the corridor and munching angrily on a splintered door. The bruug was a big one; he had prospered in captivity. He scented Kalainnen and looked up slowly at him and emitted a great roar.

  “Hello,” Kalainnen said, looking at the beast’s eyes. As it began to lumber to its feet, Kalainnen walked toward it, smiling, trying desperately not to let his fear show through and destroy his chances of mastering the animal. The roars of the bruug filled the hall. Kalainnen began to talk to it, calmly, in Traskan.

  It rose to its full height and began to charge.

  “No. You don’t want to do that at all,” Kalainnen said, listening to the echoes of his voice rattling down the corridor. “You don’t want to do that.”

  Ten minutes later he emerged from the building, with the bruug following docilely behind.

  It had been a red one.

  The Colonial Minister was a jovial-looking rotund man, one of the few unimpressive-looking Terrans Kalainnen had ever seen. Kalainnen studied his features for a moment or two, and looked down again at the text of the agreement whereby Terra would supply the planet Trask with a team of technologists and whatever aid would be necessary, in return for valuable services rendered by an inhabitant of the aforementioned planet Trask, etc., etc.

  “It sounds reasonable enough,” Kalainnen said. “I think it’ll meet our needs admirably.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that, Mr. Kalainnen,” the Colonial Minister said. “But I still don’t understand how a planet whose people have such skills as you showed can need any help from us.”

  “It’s a matter of different kinds of skills, Mr. Minister,” Kalainnen said. “Every planet understands certain things that no other one does. Once in a book of Terran folklore—we have a few old Terran books on Trask—I read a story that reminds me of this. It seems a backwoodsman came to a big city, and, amid the roaring of traffic, said he heard a cricket chirping. They laughed at him, but he walked down a street and pointed out a nearby sewer opening and sure enough, they found a little cricket in the opening. Everyone congratulated him for his miraculous powers of hearing. But he proved that he didn’t hear any better than anyone else, just that he heard different things.”

  “How did he do that?” the Minister murmured.

  “It was easy. He took a small coin out of his pocket and dropped it on the sidewalk. Two hundred people stopped and looked around at the sound.”

  The Minister smiled. Kalainnen knew from experience that he was a busy man, but at the moment he had the upper hand and he wanted to make the most of it.
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br />   “The moral of the story is, sir, that some planets are good for one thing and some for another. And so if you’ll give us the tools we need, we’ll show you why ferocious monsters on Terra are pleasant pets on Trask. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” said the Minister. He extended his pen to Kalainnen, who signed the agreement with a flourish.

  On his way out of the Ministry he passed Frandel, who was standing gloomily in the midst of a seemingly endless line.

  “Let’s get together again some time,” Kalainnen said, pausing for a moment. The Quangen just glared at him angrily. “Let me know when you get back to our system, old man. Perhaps you’d like to come over to Trask and study our technology.” Kalainnen smiled. “Best of luck, friend. The Minister is a fine man; you’ll see that as soon as you get to see him. If you get to see him, that is.”

  And Kalainnen walked on, feeling very pleased, and—unintentionally, of course—treading on the tip of this Quangen’s prehensile tail, which he had wanted to do all his life.

  LONG LIVE THE KEJWA

  (1956)

  A great deal happened to me, professionally, between the publication of “Yokel with Portfolio” in the autumn of 1955 and the appearance of this one seven months later. The most important development was the arrival in New York City, where I was living then, of one Randall Garrett.

  Garrett, a charming, roguish fellow seven or eight years older than I was, came from Texas but had been living in the Midwest, working as a chemist and writing science fiction on the side, in the early 1950s. He was a natural storyteller and had a good grasp both of science and of the traditions of science fiction, and very quickly he sold a dozen stories or so to most of the major markets, including two excellent novelets (“The Waiting Game,” 1951, and “The Hunting Lodge,” 1954) to John W. Campbell’s Astounding, one of the leading magazines of the field. But like too many science-fiction writers Garrett had an unfortunate weakness for the bottle, which led early in 1955 to the end of his marriage and the loss of his job; and then the friends in Illinois with whom he had taken refuge wearied of his wayward ways and suggested he move along. That spring he packed up his few possessions and a box of unfinished manuscripts and headed for New York to establish himself as a full-time science-fiction writer.

  One of the few people he knew in New York was Harlan Ellison, who had come from the Midwest a year before Garrett with the same goal in mind. Harlan and I were close friends, and at my suggestion he had taken a room next door to me in the seedy Manhattan residence hotel where I was living during my college years, on West 114th Street, a couple of blocks from the Columbia campus. It was a place inhabited by a sprinkling of undergraduates, an assortment of aging graduate students, a few aspiring writers like Harlan and me, some very aged ladies living on pensions, and an odd collection of down-on-their-luck characters of no apparent profession. When he reached New York, Garrett phoned Ellison, who was still meeting only frustration in his attempts to break into print. Harlan told him about our hotel, and very suddenly we had him living down the hall from us. Almost immediately thereafter Garrett and I went into partnership as a sort of fiction factory.

  He and I could scarcely have been more different in temperament. Randall was lazy, undisciplined, untidy, untrustworthy, and alcoholic. I was a ferociously hard worker, ambitious, orderly, boringly respectable and dignified, and, though I did (and do) have a fondness for the occasional alcoholic beverage, I was (and am) constitutionally unable to drink very much without getting sick. But we did have one big thing in common: we both were deeply versed in the tropes of science fiction and intended to earn our livings entirely by writing science fiction. We had the same agent, too. Furthermore, we had complementary sets of skills: Garrett’s education had been scientific, mine literary. He was good at the technological side of s-f, and also was a skillful constructor of story plots. I, though still a beginning writer, was already showing superior stylistic abilities and the knack of creating interesting characters. I was tremendously productive, too, able to turn out a short story in a single sitting, several times a week. Garrett was a swift writer too, but only when he could stay sober long enough to get anything done. It occurred to him that if we became collaborators, my discipline and ambition would be strong enough to drive both of us to get a great deal of work done, and his more experienced hand as a writer would help me overcome the neophyte’s flaws in my storytelling technique that had kept me from selling stories to any but the minor magazines. And so we set up in business together. (Harlan, having not yet reached a professional level of writing ability, remained on the outside, somewhat to his displeasure.)

  Garrett was a man of grandiose ideas, and so he and I aimed for the top right away: we meant to sell a novel to Campbell’s Astounding. As soon as my third year of college was over that June, he and I began plotting a three-part serial built around one of Campbell’s favorite formulas, the superior Earthman who helps benighted alien beings improve their lot in life. Since Campbell was of Scottish ancestry, Garrett suggested that we make our hero a Scot, one Duncan MacLeod. I cheerfully agreed. We worked it all out in great detail, and then, to my surprise, Garrett told me that we were going downtown to Campbell’s office to pitch the idea in person.

  I had never expected anything like that. I thought we would let our agent handle the marketing of the project. But Garrett, a supremely gregarious man, believed in personal contact with his editors; and so one summer morning he swept me off to Campbell’s office, where I was introduced as a brilliant new talent with whom he would be collaborating thenceforth. We pitched our story; Randall did most of the talking, but I added a thoughtful bit of Ivy League eloquence every now and then. Campbell loved the idea. He had a few improvements to suggest, though—in fact, by lunchtime he had transformed our story beyond all recognition. Then he told us to go home and write, not a novel, but a series of novelets, first, and then a novel. I went back to West 114th Street in a daze.

  Of course, I never thought anything was going to come out of this. Me, not even old enough to vote yet, selling a series of novelets to John W. Campbell? But we sat down and wrote the first in our series almost instantly, sticking the joint pseudonym “Robert Randall” on it, and Campbell bought it on the spot, reading it in his office before our eyes, in August, 1955. I was so stunned at the idea that I had sold something to Astounding that I couldn’t sleep that night.

  Garrett didn’t want us to stop there. It was the personal touch that did it, he was convinced. Editors wanted to put faces behind the manuscripts. So we needed to visit all the other editors, too—Howard Browne of Amazing, Bob Lowndes of Future, Larry Shaw of the new magazine Infinity, etc. Later in August, Garrett and I attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, where I met William L. Hamling, who had bought two stories from me that year and let me know now that he’d like me to send him some others. Garrett was right: in the small world that was science fiction in 1955, the personal touch did do it. On the strength of my collaborative sale to Campbell’s Astounding, coming on top of my scattering of sales to a few lesser magazines, I had acquired enough professional plausibility to find the doors of the editorial offices opening for me, and Garrett’s prodding had brought me inside.

  Bob Lowndes, who had already bought a story from me the year before, seemed glad to meet me, and by way of our shared love of classical music struck up a friendship right away. He had high tastes in science fiction, and would buy many more stories from me, usually the ones I had tried and failed to sell to the better-paying magazines. Browne, about whom I will have more to say a little further on, also gave me a ready welcome. He ran a different sort of magazine, featuring simple action tales staff-written by a little stable of insiders—Milton Lesser, Paul W. Fairman, and a couple of others. It happened that in the summer of 1955 Browne had two vacancies in his stable, and he offered the jobs to Garrett and me the day we showed up in his office. So long as we brought him stories every month and maintained a reasonable level of competence
he would buy everything we wrote, sight unseen.

  That struck me as almost as improbable as my selling novelets to John Campbell. Here I was, a kid still in college who had sold less than a dozen stories, and a cagy old pro like Howard Browne was offering me what amounted to a job, with a guaranteed rate of pay, to keep his science-fiction magazine supplied with copy!

  I didn’t hesitate. I had a story called “Hole in the Air” that Scott Meredith had returned to me because he didn’t think he could sell it to anyone. I handed the manuscript to Howard Browne on an August day and he bought it. The following week Garrett and I batted out a novelet, “Gambler’s Planet,” and he bought that too. We did another for him in September, “Catch a Thief,” and I sold two stories to Bob Lowndes, too, and another novelet to Campbell, and then more to Browne, and so on. In the first five months of the Garrett partnership I made a phenomenal 26 story sales—some of them collaborations, but many of them solo stories, for with Randall’s help I had acquired the momentum for a career of my own.

  One thing I did, as I grew more confident of my relationship with Howard Browne, was to feed him some of the unsold stories that I had written in the pre-Garrett days, when I was simply sending them off to Scott Meredith and hoping that he would find a market for them somewhere. In June of 1955 I had written “Long Live the Kejwa,” built around a classic theme that I had encountered in my anthropology class. Toward the end of the year, since it was still unsold, I asked Scott to send it over to Browne as part of my quota of stories for the month. It was published in the July, 1956 issue of Amazing Stories under Howard’s title, “Run of Luck,” which was, perhaps, a better title than mine. But as I restore it to print here after five decades in limbo I prefer to use the original title for it.

  That July 1956 Amazing provided another milestone for me in that dizzying year, because “Run of Luck” was one of three stories that I had in the issue. Its companions were “Stay Out of My Grave,” another early unsold story that I had salvaged by selling to Browne, and “Catch a Thief,” a Garrett collaboration published under the byline of “Gordon Aghill.” Fifteen months earlier it was an awesome thing for me to get any story published, and now here they were showing up in threes in a single issue!