Big Book of Science Fiction (28 page)

The door slammed. Tom Wolfe was
gone.

~ * ~

They
found him wandering in the hospital corridor.

“Mr. Wolfe!”

“What?”

“Mr. Wolfe, you gave us a scare,
we thought you were gone!”

“Gone?”

“Where did you go?”

“Where? Where?” He let himself be
led through the midnight corridors. “Where? Oh, if I
told
you where, you’d
never believe.”

“Here’s your bed, you shouldn’t
have left it.”

Deep into the white death bed,
which smelled of pale, clean mortality awaiting him, a mortality which had the
hospital odor in it; the bed which, as he touched it, folded him into fumes and
white starched coldness.

“Mars, Mars,” whispered the huge
man, late at night. “My best, my very best, my really fine book, yet to be
written, yet to be printed, in another year, three centuries away . . .”

“You’re tired.”

“Do you really think so?”
murmured Thomas Wolfe. “Was it a dream? Perhaps. A good dream.”

His breathing faltered. Thomas
Wolfe was dead.

~ * ~

In
the passing years, flowers are found on Tom Wolfe’s grave. And this is not
unusual, for many people travel to linger there. But these flowers appear each
night. They seem to drop from the sky. They are the color of an autumn moon,
their blossoms are immense and they burn and sparkle their cold, long petals in
a blue and white fire. And when the dawn wind blows they drip away into a
silver rain, a shower of white sparks on the air. Tom Wolfe has been dead many,
many years, but these flowers never cease. . . .

<>

~ * ~

THE MINIATURE

by John
D. MacDonald

AS
Jedediah Amberson stepped through the bronze, marble and black-glass doorway of
the City National Bank on Wall Street, he felt the strange jar. It was, he
thought, almost a tremor. Once he had been in Tepoztlan, Mexico, on a
Guggenheim grant, doing research on primitive barter systems, and during the
night a small earthquake had awakened him.

This was much the same feeling.
But he stood inside the bank and heard the unruffled hum of activity, heard no
shouts of surprise. And, even through the heavy door he could hear the
conversation of passers-by on the sidewalk.

He shrugged, beginning to wonder
if it was something within himself, some tiny constriction of blood in the
brain. It had been a trifle like that feeling which comes just before fainting.
Jedediah Amberson had fainted once.

Fumbling in his pocket for the
checkbook, he walked, with his long loose stride, over to a chest-high marble
counter. He hadn’t been in the main office of the bank since he had taken out
his account. Usually he patronized the branch near the University, but today,
finding himself in the neighborhood and remembering that he was low on cash, he
had decided to brave the gaudy dignity of the massive institution of finance.

For, though Jed Amberson dealt
mentally in billions, and used such figures familiarly in dealing with his
classes in economics, he was basically a rather timid and uncertain man and he
had a cold fear of the scornful eyes of tellers who might look askance at the
small check he would present at the window.

He made it out for twenty dollars,
five more than he would have requested had he gone to the familiar little
branch office.

Jedediah Amberson was not a man
to take much note of his surroundings. He was, at the time, occupied in writing
a text, and the problems it presented were so intricate that he had recently
found himself walking directly into other pedestrians and being snatched back
onto the curb by helpful souls who didn’t want to see him truck-mashed before
their eyes. Just the day before he had gone into his bedroom in mid-afternoon
to change his shoes and had only awakened from his profound thoughts when he
found himself, clad in pajamas, brushing his teeth before the bathroom mirror.

He took his place in the line
before a window. He was mentally extrapolating the trend line of one of J. M.
Keynes’ debt charts when a chill voice said, “Well!”

He found that he had moved up to
the window itself and the teller was waiting for his check. He flushed and
said, “Oh! Sorry.” He tried to push the check under the grill, but it fluttered
out of his hand. As he stooped to get it, his hat rolled off.

At last recovering both hat and
check, he stood up, smiled painfully and pushed the check under the grill.

The young man took it, and Jed
Amberson finally grew aware that he was spending a long time looking at the
check. Jed strained his neck around and looked to see if he had remembered to
sign it. He had.

Only then did he notice the way
the young man behind the window was dressed. He wore a deep wine-colored sports
shirt, collarless and open at the throat. At the point where the counter
bisected him, Jedediah could see that the young man wore green-gray slacks with
at least a six-inch waistband of ocher yellow.

Jed had a childlike love of
parties, sufficient to overcome his chronic self-consciousness. He said, in a
pleased tone, “Ah, some sort of festival?”

The teller had a silken wisp of
beard on his chin. He leaned almost frighteningly close to the grill, aiming
the wisp of beard at Amberson as he gave him a careful scrutiny.

“We are busy here,” the teller
said. “Take your childish little game across street and attempt it on them.”

Though shy, Jedediah was able to
call on hidden stores of indignation when he felt himself wronged. He
straightened slowly and said, with dignity, “I have an account and I suggest
you cash my check as quickly and quietly as possible.

The teller glanced beyond
Jedediah and waved the silky beard in a taut half circle, a “come here”
gesture.

Jedediah turned and gasped as he
faced the bank guard. The man wore a salmon-pink uniform with enormously padded
shoulders. He had a thumb hooked in his belt, his hand close to the plastic
bowl of what seemed to be a child’s bubble pipe.

The guard jerked his other thumb
toward the door and said, “Ride off, honorable sir.”

Jedediah said, “I don’t care much
for the comic-opera atmosphere of this bank. Please advise me of my balance and
I will withdraw it all and put it somewhere where I’ll be treated properly.”

The guard reached out, clamped
Jed’s thin arm in a meaty hand and yanked him in the general direction of the
door. Jed intensely disliked being touched or pushed or pulled. He bunched his
left hand into a large knobby fist and thrust it with vigor into the exact
middle of the guard’s face.

The guard grunted as he sat down
on the tile floor. The ridiculous bubble pipe came out, and was aimed at Jed.
He heard no sound of explosion, but suddenly there was a large cold area in his
middle that felt the size of a basketball. And when he tried to move, the area
of cold turned into an area of pain so intense that it nauseated him. It took
but two tiny attempts to prove to him that he could achieve relative comfort
only by standing absolutely still. The ability to breathe and to turn his eyes
in their sockets seemed the only freedom of motion left to him.

The guard said, tenderly touching
his puffed upper lip, “Don’t drop signal, Harry. We can handle this without
flicks.” He got slowly to his feet, keeping the toy weapon centered on
Jedediah.

Other customers stood at a
respectful distance, curious and interested. A fussy little bald-headed man
came trotting up, carrying himself with an air of authority. He wore
pastel-blue pajamas with a gold medallion over the heart.

The guard stiffened. “Nothing we
can’t handle, Mr. Green-bush.”

“Indeed!” Mr. Greenbush said, his
voice like a terrier’s bark. “Indeed! You seem to be creating enough
disturbance at this moment. Couldn’t you have exported him more quietly?”

“Bank was busy,” the teller said.
“I didn’t notice him till he got right up to window.”

Mr. Greenbush stared at Jedediah.
He said, “He looks reasonable enough, Palmer. Turn it off.”

Jed took a deep, grateful breath
as the chill area suddenly departed. He said weakly, “I demand an explanation.”

Mr. Greenbush took the check the
teller handed him and, accompanied by the guard, led Jed over to one side. He
smiled in what was intended to be a fatherly fashion. He said, glancing at the
signature on the check, “Mr. Amberson, surely you must realize, or your patrons
must realize, that City National Bank is not the sort of organization to lend
its facilities to inane promotional gestures.”

Jedediah had long since begun to
have a feeling of nightmare. He stared at the little man in blue pajamas. “Promotional
gestures?” - .

“Of course, my dear fellow. For
what other reason would you come here dressed as you are and present this . . .
this document.”

“Dressed?” Jed looked down at his
slightly baggy gray suit, his white shirt, his blue necktie and cordovan shoes.
Then he stared around at the customers of the bank who had long since ceased to
notice the little tableau. He saw that the men wore the sort of clothes
considered rather extreme at the most exclusive of private beaches. He was
particularly intrigued by one fellow who wore a cerise silk shirt, open to the
waist, emerald green shorts to his knees, and calf-length pink nylons.

The women, he noticed, all wore
dim shades of deep gray or brown, and a standard costume consisting of a
halter, a short flared skirt that ended just above the knees and a knit cap
pulled well down over the hair.

Amberson said, “Uh. Something
special going on.”

“Evidently. Suppose you explain.”

“Me explain! Look, I can show you
identification. I’m an Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia and I—” He
reached for his hip pocket. Once again the ball of pain entered his vitals. The
guard stepped over to him, reached into each of his pockets in turn, handed the
contents to Mr. Greenbush.

Then the pressure was released. “I
am certainly going to give your high-handed procedures here as much publicity
as I can,” Jed said angrily.

But Greenbush ignored him.
Greenbush had opened his change purse and had taken out a fifty-cent piece.
Greenbush held the coin much as a superstitious savage would have held a
mirror. He made tiny bleating sounds. At last he said, his voice thin and
strained, “Nineteen forty-nine mint condition! What do you want for it?”

“Just cash my check and let me
go,” Jed said wearily. “You’re all crazy here. Why shouldn’t this year’s coin
be in mint condition?”

“Bring him into my office,”
Greenbush said in a frenzy.

“But I—” Jed protested. He
stopped as the guard raised the weapon once more. Jed meekly followed Greenbush
back through the bank. He decided that it was a case of mistaken identity. He could
call his department from the office. It would all be straightened out, with
apologies.

With the door closed behind the
two of them, Jed looked around the office. The walls were a particularly
liverish and luminescent yellow-green. The desk was a block of plastic balanced
precariously on one slim pedestal no bigger around than a lead pencil. The
chairs gave him a dizzy feeling. They looked comfortable, but as far as he
could see, they were equipped only with front legs. He could not see why they
remained upright. 

“Please sit there,” Greenbush
said.

Jed lowered himself into the
chair with great caution. It yielded slightly, then seemed to clasp him with an
almost embarrassing warmth, as though he sat on the pneumatic lap of an
exceptionally large woman.