Part 36 (1/2)

”I hear you.”

Instinctively, Lamorak was shouting. ”Is anything wrong? There seems to be a block here. Are there complications with Ragusnik?”

”Ragusnik has gone to work,” came Blei's voice. ”The crisis is over, and you must make ready to leave.”

”Leave?”

”Leave Elsevere; a s.h.i.+p is being made ready for you now.”

”But wait a bit.” Lamorak was confused by this sudden leap of events. ”I haven't completed my gathering of data.”

Blei's voice said, ”This cannot be helped. You will be directed to the s.h.i.+p and your belongings will be sent after you by servo-mechanisms. We trust-- we trust--”

Something was becoming clear to Lamorak. ”You trust what?”

”We trust you will make no attempt to see or speak directly to any Elseverian. And of course we hope you will avoid embarra.s.sment by not attempting to return to Elsevere at any time in the future. A colleague of yours would be welcome if further data concerning us is needed.”

”I understand,” said Lamorak, tonelessly. Obviously, he had himself become a Ragusnik. He had handled the controls that in turn had handled the wastes; he was ostracized. He was a corpse-handler, a swineherd, an inside man at the skonk works.

He said, ”Good-bye.”

Blei's voice said, ”Before we direct you, Dr. Lamorak--. On behalf of the Council of Elsevere, I thank you for your help in this crisis.”

”You're welcome,” said Lamorak, bitterly.

In some ways, this story has the strangest background of any I ever wrote. It is also the shortest story I ever wrote--only 350 words. The two go together.

It came about this way. On August 21, 1957, I took part in a panel discussion on means of communicating science on WGBH, Boston's educational TV station. With me were John Hansen, a technical writer of directions for using machinery, and David O. Woodbury, the well-known science writer.

We all bemoaned the inadequacy of most science writing and technical writing and there was some comment on my own prolificity. With my usual modesty, I attributed my success entirely to an incredible fluency of ideas and a delightful facility in writing. I stated incautiously that I could write a story anywhere, any time, under any conditions within reason. I was instantly challenged to write one right then and there with the television cameras on me.

I accepted the challenge and began to write, taking for my theme the subject of discussion. The other two did not try to make life easier for me, either. They deliberately kept interrupting in order to drag me into their discussion and interrupt my line of thought, and I was just vain enough to try to answer sensibly while I continued scribbling.

Before the half-hour program was over I had finished and read the story (which is why it is so short, by the way) and it was the one you see here as ”Insert k.n.o.b A in Hole B.” In his own introduction to the story, when it appeared in F & SF, Mr. Boucher said he was printing it just as it was (I had sent him the handwritten script, after typing a copy for myself) ”even to the retention of its one grammatical error.” I have kept that error here, too. It's yours for the finding.

I cheated, though. (Would I lie to you?) The three of us were talking before the program started and somehow I got the idea they might ask me to write a story on the program. So, just in case they did, I spent a few minutes before its start blocking out something.

Consequently, when they asked me, I had it roughly in mind. All I had to do was work out the details, write it down, and then read it. After all, I had twenty minutes.

First appearance--The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1957. , 1957, by Fantasy House, Inc.

Insert k.n.o.b A in Hole B

Dave Woodbury and John Hansen, grotesque in their s.p.a.cesuits, supervised anxiously as the large crate swung slowly out and away from the freight-s.h.i.+p and into the airlock. With nearly a year of their hitch on s.p.a.ce Station A5 behind them, they were understandably weary of filtration units that clanked, hydroponic tubs that leaked, air generators that hummed constantly and stopped occasionally.

”Nothing works,” Woodbury would say mournfully, ”because everything is hand-a.s.sembled by ourselves.”

”Following directions,” Hansen would add, ”composed by an idiot.”

There were undoubtedly grounds for complaint there. The most expensive thing about a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p was the room allowed for freight so all equipment had to be sent across s.p.a.ce disa.s.sembled and nested. All equipment had to be a.s.sembled at the Station itself with clumsy hands, inadequate tools and with blurred and ambiguous direction sheets for guidance.

Painstakingly Woodbury had written complaints to which Hansen had added appropriate adjectives, and formal requests for relief of the situation had made their way back to Earth.

And Earth had responded. A special robot had been designed, with a positronic brain crammed with the knowledge of how to a.s.semble properly any disa.s.sembled machine in existence.

That robot was in the crate being unloaded now and Woodbury was trembling as the airlock closed behind it.

”First,” he said, ”it overhauls the Food-a.s.sembler and adjusts the steak-attachment k.n.o.b so we can get it rare instead of burnt.”

They entered the Station and attacked the crate with dainty touches of the demoleculizer rods in order to make sure that not a precious metal atom of their special a.s.sembly-robot was damaged.

The crate fell open!

And there within it were five hundred separate pieces--and one blurred and ambiguous direction sheet for a.s.semblage.

I have frequently (rather to my own uneasy surprise) been accused of writing humorously. Oh, I try, I try, but only very cautiously, and for a long time I thought n.o.body noticed.

You see, there is no margin for error in humor. You can try to write suspense and not quite hit the mark, and have a story that is only moderately suspenseful. In a.n.a.logous manner, you can have a story be only moderately romantic, moderately exciting, moderately eerie, even moderately science-fictiony.

But what happens when you miss the mark in humor? Is the result moderately humorous? Of course not! The not-quite-humorous remark, the not-quite-witty rejoinder, the not-quite-farcical episode are, respectively, dreary, stupid, and ridiculous.

Well, with a target that is all bull's-eye and no larger than a bull's-eye at that, am I going to blaze away carelessly? Certainly not! I'm fantastically courageous, but I'm not stupid.

So I have tried being funny only occasionally, and usually only gently and un.o.btrusively (as in ”n.o.body Here But--”) .On the few occasions in which I tried to write a purely funny story, I wasn't completely satisfied.

Mostly, therefore, I kept my stories grave and sober (as you can tell). Yet, I never quite gave up, either. One day, at the prodding of Mr. Boucher, I tried my hand at a Gilbert and Sullivan parody and finally (in my own eyes, at any rate) I clicked without reservation. I read the story over and laughed heartily.

That was it. I had found my metier in humor. All I had to do was to a.s.sume a very slightly exaggerated pseudo-Victorian style and I found I had no trouble at all in being funny.

Did I enter a full-fledged career as science fiction humorist at once? Not at all. I kept the humor at the previous level and remained, for the most part, grave and sober. That's still what I do best.

However, in the middle 1960s, I took to writing a series of articles for TV Guide which are nothing but this kind of humor, and I love them. (1 am sometimes taken to task, by the way, for saying, in my artless way, that I like my own material, but why shouldn't I? Is it conceivable that I would spend seventy hours a week on writing and related reading if I didn't like what I wrote? Come on!) By the way, a final word about ”The Up-to-Date Sorcerer”--It is not essential to read Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer first, but it would make my story funnier if you did (I think) , and I would like to give it every break.

First appearance--The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1958. @, 1958, by Mercury Press, Inc.

The Up-to-Date Sorcerer

It always puzzled me that Nicholas Nitely, although a Justice of the Peace, was a bachelor. The atmosphere of his profession, so to speak, seemed so conducive to matrimony that surely he could scarcely avoid the gentle bond of wedlock.

When I said as much over a gin and tonic at the Club recently, he said, ”Ah, but I had a narrow escape some time ago,” and he sighed.

”Oh, really?”

”A fair young girl, sweet, intelligent, pure yet desperately ardent, and withal most alluring to the physical senses for even such an old fogy as myself.”

I said, ”How did you come to let her go?”