Short Fiction

father’s axe.

“We go down that way,” he said.

---

So they went, down, and on, and on, and on. The last cartridge was fired; the last sliver of Doorshan metal wore out or rusted away. By then, however, they had learned to make chipped stone, and bone, and reindeer-horn, serve their needs. Century after century, millennium after millennium, they followed the game-herds from birth to death, and birth replenished their numbers faster than death depleted. Bands grew in numbers and split; young men rebelled against the rule of the old and took their women and children elsewhere.

They hunted down the hairy Neanderthalers, and exterminated them ruthlessly, the origin of their implacable hatred lost in legend. All that they remembered, in the misty, confused, way that one remembers a dream, was that there had once been a time of happiness and plenty, and that there was a goal to which they would some day attain. They left the mountains⁠—were they the Caucasus? The Alps? The Pamirs?⁠—and spread outward, conquering as they went.

We find their bones, and their stone weapons, and their crude paintings, in the caves of Cro-Magnon and Grimaldi and Altimira and Mas-d’Azil; the deep layers of horse and reindeer and mammoth bones at their feasting-place at Solutre. We wonder how and whence a race so like our own came into a world of brutish subhumans.

Just as we wonder, too, at the network of canals which radiate from the polar caps of our sister planet, and speculate on the possibility that they were the work of hands like our own. And we concoct elaborate jokes about the “Men From Mars”⁠—ourselves.

Null-A.B.C.

By H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

I

Chester Pelton retracted his paunch as far as the breakfast seat would permit; the table, its advent preceded by a collection of mouth-watering aromas, slid noiselessly out of the pantry and clicked into place in front of him.

“Everything all right, Miss Claire?” a voice floated out after it from beyond. “Anything else you want?”

“Everything’s just fine, Mrs. Harris,” Claire replied. “I suppose Mr. Pelton’ll want seconds, and Ray’ll probably want thirds and fourths of everything.” She waved a hand over the photocell that closed the pantry door, and slid into place across from her brother, who already had a glass of fruit juice in one hand and was lifting platter covers with the other.

“Real eggs!” the boy was announcing. “Bacon. Wheat-bread toast.” He looked again. “Hey, Sis, is this real cow-made butter?”

“Yes. Now go ahead and eat.”

As though Ray needed encouragement, Chester Pelton thought, watching his son use a spoon⁠—the biggest one available⁠—to dump gobs of honey on his toast. While he was helping himself to bacon and eggs, he could hear Ray’s full-mouthed exclamation: “This is real bee-comb honey, too!” That pleased him. The boy was a true Pelton; only needed one bite to distinguish between real and synthetic food.

“Bet this breakfast didn’t cost a dollar under five C,” Ray continued, a little more audibly, between bites.

That was another Pelton trait; even at fifteen, the boy was learning the value of money. Claire seemed to disapprove, however.

“Oh, Ray; try not to always think of what things cost,” she reproved.

“If I had all she spends on natural food, I could have a this-season’s model ’copter-bike, like Jimmy Hartnett,” Ray continued.

Pelton frowned. “I don’t want you running around with that boy, Ray,” he said, his mouth full of bacon and eggs. Under his daughter’s look of disapproval, he swallowed hastily, then continued: “He’s not the sort of company I want my son keeping.”

“But, Senator,” Ray protested. “He lives next door to us. Why, we can see Hartnett’s aerial from the top of our landing stage!”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, in a tone meant to indicate that the subject was not to be debated. “He’s a Literate!”

“More eggs, Senator?” Claire asked, extending the platter and gesturing with the serving knife.

He chuckled inwardly. Claire always knew what to do when his temper started climbing to critical mass. He allowed her to load his plate again.

“And speaking of our landing stage, have you been up there, this morning, Ray?” he asked.

They both looked at him inquiringly.

“Delivered last evening, while you two were out,” he explained. “New winter model Rolls-Cadipac.” He felt a glow of paternal pleasure as Claire gave a yelp of delight and aimed a glancing kiss at the top of his bald head. Ray dropped his fork, slid from his seat, and bolted for the lift, even bacon, eggs, and real bee-comb honey forgotten.

With elaborate absentmindedness, Chester Pelton reached for the switch to turn on the video screen over the pantry door.

“Oh-oh! Oh-oh!” Claire’s slender hand went out to stop his own. “Not till coffee and cigarettes, Senator.”

“It’s almost oh-eight-fifteen; I want the newscast.”

“Can’t you just relax for a while? Honestly, Senator, you’re killing yourself.”

“Oh, rubbish! I’ve been working a little hard, but⁠—”

“You’ve been working too hard. And today, with the sale at the store, and the last day of the campaign⁠—”

“Why the devil did that idiot of a Latterman have the sale advertised for today, anyhow?” he fumed. “Doesn’t he know I’m running for the Senate?”

“I doubt it,” Claire said. “He may have heard of it, the way you’ve heard about an election in Pakistan or Abyssinia, or he just may not know there is such a thing as politics. I think he does know there’s a world outside the store, but he doesn’t care much what goes on in it.” She pushed her plate aside, poured a cup of coffee, and levered a cigarette from the Readilit, puffing at it with the relish of the morning’s first smoke. “All he knows is that we’re holding our sale three days ahead of Macy & Gimbel’s.”

“Russ is a good businessman,” Pelton said seriously. “I wish you’d take a little more interest in him, Claire.”

“If you mean what I think you do, no thanks,” Claire replied. “I suppose I’ll get married, some day⁠—most girls do⁠—but it’ll be