The Apocalypse & Post-Apocalypse MEGAPACK®, page 1
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFO
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
A MAN SPEKITH, by Richard Wilson
OUR TOWN, by Jerome Bixby
EDDIE FOR SHORT, by Wallace West
THE COURTS OF JAMSHYD, by Robert F. Young
THE GREAT NEBRASKA SEA, by Allan Danzig
SEED OF EMPIRE, by Chester S. Geier
THE BLACK GRIPPE, by Edgar Wallace
BREAKDOWN, by Herbert Kastle
INFINITY’S CHILD, by Charles V. De Vet
DUST, by Wallace West
THE LAST HERO, by Robert F. Young
THE WORLD OF WILLIAM GRESHAM, by Nelson S. Bond
THE PASSING STAR, by Isaac R. Nathanson
THE FAITHFUL, by Lester Del Ray
THE WOLF PAIR, by Fritz Leiber
THE GREAT COLD, by Frank Belknap Long
THE GROWN-UP PEOPLE’S FEET, by Robert F. Young
LITTLE BOY, by Jerome Bixby
RUN, LITTLE MONSTER! by Chester S. Geier
MOTHER TO THE WORLD, by Richard Wilson
Wildside Press’s MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
COPYRIGHT INFO
The Apocalypse & Post-Apocalypse MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2019 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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“A Man Spekith,” by Richard Wilson, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1969.
“Our Town, by Jerome Bixby, was originally published in If, February 1955.
“Eddie for Short,” by Wallace West (also published as “The Last Women”), was originally appeared in Amazing Stories, December 1953-January 1954. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Wallace West.
“The Courts of Jamshyd,” by Robert F. Young, was originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, September 1957. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Robert F. Young.
“The Great Nebraska Sea,” by Allan Danzig, was originally published in Galaxy, August 1963.
“Seed of Empire,” by Chester S. Geier, was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, August 1949.
“The Black Grippe,” by Edgar Wallace, was originally published in 1920.
“Breakdown,” by Herbert Kastle, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1961.
“Infinity’s Child,” by Charles V. De Vet, was originally published in If, May 1952.
“Dust,” by Wallace West, was originally appeared in Famous Science Fiction, Spring 1967. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Wallace West.
“The Last Hero,” by Robert F. Young, was originally published in Fantastic, March 1959. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Robert F. Young.
“The World of William Gresham,” by Nelson S. Bond, was originally published in No Time Like the Future (1954).
“The Passing Star,” by Isaac R. Nathanson, was originally published in Amazing Stories, September 1930.
“The Faithful,” by Lester Del Ray, was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1938. Copyright © 1938, renewed 1986 by Lester del Rey.
“The Wolf Pair,” by Fritz Leiber, was originally published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, January 1960. Also published under the title, “Night of the Long Knives.”
“The Great Cold,” by Frank Belknap Long, was originally published Astounding Stories, February 1935. Copyright © 1935, renewed 1983 by Frank Belknap Long. Reprinted by permission of Mansfield Doty, Lily Dots, and the Estate of Frank Belknap Long.
“The Grown-Up People’s Feet,” by Robert F. Young, was originally published in Fantastic Universe, June 1955.
“Little Boy,” by Jerome Bixby, was originally published in If, October 1954, under the pseudonym, “Harry Neal.”
“Run, Little Monster!” by Chester S. Geier, was originally published in Imagination, January 1952.
“Mother to the World,” by Richard Wilson, was originally published in Orbit 3 (1967). Copyright © 1967 by Richard Wilson. Reprinted by permssion of the Estate of Richard Wilson.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
This volume is a follow-up to The Plague, Pestilence, and Apocalypse MEGAPACK® (2015) and contains 20 more tales of epic disaster.
I have always been a sucker for tales of the end of the world, whether from floods, asteroids, plagues, or alien invasion—anything that can destroy the world (and the human race) fascinates me. That’s probably why I love zombie movies so much.
Here, then, is another celebration of The End Of It All. Enjoy!
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
ABOUT THE SERIES
Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone who has ever worked at Wildside has worked on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.
A MAN SPEKITH, by Richard Wilson
Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1969.
CHAPTER I
Marty: Don’t read this; it’s in Old English and the spelling is different: “Jangling is when a Man spekith to moch beforn folk, and clappith as a mille, and taketh no keep what he saith.”
Now that you’ve read it anyway, you bright ones, I’ll tell you that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote it in “The Parson’s Tale.” What he said was—but I needn’t translate; you probably had no more trouble with it than if you’d been listening to the kind of English disc jockeys once spoke on rock radio stations.
This is a story of a Jangler nearly seven hundred years removed from Geoffrey’s time. It’s the tale of a disc jockey named Jabber McAbber, which he sometimes called himself. At other times, at other contemporary music stations, as they called themselves, he was known as Esoteric Ed, or Happy Mac, or James the First. For he moved on. He moved from Cincinnati to Akron to Chicago to Phoenix. He dreamed of making the big time in New York but that call never came.
Another kind of call came, though. It came in Phoenix, where he took the fancy of an eccentric billionaire who owned, among things and people, a radio-television network, an advertising agency, a movie studio, a publishing house, a university, several electronics companies, a city of some size in the Southwest—he owned most of the real estate and enough of the politicians, one way or another—and a deactivated rocket base in the desert. You know the name of the billionaire and the single-minded determination with which he went after anything he wanted. More about him later.
Our disc jockey’s real name was Edward James McHenry. He was 38 years old now and sometimes he had to force it. The old spontaneity wasn’t always there. The drive had ebbed. The zing had zung.
Once the words had tumbled out, more of them than he could articulate, but now it took an effort to make them flow. His delivery was more deliberate, not rehearsed, but thought out.
It comforted him to know his plight was not unique. A writer had told him of times when it took a monumental effort to roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter. He’d known artists who’d said similar. He’d known poets, too, and peasants…
“Oh, yes! I’ve known poets and peasants, and pallbearers and priests. And princes crossed my path, or I theirs, in foreign climes and on native shores, for princes travel. And I’ve known princesses—native born like Grace K. Rainier and Rita H. Kahn—and those of alien corn like Elizabeth and Margaret, not to mention whatsername and whoozis.
“But I’ve strayed from my theme, which is music, so I’ll get off and spin a record, as we used to say before tape. Spin with me, won’t you? as we enjoy the sounds of the Jefferson Airplane.”
Two minutes and forty seconds later he was on again. He’d prepared for the end of the music. In the old days it would have been off the cuff, off the top of the head, off the world.
“Wasn’t that the most? Where can you go from there, except elsewhere? And so we spin you on, you spinnable people, to the obligatory scene, if you remember Drama 201—we spin you, I say, to this word from our sponsor—this important announcement:
“Friends! Fellow human beings! Mortals like me! Are you troubled with irregularity?…”
He went on too long, unnecessarily identifying, stretching it out.
You may have wondered who’s been talking here, beside Ed. I mean words don’t come out of a void, especially when they’re not Ed’s words and Ed’s the last man alive.
I’ve been talking. Me, Marty. I’m a machine. That’s what the first letter of my acronym stands for. My full name is Machine Amplifying Rationalizations Treating of Yore. Or maybe it’s Machine Assessing Reality as Told to You. It doesn’t matter. The acronym-makers are long gone. I realize that as a machine I should be positive. I shouldn’t tell you different things, or variations of the same thing, and claim there’s no real difference. To do this is to be guilty of what somebody called terminological inexactitude. I think the somebody was Winston Churchill. Of course I don’t really mean I really think. That would be a lie and it would not do to have a machine capable of lying. Especially since one of my functions is to amend; correct, edit, amplify and otherwise make more meaningful for posterity the mouthings of Esoteric Ed. But first let’s listen some more to Ed.
* * * *
Ed: Sometimes I tell different stories, up here in the lonely. I make up alternate pasts for myself. I use different names for my different pasts, for my different moods.
Some days I’m Gaylord Guignol, sole survivor of a destroyed world and devil-may-care chronicler of its last agony. Except that I do care; my nonchalance disguises the deep hurt I felt, and feel, at the death of Earth.
Sometimes I’m Hank Hardcastle, steely-eyed hero of a thousand thrilling adventures, scion of a near-noble family.
Other times I’m Harry Protagonist, space disc jockey, who’s been set whirling in the void on an unfathomable mission. I need to communicate my fears, hopes, fantasies and, above all, my puzzlement, to my imagined listeners.
Sometimes I forget who I really am. A person can tamper just so long with what he is, pretending to be another, before he becomes, to some extent, one of those other selves. Then his own self is lost, or blurred. Too much blurring is bad. It’s desirable sometimes to hide from one’s self, to pretend, to merge the ego into a fantasy personality, to live or dream vicariously, but I may be overdoing it.
Who am I really? Does it matter as long as I get through the day? I owe myself and you my listeners that much. It is my duty to you and to myself. But a certain tranquility is needed to reach the end of the day. Some achieved this by natural talent, by their very vivaciousness or stick-to-itiveness. Doggedly they breathed in and out and took sustenance from time to time and went to the bathroom to rid themselves of the residue of previous sustenance-takings, and did a little work, and lo, it was a new day. Some never achieved the new day. They funked it. They flunked out. Others got there, though, by drink or drugs or pot. I speak of back then, you understand, before the now. You may have noticed that I’m not always lucid, though once in a nightclub I was Larry Lucid, explainer of contemporary society to those less informed. But I coped. I used music. I always had something on, either on the hi-fi or the radio. I used to bounce through the day on a big beat that included me in because it just naturally assumed that everybody was a part of it and approved and throbbed along with it and so I was one with all that went on. But that was long ago and now I’m part of nothing because nothing is going on.
The only thing that goes on is what I make happen and even that may not be real.
They’ve done something to me. I feel banded, like a Canadian duck. I don’t have a circlet around wrist or ankle but I know something’s got me somewhere. Maybe I’ve been implanted—I’ve already been tapped and bugged.
I read once that some ornithologists had attached a radio to a condor to find out how far it went for food, or to rest, or whatever condors do to get by.
I didn’t find out whether the condor knew it’d been bugged. But I know something’s been done to me and I resent it. I don’t mind doing my bit for science; but if they’ve tampered with my human dignity, if they’ve psyched me in the psyche…
* * * *
Marty: This is Marty again. I’ll tell you more about the man who put our hero up here. His name was John Potter Parnell and, because he was a sanitary facilities manufacturer, he was known as Potty, or John. Sometimes he was he called Young Potty, to distinguish him from his father, also known as Potty and to a few intimates as Poopy. Young Potty, at 50, was still in his father’s shadow.
The old man had founded the business and made the original millions. Hy-G-Enic, Inc., manufactured most of the country’s and later the world’s toilets, urinals, sinks, towel racks and dispensers of sanitary and prophylactic devices.
The millions and then the billions poured in at such a rate that, when Poopy retired, Potty could have sat back and let inertia provide opulently for him and all his heirs. But Potty—he really preferred John—had come late to the presidency and wasn’t content to let Hy-G-Enic expand at a safe, sure rate. He established a foundation that awarded grants for research. He set up an experimental division, hired scientists and turned them loose to work at their own pace and let him know when they’d got something. He sponsored a competition to design a better bidet. He sent engineers to Washington to see what Hy-G-Enic could do in the space program.
It was Potty’s emissaries to NASA who led to the hiring of Ed. They got him from a subsidiary company, Arizona Airtalk, for which he’d been broadcasting as Jim McHenry, Jock of the Desert. The Jock’s music-talk show was the despair of competitors in the rock radio game.
We’ll come back to Ed. Here’s some information about me—Marty the machine. It’s not as if I’m a machine, singular. I’m the end product of many machines, sophisticated and otherwise. I know everything they know because I’m the synthesis, the reincarnation of all of them.
Let me answer your other unspoken question, whoever you are: Why don’t I sound like a machine? How come I come on colloquial instead of respectfully, as befits the man-machine relationship? Like: “You master, me robot.” Or solemnly, like: “The data you have requisitioned are stored in circuits in Subtank 4739C of my vast interconnected memory banks. There will be an unavoidable delay while the necessary hookups are made to retrieve this rarely-requested material.”
Nuts. Everything I have is yours—whoever, wherever and whenever you are—instantly. Sometimes you don’t even have to ask. This whole ship is my memory circuit. I extend into every nook—even to places Ed prefers not to think about, like the reconstitution unit. You might almost say I am the ship, but that would be an exaggeration, and immodest.
If you still think I sound more human than mechanical, it’s only natural. Hell, I was made by human beings. How else should I talk? Like Mowgli’s wolves or Tarzan’s apes? Machines talk good. Like colloquial. Machines have been talking generations. Ask Victor.
* * * *
Ed: I have this reluctance to eat that keeps me thin. I mean I’m not bloaty. Old tum don’t sag. Old chin ain’t double. No dewlaps yet on old cheekflesh. I’m a pretty good specimen by any standards and I guess it’s because I’m abstemious. I don’t eat much—certainly not between meals. You wouldn’t either if everything you had for dinner was something you’d had a hundred, a thousand times before. It’s reconstituted stuff. I mean I’ve bought used cars and second-hand boats and if I’d settled down I might have even have bought a used Oriental rug, but I’d have drawn the line at used food. My folks talked sometimes about Depression and told about the cheap things they ate, but at least they’d been the first to eat them. They came out of those bad times strong and proud. I sit down to dinner with as much pleasure as an explorer at a cannibal feast. I don’t want to eat this stuff, sanitary as it must be, that has already passed at least once through the alimentary canal. And there’s no comfort in knowing it’s no foreign waterway that’s been navigated—it’s my own, my native gland. It’s an affront to the system. Except it’s not the system that’s outraged. The body can take it; it’s the imagination that revolts. It’s got this way of exaggerating to the point where you say never mind what the facts are, things ought to be different.
* * * *
Marty: I have to defend the reconstitution works against Ed’s slander. After all, it’s a fellow machine. What comes out of it goes back into Ed perfectly clean. It’s cleaner than what he got in those fancy restaurants he enjoyed and a damn sight more sanitary and nutritious than the weird meals he cooked for himself in his various bachelor apartments.
