The 48th Golden Age of Science Ficton MEGAPACK®, page 1
Table of Contents
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER
JUNGLE DOCTOR
MORE STATELY MANSIONS
LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE
THE OTHER KIDS
WISH UPON A STAR
ADDED INDUCEMENT
APE’S EYE VIEW
PILGRIMS’ PROJECT
YOUR GHOST WILL WALK
GODDESS IN GRANITE
THE COURTS OF JAMSHYD
WRITTEN IN THE STARS
STRUCTURAL DEFECT
THIRTY DAYS HAD SEPTEMBER
REPORT ON THE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR ON ARCTURUS X
THE BLUEBIRD PLANET
THE LEAF
MAGIC WINDOW
ACRE IN THE SKY
Wildside Press’s MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Welcome to the 48th volume of our “Golden Age of Science Fiction” series! We again celebrate science fiction writer Robert F. Young’s classic science fiction with a second volume of his short stories. (The first volume was #40 in this series.)
As I said last time:
Robert Franklin Young (1915–1986) was an American science fiction writer born in Silver Creek, New York. Except for the three and a half years he served in the Pacific during World War II, he spent most of his life in New York State. He owned a property on Lake Erie.
Although his career spanned more than thirty years, and he wrote fiction until he died, he remained little known by the public, in the United States as well as abroad. Only near the end of his life did the science fiction community learn he had been a janitor in the Buffalo public school system.
He started publishing in 1953 in Startling Stories, then Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post, and Collier’s. His work had a poetic and romantic style that many compared to Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon.
His most famous short stories are perhaps “The Dandelion Girl,” which influenced the director of the anime series RahXephon, and “Little Dog Gone”, which was nominated in 1965 for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.
Wildside Press will be reprinting much of his work in coming months.
Enjoy!
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.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 at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee 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 email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com.
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.
AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER
Originally published in Startling Stories, Summer 1955.
CHAPTER I
My father bought a new ford, a red one, and I spent my summer vacation mostly, riding in my fathers ford. My fathers ford is the fastest car ever and when he opens it up on Sunday it seems like the other cars are standing still, I had a wonderful summer vacation riding in my fathers red Ford.
Abruptly Miss Ellis decided to grade the rest of the “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” compositions at Mrs. Harper’s. Ordinarily she did all of her work in the classroom, leaving her evenings free for TV, but there were times when the classroom seemed, despite its unobtrusive modern architecture and its modernistic vista of close-cropped lawn and youthful elms, like a setting out of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”
She enclosed the compositions in a manila folder, then straightened her desk, aligning the books between the sphinx bookends, making a military echelon of the pencils, and shoving everything that would not lend itself to a geometric pattern into a convenient drawer. Mr. Findley frequently checked the classrooms before going home and he loved to leave little notes on the teachers’ desks, sarcastic little notes alluding to stray papers, undisciplined pencils, and careless teachers.
Miss Ellis winced a little at the thought of Mr. Findley. It was the beginning of her second year under his command, and from all indications it was going to be a repetition of her first. Not that Mr. Findley wasn’t a good principal. He was young and ambitious, and, with the exception of the National Guard, he put his work above everything. And not only that, he was exceedingly handsome in a neat, refined way—not that it really mattered, of course—and he cut a fine figure in his blue serge suit walking militarily up and down the school corridors and along the streets of Tompkinsville.
But he did have some rather exacting ideas about the way elementary schools should be run—
Thinking of Mr. Findley, Miss Ellis almost forgot her window shades, and that was odd because uniformity of window shades was Number 1 on his list of “musts” for model teachers. They were one of the main reasons why his pre-breakfast constitutional took him past the school. She was halfway down the corridor before she remembered them. She returned hurriedly to her room and lowered the bottom ones to exactly half the height of the bottom windows, and raised the upper ones to exactly half the height of the upper windows. Leaving her room again, she exhaled a little sigh of relief. It had been a narrow escape.
Outside she verified a theory she had been entertaining all afternoon; the weather had turned out to be lovely. It was still lovely, though the dampness of approaching evening was beginning to permeate the hazy air. She strolled down the school walk in the mild September sunlight, thinking of how nice it would be if Mrs. Harper’s boarding house was on the other side of town instead of right across the street. She felt like walking. She wanted to walk and walk and walk—
But she couldn’t, of course. Not without a sensible reason. Aimless strolling was one of the many behaviorisms which Mr. Findley classified as being “detrimental to the dignity of the faculty.” So she simply crossed the street, beneath the big overarching maples, and let herself into Mrs. Harper’s enclosed front porch.
Her room was at the end of the upstairs hall, overlooking an expanse of shed roof and a brief vista of backyard. She closed the door quietly, sat down on the bed and took off her shoes. There was time to grade a few compositions before dinner, so she rested the folder on her lap and armed herself with a red pencil.
She reread the first composition and graded it “C Minus.” She went on to the next—
We built a tree house and we started a club. Only kids living on our block could belong to the club. We called ourselfs the tigers and we lived in our tree house all summer and garded our block from the kids that dident live on it. When those kids came around we climbed down from our tree house and chased them away.
“B.”
This is the way I spent my sumer vacation. I got a new girls too wheeler for my birthday in july and all sumer I rode my too wheeler its a speshul delux too wheeler with a siren a seled beem hedlite a basket and wife side walled tires. The color is read with wife strips. I like my too wheeler its the best one on the street and wen I ride by the other kids are jelus. I rode by than all sumer.
“D.”
My father said Alpha Ophiuchi 14 ought to be a good place to spend our summer vacation and my mother said, all right lets go. And it was. You should see all the blue lakes and the silver mountains! We rematerialized in Whynn the capital, and we rented a cabin on one of the lakes and all summer we sailed on the lake and fished. It was a marvelous summer vacation.
Miss Ellis frowned. She expected her pupils to evince tendencies toward object-worship and ethnocentrism when she assigned them a composition to write, but she didn’t expect them to use the composition as a medium for imaginative literature.
And then her annoyance gave way to amusement. Alpha Ophiuchi 14 indeed! And blue lakes and silver mountains! Smiling, she marked “C Minus” above the title and wrote, “No more Science Fiction please!” in parentheses.
And then she noticed the paper.
It bore little resemblance to the cheap tablet paper which the other compositions were written on. For one thing, it had no lines, and for another thing, it was unusually heavy. But by far the most remarkable feature about it was its rich, bluish texture. Someone’s been into their parents’ stationery, she thought, and held it up to the light to see the watermark.
Instantly, tiny wire-like fibers materialized around the borders and began to glow. The paper misted and a scene formed behind it—a three dimensional miniature of an exotic lake nestling amid stately silver mountains t
It was as though the paper had taken the words on its surface and transformed them into the scene they described. Miss Ellis’ hands were shaking when she lowered it to her lap. Immediately the miniature faded away and the paper regained its former opacity. The writing reasserted itself and the borders ceased to glow.
She looked at the name in the upper right hand corner: Lyle Lylequest, Jr., Grade 4. While it was rather early in the semester for her to be able to visualize her pupils merely by seeing their names, she found that she could visualize Lyle Lylequest, Jr. quite easily. And that was odd, because he was just about the most average child in her class, both in his appearance and in his actions. Too average perhaps.
Miss Ellis shook her head sharply and brought the headlong rush of her thoughts to an abrupt halt. I’m letting my imagination run away with me, she thought. I wonder if I really saw that scene at all. The paper rested innocently on her lap, so innocently that she couldn’t resist holding it up to the light again to prove to herself that it really was what she had taken it for in the first place—a sheet of expensive stationery which a small boy had swiped from either his mother’s or father’s desk to make an impression on his teacher.
Instantly the wire-like fibers leaped into luminescence and the miniature reformed, and this time the cobalt sky seemed more awesome than before—so vast and deep and interminable that Miss Ellis grew cold and frightened just looking at it. She jerked the paper out of the light and dropped it on the bed. She got up and went over to the window and looked out at the prosaic shed roof and the perfectly ordinary backyard.
There was a reassuring quality about the afternoon sunlight, a friendliness about the hazy September sky. Gradually her fright left her. I’m behaving like a silly over-imaginative schoolgirl, she thought. I’ll bet it I showed that sheet of paper to Lyle’s parents and told them what I’m thinking, they’d laugh their heads off.
And then the thought struck her—why not show it to them? Why not ask them about it, just to see what they’d say? And why not tonight? That coarse comic, Tippy Charm, was on TV, and she certainly didn’t want to watch him, and as for the “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” compositions, she’d have plenty of time to grade them when she got back.
CHAPTER II
The Lylequests lived in an average residential section. There was a light burning on the old fashioned front porch and another one shining in the big living room window. Miss Ellis paid the cab driver and walked up the spiraea-bordered walk to the porch. She climbed the steps a little timidly and rang the doorbell.
Presently a tall, willowy man opened the door and regarded her rather blankly with faded blue eyes. He was quite young and his features were pleasant in an unspectacular kind of way. He looked like a person who was a little bewildered by the events transpiring in the world around him—in other words, an average citizen.
For a moment Miss Ellis felt ridiculous. Then she remembered the cobalt sky. “Mr. Lylequest?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“I’m Miss Ellis, Lyle’s teacher. I—I’m afraid I’m being rather officious, Mr. Lylequest, but there’s something I’d like to discuss with you about Lyle.”
Mr. Lylequest’s eyes came gradually to life. “Come in, please,” he said. “I hope Lyle hasn’t done anything serious.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Miss Ellis preceded him into the hall. “You see, yesterday I gave my class a composition to write as their first homework assignment—you know, the usual one about how they spent their summer vacation—and this afternoon, when I was reading Lyle’s, I couldn’t help but notice the kind of paper he’d used.”
Mr. Lylequest paused in the hall. “What kind of paper did he use?”
“I—I thought at first it was simply an expensive variety of stationery. But when I held it up to the light to see what make it was it formed a picture of the scene he’d described in his composition. I was kind of upset. I mean, the scene was so strange, so—Perhaps I’d better show it to you. I have it right here.” She fumbled in her purse, found the composition and handed it to him.
A small woman with tiny, exquisite features suddenly appeared in the living room doorway. “Stationery?” she said sharply. She would have been beautiful, Miss Ellis thought, if it hadn’t been for her complexion. Her diminutive face was positively gray.
But so was Mr. Lylequest’s, Miss Ellis noticed, though it was funny that she hadn’t noticed it before. He had unfolded the paper and was holding it up to the hall light. His blue eyes weren’t in the least faded now. She began to feel uncomfortable.
Presently he lowered the paper and read the words on its surface. He raised his eyes to the woman in the doorway. “Lylla, this is Miss Ellis, Lyle’s teacher.” He turned to Miss Ellis. “Miss Ellis, this is my wife.”
“How do you do, Miss Ellis. Did you say something about stationery?”
“How do you do,” Miss Ellis said. “I was just showing Mr. Lylequest Lyle’s composition. I—I was curious about the paper he used.”
Mrs. Lylequest seemed to flutter in the doorway. “Let me see!” she said. She fairly snatched the composition out of her husband’s hands and held it up to the light. “Why—why, it’s a sheet of our novelty stationery! Our—our stereoscopic stationery!” She lowered the paper and hastily read the composition. She seemed to flutter again. “Why—such a silly way to describe it!” she said, looking intently at Miss Ellis.
Miss Ellis was confused. “Describe what?”
“Why the mountain lake scene of course! He’s made up an imaginary vacation to match the stereo picture. Alpha Ophiuchi 14!” She turned to her husband. “What in the world is Alpha Ophiuchi 14?”
“Sounds like it might be a star,” Mr. Lylequest said vaguely.
“A star!” Mrs. Lylequest laughed. It was rather thin laughter, Miss Ellis thought. “Imagine him putting one of our pretty little stereo lakes on a star!”
“But I thought—” Miss Ellis began.
“Mr. Lylequest bought the stationery last time he was in the city. Didn’t you, dear?”
“Why yes, yes I did,” Mr. Lylequest said. “I noticed it in some little out of the way novelty shop—I’ve forgotten just what street it was on. I thought it was rather clever, so I picked it up.”
“Oh,” Miss Ellis said. It was such a simple explanation, and here she’d been thinking—She felt her face grow warm. And yet there had been something uncanny about that cobalt sky, something frightening. A thought occurred to her. “Do you have any more of the stationery?” she asked.
“Oh yes, lots of it,” Mr. Lylequest said. “We—”
“It’s all the same though,” Mrs. Lylequest interrupted. “So there wouldn’t be any point in our showing it to you. We’re being terribly rude, Miss Ellis, keeping you out here in the hall like this. Won’t you come in and sit down?”
“Why yes, thank you,” Miss Ellis said. “But I can only stay a little while.”
The living room was spacious and informal. Lyle was sitting at one end of the studio couch that faced the television set, reading a comic book. He looked up.
“Hello, Miss Ellis,” he said.
“Hello, Lyle.” Diffidently she sat down on the opposite end of the couch. “I feel kind of guilty breaking in on you people like this,” she said, “bothering you about such an inconsequential matter.” Nervously her eyes went from Mrs. Lylequest, who had sat down beside her, to AMr. Lylequest, who was in the process of sitting down in an adjacent armchair, to the floor, to the television screen. “Why,” she said in sudden surprise, “what program is that?”
The scene in progress was unusual, to say the least. It consisted, as far as Miss Ellis could ascertain, of a many-sided geometric figure moving erratically before several ranks of similar, though much smaller, figures. As she watched, the foremost figure subtly added another side to the accompaniment of a series of noises that sounded like arithmetic set to music. One by one the other figures followed suit. By that time Mr. Lylequest, his chair forgotten, was bending over the dials, and when he straightened up again there was nothing on the screen but the moon face of comic Tippy Charm. Mr. Lylequest was staring at Mrs. Lylequest—rather desperately, it seemed to Miss Ellis—and Mrs. Lylequest was staring back at him, her gray complexion more noticeable than ever. Mr. Charm’s jokes had scarcely any effect upon the silence that crept into the room.
