The Best of Bova: Volume 1 Read online

  But only Vince could hear Sizzle’s amused reply, “No, Vince. I have no use for souls, yours or anyone else’s.”

  As the months went by, Vince’s rapid rise to Family stardom naturally attracted some antagonism from other young men attempting to get ahead in the organization. Antagonism sometimes led to animosity, threats, even attempts at violence.

  But strangely, wondrously, anyone who got angry at Vince disappeared. Without a trace, except once when a single charred shoe of Fats Lombardi’s was found in the middle of Tasker Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth.

  Louie and the other elders of the Family nodded knowingly. Vince was not only ambitious and talented. He was smart. No bodies could be laid at his doorstep.

  From arson, Vince branched into loan-sharking, which was still the heart of the Family’s operation. But he didn’t need Big Balls Falcone to terrify his customers into paying on time. Customers who didn’t pay found their cars turned into smoking wrecks. Right before their eyes, an automobile parked at the curb would burst into flame.

  “Gee, too bad,” Vince would say. “Next time it might be your house,” he’d hint darkly, seeming to wink at somebody who wasn’t there. At least, somebody no one else could see. Somebody very tall, from the angle of his head when he winked.

  The day came when Big Balls Falcone himself, understandably put out by the decline in his business, let it be known that he was coming after Vince. Big Balls disappeared in a cloud of smoke, literally.

  The years rolled by. Vince became quite prosperous. He was no longer the skinny, scared kid he had been when he had first met Sizzle. Now he dressed conservatively, with a carefully-tailored vest buttoned neatly over his growing paunch, and lunched on steak and lobster tails with bankers and brokers.

  Although he moved out of the old neighborhood row house into a palatial ranch-style single near Cherry Hill, over in Jersey, Vince still came back to the Epiphany Church every Sunday morning for Mass. He sponsored the church’s Little League baseball team and donated a free Toyota every year for the church’s annual raffle.

  He looked upon these charities, he often told his colleagues, as a form of insurance. He would lift his eyes at such moments. Those around him thought he was looking toward heaven. But Vince was really searching for Sizzle, who was usually not far away.

  “Really, Vince,” the dragon told him, chuckling, “you still don’t trust me. After all these years. I don’t want your soul. Honestly I don’t.”

  Vince still attended church and poured money into charities.

  Finally Louie himself, old and frail, bequeathed the Family fortunes to Vince and then died peacefully in his sleep, unassisted by members of his own or any other Family. Somewhat of a rarity in Family annals.

  Vince was now Capo of the Family. He was not yet forty, sleek, hair still dark, heavier than he wanted to be, but in possession of his own personal tailor, his own barber, and more women than he had ever dreamed of having.

  His ascension to Capo was challenged, of course, by some of Louie’s other lieutenants. But after the first few of them disappeared without a trace, the others quickly made their peace with Vince.

  He never married. But he enjoyed life to the full.

  “You’re getting awfully overweight, Vince,” Sizzle warned him one night, as they strolled together along the dark and empty waterfront where they had first met. “Shouldn’t you be worrying about the possibility of a heart attack?”

  “Naw,” said Vince. “I don’t get heart attacks, I give ’em!” He laughed uproariously at his own joke.

  “You’re getting older, Vince. You’re not as cute as you once were, you know.”

  “I don’t hafta be cute, Sizzle. 1 got the power now. I can look and act any way I wanna act. Who’s gonna get in my way?”

  Sizzle nodded, a bit ruefully. But Vince paid no attention to her mood.

  “I can do anything I want!” he shouted to the watching heavens. “I got th’ power and the rest of those dummies are scared to death of me. Scared to death!” He laughed and laughed.

  “But Vince,” Sizzle said, “I helped you to get that power.”

  “Sure, sure. But I got it now, an’ I don’t really need your help anymore. I can get anybody in th’ Family to do whatever I want!”

  Dragons don’t cry, of course, but the expression on Sizzle’s face would have melted the heart of anyone who saw it.

  “Listen,” Vince went on, in a slightly less bombastic tone, “I know you done a lot to help me, an’ I ain’t gonna forget that. You’ll still be part of my organization, Sizzle old girl. Don’t worry about that.”

  But the months spun along and lengthened into years, and Vince saw Sizzle less and less. He didn’t need to. And secretly, down inside him, he was glad that he didn’t have to.

  I don’t need her no more, and I never signed nuthin about givin’ away my soul or nuthin. I’m free and clear!

  Dragons, of course, are telepathic.

  Vince’s big mistake came when he noticed that a gorgeous young redhead he was interested in seemed to have eyes only for a certain slick-looking young punk. Vince thought about the problem mightily, and then decided to solve two problems with one stroke.

  He called the young punk to his presence, at the very same restaurant where Louie had given Vince his first big break.

  The punk looked scared. He had heard that Vince was after the redhead.

  “Listen kid,” Vince said gruffly, laying a heavily be-ringed hand on the kid’s thin shoulder. “You know the old clothing factory up on Twenty-Eighth and Arch?”

  “Yessir,” said the punk, in a whisper that Vince could barely hear.

  “It’s a very flammable building, dontcha think?”

  The punk blinked, gulped, then nodded. “Yeah. It is. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  His voice trembling, the kid said, “I heard that two, three different guys tried beltin’ out that place. An’ they . . . they never came back!”

  “The place is still standin’, ain’t it?” Vince asked severely.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, by tomorrow morning, either it ain’t standin’ or you ain’t standin.’ Capisce?”

  The kid nodded and fairly raced out of the restaurant. Vince grinned. One way or the other, he had solved a problem, he thought.

  The old factory burned cheerfully for a day and a half before the Fire Department could get the blaze under control. Vince laughed and phoned his insurance broker.

  But that night, as he stepped from his limousine onto the driveway of his Cherry Hill home, he saw long coils of glittering scales wrapped halfway around the house.

  Looking up, he saw Sizzle smiling at him.

  “Hello, Vince. Long time no see.”

  “Oh, hi Sizzle ol’ girl. What’s new?” With his left hand, Vince impatiently waved his driver off. The man backed the limousine down the driveway and headed for the garage back in the city, goggle-eyed that The Boss was talking to himself.

  “That was a real cute fellow you sent to knock off the factory two nights ago,” Sizzle said, her voice almost purring.

  “Him? He’s a punk.”

  “I thought he was really cute.”

  “So you were there, huh? I figured you was, after those other guys never came back.”

  “Oh Vince, you’re not cute anymore. You’re just soft and fat and ugly.”

  “You ain’t gonna win no beauty contests yourself, Sizzle.”

  He started for the front door, but Sizzle planted a huge taloned paw in his path. Vince had just enough time to look up, see the expression on her face, and scream.

  Sizzle’s forked tongue licked her lips as the smoke cleared.

  “Delicious,” she said. “Just the right amount of fat on him. And the poor boy thought I was after his soul!”

  THE LAST DECISION

  One of the things that makes science fiction such a vital and vivid field is the synergy that manifests itself among the writers. Whereas in mo
st other areas of contemporary letters the writers appear to feel themselves in competition with each other (for headlines, if nothing else) the writers of science fiction have long seen themselves as members of a big family. They share ideas, they often work together, and they help each other whenever they can.

  A large part of this synergy stems from the old, original Milford Science Fiction Writers Conference, which used to be held annually in Milford, Pennsylvania. Everlasting thanks are due to Damon Knight, James Blish, and Judith Merrill, who first organized the conferences. For eight days out of each June, a small and dedicated group of professional writers—about evenly mixed between old hands and newcomers—ate, slept, breathed, and talked about writing. Lifelong friendships began at Milford, together with the synergy that makes two such friends more effective working together than the simple one-plus-one equation would lead you to think.

  I met Gordon R. Dickson at the first Milford I attended, back in the early Sixties, and we became firm friends until the day he died. We collaborated on a children’s fantasy, Gremlins, Go Home! some years later, and even though Gordy lived in Minneapolis and I on the East Coast, it was a rare six months when we did not see each other.

  “The Last Decision” is an example of the synergy between writers. Gordy wrote a marvelous story, “Call Him Lord,” which stuck in my mind for years. In particular, I was haunted by the character of the Emperor of the Hundred Worlds, as powerful a characterization as I have found anywhere, even though he is actually a minor player in Gordy’s story. I wanted to see more of the Emperor, and finally asked Gordy if he would allow me to “use” the character in a story of my own. He graciously gave his permission, and the result is “The Last Decision.”

  * * *

  The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds stood at the head of the conference chamber, tall, gray, grim-faced. Although there were forty other men and women seated in the chamber, the Emperor knew he was alone.

  “Then it is certain?” he asked, his voice grave but strong despite the news they had given him. “Earth’s Sun will explode?”

  The scientists had come from all ends of the Empire to reveal their findings to the Emperor. They shifted uneasily in their sculptured couches under his steady gaze. A few of them, the oldest and best-trusted, were actually on the Imperial Planet itself, only an ocean away from the palace. Most of the others had been brought to the Imperial planetary system from their homeworlds, and were housed on the three other planets of the system.

  Although the holographic projections made them look as solid and real as the Emperor himself, there was always a slight lag in their responses to him. The delay was an indication of their rank within the scientific order, and they had even arranged their seating in the conference chamber the same way: the farther away from the Emperor, the lower in the hierarchy.

  Some things cannot be conquered, the Emperor thought to himself as one of the men in the third rank of couches, a roundish, bald, slightly pompous little man, got to his feet. Time still reigns supreme. Distance we can conquer, but not time. Not death.

  “Properly speaking, Sire, the Sun will not explode, it will not become a nova. Its mass is too low for that. But the eruptions that it will suffer will be of sufficient severity to heat Earth’s atmosphere to incandescence. It will destroy all life on the surface. And, of course, the oceans will be drastically damaged; the food chain of the oceans will be totally disrupted.”

  Goodbye to Earth, then, thought the Emperor.

  But aloud he asked, “The power satellites, and the shielding we have provided the planet—they will not protect it?”

  The scientist stood dumb, patiently waiting for his Emperor’s response to span the light-minutes between them. How drab he looks, the Emperor noted. And how soft. He pulled his own white robe closer around his iron-hard body. He was older than most of them in the conference chamber, but they were accustomed to sitting at desks and lecturing to students. He was accustomed to standing before multitudes and commanding.

  “The shielding,” the bald man said at last, “will not be sufficient. There is nothing we can do. Sometime over the next three to five hundred years, the Sun will erupt and destroy all life on Earth and the inner planets of its system. The data are conclusive.”

  The Emperor inclined his head to the man, curtly, a gesture that meant both “thank you” and “be seated.” The scientist waited mutely for the gesture to reach him.

  The data are conclusive. The integrator woven into the molecules of his cerebral cortex linked the Emperor’s mind with the continent-spanning computer complex that was the Imperial memory.

  Within milliseconds he reviewed the equations and found no flaw in them. Even as he did so, the other hemisphere of his brain was picturing Earth’s daystar seething, writhing in a fury of pent-up nuclear agony, then erupting into giant flares. The Sun calmed afterward and smiled benignly once again on a blackened, barren, smoking rock called Earth.

  A younger man was on his feet, back in the last row of couches. The Emperor realized that he had already asked for permission to speak. Now they both waited for the photons to complete the journey between them. From his position in the chamber and the distance between them, he was either an upstart or a very junior researcher.

  “Sire,” he said at last, his face suddenly flushed in embarrassed self-consciousness or, perhaps, the heat of conviction, “the data may be conclusive, true enough. But it is not true that we must accept this catastrophe with folded hands.”

  The Emperor began to say, “Explain yourself,” but the intense young man never hesitated to wait for an Imperial response. He was taking no chances of being commanded into silence before he had finished.

  “Earth’s Sun will erupt only if we do nothing to prevent it. A colleague of mine believes that we have the means to prevent the eruptions. I would like to present her ideas on the subject. She could not attend this meeting herself.” The young man’s face grew taut, angry. “Her application to attend was rejected by the Coordinating Committee.”

  The Emperor smiled inwardly as the young man’s words reached the other scientists around him. He could see a shock wave of disbelief and indignation spread through the assembly. The hoary old men in the front row, who chose the members of the Coordinating Committee, went stiff with anger.

  Even Prince Javas, the Emperor’s last remaining son, roused from his idle daydreaming where he sat at the Emperor’s side and seemed to take an interest in the meeting for the first time.

  “You may present your colleague’s proposal,” the Emperor said. That is what an Emperor is for, he said silently, looking at his youngest son, seeking some understanding on his handsome untroubled face. To be magnanimous in the face of disaster.

  The young man took a fingertip-sized cube from his sleeve pocket and inserted it into the computer input slot in the arm of his couch. The scientists in the front ranks of the chamber glowered and muttered to each other.

  The Emperor stood lean and straight, waiting for the information to reach him. When it did, he saw in his mind a young dark-haired woman whose face would have been seductive if she were not so intensely serious about her subject. She was speaking, trying to keep her voice dispassionate, but almost literally quivering with excitement. Equations appeared, charts, graphs, lists of materials and costs; yet her intent, dark-eyed face dominated it all.

  Beyond her, the Emperor saw a vague, star-shimmering image of vast ships ferrying megatons of equipment and thousands upon thousands of technical specialists from all parts of the Hundred Worlds toward Earth and its troubled Sun.

  Then, as the equations faded and the starry picture went dim and even the woman’s face began to pale, the Emperor saw the Earth, green and safe, smelt the grass and heard birds singing, saw the Sun shining gently over a range of softly rolling, ancient wooded hills. He closed his eyes. You go too far, woman. But how was she to know that his eldest son had died in hills exactly like these, killed on Earth, killed by Earth, so many years ago?

&nbs
p; * * *

  He sat now. The Emperor of the Hundred Worlds spent little time on his feet anymore. One by one the vanities are surrendered. He sat in a powered chair that held him in a soft yet firm embrace. It was mobile and almost alive: part personal vehicle, part medical monitor, part communications system that could link him with any place in the Empire.

  His son stood. Prince Javas stood by the marble balustrade that girdled the high terrace where his father had received him. He wore the gray-blue uniform of a fleet commander, although he had never bothered to accept command of even one ship. His wife, the Princess Rihana, stood at her husband’s side.

  They were a well-matched pair, physically. Gold and fire. The Prince had his father’s lean sinewy grace, golden hair and star-flecked eyes. Rihana was fiery, with the beauty and ruthlessness of a tigress in her face. Her hair was a cascade of molten copper tumbling past her shoulders, her gown a metallic glitter.

  “It was a wasted trip,” Javas said to his father, with his usual sardonic smile. “Earth is . . . well,” he shrugged, “nothing but Earth. It hasn’t changed in the slightest.”

  “Ten wasted years,” Rihana said.

  The Emperor looked past them, beyond the terrace to the lovingly landscaped forest that his engineers could never make quite the right shade of terrestrial green.

  “Not entirely wasted, daughter-in-law,” he said at last. “You only aged eighteen months.”

  “We are ten years out of date with the affairs of the Empire,” she answered. The smoldering expression on her face made it clear that she believed her father-in-law deliberately plotted to keep her as far from the throne as possible.

  “You can easily catch up,” the Emperor said, ignoring her anger. “In the meantime, you have kept your youthful appearance.”

  “I shall always keep it! You are the one who denies himself rejuvenation treatments, not me.”

  “And so will Javas, when he becomes Emperor.”

  “Will he?” Her eyes were suddenly mocking.

  “He will,” said the Emperor, with the weight of a hundred worlds behind his voice.