The Science Fiction anthology - Andre Norton

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the ballot. By the time he was forty, Andrew Hills was a U.S. Senator.

      That spring, he and Paula spent a month in Acapulco, in an enchanting home they had erected in the cool shadows of the steep mountains that faced the bay. It was there that Andy talked about his future.

      “I know what the party’s planning,” he told his wife, “but I know they’re wrong. I’m not Presidential timber, Paula.”

      But the decision wasn’t necessary; by summer, the Asiatic Alliance had tired of the incessant talks with the peacemakers and had launched their attack on the Alaskan frontier. Andy was commissioned at once as a major.

      His gallantry in action, his brilliant recapture of Shaktolik, White Mountain, and eventual triumphant march into Nome guaranteed him a place in the High Command of the Allied Armies.

      By the end of the first year of fighting, there were two silver stars on his shoulder and he was given the most critical assignment of all—to represent the Allies in the negotiations that were taking place in Fox Island in the Aleutians. Later, he denied that he was solely responsible for the successful culmination of the peace talks, but the American populace thought him hero enough to sweep him into the White House the following year in a landslide victory unparalleled in political history.

      He was fifty by the time he left Washington, but his greatest triumphs were yet to come. In his second term, his interest in the World Organization had given him a major role in world politics. As First Secretary of the World Council, his ability to effect a working compromise between the ideological factions was directly responsible for the establishment of the World Government.

      When he was sixty-four, Andrew Hills was elected World President, and he held the office until his voluntary retirement at seventy-five. Still active and vigorous, still capable of a commanding tennis game, of a painting that set art circles gasping, he and Paula moved permanently into the house in Acapulco.

      He was ninety-six when the fatigue of living overtook him. Andrew Junior, with his four grandchildren, and Denise, with her charming twins, paid him one last visit before he took to his bed.

      “But what is the stuff?” Paula said. “Does it cure or what? I have a right to know!”

      Dr. Bernstein frowned. “It’s rather hard to describe. It has no curative powers. It’s more in the nature of a hypnotic drug, but it has a rather peculiar effect. It provokes a dream.”

      “A dream?”

      “Yes. An incredibly long and detailed dream, in which the patient lives an entire lifetime, and lives it just the way he would like it to be. You might say it’s an opiate, but the most humane one ever developed.”

      Paula looked down at the still figure on the bed. His hand was moving slowly across the bed-sheet, the fingers groping toward her.

      “Andy,” she breathed. “Andy darling....”

      His hand fell across hers, the touch feeble and aged.

      “Paula,” he whispered, “say good-by to the children for me.”

      SPACEGRAM

      From: Jed Michaels,

      Ryttuk, Eros

      To: H. E. Horrocks,

      Interplanetary Amusement Corp.,

      Cosmopolis, Earth

      I QUIT, YOU BALLOON BRAIN.

      JED

      ROCKET MAIL (Second Class)

      Dear Michaels:

      Your last message indicates you wish to leave the employment of the Interplanetary Amusement Corp. Under our employee policy, this is allowable, effective upon completion of your current assignment. Under precedent set as long ago as 2347 A. D. the company will even pay the cost of your message of resignation.

      However, the words “you balloon brain” do not seem a necessary part of that message and will be deducted from your salary.

      Furthermore, I have a few words of my own to say. You march straight into my office, Michaels, just as soon as you get back from Eros. Eros? WHAT IN HELL ARE YOU DOING ON EROS?

      Horrocks

      ROCKET MAIL (First Class)

      Mr. H. E. Horrocks

      Dear Balloon Brain:

      If you paid a little more attention to your office and less to that golf course on Venus, you’d know what I am doing on Eros. I got here two days ago via Mars with a herd of six wrestlers, in accordance with your own written memorandum. We were to appear at an Auruchs club smoker.

      Upon arrival, I found that no preparations had been made for us and nobody knows anything about an Auruchs club.

      The people here are nuts. They talk in six syllable words and their idea of a good time is to sniff flowers and do five dimensional calculus. They have less use for wrestlers than I have for you.

      Michaels

      ROCKET MAIL (Second Class)

      Michaels, you nitwit:

      That wasn’t Eros, you idiot! You were supposed to go to Erie—Erie, Pa., right here on Earth!

      If you remembered even your sixth grade Solar System history, you would know that the planetoid Eros was settled in 2141 by a group of longhairs headed by Prof. M. R. Snock, a philosopher with a dozen university degrees.

      He wanted to show that war, crime and all forms of violence would disappear if people thought only beautiful thoughts.

      The planetoid is lousy rich with erydnium ore and the people keep in luxury selling it to space freighters. They spend their time being gentle and thinking beautiful. There hasn’t even been a spitball thrown there in eight generations.

      A fine place for you to show up mahouting six wrestlers with no foreheads. You’re lucky they haven’t thrown you in jail.

      Horrocks

      ROCKET MAIL (Postage Due)

      Mr. H. E. Horrocks

      Dear Jellyhead:

      What do you mean lucky? We are in jail.

      Right after we got here, the boys decided they had been cramped in that local spaceship and needed a workout to limber up. As soon as they got started, they were surrounded by a bunch of scrawny males, all sniffing hollyhocks.

      Their spokesman, a bald bird with rosebuds in his whiskers, touched me with a gold-headed cane and said that apparently we were not yet attuned to the high mental plane of the planetoid, and would we mind going into protective custody while they worked over our egos and cured our kineticism.

      I said suppose we wouldn’t. He looked shocked and waved his flower and said that then, although it had never happened before, he supposed he would have to call the space patrol and have us thrown into the hoosegow on Ganymede.

      I translated that into basic wrestler for the boys and we agreed we’d better go along. We’d heard about the jail those tough space patrol babies operate on Ganymede.

      The flower lovers took us to an old erydnium pit and asked us to please go down. Now they’re perfuming us every hour and feeding us flower bulbs to make us gentle.

      We could climb out of this rat-hole whenever we wanted, but that would be climbing straight into a striped spacesuit.

      I think about you all the time. And if you think they’re beautiful thoughts, you’re as crazy as I’ve always suspected.

      Michaels

      P.S. The boys asked that I enclose this note from them:

      Dear Mr. Horox:

      We do

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