A Handful of Time Read online

  ROSEL GEORGE BROWN

  A Handful of

  Time

  BALLANTINE BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  To

  BURLIE BROWN

  for all those other things, but mostly for fun.

  Copyright © 1963 by Rosel George Brown. All rights reserved.

  The following stories in this volume are reprinted from the magazines in which they originally appeared:

  LOST IN TRANSLATION: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May, 1959. © 1959 by Mercury Press, Inc.

  STEP IV: Amazing Science Fiction Stories, June, I960. Copyright © 1960 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.

  A LITTLE HUMAN CONTACT: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, I960. © I960 by Mercury Press, Inc.

  SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Amazing Science Fiction Stories, December, 1959. Copyright © 1959 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.

  OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1961. © 1960 by Mercury Press, Inc.

  JUST A SUGGESTION: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August, 1960. © I960 by Mercury Press, Inc.

  SAVE YOUR CONFEDERATE MONEY, BOYS: Fantastic Universe, November. 1959. © 1959, by Great American Publications, Inc.

  VISITING PROFESSOR: Fantastic Stories of Imagination, February, 1961. Copyright © 1961 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.

  CAR POOL: If, July, 1959. Copyright New York 1959 by Digest Productions Corporation.

  FRUITING BODY: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August, 1962. © 1962 by Mercury Press, Inc.

  The author wishes to acknowledge special help from Horace Gold, Willy Ley and Frances Welden.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover painting by Richard M. Powers

  BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.

  101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, N.Y.

  Contents

  Publisher’s Preface to the Paperback Edition

  Preface to the eBook Edition

  Lost in Translation

  Step IV

  A Little Human Contact

  Signs of the Times

  Of All Possible Worlds

  Just a Suggestion

  Save Your Confederate Money, Boys

  Visiting Professor

  Car Pool

  Fruiting Body

  Smith’s Revenge

  The Devaluation of the Symbol

  ______

  Publisher’s Preface to the Paperback Edition

  These days,

  when words like space-probe and moon-flight (not to say megadeath and overkill) are common, household terms, it is very refreshing indeed to find a science fiction writer whose primary concern is human beings.

  Here you will find people dealing with the common, household problems of how a girl can maintain the proper moral front while secretly living a joyous life of sin, keeping up with the Jones’s, car pools, the pitiless omnipresence of small children, love and war between man and woman‌—‌and many other readily recognizable joys of living‌—‌even if the methods of dealing with them are a bit peculiar.

  While it would be going too far to claim that this little volume is a handy reference guide to positive thinking (we are mot sure the author would be in favor of positive thinking anyway) still the fact remains that reading Rosel George Brown is itself a contribution to feeling better about things in general.

  These days,

  that’s saying a lot.

  Preface to the eBook Edition

  Rosel George Brown was born in 1926 and died tragically young at the age of 41. She lived most of her life in New Orleans and studied at Sophie Newcomb College and the University of Minnesota, receiving her M.A. in ancient Greek. After receiving her degree she returned to New Orleans, where she lived with her husband, historian W. Burlie Brown.

  Rosel George Brown, circa 1966

  Brown began publishing science fiction stories in September 1958. Some of her stories had themes that were typical of “women’s” science fiction of the period, but she had a broad range, writing stories of interplanetary exploration, social satire, time travel, biological experimentation, and more. Most of the stories in this collection have some element of humor, but as funny as she is in delightful stories like “Lost in Translation” and “Save Your Confederate Money, Boys”, she could also be quite dark, as in “Step IV”, or melancholic and dream-like, as in “Of All Possible Worlds”.

  An illustration for “Save Your Confederate Money, Boys” from Fantastic Universe, November 1959. Artist Virgil Finlay.

  Brown’s writing was characterized by its wit, its fine craftsmanship, and by the depth and care with which she would draw her characters’ personalities‌—‌something that was rare in the action- and idea-oriented science fiction of her time.

  In addition to 21 published short stories, Brown wrote two novels: Sibyl Sue Blue (1966) and The Waters of Centaurus (posthumously published in 1970). She also collaborated with Keith Laumer on the novel Earthblood (1966; currently available in the book Earthblood and Other Stories, 2008).

  As is mentioned on the cover, the story collection A Handful of Time was Brown’s first appearance in book form, and it brings together much of her early work.

  This eBook edition has been created in hopes of introducing a few more readers to this excellent and little-known science fiction author.

  ‌—‌ Anon, 2014

  LOST IN TRANSLATION

  MERCEDES HAD particularly preserved her chastity, as her adenoids, out of intellectual conviction. The difference was that she had had an opportunity to be rid of her adenoids. There was nothing conventional about Mercedes, for that matter. When other girls were out experimenting with hashish, and swimming naked in mixed groups, Mercedes reclined neurasthenically on her violet plush sofa, reading the Bifurcate Review. In her adenoidal way, she was a Humanist, a Classicist, and a Graecophile (in translation, of course). As a further refinement, she read only Victorian translations from the Greek, a matter of keeping in step with the avant-garde neo-Victorian revival.

  When the doorbell chimed “Home Sweet Home,” Mercedes’ heart fluttered ominously. She was, she thought palely, so very delicate. She passed a small bottle of sal volatile under her nose, and placed an embroidered bookmark between the pages of her Aristophanes before closing it reluctantly. Such delightful humor! The fact that she actually didn’t get any of the jokes was of course because So Much Is Lost in Translation.

  There was a discreet knock at the door and Thomas, in faultless butler’s attire, walked in carrying a silver salver. Mercedes frowned at Thomas’ creaking walk, conscious that she had been putting off the indelicate and really repulsive task of oiling him. Thomas, eyes shifting in embarrassment at his irrepressible squeaks, presented the salver on which rested, as usual, nothing.

  “The gentleman” Thomas said with a rusty sniff, “said he had no card.”

  “A man?” Mercedes asked rhetorically. “Very well. I guess you may show him in.” She moved to the red velvet, rose-carved chair where the tapestried bellpull and a heavy bronze paperweight were near at hand.

  Thomas opened the door to admit a fresh-faced young man that looked like one of her father’s graduate students.

  “My name is Kim,” he said heartily, coming toward her with his hand extended. He stopped in midpassage and colored slightly as he looked around the room, and did a double-take on Mercedes’ horn-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in the Ivy League loincloth and high boots, mementoes of a year at Harvard. He lowered his green bag to the floor and looked longingly at the enormous Chinese scarf which clothed the piano so modestly. He abandoned the idea, sank down in the Eastlake loveseat opposite Mercedes, and began to pluck nervously at the antimacassar.
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  “I have come to see you,” he said in hushed tones, “about a matter of‌—‌er‌—‌extreme delicacy.”

  Mercedes clutched her sal volatile convulsively. “Yes, Mr…?”

  “Kim,” he, replied. “Oh, er, Mr. Brian. I have, of course, spoken to your father first.”

  Mercedes flushed violently. She moved nearer the bell-pull and began to toy with the paperweight. “Mr. Brian… sir…” she began haltingly. “I don’t even know you. This matter of great delicacy‌—‌perhaps we had better speak of it at some more propitious moment I am not too well, you know.” Mercedes placed her hand on her fluttering heart.

  Kim, who hadn’t read a Victorian novel since English II, responded tactlessly. “You’re healthy as a horse. I’ve just been over your medical.”

  His gross brutality shocked Mercedes out of her impending swoon. “What’s this all about? What did you talk to my father about?” Had this coarse, working class type man gone over her medical report before… whatever he had in mind? She shuddered and calculated the thrust necessary to carry the paperweight from her hand to his head.

  “I’m one of Jack’s‌—‌ah‌—‌Mr. King’s graduate students. We’ve been engaged in an experiment of great importance. It’s so important, in fact, and so secret, that only two people in the world know about it‌—‌your father and myself. We have reached the stage now where we need a vic… ah… a volunteer to test our hypothesis.”

  “And you’re asking me… my own father…” Mercedes covered her face with her hands, overcome by the Horror of the Situation. She felt exactly like‌—‌who was it? Oh, yes‌—‌Dr. Rappacini’s daughter. She could feel the Forces of Evil closing in around her.

  Kim took out a cigarette irritably, looked hopelessly for an ashtray and replaced the cigarette in his green bag. He leaned forward, right elbow on one knee, and grinned at Mercedes in the powerful, masculine way most women found irresistible.

  “Let me at least tell you what the experiment is. You can faint after I’m finished. We have, we think, perfected a time machine. It works by a method of ‘jump grooving’ of instants, so that the subject is translated from one instant to another. In other words, if we send you back to, say, last Friday at three o’clock, the instant you arrive you create the existence you have come to observe, just as it actually was. It’s not in reality, if I may use the term, the same, but it’s exactly alike. Only, so to speak, in another groove. Except for the paradox. You wouldn’t meet yourself, because you aren’t there until you are translated there and create the moment.”

  But Mercedes wasn’t listening. Her head was thrown back, waiting for the guillotine to fall.

  “Well, never mind the theory then. The point is, the machine is all built and we need someone to test it.”

  “I understand,” Mercedes quivered. “It’s dangerous. No one would willingly risk their neck…”

  “No, no. Not at all dangerous. Whether it works or not the machine itself is perfectly safe.”

  “Then why me? Why not you? Or father? Or anyone at all except me?”

  “For a very good reason. The machine requires three people, two to work it from this end, and the subject who travels. No one can work it but Jack and me. Anyone, of course, could be the traveler, but we’re afraid to get anyone else in on it. You were entirely Jack’s idea. It would keep the experiment in the family.”

  Mercedes glowered at him and reached for the bell pull. “I won’t go.”

  “Wait!” Kim caught her hand. He gazed into her eyes with all the sincerity of three summers with the Little Theatre. “You’re a terribly attractive woman, you know.”

  Mercedes let her hand fall. There was a certain brute honesty about the man.

  Kim lit a cigarette and threw the match into the rose-patterned hand-stenciled sewing box. “For a woman of your taste and intelligence this offers an unparalleled opportunity. I imagine, just as an offhand guess, that you would enjoy a trip back to the time of King Victoria the Great.”

  Mercedes winced.

  Kim laughed at himself. “Queen, I mean, of course. Good Queen Victoria. For one of your temperament…”

  “You misinterpret my character entirely,” Mercedes replied. It was her turn to lean forward interestedly. “I am, of course, a devotee and advocate of the neo-Victorian revival, for reasons which someone of your class couldn’t possibly understand. My real interests, however, lie deeper. Much deeper. I am a Graecophile.” She paused triumphantly, expecting him at last to cower before the Grandeur of her Interests.

  “You like Greeks?” he asked innocently.

  “Ancient Greeks, you ninny,” she shouted and, like someone (probably Prometheus) suddenly released, she threw the paperweight. It missed him and demolished an innocent shepherdess. Recovering herself slightly, she tossed the heavy, leather bound, antiqued volume of Aristophanes in his lap. “That’s what I like. Intellectual wit. Real art. Classic refinement.”

  “Naturally,” Kim said. He longed to pull off his loincloth to mop his sweaty brow, but some instinct told him this would not be de rigeur. “We can easily send you back to ancient Greece. You’ll go?”

  “Of course I’ll go. But then,” she said regretfully, “there’s the matter of the language barrier. I wouldn’t be able to understand a word, or ask for a glass of water or where the ladies’… come to think of it, there might be many complications.”

  But Kim was on his feet. “Come,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s go right now. No use torturing yourself with these doubts. Surely a woman of your Intelligence and Refinement will find a welcome niche in ancient Greek society. The language is the least problem. We’ve got a logophone right in the study and you can take it with you. You won’t just get a translation in time‌—‌you’ll also understand and speak the language as if it were your own.”

  When Mercedes materialized in the front row of the Athenian Theatre of Dionysus in the year 416 B.C., during the Greater Dionysia and specifically during the performance of Aristophanes’ Frogs, she immediately turned on her logophone.

  The first thing she heard was an incredibly crude noise, apparently made by one of the actors. “Static,” she thought and blushed anyhow. The crowds about her were roaring with laughter and watching the stage.

  The next several lines of dialogue caused Mercedes to turn off her logophone in sheer horror. The flow of obscenity mercifully became a meaningless babble.

  She leaned forward myopically to get a better view of the stage because she had forgotten her glasses. This was the flower of Greek drama. The actors were dressed very oddly. They carried the strangest looking objects. Almost like totem poles‌—‌no, they reminded her of something else. Something‌—‌unmentionable.

  Huffily arranging the folds of her indignation about her, Mercedes rose to leave.

  She made her way up the tiered rows of seats and out onto the slope of the hill. She stood awhile in pensive thought, nursing her disillusion and wishing fervently she had chosen the Lake Poets instead of Aristophanes.

  Well, Aristophanes was all washed up as far as she was concerned. But then, this was an age full of great names. There were people she should meet and talk to, if she could think of the names. Her mind ground ponderously through Greek Literature in Translation. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides‌—‌and of course people like Pericles and‌—‌well, others. And why were they all men? There must have been some women.

  Aspasia‌—‌ah, yes. The wise Aspasia, companion to the noble Pericles and center of a brilliant salon. Anyone, Mercedes was sure, would be able to point her out.

  As these thoughts flashed upon her inward eye people began to surge out of the theatre. Mercedes turned on her logophone and approached a thinly veiled young woman who was heavily made up and seemed to be chewing vigorously on something.

  “Sure, honey,” the girl answered with comradely spirit, “Everybody knows old Aspasia. Come on, I’ll point her out.” The girl began to lead Mercedes toward the other side of the theatre
. She stopped, finally, and eyed Mercedes curiously. “You from Crete, honey?”

  “No,” Mercedes answered. “I’m from the Future.”

  “Refugee from Boeotia,” the girl concluded. “I thought you looked corn-fed. Aspasia’s got a heart as big as a house. She’ll help you out. By the way, my name’s Phye.”

  The girl searched the crowds pouring from the theatre. She finally spotted a tall, regal-looking woman dressed in what looked to be a robe of lavender chiffon.

  “Aspasia!” Phye shouted. “Here’s someone who wants to see you!” She presented Mercedes. “She’s a refugee. I imagine she wants to be introduced around a little. Either that or to locate in a good House.”

  Aspasia smiled affectionately at the girl and turned to Mercedes. “My dear, you’re too fat to go around without body bands. And where did you get that impossible costume. It doesn’t show a thing!”

  Mercedes was, for a moment, speechless. Aspasia did not look nearly so regal on close inspection. She was far on the worst side of fifty. Powder and rouge caked her face and mascara was beginning to edge down her cheeks. Her hair was frankly a screaming yellow and tortured into an impossible intricacy of curls that bounced gleefully as she walked.

  “You’re… Aspasia?” Mercedes asked haltingly.

  “Sure, honey. You come on home with me for a day and then we’ll see if we can place you.”

  It began to dawn on Mercedes that perhaps she was not misunderstanding Aspasia. How she wished all this had been Lost in Translation! Still, there would be advantages to being received in Aspasia’s house. They walked in silence for a moment, Aspasia waving to her friends along the way. Finally Mercedes turned to her.