The Second Fredric Brown Megapack. Fredric Brown
Don’t!” Dr. Grainger started forward.
“Stop, Doc. Or I’ll press the button now. Otherwise I’ll explain to you.” Grainger stopped. “I’ve heard of that paradox too. And it’s always interested me because I knew I would kill my grandfather if I ever had a chance to. I hated him. He was a cruel bully, made life a hell for my grandmother and my parents. So this is a chance I’ve been waiting for.”
Smedley’s hand reached for the button and pressed it.
There was a sudden blur… Smedley was standing in a field. It took him only a moment to orient himself. If this spot was where Dr. Grainger’s house would some day be built, then his great-grandfather’s farm would be only a mile south. He started walking. En route he found a piece of wood that made a fine club.
Near the farm, he saw a red-headed young man beating a dog with a whip. “Stop that!” Smedley yelled, rushing up.
“Mind your own damn business,” said the young man as he lashed with the whip again.
Smedley swung the club.
Sixty years later, Dr. Grainger said solemnly, “Gentlemen, the first time machine.”
His two friends stared at it.
BLOOD
In their time machine, Vron and Dreena, last two survivors of the race of vampires, fled into the future to escape annihilation. They held hands and consoled one another in their terror and their hunger.
In the twenty-second century mankind had found them out, had discovered that the legend of vampires living secretly among humans was not a legend at all, but fact. There had been a pogrom that had found and killed every vampire but these two, who had already been working on a time machine and who had finished in time to escape in it. Into the future, far enough into the future that the very word vampire would be forgotten so they could again live unsuspected—and from their loins regenerate their race.
“I’m hungry, Vron. Awfully hungry.”
“I too, Dreena dear. We’ll stop again soon.”
They had stopped four times already and had narrowly escaped dying each time. They had not been forgotten. The last stop, half a million years back, had shown them a world gone to the dogs—quite literally: human beings were extinct and dogs had become civilized and man-like. Still they had been recognized for what they were. They’d managed to feed once, on the blood of a tender young bitch, but then they’d been hounded back to their time machine and into flight again.
“Thanks for stopping,” Dreena said. She sighed.
“Don’t thank me,” said Vron grimly. “This is the end of the line. We’re out of fuel and we’ll find none here—by now all radioactives will have turned to lead. We live here…or else.”
They went out to scout. “Look,” said Dreena excitedly, pointing to something walking toward them. “A new creature! The dogs are gone and something else has taken over. And surely we’re forgotten.”
The approaching creature was telepathic. “I have heard your thoughts,” said a voice inside their brains. “You wonder whether we know ‘vampires,’ whatever they are. We do not.”
Dreena clutched Vron’s arm in ecstasy. “Freedom!” she murmured hungrily. “And food!”
“You also wonder,” said the voice, “about my origin and evolution. All life today is vegetable. I—” He bowed low to them. “I, a member of the dominant race, was once what you called a turnip.”
THE LAST MARTIAN
It was an evening like any evening, but duller than most. I was back in the city room after covering a boring banquet, at which the food had been so poor that, even though it had cost me nothing, I’d felt cheated. For the hell of it, I was writing a long and glowing account of it, ten or twelve column inches. The copyreader, of course, would cut it to a passionless paragraph or two.
Slepper was sitting with his feet up on the desk, ostentatiously doing nothing, and Johnny Hale was putting a new ribbon on his typewriter. The rest of the boys were out on routine assignments.
Cargan, the city ed, came out of his private office and walked over to us. “Any of you guys know Barney Welch?” he asked us.
A silly question. Barney runs Barney’s Bar right across the street from the Trib. There isn’t a Trib reporter who doesn’t know Barney well enough to borrow money from him. So we all nodded.
“He just phoned,” Cargan said. “He’s got a guy down there who claims to be from Mars.”
“Drunk or crazy, which?” Slepper wanted to know.
“Barney doesn’t know, but he said there might be a gag story in it if we want to come over and talk to the guy. Since it’s right across the street and since you three mugs are just sitting on your prats, anyway, one of you dash over. But no drinks on the expense account.”
Slepper said, “I’ll go,” but Cargan’s eyes had lighted on me. “You free, Bill?” he asked. “This has got to be a funny story, if any, and you got a light touch on the human interest stuff.”
“Sure,” I grumbled. “I’ll go.”
“Maybe it’s just some drunk being funny, but if the guy’s really insane, phone for a cop, unless you think you can get a gag story. If there’s an arrest, you got something to hang a straight story on.”
Slepper said, “Cargan, you’d get your grandmother arrested to get a story. Can I go along with Bill, just for the ride?”
“No, you and Johnny stay here. We’re not moving the city room across the street to Barney’s.” Cargan went back into his office.
I slapped a “thirty” on to end the banquet story and sent it down the tube. I got my hat and coat. Slepper said, “Have a drink for me, Bill. But don’t drink so much you lose that light touch.”
I said, “Sure,” and went on over to the stairway and down.
I walked into Barney’s and looked around. Nobody from the Trib was there except a couple of pressmen playing gin rummy at one of the tables. Aside from Barney himself, back of the bar, there was only one other man in the place. He was a tall man, thin and sallow, who was sitting by himself in one of the booths, staring morosely into an almost empty beer glass.
I thought I’d get Barney’s angle first, so I went up to the bar and put down a bill. “A quick one,” I told him. “Straight, water on the side. And is tall-and-dismal over there the Martian you phoned Cargan about?”
He nodded once and poured my drink.
“What’s my angle?” I asked him. “Does he know a reporter’s going to interview him? Or do I just buy him a drink and rope him, or what? How crazy is he?”
“You tell me. Says he just got in from Mars two hours ago and he’s trying to figure it out. He says he’s the last living Martian. He doesn’t know you’re a reporter, but he’s all set to talk to you. I set it up.”
“How?”
“Told him I had a friend who was smarter than any usual guy and could give him good advice on what to do. I didn’t tell him any name because I didn’t know who Cargan would send. But he’s all ready to cry on your shoulder.”
“Know his name?”
Barney grimaced. “Yangan Dal, he says. Listen, don’t get him violent or anything in here. I don’t want no trouble.”
I downed my shot and took a sip of chaser. I said, “Okay, Barney. Look, dish up two beers for us and I’ll go over and take ’em with me.”
Barney drew two beers and cut off their heads. He rang up sixty cents and gave me my change, and I went over to the booth with the beers.
“Mr. Dal?” I said. “My name is Bill