Anthony Boucher

“ Vyrko covered his eyes with his hands. Darkness was infinite relief. A minute passed before he felt that he could endure once more even the normal exercise of the optic nerve. He opened his eyes sharply at a little scream from Lavra.
He opened them to see how still Kirth-Labbery sat. The human heart, too, is framed to endure only so much; and, as the scientist had said, he was old.
It was three days after Kirth-Labbery's death before Vyrko had brought his prose-and-verse record up to date. ”

“ Vyrko concluded, "you too will fight for every breath and twist your body in torment until your heart decides that it is all just too much trouble. Here we are safe, because your father's eczema was the only known case of allergy in centuries—and was traced to the inert gases. Here is the only air-conditioning in the world that excludes the inert gases—and with them agnoton. And here—"
Lavra leaned forward, a smile and a red fleck of apple skin on her lips, the apples of her breasts touching Vyrko's shoulders. ”

“ Kirth-Labbery, had he lived, would have devoted his energies in the laboratory to an effort, even conceivably a successful one, to destroy the invaders. Vyrko knew his own limitations too well to attempt that.
Vrist, his gay wild twin, who had been in Lunn on yet another of his fantastic ventures when the agnoton struck—Vrist would have dreamed up some gallant feat of physical prowess to make the invaders pay dearly for his life. Vyrko found it difficult to cast himself in so swash-buckling a role.
He had never envied Vrist till now. Be jealous of the dead; only the living are alone. ”

“ Kirth-Labbery fiddled with the dials under the screen. It was still possible to pick up occasional glimpses from remote sectors, though by now the heart sickened in advance at the knowledge of the inevitable end of the cast.
"It is possible, Vyrko. It is the only hope. The three of us here, where the agnoton and the yellow bands are alike helpless to enter, may continue our self-sufficient existence long enough to outlast the invaders. Perhaps somewhere on Earth there are other such nuclei, but I doubt it. We are the whole of the future ... ”

“ It was a different beauty from Lavra's, and an infinitely different beauty from the curious standards set by the 1949 films; but it was beauty and it spoke to Norbert Holt.
"You'll forgive a certain surprise, Miss Stern," he ventured. "I've read Surprising for so many years and never thought...."
Manning Stern grinned. "That the editor was also surprising? I'm used to it—your reaction, I mean. I don't think I'll ever be quite used to being a woman ... or a human being, for that matter." ”

“ The tone of his voice projected a sense of doom, and Manning forgot everything else. "Is something going to happen to you? Are you going to—Oh, my dear, no! All right, so you, have a wife on every space station in the asteroid belt; but if anything happens to you...."
"I don't know," said Norbert Holt. "I can't remember the exact date of that issue...." He rose abruptly. "I shouldn't have tried a goodbye. See you again, darling—the next time round Ouroboros." ”

“ He saw it clearly. Kirth-Labbery's genius had at last evolved a time machine. That was the one escape, the escape which the scientist had not yet tested and rather distrusted. And Lavra had poked the green button because Norbert Holt had said she had poked (would poke?) the green button.
How many buttons could a wood poke poke if a wood poke would poke....
"The breakfast didn't seem to agree with him, doctor."
"Maybe it was the paper. Makes me run a temperature every morning, too!" ”

“ Vyrko thought bitterly, comparing the financial position of the poet here and in his own world.
His failures were beginning to bring back the bitterness and boredom, and his thoughts turned more and more to that future to which he could never know the answer.
Twins. It had to be twins—of opposite sexes, of course. The only hope of the continuance of the race lay in a matter of odds and genetics.
Odds.... He began to think of the election bet, to figure other angles with which he could turn foreknowledge to profit. But his pulp-reading had filled his mind with fears of the paradoxes involved. ”

“ And the child of Kirth-Labbery could hardly carry only a fool's genes.
Several generations could grow up in this retreat before the inevitable failure of the most permanent mechanical installations made it uninhabitable. By that time Earth would be free of agnoton and yellow bands, or they would be so firmly established that there was no hope. The third generation would go forth into the world, to perish or....
He walked over to Lavra and laid a gentle hand on her golden hair.
Vyrko never understood whether Lavra had been bored before that time. ”

“ That would be nice. They wouldn't be lonely until we could.... But get it quick, dear. Read it to me; I can't wait!"
So he read Norbert Holt's story to her—too excited and too oddly affectionate to point out that her long-standing aversion for print persisted even when she herself was a character. He read on past the quarrel. He read a printable version of the past hour. He read about himself reading the story to her.
"Now!" she cried. "We're up to now. What happens next?"
Vyrko read:
The emotional release of anger and love had set Vyrko almost at peace with himself again ”

“ You come home and meet her and have potluck, huh?"
"Good. Fine. Always like to try a new dish."
Manning Stern looked at him curiously. "Now was that a gag or not? You're funny, Holt. You know a lot about everything and then all of a sudden you go all Man-from-Mars on the simplest thing. Or do you...? Anyway, let's go feed Raquel."
And five hours later Holt was saying, "I never thought I'd have this reason for being glad I sold a story. Manning, I haven't had so much fun talking to—I almost said 'to a woman.' I haven't had so much fun talking since—"
He had almost said since the agnoton came. ”

“ No Rocklipper has arrived from Lunn for over a week, and it is thirty-six hours since we have made contact with the Lunn telestation. Yurp has been silent for over two days, and Asia a week.
"'The most serious threat of this epidemic,' the head of the Academy has said in an authorized statement, 'is the complete disruption of the systems of communication upon which world civilization is based. When man becomes physically incapable of governing his machines....'" ”

“ Civil authorities have forbidden further plane travel indefinitely because of the danger of spasms at the controls, and it is rumored that all vehicular transport whatsoever is to come under the same ban. ”

“ It had begun with the accidental discovery in a routine laboratory analysis of a new element in the air, an inert gas which the great paleolinguist Larkish had named agnoton, the Unknown Thing, after the pattern of the similar nicknames given to others: neon, the New Thing ”

“ Unsuccessfully, I may add."
"Un ... suc ... cess ... fully," said Manning Stern ruminatively. "Five martinis and the man can say unsuccessfully successfully. But I try to explain the Marx Brothers yet! Look, Holt. I've got a subversive orphan at home and she's undoubtedly starving. I've got to feed her. ”

“ He had to try a dozen channels before he found one that was still casting. When every erg of a man's energy goes to drawing his next breath, he cannot tend his machine.
At last Kirth-Labbery picked up a Nyork newscast. The announcer was sneezing badly ("The older literature," Vyrko observed, "found sneezing comic....") ”

“ Soberly, yet half-grinning, he crossed out KIRTH VYRKO on the first page and wrote NORBERT HOLT.
Manning Stern rejoiced loudly in this fresh discovery. "This boy's got it! He makes it sound so real that...." The business office was instructed to pay the highest bonus rate (unheard of for a first story) and an intensely cordial letter went to the author outlining immediate needs and offering certain story suggestions.
The editor of Surprising was no little surprised at the answer:
... ”