Measure for a Loner - Jim Harmon

Measure for a Loner - Jim Harmon, ebook, Temp

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Measure for a Loner
Harmon, Jim
Published:
1959
Type(s):
Short Fiction, Science Fiction
Source:
1
About Harmon:
James Judson Harmon, aka Jim Harmon (born 1933), is an American
short story author and popular culture historian who has written extens-
ively about the Golden Age of Radio. He sometimes wrote under the
pseudonym Judson Grey, and occasionally he was labeled Mr. Nostalgia.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Harmon wrote for if, Venture Science Fic-
tion Magazine, Galaxy Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy &
Science Fiction and other magazines. The best of his science fiction stor-
ies were recently reprinted in Harmon's Galaxy (Cosmos Books, 2004)
with an introduction by Richard A. Lupoff. The collection includes one
from the December 1962 issue of F&SF ("The Depths") and five from
Galaxy — "Charity Case" (December 1959), "Name Your Symptom" (May
1956), "No Substitutions" (November 1958), "The Place Where Chicago
Was" (February 1962) and "The Spicy Sound of Success" (August 1959).
Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Harmon:
•
(1962)
Copyright:
Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or
check the copyright status in your country.
Note:
This book is brought to you by Feedbooks.
Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.
2
So, General, I came in to tell you I've found the loneliest man in the
world for the Space Force.
How am I supposed to rate his loneliness for you? In Megasorrows or
Kilofears? I suspect I know quite a library on the subject, but you know
more about stripes and bars. Don't try to stop me this time, General.
Now that you mention it, I'm not drunk. I had to have something to
back me up so I stopped off at the dispensary and stole a needle.
I want you to get off my back with that kind of talk. I've got enough
there—it bends me over like I had bad kidneys. It isn't any of King
Kong's little brothers. They over rate the stuff. It isn't the way you've
been riding me either. Never mind what I'm carrying. Whatever it
is—and believe me, it
is
—I have to get rid of it.
Let me tell it, for God's sake.
Then for Security's sake? I thought you would let me tell it, General.
I've been coming in here and giving you pieces of it for months but
now I want to let you be drenched in the whole thing. You're going to
take it all.
There were the two of them, the two lonely men, and I found them for
you.
You remember the way I found them for you.
The intercom on my blond desk made an electronic noise at me and
the words I had been arranging in my mind for the morning letters
splattered into alphabet soup like a printer dropping a prepared slug of
type.
I made the proper motion to still the sound.
"Yes," I grunted.
My secretary cleared her throat on my time.
"Dr. Thorn," she said, "there's a Mr. Madison here to see you. He lays
claim to be from the Star Project."
He could come in and file his claim, I told the girl.
I rummaged in the wastebasket and uncrumpled the morning's fac-
simile newspaper. It was full of material about the Star Project.
We were building Man's first interstellar spaceship.
A surprising number of people considered it important. Flipping from
the rear to page one, Wild Bill Star in the comics who had been blasting
3
all the way to forty-first sub-space universe for decades was harking
back to the good old days of Man's first star flight (which he had made
himself through the magic of time travel), the editor was calling the man
to make the jaunt the Lindbergh of Space, and the staff photographer
displayed a still of a Space Force pilot in pressure suit up front with his
face blotted out by an air-brushed interrogation mark.
Who was going to be the Lindbergh of Space?
We had used up the Columbus of Space, the Magellan of Space, the
Van Reck of Space. Now it was time for the Lone Eagle, one man who
would wait out the light years to Alpha Centauri.
I remembered the first Lindbergh.
I rode a bus fifty miles to see him at an Air Force Day celebration
when I was a dewy-eared kid. It's funny how kids still worship heroes
who did everything before they were even born. Uncle Max had told me
about standing outside the hospital with a bunch of boys his own age the
evening Babe Ruth died of cancer. Lindbergh seemed like an old man to
me when I finally saw him, but still active. Nobody had forgotten him.
When his speech was over I cheered him with the rest just as if I knew
what he had been talking about.
But I probably knew more about what he meant then as a boy than I
did feeling the reality of the newspaper in my hands. Grown-up, I could
only smile at myself for wanting to go to the stars myself.
Madison rapped on my office door and breezed in efficiently.
I've always thought Madison was a rather irritating man. Likable but
irritating. He's too good looking in an unassuming masculine way to
dress so neatly—it makes him look like a mannequin. That polite way of
his of using small words slowly and distinctly proves that he loves his
fellow man—even if his fellow always does have less brains or authority
than Madison himself. That belief would be forgivable in him if it wasn't
so often true.
Madison folded himself into the canary yellow client's chair at my dir-
ection, and took a leather-bound pocket secretary from inside his almost-
too-snug jacket.
"Dr. Thorn," he said expansively, "we need you to help us locate an
atavism."
I flicked professional smile No. Three at him lightly.
"I'm a historical psychologist," I told him. "That sounds in my line.
Which of your ancestors are you interested in having me analyze?"
4
"I used the word 'atavism' to mean a reversion to the primitive."
I made a pencil mark on my desk pad. I could make notes as well as he
could read them.
"Yes, I see," I murmured. "We don't use the term that way. Perhaps
you don't understand my work. It's been an honest way to make a living
for a few generations but it's so specialized it might sound foolish to
someone outside the psychological industry. I psychoanalyze historical
figures for history books (of course), and scholars, interested descend-
ants, what all, and that's
all
I do."
"All you
have
done," Madison admitted, "but your government is cer-
tain that you can do this new work for them—in fact, that you are one of
the few men prepared to locate this esoteric—that is, this odd aberration
since I understand you often have to deal with it in analyzing the past.
Doctor, we want you to find us a lonely man."
I laid my chrome yellow pencil down carefully beside the cream-
colored pad.
"History is full of loneliness—most of the so-called great men were
rather neurotic—but I thought, Madison, that introspection was pretty
much of a thing of the, well, past."
The government representative inhaled deeply and steepled his mani-
cured fingers.
"Our system of childhood psycho-conditioning succeeds in burying
loneliness in the subconscious so completely that even the records can't
reveal if it was ever present."
I cleared my throat in order to stall, to think.
"I'm not acquainted with
contemporary
psychology, Madison. This
comes as news to me. You mean people aren't really well-adjusted today,
that they have just been conditioned to
act
as if they were?"
He nodded. "Yes, that's it. It's ironic. Now we need a lonely man and
we can't find him."
"To pilot the interstellar spaceship?"
"For the
Evening Star
, yes," Madison agreed.
I picked up my pencil and held it between my two index fingers. I
couldn't think of a damned thing to say.
"The whole problem," Madison was saying, "goes back to the early
days of space travel. Men were confined in a small area facing infinite
5
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

sylwina.xlx.pl