Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II (15 page)

It was a frightful weapon, a shattering weapon, a weapon that smashed the constituents of time and space in a given area. They sincerely hoped never to have to use that weapon in actual warfare. Still, one never knew to what lengths an uncivilized enemy might go.

The weapon had to be tested.

It was impossible, given the terrible nature of the weapon, given its totally unpredictable aftereffects, to test it in any densely populated section of the galaxy. Furthermore, in order to get a clear and scientific picture of the weapon's potential military value, it was necessary to destroy an entire planet in the course of the test.

The aliens had selected the site very carefully. They had selected a sparsely populated solar system, a very unimportant planet inhabited by an extremely backward race—a race so backward, in fact, that it was just now beginning to develop space travel. They had selected, in other words, a world of no conceivable value to anybody consulted, a world that no other race in the galaxy deemed at all desirable, an absolutely useless, second-rate nonentity of a world—our Earth.

Here they would test their weapon. They would test it on a world whose total obliteration would not be noticed anywhere.

But Earth was inhabited by a race which had intelligence within, at least, the widest definition of the term. And the aliens were civilized, highly civilized, ultimately civilized. They could not just destroy another race out of hand, no matter how primitive it might be. They had a responsibility to life itself, to the future, to history.

So they had done this enormous, this expensive, this altruistic and unheard-of thing. At a cost so overwhelming that it could not be expressed at all in the limited figures of human economics, they had evacuated our entire planet.

They had carried us all the way across the galaxy (hang the expense! never mind the expense! when they did a thing, they believed in doing it right!) to another planet which, while uninhabited, was as much like Earth as anything they could find in the universe.

Its size and mass were almost exactly the same as Earth's—so we didn't have to worry about any difference in gravity. Its distance from the sun, its periods of revolution and rotation were quite similar—our day-night systems and calendars would be little altered.

All in all, a wonderful new home.

Of course, there were some changes: no two planets were exactly alike. The atmospheric elements existed here in slightly different proportions; the water, while not poisonous, was effectively undrinkable; it would not be possible for a good long time to grow any edible plants in this soil. And, no doubt we had noticed, there weren't any animals on this world, nor were the mineral resources susceptible to exploitation by any techniques we had developed to date. However, taking the good with the bad, the bitter with the sweet, one way or another, sooner or later, they knew we would manage. We had a brand new planet, a completely untouched planet, a virgin planet, all for our very own.

All we had to do was to learn how to use it properly.

Meanwhile, they would not desert us. Hadn't they told us how civilized they were? No, however long it took us to get on our feet and become self-supporting, their robots would be there to take care of us. We could use the barracks (they were made of almost indestructible material) until we figured out a way to make some other kind of home on this world. And the soup kitchens would be running, day in and day out, serving the good white dumplings designed especially for us until we developed some other, more indigenous source of nourishment.

But all this was for the future. We had had a long, tiring trip and probably did not want to worry about practical matters right now. How about a little entertainment? Something special, something none of us had ever imagined we would see.

Television screens appeared on the ceilings of the barracks, and humans turned baffled, confused faces upwards. Outside the walls, everywhere, the wind howled stubbornly, unendingly.

This was a rare treat, the aliens explained through the loudspeakers, a once-in-a-thousand-years sort of thing. We would be able to tell our children and our children's children that we had seen it, at exactly the same time as other, much more advanced races throughout the galaxy. "Now, for the first time, and at the exact moment it occurs, you will witness the total destruction of a world—the planet Earth—in the course of an essential and epic scientific experiment."

For those readers who don't know about it:

In 1946, the United States needed a place to test the atomic bomb that had been developed and used only one year before. The Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean was chosen. It consisted of thirty-six islets on a reef twenty-five miles long.

The entire population was evacuated and removed, first to Rongerik, then to Ujelang, then to Kili. Between 1948 and 1958, twenty-three atomic and hydrogen bomb tests were conducted on the atoll. In 1969, Bikini was declared safe for humans once again, and in 1974, about a hundred or so of the original inhabitants were allowed back. They were all, however, reevacuated in 1978.

But for someone, somewhere, this testing was not enough. So they went to the island of Attu in the Aleutian chain of the North Pacific, and did it all over again.

Written 1994——Published 1994

In this part of the country, folks think that Doc Judd carries magic in his black leather satchel. He's
that
good.

Ever since I lost my leg in the sawmill, I've been all-around handyman at the Judd place. Lots of times when Doc gets a night call after a real hard day, he's too tired to drive, so he hunts me up and I become a chauffeur, too. With the shiny plastic leg that Doc got me at a discount, I can stamp the gas pedal with the best of them.

We roar up to the farmhouse and, while Doc goes inside to deliver a baby or swab grandma's throat, I sit in the car and listen to them talk about what a ball of fire the old Doc is. In Groppa County, they'll tell you Doc Judd can handle
anything
. And I nod and listen, nod and listen.

But all the time I'm wondering what they'd think of the way he handled his only son falling in love with a vampire...

It was a terrifically hot summer when Steve came home on vacation—real blister weather. He wanted to drive his father around and kind of help with the chores, but Doc said that after the first tough year of medical school anyone deserved a vacation.

"Summer's a pretty quiet time in our line," he told the boy. "Nothing but poison ivy and such until we hit the polio season in August. Besides, you wouldn't want to shove old Tom out of his job, would you? No, Stevie, you just bounce around the countryside in your jalopy and enjoy yourself."

Steve nodded and took off. And I mean took off. About a week later, he started coming home five or six o'clock in the morning. He'd sleep till about three in the afternoon, laze around for a couple of hours and, come eight-thirty, off he'd rattle in his little hot-rod. Roadhouses, we figured, or maybe some girl...

Doc didn't like it, but he'd brought up the boy with a nice easy hand and he didn't feel like saying anything just yet. Old buttinsky Tom, though—I was different. I'd helped raise the kid since his mother died, and I'd walloped him when I caught him raiding the icebox.

So I dropped a hint now and then, kind of asking him, like, not to go too far off the deep end. I could have been talking to a stone fence for all the good it did. Not that Steve was rude. He was just too far gone in whatever it was to pay attention to me.

And then the other stuff started and Doc and I forgot about Steve.

Some kind of weird epidemic hit the kids of Groppa County and knocked twenty, thirty, of them flat on their backs.

"It's almost got me beat, Tom," Doc would confide in me as we bump-bump-bumped over dirty back-country roads. "It acts like a bad fever, yet the rise in temperature is hardly noticeable. But the kids get very weak and their blood count goes way down. And it stays that way, no matter what I do. Only good thing, it doesn't seem to be fatal—so far."

Every time he talked about it, I felt a funny twinge in my stump where it was attached to the plastic leg. I got so uncomfortable that I tried to change the subject, but that didn't go with Doc. He'd gotten used to thinking out his problems by talking to me, and this epidemic thing was pretty heavy on his mind.

He'd written to a couple of universities for advice, but they didn't seem to be of much help. And all the time, the parents of the kids stood around waiting for him to pull a cellophane-wrapped miracle out of his little black bag, because, as they said in Groppa County, there was nothing that could go wrong with a human body that Doc Judd couldn't take care of some way or other. And all the time, the kids got weaker and weaker.

Doc got big, bleary bags under his eyes from sitting up nights going over the latest books and medical magazines he'd ordered from the city. Near as I could tell he'd find nothing, even though lots of times he'd get to bed almost as late as Steve.

And then he brought home the handkerchief. Soon as I saw it, my stump gave a good, hard, extra twinge and I wanted to walk out of the kitchen. Tiny, fancy handkerchief, it was, all embroidered linen and lace edges.

"What do you think, Tom? Found this on the floor of the bedroom of the Stopes' kids. Neither Betty nor Willy have any idea where it came from. For a bit, I thought I might have a way of tracing the source of infection, but those kids wouldn't lie. If they say they never saw it before, then that's the way it is." He dropped the handkerchief on the kitchen table that I was clearing up, stood there sighing. "Betty's anemia is beginning to look serious. I wish I knew... I wish... Oh, well." He walked out to the study, his shoulders bent like they were under a sack of cement.

I was still staring at the handkerchief, chewing on a fingernail, when Steve bounced in. He poured himself a cup of coffee, plumped it down on the table and saw the handkerchief.

"Hey," he said. "That's Tatiana's. How did it get here?"

I swallowed what was left of the fingernail and sat down very carefully opposite him. "Steve," I asked, and then stopped because I had to massage my aching stump. "Stevie, you know a girl who owns that handkerchief? A girl named Tatiana?"

"Sure. Tatiana Latianu. See, there are her initials embroidered in the corner—T.L. She's descended from the Rumanian nobility; family goes back about five hundred years. I'm going to marry her."

"She the girl you've been seeing every night for the past month?"

He nodded. "She only goes out at night. Hates the glare of the sun. You know, poetic kind of girl. And Tom, she's so
beautiful
..."

For the next hour, I just sat there and listened to him. And I felt sicker and sicker. Because I'm Rumanian myself, on my mother's side. And I knew why I'd been getting those twinges in my stump.

She lived in Brasket Township, about twelve miles away. Tom had run into her late one night on the road when her convertible had broken down. He'd given her a lift to her house—she'd just rented the old Mead Mansion—and he'd fallen for her, hook, line and whole darn fishing rod.

Lots of times, when he arrived for a date, she'd be out, driving around the countryside in the cool night air, and he'd have to play cribbage with her maid, an old beak-faced Rumanian biddy, until she got back. Once or twice, he'd tried to go after her in his hot-rod, but that had led to trouble. When she wanted to be alone, she had told him, she wanted to be
alone
. So that was that. He waited for her night after night. But when she got back, according to Steve, she really made up for everything. They listened to music and talked and danced and ate strange Rumanian dishes that the maid whipped up. Until dawn. Then he came home.

Steve put his hand on my arm. "Tom, you know that poem—
The Owl and the Pussycat
? I've always thought the last line was beautiful. 'They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon.' That's what my life will be like with Tatiana. If only she'll have me. I'm still having trouble talking her into it."

I let out a long breath. "The first good thing I've heard," I said without thinking. "Marriage to
that
girl—"

When I saw Steve's eyes, I broke off. But it was too late.

"What the hell do you mean, Tom:
that
girl? You've never even met her."

I tried to twist out of it, but Steve wouldn't let me. He was real sore. So I figured the best thing was to tell him the truth.

"Stevie. Listen. Don't laugh. Your girlfriend is a vampire."

He opened his mouth slowly. "Tom, you're off your—"

"No, I'm not." And I told him about vampires. What I'd heard from my mother who'd come over from the old country, from Transylvania, when she was twenty. How they can live and have all sorts of strange powers—just so long as they have a feast of human blood once in a while. How the vampire taint is inherited, usually just one child in the family getting it. And how they go out only at night, because sunlight is one of the things that can destroy them.

Steve turned pale at this point. But I went on. I told him about the mysterious epidemic that had hit the kids of Groppa County—and made them anemic. I told him about his father finding the handkerchief in the Stopes' house, near two of the sickest kids. And I told him—but all of a sudden I was talking to myself. Steve tore out of the kitchen. A second or two later, he was off in the hot-rod.

He came back about eleven-thirty, looking as old as his father. I was right, all right. When he'd wakened Tatiana and asked her straight, she'd broken down and wept a couple of buckets-full. Yes, she was a vampire, but she'd only got the urge a couple of months ago. She'd fought it until her mind began to break when the craving hit her. She'd only touched kids, because she was afraid of grown-ups—they might wake up and be able to catch her. But she'd kind of worked on a lot of kids at one time, so that no one kid would lose too much blood. Only the craving had been getting stronger...