The Very Best of F & SF v1 Read Free Page A

but guilt and unhappiness.
You are aware of this already.”
    “I disagree,” Knight
said.
    “Do you? Then
why do you work? Why not steal? Rob? Burgle? Cheat others of their money to
fill your own pockets?”
    “But I—” Knight
began, and then stopped.
    “The point is
well taken, eh?” Boyne waved his hand impatiently. “No, Mr. Knight. Seek a
mature argument. You are too ambitious and healthy to wish to steal success.”
    “Then I’d just
want to know if I would be successful.”
    “Ah? Stet. You
wish to thumb through the pages looking for your name. You want reassurance.
Why? Have you no confidence in yourself? You are a promising young attorney.
Yes. I know that. It is part of my data. Has not Miss Clinton confidence in
you?”
    “Yes,” Jane said
in a loud voice. “He doesn’t need reassurance from a book.”
    “What else, Mr.
Knight?”
    Knight
hesitated, sobering in the face of Boyne’s overwhelming intensity. Then he
said: “Security.”
    “There is no
such thing. Life is insecurity. You can only find safety in death.”
    “You know what I
mean,” Knight muttered. “The knowledge that life is worth planning. There’s the
H-Bomb.”
    Boyne nodded
quickly. “True. It is a crisis. But then, I’m here. The world will continue. I
am proof.”
    “If I believe
you.”
    “And if you do not?”
Boyne blazed. “You do not want security. You want courage.” He nailed the
couple with a contemptuous glare. “There is in this country a legend of pioneer
forefathers from whom you are supposed to inherit courage in the face of odds.
D. Boone, E. Allen, S. Houston, A. Lincoln, G. Washington and others. Fact?”
    “I suppose so,” Knight
muttered. “That’s what we keep telling ourselves.”
    “And where is
the courage in you? Pfui! It is only talk. The unknown terrifies you. Danger
does not inspire you to fight, as it did D. Crockett; it makes you whine and
reach for the reassurance in this book. Fact?”
    “But the
H-Bomb...”
    “It is a danger.
Yes. One of many. What of that? Do you cheat at Solhand?”
    “Solhand?”
    “Your pardon.” Boyne
reconsidered, impatiently snapping his fingers at the interruption to the white
heat of his argument. “It is a game played singly against chance relationships
in an arrangement of cards. I forget your noun...”
    “Oh!” Jane’s
face brightened. “Solitaire.”
    “Quite right.
Solitaire. Thank you, Miss Clinton.” Boyne turned his frightening eyes on
Knight. “Do you cheat at Solitaire?”
    “Occasionally.”
    “Do you enjoy
games won by cheating?”
    “Not as a rule.”
    “They are
thisney, yes? Boring. They are tiresome. Pointless. Null-Co-ordinated. You wish
you had won honestly.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “And you will
suppose so after you have looked at this bound book. Through all your pointless
life you will wish you had played honestly the games of life. You will verdash
that look. You will regret. You will totally recall the pronouncement of our
great poet-philosopher Trynbyll who summed it up in one lightning, skazon line. ‘The Future is Tekon,’ said
Trynbyll. Mr. Knight, do not cheat. Let me implore you to give me the Almanac.”
    “Why don’t you
take it away from me?”
    “It must be a
gift. We can rob you of nothing. We can give you nothing.”
    “That’s a lie.
You paid Macy to rent this backroom.”
    “Macy was paid,
but I gave him nothing. He will think he was cheated, but you will see to it
that he is not. All will be adjusted without dislocation.”
    “Wait a minute...”
    “It has all been
carefully planned. I have gambled on you, Mr. Knight. I am depending on your
good sense. Let me have the Almanac. I will disband... re-orient... and you
will never see me again. Vorloss verdash! It will be a bar adventure to narrate
for friends. Give me the Almanac!”
    “Hold the phone,”
Knight said. “This is a gag. Remember? I—”
    “Is it?” Boyne
interrupted. “Is it? Look at me.”
    For almost a
minute the