Foreign Constellations
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:
Brunner, John, 1934-
Foreign constellations.
CONTENTS: The Berendt conversion.—The easy way out.—Out of mindshot.—Pond water, [etc.]
1. Science fiction, English. I. Title.
PZ4.B8gGal 1980 [PR6052.R8] 823‘914 79-92183
ISBN: 0-89696-094-3
Copyright © 1980 by Brunner Fact & Fiction Limited
All Rights Reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Beaverbooks, Pickering, Ontario
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Joyce Cameron Weston
First Edition FG
Contents
The Berendt Conversion
The Easy Way Out
Out of Mindshot
Pond Water
The Protocols of the Elders of Britain
The Suicide of Man
The Taste of the Dish and the Savour of the Day
What Friends Are For
Acknowledgments
The Berendt Conversion first appeared in Ramparts, July 1975, Copyright © 1975 by Noah’s Ark Inc., and was included in Fireweed #9, June 1977.
The Easy Way Out first appeared in If, June 1971, Copyright © 1971 by UPD Publishing Corp., and was included in Best Science Fiction for 1972, edited by Frederick Pohl (Ace Books).
Out of Mindshot first appeared in Galaxy, June 1970, Copyright © 1970 by Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp., and was included in The Best from Galaxy, Volume 1 (Award Books).
Pond Water first appeared in The Farthest Reaches, edited by Joseph Elder (Trident Press), Copyright © 1968 by Joseph Elder
The Protocols of the Elders of Britain first appeared in Stopwatch, edited by George Hay (New English Library), Copyright © 1974 by John Brunner, and was included in The 1976 Annual World’s Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim (DAW Books).
The Suicide of Man first appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, July-August 1978, Copyright © 1978 by Davis Publications.
The Taste of the Dish and the Savour of the Day first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1977, Copyright © 1977 by Mercury Press Inc., and was included in The 1978 Annual World’s Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim (DAW Books).
What Friends Are For first appeared in Fellowship of the Stars, edited by Terry Carr (Simon & Schuster), Copyright © 1974 by Terry Carr, and was included in Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year #4, edited by Lester Del Rey (E.P. Dutton).
Foreign Constellations
The Berendt Conversion
Under the cloud-dark sky that promised rain by sunset: the noise of an approaching engine. Heads were turned. The soup-tanker was of course what everybody was looking forward to, but it couldn’t possibly be here for at least another hour and would be later still if the crew had to beat off an attempted hijack. Anyhow, what was coming was a helicopter and those had been reserved since spring for moving people, not goods.
It was a bad time for the unexpected. Five wars were in progress over food.
Therefore soldiers’ knuckles paled on the hands that held their guns. Many of them had seen service during hunger riots last year and the year before. Workers trudging down from the hills with burdens of miscellaneous vegetation reflexively glanced around in search of cover. In the supermarket car-park the non-working refugees reacted also, bar the handful who were too weak. But those were mostly children. This operation had an admirable record. Some days nobody died here at all.
The youngest of the five policemen whose job it was to keep order among the inhabitants of the car park was proud of his contribution to this exceptional achievement. Before permitting himself to look up he took time to survey his charges. Most were sheltered by abandoned cars and delivery trucks; even the least fortunate were protected from wind and rain, if not from cold, by tents improvised out of plastic sheet and aluminium pipe. Now and then someone in a tent noticed that someone in a more substantial home was weakening and took advantage of the police’s backs being turned to kick out the luckier neighbours. Once there had been an epidemic of such attacks and for a week more fatalities were due to murder than to hunger.
Not presently, however. And the young policeman had no opinion, private or public, concerning the latrine rumour which claimed that the protein content of the soup had been cut to increase fatigue and forestall another similar outbreak.
As soon as they realised the chopper was neither shooting nor being shot at, the refugees and workers slumped back in time to where they had been a moment earlier: the latter because payout was as distant as usual, the former—it could be read in their hostile eyes—because they feared more mouths were being brought, more empty bellies.
The soldiers would have done likewise but that the sergeant in charge of the assessment detail ordered them to stand to. The earliest-returning of the workers were coming up to the perimeter gate with their day’s forages, demanding to be let pass along the barbed wire corridor into the supermarket, that horrible echoing cavern of a place where the only light came from holes blasted in the walls and meshed over against thieves, or cold refugees jealous that the soldiers and police should sleep under such solid cover.
The young policeman had often wondered what it was like to run that gauntlet at the end of a hard day: to face the scales, then the sonic testers employed to determine how much usable greenery, how much woody matter, and how much dirt and gravel made up the weight of each bag and basket, then let his hand be stamped with a code indicating what food he was to be allotted when the tanker pulled in with its loaf-nets sagging on either side.
Funny . . . As the summer wore to its end more and more of the workers seemed to be losing touch with reality, trying to deceive the assessors by hiding pebbles among the leaves and roots they could legitimately gain credit for, even though they must surely by now be aware that all such trickery was certain to be found out. Yesterday indeed a man who should have known better, being father of five children including a recent baby, had