A Likely Story

If you discovered a fantastic power like this, you'd use it benevolently, for the good of the entire human race--wouldn't you? Sure you would!

a likely story

By DAMON KNIGHT

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

That was the damnedest December I ever saw in New York. Whatever the weather is, Manhattan always gets the worst of it--frying hot in summer, snow or slush up to your ankles in winter--and all along the seaboard, it was a mean season. Coming in from Pennsylvania the day before, we'd been held up twice while the tracks were cleared. But when I stepped out of the hotel that night, the Saturday after Christmas, it was like a mild October; the air was just cool, with a fresh hint of snow in it. There was a little slush in the gutters, not much; the pavements were dry.

I was late, or I would have gone back and ditched the rubbers; I hate the foolish things to begin with, one reason I moved to the country--out there, I wear house slippers half the year, galoshes the rest; there's no in-between. I took off my gloves, opened my scarf, and breathed deep lungfuls while I walked to the corner for a cab. I began to wonder if it had been smart to move 90 miles out of town just because I didn't like rubbers.

The streets didn't seem overcrowded. I got a cab without any trouble. Nobody was hurrying; it was as if the whole population was sitting peacefully at home or in some bar, in no rush to be anywhere else.

"Listen," I said to the cabbie, "this is still New York, isn't it?"

He jerked his chin at me. "Hah?"

"Where's the crowds?" I said. "Where's the rotten weather? What happened?"

He nodded. "I know whatcha mean. Sure is funny. Crazy weather."

"Well, when did this happen?"

"Hah?"

"I said, how long has this been going on?"

"Cleared up about three o'clock. I looked out the winda, and the sun was shinin'. Jeez! You know what I think?"

"You think it's them atom bombs," I told him.

"That's right. You know what I think, I think it's them atom bombs." He pulled up opposite a canopy and folded down his flag.

In the lobby, I found an arrow-shaped sign that said, "MEDUSA CLUB."

The Medusa Club is, loosely speaking, an association for professional science fiction writers. No two of them will agree on what science fiction is--or on anything else--but they all write it, or have written it, or pretend they can write it, or something. They have three kinds of meetings, or two and a half. One is for club politics, one is for drinking, and the third is also for drinking, only more so. As a rule, they meet in people's apartments, usually Preacher Flatt's or Ray Alvarez', but every year at this time they rent a hotel ballroom and throw a whingding. I'm a member in bad standing; the last time I paid my dues was in 1950.

Rod Pfehl (the P is silent, as in Psmith) was standing in the doorway, drunk, with a wad of dollar bills in his hand. "I'm the treasurer," he said happily. "Gimme." Either he was the treasurer, or he had conned a lot of people into thinking so. I paid him and started zigzagging slowly across the floor, trading hellos, looking for liquor.

Tom Q. Jones went by in a hurry, carrying a big camera. That was unusual; Tom Q. is head components designer for a leading radio-TV manufacturer, and has sold, I guess, about two million words of science fiction, but this was the first time I had ever seen him in motion, or with anything but a highball in his hand. I spotted Punchy Carrol, nut-brown in a red dress; and Duchamp biting his pipe; and Leigh MacKean with her pale protoNordic face, as wistful and fey as the White Knight's; and there was a fan named Harry Somebody, nervously adjusting his hornrims as he peered across the room; and, this being the Christmas Party, there were a lot of the strangest faces on earth.