October 17, 2025 • 24 mins
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs. Each episode is a cerebral journey into the mind’s deepest questions. Explore a world of immersive, ad-free audio experiences from nature sounds to timeless stories at https://www.adfreesounds.com
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
My mind will welcome to a half hour of mind
(00:54):
wag short stories.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
From the worlds suspect into fiction.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Strong.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
This is Michael Anson on this edition of mind webs Hour.
Her first story comes from the book Nebula of Words
Stories number two, a collection edited by Brian Oldos and
Harry Harrison. This is inly a magicn by George Henry Smith.
Dandre leaned back on the warm silk of the lounge
(01:35):
and stretched, letting his eyes wander up to the high
ceiling of his palace and then drop down to the
blonde to knelt at his feet. She was putting the
finishing touches on his carefully manicured toenails, while the voluptuous
brunettes with the mobile hips and full red mouth leaned
forward to pop another grape into his mouth. He studied
the blonde, whose name was Cecily, and thought about the
(01:55):
other service he had performed for him last night. That
had been nice, very nice, But today he felt bored,
just as he was bored with the brunett whose name
he couldn't remember at the moment, and with the cuddly
redheaded twins, and with Dender. He yawned, Why were they
all so damned worshipful, and always so eager to please.
It was almost, he thought, with a rye grin, as
(02:18):
though they were products of his imagination. Or rather, and
he almost laughed aloud, of that greatest of all man's inventions,
the a Magican.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
There.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Now, don't they look nice, Cecily said, sitting back to
admire his finished pedicure with pride. Dandur looked at the
ten shining objects of her gaze and grimaced. It made
him feel pretty silly. Then Cecily made him feel even
sillier by leaning over and kissing his right foot with
passionate red lips.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Oh, dander, Dandre, I love you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Dandur resisted the temptation to use one of his newly
pampered feet to give her a healthy kick on her
round little bottom. He resisted it because even at times
like this, when his life with these women began to
seem unreal, he tried to be as kind as possible
to them, Even when their worship and adoration threatened to
bore him to death, he tried to be kind. So
(03:11):
instead of kicking Cecily, he yawned. The effect was almost
the same. Her blue eyes widened in fear, and the
brunette raised white eyes from the grape she was feeling.
Her lips started to tremble.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You you're going to leave us, aren't you?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
He yawned again and patted her head absent mindedly. Eh,
just for a little time, darling.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Oh, Dander, don't you love us?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
H of course I do.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
But Dander, please don't go.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
We'll do anything to make you happy. I know, I
know that you're both very sweet, but somehow I just
feel wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Day.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Why have a party with champagne, any kind of pleasure
you desire. We'll go get the other girls, I'll dance.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I'm sorry, Daphne, he said, finally remembering her name. I'm sorry,
but you girls are beginning to seem UnrealEd in me,
and when that happens, I must go.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
But when you leave us, it's almost as though we
were turned off.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Her word saddened him a little, because in a way
it was true. When he left, it was almost like
turning them off. But true or not, he couldn't do
anything about it, because he felt himself being drawn irresistibly
toward that other world. He took one last look around
at the incredible luxury of his glacial palace, at the
beauty of his women, and at the warm sun shining
(04:34):
through the windows, and then he was gone. The first
thing he heard when he came out of the imagican
was the howling of the wind, and the first thing
he felt was the numbing cold. The next thing that
assaulted his ears was the rasping screech of his wife's voice.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Say, highly came out of it, did yet, Well, it's
about tying it done for not a little runt.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So he was really back on the strand, back on
the coldest hell of a colonial world in any universe.
He had often thought that he would never return, But
here he was, back on the strand, and back with
his wife, Nona.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
You been gone long enough.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
She was a big, raw boned woman with stringy black hair,
broad flat face, with thin lips and uneven yellowish teeth. God,
but she's ugly, he thought as he stared at her.
Beside her, Cecily and the others were goddesses.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
It's a good thing you got back, because the ice
flows as acting up, and we need frozen ice moss
for the fire, and you had just better go out there.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Dander just stood there and listened as she went on
and on with a long list of chores that needed doing. Why,
he wondered, why didn't she get one of her boyfriends
from down at the mines to do these things? He
knew without being told that her lovers had been around
while he was gone. Nona was as faithless as she
was ugly. And since there were twenty men to every
(06:01):
woman on this planet, Chee had plenty of opportunity, and
that count was shed. Need a new roof?
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Did you hear me?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I said, there's things to be done?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yes, yes, I heard you.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Oh I don't stand there like an idiot, said, Ow,
eat your breakfast, then.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Get out into book.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Breakfast was a thick, greasy piece of rancid pork and
a bowl of lukewarm grits. Dander choked on it but
finally forced it down. Then he put on his thermal
suit and furs and started for the door. Here stupid,
said Nona, picking up a face mask from a pile
of litter on the table and flinging it at him.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
You want to freeze your nose off.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
He slapped the mask on quickly so she wouldn't see
the anger on his face, opened the door and plunged out.
The wind hid him in the face, hurling jagged ice
crystals against his mask. Nstrand, my god, why Nustrand, he
thought longingly the comparative warmth of the cabin. As he
stared out at the blue landscape, he thought of the
(07:01):
black box that was the Imagican. It sat in the
one clear corner of the cabin and was the only
way back to But no, he couldn't go back yet.
There were too many things to be done here. So
with an axe over his shoulder, he started across the
frozen waist to the ancient peat bog where they cut
their fuel. All morning long, with the wind raging at
(07:24):
him in the bitter cold, making every breath an aching
torment in his chest, he cut and stacked the frozen peat. Then,
when the pale yellow sund peaked through the clouds of
ice crystals for a moment and he saw it was
almost directly overhead, he tied up a large bundle of
the bricklike slabs and hoisted it on to his shoulder
for the trip back to the miserable huts of the Strande.
(07:46):
Nona slapped a bowl of thin soup and a piece
of stale bread down in front of him, called it lunch.
He ate in silence, and then went out behind the
cabin to spend the afternoon digging the new cesspool. This
made the work of the morning scene like a rest cure.
The ground had been frozen since Nastrand first started to
roll around its inadequate sun. By evening, his back and
(08:09):
legs and thighs ached tormentingly with only a foot of
ground excavated. He had to give up when night fell,
and staggered back toward the cabin with only one thought
in mind, sleep. The howl that wrenched him from his
troubled slumbers seemed to come from the deepest pits of hell.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
What what's that ice wall?
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Ye fool, they're after the cattle shed. I'll get out
there is stop 'em.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Danvers straggled to his feet and fumbled for his clothes
as another howl rent the night. He reached for his
laser rifle, while Nona yelled again, huh yuh.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
All things got.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Ripped long off a sheet like it was kindling.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
He was out the door then, with flashlight in one
hand and rifle in the other, he saw them at once.
There were two of the six legged terrors. One of
them was raised up on its four back legs, its
massive jaws ripping at the timber of the shed van.
There could hear the terrified bellow of the cattle inside.
He plowed through the snow toward the creature. It hurt
(09:13):
him and turned fiery red eyes in his direction. It
kept on slashing at the logs for a second, and
then whirled and came at him in great leaping bonds.
Caught by surprise, he had no time to drop the
flashlight and lift the laser rifle to fringe position. He
had a fire from the hip, and the beam caught
the monster in the shoulder. It wasn't good enough. Beside
(09:34):
stepped as the huge body hurtled past him, and then
blasted its head off. Then he almost dyed himself as
the decapitated thing went slithering through the snow, spurting blood everywhere.
He almost died because for a split second he had
forgotten its mates.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
He remembered only when the creature struck.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Him from behind and sent him sprawling on the frozen ground.
The monstrous beast was on top of him, and he
screamed as a claw flush away from his thigh and
the powerful jaws moved toward his throat. The flashlight had
been flung from his hand, but the real rifle was
still resting and slaying attached to his shoulder. He found
the trigger and fired its full power. The laser beam
(10:14):
tore off a leg, an haunch of the ice wolf,
and it fell away away from him, and he blasted
it again. Then blackness closed in over him. When he
came to, he was lying on the table in the cabin.
Nona and the strange man were bending over him.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Well, you sure got yourself and a pretty mit sit time.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That leg is going to have come off a Are
you a doctor? Only one this side of our fishing car?
Is it?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Pain?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Doctor? Can't you give me something for the pain? He
gave you the lashed morphine I had back on Earth,
we might have shaved that leg, But here white hot
flames seemed to envelope the slashed leg. Dander winced and
then saw the half smile on Nona's lips.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
As she said, with no more morphine or anything else
gotten off, that leg's gonna hurt like hell.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Hey it, Doc, got some whiskey in my car, Go
get it. He went, hobbling off and Nona leaned over
then there and looked into his eyes. It's really gonna hurt, sweetie.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
It's gonna hurt like it hurt me all those times
when you went off and left me. Yeah, and you
went off in your black box.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
No, no, Nona, no, it didn't hurt you.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
You're not. He almost said she wasn't capable of being hurt,
but he stopped because he didn't know for sure. If
that were true.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
With only one leg, you're not gonna be able to
get you that damn thing by yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
You're gonna have to stay here and be nice to me.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
He started to plead with her, but then the doctor
was black with a court of whiskey and his black bag.
Here here, drink this flash. He drank deeply and quickly,
but it didn't help much. As the doctor cut and sawed,
Dander was sure his screams would burst his skull. At times,
he wondered why his curses didn't snap the straps that
(12:24):
held him down, or drive off the two tormentors bending
over him. Well, I guess that's it there. We're going
to have to caterize this stumper. He'll bleed the desk.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I ain't got nothing but fire to do it with
either it.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Come help me heat up the poker woman. Dandre came
fully awake as he caught the over the shoulder look
no one gave him. He saw her eyes dark toward
the magic con.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It was almost as though she had said aloud, you
belong to.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Me, now, only to me that there won't be no
more about going off.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
But she couldn't. How could she? Through the haze of morphine,
alcohol and pain. Vander tried to ask himself why should
she treat him this way? He couldn't think of any answer,
and as they hurried off to prepare the cauterizing iron
for the bloody stump of his leg, the black coffin
like shape of the Amagican filled his eyes and his mind.
(13:21):
If the pain hadn't already been more than reason could bear,
he wouldn't have had the courage to roll off the
table and again crawling toward the Black Box, leaving the
trail of blood behind him. The black Box, somehow he
knew it represented a surcease from pain, a promise of
ultimate safety. He reached it without there being aware of
(13:43):
his actions, and by making a supreme effort, he pulled
himself up high enough to press his palm against the
censor that identified him instantly and was the only thing
in this or any other universe that could open it.
He collapsed, more dead than alive, into the imagican, and
it closed silently over him. Then there was a bright,
(14:06):
warm world around him, and bright young faces above him.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh, danned, darling, darling, sweetheart, you've come back. We're so
happy to see you. We're so happy to you, and
and I'm the happiest of all.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Dan There assured them, gazing down at his leg, at
his perfectly whole, intact leg, which felt no pain whatever.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Thank god, Oh, thank god.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I'm back.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
The magicon had worked. It had worked once again. It
had taken him to the world of imagination and back
again to reality, to wonderful, wonderful reality. Danver sat up
and looked around at his own, warm and marvelous world.
It was the world of Earth in twenty two, three hundred,
(14:59):
the world hundred years after the plague, the plague which
had attacked the male genes and reduced the male population
to a few thousand, and made each man the center
of an eager and worshipful harem of women. Many of
the surviving men had not been able to stand the strain.
Too many years of adoration, too many years of having
(15:20):
everything and every woman they wanted, had proved too much
for them. Then there had come the a Magikan, the
invention that made any world a man desired zeem absolutely real.
Some men had used it to create even more exotic
and wonderful worlds than the one they lived in, but
that had been only more of a good thing, and
(15:41):
had made them more dissatisfied than ever. Dander had been
wise with his Amagican, he had created an entirely different
kind of world, a world of cold and terror called Mastrande.
Dander known a great truth. What good was paradise without
(16:04):
something to compare it to, without a taste of hell
from time to time? How could a man appreciate heaven?
(16:37):
That was Indian magic? On a story by George Henry Smith.
It appears in the collection edited by Brian Alvis and
Harry Harrison called Nebula Award Stories. Two I am Michael Hanson.
Reading with me were Benita Cornut, Louisetrasbau, and Jay Fitts.
(17:34):
Now This half hour of Mind WBS continues with Roger's
Alasani's story correada. It's from this book The Doors of
his Face, The Lamps of his Mouth, and other stories.
He awoke to an ultras sonic wailing. It was a
thing that tortured his ear drums. While remaining just beyond
(17:56):
the threshold of the audible, he scrambled to his feet
in the darkness. He bumped against the wall several times dully.
He realized that his arms were sore, as though many
needles had entered there. The sound maddened him escape. He
had to get away. A tiny patch of light occurred
(18:18):
to his left. He turned and raced toward it, and
it grew into a doorway. He dashed through and stood
blinking in the glare that assailed his eyes. He was naked,
he was sweating. His mind was full of fog in
the rag ends of dreams. He heard a roar as
(18:38):
of a crowd, and he blinked against the brightness. Towering,
A dark figure stood before him in the distance. Overcome
by rage, he raced toward it, not quite certain why.
His bare feet trod hot sand, but he ignored the
pain as he ran to attack. Some portion of his
(19:01):
mind framed the question why, but he ignored it. Then
he stopped. A kneeled woman stood before him, beckoning and inviting,
and there came a sudden surge of fire within his loins.
He turned slightly to his left and headed toward her.
(19:21):
She danced away. He increased his speed, but as he
was about to embrace her, there came a surge of
fire in his right shoulder, and she was gone. He
looked at his shoulder and an aluminum rod protruded from it,
and the blood ran down along his arm. There arose
(19:41):
another roar, and she appeared again. He pursued her once more,
and his left shoulder burned with sudden fires. She was gone,
and he stood, shaking and sweating, blinking against the glare.
It's a trick, He's decid. Don't play the game. She
(20:04):
appeared again, and he stood stock still, ignoring her. He
was assailed by fires, but he refused to move, striving
to clear his head. The dark figure appeared once more,
about seven feet tall and possessing two pairs of arms.
It held something in one of its hands. If only
(20:26):
the lighting weren't so crazy, perhaps he but he hated
that dark figure, and he charged it pain lashed his side.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, crazy, It's all crazy,
he told himself, recalling his identity.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
This is a bull ring and I'm a man, and
that dark thing isn't something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
He dropped to his hands and knees, Buying time, he
scooped up a double fistful of sand. While he was down,
there came proddings, electric and painful. He ignored them for
as lung as he could. Then stood A dark figure
waved something at him, and he felt himself hating it.
(21:17):
He ran toward it and stopped before it. He knew
it was again now. His name was Michael Cassidy. He
was an attorney, New York of Johnson, Weens, Drothy and Cassidy.
A man had stopped him asking for a light on
a street corner late at night that he remembered. He
(21:40):
threw the sand at the creature's head. It swayed momentarily,
and its arms were raised toward what might have been
its face. Gritting his teeth, he tore the aluminum rod
from his shoulder and drove its sharpened end into the
creature's middle. Something touched the back of his neck, and
there was darkness. And he lay still for a long time.
(22:05):
When he could move again, he saw the dark figure
and he tried to tackle it. He missed, and it
was pain across his back and something wet. When he
stood once again.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
He bellowed, you can't do this to me.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
I'm a man, not a bull.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
There came a sound of applause. He raced toward the
dark thing six times, trying to grapple with it and
hold it. Heard it each time, heard himself. Then he
stood panting and gasping, and his shoulders ached and his
(22:48):
back ached, and his mind cleared a moment, and he said,
you were you were, God, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And this is the way you play the game.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
The creature did not answer him, and he lunged. He
stopped short and dropped to one knee and dove against
its legs. He felt a terrible, fiery pain within his
side as he brought the dark one to earth. He
struck at it twice with his fists. Then the pain
(23:24):
entered his breast, and he felt himself grow numb.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Or or are you.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
No?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
You're not?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Where where am i? His last memory was of something
cutting away at his ears. You've heard correta by Rogers
(24:17):
of Asnie. It's a story from his book The Doors
of his Face, The Lamps of his Mouth and other stories.
This is Michael Anson technical operation for this broadcast by
Marshall Phillips. Mind webs is a production of WHA Radio
in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin Extension
My mind will welcome to a half hour of mind
(00:54):
wag short stories.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
From the worlds suspect into fiction.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Strong.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
This is Michael Anson on this edition of mind webs Hour.
Her first story comes from the book Nebula of Words
Stories number two, a collection edited by Brian Oldos and
Harry Harrison. This is inly a magicn by George Henry Smith.
Dandre leaned back on the warm silk of the lounge
(01:35):
and stretched, letting his eyes wander up to the high
ceiling of his palace and then drop down to the
blonde to knelt at his feet. She was putting the
finishing touches on his carefully manicured toenails, while the voluptuous
brunettes with the mobile hips and full red mouth leaned
forward to pop another grape into his mouth. He studied
the blonde, whose name was Cecily, and thought about the
(01:55):
other service he had performed for him last night. That
had been nice, very nice, But today he felt bored,
just as he was bored with the brunett whose name
he couldn't remember at the moment, and with the cuddly
redheaded twins, and with Dender. He yawned, Why were they
all so damned worshipful, and always so eager to please.
It was almost, he thought, with a rye grin, as
(02:18):
though they were products of his imagination. Or rather, and
he almost laughed aloud, of that greatest of all man's inventions,
the a Magican.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
There.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Now, don't they look nice, Cecily said, sitting back to
admire his finished pedicure with pride. Dandur looked at the
ten shining objects of her gaze and grimaced. It made
him feel pretty silly. Then Cecily made him feel even
sillier by leaning over and kissing his right foot with
passionate red lips.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Oh, dander, Dandre, I love you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Dandur resisted the temptation to use one of his newly
pampered feet to give her a healthy kick on her
round little bottom. He resisted it because even at times
like this, when his life with these women began to
seem unreal, he tried to be as kind as possible
to them, Even when their worship and adoration threatened to
bore him to death, he tried to be kind. So
(03:11):
instead of kicking Cecily, he yawned. The effect was almost
the same. Her blue eyes widened in fear, and the
brunette raised white eyes from the grape she was feeling.
Her lips started to tremble.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You you're going to leave us, aren't you?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
He yawned again and patted her head absent mindedly. Eh,
just for a little time, darling.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Oh, Dander, don't you love us?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
H of course I do.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
But Dander, please don't go.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
We'll do anything to make you happy. I know, I
know that you're both very sweet, but somehow I just
feel wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Day.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Why have a party with champagne, any kind of pleasure
you desire. We'll go get the other girls, I'll dance.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I'm sorry, Daphne, he said, finally remembering her name. I'm sorry,
but you girls are beginning to seem UnrealEd in me,
and when that happens, I must go.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
But when you leave us, it's almost as though we
were turned off.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Her word saddened him a little, because in a way
it was true. When he left, it was almost like
turning them off. But true or not, he couldn't do
anything about it, because he felt himself being drawn irresistibly
toward that other world. He took one last look around
at the incredible luxury of his glacial palace, at the
beauty of his women, and at the warm sun shining
(04:34):
through the windows, and then he was gone. The first
thing he heard when he came out of the imagican
was the howling of the wind, and the first thing
he felt was the numbing cold. The next thing that
assaulted his ears was the rasping screech of his wife's voice.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Say, highly came out of it, did yet, Well, it's
about tying it done for not a little runt.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So he was really back on the strand, back on
the coldest hell of a colonial world in any universe.
He had often thought that he would never return, But
here he was, back on the strand, and back with
his wife, Nona.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
You been gone long enough.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
She was a big, raw boned woman with stringy black hair,
broad flat face, with thin lips and uneven yellowish teeth. God,
but she's ugly, he thought as he stared at her.
Beside her, Cecily and the others were goddesses.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
It's a good thing you got back, because the ice
flows as acting up, and we need frozen ice moss
for the fire, and you had just better go out there.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Dander just stood there and listened as she went on
and on with a long list of chores that needed doing. Why,
he wondered, why didn't she get one of her boyfriends
from down at the mines to do these things? He
knew without being told that her lovers had been around
while he was gone. Nona was as faithless as she
was ugly. And since there were twenty men to every
(06:01):
woman on this planet, Chee had plenty of opportunity, and
that count was shed. Need a new roof?
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Did you hear me?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I said, there's things to be done?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yes, yes, I heard you.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Oh I don't stand there like an idiot, said, Ow,
eat your breakfast, then.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Get out into book.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Breakfast was a thick, greasy piece of rancid pork and
a bowl of lukewarm grits. Dander choked on it but
finally forced it down. Then he put on his thermal
suit and furs and started for the door. Here stupid,
said Nona, picking up a face mask from a pile
of litter on the table and flinging it at him.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
You want to freeze your nose off.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
He slapped the mask on quickly so she wouldn't see
the anger on his face, opened the door and plunged out.
The wind hid him in the face, hurling jagged ice
crystals against his mask. Nstrand, my god, why Nustrand, he
thought longingly the comparative warmth of the cabin. As he
stared out at the blue landscape, he thought of the
(07:01):
black box that was the Imagican. It sat in the
one clear corner of the cabin and was the only
way back to But no, he couldn't go back yet.
There were too many things to be done here. So
with an axe over his shoulder, he started across the
frozen waist to the ancient peat bog where they cut
their fuel. All morning long, with the wind raging at
(07:24):
him in the bitter cold, making every breath an aching
torment in his chest, he cut and stacked the frozen peat. Then,
when the pale yellow sund peaked through the clouds of
ice crystals for a moment and he saw it was
almost directly overhead, he tied up a large bundle of
the bricklike slabs and hoisted it on to his shoulder
for the trip back to the miserable huts of the Strande.
(07:46):
Nona slapped a bowl of thin soup and a piece
of stale bread down in front of him, called it lunch.
He ate in silence, and then went out behind the
cabin to spend the afternoon digging the new cesspool. This
made the work of the morning scene like a rest cure.
The ground had been frozen since Nastrand first started to
roll around its inadequate sun. By evening, his back and
(08:09):
legs and thighs ached tormentingly with only a foot of
ground excavated. He had to give up when night fell,
and staggered back toward the cabin with only one thought
in mind, sleep. The howl that wrenched him from his
troubled slumbers seemed to come from the deepest pits of hell.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
What what's that ice wall?
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Ye fool, they're after the cattle shed. I'll get out
there is stop 'em.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Danvers straggled to his feet and fumbled for his clothes
as another howl rent the night. He reached for his
laser rifle, while Nona yelled again, huh yuh.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
All things got.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Ripped long off a sheet like it was kindling.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
He was out the door then, with flashlight in one
hand and rifle in the other, he saw them at once.
There were two of the six legged terrors. One of
them was raised up on its four back legs, its
massive jaws ripping at the timber of the shed van.
There could hear the terrified bellow of the cattle inside.
He plowed through the snow toward the creature. It hurt
(09:13):
him and turned fiery red eyes in his direction. It
kept on slashing at the logs for a second, and
then whirled and came at him in great leaping bonds.
Caught by surprise, he had no time to drop the
flashlight and lift the laser rifle to fringe position. He
had a fire from the hip, and the beam caught
the monster in the shoulder. It wasn't good enough. Beside
(09:34):
stepped as the huge body hurtled past him, and then
blasted its head off. Then he almost dyed himself as
the decapitated thing went slithering through the snow, spurting blood everywhere.
He almost died because for a split second he had
forgotten its mates.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
He remembered only when the creature struck.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Him from behind and sent him sprawling on the frozen ground.
The monstrous beast was on top of him, and he
screamed as a claw flush away from his thigh and
the powerful jaws moved toward his throat. The flashlight had
been flung from his hand, but the real rifle was
still resting and slaying attached to his shoulder. He found
the trigger and fired its full power. The laser beam
(10:14):
tore off a leg, an haunch of the ice wolf,
and it fell away away from him, and he blasted
it again. Then blackness closed in over him. When he
came to, he was lying on the table in the cabin.
Nona and the strange man were bending over him.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Well, you sure got yourself and a pretty mit sit time.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That leg is going to have come off a Are
you a doctor? Only one this side of our fishing car?
Is it?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Pain?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Doctor? Can't you give me something for the pain? He
gave you the lashed morphine I had back on Earth,
we might have shaved that leg, But here white hot
flames seemed to envelope the slashed leg. Dander winced and
then saw the half smile on Nona's lips.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
As she said, with no more morphine or anything else
gotten off, that leg's gonna hurt like hell.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Hey it, Doc, got some whiskey in my car, Go
get it. He went, hobbling off and Nona leaned over
then there and looked into his eyes. It's really gonna hurt, sweetie.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
It's gonna hurt like it hurt me all those times
when you went off and left me. Yeah, and you
went off in your black box.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
No, no, Nona, no, it didn't hurt you.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
You're not. He almost said she wasn't capable of being hurt,
but he stopped because he didn't know for sure. If
that were true.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
With only one leg, you're not gonna be able to
get you that damn thing by yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
You're gonna have to stay here and be nice to me.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
He started to plead with her, but then the doctor
was black with a court of whiskey and his black bag.
Here here, drink this flash. He drank deeply and quickly,
but it didn't help much. As the doctor cut and sawed,
Dander was sure his screams would burst his skull. At times,
he wondered why his curses didn't snap the straps that
(12:24):
held him down, or drive off the two tormentors bending
over him. Well, I guess that's it there. We're going
to have to caterize this stumper. He'll bleed the desk.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I ain't got nothing but fire to do it with
either it.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Come help me heat up the poker woman. Dandre came
fully awake as he caught the over the shoulder look
no one gave him. He saw her eyes dark toward
the magic con.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It was almost as though she had said aloud, you
belong to.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Me, now, only to me that there won't be no
more about going off.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
But she couldn't. How could she? Through the haze of morphine,
alcohol and pain. Vander tried to ask himself why should
she treat him this way? He couldn't think of any answer,
and as they hurried off to prepare the cauterizing iron
for the bloody stump of his leg, the black coffin
like shape of the Amagican filled his eyes and his mind.
(13:21):
If the pain hadn't already been more than reason could bear,
he wouldn't have had the courage to roll off the
table and again crawling toward the Black Box, leaving the
trail of blood behind him. The black Box, somehow he
knew it represented a surcease from pain, a promise of
ultimate safety. He reached it without there being aware of
(13:43):
his actions, and by making a supreme effort, he pulled
himself up high enough to press his palm against the
censor that identified him instantly and was the only thing
in this or any other universe that could open it.
He collapsed, more dead than alive, into the imagican, and
it closed silently over him. Then there was a bright,
(14:06):
warm world around him, and bright young faces above him.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh, danned, darling, darling, sweetheart, you've come back. We're so
happy to see you. We're so happy to you, and
and I'm the happiest of all.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Dan There assured them, gazing down at his leg, at
his perfectly whole, intact leg, which felt no pain whatever.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Thank god, Oh, thank god.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I'm back.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
The magicon had worked. It had worked once again. It
had taken him to the world of imagination and back
again to reality, to wonderful, wonderful reality. Danver sat up
and looked around at his own, warm and marvelous world.
It was the world of Earth in twenty two, three hundred,
(14:59):
the world hundred years after the plague, the plague which
had attacked the male genes and reduced the male population
to a few thousand, and made each man the center
of an eager and worshipful harem of women. Many of
the surviving men had not been able to stand the strain.
Too many years of adoration, too many years of having
(15:20):
everything and every woman they wanted, had proved too much
for them. Then there had come the a Magikan, the
invention that made any world a man desired zeem absolutely real.
Some men had used it to create even more exotic
and wonderful worlds than the one they lived in, but
that had been only more of a good thing, and
(15:41):
had made them more dissatisfied than ever. Dander had been
wise with his Amagican, he had created an entirely different
kind of world, a world of cold and terror called Mastrande.
Dander known a great truth. What good was paradise without
(16:04):
something to compare it to, without a taste of hell
from time to time? How could a man appreciate heaven?
(16:37):
That was Indian magic? On a story by George Henry Smith.
It appears in the collection edited by Brian Alvis and
Harry Harrison called Nebula Award Stories. Two I am Michael Hanson.
Reading with me were Benita Cornut, Louisetrasbau, and Jay Fitts.
(17:34):
Now This half hour of Mind WBS continues with Roger's
Alasani's story correada. It's from this book The Doors of
his Face, The Lamps of his Mouth, and other stories.
He awoke to an ultras sonic wailing. It was a
thing that tortured his ear drums. While remaining just beyond
(17:56):
the threshold of the audible, he scrambled to his feet
in the darkness. He bumped against the wall several times dully.
He realized that his arms were sore, as though many
needles had entered there. The sound maddened him escape. He
had to get away. A tiny patch of light occurred
(18:18):
to his left. He turned and raced toward it, and
it grew into a doorway. He dashed through and stood
blinking in the glare that assailed his eyes. He was naked,
he was sweating. His mind was full of fog in
the rag ends of dreams. He heard a roar as
(18:38):
of a crowd, and he blinked against the brightness. Towering,
A dark figure stood before him in the distance. Overcome
by rage, he raced toward it, not quite certain why.
His bare feet trod hot sand, but he ignored the
pain as he ran to attack. Some portion of his
(19:01):
mind framed the question why, but he ignored it. Then
he stopped. A kneeled woman stood before him, beckoning and inviting,
and there came a sudden surge of fire within his loins.
He turned slightly to his left and headed toward her.
(19:21):
She danced away. He increased his speed, but as he
was about to embrace her, there came a surge of
fire in his right shoulder, and she was gone. He
looked at his shoulder and an aluminum rod protruded from it,
and the blood ran down along his arm. There arose
(19:41):
another roar, and she appeared again. He pursued her once more,
and his left shoulder burned with sudden fires. She was gone,
and he stood, shaking and sweating, blinking against the glare.
It's a trick, He's decid. Don't play the game. She
(20:04):
appeared again, and he stood stock still, ignoring her. He
was assailed by fires, but he refused to move, striving
to clear his head. The dark figure appeared once more,
about seven feet tall and possessing two pairs of arms.
It held something in one of its hands. If only
(20:26):
the lighting weren't so crazy, perhaps he but he hated
that dark figure, and he charged it pain lashed his side.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, crazy, It's all crazy,
he told himself, recalling his identity.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
This is a bull ring and I'm a man, and
that dark thing isn't something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
He dropped to his hands and knees, Buying time, he
scooped up a double fistful of sand. While he was down,
there came proddings, electric and painful. He ignored them for
as lung as he could. Then stood A dark figure
waved something at him, and he felt himself hating it.
(21:17):
He ran toward it and stopped before it. He knew
it was again now. His name was Michael Cassidy. He
was an attorney, New York of Johnson, Weens, Drothy and Cassidy.
A man had stopped him asking for a light on
a street corner late at night that he remembered. He
(21:40):
threw the sand at the creature's head. It swayed momentarily,
and its arms were raised toward what might have been
its face. Gritting his teeth, he tore the aluminum rod
from his shoulder and drove its sharpened end into the
creature's middle. Something touched the back of his neck, and
there was darkness. And he lay still for a long time.
(22:05):
When he could move again, he saw the dark figure
and he tried to tackle it. He missed, and it
was pain across his back and something wet. When he
stood once again.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
He bellowed, you can't do this to me.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
I'm a man, not a bull.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
There came a sound of applause. He raced toward the
dark thing six times, trying to grapple with it and
hold it. Heard it each time, heard himself. Then he
stood panting and gasping, and his shoulders ached and his
(22:48):
back ached, and his mind cleared a moment, and he said,
you were you were, God, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And this is the way you play the game.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
The creature did not answer him, and he lunged. He
stopped short and dropped to one knee and dove against
its legs. He felt a terrible, fiery pain within his
side as he brought the dark one to earth. He
struck at it twice with his fists. Then the pain
(23:24):
entered his breast, and he felt himself grow numb.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Or or are you.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
No?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
You're not?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Where where am i? His last memory was of something
cutting away at his ears. You've heard correta by Rogers
(24:17):
of Asnie. It's a story from his book The Doors
of his Face, The Lamps of his Mouth and other stories.
This is Michael Anson technical operation for this broadcast by
Marshall Phillips. Mind webs is a production of WHA Radio
in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin Extension
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