By Mind Alone
By Mind Alone
Larry Niven, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June, 1966.
part 1
From the blue water and crowded pines of Lake Arrowhead to the rectangular citrus orchards around San Bernardino is a drop of nearly a mile as the crow falls. The road down is hours longer. It falls gently, in looping curves and in sharp, neck-cracking twists, joins a four-lane highway without straightening out, swoops across empty space and winds about dynamite-blasted cliffs of naked rock, until after hours of driving the highway finally touches the valley floor and takes off straight as a bullet. Carol heaved a sigh of relief as we touched down, and I said, “Now we’ll find a place that’ll sell us cigarettes.”
We did. Carol and I were both nicotine addicts, which made the smokeless drive just that much longer. WE bought beer, too, and took it along. As we were walking back to the car, Carol said, “Art, what do you suppose Pat didn’t teleport up to the Lake?”
“I thought about that while I got the car going. After Carol opened the beers and handed me one, I asked, “Did she ever tell you how she used to go up there every summer with her grandparents?”
“She sure did. Pat must love that place.”
“The long, sweltering drive from Beverly Hills to the foot of the mountain. The air cooling and thinning as the car rises; the altitude signs showing higher and higher. Finally the deep blue of the Lake flashing through the pines.” I was more or less quoting Pat; but she’d described it accurately enough. “That’s why she didn’t teleport up. The drive is part of going to Lake Arrowhead. She didn’t want to miss a single detail.”
“Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“The doctor said so, didn’t he?”
“Him! He didn’t even know what was wrong with her.”
“Neither do we.”
That was arguable. Carol leaned her lovely blonde head against the headrest and watched the lemon groves go by.
In two hours she would be dead. Dead in a manner unique since the beginning of time. Dead by my carelessness. But I didn’t know that then.
She looked out in a silence of rushing wind and humming motor, and after a time she said, “Well, it was one strange party.”
In this Sunday series of posts I will be “re-publishing” pulp science fiction short stories that have long since gone out of print. When possible I will seek out author’s and estates for permission.
