In the Barn Read online

  "My writing career has been similar to other aspects of my life. I wrote on and off for eight years before selling my first story late in 1962 for $20.

  "I have sold stories to all the major sf magazines in this country (hard to count exactly, because some have been republished as portions of a novel) - a score or so, I guess. Eleven novels at this writing, with four more on the market, and more in progress, since I earn my living by writing. They range from juvenile sf to pornographic fantasy, though my ultimate aspiration is to write straight history. Six have sold in England, and I have a few translation sales: Holland, Germany, Japan.

  "Titles of novels: Chthon (Ballantine 1967); Sos the Rope (F&SF, Pyramid, 1968, contest winner); The Ring (with Robert Margroff; Ace Special 1968); Omnivore (Ballantine 1968, SF Book Club 1969); Macroscope (Avon 1969); The E.S.P. Worm (w/Margroff; Paperback Library 1970; Orn (serialized in Amazing magazine, 1970; Avon 1971? SF Book Club 1971?); Hasan (serialized in Fantastic magazine, 1969-70; bought by a book publisher but written off without publication in 1971); Var the Stick (Bantam 1971?); Prostho Plus (the dental series novelized; Berkley 1972?); Neq the Sword (Bantam 1972?). Question marks indicate my guess when they will be published. One novel, Chthon, was in the running for both Nebula and Hugo, but made neither; Macroscope was on the Hugo ballot but lost, and one of the dental stories, "Getting Through University," was also on the Hugo ballot."

  IN THE BARN

  Piers Anthony

  The barn was tremendous. It was reminiscent, Hitch thought, of the red giants of classical New England (not to be confused with the blue dwarfs of contemporary farming), but subtly different. The adjacent fences were there as usual, together with the granary and corncrib and round silo and even a standard milkhouse at one end. To one side was a shed with a large tractor and cultivating machinery, and to the other were conventional mounds of hay. But the curves and planes of the main structure - a genuine farmer could probably have called out fifty major and minor aspects of distinction from anything known on Earth-Prime.

  Hitch, however, was not a connoisseur of barns, EP or otherwise; he was merely a capable masculine interworld investigator briefed in farming techniques. He could milk a cow, fork manure, operate a disc-harrow or supervise the processing of corn silage-but the nuances of bucolic architecture were beyond him.

  This, mundane as it might appear, was it: the site of his dangerous interearth mission. Counter-Earth #772, located by another fluke of the probability aperture, and for him a routine investigation into a nonroutine situation. Almost a thousand Earth-alternates had been discovered in the brief decade the aperture had operated reliably, most quite dose to Earth-Prime in type. Several even had the same current U.S. President, making for rather intriguing dialogues between heads-of-state. If, as some theorists would have it, this was a case of parallel evolution of worlds, the parallels were exceedingly close; if a case of divergence from Earth-Prime (or if EP represented a split from one of the other worlds - heretical thought!), the break or series of breaks had occurred quite recently.

  But only Earth-Prime had developed the aperture; only EP could send its natives into alternate frameworks and bring them back whole, live and sane. Thus it claimed the title of stem-world, the originator, and none of the others had been able to refute it. None - yet. Hitch tried not to think too much about the time when a more advanced Earth would be encountered - one that could talk back. Or fight back.

  On the surface, #772 was similar to the other worlds he had visited during past missions, except for one thing. It was retarded. It appeared to have suffered from some planetary cataclysm that had set it back technologically thirty years or so. A giant meteor-strike, a recent ice-age - Hitch was not much on historical or geological analysis, but knew that something had severely reduced its animal life, and so set everything back while the people readjusted.

  There were no bears on #772, no camels, no horses, sheep or dogs. No cats or pigs. Few rodents. Man, in fact, was about the only mammal that remained, and it would be centuries before he had any overpopulation problem here. Perhaps a germ from outer space had wiped the mammals out, or a bad freeze; Hitch didn't know and hardly cared. His concern was with immediacies. His job was to find out how it was that livestock was such an important enterprise, dominating the economics of this world. Barns were everywhere, and milk was a staple industry - yet there were no cows or goats or similar domesticants.

  That was why he now stood before this barn. Within it must lie the secret to #772's sinister success.

  So - a little innocuous snooping, before the official welcome to EP's commonwealth of alternates. Earth-Prime did not want to back into an alliance with a repressive dictatorship or human-sacrifice society or whatever other bizarrity might be manifested. Every alternate was different, in some obvious or devious manner, and some were - well, no matter what Io said, that was not his worry. She liked to lecture him on the theoretical elements of alternistic intercourse, while cleverly avoiding the more practical man-woman intercourse he craved. In the months he had known her he had developed a considerable frustration.

  Now he had to make like a farmhand, in the name of Earth-Prime security and diplomacy. A fine sex-sublimation that promised to be! He could contemplate manure and dream of Iolanthe's face.

  He kicked a clod of dirt and advanced on his mission. Too bad the initial surveyor had not taken the trouble to peek into a barn. But virgin-world investigators were notoriously gun-shy if not outright cowards. They popped in and out again in seconds, repeating in scattered locations, then turned their automatic cameras and sensors over to the lab for processing in detail while they resumed well-paid vacations. The dirty work was left to the second-round investigators like Hitch.

  Behind the barn were long corrals extending down to a meandering river. That would be where the livestock foraged during the day. But the only photograph of such an area had evidently been taken of a cleanup session, because human beings had been in the pastures instead of animals. Typically blundering surveyor!

  No, he had to be fair, even to a first-rounder. The work was risky, because there was no way to tell in advance what menaces lurked upon an unprobed alternate. The man might land in a cloud of mustard-gas or worse, or in the jaws of a carnosaur, and pop back into EP a blistered or bloody hulk. He had to keep himself alive long enough for his equipment to function properly, and there was no time to poke into such things as barns. Robotic equipment couldn't be used because of the peril of having it fall into inimical hands. The first investigator of #772 probably had not even been aware of the shortage of animals, nor would he have considered it significant. Only the tedious lab analysis had showed up the incongruity of this particular world.

  Still, that picture was unusual. Maybe it had been a barnyard party, because in the foreground had been a splendidly naked woman. The farmers of #772 evidently knew how to let off steam, once the hay was in!

  Once he got home, he was going to let off steam - and this time sweet Io would not divert the subject until well after the ellipsis.

  He was very near the barn now, but in no hurry. His mission could terminate suddenly therein, and natural caution restrained him.

  Transfer to #772 had been no problem. A mere opening of the interworld veil, a boost through, and Hitch was in the same geographic area of another frame of reality. When he finished here, a coded touch on the stud embedded in his skull would summon the recovery aperture in seconds, and he would be hooked back through. He was in no danger so long as he kept alert enough to anticipate trouble by those few seconds. All he had to do was make his investigation and get the facts without arousing suspicion or getting into trouble with the locals. He was allowed no weapon other than a nondescript knife strapped to his ankle, per the usual policy. He agreed; imagine the trouble a lost stunner could cause . . .

  So far it had been deceptively simple. He had been landed in a wooded area near a fair-sized town, so that his entry had not flabbergasted any happenstance observer. That was anothe
r fringe benefit of the initial survey: the identification of suitable places for more leisurely entry. It wouldn't do to find himself superimposed upon a tree!

  He had walked into that town and filched a newspaper. The language of #772 matched that of EP, at least in America, and he read the classified section without difficulty. Only the occasional slang terms put him off. Under HELP WANTED were a number of ads for livestock attendants. That was what he was here for.

  No bovines or caprines or equines or porcines - what did they use?

  The gentleman farmer to whom he applied at break of day hadn't even checked his faked credentials. Hitch had counted on that; dawn was rush-hour for a farm, and an under-staffed outfit could hardly be choosy then. "Excellent! We need an experienced man. We have some fine animals here, and we don't like to skimp on supervision. We try to take good care of our stock."

  Animals, stock. Did they milk chickens or turtles here? "Well," Hitch had said with the proper diffidence, "it has been a little while since I worked a farm. I've been traveling abroad." That was to forestall challenge of his un-#772 accent. "Probably take me a day or so to recover the feel of it, to fall back into the old routine, you know. But I'll do my best." For the hour or two he was here, anyway.

  "I understand. I'll give you a schedule for my smallest unit. Fifty head, and not a surly one among them. Except perhaps for Iota - but she's in heat. They generally do get frisky about that time. No cause for alarm." He brought out a pad and began scribbling.

  "You know the names of all your animals?" Hitch hardly cared about that inconsequential, but preferred to keep the farmer talking.

  The man obliged, smiling with pride as his pencil moved. "All of them. None of that absentee ownership here - I run my farm myself. And I assure you every cow I own is champion-sired."

  Cow? Hitch suspected that the labman who had made the critical report on #772 had been imbibing the developer fluid. No bovines, indeed! For a damn clerical error, he had been sent out -

  "And if you have any trouble, just call on me," the farmer said, handing him the written schedule and a small book. "I'd show you the layout myself, but I'm behind on my paperwork."

  "Trouble?"

  "If an animal gets injured - sometimes they bang against the stalls or slip. Or if any equipment mallunctions -"

  "Oh, of course." Yes, he could see the man was in a hurry. Perfect timing. It had been too easy. Now Hitch's experienced nose smelled more than manure: trouble. It was the quiet missions that were most apt to boomerang.

  He glanced at the schedule-paper before he entered the indicated cowshed. The handwriting was surprisingly elegant: 1. FEEDING 2. MILKING 3. PASTURE 4. CLEANUP . . . and several tighter lines below. It all seemed perfectly routine. The booklet was a detailed manual of instructions for reference when the need arose. All quite in order. There were cows in that barn, despite what any half-crocked report had said, and he would verify it shortly. Very shortly.

  Why, then, did he have such a premonition of disaster?

  Hitch shrugged and entered. There was a stifling aroma of backhouse at first, but of course this was typical. A cow barn was the barniest kind of barn. His nose began to adapt almost immediately, though the odor was unlike that of the unit he had been briefed in. He ceased - almost - to notice it. He paused just inside the door to let his other senses adapt to the gloom and rustle of the balmy interior. He faced a kind of hallway leading deep into the barn, lined on either side by stalls. Above the long feeding troughs twin rows of heads projected, emerging from the padded slats of the individual compartments. They turned to face him expectantly as he approached, making gentle, almost human murmurs of anticipation. This morning the herd was hungry, naturally; it was already late.

  At the far end was the entrance to the "milkshed" - an area sealed off from the stable by a pair of tight doors. Short halls opened left and right from where he stood, putting him at the head of a T configuration. The left offshoot contained bags of feed; the other -

  Hitch blinked, trying to banish the remaining fogginess. For a moment, peering down that right-hand passage, he could have sworn he had seen a beautiful, black-haired woman staring at him from a stall - naked. A woman very like Iolanthe - except that he had never so much as glimpsed Io in the nude.

  Ridiculous; his more determined glance showed nothing there. His sub conscious was playing tricks on him, perking up a dull assignment.

  He faced forward with self-conscious determination. The episode, fleeting and insubstantial as it had been, had shaken him up, and now it was almost as though he had stagefright before the audience of animals.

  As his eyes adjusted completely, Hitch felt a paralysis of shock coming over him. These were not bovine or caprine snouts greeting him; these were human heads. The fair features and lank tresses of healthy young women. Each stood in her stall, naked, hands grasping the slats since there was room only for the head to poke through. Blondes, brunettes, redheads; tall, petite, voluptuous - all types were represented. This group, clothed, could have mixed enhancingly into any festive Earth-Prime crowd.

  Except for two things. First, their bosoms. The breasts were enormous and pendulous, in some cases hanging down to waist-level, and quite ample in proportion. Hitch was sure no conventional brassiere could confine these melons. They were long beyond cosmetic control. It would require a plastic surgeon with a sadistic nature to make even a start on the job.

  Second, the girls' expressions. They were the blank, amiable stares of idiocy.

  Milkers . . .

  For some reason he had a sudden vision of a hive of bees, the workers buzzing in and out.

  He had seen enough. His hand lifted to the spot on his skull where his hair covered the signal-button-and hesitated as his eye dwelt on the nearest pair of mammaties. Certainly he had the solution to the riddle; certainly this alternate was not fit for commonwealth status. Quite likely his report would launch a planetary police action, for the brutal farming of human beings was intolerable. Yet -

  The udderlike extremities quivered gently with the girl's respiration, impossibly full. He was attracted and repelled, as the intellectual element within him strove to suppress the physical. To put his hand on one of those . . .

  If he left now - who would feed the hungry cows?

  His report could wait half an hour. It would take longer than that for him to return to headquarters, even after the aperture had been utilized. Time was not short, yet.

  Hitch opened the instruction book and read the paragraph on feeding. Water was no problem, he learned; it was piped into each cell to be sipped as desired. But the food had to be dumped into the trough by hand.

  He returned to the storage area and loaded a sack of enriched biscuits onto a dolly. He wheeled this into the main hall and used the clean metal scoop to ladle out two pounds to each individual. The girls reached eagerly through to grasp the morsels, picking them up wholehanded, thumbs not opposed, and chewing on the black chunks with gusto. Hitch noticed that they all had strong white teeth, but could not determine why they failed to use their thumbs and fingers as - as thumbs and fingers. Why were they deliberately clumsy? Yes, they were healthy animals . . . and nothing more.

  He had to return twice for new bags, keeping his eyes averted from the - empty - right-hand hall lest his imagination taunt him again. He suspected that he was being too generous with the feed, but in due course breakfast had been served. He stood back and watched the feast.

  The first ones had already finished, and a couple were squatting in the corners of their stalls, their bowels evidently stimulated to performance by the roughage. His presence did not seem to embarrass them during such intimate acts, any more than the presence of the farmer restrained a defecating cow. And these cows did seem to be contented. Had they all been lobotomized? He had observed no scars . . .

  Idly, he sampled a biscuit. It was tough but not fibrous, and the flavor was surprisingly rich. According to the label, virtually every vitamin and mineral necessary for anim
al health and rich milk was contained herein. Only those elements copious in pasture foliage were skimped. Rolling the mass over his tongue, he could believe it. He wondered what kind of pasture was available for such as these; surely they didn't eat grass and leaves. Were there vegetables and fruits out there among the salt licks?

  Now he had fed the herd. The cows would not suffer if he deserted them, since the shift would change before they became really hungry again. He had no reason to dawdle longer. He could activate the signal and -

  Again his hand halted short of the button. Those hobbling teats reminded him of the second item on his schedule: milking. He knew that real cows hurt if they did not get milked on time. These - udders - looked overfull already.

  Damn it, he hadn't sacrificed his humanity when he obtained his investigator's license! The report could wait.