There was a flutter. He and Meta could not resist checking—but Blue remained where she was. Red had come down to join her. "Isn't that sweet," Meta said.
In the morning Blue was dead. She lay on her back on the bottom of the cage, and her eyes were open and already shrunken. The two others seemed not to notice, but Red hopped about nervously.
"You don't know what to make of it, do you?" Humbert said. He felt unaccustomed tears sting his eyes as he picked up the fragile body.
He inspected Blue carefully, but there was no way to bring her back. He wrapped her tenderly in his handkerchief and took the body into the back yard for burial.
Red came with him. "We all have to go sometime," Humbert said as he dug a shallow grave beside a rose bush.
He laid the body in the ground and covered it over. "I know how you must feel," he said to Red on the bush. "But you did what you could to give her comfort. I'm sure you made her life brighter, right up to the end. I think she died knowing she was loved."
Red flew to the fence and looked at him. Humbert knew even before the bird took flight again that this was the end of their acquaintance.
Meta was too upset to go to work that day. She looked at the cage, suddenly too large for the two birds within, and turned away, only to look again, perversely hopeful, a moment later. Humbert turned on the radio and sat before his toothpick spaceship, the model almost complete, but could not work.
"We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin," the radio said urgently. "The alien spaceship is gone. Just a few minutes ago—"
Humbert listened, surprised. Just like that? It had left without ever making contact with Man. All that effort to come, then a departure as mysterious as the arrival.
He smiled. Perhaps they had been wise to avoid contact with Earth's officialdom, for that was representative in name only. Still, in their place he would at least have sent down a representative, perhaps incognito, in an attempt to come to know the temper of the common man of the planet. That was where the truth inevitably lay—in the attitudes of the common individual. Once that was known, little else was required for decision.
Yes—he would have gone down quietly, and not for any overnight stand. He would have observed for a reasonable length of time, and if the standards of the world differed somewhat from his own—well, there were still ways to judge, given sufficient time.
His hand halted before the model. A representative—perhaps a creature very like a native animal, neither wild nor tame. Something like a parrakeet, free to enter certain homes without being challenged or held; free to observe intimately....
Free also to love a native girl, who might not be as intelligent, but still was beautiful and affectionate. Free to love her—and lose her?
Free to run from grief—but never to escape it entirely, though a world be forgotten, and its other inhabitants never contacted at all.
GETTING THROUGH UNIVERSITY
This was the lead story in the August 1968 issue of If, and the names on the cover were Chandler, Zelazny, Pohl, Williamson, del Rey "and many more." That's right—even with the lead spot, Anthony was not at that time worthy of cover notice. The author is supposed to get a free copy or two, but If didn't bother, so my file copy I bought at the local store myself. It was obvious that I wasn't making it to fame in the story market. And sure enough, it was another idiotic retitling. My title was simply "University," and that makes sense. In no sense does Dr. Dillingham (I have two middle names; one is Anthony, used as my literary pseudonym, and the other is Dillingham) "get through." The story is about the admissions procedure. I have a rule of thumb: only those editors who have no taste in titles, change the titles of the authors. Certainly If seemed to be unable to let a decent, relevant title stand unblemished.
But this story neither begins nor ends there. It derives from personal experience in a special way. Remember when I retired from my year of writing to go back to school, to learn to be a teacher? I went to the University of South Florida, in Tampa, for two trimesters, and did qualify, and did become an English teacher—and retired again to full time writing in mid-1966. From that time on I have stayed with it, and I never want to stop. Writing is indeed my way of life, suffusing virtually every aspect of my current existence. But then, that University—I thought I'd never even get registered for my classes. I couldn't make head or tail of their requirements, and there were endless lines everywhere, and the professors there to advise confused people like me were too swamped to bother with people like me. Understand, the college I had graduated from nine years before was a very small one; I think there were ten students in my graduating class. Here there were thousands milling about, and the scale of this human maelstrom was appalling. In addition, one of the classes I needed had been closed out the day before I was permitted to apply for it; I had to get a special variance to attend. My head spinning, I was sorely tempted just to go home and give it all up. But I'm ornery, and I hung in there, and finally did get registered. What followed is too complex and fouled up to go into here; I'll just say that contemporary American education is in serious trouble, like a giant tree that is rotting at the core. And so I wrote a story about the mood of my experience—just getting registered to attend the University.
The rest of the story about this story mostly follows its publication under its junky title. Editor Fred Pohl had considered "University" marginal and paid only 1.5¢ per word for it—$200 for the 13,000 word piece. But about that time he was getting assisted by two others: Lester del Rey, who had edited one of my favorite magazines back in the 1950's and who struck me as the kind of editor I could really write for—i.e., one with common sense—and Judy-Lynn Benjamin. Lester looked at "University" and found it good. (I told you he had common sense.) So it was published despite Fred's misgivings. Then they set up an annual Galaxy Publications survey: the readers were encouraged to write in and vote for their favorite pieces of the year, with the top five pieces to receive bonuses. They did not differentiate between Galaxy and If, or between novels and stories. (I told you Fred had no sense about editing) so naturally four of the top five finishers were novels—one of which was Fred Pohl's own (I told you he could write). So he disqualified his own (he is a decent guy, apart from his klutzheadedness about editing) and moved the number six item up to the fifth spot. That item was "University," the second most popular of all the under-novel-length pieces Galaxy Publications had published that year, beating out all those three-cent-a-worders. The readers knew what they liked, even if the editor didn't. So I was vindicated at last, and received a bonus of $100 and a guarantee of 3¢ per word for my future stories there—which wasn't always honored. The story went on to contend (and lose) for that year's Hugo Award. I reported to the prominent news fanzine LOCUS that my story had been run up the Pohl-poll-pole, but for some reason that comment was never published. Professional fans, as a class, do not consider Anthony to be a clever writer. And Fred Pohl, having finally learned what the readers really liked—lost his job as editor. No, he wasn't fired; the magazines were bought by another outfit that had its own editor, and in the spoils system of Parnassus that was that. Well, he was doubtless better off as a writer anyway; he went on to win awards.