The Dark Side by Damon Knight (ed.) Page B

drown.”
    The logic of Mike’s statement reassured Greenberg. He stepped out boldly. He experienced a peculiar sense of accomplishment when the water hastily retreated under his feet into pressure bowls, and an unseen, powerful force buoyed him upright across the lake’s surface. Though his footing was not too secure, with care he was able to walk quite swiftly.
    “Now what?” he asked, almost happily.
    Mike had kept pace with him in the boat. He shipped his oars and passed Greenberg a rock. “We’ll drop them all over the lake—make it damned noisy down there and upset the place. That’ll get him up.”
    They were more hopeful now, and their comments, “Here’s one that’ll wake him,” and “I’ll hit him right on the noodle with this one,” served to cheer them still further. And less than half the rocks had been dropped when Greenberg halted, a boulder in his hands. Something inside him wrapped itself tightly around his heart and his jaw dropped.
    Mike followed his awed, joyful gaze. To himself Mike had to admit that the gnome, propelling himself through the water with his ears, arms folded in tremendous dignity, was a funny sight.
    “Must you drop rocks and disturb us at our work?” the gnome asked.
    Greenberg gulped. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gnome,” he said nervously, “I couldn’t get you to come up by yelling.”
    The gnome looked at him. “Oh. You are the mortal who was disciplined. Why did you return?”
    “To tell you that I’m sorry, and I won’t insult you again.”
    “Have you proof of your sincerity?” the gnome asked quietly.
    Greenberg fished furiously in his pocket and brought out a handful of sugar wrapped in cellophane, which he tremblingly handed to the gnome.
    “Ah, very clever, indeed,” the little man said, unwrapping a cube and popping it eagerly into his mouth. “Long time since I’ve had some.”
    A moment later Greenberg spluttered and floundered under the surface. Even if Mike had not caught his jacket and helped him up, he could almost have enjoyed the sensation of being able to drown.

In Heinlein’s “They” we met a theme which has fueled some of the most powerful writing ever done in imaginative fiction. Here it is again, in a different and more evocative, perhaps more disturbing, form. Who are you, really—and how do you know you are?

Peter Phillips
C/O MR. MAKEPEACE
    Regard London suburbanites. Then abandon the attempt at crystalline classification. The suburbanite tag is the only thing they have in common.
    Some commute. Others tend their gardens. The brick boxes of city clerks sidle up close to the fifteen-room mansions of stockbrokers. The party wall of a semi-detached villa is a barrier between universes; in this half lives a sweetly respectable retired grocer; in the other, a still-active second-storey man with a fat and ailing wife and a nymphomaniac daughter.
    Sometimes there’s a community sense. But more often, neighbors stay strangers throughout their lives.
    For instance, no one knew 50-year-old Tristram Makepeace. Not even himself.
    British reserve can be a damnably frightening thing.
    One morning, in the long, winding, tree-lined avenue in the so-suburban suburb where he lived—
    “Hey!”
    The postman turned at the gate. Tristram Makepeace hurried down the path of his neat, bush-enclosed front garden, leaving the door of his villa open.
    “Not here,” he said, and held out an envelope.
    The postman took it, read the typewritten address.
E. Grabcheek, Esq.
c/o Tristram Makepeace,
36, Acacia Avenue.
    The postman, blank-faced, looked at the thin, tall, hollow-cheeked bachelor. “That’s you, sir, isn’t it? And it’s your address.”
    Makepeace drew his dressing gown closer against the chill morning air. His voice was high, with limited range of inflection. “But I don’t know anyone named Grabcheek. There’s certainly no one staying with me. It’s lucky I was up in time for the delivery this morning. I’m not, as a rule, you