Table Of ContentIsaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy. Book 6: Mythical Beasties
Centaur
Centaur Fielder For The Yankees
by Edward D. Hoch
Dragon
The Ice Dragon George
Firedrake
Prince Prigio
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Gorgon
The Gorgon
Griffin
The Griffin And The Minor Canon
Kragen
The Kragen
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
Minotaur
Letters From Laura
Pegascis
The Triumph Of Pegascis
Phoenix
Caution! Inflammable!
Sphinx
The Pyramid Project
The Sphinx
Cheop's Daughter
The Pyramid Project
Ahura's Tale
The Ambassadors
Unicorn
The Silken Swift
Wendigo
Mood Wendigo
About The Editors
Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy.
Book 6: Mythical Beasties
Centaur
The horse was tamed about 2000 B.C. by the nomads of the Central Asian
steppes, and when it drew a light chariot bearing a driver and an armed warrior,
it proved a fearsome weapon. The horsemen conquered the entire civilized world
from India to Egypt, and held their rule until the dominated people learned the
use of the horse themselves.
By 800 B.C.. the Medes of western Asia had bred horses large enough to
carry men on their backs, and that combination was even more fearsome. To
farmers who encountered horsemen for the first time this combination of men
and animals must have seemed monstrous.
The early Greeks were not horsepeople, for their mountainous terrain and
narrow valleys were not conducive to either the breeding or the use of horses. In
northern Greece, however, there was the plain of Thessaly, and there horses and
horsemen made their appearance.
The fearful Greeks must have first seen them as horsehuman combinations,
and so was born the myth of the ' 'centaur,'' finally portrayed in Greek art as a
creature with the head and torso of a human being replacing the head and neck
of a horse. For the most part, the Greeks pictured the centaurs as barbarians-
crude, wild. lawless, easily made drunk, and, in that state, prone to be lascivious.
Perhaps' that is how they saw the real Thessalian horsemen.
At least one centaur, however, named Chiron, was wise, Edward D. Hoch
noble, and learned. He was the tutor of Hercules and Achilles, among others.
The centaur of the story that follows falls between these two extremes.
Centaur Fielder For The Yankees
by Edward D. Hoch
Let me tell you. there was a time not so long ago when a centaur would
have been kept in a zoo or a circus. He certainly wouldn't have been allowed to
play major league baseball. But times have changed, and we're more tolerant of
people who are different. I suppose that's why Mark Eques ended up playing
baseball for the New York Yankees.
But I'd better tell it from the beginning.
The idea of centaurs-creatures having the head, trunk and arms of a man
and the body and legs of a horse-had been around since Ovid's Metamorphoses
and Homer's lliad. It was Lucretius who declared that the creature must be
mythical because horses reach maturity before humans, and are full-grown at
three years of age. The horse would die fifty years before the man. All mis is
true enough, but when Professor Hagger of Columbia University returned from
me Greek island of Antikythira with a young living centaur early in the 22nd
century, a great many preconceptions changed.
Like most everyone else in America, I'd equated centaurs with unicorns and
other mythical beasts. Seeing one live on the evening news took some getting
used to. Hagger christened the young creature Mark Eques, and set about
educating him. It was quite a story for a month or two, during the slow news
days of summer, but by fall Professor Hagger and his discovery had faded from
view. Mark Eques was living on a farm in upstate New York, staying pretty
much out of the public eye. A few years passed before we heard about him
again, and this time it was an announcement by Professor Hagger that Mark was
about to enter Columbia University, having passed the traditional college
entrance examinations. He was even entitled to special consideration by the
university, since the government had ruled that Mark was a handicapped human
being and not any sort of monster.
Mark found college to be difficult, and by me end of his first year it
appeared he was ready to drop out. That was when Roscoe Greene, a scout for
the New York Yankees baseball team, contacted Mark, and when I had my first
meeting with the boy centaur.
I was a sportswriter on a Boston paper at the time, and I became interested
in Mark when he attempted to run in the Boston marathon, They couldn't
officially bar him from it, but they did me next best thing. They set up a special
category for centaurs. Since he was the only known centaur on earth, he had no
one to compete against but himself. There was no point in running at all, and on
Patriots' Day he didn't even bother to appear.
But baseball was a different story.
Mark Eques had been ruled a handicapped person, and under federal
regulations in those early years of the 22nd century, handicapped persons were
allowed to play professional sports, so long as their handicap did not prevent
them from performing their duties. I had to hand it to Roscoe Greene for coming
up with that one.
An old girl friend in the Yankee front office tipped me off to what was
happening, and I drove all night to reach the Dutchess County farm where Mark
was living with Professor Hagger after completing his first year at Columbia. It
was horse country, with the roads bordered on either side by neat white fences
that extended back over the rolling hills as far as the eye could see.
As I pulled into the Hagger farm shortly after nine in the morning I saw that
Roscoe Greene had arrived first. He stood at the fence speaking with Mark
Eques. When he saw me he cursed, not too softly. "What in hell are you doing
here, Danny? Go back to Boston where you belong!"
"Hello, Roscoe. Glad to see you too. Is it true the Yankees are about to sign
Mark here to a position in center field?'* Mark Eques, his hairy chest bare to the
morning sun, grinned boyishly and pawed the grass with his front hoof.
"I'm gonna play in the big leagues," he announced proudly.
"What does Hagger say about all this?" I wanted to know.
"Why don't you ask him?" Greene answered smugly.
Professor Hagger must have observed my arrival, because he came out of
the farmhouse to join us. When Greene introduced me. he said, "So the press is
onto this already!
You don't waste any time."
"Danny's a go-getter." Green confirmed. "One of these days he'll cover a
story before it happens."
"Has he ever played ball?" 1 asked the professor. "Is he any good at it?"
"His family apparently played a version of baseball,'* Hagger responded.
"He remembers it as a child."
"I'm good," Mark Eques answered for himself. "They wouldn't let me run in
the marathon but they can't stop me now."
"He has tremendous speed in the outfield," Professor Hagger confirmed.
"Virtually nothing gets by him. His baserunning is superb too. We're still
working on his hitting."
"What do you think, Roscoe?" I asked Greene.
"I think he has unlimited potential. Young, clean-cut- people will flock to
the games just to see him play."
"The other managers will never allow it," I predicted.
"We've already got the courts behind us. Let the other clubs go out and hire
their own centaur."
Mine was the first exclusive interview with Mark Eques on his signing with
the Yankees, and for a week or two it wa§ quite a story. The other major league
clubs grumbled, of course, until New York agreed to share with them the
additional revenues Mark's appearance was expected to generate.
So, after a month of hoopla and further training, the centaur took the field
for a July 4th doubleheader against the Boston Red Sox. I was there, of course,
covering Boston on the road as I usually did, but so was just about every
sportswriter in the country, along with all the TV and satellite people. It's a
wonder there was any space left in the Yankees' new domed stadium for just
plain fans.
Mark Eques galloped onto the field wearing his Yankee shirt and the crowd
went wild. He removed his hat while the National Anthem was played, and then
continued on into center field. The first inning was a disappointment for the fans
and television cameras, with not a single ball making it out of the infield. But in
the top of the second Mark showed his stuff, charging across center field to nab a
well-hit grounder and peg it to first base for the out. The crowd went wild for the
second time.
He could hit too. He ended the day's doubleheader with two doubles and a
single, which wasn't bad. The Yankees won the first game 5-3, and only dropped
the nightcap 2-1 as a result of a ninth-inning Boston homer. Even a centaur in the
outfield couldn't protect against home runs.
The following week's games showed that his biggest strengths were in
fielding and baserunning. Once he got the hang of it, Mark proved a whiz at
stolen bases. The sight of him galloping into second at a full charge was enough
to intimidate most any second baseman in the league. By the end of July, the
Yankees had climbed into a tie with Boston for first place in the American
League East.
That was when I was approached by Lippy Lewis.
Lippy was a gambler who specialized in sports betting of any kind. He'd bet
big money on Boston as an early-season favorite to take both the pennant and the
World Series, and he wasn't about to lose it. "Tell me something, Danny," he said
one afternoon in August after the Yankees had extended a midseason winning
streak to seven games. "Do you think that Eques guy could be bought off?"
"Lippy, you always did have a big mouth," I told him. "I guess that's how
you got your name. Do you want me to run what you just said in tomorrow's
edition? I could probably even get your picture in. What were you thinking of
offering him-oats?"
Lippy shrugged. "Money. Women. He must have some weakness."
"Stay away from him, Lippy, or I will print that."
"Hell, you're a Boston guy! The Sox are your meal ticket too."
"Mark Eques is my meal ticket this year. He's the greatest thing that's
happened to baseball in two decades. Stay away from him, Lippy, or you'll be in
big trouble."
But 1 knew Lippy Lewis would do as he pleased, and I wasn't surprised the
following week to see him chatting with Mark after a game, standing by the
horse trailer that Professor Hagger used to make the run to and from his farm.
The trailer was even used for games on the road. though it had to be transported
by air between distant cities. I stood off to one side, waiting until Lippy
departed, and then strolled up to Mark.
"Lippy's got a bad reputation," I said casually. "You shouldn't be seen
talking to him too much."
"That guy? He doesn't bother me. He offered me money and girls to miss a
few fly balls." Mark seemed to find the idea amusing.
"What did you say?"
"I told him I had enough money. As for girls, it's wrong to mate outside
your species. Professor Hagger taught me that."
"But there are no female centaurs, are there?"
"Oh sure," he replied offhandedly. "They're just shy, that's all. They live in
the caves and the mazes and no one ever sees them."
"I thought mazes were for Minotaurs."
Mark looked disgusted. "No one believes in them anymore."
Professor Hagger always attended the games, of course, transporting Mark
back and forth in the trailer. 1 caught up with him at the next home appearance,
with the Yankees now firmly in first place. "Has there been any more trouble
with Lippy Lewis?" I asked.
Hagger looked surprised. "We haven't had any trouble with Lippy that I
know about."
"I think he tried to bribe Mark to relax a bit. There's big money riding on
the pennant and the World Series,"
"Mark wouldn't take a bribe."
"I'm sure he wouldn't. But if you have any trouble with Lippy, let me know.
A few mentions in my column would cool him off.''
Hagger nodded. "We appreciate everything you've done for Mark already.
Some of the press still treat him like a freak. Your stories make him seem like a
human being."
"I've always considered Mark to be a human being."
Hagger smiled slightly. "Well, he's still a centaur. Nothing can change that.''
Mark Eques hit two home runs in that evening's game, and ran the bases
like a stallion. His fielding was better than ever-so good, in fact, that the
opposing manager raised the point in a post-game press conference that Mark
should be banned from organized baseball. "He's not human, after all," Bunty
Simmons grumbled.
I fought my way through the throng to the front row of questioners. "Back
in July you alt went along with it," I reminded him. "The gates would increase
and everyone would share in the wealth."
"Well. sure," he admitted. "We knew people would pay to see a centaur
playing ball. What we didn't know was-"
"-that he'd be so good," I finished for him.
Through all of this, Roscoe Greene, the scout who'd first signed Mark with
the Yankees, was riding high. I heard through the grapevine that he'd gotten a big
raise, with a bonus promised if Mark Eques came through strong in the World
Series. Greene and I had never really been friends, and I was surprised when he
phoned me in Boston the day the Yankees clinched the pennant in the American
League East.
"Have you heard the news?" he asked without preamble.
"About what?"
"Mark Eques."
The panic in his voice was catching. "He's not hurt?"
"Worse than that."
"What-?"
"It just came over the radio. An expedition on that Greek island has
discovered a female centaur!"
"Then he wasn't kidding me. He said there were females.
That's great news, Roscoe."
"It's terrible news."
"How come?"
"The expedition is financed by Lewis Enterprises, the video people. In case
you didn't know, that's Lippy Lewis's brother.'' "My God!"
"I know Lippy's been trying to bribe Mark. Now he's got his weapon. Mark
may not be tempted by regular women, but a female centaur is something else
again!"
Well, this latest development really stirred up the press.
About the only thing they like better than a bribery scandal is a sex scandal.
Although the whereabouts of the newly discovered female centaur was a
