Selected by Mr. Pohl from the volumes of STAR SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, this splendid anthology contains stories which cover a multitude of subjects—but it must have been a difficult choice to make. Fans have only to look at the roster of stories to be reminded of other tales by these authors which are also in the STAR series and which might just as easily have appeared in this "cream of the crop" collection-Arthur Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" for instance, or Fritz Leiber's classic satire on a certain very famous, very bloody minded detective.
Science fiction fans indeed, need no introduction to the stories in this collection, or to these authors.
Let it be said quite simply that these are the kind of authors whose work goes far to explain why more and more people are reading science fiction: not only for the usual rewards of gripping narrative, but because these writers bring closer fascinating new worlds and make them vivid and alive.
BOOKS BY FREDERIK POHL
Alternating
Currents The Case Against Tomorrow Tomorrow Times
Seven Slave Ship
The Man Who Ate the World
BOOKS
EDITED BY FREDERIK POHL
Star
Science Fiction Series—Nos. 1 to 6 Star Science Fiction Short Novels Star of
Stars
IN COLLABORATION WITH C. M. KORNBLUTH
The Space Merchants
G
ladiator-at-Law
Search
the Sky
A
Town is Drowning
Presidential
Year
Wolfbane
STAR OF STARS
Edited by FREDERIK POHL
All of the characters in this book are
fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
library of congress catalog
card number 60-13554
copyright, 1953, 1954, 1958, 1959, by
ballantine books, inc. copyright ©
1960 by frederik pohl all
rights reserved
printed in the united
states of america
Ballantine
Books edition published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York
Ballantine Books are distributed in the U.S.A. by Affiliated Publishers,
a division of Pocket Books, Inc., 630
Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y.
BALLANTINE
BOOKS, INC.
101
Fifth Avenue, New York 3, N. Y.
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
frederik pohl Introduction 9
gerald kersh Whatever Happened to Corporal
Cuckoo? 13
c. m. kornbluth The Advent on Channel Twelve 41
Alfred bester Disappearing Act 45
Elisabeth mann borgese Twin's Wail 65
William Morrison Country Doctor 87
Robert bloch Daybroke 110
Arthur c. clarke The Deep Range 120
henry kuttner A Cross of Centuries 130
h. l. gold The Man with English 145
gavin Hyde Sparkle's Fall 155
fritz leiber Space-Time for Springers 159
richard matheson Dance of the Dead 172
jack Williamson The Happiest Creature 189
jerome bixby It's a Good
Life 205
STAR
OF STARS
INTRODUCTION
In
1953 the first volume of Star Science Fiction Stories appeared. It was a curious, hybrid publishing format, not quite a
magazine and yet not very like the ordinary varieties of book. Its plan was
simply to find enough of the best science fiction stories that could be had and
to print them; and the one editorial rule established was that they must never
have been published before.
It
is only rules of that sort—mechanical rules, rules which admit of a simple
yes-no answer—that can rigorously be applied in the selection of science
fiction stories. Every other rule begins with a numerous class of exceptions.
Science fiction is not stories about the future. Or
about space. Or about technology. It is all of
these things, and more than them. Science fiction lies in the eye of the
beholder. In fact, said the introduction to that first volume of Star, it is a limitless field, as spacious as space itself. Publisher, critic,
and a good many readers have a tendency to think of science fiction as one of
the "categories" of publishing, in the specific sense of the term,
like detective stories and Westerns. But unless you can think of The Big Sky as a Western or Hamlet as a whodunit, you can hardly class in a tight little group so widely
variant an assortment of stories as justly fit under the common label of
science fiction.
Was that a fair estimate of the situation?
Well, let's look at the record.
Since
then there have been eight volumes of one sort or another in the Star series. The aggregate is seventy-five stories, amounting to some
half-million words. They have among them carried us to nearly all the planets
of the solar system, including our own earth (both surface and interior) and
its moon; we have circled many foreign stars and wandered in the space between
them. In time we have seen both past and future—including a past that never
really was
(see Bester's "Disappearing Act") and futures that, heaven grant,
will never be at all. (See the assorted waspish predictions of Kornbluth,
Matheson, and Bloch.) Earth itself was invaded many times, for many reasons;
half a dozen times civilization was destroyed. (And half a dozen more times it
should have been. Surely such surviving cultures as those of Kornbluth and
Matheson, for two, are really better off dead.)
But
these themes, situations, and events are no more than the pegs on which Star's fifty-six contributors hung their imaginings. Science fiction can be,
when it chooses, a literature of ideas. If Star proved anything in seven years, surely it proved that there are ideas
which can be explored in no other way.
The stories included in this volume can speak
for themselves, but perhaps we can spare a word for some which, for one reason
or another, had to be left out. The only volume in the series not represented
is Star Short Novels, and that because, though each of its three
stories —by Lester del Ray, Jessamyn West and Theodore Sturgeon—was a memorable
work, any one of them would by sheer mass have squeezed out three or four
others. It seemed a necessary rule that the very longest stories simply could
not be made to fit.
The
other ground rule observed in constructing the present volume was that, given a
choice, the story less frequently reprinted would get the nod. On that sharp
edge of decision were lost such ornaments as the Brad-burys, the Asimovs, the
Sheckleys, and a dozen others. A few stories simply would not allow themselves
to be left out for any reason at all, and so Leiber's tale is here in spite of
its having appeared in a previous collection, Clarke's despite its having
formed the basis of his full-dress novel of the same name, and so on. But the
number is quite few. Of the fourteen stories herein, only four have appeared
anywhere in this country except for their first use in Star itself.
It seems at this point more
than likely that there will be no future issues of Star. It would not be fitting to see
Introduction
11
it end without some words of thanks. I acknowledge deep gratitude, then, to the writers who gave it fine
stories, to the critics who treated all of its incarnations most kindly and,
most of all, to Ian Ballantine, least remote of publishers, who conceived the
plan of the series in the first place and, with endless patience, saw its
editor through eight ill-kept deadlines.
frederik pohl
Red Bank, New Jersey February, 1960
GERALD KERSH
Gerald Kersh writes much and very well, and Star's pleasure in having a Kersh to offer is one that has been shared by most
of the best magazines in the world. Yet no matter where he appears, in sober,
mass-circulation company or in small and select, the
man has always his own flavor. He tastes of the wry,
he exudes the not-quite-probable. This is the bouquet of the science
fictioneer; and when Kersh turns to our sort
of subject matter he shapes it with a sure
hand—as you can see for yourself in—
Whatever Happened to
Corporal Cuckoo
Several
thousand officers and privates of the U. S. Army who fought in Europe in World
War II can bear witness to certain basic facts in this otherwise incredible
story. Let me refresh my witnesses' memories: The Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary sailed from Greenock, at the mouth of the
river Clyde, on July 6th, 1945, bound for New York, packed tight with
passengers. No one who made that voyage can have forgotten it: there were
fourteen thousand men aboard; a few ladies; and one dog. The dog was a gentle,
intelligent German shepherd, saved from slow and painful death by a young
American officer in Holland. I was told that this brave animal, exhausted, and
weak with hunger, had tried to jump over a high barbed-wire fence, and had got
caught in the barbs on the top strand, where it hung for days, unable to go
forward or backward. The young officer
helped it
down, and so the dog fell in love with the man, and the man fell in love with
the dog. Pets are not allowed on troopships. Still, the young officer managed
to get his dog on board. Rumor has it that his entire company swore that they
would not return to the United States without the dog, so that the authorities
were persuaded to stretch a point, just for once; this is what Kipling meant
when he referred to The Power Of The Dog. Everyone who sailed on the Queen Mary from Greenock on July 6th, 1954, remembers
that dog. It came aboard in a deplorable state, arching its bedraggled back to
ease its poor injured stomach, and when you stroked it, you felt its skeleton
under the sickly, staring coat. After about three days of affectionate
care—half a hundred strong hungry men begged or stole bits of meat for its
sake—the dog began to recover. By July 11th, when the Queen Mary docked in New York, the dog was taking a
dog's interest in a soft rubber ball with which several officers were playing
on the sun deck.
I
bring all this back into memory to prove that I was there, as a war
correspondent, on my way to the Pacific. Since I was wearing battledress and a
beard, I also must have been conspicuous, that voyage. And the secret school of
illicit crapshooters must remember me with nostalgic affection: I arrived in
New York with exactly fifteen cents, and had to borrow five dollars from an
amiable Congre-gationalist minister named John Smith, who also will testify to the
fact that I was on board. If further evidence were needed, a lady nurse,
Lieutenant Grace Dimichele, of Vermont, took my photograph as we came into
port.
But
in the excitement of that tremendous moment, when thousands of men were
struggling and jostling, laughing and crying, and snapping cameras at the New
York skyline, which is the most beautiful in the world, I lost Corporal Cuckoo.
I have made exhaustive inquiries as to his whereabouts, but that extraordinary
man had disappeared like a puff of smoke.
Surely, there must be scores of men who
retain some memory of Cuckoo, whom they must have seen hundreds and hundreds of
times on the Queen
Mary between July 6th and
July 11th, 1945?
He was a light-haired man of medium height,
but he must have weighed at least a hundred and ninety pounds, for he was
ponderously built, and had enormously heavy bones. I beg my fellow passengers
to remember, if they can. He had watery eyes of greenish-gray, and limped a
little on his right leg. His teeth were powerful—large, square and slightly
protruding; but generally he kept them covered with his thick, curiously
wrinkled hps. People in general are unobservant, I know, but no one who saw
Corporal Cuckoo could fail to remember his scars. There was a frightful
indentation in his skull, between his left eyebrow and his right ear. When I
first noticed him, I remembered an ax murder at which I shuddered many years
ago when I was a crime reporter. He must have an extraordinary constitution if
he lives to walk around with a scar like that, I thought. His chin and throat
were puckered scar tissue such as marks the place where flesh has been badly
burned and well healed. Half of his right ear was missing and close by there
was another scar, from cheekbone to mastoid. The back of his right hand
appeared to have been hacked with a knife —I counted at least four formidable
cuts, all old and white and deep. He conveyed this impression: that a long time
ago, a number of people had got together to butcher him with hatchets,
sabers, and knives, and that in spite of their most determined efforts he had
survived. For all his scars were old. Yet the man was young—not more than
thirty-five, as I guessed.
He
filled me with a burning curiosity. One of you must remember him! He went about, surly and unsociable, smoking cigarettes
which he never took out of his mouth— he smoked them down and spat the ends out
only when the fire touched his hps. That, I thought, must be why his eyes are
so watery. He moped about, thinking, or brooding. He was particularly addicted
to loitering on the stairs and lurking in dark corners. I made tentative inquiries
about him around the decks; but just then everyone was passionately interested
in an officer who looked like Spencer Tracy. But in the end I found out for
myself.
Liquor,
also, was prohibited on troopships. Having been warned of this, I took the
precaution of smuggling some bottles of whiskey aboard. On the first day out I
offered a drink to a captain of infantry. Before I knew where I was, I had made
seventeen new friends who overwhelmed me with affability and asked for my
autograph; so that on the second day, having thrown the last of the empty
bottles out of the porthole, I was glad to sponge a drink off Mr. Charles
Bennett, the Hollywood playwright. (He, too, if his modesty permits, will bear
witness that I am telling the truth.) He gave me a ginger-ale bottle full of
good Scotch, which I concealed in the blouse of my battledress, not daring to
let any of my friends know that I had it. Late in the evening of the third day,
I withdrew to a quiet spot where there was a strong-enough diffusion of yellow
light for me to read by. I intended to struggle again through some of the
poems of Francois Villon, and to refresh myself at intervals with a spot of Mr.
Bennett's Scotch. It was hard to find an unoccupied place beyond locked doors
on the Queen Mary at that time, but I found one. I was trying
to read Villon's Ballade
of Good Counsel, which
that great poet wrote in medieval underworld slang, which is all but incomprehensible
even to erudite Frenchmen who have studied the argot of the period. I repeated
the first two lines aloud, hoping to talk some new meaning into them:
Car
ou sole porteur de bulles Pipeur ou hasardeur de dez
Then a languid voice said: "Hello there!
What do you know about it?"
I
looked up and saw the somber, scarred face of the mysterious corporal half in
and half out of the shadows. There was nothing to do but offer him a drink, for
I had the botde in my hand, and he was looking at it. He thanked me curtly, half emptied the little bottle in one gulp and
returned it to me. "Pipeur
ou hasardeur de dez," he said, sighing. "That's old stuff. Do you like it, sir?"
I
said, "Very much indeed. What a great man Villon must have been. Who else
could have used such debased language to such effect? Who else could have taken
thieves' patter—which is always ugly—and turned it into beautiful poetry?"
"You understand it, eh?" he asked,
with a half laugh.
"I
can't say that I do," I said, "but it certainly
makes poetry."
"Yes, I know."
"Pipeur ou hasardeur de dez. You might as well try to make poetry out of something like this, 7 don't care if you run some Come-to-Jesus racket, or shoot craps... !' Who are you? What's the idea? It's a hell of
a long time since they allowed you to wear a beard in the army."
"War
correspondent," I said. "My name is Kersh. You might as well finish
this."
He
emptied the little bottle and said, "Thanks, Mr. Kersh. My name is
Cuckoo."
He
threw himself down beside me, striking the deck like a sack of wet sand.
"Yeahp ... I think I will sit
down," he said. Then he took my little book in his frightfully scarred
right hand, flapped it against his knee, and then gave it back to me. "Hasardeur de dez!" he said, in an outlandish accent.
"You read Villon, I see," I said.
"No, I don't. I'm not much of a
reader.'*
"But you speak French? Where did you
learn it?" I asked.
"In France."
"On your way home now?" "I
guess so."
"You're not sorry, I daresay."
"No, I guess not."
"You were in France?"
"Holland."
"In the army
long?"
"Quite a while."
"Do you like it?"
"Sure. It's all right, I guess. Where are you from?"
"London," I said.
He said, "I've been there."
"And where do you come from?" I
asked.
"What? .. . Me? ... Oh, from New York, I guess."
"And how did you like London?" I
asked.
"It's improved."
"Improved?
I was afraid you'd seen it at a disadvantage, what with the bombing, and all
that," I said.
"Oh, London's all
right. I guess."
"You
should have been there before the war, Corporal Cuckoo."
"I was there before
the war."
"You must have been
very young then," I said.
Corporal Cuckoo replied,
"Not so damn young."
I
said, "I'm a war correspondent, and newspaperman, and so I have the right
to ask impertinent questions. I might, you know, write a piece about you for my
paper. What sort of name is Cuckoo? I've never heard it before."
For
the sake of appearances I had taken out a notebook and pencil. The corporal
said, "My name isn't really Cuckoo. It's a French name, originally—Lecocu. You know what that means,
don't you?"
Somewhat
embarrassed, I replied, "Well, if I remember rightly, a man who is cocu is a man whose wife has been unfaithful to him."
"That's right."
"Have you any
family?"
"No."
"But you have been married?" I
asked. "Plenty."
"What
do you intend to do when you get back to the States, Corporal Cuckoo?"
He
said, "Grow flowers, and keep bees and chickens." "All
alone?"
"That's right," said Corporal
Cuckoo. "Flowers, bees and chickens!... What kind
of flowers?" I asked.
"Roses," he said, without
hesitation. Then he added, "Maybe a little later on I'll go south."
"What on earth for?" I asked. "Turpentine."
Corporal
Cuckoo, I thought, must be insane. Thinking of this, it occurred to me that his
brain might have been deranged by the wound that had left that awful scar on
his head. I said, "They seem to have cut you up a bit, Corporal Cuckoo."
"Yes,
sir, a little bit here and there," he said, chuckling. "Yeahp, I've
taken plenty in my time."
"So
I should think, Corporal. The first time I saw you I was under the impression that you'd got caught up in some machinery, or
something of the sort."
"What do you mean, machinery?"
"Oh, no offense, Corporal, but those
wounds on your
head and face and neck haven't the appearance of wounds
such as you might get from any weapon of modern war-
fare--------- "
"Who
said they were?" said Corporal Cuckoo, roughly. Then he filled his lungs
with air, and blew out a great breath which ended in an exclamation:
"PAoo-wow! What was that stuff you gave me to drink?"
"Good Scotch.
Why?"
"It's
good all right. I didn't ought to drink it. I've laid off the hard stuff for God knows how many years. It
goes to my head. I didn't ought to touch it."
"Nobody
asked you to empty a twelve-ounce ginger-ale bottle full of Scotch in two
drinks," I said resentfully.
"I'm
sorry, mister. When we get to New York, I'll buy you a whole bottle, if you like,"
said Corporal Cuckoo, squinting as if his eyes hurt and running his ringers
along the awful crevasse of that scar in his head.
I said, "That was a
nasty one you got, up there."
"What?
This?" he said, carelessly striking the scar with
the flat of a hard hand. "This? Nasty one? I'll
say it was a nasty one. Why, some of my brains came out. And look here—"
He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled up his undershirt with his left hand, while
he opened and fit a battered Zippo with his right. "Take a look at that."
I
cried out in astonishment. I had never seen a living body so incredibly mauled
and mutilated. In the vacillating light of the flame I saw black shadows
bobbing and weaving in a sort of blasted wilderness of crags, chasms, canyons
and pits. His torso was like a place laid waste by the wrath of God—burst
asunder from below, scorched from above, shattered by
thunderbolts, crushed by landslides, ravaged by hurricanes. Most of his ribs,
on the left-hand side, must have been smashed into fragments no bigger than the
last joint of a finger by some tremendously heavy object. The bones,
miraculously, had knit together again, so that there was a circle of hard,
bony knobs rimming a deep indentation; in that light it reminded me of one of
the dead volcanoes on the moon. Just under the sternum there was a dark hole,
nearly three inches long, about half an inch wide, and hideously deep. I have
seen such scars in the big muscles of a man's thigh—but never in the region of
the breastbone. "Good God, man, you must have been torn in two and put
together again!" I said. Corporal Cuckoo merely laughed, and held his
lighter so that I could see his body from stomach to hips. Between the strong
muscles, just under the liver, there was an old scar into which, old and healed
though it was, you might have laid three fingers. Cutting across this, another
scar, more than half as deep but more than twelve inches long, curved away
downward toward the groin on the left. Another appalling scar came up from
somewhere below the buckle of his belt and ended in a deep triangular hole in
the region of the diaphragm. And there were other scars—but the lighter went
out, and Corporal Cuckoo buttoned up his shirt.
"Is that
something?" he asked.
"Is
that something!" I cried. "Why, good God,
I'm no medical man, but I can see that the least of those wounds you've got
down there ought to be enough to kill any man. How do you manage to be alive,
Cuckoo? How is it possible?"
"You
think you've seen something? Listen, you've seen nothing till you see my back.
But never mind about that now."
"Tell me," I said, "how the
devil did you come by all
that? They're old scars. You couldn't have got them in
this war----------- "
He
slid down the knot of his tie, unbuttoned his collar, pulled his shirt aside,
and said, dispassionately, "No. Look—this is all I got this time." He
pointed nonchalantly to his throat. I counted five bullet scars in a cluster,
spaced like the fingertips of a half-opened hand, at the base of the throat.
"Light machine-gun," he said.
"But this is impossible!" I said,
while he readjusted his tie. "That little packet there must have cut one
or two big arteries and smashed your spine to smithereens."
"Sure it did,"
said Corporal Cuckoo.
"And how old did you
say you were?" I asked.
Corporal
Cuckoo replied, "Round about four hundred and thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight?"
"I said four hundred
and thirty-eight."
The man is mad, I thought. "Born 1907?" I asked.
"1507,"
said Corporal Cuckoo, fingering the dent in his skull. Then he went on,
half-dreamily. (How am I to describe his manner? It was repulsively compounded
of thick stupidity, low cunning, anxiety, suspicion and sordid calculation—it
made me remember a certain peasant who tried to sell me an American wristwatch
near Saint Jacques in 1944. But Corporal Cuckoo talked American, at first
leering at me in the dim fight, and feeling his shirt as if to assure himself
that all his scars were safely buttoned away.) He said, slowly, "Look... I'll give you the outline. It's no use you trying to sell the outline, see? You're a
newspaperman. Though you might know what the whole story would be worth,
there's no use you trying to sell what I'm giving you now, because you haven't
got a hope in hell. But I've got to get back to work, see? I want some
dough."
I said, "For roses,
chickens, bees and turpentine?"
He
hesitated, and then said, "Well, yes," and rubbed his head again.
"Does it bother
you?" I asked.
"Not
if I don't touch that stuff you gave me," he replied, dreamily resentful.
"Where
did you get that scar?" I asked. "Battle of Turin," he said.
"I
don't remember any Battle of Turin, Corporal Cuckoo. When was that?"
"Why, the Battle of Turin. I got this in the Pass of Suze."
"You were wounded in the Pass of Suze at
the Battle of Turin, is that right? When was that?" I asked. "In 1536 or 1537. King Frangois sent us up against the
Marquess de Guast. The enemy was holding the pass, but we broke through. That was my first
smell of gunpowder."
"You were there of
course, Corporal Cuckoo?"
"Sure I was there. But I wasn't a
corporal then, and
my name was not Cuckoo. They called me Lecocu. My
real name was Lecoq. I came from Yvetot. I used to work
for a man who made linen—Nicolas, the------------------------- "
Two
or three minutes passed, while the corporal told me what he thought of Nicolas.
Then, having come down curse by curse out of a red cloud of passion, he continued:
"... To cut it short, Denise ran
off, and all the kids in the town were singing:
Lecoq,
lecoq, lecoq, Lecoq, lecoq, lecocu. I got the hell out of it and joined the
army.... I'm not giving you anything you can make anything of, see? This is the
layout, see? ... Okay. I was about
thirty, then, and in pretty good shape. Well, so when King Francois sent us to
Turin—Monsieur de Montagan was Colonel-General of Infantry—my Commander,
Captain Le Rat, led us up a hill to a position, and we sure had a hot five
nrinutes! It was anybody's battle until the rest cut through, and then we
advanced, and I got this."
The Corporal touched his
head. I asked, "How?"
"From a halberdier. You know what a halberd is, don't you? It's sort of heavy ax on the end
of a ten-foot pole. You can split a man down to the waist with a halberd, if
you know how to handle it. See? If it had landed straight— well, I guess I
wouldn't be here right now. But I saw it coming, see, and I ducked, and just as
I ducked my foot slipped in some blood, and I fell sideways. But
all the same that halberdier got me. Right here, just where the scar is.
See? Then everything went sort of black-and-white, and black, and I passed out.
But I wasn't dead, see? I woke up, and there was the army doctor, with a cheap
steel breastplate on—no helmet—soaked with blood up to the elbows. Our blood, you can bet your life—you know what medical officers are?"
I
said soolningly, "Oh yes, I know, I know. And this, you say, was in
1537?"
"Maybe 1536, 1 don't remember exactly. As I was saying, I woke up, and I
saw the doctor, and he was talking to some other doctor that I couldn't see;
and all around men were shouting their heads off—asking their friends to cut
their throats and put them out of their misery ... asking for priests ...
I thought I was in hell. My head was split wide open, and I could feel a sort
of draft playing through my brains, and everything was going bump-bump, bumpety-bump, bump-bump-bump.
But although I couldn't move or speak I could see and hear what was going on. The
doctor looked at me and said ..."
Corporal Cuckoo paused.
"He said?" I asked, gently.
"Well,"
said Corporal Cuckoo, with scorn, "you don't even know the meaning of what
you were reading in your little book—Pipeur ou hasardeur de dez, and all that— even when it's put down in cold print. I'll put it so that
you'll understand. The doctor said something like this: 'Come here and look,
sir, come and see! This fellow's brains were bursting out of his head. If I had
applied Theriac, he would be buried and forgotten by now. Instead, having no
Theriac, for want of something better, I applied
my Digestive. And see what has happened. His eyes have opened! Observe, also
that the bones are creeping together and over this beating brain a sort of skin
is forming. My treatment must be right, because God is healing him!' Then the
one I couldn't see said something like: 'Don't be a fool, Ambroise. You're
wasting your time and your medicine on a corpse.' Well, the doctor looked down
at me, and touched my eyes with the ends of his fingers—like this—and I
blinked. But the one I couldn't see said: 'Must you waste time and
medicine on the dead?'
"After I blinked my eyes, I couldn't
open them again. I couldn't see. But I could still hear, and
when I heard that, I was as scared as hell they were going to bury me alive.
And I couldn't move. But the doctor I'd seen said: 'After live days this poor
soldier's flesh is still sweet, and, weary as I am, I have my wits about me,
and I swear to you that I saw his eyes open.' Then he called out: 'Jehan! Bring
the Digestive! ... By your leave,
sir, I will keep this man until he comes back to life, or begins to stink.
And
into this wound I am going to pour some more of my Digestive.'
"Then
I felt something running into my head. It hurt like hell. It was like ice water
dripped into your brains. I thought This is it!—and then I went numb all over, and then I went dead again, until I woke
up later in another place. The young doctor was there, without his armor this
time, but he had a sort of soft hat on. This time I could move and talk, and I asked for something to drink. When he heard me
talk, the doctor opened his mouth to let out a shout, but stopped himself, and
gave me some wine out of a cup. But his hands were shaking so that I got more
wine in my beard than in my mouth. I used to wear a beard in those days, just
like you—only a bigger one, all over my face. I heard somebody come running
from the other end of the room. I saw a boy— maybe fifteen or sixteen years
old. This kid opened his mouth and started to say something, but the doctor got
him by the throat and said...
put it like this: 'For your life, Jehan, be quiet!'
"The
kid said: 'Master! You have brought him back from the dead!'
"Then
the doctor said: 'Silence, for your life, or do you want to smell burning
faggots?'
"Then
I went to sleep again, and when I woke up I was in a little room with all the
windows shut and a big fire burning so that it was hotter than hell. The doctor
was there, and his name was Ambroise Paré. Maybe
you have read about Ambroise Paré?"
"Do
you mean the Ambroise Paré
who became an army surgeon
under Anne de Montmorency in the army of Francis the First?"
Corporal
Cuckoo said, "That's what I was saying, wasn't it? Francois Premier,
Francis the First. De Montmorency was our Lieutenant-General, when we got
mixed up with Charles V. The whole thing started between France and Italy, and
that's how I came to get my head cracked when we went down the hill near Turin.
I told you, didn't I?"
"Corporal
Cuckoo," I said, "you have told me that you are four hundred and
thirty-eight years old. You were born in 1507, and left Yvetot to join the army
after your wife made a fool of you with a linen merchant named Nicolas. Your
name was Lecoq, and the children called you Lecocu. You fought at the Battle of
Turin, and were wounded in the Pass of Suze about 1537. Your head was cut open
with a halberd, or poleax, and some of your brains
came out. A surgeon named Ambroise Pare poured into the wound in your head what
you called a Digestive. So you came back to life—more than four hundred years
ago! Is this right?"
"You've
got it," said Corporal Cuckoo, nodding. "I knew you'd get it."
I
was stupefied by the preposterousness of it all, and could only say, with what
must have been a silly giggle, "Well, my venerable friend; by all
accounts, after four hundred and thirty-odd years of life you ought to be
tremendously wise—as full of wisdom, learning, and experience as the British
Museum Library."
"Why?" asked
Corporal Cuckoo.
"Why? Well," I said, "it's an
old story. A philosopher, let us say, or a scientist, doesn't really begin to
learn anything until his life is almost ended. What wouldn't he give for five
hundred extra years of life? For five hundred years of life he'd sell his soul,
because given that much time, knowledge being power, he could be master of the
whole world."
Corporal
Cuckoo said, "Baloney! What you say might go for philosophers, and all
that. They'd just go on doing what they were interested in, and they
might—well—learn how to turn iron into gold, or something. But
what about a baseball player, for instance, or a boxer? What would they
do with five hundred years? What they were fit to do —swing bats or throw
leather! What would you do?"
"Why,
of course, you're right, Corporal Cuckoo," I said. "I'd just go on
and on banging a typewriter and chucking my money down the drain, so that in
five hundred years from now I'd be no wiser and no richer than I am at this
moment."
"No,
wait a minute," he said, tapping my arm with a finger that felt like a rod
of iron, and leering at me shrewdly. "You'd go on writing books and
things. You're paid on a percentage basis, so in five hundred years you'd have
more than you could spend. But how about me? All I'm
fit for is to be in the army. I don't give a damn for philosophy, and all that
stuff. It don't mean a thing to me. I'm no wiser now
than I was when I was thirty. I never did go in for reading, and all that stuff, and I never will. My ambition is to get me a place
like Jack Dempsey's on Broadway."
"I thought you said you wanted to grow
roses, and chickens, and bees, and turpentine trees and whatnot," I said.
"Yeahp, that's
right."
"How
do you reconcile the two? ... I mean,
how does a restaurant on Broadway fit in with the bees and roses et
cetera?"
"Well, it's like this..." said
Corporal Cuckoo.
"... I told you about how Doctor Paré healed up my head when it was split open so that my brains were coming
out. Well, after I could walk about a bit he let me stay in his house, and I
can tell you, he fed me on the fat of the land, though he didn't live any too
damn well himself. Yeahp, he looked after me like a son—a hell of lot better
than my old man ever looked after me: chickens, eggs in wine, anything I
wanted. If I said, '1 guess I'd like a pie made with
skylarks for dinner,' I had it. If I said, 'Doc, this wine is kind of sour,' up
came a bottle of Alicante or something. Inside two or three weeks, I was fitter
and stronger than I'd ever been before. So then I got kind of restless and said
I wanted to go. Well, Doctor Paré said
he wanted me to stay. I said to him, 'I'm an active man, Doc, and I've got my
living to get; and before I got this little crack on the head I heard that
there was money to be made in one army or another right now.'
"Well,
then Doctor Paré
offered me a couple of
pieces of gold to stay in his house for another month. I took the money, but I
knew then that he was up to something, and I went out of my way to find out. I
mean, he was Army Surgeon, and I was nothing but a lousy infantryman. There was
a catch in it somewhere, see? So I acted dumb, but I kept my eyes open, and
made friends with Jehan, the kid that helped around the doctor's office. This
Jehan was a big-eyed, skinny kid, with one leg a bit shorter than the other,
and he thought I was a hell of a fellow when I cracked a walnut between two
fingers, and lifted up the big table, that must have weighed
about five hundred pounds, on my back. This Jehan, he told me he'd
always wanted to be a powerful guy like me. But he'd been sick since before he
was born, and might not have lived at all if Doctor Paré hadn't saved his life. Well, so I went to work on Jehan, and I found out
what the doctor's game was. You know doctors, eh?"
Corporal Cuckoo nudged me, and I said,
"Uh uh, go on."
"Well it seems that up
to the time when we got through the Pass of Suze, they'd treated what they
called 'poisoned wounds' with boiling oil of elder with a dash of what they
called Theriac. Theriac was nothing much more than honey and herbs. Well, so it
seems that by the time we went up the hill, Doctor Paré had run out of the oil of elder and Theriac, and so, for want of
something better, he mixed up what he called a Digestive.
"My commander, Captain Le Rat, the one
that got the bullet that smashed up his ankle, was the first one to be dosed
with the Digestive. His ankle got better," said Corporal Cuckoo, snapping
his fingers, "like that.
I was the third or fourth
soldier to get a dose of Doctor Paré's Digestive.
The doc was looking over the battlefield, because he wanted a dead body to cut
up on the side. You know what doctors are. This kid Jehan told me he wanted a
brain to play around with. Well, there was I, see, with my brains showing. All
the doctor had to do was, reach down and help himself.
Well, to cut it short, he saw that I was breathing, and wondered how the hell a
man could be breathing after he'd got what I had. So he poured some of his
Digestive into the hole in my head, tied it up, and watched for developments. I
told you what happened then. I came back to life. More than that, the bones in
my head grew together. Doctor Ambroise Paré believed
he'd got something. So he was keeping me sort of under observation, and making
notes.
"I know doctors. Well, anyway, I went to work on
Jehan. I
said, *Be a good fellow, Jehan, tell a pal what is this Digestive, or whatever your master calls it?'
"Jehan said, 'Why, sir, my master makes
no secret of it. It is nothing but a mixture of egg yolks, oil of roses, and
turpentine.' (I don't mind telling you that, bub, because it's already been
printed.)"
I said to Corporal Cuckoo, "I don't know
how the devil you come by these curious facts, but I happen to know that
they're true. They are available in several histories of medicine. Ambroise Paré's Digestive, with which he treated the wounded
after the Battle of Turin, was, as you say, nothing but a mixture of oil of
roses, egg yolks, and turpentine. And it is also a fact that the first wounded
man upon whom he tried it really was Captain Le Rat, in 1537. Paré said at the time, T dressed his wounds and God healed him.'...
Well?"
"Yeahp," said Corporal Cuckoo, with
a sneer. "Sure. Turpentine, oil of roses, egg.
That's right. You know the proportions?"
"No,
I don't," I said.
"I know you don't,
bub. Well, I do. See? And I'll tell you something else. It's not just oil of
roses, eggs and turpentine—there was one other thing Doc Paré slipped in in my case, for an experiment—see? And I know what it is."
I said, "Well, go on."
"Well, I could see that this Doctor
Ambroise Paré
was going to make something
out of me, see? So I kept my eyes open, and I waited, and I worked on Jehan,
until I found out just where the doctor kept his notebook. I mean, in those
days you could get sixty or seventy thousand dollars for a bit of bone they
called a 'unicorn's horn.' Hell, I mean, if I had something that could just
about bring a man back from the dead—draw his bones together and put him on his
feet in a week or two, even if his brains were coming out—hell, everybody was
having a war then, and I could have been rich in a few minutes."
I said, "No doubt about that. What----------------------- "
"What the hell--------------- " said Corporal
Cuckoo, "what the
hell
right did he have to use me for a guinea pig? Where would he have been if it
hadn't been for me? And where do you think I'd have been after? Out on my neck with two or three gold pieces, while the doctor
grabbed the credit and made millions out of it. I wanted to open a place
in Paris—girls and everything, see? Could I do that on two or three gold
pieces? I ask you! Okay; one night when Doctor Pare and Jehan were out, I took
his notebook, slipped out of a window, and got the hell out of it.
"As soon as I thought I was safe, I went
into a saloon, and drank some wine, and got into conversation with a girl. It
seems somebody else was interested in this girl, and there was a fight. The
other guy cut me in the face with a knife. I had a knife too. You know how it
is—all of a sudden I felt something pulling my knife out of my hand, and I saw
that I'd pushed it between this man's ribs. He was one of those mean little
guys, about a hundred and twenty pounds, with a screwed-up face. (She was a
great big girl with yellow hair.) I could see that I'd killed him, so I ran for
my life, and I left my knife where it was—stuck tight between his ribs. I hid
out, expecting trouble. But they never found me. Most of
that night I lay under a hedge. I was pretty sick. I mean, he'd cut me
from just under the eye to the back of my head—and cut me deep. He'd cut the
top of my right ear off, clean. It wasn't only that it hurt like hell, but I
knew I could be identified by that cut. I'd left half an ear behind me. It was
me for the gallows, see? So I kept as quiet as I could, in a ditch, and went to
sleep for a few hours before dawn. And then, when I woke up, that cut didn't
hurt at all, not even my ear—and I can tell you that a cut ear sure does hurt.
I went and washed my face in a pond, and when the water got still enough so I
could see myself, I saw that cut and this ear had healed right up so that the
marks looked five years old. All that in half a night! So I went on my way.
About two days later, a farmer's dog bit me in the leg—took a piece out. Well,
a bite like that ought to take weeks to heal up. But mine didn't. It was all
healed over by next day, and there was hardly a scar. That stuff Pare poured on
my head had made me so that any wound I might get, anywhere, any time, would
just heal right up—like magic. I knew I had something when I grabbed those papers of Paré's. But
this was terrific!"
"You had them still, Corporal Cuckoo?"
"What do you tliink?
Sure I had them, wrapped up in a bit
of linen and tied round my waist, four pieces of it ... not paper, the other stuff, parchment.
That's it, parchment. Folded across, and sewn up along the fold. The outside
bit was blank, like a cover. But the six pages inside were all written over.
The hell of it was, I couldn't read. I'd never been learned. See? Well, I had
the best part of my two gold pieces left, and I pushed on to Paris."
I asked, "Didn't Ambroise Paré say
anything?"
Corporal Cuckoo sneered again. "What the
hell could he say?" he asked. "Say what? Say he'd resurrected the
dead with his Digestive? That would have finished him for sure. Where was his
evidence? And you can bet your life that kid Jehan kept his mouth shut; he wouldn't want the doctor to know he'd squealed. See? No,
nobody said a word. I got into Paris okay."
"What did you do there?" I asked.
"My idea was to find somebody I could
trust to read those papers for me, see? If you want to know how I got my
living, well, I did the best I could—never mind what. Well, one night, in a
place where I was, I came across a student,
mooching drinks, an educated man with no place to sleep. I showed him the
doctor's papers, and asked him what they meant. They made him think a bit, but
he got the hang of them. The doctor had written down just how he'd mixed that
Digestive of his, and that only filled up one page. Four of the other pages
were full of figures, and the only other writing was on the last page. It was
all about me. And how he'd cured me."
I said, "With the yolks of eggs, oil of
roses, and turpentine?"
Corporal Cuckoo nodded, and said, "Yeahp.
Them three and something else."
I said, "I'll bet you anything you like
I know what the fourth ingredient is, in this Digestive."
"What'll you bet?" asked Corporal Cuckoo.
I said,
"I'll bet you a beehive."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, Corporal, it stands to reason. You
said you wanted to raise chickens, roses, and bees. You said you wanted to go
south for turpentine. You accounted for egg yolks, oil of roses, and turpentine
in Doctor Pare's formula. What would a man like you want with bees? Obviously
the fourth ingredient is honey."
"Yeahp," said Corporal Cuckoo.
"You're right, bub. The doctor slipped in some honey." He opened a jack-knife, looked at me narrowly, then snapped the blade
back again and pocketed the knife, saying, "You don't know the proportions.
You don't know how to mix the stuff. You don't know how hot it ought to be, or
how slow you've got to let it cool."
"So you have the Secret of Life?" I said. "You're four hundred years old, and wounds can't kill you. It
only takes a certain mixture of egg yolks, oil of roses, turpentine and honey.
Is that right?"
"That's
right," said Corporal Cuckoo.
"Well, didn't you think of buying the
ingredients and mixing them yourself?"
"Well, yes, I did. The doctor had said
in his notes how the Digestive he'd given to me and Captain Le Rat had been
kept in a bottle in the dark for two years. So I made a wine bottle full of the
stuff and kept it covered up away from the light for two years, wherever I
went. Then me and some friends of mine got into a bit
of trouble, and one of my friends, a guy called Pierre Solitude, got a pistol
bullet in the chest. I tried the stuff on him, but he died. At the same time I
got a swordcut in the side. Believe me or not, that healed up in nine hours,
inside and out, of its own accord. You can make what you like of that. It all
came out of something to do with robbing a church.
"I got out of France, and lived as best
I could for about a year until I found myself in Salzburg. That was about four
years after the battle of the Pass of Suze. Well, in Salzburg I came across
some guy who told me that the greatest doctor in the world was in town. I
remember this doctor's name, because, well, who wouldn't? It was A lire olus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. He'd been
a big shot in Basle a few years before. He was otherwise known as Paracelsus.
He wasn't doing much then. He hung around, most of the time, drinking himself
crazy in a wine cellar called The Three Doves. I met him there one night—it
must have been in 1541—and said my piece when nobody else was listening."
Corporal Cuckoo laughed harshly.
I said, "Paracelsus was a very great
man. He was one of the great doctors of the world."
"Oh, hell, he was only
a fat old drunk. Certainly was higher than a kite when I saw him. Yelling his
head off, banging on the table with an empty can. When I told him about this
stuff, in strict confidence, he got madder than ever, called me everything he
could think of—and believe me, he could think of plenty—and bent the can over
my head. Broke the skin just where the hair starts. I
was going to take a poke at him but then he calmed down a bit and said in
Swiss-German, I think it was, 'Experiment, experiment! A demonstration! A
demonstration! If you come back tomorrow and show me that cut perfectly healed,
charlatan, I'll listen to you.' Then he burst out laughing, and I thought to
myself, I'll give you something to laugh at, bub. So I took a
walk, and that little cut healed up and was gone inside an hour. Then I
went back to show him. I'd sort of taken a liking to the old soak, see? Well,
when I get back to this tavern there's doctor Von
Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, if you like, lying on his back dying of a dagger
stab. He'd gotten into a fight with a woodcarver, and this woodcarver was as
soused as he was, see? And so he let this Paracelsus
have it. I never did have no luck, and I never will.
We might have got along together, me and him, I only
talked to him for half an hour, but so help me, you knew who was the boss when
he was there, all right! Oh well, that was that."
"And
then?" I asked.
"I'm just giving you the outline, see?
If you want the whole story it's going to cost you plenty," said Corporal
Cuckoo. "I bummed around Salzburg for a year, got whipped out of town for
being a beggar, got the hell out of it to Switzerland, and signed on with a
bunch of paid soldiers, what they called Condottieri, under
a Swiss colonel, and did a bit of fighting in Italy. There was supposed to be
good pickings there. But somebody stole my little bit of loot, and we never
even got half our pay in the end. Then I went to France, and met a sea captain
by the name of Bordelais who was carrying brandy to England and was short of a
man. A fast little English pirate boat stopped us in the Channel, and grabbed
the cargo, cut Bordelais' throat and slung the crew overboard—all except me.
The Limey captain, Hawker, liked the look of me. I joined the crew, but I never
was much of a sailor. That hooker—hell, she wasn't bigger than one of the
lifeboats on this ship—was called the Harry, after
the King of England, Henry VIII, the one they made a movie about. Still, we did
all right. We specialized in French brandy: stopped the Froggy boats in
mid-channel, grabbed the cargo, shoved the captain and
crew overboard. 'Dead men tell no tales,' old Hawker always said. Well, I
jumped the ship somewhere near Rommey, with money in my pocket—I didn't like
the sea, see? I'd had half a dozen nasty wounds, but they couldn't kill me. I
was worried about what'd happen if I went overboard. You could shoot me through
the head and not kill me, though it'd hurt like hell for a few days while the
wound healed itself. But I just hated to think of what would happen if
somebody tried to drown me. Get it? I'd have to wait under water till the
fishes ate me, or till I just sort of naturally rotted away—alive all the time.
And that's not nice.
"Well,
as I was saying, I quit at Rommey and got to London. There was an oldish widow
with a linen-draper's business near London Bridge. She had a bit of dough, and
she took a fancy to me. Well, what the hell? I got married to her. Lived with her about thirteen years. She was a holy terror,
at first, but I corrected her. Her name was Rose, and she died just about when
Queen Elizabeth got to be Queen of England. That was around 1558, I guess. She
was scared of me—Rose, I mean, not Queen Elizabeth, because I was always
playing around with honey, and eggs, and turpentine, and oil of roses. She got
older and older, and I stayed exactly the same as I was when I married her, and
she didn't like that one little bit. She thought I was a witch. Said I had the
Philosophers'
Stone,
and knew the secret of perpetual youth. Hah, so help me, she wasn't so damn far
wrong. She wanted me to let her in on it. But, as I was saying, I kept working
on those notes of Doctor Pare's, and I mixed honey, turpentine, oil of roses,
and the yolks of eggs, just as he'd done, in the right proportions, at the
proper temperature, and kept the mixture bottled in the dark for the right
length of time—and still it didn't work."
I asked Corporal Cuckoo,
"How did you find out that your mixture didn't work?"
"Well, I tried it on Rose. She kept on
at me till I did. Every now and again we had kind of a lovers' quarrel, and I
tried the Digestive on her afterward. But she took as long to heal as any
ordinary person would have taken. The interesting thing was that I not only
couldn't be killed by a wound, I couldn't get any older! I couldn't catch any diseases! I couldn't die!
And you can figure this for
yourself: if some stuff that cured any sort of wound was worth a fortune, what
would it be worth to me if I had something that would make people stay young
and healthy forever? Eh?" He paused.
I said, "Interesting speculation. You
might have given some of the stuff, for example, to Shakespeare. He got better and better as he went on. I wonder what he would have arrived
at by now? I don't know, though. If Shakespeare had
swallowed an elixir of life and perpetual youth when he was very young, he
would have remained as he was, young and undeveloped. Maybe he might still be
holding horses outside theatres—or whistling for taxis, a stage-struck country
boy of undeveloped genius.
"If, on the other hand, he had taken the
stuff when he wrote, say, The Tempest—there
he'd be still, burnt up, worn out, world-weary, tired to death and unable to
die. On the other hand, of course, some debauched rake of the Elizabethan
period could go on being a debauched rake at high pressure, for centuries and
centuries. But, oh my God, how bored he would get after a hundred years or so,
and how he'd long for death! That would be dangerous stuff, that stuff of
yours, Corporal Cuckoo!"
"Shakespeare?" he said.
"Shakespeare? William Shakespeare. I met him. I met a buddy of his when I
was fighting in the Netherlands, and he introduced us when we got back to
London. William Shakespeare—puffy-faced man, bald on top;
used to wave his hands about when he talked. He took an interest in me.
We talked a whole lot together."
"What
did he say?" I asked.
Corporal Cuckoo replied, "Oh, hell, how
can I remember every goddam word? He just asked questions, the same as you do.
We just talked."
"And
how did he strike you?" I asked.
Corporal Cuckoo considered, and then said,
slowly, "The kind of man who counts his change and leaves a nickel tip....
One of these days I'm going to read his books, but I've never had much time for
reading."
I said, "So, I take it
that your only interest in Pare's Digestive has been a financial interest. You
merely wanted to make money out of it. Is that so?"
"Why, sure," said
Corporal Cuckoo. "I've had my shot
of the stuff. I'm all right."
"Corporal Cuckoo, has
it occurred to you that what you are after is next door to impossible?"
"How's that?"
"Well," I said,
"your Pare's Digestive is made of egg yolk, oil of roses, turpentine and
honey. Isn't that so?"
"Well, yes. So what? What's impossible about that?"
I said, "You know how a chicken's diet
alters the taste of an egg, don't you?"
"Well?"
"What a chicken eats
changes not only the taste, but the color of an egg. Any chicken farmer can
tell you that. Isn't that so?"
"Well?"
"Well, what a chicken
eats goes into the egg, doesn't it—just as the fodder that you feed a cow comes
out in the milk? Have you stopped to consider how many different sorts of
chickens there have been in the world since the Battle of Turin in 1537, and
the varieties of chicken feed they might have pecked up in order to lay their
eggs? Have you thought that the egg yolk is only one of four ingredients mixed
in Ambroise Pare's Digestive? Is it possible that it has not occurred to you
that this one ingredient involves permutations and combinations of several millions
of other ingredients?"
Corporal Cuckoo was silent. I went on,
"Then take roses. If no two eggs are exactly alike, what
about roses? You come from wine-growing country, you say: then you must
know that the mere thickness of a wall can separate two entirely different
kinds of wine—that a noble vintage may be crushed out of grapes grown less than
two feet away from a vine that is good for nothing. The same applies to
tobacco. Have you stopped to think of your roses? Roses are pollinated by bees, bees go from flower to flower, making them fertile.
Your oil of roses, therefore, embodies an infinity of
possible ingredients. Does it not?"
Corporal Cuckoo was still silent. I
continued, with a kind of malicious enthusiasm. "You must reflect on these
things, Corporal. Take turpentine. It comes out of trees. Even in the sixteenth
century there were many known varieties of turpentine—Chian Terebinthine, and
what not. But above all, my dear fellow, consider honey! There are more kinds
of honey in the world than have ever been categorized. Every honeycomb yields a
slightly different honey. You must know that bees living in heather gather and
store one kind of honey, while bees living in an apple orchard give us
something quite different. It is all honey, of course, but its flavor and
quality are variable beyond calculation. Honey varies from hive to hive,
Corporal Cuckoo. I say nothing of wild bees' honey."
"Well?" he said, glumly.
"Well. All this is relatively simple,
Corporal, in relation to what comes next. I don't know how many beehives there
are in the world. Assume that in every hive there are—let us be moderate—one
thousand bees. (There are more than that, of course, but I am trying to
simplify.) You must realize that every one of these bees brings home a slightly
different drop of honey. Every one of these bees may, in its travels, take
honey from fifty different flowers. The honey accumulated by all the bees in
the hive is mixed together. Any single cell in any honeycomb out of any hive
contains scores of subtly different elements! I say nothing of the time
element; honey six months old is very different from honey out of the same
hive, left for ten years. From day to day, honey changes. Now taking all
possible combinations of eggs, roses, turpentine and honey—where are you?
Answer me that, Corporal Cuckoo."
Corporal Cuckoo struggled
with this for a few seconds, and then said, "I don't get it. You think
I'm nuts, don't you?"
"I
never said so," I said uneasily.
"No,
you never said
so. Well, listen. Don't
give me all
that double talk. I'm doing you a favor. Look------------------------- "
He took out and opened his jackknife, and
scrutinized his left hand, looking for an unscarred area of skin.
"No!" I shouted, and gripped his knife-hand. I might have been trying
to hold back the piston rod of a great locomotive. My grip and my weight were
nothing to Corporal Cuckoo.
"Look," he said, calmly, and cut
through the soft flesh between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand until
the knifeblade stopped on the bone, and the thumb fell back until it touched
the forearm. "See that?"
I saw it through a mist. The great ship
seemed, suddenly, to roll and plunge. "Are you crazy?" I said, as
soon as I could.
"No," said Corporal Cuckoo.
"I'm showing you I'm not, see?" He held his mutilated hand close to
my face.
"Take it away," I said.
"Sure," said
Corporal Cuckoo. "Watch this." He pushed the almost-severed thumb
back into place, and held it down with his right hand. "It's okay,"
he said, "there's no need to look sick. I'm
showing you, see? Don't go—sit down. I'm not kidding. I can give you a hell of
a story, a fact-story. I can show you Pare's little notebook and everything.
You saw what I showed you when I pulled up my shirt? You saw what I've got
right here, on the left side?"
I said, "Yes."
"Well, that's where I got hit by a
nine-pound cannon-ball when I was on the Mary Ambree, fighting
against the Spanish Armada—it smashed my chest so that the ribs went through my
heart—and I was walking about in two weeks. And this other one on the right,
under the ribs— tomorrow I'll show you what it looks like from the back —I got
that one at the Battle of Fontenoy; and there's a hell of a good story there. A
French cannonball came down and hit a broken sword that a dead officer had
dropped, and it sent that sword flying right through me, lungs and liver and
all. So help me, it came out through my right shoulderblade. The other one
lower down was a bit of bombshell at the Battle of Waterloo—I was opened up
like a pig—it wasn't worth the surgeon's while to do anything about it. But I
was on my feet in six days, while men with broken legs were dying like flies. I
can prove it, I tell you! And listen—I marched to Quebec with Benedict Arnold.
Sit still and listen—my right leg was smashed to pulp all the way down from the
hip to the ankle at Balaklava. It knitted together before the surgeon had a
chance to get around to me; he couldn't believe his eyes—he thought he was
dreaming. I can tell you a hell of a story! But it's worth dough, see? Now,
this is my proposition: I'll tell it, you write it, and we'll split
fifty-fifty, and I'll start my farm. What d'you say?"
I
heard myself saying, in a sickly, stupid voice, "Why didn't you save some
of your pay, all those years?"
Corporal Cuckoo replied, with scorn,
"Why didn't I save my pay! Because I'm what I am, you mug! Hell, once upon a time, if I'd kept away from cards, I could've
bought Manhattan Island for less than what I lost to a Dutchman called
Bruncker, drawing ace-high for English guineas! Save my pay! If it wasn't one
thing it was another. I lay off liquor. Okay. So if it's not liquor it's a
woman. I lay off women. Okay. Then it's cards or dice. I always meant to save my pay; but I never had it in me to save my goddam pay! Doctor Pare's stuff fixed me— and when I say
it fixed me, I mean, it fixed
me, just like I was, and
am, and always will be. See? A foot-soldier, ignorant as
dirt. It took me nearly a hundred years to learn to write my name, and
four hundred years to get to be a corporal. How d'you like that? And it took
will power, at that! Now here's my proposition: fifty-fifty on the story. Once
I get proper publicity in a magazine, I'll be able to let the Digestive out of
my hands with an easy mind, see? because nobody'd dare
to try any funny business with a man with nationwide publicity. Eh?"
"No, of course not," I said.
"Eh?"
"Sure, sure, Corporal."
"Good,"
said Corporal Cuckoo. "Now in case you think I'm kidding, take a look at
this. You saw what I done?" "I saw, Corporal."
"Look," he said,
thrusting his left hand under my nose. It was covered with blood. His shirt
cuff was red and wet. Fascinated, I saw one thick, sluggish drop crawl out of
the cloth near the buttonhole, and hang, quivering, before it fell on my knee.
The mark of it is in the cloth of my trousers to this day.
"See?" said Corporal Cuckoo, and he
licked the place between his fingers where his knife had cut down. A pale area
appeared. "Where did I cut myself?" he asked.
I shook my head; there was no wound—only a white scar. He wiped his knife on the palm of his hand—it left a red
smear—and let the blade fall with a sharp click. Then he wiped his left hand on
his right, rubbed both hands clean upon the backs of his trouser legs, and
said: "Am I kidding?"
"Well!" I said, somewhat breathlessly. "Well------------------------------ "
"Oh, what the hell!" groaned
Corporal Cuckoo, weary beyond words, exhausted, worn out by his endeavors to
explain the inexplicable and make the incredible sound reasonable. "... Look. You think this is a trick?
Have you got a knife?"
"Yes. Why?"
"A big knife?"
"Moderately big."
"Okay. Cut my throat with it, and see
what happens. Stick it in me wherever you like. And I'll bet you a thousand dollars I'll be all right inside two
or three hours. Go on. Man to man, it's a bet. Or go borrow an ax if you like;
hit me over the head with it."
"Be damned if I do," I said, shuddering.
"And that's how it is," said
Corporal Cuckoo, in despair. "And that's how it is every time. There they
are, making fortunes out of soap and toothpaste, and here I am, with something
in my pocket to keep you young and healthy forever—ah, go chase yourself! I
never ought to've drunk your rotten Scotch. This is the way it always is. You
wear a beard just like I used to wear before I got a gunpowder burn in the chin
at Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sidney got his; or I wouldn't have talked to you.
Oh, you dope! I could murder you, so help me I could! Go to hell."
Corporal Cuckoo leaped to his feet and darted
away so swiftly that before I found my feet he had disappeared. There was blood
on the deck close to where I had been sitting—a tiny pool of blood, no larger
than a coffee saucer, broken at one edge by the imprint of a heel. About a
yard and a half away I saw another heel mark in blood, considerably less
noticeable. Then there was a dull smear, as if one of the bloody rubber heels
had spun around and impelled its owner toward the left. "Cuckoo!
Cuckoo!" I shouted. "Oh, Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
But I never saw Corporal Cuckoo again, and I
wonder where he can be. It may be that he gave me a false name. But what I
heard I heard, and what I saw I saw; and I have five hundred dollars here in an
envelope for the man who will put me in touch with him. Honey and oil of roses,
eggs and turpentine; these involve, as I said, infinite permutations and combinations.
So does any comparable mixture. Still, it might be worth investigating. Why
not? Fleming got penicillin out of mildew. Only God knows the glorious
mysteries of the dust, out of which come trees and bees, and fife in every
form, from mildew to man.
I lost Corporal Cuckoo before we landed in
New York on July 11th, 1945. Somewhere in the United States, I believe, there
is a man tremendously strong in the arms and covered with terrible scars who has the dreadfully dangerous secret of perpetual youth and
life. He appears to be about thirty-odd years of age, and has watery, greenish
eyes.
C. M. KORNBLUTH
In Cyril Kornbluth was a sharp tooth, just
right for puncturing, and he used it with wit and passion. His stories had
bite. He was sensitive toward hypocrisy and remorseless to poses.
. . and it is all very well, he kept saying through his life, to invent these
faster-than-light radium-bearinged plastic dishwash-where he might have gone;
but he died young. This a writer, Cyril grew and grew.
There is no telling ers; but let us not forget that they will be paid for
overs, who are in the doghouse with their wives. As on the installment plan by
fretful men with hang-is almost his last story. He wrote it when he was
thirty-five, and before it saw print he was dead.
The Advent on
Channel Twelve
It
came to pass in the third quarter of the fiscal year that the Federal Reserve
Board did raise the rediscount rate and money was tight in the land. And
certain bankers which sate in New York sent to Ben Graffis in Hollywood a
writing which said, Money is tight in the land so let Poopy Panda up periscope
and fire all bow tubes. Whereupon Ben Graffis made to them this moan: O ye
bankers, Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh and you have made of
him a devouring dragon. Once was I content with my studio and my animators when
we did make twelve Poopy Pandas a year; cursed be the day when I floated a New
York loan. You have commanded me to make feature length cartoon epics and I did
obey, and they do open at the Paramount to sensational grosses, and we do
re-release them to the nabes year on year, without end. You have commanded me
to film five ad-
A 1
venture
shorts and I did obey, and in the cutting room we do devilishly splice and pull
frames and flop negatives so that I and my cameras are become bearers of false
witness and men look upon my live adventure shorts and say lo! these beasts and birds are like unto us in their laughter,
wooing, pranks and contention. You have commanded that I become a mountebank
for that I did build Poopy Pandaland whereinto men enter with their children,
their silver and their wits, and wherefrom they go out with their children
only, sandbagged by a thousand catch-penny engines; even this did I obey. You
have commanded that Poopy Panda shill every weekday night on television between
five and six for the Poopy Panda Pals, and even this did I obey though Poopy
Panda is like unto the child of my flesh.
But O ye bankers, this last command will I never obey.
Whereupon the bankers which sate in New York
sent to him another writing that said, Even so, let Poopy Panda up periscope
and fire all bow tubes, and they said, Remember, boy, we hold thy paper.
And Ben Graflis did obey.
He called unto him his animators and
directors and cameramen and writers, and his heart was sore but he dissembled
and said;
In jest you call one another brain washers,
forasmuch as you addle the heads of children five hours a week that they shall
buy our sponsors' wares. You have fulfilled the prophecies, for is it not
written in the Book of the Space Merchants that there shall be spherical
trusts? And the Poopy Panda Pals plug the Poopy Panda Magazine, and the Poopy
Panda Magazine plugs Poopy Pandaland, and Poopy Pandaland plugs the Poopy Panda
Pals. You have asked of the Motivational Research boys how we shall hook the
little bastards and they have told ye, and ye have done it. You identify the
untalented kid viewers with the talented kid performers, you provide in Otto
Clodd a bumbling father image to be derided, you furnish in Jackie Whipple an
idealized big brother for the boys and a sex-fantasy for the more precocious
girls. You flatter the cans off the viewers by ever saying to them that they
shall rule the twenty-first century, nor mind
C. Af. Kornbluth
43
that
those who shall in good sooth come to power are doing their homework and not
watching television programs. You have created a liturgy of opening hymn and closing
benediction, and over all hovers the spirit of Poopy Panda urging and coaxing
the viewers to buy our sponsors' wares.
And Ben Graffis breathed a great breath and
looked them not in the eye and said to them, Were it not a better thing for
Poopy Panda to coax and urge no more, but to command as he were a god?
And the animators and directors and cameramen
and writers were sore amazed and they said one to the other, This
is the bleeding end, and the bankers which sit in New York have flipped their
wigs. And one which was an old animator said to Ben Graffis, trembling, O chief,
never would I have stolen for thee Poopy Panda from the Winnie the Pooh
illustrations back in twenty-nine had I known this was in the cards, and Ben
Graffis fired him.
Whereupon another which was a director said
to Ben Graffis, O chief, the thing can be done with a two-week buildup, and Ben
Graffis put his hands over his face and said, Let it be so.
And it came to pass that on
the Friday after the two-week buildup, in the closing quarter-hour of the Poopy
Panda Pals, there was a special film combining five and animated action as they
were one.
And in the special film did Poopy Panda
appear en-haloed, and the talented kid performers did do him worship, and Otto
Clodd did trip over his feet whilst kneeling, and Jackie Whipple did urge in
manly and sincere wise that all the Poopy Panda Pals out there in
television-land do likewise, and the enhaloed Poopy Panda did say in his
lovable growly voice, Poop-poop-poopy.
And adoration ascended from thirty-seven
million souls.
And it came to pass that Ben Graffis went
into his office with his animators and cameramen and directors and writers
after the show and said to them, It was definitely a TV first, and he did go to
the bar.
44 THE ADVENT ON CHANNEL TWELVE
Whereupon one which was a
director looked at Who sate behind the desk that was
the desk of Ben Graffis and he said to Ben Graffis, O chief, it is a great gag
but how did the special effects boys manage the halo?
And Ben Graffis was sore amazed at Who sate
behind his desk and he and they all did crowd about and make as if to poke him,
whereupon He in His lovable growly voice did say, Poop-poop-poopy, and they
were not.
And certain unclean ones which had gone
before turned unbelieving from their monitors and said, Holy Gee, this is
awful. And one which was an operator of marionettes turned to his manager and
said, Pal, if Graffis gets this off the ground we're dead. Whereat a great and
far-off voice was heard, saying, Poop-poop-poopy, and it was
even so; and the days of Poopy Panda were long in the land.
Filtered
for error, Jan. 18th 36 P.P. Synod on Filtration & Infiltration O. Clodd,
P.P.P. J. Whipple, P.P.P.
ALFRED BESTER
Alfred Bester occupies a chair of honor on Holiday's writing staff. He has to his credit countless
radio scripts and a bright and astonishing novel of today's television world
called Who He? Almost the only first-rate television play on
a science fiction theme—"Murder and the Android"—came from his brain,
and so did the remarkable, the trail-blazing, the award-winning—in a word, the
unique The Demolished Man. He does everything, you see. And he has a
touch of his own. When it comes to a time-travel story, most science fiction
writers may content themselves with traveling to the future, or to the past, or
perhaps sidewise to the parallel worlds of "if" that lie around us.
Not Bester. He goes in a direction
discovered by himself; and thus it is that he takes us
along on this strange—
Disappearing Act
This
one wasn't the last war or a war to end war. They called it the War for the
American Dream. General Carpenter struck that note and sounded it constantly.
There are fighting generals (vital to an
army), political generals (vital to an administration), and public relations
generals (vital to a war). General Carpenter was a master of public relations.
Forthright and Foursquare, he had ideals as high and as understandable as the
mottoes on money. In the mind of America he was the army, the administration, the nation's shield and sword and stout
right arm. His ideal was the American Dream.
"We are not fighting for money, for power, or for 45 world
domination," General Carpenter announced at the Press Association dinner.
"We are fighting
solely for the American Dream," he said to the 137th Congress.
"Our aim is not
aggression or the reduction of nations to slavery," he said at the West
Point Annual Officer's Dinner.
"We are fighting for the meaning of
civilization," he told the San Francisco Pioneers' Club.
"We are struggling for
the ideal of civilization; for culture, for poetry, for the Only Things Worth Preserving," he said at the Chicago Wheat Pit
Festival.
"This is a war for
survival," he said. "We are not fighting for ourselves, but for our
dreams; for the Better Things in Life which must not disappear from the face of
the earth."
America fought. General
Carpenter asked for one hundred million men. The army was given one hundred
million men. General Carpenter asked for ten thousand H-Bombs. Ten thousand
H-Bombs were delivered and dropped. The enemy also dropped ten thousand H-Bombs
and destroyed most of America's cities.
"We must dig in against the hordes of
barbarism," General Carpenter said. "Give me a thousand engineers."
One thousand engineers were
forthcoming, and a hundred cities were dug and hollowed out beneath the
rubble.
"Give me five hundred sanitation
experts, three hundred traffic managers, two hundred air-conditioning experts,
one hundred city managers, one thousand communication chiefs, seven hundred
personnel experts . .."
The list of General Carpenter's demand for
technical experts was endless. America did not know how to supply them.
"We must become a nation of
experts," General Carpenter informed the National Association of American
Universities. "Every man and woman must be a specific tool for a specific
job, hardened and sharpened by your training and education to win the fight for
the American Dream."
"Our Dream," General Carpenter said
at the Wall Street Bond Drive Breakfast, "is at one with the gentle
Greeks of Athens, with the noble Romans of ... er ... Rome. It is a dream of the Better Things in Life. Of music and art and poetry and culture. Money is only a
weapon to be used in the fight for this dream. Ambition is only a ladder to
climb to this dream. Ability is only a tool to shape this dream."
Wall Street applauded. General Carpenter
asked for one hundred and fifty billion dollars, fifteen hundred ambitious
dollar-a-year men, three thousand able experts in mineralogy, petrology, mass
production, chemical warfare and air-traffic time study. They were delivered.
The country was in high gear. General Carpenter had only to press a button and
an expert would be delivered.
In March of a.d. 2112 the war came to a climax and the
American Dream was resolved, not on any one of the seven fronts where millions
of men were locked in bitter combat, not in any of the staff headquarters or
any of the capitals of the warring nations, not in any of the production
centers spewing forth arms and supplies, but in Ward T of the United States
Army Hospital buried three hundred feet below what had once been St. Albans,
New York.
Ward T was something of a mystery at St.
Albans. Like any army hospital, St. Albans was organized with specific wards
reserved for specific injuries. All right arm amputees were gathered in one
ward, all left arm amputees in another. Radiation burns, head injuries,
eviscerations, secondary gamma poisonings and so on were each assigned their
specific location in the hospital organization. The Army Medical Corps had
designated nineteen classes of combat injury which included every possible kind
of damage to brain and tissue. These used up letters A to S. What, then, was in
Ward T?
No one knew. The doors were double locked. No
visitors were permitted to enter. No patients were permitted to leave.
Physicians were seen to arrive and depart. Their perplexed expressions
stimulated the wildest speculations but revealed nothing. The nurses who ministered
to Ward T were questioned eagerly but they were close-mouthed.
There were dribs and drabs of information,
unsatisfying and self-contradictory. A charwoman asserted that she had been in
to clean up and there had been no one in the ward. Absolutely
no one. Just two dozen beds and nothing else.
Had the beds been slept in? Yes. They were rumpled, some of them. Were there
signs of the ward being in use? Oh yes. Personal things on
the tables and so on. But dusty, kind of. Like they hadn't been used in a long time.
Public opinion decided it
was a ghost ward. For spooks only.
But a night orderly
reported passing the locked ward and hearing singing from within. What kind of
singing? Foreign language, like. What language? The
orderly couldn't say. Some of the words sounded like... well, like: Cow dee on us eager tour...
Public opinion started to run a fever and
decided it was an alien ward. For spies only.
St. Albans enlisted the help of the kitchen
staff and checked the food trays. Twenty-four trays went in to Ward T three
times a day. Twenty-four came out. Sometimes the returning trays were emptied.
Most times they were untouched.
Public opinion built up
pressure and decided that Ward T was a racket. It was an informal club for
goldbricks and staff grafters who caroused within. Cow de on us eager tour
indeed!
For gossip, a hospital can
put a small town sewing circle to shame with ease, but sick people are easily
goaded into passion by trivia. It took just three months for idle speculation
to turn into downright fury. In January, 2112, St. Albans was a sound,
well-run hospital. By March, 2112, St. Albans was in a
ferment, and the psychological unrest found its way into the official
records. The percentage of recoveries fell off. Malingering set in. Petty
infractions increased. Mutinies flared. There was a staff shake-up. It did no
good. Ward T was inciting the patients to riot. There was another shake-up, and
another, and still the unrest fumed.
The news finally reached General Carpenter's
desk through official channels.
"In our fight for the
American Dream," he said, "we must not ignore those who have already
given of themselves. Send me a Hospital Administration expert."
The expert was delivered. He could do nothing
to heal St. Albans. General Carpenter read the reports and broke him.
"Pity," said
General Carpenter, "is the first ingredient of
civilization. Send me a Surgeon General."
A Surgeon General was delivered. He could not
break the fury of St. Albans and General Carpenter broke him. But by this time
Ward T was being mentioned in the dispatches.
"Send me," General Carpenter said,
"the expert in charge of Ward T."
St. Albans sent a doctor, Captain Edsel
Dimmock. He was a stout young man, already bald, only three years out of
medical school but with a fine record as an expert in psychotherapy. General
Carpenter liked experts. He liked Dimmock. Dimmock adored the general as the
spokesman for a culture which he had been too specially trained to seek up to
now, but which he hoped to enjoy after the war was won.
"Now look here, Dimmock," General
Carpenter began. "We're all of us tools, today—sharpened and hardened to
do a specific job. You know our motto: A job for everyone and everyone on the
job. Somebody's not on the job at Ward T and we've got to kick him out. Now, in
the first place, what the hell is Ward T?"
Dimmock stuttered and fumbled. Finally he
explained that it was a special ward set up for special combat cases. Shock cases.
"Then you do have patients in the ward?"
"Yes, sir. Ten women and fourteen
men."
Carpenter brandished a sheaf of reports.
"Says here the St. Albans patients claim nobody's in Ward T."
Dimmock was shocked. That was untrue, he
assured the general.
"All right, Dimmock. So you've got your
twenty-four crocks in there. Their job's to get well. Your job's to cure them.
What the hell's upsetting the hospital about that?"
"W-Well, sir. Perhaps it's because we keep them locked
up."
"You keep Ward T locked?"
"Yes, sir." "Why?"
"To keep the patients
in, General Carpenter." "Keep 'em in? What d'you mean? Are they trying to get out? They violent, or something?" "No,
sir. Not violent."
"Dimmock, I don't like your attitude.
You're acting damned sneaky and evasive. And I'll tell you something else I
don't like. That T classification. I checked with a
Filing Expert from the Medical Corps and there is no T classification. What the
hell are you up to at St. Albans?"
"W-Well, sir. .. We invented the T classification.
It ... They ... They're rather special cases, sir. We don't know what to do
about them or how to handle them. W-We've been trying to keep it quiet until
we've worked out a modus operandi, but it's brand new, General Carpenter. Brand new!" Here the expert in Dimmock triumphed over
discipline. "It's sensational. It'll make medical history, by God! It's
the biggest damned thing ever."
"What is it, Dimmock? Be specific."
"Well, sir, they're shock cases. Blanked out. Almost catatonic. Very little respiration. Slow pulse. No response."
"I've seen thousands of shock cases like
that," Carpenter grunted. "What's so unusual?"
"Yes, sir. So far it sounds like the standard Q or R
classification. But here's something unusual. They don't eat and they don't
sleep."
"Never?"
"Some of them
never."
"Then why don't they die?"
"We don't know. The metabolism cycle's
broken, but only on the anabolism side. Catabolism continues. In other words,
sir, they're eliminating waste products but they're not taking anything in. They're eliminating fatigue poisons and rebuilding worn tissue, but
without sleep. God knows how. It's fantastic."
"That why you've got them locked up?
Mean to say ... D'you suspect them of stealing food and cat naps somewhere
else?"
"N-No, sir." Dimmock looked shamefaced. "I don't
know how to tell you this, General Carpenter. I... We lock them up because of the real mystery. They ... Well, they disappear."
"They what?"
"They
disappear, sir. Vanish. Right before your eyes."
"The hell you say."
"I do say, sir. They'll be sitting on a
bed or standing around. One minute you see them, the next minute you don't.
Sometimes there's two dozen in Ward T. Other times none. They disappear and
reappear without rhyme or reason. That's why we've got the ward locked, General
Carpenter. In the entire history of combat and combat injury there's never been
a case like this before. We don't know how to handle it."
"Bring me three of
those cases," General Carpenter said.
Nathan Riley ate French toast, eggs benedict;
consumed two quarts of brown ale, smoked a John Drew, belched delicately and
arose from the breakfast table. He nodded quietly to Gentleman Jim Corbett, who
broke off his conversation with Diamond Jim Brady to intercept him on the way
to the cashier's desk.
"Who
do you like for the pennant this year, Nat?" Gentleman Jim inquired.
"The Dodgers,"
Nathan Riley answered.
"They've got no
pitching."
"They've got Snider and Furillo and
Campanella. They'll take the pennant this year, Jim. I'll bet they take it
earlier than any team ever did. By September 13th.
Make a note. See if I'm right."
"You're always right,
Nat," Corbett said.
Riley
smiled, paid his check, sauntered out into the street and caught a horsecar
bound for Madison Square Garden. He got off at the corner of 50th and Eighth
Avenue and walked upstairs to a handbook office over a radio repair shop. The
bookie glanced at him, produced an envelope and counted out fifteen thousand
dollars.
"Rocky Marciano by a TKO over Roland La
Starza in the eleventh," he said. "How the hell do you call them so
accurate, Nat?"
"That's
the way I make a living," Riley smiled. "Are
you making book on the elections?"
"Eisenhower twelve to
five.
Stevenson----------------------- "
"Never mind Adlai." Riley placed twenty thousand
dollars on
the counter. "I'm backing Ike. Get this down
for me."
He left the handbook office and went to his
suite in the Waldorf where a tall, thin young man was waiting for him
anxiously.
"Oh yes," Nathan
Riley said. "You're Ford, aren't you? Harold Ford?"
"Henry Ford, Mr. Riley."
"And you need
financing for that machine in your bicycle shop. What's it called?"
"I call it an Ipsimobile, Mr. Riley."
"Hmmm. Can't say I like that name. Why not call it
an automobile?"
"That's a wonderful suggestion, Mr.
Riley. I'll certainly take it."
"I like you, Henry.
You're young, eager, adaptable. I believe in your
future and I believe in your automobile. I'll invest two hundred thousand
dollars in your company."
Riley wrote a check and ushered Henry Ford
out. He glanced at his watch and suddenly felt impelled to go back and look
around for a moment. He entered his bedroom, undressed, put on a gray shirt and
gray slacks. Across the pocket of the shirt were large blue letters: U.S.A.H.
He locked the bedroom door and disappeared.
He reappeared in Ward T of the United States
Army Hospital in St. Albans, standing alongside his bed which was one of
twenty-four fining the walls of a long, light steel barracks. Before he could
draw another breath, he was seized by three pairs of hands. Before he could
struggle, he was shot by a pneumatic syringe and poleaxed by XVi cc of sodium thiomorphate.
"We've got one," someone said.
"Hang around," someone else
answered. "General Carpenter said he wanted three."
After Marcus Junius Brutus
left her bed, Lela Machan clapped her hands. Her slave women entered the
chamber and prepared her bath. She bathed, dressed, scented herself and
breakfasted on Smyrna figs, rose oranges and a flagon of Lacrima ChristL Then
she smoked a cigarette and ordered her fitter.
The gates of her house were crowded as usual
by adoring hordes from the Twentieth Legion. Two centurions removed her
chair-bearers from the poles of the litter and bore her on their stout
shoulders. Lela Machan smiled. A young man in a sapphire-blue cloak thrust
through the mob and ran toward her. A knife flashed in his hand. Lela braced
herself to meet death bravely.
"Lady!" he cried. "Lady Lela!"
He slashed his left arm with the knife and
let the crimson blood stain her robe.
"This blood of mine is the least I have
to give you," he cried.
Lela touched his forehead gently.
"Silly boy," she murmured. "Why?"
"For love of you, my lady."
"You will be admitted tonight at
nine," Lela whispered. He stared at her until she laughed. "I promise
you. What is your name, pretty boy?"
"Ben Hur."
"Tonight
at nine, Ben Hur."
The fitter moved on. Outside the forum,
Julius Caesar passed in hot argument with Marcus Antonius, Antony. When he saw
the litter he motioned sharply to the centurions, who stopped at once. Caesar
swept back the curtains and stared at Lela, who regarded him languidly.
Caesar's face twitched.
"Why?" he asked hoarsely. "I
have begged, pleaded, bribed, wept, and all without forgiveness. Why, Lela?
Why?"
"Do you remember Boadicea?" Lela murmured.
"Boadicea? Queen of
the Britons? Good God, Lela, what can she mean to our love? I did not
love Boadicea. I merely defeated her in battle."
"And killed her, Caesar."
"She
poisoned herself, Lela."
"She was my mother,
Caesar!" Suddenly Lela pointed her finger at Caesar. "Murderer.
You will be punished. Beware the Ides of March, Caesar!"
Caesar recoiled in horror. The mob of
admirers that had gathered around Lela uttered a shout of approval. Amidst a
rain of rose petals and violets she continued on her way across the Forum to
the Temple of the Vestal Virgins where she abandoned her adoring suitors and
entered the sacred temple.
Before the altar she genuflected, intoned a
prayer, dropped a pinch of incense on the altar flame and disrobed. She
examined her beautiful body reflected in a silver mirror, then experienced a
momentary twinge of homesickness. She put on a gray blouse and a gray pair of
slacks. Across the pocket of the blouse was lettered U.S.A.H.
She smiled once at the altar and disappeared.
She reappeared in Ward T of the United States
Army Hospital where she was instantly felled by IV2 cc sodium thiomorphate injected subcutaneously by a pneumatic syringe.
"That's two," somebody said.
"One more to go."
George Hanmer paused
dramatically and stared around ... at
the opposition benches, at the Speaker on the woolsack, at the silver mace on
a crimson cushion before the Speaker's chair. The entire House of Parliament,
hypnotized by Hanmer's fiery oratory, waited breathlessly for him to
continue.
"I can say no more," Hanmer said at
last. His voice was choked with emotion. His face was blanched and grim.
"I will fight for this bill at the beachheads. I will fight in the cities,
the towns, the fields and the hamlets. I will fight for this bill to the death
and, God willing, I will fight for it after death. Whether this be a challenge or a prayer, let the consciences of the right
honorable gentlemen determine; but of one thing I am sure and determined:
England must own the Suez Canal."
Hanmer sat down. The House exploded. Through
the cheering and applause he made his way out into the division lobby where Gladstone, Canning and Peel stopped him to shake his hand.
Lord Palmerston eyed him coldly, but Pam was shouldered aside by
Disraeli who limped up, all enthusiasm, all admiration.
"We'll have a bite at
Tattersall's," Dizzy said. "My car's waiting."
Lady Beaconfield was in the
Rolls Royce outside the Houses of Parliament. She pinned a primrose on Dizzy's
lapel and patted Hanmer's cheek affectionately.
"You've come a long way from the
schoolboy who used to bully Dizzy, Géorgie,"
she said.
Hanmer laughed. Dizzy sang: "Gaudeamus igitur.. " and Hanmer chanted the ancient scholastic song until they reached
Tattersall's. There Dizzy ordered Guinness and grilled bones while Hanmer went
upstairs in the club to change.
For no reason at all he had the impulse to go
back for a last look. Perhaps he hated to break with his past completely. He
divested himself of his surtout,
nankeen waistcoat, pepper
and salt trousers, polished Hessians and undergarments. He put on a gray shirt
and gray trousers and disappeared.
He reappeared in Ward T of the St. Albans
hospital where he was rendered unconscious by IV2 cc of sodium thiomorphate.
"That's three," somebody said.
"Take
'em to Carpenter."
So there they sat in
General Carpenters' office, PFC Nathan Riley, M/Sgt Lela Machan, and Corp/2
George Hanmer. They were in their hospital grays. They were torpid with sodium
thiomorphate.
The office had been cleared and it blazed
with blinding light. Present were experts from Espionage, Counter-Espionage,
Security and Central Intelligence. When Captain Edsel Dimmock saw the
steel-faced ruthless squad awaiting the patients and himself,
he started. General Carpenter smiled grimly.
"Didn't occur to you that we mightn't
buy your disappearance story, eh, Dimmock?"
"S-Sir?"
"I'm an expert too,
Dimmock. I'll spell it out for you. The war's going badly. Very
badly. There've been intelligence leaks. The St. Albans mess might
point to you."
"B-But they do disappear, sir. I----------------------- "
"My experts want to talk to you and your
patients about this disappearance act, Dimmock. They'll start with you."
The experts worked over Dimmock with
preconscious softeners, id releases and superego blocks. They tried every truth
serum in the books and every form of physical and mental pressure. They brought
Dimmock, squealing, to the breaking point three times, but there was nothing to
break.
"Let him stew for now," Carpenter
said. "Get on to the patients."
The experts appeared reluctant to apply
pressure to the sick men and the woman.
"For God's sake, don't be
squeamish," Carpenter raged. "We're fighting a war for civilization.
We've got to protect our ideals no matter what the price. Get to it!"
The experts from Espionage,
Counter-Espionage, Security and Central Intelligence got to it. Like three candles,
PFC Nathan Riley, M/Sgt Lela Machan and Corp/2 George Hanmer snuffed out and
disappeared. One moment they were seated in chairs surrounded by violence. The
next moment they were not.
The experts gasped. General Carpenter did the
handsome thing. He stalked to Dimmock. "Captain Dimmock, I apologize.
Colonel Dimmock, you've been promoted for making an important discovery... only what the hell does it mean? We've
got to check ourselves first."
Carpenter snapped up the intercom. "Get
me a combat-shock expert and an alienist."
The two experts entered and
were briefed. They examined the witnesses. They considered.
"You're all suffering from a mild case
of shock," the combat-shock expert said. "War jitters."
"You mean we didn't see them disappear?"
The shock expert shook his head and glanced
at the alienist who also shook his head.
"Mass illusion," the alienist said.
At that moment PFC Riley,
M/Sgt Machan and Corp/2 Hanmer reappeared. One moment they were a mass
illusion; the next, they were back sitting in their chairs surrounded by
confusion.
"Dope 'em again, Dimmock,'' Carpenter
cried. "Give 'em a gallon." He snapped up
his intercom. "I want every expert we've got. Emergency
meeting in my office at once."
Thirty-seven experts, hardened and sharpened
tools all, inspected the unconscious shock cases and discussed them for three
hours. Certain facts were obvious: This must be a new fantastic syndrome
brought on by the new and fantastic horrors of the war. As combat technique
develops, the response of victims of this technique must also take new roads.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Agreed.
This new syndrome must involve some aspects
of tele-portation... the power of
mind over space. Evidently combat shock, while destroying certain known powers
of the mind, must develop other latent powers hitherto unknown. Agreed.
Obviously, the patients must only be able to
return to the point of departure, otherwise they would not continue to return
to Ward T nor would they have returned to General Carpenter's office. Agreed.
Obviously, the patients must be able to
procure food and sleep wherever they go, since neither was required in Ward T.
Agreed.
"One small point," Colonel Dimmock
said. "They seem to be returning to Ward T less frequently. In the beginning
they would come and go every day or so. Now most of them stay away for weeks
and hardly ever return."
"Never mind
that," Carpenter said. "Where do they go?"
"Do they
teleport behind the enemy lines?" someone asked. "There's
those intelligence leaks."
"I want Intelligence to check,"
Carpenter snapped. "Is the enemy having similar difficulties with, say,
prisoners of war who appear and disappear from their POW camps? They might be
some of ours from Ward T."
"They might simply be going home,"
Colonel Dimmock suggested.
"I want Security to
check," Carpenter ordered. "Cover the home life and associations of
every one of those twenty-four disappeared. Now ... about our operations in Ward T. Colonel Dimmock has a
plan."
"We'll set up six extra beds in Ward
T," Edsel Dim-mock explained. "We'll send in six experts to live
there and observe. Information must be picked up indirectly from the patients.
They're catatonic and nonresponsive when conscious, and incapable of answering
questions when drugged."
"Gentlemen," Carpenter summed it
up. "This is the greatest potential weapon in the history of warfare. I
don't have to tell you what it can mean to us to be able to teleport an entire
army behind enemy lines. We can win the war for the American Dream in one day
if we can win this secret hidden in those shattered minds. We must win!"
The experts hustled,
Security checked, Intelligence probed. Six hardened and sharpened tools moved
into Ward T in St. Albans Hospital and slowly got acquainted with the
disappearing patients who appeared and departed less and less frequently. The
tension increased.
Security was able to report that not one case
of strange appearance had taken place in America in the past year. Intelligence
reported that the enemy did not seem to be having similar difficulties with
their own shock cases or with POWs.
Carpenter fretted.
"This is all brand new. We've got no specialists to handle it. We've got
to develop new tools." He snapped up his intercom. "Get me a
college," he said.
They got him Yale.
"I want some experts
in mind over matter. Develop them," Carpenter ordered. Yale
at once introduced three graduate courses in Thaumaturgy, Extra Sensory Perception
and Telekinesis.
The first break came when
one of the Ward T experts requested the assistance of another expert. He wanted
a Lapidary.
"What the hell for?" Carpenter
wanted to know. "He picked up a reference to a gem stone," Colonel
Dimmock
explained. "He can't relate it to anything in his experience. He's a
personnel specialist."
"And he's not supposed to,"
Carpenter said approvingly. "A job for every man and
every man on the job." He flipped up the intercom. "Get me a
Lapidary."
An expert Lapidary was given leave of absence
from the army arsenal and asked to identify a type of diamond called Jim Brady.
He could not.
"We'll try it from another angle,"
Carpenter said. He snapped up his intercom. "Get me a Semanticist."
The Semanticist left his
desk in the War Propaganda Department but could make nothing of the words Jim
Brady. They were names to him. No more. He suggested a Genealogist.
A Genealogist was given one day's leave from
his post with the Un-American Ancestors Committee but could make nothing of the
name of Brady beyond the fact that it had been a common name in America for
five hundred years. He suggested an Archaeologist.
An Archaeologist was released from the
Cartography Division of Invasion Command and instantly identified the name
Diamond Jim Brady. It was a historic personage who had been famous in the city
of Little Old New York some time between Governor Peter Stuyvesant and Governor
Fiorello La Guardia.
"Christ!"
Carpenter marveled. "That's centuries ago. Where the hell did Nathan Riley
get that? You'd better join the experts in Ward T and follow this up."
The Archaeologist followed
it up, checked his references and sent in his report. Carpenter read it and
was stunned. He called an emergency meeting of his staff of experts.
"Gentlemen," he announced,
"Ward T is something bigger than teleportation. Those shock patients are
doing something far more incredible ...
far more meaningful.
Gentlemen, they're
traveling through time."
The staff rustled uncertainly. Carpenter
nodded emphatically.
"Yes, gentlemen. Time travel is here. It has not arrived
the way we expected it... as a result
of expert research
by qualified specialists; it has come as a plague_________________ an
infection... a disease of the war... a result of combat injury to ordinary
men. Before I continue, look through these reports for documentation."
The staff read the stenciled sheets. PFC
Nathan Riley ... disappearing into
the early twentieth century in New York; M/Sgt Lela Machan ... visiting the first century in Rome;
Corp/2 George Hanmer ... journeying
into the nineteenth century in England. And all the rest of the twenty-four
patients, escaping the turmoil and horrors of modern war in the twenty-second
century by fleeing to Venice and the Doges, to Jamaica and the buccaneers, to
China and the Han Dynasty, to Norway and Eric the Red, to any place and any
time in the world.
"I needn't point out the colossal
significance of this discovery," General Carpenter pointed out.
"Think what it would mean to the war if we could send an army back in time
a week or a month or a year. We could win the war
before it started. We could protect our Dream______________ poetry
and
beauty and the fine culture of America...
from barbarism without ever endangering it."
The staff tried to grapple with the problem
of winning battles before they started.
"The situation is complicated by the
fact that these men and women of Ward T are non compos. They may or may not know how they do what
they do, but in any case they're incapable of communicating with the experts
who could reduce this miracle to method. It's for us to find the key. They
can't help us."
The hardened and sharpened specialists looked
around uncertainly.
"We'll
need experts," General Carpenter said.
The staff relaxed. They were on familiar ground again.
"We'll need a Cerebral Mechanist, a
Cyberneticist, a Psychiatrist, an Anatomist, an Archaeologist and a first-rate
Historian. They'll go into that ward and they won't come out until their job is
done. They must get the technique of time travel."
The first five experts were
easy to draft from other war departments. All America was a tool chest of
hardened and sharpened specialists. But there was trouble locating a
first-class Historian until the Federal Penitentiary operated with the army
and released Dr. Bradley Scrim from his twenty years at hard labor. Dr. Scrim
was acid and jagged. He had held the chair of Philosophic History at a Western
university until he spoke his mind about the war for the American Dream. That
got him the twenty years hard.
Scrim was still intransigent, but induced to
play ball by the intriguing problem of Ward T.
"But I'm not an expert," he
snapped. "In this benighted nation of experts, I'm the last singing
grasshopper in the ant heap."
Carpenter snapped up the intercom. "Get
me an Entomologist," he said.
"Don't bother,"
Scrim said. "I'll translate. You're a nest of ants... all working and toiling and specializing. For
what?"
"To preserve the American Dream,"
Carpenter answered hotly. "We're fighting for poetry and culture and
education and the Finer Things in Life."
"You're fighting to preserve me,"
Scrim said. "That's what I've devoted my life to. And what do you do with
me? Put me in jail."
"You were convicted of enemy
sympathizing and fellow-traveling," Carpenter said.
"I was convicted of believing in the
American Dream," Scrim said. "Which is another way of saying I had a
mind of my own."
Scrim was also intransigent in Ward T. He
stayed one night, enjoyed three good meals, read the reports, threw them down
and began hollering to be let out.
"There's a job for
everyone and everyone must be on the job," Colonel Dimmock told him.
"You don't come out until you've got the secret of time travel."
"There's no secret I can get," Scrim said.
"Do they travel in time?"
"Yes and no."
"The
answer has to be one or the other. Not both.
You're evading the--------------- "
"Look," Scrim
interrupted wearily. "What are you an expert in?"
"Psychotherapy."
"Then how the hell can
you understand what I'm talking about? This is a philosophic concept. I tell
you there's no secret here that the army can use. There's no secret any group
can use. It's a secret for individuals only."
"I don't understand you."
"I didn't think you would. Take me to Carpenter."
They took Scrim to Carpenter's office where
he grinned at the general malignantly, looking for all the
world like a red-headed, underfed devil.
"I'll need ten
minutes," Scrim said. "Can you spare them out of your tool box?"
Carpenter nodded.
"Now listen carefully. I'm going to give
you all the clues to something vast, s6 strange, so new, that it will need all
your fine edge to cut into it."
Carpenter looked expectant.
"Nathan Riley goes back in time to the
early twentieth century. There he lives the life of his fondest dreams. He's a
big-time gambler, the friend of Diamond Jim Brady and others. He wins money
betting on events because he always knows the outcome in advance. He won money
betting on Eisenhower to win an election. He won money betting on a prize
fighter named Marciano to beat another prize fighter named La Starza. He made
money investing in an automobile company owned by Henry Ford. There are the
clues. They mean anything to you?"
"Not without a Sociological
Analyst," Carpenter answered. He reached for the intercom.
"Don't bother. I'll explain. Let's try
some more clues. Lela Machan, for example. She escapes
into the Roman empire where she lives the life of her
dreams as a femme
jatale. Every
man loves her. Julius Caesar, Brutus, the entire Twentieth Legion, a man named
Ben Hur. Do you see the fallacy?"
"No."
"She also smokes cigarettes."
"Well?" Carpenter asked after a pause.
"I continue," Scrim said.
"George escapes into England of the nineteenth century where he's a
Member of Parliament and the friend of Gladstone, Canning and
Disraeli,
who takes him riding in his Rolls Royce. Do you know
what a Rolls Royce is?" "No."
"It
was the name of an automobile." "So?"
"You
don't understand yet?" "No."
Scrim
paced the floor in exaltation. "Carpenter, this is a bigger discovery than
teleportation or time travel. This can be the salvation of man. I don't think
I'm exaggerating. Those two dozen shock victims in Ward T have been H-Bombed
into something so gigantic that it's no wonder your specialists and experts
can't understand it."
"What
the hell's bigger than time travel, Scrim?"
"Listen to this, Carpenter. Eisenhower
did not run for office until the middle of the twentieth century. Nathan Riley
could not have been a friend of Diamond Jim Brady's and bet on Eisenhower to
win an election . ..
not simultaneously. Brady was dead a quarter of a
century before Ike was President. Marciano defeated La Starza fifty years after
Henry Ford started his automobile company. Nathan Riley's time traveling is
full of similar anachronisms."
Carpenter
looked puzzled.
"Lela
Machan could not have had Ben Hur for a lover. Ben Hur never existed in Rome.
He never existed at all. He was a character in a novel. She couldn't have
smoked. They didn't have tobacco then. You see? More anachronisms.
Disraeli could never have taken George Hanmer for a ride in a Rolls Royce
because automobiles weren't invented until long after Disraeli's death."
"The
hell you say," Carpenter exclaimed. "You mean they're all
lying?"
"No.
Don't forget, they don't need sleep. They don't need food. They're not lying.
They're going back in time all right. They're eating and sleeping back
there."
"But
you just said their stories don't stand up. They're full of anachronisms."
"Because they travel back into a time of their own imagination. Nathan Riley has his own picture of what
America was like in the early twentieth century. It's faulty and anachronistic
because he's no scholar; but it's real for him. He can live there. The same is
true for the others."
Carpenter goggled.
"The concept is almost beyond
understanding. These people have discovered how to turn dreams into reality.
They know how to enter their dream realities. They can stay there, live there,
perhaps forever. My God, Carpenter, this is your American dream. It's miracle-working, immortality, Godlike
creation, mind over matter... It must
be explored. It must be studied. It must be given to the world."
"Can you do it, Scrim?"
"No, I cannot. I'm a historian. I'm
noncreative, so it's beyond me. You need a poet... a man who understands the creation of dreams. From creating
dreams on paper or canvas it oughtn't to be too difficult to take the step to
creating dreams in actuality."
"A poet? Are you serious?"
"Certainly I'm serious. Don't you know
what a poet is? You've been telling us for five years that this war is being
fought to save the poets."
"Don't be facetious, Scrim, I—"
"Send a poet into Ward T. He'll learn
how they do it. He's the only man who can. A poet is half doing it anyway.
Once he learns, he can teach your psychologists and anatomists. Then they can
teach us; but the poet is the only man who can interpret between those shock
cases and your experts."
"I believe you're right, Scrim."
"Then don't delay, Carpenter. Those
patients are returning to this world less and less frequently. We've got to
get at that secret before they disappear forever. Send a poet to Ward T."
Carpenter snapped up his intercom. "Send
me a poet," he said.
He waited, and waited ... and waited ... while America sorted feverishly through its two hundred and
ninety millions of hardened and sharpened experts, its specialized tools to
defend the American Dream of beauty and poetry and the Better Things in Life.
He waited for them to find a poet, not understanding the endless delay, the
fruitless search; not understanding why Bradley Scrim laughed and laughed and
laughed at this final, fatal disappearance.
ELISABETH MANN BORGESE
Star in its history was able to draw on the services of a clear majority of
the best writers in the science fiction field; but there were, too, a sizable
number of first-rate contributions by "mainstream" writers, drawn to
science fiction because they had something to say that could not be said
elsewhere. There were half a dozen of these—Gerald Kersh, Jessamyn West, one or
two who elected the protection of pen names— and there is Mrs. Borgese, who is
not only the daughter of one of the greatest writers of all, but in her own
right a talented artist with words. Have no doubt of this; discover it for
yourself in—
Twin's Wail
When
he first said, "It is not Martha's fault, why, any Martha would have done
it; he got her to be that way; I too had a Martha like that," people
simply thought he was crazy. But after he had pieced the facts together,
patiently and humbly, they made sense. People began to wonder about the sense
they made and wanted to hope for the best, wish them well, Phil and Martha,
whoever they were. Somehow it seemed the toll was paid; what for, no one could
quite discern, but a toll was paid. They could go ahead now, Phil and Martha.
Vanyambadi,
April 24, 1918. Today James christened them. Willoughby and
Theophil. Willoughby, after Dad.
"Willy" just suits him, the cute thing. And if one is Willy, it is
nice that the other be Philly. We thought of Philip, too; but, come to think of
it, it doesn't make much sense, in our family. "Theophil" augurs
well. Let him be dear to God.
June 6.
Will
always has to be on the left side, Phil always on the
right, in the crib and in the buggy too. If you put them the
other
way, they'll cry. It's really easier that way to tell them apart. Dr. Edgecomb
says to separate them. They would grow better, he says. But it can't be done.
They'll cry. Will keeps his left arm under his head, Phil the right one. And
when people stare at them—they have never seen a pair of twins here; they stare
at them as if they were monsters—they both start crying at the same time. And
when I rock the buggy they are quiet and begin to suck their thumbs: Will the
right one, Phil the left. It's always like that. One is always the mirror image
of the other.
July
24.
The
kind of service you've got to put up with! I am frankly scared of Yoshi, but if
I fire her the next one may be worse yet. Yoshi says they want to be two but
the dasus prevent it. Chewing a parrot feather for a toothpick, she says if
they cannot be two they'll bring on the earthquake, a terrible earthquake.
November
11.
They
both spat out their spinach. They have the same likes and the same dislikes.
They wet their diapers at the same time. Woe, if I changed Phil without
changing Will! And Will must always be first.
May
1.
Yoshi
says, and she wears an old stocking of mine on her head for a turban, help them be two. She says: Do shave Will's hair and
sacrifice it to Shiva-with-the-Four-Arms that he sever
them into two times two. Burn Will's hair. But Phil's hair should be done up
with cow dung. That will help them be two.
November
9.
Will's
cold is hanging on. We still kept him indoors today. He's rather cross and a bit run down. Got himself badly
scratched up, along the left leg, while playing in his playpen with some train
tracks. When Phil came home I'll be darned if he hadn't his leg scratched up too. The right one. He had
crawled off towards the garden fence and fallen against the barbed wire.
December
13.
Yoshi
said, in a magical singsong voice not her own: Don't bathe them in water, which
makes for sameness. Will should be rubbed with the fat of a hilsa, but for Phil
you should get the twice-chewed hay of a sacred cow and boil it in palm oil,
with leaves of sandalwood and minusops. That you should rub on Phil. It will
make them different.
February 12.
There
is a Peter Toledo and a Peter MacGregor among the boys down at the Mission
Nursery. Peter Toledo is small and dark and flabby, and Peter MacGregor is tall
and blond and springy. They haven't got a thing in common but their name. And that Phil is picking on Peter Toledo and Will is bothering
Peter MacGregor. Today Phil took Peter Toledo's cookies, up in the
dining room, and bit him when he cried, while Will kicked Peter MacGregor off
the swing, down in the backyard, and rocked himself wildly and burst with
laughter when he saw that Peter had got hurt.
Christmas.
It
seems so strange, these two children who are really only one. And you don't
know where one ends and the other begins. Will is for Phil, Phil is for Will,
and there seems to be no room for anybody else. The space between them seems
different from the space around, permeated by invisible communications. I've
looked it up in the books, and it seems to be all perfectly normal the way it
is. James says each one has a soul, each one of them is alone before God. But
sometimes I wonder.
May 5.
Phil
has grown faster than Will. He is almost an inch taller now. But Will is
getting so bossy. Phil—"My Phil"— he has to do everything just the
way Will wants him to. Phil is such a good boy. He does not mind. This
morning Will wetted Phil's bed. I know he did, because
Phil's bed was dry when I picked him up for his bath. But Will said: "Phil
made wettywetty in his beddy. Bad Phil." And Phil
looked at us so sorrowfully with guilty eyes. I really think he believed
he did it.
Halloween.
Yoshi
said: Their karmas are two. They are two. She sat on a stool by the bead
curtain front door, spreading her shawl over Will and Phil on her sides, and
she held their hands—Will's left, Phil's right—joined on her lap. The
heart and
the head line will never meet on Will's palm; he's going to be an impulsive
boy. Phil will be pensive. See, where they join, the head and the heart line,
in one. This swelling shows fortune and foresight. The life line is long but
the mountain of love is shrivelled; dimpled and broken his pride and reliance.
Will too shows good fortune but is reckless and wild. The field of Dishnana
augurs abundance, but the mountain of love is like Phil's, just like Phil's,
and his life line is cut through by Asuras. Their karmas are two, said Yoshi.
Palm Sunday.
I
gave Phil a bunny with floppy ears, but he cried till Will got one just like
it. I gave Willy a set of jinglebells but he broke them in two, half for him,
half for Philly. I gave them a team of galloping horses hitched to a covered
wagon. They cried they did not want one but two. But there wasn't another one,
not in all of Vanyambadi. So they cried and they said: We are scared of it,
take it away!
This is as far as she got. Poor
mother. Here her hand was halted.
Had she listened to Yoshi, perhaps the earth
would have tarried. And we were to leave anyway, for Dad had been called to the
Christ Church in Chicago. But the earth did not wait. God knows why it was sore
at me and my Will.
There is not much I can remember. A sulky day of frightening colors. The kitten vomited and
mewed, and the sheep dog had his tail between his legs. Yoshi was off to the
village. Rice wine, too much rice wine, I remember they said. Has anybody ever
seen a sunset like this, they said. A cloud with a golden rim was hovering over
the horizon like a monster. Then I felt dizzy, trying to hold myself on all
fours, and sick to my stomach. When it was over, the house had crumbled and the
yard was gaping and smoking and the sheep dog was howling at the ruins and Dad
took me in his arms and kissed me and carried me away. Mother had gone to
Heaven, he said, and Will had gone with her so she wouldn't be lonely, but
Philly and Daddy would go to Chicago. The stars had long tails and swirled over
the sky through the ship's bull's eye.
Poor father. Had he listened to me, we might have found Will, for he was not in
Heaven. I heard his voice calling in the night and wept to the nurse who came
to soothe me. "My Will is crying, my Will wants
me." I heard him often and knew him to be sick and looking
for us. Phil is missing Will so, they said.
There
was a mirror in the dressing room at the Nursery School in Chicago. I looked at
it, while the teacher buttoned up my snowsuit, and called, overjoyed,
"There is my Will." The other children too began to point at their
selves in the mirror and shouted names and jumped and laughed. There is another
Dick. Where is the other Helen? My Tommy! Many a one fancied a twin. It was a
game like another. Thus my Will faded to fantasy and then was forgotten. He was
put away with the old toys for new ones.
That was thirty years ago.
CHICAGO
TRIBUNE, December 4, 1952. AUTHOR SLAIN IN APARTMENT BY
DRUNKEN WIFE. Rome, December 3. William Sailor, thirty-four-year-old
Anglo-Indian, was murdered this afternoon in his apartment in Via Sistina.
Apparently he was attacked by his wife, the former Martha Egan, a television
starlet, with a hunting knife. The woman, who was found to be doped and drunk,
stabbed his left cheek and wounded his left arm. While Sailor was staggering
and trying to regain his senses, the woman fired two shots from a pistol.
Sailor was killed instantly. Neighbors and police were brought to the scene by
the shots. Mrs. Sailor suffered a nervous breakdown. The Sailors had been heard
quarrelling several times before.
Sailor
lost all his family during the earthquake of Vanyambadi, India, in 1921. At
sixteen he joined the British Merchant Navy and led an adventurous life that
took him over most of the Asian and African coasts. After the war he settled in
Rome where he married Martha Egan in 1949. William Sailor is the author of
numerous books on travel and adventure. His best known work is a novel, No
Home for Strangers.
"Did you see that, Phil?" Robby
McNutting said over the luncheon table. "It's this morning's Trib. He looked just exactly like you. My word, I've never seen such a
likeness in all my life. Look at the forehead, generous like yours; the short
cropped hair, the questioning eyes. Must be dark, like yours.
The long straight nose, and the folds down the mouth,
deeper on one side. Look, he even draws one shoulder up like you. Your mirror image." And he handed the page to Phil.
The paper trembled in Phil's hand so he put
it down before him on the table and wiped over it with the back of his spoon as
though to flatten it, or to see whether it was really there. Jim Wilder pushed
his chair round the corner of the table, to look at the picture too, and Ted
Con-nally, on the opposite side, got up, walked round, leaned his arms on the
back of Phil's chair, and looked over his shoulder.
"Boy," Jim Wilder said, "it's
almost uncanny."
"Phil,
old fellow," Ted Connally guffawed, slapping him on the shoulder,
"how does it feel to have been murdered?"
"Oh, come on," Robby McNutting said
helpfully, "you can't tell from a telephoto. Maybe the man looked altogether
different."
Phil
kept staring at the picture and the story. "And I knew it, I knew it, I
knew it all the time," he mumbled. Then he poured down his Martini, and
McNutting's and Wilder's and what was left of Ted Connally's second, and
staggered out of the Club.
CHICAGO
TRIBUNE, December 8, 1952. MURDERESS DEFENDED BY VICTIM'S DOUBLE. Rome, December
7. Theophil Thorndike, a Chicago banker, arrived here today by plane from New
York. He claimed to be the twin brother of William Sailor who was murdered by
his wife on December 3. Thorndike said he had documents to prove the
relationship. People who knew William Sailor said the similarity to Thorndike
was astounding. Thorndike hired a lawyer to defend Mrs. Sailor and obtained her
transfer, pending trial, to a private room at the sanatorium Villa Igea.
They certainly had explained my coming. But
probably she had not listened. She was easily distracted. When I opened the
door she seemed utterly unprepared.
She
stared at me, buried her face in her hands, then
stared again, forlorn. She jerked up from the red upholstered armchair in
which she had been resting and retreated towards the red-framed window, groping
blindly backwards with her arms, always staring at me, through me, at the red
rousing wall. She leaned against the window, her palms cooling on the glass
pane. Her black open hair fell over her black shoulders. Her face was pale and
contorted. A witch condemned to the stake, a poor sick suffering girl. "Go
away," she hissed, "please go away and leave me alone."
"How do you do, Martha." The calm swing of a trained business voice
sounded utterly out of place, even to me. "I am Will's brother Phil
Thorndike. From Chicago. Didn't they tell you?"
There was not another sound to be gotten out of her. She stood there black and
twisted, her arms spread out, a barren tree against the darkling sky. A quarter
of an hour, perhaps half an hour, and night fell. I stole towards the door and
slipped out.
The next morning he brought
her roses and candies.
"Hello,
Martha, you look fine today. Had a good rest? It was cold in Chicago when I
left, you know; the wings of the plane were heavy with ice. We had a hard time
taking off. Didn't he ever tell you he had a brother? He probably didn't
remember. I couldn't either, but then I knew it even though he ceased to be
real long ago, in a certain way. Dad kept talking about him and mother, and
there were pictures and the baby book. I'll show them to you. Look, I bought a
copy of No
Home for Strangers. Started reading it. He must have been a tough guy. You know, I wanted to be a writer, too. Took a couple of courses in creative writing at college. But
then, I met—■ Martha—my wife's name was Martha too—and then I got a job
at the Morris Trust Company and went to Law School. I guess that didn't leave
much time for anything else. Why don't you try these candies? You smoke? You
know, I don't know a soul here in Rome. It's funny. But there are American bars
all over the place. Hot dogs de luxe—the Romans take them so seriously and
they're terribly fashionable. But I don't like it here. People
staring at me. 'That must be William Sailor's brother'—do I really look
so much like Will?" "Why don't you shut up?"
"Hello Martha. Feeling
better today?"
"Say, how long are you
going to hang around here?"
"Oh, Martha, I want to stay as long as
necessary. I
want to help you_________ I've
finished Will's book. Do you
like it,
Martha?"
"I
hate it. And I hate Will. I hate both of you. Oh, don't go! Please don't go
away."
Martha
wept, fitfully and fearfully. Her face on her arm on the red
polished hospital table. Her back shaking. Tears clogging her nose and choking her throat. The world,
coming to an end with each long pressed sob, vanished trembling behind the wall
of tears. The void closed in, tightening on her deluged temples, her squeezed
lungs. She wept on Phil's hand stretched to stroke soothingly her jerking
shoulders. "Poor girl," he said. "I know it. I know it all. Cry
it out. Cry it all out of your system."
She stroked his face,
blindly, gratefully.
"The
scar," she said, and had suddenly stopped weeping. "The
scar on your cheek, on your right cheek." She looked at him in new
horror.
"Nothing. An accident. A crash. Three months ago. It's all healed now."
Martha:
Good morning Phil. How nice
of you to come so early.
Phil:
Had a good rest?
Martha: Just fine. Thanks. And you?
Phil:
I got up early and
took a walk in the city.
Martha: It's a wonderful city.
Phil:
People sitting
outdoors in the cafes.
Martha: In Via Veneto.
Phil:
In December. In
Chicago it's blizzards. Martha:
And here the light is
lambent on the red stones.
Phil: You just walk for hours, just walk and get
lost. Martha: One discovery opening into another. Phil:
Don't you love it? Martha: I loved it.
Phil: How long have you been living here, Martha? Martha: Seven, almost eight years. It's almost eight
years. Phil: Met Will in Rome? Martha: At
Dermott McDermott's. Phil: You know Dermott?
Martha: Of course I do. I was staying with him, and
you know Freddy.
Phil: Freddy? It's years and years.
Martha:
He pays him ninety dollars
a month.
Phil: Just for the fun of sleeping with him.
Martha:
Freddy is a terrible mess.
Phil: I don't see what Dermott finds in him.
Martha: Sometimes he won't speak to Dermott all day.
Phil: I think he hates Dermott. I think he will kill Dermott some day.
Martha: When Dermott wants to dress up and go to the
show, Freddy won't shave and he'll hang around in dirty jeans, and he'll go out
into the street and talk to the whores.
Phil: Like and like keep good company.
Martha: He won't do a thing at home. The bathroom, always messy. He'd use up the last piece of
soap.
Phil: The last piece of toilet paper.
Martha:
But he'd never dream of
replacing it.
Phil: Never. You had to do it all.
Martha: What are you smiling at? Am I boring you? I guess I am boring you.
Phil: Not in the least, Martha.
Martha:
Will smiled, just before
that gun went off.
Phil: Smiled, just like that.
Martha: I sometimes think: You. Simply
you. You almost did it. You died. You scared me. Don't do it again. I
must be more careful. That must never happen again. Phil, I am so scared.
Phil: How did Will and Dermott get along?
Martha: At first, famously. That is, Will adored
Dermott.
Phil: And Dermott just loves being adored.
Martha: For Will, Dermott was a real writer, and artist.
Dermott had to check every comma Will wrote. Phil: Poor
Will. And he himself wasn't a real writer? Martha: Just thrillers, you know. And he said he did
not
know any
language at all. Phil: He must have known Hindi, as a child. Martha: He forgot it, and English he never learned.
Just
picked it
up from the boys in the Navy. Phil: And read a lot, I guess.
Martha: But it was not his language. And lately he started getting mixed up with Italian.
Phil:
He had no language.
Martha: It does something to your mind, he said.
Phil:
Huprooted. Kicked around in world and creeds and systems. So huprooted. All of us.
Martha: And did he show off in front of Dermott,
spending silly amounts of money, you know, and telling him how many
copies of his latest book had been sold and in how many languages it had been
translated.
Phil:
Dermott couldn't care
less.
Martha: And he said it read best in Persian, although
there were a few minor mistakes in the translation.
Phil:
That's sheer
snobbism.
Martha: I don't know why he picked up with me in the
first place; whether it was because he cared for me or whether he thought it
would hurt Dermott. You know, he was jealous of Dermott, at the same time.
Phil:
And you?
Martha: I don't know. I really don't know. He said he
was going to get me a part in his new television play. A part
written just for me. He was wonderfully like you. Don't die any more,
please don't.
Phil: It is late, Martha, and I must go. They are getting your lunch ready. Halfway decent? What shall I bring you tomorrow? Okay,
Martha, it will be marrons glaces. So long, Martha.
She is not a bad girl after all. Simple, forthright, cordial,
rather generous, by nature, underneath. Out of place
in this career. Slithered into it God knows why. What made her act so
horridly with Will?
My Martha was different. Wicked
right from the outset. A go-getter. At first
she seemed nice enough, though, and active. Pretty tall blond she was.
Dead. Destroyed. Kaputt. Won't work no more. Slipped out of my
impotent hands. And left a hard hole, hard
white hole, superimposing its Martha shape, planing into its contours whoever
wants to float up through.
The other girls at the office didn't like
her, though. Fawning on the boss and bossy on the fawns.
(That's a good one. Must tell Martha.
Which Martha?) She certainly knew what she wanted. Spun her web round me in no time. And then
the allergies. Never seemed to bother her till she had
me. But then! Endless trouble and troubled end.
Phil: Listen, Martha, what I made up yesterday on my way home: "Fawning
on the boss and bossy on the fawns." Isn't that a good one?
Martha:
Who? What?
Phil: Any one. I mean, I was thinking of my wife, when she was still working at
the office. Can you imagine. She wasn't a bit like
you: all cold and calculating.
Martha:
Just the name.
Phil: That does not create any bond.
Martha:
Maybe it does.
Phil: There are many Marthas.
Martha:
And one proto-Martha.
Phil: What difference does it make?
Martha:
There's something damned
about all Marthas.
Phil: Perhaps.
Martha:
Parents ought to be more
careful. Phil: It's their way, their luck, they impress with their chosen name.
Martha: I wish my name was------------------- . I can't think of a suit-
able name for myself; but imagine if my name
was--------- , everything would
have been different.
There's something damned about all Marthas. Phil: About mine there was, by Jove. Hell of a life. Martha: What did she do to you?
Phil: The allergies. The air-conditioned rooms and the
oxygen tents. The fumes and the moves and the fired
nurses.
Martha: if she was sick?
Phil: I couldn't accept any invitations for dinner Martha: or bring home any guests.
Phil: She'd be sick, infallibly. She called me at the office and she called me
at board meetings
Martha: and woe, if you didn't get home on time.
Phil:
She made my life
utterly impossible.
Martha: Why didn't you get rid of her?
Phil: I did. Divorce, you know, has an ugly ring in the ear of a missionary's
son
Martha:
and I think you just wanted
it like that. Some people just have to have hell at home. You know,
Phil:
Will_____
Did you run Will like that?
Martha: I don't know. I guess I was worried about him
because he took to drinking so heavily. Phil: You canceled his dinner engagements? Martha: Because I didn't want people to see him so
drunk. Phil: There's always some because Martha: because
he put both hands into the salad bowl at
the Marchesa Marchesani's Phil:
if he didn't do worse
than that Martha:
and he would argue. Did he
argue, with Dermott,
when they both were drunk? He was quite un-
bearable.
Phil:
What did they argue
about? Martha: Politics, lots of it. Imperialism.
Socialism, and all the rest.
Phil: Well. I know where Dermott stands on all
those things
Martha: and you can imagine what happened when Will
said the Indians were inferior. Phil:
Did he say that?
Martha: And the children there get blind because they
are
too lazy to drive the flies off their eyes. He
said
they
just sit there and let the flies eat their eyes.
Phil:
Maybe it's true. I
heard it too.
Martha: You know, he lived with them, street urchins,
for years, after he got lost during the earthquake —a girl named Maharata
picked him up and mothered him as best she could—and he said, if he didn't turn
out to be a mess like them it was because he had the stuff it takes to be a
man.
Phil: it's the same stuff I am made of. I can assure you.
Martha: It hasn't got anything to do with the
"social order" he said. And the British officers in India did a
wonderful job
Phil: they tried to bring the natives up to their standards: didn't he say
that?
Martha: Why, they even left their personal silver to
the Indian Officers Mess, when they quit, just to show
them
Phil:
that was undoubtedly
generous on their part.
Martha: But the Labour Government was terrible
Phil:
that wasn't exactly
what Dermott thought.
Martha: But Will, he turned literally green when you
as much as mentioned one of them. Which, after all, is rather
strange because he knew nothing about politics in the first place.
Phil:
What did he think was
wrong?
Martha: The way they betrayed the Empire, he said, was
terrible and they killed initiative at home and produced soft characters,
whereas, what you need to get along is to be tough, he said
Phil: come to think about it, that's just the way I used to feel
Martha: you've got to be tough
Phil: it was because I was so tough that I became president of the
Morris Trust Co. at thirty years of age
Martha: you thought, the real way to start a business
was to sell apples from an apple cart
Phil: I even tried to write a book about these things, you know, how tough and
self-made you've got to be
Martha: and that the New Deal was terrible
Phil: and that the government should keep off my
affairs and yours Martha: and stuff like that.
Phil: It was to be called: Keep Going West, Young Man, but I guess it was so badly written no one wanted to publish it, thank
goodness.
Martha: Why did you change your mind about these
things?
Phil: It's all stuff and nonsense: I and I and I. Did you
ever hear about a fellow named Plato? Martha: Vaguely.
Phil: My favored author at the Great Books class.
Martha: Your mind is wandering, Phil.
Phil: At the beginning, he said, there were neither
men
nor women Martha: but
some kind of funny beings Phil: male and female at once. Martha: I guess they must have had four arms Phil:
and four legs and so
on
Martha: I wonder whether they were happy that way Phil:
until, one day, a
certain rude deity split them asunder
Martha: severing boy and girl
Phil:
and they have been looking
for one another ever since.
Martha: What are you driving at, Phil?
Phil:
It's the story of
Will and me.
Martha: Split asunder, one day, by a certain rude
deity?
Phil:
A quirk of fate.
Martha:
You should have been one,
are one. Don't die
any
more, please don't die again. Phil: One case of 86 works out like
that: Twins. One
out of every 862, makes triplets; one
of every
863, quadruplets. The dickens knows why. But
that's the way it is Martha: and it had to be you Phil:
or else it might have
been one of 87 Martha:
the law upset
Phil: a false interval, a dissonant chord: it hurts my ear to trunk of it
Martha: it could not happen
Phil:
the name, of the new
Platonic God is Statistics. Martha: You
are mad, Phil,
Phil: and all that he-man stuff just to hide the half-man, you know
Martha: and you were lonely and little and scared
underneath.
It had gotten dark in the
room.
"Martha, dear, Doctor Rosselli says the
trial has been set for a month from now. He is very confident it will go all
right. He says he can drop the plea for temporary insanity—your nervous breakdown came after the fact— and base your case on
self-defense. Accidental killing in self-defense. He
says the only trouble is that there are no witnesses, and the fact that you
were doped, but he hopes to get around that. But now you should tell me
everything. The whole story. That may be very, very
helpful. Are you strong enough to tell me everything?"
"I'll
try. But it's a long story. I'll try to piece it together. Well, Will was
getting worse all the time. He drank terribly. For a certain time, he grew a
beard, and he was wearing dark glasses. The light hurt his eyes, he said. What
are you fumbling with in your pocket. Now look there,
for God's sake, dark glasses! You too! He looked terribly sick. I wanted to
take him to a doctor, but he said he knew I wanted to murder him. He
said that all the time. He whispered it into my ear at night. He developed the
strangest notions."
"What notions?"
"For
a while he always thought that he ...
stank. That was before he grew the beard. Later he didn't care any more. At
that time, he would constantly change his underwear, order that it be boiled, sniff at his shirts and jackets and pillow cases. He would
constantly get new mouth waters and tooth pastes. When there was some bad smell
somewhere—for instance, at the post office—he would say with a very loud voice,
che puzzo, what a stink! And everybody would look at
him—which is just what he wanted—for he wanted them all to know that it wasn't he. At the restaurant he would order the waiter to open the windows—I smell
the smell of sour feet, he would announce—and when the lady at the next table
protested against the draught, he said, Lady, if I were in your shoes —and I
mean what I say, he added—I would not protest against a little fresh air. But
some people don't seem to notice when they . . . because the smell goes away:
it doesn't go up into your own nose. He had often noticed that, he said. It was
quite embarrassing."
"What's there to
giggle about, Martha? Poor Will."
"And
when I opened the door to his room, he said, why don't you come in, does it
stink here? But, as I said, it got worse and worse. He stayed up all night,
trying to work. And then he would sleep for days on end. He hollered at me,
even when there were other people, and he threw things at me. The telephone. He kept it unplugged most of the time. And if
I forgot to unplug it and it rang, he picked it up and cooed 'googlegooglegoo'
into it, and then he hit me over the head with it."
"He
would go to any length to get you to be what you were not."
"Well,
I guess, I got mean too. It's contagious, you know. I smashed his bottles, and
then I watched him lapping the whiskey off the ground."
"How ghastly,
Martha."
"And then came
the affair with Freddy. And that was the end."
"What do you mean, affair?"
"I mean I had an affair with
Freddy."
"Didn't you say you
couldn't stand him?"
"I'll tell you in a minute. But first I
must tell you about Licky. Poor Licky. She was so
cute."
"Who was Licky?"
"A little Dalmatian. The cutest dog you ever saw. Dermott's
wedding present. Well, Licky was in heat. And we kept her locked up in my
bedroom. She could open all the doors, if you didn't lock them with the key.
She was so smart. And I would take her down, three, four times a day, on the
leash, of course, and never letting go of her for a minute. When she was in her
third week—which is, of course, the worst possible moment—I came home one
evening and saw Licky, loose, racing around like crazy, panting, her tongue-
out, and Will, going his way as if there was nothing to it. I said, for
Christ's sake, Will, are you out of your mind? He
said—he was so drunk—now don't start fussing. The mutt got her too, I saw it,
he said, but so what. To hell with it all. I'll fix
her up, he said. Don't start fussing. Then he got a shot from the
vet—Ergotinina —I guess he gave it the wrong way, or, at any rate, much too
much of it—he should have given her 3 cc and he gave her about 10—and poor
Licky, her heart was not strong ever since she had had distemper. What we went
through with that dog, sitting up days and nights, and I won't tell you what we
spent on medicines and vet bills —that distemper had left her with a weak
heart. And, what with that wrong shot, she beastly died." "That's
terrible."
"I
am telling you all that, because he did exactly the same thing to me. He
practically arranged it. He always managed to get the two of us together."
"But
why?"
"I guess it wasn't enough for him to
have taken me away from Dermott. He wanted to take away
Freddy too." "Sheer wickedness."
"And
jealousy. Anyway. One evening Dermott and Freddy came
over, and Will said, and he was all dressed up, even with a hat, he said,
Dermott and he had to go to a PEN Club meeting which was terribly important. He
said he was arranging for some sumptuous prize to be awarded to Dermott—but
Freddy and I couldn't come along, he said, because we were not members, and we
should wait at home, and there was a new bottle of Scotch, and we should play
some records. After we were half through with the Scotch, I assure you I felt
so bored and so drunk, and there was nothing we had to say to each other, and I
guess so I started making love to Freddy. Freddy was puzzled; he'd never done
it with a girl before. But before we knew it."
"Goodness
gracious."
"When
we found out that I was pregnant, Will got so
disgusting it's hard to describe. You know, he didn't get angry or passionate
about it, just cold and cynical. Quite disgusting. He
said, either you pull out of here or I'll see to it that you get fixed up all
right. He said he didn't want a child of Freddy's in his house. As a matter of
fact he didn't want any child at all. I felt so sick and nauseated I told him
it was all the same to me, just so long as he took care of everything. And he
did. But I kept having pains afterwards, and then he would get me dope but I
felt just terrible, terrible. And that Sicilian woman who came in to clean up,
she knew all about it. She was tiny and black and her eyes stung. I still hear
the click of her clogs and she kept hissing at me ammazzalo, you should kill him."
"Sicilians are quick at that."
"Between
Will's own obessions and that Sicilian's constant whispers I gradually got
quite used to the idea."
"Did you really want to kill him?"
"I
guess I did not really want anything at all. One evening I said I wished I had
died like Licky. And he said: But Licky was a good bitch. At that moment I picked up that pistol from his desk—I was
sitting near his desk—and pointed it at him. I did not know whether it was
loaded, and I don't know how to fire a gun anyway. I just kept pointing it at
him. And he grabbed a hunting knife and leapt forward and spat like a cat: So
you are going to kill me, no, you aren't. And he smiled. Now I don't understand
whether it was because he wasn't as tough as he thought he was, or because he
had the knife in his right hand—you know, he was left-handed— at any rate, I
dropped the pistol and tried to wrestle the knife from him. He was so awkward
and so weak, come to think of it, he practically slashed his cheek—the left
one—with his own hand, and then the knife slipped and stuck in his left arm. He
yelled and stepped back to pull it out and I picked up the pistol again and
pointed it against him, just in case he attacked again. But, I don't know how,
the pistol fired. And that was the end."
"Oh, Martha, poor poor girl. Don't cry now. It is all too terrible for
words. It is even more terrible than you think it is. But now it's all over.
Poor, poor Martha, it is not your fault, and it will be plain for every one to
see. Look at the scar on my cheek . . . right cheek .. . my
right arm was badly mangled too. You asked me the first day what it was. Now
I'll tell you. It's weird. Martha, my wife, she got pregnant too. But she did
not want it at all. If you want to breast-feed him you can have him, she said
to me. Her hps were pale, her cheeks drawn, her eyes shot venom."
"Maybe she was really ill."
"With
the kind of service you've got to put up with here, she said, I'd lose years
playing nurse-maid. Farewell to social life. Farewell to lectures and studies.
And as sick and delicate as I am, she said. The allergies.
Just shut up at home. That's what you wanted, I know, she said. There was no
way of stopping her."
"But if she was really
sick ..."
"She
said, and how do you know it is your child? She said it out of sheer meanness.
There was absolutely no reason for supposing that it was not my child. I guess she was much too selfish to plunge into the sea of
trouble, to go through all the fluster and gripes it takes to have a lover."
"Couldn't
it be that she was too nice?" "Why are you trying to defend
her?" "She's dead."
"I
remember, I remember: She hustled in her dressing gown and kicked up the kind
of smell nasty ladies have on them in the morning. You know. Mixed up perfumes
and powders and greases and sleep and some coffee in it..."
"You too go in for
smells?"
"Are
you trying to be funny? It is strange. I never thought of that. Anyway, what
would you have told her?"
"I'd
let her go to hell. I mean, I suppose, you should have comforted her,
encouraged her, told her it would be a fine baby."
"Oh, come on
now."
"What did you tell her
then?"
"I felt so disgusted by that
time—hapless creature, I thought—so I merely said: You're your own boss,
darling. It's your problem. You solve it."
"And she?"
"I
never saw anybody turning so green. I suppose she expected me to fall on my
knees and beg her not to do it. But I simply didn't feel like it."
"And so she got it
fixed?"
"I didn't see her until after it was all
over. She felt lousy and she hated me for it. I guess it was all
my fault."
"What
do you mean, your fault, if the same thing happened to Will just about at the
same time?"
"Wasn't it his fault?
Didn't he act simply beastly?"
"How
could it have been his fault, if it happened to you too?"
"Whose
fault is it then?" "I guess fault isn't the right word here."
"Well. Now you are getting nearer to where I want you to get. Because surely it was not your fault—" "Go on with your story."
"I
am nearly at the end. We did not see much of each other after that. And we
didn't see anybody else. Only once I accepted
an invitation for lunch, at the Wilcoxes at Winnetka. Martha said she was glad
to go to the Wilcoxes. It was a Sunday, and so foggy you couldn't see your own
hand at an arm's length, and we took the Outer Drive."
"You were living on
the South Side?"
"Yes.
And just after the underpass at 53rd Street... a crazy car, passing
another one in that fog. He came up against us, at full speed. I saw him
coming when he was practically crashing into us. All three cars, smashed. Four people, badly cut up. Only Martha was dead."
"And you felt that you
killed her."
"I
certainly did. And I still don't understand how. Look, it was she or I. If the
car had swerved to the right—as it should—I would have been killed; she wounded.
But it swerved to the left. God knows how. I think, when she saw what was going
on, she herself grabbed the wheel and pushed it over. Or perhaps I did it, I
really don't know."
"Just
like the fight between Will and me. And that moment of
indecision."
"Indecision on things
long since decided."
"It was he or I. And I don't know, still
don't know,
how it was that it was he__________ "
"And his left side cut
up and my right, in the process."
"That
is the way it had to be. Wait a moment: Can you explain to me why?"
"Karma. It all was there. Nothing
to be done about it. And one half and one half made one."
"You know, I think it does something to your mind, the mere fact of having been born
in the Orient."
"Sure does. Just look at Harry Luce."
"Thank you, Doctor Rosselli, Martha is
getting much much better. And I am so glad that you think the material at our
disposal is shaping up so promisingly."
"I think Mr. McDermott's statement will
be very useful. After all, he has known Martha for a long long time and seen her
practically until the day of the ...
accident."
"And the maid is ready to testify."
"That'll be helpful too."
"I, myself, have prepared a little
statement, awocato. I don't know whether it will be of any use to
you. Just some thoughts I had on the whole thing—the way I see it. And so I put
them down. Here, at any rate, awocato, here it is."
TWIN'S
WAIL
You are trying Martha Egan
Sailor for murder while everyone says she is such a good girl, but the more
they talk about her and the more she talks about herself, the wronger her case
gets, and she's just a plain murderess.
Why didn't any one try me for murder? I
killed Martha in a crash and took to the deed all the ingredients my brother
used but plus one: the grace of God.
If it is a grace to live. Cain lived, but Abel died. There was Cain in
Will, much Cain, but some Abel, for he died. There was Abel in me, much able
Abel, but some Cain; for I live.
I was quite a regular fellow, standing on my
own two feet, with a regular career and a successful one; I thought that was my
merit and a bit of luck. With a marriage that miscarried: I thought that was my
fault and a bit of disgrace.
It stopped there and made sense: a closed
system of information.
Will too was a typical
fellow, standing on his own two feet, with a typical career that made sense
absolute, and a marriage that failed and ended in violence, an old and
self-sufficient story.
Another closed system of
information, and if you stop there, his murderess is a murderess.
But
extrapolate the facts and interpolate the systems, and differentiate and
integrate, which is not enough: who knows how much to interpolate, to extegrate
and com-munate to get the whole, complex, infiniplex truth to the nth
potential. Somehow no value can be assigned to Guilt in these equations. It
whittles down, infinitesimal.
A
wretched wrecked girl pulling a trigger is such a trivial factor in this
factura. Incogent to think you'll bring down the crushing structure of
incognita by sawing away at that thin leg of my cognita cognate. Let her alone.
Whatever her part of how do you call it, Guilt, in the context of her own
closed system, she was certainly expiated. The fact is that what happened here
had to happen and did happen because it happened another time far away. Our
wills are tied through the ages across spaces, and what I did, or had done to,
my right hand was but a reflex of what he did with, or had done to, his left.
It always was like that between us and was all written down. (Exhibit A,
attached.)
That
knocks out the girl, altogether, her only fault being that her name is Martha.
Calling all Marthas, suing all Marthas, if you wish.
Blind
chance has once more shown its foresight in permitting us to reason this out at
Villa Igea, an insane asylum providing undoubtedly the most suitable setting
for suchlike revelations. I am putting them down because, whereas it is of
course possible that we are freaks of nature, half-men, conditioned by one
another, it is, on the other hand, equally possible that our experience, though
extreme, is yet more or less typical, and that men proud of their achievements
or crushed by their guilt are equally presumptuous, for thinking they are
free—they are not. With kindest regards, very sincerely yours.
"Oh, Phil, dear, the news is a little bit too good."
"It never can be too good, Martha. Why,
what did he say, Doctor Comedger?"
"He said I was fine. General
condition, excellent. Blood count, satisfactory.
Weight, satisfactory. But, Phil, brace yourself for the good news ..."
"Well, what could it be?"
"Phil,
it's twins."
WILLIAM MORRISON
Joseph Samachson, Ph.D., is a quiet and industrious chemist who translates technical works from
difficult languages, does complicated things on the research staff of a major
New York hospital and, in spare time, writes books about archeology and the
ballet with his wife, Dorothy. There is, however, another area of extreme
competence in the man. Under the pseudonym of "William Morrison," Dr.
Samachson has for years been among the foremost writers of science fiction.
When the two halves of his personality fuse, when the biochemist meets the
science fictioneer, we reap such a splendid hybrid harvest as—
Country Doctor
He
had long resigned himself to thinking that opportunity had passed him by for
life. Now, when it struck so unexpectedly and so belatedly, he wasn't sure
that it was welcome.
He had gone to sleep early, after an
unusually hectic day. As if the need for immunizing against the threat of an
epidemic hadn't been enough, he had also had to treat the usual aches and
pains, and to deliver one baby, plus two premature Marsopolis calves. Even as
he pulled the covers over himself, the phone was ringing, but he let Maida
answer it. Nothing short of a genuine first-class emergency was going to drag
him out of the house again before morning if he could help it. Evidently the
call wasn't that important, for Maida hadn't come in to bother him about it,
and his last feeling, before dropping off to sleep, was one of gratitude for
her common sense.
He wasn't feeling grateful when the phone
rang again. He awoke with a start. The dark of night still lay around the
house, and from alongside him came the sound of his wife's slow breathing. In
the next room, one of the kids, he couldn't tell which, said drowsily,
"Turn off the alarm." Evidently the sound of the ringing hadn't
produced complete wakefulness.
While he lay there, feeling too heavy to move,
Maida moaned slightly in her sleep, and he said to himself, "If that's old
Bender, calling about his constipation again, I'll feed him dynamite
pills." Then he reached over to the night table and forced himself to pick
up the phone. "Who is it?"
"Doctor Meltzer?" He recognized the
hoarse and excited tones of Tom Linton, the city peace officer. "You
better get over here right away!"
"What is it, Tom? And
where am I supposed to get?"
"Over
at the space port. Ship out of control—almost ran into Phobos coming down—and
it landed with a crash. They need you fast."
"I'm coming."
The sleep was out of his eyes now. He grabbed
his emergency equipment, taking along a plentiful supply of antibiotics and
adjustable bandages. There was no way of knowing how many men had been hurt,
and he had better be ready to treat an entire crew.
Outside
the house, his bicar was waiting for him. He tossed in his equipment and hopped
in after it. A throw of the switch brought in full broadcast power, and a fraction of a second later he had begun to skim over the smooth path
that led over the farmland reclaimed from the desert.
The
space port was less than twenty miles away, and it took him no more than ten
minutes to get there. As he approached, the light blinked green at an
intersection. Ah, he thought, one advantage of being a country doctor with a privileged road is that you always have the right of way. Are there any
other advantages? None that you can think of offhand.
You go through college with a brilliant
record, you dream of helping humanity, of doing research in medicine, of making
discoveries that will lengthen human life and lend it a little added happiness.
And then, somehow, you find yourself trapped. The frontier outpost that's
supposed to be the steppingstone to bigger things turns out to be a lifetime
job. You find that your most important patients are
not people, but food-animals. On Mars there are plenty of men and women, but
few cows and sheep. Learn to treat them, and
you really amount to something. Save a cow, and the news gets around faster
than if you saved a man. And so, gradually, the animals begin to take more and
more of your time, and you become known and liked in
the community. You marry, you have children, you slip
into a routine that dulls the meaning of the fast-hurrying days. You reach
fifty—and you realize suddenly that life has passed you by. Half your alloted
hundred years are gone, you can't tell where. The opportunities that once
beckoned so brightly have faded in the distance.
What
do you have to show for what the years have taken? One wife, one boy, one girl—
A
surge of braking-power caught him from the direction of the space port. The
sudden deceleration brought him out of his musings to realize that the entire
area was brightly lit up. A huge ship lay across the middle of the field. Its
length was at least a thousand feet, and he knew that there must be more than
two dozen men in its crew. He hoped that none had been killed.
"Doc!"
Tom was rushing over to
him. "How many hurt, Tom?'*
"Our
injuries are all minor, Doctor," said a sharp voice. "Nothing
that I can't handle well enough myself."
As
he stared at the man in the gold-trimmed uniform who was standing alongside
Tom, he had a feeling of disappointment. If there were no serious injuries,
what was the rush all about? Why hadn't they telephoned him while he was riding
over, told him there was no need of him, let him get back to bed?
"I thought there was a serious
crash."
"The
crash was nothing, Doctor. Linton, here, was excited by our near-miss of
Phobos. But we've no time to waste discussing that fact. I understand, Doctor
Meltzer, that you're a first-class vet."
He flushed. "I hope you didn't drag me
out of bed to treat a sick dog. I'm not sentimental about ship's pets—"
"This is no pet. Come
along, and I'll show you."
He
followed silently as the Captain led the way up the ramp and into the ship.
Inside the vessel, there were no indications of any disorder caused by the
crash. One or two of the men were bandaged around the head, but they seemed
perfectly capable of getting around and doing their work.
He
and the Captain were on a moving walkway now, and for three hundred
feet they rode swiftly along it together, toward the back of the ship. Then
the Captain stepped off, and Dr. Meltzer followed suit. When he caught sight of
the thing that was waiting for him, he jaw dropped.
Almost
the entire stern of the ship, about one third its length,
was occupied by a great reddish creature that lay there quietly like an
overgrown lump of flesh taken from some giant's butcher shop. A transparent
panel walled it off from the rest of the ship. Through the panel Dr. Meltzer
could see the thirty-foot-wide slit that marked the mouth. Above that was a
cluster of breathing pores, looking like gopher holes, and above these was a
semicircle of six great eyes, half closed and dulled as if with pain.
He had never seen anything like it before. "My God, what it it?"
"For lack of a better name, we call it a space-cow. Actually, it doesn't inhabit free space—we picked it up on
Ganymede as a matter of fact—and as you can see, it doesn't resemble a cow in the least."
"Is that supposed to
be my patient?"
"That's it,
Doctor."
He laughed, with more anger than amusement. "I haven't the slightest idea what that behemoth
is like and what's wrong with it. How do you expect me to treat it?"
"That's
up to you. Now, wait a minute, Doctor, before you blow up. This thing is sick.
It isn't eating. It hardly moves. And it's been getting worse almost from the
time we left Ganymede. We meant to land at Marsopolis and have it treated
there, but we overshot the place and when something went wrong with our drive
we had no choice but to come down here."
"Don't
they have any doctors to spare from town?"
"They're no better than you are. I mean
that, Doctor. The vets they have in Marsopolis are used to treating pets for a
standard series of diseases, and they don't handle animals as big as the ones
you do. And they don't meet the kind of emergencies you do, either. You're as
good a man as we can get."
"And I tell you, I
don't know a thing about this overgrown hunk of
protein."
"Then you'll just have
to find out about it. We've radioed Earth, and hope to be getting some
information soon from some of their zoo directors. Meanwhile—"
The crewmen were bringing over what appeared
to be a diver's uniform. "What's this?" he
asked suspiciously.
"Something for you to
wear.
You're going to go down into this animal."
"Into
that mass of flesh?" For a moment horror left him with his mouth open.
Then anger took over. "Like heU I am."
"Look, Doctor, it's necessary. We want to keep this beast alive—for
scientific purposes, as well as possible value as a food animal. And how can we keep it alive unless we learn something
about it?"
"There's plenty we can learn without
going into it. Plenty of tests we can make first. Plenty of—"
He caught himself abruptly because he was
talking nonsense and he knew it. You could take the thing's temperature^—but
what would the figure you got tell you? What was normal temperature for a
space-cow? What was normal blood pressure—provided the creature had blood? What
was normal heartbeat—assuming there was a heart? Presumably the thing had
teeth, a bony skeleton—but how to learn where and what they were? You couldn't
X-ray a mass of flesh like this—not with any equipment he had ever seen, even
in the best-equipped office.
There were other, even more disquieting ways
in which he was ignorant. What kind of digestive juices did the thing have?
Suppose he did go down in a divers uniform —would the juices dissolve it? Would
they dissolve the oxygen lines, the instruments he used to look around and
probe the vast inside of the beast?
He
expressed his doubts to the Captain, and the latter said, "These suits
have been tested, and so have the lines. We know that they can stand a half
hour inside without being dissolved away. If they start to go, you'll radio to
us, and we'll pull you up."
"Thanks. How do I know that once the
suit starts to go, it won't rip? How do I know that the juices simply won't eat
my skin away?"
There was no answer to that. You just didn't
know, and you had to accept your ignorance.
Even
while he was objecting, Dr. Meltzer began putting on the suit. It was thin and light,
strong enough to withstand several atmospheres of pressure, and at the same
time not so clumsy as to hamper his movements considerably. Sealed pockets
carried an assortment of instruments and supplies. Perfect two-way
communication would make the exchange of ideas—such as they might be—as easy as
if the person he was talking to were face to face with him. With the suit came
a pair of fragile-looking gloves that left his hands almost as free as if they
were bare. But the apparent fragility was misleading. Mechanical strength was
there.
But what about resistance to biological
action? The
question kept nagging him. You can't know, he told himself. About things like
that you take a chance. You take a chance
and hope that if anything goes wrong, they'll pull you up before the juices
have time to get working on you.
They
had everything in readiness. Two of the other men were also wearing uniforms
like his own, and when he had put his on, and tested it, the Captain gave the
signal, and they all went into a small airlock. The door sealed behind them, a
door in front opened. They were in the chamber where the great beast lay and
quivered dully as if in giant pain.
They
tied strong thin plastic cords around Doctor Meltzer's waist, tested the oxygen
lines. Then they put a ladder up in front of the beast's face. Doctor Meltzer
had a little trouble breathing, but it was not
because of anything wrong with the oxygen supply. That was at the right
pressure and humidity, and it was mixed with the correct amount of inert gases.
It was merely the thought of going down into the creature's belly that
constricted his throat, the idea of going into a strange and terrible world so
different from his own, of submitting to unimaginable dangers.
He said hoarsely into the radio speaker,
"How do I get in anyway, knock? The mouth's at least
forty feet off the ground. And it's closed. You've got to open it,
Captain. Or do you expect me to pry it open myself?"
The two men with him stretched out a plastic
ladder. In the low gravity of Mars, climbing forty feet was no problem. Dr.
Meltzer began to pull his way up. As he went higher, he noticed that the great
mouth was slowly opening. One of the men had poked the creature with an
electric prod.
Dr. Meltzer reached the level of the low jaw,
and with the fascinated fear of a bird staring at a snake, gazed at the great
opening that was going to devour him. Inside there was a gray and slippery
surface which caught the beam of his flashlight and reflected it back and forth
until the rays faded away. Fifty feet beyond the opening, the passage made a
slow turn to one side. What lay ahead, he couldn't guess.
The sensible thing was to go in at once, but
he couldn't help hesitating. Suppose the jaws closed just as he got between
them? He'd be crushed like an eggshell. Suppose that throat constricted with
the irritation he caused it? That would crush him too. He recalled suddenly an
ancient fable about a man who had gone into a whale's belly. What was the man's
name, now? Daniel—no, he had only gone into a den of lions. Job—wrong again.
Job had been afflicted with boils, the victim of staphylococci at the other
end of the scale of size. Jonah, that was it. Jonah, the man whose name was a symbol among the superstitious for
bad luck.
But a scientist had no time for superstition.
A scientist just thrust himself forward—
He stepped off the ladder into the great
mouth. Beneath him, the jaw was slippery. His feet slid out from under him, and
then his momentum carried him forward, and he glided smoothly down the yawning
gullet. It was like going down a Martian hillside on a greased sled, the low
gravity making the descent nice and easy. He noticed that the cords around his
waist, as well as the oxygen lines, were descending smoothly after him. He
reached the turn, threw his body away from the gray wall, and continued
sliding. Another fifty feet, and he landed with a small plash in a pool of
liquid.
The stomach? Never mind what you called it, this was probably the beginning of a digestive tract.
He'd have a chance now to see how resistant his suit was.
He was immersed in the liquid now, and he
sank slowly until his feet touched more solid flesh again. By the beam from his
flashlight, he saw that the ljquid around him was a light green. The portion of
the digestive tract on which he stood was slate gray, with bright emerald
streaks.
A voice spoke anxiously in
his ears. "Doctor Meltzer! Are you safe?"
"Fine, Captain. Having
a wonderful time. Wish you were here."
"What's it like in there?"
"I'm standing at the bottom of a pool of
greenish liquid. I'm fascinated, but not greatly instructed."
"See anything that might be wrong?"
"How the devil would I tell right from
wrong in here? I've never been in one of these beasts before. I've got sample
bottles, and I'm going to fill them in various places. This is going to be
sample one. You can analyze it later."
"Fine, Doctor. You just keep on going."
He flashed the beam around him. The liquid
was churning gently, possibly because of the splash he himself had made. The
gray-green walls themselves were quiet, and the portion underfoot yielded
slightly as he put his weight upon it, but was otherwise apparently undisturbed
by his presence.
He moved ahead. The liquid
grew shallower, came to an end. He climbed out and stepped cautiously forward.
"Doctor, what's happening?"
"Nothing's happening. I'm just looking
around." "Keep us informed. I don't think there's any danger,
but—"
"But
in case there is, you want the next man to know what to watch out for? All
right, Captain." "Lines all right?"
"They're fine." He took another
step forward. "The ground—I suppose I can call it the ground—is getting
less slippery. Easier to walk on. Walls
about twenty feet apart here. No sign of macroscopic flora or fauna. No
artifacts to indicate intelligent life."
The Captain's voice sounded pained.
"Don't let your sense of humor carry you away, Doctor. This is important.
Maybe you don't realize exactly how important, but—"
He interrupted. "Hold it, Captain,
here's something interesting. A big reddish bump, about three feet across, in
the gray-green wall."
"What is it?"
"Might be a tumor. I'll slice some tissue from the wall itself.
That's sample number two. Tissue from the tumor, sample number three."
The wall quivered almost imperceptibly as he
sliced into it. The fresh-cut surface was purple, but it slowly turned red
again as the internal atmosphere of the beast got at it.
"Here's another tumor, like the first,
this time on the other side of the wall. And here are a
couple more. I'm leaving them alone. The walls are getting narrower.
There's still plenty of room to walk, but—wait a minute, I take that back.
There's some kind of valve ahead of me. It's opening and closing
spasmodically."
"Can you get through?"
"I'd hate to take a chance. And even if
I did make it while it was open, it could crush the oxygen lines when it
closed."
"Then that's the end of the road?"
"I don't know. Let me think."
He stared at the great valve. It moved
rapidly, opening and closing in a two-second rhythm. Probably a valve
separating one part of the digestive system from another, he thought, like the
human pylorus. The green-streaked gray flesh seemed totally unlike human
muscle, but all the same it appeared to serve a similar function. Maybe the
right kind of drug would cause muscular relaxation.
He pulled a large hypodermic syringe from one
of the sealed pockets of his diver's uniform. He plunged the needle quickly
into the edge of the valve as it paused for a fraction of a second before closing, shot a pint of drug solution into the flesh, and
ripped the needle out again. The valve closed once more, but more slowly. It
opened, closed again, opened once more—and stayed open.
How long before it
recovered, and shut off his retreat? He didn't know. But if he wanted to find
out what was on the other side, he'd have to work fast. He plunged forward,
almost slipping in his eagerness, and leaped through the motionless valve.
Then he called up to tell the Captain what he
had done.
The Captain's voice was anxious. "I
don't know whether you ought to risk it, Doctor."
"I'm down here to
learn things. I haven't learned much yet. By the way, the walls are widening
out again. And there's another pool of liquid ahead. Blue
liquid, this time."
"Are you taking a sample?"
"I'm a sampler from way back,
Captain."
He waded into the blue pond, filled his
sample bottle, and put it into one of his pockets. Suddenly, in front of him
something broke the surface of the pond, then dived
down again.
He came to a full stop. "Hold it, Captain. There seems to be fauna."
"What? Something
alive?" "Very much alive."
"Be careful, Doctor. I think there's a
gun in one of the pockets of that uniform. Use it if necessary."
"A gun? Don't be cruel, Captain. How'd you like to
have somebody shooting off guns inside you?"
"Be careful, man!"
"I'll use my hypodermic as a
weapon."
But the creature, whatever it was, did not
approach
him again, and he waded further into the blue
pool. When his eyes were below the surface of the liquid, he saw the thing
moving again.
"Looks like an
overgrown tadpole, about two feet long."
"Is it coming
close?"
"No, it's darting away from me. And
there's another one. I think the light bothers it."
"Any
signs that the thing is dangerous?"
"I can't tell. It may be a parasite of
the big creature, or it may be something that lives in symbiosis with it."
"Stay
away from it, Doctor. No use risking your life for nothing."
A trembling voice said,
"Larry! Are you all right?"
"Maida! What are you doing here?"
"I
woke up when you left. And then I had trouble going to sleep again."
"But why did you come
to the space port?"
"Ships
began to flash by overhead, and I began to wonder what had happened. So I
called up—and they told me."
"Ships overhead?"
The
Captain's voice cut in again. "The news services, Doctor. This case has
aroused great interest. I didn't want to tell you before, but don't be
surprised if you come up to find yourself famous."
"Never
mind the news services. Have you heard from Earth yet?"
"No messages from Earth. We did hear
from the curator of the Marsopolis Zoo." "What did he say?"
"He
never even heard of a space-cow, and he has no suggestions to make."
"That's
fine. By the way, Captain, are there any photographers around from those news
services?"
"Half
a dozen.
Still, motion picture, television—"
"How
about sending them down inside to take a few pictures?"
There
was a moment of silence. Then the Captain's voice again: "I don't think
they can go down for a while yet. Maybe later."
"Why can't they go down now? I'd like to
have some company. If the beast's mouth is open—" A disquieting thought
struck him. "Say, it is open, isn't it?"
The
Captain's voice sounded tense. "Now, don't get upset, Doctor, we're doing
all we can!"
"You mean it's
closed?"
"Yes, it's closed. I didn't want to tell
you this, but the mouth closed unexpectedly, and then, when we did have the
idea of sending a photographer down inside, we couldn't get it open again.
Apparently the creature has adapted to the effects of the electric shock."
"There must be some
way of getting it open again."
"Of
course there's a way. There's always a way. Don't worry, Doctor, we're working
on it. We'll find it."
"But the oxygen—"
"The lines are strong, and the mouth
isn't closed tight enough to pinch them off. You can breathe all right, can't
you?"
"Now that I think of
it, I can. Thanks for telling me."
"You see, Doctor, it
isn't so bad."
"It's
perfectly lovely. But what happens if my uniform or the oxygen lines start to
dissolve?"
"We'll
pull you out. We'll do something to open the mouth. Just don't get caught
behind that valve, Doctor."
"Thanks for the advice. I don't know
what I'd do without it, Captain."
He felt a sudden surge of anger. If there was
one thing he hated, it was good advice, given smugly when the giver could stand
off to one side, without sharing the danger of the person he was helping. Don't
let this happen, don't get caught here, take care of yourself. But you were
down here to do a job, and so far you hadn't done it. You hadn't learned a
thing about what made this monstrous creature tick.
And
the chances were that you wouldn't learn, either. The way to examine a beast was
from the outside, not from within. You watched it eat, you studied the transfer
of the food from one part of the body to another, you checked on the
circulation of the body fluids, using radioactive tracers if no other methods
offered, you dissected specimens of typical individuals. The Captain should
have had a few scientists aboard, and they should have done a few of these
things instead of just sitting there staring at the beast. But that would have
made things too easy. No, they had to wait for you to come aboard, and then
-send you deliberately sliding down into the guts of an animal you didn't know
anything about, in the hope of having a miracle happen to you. Maybe they
thought a loop of intestine or some gland of internal secretion would come over
to you and say, "I'm not working right. Fix me, and everything will be
fine."
Another of the tadpole-like creatures was
swimming over toward him, approaching slowly, the forepart twitching like the
nose of a curious dog. Then, like the others, the creature turned and darted
away. "Maybe that's the cause," he thought. "Maybe that's the
parasite that's causing the trouble."
Only—it might just as well be a creature
necessary to the larger creature's health. Again and again you were faced with
the same problem. Down here you were in a world you knew nothing about. And
when everything was so strange to you—what was normal, and what wasn't?
When in doubt, he decided, move on. He moved.
The blue pool was shallow, and once more he
came up on what he decided to call dry ground. Once more the walls grew narrow
again. After a time he could reach out and touch the walls on
either side of him at the same time.
He flashed his light into the narrow passage,
and saw that a dozen yards ahead of him it seemed to come to an end.
"Blind alley," he thought. "Time to turn
back."
The Captain's voice came to him again.
"Doctor, is everything all right?"
"Beautiful. I've had a most interesting
tour. By the way, did you get the creature's mouth open yet?"
"We're still working on it."
"I wish you luck. Maybe when those
reports from Earth come in—"
"They've come. None of the curators
knows anything about space-cows. For some reason, the electric shock method
doesn't work any more, and we're trying all sorts of other stimuli."
"I take it that nothing is effective."
"Not yet. One of the photo service men
suggested we use a powerful mechanical clamp to pull the jaws open. We're
having one flown over."
"Use anything,"
he said fervently. "But for God's sake, get that mouth open!"
Dr. Meltzer cursed the
photo service people, to whom he meant nothing more than a series of colored
lines in space. Then he added an unkind word or two for the Captain, who had
got him into this mess, and started back.
The tadpole creatures
seemed to be interested in his progress. They came swarming around him, and now
he could see that there were almost a dozen of them. They moved with quick
flips of their tails, like the minnows he had once seen back on Earth, where he
had attended medical school. Between each pair of flips there was a momentary
pause, and when they came close he was able to get a reasonably good look at
them. He was surprised to see that they had two rows of eyes each.
Were the eyes functional or vestigial? In the
former case, they must spend some part of their life cycle outside the host
creature, in places where they had need of the sense of sight. In the latter
case, they were at least descended from outside creatures. Maybe I'll try to
catch one of them, he thought. Once I get it outside I can give it a real
examination.
Once I get it outside, he
repeated. Provided I get outside myself.
He waded through the pond again. As he
reached the shallow part of the blue liquid, a voice came to him—this time his
wife's voice. "Larry, are you all right?"
"Doing fine. How are the kids?"
"They're with me. They woke up during
the excitement, and I brought them along."
"You didn't tell me that before!"
"I didn't want to upset you."
"Oh, it doesn't upset me in the least. Nothing like a nice family picnic. But how do you expect
them to go to school in the morning?"
"Oh,
Larry, what difference does it make if they miss school for once? A chance to
be in on something like this happens once in a lifetime."
"That's a little too
often to suit me. Well, now that I know
they're here, let me talk to them."
Evidently they had been
waiting for the chance, for Jerry's voice came at once. "Hiya, Dad."
"Hiya, Jerry. Having a good time?"
"Swell. You oughtta be out here, Dad.
There are a lot of people. They're treatin' us
swell."
Martia cut in. "Mom, he isn't letting me
talk. I want to talk to Daddy too."
"Let her talk, Jerry.
Go ahead, Martia. Say something to Daddy."
A sudden blast almost
knocked out his eardrum. "Dad, can you hear me?" Martia screamed.
"Can you hear me, Dad?"
"I can hear you, and
so can these animals. Not so loud, sweetheart."
"Gee, Dad, you oughtta see all the
people. They took pictures of me and Mom. Oh, we're so thrilled!"
"They took pictures of me too, Dad," said Jerry.
"They're sending the pictures all over. To Earth and Venus, and everywhere. We're gonna be on
television too, Dad. Isn't it exciting?"
"It's terrific, Martia. You don't know
what this does for my morale."
"Aw, all she thinks about is pictures.
Mom, make her get away from the microphone, or I'll push her away."
"You've had your chance, Martia. Let Jerry talk again."
"You know what, Dad? Everybody says
you're gonna be famous. They say this is the only animal of its kind ever
discovered. And you're the only person ever went into it. Can I go down there
too, Dad?"
"No!"
he yeUed.
"Okay, okay. Say, Dad know
what? If you bring it back alive, they're gonna take it to Earth, and put it in
a special zoo of its own."
"Thank them for me. Look, Jerry, did
they get the animal's mouth open yet?"
"Not yet, Dad, but they're bringing in a great big machine."
The Captain's voice again: "We'll have
the mouth open soon, Doctor. Where are you now?"
"Approaching the valve
again. Having
you heard anything that could be useful? Maybe some explorer or hunter might
be able to tell you something about space-cows—"
"Sorry, Doctor. Nobody knows anything
about space-cows."
"That's what you said before. All right,
Captain, stand by for further news. I've got a shoal of these tadpole beasts in
attendance. Let's see what happens now."
"They're not attacking, are they?"
"Not yet."
"You feel all right otherwise?"
"Fine. A little short of breath, though. That may
be the result of tension. And a little hungry. I
wonder how this beast would taste raw—my God!"
The Captain asked anxiously, "What is it?"
"That valve I paralyzed. It's working
normally once more!"
"You mean it's opening and closing?"
"The same rhythm as
before. And
every time it closes, it squeezes those oxygen tubes. That's why I sometimes
feel short of breath. I have to get out of here!"
"Do you have enough drug
to paralyze the valve again?"
"No, I don't. Keep
quiet, Captain, let me figure this out."
"That valve I paralyzed. It's working normally once more!" place to take off from.
He might have dived safely through the
opening during the near-second when the muscles were far apart. But there was
no place for a take-off. He had to approach up a slippery slope, hampered by
uniform and lines. And if he misjudged the right moment to go through, he'd be
caught when the valve closed again.
He stood there motionless for a moment, sweat
pouring down his forehead and into his eyes. Damn it, he thought, I can't even
wipe it away. I've got to tackle this thing half blind.
Through one partially fogged eyeplate he
noticed the tadpole creatures approaching more closely. Were they vicious after
all? Were they coming closer because they sensed that he was in danger? Were
they closing in for the kill?
One of them plunged straight at him, and
involuntarily he ducked. The thing turned barely aside at the last moment,
raced past him, slithered out of the blue liquid, and squirmed up the slope
toward the valve.
Unexpectedly, the valve opened to twice its
previous width, and the creature plunged through without trouble.
"Doctor
Meltzer? Are you still all right?"
"I'm alive, if that interests you.
Listen, Captain, I'm going to try getting through that valve. One of the
tadpole beasts just did it, and the valve opened a lot wider to let it
through."
"Just
how do you expect to manage?"
"I'll try grabbing one of the beasts and
hitch-hike through. I just hope it isn't vicious, and doesn't turn on me."
But the tadpole creatures wouldn't let
themselves be grabbed. In this, their home territory,
they moved a great deal faster than he did, and even though they didn't seem to
be using their eyes to see with, they evaded his grasp with great skill.
At last he gave up the attempt and climbed
out of the blue pool. The creatures followed him.
One of the biggest of them suddenly dashed
forward. Sensing what the thing was going to do, Dr. Meltzer hurried after it.
It scurried up the slope, and plunged through the valve. The valve opened wide.
Dr. Meltzer, racing desperately forward, threw himself into the opening. The
valve paused, then snapped at him. He felt it hit his
heel.
The next moment he was gasping for breath.
The oxygen lines had become tangled.
He fought frenziedly to untwist them, and
failed. Then he realized that he was trying to do too much. All he needed to do
was loosen the knot and straighten out the kinks. By
the time he finally succeeded, he was seeing black spots in front of his eyes.
"Doctor Meltzer, Doctor Meltzer!"
The sound had been in his
ears for some time. "Still alive," he gasped.
"Thank God! We're
going to try to open the mouth now, Doctor. If you hurry forward, you'll be in
a position to be pulled out."
"I'm hurrying. By the way, those tadpoles
are still with me. They trailing along as if they'd found a long-lost friend. I
feel like a pie-eyed piper."
"I just hope they don't attack."
"You're not hoping any harder than I am."
He could catch his breath now, and with the
oxygen lines free, the perspiration that had dimmed his sight slowly
evaporated. He caught sight of one of the reddish tumors he had noticed on his
forward passage.
"May as well be hung for a sheep as a
lamp," he murmured. "It would take an axe really to chop that tumor
out, but I may as well slice into it and see what 1 can learn."
From one of his pockets he
took a sharp oversize scalpel, and began to cut around the edges.
The tumor throbbed convulsively.
"Well, well, I may have something
here," he said, with a surgeon's pleasure. He dug deeper.
The tumor erupted. Great gobs of reddish
liquid spurted out, and with one of them came another of the tadpole creatures,
a small one, half the average size of those he had first encountered.
"Glory be," he muttered. "So
that's the way they grow."
The creature sensed him and darted aside, in
the direction of the valve. As it approached, the open valve froze in place,
and let the small creature through, further into the host, without enlarging.
Then the valve began to close again.
They're adapted to each
other, he thought. Probably symbiosis, rather then a
one-sided parasitism. He moved upwards, toward the greenish liquid. An
earthquake struck.
The flesh heaved up beneath his feet, tossing
him head over heels into the pool. The first shock was followed by a second and
third. A tidal wave hit him, and carried him to the side of the pool. He landed
with a thud against the hard side and bounced back.
The sides began to constrict, hemming him in.
"Captain!" he yelled. "What's
going on out there? What are you doing to the beast?"
"Trying to pry .open its mouth. It doesn't seem to like the idea. It's
threshing around against the walls of the ship."
"For God's sake, cut it out! It's giving
me a beating in here."
They must have halted their efforts at once,
for immediately afterwards the beast's movements became less convulsive. But
it was some time before the spasmodic quivering of the side walls came to an
end.
Dr.
Meltzer climbed out of the pool of liquid, making an automatic and entirely
useless gesture to wipe the new perspiration from his forehead.
"Is it better in there, Doctor?"
"It's better. Don't
try that again," he panted.
"We have to get the
mouth open some way."
"Try a bigger electric
shock."
"If you want us to. But it may mean another beating for you,
Doctor."
"Then wait a
rninute. Wait till I get near the upper part of the gullet."
"Whenever
you say.
Just tell us when you're ready."
Better
be ready soon, he thought. My light's beginning to dim. When it goes out
altogether, I'll probably be in a real
panic. I'll be yelling for him to do anything, just to get me out of there.
And what about the suit and the oxygen lines? I think the digestive fluid's beginning to affect
them. It's hard to be sure, now that the light's weakening, but they don't have
the clear transparent look they had at first. And when they finally go, I go
with them.
He
tried to move forward faster, but the surface underfoot was slimy, and when he
moved too hastily, he slipped. The lines Were getting
tangled too. Now that the creature's mouth was closed, it was no use tugging at
the cord around his waist. That wouldn't get him up.
"Doctor Meltzer!"
He
didn't answer. Instead, he pulled out his lancet and cut the useless cords
away. The oxygen lines too were a nuisance,
in constant danger of kinking and tangling, now that they were no longer taut.
But at least the gas was still flowing through them and would continue to flow—
until the digestive fluid ate through.
The tadpole creatures seemed to have
developed a positive affection for him. They were all around him, not close
enough for him to grab them, but too close for comfort. At any moment they
might decide to take a nip out of his suit or an oxygen line. And with the
plastic already weakened, even a slight tear might be fatal.
He reached the sharp slope that signified the
gullet. "Dr. Meltzer?"
"What do you want?"
"Why didn't you answer?"
"I was busy. I cut the cords away from
around my waist. Now I'm going to try climbing up inside this thing's
throat."
"Shall we try that sharp electric
shock?" "Go ahead."
He had a pair of small surgical clamps, and
he took one in each hand. The flashlight he put in a holder at his waist. Then,
getting down on all fours, he began to crawl up, digging each pair of clamps
into the flesh in turn to give him a grip. A slow wave ran away in both
directions every time he inserted one of the pairs of clamps into the flesh,
but otherwise the beast didn't seem to mind too much.
He was about halfway up, when the earthquakes
began again. The first one sent him tumbling head over heels down the slope.
The others added some slight injury to the insult, knocking him painfully
against the walls. They must have used a powerful electric jolt, for some of it
was transmitted through the creature to him, making his skin tingle. He hadn't
lost his flashlight, but by now it was exceedingly dim, and shed only a feeble
circle of light. Far ahead of him, where the mouth was to open, was blackness.
"No luck, Captain?"
"No luck, Doctor. We'll try again."
"Don't. You just make things
worse."
"Larry, were you hurt? Larry—"
"Don't bother me now, Maida," he
said roughly. "I have to figure out a way to get out."
A faint hiss came from the
oxygen line. A leak. Time was growing short.
The tadpole creatures were
swimming around faster now. They too must have been upset by the shock. One of
them darted ahead of him, and wriggled ahead until it was lost in blackness.
That seems to be trying to
get out too, he told himself. Maybe we can work this together. There must be
some way, something to get this creature to open its mouth. Maybe the Captain
can't do it from outside, but I'm in here, where the beast's most sensitive. I
can hit it, slash at it, tickle it—
There's a thought. Tickle
it. It's a monster, and it'll take some monstrous tickling, but sooner or
later, something should affect it.
He stamped hard with his foot. No effect. He
took his large lancet from his pocket and slashed viciously with it. A shudder
ran through the flesh, but that was all.
And then he had an idea. That green liquid
undoubtedly contained hormones. Hormones, enzymes,
co-enzymes, antibiotics, biological chemicals of all kinds. Stuff to which some tissues would be adapted and some would not.
And those that weren't would react violently.
He turned back, filled his hypodermic syringe
with the greenish liquid, a"nd ran forward again.
The light was almost gone by now, and the hissing from the oxygen line was
growing ominously, but he climbed forward as far as he could before plunging
the hypodermic in and injecting its contents.
The creature heaved. He dropped hypodermic,
light, and clamps, and let the huge shuddering take him where it would. First
it lifted him high. Then it let him fall suddenly —not backwards, but in the
same place. Two of the tadpole beasts were thrown against him. Then he was
lifted way up again, and this time forward. A huge cavern opened before him.
Light bathed the gray surface and he was vomited out.
The light begun to flicker, and he had time
for one last thought. Oxygen lack, he told himself. My suit's
ripped, the lines have finally torn.
And then blackness.
When he came to, Maida was
at his side. He could see that she had been crying. The Captain stood a httle further off, his face drawn, but relieved.
"Larry, dear, are you all right? We thought you'd never get out."
"I'm fine." He sat up and saw his
two children, standing anxious and awe-stricken on the other side of the bed.
Their silence showed how strongly they had been affected. "I hope you kids
didn't worry too much about me."
"Of course I didn't
worry," said Jerry bravely. "I knew you were smart, Dad. I knew you'd
think of a way to get out."
"While we're on the
subject," interposed the Captain, "What was the way out?"
"I'll tell you later. How's the patient?"
"Doing fine. Seems to have recovered
completely."
"How many of the tadpoles came out with me?"
"About six. We're keeping them in the same low-oxygen
atmosphere as the creature itself. We're going to study them. We figure that if
they're parasites—"
"They're not parasites. I finally came
to a conclusion about them. They're the young."
"What?"
"The young. If you take good care of them, they'll
eventually grow to be as big as the mother-monster you've got in the
ship."
"Good God, where will we keep them?"
"That's your worry. Maybe you'd better
expand that zoo you're preparing. What you'll do for money to feed them,
though, I don't know."
"But what—"
"The trouble with that
monster—its 'illness'—was merely that it was
gravid." "Gravid?"
"That means pregnant," exclaimed Jerry.
"I know what it means." The Captain
flushed. "Look, do we have to have these kids in here while we discuss
this?"
"Why not? They're a doctor's children. They know what
it's all about. They've seen calves and other animals being born."
"Lots
of times," said Martia.
"Confined as it was on
the ship, your beast couldn't get the exercise it needed. And the young
couldn't get themselves born."
"But that was the digestive tract you went down—"
"What of it? Are all animals born the
same way? Ask the average kid where a baby grows, and he'll tell you that it's
in the stomach."
"Some kids are dopes," said Jerry.
"They wouldn't be in this case. What
better place to get a chance at the food the mother eats, in all stages from
raw to completely digested? All that
beast needed to give birth was a little exercise. You gave it some from the outside,
but not enough. I finished the job by injecting some of its own digestive fluid
into the flesh. That caused a pretty little reaction."
The Captain scratched his head. "Doctor,
you did a good job. How would you like to take care of that beast permanently?
I could recommend you—"
"To go down inside
that monster again? No, thanks. From now on, I treat nothing but
small monsters. Sheep, cows—and human beings."
There was a pounding of feet in the hallway.
Then the door swung in, violently. Flashbulbs that gave invisible light began
to pop with inaudible bursts of high-frequency sound. Cameras pointed
menacingly at him and sent his image winging to Earth and far-off planets.
Reporters began to fire their questions.
"My God," he muttered wearily,
"who let these animals in here? They're worse than the ones I met inside
the blue pool."
"Be nice to them,
dear," chided Maida gently. "They're turning you into a great
man."
Then Maida and Jerry and
Marti a grouped themselves around him, and the cameras caught them too. The
proud look on their faces was something to see. And he realized that he was
glad for their sake.
Opportunity had knocked, and when he had
opened the door to it, it had proved to be an exacting guest. Still, he hadn't
been a bad host—not a bad host at all, he thought. And slowly his features
relaxed into a tired and immediately famous grin.
ROBERT BLOCH
With indignation Bob Bloch denies a libel:
"It is not true that I am a monster! I have the heart of a small boy. I
keep it in my desk drawer." Heart he has (no matter whose); he also has
wit and insight. And if sometimes what he has to tell us is monstrous (witness
his recent shuddery suspense novel Psycho, or,
for that matter, the following), it is not that he exaggerates a picture, but
only that his perceptions are so clear. Almost any writer could have conceived
the setting he describes below, but only Robert Bloch could have made it into—
Daybroke
Up
in the sky the warheads whirled, and the thunder of their passing shook the
mountain.
Deep in his vaulted sanctuary he sat, godlike
and inscrutable, marking neither the sparrow's nor the missile's fall. There
was no need to leave his shelter to stare down at the city.
He knew what was happening—had known ever
since early in the evening when the television flickered and died. An announcer
in the holy white garb of the healing arts had been delivering an important
message about the world's most popular laxative—the one most people preferred,
the one four out of five doctors used themselves. Midway in his praise of this
amazing new medical discovery he had paused and advised the audience to stand
by for a special bulletin.
But the bulletin never
came; instead the screen went blank and the thunder boomed.
All night long the mountain
trembled, and the seated man trembled too; not with anticipation but with realization.
He had expected this, of course, and that was why he was here. Others had
talked about it for years; there had been wild rumors and solemn warnings and
much muttering in taverns. But the rumor-mongers and the warning-sounders and
the tavern-mutterers had made no move. They had stayed in the city and he alone
had fled.
Some of them, he knew, had stayed to stave
off the inevitable end as best they could, and these he saluted for their
courage. Others had attempted to ignore the future, and these he detested for
their blindness. And all of them he pitied.
For he had realized, long ago, that courage
was not enough and that ignorance was no salvation. Wise words and foolish
words are one—they will not halt the storm. And when the storm approaches, it
is best to flee.
So he had prepared for
himself this mountain retreat, high over the city, and here he was safe; would
be safe for years to come. Other men of equal wealth could have done the same,
but they were too wise or too foolish to face reality. So while they spread
their rumors and sounded their warnings and muttered in their cups, he built
his sanctuary; lead-guarded, amply provisioned, and stocked with every need for
years to come, including even a generous supply of the world's most popular
laxative.
Dawn came at last and the
echoes of the thunder died, and he went to a special, shielded place where he
could sight his spyglass at the city. He stared and he squinted, but there was
nothing to be seen—nothing but swirling clouds that billowed blackly and rolled
redly across the hazed horizon.
Then he knew that he must go down to the city
if he wanted to find out, and made due preparations.
There was a special suit to wear, a cunning
seamless garment of insulated cloth and lead, difficult and costly to obtain.
It was a top secret suit; the kind only Pentagon generals possess. They cannot
procure them for their wives, and they must steal them for their mistresses.
But he had one. He donned it now.
An elevated platform aided
his descent to the base of the mountain, and there his car was waiting. He
drove out, the shielded doors closing automatically behind him, and started for
the city. Through the eyepiece of his insulated helmet he stared out at a
yellowish fog, and he drove slowly, even though he encountered no traffic nor any sign of life.
After a time the fog lifted, and he could see
the countryside. Yellow trees and yellow grass stood stiffly silhouetted
against a yellow sky in which great clouds writhed and whirled.
Van Gogh's work, he told himself, knowing it was a lie. For no
artist's hand had smashed the windows of the farmhouses, peeled the paint from
the sides of the barns, or squeezed the warm breath from the herds huddling in
the fields, standing fright-frozen but dead.
He drove along to the broad arterial leading
to the city; an arterial which ordinarily swarmed with the multicolored
corpuscles of motor vehicles. But there were no cars moving today, not in this
artery.
Not until he neared the suburbs did he see
them, and then he rounded a curve and was halfway upon the vanguard before he
panicked and halted in a ditch.
The roadway ahead was packed with automobiles
as far as the eye could see—a solid mass, bumper to bumper, ready to descend
upon him with whirring wheels.
But the wheels were not turning.
The cars were dead. The further stretches of
the highway were an automobile graveyard. He approached the spot on foot,
treading with proper reverence past the Cadillac-corpses, the cadavers of
Chevrolets, the bodies of Buicks. Close at hand he could see the evidence of
violent ends; the shattered glass, the smashed fenders, the battered bumpers
and twisted hoods.
The signs of struggle were often pitiable to
observe; here was a tiny Volkswagen, trapped and crushed between two looming
Lincolns; there an MG had died beneath the wheels of a charging Chrysler. But
all were still now. The Dodges dodged no longer, the Hornets had ceased their
buzzing, and the Ramblers would never ramble again.
It
was hard for him to realize with equal clarity the tragedy that had
overtaken the people inside these cars— they were dead, too, of course, but
somehow their passing seemed insignificant. Maybe his thinking had been
affected by the attitude of the age, in which a man tended to be less and less
indentified as an individual and more and more regarded on the basis of the
symbolic status of the car he drove. When a stranger rode down the street, one
seldom thought of him as a person; one's only immediate reaction was,
"There goes a Ford—there goes a Pontiac— there goes one of those big
goddam Imperials." And men bragged about their cars instead of their
characters. So somehow the death of the automobiles seemed more important than
the death of their owners. It didn't seem as though human beings had perished
in this panic-stricken effort to escape from the city; it was the cars which
had made a dash for final freedom and then failed.
He
skirted the road and now continued along the ditch until he came to the first
sidewalks of the suburbs. Here the evidence of destruction was accentuated.
Explosion and implosion had done their work. In the country, paint had been
peeled from the walls, but in the suburbs walls had been peeled from the
buildings. Not every home was leveled. There were still plenty of ranchhouses
standing, though no sign of a rancher in a gray flannel' suit. In some of the
picturesquely modern white houses, with their light lines and heavy mortgages,
the glass side walls remained unshattered, but there was no sign of happy, busy
suburban life within—the television sets were dead.
Now he found his progress impeded by an increasing
litter. Apparently a blast had swept through this area; his way was blocked by
a clutter of the miscellaneous debris of Exurbia.
He waded through or stepped
around:
Boxes of Kleenex, artificial shrunken heads
which had once dangled in the windows of station-wagons, crumpled
shopping-lists and scribbled notices of appointments with psychiatrists.
He stepped on an Ivy League cap, nearly
tripped over a twisted barbecue grille, got his feet tangled in the straps of
foam-rubber falsies. The gutters were choked with the glut from a bombed-out
drugstore; bobbie-pins, nylon bobby-socks, a spate of pocketbooks, a carton of
tranquilizers, a mass of suntan lotion, suppositories, deodorants, and a big
cardboard cutout of Harry Belafonte obscured by a spilled can of hot fudge.
He shuffled on, through a welter of women's
electric shavers, Book-of-the-Month-Club bonus selections, Presley records,
false teeth, and treatises of Existentialism. Now he was actually approaching
the city proper. Signs of devastation multiplied. Trudging past the campus of
the university he noted, with a start of horror, that the huge football stadium
was no more. Nestled next to it was the tiny Fine Arts
building, and at first he thought that it too had been razed. Upon closer
inspection, however, he realized it was untouched, save for the natural
evidence of neglect and decay.
He found it difficult to
maintain a regular course, now, for the streets were choked with wrecked
vehicles and the sidewalks often blocked by beams or the entire toppled fronts
of buildings. Whole structures had been ripped apart, and here and there were
freakish variations where a roof had fallen in or a single room smashed to
expose its contents. Apparently the blow had come instantly, and without
forewarning, for there were few bodies on the streets and those he glimpsed
inside the opened buildings gave indication that death had found them in the
midst of their natural occupations.
Here, in a gutted basement, a fat man
sprawled over the table of his home workshop, his sightless eyes fixed upon the
familiar calendar exhibiting entirely the charms of Marilyn Monroe. Two flights
above him, through the empty frame of a bathroom window, one could see .his
wife, dead in the tub, her hand still clutching a movie magazine with a Rock
Hudson portrait on the cover. And up in the attic, open to the sky, two young
lovers stretched on a brass bed, locked naked in headless ecstasy.
He turned away, and as his progress continued
he deliberately avoided looking at the bodies. But he could not avoid seeing
them now, and with familiarity the revulsion softened to the merest twinge. It
then gave way to curiosity.
Passing a school playground he was pleased to
see that the end had come without grotesque or unnatural violence. Probably a
wave of paralyzing gas had swept through this area. Most of the 'figures were
frozen upright in normal postures. Here were all of the aspects of ordinary
childhood—the big kid punching the little kid, both leaning up against a fence
where the blast had found them; a group of six youngsters in uniform black
leather jackets piled upon the body of a child wearing a white leather jacket.
Beyond the playground loomed the center of
the city. From a distance the mass of shattered masonry looked like a crazy
garden-patch turned by a mad plowman. Here and there were tiny blossoms of
flame sprouting forth from the interstices of huge clods, and at intervals he
could see lopped, stemlike formations, the lower stories of skyscrapers from
which the tops had been sheared by the swish of a thermonuclear scythe.
He
hesitated, wondering if it was practical to venture into this weird welter.
Then he caught sight of the hillside beyond, and of the imposing structure
which was the new Federal Building. It stood there, somehow miraculously
untouched by the blast, and in the haze he could see the flag still fluttering
from its roof. There would be life here, and he knew he would not be content
until he reached it.
But
long before he attained his objective, he found other evidences of continued
existence. Moving delicately and deliberately through the debris, he became
aware that he was not entirely alone here in the central chaos.
Wherever
the flames flared and flickered, there were furtive figures moving against the
fire. To his horror, he realized that they were actually kindling the blazes;
burning away barricades that could not otherwise be removed, as they entered
shops and stores to loot. Some of the scavengers were silent and ashamed,
others were boisterous and drunken; all were doomed.
It
was this knowledge which kept him from interfering. Let them plunder and pilfer
at will, let them quarrel over the spoils in the shattered streets; in a few
hours or a few days, radiation and fallout would take inevitable toll.
No one interfered with his
passage; perhaps the helmet and protective garment resembled an official
uniform. He went his way unhindered and saw:
A
barefooted man wearing a mink coat, dashing through
the door of a cocktail lounge and passing bottles out to a
bucket-brigade of four
small children-------------------------
An
old woman standing in a bombed-out bank vault,
sweeping stacks of bills into the street with her broom.
Over in one corner lay the body of a white-haired man,
his futile arms outstretched to embrace a heap of coins.
Impatiently, the old woman nudged him with her broom.
His head lolled, and a silver dollar popped out of his
open mouth------------
A soldier and a woman wearing the armband of the
Red Cross, carrying a stretcher to the blocked entrance
of a partially-razed church. Unable to enter, they bore
the stretcher around to the side, and the soldier kicked
in one of the stained-glass windows----------------------
An artist's basement studio, open to the sky; its walls
still intact and covered with abstract paintings. In the
center of the room stood the easel, but the artist was
gone. What was left of him was smeared across the
canvas in a dripping mass, as though the artist had finally
succeeded in putting something of himself into his
picture----------
A
welter of glassware that had once been a chemical
laboratory, and in the center of it a smocked figure
slumped over a microscope. On the slide was a single
cell which the scientists had been intently observing when
the world crashed about his ears---------------------
A woman with the face of a Vogue model,
spread-
eagled in the street. Apparently she had been struck
down while answering the call of duty, for one slim,
aristocratic hand still gripped the strap of her hatbox.
Otherwise, due to some prank of explosion, the blast
had stripped her quite naked; she lay there with all
her expensive loveliness exposed-----------------
A thin man, emerging from a pawnshop and carrying
an enormous tuba. He
disappeared momentarily into a
meat market, next door, then came out again, the bell of
his tuba stuffed with sausages-----------------
A broadcasting
studio, completely demolished, its once
immaculate sound stage littered with the crumpled cartons
of fifteen different varieties of America's Favorite Cigar-
ette and the broken bottles of twenty brands of America's
Favorite Beer. Protruding from the wreckage was the head
of America's Favorite Quizmaster, eyes staring glassily
at a sealed booth in the corner which now served as the
coffin for a nine-year-old boy who had known the batting-
averages of every team in the American and National
Leagues since 1882------------------
A
wild-eyed woman sitting in the street, crying and
crooning over a kitten cradled in her arms-------------------------
A
broker caught at his desk, his body mummified in
coils of ticker-tape---------------
A motor-bus, smashed into a brick wall; its passengers
still jamming the aisles; standees clutching straps in
rigor mortis-----------
The
hindquarters of a stone lion before what had once
been the Public Library; before it, on the steps, the corpse
of an elderly lady whose shopping-bag had spewed its
contents over the street—two murder-mysteries, a rental
copy of Peyton
Place, and the latest issue
of the Reader's
Digest----------
A small boy wearing a cowboy hat, who levelled a toy pistol at his little sister and shouted,
"Bang! You're dead!"
(She
was.)
He walked slowly now, his pace impeded by
obstacles both physical and of the spirit. He approached the building on the
hillside by a circuitous route; avoiding repugnance, overcoming morbid
curiosity, shunning pity, recoiling from horror, surmounting shock.
He knew there were others about him here in
the city's core, some bent on acts of mercy, some on heroic rescue. But he
ignored them all, for they were dead. Mercy had no meaning in this mist, and
there was no rescue from radiation. Some of those who passed called out to him,
but he went his way unheeding, knowing their words were mere death-rattles.
But suddenly, as he climbed
the hillside, he was crying. The salty warmth ran down his cheeks and blurred
the inner surface of his helmet so that he no longer saw anything clearly. And
it was thus he emerged from the inner circle; the inner circle of the city, the
inner circle of Dante's hell.
His tears ceased to flow and his vision
cleared. Ahead of him was the proud outline of the Federal Building, shining
and intact—or almost so.
As he neared the imposing
steps and gazed up at the facade, he noted that there were a few hints of
crumbling and corrosion on the surface of the structure. The freakish blast had
done outright damage only to the sculptured figures surmounting the great
arched doorway; the symbolic statuary had been partially shattered so that the
frontal surface had fallen away. He blinked at the empty outlines of the three
figures; somehow he never had realized that Faith, Hope and Charity were
hollow.
Then he walked inside the building. There
were tired soldiers guarding the doorway, but they made no move to stop him,
probably because he wore a protective garment even more intricate and
impressive than their own.
Inside the structure a
small army of low clerks and high brass moved antlike in the corridors;
marching grim-faced up and down the stairs. There were no elevators, of course—they'd
ceased functioning when the electricity gave out. But he could climb.
He wanted to climb now, for that was why he had
come here. He wanted to gaze out over the city. In his gray insulation he
resembled an automaton, and like an automaton he plodded stiffly up the
stairways until he reached the topmost floor.
But there were no windows here, only
walled-in offices. He walked down a long corridor until he came to the very
end. Here, a single large cubicle glowed with gray fight from the glass wall
beyond.
A man sat at a desk, jiggling the receiver of
a field telephone and cursing softly. He glanced curiously at the intruder,
noted the insulating uniform, and returned to his abuse of the instrument in
his hand.
So it was possible to walk
over to the big window and look down.
It was possible to see the city, or the crater where the city had been.
Night was mingling with the haze on the
horizon, but there was no darkness. The little incendiary blazes had been
spreading, apparently, as the wind moved in, and now he gazed down upon a
growing sea of flame. The crumbling spires and gutted structures were drowning
in red waves. As he watched, the tears came again, but he knew there would not
be enough tears to put the fires out.
So he turned back to the man at the desk,
noting for the first time that he wore one of the very special uniforms
reserved for generals.
This must be the commander, then. Yes, he was
certain of it now, because the floor around the desk was littered with scraps
of paper. Maybe they were obsolete maps, maybe they were obsolete treaties. It
didn't matter now.
There was another map on the wall behind the
desk, and this one mattered very much. It was studded v/ith black and red pins,
and it took but a moment to decipher their meaning. The red pins signified
destruction, for there was one affixed to the name of this city. And there was
one for New York, one for Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles—every important center
had been pierced.
He
looked at the general, and finally the words came.
"It must be awful," he said.
"Yes, awful," the general echoed.
"Millions upon millions dead."
"Dead."
"The
cities destroyed, the air polluted, and no escape. No escape anywhere in the
world." "No escape."
He turned away and stared
out the window once more, stared down at Inferno. Thinking, this is what it has come to,
this is the way the world ends.
He glanced at the general again, and then
sighed. "To think of our being beaten," he whispered.
The red glare mounted, and in its fight he
saw the general's face, gleeful and exultant.
"What do you mean, man?" the
general said proudly, the flames rising. "We won!"
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Writer, lecturer, skin diver, travel expert, and interpreter of science for the lay audience, Arthur Clarke is not quite
all things to all men but he is giving it a good try. He helped British pilots
outwit the Luftwaffe
in the Battle of Britain.
He was one of the founders of the British rocket society. He has had no fewer
than six sightings of TJFOs (all of which he explains in non-saucerian terms).
And, in general, he has shown a remarkable capacity for being where the
excitement is, and coming back to tell the rest of us about it. He is also a
science fiction writer at the very rarefied level of general excellence shared
by only a few. You already know this, of course; but if you didn't you would
soon learn in reading—
The Deep Range
There
was a killer loose on the range. A 'copter patrol, five
hundred miles off Greenland, had seen the great corpse staining the sea crimson
as it wallowed in the waves. Within seconds, the intricate warning
system had been alerted: men were plotting circles and moving counters on the
North Atlantic chart—and Don Burley was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes
as he dropped silently down to the twenty-fathom line.
The pattern of green lights on the tell-tale
was a glowing symbol of security. As long as that pattern was unchanged, as
long as none of those emerald stars winked to red, all was well with Don and
his tiny craft. Air— fuel—power—this was the triumvirate which ruled his life.
If any of them failed, he would be sinking in a steel
coffin
down toward the pelagic ooze, as Johnnie Tyndall had done the season before
last. But there was no reason why they should fail; the accidents one foresaw,
Don told himself reassuringly, were never the ones that happened.
He leaned across the tiny
control board and spoke into the mike. Sub 5 was still close enough to the
mother ship for radio to work, but before long he'd have to switch to the
sonics.
"Setting
course 255, speed 50 knots, depth 20 fathoms,
full sonar coverage. . . . Estimated time to target area,
70 minutes. . . . Will report at 10-minute intervals.
That
is all_____ Out."
The acknowledgement,
already weakening with range, came back at once from the Herman Melville.
"Message received and understood. Good
hunting. What about the hounds?"
Don chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. This
might be a job he'd have to handle alone. He had no idea, to within fifty miles
either way, where Benj and Susan were at the moment. They'd certainly follow if
he signaled for them, but they couldn't maintain his speed and would soon have
to drop behind. Besides, he might be heading for a pack of killers, and the last
thing he wanted to do was to lead his carefully trained porpoises into trouble.
That was common sense and good business. He was also very fond of Susan and
Benj.
"It's too far, and T don't
know what I'm running into," he replied. "If they're in the
interception area when I get there, I may whistle them up."
The acknowledgement from the mother ship was
barely audible, and Don switched off the set. It was time to look around.
He dimmed the cabin lights so that he could
see the scanner screen more clearly, pulled the polaroid
glasses down over his eyes, and peered into the depths. This was the moment
when Don felt like a god, able to hold within his hands a circle of the
Atlantic twenty miles across, and to see clearly down to the still-unexplored
deeps, three thousand fathoms below. The slowly rotating beam of inaudible
sound was searching the world in which he floated, seeking out friend and foe
in the eternal darkness where light could never penetrate. The pattern of
soundless shrieks, too shrill even for the hearing of the bats who had invented
sonar a million years before man, pulsed out into the watery night: the faint
echoes came tingling back as floating, blue-green flecks on the screen.
Through long practice, Don could read thir
message with effortless ease. A thousand feet below, stretching out to his
submerged horizon, was the scattering layer—the blanket of life that covered
half the world. The sunken meadow of the sea, it rose and fell with the passage
of the sun, hovering always at the edge of darkness. But the ultimate depths
were no concern of his. The flocks he guarded, and the enemies who ravaged
them, belonged to the upper levels of the sea.
Don flicked the switch of the depth-selector,
and his sonar beam concentrated itself into the horizontal plane. The
glimmering echoes from the abyss vanished, but he could see more clearly what
lay around him here in the ocean's stratospheric heights. That glowing cloud
two miles ahead was a school of fish; he wondered if Base knew about it, and
made an entry in his log. There were some larger, isolated blips at the edge of
the school—the carnivores pursuing the cattle, insuring that the endlessly
turning wheel of life and death would never lose momentum. But this conflict
was no affair of Don's; he was after bigger game.
Sub 5 drove on toward the west, a steel
needle swifter and more deadly than any other creature that roamed the seas.
The tiny cabin, lit only by the flicker of lights from the instrument board,
pulsed with power as the spinning turbines thrust the water aside. Don glanced
at the chart and wondered how the enemy had broken through this time. There
were still many weak points, for fencing the oceans of the world had been a
gigantic task. The tenuous electric fields, fanning out between generators
many miles apart, could not always hold at bay the starving monsters of the
deep. They were learning, too. When the fences were opened, they would
sometimes slip through with the whales and wreak havoc before they were
discovered.
The long-range receiver bleeped plaintively,
and Don switched over to Transcribe. It wasn't practical to send speech any
distance over an ultrasonic beam, and code had come back into its own. Don had
never learned to read it by ear, but the ribbon of paper emerging from the slot
saved him the trouble.
Copter reports school 50-100 whales heading 95 degrees grid ref XI86475 Y438034 stop. Moving at speed. Stop. Melville. Out.
Don started to set the
coordinates on the plotting grid, then saw that it was no longer necessary. At
the extreme edge of his screen, a flotilla of faint stars had appeared. He
altered course slightly, and drove head-on toward the approaching herd.
The 'copter was right: they were moving fast.
Don felt a mounting excitement, for this could mean that they were on the run
and luring the killers toward him. At the rate at which they were traveling he
would be among them in five minutes. He cut the motors and felt the backward
tug of water bringing him swiftly to rest.
Don Burley, a knight in armor, sat in his
tiny dim-lit room fifty feet below the bright Atlantic waves, testing his
weapons for the conflict that lay ahead. In these moments of poised suspense,
before action began, his racing brain often explored such fantasies. He felt a
kinship with all shepherds who had guarded their flocks back to the dawn of
time. He was David, among ancient Palestinian hills, alert for the mountain
lions that would prey upon his father's sheep. But far nearer in time, and far
closer in spirit, were the men who had marshaled the great herds of cattle on
the American plains, only a few lifetimes ago. They would have understood his
work, though his implements would have been magic to them. The pattern was the
same; only the scale had altered. It made no fundamental difference that the
beasts Don herded weighed almost a hundred tons, and browsed on the endless
savannahs of the sea.
The school was now less than two miles away,
and Don checked his scanner's continuous circling to concentrate on the sector
ahead. The picture on the screen altered to a fanshaped wedge as the sonar beam
started to flick
from side to side; now he could count every whale in the school, and even make
a good estimate of its size. With a practiced eye, he began to look for
stragglers.
Don could never have explained what drew him
at once toward those four echoes at the southern fringe of the school. It was
true that they were a little apart from the rest, but others had fallen as far
behind. There is some sixth sense that a man acquires when he has stared long
enough into a sonar screen—some hunch which enables him to extract more from
the moving flecks than he has any right to do. Without conscious thought, Don
reached for the control which would start the turbines whirling into life. Sub
5 was just getting under way when three leaden thuds reverberated through the
hull, as if someone was knocking on the front door and wanted to come in.
"Well I'm damned," said Don.
"How did you get here?" He did not bother to switch
on the TV; he'd know Benj's signal anywhere. The porpoises must have been in
the neighborhood and had spotted him before he'd even switched on the hunting
call. For the thousandth time, he marveled at their intelligence and loyalty.
It was strange that Nature had played the same trick twice —on land with the
dog, in the ocean with the porpoise. Why were these graceful sea-beasts so fond
of man, to whom they owed so little? It made one feel that the human race was
worth something after all, if it could inspire such unselfish devotion.
It had been known for centuries that the
porpoise was at least as intelligent as the dog, and could obey quite complex
verbal commands. The experiment was still in progress, but if it succeeded then
the ancient partnership between shepherd and sheep-dog would have a new lease
on life.
Don switched on the speakers recessed into
the sub's hull and began to talk to his escorts. Most of the sounds he uttered
would have been meaningless to other human ears; they were the product of long
research by the animal psychologists of the World Food Administration. He gave
his orders twice to make sure that they were understood, then
checked with the sonar screen to see that Benj and Susan were following astern
as he had told them to.
The four echoes that had
attraced his attention
were clearer and closer
now, and the main body of the whale pack had swept past him to the east. He had
no fear of a collision; the great animals, even in their panic, could sense his
presence as easily as he could detect theirs, and by similar means. Don
wondered if he should switch on his beacon. They might recognize its sound
pattern, and it would reassure them. But the still unknown enemy might recognize
it too.
He closed for an
interception, and hunched low over the screen as if to drag from it by sheer
will power every scrap of information the scanner could give. There were two
large echoes, some distance apart, and one was accompanied by a pair of
smaller satellites. Don wondered if he was already too late. In his mind's eye,
he could picture the death struggle taking place in the water less than a mile ahead. Those two fainter blips would be the enemy—either shark or
grampus—worrying a whale while one of its companions stood by in helpless
terror, with no weapons of defense except its mighty flukes.
Now he was almost close enough for vision.
The TV camera in Sub 5's prow strained through the gloom, but at first could
show nothing but the fog of plankton. Then a vast shadowy shape began to form in the center of the screen, with two
smaller companions below it. Don was seeing, with the greater precision but
hopelessly limited range of ordinary light, what the sonar scanners had already
told him.
Almost at once he saw his mistake. The two
satellites were calves, not sharks. It was the first time he had ever met a
whale with twins; although multiple births were not unknown, a cow could suckle
only two young at once and usually only the stronger would survive. He choked
down his disappointment; this error had cost him many minutes and he must
begin the search again.
Then came the
frantic tattoo on the hull that meant danger. It wasn't easy to scare Benj, and
Don shouted his reassurance as he swung Sub 5 round so that the camera could
search the turgid waters. Automatically, he had turned toward the fourth blip
on the sonar screen— the echo he had assumed, from its size, to be another
adult whale. And he saw that, after all, he had come to the right place.
"Jesus!" he said
softly. "I didn't know they came that big." He'd seen larger sharks
before, but they had all been harmless vegetarians. This, he could tell at a
glance, was a Greenland shark, the killer of the northern seas. It was supposed
to grow up to thirty feet long, but this specimen was bigger than Sub 5. It was
every inch of forty feet from snout to tail, and when he spotted it, it was
already turning in toward the kill. Like the coward it was, it had launched its
attack at one of the calves.
Don yelled to Benj and Susan, and saw them
racing ahead into his field of vision. He wondered fleetingly why porpoises had
such an overwhelming hatred of sharks; then he loosed his hands from the
controls as the autopilot locked on to the target. Twisting and turning as
agilely as any other sea-creature of its size, Sub 5 began to close in upon the
shark, leaving Don free to concentrate on his armament.
The killer had been so intent upon his prey
that Benj caught him completely unawares, ramming him just behind the left
eye. It must have been a painful blow: an iron-hard snout, backed by a
quarter-ton of muscle at fifty miles an hour is something not to be laughed at
even by the largest fish. The shark jerked round in an impossibly tight curve,
and Don was almost jolted out of his seat as the sub snapped on to a new
course. If this kept up, he'd find it hard to use his String. But at least the
killer was too busy now to bother about his intended victims.
Benj and Susan were worrying the giant like
dogs snapping at the heels of an angry bear. They were too agile to be caught
in those ferocious jaws, and Don marveled at the coordination with which they
worked. When either had to surface for air, the other would hold off for a
minute until the attack could be resumed in strength.
There was no evidence that the shark realized
that a far more dangerous adversary was closing in upon it, and that the
porpoises were merely a distraction. That suited Don very nicely; the next
operation was going to be difficult unless he could hold a steady course for at
least fifteen seconds. At a pinch he could use the tiny rocket torps to make a
kill. If he'd been alone, and faced with a pack of sharks, he would certainly
have done so. But it was messy, and there was a better way. He preferred the
technique of the rapier to that of the hand-grenade.
Now he was only fifty feet away, and closing
rapidly. There might never be a better chance. He punched the launching stud.
From beneath the belly of
the sub, something that looked like a sting-ray hurtled forward. Don had
checked the speed of his own craft; there was no need to come any closer now.
The tiny, arrow-shaped hydrofoil, only a cotiple of feet across, could move far
faster than his vessel and would close the gap in seconds. As it raced forward,
it spun out the thin line of the control wire, like some underwater spider
laying its thread. Along that wire passed the energy that powered the Sting,
and the signals that steered it to its goal. Don had completely ignored his own
larger craft in the effort of guiding this underwater missile. It responded to
his touch so swiftly that he felt he was controlling some sensitive
high-spirited steed.
The shark saw the danger less than a second
before impact. The resemblance of the Sting to an ordinary ray confused it, as
the designers had intended. Before the tiny brain could realize that no ray
behaved like this, the missile had struck. The steel hypodermic, rammed forward
by an exploding cartridge, drove through the shark's horny skin, and the great
fish erupted in a frenzy of terror. Don backed rapidly away, for a blow from
that tail would rattle him around like a pea in a can and might even cause
damage to the sub. There was nothing more for him to do, except to speak into the
microphone and call off his hounds.
The doomed killer was trying to arch its body
so that it could snap at the poisoned dart. Don had now reeled the Sting back
into its hiding place, pleased that he had been able
to retrieve the missile undamaged. He watched without pity as the great fish
succumbed to its paralysis.
Its struggles were weakening. It was swimming
aimlessly back and forth, and once Don had to sidestep smartly to avoid a
collision. As it lost control of buoyancy, the dying shark drifted up to the
surface. Don did not bother to follow; that could wait until he had attended to more important
business.
He found the cow and her
two calves less than a mile away, and inspected them carefully. They were
uninjured, so there was no need to call the vet in his highly specialized
two-man sub which could handle any cetological crisis from a stomach-ache to a
Caesarian. Don made a note of the mother's number, stencilled just behind the
flippers. The calves, as was obvious from their size, were this season's and
had not yet been branded.
Don watched for a little while. They were no
longer in the least alarmed, and a check on the sonar had shown that the whole
school had ceased its panicky flight. He wondered how they knew what had
happened; much had been learned about communication among whales, but much was
still a mystery.
"I hope you appreciate what I've done
for you, old lady," he muttered. Then, reflecting that fifty tons of
mother love was a slightly awe-inspiring sight, he blew his tanks and surfaced.
It was calm, so he cracked the airlock and
popped his head out of the tiny conning tower. The water was only inches below
his chin, and from time to time a wave made a determined effort to swamp him.
There was little danger of this happening, for he fitted the hatch so closely
that he was quite an effective plug.
Fifty feet away, a long slate-colored mound, like an overturned boat,
was rolling on the surface. Don looked at it thoughtfully and did some mental
calculations. A brute this size should be valuable; with any luck there was a
chance of a double bonus. In a few minutes he'd radio his report, but for the
moment it was pleasant to drink the fresh Atlantic air and feel the open sky
above his head.
A gray thunderbolt shot up out of the depths
and smashed back onto the surface of the water, smothering Don with spray. It
was just Benj's modest way of drawing attention to himself; a moment later the
porpoise had swum up to the conning tower, so that Don could reach down and
tickle its head. The great, intelligent eyes stared back into his; was it pure
imagination, or did an almost human sense of fun also lurk in their depths?
Susan, as usual, circled shyly at a distance
until jealousy overpowered her and she butted Benj out of the way. Don
distributed caresses impartially and apologized because he had nothing to give
them. He undertook to make up for the omission as soon as he returned to the Herman Melville.
"I'll
go for another swim with you, too," he promised, "as long as you
behave yourselves next time." He rubbed thoughtfully at a large bruise
caused by Benj's playfulness, and wondered if he was not getting a little too
old for rough games like this.
"Time
to go home," Don said firmly, sliding down into the cabin and slamming the
hatch. He suddenly realized that he was very hungry, and had better do
something about the breakfast he had missed. There were not many men on earth
who had earned a better right to eat their morning meal. He had saved for
humanity more tons of meat, oil and milk than could easily be estimated.
Don Burley was the happy warrior, coming home
from
one battle that man would always have to fight. He was
holding at bay the specter of famine which had confronted
all earlier ages, but which would never threaten the world
again while the great plankton farms harvested their
millions of tons of protein, and the whale herds obeyed
their new masters. Man had come back to the sea after
aeons of exile; until the oceans froze, he would never
be hungry again_______
Don glanced at the scanner as he set his
course. He smiled as he saw the two echoes keeping pace with the central splash
of light that marked his vessel. "Hang around," he said. "We
mammals must stick together." Then, as the autopilot took over, he lay
back in his chair.
And presently Benj and Susan heard a most
peculiar noise, rising and falling against the drone of the turbines. It had
filtered faintly through the thick walls of Sub 5, and only the sensitive ears
of the porpoises could have detected it. But intelligent beasts though they
were, they could hardly be expected to understand why Don Burley was
announcing, in a highly unmusical voice, that he was Heading for the Last
Round-up....
HENRY KUTTNER
The present editor was (and still is) a fan; and almost the first fan letter he ever wrote was to the Weird Tales of the Thirties, attempting to communicate
his high excitement at having read a story by a brand-new name in that magazine. The story was a ghastly, shuddery bit of horror; and the author was Henry Kuttner, just
beginning, a long way from the heights of competence and creativity he was to
attain, but already showing a most individual capacity for stirring the guts
of his readers. Henry Kuttner wrote an incredible quantity for more than two
decades after that (all good, and much superb) until his tragic death in 1958.
Almost the last—and one of the best—of his countless fine science fiction
stories is—
A Cross of Centuries
They
called him Christ. But he was not the Man Who had
toiled up the long road to Golgotha five thousand years before. They called him
Buddha and Mohammed; they called him the Lamb, and the Blessed of God. They
called him the Prince of Peace and the Immortal One. His name was Tyrell.
He had come up another road now, the steep
path that led to the monastery on the mountain, and he stood for a moment
blinking against the bright sunlight. His white robe was stained with the
ritual black.
The girl beside him touched his arm and urged
him gently forward. He stepped into the shadow of the gateway.
Then he hesitated and looked back. The road
had led up to a level mountain meadow where the monastery stood, and the meadow
was dazzling green with early spring. Faintly, far away, he felt a wrenching
sorrow at the thought of leaving all this brightness, but he sensed that things
would be better very soon. And the brightness was far away. It was not quite
real any more. The girl touched his arm again and he nodded obediently and
moved forward, feeling the troubling touch of approaching loss that his tired
mind could not understand now.
I am
very old, he
thought.
In
the courtyard the priests bowed before him. Mons, the leader, was standing at
the other end of a broad pool that sent back the bottomless blue of the sky.
Now and again the water was ruffled by a cool, soft breeze.
Old habits sent their messages along his
nerves. Tyrell raised his hand and blessed them all.
His voice spoke the
remembered phrases quietly.
"Let
there be peace. On all the troubled earth, on all the worlds and in God's
blessed sky between, let there
be peace. The powers of—of-------------- "
his hand wavered;
then he
remembered—"the powers of darkness have no strength against God's love and
understanding. I bring you God's word. It is love; it is
understanding; it is peace."
They
waited till he had finished. It was the wrong time and the wrong ritual. But that
did not matter, since he was the Messiah.
Mons,
at the other end of the pool, signaled. The girl beside Tyrell put her hands
gently on the shoulders of his robe.
Mons
cried, "Immortal, will you cast off your stained garment and with it the
sins of time?"
Tyrell looked vaguely across the pool.
"Will
you bless the worlds with another century of your holy presence?"
Tyrell remembered some
words.
"I leave in peace; I return in
peace," he said.
The girl gently pulled off the white robe,
knelt, and removed Tyrell's sandals. Naked, he stood at the pool's edge.
He looked like a boy of twenty. He was two
thousand years old.
Some deep trouble touched
him. Mons had lifted his arm, summoning, but Tyrell looked around confusedly
and met the girl's gray eyes.
"Nerina?" he murmured.
"Go in the pool," she whispered. "Swim across it."
He put out his hand and touched hers. She
felt that wonderful current of gentleness that was his indomitable strength.
She pressed his hand tightly, trying to reach through the clouds in his mind,
trying to make him know that it would be all right again, that she would
be waiting —as she had waited for his resurrection three times already now, in
the last three hundred years.
She was much younger than Tyrell, but she was
immortal too.
For an instant the mists cleared from his blue eyes.
"Wait for me, Nerina," he said.
Then, with a return of his old skill, he went into the pool with a clean dive.
She watched hrm swim across, surely and
steadily. There was nothing wrong with his body; there never was, no matter how
old he grew. It was only his mind that stiffened, grooved deeper into the iron
ruts of time, lost its friction with the present, so that his memory would
fragment away little by little. But the oldest memories went last, and the
automatic memories last of all.
She was conscious of her own body, young and
strong and beautiful, as it would always be. Her mind... there was an answer to that too. She was watching the answer.
/ am greatly blessed, she thought. Of all women on all the worlds, I am the
Bride of Tyrell, and the only other immortal ever born.
Lovingly and with reverence she watched him
swim. At her feet his discarded robe lay, stained with the memories of a
hundred years.
It did not seem so long ago. She could
remember it very clearly, the last time she had
watched Tyrell swim across the pool. And there had been one time before that
—and that had been the first. For her; not for Tyrell.
He came dripping out
of the water and hesitated. She felt a strong pang at the change in him from
strong sureness to bewildered questioning. But Möns was ready. He reached out and took Tyrell's hand. He led the Messiah toward
a door in the high monastery wall and through it. She thought that Tyrell
looked back at her, with the tenderness that was always there in his deep,
wonderful calm.
A priest picked up the stained robe from her
feet and carried it away. It would be washed clean now and placed on the altar,
the spherical tabernacle shaped like the mother world. Dazzling white again,
its folds would hang softly about the earth.
It would be washed clean, as Tyrell's mind
would be washed clean too, rinsed of the clogging deposit of memories that a
century had brought.
The priests were filing
away. She glanced back, beyond the open gateway, to the sharply beautiful green
of the mountain meadow, spring grass sensuously reaching to the sun after the
winter's snow. Immortal,
she thought, lifting her
arms high, feeling the eternal blood, ichor of gods, singing in deep rhythm
through her body. Tyrell
was the one who suffered. I have no price to pay for this —wonder.
Twenty centuries.
And the first century must have been utter horror.
Her mind turned from the hidden mists of history
that was legend now, seeing only a glimpse of the calm White Christ moving
through that chaos of roaring evil when the earth was blackened, when it ran
scarlet with hate and anguish. Ragnarok, Armageddon, Hour of the Antichrist—two thousand years ago!
Scourged, steadfast, preaching his word of
love and peace, the White Messiah had walked like light through earth's descent
into hell.
And he had lived, and the forces of evil had
destroyed themselves, and the worlds had found peace now—had found peace so long ago that the Hour of the Antichrist was lost to
memory; it was legend.
Lost, even to Tyrell's
memory. She
was glad of that. It would have been terrible to remember. She turned chill at
the thought of what martyrdom he must have endured.
But it was the Day of the
Messiah now, and Nerina, the only other immortal ever born, looked with
reverence and love at the empty doorway through which Tyrell had gone.
She glanced down at the
blue pool. A cool wind ruffled its surface; a cloud moved lightly past the sun,
shadowing all the bright day.
It would be seventy years before she would
swim the pool again. And when she did, when she woke, she would find Tyrell's
blue eyes watching her, his hand closing lightly over hers, raising her to join
Mm in the youth that was the springtime where they lived forever.
Her gray eyes watched him; her hand touched his as he lay on the couch.
But still he did not waken. She glanced up anxiously at Mons. He nodded reassuringly.
She
felt the slightest movement against her hand.
His eyelids trembled. Slowly they lifted. The
calm, deep certainty was still there in the blue eyes that had seen so much, in
the mind that had forgotten so much. Tyrell looked at her for a moment. Then he
smiled.
Nerina said shakily, "Each time I'm
afraid that you'll forget me."
Mons said, "We always give him back his
memories of you, Blessed of God. We always will."
He leaned over Tyrell. "Immortal, have you truly wakened?"
"Yes," Tyrell said, and thrust
himself upright, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch, rising to his
feet in a swift, sure motion. He glanced around, saw the new robe ready, pure
white, and drew it on. Both Nerina and Mons saw that there was no more
hesitancy in his actions. Beyond the eternal body, the mind was young and sure
and unclouded again.
Mons knelt, and Nerina
knelt too. The priest said softly, "We thank God that a new Incarnation is
permitted. May peace reign in this cycle, and in all the cycles beyond."
Tyrell lifted Nerina to her feet. He reached
down and drew Mons upright too.
"Mons, Mons," he said, almost chidingly. "Every century
I'm treated less like a man and more like a god. If you'd been alive a few
hundred years ago—well, they still prayed when I woke, but they didn't kneel.
I'm a man, Mons. Don't forget that."
Mons said, "You brought peace to the
worlds."
"Then may I have something to eat, in
return?"
Mons
bowed and went out. Tyrell turned quickly to Nerina. The strong gentleness of
his arms drew her close.
"If
I never woke, sometime—" he said. "You'd be the hardest thing of all
to give up. I didn't know how lonely I was till I found another immortal."
"We
have a week here in the monastery," she said. "A week's retreat,
before we go home. I like being here with you best of all."
"Wait
a while," he said. "A few more centuries and you'll lose that
attitude of reverence. I wish you would. Love's better—and who else can I love
this way?"
She
thought of the centuries of loneliness he had had, and her whole body ached
with love and compassion.
After
the kiss, she drew back and looked at htm thoughtfully.
"You've
changed again," she said. "It's still you, but—" "But
what?"
"You're gentler, somehow." Tyrell
laughed.
"Each time, they wash out my mind and
give me a new set of memories. Oh, most of the old ones, but the total's a
little different. It always is. Things are more peaceful now than they were a
century ago. So my mind is tailored to fit the times. Otherwise I'd gradually
become an anachronism." He frowned slightly. "Who's that?"
She glanced at the door.
"Mons? No. It's no one."
"Oh? Well. .. yes, we'll have a week's retreat. Time to
think and integrate my retailored personality. And the
past--------- "
He hesitated again.
She said, "I wish I'd been born earlier.
I could have been with you—"
"No," he said quickly. "At least—not
too far back."
"Was it so bad?"
He shrugged.
"I don't know how true my memories are
any more. I'm glad I don't remember more than I do. But I remember enough. The
legends are right." His face shadowed with sorrow. "The big wars ... hell was
loosed. Hell was omnipotent! The Antichrist walked in the noonday sun, and men
feared that which is high...." His gaze lifted to the pale low ceiling of
the room, seeing beyond it "Men had turned into beasts. Into
devils. I spoke of peace to them, and they tried to kill me. I bore it.
I was immortal, by God's grace. Yet they could have killed me. I am vulnerable
to weapons." He drew a deep, long breath. "Immortality was not
enough. God's will preserved me, so that I could go on preaching peace until,
little by little, the maimed beasts remembered their souls and reached up out
of hell...."
She had never heard him talk like this.
Gently she touched his hand.
He came back to her.
"It's over," he
said. "The past is dead. We have today."
From
the distance the priests chanted a paean of joy and gratitude.
The next afternoon she saw
him at the end of a corridor leaning over something huddled and dark. She ran
forward. He was bent down beside the body of a priest, and when Nerina called
out, he shivered and stood up, his face white and appalled.
She looked down and her face, too, went white.
The priest was dead. There were blue marks on
his throat, and his neck was broken, his head twisted monstrously.
Tyrell moved to shield the body from her gaze.
"G-get Mons," he said, unsure as
though he had reached the end of the hundred years. "Quick. This... get him."
Mons came, looked at the body, and stood
aghast. He met Tyrell's blue gaze.
"How many centuries, Messiah?" he
asked, in a shaken voice.
Tyrell said, "Since there was violence? Eight centuries or more. Mons, no one—no one is capable of
this."
Mons
said, "Yes. There is no more violence. It has been bred out of the
race." He dropped suddenly to his knees. "Messiah, bring peace again!
The dragon has risen from the past!"
Tyrell straightened,
a figure of strong humility in his white robe.
He lifted his eyes and
prayed.
Nerina
knelt, her horror slowly washed away in the burning power of Tyrell's prayer.
The
whisper breathed through the monastery and shuddered back from the blue, clear
air beyond. None knew who had closed deadly hands about the priest's throat. No
one, no human, was capable any longer of killing; as Mons had said, the ability
to hate, to destroy, had been bred out of the race.
The
whisper did not go beyond the monastery. Here the battle must be fought in
secret, no hint of it escaping to trouble the long peace of the worlds.
No human.
But another whisper grew: The Antichrist is born again.
They turned to Tyrell, to
the Messiah, for comfort.
Peace,
he said, peace—meet evil with humility, bow your heads
in prayer, remember the love that saved man when hell was loosed on the worlds
two thousand years ago.
At
night, beside Nerina, he moaned in his sleep and struck out at an invisible
enemy.
"Devil!" he
cried—and woke, shuddering.
She held him, with proud humility, till he
slept again.
She came with Mons one day
to Tyrell's room, to tell him of the new horror. A priest had been found dead,
savagely hacked by a sharp knife. They pushed open the door and saw Tyrell
sitting facing them at a low table. He was praying while he watched, in sick
fascination, the bloody knife that lay on the table before him.
"Tyrell----------- " she said, and suddenly
Mons drew in a
quick,
shuddering breath and swung around sharply. He pushed her back across the
threshold.
"Wait!" he said,
with violent urgency. "Wait for me here!" Before she could speak he
was beyond the closing door, and she heard it lock.
She stood there, not thinking, for a long time.
Then Mons came out and
closed the door softly behind him. He looked at her.
"It's all right,"
he said. "But... you must listen
to me now." Then he was silent.
He tried again.
"Blessed
of God----------------- "
Again he drew that difficult
breath. "Nerina. I------------------- " He laughed oddly. "That's
strange. I can't talk unless I call you
Nerina."
"What is it? Let me go to Tyrell!"
"No—no. He'll be all right. Nerina, he's—sick."
She shut her eyes, trying to concentrate. She
heard his voice, unsure but growing stronger.
"Those killings. Tyrell did them."
"Now you he," she said. "That is a lie!"
Mons said almost sharply, "Open your
eyes. Listen to me. Tyrell is—a man. A very great man, a very
good man, but no god. He is immortal. Unless he is struck down, he will
live forever—as you will. He has already lived more than twenty
centuries."
"Why tell me this? I know it!"
Mons said, "You must help, you must
understand. Immortality is an accident of the genes. A
mutation. Once in a thousand years, perhaps, or ten thousand, a human is
born immortal. His body renews itself; he does not age. Neither does his brain.
But his mind ages—"
She said desperately, "Tyrell swam the
pool of rebirth only three days ago. Not for another century will his mind age
again. Is he—he's
not dying?"
"No-no. Nerina, the pool of rebirth is only a
symbol. You know that."
"Yes. The real rebirth comes afterward,
when you put us in that machine. I remember."
Mons said, "The machine. If it were not
used each century, you and Tyrell would have become senile and helpless a long
time ago. The mind is not immortal, Nerina. After a while it cannot carry the
weight of knowledge, learning, habits. It loses flexibility,
it clouds with stiff old age. The machine clears the mind, Nerina, as
we can clear a computer of its units of memory. Then we
replace some memories, not all, we put the necessary
memories in a fresh, clear mind, so it can grow and learn
for another hundred years."
"But I know all that "
"Those new memories
form a new personality, Nerina."
"A new------------- ? But Tyrell is still the same."
"Not
quite. Each century he changes a little, as life grows better, as the worlds
grow happier. Each century the new mind, the fresh personality of Tyrell is
different —more in tune with the new century than the one just past. You have
been reborn in mind three times, Nerina. You are not the same as you were the
first time. But you cannot remember that. You do not have all the old memories
you once had."
"But—but
what---------------- "
Mons said, "I do not know. I have talked
to Tyrell.
I think this is what has happened. Each century when
the mind of Tyrell was cleansed—erased—it left a blank
mind, and we built a new Tyrell on that. Not much
changed. Only a little, each time. But more than
twenty
times? His mind must have been very different twenty
centuries ago. And--------------- "
"How different?"
"I don't know. We've assumed that when
the mind was erased, the pattern of personality—vanished. I think now that it
didn't vanish. It was buried. Suppressed, driven so deeply into the mind that
it could not emerge. It became unconscious. Century after century this has happened.
And now more than twenty personalities of Tyrell are buried in his mind, a
multiple personality that can no longer stay in balance. From the graves in his
mind, there has been a resurrection."
"The White Christ was never a
killer!"
"No. In reality, even his first
personality, twenty-odd centuries ago, must have been very great and good to
bring peace to the worlds—in that time of Antichrist. But sometimes, in the
burial of the mind, a change may happen. Those buried personalities, some of
them, may have changed to—to something less good than they were originally. And
now they have broken loose." Nerina turned to the door.
Mons said, "We must be very sure. But we
can save the Messiah. We can clear his brain, probe deep, deep, root out the
evil spirit. . . . We can save him and make him whole again. We must start at
once. Nerina—pray for him."
He gave her a long,
troubled look, turned, and went swiftly along the corridor. Nerina waited, not
even thinking. After a while she heard a slight sound. At one end of the
corridor were two priests standing motionless; at the other end, two others.
She opened the door and went in to Tyrell.
The first thing she saw was
the blood-stained knife on the table. Then she saw the dark silhouette at the
window, against the aching intensity of blue sky.
"Tyrell," she said hesitantly.
He turned.
"Nerina. Oh, Nerina!"
His
voice was still gentle with that deep power of calm. She went swiftly into his
arms.
"I was praying," he said, bending
his head to rest on her shoulder. "Mons told me.... I was praying. What have I done?"
"You are the Messiah," she said
steadily. "You saved the world from evil and the Antichrist. You've done
that."
"But the rest! This devil in my mind! This seed that has
grown there, hidden from God's sunlight—what has it grown into? They say I killed!"
After a long pause she whispered, "Did
you?"
"No," he said, with absolute
certainty. "How could I? I, who have lived by love—more than two thousand
years—I could not harm a living thing."
"I knew that," she said. "You
are the White Christ."
"The White
Christ," he said softly. "I wanted no such name. I am only a man,
Nerina. I was never more than that. But. . . something
saved me, something kept me alive through the Hour of the Antichrist. It was
God. It was His hand. God—help me now!"
She held him tightly and
looked past him through the window, bright sky, green meadow, tall mountains
with the clouds rimming their peaks. God was here, as he was out beyond the
blue, on all the worlds and in the gulfs between them, and God meant peace and
love.
"He will help you," she said
steadily. "He walked with you two thousand years ago. He hasn't gone away."
"Yes," Tyrell whispered. "Mons
must be wrong. The way it was ... I
remember. Men like beasts. The sky was burning fire. There was blood... there was blood. More than a hundred
years of blood that ran from the beast-men as they fought."
She felt the sudden stiffness in him, a
trembling rigor, a new sharp straining.
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes.
She thought of ice and fire, blue ice, blue fire.
"The big wars,"
he said, his voice stiff, rusty.
Then he put his hand over
his eyes.
"Christ!"
The word burst from his
tight throat. "God,
God—
"Tyrell!" She screamed his name.
"Back!" he croaked, and she
stumbled away, but he was not talking to her. "Back, devil!" He
clawed at his head, grinding it between his palms, bowing till he was half
crouched before her.
"Tyrell!' she cried.
"Messiah! You are the White
Christ---------- "
The
bowed body snapped erect. She looked at the new face and felt an abysmal horror
and loathing.
Tyrell
stood looking at her. Then, appallingly, he gave her a strutting, derisive bow.
She
felt the edge of the table behind her. She groped back and touched the heavy
thickness of dried blood on the knifeblade. It was part of the nightmare. She
moved her hand to the haft, knowing she could die by steel, letting her thought
move ahead of the glittering steel's point into her breast.
The voice she heard was
touched with laughter.
"Is
it sharp?" he asked. "Is it still sharp, my love? Or did I dull it on
the priest? Will you use it on me? Will you try? Other women have tried!"
Thick laughter choked in his throat.
"Messiah," she whispered.
"Messiah!" he mocked. "A White Christ! Prince of Peace! Bringing the word of
love, walking unharmed through the bloodiest wars that ever wrecked a world ... oh yes, a legend, my love, twenty centuries old and more. And a he. They've
forgotten! They've all forgotten what it was really like then!"
All she could do was shake her head in
helpless denial.
"Oh yes," he said. "You
weren't alive then. No one was. Except me, Tyrell.
Butchery! I survived. But not by preaching peace. Do
you know what happened to the men who preached love? They died—but I didn't
die. I survived, not by preaching."
He pranced, laughing.
"Tyrell the Butcher," he cried.
"I was the bloodiest of them all. All they could understand was fear. And
they weren't easily frightened then—not the men like beasts. But they were
afraid of me."
He lifted his clawed hands, his muscles
straining in an ecstasy of ghastly memory.
"The Red Christ," he said.
"They might have called me that. But they didn't. Not after I'd proved
what I had to prove. They had a name for me then. They knew my
name. And now--------------- " He grinned at her. "Now that the
worlds are
at peace, now I'm worshiped as the Messiah. What can Tyrell the Butcher do today?"
His laughter came slow, horrible and
complacent.
He took three steps and swept his arms around
her. Her flesh shrank from the grip of that evil.
And then, suddenly, strangely, she felt the
evil leave him. The hard arms shuddered, drew away, and then tightened again,
with frantic tenderness, while he bent his head and she felt the sudden hotness
of tears.
He could not speak for a while. Cold as stone,
she held him.
Somehow she was sitting on a couch and he was
kneeling before her, his face buried in her lap.
She could not make out many of his choking
words. "Remember ... I remember.,, the
old memories...
I can't stand it, I can't look back ... or ahead ... they— they had a name for me. I remember now. ..."
She laid one hand on his
head. His hair was cold and damp.
"They called me Antichrist!"
He lifted his face and looked at her.
"Help me!" he cried in anguish. "Help me, help me!"
Then his head bowed again and he pressed his
fists against his temples, whispering wordlessly.
She
remembered what was in her right hand, and she lifted the knife and drove it
down as hard as she could, to give him the help he needed.
She stood at the window, her back to the room
and the dead immortal.
She waited for the priest Mons to return. He
would know what to do next. Probably the secret would have to be kept, somehow.
They would not harm her, she knew that. The
reverence that had surrounded Tyrell enfolded her too. She would live on, the
only immortal now, born in a time of peace, living forever and alone in the
worlds of peace. Some day, some time, another immortal might be born, but she
did not want to think of that now. She could think only of Tyrell and her loneliness.
She looked through the window at the bright
blue and green, the pure day of God, washed clean now of the last red stain of
man's bloody past. She knew that Tyrell would be glad if he could see this
cleanness, this purity that could go on forever.
She would see it go on. She was part of it,
as Tyrell had not been. And even in the loneliness she already felt, there was
a feeling of compensation, somehow. She was dedicated to the centuries of man
that were to come.
She reached beyond her sorrow and love. From
far away she could hear the solemn chanting of the priests. It was part of the
righteousness that had come to the worlds now, at last, after the long and
bloody path to the new Golgotha. But it was the last
Golgotha, and she would go on now as she must, dedicated and sure.
Immortal.
She lifted her head and looked steadily at
the blue. She would look forward into the future. The past was forgotten. And
the past, to her, meant no bloody heritage, no deep corruption that would work
unseen in the black hell of the mind's abyss until the monstrous seed reached
up to destroy God's peace and love.
Quite
suddenly, she remembered that she had committed murder. Her arm thrilled again
with the violence of the blow; her hand tingled with the splash of shed blood.
Very
quickly she closed her thoughts against the memory. She looked up at the sky,
holding hard against the closed gateway of her mind as though the assault
battered already against the fragile bars.
H. L. GOLD
In science fiction, nearly everybody reads Galaxy. Since
its first issue, and in all of the decade that followed, it has ranked among
the best science fiction magazines—always exciting, and, mutatis mutandis, always reliable. The man
whose editorial skill steers Galaxy past the rocks where scores of
other magazines founder is, in his off-duty hours, a talented author in his
own right. You didn't know this? You will know it very soon .. .if you go
on to read—
The Man with English
Lying
in the hospital, Edgar Stone added up his misfortunes as another might count
blessings. There were enough to infuriate the most temperate man, which Stone
notoriously was not. He smashed his fist down, accidentally hitting the metal
side of the bed, and was astonished by the pleasant feeling. It enraged him
even more. The really maddening thing was how simply he had goaded himself into
the hospital.
He'd locked up his drygoods store and driven
home for lunch. Nothing unusual about that; he did it every
day. With his miserable digestion, he couldn't stand the restaurant food
in town. He pulled into the driveway, rode over a collection of metal shapes
his son Arnold had left lying around, and punctured a tire.
"Rita!" he yelled. "This is
going too damned far! Where is that brat?"
"In here," she called truculently from the kitchen.
He kicked open the screen
door. His foot went through the mesh.
"A
ripped tire and a torn screen!" he shouted at Ar-145 nold, who was
sprawled in angular adolescence over a blueprint on the kitchen table.
"You'll pay for them, by God! They're coming out of your allowance!"
"I'm sorry, Pop,"
the boy said.
"Sorry, my left foot," Mrs. Stone
shrieked. She whirled on her husband. "You could have watched where you
were going. He promised to clean up his things from the driveway right after
lunch. And it's about time you stopped kicking open the door every time you're
mad."
"Mad? Who wouldn't be
mad? Me hoping he'd get out of school and come into the store, and he wants to
be an engineer. An engineer—and he can't even make change when he—hah!—helps me
out in the store!"
"He'll be whatever he wants to be,"
she screamed in the conversational tone of the Stone household.
"Please," said Arnold. "I can't concentrate on this plan."
Edgar Stone was never one to restrain an
angry impulse. He tore up the blueprint and flung the pieces down on the
table.
"Aw, Pop," the boy said.
"Don't say 'Aw, Pop' to me. You're not
going to waste a summer vacation on junk like this. You'll eat your lunch and
come down to the store. And you'll do it every day for the rest of the
summer!"
"Oh, he will, will he?" demanded
Mrs. Stone. "He'll catch up on his studies. And as for you, you can go
back and eat in a restaurant."
"You know I can't stand that slop!"
"You'll eat it because you're not having
lunch here any more. I've got enough to do without making three meals a
day."
"But
I can't drive back with that tire—" He did, though not with the tire—he
took a cab. It cost a dollar plus tip, lunch was a dollar and a half plus tip,
bicarb at Rite Drug Store a few doors away and in a great hurry came to another
fifteen cents—only it didn't work.
And then Miss Ellis came in for some
material. Miss Ellis could round out any miserable day. She was fifty, tall,
skinny and had thin, disapproving lips. She had a sliver of cloth clipped very
meagerly off a hem that she intended to use as a sample.
"The arms of the
slipcover on my reading chair wore through," she informed him. "I
bought the material here, if you remember."
Stone didn't have to look
at the fragmentary swatch. "That was about seven years ago—"
"Six-and-a-half," she corrected.
"I paid enough for it. You'd expect anything that expensive to last."
"The style was discontinued. I have
something here that—"
"I do not want to make
an entire slipcover, Mr. Stone. All I want is enough to make new panels for the
arms. Two yards should do very nicely."
Stone smothered a bilious
hiccup. "Two yards, Miss Ellis?"
"At the most."
"I sold the last of that
material years ago." He pulled a bolt off a shelf and partly
unrolled it for her. "Why not use a different pattern as a kind of
contrast?"
"I want this same
pattern," she said, her thin hps getting even thinner and more obstinate.
"Then I'll have to order it and hope one
of my wholesalers still has some of it in stock."
"Not without looking for it first right
here, you won't order it for me. You can't know all these materials you have on these shelves."
Stone felt all the familiar symptoms of
fury—the sudden pulsing of the temples, the lurch and bump of his heart as
adrenalin came surging in like the tide at the Firth of Forth, the quivering of
his hands, the angry shout pulsing at his vocal cords from below.
"I'll take a look, Miss Ellis," he said.
She was president of the Ladies Cultural
Society and dominated it so thoroughly that the members would go clear to the
next town for their dry goods, rather than deal with him, if he offended this
sour stick of stubbornness.
If Stone's life insurance salesman had been
there, he would have tried to keep Stone from climbing the ladder that ran
around the three walls of the store. He probably wouldn't have been in time.
Stone stamped up the ladder to reach the highest shelves, where there
were scraps of bolts. One of them might have been the remnant of the material
Miss Ellis had bought six-and-a-half years ago. But Stone never found out.
He snatched one, glaring down meanwhile at
the top of Miss Ellis's head, and the ladder skidded out from under him. He felt
his skull collide with the counter. He didn't feel it hit the floor.
"God damn it!"
Stone yelled. "You could at least turn on the lights."
"There,
there, Edgar. Everything's fine, just fine."
It was his wife's voice and the tone was so
uncommonly soft and soothing that it scared him into a panic.
"What's wrong with
me?" he asked piteously. "Am I blind?"
"How many fingers am I holding up?" a man wanted to know.
Stone was peering into the blackness. All he
could see before his eyes was a vague blot against a darker blot.
"None," he bleated. "Who are you?"
"Dr. Rankin. That was a nasty fall you
had, Mr. Stone —concussion of course, and a splinter of bone driven into the
brain. I had to operate to remove it."
"Then you cut out a nerve!" Stone
said. "You did something to my eyes!"
The doctor's voice sounded puzzled.
"There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with them. I'll take a look,
though, and see."
"You'll be all right, dear," Mrs.
Stone said reassuringly, but she didn't sound as if she believed it.
"Sure you will, Pop," said Arnold.
"Is that young stinker here?" Stone
demanded. "He's the cause of all this!"
"Temper, temper," the doctor said. "Accidents
happen."
Stone heard him lower the Venetian blinds. As if they had been a switch, light
sprang up and everything in the hospital became brightly visible.
"Well!" said Stone. "That's
more like it. It's night and you're trying to save
electricity, hey?"
"It's broad daylight, Edgar dear,"
his wife protested. "All Dr. Rankin did was lower the blinds and—"
"Please,"
the doctor said. "If you don't mind, I'd rather take care of any
explanations that have to be made."
He
came at Stone with an ophthalmoscope. When he flashed it into Stone's eyes,
everything went black and Stone let him know it vociferously.
"Black?" Dr. Rankin repeated blankly. "Are you positive? Not a sudden
glare?"
"Black,"
insisted Stone. "And what's the idea of putting me in a bed filled with
bread crumbs?"
"It was freshly
made—"
"Crumbs. You heard me. And the pillow has rocks in it."
"What
else is bothering you?" asked the doctor worriedly.
"It's freezing in here." Stone felt
the terror rise in him again. "It was summer when I fell off the ladder.
Don't tell me I've been unconscious clear through till winter!"
"No, Pop," said Arnold. "That
was yesterday—"
"I'll take care of this," Dr.
Rankin said firmly. "I'm afraid you and your son will have to leave, Mrs.
Stone. I have to do a few tests on your husband."
"Will he be all
right?" she appealed.
"Of course, of course," he said
inattentively, peering with a frown at the shivering patient. "Shock, you
know," he added vaguely.
"Gosh,
Pop," said Arnold. "I'm sorry this happened. I got the driveway all
cleaned up."
"And we'll take care of the store till
you're better," Mrs. Stone promised.
"Don't you dare!" yelled Stone.
"You'll put me out of business!"
The
doctor hastily shut the door on them and came back to the bed. Stone was
clutching the light summer blanket around himself. He felt colder than he'd
ever been in his life.
"Can't
you get me more blankets?" he begged. "You don't want me to die of
pneumonia, do you?"
Dr. Rankin opened the
blinds and asked, "What's this like?"
"Night,"
chattered Stone. "A new idea to save electricity—hooking
up the blinds to the light switch?"
The doctor closed the
blinds and sat down beside the bed. He was sweating as he reached for the
signal button and pressed it. A nurse came in, blinking in their direction.
"Why
don't you turn on the light?" she asked.
"Huh?" said Stone. "They are."
"Nurse, I'm Dr. Rankin. Get me a piece
of sandpaper, some cotton swabs, an ice cube and Mr. Stone's lunch."
"Is there anything he shouldn't eat?"
"That's
what I want to find out. Hurry, please."
"And some blankets." Stone put in,
shaking with the chill.
"Blankets,
Doctor?" she asked, startled.
"Half
a dozen will do," he said. "I think."
It took her ten minutes to return with all
the items. Stone wanted them to keep adding blankets until all seven were on
him. He still felt cold.
"Maybe
some hot coffee?" he suggested.
The doctor nodded and the nurse poured a cup,
added the spoon and a half of sugar he requested, and he took a mouthful. He sprayed it out violently.
"Ice cold!" he yelped. "And who put salt in it?"
"Salt?" She fumbled around on the tray. "It's
so dark here—"
"I'll attend to
it," Dr. Rankin said hurriedly. "Thank you."
She walked cautiously to the door and went out.
"Try this," said the doctor, after filling another cup.
"Well, that's better!" Stone
exclaimed. "Damned practical joker. They
shouldn't be allowed to work in hospitals."
"And now, if you don't mind," said
the doctor, "I'd like to try several tests."
Stone was still angry at
the trick played on him, but he cooperated willingly.
Dr. Rankin finally sagged back in the chair.
The sweat ran down his face and into his collar, and his expression was so
dazed that Stone was alarmed.
"What's wrong, Doctor? Am I going to—going to—"
"No, no. It's not that. No danger. At least,
I don't believe there is. But I can't even be sure of that any more."
"You can't be sure if I'll live or die?"
"Look." Dr. Rankin grimly pulled
the chair closer. "It's broad daylight and yet you can't see until I
darken the room. The coffee was hot and sweet, but it was cold and salty to
you, so I added an ice cube and a spoonful of salt and it tasted fine, you
said. This is one of the hottest days on record and you're freezing. You told
me the sandpaper felt smooth and satiny, then yelled
that somebody had put pins in the cotton swabs, when there weren't any, of
course. I've tried you with different colors around the room and you saw violet
when you should have seen yellow, green for red, orange for blue, and so on.
Now do you understand?"
"No,"
said Stone frightenedly. "What's wrong?"
"All I can do is guess. I had to remove
that sliver of bone from your brain. It apparently shorted your sensory
nerves."
"And what happened?"
"Every one of your senses has been
reversed. You feel cold for heat, heat for cold, smooth for rough, rough for
smooth, sour for sweet, sweet for sour, and so forth. And you see colors
backward."
Stone sat up. "Murderer! Thief! You've
ruined me!"
The doctor sprang for a hypodermic and
sedative. Just in time, he changed his mind and took a bottle of stimulant
instead. It worked fine, though injecting it into his screaming, thrashing
patient took more strength than he'd known he owned. Stone fell asleep
immediately.
There were nine blankets on Stone and he had
a bag of cement for a pillow when he had his lawyer, Manny Lubin,
in to hear the charges he wanted brought against Dr. Rankin. The doctor was
there to defend himself. Mrs. Stone was present in spite of her husband's
objections—"She always takes everybody's side against me," he
explained in a roar.
"I'll be honest with you, Mr.
Lubin," the doctor said, after Stone had finished on a note of shrill
frustration. "I've hunted for cases like this in medical history and this
is the first one ever to be reported. Except," he amended quickly,
"that I haven't reported it yet. I'm hoping it reverses itself. That
sometimes happens, you know."
"And what am I supposed to do in the
meantime?" raged Stone. "I'll have to go out wearing an overcoat in
the summer and shorts in the winter—people will think I'm a maniac. And they'll
be sure of it because I'll have to keep the store closed during the day and open
at night —I can't see except in the dark. And matching materials! I can't stand the feel of smooth cloth and I see colors backward!" He
glared at the doctor before turning back to Lubin. "How would you like to
have to put sugar on your food and salt in your coffee?"
"But we'll work it out, Edgar
dear," his wife soothed. "Arnold and I can take care of the store.
You always wanted him to come into the business, so that ought to please
you—"
"As long as I'm there
to watch him!"
"And Dr. Rankin said maybe things will
straighten out."
"What about that, Doctor?" asked Lubin. "What are the chances?"
Dr. Rankin looked uncomfortable. "I
don't know. This has never happened before. All we can do is hope."
"Hope, nothing!" Stone stormed.
"I want to sue him. He had no right to go meddling around and turn me upside
down. Any jury would give me a quarter of a niillion!"
"I'm no millionaire, Mr. Stone,"
said the doctor. "But the hospital has money. We'll sue him and the
trustees."
There was a pause while the attorney thought.
"I'm afraid we wouldn't have a case, Mr. Stone." He went on more
rapidly as Stone sat up, shivering, to argue loudly. "It was an emergency
operation. Any surgeon would have had to operate. Am I right, Dr. Rankin?"
The doctor explained what would have happened
if he had not removed the pressure on the brain, resulting from the concussion,
and the danger that the bone splinter, if not extracted, might have gone on
traveling and caused possible paralysis or death.
"That would be better than this," said Stone.
"But medical ethics couldn't allow him
to let you die," Lubin objected. "He was doing his duty. That's point
one."
"Mr. Lubin is
absolutely right, Edgar," said Mrs. Stone.
"There, you see?" screamed her
husband. "Everybody's right but me! Will you get her out of here before I
have a stroke?"
"Her interests are also involved,"
Lubin pointed out. "Point two is that the emergency came first, the aftereffects
couldn't be known or considered."
Dr. Rankin brightened. "Any operation
involves risk, even the excising of a corn. I had to take those risks."
"You had to take them?" Stone scoffed.
"All right, what are you leading up to, Lubin?"
"We'd lose," said the attorney.
Stone subsided, but only for a moment.
"So we'll lose. But if we sue, the publicity would ruin him. I want to
sue!"
"For what, Edgar dear?" his wife
persisted. "We'll have a hard enough time managing. Why throw good money
after bad?"
"Why didn't I marry a woman who'd take
my side, even when I'm wrong?" moaned Stone. "Revenge, that's what.
And he won't be able to practice, so he'll have time to find out if there's a
cure... and at no charge, either! I
won't pay him another cent!"
The doctor stood up eagerly. "But I'm
willing to see what can be done right now. And it wouldn't cost you anything,
naturally."
"What do you mean?" Stone challenged suspiciously.
"If I were to perform another operation,
I'll be able to see which nerves were involved. There's no need to go into the
technical side right now, but it is possible to connect nerves. Of course,
there are a good many, which complicates matters, especially since the
splinter went through several layers—"
Lubin pointed a lawyer's impaling finger at
him. "Are you offering to attempt to correct the injury—gratis?"
"Certainly. I mean to say, I'll do my absolute best. But
keep in mind, please, that there is no medical precedent."
The attorney, however, was already
questioning Stone and his wife. "In view of the fact that we have no legal
grounds whatever for suit, does this offer of settlement satisfy your claim
against him?"
"Oh,
yes!" Mrs. Stone cried.
Her husband hesitated for a while, clearly
tempted to take the opposite position out of habit. "I guess so," he
reluctantly agreed.
"Well,
then it's in your hands, Doctor," said Lubin.
Dr. Rankin buzzed excitedly for the nurse.
"I'll have him prepared for surgery right away."
"It better work this time," warned
Stone, clutching a handful of ice cubes to warm his fingers.
Stone came to foggily. He didn't know it, but he had given the
anesthetist a bewildering problem, which finally had been solved by using fumes
of aromatic spirits of ammonia. The four blurred figures around the bed seemed
to be leaning precariously toward him.
"Pop!" said
Arnold, "Look, he's coming out of it! Pop!"
"Speak to me, Edgar dear," Mrs. Stone beseeched.
Lubin said, "See how he is, Doctor."
"He's fine," the doctor insisted
heartily, his usual bedside manner evidently having returned. "He must
be— the blinds are open and he's not complaining that it's dark or that he's
cold." He leaned over the bed. "How are we feeling, Mr. Stone?"
It took a minute or two for
Stone to move his swollen tongue enough to answer. He wrinkled his nose in
disgust.
"What smells purple?" he demanded.
GAVIN HYDE
A few years back, in Ireland, Ray Bradbury
spent some very productive months. Not only did he write the script of one of
the best motion pictures of recent years—Moby Dick was
its name—but on a side trip he met a young writer who had just turned his hand
to science fiction, and persuaded him to let American editors see the results. Star was delighted to acquire two of them; the first was "Nor the Moon
by Night," and the second is—
Sparkle's Fall
Sparkson was relieved to see the evening sky melt into the terrain of
the planet where he had been forced down, slowly obhterating the forms of the
aliens on each side of him. He had been looking forward to night because he had thought it over and
he hoped—rather optimistically, he admitted to himself—that they might let him
leave the rocket, or something. Anything.
Anything
was better than walking around the ship for the equivalent of three earth days,
the only diversion being the mechanical Translator and that exasperating as
hell as it tried to make sense of what the alien said and type it out for him
on white little slips of paper: "NAME, I am worried. Could Sparkie (eat)
(be nourished by) GARBLE?"
And then the answer: "!,
(stop) (cease) (desist from) worrying, NAME. Sparkie is (in admirable
condition) (fine)!"
It had taken him twenty years to get "Sparkie" out of his 155
family's vocabulary. And now the first two "people" he met in outer
space called him Sparkie.
Just because they were
bigger than he was!
They
lay on each side of him, gigantic whales from an ocean of soot, their lights
glowing handfuls of sand. Nothing came out, nothing went in.
There were just two.
Many
of his controls had ceased to function when they had pulled him down between
them. Others were as usual. He couldn't take off, of course—except when that
message came out of the Translator: "NAME, Sparkie might (desire) (want)
(thirst for) exercise."
He
leapt to the chance—it was foolish of them to think that the ship was the man
and needed exercise, but that foolishness might help him escape—but they had
gone with him, limiting him to graceful figure eights. He tried turning out of
one of them, away into space.
He was returned to his
place, gently.
When
they had captured him, naturally, his first move was to open communications
with them through the radio. They received him well, with the help of the
translator. They said hello, yes we know where you came from, hope you had a
good trip, and then they were quiet.
He
had asked them the first forty-nine questions on the checklist designed for
making contact with aliens. Nothing. At the end he was
yelling at them.
Then
he forgot his briefings. "What's the matter, battery gone dead?"
They said only: "Time
to rest, Sparkie."
They
were not exactiy their last words, because while he was "exercising"
he had asked if he could fire a nuclear missile, hoping to arouse a little more
respect.
Then
the one that always seemed subservient to the other said, "NAME, I am frightened. Sparkie might not (throw) (hurl) (eject) it free of his
vessel. (Moreover) (Also) it might GARBLE the alignment of the GARBLE
GARBLE."
The other didn't even answer that. "Fire
away, Sparkie!"
So
he threw the lever and there was a wondrous sun and a mushroom that would have
turned Einstein over in his grave, certainly, if it had grown under him.
Gavin Hyde
157
One said, "That's (enough) (sufficient)
for (period of time)!" And the other said, "Better than 4th of July,
eh, Sparkie?"
"It
sure is. How come you know about the 4th?" "We know what we need to
know. Let us rest now." Sparkson tried everything, even "I'm
lonely!" But rest it was.
He had slept, getting up to check gauges and
read some incredibly garbled messages—conversations having nothing to do with
him that the Translator apparently couldn't begin
to handle.
Now, with the coming of night, he stayed by
the Translator. After an hour of darkness a short slip of paper appeared.
"Goodnight, NAME."
Then another. "(Sweet) (Pleasant) (Gentle) dreams of mother, NAME."
They were going to sleep. He sat sweating,
staring at the slot, with his hands on each side of the gold-braided uniform
cap on his head.
After
a while some papers slid out of the Translator. Drowsily the aliens were
communicating, like girls whispering secret, in bed.
"NAME—"
"It is (odd) (strange)
(perplexing)."
"I
am thinking of Sparkie's mind ...
NAME!" "I am awake!"
"Sparkie
is so (small) (weak) (defenseless)." "(Hm) (Mm) (Mmm)."
"His
mind is like a (piece) (sheet) of GARBLE. We think on the (bases) (conditions)
(roots) of our experience, our perceptions which are multiplied by (objects)
(things) (forms of matter) which we have sensed. Sparkie must think with the
(toys) (playthings) of his earth only. How can he understand us? What does he
know of GARBLE, GARBLE or GARBLE for example, this (small) (weak) (defenseless)
being? NAME!"
"! Go to sleep."
That was all. He waited another hour. Then he
read the bits of paper, in order. He read them over and over again, while the
starless biblical darkness, one thing by God that was not among the forms of matter, offered him freedom.
So he was "(small)
(weak) (defenseless)"?
He would show them.
He
reviewed the gravity and atmospheric tables beside the suit, strapped nuclearms
on each side, brought it closed around his body.
As
he staggered, arms up and legs bent under the weight,
he was made suddenly angry by an insistent tension at the back of his throat.
The "(toys)
(playthings)" of his earth indeed!
He opened the hatch.
He jumped to the surface of
the.... the....
Planet?
This?
Some hours later the Translator in the cold
metal hum of the ship began to spit papers, violently.
Waves
of magnetism, pulses of electric desire, like startled schools of fish in
coral, swept the corridors.
A
great rocking bellowing sound and a smell of sorrow spread skyward.
FRITZ LEIBER
Before Fritz Leiber sat down to tell us what
lay in the heart and mind of a kitten named Gummitch, he had already behind him
a considerable career as writer ("Gather, Darkness!", the
award-winning "The Big Time," and scores of other memorable stories),
editor (of a popular scientific magazine) and, of all things, Shakespearean
actor (following in the footsteps of the older Fritz Leiber, his father).
Surely he has at least as much before him; and it is with confidence and glee
that we contemplate the fact that the future may hold many more stories from
his as moving and insighted as—
Space-time for Springers
Gummitch
was a superkitten, as he knew very well, with an l.Q. of about 160. Of course,
he didn't talk. But everybody knows that l.Q. tests based on language ability
are very one-sided. Besides, he would talk as soon as they started setting a
place for him at table and pouring him coffee. Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra ate
horsemeat from pans on the floor and they didn't talk. Baby dined in his crib
on milk from a bottle and he didn't talk. Sissy sat at table but they didn't
pour her coffee and she didn't talk—not one word. Father and Mother (whom
Gummitch had nicknamed Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here) sat at table and
poured each other coffee and they did talk.
Q.E.D.
Meanwhile,
he would get by very well on thought projection and intuitive understanding of
all human speech—not even to mention cat patois, which almost any civilized animal could play by ear. The dramatic monologues and
Socratic
dialogues, the quiz and panel-show appearances, the felidological expedition to
darkest Africa (where he would uncover the real truth behind Hons and tigers),
the exploration of the outer planets—all these could wait. The same went for
the books for which he was ceaselessly accumulating material: The Encyclopedia of Odors, An-thropofeline
Psychology, Invisible Signs and Secret Wonders, Space-Time for Springers, Slit
Eyes Look at Life, et
cetera. For the present it was enough to live existence to the hilt and soak up
knowledge, missing no experience proper to his age level—to rush about with
tail aflame.
So to all outward appearances Gummitch was
just a vividly normal kitten, as shown by the succession of nicknames he bore
along the magic path that led from blue-eyed infancy toward puberty: Little
One, Squawker, Portly, Bumble (for purring not clumsiness), Old
Starved-to-Death, Fierso, Loverboy (affection not sex), Spook and Catnik. Of
these only the last perhaps requires further explanation: the Russians had just
sent Muttnik up after Sputnik, so that when one evening Gummitch streaked three
times across the firmament of the living room floor in the same direction, past
the fixed stars of the humans and the comparatively slow-moving heavenly bodies
of the two older cats, and Kitty-Come-Here quoted the line from Keats:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken;
it was
inevitable that Old Horsemeat would say, "Ah— Catnik!"
The
new name lasted all of three days, to be replaced by Gummitch, which showed
signs of becoming permanent.
The
little cat was on the verge of truly growing up, at least so Gummitch overheard
Old Horsemeat comment to Kitty-Come-Here. A few short weeks, Old Horsemeat
said, and Gummitch's fiery flesh would harden, his slim neck thicken, the
electricity vanish from everything but his fur, and all his delightful
kittenish qualities rapidly give way to the earth-bound smglemindness of a
torn. They'd be lucky, Old Horsemeat concluded, if he didn't turn completely
surly like Ashurbanipal.
Gummitch
listened to these predictions with gay unconcern and with secret amusement
from his vantage point of superior knowledge, in the same spirit that he
accepted so many phases of his outwardly conventional existence: the murderous
sidelong looks he got from Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra as he devoured his own
horsemeat from his own little tin pan, because they sometimes were given canned
catfood but he never; the stark idiocy of Baby, who didn't know the difference
between a live cat and a stuffed teddy bear and who tried to cover up his
ignorance by making goo-goo noises and poking indiscriminately at all eyes; the
far more serious—because cleverly hidden—maliciousness of Sissy, who had to be
watched out for warily—especially when you were alone—and whose retarded—even
warped —development, Gummitch knew, was Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here's
deepest, most secret, worry (more of Sissy and her evil ways soon); the limited
intellect of Kitty-Come-Here, who despite the amounts of coffee she drank was
quite as featherbrained as kittens are supposed to be and who firmly believed,
for example, that kittens operated in the same space-time as other beings—that
to get from here
to there they had to cross the space between —and
similar fallacies; the mental stodginess of even Old Horsemeat, who although he
understood quite a bit of the secret doctrine and talked intelligently to
Gummitch when they were alone, nevertheless suffered from the limitations of
his status—a rather nice old god but a maddeningly slow-witted one.
But
Gummitch could easily forgive all this massed inadequacy and downright
brutishness in his felino-human household, because he was aware that he alone
knew the real truth about himself and about other kittens and babies as well,
the truth which was hidden from weaker minds, the truth that was as
intrinsically incredible as the germ theory of disease or the origin of the
whole great universe in the explosion of a single atom.
As a
baby kitten Gummitch had believed that Old Horsemeat's two hands were hairless
kittens permanently attached to the ends of Old Horsemeat's arms but having an
independent life of their own. How he had hated and loved those two five-legged
sallow monsters, his first playmates, comforters and battle-opponents!
Well,
even that fantastic discarded notion was but a trifling fancy compared to the
real truth about himself!
The
forehead of Zeus split open to give birth to Minerva. Gummitch had been born
from the waist-fold of a dirty old terrycloth bathrobe, Old Horsemeat's basic
garment. The kitten was intuitively certain of it and had proved it to himself
as well as any Descartes or Aristotle. In a kitten-size tuck of that ancient
bathrobe the atoms of his body had gathered and quickened into life. His
earliest memories were of snoozing wrapped in terrycloth, warmed by Old
Horsemeat's heat. Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here were his true parents. The
other theory of his origin, the one he heard Old Horsemeat and Kitty-Come-Here
recount from time to time—that he had been the only surviving kitten of a
litter abandoned next door, that he had had the shakes from vitamin deficiency
and lost the tip of his tail and the hair on his paws and had to be nursed back
to life and health with warm yellowish milk-and-vitamins fed from an
eyedropper—that other theory was just one of those rationalizations with which
mysterious nature cloaks the birth of heroes, perhaps wisely veiling the truth
from minds unable to bear it, a rationalization as false as Kitty-Come-Here and
Old Horsemeat's touching belief that Sissy and Baby were their children rather
than the cubs of Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra.
The day that Gummitch had
discovered by pure intuition the secret of his birth he had been filled with a
wild instant excitement. He had only kept it from tearing him to pieces by
rashing out to the kitchen and striking and devouring a fried scallop,
torturing it fiendishly first for twenty minutes.
And the secret of his birth was only the
beginning. His intellectual faculties aroused, Gummitch had two days later
intuited a further and greater secret: since he was the child of humans he
would, upon reaching this maturation date of which Old Horsemeat had spoken,
turn not into a sullen torn but into a gc)dlike human youth with reddish golden
hair the color of his present fur. He would be poured coffee; and he would
instantly be able to talk, probably in all languages. While Sissy (how clear it
was now!) would at approximately the same time shrink and fur out into a sharp-clawed and vicious she-cat dark as her
hair, sex and self-love her only concerns, first harem-mate for Cleopatra,
concubine to Ashurbanipal.
Exactly
the same was true, Gummitch realized at once, for all kittens and babies, all
humans and cats, wherever they might dwell. Metamorphosis was as much a part of
the fabric of their lives as it was of the insects'. It was also the basic fact
underlying all legends of werewolves, vampires and witches' familiars.
If
you just rid your mind of preconceived notions, Gummitch told himself, it was
all very logical. Babies were stupid, fumbling, vindictive creatures without
reason or speech. What more natural than that they should grow up into mute
sullen selfish beasts bent only on rapine and reproduction? While kittens were
quick, sensitive, subtle, supremely alive. What other destiny were they
possibly fitted for except to become the deft, word-speaking, book-writing,
music-making, meat-getting-and-dispensing masters of the world? To dwell on
the physical differences, to point out that kittens and men, babies and cats,
are rather unlike in appearance and size, would be to miss the forest for the
trees—very much as if an entomologist should proclaim metamorphosis a myth
because his microscope failed to discover the wings of a butterfly in a caterpillar's slime or a golden beetle in a grub.
Nevertheless
it was such a mind-staggering truth, Gummitch realized at the same time, that
it was easy to understand why humans, cats, babies and perhaps most kittens
were quite unaware of it. How safely explain to a butterfly that he was once a
hairy crawler, or to a dull larva that he will one day be a walking jewel? No,
in such situations the delicate minds of man- and feline-kind are guarded by a merciful mass amnesia, such as Velikovsky has
explained prevents us from recalling that in historical times the Earth was
catastrophically bumped by the planet Venus operating in the manner of a comet
before settling down (with a cosmic sigh of relief, surely!) into its present orbit.
This conclusion was confirmed when Gummitch
in the first fever of illumination tried to communicate his great insight to
others. He told it in cat patois, as well as that limited jargon permitted, to
Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra and even, on the off chance, to Sissy and Baby. They
showed no interest whatever, except that Sissy took advantage of his unguarded
preoccupation to stab him with a fork.
Later,
alone with Old Horsemeat, he projected the great new thoughts, staring with
solemn yellow eyes at the old god, but the latter grew markedly nervous and
even showed signs of real fear, so Gummitch desisted. ("You'd have sworn
he was trying to put across something as deep as the Einstein theory or the
doctrine of original sin," Old Horse-meat later told Kitty-Come-Here.)
But
Gummitch was a man now in all but form, the kitten reminded himself after these
failures, and it was part of his destiny to shoulder secrets alone when
necessary. He wondered if the general amnesia would affect him when he
metamorphosed. There was no sure answer to this question, but he hoped not—and
sometimes felt that there was reason for his hopes. Perhaps he would be the
first true kitten-man, speaking from a wisdom that had no locked doors in it.
Once he was tempted to speed up the process
by the use of drags. Left alone in the kitchen, he sprang onto the table and
started to lap up the black puddle in the bottom of Old Horsemeat's coffee cup.
It tasted foul and poisonous and he withdrew with a little snarl, frightened as
well as revolted. The dark beverage would not work its tongue-loosening magic,
he realized, except at the proper time and with the proper ceremonies.
Incantations might be necessary as well. Certainly unlawful tasting was highly
dangerous.
The
futility of expecting coffee to work any wonders by itself was further
demonstrated to Gummitch when Kitty-Come-Here, wordlessly badgered by Sissy,
gave a few spoonfuls to the little girl, liberally lacing it first with milk
and sugar. Of course Gummitch knew by now that Sissy was destined shortly to
turn into a cat and that no amount of coffee would ever make her talk, but it
was nevertheless instructive to see how she spat out the first mouthful, drooling a lot of saliva after it, and dashed the cup and
its contents at the chest of Kitty-Come-Here.
Gummitch
continued to feel a great deal of sympathy for his parents in their worries
about Sissy and he longed for the day when he would metamorphose and be able as
an acknowledged man-child truly to console them. It was heart-breaking to see
how they each tried to coax the little girl to talk, always attempting it while
the other was absent, how they seized on each accidentally wordlike note in the
few sounds she uttered and repeated it back to her hopefully, how they were
more and more possessed by fears not so much of her retarded (they thought)
development as of her increasingly obvious maliciousness, which was directed
chiefly at Baby ... though the two
cats and Gummitch bore their share. Once she had caught Baby alone in his crib
and used the sharp corner of a block to dot Baby's large-domed lightly downed
head with triangular red marks. Kitty-Come-Here had discovered her doing it,
but the woman's first action had been to rub Baby's head to obliterate the
marks so that Old Horsemeat wouldn't see them. That was the night
Kitty-Come-Here hid the abnormal psychology books.
Gummitch understood very well that
Kitty-Come-Here and Old Horsemeat, honestly believing themselves to be Sissy's
parents, felt just as deeply about her as if they actually were and he did what
little he could under the present circumstances to help them. He had recently
come to feel a quite independent affection for Baby—the miserable little
proto-cat was so completely stupid and defenseless—and so he unofficially
constituted himself the creature's guardian, taking his naps behind the door of
the nursery and dashing about noisily whenever Sissy showed up. In any case he
realized that as a potentially adult member of a felino-human household he had
his natural responsibilities.
Accepting
responsibilities was as much a part of a kitten's life, Gummitch told himself,
as shouldering un-sharable intuitions and secrets, the number of which continued
to grow from day to day.
There was, for instance, the Affair of the
Squirrel Mirror.
Gummitch had early solved the mystery of
ordinary mirrors and of the creatures that appeared in them. A little
observation and sniffing and one attempt to get behind the heavy wall-job in
the living room had convinced him that mirror beings were insubstantial or at
least hermetically sealed into their other world, probably creatures of pure
spirit, harmless imitative ghosts—including the silent Gummitch Double who
touched paws with him so softly yet so coldly.
Just
the same, Gummitch had let his imagination play with what would happen if one
day, while looking into the mirror world, he should let loose his grip on his
spirit and let it slip into the Gummitch Double while the other's spirit
slipped into his body—if, in short, he should change places with the scentless
ghost kitten. Being doomed to a life consisting wholly of imitation and
completely lacking in opportunities to show initiative—except for the
behind-the-scenes judgment and speed needed in rushing from one mirror to
another to keep up with the real Gummitch— would be sickeningly dull, Gummitch
decided, and he resolved to keep a tight hold on his spirit at all times in
the vicinity of mirrors.
But that isn't telling about the Squirrel
Mirror. One morning Gummitch was peering out the front bedroom window that
overlooked the roof of the porch. Gummitch had already classified windows as
semi-mirrors having two kinds of space on the other side: the mirror world and
that harsh region filled with mysterious and dangerously organized-sounding
noises called the outer world, into which grownup humans reluctantly ventured
at intervals, donning special garments for the purpose and shouting loud
farewells that were meant to be reassuring but achieved just the opposite
effect. The coexistence of two kinds of space presented no paradox to the
kitten who carried in his mind the 27-chapter outline
of Space-Time for
Springers—indeed,
it constituted one of the mirror themes of the book.
This morning the bedroom
was dark and the outer world was dull and sunless, so the mirror world was
unusually difficult to see. Gummitch was just lifting his face toward it, nose
twitching, his front paws on the sill, when what should rear up on the other
side, exactly in the space that the Gummitch Double normally occupied, but a dirty
brown, narrow-vis aged image with savagely low forehead, dark evil walleyes,
and a huge jaw filled with shovel-like teeth.
Gummitch
was enormously startled and hideously frightened. He felt his grip on his
spirit go limp, and without volition he teleported himself three yards to the
rear, making use of that faculty for cutting corners in space-time, traveling
by space-warp in fact, which was one of his powers that Kitty-Come-Here refused
to believe in and that even Old Horsemeat accepted only on faith.
Then,
not losing a moment, he picked himself up by his furry seat, swung himself
around, dashed downstairs at top speed, sprang to the top of the sofa, and
stared for several seconds at the Gummitch Double in the wall-mirror—not
relaxing a muscle strand until he was completely convinced that he was still
himself and had not been transformed into the nasty brown apparition that had
confronted him in the bedroom window.
"Now
what do you suppose brought that on?" Old Horsemeat asked Kitty-Come-Here.
Later Gummitch learned that what he had seen
had been a squirrel, a savage, nut-hunting being belonging wholly to the outer
world (except for forays into attics) and not at all to the mirror one.
Nevertheless he kept a vivid memory of his profound momentary conviction that
the squirrel had taken the Gummitch Double's place and been about to take his
own. He shuddered to think what would have happened if the squirrel had been
actively interested in trading spirits with him. Apparently mirrors and
mirror-situations, just as he had always feared, were highly conductive to
spirit transfers. He filed the information away in the memory cabinet reserved
for dangerous, exciting and possibly useful information, such as plans for
climbing straight up glass (diamond-tipped claws!) and flying higher than the
trees.
These days his thought cabinets were
beginning to feel filled to bursting and he could hardly wait for the moment
when the true rich taste of coffee, lawfully drunk, would permit him to
speak.
He
pictured the scene in detail: the family gathered in conclave at the kitchen
table, Ashurbanipal and Cleopatra respectfully watching from floor level,
himself sitting erect on chair with paws (or would they be hands?) lightly
touching his cup of thin china, while Old Horsemeat poured the thin black
steaming stream. He knew the Great Transformation must be close at hand.
At
the same time he knew that the other critical situation in the household was
worsening swiftly. Sissy, he realized now, was far older than Baby and should
long ago have undergone her own somewhat less glamorous though equally
necessary transformation (the first tin of raw horse-meat could hardly be as
exciting as the first cup of coffee). Her time was long overdue. Gummitch found
increasing horror in, this mute vampirish being inhabiting the body of a
rapidly growing girl, though inwardly equipped to be nothing but a most
bloodthirsty she-cat. How dreadful to think of Old Horsemeat and
Kitty-Come-Here having to care all their lives for such a monster! Gummitch
told himself that if any opportunity for alleviating his parents' misery should
ever present itself to him, he would not hesitate for an instant.
Then
one night, when the sense of Change was so burst-ingly strong in him that he
knew tomorrow must be the Day, but when the house was also exceptionally
unquiet with boards creaking and snapping, taps adrip, and curtains
mysteriously rustling at closed windows (so that it was clear that the many
spirit worlds including the mirror one must be pressing very close), the
opportunity came to Gummitch.
Kitty-Come-Here and Old Horsemeat had fallen
into especially sound, drugged sleeps, the former with a bad cold, the latter
with one unhappy highball too many (Gummitch knew he had been brooding about
Sissy). Baby slept too, though with uneasy whimperings and joggings—moonlight
shone full on his crib past a window shade which had whirringly rolled itself
up without human or feline agency. Gummitch kept vigil under the crib, with
eyes closed but with wildly excited mind pressing outward to every boundary of
the house and even stretching here and there into the outer world. On this
night of all nights sleep was unthinkable.
The
suddenly he became aware of footsteps, footsteps so soft they must, he thought,
be Cleopatra's.
No,
softer than that, so soft they might be those of the Gummitch Double escaped
from the mirror would at last and padding up toward him through the
darkened halls. A ribbon of fur rose along his spine.
Then
into the nursery Sissy came prowling. She looked slim as an Egyptian princess
in her long thin yellow nightgown and as sure of herself, but the cat was very
strong in her tonight, from the flat intent eyes to the dainty canine teeth
slightly bared—one look at her now would have sent Kitty-Come-Here running for
the telephone number she kept hidden, the telephone number of the special
doctor ■—and Gummitch realized he was witnessing a monstrous suspension
of natural law in that this being should be able to exist for a moment without
growing fur and changing round pupils for slit eyes.
He retreated to the darkest corner of the
room, suppressing a snarl.
Sissy approached the crib and leaned over
Baby in the moonlight, keeping her shadow off him. For a while she gloated.
Then she began softly to scratch his cheek with a long hatpin she carried, keeping away from
his eye, but just barely. Baby awoke and saw her and Baby didn't cry. Sissy
continued to scratch, always a little more deeply. The moonlight glittered on
the jeweled end of the pin.
Gummitch
knew he faced a horror that could not be countered by running about or even
spitting and screeching. Only magic could fight so obviously supernatural a manifestation. And this was also no time to
think of consequences, no matter how clearly and bitterly etched they might
appear to a mind intensely awake.
He
sprang up onto the other side of the crib, not uttering a sound, and fixed his golden eyes on Sissy's in the moonlight. Then he
moved forward straight at her evil face, stepping slowly, not swif dy, using
his extraordinary knowledge of the properties of space to walk straight through her hand and arm as
they flailed the hatpin at him. When his nose-tip finally paused a fraction of an inch from hers his eyes
had not blinked once, and she could not look away. Then he unhesitatingly flung
his spirit into her like a fistful of flaming arrows and he worked the Mirror
Magic.
Sissy's
moonlit face, feline and terrified, was in a sense the last thing that
Gummitch, the real Gummitch-kitten, ever saw in this world. For the next
instant he felt himself enfolded by the foul black blinding cloud of Sissy's
spirit, which his own had displaced. At the same time he heard the little girl
scream, very loudly but even more distinctly, "Mommy!"
That cry might have brought Kitty-Come-Here
out of her grave, let alone from sleep merely deep or drugged. Within seconds
she was in the nursery, closely followed by Old Horsemeat, and she had caught
up Sissy in her arms and the little girl was articulating the wonderful word
again and again, and miraculously following it with the command—there could be
no doubt, Old Horsemeat heard it too—"Hold me tight!"
Then
Baby finally dared to cry. The scratches on his check came to attention and Gummitch,
as he had known must happen, was banished to the basement amid cries of horror
and loathing chiefly from Kitty-Come-Here.
The
little cat did not mind. No basement would be one-tenth as dark as Sissy's
spirit that now enshrouded him for always, hiding all the file drawers and the
labels on all the folders, blotting out forever even the imagining of
the scene of first coffee-drinking and first speech.
In a
last intuition, before the animal blackness closed in utterly, Gummitch
realized that the spirit, alas, is not the same thing as the consciousness and
that one may lose— sacrifice—the first and still be burdened with the second.
Old
Horsemeat had seen the hatpin (and hid it quickly from Kitty-Come-Here) and so
he knew that the situation was not what it seemed and that Gummitch was at the
very least being made into a sort of scapegoat. He was quite apologetic when he
brought the tin pans of food to the basement during the period of the little
cat's exile. It was a comfort to Gummitch, albeit a small one. Gummitch told himself, in his
new black halting manner of thinking, that after all a cat's best friend
is his man.
From
that night Sissy never turned back in her development. Within two months she
had made three years' progress in speaking. She became an outstandingly
bright, light-footed, high-spirited little girl. Although she never told anyone
this, the moonlit nursery and Gummitch's magnified face were her first
memories. Everything before that was inky blackness. She was always very nice
to Gummitch in a careful sort of way. She could never stand to play the game
"Owl Eyes."
After
a few weeks Kitty-Come-Here forgot her fears and Gummitch once again had the
run of the house. But by then the transformation Old Horsemeat had always
warned about had fully taken place. Gummitch was a kitten no longer but an
almost burly torn. In him it took the psychological form not of sullenness or
surliness but an extreme dignity. He seemed at times rather like an old pirate
brooding on treasures he would never live to dig up, shores of adventure he
would never reach. And sometimes when you looked into his yellow eyes you felt
that he had in him all the materials for the book Slit Eyes Look
at Life —three
or four volumes at least—although he would never write it. And that was natural
when you come to think of it, for as Gummitch knew very well, bitterly well
indeed, his fate was to be the only kitten in the world that did not grow up to
be a man.
RICHARD MATHESON
The good science
fiction movies can be counted on the fingers of the hands. One of them (say,
about the left thumb) is The Incredible Shrinking Man, made, with unusual fidelity, from the novel of almost the same name by
Richard Matheson. Matheson is youngish, talented, prolific;
and it is a pleasure to include him here (in distinguished company, where he
belongs) with his shocking—
Dance of the Dead
I wanna RIDE!
with my Rota-Mota honey
by my SIDE!
As we whiz along the highway
"We will HUG and SNUGGLE and we'll have
a little STRUGGLE!"
struggle (strug'el), n., act of promiscuous love
play; usage evolved during W.W. III.
Double beams spread buttery
lamplight on the highway. Rotor-Motors Convertible, Model C, 1987, rushed after it. Light spurted ahead, yellow
glowing. The car pursued with a twelve-cylindered, snarling pursuit. Night blotted in behind, jet and still. The car sped on.
ST.
LOUIS—10
"I
wanna FLY!" they sang, "with the Rota-Mota apple of my EYE!" they sang, "It's
the only way of living.. The quartet singing: Len, 23 Bud, 24
Barbara, 20 Peggy, 18
Len with Barbara, Bud with
Peggy. Bud
at the wheel, snapping around tilted curves, roaring up black-shouldered hills,
shooting the car across silent flatlands. At the top of three lungs (the fourth
gentler), competing with wind that buffeted their heads, that
whipped their hair to lashing threads—singing:
"You can have your
walkin' under MOONLIGHT BEAMS!
"At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM
my DREAMS!"
Needle quivering at 130,
two 5-m.p.h. notches from gauge's end. A sudden dip! their
young frames jolted and the thrown-up laughter of three was wind-swept into
night. Around a curve, darting up and down a hill, flashing
across a leveled plain—an ebony bullet skimming earth.
"In my ROTORY, MOTORY,
FLOATERY, drivin' machi-i-i-i-ine!"
YOU'LL BE A FLOATER IN YOUR ROTOR-MOTOR
In the back seat: "Have a jab,
Bab." "Thanks, I had one after supper." (Pushing away needle
fixed to eye-dropper.) In the front seat: "You meana tell me this is the
first time you ever been t'Saint Loo!"
"But I just started school in
September." "Hey, you're a frosh!"
Back seat joining front
seat: "Hey, frosh,
have a mussle-tussle."
(Needle
passed forward, bulb quivering amber juice.) "Live it, girl!"
mussle-tussle (mus' el-tus' el), n., slang for the result
of injecting a drug into a muscle; usage evolved during W. W. III.
Peggy's
lips failed at smiling. Her fingers twitched.
"No, thanks, I'm not------------------ "
"Come
on, frosh!" Len leaning hard over the seat,
white-browed under black, blowing hair. Pushing the needle at
her face. "Live it, girl! Grab a li'l mussle-tussle!"
"I'd
rather not," said Peggy, "If you don't-------------------------- "
"What's
'at, frosh?" yelled Len and pressed his leg
against the pressing leg of Barbara.
Peggy
shook her head and golden hair flew across her cheeks and eyes. Underneath her
yellow dress, underneath her white brassiere, underneath her young breast—a
heart throbbed heavily. Watch
your step, darling, that's all we ask. Remember, you're all we have in the
world now. Mother
words drumming at her; the needle making her draw back into the seat
"Come on, frosh!"
The car groaned its shifting weight around a
curve; centrifugal force pressed Peggy into Bud's lean hip. His hand dropped
down and fingered at her leg. Underneath her yellow dress, underneath her sheer
stocking—flesh crawled. Lips failed again; the smile was a twitch of red.
"Frosh, live it
up!"
"Lay off, Len, jab your own dates."
"But we gotta teach frosh how to
mussle-tussle!"
"Lay off, I said! She's my date!"
The
black car roared, chasing its own light. Peggy
anchored down the feeling hand with hers. The wind whistled over them and
grabbed down chilly fingers at their hair. She didn't want his hand there but
she felt grateful to him.
Her
vaguely frightened eyes watched the road lurch beneath the wheels. In back, a
silent struggle began, taut hands rubbing, parted mouths chnging. Search for
the sweet elusive at 120-mües-per-hour.
"Rota-Mota honey," Len moaned the moan between salivary kisses.
In the front seat a young girl's heart beat unsteadily.
ST.
LOUIS—6
"No
kiddin', you never been to Saint Loo?"
"No, I------------ "
"Then you never saw the loopy's
dance?"
Throat contracting suddenly. "No, I—. Is
that what
we're going to------------- "
"Hey, frosh never saw
the loopy's dance!" Bud yelled back.
Lips parted, slurping;
skirt was adjusted with blase" aplomb. "No kiddin'!" Len fired
up the words. "Girl, you haven't lived!"
"Oh, she's got to see that,"
said Barbara, buttoning a button.
"Let's go there then!" yelled Len.
"Let's give frosh a thrill!"
"Good enough,"
said Bud and squeezed her leg. "Good enough up here,
right, Peg?"
Peggy's
throat moved in the dark and the wind
clutched harshly at her hair. She'd heard of it; she'd read
of it but never had she thought she'd-----------------------
Choose
your school friends carefully, darling. Be very careful.
But when no one spoke to you for two whole
months? When you were lonely and wanted to talk and laugh and be alive? And
someone spoke to you finally and asked you to go out with them?
"I yam Popeye, the
sailor man!" Bud
sang.
In back, they crowed artificial delight. Bud was taking a course in PRE-WAR COMICS AND CARTOONS—2. This week the class was studying Popeye. Bud had
fallen in love with the one-eyed seaman and told Len and Barbara all about
him; taught them dialogue and song.
"I
yam Popeye, the sailor man! I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women! I yam
Popeye, the sailor man!"
Laughter. Peggy smiled falteringly. The hand left her
leg as the car screeched around a curve and she was thrown against the door.
Wind dashed blunt coldness in her eyes and forced her back,
blinking—110—115—120 miles per hour.
ST.
LOUIS—3
Be very careful, dear.
Popeye
cocked a wicked eye.
"O, Olive Oyl, you is my sweet
patootie."
Elbow nudging Peggy. "You be Olive Oyl—you."
Peggy smiled nervously. "I can't."
"Sure."
In the back seat, Wimpy came up for air to
announce, *T will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Three fierce voices and a faint fourth raged
against the howl of wind. "I fights to the /i-nish 'cause I eats my spin-?sM I yam Popeye, the sailor man! Toot! Toot!"
"I yam what I yam," reiterated
Popeye gravely and put his hand on the yellow-skirted leg of Olive Oyl. In the
back, two members of the quartet returned to feeling struggle.
ST.
LOUIS—1
The black car roared
through the darkened suburbs. "On with the noses!"
Bud sang out. They all took out their plasticate nose-and-mouth pieces and
adjusted them.
|
|
|
ANCE IN YOUR PANTS WOULD BE A PITY! WEAR YOUR NOSES IN THE CITY!! |
Ance (anse), n., slang for anti-civilian
germs; usage evolved during W.W. III.
"You'll like the loopy's dance!"
Bud shouted to her over the shriek of wind, "It's
sensaysh!"
Peggy felt a cold that wasn't of the night or
of the wind. Remember,
darling, there are terrible things in the world today. Things you must avoid.
"Couldn't we go somewhere else?"
Peggy said but her voice was inaudible. She heard Bud singing, "I like to
go swinimin' with bow-legged women!" she felt his hand on her leg again
while, in the back, was the silence of grinding passion without kisses.
Dance of the dead. The words trickled ice across Peggy's brain.
ST. LOUIS
The black car sped into the ruins.
It was a place of smoke and
blatant joys. Air resounded with the bleating of revelers and there was a noise
of sounding brass spinning out a cloud of music—1987 music, a frenzy of twisted
dissonances. Dancers, shoe-homed into the tiny square of open
floor, ground pulsing bodies together. A network of bursting sounds
lanced through the mass of them; dancers singing:
"Hurt
me! Bruise me! Squeeze me TIGHT! ,
Scorch my blood with hot DELIGHT!
Please abuse me every NIGHT!
LOVER, LOVER, LOVER, be a beast-to-me!"
Elements of explosion restrained within the
dancing bounds—instead of fragmenting, quivering. "Oh, be a beast, beast, beast, Beast, BEAST to me!"
"How is this, Olive old goil?" Popeye inquired of the light of his eye as they
struggled after the waiter. "Nothin' like this in Sykesville, eh?"
Peggy smiled but her hand in Bud's felt numb.
As they passed by a murky
lighted table, a hand
she didn't see clutched at her leg. She twitched and bumped against a hard knee
across the narrow aisle. As she stumbled and lurched through the hot and smoky,
thick-aired room, she felt a dozen eyes disrobing her, abusing her. Bud jerked
her along and she felt her Hps trembling.
"Hey,
how about that!" Bud exulted as they sat. "Right by the
stage!"
From cigarette mists, the
waiter plunged and hovered, pencil-poised, beside their table.
"What'll it be?"
his questioning shout cut through cacophony.
"Whiskey-water!" Bud and Len paralleled orders,
then turned to their dates. "What'll it be!" the waiter's request
echoed from their hps.
"Green Swamp!" Barbara said "Green
Swamp here!" Len
passed it along. Gin, Invasion Blood (1987 Rum) lime juice, sugar, mint spray,
splintered ice—a popular college-girl drink.
"What
about you, honey?" Bud asked his date.
Peggy smiled. "Just some ginger
ale," she said, her voice a fluttering frailty in
the massive clash and fog of smoke.
"What's that, didn't hear!" the
waiter shouted. "Ginger ale." "What?" "Ginger ale!"
"GINGER ALE!" Len screamed it out and the drummer, behind
the raging curtain of noise that was the band's music, almost heard it. Len
banged down his fist. One—Two—Three!
CHORUS: Ginger Ale was only twelve years old! Went
to church and was as good as gold! Till that day when—--------
"Come on, Come on!"
the waiter squalled.
"Let's have that order, kids! I'm busy!"
"Two whiskey-waters and two green
swamps!" Len sang out and the waiter was gone into the swirling maniac
mist.
Peggy felt her young heart flutter
helplessly. Above
all, don't drink when you're out on a date. Promise us that, darling, you must
promise us that. She
tried to push away instructions etched in brain.
"How you like this
place, honey? Loopy,
ain't it?" Bud fired
the question at her; a red-faced, happy-faced Bud.
loopy (loo pi), adj., common alter of L.U.P.
She smiled at Bud, a smile of nervous politeness. Her eyes moved around, her face inchned
that she was looking up at the stage. Loopy. The word scalpeled at her mind. Loopy, loopy.
The stage was five yards
deep at the radius of its wooden semi-circle. A waist-high rail girdled its
circumference, two pale purple spotlights, unlit, hung at each rail end. Purple
on white—the thought came. Darling, isn't Sykes-ville Business College good enough? No! I don't
want to take a business course, I want to major in art
at the University!
The drinks were brought and
Peggy watched the disembodied waiter arm thud down a high, green-looking glass
before her. Presto!—the arm was gone. She looked into the murky
green swamp depths and saw chipped ice bobbing.
"A toast! Pick up your glass, Peg!" Bud clarioned. They all clicked glasses: "To lust
primordial!" Bud toasted.
"To beds inviolate!" Len added.
"To flesh insensate!" Barbara added a third link.
Their eyes zeroed in on Peggy's face,
demanding. She didn't understand.
"Finish it!" Bud told her, plagued by freshman
sluggishness.
"To—u-us," she faltered.
"How o-r/g-inal," stabbed Barbara
and Peggy felt heat licking up her smooth cheeks. It passed unnoticed as three
Youths of America With Whom The Future Rested gurgled
down their liquor thirstily. Peggy fingered at her glass, a smile printed to
lips that would not smile unaided.
"Come on, drink, girl!" Bud shouted to her across the vast distance of one foot. "Chuggalug!"
"Live it, girl," Len suggested
abstractedly, fingers searching once more for soft leg. And
finding, under table, soft leg waiting.
Peggy didn't want to drink,
she was afraid to drink. Mother words kept pounding—never on a date, honey, never. She raised the glass a little.
"Uncle
Buddy will help, will help!"
Uncle Buddy leaning close,
vapor of whiskey haloing his head. Uncle Buddy pushing cold glass to shaking young hps.
"Come on, Olive Oyl, old goil! Down the hatch!"
Choking sprayed the bosom
of her dress with green swamp droplets. Flaming liquid trickled into her
stomach, sending off shoots of fire into her veins.
Bangity boom crash smash POWH The drummer applied the coup de grace to what
had been, in ancient times, a lover's waltz. Lights dropped and Peggy sat
coughing and tear-eyed in the smoky cellar club.
She felt Bud's hand clamp strongly on her
shoulder and, in the murk, she felt herself pulled off balance and felt Bud's
hot wet mouth pressing at her lips. She jerked away and then the purple spots
went on and a mottle-faced Bud drew back, gurgling, "I fights to the
finish," and reaching for his drink.
"Hey,
the loopies now, the loopies!" Len said eagerly, releasing exploratory
hands.
Peggy's heart jolted and she thought she was
going to cry out and run thrashing through the dark, smoke-filled room. But a
sophomore hand anchored her to the chair and she looked up in white-faced dread
at the man who came out on the stage and faced the microphone which, like a
metal spider, had swung down to meet him.
"May I have your attention, ladies and
gentlemen," he said, a grim-faced, sepulchral-voiced man whose eyes moved
out over them like flicks of doom. Peggy's breath was labored,
she felt thin lines of green swamp water filtering hotly through her chest and
stomach. It made her blink dizzily. Mother. The word escaped cells of the mind and trembled into conscious freedom. Mother, take me home.
"As you know, the act you are about to
see is not for the faint of heart, the weak of will." The man plodded
through the words like a cow enmired. "Let me caution those of you whose
nerves are not what they ought to be
—leave
now. We make no guarantees
of responsibility. We can't even afford to maintain a house doctor."
No laughter appreciative: "Cut the crap
and get off stage," Len grumbled to himself. Peggy felt her fingers
twitching.
"As you know," the man went on, his
voice gilded with learned sonority. "This is not an offering of mere sensation
but an honest scientific demonstration."
"Loophole for
Loopy's!" Bud and Len heaved up the words with the
thoughtless reaction of hungry dogs salivating at a bell.
It was, in 1987, a comeback so rigidly
standard it had assumed the status of a catechism answer. A crenel in the
post-war law allowed the L.U.P. performance if it was orally prefaced as an
exposition of science. Through this legal chink had poured so much abusing of
the law that few cared any longer. A feeble government was grateful for
recognition of the law at all.
When hoots and shoutings had evaporated in
the smoke-clogged air, the man, his arms upraised in patient benediction, spoke
again.
Peggy watched the studied movement of his
lips, her heart swollen, then contracted in slow,
spasmodic beats. An iciness was creeping up her legs.
She felt it rising toward the thread-like fires in her body and her fingers
twitched around the chilly moisture of the glass. / want to go, please take me home—will-spent words were in her mind again.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the man
concluded, "brace yourselves."
A gong sounded its hollow,
shivering resonance, the man's voice thickened and slowed. "The L.U.P. Phenomenon!"
The man was gone,
the microphone had risen and was gone. Music began; a moaning brassiness, all
muted. A jazzman's conception of the palpable obscure—mounted on a pulse of thumping drum. A dolor of saxophone, a menace of
trombone, a harnessed bleating of trumpet— they raped the air with stridor.
Peggy felt a shudder plaiting down her back
and her gaze dropped quickly to the murky whiteness of the table.
Smoke and darkness, dissonance and heat
surrounded her.
Without meaning to but driven by an impulse
of nervous fear, she raised the glass and drank. The glacial trickle in her
throat sent another shudder rippling through her. Then further shoots of
liquored heat budded in her veins and a numbness
settled in her temples. Through parted lips, she forced out a shaking breath.
Now a restless, murmuring movement started
through the room, the sound of it like willows in a soughing wind. Peggy dared
not lift her gaze to the purpled silence of the stage. She stared down at the
shifting glimmer of her drink, feeling muscle strands draw tightly in her
stomach, feeling the hollow thumping of her heart. I'd like to leave, please let's leave.
The music labored toward a rasping dissonant
climax, its brass components struggling, in vain, for unity.
A hand stroked once at Peggy's leg and it was
the hand of Popeye, the sailor man, who muttered croupily, "Olive Oyl, you
is my goil." She barely felt or heard. Automatonlike,
she raised the cold and sweating glass again and felt the chilling in her
throat and then the flaring warmth.
SWISH!/
The curtain swept open with such a rush, she
almost dropped her glass. It thumped down heavily on the table, swamp water
cascading up its sides and raining on her hand. The music exploded shrapnel of
ear-cutting cacophony and her body jerked. On the tablecloth, her hands
twitched white on white, while claws of uncontrollable demand pulled up her
frightened eyes.
The music fled, frothing behind a wake of
swelling drum rolls.
The night club was a wordless crypt, all
breathing checked.
Cobwebs of smoke drifted in the purple light
across the stage.
No sound except the muffled, rolling drum.
Peggy's body was a petrifaction in its chair,
smitten to rock around her leaping heart, while, through the wavering haze of
smoke and liquored dizziness, she looked up in horror to where it stood.
It had been a woman.
Her hair was black, a
framing of snarled ebony for the tallow mask that was her face. Her
shadow-rimmed eyes were closed behind lids as smooth and white as ivory. Her
mouth, a lipless and unmoving line, stood like a clotted sword wound beneath
her nose. Her throat, her shoulders and her arms were white, were motionless.
At her sides, protruding from the sleeve ends of the green transparency she
wore, hung alabaster hands.
Across this marble statue, the spotlight
coated purple shimmer.
Still paralyzed, Peggy
stared up at its motionless features, her fingers knitted in a bloodless angle
on her lap. The pulse of drumbeats in the air seemed to fill her body, its
rhythm altering her heartbeat.
In the black emptiness behind her, she heard
Len muttering, "I love my wife but oh, you corpse," and heard the
wheeze of helpless snickers that escaped from Bud and Barbara. The cold still
rose in her, a silent tidal dread.
Somewhere in the smoke-fogged darkness, a man
cleared viscid nervousness from his throat and a murmur of appreciative relief
strained through the audience.
Still no motion on the stage, no sound but
the sluggish cadence of the drum, thumping at the
silence like someone seeking entrance at a far-off door. The thing that was a
nameless victim of the plague stood palely rigid while the distillation sluiced
through its blood-clogged veins.
Now the drum throbs
hastened like the pulsebeat of a rising panic. Peggy felt the chill begin to
swallow her. Her throat began to tighten, her
breathing was a string of hp-parted gasps. The loopy's eyelid twitched.
Abrupt, black, straining silence webbed the
room. Even the breath choked off in Peggy's throat when she saw the pale eyes
flutter open. Something creaked in the stillness; her body pressing back
unconsciously against the chair. Her eyes were wide, unblinking circles that
sucked into her brain the sight of the thing that had been a woman.
Music again; a brass-throated moaning from
the dark, like some animal made of welded horns mewling its derangement in a
midnight alley.
Suddenly, the right arm of the loopy jerked
at its side, the tendons suddenly contracted. The left arm twitched alive,
snapping out, then falling back and thudding in purple-white limpness against
the thigh. The right arm out, the left arm out, the right,
the left-right-left-right— like marionette arms twitching from an amateur's dangling
strings.
The music caught the time, drum brushes scratching
out a rhythm for the convulsions of the loopy's muscles. Peggy pressed back
further, her body numbed and cold, her face a livid, staring mask in the
fringes of the stage light.
The loopy's right foot moved now, jerking up
inflexibly as the distillation constricted muscles in its leg. A second and a
third contraction caused the leg to twitch, the left leg flung out in a violent spasm and then the woman's body lurched stiffly forward, filming
the transparent silk to its light and shadow.
Peggy heard the sudden hiss of breath that
passed the clenching teeth of Bud and Len and a wave of nausea sprayed foaming
sickness up her stomach walls. Before her eyes, the stage abruptly undulated
and it seemed as if the flailing loopy were headed straight for her.
Gasping dizzily, she pressed back in horror,
unable to take her eyes from its now agitated face.
She watched the mouth jerk to a gaping
cavity, then a twisted scar that split into a wound again.
She saw the dark nostrils twitching, saw writhing flesh beneath the ivory
cheeks, saw furrows dug and undug in the purple whiteness of the forehead. She
saw one lifeless eye wink monstrously and heard the gasp of startled laughter
in the room.
While music blared into a fit of grating noise, while the woman's arms and legs kept jerking with
convulsive cramps that threw her body around the purpled stage like a full-size rag doll given spastic life.
It was nightmare in an
endless sleep. Peggy shivered in helpless terror as she watched the loopy's
twisting, leaping dance. The blood in her had turned to ice,
there was no life in her but the endless, pounding stagger of her heart. Her
eyes were frozen spheres staring at the woman's body writhing white and
flaccid underneath the clinging silk.
Then, something went wrong.
Up till then, its muscular seizures had bound
the loopy to an area of several yards before the amber flat which was the
background for its paroxysmal dance. Now its erratic surging drove the loopy
toward the stage-encircling rail.
Peggy heard the thump and creaking strain of
wood as the loopy's hip collided with the rail. She cringed into a shuddering
knot, her eyes still raised fixedly to the purple-splashed face whose every
feature was deformed by throes of warping convulsion.
The loopy staggered back and Peggy saw and
heard its leprous hands slapping with a fitful rhythm at its silk-scaled
thighs.
Again it sprang forward like a maniac
marionette and the woman's stomach thudded sickeningly into the railing wood.
The dark mouth gaped, clamped shut and then the loopy
twisted through a jerking revolution and crashed back against the rail again,
almost above the table where Peggy sat.
Peggy couldn't breathe. She sat rooted to the
chair, her lips a trembling circle of stricken dread, a pounding of blood at
her temples as she watched the loopy spin again, its arms a blur of flailing
white.
The lurid bleaching of its face dropped
toward Peggy as the loopy crashed into the waist-high rail again and bent
across its top. The mask of lavender-rained whiteness hung above her, dark
eyes twitching open in a hideous stare.
Peggy felt the floor begin to move and the
livid face was blurred with darkness, then reappeared
in a burst of luminosity. Sound fled on brass shod feet, then plunged into her
brain again—a smearing discord.
The loopy kept on jerking forward, driving
itself against the rail as though it meant to scale it. With every spastic
lurch, the diaphanous silk fluttered like a film about its body and every
savage collision with the railing tautened the green
transparency across its swollen flesh. Peggy looked up in rigid muteness at the
loopy's fierce attack, her eyes unable to escape the wild distortion of the woman's
face with its black frame of tangled, snapping hair.
What happened then happened
in a blurring passage of seconds.
The grim-faced man came rushing across the
purple-lighted stage, the thing that had been a woman went crashing, twitching,
flinging at the rail, doubling over it, the spasmodic hitching flinging up its
muscle-knotted legs.
A clawing fall.
Peggy lurched back in her
chair and the scream that started in her throat was forced back into a
strangled gag as the loopy came crashing down onto the table, its limbs a
thrash of naked whiteness.
Barbara screamed, the audience gasped and
Peggy saw, on the fringe of vision, Bud jumping up, his face a twist of stunned
surprise.
The loopy flopped and twisted on the table
like a new-caught fish. The music went grinding into silence, a rush of
agitated murmur filled the room and blackness swept in brain-submerging waves
across Peggy's mind.
Then the cold white hand slapped across her
mouth, the dark eyes stared at her, in purple fight and Peggy felt the darkness
flooding.
The horror-smoked room went rarning on its side.
Consciousness. It flickered in her brain like gauze-veiled
candlelight. A murmuring of sound, a blur of shadow before
her eyes.
Breath dripped like syrup from her mouth.
"Here, Peg."
She heard Bud's voice and felt the chilly
metal of a flask neck pressed against her hps. She swallowed, twisting
slightly at the trickle of fire in her throat and stomach, then coughed and
pushed away the flask with deadened fingers.
Behind her, a rustling
movement.
"Hey, she's back,"
Len said, "OT Olive
Oyl is back."
"You feel all right?" asked Barbara.
She felt all right. Her
heart was like a drum hanging from piano wire in her chest, slowly beaten. Her
hands and feet were numb not with cold but with a sultry torpor. Thoughts moved
with a tranquil lethargy, her brain a leisurely machine imbedded in swaths of
woolly packing.
She felt all right.
Peggy looked across the
night with sleepy eyes. They were on a hilltop, the convertible braked
crouching on a jutting edge. Far below, the country slept,
a carpet of light and shadow beneath the chalky moon.
An arm snake moved around her waist.
"Where are we?" she asked him in a languid voice.
"Few miles outside school," Bud
said, "How d'ya feel, honey?"
She stretched,
her body a delicious strain of muscles. She sagged
back, limp, against his arm.
"Wonderful," she murmured with a dizzy smile and scratched
the tiny itching bump on her left shoulder. Warmth radiated through her flesh;
the night was a sabled glow. There seemed—somewhere—to be a memory but it crouched in secret
behind folds of thick content.
"Woman, you were out," laughed Bud and Barbara added and Len added, "Were you!" and "Olive Oyl went plunko!"
"Out?" Her casual murmur went unheard.
The flask went around and Peggy drank again,
relaxing further as the liquor needled fire through her veins.
"Man, I never saw a loopy dance like that!" Len said.
A momentary chill across
her back, then warmth again. "Oh," said Peggy. "That's right. I forgot."
She
smiled.
"That was what I calls
a grande finale!" Len said, dragging back his willing date, who murmured, "Lenny boy."
"L.U.P.," Bud muttered, nuzzling at
Peggy's hair, "Son of a gun." He reached out idly for the radio knob.
L.U.P.
(Lifeless Undead Phenomenon)—This freak of
physiological abnormality was discovered during the war when, following certain
germ-gas attacks, many of the dead troops were found erect and performing the
spasmodic gyrations which, later, became known as the "loopy's"
(L.U.P.'s) dance. The particular germ spray responsible was later distilled and
is now used in carefully controlled experiments which are conducted only under
the strictest of legal license and supervision.
Music surrounded them, its melancholy fingers touching at their hearts.
Peggy leaned against her date and felt no need to curb exploring hands.
Somewhere, deep within the jellied layers of her mind, there was something trying
to escape. It fluttered like a frantic moth imprisoned in congealing wax,
struggling wildly but only growing weaker in attempt as the chrysalis hardened.
Four voices sang softly in the night.
"If the world is here tomorrow I'll be
waiting, dear, for you If the stars are there tomorrow
I'll be wishing on them too."
Four
young voices singing, a murmur in immensity. Four bodies, two by two, slackly
warm and drugged. A singing, an embracing—a wordless
accepting. ,
"Star light, star bright Let there be another night."
The singing ended but the song went on.
A young girl sighed.
"Isn't it romantic?" said Olive
Oyl.
JACK WILLIAMSON
If your father read science fiction, he very
likely counted Jack Williamson high among his favorite writers—as you very
likely do today. Young enough to have served with the Air Force in the South
Pacific in World War II, Williamson is old enough, and has been writing
excellent science fiction stories often enough, to have attained an almost
unique status as combination revered old master and bright new star. For more
than thirty years his stories have been the delight of hundreds of thousands of
readers. Such consistent loyalty demonstrates the existence of talent; such
talent implies the ability to create so bright a bit as—
The Happiest
Creature
The
collector puffed angrily into the commandant's office in the quarantine
station, on the moon of Earth. He was a heavy hairless man with shrewd little
ice-green eyes sunk deep in fat yellow flesh. He had a genial smile when he was
getting what he wanted. Just now he wasn't.
"Here
we've come a good hundred light-years, and you can see
who I am." He riffled his psionic identification films under the
commandant's nose. "I intend to collect at least one of those queer
anthropoids, in spite of all your silly red tape."
The
shimmering films attested his distinguished scientific attainments. He was
authorized to gather specimens for the greatest zoo in the inhabited galaxy,
and the quarantine service had been officially requested to expedite his
search.
"I
see." The commandant nodded respectfully, trying to 189 conceal
a weary frown. The delicate business of safe guarding Earth's embryonic
culture had taught him to deal cautiously with such unexpected threats.
"Your credentials are certainly impressive, and we'll give you whatever
help we can. Won't you sit down?"
The
collector wouldn't sit down. He was thoroughly annoyed with the commandant. He
doubted loudly that the quarantine regulations had ever been intended to apply
to such a backward planet as Earth, and he proposed to take his specimen
without any further fiddle-faddle.
The
commandant, who came from a civilization which valued courtesy and reserve,
gasped in spite of himself at the terms that came through his psionic
translator, but he attempted to restrain his mounting impatience.
"Actually,
these creatures are human," he answered firmly. "And we are stationed
here to protect them."
"Human?"
The collector snorted. "When they've never got even this
far off their stinking little planet!"
"A
pretty degenerate lot," the commandant agreed regretfully. "But
their human origins have been well established, and you'll have to leave them
alone."
The
collector studied the commandant's stern-lipped face and modified his voice.
"All
we need is a single specimen, and we won't injure that." He recovered his
jovial smile. "On the contrary, the creature we pick up will be the
luckiest one on the planet. I've been in this game a good many centuries, and I
know what I'm talking about. Wild animals in their native environments are
invariably diseased. They are in constant physical danger, generally
undernourished, and always more or less frustrated sexually. But the beast we
take will receive the most expert attention in every way."
A hearty chuckle shook his oily yellow yowls.
"Why,
if you allowed us to advertise for a specimen, half the population would
volunteer."
"You can't advertise," the
commandant said flatly. "Our first duty here is to guard this young
culture from any outside influence that might cripple its natural development."
"Don't upset
yourself." The fat man shrugged. "We're undercover experts. Our
specimen will never know that it has been collected, if that's the way you want
it."
"It
isn't." The commandant rose abruptly. "I will give your party every legitimate assistance, but if I discover that you have
tried to abduct one of these people I'll confiscate your ship."
"Keep
your precious pets," the collector grunted ungraciously. "We'll just
go ahead with our field studies. Live specimens aren't really essential,
anyhow. Our technicians have prepared very authentic displays, with only
animated replicas."
"Very well." The commandant managed a somewhat sour
smile. "With that understanding, you may land."
He
assigned two inspectors to assist the collector and make certain that the
quarantine regulations were respected. Undercover experts, they went on to
Earth ahead of the expedition, and met the interstellar ship a few weeks later at a rendezvous on the night side of the planet.
The
ship returned to the moon, while the outsiders spent several months traveling
on the planet, making psionic records and collecting specimens from the unprotected
species. The inspector reported no effort to violate the Covenants, and
everything went smoothly until the night when the ship came back to pick up the
expedition.
Every
avoidable hazard had been painstakingly avoided. The collector and his party
brought their captured specimens to the pickup point in native vehicles,
traveling as Barstow Brothers' Wild Animal Shows. The ship dropped to meet them
at midnight, on an uninhabited desert plateau. A thousand such pickups had been
made without an incident, but that night things went wrong.
A
native anthropoid had just escaped from a place
of confinement. Though his angered tribesmen pursued, he had outrun them in a
series of stolen vehicles. They blocked the roads, but he got away across the
desert. When his last vehicle stalled, he crossed a range of dry hills on foot
in the dark. An unforeseen danger, he blundered too near the waiting
interstellar ship.
His
pursuers discovered his abandoned car, and halted the disguised outsiders to
search their trucks and warn them that a dangerous
convict was loose. To keep the natives away from the ship, the inspectors
invented a tale of a frightened man on a horse, riding wildly in the opposite
direction.
They
guided the native officers back to where they said they had seen the imaginary
horseman, and kept them occupied until dawn. By that time, the expedition was
on the ship, native trucks and all, and safely back in space.
The
natives never recaptured their prisoner. Through that chance-in-a-milhon that
can never be eliminated by even the most competent undercover work, he had got
aboard the interstellar ship.
The
fugitive anthropoid was a young male. Physically, he appeared human
enough, even almost handsome. Lean from the prison regime, he carried himself
defiantly erect. Some old injury had left an ugly scar across his cheek and his
thin hps had a snarling twist, but he had a poised alertness and a kind of wary grace.
He
was even sufficiently human to possess clothing and a name. His filthy garments
were made of twisted animal and vegetable fibers and the skins of butchered
animals. His name was Casey James.
He
was armed like some jungle carnivore, however, with a sharpened steel blade. His body, like his whole planet, was contaminated
with parasitic organisms. He was quivering with fear and exhaustion, like any hunted
animal, the night he blundered upon the ship. The pangs of his hunger had
passed, but a bullet wound in his left arm was nagging him with unalleviated
pain.
In
the darkness, he didn't even see the ship. The trucks were stopped on the road,
and the driver of the last had left it while he went ahead to help to adjust
the loading ramp. The anthropoid climbed on the unattended truck and hid
himself under a tarpaulin before it was driven aboard.
Though
he must have been puzzled and alarmed to find that the ship was no native
conveyance, he kept hidden in the cargo hold for several days. With his animal
craftiness, he milked one of the specimen animals for food, and slept in the
cab of an empty truck. Malignant organisms were multiplying in his wounded arm,
however, and pain finally drove him out of hiding.
He approached the attendants who were feeding
the animals, threatened them with his knife, and demanded medical care. They
disarmed him without difficulty and took him to the veterinary ward. The
collector found him there, already scrubbed and disinfected, sitting up in his
bed.
"Where're we headed
for?" he wanted to know.
He
nodded without apparent surprise when the collector told him the mission and
the destination of the ship.
"Your
undercover work ain't quite so hot as you seem to
think," he said. "I've seen your flying saucers myself."
"Flying saucers!" The collector sniffed disdainfully, "They aren't anything of ours.
Most of them are nothing but refracted images of surface lights, produced by
atmospheric inversions. The quarantine people are getting out a book to
explain that to your fellow creatures."
"A good one for the cops!" The anthropoid grinned. "I bet they're
still scratching their dumb skulls, over how I dodged 'em." He paused to
finger his bandaged arm, in evident appreciation of the civilized care he had
received. "And when do we get to this wonderful zoo of yours?"
"You
don't," the collector told him. "I did want exactly such a specimen
as you are, but those stuffy bureaucrats wouldn't let me take one."
"So you gotta get rid
of me?"
The
psionic translator revealed the beast's dangerous desperation, even before his
hard body stiffened.
"Wait!"
The collector retreated hastily. "Don't alarm yourself. We won't hurt you.
We couldn't destroy you, even to escape detection. No civilized man can destroy
a human fife."
"Nothing
to it," the creature grunted. "But if you ain't gonna toss me out in
space, then what?"
"You've
put us in an awkward situation." The yellow man scowled with annoyance.
"If the quarantine people caught us with you aboard, they'd cancel our
permits and seize everything we've got. Somehow, we'll have to put you
back."
"But I can't go back." The
anthropoid licked his lips nervously. "I just gut-knifed
a guard. If they run me down this time, it's the chair for sure."
The translator made it
clear that the chair was an elaborate torture machine in which convicted
killers were put to a ceremonial death, according to a primitive tribal code of
blood revenge.
"So you gotta take me wherever you're
going." The creature's dark, frightened eyes studied the collector cunningly.
"If you put me back, you'll be killing me."
"On the
contrary." The
collector's thick upper hp twitched slightly, and a slow smile oozed across his
wide putty face, warming everything except his frosty little eyes. "Human
life is sacred. We can arrange to make you the safest creature of your kind—and
also the happiest—so long as you are willing to observe two necessary
conditions."
"Huh?" The anthropoid squinted. "Whatcha mean?"
"You understand that
we violated the quarantine in allowing you to get aboard," the collector
explained patiently. "We, and not you, would be held responsible in case
of detection, but we need your help to conceal the violation. We are prepared
to do everything for you, if you will make and keep two simple promises."
"Such as?"
"First, promise you won't talk about us."
"Easy
enough." The
beast grinned. "Nobody'd believe me, anyhow."
"The quarantine people
would." The collector's cold eyes narrowed. "Their undercover agents
are alert for rumors of any violation."
"Okay, I'll keep my mouth shut."
The creature shrugged. "What else?"
"Second, you must
promise not to kill again."
The anthropoid stiffened.
"What's it to you?"
"We
can't allow you to destroy any more of your fellow beings. Since you are now in
our hands, the guilt would fall on us." The collector scowled at him. "Promise?"
The anthropoid chewed thoughtfully on his
thin lower lip. His hostile eyes looked away at nothing. The collector caught a
faint reflection of his thoughts, through the translator, and stepped back
uneasily.
"The cops are hot behind me," he
muttered. "I gotta take care of myself."
"Don't
worry." The collector snapped his fat fingers. "We can get you a
pardon. Just say you won't kill again."
"No."
Lean muscles tightened in the anthropoid's jaws. "There's one certain man
I gotta knock off. That's the main reason I busted outa the pen."
"Who
is this enemy?" The collector frowned. "Why is he so dangerous?"
"But
he ain't so dangerous," the beast grunted. "I just hate his
guts."
"I don't understand."
"I
always wanted to kick his face in." The creature's thin hps snarled.
"Ever since we was kids together, back in Las
Verdades."
"Yet
you have never received any corrective treatment for such a monstrous
obsession?" The collector shook his head incredulously, but the anthropoid
ignored him.
"His
name is Gabriel Melendez," the creature muttered. "Just a dirty
greaser, but he makes out he's just as good as me. I had money from my rich
aunt and he was hungry half the time, but he'd never stay in his place. Even
when he was just a snotty-nosed kid, and knew I could beat him because I was bigger, he was always trying to fight me." The beast
bared his decaying teeth. "I aim to kill him, before I'm through."
"Killing
is never necessary," the collector protested uneasily. "Not for
civilized men."
"But
I ain't so civilized." The anthropoid grinned bleakly. "I aim to
gut-knife Gabe Melendez, just like I did that dumb guard."
"An incredible obsession!" The collector recoiled from the grim-lipped
beast and the idea of such raw violence. "What has this creature done to
you?"
"He
took the girl I wanted." The beast caught a rasping breath. "And he put
the cops on me. At least I think it was him, because I got caught not a month
after I stuck up the filling station where he works. I think he recognized me,
and I aim to get him."
"No----------- "
"But I will!" The anthropoid
slipped out of bed and stood towering over the fat man defiantly, his free hand
clenched and quivering. "You can't stop me, not with all your fancy
gadgets."
The
beast glared down into the collector's bright little eyes. They looked back
without blinking, and their lack of brows or lashes made them seem coldly
reptilian. Abruptly, the animal subsided.
"Okay,
okay!" He spat deliberately on the spotless floor and grinned at the
collector's involuntary start. "What's it worth, to let him live?"
The collector shook off his
shocked expression.
"We're
undercover experts and we know your planet." A persuasive smile crept
across his gross face. "Our resources are quite adequate to take care of
anything you can demand. Just give your word not to kill again, or talk about
us, and tell me what you want."
The
anthropoid rubbed his hairy jaw, as if attempting to think.
"First,
I want the girl," he muttered huskily. "Carmen Quintana was her name,
before she married Gabe. She may give you a little trouble, because she don't like me a bit. Nearly clawed my eyes out once, even
back before I shot her old man at the filling station." His white teeth
flashed in a wolfish grin. "Think you can make her go for me?"
"I
think we can." The collector nodded blandly. "We can arrange nearly
anything."
"You'd
better arrange that." The anthropoid's thin brown hand knotted again.
"And I'll make her sorry she ever looked at Gabe!"
"You don't intend to injure her?"
"That's
my business." The beast laughed. "Just take me to Las Verdades.
That's a little 'dobe town down close to the border."
The anthropoid listed the rest of his
requirements, and crossed his heart in a ritual gesture of his tribe to solemnize
his promises. He knew when the interstellar craft landed again, but he had to
stay aboard a long time afterwards, living like a prisoner in a sterile little
cell, while he waited for the outsiders to complete their underground arrangements
for his return. He was fuming with impatience, stalking around his windowless
room like a caged carnivore, when the collector finally unlocked his door.
"You're
driving me nuts," he growled at the hairless outsider. "What's the
holdup?"
"The quarantine people." The collector shrugged. "We had to
manufacture some new excuse for every move we made, but I don't think they ever
suspected anything. And here you are!"
He
dragged a heavy piece of primitive luggage into the room and straightened up
beside it, puffing and mopping at his broad wet face.
"Open
it up," he wheezed. "You'll see that we intend to keep our part of
the bargain. Don't forget yours."
The
anthropoid dropped on his knees to burrow eagerly through the garments and the
simple paper documents in the bag. He looked up with a scowl.
"Where is it?" he
snapped.
"You'll find everything," the fat
man panted. "Your
pardon papers. Ten thousand dollars in currency.
Forty
thousand in cashier's checks. The clothing you speci-
fied---------- "
"But where's the
gun?"
"Everything has been arranged so that
you will never
need it." The collector shifted on his feet uncomfortably.
"I've been hoping you might change your mind
about---------- "
"I gotta protect
myself."
"You'll never be
attacked."
"You said you'd give
me a gun."
"We
did." The collector shrugged unhappily. "You may have it, if you
insist, when you leave the ship. Better get into your new clothing now. We want
to take off again in half an hour."
The yellow Cadillac convertible he had demanded
was waiting in the dark at the bottom of the ramp, its chrome trim shimmering
faintly. The collector walked with him down through the airlock to the car, and
handed him a heavy little package.
"Now don't turn on the headlamps,"
the yellow man cautioned him. "Just wait here for daylight. You'll see the
Albuquerque highway then, not a mile east. Turn right to Las Verdades. We have
arranged everything to keep you very happy there, so long as you don't attempt
to betray us."
"Don't
worry." He grinned in the dark. "Don't worry a minute."
He
slid into the ear and clicked on the parking lights. The instrument panel lit
up like a Christmas tree. He settled himself luxuriously at the wheel,
appreciatively sniffing the expensive new-car scents of leather and rubber
and enamel.
"Don't
you worry, butter-guts," he muttered. "You'll never know."
The
ramp was already lifting back into the interstellar ship when he looked up. The
bald man waved at him and vanished. The airlock thudded softly shut. The
great disk took off into the night, silently, like something falling upward.
The
beast sat grinning
in the car. Quite a deal,
he was thinking. Everything he had thought to ask for, all for just a couple of
silly promises they couldn't make him keep. He already had most of his pay, and
old clabber-guts would soon be forty thousand miles away, or however far it was
out to the stars.
Nobody had ever been so
lucky.
They
had fixed his teeth, and put him in a hundred-dollar suit, and stuffed his
pockets with good cigars. He unwrapped one of the cigars, bit off the end, lit
it with the automatic lighter, and inhaled luxuriously. He had everything.
Or did he?
A
sudden uncertainty struck him, as dawn began to break. The first gray shapes
that came out of the dark seemed utterly strange, and he was suddenly afraid
the outsiders had double-crossed him. Maybe they hadn't really brought him back
to Earth, after all. Maybe they had marooned him on some foreign planet, where
he could never find Carmen and Gabe Melendez.
With a gasp of alarm, he
snapped on the headlights.
The
wide white beams washed away all that terrifying strangeness, and left only a
few harmless clumps of yucca and mesquite. He slumped back against the
cushions, laughing weakly.
Now
he could see the familiar peaks of Dos Lobos jutting up like jagged teeth,
black against the green glass sky. He switched off the headlights and started
the motor and eased the swaying car across the brown hummocks toward the dawn.
In a few minutes he found the highway.
JOSE'S OASIS, ONE STOP
SERVICE, 8 MILES AHEAD
He grimaced at the sign,
derisively. What if he had got his twenty years for sticking up the Oasis and
shooting down old Jose. Who cared now if his mother
and his aunt had spent their last grubby dimes, paying the lawyers to keep him
out of the chair? And Carmen, what if she had spat in his face at the trial?
The outsiders had taken care of everything.
Or what if they hadn't?
Cautiously, he slowed the long car and pulled
off the pavement where it curved into the valley. The spring rains must have
already come, because the rocky slopes were all splashed with wild flowers and
tinted green with new grass. The huge old cottonwoods along the river were just
coming into leaf, delicately green.
The valley looked as kind as his old mother's
face, when she was still alive, and the little town beyond the river seemed
clean and lovely as he remembered Carmen. Even the sky was shining like a blue
glass bowl, as if the outsiders had somehow washed and sterilized it. Maybe
they had. They could do anything, except kill a man.
He chuckled, thinking of the way old baldy had made him cross
his heart. Maybe the tallow-gutted fool had really thought that would make him
keep his promises. Or was there some kind of funny business about the package
that was supposed to be a gun?
He
ripped it open. There in the carton was the automatic he had demanded, a .45,
with an extra cartridge clip and two boxes of ammunition. It looked all right,
fiat and black and deadly in his hand. He loaded it and stepped out of the car
to test it.
He was aiming at an empty whisky bottle
beside the pavement when he heard a mockingbird singing in the nearest
cottonwood. He shot at the bird instead, and grinned when it dissolved into a
puff of brown feathers.
"That'll
be Gabe." His hard Hps curled sardonically. "Coming
at me like a mad dog, if anybody ever wants to know, and I had to stop him
to save my own hide."
He
drove on across the river bridge into Las Verdades. The
outsiders had been here, he knew, because the dirt streets were all swept
clean, and the wooden parts of all the low adobe buildings were bright with new
paint, and all he could smell was the fragrances of coffee and hot bread, when
he passed the Esperanza
Café.
Those
good odors wet his dry mouth with saliva, but he didn't stop to eat. With the
automatic lying ready beside him on the seat, he pulled into the Oasis. The
place looked empty at first and he thought for a moment that everybody was
hiding from him.
As he sat waiting watchfully, crouched down
under the wheel, he had time to notice that all the shattered glass had been
neatly replaced. Even the marks of his bullets on the walls had been covered
with new plaster, and the whole station was shining with fresh paint, like
everything else in town.
He
reached for the gun when he saw the slight dark boy corning from the grease
rack, wiping his hands on *a rag. It was Carmen's brother Tony, smiling with an
envious adoration at the yellow Cadillac. Tony had always been wild about cars.
"Yes, sir! Fill her up?" Tony recognized him then, and dropped the
greasy rag. "Casey James!" He ran out across the driveway.
"Carmen told us you'd be home!"
He
was raising the gun to shoot when he saw that the boy only wanted to shake his
hand. He hid the gun hastily; it wasn't Tony that he had come to kill.
"We read all about your pardon."
Tony stood grinning at him, caressing the side of the shining car lovingly.
"A shame the way you were framed, but we'll all try to make it up to you
now." The boy's glowing eyes swept the long car. "Want me to fill her
up?"
"No!" he muttered hoarsely.
"Gabe Melendez—don't he still work here?"
"Sure, Mr. James," Tony drew back
quickly, as if the
car had somehow burned his delicate brown hands.
"Eight to five, but he isn't here yet. His home is that
white stucco beyond the acequia
madre---------------- "
"I know."
He
gunned the car. It lurched back into the street, roared across the acequia bridge, skidded to a screaming stop in front
of the white stucco. He dropped the gun into the side pocket of his coat and
ran to the door, grinning expectantly.
Gabe
would be taken by surprise. The outsiders had set it up for him very
cleverly, with all their manufactured evidences that he had been innocent of
any crime at all, and Gabe wasn't likely to be armed.
The
door opened before he could touch the bell, but it was only Carmen. Carmen,
pale without her makeup but beautiful anyhow, yawning sleepily in sheer pink
pajamas that were half unbuttoned. She gasped when she saw him.
"Casey!" Strangely, she was smiling.
"I knew you'd come!"
She swayed toward him eagerly, as if she
expected him to take her in his arms, but he stood still, thinking of
how she had watched him in the courtroom, all through his trial for killing her
father, with pitiless hate in her dark eyes. He didn't understand it, but old
puffy-guts had somehow changed her.
"Oh!"
She turned pink and buttoned her pajamas hastily. "No wonder you were
staring, but I'm so excited. I've been longing for you so. Come on in, darling.
I'll get something on and make us some breakfast."
"Wait a minute!"
He
shook his head, scowling at her, annoyed at the outsiders. They had somehow
cheated him. He wanted Carmen, but not this way. He wanted to fight Gabe to
take her. He wanted her to go on hating him, so that he would have to beat and
frighten her. Old blubber-belly had been too clever and done too much.
"Where's Gabe?" He reached in his
pocket to grip the cold gun. "I gotta see Gabe."
"Don't
worry, darling." Her tawny shoulders shrugged becomingly. "Gabriel
isn't here. He won't be here any more. You see, dear, the state cops talked to
me a lot while they were here digging up the evidence to clear you. It came
over me then that you had always been the one I loved. When I told Gabriel, he
moved out. He's living down at the hotel now, and we're getting a divorce right
away, so you don't have to worry about him."
"I gotta see him,
anyhow."
"Don't
be mean about it, darling." Her pajamas were
corning open again, but she didn't seem to care. "Come on in, and let's
forget about Gabriel. He has been so good about everything, and I know he won't
make us any trouble."
"I'll
make the trouble." He seized her bare arm. "Come along."
"Darling,
don't!" She hung back, squirming. "You're hurting me!"
He
made her shut up, and dragged her out of the house. She wanted to go back for a
robe, but he threw her into the car and climbed over her to the wheel. He
waited for her to try to get out, so that he could slap her down, but she only
whimpered for a Kleenex and sat there sniffling.
Old balloon-belly had ruined everything.
He
tried angrily to clash the gears, as he started off, as if that would damage
the outsiders, but the Hydramatic transmission wouldn't clash, and anyhow the
saucer ship was probably somewhere out beyond the moon by now.
"There's
Gabriel," Carmen sobbed. "There, crossing the street, going to work.
Don't hurt him, please!"
He
gunned the car and veered across the pavement to run him down, but Carmen
screamed and twisted at the wheel. Gabriel managed to scramble out of the way.
He stopped on the sidewalk, hatless and breathless but grinning stupidly.
"Sorry, mister. Guess I wasn't looking—" Then Gabriel saw who he was. "Why,
Casey! We've been expecting you back. Seems you're the lucky
one, after all." Gabriel had started toward the car, but he stopped
when he saw the gun. His voice went shrill as a child's. "What are you
doing?"
"Just
gut-shooting another dirty greaser, that's all."
"Darling!" Carmen snatched at the gun. "Don't-------------------------------- "
He slapped her down.
"Don't
strike her!" Gabriel stood gripping the door of the car with both hands.
He looked sick. His twitching face was bright with sweat, and he was gasping
hoarsely for his breath. He was staring at the gun, his wide eyes dull with
horror.
"Stop me!"
He
smashed the flat of the gun into Carmen's face, and grinned at the way Gabriel
flinched when she screamed. This was more the way he wanted everything to be.
"Just try and stop
me!"
"I—I won't fight you," Gabriel
croaked faintly. "After
all, we're not animals. We're civilized humans. I know
Carmen loves you. I'm stepping out of the way. But you
can't make me fight------------------- "
The gun stopped Gabriel.
Queerly,
though, he didn't fall. He just stood there like some kind of rundown machine,
with his stiffened hands clutching the side of the car.
"Die, damn you!"
Casey
James shot again; he kept on shooting till the gun was empty. The bullets
hammered into the body, but somehow it wouldn't fall. He leaned to look at the
wounds, at the broken metal beneath the simulated flesh of the face and the hot
yellow hydraulic fluid running out of the belly, and recoiled from what he saw,
shaking his head, shuddering like any trapped and frightened beast.
"That—thing!"
With
a wild burst of animal ferocity, he hurled the gun into what was left of its
plastic face. It toppled stiffly backward then, and something jangled faintly
inside when it struck the pavement.
"It—it ain't
human!"
"But
it was an excellent replica." The other thing, the one he had thought was
Carmen, gathered itself up from the bottom of the car, speaking gently to him
with what now seemed queerly like the voice of old barrel-belly. "We had
taken a great deal of trouble to make you the happiest one of your breed."
It looked at him sadly with Carmen's limpid dark eyes. "If
you had only kept your word."
"Don't------------ "
He cowered back from it, shivering.
"Don't
k-k-kiU me!"
"We
never kill," it murmured. "You need never be afraid of that."
While
he sat trembling, it climbed out of the car and picked up the ruined thing that
had looked like Gabe and carried it easily away toward the Oasis garage.
Now
he knew that this place was only a copy
of Las Verdades, somewhere not on Earth. When he looked up at the blue crystal
sky, he knew that it was only some kind of screen. He felt the millions of
strange eyes beyond it, watching him like some queer monster in a cage.
He tried to run away.
He
gunned the Cadillac back across the acequia bridge
and drove wildly back the way he had come in, on the Alburquerque highway. A
dozen miles out, an imitation construction crewman tried to flag him down,
pointing at a sign that said the road was closed for
repairs. He whipped around the barriers and drove the pitching car on across
the imitation desert until he crashed into the bars.
JEROME BIXBY
If editors know more than writers about what is good and bad (admittedly an arguable point),
Jerry Bixby should know very much more than almost any other writer at all.
Other writers have been tempted to do a stint of editing; Bixby was so lost to
self-control that he found himself, one time and another, editing at least half
a dozen magazines, including some of the very best. He has also a good many
new, fine TV scripts to his credit. Oh, and he
illustrates. And he plays a fine piano. And------------------------ But
read on;
and you'll learn all that anyone ever needs to learn about the fine creative
talents of Jerome Bixby, in—
It's a Good Life
Aunt
Amy was out on the front porch, rocking back and forth in the highbacked chair
and fanning herself, when Bill Soames rode his bicycle up the road and stopped
in front of the house.
Perspiring under the afternoon
"sun," Bill lifted the box of groceries out of the big basket over
the front wheel of the bike, and came up the front walk.
Little Anthony was sitting on the lawn,
playing with a rat. He had caught the rat down in the basement—he had made it think
that it smelled cheese, the most rich-smelling and crumbly-delicious cheese a
rat had ever thought it smelled, and it had come out of its hole, and now
Anthony had hold of it with his mind and was making it do tricks.
When the rat saw Bill Soames coming, it tried
to run, but Anthony thought at it, and it turned a flip-flop on
the
grass, and lay trembling, its eyes gleaming in small black terror.
Bill Soames hurried past
Anthony and reached the front steps, mumbling. He always mumbled when he came
to the Fremont house, or passed by it, or even thought of it. Everybody did.
They thought about silly things, things that didn't mean very much, like
two-and-two-is-four-and-twice-is-eight and so on; they tried to jumble up their
thoughts and keep them skipping back and forth, so Anthony couldn't read their
minds. The mumbling helped. Because if Anthony got anything strong out of your
thoughts, he might take a notion to do something about it—like curing your
wife's sick headaches or your kid's mumps, or getting your old milk cow back on
schedule, or fixing the privy. And while Anthony mightn't actually mean any
harm, he couldn't be expected to have much notion of what was the right thing
to do in such cases.
That was if he liked you. He might try to
help you, in his way. And that could be pretty horrible.
If he didn't like you . .. well, that could be worse.
Bill Soames set the box of groceries on the
porch railing, and stopped his mumbling long enough to say, "Everythin'
you wanted, Miss Amy."
"Oh, fine, William," Amy Fremont
said Hghtly. "My, ain't it terrible hot today?"
Bill Soames almost cringed. His eyes pleaded
with her. He shook his head violently no, and
then interrupted his mumbling again, though obviously he didn't want to:
"Oh don't say that, Miss Amy... it's fine, just fine. A real good day!"
Amy Fremont got up from the rocking chair,
and came across the porch. She was a tall
woman, thin, a smiling vacancy in her eyes. About a year
ago, Anthony had gotten mad at her, because she'd told him he shouldn't have
turned the cat into a cat-rug, and although he had always obeyed her more than
anyone else, which was hardly at all, this time he'd snapped at her. With his mind. And that had been the end of Amy Fremont's
bright eyes, and the end of Amy Fremont as everyone
had known her. And that was when word got around in Peaksville (population: 46)
that even the members of Anthony's own family weren't safe. After that,
everyone was twice as careful.
Someday Anthony might undo
what he'd done to Aunt Amy. Anthony's Mom and Pop hoped he would. When he was older, and maybe sorry. If it was possible, that
is. Because Aunt Amy had changed a lot,
and besides, now Anthony wouldn't obey anyone.
"Land alive, William," Aunt Amy
said, "you don't have to mumble like that.
Anthony wouldn't hurt you. My goodness, Anthony likes you!" She raised her
voice and called to Anthony, who had tired of the rat and was making it eat
itself. "Don't you, dear? Don't you like Mr. Soames?"
Anthony looked across the lawn at the grocery
man—a
bright, wet, purple gaze.
He didn't say anything. Bill Soames tried to smile at him. After a second
Anthony returned his attention to the rat. It had already devoured its tail, or
at least chewed it off—for Anthony had made it bite faster than it could
swallow, and little pink and red furry pieces lay around it on the green grass.
Now the rat was having trouble reaching its hindquarters.
Mumbling silently, thinking of nothing in
particular as hard as he could, Bill Soames went stiff-legged down the walk,
mounted his bicycle and pedaled off.
"We'll see you tonight, William,"
Aunt Amy called after him.
As Bill Soames pumped the
pedals, he was wishing deep down that he could pump twice as fast, to get away
from Anthony-all the faster, and away from Aunt Amy, who sometimes just forgot
how careful you had to be. And he shouldn't have thought
that. Because Anthony caught it. He caught the desire
to get away from the Fremont house as if it was something bad, and his purple gaze blinked, and he snapped a small, sulky thought after
Bill Soames —just a small one, because he was in a good mood today, and
besides, he liked Bill Soames, or at least didn't dislike him, at least today.
Bill Soames wanted to go away—so, petulantly, Anthony helped him.
Pedaling with superhuman speed—or rather,
appearing to, because in reality the bicycle was pedaling him—Bill Soames vanished down the road in a cloud of dust, his thin,
terrified wail drifting back across the summerlike heat.
Anthony looked at the rat. It had devoured
half its belly, and had died from pain. He thought it into a grave out deep in
the cornfield—his father had once said, smiling, that he might as well do that
with the things he killed—and went around the house, casting his odd shadow in
the hot, brassy light from above.
In the kitchen, Aunt Amy
was unpacking the groceries. She put the Mason-jarred goods on the shelves, and
the meat and milk in the icebox, and the beet sugar and coarse flour in big
cans under the sink. She put the cardboard box in the corner, by the door, for
Mr. Soames to pick up next time he came. It was stained and battered and torn
and worn fuzzy, but it was one of the few left in Peaksville. In faded red
letters it said Campbell's
Soup. The last cans of
soup, or of anything else, had been eaten long ago, except for a small communal
hoard which the villagers dipped into for special occasions—but the box
lingered on, like a coffin, and when it and the other boxes were gone, the men
would have to make some out of wood.
Aunt Amy went out in back, where Anthony's
Mom— Aunt Amy's sister—sat in the shade of the house, shelling peas. The peas,
every time Mom ran a finger along a pod, went lollop-lollop-lollop into the pan on her lap.
"William brought the groceries,"
Aunt Amy said. She sat down wearily in the straightbacked chair beside Mom, and
began fanning herself again. She wasn't really old, but ever since Anthony had
snapped at her with his mind, something had seemed to be wrong with her body as
well as her mind, and she was tired all the time.
"Oh, good," said Mom. Lollop went the fat peas into the pan.
Everybody in Peaksville always said "Oh,
fine," or "Good," or "Say, that's swell!" when almost
anything happened or was mentioned—even unhappy things like accidents or even
deaths. They'd always say "Good," because if they didn't try to
cover up how they really felt, Anthony might overhear with his mind, and then
nobody knew what might happen. Like the time Mrs. Kent's husband, Sam, had come
walking back from the graveyard, because Anthony liked Mrs. Kent and had heard
her mourning. Lollop.
"Tonight's television night," said
Aunt Amy. "I'm glad. I look forward to it so much every week. I wonder
what we'll see tonight?"
"Did Bill bring the
meat?" asked Mom.
"Yes."
Aunt Amy fanned herself, looking up at the featureless
brassy glare of the sky. "Goodness, it's so hot! I wish Anthony would make
it just a little cooler—"
"Amy!"
"Oh!" Mom's sharp tone had
penetrated, where Bill Soames' agonized expression had failed. Aunt Amy put one
thin hand to her mouth in exaggerated alarm. "Oh .. . I'm sorry, dear." Her pale
blue eyes shuttled around, right and left, to see if Anthony was in sight. Not
that it would make any difference if he was or wasn't—he didn't have
to be near to know what you were tMnking. Usually, though, unless he had his
attention on somebody, he would be occupied with thoughts of his own.
But
some things attracted his attention—you could never be sure just what.
"This weather's just fine" Mom said.
Lollop.
"Oh, yes," Aunt Amy said. "It's a wonderful
day. I
wouldn't want it changed for the world!" Lollop. Lollop.
"What time is
it?" Mom asked.
Aunt
Amy was sitting where she could see through the kitchen window to the alarm clock on the
shelf above the stove. "Four-thirty," she said.
Lollop.
"I
want tonight to be something special," Mom said. "Did Bill bring a
good lean roast?"
"Good and lean, dear. They butchered just today, you know, and sent us over the best
piece."
"Dart
Hollis will be so surprised when he finds out that tonight's
television party is a birthday party for him too!"
"Oh, I think he will! Are you sure nobody's told him?"
"Everybody swore they
wouldn't."
"That'll
be real nice," Aunt Amy nodded, looking off across the cornfield. "A birthday party."
"Well------------ "
Mom put the pan of peas down beside
her, stood up and brushed her apron. "I'd
better get the roast on. Then we can set the table." She picked up the
peas.
Anthony
came around the corner of the house. He didn't look at them, but continued on
down through the carefully kept garden—all the
gardens in Peaksville were carefully kept, very carefully kept—and went past
the rusting, useless hulk that had been the Fremont family car, and went
smoothly over the fence and out into the cornfield.
"Isn't
this a lovely day!" said Mom, a little loudly, as they went toward the
back door.
Aunt
Amy fanned herself. "A beautiful day, dear. Just finer
Out
in the cornfield, Anthony walked between the tall, rustling rows of green
stalks. He liked to smell the corn. The alive corn overhead,
and the old dead corn underfoot. Rich Ohio earth, thick with weeds and brown,
dry-rotting ears of corn, pressed between his bare toes with every step)—he had
made it rain last night so everything would smell and feel nice today.
He
walked clear to the edge of the cornfield, and over to where a grove of shadowy
green trees covered cool, moist, dark ground, and lots of leafy undergrowth,
and jumbled moss-covered rocks, and a small spring that made a clear, clean
pool. Here Anthony liked to rest and watch the birds
and insects and small animals that rustled and scampered and chirped about. He
liked to lie on the cool ground and look up through the moving greenness
overhead, and watch the insects flit in the hazy soft sunbeams that stood like
slanting, glowing bars between ground and treetops. Somehow, he liked the
thoughts of the little creaures in this place better than the thoughts outside;
and while the thoughts he picked up here weren't very strong or very clear, he
could get enough out of them to know what the little creatures liked and
wanted, and he spent a lot of time making the grove more like what they wanted
it to be. The spring hadn't always been here; but one time he had found thirst
in one small furry mind, and had brought subterranean water to the surface in a
clear cold flow, and had watched blinking as the creature drank, feeling its
pleasure. Later he had made the pool, when he found a small urge to swim.
He had made rocks and trees and bushes and
caves, and sunlight here and shadows there, because he had felt in all the tiny
rninds around him the desire—or the instinctive want—for this kind of resting
place, and that kind of mating place, and this kind of place to play, and that
kind of home.
And somehow the creatures from all the fields
and pastures around the grove had seemed to know that this was a good place,
for there were always more of them coming in—every time Anthony came out here
there were more creatures than the last time, and more desires and needs to be
tended to. Every time there would be some kind of creature he had never seen
before, and he would find its mind, and see what it wanted, and then give it to
it.
He liked to help them. He liked to feel their
simple gratification.
Today, he rested beneath a thick elm, and
lifted his purple gaze to a red and black bird that had just come to the grove.
It twittered on a branch over his head, and hopped back and forth, and thought
its tiny thoughts, and Anthony made a big, soft nest for it, and pretty soon it
hopped in.
A long, brown, sleek-furred animal was
drinking at the pool. Anthony found its mind next. The animal was thinking
about a smaller creature that was scurrying along the ground on the other side
of the pool, grubbing for insects. The little creaure didn't know that it was
in danger. The long, brown animal finished drinking and tensed its legs to
leap, and Anthony thought it into a grave in the cornfield.
He didn't like those kinds of thoughts. They
reminded him of the thoughts outside the grove. A long time ago some of the
people outside had thought that way about him, and one night they'd hidden and waited for him to come back from the grove—and
he'd just thought them all into the cornfield. Since then, the rest of the people
hadn't thought that way—at least, very clearly. Now their thoughts were all
mixed up and confusing whenever they thought about him or near him, so
he didn't pay much attention.
He liked to help them too, sometimes—but it
wasn't simple, or very gratifying either. They never
thought happy thoughts when he did—just the jumble. So he spent more time out
here.
He watched all the birds and insects and
furry creatures for a while, and played with a bird, making it soar and dip and
streak madly around tree trunks until, accidentally, when another bird caught
his attention for a moment, he ran it into a rock. Petulantly, he thought the
rock into a grave in the cornfield; but he couldn't do anything more with the
bird. Not because it was dead, though it was; but because it had a broken wing.
So he went back to the house. He didn't feel like walking back through the
cornfield, so he just went
to the house, right down
into the basement.
It was nice down here. Nice and dark and damp
and sort of fragrant, because once Mom had been making preserves in a rack
along the far wall, and then she'd stopped coming down ever since Anthony had
started spending time here, and the preserves had spoiled and leaked down and
spread over the dirt floor, and Anthony liked the smell.
He caught another rat, making it smell
cheese, and after he played with it, he thought it into a grave right beside
the long animal he'd killed in the grove. Aunt Amy hated rats, and so he killed
a lot of them, because he liked Aunt Amy most of all and sometimes did things
that Aunt Amy wanted. Her mind was more like the littie furry minds out in the
grove. She hadn't thought anything bad at all about him for a long time.
After the rat, he played with a big black
spider in the corner under the stairs, making it run back and forth until its
web shook and shimmered in the fight from the cellar window like a reflection
in silvery water. Then he drove fruit flies into the web until the spider was
frantic trying to wind them all up. The spider liked flies, and its thoughts
were stronger than theirs, so he did it. There was something bad in the way it
liked flies, but it wasn't clear—and besides, Aunt Amy hated flies too.
He
heard footsteps overhead—Mom moving around in the kitchen. He blinked his
purple gaze, and almost decided to make her hold still—but instead he went up to the attic, and, after looking out the circular window at the front
end of the long V-roofed room for a while at the front lawn and the dusty road
and Henderson's tip-waving wheatfield beyond, he curled into an unlikely shape
and went partly to sleep.
Soon
people would be coming for television, he heard Mom think.
He went more to sleep. He liked television
night. Aunt Amy had always liked television a lot, so one time he had thought
some for her, and a few other people had been there at the time, and Aunt Amy
had felt disappointed when they wanted to leave. He'd done something to them
for that—and now everybody came to television.
He liked all the attention
he got when they did.
Anthony's father came home around six-thirty,
looking tired and dirty and bloody. He'd been over in Dun's pasture with the
other men, helping pick out the cow to be slaughtered this month and doing the
job, and then butchering the meat and salting it away in Soames's icehouse.
Not a job he cared for, but every man had his turn. Yesterday, he had helped
scythe down old Mclntyre's wheat. Tomorrow, they would start threshing. By hand. Everything in Peaksville had to be done by hand.
He
kissed his wife on the cheek and sat down at the kitchen table. He smiled and
said, "Where's Anthony?"
"Around
someplace," Mom said.
Aunt
Amy was over at the wood-burning stove, stirring the big pot of peas. Mom went
back to the oven and opened it and basted the roast.
"Well,
it's been a good
day," Dad said. By rote. Then he looked at the mixing bowl and breadboard on
the table. He sniffed at the dough. "M'm," he said. "I could eat
a loaf all by myself, I'm so hungry."
"No
one told Dan Hollis about its being a birthday party, did they?" his wife
asked.
"Nope. We kept as quiet as mummies."
"We've fixed up such a
lovely surprise!"
"Urn? What?"
"Well...
you know how much Dan likes music. Well, last week Thelma Dunn found a record in her attic!" "No!"
"Yes! And we had Ethel sort of ask—you
know, without really asking—if he had that one. And he said no. Isn't
that a wonderful surprise?"
"Well,
now, it sure is. A record, imagine! That's a real nice thing to find! What
record is it?"
"Perry Como, singing You Are My Sunshine."
"Well, I'll be darned. I always liked
that tune." Some raw carrots were lying on the table. Dad picked up a
small one, scrubbed it on his chest, and took a bite. "How did Thelma
happen to find it?"
"Oh, you know—just
looking around for new things."
"M'm." Dad
chewed the carrot. "Say, who has the
picture we found a while back? I kind of liked it—that
old clipper sailing along----------------- "
"The Smiths. Next week the Sipichs get it, and they give
the Smiths old Mclntyre's music-box, and we give
the Sipichs------------ "
and she went down the tentative order
of
things that would exchange hands among the women at church this Sunday.
He nodded. "Looks like we can't have the
picture for
a while, I guess. Look, honey, you might try to get that
detective book back from the Reillys. I was so busy the
week we had it, I never got to finish all the stories--------------------------- "
"I'll try," his wife said
doubtfully. "But I hear the Van
Husens have a stereoscope they found in the cellar." Her
voice was just a little accusing. "They had it two whole
months before they told anybody about it---------------------------- "
"Say,"
Dad said, looking interested. "That'd be nice, too. Lots
of pictures?"
"I
suppose so. I'll see on Sunday. I'd like to have it— but we still owe the Van
Husens for their canary. I don't know why that bird had to pick our house to die ... it must have
been sick when we got it. Now there's just no satisfying Betty van Husen—she
even hinted she'd like our piano for
a while!"
"Well, honey, you try for the
stereoscope—or just anything you think we'll like." At last he swallowed
the carrot. It had been a little young and tough. Anthony's whims about the
weather made it so that people never knew what crops would come up, or what shape they'd be in if they did. All they could
do was plant a lot;
and always enough of something came up any one season to live on. Just once
there had been a grain surplus; tons of it had been hauled to the edge of
Peaksville and dumped off into the nothingness. Otherwise, nobody could have
breathed, when it started to spoil.
"You know," Dad went on. ''It's
nice to have the new
things around. It's nice to think that there's probably
still a lot of stuff nobody's found yet, in cellars and attics
and barns and down behind things. They help, somehow.
As much as anything can help-------------------- "
"Sh-h!" Mom glanced nervously around.
"Oh,"
Dad said, smiling hastily. "It's all right! The new things are good! It's nice
to be able to have something
around you've never seen before, and know that something you've given somebody
else is making them happy ..
. that's a real good thing."
"A good thing,"
his wife echoed.
"Pretty soon," Aunt Amy said, from
the stove, "there
won't be any more new things. We'll have found every-
thing there is to find. Goodness, that'll be too bad---------------------------- "
"Amy!"
"Well------------ "
her pale eyes were shallow and fixed, a
sign of her recurrent vagueness. "It will be
kind of a
shame—no new things---------------- "
"Don't
talk like that," Mom said, trembling.
"Amy, be quiet!"
"It's
good" said Dad, in the loud, familiar,
wanting-to-be-overheard tone of voice. "Such talk is good. It's okay, honey—don't you see? It's good for Amy
to talk any way she wants. It's good for her to feel bad. Everything's good.
Everything has to be good..."
Anthony's mother was pale.
And so was Aunt Amy— the peril of the moment had suddenly penetrated the clouds
surrounding her mind. Sometimes it was difficult to handle words so that they
might not prove disastrous. You just never knew. There were so many things it was wise not to say,
or even think—but remonstration for saying or thinking them might be just as
bad, if Anthony heard and decided to do anything about it. You could just never
tell what Anthony was liable to do.
Everything had to be good. Had
to be fine just as it was, even if it wasn't. Always.
Because any change might be worse. So terribly much worse.
"Oh, my goodness, yes, of course it's
good," Mom said. "You talk any way you want to, Amy, and it's just
fine. Of course, you want to remember that some ways are better than others ..."
Aunt Amy stirred the peas, fright in her pale eyes.
"Oh, yes," she
said. "But I don't feel like talking right now. It... it's good that I don't feel like talking."
Dad said tiredly, smiling, "I'm going out and wash up."
They started arriving around eight o'clock.
By that time, Mom and Aunt Amy had the big table in the dining room set, and
two more tables off to the side. The candles were burning and the chairs situated,
and Dad had a big fire going in the fireplace.
The
first to arrive were the Sipichs, John and Mary. John wore his best suit, and
was well-scrubbed and pink-faced after his day in Mclntyre's pasture. The suit
was neatly pressed, but getting threadbare at elbows and cuffs. Old Mclntyre
was working on a loom, designing it out of schoolbooks, but so far it was slow
going. Mclntyre was a capable man with wood and tools, but a loom was a big
order when you couldn't get metal parts. Mclntyre had been one of the ones
who, at first, had wanted to try to get Anthony to make things the villagers
needed, like clothes and canned goods and medical supplies and gasoline. Since
then, he felt that what had happened to the whole Terrance family and Joe
Kinney was his fault, and he worked hard trying to make it up to the rest of
them. And since then, no one had tried to get Anthony to do anything.
Mary Sipich was a small,
cheerful woman in a simple dress. She immediately set about helping Mom and
Aunt Amy put the finishing touches on the dinner.
The next arrivals were the Smiths and the
Dunns, who lived right next to each other down the road, only a few yards from
the nothingness. They drove up in the Smiths' wagon, drawn by their old horse.
Then the Reillys showed up, from across the
darkened wheatfield, and the evening really began. Pat Reilly sat down at the
big upright in the front room, and began to play from the popular sheet music
on the rack. He played softly, as expressively as he could—and nobody sang.
Anthony liked piano playing a whole lot, but not singing; often he would come
up from the basement, or down from the attic, or just come, and sit on top of the piano, nodding his head as Pat played Lover or Boulevard
of Broken Dreams or Night and Day. He seemed to prefer ballads, sweet-sounding
songs—but the one time somebody had started to sing, Anthony had looked over
from the top of the piano and done something that made everybody afraid of
singing from then on. Later, they'd decided that the piano was what Anthony had
heard first, before anybody had ever tried to sing, and now anything else added
to it didn't sound right and distracted him from his pleasure.
So, every television night, Pat would play
the piano, and that was the beginning of the evening. Wherever Anthony was, the
music would make him happy, and put him in a good mood, and he would
know that they were gathering for television and waiting for him.
By eight-thirty everybody had shown up,
except for the seventeen children and Mrs. Soames who was off watching them in
the schoolhouse at the far end of town. The children of Peaksville were never,
never allowed near the Fremont house—not since little Fred Smith had tried to
play with Anthony on a dare. The younger children weren't even told about
Anthony. The others had mostly forgotten about him, or were told that he was a
nice, nice goblin but they must never go near him.
Dan
and Ethel Hollis came late, and Dan walked in not suspecting a thing. Pat
Reilly had played the piano until his hands ached—he'd worked pretty hard with
them today—and now he got up, and everybody gathered around to wish Dan Hollis
a happy birthday.
"Well,
I'll be darned," Dan grinned. "This is swell.
I wasn't expecting this at all...
gosh, this is swell!"
They gave him his presents—mostly things they
had made by hand, though some were things that people had possessed as their
own and now gave him as his. John Sipich gave him a watch charm, hand-carved
out of a piece of hickory wood. Dan's watch had broken down a year or so ago,
and there was nobody in the village who knew how to fix it, but he still
carried it around because it had been his grandfather's and was a fine old
heavy thing of gold and silver. He attached the charm to the chain, while
everybody laughed and said John had done a nice job of carving. Then Mary
Sipich gave him a knitted necktie, which he put on, removing the one he'd worn.
The Reillys gave him a little box they had
made, to keep things in. They didn't say what things, but Dan said he'd keep
his personal jewelry in it. The Reillys had made it out of a cigar box,
carefully peeled of its paper and lined on the inside with velvet. The outside
had been polished, and carefully if not expertly carved by Pat— but his carving
got complimented too. Dan Hollis received many other gifts—a pipe, a pair of
shoelaces, a tie pin, a knit pair of socks, some fudge, a
pair of garters made from old suspenders.
He unwrapped each gift with vast pleasure, and wore as many of
them as he could right there, even the garters. He lit up the pipe, and said
he'd never had a better smoke; which wasn't quite true, because the pipe wasn't
broken in yet. Pete Manners had had it lying around ever since he'd received it
as a gift four years ago from an out-of-town relative who hadn't known he'd
stopped smoking.
Dan
put the tobacco into the bowl very carefully. Tobacco was precious. It was only
pure luck that Pat Reilly had decided to try to grow some in his backyard just
before what had happened to Peaksville had happened. It didn't grow very well,
and then they had to cure it and shred it and all, and
it was just precious stuff. Everybody in town used wooden holders old Mclntyre
had made, to save on butts.
Last of all, Thelma Dunn
gave Dan Hollis the record she had found.
Dan's eyes misted even
before he opened the package. He knew it was a record.
"Gosh," he said
softly. "What one is it? I'm almost afraid to look ..."
"You haven't got it,
darling," Ethel Hollis smiled. "Don't you remember, I asked about You Are My Sunshine?"
"Oh, gosh," Dan
said again. Carefully he removed the wrapping and stood there fondling the
record, running his big hands over the worn grooves with their tiny, dulling
crosswise scratches. He looked around the room, eyes shining, and they all
smiled back, knowing how delighted he was.
"Happy
birthday, darling!" Ethel said, throwing her arms around him and kissing him.
He clutched the record in both hands, holding
it off to one side as she pressed against him. "Hey," he laughed,
pulling back his head. "Be careful...
I'm holding a priceless object!" He looked around again, over his wife's
arms, which were still around his neck. His eyes were hungry. "Look... do you think we could play it? Lord,
what I'd give to hear some new music...
just the first part, the orchestra part, before Como sings?"
Faces sobered. After a minute, John Sipich
said, "I don't think we'd better, Dan. After all, we don't know just where
the singer comes in—it'd be taking too much of a chance. Better wait till you
get home."
Dan Hollis reluctantly put the record on the
buffet with all his other presents. "It's good," he said automatically, but disappointedly,
"that I can't play it here."
"Oh, yes," said Sipich. "It's
good." To compensate for Dan's disappointed tone, he repeated, "It's good."
They ate dinner, the candles lighting their
smiling faces, and ate it all right down to the last delicious drop of gravy.
They complimented Mom and Aunt Amy on the roast beef, and the peas and carrots,
and the tender corn on the cob. The corn hadn't come from the Fremont's
cornfield, naturally—everybody knew what was out there; and the field was going
to weeds.
Then
they polished off the dessert—homemade ice cream and cookies. And then they sat
back, in the flickering light of the candles, and chatted, waiting for
television.
There
never was a lot of mumbling on television night —everybody came and had a good
dinner at the Fremonts', and that was nice, and afterwards there was
television, and nobody really thought much about that—it just had to be put up
with. So it was a pleasant enough get-together, aside from your having to watch
what you said just as carefully as you always did everyplace. If a dangerous
thought came into your mind, you just started mumbling, even right in the
middle of a sentence. When you did that, the others just ignored you until you
felt happier again and stopped.
Anthony
liked television night. He had done only two or three awful things on
television night in the whole past year.
Mom
had put a bottle of brandy on the table, and they each had a tiny glass of it.
Liquor was even more precious then tobacco. The villagers could make wine, but
the grapes weren't right, and certainly the techniques weren't, and it wasn't
very good wine. There were only a few bottles of real liquor left in the
village—four rye, three Scotch, three brandy, nine real wine and half a bottle
of Drambuie belonging to old Mclntyre (only for marriages)—and when those were
gone, that was it.
Afterward,
everybody wished that the brandy hadn't been brought out. Because
Dan Hollis drank more of it than he should have, and mixed it with a lot of the
homemade wine. Nobody thought anything about it at first, because he
didn't show it much outside, and it was his birthday party and a happy party,
and Anthony liked these get-togethers and shouldn't see any reason to do
anything even if he was listening.
But Dan Hollis got high, and did a fool
thing. If they'd seen it coming, they'd have taken him outside and
walked him around.
The first thing they knew,
Dan stopped laughing right in the middle of the story about how Thelma Dunn had
found the Perry Como record and dropped it and it hadn't broken because she'd
moved faster than she ever had before in her life and caught it. He was
fondling the record again, and looking longingly at the Fremonts' gramophone
over in the corner, and suddenly he stopped laughing and his face got slack,
and then it got ugly, and he said, "Oh, Christ!"
Immediately
the room was still. So still they could hear the whirring movement of the
grandfather's clock out in the hall. Pat Reilly had been playing the piano,
softly. He stopped, his hands poised over the yellowed keys.
The
candles on the dining-room table flickered in a cool breeze that blew through the lace
curtains over the bay window.
"Keep playing, Pat,"
Anthony's father said softly.
Pat
started again. He played Night and Day, but
his eyes were sidewise on Dan Hollis, and he missed notes.
Dan
stood in the middle of the room, holding the record. In his other hand he held
a glass of brandy so hard his hand shook.
They were all looking at him.
"Christ,"
he said again, and he made
it sound like a dirty word.
Reverend
Younger, who had been talking with Mom and Aunt Amy by the dining-room door,
said "Christ" too—but he was using it in a prayer. His hands were
clasped, and his eyes were closed.
John
Sipich moved forward. "Now, Dan ...
it's good for you to talk that way. But you don't want
to talk too much, you know."
Dan shook off the hand
Sipich put on his arm.
"Can't
even play my record," he said loudly. He looked down at the record, and
then around at their faces. "Oh, my God ..."
He threw the glassful of brandy against the
wall. It splattered and ran down the wallpaper in streaks. Some of the women
gasped.
"Dan," Sipich said in a whisper. "Dan, cut it out---------------------------- "
Pat Reilly was playing Night and Day louder, to cover up the sounds of the talk.
It wouldn't do any good, though, if Anthony was listening.
Dan Hollis went over to the piano and stood
by Pat's shoulder, swaying a little.
"Pat," he said. "Don't play that. Play this."
And he began to sing.
Softly, hoarsely, miserably: "Happy birthday to me .. . Happy birthday to me ..."
"Dan!" Ethel Hollis screamed. She
tried to run across
the room to him. Mary Sipich grabbed her arm and held
her back. "Dan," Ethel screamed again. "Stop----------------------------- "
"My
God, be quiet!" hissed Mary Sipich, and pushed her toward one of the men,
who put his hand over her mouth and held her still.
"---------- Happy
birthday, dear Danny," Dan sang. "Happy
birthday to
me!" He stopped and looked down at Pat Reilly. "Play it, Pat. Play
it, so I can sing right... you know I
can't carry a tune unless somebody plays it!"
Pat
Reilly put his hands on the keys and began Lover —in a slow waltz tempo, the way Anthony liked it. Pat's face was white.
His hands fumbled.
Dan
Hollis stared over at the dining-room door. At Anthony's mother, and at
Anthony's father who had gone to join her.
"You
had him," he said.
Tears gleamed on his cheeks as the candlelight caught them. "You had to go and have him..."
He closed his eyes, and the tears squeezed
out. He sang
loudly, "You are my sunshine____________ my only sunshine...
you
make me happy ... when I am blue ..."
Anthony came into the room.
Pat
stopped playing. He froze. Everybody froze. The breeze rippled the curtains. Ethel
Hollis couldn't even try to scream—she had fainted.
"Please don't take my sunshine ... away ..."
Dan's
voice faltered into silence. His eyes widened. He put
both hands out in front of him, the empty glass in one,
the record in the other. He hiccupped, and said, "No------------------------- "
"Bad
man," Anthony said, and thought Dan Hollis into something like nothing
anyone would have believed possible, and then he thought the thing into a grave
deep, deep in the cornfield.
The glass and record
thumped on the rug. Neither broke.
Anthony's
purple gaze went around the room.
Some of the people began mumbling. They all
tried to smile. The sound of mumbling filled the room like a far-off approval.
Out of the murmuring came one or two clear voices:
"Oh, it's a very good thing,"
said John Sipich.
"A good thing," said Anthony's
father, smiling. He'd had more practice in smiling than most of them. "A wonderful thing."
"It's swell... just swell," said Pat Reilly, tears leaking from eyes
and nose, and he began to play the piano again, softly, his trembling hands
feeling for Night
and Day.
Anthony climbed up on top of the paino, and Pat played for two hours.
Afterward, they watched television. They all
went into the front room, and lit just a few candles, and pulled up chairs
around the set. It was a small-screen set, and they couldn't all sit close
enough to it to see, but that didn't matter. They didn't even turn the set on.
It wouldn't have worked anyway, there being no electricity in Peaksville.
They
just sat silently, and watched the twisting, writhing shapes on the screen,
and listened to the sounds that came out of the speaker, and none of them had
any idea of what it was all about. They never did. It was always the same.
"It's real nice," Aunt Amy said
once, her pale eyes on
the meaningless flickers and shadows. "But I liked it a
little better when there were cities outside and we could
get real----------- "
"Why,
Amy!" said Mom. "It's good for you to say such a thing. Very good. But how can you mean it? Why, this television is much better than anything we ever used to get!"
"Yes,"
chimed in John Sipich. "It's fine. It's the best show we've ever
seen!"
He
sat on the couch, with two other men, holding Ethel Hollis flat against the
cushions, holding her arms and legs and putting their hands over her mouth, so
she couldn't start screaming again. "It's really good!" he said again.
Mom looked out of the front window, across
the darkened road, across Henderson's darkened wheat field to the vast,
endless, gray nothingness in which the little village of Peaksville floated
like a soul—the huge nothingness that was most evident at night, when Anthony's
brassy day had gone.
It did no good to wonder
where they were ... no good at all.
Peaksville was just someplace. Someplace away from the world.
It was wherever it had been since that day three years ago when Anthony had
crept from her womb and old Doc Bates—God rest him—had screamed and dropped him
and tried to kill him, and Anthony had whined and done the thing. Had taken the village someplace. Or had destroyed the world
and left only the village, nobody knew which.
It did no good to wonder about it. Nothing at
all did any good—except to live as they must live. Must
always, always live, if Anthony would let them.
These
thoughts were dangerous, she thought.
She began to mumble. The others started
mumbling too. They had all been thinking, evidently.
The men on the couch whispered and whispered
to Ethel Hollis, and when they took their hands away, she mumbled too.
While Anthony sat on top of the set and made
television, they sat around and mumbled and watched the meaningless,
flickering shapes far into the night.
Next day it snowed, and killed off half the
crops—but it was a good
day.
Printed in U.S.A.
Ballantine
Books published six volumes of original short stories in the STAR series.
Doubleday then printed the cream of the stories from these volumes in STAR OF
STARS. This book is a reprint of STAR OF STARS.
When
Ballantine Books' STAR collections first began to appear, they were greeted
with review reaction which quickly established them as tops in the field. Here
are a few comments:
. "You won't find a better anthology buy."
New
York Herald Tribune
"Some of the best work of some of the
best contemporary practitioners of science fiction."
New York Times
"Magnificent!" Galaxy
"The
whole Ballantine science-fiction line has..!the
highest average of literary quality and the best understanding of modern
science fiction that any book publisher has yet reached."
Fantasy and Science Fiction