Black Gondolier and Other Stories (44 page)

A third time the phone bzzd—much sooner than the once-a-century rhythm called for. A brisk grating voice said, “Tag George. All ready to pop those lions, boy? Rhodesia's waiting for us.” To Tag's horror all he could say was, “No, thanks,” and all he could do was hang up.

Finally Anselmo arrived at the potting table and began methodically to care for the three plants there, insensible to Tag's mental screams, even when Anselmo's sprinkling reawakened Tag's searing thirst and they became the inward shriek, “For the love of God, pour some of that in my mouth!”

Anselmo finished with the Erica, the vamp (a bit cautious with his huge hands there as they moved around the foot-long tendrils), and finally the Taggart. Only then did his behavior alter. He stood ox-still and stared an interminable time at the smirking walnut-head of the Taggart. Hope rekindled in Tag.

Then Anselmo turned and stared for almost an equally long period at his life-size employer. Tag's hope flamed. If only there were some readable expression in that white face big as a washbowl . . .

Then Anselmo looked back at the walnut-head, puzzledly shook his own in three wide horse-like swings, shrugged his sloping shoulders, and dragged off down the aisle. The secret door opened, then closed behind him.

A trapdoor opened in the corridor and Anselmo plummeted into the hottest room in hell—in Tag's imagination.

A mere thousand years and ten phone-calls later, Erica added, “I know the garden's under the pool. How do I get in?”

Tag focused his will and thought, “Sooner than tell you, I'd see myself in Hell. I'd become a pauper. You're the evil woman my Great-aunt Veronica always warned me about. You're the Witch Queen. No.”

What he said into the phone was, “Turn right at the foot of the main staircase. The seventh vertical molding to your right. The seventh rosette from the floor. Press three-one.”

“Thanks. I won't be long. Incidentally, you are in Hell and there is no pauper alternative. Oh, by the way, it's about time you were getting out of your body—it wont' live much longer, even with you in it. Don't look at my plant any more, don't look at the vamp, just look at the you-plant . . . and project . . . project . . . project . . .”

Tag complied. After a century the walnut-head began to bob and smirk in exact time with his own blinking. Then suddenly it grew moon-huge. Looking down, Tag saw that he had grown a large green full ruff around his neck.

His first reaction to the realization that he was now in the Taggart-plant was to try and project himself back into his rightful body.

One glance at it changed his mind. That gray-faced elephantine hulk, that moon-tongued mountain, looked dead.

This tentative information didn't depress him perhaps as much as it should have. He felt a vivification, an unreasoning cockiness, a confidence in his own powers, although he could only move his head and wriggle his torso a bit. Perhaps it was because he was no longer thirsty—Anselmo had watered well and cool moisture pervaded his every tissue.

Also, time had speeded up for him again—minutes no longer dragged like years.

Or perhaps his exhilaration was due to his increased sensitivity. Air-eddies intangible before now rippled against his bare flesh like brook water. A drifting bit of lint bumped him like a paper boat. Colors were brighter—he could see with the fresh-washed vision of a child. Odors were a symphony, chiefly of girl-accents, which he realized he had never properly appreciated before; now he could pick out each instrument in the orchestra.

And he could hear with exquisite precision and clarity. Why, he could even hear what the flower-girls were saying!

“We hate you, Tag Adams, we loathe and despise you,” they were chanting, occasionally varying it with obscenities in several languages.

His chest swelled. Why, it was a kind of hymn. No wonder the little guy had acted so happy. Where was that little guy now anyhow? Absorbed in his own larger consciousness? No matter, just listen . . . now what was that French girl calling him . . .?

“Enjoy it while you can,” the Erica-plant cut in sweetly.

“Shut up!” he snapped, swiveling his head toward her. My, my, she certainly was as handsomely constructed as he'd guessed she'd be when she first entered his office—he decided with an appreciative, quite involuntary whistle.

“How gallant,” the Erica-plant replied with a shrug. “Give him a hug for me, Red.”

The vamp, far more supple-stemmed than the mimics, thrust forward between them. The Medusa-face mopped and mowed. The eyes glared white-circled. The white fangs clicked and shirred. And then the inch-thick living tendrils whipped around him until they were like a red-barred cage, their tips not quite touching him, until one slowly dipped and drew itself stingingly across his chest . . .

“Cut it short, Red,” the Erica-plant commanded.

There was a distant grating noise. The red tendrils whipped away. The grating noise continued.

The secret panel was opening. Then the tramp of giant footsteps—Tag could feel their almost painful vibrations coming up from the concrete through the table and his pot and his earth.

Erica Slyker had entered the room: a girl as tall as a pine tree, bigger than a dinosaur to Tag, a colossal Witch Queen.

She was wearing a platinum mink coat over her pearl-worked pearl-gray suit. To the left shoulder of her coat was pinned a big spray of white funeral lilies.

Under her left elbow she carried a small cubical white box, big as a piano crate to Tag. It hummed, as though there were several electric motors running inside it.

Halfway down the aisle she stopped to look at the three Alices.

“Save us, save us!” all the flower-girls called to her.

She slowly and rather sadly shook her head. Then she jerked the three Alices screaming out of their pots.

“Kill or cure, my dear,” she said in a voice that to Tag was like thunder. “Anything's better than the state you're in.”

She stooped, swinging the three still-screaming Alices high in the air and smashed them against the concrete with a heavy thud, the vibrations from which made Tag wince, and left them there.

All the flower-girls grew alert. The pot-jarring footsteps resumed. Erica sat down the white box on the potting table and the electric motors added their different but painful vibrations to the others. Tag writhed. He was discovering why his flower-girls had never liked hi-fi the nights he'd played it to them hour after hour, full blast.

Erica bent toward him. It was like a face leaning down out of Mt. Rushmore. He could look down her pores, see the powder grains, retch at her overpowering odors.

“It's not so much fun being a sensitive plant, is it, Mr. Adams?” she rumbled slowly.

“May my Great-aunt torture you in Hell!” Tag squeaked.

“You'll find Erica in Veronica,” she replied cryptically. Then she slowly unwound a long blue-black hair from around the ear of his corpse. She dangled it in front of him and said, “There are many variants of the hair formula, Mr. Adams—and more than one way of applying an exodermal token.”

Then she dug her fingers into the pot of her own plant, carefully loosened its roots, gently shook them out and wrapped them in a wet handkerchief, then tucked and fastened the she-flower in the center of her spray of lilies.

Then she looked at Tag across the white box.

“The Witch Gods do not love you, Mr. Adams,” she whispered in a voice like distant thunder.

She took the cover off the box. A black bee, yellow-striped and big as a half-grown kitten, crawled up on the rim.

“You signed your will and your death-warrant, you know, Mr. Adams,” she continued, “within an hour of our meeting in your office. Signed them in more senses than one.”

With the bzzz of a power lawn mower the bees took off and came circling widely around Tag.

“After all, you've had a long life,” Erica went on. “About fourteen thousand years, wouldn't you say?—even if most of them were spent here during the last few days.”

Tiny tears of horror trickled down Tag's face as he craned and craned his neck. He'd often wondered exactly what the drops of dew on the flower-girl's checks had meant.

“I'll be leaving soon, Mr. Adams,” Erica said. “You'll have the place to yourself. The lock will be jammed. Anselmo will assume you've set it against him. I'm going to leave the sunlight turned on full—it's the kindest thing I can do for the others.”

The bee lit on Tag's shoulder like a six-legged live helicopter. It stank acidly. Of the million screams inside him he dared not utter one.

“Don't be frightened,” Erica rumbled. “Bees don't sting flowers—if they're quiet. And the scent of a male plant, such as you, happens to be irresistible to these.”

Two more bees climbed to the rim and took off and came circling.

“It's really an honor to you, Mr. Adams,” she continued. “Judging from your magazine, it's what you've always wanted to have happen. It should be an exquisite fate, from your point of view.”

More bees took off. A second landed on Tag's neck. The first walked slowly down his chest, its sticky hair-fringed feet pricking and tickling almost unbearably, its stinger wagging in his face.

“Yes,” she explained, standing up, “the bees are merely going to carry your pollen to all these beautiful girls.” She spread her arms wide, then leaned forward and finished. “But before they can carry your pollen, Mr. Adams, they have to collect it.”

Detectives Morris and O'Brien stayed for a last ruminative look around the stuffy, dried-out garden, after the rest of Homicide had come, sniffed and sniffed, finally shrugged and departed.

“There's something real mysterious here,” O'Brien declared, staring at the rows of shriveled brown plants. “For instance, why do I keep thinking of mummies?”

Morris shrugged. “The coroner says Adams died of simple inanition. That means nothing but lack of water and food. Now why should a guy with all that dough and all those beautiful babes lock himself in a secret hot house and starve? There's your mystery.”

“He couldn't have been such a bad joe,” O'Brien observed absently. “Look at all that money he left to the girl fresh out of the mental hospital—Alice something-or-other.” He moved to the potting table. The intent note came back into his voice. “But there's still a mystery here. Take those dead bees all in and around that one pot—that pot with the dried-up plant that's got dead vines around it from the next pot and that still looks to me— ”(he shivered) “a little like him.”

Morris chucked uneasily. “The real mystery,” he said to O'Brien, “is where you get your morbid imagination.”

Afterword: or my own thank you to Fritz Leiber

How on earth do you sum up the lifetime achievement of someone like Fritz Leiber? In truth, I don't believe you can, at least not to any great satisfaction. Leiber's influence on the horror, fantasy and science fiction genres is incomparable. You only have to look at the slew of modern fantasists and fabulists out there with their urban take on horror and the lurking evils of stone and slate to see the paranoid nightmares of Smoke Ghost creeping across the rooftops all over again.

Fritz Leiber was special. Not only was he a genuine literary titan, there's no question of that, he was a gentleman known for getting into long correspondences with fans, an actor and a scholar. Still the question remains, where do you begin? Obviously one angle would be to focus on the critical acclaim and the shelves laden with Hugo's, Nebula's, and World Fantasy Awards but the truth is awards only tell so much of the story. Equally, one could attempt to dissect the body of work left behind, picking out the highlights from a career of highlights, offering thoughts on just why Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness are two of the most chilling occult novels of all time, or on what makes Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser such a captivating — and lasting — pair of rogues but that has been done so wonderfully by writers much more accomplished than I. A brief biography perhaps? Illuminating the dry spells which interestingly enough seemed to almost always end with a change in writing direction might be interesting.

Or one could simply say thank you for the chance to share such a precious gift.

I can still remember the scene quite vividly. I was nine and my father was working away from home a lot. On one of his rare returns he came into my bedroom clutching a very battered copy of Fritz Leiber's Night's Black Agents he had found on the train. He thought it might be my cup of tea because the blurb promised “Worlds of fantasy- and adventure!” coupled with “Nightmare stories of the oily-clawed beings that lurk in the coal-sack shadows of the city!” He was going through a stage of absent parent guilt, I think. It was just after the divorce and both he and my mother were very worried as to how I would take it, after all, divorce was a relatively new phenomenon back then. About the only thing he knew for sure about me was that I loved ‘strange' stuff like Star Wars, so over the last few homecomings he had brought copies of Tolkien's The Two Towers (another novel rescued from a train) and one of Brian Daley's Han Solo spin-offs. All of these were terrific introductions to the literature of the fantastic and in their own way shaped my childhood into one of awe and wonder where nothing was ever quite as it seemed and shadows existed for no other purpose than to cloak a deeper and more sinister darkness. I was hooked.

That copy of Night's Black Agents travelled with me to school for about three months with me reading each of the stories over and over. My favourites differed from week to week, depending on my mood. One week I might be haunted by The Dreams of Albert Moorland, the next I would be unable to escape the lure of The Girl With The Hungry Eyes. Thanks to Fritz Leiber, I know one truism for sure: you never forget a good story.