Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (38 page)

"That's where that bluejay got it from," Mayo muttered. "But what the hell
is it?"

He drifted eastward to investigate, but forgot the mystery when he came to
the diamond center. He was dazzled by the blue-white stones glittering in
the showcases. The door of one jewel mart had sagged open, and Mayo tipped
in. When he emerged, it was with a strand of genuine matched pearls which
had cost him an I.O.U. worth a year's rent on the Body Slam.

His tour took him to Madison Avenue, where he found himself before
Abercrombie & Fitch. He went in to explore and came at last to the gun
racks. There he lost all sense of time, and when he recovered his senses,
he was walking up Fifth Avenue toward the boat pond. An Italian Cosmi
automatic rifle was cradled in his arms, guilt was in his heart, and a
sales slip in the store read:
I.O.U. 1 Cosmi Rifle, $750.00. 6 Boxes
Ammo. $18.00. James Mayo.

It was past three o'clock when he got back to the boathouse. He eased in,
trying to appear casual, hoping the extra gun he was carrying would go
unnoticed. Linda was sitting on the piano bench with her back to him.

"Hi," Mayo said nervously. "Sorry I'm late. I … I brought you a
present. They're real." He pulled the pearls from his pocket and held them
out. Then he saw she was crying.

"Hey, what's the matter?"

She didn't answer.

"You wasn't scared I'd run out on you? I mean, well, all my gear is here.
The car, too. You only had to look."

She turned. "I hate you!" she cried.

He dropped the pearls and recoiled, startled by her vehemence. "What's the
matter?'

"You're a lousy, rotten liar!"

"Who? Me?"

"I drove up to New Haven this morning." Her voice trembled with passion.
"There's no house standing on Grant Street. It's all wiped out. There's no
Station WNHA. The whole building's gone."

"No."

"Yes. And I went to your restaurant. There's no pile of TV sets out in the
street. There's only one set, over the bar. It's rusted to pieces. The
rest of the restaurant is a pigsty. You were living there all the time.
Alone. There was only one bed in back. It was lies! All lies!"

"Why would I lie about a thing like that?"

"You never shot any Gil Watkins."

"I sure did. Both barrels. He had it coming."

"And you haven't got any TV set to repair."

"Yes, I do."

"And even if it is repaired, there's no station to broadcast."

"Talk sense," he said angrily. "Why would I shoot Gil if there wasn't any
broadcast?"

"If he's dead, how can he broadcast?"

"See? And you just now said I didn't shoot him."

"Oh, you're mad! You're insane!" she sobbed. "You just described that
barometer because you happened to be looking at my clock. And I believed
your crazy lies. I had my heart set on a barometer to match my clock. I've
been looking for years." She ran to the wall arrangement and hammered her
fist alongside the clock. "It belongs right here. Here. But you lied, you
lunatic. There never was a barometer."

"If there's a lunatic around here, it's you," he shouted. "You're so crazy
to get this house decorated that nothing's real for you anymore."

She ran across the room, snatched up his old shotgun, and pointed it at
him. "You get out of here. Right this minute. Get out or I'll kill you. I
never want to see you again."

The shotgun kicked off in her hands, knocking her backward and spraying
shot over Mayo's head into a corner bracket. China shattered and clattered
down. Linda's face went white.

"Jim! My God, are you all right? I didn't mean to … it just went
off …"

He stepped forward, too furious to speak. Then, as he raised his hand to
cuff her, the sound of distant reports come, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM. Mayo froze.

"Did you hear that?" he whispered.

Linda nodded.

"That wasn't any accident. It was a signal."

Mayo grabbed the shotgun, ran outside, and fired the second barrel into
the air. There was a pause. Then again came the distant explosions in a
stately triplet, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM. They had an odd, sucking sound, as though
they were implosions rather than explosions. Far up the park, a canopy of
frightened birds mounted into the sky.

"There's somebody," Mayo exulted. "By God, I told you I'd find somebody.
Come on."

They ran north, Mayo digging into his pockets for more shells to reload
and signal again.

"I got to thank you for taking that shot at me, Linda."

"I didn't shoot at you," she protested. "It was an accident."

"The luckiest accident in the world. They could be passing through and
never know about us. But what the hell kind of guns are they using? I
never heard no shots like that before, and I heard 'em all. Wait a
minute."

On the little piazza before the Wonderland monument, Mayo halted and
raised the shotgun to fire. Then he slowly lowered it. He took a deep
breath. In a harsh voice he said, "Turn around. We're going back to the
house." He pulled her around and faced her south.

Linda stared at him. In an instant he had become transformed from a gentle
teddy bear into a panther.

"Jim, what's wrong?"

"I'm scared," he growled. "I'm goddamn scared, and I don't want you to be,
too." The triple salvo sounded again. "Don't pay any attention," he
ordered. "We're going back to the house. Come on!"

She refused to move. "But why? Why?"

"We don't want any part of them. Take my word for it."

"How do you know? You've got to tell me."

"Christ! You won't let it alone until you find out, huh? All right. You
want the explanation for that bee smell, and them buildings falling down,
and all the rest?" He turned Linda around with a hand on her neck and
directed her gaze at the Wonderland monument. "Go ahead. Look."

A consummate craftsman had removed the heads of Alice, the Mad Hatter, and
the March Hare, and replaced them with towering mantis heads, all saber
mandibles, antennae, and faceted eyes. They were of a burnished steel and
gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. Linda let out a sick whimper and sagged
against Mayo. The triple report signaled once more.

Mayo caught Linda, heaved her over his shoulder, and loped back toward the
pond. She recovered consciousness in a moment and began to moan. "Shut
up," he growled. "Whining won't help." He set her on her feet before the
boathouse. She was shaking but trying to control herself. "Did this place
have shutters when you moved in? Where are they?"

"Stacked." She had to squeeze the words out. "Behind the trellis."

"I'll put 'em up. You fill buckets with water and stash 'em in the
kitchen. Go!"

"Is it going to be a siege?"

"We'll talk later. Go!"

She filled buckets and then helped Mayo jam the last of the shutters into
the window embrasures. "All right, inside," he ordered. They went into the
house and shut and barred the door. Faint shafts of the late afternoon sun
filtered through the louvers of the shutters. Mayo began unpacking the
cartridges for the Cosmi rifle. "You got any kind of gun?"

"A .22 revolver somewhere."

"Ammo?"

"I think so."

"Get it ready."

"Is it going to be a siege?" she repeated.

"I don't know. I don't know who they are, or what they are, or where they
come from. All I know is, we got to be prepared for the worst."

The distant implosions sounded. Mayo looked up alertly, listening. Linda
could make him out in the dimness now. His face looked carved. His chest
gleamed with sweat. He exuded the musky odor of caged lions. Linda had an
overpowering impulse to touch him. Mayo loaded the rifle, stood it
alongside the shotgun, and began padding from shutter to shutter, peering
out vigilantly, waiting with massive patience.

"Will they find us?" Linda asked.

"Maybe."

"Could they be friendly?"

"Maybe."

"Those heads looked so horrible."

"Yeah."

"Jim, I'm scared. I've never been so scared in my life."

"I don't blame you."

"How long before we know?"

"An hour, if they're friendly; two or three, if they're not."

"W-why longer?"

"If they're looking for trouble, they'll be more cautious."

"Jim, what do you really think?"

"About what?"

"Our chances."

"You really want to know?"

"Please."

"We're dead."

She began to sob. He shook her savagely. "Stop that. Go get your gun
ready."

She lurched across the living room, noticed the pearls Mayo had dropped,
and picked them up. She was so dazed that she put them on automatically.
Then she went into her darkened bedroom and pulled Mayo's model yacht away
from the closet door. She located the .22 in a hatbox on the closet floor
and removed it along with a small carton of cartridges.

She realized that a dress was unsuited to this emergency. She got a
turtleneck sweater, jodhpurs, and boots from the closet. Then she stripped
naked to change. Just as she raised her arms to unclasp the pearls, Mayo
entered, paced to the shuttered south window, and peered out. When he
turned back from the window, he saw her.

He stopped short. She couldn't move. Their eyes locked, and she began to
tremble, trying to conceal herself with her arms. He stepped forward,
stumbled on the model yacht, and kicked it out of the way. The next
instant he had taken possession of her body, and the pearls went flying,
too. As she pulled him down on the bed, fiercely tearing the shirt from
his back, her pet dolls also went into the discard heap along with the
yacht, the pearls, and the rest of the world.

The End

© 1963 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted with permission of the
author's estate, represented by The Pimlico Agency.

Space-time for Springers

Fritz Leiber

Gummitch was a superkitten, as he knew very well, with an I.Q. of about 160.
Of course, he didn't talk. But everybody knows that I.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 lions 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, Anthropofeline
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 the 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 earthbound
single-mindedness of a tom. 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 cat food 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.