Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (69 page)

"So I had my face altered, and I got what I wanted. You. I didn't look
like Millie the Mule any more, and I thought it was enough to make us both
happy. That was my mistake, darling. Because it didn't make you happy, did
it? You could still see Millie the Mule underneath the mask, and that's
why you strayed.

"The only person I fooled was myself. And it wasn't until tonight that I
realized the truth.

"I
am
Millie the Mule. Inside, I'm as ugly as you are. Only an ugly
person could dream of doing what I'm going to do to you."

Jimmie stared at her hands, knowing that in a moment she'd move. Then he
stared at her face, and in the half-light it seemed oddly altered. For a
moment he could almost see her as she had once been, years ago—Millie
the Mule, ugly as sin.

"But I'm not crazy," she whispered. "Please understand that, because it's
important. You did your best to drive me mad, torturing me for years with
your name-calling, your nastiness, your sniggering, your loathing. Still,
it wasn't enough to drive me mad; just enough to make a monster out of me.
That's right, Jimmie. I'm a monster now. That's why I've got to do this
thing. Because you deserve it for making me ugly inside. So ugly that when
I saw you and that girl together tonight, I gave up any thought of just
shooting you. That's when I knew just how much of a monster you'd made of
me—when I realized what I was planning, and how much I'm going to
enjoy it.

"It's going to take a long time, Jimmie. I want it to take quite a long
time. It will help me to get rid of your ugliness and mine, together."

Jimmie was thinking that she had never looked more like Millie the Mule
than she did at this moment, as she knelt beside him and went to work
…

It was quite the most horrible tragedy Highland Springs had ever known.
When poor Millie came back from Cleveland and found her husband in the
garage that way, everybody thought she'd collapse. But she managed to hold
up quite bravely, even through the investigation and inquest, and when the
ordeal of the funeral was over, she seemed like a different person.

In fact everyone remarked on it. While plastic surgery had done wonders
for her, it wasn't until after her husband's death that Millie became a
truly beautiful woman. She seemed to glow with an inner serenity, as if
all the ugliness had been burned out of her.

All the more surprising, considering the shock she must have had when she
discovered her husband's corpse. It was bad enough that the unknown
thieves had tortured him, burning the soles of his feet to get the
combination of the safe. But then, probably by accident, they'd set the
gasoline torch down right next to his head. Even with a low flame, his
face had been burned completely off …

The End

© 1960 by Robert Bloch. Reprinted with permission of the agent for
the author's estate, Ralph Vicinanza, Ltd. Originally published as
"Skin-Deep" in
Best-Seller Mystery Magazine
, July 1960.

Robert Silverberg

He saw the girl waiting in line outside a big Los Angeles movie house, on
a mildly foggy Tuesday morning. She was slim and pale, barely five-three,
with stringy flaxen hair, and she was alone. He remembered her, of course.

He knew it would be a mistake, but he crossed the street anyway and walked
up along the theater line to where she stood.

"Hello," he said.

She turned, stared at him blankly, flicked the tip of her tongue out for
an instant over her lips. "I don't believe I—"

"Tom Niles," he said. "Pasadena, New Year's Day, 1955. You sat next to me.
Ohio State-20, Southern Cal-7. You don't remember?"

"A football game? But I hardly ever—I mean-I'm sorry, but—"

Someone else in the line moved forward toward him with a tight hard scowl
on his face. Niles knew when he was beaten. He smiled apologetically and
said, "I'm sorry, miss. I guess I made a mistake. I took you for someone I
knew—a Miss Bette Torrance. Excuse me."

And he strode rapidly away. He had not gone more than ten feet when he
heard the little surprised gasp and the "But I
am
Bette Torrance!"—but
he kept going.

I should know better after twenty-eight years,
he thought bitterly.
But I forget the most basic fact—that even though I remember
people, they don't necessarily remember me …

He walked wearily to the corner, turned right, and started down a new
street, one whose shops were totally unfamiliar to him and which,
therefore, he had never seen before. His mind, stimulated to its normal
pitch of activity by the incident outside the theater, spewed up a host of
tangential memories like the good machine it was:

Jan. 1, 1955, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California, Seat G126; warm day,
high humidity, arrived in stadium 12:03
P.M.,
PST.
Came alone. Girl in next seat wearing blue cotton dress, white
oxfords, carrying Southern Cal pennant. Talked to her. Name Bette
Torrance, senior at Southern Cal, government major. Had a date for the
game but he came down with flu symptoms night before, insisted she see
game anyway. Seat on other side of her empty. Bought her a hot dog, 20¢
(no mustard)—

There was more, much more. Niles forced it back down. There was the
virtually stenographic report of their conversation all that day:

(
"… I hope we win. I saw the last Bowl game we won, two years
ago …"

"… Yes, that was 1953. Southern Cal-7, Wisconsin-0 … and two
straight wins in 1944-45 over Washington and Tennessee …"

"… Gosh, you know a lot about football! What did you do, memorize
the record book?")

And the old memories. The jeering yell of freckled Joe Merritt that warm
April day in 1937:
Who are you, Einstein?
And Buddy Call saying
acidly on November 8, 1939:
Here comes Tommy Niles, the human adding
machine. Get him!
And then the bright stinging pain of a snowball
landing just below his left clavicle, the pain that he could summon up as
easily as any of the other pain-memories he carried with him. He winced
and closed his eyes suddenly, as if struck by the icy pellet here on a Los
Angeles street on a foggy Tuesday morning.

They didn't call him the human adding machine any more. Now it was the
human tape recorder; the derisive terms had to keep pace with the passing
decades. Only Niles himself remained unchanging, The Boy With The Brain
Like a Sponge grown up into The Man With The Brain Like a Sponge, still
cursed with the same terrible gift.

His data-cluttered mind ached. He saw a diminutive yellow sports car
parked on the far side of the street, recognized it by its make and model
and color and license number as the car belonging to Leslie F. Marshall,
twenty-six, blond hair, blue eyes, television actor with the following
credits—

Wincing, Niles applied the cutoff circuit and blotted out the upwelling
data. He had met Marshall once, six months ago, at a party given by a
mutual friend—an
erstwhile
mutual friend; Niles found it
difficult to keep friends for long. He had spoken with the actor for
perhaps ten minutes, and had added that much more baggage to his mind.

It was time to move on, Niles decided. He had been in Los Angeles ten
months. The burden of accumulated memories was getting too heavy; he was
greeting too many people who had long since forgotten him (
curse my
John Q. Average build, 5'9", 163 pounds, brownish hair, brownish eyes, no
unduly prominent physical features, no distinguishing scars except those
inside
). He contemplated returning to San Francisco, and decided
against it. He had been there only a year ago; Pasadena, two years ago.
The time had come, he realized, for another eastward jaunt.

Back and forth across the face of America goes Thomas Richard Niles,
der fliegende Holländer, the Wandering Jew, the Ghost of Christmas
Past, the Human Tape Recorder.
He smiled at a newsboy who had sold him
a copy of the
Examiner
on May 13 past, got the usual blank stare in
return, and headed for the nearest bus terminal.

For Niles the long journey had begun on October 11, 1929, in the small
Ohio town of Lowry Bridge. He was third of three children, born of
seemingly normal parents: Henry Niles (b. 1896), Mary Niles (b. 1899). His
older brother and sister had shown no extraordinary manifestations. Tom
had.

It began as soon as he was old enough to form words; a neighbor woman on
the front porch peered into the house where he was playing and remarked to
his mother, "Look how
big
he's getting, Mary!"

He was less than a year old. He had replied, in virtually the same tone of
voice, "
Look how
big
he's getting, Mary!
" It caused a
sensation, even though it was only mimicry, not even speech.

He spent his first twelve years in Lowry Bridge, Ohio. In later years, he
often wondered how he had been able to last there so long.

He began school at the age of four, because there was no keeping him back;
his classmates were five and six, vastly superior to him in physical
coordination, vastly inferior in everything else. He could read. He could
even write, after a fashion, though his babyish muscles tired easily from
holding the pen. And he could remember.

He remembered everything. He remembered his parents' quarrels and repeated
the exact words of them to anyone who cared to listen, until his father
whipped him and threatened to kill him if he ever did
that
again.
He remembered that, too. He remembered the lies his brother and sister
told and took great pains to set the record straight. He learned
eventually not to do that, either. He remembered things people had said
and corrected them when they later deviated from their earlier statements.

He remembered everything.

He read a textbook once and it stayed with him. When the teacher asked a
question based on the day's assignment, Tommy Niles' skinny arm was in the
air long before the others had even really assimilated the question. After
a while, his teacher made it clear to him that he could
not
answer
every question, whether he had the answer first or not; there were twenty
other pupils in the class. The other pupils in the class made that
abundantly clear to him after school.

He won the verse-learning contest in Sunday School. Barry Harman had
studied for weeks in hopes of winning the catcher's mitt his father had
promised him if he finished first—but when it was Tommy Niles' turn
to recite, he began with
In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth,
continued through
Thus the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all the host of them,
headed on into
Now the serpent
was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made,
and presumably would have continued clear through Genesis, Exodus, and on
to Joshua if the dazed proctor hadn't shut him up and declared him the
winner.

Barry Harman didn't get his glove; Tommy Niles got a black eye instead.

He began to realize he was different. It took time to make the discovery
that other people were always forgetting things and that instead of
admiring him for what he could do they hated him for it. It was difficult
for a boy of eight, even Tommy Niles, to understand
why
they hated
him, but eventually he did find it out, and then he started learning how
to hide his gift.

Through his ninth and tenth years he practiced being normal, and almost
succeeded; the after-school beatings stopped, and he managed to get a few
B's on his report cards at last, instead of straight rows of A. He was
growing up; he was learning to pretend. Neighbors heaved sighs of relief
now that that terrible Niles boy was no longer doing all those crazy
things.

But inwardly he was the same as ever. And he realized he'd have to leave
Lowry Bridge soon.

He knew everyone too well. He would catch them in lies ten times a week,
even Mr. Lawrence, the minister, who once turned down an invitation to pay
a social call to the Nileses one night, saying, "I really have to get down
to work and write my sermon for Sunday," when only three days before Tommy
had heard him say to Miss Emery, the church secretary, that he had had a
sudden burst of inspiration and had written three sermons all at one
sitting, and now he'd have some free time for the rest of the month.

Even Mr. Lawrence lied, then. And he was the best of them. As for the
others …

Tommy waited until he was twelve; he was big for his age by then and
figured he could take care of himself. He borrowed twenty dollars from the
supposedly secret cashbox in the back of the kitchen cupboard (his mother
had mentioned its existence five years before, in Tommy's hearing) and
tiptoed out of the house at three in the morning. He caught the night
freight for Chillicothe and was on his way.

There were thirty people on the bus out of Los Angeles. Niles sat alone in
the back, by the seat just over the rear wheel. He knew four of the people
in the bus by name—but he was confident they had forgotten who he
was by now, and so he kept to himself.

It was an awkward business. If you said hello to someone who had forgotten
you, they thought you were a troublemaker or a panhandler. And if you
passed someone by, thinking he had forgotten you, and he hadn't—well,
then you were a snob. Niles swung between both those poles five times a
day. He'd see someone, such as that girl Bette Torrance, and get a cold
unrecognizing stare; or he'd go by someone else, believing the other
person did not remember him but walking rapidly just in case he did, and
there would be the angry, "Well! Who the blazes do you think
you
are!" floating after him as he retreated.

Now he sat alone bouncing up and down with each revolution of the wheel,
with the one suitcase containing his property thumping constantly against
the baggage rack over his head. That was one advantage of his talent: he
could travel light. He didn't need to keep books once he had read them,
and there wasn't much point in amassing belongings of any other sort
either; they became overfamiliar too soon.