The Best of Fritz Leiber (26 page)

The blond soldier murmured two or three words and for a moment he thought the whole army had spoken to him. Then he understood and .made the necessary adjustment in the instrument they were setting up.

But those two or three words had plunged him with breath-taking abruptness into the worst sort of inner misery. What was abstract had become personal, and that was bad. To conceive a monster made of men was one thing; to feel the insensate, inescapable prod of a neighboring cell and realize the stifling, close-packed pressure of the whole was another. He lifted his hand to his collar. The very air seemed to convey to his skin the shoving and jostling of distant, invisible individuals. The nudge of the galactic horde.

They were at the end of the crest now, atop a little hillock, and he stared ahead to where the air was clearer. He felt as
ft
he were suffocating. His new mood had come as utterly without warning as most of his moods now came, gushing up explosively from some wild, alien, ever expanding dimension within him.

Then, in the broad expanse of fantastically clouded sky ahead of him, he saw his friends’ faces again, orderly and side by side but gigantic, like a pantheon of demigods. Just as he had in the cellar and several times since, only now altogether. The only faces that meant anything in the cosmos. Black George, with the wide grin that looked, but was not, stupid. Hollow-cheeked Loren, peering up with shy canniness, about to argue. Dark Helen, with her proud, subtle lips. Sallow Kenneth again, with his veiledly appraising eyes. And Albert, and Maurice, and Kate. And others whose features were blurred, heartbreakingly suggesting friends forgot. All transfigured and glowing with warmth and light. As meaningful as symbols, yet holding each within itself the quintessence of individuality.

He stood stock-still, beginning to tremble, feeling great guilt. How had he neglected and deserted them? His friends, the only ones deserving his loyalty, the only island for him in the cosmos-choking sea of humanity, the only ones with worth and meaning; compared to which race and creed and humanity were without significance. It was as self-evident and undeniable as a premise in mathematics. Heretofore he had seen only the masks of reality, the reflections, the countershadows. Now, at a bound, he stood beside the gods in darkness who pulled the wires.

The vision faded, became part of his mind. He turned, and it was as if he saw the blond soldier for the first time. How had he ever believed that he and the other soldier might have anything in common? The gulf between them was far, far greater than if they belonged to different species. Why had he ever given two thoughts to such a silly, squinty-eyed, bustling little organism? He never would again. It was all very clear.

“We’ll get them this time,” the other soldier said with conviction. “We’ve got the stuff now. We’ll show the bugs. Come on.”

It was wonderful, hysterical, insufferable. Yesterday spiders. Today bugs. Tomorrow worms? The other soldier really believed it was important and noble. Could still pretend there was that kind of meaning and purpose to that sort of slaughter.

“Come on. Get the beta cycling,” said the other soldier impatiently, nudging him.

It was all very clear. And he would never lose that clarity. By one action he would cut himself off from the galactic pack and cleave forever to the faces in the sky.

“Come on,” ordered the other soldier, jerking at him.

He unsheathed his weapon, touched a button. Silently a dull black spot, not a hole, appeared in the back of the blond soldier’s head. He hid the body, walked down the other side of the hill, and attached himself to another unit. By morning they were retreating again, the monster badly hurt and automatically resisting dissolution.

He was an officer now.

“I don’t like him,” said a soldier. “Of course, they all try to scare you, whether they know it or not. Part of the business. But with him it’s different. I know he doesn’t talk tough, or threaten or act grim. I know he’s pleasant enough when he takes time to notice you. Even sympathetic. But there’s something there I can’t put my finger on. Something cold-blooded. Like he wasn’t even alive—or as if we weren’t. Even when he acts especially decent or thoughtful toward me, I know he doesn’t give a damn. It’s his eyes. I can read meaning in the eyes of a Fomalhautian blindworm. But I can’t read anything in his.”

The soaring city seemed alien though it had once been home. He liked it the better for that. Civilian clothes felt strange against his skin.

He whisked briskly along the slidewalk, taking the turns aimlessly when it split at the pedestrian cloverleafs. He looked at the passing faces with frank inquisitiveness, as if he were at a zoo. He just wanted to enjoy the feeling of anonymity for a little while. He knew what he was going to do afterwards. There were his friends, and there were the animals. And the fortunes of his friends were to be advanced.

Beside the next cloverleaf was a speaker, and a little crowd. There had been a good deal of that sort of stuff since the truce. Curiously he listened, recognized the weakness of the words. They were sloshed with ideals, tainted with unprofitable, poorly selected hatreds. The call to action was tinged by an undercurrent of bitterness that argued inaction would be better. They were civilized words and therefore useless to one who wanted to become an animal trainer on a galactic scale. What a zoo he’d have some day—and every single beast in it advertised as intelligent!

Other words and phrases began to ooze up into his mind. “Thinkers! Listen to me… cheated of what you deserve… misled by misled men… the galactic runaround… this engineered truce… the creatures who used the war to consolidate their power… The Cosmic Declaration of Servitude… life—to lose… liberty— to obey… and as for the pursuit of happiness—happiness is a light-millennium ahead of all of us… our universal rights… We have thirty armored planetoids orbiting uselessly, three hundred star-ships, three thousand spaceships, and three million space veterans sweating in servile jobs in this system alone! Free Martia! Terra for All! Revenge…”

These unspoken words, he felt, were the harbingers of leadership. Alexander had done it. Hitler had done it. Smith had done it. Hriv-lath had done it. The Neuron had done it. The Great Centaur had done it. All murderers—and only murderers won. He saw the brilliant light-years of his future stretch ahead, endlessly. He saw no details, but it was all of the same imperial color. Never again would he hesitate. Each moment would decide something. Each of his future actions would drop like a gram of sand from an ancient hour glass, inevitably.

Profound excitement seized him. The scene around him grew and grew until he seemed at the center of a vast, ominous spellbound crowd that filled the galaxy. The faces of his friends were close, eager and confident. And from a great distance, as if the stars themselves pricked out its pattern on the dark like a new constellation, he seemed to see his own face staring back at him, pale, skulleyed, and insatiably hungry.

THE WHISTLES blew. A thousand hands switched off pocket radios and wall-size television screens, right in the middle of the Martian newscast. Another 500 all around the town locked the motors of sky scooters and ground buggies. A dozen cash registers rang up lucky last sales and were silent, locked. Two thousand throats breathed a sigh of relief. Two thousand hearts began to warm.

The whistles blew. Mrs. Pullen slammed a last batch of cookies into the electronic oven, counted to ten, switched it off, wiped her face, and stood there beaming at the fragrant towers of her handiwork—a gray-haired princess in a cookie castle. Mrs. Goldfarb smiled at her brown and creamflecked woodpiles of blintzes. Mr. Gianelli, his eyes watering with heat and spices, admired his steaming logjams of Italian sausage. Widowed Mr. Tomlinson was contemplating his bowls of hard-boiled eggs when a goddess shot him in the back with a silver arrow. He turned around and commented, “That runic is a bit daring, pet.” His daughter, new to grown-up life as a pussy willow, waved her plastic bow and said, “I’m going as Diana.” Mr. Tomlinson mused, “Ah, the fleet-footed huntress.”

The whistles blew. Mr. Jingles, so called by the children for the silver coins he always carried, emptied his pockets of them, added his green money, put it all away in the top drawer of his dresser. Everywhere else in the town billfolds and purses disappeared. Offices closed. Secretaries sprayed their noses with powder and fluttered into their cloudlike electrosilk coats.

Mr. Debevois tore a May-something 2077 date-sheet off his desk calendar, made a paper dart of it, and shot it at his lagging stenographer, who was stooping to return a folder of microfilm to a bottom file drawer. Storekeepers took off their aprons and walked out, leaving doors unlocked. Plump Mr. Wilson pressed a button and a sign appeared on the movie-house marquee: NO SHOW TONIGHT. Beardy Mr. Goldfarb shrugged, smiled, put away a sheaf of teleflashed stock reports, unbuttoned a great big drawer and took out a great big parchment scroll. School children tore off across the soft sandy schoolyard and green lawns slippery with sunlight. Down at the little aluminum station the atomic train inched to a stop like a golden caterpillar and the engineer jumped out in his best clothes.

The whistles blew. Mr. Moriarty, the town mortician, with black-clad limbs thin as a spider’s and hat tall as Abraham Lincoln’s, looked around at the bare gleaming tables and rubbed his hands. He opened a big thick icebox door and looked into two coffins. “They’ll keep,” he said. He opened another and looked at the empty shelves and nodded. “In case anybody has the bad luck to die the next three days,” he said. Then the spiderweb of wrinkles all over his face contracted in a smile. He said softly, “Or maybe that would be the nicest time of year to go.”

The whistles stopped. From back of the firehouse, around the lovely new red-vaned fire-copter, twenty pairs of strong hands pushed an oldfashioned automobile, a convertible, black and fat as sin, armored with chromium and sprouting three antennae—for radio, phone, and television. They shoved it across the street with a shout and it jounced to rest in front of the courthouse, its antennae quivering.

While toward the courthouse square, down the leaf-bowered streets silent of traffic, 4,000 big and little feet came pounding.

In the empty schoolhouse, before the mirror in the girls’ room, Miss Kidd decided that her inch-long eyelashes were securely attached. She painted herself sultry lips, then almost ruined them making anguished faces as she tugged at the girdle borrowed from the museum. Pausing to catch her breath, she leafed with morbid curiosity through the pile of themes her class had turned in. They were all tided “The Big Holiday.” The first one began:

By some it is thot that the Big Holiday started with the merrimaking of the Pre-lentin festeval at Reo D. Janero…

She hastily turned to the next.

In the olden times of the 20th Century, people didnt injoy holidays very much. They worried too much about making money and buying and selling. They even tried to sell each other, like in the very faroff times of slavery…

(Beside this, Miss Kidd had red-penciled, “
Sell
a person
on
something. Old idiom. Means to persuade to buy, or convince of worth; has nothing to do with slavery.”)

Resisting further temptation, Miss Kidd turned the themes face down and got back to work. She pinned together the plunging neckline of her antique cocktail dress, hesitated, then recklessly unpinned it. She put on a weird picture hat about three feet across, tossed a mink fur around her shoulders. “The fourth grade will have things to say about you,” she told her reflection and hobbled out on unfamiliar French heels.

In the barber shop Mr. Felton, the town drunkard, lifted incredulous fingers to his fresh-shaven, lotioned cheeks. He watched the mirror with a beery wonder as they clad him in silk shirt, stiff collar, and a pin-striped suit. He gaped with delight as they draped a huge gold watch-chain across his paunch and speared his tie with a blinding diamond pin. Mr. Kantarian, the barber, stood back, walked around, and curtly nodded his approval.

Mr. Wilson stepped into a money bag with arms and legs, tightened the drawstring around his neck, and put on a golden crown. A thought struck him and he got out his pocketbook. “It isn’t breaking a holiday rule,” he reassured himself, “if I use the junk as a stage property.” And he artistically stuffed twenty or thirty dollar bills into his neckband. Then he walked out of his movie house.

The square was already a-chatter and a-swirl with the town’s two thousand. Mr. Wilson, conscious of the dignity of his role, ignored the attention he attracted. At the firehouse corner he was joined by Miss Kidd and Mr. Felton. The drunkard eyed the crowd, then stiffened his back. With ritualistic solemnity the three walked to the fat black convertible. There they were met by Mr. Moriarty, whose spider-webbed face was set in the gloomiest lines. He tipped his stovepipe hat and opened the rear door for Miss Kidd and Mr. Felton, then got in front beside Mr. Wilson, who had taken the wheel.

There was a shot and a puff of smoke. A figure in track pants and shirt emblazoned with golden bolts of lightning took off from across the square. He sped like the wind, the propeller of his beanie making a golden glory over his bent head. A goddess with a plastic bow gave an excited little yip. Mr. Tomlinson lifted a comprehending brow and remarked to her, “
Jim
Kelly, pet? So that’s why you need to be fleet-footed.”

“He’s awfully shy too,” she told him frankly.

Meanwhile the speedy topic of their conversation had sprung up on the back of the seat behind Mr. Wilson and begun pounding him on his money-green ruff and pointing frantically to the big old alarm clock strapped to his own wrist.

A dark man beat on a drum. Things got quiet. Mr. Goldfarb unrolled his parchment, cleared his throat, directed a severe stare at the occupants of the black car, and recited loudly, “Hear ye! Hear ye! Know all men here present that for the good of our hearts and minds and souls the following creatures are banished from town.