The Moon Moth and Other Stories (30 page)

Jaadian returned a message. “I recognize your discomfort, and extend my sympathy. It is best that you now return to your native home.”

He put aside his weaving and conveyed Fair down through the requisite vortices. Along the way they passed Misthemar. No flicker of meaning was expressed or exchanged, but Howard Fair thought to feel a tinge of faintly malicious amusement.

Howard Fair sat in his apartment. His perceptions, augmented and sharpened by his sojourn in the green realm, took note of the surroundings. Only two hours before, by the clocks of Earth, he had found them both restful and stimulating; now they were neither. His books: superstition, spuriousness, earnest nonsense. His private journals and workbooks: a pathetic scrawl of infantilisms. Gravity tugged at his feet, held him rigid. The shoddy construction of the house, which heretofore he never had noticed, oppressed him. Everywhere he looked he saw slipshod disorder, primitive filth. The thought of the food he must now eat revolted him.

He went out on his little balcony which overlooked the street. The air was impregnated with organic smells. Across the street he could look into windows where his fellow humans lived in stupid squalor.

Fair smiled sadly. He had tried to prepare himself for these reactions, but now was surprised by their intensity. He returned into his apartment. He must accustom himself to the old environment. And after all there were compensations. The most desirable commodities of the world were now his to enjoy.

Howard Fair plunged into the enjoyment of these pleasures. He forced himself to drink quantities of expensive wines, brandies, liqueurs, even though they offended his palate. Hunger overcame his nausea, he forced himself to the consumption of what he thought of as fried animal tissue, the hypertrophied sexual organs of plants. He experimented with erotic sensation, but found that beautiful women no longer seemed different from the plain ones, and that he could barely steel himself to the untidy contacts. He bought libraries of erudite books, glanced through them with contempt. He tried to amuse himself with his old magics; they seemed ridiculous.

He forced himself to enjoy these pleasures for a month; then he fled the city and established a crystal bubble on a crag in the Andes. To nourish himself, he contrived a thick liquid, which, while by no means as exhilarating as the substances of the green realm, was innocent of organic contamination.

After a certain degree of improvisation and make-shift, he arranged his life to its minimum discomfort. The view was one of austere grandeur; not even the condors came to disturb him. He sat back to ponder the chain of events which had started with his discovery of Gerald McIntyre’s workbook. He frowned. Gerald McIntyre? He jumped to his feet, looked far over the crags.

He found Gerald McIntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of the South Dakota prairie. McIntyre was sitting in an old wooden chair, tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a straw hat shading his eyes from the sun. He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with blue eyes whose gaze stung like the touch of an icicle. His left thumb-nail glistened green.

Fair greeted him casually; the two men surveyed each other with wry curiosity.

“I see you have adapted yourself,” said Howard Fair.

McIntyre shrugged. “As well as possible. I balance between solitude and the pressure of humanity.” He looked into the bright blue sky where crows flapped and called. “For many years I lived in isolation. I began to detest the sound of my own breathing.”

Along the highway came a glittering automobile, rococo as a hybrid goldfish. With the perceptions now available to them, Fair and McIntyre could see the driver to be red-faced and truculent, his companion a peevish woman in expensive clothes.

“There are other advantages to residence here,” said McIntyre. “For instance, I am able to enrich the lives of passers-by with an occasional trifle of novel adventure.” He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped down and flew beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and forth along the hood, fouled the windshield.

The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds to flight. He threw an ineffectual rock, waved his arms in outrage, returned to his car, proceeded.

“A paltry affair,” said McIntyre with a sigh. “The truth of the matter is that I am bored.” He pursed his mouth and blew forth three bright puffs of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. “I have arrived at the estate of foolishness, as you can see.”

Fair surveyed his great-uncle with a trace of uneasiness. McIntyre laughed. “Enough; no more pranks. I predict, however, that you will presently share my malaise.”

“I share it already,” said Fair. “Sometimes I wish I could abandon all my magic and return to my former innocence.”

“I have toyed with the idea,” McIntyre replied thoughtfully. “In fact I have made all the necessary arrangements. It is really a simple matter.” He led Fair to a small room behind the station. Although the door was open, the interior showed only a thick darkness.

McIntyre, standing well back, surveyed the darkness with a quizzical curl to his lip. “You need only enter. All your magic, all your recollections of the green realm will depart. You will be no wiser than the next man you meet. And with your knowledge will go your boredom, your melancholy, your dissatisfaction.”

Fair contemplated the dark doorway. A single step would resolve his discomfort.

He glanced at McIntyre; the two surveyed each other with sardonic amusement. They returned to the front of the building.

“Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness,” said McIntyre. “Then I am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious commodity is so much misery.”

Fair made himself ready for departure. “I thank you for this new wisdom, which a hundred more years in the green realm would not have taught me. And now—for a time, at least—I go back to my crag in the Andes.”

McIntyre tilted his chair against the wall of the service station. “And I—for a time, at least—will wait for the next passer-by.”

“Good-by, then, Uncle Gerald.”

“Good-by, Howard.”

Alfred’s Ark

Ben Hixey, Editor of the Marketville, Iowa,
Weekly Courier
, leaned back in his chair, lit the stub of a dead cigar, inspected his visitor through the smoke. “Alfred, you look the picture of deep despair. Why the long face?”

Alfred Johnson, the local feed-and-grain merchant, made no immediate reply. He looked out the window, at his boots, at Ben, at his own thick hands. He rubbed his stiff brown hair, releasing a faint haze of dust and chaff. He said finally, “I don’t hardly know how to tell you, Ben, without causing a lot of excitement.”

“Begin at the beginning,” said Ben. “I’m a hard man to excite. You’re not getting married again?”

Alfred shook his head, grinning the painful grin of a man who has learned the hard way. “Twice was enough.”

“Well, give. Let’s hear the excitement.”

“Do you read your Bible, Ben?”

“Bible?” Ben clapped his hand down on the latest issue of
Editor and Publisher
. “Here’s my Bible.”

“Seriously, now.”

“No,” said Ben, blowing a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “I can’t say as I’m a real deep-dyed student in such matters.”

“You don’t need the Bible to tell you there’s wickedness in the world,” Alfred said. “Lots of it.”

Ben agreed. “I’d never vote for it, but it sure helps circulation.”

“Six thousand years ago the world was like it is today—full of sin. You remember what happened?”

“Off-hand, no.”

“The Lord sent a great flood. He washed the world clean of wickedness. Ben, there’s going to be another flood.”

“Now Alfred,” said Ben briskly, “are you pulling my leg?”

“No sir. You study your Bible, you’ll see for yourself. The day is coming and it’s coming soon!”

Ben rearranged the papers on his desk. “I suppose you want me to print big headlines about this flood?”

Alfred hitched himself forward, struck the desk earnestly with his fist. “Here’s my plan, Ben. I want the good citizens of this town to get together. I want us to build an ark, to put aboard two beasts of every kind, plenty of food and drink, a selection of good literature, and make ourselves ready. Don’t laugh at me, Ben. It’s coming.”

“Just when is the big day?”

“June 20th. That gives us less than a year. Not much time, but enough.”

“Alfred—are you serious?”

“I most surely am, Ben.”

“I’ve always took you for a sensible man, Alfred. You can’t believe something so fantastic as all this.”

Alfred smiled. “I never expected you to take it on my say-so. I’m going to prove it to you.” He took a Bible from his pocket, walked around the desk, held it in front of Ben’s restless gaze. “Look here…”

For half an hour he argued his case, pointing out the significant passages, explaining implications which Ben might otherwise have missed. “Now,” he said, “now do you believe me?”

Ben leaned back in his chair. “Alfred, you want my advice?”

“I’d like your
help
, Ben. I’d like you and your family aboard this ark I’m fixing to build.”

“I’ll give you my advice. Get yourself married again. It’s the lesser of the evils, and it’ll take your mind off this flood proposition.”

Alfred rose to his feet. “I guess you won’t run an announcement in the paper?”

“No sir. And do you know why? Because I don’t want to make you the laughing-stock of the county. You go home and clean up, take a run into Davenport, get good and drunk, and forget all this stuff.”

Alfred waved his hand in resignation, departed.

Ben Hixey sighed, shook his head, returned to work.

Alfred returned a moment or two later. “Here’s something you can do for me, Ben. I want to put my business up for sale. I want to run a big ad on your front page. At the bottom I want you to print: ‘Flood coming June 20th. Help and funds needed to build an ark.’ Will you do that?”

“It’s your advertisement,” said Ben.

Two weeks later on a vacant lot next to his house, Alfred Johnson began construction of an ark. He had sold his business for a price his friends considered outrageous. “He stole it from you, Alfred!” Alfred shook his head. “I stole from him. In a year that business will be washed clean out of sight. I only took his money because in a year his money won’t be any good either.”

“Alfred,” his friends told him in disgust, “you’re making a fool of yourself!”

“Maybe so,” said Alfred. “And maybe while you’re swimming I’ll be standing. Ever think of that?”

“You’re really in earnest, Alfred?”

“Of course I’m in earnest. You ever hear of divine revelation? That’s what I had. Now if you’ve only come to jaw, excuse me, I gotta get to work.”

The ark took shape: a barge fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, ten feet deep. Alfred became something of a local celebrity, and the townspeople made it a practice to come past and check on progress. Alfred received a great deal of jocular advice.

“That barge sure ain’t big enough, Alfred,” called Bill Olafson. “Not when you consider the elephants and rhinoceroses and giraffes and lions and tigers and hippos and grizzly bears.”

“I’m not taking savage beasts,” said Alfred. “Just a few pedigreed cattle, cows, horses and sheep, nothing but good stock. If the Lord wanted the others saved he’d have sent me more money. I got just enough for what you see.”

“What about a woman, Alfred? You ain’t married. You planning to repopulate the world by this here immaculate conception idea?”

“If the right woman don’t come along,” said Alfred, “I’ll just up and hire a woman for the day. When she sees I’m the only man left alive, she’ll marry me quick enough.”

The fall passed into winter; spring came, and the ark was complete. Alfred began loading aboard stores of all kinds.

Ben Hixey came out to see him one day. “Well, Alfred, I must say you got the courage of your conviction.”

“It’s not courage, Ben. It’s cowardice. I don’t want to drown. I’m sorry some of you other folks ain’t cowards along with me.”

“I’m more worried about the H-bomb, Alfred. That’s what I’d like to build an ark against.”

“In just about a month there won’t be any H-bomb left, Ben. There won’t be bombs of any kind, never again, if I got anything to say about it—and I guess I will, the way things look.”

Ben surveyed the ark with wondering eyes. “You’re really convinced of this business, aren’t you, Alfred?”

“I sure am, Ben. There’s a lot of good folk I’ll hate to see go—but I gave you all warning. I wrote the President and the Governor and the head of
Reader’s Digest
.”

“Yeah? What did they say?”

“They wrote back thanks for my suggestions. But I could see they didn’t believe me.”

Ben Hixey smiled. “I don’t either, Alfred.”

“You’ll see, Ben.”

June arrived in a spell of wonderful summer weather. Never had the countryside looked so fresh and beautiful. Alfred bought his livestock, and on June 15th herded them aboard the ark. His friends and neighbors took photographs, and made a ceremonial presentation of a glass cage containing two fleas. The problem of securing a woman to become progenetrix of the future race solved itself: a press agent announced that his client, the beautiful movie starlet Maida Brent, had volunteered her services and would be aboard the ark on the morning of June 20th.

“No,” said Alfred Johnson. “June 20th begins at midnight. She’s got to be aboard on the night of June 19th.”

The press agent, after consultation with Miss Brent, agreed.

June 18th dawned bright and sunny, although radio and TV weather reports mentioned peculiar kinks in the jet stream.

On the morning of June 19th, Alfred Johnson, wearing new shoes and a new suit, called in on Ben Hixey. “Last time around, Ben.”

Ben looked up from an AP dispatch, grinning rather ruefully. “I’ve been reading the weather report.”

Alfred nodded. “I know. Rain.” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, Ben.”