by Fritz Leiber
CHAPTER 8
Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.
--Archimedes
A PLACE TO STAND
Bruce's voice had a faraway touch and he was looking up left at the Voidas he said, "Have you ever really wondered why the two sides of this warare called the Snakes and the Spiders? Snakes may be clear enough--youalways call the enemy something dirty. But Spiders--our name forourselves? Bear with me, Ilhilihis; I know that no being is createddirty or malignant by Nature, but this is a matter of anthropoidfeelings and folkways. Yes, Mark, I know that some of your legions havenicknames like the Drunken Lions and the Snails, and that's about asinsulting as calling the British Expeditionary Force the OldContemptibles.
"No, you'd have to go to bands of vicious youths in cities slated forruin to find a habit of naming like ours, and even they would try tobrighten up the black a bit. But simply--Spiders. And Snakes, for that'stheir name for themselves too, you know. Spiders and Snakes. What areour masters, that we give them names like that?"
It gave me the shivers and set my mind working in a dozen directions andI couldn't stop it, although it made the shivers worse.
Illy beside me now--I'd never given it a thought before, but he did haveeight legs of a sort, and I remembered thinking of him as a spidermonkey, and hadn't the Lunans had wisdom and atomic power and a billionyears in which to get the Change War rolling?
Or suppose, in the far future, Terra's own spiders evolved intelligenceand a cruel cannibal culture. They'd be able to keep their existencesecret. I had no idea of who or what would be on Earth in Sevensee'sday, and wouldn't it be perfect black hairy poisoned spider-mentality tospin webs secretly through the world of thought and all of space andtime?
And Beau--wasn't there something real Snaky about him, the way he movedand all?
Spiders and Snakes. _Spinne und Schlange_, as Erich called them. S & S.But SS stood for the Nazi _Schutzstaffel_, the Black Shirts, and what ifsome of those cruel, crazy Jerries had discovered time travel and--Ibrought myself up with a jerk and asked myself, "Greta, how nuts can youget?"
* * * * *
From where he was on the floor, the front of the bar his sounding board,Doc shrieked up at Bruce like one of the damned from the pit, "Don'tspeak against the Spiders! Don't blaspheme! They can hear the Unbornwhisper. Others whip only the skin, but they whip the naked brain andheart," and Erich called out, "That's enough, Bruce!"
But Bruce didn't spare him a look and said, "But whatever the Spidersare and no matter how much whip they use, it's plain as the telltale onthe Maintainer that the Change War is not only going against them, butgetting away from them. Dwell for a bit on the current flurry of stupidslugging and panicky anachronism, when we all know that anachronism iswhat gets the Change Winds out of control. This punch-drunk pounding onthe Cretan-Dorian fracas as if it were the only battle going and theonly way to work things. Whisking Constantine from Britain to theBosporus by rocket, sending a pocket submarine back to sail with theArmada against Drake's woodensides--I'll wager you hadn't heard those!And now, to save Rome, an atomic bomb.
"Ye gods, they could have used Greek fire or even dynamite, but afission weapon.... I leave you to imagine what gaps and scars that willmake in what's left of history--the smothering of Greece and thevanishment of Provence and the troubadours and the Papacy's IrishCaptivity won't be in it!"
The cut on his cheek had opened again and was oozing a little, but hedidn't pay any attention to it, and neither did we, as his lips thinnedin irony and he said, "But I'm forgetting that this is a cosmic war andthat the Spiders are conducting operations on billions, trillions ofplanets and inhabited gas clouds through millions of ages and that we'rejust one little world--one little solar system, Sevensee--and we canhardly expect our inscrutable masters, with all their pressingpreoccupations and far-flung responsibilities, to be especiallyunderstanding or tender in their treatment of our pet books andcenturies, our favorite prophets and periods, or unduly concerned aboutpreserving any of the trifles that we just happen to hold dear.
"Perhaps there are some sentimentalists who would rather die foreverthan go on living in a world without the _Summa_, the Field Equations,_Process and Reality_, _Hamlet_, Matthew, Keats, and the _Odyssey_, butour masters are practical creatures, ministering to the needs of thoserugged souls who want to go on living no matter what."
* * * * *
Erich's "Bruce, I'm telling you that's enough," was lost in thequickening flow of the New Boy's words. "I won't spend much time on theminor signs of our major crack-up--the canceling of leaves, the sharpershortages, the loss of the Express Room, the use of RecuperationStations for ops and all the other frantic patchwork--last operationbut one, we were saddled with three Soldiers from outside the Galaxyand, no fault of theirs, they were no earthly use. Such little thingsmight happen at a bad spot in any war and are perhaps only local. Butthere's a big thing."
He paused again, to let us wonder, I guess. Maud must have worked herway over to me, for I felt her dry little hand on my arm and shewhispered out of the side of her mouth, "What do we do now?"
"We listen," I told her the same way. I felt a little impatient with herneed to be doing something about things.
She cocked a gold-dusted eyebrow at me and murmured, "You, too?"
I didn't get to ask her me, too, what? Crush on Bruce? Nuts!--becausejust then Bruce's voice took up again in the faraway range.
"Have you ever asked yourselves how many operations the fabric ofhistory can stand before it's all stitches, whether too much Changewon't one day wear out the past? And the present and the future, too,the whole bleeding business. Is the law of the Conservation of Realityany more than a thin hope given a long name, a prayer of theoreticians?Change Death is as certain as Heat Death, and far faster. Everyoperation leaves reality a bit cruder, a bit uglier, a bit moremakeshift, and a whole lot less rich in those details and feelings thatare our heritage, like the crude penciled sketch on canvas when you'vestripped off the paint.
"If that goes on, won't the cosmos collapse into an outline of itself,then nothing? How much thinning can reality stand, having more and moreDoublegangers cut out of it? And there's another thing about everyoperation--it wakes up the Zombies a little more, and as its ChangeWinds die, it leaves them a little more disturbed and nightmare-riddenand frazzled. Those of you who have been on operations in heavilyworked-over temporal areas will know what I mean--that look they giveyou out of the sides of their eyes as if to say, 'You again? ForChrist's sake, go away. We're the dead. We're the ones who don't want towake up, who don't want to be Demons and hate to be Ghosts. Stoptorturing us.'"
* * * * *
I looked around at the Ghostgirls; I couldn't help it. They'd somehowgot together on the control divan, facing us, their backs to theMaintainers. The Countess had dragged along the bottle of wine Erich hadfetched her earlier and they were passing it back and forth. TheCountess had a big rose splotch across the ruffled white lace of herblouse.
Bruce said, "There'll come a day when all the Zombies and all the Unbornwake up and go crazy together and figuratively come marching at us intheir numberless hordes, saying, 'We've had enough.'"
But I didn't turn back to Bruce right away. Phryne's chiton had slippedoff one shoulder and she and the Countess were sitting sagged forward,elbows on knees, legs spread--at least, as far as the Countess's hobbleskirt would let her--and swayed toward each other a little. They werestill surprisingly solid, although they hadn't had any personalattention for a half hour, and they were looking up over my head withhalf-shut eyes and they seemed, so help me, to be listening to whatBruce was saying and maybe hearing some of it.
"We make a careful distinction between Zombies and Unborn, between thosetroubled by our operations whose lifelines lie in the past and thosewhose lifelines lie in the future. But is there any distinction anylonger? Can
we tell the difference between the past and the future? Canwe any longer locate the now, the real now of the cosmos? The Placeshave their own nows, the now of the Big Time we're on, but that'sdifferent and it's not made for real living.
"The Spiders tell us that the real now is somewhere in the last half ofthe 20th Century, which means that several of us here are also alive inthe cosmos, have lifelines along which the now is traveling. But do youswallow that story quite so easily, Ilhilihis, Sevensee? How does itstrike the servants of the Triple Goddess? The Spiders of Octavian Rome?The Demons of Good Queen Bess? The gentlemen Zombies of the GreaterSouth? Do the Unborn man the starships, Maud?
"The Spiders also tell us that, although the fog of battle makes the nowhard to pin down precisely, it will return with the unconditionalsurrender of the Snakes and the establishment of cosmic peace, and rollon as majestically toward the future as before, quickening the continuumwith its passage. Do you really believe that? Or do you believe, as Ido, that we've used up all the future as well as the past, wasted it inpremature experience, and that we've had the real now smudged out ofexistence, stolen from us forever, the precious now of true growth, thechild-moment in which all life lies, the moment like a newborn baby thatis the only home for hope there is?"
* * * * *
He let that start to sink in, then took a couple of quick steps and wenton, his voice rising over Erich's "Bruce, for the last time--" andseeming to pick up a note of hope from the very word he had used, "Butalthough things look terrifyingly black, there remains a chance--theslimmest chance, but still a chance--of saving the cosmos from ChangeDeath and restoring reality's richness and giving the Ghosts good sleepand perhaps even regaining the real now. We have the means right athand. What if the power of time traveling were used not for war anddestruction, but for healing, for the mutual enrichment of the ages, forquiet communication and growth, in brief, to bring a peace message--"
But my little commandant is quite an actor himself and knows a wee bitabout the principles of scene-stealing, and he was not going to letBruce drown him out as if he were just another extra playing a Voicefrom the Mob. He darted across our front, between us and the bar, took arunning leap, and landed bang on the bloody box of bomb.
A bit later, Maud was silently showing me the white ring above her elbowwhere I'd grabbed her and Illy was teasing a clutch of his tentacles outof my other hand and squeaking reproachfully, "Greta girl, don't ever dothat."
Erich was standing on the chest and I noticed that his boots carefullystraddled the circle of skulls, and I should have known anyway you couldhardly push them in the right order by jumping on them, and he waspointing at Bruce and saying, "--and that means mutiny, my young sir._Um Gottes willen_, Bruce, listen to me and step down before you sayanything worse. I'm older than you, Bruce. Mark's older. Trust in your_Kameraden_. Guide yourself by their knowledge."
He had got my attention, but I had much rather have him black my eye.
"You older than me?" Bruce was grinning. "When your twelve-years'advantage was spent in soaking up the wisdom of a race of sadisticdreamers gone paranoid, in a world whose thought-stream had already beenmuddied by one total war? Mark older than me? When all his ideas andloyalties are those of a wolf pack of unimaginative sluggers twothousand years younger than I am? Either of you older because you havemore of the killing cynicism that is all the wisdom the Change Worldever gives you? Don't make me laugh!
"I'm an Englishman, and I come from an epoch when total war was still adesecration and the flowers and buds of thoughts not yet whacked off orblighted. I'm a poet and poets are wiser than anyone because they're theonly people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time. Right,Sid? When I talk to all of you about a peace message, I want you tothink about it concretely in terms of using the Places to bring helpacross the mountains of time when help is really needed, not to bringhelp that's undeserved or knowledge that's premature or contaminating,sometimes not to bring anything at all, but just to check with infinitetenderness and concern that everything's safe and the glories of theuniverse unfolding as they were intended to--"
"Yes, you are a poet, Bruce," Erich broke in. "You can tootle soulfullyon the flute and make us drip tears. You can let out the stops on thebig organ pipes and make us tremble as if at Jehovah's footsteps. Forthe last twenty minutes, you have been giving us some very _charmante_poetry. But what are you? An Entertainer? Or are you a Soldier?"
* * * * *
Right then--I don't know what it was, maybe Sid clearing his throat--Icould sense our feelings beginning to turn against Bruce. I got thestrangest feeling of reality clamping down and bright colors going dulland dreams vanishing. Yet it was only then I also realized how muchBruce had moved us, maybe some of us to the verge of mutiny, even. I wasmad at Erich for what he was doing, but I couldn't help admiring hiscockiness.
I was still under the spell of Bruce's words and the more-than-wordsbehind them, but then Erich would shift around a bit and one of hisheels would kick near the death's-head pushbuttons and I wanted to stampwith spike heels on every death's-head button on his uniform. I didn'tknow exactly what I felt yet.
"Yes, I'm a Soldier," Bruce told him, "and I hope you won't ever have toworry about my courage, because it's going to take more courage than anyoperation we've ever planned, ever dreamed of, to carry the peacemessage to the other Places and to the wound-spots of the cosmos.Perhaps it will be a fast wicket and we'll be bowled down before wescore a single run, but who cares? We may at least see our real masterswhen they come to smash us, and for me that will be a deep satisfaction.And we may do some smashing of our own."
"So you're a Soldier," Erich said, his smile showing his teeth. "Bruce,I'll admit that the half-dozen operations you've been on were rougherthan anything I drew in my first hundred sleeps. For that, I am allhonest sympathy. But that you should let them get you into such a statethat love and a girl can turn you upside down and start you babblingabout peace messages--"
"Yes, by God, love and a girl have changed me!" Bruce shouted at him,and I looked around at Lili and I remembered Dave saying, "I'm going toSpain," and I wondered if anything would ever again make my face flamelike that. "Or, rather, they've made me stand up for what I've believedin all along. They've made me--"
"_Wunderbar_," Erich called and began to do a little sissy dance on thebomb that set my teeth on edge. He bent his wrists and elbows at artyangles and stuck out a hip and ducked his head simperingly and blinkedhis eyes very fast. "Will you invite me to the wedding, Bruce? You'llhave to get another best man, but I will be the flower girl and throwpretty little posies to all the distinguished guests. Here, Mark. Catch,Kaby. One for you, Greta. _Danke schoen. Ach, zwei Herzen indreivierteltakt ... ta-ta ... ta-ta ... ta-ta-ta-ta-ta ..._"
"What the hell do you think a woman is?" Bruce raged. "Something to messaround with in your spare time?"
* * * * *
Erich kept on humming "Two Hearts in Waltz Time"--and jigging around toit, damn him--but he slipped in a nod to Bruce and a "Precisely." So Iknew where I stood, but it was no news to me.
"Very well," Bruce said, "let's leave this Brown Shirt _maricon_ toamuse himself and get down to business. I made all of you a proposal andI don't have to tell you how serious it is or how serious Lili and I areabout it. We not only must infiltrate and subvert other Places, whichluckily for us are made for infiltration, we also must make contact withthe Snakes and establish working relationships with their Demons at ourlevel as one of our first steps."
That stopped Erich's jig and got enough of a gasp from some of us tomake it seem to come from practically everybody. Erich used it to work achange of pace.
"Bruce! We've let you carry this foolery further than we should. Youseem to have the idea that because anything goes in the Place--dueling,drunkenness, _und so weiter_--you can say what you have and it will allbe forgotten with the hangover. Not so. It is true that among such a
setof monsters and free spirits as ourselves, and working as secret agentsto boot, there cannot be the obvious military discipline that wouldobtain in a Terran army.
"But let me tell you, Bruce, let me grind it home into you--Sid and Kabyand Mark will bear me out in this, as officers of equivalent rank--thatthe Spider line of command stretches into and through this Place just assurely as the word of _der Fuehrer_ rules Chicago. And as I shouldn'thave to emphasize to you, Bruce, the Spiders have punishments thatwould make my countrymen in Belsen and Buchenwald--well, pale a little.So while there is still a shadow of justification for our interpretingyour remarks as utterly tasteless clowning--"
"Babble on," Bruce said, giving him a loose downward wave of his handwithout looking. "I made you people a proposal." He paused. "How do youstand, Sidney Lessingham?"
Then I felt my legs getting weak, because Sid didn't answer right away.The old boy swallowed and started to look around at the rest of us. Thenthe feeling of reality clamping down got something awful, because hedidn't look around, but straightened his back a little. Just then, Markcut in fast.
"It grieves me, Bruce, but I think you are possessed. Erich, he must beconfined."
* * * * *
Kaby nodded, almost absently. "Confine or kill the coward, whichever iseasier, whip the woman, and let's get on to the Egyptian battle."
"Indeed, yes," Mark said. "I died in it. But now perhaps no longer."
Kaby said to him, "I like you, Roman."
Bruce was smiling, barely, and his eyes were moving and fixing. "You,Ilhilihis?"
Illy's squeak box had never sounded mechanical to me before, but it didas he answered, "I'm a lot deeper into borrowed time than the rest ofyou, tra-la-la, but Papa still loves living. Include me very much out,Brucie."
"Miss Davies?"
Beside me, Maud said flatly, "Do you think I'm a fool?" Beyond her, Isaw Lili and I thought, "My God, I might look as proud if I were in hershoes, but I sure as hell wouldn't look as confident."
Bruce's eyes hadn't quite come to Beau when the gambler spoke up. "Ihave no cause to like you, sir, rather the opposite. But this Place hascome to bore me more than Boston and I have always found it difficult toresist a long shot. A very long one, I fear. I am with you, sir."
There was a pain in my chest and a roaring in my ears and through it Iheard Sevensee grunting, "--sicka these lousy Spiders. Deal me in."
And then Doc reared up in front of the bar and he'd lost his hat and hishair was wild and he grabbed an empty fifth by the neck and broke thebottom of it all jagged against the bar and he waved it and screeched,"_Ubivaytye Pauki--i Nyemetzi!_"
And right behind his words, Beau sang out fast the English of it, "Killthe Spiders--and the Germans!"
And Doc didn't collapse then, though I could see he was hanging ontothe bar tight with his other hand, and the Place got stiller, inside andout, than I've ever known it, and Bruce's eyes were finally moving backtoward Sid.
* * * * *
But the eyes stopped short of Sid and I heard Bruce say, "Miss Forzane?"and I thought, "That's funny," and I started to look around at theCountess, and felt all the eyes and I realized, "Hey, that's me! Butthis can't happen to me. To the others, yes, but not to me. I just workhere. Not to Greta, no, no, no!"
But it had, and the eyes didn't let go, and the silence and the feelingof reality were Godawful, and I said to myself, "Greta, you've got tosay something, if only a suitable four-letter word," and then suddenly Iknew what the silence was like. It was like that of a big city if therewere some way of shutting off all the noise in one second. It was likeErich's singing when the piano had deserted him. It was as if the ChangeWinds should ever die completely ... and I knew beforehand what hadhappened when I turned my back on them all.
The Ghostgirls were gone. The Major Maintainer hadn't merely beenswitched to Introvert. It was gone, too.
