A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  I thought myself insane, but after an examination, a physician pronounced me that I had been strained mentally. I am competent. But I wonder if he is wrong.

  I view the silken stars tonight with loathing. HE sought to master their inscrutable secret meaning, and succeeded. He imagined, he dreamed; and he fed his sleep with potions, so that he might learn where his mind might be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wandered from space into his resting body-shell. I am no scientist, no bio-chemist, so I learned little of his methods. Only that he did succeed in removing his mind from Earth, and soaring to some remote world over and beyond this universe—where THEY dwell. And THEY knew him to be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld, so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And THEY cured him, and sent him back to earth . . . “They are waiting!” he shrieked, in his grating skeleton of a voice. “They are contemptuous of man and his feeble colonies. But they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiot child, he may do them harm. But before this time—when Man has progressed into a ripeness—THEY will descend! Then they will come in hordes to exploit the world as THEY did before!”

  Of his return, and his assuming the role of a man, the Alien spoke evasively. It was to be assurred that this talk of his was not some repulsive caprice; to know that all of it was true, that I gripped him and beheld him. To my everlasting horror, I must know. Little in itself, what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone bench in a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear this clutching terror from my soul. Only this: That when I looked into his staring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understood and quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance that between the muffling of his coat and black scarf the INTRUDER wore a meticulously painted metal mask—to hide what I must not see . . .

  PHILTERED POWER

  Malcolm Jameson

  IF!

  If the State’s gold mines had not played out, the assay office would not have become the sinecure it was.

  If the State had had an efficient government, the job would have been abolished decades before, instead of remaining one of the choicest plums at the disposal of the Hannigan machine. And if Doc Tannent had been any sort of chemist and had not been such a colorless, shy and helpless individual, he might have been able to hold a regular job somewhere and not be compelled to sponge on his wife’s brother from time to time. And if the brother-in-law had not been a clever lawyer and therefore able to get something on Hannigan, he would never have been in the position to demand that Hannigan “do something” for the estimable but ineffectual Doc Tannent.

  So it was that Doc Tannent became State assayist.

  Now, that is one of the cushiest, most innocuous berths in the United States, and there should have been no reason why the good doctor should not have settled down and enjoyed himself in idleness for the remainder of his life. If only the roof had not leaked, and if it had not been that he had the dizziest, most scatterbrained assistant assayist in the whole country to help him do nothing, the startling events of that summer would never have come about. Or even granting those two accessory “ifs,” if Doc had been a golf player, no harm would have come of the appointment.

  But he wasn’t. He loathed golf. And, as the bard so charmingly puts it, thereby hangs a tale.

  DOC TANNENT was willing to have a soft job, but the assay office exceeded all expectations in that direction. There was absolutely nothing to do. There was no mail, no rocks, to analyze or any chemicals to do it with. Except for keeping office hours and signing the pay roll twice a month, Doc had no duties—except, of course, the forwarding of the ten-percent “contribution” to Hannigan as he cashed each of his pay checks.

  His helper, Elmer Dufoy, ne’er-do-well nephew of a United States senator, swept the place when the spirit moved him, or on rare occasions dusted off the tops of the obsolete books on metallurgy that graced the office’s library. The laboratory was kept closed and locked, and the cases of mineral specimens in the halls needed no attention. When Elmer was not skylarking with the girls in the adjutant general’s office across the road, he sometimes mixed up batches of a foul-smelling compound which his kid brother later peddled to farmers as horse liniment..

  Such was the layout of the assay office, and such was the situation when Doc Tannent took over. He inspected his plant the first day, moved his belongings into his private office the next, and on the third day he became bored. For, for all his ineptness as a chemist and a human being, Doc was full of energy and liked to be doing something, if only pottering away at aimless experiments. So, being bored and having an ancient, disused laboratory at his elbow, Doc took up a hobby—a scientific hobby—and not golf, which is a much more efficient and safer method of killing time. That turned out to be a mistake, as Doc himself would be the first to admit, if it were not for the fact that today he is confined to the padded cell of Ward 8B of the State Hospital, complaining bitterly because no one will kill him as he deserves, or let him kill himself.

  In the beginning he did not take the giddy Elmer into his confidence. All Elmer knew was that many strange parcels and boxes kept arriving and that Doc chose to unpack them himself and stow their contents away in the privacy of his own sanctum.

  But one day a case arrived marked “Open Without Delay—Perishable,” and since Doc was not in, Elmer undertook to unpack it, and looked for a place to put its contents. To his astonishment, the box was filled with recently dead frogs, and while he was still staring goggle-eyed at the heap of limp amphibians, little Doc Tannent came bustling in. Around Elmer, Doc did not exhibit the bashfulness and stammering he was noted for before strangers.

  “Come, come,” he said sharply, “get a jar and put them on the shelf beside the scorpions.”

  Shaking his head and muttering Elmer unlocked the gloomy laboratory and found a jar. An hour later he had finished helping Doc rearrange the curious contents of the private office, which Doc had rigged up for his experimentation.

  Along one wall was a row of bins, and over them were shelves cluttered with jars and tins, and every container in the room bore a strange label. Such things were in Doc’s hoard as earners dung, powdered dried eyeballs of newts, tarantula fangs, dried bats blood and tiger tendons. In the bottles were smelly concoctions marked “Theriac” this and that, and there were jugs filled with stuff like “Elixir of Ponie” and “Tincture Vervain,” and there was a small beaker labeled “Pearl Solution.” In addition there were tins of dried scorpions and crumbled serpent skins, and many more jars containing the organs of small animals, and each of them had a legend which described the animal and the time, and circumstances of its death. One that Doc seemed to value highly read: “Gall of Black Cat. Killed in a churchyard on St. John’s Eve; Moon new, Mars ascendant.” It struck Elmer as a wee bit spooky, smacking of necromancy.

  “Thank you,” said Doc, when the queer substances had been neatly put in order. “A little later, when I have made more progress, I may ask you to help me now and then with my researches.”

  Elmer went away, mystified by the strange slant his new boss had taken. The last assay officer had not been that kind of scientist. He was a mathematician—had a system for doping out the chances of the ponies in today’s race—and spent all his time tabulating track statistics and running the resultant data through some weird algebraic formulas. Elmer hadn’t any too much respect for his various chiefs, as most of their hobbies worked out badly. He knew, for it had been his job to run down to the corner cigar store and place the former assayist’s bets. He had picked up a nice piece of change a few times by placing a bet of his own—the boss’ choice to lose.

  “Another nut,” he confided to Bettie Ellsworth, filing clerk for the adjutant general, but Bettie was not particularly impressed. It was axiomatic that anyone accepting the assayship would be a nut. So what?

  DOC and Elmer broke the ice between them the day the long box arrived from Iceland. Elmer got the pinc
h bar and nail puller and ripped the cover off. Inside was a slender something wrapped in burlap and wire, and the invoice said: “One eight-foot unicorn horn, Grade A. Guaranteed by International Alchemical Supply, Inc.” Elmer’s eyes bugged at that. So! Magic and wizardry was Doc’s racket. Alchemy!

  But he shucked off the burlap and stood the thing up. It was a tapering ivory rod indented by a spiral groove running around it—obviously a tusk of the narwhal. Elmer had had to pass the civil-service test, being only an assistant, and knew a thing or two about elementary science, even if his uncle was a United States senator.

  “Spu-spu-spu splendid,” stuttered Doc, delighted at its arrival. “Now I can go to work. Saw off a couple of feet of that and pulverize, it for me—and get that heavy iron mortar and pestle out of the metallurgical lab. You’ll need it. And be sure you keep the unicorn flour clean—impurities might spoil, the outcome.”

  “O.K.,” said Elmer, gayly, dashing off to the lab. He remembered vaguely that miraculous things could be done by alchemy and he had hopes that Doc might teach him a few tricks.

  The next day Doc put him to work making a salve out of an aggregation of dried lizards, eagle claws, rose petals, rabbit fur and other such ingredients. While Elmer was stirring the mess in some gluey solvent, Doc dragged down a few of the big books he had bought recently, and laid them about the room, opened with markers lying in them. Then he set a beaker of greenish fluid to boil and scuttled from one of the huge tomes to another, writing copious memoranda on a pad of paper.

  “You may think that alchemy is a lot of foolishness, Elmer,” said Doc, as he sprinkled a handful of chopped cockscombs into the malodorous mixture boiling in the beaker, “and so it is—a blend of superstition and pompous nonsense. But some of these prescriptions were used for centuries to treat, the sick, and believe it or not, some of them were actually helpful. I grant you that with most of the patients it made no difference whatever, and-a sizable number of the others died, but why did some recover?”

  Elmer shook his head, not stopping his whistling as he churned and kneaded the filthy compound under his mixing pestle.

  “Unknown to the alchemists of the Middle Ages, some of the ingredients they used actually had therapeutic value. Take the Chinese. They brewed a tea from dried toads’ skins and gave it to sufferers from heart trouble. It helped. That is because there are some glands in the neck of a frog that secrete a hormone something like digitalis, and that is what did the trick. Maybe there is something in the superstition held by some savages that eating the vital organs of your enemy makes you fiercer and stronger. Why not? When they ate the other fellow’s, kidneys, they ate his adrenal glands along with them. That ought to pep up anybody.

  “This work I’m doing may bring to light some hormone we haven’t discovered yet. Classical chemists say, of course, that there is no point in mixing these prescriptions—that all the ingredients have been analyzed and that those that are of any use are already in our pharmacopoeia. But to my mind that is an inadequate argument. Analysis of metals tells you very little about the properties of alloys made by mixing them. So it is with these things. We have to mix them up and see what we get. That is the only way.”

  “Uh-huh.” grunted Elmer, then sneezed violently. His annual attack of hay fever had announced its onset.

  “Watch out,” cautioned Doc, in some concern. “The humors, as-they were called, of the body have a profound effect on these mixtures.

  Many, of them call for human blood, or spittle, or such things. See, I have a bottle here of my own blood that I drained out of my arm for use wherever it is called for. So don’t go sneezing into that salve—you might change its properties altogether.”

  “Yes, sir,” moaned Elmer, and dragged out his handkerchief.

  ELMER DUFOY let himself into Doc’s office that night with his passkey and, after carefully shrouding the windows, turned on the light. It was the first time in the history of the assay office that any of its employees had worked overtime, but Elmer had a reason. He had peeked into one of Doc’s big books and seen a page that stirred him strangely.

  His courtship of Bettie Ellsworth was not going too smoothly. There was a hated rival, for one thing, and Bettie was naturally coy, for another. The page that had caught Elmer’s eye was headed this way: “Love Potions and Philters. How the Spurned Suitor May Win the Coldest Damsel,” and there followed similar provocative subtitles. Elmer’s heart vibrated with expectancy as he hauled down the weighty volume and hastily scanned the pages.

  He found what he was looking for, scribbled some notes and assembled the equipment. He, robbed Doc’s jars and bins of the necessary components of the stuff he was about to brew. He rigged a still, having already learned that that was the modern counterpart of the “alembic” the ancient tome called for. He found an aludel, and an athanor, and by midnight his love potion was sizzling away merrily. Even through his hay-fever-stricken nostrils he could tell it-was potent. Any thing that smelled like that must have a lot of power.

  At last the time came for the personal touch, and Elmer jabbed a finger with his penknife and let the blood trickle slowly into a measuring glass. He added the few drams required, set the beaker on the window sill to cool, and idly strolled up and down the room, thinking contentedly of how easy the conquest of Bettie was going to be. After a while he thrummed through some of the other books to see what formulas they might contain.

  There was the “Zekerboni” of Pierre Mora, books by Friar Bacon, Basilius Valentinus, Sendigovius, Rhasis and other outlandish names. He came upon four massive volumes by one Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim and found that the short for it was Paracelsus. There were books in medieval German, Latin, and what looked to him like shorthand, but what a notation on the flyleaf said was Arabic.

  He might have looked farther, but his solution had cooled and the hour was late. He drew off the clear liquid, as the directions-prescribed, filtered it through powdered unicorn horn and added the four drops of a certain tincture. Then he bottled it and slipped it into his pocket, well satisfied that a happy, home for fife was to be his lot, commencing with tomorrow.

  Although he had every confidence that he had followed the directions to the letter, he was not thoroughly convinced of the efficacy of his potion until he had administered it to his victim and seen with his own eyes the consequences. That night, sleepy as he was, he took her to a show and to a soda fountain afterward. Quickly, once when she turned her head away, he dumped the potion into her ice-cream soda. He watched eagerly as the liquid in the glass slowly began to fall, drawn away through the straw clamped between the two desired ruby lips.

  “I think you’re cute,” she remarked, irrelevantly after the first sip.

  When the glass was half empty she suddenly bounced off her stool and flung her arms about his neck, kissing him wildly. “I love you, I love you, you wonderful boy!” she exclaimed, disregarding the other customers in the place.

  “Drink it all, honey,” said Elmer, grabbing the check and making ready for a fast getaway. They could discuss the rest of it somewhere other than the drugstore. There were a lot of people in the place.

  DOC TANNENT next congratulated Elmer absent-mindedly when his helper informed him he was about to be married. Something new had turned up to make the assay officer preoccupied. The roof was leaking, and badly. Eight pounds of rare ‘herbs’ had been spoiled by the water from the last rain, and two lots of salts ruined. The superintendent of public buildings had been over and after a look around shook his head. A new roof was needed, and that meant an appropriation. See Hannigan, was his suggestion.

  It was at that time that the convention of the Coalition Party was due to be held in Cartersburg, and Hannigan would, of course be there, as well as the governor, the members of the legislature and all the other politicos, both big shots an cl small fry. The annual convention was the whole works, as far as the government of the State was concerned. New office holders were picked and, nominated, th
e pulse of the people was taken and new taxes were decided upon. The winter’s legislation was planned, contracts were promised and appropriations doled out.

  It was Hannigan’s show, from first to last, and nobody else’s. He made and broke everybody, from the governor down to the dog catchers; he decided what the people would stand for, and inside those limits he took a cut on every dollar the State took in and had another slice out of every cent the State paid out. When you wanted to get anything, you saw Hannigan, no matter who was the nominal boss. And Hannigan, a political boss of the old school, heavy-paunched and heavy-jowled, was no man to trifle with. “What’s in it for me?” was his invariable question before discussing any subject, and he would tip the derby hat more on the back of his head, take a fresh bite on his fat, black cigar, and glare at the petitioner. If the answer was satisfactory, there would be a cynical wink, a slap on the back, and the matter was as good as done.

  Doc Tannent’s timidity and general incapacity came back on him with full force the moment it was suggested he go see Hannigan about the roof.

  “Oh, let it go,” he would say, whenever Elmer prodded him about it, for he dreaded the encounter with the wily politician at Cartersburg. But then it would rain again, and his office would nearly get afloat. Elmer was thinking, too, of his approaching marriage. He wanted a raise, and wanted it so badly he was willing to kick in twenty percent of the gain in order to get it.

  “Hannigan won’t bite you,” urged Elmer, wise in the way of the State’s routine, “Just talk up to him. Lay your cards on the table; you don’t have to be squeamish about mentioning money. He’ll rebuild the building, and double our salaries if you put it up the right way. If you Slit a snag, send me a telegram. In a pinch my uncle might put in a word for us.”

  In the end Doc went, leaving Elmer, sniffling and sneezing, to hold down the assay office in his absence. Four days later Elmer received a doleful letter from his chief, stating in rather elaborate and antiquated English that he was being subjected to what the more terse moderns would simply call the “run-around.” He hadn’t been able to get near Hannigan. They had shunted him from one committee to another, and nobody would promise anything.