A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  Elmer frowned at the letter as his vision of the little love nest he had planned began to dwindle. He was reaching for the phone to try to contact his powerful uncle in Washington when the happy thought hit him. Alchemy had got him a bride, why not the raise? He dropped everything and began a frenzied search of Doc’s queer library.

  HHAT he wanted was not in Paracelsus nor yet in Sendigovius. He ran through many volumes before he found the Elizabethan translation of an obscure treatise written by a Portuguese monk. It dealt with charms and amulets chiefly, but there was a section on potions. Elmer sighed happily when he turned a page and saw staring him in the face the following caption:“For Courtiers and Supplicants Desirous of Winning the Favour of Monarchs and Potentates.”

  That was it. What he wanted exactly, for he knew from a letterhead that Hannigan was Grand Potentate of the Mystic Order of the Benevolent Phoenix. It was a natural, so to speak—supplicant, favor, and potentate—all the elements were there. He began scanning the list of ingredients.

  That night he brought Bettie to the laboratory with him. She loved him so hard she could hot bear to have him out of her sight. Together they mixed up the brew that was to make Hannigan eat out of Doc’s hand.

  First there was the heart of a dove, no color specified, to be stewed in the fat of a red bullock, calcined in an aludel with the kidney of a white hare and some virgin wax, and the resulting mess, was to be treated elaborately in a retort together with sesame, ground pearls, and dill. Dill puzzled him until Bettie looked it lip in another book and found out it came from a plant called Anethum Graveolans. The book explained that a pale-yellow aromatic oil was distilled from the seeds, and that it was good for flatulence.

  “That ought not to hurt Doc or Hannigan either,” grinned Elmer, when he found out that flatulence meant “windiness.”

  He dumped his mixture into a container, added the correct quantity of Doc’s own blood, which was fortunately available, and shoved it into the queer antique furnace Doc had built and called an athanor. That was, as the directions said, “to rid it of its dross and bring it to a state of quintessence most pure.” Patiently, hand in hand, the two lovebirds regulated the heat of the athanor as the sticky mess went through the successive states of purgation, sublimation, coagulation, assation, reverberation, dissolution, and finally descension.

  It was midnight when the “descension” was completed, and after carefully blowing his nose Elmer broke the crust on his crucible and began to draw off the pale moss-green oil that was in it. There was enough to almost fill an eight-ounce bottle. It must have been of the quintessence most pure, for the stuff put in, originally, counting a couple of pints of Theriac, would have filled a top hat. Elmer was very well pleased with himself. The Aromatick Unction looked exactly as the book said it should look. He tried to judge the odor of it, but his sense of smell was hopelessly wrecked by his hay fever.

  “What do you think?” he asked, pushing the bottle under Bettie’s nose.

  “I think,” said Bettie, with pronounced enthusiasm, “that Dr. Tannent is the wisest, kindest, most deserving man in the whole, whole world, and I would give him anything I owned. Why, he’s—”

  “Don’t you think you’re just a little susceptible, hon?” growled Elmer, not pleased at the implied comparison. Then he remembered that ice cream soda. It was the potion! He couldn’t smell it, but she could. He had hit another bull’s-eye!

  “Come on, baby, get your bag packed. We’re going to Cartersburg.”

  ON THE BUS Elmer studied the instructions. The alchemist who had first hit on the prescription evidently had thought of everything. The chances were that any courtier needing such a potion to get what he wanted was also in bad with the king, so that it was made potent enough to work through the air. The subject was to anoint himself thoroughly with the unction, and also carry a small vial of it in his hand. Properly prepared, the stuff would cause sentries and guards to bow reverently and make way, and it was solemnly assured that, once in the presence of the potentate, anything he asked would be granted. In proper strength, anything he wished for, even, would be granted without the asking.

  “The raise is in the bag,” Elmer told Bettie, giving her a little hug.

  When they got to Cartersburg they found to their dismay that the convention had already met for the main event of the week—the nomination, of the next governor—and the hall was packed to the doors. There was no admission without special tickets, and all those with authority to issue the tickets were already in the hall. Doc Tannent, apparently, was in there, too, perhaps still trying vainly to get in touch with Hannigan. Elmer considered anointing himself with the unction until he remembered that it was Doc’s blood, not his, that was in the compound. Whatever effect it had would benefit only Doc.

  He tried to get in the side door by slipping the doorman a little change, but the doorman said nothing doing. He took a try at the basement, but a gruff janitor shooed him away. Elmer backed away from the building and studied it from the far side of the street. That was when he noted the intake for the big blower fan on the roof, and saw that it was an easy step onto the parapet by it from the next-door, office building. He grabbed Bettie’s hand and made for the entrance to the office building.

  They had little trouble getting into the intake duct. It was a huge affair of sheet metal, obviously part of the air-conditioning system, and its outer opening was guarded by Coarse wire netting to keep out the bigger particles of trash, such as leaves and flying papers. Elmer, without a moment’s hesitation, yanked out his knife and cut away an opening. He figured there would be a door into the duct somewhere to allow access to it for cleaners coming from the inside of the hall.

  Elmer led the way, gingerly holding the bottle in one hand while clinging to the slippery wall of the duct with the other. Bettie stumbled along behind. It got darker as they went deeper, but presently Elmer saw the cleaning door he was looking for, only it was behind yet another filter, which meant another cutting job to do. A few yards beyond the door an enormous blower was sucking air into the auditorium, and the draft created by it was so strong that they were hard put at times to hold their footing on the slick metal deck under them. But Elmer tore at the second screen and worked his way through the opening in it.

  For a moment he was convulsed with a miserable fit of sneezing and coughing, for in ripping apart the screen he had dislodged much dust. Then he started swearing softly but steadily. Bettie crawled through the hole after him and cuddled up to him consolingly.

  “Whassa matta, sweeticums?” she cooed.

  “Dropped the damn bottle,” he snuffled, “and it busted all to hell.”

  He had. He struck some matches, but the wind blew them out. Then he worked the cleaning door open and a little light came in. All there was at his feet were some bits of broken glass—not so much as a smell of the precious Aromatick Unction was left. Elmer looked sheepishly at the remnants, and then, in an effort at being philosophical, he said:

  “Oh, what the hell! Come on, as long, as we’re here, let’s watch ’em nominate the new governor. It’s fun to see the way Hannigan builds up his stooges. A coupla speeches is all it takes to turn a stuffed shirt into a statesman.”

  They wandered around the attic for five minutes or so before they found the steps that led down to the gallery of the hall. The gallery was packed, and they couldn’t see at first because everybody there Was jumping up and down and yelling his head off. That-was surprising, for it generally took a nominating convention a couple of hours to get past the dry introductions before they uncorked their “enthusiasm and really went to town. Then Elmer recognized that the yelling had settled down to a steady chanting. He heard the words, but didn’t believe them—not at first. It just couldn’t be. But what the crowd was calling, over and over again, were the words:

  “We want Tannent! We want Tannent! We want Tannent!”

  Then they stopped the yelling in unison and let go, every fellow for himself, in what is technically
known as an ovation. A high voice from down oh the main floor sang out, “Tannent—ain’t he wonderful!” and right away the whole auditorium took that up and made it into another chant.

  Elmer gave a startled look at Bettie, but she was as bad as the rest. He marveled that he had ever thought her beautiful when he looked at her red face, eyes bulging, and the veins standing out all over. She was yelling her lungs out for Tannent. A man on the other side slapped Elmer on the back and said something about what a grand guy Tannent was and what a swell governor he would make, and how happy he was to be able to vote for him. It was all so silly.

  Elmer deserted Bettie and fought his way down the aisle until he reached the rail where he could look down onto the main floor. The band was playing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and the shouting had reached heights of insane frenzy. Something unprecedented had stampeded this convention, and Elmer, as soon as he had taken the precaution to blow his nose once more and dab the water out of his bleary eyes, hung over the rail and tried to spot the center of the commotion.

  He found it. Big Tim Hannigan was plowing his way through the dense crowd beneath. Doc Tannent was sitting piggyback on top of the boss’ shoulders, smiling and bowing and waving to the crowd! Men went crazy as he passed, trying to get at him to shake his hand. Elmer went crazy, too—with amazement.

  And then he tumbled. It was his philter—his potion to soften up the potentate and make him give what was asked for. Where it had been spilled in the air intake, the conditioning system had spread it through the auditorium and everybody was affected, They were trying to give Doc what he wanted. It didn’t matter what—just whatever he wanted. “Tell us, Doc,” yelled one delegate, “what’ll you have? If we’ve got it, dt’s yours!” It was a powerful philter. Not a doubt of that.

  By that time the bigwigs were on the rostrum—Hannigan, the incumbent governor and some others. There was Doc, his bald head glistening and his little goatee bobbing up and down, making a speech of some sort, and not stammering while he did it, either. Hannigan, the big grafting gorilla, was at one side, beaming down on Doc with exactly the expression on his face that a fond mother wears when her baby boy steps out onto the stage at a parent-teacher’s meeting to say a piece. And Hannigan’s wasn’t the only mug there like that. Everybody else looked the same way. Even the hard-boiled, sophisticated newspaper boys fell for the philter. The slush they sent their services that night cost several of them their jobs.

  THE old governor broke three or four gavels, pounding for order, but finally got enough quiet to scream out a few words. Elmer suddenly realized that Doc, Tannent had already been nominated for governor; the hubbub he was witnessing was the celebration of it. Or maybe the crowd, in their unbridled enthusiasm, merely thought they had nominated him for governor. At any, rate, this is what the old governor said:

  “Please! Please! Let me say one word—”

  (The crowd: “Go jump in the lake—scram—we want Tannent!”)

  “—I realize my administration has been a poor thing, but it was the best I could do. Now that we have nominated a real governor—”

  (The crowd: “Wheel Hooray for Tannent!”)

  “—I resign here and now, to make way for him.”

  The crowd cut loose then and made its previous performance seem tame and lukewarm by comparison. Some killjoy, probably another man with a bad cold, jumped up and remarked that the resignation oh the governor accomplished nothing except the elevation of the old lieutenant governor to the highest office of the State. Whereupon the lieutenant governor promptly rose, flung his arms around Doc, and then announced that he had appointed Doc to be lieutenant governor. Whereupon he resigned. That made Doc the actual, constitutional governor—on the spot.

  There was a brief flurry that marked the ejection of the killjoy from the hall, and then the assembled delegates cast the last vestiges of reserve aside and proceeded to voice their happiness. The steel trusses overhead trembled with the vibration, and the walls shook.

  Doc was governor! Elmer was stunned. He had wrought more than he intended. That “quintessence most pure” must have been simply crawling with hormones favorable to Doc.

  But there was more to come. In the orgy of giving Doc what he wanted, or what they thought he wanted, the legislature resigned, one by one.

  Then Doc appointed their successors on the spur of the moment—according to what system no one could guess. But nobody was sane enough to want to guess—except Elmer, and he was too astonished to think about a little thing like that.

  What nearly bowled him over was the consummate poise and masterful manner of Doc himself. It was as if Caspar Milquetoast had elevated himself to a dictatorship, only he carried it off as if to the manner born. Elmer knew the answer to that, but he had not foreseen it. Doc had had a few whiffs of his own philter, and was in love with himself. He believed in himself, for the first time in his life, and it made a whale of a difference. He was bold, confident and serene.

  Completely flabbergasted by the turn of events, Elmer turned and started to force his way up the aisle to where he had left Bettie, when a new roar broke through the reverberating hall. It was a new note, a superclimax if such a thing were possible. Elmer turned back and gripped the balcony rail, staring down.

  Hannigan was on his feet, weeping like a brand snatched from the burning at an old-fashioned revival meeting. He was making a speech, if one could call such a sob-punctuated confession a speech, and it tore the lid right off the meeting. In the pandemonium of noise, Elmer could only catch a phrase here and there. “Clean government is what you want, and that is what you’ll get . . . many times in the past I have . . . but now I bitterly regret it. My bank accounts are at the disposal of the State treasurer . . . will deed back the public lands . . . glad of the opportunity to make restitution. I will give you a list, too, of the many unworthy appointments—”

  Elmer slunk up the aisle; he could bear no more. It was all very confusing. He had counted on nothing like this. If Hannigan had turned saint, it was even a greater miracle than putting hair on the fumbling, shy little Doc’s chest. Elmer shuddered at that last crack. Unworthy appointment, indeed! He must get-Hold of his uncle right away. He had quit worrying about whether the new governor would remember that he came to Cartersburg to get the raise for him what concerned him now was whether he still had a job.

  Eventually he found Bettie, exhausted and hysterically weeping. She was awfully happy about Tannent, Elmer grabbed her hand and dragged her from the place.

  THAT was how Doc Tannent got to be governor.

  No, Elmer didn’t get, the raise. He didn’t need it. A week later Bettie quarreled violently with him. The day after that she pulled his hair, stamped on his foot, hand scratched at his eyes. The day following she went after him with a knife-and had carved several long gashes in him when the cops pulled her off and took her away.

  Elmer, after they had finished bandaging him and put him to bed, told the attending physician the story of his conquest of Bettie. He could not understand her sudden revulsion to him. He even gave the doctor the list of ingredients in the love potion.

  “That’s bad,” murmured the doctor, looking very profound. “Maybe it would be well if I took a blood specimen from her to see what’s there.”

  A week later the doctor was back, and his expression was grave. He had with him a fourteen-page report from the biological bureau, and there was a lot in it about hormones and antibodies, toxins and antitoxins and other biological jargon.

  “When she ingested that potion you gave her,” said the doctor in his most severe manner, “she introduced in her system some strange and powerful organisms. Being a healthy girl, her body naturally resisted those foreign organisms. She built up antibodies to counteract them. It appears that she overdid. She is now immune to your influence.”

  “You mean,” moaned Elmer, “she is going to not like me as much as she did like me?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor solemnly. “I am afraid that is t
he case. And it will be permanent. Fools, my boy, rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  Elmer closed his eyes and for a few minutes felt very faint. Then he suddenly thought of Doc Tannent, of whom he had said nothing to the hospital doctor. “Oh, gosh! Doc!” he wailed, and begged the nurse to let him put in a telephone call to the governor.

  It was no good, though. The governor wouldn’t receive the call. He was too big a man that week. It was not until the next week that the, antibodies began to propagate inside the lads of the Hannigan gang. And then-oh, boy!

  THE TEST-TUBE MONSTER

  George E. Clark

  Ultra-science had created this beautiful test-tube girl Graeme Mansfield loved, and ultra-science would wed her to the test-tube monster who chose her as his mate!

  CHAPTER I

  Birth of a Super-man

  GRAEME MANSFIELD repressed a slight shudder as he pushed the button beside the shining door of the scientist’s laboratory. The wild, eager expression on Professor Thorndile’s face, as it had appeared in the television mirror, and the uncontrolled squeak of his excited voice had prepared him for a distasteful half hour.

  Mansfield was an artist; scientific matters bored him. He cheerfully admitted that he, like all humanity, profited every moment of his life from the discoveries of such men as this old professor. Yet even the projected flight to Mars, which after years of planning was scheduled to begin today, had failed to lure him from his glassite-domed studio, where he worked passionately over his own problem of the fourth-dimensional element in his latest painting, that of a superb golden goddess.