A Specter Is Haunting Texas

by Fritz Leiber

  During the trip my fingers felt the heat of direct sunlight, reminding me I had no time to lose.

  The descent had been a breeze despite the friction between my dragged left arm and body. Now my left fingers blindly found cracks again and began to walk both away from my body and up toward the line of my shoulders.

  Meanwhile I walked my right hand up toward my right armpit, to provide a cushion for my head, when and if it turned over, and also to be a brace and obstacle, so that my left hand would have its chance to turn my body over, not slide it across the pavement.

  At the same time, by moving my jaw first right then left, I started to walk my head off my left shoulder, which had begun to lift, and across my chest. The stubble on my chin — I had not shaved since departure from Circumluna — helped, though in this area I made little progress.

  My left fingers were really working hard now. Thumb and middle finger would crook in a crack, while my forefinger and ring finger groped forward seeking another crack, in which they could seat their tips and take up the crooking or pulling job. Little finger helped which pair needed her most

  A quarter of my back was lifted off the pavement now. There was a sharp pain in my left shoulder. I feared it would dislocate — ghost muscles are little use in holding together joints subjected to strain. My eyes, slit-lidded, were looking almost straight up into the bright pale sky.

  There was a moment when I feared I’d never make it. But then my fingers found a providentially wide and suitably curving crack in which they could all pull together. My head rolled over so that it lay with temple on right shoulder, chin on right fist. My hips turned then, so that left was directly above right. For the present I let them remain that way, my body lying on my right side. Most of the front of my body was is shade at last, though other areas of it were newly exposed to the bright sunlight, which had now moved as high as my hips and was stinging me hard.

  Suddenly feeling very apprehensive I blinked my eyes twice, then forced them to look dispassionately toward the house-end of the patio.

  Facing me and grotesquely seated in a chair not four meters away was my exoskeleton with my sack suit tossed across it.

  But both my titanium humeruses and femurs had been bent almost double, so that their cables curled and dangled. The delicate lattice of my ribs had been crushed in almost out of recognition. My head-basket had numerous dents. One cheek plate had been bent out. While my sack suit had been slashed to black ribbons.

  Really, it had considerable power as a semi-accidental work of art. In fact, it brought tears to my eyes — tears which I hated because I now loathed any power of Texans to make me emote, but more because tears robbed me of moisture I could ill afford to lose.

  For now my most urgent need was water, along with some sort of relief from the unending strain of gravity and the burning, dehydrating heat of the sun.

  I would not ask Texans for help, even if anyone would come in answer to my croaking calls. I resolutely repressed from my mind the vision of Chase and Hunt demonstrating their drunken strength last night by bending my exo-humeruses and -femurs, and tramping my rib-cage. It had been to prevent that, of course, that Fanninowicz had fought them: he loved my exo even if he didn’t love me.

  There was no use whatever in regretting the past, or in gloating with a masochistic self-pity over the indignities done me and my dear exo.

  My body must have known my intentions before I did — or else, already in the fringes of dehydration delirium, I was beginning to act by instinct rather than reason — for while I had been thinking those thoughts, my left hand had toppled my body over onto my chest. Now, aided by my fresh right fingers crooking and crawling under my chin, it was walking in a direction that would hopefully drag my whole body around and head me for the swimming pool.

  My toppling over had left me with my right leg twisted under my left. But now my well-muscled toes got to work, first untwisting my legs, then finding cracks and aiding me to claw my way toward my new goal.

  At last I was turned enough so that I could see it. Because it was almost brimful, my eyes could even glimpse from their slight altitude the great sheet of lovely glimmering silver. It made me think of how comfortable and snug I’d felt sandwiched between my water-mattresses aboard the Tsiolkoveky, totally embraced by sheeted liquid except for a hole over my face.

  My fingers and toes redoubled their efforts. I told myself that once I was floating on my back in that delectable H2O, its coolth erasing the sun’s sting, my whole body exquisitely hydrating again — that then I could ponder my next move and easily conceive some brilliant plan to thwart my captors. But for the present I must concentrate on finger and toe and maybe even chin-crawling, lugging my inert body to the reviving fluid.

  The whole course ahead of me was literally scattered with broken glass. I chose a curving and recurving route, which would miss the worst, but take me close to Burleson’s feet. Most of it would be through direct sunlight, but that did not worry me, now that my belly and chiest were in shade.

  I soon discovered that I could keep my head upright on my chin without the aid of my right hand, which was more efficiently employed like my left — stretched far ahead and finding cracks by which to pull myself forward, a job which my toes had to do blindly. Quick work with my chin would keep my head from toppling to either side or from falling forward, robbing me of my vision.

  Of course my chin was getting well-scraped in the process, as was all of my ventral region, but this was inevitable.

  At first I would walk a hand and with a finger flick out of my path any but the tiniest fragments of glass.

  But then my whistling breath, an increasing ache in my throat, dizzy spells or a return of the centrifuge illusion, and a sense of being engulfed in almost endurable heat made me realize I had only a very limited time left in which to reach the water that would save my life.

  Now I flicked out of the way only the largest and most wicked-looking fragments. My chin avoided most of the others, which accumulated under the top of my chest, where they scratched and stabbed.

  As I approached Burleson in my giant-inchworm fashion, I saw his eyes open and stare at me, at first incuriously, then with a certain groggy but net over-great Horror, as if I were only one more grotesque denizen of the world of Hangover. He lifted to his lips an open green bottle, which his right hand had been snugged around, glug-glugged a while, and relapsed once more into his shut-eyed sprawl.

  It tells much about my desperation and depletion of resources at that time, that I did not then see anything the least funny about his actions, I was merely glad to get past the big slob’s huge shoes, one more landmark in advance.

  I didn’t bother any more about the glass, though I was aware of certain new sharp pains in my chest and belly, and also of a warm slime which made travel easier. Actually I no longer even saw the glass, I saw only my watery goal. My fingers, toes and chin were moving on their own initiative. I had turned into a team of two hands, two feet and a jaw, harnessed to a vast indefinite load which had to be dragged like a travois. My brain filled with useless visions; of freefall swims in the huge high-surface-tension water-drop which is Circumluna’s pride, or Elmo harranging me on the grandeurs and glories of Texas, of tides of burning deserts, of my mother nursing me, of my father trying to explain to me what oceans were, and so on.

  As my fingers touched at last the edge of the pool and longed to climb down in at once, a measure of sanity returned to me. I realized it would be a tricky business to get myself into the pool on my back, for if I floated on my face, I would have no way to get my nose and mouth out of the water.

  Accordingly, although my consciousness was now wavering and every cell of my body screaming for moisture, I made myself crawl through a curve until the entire right side of my body was lying along the edge of the pool — me still belly down, of course. Then I walked my left foot back of my right so my legs were again crossed.

  Next I worked my right hand under my chin, clutching the edge
of the pool with it, and walked my left hand as far ahead as I could and then down over the edge of the pool where it found a convenient negative ledge.

  All this while my eyes had been feasting on the water, as the thoughts of a lonely rocket pilot on his fuel. My right elbow, dipped in the stuff, knew chilly bliss. But there was a tiny admixture of apprehension. That water looked deep. But I reminded myself that one floated as readily over ten meters of water as over two — or over ten kilometers of H2O (incredible oceanic datum).

  I strongly crooked the fingers of my left hand. My right hand stood up under my chin. I opened my mouth wide and my head tipped over toward the pool. At the same time my left toes found the same negative ledge my left fingers had, and they crooked too. My left hip rose.

  As I teetered there, prolonging my agony a delicious moment and reminding myself of the precautions to take in water, I decided I must have started hallucinating, for I saw a long pink snake uncoil its tail downward from a top-story window of the patio and its long pale pink head emerge and begin to sway.

  But maybe that super-cobra wasn’t hallucination, for next I saw Mayor Burleson sit up and stare at his feet. Then his gaze slowly followed what I realized must be the blood track I had left, until he was looking for me.

  I took a deep breath and toppled myself over. I landed with a splash on my back, precisely as I’d planned.

  Cold shock almost knocked me senseless. Then, although consciousness was still wavering and vision blurring, I began to be happy. Water is ersatz freefall, but good ersatz. I let it into my mouth, little by little. Nectar. I swiftly exhaled, remembering to do so through the nose, then took another deep breath. I discovered that the blurring was mostly water in my eyes.

  I rolled away from the poolside as far as the leash of my right arm let me, then in reaction rolled back. Through my one eye above water I watched Burleson reeling both from alcohol and my disordered vision. As he followed my spoor to the pool-side, his arms hung slackly, one still holding the green bottle. His head was bent down until his jowls were multiplied. He looked so much like a huge stupid dog who had been taught to walk on his hind legs — and to guzzle — but nothing else, that I would have laughed except I noted in time that my mouth and nose were both underwater.

  Behind him and even more out of focus, the hyper-serpent illusion or reality continued. Now the thicker section I had first taken for the serpent’s head was midway to the ground. Perhaps it was something which the snake had swallowed in the top-storey room.

  Burleson kept getting bigger and funnier. He was near enough for me to note the owlish solemnity of his downward gaze.

  Then he made a sloppy swinging grab at my right hand, missed, and almost fell in beside me. After teetering a long second on the brink — a mountain about to topple over sideways — he got his balance again. His first act was to take two more slugs from the green bottle. Then he aimed his gaze very carefully at my hand, spread the fingers of his own free hand for a second grab — and was funny no longer.

  I did not want to be pulled from the pool only one-quarter restored. I did not want to be pulled from the pool period. I did not want to fall again into the hands of Texans. The pool was not the best base of operations, but at least it was a base, from which I might for a while be be able to conduct independent negotiations.

  Besides, I did not want to be near Burleson if he fell or dove into the pool. The wave he created might well swamp or overturn me. So as he grabbed again, I boldly pushed off from the pool’s wall with a brisk backhand flick of my right hand. I intended to paddle myself with my fin-clenched fingers to the pool’s center, waiting developments.

  The flick lifted my face from the water. I took another very deep breath.

  It was well for me I did so, for the next thing that happened was that I began to sink. When I opened my eyes I was looking up through several centimeters of water — centimeters which rather rapidly became decimeters. I energetically flapped my finger-fins downward. It slightly slowed, but did not halt my descent.

  Too late, it was crystal-clear what had happened to me. With my preponderance of bone and almost total lack of fat, I massed considerably more than an equivalent volume of water and so was inevitably going down. I should have foreseen it, but who ever thinks of one’s specific gravity, especially in freefall?

  How I wish now that I had inherited my mother’s pyknic tendencies and grown up a Fat! — even though it would have almost certainly resulted in me becoming a comedian rather than a star of high tragedy. Mother would have floated like a butterball.

  I flatter myself that I sank with a certain dignity, though I continued to flap my finger-fins industriously and even made some tiny swimming motions with my ghost-muscles, which worked a little now that gravity’s clutch was slightly counterbalanced by my negative buoyancy. If I must die, let it be with a minimum of panic. Besides, the grip of gravity on a freefall being tends to make him fatalistic — he is in the ubiquitous grip of a power greater far than himself. Soon, surely, I would be lying on the pool’s bottom, nailed down almost as securely as I had been on the tesselated pavement above. Crawl then to the pool’s side and climb out if there were cracks to climb by? I strongly doubted my oxygen supply would permit that, though I would make the attempt.

  Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,

  Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;

  Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,

  Dry their mail and bask in the brine;

  To his own native shore.

  Where great whales come sailing by,

  Sail and sail, with unshut eye,

  Round the world for ever and aye.

  “The Forsaken Merman,” by Matthew Arnold

  Table of Contents

  - IX -

  IN THE POOL

  As I sank I oddly noted a dozen or so scarlet threads rising from my chest. The broken glass had pocked me deeply indeed. Now was the time for barracudas, piranhas and small sharks (but Texans would surely use big ones) to come nosing up to the threads and then snap me to chunks, bits, and ribbons in a tumultuous swirl of chaotic water — that is, if this pool were filled with such carnivores, as Terran suspense fiction had assured me was the custom of all evil millionaires, wealthy criminals and politicos.

  What actually happened was worse. I got the impression a white whale had dived into the pool or a medium-size white submarine been launched into it. The crash of its entry deafened me. Sub-surface waves struck me. The water was vastly disordered. All the artistically curving scarlet threads vanished in a pink swish. Then a pale monster approached and glided under me. I awaited with minimal tranquility the half-turn of the white shark and the great bite of its razor teeth. Considering my slenderness, I would doubtless be cut in two. In any case, it would all be over swiftly, the books agreed. I would emit one horrific groaning scream and —

  What actually happened was that arms embraced me, I felt a female form long as my own against my back, while powerful kicks swiftly propelled me to the surface.

  As I emerged, I blew explosively, and gulped down great lungfuls of thick Terran air, which now seemed sweeter than the Sack’s. One strong hand shifted to my armpit. The other cradled the back of my head. I faintly heard the kicks which were keeping us both afloat. My whole face and some of my chest were above water.

  Then from behind me, in strangely muffled tones, Rachel Vachel said, “You okay, Captain Skull?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “but I can’t hear you.”

  “Water in your ears. I’ll fix that.” Lips and a tongue expertly glued themselves to each of my ears in turn and sucked. Then, in a roar, “how’s that?”

  “Perfect, princess. You needn’t shout,” I replied. “And now, if it is possible, could you turn me over so that my chest and belly are not in direct sunlight?”

  “Of course, but why?”

  “So we can look into each other’s eyes. There’s another reason, but it’s too complicated to explain.”

  By tha
t time Rachel had me turned and was supporting me with a hand under my chin. Framed by plastered-down silvery hair, her face was more beautiful than I’d recalled. Her skull was well-formed — she had the makings of a good Thin. She was grinning, as if in the highest spirits.

  Whatever her motives for rescuing me — generous, sneaky or crazy — I suddenly felt so much gratitude and tender admiration that only poetry could express it. Accordingly I recited:

  Rachel, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicean barks of yore,

  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

  The weary, wayworn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

  “By courtesy of Edgar Poe,” I added.

  “That’s just plumb beautiful, Scully,” she sighed, “even if this pool ain’t perfumed.”

  “It is now, princess,” I told her, looking deeply into her shining eyes.

  “Oh what a courtier!” she exclaimed. Then, chuckling. “So you think of me as a bark, Scully — a great big clumsy oceangoing vessel?”

  “You are an ocean-going goddess,” I told her. “While I am surely a most grateful, weary, wayworn wan ...”

  A great wave of weakness washed over me, almost blacking out my vision. I heard Rachel calling faintly, as if from a great distance, “Gloryosky! — I forgot your pills. Is one of each color right?”

  “Yes. Two browns,” I managed to reply.

  I felt her wet fingers place four pills on my tongue. I crushed them between my molars for swifter effect and downed them quickly with a half mouthful of pool.

  When my vision cleared, she was still trying to close with one hand a small pink case tied round her neck by a pink ribbon. Her other hand was occupied supporting me. She got it shut, but not before I’d noted inside, besides the pills which she must have taken from my exo’s check-plate, a small dialed box and a half dozen or so of what seemed to be minitapes.