The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  All the way down Circle Street, Smith kept rubbing his arm, muttering that he believed he’d been poisoned.

  “Poisoned with knowledge, huh?” Kolo added a back slap, but his quip left the party cold.

  It was the Trillionaire who called us to a halt in front of a sign:

  THE WORLD’S GREATEST PHILANTHROPIST LIVES HERE.

  “I don’t like that,” said the Trillionaire. “It’s gross misrepresentation. The man can’t be as rich as all that.”

  So the Boosters trooped into the cave to check up.

  The cave narrowed to a long winding tunnel that echoed our voices. By the time we came into the light of the amber torches no one was talking but the Martian Trillionaire. His voice clinked on, only now it seemed to clank like brass counterfeits. And then we knew we were hearing more than his voice. There was a clanking of coins, somewhere ahead.

  Where the room opened out into an oval, a weirdly round figure was dancing. Under the circle of amber torches, dressed in clanking yellow discs—thousands of them—the figure was whirling and swaying in a one-man riot of gayety. But he was not only dancing. He was juggling coins, flinging them against walls.

  He saw us, his spherical body jerked to an oscillating stop, and he swung his hand up to catch the last of a flock of coins out of the air.

  “What do you want?” he bellowed. His face bulged at us.

  “We’re a good-will tour,” someone said. “We’ve come to—”

  “So you’ve come to ask for contributions?” the gold man cut in. “Just because I’m the richest man in the world, you come to see me! You think I’ll invest. You’ve got schemes—I know your kind. Get out!”

  The Martian Trillionaire motioned us back; he’d take care of this affair himself. He approached the roundish, gold-armored juggler. “Your preposterous sign outside the cave—”

  The Martian Trillionaire forgot whatever it was he was about to say. He stopped, fascinated by the stacks of glowing coins against the wall. The glitter in his eye was both envious and hungry.

  “The sign,” said the gold man, “states a simple fact. I’m the world’s greatest philanthropist.”

  Smith forgot his swelling arm long enough to take down a few statistics. The gold man reeled off the plans for his gifts in terms of decillions. He hadn’t actually made the gifts yet, he admitted, because he’d been too busy making the money. Yes, he coined his own. All he had he owed to his own industry. And no good-will tourists were going to gouge him—

  At this point the Martian Trillionaire shook out of the spell that the sight of heaps of money had cast over him, and gave argument.

  “Did you say decillions? Tsk, tsk.

  There’s not that much money in all the interplanetary exchanges.”

  “Industry and thrift,” the gold man repeated, and his eyes bugged defensively. “I make my own.”

  “Your figures are too high,” the Martian Trillionaire said crustily. “I know. My friends and I have got a corner on the world’s gold supply.”

  “You’ve got no corner on mine.” The Martian Trillionaire reached to touch the gold man’s clanking sleeve. “That’s not gold.”

  “Maybe you’d like to see a stack of the real thing.” The gold man’s words caused the Trillionaire’s breathing to quicken and his fingers to rub together eagerly. “Maybe you’d like to count it.”

  “That’s the only way I’d believe it,” said the Trillionaire as he followed the gold man across to a little alcove lighted by a single amber torch.

  “Right in here,” said the gold man. “Take your time. I’m always glad to have skeptical people count my gold.”

  His clanking arm touched a lever and coins began to splash down over the Martian Trillionaire’s hands, from the alcove ceiling.

  For a while we watched and waited. But Boss Venoko and the others were impatient to get on, and Smith was suffering for a drink of water. And the coins kept spilling down. With lustful eagerness, the Martian Trillionaire slid them through his hands furiously, computing them in rough thousands. They heaped up around his knees.

  The rest of the party left him to his counting and went on.

  The five of us stopped on Circle Street for a drink. There was an argument over whether we should wait for the missing members of the party or proceed. Meanwhile I hiked back into the gold man’s cave to see how the Martian Trillionaire was faring.

  He was still counting. The little alcove was filling up with gold and he was in the middle of it. It was up to his chest. He was trying to wriggle out, he was shouting that it was only fool’s gold, he was struggling—

  But the roundish gold man was paying no attention. He was juggling again, and his roly-poly body was dancing gleefully—like his eyes.

  The gold hailed down on the Trillionaire’s head. He was being buried alive. He shrieked—and I returned to the party of four. “We won’t wait any longer.”

  We passed a house of green stone whose cornices were lighted by a string of green lights. One of the lights had blinked off sometime in the past. I walked over to it, adjusted it, and it blazed on. Professor Kolo complimented me for doing my good turn. He also suggested that we go in and see who lived there.

  But I rejected the suggestion confidently. There would be no one at home, I reasoned. On a planet like this where there were so many big moons to black out the sunlight, the people were wise to leave their outdoor lights burning so they could find their way home.

  This line of reasoning brought on another disturbing discussion: Why should any moon be so big? The vast reddish disc which I had predicted would soon block out our sunlight was bidding fair to keep my promise. The more skyscape it filled, the more my party became throubled over a theoretical problem in proportions. As Smith put it, how much bigger must this planet of Jupiter look if we were viewing it from a moon instead of standing on it.

  A musical tone welled up to us, seemingly out of the ground.

  Sam, the Jamband King, said, “Hsssh!” and everyone listened.

  We edged along Circle Street and the sound grew louder. A series of variations in pitch made Sam snap his fingers. “What a melody! What a melody! But it’s all a machine. No human could get such an even tone—”

  We looked down into a rock-walled pit and saw where the music was coming from. The musician looked up through his ventilated glass roof and saw us descending the spiral stairs. He went on playing, looking up at us with soulful eyes.

  “Rather than break in upon an artist’s music, I stopped my party of sightseers half way down the spiral. I whispered to them of perfection. This was it—the perfect and unadulterated tones of a flute, made possible by a lifetime devoted to ceaseless practice, practice, practice.

  “Enough,” I said. “We must hurry on.”

  But only three men ascended the stairs with me. The Jamband King went on down. He had evidently noticed that there were other musical instruments lying around near the musician.

  By the time we reached the top of the stairs the music had turned into a duet. Along with the flute melody came a shrill c larinet obligato. And what that did to the three Boosters! They looked down over the edge of the pit and shouted “Bravo, Sam!” “Go to it!” “Plenty hot, ain’t he?” Boss Venoko turned to me. “I hope their broadcastin’ it all over Jupiter. Sam’ll put us Boosters over, all right.”

  “But that flutist is sensitive,” I warned. “He claims to be the purest tone-maker in the world—”

  “Ha! Listen at Sam hog the breaks away from him. Look! The other guy’s picking up a clarinet . . .”

  “But he’s not blowing it. He’s attaching it to an air tube from the wall,” Smith observed, “and playing it on artificial wind.”

  “Unfair advantage,” Boss Venoko muttered. “Sam shoulda beat him to it.”

  The battle was on. That is, the two musicians were aiming their notes squarely at each other. The Boosters were so sure that Sam, the Jamband King, would be good for an all day and night marathon on these terms that they
went on their way.

  I lingered only long enough to see the clash pass the turning point. From the faint odor that wafted up through the glass air shafts I knew that it was not compressed air which fed through the tube to the Jupiter musician’s clarinet. It was gas. A high wailing note from Sam’s instrument gradually faded away like a dying siren. The bell of the other’s instrument continued to play against his face. Sam’s clarinet choked off.

  I caught up with the remaining three: Smith, Boss Venoko, Professor Kolo.

  “Now I don’t hear anything but that flute tone again,” the professor was saying. “Maybe Sam will catch up with us.”

  “We won’t wait,” I said.

  “Where we going?” Smith asked.

  “We’ll see if anyone’s at home here,” I said, leading the way to a stone house clinging perilously to a mountainside. The approach was a maze of zigzagging stairs, with a footbridge here and there to cross a tumbling mountain stream. Smith never failed to stop and bathe his arm and catch a drink at each crossing.

  Inside the house we could hear the grinding of water-power machinery somewhere among the cavernous chambers. We searched around until we came upon the one occupant of the house.

  We found him in the jagged walled library with his feet propped up on the window ledge. He held an enormous red book before him, leaning it against the edge of the stone table.

  “Hello,” said Professor Kolo. “May we come in?”

  A long drawn “S-s-s-sh!” was the man’s strange answer. At the same time he removed a set of long fluffy false whiskers from his face, and replaced them with a black bristly set. He turned a page and went on reading the book.

  That is, he appeared to read it. But as we drew closer we saw that the page he was studying was perfectly blank.

  “We’re members of the Space-Wide Booster Club,” said Professor Kolo.

  “I’m Zaxo,” said the man in a low voice. “S-s-sh!” He narrowed his eyes at us and gave his chin a high thrust, accentuating it by making another change in his false whiskers. Obviously, from the supply of false faces and whiskers on the table, these changes of face were a part of normal conversation with him. He repeated, “I’m Zaxo . . . Does that mean anything to you?” The Boosters weren’t sure how to answer this. The man’s face repelled them, with or without whiskers.

  “There’s a politician among you,” Zaxo said, sniffing.

  “That’s me,” said Boss Venoko.

  “I knew it. You’re a spy.”

  “Hell, no. I’m no spy. I’m a city boss—the main ramrod down at Venus—”

  “Don’t try to crawfish. You know I’m Zaxo, the revolutionist. You’ve come to find out how soon I’ll strike—”

  “Revolutionist!” Boss Venoko gasped.

  “Don’t try to act surprised. I’m onto you.” Zaxo gave a weird laugh that tumbled ominously down the scale until it melted into the grind of machines.

  Boss Venoko struggled to recover himself. “Hell, if you’re a revolutionist, I can tell you a thing or two—”

  “No ifs,” Zaxo growled. “I’ve got it all organized. The guns and the men are on my side. All that waits is a little more propaganda—then the zero hour!”

  “Wait a minute, my friend,” said Venoko, rasping irritatedly. “Lemme tell you something. You don’t need a revolution. You can get what you want outa the present setup if you’re smart—like me. Watch your graft, watch your gangs, play your henchmen—”

  “I want a revolution,” Zaxo grated, “and I’ll have a revolution!”

  Boss Venoko gulped and shifted his eyes from Zaxo to the book.

  “And don’t think I’ll let you in on the secrets,” Zaxo continued. “You and all of Venus will be swallowed up.”

  “Your book seems to be blank.” Boss Venoko was trying to change the subject.

  “How else,” said Zaxo, “would I keep its secrets from you spies?”

  Professor Kolo whispered that we’d better get out of here, and Smith acted on the suggestion. I followed the two of them to the door; but Boss Venoko began to look around, and I saw him saunter into another room. Zaxo followed him. I followed Zaxo. The machine was a printing press. The automatic feeder was busy inserting papers. Papers were scattered everywhere, but none had been printed.

  “I’m printing propaganda,” Zaxo volunteered, gathering up a stack of papers and placing them within reach of the feeder.

  “But you’re not printing anything,” Venoko protested.

  “It’s secret propaganda,” said Zaxo. “No spy is going to get the goods on me.”

  “I tell you, I’m no spy.”

  “That’s exactly what I would expect you to say if you were a spy,” said Zaxo. “By saying it you’ve proved you are one.” With these words he slipped a false face on that made him a red-faced devil with an evil grin.

  “There’s a screw loose somewhere,” Boss Venoko muttered. “If you weren’t so stupid, I could be helpful to you. I know plenty about propaganda—”

  “So you want to help me?” A dangerous glitter shone in the revolutionist’s eyes. “I’ll let you read this message.”

  He picked up one of the blank papers and handed it to Venoko, who glared at it bewilderedly. Zaxo stopped the press.

  “If you can’t see it on the paper, you can read it in the type. Look right up there into the press. Get closer . . .”

  Boss Venoko inserted his head deeper between the powerful jaws of the press.

  Zaxo made a swift reach for the lever, to throw the press in gear. He yanked it. The jaws closed down . . .

  I hurried out to find Smith and Professor Kolo.

  A certain tight and knotted feeling in the muscles of my back, which I have previously referred to, was now more relaxed than at any time since this tour began. But the hearty backslap with which the professor now greeted me brought back a sharp twinge.

  A little farther around Circle Street the professor and I left Smith drinking at a public fountain while we went on to make another acquaintance. Our way led up a long inclined path flanked on either side by columns of green and purple stone. Jeweled designs glittered from the throne at the top of this ascent.

  “This must be a person of tremendous importance,” said the professor, proud that he had this event all to himself. He swelled his chest. “I’ve yet to meet a really important person who isn’t impressed by my Have-and-Go philosophy.”

  “Don’t forget,” I warned, “that persons in the Capital City of Jupiter have their own standards of greatness.” Then looking at the motionless figure who sat on the throne, I added in a whisper, “And don’t be too sure this is a person.”

  The figure on the throne was a gentle-faced old man with an unkept beard and long fingernails and a pair of glassy eyes that were fixed on some imaginary point up in the clouds. It was the messianic fervor of those eyes that made Professor Kolo gape.

  “Is he alive?” the professor whispered to me. We noticed that the fringe of the old man’s robe had been gnawed away, by mice, perhaps. Occasionally birds would alight on his shoulders. But his contemplative eyes were not swerved by such trifles.

  Now the old man looked down at us and motioned us to come.

  Professor Kolo marched up, looking his brightest and best, introduced himself, and inquired the old man’s name and business.

  The old man answered in a low rumble like far-away thunder.

  “I am God.”

  A curve of cynicism passed the lips of the Have-and-Go philosopher. “Just a minute, my friend. I’ve traveled several planets and studied several religious legends. But all these gods are purely mythical—”

  “I am the God of the Universe,” said the old man.

  Kolo gave an uncomfortable laugh.

  The old man’s eyes showed a glint of fierceness. “I cannot tolerate skeptics, much less cynics.”

  “I’m sorry, old man, but you’re completely obsolete. I mean—no offense, you understand—but you should read my books. I’ve explained you a
way completely.”

  The fierce glint in the old man’s eyes became a blaze. His gaunt fingers reached for a piece of old rusty chain that lay near the arm of his throne.

  Professor Kolo shrank back. The chain swung at him, but the professor dodged behind a column, leaped into the clear, and was off. He raced back down the long incline, hurling rocks and shadows.

  I overtook him and Smith near the last curve of Circle Street.

  Smith said his arm was better, and he gave me a healthy slap on the back to prove it. He hoped the rest of the party would catch up before the sky was completely blacked out. The lowering sun was already eclipsed, but the heavenful of red moon cast a warm glow over the jagged purple city.

  “There’s the first vehicle I’ve seen,” said Smith, pointing across the street. We struck out to overtake the wheeled object. Professor Kolo, who had had some of his conversational proclivities knocked out of him by his recent interview with “God,” lagged after us with a cautious step.

  The vehicle proved to be a combination tricycle-and-cart affair with certain peculiarities that made Smith mutter in dead languages. The rider of the tricycle was a one-eyed man with one arm tied to his back. The front wheel of his tricycle was five-sided instead of round, so that he rode with a rhythmic gallop.

  The cart in tow was full of rocks. It rolled along on five wheels.

  “What’s up, my friend?” I said. The tricycle rider ignored me. He looked from Smith to Kolo and back to Smith.

  “What’s that?” he barked, pointing at Smith’s notebook.

  Smith told him. “I’m taking down all curious sights. That five-wheeled cart, for instance—”

  “Don’t be fooled by that,” said the tricycle rider. “That’s only a device to confuse my imitators.”

  “What imitators?” Smith asked, writing notes furiously.

  “Inventors all over the universe,” and the man motioned Smith closer and talked with him in a confidential tone. He was the greatest inventor in the Solar world, he explained. He could out-invent anyone, even with one hand tied behind him. His sharp face took on the glow of genius as he talked. “All the best inventions of the modern age have stemmed from this brain.”