He began to grow lighter red and lighter red again, and Memba said to Poolwana in a whisper: “I’m a little sorry for him, Poolwana. Look how he’s getting lighter red and lighter red again. If he gets any lighter he might die, don’t you think so?”
“Would you be sorry if he died?” whispered back Poolwana.
“Of course I would. I hate to see anything die.” There were tears in Memba’s eyes. She sniffled.
“You’re a funny creature,” said Poolwana. “I thought you hated Bumbleboom. Didn’t you say he was cruel for the way he treated Joomeel?”
“That was when he was rich and powerful and red,” said Memba. “Now he’s getting poorer every minute and less powerful—and he’s losing his red. Won’t you offer him some honey? Perhaps if he ate some honey he might get back some of his colour, at least.”
“I think he deserves to be unhappy,” said Poolwana. “He’s a bad jee.”
“I don’t care if he’s a bad jee,” said Memba, “I’m still sorry for him. Hear how he’s groaning and shaking himself. Don’t be so hardhearted, Poolwana. Offer him some honey.”
“If even I did offer him some honey, how would he get it? He has no spoon to reach through the bars to get it—and I have no spoons.”
“That’s no trouble. I could easily push in my probo—my sucker—through the bars and reach any of the pools, and I’d take up a good sackful and give it to him.”
“What! Do you mean you’d do that for him? You’d put your probo into his ugly jee mouth and feed him with honey?”
“And why not?” said Memba. “If it’s an errand of mercy why not?”
“But he’s a big bad jee, Memba,” said Poolwana, amazed. “Why should you have mercy on bad creatures?”
“I don’t care,” said Memba, wiping the tears that flowed down her cheeks. “I still want to do it.”
“You’re the queerest creature I’ve ever heard of!” Poolwana exclaimed, staring at her.
“I don’t care how queer I am,” said Memba. “Are you going to let me get the honey for him, or not? Oh! Just look at him! Poor fellow! He’s getting lighter red and lighter red every second. I believe he’s dying.” Memba sniffled.
Aggie and Baggie and Lolopo and Joomeel crowded curiously round Bumbleboom who was lying on his back groaning, his eyes shut, his body barely pink.
“He’s going,” said Aggie.
“He’s going fast,” said Lolopo.
At the entrance of the cave a black jee suddenly appeared—a small servant jee from Bumbleboom’s palace. “Oh, lord and master!” Oh, dear Lord Bumbleboom! Is anything the matter? Are you ill, lord and master?”
On hearing the voice of one of his servants, Bumbleboom sat up, some of his red coming back. “What is it?” he asked, a light of hope in his eyes. “Is the fire out? Was anything saved?”
“Oh, lord and master! Oh, dear Lord Bumbleboom, I’m your only servant left who is still faithful to you. All the others have decided to search for you and kill you. The butler is leading them—that green jee who always secretly envied you your riches and power.”
“Indeed!” said Bumbleboom, rising slowly, his red coming back very slowly but very steadily. “So that’s it, is it? That upstart has turned against me, has he? Where is he? I’ll break him in two when I meet him.”
“He’s looking everywhere for you, Lord Bumbleboom, and I don’t believe he’s very far off. He’s burnt down your palace and killed all your wives and all your children and uncles. He says he was tired of being butler for so many creatures. He says he hated the palace and all your honey-brew vats and all your pollen jam. I believe he’s a little mad, oh, lord and master!”
Bumblebook swayed on his feet. “My palace! Oh, my great palace-nest! My palace-nest burnt down! My wives and my children, and my uncles and aunts all dead! Nothing to live for anymore! Nothing at all!”
“It’s the end,” said Lolopo.
“Yes, the end,” said Bumbleboom with a low moan, and sat down slowly, shaking from side to side. “The end. The end for poor Bumbleboom.”
“I could take you to a safe hiding place, lord and master,” said the little servant jee. “Come quickly before that bad green jee butler and the other servants find you. We have no time to waste. They may be here any minute.”
Aggie glanced outside and said: “They’re coming. I can see them. They’re at the purple blossoms only a little way off. They’re looking toward the orchid here, too. I believe they know he’s here.”
“I don’t care,” moaned Bumbleboom, “I have nothing more to live for. Let me lie down and die.”
“Won’t you even live for me, Bumbleboom?” said Memba, moving a step toward him. She was trembling a little.
Bumbleboom turned and stared at her.
“You?” he said. “Memba? You want me to live for you? Oh, I’m not hearing right. I must be dying, that’s why it sounds like that to me.”
“No, you heard right, Bumbleboom,” said Memba in a soft voice. “I want you. To live. Live for me.”
Bumbleboom tried to sit up and managed. “How sweet of you to say that, Memba. I wish I could live for you. But it’s too late. I’ve lost too much red, and there’s no more honey. If I could get a drink of honey perhaps I’d be able to get back some of my red and live. But it’s too late now. It’s too late.”
“It isn’t. I’ll get you some honey.”
Memba turned, and without waiting for Poolwana to say yes, pushed her probo—her sucker—through the bars and into a pond of honey. She sucked up a full sackful and hurrying up to Bumbleboom, put her probo—her sucker—into Bumbleboom’s mouth and began to feed him with the honey.
“Oh, look! Look!” cried Aggie in alarm, and Baggie gave a squeal.
Lolopo looked, and what he saw made him hurry out of the cave and out onto the stem of the orchid. Aggie and Baggie followed him, and the little servant jee, with a frightened cry, darted out, too, and flew off, Joomeel after him.
Poolwana looked and began to dance up and down and shout warnings to Bumbleboom and Memba.
“Look, Memba! Look, Bumbleboom! Look what’s happening! Hurry! Get out of the orchid!”
But Bumbleboom was too busy drinking in the honey that Memba was giving him to bother about any warnings; and Memba was too happy at the sight of Bumbleboom getting red again to care what was going on around her.
When, at last, Bumbleboom had drank all the honey Memba had sucked up from the pond for him, he sat up and smiled at Memba.
“I’ve never been treated so kindly in all my life,” he said. “If only I had my palace-nest still! I’d give it to you and all my honey-brew vats, Memba—all for your own self. I mean it.”
“What a nice thing to say!” smiled back Memba. “Are you feeling quite well and alive again, Mr. Bumbleboom?”
“I feel in the pinkest—I mean the reddest, thank you, Memba. You’ve saved my life.”
“Yes, she’s saved your life,” said Poolwana, “but look what’s happened to you in the meantime. You’re both prisoners like myself.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bumbleboom. And then he looked toward the entrance of the cave and saw what had happened.
A network of fine silvery down—like the hair on an old man’s head—had formed over the entrance, making the whole orchid a trap from which nothing could escape.
Memba, too, looked, and Memba said in a soft voice: “We’re prisoners. We can never get out of here again. We’re like Poolwana now.”
“It’s because you took the honey from the pool,” said Poolwana. “I told you this was a magic-orchid but you wouldn’t listen. See! You all laughed at me because I believed in my orchid!”
Suddenly Bumbleboom began to laugh. Bumbleboom got up and began to dance about. “But I’m glad! I’m glad! In here I’ll have no one to bo
ther me. No wives or uncles or aunts or servants to pester me. I’m happy. Oh, I’m happy!”
“But you’re a prisoner,” said Poolwana. “Don’t you understand?”
“I don’t care,” said Bumbleboom. “I have Memba with me as a prisoner. Memba, do you mind being a prisoner with me in Poolwana’s orchid?”
Memba smiled—a little coyly—and said: “Well, now you mention it, Bumbleboom, I don’t think I mind at all.”
Bumbleboom danced about again. “Poolwana, did you hear that? She called me Bumbleboom not Mr. Bumbleboom!”
“I heard,” said Poolwana. “I do believe she likes you. She’s a queer creature. I’ve never seen such a queer creature as Memba in all my life.”
“I’m not at all queer,” said Memba. “It’s only that I sort of felt that Bumbleboom wasn’t so black—I mean so red—I mean so bad as he was painted. I—I—anyway, you know what I mean,” said Memba confusedly, growing a little pink around her probo—her sucker.
Well, that is the way everything ended. Bumbleboom and Memba lived happily ever after in the orchid with Poolwana. Whenever it was feeding time Memba would push her probo—her sucker—through the bars of Poolwana’s cage and suck up enough honey for herself and Bumbleboom and Bumbleboom’s happiest moment was when Memba was feeding him. After a meal, he would always say: “I’m sure the happiest jee in all Jeeland—I mean in Poolwana’s orchid.”
Margaret St. Clair (1911–1995) was born in Kansas and lived most of her life in California. In the mid-1940s, she began publishing mystery, science fiction, and fantasy stories in a range of styles. In the 1950s, some of her best stories, including “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the pseudonym Idris Seabright. The Seabright stories tended to be more polished and less pulpy than the stories St. Clair was then publishing under her own name, and they quickly became popular. She began publishing novels with Agent of the Unknown (1956) and The Green Queen (1956). Her later work showed her interest in neopaganism and the Wiccan religion, and was cited by Gary Gygax as an influence on the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Collections of her stories include Change the Sky and Other Stories (1974), The Best of Margaret St. Clair (1985), and The Hole in the Moon and Other Tales (2019).
THE MAN WHO SOLD ROPE TO THE GNOLES
Margaret St. Clair
THE GNOLES HAD a bad reputation, and Mortensen was quite aware of this. But he reasoned, correctly enough, that cordage must be something for which the gnoles had a long unsatisfied want, and he saw no reason why he should not be the one to sell it to them. What a triumph such a sale would be! The district sales manager might single out Mortensen for special mention at the annual sales-force dinner. It would help his sales quota enormously. And, after all, it was none of his business what the gnoles used cordage for.
Mortensen decided to call on the gnoles on Thursday morning. On Wednesday night he went through his Manual of Modern Salesmanship, underscoring things.
“The mental states through which the mind passes in making a purchase,” he read, “have been catalogued as 1) arousal of interest 2) increase of knowledge 3) adjustments to needs…” There were seven mental states listed, and Mortensen underscored all of them. Then he went back and double-scored No. 1, arousal of interest, No. 4, appreciation of suitability, and No. 7, decision to purchase. He turned the page.
“Two qualities are of exceptional importance to a salesman,” he read. “They are adaptability and knowledge of merchandise.” Mortensen underlined the qualities. “Other highly desirable attributes are physical fitness, and high ethical standard, charm of manner, a dogged persistence, and unfailing courtesy.” Mortensen underlined these too. But he read on to the end of the paragraph without underscoring anything more, and it may be that his failure to put “tact and keen power of observation” on a footing with the other attributes of a salesman was responsible for what happened to him.
The gnoles live on the very edge of Terra Cognita, on the far side of a wood which all authorities unite in describing as dubious. Their house is narrow and high, in architecture a blend of Victorian Gothic and Swiss chalet. Though the house needs paint, it is kept in good repair. Thither on Thursday morning, sample case in hand, Mortensen took his way.
No path leads to the house of the gnoles, and it is always dark in that dubious wood. But Mortensen, remembering what he had learned at his mother’s knee concerning the odor of gnoles, found the house quite easily. For a moment he stood hesitating before it. His lips moved as he repeated, “Good morning, I have come to supply your cordage requirements,” to himself. The words were the beginning of his sales talk. Then he went up and rapped on the door.
The gnoles were watching him through holes they had bored in the trunks of trees; it is an artful custom of theirs to which the prime authority on gnoles attests. Mortensen’s knock almost threw them into confusion, it was so long since anyone had knocked on their door. Then the senior gnole, the one who never leaves the house, went flitting up from the cellars and opened it.
The senior gnole is a little like a Jerusalem artichoke made of India rubber, and he has small red eyes which are faceted in the same way that gemstones are. Mortensen had been expecting something unusual, and when the gnole opened the door he bowed politely, took off his hat, and smiled. He had got past the sentence about cordage requirements and into an enumeration of the different types of cordage his firm manufactured when the gnole, by turning his head to the side, showed him that he had no ears. Nor was there anything on his head which could take their place in the conduction of sound. Then the gnole opened his little fanged mouth and let Mortensen look at his narrow ribbony tongue. As a tongue it was no more fit for human speech than was a serpent’s. Judging from his appearance, the gnole could not safely be assigned to any of the four physio-characterological types mentioned in the Manual; and for the first time Mortensen felt a definite qualm.
Nonetheless, he followed the gnole unhesitatingly when the creature motioned him within. Adaptability, he told himself, adaptability must be his watchword. Enough adaptability, and his knees might even lose their tendency to shakiness.
It was the parlor the gnole led him to. Mortensen’s eyes widened as he looked around it. There were whatnots in the corners, and cabinets of curiosities, and on the fretwork table an album with gilded hasps; who knows whose pictures were in it? All around the walls in brackets, where in lesser houses the people display ornamental plates, were emeralds as big as your head. The gnoles set great store by their emeralds. All the light in the dim room came from them.
Mortensen went through the phrases of his sales talk mentally. It distressed him that that was the only way he could go through them. Still, adaptability! The gnole’s interest was already aroused, or he would never have asked Mortensen into the parlor; and as soon as the gnole saw the various cordages the sample case contained he would no doubt proceed of his own accord through “appreciation of suitability” to “desire to possess.”
Mortensen sat down in the chair the gnole indicated and opened his sample case. He got out henequen cable-laid rope, an assortment of ply and yarn goods, and some superlative slender abaca fiber rope. He even showed the gnole a few soft yarns and twines made of cotton and jute.
On the back of an envelope he wrote prices for hanks and cheeses of the twines, and for fifty- and hundred-foot lengths of the ropes. Laboriously he added details about the strength, durability, and resistance to climatic conditions of each sort of cord. The senior gnole watched him intently, putting his little feet on the top rung of his chair and poking at the facets of his left eye now and then with a tentacle. In the cellars from time to time someone would scream.
Mortensen began to demonstrate his wares. He showed the gnole the slip and resilience of one rope, the tenacity and stubborn strength of another. He cut a tarred hemp rope in two and laid a five-foot piece on the parlor floor t
o show the gnole how absolutely “neutral” it was, with no tendency to untwist of its own accord. He even showed the gnole how nicely some of the cotton twines made up a square knotwork.
They settled at last on two ropes of abaca fiber, 3⁄16 and 5⁄8 inch in diameter. The gnole wanted an enormous quantity. Mortensen’s comment on those ropes, “unlimited strength and durability,” seemed to have attracted him.
Soberly, Mortensen wrote the particulars down in his order book, but ambition was setting his brain on fire. The gnoles, it seemed, would be regular customers; and after the gnoles, why should he not try the gibbelins? They too must have a need for rope.
Mortensen closed his order book. On the back of the same envelope he wrote, for the gnole to see, that delivery would be made within ten days. Terms were 30 percent with order, balance upon receipt of goods.
The senior gnole hesitated. Shyly he looked at Mortensen with his little red eyes. Then he got down the smallest of the emeralds from the wall and handed it to him.
The sales representative stood weighing it in his hands. It was the smallest of the gnoles’ emeralds, but it was as clear as water, as green as grass. In the outside world it would have ransomed a Rockefeller or a whole family of Guggenheims; a legitimate profit from a transaction was one thing, but this was another; “a high ethical standard”—any kind of ethical standard—would forbid Mortensen to keep it. He weighed it a moment longer. Then with a deep, deep sigh he gave the emerald back.
He cast a glance around the room to see if he could find something which would be more negotiable. And in an evil moment he fixed on the senior gnole’s auxiliary eyes.
The senior gnole keeps his extra pair of optics on the third shelf of the curiosity cabinet with the glass doors. They look like fine dark emeralds about the size of the end of your thumb. And if the gnoles in general set store by their gems, it is nothing at all compared to the senior gnole’s emotions about his extra eyes. The concern good Christian folk should feel for their soul’s welfare is a shadow, a figment, a nothing, compared to what the thoroughly heathen gnole feels for those eyes. He would rather, I think, choose to be a mere miserable human being than that some vandal should lay hands upon them.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 10
