“You’re the only audience we want, Lady Sutton.”
“Ah! Keep it all in the family?”
“So to speak.”
“The Six—Happy Family of Hatred.”
“That’s not so, Lady Sutton.”
“Don’t be an ass, Dig. We’re all hateful. We glory in it. I ought to know. I’m the Bookkeeper of Disgust. Some day I’ll let you see all the entries. Some day soon.,,
“What sort of entries?”
“Curious already, eh? Oh, nothing spectacular. Just the way Sidra’s been trying to kill her husband—and Bob’s been torturing her by holding on. And you making a fortune out of filthy pictures and eating your rotten heart out for that frigid devil, Theone—”
“Please, Lady Sutton!”
“And Theone,” she went on with relish, “using that icy body of hers like an executioner’s scalpel to torture and . . . and Chris . . . How many of his books d’you think he’s stolen from those poor Grub Street devils?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“I know. All of them. A fortune on other men’s brains. Oh, we’re a beautifully loathsome lot, Dig.
It’s the only thing we have to be proud of—the only thing that sets us off from the billion blundering moralistic idiots that have inherited our earth. That’s why we’ve got to stay a happy family of mutual hatred.”
“I should call it mutual admiration,” Finchley murmured. He bowed courteously and went to the curtains, looking more like a scarecrow than ever in the black dinner clothes. He was extremely tall—three inches over six feet—and extremely thin. The pipestem arms and legs looked like warped dowel sticks, and his horsy flat features seemed to have been painted on a pasty pillow.
Finchley pulled the curtains together behind him. A moment after he disappeared there was a whispered cue and the lights dimmed. In the vast room there was no sound except Lady Sutton’s croupy breathing. Peel, still slumped in his deep chair, was motionless and invisible except for the limp angle of his legs.
From infinite distances came a slight vibration—almost a shudder. It seemed at first to be a sinister reminder of the hell that was bursting across England, hundreds of feet over their heads. Then the shuddering quickened and by imperceptible stages swelled into the deepest tones of the organ. Above the background of the
throbbing diapasons, a weird tremolo of fourths, empty and spine-chilling, cascaded down the keyboard in chromatic steps.
Lady Sutton chuckled faintly. “My word,” she said, “that’s really horrid, Sidra. Ghastly.”
The grim background music choked her. It filled the shelter with chilling tendrils of sound that were more moan than tone. The curtains slipped apart slowly, revealing Christian Braugh garbed in black, his face a hideous, twisted mass of red and purple-blue that contrasted starkly to the near-albino white hair.
Braugh stood at the center of the stage surrounded by spider-legged tables piled high with Necromancer’s apparatus. Prominent was Merlin, Lady Sutton’s black cat, majestically poised atop an iron-bound volume.
Braugh lifted a piece of black chalk from a table and drew a circle on the floor twelve feet around himself. He inscribed the circumference with cabalistic characters and pentacles. Then he lifted a wafer and exhibited it with a flirt of his wrist.
“This,” he declaimed in sepulchral tones, “is a sacred wafer stolen from a church at midnight.”
Lady Sutton applauded satirically, but stopped almost at once. The music seemed to upset her. She moved uneasily on the divan and looked about her with little uncertain glances.
Muttering blasphemous imprecations, Braugh raised an iron dagger and plunged it through the center of the wafer. Then he arranged a copper chafing dish over a blue alcohol flame and began to stir in powders and crystals of bright colors. He lifted a crystal vial filled with purple liquid and poured the contents into a porcelain bowl. There was a faint detonation and a thick cloud of vapor lifted to the ceiling.
The organ surged. Braugh muttered incantations under his breath and performed oddly suggestive gestures. The shelter swam with scents and mists, violet clouds and deep fogs. Lady Sutton glanced toward the chair across from her. “Splendid, Bob,” she called. “Wonderful effects—really.” She tried to make her voice cheerful, but it came out in a sickly croak. Peel never moved.
With a savage motion, Braugh pulled three black hairs from the cat’s tail. Merlin uttered a yowl of rage, and sprang at the same time from the table to the top of an inlaid cabinet in the background.
Through the mists and vapors his giant yellow eyes gleamed balefully. The hairs went into the chafing dish and a new aroma filled the room. In quick succession the claws of an owl, the powder of vipers, and a human-shaped mandrake root followed.
“Now!” cried Braugh.
He cast the wafer, transfixed by the dagger, into the porcelain bowl containing the purple fluid, and then poured the whole mixture into the copper chafing dish.
There was a violent explosion.
A jet-black cloud enfolded the stage and swirled out into the shelter. Slowly it cleared away, faintly revealing the tall form of a naked devil; the body exquisitely formed, the head a frightful mask. Braugh had disappeared.
Through the drifting clouds, in the husky tones of Theone Dubedat, the devil spoke: “Greetings, Lady Sutton—”
She stepped forward out of the vapor. In the pulsating light that shot down to the stage her body shone with a shimmering nacreous glow of its own. The toes and fingers were long and graceful. Color slashed across the rounded torso. Yet that whole perfect body was cold and lifeless—as unreal as the grotesque papier mâché that covered her head.
Theone repeated: “Greetings—”
“Hi, old thing!” Lady Sutton interrupted. “How’s everything in hell?”
There was a giggle from the alcove where Sidra Peel was playing softly. Theone posed statuesquely and lifted her head a little higher to speak. “I bring you—”
“Darling!” shrieked Lady Sutton, “why didn’t you let me know it was going to be like this. I’d have sold tickets!”
Theone raised a gleaming arm imperiously. Again she began: “I bring you the thanks of the five who—” And then abruptly she stopped.
For the space of five heartbeats there was a gasping pause while the organ murmured and the last of the black smoke filtered away, mushrooming against the ceiling. In the silence Theone’s rapid, choked breathing mounted hysterically— then came a ghastly, piercing scream.
The others darted from behind the stage, exclaiming in astonishment—Braugh, Necromancer’s costume thrown over his arm, his make-up removed; Finchley like a pair of animated scissors in black habit and cowl, a script in his hand. The organ stuttered, then stopped with a crash, and Sidra Peel burst out of the alcove.
Theone tried to scream again, but her voice caught and broke. In the appalled silence Lady Sutton cried: “What is it? Something wrong?”
Theone uttered a moaning sound and pointed to the center of the stage. “Look— There—” The words came off the top of her throat like the squeal of nails on slate. She cowered back against a table upsetting the apparatus. It clashed and tinkled.
“What is it? For the love of—”
“It worked—” Theone moaned. “The r-ritual—It worked!”
They stared through the gloom, then started. An enormous sable Thing was slowly rising in the center of the Necromancer’s circle—a vague, amorphous form towering high, emitting a dull, hissing sound like the whisper of a caldron.
“Who is that?” Lady Sutton shouted.
The Thing pushed forward like some sickly extrusion. When it reached the edge of the black circle it halted. The seething sounds swelled ominously.
“It is one of us?” Lady Sutton cried. “Is this a stupid trick? Finchley . . Braugh—”
They shot her startled glances, bleak with terror.
“Sidra ... Robert. . . Theone . . . No, you’re all here. Then who is that? How did it get in here?”
“It’s impossible,” Braugh whispered, backing away. His legs knocked against the edge of the divan and he sprawled clumsily.
Lady Sutton beat at him with helpless hands and cried: “Do something! Do something—”
Finchley tried to control his voice. He stuttered: “W-we’re safe so long as the circle isn’t broken. It can’t get out—”
On the stage, Theone was sobbing, making pushing motions with her hands. Suddenly she crumpled to the floor. One outflung arm rubbed away a segment of the black chalk circle. The Thing moved swiftly, stepped through the break in the circle and descended from the platform like a black fluid. Finchley and Sidra Peel reeled back with terrified shrieks. There was a growing thickness pervading the shelter atmosphere. Little gusts of vapor twisted around the head of the Thing as it moved slowly toward the divan.
“You’re all joking!” Lady Sutton screamed. “This isn’t real. It can’t be!” She heaved up from the divan and tottered to her feet. Her face blanched as she counted the tale of her guests again.
One—two—and four made six—and the shape made seven. But there should only be six— She backed away, then began to run. The Thing was following her when she reached the door. Lady Sutton pulled at the door handle, but the iron bolt was locked. Quickly, for all her vast bulk, she ran around the edge of the shelter, smashing over the tables. As the Thing expanded in the darkness and filled the room with its sibilant hissing, she snatched at her purse and tore it open, groping for the key. Her shaking hands scattered the purse’s contents over the room.
A deep bellow pierced the blackness. Lady Sutton jerked and stared around desperately, making little animal noises. As the Thing threatened to engulf her in its infinite black depths, a cry tore up through her body and she sank heavily to the floor.
Silence.
Smoke drifted in shaded clouds.
The china clock ticked off a sequence of delicate periods.
“Well—” Finchley said in conversational tones. “That’s that.”
He went to the inert figure on the floor. He knelt over it for a moment, probing and testing, his face flickering with savage hunger. Then he looked up and grinned. “She’s dead, all right. Just the way we figured. Heart failure. She was too fat.”
He remained on his knees, drinking in the moment of death. The others clustered around the toadlike body, staring with distended nostrils. The moment hardly lasted, then the languor of infinite boredom again shaded across their features.
The black Thing waved its arms a few times. The costume split at last to reveal a complicated framework and the sweating, bearded face of Robert Peel. He dropped the costume around him, stepped out of it, and went to the figure in the chair.
“The dummy idea was perfect,” he said. His bright little eyes glittered momentarily. He looked like a sadistic miniature of Edward VII. “She’d never have believed it if we hadn’t arranged for a seventh unknown to enter the scene.” He glanced at his wife. “That slap was a stroke of genius, Sidra. Wonderful realism—’’
‘‘I meant it.’’
“I know you did, dearly beloved, but thanks nevertheless.”
Theone Dubedat had risen and gotten into a white dressing gown. She stepped down and walked over to the body, removing the hideous devil’s mask. It revealed a beautifully chiseled face, frigid and lovely. Her blond hair gleamed in the darkness.
Braugh said: “Your acting was superb, Theone—” He bobbed his white albino head appreciatively.
For a time she didn’t answer. She stood staring down at the shapeless mound of flesh, an expression of hopeless longing on her face; but there was nothing more to her gazing than the impersonal curiosity of a bystander watching a window chef. Less.
At last Theone sighed. She said: “So it wasn’t worth it, after all.”
“What?” Braugh groped for a cigarette.
“The acting—the whole performance. We’ve been let down again, Chris.”
Braugh scratched a match. The orange flame flared, flickering across their disappointed faces. He lit his cigarette, then held the flame high and looked at them. The illumination twisted their features into caricatures, emphasizing their weariness, their infinite boredom. Braugh said: “My-my—”
“It’s no use, Chris. This whole murder was a bust. It was about as exciting as a glass of water.”
Finchley hunched his shoulders and paced up and back of the shelter like a bundle of stilts. He said:
“I got a bit of a kick when I thought she suspected. It didn’t last long, though.”
“You ought to be grateful for even that.”
‘‘I am.’’
Peel clucked his tongue in exasperation, then knelt like a bearded humptydumpty, his bald head gleaming, and raked in the contents of Lady Sutton’s scattered purse. The banknotes he folded and put in his pocket. He took the fat dead hand and lifted it slightly toward Theone. “You always admired her sapphire, Theone. Want it?”
“You couldn’t get it off, Bob.”
“I think I could,” he said, pulling strenuously.
“Oh, to hell with the sapphire.”
“No-it’s coming.”
The ring slipped forward, then caught in the folds of flesh at the knuckle. Peel took a fresh grip and tugged and twisted. There was a sucking, yielding sound and the entire finger tore away from the hand.
The dull odor of putrefaction struck their nostrils as they looked on with vague curiosity.
Peel shrugged and dropped the finger. He arose, dusting his hands slightly. “She rots fast,” he said.
“Peculiar—”
Braugh wrinkled his nose and said: “She was too fat.”
Theone turned away in sudden frantic desperation, her hands clasping her elbows. “What are we going to do?” she cried. “What? Isn’t there a sensation left on earth we haven’t tried?”
With a dry whir the china clock began quick chimes. Midnight.
Finchley said: “We might go back to drugs.”
“They’re as futile as this paltry murder.”
“But there are other sensations. New ones.”
“Name one!” Theone said in exasperation. “Only one!” “I could name several—if you’ll have a seat and permit me—” Suddenly Theone interrupted: “That’s you speaking, isn’t it, Dig?” In a peculiar voice Finchley answered: “N~no. I thought it was Chris.” Braugh said: “Wasn’t me.”
“You, Bob?”
‘No.
“Th-then—”
The small voice said: “If the ladies and gentlemen would be kind enough to—” It came from the stage.
There was something there—something that spoke in
that quiet, gentle voice; for Merlin was stalking back and forth, arching his high black back against an invisible leg.
“—to sit down,” the voice continued persuasively.
Braugh had the most courage. He moved to the stage with slow, steady steps, the cigarette hanging firmly from his lips. He leaned across the apron and peered. For a while his eyes examined the stage, then he let a spume of smoke jet from his nostrils and called: “There’s nothing here.”
And at that moment the blue smoke swirled under the lights and swept around a figure of emptiness.
It was no more than a glimpse of an outline—of a negative, but it was enough to make Braugh cry out and leap back. The others turned sick, too, and staggered to chairs.
“So sorry,” said the quiet voice. “It won’t happen again.”
Peel gathered himself and said: “Merely for the sake of—”
“Yes?’’
He tried to freeze his jerking features. “Merely for the sake of s-scientific curiosity it—”
“Calm yourself, my friend.”
“The ritual . . . it did w-work?”
“Of course not. My friends, there is no need to call us with such fantastic ceremony. If you really want us, we come.”
“And you?”
“I? Oh... I know you have been thinkin
g of me for some time. Tonight you wanted me—really wanted me, and I came.”
The last of the cigarette smoke convulsed violently as that terrible figure of emptiness seemed to stoop and at last seat itself casually at the edge of the stage. The cat hesitated and then began rolling its head with little mews of pleasure as something fondled it.
Still striving desperately to control himself, Peel said: “But all those ceremonies and rituals that have been handed down—”
“Merely symbolic, Mr. Peel.” Peel started at the sound of his name. “You have read, no doubt, that we do not appear unless a certain ritual is performed, and only if it is letter-perfect. That is not true, of course. We appear if the invitation is sincere—and only then—with or without ceremony.”
Sick and verging on hysteria, Sidra whispered: “I’m getting out of here.” She tried to rise.
The gentle voice said: “One moment, please—”
“No!”
“I will help you get rid of your husband, Mrs. Peel.”
Sidra blinked, then sank back into her chair. Peel clenched his fists and opened his mouth to speak.
Before he could begin, the gentle voice continued: “And yet you will not lose your wife, if you really want to keep her, Mr. Peel. I guarantee that.”
The cat was suddenly lifted into the air and then settled comfortably in space a few feet from the floor. They could see the thick fur on the back smooth and resmooth from the gentle petting.
At length Braugh asked: “What do you offer us?”
“I offer each of you his own heart’s desire.”
‘‘And that is?’’
“A new sensation—all new sensations—”
“What new sensation?”
“The sensation of reality.”
Braugh laughed. “Hardly anyone’s heart’s desire.”
“This will be, for I offer you five different realities—realities which you may fashion, each for himself.
Selected Stories of Alfred Bester Page 20
