The Complete Stories, Vol. 1: Final Reckonings

by Robert Bloch

  And during the next hour, he saw the picture unreel. The planet was explored by the rocket ship's crew. The captain and the three leading crewmen enacted a private drama of their own. The crew was going mad. It was the color that did it — the effort of adjusting to a world where everything was green. They mutinied. They tried to steal the ship. The captain alone did not crack. He fought them off. They succumbed, one by one, to the green lure of the lake, to the call of the green jungle, to the green death of the swamp. It was, in a way, an absorbing psychological study — the unpredictable effect of subjecting a normal mind and a normal pair of eyes to a single, unvarying, constant color.

  The last crew member died in a crazy attempt to paint the rocket ship green. He succeeded — and failed, for the captain shot him.

  And now the captain was alone. Alone, and sane, for he wouldn't yield to his environment. He was stronger than the planet, stronger than the mysterious force of chlorophyll or radiation or combination of both that made everything on its surface conform to its greenness.

  His will did not break, his mind did not give way. He prepared to return to Earth alone. It was only when he reached the end of his ordeal and found the safety of his cabin that he stared in the mirror — and saw that he had turned green.

  The film ended there. Or rather, the green came up. Codd felt himself falling away from it, falling into greenness, falling into blackness, falling into redness. . . .

  Her hair, covering his face. And her voice whispering, "Wake up, now. Wake up. I've taken it off."

  He was awake, and she had taken off the helmet. He sat there, dazed, and she handed him a drink. Outside the windows a false dawn paled, then was blotted out in final darkness.

  "What happened?" he whispered.

  "You tell me," she suggested. " You wore the helmet."

  Barnaby Codd told her. She nodded from time to time, nodded thoughtfully.

  "But I don't understand it at all," he concluded. "You were in the dream, and there was a dog, and a spaceship, and everything was green, yet it made a story."

  "That's the whole point," said Cleo. "The experiment was successful, because it made a story. Do you think you could write that story, now, and sell it?"

  Codd stood up. "Why — yes, I guess so. I've never tried anything in science fiction or fantasy before, but the market is there. And this psychological angle, about the effects of color, would work in."

  "Then why don't you do it?" the woman suggested.

  "Because I've got to know what happened, first. I've got to understand this thing. Where did the story come from?"

  "From your own mind, of course," Cieo told him. "The helmet merely organized the various subconscious images in a coherent form. I don't pretend to know the mechanism — but the helmet integrates thought patterns. Some of the elements you observed are simple enough to figure out."

  "Such as?"

  "Well, myself, for example. I belonged in the prelude to the story because I was on your mind,' you might say. And the dog — " She hesitated. "Go on," he prompted.

  "The dog was probably a symbol of yourself. You have felt like a dog lately, even told yourself that you were a 'dog,' haven't you?"

  Codd smiled. "Tell me more."

  "The rocket ship? Well, you spoke of the helmet as if it was a science fiction gadget. Pure association there." Codd nodded. "And the color green?"

  Cleo sighed. "I must admit to a little cheating, there. I had to do something that would help me check. So while you wore the helmet and stared off into nothingness — "

  "Is that what I did all that time?" Codd interrupted.

  "Yes. You just sat in a trance, eyes open, until it was over. And while you stared, I held this in front of your eyes."

  The girl extended her hand and Codd stared at the jewel blazing up at him. An emerald, of course.

  "Then it's all a matter of suggestion, of self-hypnosis?"

  "Perhaps. But the helmet is the agent. You wear it, and your thoughts weave a pattern. It will help you to create. You speak of losing your mind. The helmet permits you to find it again."

  "But how does it work?"

  "I cannot answer that. And you must not question me too closely. This much, and this much only, need you know. I am empowered to offer you the loan of the helmet for an indefinite period, for experimental purposes.

  "You can wear it whenever you want, write whatever you want as a result of your experiences while wearing it. I believe you are going to find this a most profitable undertaking."

  "And what do you — and your mysterious inventor friend — get for this privilege?"

  "Merely the opportunity to test the helmet and observe its effects. The record of effects will be found in the stories you write."

  "But where's the catch?"

  "There is no catch. Perhaps, some day, we will want you to go on record as to the way in which the helmet performs. We may patent and market it on a wide scale. We may find other uses for it. I cannot say at present."

  Codd paced the floor. "I don't know. It sounds crazy."

  "Can you sell the story?"

  "Certainly."

  "Then remember this — you'll write other stories. Tonight your mind was at singularly low ebb; you were confused, half-drunk. What do you suppose you'll be capable of once you're clearly confident, once you begin to organize your talent and utilize all your creativity with the helmet's aid? Why, you'll be able to turn out bestsellers! You'll be rich, famous, perhaps immortal. Wouldn't you like that?"

  Wouldn't he? An abrupt vision of the frowsy furnished room came unbidden to his brain. Codd nodded. Of course he wanted to be rich and famous. And what had he to lose, what had he to fear?

  "Suppose I accept," he said. "Are there any restrictions?"

  "None. Of course, you will keep this secret. You'll have to, at first — you know as well as I do what people would say if you came to them with such a fantastic explanation."

  "Agreed," said Codd.

  "You may not take the helmet off while a dream is in progress. And you are further instructed not to tamper with the helmet in any way. If you have any notion of running off to some scientific testing laboratory and discover the 'secret' of its mechanism, I can assure you that the attempt will end in disaster. You'll end up with a damaged, useless instrument — and know nothing. Because today's science does not operate in a frame of reference sufficient to make this phenomenon intelligible to mankind." She smiled. "But I become ponderous. All I mean to do is use that old phrase — what is it again? — 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth.' "

  She extended the helmet. Codd grasped it, moved toward the door.

  "And when do I see you again?" he asked.

  "Soon. Quite soon." Cleo Fane smiled. "I'll see you in my dreams."

  4

  Barnaby Codd wrote The Green Planet as a novelette, in three sittings. He sold it, first trip out, for three hundred dollars. It was printed, and successfully received, four months later, and the editor asked for more. The editor had illustrated it with a cover showing four or five colors instead of just green, but nobody seemed upset about that. Codd wasn't upset either, because by the time the story appeared he was already out of the science fiction field.

  He was out of the furnished room, too, and established in a pleasant apartment once more. The actual mechanics of locating a new place and furnishing it proved tiresome — but then, for several weeks after writing the story, everything was tiring to Codd. He felt oddly drained and depleted of energy.

  Yet he had energy enough to make an effort to locate Cleo Fane. He tried the phone book, of course, and to no avail. Then he consulted the city directory and drew a blank. So he went to Hank Olcott.

  "Cleo Fane?" Hank considered for a moment. "No, can't say that I recognize the name." He tapped a cigarette and leaned back. "Should I?"

  "Well, she was at your party," Codd persisted. "Surely you remember her—tall redhead in a green dress."

  Hank shook his head slowly. "Sorry. I don't
recall seeing her. Of course, there were so many strangers barging in and out all night long. I can ask some of the gang."

  "I wish you would," Codd urged. "I must find her."

  Hank Olcott chuckled. "I thought you told me you went out together. Don't you know where she lives?"

  Codd tried to explain. He didn't know, he'd had too much to drink, he'd tried to retrace his steps and couldn't find the building on the sidestreet.

  Olcott listened patiently, promised to make inquiries, and did so. But he learned nothing.

  Nor did Codd, in the days that followed. He sat at home, waiting for a call that never came. He might have had a few drinks to pass the time, but he found he no longer wanted to drink. He might have turned to the typewriter and done some work, but he found that he couldn't work. In that respect his status was unchanged — he was still in a writer's slump. The novelette had been an accident, after all.

  But it wasn't an accident. It was merely the result of wearing the helmet. The helmet gave him the story. Why not use it now? Besides, what had she told him at the last?

  'Til see you in my dreams."

  Codd took the helmet out of its place of concealment, at the bottom of his suitcase. He cradled it, examining it curiously. The light, malleable metal was silver, and its surface held the tarnish of age. The peculiar antennae and tubular filament between defied his analysis. This apparatus had not been sewed or riveted or soldered on — it seemed to be an inherent part of the whole. How the helmet was made or what process had been used in its contrivance it was beyond his power to determine. It was all a mystery.

  And so was its power, and so was the woman, and so was her power over him — mystery.

  Codd sighed. He switched off the lamp, sat in darkness. The helmet gave off a faint phosphorescent glow. He raised it to his face, then placed it on his head. The phosphorescent glow flooded the room, flooded his brain and being.

  Codd was back on the green planet now. He stood against the hillside and stared down. Cleo came bounding past, on the back of a gigantic wolf. The wolf looked up at him and howled. Cleo waved once — at least he thought she waved. Then she disappeared.

  And now, oddly, the planet disappeared. Codd was somewhere else — in a modern city. He was watching another story unfold.

  This was the story of David Harris, the man on the ragged edge of sanity. Codd knew the man, knew his thoughts, because he found he could get inside the man and read his mind. Not that alone; to a certain extent he could be the man if he so desired.

  He watched Harris, discharged from the asylum, roaming through the city and seeking companionship, seeking a friend to save him from loneliness. For loneliness was the source of his aberration; being alone would drive him mad once more. He followed Harris through the drabness of his days, the empty impersonality of his contacts in a strange city. He suffered all the defeats which Harris met in his efforts to establish even a small acquaintanceship with his fellow men. He fought, as Harris fought, the terrifying hatreds that welled up in him, hatreds directed against all living things. He tried to conquer the delusion that all men were his enemies.

  And he followed Harris to the tavern the night he met the girl. The girl was Cleo, of course — but this time she was a blonde, and he discovered she was a waitress out of a job and down on her luck. She was lonely too. Then Harris took her to his room, and they spent the night, and Harris made the discovery of communication, of freedom from loneliness and fear. It seemed to Harris that this was too much to bear, that his mind would burst with the realization of his love, that his love was a torment worse than loneliness, that by losing himself in love he lost his identity, which was that of a man to whom all men were enemies.

  As Harris, he slept, and awoke in the morning to find the girl gone. Then he followed Harris through the streets, followed him in his search for the girl who had become to him the symbol of salvation. He must find her now or go mad forever. And he searched and he searched, and his panic grew, and he knew that he was on the borderline, on the ragged edge, and he couldn't endure it without her. And he tried to think back to last night and couldn't, and the hatred came welling up in him again, and he went back to his room, and then he sensed her presence there.

  The mere thought of her presence was enough to save him; he realized now, for the first time, how close he had come to the brink last night when he'd met her. It had only been a matter of hours, or perhaps even minutes, before he would have cracked, if he hadn't found her. No wonder he'd blacked out there at the last as they made love.

  But now her presence was strong, she was with him, somehow, and he knew she would be with him always. He'd done something—he couldn't remember what it was, just now — to ensure that. He'd done something to save himself by keeping her with him forever.

  Harris couldn't remember. Not until he decided to go out, and went to the closet and opened the door, and found her propped stiffly in the corner with his knife in her throat. . . .

  Then Harris went mad, phosphorescently mad, and Codd got out of him quickly, got out of the phosphorescence and ripped off the helmet.

  He sat there panting in the dark for a long moment before he was able to stand up, switch on the light, and walk over to the typewriter.

  That night he wrote The Ragged Edge in one sitting.

  5

  During the next three months Barnaby Codd wrote nine short stories and two novelettes. Both of the novelettes and the last six stories sold to the slicks, and Codd acquired a bright, brisk agent named Freeman who negotiated a motion picture sale for one of the novelettes and sold TV rights to three of the stories. He kept urging Codd to tackle a novel now, and talked about "deals" and "percentages" and "building up a name while things are hot."

  Things were hot, all right. Too hot. Codd had new furniture and a new car. He had a bank balance of over seven thousand dollars. He was in a position to satisfy his gregarious instincts and aggrandize his ego. There was no need to wait for a phone call from the Hank Olcotts of this world — he could give his own parties whenever he chose.

  He tried it, once. The party was not a success. Oh, Hank came and the rest of the crowd came, and they seemed to have a good time. They complimented him and joined with Freeman in marveling over his sudden, unprecedented success. But Codd didn't enjoy himself. He kept waiting for a scarlet poppy to blossom in the corner — and, of course, it didn't.

  Then he tried to drink, and found he hadn't the taste for it any longer. Nor the energy. The party tired him. He was glad when they all went away, finally, and he could turn out the lights and put on the helmet.

  Because when he put on the helmet, she came. She always came, and always in the same way. He'd find himself back on the green planet under the three green moons. An instant of waiting, and then she'd bound across the landscape on an animal. Each time the animal was different — a lion, tiger, stallion, boar. Each time the action was the same — the creature bounded, she waved, then disappeared. And he'd be off in a dream plot. The plots inevitably were a product of some previous reality; twisted, inverted, expanded and projected. The Ragged Edge had been the result of his own search for Cleo. Other plots had been remotely based on subsequent daily incidents in his life.

  Tonight, his dream concerned a party — a charity ball. Cleo was there (odd, she seemed to turn up in disguise as a character, regularly), and this time she was a brunette. A reigning movie queen, internationally famous, a symbol of scandal and sophistication.

  There was a raffle, and she danced with the holders of the winning tickets. Codd knew the winners — he became the winners, each in turn. And he followed their lives.

  He was Homer Johnson, meek little bespectacled Homer Johnson, the bookkeeper with the nagging wife. And as a result of his moment of glory, his dance with a dream, he found the courage to leave his wife, tell off his boss, and go on to his romantically cherished ambition of life in the merchant marine. The dance made him a hero.

  He was young Derek; Derek, the fortunate. Blond, h
andsome rich man's son, with an assured future and a girl who worshipped him. But he danced with a dream and thereafter the girl meant nothing to him, and no woman was good enough. He went down, down, to an inevitable end. The dance destroyed him.

  He was Geoffrey Farr, a once-great name on the legitimate stage and now an extra voice, a bit character actor in soap operas. He'd wangled his invitation, taken his last five dollars to buy a raffle ticket because he couldn't afford to be shamed in front of the "public." And he'd won a dance, too — won it in his rented tuxedo, danced with splitting seams, danced with a tearing pain in his chest — because he was old, too old for the constant strain of "keeping up appearances" and too old for the excitement.

  The star had been nice to him when they danced, and some Life photographer had remembered his name and taken a shot on the off-chance that this was a good "human interest angle" to play up. And the ballroom buzzed.

  Before the night was over, Geoffrey Farr had been "rediscovered" by two agents, a producer casting a Broadway show and the star's personal director. There would be contracts in the morning, and Geoffrey Farr would be back on top again.

  Before the night was over, Geoffrey Farr died of a heart attack, brought on by the strain and the excitement. He had danced with a dream, and the dream was death.

  Codd died, took off the helmet, and began to set down the complete outline of THE DANCERS. It was going to be quite a novel — some of the touches were pure corn, he realized, but the kind of corn that sells. The kind that logically lends itself to rental library circulation, to mass motion picture audience appeal. "A" corn. He had the angle now. A sort of combination of GRAND HOTEL and LETTER TO THREE WIVES.

  He could write it in a month, he knew that.

  And he did.

  Freeman was enthusiastic when he saw the finished manuscript. "This is it!" he kept crowing. "I knew you'd do it, Barnaby. You've been getting farther and farther away from all that morbid fantasy stuff. Now you've got the commercial angle. I'm going to get busy on this tomorrow. Don't worry about a thing. I'd suggest you go home and take a good long rest. You look tired, man. This job must have knocked you out."