by Fritz Leiber
I jest, yet from all this you can understand, Di, why younger, sounder, more professional physicists would laugh or shake their heads if I told them of Geller’s Folly. I am waiting, on my knees as it were, for an improbability that is for all human purposes an impossibility. To them I must present a ridiculous spectacle. But those younger men, with their easier, more sophisticated, eclectic philosophies, do not comprehend the deep passions of a devoted materialist like myself. Scorning the lie of spirit, believing—only in matter, in molecules and other particles, I have a far more fierce and patient desire than they do to understand all that matter is capable of, to know matter’s rare and whimsical as well as its everyday behavior. When one of the young men embraces the Christian faith, especially in its Catholic form, I am tempted to suggest: (again I trust I do not shock you) “Let us subject to chemical analysis this host you consume at mass to learn if there is indeed protoplasm in the transubstantiated wafer and hemoglobin in the wine”—a suggestion which, if I made it, would get me called a blockhead or worse. As I say, they simply no longer understand the true materialist temper.
It is for a related reason that I keep the Folly so carefully under lock and key—a circumstance that I imagine had been puzzling you, Di. Once in an unwise burst of enthusiasm I told my students about the Folly. Instead of receiving the information with bored incomprehension or kindly indulgence, a mischievous cruelty seized them. Attempts were made by doctoring the tape to hoax me into thinking I had achieved fabulous results. Since then I have taken stern precautions and I have told no one about the Folly, no one, at all, except…
Oh, let me hold the door for you. Thank you. Ah, the night is refreshingly chill—I see traces of snow in the shadows—and for once Chicago’s air seems smog-free, though acid and cold. We will let it stream through our beings and blow away the stuffy preoccupations of an old man who has lived too long with molecules.
That’s a strange thing, Di, but I just now seemed to smell roses, an abundance of roses. Oh, is it your perfume? No—no, I see that yours is a very different scent though equally delightful. Pardon me if I seem flustered, but I don’t know when a young lady had leaned her cheek so close to mine—even in the interests of scientific accuracy. You put the perfume behind the lobe of your ear?—that’s charming.
You smelled the roses too? You shared my illusion?—if it was one. Roses in January in Chicago snows—a delightful circumstance. Perhaps a hearse skidded and overset nearby—or don’t you enjoy macabre fancies?
In Chicago one must learn to treasure each hint of the marvelous or outlandish—there are few enough of them at best to offset the dismalness of the city, its grime, its stenches, its shrieking, roaring, growling, rumbling tumult that distantly assaults our ears even here in these gray gothic precincts. A grimly lonely city. When I first came here as a fellow (my entire academic life, Di, has been spent in this one institution) it seemed to me that Chicago’s loneliness was an almost unbearable continuation, in a darker mode, of the loneliness of my childhood and youth. The whine of its elevated trains and the screech of its streetcars, the angry chug of its taxicabs and the pounding of its presses (augmented now by the drone of its aircraft, even the boom of its jets, and not to mention the heavier minatory sounds that proceed from its railway yards, docks and factory districts)—all these noises became an integral part of my consciousness.
Listen to the Song of Chicago, Di! Listen to the steel tom-toms and rattles of modern primitive man. The more noise the less message, the new men say—I sometimes understand what that means. Listen to the Music of the Spheres, Midwestern style—I might venture to call it the Jazz of the Gears. I wonder if, to more sensitive ears, the molecules in the Folly make any such muted pandemonium? What? Yes, I’ll be quiet.
Di, you’re right! You’re right! It was incredible, but it did happen. For a moment—no, for several seconds—the sounds of the city became the notes of a great symphony, tragic and darkly majestic. Let us listen again. No, it is gone now. Oh, I suppose it might have been a powerful hi-fi briefly yet smoothly turned up, perhaps in the dormitory there—no, I will not believe that, I will never believe it!—it was the random sounds of the city we heard and for several seconds they became powerful, perfect music. Marihuana, I have read, produces such illusions, but I have never smoked even nicotine. Well, this is becoming a night for wonders! I shall always think you somehow responsible for them, Di.
Di, it occurs to me that what we have just shared the privilege of hearing is an excellent chance example of what I am trying to achieve under laboratory conditions in the Folly. It has been said that if you set a billion monkeys to pounding on a billion typewriters they would eventually write among other things purely by chance the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. There are several catches to that one, especially the length of time represented by the “eventually” and the question of the means of checking the monkey pages for intelligibility and of recognizing and fitting together the fragments. Still, it seems to me that we have here a valid analogy: listen to the random noises of a city long enough and you will eventually catch a section where purely by chance they counterfeit a great unknown symphony. It is another case of waiting for three weeks of thirteen-hearts-hands and—in this case—getting them!
Also it occurs to me that the roses we swore we smelled might conceivably by put in the same or a nearby category. Some physiologists believe that odor is a matter of formula and that various combinations of molecules, some common, some most rare, will produce the same scent when impinging on the receptors in the nasal membrane. Sniff the acrid atmosphere of a city long enough and you will eventually inhale a rare combination of industrial molecules that counterfeits the scent of roses. Oh, what travesties the cruder of my colleagues would make of that notion!
I suppose there must be some humdrum explanation in both cases (though I don’t really believe that) but just the same I feel extraordinarily exhilarated. You know, Di, I have searched for the miraculous all my life, in my austere fashion—Maxwell’s demon is a god of sorts, and how else would any god manifest itself except by bringing about the occurrence of the vastly improbable? Tonight for the first time I believe my desire has achieved fruition or at least the illusion thereof. When I was a child—this is something I have told to very few people, Di, very few—when I was a child I became enamoured of Greek mythology (Ovid’s Metamorphoses was one of my first books) and in my loneliness I peopled the empty lots around my home and the park nearby with the deities and monsters of classic Greece. In a glade in the park (really a bare space behind some bushes) I reared rude altars (little more than shingles with flowers and bright trinkets and assorted childish treasures set on them as offerings) to Pan and Diana.
Yes, Di, to your namesake! To Diana, the slim moon-goddess, the virgin huntress. Much later it occurred to me that here I might have made a mistake (no, not a mistake precisely—I do not blaspheme your namesake, Di) in making my offerings to Diana rather than Venus, for no lovely young lady ever came to share my life. I have always been a votary of the chaste Silver One—Miss Silvers! What a night for coincidences!
Small wonder, really, that I remain celibate, for I was always singularly timid, credulous and inept in my very limited contacts with the opposite sex. Why, I was such a num-noddy in such matters, especially during my college years, that I was once cruelly hoaxed. I was accosted in the dormitory corridors by a slim and very pretty young lady who claimed to be in need of immediate assistance with her costume—a pin for her underskirt was wanted. In fear and secret delight I invited her into my room, where she lingered for an embarrassingly blissfully long time and finally wantonly approached me. A few moments later there was a chorus of laughter from a group of hidden eavesdroppers and the secret was out—the young lady was the “feminine” lead in the all-male Capers, or whatever they called their yearly show.
And that is something I have never told another soul. A distressful anecdote, really, with distasteful overtones—I hardly know why I should have bu
rdened you with it. Come, let us return. Here’s our doorway again. We have taken rather long, Olafson will have climbed from his Hole and be waiting at the Folly.
Di, why did you touch my cheek? Look up, you say?
Di, that glimmering! What is it? What are they? What are those ghostly figures of ice and fire moving up the sky, those jeweled deities, that heroic procession? I’m frightened, Di, hold me close—no, no, pardon an old man’s weakness, but what was it that we saw? I’m shaking still. What was it? Again the impossibly improbable? Look at the multitudinous lights of a city long enough…
Di, what’s happening tonight? What are you doing?—it is your doing, isn’t it? All of a sudden these things are too much for me, too many for me. Why did you come to me tonight? Why did you come back, really? Were you really a student of mine? Is this some last hoax? No, I don’t see how, but—
The Folly? We can’t go to the Folly now. I feel… Yes, I suppose we could, but… Very well.
Di! Yes, I’m coming, but the stone, here, by the door—it feels like velvet, like silver velvet! Touch gray stone long enough… Di, am I going mad? Wait for me, Di!
Watch out, Di! Watch out for Olafson—I don’t think he can see you. Olafson, don’t walk into the lady! Olafson, what’s happened to you? Olafson!
He moves past us as if we weren’t there! And he’s smiling, smiling like a man in ecstasy. Do you see that? Olafson is smiling…
What’s that that fluttered from his hand? I’ll get it. A torn-off scrap of paper—the Folly’s last measurements. I’ll look at them.
.99999
.99999
1.00000
.99999
1.00000
.99999
.00000
2.00000
1.00000
.99999
.99999
1.00001
Di! Where are you, Di?
Di, who were you?
TABOO
“In the name of the Great Heritage, I claim refuge!”
The voice was strong and trumpet-clear, yet with a curious note of mockery. The face was in shadow, but the embers of a smoky sunset outlined, with smudged brush-strokes of blood, the giant figure. The left hand lightly gripped the lintel of the low doorway for support. The right hung limp—Seafor noted that there the sunset red merged into real blood, which now began to drip upon the floor.
Seafor looked up. “If I am not mistaken,” he said, “you are Amine the outlaw—”
“When there was law, or rather the illusion of law, which there hasn’t been, in my lifetime,” interjected the other, in an amused rumble.
“—who has ravaged a hundred petty domains,” Seafor continued imperturbably, “who has thieved, kidnapped, and killed without mercy, whose trickery and cunning have already become legend, and who does not care one atom in chaos for the Great Heritage which he now invokes to save his life.”
“What difference does that make?” Amine chuckled. “You have to grant me refuge if I claim it. That’s your law.” He swayed, gripped the lintel more strongly, and looked behind him. “And if you don’t cut your speech of welcome pretty short, it’ll be my funeral oration. I’m still fair prey, you know, until I’m inside the door.”
There was a sudden humming in the murky sky. A narrow beam laced down, firing the air to incandescence, making a great gout of blinding light where it struck the ground a dozen yards away. Immediately came thunder, a puff of heat, and the smell of burning. Seafor fell back a step, blinking. But in the empty hush that followed the thunder, his reply to Amine sounded as cool and methodical as his previous remarks.
“You are right, on all counts. Please come in.” He moved a little to one side and inclined his head slightly. “Welcome, Amine, to Bleaksmound Retreat. We grant you refuge.”
The outlaw lurched forward, yet with something of the effect of a swagger. As he passed Seafor, there came from beyond the door a groan of the sort that sets the teeth on edge. Seafor looked at him sharply.
“You have a companion?”
The outlaw shook his head. He turned, so that the ruddy sunset glow highlighted his lean, big-featured face—a dangerous, red-haired god, a hero with a fox somewhere among his ancestors.
“Some beast, perhaps, singed by the blast,” he hazarded, and showed his teeth in a long, thin smile.
Seafor made no comment. “Hyousiks! Teneks!” he called. “We have a guest. Attend to his hurts. Relieve him of his weapons.” Then he took down from the wall a small transparent globe with a dark cylindrical base and went inside.
It was a ragged and desolate landscape that opened up for Seafor. The crimson band of sky edging the horizon heightened the illusion that a forest fire had recently burned through it. Dead and sickly trees were outlined blackly.
Seafor skirted the blasted patch, holding up the globe, in which a curled wire now glowed brightly. The humming returned. He did not look up, but he moved the luminous globe back and forth to call attention to it.
The groan was repeated. A metallic shimmer caught Seafor’s eyes. A few steps brought him to the wreck of a small flier. Beside it, in an unnaturally contorted posture, was sprawled a small figure clad in rich synthetics.
Seafor unlashed the small wrists, and did a little to ease the broken ankle. The boy shuddered and tried to draw away. Then his eyes opened.
“Seafor! Seafor of Bleaksmound!” There was surprise in the shrill voice. He stared and plucked at Seafor’s sleeve with his skinny fingers.
The humming increased. It was as if the buzzing of one giant wasp had brought others.
“You’re safe now,” said Seafor. “Arnine’s gone. Your father’s men will be here very soon.”
The boy’s fingers tightened. “Don’t let them take me,” he whispered suddenly.
“Don’t you understand? I said your father’s men.”
The boy nodded. “Please don’t let them take me,” he repeated in the same imploring whisper. “I want to stay with you, Seafor. I want to stay at Bleaksmound.”
Within seconds of each other, four fliers grounded, their repulsors scattering clods of black soil. From each, two men sprang.
The boy tugged frantically at Seafor’s arm, as if by that means he could force a nod or a reassuring smile. Then a kind of boyish cunning brightened his eyes.
“Refuge, Seafor,” he whispered. “I claim refuge.”
Seafor did not reply and his expression remained impassive, but he hooked to his belt the globe which he had previously set down, and carefully lifted the boy in his arms.
The men hurried up. They wore identical emblems on their blue synthetic coveralls and skull-tight hoods. They carried blasters. They seemed like soldiers, except for a lack of discipline and a kind of animal bleakness that darkened their faces like a tangible film. Because of that film, they did not even seem human—quite.
Seafor’s gray robe was crude and beggarly compared with their sleek clothing, but his pale, stern, ascetic face, like something carved from ivory, shone with a light that further darkened theirs.
Now that they faced him, a certain confusion became apparent in their manner.
“We’re Ayarten of Rossel’s men,” one of them explained. “That’s his son you’ve got there. Amine the outlaw kidnapped him, intending ransom. We brought down his flier.”
“I know that,” said Seafor.
“We’re grateful to you, outsider, for the help you’ve given Ayarten’s son,” the other continued. He stepped forward to take the boy, but his manner lacked assurance.
Seafor did not reply. The boy clung to him. He turned and walked toward the dark, square mass of Bleaksmound.
“We must take the boy home to his father,” the other protested, following a step. “Give him to us, outsider.”
“He has claimed refuge,” Seafor told them without turning his head, and walked on.
They conferred together in whispers, but no action came of it. They watched the luminous globe jog gently up the hill, casting a large fantastic s
hadow.
“Gives you the shivers,” muttered one. “Dead men. That’s what they’re like. Dead men.”
“You can’t figure them out. Think of getting light by heating a wire inside a ball of dead air. Like our primitive ancestors. And when there’s atom power a-plenty!”
“But they give up atom power, you know, when they give up everything else—when they die to the world,”
“Imagine the boy asking for refuge. Scared out of his wits, I suppose. Never catch me doing that.”
“I always thought young Ayten was a queer boy.”
“Ayarten won’t like this when we tell him. He won’t like it at all—not with Amine taking shelter in the same place. He’ll be angry.”
“Not our fault, though.”
“We’d better hurry. Set the cordon. Report to Ayarten.”
Burly, blue-tinged shadows, they dispersed to their fliers.
Seafor handed the boy to two of his gray-robed brethren, who had a stretcher ready, and preceded them to the infirmary. He met Amine coming out of the weapon room under escort, and noted the greedy look on the outlaw’s face.
“Remarkable collection you have there,” said Amine. “Some of the fine old models they don’t turn out any more. And so many!”
“Some people die in refuge,” Seafor explained. “A few become outsiders. And some go away without reclaiming their weapons.”
Arnine’s ruddy-gold eyebrows arched skeptically. He seemed on the point of launching a satirical reply when he noticed the stretcher.
Seafor motioned the bearers on to the infirmary. “Do you feel up to having dinner in the refectory?” he asked.
