The Metallic Muse

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  Occasionally someone lets slip a hint: Lord Dunsany describing his relationship with artist Sidney H. Sime; (“I found Mr. Sime one day, in his strange house in Worplesdon, complaining that editors did not offer him very suitable subjects for illustrations; so I said, ‘Why not do any pictures you like, and I will write stories explaining them?’ Mr. Sime fortunately agreed; and so, reversing the order of story and illustration which we, had followed hitherto, we set about putting together The Book of Wonder …”)* Or this introduction to The Botticelli Horror.

  With the Science Fiction magazines, it has been a common practice with some editors to buy a cover painting and then commission an author to write a story illustrating it. Why is it done? I would seem to be a confirmation of two assumptions widely held by authors: 1) Given a choice between a good story and a good cover painting, most editors would snatch at the painting. 2) Many artists illustrate stories under the slight handicap of not being able to read them, whereas any author who is not blind is capable of looking at pictures. (I vividly recall an early experience of my own: a story plot turned upon the villain’s lefthandedness, and the illustrator drew him wielding a knife with his right hand.)

  I thought this commission an interesting challenge. My mind fixed upon that line, “a gal busting out of a shell,” and for reasons now irretrievably lost this made me think of the “Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells,” from Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. (The fact that this composition is an interesting example of music being illustrated before it was written was coincidental.) From there a quantum jump or two took me to a setting in the Gobi Desert, where a party of paleontologists had just discovered a vast horde of enormous petrified dinosaur eggs. Horror struck immediately—members of the expedition began to vanish, and when, in the course of scientific investigation, a scientist cut into a petrified egg, he found there one of the missing paleontologists.

  I sent this notion along to my agent and set about working out a few pertinent details, such as whether the newly discovered missing person was alive, dead, or petrified, and how he got into the egg and why. I regret to say that I never solved any of these problems; the answers might possibly have been interesting.

  Letter from my agent dated September 16, 1959:

  “Nup, try again; here’s your stat. No egg.

  “But don’t let it throw you. Remember it’s a Biggish kind of story they want, your typical work: that’s the main thing. Fitting in the pic is incidental and not to be regarded as literal; it doesn’t have to involve a main scene; it doesn’t have to match exactly. Any liberties you take are okay.”

  Quoted in At the Edge of the World, copyright © 1970 by Carter (Ballantine Books), p. 157.

  It would be nice to be able to state that the moment if saw the photostat I was instantly reminded of Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus,” a painting with which I was familiar, and the plot of the story fell into place like the pieces of a magical, self-completing jigsaw puzzle. Alas, I fumbled with an unyielding plot for several days before it suddenly occurred to me that “Botticelli” was not a name that the artist or editor had made up. Then the plot fell into place.

  Whence the idea? If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten. This was ten years before MQF’s mobile quarantine facilities for returning Lunar astronauts, and the best-selling novel Andromeda Strain, but I’d be much surprised to learn that I originated anything. H. G. Wells, the old master originator, was probably first. In his The War of the Worlds the Martians are killed by Earth’s bacteria, an Andromeda Strain in reverse.

  Letter from my agent dated November 15, 1959:

  “Just to say thanks much for the Botticelli Horror. Reads damn fine, and it’s full of bright new notions.”

  One further note: The Venus referred to in this story no longer exists.

  For many years it was a scientific possibility, even probability, and scientific possibilities and probabilities are Science Fictional realities. Until the 1920s the concept of Venus as a world of enormous swamps and large, shallow, island-dotted lakes contended with one in which the entire planet was covered with water. Both visions were sandbagged scientifically in the third decade of this century by a new theory that made Venus a dry world torn by dust storms. When first advanced this ranked as merely one more speculation—no one really knew what Venus was like—and most authors found that the earlier theories provided better settings for stories, especially for the one that produced a Venus resembling the Carboniferous Period on Earth: the enormous swamps, the lush, fantastically exotic vegetation, the monstrous and amphibious animal life. This stubborn persistence on the part of Science Fiction writers was vindicated in the mid-1950s when a re-evaluation of reflection and polarization studies, along with new temperature measurements, restored the concept of an extremely wet Venus.

  The restoration was, alas, short-lived. First radio measurements and then the Venus probe Mariner II (launched August 27, 1962) settled the notion of a wet Venus forever. We now know that the surface is rough and dry, with pressure twenty times that of our atmosphere and a surface temperature much too hot for any life known to man (it would melt zinc). Gone is the ocean planet of C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra. Gone is the sea monster of Roger Zelanzny’s prize-winning story “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.” Gone is Botticelli Horror. Sometimes it’s more fun not to know!

  page 180

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Botticelli Horror

  Even from a thousand feet the town looked frightened.

  It lay tense under the shimmering heat of midafternoon a town of museum piece houses with smoke-blackened roofs that crowded closely upon one another, and of tree lined streets that neatly sliced it into squares. It was a town out of a history book—the kind of town some people thought no longer existed.

  But hundreds of such towns survived, and John Allen encountered them often, hidden away in remote valleys or rising up unexpectedly amidst rolling farm lands, like the town of Gwinn Center, Kansas. They were, all of them, much alike that even their differences seemed similar.

  Gwinn Center had other differences.

  The streets were deserted. The clumsy ground vehicles that crept along the twisting black ribbon of roadway miles beyond the town were headed south, running away. Stretched across the rich green of the cultivated fields was a wavering line of dots. As Allen slanted his plane downward the dots enlarged and became men who edged forward doggedly, holding weapons at the ready.

  The town was not completely abandoned. As Allen circled to pick out a landing place he saw a man dart from one of the commercial buildings, run at top speed along the center of a street, and with a final, furtive glance over his shoulder, disappear into a house. None of this surprised Allen. The message that had been plunked on his desk at Terran Customs an hour and a half before was explanation enough. The lurking atmosphere of terror, the fleeing townspeople, the grim line of armed men—Allen had expected all of that.

  It was the tents that puzzled him.

  They formed a square in a meadow near the edge of town, a miniature village of flapping brown and green canvas surrounding an amazing clutter of weirdly shaped contraptions of uncertain function and unknown purpose. Allen’s message didn’t account for the tents.

  He circled again, spotted the white numbers of a police plane that was parked on one of the town’s wider streets. A small group of men stood nearby in the shadow of a building. Allen completed his turn and pointed the plane downward.

  Dr. Ralph Hilks lifted his nose from the scientific journal that had claimed his entire attention from the moment of their takeoff and peered down curiously. “Is this the place? Where is everyone?”

  “Hiding, probably,” Allen said. “Those that haven’t already left.”

  “What are the tents?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  Hilks grunted. “Looks as if we’ve been handed a hot one,” he said and returned to his reading.

  Allen concentrated on the landing. They floated str
aight down and came to rest beside the police plane with a gentle thud.

  Hilks closed his journal a second time. “Nice,” he observed,

  Allen cut the motor. “Thanks,” he said dryly. “It has the new-type shocks.”

  They climbed out. The little group of men—there were four of them—had turned to watch them land. Not caring to waste time on formalities, Allen went to meet them.

  “Allen is my name,” he said. “Chief Customs Investigator. And this—” He paused until the pudgy, slow-moving scientist had caught up with him. “This is Dr. Hilks, our scientific consultant.”

  The men squared away for introductions. The tall one was Fred Corning, State Commissioner of Police. The young man in uniform was his aide, a Sergeant Darrow. A sturdy, deeply tanned individual with alert eyes and slow speech was Sheriff Townsend. The fourth man, old, wispy, with startling white, unruly hair and eyeglasses that could have been lifted from a museum, was Dr. Anderson, a medical doctor. All four of them were grim, and the horror that gripped the town had not left them unmarked, but at least they weren’t frightened.

  “You didn’t waste any time getting here,” the commissioner said. “We’re glad of that.”

  “No,” Allen said. “Let’s not waste time now.”

  “I suppose you want to see the—ah—remains?”

  “That’s as good a place to start as any.”

  “This way,” the commissioner said.

  They moved off along the center of the street.

  The house was one of a row of houses at the edge of town. It was small and tidy-looking, a white building with red shutters and window boxes full of flowers. Th splashes of color should have given it a cheerful appearance, but in that town, on that day, nothing appeared cheerful.

  The yard at the rear of the house was enclosed by a shoulder-high picket fence. They paused while the commissioner fussed with the fastener on the gate, and Dr. Hilks stood gaping at the row of houses.

  The commissioner swung the gate open and turned to look at him. “See anything?”

  “Chimneys!” Hilks said. “Every one of these dratted buildings has its own chimney. Think of it—a couple of hundred heating plants, and the town isn’t large enough for one to function efficiently. The waste must be—”

  The others moved through the gate and left him talking to himself.

  At the rear of the yard a sheet lay loosely over unnatural contours. “We took photographs, of course,” the commissioner said, “but it’s so incredible—we wanted you to see—”

  The four men each took a corner, raised the sheet carefully, and moved it away. Allen caught his breath and stepped back a pace.

  “We left—things—just as they were,” the commissioner said. “Except for the child that survived, of course. He was rushed—”

  At Allen’s feet lay the head of a blonde, blue-eyed child. She was no more than six, a young beauty who doubtless had already caused romantic palpitations in the hearts of her male playmates.

  But no longer. The head was severed cleanly just below the chin. The eyes were wide open, and on the face was a haunting expression of indescribable horror. A few scraps of clothing lay where her body should have been.

  A short distance away were other scraps of clothing and two shoes. Allen winced as he noticed that one shoe contained a foot. The other was empty. He circled to the other side, where two more shoes lay. Both were empty. Hilks was kneeling by the pathetic little head.

  “No bleeding?” Hilks asked.

  “No bleeding,” Dr. Anderson said hoarsely. “If there had been, the other child—the one that survived—would have died. But the wounds were—cauterized, you might say, though I doubt that it’s the right word. Anyway, there wasn’t any bleeding.”

  Dr. Hilks bent close to the severed head. “You mean heat was applied—”

  “I didn’t say heat,” Dr. Anderson said testily.

  “We figure it happened like this,” the commissioner said. “The three children were playing here in the yard. They were Sharon Brown, the eldest, and her little sister Ruth, who was three, and Johnnie Larkins, from next door. He’s five. The mothers were in the house, and no one would have thought anything could possibly happen to the kids.”

  “The mothers didn’t hear anything?” Allen asked. The commissioner shook his head. “Strange they wouldn’t yell or scream or something.” “Perhaps they did. The carnival was making a powerful lot of noise, so the mothers didn’t hear anything.” “Carnival?”

  The commissioner nodded at the tents.

  “Oh,” Allen said, looking beyond the fence for the first time since he’d entered the yard. “So that’s what it is.”

  “The kids were probably standing close together, playing something or maybe looking at something, and they didn’t see the—see it—coming. When they did see it they tried to scatter, but it was too late. The thing dropped on them and pinned them down. Sharon was completely covered except for her head. Ruth was covered except for one foot And Johnnie, maybe because he was the most active or maybe because he was standing apart a little, almost got away. His legs were covered, but only his knees. And then—the thing ate them.”

  Allen shuddered in spite of himself. “Ate them? Bones and all?”

  “That’s the wrong word,” Dr. Anderson said. “I would say—absorbed them.”

  “It seems to have absorbed most of their clothing, too,” Allen said. “Also, Sharon’s shoes.”

  The commissioner shook his head. “No. No shoes. Sharon wasn’t wearing any, and it left the others’ shoes. Well, this is what the mothers found when they came out. They’re both in bad shape, and I doubt that Mrs. Brown will ever be the same again. We don’t know yet whether Johnnie Larkins will recover. We don’t know what the after-effects might be when something like that eats part of you.”

  Allen turned to Hilks. “Any ideas?”

  “I’d like to know a little more about this thing. Did anyone catch a glimpse of it?”

  “Probably a couple of thousand people around here have seen it,” the commissioner said. “Now we’ll go talk to Bronsky.”

  “Who’s Bronsky?” Allen asked.

  “He’s the guy that owned it”

  They left Dr. Anderson at the scene of the tragedy to supervise whatever was to be done with the pathetic remains. The commissioner led the way through a rear gate and across the meadow to the tents.

  Above the entrance a fluttering streamer read, JOLLY BROTHERS SHOWS. They entered, with Hilks mopping his perspiring face and complaining about the heat, Allen looking about alertly, and the others walking ahead in silence.

  Allen turned his attention first to the strange apparatus that stood in the broad avenue between the tents. He saw miniature rocket ships, miniature planes, miniature ground cars, and devices too devious in appearance to identify, but he quickly puzzled out the fact that a carnival was a kind of traveling amusement park.

  Hilks had paused to look at a poster featuring a row of scantily clad young ladies. “They look cool,” he muttered, mopping his face again.

  Allen took his arm and pulled him along. “They’re also of unmistakable terrestrial origin. We’re looking for a monster from outer space.”

  “This place is something right out of the twentieth century,” Hilks said. “If not the nineteenth. Ever see one before?”

  “No, but I’ve seen stuff like this in amusement parks. I guess a carnival just moves it around.”

  Sheriff Townsend spoke over his shoulder. “This carnival has been coming here every year for as long as I can remember.”

  They passed a tent that bore the flaming title, EXOTIC WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE. The illustrations were lavishly colored and immodestly exaggerated. A gigantic flower that Allen recognized as vaguely resembling a Venusian Meat-Eater was holding a struggling rodent in its fangs. A vine, also from Venus, was in hot pursuit of a frantic young lady it had presumably surprised in the act of dressing. The plants illustrated were all Venusian, Allen thought though
the poster mentioned lichens from Mars and a Luna Vacuum Flower.

  “That isn’t the place,” the commissioner said. “There isn’t anything in there but plants and rocks.”

  “I’d like to take a look,” Allen said. He raised the tent flap. In the dim light he could see long rows of plastic display cases, each tagged with the bright yellow import permit of Terran Customs.

  “I’ll take another look later, but things seem to be in proper order,” he said.

  They moved on and stopped in front of the most startling picture Allen had ever seen. A girl arose genie-like from the yawning opening of an enormous shell. Her shapely body was—perhaps—human. Tentacles intertwined nervously where her hair should have been. Her hands were webbed claws, her facial expression the rigid, staring look of a lunatic, and her torso tapered away into the sinister darkness of the shell’s interior.

  “This is it,” the commissioner said.

  “This?” Allen echoed doubtfully.

  “That’s one of the things it did in the act.”

  Hilks had been staring intently at the poster. Suddenly he giggled. “Know what that looks like? There was an old painting by one of those early Italians. Da Vinci, maybe.

  Or Botticelli. I think it was Botticelli. It was called ‘The Birth of Venus,’ and it had a dame standing on a shell in just about that posture—except that the dame was human and not bad-looking. I wonder what happened to it. Maybe it went up with the old Louvre. I’ve seen reproductions of it. I may have one at home.”

  “I doubt that it has much bearing on our present problem,” the commissioner said dryly.

  Hilks slapped his thigh. “Allen! Some dratted artist has a fiendish sense of humor. I’ll give you odds this thing comes from Venus. It’ll have to. And the painting was called, ‘The Birth of Venus.’ From heavenly beauty to Earthly horror. Pretty good, eh?”