The Magazine of fantasy and science fiction : a 30-year retrospective

by Edward L Ferman

  "Get off," said the robber.

  The ass stopped in the path. Brother Francis tossed back his cowl to reveal the eye patch, and raised a trembling finger to touch it. He began to lift the patch slowly as if to reveal something hideous that might be hidden beneath it. The robber threw back his head and laughed a laugh that might have sprung from the throat of Satan himself. Francis muttered an exorcism, but the robber seemed untouched.

  "You black-sacked jeebers wore that one out years ago," he said. "Get off."

  Francis smiled, shrugged, and dismounted without protest.

  "A good day to you, sir," he said pleasantly. "You may take the ass. Walking will improve my health, I think." He smiled again and started away.

  "Hold it," said the robber. "Strip to the buff. And let's see what's in that package."

  Brother Francis touched his begging bowl and made a helpless gesture, but this brought only another scornful laugh from the robber.

  "I've seen that alms-pot trick before too," he said. "The last man with a begging bowl had half a heklo of gold in his boot. Now strip."

  Brother Francis displayed his sandals, but began to strip. The robber searched his clothing, found nothing, and tossed it back to him.

  "Now let's see inside the package."

  "It is only a document, sir," the monk protested. "Of value to no one but its owner."

  "Open it."

  Silently Brother Francis obeyed. The gold leaf and the colorful design flashed brilliantly in the sunlight that filtered through the foliage. The robber's craggy jaw dropped an inch. He whistled softly.

  "What a pretty! Now wouldn't me woman like it to hang on the shanty wall!"

  He continued to stare while the monk went slowly sick inside. // Thou has sent him to test me, O Lord, he pleaded inwardly, then help me to die like a man, for he'll get it over the dead body of Thy servant, if take it he must.

  "Wrap it up for me," the robber commanded, clamping his jaw in sudden decision.

  The monk whimpered softly. "Please, sir, you would not take the work of a man's lifetime. I spent fifteen years illuminating this manuscript, and..."

  "Well! Did it yourself, did you?" The robber threw back his head and howled again.

  Francis reddened. "I fail to see the humor, sir . . ."

  The robber pointed at it between guffaws. "You! Fifteen years to make a paper bauble. So that's what you do. Tell me why. Give me one good reason. For fifteen years. Ha!"

  Francis stared at him in stunned silence and could think of no reply that would appease his contempt.

  Gingerly, the monk handed it over. The robber took it in both hands and made as if to rip it down the center.

  "Jesus, Mary, Joseph!" the monk screamed, and went to his knees in the trail. "For the love of God, sir!"

  Softening slightly, the robber tossed it on the ground with a snicker. "Wrestle you for it."

  "Anything, sir, anything!"

  They squared off. The monk crossed himself and recalled that wrestling had once been a divinely sanctioned sport—and with grim faith, he marched into battle.

  Three seconds later, he lay groaning on the flat of his back under a short mountain of muscle. A sharp rock seemed to be severing his spine.

  "Heh-heh," said the robber, and arose to claim his document.

  Hands folded as if in prayer, Brother Francis scurried after him on his knees, begging at the top of his lungs.

  The robber turned to snicker. "I believe you'd kiss a boot to get it back."

  Francis caught up with him and fervently kissed his boot.

  This proved too much for even such a firm fellow as the robber. He flung the manuscript down again with a curse and climbed aboard the monk's donkey. The monk snatched up the precious document and trotted along beside the robber, thanking him profusely and blessing him repeatedly while the robber rode away on the ass. Francis sent a glowing cross of benediction after the departing figure and praised God for the existence of such selfless robbers.

  And yet when the man had vanished among the trees, he felt an aftermath of sadness. Fifteen years to make a paper bauble . . . The taunting voice still rang in his ears. Why? Tell one good reason for fifteen years.

  He was unaccustomed to the blunt ways of the outside world, to its harsh habits and curt attitudes. He found his heart deeply troubled by the mocking words, and his head hung low in the cowl as he plodded along. At one time he considered tossing the document in the brush and leaving it for the rains—but Father Juan had approved his taking it as a gift, and he could not come with empty hands. Chastened, he traveled on.

  The hour had come. The ceremony surged about him as a magnificent spectacle of sound and stately movement and vivid color in the majestic basilica. And when the perfectly infallible Spirit had finally been invoked, a monsignor—it was di Simone, Francis noticed, the advocate for the saint—arose and called upon Peter to speak, through the person of Leo XXII, commanding the assemblage to hearken.

  Whereupon, the Pope quietly proclaimed that Isaac Edward Leibo-witz was a saint, and it was finished. The ancient and obscure technician was of the heavenly hagiarchy, and Brother Francis breathed a dutiful prayer to his new patron as the choir burst into the Te Deum.

  The Pontiff strode quickly into the audience room where the little monk was waiting, taking Brother Francis by surprise and rendering him briefly speechless. He knelt quickly to kiss the Fisherman's ring and receive the blessing. As he arose, he found himself clutching the beautiful document behind him as if ashamed of it. The Pope's eyes caught the motion, and he smiled.

  "You have brought us a gift, our son?" he asked.

  The monk gulped, nodded stupidly, and brought it out. Christ's Vicar stared at it for a long time without apparent expression. Brother Francis' heart went sinking deeper as the seconds drifted by.

  "It is a nothing," he blurted, "a miserable gift. I am ashamed to have wasted so much time at. . ." He choked off.

  The Pope seemed not to hear him. "Do you understand the meaning of Saint Isaac's symbology?" he asked, peering curiously at the abstract design of the circuit.

  Dumbly the monk shook his head.

  "Whatever it means ..." the Pope began, but broke off. He smiled and spoke of other things. Francis had been so honored not because of any official judgment concerning his pilgrim. He had been honored for his role in bringing to light such important documents and relics of the saint, for such they had been judged, regardless of the manner in which they had been found.

  Francis stammered his thanks. The Pontiff gazed again at the colorful blaze of his illuminated diagram. "Whatever it means," he breathed once more, "this bit of learning, though dead, will live again." He smiled up at the monk and winked. "And we shall guard it till that day."

  For the first time, the little monk noticed that the Pope had a hole in his robe. His clothing, in fact, was threadbare. The carpet in the audience room was worn through in spots, and plaster was falling from the ceiling.

  But there were books on the shelves along the walls. Books of painted beauty, speaking of incomprehensible things, copied by men whose business was not to understand but to save. And the books were waiting.

  "Goodby, beloved son."

  And the small keeper of the flame of knowledge trudged back toward his abbey on foot. His heart was singing as he approached the robber's outpost. And if the robber happened to be taking the day off, the monk meant to sit down and wait for his return. This time he had an answer.

  Love Letters from Mars

  John Clardi

  Dear cell, the Martian winter ends. The tubes run green again, and green the hydroponic hills are seen without their glass. Our ship ascends through a new vapor. And the Frogs grow restless in their locks. Unrest is on us all. This gravity works through me. No psychometry keeps its adjustment. Everywhere the Frogs are hating us, hating us. (Can we shut out what we shut in?) Sometimes I tense myself to tear my filter off, gulp, and be damned. "A lot of extra-sensory fuss," I tell myself, but ca
n't command the balance of my mood. My dear, something is happening to Spring: we've come too far from everything.

  One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts

  Shirley Jackson

  Shirley Jackson was a well-known novelist {and practicing amateur witch!) who died in 1965. Her novels include The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Her short fiction in-eludes the famous story "The Lottery" and the lesser-known but equally distinguished story that appears below. It was first published in F&SF's January 1955 issue.

  Mr. John Philip Johnson shut his front door behind him and came down his front steps into the bright morning with a feeling that all was well with the world on this best of all days, and wasn't the sun warm and good, and didn't his shoes feel comfortable after the resoling, and he knew that he had undoubtedly chosen the precise very tie which belonged with the day and the sun and his comfortable feet, and, after all, wasn't the world just a wonderful place? In spite of the fact that he was a small man, and the tie was perhaps a shade vivid, Mr. Johnson irradiated this feeling of well-being as he came down the steps and onto the dirty sidewalk, and he smiled at people who passed him, and some of them even smiled back. He stopped at the newsstand on the corner and bought his paper, saying "Good morning" with real conviction to the man who sold him the paper and the two or three other people who were lucky enough to be buying papers when Mr. Johnson skipped up. He remembered to fill his pockets with candy and peanuts, and then he set out to get himself uptown. He stopped in a flower shop and bought a carnation for his buttonhole, and stopped almost immediately afterward to give the carnation to a small child in a carriage, who looked at him dumbly, and then smiled, and Mr. Johnson smiled, and the child's mother looked at Mr. Johnson for a minute and then smiled too.

  When he had gone several blocks uptown, Mr. Johnson cut across the avenue and went along a side street, chosen at random; he did not follow the same route every morning, but preferred to pursue his eventful way in wide detours, more like a puppy than a man intent upon business. It happened this morning that halfway down the block a moving van was parked, and the furniture from an upstairs apartment stood half on the sidewalk, half on the steps, while an amused group of people loitered, examining the scratches on the tables and the worn spots on the chairs, and a harassed woman, trying to watch a young child and the movers and the furniture all at the same time, gave the clear impression of endeavoring to shelter her private life from the people staring at her belongings. Mr. Johnson stopped, and for a moment joined the crowd, and then he came forward and, touching his hat civilly, said, "Perhaps I can keep an eye on your little boy for you?"

  The woman turned and glared at him distrustfully, and Mr. Johnson added hastily, "We'll sit right here on the steps." He beckoned to the little boy, who hesitated and then responded agreeably to Mr. Johnson's genial smile. Mr. Johnson brought out a handful of peanuts from his pocket and sat on the steps with the boy, who at first refused the peanuts on the grounds that his mother did not allow him to accept food from strangers; Mr. Johnson said that probably his mother had not intended peanuts to be included, since elephants at the circus ate them, and the boy considered, and then agreed solemnly. They sat on the steps cracking peanuts in a comradely fashion, and Mr. Johnson said, "So you're moving?"

  "Yep," said the boy.

  "Where you going?"

  "Vermont."

  "Nice place. Plenty of snow there. Maple sugar, too; you like maple sugar?"

  "Sure."

  "Plenty of maple sugar in Vermont. You going to live on a farm?"

  "Going to live with Grandpa."

  "Grandpa like peanuts?"

  "Sure."

  "Ought to take him some," said Mr. Johnson, reaching into his pocket. "Just you and Mommy going?"

  "Yep."

  "Tell you what," Mr. Johnson said. "You take some peanuts to eat on the train."

  The boy's mother, after glancing at them frequently, had seemingly decided that Mr. Johnson was trustworthy, because she had devoted herself wholeheartedly to seeing that the movers did not—what movers rarely do, but every housewife believes they will—crack a leg from her good table, or set a kitchen chair down on a lamp. Most of the furniture was loaded by now, and she was deep in that nervous stage when she knew there was something she had forgotten to pack—hidden away in the back of a closet somewhere, or left at a neighbor's and forgotten, or on the clothesline—and was trying to remember under stress what it was.

  "This all, lady?" the chief mover said, completing her dismay.

  Uncertainly, she nodded.

  "Want to go on the truck with the furniture, sonny?" the mover asked the boy, and laughed. The boy laughed too and said to Mr. Johnson, "I guess I'll have a good time at Vermont."

  "Fine time," said Mr. Johnson, and stood up. "Have one more peanut before you go," he said to the boy.

  The boy's mother said to Mr. Johnson. "Thank you so much; it was a great help to me."

  "Nothing at all," said Mr. Johnson gallantly. "Where in Vermont are you going?"

  The mother looked at the little boy accusingly, as though he had given away a secret of some importance, and said unwillingly, "Greenwich."

  "Lovely town," said Mr. Johnson. He took out a card, and wrote a name on the back. "Very good friend of mine lives in Greenwich," he said. "Call on him for anything you need. His wife makes the best doughnuts in town," he added soberly to the little boy.

  "Swell," said the little boy.

  "Goodbye," said Mr. Johnson.

  He went on, stepping happily with his new-shod feet, feeling the warm sun on his back and on the top of his head. Halfway down the block he met a stray dog and fed him a peanut.

  At the corner, where another wide avenue faced him, Mr. Johnson decided to go on uptown again. Moving with comparative laziness, he was passed on either side by people hurrying and frowning, and people brushed past him going the other way, clattering along to get somewhere quickly. Mr. Johnson stopped on every corner and waited patiently for the light to change, and he stepped out of the way of anyone who seemed to be in any particular hurry, but one young lady came too fast for him, and crashed wildly into him when he stooped to pat a kitten which had run out onto the sidewalk from an apartment house and was now unable to get back through the rushing feet.

  "Excuse me," said the young lady, trying frantically to pick up Mr. Johnson and hurry on at the same time, "terribly sorry."

  The kitten, regardless now of danger, raced back to its home. "Perfectly all right," said Mr. Johnson, adjusting himself carefully. "You seem to be in a hurry."

  "Of course I'm in a hurry," said the young lady. "I'm late."

  She was extremely cross and the frown between her eyes seemed well on its way to becoming permanent. She had obviously awakened late, because she had not spent any extra time in making herself look pretty, and her dress was plain and unadorned with collar or brooch, and her lipstick was noticeably crooked. She tried to brush past Mr. Johnson, but, risking her suspicious displeasure, he took her arm and said, "Please wait."

  "Look," she said ominously, "I ran into you and your lawyer can see my lawyer and I will gladly pay all damages and all inconveniences suffered therefrom but please this minute let me go because / am late"

  "Late for what?" said Mr. Johnson; he tried his winning smile on her but it did no more than keep her, he suspected, from knocking him down again.

  "Late for work," she said between her teeth. "Late for my employment. I have a job and if I am late I lose exactly so much an hour and I cannot really afford what your pleasant conversation is costing me, be it ever so pleasant."

  "I'll pay for it," said Mr. Johnson. Now these were magic words, not necessarily because they were true, or because she seriously expected Mr. Johnson to pay for anything, but because Mr. Johnson's flat statement, obviously innocent of irony, could not be, coming from Mr. Johnson, anything but the statement of a responsible and truthful and respectable man.

  "What do you mean?" she asked.<
br />
  "I said that since I am obviously responsible for your being late I shall certainly pay for it."

  "Don't be silly," she said, and for the first time the frown disappeared. "I wouldn't expect you to pay for anything—a few minutes ago I was offering to pay you. Anyway," she added, almost smiling, "it was my fault."

  "What happens if you don't go to work?"

  She stared. "I don't get paid."

  "Precisely," said Mr. Johnson.

  "What do you mean, precisely? If I don't show up at the office exactly twenty minutes ago I lose a dollar and twenty cents an hour, or two cents a minute or . . ." She thought. ". . . Almost a dime for the time I've spent talking to you."

  Mr. Johnson laughed, and finally she laughed, too. "You're late already," he pointed out. "Will you give me another four cents worth?"

  "I don't understand why."

  "You'll see," Mr. Johnson promised. He led her over to the side of the walk, next to the buildings, and said, "Stand here," and went out into the rush of people going both ways. Selecting and considering, as one who must make a choice involving perhaps whole years of lives, he estimated the people going by. Once he almost moved, and then at the last minute thought better of it and drew back. Finally, from half a block away, he saw what he wanted, and moved out into the center of the traffic to intercept a young man, who was hurrying, and dressed as though he had awakened late, and frowning.

  "Oof," said the young man, because Mr. Johnson had thought of no better way to intercept anyone than the one the young woman had unwittingly used upon him. "Where do you think you're going?" the young man demanded from the sidewalk."

  "I want to speak to you," said Mr. Johnson ominously.

  The young man got up nervously, dusting himself and eying Mr. Johnson. "What for?" he said. "What'd / do?"

  "That's what bothers me most about people nowadays," Mr. Johnson complained broadly to the people passing. "No matter whether they've done anything or not, they always figure someone's after them. About what you're going to do," he told the young man.