Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Pete hunkered down in an’ alley and began to think furiously. Sabu watched, awe-stricken. Pete might start a war, in which the owner of a flying carpet could make a fortune. But military experiences at the siege of Troy weren’t exactly unqualified successes. Besides, people were always getting hurt in wars. No, the war idea was not so good.

  Finally Pete came to the perfect solution of his problem. Vaudeville! Introduce the delights of vaudeville to these Persians, offer big money for new and original acts, and indubitably the magic carpeteer would learn of his big chance to cash in. He would come as inevitably as flies to honey.

  Once he had the inventor located, Pete had no doubt of his ability to wheedle, bribe, steal, or slug the secret of the carpet from its owner.

  “Okay!” he cried, jumping up. “I got it!”

  Sabu’s eyes widened.

  “Hath aught been revealed to thee in a vision, O Bo?”

  “Yeah, yeah. A vision. All I need now is a theatre. I mean, d’you know of a place I can rent a big building?”

  Sabu thought, then suggested the home of a recently deceased wealthy jewel trader. His harem had been disbanded by his sole heir, a spinster sister, and now the place stood practically empty. Apart from the mosque, it was the most nearly suitable place in Bagdad that the lad could think of.

  WITHIN the hour Pete presented himself to the lady in question. Behind her veil she was homely enough to have gotten a job in any dairy souring the cream, but this type was all the easier for Pete’s savoir faire. Glib-tongued, suave, he knocked her off balance with rank flattery, then floored her with his fast-talking business proposition.

  “Babe,” he said, “it’s the birth of vaudeville, and don’t ask me why. It’ll sweep the country, and I’m the guy what can do it. We’ll take this barn o’ yours—it ain’t earnin’ you a dime, I mean a kran, and what d’you want with such a big joint, anyway?—and turn it into a real investment. You’ll be known throughout the Orient as a benign patroness of the Arts.

  “Of course, I realize the financial gain involved doesn’t interest you so much, so we’ll just sign for a nominal ten per cent of the net profits. By coincidence I have a contract right with me, just a little one-year lease with options and permission to make alterations.” Pete whipped out parchment and quill smoothly. “Right here, if you please. On the dotted line . . .”

  A flirtatious glance, a sly squeeze of the hand, and she was Pete’s, body and soul. More to the point, so was her property.

  An architect came next, and he was induced to remodel the building to Pete’s specifications, in return for another ten per cent of the net, if any.

  Pete opened his office in one corner of the new theatre with the sign, “Theatrical Agency. Talent Wanted,” hung in the window. He also plastered Bagdad with throw-sheets asking for entertainers, promising glittering rewards for those who could qualify. Then he sat back to await prosperity.

  Prosperity, unfortunately, was reluctant to be wooed by this brash stranger. Entertainers came, it is true, but they were all alike. They were girls who danced at banquets and stag parties; to the last female, the only thing they could do was the Dance of the Seven Veils.

  “That’s okay as far as it goes,” Pete exclaimed to Sabu in disgust, “but you can’t make a vaudeville show outa one act, can you?”

  “I know not, O Bo.”

  So Pete took the seven best hoofers, made a chorus, and taught them some of the simpler tap routines he had once known many centuries in the future. He named the act Dance of the Forty-nine Veils.

  “It’s plain to see,” he observed, “that I gotta be the director of this show as well as the producer.”

  Sabu’s bottle gave Manx his first idea. Aided by a coppersmith, he fashioned one of those trick stage jugs which appear to empty themselves of water time after time. Pete, in his varied career, had once stooged for a rather good magician. Naturally he had picked up a good many of the master’s tricks, and now they came in good stead.

  He worked out a magic act for himself, nothing elaborate but sufficiently clever to amaze the local yokels. There were some simple card tricks, a many-pocketed coat with the usual assortment of eggs, coins, and rabbits, and the act climaxed by sawing Sabu in half. The equipment was paid for by another promise of ten per cent of the profits.

  NEXT Pete scouted around for musicians. There were a few street singers and beggars strumming on three-stringed mandolins, and he also found two down-at-heel fellows who played on a flute-like instrument. The music was weird, sing-song stuff, like Raymond Scott a little off key.

  He whipped together an octet of strings and woodwinds, with a percussion section featuring a home-made drum. Not at all satisfied with the current taste in music, Pete simply wrote his own—three pieces, all that he could remember offhand; Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar, Boogly Woogly Piggy, and a rough rendering of Glenn Miller’s arrangement of the Volga Boatman.

  By the time he had thoroughly rehearsed his orchestra, one of the girls had blossomed forth with real talent, and was elevated to the position of specialty artiste. Stalling for time, Pete promised the cast another ten per cent if they would be patient.

  “It’s tough, kid,” he sighed to the awed Sabu. “Sometimes people don’t savvy the genius of a true promoter.”

  When the show finally premiered, however, Pete considered his troubles practically over. It was a smash hit. Bo’s Bagdad Burleycue (Come One—Come All! Plenty of Persian Pretties!) played to S.R.O. before the first week was out. Money poured in so fast Sabu, promoted to theater manager, became dizzy trying to keep accounts.

  Pete, of course, was preoccupied with his main purpose, trying to locate the elusive roving rug. By twos and threes, then by dozens and finally by the hundreds, hopeful entertainers thronged Pete’s offices trying to persuade the Great Man that they were born vaudevillians. Jugglers, minstrels, acrobats, itinerant storytellers, and others swarmed about like a plague.

  Pete trained two assistants to catch the acts, which were monotonously alike and usually lousy. All he wanted to know was—had any of them ever heard of a guy with a flying carpet? None had.

  Presently another difficulty arose. Pete was not surprised; he had yet to travel in Time without something going amiss. Sabu came to him breathlessly one morning with a message.

  “O Bo,” he gasped, “the mighty Ali Ben Mahmoud demands thy presence!”

  Pete sighed.

  “Who’s this Ben? Why don’t he see me here?”

  “Ali Ben Mahmoud, O Bo, is the caliph of Bagdad.” Sabu lowered his voice fearfully. “A very wicked caliph, O Bo, whose people groan beneath unjust taxes and walk in terror of his displeasure.”

  Pete smiled cynically.

  “Crooked politics, hey? What’s he want?”

  “I surmise that thou hast incurred his displeasure with thy vaudeville. It angers the caliph when another maketh more money than he.”

  Pete glanced down at his tailor-made silks, glittering with jewels. He smiled with some vanity.

  “We are in the dough,” he said complacently. “Well, let’s put this smalltime politician in his place.”

  Sabu hesitated.

  “It would be better, O Bo, wert thou a man of high social estate. Hast thou a title in that far land whence thou come?”

  “I was a corporal in C.M.T.C. once.

  I guess nobody will kick if I promote myself. From now on you can call me major.”

  “Excellent, O Major Bo. It will impress the caliph. Follow me.”

  THE palace to which Sabu led Pete was an ornate structure of the Persian hybrid architecture of domes and minarets and semicircular arches. Ali Ben Mahmoud, however, though pretentious in a fat and bejeweled way, was anything but hybrid. He was pure, unadulterated chiseler from turban to sandals. Pete had known too many sharpshooters to make any mistake about this one.

  He bowed low, tipping his turban at a rakish angle.

  “Major Bo, at your service, Caliph. What’s cookin’ ?”
<
br />   Ali Ben gave the flippant visitor a basilisk stare, while pawing through an acre of surrounding food for a chop to gnaw on.

  “It hath come to my ears,” he said, “that thou seekest a magic carpet.”

  “Yeah, Ben. Somewhere around here a guy has invented a flying rug. I’m tryin’ to locate it.”

  “If there be any such marvel in Bagdad, it belongeth to me.”

  Ali Ben and Pete exchanged a long look. Pete swallowed. This was what he had feared, tough competition that he would have trouble in bucking.

  “Sure, Ben, if I get it. If I find the thing, I’ll bring it right around. All I want is a few words with the inventor, anyway.”

  “Not ‘if,’ O Major. Thou seemest confident of the existence of such a magic carpet. If ’tis not brought to me forthwith, I shall suspect treachery. That would be unfortunate.” He drew one fat finger playfully across his throat, but Pete could see he was not joking.

  Pete began to sweat.

  “Gimme time, Ben. Say, four weeks, huh? I oughtta locate it by then.” He smothered a smile when the caliph acquiesced. If he failed, inside of four weeks he would be safely back in the twentieth century.

  Ali Ben Mahmoud tossed a ruined drumstick aside, replete.

  “Lest you misunderstand, Major Bo, I have imposed a new tax. Fifty tomans a day for all who promote entertaining in theaters.”

  Pete shrugged. That was chicken-feed. But the caliph continued:

  “Shrug not, O Bo. This tax increaseth each day by fifty tomans, thus to insure thy most earnest efforts in the search for the flying carpet.” He smiled benignly. “Tax defaulters, of course—” He again made the cute little throat-cutting gesture.

  Pete gulped; they evidently played for keeps in Bagdad.

  “Okay, Ali, if that’s the way you want it. I’ll do my best.” Wherewith he bowed himself out of The Presence, muttering angrily.

  Back at his office, Pete realized things would have to hum. In ten days that mounting tax would be more than his profits could handle.

  At once he began to organize roadshows. The beauty of the scheme was that, besides increasing revenue, it would send his agents to all parts of the kingdom and multiply his chances of catching the eye and ear of the cagey magic carpet inventor. These Major Bo’s Units were whipped together and sent out by caravan at the rate of one a day.

  By the end of a fortnight, Pete’s touring tyros were laying them in the aisles all over the country. But his agents, though they returned with tales of success and bags of gold, brought not a word of the traveling tapestry.

  STALLING for more time, Pete cast about for more sources of revenue. He found that his boogie-woogie was sweeping the country, being played and sung from public house to harem. Promptly he organized the Fraternal Order of Loyal Song Composers and Publishers, consisting of himself and Sabu.

  With the help of the caliph, whose coffers were beginning to creak with the mounting tax collections on Bo’s vaudeville, a law was hurriedly passed which forbade anyone so much as to hum a FOOLSCAP tune without first buying a license to do so. A dictatorship has its points, Pete mused.

  Sabu was horrified with this alliance with Evil, despite the increased income. Pete tried to pass it off nonchalantly with the famous ward-heeler political aphorism, “If you can’t lick ’em, then join ’em.”

  But Bo had his worries, and they increased geometrically. Ali Ben Mahmoud wanted the secret of the flying carpet. He was also jealous of the ability of the upstart tycoon, Major Bo, and determined to smash him. He could have Bo executed, of course, but Bo was now a very popular man in the kingdom; repercussions might repercuss. Besides, there was more in it for the caliph by taxing the financial genius to ruin.

  Ali Ben watched Pete’s frantic squirmings with dispassionate detachment, to see just how much the man could really earn before the rising tax rate caught up with him.

  There Was no real escape; Pete knew that. It was a race against time. He had to pyramid his enterprises and expand them so as to hold out till Dr. Mayhem rescued him. FOOLSCAP enabled him to meet the racket payments for several more days, but a week yet remained.

  His wits had never worked more smoothly. Already he had introduced the use of cosmetics and exotic hairdos on his chorus girls. The situation was ripe for public exploitation. Desperately he rounded up some artists, instructed them hurriedly in the delicate art of make-up, and opened the Chez Bo—Coiffures, Cosmetiques; “Be Beautified By Bo.”

  As all big-time beauty parlors, the Chez Bo was a colossal success. Bagdad babes were pretty awful beneath their veils, and there was plenty of room for lipstick, rouge, face creams, and what-not. Unfortunately, though the returns still kept the caliph’s tax collectors at bay, there was no news of the restless rug.

  As doom approached with each hour, Pete surveyed his financial empire with horror. The ramifications of Bo’s entertainment enterprises and their subsidiaries were almost endless. When the crash came, it would make the debacle of Ivar Kreuger, the Match King, look like a pitiful imitation by comparison.

  Inevitably, of course. The Day arrived. The tax mounted too high to be met; Pete sent the leering collector home empty-handed. Within an hour the street resounded with the tramp of hooves as the Camel Police rode up to arrest him.

  “Sabu,” said Pete sadly, “this is the end. We ain’t found that magic carpet so the joint is pinched. You better scram while the scrammin’ is good, kid. Take your liquid assets and lam till the heat’s off.”

  Sabu got the general drift of the genie’s strange tongue. Bo, alas, was about to return to the magic bottle, never to appear again, perhaps. But Sabu was loyal. Bo had promised him great wealth, and had kept that promise; therefore Sabu would not desert him.

  Pete started to argue the lad into fleeing at once. For once he had outsmarted himself, having calculated things too fine. Before he had finished talking, and just as the cops pushed in, the world began to slip out of focus, slantwise, in the familiar distortion that carried the Time Traveler back home again . . .

  Zung-g-g!

  PETE heaved to his feet, one hand indelicately over his mouth. He made gobbling noises. Professor Aker trotted into the deserted lab.

  “Ah, there, Manx!” he said anxiously. “Nausea? We didn’t expect you for an hour or so yet. Was the journey successful?”

  Pete flung himself onto a couch, quickly readjusting himself to his own world. He listened impatiently to Aker’s questions.

  “Quiet!” he interrupted finally. “There ain’t no magic carpet, an’ that’s that. Now keep still and lemme think.”

  Minutes passed, and Aker began to fidget in alarm. A speechless and pensive Pete was a strange phenomenon, indeed.

  “Anything wrong, Manx?” He ventured.

  “Plenty.” Pete grunted. “There’s a nice kid back there in Bagdad who’s in a terrific jam ’cause o’ me. An’ the guy whose body I took over—boy!

  Is he in trouble! Look, Prof, answer me this one question.”

  He posed his problem, received a puzzled but very accurate reply.

  “Okay, Prof. I gotta go back there in a coupla days. Make it four. Can you work the Time Chair without Mayhem?”

  “Of course, my dear fellow.” He nodded and stared keenly at Manx, realizing there were hidden depths in the tough little man’s character. For him to return deliberately into whatever hornet’s nest he had inevitably stirred up, just to help a boy who was now dust centuries old—that took courage.

  “You realize that whereas we can send you back to about the same time, we couldn’t possibly say as to whose mind you will enter.”

  “That’s okay,” Pete agreed. “It couldn’t be any worse’n it was when I left.” He grimly strode to the Time Chair once more, watched Professor Aker adjust the delicately sensitive selectors. “Let’er rip!”

  Zung-g-g!

  Again the blinding sunlight beat down upon Pete Manx, but this time the clamor of Bagdad was gone. Instead was a whispering silence, and Pete stared
around wonderingly at a desert.

  He was dressed in fine silks again, but with burnoose instead of turban. He sat astride a magnificent black horse, a veritable Whirlaway. Behind him, obviously awaiting his command, was a hard-bitten crew of some three dozen well-armed fighting men.

  It was evident he was now a nomad, leader of a band of desert raiders. Ahead lay the glory that was Bagdad, wavering in the heat waves. His course was plain. He speared a brown, muscular arm toward the distant city.

  “Thar’s where we’re a-headin’. Dig in them spurs, cowboys!”

  The bandits yelled fierce approval.

  “Our sheikh Hassan speaks mighty words! Onward!” The riders thundered across the desert.

  When they came to a dusty halt beneath the walls of Bagdad, the guard of the city gates stared suspiciously as Pete rode up.

  “What dost thou wish?” he wanted to know. “Qpen up!” Pete cried imperiously.

  “Open! Huh! Says who?”

  “Open, sez me!” retorted Pete. “Special envoy to Ali Ben Mahmoud!” The bluff worked. The guard looked around uncertainly, then opened the gates to allow Pete and his men to pass through. Little did Pete realize that the effect of his strange command was to be told and retold through the bazaars and, distorted by time, become a legendary password—Open Sesame.

  THE same manner did not open the gates of the caliph’s residence, but an added sentence did the trick.

  “Tell Ali I’m the inventor of the magic carpet,” he announced.

  A messenger vanished into the mansion, returned pop eyed.

  “The stranger is permitted to enter forthwith,” he said. “Alone.”

  Pete grinned insolently and ordered his whole gang to follow. They did, right into the presence of Ali Ben Mahmoud. As usual, the caliph was eating, popping grapes into his mouth and spitting out the seeds like a machine-guner. Poker-faced he stared at the wild-looking delegation.

  “Thou’rt the maker of the flying carpet?”