The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “But…but…see here, Doctor, I’d feel better about it. I assure you I am quite in the habit of paying for magic—”

  He held up a hand. “It is not possible, my young friend, for two reasons: In the first place, I am not licensed to practice in your state. In the second place, I am not a magician.”

  I suppose I looked as inane as I sounded. “Huh? What’s that? Oh! Excuse me, Doctor, I guess I just naturally assumed that since Mrs. Jennings had sent you, and your title, and all—”

  He continued to smile, but it was a smile of understanding rather than amusement at my discomfiture. “That is not surprising; even some of your fellow citizens of my blood make that mistake. No, my degree is an honorary doctor of laws of Cambridge University. My proper pursuit is anthropology, which I sometimes teach at the University of South Africa. But anthropology has some odd bypaths; I am here to exercise one of them.”

  “Well, then, may I ask—”

  “Certainly, sir. My avocation, freely translated from its quite unpronounceable proper name, is ‘witch smeller.’”

  I was still puzzled. “But doesn’t that involve magic?”

  “Yes and no. In Africa the hierarchy and the categories in these matters are not the same as in this continent. I am not considered a wizard, or witch doctor, but rather an antidote for such.”

  Something had been worrying Jedson. “Doctor,” he inquired, “you were not originally from South Africa?”

  Worthington gestured toward his own face. I suppose that Jedson read something there that was beyond my knowledge. “As you have discerned. No, I was born in a bush tribe south of the Lower Congo.”

  “From there, eh? That’s interesting. By any chance, are you nganga?”

  “Of the Ndembo, but not by chance.” He turned to me and explained courteously. “Your friend asked me if I was a member of an occult fraternity which extends throughout Africa, but which has the bulk of its members in my native territory. Initiates are called nganga.”

  Jedson persisted in his interest. “It seems likely to me, Doctor, that Worthington is a name of convenience—that you have another name.”

  “You are again, right—naturally. My tribal name—do you wish to know it?”

  “If you will.”

  “It is”—I cannot reproduce the odd clicking, lip-smacking noise he uttered—“or it is just as proper to state it in English, as the meaning is what counts—Man-Who-Asks-Inconvenient-Questions. Prosecuting attorney is another reasonably idiomatic, though not quite literal, translation, because of the tribal function implied. But it seems to me,” he went on, with a smile of unmalicious humor, “that the name fits you even better than it does me. May I give it to you?”

  Here occurred something that I did not understand, except that it must have its basis in some African custom completely foreign to our habits of thought. I was prepared to laugh at the doctor’s witticism, and I am sure he meant it to be funny, but Jedson answered him quite seriously:

  “I am deeply honored to accept.”

  “It is you who honor me, brother.”

  From then on, throughout our association with him, Dr. Worthington invariably addressed Jedson by the African name he had formerly claimed as his own, and Jedson called him “brother” or “Royce.” Their whole attitude toward each other underwent a change, as if the offer and acceptance of a name had in fact made them brothers, with all the privileges and obligations of the relationship.

  “I have not left you without a name,” Jedson added. “You had a third name, your real name?”

  “Yes, of course,” Worthington acknowledged, “a name which we need not mention.”

  “Naturally,” Jedson agreed, “a name which must not be mentioned. Shall we get to work, then?”

  “Yes, let us do so.” He turned to me. “Have you someplace here where I may make my preparations? It need not be large—”

  “Will this do?” I offered, getting up and opening the door of cloak-and washroom which adjoins my office.

  “Nicely, thank you,” he said, and took himself and his brief case inside, closing the door after him. He was gone ten minutes at least.

  Jedson did not seem disposed to talk, except to suggest that I caution my girl not to disturb us or let anyone enter from the outer office. We sat and waited.

  Then he came out of the cloakroom, and I got my second big surprise of the day. The urbane Dr. Worthington was gone. In his place was an African personage who stood over six feet tall in his bare black feet, and whose enormous, arched chest was overlaid with thick, sleek muscles of polished obsidian. He was dressed in a loin skin of leopard, and carried certain accouterments, notably a pouch, which hung at his waist.

  But it was not his equipment that held me, nor yet the John Henry-like proportions of that warrior frame, but the face. The eyebrows were painted white and the hairline had been outlined in the same color, but I hardly noticed these things. It was the expression—humorless, implacable, filled with dignity and strength which must be felt to be appreciated. The eyes gave a conviction of wisdom beyond my comprehension, and there was no pity in them—only a stern justice that I myself would not care to face.

  We white men in this country are inclined to underestimate the black man—I know I do—because we see him out of his cultural matrix. Those we know have had their own culture wrenched from them some generations back and a servile pseudo culture imposed on them by force. We forget that the black man has a culture of his own, older than ours and more solidly grounded, based on character and the power of the mind rather than the cheap, ephemeral tricks of mechanical gadgets. But it is a stern, fierce culture with no sentimental concern for the weak and the unfit, and it never quite dies out.

  I stood up in involuntary respect when Dr. Worthington entered the room.

  “Let us begin,” he said in a perfectly ordinary voice, and squatted down, his great toes spread and grasping the floor. He took several things out of the pouch—a dog’s tail, a wrinkled black object the size of a man’s fist, and other things hard to identify. He fastened the tail to his waist so that it hung down behind. Then he picked up one of the things that he had taken from the pouch—a small item wrapped and tied in red silk—and said to me, “Will you open your safe?”

  I did so, and stepped back out of his way. He thrust the little bundle inside, clanged the door shut, and spun the knob. I looked inquiringly at Jedson.

  “He has his…well…soul in that package, and has sealed it away behind cold iron. He does not know what dangers he may encounter,” Jedson whispered. “See?” I looked and saw him pass his thumb carefully all around the crack that joined the safe to its door.

  He returned to the middle of the floor and picked up the wrinkled black object and rubbed it affectionately. “This is my mother’s father,” he announced. I looked at it more closely and saw that it was a mummified human head with a few wisps of hair still clinging to the edge of the scalp! “He is very wise,” he continued in a matter-of-fact voice, “and I shall need his advice. Grandfather, this is your new son and his friend.” Jedson bowed, and I found myself doing so. “They want our help.”

  He started to converse with the head in his own tongue listening from time to time, and then answering. Once they seemed to get into an argument, but the matter must have been settled satisfactorily, for the palaver soon quieted down. After a few minutes he ceased talking and glanced around the room. His eye lit on a bracket shelf intended for an electric fan, which was quite high off the floor.

  “There!” he said. “That will do nicely. Grandfather needs a high place from which to watch.” He went over and placed the little head on the bracket so that it faced out into the room.

  When he returned to his place in the middle of the room he dropped to all fours and commenced to cast around with his nose like a hunting dog trying to pick up a scent. He ran back and forth, snuffling and whining, exactly like a pack leader worried by mixed trails. The tail fastened to his waist stood up tensely and quivered, a
s if still part of a live animal. His gait and his mannerisms mimicked those of a hound so convincingly that I blinked my eyes when he sat down suddenly and announced:

  “I’ve never seen a place more loaded with traces of magic. I can pick out Mrs. Jennings’ very strongly and your own business magic. But after I eliminate them the air is still crowded. You must have had everything but a rain dance and a sabbat going on around you!”

  He dropped back into his character of a dog without giving us a chance to reply, and started making his casts a little wider. Presently he appeared to come to some sort of an impasse, for he settled back, looked at the head, and whined vigorously. Then he waited.

  The reply must have satisfied him; he gave a sharp bark and dragged open the bottom drawer of a file cabinet, working clumsily, as if with paws instead of hands. He dug into the back of the drawer eagerly and hauled out something which he popped into his pouch.

  After that he trotted very cheerfully around the place for a short time, until he had poked his nose into every odd corner. When he had finished he returned to the middle of the floor, squatted down again, and said, “That takes care of everything here for the present. This place is the center of their attack, so grandfather has agreed to stay and watch here until I can bind a cord around your place to keep witches out.”

  I was a little perturbed at that. I was sure the head would scare my office girl half out of her wits if she saw it. I said so as diplomatically as possible.

  “How about that?” he asked the head, then turned back to me after a moment of listening. “Grandfather says it’s all right; he won’t let anyone see him he has not been introduced to.” It turned out that he was perfectly correct; nobody noticed it, not even the scrubwoman.

  “Now then,” he went on, “I want to check over my brother’s place of business at the earliest opportunity, and I want to smell out both of your homes and insulate them against mischief. In the meantime, here is some advice for each of you to follow carefully: Don’t let anything of yourself fall into the hands of strangers—nail parings, spittle, hair cuttings—guard it all. Destroy them by fire, or engulf them in running water. It will make our task much simpler. I am finished.” He got up and strode back into the cloakroom.

  Ten minutes later the dignified and scholarly Dr. Worthington was smoking a cigarette with us. I had to look up at his grandfather’s head to convince myself that a jungle lord had actually been there.

  BUSINESS WAS PICKING UP AT that time, and I had no more screwy accidents after Dr. Worthington cleaned out the place. I could see a net profit for the quarter and was beginning to feel cheerful again. I received a letter from Ditworth, dunning me about Biddle’s phony claim, but I filed it in the wastebasket without giving it a thought.

  One day shortly before noon Feldstein, the magicians’ agent, dropped into my place. “Hi, Zack!” I said cheerfully when he walked in. “How’s business?”

  “Mr. Fraser, of all questions, that you should ask me that one,” he said, shaking his head mournfully from side to side. “Business—it is terrible.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. “I see lots of signs of activity around—”

  “Appearances are deceiving,” he insisted, “especially in my business. Tell me—have you heard of a concern calling themselves ‘Magic, Incorporated’?”

  “That’s funny,” I told him. “I just did, for the first time. This just came in the mail”—and I held up an unopened letter. It had a return address on it of “Magic, Incorporated, Suite 700, Commonwealth Building.”

  Feldstein took it gingerly, as if he thought it might poison him, and inspected it. “That’s the parties I mean,” he confirmed. “The gonophs!”

  “Why, what’s the trouble, Zack?”

  “They don’t want that a man should make an honest living—Mr. Fraser,” he interrupted himself anxiously, “you wouldn’t quit doing business with an old friend who had always done right by you?”

  “Of course not, Zack, but what’s it all about?”

  “Read it. Go ahead.” He shoved the letter back to me.

  I opened it. The paper was a fine quality, water-marked, rag bond, and the letterhead was chaste and dignified. I glanced over the stuffed-shirt committee and was quite agreeably impressed by the caliber of men they had as officers and directors—big men, all of them, except for a couple of names among the executives that I did not recognize.

  The letter itself amounted to an advertising prospectus. It was a new idea; I suppose you could call it a holding company for magicians. They offered to provide any and all kinds of magical service. The customer could dispense with shopping around; he could call this one number, state his needs, and the company would supply the service and bill him. It seemed fair enough—no more than an incorporated agency.

  I glanced on down. “—fully guaranteed service, backed by the entire assets of a responsible company—” “—surprisingly low standard fees, made possible by elimination of fee splitting with agents and by centralized administration—” “The gratifying response from the members of the great profession enables us to predict that Magic, Incorporated, will be the natural source to turn to for competent thaumaturgy in any line—probably the only source of truly first-rate magic—”

  I put it down. “Why worry about it, Zack? It’s just another agency. As for their claims—I’ve heard you say that you have all the best ones in your stable. You didn’t expect to be believed, did you?”

  “No,” he conceded, “not quite, maybe—among us two. But this is really serious, Mr. Fraser. They’ve hired away most of my really first-class operators with salaries and bonuses I can’t match. And now they offer magic to the public at a price that undersells those I’ve got left. It’s ruin, I’m telling you.”

  It was hard lines. Feldstein was a nice little guy who grabbed the nickels the way he did for a wife and five beady-eyed kids, to whom he was devoted. But I felt he was exaggerating; he has a tendency to dramatize himself. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll stick by you, and so, I imagine, will most of your customers. This outfit can’t get all the magicians together; they’re too independent. Look at Ditworth. He tried with his association. What did it get him?”

  “Ditworth—aagh!” He started to spit, then remembered he was in my office. “This is Ditworth—this company!”

  “How do you figure that? He’s not on the letterhead.”

  “I found out. You think he wasn’t successful because you held out. They held a meeting of the directors of the association—that’s Ditworth and his two secretaries—and voted the contracts over to the new corporation. Then Ditworth resigns and his stooge steps in as front for the non-profit association, and Ditworth runs both companies. You will see! If we could open the hooks of Magic, Incorporated, you will find he has voting control, I know it!”

  “It seems unlikely.” I said slowly.

  “You’ll see! Ditworth with all his fancy talk about a no-profit service for the improvement of standards shouldn’t be any place around Magic, Incorporated, should he, now? You call up and ask for him—”

  I did not answer, but dialed the number on the letterhead. When a girl’s voice said, “Good morning—Magic, Incorporated,” I said:

  “Mr. Ditworth, please.”

  She hesitated quite a long time, then said, “Who is calling, please?”

  That made it my turn to hesitate. I did not want to talk to Ditworth; I wanted to establish a fact. I finally said, “Tell him it’s Dr. Biddle’s office.”

  Whereupon she answered readily enough, but with a trace of puzzlement in her voice, “But Mr. Ditworth is not in the suite just now; he was due in Dr. Biddle’s office half an hour ago. Didn’t he arrive?”

  “Oh,” I said, “perhaps he’s with the chief and I didn’t see him come in. Sorry.” And I rang off.

  “I guess you are right,” I admitted, turning back to Feldstein.

  He was too worried to be pleased about it. “Look,” he said, “I want you should have lunch
with me and talk about it some more.”

  “I was just on my way to the Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Come along and we’ll talk on the way. You’re a member.”

  “All right,” he agreed dolefully. “Maybe I can’t afford it much longer.”

  WE WERE A LITTLE LATE and had to take separate seats. The treasurer stuck the kitty under my nose and “twisted her tail.” He wanted a ten-cent fine from me for being late. The kitty is an ordinary frying pan with a mechanical bicycle bell mounted on the handle. We pay all fines on the spot, which is good for the treasury and a source of innocent amusement. The treasurer shoves the pan at you and rings the hell until you pay up.

  I hastily produced a dime and dropped it in. Steven Harris, who has an automobile agency, yelled, “That’s right! Make the Scotchman pay up!” and threw a roll at me.

  “Ten cents for disorder,” announced our chairman, Norman Somers, without looking up. The treasurer put the bee on Steve. I heard the coin clink into the pan, then the bell was rung again.

  “What’s the trouble?” asked Somers.

  “More of Steve’s tricks,” the treasurer reported in a tired voice. “Fairy gold, this time.” Steve had chucked in a synthetic coin that some friendly magician had made up for him. Naturally, when it struck cold iron it melted away.

  “Two bits more for counterfeiting,” decided Somers, “then hand-cuff him and ring up the United States attorney.” Steve is quite a card, but he does not put much over on Norman.

  “Can’t I finish my lunch first?” asked Steve, in tones that simply dripped with fake self-pity. Norman ignored him and he paid up.

  “Steve, better have fun while you can,” commented Al Donahue, who runs a string of drive-in restaurants. “When you sign up with Magic, Incorporated, you will have to cut out playing tricks with magic.” I sat up and listened.

  “Who said I was going to sign up with them?”

  “Huh? Of course you are. It’s the logical thing to do. Don’t be a dope.”