The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  They were, however, able to catch numbers of the chickens and turkeys and other birds who incessantly alighted on the head of the Rhinoceros for the purpose of gathering the seeds of the rhododendron plants which grew there, and these creatures they cooked in the most translucent and satisfactory manner, by means of a fire lighted on the end of the Rhinoceros’s back. A crowd of Kangaroos and Gigantic Cranes accompanied them, from feelings of curiosity and complacency, so that they were never at a loss for company, and went onward as it were in a sort of profuse and triumphant procession.

  Thus, in less than eighteen weeks, they all arrived safely at home, where they were received by their admiring relatives with joy tempered with contempt; and where they finally resolved to carry out the rest of their travelling plans at some more favourable opportunity.

  As for the Rhinoceros, in token of their grateful adherence, they had him killed and stuffed directly, and then set him up outside the door of their father’s house as a Diaphanous Doorscraper.

  THE DISADVANTAGES OF MIND

  James F. Sullivan

  To complete our trilogy of ancient tomes, here’s a story by a long-forgotten writer from the turn of the century, James F. Sullivan (1853–1936). He was a regular contributor to the popular magazines of the day, especially The Strand Magazine, and was also an excellent illustrator, occasionally producing eccentric pictures to accompany his stories and articles, making him something of a precursor to Heath Robinson. Sullivan wrote a series of amusing stories and articles for The Strand under the collective title of “The Queer Side of Things”. When these were collected as Queer-Side Stories in 1900 he added a few new ones, including the following, which has never been reprinted in all those years.

  It was the heyday of the Pleistocene period. Mrs Elephas Primigenius sat up and yawned. Then she washed the children in a pond, and untied the rushes with which she curled the hairs at the ends of their tails every night, and brushed down the little ones with a bunch of thorns. Then she went and kicked Mr Primigenius as hard as she could.

  “What a healthy sleeper George is, to be sure!” she said.

  Snatching up one of the children with her trunk, she hurled it in the air, so that it descended with a resounding bump on its father’s head: but Mr P only grunted and turned over in his sleep.

  So Mrs P jumped as high as she could, and came down bang on her spouse. Yet the result was only a larger grunt.

  “Gee-orge!” she screamed; “get up, will you? It’s past breakfast time. Geee-horge!”

  No use. Then she found a boulder weighing a ton or two, carried it to the top of the rock above Mr P’s head, and dropped it over. It descended on Mr P’s head with a shock that shook the surrounding cliffs; and Mr P opened his eyes, said, “Eh, my dear?” and slowly sat up and yawned.

  “What a dreadful nuisance you are to wake!” said Mrs P crossly. “With thousands of ants boring into your hide, and you asleep like an idiot right in that puddle – enough to lay you up with rheumatic fever, and there I shall be a lone widow with these seven children to support, and it’s a pity you can’t be a little more considerate!”

  Mr P sat chuckling in a way that frightened the ichthyosaurus, who lived next door, nearly into a fit.

  “Ho! ho! Roo-matic fever!” roared Mr P. “Roo-matic fever! I hain’t delicate, my dear – don’t you bother yourself about me. I’m a ’ealthy sleeper, Jane; that’s what I am.”

  “You’re a horrid rough lump; that’s what you are!” said Mrs P, thoroughly angry. “A rough, lumping, clumping, lumbering, pachydermatous mass of material, without any mind or sensibilities. It’s a pity you don’t cultivate some sensibilities by improving your mind a bit; that’s what I think!”

  And Mrs P stamped away to pull down a few trees for the children’s breakfast.

  Mr Elephas Primigenius sat where he was. He appeared to be trying to think. He was moody, and not in his usual spirits.

  “Horrid rough lump!” he murmured, and sat stroking his trunk with his paw. Presently he muttered: “ ‘Pachydermatous mass,’ eh? ‘No sensibilities.’ ‘Improve my mind a bit.’ Humph!” And when Mrs P returned he was still sitting there pondering.

  “Whatever on earth is the matter, George?” said Mrs P. “You’re not in spirits this morning. Have you eaten anything that disagrees with you?”

  “Disagrees with me!” said Mr P, with deep derision. “Disa-grees with me!” Dj’yer ever know anything disagree with me? It’d have to be a toughish morsel, my dear!”

  Yet he certainly was not in his wonted spirits. Instead of partaking of his usual breakfast of half an acre of forest and a few tons of grass, he strayed moodily by the river all the rest of the day, deeply pre-occupied about something; and towards evening he hastily masticated a few trees, and then sat gloomily with his back against a rock until the small hours of the morning; after which he fell into a troubled slumber, punctuated by grunts.

  When he woke next morning he went straight off by the river; and Mrs P saw no more of him until, going in search of him, she found him minutely inspecting a small plant – sitting and watching it intently.

  “Whatever on earth are you doing, George?” said Mrs P impatiently. “What’s the matter with that little plant, that you’re sitting glowering at it like that?”

  “Trying to improve my mind, Jane,” replied Mr P. “It struck me you were about right in what you said yesterday morning; so I’m looking into things a bit to see ’ow they’re done. I’ve been watching this plant grow – most interesting, my dear, although, o’ course, it’s rather slow work. But I feel it’s doing me good, Jane; and that’s fact. There’s a lot of wonderful things a-going on which never struck me before. What makes that plant grow? How does it do it? Why does it do it? Dear me? Most absorbin’.”

  “Poor George,” said Mrs P to herself, “I really didn’t mean it. I’m sure I wouldn’t hurt his feelings for the world; but perhaps it’ll be good for him; he’ll be all the better for something to occupy his mind all day while I’m looking after the children. I’m afraid I don’t look after him so much since little James, and Maria, and Henrietta came,” and she sighed, and went back to busy herself about a new bandage of grass for little James’s foot, which had been bitten by a plesiosaurus that objected to children.

  Mr Primigenius seemed very much changed; every day he would bring home a lot of plants which he was studying, and litter the domestic turf with them. One day he suddenly got up, selected two flints, laid one of them on a granite boulder, took the other with the end of his trunk, and sat patiently tapping it on the first. The little Ps, who thought it must be some new game, gathered round and watched.

  “What are you making, George?” asked Mrs P.

  “A knife, my dear – a dissecting-knife, to cut up the specimens with,” said Mr P, and he chipped patiently until he made a keen edge, while Mrs P meditated wonderingly on this change from his old impatient way of tearing and rending anything which offered any resistance to his efforts.

  It was a few days after this that Mrs P heard dismal wails proceeding from one of the children, and, with a mother’s anxiousness, ran hastily up, to find Mr P birching little James with a young pine-tree.

  “Oh, George! What has he done?”

  “Bin eatin’ them plants!” roared Mr P.

  “Plants!” said Mrs P indignantly. “Of course. Don’t you expect your lawful, innocent offspring to eat plants like their father did before ’em, you unnatural parent? Perhaps you look for ’em to go eating mud like the slimyosaurus and such-like low characters? They’d better let me catch ’em at it – that’s all.”

  “But, my love,” said poor Mr P, “they’re my specimens he’s bin eating, and all after me a-layin’ them out so careful on the shelf! Tell you what; if I’m to improve my mind, I shall have to have a study to myself; and that’s all about it!”

  So Mrs Primigenius went and stroked her husband gently with her paw, and led away little James, still howling; and then she helped her husband to bui
ld a wall of boulders round a space of green turf, at the foot of a rock conveniently formed in shelves for the specimens; and this was Mr P’s study; and the youngsters were warned not to set foot in it.

  Time went on, and Mrs P began to get dissatisfied. She missed the society of her husband, once so cheering to her amid the cares of a family. She sat down by him on the study wall, and took his paw.

  “Don’t you think, George, dear, that – that you’ve improved your mind enough now?” she said ruefully. “I never thought you would take what I said so seriously to heart; and I’m sure you’re looked upon as quite a superior person now by the mastodon and hippopotamus major, and megaceros hibernicus, and anoplotheriun, and all those. They’re always talking about your learnedness; and what’s more, I’m not sure they’re quite pleased about it. They seem to feel hurt; they say prehistoric mammalia were intended to be prehistoric mammalia and behave themselves as such with proper palaeozocism, and not go making superior, conceited, stuck-up philosophers of themselves. I heard the hippopotamus say as much to the whatdyecallit vulpiceps only yesterday.”

  Mr P shook his head. “I feel I ought to keep on,” he said. “I think it’s my mission. Every day I feel more and more how horribly ignorant I am.”

  “You’re not looking so well as you used to,” said Mrs P, with a tear in her eye. “You’re paler; and I believe you’re thinner. You never trumpet now, like you used to when you were merry; and the children miss it; and I miss the walks we used to take together through the palaeodendric glades. You never come and paddle in the lake now. I’m sorry I ever said that about improving your mind!” And she wept.

  “I am convinced that study is the right thing – the proper pursuit even for a prehistoric mammal,” said Mr P, thoughtfully; and she could not but notice the remarkable improvement in his method of speech.

  It was useless to attempt to stop the ball which she herself had set rolling; and bitter regret alone was left to her.

  One evening, some years after this, Mr P arose from his studies, and sank wearily down on a knoll outside.

  “You’re tired, George, dear!” said Mrs P, passing her paw over his brow. “And I never saw you so pale!”

  “Tired? Pale?” began Mr P, in a voice of derision; but he paused; and when he went on it was in quite a different tone: “I do believe I am tired, Jane! Just fancy my getting tired. To tell the truth, I have a bit of a headache, and a sort of a pain in my chest.”

  “Ah, I thought so – indigestion!” said Mrs P.

  Mr P looked towards the children, who were trying to pull down a large bulkeyodendron thousandfeetium Jonesii to play with; and they came trooping to their father to beg him to pull it down for them; and Mr P rose wearily and plodded towards it.

  Seven times he tried to pull down that tree, but without success.

  “I’m— I’m afraid I’m not quite the elephant I used to be, Jane!” he said sadly. “A few years ago I should have thought nothing of pulling down a bigger tree than that – and now—”

  “Oh, you’re out of sorts, George; that’s all. Why, you’re quite young yet, as I told that horrid, rowdy hippopotamus the other day when he had the impertinence to suggest that he could pull harder than you – quite young and worth twenty of him!”

  But in spite of the forced gaiety of Mrs P’s tone, a little sigh betrayed her inward anxiety; and she gazed furtively and sadly at her husband as he went slowly and wearily back to his seat on the knoll.

  At that moment the hippopotamus strolled up.

  “Hullo, Primy!” he shouted. “Why, you’re looking off colour! Lost flesh too, old chappie – lost flesh. Why, I’ll wager you don’t weigh as much as me now!”

  “Impertinence! He weighs as much as ten of you, so there!” said Mrs P angrily; but the moment after she regretted that she had said it; for the hippopotamus told the young elephants to balance a convenient log on a boulder, and invited Mr P to sit on one end while he sat on the other, and it was with intense mortification and misgiving that Mrs P saw the hippopotamus’s end go down.

  “I do wish those pterodactyls wouldn’t keep up such a shrieking!” said Mr P. It was in the early hours of the morning; and he had lain, vainly trying to sleep ever since he had retired the evening before.

  “What with one row and another in this miserable prehistoric forest, I’ll be hanged if I can get any sleep! As soon as the bos antiquus leaves off bellowing, the confounded bubalus moschatus begins; then the palaeontological carnivora of Cuvier take it up; then the beastly machairodus palmidens begins his yelling; and the batrachians begin whistling all out of tune! and— hang it all, I can’t get a wink!”

  “You didn’t mind noises once!” said poor Mrs P. “You could sleep through anything. Noises are unavoidable in the palaeozoic era.”

  “Why?” said Mr P irritably. “Why on earth? Noise is not a necessity, surely? I hate noise. Why can’t these fools of animals have a little consideration for their neighbours?”

  “Well, dear; you know their other neighbours don’t mind noise, and can sleep through it. Your nerves are really getting dreadfully acute. I wish you had never, never taken up this miserable improving of your mind. You’ll be a confirmed invalid – mark my words, George.”

  He was growing daily more irritable, especially during his fits of indigestion, which were becoming more and more frequent: his appetite had fallen off dreadfully, and he had to be careful about what he ate, being no longer able to digest anything but the tenderest shoots of a few plants. After a time he began to find that his sight was not so good as it had been; and he had to look about for some rock crystal, and slowly and painfully grind down two pieces into convex form, and fix them on each side of his trunk in front of his eyes.

  He slept worse and worse, until he found himself the victim of confirmed insomnia.

  Poor Mrs P would hide herself behind a mountain and sob for hours after she had seen the other prehistoric fauna whispering in corners and pointing at her husband: she knew the malicious delight those uncultivated specimens found in the misfortunes of a fellow-creature.

  Mr P was becoming alarmingly emaciated and bald, and his nerves were dreadful; he suffered acutely from neuralgia and jumps. He knew a great deal by this time, having, in addition to his earnest study of botany, devoted much time to mineralogy and zoology; the latter being a very favourite pursuit, as it gave him much pleasure in his present unamiable and irritable state of mind to catch the smaller vertebrata and subject them to vivisection with that flint knife he had made.

  Every day the ravages made by brain upon body became more noticeable; Elephas Primigenius was a physical wreck. The acutest form of melancholia set in, resulting from complete nervous exhaustion.

  Mrs P sat with the little Ps in the study – they were all sobbing as if their hearts would break. The hippopotamus-major looked in.

  “Hullo!” he said, awkwardly. “I say, I do hope there’s nothing serious, Mrs P? I’m a rough, thoughtless fellow, I know; but if there’s any blessed thing I can do for you—”

  “He’s gone!” sobbed poor Mrs P. “Wandered away! I’ve searched for him everywhere! Oh, I’m afraid— afraid that— oh, what shall I do?”

  “Deary, deary!” blurted out the hippopotamus, hurriedly brushing his eyes with his paw. “It’s all right, ma’am – believe me, it’s all right. I’m a rough fellow, I know – but—”

  He hurried away, and searched tirelessly high and low; and at length he came upon the emaciated form of Mr P standing gloomily in a shallow pond. In an instant the hippopotamus had dragged him out and was standing over him on the grass.

  “P!” he roared, stamping all his feet with indignation, “what were you doing?”

  “Going to put an end to it – drown myself,” said Mr P sullenly.

  “P!” said the hippopotamus, “you’re a coward – a coward and a criminal! Be an elephant, P! Only to think of it, and her at home, crying her eyes out! Just look here, P – I’ve known her and you for many years, and I
tell you I won’t stand by and see any more of this tomfoolery. Now you just mind what I say – you go away home right now, and you smash up every blessed one of them blessed specimens o’ yours, sharp – d’ye hear? And if I ever see you studying any blessed thing again, I’ll give you such a lathering that— confound my eyes, if I don’t break every bone in your body! Now hustle!”

  Elephas Primigenius looked at him, and saw the strange fixed determination in his eye, and the scorn and indignation in it; and rose, and gripped his rough paw.

  “Hippy!” he said, in a new voice, “I never knew what a good fellow you were till this moment. You have changed me! You are right – I’ll do it, every letter of it! You are right – a palaeozoic specimen should be a palaeozoic specimen and act as such, instead of inventing nerves. Don’t speak, old chap!”

  Elephas Primigenius was never the same fellow he had once been; but he picked up somewhat under careful treatment, and could get about.

  He forbade his children to take to any form of study.

  Hippopotamus-major called a meeting of the palaeozoics, at which it was unanimously carried that “This meeting unreservedly condemns all cultivation of the mind, as tendering to injure and undermine the physical health and well-being, and to introduce a most undesirable and disastrous innovation known as nerves: and it considers it the highest duty of the creatures of the palaeozoic era to discourage and oppose all undertakings in the direction indicated, and to leave all such foolishness to races of inferior intelligence and wisdom.”

  So there were no more nerves nor debility until a creature called “man” arrived on the earth.

  A Quiver of Spooks

  THE RETURN OF MAX KEARNY

  Ron Goulart

  Ron Goulart (b. 1933) began contributing short stories to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1952 and, for a period, was one of the few writers consistently producing humorous stories – rather a lone voice. These did not generally appear in book form until years later, by which time Goulart had diversified into a wide variety of space adventure and hero-pulp adventure novels, including most of the work on William Shatner’s Tek War (1989) and sequels. Some of his more amusing stories will be found in What’s Become of Screwloose? (1971), Broke Down Engine and Other Troubles with Machines (1971) and Nutzenbolts and More Troubles with Machines (1975). Goulart first introduced the occult investigator with a penchant for bizarre cases in “Time Was” in 1961, and several stories were brought together as Ghost Breaker (1971). The following is a later addition.