Sci Fiction Classics Volume 3

by Vol 3 (v1. 2) (epub)

  She spotted it behind some shovels, misted over with cobwebs. She pushed the shovels aside, grasped the handle, and lifted the gasoline can. It was heavy. She shook it. There was a satisfying slosh. She smiled grimly and started back to the house, walking more lopsided than ever.

  Then she stopped and gaped when she saw Leo Whittaker's car parked out of sight behind the house. She hurried on, letting the heavy can bounce against the ground with every other step. She opened the kitchen door and shrieked.

  Mrs. Gilbreath stood in the doorway, smiling pleasantly at her, and holding a butcher knife. Without reasoning, without even thinking, Miss Mahan took the handle of the heavy gasoline can in both hands and swung it as hard as she could.

  The sharp rim around the bottom caught Mrs. Gilbreath across the face, destroying one eye, shearing away her nose, and opening one cheek. Her expression didn't change. Blood flowed over her pleasant smile as she staggered drunkenly backward.

  Miss Mahan lost her balance completely. The momentum of the gasoline can swung her around and she sat in the snow, flat on her skinny bottom. The can slipped from her fingers and bounced across the ground with a descending scale of clangs. She lurched to her feet and looked in the kitchen door. Mrs. Gilbreath had slammed against the wall and was sitting on the floor, still smiling her gory smile, her right arm twitching like a metronome.

  Miss Mahan scrambled after the gasoline can and hid it in the pantry. She ducked up the kitchen stairs when she heard footsteps.

  Mr. Gilbreath walked through the kitchen, ignoring Mrs. Gilbreath, and went out the back door. Miss Mahan hurried up the stairs. Oh Lord, she thought. I'll be so sore I can't move for a week.

  She entered the upstairs hall from the opposite end. She stepped carefully over the debris from the wall shattered by the djinn. She looked in the bedrooms on the other side. The first one was empty with a layer of dust, but the second … She stared. It looked like a set from a Maria Montez movie. A fire burned in the fireplace, and Leo Whittaker lay stark-naked on the fur-covered bed.

  "Leo Whittaker!" she bellowed. "Get up from there and put your clothes on this instant!" But he didn't move. He was alive; his chest moved gently as he breathed. She went to him, trying to keep from looking at his nakedness. Then she thought, what the dickens? There's no point in being a prude at this stage. Her eyes widened in admiration. Then she ceded him a few additional points for being able to satisfy Twilla. Why couldn't she have found a beautiful man like that when she was twenty-three, she wondered. She sighed. It wouldn't have made any difference, she guessed. It would have all turned out the same.

  She put her hand on his shoulder and shook him. He moaned softly and shifted on the bed. "Leo! Wake up! What's the matter with you?" She shook him again. He acted drugged or something. She saw a long golden hair on his stomach and plucked it off, throwing it on the floor. She took a deep breath and slapped him in the face. He grunted. His head lifted slightly and then fell back. "Leo!" she shouted and slapped him again. His body jerked, and his eyes clicked open but didn't focus.

  "Leo!" Slap!

  "Owww," he said and looked at her. "Miss Mahan?"

  "Leo, are you awake?"

  "Miss Mahan? What are you doing here? Is Lana all right?" He sat up in the bed and saw the room. He grunted in bewilderment.

  "Leo. Get up and get dressed. Hurry!" she commanded. She heard the starter of a car grinding. Leo looked at himself, turned red, and tried to move in every direction at once. Miss Mahan grinned and went to the window. She could hear Leo thumping and bumping as he tried to put his clothes on. The car motor caught, and steam billowed from the carriage house. "Hurry, Leo!" The black Chrysler began slowly backing out, Mr. Gilbreath at the wheel. Then the motor stalled and died.

  He's trying to get away, she thought. No, he's only a puppet. He's planning to take Twilla away! She turned back to Leo. He was dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed, putting on his shoes. He looked at her shamefaced, like a little boy.

  "Leo," she said in her sternest, most no-nonsense, unruly child voice. The car motor started again. "Don't ask any questions. Go down the kitchen stairs and to your car. Hurry as fast as you can. Don't let Mr. Gilbreath see you. Bring your car around to the front and to the end of the lane. Block the lane so Mr. Gilbreath can't get out. Keep yourself locked in your car, because he's dangerous. Do you understand?"

  "No," he said, shaking his head.

  "Never mind. Will you do what I said?"

  He nodded.

  "All right, then. Hurry!" They left the bedroom. Leo gave it one last bewildered glance. They ran down the kitchen stairs as fast as they could, Leo keeping her steady. She propelled him out the back door before he could see Mrs. Gilbreath still smiling and twitching. The black Chrysler was just pulling around to the front of the house.

  She ran to the pantry, retrieved the gasoline can, and staggered into the entry hall. She could see Mr. Gilbreath getting out of the car. She locked the door and hobbled into the parlor. Twilla had been moved to the divan and covered with a quilt. He shouldn't have moved her, Miss Mahan thought; with an injury like that, it could have killed her.

  Twilla saw her enter and began screeching curses at her. Miss Mahan shook her head. She put the gasoline can down by the divan and tried to unscrew the cap on the spout. It wouldn't budge. It was rusted solid. Miss Mahan growled in frustration. The front door began to rattle and clatter.

  Twilla's curses stopped suddenly, and Miss Mahan looked at her. Twilla was staring at her in round-eyed horror. Miss Mahan went to the fireplace and got the poker. Twilla's eyes followed her. She drew the poker back and swung it as hard as she could at the gasoline can. It made a very satisfactory hole. She swung the poker several more times and tossed it away. She picked up the can as Twilla began to scream and plead. She rested it on the back of the divan and stripped away the blanket. She tipped it over, and pale pink streams of gasoline fell on Twilla.

  Glass shattered in the front door. Miss Mahan left the can resting on the back of the divan, still gurgling out its contents, and went to the fireplace again. She picked up the box of matches as Mr. Gilbreath walked in. His expression didn't change as he hurried toward her. She took a handful of wooden matches. She struck them all on the side of the box and tossed them on Twilla.

  Twilla's screams and the flames ballooned upward together. Mr. Gilbreath shifted directions and waded into the flames, reaching for Twilla. Miss Mahan ran out of the house as fast as she could.

  She was past the black Chrysler, its motor still running, when the gasoline can exploded. Leo had parked his car where she told him. Now he jumped out and ran to her. They looked at the old Peacock house.

  It was old and dry as dust. The flames engulfed it completely. The snow was melting in a widening circle around it. They had to back all the way to Leo's car because of the heat.

  They heard a siren and turned to see Sheriff Walker's car hurrying down the lane, followed by some of the funeral procession on its way back to Hawley. The ones who hadn't turned down the road were stopped on the highway, looking.

  "Leo, dear," she said. "Do you know what you're doing here?"

  He rubbed his hand across his face, his eyes still a little bleary. "Yes, I think so. It all seems like a dream. Twilla… Miss Mahan," he said in pain, "I don't know why I did it."

  "I do," she said soothingly and put her arm around him. "And it wasn't your fault. You have to believe that. Don't tell Lana or anyone. Forget it ever happened. Do you understand?"

  He nodded as Robin Walker got out of his car and ran toward them. He looks very handsome in his uniform, she thought. My, my, I've suddenly become very conscious of good-looking men. Too bad it's thirty years to late.

  "Miss Mahan? Leo? What's going on here?" Robin asked in bewilderment. "Is anyone still in there?" He looked at her feet. "Miss Mahan, why are you running around in the snow with only one shoe on?"

  She followed his gaze. "I'll declare," she said in astonishment. "I didn't know I'd lost it. Le
o. Robin, let's get in your car. I have a lot to tell you both."

  Miss Mahan sat before the fireplace in her comfortable old house, tearing the pages from her Twilla journal and feeding them one at a time to the fire. Paul Sullivan had doctored her cuts and bruises, and she felt wonderful—stiff and sore, to be sure—but wonderful. Tomorrow the news would be all over town that, with brilliant detective work, Robin Walker, aided by Leo Whittaker, had discovered that Twilla Gilbreath's father was Yvonne's killer. In an attempt to arrest him, the house had burned, and all three had perished.

  She had told Robin and Leo everything that happened—well, almost everything. She had left out her own near encounter with Dazreel and a few other related items. She had also given the impression—sort of—that the house had burned by accident. Poor sweet Robin hadn't believed a word of it. But after hearing Leo's account, taking a look at her demolished car, and seeing the footprints in the snow, he finally, grudgingly, agreed to go along with it. And it did explain all the mysteries of Yvonne's death.

  She knew the public story was full of holes and loose ends, but she also knew the people in Hawley. They wanted to hear that an outsider had done it, and they wanted to hear that he had been discovered. Their own imaginations would fill in the gaps.

  Lana Whittaker didn't really believe that Leo was working with Robin all those nights he was away, but they loved each other enough. They'd be all right.

  She fed the last pages to the fire and looked around her parlor. She decided to put up a tree this year. She hadn't bothered with one in years. And a party. She'd have a party. There hadn't been more than three people in the house at one time in ages.

  She hobbled creakily up the stairs, humming "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly," considerably off-key, heading for the attic to search for the box of Christmas-tree ornaments.

  The End

  © 1974 by Tom Reamy. First appeared in the September 1974 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; from San Diego Lightfoot Sue; reprinted by permission of the author's Estate and the Estate's agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

  Ballenger's People

  Kris Ottman Neville

  The radios in the wall came on with a click, and a moment later African drum music issued into the bedroom. Bart Ballenger was instantly awake.

  He took a vote, and the consensus was it's Thursday.

  He arose and stood before the window and breathed deeply. Thursday was the day to settle accounts with a lawyer on Wilshire Blvd.

  Air and sunlight said spring. This, too, was verified democratically.

  Ballenger completed the early morning routine against the sound of music. He moved about his two-bedroom apartment checking. All was as the previous evening. No one had entered during the night. The smaller bedroom was in order against the arrival of guests who never came.

  He sat at the counter-top divider, between living room and kitchen, eating eggs, drinking coffee. The radios around him, all switched on, played the same music as in the bedroom. He bobbed his head to the rhythm, visualized The Star Walkers. He was in love with the middle drummer, a girl named Angelique Roust.

  Ballenger had seen Angelique on TV and instantly fallen in love with her. She replaced his previous love, Miss Terri Paul, flutist, a person, in retrospect, with no bust worthy of mention.

  Now it seemed, over the eggs and coffee in the natural brightness of morning, fantastic that such a collection as Miss Terri Paul could have attracted even his momentary attention, much less captivated him for a single minute, let alone nearly five whole months. He vowed against eternity that he would never, never, never show Miss Terri Paul's TV tapes again, and if he heard her on radio, he would refuse to listen. This would be proof of his love for Angelique.

  He finished his coffee. The news was coming on, blaring out over the sounds of cool jazz. There were, in the world, the nations of crime and the nations of law and order; he belonged to the latter. All were democracies, whether they knew it or not, but some were insane. This was scarcely surprising when you considered evolution.

  Out came the letter: Final Notice! The amount, including postage, was twenty-three dollars and forty-seven cents.

  "Ballenger" began the letter, omitting the customary salutation—"your actions indicate you have no intention of paying the enclosed bill. If this bill is not paid immediately, I will be forced to institute legal action, which may involve your employer. You will be liable for all costs incurred in collection. To avoid embarrassment and the extra expense, your check in the amount of $23.47 must be received by return mail. I mean business. This is the last notice I will send before forwarding the bill to the California Courts for collection. F. Terrace Watson, Attorney at Law."

  The bill was clearly illegal. Watson had been given every chance to prove his case and had failed dismally.

  Item one: Jury trial.

  Item two: Superior court review.

  Item three: Supreme court decision.

  All favored Ballenger. Watson did not care enough even to present his case on the appeal, and Ballenger, out of a sense of fairness, had continued the proceedings on his own initiative. Now this man, Watson, was threatening the very nation itself.

  Ballenger folded the letter and replaced it in his inner suit-coat pocket. Breakfast finished, he put the dishes in the machine. Seven-twenty in the morning. Normally time to leave for work. Switchboard opens in exactly thirty-five minutes. Time was a rubber band, stretching out.

  He removed his credit-card receipts. We will audit the accounts this morning. Prudent financial management is the foundation of the nation. The Secretary of the Treasury was summoned.

  Two dollars and fifty-nine cents, plus tax, for a six-pack of half-quart cans of beer. Five cans were still in the refrigerator. The supply would last another month. The Secretary of the Treasury waived the right to appeal and agreed the expense was reasonable. Three dollars and eighty-nine cents for dry cleaning: an unavoidable expense. Ten dollars, thirteen cents: a lube and oil job, rotors adjusted, fuel tank filled. No argument there. Forty-seven cents for a large chocolate bar. They called in the Surgeon General on that one. To the bathroom scale. Ballenger had picked up four ounces by the scale. Back to the accounts. Let's watch that candy. Ballenger agreed.

  Four dollars and ten cents, including tips, for dinner in the restaurant last night. This Wednesday's expense was sanctioned by tradition, and recent polls showed it was approved by eighty-three percent of the citizens. Of the twenty-five dollars he allowed himself for the period, he still had three dollars plus change. Close enough. The Secretary of the Treasury was satisfied.

  Snap! went the rubber band. Five minutes before eight.

  Ballenger phoned the switchboard.

  "Thank you for calling Merritt and Finch," said the recording. "Space research is our specialty."

  He said, "Ballenger from Accounting. I have some personal business to take care of this morning. I'll be in after lunch."

  "Thank you for your message, Mr. Ballenger," said the machine.

  Traffic above Los Angeles would begin breaking in another fifteen minutes. It was a twenty-minute flight to the office of F. Terrace Watson, Attorney at Law. Leave at eight-fifteen, be there at twenty-five before nine.

  Ballenger checked the day-shift workers. Everyone seemed at his job. Pulse was good, heartbeat steady, respiration normal. Swing shift would be going to bed in another hour. Most of the night shift probably hadn't gone back to sleep after voting on the day of the week. They should be up stirring. Should try to get all of today's major business out of the way before nine, nine-thirty, so the swing shift could get their rest.

  Some sort of a proxy agreement really must be worked out, if it can be done democratically. We've got to send legislation to that effect up to the next Congress. Note: Cabinet meeting on Sunday should discuss this.

  Meanwhile, one of the problems was too many important decisions. The executive himself could do something about that. Should definitely cut down on the numb
er of major decisions, keep them to a bare minimum, try to get them all out of the way before nine o'clock. No excuse for decisions in the middle of the day. A well-run country shouldn't have emergencies.

  Yet the evils of dictatorships are too well known to review: an evolutionary failure of the organism. Strange so few saw this very point with the clarity of Ballenger.

  Promptly at eight-twelve, he buzzed the garage of his departure and left the apartment, checking to be sure the door latch was set to lock. Two minutes later, he was on the roof. The morning rush having passed, the mechanical attendant had already assembled the blades. He stepped in, and the radios came on with the ignition. He hummed in time, tapping the control bar.

  Airborne, the Security Forces relaxed. Once again he had remembered to lock the door. The day-shift technicians, well rested, began to supervise the complicated motor activity connected with flying. The pilot stood at the bridge, in command, studying meaningful lights as they flashed their careful traffic patterns, responding with the necessary movements.

  Ballenger again wished there were some way to introduce more automation. Perhaps he should take it up with his Scientific Advisory Group. But if the SAG could work out a way, what about unemployment, long solved among nations, but an ever-present internal danger?

  No! Better to have jobs for all than to have to worry about chronic unemployment. The thing to avoid was overtime. The union was very difficult when it came to overtime. Four hours off for each hour on. Once, after a very difficult week at the office, he had spent all of Friday in bed to catch up.

  The blades joined traffic.

  At eight-thirty, between commercials, came the newsbreak. It was the one thing he really did not like about the station. Ballenger frowned in annoyance. The nations of crime seemed to have the upper hand: an aggression in Florida, a war on the streets of Los Angeles. Incomprehensible. Pointless.