The Unicorn Trade

by Poul Anderson

  Darkness from the east was rapidly engulfing an ice-green southwest while he brought in as much wood as he reckoned he’d need. Noisily crumpling newspaper, he dropped a glance across the grate and saw fragments of Una’s thesis. His difficulties at work, and that damn kitten, had made him quite forget it. Not everything was ash. Whole sheets survived, browned or partly charred. On impulse he reached over the screen and fished out the topmost. Maybe, if he cited chapter and verse, Una would see what a waste of time her project was—his time, for didn’t he, as a breadwinner, have a right to hers?

  He brought the piece near a lamp, the better to find his way through the strikeovers and scribbled corrections of a first draft.… “—will argue that, while Egyptian religion had origins as primitive as any, it developed a subtlety comparable to Maimonides or Thomas Aquinas. Monotheism was no invention of Akhnaton’s; we have grounds for supposing it existed already in the Fifth Dynasty, though for reasons to be discussed its expression was always henotheistic. The multiple ‘bodies’ and ‘souls’ attributed to man in the Book of the Dead were as intricate in their relationships as the Persons of the Trinity. Even the ka, which superficially resembles an idea found in shamanism and similarly naive mythomagical systems, suggested by dream experience: even the ka turns out on examination to be a concept of such psychological profundity that a sophisticated modern can well think that here a certain truth is symbolized, and a Jungian go to the length of wondering if there is something more than symbolism. The author will not speculate further, but does admit to being a Jungian who will in this paper often resort to that form of analysis—”

  “Holy shit!” Tronen stopped himself from tearing the sheet in half. Let him read it aloud to her, let her hear not only what crap it was but how she wrote like the stuffiest kind of professor. Yes, and point out the influence, in those directions, of her dear ex-boyfriend Harry Quarters … He folded the brittle paper, tucked it in a hip pocket, and went back to building his fire. The rest of her work could certainly burn.

  The flames jumped eagerly to life. Their reflections soon shimmered from windowpanes, red upon black. Tronen stood a few minutes watching the fire grow, warming his palms, listening to the crackle, sniffing wisps of smoke that escaped the chimney. His daylong indignation quieted, hardened toward resoluteness. He’d bust that bronco the world yet. Spurs, quirt, and bit—

  The phone rang.

  Who was his next pest? He stalked to the instrument, snatched it up, barked, “Yes?” while his free hand made a fist.

  “Leo—”

  Una’s voice.

  “Leo, I thought I’d wait more, but it’s been too lonesome.”

  Triumph kindled. “Well, you want back, do you? I suppose we can talk that over.”

  Silence hummed, until (he could practically see the fair head rise): “Talk. Yes, naturally we will. We must. I see no sense in staying on in limbo, do you?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Why do you care?” She lost her defense. The tone blurred. “Did I call too soon? Do you need more time to, to cool off? … Should I take more time to think what we can do? … I’m sorry if I seem pushy, I’ll wait if you prefer. I’m sorry, Leo.”

  “I asked where I can reach you,” he said, word by bitten-off word.

  “I—well, I don’t like this room where I am. I’m moving out tomorrow morning, not sure where. I’d hoped I could move home. But not for a while, if ever, is that right?”

  “Call back, then,” he snapped “at your convenience,” and banged the receiver down.

  There! Make her come crawling.

  Tronen noticed he was shaky. Tension. How about the eggnog he’d decided on? He took a brandy bottle from the liquor cabinet and marched to the kitchen.

  As he entered, he barely heard at the door, “Weep, weep.”

  The bottle fell from his grasp. For an instant that stretched, he stood alone with the pleading from the night.

  Then his wrath flared and screamed, “No more persecution, you hear? No more persecution!” Like a soldier charging a machine gun, he sprang across the floor. He almost tore the doorknob loose.

  Light leaked outward, cold and darkness seeped in. The kitten lay at the end of a thin trail of blood. Except for rapid, shallow breaths, he saw no motion. But when he grabbed it, his hand felt how the heartbeat shivered the broken ribs.

  He fought down vomit. Quick, quick, end this vile thing, once and forever. He ran back to the living room. His fire still lacked a proper bed of coals, but the flames whirled high, loud, many-colored. He knocked the screen down in his haste. “Go!” he yelled, and threw the kitten in.

  It wailed, rolled around, tried to crawl free, though fur was instantly ablaze. Tronen seized the poker. With his whole strength, he thrust and held, pinning the animal in place. “Die,” he chanted, “die, won’t you, die, die, die!” Bared skin blistered, reddened, blackened, split. Eyeballs bubbled. That which had been a kitten grew silent, grew still. The fire, damped by its body, sputtered toward extinction. Smells of char and roast sent Tronen gagging backward. He held the poker as though it were a sword.

  The thing was dead, dead at last. But would he be stunk out of his house? He retreated toward the kitchen. When yonder barbecue had finished, he’d open windows and doors. Meanwhile, here was the brandy bottle he’d dropped.

  After several long gulps, safe amidst the kitchen’s chrome and plastic, he supposed he should eat. The idea of food nauseated. He wasn’t sure why. True, he hadn’t enjoyed disposing of this … intolerable nuisance. But that was something he flat-out had to do. Should he not be glad the episode was over?

  He took another mouthful. His gullet savored its heat. Would he have been wrong, anyway, to enjoy? Oh, he was no sadist. However, he’d been given more provocation than most men would have suffered before taking action. If the kitten had been an innocent dumb brutelet, so was a rattlesnake or a plague-bearing rat, right? You were allowed to enjoy killing those, weren’t you? In war movies on TV, the GI’s gloried and joked as they bombed, shot, burned Nazis. Unwritten law said it was no crime, no occasion for remorse, if a man killed his wife’s rapist.

  Or her lover.

  Quarters …

  Where had Una phoned from? Direct dialing gave no clue, as she’d be aware. Their fight Monday had originated, as well as he could remember, when he characterized Quarters for her. No, wait, earlier he’d grumbled about neglected housework, neglected because she was off discussing her stupid thesis with her pet teacher. But she didn’t flare back, and thus detonate his final response, until he called Quarters a few well-chosen names, like moocher, mooncalf, failure who was dragging her down alongside him, therefore stone around Tronen’s neck too … Why did she care what her husband said? What really was between them?

  By God and hell, Tronen thought, if he’s been fouling my nest … If she rang from his place, at his suggestion, to get me to keep on supporting her, while he stood in the background and snickered …

  This might not be true. This might not be true. But if it is.

  The rage mounting in Tronen was not like the day’s anger. That had been controlled, lawful, eager to find reasons for itself. This was a fire. He’d been tormented past endurance. And the start of everything was Quarters. Whether or not he’d ever laid Una, he’d blown her mind (yes, blown!), which in many ways was worse than seducing her body. It was a theft, an invasion, of every part of her husband’s life. And what was Tronen permitted to do in self-defense? A married woman could have friends, couldn’t she? Even when the friends were vampires. The law said she could. Centuries had passed since the law put stakes through the hearts of vampires and burned them.

  Divorce? Ha! No matter what Una babbled—whether or not she was sincere at this time—Lover Boy Quarters would want a property settlement and alimony for his use. Failing that, he’d want her marriage continued, free ass for him and a monopoly of her mind. Tronen could look for no peace while Quarters lived. How lucky Quarters was that Tronen owned no firea
rm.

  Fire is an arm.

  Tronen drank little more. He sat for perhaps an hour, thinking. His justice must be untraceable. But he was too wise to plan anything elaborate. The fire in him should cleanse his life, not destroy it.

  He kept a gallon of white gas in the garage for miscellaneous uses. Quarters rented a house (why, since he was unwed?), small, old, built of wood long dried, full of books and other paper. An enthusiastic outdoorsman in his vacations, he owned a Coleman stove—Una had spoken of this—and therefore doubtless fuel. Let that stove be found near the burnt body; the natural supposition would be that Quarters came to grief tinkering with it.

  Tronen roared his ardor.

  He was careful, though. He left lights on, TV going—pause to jerk an upright middle finger at a tiny lump of meat and bones in a dead fire—and backed his car out as softly as he could manage, headlamps darkened. Should someone by ill chance phone or come around and find him not at home, why, he’d gone for supplies; he would indeed stop at a supermarket on his way home and buy a few items. Nobody was apt to look closely at the timing, for nobody supposed he and Quarters were anything but friends. (Ah-ha, outsmarted yourself, did you, Harry boy?) And odds were his absence would not be noticed, he would never be questioned.

  When he had gone a sufficient distance, his way illuminated by countless points of fire overhead, he switched on lights and drove most carefully, conventionally, till near his goal. In this less prosperous district houses stood fairly close together, but hedges and evergreen trees cast deep shadows, and elsewhere the street lamps revealed nobody abroad. Parking under a great spruce, he took his canister of gas and walked fast to the property he wanted. There he moved slantwise across the lawn. The chill he breathed was sharp as a flame. Snow squeaked underfoot like a kitten.

  Windows glowed. If Una was there—!

  A peek showed Quarters alone, sprawled in a seedy armchair, lost in a book. Good. Tronen entered the garage by a rear door and drew a flashlight from his coat. The portable stove glimmered at him out of murk. He carried it in the same hand as the fuel, walked around to the front entrance of the house, and punched a button he could barely see. The doorbell mewed.

  Warmth (not that he felt cold) flowed over him when the door opened. “Why, hello, Leo,” Quarters said. “What brings you here?” He glanced surprised at his visitor’s burden, perhaps not recognizing the Coleman right away. “Come in.”

  Tronen kicked the door shut behind him. “We’ve got business, you and me,” he said.

  Quarters’ bespectacled gaze grew concerned. “Urgent, I gather. Una?”

  “Yes.” Tronen set down the stove, retained the canister, fiddled with the cap, unscrewing it beneath an appearance of nervousness. “She’s gone. I’m worried. That’s why I cut you off yesterday. Now I wonder if you have any notion where she might be.”

  “Good heaven, no. What can have gone wrong? And, uh, why’re you lugging that stuff around?”

  “You don’t know where she is, lover boy?” Tronen purred.

  Quarters flushed. “Huh? What do you mean? Are you, for God’s sake, are you implying—”

  “Yes.”

  “No! Una? She’s the cleanest, most honorable person alive. Leo, are you crazy?”

  The interior fire crowned and ran free through heaven. A part of Tronen remembered that only an idiot would waste time and give the foe opportunity in a confrontation scene. He had the cap off the can. He dashed gasoline across Quarters. The man yelled, staggered back, brushed the stinking reek from his face. Tronen dropped the can to pour out what remained of its contents. He must finish his justice and be away before noise drew neighbors. He pulled forth his cigarette lighter. “Burn, Harry,” he said. “Burn.” He snapped flame and advanced on Quarters. He was much the heavier and stronger male.

  “No, please, no!” Quarters tried to scuttle aside. But the room wasn’t big. Tronen kept between him and the door. Soon he’d be boxed in a corner. Tronen moved forward, yowling.

  Quarters grabbed an outsize ashtray off an end table by his armchair. Una had given him it for his pipes. He threw, as he would scorch a baseball across a sandlot.

  Tronen saw amber-hued glass spin toward him, aglare like the eye of a cat. It struck. Fire exploded and went out.

  As he fell, his lighter flame touched the gasoline spilled across the floor. Flame sprang aloft.

  Quarters did the heroic thing. Although himself drenched, he didn’t flee immediately. Instead he dragged Tronen along. When safe on the lawn, he secured limbs with belt and necktie before the maniac should regain consciousness. Then he phoned an alarm in from an adjacent house. The trucks arrived too late to save him.

  The police chief’s office in a smallish town is rarely impressive. This held a battered desk, a couple of creaky chairs, a filing cabinet, and a coatrack on a threadbare carpet between dingy plaster walls. It smelled of cigar butts. The view in the window was glorious, though. A thaw had been followed by a freeze, and winter-brilliant sunlight from a sky like sapphire burst in the icicles hung on boughs in Riverside Park.

  “—appreciate your, uh, concern, Mr. Quarters,” he said into the telephone. “Can’t be sure yet, of course. But Dr. Mandelbaum, you know, big-name psychiatrist at the university, he’s already come down and examined Tronen. Says he’s never seen a case quite like it, but in his opinion the man’s hopelessly insane. Permanently, I mean. Homicidal, incapable of reason, will have to be kept confined for life like any dangerous animal.” The chief grimaced. “He keeps shouting about how he’s on fire and wants his kitten back and—You got any idea what this might mean, sir? … No?”

  The chief paused. “Uh, Mr. Quarters, maybe you can help us in a couple of matters … First off, we found a piece of writing in Tronen’s pants pocket. Weird stuff, about a, uh, ka, whatever that is. I thought maybe a clue—

  “Oh, an article his wife was working on, hm? Well, look, if you could explain—Something must’ve sent Tronen off the deep end.”

  He took notes as he listened. Finally: “Mm, yes, thanks. Let me see if I’ve got the idea straight. The Egyptians thought a man had several different souls. The ka was the one that could wander around independently, in the shape of an animal; it’d come back and talk with him in his grave, except he was actually in heaven … Aw, nuts, too complicated for me. The ka was his spirit of reason and rightness. Let’s leave it at that as far as this old woodenhead is concerned, okay? … No, I don’t see any help. Like you say, it’s only research Mrs. Tronen was doing.”

  The chief filled his lungs. Being in a smallish town, he knew a little about the persons involved. “Uh, favor number two, Mr. Quarters. I understand you’re a friend of the family. When she learns what’s happened, could you, well, sort of take over? Help her out? And—what the psychiatrist said—I’d suggest you try and get her to end her marriage. He’s nothing more than a body now. She ought to make a new life for herself …

  “Okay, thanks, Mr. Quarters. Thanks a lot. Goodbye.”

  He hung up. “Excuse me,” he said to the fire chief, who sat opposite him. “What were you saying when he rang?”

  The fire chief shrugged. “Nothing much. Just that we’ve sifted the ruins pretty thoroughly—a sensational case like this, we’d better—and found nothing to cast any doubt on Quarters’ story.”

  “Bones?” asked the police chief suddenly.

  “Huh?” The fire chief was startled. “Why, yes, chicken bones in the ashes of the kitchen. Why not?” A silence lengthened which he decided should be filled. “People don’t realize how incombustible a human or animal body is. Crematoriums use far higher temperatures than any ordinary fire reaches, and still they have to crush the last pieces mechanically. Didn’t you know that, Bob?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “Oh … I dunno. I guess Tronen simply lost his mind.” The police chief stared out the window. “His raving made me think we might find a clue in his fireplace. But there was only burn
t wood and paper. Nothing else at all.”

  —Poul and Karen Anderson

  APOLLO 1: JANUARY 27, 1967

  I hope the people in the United States are mature enough that when we do lose our first crews they accept this as part of the business.

  —Frank Borman, astronaut, 1965

  GRISSOM:

  … There’s always a possibility that you can have a catastrophic failure. Of course, this can happen on any flight. It can happen on the last one as well as the first one.

  WHITE:

  … I think you have to understand the feeling that a test pilot has.… There’s a great deal of pride involved.…

  CHAFFEE:

  … This is our business, to find out if this thing will work for us.

  —Interview, December 1966

  Gus Grissom, your name is as familiar to me as my own. I have a yellowed newspaper picture of your liftoff, nearly six years ago, that has spent that time mounted on the inside of one of my kitchen cabinet doors. It is accompanied by pictures of John Glenn and Yuri Gagarin. I wanted something to buck me up at dishwashing. You meant a hell of a lot to me—

  Goodbye, Gus.

  Ed White, you were my special astronaut. I sat within a few yards of you a year ago, watching and hearing you comment on the movies of your spacewalk, manoeuvres in space, and the rest. I even exchanged half-a-dozen words with you and got your autograph in Oberth’s book—but you had never heard of Oberth. It made me wonder if you had The Dream: if you could understand how I hung on every word you said, and prayed my wordless agnostic prayers that I might somehow get to where you’d been.

  Goodbye, Ed.

  Roger Chaffee, they say you had The Dream. You weren’t a test pilot. You were a pioneer, and you wanted to go as far as you could. Did you ever do a flit with the Gray Lensman? Did you go with D. D. Harriman to the moon? I think you did. I think you and I spoke the same language.