by Hal Annas
“No,” I said. “If she’ll just stop moving around—”
“Be quiet,” Bill interrupted. “We can’t hear the ticking when you’re talking.” He pushed me into a chair.
“We’ve got to do something,” Ella repeated. “I can’t stand this.”
“Call a couple newspapers,” Bill suggested.
Alan shook his head. “They’d check with the scientists and label the whole thing a hoax.”
Bill nodded solemnly. “And even if they published it as fact, there’d be panic and riots.”
“But we’ve got to do something,” Ella insisted. “We can’t just wait for the world to be destroyed when we’ve got our fingers on the thing that would save us.”
Her fingers were twining and retwining about one another, but she was referring to me. A girl in love can’t get her mind on anything but the man in question, and will allude to her love in a thousand ways.
And there is the law of opposites which goes into effect whenever she begins swearing. She is simply choosing delicate and tender antonyms, knowing you’ll understand. In her colorful and feminine way, Ella damned me for not ticking. She called me a dumb ox, an insipid ass, an inveterate moron, a chronic mental invalid, a mindless blob, a collection of bones and blubber that wouldn’t tick when ticking was required. All of which under the law of opposites, showed how tenderly she adored me.
I felt sorry for her. Her overwhelming passion kept her swearing for five minutes in a way that, if printed, would set the page afire. Her love was magnificent, transcendent, expressed more ardently than Cleo might have mentioned her own pallid affections for Anthony, and under the pressure of the law of opposites demonstrated in the way she kicked me, slugged me, slapped me, and yanked my head around, trying to make me tick.
“I’m going to get drunk,” Alan said.
“No,” Bill snapped. “Not another drop until we’ve done something. We have to keep on trying.”
“But I’m at the end of my rope,” Alan argued. “What can we do?”
“Get in touch with the president,” Ella offered. “If we can convince him we’ll have the resources of the government behind us.”
Alan snatched the telephone and tried to put through a call to the White House. Somebody demanded that he state his business and identity, which he did, and promised to refer the matter up the line.
He called the F.B.I. and somebody there promised to investigate all stray storms and apprehend the guilty party or parties.
He finally called the switchboard operator and said, “Is that you, honey? Well, listen, honey, this is Alan, honey, and I’m calling to tell you goodbye, honey, because they’re about to ring the curtain down, honey . . .”
The talk went on for several minutes and said the same thing, substantially, twenty-seven times. At the end of it, after he’d told her, with tears in his eyes, that his last thoughts would be of her, he asked her to ring Magnusson’s home.
Whoever answered was excited, and talked so loud that Alan had to take the receiver away from his ear, and we could all plainly hear what was said.
“Yes,” the voice shouted, “Mr. Magnusson came in and went immediately to his study. He came out soon with a paper in his hand. He looked at me and gasped, ‘Great Caesar’s ghost,’ then ran out of the house. That was quite a while ago. He’s never acted this way before and I don’t know what to do. Can you suggest anything?”
“I can’t,” Alan said and hung up.
“What now?” Bill wanted to know.
“Nothing much,” Alan said. “Magnusson’s lost his mind. That’s all. And he was our last hope.”
They brooded and forgot to order lunch. Ella got into another swearing mood and my love soared like a balloon. The full realization of my genius came then. Evolution had for millennia striven toward an age of ticking. I was the first successful working model. In history I would live as the herald, the first to light a candle in an age of darkness. All men would envy me; all women would envy Ella whose torrid passion would be credited as the inspiration. In these mammoth thoughts, so profound and complicated that no other man alive could wield them through his mind with even approximate facility, I almost fell asleep.
Magnusson burst in on us. He said, “Greater Caesar’s ghost, get busy! Don’t sit there like clucks. The whole thing is clear now. I had a paper on my desk reporting Farley’s discovery of a cosmic hotspot headed toward the solar system, and this confirms it.” He waved the paper on which Ella had typed. “Get busy,” he shouted.
Everybody jumped. Bill took a drink. Ella collapsed into a chair.
“Get busy doing what?” Alan demanded.
“Get in communication with Mars,” Magnusson roared. “Time may be running out. But we can avert this thing if we work fast.”
Bill took one of my ears and Alan the other and I thought they were going to tear my head off my shoulders.
“Not that,” Magnusson snorted. “Miss Lauroo, kiss him, and for godsake put some fire in it.”
At first she seemed puzzled, then, with a malicious gleam in her big eyes, she advanced on me. I confess I was frightened. The way she kissed me made my hair stand on end, and suddenly I was ticking so loud that it rattled the windows.
“That’s the stuff,” Magnusson said encouragingly. “Keep on and put more enthusiasm into it. Charge him up just short of blowing a fuse.”
She did. I swooned. Bill and Alan caught me and placed me on the couch. Then she went to work in earnest. The whole cosmos spun blissfully and great thunderclaps of ticking hammered inside my head.
“That’s enough,” Magnusson warned, eyeing Ella with more than scientific interest. “He’s gasping for breath. And you, Miss Lauroo, are an electrical phenomenon. I would personally like to make a thorough investigation of your cellular structure. But to the point: Get in communication with Mars.”
She rapped on my head.
“Harder,” Magnusson advised. “I’m inclined to believe the signal impulses respond to his feeling, and as you can plainly see he’s almost unconscious. You will have to pound on his skull.”
She did. I saw stars, Mars and other planets and flashes of lightning.
“Please, Miss Lauroo,” Magnusson cautioned, “don’t knock him unconscious. He may have a concussion already. Ease up and transmit what I tell you: Mass defect times the square of the velocity of light—Hold on. Don’t want any mistakes. I’ll write it out.”
That’s when I discovered my full genius for handling figures. As I lay there in a semi-conscious state, the formula throbbed through my head without a solitary mistake. Only genius is perfect or near perfect.
She pounded for what seemed hours, pausing only when those explosive tickings came back with questions or comments. And as she did so, Magnusson explained: “We’re not transmitting electrical energy. It moves at the velocity of light and there would be a time lag between here and Mars. The response is instantaneous, in zero time, which means a new form of energy in the ticking age.”
“Are you going to be able to save the world?” Alan demanded.
“The world?” Magnusson registered astonishment. “I doubt it. Men and women have been trying since the beginning. It’s out of my field. We are now trying to save the life on Mars from a cosmic storm.”
“Will we succeed?” Ella asked quickly.
“I think so,” Magnusson said. “Our calculations about the storm differed from theirs. It will not be as intense as they anticipate. I’ve given them new formulas worked out by Farley and me which will enable them to minimize their losses by appropriate measures.
“The significant thing,” he went on, “is the fact that a new age has dawned. We are in communication with intelligent life beyond our planet. It is our duty to maintain that communication.” He looked at me. “You’re an unusual specimen,” he added.
“Does that mean,” I asked, “that I’m something special like a genius?”
“Something different, yes.” He nodded. “It may be that in your he
ad is a series of unusual vacuums, similar to vacuum tubes.”
“Ella,” I said, “will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “I love to hear you tick.”
And as she put her arms about me and kissed me, and then really went to work, and as I ticked louder and louder, as the storm of emotions in my body spun the universe dizzily, as I swooned ecstatically toward unconsciousness, I heard Alan say to Bill, “It’s fine now. But you know how women are. Soon she’ll expect chimes and bells and maybe even a concert.”
Magician-Second Class
On the far-off planet he called home, everybody was a magician! And to his utter shame, he had to use props! The disgrace sent him into exile . . . to Earth, where props were okay!
Before Sasko reached the entrance beneath the sign “Mysto, The Magician,” he looked in a window. His reflection was both strange and familiar. He knew he was five feet eleven inches tall, slim, had black hair, eyes, and a dark complexion. He was dressed in a dark suit, neat black bow tie about the collar of a gleaming white shirt, and he gathered, from the glances of others, particularly of the opposite sex, not revolting to look at. He certainly looked like an Earthman . . .
At the entrance he paused.
“Beat it, Bub,” the man said. “Only actors and actresses allowed in here.”
“But I want to see the magician,” Sasko said. “I need a job. I materialized some money earlier, but the people I offered it to said it was counterfeit.”
“Two blocks up, turn left to go to the nuthouse,” the man said. “Now, beat it.”
A girl appeared behind the man. Here eyes were soft blue. “If you’re an actor out of work come on in. I’m Mysto’s assistant. Maybe he can get you booking.”
Sasko walked by the man. His black eyes studied the girl, particularly her legs. They were better than anything he’d ever been able to materialize.
“I need a job,” he said.
She gave him a quick smile that did things to his heart and made him feel he’d grown an inch. “Maybe you’ll get one,” she said.
In a small dressing room he was introduced to the magician. Mysto was a trifle fat and slouchy. His shirtfront held the stains of an amber liquid he was drinking out of a glass and his dark clothes were wrinkled as if they’d been slept in. On his dressing table was an ashtray that’d overflowed. He appeared worried.
“Actor out of work,” the girl told him. “I remembered your asking about a broken-down actor at the agency.”
“I need an assistant to hand me snakes,” Mysto said. “She’s afraid of them, and my last male assistant got bitten.”
“Snakes?”
“He swallows them,” the girl explained. “He read something about goldfish swallowing years ago. It was widely publicized. He hoped swallowing snakes would put him in the bigtime.”
Sasko nodded.
“And I also want you to catch a bullet in your teeth,” Mysto explained, handing him a small piece of lead. “Carry it in your mouth. When I fire the pistol work it out between your teeth.”
It didn’t sound difficult, but Sasko was apprehensive. When he performed magic unexpected things happened.
The girl stepped behind a screen to dress. He followed, wanting a closer look at her legs and figure, but she pushed him back.
Someone knocked on the door, yelled, “Two minutes, Mysto.”
The magician studied Sasko. “Clothes all right,” he said. “A little grease paint and you’re all set.” He took another drink from the glass and walked to the door.
Sasko glanced in the mirror, down at the paint. He concentrated on the shading and watched his cheeks take on a pinkish glow. The paint itself was prop enough. All he needed was to implant the thought firmly that his make-up would be nearly like Mysto’s.
The girl came from behind the screen. The dress she’d worn no longer hid her charms. The pants were not a waste of material, neither the bra. It occurred to him that maybe there was a scarcity on this planet. But he made no complaint.
Her cheeks were bright; her eyes alive with interest, and her smile for him very warm.
They followed Mysto out to the wing. On the stage a troupe of dancers was taking a bow. Half of them came trotting this way, while the other half departed in the opposite direction. The moment they got into the wing the bright smiles on their features vanished.
“Tough audience,” one girl snorted. “Sitting on their hands.”
A man appeared on the stage, announced, “And now, Mysto the Magician.”
Mysto walked out. bowed. The girl moved gracefully at his side, took up a position beyond and behind him. She continued moving about. The audience clapped lightly, and then as it settled down, Mysto plucked a rose out of the air, wrapped it in a handkerchief and turned it into a sphere which floated up and out over the audience.
Sasko was a little astonished that Mysto would sink to the level of using props. The rose, he knew, had been made of rubber and blew itself up into that shape when he pressed something to form gas inside it, and, of course, kept on expanding until it became a balloon.
Mysto, it dawned, wasn’t any more accomplished than he.
A stagehand rolled out a table draped with various paraphernalia on its top. Mysto used props for every trick. He even had false legs in the box when he sawed the girl in two, which, Sasko thought, was a shame, because her own legs were so much prettier and would’ve sawed nicely.
Somebody handed Sasko a box and nudged him. “Your cue,” the man said.
Sasko walked onto the stage, aware of the movement inside the box. He lifted the lid gingerly and peeked. They were vicious looking and he got the idea they would like a nip at him.
Mysto pulled up his sleeves, showed his hands front and back. The girl danced about. The spot became dim, finally dark blue. Mysto tilted his head back and placed his hands against his stomach.
Sasko stood unmoving. Mysto grunted, rolled his eyes toward him and back. “Now,” he breathed hoarsely.
Still Sasko didn’t move.
Dancing near, the girl whispered, “The snakes. Lift them out one at a time and hold them near that opening in his shirt.”
Sasko obliged. The first snake wiggled and twisted. Mysto opened his mouth as he looked at the audience, then closed it as he tilted his head back.
The snake tried to get into the hole in his shirt, but Sasko, remembering that he’d said he was going to swallow the snakes restrained it. “Open up,” he said, holding the snake above Mysto’s mouth.
Mysto cringed back, snarled, “Fool! Let it go in the hole.”
The girl danced close again. “It’s trained,” she whispered. “It knows where to go.”
Sasko didn’t like it. Cheating, he knew, was frowned on. But he finally let the snake slide through his hand. It disappeared into the hole. Instantly Mysto straightened up, hiccupped, rubbed his paunch, let the audience see that it was wiggling. Applause sounded.
“Now,” Mysto snapped, again tilting his head back.
Sasko brought out a larger snake, let it slide into the hole. This was repeated again and then Mysto strode about with his stomach jumping while the audience roared.
The girl touched Sasko’s arm, danced off the stage. He followed and last came Mysto.
“If they call for an encore,” the girl hastened to explain, “he does the bullet trick. Put it in your mouth so you’ll be ready.”
Mysto went back on the stage, held up a hand to the audience, then beckoned toward the wing.
“That’s us,” Bonnie said.
Again they went out. Mysto produced a formidable-looking revolver and aimed at Sasko. He got the idea and quickly moved the piece of lead with his tongue and held it between his teeth as the gun went off. The spot was very bright and it gleamed there.
Back in the dressing room, he was unaccountably sad. “You would’ve sawed nicely,” he told Bonnie. “And when he said he was going to swallow snakes he should’ve swallowed them.”
The girl stared, a fr
own on her even features. Mysto seemed puzzled, finally said, “You’ve a lot to learn. We’ll begin teaching you at once.”
It disturbed him, but he accepted the routine, learned sleight of hand that was not magic at all. Mysto wasn’t satisfied with his performance and continued criticizing, as they went from town to town for one and two night stands, but gave him enough money to live on and to take Bonnie out occasionally.
When they played her home town she was in a fever of excitement. She took him and Mysto to her parents’ home before the show and herself helped with the cooking. Her baby sister sat on his lap and asked him to tell a story. He told about Finuello in the next galaxy who changed all the inhabitants of a planet to minor magicians so he could loaf. She said it was almost as good as the stories in her fairy books but not quite as believable.
She said, “If you won’t tell anybody I’ll show you something.”
He promised and she closed her eyes tight and stood at the window. Then she intoned, “Starlight, star bright, I wish I may I wish I might . . .”
The words were vaguely familiar. Something like them was known to the Magi. He decided to help her, and when she made her wish a tiny winged creature materialized, kissed her on each cheek, and made a subsonic suggestion to her subconscious that she would have a wonderful dream.
Enraptured, she ran back to him and told him she already knew what the dream was and that it would come true. He was to become her big brother. After the show they went on to another town.
Mysto grew fatter and drank more of the amber liquid. His performance fell off after a woman came to see him backstage and talked about money. He admitted she was his wife and that he was behind in the payments for separate maintenance. He sold part of Donnie’s wardrobe and some of the props from his act.
Sasko became more disturbed as the enthusiasm of the audience fell off. He didn’t like the use of props. They made him feel inferior. An accomplished Magi, he knew, would be turned into a goat by another one if he resorted to any form of trickery. His own weakness had appeared when he was young and he’d been fortunate enough to have a kind teacher. He’d remained in the first grade sixteen years, by reckoning on this planet, and even then hadn’t made a passing mark by materializing twelve ogres and turning them into angels. Even beginners could accomplish the feat, but the best he’d been able to do was materialize something resembling his classmates. They were all young and innocent and, of course, not ogres. They merely acted like ogres when they made fun of his backwardness.
