(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "Of course not! They make the same claims we do. But somewhere, Greta, you have to trust." He put out the middle finger of his hand.

  I didn't take hold of it. He whirled it away, snapping it against his thumb.

  "You're still grieving for that carrion there!" he accused me. He jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over the stiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in the black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursing one lone painful patch of consciousness. And only to hold a fort! Only to make sure Mary Stuart is executed, the Armada licked, and that all the other consequences flow on. The Snakes' Elizabeth let Mary live ... and England die ... and the Spaniard hold North America to the Great Lakes and New Scandinavia."

  Once more he put out his middle finger.

  * * * * *

  "All right, all right," I said, barely touching it. "You've convinced me."

  "Great!" he said. "'By for now, Greta. I got to help strike the set."

  "That's good," I said. He loped out.

  I could hear the skirling sword-clashes of the final fight to the death of the two Macks, Duff and Beth. But I only sat there in the empty dressing room pretending to grieve for a devil-smiling snow tiger locked in a time-cage and for a cute sardonic German killed for insubordination that I had reported ... but really grieving for a girl who for a year had been a rootless child of the theater with a whole company of mothers and fathers, afraid of nothing more than subway bogies and Park and Village monsters.

  As I sat there pitying myself beside a shrouded queen, a shadow fell across my knees. I saw stealing through the dressing room a young man in worn dark clothes. He couldn't have been more than twenty-three. He was a frail sort of guy with a weak chin and big forehead and eyes that saw everything. I knew at one he was the one who had seemed familiar to me in the knot of City fellows.

  He looked at me and I looked from him to the picture sitting on the reserve makeup box by Siddy's mirror. And I began to tremble.

  He looked at it too, of course, as fast as I did. And then he began to tremble too, though it was a finer-grained tremor than mine.

  The sword-fight had ended seconds back and now I heard the witches faintly wailing, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair--" Sid has them echo that line offstage at the end to give a feeling of prophecy fulfilled.

  Then Sid came pounding up. He's the first finished, since the fight ends offstage so Macduff can carry back a red-necked papier-mache head of him and show it to the audience. Sid stopped dead in the door.

  Then the stranger turned around. His shoulders jerked as he saw Sid. He moved toward him just two or three steps at a time, speaking at the same time in breathy little rushes.

  * * * * *

  Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling up behind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so none of them could get past. Their faces peered around him.

  And all this while the stranger was saying, "What may this mean? Can such things be? Are all the seeds of time ... wetted by some hell-trickle ... sprouted at once in their granary? Speak ... speak! You played me a play ... that I am writing in my secretest heart. Have you disjointed the frame of things ... to steal my unborn thoughts? Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? Speak, I say! Are you not my friend Sidney James Lessingham of King's Lynn ... singed by time's fiery wand ... sifted over with the ashes of thirty years? Speak, are you not he? Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth ... aye, and perchance hell too ... Speak, I charge you!"

  And with that he put his hands on Sid's shoulders, half to shake him, I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time I ever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing to say.

  He worked his lips. He opened his mouth twice and twice shut it. Then, with a kind of desperation in his face, he motioned the actors out of the way behind him with one big arm and swung the other around the stranger's narrow shoulders and swept him out of the dressing room, himself following.

  The actors came pouring in then, Bruce tossing Macbeth's head to Martin like a football while he tugged off his horned helmet, Mark dumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as she skittered past me to say, "Hi Gret, great you're back," and patting my temple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid's dressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid's reserve makeup box.

  "The lights, Martin!" he called.

  Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him and standing for a moment with his back against it, panting.

  I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before it could get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, "Siddy, you can't fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don't care how much he shakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes--Siddy, that was Shakespeare!"

  "Aye, girl, I think so," he told me, holding my wrists together. "They can't find dolls to double men like that--or such is my main hope." A big sickly grin came on his face. "Oh, gods," he demanded, "with what words do you talk to a man whose speech you've stolen all your life?"

  I asked him, "Sid, were we ever in Central Park?"

  He answered, "Once--twelve months back. A one-night stand. They came for Erich. You flipped."

  He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out.

  * * * * *

  Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, covered with dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid's reserve makeup box. The strongest green glow showed his intent face, still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as he kneeled before the thing--Major Maintainer, I remembered it was called.

  "When now? Where?" Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder.

  "The forty-fourth year before our Lord's birth!" Sid answered instantly. "Rome!"

  Beau's fingers danced over the dials like a musician's, or a safe-cracker's. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly.

  "There's a storm in that vector of the Void."

  "Circle it," Sid ordered.

  "There are dark mists every way."

  "Then pick the likeliest dark path!"

  I called through the dark, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh, Siddy?"

  "Aye, chick," he answered me. "'Tis all the rule we have!"

  --FRITZ LEIBER

  * * *

  Contents

  THE AMBULANCE MADE TWO TRIPS

  By Murray Leinster

  If you should set a thief to catch a thief, what does it take to stop a racketeer...?

  Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald found a package before his door that morning, along with the milk. He took it inside and opened it. It was a remarkably fine meerschaum pipe, such as the sergeant had longed irrationally to own for many years. There was no message with it, nor any card. He swore bitterly.

  On his way to Headquarters he stopped in at the orphanage where he usually left such gifts. On other occasions he had left Scotch, a fly-rod, sets of very expensive dry-flies, and dozens of pairs of silk socks. The female head of the orphanage accepted the gift with gratitude.

  "I don't suppose," said Fitzgerald morbidly, "that any of your kids will smoke this pipe, but I want to be rid of it and for somebody to know." He paused. "Are you gettin' many other gifts on this order, from other cops? Like you used to?"

  The head of the orphanage admitted that the total had dropped off. Fitzgerald went on his way, brooding. He'd been getting anonymous gifts like this ever since Big Jake Connors moved into town with bright ideas. Big Jake denied that he was the generous party. He expressed complete ignorance. But Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald knew better. The gifts were having their effect upon the Force. There was a police lieutenant whose wife had received a mink stole out of thin air and didn't speak to her husband for ten days when he gave it to the Community Drive. He wouldn't do a thing like that again! There was another sergeant--n
ot Fitzgerald--who'd found a set of four new white-walls tires on his doorstep, and was ostracized by his teen-age offspring when he turned them into the police Lost and Found. Fitzgerald gave his gifts to an orphanage, with a fine disregard of their inappropriateness. But he gloomily suspected that a great many of his friends were weakening. The presents weren't bribes. Big Jake not only didn't ask acknowledgments of them, he denied that he was the giver. But inevitably the recipients of bounty with the morning milk felt less indignation about what Big Jake was doing and wasn't getting caught at.

  At Headquarters, Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald found a memo. A memo was routine, but the contents of this one were remarkable. He scowled at it. He made phone calls, checking up on the more unlikely parts of it. Then he went to make the regular investigation.

  When he reached his destination he found it an unpretentious frame building with a sign outside: "Elite Cleaners and Dyers." There were no plate-glass windows. There was nothing show-off about it. It was just a medium-sized, modestly up-to-date establishment to which lesser tailoring shops would send work for wholesale treatment. From some place in the back, puffs of steam shot out at irregular intervals. Somebody worked a steampresser on garments of one sort or another. There was a rumbling hum, as of an oversized washing-machine in operation. All seemed tranquil.

  The detective went in the door. Inside there was that peculiar, professional-cleaning-fluid smell, which is not as alarming as gasoline or carbon tetrachloride, but nevertheless discourages the idea of striking a match. In the outer office a man wrote placidly on one blue-paper strip after another. He had an air of pleasant self-confidence. He glanced up briefly, nodded, wrote on three more blue-paper strips, and then gathered them all up and put them in a particular place. He turned to Fitzgerald.

  "Well?"

  Fitzgerald showed his shield. The man behind the counter nodded again.

  "My name's Fitzgerald," grunted the detective. "The boss?"

  "Me," said the man behind the counter. He was cordial. "My name's Brink. You've got something to talk to me about?"

  "That's the idea," said Fitzgerald. "A coupla questions."

  Brink jerked a thumb toward a door.

  "Come in the other office. Chairs there, and we can sit down. What's the trouble? A complaint of some kind?"

  * * * * *

  He ushered Fitzgerald in before him. The detective found himself scowling. He'd have felt better with a different kind of man to ask questions of. This Brink looked untroubled and confident. It didn't fit the situation. The inner office looked equally matter-of-fact. No.... There was the shelf with the usual books of reference on textiles and such items as a cleaner-and-dyer might need to have on hand. But there were some others: "Basic Principles of Psi", "Modern Psychokinetic Theories." There was a small, mostly-plastic machine on another shelf. It had no obvious function. It looked as if it had some unguessable but rarely-used purpose. There was dust on it.

  "What's the complaint?" repeated Brink. "Hm-m-m. A cigar?"

  "No," said Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald. "I'll light my pipe." He did, extracting tobacco and a pipe that was by no means a meerschaum from his pocket. He puffed and said: "A guy who works for you caught himself on fire this mornin'. It happened on a bus. Very peculiar. The guy's name was Jacaro."

  Brink did not look surprised.

  "What happened?"

  "It's kind of a strange thing," said Fitzgerald. "Accordin' to the report he's ridin' this bus, readin' his paper, when all of a sudden he yells an' jumps up. His pants are on fire. He get 'em off fast and chucks them out the bus window. He's blistered some but not serious, and he clams up--but good--when the ambulance doc puts salve on him. He won't say a word about what happened or how. They hadda call a ambulance because he couldn't go huntin' a doc with no pants on."

  "But he's not burned badly?" asked Brink.

  "No. Blisters, yes. Scared, yes. And mad as hell. But he'll get along. It's too bad. We've pinched him three times on suspicion of arson, but we couldn't make it stick. Something ought to happen to make that guy stop playin' with matches--only this wasn't matches."

  "I'm glad he's only a little bit scorched," said Brink. He considered. "Did he say anything about his eyelids twitching this morning? I don't suppose he would."

  The detective stared.

  "He didn't. Say aren't you curious about how he came to catch on fire? Or what his pants smelled of that burned so urgent? Or where he expected burnin' to start instead of his pants?"

  Brink thought it over. Then he shook his head.

  "No. I don't think I'm curious."

  The detective looked at him long and hard.

  "O.K.," he said dourly. "But there's something else. Day before yesterday there was a car accident opposite here. Remember?"

  "I wasn't here at the time," said Brink.

  "There's a car rolling along the street outside," said the detective. "There's some hoods in it--guys who do dirty work for Big Jake Connors. I can't prove a thing, but it looks like they had ideas about this place. About thirty yards up the street a sawed-off shotgun goes off. Very peculiar. It sends a load of buckshot through a side window of your place."

  Brink said with an air of surprise: "Oh! That must have been what broke the window!"

  "Yeah," said Fitzgerald. "But the interesting thing is that the flash of the shotgun burned all the hair off the head of the guy that was doin' the drivin'. It didn't scratch him, just scorched his hair off. It scared him silly."

  Brink grinned faintly, but he said pleasantly: "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk."

  "He jams down the accelerator and rams a telephone pole," pursued Fitzgerald. "There's four hoods in that car, remember, and every one of 'em's got a police record you could paper a house with. And they've got four sawed-off shotguns and a tommy-gun in the back seat. They're all laid out cold when the cops arrive."

  "I was wondering about the window," said Brink, pensively.

  "It puzzles you, eh?" demanded the detective ironically. "Could you've figured it out that they were goin' to shoot up your plant to scare the people who work for you so they'll quit? Did you make a guess they intended to drive you outta business like they did the guy that had this place before you?"

  "That's an interesting theory," said Brink encouragingly.

  Detective Fitzgerald nodded.

  "There's one thing more," he said formidably. "You got a delivery truck. You keep it in a garage back yonder. Yesterday you sent it to a garage for inspection of brakes an' lights an' such."

  "Yes," said Brink. "I did. It's not back yet. They were busy. They'll call me when it's ready."

  Fitzgerald snorted.

  "They'll call you when the bomb squad gets through checkin' it! When the guys at the garage lifted the hood they started runnin'. Then they hollered copper. There was a bomb in there!"

  Brink seemed to try to look surprised. He only looked interested.

  "Two sticks of dynamite," the detective told him grimly, "wired up to go off when your driver turned on the ignition. He did but it didn't. But we got a police force in this town! We know there's racketeerin' bein' practiced. We know there's crooked stuff goin' on. We even got mighty good ideas who's doin' it. But we ain't been able to get anything on anybody. Not yet. Nobody's been willin' to talk, so far. But you--"

  The telephone rang stridently. Brink looked at the instrument and shrugged. He answered.

  "Hello.... No, Mr. Jacaro isn't in today. He didn't come to work. On the way downtown his pants caught on fire--"

  Fitzgerald guessed that the voice at the other end of the line said "What?" in, an explosive manner.

  Brink said matter-of-factly: "I said his pants caught on fire. It was probably something he was bringing here to burn the plant down with--a fire bomb. I don't think he's to blame that it went off early. He probably started out with the worst possible intentions, but something happened...." He listened and said: "But he didn't chicken! He couldn't come to work and plant a fire bomb to set fire to the place!... I
know it must be upsetting to have things like that automobile accident and my truck not blowing up and now Jacaro's pants instead of my business going up in flames. But I told you--"

  He stopped and listened. Once he grinned.

  "Wait!" he said after a moment. He covered the transmitter and turned to Fitzgerald. "What hospital is Jacaro in?"

  Fitzgerald said sourly: "He wasn't burned bad. Just blistered. They lent him some pants and he went home cussing."

  "Thanks," said Brink. He uncovered the transmitter. "He went home," he told the instrument. "You can ask him about it. In a way I'm sure it wasn't his fault. I'm quite sure his eyelids twitched when he started out. I think the men who drove the car the other day had twitching eyelids, too. You should ask--"

  The detective heard muted noises, as it a man shouted into a transmitter somewhere.

  Brink said briskly: "No, I don't see any reason to change my mind.... No.... I know it was luck, it you want to put it that way, but.... No. I wouldn't advise that! Please take my advice about when your eyelid twitches--"

  Fitzgerald heard the crash of the receiver hung up at some distant place. Brink rubbed his ear. He turned back.

  "Hm-m-m," he said. "Your pipe's gone out."

  It was. Sergeant Fitzgerald puffed ineffectually. Brink reached out his finger and tapped the bowl of the detective's pipe. Instantly fragrant smoke filled the detective's mouth. He sputtered.

  "Now.... where were we?" asked Brink.

  "Who was that?" demanded Fitzgerald ferociously. "That was Big Jake Connors!"

  "You may be right." Brink told him. "He's never exactly given me his name. He just calls up every so often and talks nonsense."

  "What sort of nonsense?"

  "He wants to be a partner in this business," said Brink without emotion. "He's been saying that things will happen to it otherwise. I don't believe it. Anyhow nothing's happened so far."