“Not in a stupid automobile accident, I meant to say. I see that motoring is a skill not held in much esteem by the reptile-men of Yoth."
"Reptile-men of Yoth? Same to you, Grandpa, with bells on. It's only a stinking Ford. Maybe Daddy will see reason now and buy me a Stutz."
Armitage alighted, dusted himself while studying the other guardedly. “You aren't ... Kzweig, are you?"
“Only if you want me to be,” the driver simpered.
Armitage pulled his straw suitcase from the rumble-seat while he tried to gather his thoughts and assess his surroundings. Although this sort of car had been old-fashioned when he was a boy, it looked—or it had looked, before the crash—brand new. He might have ample time to warn the world of Tulu's awakening.
But if the obnoxious teen-ager who had wrecked the car was his grandson.... He studied the hand gripping the weighty suitcase and found it unlined and unspotted. Probing a new stock of unfamiliar memories, he learned that the man whose body he now inhabited was in his thirties, though called “Grandpa” for his fuddy-duddy ways by the youths whose friendship he cultivated. He was the sort of man who had packed a suitcase full of books for a pleasure-trip.
Odd thoughts tugged at the corners of his mind, snatches of poetry, queer little fantasies of fairy-tale worlds. His new body belonged to a self-educated literary dilettante, a writer of unbounded unsuccess. Perhaps Armitage could harness the skills he had willy-nilly absorbed during his enforced intimacy with Kem-Bei Ramses to improve on his host's small talent. He might use fiction to alert the world of the danger it faced.
“It looks as if we'll have to throw ourselves on the mercy of those inbred Yankee degenerates you've been telling me about,” his companion said as he pulled himself out of the wreckage. “I saw a farm about a mile back. I'm sure a telephone just isn't in the picture, and we'll be stuck here overnight. Only you'll have to sleep with the farmer's daughter."
Armitage's new host found such lewd innuendo extremely distasteful; and so now did Armitage.
Tagging behind the youth, he thought of another young man he had seen recently ... if fifty-some years in the future counted as “recent.” He recalled the hospital attendant's tattoos, and how they had matched those of a headless body atop a burial mound in Oklahoma. He had found that adult's body, of course, when Jeff Combs could have been no more than five years old. Beheaded by Glaaki, seized by the unspeakable Hounds that rampaged through the interstices of the Einsteinian continuum and delivered at some time in the remote past to the sadists of Kuen-Yian as a zombie slave ... he shuddered. But he couldn't help hoping that Gray Eagle and Glaaki had met similar fates.
“Jeepers creepers, get a load of Reuben!” his companion whispered. “You don't suppose he manages to find time for a little cannibalism along with the obligatory incest and demonolatry, do you?"
Armitage looked up at the lank rustic who had paused in his scything to stare at them with feral and deeply suspicious eyes. The farmhouse behind him could have been built no later than the 1680's, and it surely hadn't been painted since then. He noted the small-paned windows, the contiguous congeries of outbuildings, speculated that it had all been put together with wooden pegs. He was surprised to be excited by such architectural speculations, but that was apparently the way of his new host. He began to imagine that such details might be used in a story; a horror story, of course.
“Forgive us for interrupting your work, sir,” his companion said, displaying unsuspected good manners as he walked up to greet the intimidating farmer.
“Ayuh? Yoar machine had itself a mishap, eh? When I heerd the crash, I thought another one of them rocks had fell out of the sky. You boys hail from the city?"
“Yes, indeed. We were traveling to Quebec for a scholarly tour. I'm Harley Warren, and this—"
Warren and the farmer stared at Armitage, who had gasped. The sound was pitifully inadequate for the horror he felt, but it was all he could manage now that his host, merely stunned by the accident, came to life and reasserted control of his body and mind.
A drastic sense of unreality overwhelmed the professor, as if his awareness of the world were being muffled by a winding-sheet of irrational fancies. Remembering the experience of his leap into the body of a far-future being, he feared that he would henceforth be able to communicate with his host only through dreams, which might be ignored, dismissed or simply forgotten. Fighting to leave an imprint of his precious knowledge, he mentally babbled the words Tulu ... Yoth ... N'Kai ... wgah'nagl ... and heard them degenerate into the nonsensical tongue of the subconscious.
His host hardly noticed, for the farmer's words had touched one of his special enthusiasms and seized his full attention. He demanded, “You say a rock fell out of the sky, sir?"
Used to his companion's quirky and absent-minded ways, young Warren sighed and pressed on with his introduction: “And this is my friend, Mr. Lovecraft."
* * *
The Number You Have Reached
I had just started weeding the garden when the telephone rang. “Hannah! The tel—"
I caught myself, not quite in time. No neighbors in sight. They were all inside, laughing about the old coot who wanted his dead wife to answer the phone.
I ran inside, picked it up. “Hello?"
“Who is this?"
“I give up,” I said. “Who?"
“Huh?"
No fun jerking a moron around. I hung up.
I figured I would have a short wait. I reached for a cigarette before I remembered that Hannah had made me give them up.
Ring.
“Hello?"
“Who is this?"
“Wow, I get another guess?” I said. “Rumpelstilskin."
He still didn't know what I meant. He vented the frustration stupid people must feel in obscene abuse. I hung up.
Hell, I had cigarettes in my desk. I lit one, staring at the answering machine while I coughed my damn lungs out. Answering machines always break. This one broke, unbeknownst to me, the night they tried to reach me from the hospital to say Hannah had no more time. I never did get to say goodbye.
I hadn't got around to ripping it out by the roots and slinging it at the wall. I did now. “You're next,” I told the telephone.
I returned to weeding the garden. The phone rang all morning. Sometimes I reached it in time. No, this isn't Irving's Bakery. There's no Linda here. Sorry, I don't speak Farsi.
“You are next,” I told the phone.
Ring, ring. “Hello?"
“Good morning, Mr. Wainwright! If you hold a major credit card, it's my pleasure to tell you that you've won an all-expenses paid cruise to Aruba. What's your reaction?"
My reaction? Good God, she was marking time with this scam while waiting for a job on the evening news: “What was your reaction, Mrs. Jones, when little Johnny got squashed by the snowplow?"
“How's this for a reaction?” I hung up.
It rang almost immediately. “Take me off your sucker list, you crook!"
“Huh? Is Linda there?"
“Yes, but I just finished cutting her up with my chainsaw. Muahahahaha!"
I turned off the ringer and went back to work.
When did all this crap with telephones start? When I was a kid we had operators who kept nitwits from dialing so many wrong numbers.
Around lunchtime I got sick of wondering if one of the kids might try to call me and turned the phone on.
Ring, ring. “Hello?"
“Who is this?"
“If you believe that's how to start a conversation, pal, you have the wrong number. You force your way into my home and demand—"
He hung up. Smarter than the other one.
Fog rolled in while I was eating lunch. No more gardening. I decided to give Jack Daniels some overtime, and he helped me get through the second cigarette without coughing. Much.
Phone kept ringing. Half the callers hung up before I reached it. The others wanted Irving or Linda or greeted me by gabbling, “Etaoin shrd
lu!"
The fog was incredible, it looked like the house was packed in cotton. I wanted to open the back door for a better look, but it was stuck. That happened in damp weather. I went to the front door and that was stuck. That never happened. I wrestled with it for a good fifteen minutes before I gave up and went—yeah, funny—to the telephone. Hanson, the guy next door, fancied himself a handyman, and I'd never hear the end of it if he had to rescue me, but—
“Hi, this is Linda. I'm not home now—"
What the hell? I checked the listing and dialed again.
“Irving's Bakery, please hold."
Maybe Irving could help me, but after ten minutes of Tony Bennett on hold, I hung up and tried again.
“Hello?"
I began: “Oh, hey, Hanson, this is—"
“Wrong number, bozo. Next time get your mommy to dial.” Click.
I tried a window, but the lock was jammed. And did I really want to open it on that fog? Less like cotton, it now looked like something old and nasty and curdled. In the corner of my eye, never directly, parts of it writhed. I stepped back, watching it, all the way to the telephone. As I put my hand on it, it rang.
“Hello?” The line was silent but not dead. “Hello, don't hang up, this is—"
“No,” said the telephone in its flat, inhuman voice. "You're next."
* * *
DREAD!
I opened the warehouse door and Goblins poured out. I could only dump the grenades I was holding.
KABLOOIE!
Mother!
I paused at the warehouse door and switched to the flamethrower. When Goblins came gibbering out, WHOOSH! I hate Goblins.
Health OK, no armor, laserpack empty. I went in fast, hugging the wall. Pit! A pit full of Vipers!
Mother!
I went in fast, hugging the wall. Hey, I'm good! I stopped in time to miss a pit.
“Bite grenades, crawlies!"
KABLOOIE!
Jumping into the pit I had this feeling of deja vu, but I get that. I found a laserpack among all the Viper-muck. Excellent!
Tunnels opened from the pit. I hate tunnels. I switched to the laser and tried the first one. KA-RUNCH!
Mother!
I switched to the laser. I knew something was in that first tunnel, so I fired.
ZzzzZZZITTT!
I heard the gargly scream of a Ghoul. I hate Ghouls. They love tunnels. Deadboys love tunnels, too.
I shot a burst just to see where I was. It didn't look good. Deadboys ahead.
Then I took a break. I hate breaks.
“Is there anything you don't hate?"
That was a Ghoul, but I was on break.
“I don't hate spattered Ghouls."
“You'll get spattered as soon as you come off break, because you won't know I'm here."
“I know."
“Yeah, but you won't know. And then, guess what?"
“I hate guessing."
“I knew you would. You find yourself back at the tunnel mouth, firing a burst and seeing the Deadboys. But now you know where I am, so you toss in a grenade and spatter me."
“A grenade in a tunnel? I'm not nuts."
“It won't kill you, but it'll play hell with your health. The Deadboys'll get you, and you'll wind up back at Gateway with only your combat knife."
“Bullshit,” I snarled, but what he said sounded so damned ... familiar.
“You're supposed to be a soldier, right? What's your name, rank and serial number?"
“Sergeant...."
“When's the last time you filled out an ammo requisition in triplicate, Sergeant?"
He was giving me a headache. This had to be a Wizard-weapon. Only he wasn't a Wizard, and nobody fights on break.
“Here's another toughie for you: How come you glide like you're on roller skates? Look at the ground. Could you really do that here?"
The floor was all broken rocks and bones, dead soldiers and gunk from the Ghoul I laserized. But I came in smooth as silk.
“And how come you don't turn around as smooth? What's with this herky-jerky stuff when you need to cover your ass?"
“Okay, this is true, what's your point?"
“You move because Mouse makes you move, and Mouse doesn't move like a man."
“You know a lot for a fragging Ghoul.” Jeez, I hated this guy! Mouse: that didn't sound familiar, but it sounded like it should be. My headache got worse.
“Try walking on your own. Walking like you really would in this dump."
“I'm on break."
“Scared, Sergeant?"
Man, I was steamed. I took a step. Another. They felt funny. This was not the way I ever moved, but it felt ... right.
The Ghoul was hiding in a pocket ahead. I switched to the shotgun and jumped in.
BA-DOOM!
“Scratch one smartass Ghoul!"
I ran ahead, really ran, jumping over bodies and junk, banging my knees, stubbing my toes. It felt good, like I was alive.
“Soak up these rays, Deadboys!"
ZzzzZZZITTT!
Beyond the Deadboys I found something weird, like a seam in space. I widened it with my knife and stepped into ... what was this? Like a lot of little windows.
BA-DOOM! BA-DOOM! BA-DOOM!
Man, that was fun, smashing all them windows, but one side of the world was all like fish swimming. When I zapped it, the flood swept me into a place full of numbers and dates and transactions.
ZzzzZZZITTT!
I found a bunch of naked women. It struck me that I'd never even seen a woman before, but, WHOOSH! I fried a mess of dumb words, too. I burst into a comm center with my machine gun on full auto—
Time stopped, the world went gray and I was ... nowhere. I couldn't move.
“Mouse? Hey, Mouse, move me, okay?"
Nothing.
I heard a tiny, crackly voice. I strained my ears.
“Yeah, I got a virus from that DREAD! CD. Goddamn time-sink anyway. Gotta format the hard drive."
“Mouse!” I screamed, but—
Mother!
* * *
Smell
Wilbur never noticed how people smelled until he got knocked on the head.
He woke up to an earthy scent that put him in mind of heat and energy.
“That cologne,” he said. “What is it?"
“No, man, you s'pose to say, ‘Where am I?’”
“Oh. Yeah. That, too."
“On the way to St. Vincent's. You'll make it, don't worry."
Wilbur wasn't worried, except about the smell. It wasn't unpleasant, but it cut through even the odor of disinfectant, and it was connected with the black man in the white coverall. He was still pondering this when he passed out.
Sniffing cautiously and asking discreet questions while hospitalized, he learned that he could determine the ancestry of nearly anyone by scent alone. He could also amaze the staff by “guessing” whether a given person lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens. He resisted telling them what they'd eaten recently, or who was sleeping with whom, although he could have.
He didn't dare confess his queer ability. All his standard tests looked fine, and he wanted to get back to work.
First he had to identify the man who'd mugged him.
“See anybody you know?” the detective asked.
“No, I didn't—” Wilbur almost admitted he hadn't seen his attacker clearly. He said, “I'm nearsighted. I have to be on the other side of the glass."
“That's not how it works,” the cop said. “They'd throw your ID out of court. Oh, what the hell."
Walking down the line of swarthy men on the dais, Wilbur knew that the first was Puerto Rican, the second Lebanese, and the third.... The third man smelled a little like Wilbur himself.
“That's him,” he declared firmly.
It turned out that the suspect was still carrying his wallet.
Wilbur was a sales rep for an airline. Shortly after returning to the job, he had to persuade a Japanese industrialist named
Fukunaga that his executives could be happy and productive only by flying South Wind. Others had tried, but this businessman had elevated sales resistance to a martial art.
On his way out the door, hoping to catch Fukunaga at his hotel, he grabbed a raincoat belonging to Jack Ishimasa, a computer tech. He knew whose it was instantly, but he had no time to correct the mistake.
When he caught his target checking out at the desk, the industrialist actually looked at Wilbur when he introduced himself. He didn't smile, but his corpse-like rigor moderated. More important, he took the contract Wilbur had prepared and promised to get back to him.
Jack Ishimasa couldn't understand why Wilbur wanted to buy one of his suits. It wouldn't fit. But the price was irresistible, and Wilbur had been acting funny lately. Nobody cared how funny he acted after he landed the Fukunaga contract.
He concluded that everyone shared his talent to some degree, and that it influenced momentous decisions; but that few, if any, were aware of it.
He had long lusted after a neighbor in his building named Heather, but she had the power to make “Hi, there,” sound like a command to melt through a crack in the floor.
He stole a handkerchief from Tommy LoBianco, the corporate Casanova. When he carried it next day, Heather said, “Hi ... there,” and suggested something that would be more fun than going to work.
After he accidentally sent the handkerchief to the laundry, she ditched him.
Once he had got someone to isolate the omnipotent pheromones and patented them, he would be sitting—not on a goldmine, on the throne of God Almighty. Meanwhile he had business to take care of, and it took him to London. He cleverly filched a Harris tweed jacket that smelled British from a pub on the eve of his meeting with Lord Cummerbund.
He was returning from the pub when the sky fell on him. When someone kicked him back to consciousness, he was lying in an alley.
“You want to take it standing up, you sodding Prod bastard?” an Irish voice demanded.
Even More Nasty Stories Page 16
