Unnatural Creatures

by Neil Gaiman

  The girl had been awed by Svetz’s jewels, and by Svetz himself, possibly because of his height or his ability to fly. But the extension cage scared her. Svetz couldn’t blame her. The side with the door in it was no trouble: just a seamless spherical mirror. But the other side blurred away in a direction men could not visualize. It had scared Svetz spitless the first time he saw the time machine in action.

  He could buy the horse from her, shoot it here and pull it inside, using the flight stick to float it. But it would be so much easier if…

  It was worth a try. Svetz used the rest of his corundum. Then he walked into the extension cage, leaving a trail of colored corundum beads behind him.

  He had worried because the heat-and-pressure device would not produce facets. The stones all came out shaped like miniature hen’s-eggs. But he was able to vary the color, using chromic oxide for red and ferric oxide for yellow and titanium for blue; and he could vary the pressure planes, to produce cat’s-eyes or star gems at will. He left a trail of small stones, red and yellow and blue…

  And the girl followed, frightened, but unable to resist the bait. By now she had nearly filled a handkerchief with the stones. The horse followed her into the extension cage.

  Inside, she looked at the four stones in Svetz’s hand: one of each color, red and yellow and light blue and black, the largest he could make. He pointed to the horse, then to the stones.

  The girl agonized. Svetz perspired. She didn’t want to give up the horse…and Svetz was out of corundum…

  She nodded, one swift jerk of her chin. Quickly, before she could change her mind, Svetz poured the stones into her hand. She clutched the hoard to her bosom and ran out of the cage, sobbing.

  The horse stood up to follow.

  Svetz swung the rifle and shot it. A bead of blood appeared on the animal’s neck. It shied back, then sighted on Svetz along its natural bayonet.

  Poor kid, Svetz thought as he turned to the door. But she’d have lost the horse anyway. It had sucked polluted water from an open stream. Now he need only load the flight stick aboard…

  Motion caught the corner of his eye.

  A false assumption can be deadly. Svetz had not waited for the horse to fall. It was with something of a shock that he realized the truth. The beast wasn’t about to fall. It was about to spear him like a cocktail shrimp.

  He hit the door button and dodged.

  Exquisitely graceful, exquisitely sharp, the spiral horn slammed into the closing door. The animal turned like white lightning in the confines of the cage, and again Svetz leapt for his life.

  The point missed him by half an inch. It plunged past him and into the control board, through the plastic panel and into the wiring beneath.

  Something sparkled and something sputtered.

  The horse was taking careful aim, sighting along the spear in its forehead. Svetz did the only thing he could think of. He pulled the home-again lever.

  The horse screamed as it went into free fall. The horn, intended for Svetz’s navel, ripped past his ear and tore his breathing-balloon wide open.

  Then gravity returned; but it was the peculiar gravity of an extension cage moving forward through time. Svetz and the horse were pulled against the padded walls. Svetz sighed in relief.

  He sniffed again in disbelief. The smell was strong and strange, like nothing Svetz had ever smelled before. The animal’s terrible horn must have damaged the air plant. Very likely he was breathing poison. If the cage didn’t return in time…

  But would it return at all? It might be going anywhere, anywhen, the way that ivory horn had smashed through anonymous wiring. They might come out at the end of time, when even the black infrasuns gave not enough heat to sustain life.

  There might not even be a future to return to. He had left the flight stick. How would it be used? What would they make of it, with its control handle at one end and the brush-style static discharge at the other and the saddle in the middle? Perhaps the girl would try to use it. He could visualize her against the night sky, in the light of a full moon…and how would that change history?

  The horse seemed on the verge of apoplexy. Its sides heaved, its eyes rolled wildly. Probably it was the cabin air, thick with carbon dioxide. Again, it might be the poison the horse had sucked from an open stream.

  Gravity died. Svetz and the horse tumbled in free fall, and the horse queasily tried to gore him.

  Gravity returned, and Svetz, who was ready for it, landed on top. Someone was already opening the door.

  Svetz took the distance in one bound. The horse followed, screaming with rage, intent on murder. Two men went flying as it charged out into the Institute control center.

  “It doesn’t take anesthetics!” Svetz shouted over his shoulder. The animal’s agility was hampered here among the desks and lighted screens, and it was probably drunk on hyperventilation. It kept stumbling into desks and men. Svetz easily stayed ahead of the slashing horn.

  A full panic was developing….

  “We couldn’t have done it without Zeera,” Ra Chen told him much later. “Your idiot tanj horse had the whole Center terrorized. All of a sudden it went completely tame, walked up to that frigid intern Zeera and let her lead it away.”

  “Did you get it to the hospital in time?”

  Ra Chen nodded gloomily. Gloom was his favorite expression and was no indication of his true feelings. “We found over fifty unknown varieties of bacteria in the beast’s bloodstream. Yet it hardly looked sick! It looked healthy as a…healthy as a…it must have tremendous stamina. We managed to save not only the horse, but most of the bacteria too, for the Zoo.”

  Svetz was sitting up in a hospital bed, with his arm up to the elbow in a diagnostician. There was always the chance that he too had located some long-extinct bacterium. He shifted uncomfortably, being careful not to move the wrong arm, and asked, “Did you ever find an anesthetic that worked?”

  “Nope. Sorry about that, Svetz. We still don’t know why your needles didn’t work. The tanj horse is simply immune to tranks of any kind.

  “Incidentally, there was nothing wrong with your air plant. You were smelling the horse.”

  “I wish I’d known that. I thought I was dying.”

  “It’s driving the interns crazy, that smell. And we can’t seem to get it out of the Center.” Ra Chen sat down on the edge of the bed. “What bothers me is the horn on its forehead. The horse in the picture book had no horns.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then it must be a different species. It’s not really a horse, Svetz. We’ll have to send you back. It’ll break our budget, Svetz.”

  “I disagree, sir—”

  “Don’t be so tanj polite.”

  “Then don’t be so tanj stupid, sir.” Svetz was not going back for another horse. “People who kept tame horses must have developed the habit of cutting off the horn when the animal was a pup. Why not? We all saw how dangerous that horn is. Much too dangerous for a domestic animal.”

  “Then why does our horse have a horn?”

  “That’s why I thought it was wild, the first time I saw it. I suppose they didn’t start cutting off horns until later in history.”

  Ra Chen nodded in gloomy satisfaction. “I thought so too. Our problem is that the Secretary-General is barely bright enough to notice that his horse has a horn, and the picture-book horse doesn’t. He’s bound to blame me.”

  “Mmm.” Svetz wasn’t sure what was expected of him.

  “I’ll have to have the horn amputated.”

  “Somebody’s bound to notice the scar,” said Svetz.

  “Tanj it, you’re right. I’ve got enemies at court. They’d be only too happy to claim I’d mutilated the Secretary-General’s pet.” Ra Chen glared at Svetz. “All right, let’s hear your idea.”

  Svetz was busy regretting. Why had he spoken? His vicious, beautiful horse, tamely docked of its killer horn…He had found the thought repulsive. His impulse had betrayed him. What could they do but remove th
e horn?

  He had it. “Change the picture book, not the horse. A computer could duplicate the book in detail, but with a horn on every horse. Use the Institute computer, then wipe the tape afterward.”

  Morosely thoughtful, Ra Chen said, “That might work. I know someone who could switch the books.” He looked up from under bushy black brows. “Of course, you’d have to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t forget.” Ra Chen got up. “When you get out of the diagnostician, you start a four-week vacation.”

  “I’m sending you back for one of these,” Ra Chen told him four weeks later. He opened the bestiary. “We picked up the book in a public park around ten PostAtomic; left the kid who was holding it playing with a corundum egg.”

  Svetz examined the picture. “That’s ugly. That’s really ugly. You’re trying to balance the horse, right? The horse was so beautiful, you’ve got to have one of these or the universe goes off balance.”

  Ra Chen closed his eyes in pain. “Just go get us the Gila monster, Svetz. The Secretary-General wants a Gila monster.”

  “How big is it?”

  They both looked at the illustration. There was no way to tell.

  “From the looks of it, we’d better use the big extension cage.”

  Svetz barely made it back that time. He was suffering from total exhaustion and extensive second-degree burns. The thing he brought back was thirty feet long, had vestigial batlike wings, breathed fire, and didn’t look very much like the illustration; but it was as close as anything he’d found.

  The Secretary-General loved it.

  11

  Two of my very favorite writers, growing up, were SAMUEL R. DELANY, who wrote books like Nova and The Einstein Intersection, which I loved even if I didn’t understand them; and James Thurber, who wrote The 13 Clocks, which may be the best book in the world. Here Mr. Delany (Chip, to his friends) writes a story that may owe its inspiration to Thurber, but is very much his own tale. And what is inside the steamer trunk?

  A very thin and very grey man arrives in a tavern with a large steamer trunk, which contains his “nearest and dearest friend.” The man offers to pay for the assistance of the quick-witted Amos in procuring the cure his friend needs. Off Amos goes, questing for three shards of magical mirror….

  ONE

  ONCE THERE WAS A POOR MAN NAMED AMOS. He had nothing but his bright red hair, fast fingers, quick feet, and quicker wits. One grey evening when the rain rumbled in the clouds, about to fall, he came down the cobbled street toward Mariners’ Tavern to play jackstraws with Billy Belay, the sailor with a wooden leg and a mouth full of stories that he chewed around and spit out all evening. Billy Belay would talk and drink and laugh and sometimes sing. Amos would sit quietly and listen and always won at jackstraws.

  But this evening as Amos came into the tavern, Billy was quiet; and so was everyone else. Even Hidalga, the woman who owned the tavern and took no man’s jabbering seriously, was leaning her elbows on the counter and listening with opened mouth.

  The only man speaking was tall, thin, and grey. He wore a grey cape, grey gloves, grey boots, and his hair was grey. His voice sounded to Amos like wind over mouse fur, or sand ground into old velvet. The only thing about him not grey was a large black trunk beside him, high as his shoulder. Several rough and grimy sailors with cutlasses sat at his table—they were so dirty they were no color at all!

  “…and so,” the soft grey voice went on, “I need someone clever and brave enough to help my nearest and dearest friend and me. It will be well worth someone’s while.”

  “Who is your friend?” asked Amos. Though he had not heard the beginning of the story, the whole tavern seemed far too quiet for a Saturday night.

  The grey man turned and raised grey eyebrows. “There is my friend, my nearest and dearest.” He pointed to the trunk. From it came a low, muggy Ulmphf.

  All the mouths that were hanging open about the tavern closed.

  “What sort of help does he need?” asked Amos. “A doctor?”

  The grey eyes widened, and all the mouths opened once more.

  “You are talking of my nearest and dearest friend,” said the grey voice, softly.

  From across the room Billy Belay tried to make a sign for Amos to be quiet, but the grey man turned around, and the finger Billy had put to his lips went quickly into his mouth as if he were picking his teeth.

  “Friendship is a rare thing these days,” said Amos. “What sort of help do you and your friend need?”

  “The question is: would you be willing to give it?” said the grey man.

  “And the answer is: if it is worth my while,” said Amos, who really could think very quickly.

  “Would it be worth all the pearls you could put in your pockets, all the gold you could carry in one hand, all the diamonds you could lift in the other, and all the emeralds you could haul up from a well in a brass kettle?”

  “That is not much for true friendship,” said Amos.

  “If you saw a man living through the happiest moment of his life, would it be worth it then?”

  “Perhaps it would,” Amos admitted.

  “Then you’ll help my friend and me?”

  “For all the pearls I can put in my pockets, all the gold I can carry in one hand, all the diamonds I can lift in the other, all the emeralds I can haul up from a well in a brass kettle, and a chance to see a man living through the happiest moment of his life—I’ll help you!”

  Billy Belay put his head down on the table and began to cry. Hidalga buried her face in her hands, and all the other people in the tavern turned away and began to look rather grey themselves.

  “Then come with me,” said the grey man, and the rough sailors with cutlasses rose about him and hoisted the trunk to their grimy shoulders —Onvbpmf came from the trunk—and the grey man flung out his cape, grabbed Amos by the hand, and ran out into the street.

  In the sky the clouds swirled and bumped each other, trying to upset the rain.

  Halfway down the cobbled street the grey man cried, “Halt!”

  Everyone halted and put the trunk down on the sidewalk.

  The grey man went over and picked up a tangerine-colored alley cat that had been searching for fish heads in a garbage pail. “Open the trunk,” he said. One of the sailors took an iron key from his belt and opened the lock on the top of the trunk. The grey man took out his thin sword of grey steel and pried up the lid ever so slightly. Then he tossed the cat inside.

  Immediately he let the lid drop, and the sailor with the iron key locked the lock on the top. From inside came the mew of a cat that ended with a deep, depressing Elmblmpf.

  “I think,” said Amos, who after all thought quickly and was quick to tell what he thought, “that everything is not quite right in there.”

  “Be quiet and help me,” said the thin grey man, “or I shall put you in the trunk with my nearest and dearest.”

  For a moment Amos was just a little afraid.

  TWO

  Then they were on a ship, and all the boards were grey from having gone so long without paint. The grey man took Amos into his cabin, and they sat down on opposite sides of a table.

  “Now,” said the grey man, “here is a map.”

  “Where did you get it?” asked Amos.

  “I stole it from my worse and worst enemy.”

  “What is it a map of?” Amos asked. He knew you should ask as many questions as possible when there were so many things you didn’t know.

  “It is a map of many places and many treasures, and I need someone to help me find them.”

  “Are these treasures the pearls and gold and diamonds and emeralds you told me about?”

  “Nonsense,” said the grey man. “I have more emeralds and diamonds and gold and pearls than I know what to do with,” and he opened a closet door.

  Amos stood blinking as jewels by the thousands fell out on the floor, glittering and gleaming, red, green, and yellow.

&
nbsp; “Help me push them back in the closet,” said the grey man. “They’re so bright that if I look at them too long, I get a headache.”

  So they pushed the jewels back and leaned against the closet door till it closed.

  Then they returned to the map.

  “Then what are the treasures?” Amos asked, full of curiosity.

  “The treasure is happiness, for me and my nearest and dearest friend.”

  “How do you intend to find it?”

  “In a mirror,” said the grey man. “In three mirrors, or rather, one mirror broken in three pieces.”

  “A broken mirror is bad luck,” said Amos. “Who broke it?”

  “A wizard so great and so old and so terrible that you and I need never worry about him.”

  “Does this map tell where the pieces are hidden?”

  “Exactly,” said the grey man. “Look, we are here.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The map says so,” said the grey man. And sure enough, in large letters one corner of the map was marked HERE.

  “Perhaps somewhere nearer than you think, up this one, and two leagues short of over there, the pieces are hidden.”

  “Your greatest happiness will be to look into this mirror?”

  “It will be the greatest happiness of myself and of my nearest and dearest friend.”

  “Very well,” said Amos. “When do we start?”

  “When the dawn is foggy and the sun is hidden and the air is grey as grey can be.”

  “Very well,” said Amos a second time. “Until then, I shall walk around and explore your ship.”

  “It will be tomorrow at four o’clock in the morning,” said the grey man. “So don’t stay up too late.”

  “Very well,” said Amos a third time.

  As Amos was about to leave, the grey man picked up a ruby that had fallen from the closet and not been put back. On the side of the trunk that now sat in the corner was a small triangular door that Amos had not seen. The grey man pulled it open, tossed in the ruby, and slammed it quickly: Orghmflbfe.