The Compleat Boucher

by Anthony Boucher; Editor: James A. Mann

  “Correct? Hell, it’s perfect!” Impulsively, Kathy kissed him. “Oh, my!” she said as she drew back. “Now you’ve got lipstick after coming off the balcony spotless!”

  “Variety,” said Jose approvingly. “Still wonder one thing, Kathy. Those mashed potatoes—extraordinary. If secret of house, there’s where. Confide in me?”

  “Now that you’re part of the family, sure.”

  “Yes?”

  “The secret is this: I take lots of butter and cream—real cow-stuff, no syntho —and I beat the living bejeepers out of ’em.”

  When they returned to the living room, it was obvious that Linda had told George the news. Using his newly recovered leg with as ostentatious pride as a year-old toddler, George advanced paternally upon Jose Lermontov.

  “Let tonight’s dinner be a marital lesson to you, my boy. Remember the last time you ate here, and realize that there’s no fault in a wife that a little husbandly persistence can’t cure.”

  This time there was no doubt whatsoever that the gentlemanly Venusian diplomat was winking at his hostess.

  The Scrawny One

  The old magician had only one arm.

  “That is why,” he explained, “I now employ the fuse. It is dangerous to reach any part of your body inside the pentacle when you light the powder. They are hungry, these ones that we call up, and our flesh is to their taste.”

  John Harker watched the old man lead the fuse from the powder-heaped center of the pentacle to a safe distance from its rim. He watched him lean over and strike a match on the cement floor, watched the sudden flame disquiet the shadows of the deserted warehouse, watched the fuse begin to sputter.

  Then John Harker struck. The knife pierced easily through the soft flesh of the old back. His other hand came up to keep the magician from falling across the fuse. He hurled the dying body back, safely away from fuse and pentacle, and thrust it from his mind as his eyes followed the sputtering sparks.

  John Harker was unconcerned with fingerprints and clues. After tonight no man could touch him, not even for the most easily proved murder.

  He had built to this carefully. Six months of research in the role of a freelance writer, investigating the multitudinous magic cults of Southern California. A meticulous screening of frauds, fakes and phonies, and finally the discovery of this one-armed man of undeniable powers. The arrangements for this instant of ultimate truth, the calling up of a demon . . .

  The hissing boom within the pentacle drowned out the last grating rattle of the old man’s voice. John Harker looked at what he had caused to be summoned.

  The first word that came to him was scrawny. Which is a peculiar word to apply to something not of our flesh, nor shaped in any way conceivable to us; but there was that in what passed for its eyes that told of endless deprivation, insufficiency, hunger.

  It spoke, though no sound waves disturbed the stillness of the warehouse. It said, “You called me. I can grant you one wish. Make up your mind.”

  John Harker smiled. “Are your customers usually so irresolute? I have made up my mind.”

  The scrawny one’s eyes fed on him. “What can you want?” it said, and there was hatred and envy in its soundless words. “What can any man want when you have the one thing to be prized above all others . . . flesh?”

  “How fortunate,” Harker observed, “that you are not empowered to call us up. But little though you may believe it, we have our hungers too, and largely because of this so enviable flesh. And my own hungers I am resolved to end now.”

  “Your wish!” The scrawny one writhed in impatience.

  Harker deliberately dawdled, savoring this little moment of power, this curtainraiser to the ultimate power. “In the opera,” he began, “Mephisto, when summoned, proffers Faust first gold, then glory, then power. But that prime idiot the learned Doctor Faust replies, ‘I want a treasure that contains them all! . . . I want youth!’” Harker laughed and hummed a snatch of the tripping tune to which Faust expresses his senile desire. “But I know better.”

  “Your wish!” the scrawny one insisted.

  “I know that power and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing can all be summed up, in this most worldly of all possible worlds, in one word: wealth. My wish is simple: You will make me the richest man in the world. From that all else will follow.”

  The scrawny one made a sign of agreement, while darting hunger glimmered in several of its eyes. Then it added, “You must release me from the pentacle before I can accomplish that.”

  John Harker hesitated. “I know that you are bound to truth while you are contained there. You swear to me that if I release you you will do no harm to me in soul or body?”

  “I swear.”

  “You swear that if I release you you will, immediately, make me the richest man in the world?”

  “I swear. You must cut the pentacle with cold steel.”

  John Harker nodded and jerked the knife from the dead magician’s back. As he extended the bloody knife toward the pentacle there was a flicker of the scrawny shape, and that part of the blade which protruded beyond the rim was licked clean of blood.

  The cold steel descended and scraped across the cement floor.

  The pentacle was empty and the scrawny one was beside John Harker.

  “Now!” he commanded.

  But the scrawny one flashed the thought that it had something to do first.

  When there was no trace left of the magician’s body (and how convenient that was, even when you were unconcerned about damaging evidence), the not quite so scrawny one ceased its intricate vibrations and stood all but motionless beside John Harker.

  “Are you ready for your wish?” it asked.

  John Harker smiled and nodded.

  That is, he lowered his chin in assent. A nod is usually concluded by bringing the chin back to its normal position. But his muscles would not obey and his chin remained sunk on his breastbone.

  There was trouble with his eyes too. He did not remember closing the lids, but closed they were and obstinately so.

  His ears functioned. They brought a sound of music totally unfamiliar to him who had casually prided himself on his knowledge of music. And mingled with the wailing of unknown pipes was the wailing of hundreds of unknown voices. And mingled with the plunking of strings and the thumping of drums was the plunking thump of hundreds of small hard objects, like the rattle of hail close to his ears.

  His other senses functioned, too. One told him that he lay suspended on some flat metal surface, that he did not rest in one position, but slowly kept floating higher in the air. And another told him that there was not a fiber of his body that did not ache with a pain so exquisitely refined as to be almost beyond the limits of conscious endurance.

  And yet another sense informed him that he was surrounded by a stench of decay, an aura of charnel rot so strong, so intimate, that he could not long resist the conclusion that it rose from his own vile body.

  The upward movement had stopped, and he floated in equipoise as the music and the rattle ceased and a shout went up from the hundreds of voices. Now at last his eyes half-opened, and he could see his vast bloated bulk swaying in one pan of a tremendous gold balance, while in the other pan hung his weight in precious stones.

  The sight of his wealth gave him a last flash of strength. He was able to move his hand close enough to his eyes for their half-parted slits to watch his little finger slowly detach itself and drop, leaving a ragged stump of corruption. Through the eyes that had once been John Harker’s, the once scrawny one read the newspaper story:

  RICHEST MAN DYING

  Annual gem rite held

  RAVENPORE, India (UP).— The Djatoon of Khot, reputedly the wealthiest man in the world, lay dying here today of an obscure disease; but his loyal subjects still performed the traditional annual ceremony in which the Djatoon is presented with his weight in precious stones.

  The greatest physicians of three continents profess themselves baffled by
the degenerative malignancy which has attacked the wealthy potentate, and express no hopes for his recovery.

  The once scrawny one used John Harker’s features to shape a satisfied smile. Then it used John Harker’s muscles to propel his body and went out into the streets of the city, there to accomplish at its leisure those delightful undertakings which would enable it, in time, quite to forget its starved and scrawny past.

  Star Bride

  I always knew, ever since we were in school together, that he’d love me some day; and I knew somehow too that I’d always be in second place. I didn’t really care either, but I never guessed then what I’d come second to: a native girl from a conquered planet.

  I couldn’t guess because those school days were before the Conquest and the Empire, back in the days when we used to talk about a rocket to a moon and never dreamed how fast it would all happen after that rocket.

  When it did all begin to happen I thought at first what I was going to come second to was Space itself. But that wasn’t for long and now Space can never take him away from me and neither can she, not really, because she’s dead.

  But he sits there by the waters and talks and I can’t even hate her, because she was a woman too, and she loved him too, and those were what she died of.

  He doesn’t talk about it as often as he used to, and I suppose that’s something. It’s only when the fever’s bad, or he’s tried to talk to the Federal Council again about a humane colonial policy. That’s worse than the fever.

  He sits there and he looks up at her star and he says, “But damn it, they’re people. Oh, I was like all the rest at first; I was expecting some kind of monster even after the reports from the Conquest troops. And when I saw that they looked almost like us, and after all those months in the space ship, with the old regulation against mixed crews . . .”

  He has to tell it. The psychiatrist explained that to me carefully. I’m only glad it doesn’t come so often now.

  “Everybody in Colonial Administration was doing it,” he says. “They’d pick the girl that came the closest to somebody back home and they’d go through the Vlnian marriage rite—which of course isn’t recognized legally under the C. A., at least not where we’re concerned.”

  I’ve never asked him whether she came close to me.

  “It’s a beautiful rite, though,” he says. “That’s what I keep telling the Council: Vln had a much higher level of pre-Conquest civilization than we’ll admit. She taught me poetry and music that. . .”

  I know it all by heart now. All the poetry and all the music. It’s strange and sad and like nothing you ever dreamed of . . . and like everything you ever dreamed.

  “It was living with her that made me know,” he says. “Being with her, part of her, knowing that there was nothing grotesque, nothing monstrous about green and white flesh in the same bed.”

  No, that’s what he used to say. He doesn’t say that part any more. He does love me. “They’ve got to understand!” he says, looking at her star.

  The psychiatrist explained how he’s transferring his guilt to the Council and the Colonial policy; but I still don’t see why he has to have guilt. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to come back. He meant to come back. Only that was the trip he got space fever, and of course after that he was planet-bound for life.

  “She had a funny name,” he says. “I never could pronounce it right—all vowels. So I called her Starbride, even though she said that was foolish—we both belonged to the same star, the sun, even if we were of different planets. Now is that a primitive reaction? I tell you the average level of Vlnian scientific culture . . .”

  And I still think of it as her star when he sits there and looks at it. I can’t keep things like that straight, and he does call her Starbride.

  “I swore to come back before the child was born,” he said. “I swore by her God and mine and He heard me under both names. And she said very simply, ‘If you don’t, I’ll die.’ That’s all, just ‘I’ll die.’ And then we drank native wine and sang folksongs all night and went to bed in the dawn.”

  And he doesn’t need to tell me about his letter to her, but he does. He doesn’t need to because I sent it myself. It was the first thing he thought of when he came out of the fever and saw the calendar and I wrote it down for him and sent it. And it came back with the C. A. stamp: Deceased and that was all.

  “And I don’t know how she died,” he says, “or even whether the child was born. Try to find out anything about a native from the Colonial Administrator! They’ve got to be made to realize . . .”

  Then he usually doesn’t talk for a while. He just sits there by the waters and looks up at the blue star and sings their sad folksongs with the funny names: Saint Louis Blues and Barbara Allen and Lover, Come Back to Me.

  And after a while I say, “I’m not planet-bound. Some day when you’re well enough for me to leave you I’ll go to Vln—”

  “ ‘Earth,’ ” he says, almost as though it was a love-word and not just a funny noise. “That’s their name for Vln. She called herself an earth woman, and she called me her martian.”

  “I’ll go to Earth,” I say, only I never can pronounce it quite right and he always laughs a little, “and I’ll find your child and I’ll bring it back to you.”

  Then he turns and smiles at me and after a while we leave the waters of the canal and go inside again away from her blue star and I can stand coming second even to a dead native white Starbride from the planet Earth.

  The Way I Heard It

  They were telling ghost stories. It was an odd assortment of guests; but then, you expected that at Martin’s. There were an actress and a reporter and a young doctor who made amateur films and an elderly professor of English and several just plain people. Martin finished the one about the female medical student, and they were all duly horrified, even though you couldn’t call it a ghost story proper. Somebody threw another log on the fire, and there was a pause for refilling glasses.

  Then the actress spoke. “Now I know this one is true,” she said, “because the girl who told it to me heard it from a man who knew the cousin of one of the people it happened to. So there.”

  “What you call direct evidence,” the reporter murmured.

  The actress didn’t hear him. “It happened in Berkeley,” she went on. “It seems these people were driving up in the hills on a dark, dark night, when all of a sudden they heard—only I ought to tell you about the car first of all. You see, it was a two-door sedan—you know, where you can’t get out of the back without climbing over the people in front.”

  A man who worked in a travel office interrupted her. “Sorry, but I know this one. Only it happened in New Orleans. A friend of mine who’s a steward on a boat—”

  “That must be something else. I tell you I know this happened in Berkeley.”

  “I heard it in San Francisco,” the reporter put in. “A friend of mine tried to run the story down, but he didn’t get anywhere.”

  “Don’t quarrel, children,” Martin said. “It is a Berkeley legend; I’ve heard it a dozen times up there. And I don’t know where else it might be current. Let’s go on to a new story.”

  The doctor objected. “But I don’t know it. And besides, I’m looking for something for a short supernatural picture. Would this do, do you think?”

  “It might at that.”

  “Then somebody tell it.”

  “Yes,” said the professor of English. “By all means tell it.”

  The actress unruffled herself. “All right. Now please be quiet, everybody. These people were driving up in the hills—”

  “A doctor and his wife,” the reporter added.

  “I’ve heard a clergyman,” Martin said.

  “I don’t think that matters. Anyway, they heard these moans, so they stopped the car. And there under a hedge—”

  “The way I heard it,” the travel man protested, “she was standing on the curb.”

  “But don’t you see, she has to be lying down, bec
ause she’s really— But that would spoil the story, wouldn’t it? I’m sorry. So they go over to her and help her into the car . . .”

  “Don’t forget the suitcase.”

  “What suitcase?”

  “But she has to have a suitcase, because—”

  “I don’t see why.”

  The doctor was getting impatient. “For the Lord’s sake, will somebody tell this story? I don’t give a hang about suitcases. I want to hear what happened.”

  Three people started at once. The actress won out and went on. “So they ask her where they can take her, and she says she doesn’t know.”

  “She doesn’t know! But that kills the whole—”

  “Of course, how can you—”

  “Please,” said the professor quietly.

  “She doesn’t know then,” the actress continued calmly. “She tells them later. Oh, I should say that they put her in the back seat. You have to know that. Then she tells them where to take her—she’s very pale, of course, and beautiful and sad—and they take her there. And when they drive up to the house—”

  “Only first they notice—”

  “No, not till they get there.”

  “Well, the way I heard it . . .”

  “Let’s hear her version first,” Martin suggested. “Then you can argue.”

  “So they look around, and she isn’t there anymore. And you see, there isn’t any way she could have got out without their knowing it, because the car was a two-door thing. That’s why I had to tell you about that. And it looks impossible, and they’re worried; but they go up to the house anyway. And a man answers the doorbell, and he asks what the matter—”

  “No!” the reporter broke in sharply. “He says, ‘I know why you have come.’ ”

  The actress thought. “Yes. I guess you’re right. He says, ‘Don’t tell me why you’ve come.’ Only they tell him anyway, which is just what people always do. And he says, ‘Yes. You’re the tenth people’—that sounds silly, doesn’t it?—you’re the tenth people who’ve brought her here.’ ”