The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  It was well up the delta of the Sacramento River, and I realized, dismally, that the wreck was, after all these centuries, undoubtedly under forty or fifty feet of silt.

  Either my expression gave me away or the Captain read my mind. “Andy, Andy,” he said, “do not despair. Remember modern technology—but just be very, very careful who you let in on it.”

  Having had some experience with what can happen to original discoveries too carelessly broadcast by eager graduate students, I knew that his point was well taken.

  “The Captain is your friend,” declared Marduk. “He will help you, and I too shall be there—I promise you! You will make sure that I, Admiral Marduk, will get full credit in today’s world for first discovering this magnificent harbor?”

  “We’ll do our damndest,” promised the Captain, and I echoed him.

  “You can always get in touch with me through this lovely lady,” Marduk asserted. “No matter where I am—Bremen, Capetown, Cap Finisterre—I will come immediately.”

  McWhinney, having swilled his drink almost in a gulp, started to say something offensive, but couldn’t quite manage it. He dropped his glass, and his chin fell forward on his chest. He started to snore.

  “A very reliable compound,” said the Captain. “It was used in the sailing-ship days to shanghai sailors when a ship was short handed.

  “Throw the turd overboard!” advised Marduk. “I wish I could stay and watch, but I’ve been here too long already. I have other duties to perform.”

  We bade him good night, and a moment later Ludmilla came awake, orienting herself and reaching for her glass, which Mickey had thoughtfully refilled.

  “Hey, did he show?” she asked.

  The Captain informed her that he had indeed, that they had had a most interesting and informative session, and that both he and I couldn’t thank her enough.

  She looked at McWhinney, now sprawled face-down over the table. “Oh balls!” she exclaimed. “Here’s old lover boy drunk again. Somebody help me get him in the car and I’ll roll him home to bed—the useless bastard. Would you believe he’s a high school history teacher? Would you believe there’s a high school in Oakland where they teach history?”

  She stayed for three more of her green drinks, which I must admit she held admirably. Then Mickey and the Captain and I helped her load him into her car after we carried him to the parking lot, and we watched her drive away. The two grad students had disappeared.

  “Well, Andrew,” said the Captain, “now aren’t you glad I took her seriously? Just think, poor ’Opkins and Lydy ’Amilton, free after all these years to go on to wherever. And up the Bay, there’s that galley waiting for you. Now will you be going directly home to Berkeley, or would you rather come back in and chat for a bit? I’ve a feeling you’ve got a few questions you’d like to ask me.”

  Once more, I was amazed at his perceptiveness. The session with Marduk and la Gooch had intensified the feeling I’d had about there being something strange about him.

  “Captain, I’d like very much to—and you’re right about the questions—that is, if you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all, my boy, not at all,” he said, “and my Juliana—she’s Javanese but that’s her Dutch name—will probably join us there. She speaks only Dutch and her native language, so she won’t contribute much to the conversation, but most people are content just to look at her.”

  I followed him back into the cuddy, where Mickey had our drinks ready for us; and presently we were joined by an absolutely gorgeous Javanese girl. She looked like an idealized dream of Bali, and instantly I found myself undressing her in my imagination. I’m afraid I blushed.

  “Don’t worry, Andy,” he said. “She won’t be offended. She knows just about everyone does it.”

  He stood, seated her; and Mickey served her what looked like a glass of dry sherry.

  The Captain smiled. “And now, Andy,” he said, “what about those questions?”

  “Well sir—” I hesitated, then went on as he nodded encouragingly. “Captain, there were several things this evening. That Phoenician admiral acted as though he’d known you a long time. So did Hopkins. And you yourself acted as if you’d known both Hopkins and that cat, Lady Hamilton. And I’ve met several people who say they’ve known you for years and you never seem to get any older. I hope you won’t mind my saying so, but—well, it is kind of weird.”

  “You’re quite right,” he said. “You have no idea just how strange it is. I’ll tell you about it—I know you won’t repeat anything I say, and anyhow nobody’s believe you if you did. The truth of the matter, Andrew, is that I did know poor ’Opkins. I knew him because I was in command of the Dryad when she put into San Francisco Bay, so I was held responsible for the crew’s desertion and for the fact that some of them managed to get back into her and scuttle her when they heard that our Consul and I had sent to the Admiralty for a replacement crew by the fastest means then available. In the meantime, some of my officers, and the ship’s carpenter, who’d remained loyal, had done their best to waterproof her aftercabins, just in case, which was fortunate, because the city was starting to fill in the waterfront as fast as possible, covering up the sunken and sinking hulks with thousands of wagonloads of earth. There was nothing we could do to stop them. By the time another Royal Naval vessel brought us the crew I’d asked for, the Dryad was as you see here now.”

  He sighed heavily. “Unhappily,” he said, “the report had been brought directly to the attention of Her Majesty the Queen, who—as you may remember from your history books—was not amused. Her order came to me directly—by a Queen’s Messenger and written in her own hand. Dryad was to remain on the active list, and I was ordered to remain in command “until such a time as the crew could be returned, properly punished, and the ship made ready for sea service,” all of which was, of course, patently impossible. I imagine that, what with other matters, the Crimean War and whatever, she probably forgot about me; but my pay kept coming in, first through our Consulate, then less formally through one of the banks, and always in golden sovereigns—they must have a lot of them still stowed away. Well, I made the best of it. I had some family money. so I bought up the new bit of land they’d filled in and put up the hotel, which at least has been interesting.”

  “But Captain Crankshaw, I—I’m still puzzled. How—how on earth?—after all, everybody ages.”

  His face hardened. His gray eyes looked out to a horizon I couldn’t see.”Andrew,” he declared, “Her Majesty the Queen was no ordinary woman. Do you realize that, at the age of barely eighteen, she ascended an imperiled throne, totally unprepared either by training or experience, and during her more than sixty-year reign brought us to our pinnacle of power and prosperity? Consider her Ministers—Wellington, Disraeli who crowned her Empress of India, even Gladstone. Andrew, she had those mysterious powers royalty was always believed to possess. Even George III, in his madness, wandered the streets of London curing the King’s Evil, as one of your historians—Davidson, I think his name was—discussed in detail. In short, her orders were to be obeyed. If I aged, I could not have obeyed them. If I had been a young man, more people would have noticed that I grew no older and made more of it, but I was already in my middle years, when no one really notices. In any case, most people’s memories are short and muddled. Nowadays they’d probably say my subconscious had some thing to do with it.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he smiled. “There are times, Andy, when I regret not having gone on to be an Admiral and finally retire to Norfolk and write my memoirs. But in may ways I’ve had a rewarding and interesting life.” He and Juliana smiled at each other and I began to feel like an intruder. “I’ve had adventures I otherwise never would have had, and met people I never would have met. And there’s more ahead. I can hardly wait till you dig up that galley of Marduk’s—I’m sure you will. That’ll really s
et those Columbus people on their ear, though I do feel a bit sorry for those who claimed the honor of the Bay’s discovery for Sir Francis Drake.”

  FEGHOOT SHIPWRECKED (Feghoot 37)

  In 2631, Ferdinand Feghoot found himself spaceshipwrecked on the fifth planet of Schimmelhorn III. The only other survivor was Dr. Jacqueline Cusp, the famous biologist, advocate of parthenogenesis, author of the popular work entitled “All Men Are Beasts”, and founder of a female movement which required its members to wear Mother Hubbards and full masks at all times.

  In the wreck, their clothing had been almost completely burned off, but Feghoot, whose chivalry was proverbial, had salvaged part of the ship’s cargo of cured hides at great risk to himself, and had fashioned robes for the two of them.

  “We had no idea,” he told his friend Robert Louis Stevenson on his next junket into the past, “that this planet was the home of the gnurrs, who devour fabrics, and leather, and even synthetics. That same night they descended upon us; and, without even disturbing us, ate up every one of the hides, including those we were wearing. At dawn I was wakened by the most hideous scream that ever I heard. The good doctor had found herself stark, staring naked!”

  “It’s an interesting story,” commented Stevenson. “I might be able to use it if I could think of a title.”

  “Why not call it ‘Dr. Jacqueline Missed Her Hide?’” suggested Ferdinand Feghoot.

  THE GHOST (Feghoot 19)

  In 3180, Ferdinand Feghoot found the planet called Pigg. It was worthy of note, not because all its species were civilized (which is common enough), but because the spirits of its dead remained visibly present for years, getting into the same sorts of scrapes they had when alive. This troubled the living, who were convinced that there was no way to help or console them.

  Feghoot saw an example as he was taking a stroll with the President. A little ghost-cat crept up, weepIng and wailing.

  “Th-th-that old gh-gh-ghost B-Boxer bit off my t-t-t-tail!” he told them, sobbing and blowing his nose.

  “Oh, dear, dear, dear!” the President moaned. “And there’s nothing at all we can do!”

  Feghoot paid no attention. Kneeling, he whispered some words. Instantly, the cat-ghost leaped happily up, thanked him politely, and dashed off purring a tune.

  “How splendid!” the President cried. “Mr. Feghoot, what did you say?”

  “I told him to go to a grog shop.”

  “A grog shop, but why?”

  “Because,” said Ferdinand Feghoot, “that is where they retail spirits.”

  CIVIL RIGHTS (Feghoot 36)

  The Women’s Absolute Equality Party elected its first President in 2482 and set out to take over all known planets. Ferdinand Feghoot, then Governor-General of Awk-k-k-kaw in the system of Aldebaran, was ordered to accept a Mrs. Taffypull Jihad as his “Instructress,” to give her all aid while she indoctrinated the intelligent aviform natives, and finally resign his office.

  Mrs. Jihad taught the Awk-k-k-kawians exactly how things were done back on Earth, not only in politics, but in everything else. Her pupils were apt; and she soon informed Feghoot that they had elected a feminine President and Senate and a masculine Vice-President and House, that Absolute Equality was established, and that he must resign.

  Feghoot himself arranged a great ceremony. With Senators and Representatives all on their perches, he presented the native President and Vice-President, who delivered splendid orations of welcome.

  When they had finished, however, the new Governess General leaped to her feet in a fury. “Feghoot!” she cried. “Why were they using two speakers’ stands? Why weren’t they using the same one? It’s discrimination! There’s a misogynist in the house!”

  “No, dear lady,” said Ferdinand Feghoot. “They are trying to follow Earth customs. You told them time and again that on Earth we invariably have separate ladies’ rostrums and gentlemen’s rostrums.”

  GNURRS COME FROM THE VOODVORK OUT

  When Papa Schimmelhorn heard about the war with Bobovia, he bought a box-lunch, wrapped his secret weapon in brown paper, and took the first bus straight to Washington. He showed up at the main gate of the Secret Weapons Bureau shortly before midday, complete with box-lunch, beard, and bassoon. That’s right—bassoon. He had unwrapped his secret weapon. It looked like a bassoon. The difference didn’t show.

  Corporal Jerry Colliver, on duty at the gate, didn’t know there was a difference. All he knew was that the Secret Weapons Bureau was a mock-up, put there to keep the crackpots out of everybody’s hair, and that it was a lousy detail, and that there was the whole afternoon to go before his date with Katie.

  “Goot morning, soldier boy!” bellowed Papa Schimmelhorn, waving the bassoon.

  Corporal Colliver winked at the two Pfc’s who were sunning themselves with him on the guardhouse steps. “Come back Chris’mus, Santa,” he said. “We’re closed for inventory.”

  “No!” Papa Schimmelhorn was annoyed. “I cannot stay so long from vork. Also, I haff here a zecret veapon. Ledt me in.”

  The Corporal shrugged. Orders were orders. Crazy or not, you had to let ’em in. He reached back and pressed the loony-button, to alert the psychos just in case. Then, keys jangling, he walked up to the gate. “A secret weapon, huh?” he said, unlocking it. “Guess you’ll have the war all won and over in a week.”

  “A veek?” Papa Schimmelhorn roared with laughter. “Soldier boy, you vait! It iss ofer in two days! I am a chenius!”

  As he stepped through, Corporal Colliver remembered regulations and asked him sternly if he had any explosives on or about his person.

  “Ho-ho-ho! It iss nodt necessary to haff exblosives to vin a var! Zo all right, you zearch me!”

  The corporal searched him. He searched the box-lunch, which contained one devilled egg, two pressed-ham sandwiches, and an apple. He examined the bassoon, shaking it and peering down it to make sure that it was empty.

  “Okay, Pop,” he said, when he had finished. “You can go on in. But you better leave your flute here.”

  “It iss nodt a fludt,” Papa Schimmelhorn corrected him. “It iss a gnurr-pfeife. And I must take it because it iss my zecret veapon.”

  The Corporal, who had been looking forward to an hour or so of trying to tootle Comin’ Through the Rye, shrugged philosophically. “Barney,” he said to one of the Pfc’s, “take this guy to Section Eight.”

  As the soldier went off with Papa Schimmelhorn in tow, he pressed the loony-button twice more just for luck. “Don’t it beat all,” he remarked to the other Pfc, “the way we gotta act like these nuts was top brass or something?”

  Corporal Colliver, of course, didn’t know that Papa Schimmelhorn had spoken only gospel truth. He didn’t know that Papa Schimmelhorn really was a genius, or that the gnurrs would end the war in two days, or that Papa Schimmelhorn would win it.

  Not then, he didn’t.

  * * * *

  At ten minutes past one, Colonel Powhattan Fairfax Pollard was still mercifully unaware of Papa Schimmelhorn’s existence.

  Colonel Pollard was long and lean and leathery. He wore Peal boots, spurs, and one of those plum-colored shirts which had been fashionable at Fort Huachuca in the ’twenties. He did not believe in secret weapons. He didn’t even believe in atomic bombs and tanks, recoilless rifles and attack aviation. He believed in horses.

  The Pentagon had called him back out of retirement to command the Secret Weapons Bureau, and he had been the right man for the job. In the four months of his tenure, only one inventor—a man with singularly sound ideas regarding packsaddles—had been sent on to higher echelons.

  Colonel Pollard was seated at his desk, dictating to his blond WAC secretary from an open copy of Lieutenant-General Wardrop’s Modern Pigsticking. He was accumulating material for a work of his own, to be entitled Sword and Lance in Futur
e Warfare. Now, in the middle of a quotation outlining the virtues of the Bengal spear, he broke off abruptly. “Miss Hooper!” he announced. “A thought has occurred to me!”

  Katie Hooper sniffed. If he had to be formal, why couldn’t he just say sergeant? Other senior officers had always addressed her as my dear or sweetheart, at least when they were alone. Miss Hooper, indeed! She sniffed again, and said, “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Pollard snorted, apparently to clear his mind. “I can state it as a principle,” he began, “that the mania for these so-called scientific weapons is a grave menace to the security of the United States. Flying in the face of the immutable science of war, we are building one unproved weapon after another, counter-weapons against these weapons, counter-counter-weapons, and—and so on. Armed to the teeth with theories and delusions, we soon may stand defenseless, impotent— Did you hear me, Miss Hooper? Impotent—”

  Miss Hooper snickered and said, “Yessir.”

  “—against the onrush of some Attila,” shouted the Colonel, “some modern Genghis Khan, as yet unborn, who will sweep away our tinkering technicians like chaff, and carve his empire with cavalry—yes, cavalry, I say!—with horse and sword!”

  “Yessir,” said his secretary.

  “Today,” the Colonel thundered, “we have no cavalry! A million mounted moujiks could—”

  But the world was not destined to find out just what a million mounted moujiks could or could not do. The door burst open. From the outer office, there came a short, sharp squeal. A plump young officer catapulted across the room, braked to a halt before the Colonel’s desk, saluted wildly.

  “Oooh!” gasped Katie Hooper, staring with vast blue eyes.

  The Colonel’s face turned suddenly to stone.

  And the young officer caught his breath long enough to cry, “My God, it—it’s happened, sir!”