Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  Of course I worry about it, sir. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t worry about eating them, even though I can’t help feeling sorry for a race that’s in a worse bind than we are. They’ve adjusted to their ecology and manage to make do. But they must get as tired of their diet as we get of ours, and they look at us as we look at them. I can’t help thinking about those nests along the riverbank surrounded by colonies of burrowers and swimmers who wait to be eaten when their masters are hungry. It doesn’t take too much imagination to think what those basilisks could do if they went beyond toleration and actually worked together toward a common goal. If one of them can control whole colonies of lesser creatures, what could a dozen—or a hundred—do? I wonder—and worry—but I suppose it’s a calculated risk we have to take.

  TWEEN

  Adolescence is usually the most difficult part of growing up, but it’s worse for a—

  “LEONARD,” Mr. Ellingsen said, “What on earth are you doing to your hair?”

  “Nothing,” Lenny said uncomfortably. He glared at Mary Ellen and she looked at him with eyes of greenest innocence. Damned witch, Lenny thought. What Mr. Ellingsen should have said was what in hell is happening to your hair. At least his geography would be more accurate.

  “Hmm,” Mr. Ellingsen said. “For a moment, it looked as though unseen hands were ruffling it. It was a thoroughly unpleasant sight. I have learned to endure long hair on young men, but I cannot stand watching it rise and fall like waves on a windy beach.”

  The class laughed and Mary Ellen looked smugly virtuous.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Lenny protested.

  “Please don’t do it again,” Mr. Ellingsen said.

  The class giggled and Lenny wished that he was miles away, or that Mary Ellen was; preferably the latter. Just why did she have to pick on him? He wished that he had never dated her last summer. All he’d done was kiss her a couple of times. And he wouldn’t have done that if Sue Campbell hadn’t been in California with her parents. But the way she’d acted when Sue came back was like they’d been making out ever since Sue left.

  It wasn’t true. He’d only tried to go further once, and she froze like an icicle. She turned off just like she’d turned a switch. He shrugged. If she wanted to be a cold tomato, that was her bag, but she needn’t have acted like she owned him. He dropped her like a hot potato and went back to Sue almost with relief. That was when she started hanging around and being obnoxious. But Sue didn’t like Mary Ellen and that kept the witch away until the end of winter term. Jealousy was strong medicine against witches, Lenny guessed, but it wasn’t perfect because Sue and Mary Ellen were talking to each other now.

  That wasn’t good. Sue was impressionable, and she believed that crap Mary Ellen dished out. Mary Ellen wasn’t too truthful when she got going. In fact, she was a goddam liar. But Sue didn’t know that. Mary Ellen sure knew how to get Sue worked up.

  A guy would be safer with a rattlesnake. At least the snake gave warning before it struck. And its poison was no worse than Mary Ellen’s—now she was making cold chills run up and down his spine. They really ran, leaving icy little footprints on his vertebrae. His skin tingled and he shivered uncontrollably.

  Mr. Ellingsen looked at him again. A grimace of annoyance twisted the teacher’s pallid face.

  Lenny began to itch. The urge to scratch was almost uncontrollable.

  “Miss Jones,” Mr. Ellingsen said.

  Mary Ellen shifted her eyes to the teacher. The itching promptly stopped, although the cold spots remained.

  “What is there about the back of Leonard’s head that demands such intense scrutiny?” Mr. Ellingsen asked.

  Mary Ellen blushed.

  Lenny felt a mild satisfaction; it served her right. She didn’t like being the center of attention. Witches never do. When things began to happen to him a month ago, he’d been suspicious, and after some reading of books in the school and public library he had become certain. He was bewitched. It wasn’t something he could talk about, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. After all, killing Witches was no longer a public service, especially not when they were as pretty as Mary Ellen Jones. Anyway, she was more annoyance than danger. She couldn’t really harm him now that he was carrying a clove of garlic in his pocket and wore a cross and a St. Christopher medal. And in three weeks he’d be graduating from dear old John Tyler High and that would be the last of Mary Ellen. He was going to join the Air Force and volunteer for foreign service.

  Mary Ellen eyed Mr. Ellingsen with distaste. He didn’t have to call attention to her. He was typical of all that was wrong with male high school teachers, Mary Ellen thought moodily. Possibly he would have turned out better if he had more body and less brains, but slight, balding, nearsighted Mr. Ellingsen with his high precise voice, and quick birdlike movements was a distinct washout. He was almost as bad as Lenny Stone. She shook her head. No—that wasn’t being fair to Mr. Ellingsen. Lenny was unique. Nobody could be as bad—as ugly—as inconsiderate—as horrid as Leonard Joseph Stone. Lord! How she disliked him! It was am emotion that might well develop into a first class hatred. After all, Mr. Ellingsen was intelligent in a stupid sort of way, which made him different from Lenny. Still, that hardly compensated for his defects. He wasn’t human—but then what teacher is? And he was awfully mean to poor Miss Marsden. Everyone knew Anna Marsden was in love with him, but Mr. Ellingsen never gave her a break. He didn’t sit with her at the faculty table or walk with her in the hall. He was too wrapped up in Physics to even see a mere English teacher. He was absolutely insufferable. Mary Ellen eyed Ellingsen speculatively. He just might lose some of his offensive superiority if one of his experiments went sour, but nothing ever went wrong with an Ellingsen demonstration. They always went off like clockwork and always proved their point. Mary Ellen sighed. She wished she could do something for Miss Marsden, or do something to Mr. Ellingsen. Either alternative would be more pleasant than just sitting here and listening to things she didn’t want to understand. She settled back into a comfortable daydream of experiments going wrong to the complete frustration of Mr. Ellingsen . . .

  “The object of this demonstration,” Mr. Ellingsen said, “is to show that the force of gravity is to all intents and purposes a constant when substances of relatively small mass are involved, and that, under these conditions objects will fall at the same velocity regardless of their size and weight. Of course, this is within reasonable limits. I suppose that if you dealt with something as large as the moon compared with something as small as a steel ball bearing, you would find that the moon would reach the earth sooner because it would attract the earth to it more than the steel ball would, but insofar as the earth’s attraction to the moon is concerned, the speeds of attraction would be the same, roughly about 16 feet per second, per second.”

  “What I’m going to do is show you that a ping pong ball and a steel ball bearing of equal size will fall at the same speed.”

  “Wouldn’t the steel ball hit the ground a lot sooner if you dropped them off a real high place like the top of the clock tower?” Bill Reichart asked. Bill was an honor student and always asked questions. Mr. Ellingsen liked it because it gave him a chance to explain.

  “Of course it would, but there are other factors involved.”

  “Like air resistance?” Lenny asked.

  “Exactly. The air would slow the ping pong ball. But if you dropped the two balls through a vacuum they’d fall at the same speed.”

  “Exactly the same speed?” Reichart persisted.

  “Theoretically no—actually yes.

  The steel ball should attract the earth toward it more than the ping pong hall, but their relative masses are so infinitesimally small as compared with the mass of the earth that the difference is calculable only mathematically and would be expressed in a fractional skillionth of a nanosecond. At any rate, there is no instrument in this school that can measure the difference.” Mr. Ellingsen was sidestepping the issue. Actually, he wasn’t as sure o
f himself as he had been a few minutes ago. There was something about gravity nibbling at the edges of his memory, but he consoled himself with the thought that if he didn’t know, neither did the members of the class. He thought wryly that this was probably why he was teaching high school rather than working for a Nobel prize in physics. He simply didn’t know enough.

  Bill Reichart nodded. “You wouldn’t want to bring up Einstein’s math?” he asked.

  “Not now,” Ellingsen said. The class looked relieved. “I’ll try to explain,” he continued, ignoring the collective subliminal sigh from the students, “but I’ll do it with this apparatus. You see, all I want to show at this time is that within practical limits the earth’s attraction is a constant. Indeed, it is enough of a constant that Sir Isaac Newton used it as a base for his theory of gravitation and to develop a mathematics that still is useful, despite later discoveries. From a practical viewpoint we have no need for an analysis of gravity that is more accurate than Newton’s unless we become astronomers or astronauts.”

  “Now let us examine the demonstration apparatus.” Mr. Ellingsen pointed to the two clear plastic tubes behind him that reached from the door almost to the high ceiling.

  “These tubes contain a reasonably hard vacuum,” Mr. Ellingsen said.

  “This will eliminate air resistance. They also contain two dissimilar objects—a ping pong ball and a steel ball bearing, and some electronic apparatus to measure time. The left hand tube contains the ball bearing and the right hand tube contains the ping pong ball. The ping pong ball has a few iron filings glued to its surface. Both balls are held in the top of the tubes by electromagnets and there is a sensing device in the bottom of each tube. When I touch this button it will cut the current to the magnets and both balls will be released simultaneously. Now watch what happens . . .”

  Mr. Ellingsen pushed the button.

  The ping pong ball smacked against the bottom of the right hand tube but the steel ball remained at the top of its container. With an exclamation of annoyance Mr. Ellingsen punched the button a second time. “Apparently the magnet didn’t release,” he said uncomfortably. “Well—well try again. It’s no trouble to reset the balls. All we have to do is turn on the current and invert—” He voice stopped and his eyes bulged. For the steel ball was floating hesitantly down the inside of the tube—moving an inch at a time, pausing occasionally as though to determine whether it was safe to descend another inch. As Mr. Ellingsen peered at the ball, it shivered coyly and retreated to the top of the tube.

  “I think I am going mad!” Mr. Ellingsen muttered. “This simply cannot happen. It repeals the Law of Gravity.”

  Mary Ellen giggled. The sound held a triumphant note.

  The whole tube quivered, rose slowly from its metallic base and floated towards the ceiling. Mr. Ellingsen made a frantic grab for the plastic column—and missed.

  The class giggled.

  Beads of sweat dotted Ellingsen’s forehead, as he watched the tube snuggle against the ceiling.

  “That’s a good trick, sir,” Bill Reichart said, “How do you do it?”

  “I don’t,” Mr. Ellingsen said unhappily. “It’s doing it all by itself.”

  “I’ll bet you do it with wires.” Mary Ellen offered helpfully.

  “Why should I?” Mr. Ellingsen said in a harassed voice.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a teaching device.”

  “I intended to teach you about the law of gravity—not to repeal it,” Mr. Ellingsen replied pettishly. “Both you and I know perfectly well that a thing like this can’t happen. It’s a physical impossibility. Yet there it is,” he gestured hopelessly at the ceiling. “It should be down here.”

  “But it isn’t, sir,” Reichart said. “We can all see that. What makes it stay up there?”

  “If I knew, do you think I’d be here?” Mr. Ellingsen said. “I’d be so busy patenting the process I wouldn’t have time to teach. What you’re looking at is antigravity.” He looked up at the tube accusingly. “Come down this instant!” he ordered.

  The tube dropped on Mr. Ellingsen’s head. He went down as though he had been poleaxed—and mixed with the horrified gasp from the class, Lenny could hear Mary Ellen’s gloating giggle . . .

  LATER, when Mr. Hardesty, the vice-principal, tried to establish the cause of the accident that put Mr. Ellingsen in the hospital with a mild concussion, he came to the conclusion that everyone in Physics 3 was stark, raving mad—including Mr. Ellingsen. The matter was quickly dropped and everyone tried to forget it. Of course, no one did and it was a six days wonder until it was replaced with something else. In HomeEc class, about a week later and for no reason at all, plates and glassware sailed across the room and shattered against the wall. Mrs. Albritton, the teacher, was put under the doctor’s care, suffering from nervous collapse. Mr. Hardesty told reporters from the school paper that Mrs. Albritton hadn’t been feeling well prior to the incident and that everyone hoped she would be better soon. There was no truth in either statement.

  The high school baseball team, with worse material than it had the previous year, when it had a 0-10 season, won games with depressing regularity, and by lopsided scores. The ball, no matter who hit it, went for extra bases. And the pitching was uncanny. The only games the team lost were ones a long distance from home, and those losses were by almost as nightmarish scores as the wins near at hand.

  “I can’t explain it,” Mr. Curtis said, as he flexed his Mr. America muscles, “unless we’ve got a friendly gremlin. I’ve never coached a team like this. At home we can’t do a thing wrong, and on the road we can’t do a thing right. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that there’s a sorcerer in the stands casting spells for our side. I saw one pitch last night change directions twice. I can’t figure it.” Curtis’ muscles were fine, but his eyes were a bit weak or were playing tricks on him. At least, that was what most people figured after listening. And after Mr. Hardesty talked to him it was noticeable that he didn’t talk so much about the antics of his baseball team.

  Lenny figured it was Mary Ellen’s doing. Mr. Curtis was wrong only in the matter of sex. It wasn’t a sorcerer. It was a witch. Mary Ellen liked baseball. And she liked to win. Lenny would have bet his last dime that Mary Ellen had hexed the entire baseball team as well as being responsible for everything that went wrong in school . . . and he would have been right.

  As Mary Ellen saw it, Anna Marsden was well on her way to becoming an old maid. Even though she was pretty and intelligent, she was twenty five, which was on the downhill side toward thirty. And everyone knew that thirty was ancient! That was mainly because she had to fall in love with that awful stick of a Mr. Ellingsen. Now Mr. Curtis, the baseball coach, was much nicer. Not only did he have hair and muscles, but he had been hanging around the English class for weeks. He said it was because one of his players was having trouble with English Comp, but it was obvious that he liked Miss Marsden. Miss Marsden never gave him a break, which was silly. All she could see was that skinny Mr. Ellingsen—and he never noticed her at all. Miss Marsden would do a lot better with Mr. Curtis. Now if . . .

  The scandal erupted two nights later when Mr. Ellingsen broke into Mr. Curtis’ apartment and found Miss Marsden. It was only because Mr. Ellingsen was just out of the hospital that Curtis was still alive. Ellingsen bad hit him with a bronze table lamp which should have fractured his skull, but due in equal parts to the hardness of Curtis’ head and Ellingsen’s lack of strength, all the baseball coach suffered was a split scalp. Ellingsen apparently had cause for his actions, since he had been married to Anna Marsden for nearly two months.

  “Damned homewrecker!” Mr. Ellingsen snapped from his cell in the city jail. “Casanova! Wife stealer! I hope he’s crippled for life. But he won’t be,” he added gloomily. “I hit the oaf on the head!”

  “I never knew she was married, and she never told me,” Mr. Curtis explained “I asked her to come up to my place to look at my Hogarth engravings. She could have refused if
she wanted to, but she didn’t.”

  “I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it at all,” Miss Marsden said wildly. “I love Reggie. I always will. We were going to keep our marriage a secret this year because of this silly school board rule about married couples working in the same school, and earn the down payment on a house. Everything was wonderful until Bill Curtis began chasing after me. I didn’t like it and I wanted to tell him so, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to go to his apartment, but when he asked me, I said yes. I tried to tell him I was married, but the words wouldn’t come. It was like I was sitting outside myself watching something move me like a puppet. It was horrible!”

  Sue Chambers ran off with Bill Reichart and got married and their families were squabbling about an annulment. Bill didn’t seem worried about it and Sue had forgotten about becoming a medical missionary and decided to become a mother instead. Somehow she developed an appalling domesticity that made Lenny oddly grateful that things turned out as they did, although for a couple of days he despised Sue and hated Bill. Fortunately it was close enough to graduation that the happy couple were assured of getting their degrees. After that it wouldn’t matter. Reichart was going to college and Sue would go with him.

  The baseball team won the remainder of its games by lopsided scores, went to the state tournament and was eliminated. Mary Ellen was home in bed with the flu.

  Old Mr. Dodds took the wraps off his English History course the last two weeks before finals and gave his students enough details about the Regency Period to arouse a burning love for skatology in the breasts of students who had never cared for history at all. He also gave the class a blanket “A”. He was promptly suspended for conduct unbecoming a teacher and went chortling into retirement.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for thirty years.” he chuckled as he made his way through a crowd of admiring students alter his last session with the School Board. “For thirty years I’ve taught emasculated pap for children and I finally got tired of it. This time I gave them the facts.”