The Best of Fritz Leiber Part 17

And they were truly neither more nor less than ants. He was no more than an epidermal cell in a monster that was dueling with another monster, very careful of its inner organs but careless about its epidermis. There was something comfortingly abstract and impersonal about the idea of being united in such a way with many other men, not because of any shared purpose, but merely because they belonged to the same monster, a monster so large that it could readily do duty for fate and necessity. The fellowship of protoplasm.

The blond soldier murmured two or three words and for a moment he thought the whole army had spoken to him. Then he understood and .made the necessary adjustment in the instrument they were setting up.

But those two or three words had plunged him with breath-taking abruptness into the worst sort of inner misery. What was abstract had become personal, and that was bad. To conceive a monster made of men was one thing; to feel the insensate, inescapable prod of a neighboring cell and realize the stifling, close-packed pressure of the whole was another. He lifted his hand to his collar. The very air seemed to convey to his skin the shoving and jostling of distant, invisible individuals. The nudge of the galactic horde.

They were at the end of the crest now, atop a little hillock, and he stared ahead to where the air was clearer. He felt as ft he were suffocating. His new mood had come as utterly without warning as most of his moods now came, gushing up explosively from some wild, alien, ever expanding dimension within him.

Then, hi the broad expanse of fantastically clouded sky ahead of him, he saw his friends' faces again, orderly and side by side but gigantic, like a pantheon of demiG.o.ds. Just as he had hi the cellar and several times since, only now altogether. The only faces that meant anything hi the cosmos. Black George, with the wide grin that looked, but was not, stupid. Hollow-cheeked Loren, peering up with shy canniness, about to argue. Dark Helen, with her proud, subtle lips. Sallow Kenneth again, with his veiledly appraising eyes. And Albert, and Maurice, and Kate. And others whose features were blurred, heartbreakingly suggesting friends forgot. All transfigured and glowing with warmth and light. As meaningful as symbols, yet holding each within itself the quintessence of individuality.

He stood stock-still, beginning to tremble, feeling great guilt. How had he neglected and deserted them? His friends, the only ones deserving his loyalty, the only island for him hi the cosmos-choking sea of humanity, the only ones with worth and meaning; compared to which race and creed and humanity were without significance. It was as self-evident and undeniable as a premise hi mathematics. Heretofore he had seen only the masks of reality, the reflections, the countershadows. Now, at a bound, he stood beside the G.o.ds in darkness who pulled the wires.

The vision faded, became part of his mind. He turned, and it was as if he saw the blond soldier for the first time. How had he ever believed that he and the other soldier might have anything hi common? The gulf between them was far, far greater than if they belonged to different species. Why had he ever given two thoughts to such a silly, squinty-eyed, bustling little organism? He never would again. It was all very clear.

"We'll get them this time," the other soldier said with conviction. "We've got the stuff now. We'll show the bugs. Come on."

It was wonderful, hysterical, insufferable. Yesterday spiders. Today bugs. Tomorrow worms? The other soldier really believed it was important and n.o.ble. Could still pretend there was that kind of meaning and purpose to that sort of slaughter.

"Come on. Get the beta cycling," said the other soldier impatiently, nudging him.

It was all very clear. And he would never lose that clarity. By one action he would cut himself off from the galactic pack and cleave forever to the faces in the sky.

"Come on," ordered the other soldier, jerking at him.

He unsheathed his weapon, touched a b.u.t.ton. Silently a dull black spot, not a hole, appeared hi the back of the blond soldier's head. He hid the body, walked down the other side of the hill, and attached himself to another unit. By morning they were retreating again, the monster badly hurt and automatically resisting dissolution.

He was an officer now.

"I don't like him," said a soldier. "Of course, they all try to scare you, whether they know it or not. Part of the business. But with him it's different. I know he doesn't talk tough, or threaten or act grim. I know he's pleasant enough when he takes time to notice you. Even sympathetic. But there's something there I can't put my finger on. Something cold-blooded. Like he wasn't even alive-or as if we weren't. Even when he acts especially decent or thoughtful toward me, I know he doesn't give a d.a.m.n. It's his eyes. I can read meaning in the eyes of a Fomalhautian blindworm. But I can't read anything in his."

The soaring city seemed alien though it had once been home. He liked it the better for that. Civilian clothes felt strange against his skin.

He whisked briskly along the slidewalk, taking the turns aimlessly when it split at the pedestrian cloverleafs. He looked at the pa.s.sing faces with frank inquisitiveness, as if he were at a zoo. He just wanted to enjoy the feeling of anonymity for a little while. He knew what he was going to do afterwards. There were his friends, and there were the animals. And the fortunes of his friends were to be advanced.

Beside the next cloverleaf was a speaker, and a little crowd. There had been a good deal of that sort of stuff since the truce. Curiously he listened, recognized the weakness of the words. They were sloshed with ideals, tainted with unprofitable, poorly selected hatreds. The call to action was tinged by an undercurrent of bitterness that argued inaction would be better. They were civilized words and therefore useless to one who wanted to become an animal trainer on a galactic scale. What a zoo he'd have some day-and every single beast in it advertised as intelligent!

Other words and phrases began to ooze up into his mind. "Thinkers! Listen to me... cheated of what you deserve... misled by misled men... the galactic runaround... this engineered truce... the creatures who used the war to consolidate their power... The Cosmic Declaration of Servitude... life-to lose... liberty - to obey... and as for the pursuit of happiness-happiness is a light-millennium ahead of all of us... our universal rights... We have thirty armored planetoids...o...b..ting uselessly, three hundred star-ships, three thousand s.p.a.ceships, and three million s.p.a.ce veterans sweating in servile jobs in this system alone! Free Martia! Terra for All! Revenge..."

These unspoken words, he felt, were the harbingers of leadership. Alexander had done it. Hitler had done it. Smith had done it. Hriv-lath had done it. The Neuron had done it. The Great Centaur had done it. All murderers-and only murderers won. He saw the brilliant light-years of his future stretch ahead, endlessly. He saw no details, but it was all of the same imperial color. Never again would he hesitate. Each moment would decide something. Each of his future actions would drop like a gram of sand from an ancient hour gla.s.s, inevitably.

Profound excitement seized him. The scene around him grew and grew until he seemed at the center of a vast, ominous spellbound crowd that filled the galaxy. The faces of his friends were close, eager and confident. And from a great distance, as if the stars themselves p.r.i.c.ked out its pattern on the dark like a new constellation, he seemed to see his own face staring back at him, pale, skulleyed, and insatiably hungry.

The Big Holiday

THE WHISTLES blew. A thousand hands switched off pocket radios and wall-size television screens, right hi the middle of the Martian newscast. Another 500 all around the town locked the motors of sky scooters and ground buggies. A dozen cash registers rang up lucky last sales and were silent, locked. Two thousand throats breathed a sigh of relief. Two thousand hearts began to warm.

The whistles blew. Mrs. Pullen slammed a last batch of cookies into the electronic oven, counted to ten, switched it off, wiped her face, and stood there beaming at the fragrant towers of her handiwork-a gray-haired princess in a cookie castle. Mrs. Goldfarb smiled at her brown and creamflecked woodpiles of blintzes. Mr. Gianelli, his eyes watering with heat and spices, admired his steaming logjams of Italian sausage. Widowed Mr. Tomlinson was contemplating his bowls of hard-boiled eggs when a G.o.ddess shot him hi the back with a silver arrow. He turned around and commented, "That runic is a bit daring, pet." His daughter, new to grown-up life as a p.u.s.s.y willow, waved her plastic bow and said, "I'm going as Diana." Mr. Tomlinson mused, "Ah, the fleet-footed huntress."

The whistles blew. Mr. Jingles, so called by the children for the silver coins he always carried, emptied his pockets of them, added his green money, put it all away in the top drawer of his dresser. Everywhere else hi the town billfolds and purses disappeared. Offices closed. Secretaries sprayed their noses with powder and fluttered into their cloudlike electrosilk coats.

Mr. Debevois tore a May-something 2077 date-sheet off his desk calendar, made a paper dart of it, and shot it at his lagging stenographer, who was stooping to return a folder of microfilm to a bottom file drawer. Storekeepers took off their ap.r.o.ns and walked out, leaving doors unlocked. Plump Mr. Wilson pressed a b.u.t.ton and a sign appeared on the movie-house marquee: NO SHOW TONIGHT. Beardy Mr. Goldfarb shrugged, smiled, put away a sheaf of teleflashsd stock reports, unb.u.t.toned a great big drawer and took out a great big parchment scroll. School children tore off across the soft sandy schoolyard and green lawns slippery with sunlight. Down at the little aluminum station the atomic train inched to a stop like a golden caterpillar and the engineer jumped out in his best clothes.

The whistles blew. Mr. Moriarty, the town mortician, with black-clad limbs thin as a spider's and hat tall as Abraham Lincoln's, looked around at the bare gleaming tables and rubbed his hands. He opened a big thick icebox door and looked into two coffins. "They'll keep," he said. He opened another and looked at the empty shelves and nodded. "In case anybody has the bad luck to die the next three days," he said. Then the spiderweb of wrinkles all over his face contracted in a smile. He said softly, "Or maybe that would be the nicest time of year to go."

The whistles stopped. From back of the firehouse, around the lovely new red-vaned fire-copter, twenty pairs of strong hands pushed an oldfashioned automobile, a convertible, black and fat as sin, armored with chromium and sprouting three antennae-for radio, phone, and television. They shoved it across the street with a shout and it jounced to rest in front of the courthouse, its antennae quivering.

While toward the courthouse square, down the leaf-bowered streets silent of traffic, 4,000 big and little feet came pounding.

In the empty schoolhouse, before the mirror in the girls' room, Miss Kidd decided that her inch-long eyelashes were securely attached. She painted herself sultry lips, then almost ruined them making anguished faces as she tugged at the girdle borrowed from the museum. Pausing to catch her breath, she leafed with morbid curiosity through the pile of themes her cla.s.s had turned in. They were all tided "The Big Holiday." The first one began: By some it is thot that the Big Holiday started with the merrimak-ing of the Pre-lentin festeval at Reo D. Janero...

She hastily turned to the next.

In the olden times of the 20th Century, people didnt injoy holidays very much. They worried too much about making money and buying and selling. They even tried to sell each other, like in the very f aroff times of slavery...

(Beside this, Miss Kidd had red-penciled, "Sell a person on something. Old idiom. Means to persuade to buy, or convince of worth; has nothing to do with slavery.") Resisting further temptation, Miss Kidd turned the themes face down and got back to work. She pinned together the plunging neckline of her antique c.o.c.ktail dress, hesitated, then recklessly unpinned it. She put on a weird picture hat about three feet across, tossed a mink fur around her shoulders. "The fourth grade will have things to say about you," she told her reflection and hobbled out on unfamiliar French heels.

In the barber shop Mr. Felton, the town drunkard, lifted incredulous fingers to his fresh-shaven, lotioned cheeks. He watched the mirror with a beery wonder as they clad him hi silk shirt, stiff collar, and a pin-striped suit. He gaped with delight as they draped a huge gold watch-chain across his paunch and speared his tie with a blinding diamond pin. Mr. Kantarian, the barber, stood back, walked around, and curtly nodded his approval.

Mr. Wilson stepped into a money bag with arms and legs, tightened the drawstring around his neck, and put on a golden crown. A thought struck him and he got out his pocketbook. "It isn't breaking a holiday rule," he rea.s.sured himself, "if I use the junk as a stage property." And he artistically stuffed twenty or thirty dollar bills into his neckband. Then he walked out of his movie house.

The square was already a-chatter and a-swirl with the town's two thousand. Mr. Wilson, conscious of the dignity of his role, ignored the attention he attracted. At the firehouse corner he was joined by Miss Kidd and Mr. Felton. The drunkard eyed the crowd, then stiffened his back. With ritualistic solemnity the three walked to the fat black convertible. There they were met by Mr. Moriarty, whose spider-webbed face was set in the gloomiest lines. He tipped his stovepipe hat and opened the rear door for Miss Kidd and Mr. Felton, then got in front beside Mr. Wilson, who had taken the wheel.

There was a shot and a puff of smoke. A figure hi track pants and shirt emblazoned with golden bolts of lightning took off from across the square. He sped like the wind, the propeller of his beanie making a golden glory over his bent head. A G.o.ddess with a plastic bow gave an excited little yip. Mr. Tomlinson lifted a comprehending brow and remarked to her, "Jim Kelly, pet? So that's why you need to be fleetfooted."

"He's awfully shy too," she told him frankly.

Meanwhile the speedy topic of their conversation had sprung up on the back of the seat behind Mr. Wilson and begun pounding him on his money-green ruff and pointing frantically to the big old alarm clock strapped to his own wrist.

A dark man beat on a drum. Things got quiet. Mr. Goldfarb unrolled his parchment, cleared his throat, directed a severe stare at the occupants of the black car, and recited loudly, "Hear ye! Hear ye! Know all men here present that for the good of our hearts and minds and souls the following creatures are banished from town.

"First," he said, eyeing Mr. Wilson, "Money! Because he's a tyrant, a very Midas who turns the moon to two bits and the green gra.s.s to dingy green paper.

"Second," (Mr. Felton beamed as the stern gaze turned his way). "Success! Because he goes around with the wrong sort of people- I mean the gentleman I referred to first and the lady I'm referring to next." He looked at Miss Kidd. "Glamour! Because she's a huzzy who doesn't play fair. We like girls too much to let them be used to help sell soft drinks.

"And finally," he went on, turning to Jim Kelly and Mr. Moriarty, "Hurry and Worry! The one because while he's a good boy on a trip to Mars or the doctor, he's too hard on our hearts. The other-Worry- because he aids and abets all four aforementioned."

Mr. Jingles stepped up and began to tootle the funeral march, while dark Mr. Ambrose rumbled his drums ever so softly.

Mr. Goldfarb concluded, "These five are directed to leave town at once without pause or prayer. If they -or any of their equally guilty accomplices, such as Work, War, and Glory-should venture within the town limits during the next three days, we will violate the Const.i.tution and visit upon them various cruel and unusual punishments."

He rolled up the parchment, folded his arms, stuck out his beard, and said, "Now, get!"

Mr. Wilson stamped on the starter. The exhaust puffed nose-wrinkling blue smoke. The fat black car moved forward ponderously. Ahead the bright-clad people lined up on either side, like rows of flowers.

"Goodby," they called.

They waved at Mr. Wilson. "Goodby, Money." He stared solemnly ahead, intent on steering.

"Goodby, Success," they called to Mr. Felton. Forgetting character, he waved happily back.

"Goodby, Glamour," they called to Miss Kidd. She smiled at them scornfully, threw back her shoulders, looked down her plunging neckline, gathered her courage and held her position.

"Goodby, Hurry. Goodby, Worry," they called to Jim Kelly and Mr. Moriarty. The latter creased his brow and shook his head doom-fully. The sprinter wildly pleaded with Wilson for more speed.

The car pa.s.sed between Mason's Hardware and the town's sole skysc.r.a.per, a ten-story glastic skylon. Buckets of black confetti filled the air, snowed on the car, peppered Miss Kidd with beauty spots. Black paper streamers unrolled lazily downward, snagged chromium grills, dragged behind like a black fringe.

Moving majestically always, the car reached the schoolyard with its new-gathered ranks of children. A line of third and fourth grade boys raised cap pistols and solemnly discharged them. "Goodby, Hurry. Goodby, Worry." A few fourth graders called, "Goodby, Miss Kidd," and some added, "Goodby, themes," but their voices were lost.

One boy, greatly daring, darted in front of the car, planted two suction cupped black plumes on the hood, and skipped away. They waved like black banderillas in the shoulders of a sluggish black bull.

"Goodby, Money. Goodby, Success. Goodby, Glamour.

"Goodby, goodby, goodby."

A half mile out of town, just beyond the flower-gay cemetery, Mr.

Wilson parked the fat black car. They all got out and took suitcases from the trunk compartment, changed to regular holiday clothes and strolled back to join the fun, half listening to a bibulous harangue by Mr. Felton on the pros and cons of the Big Holiday.

"Who's your girl friend this time?" Miss Kidd asked Jim Kelly with teacher-like camaraderie, but he blushed and sidled away without answering.

Two blocks off they could hear Mr. Pullen, the banker, sawing on his fiddle. Right in the dappling shade in front of the courthouse. Mr. Jingles was twittering his flute. Dark Mr. Ambrose was making his drums talk gay. The whole village band was turning its happiness to sound. Around, streams of women were piling tables high. Suddenly there was a rush to the west side of the square. Up Main Street, swept speckless for dancing, creaked a museum carriage, pulled like a rickshaw by half the eighth grade boys. Out of it jumped Mr. Ferguson, the butcher, dressed in a domino, face red with glee. He lifted down a girl dressed in white like a nymph or a bride. Seeing her in the insurance office, you'd never have guessed that Miss Wolzynski could look so pretty.

"Welcome, Friendship! Welcome, Love!"

Up from the back of the carriage, yawning and arm-stretching, rose tall Mr. Gutknecht, teacher and town historian, dressed like an oldtime farmer, with hay in his hair.

"Welcome, Laziness!"

Clang! Up popped a magnesium manhole cover and out shot Joe Turner, the town policeman, dressed in motley with a bladder on a stick.

"Welcome, Fun!"

Fun chased Mr. Ferguson, chased Miss Wolzynski, chased Mr. Gutknecht, who wouldn't be chased and only yawned as the bladder bounced off his back.

BZZ-bzz. A silver ambulance-copter droned over the square. Down snowed bushels of flowers. Down came a silken line. And down that, on a flower-decked parachute in a flower-decked dress, came Jenny, waitress at the Skylon Cafe. Her hair was so full of flowers you'd need to have seen her before to know it was corn-colored.

"Welcome, Joy!"

Mr. Goldfarb smiled at everything, wiped his forehead and his neck under his beard, and wrapped comradely ringers around a lapel of Mr. Wilson, who had just got back.

"Say," he said, "did you notice in the last flash that Amalgamated Planetoid shares have climbed to-"

Biff! Fun's bladder dented Mr. Goldfarb's fuzzy Homburg and Fun roared triumphantly, "Caught you talking news, Mr. Goldfarb! Next you'll be reading inch-thick newspapers, like the ancients did to pa.s.s away holidays. The forfeit is to wear your hat upside down for the next three days."

Mr. Goldfarb shrugged happily, upended the Homburg so he looked like an ancient bearded sailor, and headed for the food tables.

Things got livelier. Rotary, Baptist Church, Volunteer Fire Department, and s.p.a.ce Veterans put on acts and skits-just little stuff, the big shows were for tomorrow: the town's own live movies on real stages, the town's own lifesize TV shows without screens, ballets they danced themselves, games they played with their own hands, races they ran with their own feet, poetry they read with their own mouths-not to mention an original epic by Mr. Tomlinson ent.i.tled Roosevelt's Farewell.

People laughed, people talked, people milled, people mocked, people got it off their chests. It got dark.

Small children were herded off to dormitories to be told wonderful stories by parents who babysat by turns. The square blossomed with bobbing lanterns. People ate quite a bit and drank quite a little. s.p.a.ce was cleared in the street and the dancing started.

Mr. Felton weaved up to Mr. Wilson, decided that this was the man he'd been arguing with in the dark for a long, long time. "Look," he said with brotherly aggressiveness, "I don't hold with those folk who say America never had any good holidays and parties until now. Why, America's the home of holidays." His aplomb became professorial and his tongue began to trip more lightly than any sober man's possibly could. "There's the clambake, the c.o.c.ktail party, the Sunday school picnic, the convention, the moon-jaunt, the field day, the jam session, the ten-way telephone call, the treasure hunt, the week end, the round-the-world-in-a-day-and-a-half-" He gulped a huge breath and grabbed tight to Mr. Wilson, who showed signs of edging off. "-the pub crawl, the night-to-howl, the barbecue, the wiener roast, the Sunday copter soar, the Kentucky frolic, the county fair, the retreat, the psychodrama, the psychoa.n.a.lysis, the s.p.a.ce-scoot, the blanket party, bundling, the revival, the over-the-top-of-the-world, and the fishing trip!" He waved his arms wildly and proclaimed, "They had Christmas, New Year's, Labor Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Sweetest Day-oh, and all sorts of holidays a man might enjoy with pleasure and profit. Only-" (and he hiccuped wisely) "-they got just a little too profitable."

Miss Kidd, dressed like Cleopatra, glided in front of Mr. Wilson. He put his arms around her.

"I've always wanted to know what it was like to kiss a schoolteacher," he said.

"Now you know," she told him three seconds later.

"Yes, I do," he agreed in awed tones, as Mr. Felton swayed off through the dancers.

It got real dark. New lights flamed and flared. The music got faster. Miss Kidd danced with Mr. Gutknecht. Mr. Felton swooped around with Mrs. Goldfarb. Mr. Kantarian danced with Mrs. Ferguson. Mr. Gianelli danced with Mrs. Lovesmith. Mr. Moriarty danced with Jenny and the wrinkles danced right off his face, maybe into his ears or under his collar. Octavia Tomlinson went to ask Jim Kelly to dance with her, but he saw her coming and ran away into the dark. So Diana strung a silver arrow to her plastic bow and went hunting.

Joy spun and flowers sprang from her dress, joined those underfoot. Friendship waltzed with Love, Fun cut didoes, while Laziness smiled and snoozed by turns. Dark shopfronts all around the square reflected a whirling rout of colors. But overhead there was nothing to turn back the happy hues and they shot upward, through air untroubled by radio waves or the roar of jets, to join those from a hundred thousand other towns on Earth and Mars, and flash a gay message to the twinkling, friendly stars.

The Night He Cried

I GLANCED down my neck secretly at the two snowy hillocks, ruby peaked, that were pushing out my blouse tautly without the aid of a bra.s.siere. I decided they'd more than do. So I turned away scornfully as his vast top-down convertible cruised past my street lamp. I struck my hip and a big match against the fluted column, and lit a cigarette. I was Lili Marlene to a T-or rather to a V-neckline. (I must tell you that my command of earth-idiom and allusion is remarkable, but if you'd had my training you wouldn't wonder.) The convertible slowed down and backed up. I smiled. I'd been certain that my magnificently formed milk glands would turn the trick. I puffed on my cigarette languorously.

"Hi, Babe!"

Right from the first I'd known it was the man I was supposed to contact. Handsome hatchet face. Six or seven feet tall. Quite a creature. Male, as they say.

I hopped into his car, vaulting over the low door before he opened it. We zoomed off through New York's purple, smelly twilight.

"What's your name, Big Male?" I asked him.

Scorning to answer, he stripped me with his eyes. But I had confidence hi my milk glands. Lord knows, I'd been hours perfecting them.

"Slickie Millane, isn't it?" I prompted recklessly.

"That's possible," he conceded, poker-faced.

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" I asked him, nudging him with the leftermost of my beautifully conical milk glands.

"Look here, Babe," he told me, just a bit coldly, "I'm the one who dispenses s.e.x and justice in this area."