In November AMAZING:

THREE

GENERATIONS
FROM NOW . . .

• War and conflict will be obsolete

• Hollywood will be the capital of the
Ideal States of America

• Business tycoons and psychiatrists
will direct our society

• There will be no creativity or individ-
ual expression

• Yet everyone will be happy . . .

—THAT IS, ALL
EXCEPT ONE MAN!

In November AMAZING you’ll meet
that man — in the pages of Robert
Bloch’s startling novel “Sneak Pre-
view.” You’ll follow this man who dared to be creative ... as his tor-
tured soul moves toward violent revolt and shattering climax !

You'll also enjoy such exciting November AMAZING features as

• Poul Anderson’s thought-provoking article “Science and
Superman : An inquiry.”

• A surprising short story by Jack Sharkey — and much, much more!
Be sure to get the November AMAZING, on sale October 8 at your
newsstand — only 35c

FANTASTIC SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, Vol. 8, No. 11. November 1959, is published monthly
by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, William B. Zifr, Chairman or the 3oard (1946-1953) at
434 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago 5, Illinois. Second-das. po; age paid af Chicago, Illinois
and at additional mailing offices. Subscription raies: U. S. and possession; and Canada $3.50
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Book-Length Novel by Robert Bloch
Sneak Preview

T)ERHAPS some old-timers will be able successfully to con-
tradict me, but I would hazard the statement that this is
the first time in a very long time, if ever, that an entire issue
of a science-fiction magazine was devoted to the work of a
single writer.

This issue — as you must know from the cover — features the
output of Fritz Leiber.

It is a strange thing that editors shy away from one-writer
issues. Variety is always the keyword; the reader must be
given lots of different writers ; and if by chance the exigencies
of scheduling force an editor to use two stories by the same
author in the same issue, he feels it necessary to conceal this
from the reader by using a pseudonym on one of the stories.

Why should this be so? Art galleries make a strong point of
featuring exhibits of paintings by one artist. Symphony or-
chestras will occasionally devote an entire program to one
composer. And why not? This gives the audience a chance to
steep itself utterly in one man’s imagination and technique ; to
comprehend his basic philosophy ; and to marvel at his variety,

And so we feel proud to devote an entire issue of Fantastic
to the writings — all brand new — of Fritz Leiber. Writings in
'various moods, of various lengths, about various things — a tre-
mendous display of versatility, a true tour de force.

We had thought of dedicating this issue to Leiber’s honor,
as a veteran writer in the genre. On second thought, however,
the honor is all ours. — NL

3

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fantastic

Science Fiction Stories

Volume 8

Number 11

REG. 0. S. PAT. OFF.

All Stories by Fritz Leiber

Publisher

Michael Michaelson

Editorial Director

Norman M. Lobsenz

Editor

Cele Goldsmith

Art Editor

Sid Greiff

NOVELLA

Lean Times In Lankhmar 6

NOVELET

Tranquility, Or Else!..,. - 89

SHORT STORIES

The Reward „ 45

The Mind Spider.. 55

The Improper Authorities 71

FEATURES

Editorial 3

According To You 85

Coming Next Month 84

Illustrations by: Grayam, Summers, Varga

Cover: MORRIS S. DOLLENS

V

Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, One Park
Avenue, New York lfi, New York. William Ziff.
President : W, Bradford Briggs, Execut ve Vice
President : Michael Michaelson, Vice President and
Circulation Director ; H. B. Savbin, Vice Presi-
dent : J. Leonard O’Donnell, Treasurer.

*

Copyright © 1959 by Ziff-Dovt* Pub//shtng Company, All rights reserved.

If you ran a popular
enough religion, there
was money in it. And
tor money, men took
risks, especially when
there were . . .

LEAN
TIMES IN
LANKHMAR

ONCE upon a time in
Lankhmar, City of the
Black Toga, in the world of
Nehwon, two years after the
Year of the Feathered Death,
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
parted their ways.

Exactly what caused the
tall brawling barbarian and
the slim elusive Prince of
Thieves to fall out, and the
mighty adventuring partner-
ship to be broken, is uncer-
tainly known and was at the
time the subject of much
speculation. Some said they
had quarreled over a girl.
Others maintained, with even
greater unlikelihood, that
they had disagreed over the

proper division of a loot of
jewels raped from Muulsh the
Moneylender. Srith of the
Scrolls suggests that their
mutual cooling off was large-
ly the reflection of a supernat-
ural enmity existing at the
time between Sheelba of the
Eyeless Face, Fafhrd’s de-
monic one-time mentor, and
Ningauble of the Seven Eyes,
the Mouser’s alien and multi-
serpentine patron.

The likeliest explanation,
which runs directly counter to
the Muulsh Hypothesis, is
simply that times were hard
in Lankhmar, adventures few
and uninviting, and that the
two heroes had reached that
point in life when hard-
pressed men desire to admix
even the rarest quests and
pleasurings with certain pru-
dent activities leading either
to financial or to spiritual se-
curity, though seldom if ever
to both.

This theory — that boredom
and insecurity, and a differ-
ence of opinion as to how
these dismal feelings might
best be dealt with, chiefly un-
derlay the estrangement of
the twain . . . this theory may
account for and perhaps even
subsume the otherwise ridicu-
lous suggestion that the two
comrades fell out over the
proper spelling of Fafhrd’s

name, the Mouser perversely,
favoring a simple Lankhmar-
ian equivalent of “Faferd”
while the name’s owner insist-
ed that only the original
mouth-filling agglomeration of
consonants could continue to
satisfy his ear and eye and his
semi-literate, barbarous sense
of the fitness of things. Bored
and insecure men will loose
arrows at dust motes.

Certain it is that their
friendship, though not utter-
ly fractured, grew very cold
and that their life-ways,
though both continuing in
Lankhmar, diverged remark-
ably.

The Gray Mouser entered
the service of one Pulg, a ris-
ing racketeer of small relig-
ions, a, lord of Lankhmar’s
dark underworld who levied
tribute from the priests of all
godlets seeking to become
gods — on pain of various un-
pleasant, disturbing and re-
volting things happening at
future services of the default-
ing godlet. If a priest didn’t
pay Pulg, his miracles were
sure to misfire, his congrega-
tion and collection would fail
off sharply, and it was quite
possible that a bruised skin
and broken bones would be
his lot.

Accompanied by three or
four of Pulg’s bullies and fre-
quently a slim dancing girl or

8

FANTASTIC

two, the Mouser became a fa-
miliar and newly-ominous
sight in Lankhmar’s Street of
the Gods, which leads from
the Marsh Gate to the distant
docks and the Citadel. He still
wore gray, went close-hooded,
and carried Cat’s Claw and
Scalpel at his side, but the
dagger and slim curving
sword kept in their sheaths.
Knowing from of old that a
threat is generally more ef-
fective than its execution, he
limited his activities to the
handling of conversations and
cash. “I speak for Plug — Plug
with a guh!” was his usual
opening. Later, if holy men
grew recalcitrant or overly
keen in their bargaining and
it became necessary to maul
saintlets and break up ser-
vices, he would sign the bul-
lies to take these disciplinary
measures while he himself
stood idly by, generally in
slow sardonic converse with
the attendant girl or girls and
often munching sweetmeats.
As the months passed, the
Mouser grew fat and the
dancing girls successively
more child-slim and submis-
sive-eyed.

Fafhrd, on the other hand,
broke his longsword across
his knee (cutting himself bad-
ly in the act), tore from his
garments the few remaining

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

ornaments (dull worthless
scraps of base metal) and bits
of ratty fur, foreswore strong
drink and all allied pleasures
(he had been on small beer
and womanless for some
time) , and became the sole
acolyte of Bwadres, the sole
priest of Issek of the Jug.
Fafhrd let his beard grow un-
til it was as long as his shoul-
der-brushing hair, he became
lean and hollow-cheeked and
cavern-eyed, and his voice
changed from bass to tenor,
though not as a result of the
distressing mutilation which
some whispered he had inflict-
ed upon himself — these last
knew he had cut himself but
lied wildly as to where.

The gods in Lankhmar
(that is, the gods and candi-
dates for divinity who dwell
or camp, it may be said, in
the Imperishable City, not the
gods of Lankhmar — a very
different and most secret and
dire matter) . . . the gods in
Lankhmar sometimes seem as
if they must be as numberless
as the grains of sand in the
Great Eastern Desert. The
vast majority of them began
as men, or more strictly the
memories of men who led as-
cetic, vision-haunted lives and
died painful, messy deaths.
One gets the impression that
since the beginning of time
an unending horde of their

9

priests and apostles (or even
the gods themselves, it makes
little difference) have been
crippling across that same
desert, the Sinking Land, and
the Great Salt Marsh to con-
verge on Lankhmar’s low,
heavy-arched Marsh Gate —
meanwhile suffering by the
way various inevitable tor-
tures, castrations, blindings
and stonings, impalements,
crucifixions, quarterings and
so forth at the hands of east-
ern brigands and Mingol un-
believers who, one is tempted
to think, were created solely
for the purpose of seeing to
the running of that cruel
gantlet. Among the torment-
ed holy throng are a few war-
locks and witches seeking in-
fernal immortality for their
dark satanic would-be deities
and a very few proto-god-
desses— generally maidens re-
puted to have been enslaved
for decades by sadistic magi-
cians and ravished by whole
tribes of Mingols.

Lankhmar itself and es-
pecially the earlier-mentioned
street serves as the theatre or
more precisely the intellec-
tual and artistic testing-
ground of the proto-gods
after their more material but
no more cruel sifting at the
hands of the brigands and
Mingols. A new god (his

priest or priests, that is) will
begin at the Marsh Gate and
more or less slowly work his
way up the Street of the
Gods, renting a temple or
preempting a few yards of
cobbled pavement here and
there, until he has found his
proper level. A very few win
their way to the region ad-
joining the Citadel and join
the aristocracy of the gods in
Lankhmar — transients still
though resident there for
centuries and even millennia
(the gods of Lankhmar are as
jealous as they are secret).
Far more godlets, it can just-
ly be said, play a one-night-
stand near the Marsh Gate
and then abruptly disappear,
perhaps to seek cities where
the audiences are less critical.
The majority work their way
about halfway up the Street
of the Gods and then slowly
work their way down again,
resisting bitterly every inch
and yard, until they once
more reach the Marsh Gate
and vanish forever from
Langhmar and the memories
of men.

Now Issek of the Jug,
whom Fafhrd chose to serve,
was one of the most lowly and
unsuccessful of the gods, god-
lets rather, in Lankhmar. He
had dwelt there for about
thirteen years, during which
time he had traveled only two

10

FANTASTIC

squares up the Street of the
Gods and was now back at the
Marsh Gate again, ready for
oblivion. He is not to be con-
fused with Issek the Armless,
Issek of the Burnt Legs,
Flayed Issek, or any other of
the numerous and colorfully
mutilated divinities of that
name. Indeed, his unpopular-
ity may have been due in part
to the fact that the manner
of his death — racking — was
not deemed particularly spec-
tacular. A few scholars have
confused him with Jugged
Issek, an entirely different
saintlet whose claim to im-
mortality lay in his confine-
ment for seventeen years in
a not overly roomy earthen-
ware jar. The Jug (Issek of
the Jug’s Jug) was supposed
to contain Waters of Peace
from the Cistern of Cillivat —
but none apparently thirsted
for them. Indeed, had you
sought for a good example of
a has-been god who had never
really been anything, you
could hardly have hit on a bet-
ter choice then Issek of the
Jug, while Bwadi'es was the
very type of the failed priest
— sere, senile, apologetic and
mumbling. The reason that
Fafhrd attached himself to
B wad res, rather than to any
one of a vast number of live-
lier holy men with better
prospects, was that he had

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

once seen Bwadres pat a
deaf-and-dumb child on the
head while (so far as Bwadres
could have known) no one
was looking and the incident
(possibly unique in Lankh-
mar) had stuck in the mind
of the barbarian. But other-
wise Bwadres was a most un-
exceptional old dodderer.

However, after Fafhrd be-
came his acolyte, things some-
how began to change.

In the first place, and even
if he had contributed nothing
else, Fafhrd made a very im-
pressive one-man congrega-
tion from the very first day
when he turned up so ragged-
looking and bloody (from the
cuts got breaking his long-
sword). His near seven-foot
height and still warlike car-
riage stood out mountainous-
ly among the old women, chil-
dren and assorted riff-raff
who made up the odorous,
noisy, and vastly fickle crowd
of worshippers at the Marsh-
Gate end of the Street of the
Gods. One could not help
thinking that if Issek of the
Jug could attract one such
worshipper the godlet must
have unsuspected virtues.
Fafhrd’s formidable height,
shoulder-breadth and bearing
had one other advantage: he
could maintain claim to a very
respectable area of cobbles

1 1

for Bwadres and Issek merely
by stretching himself out to
sleep on them after the
night’s services were over.

It was at this time that
oafs and ruffians stopped el-
bowing Bwadres and spitting
on him. Fafhrd was most pa-
cific in his new personality
— after all, Issek of the Jug
was notably a godlet of peace
— but Fafhrd had a fine bar-
baric feeling for the proprie-
ties. If anyone took liberties
with Bwadres or disturbed
the various rituals of Issek-
worship, he would find him-
self lifted up and set down
somewhere else, with an ad-
monitory thud if that seemed
called for — a sort of informal
one-stroke bastinado.

Bwadres himself brighten-
ed amazingly as a result of
this wholly unexpected respite
granted him and his divinity
on the very brink of oblivion.
He began to eat more often
than twice a week and to
comb his long skimpy beard.
Soon his senility dropped
away from him like an old
cloak, leaving of itself only a
mad stubborn gleam deep in
his yellowly crust-edged eyes,
and he began to preach the
gospel of Issek of the Jug
with a fervor and confidence
that he had never shown be-
fore.

Meanwhile Fafhrd, in the
second place, fairly soon be-
gan to contribute more to the
promotion of the Issek-of-
the-Jug cult than his size,
presence, and notable talents
as a chucker-out. After two
months of self-imposed abso-
lute silence, which he refused
to break even to answer the
simplest questions of Bwa-
dres, who was at first consid-
erably puzzled by his gigantic
convert, Fafhrd procured a
small broken lyre, repaired it,
and began regularly to chant
the Creed and History of
Issek of the Jug at all serv-
ices. He competed in no way
with Bwadres, never chanted
any of the litanies or presum-
ed to bless in Issek’s name, in
fact he always kneeled and re-
sumed silence while serving
Bwadres as acolyte, but seat-
ed on the cobbles at the foot
of the service area while
Bwadres meditated between
rituals at the head, he would
strike melodious chords from
his tiny lyre and chant away
in a rather high-pitched,
pleasing, romantically vibrant
voice.

Now as a Northerner boy
in the Cold Waste, far pole-
ward of Lankhmar across the
Inner Sea, the forested Land
of the Eight Cities and the
Trollstep Mountains, Fafhrd
had been trained in the

12

FANTASTIC

School of the Singing Skalds
(so called, although they
chanted rather than sang, be-
cause they pitched their voices
tenor) rather than in the
School of the Roaring Skalds
(who pitched their voices
base). This resumption of a
childhood-inculcated style of
elocution, which he also used
in answering the few ques-
tions his humility would per-
mit him to notice, was the
real and sole reason for the
change in Fafhrd’s voice that
was made the subject of gos-
sip by those who had known
him as the Gray Mouser’s
deep-voiced swordmate.

As delivered over and over
by Fafhrd, the History of
Issek of the Jug gradually al-
tered, by small steps which
even Bwadres could hardly
cavil at had he wished, into
something considerably more
like the saga of a northern
hero, though toned down in
some respects. Issek had not
slain dragons and other mon-
sters as a child — that would
have been against his Creed —
he had only sported with
them, swimming with levia-
than, frisking with behemoth,
and flying through the track-
less spaces of air on the backs
of wivern, griffin and hippo-
gryph. Nor had Issek as a
man scattered kings and em-

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

perors in battle, he had mere-
ly dumbfounded them and
their quaking ministers by
striding about on fields of
poisoned sword-points, stand-
ing at attention in fiery fur-
naces, and treading water in
tanks of boiling oil — the while
delivering majestic sermons
on brotherly love in perfect,
intricately rhymed stanzas.

Bwadres’ Issek had expired
quite quickly, though with
some kindly parting admoni-
tions, after being disjointed
on the rack. Fafhrd’s Issek
(now the Issek) had broken
seven racks before he began
seriously to weaken. Even
when, supposedly dead, he had
been loosed and had got his
hands on the chief torturer’s
throat there had been enough
strength remaining in them
alone so that he had been able
to strangle the wicked man
with ease, although the latter
was a champion of wrestlers
among his people. However,
Fafhrd’s Issek had not done
so — again it would have been
quite against his Creed — he
had merely broken the tortur-
er’s thick brass band of office
from around his trembling
neck and twisted it into an ex-
quisitely beautiful symbol of
the Jug before finally permit-
ting his own ghost to escape
from him into the eternal
realms of spirit, there to con-

13

tinue its wildly wonderful ad-
venturings.

Now since the vast major-
ity of the gods in Lankhmar,
arising from the Eastern
Lands or at least from the
kindredly decadent southern
country around Quarmall, had
been in their earthly incarna-
tions rather effete types, un-
able to bear more than a few
minutes of hanging or a few
hours of impalement, and
with relatively little resist-
ance to molten lead or show-
ers of barbed darts, also not
given overly to composing ro-
mantic poetry or to dashing
exploits with strange beasts,
it is hardly to be wondered
that lssek of the Jug, as in-
terpreted by Fafhrd, swiftly
won and held the attention
and soon thereafter also the
devotion of a growing section
of the usually unstable, gods-
dazzled mob. In particular
the vision of lssek of the Jug
rising up with his rack, strid-
ing about with it on his back,
breaking it, and then calmly
waiting with arms voluntar-
ily stretched above his head
until another rack could be
readied and attached to him
. . . that vision, in particular,
came to occupy a place of
prime importance in the
dreams and daydreams of
many a porter, beggar, drab

scullion, and the brats and
aged dependents of such.

As a result of this popular-
ity, lssek of the Jug was soon
not only moving up the Street
of the Gods for a second time
— a rare enough feat in itself
— but also moving at a great-
er velocity than any god had
been known to attain in the
modern era. Almost every
service saw Bwadres and
Fafhrd able to move their
simple altar a few more yards
toward the Citadel end as
their swelling congregations
overflowed areas temporarily
saci'ed to gods of less drawing
power, and ' frequently late-
coming and untirable wor-
shippers enabled them to keep
up services until the sky was
reddening with the dawn —
ten or twelve repetitions of
the ritual (and the yardage
gain) in one night. Before
long the make-up of their con-
gregations had begun to
change. Pursed and then fat-
ter-pursed types showed up:
mercenaries and merchants,
sleek thieves and minor offi-
cials, jeweled courtesans and
slumming aristocrats, shav-
en philosophers who scoffed
lightly at Bwadres’ tangled
arguments and Issek’s irra-
tional Creed but who were se-
cretly awed by the apparent
sincerity of the ancient man
and his giant poetical acolyte

14

FANTASTIC

. . , and with these monied
newcomers came, inevitably,
the iron-tough hirelings of
Pulg and other such hawks
circling over the fowlyards of
religion.

Naturally enough, this
threatened to pose a consid-
erable problem for the Gray
Mouser.

So long as Issek, B wad res
and Fafhrd stayed within
hooting range of the Marsh
Gate, there was nothing to
worry about. There when col-
lection time came and Fafhrd
circled the congregation with
cupped hands, the take, if
any, was in the form of moldy
crusts, common vegetables
past their prime, rags, twigs,
bits of charcoal, and — very
rarely, giving rise to shouts
of wonder — bent and dinted
greenish coins of brass. Such
truck was below the notice of
even lesser racketeers than
Pulg, and Fafhrd had no trou-
ble whatever in dealing with
the puny and dull-witted types
who sought to play Robber
King in the Marsh Gate’s
shadow. More than once the
Mouser managed to advise
Fafhrd that this was an ideal
state of affairs and that any
considerable further progress
of Issek up the Street of the
Gods could lead only to great
unpleasantness. The Mous-

er was nothing if not cautious
and most prescient to boot.
He liked, or firmly believed
he liked, his newly-achieved
security almost better than he
liked himself. He knew that,
as a recent hireling of Pulg,
he was still being watched
closely by the Great Man and
that any appearance of con-
tinuing friendship with
Fafhrd (for most outsiders
thought they had quarreled
irrevocably) might some day
be counted against him. So on
the occasions when he drift-
ed down the Street of the
Gods during off-hours — that
is, by daylight, for religion is
largely a nocturnal, torchlit
business in Lankhmar — he
would never seem to speak to
Fafhrd directly. Nevertheless
he would by seeming accident
end up near Fafhrd and,
while apparently engaged in
some very different private
business or pleasure (or per-
haps come secretly to gloat
over his large enemy’s fallen
estate — that was the Mouser ’s
second line of defense
against conceivable accusa-
tions by Pulg) he would
manage considerable conver-
sations out of the corner of
his mouth, which Fafhrd
would answer, if at all, in the
same way — though in his
case presumably from ab-
straction rather than policy.

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

15

“Look, Fafhrd,” the Mous-
er said on the third of such
occasions, meanwhile pre-
tending to study a skinny-
limbed pot-bellied beggar girl,
as if trying to decide whether
a diet of lean meat and cer-
tain callisthenics would bring
out in her a rare gaminesque
beauty — “Look, Fafhrd, right
here you have what you want,
whatever that is — I think it’s
a chance to patch up poetry
and squeak it at fools — but
whatever it is, you must have
it here near the Marsh Gate,
for the only thing in the
world that is not near the
Marsh Gate is money, and you
tell me you don’t want that —
the more fool you ! — but let
me tell you something: if you
let Bwadres get any nearer
the Citadel, yes even a peb-
ble’s toss, you will get money
whether you want it or not,
and with that money you and
Bwadres will buy something,
also willy-nilly and no matter
how tightly you close your
purse and shut your ears to
the cries of the hawkers. That
thing which you and Bwadres
will buy is trouble.”

Fafhrd answered only with
a faint grunt that was the
equivalent of a shoulder
shrug. He was looking stead-
ily down past his bushy beard
with almost cross-eyed con-
centration at something his

long fingers were manipulat-
ing powerfully yet delicately,
but that the large backs of his
hands concealed from the
Mouser’s view.

“How is the old fool, by the
by, since he's eating regular-
ly?” the Mouser continued,
leaning a hair closer in an ef-
fort to see what Fafhrd was
handling. “Still stubborn as
ever, eh? Still set on taking
Issek to the Citadel? Still as
unreasonable about . . . er . . .
business matters?”

“Bwadres is a good man,”
Fafhrd said quietly.

“More and more that ap-
pears to be the heart of the
trouble,” the Mouser answer-
ed with a certain sardon-
ic exasperation. “But look,
Fafhrd, it’s not necessary to
change Bwadres’ mind — I’m
beginning to doubt whether
even Sheelba and Ning, work-
ing together, could achieve
that cosmic revolution. You
can do by yourself all that
needs to be done. Just give
your poetry a little downbeat,
add a little defeatism to
Issek’s Creed — even you must
be tired by now of all this
ridiculous mating of northern
stoicism to southern maso-
chism, and wanting a change.
One theme’s good as another
to a true artist. Or, simpler
still, merely refrain from

16

FANTASTIC

moving Issek’s altar up the
street on your big night . . .
or even move it down a little !
— Bwadres gets so excited
when you have big crowds
that the old fool doesn’t know
which direction you’re going,
anyhow. You could progress
like the well-frog. Or, wisest
of all, merely prepare yourself
to split the take before you
hand over the collection to
Bwadres. I could teach you
the necessary legerdemain in
the space of one dawn, though
you really don’t need it — with
those huge hands you can
palm anything.”

“No,” said Fafhrd.

“Suit yourself,” the Mouser
said very very lightly, though
not quite unfeelingly. “Buy
trouble if you will, death if
you must. Fafhrd, what is
that thing you’re fiddling
with? No, don’t hand it to me,
you idiot! Just let me glimpse
it. By the Black Bones in the
First Black Toga! — what is
that?”

Without looking up or oth-
erwise moving, Fafhrd had
cupped his hands sideways,
much as if he were displaying
in the Mouser’s direction a
captive butterfly or beetle —
and indeed it did seem at first
glimpse as if it were a rare
large beetle he was cautiously
baring to view, one with a

carapace of softly burnished
gold.

“It is an offering to Issek,”
Fafhrd droned. “An offering
made last night by a devout
lady who is wed in spirit to
the god.”

“Yes, and to half the young
aristos of Lankhmar too and
not at all in spirit,” the Mous-
er hissed. “I know one of
Lessnya’s double-spiral brace-
lets when I see it. Reputedly
given her by the Twin Dukes
of Uthmar, by the by. What
did you have to do to her to
get it? — stop, don’t answer. I
know . . . recite poetry! Fa-
fhrd, things are far worse
than I dreamed. If Pulg knew
you were already getting
gold ...” He let his whisper
trail off. “But what have you
done with it?”

“Fashioned it into a repre-
sentation of the Holy Jug,”
Fafhrd answered, bowing his
head a shade farther and
opening his hands a bit wider
and tipping them a trifle.

“So I see,” the Mouser hiss-
ed. The soft gold had been
twisted into a remarkably
smooth strange knot. “And
not a bad job either, though
a most barbarous one. Not a
bad job at all. Fafhrd, how
you keep such a delicate feel-
ing for curves when for six
months you’ve slept without
them against you is quite be-

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

17

yond me. Doubtless such
things go by opposites. Don’t
speak for a moment now, I’m
getting an idea. And by the
Black Scapula! — a good one!
Fafhrd, you must give me
that trinket so that I may give
it to Pulg. No — please hear
me out and then think this
through ! — not for the gold in
it, not as a bribe or as part of
a first split — I’m not asking
that of you or Bwadres — but
simply as a keepsake, a pre-
sentation piece. Fafhrd, I've
been getting to know Pulg
lately and I find he has a
strange sentimental streak in
him — he likes to get little
gifts, little trophies, from his
. . . er . . . customers, we
sometimes call them. These
curios must always be items
relating to the god in ques-
tion— chalices, censors, bones
in silver filigree, jeweled
amulets, that sort of thing.
He likes to sit looking at his
shelves of them and dream.
Sometimes I think the man is
getting religion without real-
izing it. If I should bring him
this bauble he would — I
know ! — develop an affection
for Issek. He would tell me
to go easy on Bwadres. It
would probably even be pos-
sible to put off the question
of tribute money for . . . well,
for three more squares at
least.”

"No,” said Fafhrd.

“So be it, my friend. Come
with me, my dear, I am going
to buy you a steak.” This sec-
ond remark was in the Mous-
er’s regular speaking voice
and directed, of course, at the
beggar girl, who reacted with
a look of already practiced
and rather langorous affright.
“Not a fish steak either, puss.
Did you know there were oth-
er kinds? Toss this coin to
your mother, dear, and come.
The stall is four squares up.
No, we won't take a litter —
you need the exercise. Fare-
well— Death-seeker!”

Despite the wash-my-hands-
of-you tone of this last whis-
per, the Gray Mouser did
what he could to put off the
evil night of reckoning, devis-
ing more pressing tasks for
Pulg’s bullies and alleging
that this or that omen was
against the immediate settling
of the Bwadres account — for
Pulg, alongside his pink
streak of sentimentality, had
recently taken to sporting a
gray one of superstition.

There would have been no
insurmountable problem at
all, of course, if Bwadres had
only had that touch of realism
about money matters that,
when a true crisis arises, is
almost invariably shown by
even the fattest, greediest

18

FANTASTIC

priest or the skinniest, most
unworldly holy man. But
Bwadres was stubborn — it
was probably, as we have
hinted, the sole remaining
symptom, though a most in-
convenient one, of his only
seemingly cast-off senility.
Not one rusty iron tik (the
smallest coin of Lankhmar)
would he pay to extortioners
— such was Bwadres’ boast.
To make matters worse, if
that were possible, he would
not even spend money renting
gaudy furniture or temple
space for Issek, as was prac-
tically mandatory for gods
progressing up the central
stretch of the Street. Instead
he averred that every tik col-
lected, every bronze agol,
every silver smerduk, every
gold rilk, yes every diamond-
in-amber glulditch ! — would
be saved to buy for Issek the
finest temple at the Citadel
end, in fact the temple of
Aarth the Invisible All-Lis-
tener, accounted one of the
most ancient and powerful of
all the gods in Lankhmar.

Naturally this insane chal-
lenge, thrown out for all to
hear, had the effect of still
further increasing Issek’s
popularity and swelled his
congregations with all sorts of
folk who came, at first at
least, purely as curiosity seek-
ers. The odds on how far

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

Issek would get up the Street
how soon (for they regularly;
bet on such things in Lankh-
mar) began to switch wildly,
up and down as the affair got
quite beyond the shrewd but
essentially limited imagina-
tions of bookmakers. Bwadres
took to sleeping curled in the
gutter around Issek’s coffer
(first an old garlic bag, later
a small stout cask with a slit
in the top for coins) and with
Fafhrd curled around him.
Only one of them slept at a
time, the other rested but
kept watch.

At one point the Mouser al-
most decided to slit Bwadres’
throat as the only possible
way off his dilemma. But he
knew that such an act would
be the one unforgivable crime
against his new profession —
it would be bad for business
— and certain to ruin him for-
ever with Pulg and all other
extortioners if ever traced to
him even in faintest suspi-
cion. Bwadres must be rough-
ed up if necessary, yes even
tortured, but at the same time
he must be treated in all ways
as a goose who laid golden
eggs. Moreover, the Mouser
had a presentiment that put-
ting Bwadres out of the way
would not stop Issek. Not
while Issek had Fafhrd.

What finally brought the af-

19

fair to a head, or rather to its
first head, and forced the
Mouser’s hand was the ines-
capable realization that if he
held off any longer from put-
ting the bite on Bwadres for
Pulg, then rival extortioners
— one Bashabek in particular
— would do it on their own
account. As the Number One
Racketeer of Religions in
Lankhmar, Pulg certainly had
first grab, but if he delayed
for an unreasonable length of
time in making it (no matter
on what grounds of omens or
arguments about fattening
the sacrifice) then Bwadres
was anybody’s victim — Bash-
abek’s in particular, as Pulg’s
chief rival.

So it came about, as it so
often does, that the Mouser’s
efforts to avert the evil night-
fall only made it darker and
stormier when it finally came
down.

When at last that penulti-
mate evening did arrive, sig-
nalized by a final warning
sent Pulg by Bashabek, the
Mouser, who had been hoping
all along for some wonderful
last-minute inspiration that
never came, took what may
seem to some a coward’s way
out. Making use of the beggar
girl, whom he had named Lily-
black, and certain other of his
creatures, he circulated a ru-

mor that the Treasurer of the
Temple of Aarth was prepar-
ing to decamp in a rented
black sloop across the Inner
Sea, taking with him all
funds and temple-valuables,
including a set of black-pearl-
crusted altar furnishings, gift
of the wife of the High Over-
lord, on which the split had
not yet been made with Pulg.
He timed the rumor so that
it would return to him, by un-
impeachable channels, just
after he had set out for
Isselt’s spot with four well-
armed bullies.

It may be noted, in passing,
that Aarth’s Treasurer ac-
tually was in monetary hot
waters and really had rented
a black sloop. Which proved
not only that the Mouser used
good sound fabric for his
fabrications, but also that
Bwadres had by landlords’
and bankers’ standards made
a very sound choice in select-
ing Issek’s temple-to-be —
whether by chance or by
some strange shrewdness co-
dwelling with his senile stub-
bornness.

The Mouser could not di-
vert his whole expeditionary
force, for Bwadres must be
saved from Bashabek. How-
ever, he was able to split it
with the almost certain
knowledge that Pulg would
consider his action the best

20

FANTASTIC

strategy available at the mo-
ment. Three of the bullies he
sent on with firm instructions
to bring Bwadres to account,
while he himself raced off
with minimum guard to in-
tercept the supposedly fleeing
and loot-encumbered treas-
urer.

Of course the Mouser could
have made himself part of
the Bwadres-party, but that
would have meant he would
have had personally to best
Fafhrd or be bested by him,
and while the Mouser wanted
to do everything possible for
his friend he wanted to do
just a little bit more than that
(he thought) for his own se-
curity.

Some, as we have suggest-
ed, may think that in taking
this way out the Gray Mouser
was throwing his friend to
the wolves. However, it must
always be remembered that
the Mouser knew Fafhrd.

The three bullies, who did
not know Fafhrd (the Mous-
cr had selected them for that
reason), were pleased with
the turn of events. An inde-
pendent commission always
meant the chance of some
brilliant achievement and so
perhaps of promotion. They
waited for the first break be-
tween services, when there
was inevitably considerable
passing about and jostling.

Then one, who had a small
axe in his belt, went straight
for Bwadres and his cask,
which the holy man also used
as altar, draping it for the
purpose with the sacred gar-
lic bag. Another drew sword
and menaced Fafhrd, keeping
sound distance from and care-
ful watch on the giant. The
third, adopting the jesting,
rough-and-ready manner of
the master of the show in a
bawdy house, spoke ringing
warnings to the crowd and
kept a reasonably watchful
eye on them. The folk of
Lankhmar are so bound by
tradition that it was unthink-
able that they would interfere
with any activities as legiti-
mate as those of an extortion-
er— the Number One Extor-
tioner, too — even in defense
of a most favored priest, but
there are occasional foreign-
ers and madmen to be dealt
with (though in Lankhmar
even the madmen generally
respect the traditions).

No one in the congregation
saw the crucial thing that
happened next, for their eyes
were all on the first bully, who
was lightly choking Bwadres
with one hand while pointing
his axe at the cask with the
other. There was a cry of sur-
prise and a clatter. The sec-
ond bully, lunged forward

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

21

toward Fafhrd, had dropped
his sword and was shaking
his hand as if it pained him.
Without haste Fafhrd picked
him up by the slack of his gar-
ments between his shoulder-
blades. reached the first bully
in two giant strides, slapped
the axe from his hand, and
picked him up likewise.

It was an impressive sight :
the giant, gaunt-cheeked,
bearded acolyte wearing his
long robe of undyed camel’s
hair (recent gift of a votary)
and standing with knees bent
and feet wide-planted as he
held aloft to either side a
squirming bully.

But although indeed a most
impressive tableau, it pre-
sented a made-to-order open-
ing for the third bully,
who instantly unsheathed his
scimitar and, with an acro-
bat’s smile and wave to the
crowd, lunged forward long
and low and swept his cruel
sword upward toward the
apex of the obtuse angle
formed by the juncture of
Fafhrd 's legs.

The crowd shuddered and
squealed with the thought of
the poignancy of the blow.

There was a muffled thud.
The third bully dropped his
sword. Without changing his
stance Fafhrd swept together
the two bullies he was hold-

ing so that their heads met
with a loud thunk. With an
equally measured movement
he swept them apart again
and sent them sprawling
to either side, unconscious,
among the onlookers. Then
stepping forward, still with-
out seeming haste, he picked
up the third bully by neck and
crotch and pitched him a con-
siderably greater distance
into the crowd, where he
bowled over two of Basha-
bek’s henchmen who had been
watching the proceedings
with great interest.

There was absolute silence
for three heartbeats, then the
crowd applauded rapturously.
While the tradition-bound
Lankhmarians thought it
highly proper for extortioners
to extort, they also considered
it completely in character for
a strange acolyte to work
miracles, and they never
omitted to clap a good per-
formance.

Bwadres, fingering his
throat and still gasping a
little, smiled with simple
pleasure and when Fafhrd fi-
nally acknowledged the ap-
plause by dropping down
cross-legged to the cobbles
and bowing his head, the old
priest launched instantly into
a sermon in which he further
electrified the crowd by sev-
eral times hinting that, in his

22

FANTASTIC

celestial realms Issek was
preparing to visit Lankhmar
in person. His acolyte’s rout-
ing of the three evil men
Bwadres attributed to the in-
spiration of Issek’s might — to
be interpreted as a sort of
foretaste of the god’s ap-
proaching reincarnation.

The most significant conse-
quence of this victory of the
doves over the hawks was a
little midnight conference in
the back room of the Inn of
the Silver Eel, where Pulg
first warmly praised and then
coolly castigated the Gray
Mouser.

He praised the Mouser for
intercepting the Treasurer of
Aarth, who it turned out had
just been embarking on the
black sloop, not to flee Lankh-
mar, though, but only to
spend a water-guarded week
end with several riotous com-
panions and one Ilala, High
Priestess of the goddess of the
same name. However, he had
actually taken along several
of the black-pearl-crusted
altar furnishings, apparently
as a gift for the High Priest-
ess, and the Mouser very
properly confiscated them be-
fore wishing the holy band
the most exquisite of pleas-
ures on their holiday. Pulg
judged that the Mouser’s loot
amounted to just about twice
the usual cut, which seemed

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

a reasonable figure to cover
the Treasurer’s irregularity.

He rebuked the Mouser for
failing to warn the three bul-
lies about Fafhrd and omit-
ting to instruct them in detail
on how to deal with the giant.

“They’re your boys, son,
and I judge you by their per-
formance,” Pulg told the
Mouser in fatherly matter-of-
fact tones. “To me, if they
stumble, you flop. You know
this Northerner well, son, you
should have had them trained
to meet his sleights. You solv-
ed your main problem well,
but you slipped on an impor-
tant detail. I expect good
strategy from my lieutenants,
but I demand flawless tactics.”

The Mouser bowed his
head.

“You and this Northerner
were comrades once,” Pulg
continued. He leaned forward
across the dinted table and
drew down his lowrer lip.
“You’re not still soft on him,
are you, son?”

The Mouser arched his eye-
brows, flared his nostrils and
slowly swung his face from
side to side.

Pulg thoughtfully scratched
his nose. “So we come to to-
morrow night,” he said.
“Must make an example of
Bwadres — an example that
will stick like Mingol glue. I’d

23

suggest having Grilli ham-
string the Northerner at the
first onset. Can’t kill him —
he’s the one that brings in the
money. But with ankle ten-
dons cut he could still stump
around on his hands and
knees and be in some ways an
even better drawing card.
How’s that sound to you?”

The Mouser slitted his eyes
in thought for three breaths.
Then, “Bad,” he said boldly.
“It gripes me to admit it, but
this Northerner sometimes
conjures up battle-sleights
that even I can't be sure of
countering — crazy berserk
tricks born of sudden whim
that no civilized man can an-
ticipate. Chances are Grilli
could nick him, but what if
he didn’t? Here’s my reed — it
lets you rightly think that I
may still be soft on the man,
but I give it because it’s my
best reed : let me get him
drunk at nightfall. Dead
drunk. Then he’s out of the
way for certain.”

Pulg frowned. “Sure you
can deliver on that, son? They
say he’s forsworn booze. And
he sticks to Bwadres like a
giant squid.”

“I can detach him,” the
Mouser said. “And this way
we don’t risk spoiling him for
Bwadres’ show. Battle’s al-
ways uncertain. You may plan

to hock a man and then have
to cut his throat.”

Pulg shook his head. “We
also leave him fit to tangle
with our collectors the next
time they come for the cash.
Can’t get him drunk every
time we pick up the split. Too
complicated. And looks very
weak.”

“No need to,” the Mouser
said confidently. “Once Bwa-
dres starts paying, the North-
erner will go along.”

Pulg continued to shake
his head. “You’re guessing,
son,” he said. “Oh, to the best
of your ability, but still
guessing. I want this deal
bagged up strongly. An ex-
ample that will stick, I said.
Remember, son, the man
we’re really putting on this
show for tomorrow night is
Bashabek. He’ll be there, you
can bet on it, though standing
in the last row, I imagine —
did you hear how your North-
erner dumped two of his
boys? I liked that.” He grin-
ned widely, then instantly
grew serious again. “So we’ll
do it my way, eh? Grilli’s very
sure.”

The Mouser shrugged once,
deadpan. “If you say so. Of
course, some Northerners
suicide when crippled. I don’t
think he would, but he might.
Still, even allowing for that,
I’d say your plan has four

24

FANTASTIC

chances in five of working out
perfectly. Four in five.”

Pulg frowned furiously, his
rather piggy red-rimmed eyes
fixed on the Mouser. Finally
he said, “ Sure you can get
him drunk, son? Five in
five?”

“I can do it,” the Mouser
said. He had thought of a half
dozen additional arguments
in favor of his plan, but he
did not utter them. He did not
even add, “Six in six,” as he
was tempted to. He was learn-
ing.

Pulg suddenly leaned back
in his chair and laughed,
signing that the business part
of their conference was over.
He tweaked the naked girl
standing beside him. “Wine!”
he ordered. “No, not that
sugary slop I keep for cus-
tomers— didn’t Zizzi instruct
you? — but the real stuff from
behind the green idol. Come,
son, pledge me a cup, and
then tell me a little about this
Issek. I’m interested in him.
I’m interested in ’em all.” He
waved loosely at the darkly
gleaming shelves of religious
curios in the handsomely
carved traveling case rising
beyond the end of the table.
He frowned a very different
frown from his business one.
“There are more things in
this world than we under-

stand,” he said sententiously.
“Did you know that, son?”
The Great Man shook his
head, again very differently.
He was swiftly sinking into
his most deeply metaphysical
mood. “Makes me wonder,
sometimes. You and I, son,
know that these — ” (He wav-
ed again at the case) “ — are
toys. But the feelings that
men have toward them . . .
they’re real, eh? — and they
can be strange. Easy to un-
derstand part of those feel-
ings — brats shivering at
bogies, fools gawking at a
show and hoping for blood or
a bit of undressing — but
there’s another part that’s
strange. The priests bray non-
sense, the people groan and
pray, and then something
comes into existence. I don’t
know what that something is
— I wish I did, I think — but
it’s strange.” He shook his
head. “Make any man wonder.
So drink your wine, son —
watch his cup, girl, and don’t
let it empty — and talk to me
about Issek. I’m interested in
’em all, but right now I’d like
to hear about him.”

He did not in any way hint
that for the past two months
he had been watching the
services of Issek for at least
five nights a week from be-
hind a veiled window in var-
ious lightless rooms along the

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

25

Street of the Gods. It was cer-
tain that was something that
not even the Mouser knew
about Pulg.

So as a pinkly opalescent,
rose-ribboned dawn surged up
the sky from the black and
stinking Marsh, the Mouser
sought out Fafhrd. Bwadres
was still snoring in the gut-
ter, embracing Issek’s cask,
but the big barbarian was
awake and sitting on the curb,
hand grasping his chin under
his beard. Already a few
children had gathered at a re-
spectful distance, though no
one else was abroad.

“That the one they can’t
stab or cut?” the Mouser
heard one of the children
whisper.

“That’s him,” another an-
swered.

“I’d like to sneak up behind
him and stick him with this
pin.”

“I’ll bet you would!”

“I guess he’s got iron skin,”
said a tiny girl with large
eyes.

The Mouser smothered a
guffaw, patted that last child
on the head, and then advanc-
ed straight to Fafhrd and,
with a grimace at the stained
refuse between the cobbles,
squatted fastidiously on his
hams. He still could do it eas-
ily though his new belly made

a considerable pillow in his
lap.

He said without preamble,
speaking too low for the chil-
dren to hear, “Some say the
strength of Issek lies in love,
some say in honesty, some say
in courage, some say in stink-
ing hypocrisy. I believe I have
guessed the one true answer.
If I am right, you will drink
wine with me. If I am wrong,
I will strip to my loincloth,
declare Issek my god and
master, and serve as acolyte’s
acolyte. Is it a wager?”

Fafhrd studied him. “It is
done,” he said.

The Mouser advanced his
right hand and lightly rapped
Fafhrd’s body twice through
the soiled camel’s hair — once
on the chest, once between the
legs.

Each time there was a faint
thud with just the hint of a
clank.

"The cuirass of Mingsward
and the groin-piece of
Gortch,” the Mouser pro-
nounced. “Each heavily pad-
ded to keep them from ring-
ing. Therein lie Issek’s
strength and invulnerability.
They wouldn’t have fit you six
months ago.”

Fafhrd sat as one bemused.
Then his face broke into a
large grin. “You win,” he
said. “When do I pay?”

“This very afternoon,” the

26

FANTASTIC

Mouser whispered, "when
Bwadres eats and takes his
forty winks.” He rose with a
light grunt and made off,
stepping daintily from cobble
to cobble.

Soon the Street of the Gods
grew moderately busy and for
a while Fafhrd was surround-
ed by a scattering of the
curious, but it was a very hot
day for Lankhmar. By mid-
afternoon the Street was de-
serted, even the children
had sought shade. Bwadres
droned through the Acloyte’s
Litany twice with Fafhrd,
then called for food by touch-
ing his hand to his mouth —
it was his ascetic custom al-
ways to eat at this uncomfort-
able time rather than in the
cool of the evening.

Fafhrd went off and short-
ly returned with a large bowl
of fish stew. Bwadres blinked
at the size of it, but tucked it
away, belched, and curled
around the cask after an
admonition to Fafhrd. He was
snoring almost immediately.

A hiss sounded from the
low wide archway behind
them. Fafhrd stood up and
quietly moved into the shad-
ows of the portico. The
Mouser gripped his arm and
guided him toward one of sev-
eral curtained doorways.

“Your sweat’s a flood, my
friend,” he said softly. “Tell

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

me, do you really wear the
armor from prudence, or is it
a kind of metal hair-shirt?”
Fafhrd did not answer. He
blinked at the curtain, the
Mouser drew aside. “I don’t'
like this,” he said. “It’s a
house of assignation. I may
be seen and then what will
dirty-minded people think?”
“Hung for the kid, hung
for the goat,” the Mouser said
lightly. “Besides, you haven’t
been seen — yet. In with you!”
Fafhrd complied. The heavy
curtains swung to behind
them, leaving the room in
which they stood lit only by
high louvers. As Fafhrd
squinted into the semi-dark-
ness, the Mouser said, “I’ve
paid the evening’s rent on this
place. It’s private, it’s near.
None will know. What more
could you ask?”

“I guess you’re right,”
Fafhrd said uneasily. “But
you’ve spent too much rent
money. Understand, my little
man, I can have only one drink
with you. You tricked me into
that — after a fashion you did
— but I pay. But only one cup
of wine, little man. We’re
friends, but we have our sep-
arate paths to tread. So only
one cup. Or at most two.”
“Naturally,” purred the
Mouser.

The objects in the room

27

grew in the swimming gray
blank of Fafhrd’s vision.
There was an inner door
(also curtained), a narrow
bed, a basin, a low table and
stool, and on the floor beside
the stool several portly short-
necked large-eared shapes.
Fafhrd counted them and
once again his face broke into
a large grin.

“Hung for a kid, you said,”
he rumbled softly in his old
bass voice, continuing to eye
the stone bottles of vintage.
“I see four kids, Mouser.”

The Mouser echoed himself.
“Naturally.”

By the time the candle the
Mouser had fetched was gut-
tering in a little pool Fafhrd
was draining the third “kid.”
He held it upended above his
head and caught the last drop,
then batted it lightly away
like a large feather-stuffed
ball. As its shards exploded
from the floor, he bent over
from where he was sitting on
the bed. bent so low that his
beard brushed the floor, and
clasped the last “kid” with
both hands and lifted it with
exaggerated care onto the
table. Then taking up a very
short-bladed knife and keep-
ing his eyes so close to his
work that they were inevita-
bly crossed, he picked every
last bit of resin out of the
neck, flake by tiny flake.

Fafhrd no longer looked at
all like an acolyte, even a mis-
behaving one. After finishing
the first “kid” he had strip-
ped for action. His camel’s
hair robe was flung into one
corner of the room, the pieces
of padded armor into another.
Wearing only a once- white
loincloth he looked like some
lean doomful berserk, or a
barbaric king in a bath-house.

For some time no light had
been coming through the
louvers. Now there was a lit-
tle— the red glow of torches.
The noises of night had start-
ed and were on the increase
— thin laughter, hawkers’
cries, various summonses to
prayer . . . and Bwadres call-
ing “Fafhrd!” again and
again in his raspy long-carry-
ing voice. But that last had
stopped some time ago.

Fafhrd took so long with
the resin, handling it like gold
leaf, that the Mouser had to
fight down several groans of
impatience. But he was smil-
ing his soft smile of victory.
He did move once — to light
a fresh taper from the expir-
ing one. Fafhrd did not seem
to notice the change in illum-
ination. By now, it occurred
to the Mouser, his friend was
doubtless seeing everything
by that brilliant light of
spirits of wine which illum-

28

FANTASTIC

ines the way of all brave
drunkards.

Without any warning the
Northerner lifted the short
knife high and stabbed it into
the center of the cork.

“Die, false Mingol!” he
cried, withdrawing the knife
with a twist, the cork on its
point. “I drink your blood!”
And he lifted the stone bottle
to his lips.

After he had gulped about
a third of its contents, by the
Mouser’s calculation, he set it
down rather suddenly on the
table. His eyeballs rolled up-
ward, all the muscles of his
body quivered with the pass-
ing of a beatific spasm, and
he sank back majestically,
like a tree that falls with care.
The frail bed creaked omin-
ously but did not collapse un-
der its burden.

Yet this was not quite the
end. An anxious crease ap-
peared between Fafhrd’s
shaggy eyebrows, his head
tilted up and his bloodshot
eyes peered out menacingly
from their eagle’s nest of
hair, searching the room.

Their gaze finally settled on
the last stone bottle. A long
rigidly-muscled arm shot out,
a great hand shut on the top
of the bottle and placed it un-
der the edge of the bed and
did not leave it. Then Fafhrd’s
eyes closed, his head dropped

back with finality and, smil-
ing, he began to snore.

The Mouser stood up and
came over. He rolled back one
of Fafhrd’s eyelids, gave a
satisfied nod, then gave an-
other after feeling Fafhrd’s
pulse, which was surging with
as slow and strong a rhythm
as the breakers of the Outer
Sea. Meanwhile the Mouser’s
other hand, operating with an
habitual deftness and artistry
unnecessary under the cir-
cumstances, abstracted from
a fold in Fafhrd’s loincloth a
gleaming gold object he had
earlier glimpsed there. He
tucked it away in a secret
pocket in the skirt of his gray
tunic.

Someone coughed behind
him.

It was such a deliberate-
sounding cough that the
Mouser did not leap or start,
but only turned around with-
out changing the planting of
his feet in a movement slow
and sinuous as that of a cere-
monial dancer in the Temple
of the Snake.

Pulg was standing in the
inner doorway, wearing the
black-and-silver striped robe
and cowl of a masker and
holding a black, jewel-span-
gled vizard a little aside from
his face. He was looking at
the Mouser enigmatically.

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

29

“I didn’t think you could do
it, son, but you did,” he said
softly. “You patch your credit
with me at a wise time. Ho,
Wiggin, Quatch! Ho. Grilli!”
The three henchmen glided
into the room behind Pulg, all
garbed in garments as som-
berly gay as their master’s.
The first two were stocky men,
but the third was slim as a
weasel and shorter than the
Mouser, at whom he glared
with guarded and rivalrous
venom. The first two were
armed with small crossbows
and shortswords, but the
third had no weapon in view.

“You have the cords,
Quatch?” Pulg continued. He
pointed at Fafhrd. “Then
bind me this man to the bed.
See that you secure well his
brawny arms.”

“He’s safer unbound,” the
Mouser started to say, but
Pulg cut in on him with,
“Easy, son. You’re still run-
ning this job, but Pm going
to be looking over your shoul-
der, yes and I’m going to be
revising your plan as you go
along, changing any detail I
choose. Good training for
you. Any competent lieuten-
ant should be able to operate
under the eyes of his general,
yes even when other subordi-
nates are listening in on the
reprimands. We’ll call it a
test.”

The Mouser was alarmed
and puzzled. There was some-
thing about Pulg’s behavior
that he did not at all under-
stand. Something discordant,
as if a secret struggle were
going on inside the master
extortioner. He was not ob-
viously drunk, yet his piggy
eyes had a strange gleam. He
almost seemed fey.

“How have I forfeited your
trust?” the Mouser asked
sharply.

Pulg grinned skewily. “Son,
I’m ashamed of you,” he said.
“High Priestess Ilala told me
the full story of the black
sloop — how you sublet it from
the treasurer in return for
allowing him to keep the pearl
tiara and stomacher. How you
had Ourph the deafmute Min-
gol sail it to another dock.
Ilala got mad at the treasurer
because he went cold on her
or scared and wouldn’t give
her the black gewgaws. That’s
why she came to me. To cap
it, your Lilyblack spilled the
same story to Grilli here,
whom she favors. Well, son?”

The Mouser folded his arms
and threw back his head.
“You said yourself the split
was sufficient,” he told Pulg.
“We can always use another
sloop.”

Pulg laughed low and rath-
er long. “Don’t get me wrong,

30

FANTASTIC

son,” he said at last. “I like
my lieutenants to be the sort
of men who’cl want a bolt-hole
handy — I’d suspect their
brains if they didn’t. I ivant
them to be the sort of men
who worry a lot about their
precious skins, but only after
worrying about my hide first !
Don’t fret, son. We’ll get
along — I think. Quatch! Is he
bound yet?”

The two burlier henchmen,
who had hooked their cross-
bows to their belts, were well
along with their job. Tight
loops of rope at chest, waist
and knees bound Fafhrd to
the bed, while his wrists had
been drawn up level with the
top of his head and tightly
laced to the sides of the bed.
Fafhrd still snored peacefully
on his back. He had stirred a
little and groaned when his
hand had been drawn away
from the bottle under the
bed, but that was all. Wiggin
was preparing to bind the
Northerner’s ankles, but Pulg
signed it was enough.

“Grilli!” Pulg called. “Your
razor!”

The weasel-like henchman
seemed merely to wave his
hand past his chest and — lo!
— there was a gleaming
square-headed blade in it. He
smiled as he moved toward
Fafhrd’s naked ankles. He

caressed the thick tendons un-
der them and looked pleading-
ly at Pulg.

Pulg was watching the
Mouser narrowly.

The Mouser felt an unbear-
able tension stiffening him.
He must do something! He
raised the back of his hand to
his mouth and yawned.

Pulg pointed at Fafhrd’s
other end. “Grilli,” he repeat-
ed, “shave me this man! De-
beard and demane him ! Shave
him like an egg!” Then he
leaned toward the Mouser and
said in a sort of slack-mouth-
ed confidential way, “I’ve
heard of these barbs that it
draws their strength. Think
you so? No matter, we’ll
see.”

Slashing off a lusty man’s
head-and-face hair and then
shaving him close takes con-
siderable time, even when the
barber is as shudderingly
swift as Grilli and as heed-
less of the dim and flickering
light. Time enough for the
Mouser to assess the situation
seventeen different ways and
still not find its ultimate key.
One thing shone through
from every angle: the irra-
tionality of Pulg’s behavior.
Spilling secrets . . . accusing
a lieutenant in front of hench-
men . . . proposing an idiot
“test” . . . wearing grotesque
holiday clothes . . . binding a

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

31

man dead drunk . . . and now
this superstitious nonsense of
shaving Fafhrd — why, it was
as if Pulg were fey indeed
and performing some eerie
ritual under the demented
guise of shrewd tactics.

And there was one thing the
Mouser was certain of : that
when Pulg got through being
fey or drugged or whatever
it was, he would never again
trust any of the men who had
been through the experience
with him, including — most
particularly! — the Mouser. It
was a sad conclusion — to ad-
mit that his hard-bought se-
curity was now worthless —
yet it was a realistic one and
the Mouser perforce came to
it. So even while he continued
to puzzle, the small man in
gray congratulated himself
on having bargained himself
so disastrously into posses-
sion of the black sloop. A
bolt-hole might soon be
handy indeed, and he doubted
whether Pulg had discovered
where Ourph had concealed
the craft. Meanwhile he must
expect treachery from Pulg
at any step and death from
Pulg’s henchmen at their
master’s unpredictable whim.
So the Mouser decided that
the less they (Grilli in par-
ticular) were in a position to
do the Mouser or anyone else
damage, the better.

Pulg was laughing again.
“Why, he looks like a new-
hatched babe!” the master
extortioner exclaimed. “Good
work, Grilli!”

Fafhrd did indeed look
startlingly youthful without
any hair above that on his
chest, and in a way far more
like what most people think
an acolyte should look. He
might even have appeared ro-
mantically handsome except
that Grilli, in perhaps an ex-
cess of zeal, had also shorn
naked his eyebrows — which
had the effect of making Fa-
fhrd’s head, very pale under
the vanished hair, seem like
a marble bust set atop a liv-
ing body.

Pulg continued to chuckle.
“And no spot of blood — no,
not one! That is the best of
omens! Grilli, I love you!"

That was true enough too
— in spite of his demonic
speed, Grilli had not once
nicked Fafhrd’s face or head.
Doubtless a man thwarted of
the opportunity to hamstring
another would scorn any
lesser cutting — indeed, con-
sider it a blot on his own
character. Or so the Mouser
guessed.

Gazing at his shorn friend,
the Mouser felt almost inclin-
ed to laugh himself. Yet this
impulse — and along with it

32

FANTASTIC

his lively fear for his own and
Fafhrd’s safety — was momen-
tarily swallowed up in the
feeling that something about
this whole business was very
wrong — wrong not only by
any ordinary standards, but
also in a deeply occult sense.
This stripping of Fafhrd, this
shaving of him, this binding
of him to the ricketty narrow
bed . . . wrong, wrong wrong !
Once again it occurred to him,
more strongly this time, that
Pulg was unknowingly per-
forming an eldritch ritual.

“Hist!” Pulg cried, raising
a finger. The Mouser obe-
diently listened along with the
three henchmen and their
master. The ordinary noises
outside had diminished, for a
moment almost ceased. Then
through the curtained door-
way and the red-lit louvers
came the raspy high voice of
Bwadres beginning the Long
Litany and the mumbling
sigh of the crowd’s response.

Pulg clapped the Mouser
hard on the shoulder. “He is
about it! ’Tiz time!” he cried.
“Command us! We will see,
son, how well you have
planned. Remember, I will be
watching over your shoulder
and that it is my desire that
you strike at the end of Bwa-
dres’ sermon when the collec-
tion is taken.” He frowned at
Grilli, Wiggin and Quatch.

“Obey this my lieutenant!” he
warned sternly. “Jump at his
least command! — save when
I countermand. Come on, son,
hurry it up, start giving or-
ders!”

The Mouser would have lik-
ed to punch Pulg in the
middle of the jeweled vizard
which the extortioner was
just now again lifting to his
face — punch his fat nose and
fly this madhouse of com-
manded commandings. But
there was Fafhrd to be con-
sidered — stripped, shaved,
bound, dead drunk, immeas-
urably helpless. The Mouser
contented himself with start-
ing through the outer door
and motioning the henchmen
and Pulg too to follow him.
Hardly to his surprise — for it
was difficult to decide what
behavior would have been
surprising under the circum-
stances— they obeyed him.

He signed Grilli to hold the
curtain aside for the others.
Glancing back over the small-
er man’s shoulder he saw
Quatch, last to leave, dip to
blow out the taper and under
cover of that movement snag
the two-thirds full bottle of
wine from under the edge of
the bed and lug it along with
him. And for some reason
that innocently thievish act
struck the Mouser as being

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

33

the most occultly wrong thing
of all the supernally off-key
events that had been occur-
ring recently. He wished
there were some god in whom
he had real trust so .that he
could pray to him for enlight-
enment and guidance in the
ocean of inexplicably strange
intuitions engulfing him. But
unfortunately for the Mouser
there was no such divinity. So
there was nothing for it but
to plunge all by himself into
that strange ocean and take
his chances — do without cal-
culation whatever the in-
spiration of the moment
moved him to do.

So while Bwadres keened
and rasped through the Long
Litany against the sighing
responses of the crowd (and
an uncommonly large number
of cat-calls and boos), the
Mouser was very busy indeed,
helping prepare the setting
and place the characters for
a drama of which he did not
know more than scraps of the
plot. The many shadows were
his friends in this — he could
slip almost invisibly from one
shielding darkness to another
— and he had the trays of half
the hawkers in Lankhmar as
a source of stage properties.

Among other things, he in-
sisted on personally inspect-
ing the weapons of Quatch

and Wiggin — the shortswords
and their sheaths, the small
crossbows and the quivers of
tiny quarrels that were their
ammunition — most wicked-
looking short arrows. By the
time the Long Litany had
reached its wailing conclusion,
the stage was set, though ex-
actly when and where and
how the curtain would rise — -
and who would be the au-
dience and who the players —
remained uncertain.

At all events it was an im-
pressive scene : the long

Street of the Gods stretching
off toward a colorful torchlit
dolls’ world of distance in
either direction, low clouds
racing overhead, faint rib-
bons of mist gliding in from
the Great Salt Marsh, the
rumble of far distant thun-
der, bleat and growl of priests
of gods other than Issek,
squealing laughter of women
and children, leather-lunged
calling of hawkers and news-
slaves, odor of incense curling
from temples mingling with
the oily aroma of fried foods
on hawkers’ trays, the reek
of smoking torches, and the
musk and flower smells of
gaudy ladies.

Issek’s audience, augment-
ed by the many drawn by the
tale of last night’s doings of
the demon acolyte and the
wild predictions of Bwadres,

34

FANTASTIC

blocked the Street from curb
to curb, leaving only difficult
gangway through the roofed
porticos to either side. All
levels of Lankhmarian society
were represented — rags and
ermine, bare feet and jeweled
sandals, mercenaries’ steel
and philosophers’ wands,
faces painted with rare cos-
metics and faces powdered
only with dust, eyes of hun-
ger, eyes of satiety, eyes of
mad belief and eyes of a skep-
ticism that hid fear.

Bwadres, panting a little
after the Long Litany, stood
on the curb across the Street
from the low archway of the
house where the drunken
Fafhrd slept bound. His shak-
ing hand rested on the cask
that, draped now with the
garlic bag, was both Issek’s
coffer and altar. Crowded so
close as to leave him almost
no striding space were the in-
ner circles of the congregation
— devotees sitting cross-
legged, crouched on knees, or
squatting on hams.

The Mouser had stationed
Wiggin and Quatch by an
overset fishmonger’s cart in
the center of the Street. They
passed back and forth the
stone bottle Quatch had snar-
ed, doubtless in part to make
their odorous post more bear-
able, though every time the
Mouser noted their bibbing

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

he had a return of the feeling
of occult wrongness.

Pulg had picked for his
post a side of the low arch-
way in front of Fafhrd’s
house, to call it that. He kept
Grilli beside him, while the
Mouser crouched nearby after
his preparations were com-
plete. Pulg’s jeweled mask
was hardly exceptional in the
setting; several women were
vizarded and a few of the oth-
er men — colorful blank spots
in the sea of faces.

It was certainly not a calm
sea. Not a few of the audience
seemed greatly annoyed at
the absence of the giant
acolyte (and had been respon-
sible for the boos and cat-calls
during the Litany). While
even the regulars missed the
acolyte’s lute and his sweet
tenor tale-telling and were ex-
changing anxious questions
and speculations. All it took
was someone to shout,
“Where’s the acolyte?” and in
a few moments half the au-
dience was chanting, “We
want the acolyte! We want
the acolyte!”

Bwadres silenced them by
looking earnestly up the
Street with shaded eyes, pre-
tending he saw one coming,
and then suddenly pointing
dramatically in that direction,
as if to signal the approach

35

of the man for whom they
were calling. While the crowd
craned their necks and shoved
about, trying to see what
Bwadres was pretending to —
and incidentally left off
chanting — the ancient priest
launched into his sermon.

“I will tell you what has
happened to my acolyte!” he
cried. “Lankhmar has swal-
lowed him, Lankhmar has
gobbled him up — Lankhmar
the evil city, the city of
drunkenness and lechery and
all corruption — Lankhmar,
the city of the stinking black
bones!”

This last blasphemous ref-
erence to the gods of Lankh-
mar (whom it can be death to
mention, though the gods in
Lankhmar may be insulted
without limit) further shock-
ed the crowd into silence.

Bwadres raised his hands
and face to the low racing
clouds.

“Oh, Issek, compassionate
mighty Issek, pity thy humble
servitor who now stands
friendless and alone. I had
one acolyte, strong in thy de-
fense, but they took him from
me. You told him, Issek, much
of your life and your secrets,
he had ears to hear it and lips
to sing it, but now the black
devils have got him! Oh,
Issek, have pity!”

Bwadres spread his hands

toward the mob and looked
them around.

“Issek was a young god
when he walked the earth, a
young god speaking only of
love, yet they bound him to
the rack of torture. He
brought Waters of Peace for
all in his Holy Jug, but they
broke it.” And here Bwadres
described at great length and
with far more vividness than
his usual wont (perhaps he
felt he had to make up for the
absence of his skald-turned-
acolyte) the life and especial-
ly the torments and death of
Issek of the Jug, until there
was hardly one among the
listeners who did not have
vividly in mind the vision of
Issek on his rack (succession
of racks, rather) and who did
not feel at least sympathetic
twinges in his joints at the
thought of the god’s suffering.

Women and strong men
wept unashamedly, beggars
and scullions howled, philoso-
phers covered their ears.

Bwadres wailed on toward
a shuddering climax. "As you
yielded up your precious
ghost on the eighth rack, oh,
Issek, as your broken hands
fashioned even your tortur-
er’s collar into a Jug of sur-
passing beauty, you thought
only of us, oh, Holy Youth.
You thought only of making

36

FANTASTIC

beautiful the lives of the most
tormented and deformed of
us, thy miserable slaves.”

At those words Pulg took
several staggering steps for-
ward from the side of the
archway, dragging Grilli with
him, and dropped to his knees
on the filthy cobbles. His
black-and-silver striped cowl
fell back on his shoulders and
his jeweled black vizard slip-
ped from his face, which was
thus revealed as unashamedly
coursing with tears.

“I renounce all other gods,”
the boss extortioner gasped
between sobs. “Hereafter I
serve only gentle Issek of the
Jug.”

The weasley Grilli, crouch-
ing contortedly in his efforts
to avoid being smirched by
the nasty pavement, gazed at
his master as at one dement-
ed, yet could not or still dared
not break Pulg’s hold on his
wrist.

Pulg’s action attracted no
particular attention — conver-
sions were a smerduk a score
at the moment — but the
Mouser took note of it, espe-
cially since Pulg’s advance
had brought him so close that
the Mouser could have reach-
ed out and patted Pulg’s bald
pate. The small man in gray
felt a certain satisfaction or
rather relief — if Pulg had for
some time been a secret Issek-

worshipper, then his feyness
might be explained. At the
same time a gust of emotion
akin to pity went through
him. Looking down at his left
hand the Mouser discovered
that he had taken out of its
secret pocket the gold bauble
he had filched from Fafhrd.
He was tempted to put it soft-
ly in Pulg’s palm. How fitting,
how soul-shaking, how nice it
would be, he thought, if at the
moment the floodgates of re-
ligious emotion burst in him,
Pulg were to receive this
truly beautiful memento of
the god of his choice. But gold
is gold, and a black sloop re-
quires as much upkeep as any
other color yacht, so the
Mouser resisted the tempta-
tion.

Bwadres threw wide his
hands and continued, “With
dry throats, oh, Issek, we
thirst for thy Waters. With
gullets burning and cracked,
thy slaves beg for a single sip
from thy Jug. We would ran-
som our souls for one drop of
it to cool us in this evil city,
damned by black bones. Oh,
Issek, descend to us! Bring
us! Bring us thy Waters of
Peace ! We need you, we want
you. Oh, Issek, come!”

Such was the power and
yearning in that last appeal
that the whole crowd of kneel-

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

37

ing worshippers gradually
took it up, chanting with all
reverence, louder and louder,
in an unendingly repeat-
ed, self-hypnotizing response :
“We want Issek! We want
Issek!”

It was that mighty rhyth-
mic shouting which finally
penetrated to the small con-
scious core of Fafhrd’s wine-
deadened brain where he lay
drunk in the dark, though
Bwadres’ remarks about dry
throats and burning gullets
and healing drops and sips
may have opened the way. At
any rate, Fafhrd came sud-
denly and shudderingly awake
with the one thought in his
mind : another drink — and

the one sure memory: that
there was some wine left.

It disturbed him a little that
his hand was not still on the
stone bottle under the edge of
the bed, but for some dubious
reason up near his ear.

He reached for the bottle
and was outraged to find that
he could not move his arm.
Something or someone was
holding it.

Wasting no time on petty
measures, the large barbarian
rolled his whole body over
mightily, with the idea of at
once wrenching free from
whatever was holding him and
getting under the bed where
the wine was.

He succeeded in tipping
the bed on its side and him-
self with it. But that didn’t
bother him, it didn’t shake up
his numb body at all. What
did bother him was that he
couldn’t sense any wine near-
by— smell it, see it squintily,
bump his head into it . . . cer-
tainly not the quart or more
he remembered having safe-
guarded for just such an
emergency as this.

At about the same time he
became dimly aware that he
was somehow attached to
whatever he’d been sleeping
on — especially his wrists and
shoulders and chest.

However his legs seemed
reasonably free, though some-
what hampered at the knees,
and since the bed happened to
have fallen partly on the low
table and with its head braced
against the wall, the blind
twist-and-heave he gave now
actually brought him to his
feet and the bed with him.

He squinted around. The
curtained outer doorway was
an oblong of lesser darkness.
He immediately headed for it.
The bed foiled his first efforts
to get through, bringing him
up short in a most exasperat-
ing manner, but by ducking
and by turning edgewise he
finally managed it, pushing
the curtain ahead of him with
his face. He wondered mud-

38

FANTASTIC

dily if he were paralyzed, the
wine he’d drunk all gone into
his arms, or if some warlock
had put a spell on him. It was
certainly degrading to have to
go about with ones wrists up
about ones ears. Also, his
head and cheeks and chin felt
unaccountably chilly — possi-
bly another evidence of black
magic.

The curtain dragged off of
his head finally and he saw
ahead of him a rather low
archway and — vaguely and
without being at all impressed
by them — crowds of people
kneeling and swaying.

Ducking down again, he
lumbered through the arch-
way and straightened up.
Torchlight almost blinded
him. lie stopped and stood
there blinking. After a bit his
vision cleared a little and the
first person he saw that meant
anything to him was the Gray
Mouser.

lie remembered now that
the last person he had been
drinking with was the Mous-
er. By the same token — in
this matter Fafhrd’s maggoty
mind worked very fast indeed
— the Mouser must be the
person who had made away
with his quart or more of
midnight medicine. A great
righteous anger flamed in him
and he took a very deep
breath.

So much for Fafhrd and
what he saw.

What the crowd saw — the
god - intoxicated, chanting,
weeping crowd — was very
different indeed.

They saw a man of divine
stature strapped with hands
high to a framework of some
sort. A mightily muscled man,
naked save for a loincloth,
with a shorn head and face
that, marble white, looked
startlingly youthful. Yet with
the expression on that marble
face of one who is being tor-
tured.

And if anything else were
needed (truly, it hardly was)
to convince them that here
was the god, the divine Issek,
they had summoned with
their passionately insistent
cries, then it was supplied
when that nearly seven-foot-
tall apparition called out in a
deep voice of thunder:

“Where is the jug? WHERE
IS THE JUG?”

The few people in the crowd
who were still standing drop-
ped instantly to their knees
at that point or prostrated
themselves. Those kneeling in
the opposite direction switch-
ed around like startled crabs.
Two score persons, including
Bwadres, fainted, and of these
the hearts of five stopped
beating forever. At least a

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

39

dozen individuals went per-
manently mad, though at the
moment they seemed no dif-
ferent from the rest — includ-
ing (among the twelve)
seven philosophers and a niece
of Lankhmar’s High Over-
lord. As one, the members of
the mob abased themselves in
terror and ecstacy — grovel-
ing, writhing, beating breasts
or temples, clapping hands to
eyes and peering fearfully
through hardly parted fingers
as if at an unbearably bright
light.

It may be objected that at
least a few of the mob should
have recognized the figure be-
fore them as that of Bwadres’
giant acolyte. After all, the
height was right. But consid-
er the differences : The acolyte
was full-bearded and shaggy-
maned ; the apparition was
beardless and bald — and
strangely so, lacking even
eyebrows. The acolyte had al-
ways gone robed; the appari-
tion was nearly naked. The
acolyte had always used a
sweetly high voice; the ap-
parition roared harshly in a
voice almost two octaves low-
er.

Finally, the apparition was
bound — to a torture rack,
surely — and calling in the
voice of one being tortured for
his Jug.-

As one, the members of the
mob abased themselves.

With the exception of the
Gray Mouser, Grilli, Wiggin,
and Quatch. They knew well
enough who faced them.
( Pulg knew too, of course, but
he, most subtle-brained in
some ways and now firmly
converted to Issekianity,
merely assumed that Issek had
chosen to manifest himself in
the body of Fafhrd and that
he, Pulg, had been divinely
guided to prepare that body
for the purpose. He humbly
swelled with the full realiza-
tion of the importance of his
own position in the scheme of
Issek’s reincarnation.)

His three henchmen, how-
ever, were quite untouched by
religious emotions. Grilli for
the moment could do nothing
as Pulg was still holding his
wrist in a grip of fervid
strength.

But Wiggin and Quatch
were free. Although some-
what dull-brained and little
used to acting on their own
initiative, they were not long
in realizing that the giant had
appeared who was supposed
to be kept out of the way so
that he would not queer the
game of their strangely-be-
having master and his tricky
gray-clad lieutenant. More-
over, they well knew what jug
Fafhrd was shouting for so

40

FANTASTIC

angrily, and since they also
knew they had stolen and
drunken it empty, they likely
also were moved by guilty
fears that Fafhrd might soon
see them, break loose, and
visit vengeance upon them.

They cranked up their
crossbows with furious haste,
slapped in quarrels, knelt,
aimed, and discharged the
bolts straight at Fafhrd’s
naked chest. Several persons
in the mob noted their action
and shrieked at its wicked-
ness.

The two bolts struck Fa-
fhrd’s chest, bounced off, and
dropped to the cobbles — quite
naturally enough, as they
were two of the fowling quar-
rels (headed merely with
little knobs of wood and used
for knocking down small
birds) with which the Mouser
had topped off their quivers.

The crowd gasped at
issek’s invulnerability and
cried for joy and amazement.

However, although fowling
quarrels will hardly break a
man’s skin, even when dis-
charged at close range, they
nevertheless sting mightily
even the rather numb body of
a man who has recently drunk
numerous quarts of wine.
Fafhrd roared in agony,
punched out his arms convul-
sively, and broke the frame-

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

work to which he ivas at-
tached.

The crowd cheered hyster-
ically at this further proper
action in the drama of Issek
which his acolyte had so oft-
en chanted.

Quatch and Wiggin, realiz-
ing that their missile weap-
ons had somehow been ren-
dered innocuous, but too dull-
witted or wine-fuddled to see
anything either occult or sus-
picious in the manner of that
rendering, grabbed at their
shortswords and rushed for-
ward at Fafhrd to cut him
down before he could finish
detaching himself from the
fragments of the broken bed
— which he was now trying
to do in a puzzled way.

Yes, Quatch and Wiggin
rushed forward, but almost
immediately came to a halt —
in the very strange posture
of men who are trying to lift
themselves into the air by
heaving at their own belts.

The shortswords would not
come out of their scabbards.
Mingol glue is indeed a pow-
erful adhesive and the Mous-
er had been most determined
that, however little else he ac-
complished, Pulg’s henchmen
should be put in a position
where they could harm no
one.

However, he had been able
to do nothing in the way of

41

pulling Grilli’s fangs, as the
tiny man was most sharp-
witted himself and Pulg had
kept him closely at his side.
Now almost foaming at the
mouth in vulpine rage and
disgust, Grilli broke loose
from his god-besotted master,
whisked out his razor, and
sprang at Fafhrd, who at last
had clearly realized what was
encumbering him and was
having a fine time breaking
the last pesky fragments of
the bed over his knee or by
the leverage of foot against
cobble — to the accompani-
ment of the continuing wild
cheers of the mob.

But the Mouser sprang
rather more swiftly. Grilli
saw him coming, shifted his
attack to the gray-clad man,
feinted twice and loosed one
slash that narrowly missed.
Thereafter he lost blood too
quickly to be interested in at-
tempting any further fencing.
Cat’s Claw is narrow and
slightly curved but it cuts
throats as well as any other
dagger (though it does not
have a barbed tip, as some
literal-minded scholars have
claimed).

The bout with Grilli left the
Mouser standing very close to
Fafhrd. The little man real-
ized he still held in his left
hand the golden representa-
tion of the Jug fashioned by

Fafhrd, and that object now
touched off in the Mouser’s
mind a series of inspirations
leading to actions that follow-
ed one another very much like
the successive figures of a
dance.

He slapped Fafhrd back-
handed on the cheek to attract
the giant’s attention. Then he
sprang to Pulg, sweeping his
left hand in a dramatic arc as
if conveying something from
the naked god to the extortion-
er, and lightly placed the
golden bauble in the supplicat-
ing fingers of the latter. (One
of those times had come when
all ordinary scales of value
fail — even for the Mouser — -
and gold is — however briefly
— of no worth.) Recognizing
the holy object, Pulg almost
expired in ecstacy.

But the Mouser had already
skipped on across the Street.
Reaching Issek’s coffer-altar,
beside which Bwadres was
stretched unconscious but
smiling, he twitched off the
garlic bag and sprang upon
the small cask and danced
upon it, hooting to further at-
tract Fafhrd’s attention and
then pointing at his own feet.

Fafhrd saw the cask, all
right, as the Mouser had in-
tended he should, and the
giant did not see it as any-
thing to do with Issek’s col-

42

FANTASTIC

lections (the thought of all
such matters was still wiped
from his mind) but simply as
a likely source of the liquor
he craved. With a glad cry he
hastened toward it across the
Street, his worshippers scut-
tling out of his way or moan-
ing in beatific ecstacy when
he trod on them with his
naked feet. He caught up the
cask and lifted it to his lips.

To the crowd it seemed that
Issek was drinking his own
coffer — an unusual yet unde-
niably picturesque way for a
god to absorb his worship-
pers’ cash offerings.

With a roar of baffled dis-
gust Fafhrd raised the cask
to smash it on the cobbles,
whether from pure frustra-
tion or with some idea of
getting at the liquor he
thought it held is hard to say,
but just then the Mouser
caught his attention again.
The small man had snatched
two tankards of ale from an
abandoned tray and was
pouring the heady liquid back
and forth between them un-
til the high-piled foam trailed
down the sides.

Tucking the cask under his
left arm — for many drunk-
ards have a curious prudent
habit of absent - mindedly
hanging onto things, especial-
ly if they may contain liquor
— Fafhrd set out again after

LEAN TIMES IN LANKHMAR

the Mouser, who ducked into
the darkness of the nearest
portico and then danced out
again and led Fafhrd in a
great circle all the way
around the roiling congrega-
tion.

Literally viewed it was
hardly an edifying spectacle
— a large god stumbling after
a small gray demon and
grasping at a tankard of beer
that just kept eluding him —
but the Lankhmarians were
already viewing it under the
guise of two dozen different
allegories and symbolisms,
several of which were later
written up in learned scrolls.

The second time through
the portico Issek and the
small gray demon did not
come out again. A large chor-
us of mixed voices kept up
expectant and fearful cries
for some time, but the two
supernatural beings did not
reappear.

Turning back to a dawn ex-
actly three years earlier we
find the Gray Mouser and
Fafhrd clambering from a
cranky leaky skiff into the
cockpit of a black sloop moor-
ed beyond the Great Mole that
juts out from Lankhmar and
the east bank of the River
Hlal into the Inner Sea. Before
coming aboard, Fafhrd first
handed up Issek’s cask to

43

the impassively sallow-faced
Ourph. Then all three bent to
the task of upping anchor and
making sail.

As soon as the salty wind
was driving them directly
away from the land and
Lankhmar, the Mouser turned
quickly to Issek’s cask and its
loot. In the dusk his fingers
could not find a coin-slit. When
he upended the heavy object it
did not even jingle. Eager to
open it before Fafhrd could
protest, the Mouser raised a
heavy hatchet he had taken
from the sloop’s tool rack and
bashed in a section of wood.

There was a spray of sting-
ingly aromatic fluid of most
familiar odor. Brandy ... to
the absolute top so it had not
gurgled. And then, as the day
grew brighter, the Mouser no-
ticed a somewhat burnt in-
scription on one end of the
cask: “Dear Pulg — Drown

your sorrows in this — Basha-
bek.”

In thinking back it was only
too easy to realize how yester-
day afternoon the Number
Two Extortioner had had a
perfect opportunity to effect
the substitution.

Then, for the first time in
many months, Fafhrd and the
Mouser really looked at each
other. There was an odd shy-
ness in both their gazes — each
had the sudden thought that

he had taken his friend away
from the lifepath he had
chosen in Lankhmar, perhaps
the life-path best suited to his
treading.

The Mouser laughed a little
self-consciously. “I have no re-
grets for Lankhmar,” he said,
lying mightily, though not en-
tirely. “I can see now that if
I’d stayed I’d have gone the
way of Pulg and all such
Great Men — fat, power-rack-
ed, lieutenant-plagued, smoth-
ered with false-hearted danc-
ing girls, and falling at last
into the arms of religion. At
least I’m saved that last
chronic ailment, which is
worse than the dropsy.” He
looked at Fafhrd narrowly.
“But how of you, old friend?
Will you miss Bwadres and
your cobbled bed and your
nightly tale-weaving?”

Fafhrd frowned as the
sloop plunged on northward
and the salt spray dashed him.

“Not I,” he said at last.
“There are always other tales
to be woven. I served a god
well, I dressed him in new
clothes, and then I did a third
thing. Who’d go back to being
an acolyte after being so
much more? You see, old
friend, I really was Issek.”

The Mouser arched his eye-
brows. “You were?”

Fafhrd nodded twice, most
gravely. the end

44

FANTASTIC

THE

REWARD

They all made fun of
Gel ler and his Felly
. . . except the slim
blonde girl . . . and
a faceless entity call-
ed Chance.

AND here behind this dingy
door, Miss Silvers — Well,
Diana then — All right, Di ! (I
am unused to addressing love-
ly young ladies familiarly, in
fact I am unused to lovely
young ladies, they rarely reg-
ister for my courses — even
the elementary survey — and
you are the first who ever did
me the very great honor of
coming back afterwards to
pay me a visit, an evening
visit indeed.) Well, behind
this unimpressive door, Di,
the least impressive in the
whole science building, is
Geller’s Folly, the last whim-
sical fling of a professor emer-
itus, the ridiculous project

45

that makes it crystal clear
that I am not one of the infi-
nitely competent new nuclear
men, but a physicist of the
Cavendish breed — a half-mad
hobbyist. Yes, that is a type-
writer of sorts you hear be-
hind the door — it is part of
the Folly. The typist seems to
think a lot between bursts,
does he not?

Bother, I have left my key
at home. We will pass up the
Folly, Di. Without regrets.
You will remember it better
as a trivial mystery, an old
man’s flaunting boast in a
dimly lit corridor, than in its
shrunken dull reality.

You really would like to see
the Folly? It does have a cer-
tain robot fascination. Well,
I suppose we can get Olafson’s
key. He lives in the machine
shop except for a brief respite
after midnight — and it lacks
three hours of that. With your
permission, Di, we will de-
scend to Olafson’s .Hole. This
way. Your furs and silks will
make a brave shine in his dis-
mal smithy where, a wide-
cheeked Alberich, he fashions
our brass and steel traps for
the molecule. Olafson is a
physicist’s machinist of the
old breed, a dogged perfec-
tionist such as Babbage de-
pended on for building his ill-
starred difference machine.
Our Swedish Vulcan will be

delighted by your presence
and perhaps inwardly fluster-
ed— I imagine he is as unused
to lovely young ladies as I.

But there is one thing that
not even you will be able to
elicit from Olafson — a smile.
Olafson may conceivably have
smiled as a baby, but there is
no record of it, and he certain-
ly has never smiled since. He
is the very embodiment of
sullen materialism, an aggre-
gation of solidly packed mole-
cules in which there is no
room for the nonsense of spir-
it. I must confess that I like
him that way, for I am a ma-
terialist myself, a devoted
monist and atheist — I trust I
do not shock you. I do not well
understand the new young
men in my field, who listen to
Bach and Bruckner and Bar-
tok, read Kierkegaard and
Niebuhr and Dostoyevsky,
have themselves psychoana-
lyzed, and eventually become
Unitarians or High Episcopa-
lians. I stand by Haeckel and
Haldane, I know that the uni-
verse is a meaningless swirl
of atoms, though from time to
time I have whimsical fancies.

The Folly? Yes, perhaps it
is best that I describe it to
you now. Then we need steal
only a quick glimpse of the
actuality, which may leave it
a shred of glamor. Besides, it

46

FANTASTIC

will pass the time — as you see,
Olafson’s Hole is a deep one
and the way to it is long.

The Folly is a tiny hermeti-
cally sealed chamber filled
with air under the constant
pressure of one atmosphere.
Every five seconds a knife-
edged wall descends swiftly
through its midst, cutting it
into two chambers. In each of
these two chambers the pres-
sure of the air is automatical-
ly measured with an accuracy
of five figures. Then the divid-
ing wall flies up, the Folly be-
comes one chamber again, and
the process is repeated. With
Olafson’s help I try to keep it
operating 24 hours a day.
There are occasional break-
downs, but we have had it
slashing air and measuring
pressure continuously for pe-
riods as long as 15 months. It
is in its seventh month this
time.

Somewhere in my pockets
I should have a section of the
record it taps out like a verita-
ble stock ticker — I have com-
promised enough with modern
methods to let one of the
young men hook on a type-
writing device that commits
the air pressure measure-
ments to a paper tape. Here
it is! See, the left-hand col-
umn records the pressures in
Chamber A and the right
hand column the pressures

that simultaneously exist in
Chamber B — taking the pres-
sure inside the Folly as unity.

1.00000

.99999

.99999

.99999

1.00000

1.00000

1.00000

1.00000

1.00001

.99999

As you can plainly see, the
readings do not difFer by more
than two ten-thousandths —
the Folly’s permissable mar-
gin of error in measurement.
I have yards and yards of such
figures, all showing the same
boresome invariability. Once
I spotted a reading of .99997
and my heart skipped a beat,
but the reading was the same
in the other chamber — the
Folly had merely sprung a
slow leak and the air pressure
outside was lower.

Well may you ask, Di, even
though you did audit the ele-
mentary survey . . . you know,
I really should remember you,
I should remember such a
lovely young lady. I am grow-
ing old, I fear, and my mem-
ory has become an ungallant
traitor, while you are excep-
tionally young to be bothering
about alumni reunions and
calls on old profs ... Well may
you ask, Di, why I should ex-
pect the air pressure in the
two chambers ever to differ,
why I should have Olafson

THE REWARD

47

build a machine that goes
through such a trivial rigma-
role, why in short I should
spend my declining years
dancing attendance on monot-
ony. The answer is that I am
trying to trap Maxwell’s de-
mon. Here is Olafson’s Hole.

Who is he? Why, as I told
you, he is our machinist — Oh,
Maxwell’s demon. Well, he
might be described as the ele-
ment of the fantastic in the
cosmos — the element of the
possbile but wildly improba-
ble.

Bother, Olafson has gone off
on some errand. He had lock-
ed up and hung his “Back in
20 minutes” sign on the door.
I fear the Fates are against
us, Di, tonight. They do not
wish you to see Geller’s Folly,
and be disillusioned. I am sure
of course that they are wiser
than we.

You still wish to see it? You
are most flattering to an old
man. Well, we can confidently
wait for Olafson — his 20 min-
utes never means 21, nor —
oddly — 19. Better, we’ll take
a turn around the quadrangle
— it is a mild night for Janu-
ary and you have your furs,
while I will simply button the
cardigan I wear in winter be-
neath my suit coat. Allow me
a moment to scribble a note to
Olafson so that he does not go

off again. Better, I’ll tell him
to meet us at the Folly.

How do I expect to trap
Max — I mean the fantastic in
the Folly? Well ... You are
sure I am not boring you?
Yes, I agree that if you wish
to see the Folly, it is likely
that you wish to understand
it. Thank you. Well, in the
Folly I have a double handful
of air — billions of molecules
of several gasses, each moving
at thousands of feet a second,
endlessly colliding, rebounding
from each other and the walls
of the Folly hundreds of times
a second, a shuffled jumble of
particles. The energy of move-
ment of these molecules, of
course, adds up to the air pres-
sure— I fear I grow stuffy, Di.

Science does not allow me
to predict the behavior of any
one of the molecules — as
Whitehead puts it, the indi-
vidual particle is a rare bird —
but I am able to make signifi-
cant predictions about the be-
havior of the flock. For in-
stance, I can say that at any
given moment the chances are
overwhelming (I will not
trouble you with the figures)
that half the molecules are
moving predominantly west-
ward and half eastward — and
the same for north and south
and up and down.

But that, mark you, is only
the overwhelming probability.

48

FANTASTIC

It is conceivable, though vast-
ly improbable, that at some
given instant, all the mole-
cules (or, more modestly, sig-
nificantly more than fifty per-
cent) might be moving west.
It is a little like the chance of
getting thirteen hearts at
bridge or a “pat” royal flush
at poker — though of course
vastly more unlikely than
that. The point is that the pos-
sibility, however remote, is a
real one.

You see, Di, miracles are
possible though we might have
to wait more than the life-
times of a thousand universes
to see one. Yet, the miracle
might come this moment, con-
ceivably. You might unpin
that charming half-moon sil-
ver brooch at your throat and
hold it out, and if all the mole-
cules immediately beneath it
chanced to be moving upward
at that instant, it would be
struck from your hand high
into the air! Or across the
corridor into my hand, if that
chanced to be the whim of the
molecule flock. (Here, inciden-
tally, is where Maxwell’s de-
mon comes in. The British
physicist Clerk Maxwell, sim-
ply to illustrate a point about
the Second Law of Thermo-
dynamics, hypothesized an
invisible spirit with the abil-
ity to direct the motion of in-
dividual particles.)

Similarly, at some instant
all the molecules in the Folly
might chance to be in Cham-
ber A when the knife edge
comes down. In that case, we
would surely know it, for the
pressure reading would be
twice unity — two — in Cham-
ber A and zero — a vacuum —
in Chamber B.

Naturally, I am not looking
for any such horrendously
spectacular result. The. most
I hope for is a reading that
shows a barely significant dif-
ference. Even at that I am like
a roulette player waiting for
black to turn up a hundred
times running (really a mil-
lion or a billion times), I am
like a bridge player hoping to
be dealt thirteen hearts in
every hand for, say, three
weeks of play.

I am like a gambler tireless-
ly casting a billion billion dice
— the Folly my box — in the
hope of one day throwing a
billion billion sixes. Note, Di,
that I try not to change dice,
I try to shake the same mole-
cules each time — that is why
the Folly is hermetically seal-
ed. I don’t imagine that like
an old deck of cards the mole-
cules will develop markings
with use and become “read-
ers”— though that is an at-
tractive notion — but I coddle
in my mind the ridiculous

THE REWARD

49

fancy that the same molecular
flock, cooped up so long in the
Folly, will eventually become
bored and frantic and panicky
(part of my mind thinks like
a pagan infant’s) and in their
desperation begin to behave
irregularly. Some men have
suggested that light ages in
its passage through space, you
know, so why might not mole-
cules go mad from long im-
prisonment?

I jest, yet from all this you
can understand, Di, why
younger, sounder, more pro-
fessional physicists would
laugh or shake their heads if
I told them of Geller’s Folly.
I am waiting, on my knees as
it were, for an improbability
that is for all human purposes
an impossibility. To them I
must present a ridiculous
spectacle. But those younger
men, with their easier, more
sophisticated, eclectic philoso-
phies, do not comprehend the
deep passions of a devoted
materialist like myself. Scorn-
ing the lie of spirit, believing
only in matter, in molecules
and other particles, I have a
far more fierce and patient
desire than they do to under-
stand all that matter is capa-
ble of, to know matters’ rare
and whimsical as well as its
everyday behavior. When one
of the younger men embraces

the Christian faith, especially
in its Catholic form, I am
tempted to suggest: (again I
trust I do not shock you) “Let
us subject to chemical analy-
sis this host you consume at
mass to learn if there is in-
deed protoplasm in the tran-
substantiated wafer and he-
moglobin in the wine’’ — a sug-
gestion which, if I made it,
would get me called a block-
head or worse. As I say, they
simply no longer understand
the true materialist temper.

It is for a related reason
that I keep the Folly so care-
fully under lock and key — a
circumstance that I imagine
had been puzzling you, Di.
Once in an unwise burst of
enthusiasm I told my students
about the Folly. Instead of re-
ceiving the information with
bored incomprehension or
kindly indulgence, a mis-
chevious cruelty seized them.
Attempts were made by doc-
toring the tape to hoax me
into thinking I had achieved
fabulous results. Since then I
have taken stern precautions
and I have told no one about
the Folly, no one, at all, ex-
cept . . .

Oh, let me hold the door for
you. Thank you. Ah, the night
is refreshingly chill — I see
traces of snow in the shad-
ows— and for once Chicago’s
air seems smog-free, though

50

FANTASTIC

acid and cold. We will let it
stream through our beings
and blow away the stuffy pre-
occupations of an old man who
has lived too long with mole-
cules.

That’s a strange thing, Di,
but I just now seemed to smell
roses, an abundance of roses.
Oh, is it your perfume? No
— no, I see that yours is a
very different scent though
equally delightful. Pardon me
if I seem flustered, but I don’t
know when a young lady has
leaned her cheek so close to
mine — even in the interests of
scientific accuracy. You put
the perfume behind the lobe
of your ear? — that’s charm-
ing.

You smelled the roses too?
You shared my illusion? — if
it was one. Roses in January
in Chicago snows — a delight-
ful circumstance. Perhaps a
hearse skidded and overset
nearby — or don’t you enjoy
macabre fancies?

In Chicago one must learn
to treasure each hint of the
marvelous or outlandish —
there are few enough of them
at best to offset the dismal-
ness of the city, its grime, its
stenches, its shrieking, roar-
ing, growling, rumbling tum-
ult that distantly assaults
our ears even here in these
gray gothic precincts. A grim-

ly lonely city. When I first
came here as a fellow (my en-
tire academic life, Di, has
been spent in this one insti-
tution) it seemed to me that
Chicago’s loneliness was an
almost unbearable continua-
tion, in a darker mode, of the
loneliness of my childhood and
youth. The whine of its elevat-
ed trains and the screech of
its streetcars, the angry chug
of its taxicabs and the pound-
ing of its presses (augment-
ed now by the drone of its
aircraft, even the boom of its
jets, and not to mention the
heavier minatory sounds that
proceed from its railway
yards, docks and factory dis-
tricts)— all these noises be-
came an integral part of my
consciousness.

Listen to the Song of Chi-
cago, Di ! Listen to the steel
tomtoms and rattles of mod-
ern primitive man. The more
noise the less message, the
new men say — I sometimes
understand what that means.
Listen to the Music of the
Spheres, Midwestern style — I
might venture to call it the
Jazz of the Gears. I wonder if,
to more sensitive ears, the
molecules in the Folly make
any such muted pandemon-
ium? What? Yes, I’ll be quiet.

Di, you’re right! You’re
right! It was incredible, but
it did happen. For a moment

THE REWARD

51

— no, for several seconds — the
sounds of the city became the
notes of a great symphony,
tragic and darkly majestic.
Let us listen again. No, it is
gone now. Oh, I suppose it
might have been a powerful
hi-fi briefly yet smoothly
turned up, perhaps in the
dormitory there — no, I will
not believe that, I will never
believe it! — it was the ran-
dom sounds of the city we
heard and for several seconds
they became potverful, perfect
music. Marihuana, I have
read, produces such illusions,
but I have never smoked even
nicotine. Well, this is becom-
ing a night for wonders ! I
shall always think you some-
how responsible for them,
Di.

Di, it occurs to me that
what we have just shared the
privilege of hearing is an ex-
cellent chance example of
what I am trying to achieve
under laboratory conditions in
the Folly. It has been said that
if you set a billion monkeys
to pounding on a billion type-
writers they would eventually
write among other things
purely by chance the en-
tire Encyclopedia Britannica.
There are several catches to
that one, especially the length
of time represented by the
“eventually” and the question
of the means of checking the

monkey pages for intelligibil-
ity and of recognizing and
fitting together the frag-
ments. Still, it seems to me
that we have here a valid
analogy : listen to the random
noises of a city long enough
and you will eventually catch
a section where purely by
chance they counterfeit a
great unknown symphony. It
is another case of waiting
for three weeks of thirteen-
hearts-hands and — in this
case — getting them !

Also it occurs to me that
the roses we swore we smelled
might conceivably be put in
the same or a nearby cate-
gory. Some physiologists be-
lieve that odor is a matter of
formula and that various com-
binations of molecules, some
common, some most rare, will
produce the same scent when
impinging on the receptors in
the nasal membrane. Sniff th e,
acrid atmosphere of a city
long enough and you will
eventually inhale a rare com-
bination of industrial mole-
cules that counterfeits the
scent of roses. Oh, what
travesties the cruder of my
colleagues would make of
that notion !

I suppose there must be
some humdrum explanation
in both cases (though I don’t
really believe that) but just

52

FANTASTIC

the same I feel extraordinar-
ily exhilarated. You know, Di,
I have searched for the mir-
aculous all my life, in my
austere fashion — Maxwell’s
demon is a god of sorts, and
how else would any god mani-
fest itself except by bringing
about the occurrence of the
vastly improbable? Tonight
for the first time I believe my
desire has achieved fruition
or at least the illusion thereof.
When I was a child — this is
something I have told to very
few people, Di, very very few
— when I was a child I be-
came enamoured of Greek
mythology (Ovid’s Metamor-
phoses was one of my first
books) and in my loneliness I
peopled the empty lots around
my home and the park nearby
with the deities and monsters
of classic Greece. In a glade
in the park (really a bare
space behind some bushes) I
reared rude altars (little more
than shingles with flowers and
bright trinkets and assorted
childish treasures set on them
as offerings) to Pan and
Diana.

Yes, Di, to your namesake!
To Diana, the slim moon-god-
dess, the virgin huntress.
Much later it occurred to me
that here I might have made
a mistake (no, not a mistake
precisely — I do not blaspheme
your namesake, Di) in mak-

ing my offerings to Diana
rather than Venus, for no
lovely young lady ever came
to share my life. I have al-
ways been a votary of the
chaste Silver One — Miss Sil-
vers ! What a night for coinci-
dences !

Small wonder, really, that I
remain celibate, for I was al-
ways singularly timid, credu-
lous and inept in my very
limited contacts with the op-
posite sex. Why, I was such
a num-noddy in such matters,
especially during my college
years, that I was once cruelly
hoaxed. I was accosted in the
dormitory corridors by a slim
and very pretty young lady
who claimed to be in need of
immediate assistance with her
costume — a pin for her under-
skirt was wanted. In fear and
secret delight I invited her
into my room, where she lin-
gered for an embarrassingly
blissfully long time and final-
ly wantonly approached me.
A few moments later there
was a chorus of laughter
from a group of hidden eaves-
droppers and the secret was
out — the young lady was the
“feminine” lead in the all-
male Capers, or whatever
they called their yearly show.

And that is something I
have never told another soul.
A distressful anecdote, really,

THE REWARD

53

with distasteful overtones — I
hardly know why I should
have burdened you with it.
Come, let us return. Here’s
our doorway again. We have
taken rather long, Olafson
will have climbed from his
Hole and be waiting at the
Folly.

Di, why did you touch my
cheek? Look up, you say?

Di, that glimmering! What
is it? What are they? What
are those ghostly figures of
ice and fire moving up the sky,
those jeweled deities, that
heroic procession ? I’m fright-
ened, Di, hold me close — no,
no, pardon an old man’s weak-
ness, but what was it that we
saw? I’m shaking still. What
was it? Again the impossibly
improbable? Look at the mul-
titudinous lights of a city long
enough . . .

Di, what’s happening to-
night? What are you doing?
— it is your doing, isn’t it? All
of a sudden these things are
too much for me, too many
for me. Why did you come to
me tonight? Why did you
come back, really? Were you
really a student of mine? Is
this some last hoax? No, I
don’t see how, but —

THE

The Folly? We can’t go to
the Folly now. I feel ... Yes,
I suppose we could, but . . .
Very well.

Di! Yes, I’m coming, but
the stone, here, by the door —
it feels like velvet, like silver
velvet ! Touch gray stone long
enough . . . Di, am I going
mad? Wait for me, Di!

Watch out, Di! Watch out
for Olafson — I don’t think he
can see you. Olafson, don’t
walk into the lady! Olafson,
what’s happened to you? Olaf-
son!

He moves past us as if we
weren’t there ! And he’s smil-
ing, smiling like a man in
ecstasy. Do you see that?
Olafson is smiling.

What’s that that fluttered
from his hand? I’ll get it. A
torn-off scrap of paper — the
Folly’s last measurements.
I’ll look at them.

.99999 .99999

1.00000 .99999

1.00000 .99999

.00000 2.Q0000

1.00000 .99999

.99999 1.00001

Di! Where are you, Di?

Di, who were you?

54

FANTASTIC

HOUR and minute hand of
the odd little gray clock
stood almost at midnight,
Horn Time, and now the sec-
ond hand, driven by the same

tiny, invariable radioactive
pulses, was hurrying to over-
take them. Morton Horn took
note. He switched off his book,
puffed a brown cigarette

Togetherness was more than a slogan for
the descendants of Grandfather Horn. It
was a unique and enriching hereditary de-
velopment— until the fearful intrusion of...

THE MIND SPIDER

55

alight, and slumped back
gratefully against the saddle-
shaped forcefield which com-
bined the sensations of swans-
down and laced rawhide.

When all three hands stood
together, he flicked the switch
of a small black cubical box in
his smock pocket. A look of
expectancy came into his
pleasant, swarthy face, as if
he were about to receive a
caller, although the door had
not spoken.

With the flicking of the
switch a curtain of brain-
wave static surrounding his
mind vanished. Unnoticed
while present, because it was
a meaningless thought-tone —
a kind of mental gray — the
vanishing static left behind a
great inward silence and
emptiness. To Morton it was
as if his mind had crept from
a cozy box lined with cotton
wool and were crouched on a
mountainpeak in infinity.

“Hello, Mort. Are we first?”

A stranger in the room
could not have heard those
words, yet to Mort they were
the cheeriest and friendliest
greeting imaginable — words
clear as crystal without any of
the air-noise or bone-noise
that blurs ordinary speech,
and they sounded like choco-
late tastes.

“Guess so, Sis,” his every
thoughts responded, “unless

56

the others have started a
shaded contact at their end.”

His mind swiftly absorbed
a vision of his sister Grayl’s
studio upstairs, just as it ap-
peared to her. A corner of the
work table, littered with air-
brushes and cans of dye and
acid. The easel, with one half-
completed film for the multi-
level picture she was spray-
ing, now clouded by cigarette
smoke. In the foreground, the
shimmery gray curve of her
skirt and the slim, competent
beauty of her hands, so close
- — especially when she raised
the cigarette to puff it — that
they seemed his own. The
feathery touch of her clothes
on her skin. The sharp cool
tingly tone of her muscles. In
the background, only floor
and cloudy sky, for the glastic
walls of her studio did not re-
fract.

The vision seemed a ghost-
ly thing at first, a shadowy
projection against the solid
walls of his own study. But
as the contact between their
minds deepened, it grew more
real. For a moment the two
visual images swung apart
and stood side by side, equally
real, as if he were trying to
focus one with each eye. Then
for another moment his room
became the ghost room and
Grayl’s the real one — as if he

FANTASTIC

had become Grayl. He raised
the cigarette in her hand to
her lips and inhaled the pleas-
ant fumes, milder than those
of his own rompe-pecho. Then
he savored the two at once
and enjoyed the mental blend-
ing of her Virginia cigarette
with his own Mexican “chest-
breaker.”

From the depths of her . . .
his . . . their mind Grayl
laughed at him amiably.

“Here now, don’t go sliding
into all of me!” she told him.
“A girl ought to be allowed
some privacy.”

“Should she?" he asked
teasingly.

“Well,, at least leave me my
fingers and toes ! What if Fred
had been visiting me?”

“I knew he wasn’t,” Mor-
ton replied. “You know, Sis,
I’d never invade your body
while you were with your
non-telepathic sweetheart.”

“Nonsense, you’d love to,
you old hedonist ! — and I don’t
think I’d grudge you the ex-
perience— especially if at the
same time you let me be with
your lovely Helen! But now
please get out of me. Please,
Morton.”

He retreated obediently un-
til their thoughts met only at
the edges. But he had noticed
something strangely skittish
in her first reaction. There
had been a touch of hysteria

in even the laughter and ban-
ter and certainly in the final
plea. And there had been a
knot of something like fear
under her breastbone. He
questioned her about it.
Swiftly as the thoughts of one
person, the mental dialogue
spun itself out.

“Really afraid of me taking
control of you, Grayl?”

“Of course not, Mort! I’m
as keen for control-exchange
experiments as any of us,
especially when I exchange
with a man. But . . . we’re so
exposed, Mort — it sometimes
bugs me.”

“How do you mean exact-
ly?”

“You know, Mort. Ordinary
people are protected. Their
minds are walled in from
birth, and behind the walls it
may be stuffy but it’s very
safe. So safe that they don’t
even realize that there are
walls . . . that there are fron-
tiers of mind as well as
frontiers of matter . . . and
that things can get at you
across those frontiers.”

“What sort of things?
Ghosts ? Martians ? Angels ?
Evil spirits? Voices from the
Beyond? Big bad black static-
clouds?” His response was
joshing. “You know how flat-
ly we’ve failed to establish
any contacts in those direc-

THE MIND SPIDER

57

tions. As mediums we’re a
howling failure. We’ve never
got so much as a hint of any
telepathic mentalities save
our own. Nothing in the whole
mental universe but silence
and occasional clouds of noise
— static — and the sound of
distant Horns, if you’ll par-
don the family pun.”

“I know, Mort. But we’re
such a tiny young cluster of
mind, and the universe is an
awfully big place and there’s
a chance of some awfully
queer things existing in it.
Just yesterday I was reading
an old Russian novel from the
Years of Turmoil and one of
the characters said something
that my memory photograph-
ed. Now where did I tuck it
away? — No, keep out of my
files, Mort! I’ve got it any-
way— here it is.”

A white oblong bobbed up
in her mind. Morton read the
black print on it.

“We always imagine etern-
ity (it said) as something
beyond our conception, some-
thing vast, vast! But why
must it be vast? Instead of all
that, what if it’s one little
room, like a bathhouse in the
country, black and grimy and
spiders in every corner, and
that’s all eternity is? I some-
times fancy it like that.”

“Brrr!” Morton thought,

trying to make the shiver
comic for Grayl’s sake.
“Those old White and Red
Russkies certainly had black
minds! Andreyev? Dostoyev-
sky?”

“Or Svidrigailov, or some
name like that. But it wasn’t
the book that bothered me. It
was that about an hour ago I
switched off my static box to
taste the silence and for the
first time in my life I got the
feeling there was something
nasty and alien in infinity and
that it was watching me, just
like those spiders in the bath-
house. It had been asleep for
centuries but now it was wak-
ing up. I switched on my box
fast.”

“Ho-ho! The power of sug-
gestion ! Are you sure that
Russian wasn’t named Sven-
gali, dear self-hypnosis-sus-
ceptible sister?”

“Stop poking fun! It was
real, I tell you.”

“Real? How? Sounds like
mood-reality to me. Here, stop
being so ticklish and let me
get a close-up."

He started mock-forcibly to
explore her memories, think-
ing that a friendly mental
roughhouse might be what
she needed, but she pushed
away his thought-tendrils
with a panicky and deathly-
serious insistence. Then he
saw her decisively stub out

58

FANTASTIC

her cigarette and he felt a
sudden secretive chilling of
her feelings.

“It’s all really nothing,
Mort,” she told him briskly.
“Just a mood, I guess, like you
say. No use bothering a fam-
ily conference with a mood,
no matter how black and dev-
ilish.”

“Speaking of the devil and
his cohorts, here we are !
May we come in?” The tex-
ture of the interrupting
thought was bluff and yet
ironic, highly individual —
suggesting not chocolate but
black coffee. Even if Mort and
Grayl had not been well ac-
quainted with its tone and
rhythms, they would have rec-
ognized it as that of a third
person. It was as if a third
dimension had been added to
the two of their shared mind.
They knew it immediately.

“Make yourself at home,
Uncle Dean,” was the wel-
come Grayl gave him. “Our
minds are yours.”

“Very cozy indeed,” the
newcomer responded with a
show of gruff amusement. “I’ll
do as you say, my dear. Good
to be in each other again.”
They caught a glimpse of
scudding ragged clouds patch-
ing steel-blue sky above to
gray-green forest below —
their uncle’s work as a ranger

kept him up in his flyabout a
good deal of the day.

“Dean Horn coming in,” he
announced with a touch of
formality and then imme-
diately added, “Nice tidy little
mental parlor you’ve got, as
the fly said to the spider.”

“Uncle Dean ! — what made
you think of spiders?”
Grayl’s question was sharply
anxious.

“Haven’t the faintest no-
tion, my dear. Maybe recall-
ing the time we took turns
mind-sitting with Evelyn un-
til she got over her infant fear
of spiders. More likely just re-
flecting a thought-dicker from
your own unconscious or
Morton’s. Why the fear-
flurry?”

But just then a fourth
mind joined them — resinous
in flavor like Greek wine.
“Hobart Horn coming in.”
They saw a ghostly labora-
tory, with chemical apparat-
us.

Then a fifth — sweet-sour
apple-tasting. “Evelyn Horn
coming in. Yes, Grayl, late as
usual — thirty-seven seconds
by Horn Time. I didn’t miss
your cluck-cluck thought.”
The newcomer’s tartness was
unmalicious. They glimpsed
the large office in which Eve-
lyn worked, the microtype-
writer and rolls of correspon-
dence tape on her desk. “But

THE MIND SPIDER

59

— bright truth! — someone al-
ways has to be last,” she con-
tinued. “And I’m working
overtime. Always make a
family conference, though.
Afterwards will you take con-
trol of me, Grayl, and spell
me at this typing for a while?
I’m really fagged — and I
don’t want to leave my body
on automatic too long. It gets
hostile on automatic and
hurts to squeeze back into.
How about it, Grayl?”

“I will,” Grayl promised,
“but don’t make it a habit. I
don’t know what your admin-
istrator would say if he knew
you kept sneaking off two
thousand miles to my studio
to smoke cigarettes — and get
my throat raw for me!”

“All present and accounted
for,” Mort remarked. “Eve-
lyn, Grayl, Uncle Dean, Ho-
bart, and myself — the whole
damn family. Would you care
to share my day’s experiences
first? Pretty dull armchair
stuff, I warn you. Or shall we
make it a five-dimensional
free-for-all? A Quintet for
Horns? Hey, Evelyn, quit di-
recting four-letter thoughts
at the chair!”

With that the conference
got underway. Five minds
that were in a sense one mind,
because they were wide open
to each other, and in another

60

sense twenty-five minds, be-
cause there were five sensory-
memory set-ups available for
each individual. Five separate
individuals, some of them
thousands of miles apart, each
viewing a different sector of
the world of the First Global
Democracy. Five separate vis-
ual landscapes — study, studio,
laboratory, office, and the
cloud-studded opennes of the
upper air — all of them exist-
ing in one mental space, now
superimposed on each other,
now replacing each other,
now jostling each other as
two ideas may jostle in a sin-
gle non-telepathic mind. Five
varying auditory landscapes
— the deep throb of the vanes
of Dean’s flyabout making the
dominant tone, around which
the other noises wove coun-
terpoint. In short, five com-
plete sensory pictures, open
to mutual inspection.

Five different ideational
set-ups too. Five concepts of
truth and beauty and honor,
of good and bad, of wise and
foolish, and of all the other
so-called abstractions with
which men and women direct
their lives — all different, yet
all vastly more similar than
such concepts are among the
non-telepathic, who can never
really share them. Five differ-
ent ideas of life, jumbled to-
gether like dice in a box.

FANTASTIC

And yet there was no con-
fusion. The dice were edu-
cated. The five minds slipped
into and out of each other
with the practiced grace and
courtesy of diplomats at a tea.
For these daily conferences
had been going on ever since
Grandfather Horn first dis-
covered that he could com-
municate mentally with his
children. Until then he had
not known that he was a tele-
pathic mutant, for before his
children were born there had
been no other minds with
which he could communicate
—and the strange mental si-
lence, disturbed from time to
time by clouds of mental
static, had even made him
fear that he was psychotic.
Now Grandfather Horn was
dead, but the conferences
went on between the mem-
bers of the slowly widening
circle of his lineal descend-
ants— at present only five in
number, although the muta-
tion appeared to be a partial
dominant. The conferences of
the Horns were still as secret
as the earliest ones had been.
The First Global Democracy
was still ignorant that tele-
pathy was a long-established
fact — among the Horns. For
the Horns believed that jeal-
ousy and suspicion and sav-
age hate would be what they
would get from the world if

it ever became generally
known that, by the chance of
mutated heredity, they pos-
sesed a power which other
men could never hope for. Or
else they would be exploited
as all-weather and interplane-
tary “radios.” So to the out-
side world, including even
their non-telepathic husbands
and wives, sweethearts and
friends, they were just an
ordinary group of blood rela-
tions— no more “psychic” cer-
tainly than any group of close-
knit brothers and sisters and
cousins. They had something
of a reputation of being a
family of “daydreamers” —
that was about all. Beyond
enriching their personalities
and experience, the Horns’
telepathy was no great ad-
vantage to them. They could
not read the minds of animals
and other humans and they
seemed to have no powers
whatever of clairvoyance,
clairaudience, telekinesis, or
foreseeing the future or past.
Their telepathic power was, in
short, simply like having a
private, all-senses family tele-
phone.

The conference — it was
much more a hyper-intimate
gabfest — proceeded.

“My static box bugged out
for a few ticks this morn-
ing,” Evelyn remarked in the

61

THE MIND SPIDER

course of talking over the
trivia of the past twenty-four
hours.

The static boxes were
an invention of Grandfather
Horn. They generated a tiny
cloud of meaningless brain
waves. Without such individ-
ual thought-screens, there was
too much danger of complete
loss of individual personality
— once Grandfather Horn had
“become” his infant daughter
as well as himself for several
hours and the unfledged mind
had come close to being per-
manently lost in its own sub-
conscious. The static boxes
provided a mental wall behind
which a mind could safely
grow and function, similar to
the wall by which ordinary
minds are apparently always
enclosed.

In spite of the boxes, the
Horns shared thoughts and
emotions to an amazing de-
gree. Their mental together-
ness was as real and as mys-
terious— and as incredible —
as thought itself . . . and
thought is the original angel-
cloud dancing on the head of
a pin. Their present confer-
ence was as warm and inti-
mate and tart as any actual
family gathering in one actual
room around one actual table.
Five minds, joined together in
the vast mental darkness that

shrouds all minds. Five minds
hugged together for comfort
and safety in the infinite
mental loneliness that per-
vades the cosmos.

Evelyn continued, “Your
boxes were all working, of
course, so I couldn’t get your
thoughts — just the blurs of
your boxes like little old dark
gray stars. But this time it
gave me a funny uncomfort-
able feeling, like a spider
crawling down my — Grayl !
Don’t feel so wildly! What is
it?”

Then . . . just as Grayl
started to think her answer
. . . something crept from the
vast mental darkness and in-
finite cosmic loneliness sur-
rounding the five minds of
the Horns.

Grayl was the first to no-
tice. Her panicky thought had
the curling too-keen edge of
hysteria. “There are six of
us now ! There should only be
five, but there are six. Count!
Count, I tell you! Six!”

To Mort it seemed that a
gigantic spider was racing
across the web of their
thoughts. He felt Dean’s
hands grip convulsively at
the controls of his flyabout.
He felt Evelyn’s slave-body
freeze at her desk and Hobart
grope out blindly so that a
piece of apparatus fell with a
crystalline tinkle. As if they

62

FANTASTIC

had been sitting together at
dinner and had suddenly
realized that there was a sixth
place set and a tall figure
swathed in shadows sitting at
it. A figure that to Mort ex-
uded an overpowering taste
and odor of brass — a sour me-
tallic stench.

And then that figure spoke.
The greater portion of the in-
truder’s thought was alien,
unintelligible, frightening in
its expresion of an unearthly
power and an unearthly
hunger.

The understandable portion
of its speech seemed to be in
the nature of a bitter and
coldly menacing greeting, in-
sofar as references and emo-
tional sense could be at all
determined.

“I, the Mind Spider as you
name me — the deathless one,
the eternally exiled, the eter-
nally imprisoned — or so his
overconfident enemies suppose
— coming in.”

Mort saw the danger almost
too late — and he was the first
to see it. He snatched toward
the static box in his smock.

In what seemd no more
than an instant he saw the
shadow of the intruder darken
the four other minds, saw
them caught and wrapped in
the intruder’s thoughts, just
as a spider twirls a shroud

around its victims, saw
the black half - intelligible
thoughts of the intruder scut-
tle toward him with blinding
speed, felt the fanged impact
of indomitable power, felt his
own will fail.

There was a click. By a
hairsbreath his fingers had
carried out their mission.
Around his mind the neutral
gray wall was up and — Thank
the Lord! — it appeared that
the intruder could not pene-
trate it.

Mort sat there gasping,
shaking, staring with the dull
eyes of shock. Direct mental
contact with the utterly inhu-
man— with that sort of inhu-
manity — is not something
that can be lightly brushed
aside or ever forgot. It makes
a wound. For minutes after-
wards a man cannot think at
all.

And the brassy stench lin-
gered, tainting his entire con-
sciousness— a stench of Sa-
tanic power and melancholy.

When he finally sprang up,
it was not because he had
thought things out but be-
cause he heard a faint sound
behind him and knew with a
chilling certainty that it
meant death.

It was Grayl. She was car-
rying an airbrush as if it were
a gun. She had kicked off her
shoes. Poised there in the

THE MIND SPIDER

63

doorway she was the incarna-
tion of taut stealthiness, as if
she had sloughed off centuries
of civilization in seconds of
time, leaving only the prime-
val core of the j ungle killer.

But it was her face that
was the worst, and the most
revealing. Pale and immobile
as a corpse’s — almost. But the
little more left over from the
“almost” was a spiderish im-
placability, the source of
which Mort knew only too
well.

She pointed the airbrush at
his eyes. His sidewise twist
saved them from the narrow
pencil of oily liquid that spat
from the readjusted nozzle,
but a little splashed against
his hand and he felt the bite
of acid. He lunged toward her,
ducking away from the spray
as she whipped it back toward
him. He caught her wrist,
bowled into her, and caried
her with him to the floor.

She dropped the airbrush
and fought — with teeth and
claws, like a cat, yet with this
horrible difference that it was
not like an animal lashing out
instinctively but like an ani-
mal listening for orders and
obeying them.

Suddenly she went limp.
The static from his box had
taken effect. He made doubly
sure by switching on hers.

She was longer than he had
been in recovering from the
shock, but when she began to
' speak it was with a rush, as
if she already realized that
every minute was vital.

“We’ve got to stop the
others, Mort, before they let it
out. The . . . the Mind Spider,
Mort! It’s been imprisoned
for eons, for cosmic ages.
First floating in space, then
in the Antarctic, where its
prison spiralled to Earth. Its
enemies . . . really its judges
. . . had to imprison it, be-
cause it’s something that
can’t be killed. I can’t make
you understand just why they
imprisoned it — ” (Her face
went a shade grayer)
“ — you’d have to experience
the creature’s thoughts for
that — but it had to do with
the perversion and destruc-
tion of the life-envelopes of
more than one planet.”

Even under the stress of
horror, Mort had time to
realize how strange it was to
be listening to Grayl’s words
instead of her thoughts. They
never used words except when
ordinary people were present.
It was like acting in a play.
Suddenly it occurred to him
that they would never be able
to share thoughts again. Why,
if their static boxes were to
fail for a few seconds, as Eve-
lyn’s had this morning . . .

64

FANTASTIC

“That’s where it’s been,”
Grayl continud, “locked in the
heart of the Antarctic, dream-
ing its centuries-long dreams
of escape and revenge, waking
now and again to rage against
its captivity and rack its mind
with a thousand schemes —
and searching, searching, al-
ways searching ! Searching
for telepathic contact with
creatures capable of operating
the locks of its prison. And
now, waking after its last
fifty year trance, finding
them!”

He nodded and caught her
trembling hands in his.

“Look,” he said, “do you
know where the creature’s
prison is located?”

She glanced up at him fear-
fully. “Oh yes, it printed the
coordinates of the place on my
mind as if my brain were
graph paper. You see, the
creature has a kind of color-
less perception that lets it see
out of its prison. It sees
through rock as it sees
through air and what it sees
it measures. I’m sure that it
knows all about Earth — be-
cause it knows exactly what
it wants to do with Earth, be-
ginning with the forced evo-
lution of new dominant life
forms from the insects and
arachnids . . and other or-
ganisms whose sensation-tone

pleases it more than that of
the mammals.”

He nodded again. “All
right,” he said, “that pretty
well settles what you and I
have got to do. Dean and Ho-
bart and Evelyn are under its
control — we’ve got to suppose
that. It may detach one or
even two of them for the side
job of finishing us off, just as
it tried to use you to finish
me. But it’s a dead certainty
that it’s guiding at least one
of them as fast as is humanly
possible to its prison, to re-
lease it. We can’t call in Inter-
planetary Police or look for
help anywhere. Everything
hinges on our being tele-
pathic, and it would take days
to convince them even of that.
We’ve got to handle this all
by ourselves. There’s not a
soul in the world can help us.
We’ve got to hire an all-pur-
pose fiyabout that can make
the trip, and we’ve got to go
down there. While you were
unconscious I put through
some calls. Evelyn has left the
office. She hasn’t gone home.
Hobart should be at his labor-
atory, but he isn’t. Dean’s
home station can’t get in
touch with him. We can’t hope
to intercept them on the way
— I thought of getting I. P.
to nab them by inventing
some charges against them,
but that would probably end

THE MIND SPIDER

65

with the police stopping us.
The only place where we have
a chance of finding them, and
of stopping them, is down
there, where it is.

“And we’ll have to be ready
to kill them.”

For millenniums piled on
millenniums, the gales of
Earth’s loftiest, coldest, lone-
liest continent had driven the
powdered ice against the dull
metal without scoring it,
without rusting it, without
even polishing it. Like some
grim temple sacred to pitiless
gods it rose from the Antarc-
tic gorge, a blunt hemisphere
ridged with steps, with a
tilted platform at the top, as
if for an altar. A temple built
to outlast eternity. Unmistak-
ably the impression came
through that this structure
was older than Earth, older
perhaps than the low-circling
sun, that it had felt colds to
which this was summer
warmth, that it had known
the grip of forces to which
these ice-fisted gales were
playful breezes, that it had
known loneliness to which
this white wasteland was
teeming with life.

Not so the two tiny figures
struggling toward it from one
of three flyabouts lying craz-
ily atilt on the drifts. Their
every movement betrayed

frail humanity. They stum-
bled and swayed, leaning into
the wind. Sometimes a gust
would send them staggering.
Sometimes one would fall. But
always they came on. Though
their clothing appeared
roughly adequate — the sort of
polar clothing a person might
snatch up in five minutes in
the temperate zone — it was
obvious that they could not
survive long in this frigid re-
gion. But that did not seem
to trouble them.

Behind them toiled two
other tiny figures, coming
from the second grounded fly-
about. Slowly, very slowly,
they gained on the first two.
Then a fifth figure came from
behind a drift and confronted
the second pair.

“Steady now. Steady!”
Dean Horn shouted against
the wind, leveling his blaster.
“Mort ! Grayl ! For your lives,
don’t move!”

For a moment these words
resounded in Mort’s ears with
the inhuman and mocking fi-
nality of the Antarctic gale.
Then the faintly hopeful
thought came to him that
Dean would hardly have
spoken that way if he had
been under the creature’s con-
trol. He would hardly have
bothered to speak at all.

The wind shrieked and tore.
Mort staggered and threw an

66

FANTASTIC

arm around Grayl’s shoulders
for mutual support.

Dean fought his way to-
ward them, blaster always
leveled. In his other hand he
had a small black cube — his
static box, Mort recognized.
He held it a little in front of
him (like a cross, Mort
thought) and as he came close
to them he thrust it toward
their heads (as if he were
exorcising demons, Mort
thought). Only then did Dean
lower the muzzle of his
blaster.

Mort said, “I’m glad you
didn’t count lurching with the
wind as moving.”

Dean smiled harshly. “I
dodged the thing, too,” he ex-
plained. “Just managed to
flick on my static box. Like
you did, I guess. Only I had
no way of knowing that, so
when I saw you I had to make
sure. I — ”

The circular beam of a
blaster hissed into the drift
beside them, raising a great
cloud of steam and making a
hole wide as a bushel basket.
Mort lunged at Dean, toppling
him down out of range, pull-
ing Grayl after.

“Hobart and Evelyn!” He
pointed. “In the hollow ahead !
Blast to keep them in it, Dean.
What I've got in mind won’t
take long. Grayl, stay close to

Dean . . . and give me your
static box!”

He crawled forward along
a curve that would take him
to the edge of the hollow. Be-
hind him and at the further
side of the hollow, snow
puffed into clouds of steam as
the blasters spat free energy.
Finally he glimpsed a shoul-
der, cap, and upturned collar.
He estimated the distance,
hefted Grayl’s static box,
guessed at the wind and made
a measured throw. Blaster-
fire from the hollow ceased.
He rushed forward, waving to
Dean and Grayl.

Hobart was sitting in the
snow, staring dazedly at the
weapon in his hand, as if it
could tell him why he’d done
what he’d done. He looked up
at Mort with foggy eyes. The
black static box had lodged in
the collar of his coat and Mort
felt a surge of confidence at
the freakish accuracy of his
toss.

But Evelyn was nowehere
in sight. Over the lip of the
hollow, very close now, ap-
peared the ridged and dully
gleaming hemisphere, like the
ascendant disk of some tiny
and ill-boding asteroid. A
coldness that was more than
that of the ice-edged wind
went through Mort. He
snatched Hobart’s blaster and

THE MIND SPIDER

67

ran. The others shouted after
him, but he only waved back
at them once, frantically.

The metal of the steps
seemed to suck warmth even
from the wind that ripped at
his back like a snow-tiger as
he climbed. The steps were as
crazily tilted as those in a
nightmare, and there seemed
always to be more of them,
as if they were somehow
growing and multiplying. He
found himself wondering if
material and mental steps
could ever get mixed.

He reached the platform.
As his head came up over the
edge, he saw, hardly a dozen
feet away, Evelyn’s face, blue
with cold but having frozen
into it the same spiderish ex-
pression he had once seen in
Grayl’s. He raised the blaster,
but in the same moment the
face dropped out of sight.
There was a metallic clang.
He scrambled up onto the
platform and clawed impo-
tently at the circular plate
barring the opening into
which Evelyn had vanished.
He was still crouched there
when the others joined him.

The demon wind had died,
as if it were the Mind Spider’s
ally and had done its work.
The hush was like a prelude
to a planet’s end, and Hobart’s
bleak words, gasped out dis-

jointedly, were like the sen-
tence of doom.

“There are two doors. The
thing told us all about them
. . . while we were under its
control. The first would be
open ... we were to go inside
and shut it behind us. That’s
what Evelyn’s done . . . she’s
locked it from the inside . . .
just the simplest sliding bolt
. . . but it will keep us from
getting at her . . . while she
activates the locks of the sec-
ond door . . . the real door.
We weren’t to get the instruc-
tions ... on how to do that
. . . until we got inside.”

“Stand aside,” Dean said,
aiming his blaster at the trap-
door, but he said it dully, as
if he knew beforehand that it
wasn’t going to work. Waves
of heat made the white hill
beyond them waver. But the
dull metal did not change color
and when Dean cut off his
blaster and tossed down a
handful of snow on the spot,
it did not melt.

Mort found himself won-
dering if you could make a
metal of frozen thought.
Through his numbed mind
flashed a panorama of the rich
lands and seas of the Global
Democracy they had flown
over yesterday — the green-
framed white power stations
of the Orinoco, the fabulous
walking cities of the Amazon

68

FANTASTIC

Basin, the jet-atomic launch-
ing fields of the Gran Chaco,
the multi - domed Oceano-
graphic Institute of the Falk-
land Islands. A dawn world,
you might call it. He won-
dered vaguely if other dawn
worlds had struggled an hour
or two into the morning only
to fall prey to things like the
Mind Spider.

“No!” The word came like
a command heard in a dream.
He looked up dully and
realized that it was Grayl
who had spoken — realized,
with stupid amazement, that
'her eyes were flashing with
anger.

“No! There’s still one way
we can get at it and try to
stop it. The same way it got
at us. Thought! It took us by
surprise. We didn’t have time
to prepare resistance. We
were panicked and it’s given
us a permanent panic-psychol-
ogy. We could only think of
getting behind our thought-
screens and about how — once
there — we’d never dare come
out again. Maybe this time, if
we all stand firm when we
open our screens . . .

“I know it’s a slim chance,
a crazy chance . . .”

Mort knew that too. So did
Dean and Hobart. But some-
thing in him, and in them,
rejoiced at Grayl’s words, re-
joiced at the prospect of meet-

ing the thing, however hope-
lessly, on its own ground,
mind to mind. Without hesita-
tion they brought our their
static boxes and, at the signal
of Dean’s hand uplifted,
switched them off.

That action plunged them
from a material wilderness of
snow and bleakly clouded sky
into a sunless, dimensionless
wilderness of thought. Like
some lone fortress on an end-
less plain, their minds linked
together, foursquare, waiting
the assault. And like some
monster of nightmare, the
thoughts of the creature that
accepted the name of the
Mind Spider rushed toward
them across that plain, threat-
ening to overmaster them by
the Satanic prestige that ab-
solute selfishness and utter
cruelty confer. The brassy
stench of its being was like a
poison cloud.

They held firm. The
thoughts of the Mind Spider
darted about, seeking a weak
point, then seemed to settle
down upon them everywhere,
engulfingly, like a dry black
web.

Alien against human, ego-
centric killer-mind against
mutually loyal preserver-
minds — and in the end it was
the mutual loyalty and knit-
tedness that turned the tide.

THE MIND SPIDER

69

giving them each a four-fold
power of resistance. The
thoughts of the Mind Spider
retreated. Theirs pressed
after. They sensed that a cor-
ner of his mind was not truly
his. They pressed a pincers
attack at that point, seeking
to cut it off. There was a
moment of desperate resist-
ance. Then suddenly they
were no longer four minds
against the Spider, but five.

The trapdoor opened. It
was Evelyn. They could at
last switch on their thought-
screens and find refuge be-
hind the walls of neutral gray
and prepare to fight back to
their flyabouts and save their
bodies.

But there was something
that had to be said first, some-

thing that Mort said for them.

‘.‘The danger remains and
we probably can’t ever destroy
it. They couldn’t destroy it, or
they wouldn’t have built this
prison. We can’t tell anyone
about it. Non - telepaths
wouldn’t believe all our story
and would want to find out
what was inside. We Horns
have the job of being a mon-
ster’s jailers. Maybe some day
we’ll be able to practice tele-
pathy again — behind some
sort of static-spheres. We will
have to prepare for that time
and work out many precau-
tions, such as keying our
static boxes, so that switch-
ing on one switches on all.
But the Mind Spider and its
prison remains our responsi-
bility and our trust, forever.”

THE END

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70

Gravity, shmavity, how do you make
it pay off? Not, certainly, by ap-
proaching . . .

THE

IMPROPER

AUTHORITIES

AS SOON as Ronald Fleck-
er fully convinced him-
self that he had discovered in
his eccentric aunt’s cluttered
basement a small battery that
stored the force of gravity in-
stead of electricity — a battery
that held in complete essence
the power of fuelless space-
flight, levitation, and any
number of lesser marvels — he
sat down to do some very se-
rious thinking.

The discovery had come
about while he was repairing
his aunt’s doorbell — one of
the innumerable small tasks
she hesitantly but in the end
always rather firmly set him,
although she had more than
enough money to hire profes-
sional household mechanics,
and that Ronald in any case
always felt obliged to dis-
charge in return for the

privilege of sleeping over her
garage. He had found the thin
wires in a monstrous tangle
close under the dusty rafters.
It turned out the system was-
n’t even worked by a step-
down transformer but by dry
cells and some idiot had hook-
ed up the cells in parallel
rather than series, accounting
in large part for the doorbell’s
feeble performance. His aunt
recalled that the last person
before Ronald to revive the
doorbell had been the kindly
but abstracted and rather
smelly Dr. Yorn, the second-
to-last in her unending series
of spiritual counselors — a
yogi, medium, hypnotist,
dynamic psychologist, some-
thing like that. Mrs. Wycher-
ly liked variety and versatile
men. Dr. Yorn’s successor,
the gleaming-eyed and dap-

71

per Mr. Espy, seemed equally
obliging and would almost
certainly have been willing to
tackle the doorbell, but now
Mrs. Wycherly had Ronald
for those things.

Ronald had picked out the
three freshest looking dry
cells, setting the other two,
which still had short bent
lengths of wire untidily at-
tached to their terminals,
down on the scarred top of an
upended trunk beside the
stepladder on which he was
working. It was still day out-
side, barely, although of
course he had a flashlight to
see up into the cobwebby
rafters, and just as he’d about
connected up the three newer
looking cells properly, work-
ing a little gingerly because
of his apprehension of spid-
ers, a beam of yellow light
from the setting sun struck
brightly through one of the
low oblong windows and
across the top of the trunk. It
showed a lot more dust motes
trembling in the air than
Ronald’s flashlight revealed,
and immediately Ronald felt
a sneeze coming on. But then
it showed something so much
more strange and arresting
that the sneeze never came
and Ronald quite forgot that
his nasal passages had been
tickling.

72

One of the rejected bat-
teries carried attached to one
terminal a length of gray-in-
sulated wire so sharply curv-
ed that its other end now
chanced to touch the other
terminal, shorting the battery
out — except that the battery
had looked to Ronald too
dingy and old to have any
juice left to short.

The dust motes were whirl-
ing in orderly circles around
the wire, forming a dim tube
that curved from terminal to
terminal ivith the 'wire run-
ning doivn the center or axis
of the shadowy tube. The
circular orbiting of the dust
motes was clearest within an
inch of the wire, but even as
he watched he saw some of
the more distant motes begin
to take up the movement,
swinging in larger, slower
circles.

Ronald’s face grew blank
with attention. He leaned
down very slowly until his
eyes were only inches from
the phenomenon. Fearfully,
almost reverently he blew
softly at the wire. The motes
eddied away wildly and then
almost immediately began to
resume their circling, those
nearest the wire taking it up
most quickly, then those fur-
ther off starting once more to
join in.

Ronald thought: There’s a
FANTASTIC

force moving those particles.
They're in a force-field. If
they were powdered iron or
black iron oxide ( but they
aren’t) it would be a magnetic
field moving them, a magnetic
field created by an electric
current moving through the
wire, though I think it would
have to be a lot stronger cur-
rent than a dry cell could fur-
nish.

But the particles aren’t
iron or iron oxide ( too heavy
to float in air, besides this has
to be just Wycherly base-
ment dust — ashes, lint, earth,
powdered wood and paper) so
it can’t be a magnetic field
that’s moving them, though
they’re moving exactly as if
they were in a force-field, of
some. sort. So it has to be
gravity ... a granitic force-
field they’re moving in, at
least that’s the only other
force I know of it could be.

An electric current moving
through a conductor creates
a magnetic field.

A u>hat?-cu>rent . . . call it
a granitic current anyway . . .
though it could be a magnetic
current ... a granitic current
moving through a conductor
creates a granitic field.

The sunlight faded swiftly.
As the yellow beam moved
upward, dimming, its last
rays showed more and more

dust motes pouring into the
vortex, joining in the fren-
zied yet orderly circling.

As the dark basement twi-
light closed in, Ronald reach-
ed out and grasped the
battery protectively, posses-
sively. With his other hand he
bent the wire away from the
terminal. Already he had be-
gun to worry about the bat-
tery running down.

A minute or so later it oc-
curred to him to use his flash-
light to examine the battery
more closely. It was a dis-
tinctly smaller cylinder than
the other dry cells, he saw
now — only about five inches
high and an inch-and-a-half
in diameter — and it had no
cardboard sheath around it,
which had been the chief
reason he’d thought of it as
older and more likely to be
completely exhausted than
the others. And the termin-
als, although of the screw-on,
knurled-nut type, didn’t seem
to be brass, but something
grayer, like the zinc, or what-
ever it was, of the battery’s
body.

He tried to force himself to
think in a systematic way
about the possible source of
the thing, granting that it
really was a gravity battery
— something that another
part of his mind was already
working out delightful ways

74

FANTASTIC

to check. Let’s see, he thought,
it could be a genuine gravity
battery manufactured as such
by human beings engaged in
secret government-sponsored
anti-gravity research either
in this country or elsewhere
— there are such projects —
though then how it should get
into Aunt Wycherly’s base-
ment seems to require very
weird assumptions. Or else —
my God, this gets fantastic —
it could come from off this
earth and have been manufac-
tured, by extra-terrestrials —
got to consider every possi-
bility— though that involves
us in even more weird as-
sumptions.

Or it could just have hap-
pened. I mean the battery
could have started out as an
ordinary battery, but sitting
here in Aunt Wycherhfs
basement and undergoing all
sorts of rhythmical tempera-
ture changes and God knows
what else, the chemicals in it
could have been transformed
into substances generating a
current — gravitic, magnetic,
hou> should I know what jar-
gon to use? — that, in turn
creates a gravitic field. Like
spontaneous combustion, or
something. Old, rags. That's
not unusual.

Or it could all be illusion or
freak air currents.

Or I could just be going

nuts — that’s something to
keep in mind too.

But while Ronald was mak-
ing his brain hammer out
these possibilities, another
section of his thoughts was
darting around like kittens to
investigate all sorts of won-
derful ideas, making use of
the thirty years’ rag-tag ac-
cumulation of information in
Ronald’s mind — a quite re-
markable and varied assort-
ment. For one thing he was
thinking that since this base-
ment phenomenon behaved so
much like magnetism, it must
be a dipolar gravity field he
had here, promising both
positive and negative gravity
if properly harnessed ; that is,
not only gravitic attraction
but gravitic repulsion — in
other words, antigravity, the
secret of rocketless space-
flight! There were ways to
check that, of course. And
what was the wonderful stuff
that flowed through the wire
and made the field grab and
the motes spin? Gravitic
fluid, could you call it? Liquid
gravity? Was it particles, like
electrons? Gravitrons, would
you call them? Hell, nobody
really understood electricity
yet! Still —

“Ronald, why are you tak-
ing so long? Mr. Espy will be
coming soon and I don’t want

THE IMPROPER AUTHORITIES

75

to have to watch for him at
the window.”

Ronald looked down at
his aunt's pudgy, thin-lipped
face, realizing that she had
come creaking and clumping
all the way down to the base-
ment without his being aware
of it. He nodded slowly at her
without a word, put away the
battery he was holding, and
like a man in a dream began
to make the last connections
in the bell system.

The bell rang strongly at
the first test. Mrs. Wycherly
thanked Ronald profusely in
the kitchen and seemed on the
point of bringing up some
additional matter, but just
then Ronald rather abruptly
wandered off toward the
garage, still acting like a man
in a dream.

Mrs. Wycherly made a lit-
tle humorous face. She’d been
debating giving Ronald two
dollars for his labors and had
almost decided to, but if he
chose to go mooning off that
way . . .

She was still wondering,
too, why he had so carefully
put one of her batteries into
the inside breast pocket of his
coat, buttoning the coat after-
wards. It was almost like a
psychiatric symptom, with
some deep symbolic meaning
— perhaps she should ask Mr.
Espy about it. But no, Ron-

ald probably just wanted it
for something in the garage.
Well, she wouldn’t grudge it
to him, though of course he
ought to have asked her first.

Convincing himself that his
find really was a gravity bat-
tery occupied Ronald most of
the night and next day. He
made his tests with great
care, only after thinking each
through in detail first, he kept
them as few and brief as his
delight and wonder would let
him. The possibility of the
battery running down had be-
gun to prey on his mind more
and more seriously, especially
after a search of the basement
next morning revealed no
more dry cells of similar ap-
pearance.

The chief test, or rather
set of tests, involved making
a coil of the wire joining the
terminals, so as to give direc-
tion and greater power to the
gravitic field, exactly as one
would do in making an elec-
tromagnet. The most ob-
vious and interesting cylinder
around which to wind the coil
was the battery itself. Ronald
started out with just a dozen
loops, winding the wire down
the body of the battery from
one terminal and returning it
through the air to the other.

The result was more than
gratifying. Held terminals-

76

FANTASTIC

end-up the battery almost
doubled in iceight as soon as
he connected the coil. Of
course he was just judging
the weight by feel, but he was
sure he couldn’t be fooling
himself to that degree. More-
over, the coils strained toward
the floor in that position,
tending to creep along the
cylinder and bunch together.
(In later tests he made a point
of anchoring them individ-
ually with adhesive tape.)

Held terminals - end - down
the battery weighed almost
nothing at all. It seemed as
light as if it were a painted
balsa-wood model of itself.
The transition from twice-
weight to no-weight, as felt
by his hand, was as mys-
teriously alarming and de-
lightful as a mild electric
shock.

Clearly the gravitic field
was dipolar as he’d surmised.
The terminal-end was the
negative or repulsive pole,
seeking to push away from
the earth — or push the earth
away! The other end was the
positive or attractive one. (A
bit later he discovered what
he told himself he should have
guessed at once: that if he
wound the coil the opposite
way, say clockwise instead of
counter-clockwise, it reversed
the poles — they really had
nothing to do with the loca-

tion of the terminals on the
battery.)

For light objects nearby,
the battery’s tiny gravitic
field was more powerful than
that of the earth — a circum-
stance that shouldn’t surprise
him, Ronald reminded him-
self, as earth’s center of grav-
ity was 4,000 miles away
while the battery’s was right
in his hand. The attractive
pole would snatch a cork off
the floor from the height of
two feet — he could actually
see the cork falling upward
faster and faster — while the
repulsive pole would bat away
the same cork dropped on it
from above. And the attrac-
tive pole always became cov-
ered with dust when used,
while the other, pole stayed
clean.

Brought close to his fore-
arm, the repulsive pole made
a shallow, saucer-shaped
dimple in the flesh, while the
attractive one tugged at the
tissue in a way that somehow
felt deeper than suction.

It was vastly exciting to say
the very least, and Ronald
could hardly wait to step up
the power of the field by in-
creasing the number of turns
in the coil — this being one of
the times when his delight
and wonder got the better of
him.

THE IMPROPER AUTHORITIES

77

However, he retained at
least minimal prudence and
added only six turns. He told
himself that if the effect
wasn’t enough, he could al-
ways add more.

He was glad that he had
been conservative. The re-
pulsive pole was downward
when he touched the return
wire to the second terminal,
and the battery tugged his
hand sharply upward, as if it
were, not a small, but say a
medium-size bird trying to
escape. Or maybe a weather
balloon. The sensation was
peculiarly delightful — his
hand was not only tugged but
indescribably tickled (pre-
sumably by the curving com-
ponents of the dipolar gravitic
field) — and despite his con-
cern about the battery run-
ning down, it was all Ronald
could do not to stand there all
night holding the up-surging
battery with a happy, dazed
smile on his face.

And in fact Ronald did not
disconnect it right away.
He’d got the impression that
the wire of the coil had
changed color in some way
and on an impulse he switched
off the light he’d been work-
ing by, a hanging and unshad-
ed 150-watt globe (which he
kept secret from his aunt, for
she had a thing about wasting
electricity and kept nothing

stronger than 40 watts in her
whole mansion).

The consequences were
sudden, spectacular, and al-
most disastrous.

In the darkness the coil
was outlined in bright white
light.

Ronald was so startled that
he opened his hand.

The white-spiraled battery
sprang upward and for an in-
stant Ronald had the dreadful
fear that the thing had got
away from him forever, and
from the earth too, although
he knew very well that the
ceiling of his garage apart-
ment must stop it.

But then almost imme-
diately, without touching the
ceiling, the thing flipped over,
dove down, and hit the floor
with a sharp crack.

Its light went out.

Ronald’s feelings were in-
tense and mixed. He was re-
lieved that the battery hadn’t
escaped, doubly relieved to
discover that apparently it
couldn’t escape from earth —
that released repulsive pole
down it would simply flip
over and dive. (There was the
possibility that he had start-
ed the battery flipping over
with a twist of his hand when
he released it, but that possi-
bility didn’t bulk large in his
mind.)

78

FANTASTIC

And of course, beyond all
else, he was fearful that the
fall had somehow ruined the
battery forever. For instance,
if its ability to generate grav-
itic energy depended on some
rare and delicate spontaneous
chemical transformation that
had taken place inside it,
then even something as slight
as a sudden jar might well re-
verse the transformation.

He switched on the light
and picked up the battery as
if it were a wounded bird. He
was considerably relieved to
find that the wire had jarred
loose from one of the termi-
nals. He reconnected it, the
battery surged in his hand,
and his relief was complete.

But thereafter his careful-
ness was doubled and also
tainted with suspicion.

He made a number of other
interesting discoveries about
the battery besides the epi-
phenomenon of the white
glow. For instance, it turned
out to be the insulation on the
wire that carried the gravitic
current. A bare copper wire
didn’t work at all. A nylon
cord worked beautifully, pro-
vided he wrapped it in tinfoil
so that it didn’t short itself
out. In fact, there seemed to
be a half dozen new sciences
implicit in the battery and
Ronald would have liked noth-

ing better than to spend the
next six months in investigat-
ing them all, provided he had
a dozen batteries to work
with, or even just one to hold
in reserve.

That was the fly in the
ointment, of course. His bat-
tery was goose and golden egg
rolled into one, a bird in the
hand but none at all in the
bushes. So about the middle
of the next afternoon he sat
down to do some serious, real-
ly serious thinking — meaning
of course thinking about how
he could use his great discov-
ery to profit himself.

First he carefully locked
away the battery and went
out into the garden to medi-
tate it through, but he found
he couldn’t bear to be that far
away from his find, so he
went back to his garage apart-
ment and sat beside the win-
dow that looked into the gar-
den, feeling a little giddy
from lack of sleep.

His aunt had noted his ab-
stracted and somewhat agitat-
ed behavior, however, from
one of her lace-curtained
watch-windows, just as she’d
early that morning been
aware of him poking around
in the basement without her
permission. She frowned, re-
membering his distinctly odd
behavior with her battery.
She hadn’t discussed the mat-

THE IMPROPER AUTHORITIES

79

ter with Mr. Espy yesterday
but she decided she certainly
would tonight.

Serious thinking is always
apt to be a somewhat chilling
business. The more Ronald
applied his mind to the prob-
lem of how to make money
out of one small and presum-
ably irreplacable gravitic and
antigravitic battery, the chil-
lier the prospects came to look
to him.

One thing he was fatalis-
tically certain of from the
start : that if he reported his
find to any “proper authori-
ties” (military, scientific, in-
dustrial, academic, govern-
mental— authorities are al-
ways governmental to the
end) he would get nothing
whatever for himself except
trouble. To begin with —
the governmental authorities
would know very well wheth-
er one of their secret projects
had or had not started to
manufacture gravitic batter-
ies. In either case they would
grab the battery — either for
safekeeping or for feverish
secret research into its mys-
teries— and at the same time
loudly proclaim that it did
not exist. Ronald’s protests
would be laughed at. He would
be left out in the cold or, more
likely, grabbed himself and
awarded a lifetime of protec-

tive custody and unending in-
terrogation. Where a discov-
ery of such fabulous military
importancee as antigravity
was concerned, an individual’s
rights just wouldn’t count.

Perhaps he could investi-
gate the battery himself, care-
fully open it and find out
what made it work? Ronald’s
reaction to this idea' was
simply to shudder. True, he
fancied a bit his talent for
scientific thinking, but he
wasn’t that egotistical. Cut-
ting or prying the battery
open in hope of discovering
its secrets struck Ronald as
some seven degrees more un-
promising than an infant tak-
ing apart a gold wristwateh
to find out what made it
work. This seemed particular-
ly to the point as Ronald now
inclined more and more to the
theory that the battery was
something that had been spon-
taneously generated in his
aunt’s basement by complex
cycles of temperature change
or the like — which also
brought him back once more
to the fact that he only had
one battery, that as far as he
knew there was only one on
Earth. And if that were the
case, why the chances were
that the properest scientific
authorities in the world
wouldn’t be any too success-
ful in probing the battery’s

80

FANTASTIC

secrets. They’d play with it —
at a little more sophisticated
level than himself, to be sure
— until its power gave out,
and then dissect it into micro-
scopic slides and peer and
poke at it, and like as not end
up knowing little or nothing
more than at the first testing.

These general considera-
tions also made Ronald shy
away from the plan of find-
ing and privately enlisting
the services of some brilliant
young technician or engineer-
ing student, or offering such
a person a partnership in the
battery.

Perhaps he could sell the
battery? No, any substantial
businessman would be fearful-
ly suspicious of such an offer.
He’d think it was the Keeley
motor over again or some
perpetual motion crank or the
powder that added to water
makes gasoline. Ronald could
arrange brilliant demonstra-
tions, of course, but the more
brilliant they were the more
his prospect would suspect
trickery. Experts would have
to be called in and he would
be back once more with the
proper authorities, who would
be snatching at his battery
with rapacious fingers.

Suppose he were to find a
millionaire gambler and bet
him that — Ronald irritably

THE IMPROPER AUTHORITIES

shook his head. In the first
place he didn’t know any such
gamblers or how to approach
them and in the second place
the last thing a Bet-a-million
Gates would bet on was some-
thing that looked like a cast-
iron certainty to win. The
maker of such a tempting offer
would be bound to have some-
thing up his sleeve.

Maybe he could use the bat-
tery to put on a magic or spir-
itualist act? Causing some-
thing to float without wires, or
levitating small objects in a
slightly darkened room for the
edification of wealthy crack-
pots like his aunt — do the Pol-
tergeist bit. Now that, Ronald
told himself, was cutting his
problem down close to size.
The trouble was, of course, as
with so many other plans, that
the battery would eventually
run down and probably sooner
than later. But more than that,
the magic-act plan ran up
against the objection that Ron-
ald simply wasn’t even a pass-
able third-rate showman or
conman and knew it very well.

Sitting in his chilly hole-
over-a-garage and gazing out
at the darkening garden — for
a full twenty-four hours had
passed since his great discov-
ery— Ronald gave an irritated
little sigh. His utter incapacity
as a showman and conman was
an old sore point with him.

81

Why, as long as ten years ago
he’d been the one to get his
aunt interested in occultism,
but had he reaped any of the
benefits of her craze? No!
That had been reserved for the
slick operators like Mr. Espy,
Dr. Yorn, and their dozen or
so predecessors. They’d taken
hundreds, thousands of dollars
from her over the years.
She’d even sent money by mail
to Tibet, Ceylon and Southern
California "to further occult
research,” while he, who’d
started the whole thing, was
lucky if from time to time he
got a few cans of corned beef
hash or spaghetti from her
pantry hoard!

Not that Ronald lay awake
nights scheming how to mur-
der his aunt without being sus-
pected or how to defraud her
on a large scale. He wasn’t
that sort of person at all. He
just grieved occasionally that
a man with a commanding
gaze and a confident pseudo-
professional manner should be
able to charm a twenty-dollar
bill out of someone else’s
pocket and into his own, while
he, with ten times the educa-
tion, ingenuity, and honest
idealism, couldn’t !

Now if I just had the kind
of cheap ability that a Yorn or
an Espy has, Ronald told him-
self, I’d figure out a dozen
childishly simple ways to

profit from this battery and,
what’s more important, I’d
have the nerve and know-how
to put them into action.

He shook his head and shiv-
ered. He’d just had a vision of
himself, days or months hence,
the battery completely dead,
finally going to the "proper
authorities” with a crazed
gleam in his eyes and assuring
them that, yes, once this bat-
tery had held gravitic en-
ergy . . .

What I obviously need, he
told himself, is an improper
authority.

His gaze lit on Mr. Espy and
his aunt talking at the far end
of the garden. Almost at once
his aunt went inside and Mr.
Espy lit a cigarette and began
to stroll.

Normally Ronald was any-
thing but a man of action, but
sleeplessness and desperation
had transformed him. He
grabbed the battery and com-
pleted the connection. It glow-
ed brilliantly and surged pow-
erfully upward in his hand,
the coil consisting now of some
twenty turns of tinfoil-wrap-
ped nylon. Ronald headed for
the garden.

Strike while the iron is hot,
he told himself exultantly.
Espy’s my man. With this to
show him and let him feel it
won’t take me twenty seconds

82

FANTASTIC

to make my pitch. And with
his conning ability and my
battery . . .

Ronald certainly did make
an arresting sight as he hur-
ried through the darkening
garden, holding high his glow-
ing hand. Mr. Espy stopped
dead and stared at Ronald.

There was something pecu-
liar about the stare, though. It
seemed to Ronald to go
through him like a knife. In-
tending to startle, Ronald
found himself startled in re-
turn . . . momentarily almost
paralyzed.

He realized with horror that
the battery had sprung from
his limp fingers.

He waited for it to flip over
and crash, thanking God that
the ground was soft.

It didn’t flip over. Buzzing
faintly now and seeming to
spin, it bulleted straight up-
ward at ever-increasing veloc-
ity, one more bright point of
light headed toward the first
stars of evening.

It faded and was gone for-
ever.

Ronald realized that Mr.
Espy had hold of his shoulder
and was shaking him.

“Young man!” Mr. Espy
was saying, “Do you realize
that you possess astounding
occult powers? That was the
most impressive demonstra-
tion of telekinesis I have ever

witnessed in a long and rather
far-flung life !”

Lieutenant J. C. Arnold and
S. Abramson, usaf, were on a
routine jet mission at 30,000
feet when the phenomenon
shot by them at a distance of
only a few yards, its velocity
now considerable.

“Jack, a meteor!” the sec-
ond gasped.

“Be your age, Sammy,” the
first admonished him. “Would
a shooting star shoot up?” He
paused before adding, “But
what could it have been?”

Rather later that evening
Mr. Espy was preparing a sort
of telegram for transmission,
though not by Western Union.
It read in part :

You will also be pleased
to hear that the last of the
batteries the saintly Yorn
absent-mindedly distributed
around in his chuckle-head-
ed way before he was reas-
signed to a less critical post,
has been located and safely
disposed of. It is no longer
on Earth. One worry less
for all of us ! To get it away
painlessly from the young
human who had discovered
it and was beginning to
probe its more superficial
powers, I was forced to em-
ploy what on this planet

THE IMPROPER AUTHORITIES

83

they quaintly called “the
whammy.” He was most
startled and considerably
grieved to see the bat-
tery star-trend, having ap-
parently not anticipated all
the consequences of the gy-
ral effect or the cube law on
the coils. I calmed him and
reconciled him in part to his
loss without having to wipe
his memory.

So . . . our observation
station on Sol Three is once
more reasonably secure
from discovery. It will not
be necessary now to find
new patrons — we can con-
tinue to depend for local
financing on Mrs. Wycherly
and the other ladies who un-
knowingly but so very kind-
ly support our little enter-
prise.

THE END

COMING NEXT MONTH

A blockbuster of a novel by POUL ANDERSON headlines
The December issue of Fantastic Magazine.

Devil-may-care Galactic in-
vestigator Dominic Flandry
has the adventure of his
career in A Message in Se-
cret, as he copes with several
sets of enemies on one of the
strangest planets in the uni-
verse.

Backing up Anderson is The
Clone, by Theodore L.
Thomas, a science-cum-hor-
ror short story that combines
one of the most original s-f
plots we’ve seen in a long
time, with a taut style that lit-
erally brings catastrophe into
your kitchen sink.

I, Gardener, by Allen Kim
Lang, is a short story that
could stand on its own — yet
to s-f initiates, it will have an extra hidden meaning.

Several other short stories and all the usual features round out the
December FANTASTIC. It will be on sale at your newsdealer's Nov. 19.
Reserve your copy now.

84

According to you...

Dear Editor:

I found to my dismay, that the August issue of Fantastic
just didn’t seem to have the higher quality work of a few
months ago. The editorial was interesting, but too small. I just
start to read the thing when, poof, it’s finished. You should
enlarge it to at least two pages.

The lead story by Fritz Leiber, “Damnation Morning,” in
my opinion, was one of the worst stories I've ever read in
Fantastic. I had the gimmick ending figured out before the
story was one-third through. And the whole thing seemed
hastily shoved together with no characterization or motivation
whatsoever. Mr. Leiber can do much better than this, I’m sure.

That Jack Sharkey is going places. No matter how old the
plot gimmick is, he seems to add a much needed vitality to it.

Another feature that’s too short to be worthwhile is the
letter column. If you must keep the classified ad section isn’t
there some way for a bigger letter column?

William Brooks
Detachment 2

Air Force Institute of Technology
Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

• Bigger editorials, more letters? That means fewer stories.
We think you’d rather read writers than editors.

Dear Editor:

I’m an underfed bookworm with a six-year-old addiction to
science fiction, and no place within miles to acquire it. I was
just donated about 200 back number mags to add to my collec-
tion of about 400 science fiction magazines, which proves I
have the right kind of friends. But if I could only get the kids

85

to cooperate and go barefooted I’d have enough cash to sub-
scribe to a few magazines and read some fresh ones.

Anyhow, my contribution to literature in this column is
about the people who write in to complain that s-f is “trash”
etc. I think the Russians have them tagged right, as Pasternak
says in his book, “They were unaware that such dramatic ex-
cesses, far from showing their warmth and breadth of char-
acter, expressed intellectual poverty.”

Now that I've written a letter and taken part, as well as
collecting and reading, can I call myself a genuine Fan-worm?

Elaine Rambo
Osage Beach, Missouri

• Consider yourself a Grand Exalted Fan-worm. And you
knov> worms often exist in Fen.

Dear Editor:

While scanning — and reading — some back issues of a com-
petitive magazine (name withheld) I observed on the con-
cluding page of one of the issues, a short vignette titled,
appropriately, Letters to the Editor, written by a certain young
freshman at the University of California, Ron Goulart.

Next year, up pops Goulart in the same mag, with a short
story this time. The editors proclaim Goulart in a class of his
own. A class of distinction. It was subtly hinted that Goulart
would rise to great heights in the future.

Several weeks afterwards, I received the August issue of
Fantastic. I read your magazine with avid enthusiasm. All the
stories were good, especially good.

One of the stories was written with a quirkish ending, not
exactly morbid. A story by Goulart. His story, I feel, was
above average for your magazine, or for that matter, any other
mag.

As for the magazine as a whole, one of the best. The authors
in the August issue came up with some particularly witty —
and dead-pan? — endings.

Like most fans, I have my favorites. Like to see more of
Goulart, Chandler, Porges and Sharkey. Try and get some
stories or novelets by some other writers : Galouye, Budrys or
Anderson, maybe?

86

FANTASTIC

It’s good to know that at least there is one magazine that is
not filled with the same old bore and gore.

Glen Christianson
30012 Champin Dr.

St. Clair Shores, Mich.

• Anderson coming up with a novelet next month.

Dear Editor:

Do you believe in mental connections between people such
as often read s-f magazines, where two people hit on the same
name or important discovery at the same time ? It happens in
real life many times, and is stranger than fiction when it oc-
curs. Take the story “Man Under Glass” which appears in
the August issue of Fantastic — I refer only to the title. Could
two writers conceive of it at the same time? Two entirely
different stories, one science fiction, one non s-f, now bear
that name. I wrote the one your readers didn’t see. An excerpt
from my story and an illustration were published in a Rich-
mond College newspaper of limited circulation as part of a
fiction writing contest and appeared April 30th of this year.
I am sure some form of parapsychological connection took
place and would like to hear from the author. Did we have a
mental connection?

H. R. Frye
408 Alleghany Rd.

Hampton, Va.

• To our way of thinking it’s just coincidence, but maybe
Author Evelyn Goldstein will recall a psychic blast, now that
you mention it.

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87

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CIT\ ZONE STATE.

FAN 11-9

TRANQUILITY,

OR

ELSE!

Beware of too much peace and quiet! It
might turn out that going off your rocker
is the only thing worth doing when self-
expression is taboo and depersonalization
becomes the current rage.

My strangest case, bar none,
from the Psychotic Years
was the Green Demon of
New Angeles.

— 'from the notebooks of
Andreas Snowden

IT WOULD be hard to imag-
ine a more peaceful and
reassuring spot, a spot less
likely to harbor or attract hor-
rors, even in America of the
tranquil Early Twenty-first
Century, than the suburb-
exurb — rather — of Civil Ser-
vice Knolls. Cozy was the
word for the place — a loose as-
sembly of a half thousand
homes snuggling down in the
warm moonlight a mountain
ridge away from the metropo-
lis of New Angeles. With
their fashionably rounded
roofs the individual houses
looked rather like giant mush-

rooms among the noble trees.
They were like mushrooms too
in the way they grew with the
families they housed — one
storey for the newlyweds, two
for the properly childrened
and community - seasoned,
three for those punchdrunk
with reproduction and happy
living. From under their eaves
spilled soft yellow light of the
exact shade that color analysts
had pronounced most home-
like.

There were no streets or
roads, only the dark pine-
scented asphalt disks of side-
yard landing spots now hold-
ing the strange-vaned shapes
of copters and flutteryplanes
locked for the night, like sleep-
ing dragonflies and moths.
While for the ground-minded
there was the unobtrusive sub-
way entrance. Even the gro-

89

ceries came by underground
tube straight to the kitchen
in response to the housewife’s
morning dialing, delivery hav-
ing at last gone underground
with the other utilities. Well-
chewed garbage vanished
down rust-proof ducts in the
close company of well-bred
bacteria. There were not even
any unsightly dirt paths worn
in the thick springy lawns —
the family hypnotherapist
had implanted in the mind of
every resident, each last bal-
die and toddler, the suggestion
that pedestrians vary their
routes and keep their steps
light and rather few.

No nightclubs, no bars, no
feelie pads, no mess parlors,
no bongo haunts, no jukebox
joints, no hamburg havens, no
newsstands, no comic books,
no smellorama, no hot-rods,
no weed, no jazz, no gin.

Yes, tranquil, secure and
cosy were all good words for
Civil Service Knolls — a sylvan
monument to sane, civilized,
progressive attitudes.

Yet fear was about to
swoop there just the same. Not
fear of war, missile-atomic or
otherwise — the Cold Truce
with Communism was a good
fifty years old. Not fear of
physical disease or any crip-
pling organic infirmity — such
ills were close to the vanishing

point and even funerals and
deaths — again with the vital
aid of the family hypnothera-
pist— were rather pleasant or
at least reassuring occasions
for the survivors. No, the fear
that was about to infiltrate
Civil Service Knolls was of
the sort that must be called
nameless.

A householder crossing a
stretch of open turf as he
strolled home from the subway
thought he heard a whish di-
rectly overhead. There was
nothing whatever blackly sil-
houetted against the wide
stretch of moon-pale sky, yet
it seemed to him that one of
the moon-dimmed stars near
the zenith quivered and shift-
ed, as if there were an eddy
in the air or sky. Heaven had
wavered. And weren’t there
two extra stars there now? —
two new stars in the center of
the eddy — two dim red stars
close-placed like eyes?

No, that was impossible, he
must be seeing things — his
own blasted fault for missing
his regular soothe-session with
the hypnotherapist! Just the
same, he hurried his steps.

The eddy in the darkness
overhead floated in pace with
him a while, then swooped. He
heard a louder tvhish, then
something brushed his shoul-
der and claws seemed to fasten
there for an instant.

90

FANTASTIC

;C.“V

■

He gasped like someone
about to vomit and leaped for-
ward frantically.

From the empty moon-
glowing darkness behind him
came a cackle of grim laugh-
ter.

While the householder des-
perately pounded upon his
own front door, the eddy in the
darkness shot up to the height
of a sequoia, then swooped on
another section of Civil Ser-
vice Knolls. It hovered for a
while above the imposing two-
story residence of Judistra-
tor Wisant, took a swing
around the three-story one of
Securitor Harker, but in the
end drifted down to investi-
gate a faintly glowing up-
stairs window in another
three-storey house.

Inside the window an ath-
letically - handsome matron,
mother of five, was leisurely
preparing for bed. She was
thinking, rather self-satisfied-
ly, that (1) she had completed
all preparations for her fam-
ily’s participation in the Twi-
light Tranquility Festival to-
morrow, high point of the
community year; (2) she had
thrown just the right amount
of cold water on her eldest
daughter’s infatuation for the
unsuitable boy visiting next
door (and a hint to the hypno-
therapist before her daugh-
ter’s next session would do the

rest) ; and (3) she truly didn’t
look five years older than her
eldest daughter.

There was a tap at the win-
dow.

The matron started, pulling
her robe around her, then
craftily waved off the light. It
had instantly occurred to her
that the unsuitable boy might
have had the audacity to try
to visit her daughter illicitly
and have mistaken bedroom
windows — she had read in
magazine articles that such
wild lascivious young men ac-
tually existed in parts of
America, though — thank Pla-
cidity!— not as regular resi-
dents of Civil Service Knolls.

She walked to the window
and abruptly waved it to full
transparency and then with a
further series of quick side-
wise waves brought the room’s
lights to photoflood brilliance.

At first she saw nothing but
the thick foliage of the syca-
more a few yards outside.

Then it seemed to her as if
there were an eddy in the
massed greenery. The leaves
seemed to shift and swirl.

Then a face appeared in the
eddy — a green face with the
fanged grin of a devil and hot-
ly glowing eyes that looked like
twin peepholes into Hell.

The matron screamed, spun
around, and sprinted into the
hall, shouting the local secu-

92

FANTASTIC

rity number toward the phone
which her scream triggered
into ear-straining awareness.

From beyond the window
came peals of cold maniacal
laughter.

Yes, fear had come to Civil
Service Knolls — in fact, hor-
ror would hardly be too strong
a term.

Sovic men lead perfect lives

— poor devils!

— the notebooks of A.S.

Judistrator Wisant was
awakened by a familiar insist-
ent tingling in his left wrist.
He reached out and thumbed
a button. The tingling stop-
ped. The screen beside the bed
glowed into life with the
handsome hatchet-face of his
neighbor Securitor Harker. He
touched another button, acti-
vating the tiny softspeaker
and micromike relays at his
ear and throat.

“Go ahead, Jack,” he mur-
mured.

Two seconds after his head
had left the pillow a faint
light had sprung from the
walls of the room. It increased
now by easy stages as he lis-
tened to a terse second-hand
account of the two most star-
tling incidents to disturb Civil
Service Knolls since that trag-
ic episode ten years ago when
the kindergarten hypnothera-

pist went crazy and called
attention to her psychosis only
by the shocking posthypnotic
suggestions she implanted in
the toddlers’ minds.

Judistrator Wisant was a
large, well-built, shaven-head-
ed man. His body, half covered
now by the lapping sheet, gave
the impression of controlled
strength held well in reserve.
His hands were big and quiet.
His face was a compassionate
yet disciplined mask of sanity.
No one ever met him and fail-
ed to be astounded when they
learned afterwards that it was
his wife Beth who had been
the aberrating school hypno-
therapist and who was now a
permanent resident of the
nearby mental hospital of
Serenity Shoals.

The bedroom was as bare
and impersonal as a gymna-
sium locker room. Screen, play-
er, two short bedside shelves
of which one was filled with
books and tapes and neatly
stacked papers, an uncurtain-
ed darkened windoor leading
to a small outside balcony and
now set a little ajar, the dou-
ble bed itself exactly half
slept in — that about completed
the inventory, except for two
3-D photographs on the other
bedside shelf of two smiling,
tragic-eyed women who looked
enough alike to be sisters of
about 27 and 17. The photo-

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

93

graph of the elder bore the in-
scription, “To my Husband,
With all my Witchy Love.
Beth,” and of the younger, “To
her Dear Daddikins from
Gabby.”

The topmost of the stacked
papers was a back cover cut
from a magazine demurely
labeled Individuality Unlimit-
ed: Monthly Bulletin. The

background was a cluster of
shadowy images of weird and
grim beings: vampires, were-
wolves, humanoid robots,
witches, murderesses, “Mar-
tians,” mask-wearers, naked
brains with legs. A central
banner shouted: Next Month:
Accent the Monster in You!
In the lower lefthand corner
was a small sharp photo of a
personable young man looking
mysterious, with the legend
David Cruxon: Your Monster
Mentor. Clipped to the page
was a things-to-do-tomorrow
memo in Joel Wisant’s angu-
lar script: “10 ack emma: In-
dividuality Unlimited hearing.
Warn them on injunction.”

Wisant’s gaze shifted more
than once to this item and to
the two photographs as he pa-
tiently heard out Harker’s
account. Finally he said,
“Thanks, Jack, No, I don’t
think it’s a prankster — what
Mr. Frederick’s and Mrs. Ames
report seeing is no joke-shop

scare - your - friends illusion.
And I don’t think it’s anything
that comes in any way from
Serenity Shoals, though the
overcrowding there is a prob-
lem and we’re going to have
to do something about it.
What’s that? No, it’s nobody
fooling around in an antigrav-
ity harness — they’re too re-
stricted. And we know it’s
nothing from outside — that’s
impossible. No, the real trou-
ble, I’m afraid, is that it’s
nothing at all — nothing mate-
rial. Does the name Mattoon
mean anything to you?

“I’m not surprised, it was a
hundred years ago. But a
town went mad because of an
imaginary prowler, there was
an epidemic of insane fear.
That sort of thing happening
today could be much worse.
Are you familiar with Report
K?

“No matter, I can give yon
the gist of it. You’re cleared
for it and ought to have it. But
you are calling on our private
line, aren’t you? — this stuff is
top restricted.

“Report K is simply the
true annual statistics on men-
tal health in America. Adjust-
ed ones showing no significant
change have been issued
through the usual channels.
Jack, the real incidence of new
psychoses is up 15 percent in
the last eight months. Yes, it

94

FANTASTIC

is pretty staggering and I am
a close-mouthed old dog. No,
it’s been pretty well proved
that it isn’t nerve-viruses or
mind-war, much as the Krem-
lin boys would like to see us
flip and despite those irration-
al but persistent rumors of a
Mind Bomb. Analysis is not
complete, but the insanity-
surge seems to be due to a va-
riety of causes — things that
we’ve let get out of hand and
must deal with drastically.”

As Wisant said those last
words he was looking at the
Accent-the-Monster banner on
the Individuality Unlimited
bulletin. His hand took a styl-
us, crossed out the “Warn
them on” in his memo, under-
lined “injunction” three times
and added an exclamation
point.

Meanwhile he continued,
“As far as Mr. Fredericks and
Mrs. Ames are concerned,
here’s your procedure. First,
instruct them to tell no one
about what they thought they
saw — tell them it’s for the
public safety — and direct
them to see their hypnothera-
pists. Same instructions to
family members and anyone to
whom they may have talked.
Second, find the names of their
hypnotherapists, call them
and tell them to get in touch
with Dr. Andreas Snowden at
Serenity Shoals — he’s up on

Report K and will know what
reassurance - techniques or
memory-wiping to advise. I
depend on Snowden a lot — for
that matter he’s going to be
with us tomorrow when we
go up against Individuality
Unlimited. Third, don’t let
anything leak to the press —
that’s vital. We must confine
this outbreak of delusions be-
fore any others are infected. I
don’t have to tell you, Jack,
that I have reason to feel very
deeply about a thing like this.”
(His gaze went to the photo of
his wife.) “That's right, Jack,
we’re sanitary engineers of
the mind, you and I — we hose
out mental garbage!”

A rather frosty smile came
into his face and stayed there
while he listened again to
Harker.

After a bit he said, “No, I
wouldn’t think of missing the
Tranquility Festival — in fact
they’ve got me leading part of
it. Always proud to — and
these community occasions are
very important in keeping
people sane. Gabby ? — she’s
looking forward to it, too, as
only a pretty, sweet-minded
girl of 17 can, who’s been
chosen Tranquility Princess.
She really makes it for me.
And now hop to it, Jack, while
this old man grabs himself
some more shut-eye. Remem-
ber that what you’re up

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

95

against is delusions and hallu-
cinations, nothing real.”
Wisant thumbed oft the
phone. As his head touched the
pillow and the light in the
room started to die, he nodded
twice, as if to emphasize his
last remark.

Serenity Shoals, named with
a happy unintended irony, is
a sizable territory in Amer-
ica’s newest frontier: the
Mountains of Madness.

— the notebooks of A.S.

While the scant light that
filtered past the windoor died,
the eddy in the darkness
swung away from the house
of Judistrator Wisant and
sped with a kind of despera-
tion toward the sea. The
houses and lawns gave out.
The wooded knolls became
lower and sandier and soon
gave way to a wide treeless
expanse of sand holding a
half dozen large institutional
buildings and a tent-city be-
sides. The buildings were
mostly dark, but with stripes
of dimly lit windows marking
stairwells and corridors ; the
tent-city likewise had its dim-
ly lit streets. Beyond them
both the ghostly breakers of
the Pacific were barely visible
in the moonlight.

Serenity Shoals, which has
been called a Sandbox for
Grownups, was one of Twen-

ty-first Century America's
largest mental hospitals and
now it was clearly filled be-
yond any planned capacity.
Here dwelt the garden-variety
schizos, manics, paranoids,
brain-damageds, a few exotic
sufferers from radiation-in-
duced nerve sickness and
spaceflight-gendered gravita-
tional dementia and cosmic
shock, and a variety of other
special cases — but really all of
them were simply the people
who for one reason or another
found it a better or at least
more bearable bargain to live
with their imaginings rather
than even pretend to live with
what society called reality.

Tonight Serenity Shoals
was restless. There was more
noise, more laughter and chat-
ter and weeping, more move-
ment of small lights along the
corridors and streets, more
shouts and whistles, more un-
scheduled night-parties and
night-wanderings of patients
and night-expeditions of aides,
more beetle-like scurryings of
sand-cars with blinking head-
lights, more emergencies of all
sorts. It may have been the
general overcrowding, or the
new batch of untrained nurses
and aides, or the rumor that
lobotomies were being per-
formed again, or the two new
snackbars. It may even have
been the moonlight — Luna dis-

96

FANTASTIC

turbing the “loonies” in the
best superstitious tradition.

For that matter, it may
have been the eddy in the
darkness that was the cause of
it all.

Along the landward side of
Serenity Shoals, between it
and the wasteland bordering
Civil Service Knolls, stretched
a bright new wire fence, un-
pleasantly but not lethally
electrified — one more evidence
that Serenity Shoals was hav-
ing to cope with more than its
quota.

Back and forth along the
line of the fence, though a
hundred yards above, the eddy
in the darkness beat and
whirled, disturbing the star-
light. There was an impres-
sion of hopeless yearning
about its behavior, as if it
wanted to reach its people but
could not pass over the boun-
dary.

From the mangy terrace be-
tween the permanent build-
ings and the nominally tem-
porary tents, Director An-
dreas Snowden surveyed his
schizo-manic domain. He was
an elderly man with sleepy
eyes and unruly white hair.
He frowned, sensing an extra
element in the restlessness to-
night. Then his brow cleared,
and smiling with tender cyn-
icism, he recited to himself :

“Give me your tired, your
poor.

Your huddled masses yearn-
ing to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your
teaming shore.

Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me.”

Apply a lot more to Serenity
Shoals, he thought than to
America these days. Though I
ain’t no bloody copper goddess
bearing a lamp to dazzle the
Dagos and I ain’t got no keys
to no golden doors. (Dr. Snow-
den was always resolutely
crude and ungrammatical in
his private thoughts, perhaps
in reaction to the relative gen-
tility of his spoken utterances.
He was also very sentimen-
tal.)

“Oh, hello, Doctor!” The
woman darting across the
corner of the terrace had
stopped suddenly. It was hard
to see anything about her ex-
cept that she was thin.

Dr. Snowden walked towrard
her. “Good evening, Mrs. Wis-
ant,” he said. “Rather late for
you to be up and around, isn’t
it?”

“I know, Doctor, but the
thought-rays are very thick
tonight and they sting worse
than the mosquitoes. Besides
I’m too excited I couldn’t sleep
anyhow. My daughter is com-
ing here tomorrow.”

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

97

"Is she?” Dr. Snowden ask-
ed gently. “Odd that Joel has-
n’t mentioned it to me — as it
happens, I’m to see your hus-
band tomorrow on a legal
matter.”

“Oh, Joel doesn’t know she’s
coming,” the lady assured him.
“He’d never let her if he did.
He doesn’t think I’m good for
her ever since I started black-
ing out on my visits home
and . . . doing things. But it
isn’t a plot between me and
Gabby, either — she doesn’t
know she’s coming.”

“So? Then how are you go-
ing to manage it, Mrs. Wis-
ant?”

“Don’t try to sound so nor-
mal, Doctor ! — especially when
you know very well I’m not. I
suppose you think that I think
I will summon her by sending
a thought-ray. Not at all. I’ve
practically given up using
thought-rays. They’re not re-
liable and they carry yellow
fever. No, Doctor, I got Gabby
to come here tomorrow ten
years ago.”

“Now how did you do that,
Mrs. Wisant? Time travel?”

“Don’t be so patronizing! I
merely impressed it on Gab-
by’s mind ten years ago — aft-
er all, I am a trained hypno-
therapist— that she should
come to me when she became
a princess. Now Joel writes
me she’s been chosen Tranquil-

98

ity Princess for the festival
tomorrow. You see?”

“Very interesting. But don’t
be disappointed if — ”

“Stop being a wet blanket,
Doctor! Don’t you have any
trust in psychological tech-
niques? I know she’s coming.
Oh the daisies, the beautiful
daisies . . .”

“Then that settles it. How
are they treating you here
these days?”

“I have no complaints, Doc-
tor— except I must say I don’t
like all these new nurses and
aides. They’re callow. They
seem to think it’s very queer
of us to be crazy.”

Dr. Snowden chuckled.
“Some people are narrow-
minded,” he agreed.

“Yes, and so gullible, Doc-
tor. Just this afternoon two of
the new nurses were goggling
over a magazine ad about how
people should improve their
personalities by becoming
monsters. I ask you!”

Dr. Snowden shrugged. “I
doubt whether all of us are
monster material. And now
perhaps you’d better ...”

“I suppose so. Good night,
Doctor.”

As she was turning to go,
Mrs. Wisant paused to slap
her left forearm viciously.

“Thought-ray?” Dr. Snow-
den asked.

Mrs. Wisant looked at him
FANTASTIC

sardonically. “No,” she said.
“Mosquito !”

Dull security and the dead
weight of perfection breed
aberration even more surely
than disorder and fear.

— the notebooks of A.S.

Gabrielle Wisant, commonly
called Gabby though she was
anything but that, was sleep-
ing on her back in long pink
pajamas, stretched out very
straight and with her arms
folded across her breasts,
looking more like the stone
funeral effigy of a girl than a
living one — an effect which
the unrumpled bedclothes
heightened.

The unocculted windoor let
in the first cold granular light
of dawn. The room was fem-
inine, but without any special
character — it seemed secre-
tive. It had one item in com-
mon with her father’s: on a
low bedside stand and next to
a pad of pink notepaper was
another sliced-off back cover
of the Individuality Unlimited
bulletin. Close beside the
“David Cruxon : Your Mon-
ster Mentor” photo there was
a note scrawled in green ink.

Gabs — How’s this for
kicks? Cruxon’s Carny! or
corny? Lunch with your
MM same place but 130 pip
emma. Big legal morning.

Tell you then, Dave. (Signed
and Sealed in the Monster-
arium, 4 pip emma, 15 June)

The page was bowed up as
if something about ten inches
long were lying under it.

Gabrielle Wisant’s eyes
opened, though not another
muscle of her moved, and they
stayed that way, directed at
the ceiling.

And then . . . then nothing
overt happened, but it was as
if the mind of Gabrielle Wis-
ant— or the soul or spirit, call
it what you will — rose from
unimaginable depths to the
surface of her eyes to take a
long look around, like a small
furtive animal that silently
mounts to the mouth of its
burrow to sniff the weather,
ready to duck back at the
slightest sudden noise or ap-
prehension of danger — in fact,
rather like the ground-hog
come up to see or not to see its
shadow on Candlemas Day.

With a faculty profounder
than physical sight, the mind
of Gabby Wisant took a long
questioning look around at her
world — the world of a “pretty,
sweet-minded girl of 17” — to
decide if it were worth living
in.

Sniffing the weather of
America, she became aware of
a country of suntanned, slim-
med-down people with smooth-

TRANQUILITY, OR ELSE!

99

ed-out minds, who fed content-
edly on decontaminated news
and ads and inspiration pieces,
like hamsters on a laboratory
diet. But ivhat were they aft-
er? What did they do for
kicks ? What happened to the
ones whose minds ivouldn’t
smooth , or smoothed too utter-
ly?

She saw the sane, civilized,
secure, superior community
of Civil Service Knolls, a
homestead without screeching
traffic or other violence, with-
out jukeboxes or juvenile de-
linquency, a place of sensible
adults and proper children, a
place so tranquil it was going
to have a Tranquility Festival
tonight. But just beyond it she
saw Serenity Shoals with its
lost thousands living in
brighter darker worlds, in-
cluding one who had planted
posthypnotic suggestions in
children’s minds like time-
bombs.

She saw a father so sane, so
just, so strong, so perfectly
controlled, so always right
that he was not so much a
man as a living statue — the
statue she too tried to be
every night while she slept.
And ivhat ivas the statue real-
ly like under the marble?
What were the heat and color
of its blood?

She saw a witty man
named David Cruxon who per-

haps loved her, but who was
so mixed up between his cyn-
icism and his idealism that
you might say he cancelled
out. A knight without armor
. . . and armor without a
knight.

She saw no conventional
monsters, no eddies in dark-
ness— her mind had been hid-
ing deep down below all
night.

She saw the surface of her
own mind, so sweetly smooth-
ed by a succession of kindly
hypnotherapists (and one be-
loved traitor who must not be
named) that it was positively
frightening, like a book, of
horrors bound in pink velvet
with silk rosebuds, or the
sluggish sea before a hurri-
cane or night softly silent be-
fore a scream. She wished she
had the kind of glass-bottom-
ed boat that would let her
peer below, but that was the
thing above all else she must
not do.

She saw herself as Tran-
quility Princess some twelve
hours hence, receiving the
muted ovation under the arch-
ing trees, candlelight twin-
kling back from her flared
and sequinned skirt and just
one leaf drifted down and
caught in her fine-spun hair.

Princess . . . Princess . . .
As if that word were some-

100

FANTASTIC

how a signal, the mind of
Gabby Wisant made its deci-
sion about the worth of the
upper world and dove back
inside, dove deep deep down.
The ground-hog saw its shad-
ow black as ink and decided
to dodge the dirty weather
ahead.

The thing that instantly
took control of Gabby Wis-
ant’s body when her mind
went into hiding treated that
body with a savage familiar-
ity, certainly not as if it were
a statue. It sprang to its
haunches in the center of the
bed, snuffing the air loudly. It
ripped off the pink pajamas
with a complete impatience or
ignorance of magnetic clasps.
It switched on the lights and
occulted the windoor, making
it a mirror, and leered ap-
provingly at itself and ran its
hands over its torso in fierce
caresses. It snatched a knife
with a six-inch blade from un-
der the bulletin cover and
tried its edge on its thumb
and smiled at the blood it
drew and sucked it. Then it
went through the inner door,
utterly silent as to footsteps
but breathing in loud, meas-
ured gasps like a careless
tiger.

When Judistrator Wisant
woke, his daughter was squat-
ted beside him on the perma-
nently undisturbed half of his

bed, crooning to his scoutmas-
ter’s knife. She wasn’t looking
at him quite, or else she was
looking at him sideways — he
couldn’t tell through the eye-
lash-blur of his slitted eyes.

He didn’t move. He wasn’t
at all sure he could. He hump-
ed the back of his tongue to
say “Gabby,” but he knew it
would come out as a croak and
he wasn’t even sure he could
manage that. He listened to
his daughter — the crooning
had changed back to faintly
gargling tiger-gasps — and he
felt the cold sweat trickling
down the sides of his face and
over his naked scalp and
stingingly into his eyes.

Suddenly his daughter lift-
ed the knife high above her
head, both hands locked
around the hilt, and drove it
down into the center of the
empty, perfectly mounded
pillow beside him. As it thud-
ded home he realized with
faint surprise that he hadn’t
moved although he’d tried to.
It was as though he had con-
tracted his muscles convul-
sively, but discovered that all
the tendons had been cut with-
out his knowing.

He lay there quite flac-
cid, watching his daughter
through barely parted eyelids
as she mutilated the pillow
with slow savage slashes, dig-
ging in the point with a

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

101

twist, and sawing off a cor-
ner. She must be sweating too
— strands of her fine-spun
pale gold hair clung wetly to
her neck and slim shoulders.
She was crooning once more,
with a rippling low laugh and
a soft growl for variety, and
she was drooling a little. The
hospital smell of the fresh-
cut plastic came to him faint-
ly.

Young male voices were
singing in the distance. Judis-
trator Wisant’s daughter
seemed to hear them as soon
as he did, for she stopped
chopping at the pillow and
held still, and then she started
to sway her head and she smil-
ed and she got off the bed with
long easy movements and
went to the windoor and
thumbed it wide open and
stood on the balcony, the knife
trailing laxly from her left
hand.

The singing was louder
now — young male voices
rather dutifully joyous in a
slow marching rhythm — and
now he recognized the tune. It
was “America the Beautiful”
but the words were different.
This verse began,

"Oh beautiful for peaceful
minds,

Secure families ..."

It occurred to Wisant that
it must be the youths going

out at dawn to gather the
boughs and deck the Great
Bower, a traditional prepara-
tory step to the Twilight
Tranquility Festival. He’d
have deduced it instantly if
his tendons hadn’t been
cut . . .

But then he found that he
had turned his head toward
the balcony and even turned
his shoulders and lifted up on
one elbow a little and opened
his eyes wide.

His daughter put her knife
between her teeth and clam-
bered sure-footedly onto the
railing and jumped to the
nearest sycamore branch and
hung there swinging, like
a golden-haired, long-legged,
naked ape.

“And bring with thee

Tranquility

To Civil Service Knolls."

She swung in along the
branch to the trunk and laid
her knife in a crotch and brac-
ed one foot there and started
to swing the other and her
free arm too in monkey cir-
cles.

He reached out and tried to
thumb the phone button, but
his hand was shaking in a
four-inch arc.

He heard his daughter yell,
“Yoohoo! Yoohoo, boys!”

The singing stopped.

Judistrator Wisant half

102

FANTASTIC

scrabbled, half rolled out of
bed and hurried shakingly —
and he hoped noiselessly —
through the door and down
the hall and into his daugh-
ter’s bedroom, shut the door
behind him — and locked it, as
he only discovered later — and
grabbed her phone and punch-
ed out Securitor Harker’s
number.

The man he wanted answer-
ed almost immediately, a little
cross with sleep.

Wisant was afraid he’d
have trouble being coherent
at all. He was startled to find
himself talking with practic-
ally his normal confident
authority and winningness.

“Wisant, Jack. Calling
from home. Emergency. I
need you and your squad on
the double. Yes. Pick up Dr.
Sims or Armstrong on the
way but don’t waste time. Oh
— and have your men bring
ladders. Yes, and put in a
quick call to Serenity Shoals
for a ’copter. What? My au-
thority. What? Jack, I don’t
want to say it now, I’m not
using our private line. Well,
all right, just let me think for
a minute ...”

Judistrator Wisant ordi-
narily never had trouble in
talking his way around stark
facts. And he wouldn’t have
had even this time, perhaps,
if he hadn’t just the moment

before seen something that
distracted him.

Then the proper twist of
phrase came to him.

“Look, Jack,” he said, “it’s
this way: Gabby has gone to
join her mother. Get here
fast.”

He turned off the phone
and picked up the disturbing
item: the bulletin cover be-
side his daughter’s bed. He
read the note from Cruxon
twice and his eyes widened
and his jaw tightened.

His fear was all gone away
somewhere. For the moment
■all his concerns were gone ex-
cept this young man and his
stupid smirking face and
stupider title and his green
ink.

He saw the pink pad and
he picked up a dark crimson
stylus and began to write
rapidly in a script that was a
shade larger and more angu-
lar than usual.

For 100 years even break-
fast foods have been promot-
ing delirious happiness and
glorious peace of mind. To
what end?

— the notebooks of A.S.

“Suppose you begin by back-
grounding us in on what In-
dividuality Unlimited is and
how it came to be? I'm sure
we all have a general idea and
may know some aspects in de-

TRANQUILITY, OR ELSE!

103

tail, but the bold outline, from
management’s point of view,
should be firmed. At the least
it will get us talking.”

This suggestion, coming
from the judistrator himself,
reflected the surface infor-
mality of the conference tak-
ing place in VVisant’s airy
chambers in central New LA.
Dr. Andreas Snowden sat on
the judistrator’s right, doo-
dling industriously. Securitor
Harker sat on Wisant’s left,
while flanking the trio were
two female secretaries in dark
business suits similar to those
men wore a century before,
though of somewhat shapelier
cut and lighter material.

Like all the other men in
the room, Wisant was sensi-
bly clad in singlet, business
jerkin, Bermuda shorts, and
sandals. A folded pink paper
sticking up a little from his
breast pocket provided the
only faintly incongruous de-
tail. He had been just seven
minutes late to the confer-
ence, perhaps a record for
fathers who have seen their
daughters 'coptered off to a
mental hospital two hours
earlier — though only Harker
knew of and so could appre-
ciate this iron-man achieve-
ment.

A stocky man with shaggy
pepper-and-salt hair and pug-

nacious brows stood up across
the table from Wisant.

“Good idea,” he said gruffly.
“If we’re going to be hanged,
let’s get the ropes around our
necks. First I’d better identi-
fy us shifty-eyed miscreants.
I’m Bob Diskrow, president
and general manager.” He
then indicated the two men
on his left: "Mr. Sobody, our
vice president in charge of re-
search, and Dr. Gline, IU’s
chief psychiatrist.” He turn-
ed to the right: “Miss Raw-
vetch, vp in charge of pre-
sentation— ” (A big-boned
blonde flashed her eyes. She
was wearing a lavender busi-
ness suit with pearl buttons,
wing collar and Ascot tie)
“ — and Mr. Cruxon, junior vp
in charge of the . . . Monster
Program.” David Cruxon was
identifiably the young man of
the photograph with the same
very dark, crewcut hair and
sharply watchful eyes, but
now he looked simply haggard
rather than mysterious. At
the momentary hesitation in
Diskrow’s voice he quirked a
smile as rapid and almost as
convulsive as a tic.

“I happen already to be ac-
quainted with Mr. Cruxon,”
Wisant said with a smile,
“though in no fashion preju-
dicial to my conducting this
conference. He and my daugh-
ter know each other socially.”

104

FANTASTIC

Diskrow cocked an eyebrow
at him. Cruxon nodded sharp-
ly.

Diskrow stuck his hands in
his pockets and rocked back
on his heels reflectively.

Wisant lifted a hand. “One
moment,” he said. “There are
some general considerations
governing any judistrative
conference of which I should
remind us. They are in line
with the general principle of
government by Commission,
Committee and Conference
which has done so much to
simplify legal problems in our
times. This meeting is pri-
vate. Press is excluded, poli-
tics are taboo. Any informa-
tion you furnish about IU will
be treated by us as strictly
confidential and we trust you
will return the courtesy re-
garding matters we may di-
vulge. And this is a demo-
cratic conference. Any of us
may speak freely.

“The suggestion has been
made,” Wisant continued
smoothly, “that some prac-
tices of IU are against the
public health and safety. Af-
ter you have presented your
case and made your defense —
pardon my putting it that
way — I may in my judicial
capacity issue certain advise-
ment. If you comply with
those, the matter is settled.
If you do not, the advisements

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

immediately become injunc-
tions and I, in my adminis-
trative capacity, enforce them
— though you may work for
their removal through the
regular legal channels. Under-
stood?”

Diskrow nodded with a wry
grimace. “Understood — you
got us in a combined ham-
merlock and body scissors.
(Just don’t sprinkle us with
fire ants!) And now I’ll give
you that bold outline you
asked for — and try to be bold
about it.”

He made a fist and stuck
out a finger from it. “Let’s
get one thing straight at the
start : Individuality Unlimited
is no idealistic or mystical out-
fit with its head in orbit
around the moon, and it
doesn’t pretend to be. We just
manufacture and market a
product the public is willing
to fork out money for. That
product is individuality.” He
rolled the word on his tongue.

“Over one hundred years
ago people started to get seri-
ously afraid that the Machine
Age would turn them into a
race of robots. That mass pro-
duction and consumption, the
mass media of a now instanta-
neous communication, the
subtle and often subliminal
techniques of advertising and
propaganda, plus the growing

105

i use of group — and hypno-
therapy would turn them into
a bunch of identical puppets.
That wearing the same
clothes, driving the same cars,
living in look-alike suburban
homes, reading the same pop
books and listening to the
same pop programs, they’d
start thinking the same
thoughts and having the same
feelings and urges and end up
with rubber-stamp personali-
ties.

“Make no mistake, this fear
was very real,” Diskrow went
on, leaning his weight on the
table and scowling. “It was
just about the keynote of the
whole Twentieth Century
(and of course to some degree
it’s still with us). The world
was getting too big for any
one man to comprehend, yet
people were deeply afraid of
groupthink, teamlife, hive-
living, hypoconformity, pas-
sive adjustment, and all the
rest of it. The sociologist and
analyst told them they had to
play ‘roles’ in their family life
and that didn’t help much, be-
cause a role is one more rub-
ber stamp. Other cultures like
Russia offered us no hope —
they seemed further along the
road to robot life than we
were.

“In short, people were
deathly afraid of loss of iden-
tity, loss of the sense of being

unique human beings. First
and always they dreaded de-
personalization, to give it its
right name.

“Now that’s where Indi-
viduality Unlimited, operat-
ing under its time-honored
slogan ‘Different Ways to Be
Different,’ got its start,” Dis-
krow continued, making a
scooping gesture, as if his
right hand were IU gathering
up the loose ends of existence.
“At first our methods were
pretty primitive or at least
modest — we sold people indi-
vidualized doodads to put on
their cars and clothes and
houses, we offered conversa-
tion kits and hobby guides,
we featured Monthly Conven-
tion-Crushers and Taboo-
Breakers that sounded very
daring but really weren’t — ”
(Diskrow grinned and gave a
little shrug) “ — and incident-
ally we came in for a lot of
ribbing on the score that we
were trying to mass-produce
individuality and turn out
uniqueness on an assembly
line. Actually a lot of our work
still involves randomizing pat-
tern-details and introducing
automatic unpredictable vari-
ety into items as diverse as
manufactured objects and
philosophies of life.

“But in spite of the ribbing
we kept going because we
knew we had hold of a sound

106

FANTASTIC

idea: that if a person can be
made to feel he’s different, if
he is encouraged to take the
initiative in expressing him-
self in even a rather trivial
way, then his inner man
wakes up and takes over and
starts to operate under his
own steam. What people basic-
ally need is a periodic shot in
the arm. I bunk you not when I
tell you that here IU has al-
ways done and is still doing
a real public service. We don’t
necessarily give folks new
personalities, but we renew
the glow of those they have.
As a result they become hap-
pier workers, better citizens.
We make people individuality-
certain.”

“Uniqueness - convinced,”
Miss Rawvetch put in
brightly.

“Depersonalization - se-
cure,” Dr. Gline chimed. He
was a small man with a large
forehead and a permanent
hunch to his shoulders. He
added: “Only a man who is
secure in his own individual-
ity can be at one with the
cosmos and really benefit from
the tranquil awe - inspiring
rhythms of the stars, the sea-
sons, and the sea.”

At that windy remark Da-
vid Cruxon quirked a second
grimace and scribbled some-
thing on the pad in front of
him.

Diskrow nodded approv-
ingly— at Gline. “Now as IU
began to see the thing bigger,
it had to enter new fields and
accept new responsibilities.
Adult education, for exam-
ple— one very genuine way of
making yourself more of an
individual is to acquire new
knowledge and skills. Three-
D shows — we needed them to
advertise and dramatize our
techniques. Art — self-expres-
sion and a style of one’s own
are master keys to individual-
ity, though they don’t unlock
everybody’s inner doors. Phi-
losophy— it was a big step
forward for us when we were
able to offer people ‘A Philoso-
phy of Life That’s Yours
Alone.’ Religion — that too, of
course, though only indirectly
. . . strictly non-sectarian.
Childhood lifeways — it’s sur-
prising what you can do in
an individualizing way with
personalized games, adult
toys, imaginary companions,
and secret languages — and by
recapturing and adapting
something of the child’s vivid
sense of uniqueness. Psychol-
ogy— indeed yes, for a per-
son’s individuality clearly de-
pends on how his mind is
organized and how fully its
resources are used. Psychiatry
too — it’s amazing how a
knowledge of the workings of
abnormal minds can be used

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSEI

107

to suggest interesting pat-
terns for the normal mind.
Why—”

Dr. Snowden cleared his
throat. The noise was slight
but the effect was ominous.
Diskrow hurried on to say,
"Of course we were well
aware of the serious step we
were taking in entering this
field, so we added to our staff
a large psychology depart-
ment of which Dr. Gline is
the distinguished current
chief.”

Dr. Snowden nodded
thoughtfully at his profes-
sional colleague across the ta-
ble. Dr. Gline blinked and
hastily nodded back. Unno-
ticed, David Cruxon got off a
third derisive grin.

Diskrow continued: “But I
do want to emphasize the psy-
chological aspect of our work
— yes, and the psychiatric
too — because they’ve led us to
such fruitful ideas as our pro-
gram of ‘Soft-Sell Your Su-
periority,’ which last year
won a Lasker Group Award
of the American Public
Health Association.”

Miss Rawvetch broke in
eagerly : “And which was dra-
matized to the public by that
still-popular 3-D show, The
Useless Five, featuring the
beloved characters of the In-
ferior Superman, the Medi-
ocre Mutant, the Mixed-up

Martian, the Clouded Esper
and Rickety Robot.”

Diskrow nodded. “ And
which also has led, by our
usual reverse-twist technique,
to our latest program of ‘Ac-
cent the Monster in You.’
Might as well call it our Mon-
ster Program.” He gave Wi-
sant a frank smile. “I guess
that’s the item that’s been
bothering you gentlemen and
so I’m going to let you hear
about it from the young man
who created it — under Dr.
Gline’s close supervision.
Dave, it’s all yours.”

Dave Cruxon stood up. He
wasn’t as tall as one would
have expected. He nodded
around rapidly.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a
deep but stridently annoying
voice, “I had a soothing little
presentation worked up for
you. It was designed to show
that IU’s Monster Program
is completely trivial and one
hundred percent innocuous.”
He let that sink in, looked
around sardonically, then
went on with, “Well, I’m toss-
ing that presentation in the
junk-chewer! — because I
don’t think it does justice to
the seriousness of the situa-
tion or to the great service
IU is capable of rendering the
cause of public health. I may
step on some toes but I’ll try

108

FANTASTIC

not to break any phalanges.’'
Diskrow shot him a hard
look that might have started
out to be warning but ended
up enigmatic. Dave grinned
back at his boss, then his ex-
pression became grave.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “A
spectre is haunting America
— the spectre of Depersonali-
zation. Mr. Diskrow and Dr.
Gline mentioned it but they
passed over it quickly. I won’t.
Because depersonalization
kills the mind. It doesn’t mean
just a weary sense of same-
ness and of life getting dull,
it means forgetting who you
are and where you stand, it
means that we laymen still
persist in calling insanity.”
Several pairs of eyes went
sharply to him at that word.
Gline’s chair creaked as he
turned in it. Diskrow laid a
hand on the psychiatrist’s
sleeve as if to say, “Let him
alone — maybe he’s building
toward a reverse angle.”
“Why this very re^l and
well-founded dread of deper-
sonalization?” David Cruxon
looked around. “I’ll tell you
why. It’s not primarily the
Machine Age, and it’s not pri-
marily because life is getting
too complex to be easily
grasped by any one person —
though those are factors. No,
it’s because a lot of blinkered
Americans, spoonfed a sick-

eningly sweet version of ex-
istence, are losing touch with
the basic facts of life and
death, hate and love, good and
evil. In particular, due to a
lot too much hypno-soothing
and suggestion techniques
aimed at easy tranquility,
they’re losing a conscious
sense of the black depths in
their own natures — and that’s
what’s making them fear de-
personalization and actually
making them flip — and that’s
what IU’s Monster-in-You
Program is really designed to
remedy!”

There was an eruption of
comments at that, with Dis-
krow starting to say, “Dave
doesn't mean — ”, Gline begin-
ning, “I disagree. I would not
say — ”, and Snowden com-
mencing, “Now if you bring
in depth psychology — ” but
Dave added decibels to his
voice and overrode them.

“Oh yes, superficially our
Monster Program just con-
sists of hints to our customers
on how to appear harmlessly
and handsomely sinister, but
fundamentally it’s going to
give people a glimpse of the
real Mr. Hyde in themselves
— the deviant, the cripple, the
outsider, the potential rapist
and torture-killer — under the
sugary hypno-soothed con-
sciousness of Dr. Jekyll. In a
story or play, people always

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

109

love the villain best — though
they’ll seldom admit it — be-
cause the villain stands for
the submerged, neglected, and
unloved dark half of them-
selves. In the Monster Pro-
gram we’re going to awaken
that half for their own good.
We’re going to give some ex-
pression, for a change, to the
natural love of adventure,
risk, melodrama, and sheer
wickedness that’s part of
every man!”

“Dave, you’re giving an un-
fair picture of your own pro-
gram !” Diskrow was on his
feet and almost bellowing at
Cruxon. “I don’t know why —
maybe out of some twisted
sense of self-criticism or some
desire for martyrdom — but
you are ! Gentlemen, IU is not
suggesting in its new program
that people become real mon-
sters in any way — ”

“Oh, aren’t we?”

“Dave, shut up and sit
down! You’ve said too much
already. I’ll—”

“Gentlemen!” Wisant lifted
a hand. “Let me remind you
that this is a democratic con-
ference. We can all speak
freely. Any other course
would be highly suspicious.
So simmer down, gentlemen,
simmer down.” He turned to-
ward Dave with a bland warm
smile. “What Mr. Cruxon has

to say interests me very
much.’

“I’m sure it does!” Diskrow
fumed bitterly.

Dave said smoothly, “What
I’m trying to get over is that
people can’t be pampered and
soothed and wrapped away
from the ugly side of reality
and stay sane in the long run.
Half truth kills the mind just
as surely as lies. People live
by the shock of reality — espe-
cially the reality of the sub-
merged sections of their own
minds. It’s only when a man
knows the worst about him-
self and other men and the
world that he can really take
hold of the facts — brace him-
self against his atoms, you
might say — and achieve true
tranquility. People generally
don’t like tragedy and horror
— not with the Sunday-School
side of their minds, they don’t
— but deep down they have to
have it. They have to break
down the Pollyanna Partition
and find what’s really on the
other side. An all-sugar diet is
deadly. Life can be sweet, yes,
but only when the contrast of
horror brings out the taste.
Especially the horror in a
man’s heart!”

“Very interesting indeed,”
Dr. Snowden put in quietly,
even musingly, “and most lav-
ishly expressed, if I may say
so. What Mr. Cruxon has to

110

FANTASTIC

tell us about the dark side of
the human mind — the Id, the
Shadow, the Death Wish, the
Sick Negative, there have
beea many names — is of
course an elementary truth.
However . . He paused.
Diskrow, still on his feet,
looked at him with suspicious
incredulity, as if to say,
“Whose side are you pretend-
ing to be on?”

The smile faded from
Snowden’s face. “However,”
he continued, “it is an equally
elementary truth that it is
dangerous to unlock the dark
side of the mind. Not every
psychotherapist — not even
every analyst — ” (Here his
gaze flickered toward Dr.
Cline) “ — is really competent
to handle that ticklish opera-
tion. The untrained person
who attempts it can easily
find himself in the position
of the sorceror’s apprentice.
Nevertheless . . .”

“It’s like the general ques-
tion of human freedom,” Wi-
sant interrupted smoothly.
“Most men are simply not
qualified to use all the free-
doms theoretically available
to them.” He looked at the IU
people with a questioning
smile. “For example, I ima-
gine you all know something
about the antigravity harness
used by a few of our special
military units? — at least you

know that such an item ex-
ists?”

Most of the people across
the table nodded. Diskrow
said, “Of course we do. We
even had a demonstration
model in our vaults until a
few days ago.” Seeing Wi-
sant’s eyebrows lift he added
impressively, “IU is often
aske'd to help introduce new
devices and materials to the
public. As soon as the harness
was released, we were plan-
ning to have Inferior Supe
use it on The Useless Five
show. But then the directive
came through restricting the
item — largely on the grounds
that it turned out to be ex-
tremely dangerous and diffi-
cult to operate — and we
shipped back our model.”

Wisant nodded. “Since you
know that much, I can make
my point about human free-
dom more easily. Actually
(but I’ll deny this if you men-
tion it outside these cham-
bers) the antigravity harness
is not such a specialist’s item.
The average man can rather
easily learn to operate one.
In other words it is today
technologically possible for us
to put three billion humans in
the air, flying like birds.

“But three billion humans
in the air would add up to
confusion, anarchy, an un-

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Ill

imaginable aerial traffic jam.
Hence — restriction and an
emphasis on the dangers and
extreme difficulties of using
the harness. The freedom to
swim through the air can’t be
given outright, it must be
doled out gradually. The same
applies to all freedoms — the
freedom to love, the freedom
to know the world, even the
freedom to know yourself —
especially your more explosive
drives. Don’t get me wrong
now — such freedoms are fine
if the person is conditioned
for them.” He smiled with
frank pride. “That’s our big
job, you know: conditioning
people for freedom. Using
conditioning - for - freedom
techniques we ended juvenile
delinquency and beat the Beat
Generation. We — ”

“Yes, you beat them all
right!” Dave, breaking in
again suddenly, sounded rasp-
ingly angry. “You got all the
impulses such movements ex-
pressed so well battened
down, so well repressed and
decontaminated, that now
they’re coming out as aberra-
tion, deep neurosis, mania.
People are conforming and
adjusting so well, they’re such
carbon copies of each other,
that now they’re even all
starting to flip at the same
time. They were over-pro-
tected mentally and emotion-

ally. They were shielded from
the truth as if it were radio-
active— and maybe in its way
it is, because it can start
chain reactions. They were
treated like halfwits and
that’s what we’re getting.
Age of Tranquility! It’s the
Age of Psychosis ! It’s an open
secret that the government
and its Committee for Public
Sanity have been doctoring
the figures on mental disease
for years. They’re fifty, a hun-
dred percent greater than the
published ones — no one knows
how much. What’s this mys-
terious Report K we keep
hearing about? Which of us
hasn’t had friends and family
members flipping lately? Any-
one can see the overcrowding
at asylums, the bankruptcy of
hypnotherapy. This is the year
of the big payoff for genera-
tion of hysterical optimism,
reassurance psychology and
plain soft-soaping. It’s the
DTs after decades of sooth-
ing-syrup addiction!”

“That’s enough, Dave!”
Diskrow shouted. “You’re
fired! You no longer speak for
IU. Get out!”

“Mr. Diskrow!” Wisant’s
voice was stern. “I must point
out to you that you’re inter-
fering with free inquiry, not
to mention individuality.
What your young colleague
has to say interests me more

112

FANTASTIC

and more. Pray continue, Mr.
Cruxon.” He smiled like a big
fat cat.

Dave answered smile with
glare. “What’s the use?” he
said harshly. “The Monster
Program’s dead. You got me
to cut its throat and now
you’d like me to finish sever-
ing the neck, but what I did
or didn’t do doesn’t matter a
bit — you were planning to kill
the Monster Program in any
case. You don’t want to do
anything to stop the march
of depersonalization. You like
depersonalized people. As
long as they’re tranquil and
manageable, you don’t care —
it’s even okay by you if you
have to keep ’em in flip-fac-
tories and put the tranquility
in witli a needle. Government
by the three Big Cs of Com-
mission, Committee and Con-
ference! There’s a fourth C,
the biggest, and that’s the one
you stand for — government
by Censorship! So long,
everybody, I hope you’re
happy when your wives and
kids start flipping — when you
start flipping. Pm getting
out.”

Wisant waited until Dave
got his thumb on the door,
then he called, “One moment,
Mr. Cruxon!” Dave held still
though he did not turn
around. “Miss Sturges,” Wi-

sant continued, “would you
please give this to Mr. Crux-
on?” He handed her the small
folded sheet of pink paper
from his breast pocket. Dave
shoved it in his pocket and
went out.

“A purely personal matter
between Mr. Cruxon and my-
self,” Wisant explained, look-
ing around with a smile. He
swiftly reached across the
table and snagged the scratch-
pad where Dave had been sit-
ting. Diskrow seemed about
to protest, then to think better
of it.

“Very interesting,” Wisant
said after a moment, shaking
his head. He looked up from
the pad. “As you may recall,
Mr. Cruxon only used his
stylus once — just after Dr.
Gline had said something
about the awe - inspiring
rhythms of the sea. Listen to
what he wrote.” He cleared
his throat and read:

" When the majestic ocean
starts to sound like water
slopping around in the bath-
tub, it’s time to jump in."

Wisant shook his head. “I
must say I feel concerned
about that young man’s safety
. . . his mental safety.”

“/ do too,” Miss Rawvetch
interjected, looking around
with a helpless shrug. “My
Lord, was there anybody that

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113

screwball forgot to antago-
nize?”

Dr. Snowden looked up
quickly at Wisant. Then his
gaze shifted out and he
seemed to become abstracted.

Wisant continued : “Mr.

Diskrow, I had best tell you
now that in addition to my
advisement against the Mon-
ster Program, I am going to
have to issue an advisement
that there be a review of the
mental stability of IU’s en-
tire personnel. No personal
reflection on any of you, but
you can clearly see why.”
Diskrow flushed but said
nothing. Dr. Gline held very
still. Dr. Snowden began to
doodle furiously.

A monster is a master sym-
bol of the secret and power-
ful, the dangerous and un-
known, evoking the remotest
mysteries of nature and hu-
man nature, the most dimly-
sensed enigmas of space,
time, and the hidden regions
of the mind.

— the notebooks of A.S.

Masks of monsters brooded
down from all the walls —
full - lipped raven - browed
Dracula, the cavern - eyed
dome - foreheaded Phantom,
the mighty patchwork visage
of Dr. Frankenstein’s char-
nel-man with his filmy
strangely compassionate eyes,

and many earlier and later
fruitions of the dark half of
man’s imagination. Along
with them were numerous
stills from old horror movies
(both 3-D and flat), blown-up
book illustrations, monster
costumes and disguises in-
cluding an Ape Man’s hairy
hide, and several big hand-
lettered slogans such as “Ac-
cent Your Monster!” “Watch
Out, Normality!” “America,
Beware!” “Be Yourself — in
Spades!” “Your Lady in
Black,” and “Mount to Your
Monster!”

But Dave Cruxon did not
look up at the walls of his
“Monsterarium.” Instead he
smoothed out the pink note
he had crumpled in his hand
and read the crimson script
for the dozenth time.

Please excuse my daughter
for not attending lunch, to-
day, she being detained in
consequence of a massive
psychosis. ( Signed and Seal-
ed on the threshold of Seren-
ity Shoals )

The strangest thing about
Dave Cruxon’s reaction to the
note was that he did not no-
tice at all simply how weird
it was, how strangely the cen-
tral fact was stated, how
queerly the irony was ex-
pressed, how like it was to an
excuse sent by a pretentious

114

FANTASTIC

mother to her child’s teacher.
All he had mind for was the
central fact.

Now his gaze did move to
the walls. Meanwhile his
hands automatically but
gently smoothed the note,
then opened a drawer, reached
far in and took out a thick
sheaf of sheets of pink note-
paper with crimson script,
and started to add the new
note to it. As he did so a
brown flattened flower slipped
out of the sheaf and crawled
across the back of his hand.
He jerked back his hands and
stood staring at the pink
sheets scattered over a large
black blotter and at the wholly
inanimate flower.

The phone tingled his
wrist. He lunged at it.

“Dave Cruxon,” he identi-
fied himself hoarsely.

“Serenity Shoals, Recep-
tion. I find we do have a pa-
tient named Gabriel le Wisant.
She was admitted this morn-
ing. She cannot come to the
phone at present or receive
visitors. I would suggest, Mr.
Cruxon, that you call again in
about a week or that you get
in touch with — ”

Dave put back the phone.
His gaze went back to the
walls. After a while it be-
came fixed on one particular
mask on the far wall. After
another while he walked

slowly over to it and reached
it down. As his fingers
touched it, he smiled and his
shoulders relaxed, as if it re-
assured him.

It was the face of a devil —
a green devil.

He flipped a little smooth
lever that could be operated
by the tongue of the wearer
and the eyes glowed brilliant
red. Set unobtrusively in the
cheeks just below the glowing
eyes were the actual eyeholes
of the mask — small, but each
equipped with a fisheye lens
so that the wearer would get
a wide view.

He laid down the mask re-
luctantly and from a heap of
costumes picked up what
looked like a rather narrow
silver breastplate or corselet,
stiffly metallic but hinged at
one side for the convenience
of the person putting it on. To
it were attached strong wide
straps, rather like those of a
parachute. A thin cable led
from it to a small button-
studded metal cylinder that fit
in the hand. He smiled again
and touched one of the but-
tons, and the hinged breast-
plate rose toward the ceiling,
dangling its straps and drag-
ging upward his other hand
and arm. He took his finger
off the button and the breast-
plate sagged toward the floor.

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115

He set the whole assembly
beside the mask.

Next he took up a wicked-
looking pair of rather stiff
gloves with horny claws set
at the finger-ends. He also
handled and set aside a loose
one-piece suit.

What distinguished both
the gloves and the coverall
was that they glowed whitely
even in the moderately bright
light of the Monsterarium.

Finally he picked up from
the piled costumes what
looked at first like a large
handful of nothing — or rather
as if he had picked up a loose
cluster of lenses and prisms
made of so clear a material
as to be almost invisible. In
whatever direction he held it,
the wall behind was distorted
as if seen through a heat-
shimmer or as reflected in a
crazy-house mirror. Some-
times his hand holding it dis-
appeared partly and when he
thrust his other arm into it,
that arm vanished.

Actually what he was hold-
ing was a robe made of a
plastic textile called light-floio
fabric. Rather like lucite, the
individual threads of the
light-flow fabric carried or
“piped” the light entering
them, but unlike lucite they
spilled such light after carry-
ing it roughly halfway around

a circular course. The result
was that anything draped in
light-flow fabric became
roughly invisible, especially
against a uniform back-
ground.

Dave laid down the light-
flow fabric rather more reluc-
tantly than he had put down
the mask, breastplate and
other items. It was as if he
had laid down a twisting
shadow.

Then Dave clasped his
hands behind him and began
to pace. From time to time
his features worked unpleas-
antly. The tempo of his pac-
ing quickened. A smile came
to his lips, worked into his
cheeks, became a fixed, hard,
graveyard grin.

Suddenly he stopped by the
pile of costumes, struck an
attitude, commanded hoarsely,
“My hauberk, knave!” and
picked up the silver breast-
plate and belted it around
him. He tightened the straps
around his thighs and shoul-
ders, his movements now sure
and swift.

Next, still grinning, he
growled, “My surcoat, sir-
rah!”— and donned the glow-
ing coverall.

“Vizard!” “Gauntlets!” He
put on the green mask and
the clawed gloves.

Then he took up the robe
of light-flow fabric and

116

FANTASTIC

started for the door, but he
saw the scattered pink notes.

He brushed them off the
black blotter, found a white
stylus, and gripping it with
two fingers and thumb ex-
tended from slits in the right-
hand gauntlet, he wrote:

Denr Bobbie, Dr. Gee, et al,

By the time you read, thin,
you will probably be hearing
about me on the news chan-
nels. I’m doing one last
bang-up public relations job
for dear old IU. You can call
it Crux on’s Crusade — the
One-Man Witchcraft. I’ve
tried out the equipment be-
fore, but only experimental-
ly. Not this time! This time
when I’m finished, no one
will be able to bury the
Monster Program. Wish me
luck on my Big Hexperi-
ment — you’ll need it! — be-
cause the stench is going to
be unendurable.

Your little upprentic de-
mon, D.C.

He threw the stylus away
over his shoulder and slipped
on the robe of light-flow
fabric, looping part of it over
his head like a cowl.

Some twenty minutes ago a
depressed young man in busi-
ness jerkin and shorts had
entered the Monsterarium.

Now an exultant-hearted
heat-shimmer, with a reserve
glow under its robe of invisi-
bility, exited from it.

There is a batable ground
between madness and sanity,
though few tread it: laugh-
ter.

— the notebooks of A.S.

Andreas Snowden sat in
Joel Wisant’s bedroom trying
to analyze his feelings of an-
noyance and uneasiness and
dissatisfaction with himself —
and also trying to decide if
his duty lay here or back at
Serenity Shoals.

The windoor was half open
on fast-fading sunlight.
Through it came a medley of
hushed calls and commands,
hurried footsteps, twittering
female laughter, and the
sounds of an amateur orches-
tra self-consciously tuning up
— the Twilight Tranquility
Festival was about to begin.

Joel Wisant sat on the edge
of the bed looking toward the
wall. He was dressed in green
tights, jerkin, and peaked cap
— a Robin Hood costume for
the Festival. His face wore a
grimly intent, distant expres-
sion. Snowden decided that
here was a part of his reason
for feeling annoyed — it is al-
ways irritating to be in the
same room with someone who
is communicating silently by
micromike and sofstspeaker.
He knew that Wisant was at
the moment in touch with Se-
curity— not with Securitor
Harker, who was downstairs

TRANQUILITY, OR ELSE!

117

and probably likewise en-
gaged in silent phoning, but
with the Central Security Sta-
tion in New Angeles — but
that was all he did know.

Wisant’s face relaxed some-
what, though it stayed grim,
and he turned quickly toward
Snowden, who seized the op-
portunity to say, “Joel, when
I came here this afternoon,
I didn’t know anything
about — ” but Wisant ciit him
short with: “Hold it, Andy!
— and listen to this. There
have been at least a dozen
new mass-hysteria outbreaks
in the NLA area in the past
two hours.” He rapped it out
tersely. “Traffic is snarled on
two ground routes and swirl-
ed in three ’copter lanes. If
safety devices hadn’t worked
perfectly there’d have been a
hatful of deaths and serious
injuries. There’ ve been pan-
ics in department stores, res-
taurants, offices, and at least
one church. The hallucinations
are developing a certain
amount of pattern, indicating
case-to-case infection. People
report something rushing in-
visibly through the air and
buzzing them like a giant fly.
I’m having the obvious luna-
tics held — those reporting
hallucinations like green
faces or devilish laughter. We
can funnel ’em later to psy-
chopathic or your place — I’ll

want your advice on that. The
thing that bothers me most
is that a garbled account of
the disturbances has leaked
out to the press. ‘Green De-
mon Jolts City,’ one imbecile
blatted! I’ve given orders to
have the involved ’casters and
commentators picked up — got
to try to limit the infection.
Can you suggest any other
measures I should take?”
“Why, no, Joel — it’s rather
out of my sphere, you know,”
Snowden hedged. “And I’m
not too sure about your
theory of infectious psycho-
sis, though I’ve run across a
little folie a deux in my time.
But what I did want to talk
to you about — ”

“Out of your sphere, Andy?
What do you mean by that?”
Wisant interrupted curtly.
“You’re a psychologist, a psy-
chiatrist — mass hysteria’s
right up your alley.”

“Perhaps, but security
operations aren’t. And how
can you be so sure, Joel, that
there isn’t something real be-
hind these scares?”

“Green faces, invisible
fliers, Satanic laughter? —
don’t be ridiculous, Andy.
Why, these are just the sort
of outbreaks Report K pre-
dicts. They’re like the two
cases here last night. Wake
up, man! — this is a major
emergency.”

118

FANTASTIC

“Well . . . perhaps it is. It
still isn’t up my alley. Get
your loonies to Serenity
Shoals and I’ll handle them.”
Snowden raised his hand de-
fensively. “Now wait a min-
ute, Joel, there’s something 7
want to say. I’ve had it on
my mind ever since I heard
about Gabby. I was shocked
to hear about that, Joel — you
should have told me about it
earlier. Anyway, you had a
big shock this morning. No,
don’t tell me differently — it’s
bound to shake a man to his
roots when his daughter ab-
errates and does a symbolic
murder on him or beside him.
You simply shouldn’t be driv-
ing yourself the way you are.
You ought to have postponed
the IU hearing this morning.
It could have waited.”

“What? — and have taken a
chance of more of that Mon-
ster Materia] getting to the
public?”

Snowden shrugged. “A day
or two one way or the other
could hardly have made any
difference.”

“I disagree,” Wisant said
sharply. “Even as it is, it’s
touched off this mass hysteria
and — ”

" — if it is mass hysteria — ”

Wisant shook his head im-
patiently. “ — and we had to
show Cruxon up as an irre-
sponsible mischief maker.

You must admit that was a
good thing.”

“I suppose so,” Snowden
said slowly. “Though I’m
rather sorry we stamped on
him quite so hard — teased
him into stamping on himself,
really. He had hold of some
very interesting ideas even if
he was making bad use of
them.”

“How can you say that,
Andy? Don’t you psycholo-
gists ever take things serious-
ly?” Wisant sounded deeply
shocked. His face worked a
little. “Look, Andy, I haven’t
told anybody this, but I think
Cruxon was largely respon-
sible for what happened to
Gabby.”

Snowden looked up sharp-
ly. “I keep forgetting you said
they were acquainted. Joel,
how deep did that go? Did
they have dates ? Do you think
they were in love? Were they
together much?”

“I don’t know!” Wisant
had started to pace. “Gabby
didn’t have dates. She wasn’t
old enough to be in love. She
met Cruxon when he lectured
to her communications class.
After that she saw him in the
daytime — only once or twice,
I thought — to get material
for her course. But there
must have been more than
that. There must have been
things Gabby didn’t tell me. I

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119

don’t know how far they went,
Andy, I don’t know!”

He broke off because a
plump woman in flowing
Greek robes of green silk had
darted into the room.

“Mr. Wisant, you’re ‘on’ in
ten minutes!” she cried, hop-
ping with excitement. Then
she saw Snowden. “Oh excuse
me.”

“That’s quite all right, Mrs.
Potter,” Wisant told her. “I’ll
be there on cue.”

She nodded happily, made
an odd pirouette, and darted
out again. Simultaneously the
orchestra outside, which
sounded as if composed chief-
ly of flutes, clarinets and re-
corders, began warbling mys-
teriously.

Snowden took the oppor-
tunity to say quickly, “Listen
to me, Joel. I’m worried about
the way you’re driving your-
self after the shock you had
this morning. I thought that
when you came home here
you’d quit, but now I find
that it’s just so you can par-
ticipate in this community af-
fair while keeping in touch at
the same time with those NLA
scares. Easy does it, Joel —
Harker and Security Central
can handle those things.”

Wisant looked at Snowden.
“A man must attend to all his
duties,” he said simply. “This

is serious, Andy, and any min-
ute you may be involved
whether you like it or not.
What do you think the danger
is of an outbreak at Serenity
Shoals?”

“Outbreak?” Snowden said
uneasily. “What do you
mean?”

“I mean just that. You may
think of your patients as chil-
dren, Andy, but the cold fact
is that you’ve got ten thou-
sand dangerous maniacs not
three miles from here under
very inadequate guard. What
if they are infected by the
mass hysteria and stage an
outbreak?”

Snowden frowned. “It’s
true we have some inade-
quately trained personnel
these days. But you’ve got the
wrong picture of the situa-
tion. Emotionally sick people
don’t stage mass outbreaks.
They’re not syndicate crooks
with smuggled guns and
dynamite.”

“I’m not talking about
plotted outbreaks. I’m talking
about mass hysteria. If it can
infect the sane, it can infect
the insane. And I know the
situation at Serenity Shoals
has become very difficult —
very difficult for you, Andy —
with the overcrowding. I’ve
been keeping in closer touch
with that than you may know.
I’m aware that you’ve peti-

120

FANTASTIC

tioned that lobotomy, long-se-
ries electroshock, and heavy
narcotics be reintroduced in
general treatment.”

“You’ve got that wrong,”
Snowden said sharply. “A
minority of doctors — a couple
of them with political connec-
tions— have so petitioned. I’m
dead set against it myself.”
“But most families have
given consent for lobotomies.”
“Most families don’t want
to be bothered with the per-
son who goes over the edge.
They’re willing to settle for
anything that will ‘soothe’
him.”

“Why do you headshrinkers
always have to sneer at de-
cent family feelings?” Wisant
demanded stridently. “Now
you’re talking like Cruxon.”
“I’m talking like myself!
Cruxon was right about too
much soothing syrup — espe-
cially the kind you put in
with a needle or a knife.”
Wisant looked at him puz-
zledly. “I don’t understand
you, Andy. You’ll have to do
something to control your pa-
tients as the overcrowding
mounts. With this epidemic
mass hysteria you’ll have hun-
dreds, maybe thousands of
cases in the next few weeks.
Serenity Shoals will become
a ... a Mind Bomb ! I always
thought of you as a realist,
Andy.”

Snowden answered sharply,
"And I think that when you
talk of thousands of new
cases, you’re extrapolating
from too little data. ‘Danger-
ous maniacs’ and ‘mind
bombs’ are theater talk —
propaganda jargon. You can’t
mean that, Joel.”

Wisant’s face was white,
possibly with suppressed an-
ger, and he was trembling
very slightly. “You won’t say
that, Andy, if your patients
erupt out of Serenity Shoals
and come pouring over the
countryside in a great gush
of madness.”

Snowden stared at him.
“You’re afraid of them,” he
said softly. “That’s it —
you’re afraid of my loonies.
At the back of your mind
you’ve got some vision of a
stampede of droolers with
butcher knives.” Then he
winced at his own words and
slumped a little. “Excuse me,
Joel,” he said, “but really, if
you think Security Shoals is
such a dangerous place, why
did you let your daughter go
there?”

"Because she is dangerous,”
Wisant answered coldly. “I’m
a realist, Andy.”

Snowden blinked and then
nodded wearily, rubbing his
eyes. “I’d forgotten about
this morning.” He looked

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSEI

121

around. “Did it happen in
this room?”

Wisant nodded.

“Where’s the pillow she
chopped up?” Snowden asked
callously.

Wisant pointed across the
room at a box that was not
only wrapped and sealed as if
it contained infectious mate-
rial, but also corded and the
cord tied in an elaborate bow.
“I thought it should be care-
fully preserved,” he said.

Snowden stared. “Did you
wrap that box?”

“Yes. Why?”

Snowden said nothing.
Harker came in, asking,
“Been in touch Avith the Sta-
tion the last five minutes,
Joel? Two new outbreaks. A
meeting of the League for To-
tal Peace Through Total Dis-
armament reports that naked
daggers appeared from no-
where and leaped through the
air, chasing members and
pinning the speaker to his
rostrum by his jerkin. One
man kept yelling about pol-
tergeists— we got him. And
the naked body of a man
weighing 300 pounds fell
spang in the middle of the
Congress of the specp — that’s
the Society for the Prevention
of Emotional Cruelty to Peo-
ple. Turned out to be a week-
old corpse stolen from City
Hospital Morgue. Very fra-

grant. Joel, this mass-hysteria
thing is broadening out.”

Wisant nodded and opened
a drawer beside his bed.

Snowden snorted. “A solid
corpse is about as far from
mass hysteria as you can
get,” he observed. “What do
you want with that hot-rod,
Joel?”

Wisant did not answer.
Harker showed surprise.

“You stuck a heat-gun in
your jerkin, Joel,” Snowden
persisted. “Why?”

Wisant did not look at him,
but waved sharply for silence.
Mrs. Potter had come scam-
pering into the room, her
green robes flying.

“You’re on, Mr. Wisant,
you’re on!”

He nodded at her coolly and
walked toward the door just
as two unhappy-looking men
in business jerkins and shorts
appeared in it. One of them
was carrying a rolled-up black
blotter.

“Mr. Wisant, Ave want to
talk to you,” Mr. Diskrow be-
gan. “I should say we have to
talk to you. Dr. Gline and I
were making some investiga-
tions at the IU offices — Mr.
Cruxon’s in particular — and
we found — ”

“Later,” Wisant told them
loudly as he strode by.

“Joel!” Harker called ur-
gently, but Wisant did not

122

FANTASTIC

pause or turn his head. He
went out. The four men looked
after him puzzledly.

The Twilight Tranquility
Festival was approaching its
muted climax. The Pixies and
Fairies (girls) had danced
their woodland ballet. The
Leprechauns and Elves
(boys) had made their Flash-
light Parade. The Greenest
Turf, the Growingest Garden,
the Healthiest Tree, the
Quietest ’Copter, the Friend-
liest House, the Rootedest
Family, and many other si-
lently superlative exurban
items had been identified and
duly admired. The orchestra
had played all manner of for-
est, brook, and bird music.
The Fauns and Pans (older
boys) had sung “Tranquility
So Masterful,” “These Ever-
lasting Knolls,” the Safety
Hymn, and “Come Let’s Steal
Quietly.” The Sprites and
Nymphs (older girls) had
done their Candlelight Sara-
band. Representing religion,
the local Zen Buddhist pastor
(an old Caucasian Califor-
nian) had blessed the gather-
ing with a sweet-sour word-
lessness. And now the
everpopular Pop Wisant was
going to give his yearly talk
and award trophies. (“It’s
tremendous of him to give of
himself this way,” one matron

said, “after what he went
through this morning. Did
you know that she was stark
naked? They wrapped a blan-
ket around her to put her
aboard the ’copter but she
kept pulling it off.”)

Freshly cut boughs attach-
ed to slim magnesium scaffold-
ing made, along with the real
trees, a vast leafy bower out
of what had this morning
been an acre of lawn. Proud
mothers in green robes and
dutiful fathers in green jer-
kins lined the walls, shep-
herding their younger chil-
dren. Before them stood a
double line of Nymphs and
Sprites in virginal white bal-
let costumes, each holding a
tall white candle tipped with
blue-hearted golden flame.

Up to now it had been
a rather more nervously
gay Tranquility Festival than
most of the mothers approved.
Even while the orchestra
played there had been more
than the usual quota of
squeals, little shrieks, hysteri-
cal giggles, complaints of
pinches and prods in the shad-
ows, candles blown out, raids
on the refreshment tables,
small children darting into
the bushes and having to be
retrieved. But Pop Wisant’s
talk would smooth things out,
the worriers told themselves.

And indeed as he strode be-

TRANQUILITY, OR ELSE!

123

tween the ranked nymphs
with an impassive smile and
mounted the vine-wreathed
podium, the children grew
much quieter. In fact the
hush that fell on the leafy Big
Top was quite remarkable.

"Dear friends, charming
neighbors, and fellow old
coots,” he began — and then
noticed that most of the mem-
bers of the audience were
looking up at the green ceil-
ing.

There had been no wind
that evening, no breeze at all,
but some of the boughs over-
head were shaking violently.
Suddenly the shaking died
away. (“My, what a sudden
gust that was,” Mrs. Ames
said to her husband. Mr.
Ames nodded vaguely — he
had somehow been thinking
of the lines from Macbeth
about Bimam Wood coming
to Dunsinane.)

“Fellow householders and
family members of Civil Ser-
vice Knolls,” Wisant began
again, wiping his forehead,
“in a few minutes several of
you will be singled out for
friendly recognition, but I
think the biggest award ought
to go to all of you collectively
for one more year of working
for tranquility ...”

The shaking of the boughs
had started up again and was

traveling down the far wall.
At least half the eyes of the
audience were traveling with
it. (“George!” Mrs. Potter
said to her husband, “it looks
as if a lot of crumpled cello-
phane were being dragged
through the branches. It all
wiggles.” He replied, “I for-
got my glasses.” Mr. Ames
muttered to himself : “The
wood began to move. Liar and
slave!”)

Wisant resolutely kept his
eyes away from the traveling
commotion and continued,
“. . . and for one more year
of keeping up the good fight
against violence, delinquency,
irrationality ...”

A rush of wind (looking
like “curdled air,” some said
afterwards) sped from the
rear of the hall to the podium.
Most of the candles were
blown out, as if a giant had
puffed at his giant birthday
cake, and the Nymphs and
Sprites squealed all the way
down the double line.

The branches around Wis-
ant shook wildly. “. . . emo-
tionalism, superstition, and
the evil powers of the imag-
ination!” he finished with a
shout, waving his arms as if
to keep off bats or bees.

Twice after that he gath-
ered himself to continue his
talk, although his audience
was in a considerable uproar,

124

FANTASTIC

but each time his attention
went back to a point a little
above their heads. No one else
saw anything where he was
looking (except some “cur-
dled air”), but Wisant seemed
to see something most horri-
ble, for his face paled, he
began to back off as if the
something were approaching
him, he waved out his arms
wildly as one might at a wasp
or a bat, and suddenly he be-
gan to scream, “Keep it off
me! Can’t you see it, you
fools? Keep it off!”

As he stepped off the po-
dium backwards he snatched
something from inside his
jerkin. There was a nasty
u'hish in the air and those
closest to him felt a wave of
heat. There were a few shrill
screams. Wisant fell heavily
on the turf and did not move.
A shining object skidded away
from his hand. Mr. Ames
picked it up. The pistol-shaped
weapon was unfamiliar to him
and he only later discovered
it was a heat-gun.

The foliage of the Great
Bower was still again, but a
long streak of leaves in the
ceiling had instantaneously
turned brown. A few of these
came floating down as if it
were autumn.

Sometimes I think of the
whole world as one great
mental hospital, its finest

people only inmates trying

out as aides.

The notebooks of A.S.

It is more fun than skin-
diving to soar through the air
in an antigravity harness.
That is, after you have got
the knack of balancing your
field. It is deeply thrilling to
tilt your field and swoop
down at a slant, or cut it en-
tirely and just drop — and
then right it or gun it and go
bounding up like a rubber
ball. The positive field around
your head and shoulders
creates an air cushion against
the buffeting of the wind and
your own speed.

But after a while the har-
ness begins to chafe, your
sense of balance gets tired,
your gut begins to resent the
slight griping effects of the
field supporting you, and the
solid ground which you first
viewed with contempt comes
to seem more and more invit-
ing. David Cruxon discovered
all of these things.

Also, it is great fun to
scare people. It is fun to flash
a green demon mask in their
faces out of nowhere and see
them blanch. Or to glow
white in the dark and listen
to them scream. It is fun to
snarl traffic and panic pedes-
trians and break up solemn
gatherings — the solemner the
better — with rude or shocking

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

125

intrusions. It is fun to know
that your fellow man is little
and puffed up and easily terri-
fied and as in love with secu-
rity as a baby with his bottle,
and to prove it on him again
and again. Yes, it is fun to be
a practicing monster.

But after a while the best
of Halloween pranks becomes
monotonous, fear reactions
begin to seem stereotyped,
you start to see yourself in
your victims, and you get
ashamed of winning with
loaded dice. David Cruxon
discovered this too.

He had thought after he
broke up the Tranquility Fes-
tival that he had hours of
mischief left in him. The
searing near-miss of Wis-
ant’s hot-rod had left him ex-
hilarated. (Only the light-
flow fabric, diverting the in-
frared blast around him, had
saved him from dangerous,
perhaps fatal burns.) And
now the idea of stampeding
an insane asylum had an
ironic attraction. And it had
been good sport at first, espe-
cially when he invisibly buzz-
ed two sand-cars of aides into
a panic so that they went
careening over the dunes on
their fat tires, headlight
beams swinging frantically,
and finally burst through the
light fence on the landward
side (giving rise to a rumor

of an erupting horde of raven-
ing madmen). That had been
very good fun indeed, rather
like harmlessly strafing war
refugees, and after it Dave
had shucked off his robe and
hood of invisibility and put
on a Glowing Phantom aero-
batic display, diving and soar-
ing over the dark tiny hills,
swooping on little groups
with menacing phosphores-
cent claws and peals of Sat-
anic laughter.

But that didn’t prove to be
nearly as good fun. True, his
victims squealed and some-
times ran, but they didn’t
seem to panic permanently
like the aides. They seemed to
stop after a few steps and
come back to be scared again,
like happily hysterical chil-
dren. He began to wonder
what must be going on in the
minds down there if a Glow-
ing Phantom were merely a
welcome diversion. Then the
feeling got hold of him that
those people down there saw
through him and sympathized
with him. It was a strange
feeling — both deflating and
heart-warming.

But what really finished
Dave off as a practicing mon-
ster was when they started to
cheer him — cheer him as if
he were their champion re-
turning in triumph. Cruxon’s
Crusade — was that what he’d

126

FANTASTIC

called it? And was this his
Holy Land? As he asked him-
self that question he realized
that he was drifting wearily
down toward a hilltop on a
long slow slant and he let his
drift continue, landing with
a long scuff.

Despite the cheers, he rath-
er expected to be gibbered at
and manhandled by the crowd
that swiftly gathered around
him. Instead he was patted
on the back, congratulated for
his exploits at New Angeles,
and asked intelligent ques-
tions.

Gabby Wisant’s mind had
fully determined to stay un-
derground a long time. But
that had been on the assump-
tions that her body would
stay near Daddikins at Civil
Service Knolls and that the
thing that had taken control
of her body would stay hun-
gry and eager. Now those as-
sumptions seemed doubtful, so
her mind decided to risk an-
other look around.

She found herself one of a
scattered crowd of people
wandering over sandhills in
the dark. Some memories
came to her, even of the morn-
ing, but not painfully enough
to drive her mind below. They
lacked pressure.

There was an older woman
beside her — a rather silly

and strangely affected woman
by her talk, yet somehow lik-
able— who seemed to be try-
ing to look after her. By
stages Gabby came to realize
it must be her mother.

Most of the crowd were
following the movements of
something that glowed white-
ly as it swooped and whirled
through the air, like a small
demented comet far off
course. After a bit she saw
that the comet was a phos-
phorescent man. She laughed.

Some of the people started
to cheer. She copied them.
The glowing man landed on a
little sand hill just ahead.
Some of the crowd hurried
forward. She followed them.
She saw a young man step-
ping clumsily out of some
glowing coveralls. The glow
let her see his face.

“Dave, you idiot!” she
squealed at him happily.

He smiled at her shame-
facedly.

Doctor Snowden found
Dave and Gabby and Beth
Wisant on a dune just inside
the break in the wire fence
— the last of the debris from
last night’s storm. The sky
was just getting light. The
old man motioned back the
aides with him and trudged
up the sandy rise and sat
down on a log.

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSE!

127

“Oh, hello, Doctor,” Beth
Wisant said. “Have you met
Gabrielle? She came to visit
me just like I told you.”

Dr. Snowden nodded tired-
ly. “Welcome to Serenity
Shoals, Miss Wisant. Glad to
have you here.”

Gabby smiled at him timid-
ly. “I’m glad to be here too —
I think. Yesterday . . Her
voice trailed off.

“Yesterday you were a
wild animal,” Beth Wisant
said loudly, “and you killed a
pillow instead of your father.
The doctor will tell you that’s
very good sense.”

Dr. Snowden said, “All of
us have these somatic wild
animals — ” (He looked at
Dave) “ — these monsters.”
Gabby said, “Doctor, do
you think that Mama calling
me so long ago can have had
anything to do with what hap-
pened to me yesterday?”

“I see no reason why not,”
he replied, nodding. “Of
course there’s a lot more than
that that’s mixed up about
you.”

“When I implant a sugges-
tion, it works,” Beth Wisant
asserted.

Gabby frowned. “Part of
the mix-up is in the world, not
me*

“The world is always mixed
up,” Dr. Snowden said. “It’s a
pretty crazy hodge-podge

128

with sensible strains running
through it, if you look for
them very closely. That’s one
of the things we have to ac-
cept.” Pie rubbed his eyes and
looked up. “And while we’re
on the general topic of un-
pleasant facts, here’s some-
thing else. Serenity Shoals
has got itself one more new
patient besides yourselves —
Joel Wisant.”

“Hum,” said Beth Wisant.
“Maybe now that I don’t have
him to go home to, I can start
getting better.”

“Poor Daddikins,” Gabby
said dully.

“Yes,” Snowden continued,
looking at Dave, “that last lit-
tle show you put on at the
Tranquility Festival — and
then on top of it the news that
there was an outbreak here —
really broke him up.” He
shook his head. “Iron perfec-
tionist. At the end he was
even demanding that we drop
an atomic bomb on Serenity
Shoals — that was what swung
Harker around to my side.”
“An atom bomb!” Beth
Wisant said. “The idea!”

Dr. Snowden nodded. “It
does seem a little extreme.”
“So you class me as a psy-
chotic too,” Dave said, a
shade argumentively. “Of
course I’ll admit that after
what I did — ”

Dr. Snowden looked at him

FANTASTIC

sourly. “I don’t class you as
psychotic at all — though a lot
of my last-century colleagues
would have taken great de-
light in tagging you as a psy-
chopathic personality. I think
you’re just a spoiled and will-
ful young man with no capac-
ity to bear frustration. You’re
a self-dramatizer. You jump-
ed into the ocean of aberra-
tion— that was the meaning of
your note, wasn't it? — but the
first waves tossed you back on
the beach. Still, you got in
here, which was your main
object.”

“How do you know that?”
Dave asked.

“You’d be surprised,” Dr.
Snowden said wearily, “at
how many more-or-less sane
people want to get into men-
tal hospitals these days — it’s
probably the main truth be-
hind the Report K figures.
They seem to think that in-
sanity is the only great adven-
ture left man in a rather de-
personalizing age. They want
to understand their fellow
man at the depths, and here
at least they get the opportu-
nity.” He looked at Dave
meaningfully as he said that.

Then he went on, “At any
rate, Serenity Shoals is the
safest place for you right now,
Mr. Cruxon. It gets you out
from under a stack of damage
suits and maybe a lynch-mob
or two.”

He stood up. “So come on
then, all of you, down to Re-
ceiving,” he directed, a bit
grumpily. “Pick up that junk
you’ve got there, Dave, and
bring it along. We’ll try to
hang onto the harness — it
might be useful in treating
gravitational dementia. Come
on, come on ! — I’ve wasted all
night on you. Don’t expect
such concessions in the fu-
ture. Serenity Shoals is no
vacation resort — and no
honeymoon resort either ! —
though , . .” (He smiled flick-
er ingly) “. . . though some
couples do try.”

They followed him down
the sandy hill. The rising sun
behind them struck gold from
the drab buildings and faded
tents ahead.

Dr. Snowden dropped back
beside Dave. “Tell me one
thing,” he said quietly. “Was
it fun being a green demon ?”

Dave said, “That it was!”

TRANQUILITY. OR ELSEI

129

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DETECTIVES — Excellent opportunities. Experience

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LOOKING For correspondents who shore your
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i

130

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1960

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