“One more!” yelled his trusted lieutenant. And with that one more the door would give way, he knew, and what they would do to him would be no picnic. He had schooled them well, though crudely, in the techniques of strikebreaking effected by employers of the 1880s.
“Hurry it up!” he snapped at Moira. She didn’t answer, being wholly intent, it seemed, on the enlargement of the pit which was growing in the floor. It would now admit the passage of a slimmer man than the sorcerer, but his own big bones would never make it.
With agonizing slowness the pit grew, tile by tile, as the tiny creature frowned into it till her face was white and bloodless. Almarish fancied he could hear through the door the labored breathing of the half-breed demons as they made ready to swing again.
Crash! It came again, and only his own body kept the door from falling in fragments.
“Right—dive!” shrilled the little voice of Moira as the battering ram poked through into the room. He caught her up in one hand and squeezed through into the blackness of the pit. He looked up and could see a circle of faces snarling with rage as he slid down a kind of infinitely smooth inclined tunnel. Abruptly the patch of light above him was blotted out and there was absolutely nothing to be seen.
All Almarish knew was that he was gliding in utter blackness at some terrifying speed in excess of anything sane down to a place he knew nothing of in the company of a vicious little creature whose sole desire seemed to be to cut his throat and drink his blood with glee.
7
“Where,” asked Almarish, “does this end?”
“You’ll find out,” snarled the little creature. “Maybe you’re yellow already?”
“Don’t say that,” he warned. “Not unless you want to get playfully pinched—in half.”
“Cold-blooded,” she marveled. “Like a snake or lizard. Heart’s probably three-ventricled, too.”
“Our verbal contract,” said the sorcerer, delicately emphasizing verbal, “didn’t include an exchange of insults.”
“Yeah,” she said abstractedly. And though they were in the dark, he could sense that she was worried. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“It’s your fault,” she shrilled. “It’s your own damned fault hurrying me up so I did this!” The man knew that she was near distraction with alarm. And he could feel the reason why. They were slowing down, and this deceleration, presumably, was not on Moira’s schedule.
“We on the wrong line?” he asked coolly.
“Yes. That’s about it. And don’t ask me what happens now, because I don’t know, you stupid cow!” Then she was sniffling quietly in his hand, and the sorcerer was wondering how he could comfort her without breaking her in two.
“There now,” he soothed tentatively, stroking her hair carefully with the tip of a finger. “There, now, don’t get all upset—”
It occurred to him to worry on his own account. They had slowed to a mere snail’s pace, and at the dramatically, psychologically correct moment a light appeared ahead. A dull chanting resounded through the tube:
“Slimy flesh,
Clotted blood.
Fat, white worms,
These are food.”
From Moira there was a little, strangled wail. “Ghouls!”
“Grave robbers?” asked the sorcerer. “I can take care of them—knock a few heads together.”
“No,” she said in thin, hopeless tones. “You don’t understand. These are the real thing. You’ll see.”
As they slid from the tube onto a sort of receiving table Almarish hastily pocketed the little creature. Then, staring about him in bewilderment, he dropped his jaw and let it hang.
The amiable dietary ditty was being ground out by a phonograph, tending which there was a heavy-eyed person dressed all in gray. He seemed shapeless, lumpy, like a half-burned tallow candle on whose sides the drops of wax have congealed in half-teardrops and cancerous clusters. He had four limbs and, on the upper two, hands of a sort, and wore what could roughly be described as a face.
“You,” said Almarish. “What’s—where—?” He broke off in confusion as a lackluster eye turned on him.
From a stack beside him the creature handed him a pamphlet. The sorcerer studied the title:
WORKERS!
FIGHT TO PRESERVE AND EXTEND
the GLORIOUS REVOLUTION which has BEFALLEN
YOU!
He read further:
There are those among you who still can remember the haphazard days of individual enterprise and communal wealth. Those days were bad; many starved for lack of nutritious corpses. And yet people died Above; why this poverty in the midst of plenty?
There were Above as usual your scouts who cast about for likely members of your elite circle, those who wished to live forever on the traditional banquets of the Immortal Eaters. Fortunate indeed was the scout who enrolled Ingvar Hemming. For it was he who, descending to the Halls of the Eaters, saw the pitiful confusion which existed.
Even as he had brought order into the vast holdings which had been his when Above, he brought order to the Halls. A ratio was established between production and consumption and civilized habits of life-in-death were publicized. Nowadays no Immortal Eater would be seen barbarously clawing the flesh from a corpse as in the bad old days; in these times your Safety-Tasty cans are the warrant of cleanliness and flavor.
Bug-eyed, Almarish turned to the back of the booklet and scanned the advertisements:
For Those Guests Tonight!
Why Not
A Bottle of SAFETY-TASTY
EYES
10 per bottle—Hemming-Pakt
“5 blue, 5 brown—remember?”
There’s STRENGTH
s-p-e-e-d
grace
In A HEMMING HEARSE
“To serve we strive
The dead-alive.”
He tore his eyes from the repulsive pages. “Chum,” he demanded hoarsely of the phonograph attendant, “what the hell goes on here?”
“Hell?” asked the ghoul in a creaky, slushy voice. “You’re way off. You’ll never get there now. I buzzed the receiving desk—they’ll come soon.”
“I mean this thing.” Gingerly he held it up between thumb and forefinger.
“Oh—that. I’m supposed to give it to each new arrival. It’s full of bunk. If you could possibly get out of here, you’d do it. This ain’t no paradise, not by a long shot.”
“I thought,” said Almarish, “that you all had enough to eat now. And if you can afford hearses you must be well off.”
“You think so?” asked the attendant. “I can remember back when things was different. And then this Hemming man—he comes down from Above, corners the supply, hires men to can it and don’t pay them enough to buy it in cans. I don’t understand it, but I know it ain’t right.”
“But who buys the—the eyes and hearses?”
“Foremen an’ ex-ex-ekky-tives. And whut they are I don’t know. It jest ain’t jolly down here no more.”
“Where you from?” asked Almarish.
“Kentucky. Met a scout, 1794. Liked it and been here ever since. You change—cain’t git back. It’s a sad thing naow.” He dummied up abruptly as a squad of ghouls approached. They were much less far gone—“changed”—than the attendant. One snapped out a notebook. “Name?” he demanded.
“Packer, Almarish—what you will,” he said, fingering an invincible dagger in his sleeve.
“Almarish—the Almarish?”
“Overlord of Ellil,” he modestly confessed, assuming, and rightly, that the news of his recent deposition had not yet reached the Halls of the Eternal Eaters. “Come on a tour of inspection. I was wondering if I ought to take over this glorified cafeteria.”
“I assume,” said one of the reception committee—for into such it had hastily resolved itself—“you’ll want to see our vice-president in charge of Inspection and Regulation?”
“You assume wrongly,” said the
sorcerer coldly. “I want to see the president.”
“Mr. Hemming?” demanded the spokesman. All heads save that of Almarish bowed solemnly. “You—you haven’t an appointment, you know.”
“Lead on,” ordered the sorcerer grimly. “To Mr. Hemming.” Again the heads bowed.
Almarish strode majestically through the frosted-glass door simply lettered with the name and title of the man who Owned the nation of ghouls body and soul.
“Hello, Hemming,” said he to the man behind the desk, sitting down unbidden.
The president was scarcely “changed” at all. It was possible that he had been eating food that he had been used to when Above. What Almarish saw was an ordinary man in a business suit, white-haired, with a pair of burning eyes and a stoop forward that gave him the aspect of a cougar about to pounce.
“Almarish,” he said, “I welcome you to my—corporation.”
“Yes—thank you,” said the sorcerer. He was vaguely worried. Superb businessman that he was, he could tell with infallible instinct that something was wrong—that his stupendous bluff was working none too well.
“I’ve just received an interesting communication,” said Hemming casually. “A report via rock signals that there was some sort of disturbance in your Ellil. A sort of—palace revolution. Successful, too, I believe.”
Almarish was about to spring at his throat and bring down guards about his head when he felt a stirring in his pocket. Over the top of one peeked the head of Moira.
“Won’t you,” she said, “introduce me to the handsome man?”
Almarish, grinning quietly, brought her out into full view. With a little purr she gloriously stretched her lithe body. Hemming was staring like an old goat.
“This,” said the sorcerer, “is Moira.”
“For sale?” demanded the president, clenching his hands till the knuckles whitened on the top of his desk.
“Of course,” she drawled amiably. “At the moment a free agent. Right?” She tipped Almarish a wink.
“Of course,” he managed to say regretfully, “you know your own mind, Moira, but I wish you’d stay with me a little longer.”
“I’m tired of you,” she said. “A lively girl like me needs them young and handsome to keep my interest alive. There are some men”—she cast a sidelong, slumbrous glance at Hemming—“some men I’d never grow tired of.”
“Bring her over,” said the president, trying to control his voice.
Almarish realized that there was something in the combination of endemic desirability and smallness which was irresistible. He didn’t know it, but that fact was being demonstrated in his own Braintree, Mass., at that very time by a shop which had abandoned full-sized window dummies and was using gorgeous things a little taller than Moira but scarcely as sexy. In the crowds around their windows there were four men to every woman.
His Moira pirouetted on the desk top, displaying herself. “And,” she said, “for some men I’ll do a really extraordinary favor.”
“What’s that?” asked Hemming, fighting with himself to keep his hands off her. He was plainly terrified of squashing this gorgeous creature.
“I could make you,” she said, “my size. Only a little taller, of course. Women like that.”
“You can?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Then go ahead!”
“I have your full consent?”
“Yes,” he said. “Full consent.”
“Then—” A smile curved her lips as she swept her hands through the air in juggling little patterns.
A lizard about ten inches long reared up on its hind legs, then frantically skittered across the tabletop. Almarish looked for Hemming; could not see him anywhere. He picked up Moira. In a sleepy, contented voice she was saying:
“My size. Only a little taller, of course.”
8
Back in the tube from which they had been shunted into the Halls of the Eternal Eaters, as the ghouls fancied calling themselves, Almarish couldn’t get sense out of Moira. She had fallen asleep in his pocket and was snoring quietly, like a kitten that purred in its sleep.
And more than ever he marveled at this cold-blooded little creature. She had had the routine of seduction and transformation down so pat that he was sure she had done it a hundred times—or a thousand. You couldn’t tell ages in any of these unreal places; he, who should be a hundred and eight, looked just thirty-five and felt fifteen years younger than that.
All the same, it would be a good thing not to give Moira full and clear consent to anything at all. That must be an important part of the ceremony.
He hoped that the ghouls would straighten themselves out now that their president was a ten-inch lizard. But there were probably twenty villainous vice-presidents, assorted as to size, shape and duties, to fill his place. Maybe they’d get to fighting over it, and the ghouls-in-ordinary would be able to toss them all over.
Just like Ellil. A good thing he’d gotten out of that.
Not that he liked this way of traveling, he assured himself. It couldn’t be anything half so honest as it seemed—a smooth-lined tube slanting down through solid rock. It was actually, of course, God-knew-what tricky path between the planes of existence. That thirteen-hour clock was one way, this was another, but more versatile.
Lights ahead again—red lights. He took Moira from his pocket and shook her with incredible delicacy.
“You ox!” she snapped. “Trying to break my back?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Lights—red ones. What about them?”
“That’s it,” she said grimly. “Do you feel like a demigod—particularly?”
“No,” he admitted. “Not—particularly.”
“Then that’s too damn bad,” she snapped. “Remember, you have a job to do. When you get past the first trials and things, wake me up.”
“Trials?”
“Yes, always. Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse—they all have a Weigher of Souls. It’s always the same place, of course, but they like the formality. Now let me sleep.”
He put her back into his pocket and tried to brake with his hands and feet. No go. But soon he began to decelerate. Calling up what little he knew of such things, he tried to draw a desperate analogy between molecules standing radially instead of in line and whatever phenomenon this was which made him—who was actually, he knew, not moving at all—not-move more slowly than before, when he had been standing still at an inconceivably rapid pace.
The lights flared ahead into a bloody brilliance, and he skidded onto another of the delivery tables of sardonyx.
A thing with a hawk face took his arm.
“Stwm stm!” it said irritably.
“Velly solly,” said the sorcerer. “Me no spik—whatever in Hades you’re speaking.”
“R khrt sr tf mtht,” it said with a clash of its beak. Almarish drew his invincible dirk, and the thing shrugged disarmingly.
“Chdl nfr,” it grinned, sauntering off.
A Chinese approached, surveying him. “Sholom aleichim,” he greeted Almarish, apparently fooled by the beard.
“Aleichim sholom,” replied the enchanter, “but you’ve made a mistake.”
“Sorry,” said the Chinese. “We’ll put you on the calendar at General Sessions. Take him away!” he called sharply.
Almarish was hustled into a building and up a flight of stairs by two men in shiny blue uniforms before he had a chance to ask what the charge was. He was hustled through a pen, through innumerable corridors, through a sort of chicken-wire cage, and finally into a courtroom.
“Hurrah!” yelled thousands of voices. Dazedly he looked over a sea of faces, mostly bloodthirsty.
“Tough crowd,” one of the attendants muttered. “We better stick around to take care of you. They like to collect souvenirs. Arms . . . scalps . . .”
“See him?” demanded the other attendant, pointing at the judge. “Used to be a Neminant Divine. This is his punishment. This and dyspepsia. Chronic.”
Almarish could read the sour li
nes in the judge’s face like a book. And the book looked as though it had an unhappy ending.
“Prisoner to the bar,” wheezed the justice.
THE COURT: Prisoner, give your name and occupation. prisoner: Which ones, Your Honor? There are so many.
(Laughter and hisses.)
A VOICE: Heretic—burn him!
THE COURT: Order! Prisoner, give the ones you like best.
And remember—We Know All. prisoner: Yes, Your Honor. Packer, ex-overlord of Ellil. the court: Read the accusation, clerk. clerk: (several words lost) did willfully conspire to transform said Hemming into a lizard ten inches long.
(Laughter in the court.)
THE COURT: Poppycock!
RECORDING CLERK: How do you spell that, Your Honor?
THE COURT: Silence! I said Poppycock!
RECORDING CLERK: Thank you, Your Honor.
prisoner’s counsel: Your Honor, (several words lost), known (several words lost) childhood (several words lost).
THE COURT: Prisoner’s counsel is very vague.
PRISONER: My God—is he my lawyer?
THE COURT: So it would appear.
PRISONER: But I never saw the man before, and he’s obviously drunk, Your Honor!
THE COURT: Hie! What of it, prisoner?
PRISONER: Nothing. Nothing at all. Move to proceed.
PROSECUTING ATT’Y: I object! Your Honor, I object!
THE COURT: Sustained.
(A long silence. Hisses and groans.)
THE COURT: Mr. Prosecutor, you got us into this—what have you to say for yourself?
PROSECUTING ATT’Y: Your Honor, I—I—I move to proceed.
PRISONER: It’s my turn, Your Honor. I object.
THE COURT: Overruled.
(Cheers and whistles.)
VOICES: Hang him by the thumbs!
Cut his face off!
Heretic—burn him!
THE COURT: I wish it to go on record that I am much gratified by the intelligent interest which the public is taking in this trial.
Collected Short Fiction Page 281