Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  In midafternoon, Rantan, an elder, decided it was about time he killed his woman. So he pushed the thing who was examining his hut aside and smashed his female to death.

  Instantly, two of the things started jabbering at each other, hurrying out of the hut.

  One had the red mouth of a female.

  “He must have remembered it was time to kill his own woman,” Hum observed. The villagers waited, but nothing happened.

  “Perhaps,” Rantan said, “perhaps he would like someone to kill her for him. It might be the custom of their land.”

  Without further ado Rantan slashed down the female with his tail.

  The male creature made a terrible noise and pointed a metal stick at Rantan. Rantan collapsed, dead.

  “That’s odd,” Mishill said. “I wonder if that denotes disapproval?”

  The things from the metal object—eight of them—were in a tight little circle. One was holding the dead female, and the rest were pointing the metal sticks on all sides. Hum went up and asked them what was wrong.

  “I don’t understand,” Hum said, after he spoke with them. “They used words I haven’t learned. But I gather that their emotion is one of reproach.”

  The monsters were backing away. Another villager, deciding it was about time, killed his wife who was standing in a doorway. The group of monsters stopped and jabbered at each other. Then they motioned to Hum.

  Hum’s body motion was incredulous after he had talked with them.

  “If I understood right,” Hum said, “They are ordering us not to kill any more of our women!”

  “What!” Cordovir and a dozen others shouted.

  “I’ll ask them again.” Hum went back into conference with the monsters who were waving metal sticks in their tentacles.

  “That’s right,” Hum said. Without further preamble he flipped his tail, throwing one of the monsters across the village square. Immediately the others began to point their sticks while retreating rapidly.

  After they were gone, the villagers found that seventeen males were dead. Hum, for some reason, had been missed.

  “Now will you believe me!” Cordovir shouted. “The creatures told a deliberate untruth! They said they wouldn’t molest us and then they proceed to kill seventeen of us! Not only an amoral act—but a concerted death effort!”

  It was almost past human understanding.

  “A deliberate untruth!” Cordovir shouted the blasphemy, sick with loathing. Men rarely discussed the possibility of anyone telling an untruth.

  The villagers were beside themselves with anger and revulsion, once they realized the full concept of an untruthful creature. And, added to that was the monsters’ concerted death effort!

  It was like the most horrible nightmare come true. Suddenly it became apparent that these creatures didn’t kill females. Undoubtedly they allowed them to spawn unhampered. The thought of that was enough to make a strong man retch.

  The surplus females broke out of their pens and, joined by the wives, demanded to know what was happening. When they were told, they were twice as indignant as the men, such being the nature of women.

  “Kill them!” the surplus females roared. “Don’t let them change our ways. Don’t let them introduce immorality!”

  “It’s true,” Hum said sadly. “I should have guessed it.”

  “’They must be killed at once!” a female shouted. Being surplus, she had no name at present, but she made up for that in blazing personality.

  “We women desire only to live moral, decent lives, hatching eggs in the pen until our time of marriage comes. And then twenty-five ecstatic days! How could we desire more? These monsters will destroy our way of life. They will make us as terrible as they!”

  “Now do you understand?” Cordovir screamed at the men. “I warned you, I presented it to you, and you ignored me! Young men must listen to old men in time of crisis!” In his rage he killed two youngsters with a blow of his tail. The villagers applauded.

  “Drive them out,” Cordovir shouted. “Before they corrupt us!”

  All the females rushed off to kill the monsters.

  “They have death-sticks,” Hum observed. “Do the females know?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Cordovir said. He was completely calm now. “You’d better go and tell them.”

  “I’m tired,” Hum said sulkily. “I’ve been translating. Why don’t you go?”

  “Oh, let’s both go,” Cordovir said, bored with the youngster’s adolescent moodiness. Accompanied by half the villagers they hurried off after the females.

  They overtook them on the edge of the cliff that overlooked the object. Hum explained the death-sticks while Cordovir considered the problem.

  “Roll stones on them,” he told the females. “Perhaps you can break the metal of the object.”

  The females started rolling stones down the cliffs with great energy. Some bounced off the metal of the object. Immediately, lines of red fire came from the object and females were killed. The ground shook.

  “Let’s move back,” Cordovir said. “The females have it well in hand, and this shaky ground makes me giddy.”

  Together with the rest of the males they moved to a safe distance and watched the action.

  Women were dying right and left, but they were reinforced by women of other villages who had heard of the menace. They were fighting for their homes now, their rights, and they were fiercer than a man could ever be. The object was throwing fire all over the cliff, but the fire helped dislodge more stones which rained down on the thing. Finally, big fires came out of one end of the metal object.

  A landslide started, and the object got into the air just in time. It barely missed a mountain; then it climbed steadily, until it was a little black speck against the larger sun. And then it was gone.

  That evening, it was discovered that fifty-three females had been killed. This was fortunate since it helped keep down the surplus female population. The problem would become even more acute now, since seventeen males were gone in a single lump.

  Cordovir was feeling exceedingly proud of himself. His wife had been gloriously killed in the fighting, but he took another at once.

  “We had better kill our wives sooner than every twenty-five days for a while,” he said at the evening Gathering. Just until things get back to normal.”

  The surviving females, back in the pen, heard him and applauded wildly.

  “I wonder where the things have gone,” Hum said, offering the question to the Gathering.

  “Probably away to enslave some defenseless race,” Cordovir said.

  “Not necessarily,” Mishill put in, and the evening argument was on.

  FEEDING TIME

  TREGGIS FELT considerably relived when the owner of the bookstore went front to wait upon another customer. After all, it was essentially nerve-racking, to have a stoped, bespectacled, fawning old man constantly at one’s shoulder, peering at the page one was glancing at, pointing here and and there with a gnarled, dirty finger, obsequiously wiping dust from the shelves with a tobacco-stained handkerchief. To say nothing of the exquisite boredom of listening to the fellow’s cackling, high-pitched reminiscences.

  Undoubtedly he meant well, but really, there was a limit. One couldn’t do much more than smile politely and hope that the little bell over the front of the store would tinkle-as it had.

  Treggis moved toward the back of the store, hoping the disgusting little man wouldn’t try to search him out. He passed half a hundred Greek titles, then the popular sciences section. Next, in a strange jumble of titles and autors, he passed Edgar Rice Burroughs, Anthony Trollope, Theosophy, and the poems of Longfellow. The further back he went the deeper the dust became, the fewer the naked light bulbs suspended above the corridor, the higher the piles of moldy, dog-eared books.

  It was really a splendid old place, and for the life of him Treggis couldn’t understand how he had missed it before. Bookstores were his sole pleasure in life. He spent all his free hours in
them, wandering happily through the stacks.

  Of course, he was just interested in certain types of books.

  At the end of the high ramp of books there were three more corridors, branching off at absurd angles. Treggis followed the center path, reflecting that the bookstore hadn’t seemed so large from the outside; just a door half-hidden between two buildings, with an old hand-lettered sign in its upper panel. But then, these old stores were deceptive, often extending to nearly half a block in depth.

  At the end of this corridor two more book-trails split off. Choosing the one on the left, Treggis started reading titles, casually scanning them up and down with a practiced glance. He was in no hurry; he could, if he wished, spend the rest of the day here-to say nothing of the night.

  He had shuffled eight or ten feet down the corridor before one title struck him. He went back to it.

  It was a small, black-covered book, old, but with that ageles look that some books have. Its edges were worn, and the print on the cover faded.

  “Well, what do yo know,” Treggis murmured softly.

  The cover read: Care and Feeding of the Gryphon. And beneath that, in smaller print: Advice to the Keeper.

  A gryphon, he knew, was a mithological monster, half lion and half eagle.

  “Well now,” Treggis said to himself. “Let’s see now.” He opened the book and began reading the table of contents.

  The headings went: 1. Species of Gryphon. 2. A Short History of Gryphonology. 3. Subspecies of Gryphon. 4. Food for the Gryphon. 5. Constructing a NaturalHabitat for the Gryphon. 6. The Gryphon During Moulting Season. 7. The Gryphon and . . .

  He closed the book.

  “This,” he told himself, “is decidedly-well, unusual.” He flipped through the book, reading a sentence here and there. His first thought, that the book was one of the “unnatural” natural history compilations so dear to the Elizabethan heart, was clearly wrong. The book wasn’t old enough; and there was nothing euphemisic in the writing, no balanced sentence structure, ingenious antithesis and the like. It was straightforward, clean-cut, concise. Treggis flipped through a few more pages and came upon this: “The sole diet of the Gryphon is young virgins. Feeding time is once a month, and care should be exercised—”

  He closed the book again. The sentence set up a train of thought all its own. He banished it with a blush and looked again at the shelf, hoping to find more books of the same type. Something like A Short History of the Affairs of the Sirens, or perhaps The Proper Breeding of Minotaurs. But there was nothing even remotely like it. Not on that shelf nor any other, as far as he could tell.

  “Find anything?” a voice at his shoulder asked. Treggis gulped, smiled, and held out the black-covered old book.

  “Oh yes,” the old man said, wiping dust from the cover. “Quite a rare book, this.”

  “Oh, is it?” murmured Treggis.

  “Gryphons,” the old man mused, flipping through the book, “are quite rare. Quite a rare species of-animal,” he finished, after a moment’s thought. “A dollar-fifty for this book, sir.”

  Treggis left with his possession clutched under his thin right arm. He made straight for his room. It wasn’t every day that one bought a book on the Care and Feeding of Gryphons.

  Treggis’ room bore a striking resemblance to a secondhand bookstore. There was the same lack of space, the same film of gray dust over everything, the same vaguely arranged chaos of titles, autors, and types. Treggis didn’t stop to gloat over his treasures. His faded Libidinous Verses passed unnoticed. Quite uceremoniously he pushed the Psychopathia Sexualis from his armchair, sat down and began to read.

  There was quite a lot to the care and feeding of the gryphon. One wouldn’t think that a creature half lion and half eagle would be so touchy. There was also an interesting amplification of the eating habits of the gryphon. And other information. For pure enjoyment, the gryphon book was easily as good as the Havelock Ellis lectures on sex, formerly his favorite.

  Toward the end, there were full instructions on how to get to the zoo. The instructions were, to say the least, unique.

  It was a good ways past midnight when Treggis closed the book. What a deal of strange information there was between those two black covers! One sentence in particular he couldn’t get out of his head: “The sole diet of the gryphon is youn virgins.”

  That bothered him. It didn’t seem fair, somehow.

  After a while he opened the book again to the Instructions for Getting to the Zoo.

  Decidedly strange they were. And yet, not too difficult. Not requiring, certainly, too much physical exertion. Just a few words, a few motions. Treggis realized suddenly how onerous his bank clerk’s job was. A stupid waste of eight good hours a day, no matter how one looked at it. How much more interesting to be a keeper in charge of the gryphon. To use the special ointments during moulting season, to answer questions about gryphonology. To be in charge of feeding. “The sole diet . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” Treggis mumbled rapidly, pacing the floor of his narrow room. “A hoax-but might as well try out the instructions. For a laugh.”

  He laughed hollowly.

  There was no blinding flash, no clap of thander, but Treggis was nevertheless transported, instantaneously so it seemed, to a place. He staggered for a moment, then regained his balance and opened his eyes. The sunlight was blinding. Looking around, he could see that someone had done a very good job of constructing The Natural Habitat of the Gryphon.

  Treggis walked forward, holding himself quite well considering the trembling ih his ankles, knees, and stomach. Then he saw the gryphon.

  At the same time the gryphon saw him.

  Slowly at first, then with ever-gaining momentum, the gryphon advanced on him. The great eagle’s wings opened, the talons extended, and the gryphon leaped, or sailed, forward.

  Treggis tried to jump out of the way in a single uncontrollable shudder. The gryphon came at him, huge and golden in the sun, and Treggis screamed desperately, “No, no! The sole diet of the gryphon is young—”

  Then he screamed again in full realizaton as talons seized him.

  THE DEMONS

  There’s an old saying among wizards that it takes a demon to catch a demon. But you can't depend on anything nowadays. It’s getting to the point where you can’t even trust your best fiend.

  Walking along Second Avenue, Arthur Gammet decided it was a rather nice spring day. Not too cold, just brisk and invigorating. A perfect day for selling insurance, he told himself . He stepped off the curb at Ninth Street.

  And vanished.

  “Didja see that?” A butcher’s assistant asked the butcher. They had been standing in front of their store, idly watching people go by.

  “See what?” the butcher, a corpulent, red-faced man, replied.

  “The guy in the overcoat. He disappeared.”

  “Yeh,” the butcher said. “So he turned up Ninth, so what?”

  The butcher’s assistant hadn’t seen Arthur turn up Ninth, down Ninth, or across Second. He had seen him disappear. But should he insist on it? You tell your boss he’s wrong, so where does it get you? Besides, the guy in the overcoat probably had turned up Ninth. Where else could he have gone?

  But Arthur Gammet was no longer in New York. He had thoroughly vanished.

  Somewhere else, not necessarily on Earth, a being who called himself Neelsebub was staring at a pentagon. Within it was something he hadn’t bargained for. Neelsebub fixed it with a bitter stare, knowing he had good cause for anger. He’d spent years digging out magic formulas, experimenting with herbs and essences, reading the best books on wizardry and witchcraft. He’d thrown everything into one gigantic effort, and what happened? The wrong demon appeared.

  Of course, there were many things that might have gone amiss. The severed hand of the corpse—it just might have been the hand of a suicide, for even the best of dealers aren’t to be trusted. Or the line of the pentagon might have been the least bit wavy; that was very significant.
Or the words of the incantation might not have been in the proper order. Even one syllable wrongly intoned could have done it.

  Anyhow, the damage was done. Neelsebub leaned one red-scaled shoulder against the huge bottle in back of him, scratching the other shoulder with a dagger-like fingernail. As usual when perplexed, his barbed tail flicked uncertainly.

  At least he had a demon of some sort.

  But the thing inside the pentagon didn’t look like any conventional kind of demon. Those loose folds of gray flesh, for example . . . But, then the historical accounts were notoriously inaccurate. Whatever kind of supernatural being it was, it would have to come across. Of that he was certain. Neelsebub folded his hooved feet under him more comfortably, waiting for the strange being to speak.

  Arthur Gammet was still too stunned to speak. One moment he had been walking to the insurance office, minding his own business, enjoying the fine air of an early spring morning. He had stepped off the curb at Second and Ninth—and landed here. Wherever here was.

  Swaying slightly, he made out, through the deep mist that filled the room, a huge red-scaled monster squatting on its haunches. Beside it was what looked like a bottle, but a bottle fully ten feet high. The creature had a barbed tail and was now scratching his head with it, glaring at Arthur out of little piggish eyes. Hastily, Arthur tried to step back, but was unable to move more than a step. He was inside a chalked area, he noticed, and for some reason was unable to step over the white lines.

  “So,” the red creature said, finally breaking the silence. “I’ve finally got you.” These weren’t the words he was saying; the sounds were utterly foreign. But somehow, Arthur was able to understand the thought behind the words. It wasn’t telepathy, but rather as though he were translating a foreign language, automatically, colloquially.

  “I must say I’m rather disappointed,” Neelsebub continued when the captured demon in the pentagon didn’t answer. “All our legends say that demons are fearful things, fifteen feet high, with wings and tiny heads and a hole in the chest that throws out jets of cold water.”