Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “We can get married whenever you like,” he said, “but perhaps it ought to be soon because I’ve joined the expeditionary force, and there’s no telling when we’ll have to leave.”

  “What expeditionary force is that?” Chloe asked.

  “The one that we’re going to send to the Alliance. We’ve joined the Alliance, you know. Don’t you listen to the tree reports?”

  “I don’t understand,” Chloe said. “Why are we sending men? What can we Eleroi do? There’s not a man on the planet who even knows how to fix a washing machine.”

  Leo exchanged looks with Ottoline Guaschi. Ottoline understood. It was a masculine thing, perhaps.

  “We’ll give them what help we can,” Leo said quietly.

  He and Ottoline both knew that this could be the beginning of the end, for the Eleroi were so superior to other creatures that the other leaders would inevitably put them in charge of the war effort. And that was the Eleroi’s secret fear—that someone would discover their superiority some day and ask them to take over the leadership of everything and everybody. That would be a dilemma, because the Eleroi had a built-in problem about leadership. Their biochemical altruistic programming defaults wouldn’t let them refuse; their intelligence wouldn’t allow them to accept. A choice like that could be Armageddon for a race like the Eleroi.

  But they had Brodsky’s word that it would never happen. In fact, Brodsky had been very definite about it.

  “Are you kidding? The presidents and generals of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy turning over control of their destinies to you simply because you’re more intelligent and capable than they are? Forget it,” Brodsky had told them. “You don’t know how it works. Believe me, it’ll never happen.”

  The Eleroi had to be content with that. It was a relief to know that they wouldn’t be given too much responsibility in Alliance affairs too soon. But it was also a little irksome to know that they’d never even be asked. For after all, who was more suited to running things than the Eleroi?

  Too bad it would never happen.

  Or would it?

  It occurred to the entire Eleroi race more or less simultaneously that there might, in fact, be a way for them to take over control of the Alliance, then the Fleet, and, finally, the universe.

  Such thoughts occur to semitelepathic races who have mastered the bioenergetic interfaces that confer control over environment.

  It was an interesting option. The Eleroi would look into it later.

  DEATH OF THE DREAMMASTER

  Bruce Wayne would never forget the scene. He saw it again in his mind’s eye, the grisly windmill in the low fen country outside New Charity Parish. Bruce himself, as Batman, was there. He was spread-eagled against a wide wooden door, his arms and legs pinioned by steel clamps secured with half-inch bolts. The bodies of the Joker’s most recent victims had been stacked roughly against a wall like so much bloodstained cordwood. The torsos were in one pile, the arms and legs in another, the heads in a third. The Joker himself, his thin-lipped grin wider and more hideous than ever, his painter’s smock stiff with blood, a bloodstained beret perched on his green-haired head, had just lifted up the last of his victims, little Monica Elroy. The child was still alive, but she had fainted. The Joker tried to slap her into consciousness because death was so much nicer when the victim was awake to appreciate it. Mercifully for her, the child did not respond.

  “Well, she’s being a poor sport about it,” the Joker said. “Might as well finish her and get to you, Batman.”

  The Joker carried the child to the center of the big high-ceilinged room. It was dominated by two enormous grindstones, set on axles contained within an open scaffolding. The great wheels turned slowly, propelled by the wide wings of the windmill outside. They were bloodstained, those wheels. The blood from the victims they had ground into a paste of flesh and bone had stained the granite deeply.

  “We’ll just feed her in one toe at a time,” the Joker said. “Maybe she’ll come around in time to say bye-bye.”

  Batman had been tugging at the clamp that held his right arm to the door. It had a fraction of give to it. Not much, but maybe enough. Enough to give him a chance, faint though it was.

  In past years, Batman had learned a precise control of muscles and nerves in his advanced studies in Tibet. He remembered those studies now and forced his concentration to narrow and deepen, ignoring the scenes of horror around him and the overwhelming smell of blood. All his energy had to go into that arm, into his wrist, into the exact point of contact where the clamp pressed. He directed his force outward in a rhythmic fashion, timing it with his pulse beats, and, as he saw the Joker, unconscious child in his arms, mounting the three steps to the platform where the great grindstones touched their rough faces together, Batman drove at the clamp with every ounce of mental and physical energy at his disposal.

  For a moment, nothing happened. And then the steel clamp wrenched free from the wooden door with a loud clear ringing sound, and the bolt that had secured it flew across the room as if it had been shot from a slingshot.

  The Joker, who had just been lowering the unconscious girl toward the grindstones, was hit on the back of the head. Although the blow did not hurt him, he started violently, more shock than pain, and the girl fell from his arms. Off balance, he flailed, trying to regain his footing.

  One hand, wildly gesticulating in its bloodstained white glove, came up against the grindstones at their point of contact. The hand was pulled in at once. The Joker howled and tried to pull free. The grindstones turned inexorably. The madman screamed and wrenched at his arm, and so violent was his movement that it seemed as if the limb might be pulled from his shoulder. But no such luck. The grindstones continued to devour him, and, as his forearm vanished between the stones and the rest of him was pulled in after it, the Joker, mad with pain, began to laugh, the high inhuman laughter of absolute insanity, and he continued to laugh as his body was pulled between the grindstone wheels, only stopping when his head came apart like a watermelon in a hydraulic press.

  And so the Joker was dead.

  But was he?

  If so, who was that madcap and horrifying creature that Bruce kept glimpsing at the corners of his vision?

  Who was Bruce Wayne seeing now, as he walked through downtown Gotham City, on his way to see his old friend Dr. Edwin Waltham?

  Bruce Wayne shuddered slightly and resisted the urge to turn. The figure was never there when he turned around.

  But he kept on seeing it.

  This time, however, was different.

  He was at the corner of Fifth and Concord in the heart of Gotham City. Across the street rose the tall tower with the famous polychrome façade that was the New Era Hotel. It was the newest and most sumptuous hotel in the city, built, it was said, by a consortium of foreign investors. It was a place where the rich from all over the world came to look and to be seen, the women to parade in their furs and silks, the men to blow smoke from their fine Havana cigars.

  As he stood on the corner across from the hotel, waiting for the light to change, he clearly saw the figure he had glimpsed earlier. The man was long and skinny, dressed in a bottle-green swallow-tailed coat and tattersall trousers like an Edwardian dandy. But that was not what caught Bruce Wayne’s eye. It was the man’s hair, mossy green above a narrow, long-nosed, long-chinned face. The face looked at Wayne for a split second; the long, red, thinlipped mouth stretched into a grin. There could be no doubt about it: it was the Joker.

  But that was impossible. The Joker was dead. Bruce had seen him die himself; had even had a hand in it.

  The Joker, or his look-alike, turned away abruptly, darted across the street, and went into the New Era Hotel.

  Bruce Wayne came to an immediate decision. He darted out into the street. Cars screeched, and slewed out of his way. Picking his way across the wide boulevard like a fleet, broken-field runner, Wayne made it to the curb, pushed with unaccustomed brusqueness past a group of gabbling society wome
n, and entered the lobby.

  It was like stepping into another world. Outside was the modern-day rush and squalor of Gotham City. Inside, his feet sank into the deep-piled Isfahani rug made especially for the New Era. Overhead the central vault of the ceiling arched upward. Chandeliers, suspended from slender stainless steel threads, glittered with cut glass and blazed with light. The tall windows of the lobby were made of stained glass, giving the place a resemblance to a church for the worship of success.

  Surveying the scene, Bruce noticed many men in long flowing Arab robes and headdresses. Some of the women were attired in the heavy veils of those where a form of purdah is still practiced. Scattered here and there were bellboys, smart in their Coldstream Guards uniforms.

  Nowhere was there anyone who bore the least resemblance to the grinning figure Bruce had seen only seconds ago.

  Bruce hesitated a moment, then went up to the front desk. An assistant manager, a large dignified-looking man in full evening dress with muttonchop sideburns and a bald, gleaming skull, asked if he could be of service.

  Bruce described the man he sought.

  The assistant manager pursed his lips in an imitation of thoughtfulness.

  “No such person of that description has entered here, sir. Not now or ever.”

  “He might have sneaked in without being noticed,” Bruce suggested.

  “Oh, I think not, sir,” the assistant manager said. He smiled a supercilious smile. “A person of the description you gave us could hardly go unnoticed in a place like the New Era. Green hair and bottle-green coat you said? No sir, not in the New Era.”

  Bruce felt like a fool. The man was eyeing him as though he were drunk or crazy. Bruce knew very well he was not drunk. As for crazy—Well, that was one of the things he was going to Dr. Waltham to find out about.

  6:15 P.M. Dr. Waltham looked at his watch. Batman was late for his appointment. Waltham had been the Dark Knight’s physician for many years. Never before had Batman been this late.

  Waltham was ready to close up. The physician went to draw the blinds. He heard a low laugh behind him and turned.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Batman said. “I ran into somebody I thought I knew, Hope you hadn’t given up on me.”

  “No problem, Batman,” Dr. Waltham said, peering at the tall cloaked man with the black mask. As usual, Batman appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Waltham had come to expect it—as well as you can expect the unexpected. “Anybody I know?”

  “No longer.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Nothing, Doc. Shall we get on with the examination?” It was the time for Bruce Wayne’s yearly physical. In his role as Batman, he required absolute physical conditioning of himself. He worked to his own exercise program, and spent hours each week honing his skills in the martial arts. Although he was always in perfect condition, he knew that ailments and conditions could sneak up on you. Hence this yearly physical with his old family friend, Edwin Waltham, one of the top physicians in Gotham City. Waltham was an independently wealthy man who maintained his office and apartment on Starcross Boulevard, one of the best locations in the city. Waltham was small and corpulent, with a head of curly gray hair, a face flushed from good living, and small alert eyes that, behind round glasses, glinted with intelligence. Clever though he was, however, it had never occurred to him that his old friend Batman was the same person as his father’s friend, Bruce Wayne.

  “You’re in great shape, Batman, as usual,” Waltham said at the conclusion of the examination as Batman adjusted his tunic. “You’ve got a heart like a steam locomotive. You’d have to, for some of the things you do.”

  Batman nodded, frowning slightly. Waltham, who had been his parents’ physician, was like most of the people in Gotham City and knew him only as Batman, scourge of criminals and of evildoers everywhere. The doctor was always eager to hear about Batman’s cases. There was no harm in it, but there was no need for it, either. Bruce Wayne handled the Batman portion of his life like a state secret.

  As he expected, Waltham asked, “Are you working on anything now, Batman?”

  “No, I’m still taking it easy.”

  “I haven’t seen you with Vera recently.” He was referring to Vera St. Clair, a pretty society woman whom Batman had been seen with.

  “She’s in Rio. For the Carnival.”

  “Lucky her! You should have gone yourself, Batman.”

  “I considered it.” Batman didn’t know how to tell it to Waltham, but a sort of lethargy had invaded his senses in the last few months. It had begun about the time he began having the hallucinations.

  He didn’t want to talk about that, but it was one of the reasons he had come to see the doctor.

  Seeing him hesitate, Waltham asked, “What is it, Batman?”

  Batman decided to take the plunge. “Doc, I’ve begun seeing things.”

  The doctor maintained his professional aplomb, but concern glinted from his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

  The tall, grim-faced masked man described his recent hallucinations. He had had them three times now in as many months. They were usually fleeting, no more than a glimpse of some old enemy from the past, now long defeated and safely buried.

  Most recently it had been the Joker. Dead, but Bruce had seen him entering the lobby of the New Era Hotel.

  Dr. Waltham considered his words carefully. “Batman, I’ve given you the best physical money can buy. There is nothing wrong with you physically.”

  “But mentally?”

  “I would almost stake my life on your being the sanest man I know.”

  “Almost?”

  “Just a way of speaking. Have you had any unusual concerns on your mind recently?”

  Batman shook his head. He couldn’t tell Waltham that he had been thinking a lot about the past recently. About friends he had once known, now dead. Robin, Bat Woman, Bat Girl—And dead enemies, too—the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin. All of them, friends and foes alike, were his family, those who shared his deeds back when the world was younger.

  He was older now. Still perfectly fit, a unique physical specimen. But older.

  “No, no particular concerns.”

  Waltham took off his glasses and wiped them carefully. Before putting them back on he looked at Batman, his eyes a soft, unfocused myopic blue. “Tell me about the most recent.”

  “On my way here, I thought I saw the Joker.”

  “Somebody in the crowd, perhaps, a superficial resemblance—”

  “No, it was him. I followed him into the New Era Hotel. But he wasn’t there. The manager said that no such person had entered.”

  “A few hallucinations don’t matter much,” Dr. Waltham said. “You’ve been through some of the most difficult and terrible experiences known to man. A little psychomotor activity would not be unexpected. But tell me . . . is there any chance the Joker is still alive?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “I don’t know the details of his demise, but I would remind you that the Joker escaped from many situations where death seemed certain. Why not this time?”

  “I’m sure he’s dead,” he said.

  “Well then, I don’t know how to advise you,” Dr. Waltham said. “The best thing would be for you to go down to Rio and join Vera. You need to get away, take your mind off these concerns.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Batman said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Some tea, sir?” asked Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler. “It’s the special Darjeeling that you like so well.”

  “Not right now,” Bruce said. He had been going over crime reports at the antique table that served him as a desk. There were priceless antiques throughout the big, gracious old mansion that was situated on a landscaped knoll within view of Gotham City. “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir, before I retire?” Alfred asked.

  “As a matter of fact, there is,” Bruce said. He had been brooding all evening about the events of the day and his visit to Dr. Waltham. Now
he had decided to do something. “I want you to pack a suitcase for me immediately.”

  “Certainly, sir,” Alfred said, and his grave expression brightened. “I’ll pack your lightweight shorts, sir, and your new tropical suits. Perhaps a mask and snorkel? They say there’s good underwater swimming there.”

  “I beg your pardon, Alfred?”

  “In Rio de Janeiro, sir. I assume that is your destination. To join Miss Vera for the Carnival. And if you’ll excuse my saying so, it’s just what you need, sir. A change, and a little amusement in your life. You have been rather on the gloomy side of late, sir, if you’ll permit the observation.”

  Bruce smiled. “I’m touched by your concern, Alfred, but I’m afraid you’ve jumped to an erroneous conclusion. I will need no carnival costume where I’m going.”

  “I apologize for my incorrect assumption, sir. Might I ask where you’re going?”

  “The New Era Hotel, here in Gotham City.”

  “Indeed, sir?” Alfred’s aplomb was unshakeable. Bruce could have told him he was going to the North Pole and the faithful servant would merely have inquired if he should pack ice skates.

  “I’ll need about half a dozen evening suits, and some casual clothing for daytime wear, and the usual shirts and socks.”

  “A wardrobe such as you describe is already packed and ready to go, Master Wayne. I packed the Charlie Morrison wardrobe for you, sir.”

  “Alfred, you anticipate well.”

  “Yes, sir. One thing I didn’t know, sir. Will you require the Batman Suit?”

  Bruce looked up sharply. Somehow he hadn’t considered taking the Batman Suit. He hadn’t quite brought himself to the point of considering that there were at least two interpretations of his hallucinations. One, that he was going crazy. Two, that someone was planning something clever and criminal and was trying to put a scare into him.

  “Yes, pack the Batman Suit,” Bruce said. “And put in the small leather bag marked OPS 12. And one of the standard utility belts.”