Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Well,” the Joker demanded of one of the guards, “where is the Italian art treasure?”

  “Which Italian art treasure, General?” one of the guards asked.

  “The one that that crazy fellow brought in for that Joker.”

  “Ah, jawohl, mein generell, it is right over here.” The guard led him to a pallet on one side. There, still wrapped in the original canvas that the Joker had put around it, was the entire mound of the Vatican art treasure. The Joker turned back a fold and looked inside to make sure: there was no sense getting the wrong stuff now. But sure enough, it was exactly what he wanted. He saw the stacked Raphaels, the Leonardos, the Titians, and the Reubenses, plus the statuary and all the rest of the good stuff.

  “Jah, jah,” the Joker said, “Dis is dass. Bring me a cart here, quick. We have no time to waste.”

  The guards hurried away and came back with a motorized hand truck. The Joker sent them back for a second one: There was so much good stuff lying around he saw no sense in leaving it. In fact, he thought, if he’d been aware of this, he could have saved himself all the trouble of raiding the Vatican and come straight here. But of course he had always wanted to raid the Vatican. It was one of the accomplishments he was most proud of. Outside, he had his men load the bags onto the roof rack of the limo. Everyone saluted everyone else and the Joker and his men got back into the vehicle. They sped off. But as they approached the gate they saw a sudden flurry of activity.

  “Oh-oh,” Hans said. “I don’t know what this is.”

  “Just stay cool,” the Joker said. “Don’t shoot until you see me do it first.”

  They stopped. One of the guards came running up. He was waving a piece of paper. “General!” he said. “One final thing. You forgot to sign for this!”

  Ach,” the Joker said, “how silly of me.” He hastily scrawled a signature and thrust it back to the guard. The guard saluted. The gates opened and they sped out.

  “OK,” the Joker said, “so far, so good. Now. Hans, to the airfield, and don’t spare the horses.”

  Dawn was fully up by the time they reached the airfield They piled out of the car. There was a captain on duty and he was suitably overawed by the Joker’s rank and medals, and general air of hauteur. The Joker was at his swaggering best, commandeering a good-sized military transport, an old but very sound Domier with camouflage paint. At the Joker’s orders, extra tanks of gas were fitted to the wingtips. The gasoline was topped off. The propellers were spun and clearance was given. The Joker’s hired men scrambled aboard. Hans and the Joker shook hands.

  “Good luck, Herr Joker,” Hans said. “It has been a pleasure working with you.”

  “Thank you, Hems,” the Joker said. “The pleasure has been all mine. And here is a little parting gift for you.” He handed Hans a small chamois bag. Opening it, Hans found five perfect pearls.

  “Ah Joker, you are more than generous. It is too much! It is far greater than the price we agreed upon.”

  “That’s all right,” the Joker said. “It didn’t cost me anything. Good luck, Hans.”

  Hans got back into the command car and sped off. Aboard the plane, the soldiers had strapped themselves into the seats, all except one, Dietrich, who was an accomplished pilot. He was up in the nose of the plane, in the copilot’s seat. The Joker sat down in the pilot’s seat, tested the controls, revved up the engines. The four big props spun, coughed, spit blue exhaust, and then spun firmly. The Joker ran the engines up and signaled the tower for final clearance.

  “Yes, General, you are clear. But you have neglected to file a flight plan.”

  “Do that for me, old boy, all right?” the Joker said. “But where are you going?”

  “Eagle’s Lair!” The Joker said, naming the Führer’s mountain retreat in Bavaria. “The Führer is throwing the party of the century there.”

  “Jawohl!” the tower replied.

  The Joker pushed the throttles forward and the plane began to creep out onto the takeoff area. Then there was a crackle of static. The tower was calling.

  “Just a moment, General! There is something which is not in order.”

  “Oh? What’s that?” the Joker asked.

  “The guards from the depot have come. It seems that when you signed for the treasure, you signed yourself Herr General Joker.”

  “Just my little joke,” the Joker said, keeping the plane going toward the takeoff area.

  “We would like you to sign again,” the voice on the other end insisted.

  “Fool! You know I cannot keep the Führer waiting!” The Joker ran the engines up, released the brakes, and started to rumble down the field. There was a noise of confusion mixed with static. Then a voice said, “Ah well, good luck, General!”

  Then he was in the air.

  The Joker peeled off his mask. Grinning now, he came back to see how his troops were doing. “Everybody all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, Herr Joker!” They chorused.

  “I hope you packed plenty of sandwiches,” the Joker said.

  The men grinned. “Yes, we have packed sandwiches and beer, much beer!”

  “Good,” the Joker said. “Enjoy yourselves. The hard part of this is over.”

  But in that, he was very mistaken.

  The Joker’s flight plan called for him to fly due south. He wanted to get out of the war zone as soon as he could. It would be ridiculous to be shot down now. He flew over Switzerland, not bothering to respond to questions radioed to him from stations along the way. He continued south along the Tyrhennian Sea, with the mass of Italy on his left. When Sicily came into view, he made a right turn to fly west across the Mediterranean and then out into the Atlantic.

  It was at this point that a single-seater fighter appeared out of the clouds and quickly closed in on them.

  “Who the hell is that?” the Joker said. “Dietrich, can you make out any markings on his wings?”

  Dietrich looked long and steadily through binoculars at the pursuing craft. “Well, Herr Joker, it seems to have some sort of symbol on the wing but I can’t make it out.”

  “Italian Air Force?” the Joker asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Dietrich said. “It has none of their characteristic markings.”

  There was another crackle of static. Then a loud voice enquired in Italian, “What plane is that?”

  “German military transport,” the Joker replied, “on a special mission.”

  “Is that so?” said the fighter pilot. He came closer still and at last the Joker could make out the markings on the wing. The symbol was like nothing he had ever seen before. The insignia on the wingtips and side of the plane showed a heart with a dagger through it, lying atop a coiled noose.

  “What the hell is that?” the Joker asked Dietrich. “Must be some country I’ve never heard of before.” Dietrich cursed. “Ah! Herr Joker, it is the marking of the mafia!”

  “Since when have they got their own airforce?” the Joker asked.

  “The mafia always has what they need,” Dietrich said. “Especially in Sicily.”

  The Joker got back on the radio. “Stay out of my way! I’m on special orders from the Führer himself!”

  The fighter plane spun in and circled around them at close range. They could see a dark unshaven face staring at them. The Italian pilot said, “Aha! It is the Joker! Land your ship, Joker! You have what belongs to Italy and to us.”

  The Joker said to Dietrich, “Tell the men to man the machine guns.”

  The fighter plane circled them again, staying out of range. They could hear radio conversation in a Sicilian dialect, which none of them understood. Two more planes appeared out of the clouds and came toward them. When they were within range, the Joker said, “Open fire.”

  The three planes wove a pattern of death around the slow-flying transport. Machine guns chattered and were met by answering fire from the nose and tail gunners aboard the transport. Machine gun slugs ripped through the transport’s light covering.


  “Shoot them down!” the Joker screamed at his gunners.

  “But we can’t see them, sir! They’re diving out of the sun!”

  “Then shoot down the sun!” the Joker shouted.

  Meanwhile he was turning acrobatics in the plane, dodging and twisting, taking advantage of every vestige of cloud cover. One of the men scored a hit. One of the three fighters spun into the ocean in a plume of black smoke, crashing at last into the bright sea. The remaining two redoubled their efforts. Smoke began to pour from one of the transport’s port outboard engine. The Joker feathered the prop and shut down the engine. The Domier flew on steadily. They gained more cloud cover. The fighters found them and bored in again. Then the Joker performed an unorthodox maneuver. He turned the plane on one wing, sweeping around like a scythe. He caught one of the mafia planes off-guard and shot it down, watched it explode in a trail of smoke and sparks. That left one airplane. It came at them this time head on. From the radio the Joker could hear Scuzzi’s voice, “I will catch you, Joker; I will kill you!” And then the plane dissolved into a fireball and plunged into the sea. The Joker resumed his course, west and south. “Hang on, boys,” he said, “We’re going to Rio!”

  Two of his own men had been killed. The Joker told the others to throw their bodies out through the hatchway. “It’ll be just that much more treasure for the rest of us to divide,” he told them. Soon they were eating smoked bratwurst sausages and drinking beer as if nothing had happened.

  The plane flew on through the rest of the day. Night saw them well out into the Atlantic. They left the Azores behind them and finally made their turn to go due west across the shortest part of the South Atlantic. Rio lay dead ahead and about a thousand miles away.

  Morning found them still making good time. But a second engine was beginning to miss. More seriously, the plane had begun gradually to lose altitude. Checking, they found that the machine bullets had cut through one of the gas tanks. Hasty calculations showed they were not going to have enough fuel to make it all the way in.

  The Joker fought with the big plane, taking advantage of stray bits of wind and thermal updrafts, edging for altitude. But he could see it was not going to be enough.

  “Dietrich,” he said, “we’re going to have to throw out the statuary. Order the men to do it. Then tear out the seats, anything extra you can find. We must lighten the ship. There’s no way to turn back. Between here and the landing field at Rio there’s nothing but water.”

  Priceless Michelangelo marbles went tumbling out of the aircraft and into the sea. Equipment followed. It was helping, but it was still not enough. The Joker put the ship on autopilot and went back into the main cabin. He said to his men, “Well, you’ve all been really good and you’ve been a great help. I hate to do this but I’m really afraid that I have to. You, you, and you. Throw out life rafts and continue after them.”

  They protested. “Surely you are not serious, Herr Joker? We would stand little chance of survival, even with the life rafts.”

  “You will stand no chance at all,” the Joker said, “if you stay here. All there is for you here is a bullet in the head.”

  With submachine gun at the ready he herded them toward the open hatchway. One of them tried to jump him. The Joker shot him. Then at gunpoint he made the others jump out one by one. He watched as their parachutes opened.

  He was left now only with the lightest of the treasures. He was prepared to die before throwing anymore of it overboard. Only he and the remaining treasures were left in the plane. And Dietrich.

  He became aware of Dietrich as the man opened fire on him from the cockpit. The Joker, with his special sixth sense for danger, had been waiting for this and clung to the open hatch high over the steel-gray sea moving below to escape the barrage of bullets from Dietrich’s gun. In fact it helped him solve a problem. He was fond of Dietrich, who had done well by him. But the man weighed at least two hundred pounds. That would be weight well saved.

  Bullets crashed around him. The Joker fired once, and caught Dietrich square in the forehead. The man went down and stayed down. The Joker pulled his body to the hatch and threw it overboard. And then he was alone on the plane, just him and the treasure, on a wounded German transport that was still losing altitude, though slower than before.

  But even though it was slower, it was enough. He was no more than fifty feet above the wavetops now, and the plane was bucking hard. It had taken so many hits, both from the attack by the mafia planes and the combat that had gone on inside, that the plane was threatening to come apart.

  At last the Joker could see, far ahead, a dim dark line on the horizon. Brazil! He was almost there!

  The plane rushed on, its engines misfiring. He was skimming the wavetops, but the land was coming up strongly. He saw a stretch of beach and, behind it, green jungle. Quickly he checked his position. Yes, there it was! There was the landing field built out to the water’s edge, just to his left. But he didn’t know if he was going to make it. He was almost in the water now; water was splashing up through the bullet holes. If he’d had his landing gear down he would have been dragging his wheels in the water. Now the landing field was dead ahead. He could see people standing in a little crowd, waving at him. One of them was a blonde. He looked more closely. Yes, it was Petra! She had come! She was waiting for him! How sad it would be, the Joker thought, to have come this far and die just before reaching Rio.

  By sheer strength of will he forced the nose up. The plane’s tail was already starting to touch down in the water as he swept across the beach and finally brought the plane down belly first on the edge of the tarmac.

  He stood up, unbuckled himself from the seat. He had made it! It was all his! He’d done it! The greatest caper of the century, maybe of all time! And he was safe. And Petra was down there waiting for him.

  He ran down the bullet-pocked aisle, pushed open the door. As he began to step out there was a blinding flash of light. White light bathed him and suddenly, for a moment, he lost his orientation and had to close his eyes to keep from being blinded.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on a cot that was being wheeled by men in white clothes. “Is this Rio?” he asked. And then remembered that he didn’t speak Portuguese. But he needn’t have worried because the man grinned at him and said, “Rio? I guess you’ve had a pretty nice dream, huh, Joker?”

  “Dream?” the Joker said. “Where am I?”

  “This is the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane,” the man said. “You just had your shock treatment.”

  “I’m in Arkham Asylum? How did I get here?”

  “This is where Batman put you, Joker,” the attendant said. “After your last caper.”

  “What about the war?”

  “Which war?”

  “The war with the Germans.”

  “You must have had a really good dream,” the attendant said. “That war was over decades ago.”

  The Joker understood. And he began to laugh. It was a horrifying laugh, an insane laugh, and it echoed through the darkened corridors of the asylum. He was still laughing when they locked him up again in his cell.

  MYRYX

  Aaron was in one of the mobile field stations on Sestes, trying to defeat a quick-mutating fungus that had sprung up overnight and wiped out nearly ten thousand acres of mixed crops. After several hours of computerized search and simulated experiment, he came up with a self-destructing virus that stopped the fungus without any other side effects, or none he could detect in the short term.

  When he got back to his headquarters, he found a message, automatically logged. It was from a Samian ship, requesting orbital data preparatory to landing.

  It was the first time a Samian had asked permission to land on this Erthuma planet of Sestes. Aaron wished this historic occasion had come at a time when he was less rushed. Harvesting had just begun in the temperate regions of his farm. It was mostly automated, but still, especially with Lawrence gone, there was plenty to do. But it would never do to
refuse landing permission. It was important to keep on good terms with the Samians, who occupied two planets in the system. The other two were occupied by Erthumoi like Aaron, and the fifth planet, Myryx, was unpopulated.

  Aaron radioed the Samian permission to land. Soon a view of the alien ship sprang up on the screen, a reconstruction rather than a straight visual. Moments later Aaron’s ground telemetry picked up the ship’s identification signal. It was a Council ship.

  That was unexpected. The Council, which coordinated the affairs of the five planets of the Minieri system, rarely sent out its ships on official business. It was more efficient to work with the modulated-neutrino carrier waves that linked the six civilized races of the galaxy. But sometimes face-to-face discussion was needed for crucial or sensitive issues.

  The ship landed within the hour. Samian atmospheric requirements were rather different from those of Erthumoi. But Samians were a durable race, well able to tolerate for a while conditions that would kill a less adaptable race.

  After landing, the Samian pilot left his ship and came over to Aaron’s headquarters in his own specially designed vehicle. It was a tubular contraption with lightweight toothed wheels that could climb a modest slope. The Samian sat in the midst of a nest of webbing. He looked like a large side of bacon smoked to a mahogany color. It was difficult to consider him a living creature, much less an intelligent one, since he showed no differentiation into specialized parts. A muscular chunk of dark muscle, the Samian had no visible limbs, no apparent way to manipulate matter. Aaron could see the silver filaments that ran through the webbing binding the Samian to the chair. He had heard that Samians were able to control the electrical outputs of their bodies from many locations on their skin. This made it possible for the Samian to communicate directly with the small computer located beneath his chair. The computer itself ran on an Allison-Chalmers weak force multiplier.