Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Thanks very much,” the skull said.

  “You talk!” said Nat.

  “Good afternoon to ye, Nathaniel. You play pretty rough when you wrestle, I can tell you that.”

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “No, you did not, Nat. We dead spirits are pretty immune to the trials of the flesh. Though we do permit ourselves the one in order to feel the other.”

  Nat had now recovered his poise. He sat down on the edge of the shallow grave and said, “You don’t talk much like an Indian.”

  “That’s because I’m not.” The skull then proceeded to tell Nat a story. He said his name was Propertius. He had been a centurion in the time of Marcus Aurelius. He had been serving at Cadiz in the 4th Dalmatians. He’d received his orders to proceed to Britain. He’d sailed his ship just beyond the gates of Hercules when suddenly a great storm had come up. He and his men had been blown many miles out to sea. If they were not to die of thirst, they knew that they had no choice but to continue on across the western ocean, to a great and mysterious land that the Romans had recently discovered.

  This land they called Atlantis. It was a great continent, and it was populated by red men who wore feathers in their dark hair and were very fierce. Marcus Aurelius kept his knowledge of this land a secret. There was no reason to disturb people about it yet. More exploring was needed before a public announcement. Already Marcus Aurelius had rough maps of the place. It was a huge land, much larger than all of Iberia. And it was there for the taking. Only primitive Indian tribes inhabited the place. If the Germans pressed Rome too hard, there was the new continent to retreat to. But the key to taking it was logistics. Through his mapmakers, Marcus Aurelius was aware of two rivers; the ones now called the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. The question was, did they connect?

  The centurion Propertius wanted to find out about this for the emperor. He and his men started inland from the site of present-day Baltimore.

  “I had half-a-dozen sailors,” he told Nat, “and a squad of Thracian recruits, the only survivors of our ocean crossing. On the southern Atlantean coast I collected some more men. There was a Roman colony in Charleston in those days, but they were few in number and a miserable bunch. The emperor always said he’d send reinforcements. He was never able to.

  “We marched inland through a thousand perils. I would have succumbed over and over to one or more of these dangers if it had not been for my amulet. It was very old, that amulet, Babylonian work, and Marduk, the spirit who resided in it, watched over me. We marched inland, searching for the great southern-flowing river. One by one the Indians took their toll of us, and still we hadn’t reached the river. At last we came to this place. And here a great company of Indians fell upon us. We fought like furies, and each man killed his tens and twenties of the red men. But success was not to be ours that day. I asked Marduk, Why have you forsaken me? And Marduk said, It is written in the stars that you should not see another dawn. There is nothing I can do in this regard, for it is so written by Ananke, the Necessity that rules our lives. I have come to prepare you for the end.

  “The next day, just as he foretold, I was killed. My bones have lain here ever since. My spirit cannot be released until they are buried. Stranger, if you bury me, and cast the eagle buried with me into a great river, I will tell you where to find the amulet.”

  Nat did as the centurion asked him, and laid Propertius to his final rest with an impressive Latin prayer. Then Nat asked, “Where is the amulet?”

  “Tomorrow go into the fields and search for it. I will ensure that you find it,” a voice answered from the grave.

  “Whatcha looking for, Nat?” Billy asked. They stood in the upper pasture behind the farmhouse.

  “I’ll tell you when I know,” Nat said.

  They were walking through thick grasses along the bank of a small stream. Sycamore and hemlock grew near the edge. Something stimulated Nat’s witch-sense. That something was close, very close, almost within reach. Nat felt along the bank until his fingers encountered a small round hole. Carefully brushing the branches and leaves aside with his free hand, he drew a small object from the earth.

  “Wow!” Billy said. “What’s that?”

  “Indian medicine,” Nat said. He put the object into a rawhide pouch he carried on his belt. He secured the top of the pouch with a length of rawhide, and tied it with a large and complicated knot.

  “Is it very strong medicine?” Billy asked.

  “You could say so,” Nat said.

  “Is this Indian magic?” Billy asked.

  Nat didn’t answer. Billy had never seen the man quite so taciturn.

  Late that night Nat lay on his bed in the front room. He’d put out the little oil lamp, because a three-quarter moon gave enough light to get around in. He lay on the ticking, hands locked behind his head, watching the shadows weave and turn and dance on the wall and ceiling. An elm tree near the house moved its branches up and down in the light breeze that blew in from the west. The wind carried a lot of smells. There was coyote and black bear in that breeze, and the subtler odors of Emma Hawkins and Billy. A sweet odor of grass and trees wafted in from the prairie. And there was another smell, and it didn’t take Nat long to recognize it: Indian. He was smelling the dream-smell of Indian.

  He suddenly realized the smell had grown very strong. Something was in the room with him. He could almost see it, there in the darkest tangle of shadows.

  Aware of the danger, Nat slowly sat up on the bed. He couldn’t remember for a moment what he had done with the amulet. That’s what had drawn the thing to his room. He was annoyed at himself. He had only himself to blame. He had grown careless. He had forgotten that although he might be through with magic, magic might not be through with him. Where was it now? He looked around the room, dappled with leaf-patterned moonlight, and then he saw the charm, on the rough little table beside the pewter washstand. He reached for it. Something closed around his wrist.

  People laugh at the notion of things that go bump in the night; but it’s not so funny when they’re bumping into you. Nat’s impulse was to tear himself free of that cold, dry, other-worldly grip. But Nat had spent years resisting fatal first impulses like that. It is well known that apparitions are powered by your own fear. Panic is the switch that turns control of your body over to whoever is panicking you. The man who would live through these night matters had better be steadfast, because nothing else will suffice.

  Nat forced himself to remain motionless as the hand tightened around his wrist, increasing the strength of its grip gradually but inexorably until it took all of Nat’s resolve not to fight back. For a moment he wasn’t sure he could succeed. The urge to react was almost overwhelming, an instinct as old as man himself. But he resisted.

  Gradually a hazy, luminous collection of green-blue lines began to form in front of him. They sketched out the ectoplasmic figure of a man, nearly transparent except where the lines terminated in the solid dark density of his hand. Nat knew that all of the spirit’s energy was concentrated into materializing and maintaining that hand. And already the crisis was passing. The spirit couldn’t maintain his grip for long. Already it was loosening.

  Then, abruptly, the hand released its grip, but the fingertips remained in contact with Nat’s wrist. The disembodied hand, attached to nothingness by luminous lines of energy, crept up his arm, hunching itself up like a big tarantula. It crawled up his shoulder. A cold, ethereal forefinger poked at Nat’s cheek and tried to find his eye. But it was an empty threat. Nat could already feel the hand softening, dissolving back into substanceless ectoplasm.

  In the morning, Nat called on the earth spirit.

  “What is it now?” the earth spirit asked. “What happened last night?”

  “I need to know what’s going on,” Nat said.

  “Simple. The shaman Two Coyotes followed you by the dream-scent to the place where you were sleeping. He wants the amulet back. It was his, lost by mistake. He’s coming for it.”

 
“Where is he?”

  “Nat, this is the last service I’m going to do you. This one is above and beyond the call of duty. If you want this one, you have to promise to let me go at the end of it.”

  “I swear.”

  The spirit lifted Nat up and took him out over the land. Swooping low, invisible, Nat could see the rise and fall of the hills and the deep channels in which the rivers flowed. He could see the Indian host gathering. They were mounted, and there were a lot of them. There were Cheyenne and Shoshone, and Arapaho and others, and above all there was Kiowa, a small tribe but very fierce, and leading them was the shaman.

  Squat and bold he sat bareback on his painted pony. Nat came down close and peered at him. He could see the man closely, see the very pores of his skin. And then suddenly Two Coyotes became aware of him, despite his invisibility, and swung around, searching . . .

  And then they were back, Nat and the spirit, back at the place where they’d begun.

  “He saw me!”

  “Well, I did the best I could.”

  “What happens now? What do I do?”

  But the earth spirit was gone.

  Nat saw that he’d have to warn the people of what was coming. But how could he do that? What would they say? What would they do to him? How would they think he got this knowledge?

  And so this was the matter that perplexed Nat Singer. So much did he think about it that finally the long-awaited moment of buying a horse was almost anticlimactic. The beast was a large black stallion with a hard mouth and a suspicious eye. A dangerous creature, and the story was it had trampled its previous owner to death, catching him in the stall, back in Virginia. Nat didn’t know if this was true. He did know that the horse had been ill-used. Old scars from a braided whip still lay about its flanks and withers. Nat walked around the horse, keeping his distance from possible flying hooves. He looked into the horse’s eyes, touched its heaving flanks, did a reading and a prognosis there on the spot. This horse had seen some bad times, but it wasn’t a bad horse. Some steady work and some decent care and it would be good as new again. So he bought the horse, and drove a hard bargain, getting him for nine dollars. That left him one dollar with which to start his new life.

  But he couldn’t rejoice in his new life. There arose before him continually now a vision of the catastrophic attack that was coming to the town, sliding through the distant plains like smoke.

  Nat sought out the advice of Marduk, the Babylonian spirit who resided in the amulet.

  It was easy to raise Marduk. He was an ancient spirit with much experience in discourse with mankind. When Nat called him, that morning, sitting in a little copse of trees above the widow’s house, the Babylonian spirit appeared almost immediately, as if he had been sitting at the edge of Limbo waiting to be called up.

  “I want to know about Two Coyotes,” Nat said. “He tried to kill me. He knows where I am. Why hasn’t he renewed his attack?”

  “Not much doubt about the reason for that,” Marduk said. “He doesn’t want to risk a physical attack on you. Not at a time like this, when the Indians are staying quiet and preparing for new mischief. He won’t attack you again as a spirit because he didn’t have the strength to kill you that way before.”

  “Do you think maybe he’ll leave me alone?”

  Marduk chuckled. “You know enough about these matters, Nat, to know that Two Coyotes will never rest until one of you is dead. He’s coming for you, Nat. But he’s expecting to find you in the Dream Country.”

  “I don’t think I know about that,” Nat said. “Where is the Dream Country?”

  “It’s the region of the mystic world where a man can wander when he does his dreaming. Wizards and shamans can go there at will.”

  “What makes Two Coyotes think I’ll go there? It’s a region one goes to voluntarily, isn’t it?”

  “That it is, Nat.”

  “Well, you’re not going to find me there!”

  “That is wise,” Marduk said. “You are to be commended for your cautious nature.”

  The sound of Marduk’s ironic voice grated on Nat’s nerves. The spirit wasn’t being very sympathetic! But it didn’t matter. Nat knew he had to get out of there, away from Oak Bluffs, far away, before the Indians came down on the town and began their next war. He had to leave. Now. It was as simple as that.

  That morning Nat found Emma in the kitchen as usual. She was doing the week’s wash. Her abundant hair was tied back with a bit of bright yam, and her sleeves were pushed back, revealing rosy forearms. There was a glow of health upon her. Nat had never seen her look so pretty.

  “Morning, ma’am.”

  “Morning, Nat.”

  Nat willed himself to make some small talk, but none came. He had chided himself for a long time on this problem in his makeup. He had found life in the civilized East almost impossible because of this inability of his to make chitchat even at the dance they had attended. After stumbling around with tame words for a few minutes, he got straight to the point.

  “Mrs. Hawkins, I have reason to believe that you and the boy are in grave peril.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “Whatever are you talking about, Mr. Singer?”

  “I have sure knowledge that there is going to be an Indian attack on this settlement, Mrs. Hawkins. It will signal the beginning of a full-scale Indian war throughout the Middle West, extending God knows how far.”

  “I see,” she said. “And when is this Indian attack supposed to take place?”

  “I am fairly sure it will commence within a day or two. Perhaps tomorrow morning. Surely not long after that.”

  “And how did you come by this knowledge, Mr. Singer? You didn’t find it in the bottom of a jug by any chance?”

  “I beg pardon? Oh, I see what you mean. No, I have not been drinking!”

  “Then where did you come by your knowledge?”

  He hesitated. “Ma’am, that is difficult to tell. Could you not just take my word for it?”

  “No, I could not. Nor could the rest of the town. Because if there is a danger such as you say, everyone here ought to be told about it. Is that not so?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  “And who else have you told?”

  “You are the first.”

  “And to what do I owe this honor?”

  “I am afraid no one will believe me, ma’am, and they will force me to admit things that are better not spoken of.”

  “Things like what, Mr. Singer?”

  “But those are the things I prefer not to reveal!”

  “Nevertheless, if you want me to take any credence whatsoever in your wild words, you had better tell me something.”

  “Yes, I suppose I’d better,” Nat muttered. “The fact is, Mrs. Hawkins, I have some little knowledge of magical arts, and the impending Indian attack has come to my attention through them.”

  “You are claiming that you are a warlock?” she asked, her voice flat and unfriendly.

  “No, not exactly,” Singer muttered. “But I do have certain . . . powers . . . at my disposal. What I say is the truth, Emma, as God is my witness! The Indians are coming! I beg you to believe me.”

  “What is it you would have me do?” she asked.

  “Take the boy and whatever valuables you can pack in the buckboard, and head West. The Indian attack will engulf this town and the regions within a hundred miles east of here.”

  “And what of you, Mr. Singer?”

  “I will accompany you,” Nat said.

  “I see,” Emma Hawkins said. “You and I and the boy are to escape this menace. But what of the rest of the townspeople?”

  “They would never believe me,” Nat said.

  “Have you even tried to convince them?”

  “I have not! The Reverend Harrelson would have me strung up within the hour if he heard I was making talk like that. He has his suspicions of me anyhow.”

  “And so do I, Mr. Singer, so do I. I do not like this style of speaking. If there is an
y danger, which I seriously doubt, you should go to the town council and lay your suspicions before them openly and honestly. Then, if they will not heed you, you will have done what you could. Even if there were such a danger—could you have believed I would go away with you, stealing away like a thief in the night from the place where my husband is buried, abandoning my neighbors to their fate and thinking only of myself?”

  “There’s Billy to be considered, ma’am.”

  “Billy is no more a coward than I am. He will stay here with me. I see you have your horse, Mr. Singer. I suppose you will be on your way, then?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That is what I suppose.”

  “Then sooner would be better than later, Mr. Singer. I believe on work and wages we are quits. It would be convenient if you were gone by morning. I had thought better of you when you first came here, Mr. Singer. I had thought . . . Never mind! Please be on your way as soon as you can!”

  Nat went to the little copse of trees in the upper meadow. It was late afternoon. The golden light was already taking on a tinge of evening pallor. Blackbirds sung merrily in the trees. Nat lay down on the grass. Almost immediately a voice said to him, “Gotten yourself into a proper mess now, haven’t you, Nat?”

  “Is that you, Marduk? I didn’t call you.”

  “No. But I took the liberty of appearing anyway.”

  “Well, you’re right,” Nat said. “Damn but this is a bad situation! I don’t even know when this Indian attack is to take place! Not exactly. Soon, but I don’t know exactly when. Emma doesn’t believe me. The folks in town won’t believe me, either.”

  “Let me set your mind at rest about one thing,” Marduk said. “I’ve done a little investigating on your behalf and I know when the tribes plan to attack.”

  “When?”

  “The attack will begin in the morning, Nat, at first light.”

  “So soon? How could it be so soon?”

  “There’s no way it could be any later. Two Coyotes has been having a lot of trouble holding the tribes together. They don’t really trust him. Fear him, yes, but not trust. Dissident voices have been raised in council, demanding that he postpone the uprising, make one more attempt at reconciliation. His whole enterprise is foundering, Nat. Without him there to whip them on, there’d be no rebellion. Many tribes have lost their first fury, are inclined now to accept the inevitable.”