Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  I left Llew and consulted a phone book. There under Death, Deals with, I found the numbers of several Death Brokers.

  I called the first on the list. There was no time to lose.

  He came to me at once, a short little man with a wen on one side of his freckled forehead. It may have been something else but I call it a wen. He sat back behind a big desk. The background had changed too, of course. He wore a green surgeon’s gown. I learned later he had been operating on volunteer patients over at the Saltpetriere.

  “What can you do for me?” I asked, deciding I might as well get it all out front.

  “First of all, are you sure you received the notice?”

  I dug into my pocket and found it. After Llew had told me, I had taken a moment’s notice, and sure enough, I still had it.

  And so I went on. It was important to do this in a carefully measured way. How much grief is brought on by haste, and its ominous twin, Thompson! But I had determined that I could get out of the snakepit, as they call the place where death hangs out with his crosscut saw and his crossword puzzle, his bull’s pizzle and his rainy day anthems to a certain faded glory of the power that once had been.

  “It really was bad of Mr. Death,” Glynnis said, to me, “coming to our party that way. I know he can go where he wants, but we had taken such care to get it all just right, you would have thought he could have waited just a few hours, until everybody had come and gone. He’s done it for plenty of other people, why not for us? But no, no such thing.”

  He was applying a formal technique, one I knew well, dissonant regression in a vinegar base, but despite my experience I was taken in by its magic anyhow. He had taken me back to the party which had not happened yet, but where I was doomed to meet Mr. Death. I was sipping one of those long delicious ice-green drinks and I had just decided to get the hell out of there before there was trouble when I felt a finger tap me on my bare shoulder and I turned and at once it was like there was a vast great singing in my ears, and my senses swooned, and suddenly I was elsewhere. The changes were coming on a little too fast for my liking, but I was in a great palace made of a dark marble and ebony, with caryatids holding up the ceiling and ornate stuff on the upper walls, I forget what they call it, and there was a lake just behind, a long lake of polished dark glass, so silent it was, and in the midst of the lake I saw an island with a small marble house framed in dark poplars.

  I was considerably relieved, for I hadn’t known how death would present itself, and I had rather hoped for a classical presentation, something quite Grecian, as a matter of fact, or Italian, they know how to deal with these things. I surely didn’t want something raw and Egyptian, and as for the single gods, they played much too rough for me. I didn’t want to get to the bottom of the illusion, not at all; once you’re at the bottom of it they say you come out the other side. I was prepared to take the boat to the island, and sure enough, the boat came gliding up, a long gondola sort of thing, with a tall hooded man standing on its stern poling it along.

  The chimes of Deja Vu thundered in my ears. I had been here before!

  “Well then,” I said, “where are we off to now?”

  “Spare me the so-called witticisms,” Death said (for it was he, or him, whichever you please).

  Death said, “Just get in and we’ll be on our way.”

  He sounded impatient. It was the first I’d ever heard of Death being impatient, and it startled me more than dying itself, which I couldn’t quite remember at this point, something about falling down in a pool of blood, I believe, or did I die at the party? Never mind, here I was, close to what I believe is called Death’s kingdom.

  And so I got into the boat, sitting in the little seat amidships and trailing my fingers in the water. The steersman turned to his task of poling, and soon we were gliding across the dark water, on our way to what had to be the isle of the dead. Sometimes you just know things like that.

  We splashed and paddled along, and after a while the helmsman paused, letting his long pole trail in the water. “Have you got a cigarette?” he asked me.

  That got me sore. I raised myself from my torpor and said, “You’ve got a nerve! It’s cigarettes that brought me here, not directly, I can’t prove that, but if I hadn’t smoked them all those years, tearing up my lungs and pouring heavy metals and arsenic and shit like that into my bloodstream, I’d probably still be on Earth now, going about my proper business of worrying instead of being here on this boat going to this island where I’ll bet they don’t even have movies.”

  “Even without cigarettes, people die anyhow,” Death reminded me. He fumbled in his shroud, located a pack, and flipped one into his mouth with a practiced gesture. He held out the pack to me. “Smoke?”

  “I thought you didn’t have any.”

  “I just like to smoke other people’s. Go ahead, it can’t hurt you now.”

  I took a cigarette, and felt my pockets. Yes, I still had a lighter, funny how a Bic can survive death itself. I lighted cigarettes for us both. We puffed contentedly. Death sat down on the thwart opposite me, holding his cigarette in bony fingers. I puffed and looked out across the water. It was a contemplative moment. I’ve thought of a lot of things in my time, but if you’d ever told me I’d be sitting in a small open boat with Death, I’d have told you you were crazy. And it was nice to smoke a cigarette after death, when you could only benefit from it. Cigarettes after death cost a lot less than the before-dying kind.

  “So what’s it like, being Death?” I asked him. I wasn’t really interested, but you have to say something. “Well, it’s a job,” he told me.

  “You must meet some interesting people,” I said. “Stands to reason. They all come this way. Not necessarily to me. I’m not the only Death. Allegory is all very well, but we have to be practical as well. There are plenty of us Deaths, and we take different forms.”

  “So look,” I said, “I guess I can assume from this meeting pretty much that there’s life after death, huh?”

  “You can assume what you please,” Death said. “That won’t necessarily make it happen.”

  “What happens on the island?”

  “You’re about to find out.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. So far, I had found anxiety to be very real indeed, and everything else to be unsure. “What did you do before you were Death?” I asked him.

  “I was working as a nature spirit,” he told me. “I starred in one of those allegorical scenes with nymphs and cherubs and bearded men. It was pretty nice work for a while. Then we had to do scenes from the Inferno. That wasn’t so good.”

  “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

  “Sleep is the bride of Death.”

  “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

  “There are occupations in this universe,” he told me, “that you can’t even imagine. I’d like to try out one of those.”

  The boat had been guiding itself toward a little landing stage on the island. In the misty background I caught glimpses of huge figures with interesting features. I knew they were representing something, but unfortunately for me they hadn’t put in captions so I can’t tell you what. But that left me with a lot of freedom. That’s one thing about allegorical scenes, it doesn’t matter what you do, things carry on anyhow.

  While we were talking, I made out figures standing on the dock, waving.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Friends of yours, no doubt,” Death told me.

  I couldn’t imagine anyone I knew well enough in hell to come greet me when I arrived. As we moved in to the dock, I started to recognize them. Dartagnan, Ulysses, and a big fat fellow with a moustache who, unless I missed my guess, was Balzac. I hoped not. I’d never read a word he’d written, though I’d been long planning to. How embarrassing to meet him after death and not being able to say anything about the Comedy Humaine.

  “My dear fellow!” said Balzac. “How nice to see you here! No, don’t worry, you’ve never met me before. But I had
the great good luck to be put on the welcoming committee. It affords a very good platform from which to continue my investigations into the human condition.”

  “But to what purpose?” I asked him. “And how come you speak English?”

  “English is the universal language of death,” Balzac told me. “Since this is my country now, it is only correct that I should speak its language. And write in it, too. For of course I am still writing.”

  “And publishing?”

  “Indeed. You’d be amazed at how large our publications list is in hell. We publish far more books than the living, which stands to reason since there are more of us and we are more permanent. You know of course that the dead stay dead a long time. That has its drawbacks, but it does maintain the continuity. But tell me, are you really dead?”

  “Well, I assume so,” I told him. “Is there a test that one must pass?”

  “Indeed there is,” Balzac said. “You’d be surprised how many of the living try to sneak into here. While still living, mind you! And it just can’t be tolerated. We have life-detectors on all sides. Malefactors are punished by exclusion: they are told that life must go on, and sent on to one of the worlds of the living.”

  I couldn’t think of a better outcome. Although Balzac had presented it as something not so good, I wasn’t too sure. I continued out the landing stage and onto the shore. It was a pleasingly classical outlook, I was happy to see: long lines of dark poplars, formal gardens, gleaming white statuary scattered here and there. And that indefinable melancholy air that always infects mausolaria and the like. I was feeling quite good by now, because it struck me that I was going to gain either way; be here in the place of the dead if I were indeed dead, be sent on to further adventures if I happened to be among the living.

  I was told there would be a banquet that night, in honor of various new arrivals, and that formal dress was required. “None of your slipshod ways around here,” Dartagnan said, and scowled fiercely. I noticed that he too spoke English but decided not to ask him about it.

  I was taken to the palace, one of the smaller palaces, and of course it was all free. As far as I could tell. How can you pay your way in the afterlife?

  My servant was a dogfaced person with a bare chest and an Egyptian sort of kilt. He looked a bit uncanny at first, but I soon got used to him.

  After a bath and a shave, I looked over the formal clothing they had laid out for me. It all seemed perfectly correct. I lay down on the bed for a brief nap, and soon fell asleep.

  I had a dream, but was quite aware that I was dreaming. It seemed to me that one of the walls dissolved and a group of persons came through. They were all dressed in Egyptian apparel, and many of them had the heads of animals and birds. They beckoned to me and I arose from the couch. I was feeling somewhat safe, since I knew I was dreaming. But not completely safe, because there were mysteries to this place that I knew nothing of.

  I followed them through the wall and down a series of shallow steps to a river that lapped the stone walls. There was an open boat, built of papyrus unless I miss my guess, and there was a boatman with a bird’s head standing in the rear. I wanted to tell them that I had already done the boat scene, but I couldn’t seem to form sounds. They ushered me into the boat. Sitting beside me was a pale woman with dark hair. She was very lovely, but she looked so still that I despaired of making conversation with her.

  At last I said, “So do you come here often?”

  “Levity is not the best idea in a place like this,” she told me.

  “I’m not worried,” I told her. “I’m dreaming all this.”

  “That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening,” she said.

  “Is it going to?” I waited but she didn’t reply.

  “I didn’t mean to be flip,” I said. “Could you tell me what comes next?”

  “They will take you to the necrarium,” she said, “and bind your limbs and your jaws. They will draw out your brains through your nose, and your intestines through your anus, and then they will inject various preservatives.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “Not at all. I mean it.”

  “But I don’t want them to do that!”

  “It doesn’t matter what you want. You’re dead, your wishes are no longer of any interest to anyone.”

  “What about Balzac? Did they treat him that way?” She shook her head. “He made a deal.”

  “I want to make a deal, too!”

  She gave me a long, level look. “I’m afraid you have nothing to bargain with.” And then she turned away pointedly, thus ending the conversation.

  I gazed around me on all sides as the boat proceeded through the long dark tunnel. I was looking for a way out. There didn’t seem to be any. Then, after a while, we passed a long concrete landing stage. There were dogs sitting on the shore. They looked at me with their tongues hanging out.

  I didn’t like the look of it, but what lay ahead pleased me even less. I stood up, prepared to fight anyone who tried to stop me. No one did. I stepped from the boat to the stage. The boat went on, and I thought I heard the sound of ghostly laughter.

  The stage gave way to a tunnel, quite broad and high, made of rough dark unpolished stones. There was just enough light for me to see as I walked through the gloom. The tunnel slanted slightly downward. None of the dogs at the entrance had molested me, nor did they follow me as I proceeded. The tunnel grew narrower and narrower, and soon I had to stoop to go on. It curved and the constriction became narrower, until finally I was reduced to crawling. And then I stopped, because there seemed no point in going on. But when I tried to turn back, that way had constricted, too, so that I was huddled over in a stone tunnel, with narrow exits on either side through which I could not fit.

  A wave of despair came over me. Then I remembered that I still had my knapsack. I pulled it around to in front of me and took out the little pointy machine.

  THE DAY THE ALIENS CAME

  ONE DAY A man came to my door. He didn’t quite look like a man, although he did walk on two feet. There was something wrong with his face. It looked as though it had been melted in an oven and then hastily frozen. I later learned that this expression was quite common among the group of aliens called Synesters, and was considered by them a look of especial beauty. The Melted Look, they called it, and it was often featured in their beauty contests.

  “I hear you’re a writer,” he said.

  I said that was so. Why lie about a thing like that?

  “Isn’t that a bit of luck,” he said. “I’m a story buyer.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “Have you got any stories you want to sell?”

  He was very direct. I decided to be similarly so. “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  “OK,” he said. “I’m sure glad of that. This is a strange city for me.

  Strange planet, too, come to think of it. But it’s the city aspect that’s most unsettling. Different customs, all that sort of thing. As soon as I got here, I said to myself, “Traveling’s great, but where am I going to find someone to sell me stories?”

  “It’s a problem,” I admitted.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s get right to it because there’s a lot to do. I’d like to begin with a ten thousand word novelette.”

  “You’ve as good as got it,” I told him. “When do you want it?”

  “I need it by then end of the week.”

  “What are we talking about in terms of money, if you’ll excuse the expression?”

  “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a ten thousand word novelette. I was told that was standard pay for a writer in this part of Earth. This is Earth, isn’t it?”

  “It’s Earth, and your thousand dollars is acceptable. Just tell me what I’m supposed to write about.”

  “I’ll leave that up to you. After all, you’re the writer.”

  “Damn right I am,” I said. “so you don’t care what it’s about?”

  “Not in the slightest. After a
ll, I’m not going to read it.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “Why should you care?”

  I didn’t want to pursue that line of inquiry any further. I assumed that someone was going to read it. That’s what usually happens with novelettes. “What rights are you buying?” I asked, since it’s important to be professional about these matters.

  “First and second Synestrian,” he said. “And of course I retain Synestrian movie rights although I’ll pay you fifty percent of the net if I get a film sale.”

  “Is that likely?” I asked.

  “Hard to say,” he said. “As far we’re concerned, Earth is new literary territory.”

  “In that case, let’s make my cut sixty-forty.”

  “I won’t argue,” he said. “Not this time. Later you may find me very tough.

  Who knows what I’ll be like? For me this is a whole new frankfurter.”

  I let that pass. An occasional lapse in English doesn’t make an alien an ignoramus.

  I got my story done in a week and brought it in to the Synester’s office in the old MGM building on Broadway. I handed him the story and he waved me to a seat while he read it.

  “It’s pretty good,” he said after a while. “I like it pretty well.”

  “Oh, good,” I said.

  “But I want some changes.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What specifically did you have in mind?”

  “Well,” the Synester said, “this character you have in here, Alice.”

  “Yes, Alice,” I said, though I couldn’t quite remember writing an Alice into the story. Could he be referring to Alsace, the province in France? I decided not to question him. No sense appearing dumb on my own story.

  “Now, this Alice,” he said, “she’s the size of a small country, isn’t she?”

  He was definitely referring to Alsace, the province in France, and I had lost the moment when I could correct him. “Yes,” I said, “that’s right, just about the size of a small country.”