Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  NEXT EVENING, AFTER Phil arrived, I opened the closet door, and there were seven gold coins in the temenos. They all looked the same.

  I handed them to Phil. “I think this is what the Power or the spirits or magic or whatever wanted you to have.”

  “I thought you said the spirits don’t like to be asked for anything specific.”

  “The spirits are unpredictable,” I said.

  Phil jingled the coins in his hands. Then he held out one to me. “You might as well get something out of this.”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “Suit yourself.” Phil put the coins in his pocket. He was thinking hard. Finally he said, “Might you be open to a business proposition?”

  “I’d have to hear it first.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” Phil said, and left.

  About a week later, Phil asked me to meet him and a couple of friends at an expensive restaurant not far from Sullivan’s. He indicated that they had talked the previous night and had a proposition to put to me.

  I could imagine how his meeting with his friends had gone. I could hear Phil saying, “I don’t want you fellows to laugh at me, but I know we’re all interested in far-out investments.”

  “Sure,” Jon said. “What have you got?”

  “I’ve got a guy who does magic, or some damned thing.”

  And he would have explained what happened. He would have said, “Hey, I don’t know what he’s doing, but it looks good enough to invest a few bucks in.”

  So we sat in the restaurant in a comfortable haze of smoke and beer smell and dim golden lights and hurrying waitresses with twinkling legs, and we had drinks and they all stared at me.

  Finally, one of them, a fat, complacent-looking guy named Haynes, said to me, “so what exactly do you do in this magical closet of yours?”

  “It’s not the closet that’s magical, it’s the temenos, the sacred space I create within it.”

  “And what do you do with this sacred place?”

  “I perform certain procedures.”

  “Such as?”

  “I can’t tell you. Telling destroys the magic.”

  “Convenient, if you want to keep your secret.”

  I shook my head. “Necessary, strictly necessary.”

  I didn’t tell him how I had deduced that magicians in the past like Cagliostro and the Comte de St.-Germain had grown rich and famous, but finally their powers had deserted them and they ended badly. I think their downfall came from telling, and from demanding too much.

  They held a whispered consultation. Then Jon, a tall, thin, balding guy in a three-piece business suit, said to me, “Okay, we’re interested.”

  “It’s a far-out kind of thing,” I told him.

  “We’re not scared of far-out investments,” Phil said. “We’ve got a share in a shaman’s school in Arizona. Is that far enough out for you?”

  “How could you invest in me?” I asked.

  “Oh, we weren’t thinking of anything fancy. But we could set you up with a place to practice your magic. A place where you wouldn’t be disturbed. We’d supply your food and pocket money. You could give up that lousy day job at Sullivan’s. You could live on your magic.”

  I said, “Looks like there’s a lot you could do for me. But what could I do for you?”

  “Split the take with us fifty-fifty.”

  “Take?”

  “Whatever you produce in that sacred space of yours.”

  “But that might be nothing.”

  Phil said, “Then we’re stuck with fifty percent of nothing. But we like a gamble. We can get this facility in Jersey for free. Feeding you for a couple weeks won’t cost much. And we can drive out and see how you’re doing.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “And don’t forget,” Haynes put in, “you get to keep fifty percent of what you wish for.”

  It struck me as a pretty good deal at the time.

  Phil had rented this place in northern Jersey to use as a software lab. But then the bottom went out of that business. Or they found it wouldn’t be profitable under present conditions. They still had a couple months’ rent paid for, so they set me up in the place. It was a small, isolated facility with a two-room apartment in back. I moved in, and Phil drove out from New York every few days with some frozen dinners.

  I lived alone, saw no one—the nearest town was two miles away, I didn’t have a car, and besides, what would I do there? I had books to read when I wasn’t working on magic. I had a collection of Marsilio Ficino’s letters. His nobility made me ashamed of myself. I knew I was being too self-seeking. But I went on anyhow. I figured, what’s the sense of being a magician if you can’t prove it to anyone?

  A week later, on a late afternoon on a golden day in late October, the maples were just starting to turn colors. I could see birds overhead, flying south, away from the dark winter that was waiting for me. The little lawn in front of the facility was set back from the road. No one ever came by here, but she came. She came with an easel and a folding chair and a big straw purse in which she had watercolors and a bicycle bottle filled with water. She was sitting on my front lawn.

  I came outside, and she got up hastily. “I didn’t know anyone lived here. I hope I’m not trespassing.”

  “Not at all. I live here, but I don’t own the place.”

  “But I’m intruding on your privacy.”

  “A welcome intrusion.”

  She seemed relieved. She sat down again in front of her easel.

  “I’m a painter,” she said. “A watercolorist. Some say that’s not real painting, but it pleases me. I noticed this place a long time ago. I wanted to paint it, but I wanted to wait until the maples were in just the stage of bloom they’re in now.”

  “Are they at their peak?” I asked.

  “No, they’re still one or two weeks from their full color. But I like them as they are right now, with the brilliant reds and oranges showing, but merging with the green leaves. It’s a time of change, very fragile, and very precious. Anyone can paint a tree in full autumn foliage. But it’s something else to paint one just before it explodes from cool green to hot red.”

  “And after that comes winter,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re very welcome to paint my trees or anything else. Perhaps it would be better if I went inside and left you undisturbed?”

  “It doesn’t bother me if you want to stay,” she said.

  “I’m Maryanne Johnson, by the way.”

  Maryanne set up her brushes and set to work. She sketched in the tree in hard pencil, mixed her washes, and began. She worked very quickly. Her painting was like a dance. I enjoyed watching her work. And I liked looking at her. She was not pretty, but her features were delicate, and I already knew she saw more than I did. She was a small, comfortable woman, about the same age as I, maybe a year or so younger. We talked about painting and trees and magic. At the end of two hours, the painting was done.

  “I just need to give it a few minutes to dry,” she said. “Then I’ll spray it with an acrylic fixative and I’m out of your hair.”

  “Do you really have to go?”

  “It’s time for me to go,” she said, not answering me directly.

  “All right,” I said. “I told you that I do magic.”

  “Yes. It sounds wonderful.”

  “Let’s go in and see if the temenos has anything for you.”

  “I really don’t think I should go in,” Maryanne said.

  “Then I’ll run in and see if it’s left you anything.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Never mind, I’ll go in with you. I’d like to see where you live.”

  Inside we walked quickly through the cold, polished laboratory space, to the closet. I opened the door. In the shrine, under the red light, there was something oval-shaped and made of metal. I picked it up. It appeared to be of silver.

  I led her outside into the fading afternoon light and said, “I think it’s
a pendant of some sort. Magic meant it for you. Please accept the gift.”

  Gravely Maryanne took it and turned it over and over in her fingers.

  “Well,” she said, “I didn’t expect the day to turn out like this.”

  “Nor did I. May I see you again?”

  “You know the Albatross Restaurant in town? I’m a hostess there.”

  And then she was gone and the gloom of my laboratory closed in on me. I walked up and down the silent room, between the work stations, with the last light of the late afternoon sun slanting in. It was quiet in here, always quiet, a sort of concrete tomb. And I had put myself into it.

  I thought about magic and its practitioners. What kind of lives had they had? Lonely, boring, and dangerous. The only happily married magic-worker from the past I could think of was Nicholas Flamel and his precious Perrenelle. And he was very much the exception. In my rush to join the ranks of magicians, to be counted among them, I hadn’t really considered what I was getting into.

  Suddenly magic seemed to me a poor enterprise indeed, one that excluded the human dimension. At that moment, I made up my mind.

  THAT EVENING, in response to my telephone calls, they all assembled at the facility. There was Phil and Jon, and Haynes, and two others I hadn’t met before.

  They had cassette recorders with them, and even a video camera. I felt strangely calm. I knew this was going to be the last act, good or bad, fair or foul.

  I took them with me into the closet with its temenos. It was small and narrow, but it held all of us, with the partners strung out in the narrow space behind me, and Phil at my shoulder with the video camera.

  “You’re actually going to let us watch?” Phil said. “Will wonders never cease!”

  “You’ll get the whole show,” I said. “For better or worse.”

  “What should we ask for?” Haynes asked.

  I shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

  “A million dollars in gold sounds pretty good to me,” Phil said.

  “You think the spirit or whatever it is can do that?” Jon asked.

  “Magic can do anything,” I said. “The question is whether it wants to or not. If this works, the wished-for matter will appear before your very eyes, here in the space of the temenos.”

  “You always gave it overnight before,” Phil said.

  “I’m in a hurry now.”

  I turned to the temenos. I began my incantations and my gestures.

  There’s no need to talk here about what I did. Phil’s friends have a complete record—if they dare look at it after what happened.

  At the end of my ceremony, there was a growing darkness in the middle of the shrine. It started as a stillness, but there was a fury within that stillness. You could feel the presence of something malevolent and strange. A cold wind came up inside the closed dark room, and the partners began to edge away.

  “What have you done?” Haynes asked.

  “Merely asked for what you want.”

  Now the darkness in the middle of the temenos was a spinning top of dark and luminous lines. It gave off a disturbed emanation, as though some creature had been called into being and didn’t like it at all.

  The darkness formed up into a crouched, dark creature in the middle of the shrine, its luminous eyes slanted and strange.

  “Who is calling me?” the dark creature said.

  “It’s me,” I said. “My friends here would like a million dollars in gold.”

  “You bother me for a trivial matter like that? Very well, they can have it. But it must be paid back.”

  “Paid back?” Phil said. “I didn’t know it worked like that.”

  “We have to get our investment back,” the dark creature told him. “Our resources are not without limit. But our terms are easy: five years to repay, no interest or carrying charges.”

  Phil held a hasty consultation with his partners. It was obvious to them that they’d earn considerable interest on a million dollars over five years. It made this a paying proposition.

  “Yes, sir,” Phil said to the creature. “We’d like to take you up on that. That would be very acceptable, sir.”

  “Who will be personally responsible for repaying this debt?” the dark creature asked.

  “My backers and I, sir.”

  “Your backers?” the dark creature said scornfully. “To hell with that! I need one person! Who will hold himself personally responsible for this debt?”

  “I will, sir,” Phil said.

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m Phil.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll take you as collateral.”

  “Hey, just a minute,” Phil said. “I didn’t intend—” Then he was pulled into the darkness so fast he was cut off in mid-scream. One moment he was there, the next moment he was gone.

  “I’ll expect repayment in five years,” the darkness said. “Then you get Phil back. Or what’s left of him.”

  Like a wisp of smoke, the dark creature was gone. But now there was a pile of gold in the shrine. A pile that looked like a million dollars’ worth.

  The partners stared at it uneasily.

  Finally Haynes said, “It’s a lot of money.”

  “Sure,” Jon said, “but how about Phil?”

  “Well, it was his idea.”

  “But we can’t leave him wherever that thing has taken him. And certainly not for five years!”

  “No, that wouldn’t be fair,” Haynes said thoughtfully. “But what do you think about thirty days?”

  They looked at each other. Then Jon said, “Phil himself wanted to make a profit on this. And besides, what the hell, he’s there already.”

  Haynes nodded. “Thirty days wherever he is can’t be so bad. I’m sure he’ll have quite a story to tell when he gets back.” He turned to me. “What do you think?”

  “I’m finished with magic,” I said. “But I’ll be available when you need me to bring Phil back.”

  “You get a share of this,” Haynes said, pointing to the gold.

  “No thanks, I don’t want any.”

  “Phil said you had some funny ideas. He’ll be amused by this when he gets back.”

  “True. If you get him back alive.”

  “Damn, that’s right,” Jon said.

  “Sure hope he’s okay,” Haynes said. “Hey, where are you going?”

  “The Albatross Restaurant. I understand they have the best food available anywhere.” And I walked out the door.

  It seemed to me that both the partners and I had profited. They had gotten a million dollars at the possible cost of Phil. I had maybe gotten a chance at a life with Maryanne. At what price I was still to learn.

  2001

  AN INFINITY OF ANGELS

  The First Appearance:

  The way it all began, Herbie Bloom was taking the short cut home across the overrun little field in the center of the town of Hopesville, Pennsylvania. The field was lumpy and overgrown with weeds and stunty little trees, and there was an irrigation ditch along one side filled with stagnant water.

  There was some question as to who owned this field. Old Mrs. Succher had a deed that went back to 1889. It gave her clear title. On the other hand, no property taxes had been paid on this land for almost fifty years. That gave the town council of Hopesville the right to condemn it, appropriate it, and pay Mrs. Succher a fair market price for her property.

  But the problem was not just Mrs. Succher’s rights. There were several other claimants to the property, old people living in Michigan and California who had papers to prove their claims. These papers looked bogus on the face of it. But they had not yet been proven bogus.

  Until the rightful owner of the property had been ascertained, nothing could be done. There wasn’t even a fund to provide the town government with money to make the tests that would prove or disprove the various claims. In fact, for the town to disprove the claims might cost more than the worth of the property itself.

  And there was also the claim by the Lehigh a
nd Hudson railroad, which had a paper claiming that Mrs. Succher’s grandfather Antonio, had granted the railroad a right of way across the property, and had also assigned the mineral rights, if any, along with the easement.

  The railroad claim looked even more bogus than the others, but it could not be ignored, since the railroad owners were litigous in t he extreme, and not in the habit of letting go of anything they had any sort of a claim to. That was why the field had not yet been paved over to allow Sycen Builders to put up a shopping mall.

  This field had been chosen for the first test case of the current period. Its ambiguous status as to ownership was certainly a factor in the selection. Herbie Bloom might himself have been a factor, though there’s no proof as to this.

  A simple meeting of man and angel, one on one, no hysterical crowds around. That would come later, when Mrs. Succher put up an unauthorized stand on her field, with a sign proclaiming it the first place of the angel visitation in the current period, with suitable souvenirs of the occasion for sale. These souvenirs were little rag angels, made by Mrs. Succher’s three nieces, and sold for a dollar each: Mrs. Succher was no gouger.

  (Later, after she died, the field and the stand were sold by her heirs to Angel Enterprises, Inc., who sought to commercialize the holdings. They even went so far as to try to get a signed statement from the original angel that this was the place where he had first appeared. But angels had no sense of commerce and nothing ever came of it.)

  So Herbie was walking across the field one fine June morning, on his way from Mrs. Succher’s house, where he rented a room, to the Hopesville gymnasium, where he ran the concession that rented out track shoes and other gym equipment, and sold Gatorade and Power Bars. Cutting across the field saved him almost half a mile, and, except for the ragweed, made it a pleasant stroll most days.

  Today was not most days, however. As he walked his usual route, Herbie noticed a figure reclining on the little knoll in the middle of the property. The figure was dressed in light-colored clothing and seemed to have something white on its back.

  Herbie strolled over, thinking this might be a person in distress. He was a good person, this Herbie. You can be sure the angel study council had ascertained this in advance.