by C. L. Moore
"Bertram," said Susan. "My husband. Mr. Moore."
Judge Sturm pondered. "What window was this?" he finally asked.
Susan spread her hands in a baffled manner. "I don't know," she said. "I didn't see him. One minute he wasn't there, and the next there he was."
The judge drew a deep breath and turned to Corinne. "Young lady,"' he said, "as yet I have heard nothing from you. You may be the only sane member of this quartet. Would you mind giving me your version of this disreputable affair?"
Corinne licked her lips. She was feeling none too well." She was longing for the peace and quiet of Times Square and the subway. But she pulled herself together and said rapidly:
"Well, Mrs. Moore and I were walking, along Broadway when she stepped on a duck. She picked it up and it bit her. Then Mr. Watson came along and picked up the duck. It had got away—"
"Stop!" the judge said hastily. "That's enough. More than enough. Horgan, was it really necessary to arrest these people?"
"I know my duty, your honor," Horgan said stolidly.
-
AT THIS POINT Moore decided matters had gone, too far. He stepped forward and spoke quietly to Judge Sturm.
"Let me explain this, your honor," he said. "It's, quite simple, really. I'm at faulty I admit it. I lost my temper. None of the others is responsible."
"That's better," said the judge, with some satisfaction. "Apparently you're still sane. Why did you lose your temper? Do you still contend that this man picked you up?"
"Well," Moore, explained, "that wasn't really what started it. My wife started it when she picked me up.
Judge Sturm strangled on an incipient cough. He seized his gavel, considered it thoughtfully, and murmured, "You may step back, Mr. Moore. Far back. I don't want you near me. My reputation might suffer. Do you seriously mean to suggest that this young lady—your wife, I presume—actually—No, I don't want to say it."
For the moment the judge's gaze had been intent on Susan. Slowly his eyes swiveled to the left. There they remained fixed, a dim glaze creeping over them. The man suddenly looked haggard and old.
"Horgan," he said .softly, "where is Mr. Moore?"
"Mr. Moore, your honor? Why, right here."
"No, Horgan," the judge whispered. "Mr. Moore is no longer with us. He has either substituted a goat in his place by some piece of legerdemain, or he has been transformed into a goat. In any event, there is now a goat in this courtroom."
"Your honor!" Moore said indignantly. "I protest! I refuse to be made the butt of practical jokes."
"Now it's bleating at me," Judge Sturm said very quietly. "Just listen to the thing."
"Goats don't bleat, your, honor," Horgan put it. "Sheep bleat."
The judge looked long and fixedly at Horgan, who .began to sweat. At length Judge Sturm rose and began to make preparations to depart.
"Your honor!" Horgan said, shocked. "You're not leaving?"
"Yes. I'm leaving. Have you any objection?"
"But the prisoners," said Horgan, roused to desperation.
"Horgan," the judge observed in a kindly voice, "you heard Mr. Moore admit his culpability. He said that he alone was responsible. Now Mr. Moore has apparently been transformed into a goat. I fine him ten dollars and costs. You, Horgan, may collect it."
Wavering slightly, Judge Sturm retired to his chambers, where he drank long and thirstily from a brown bottle. He tried no more cases that day, which was probably lucky for the defendants.
Meanwhile Moore, muttering curses, approached Horgan and tried to give him ten dollars. But the officer seemed reluctant to accept the money. He made pushing gestures with his hands.
"Go away," he said. "Shoo!"
By the time Moore had decided to give up the vain effort, he saw that Susan, Corinne, and Steve had left the court. Dejectedly he followed them. Emerging from the city hall, he suddenly realized that only a block away lay the Union Depot.
Some unexplainable impulse drew him there. Passers-by gave him a wide berth, and Moore felt strangely lonely. He kept a wary eye alert for policemen, but, luckily, encountered none.
There was the Union Depot. Moore wandered toward the vacant lot across the street. Had the dome-shaped tavern ever really been here? But that, of course, was impossible.
-
A BALL of tumbleweed rolling through the grass stopped at Moore's feet. A pair of twinkling, malicious eyes surveyed the man. There was something extraordinarily familiar about the matted tangle of curly whiteness. And when a gnarled brown hand emerged, Moore felt certain of it.
"You make a lousy-looking goat," observed the midget. "Mangy, I'd say. What about illusion now?"
Moore felt vaguely nauseated.
The hot sunlight made him dizzy. This couldn't be real.
"Well?" the midget asked. "Was I right or not?"
"Yes," Moore said slowly. "You were right. Or else I'm quite mad."
"Oh, you're not mad. It's just magic. The spell of illusion. The veil of Proteus. I'm a bit of a magician, in my way."
"Can ... can you take away the curse?" Moore asked involuntarily.
"Sure. I don't want to be too hard on you. Just wanted to teach you a lesson. Here," said the midget, extending a small, crystal vial. "Just drink this. No, no, not yet. Wait till you've regained your rightful form. That's elixir potentis. Just gulp that down and you'll be O. K."
Moore took the flask. "Uh— thanks," he said.
"That's all right. But be careful, whatever you do. If you drank the elixir now, you'd remain in goat form; for the rest of your life. The elixir doesn't change you, it just fixes you in the particular form you're wearing at the moment. Be sure you look like a man to others before you uncork that bottle. You have to be careful when you play around with—illusion."
The last word sighed out like a whisper of the breeze. The midget was gone. Only a ball of tumbleweed rolled across the empty lot.
Moore stood silently looking at the vial in his hand. Presently he pocketed it and turned, away. He'd have to wait, now, till he regained his own form. But when would that be?
Somehow Moore reached his home. Banjo seemed terrified at sight of his master and fled howling. Quietly Moore went around to the back door and let himself into the kitchen. There Peters greeted him. The oldster's withered face was impassive, but Moore knew the man would look with equal stoicism upon a human, a goat, or a whale! There was only one way to make sure.
"Hello, Peters," he said tentatively. "My wife home yet?"
"Oh, yes," Peters responded.
"She's mixing a drink for herself. Miss Corinne's leaving. She's going back to New York. Too bad she couldn't stay longer.''
Moore felt a wave of relief. He gripped Peters' arm.
"Do I, look all right to you? I mean—like myself?"
Peters confirmed Moore's resemblance.to himself and took his departure. With a heartfelt sigh of relief Moore extracted the vial from his pocket and uncorked it.
"Bertram!" came Susan's voice from the front of the house. "Is that you?"
Moore hesitated. Then he swiftly downed the contents of the flask, dropped it under .the sink, and turned toward the door.
It opened suddenly and Susan came in. She paused on the threshold. The glass in her hand dropped to shatter on the floor.
"It's just me," Moore said, smiling. "Did I frighten you?"
But Susan wasn't listening. She turned and ran away. From the hall her voice came echoing, back to Moore's ear.
"Peters, Corinne! Help!" the woman cried shrilly. "Call the police! There's a horse in the kitchen!"
The End
FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE
Unknown - October 1940
The world's oldest tale, in the oldest setting of all—told again by one of modern fantasy's most sympathetic writers: the tale of a garden, a man, a woman and one—other.
-
It was the first Sabbath. Down the open glades of Eden a breeze stirred softly. Nothing else in sight moved except a small winged h
ead that fluttered, yawning, across the glade and vanished among leaves that drew back to receive it. The air quivered behind it like a wake left in water of incomparable clarity. From far away and far above a faint drift of singing echoed, "Hosannah ... hosannah ... hosannah—" The seraphim were singing about the Throne.
A pool at the edge of the glade gave back light and color like a great, dim jewel. It gave back reflections, too. The woman who bent over it had just discovered that. She was leaning above the water until her cloudy dark hair almost dipped into the surface. There was a curious shadow all about her, like a thin garment which did not quite conceal how lovely she was, and though no breeze stirred just now, that shadow garment moved uneasily upon her and her hair lifted a little as if upon a breeze that did not blow.
She was so quiet that a passing cherub-head paused above the water to look, too, hanging like a hummingbird motionless over its own reflection in the pool.
"Pretty!" approved the cherub in a small, piping voice. "New here, aren't you?"
The woman looked up with a slow smile, putting back the veil of her hair.
"Yes, I am," she answered softly. Her voice did not sound quite sure of itself. She had never spoken aloud before until this moment.
"You'll like the Garden," said the cherub in a slightly patronizing tone, giving his rainbow wings a shake. "Anything I can do for you? I'm not busy just now. Be glad to show you around."
"Thank you," smiled the woman, her voice sounding a little more confident. "I'll find my way."
The cherub shrugged his colored wings. "Just as you say. By the way, I suppose they warned you about the Tree?"
The woman glanced up at him rather quickly, her shadowy eyes narrowing.
"The Tree? Is there danger?"
"Oh, no. You mustn't touch it, that's all. It's the one in the middle of the Garden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—you can't miss it. I saw the Man looking at it yesterday for quite a while. That reminds me, have you met the Man?"
The woman bent her head so that the hair swung forward to veil her face. From behind it, in a voice that sounded as if she might be smiling, she said:
"He's waiting for me now."
"Oh?" said the cherub, impressed. "Well, you'll find him over by the orange grove east of the Tree. He's resting. It's the Day of Rest, you know." The cherub tilted an intimate eyebrow heavenward and added: "He's resting, too. Hear the singing? He made the Man only yesterday, right out of this very earth you're standing on. We were all watching. It was wonderful—Afterward, He called the man Adam, and then Adam named the animals—By the way, what's your name?"
The woman smiled down at her own veiled reflection in the water. After a moment—"Lilith," she said.
The cherub stared, his eyes widening into two blue circles of surprise. He was speechless for an instant. Then he pursed his pink mouth to whistle softly.
"Why," he stammered, "you ... you're the Queen of Air and Darkness!"
Smiling up at him from the corners of her eyes, the woman nodded. The cherub stared at her big-eyed for a moment longer, too overcome for speech. Then, suddenly, he beat his rainbow pinions together and darted off through the trees without another word, the translucent air rippling in a lazy, half-visible wake behind him. Lilith looked after him with a shadowy smile on her face. He was going to warn Adam. The smile deepened. Let him.
-
Lilith turned for one last glance into the mirror of the pool at the strange new shape she had just put on. It was the newest thing in creation—not even God knew about it. And rather surprisingly, she thought she was going to like it. She did not feel nearly as stifled and heavy as she had expected to feel, and there was something distinctly pleasant in the softness of the breeze pouring caressingly about her body, the fragrance of springtime sweet in her nostrils, the grass under her bare feet. The Garden was beautiful with a beauty she had not realized until she saw it through human eyes. Everything she saw through them, indeed, was curiously different now. Here in this flesh all her faculties seemed refocused, as if she, who had always seen with such crystal clarity, now looked through rainbows at everything she saw. But it was a pleasant refocusing. She wished she had longer to enjoy her tenancy in this five-sensed flesh she shared with Adam.
But she had very little time. She glanced up toward the bright, unchanging glory above the trees as if she could pierce the floor of heaven and see God resting on the unimaginable splendor of the Throne while the seraphim chanted in long, shining rows about him. At any moment he might stir and lean forward over Eden, looking down. Lilith instinctively shrugged her shadowy garment closer about her. If he did not look too closely, he might not pierce that shadow. But if he did—A little thrill of excitement, like forked lightning, went through the strange new flesh she wore. She liked danger.
She bent over the pool for one last look at herself, and the pool was a great, dim eye looking back at her, almost sentient, almost aware of her. This was a living Garden. The translucent air quivered with a rhythmic pulsing through the trees; the ground was resilient under her feet; vines drew back to let her pass beneath them. Lilith, turning away through the swimming air after the cherub, puzzled a little as she walked through the parting trees. The relation was very close between flesh and earth—perhaps her body was so responsive to the beauty of the Garden because it aped so closely flesh that had been a part of the Garden yesterday. And if even she felt that kinship, what must Adam feel, who was himself earth only yesterday?
The Garden was like a vast, half-sentient entity all around her, pulsing subtly with the pulse of the lucent air. Had God drawn from this immense and throbbing fecundity all the life which peopled Eden? Was Adam merely an extension of it, a focus and intensification of the same life which pulsed through the Garden? Creation was too new; she could only guess.
She thought, too, of the Tree of Knowledge as she walked smoothly through the trees. That Tree, tempting and forbidden. Why? Was God testing Man somehow? Was Man then, not quite finished, after all? Was there any flaw in Eden? Suddenly she knew that there must be. Her very presence here was proof of it, for she, above all others, had no right to intrude into this magical closed sphere which was God's greatest work. Yet here she walked through the heart of it, and not even God knew, yet—Lilith slanted a smile up through the leaves toward the choruses of the seraphim whose singing swelled and sank and swelled again, unutterably sweet high above the trees. The animals watched her pass with wide, bewildered eyes, somehow not quite at ease, although no such thing as fear had yet stirred through the Garden. Lilith glanced at them curiously as she passed. They were pretty things. She liked Eden.
Presently a swooning fragrance came drifting to her through the trees, almost too sweet to enjoy, and she heard a small voice piping excitedly: "Lilith ... Air and Darkness—He won't like it! Michael ought to know—"
-
Lilith smiled and stepped clear of the trees into the full, soft glow of Eden's sun. It did not touch the shadow that dimly veiled the pale contours of this newest shape in Eden. Once or twice that intangible breeze lifted her hair in a great, dim cloud about her, though no leaves moved. She stood quiet, staring across the glade, and as she stared she felt the first small tremor of distrust in this new flesh she wore.
For on a grassy bank in the sunlight, under the blossoming orange trees, lay Adam. And the trees and the flowers of Eden had seemed beautiful to the eyes of this body Lilith wore, and the breezes and the perfumes had delighted it—but here was flawless perfection newly shaped out of the warm red earth of Eden into the image of its Maker, and the sight of him frightened Lilith because it pleased her so. She did not trust a beauty that brought her to a standstill under the trees, not quite certain why she had stopped.
He sprawled in long-limbed magnificence on the grass, laughing up at the cherub with his curly yellow head thrown back. Every line of him and every motion had a splendid male beauty as perfect as Omnipotence could make it. Though he wore no clothing he was no more naked th
an she, for there was a curious glow all about him, a garment of subtle glory that clothed him as if with an all-enveloping halo.
The cherub danced excitedly up and down in the air above him, shrilling:
"She shouldn't be here! You know she shouldn't! She's evil, that's what she is! God won't like it! She—" Then above Adam's head he caught Lilith's eye, gulped a time or two, piped one last admonishing, "Better watch out!" and fluttered away among the leaves, looking back over one wing as he flew.
Adam's gaze followed the cherub's. The laughter faded from his face and he got up slowly, the long, smooth muscles sliding beautifully under his garment of subtle glory as he moved. He was utter perfection in everything he did, flawless, new-made at the hands of God. He came toward her slowly, a shining wonder on his face.
Lilith stared at him distrustfully. The other glories of the Garden had pleased her abstractly, in a way that left her mistress of herself. But here was something she did not understand at all. The eternal Lilith looked out, bewildered, through the eyes of a body that found something strange and wonderful in Adam. She laid a hand on the upper part of that body which rose and fell with her breathing, and felt something beating strongly beneath the smooth, curved surface of the stuff called flesh.
Adam came toward her slowly. They met in the middle of the glade, and for a long moment neither spoke. Then Adam said in a marveling voice, resonant and deep:
"You ... you're just as I knew you'd be—I knew you'd be somewhere, if I could only find you. Where were you hiding?"
With an effort Lilith mastered this odd, swimming warmth in her which she did not understand. After all, he was nothing but a certain limited awareness housed in newly shaped flesh, and it made no real difference at all what shape that flesh wore. Her business was too dangerous for her to linger here admiring him because by some accident he was pleasing to the eyes of her newly acquired body. She made her voice like honey in her throat and looked up at him under her lashes, crooning:
"I wasn't here at all, until you thought of me."