Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  Death! Where was he? What was he about? Death! Death!

  People commenced to look fearfully at the stranger in their midst. A new face could bring the sweat pouring from their glands. What if he were Death, in human dress, stalking among the millions—enjoying his joke. Death! where is thy sting? Death! DEATH! Death!

  And the days, the weeks rolled on. All over all Earth not a tiling died, not a cripple, not the diseased, the aged, man, mammal, reptile, fish, insect.

  Man found it impossible to eat flesh that continued to twitch and quiver even after it had been in the roasting-pan, for life did not cease with the removal of the heart. Each individual cell retained its life-spark, and even weeks later muscular reflexes reacted to touch. Perforce Man became a vegetarian. He knew that plant-life knew life and death, but it, at least, had no voice, no motion. Only there was no wilting, no drying out of the sap. A felled tree remained green, and new sprouts showed after the uprooting.

  Yet it was apparent that there would be no harvest that year of any great proportion. Man was not the only vegetarian. The increase of insect-life was without precedent. Birds, like man, had turned against their natural food. They could no more than man hold down the squirming, pulsing life. With the insects they devoured the fruits of the field and the orchard, they, in turn, multiplying as their enemies no longer hunted them. Predatory birds were also joining the hordes, unable to eat prey that would not die. And from the forest and the plain came the carnivorous animal, learning to eat vegetables, melons, grain; so that it was not an uncommon sight to see wolves, deer, crow, hawks dining side by side in a corn-field! For Death had released his minions from their policing duties. All the world was becoming an Eden wherein the lion lay down with the lamb.

  Only Eden it would not remain long. Mathematicians attempted to compute how many harvests would remain before the entire globe was denuded of its plant-life, but that task was too monumental for their abstractions. In desperation chemists were experimenting with green wood-pulp, devising ways and means of making it palatable. And in their hearts they cried out for the return of Death!

  3

  NIKO NOR looked up from his notes with some annoyance. “You called me, Talal Tar? Heavens, man, what is wrong with you?” In wonder he surveyed the trembling form, the white face with eyes burning as if from fever. “Are you sick?”

  Sadly the young scientist faced his superior. “Yes, Master, sick at heart.”

  “Why? What has happened to you?”

  “It’s the micro-universe, Master. Will you look within the Globe?”

  Mystified, Nikro Nor moved toward the great silvery sphere, put his eyes to the vision-plate. With a hand that almost trembled he adjusted the lenses. Before him lay the micro-universe he had created from a handful of dust. In miniature, great suns burned in brilliant magnificence. They lay in spiral form just as the great universe of which Gal, Guerm’s sun, was a part, although here and there a bit of matter had torn loose from the outer layers to form little islands of light. Great stars and small, blue-white stars, yellow stars, green stars, red stars, violet stars, and here and there a burned-out bit of dust swam in the spiral, or several of these dust-motes adhered together, obscuring living stars from view.

  About a dozen stars had planetary systems. These had been most difficult to create. They had necessitated the bringing together of two star-motes to cause great enough tides so that bits of matter could be drawn away from the parent. Nikro Nor was proud of that achievement. He had written a scholarly treatise which had had wide circulation throughout Guerm.

  Producing life upon the planets had been the next step. He had fashioned a delicate wand to be manipulated, from where he sat, into the plane of the spiral. After the planets had been inoculated with the life-germ they had been treated with various measures to nourish it, to make it grow, to change its form and to permit it to die once its mission in life had been accomplished. But not always had he waited for it to live its natural life-span. With the wand he killed the young infant, the growing creature, the middle-aged; and when it behooved Talal Tar or himself they used the wand to lift one of the tiny beings from the surface of its home-planet and bring it into the laboratory for dissection and study.

  After his cursory study Nikro Nor could find nothing upsetting in the miniature universe. He said as much to Talal Tar.

  “The planets! the planets! Adjust to combination 3-4-72 and see for yourself!”

  Nikro Nor frowned. He was beginning to feel provoked over his assistant’s behavior. He acted like a high-strung woman instead of a clear-thinking scientist. To humor him, however, Nikro Nor spun the designated lenses into place and watched a small bright body revolve into view. He knew it to be a planet by its reflected light. Its reddish tint showed him it was one of the barren worlds lying too close to the sun. He gave the mechanism under hand another twist so that a second planet came within his ken. For several tense moments he studied it. Another turn and a third planet appeared. One after another he magnified a dozen planets, lying in various parts of the universe. Then he turned to Talal Tar.

  “Something is apparently wrong with our Little Ones. The little worlds have a—a diseased look, but still I do not comprehend.”

  From its bracket Talal Tar took down a head-piece that fitted upon the temple. Tiny, almost invisible wires ran from it into the globe. “Listen!” he admonished his master.

  For a moment or two Nikro Nor “listened.” A puzzled expression spread across his face. At last he took the thought-amplifier off with an impatient gesture. “I never had the success with this that you have, Talal Tar. Now, out with it. What is happening to the Little Ones? What is that roar I heard?

  “Prayer, Master!”

  “Prayer? For what?”

  “Prayer for Death!”

  “Death?”

  “You recall that I told you I intended to switch off the death-rays, to give the Little Ones that which they have been seeking many generations? Immortality? Well, Master, that is just what I did do—five or ten seconds ago. I gave them life everlasting! And they ask again for Death! On every planet their hearts cry out, calling Death, Death the Destroyer!” A gentle smile creased Nikro Nor’s face. “Ah—they are wise—far wiser than I would have dared believe possible! Our Little Ones, my dear Talal Tar, have become divine of thought. It is a lesson for ourselves. By all means—give them Death. For Death is Life’s greatest gift, surcease from pain, from living—from thinking. What is more miraculous than Death?” And in his heart there was no longer a fear of the Grim Stalker. . . .

  Gravity Off!

  Jerry Moore delved just a little too deeply into science—so that he found his gravity reversed—making a living in a circus side-show as the “Upside-Down Man!” But he considers ending his misery by simply walking over the ceiling to an open door—and falling into the sky!

  “HERE you are, folks, here you are! Come and see the MAN WHO FALLS UP IN THE AIR! The Wonder Man. The Phenomenon of the Centuries! The Man Who Walks on Ceilings! Ten cents, folks, one slim dime to see the Scientific Marvel of the Ages. In India they do it with a rope. He does it with his Mind! Come one, come all, see the Great White Yogi defy the Laws of Gravity without mechanical aid!

  “It’s Astounding! It’s Educational! Bring the children to see this modern wonder. Show starts in two minutes. Don’t miss it, folks. See this Marvelous Demonstration of Mental Powers. He’s not a freak, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all done with the mind! One dime, one slim dime. Don’t miss it, don’t miss it, don’t miss it!”

  The midway barker’s mechanical drone went on and on, and men, women and children crowded around the ticket seller’s booth under a crude lithograph dangling in the sunlight in front of an unusually proportioned tent. Its base was a hundred feet square, but it rose high into the air, a hundred and fifty feet above the Midway, long guy ropes holding it in place. The crowd thickened, shoving and pushing its way inside the tent.

  Across the way another barker, megaphone hanging
listlessly from his hand, leaned on a prop, one foot swinging free, watched the shoving crowd with jaundiced eye. Behind him stood another tent with a half-dozen or more garish drawings depicting a half dozen or more freakish-looking creatures, while on a small square platform beside him three bepainted, bedizened, scantily clad houri from the East (Side) jiggled to the tinpany tune of a phonograph, moving arms and legs in a negligible wiggle.

  They, too, watched people pause and stare at the brilliant lithograph before the rival tent. It depicted a man calmly eating at a table that, apparently, along with the chair in which he sat, hung from the ceiling of the painted room. At least, that was the impression it conveyed, that the man was sitting up-side down! To make certain one understood what was intended, another man stood at the bottom of the picture, right side up.

  The houri nearest the freak-tent barker spoke from the corner of her red-smeared mouth. “What a take that guy’s got. It’s a natural if ever I saw one. They say he’s cleaning up every midway. I think I’ll go see him next show . . .”

  Her answer was a growl; the speiler still eyed the pushing crowd. Suddenly, he straightened. At the entrance of the rival tent had been hung a sign. “TENT FULL. NEXT SHOW—TWENTY MINUTES!”

  Disappointed persons looked at the sign and glanced at the freak-tent barker as he began. “Here you are, folks, the greatest collection of freaks ever brought together under one tent. See Jim-Jim, the eat-em-alive-man. Eats snakes in front of your eyes! It’s no fake, it’s the real thing! Come . . .”

  Within the tent of the Upside-Down Man people elbowed for room. Before them stood a six foot high wooden platform holding a large curtained box, twenty feet high. Beside it, on a small table was a phonograph, a bottled drink, and some wrapped sandwiches. Tacked on front of the platform was a small bulletin board with several notices pinned on it. One of these was signed by the town’s mayor, the other by the chief of police.

  Both notices were statements to the effect that the mayor and chief of police had been present at the erection of the tent, that they had seen no buried machines, no contrivances of any kind installed, and that the platform was built of ordinary lumber with no place for concealed wires.

  LOOKING above, the people found the upper part of the tent shrouded in darkness. On one canvas wall hung a rope ladder, and beside it an inch-thick rope that rose into the overhead obscurity.

  The tent was full to capacity; people were packed in like sardines. Children whimpered in the close quarters when from between the curtains a brisk, close-shaven man with graying hair stepped forward. He looked the crowd over and spoke.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began pleasantly, “the young man with the megaphone outside explained this isn’t a ‘freak show.’ That’s correct. The White Yogi, friends, isn’t a freak. He was not born this way! The feats you will see performed in a few moments are feats of scientific achievement. As you all know, in India there are men known as Yogi, men who devote all their lives to a contemplation of the life-forces, and it was among them that the White Yogi studied and learned the secret of his accomplishment, the defiance of the Laws of Gravity!

  “The Great Einstein, folks, teaches us that gravitation is the result of a warp in Space, a force responding to no other force, and is unchanging, unchangeable, and so powerful a force that it bends light! Yet, here, Ladies and Gentlemen is a man who controls the uncontrollable force with his mind! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU THE WHITE YOGI!”

  With that, the speaker waved his hand, the curtain behind him flipped aside to reveal a queer-looking chamber. It was twenty feet, high with three solid walls and was furnished exactly like a bedroom, with bed, table and chair. In the side wall was an ordinary door with an ordinary door-knob. What made the room unique, however, was the fact that it was upside-down; the furniture was nailed to the ceiling; the bedclothing was tied to the bed! The door, likewise, was upside-down, its sill being even with the room’s ceiling—or rather the floor.

  The chamber was not empty. On the floor of the stage in ordinary position stood a small nondescript looking thin man of about twenty-eight or nine. He stood in the center of the floor, feet firmly planted as he made a slight bow and scanned the audience.

  Somehow, that man presented a pitiful object; he had the saddest blue eyes anyone had ever seen. Peculiarly he was blushing; his face was a warm red!

  The announcer spoke from the side of the platform. “The White Yogi is ready to demonstrate his powers. Yogi, will you show these good people how you ascend to your bedchamber?”

  The man smiled, stooped and untied his shoes! Then, without apparent effort, with hands held above his head, he surged upward with a rush! There was a thud, and the whole unusual room shook to his impact—his upraised arms bent as he caught his weight upon his hands. So would a man’s arms bend if he dropped from the same height to the ground!

  The speiler went behind the room coming back with a ladder. While the White Yogi hung from the ceiling of his room, feet dangling toward the floor, the speiler called for volunteers to climb to the top of the chamber and examine it for a possible hidden machine responsible for the White Yogi’s unique position.

  Four self-conscious men came forward, stating they did not belong to the show, and climbed the ladder. A few moments later they came down to testify that there wasn’t a thing on the roof at all.

  As this went on, the upside-down man held his place, his face grew redder and redder and the cords of his neck strained to his effort!

  The man on the platform spoke. “All right, Yogi.”

  With that, the Yogi raised his feet, and the next instant stood in the center of the upside-down room grinning an upside-down grin at the audience as he flexed muscles and breathed heavily from his exertions. Still panting, he walked to a chair and sat down, head pointing toward the ground while the red in his face subsided. Taking out a cigarette, he put it to his lips and lighted it.

  “How about a sandwich? You hungry?”

  For the first time the upside-down man spoke. “Righto—and send up a bottle of pop, Mr. Bolton.”

  Taking a sandwich and the bottle from the nearby table, Mr. Bolton spilled some of the liquid from the bottle to show that it was full, climbed a chair and handed it to the Yogi. He quickly ate the sandwich and tipped his head backward to drink the soda from the bottle. He passed back the empty bottle.

  Now he went through a prescribed routine, walking around the upside-down room, sitting at a table to take out paper and pen from a drawer and write a few lines upon it. Next, he went to the bed and laid up upon its covers.

  “You’ll notice, ladies and gentlemen,” said Bolton, “the Yogi lies upon his bed as much at ease as you and I lie on an ordinary bed. Yogi, will you rise and let these people see the indentation your head made upon the pillow?”

  The Yogi complied and the people exclaimed aloud at what they saw. Slowly, the pillow returned to its original position, hanging down in accordance with gravity.

  “Yogi, will you give us a dance?” Going to the phonograph, the speiler put on a tune and the man on the ceiling went into a short dance routine that elicited some response from his audience.

  The record was turned off. “And now, good people, the Yogi will give you a demonstration of a man falling up into the air!—together with his own interpolation of the Hindu Rope-Trick! In India, folks, the Yogi project a rope into the air without support so that a child can climb the rope. The White Yogi does something else.

  “Yogi, will you kindly step out of your bedroom?”

  The upside-down man crossed the “floor” of his chamber to its door. He turned the knob and let the door swing outward with himself clinging to it, his feet dangling up into the air!

  AGAIN the announcer spoke at length.

  “As you people no doubt know, the velocity of a falling body continually increases by 32 feet per second in each second of the fall. This fall is calculated at approximately 16 feet in the first second, 48 feet in the second second, 80 feet in the
third second, and so on. From the Yogi’s present position he is about 125 feet from the top of this tent; therefore, he will reach the top in less than four and a half seconds. For those wishing to verify this, take out your watches while the Yogi performs this unusual feat of falling against the Force of Gravity!

  “Are you ready, Yogi?”

  “Ready!”

  At the last cry, lights went on in the top of the tent which looked even higher from the inside than it had outside.

  “GO!”

  At the signal, the White Yogi let go his hold on the doorknob, and in one upward surge, rushed toward the top of the tent!

  He struck the canvas with such force that the entire structure swayed back and forth ominously. Bolton shouted for the people to remain calm, that the tent was braced for that impact, just as the tent top was provided with springs for the benefit of the man who had fallen upon it.

  Straining their necks upward, the people saw the man who had flattened against the tent-top sit himself up—upside-down, of course, and climb to his feet.

  Walking to the side wall, he took hold of the rope fastened to the side of the rope-ladder, freed it, and held the end in his hand for all to see.

  Again Bolton spoke. “The White Yogi wants you to know the rope he is holding isn’t fastened at either end. He will now lower his end of the rope to us to prove to you all the rope is free. When he has the other end of the rope in his hands, he will come down!”

  They watched the upside-down man pay out the rope, and as one end came in reach of the platform, the announcer called for two strong volunteers to grab it and “hang on to it for dear life!”

  He turned to the audience. “Remember, folks, that rope is not suspended in any way. It is the Yogi alone who holds it upright! As he comes toward us, you’ll see the other end of the rope drop downward; the Yogi alone holds it up!” He called out.