The First Theodore R. Cogswell Megapack

by Theodore R. Cogswell

  Albert’s momentary feeling of elation vanished. “What do you mean, ‘all straightened out’? I’m no better off than I was this morning.” Unable to restrain himself, he launched into a long narration of his woes.

  “I don’t get it,” said Whooping Water when he had finally finished. “You let those thugs beat you unconscious rather than give up, but over at the University you let everybody and his brother shove you around.”

  “I just can’t help it,” said Albert miserably. “It’s not that I’m a coward. It’s just the way my glands work. Every time I start to stand up for myself, something triggers them off and they all let loose at once. I get so much adrenalin in my blood that all I can do is stand there and shake. And so I’m losing my girl and there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

  Whooping Water looked dreamily at the ceiling. “You know,” he said at last, “Mike Hammer’s glands let loose too, but he knows how to use them. And against a couple of amateurs…”

  Albert let out a sudden squawk of protest but he was too late. Two fat green sparks came arcing across and caught him square in the middle of the forehead…

  For some strange reason Priscilla wasn’t so thrilled at being rescued as might have been expected. The look of eager anticipation that was on her face as the door opened was replaced by one of annoyance when she saw who had opened it.

  “It took you long enough,” she snapped pettishly as Albert undid the ropes that bound her to the chair. The old Albert would have quailed and began to stutter apologies, but this wasn’t the old Albert.

  When he dropped her off at her home she was breathing hard and there was a strange new look in her eyes.

  “Won’t you come up?” she whispered. “There’s nobody home.”

  Albert wanted to but Hammer wouldn’t let him.

  “Got a couple of rats to take care of first,” he growled. “After that…” He ran his hand up and down her back and she melted against him. He gave her a sudden shove.

  “Beat it, kid. I got work to do…

  When Albert swaggered into his office, Lippencott was in the middle of the fifteenth reading of his latest essay in TENSION, A Quarterly Journal of New Criticism.

  “Easy does it, old man,” he said lazily as the door crashed shut. “I take it that Dr. Quimbat finally broke the news to you about the switch in courses.”

  “What switch?” growled Albert.

  “Next fall I’ll be giving a seminar in the New Criticism and a graduate course in James. I’m afraid that means that you are going to have to take over my two sections of Freshman English. Tough luck, old man, but I know that when you think it over you’ll realize that it’s for the good of the department. And now if you’ll excuse me. I’d better be taking off. Priscilla and I are going out tonight and I have a bit of work at home I want to get out of the way first.”

  “Not just yet, junior.” Albert turned and clicked the lock on the door behind him. “You and I got a little talking to do first. For one thing, I ain’t giving up my seminar or my Chaucer course for you or nobody else. And for another, you go woofing around the department head any more, sticking knives in my back, and you’re going to find out all of a sudden your ears ain’t mates!”

  Lippencott grinned and blew a puff of tobacco smoke in Albert’s face.

  “Anything more, little man?”

  “Yeah,” said Albert in a soft voice. “I got Priscilla staked out. You come poaching and you’re going to end up minus a head, not that you’d miss it none.”

  Lippencott stood up and flexed his muscles. “Albert,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to paste you for a long time. But my conscience wouldn’t let me because you were too little and too weak. But now I can do it with no regrets.”

  Proudly conscious of his beautifully muscled body, he stalked toward Albert.

  “Put ’em up,” he said, assuming the stance that had made him runner-up for the base middleweight championship during his wartime tour of duty as P.T. officer at Smutney Field.

  Albert didn’t cooperate. Instead one hand suddenly snaked out and grabbed an empty coke bottle that was sitting on the window sill. With a practiced twist of the wrist he smashed it against the floor.

  “Pretty boy,” he hissed as he advanced slowly forward, the jagged edges held at ready, “you ain’t going to be any longer.”

  Lippencott stood his ground, but not very long. “Listen, Albert,” he said nervously as he recoiled a step. “You’re not acting like a gentleman.”

  “There’s a good reason for that,” said Albert, sliding closer with a horrible grin on his face. “I ain’t no gentleman.”

  Without warning, his arm flashed out. It was only by grace of excellent reflexes and a great deal of luck that Lippencott was able to preserve his nose. It was too much. He let out a frightened howl and turned to run, but there wasn’t any place to run to. The door was locked and Albert had him backed into a corner.

  “You touch me and I’ll report you to the administration,” he whimpered as the jagged edges of the broken bottle came closer and closer to his face.

  Albert chuckled. “Who’d believe you? Everybody knows what a mouse of a guy I am.”

  That did it. Lippencott cracked completely and sobbed promise after promise. Albert waited until he’d heard the words he wanted and then tossed the bottle end crashing against the wall.

  “Just don’t forget.” He said as he swaggered out. “There’s a coke machine in every building on the campus.”

  6

  When Albert came into the English office, the gongs were still beating inside his head. He was informed by the secretary that the chairman was in conference—which meant that he was taking his daily two-hour nap on the rather bumpy divan he had brought back from his student quarters at Oxford. Albert didn’t say anything, he just slapped her attractive posterior in a flattering way and, as she stood gasping, barreled into the inner sanctum and slammed the door behind him.

  Ten minutes passed before he emerged. When he did the secretary was waiting for him with a melting smile. He gave her another spank and gestured toward the inner office.

  “Boss man wants to see you, kiddo. He’s got a few memos to dictate. He’s changed his mind about dropping my Middle English courses. The one I want you to get right out, though, is the recommendation for promotion.” He flicked again and she ran squealing into Dr. Quimbat’s office.

  Dr. Quimbat was somewhat the worse for wear. He started to babble something about a coke bottle but then regained enough of his senses to think better of it and dictate what had to be dictated.

  There was company waiting for him in Albert’s own office. As soon as the door was shut, Whooping Water gave the little finger wiggle that was necessary to banish Mike Hammer.

  “Want another shot before your date tonight? Mike’s been doing all right by you so far.”

  Albert shuddered and shook his head. “No thanks! Every time she cuddles up to me I start getting ideas.”

  “What’s wrong with that? You’re a big boy now, and she isn’t exactly a spring chicken.”

  “It’s not that I’m objecting to. These ideas involve an erotic transference from the usual areas to her stomach. And that isn’t all. I keep wanting to go out and buy a big .45.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Whooping Water.

  “So, thanks for everything. I’m going to be needing your help later today but there’s no use your hanging around here until then.”

  “I’m dismissed?”

  “You’re dismissed.”

  When Whooping Water disappeared this time, he did it by slow stages. First his epidermis became transparent, and then bit by bit the rest of him faded out until there was nothing left but a stomach, a pair of lungs, and an intricately coiled large intestine, all hanging motionless in mid-air.

  Without Hammer to back him up, Albert found himself growing nauseated. “Please,” he gulped. “I’ve had about all I can take for one day.”

  The lungs contracted and a lit
tle snicker came from the air above them. Then slowly, much too slowly, the viscera faded from sight.

  Albert had just put his feet up on his desk for the first time in his academic career when there was a knock on the door and Dick Martinelli, State’s star quarterback, came diffidently in.

  “No!” said Albert before the football player could get in a word.

  “Wait a minute, doc,” protested the other in an injured voice. “I ain’t asking for no free ride. I just want one of them there retests.”

  “You want what!”

  “A re-test. I went and read the book.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, I did. I’m going over to the drugstore to see if there’s any new Spillane in, but there ain’t. And while I’m looking over the pocket book rack to see if there’s anything else that looks interesting, I sees a picture on a cover that makes me damn near drop my teeth. So I grabs it, and you know what?”

  “What?” said Albert obediently.

  “When I gets home I find I went and bought a copy of this here Canterbury Tales which I’m supposed to be reading for your course but don’t because I take a look the first day and it’s full of funny words. Only this time I start looking through to see if I can find the part they got the picture on the cover from and WOW!”

  “Wow?”

  “Yeah, WOW!” Martinelli sniggered. ‘There’s stuff in there that I don’t see how they let it get printed. Like for example there’s one place where a guy climbs up a ladder to try and make a gal whose husband is supposed to be out of town and—”

  “I have a certain familiarity with the story in question,” said Albert. “Suppose you let me ask the questions.”

  “Sure thing, doc. Shoot!”

  “Give me a precis of ‘The Reeve’s Tale.’”

  Martinelli gulped. “A what?”

  “A precis—an abstract, a summary, a…well, just tell me what happened.”

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Well, there were a couple of guys who were going to Oxford or some place like that and they got a couple of days off. So they’re hitchhiking around and they happen to bump into this miller, see? And he’s got a good-looking wife and a daughter who’s really stacked. So that night while the old man’s asleep, these guys…”

  When Martinelli came back there was a happy smile on his face.

  “I took your note about my grade change by the Dean’s office and he says I’m eligible again. Then I went over to the library for the book you wanted but the gal at the desk couldn’t help me. She said one copy was lost and the other was at the bindery.”

  “Oh well,” said Albert. “I’ll find a copy some place. At least you finally did find out where the library was.”

  “But I got it anyway,” said Martinelli triumphantly. “There was something about the title that stuck in my head so I went over to the drugstore and looked. Sure enough, they got it out in pocket book. Here.” He tossed the small paper-backed volume on Albert’s desk. “From the cover it looks like hot stuff. Maybe there’s more to these here classics than I thought. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Just a second,” said Albert and made a quick check of his brief case. He had chalk, a piece of brass tubing, and a small quantity of charcoal.

  “I guess not,” he said. “You run on back to the practice field. I have an engagement for this evening;—I suppose you’d call it a heavy date—and I’ve got to get ready for it.”

  “Okay, Doc. I’ll be seeing you.” His hand was on the door knob when Albert stopped him.

  “I have thought of something else. Will you scout around and see if you can find me a fire extinguisher? I’ve got to build a small fire in here shortly and I don’t want to take any chances of it getting out of hand.”

  Martinelli looked bewildered, but he obeyed without question. “I got one in the car,” he said, “I’ll bring it right up.”

  As the door shut behind him, Albert picked up the pocket book and examined the provocative scene on the cover with a great deal of interest. It showed two godlike young creatures engaged in some sort of a Renaissance bed. Albert eyed the male figure with a certain amount of envy—and then shrugged. Even if he were no physical prize, Priscilla’s dimensions were also several inches short of those of the impossibly curved and scantily dressed female who was sprawled out with a dreamy smile on her face.

  “Aglon, Tetragram, vaycheon,” he muttered to himself and then settled down to wait Martinelli’s return with the extinguisher. With a sigh of anticipation, he flipped open the pocket book and began to read the first of The Adventures of Casanova.

  THE CABBAGE PATCH

  Aunt Hester sent me to bed early that night. I lay quietly in the old four-poster, listening to the night sounds and the soft sleepy hisses as the narns who lived in the old fern tree underneath my window bedded themselves down in their holes. I was supposed to settle down too, but the tight excited feeling inside my chest wouldn’t go away. I pulled the soft down pillow over my head and tried to make everything black. I wanted to go to sleep right away so I could wake up in time to see the birth-fairy when she came down with my new sister.

  Priscilla Winters said babies came from the cabbage patch but I knew better. She brought a cabbage to school one day to prove it, and that night when we were supposed to be asleep she opened it up and showed me a baby inside. It was squishy and white like all soon-babies are before they make the change, but I knew it wasn’t a real baby because it didn’t have any teeth. We made a birthing-box out of a jar and gave it some flies to eat but it wouldn’t eat them, it just kept crawling around and waving its feelers as if it didn’t like it there. When we woke up the next morning it had turned brown and was all dead.

  The narns in the fern tree had stopped their whispering, but I still couldn’t get to sleep. The little moon had chased the big one up over the horizon so far that its light was shining through the window right into my eyes. I got up and shut the blinds but even having the room dark again didn’t help. I kept seeing pictures of the birth-fairy fluttering down like a beautiful butterfly, and then after she’d put the babies safe in their birthing-box, flying off again with the year-father soaring after her on his fine new wings.

  I wanted to see his wings but Mother wouldn’t let me. For two months now she had kept him shut up in his room and she wouldn’t even let me speak to him through the door. I wanted to say goodbye to him because even if he was only a year-father, he’d been nice to me. I was never supposed to be with him unless Mother or Aunt Hester were around but sometimes I’d slip into the kitchen when they were away and we’d talk about things. I liked being with him best when he was baking preska because he’d give me bits of the dough and let me make funny things out of them.

  Once Aunt Hester caught me alone with him and her face got all hard and twisted and she was going to call the patrol and have him beaten, but Mother came in just then. She sent the year-father to his room and then took me into the parlor. I knew that she was getting ready for one of her heart-to-heart talks but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I just sat there and listened. Mother’s talks always got so wound in on themselves that when she was through I usually couldn’t figure out what all the fuss had been about.

  First she asked me if I’d felt anything funny when I was alone with the year-father. I asked her what she meant by “funny” and she sort of stuttered and her face got all red. Finally she asked me a funny question about my stinger and I said “no.” Then she started to tell me a story about the wasps and the meem but she didn’t get very far with that either. She wanted to but she got all flustered and her tongue wouldn’t work. Aunt Hester said “nonsense”, that I was still a little girl and next year would be soon enough. Mother said she wished she could be sure, then she made me promise that if ever my stinger felt funny when I was around a year-father, I’d run and tell her about it right away because if I didn’t, something terrible might happen.

  My pillow got all hot so I w
ent and sat in my chair. The more I thought about the year-father, the more I wanted to go and see his new wings. Finally I went over to the door and listened. I could hear Mother and Aunt Hester talking in the front of the house so I tiptoed down the back stairs. When I got to the landing I stopped and felt around with my foot until I found the part of the next stair that was right against the railing. That’s a bad stair because if you step in the middle of it without thinking, it gives a loud squeak that you can hear all over the house.

  The year-father’s room is right next to the kitchen. I gave a little scratch on the door so he would know who it was and not be frightened. I stood there in the dark waiting for him to open up but he didn’t so I went inside and felt for him in his nest. He wasn’t there.

  First I thought maybe I should go back up and get in bed because Aunt Hester said that if she ever again caught me up at night when I was supposed to be sleeping, she’d give me a licking that I’d never forget. But then I started to think of what would happen to the year-father if he’d gone outside and the patrol caught him wandering around alone at night, and I decided that I’d better tell Mother right away, even if I did get a walloping afterwards.

  Then I thought that first I’d better look in the kitchen for him. It was dark in there too so I shut the hall door and lit the lamp on the kitchen table. The stone floor was awfully cold on my feet and I began to wish that I’d remembered to put on my slippers before I came downstairs. Once my eyes got used to the light I looked all around but the year-father wasn’t there either. I was about to blow out the lamp and go and tell mother when I heard a funny sound coming from the nursery.

  I know it sounds funny to have a nursery in the kitchen, but since soon-babies have to be locked away in a dark place until it’s time for them to make the change, Mother said we might as well use the old pantry instead of going to all the trouble of blacking out one of the rooms upstairs.

  The big thick door that mother had put on was shut but she’d forgotten to take the key away so I went over and opened it a crack. I was real scared because at birthing time nobody is allowed to go in the nursery, not even Aunt Hester. Once the little ones are in the birthing-box, Mother locks the door and doesn’t ever open it up again until after they’ve changed into real people like us.