The First Theodore R. Cogswell Megapack

by Theodore R. Cogswell

  The demon scowled. The whole subject was obviously extremely distasteful to him. “It’s not really a field,” he growled; “it’s just a five-sided geometrical figure, a pentagram. If one of us gets stuck inside we can’t change shape and we can’t get out. We just freeze—it’s something instinctive like the way a bird reacts to a snake. Something happened way back when…after the battle with the shining ones and the long fall…after we changed so much we couldn’t fly high enough to get away.”

  He stared silently at the black shining floor for a moment and then his voice regained its normal gruffness. “We haven’t got time to talk about the past. It’s the present that’s the problem. Are you going to start doing something about it or am I?”

  “I could think better if I could relax,” said the dark man plaintively. “You don’t have to hog the only comfortable chair in the place.”

  The demon simply grunted, settled back more firmly, and producing a wicked looking dagger from some secret place, began to sharpen the tips of his long claws. There was a moment of hesitation and then the dark man said at last, “If I’m going to change the past without really changing the past, you’ll have to give me a little more to go on. Just what were you trying to accomplish by going back and changing a set of construction plans?”

  “Well,” said the other reluctantly, “they were all ready to be inked in and blueprinted. Chances are that nobody would have noticed that the design for the ornamental inlaid pentagram for the center of the vault floor had had another side added to make it a hexagram. Six-pointed figures don’t bother us at all. Bal-Shire could have walked right through it, done his business, and been back to the pits in no time. It was a good idea—”

  “—only it didn’t work. But maybe I’ve got hold of something that might. Any break in the lines of a pentagram causes it to lose its power, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s an either/or deal.”

  The dark man nodded thoughtfully and then began to fiddle with the controls of the machine on his desk. Just as the familiar oval formed, Krans jumped to his feet and came roaring across the room, his great bat wings stretched out as if he were trying to take off.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” he boomed. “Maybe I don’t know much about science but I do know something about humans. And my guess is that maybe you just got a bright idea that you could get out of this by going back before I sealed the room up and leaving me here to whistle.”

  The man in the white coat tried to say something but he didn’t get a chance.

  “Or maybe,” continued the demon, “you’re thinking that just because the contract has to be completed within thirty days that all you got to do is hop a couple of years in the future so that the whole agreement will lapse and I won’t have a legal leg to stand on?”

  “Of course I thought of all that,” said the dark man impatiently, “but I wouldn’t be fool enough to try to act on either. If I went back I’d obviously try to avoid any agreement with you in the future. And I couldn’t do that because my so doing would mean a noticeable difference in the present. And as for the future, do you think I’m stupid enough to think that legal technicalities mean anything to your kind? Even if you can’t travel in time you’re immortal. No matter where I tried to hide in the future, I’d know that eventually you’d be around looking for me.”

  Krans scratched his horns reflectively. “That makes sense,” he admitted at last and went back to his easy chair and sat down.

  The other made a final adjustment on the warper, picked up the bottle of ink on his desk, and popped through the silver oval. A moment later he popped out again. “Little off course,” he said and twiddled with the knobs on his machine. When he came back the second time he had a satisfied grin on his face.

  “Now you can’t say I didn’t complete my side of the bargain. Your boy is free. If he’s not back at the pits by now it’s because he stopped on the way for a couple of quick doubles. And under the circumstances I can’t say that I blame him.”

  The demon looked dazed. “But how? You said that nothing could be done in the past that would cause a noticeable change. How could you change the pentagram in any way that wouldn’t be noticeable?”

  “There was nothing to it,” said the other modestly. “Bal-Shire knocked over a bottle of ink in the ordinary course of events, didn’t he, and splashed it all over the floor?”

  “Yes, but so what?”

  “Nobody was around to notice it, were they?”

  The demon shook his head mutely.

  “And if I added another splash that cut across the lines of the inlaid pentagram and broke the figure so your boy could get out, there’s no reason why it should be noted more than the other splotches, is there? The janitor will clean up the whole mess Monday morning and that will be the end of that.”

  Krans let out a grunt of relief, tossed his dagger into the air, and then caught it deftly. “And now you expect me to pay off,” he said with a leer. “Chum, you already know the answer. I’ve never kept a bargain yet and I’m not about to start. And the police are going to be going around talking to themselves when they find what’s left of you inside a locked room.” A set of long tusks slid into view and gnashed hungrily as he grabbed hold of the arms of the chair and started to pull himself to his feet.

  The man behind the desk jumped back, as if in fright, grabbed for the two switches set in the wall behind him, and flipped one on and the other off. As the electric lights went out, there was a moment of total darkness before an eerie glow came from the bank of infrared and ultraviolet lights set in the ceiling. The demon let out an angry bellow and crouched to spring…and then as a glowing pentagram leapt into being around the chair, he made one convulsive movement and hurled his dagger just before he found himself locked in straining paralysis.

  The shock of the blade that buried itself to the hilt in his back slammed the dark man against the wall. He started to slump and then pulled himself erect and turned to face the trapped demon. In spite of a little trickle of blood that welled out of the corner of his mouth when he spoke, his voice gave no indication that anything unusual had happened. If anything, it was a little more pedantic than usual.

  “If you had diverted just a little of the time you expended in encouraging human corruption to an examination of human progress you might have learned that most inks fluoresce under ultraviolet light. When I went back through the time warp the first time I just made a hop of six hours. It only took me a couple of seconds to ink in a pentagram around your chair.”

  “But the ink,” croaked the other. “There wasn’t any there before. There would have been a noticeable difference!”

  The dark man gave a strangled cough as the trickle of blood suddenly increased to a gush. He dipped one finger in the inkwell and flipped several drops in the direction of the demon. As soon as they hit the floor they became invisible.

  “Jet black on a jet black floor?’’ He gasped. “Why should it be noticeable? You were right though. When the police finally break in here they’ll have a real locked room mystery.” He reached behind him with unsteady fingers and touched the hilt of the dagger that had ripped into him. “I couldn’t have done it myself. Not at that angle. But back to our agreement. I said I’d give you what you wanted most…and I did…and now…”

  The shining geometrical figure that flowed up from the floor at the paralyzed demon seemed to suck away all his strength, converting his once powerful bulk into a quivering, blubbery mass. He tried twice to speak. When he did his voice skidded out of control into a high falsetto.

  “Who are you? What do you want of me?”

  “You already know,” said the dark man softly, a faint note of compassion in his voice. “If you want to, you can remember the time before you were exiled here, the time before you made yourself ugly with your own ugliness. If you want to you can remember us. But that would be painful, and even for you there is no need for needless pain—not any longer.”

  The angel’s voice faded to a sib
ilant whisper as he let his hunting costume fall to the floor and sprawl out like a broken doll.

  “And so,” he hummed as he resolved himself into the pulsating pentagram of pure energy that was his normal shape, and began to descend over the helpless Krans like a five-sided noose, “now is your time to vanish. But not softly. And not suddenly. And not away.”

  MACHINE RECORD

  “Good Heavens” said the disreputable political affairs researcher, “you must be a madman!”

  “Exactly,” said the mad scientist, his eyes glittering with insane cunning.

  “But…but what does this manifestly evil machine do?”

  “Isn’t it evident?” The scientist cackled gaily. “It’s designed to conquer the world for me. What else?”

  “Of course. What else?”

  “It is made of indestructible materials, has wheels, jointed legs, tractor treads, and seven death rays of different frequencies. It draws its energy from a little atomic engine, the size of your thumb nail, which produces about the same potential as Grand Coulee Dam.”

  “Remarkable,” said the researcher, looking at his thumb nail.

  The machine was, indeed, a sight to inspire dread. Pear-shaped, its gleaming body was topped with bristling, odd-angled radar-like antenna. A few feet above its complex underpinnings was a double row of formidable looking muzzles, pointing in all directions. On one side was a small, push-button switch of insidious portent. Here, in this high vaulted dungeon of an ancient, blood-stained castle, high on a storm-beset mountain, in a small European principality, the effect was incredibly sinister.

  The political affairs researcher, unscrupulous as he was, gasped with ill-concealed alarm.

  “And what, sir,” he said, “have I to do with all this?”

  The scientist’s eyes glittered. “You,” he said, “are to help me organize my conquests into an empire.”

  “Good heavens,” the other man said again. “And you have brought me here to this dank dungeon to ask my assistance in a fiendish plot to conquer the world?” His imagination had not as yet assimilated the grandeur of the scheme.

  “It’s not dank,” the scientist said, waving his hand impatiently. “This dungeon is quite properly air-conditioned.” And so it was. The mad savant had, in a moment of rare lucidity, equipped his castle cellar with a remarkably efficient air conditioning machine, together with do-it-yourself asphalt tiling, and a portable bar that played “The Last Rose of Summer” when you pressed the hidden button that brought it swinging out from its artful concealment behind a bookcase.

  “That’s beside the point,” said the other. “I’m not altogether certain that I approve of your plot. Anyway,” he added primly, “I’m making forty a week where I’m working now.”

  The scientist snapped his fingers, with a carefree, yet macabre laugh. “I’ll double it,” he said. “What’s more, I have a beautiful daughter.”

  The researcher peeped at the machine out of the corner of his eye. “When do we turn it on?”

  “As soon as you work out a campaign for me,” said the other. “I want to assume complete political control with a minimum of fuss and bother. A few days perhaps?”

  The researcher stared at him blankly. “Where,” he said, “have you been for the past ten years?”

  “Here,” said the scientist, rubbing his hands together, “perfecting my designs. Is something wrong?”

  “Well…I rather thought you planned to just kill everybody.”

  “Everybody?” A new glint flickered momentarily in the madman’s eye and he licked a speculative tongue over his lower lip. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It would be so much simpler.” The other’s tone was ingratiating.

  The scientist thought for a moment, grinning evilly. Then he shook his head, which, I forgot to mention, sat somewhat crookedly upon his shoulders. “No,” he said, “no, I’m afraid not. That way my empire would be a little shabby. Nobody to rule,” he shook his head, “nobody to torture and all that. No, just work out a simple way for me to run things.”

  “Hmm,” said the researcher, who was, I also forgot to say, portly, bespectacled, and wearing a gravy-spotted vest “this will take some thought.”

  “Well take it,” said the scientist, “but don’t dawdle. I’m getting impatient.” His eyes took on a dreamy look. “I want to have a harem, and a movie made about my life, The Arnspiegle Story—that’s my name, Arnspiegle—starring Larry Parks and with Gordon Macrae’s voice dubbed in. I also want an orchid-colored Rolls-Royce and a pear-shaped swimming pool.”

  “That’s reasonable,” said the researcher, “but it’s going to take a little doing.” He frowned. “You’ll have to give me a few days before we start blasting away.”

  “If it’s absolutely necessary,” said the mad scientist petulantly, his voice registering his annoyance. He walked over and patted the monstrous machine with affection. “I’m going to have Liberace play at all my weddings,” he murmured.

  Two weeks passed while the mad scientist tinkered with his machine, perfecting its lethal powers, and while the shabby political affairs researcher worked in a freshly Kemtoned upstairs chamber, surrounded by political research materials: editorial pages from The Christian Science Monitor, Pravda, and The Boston Evening Transcript. Every evening, glued to the short-wave receiver, with bated breath he listened to Edward R. Murrow.

  Finally one day the mad scientist burst in on him, overflowing with impatience. “How’s it going, Alfred?” he asked. The researcher’s name was Alfred.

  “Complete political control, did you say?” said Alfred evasively.

  “Obviously. As Emperor of the World I have to have some simple central system for tax collection and young-virgin tribute and all. Why?”

  “It’s a tougher job than I thought,” mumbled the other. “Or maybe I’m slipping. I used to be able to whip up a foolproof world government between the second and third Martini.” His voice suddenly became pleading. “Look,” he said, “let’s just kill everybody.”

  “No,” the scientist said “definitely not. I’ve thought it all out and I’ve decided that it’s all or nothing with me.” He looked shyly at the great map of the world that covered the far wall. “I guess that’s just the kind of a guy I am.”

  Two more weeks passed, and this time it was Alfred who came down to see the mad scientist. He found him busily installing a woofer in the far wall, trying obviously, for a greater fidelity on the low notes on his Liberace records.

  His eyes lit up with their old evil gleam when he saw Alfred. “Ready?” he asked excitedly.

  “Well…” Alfred said, “not exactly. I think maybe, while I’m ironing out the last few wrinkles, that there’s some reading you ought to do. You ought to pick up a little background from this Emperor business. You know, administrative problems and all that.”

  “Oh.” The mad scientist’s voice was filled with disappointment.

  The political researcher took him upstairs, where he presented him with copies of selected works of Marx, Freud, Darwin, Mary Baker Eddy, Veblen, and David Reisman. Also a considerable pile of clippings from Westbrook Pegler, Joseph Alsop and Dr. Brady; biographies of Joseph Stalin, I. V. Lenin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Bridey Murphy, Mao Tse-Tsung, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph McCarthy, Chiang Kai-Chek. On top of the pile he placed a copy of The Power Of Positive Thinking. There was also an assortment of books on metaphysics, cybernetics, phrenology, hydrostatics, the Rosicrucians, the destiny of Man, the meaning of history, the meaning of life and the meaning of poetry.

  “These will do for a starter,” he said, throwing in a copy of The Reader’s Digest for good measure.

  “Hmmm,” said the mad scientist.

  Six weeks later a far wiser mad scientist purposively mounted the castle steps to Alfred’s room. He found the portly gentleman beside the short wave set, listening to Gabriel Heatter, a look of abject horror on his face.

  “Turn that thing off and come with me!” he commanded. Alfred f
ollowed him down to the dungeon. It was dank; the air conditioner had blown a tube. Books, pamphlets, and newspaper clippings were scattered all over the asphalt tile floor. Broken Liberace records lay everywhere. A rat scurried away, into the bowels of the hi-fi set, at their approach.

  “Good heavens, man,” said Alfred. “What happened?”

  The mad scientist looked at him and laughed a wicked, insane little laugh. “The scales,” he said, “have dropped from my eyes.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I have become politically enlightened.”

  “It’s about time,” said Alfred. His gambit had paid off.

  The mad scientist seemed hardly to hear him. His eyes had become focused sternly on some distant horizon. “I think what the situation calls for is a different approach.”

  “Like turning on the machine?”

  “Of course not!” The mad scientist’s voice fairly oozed authority. “It’s merely that there seems to be more to this thing —world-government-wise, that is—than I had suspected.” He waved a hand dramatically over the clutter of magazines, books, and badly mimeographed pamphlets that littered the floor. “I’m beginning to see that what you need, Alfred, is a fresh approach. A positive one. A totally new concept. You’ve been too much of a research man—not enough of a creative thinker.”

  Alfred began eyeing him suspiciously. “So?” he said.

  “I’ve decided that what we need is a middle man. Someone to handle the annoying administrative details.” The mad scientist inserted his thumbs under his suspenders and began rocking back and forth on his heels, still gazing at the unseen horizon. He looked very important. “Why go to all the trouble of setting up a new political machine when there’s one already in existence that is admirably suited to our purpose?”

  Alfred began to look uneasy. The mad scientist fished an old fashioned coin purse from his pocket and took out a crumpled wad of bills. “Here,” he said, “go and buy yourself a Homburg. And a briefcase.”