Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  IT SEEMED an odd way at that for the Temple’s new Oracle to have phrased her prediction, Commager thought. He regarded Dr. Knox without much sympathy. “So now you want me to simply tell her not to hurt you, eh?”

  “It would be better, Mr. Commager,” Knox suggested, “if you addressed yourself directly to the young woman called Paylar!” He reached for his visitor’s hand again. “I place myself under your protection, sir! I know you won’t refuse it!”

  Which was almost precisely what he had said as soon as the nurses left the room, and the reason Commager had believed the patient was in a state of delirium. Now it seemed more probable that he was merely badly mistaken.

  Commager decided not to ask why it would be better to speak to Paylar. At any direct question concerning the Guides, the Reverend became evasive. He said instead, “What made you decide I could protect you, Dr. Knox?” Knox looked downright crafty. “I have made no inquiries about you, sir, and I do not intend to. I am a simple man whose life has been devoted to providing a measure of beauty and solace for his fellow human beings. In a modest way, of course. I have never pried into the Greater Mysteries!”

  He seemed to expect approval for that, so Commager nodded gravely.

  “I speak only of what I saw,” Wilson Knox continued. “On Sunday night, I saw them attempt to bring you directly under their sway. Forgive me for saying, sir, that they do not do this with an ordinary person! I also saw them fail and I knew they were frightened. Nevertheless, you were not destroyed.”

  He tapped Commager’s hand significantly. “That, sir, was enough for me. I do not attempt to pry—I have merely placed myself under your protection!”

  VII

  A MAN with Secret Powers, a man who could tell the Guides to go jump in the Pacific, might take a passing interest in the gimmicks of an organization like the Temple of Antique Christianity. So on his way out through the grove, Commager had turned aside to get a closer look at the dais.

  He assumed, at least, that the gray and black marble platform was what Mrs. Lovelock had referred to as the seat of the Oracle, since nothing else around seemed suitable for the purpose.

  Standing before it, he pictured her sitting up there in the night, veiled, a vast, featureless bulk, announcing whatever came into her mind in that stunning voice, and he could see that Wilson Knox’s congregation might well have listened in pop-eyed fascination. Ruth MacDonald couldn’t have been nearly as impressive.

  Perhaps that was why she had started passing out death sentences.

  Down on Sunset, he parked his car at the curb and remained in it, watching the traffic, while he tried to digest the information he had received—if you could call it information.

  Wilson Knox and Mrs. Lovelock appeared to be people who had fabricated so much fantastic garbage for the clients of the Temple that they had no judgment left to resist the fabrications of others.

  Commager’s parting from Mrs. Lovelock had given him the impression that the huge woman also was sullenly afraid, though she hid it much better than the Reverend had. It could be simply that she felt her own position in the Temple would be lost if Knox died; but he thought that in her case, too, it was a more personal fear, of the Guides, or even of himself—

  And he’d practically promised both of them to put in a word with Paylar to protect that revolting little man!

  HOWEVER, the Reverend’s heart attack, at least, probably had been a real enough thing. And if Ruth MacDonald actually had telephoned a prediction of death to him earlier in the night, there was some cause for intervention. The practice of frightening people into their graves was something that anyone could reasonably insist should be stopped!

  And that, of course, brought up the question of how he expected to stop it.

  And the question, once more, of just what that odd group of people—who indicated they were the Guides or associated with them—was after.

  Ruth MacDonald’s activities concerning the Temple of Antique Christianity hardly seemed to lie on the lofty, idealistic level he’d been almost willing to ascribe to them in theory, even if he disliked their methods. She was a brassy, modern young witch, Commager thought, using the old witchcraft tools of fear and suggestion out of equally old motives of material gain and prestige.

  But one couldn’t account for Hawkes as simply as that, because Hawkes had had money and prestige.

  Commager knew least of all about Paylar, except for the young man called Lex Barthold, whose connection with the others wasn’t clear. The impression of Paylar was still mainly that she had a physical personality that would be hard to match if you liked them slender, dark and mysterious, and with a self-assurance that wasn’t aggressive like Ruth MacDonald’s, but that might be a great more difficult to crack. Among the three he’d had to deal with, she seemed to be the leader, though that wasn’t necessarily true.

  He found himself walking slowly down the street toward a phone booth.

  Let’s make a game of it, he thought. Assume that what Paylar had said and what the Reverend had suspected was true—at least in the Guides’s own opinion—that he had turned out to be exceptionally tough material for their psychological gimmicks. That he had, in fact, abilities he didn’t yet know about himself, but which, even in a latent state, were sufficient to have got the Opposition all hot and worried!

  EVEN IF the Guides only believed that—if they, like Knox and his mountainous registered nurse, had played around so long on the fringes of reality that they were as badly confused now as the people they’d been misleading—his intervention should still be effective! Particularly if he informed Mrs. Lovelock, with the proper degree of impressiveness, that he’d passed on the word.

  A little play-acting didn’t seem too much effort to put out to save a human life. Even a life like Wilson Knox’s . . .

  This time, it was Paylar who answered the telephone.

  “You’ve disappointed me a little, Mr. Commager,” she said. “When I first heard your voice, I was certain you were going to invite me out to dine and dance.” Commager assured her that this had been his primary purpose—and as soon as he’d said it, he began to wonder whether it wasn’t true. But business came first, he added.

  “Well, as to the business,” Paylar told him demurely, “I’m not necessarily in control of Ruth’s activities, you know. I hadn’t been informed that the Reverend Knox was ill.” She paused a moment. “I’ll tell Ruth she isn’t to frighten your friend again. Will that be satisfactory, Mr. Commager?”

  “Why, yes, it is,” Commager said and found himself flushing. Somehow, in her easy acceptance of his intervention, she’d managed to make him feel like a child whose fanciful notions were being humored by an adult. He put the idea aside, to be investigated later. “Now about where to have dinner—”

  Paylar said she’d prefer to let him surprise her. “But I have a condition,” she added pleasantly. “There’ll be no shop-talk tonight!” Putting him on the defensive again, Commager thought ruefully. He told her shop-talk had been far from his mind and would eight o’clock be about right?

  It would be about right, she agreed. And then, arriving at the store finally, some fifteen minutes later, he found Jean Bohart waiting in his office.

  “Hi, Alan,” she greeted him gloomily. “You’re taking me to lunch. Okay?”

  In one way and another, Commager felt, Tuesday simply didn’t look like a good day for business.

  “I’M IN A mood today,” Jean announced. She picked without enthusiasm at a grapefruit and watercress salad. “But you’re not talking to me, either!”

  “I was thinking,” Commager said, “that I was glad you didn’t look like a certain lady I met this morning. What’s the mood about?”

  She hesitated. “I’m making my mind up about something. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Who was the lady? Someone I know?”

  “I doubt it. A Mrs. Lovelock.”

  “I don’t know any Lovelocks. What’s the matter with her looks?”

  “Fat,” Commager ex
plained.

  “Well,” Jean said glumly, “I’m not that.”

  She was, in fact, in spite of her downcast expression, a model of crisp attractiveness as usual. A white sharkskin suit, with a lavender veil gathered lightly at her throat, plus a trim white hat to one side of a blonde head—neat, alert and healthy-looking as an airline hostess, Commager thought approvingly.

  Jean mightn’t care for the comparison, though, so he didn’t tell her. And he wasn’t going to press her about the mood. At the rare moments that she became reserved, probing made her sullen. Probably something to do with Ira again.

  “I called off the Taylors for tomorrow,” she told him suddenly, with some traces of embarrassment, “so we could talk. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Commager said hesitantly. Then it struck him suddenly: they’d had a date for an all-day fishing party Wednesday, Jean and he and the Taylor couple. He’d forgotten completely!

  “That’s all right then,” Jean said, looking down at her plate. She still seemed curiously shy and Commager realized that this was no ordinary problem. “Will you sleep at your cabin tonight?”

  “Sure,” he said, concerned—he was very fond of Jean. His sleeping at the cabin was the usual arrangement on such occasions; he’d have everything ready there for the day before anyone else arrived and then they’d be off to an early start.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow at eight,” said Jean. She gave him a quick, unhappy smile. “I love you, Alan—you never ask questions when you shouldn’t!”

  SO HE HAD two dates at eight now, twelve hours apart. If it hadn’t been for the attendant problems, Commager decided, his social life might have looked exceptionally well-rounded at the moment to almost anybody!

  But he didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of keeping clear of attendant problems. It had struck him for the first time, while they were lunching, that Jean Bohart might easily have been the prototype of the figment of Lona. There were obvious general similarities, and the dissimilarities might have been his own expression of the real-life fact that Jean was Ira’s wife.

  But he felt himself moving into a mentally foggy area at that point. There had been occasional light love-making between them, too light to really count; but Jean certainly had remained emotionally absorbed with Ira, though she tended to regard him superficially with a kind of fond exasperation.

  Commager didn’t really know how he felt about Jean, except that he liked her more than anyone else he could think of. There was a warning awareness that if he tried to push any deeper into that particular fog right now, he might get himself emotionally snagged again.

  It didn’t seem advisable to become emotionally snagged. There were still too many other doubtful issues floating around.

  One of the other issues resolved itself—in a way—very shortly, with the ringing of the office telephone.

  It was Elaine Lovelock once more.

  “Mr. Commager,” she said, “about the matter we were discussing—”

  He began to tell her he had spoken to Paylar, but she interrupted him: “Dr. Knox died an hour ago!”

  CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH

  THE TIES OF EARTH

  Conclusion of a 2-Part Serial

  You bet Commager had a problem! He could smash the conspiracy and not escape alive . . . or capitulate to it and lose his mind!

  Synopsis

  ALAN COMMAGER accompanies his friend JEAN BOHART to the home of HERBERT HAWKES in Beverly Hills, with the intention of “rescuing” Jean’s impressionable husband IRA BOHART from the influence of a mysterious metaphysical group called the Guides. Commager is amused at Ira’s belief that Commager himself has recently demonstrated psi abilities that will be of interest to the Guides.

  At Hawkes’s home, they meet a small group of people. To prove to Ira that the Guides are frauds, Commager submits to a series of experiments conducted by an attractive young woman called PAYLAR. He blacks out and discovers himself presently sitting in his store, much later in the night, with no recollection of how he got there. Also in the store is the dead body of RUTH MACDONALD whom he had met at Hawkes’s home. Commager decides the Guides are out to frame him for interfering in their business with Ira. He leaves Ruth’s body in the garden back of Hawkes’s house.

  Early next morning, Commager learns through a phone call from Jean Bohart that the Boharts are unaware of anything unusual having occurred during the experiments the night before, but that they left the party before he did. Unable to be really certain that he didn’t kill Ruth MacDonald during the period of amnesia, Commager calls on DR. HENRY L. WARBUTT, his one-time guardian and psychologist. Warbutt tells him that among the local fringe groups the Guides are reputed to have genuine metaphysical powers and that they are probably a good group to avoid.

  Commager calls next on another friend, a professional hypnotist, JULIUS SAVAGE. He relives a period of his life, four years back, when he became interested in the psi experiments of his wife, LONA, who was killed shortly afterward in an automobile crash. Julius startles him by telling him that he never had a wife and that his memories of her are a delusion.

  Paylar meets him that night no and explains that the Guides are an organization devoted to preventing the development of para-psychological abilities in human beings. Commager, she says, is in the process of developing such abilities to a dangerous extent. The Guides will use all available means to “stop” him. Commager is skeptical, but is badly jolted again when he notices that the driver of Paylar’s car is Ruth MacDonald, now very much alive again. In spite of Paylar’s warning, he has no intention of joining the Guides.

  The following morning, Commager receives a call from a MRS. ELAINE LOVELOCK, an assistant of DR. WILSON KNOX, who was present at the meeting at Hawkes’s house and who is the head of a local pseudo-religious cult. Dr. Knox has had a heart attack during the night and pleads for Commager’s help. Commager goes to see Knox who tells him the heart attack is a punishment for having resisted Ruth MacDonald’s attempt to assume control of his cult and that the Guides will kill him unless Commager grants him his “protection.” Commager, according to Knox, has abilities of which the Guides are afraid.

  Commager decides to humor Knox to the extent of phoning Paylar and telling her that Ruth is to leave Knox alone.

  A little later, Commager gets another message from Mrs. Lovelock: Dr. Knox has just died. Within half an hour, Commager finds himself suffering from something remarkably like a heart attack himself.

  SOME thirty minutes later, the first hot jolt of pain drove down from the center of Commager’s throat to a point under the end of his breast-bone.

  If it hadn’t been so damned pat, he thought, he might have yelled for a doctor. The sensations were thoroughly convincing.

  There was a section at the back of the store devoted to the experimental breeding of fish that were priced high enough to make such domestic arrangements worthwhile and exceptionally delicate in their requirements for propagation. The section had a door that could be locked, to avoid disturbances. Commager went in and locked it.

  In the swampy, hot-house atmosphere, he leaned against one of the tank racks, breathing carefully. The pain was still there, much less substantial than it had been in the first few moments, but still a vertical, hard cramping inside his chest. It had shocked him—it did yet—but he was not nearly so much alarmed as angry.

  The anger raged against himself—he was doing this! The suggestion to do it might have been implanted, but the response wasn’t an enemy from outside, a phantom tiger pressing cold, steely claws down through his chest. It was a self-generated thing that used his own muscles, his own nerves, his own brain—

  It tightened suddenly again. Steel-hard, chilling pain, along with a bitter, black, strangling nausea in his throat. “I’m doing it!” he thought.

  The clamping agony was part of himself; he had created it, structured it, was holding it there now.

  AND SO HE relaxed it again.

  Not easily,
because the other side of himself, the hidden, unaware, responsive side was being stubborn about this! It knew it was supposed to die now, and it did its determined best.

  But degree by degree, he relaxed the cramping, the tightness, and then suddenly felt it dissolve completely.

  Commager stood, his legs spread apart, swaying a little drunkenly. Sweat ran from his body. His head remained cocked to the right as if listening, sensing, while he breathed in long, harsh gasps that slowed gradually.

  It was gone.

  And now, he thought, let’s really test this thing! Let’s produce it again.

  That wasn’t easy either, because he kept cringing in fear of its return.

  But he produced it.

  And, this time, it wasn’t too hard to let it go, let it dissolve again.

  He brought it up briefly once more, a single sharp stab—and washed it away.

  And that, he thought, was enough of that kind of game. He’d proved his point!

  He stripped off his shirt and hosed cold water over his head and shoulders and arms. He dabbed himself with a towel, put his wet shirt back on, combed his hair and went back to the office.

  Sitting there, he thought of an old gag about a moronic wrestler who, practicing holds and grips all by himself, broke off his left foot and remarked admiringly, “Jeez, boss, nobody but me could have done that to me, huh?”

  Which more or less covered what had happened. And now that he had made that quite clear, it seemed safe to wonder whether just possibly there mightn’t have been some direct, immediate prompting from outside—something that told him to go ahead and break himself apart, just as the wrestler had done.

  THOUGH there needn’t have been anything as direct as a telepathic suggestion. It could also have been done, quite as purposefully, by inducing the disturbed leaders of the Temple of Antique Christianity to bring their plight to his attention. By letting him become thoroughly aware of the shadowy, superstitious possibilities in the situation, opening his mind to them and their implications—and then hammering the suggestion home with the simple, indisputable fact of Wilson Knox’s death!