by Fritz Leiber
I tongued pep, instant-glucose and antigrav pills out of their cheek-plate container into my mouth. Even the tiny dissolving pellets seemed heavy as osmium on my tongue, and they dropped down my throat like bullets. I followed them with a sip of truly heavy water from my other cheek plate, tilting my exo-skulled head to do so. They quickly helped. La Cucaracha beamed up at me her congratulations, as if she already knew my inner feelings as well as I did.
By that time, however, Elmo had a twenty-foot whip uncoiled and was cracking it over a low narrow, vehicle somewhat longer than I was.
It bounced along on two caterpillar treads moved by ten wheels. The wheels fascinated me. Except in pictures or employed as pulleys, one never sees wheels in Circumluna, where there is no gravity to put teeth in friction.
Off the vehicle were scrambling a couple of dozen Mexicans, including some of those who had received my benediction, while Elmo was shouting relaxedly, “Get off that cat-wagon, pronto, you fun-loving, irresponsible little monkeys! The Black Pope here needs it. I’ll see it gets back to your patron.” Then to me he said, “Climb aboard, Scully, and stretch out your weary exoskeleton. Ordinarily we don’t let Mexes use power cars, but a cat-wagon’s no more than a toy. However, it’s just what the metallurgical osteopath ordered for you. I can tell you’re too frazzled to mount a steed yet and, come to think of it, I don’t suppose they have too many cayuses in Circumluna, and those pretty spiritless.”
Oddly, he was right about that. CL did have a few Horses for old-style serum factories and on the Noah’s Ark principle.
I started to tell him I was splendidly unfrazzled and eager to learn the art of horsemanship, but my heart was still pounding a bit, so I decided to conserve energy and keep my attention free for the weird sights around me. I did another of my stiff-kneed bows, braced my hands on an end of the cat-wagon, transferred my leet to the other end, let myself down on my face and then rolled over with a minimum of exoskeletal clankings.
My heart quieted now that my circulatory system wasn’t fighting gravity as hard. I felt better, except that I couldn’t see much besides the sky. I raised my head and scanned.
Elmo had coiled his whip and was hooking it to his silver-studded leather belt, which also supported two lightning pistols. Otherwise he was dressed in what I took to be a conservative Terran business suit, complete with cuffs, buttons, lapel, collar and great sky-colored tie depicting blue-bonnet flowers; but on his feet were huge, high-heeled leather boots, and on his head a six-(twelve? factorial four?)-gallon hat.
He was astride a horse as huge, relatively, as he was. I marveled at the bone and muscle-power of both — his to mount and the beast’s to carry. In fact, for a moment I toyed with the notion that he had an exoskeleton under his suit, and the animal a surgically implanted steel one.
He noted my gaze and said, “Yep, Scully, we feed our mounts the hormone too. Next to Texans, they’re God’s noblest creation. And now you might punch the cat-wagon’s first go-button at your elbow. The lever next it steers her.”
I complied, and our small cavalcade started off at a pace brisk to me, a novice driver. Elmo merely walked his horse ahead of us, but its strides were long and smooth. Just behind him La Cucaracha jounced on a burrow — now I understood those disproportionate murals better. My darling rode side-saddle and regaled me with frequent smiles over-shoulder, while to the rear Elmo’s three Mexicans jogged with my bags. There was a disproportion I could correct.
“Senor Elmo,” I called, “tell your boys to throw my bags on the wagon and hop aboard themselves. There’ll be no overload — despite my metal, I mass low.”
“That’s out, Scully,” He boomed back. “Can’t have greasers riding with anything Texas-tall, no mind how skinny or strange. Myself, I been around and tolerate indecencies, but ’twould shock Dallasians spitless.”
“I want the bags for pillows,”
I explained, “so I can study Dallasian salivation, et cetera, besides scan the road.”
“Then that’s okay. But the other’s out. Peel your eyes, partner. You got a lot more to see than Texas Adam’s apples bobbing. Hey, you greasers, comfort my guest’s cerebrum with his luggage!”
I was inclined to argue longer with him about them riding, but the three Mexicans gave me such apprehensive glances as they trembling-handed tucked my bags in a soft stack under my head and seemed so eager to return to their rear-guard position, that I decided to postpone any equalitarian lecture. However, the frightened behavior of the three nagged at me.
There was indeed much to see, most of it crazy to me, like a 3D motion-montage with volumes moving at different camera speeds, and most of it jammed into a single plane — truly Terra is flatland. First there were the buildings, like cubical satellites crowded in disordered ranks, some many rooms long — no, high — on end — and made of metal and glass, reminding me of Circumluna. Between these went occasional gangways — streets — on one of which we traveled. Then there were the Texans, some on Horses, others in slowly moving vehicles, others strolling afoot.
The younger seemed even taller than the older — I wondered if the hormone had a cumulative effect.
Moving about thrice as fast and in numbers a decimal order greater were the Mexicans, all of identical bent-back height and almost all afoot. About sixty percent wore the metal collars and antennas, and these were all furiously busy at various construction and deconstruction jobs — half of our street was torn up, buildings were being dismantled, others assembled, great masts reared, great holes dug. I even thought at first the collared workers could walk up walls — no strange sight to a space-dweller — until I noted that those on vertical surfaces were supported by slim wires, which they swiftly climbed or down-climbed.
One might wonder at my being able to see so much while maneuvering a strange vehicle for the first time in a gravity field. But if one has a lifetime of experience moving in three dimensions, moving in two is child’s play. I was soon driving the cat-wagon with such easy competence that I was able to spare a hand to work at my balky knee-motor and had it adjusted in a matter of seconds. I surely had been woozy on my first try.
I soon observed that I was attracting interest. The Texans’ faces never turned toward me, but their eyeballs did, and they slowed down in passing. The collarless Mexicans goggled me frankly, but speeded up, making wide curves around our cavalcade. The collared ones, however, marched by with never a glance, like so many tiny, swift juggernauts, fortunately people-avoiding ones.
The speed of all the bent-backs surprised me. Father had told me all about Mexicans. A strict indoctrination in racial and national behavior had come very early in my education, because it is very important in the theater. Father had assured me that all Mexicans were short and wore serapes and big hats, went barefoot and spent their lives sitting against adobe walls, smoking hemp and sleeping, except for brief periods of firing off pistols.
These Mexicans were not at all like that, except for the short and barefoot parts.
In fact, there were many types. Just now some wee Mexican children, cute as dark kittens, came toddling up and scattered flowers over me, most likely thinking me a corpse bound for the boneyard, for when I lifted and turned my head to look at them, they ran away.
La Cucaracha had slowed her burro until she was jogging beside me. She observed, “Legends, or lies, from the black lands tell that flower power was once a great thing. But here at least it has died out.”
Noting my special interest in the collared Mexicans, she explained disdainfully, “They are cyborgs, the estupidos. Their collars feed them orders and happiness — straight into their veins and nerves. From a distance foremen control them — after a fashion.” She added the last phrase when two files of cyborgs collided and instantly began a confused milling aimed at eventual disentanglement, like ants I had once watched in a flatland between glass.
“They live like this forever?” I asked with some horror.
“Ah no,” she assured me, “only during the w
orking day. The other ten hours they exist as men, employing what fragments of pounded-adobe spirit they have left. Chiefly they feed, fornicate and sleep. My countrymen!”
I recalled what had been nagging me. “Senorita K,” I asked, “why is it that your countrymen regard me with a fear that is both more and less than fear? Explain that to me, if you will, mi amada bonita.”
With a rapid frown and fingershake, she leaned down and whispered warningly, “No tendernesses until moonrise, as I first commanded you, you tall in competent and undisciplined!” Then in an equally low, but most cool voice, she continued, “Senor La Cruz, my people are like children. They live by fairy tales, some sweet as sugar, some grisly as red bone. One of the latter tells of Death, tall as the sky who will one day eome striding across Texas. He will have the form of a great skeleton — El Esqueleto, he’s named oftenest. He will be tossing like fritos into his great naked jaws and grinding there human skulls — made of sugar-candy, some say, of fresh-torn bloody bone and brains, say others. My people will flock to him. He will give them never a glance, any more than stars and clouds look down at men, but he will lead them to freedom.”
I had become so engrossed in her small but colorful tale that I almost started when a large voice inquired, “Cookie been feeding you a sob story about cyborgs?” Elmo had gradually let his own mount drift backwards until he too was beside me, on the opposite side of the wagon. “Don’t you believe a single word that comes out of her cute, lying, little postage-stamp lips. Scully, my pal, cyborgs live a lot happier than Texans. Their joy comes each day sure as Coca-Cola. Besides, they’re essential to our liberty and freedom, as I’ve explained.” “Myself, I think they would all be trampled under the specter’s bony feet — if they do not run like whipped dogs at sight of him,” La Cucaracha continued as coolly as if there had been no interruption at all. “Cyborged or not, my people are estupidos de estupidos.”
“Cynical little bitch, ain’t she?” Elmo observed. “Kookie, you got an ice cube for a heart. Lucky for you your cold blood don’t chill your skin.”
“My body, though small, is designed in classic proportions, esteemed patron,” she replied to him tartly.
“Now, Kookie, you mind your modesty and keep your mind hidden,” Elmo warned her. “Don’t you go starting an intellectual striptease front of me and my guest. T’other kind’s the only one a woman’s fitted for, greaser or gringo.”
“You wish me to mop and mow like a madwoman, master? Or grunt to Senor La Cruz, no sabe? Or discard my clothing perhaps?”
“Now, Kookie, I’m telling you that if you don’t behave, I’ll—”
The altercation might have become unpleasant, except that at that moment I involuntarily interrupted it. We were approaching a gold or gilded statue twenty feet high of a most muscular man in barbarian garb. From his helmet thrust very long and twisting horns. His right hand swung back a battleaxe, his left pointed a six-shooter.
“Who is that?” I demanded, pointing with a black-shrouded leg, because I was riding feet first and my hands were busy driving. “I did not know that Terra had regressed to full barbarianism during the Interdict.”
“Scully, ain’t you familiar with the discoverer of Texas, even, and its first decent-size hombre?” Elmo retorted in genially scandalized tones. “You mean to tell me you ain’t ever heard of Leif Ericson, Paul Bunyan, Big Bill Thomson, John L. Sullivan, William Randolph Hearst, Abraham Lincoln and such other great Texans?”
“No,” I admitted, “though I have heard of Sam Houston, Jim Bowie and my namesake Davy Crockett.”
“Oh, yeah, they were Texans too,” he admitted, “though on a more local plane, San Jacinto and Alamo boys. And old Raven Sam, though one of our early prexies, was pretty dubious in some ways — Indian lover and Yankee fellow-traveler, it’s said.”
I thought of asking him about Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ, but refrained for fear of having an attack of history-epilepsy. I might learn that they too had been Texans.
Instead, I said, steering the cat-wagon around Leif Ericson, “I recognized some of the others you named, but thought them men of the United States and Canada.”
La Cucarach'a had jogged ahead again, though not without giving me a quick lip-pursed smile and eyelash ripple. Elmo leaned out of his saddle toward me and said, “Scully, I can see your heavenly instructors knew only the superficial version of Earth’s history, the one pap-fed to the general public. Since you’re going to be meeting some mighty sophisticated and influential men today, it’s best you know a scrap or two of the truth. Amigo mio, the Lone Star Republic never was one of the United States. In 1845 she assumed leadership at them, because she could see they needed bolstering against foreign aggression and internal disorder; and that was a most accurate foresight, because she had to spend the next three years throwing back the attack of Mexico on them. And pretty soon she had the Civil War to run — both sides.
“Of course it was given out to the general public of the states, who never had no brains or guts nohow and flustered easy, that this assumption of leadership was annexation — but it was always known to the speaker of the House and the senators who counted in Washington that by secretest treaty Texas was boss. Thereafter the Presidents in the White House were just figureheads for the Texas Estabisliment — Franklin D. Roosevelt, for instance, was the puppet of our Jack Garner, a mighty modest kingpin, just as later on Lyndon the Great bossed Jack Kennedy, though the latter was posthumously declared an honorary Texan and president thereof because of the grandeur and ritual importance of his demise. With the coming of the Third World War and the atomization of Washington, New York, San Francisco and so forth, secrecy became unnecessary, and Texas took over in name as well as substance, including for good measure the frosty top and hot, dry, jungly bottom of the continent. We needed more greasers, anyhow, for therapeutic reasons.”
My mind was tossing like the cat-wagon, which was traversing a curving section of the street under repair and trying to dodge Mexicans who were simaltaneously dodging me. I wished now I had had other history instructors besides my father, who would dispose of the conquest of a continent with an offhand “Enter barbarians with battle axes,” or of a civilization with “Exit voluptuaries, wringing hands rad screaming. Idris does quick naked dive-across.” I knew quite a bit of Greek, Roman and English dynastic history and the neurotic antics of Twentieth-Century man from Ibsen and Bergman to Green Comedy and Inner-Space Multistage; but our repertoire had no late plays set in Texas, so father had brushed past that land quickly. Oh, before my down-orbit he’d briefed me on the Northwest Territory and Yellowknife minutely and with great accuracy — I’d thought (now I was not so sure).
“Well, I’ve had my say, and it’s your turn to talk, Scully,” Elmo interrupted. “You were saying something back there about the Yellowknife Registry of Mining Claims?” his voice was suddenly so casual and his memory so precise that for no other reasons I found myself getting suspicious. But once again I was given opportunity to change the topic by a golden sculpture, this one abstract.
Beside the street, about twenty meters up, hung a golden rectangle, across the lower side of which was affixed, pointing acutely downward, what looked like a distance-weapon of some sort, all golden too. It was a few moments before I saw the slim, transparent pylon supporting this part of the abstraction, so near was the pylon’s substance to being invisible.
The distance-weapon pointed at the other half of the abstraction, a most complex structure of pipes, wires, rods, springs and boxes, all golden too, about as long as my cat-wagon but wider and thicker. This fantastic brick of golden tracery was also supported by the near invisible substance, but at a height of only half a meter.
Pointing, Elmo explained, “There’s the window in the book depository from which Oswald fired the fatal shots, and thats the chassis of the car in which Jack got gunned down, providing by that one brave act of his an example to all future presidents of Texas to go their way courageously when their political bell t
olled.
“Incidentally, Scully —” he continued, leaning a little lower in his saddle and pitching his voice likewise, “what I’m going to tell you now is pretty high-security stuff, but the menfolk where we’re going have got nothing whatever else in their skulls — deep waters, Scully, deep waters — so it’s only fair I give you a paddle or two to navigate with, and maybe an aqualung. And besides, we Texans don’t care much for security; we like things loose as the reins by which we Herd our second-class citizenry. Anyhow, what I was going to tell you is this: Our current president of Texas is hedging a bit when it comes to following Jack’s great example. He’s disliked, you see, but instead of standing forth and dying like a man, he’s turned the President’s Manse into a fort and — believe it and weep! — he’s organized a corps of Mexican houseboys faithful to his person, and he’s armed them! With laser guns at that! Which ain’t playing fair at all to the political opposition. Why, he’s even kicked out his Texas-Ranger guards. Says he can’t trust them not to kill him — which is true, of course, but uncouth to mention.”
“It’s him we’re going to visit now?”
“No, you got it all wrong, Scully, though his Manse is here in Dallas, where all important things are. We’re going to visit the Ranch of Cotton Bowie Lamar, governor of Texas, Texas — that is, governor of the father state in the world’s greatest nation. We’re not going to have anything to do at all with that dastardly, Mexican-arming tyrant Longhorn Elijah Austin, current bossman of that same greatest nation, though’ it pains me to say so.”
“You Hope to defeat him at the next election?” I asked.
Elmo shook his head and sucked his lips with a plop. “Nope, Scully, in achieving real freedom we’ve long ago discarded the phantasms of democracy. For the immaterial, ignoble ballot we’ve resubstituted the material, ritually preferable, noble bullet — which is the item Long Horn E. A. most contumeliously refuses to face. Adverse ballots he’d let cascade off him like cottonwood balls.”