A Specter Is Haunting Texas

by Fritz Leiber

  “It’s no riddle, and you’re just making it more complicated,” the Scratcher retorted almost angrily. Then he seemed to take himself in hand, and with such patience as one might bestow on a weak-witted child, he said, “Look, I’m asking it this way — like, before I became Sheriff of Dallas County, I was with Littleton and Lamar Lightning, and before that I was with Hunt Espionostics and so on. Every male Texan who amounts to anything is with some company, unless he’s a public official, in which case he’s with the government.”

  “I comprehend,” I said. “I am with — indeed, a featured player with — the La Cruz Theater-in-the-Sphere Stock Company.”

  “A thespian!” Lamar begad warmly. “My daughter will be —

  “Stock company!” Burleson exclaimed at the same time, chinking his gold like the wild clash of cymbals. “Mean to say you issue shares, debentures, and—”

  “La Cruz Company!” exclaimed the one with the black cylinder. “You own this business? I know for a fact that on Circumluna total communism —”

  “Gentlemen!” I politely silenced them with my deepest voice, then rapidly explained, “I am indeed an actor, a free-fall Shakespearean. Our company is stock only in the old theatrical sense of employing stock characters, or types, though most of us are more versatile than that implies. While it is my father who owns the company, though it has cooperative features and —”

  “Family business, eh?”

  “Yes,” I told Black Cylinder. “And we do have ownership, often private, in space. If objects and operations are not owned and valued, who will care for them? Mister —?”

  Once again my hint that full introductions would be desirable was lost, this time because of the last recumbent, the one with the monocle. All this while he had been watching me with intensest interest, like a schoolboy impatient to recite or demonstrate and constantly jiggling about on his couch working his features in addition to his tic, so that I expected it surely each time to dislodge the glass circle which magnified his left eye owlishly.

  How, as if obeying an impulse became irresistible, he sprang up and darted toward me, violet-clad houseboys altering their orbits to clear him a path. He stopped in front of me and, stooping and rearing, scanned my exoskeleton up and down. his fingers constantly fluttered over it without quite touching it; perhaps because I folded my arms, and staying most erect, gave him a slight frown.

  “I am extremely interested . . . in machinery,” he said in the enthusiastic but confidential tones of one who tells you, “I have a thing about flagellation.” He continued, “in particular: prosthetic, waldoic, and robotic machinery. Oh, beautiful, beautiful! A strength-in-delicacy far beyond us. What lofting Nature’s own skeleton translated to T beams . . . with a thousand improvements! Such' tiny servo-motors, yet so clearly powerful! What space-saving in battery housings! I take it that without this peerless device you would be . . . completely helpless here?”

  “Yes, even in one lunagrav, let alone six,” I admitted, somewhat taken off guard by his exclamations, “Mister—?”

  He only continued his fantastical praises with, “And how perfect a twin, or symbiote rather, your own body is! — as if bred to fit this one superb prosthetic and no other! Bone and metal in a perpetual exquisite embrace or communion . .

  I began to feel too much like a starved slavegirl stripped on the auction block, so that when he actually began to circle behind me, I turned so as to continue to face him. He speeded up, then suddenly reversed, without getting in back of me. As this nonsensical ballet continued, I began a series of calisthenics, knee-bends chiefly and head-circlings and rapid arm-extensions that missed his hair-carpeted dome by fractional inches. He flinched not a whit, such was his ecstatic concentration. He was of German extraction, most likely, I decided — which would fit the cropped hair and monocle, standard stage-indices of the Teuton.

  Governor Lamar, who had been totally absorbed in a most difficult episode of lint-picking, since it involved the left shoulder of his suit close to his neck, now put a stop to our ridiculous pas de deux with a, “Professor Fanninowicz! Scientific curiosity can come later, if our visitor permits. Mister Christopher Crockett La Cruz, I wish to present to you Professor Cassius Krupp Fanninowicz, who Heads the engineering school at UTD.”

  “Charmed!” the professor assured me, making the word hum. But his eyes continued to race over my exoskeleton as he very lightly pressed my hand, which extended bare of metallic or other support from my titanium wrist-plate. I felt mightily tempted, but controlled myself.

  The governor’s gaze began to creep toward his right shoulder, but with a perceptible effort he looked up and continued, “I also wish' to present to you, sir, Chaparral Houston Hunt, Commander in Chief of the Texas Rangers, and Big Foot Charlie Chase, Sheriff of Dallas,” pointing in turn at Black Cylinder and the Scratcher. “But Mister — or do you prefer Senor? — La Cruz, I’ve been remiss in my hospitalities. I’ve sent for my daughter, as I wished to present her too, but since she’s delayed, would you care to recline —” He indicated an empty couch near at hand “— and partake of refreshment?

  Professor, perhaps you too would now be more comfortable on your own couch.”

  “Senor suits best,” I said on one of my typical impulses, carefully letting myself down onto the couch indicated, while Fanninowicz heeded the Governor’s suggestion, though obviously disappointed at not being able to witness more closely the new bendings of my exoskeleton.

  “Thank you,” I added to the governor, meaning it. Twenty minutes on my titanium footplates had left me suddenly fatigued. I tongued in my three sorts of pills, then almost closed my eyes as relaxation hit me except that I saw the governor frowning a question at me. He looked toward Elmo, then faintly frowned at me again. I hesitated, then responded with a slight smile and nod.

  “Mr. Earp,” the governor said, “you take a couch too — that one,” pointing at one outside the circle of the rest of us. Elmo somewhat shamefacedly gave me a quick smile of gratitude as he hastened to obey.

  Meanwhile houseboys had placed on the table to my right a glass of amber fluid chinking with ice-cubes and laid in a scalloped golden tray on the left-hand table a long reefer just set a-smolder with a hot point and a clever hand-suction device. But before taking either up, I once again scanned and sought to evaluate the Texans around me. The Mexicans could come later — there were more of them and in any case they seemed at first glance as alike as identical twins, psychically cyborged if not physically.

  The Texans appeared to form two chief groups. Governor Lamar and Mayor Burleson were playing me up. Sheriff Chase and Ranger Hunt, despite curt nods and curter smiles when they’d been introduced to me by Lamar, were still putting me down. Why? That remained to be discovered.

  Elmo’s role at least was now altogether clear to me. He was the sort of minor political hanger-on who seeks to cadge small rewards, if only food, drinks and moments with the great, by inventing favors to do them, such as bringing them a stranded space-oddity, exactly as he might have brought them a wandering, halfwitted millionaire or good-looking showgirl. Yes, I had Elmo’s number, all right, and my estimate was confirmed by the swiftness with which he latched onto a drink and reefer, also sending one of the houseboys for a large plate of appetizers. My feeling of growing friendliness toward him became mingled with a tolerant contempt.

  Finally, there was the professor: seemingly all technical curiosity, which made him the easiest first object for the conversational attack I now mounted, with the intention of truly charming them all — the necessary first tactic of any traveler in a strange land.

  “Sir,” I said to him, “despite your Polish-sounding patronymic — pardon my familiarity — I take it you are of German extraction, an inheritor of the Teutonic scientific genius.”

  “I am indeed!” he responded, nodding so vigorously that I thought his monocle must surely go. “Only in Texas, sir, and the adjacent southwest could a Bavarian ever have found a spiritual home away from home. My gr
eat-great-great-grandfather came over with the first V-2’s.”

  “The Atomic War?” I asked politely.

  “No, World War Two, not Three,” he informed me. “The V-2’s lacked atomic warheads — my ancestor had a great sorrow about that — though' they were the first true space vehicles.”

  “Tell me, gentlemen,” I asked around. “how is it that Texas — or Texas, Texas rather — escaped the atomization which I gather the rest of North' America endured?”

  “It was all due to the supreme foresight of Lyndon the First and his immediate successors,” Mayor Burleson took it on himself to explain. “Realizing that this was the true heartland of the continent, they walled it with anti-continental-ballistic-missile missile defenses; and drawing on the local excavation and drilling skill, they filled it with nuclear shelters of the deepest and most strongly roofed variety, constructing what may be called the Texas Bunker, though it was then known as the Houston Carlsbad Caverns Denver Kansas-City Little Rock Pentagram, or maybe Pentagon. A step of profound wisdom, Senor La Cruz, for which we have reason to always be eternally grateful.”

  “So that when the Atomic War finally came,” Professor Fanninowicz took up with an excitement almost gleeful (Now the monocle must surely go!), “Russia, China, France, England, Black Africa, my own tormented and divided nation, and the outworks of the Texas Bunker were shattered, mangled, tattered! — while here snugly survived the virile spirit of Assyria, Macedon, Rome, Bavaria, and the brave Boers!” Now at last a tic coincided with a near screech and the monocle did pop out, though rather disappointingly he caught it deftly in his left hand and whipped it instantly back into its proper orbit, where it gleamed as brightly as his bared white teeth.

  I meanwhile had taken the first of the three sips I allow myself of an alcoholic beverage — a small sip, for the drink was strong — and inhaled two puffs of marijuana vapor, a smoke I had never before sampled. It seemed mild stuff, but I soon began to feel a lofty well-being, despite the grisly things being told me, and the scene and sounds around and about me began to organize themselves symphonically, even the chinking of Mayor Burleson’s coins fitting perfectly into the great rhythm. At first, I must admit, there was something sinister about the tiny tympanic tune of power-men releasing tension: TIC . . . clink, clink . . . scratch-scratch . . . squeeze, squeeze . . . faintest plink of thumb and fingertip on captured lint-speck . . . TIC! But swiftly even these noises became orchestrated into a blissful totality.

  Mayor Burleson said, “Senor La Cruz, I don’t doubt you come from space — in fact, I can’t, seeing that handsome contraption you need to get around in gravity — but your middle name and height make me think you’re originally a Texan who got the hormone. Now that hormone’s a closely-guarded secret, sir — the lower orders of society and the rest of the world haven’t grown up enough yet to be trusted with bigness — and we wouldn’t like to think of it being known to the Longhairs of Circumluna.”

  I said in words dreamy and poetic, yet perfectly enunciated and of course still very deep-pitched, “I may well indeed be of Texan ancestry. There can be no certainty about it, for my grand-father lifted to the Sack from Spanish' Harlem in New York City, yet my middle name whispers its hint, and the lines of heredity are as mysteriously interwoven as the curves of the clouds now gathering above us to enchant our gaze. But as for your last fear, Mayor, set your mind at rest. In free fall, unconfined by gravity, human growth is freer and sometimes almost fantastical. My grandfather was tall and slender, my father more so, and I still more so. My mother too is of considerable length, though’ it is her pleasure to be a Fat.”

  The whole scene around me, though darkening toward sunset, presented itself to me with supernormal clarity, each detail a gem.

  I took another small sip of my drink, but returned the reefer to its tray — a little of that stuff was enough for my attenuated physiology, as with most drugs. My feelings had reached a harmonious acme, why spoil it? I felt marvelously relaxed and at peace. I placed a titanium heel atop a titanium toes-guard, in effect crossing my legs for comfort as I noted several of my companions had done, and continued, “Yet I feel greatly at home here, a Texan in spirit if not in fact. You are no longer my hosts, but my dear friends. Senor La Cruz is all very well, but I would be happier if you called me Chris — or perhaps Scully, the name Mr. Earp bestowed on me from my cadaverousness.”

  “That’s fine, Scully, call me Atoms,” Burleson responded. However, I noted the Commander, the Sheriff, and the Professor bristled almost imperceptibly — my senses were vastly acute at the moment — and gave the Mayor slightly dark looks, a pale shade of gray, while the Governor was moodily absorbed watching a houseboy wipe his gleaming boots with a white pocket handkerchief he’d given him. I determined to charm them in spite of themselves and at that moment remembered an anecdote.

  I took the third sip of my drink and firmly set it down. “Gentlemen,” I said somewhat sharply, “Whatever I am in fact, I feel myself a Texan at this moment, sharing your expansive relaxation, your wide wisdom, your tolerance, your homely but huge humor. May I tell you a story?”

  I was pleased to note that it was the Governor who gave me the nod. It had been to rouse him that I’d spoken sharply.

  “When time was young,” I said, speaking softly, “God was sitting by a mud puddle, dabbling his fingers in the dirty water and playing with the mud. Because, you see, all things were young then and even God was a youth. Think of him as Ometecutli, the Papa-God of the Mexicans, but not yet a papa, only a young and stocky barefoot sun-tanned God in ragged pants, playing like the village loco in a universe of water and clay, of love and flowers.

  “First he made balls of the clay and pitched them out and up so that they went spinning round and round, forever. So he created the sun, the moon, the planets and the whole great universe.

  “After a while he grew tired of this sport. Looking into the mud-puddle, He saw for the first time his reflection. 'I will make something like that,’ he said.

  “So he made of clay the figure of a man, giving him a coat and shoes, for God was poor then and thought such things very fine, and making his hair very short, for at the moment God was a novice sculptor, and curls and such were beyond Him.

  “Then he chanched to breathe on the figure as he was admiring it closely. To his amazement, the instant his breath struck the figure, it stood up on the palm of his hand and began to march about there, doing a goose-step.”

  Smiling gently at Professor Fanninowicz, I continued, “Seeing this, God said to himself, ‘Ah-ha, a little German,’ and he reached out and set down the figure in Germany.”

  “Next God made a woman. He gave her a long skirt and long wavy hair — for God was gaining skill now — and he put a Eigh comb in her hair. He breathed upon her, and she stood up and began to sing most beautifully. ‘Ah-ha, a little Italian,’ He said to himself, and he set her down in Italy.

  “Thus God made the Englishmen, the Frenchman, the Russian, the Negro, the Hindu, the heathen Chinee and almost all other breeds of Earth.

  “God was growing somewhat tired now, and his supply of clay was getting low, so to speed things up he made two male figures at once, giving them only his own simple garb. When he breathed upon them, they sprang up instantly and began to fight with each other. ‘Two little Mexicans,’ God said, putting them down in Mexico.

  “He had not quite enough clay left for two more figures, so to finish his task — for although a loco, God was a conscientious worker and wasted nothing — he made and dressed one great tall figure. This still left him with some clay, so he made a great wide-brimmed hat for the figure and chaps for its legs and fine boots. Two small dabs of clay were left, so he used them to give the boots high heels. Two more dabs of, clay of the tiniest were still left, and so that nothing might be lost, God made of them spurs for the boots.

  “He breathed on the figure. Nothing happened. God was startled. Had he made a mistake? Perhaps the magic did not work for large figures. Ye
t he breathed on the figure again, much harder.

  “God thought he saw the figure stir a little. So he drew a deep breath and blew fiercely on the figure. his breath was like a gale or a tornado.

  “The figure only pulled the brim of his great hat down over his eyes and crossed his boots and, linking his hands behind his neck, began to snore there where he lay on God’s palm.

  “God became very angry. He drew in a tremendous breath, puffed out his cheeks and breathed upon the figure that was like a hurricane of hurricanes, like the shock wave of an atomic bomb!

  “Without stirring otherwise at all, the figure pushed back his hat from his face and, looking God straight in the eye, demanded, “Who the Hell do you think you’re spittin’ at?’ ”

  The laughter which greeted this tale gratified me. Even Chaparral Houston Hunt grinned and pounded his leg.

  Before the applause had faded, I said loudly to them all, though I made a point of looking at Lamar, “So it was in the beginning, and so it still appears to be true of that great land stretching from Nicaragua to the North-West Territory. Speaking of the latter, I trust I will have your aid in journeying to Amarillo Cuchillo tomorrow.”

  “Whatever you want, Scully!” To my surprise, it was Sheriff Chase who first answered. “Oh, that tale took us Texans off to perfection.”

  “Ask anything, Scully!” Again to my surprise, it was Commander Hunt who seconded. Elmo was standing beside him. “Sure you don’t want to leave tonight? — though we’ll hate to lose you. Of course, we could have a round of partying first.”

  “Tomorrow would be best,” I replied, thinking of La Cucaracha. “And as for partying, I thank you from heart’s bottom, yet I fear this one will be all I can take. Although my exoskeleton is tireless even in Earth-grav, my bone one and its envelope are not. It will be best for me if I spend the night in lonely quiet and rest.” I was seeking to set up a situation in which it would be easy for me to make my sneak back to the cemetery.