by Fritz Leiber
I could feel her quiver with new excitement under my fingers. “You mean, you’re goin’ to put on shows down here to raise funds? No, don’t stop what you’re doin’. Remember, you got your reputation for great sexual laxity to maintain and I got my Daddy to spite. But in that case why not star with the Dallas Little Theater, with the title role in Death Takes a Holiday for a starter? I’m sure I could swing it, and Daddy’s got pots!”
“Alas, Princess, the doctors assure me that even with the constant exoskeletal support and large periods of rest, I dare not stay more than a week on Terra, or at a risky most, two without suffering large permanent physiological damage. They expressly warned me against —”
I cut off that one quick, and the thought behind it too. Among the activities against which they had expressly warned me was the one in which I was now engaged, and I didn’t want to start questioning my knowledge, superior to that of any doctor, of my own psychosomatic needs. Especially not now, when I was aboard the primeval rocket and the countdown started.
I contented myself with saying, “No, princess, I do not intend to put on any public performances down here.”
She did not pursue her question, nor appear to take note of my interrupted remark. With the gathering dusk and perhaps in some part because of my delicate manipulations, her eyes grew larger and more luminous. Her fingers slipping between my titanium shoulder girdle and head basket touched my cervical vertebrae. her voice riding on indrawn and exhaled sighs, she said, “You know, Scully, I believe I’m failin’ in love with you just a little bit — psychically, I mean, not only physiologically. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve had moods of despair where I wanted Death to come to me like a dark knight and carry me off. I wore out three tapes of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden — and here you’re doin’ it. Why, you’re just like Death’ in The Seventh Seal, leadin’ me off in a dreamy dance — that is, if Max von Sydow had played the part ’stead of doin’ the Knight. Say, Scully — no, keep it up — how are you ever gonna raise that cash down here you need to save your theater unless you put on shows? I’d give you some, except Daddy’s a skinflint when it comes to pin-money.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Rachel Vachel,” I said, my rumble somewhat thick as she was shivering three fingers, thrust between my titanium exo-ribs, across my chest. What the devil, I’d already told her far more than I’d intended — I might as well, as Elmo would have put it, go it whole hog. “Before my grandfather lifted from Spanish Harlem, he had bought from a down-and-out Aleutian prospector a mining claim to an area near Yellowknife, Canada. I mean Amarillo Cuchillo, North Texas. This claim was supposedly worthless, but the Aleutian who had bought it from a Cree Indian had investigated the area closely and discovered that within it lay the Lost Crazy-Russian Pitchblende Mine, and he had drawn a map of the mine’s exact location. My father treasured the claim and the map as an ace in the hole to revive the La Cruz fortunes in time of trouble. They were useless during the Interdict, but now that that’s over and the time of trouble come for us and the entire Sack, my father has sent me down to sell the claim or seize the profits if someone else has meanwhile discovered it and been working it - illegally.”
“My, your pa must be quite a ... a dreamer, Scully,” Rachel Vachel murmured languidly. “That sounds to me just like the million and one Lost Dutchman Gold Mines down in Mexico, Texas. Oh, but I’m dead sure it’s going to work out fine in your case,” she hastened to add. Then, the dark-wondering peaking in her eyes, “kiss me, Scully.”
Carefully tilting my head so neither my titanium jaw-shelf nor cheek plates would touch her, I planted my lips on Hers. Her hands moved on my back between titanium T spine and exorib lattice. We kissed for some time with small moans. Then she broke away with a slightly bigger one, in which I heard faintly the whispered words, “Come sweet death'.. .” and her voice returned to medium brisk as she asked, “You didn’t leave the claim and map in your luggage, I hope? Daddy’s sure to have that snooped, scoped and espioned.”
“But surely your father is too honorable and courtly and genteel —”
“Oh', he’s the genteelest jail warden in all Texas, Texas. Why do you suppose I have secret compartments in my lingerie drawers? If he could only see right now — You know, Scully, we must be making a most exciting scene: a Greek goddess bein’ elegantly seduced by a romantical black-and-silver skeleton, the matin’ of the mantis with the june bug — just the kind of scene Daddy’ll never let us stage in our plays, the courtly old Cromwell! Where have you got the claim and the map, Scully? You didn’t forget and leave them up there in the sky, I hope?”
“I keep them on my person, princess.”
“That's nice,” she murmured, gently stroking same. “Say, Scully, what’s your impression of the Mexican situation down here? I mean seriously — no, you keep it up too — and truly. Answer honest, now.”
“I hope this doesn’t offend you, Rachel, but my answer must be: deeply disturbing. The childish and superficially humorous servitude of your Spanish Americans, I mean Spanish Texas, I find disgusting. And those cybernetic yokes — abominable!”
“That’s interesting,” she murmured. “Now what’s your attitude on revolution? No, keep it up.”
I must admit that her rapid and startling questions were putting me off stride a bit, like one-two punches, no matter how well they conformed to my own phil-osophy of all curiosities satisfied simultaneously. But I gathered my forces and carried on, on both levels.
“Revolution in Circumluna and the Sack? No. Except for the Longhairs’ puritanic blind spot, we are all too intelligent for it up there. Besides, we are too deeply interdependent, and the Longhairs hold all the cards. Down here? I don’t know. From what little I’ve seen of them, hoping for a Mexican revolution would be like expecting a revolt of the babies. Emotionally I sympathize greatly with revolution. I identify. Among my most favorite roles are Cassius, Dr. Stockman in An Enemy of the People, Danton, Lord Byron, Lenin, Sam Adams, Fidel Castro, John Brown, and Ho Chi Minh."
“Oh I can just see you as Cassius. You got that ‘lean and hungry’ look to perfection. You’re going to devour little Rachel, aren’t you? Go Waltzing-Matilda with her? Promise? Or Ho too — you have the Dr. Fumanchu touch: ‘Beware, America! You got your napalm and atomic bombs, but I got my black scorpions, my giant centipedes, my spiders with diamond eyes that wait in the dark, then leap!’ Golly! Or maybe I could work up a drama around that legendary figure of El Esqueleto — you’d be great as him. Say, there’s an idea! But Daddy — oh forget it. Look here, dear, I admit I’m getting a fetish about that skeleton of yours but couldn’t you get out of it for just a little while? Mayn’t you be underestimating your unmechanized strength? Your hands feel so strong on my funny bumps.”
I was deeply moved at that, I must confess. For some reason I could now see more plainly again my lovely eight-foot-two pale goddess in her artistically disarranged robes. A mysterious silver light bathed her and made me utterly reckless.
“Look, darling,” I whispered breathily and rapidly, “If we’re careful it’s not necessary that I—”
I do not know what would have happened next, or rather I know exactly what would have happened next, and a disaster to have missed it, or more likely a disaster to have enjoyed it . . . anyhow, Rachel Vachel pushed me away with a sharply whispered, “They’re coming back!” I heard the footsteps myself then, growing louder behind us, and I nervously smoothed my sack suit and evened my breathing. The next moment, her drapery and platinum hair in order, she was handing me a glow-tipped reefer and saying coolly, “here you are, Senor La Cruz, a Chihuahua Pot-Perfecto. Daddy always says a man can’t smoke on tobacco alone.”
As I shakingly inhaled the first piney puff, I looked straight out at the horizon again and saw that my “mysterious silver light” was merely that of the new-risen moon, silhouetting one of the big antimacassar lighthouses. I realized somewhat groggily but with a clutch of anxiety that I had not only missed my big moment wi
th Rachel Vachel, but was already breaking my date with La Cucaracha.
The patio lights boomed on. I copied Rachel Vachel in leisurely standing up and casually turning around, though I spoiled the effect a bit by clanking my exo-elbow against my pelvic girdle. Just come through the gringo door were Governor Lamar and his four fellow big-wigs, all looking a shade grim to me, and Elmo, who looked worried.
“Most sorry to interrupt your tete-a-tete,” the Governor said smoothly, “I trust you weren’t bored, Senor La Cruz, and that my daughter entertained you adequately.”
I could manage no answer save a swallow, which bobbed my overly prominent Adam’s apple, and a somewhat jerky nod.
“Now go to bed, Sugar,” he continued. “We have business to discuss with the Senor.”
“But Daddy —”
“Sugar . . .!”
With a haughty shrug and thinning of lips, the Honorable Rachel Vachel turned to me and said formally, “Good night, Senor La Cruz. I trust we have the opportunity of continuing our most interesting conversation some other day.” And she stuck out her hand, palm down.
I pressed and bowed over it. Though not risking a kiss this time, I did lightly scratch her palm with my forefinger.
Showing no reaction whatsoever, she turned away and walked through the gringo door without looking to left or right.
From the emphasis she had given her last word, I knew I could expect no opportunity of further converse with her this night and must pin on La Cucarach'a any hopes I had of getting my jangled nerves soothed, especially my frustrated parasympathetic system.
But to tell the whole truth, I was far, far more — oh so much! — concerned about the five unsmiling, craggy-visaged Texans I now faced, and it was chiefly my sympathetic nervous system, that old adrenal-squeezer, that was sending. Old tales of the vengeances done in patrist societies on daughter-seducers and sister-stealers and mere lovers up marched like a series of funeral corteges through my mind. I thought of Abelard and Chance Wayne. Rachel Vachel had as much as told me her father was a constant spier on her activities. Would he have omitted those on the patio? Wouldn’t he be sure to have had the couch bugged? And I had blurted out not only my grotesque passion, but also the secrets behind my trip to Terra. I cursed myself for an Eros-besotted fool.
It seemed to me most ominous that all five power-men were now equipped with paired side arms belted over their beautifully tailored suits. In addition, anachronistic rapiers hung from the hips of Sheriff Chase and Ranger Hunt, and all five were once more making their nerve-twanging chink-chink, scratch-scratch tune.
It struck me as particularly sinister that the Governor was plucking invisible lint from his vest without taking his eyes off me.
Then as Rachel Vachel vanished and her rapid footsteps died away and I expected the worst, everything suddenly changed for the best, as at the fairy-god-mother moment in a children’s tale. I could hardly have been more surprised if dancing elves had popped from under the flagstones.
The five power-Texans relaxed and favored me with friendly smiles, while with the most winning of these, the Governor himself, advanced toward me, saying, “Senor La Cruz, most honored and patient of guests, it’s my pleasure to inform you that all arrangements save one have been made for your passage by chartered private rocketship to Amarillo Cuchillo tomorrow morning.” And he lightly took my limp hand and pumped it warmly though carefully. his breath was redolent of bourbon.
He went on casually, “The one omission is most trifling and really unnecessary to correct except for reasons of courtesy. It’s that we visit tonight and get the countersignature on your jet-charter of President Longhom Elijah Austin. The old gentleman would be hurt to have missed a visit with you, and — sub rosa, sir — we want to continue a little political fence-mending.”
I hesitated. The Governor’s expression seemed totally relaxed and friendly, free from guile as Tom Mix. I said, “But I thought —”
“Yes, sir, exactly, you thought — and no blame whatever attaches to you for that. But... Elmo!”
“My old friend — I suddenly felt that way toward him — was twisting his huge hat into what looked like a model of a saddle-shaped universe, and he was working his lips and actually blushing. “Scully, I mean Senor La Cruz,” he choked out, “I was reshading the facts a little... no, I was really lying to you quite a bit in our earlier conversations — chiefly by exaggerating my own importance and my inside knowledge of the current political situation.
“There was once indeed a little wounded feelings between President Austin and some of the other great statesmen of our land, but I blew them up out of all proportions. That arming of his Mexican houseboys, for instance, what a whopper! And for a fact I simply didn’t know — that’s how small a bug I am in the human menagerie — that what wounds there were had been completely healed and only in need of the lightest postoperative care. Just a lowdown Texas big-mouth, that’s all I am, Scully, and I hope you forgive me.”
“Of course, Elmo,” I said quickly, embarrassed at his abject groveling, for that was what it had been, despite the humor with which he had pillowed it. I had grown to like Elmo, rather as one likes a clown. And to see a clown deflated, stripped or dissected is always bad, or at least uncomfortable theater.
I abruptly turned back to Lamar. “Is it necessary that my interview with President Austin take place tonight? I had rather—”
“I’m afraid it must, sir,” He interrupted me. “A soiree rather than a matinee, as you gentlefolk of the stage put it. Your jet leaves early tomorrow, and I have already, pardon me, taken the liberty of arranging your reception by our beloved prexy. I cad understand your desire for, nay your medical need of rest, and I assure you the interview will be very brief and your transportation to and from it both rapid and unfatiguing.”
“Quick and peaceful. Over in a wink,” Sheriff Chase confirmed, snapping his fingers once for unnecessary emphasis.
As I hesitated again, I felt my reefer sting my fingers. Quickly shifting my grip back on the butt, I took a very long drag.
Perhaps it was the pot that gave me the inspiration and emboldened me to act on it.
“It wasn’t rest I was concerned about,” I said gaily. “Your hospitalities have quite refreshed me. It was that I had the whim to take all by myself tonight, by moonlight, a brief noctural jaunt through the quieter environs of your great city of freedom, employing for that purpose the cat-wagon with which Mr. Earp so graciously provided me. Let me do this, and I shall be only too happy to bandy amenities with your prexy.”
Frowning slightly and even more slightly shaking his head, Lamar said slowly, “I’m afraid it’s already been determined that you travel by official limousine. A cat-wagon would hardly have the requisite dignity—”
“Tell you what, Cotton,” Sheriff Chase broke in, “we can bring the wagon along on a flatbed racer. Then soon as his meeting with Austin’s over, the Senor can begin this little private wander on which it seems that he’s set his Heart.”
“A Happy inspiration!” Lamar said, his frown fading. “And now come, gentlemen, our time is growing short.”
The loud clink of Burleson’s coins was like a cymbal clash that begins a jolly march’. Fanninowicz’s facial tic was a “Forward!”
I took a last drag of my reefer, crushed it in the nearest tray and stepped out with my illustrious entourage, the rhythmic clash of my titanium footplates dominating the thud of their leather boots. My cape was handed up toward me, and I swirled it carelessly around my shoulder-girdle without breaking stride.
It occurred to me how villainous I was to arouse myself with one woman and then plan to satisfy myself with another. But such is human flesh — at least that of an audacious Thin with a perfectly tuned exoskeleton who was setting out on a planetary spree.
Table of Contents
- V -
PRESIDENT’S MANSION
The downy, glimmer-windowed nest of darkness that was the limousine silently braked to a stop with a su
ddenness that mashed my face against my cheek-plates. With tiny groans the straps around my titanium rib cage and belly-support tightened almost to breaking, then they were merely snug again. Beside me, Ranger Commander Hunt cursed a simple, “Jack it!” as the exo-elbow of my outflung arm took him lightly across his handsome Roman nose.
From the other side Sheriff Chase fumbled at my riding-harness, but I brushed his hands aside and deftly unsnapped the two straps myself. I was beginning to resent being treated as an invalid or baby. When they had got out, each almost tripping over his ceremonial sword — for such they had explained them to be — I followed Hunt as swiftly and surely as a tall metal monkey and found myself standing in the moonlight on a springy black driveway, the four other limousines drawn up in line two before and two behind and debouching their passengers, while to the extreme rear I thought I could make out the flatbed bearing my cat-wagon.
Had Society done its duty to itself, Ben Thompson instead of dying the death of a desperado might have become a useful citizen. [Ben Thompson was an early Texas antihero and often acquitted multi-killer of the late 1800's, himself finally shot to death with 9 bullets in an Austin variety theater —ed.] But will the moral be read aright and turned to profit? It certainly will not unless Texas society purges itself of the complicity and indulgence which have so largely nurtured and developed the desperadoism in men. His is a slow growth and it is Texas society which encourages that growth by holding out the hope to him ot achieving both fame and fortune in a career of murderous violence and professional terrorism.
—Galveston News
Texas is a wandering and tattered ribbon of white fascism, ineffectually separating the non-directive black democracies and hip republics of Florida and California, and occupying at most 2 percent of North America. Two cents worth of bloated, mentally bombed-out squaredom!