by Fritz Leiber
“Shut up, Guchu, you foreigner with toppled mind, you black bees-bonnet!” Rosa snapped at him.
“I’ll set myself afire, I’m warning you,” he threatened back.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” I thundered my deepest, jarring the altar-table with the decisive planting of my spread-fingered hand, “And my most darling Rosa,” I added softlier. “Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors — ” Why, it fit them better than it had the Texans! “ — my very noble and approved good masters, I am the unhappy subject of these quarrels. Yet I have not been permitted, or perhaps I should say, given full opportunity, to express my own outlook on the matter. I am moved by the plight of the underprivileged in Texas, I sympathize with the aims of the Bent-Back Underground. But I am in fact and figure an extraterrestrial and one who has not spent twelve hours on your planet. As a Circumlunan of the Sack, I am bound to uphold the truce on which the uplifting of the Interdict is based. I am pledged to my own home-world not to take sides in any of your quarrels and to maintain a complete neutrality in all matters.” At this moment, however, I unobtrusively slid my hand to Rosa’s slipper and covered it gently, to assure her that my “complete neutrality” in no way applied to our budding and now hot-house forced relationship.
“Moreover,” I continued, “I am here in Dallas, Texas, Texas, purely by accident. My spaceship was supposed to land me in Amarilla Cuchillo, where I must conduct pressing business on which rests the continuing safety, nay, the life of a large section of the inhabitants of my world. They must be my first concern. So, much as I sympathize with your revolution, much as I am honored by your invitation to participate, I must with great regrets decline.”
“But amigisimo,” Rosa protested with a childlike wonder and injured innocence masking utter dishonesty, in a fashion characteristic of all women, “in agreeing to this rendezvous with me, which I have faithfully kept, you agreed to all else surely. I trusted you — ”
“Claims to be a man, but does not act like one,” El Toro put in scornfully, and I think more for Rosa’s benefit than mine. “It becomes clear that with utter lack of muscle — aye, and of cojones — goes complete absence of courageous heart.”
“False heart as well as false flesh. No more dickering with this death dingus, I say,” the Buddhist Guchu half chanted, half raved, while Father Francisco put in reprovingly, “Though tolerating them for revolt’s sake, I have always warned you against foreigners, children. And now you see in this creature from Limbo, this dubious being from the lower stars ...”
Though angry with their imputations of weakness to me, especially in the virility department, I controlled that emotion and once again thunder-rumbled, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” It is remarkable how a voice like an approaching storm catches the attention of others and silences their disputes. Filing away this valuable theater datum, I continued, “Moreover, your plan to use me as a figurehead for your revolution, though most picturesque — and flattering to me — is unfortunately quite impractical.” And I gave them a very brief account of how I had scattered the batallion of houseboys at Austin’s manse, ending with, “And so you see, gentlemen — and dear Rosa — that instead of flocking to me, your peasants and cyborged proletarians would fly from me in terror.”
El Toro, who had listened with searching interest to my account, now said, “Ah-ha, comrade, I see that you are perhaps not a coward, only deplorably ignorant of mass psychology. Any leader, in particular one of supernatural character, must be dreaded as well as loved. Fear and followership are but two sides of one coin. You may trust us to present you in such a way that the repulsion you generate in others is always outweighed a little by the attraction.”
“You speak truly, my son,” Father Francisco nodded. “Even God the Father rules firstly by the wholesome fear he strikes into his creatures.”
Guchu did not comment, at least in intelligible words. He had sunk to a staring-eyed growling and muttering, rocking all the while rhythmically in his chair.
Rosa said eagerly, “Also, amado, there is your desire to reach Amarillo Cuchillo. We will take you there, as last stop in a series of northward-trending revolutionary rallies long planned. Can you not serve the revolution for a month?”
That last bait did attract me for a moment, even though a month was twice the maximum terra-time the doctors had given me (doctors always leave margins of safety), until I realized that Rosa’s month most surely meant two or four, if it was not bait purely.
I said, “Gentlemen and dearest, most solicitous Rosa — I must still decline for several unimpeachable reasons, of which the first — ”
“Bah!” El Torro interrupted. “A weakling to the core, as I first surmised. No muscles.” Father Francisco stared through me, shaking his head contemptuously.
Rosa jerked her foot from under my hand and stamped with her heel, not quite on my fingers but very close, and spat at me, “Cobarde! Coward! Oh, most trusted and now most unmanly one! Aii, aii, how this poor girl, thees muchacha muy miserabla, has been deceived!”
I really got angry then. I made no effort to finish my rejoinder, in which I had intended to offer to appear in one or two revolutionary benefit performances, one might call them, in exchange for transportation north. Instead —
“Stoppit!” With a blood-curdling screech, Guchu sprang up from his chair, then dipping low snatched up a red container and began to gush its highly aromatic contents on his frizzy head, the while he pranced about, yelling, “I can’t stand it any more! I’m going to set myself afire! You all groveling to that feckless, fistless, filthy, frightened jumbee with no sinews, no guts. Gonna set myself afire for sure!” And he snatched out of his robe what appeared to me to be a small device for making a spark or flame-jet.
“Comrade, control your oriental eccentricities,” El Toro roared at him.
“Heathen!” Father Francisco cried out. “You shall not set yourself afire in my church!”
“All bees-bonnets!” Rosa commented to the blue ceiling with an indignant lat-atat-tat of her heels.
“Stoppit, you dumb nigra! STOPPIT!” I thundered.
He stopped. Truly, a trained actor has inordinate — in fact, most unfair — advantages over groundlings, even politicoes.
I deliberately leaned forward, setting my jaw-plate on the doubled-up right hand, gave them all a medium fast scan, my expression at its skullfulest, aad said, “You low bandits. I am deeply offended by the aspersions you have cast upon my musculature and my manhood. I pass over the point that none of you has had the wit to realize what a powerful diaphragm I must have to support my magnificent voice. I suggest — ”
“I know of no way to duel with the diaphragm muscles,” El Toro interrupted somewhat contemptuously, yet studying me.
“Except in a shouting contest,” Guchu put in, suddenly more intelligible and, strangely, quite cheerful. The red container and firing device had vanished, though he still dripped odorously. “And that’s all we’ve been having from him — words, words, words!” his voice chuckled off. He twice inhaled deeply, and his grin became ecstatic. “Hey, that’s not bad, man.”
“Oh you tricksy villain!” Rosa put in, shaking a finger at the Black Buddhist. “You pretend these self-blazes only to take gasoline trips.”
“I did not intend a shouting contest,” I said quietly, “although a duel of diaphragms is by no means impossible. Suppose we should Hold our noses tight, take deep breaths, then press open mouth to mouth tightly, to determine who can break the other’s eardrums? But I do not suggest such a contest either. I propose one with the outer skeletal musculature.”
“But that way you’d have the advantage of your metal and motors,” El Toro objected. “Not that I don’t think I couldn’t bend double any of those pipestem rods,” he added, scrutinizing them.
“I was intending wholly to forgo that advantage,” I replied. I did not tell him one reason for this decision of mine: that I had suddenly become aware that I had let my batteries run low. While tonguing pills, etc., into my
Inner Man, I had neglected my titanium Outer One. Even in a powered fight I would do badly. And now I recalled that Rachel Vachel had absent-mindedly galloped off with my luggage with its precious battery-freight still at her saddlebow. Drat the huge, gangling girl!
Without otherwise changing position, I removed my right hand from under my jaw, undoubled it, and moved it slowly from side to side, writhing its fingers and turning it, now palm to the Revolutionary Committee, now knuckles.
“You will observe,” I said casually, “that forward from my wrist-plate, my fingers, thumb — entire hand — are completely naked and have no mechanical backing whatsoever. I propose simply a contest with the strongest of you at gripping — wrists not to move, forearms flat on table. Positioned so, we clasp hands and squeeze until one gives up, either by crying quits or by straighfening fingers and thumb.” And with a soft clank of my exo-radius-ulna, I laid my forearm across the altar in El Toro’s direction.
“Lemme at him!” Guchu cried happily, waving in circles a bent arm with fingers clawed. “I’ll mash his pinkies to mush. Yoo-hoo, sky-birthed! Prepare to have your hand crushed.”
“He is mine,” El Toro asserted, thrusting the Buddhist back with a sidewise brush of his brawny arm. He took out a cigar, lit it and clamped it between his strong white teeth. For once on Terra I was smelling true tobacco smoke, not weed fumes. The Mex sat down across from me, rolled the sleeve on his right arm back to his big biceps, but did not lay down his forearm.
“I still have doubts, senor,” he said, “that your hand is not somehow reinforced with metal, either invisible or surgically implanted.”
“I will check that,” La Cucaracha told him and, kneeling on the altar, took up my hand after glancing to me for permission. She fingered it most thoroughly, here and there digging in her nails. “I find it bones and flesh only, tough-skinned, the hand of a worker,” she told El Toro. Kissing two fingers of her own hand, she laid them for a moment in my palm, and, then with a grin toward me, laid down my hand again and still kneeling on the altar commanded, “Begin!” Leaning in from the other side, Guchu began snapping his fingers. “Come on, Bull Boy,” he cheered. “Pulp him!”
Father Francisco, obviously gripped by mixed emotions, said sternly, “It is not lawful on the high altar of God . . . except to decide questions of revolutionary policy,” he ended weakly, his eyes now eagerly watching the table between me and the Mex.
El Toro slowly let down his bulging forearm and carefully positioned it. We clasped hands lightly, getting a comfortable position. My hand, though somewhat bonier, was bigger than his which felt to me both soft and wet.
Without warning he gripped most powerfully, breath hissing out around his teeth-clenched cigar with an almost “hah!”
I merely matched his grip, staring serenely into his brown eyes, which showed amazement. Then I squeezed a little. He squeezed back, puffing his cigar furiously. I squeezed harder, the muscles below my elbow beginning to bulge my sack-suit sleeve like hard salami sausages. Flexors digitorum profundus, digitorum sublimus, pollicis longus woke and got to work, also the nineteen small muscles in my hand, mostly under tough palmar aponeurosis. He squeezed back desperately. The forward section of his cigar, bitten through, dropped to the table and smoldered there. I increased the pressure. Spitting out his cigar butt with a sudden soft but anguished, “Aiii,” he let his fingers go limp, and they straightened. I instantly spread my own, continuing to gaze poker-faced at El Toro, who began gingerly to massage his punished hand.
“Un milagro,” Father Francisco breathed, crossing himself.
“I’ll be a ring-tailed ofay,” Guchu exclaimed.
“Amado muy bravo!” Rosa cried. “Ole!”.
El Toro started to reach his left hand toward me, then shrugged and made it the right. “Comarado,” he said solemnly. We shook hands carefully, yet quite firmly, he wincing but keeping up a grin. “You are a most surprising hombre” he said. “But hombre, muy hombre. Guchu, this man has muscle.”
Really he could have figured it out without getting hurt. And despite the padre’s comment, there had been no miracle whatever in my performance. Finger-gripping is simply one activity a human does as often and with as much strength in free-fall as in a gravity field. Maybe more. You need only featherweight muscles for most work and maneuvering in nulgrav — muscles having perhaps one twentieth the strength of those in a being forever battling terragrav — except for your hands (and toes, if you’re resourceful). At least, so it had been with me, working from earliest youth on costumes, props, scenery and so on for my Father’s shows. Also I had done many small sculptures of most recalcitrant clay, some with one hand. (Father would tie the other behind my back.) Another point — even on Terra fingers are light as mice, so finger-manipulation is an activity on which gravs have plus-little effect.
I could also have contested with him at cigar biting, but I did not mention that Ole!” La Cucaracha cried again and began to dance up and down the altar with much rat-tat-tating of the heels and many a swing of her delightful posterior. At the same time she began singing in time with her dance a catchy song beginning, “El Esqueleto, el Esqueleto!” — this with a grin toward me.
In hardly any more time, El Toro and Guchu took up the song too, Guchu clapping hands in time and El Toro banging his good one on the altar. Only the padre remained aloof, now scandalized, now smiling in spite of himself.
I found myself clapping too. Listening carefully, I made out that the song was a revolutionary one about the coming of the Tall Death, el Esqueleto, and I began to feel strongly the pull of this part. To play Death himself before audiences who both feared and adored — what a challenge! Or rather what a cinch part, a sure hit!
Rosa ended her dance in an electric storm of stampings.
I rumbled impulsively, “Senores y senorita sublima! If you’ll guarantee to get me to Yellowknife within three weeks. I’ll guarantee to make at least a trial appearance as El Esqueleto”
“My hero!” Rosa cried, running to me along the altar top. “Mi heroe de la Revolution!” We embraced most warmly, and the kissing shower began again.
Nor did we interrupt it when we heard the great doors open behind us and bare feet come running across the dirt. Nor even when there was the measured thud of the hooves of a horse walking. In fact, the only thing that made us pull apart was Rachel Vachel calling out, “Lover, I forgot your luggage, sa — What are you doing huggin' and lovin’ up that prancing, squashed-down, she-greaser hot-pants, Rosa Morales?”
She had ridden her white horse into the church. The kneeling ones had at last sprung up and scattered to the side walls. The two Mexes who had run in ahead of her had darted behind the altar and were excitedly conferring with El Toro; but I had no attention to spare for anyone but Rachel Vachel. The Black Madonna’s pale face and deadly eyes were paler and deadlier yet with fury.
“I am merely joining your revolution, dear,” I called to her with consummate adroitness.
Never has a clever remark of mine been more completely ignored. Clearly the two women now had eyes and ears only for each other.
Quite unintimidated by Rachel Vachel’s size and anger, Rosa snatched off her high-heeled shoes and grasping them as weapons, jeered, “hot-pants you denominate me? — when it is well known you patronize our revolution only to obtain the embraces of some of the cruder and badder-tasted members of our following!”
“I don’t give a hoot what you say about me, you Juarez whore.” Rachel retorted, “just so long as you keep your cotton-pickin’ hands off Captain Skull. He’s my property.”
“Your property! Did you not but now witness how fiercely he fondled me? And he has most recently, let me inform you, fought a duel with El Toro, with myself as the prize, and won! He is mine I tell you — mine, mine, mine!”
I made a last and most risky effort, though I stated only purest truth. “Lovely ladies,” I rumbled, “cease this disastrous quarrel. I love you both equally.”
“He is a bees-bonn
et, but mine, affianced in Holy Church — you Texan man stealer!” was La Cucaracha’s answer.
“He’s ravin’. While single-handed routin’ two hundred soldiers, he got a head-wound — which is somethin’ you’d never notice or comfort him for, you chihuahua in rut!” was Rachel’s interpretation.
A hand grasped my shoulder from behind. It was El Toro, who said to me rapidly, “Make no interference, camarado. They must fight it out themselves! for — ay, Dios! — is it thie twentieth time? Each thinks herself the heroine solo of the revolution. Meanwhile I am told the crowd has gathered. You must instantly prepare your speech to them, camarado. I will introduce you briefly. You enter beside Camarada Lamar for maximum effect — your costumes match — if she’s still in shape to walk.”
“Elefante! No, Jirafa!” Rosa was meanwhile shrieking at Comrade Lamar. “And no good in bed either, as all males testify.” Rachel’s hands dropped to her lightning pistols.
“That’s right, shoot me! Kill me in Holy Church,” Rosa responded triumphantly. “Prove you are no true daughter of the revolution, but only arrogant Texan.
Rachel’s hands came together and unbuckled her gun-belt, let it drop on her mount’s neck. Then she vaulted down nimbly and, touching her horse, pointed to a sidewall and ordered, “There, Silver!” The beast obeyed docilely, joining the whiteeyed Mexes crouching among the demon-eyed carvings.
Rachel Vachel walked steadily toward the altar, swinging her black crop. “I’m merely going to turn you over my knee,” she announced casually, “and lambast the skin off that overactive and overambitious rump of yours.”
“And I — oh, I shall rip your most unattractive flesh to even less attractive tatters I” Rosa replied, raising her spike-heeled slippers.
I watched with a deep concern and horrid fascination, but somewhat abstractedly. I was very busy reviewing my Spanish and putting together the first half-dozen sentences of a revolutionary oration by Death the Liberator. I knew if I got them exactly right, the rest would be a breeze.