by Fritz Leiber
The Governor’s courtly features were red with rage. He grabbed his daughter by her upper arms and shook her.
“Sugar, I’m intensely angry with you,” he said in tones that were both well and yet barely controlled. “I’m going to lock you in your bedroom for twenty years.”
“But Daddy, I saved your life,” she protested in a voice that went up an octave and back at least a decade into her past.
“That’s not the point. Sugar, I’m ashamed of you. It’s a scandal. Dressing like a man. Wearing pants, when there hasn’t a lady of the Lamars rode anything but sidesaddle for two centuries. Ten years bedroom confinement for you anyhow.”
“Daddy, you’re in a temper. What’s soured you? Didn’t you get President Austin?”
Here I began to have difficulty following their dialogue. It wasn’t that my unconsciousness was wavering — no, above my neck I remained fully alive, though paralyzed below, so far as sensation and voluntary muscles were concerned. It was that Fanninowicz now knelt beside me, his whole face gleaming like his monocle, and began to finger my exoskeleton with little gasps of pleasure as he traced the courses of its cables and the myoelectric leads to my skin. He even began to palpate and pinch my numb flesh, softly chortling with wonder at how little there was of it over my big bones. It was vile, but I endured it (what else?) and concentrated on what Lamar and Rachel Vachel were saying.
He answered her question pettishly.
“Oh, we got Austin all right. But then his Mex houseboys, who’d run away, laid an ambush for us. Beamed three Texas Rangers dead. Missed me by just that!” He spread forefinger and thumb. “And by the time we’d dropped a miniatomic bomb on them, they’d scattered so I don’t think we got more than fifty per cent.”
“Aw, cheer up, Daddy, you probably got mor’n you think. And you know yourself how your nerves get whangled when you’re wearied and stayed up too late and not had your proper liquor and weed, and been threatened with death, like when you catch cold.”
“Don’t you try to soften me up, sugar. I’m making it five years and not a day less. And what I say goes.”
“That’s right, Daddy, it sure does,” the incredible female agreed contritely. “Gee whillikens!” she added with a grin. “And now it goes double. I forgot — You’re president of Texas!”
“Even that’s in doubt,” he said, his voice almost cracking. “The Establishment Council’s been talking of Burleson and Hunt too, and even Ma Hogg. Not that I hold it personally against you boys,” he added.
“Course not, Governor. Course not,” the soothing deep-throated replies sounded around me.
“And that’s not the point either, sugar,” Lamar continued, grabbing his daughter again. “It’s you. It’s you I’m ashamed of. Wearing those pants that show off your legs as if you were bare-naked. Consorting with filthy, stinking, low revolutionaries —”
“But Daddy, I had to dress like this so as to be able to consort with them so as to be able to learn their revolutionary secrets. It’s a mighty big thing I’ve done for Texas. I admit they smell bad, but I bore it so as to — ”
“Secrets!” he interrupted scornfully. “Sugar, there aren’t any revolutionary secrets. Again and again I’ve told you to keep out of politics your cute little nose, that reminds me so of your sainted, admirably docile mother’s. We’ve known all about this revolution for years. It never gets anywhere. It’s just a safety valve for the greasers. I admit that President Austin arming his houseboys has tickled it up a bit, but that doesn’t really mean anything. No, sugar, you’ve been wicked and disobedient, and it’s five months locked in the bedroom for you.”
Here Fanninowicz tried to examine the containers in my cheek-plates, and I snapped at his hand, almost getting a finger. He appeared to bear me no more resentment than if I’d been a surly chimpanzee under restraint. He meaely turned his attention to my wristplates, his fingers hovering over the buttons in a spasm of fascination and hesitation.
“You cain’t mean it, Daddy-kins!” Rachel Vachel wailed. “What’s more, it’s just not true what you say about knowing everything about the Revolution. It’s been changing, Daddy. There’s nigras in it now, nigras from the Pacific Black Republic. And there’s Injuns too.”
“Sugar, you can’t sweeten me, no matter what you — Nigras from the Black Republic, did you say? And Indians? Not Comanches, I hope.” his voice went high.
“Yes, Comanches, Daddy, and Apaches. And there is space-folk! The La Cruz person admitted to me that —”
“That’s another thing I’m holding against you!” he interrupted her. “Early this evening you were snuggling concupiscently with that low Sackabond actor, who on his own admission is no more than a dirty-minded jester to the mad Longhairs of Circumluna. I saw you. I always knew acting and actors would be your ruin, sugar. My sentence remains the same: five months in a locked bedroom, on pinto beans, cornpone and Coca Cola.” “But Daddy, that was my greatest hour. I was bein’ a better lil ole agent provocateur than the best pros turned out by Hunt Espionostics. You think I enjoyed it? It was like snuggling up to a giant spider. But I called on my deepest wells o’ courage and —; ”
I would have said something ferocious then, except Fanninowicz chose that moment to press experimentally one of the buttons on my right wristplate. My right cane-sword retracted, scraping aluminum, while the German beat his knuckles together and softly tittered in ecstasy. I sagged toward that side.
“And that’s not all, Daddy,” Rachel was saying. “There’s something else I got to tell you, but it’s a private sort of thing, and I’m a little embarrassed about it. Would you other menfolk mind stepping out of hearing for a minute? Just to humor poor little me?”
With murmurings of “Sure thing, Miss Lamar,” and “Anything to please the Honorable,” Burleson, Hunt and Chase went to the other end of the bandstand, the last dragging the reluctant Fanninowicz.
Rachel took hold of her father’s lapel and drew his face clase to her own, meanwhile bending down, so they were both very near me.
He rasped in an angry whisper, “What’s all this, sugar? You are not going to tell me you’ve been intimate with this skyborn abortion?”
“Shut up, Daddy,” she whispered with something of a return to her old authority. “Remember how Icky Elmo said La Cruz had large mining interests in North Texas and he denied it? Well, he has ’em, Daddy, as he admitted to me while reelin’ from my charms. And I didn’t do a thing more than Ma would have done when so much was at stake. What’s more, his mining interests consist of the original map and claim to the Lost Crazy-Russian Pitchblende Mine!”
“How can you be sure of that?” Lamar demanded sharply, though keeping his voice down. “I even had the linings of his luggage unstitched and all areas chemicaled for invisible inks, and there wasn’t a document of any sort discovered.”
“He carries them on his person, Daddy. He told me so. So all you have to do is search that creepy-crawly black suit of his at some moment when those vultures over there aren’t around, and you’ll be the sole owner of the valuablest property in all North Texas, maybe the world!”
Tears came into Lamar's eyes. In a tremulous whisper He said, “Sugar, I’ve misjudged you unforgiveably. You’re a true Lamar of the finer sex, perhaps the truest and finest ever drew breath. Of course I’ll still have to give you one days’ room arrest so the others don’t smell a rat. But after that — Why, if you like, I’ll put a million on the line to hire Nembo-Nembo out of Florida Democracy to paint your 3D portrait — they say he’s the world’s greatest. I’ll underwrite a production of Texiana with a solid-gold surrey and diamond-encrusted hoopskirts on all the chorus girls and —”
“Senor Lamar!” I interrupted, unable to bear her perfidy and his stupidity a moment longer. “There are a few other secrets your dear daughterkins hasn’t told you. Such as what she really thinks about your lousy taste in theater, your antimacassar lighthouses, and your provincial, yokelish notions concerning the intercourse of the sexes
. Do you know what she calls you? ‘The genteelest jail warden in all Texas!’ ‘The courtly old Cromwell!’ While hidden in her lingerie drawers, she has — ”
Again the fairy-godmother wand reached out, this time touching the center of my forehead and bestowing on me the benison of oblivion.
Table of Contents
- VIII -
THE INVISIBLE PRISON
As consciousness worked its way back into me, starting deep inside and moving blindly toward my eyes, the first thing I became aware of was pain.
The pain was everywhere and came mostly from being tightly tied with a thousand ropes or a hundred thousand hairs to a flat hard surface with wide cracks in it. But I was thirsty too. There was only enough moisture in my mouth to glue my tongue to its roof. And I had the kind of weakness that told me I needed food, though the thought of food nauseated me. I also needed some sort of pills. On top of that my feet were burning up.
My head was tied, left ear down against my shoulder, numbing the latter and mashing it into the flat, cracked surface. The down ear, mashed too, heard only my thudding heartbeat.
The sound frightened me. It was very labored. My arms were strapped down to either side, so that I lay on my back in a cruciform position which was symmetrical except for my head turned to the left the contact between my dorsal flesh and the flat, hard surface was intimate. I realized I was naked.
I tried to think where in the Sack or Circumluna was a big surface like that. The only one I could recall was a big abstraction made of thin slabs of rare moon-marble. So Murray the mosaic-worker had decided to incorporate me into his greatest work of art! Visualizing carefully from onlooker-viewpoint I decided the effect would be striking, moving, even beautiful.
But did they untie me at intervals so that I could rest, drink and eat, or was I a permanent part of the mosaic? There seemed something wrong about using a highly talented actor for such a purpose, no matter how tremendous the effect. But then artists and photographers are single-minded clots. Some of them won’t even read a book or go to the theater.
Photography reminded me that I must explain to Murray that a good life-size solidograph of me portraying naked agony would do just as well or even better for his mosaic and free me to go back to the La Cruz Theater of the Sphere, where I was needed and could express my own varied inward visions, not just one of his.
By now the burning sensation had traveled up into my calves.
Into my darkened mind there floated a dim picture of Rachel Vachel and Fanninowicz gloating over me, the latter saying, “Clearly he will require no other restraint,” the girl agreeing, “That’s for sure, Fanny. He looks as if he’d been glued down yesterday with a quart of stick-tite. Or like a mashed giant spider.”
So Terra’s most hysterical personality-changer had also been a sadist. I hoped I had paid back my tall inamorata well in the only coin women understand, before returning to the Sack. Why in Pluto’s name had Murray tied me down so cruelly? I wished there weren’t so many gaps in my memory of the last half of my trip to Terra. Evidently when gravitation sickness had struck, it had struck hard.
The picture was replaced by a motion one of Fanninowicz battling wildly with Chase and Hunt. The professor’s mouth was open and working, as if he were shouting at them, although I now heard nothing. From time to time he pointed behind me.
He was the more active fighter, but the two bigger men were drunkenly getting the better of him. A bottle crashed and splashed soundlessly. For some reason Fanninowicz was on my side, and I desperately wanted him to win. It didn’t make sense.
Then the vampire-smiling Rachel Vachel floated back again, but this time with her father. Suddenly I could remember sounds again, for Lamar was saying, “Don’t you fret, sugar, we'll get those papers out of him if we have to skin him alive!”
For some unknown reason, this grisly sentiment made me laugh uproariously. The laughter came out as a strangling and highly painful series of dry croaks, but it helped wake me up. I dragged my eyes open.
My surmise was correct. I was glued to Murray’s masterpiece.
But something must be very wrong with my memory, because I didn’t recall his Sack-famed mosaic being anything this huge or violently colored. He must have extended it and touched it up with 17 different hues of paint — and Murray was an artist who favored sallow tones, such as me and my skin. And wouldn’t even a clot of an artist have much too much taste, or mere brute instinct, than to paint over the ghostly shades of moon-marble?
And why, besides myself, had Murray also glued to his revised mosaic many jagged fragments of brown, green and clear glass, several smashed chairs and tables (how had he ever wangled those out of the Museum of Terran Domestic Artifacts and got permission to destroy them?), numerous pillows, a lightning pistol, an intact monocle, and — flat on his back — Mayor Atomic Bill Burleson of Dallas, Texas, Texas?
That last brought me back to reality with a bang. I simply couldn’t see Burleson sacrificing himself for a work of art, especially another man’s — something I myself might do in certain moods.
No, I clearly was back in Governor Lamar’s patio, and there had been a sizable brawl last night. Burleson, I now noted, had his head on a pillow and was snoring in the shade like a drunkard well soused. While the burning sensation in my lower extremities, which had now reached my knees, was the morning sunlight creeping across the patio.
I must do something before it crawled high as my belly and chest, I told myself for a long frantic moment which ended as soon as I faced up to my helplessness.
My exoskeleton and sack suit were gone. The million invisible hairs pinning me down were simply the force of Terran gravity. I could wriggle my fingers and toes. I could open and shut my lower jaw. Otherwise I could not bend a joint. The way my head was placed, I could not even look down at my body. I only got a foreshortened view of my left arm coming out from under my cheek.
I let my gaze wander out. The landscape which last night had been romantic, now looked dismal and sunblasted almost as Luna’s. The few trees drooped. The truncated cones, small and large, shimmered in the heat waves like chesspieces designed by a computer. Else there was nothing but a plain of pale brown dust.
Except for the big swimming pool, everything looked dry as the inside of my mouth felt. Even the faintly blue sky appeared dehydrated. While I was robbed of billions of molecules of my slender supply of moisture by each breath I drew of the desiccated air.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.
“The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” by Oscar Wilde
Now through the last there came flapping across the pool two tiny swatches — yes, Rachel’s description had been precise — of black and orange batik. With a longing that was almost worship, my eyes followed the delightfully erratic movements of the flutterby. For that must be the true derivation, mangled by comedians. How can butter fly? Every atom of me yearned toward and revered the delicate whimsical creature. She had conquered gravity, while homo christophorus scullianas definitely had not. She fluttered out of sight.
My longing altered without changing direction. Now I passionately wanted my exoskeleton, as if it were my metal Siamese twin brother or a new robot wife.
It must have been removed from me last night while I was still unconscious from the touch of Rachel's black wand, or from further shocking or drugging. Perhaps on the pretext of rendering me helpless or tormenting me, but ultimately so that Rachel Vachel and her father could remove my sack suit and hunt through it for the claim to and the map of the Lost Crazy-Russian Pitchblende Mine. That made me chuckle again, despite torment to my uvula.
I scanned all the patio I could. Trusty Old Titanium was nowhere in sight, though he (she?) might lie hidden behind one of the couches.
Perhaps I was foolish to believe my exoskeleton would have been left on the patio, but I thought not. True. Fanninowicz would
have taken it away with him if at all possible, but my last recollection of the professor was his enthusiastic manhanching by Chase and Hunt. Most likely he had departed under restraint or on a stretcher.
Someone else with a rudimentary sense of caution or tidiness would have taken it away? Why, they hadn’t even bothered to take away Burleson, who lay snoring as sincerely as ever. Most of the others would have been close to dead drunk too. Might Rachel have taken it away? To fondle it in bed? Ridiculous — she hated me.
I recalled Fanninowicz pointing over me during the fight. At what? My stripped-off exoskeleton, I suddenly felt sure. Why would I have felt involved in the fight, unless it had been about my exoskeleton? I yearned for the impossible: that I could turn over and peer behind me. Though what use just looking at it would do me, I did not know, except to make me more miserable, if that were possible.
Then another reason occurred to me why my exo might have been carelessly left behind. All the Texans would have assumed that I would be utterly unable to stir without it. They would have forgotten, as I myself had up to this moment, the preternatural power in my fingers, toes, and jaw. And come to think of it, not even Rachel had seen my handshake fight with El Toro.
With a shudder of hope that made my hair rise (small but auspicious victory over gravity), I walked my left hand to my thigh, dragging my flaccid arm behind it. It was easy. My fingers found purchase in the cracks between the tessellations and hardly felt the weight they dragged behind them.
Now the task was more difficult: to walk my hand across my body, lifting the dead weight of my arm during the first half of the trip. But I am moderately hirsute around my crotch. By pinching hold of tufts of hair with outstretched fingers and then crooking them sharply, and by digging my rather thick, long fingernails into my flesh, careless of pain, I swiftly accomplished the job. Indeed, my hand proved to be a most able little five-limbed mountain climber.