by Fritz Leiber
It was all over in not much more than a second, yet I think all of us winced with him at the strain of that illusionary deceleration.
“A mile and a quarter,” Carlos Mendoza announced softly.
I looked a question at this comarado I hardly knew.
“That he fell,” Mendoza replied. “Or his cage.”
Meanwhile Federico was nonchalantly marching again. When I said, “Next,” he lightly gripped another support and sagged.
The whole pantomime of rapid descent and sudden deceleration was repeated. This time I remembered to stage-count. The fall took 20 seconds. That worked out to a distance of two kilometers, I calculated, dredging from the depths of my boring physics instruction the formula of distance equals one-half times six lunagravs (one decameter) multiplied by time in seconds squared.
“Again a mile and a quarter,” Mendoza whispered, agreeing well enough with my calculation.
Once more Federico marched, grasped, and fell for twenty seconds. This time his face and body broke out in sweat, and he gasped for breath.
“It becomes hot three and three-quarters miles underground,” Mendoza said tersely.
Or six kilometers, I thought, translating. I frankly felt frightened at the thought of penetrating so far into solidity. What it implied about the vast solid mass of Earth horrified me, as it would anyone knowing only life in free fall. At last the blank datum, “Earth’ has a diameter of almost thirteen thousand kilometers” became terrifyingly real to me.
This time old Federico showed a new behavior. Crouching, he lowered his hands and lifted slowly one foot, then the other. Next his hands gripped something and moved slowly upward. Clearly he was drawing on a heavy suit of some sort. One could see his arms working into gloved sleeves. Next there was pantomimed zipping. Finally he lifted something invisible onto his head.
“It is like a spacesuit,” I whispered.
His breathing changed. He inhaled through tinily puckered lips, exhaled through his nostrils.
“And the suit is refrigerated,” Mendoza whispered beside me.
I caught his point. Old Federico had stopped sweating. The beads were evaporating.
I waited with interest. Now we would see the actions involved in his underground work and perhaps be able to interpret its nature.
He marched until I said, “Next,” then grasped an invisible handhold and again dropped two kilometers.
And again and again and again, taking him fourteen kilometers below the surface of the Earth! And each time he dropped, he seemed almost to float.
We all watched with intense, even horrified interest. Nearby the intent faces of El Toro, Guchu, Mendoza, El Tacito and a couple more. I was sure each was pale under his shade of brown. Farther off, Rachel Vachel, La Cucaracha and Fanninowicz with his guards. Only the German’s expression jarred — he wore a sneer of incredulity and contempt.
I suppose that for an outsider my having the appearance of a tall and stooping Death might have added to the eldritch atmosphere.
The other old Mex, still in hypnotic sleep, continued his rhythmic drone. That was the only sound.
Environment added to the horror. That we should be in a dim-lit, oppressively low-ceilinged coal mine, its great close-set pillars marked by the strain of the weight they bore — all these things intensified the horror of the thought of a mine going already one hundred times as deep.
And yet it was all in the kingdom of the imagination! We half dozen amateur actors (including one thoroughgoing professional) were witnessing a pantomime, based only on muscular and physiological memory, which created an illusion far more gripping than any of us could have managed — perhaps even I!
Federico repeated the drop eighteen more times — until by my calculation he was forty kilometers below Terra’s surface, which' agreed well enough with Mendoza’s twenty-five miles.
“Madre de Dios!” the latter exclaimed softly. “That is the thickness given for earth’s crust. He must be near the molten mantle.”
At last Federico changed his act. Hoisting up a heavy something, he directed it downward between his feet. Bracing his forearms against his belly and hips, he began to shake in a taut violent way, so that his hard sandals beat a tattoo against the rock floor.
As if that sound had been a signal, the other old Mex’s drone became louder and changed into execrably pronounced and accented English words, which it took me three or four repetitions wholly to understand:
Every day, two Hours times twelve,
A million yokemen dig and delve.
In your earplugs comes the boss’s yell,
“You’ll keep on drilling ’til you get to Hell.”
So drill, you yokemen, drill!
Drill, you cyborgs, drill!
It’s drill blacked out in heat and pain
For your women and rum and mary jane!
And blast And fire!
As I was listening, hypnotized myself, to the fifth repetition of that eerie chant, old Federico swayed, stopped shaking, paled, swayed again and collapsed on the rock before any of us could catch him.
Perhaps the weirdest thing for me was that, as I swiftly moved to stoop beside him, I made a point of stepping over the drill that wasn’t there.
We assured ourselves that Federico was suffering from no more than exhaustion. I brought both him and the chanting Mex out of their trances. We saw them comfortably at rest.
And then we talked. “Hombre!” El Toro asked for us. “What can the Texans be wanting with mines twenty-five miles deep?”
“Gold and silver,” El Tacito suggested romantically, for once belying his name of The Silent One. “Diamonds big as kacks.”
“They seem to be on the verge of creating artificial volcanoes,” Mendoza said soberly. “But why, I ask, why?”
La Cucaracha said excitedly, “Texans already have big winds, big heats, big colds, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, tidal waves. Now they want volcanoes and earthquakes too. Everything big.”
I could agree with her on the last. The whole thing seemed like delirium. But then I had always felt horror at the thought of the innards of planets, the lair of gravity.
Rachel Vachel said, “I wish’ I’d spied on this more while I was with Daddy.”
Guchu suggested, “Maybe they building a Doomsday Machine. Gonna stuff those deep holes with bombs. If they start losing to Russia or China, or the mood hits ’em, they blow up all Texas like one Alamo. Maybe blow up the world. ‘Taking your enemies with you,’ I think it’s called.”
El Toro extended a menacing arm at Fanninowicz. “You should know about them,” he asserted. “What is their purpose?”
The German laughed harshly. “I do indeed. What you call the great towers merely house bigger drilling rigs, designed to probe for petroleum at depths of ten to twenty kilometers. Oil is being found in rock hitherto thought azoic. But this notion of great mines forty kilometers deep is nonsense. They would collapse from the pressures. And can you imagine anyone using a hand-drill, even in a refrigerated suit, at temperatures of 1800 to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit? Ridiculous! No, my dear sirs, you have let yourselves be deceived by an amateur hypnotist and a subject who kept on repeating an action that impressed you. While your theorizations are all laughable.”
I could tell from El Toro’s expression that he was mightily tempted to use force on the exasperating Teuton, but persuaded from it because of the latter’s usefulness in regard to my exoskeleton and other mechanical matters. Besides, I believe we were all impressed by his logic. Germans are most convincing maniacs. There had already begun to seem something fabulous in the ideas Federico’s behavior had generated.
My only thought was what an unesthetic clot — worse than a Circumlunan! — the professor was, not to have appreciated the theatric grandeur of Federico’s — and my — performance.
To tell the truth, I wasn’t having many thoughts by then. I was too tired. In fact, I was more than tired. Supervising Federico’s performance had taken me out of myself, bu
t now I was feeling nothing but terragrav’s horrible drag, as if I were perpetually in the agony of sudden deceleration Federico had portrayed at the end of each of his two-kilometer drops.
Rachel Vachel and La Cucaracha smiled at me side by side, inviting me to gossip with them, but threesome, not twosome. I was having none of that.
Signing to El Tacito, I walked to my quarters and was asleep before my headbasket thudded softly into my pillow.
Table of Contents
- XII -
SLUMSTORMING
The next two days I continued weary of body, heavy of mind, empty of emotion. Old Federico’s pantomime, in fact the whole coal-mine episode, seemed more a Haunting, heavy-hued nightmare than a reality.
The Ohio Valley turned out to be a miserable region. The general population has more short than tall Texans, and some of the former are in the Revolution. Poor whites. They are refused the Hormone because they don’t make enough money to support the extra poundage that goes with greater height. They say they don’t want the hormone. Sour grapes in most cases, I think. Some of them are dwarfed enough to go through Mex doors, though the law forbids that. Most Mexes accept them as fellow revolutionaries, though it frightens me to think how they must increase our security risks.
The cities are as dwarfed as the people — ragged rings around atom-glazed wastes on which new building has only recently begun.
I have taken to writing another new script to fill in time. Our show must somehow be improved. For instance, El Toro thinks he is learning acting from me, but is doing worse than when I began teaching him.
The first night we gave a rotten performance in Louisville. The second, a worse one in Cincinnati. Even I was lousy, both shouting and turning a silent back on audience to get their attention. At the end they filed out silently. I doubt we sparked a single street-corner disturbance. I know who was at fault — me. But an actor cannot play a role like Death night after night without emotional fuel.
Accordingly I waited until Rachel and Rosa were together and then somewhat somberly invited them to my brick cabin in our quarters in a deserted motel beside a rusty-fenced freeway crossed by great gullies.
I waited until they were comfortably seated, had lit up, and were gazing at me curiously.
Then, ad-libbing all the way, for I had resolutely planned no set speech, I poured out my feelings to them.
I described the vast loneliness of a freefall being on a gravity planet and in a strange culture. I explained the desolation of an actor playing a big role, especially an anti-human one such as Death. I revealed my petty foibles and childish self-pity.
In short, I spoke nothing but the truth. It was a great relief to the and it almost broke me up. But not quite. An actor remains an actor.
Next I praised them both lavishly, telling them how I couldn’t have made it without their imaginative help and comfort. I hinted at my further emotional and physiological needs. I ended by assuring them that I loved both of them greatly — and equally.
Only then did I remember that I had told them exactly the same thing in the church and they had both called me crazy.
This time they were kinder. Perhaps. Rosa patted my knee and said, “Poor bones-man. I am muy simpatico.”
“Yeah, it’s sure tough on you, Scully,” Rachel agreed, patting my other knee. “But now let’s get down to this bigamy thing you’re trying to set up, if I read you right,” she went on. “Which of us girls comes first?”
“Indeed yes,” Rosa seconded, crossing her arms and beginning to tap the floor with the toe of her slipper.
“That is for you to decide,” I answered, not loftily, but with great simplicity and sincerity. Then I crossed my arms.
“Sure you really don’t like one of us more than the other?” Rachel asked. “And are trying to be kind to the loser?”
“Kind!” Rosa spat.
“No!” I said and then went on to explain how various forms of polygamy, from the linear to the complex marriage, are found in the Sack. Likewise for love affairs.
“Well, that may work up in the sky,” Rachel responded when I paused for breath, “but down here we’re not used to it.”
“Indeed no!” Rosa agreed. “I have no intention whatever of becoming a ‘sociable secretary’ to you, amado. My heart is involved.”
“Goes for me too, Scully dear,” Rachel echoed with a sigh. “I’m too serious about you, see, to play around. Sure the balance don’t teeter just a little bit more one way than the other?”
I did not trust myself to speak. “Well then that’s that,” Rachel said. She looked at Rosa. “Shall I tell him, Miss Morales?”
“Yes, you tell him, Miss Lamar!”
“Well, Scully,” Rachel began, leaning forward a little, elbows on knees, while Rosa sat up straight, “us girls figured you might conceivably take that insane attitude, and so we worked out our answer beforehand. Which is: you got to decide which one of us you want, and then speak out in the presence of both of us, so there’s no chance for tricks.”
“But don’t you see what you’re demanding of me?” I burst out. “You’re asking me to insult one of you unforgivably!”
“That one’ll be able to take it,” Rachel replied serenely. “You see, Scully darling, Miss Morales and I have come to understand each other on this tour, because of our mutual admiration of and attachment to you.”
“Si, querido!” Rosa put in almost excitedly. “Whatever happens, whichever one of us you choose, you have created a friendship between us which can never be broken. We who were as cat and dog, are now as lamb and lamb. You can always pride yourself on that, amado.”
“But don’t you see that makes a threesome even more workable?” I demanded somewhat bewilderedly.
“No, dearest,” Rachel said with great conviction.
Rosa said sharply, “Our undying friendship — you have that already. But as for love, it must be one, or the other, never both!”
“Yeah, Scully, you got to make up your mind. It's the only way you’ll ever have either of us.” Once more I could only trust myself to shake my head. This time I added an unrehearsed shudder — at the insanity of their behavior, at the torment to my own feelings, at the merciless perversity of the universe.
“Scully!” Rachel asked with sudden concern. “have you really got that gravity sickness? We get to thinking of you as tireless and superior to all mortal ills, because you’re the star and work by electricity. Haven’t let your batteries run low?”
“I know what!” Rosa said with certainty. “The bees-bonnet has been sleeping in his skeleton!”
“And what if I have?” I growled back at her. “We’re revolutionaries. We’ve got to be ready for emergencies. Weapons close at hand. Skeleton — on!”
“You should have told us! We would have nursed you. We still will.”
“Yeah, Scully, Rosa’n I’ll be only too happy to help you off with your skeleton and tuck you in for the night, and help you on with it in the morning. And any other little thing you need. Worked fine back in the cave.”
Maybe then I made my big mistake. If I had gone along with their gag, one or the other would have been irresistibly tempted by my helplessness. Maybe.
But I had no intention of finger-crawling across any more patio floors. Even ones carpeted with ermine.
“I do not want either of you as a nurse,” I decreed. “Or both of you, for that matter. My wants run in entirely different directions.”
Rachel nodded sadly. “Well, I guess he’s given us our walking papers, Rosa.”
La Cucaracha agreed with an emphatic nod and with an upward look at a universe apparently as perversely incomprehensible as my own.
“But let’s not make it so much like a funeral,” Rachel said.
“No, to a bones-man that would be far too cruel,” Rosa agreed.
“Let’s pass around a good-by reefer,” Rachel suggested. “Rosa?”
So, mostly in silence, we smoked a long stick of grass together, and then another
. It was a gesture for which I was deeply grateful. It calmed my ruffled nerves and vanity. A little.
But contrary to many stories, the mild drug does not result in libidinous orgies, except for those who greatly desire such. So when I had taken the last sip and punched out the tiny butt of a third, the girls rose and I lifted a hand in somber farewell.
In the doorway they turned. Rachel said, “Scully, I’m sure I speak for both of us when I say that it’s a rare privilege to work in the same company with a great actor such as you. We also think you’re doing more for the revolution than anyone since Pancho Villa and Zapata and Cesar Chavez. We know the little things you’re doing, too. The voice lessons you’re giving Toro, though we’ll never mention them. The way you put up with Father Francisco and play along with Guchu and humor that maniac Fanninowicz. And — jokes about electric skeletons aside — the way you’re plumb knocking yourself out to do everything you can for the show.”
“But in that case surely—?” I left the question unfinished while I looked at them in naked yearning.
They slowly shook their heads and softly closed the door.
It stayed closed.
It was still closed when the first glow of dawn glinted from cobwebs and dust-grains on the windows.
The dawn-glow also showed me my hideous visage in a mirror appropriately spotted brown with age.
I decided I was through with all women.
Yes I was. Perhaps forever.
Even Idris McIllwraith.
If she had loved me even a little, she would have come to me across the cold quarter-million miles, by flower-powered self-teleportation.
Things always change. And infallibly, thank Diana, they change for the better when they’re at the worst. On the next day, Spindletop eighth, we gave a great show at Indianapolis. I could have taken ten curtain calls, but Death is humble, Death is the friend of every man, his comrade throughout life, reminding him to waste no moment but live to the full. And if man has any comrade at all when life is ended, that comrade is Death.