Fool on the Hill

by Matt Ruff

  “You,” he said. “You are the most beautifu—”

  A huge rat, a brown Norwegian rat of the sort known to strip the bones of human children, shot out of the cage like a furry bullet, sinking its teeth into Cobweb and ripping off his arm before he realized what was happening. At first he did not even cry out, merely stared at the bloody stump that was his shoulder, frozen in shock.

  Then he saw the rat’s eyes, its teeth, and the biggest scream of his life, his death scream, welled up in his throat, and in his extremity he could make out the rat’s thoughts clearly.

  I Thresh, thought-said the rat. Thresh ends you.

  “THRESH!” Cobweb shrieked mindlessly, as the rat tore his chest open. Saffron also shrieked, but she did not think to draw her sword or to run to Cobweb’s rescue—not that he was very rescuable anymore.

  “THRESH!” Cobweb shrieked again, his last. Angus looked up, Puck looked up, they all looked up in time to see Cobweb topple off the shelf. Halfway down he was dead, and in the nature of sprites, he faded—his body evaporated into nothingness, his clothes turned to grey rags that continued to seesaw downward. His pinsword struck the ground with an insignificant pinging sound.

  “Aye, Lord!” Macduff croaked. “What’s this, now—”

  “No!” Saffron cried out from above. More rats swarmed from the cage, and two of them rushed at her. One of these fell dead instantly, struck by needles from three crossbows—Puck, Hamlet, and Mustardseed each carried one—but the other rat stayed far enough back from the edge that they could not get a bead on him. Somehow, above the din of all the animals, they heard the unmistakable hiss of Saffron’s sword being drawn, but what happened after that they could not tell, for they had problems of their own.

  Heedless of the distance to the floor, the other rats—nine of them, including Thresh—leaped from the shelf. One died of a crossbow wound in mid-air, and two more landed badly and were unable to move, but the other six scattered, looking for blood and a way out. Two of them bore down Mustardseed before he could reload his bow; he was dead in seconds.

  After Mustardseed faded, only five sprites remained at floor level—Jaquenetta, her three apprentices, and Angus. Of those still up on the shelves, only Puck and Hamlet had long-range weapons. The rest hurried down as quickly as they could. Lennox went too fast, landed hard, and fractured his leg. A rat spotted him and moved in for the kill.

  “Not bleedin’ likely, you bastard!” Lennox cried, whipping out his sword and skewering the creature as it leaped for him. It twitched once and fell dead. “How do you like that?”

  With those words he collapsed in a faint. Two frogs hopped over his prone form, croaking contentedly, oblivious to the battle around them.

  “Aye, ye bastard!” Macduff jumped down onto a rat’s back, driving his sword into the base of its skull like a spear. “That’s for Cobweb!”

  “And this is for Mustardseed!” cried Angus, not five feet away, as he swung one of the sledgehammers at another rat. It staggered back, stunned, then shot forward and tore a chunk of flesh from Angus’ leg. As it opened its mouth for another bite Ross and Caith hit it from both sides, taking it down.

  Two more rats advanced on Jaquenetta. Without hesitating she opened the kittens’ cage door. Help me, she thought-pleaded with the first kit to emerge, a black shorthair. The kitten’s purely logical brain caught this thought, interpreting it as a sudden hunger pang; the cat shoved past the shadow at the cage door and ran toward the rats.

  The rats continued on fearlessly, knocking the kitten over and beginning to tear into it.

  “Oh, Lord,” Jaquenette murmured, drawing her sword. But before she could go to the kitten’s aid, each rat was struck down by a crossbow shot from above.

  Puck scanned the floor carefully, saw no more live rats among the milling sprites and lab animals, and turned his attention to the shelf where Cobweb had lost his life.

  “Saffron.” Speaking her name, Puck shouldered his bow, drew his sword, and clambered up to the high shelf as quickly as he could.

  Saffron Dey lay in a pool of her own blood. She had not faded and was therefore not dead, but death did not look far away. The rat lay beside her, Saffron’s pinsword buried firmly in its heart. She had killed it, but suffered badly in return.

  “Jesus and Troilus.” Puck knelt beside her. With one hand he stroked her forehead, expecting to see her fade without ever regaining consciousness. But as he touched her, she opened her eyes, and all of a sudden Puck was afraid. Saffron began to laugh from a badly torn throat.

  At the same moment, Hamlet was anxiously climbing upwards in pursuit of the last rat. Thresh had somehow eluded them and was headed up again, scrabbling from shelf to shelf toward the vent opening and escape.

  “Saffron?” Puck whispered, leaning close to her. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused, as if she were seeing not him but Something Else.

  “Still alive,” she said, laughing that unnerving laugh. “He’s still alive.”

  “Who is?”

  “They buried him,” Saffron continued, not hearing. “Buried him in The Boneyard. But they couldn’t kill him. Wounded. That’s all they could do.”

  “The Boneyard? Saffron, what are you saying? What about The Bone—” Puck cut off as Saffron suddenly grabbed his arm, gripping it with amazing strength. She stopped looking at Something Else and focused her gaze on him, and he tried to pull away, because what he saw in her eyes terrified him.

  “Pandora’s Box is going to open soon,” she told him, not letting him go. “They trapped him, but he’s going to get out. He's going to get out.” Her grip tightened until Puck felt sure his forearm would be crushed. “And once he’s out, once he gets free, he’s going to eat you all right up, right up, RIGHT UP!"

  “Got you now, you son of a bitch,” Hamlet said, steadying his aim. The rat was directly under the vent, and Hamlet was at last at a good angle. He fired, thinking to pierce it through the heart, but the rat moved at the same moment and was struck in the flank instead. It paused, half in and half out of the opening, then pushed itself in with one last great shove of its haunches. An instant later it was gone.

  Saffron stiffened, tightening her grip Still more for one excruciating moment. Then she faded, leaving Puck shaking beside a pile of dead leaves, the remains of her clothing.

  Pandora’s Box is going to open.

  Soon.

  Half a mile away, the Tower Chimes tolled midnight.

  A KISS IN THE DARK

  The Fevre Dream Tavern took its name from a novel about vampires on the Mississippi, and its politics from somewhere about a thousand miles left of center. The most militantly liberal territory in already liberal Collegetown, it served as a natural haven for the Bohemians and the Blue Zebras on their nights out. The music was often live and the drinks usually half-price; they could ask no more.

  Stephen George found himself in the ‘Dream one night about two weeks into the semester, sipping a Slow Comfortable Screw that had been mixed by an expert hand, and feeling strangely elated. The featured band was Benny Profane and the V-necks, who specialized in mismatched covers; clad in a white alligator-hide vest that showed off his biceps to maximum effect, Benny opened the show with a reggae version of “Stand By Your Man.” Following this he stepped back from the mike and gave the spotlight to Stencil One-Note, the electric guitarist, who turned the fuzz control on his amp up to maximum and burned off the Canadian national anthem in three-quarter time. This received a rousing round of applause.

  To George’s left, through an open archway, was the pool room. Here Preacher and Fantasy Dreadlock played Eight Ball against Ragnarok and Fujiko, under the learned kibitzing of half a dozen spectators. Fujiko and Ragnarok were up by one game, but this promised to change as Fuji got further along in a row of White Russians and lost more and more of her motor control. Meanwhile, back in the barroom proper, Myoko, Aphrodite (the Bohemian Minister of Love), and Panhandle (the Bohemian Minister of Unbridled Lust) gathered around a table to watch
Lion-Heart play a game of Devil’s Advocate with Woodstock. Technically, Z.Z. Top was also at the table, but he had slumped so far down in his chair as to become invisible.

  “. . . now take this crap about the Space Defense Initiative,” Woodstock was saying. “The Star Wars thing, with the laser satellites and all. That’s scary shit. That dick’s gonna get us all nuked, pushing it too far. . . .”

  “Dick?” Lion-Heart asked innocently Cinched around one arm was a cloth band adorned with pink elephants, the traditional symbol of the Advocate. “What dick?”

  “Reagan, of course.”

  Lion-Heart smiled. “That dick, my friend,” he pointed out, “is a publicly elected dick. Twice over. And last time around he got every state except Minnesota, which isn’t exactly the voice of the nation, if you know what I mean. He must have had some brains to get all those people over on his side, don’t you think?”

  “Reagan has no brains,” Woodstock insisted. “The man’s senile.”

  “So you say. But what about the Democrats, eh? They’re the ones who picked Walter Mondale to run against him. So they must be getting a little old in the head too, right?”

  “Geraldine Ferraro wasn’t a bad choice,” Myoko offered.

  Lion-Heart raised his eyebrows in mock horror, secretly squeezing her hand under the table. “She’s from Queens.”

  “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” demanded Woodstock.

  “Maybe if we could have had some sort of guarantee,” Aphrodite suggested, “that Mondale would drop dead right after he got elected, so Gerry would have taken over. . . .”

  “Reagan’s going to drop dead soon,” Panhandle predicted cheerfully. “The Zero Factor’ll kill his ass any day now. That’s the real reason he got reelected: he hadn’t died in office yet.”

  Myoko considered this. “Does it count as Zero Factor,” she asked, “if Washington gets bombed before Air Force One can lift him out of there?”

  “That’s the Ground Zero Factor,” replied Panhandle.

  “Hey,” said Woodstock, “Let’s try to keep this discussion on a mature level, OK?”

  Feeling a sudden thirst, Aphrodite got up from the table at this point and headed for the bar. Though the temperature inside the Fevre Dream was quite warm, she still wore her longcoat, a garment covered entirely in red Velcro—when Aphrodite hugged someone, they stayed hugged.

  “Hey, storyteller,” she said, taking the stool next to George and ordering a Bloody Mary from Stainless Marley, the bartender.

  George smiled at her. “Long time no see. How goes it?”

  “Oh, average. Panhandles falling all over himself tonight trying to seduce me, as usual.”

  “Yeah? Planning to take him up on it?”

  “Are you kidding? Look at what he wears, George.” Panhandle’s longcoat was transparent vinyl, slick as grease. “Nothing to grip,” Aphrodite said, indicating her own Velcro-clad arms. “Think I’d trust a man like that?”

  “You could always knit him a sweater.”

  “Hmm . . .” Her drink arrived and she took a long swallow. “And you?”

  “Doing good,” George said, bouncing a little on his stool, nervous energy in his legs. “I mean, I don’t know, feels like something’s in the wind. Can’t really explain it, but these past couple weeks I’ve had the damnedest feeling of . . . of waiting for something.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “So what’s this I hear,” asked Aphrodite, “about you and a secret admirer?”

  “What, has the Top been blabbing about that business with the rose?”

  “Yes, but don’t go hit him for it, he’s too drunk to feel anything just now. Has she gotten in touch with you yet?”

  “Don’t know that it’s a she, necessarily. Hell, I don’t even know that it’s not just a coincidence.”

  “No such thing,” Aphrodite assured him. Then: “Oh my, looks like Lust is calling me.”

  “Huh?” George looked around. Benny Profane had retaken the mike and was belting out a punk rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Panhandle stood on the dance floor, sans longcoat, beckoning Aphrodite to come slam dance.

  “Hmm, maybe there’s hope for the boy yet,” she said. She set what was left of her drink on the bar in front of George. “Be a dear and finish that for me, would you? We’ll have to trade love stories the next time we bump into each other.”

  Giving his shoulder an affectionate squeeze, she headed off to dance.

  George spent five minutes on the Bloody Mary; he had barely drained the last drops when all activity in the Tavern came to an abrupt halt. It was an odd moment, difficult to recall in detail later. Such is the nature of genuinely magical events—drunken, disjointed bits of time that could never survive if clearly remembered.

  Seconds beforehand, Stainless Marley had come down to the end of the bar, bearing a pen in one hand and a copy of The Knight of the White Roses in the other.

  “Hey George,” Stainless began to say, “you got to do me a favor. I got this lady up in Dryden, and she doesn’t believe—”

  The front door of the Tavern swung open in silence, a silence so loud it drowned out every sound in the barroom. Stainless’ words trailed off to nothing; Benny Profane cut off in the middle of shouting how he was so lonely he could die; Woodstock, caught in the heart of some clinching argument, shut up as if struck; other conversations died similarly, even in the pool room, and all eyes, all gazes were drawn to one spot.

  Calliope moved in the doorway, more a vision than a person. She was wrapped in a diaphanous white gown that might have been cut and woven from a dream, and a breeze played through her long hair, holding it at just the perfect angle to the light, making it seem alive. Her lips were set just right; her skin glowed. The word beautiful, at that instant, would not have been sufficient to describe her.

  “Jesus” Woodstock whispered. “Look at her.”

  Lion-Heart alone resisted the temptation; his lips were pressed firmly against Myoko’s, and he clung to her for dear life. The other men and women in the Fevre Dream surrendered their hearts without a struggle; Stainless Marley swayed on his feet, and in the archway to the pool room Ragnarok and Fujiko had to lean against each other for support.

  “George . . .” Stainless breathed. For the vision had locked her own gaze on someone. A perfectly formed hand let go the knob of the front door, which eased shut; Calliope began to glide across the room, weaving among tables where the frozen statues of bar patrons dared not reach out for her. And George, sure at the last that she came for him, stood to meet her, seeing finally what it was he had been waiting for.

  Closer and closer, George stretched out a hand toward her, wondering if she would ever reach him, wondering if she did whether she would be real or a phantom that his fingers would pass through like smoke. But she did reach him, solid flesh and bone clasped his hand, she came closer still, and as he leaned in to kiss her it all seemed quite natural, quite ordinary, most wonderful. He was caught up in her magic, and when their lips met and every light in the Tavern went out simultaneously, that too seemed natural, as if it were just another stage direction in some script that had been written for this moment.

  “What the fuck?” cried Z.Z. Top, rising from stupor and thinking himself blind. “What the fuck is happening here!?”

  In George’s perception, that one kiss in the dark stretched out for minutes, hours, days—an uncertain span of time in paradise. When at last Calliope drew back her head, she whispered three words to him, a promise of more to come. Then, somehow, before the lights came back on, she disentangled herself from him, vanished. Again., George was never certain later exactly how it had happened—it was so memorable, and yet so difficult to remember—but it might have been that she simply evaporated in his arms, just melted away. Though of course that was impossible.

  “What the fuck?” the Top continued to shout. “What the fuck?”

  MAKING FLIPPY-FLOPPY

  I.

  One of the prevailin
g myths about Cornell and other liberal universities is that they contain no virgins, or an insignificant number. Of course an informal visual check—for an experienced observer can spot a virgin by the way he or she laces his/her shoes—will quickly demonstrate how inaccurate this assumption is. Even simple logic should be enough to disprove it, for if virginity were really so rare, why would there be so much concern about it? Yet despite the fact that Cornellians are supposed to be bursting with logic, on any given night at least thirty percent of the student body goes to bed convinced that everyone is getting laid but them.

  Which is not to say that, as abstinence goes, Cornell can ever hope to hold a candle to Oral Roberts University. But a night on which a majority of the population had sex would be an unusual night indeed, and a night on which almost everybody did would be nothing short of miraculous.

  These, then, are the mechanics of a miracle: even as George locked lips with Calliope in the Fevre Dream, two tanker trunks were colliding head-on on a highway just north of Ithaca. One of the trucks belonged to a scientific research group and contained a thousand gallons of an experimental human pheromone; the other was an industrial tanker carrying one of the primary chemical ingredients used in feminine hygiene spray. In the aftermath of the accident, fumes from both substances mixed to form an invisible cloud that was swept southward by the wind, lowering moral standards, raising erections, and hardening nipples wherever it went. At approximately eleven-thirty it passed over North Campus; by midnight the Entrepot student store had sold out every condom in stock, and those customers who had come too late were forced to improvise. Rubber gloves became a hot item about five minutes before closing time.

  The wind kept up, and the cloud moved on through West Campus and down to Ithaca proper, sparking more sexual abandon. It was a providence-ordained night for making love or just fucking cheerfully, and more is the pity that no statistics were collected; Masters and Johnson would have paid handsomely for the data. Yet it must remain an irony that, while a full detailing of the night’s adventures would fill volumes, the most intense encounter of the evening had nothing to do with the pheromone cloud. The honor fell to a certain fiction writer who lived alone in a gaudy yellow house on Stewart Avenue, and who, tonight, needed no help from stray chemicals in the atmosphere.