The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction

by Howard Fast

  “But you’re so wise,” the mouse protested. “You can do almost anything. Change me. Make me like yourselves.”

  “By your standards we’re wise—” The space people were full of sadness. It permeated the room, and the mouse felt its desolation. “By our own standards we have precious little wisdom. We can’t make you like us. That is beyond any power we might dream of. We can’t even undo what we have done, and now we realize what we have done.”

  “And what will you do with me?”

  “The only thing we can do. Leave you here.”

  “Oh, no.” The thought was a cry of agony.

  “What else can we do?”

  “Don’t leave me here,” the mouse begged them. “Anything—but don’t leave me here. Let me make the journey with you, and then if I have to die I will die.”

  “There is no journey as you see it,” they explained. “Space is not an area for us. We can’t make it comprehensible to you, only to tell you that it is an illusion. When we rise out of the earth’s atmosphere, we slip into a fold of space and emerge in our own planetary system. So it would not be a journey that you would make with us—only a step to your death.”

  “Then let me die with you,” the mouse pleaded.

  “No—you ask us to kill you. We can’t.”

  “Yet you made me.”

  “We changed you. We made you grow in a certain way.”

  “Did I ask you to? Did you ask me whether I wanted to be like this?”

  “God help us, we didn’t.”

  “Then what am I to do?”

  “Live. That’s all we can say. You must live.”

  “How? How can I live? A mouse hides in the grass and knows only two things—fear and hunger. It doesn’t even know that it is, and of the vast lunatic world that surrounds it, it knows nothing. But you gave me the knowledge—”

  “And we also gave you the means to defend yourself, so that you can live without fear.”

  “Why? Why should I live? Don’t you understand that?”

  “Because life is good and beautiful—and in itself the answer to all things.”

  “For me?” The mouse looked at them and begged them to look at him. “What do you see? I am a mouse. In all this world there is no other creature like myself. Shall I go back to the mice?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And discuss philosophy with them? And open my mind to them? Or should I have intercourse with those poor, damned mindless creatures? What am I to do? You are wise. Tell me. Shall I be the stallion of the mouse world? Shall I store up riches in roots and bulbs? Tell me, tell me,” he pleaded.

  “We will talk about it again,” the space people said. “Be with yourself for a while, and don’t be afraid.”

  Then the mouse lay with his head between his paws and he thought about the way things were. And when the space people asked him where he wanted to be, he told them:

  “Where you found me.”

  So once again the saucer settled by night into the back yard of the suburban split-level house. Once again the air lock opened, and this time a mouse emerged. The mouse stood there, and the saucer rose out of the swirling dead leaves and spun away, a fleck of gold losing itself in the night. And the mouse stood there, facing its own eternity.

  A cat, awakened by the movement among the leaves, came toward the mouse and then halted a few inches away when the tiny animal did not flee. The cat reached out a paw, and then the paw stopped. The cat struggled for control of its own body and then it fled, and still the mouse stood motionless. Then the mouse smelled the air, oriented himself, and moved to the mouth of an old mole tunnel. From down below, from deep in the tunnel, came the warm, musky odor of mice. The mouse went down through the tunnel to the nest, where a male and a female mouse crouched, and the mouse probed into their minds and found fear and hunger.

  The mouse ran from the tunnel up to the open air and stood there, sobbing and panting. He turned his head up to the sky and reached out with his mind—but what he tried to reach was already a hundred light-years away.

  “Why? Why?” the mouse sobbed to himself. “They are so good, so wise—why did they do it to me?”

  He then moved toward the house. He had become an adept at entering houses, and only a steel vault would have defied him. He found his point of entry and slipped into the cellar of the house. His night vision was good, and this combined with his keen sense of smell enabled him to move swiftly and at will.

  Moving through the shifting web of strong odors that marked any habitation of people, he isolated the sharp smell of old cheese, and he moved across the floor and under a staircase to where a mousetrap had been set. It was a primitive thing, a stirrup of hard wire bent back against the tension of a coil spring and held with a tiny latch. The bit of cheese was on the latch, and the lightest touch on the cheese would spring the trap.

  Filled with pity for his own kind, their gentleness, their helplessness, their mindless hunger that led them into a trap so simple and unconcealed, the mouse felt a sudden sense of triumph, of ultimate knowledge. He knew now what the space people had known from the very beginning, that they had given him the ultimate gift of the universe—consciousness of his own being—and in the flash of that knowledge the mouse knew all things and knew that all things were encompassed in consciousness. He saw the wholeness of the world and of all the worlds that ever were or would be, and he was without fear or loneliness.

  In the morning, the man of the split-level suburban house went down into his cellar and let out a whoop of delight.

  “Got it,” he yelled up to his family. “I got the little bastard now.”

  But the man never really looked at anything, not at his wife, not at his kids, not at the world; and while he knew that the trap contained a dead mouse, he never even noticed that this mouse was somewhat different from other mice. Instead, he went out to the back yard, swung the dead mouse by his tail, and sent it flying into his neighbor’s back yard.

  “That’ll give him something to think about,” the man said, grinning.

  THE VISION

  OF MILTY BOIL

  NAPOLEON, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini all had one thing in common with Milton Boil: they were short men. But the most explosive moments in human history have often been the result of an absent six or seven inches in height, and while it is hardly profitable it is certainly interesting to speculate upon what might have been man’s destiny had Milton Boil been six feet and one inch instead of five feet and one inch—with a name like Smith or Jones or Goldberg instead of Boil.

  But at his maturity he was five feet and one inch, and his name had already caused him so much small suffering that no force on earth would have persuaded him to change it. All his life he had been stuck with pins, pinched and punned upon because of his name and his height; no wonder he was a millionaire before he reached thirty.

  He was born in 1940 and he grew up in the time of affluence. His father was a builder of small apartment houses. Milton (or Milty, as he came to be known the world over) came out of college, spent a year learning more about his father’s business than the old man ever knew, and then parted company with his father and built his first big apartment house. Milty was a genius. By 1970 he had become the largest builder of apartment houses in New York City. He married Joan Pebbleman, whose father was one of the country’s largest builders of office buildings, and they had three lovely children. Joan worked in charitable efforts. Her name was in The New York Times at least once a week. She was only four feet and ten inches tall, so from a reasonable distance they were a very handsome couple indeed.

  Milty respected money, rich people, brains, organizational drive, very rich people, the government, the church, and millionaires. In an interview, he was asked what he considered the first necessary attribute of a young man who desired to become a millionaire.

  “Ambition,” he replied promptly. He respected ambition.

  “And after that?”

  “Influence,” he replied. “Proper fr
iends.”

  And Milty made friends and built influence. By 1975, at the age of thirty-five, he was considered the most influential man in New York City. His influence was such that he was able to have a number of significant changes made in the building code—among them the lowering of the minimum height of the ceilings to seven feet. With this achieved, he built the first one-hundred-story apartment house in New York. In 1980, riding the crest of the wave created by the population explosion, Milty Boil managed to have the city council pass an ordinance permitting ceilings of six feet in all apartment buildings over fifty stories high.

  Rival builders sneered at Milty’s new house, claiming that no one would be so damn foolish as to rent an apartment with six-foot ceilings, but such was the housing shortage by then that the entire building, with its seven hundred apartments, was fully rented in sixty days.

  The cash flow that passed through Milty’s deserving hands had by now become so enormous that he was known throughout the business as the “golden boy” or, more often, “the golden boil”; but Milty was beyond the barbs of name-calling. His vision and imagination had lifted him to unprecedented heights, and once again he brought his influence to bear upon the lawmakers. In 1982 his workmen broke ground for a new building of one hundred stories, with ceilings five feet high. Biographers recall this as a moment of great crisis in the life of Milty Boil, and historians look back upon it as a turning point in man’s destiny. Suddenly all the forces of conservatism focused upon Milty; he was called everything from a depraved profiteer to public enemy number one; he was abused in the press, in Congress, on the air. There were, of course, a handful of farsighted people who applauded Milty’s courage and creativity, but mostly it was abuse that he received. And to this, at his now historic press conference, Milty replied simply and with dignity:

  “I give people a place to live at a reasonable rent. Especially the young people, who so desperately desire an urban condition. I give them a place to live at a rent they can afford.”

  “Do you, sir?” demanded the representative of The New York Times, bold and caustic as befitting his place, leading the attack upon Milty. “How can you say that in the light of the fact that we Americans are the tallest people on earth, especially our youth?”

  “I agree,” Milty replied. “This height is a tribute to the American way of life. All my life I have upheld the American way of life.”

  “That hardly answers the question,” said a CBS man.

  “I intend to answer it,” Milty assured them. “I have never been less than forthright about my plans. I have submitted this problem to a panel of forty-two physicians. They all agree that bending, crouching, and occasional creeping can only be beneficial to human health. Thereby a whole series of muscles formerly ignored are brought into play, and thus my own efforts coincide with the President’s plan for physical fitness. As for the defense of democracy on an international scale, nothing better develops a man for jungle combat than the alertness produced by life in a five-foot-high apartment. I have here a statement from the Secretary of Defense—mimeographed copies available—which says in part: ‘The constant concerns for his country’s welfare which dominate the thinking of Milton Boil deserve special mention and commendation.’ I also have statements from Generals Bosch and Kdrpulant, both of them experts—”

  “Mr. Boil,” he was interrupted, “are you trying to tell us that these low ceilings constitute a positive, progressive feature in apartment construction?”

  “They do indeed. Furthermore, an apartment is not a place where one lives vertically. We have conducted a survey of the habits of over ten thousand apartment dwellers, and the results show that ninety-two point eight percent of their hours spent in the apartment are spent in a sitting or reclining or prone position. With young married couples, the percentage is a trifle higher—”

  So did Milty Boil defend himself, a man alone fighting off the forces of reaction and always contemplating the gigantic profit produced by a building consisting of five-foot-high apartments. But a day later, at his regular board of directors’ meeting, Milty found that even those who shared the profits had their doubts.

  “It won’t work.”

  “Milty—you can’t go on this way. I hear Washington intends to step in.”

  “Did you, hear what Pravda has to say? I have the translation here—‘the final step in the decadence of the United States.’ Well, it gives one pause.”

  “I don’t say it wasn’t a brilliant step, Milty. I simply ask: Will it work? Can it work? Life is not Pravda, but listen to its editorial: ‘Has Milty finally flipped? We don’t hold with those who characterize Milton Boil as a madman or public enemy. We recognize that the greatest builder of modern America does not make decisions lightly. But if Milton Boil is not mad, neither are Americans three feet tall. If—’”

  “No, no!” Milty cried, finally coming to life in his place at the head of the table. “Hold it right there. Read that last sentence again.”

  “What last sentence?”

  “You know—that business about three feet tall.”

  “You mean this—‘But if Milton Boil is not mad, neither are Americans three feet tall—’”

  “Right! Right you are! There it is!”

  “There what is?” asked one of the older members, less able because of his age to follow the pyrotechnics of Milty’s thought.

  “The whole thing. The whole answer. The key to everything.” Milty’s very real excitement began to permeate the others.

  “What key, Milty? Don’t be so damned mysterious.”

  “All right. But tell me this. What is the number one problem of the world today?”

  “Communism,” half a dozen board members replied eagerly.

  “Nuts! Communism is a word. We licked them in space and we licked them in everything else down here. Our houses are better and our roads are better and our factories are better.”

  “Disease,” someone said hopefully.

  “Did you ever hear of antibiotics? Not disease.”

  “War, Milty?”

  “Since when is war a problem?”

  “Inflation?”

  “You should talk—you made millions out of inflation. Come on, come on, use your heads—there’s only one number one problem in the world today, and if we lick it, it licks us, and if we destroy it, it destroys us—until now, until right this minute when your uncle Milty Boil solved it, and we’re going to lick it and it’s not going to destroy us.”

  They spread their hands hopelessly. They looked at Milty in defeat, knowing how much he enjoyed winning.

  “Milty, let us in, tell us where the action is,” his first vice-president pleaded.

  “All right.” Milty Boil leaned forward. His face hardened; his voice became precise and crisp. He was all mind now, a cold, beautiful, hard-core calculating machine. They knew that look on Milty’s face; they knew it meant a breakthrough, action, action, and more action. The silence at the board table became a thing in itself.

  “All right. World’s number one problem—overpopulation, namely the population explosion. Next—what is our market for anything? People. And how do you increase a market? More people. But with more people you got the population explosion. Mankind trapped. Finis. Over. The earth starves.”

  “Right, Milty,” the board whispered.

  “But there’s a way.”

  The board waited.

  Slowly, measuring each word, Milty said, “Double the size of the earth. That’s the solution. That takes care of the next hundred years.”

  The members of the board relaxed, looked at each other, grinned, and then burst into laughter. Only Milty didn’t laugh. His face stony-set and cold as ice, he regarded them without pleasure and waited. They saw his expression finally, and the laughter died away. Milty pointed one finger at his second vice-president, who was in charge of purchasing, and asked evenly:

  “Just what in hell do you find so funny?”

  “The jest, Milty. We’re laughing w
ith you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a yuk, Milty, a tribute, so as to speak. You got a sense of humor like nobody else.”

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” Milty said.

  “No? But you got to be kidding, Milty. The earth is what it is. Twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. That’s fourth-grade stuff.”

  “And you got a fourth-grade mind.”

  “Milty, Milty,” said the oldest member in a fatherly way, “Milty, you have a fine mind, but nobody makes the earth larger.”

  “No?”

  “No, Milty, I am afraid not.”

  “All right,” Milty said, unperturbed by the oldest member and smiling slightly. “Nobody makes the earth larger. But tell me this—suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the average man was three feet tall. Now if he kept the same scale in relation to himself, everything would be reduced by half. Six inches would be a foot, and a mile would become two miles. In other words, if the man is reduced in size to one-half, then so are all his measurements. Suddenly the world is not twenty-five thousand miles in circumference but fifty thousand miles in circumference. We have doubled the size of the earth.”

  “Milty, Milty,” said the oldest member, still in a fatherly way, “Milty; you got a brain like a steel trap. But all you are actually doing is to buttress one impossible statement with another. To make men three feet tall is as impossible as to make the earth fifty thousand miles in diameter.”

  “Who says?”

  “I say, Milty,” continued the oldest member. “I was a friend of your father, may he rest in peace, so I have the right.”

  “Good,” Milty said. “You got the right. Now shut up.” And to the rest of the board:

  “I say we can produce the three-foot man.”

  “How, Milty?” asked the youngest member of the board. He was with Milty all the way.