The Ultimate Egoist

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “My, my,” said the cat, raising both paws in surprise. “I detect a ring of sincerity in all that. It pleases me. That is exactly the way I have felt for some years. I have never found fault with her cooking, though; she buys special food for me. I am tired of it. I am tired of her. I am tired of her to an almost unbelievable extent. Almost as much as I hate you.”

  “Me?”

  “Of course. You’re an imitation. You’re a phony. Your birth is against you, Ransome. No animal that sweats and shaves, that opens doors for women, that dresses itself in equally phony imitations of the skins of animals, can achieve the status of a cat. You are presumptuous.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I am different. I am a cat, and have a right to do as I please. I disliked you so intensely when I saw you this evening that I made up my mind to kill you.”

  “Why didn’t you? Why—don’t you?”

  “I couldn’t,” said the cat coolly. “Not when you sleep like a cat … no, I thought of something far more amusing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh yes.” Fluffy stretched out a foreleg, extended his claws. Ransome noticed subconsciously how long and strong they seemed. The moon had gone its way, and the room was filling with slate-gray light.

  “What woke you,” said the cat, leaping to the windowsill, “just before I came in?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ransome. “Some little noise, I imagine.”

  “No indeed,” said Fluffy, curling his tail and grinning through his whiskers. “It was the stopping of a noise. Notice how quiet it is?”

  It was indeed. There wasn’t a sound in the house—oh, yes, now he could hear the plodding footsteps of the maid on her way from the kitchen to Mrs. Benedetto’s bedroom, and the soft clink of a teacup. But otherwise—suddenly he had it. “The old horse stopped snoring!”

  “She did,” said the cat. The door across the hall opened, there was the murmur of the maid’s voice, a loud crash, the most horrible scream Ransome had ever heard, pounding footsteps rushing down the hall, a more distant scream, silence. Ransome bounced out of bed. “What the hell—”

  “Just the maid,” said Fluffy, washing between his toes, but keeping the corners of his eyes on Ransome. “She just found Mrs. Benedetto.”

  “Found—”

  “Yes. I tore her throat out.”

  “Good—God! Why?”

  Fluffy poised himself on the windowsill. “So you’d be blamed for it,” he said, and laughing nastily, he leaped out and disappeared in the gray morning.

  Alter Ego

  ONCE UPON A TIME, when the world was younger than it will be, and a little more foolish, there appeared a Leader. He was, in his prime, the unquestioned master of his land, and the force of his mind and of the thousands of fools who served him stilled all murmurs of reprisal. He gained his power by suasion and held it by bloodshed, and he throttled his people and by doing so deified them. That they must believe; for that was the only justification they had, poor things, to tell themselves …

  Now the Leader appeared before his people one day, to frighten and praise them, and a missile came from the crowd and killed one of his ministers. This happening frightened the Leader, and he began to think how terrible it would be for him to be killed. He was a great power in the world, this Leader, and the masses he controlled were also a great power. But the power of those masses sprang from him, and he knew that if he were dead, then the masses would not be as they were. Some other leader would come forward and destroy his work, and worse, his name and fame and memory. He gave deep thought to this matter, and decided that he must have a servant that resembled him in every way, so that at no time would anyone know whether it was the Leader that faced the people, or his substitute. It was a pleasing plan, and he instituted a great and secret search through the land for such a servant.

  It was hard. The details of that vast and quiet search are one of the most monumental stories ever to write its dark lines on the pages of history. But in months the thing was done, and the man was presented to the Leader.

  He was perfect. Nearly every line of his face, every tone of his voice, every gesture, was that of his Leader. He knew the Leader’s ways, too, and the Leader’s thought. The Leader himself taught him what details he lacked, in many secret conferences held in the Leader’s rooms in the dead of night, with but one trusted sentry guarding the double doors.

  There came a time when the Leader fell deathly sick from a malignance in his throat. He sent an urgent, secret message to the royal physician of a rival country’s King, and the physician refused to come. For had the Leader died under the knife, the physician never would have left those rooms alive.

  But the Leader did not die. One was found to cure him, an old wise man whose only thought was for gain, and it was done, and forgotten. He did not die, but while he was sick, something worse than death happened to the Leader. It was his man, his perfect prototype.

  He was too perfect.

  While the Leader lay abed, his great organization had gone on its way unchecked, unhampered by his illness. His man had stepped in to fill his place, and had done it so perfectly that no one knew—no one ever knew. There had been four momentous decisions then, too, and the man had handled them well, even as he would have. Too perfectly.

  The Leader began to look askance at this man. Suppose he, the Leader, were to be killed now, tomorrow, quietly? He would be a nameless corpse, and thereafter the memories of man would record doings that were not his, but those of another. The Leader was a god. His people spoke of him as a god—because they must; yet they spoke of him so, and such speech was necessary to him, as worship is necessary to the perpetuation of any god …

  And so it came about that a god knew the meaning of fear. Fear was hate, and hate was anger. The man must be killed.

  The killing happened sooner than the Leader had expected. It was on a night shortly after the Leader had bloodlessly invaded a part of a neighboring land. He was, with his men’s help, drawing up a promise to the world that he would take no more from that or any other neighbor.

  And his man had the impertinence to disagree! It was the first time, and the Leader was frightened and filled with hate and anger towards him. The man said that there should be more such invasions, and more, and more, until the Leader’s country not only had what territories she had lost to other lands in her stormy past, but had yet more and more, until she dominated a continent and then a world. The man gave reasons, too, and they were good. But in his stubborn anger, the Leader pretended to scoff, and the man caught the shifty glint of his eyes as he pawed a side-arm from his belt. The man, since he was dressed exactly like the Leader, also had a side-arm, and both weapons came up together. One man was a little faster.

  The sentry outside heard a sound that meant death, and he flung open the double doors. He saw two men, identical in build, in garb, in hate-filled countenance. As he watched, one of the men slumped dead to the floor. The other shrugged, put away his weapon, and gave orders that the dead man was to be removed and disposed of, most secretly.

  There followed a reign of terror and triumph, as the forces of the Leader swept south and east, taking country after country, land after land of their ancient possessions. Every nation was defied, every nation was cowed, and the land of the Leader stood in its prime, unconquerable, threatening.

  Then there was the great fall. The trusted sentry betrayed his trust one day, and whispered a suspicion. His words became a murmur, a shout, and then a battle cry. The Leader is dead! The Leader is dead!

  The man who called himself, then, the Leader, answered bloodily, and killed many of those that dared to use that battle cry. But for every one he killed, there were ten, a thousand, a million there to take it up. The government was overthrown, and starving people rejoiced, and nations that strained to attack drew back and watched the death of a régime.

  And the man who had been the Leader? His was the most agonizing death, for they did not kill him. They laughed at his furio
us impotence, and they turned him loose in the streets, quietly, so that he would not be known and so would live to suffer.

  Torture. The humiliation that man bore, walking the streets, hearing his name tossed about lightly, is beyond description. He had no friends, for he knew how to provoke no human emotion but fear and its child, hate.

  He nearly starved, and then one day found a man who wanted gain, who saw in him a means for gain. It was the old wise man who had cured the Leader of his illness. The starving beggar found this man, and gave him certain proofs, and the address of the cellar where he skulked. The physician passed quietly about, here and there, in the right places, and said what was necessary. It took a very long time, and all the while, the beggar lay in his cellar. He began to think he had been forgotten, and the infrequent gibes that echoed down to him from the street began to drive him quite, quite mad.

  At long last the day came when all was in readiness. The signal was given, and the country awoke one morning to find itself in the merciless grip of the old régime. The Leader lived! Found by his old physician, who knew him by the scars of his own knife, he lived beyond possibility of doubt. The Leader’s men were in command, and the Leader was coming back!

  They went to get him, their beggar-Leader, in his noisome cellar.

  They were too late. Fearing him as they served him, they had never told him what they did, and so he had known himself neglected and forgotten—he, a god, a Leader! It was the final humiliation, and he had taken his own life. And so his government died a second death, even as he had—and they were both dead for evermore.

  Mailed Through a Porthole

  Mr. David Jones, Esq.

  Forty Fathoms

  Sept. 21, 1938

  Dear Sir,

  Just a little note to let you know what I think of you.

  You’re kicking up your heels a little, my friend. Since when were you a big shot? I’ve been going to sea for quite a while, you piker, and I’ve never had a sample of that far-famed strength of yours. A broken propeller once; but I have a hunch it had been brazed to save expense. Once a started seam; but that was in a thirty-year-old hulk that was headed for the boneyard anyway. Once you caught up with me when my ship was unballasted, threw a squall at her and rolled her over on her beam-ends, tossing me into the ice machines. Lucky punch. Otherwise you’ve muttered and mumbled by way of bragging.

  And now it’s a hurricane warning. Am I excited? Not on your life. You can’t even get me seasick. Do your worst, half-pint. Maybe you have sunk a fisherman or two, but you’ll never crack a new seven thousand ton tanker like this. Go ahead. Try it.

  Listen to that Miami station, Jones. “The hurricane is now four hundred miles east-southeast of Miami, moving west-northwest at a speed of twenty to twenty-five miles per hour. Winds of hurricane velocity near storm center, approximately seventy-five miles in diameter. Small craft are urged to make port immediately. Residents of Miami and coastal environs, check on everything movable. The Board of Health suggests you sterilize your bathtubs and fill them with drinking water, as reservoirs may take sea water. Please take down all loose boarding. If you live in a wooden house, go at once to the nearest school, where accommodations are being made. If you have any sick or very old, have them removed to the hospital. When the wind rises, see that everyone is accounted for and is indoors. Be sure to leave one door open on the side away from the wind …” Make you feel good, Jones? Well, that’s good enough for landlubbers. But you don’t frighten me. Groundswell’s a little heavier …

  You’re getting a kick out of the crew, aren’t you? That Oklahoma bosun, for instance. He’s sitting on the bitts by the galley. He’s in a cold sweat. I’m wise to you, Davy; the kid on the 4 to 8 is wise; and the skipper is wise; but that bosun is fretting like an old maid with the shingles. Just because he had the roof blown away from over his head in the ’34 blow. We are passing plenty of ships; it’s the first time I’ve ever seen loaded tankers headed south. Every time one goes by the bosun starts moaning again, “Why doethn’t the thkipper turn around? Don’t he know there’th a hurricane coming?” and the kid and I sit and laugh at him. It’s the kid’s first trip; he’s out to see the sights. Kick up a show for him, Jones. You don’t want him to go back home and tell the truth about you, do you? Look at him. He’s got his sea-legs now; he’ll be a seaman before he gets his A.B. ticket. Look at him bracing easily against the roll of the ship, with the wind tearing at his hair. Seventeen years old, Davy, and you’re as old as the earth, but that kid has you whipped.

  Sept. 22, 1938

  Well, small stuff, you’ve succeeded in getting in people’s hair. Landlubber stuff again. Special broadcasts all night; all the crew off-watch spent the night in the messroom listening to them. “… after the wind subsides special squads of police and deputies will cover the streets. If you need assistance wait at your home until one of the squads passes.” Panic seed. You’ve got the bosun so worried that he knocks a man off when we are working on deck, to go back and get the hourly reports. We’re carrying thirty-foot seas now, but we’ve got you fooled. I told you the skipper was wise to you. By the time the blow hits the coast we’ll be a hundred miles north of it.

  I can’t figure O’Rourke. He was going to sea before my parents were born. He’s been through three hurricanes on the coast here, and everything else, running foreign, from a typhoon to a williwaw. Yet when the kid said, “I hope it hits us. Then we’ll see some fun!” O’Rourke clipped him. “Wait till ye know what ye’re talking about,” he growled, “before ye open yer young yap again.” The kid stood there rubbing his cheek, pain and shock in his eyes. Then he turned and ran below. I can’t figure it. O’Rourke knows what it’s all about; if you could kill a big-ship sailor, which I doubt, as long as the ship is in good condition, O’Rourke’s typhoons would have got him long ago. And he’s alive, isn’t he? So why should he clip the kid just because the kid has figured out in one trip what it took O’Rourke forty years to learn; that no hurricane is as strong as clean steel?

  Sails Carmody is another one. He’s a Boston Irishman, the kid’s watchmate on the 4 to 8. Sails is at the radio for every report, but he never says anything. Each time he hears of another fifty miles less between us and the storm center he frowns more deeply. Yet I saw Sails take on two big Swedes at Evelyn Hardtime’s and whip them both. I saw Sails run up the mast in oilskins in a heavy swell, to clear the signal halliard. He has no nerves. And yet this business has him worried. How can you buffalo a man like that, Jones?

  So you decided to take me up on it, did you? That Miami station: “The storm center is reported 180 miles due east of Miami, moving approximately north-northwest. It will therefore not reach the Florida coast.” Shifted north, hey? And will we meet? Let me figure this. If we hold course and speed, my ship and your little hurricane, we should meet a little to the north of Charleston, about 45 miles offshore. Hurry it up, old-timer, or we’ll be there before you and safely north by the time you reach the spot.

  Got to give you credit. You are putting on a show for the kid. When he’s on watch at night he doesn’t even go back aft for a smoke when Sails relieves him; just goes to the other wing of the bridge and leans there staring forward. They put the lookout on the bridge two nights ago; you’re wetting down the foc’sle head nicely. The ship knows her way. She’ll bury her nose and take two seas, spouting them up through the hawse-holes, tumbling the chains in the lockers under the windlass; then she’ll shudder like a wrestler bunching his muscles, shoulder a streaming mantle of sea and spume back on to the foredeck, cut masses of water to ribbons with her bulwarks, and show her decks again. The engines are half-speed; you’ve got us there, old boy. The mill can take only so much; but the hull and those firm clean bulkheads are too much for you. That and the weight of 78,000 barrels of kerosene and furnace oil, and the tons of drums and crates in the fore and after holds.

  Sept. 23, 1938

  Davy Jones, I acknowledge your strength. It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
in the magazine stories. It couldn’t be. But I have found out since early this morning when we hit the first seventy-five mile squall, that wind and sea can be strong enough to tear great strips of paint off the deck; that they can crumple sheet-steel steamguards like cardboard; that they can tear up the welded bases of the kingposts we use for raising tank tops, hurling them over the side. But the ship is tight and bone-dry inside, since we battened down the after hold, dogged the watertight doors, covered the ventilators. And I can still work my away around the poop if I hold to the rail. I can still get up on deck and tell you to your fish face that in me, and in the ship I ride, you have met your match.

  You are a murderer.

  The third squall passed and we labored like a panting ox reaching the crest of a long hill with his load. The kid and I opened a watertight door on the lee side and slipped out on deck, dogging it behind us. We worked our way to the rail at the break of the poop, stood watching her take every sea. She’d plunge, hiding her bulk. To port and starboard was ocean. At our feet was ocean. Seventy yards away the midship house was an island. Then more ocean. Then the foc’sle head. Behind us the after house was an island. Then she’d heave herself out again, and be a ship again instead of three islands.

  Patchy clouds hurtled overhead like stones thrown. One was low, five miles away, broad on the port bow. The moaning in the stays rose an octave, then another as the fourth gale struck. The black cloud paused, whirling, looming up, then charged us, shouting. I yelled at the kid, “Look out! Come back!” but he never heard me. He stood there riding the deck as if he were a part of it. I vaulted the after cargo manifold, raced over the after hatch, and threw myself down behind the coaming, twisting my fingers around the batten. The rest happened in about three seconds, but it seemed to last forever … the squall swept down and brought twilight with it, and blinding rain; swept past and took the ocean away from under the ship … must have, for she dropped like a stone when the light left her. I saw that sea from where I lay, flat on my belly behind the hatch; saw its crest curling over the top of the foremast. And I saw the kid standing upright, both hands steadying him against the lashing wind, his face upturned to meet that wall of grey-green water. And I felt the ship jar as the midship house took the brunt of it, before I was covered by a great weight of strangling brine. Ages later it passed, and I breathed again, but the kid was gone. There was a white clot on the drum of the winch.