The 18th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Jerome Bixby

by Jerome Bixby

  Thorens still glared at the woman, head down, eyes up. “Paroles?” he asked, not caring.

  “In one case,” Burman nodded. “For him.” He pointed to Potts. “The other one’s going back so the shrinkers can have another look. Him.” He pointed to Turk.

  It took a moment to sink in—a process of appalled disbelief to furious rejection of fact to bitter acceptance that shriveled to numbness. Music blared from the trivision as the song ended. Applause, more laughter. Thorens’ face sagged off the front of his skull—his voice seemed wrenched out of him—“Those two?”

  Burman stared at Thorens, not realizing (hate) what he had done. The trivision started (hate) a new wham ’n bam song hit, and the two singers (hate) began to fake their blows at each other.

  It canceled John Thorens’ mind, shuddered down through his body to explode at his extremities. It was stronger than any other emotion he had ever known. He contracted in his chair, elbows and knees doubling. Half-huddled thus, he trembled violently. Hate Turk, hate Potts, bite lips, taste blood, fight, hate, hate—

  Those two. Flying up out of Hell to the distant blue-green world that was Heaven. No—no!

  Mike Burman searched the distorted features of the little, sandy-bearded man who sat opposite him. He talked, feeling uncomfortably that there seemed little else to do: “Potts—lack of conclusive evidence of premeditation. Changed to second degree, sentence commuted to what he’s already served. And Turk—recalled for psychiatric—”

  He said a few more words, hesitantly, barely audible under the general din, while he studied Thorens’ face.

  Thorens seemed to catch fire. He thrust up out of his chair, overturning it. “Damnyou!” he gasped. “No... Not them... Get me a transfer... Get me a parole.. .me.. .me—me—” His eyes bulged. He leaned far over the table, his breath causing strands of Burman’s hair to move, and shrieked at the top of his lungs: “Take me to Earth— not them!”

  An interested silence fell over the bar, save for the trivision’s wham ’n bam. Hands of Limbos went to knives, anticipating action. The Patrolmen instantly, but casually, grouped to leave, as protocol required.

  But this was an unusual situation. Little Thorens, the Hand, was blowing his stack at the Patrol loot. Expressions became uncertain.

  Mike Burman was rearing back in dismay, as if Thorens’ cry had boosted him under the chin. “What? What? Why, I don’t—Thorens, I really—”

  Thorens swayed there, shoulders forward, hands working. His half-closed, watering eyes caught a flicker of movement outside the window—and even in his extreme agony he could chill at a strange sight.

  Two giants.

  Then details registered and became not strange. He heard, from far away, someone at the door say, “Somebody bringing a spacesuit in here.”

  * * * *

  Eyes, turning from the tableau at the table to the door, saw a gigantic spacesuit float from the darkness. Gleaming, shining, towering, it resembled a deep-sea diving suit with its great windowed helmet, its claw gloves, its massive body three feet across, seven and one half feet high. A big man carried the suit, his right arm about its waist, his left arm grasping its left arm.

  In this manner, holding it erect like a dancing-partner or more like someone getting a gentle bum’s-rush, he walked the suit across the fog-shrouded concrete roadway, up onto the curb toward Potts’ Bar. With one hand he opened the door. With the other he easily jumped the suit across the sill. The suit would have weighed at least three hundred pounds on Earth.

  The voice said, “Fixin’ job, Turk.”

  Turk nodded, his small admiring eyes fastened on the huge figures in the door.

  Handsome, golden-haired, the newcomer—six feet nine inches tall and grinning. He stood there, balancing his specially built suit with its sprung demand-valve.

  “Where fat man?” he rumbled.

  Thorens was stumbling toward the door. Mike Burman looked after him, eyes bright with bewilderment, pique, vague sympathy. Then, whistling tunelessly between his teeth, he started back for his fellows at the end of the bar. He called to 1st Engineer’s Mate “Goldy” Svenson to join them as soon as he got rid of the suit.

  Thorens scooped a bottle off the bar, evading its owner’s indignant grab, and in perfect silence threw it at the head of the Damesville woman with all his might. It smashed against the wall by her head—or rather where her head had been, for she was on her feet, screaming and pulling her steel. Glass from the bottle still skittered and tinkled as she drew back full-arm for the throw that would skewer Thorens. A roar and a whoop had gone up from the bar. Men doorwise from the woman scattered from the line of fire. Men behind her watched, heads turned and wary.

  Mike Burman shouted an order in single-syllable Patrol Code. Three Patrolmen sprang to positions between Thorens and the woman. They didn’t draw their guns—they didn’t have to. The woman’s throw was already started. She couldn’t hold it back; so she clung to the blade in a balk-throw and sank its point two inches into the floor at her feet. Instantly she snatched her second knife from sheath, on guard against the Limbo men. Glaring around, she cursed the grinning Patrolmen.

  “Where fat man?” rumbled “Goldy” Svenson again. He had not moved.

  Turk said, “Right here, cop.” As he began to wheeze, preparatory to getting up, his eyes clamped on the giants at the door, a third figure, small and furtive, dodged around them into the night.

  Watching Thorens go, Mike Burman thought: “I almost wish I’d told him....”

  * * * *

  Across the roadway from Potts’ Bar was a steep, rocky slope that led down to darkened fields some thirty feet below, and the flat gray expanse of the Spaceport beyond. A barbed-wire fence ran along the edge of the road, to discourage drunken Limbos from brawling through the fields and trampling the crops. Thorens bent down the top strand, tearing his forefinger to the bone.

  He stepped over. He took two blind steps, put a foot over the incline to encounter nothingness and spilled, rolled, flopped to the bottom. He lay on his back in the rain-ditch, face barely out of the filthy water, and cried.

  The seconds and minutes of his grief wore on. An occasional star winked down through the chill, slow-moving fog.

  Thorens squinted up at each and sobbed the louder, wishing that mysterious forces could mesh to make him a vanished man, could transport him to each speck’s vast flaming surface, push or pull him into the nuclear inferno of its interior, plunge him into the sweet methane or ammonia or formaldehyde of the atmosphere of its planets, if it had planets, or send him hurtling onto the bitter, airless surface of any of its planets’ satellites—or rush him away to a point midway between the two suns that were Mira (which he recognized), there to hang suspended as a mote that once had lived but now took its motion, its vectors, its orbit, its course through Infinity and Eternity, as the product of forces that were not consciously cruel.

  Footsteps above. Thorens choked a sob into utter silence. His hands, under water, clenched at mud. His legs tightened in terror, and developed a cramp.

  “Hear it?” a voice said, from the road.

  “Yeah.”

  “See anything?”

  “Too dark. Sounded like crying.”

  “Let’s look.”

  Thorens heard the wire creak as it was stretched down, and, clearly, the whisper of a long knife from sheath. He gulped in air and sank his face under the water—it murmured in his eardrums, transmitting his own tiny movements.

  When his lungs could stand it no longer, he bobbed his head up and gasped through his burning throat, “Kill me! Why am I hiding? Please, oh, my God, please, kill me!”

  He lay with wide eyes staring up; he saw Mira appear, then disappear again into the fog. He saw the suns, the worlds, the moons, the vacuums and infernos that filled the reaches of space, but could not notice him nor help him to die. He waited, with a mixture of mud and gastric juices in his mouth, for the fist, the boot, the knife.

  The fog around him was empty
. Footsteps faded far down the road. They had not been curious enough to come down—or perhaps they had thought it was a muggers’ trap.

  If the latter, Thorens thought frantically, they might be going to get some friends together, so they could come back and fight. His arms and legs grasped, pumped, scrambled, flailed.

  He crawled up the slope. He did not want to die.

  * * * *

  Turk’s Repair Shop was located in a shack behind Potts’ Bar. In it were a tool bench, some metal-working machinery and a cot on which Turk slept when he was too tired or too drunk to make his way home.

  Even though the Patrol naturally maintained its own repair facilities for spacesuits and all other equipment, Turk was an expert and dependable. And he would work at night, when the Patrol machine-shops were closed. Also, when Patrolmen patronized Turk, they received a bonus in addition to good workmanship, i.e., tips on what bars were or were not watering their liquor that week, and where the cleanest girls were to be found, and at what gambling-dive the tables were running against the house. So Turk prospered. And no Limbo objected. What Turk did was, in the long run, good public relations.

  Now, in the light of overhead ’tomics, Turk labored to repair “Goldy” Svenson’s spacesuit—but he was thinking about John Thorens.

  What a funny little jerk the Hand was! Sure, he got clobbered, day after day. But he asked for it! The crummy little milksop asked for it. He never talked to you straight from the shoulder. He hid in the back of his skull and played angles. He looked at you with rubbery little face, and you knew he expected you to murder him, so you got mad and did it. All he cared about was out. He ran around Limbo like a turpentined pup, squawking to life-termers about out. It was a drag. He’d make it off Limbo sooner or later, and good riddance. Right now, he was just exactly where everybody else was, except for one thing—he looked at you that way and you had to cream him.

  Then Turk started thinking about “Goldy” Svenson, all six feet nine inches of him, and that was Turk’s mistake.

  He undid eight screws and lifted a curved plate away from the back of the suit...

  * * * *

  Thorens turned the last corner. His office was burning.

  “We read your book,” a voice said from the shadows. “It started a good fire.”

  That’s Joe Moore’s voice, Thorens thought. Joe. Joe. I bought you a drink on your second night on Limbo, and you said you were sorry for me. You said you were innocent of any crime. You hated the place as I do. What made you run with the pack?

  “When you start yelling at the law,” another voice said, “that’s bad. Creates a scene. Draws attention. You need a lesson.”

  “But we won’t kill you, you little bastard,” another voice said. “You’re too much fun to have around.”

  Thorens screamed, and for the second time since his arrival on Limbo dared to run. This time, he thought agonizedly, he must get away.

  But that was before a belt-buckle, aimed low, lashed out of the darkness ahead of him.

  * * * *

  They gathered around in Turk’s Repair Shop and looked down at the large, sprawled, melted-looking, half-boiled, red and gray thing with staring, milky eyes that had been Turk.

  Here and there white showed, where flesh had sagged in blobs away from bone. The cracked skin glistened with oil, cooked up out of Turk’s enormous supply of fat.

  “Christ!” said one. “Did you hear him scream!”

  The spacesuit stood where it had killed Turk. But now it was harmless. Potts’ frantic call to the Spaceport had brought a Radiation Squad on the double. (Wild radiation was one of the very few things on Limbo that the Patrol would tend to, mainly to insure the safety of their own men stationed there.) An officer in protective clothing had gone into Turk’s shack and closed the small plate that covered the spacesuit’s atomic-power-pack. The radiation, though it had killed Turk quickly and then cooked him through prolonged exposure, counted its half-life in mere minutes; so now the room was safe to enter.

  The officer was removing the radiation suit. His companion said casually, “You know how it happened, anybody?”

  Heads shook no. One man snickered and the officer looked at him: “What’s funny?”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Do you know what happened?” (Ordinarily, the officers wouldn’t have given a damn what happened; but since Patrol equipment was involved, they had to shape up a report.)

  The man shrugged. “Those plates are close together.. .the one on the power, and the one to the oxy-system. I guess he got careless.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “I owed him eighty bucks on blackjack,” the man smirked. “He was gravving me for it. I was going to kill him myself, and he saves me the trouble!”

  The officers looked around, mouths curled in wry distaste. The Limbos grinned back, disliking them, wishing they could kill them— but no one could be safer anywhere than a Patrolman on Limbo.

  Without another word the Patrolmen left. Over the motor-noise of their bug fading down the street, Potts cursed as he looked at the mess on the floor: “How do I clean this up?”

  “Bring in stray dogs,” one man said.

  Potts nodded appreciatively. “That’s sharp.” He kicked the mess in the ribs and went over to the spacesuit. “Somebody help me get this damn thing outa the way!”

  Two men joined him, and they inched the heavy bulger toward a wall.

  Lieutenant Mike Burman was among the watchers, with some of his buddies. He stared down at the mess, thinking, He never even knew he was going back.

  Potts wrestled with the spacesuit. Another step, and his foot slipped on the wrench that Turk had dropped in dying, and he lurched sideways. He made the error of hanging onto the suit, trying to right himself, and his added weight overbalanced it and took it out of the hands of the other two helping him. For a second they made an effort to hold it back, but the mass was great and slippery, and so they let go, with the suggestion of shrugs.

  In mid-air, falling, Potts began to scream.

  The suit followed him down in the same arc, not very quickly, it seemed, stiffly, like an inexperienced lover bending to the loved. The heavy angle of a shoulder-plate shoved into Potts’ mouth as the back of his head hit the floor, and his scream cut off with a crackling of bone.

  They watched his hands twitch until finally every part of him was dead. The big young Patrolman who had looked at the woman was in a corner, holding his stomach with folded arms and swallowing excess saliva. Mike Burman was standing in front of him, thoughtful-eyed, as if not wanting the Limbos to see that Patrolmen had nerves.

  He had another reason for being thoughtful. Tonight Mike Bur-man was very near to believing in Fate.

  The Limbos looked at the spacesuit. One whistled.

  * * * *

  Thorens takes a step, and somewhere in the cauldron of pain, humiliation, and fear that is melting down his mind and nervous system to basic animal responses, float fragmentary memories of this last half-hour he has endured....

  Another step.

  Let him go. A shape moves aside. He’s had it.

  One more.

  A blow—somewhere in his back.

  Lay off the kidneys. We don’t want to kill him.

  Please kill me.

  Poker game at Charlie ’s...how about it?

  Thought you were looking for Cat Redfield, to slice him.

  Ah...I don’t feel like it. Come on—let’s go.

  A nudge in Thorens’ back, and he falls down. Drooling blood he gets up, takes a step.

  Voices fade.

  Another step....

  Walk through darkness, walk through pain, walk through fog past shadows that are things half-known, down winding, wet-gleaming streets, past lighted doors and windows, past jags and whirls and bursts of rainbow neon, under humming power lines, past toy factories whose tall smokestacks flicker at the tops with red-shot smoke (and through the walls a Teddy-bear grins; a shiny fire-engine blinks its headl
ight eyes and sirens a hello; an electric monorail whirs on its figure-8 to nowhere; a sleek rocketship charts a course for a far-off, better world; a hundred, harmless, joyous games play noisily all by themselves; a Chem-Craft Set percolates a panacea, while an Erector Set places the last shining girder in its bridge to Elsewhere; a Limbo night-watchman sprawls, bottle in hand, surrounded by the Answer apparent to any boy—and through the walls a wistful touch, a loving recollection)—and now along a fence, over dirt, across sand, past stunted plants that never have seen day, past looming dark hills and silent mineral diggings with gaunt machinery like poised skeletons, past a silver Spaceport that is a door to Heaven that has no key, past men who stare and squint through foggy darkness and nudge each other and laugh, past sight and sound of men talking, laughing, breathing, and their hearts pumping blood that rushes noisily through tiny tubes surrounded by muscles that whisper against one another as they gather to give pain.. .walk past life, or around it, or over it, or any way but through it, to some other place.

  Walk crying, walk bleeding, walk hurting, through and then beyond the veil of thoughts that govern thought to keep the Universe real.

  * * * *

  An alley. Muddy water cool around ankles. An alley, somewhere off behind the world, containing its refuse, its secrets, its littered history. An alley, closer to the past than a street.. .on the dark other side of Now. A building gray-crouched in the fog—a dirt-encrusted back window—a searching...

  Her.

  Thorens stopped, swayed, stared.

  Her.

  Giant shape waiting against the wall inside, outlined in reflected flickerings from the Spaceport across the way as a ship prepared to take devils to Heaven; and now it could go, and nobody cared, for an Angel had walked with love across the stars, and the Universe had heard, and now a giant shape, strong, exuding warmth, concern, a solidity—

  Thorens’ mind squirted out through the sutures of his skull.

  Smash of window-glass—cut hands— Has darling hurt himself? Let’s see!—Toward the huge, longed-for shape, and that smile like the birth of a Sun: Did you think Mummy was lost?