Tales From the Spaceport Bar

by George H. Scithers

  The dart landed in the fireplace fifteen feet to the left with a noise like change rattling in a pocket.

  "It curved,” the Doc yelped, and some of the crowd guffawed. But from where I stood I could see that there were four men between Doc Webster and the fireplace, and I could also see the beginnings of an unpleasant smile on Fogerty’s thick features.

  None of the Doc’s remaining shots came close to the target, and he left the firing line like a disconsolate blimp, shaking his head and looking at his hand. Fogerty took his place and, without removing that absurd hat, selected a dart.

  Watching his throw I thought for a second the match might turn out a draw. His windup was pitiful, his stance ungainly, and he held the dart too near the feathers, his other arm stiff at his side. He threw like a girl, and his follow-through was nonexistent.

  The dart landed right between the eyes with a meaty thunk.

  "Winner and new champeen, Dink Fogerty,” Fast Eddie hollered over the roar of the crowd, and Fogerty took a long, triumphant drink from the glass he’d set down on a nearby table. Fast Eddie informed him that he’d just won thirty-five bottles of Scotch, and the new champ smiled, turned to face us.

  "Any takers?” he rasped. The ’54 Chevy had gotten a valve job.

  "Sure,” said Noah Gonzalez, next on the list. "Be damned if you’ll take us for three dozen bottles with one throw.” Fogerty nodded agreeably, retrieved his dart from the target, and toed the mark again. And with the same awkward, off-balance throw as before, he proceeded to place all six darts in the fifty circle.

  By the last one the silence in the room was complete, and Noah’s strangled "I concede,” was plainly audible. Fogerty just looked smug and took another big gulp of his drink, set it down on the same table.

  "Ten dollars says you can’t do that again,” the Doc exploded, and Fogerty smiled. Fast Eddie went to fetch him the darts, but as he reached the target...

  "Hold it!" Callahan bellowed, and the room froze. Fogerty turned slowly and stared at the big redheaded barkeep, an innocent look on his pudding face. Callahan glared at him, brows like thunderclouds.

  "Whassamatter, chief?” Fogerty asked.

  "Damned if I know,” Callahan rumbled, 'hut I’ve seen you take at least a dozen long swallows from that drink you got, and it’s still full."

  Every eye in the place went to Fogerty’s glass, and sure enough. Not only was it full, all the glasses near it were emptier than their owners remembered leaving them, and an angry buzzing began.

  "Wait a minute,” Fogerty protested. "My hands’ve been in plain sight every minute—all of you saw me. You can’t pin nothin’ on me.”

  "I guess you didn’t use your hands, then,” Callahan said darkly, and a great light seemed to dawn on Doc Webster’s face.

  "By God,” he roared, "a telekinetic! Why you low-down, no-good...”

  Fogerty made a break for the door, but Fast Eddie demonstrated the veracity of his name with a snappy flying tackle that cut Fogerty down before he covered five yards. He landed with a crash before Long-Drink McGonnigle, who promptly sat on him. 'Tele-what?” inquired Long-Drink conversationally.

  "Telekinesis,” the Doc explained. "Mind over matter. I knew a telekinetic in the Army who could roll sevens as long as you cared to watch. It’s a rare talent, but it exists. And this bird’s got it. Haven’t you, Fogerty?”

  Fogerty blustered for a while, but finally he broke down and admitted it. A lot of jaws dropped, some bouncing off the floor, and Long-Drink let the guy with the hat back up, backing away from him. The hat still clung gaudily to his skull like a homosexual barnacle.

  "You mean you directed dem darts wit’ yer mind?” Fast Eddie expostulated.

  "Nah. Not ezzackly. I...I make the dart board want darts.”

  "Huh?”

  "I can’t make the darts move. What I do, I project a... a state of wanting darts onto the center of the target, like some kinda magnet, an’ the target attracts ’em for me. I only learned how ta do it about a year ago. The hard part is to hang on to all but one dart.”

  "Thought so,” growled Callahan from behind the bar. "You make your glass want Gin, too—don’t ya?”

  Fogerty nodded. "I make a pretty good buck as a fisherman—my nets want fish.”

  It seemed to me that, given his talent, Fogerty was making pretty unimaginative use of it. Imagine a cancer wanting X-rays. Then again, imagine a pocket that wants diamonds. I decided it was just as well that his ambitions were modest.

  "Wait a minute,” said the Doc, puzzled. "This 'state of wanting darts’ you project. What’s it like?”

  And Fogerty, an unimaginative man, pondered that question for the first time in his life, and the inevitable happened.

  There’s an old story about the centipede who was asked how he could coordinate so many legs at once, and, considering the mechanics of something that had always been automatic, became so confused that he never managed to walk again. In just this manner, Fogerty focused his attention on the gift that had always been second nature to him, created that zone of yearning for the first time in his head where he could observe it, and...

  The whole half-dozen darts ripped free of the target, crossed the room like so many Sidewinder missiles, and smashed into Fogerty’s forehead.

  If he hadn’t been wearing that dumb hat, they might have pulped his skull. Instead they drove him backward, depositing him on his ample fundament, where he blinked up at us blinking down at him. There was a stunned silence (literally so on his part) and then a great wave of laughter that grew and swelled and rang, blowing the cobwebs from the rafters. We laughed till we cried, till our lungs ached and our stomachs hurt, and Fogerty sat under the avalanche of mirth and turned red and finally began to giggle himself.

  And like the centipede, like the rajah whose flying carpet would only function if he did not think of the word "elephant,” Fogerty from that day forth never managed to bring himself to use his bizarre talent again.

  Imagine getting a netful of mackerel in the eye!

  Spider Robinson, who lives in Nova Scotia between trips to Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, has been writing good, serious (and some not so serious) SF since 1973. In 1974 he shared the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with Lisa Tuttle. His collaboration with Jeanne Robinson, Stardance, won the Hugo Award in 1978.

  About "The Centipede’s Dilemma” Mr. Robinson writes: "In 1959 a distant relation of mine, Raymond Robinson, was working on one of the last dance-hall gigs of his career. At 12:48 A.M. Ray found himself in a small pickle: He and his band and backup singers had played their entire book— and still had twelve minutes to 'fill.

  "So he began 'noodling,’ as he puts it in his autobiography: 'Just a little riff which floated up into my head. It felt good and I kept on going.’ The crowd received the result so warmly that he tried it the next few nights, improvising lyrics, until it 'froze into place.’ It was fun.

  "Later that year he cut it as a single, his twenty-second. It was a breakaway crossover hit, his biggest to date, and Ray—who came up when Sugar Ray was around, and so has always performed under his middle name, Charles—to this day briefly quotes it at the end of every concert.

  "It is called (his preferred spelling) 'What I Say.’

  "I’m not suggesting for a moment that The Centipede’s Dilemma is of that level of quality (it is not the Callahan’s story I’d have picked to anthologize, myself, but I was not consulted); I mention the anecdote about Brother Ray only because the story was created in exactly the same way.

  "Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, the first Callahan collection, was sold and about to be printed—and the editor called up and said that someone upstairs wanted the book to be longer; did I have any more Callahan stories lying around? No, I did not. Could I write a few at once? I didn’t have an idea in my head. Try, he said. (Baby, what I say?...)

  "Well, I thought, a lot of clever, witty, hip people have walked into that bar—isn’t it time we had a moron? How about a mo
ron with a secret weapon... that only a moron can use? Just a little riff that floated up in my head, as Brother Ray said. Noodling. It felt good and I kept going.

  "It was fun.

  "There are two additional volumes of Callahan’s Place stories, and there will never be a fourth; nonetheless the series is not, repeat not a trilogy. It merely happens to end with the volume that follows the after-the-first one, that's all. The other books are Time Travelers Strictly Cash and Callahan’s Secret, and they can be read in any sequence. Fair warning: They all contain puns. And this story does not, and now I understand why George and Darrell selected it!”

  THE CAUSES

  by Margaret St Clair

  Another San Francisco bar, this one with music of a kind...

  "God rot their stinking souls,” the man on the bar stool next to George said passionately. "God bury them in the lowest circle of the pit, under the flaying ashes. May their eyeballs drip blood and their bones bend under them. May they thirst and be given molten glass for liquid. May they eat their own flesh and sicken with it. May they—” He seemed to choke over his rage. After a moment he lifted his glass of Stout and buried his nose in it. "You Irish?” George asked with interest.

  "Irish? No.” The man with the Stout seemed surprised. "I’m from New; Zealand. Mother was Albanian. I’m a mountain climber. Why?”

  "Oh, I just wondered. What are you sore about?” The man with the moustache patted the newspaper in his pocket. "I’ve been reading about the H-bomb,” he said. "It makes me sick. I’m cursing the

  scientists. Do they want to kill us all? On both sides, I’m cursing them.”

  "Yes, but you have to be reasonable,” the man on the second bar stool beyond George argued, leaning toward the other two. "None of us like that bomb, but we have to have it. The world’s a bad place these days, and those Russians—they’re bad cookies. Dangerous.” Uneasily he shifted the trombone case he was holding on his lap.

  "Oh, sure, they’re dangerous.” The man with the Stout hesitated, sucking on his moustache. "But basically, the Russians have nothing to do with it,” he said. He cleared his throat. "I know what you’re going to say, but it’s not true. Our real trouble isn’t

  the Russians..... We’re in the mess we’re in because

  we’ve lost our gods.”

  "Hunh?” said the man on the second bar stool. "Oh, I get it. You mean we’ve become antireligious, materialistic, worldly. Ought to go back to the old-time religion. Is that what you meant?”

  "I did not,” the man with the Stout said irritably. "I meant what I said. The gods—our real gods—are gone. That’s why everything is so fouled up these days. There’s nobody to take care of us. No gods.”

  "No gods?” asked the man on the second bar stool.

  "No gods.”

  The interchange began to irk George. He finished his drink—Bourbon-and-Soda—and motioned to the bartender for another. When it came, he said to the man with the moustache, "Well, if we haven’t got any gods, what’s happened to them? Gone away?”

  "They’re in New Zealand,” the man with the moustache said.

  He must have sensed the withdrawal of his auditors, for he added hastily, "It’s all true dinkum. I’m not making it up. They’re living on Ruapehu in Wellington—it’s about nine thousand feet—now, instead of Olympus in Thrace.”

  George took a leisurely pull at his drink. He was feeling finely credulous. "Well, go on. How did they get there?” he asked.

  "It started when Aphrodite lost her girdle—”

  "Venus!” said the man on the second bar stool. He rolled his eyes. "This ought to be hot. How’d she lose it?”

  "Her motives were above reproach,” the man with the Stout said stiffly. "This isn’t a smutty story. Aphrodite lent the girdle to a married woman who was getting along badly with her husband for the most usual reason, and the girl was so pleased with the new state of things that she forgot to return it. The couple decided to take a long cruise as a sort of delayed honeymoon, and the woman packed the girdle in her trunk by mistake. When Aphrodite missed it—Olympian society goes all to pieces without the girdle; even the eagles on Father Zeus’s throne start fighting and tearing feathers—it was too late. The ship had gone so far she couldn’t pick up any emanation from it.”

  "When did all this happen?” George asked.

  "In 1913. You want to remember the date.

  "Well, as I was saying, she couldn’t pick up any emanation from the girdle. So finally they sent Hermes out to look for it—he’s the divine messenger, you know. And he didn’t come back.”

  "Why not?” the man on the second bar stool asked.

  "Because, when Hermes located the ship, it had put in at New Zealand. Now, New Zealand’s a beautiful country. Like Greece, I guess—I’ve never been there—but better wooded and more water. Hermes picked up the girdle. But he liked the place so much he decided to stay.

  'They got worried then, and they sent others of the Olympians out. Iris was first, and then the Muses and the Moirae. None of them came back to Olympus. Those left got more and more alarmed, and one big shot after another went out hunting the girdle. Finally by 1914 there wasn’t anybody left on Olympus except Ares. He said he didn’t much care for the girdle. Things looked interesting where he was. He guessed he’d stay.

  "So that’s the situation at present. All the gods except Ares, and once in a while Athena, are on Ruapehu. They’ve been there since 1914. The Maori are a handsome people anyhow, and you ought to see some of the children growing up in the villages around there. Young godlings, that’s what they are.

  "Athena doesn’t like it there as well as the others. She’s a maiden goddess, and I suppose there isn’t so much to attract her. She keeps going back to Europe and trying to help us. But somehow, everything she does, no matter how well she means it, always turns out to help that hulking big half brother of hers.”

  "Interesting symbolism,” George said approvingly. "All the gods we’ve got left are Ares, the brutal war god, and Athena, the divine patroness of science. Athena wants to help us, but whatever she does helps the war god. Neat. Very neat.”

  The man with the moustache ordered another bottle of Stout. When it came, he stared at George stonily. "It is not symbolism,” he said, measuring his words. "It’s the honest truth. I told you I was a mountain climber, didn’t I? I climbed Ruapehu last summer. I saw them there.”

  "What did they look like?” George asked lazily.

  "Well, I really only saw Hermes. He’s the messenger, you know, and it’s easier for people to look at him without being blinded. He’s a young man, very handsome, very jolly-looking. He looks like he’d play all kinds of tricks on you, but you wouldn’t mind it. They’d be good tricks. He—you could see him shining, even in the sun.”

  "What about the others?”

  The man with the Stout shook his head. "I don’t want to talk about it. You wouldn’t understand me. They’re too bright. They have to put on other shapes when they go among men.

  "But I think they miss us. I think they’re lonesome, really. The Maori are a fine people, very intelligent, but they’re not quite what the gods are used to. You know what I think?” The man with the moustache lowered his voice solemnly. ”1 think we ought to send an embassy to them. Send people with petitions and offerings. If we asked them right, asked them often enough, they’d be sorry for us. They’d come back.”

  There was a stirring four or five stools down, toward the middle of the bar. A sailor stood up and came toward the man with the moustache. "So you don’t like the government?” he said menacingly. There was a Beer bottle in his hand.

  "Government?” the man with the moustache answered. George noticed that he was slightly pop-eyed. "What’s that got to do with it? I’m trying to help.”

  "Haaaaaa! I heard you talking against it,” said the sailor. He swayed on his feet for a moment. Then he aimed a heavy blow with the Beer bottle at the center of the moustache.

  The man with the moust
ache ducked. He got off the bar stool, still doubled up. He drew back. He rammed the sailor hard in the pit of the stomach with his head.

  As the sailor collapsed, the man from New Zealand stepped neatly over him. He walked to the front of the bar and handed a bill to the bartender who was standing, amazed, near the cash register. He closed the door of the bar behind him.

  After a moment he opened it again and stuck his head back in. "God damn everybody!” he yelled.

  After the sailor had been revived by his friends and pushed back on a bar stool, the man with the trombone case, who had been on the far side of the Stout drinker, moved nearer to George.

  "Interesting story he told, wasn’t it?” he said cheerily. "Of course, there wasn’t anything to it.”

  "Oh, I don’t know,” George answered perversely. "There might have been.”

  "Oh, no,” the man with the trombone case said positively. He shook his head so vigorously that the folds of his pious, starchy, dewlapped face trembled. "Nothing like that.”

  "How can you be sure?”

  "Because...” He hesitated. "Because I know what the real reasons for our difficulties are.”

  "Well, what’s your explanation?”

  "I—I don’t know whether I ought to say this,” the starchy man said coyly. He put his head on one side and looked at George bright-eyed. Then, as if fearing George’s patience might be on the edge of exhaustion, he said, quite quickly, "It’s the last trump.”

  "Who’s the last trump?” the man on the bar stool around the corner from George asked, leaning forward to listen. George knew him by sight; his name was Atkinson.

  "Nobody,” the starchy man answered. "I meant that the last trump ought to have been blown ages ago. The world is long overdue for judgment.”

  "H. G. Wells story,” George murmured.

  "I beg your pardon?” said the starchy man. "Nothing.” George motioned to the bartender and ordered a round of drinks. Atkinson took Gin-and-Ginger-Ale, and the starchy man Kirschwasser.