Tales From the Spaceport Bar

by George H. Scithers

  "Why hasn’t the trump been blown?” Atkinson asked, with the air of one tolerating noisy children.

  "Because it’s lost,” the starchy man replied promptly. "When the time came to blow it, it wasn’t in heaven. This wicked, wicked world! Ages ago it should have been summoned to meet its master.” He drooped his eyelids.

  George felt his tongue aching with the repression of his wish to say, "Plagiarist!” Atkinson said, "Oh, fooey. How do you know the trump’s been lost?” "Because I have it here,” the starchy gentleman answered. "Right here.” He patted his trombone case.

  George and Atkinson exchanged a look. George said, "Let’s see it.”

  "I don’t think I’d better...”

  "Oh, go on!”

  "Well... No, I’d better not.”

  Atkinson leaned his elbows on the bar and rested his chin on his interlaced fingers. "I expect there’s nothing in the trombone case actually,” he said indifferently. "I expect it’s only a gambit of his.”

  The soft, wrinkled skin of the man who was drinking Kirschwasser flushed red around the eyes. He put the trombone case down on the bar in front of George with a thump, and snapped open the lid. Atkinson and George bent over it eagerly.

  The trombone case was lined with glossy white silk, like a coffin. Against the white fabric, gleaming with an incredible velvety luster, lay a trumpet of deepest midnight blue. It might have been black, but it wasn’t; it was the color of deep space where it lies softly, like a caress, for trillions of miles around some regal, blazing star. The bell of the trumpet was fluted and curved like the flower of a morning glory.

  Atkinson whistled. After a moment he paid the trumpet the ultimate tribute. "Gosh,” he said.

  The man with the trumpet said nothing, but his little mouth pursed in a small, tight, nasty smile.

  "Where’d you get it?” George queried.

  "I'm not saying.”

  "How do you know it’s the last trump?” Atkinson asked.

  The starchy man shrugged his shoulders. "What else could it be?” he asked.

  The door at the front of the bar opened and three men came in. George watched them absently as they walked the length of the bar counter and went into the rear. "But... you mean if this thing were blown, the world would come to an end? There’d be the last judgment?”

  "I imagine.”

  "I don’t believe it,” Atkinson said after a minute. "I just don’t believe it. It’s an extraordinary-looking trumpet, I admit, but it can’t be... that.”

  "Ohhhhh?”

  "Yes. If it’s what you say, why don’t you blow it?”

  The starchy man seemed disconcerted. He licked his lips. Then he said, in rather a hostile tone, "You mean you want me to blow? You mean you’re ready to meet your Maker—you and all the rest of the world—right now? Right this minute? With all your sins, with all your errors of commission and omission, unforgiven and unshriven on your head?”

  "Sure. That’s right. Why not? The longer the world goes on existing, the worse it’ll get. As to sins and all that, I’ll take my chances. They couldn’t be much worse than what”—Atkinson made a small gesture that seemed to enclose in itself the whole miserable, explosive terrestrial globe—"than what we have now.”

  Under his breath, George quoted, '"We doctors know a hopeless case—’”

  The starchy man turned to him. "Do you agree with him, young man?” he demanded.

  "Yep.”

  The man with the trombone turned bright red. He reached into the case and picked up the trombone. As he lifted it through the air, George noticed what a peculiarly eye-catching quality the celestial object had. Its color and gloss had the effect on the eye that a blare of horns has on the ear. Heads began to turn toward it. In no time at all, everyone in the bar was watching the starchy man.

  He seemed to pause a little, as if to make sure that he had the attention of his audience. Then he drew a deep, deep breath. He set the trumpet to his lips.

  From the rear of the bar there burst out a jangling, skirling, shrieking, droning uproar. It was an amazing noise; a noise, George thought, to freeze the blood and make the hair stand upright. There must have been ultrasonics in it. It sounded like a thousand pigs being slaughtered with electric carving knives.

  Everyone in the bar had jumped at the sudden clamor, but the effect on the starchy man was remarkable. He jumped convulsively, as if he had sat on a damp tarantula. His eyes moved wildly; George thought he had turned pale.

  He shouted, 'They’re after me!” He shouted it so loudly that it was perfectly audible even above the demoniac noise of the bagpipes. Then he grabbed up the trombone case, slammed the trombone in it, and ran out of the bar on his neat little patent-leather feet.

  The two bagpipers came out from the rear of the bar, still playing, and began to march toward the front. Apparently they had noticed nothing at all of the episode of the dark blue trumpet. The third man followed in the rear, beating on a small drum. From time to time he would put the drumsticks to his upper lip and seem to smell at them.

  "Remarkable, isn’t it?” Atkinson said to George over the racket. "Only bar I ever was in where they kept bagpipes in the rear to amuse the customers. The owner’s Scottish, you know.”

  The instrumentalists reached the front of the bar. They stood there a moment skirling. Then they executed an about-face and marched slowly to the rear. They stood there while they finished their number. It was long, with lots of tootling. At last they laid their instruments aside, advanced to the bar, and sat down on three bar stools near the center. They ordered Irish Whiskey.

  "Wonder where he got that trumpet,” Atkinson said thoughtfully, reverting to the man with the trombone case. "Stole it somewhere, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  "Too bad he didn’t get to blow it,” George answered. He ordered Atkinson and himself another drink.

  "Oh, that!” Atkinson laughed shortly. "Nothing would have happened. It was just a fancy horn. You surely don’t believe that wild yam he told us? Why, I know what the real reason for all our troubles is!”

  George sighed. He drew a design on the bar counter with his finger. "Another one,” he said.

  "Eh? What? Oh, you were talking to yourself. As I was saying, I know the real reason. Are you familiar with Tantrist magic and its principles?”

  "Un-hunh. No.”

  Atkinson frowned. "You almost sound as if you didn’t want to hear about this,” he observed. "But I was talking about Tantrist magic. One of its cardinal tenets, you know, is the magic power of certain syllables. For instance, if you persistently repeat Avalokiteshvara’s name, you’ll be assured of a happy rebirth in heaven. Other sounds have a malign and destructive power. And so on.”

  George looked about him. It was growing late; the bar was emptying. Except for himself and Atkinson, the pipers and the drummer, and a man around the corner of the bar from George, who had been sitting there silently against the wall all evening, the stools were empty. He looked at Atkinson again.

  "About 1920,” Atkinson was saying, "a lama in a remote little valley in Tibet”—George noticed that he pronounced the word in the austere fashion that makes it rhyme with gibbet—"got a terrific yen for one of the native girls. She was a very attractive girl by native standards, round and brown and plump and tight, like a little bird. The lama couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and he didn’t want to keep his hands off either. Unfortunately, he belonged to a lamistic order that was very strict about its rule of chastity. And besides that, he was really a religious man.

  "He knew there was one circumstance, and one only, under which he could enjoy the girl without committing any sin. He decided to wait for it.

  "A few months later, when the girl was out pasturing the buffalo, or feeding the silkworms, or something, she saw the lama coming running down the side of the hill toward her. He was in a terrific froth. When he got up to her, he made a certain request. ’No,’ the girl answered, 'my mother told me I mustn’t.’ You see, she was a well-brou
ght-up girl.”

  George was looking at Atkinson and frowning hard. "Go on,” he said.

  "I am going on,” Atkinson answered. "The lama told her to go home and ask her mother if it wasn’t all right to do what the holy man told her. He said to hurry. So she did.

  "When she came back the lama was sitting on the field in a disconsolate position. She told him it was all right, her mother had said to mind him. He shook his head. He said, The Dalai Lama has just died. I thought you and I could cooperate to reincarnate him. Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t have been a sin. But now it’s too late. Heaven has willed otherwise. The job has already been attended to.’ And he pointed over to a corner of the field where two donkeys were copulating.

  "The girl began to laugh. As I said, she was a well-brought-up girl, but she couldn’t help it. She laughed and laughed. She almost split her sides laughing. And the poor lama had to sit there listening while she laughed.

  "You can’t excuse him, but you can understand it. He’d wanted her so much, he’d thought he was going to get her, and then those donkeys— Well, he began to curse. He began to curse those terrible, malign Tantrist curses. He’s been cursing ever since.

  "Ever since 1920, he’s been cursing. Once in a while he pauses for breath, and we think things are going to get better, but he always starts in again. He says those dreadful Tantrist syllables over and over, and they go bonging around the world like the notes of enormous brass bells ringing disaster. War and famine and destruction and revolution and death—all in the Tantrist syllables. He knows, of course, that he’ll be punished by years and years of rebirths, the worst possible kind of karma, but he can’t help it. He just goes on saying those terrible syllables.”

  George looked at him coldly. "Two Kinds of Time," he said.

  "Hunh?”

  "I said, you read that story in a book about China called Two Kinds of Time. I read it myself. The donkeys, the lama, the girl—they’re all in there. The only original part was what you said about the Tantrist curses, and you probably stole that from someplace else.” George halted. After a moment he said passionately, "What’s the matter with everybody tonight?”

  "Oh, foozle,” Atkinson replied lightly. "Om mani padme hum” He picked up his hat and left the bar.

  After a minute or so, the two pipers followed him. That left George, the silent man in the comer, and the instrumentalist who had played on the drum. George decided to have one more drink. Then he’d go home.

  The silent man who was leaning against the wall began to speak.

  "They were all wrong,” he said.

  George regarded him with nausea. He thought of leaving, but the bartender was already bringing his drink. He tried to call up enough force to say, "Shut up,” but heart failed him. He drooped his head passively.

  "Did you ever notice the stars scattered over the sky?” the man in the corner asked. He had a deep, rumbling voice.

  "Milky Way?” George mumbled. Better hurry and get this over with.

  "The Milky Way is one example,” the stranger conceded. "Only one. There are millions of worlds within the millions of galaxies.”

  "Yeah.”

  "All those millions of burning worlds.” He was silent for so long that George’s hopes rose. Then he said, "They look pretty hot, don’t they? But they’re good to eat.”

  "Hunh?”

  "The stars, like clams..

  "Beg your pardon,” George enunciated. He finished his drink. "Misjudged you. You’re original.”

  The man in the corner did not seem to have listened. "The worlds are like clams,” he said rapidly, "and the skies at night present us with the glorious spectacle of a celestial clambake. They put them on the fire, and when they’ve been on the fire long enough they open. They’re getting this world of yours ready. When it’s been on the fire a little longer, it’ll open. Explode.”

  George realized that that last drink had been one too many. He didn’t believe what the man in the corner was saying. He wouldn’t. But he couldn’t help finding a dreadful sort of logic in it. "How’ju know this?” he asked feebly at last.

  The man in the corner seemed to rise and billow. Before George’s horrified and popping eyes, he grew larger and larger, like a balloon inflating. George drew back on the bar. stool; he was afraid his face would be buried in the vast unnatural bulk.

  "Because,” said the inflating man in a high, twanging voice, "because I’m one of the clam-eaters!”

  This horrid statement proved too much for George’s wavering sobriety. He blinked. Then he slid backward off the bar stool and collapsed softly on the floor. His eyes closed.

  The billowing form of the clam-eater tightened and condensed into that of a singularly handsome young man. He was dressed in winged sandals and a winged hat; from his naked body there came a soft golden light.

  For a moment he stood over George, chuckling at the success of his joke. His handsome, jolly face was convulsed with mirth. Then, giving George a light, revivifying tap on the shoulder with the herald’s wand he carried, the divine messenger left the bar.

  This story had its genesis when the late editor of The Magazine, of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tony Boucher (pseudonym of William Anthony Parker White), took the charming author, Idris Seabright (pseudonym of Margaret St. Clair), to a bar and stood her a drink. Boucher described the bar as an unobtrusive neighborhood tavern whose peculiarities were accurately portrayed in this story, along with a few other oddities that only Miss Seabright could invent.

  "It’s basically a religious story” Margaret St. Clair tells us. Her first story appeared in Fantastic Adventures in 1946; her most recent work appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in the 1970s. She is best remembered for the polished fantasies she published in Boucher's magazine as Idris Seabright. The present story is one of them.

  FOR A FOGGY NIGHT

  by Larry Niven

  "... they know that they might return home to find a Romish camp, or a Druidic dancing ground, or:. ”

  The bar was selling a lot of Irish Coffee that night. I’d bought two myself. It was warm inside, almost too warm, except when someone pushed through the door. Then a puff of chill, damp fog would roll in.

  Beyond the window was grey chaos. The fog picked up all the various city lights: yellow light leaking from inside the bar, passing automobile headlights, white light from frosted street globes, and the rainbow colors of neon signs. The fog stirred all the lights together into a cold grey-white paste and leaked it back through the windows.

  Bright spots drifted past at a pedestrian’s pace. Cars. I felt sorry for the drivers. Rolling through a grey formless limbo, running from street globe to invisible street globe, alert for the abrupt, dangerous red dot of a traffic light: an intersection; you couldn’t tell otherwise..... I had friends in San Francisco; there were other places I could be. But it wasn’t my city, and I was damned if I’d drive tonight.

  A lost night. I’d finished my drink. One more, and I’d cross the street to my hotel.

  "You’d best wait until the fog thins out,” said the man next to me.

  He was a stranger, medium all over; medium height and weight, regular features, manicured nails, feathery brown hair, no scars. The invisible man. I’d never have looked his way if he hadn’t spoken. But he was smiling as if he knew me.

  I said, "Sorry?”

  "The point is, your hotel might not be there when you’ve crossed the street. Don’t be surprised,” he added. "I can read minds. We’ve learned the knack, where I come from.”

  There are easy ways to interrupt a conversation with a stranger. A blank stare will do it. But I was bored and alone, and a wacky conversation might be just what I needed.

  I said, "Why shouldn’t my hotel be exactly where I left it?”

  He frowned into his Scotch-and-Soda, then took a swallow. "Do you know the theory of multiple world lines? It seems that whenever a decision is made, it’s made both ways. The world becomes two or more worlds, one for ea
ch way the decision can go. Ah, I see you know of it. Well, sometimes the world lines merge again.”

  "But—”

  "That’s exactly right. The world must split on the order of a trillion times a second. What’s so unbelievable about that? If j au want a real laugh, ask a physicist about fur-coated particles.”

  "But you’re saying it’s real. Every time I get a haircut—”

  "One of you waits until tomorrow,” said the brown-haired man. "One of you keeps the side-bums. One gets a manicure, one cuts his own nails.

  The size of the tip varies too. Each of you is as real as the next, and each belongs to a different world line. It wouldn’t matter if the world lines didn’t merge every so often.”

  "Uh-huh.” I grinned at him. "What about my hotel?”

  "I’ll show you. Look through that window. See the street lamp?”

  "Vaguely.”

  "You bet, vaguely. San Francisco is a town with an active history. The world lines are constantly merging. What you’re looking at is the probability of a street lamp being in a particular place. Looks like a big fuzzy ball, doesn’t it? That’s the locus of points where a bulb might be—or a gas flame. Greatest probability density is in the center, where it shows brightest.”

  "I don’t get it.”

  "When the world lines merge, everything blurs. The further away something is, the more blurred it looks. I shouldn’t say looks, because the blurring is real; it’s no illusion. Can you see your hotel from here?”

  I looked out the appropriate window, and I couldn’t. Two hours ago I’d nearly lost my way just crossing the street. Tonight a man could lose himself in any city street, and wander blindly in circles in hopes of finding a curb.....

  "You see? Your hotel’s too far away. In the chaos out there, the probability of your hotel being anywhere specific is too small to see. Vanishingly small. You’d never make it.”

  Something about the way he talked...

  "I wondered when you’d notice that.” He smiled, as if we shared a secret.