Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  “You’re a jobholder, ain’t you, pal?” asked Fred, slapping the young man. The youth began to wrestle ineffectually, and Fred slammed a fist into his ribs full power. The young man collapsed, croaking. Fred bent down and seized one of his manicured fingers and wrenched it back savagely until he thought it must be broken. “Now try and work,” he said.

  The young man sat on the ground yelping and stuttering with his broken finger and cracked ribs. Fred had had enough, so instead of shutting him up he walked away. After a quick glance around to make sure that no one was coming to interfere, he looked to see what Wolf and Lewandowski were doing with the girl.

  “Don’t hurt me!” she was squealing. “Take my money, wrap me, but don’t hurt me!” “Who’d want to wrap you, sister?” Lewandowski laughed. He had her purse tucked under his arm, and he was tearing off her electrostatically-clinging costume, while Wolf kept her from running away. Lewandowski peeled the last bit of silvery film from her plump body, and then shoved her away so she fell, sadly naked and unattractive. She sat there quivering flabbily, staring at them in abject terror, while Wolf and Lewandowski rifled her purse.

  Some people at the end of the block were looking their way and pointing. “Come on, let’s go,” urged Fred, starting away.

  Wolf delayed a moment, bending over the girl. She screamed loudly and he jumped up and came hurrying after Fred and Lewandowski. For some reason the three of them started running. They ran for a block, switched slidewalks athletically, and ran again, looking over their shoulders. There was no pursuit, and they slowed to a casual walk. Fat Lewandowski was puffing hard.

  Wolf was holding up the head of his pelt, waiting for the other two to notice it. Fred saw that the sharp-pointed plastic teeth were reddened. “I left m’ brand on her, where it counts,” Wolf snickered, and Fred wondered, without caring, where the place that counted was.

  Lewandowski still had a handful of silvery film, and was tearing it into little bits which he scattered like confetti. Good-humoredly he demanded: “How much bread that guy have on him, Lohmann? Hey Fred, you get the bread?”

  Lewandowski laughed at his own rhyme, and they all laughed, feeling good. Fred’s sense of power and self-assertion, brought to a peak by the terror with which the girl had looked at him, was not spoiled by the realization that he had forgotten to take the young man’s money.

  “Naw, I didn’t get it,” he admitted cheerfully. “But what th’ purity.”

  “Didn’t get it? Why?” Lewandowski too was more amused than upset.

  “Cause I didn’t give a quint about it. What the purity!” But now the omission did begin to bother Fred a little, mainly because the young jobholder would be comforted by having retained his money and his papers. All right, next time Fred would make up for the oversight. Fred had never done anything quite like this before. As a kid he had been in fights, but never launched such an unprovoked attack. But already he knew that there would be a next time, and then he wouldn’t stop with just breaking a finger and maybe cracking a rib or two. Next time? Quintuplets, yes, there would be one.

  THE Magnifico, when he finally returned, furrowed his brow over the chessboard and took half an hour to make twelve moves. Then Art managed to let him win a pawn. Rizzo was an intense and serious player, with a drivingly aggressive style that would probably win him most of the amateur games he played. Though he mentioned vaguely having taken part in some tournaments, he seemed to have little competitive experience since he accepted a pawn from a master without apparent suspicion. Maybe he had played in prison somewhere. Art, headache-ridden, wished he had given away a knight or bishop and so provided himself with an excuse to resign. But no, that might be putting it on too thick. The best thing was to arrange a draw. If only Rizzo would not take so long to move!

  A man opened the study door. “Chief?” Rizzo grunted in exasperation, got up, and went out. Art shifted in his chair, took a bite from the tasteless sandwich that had been provided for him, took a sip from the accompanying drink, and looked at his watch. Nine o’clock, almost. It would be dark outside. His headache was waxing fat. He could ask for aspirin but it wouldn’t mix well with the drink.

  He meant to spend a lot of time and effort, from now on, making it up to Rita for what she was losing, or thought that she was losing. Right now, for some reason, all of Rita’s weak points—mostly insignificant things, of course, like her occasional stutter—kept popping up in Art’s thoughts; but all in all she was a good wife. What was he thinking? She was a purity of a good wife, the best of wives, and someday she would understand. When that day came it would be a great relief to be able to tell her how he had managed things, and to have her understand and thank him for it. It wasn’t as if he had had a real child of hers done away with. It wasn’t anything at all like that, even if they could move. They would smile over all this then. Over all their foolish ideas and fears.

  Someday they would. Still only nine o’clock. Yes, his watch was still running. Twins, how this night seemed to last and last.

  The Magnifico came back through the draperies, smiling and rubbing his hands together, looking eagerly at the board. “Where’d you move? Like I said, I don’t know about these places where they have your wife. But if I was to give you advice like a father I’d say don’t worry, these things have a way of working themselves out.”

  “I moved my queen here. And I want to thank you.”

  “For advice?” Rizzo’s laugh was deep and rich, and still it managed to be nasty. “Advice is cheap.”

  The door opened again. “Chief?”—

  “Oh, Gramma’s chastity. Look, Mr. Rodney, you don’t mind, hey? I guess we can’t continue our game tonight.”

  “Of course.” Art stood up, trying to hide his relief: “Some other time maybe. We’ll call this one a draw.”

  “Sure, sure, maybe another day. Look, I’m gonna have one of my friends see you safely on your way.”

  A taciturn man nearly as big as Jove came out to guide Art on the slidewalks and ride withrmrn; maybe Rizzo’s cars were all out on “business. The guardian rode silently and protectively at Art’s side until they drew near the Parrs’. Art didn’t want him coming to the door. “It’s all right, you can go back now. This is a safe neighborhood.”

  He rode on under the black sky and the daylight streetlights that somehow were nothing like the day at all. What would he tell George and Ann when he got back to them? Nothing. Why should he have to tell them anything? Never mind, some words would come.

  He looked sharply over both shoulders; his escort was well out of sight already, and there was no one else in view. He glided past a clock in a vendor’s window, and checked it automatically against his watch. Only a little after nine; why did he bother to worry about the time? If only this headache would let up.

  At an intersection he heard loud voices in the dark, coming from along the walk that came to cross his at right angles. A streetlight must be out, it was so dark in that direction. He saw an arm wave, though, an extended imperious hand, and a voice called: “Hey. Hey you, hold up.” At least he thought those were the words.

  Art ran. Each jog of his body sent a stab of pain flaring up from the base of his skull to exit on his pate. The voice, or voices, were raised now in a babble of threats and pursuing feet came pounding in his wake.

  He tried to yell for help, but only the tortured wheezing sounds of an exhausted runner left his mouth. The wall of gray faintness, that he had last seen following his struggle in the whorehouse, rose up quite soon to mask the world.

  Art stumbled, and had the sensation of losing consciousness for just a moment as he fell. Were they kicking him, hitting him already? No, it was only the pain in his head and the indirect jarring as he fell to elbows and knees on the smooth and smoothly moving walk. Where were his attackers, then?

  With a grateful shudder he realized that there was no one nearby. They had left him for more sporting game. Or had he really managed to outrun them all?

  Rizzo sent them
. Rizzo sent them, said the irrational panic inside his buzzing head, but that made no sense at all. Rizzo liked him, and anyway Rizzo’s agent would not have been so easily eluded. But still Art could not get rid of Rizzo’s name. It kept coming up like something that had to be vomited.

  Art glimpsed a street sign and knew that he was still on the correct walk. He tried-to get up on his feet again but couldn’t, not right away. He rode on all fours, in terror of meeting someone.

  THE guard at the pedestrian entrance of the Parrs’ blockhouse took no chances on being tricked out of his bulletproof booth. First he shut the steel grillwork gate behind Art’s crawling figure, then got on the house phone, and only then came out of his booth to try to help.

  A few moments later George came running up, his face a taut mask. Once they helped Art to his feet, he was able to stand. The faintness returned for a moment but then abated swiftly, although the headache pain went on and on.

  They asked him where he had been hurt, and which way his attackers went. These days if you saw a human being knocked down, squashed like a bug beneath a run-over box in the road, you just assumed some other human being had done it to him.

  “I—I got away from them somehow. I’m just winded. From running.”

  George said to the guard: “I wouldn’t call the cops yet, hey Casey?”

  “All right, no law says I have to in a case like this. Wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

  “I’m all right,” Art muttered, finding he could do without support as he and George passed on into the interior of the block. “How are the kids?”

  “Okay. Come on in and rest, Art. You look like you’ve been through the mill.” At the Parrs’ patio door, Ann came to meet them. “Put that thing down,” said George. “We’re not invaded.”

  “Ohhh,” she murmured, sagging briefly against a wall. Art saw now that she was carrying a carving knife with a gaily decorated blade in her right hand, holding it as if ready to thrust. For a moment he could also see in her face all the strain of the last few days, and he could see how she would look when she was middle-aged and when she was old. Then she turned away to take the knife back to the kitchen.

  George pulled forward a chair in which Art gratefully sank down. Then George said: “We’ve just now had word from Rita’s doctor. The one who operated. She’s all right.”

  “Operated?” Art started to his feet again. “Then—?”

  “Sit down. She’s all right. I got the codeword message on when and where to pick up her and the baby.”

  Suddenly this was all, in essence, very familiar. Old stuff. It had happened to him twice before, with Timmy and with Paula. “How’s the baby?”

  “Oh, the birth went okay. Codeword for a healthy boy.” George bent down, squinting at Art, his face going all blurry in Art’s vision. “You all right?”

  “I’m all right,” said Art. “All right now.” He was crying.

  XIV

  TONIGHT Dr. Matthew Hammad was working late office hours, and he happened to be performing an abortion on a teenaged girl when the phone call came in.

  “Says to tell you it’s life or death,” his receptionist informed him. “Really vehement about it.” Behind the receptionist’s image on the intercom he could see on the wall of his outer office, just some grapes and Bacchus’ elbow showing in part of a painting visible there.

  “What name?” Hammad asked, looking across the supine figure of his abortion patient. He was irritated at the interruption and yet professionally unwilling to ignore the possibility that the life-or-death claim was true.

  “Said he was calling for a Ms. Chester. But I didn’t know that you had any patient by that name.”

  “Oh.” Hammad glanced down. The young girl draped in translucent sheeting on the treatment table had the music earphones on, and the look in her eyes was faraway. “All right, I’ll take it in here.” He touched the girl on the arm and when she had loosened an earphone and looked up inquiringly, he said: “We’ll just let this work for a minute. Are you comfortable?” Resting on the table between her raised knees, the Autobort looked something like a small vacuum cleaner, or some unearthly alien in sexual union with the girl, its slender sterile organ of plastic and flexible glass extended into her body.

  She said: “I’m starting to get a cramp inside.”

  “Well, next time come in sooner, and we can do a simple menstrual regulation. Those are a lot easier, you know. Next time don’t wait until you’re this far along.”

  The girl, pouting at the mild lecture, put her earphone on snugly again and Hammad went over to the phoneplate. He punched the button to take the incoming call. “Ms. Chester” was a code word, and one that Hammad knew he had better not ignore.

  The caller kept his own phoneplate blanked, as Hammad expected, but the doctor recognized the voice from a few previous calls. What the voice said this time was guarded and indirect, and the message was being relayed from someone else, but still the message came through plainly.

  “Yes, yes, I understand.” Now Hammad was frowning. “Well, it wasn’t my intention to make trouble when I made the referral. Mrs. ah, Chester’s whereabouts are not known to me now with any certainty.” Now Hammad understood why this call was being made; every time overlords of illegal business had the chance, they tried to embarrass the operations of their rivals in midwifery, the religious cultists who ran their birth-mills without paying tribute for the privilege.

  “I can only guess whether I’ll be able to reach her and, ah, provide the therapy.” Even while he was engaged in this difficult call, Hammad kept a conscientious physician’s eye on the progress the Autobort was making. The girl was now quite relaxed, soothed by light sedation and music and the mild sexual stimulation of the machine. Through the tubing into the receptacle of clear glass on the vacuum cleaner’s back there now flowed the debris from the dismemberment within the womb. Now a few ribs, fishbone clear and soft but recognizable to the trained eye. Now a knee joint, which Hammad also could readily identify. Now parts of the skull and brain.

  “Yes, I understand.” His frown deepened as he stood listening to the phoneplate voice. Certain powerful people, those who made it possible for him to continue in the illegal sideline of his profession, were displeased that he still made referrals to the cultists. “Yes, I’m sorry.” Try to help out a friend whose sister was having problems and look where it got you. Now which would he rather have angry at him, George Parr or Vic Rizzo? There was always South America, he thought to himself. Meanwhile, George Parr need never know everything that went on, while Vic Rizzo evidently already did.

  “All right, then, I’ll do everything I can. At once. You can depend on me to take care of it.”

  His caller blanked off. Looking grimmer than ever, Hammad kept the phoneplate in hand and punched a number rapidly. Waiting, he continued to keep a dutiful watch on his tabled patient. She was coming along nicely. “Hello, let me speak to Ivor. This is Dr. Hammad. Oh. Well, whenever he comes back, or as soon as you can reach him, will you tell him to call me back at once. It’s rather urgent. Thank you.” He blanked off and at once began to punch again.

  WHEN Fred got back to the Y and found the message waiting for him at the desk, he wasted no time in hurrying to Hammad’s office; he wanted to hang onto his job, part-time or not.

  Hammad ushered him directly into an inner consultation room and shut the door. “Lohmann, there’s something very important that’s just come up, and I haven’t been able to get hold of Ivor. It can’t wait. You haven’t been working for me very long, but I think I can rely on you—right?”

  Fred nodded at once, and felt the butterflies start up in his stomach. His big chance—could this be it?

  “Fred, the situation is this. There’s a fetal specimen that has to be reclaimed. This woman.—‘she’s not one of my patients. I’m doing this for a colleague—has carried off a specimen that according to law should have been destroyed, and she’s likely to get several innocent people in trouble by doing so.”


  Fred nodded.

  “There’ll be a nice bonus for you if you can carry this off. We’d prefer that the police not be involved in this at all, if you understand me.”

  “Yeah, I got the idea.”

  “Good. Now, from past experience with the people who have been encouraging this woman to do the wrong thing, I can tell you just where she’s likely to be waiting to be picked up by some of her relatives or friends. It’s down on South Shore beach. Do you have a reliable friend or two to take along in case of trouble?”

  “Yeah, sure.” With any luck at all he would be able to find Lewandowski or Wolf, or both of them, back at the Megiddo. Lewandowski, being a native Chicagoan, would certainly be able to lead him to South Shore beach, and either of them would be a good back-up man if he should need one. “I can handle it for you, chief. If she’s there and she’s got it with her. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  ART and George had time for only a few hours’ sleep before they started out on the slidewalks at about an hour before dawn. When Ann came to wake him, Art sat up with a start, but he felt rested. The pain was still there in the top of his head, but not bad enough to keep him from concentrating on other matters.

  George had dug out a couple of old fishing poles and some other fishing gear for them to carry, to provide a plausible reason for being out if they fell under the eye of the police. He said a lot of fishermen went to the lake in the early morning, this time of year. They briefly considered calling a cab for the trip, but with cabdrivers required to file complete reports on all passengers for the police computers, that was about as risky as being stopped and questioned.

  On their southwest passage through the city’s nearly deserted predawn streets, they twice underwent brief surveillance from police cars but were not stopped. They also had one near-brush with a small group of rough-looking youths, but at the last moment the others avoided open confrontation.

  In the grayness before sunrise the slidewalks brought them to the edge of a green strip of parkland that George said ran continuously along the city’s lakefront. Streets and buildings behind them now, George led the way into the park, across a wide, grassy athletic field, now otherwise deserted. Art thought he could smell the lake nearby, fresh dampness without the tang of ocean salt, and billows of morning fog drifted into their faces as they trudged toward the east. The fog made vague green mounds out of stands of trees, and limited visibility drastically in all directions.