Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  “I understood perfectly that he would force the door at once if no key were available. Silently I went to the desk, and got the key from the upper drawer, where, in my confusion I had just replaced it; I handed it to Richard, still without a word. At that moment I knew with certainty that final ruin was upon me, and I could not bear another instant the horror of waiting for the blow to fall. I thought that after Richard had seen what I had done, then, in that moment of his greatest shock, I might appeal to him. I could only hope that he loved me as truly and deeply as I did him.

  “But his gaze was black and forbidding as he took the key from my hand and turned away. He was in the lumber-room for only a few moments, but I need not tell you what an eternity they seemed to me. When he reappeared, his face was altered; yet even as I gazed at him in despair, a sudden new hope was born within my breast. For his new expression was not so much one of horror or shock, as one expressing a great relief, even though mingled with shame and bewilderment.

  “For a moment he could not speak. Then ‘Darling!,’ he said at last, and his voice cracked, even as mine had moments earlier. ‘Can you ever forgive me for having doubted you?’

  “Without answering, I pushed past Richard to the door of the lumber-room. Everything inside, with one great exception, was just as I had seen it a few minutes earlier before I had locked the door. There were the dusty crates and cartons, untouched, certainly, by any human hand in the intervening time. There on the floor, in lighter dust and hardly noticeable, were the tracks left by my own feet on my first entrance, and by the horrible burden that I had dragged in with such difficulty. There was the stone with which I had struck the fateful blow—but the piece of stone lay now in the middle of the otherwise empty patch of bare floor. Of the body of the man I had struck down there was not the smallest trace.”

  My friend the detective emitted a faint sigh, expressing what in the circumstances seemed a rather inhuman degree of intellectual satisfaction. “Most interesting indeed,” he murmured soothingly. “And then?”

  “There is very little more that I can tell you. I murmured something to Richard; he, assuming my state of near-collapse was all his fault for behaving, as he said, brutally, made amends to the best of his ability. To make the story short, we were married as planned. Hayden’s name has never since been mentioned between us. Our life together has been largely uneventful, and in all outward aspects happy. But I tell you, gentlemen—since that day I have lived in inward terror . . . either I am mad, and therefore doomed, and imagined the whole ghastly scene in which I murdered Hayden; or I did not imagine it. Then he was only stunned. He somehow extricated himself from that lumber-room. He is lying in wait for me. Somewhere, sometime . . . neither of you know him, what he can be like . . . he still has the letters, yet he has in mind some revenge that would be even more horrible . . . I tell you I can bear it no longer . . .” The lady sank into a chair, struggling to control herself.

  The detective turned to me. “Dr. Corday, it is essential that we ascertain the—nature of this man Hayden.” A meaningful glance assured me what sort of variations in nature he had in mind.

  I nodded, and addressed myself to the lady, who had now somewhat recovered. “At what time of day, madam, did these events occur? Can we be absolutely sure that they took place after dawn and before sunset?”

  The lady looked for a moment as if she suspected that madness was my problem instead of hers. “In broad daylight, surely,” she replied at last. “Though what possible difference . . .”

  I signed to my friend that I must speak to him in confidence. After a hurried apology to our client we withdrew to a far corner of the study. “The man she knocked down,” I informed the detective there, “could not possibly have been a vampire, because of the force of the blow that felled him was borne in stone, to which we are immune. Nor could he, even supposing him to be a vampire, have shifted form in broad daylight, and escaped as a mist from that closet under the conditions we have heard described; nor could he in daylight have taken on the form of a small animal and hidden himself somewhere among those crates and boxes.”

  “You are quite sure of all that?”

  “Quite.”

  “Very good.” My friend received my expert opinion with evident satisfaction, which surprised me.

  For my own part, it seemed to me that we were getting nowhere. “My life has been very long,” I added, “and active, if not always well spent. I have seen madness . . . much madness. And I tell you that the lady here, if I am any judge, is neither mad nor subject to hallucinations.”

  “In that opinion I concur.” Still my friend did not appear nearly as disconcerted as it seemed to me he should. There was, in feet, something almost like a twinkle in his eye.

  “Then what are we to make of this?” I demanded.

  “I deduce . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Again the twinkle. “That one of her father’s trips abroad, before the wedding, took him to Arizona. But of course I must make sure.” And with that, leaving me in a state that I confess approached speechlessness, my friend went back across the room.

  He approached our client, who still sat wearily in her chair, and extended both his hands. When she took them, wonderingly, he raised her to her feet. “One more question,” he urged her solemnly. “The stone with which you struck down Hayden—where is it now? Surely it is not one of those still on the desk?”

  “No,” the lady marveled. “I could not bear to leave it there.” Going back to the door of the lumber-room, she reached inside, and from a shelf took down a pinkish stone of irregular, angular shape, a little larger than a man’s fist. This she presented to my friend.

  He turned it over once in his hands, and set it back upon the desk. A confident smile now transformed his face. “It is my happy duty to inform you,” he said at once, “that the man you knew as Hayden will never bother you again; you may depend upon it.”

  Dracula paused here in his narration. “In a moment I was able to add my own assurances, for what they were worth, to those of the famed detective. That was after I had walked over to the desk and looked at the weapon for myself. I knew then that the man struck down with it could indeed have been a vampire; nay, that he must have been. For when he died of the effects of the blow, there on the floor of the lumber-room, his body, as is commonly the case with us, had at once undergone a dissolution to dust, and less than dust. His clothing, including the letters in his pocket, had, as would be expected, disappeared as well. No humanly detectable trace was left when the fiancé opened the door a few moments later.”

  “A vampire?” I protested. “But, he was struck down with a stone . . .”

  “I was looking,” said Dracula softly, “at a choice Arizona specimen of petrified wood.”

  INTERMISSION

  Atoms do not age. They either exist or they do not. Then do molecules get old and tired? Do genes?

  In the last twilight of the Sun the answer regarding genes became clear. It was stored in the investigating machines’ memories, until the time of live intelligence came again.

  1985

  THE SONG OF SWORDS

  Who holds Coinspinner knows good odds

  Whichever move he make

  But the Sword of Chance, to please the gods

  Slips from him like a snake.

  The Sword of Justice balances the pans

  Of right and wrong, and foul and fair.

  Eye for an eye, Doomgiver scans

  The fate of all folk everywhere.

  Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, how d’you slay?

  Reaching for the heart in behind the scales.

  Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, where do you stay?

  In the belly of the giant that my blade impales.

  Farslayer howls across the world

  For thy heart, for thy heart, who hast wronged me!

  Vengeance is his who casts the blade

  Yet he will in the end no triumph see.

  Whose flesh the Sword of Mercy
hurts has drawn no breath;

  Whose soul it heals has wandered in the night,

  Has paid the summing of all debts in death

  Has turned to see returning light.

  The Mindsword spun in the dawn’s gray light

  And men and demons knelt down before.

  The Mindsword flashed in the midday bright

  Gods joined the dance, and the march to war.

  It spun in the twilight dim as well

  And gods and men marched off to hell.

  I shatter Swords and splinter spears;

  None stands to Shieldbreaker.

  My point’s the fount of orphans’ tears

  My edge the widowmaker.

  The Sword of Stealth is given to

  One lonely and despised.

  Sightblinder’s gifts: his eyes are keen

  His nature is disguised.

  The Tyrant’s Blade no blood hath spilled

  But doth the spirit carve

  Soulcutter hath no body killed

  But many left to starve.

  The Sword of Siege struck a hammer’s blow

  With a crash, and a smash, and a tumbled wall.

  Stonecutter laid a castle low

  With a groan, and a roar, and a tower’s fall.

  Long roads the Sword of Fury makes

  Hard walls it builds around the soft

  The fighter who Townsaver takes

  Can bid farewell to home and croft.

  Who holds Wayfinder finds good roads

  Its master’s step is brisk.

  The Sword of Wisdom lightens loads

  But adds unto their risk.

  AS DULY AUTHORIZED

  Fred Saberhagen’s new story is about a most surprising—and most logical—evolutionary leap. His latest book is BERSERKER THRONE (Fireside Books), an addition to the famous Berserker series.

  The truth of our late twenty-first-century lives is contained in our documents, our filmed and magnetized records. Or so we believe. Therefore, not only my own life but the foundation of all our lives is now at stake. For the sake of our whole world’s survival, it is vital that this statement of mine be credited, that appropriate action—in this case, an investigation of the monstrous child Martin Mandell—be taken without delay by those authorized to do so.

  It was this child, Martin Mandell, who on a day some three weeks ago began the chain of events that has brought me to my present unhappy situation. I was then, and had been for about two years, assigned to the Bureau of Science, Department of Paleontology, Fairbanks Office. My duties were of course administrative, and commensurate with my rank; nearly a score of clerks and aides worked under my direction.

  That never-to-be-forgotten day began like any other, and continued so until midafternoon. At that time I was slightly irritated to notice that my then secretary, Ms. Lorraine Mandell (the child’s widowed mother), had already spent several minutes of working time in the corridor outside my office, engaged in a personal conversation with the technician, Antonelli.

  Antonelli had paused for this discussion while transporting through the corridor a paleontological fieldwork robot. While the technician allowed his attention to be distracted from his duties regarding this device, the Mandell child approached down the corridor. It was the child’s custom, despite my continued efforts to discourage the practice, to pass the office each day on his way home from school, and from the corridor distract his mother at least momentarily from her duties.

  Today most of the width of the corridor was occupied by the fieldwork robot, standing waiting while Antonelli chatted. Whether from sheer idle curiosity, or from some yet baser motive, young Mandell was attracted to the controls of the machine. Before anyone was aware of the danger, it had begun to labor, and before Antonelli could regain control of the device, it had bored sizable openings—several centimeters in diameter—in both sides of the corridor, in completely unauthorized locations.

  Since one of these openings pierced the external wall of the building complex, and the other, almost directly opposite, breached the window between my office and the corridor, my staff and I were at once engulfed in a rush of raw outside air. In passing. I may remark that the technician’s lapse and the boy’s mischief—if it was no more than mischief—would certainly have had a much severer effect had the incident occurred during the winter months. Since we here in Alaska are, as you probably know, in the high northern latitudes, a direct opening of the building in January, say, would have admitted a volume of air at such low temperatures as to be immediately dangerous to health—air perhaps accompanied by frozen precipitation, all forms of which I am sure are highly unpleasant.

  Too late, Lorraine seized upon her son, who began to howl. He is, I suppose six or eight years of age, and of what I should call nondescript appearance, save for the small permanent vertical crease in his forehead that gives to his face the expression of a habitual frown. I gave Lorraine leave to remove the child to home or playground or wherever he should have been at that time of day; and then I turned to Antonelli.

  “Nobody’s hurt, thank God, nobody’s hurt,” was all that he could find to say at first.

  “Fortunately for you,” I replied. From the bookcase beside my desk, I brushed fine fragments of window glass, and pulled out Volume 1 of the Emergency Reporting Procedures, which 1 keep available at all times in nonelectronic form, to be prepared for power failures. I weighed the book significantly in my hand, and opened it. “However, if memory serves me correctly—yes, here is the appropriate section—even when no personal injury is involved, there are seventeen separate reports to be filled out following an accident of this type involving the destruction of property. You are undoubtedly the one responsible. The reports are to be completed at once, before you resume your normal duties.”

  “Seventeen,” he mumbled, shocked. He looked at his watch. “Sir, I am responsible. I’ll pay for the damage—”

  “Of course!”

  “But right now I can’t sit down and make out seventeen forms. Some must be long ones? Naturally. You see, I have to get this robot out to the diggings in just an hour. We’re short of techs, and there’s no one else I can ask to handle it. I accept responsibility for what happened; if we can just let some of these reports go until I hurry back—”

  “That is quite impossible. The World Office Regulations are very clear on the procedure to be followed.”

  “Maybe you don’t understand, sir, but it’s vital for me to get out there inside of an hour. If I miss this digging today, maybe even my whole future career will be shot. I was just telling Lorraine here about this one opening in Scientist Grade One—”

  Although I had given Lorraine leave to remove her child, she was still hovering nearby. Her arms were about her son, who clung to her. I recall now—and now shudder at the possible significance of the fact—that he was chewing like an infant on some small, already half-demolished plastic toy, while his eyes stared up at me from under his frowning forehead.

  His mother’s eyes were also fixed on mine, and they held a pleading expression 1 had not seen in them before. “Oh, really, it was my fault. Marty’s my responsibility. Tony here isn’t to blame.”

  “In this case, Lorraine,” I said to her, “your sympathy is misplaced. Please remove the child to wherever his proper location at this hour may be.”

  After another moment she nodded reluctantly, and turned away with her offspring.

  I then, with a sigh, turned back to face Antonelli, and my unpleasant task of seeing to it that the culprit complied with regulations. I regretted that the danger to the technician’s future career was probably real. In the Bureau of Science, many of even the higher positions of authority are filled by persons known more for their technical ability than their administrative competence, so that his hope for advancement was not altogether illusory. It is also true that in the Department of Paleontology’s circumpolar operations, due to the shortness of the annual period of summer weather and thawed-out soil, operation
al schedules are frequently rigid and the junior worker who misses his chance for fieldwork on one day may not be granted another chance on the next. These operational difficulties, and the need for haste arising therefrom, are used by some to justify all manner of procedural irregularities.

  Irregularity had never been the rule in my office. The regulations on reporting accidents were perfectly clear, and I was of course prepared to call the police, if need be, to enforce them. I made sure that Antonelli was aware of this fact. As there was then nothing else that he could do, he seated himself at Lorraine’s desk. Helpfully I placed a microwriter, several rolls of blank magnetic film, and the book of Emergency Reporting Procedures, containing blanks of all the necessary forms, before him. He opened the volume with an air of hopelessness, but soon he raised his fingers to the keyboard of the microwriter and began furiously to type. I remember feeling a pang of sympathy for him, as it was manifestly impossible that the most skilled clerk should be able to the complete the seventeen forms in less than half a day.

  It had become apparent to my olfactory sense that some spicelike pollen or similar substance was entering the room from outside, through the holes in wall and window, but I still had duties to perform. Cautioning my staff against unnecessary deep breathing of this unauthorized air, I returned to my own desk, and on my personal microwriter began the reports that would be required of me as senior administrator at the scene of the accident.

  This had occupied me for some twenty minutes when, raising my head, I saw that Lorraine had returned to the office. (Her apartment on the residential level was only a minute’s walk away.) She was standing now beside her own desk, at which Antonelli was still seated, and speaking earnestly to him. As I watched, she nervously—and, as I thought, furtively—placed her right hand briefly in his. The manner in which this was done suggested to me very strongly that she had secretly given him some small object, or objects. I gave no sign of having observed anything out of the ordinary. I waited, and as may well be imagined, I wondered.