by Jerome Bixby
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced Science Fiction Stories 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
_The main trouble is that you'd never suspect anything was wrong; you'd enjoy associating with _slizzers_, so long as you didn't know...._
_The Slizzers_
by JEROME BIXBY
* * * * *
They're all around us. I'll call them the _slizzers_, because they_sliz_ people. Lord only knows how long they've been on Earth, and howmany of them there are....
They're all around us, living with us. We are hardly ever aware oftheir existence, because they can _make_ themselves look like us, anddo most of the time; and if they can look like us, there's really noneed for them to think like us, is there? People think and behave inso many cockeyed ways, anyhow. Whenever a _slizzer_ fumbles a littlein his impersonation of a human being, and comes up with a puzzlingresponse, I suppose we just shrug and think. _He could use a goodpsychiatrist._
So ... you might be one. Or your best friend, or your wife or husband,or that nice lady next door.
They aren't killers, or rampaging monsters; quite the contrary. Theyneed us, something like the way we'd need maple trees if it came tothe point where maple syrup was our only food. That's why we're in nocomic-book danger of being destroyed, any more than maple trees wouldbe, in the circumstances I just mentioned--or are, as things go. In asense, we're rather well-treated and helped along a bit ... the way wecare for maple trees.
But, sometimes a man here and there will be careless, or ignorant, orgreedy ... and a maple tree will be hurt....
Think about that the next time someone is real nice to you. He may bea _slizzer_ ... and a careless one....
How long do we live?
Right. About sixty, seventy years.
You probably don't think much about that, because that's just the waythings are. That's life. And what the hell, the doctors are increasingour lifespan every day with new drugs and things, aren't they?
Sure.
But perhaps we'd live to be about a _thousand_, if the _slizzers_ leftus alone.
Ever stop to think how little we know about why we live? ... what itis that takes our structure of bones and coldcuts and gives it thefunction we call "life?"
Some mysterious life-substance or force the doctors haven't pinneddown yet, you say--and that's as good a definition as any.
Well, we're maple trees to the _slizzers_, and that life-stuff is thesap we supply them. They do it mostly when we're feeling good--feelingreally terrific. It's easier to tap us that way, and there's more tobe had. (Maybe that's what makes so-called manic-depressives ... theyattract _slizzers_ when they feel tip-top; the _slizzers_ feed; and_floo-o-m_ ... depressive.)
Like I say, think about all this next time someone treats you justginger-peachy, and makes you feel all warm inside.
So see how long that feeling lasts ... and who is hanging around youat the time. Experiment. See if it doesn't happen again and again withthe same people, and if you don't usually end up wondering where inhell your nice warm feeling went off to....
* * * * *
I found out about the _slizzers_ when I went up to Joe Arnold'sapartment last Friday night.
Joe opened the door and let me in. He flashed me his big junior-exec'sgrin and said, "Sit, Jerry. I'll mix you a gin and. The others'll bealong in awhile and we can get the action started."
I sat down in my usual chair. Joe had already fixed up the table ...green felt top, ashtrays, coasters, cards, chips. I said, "IfMel--that's his name, isn't it, the new guy?--if he starts callingwild games again when it comes his deal, I'll walk out. I don't like'em." I looked at the drink Joe was mixing. "More gin."
Joe crimped half a lime into the glass. "He won't call any crazy stufftonight. I told him that if he did, we wouldn't invite him back. Henearly ruined the whole session, didn't he?"
I nodded and took the drink. Joe mixes them right--just the way I likethem. They make me feel good inside. "How about a little blackjackwhile we're waiting?"
"Sure. They're late, anyway."
I got first ace, and dealt. We traded a few chips back andforth--nothing exciting--and on the ninth deal Joe got blackjack.
He shuffled, buried a trey, and gave me an ace-down, duck-up.
"Hit me," I said contentedly.
Joe gave me another ace.
"Mama! ... hit me again."
A four.
"Son," I told him, "you're in for a royal beating. Again."
A deuce.
Joe winced.
I turned up my hole ace and said, "Give me a sixth, you poor son. Ican't lose."
A nine.
"Nineteen in six," I crowed. I counted up my bets: five dollars. "Youowe me fifteen bucks!"
Then I looked up at him.
I'll repeat myself. You know that hot flush of pure delight, of hightriumph, even of mild avarice that possesses you from tingling scalpto tingling toe when you've pulled off a doozy? If you play cards,you've been there. If you don't play cards, just think back to thelast time someone complimented the pants off you, or the last time youclinched a big deal, or the last time a sweet kid you'd been hot aftersaid, "Yes."
That's the feeling I mean ... the feeling I had.
And Joe Arnold was eating it.
I knew it, somehow, the moment I saw his eyes and hands. His eyesweren't Joe Arnold's blue eyes any longer. They were wet balls ofshining black that took up half his face, and they looked hungry. Hisarms were straight out in front of him; his hands were splayed tenselyabout a foot from my face. The fingers were thinner and much longerthan I could recall Joe's being, and they just _looked_ like antennaeor electrodes or something, stretched wide-open that way andquivering, and I just _knew_ that they were picking up and drainingoff into Joe's body all the elation, the excitement, the warmth that Ifelt.
I looked at him and wondered why I couldn't scream or move a muscle.
"Guess I made a boo-boo," he said. He blinked his big black globes ofeyes. "No harm done, though."
His head had thinned down, just like his fingers, and now came to apeak on top.
He had practically no shoulders. He smiled at me, and I saw long blackhair growing on the insides of his lips.
_What are you?_ I screamed at him to myself.
Joe licked his hairy lips and folded those long inhuman hands in frontof him.
"It hurts like hell," he said in a not-human voice, "to be _slizzing_you and then have you chill off on me that way, Jerry. But it's my ownfault, I guess."
* * * * *
The door-bell rang--two soft tones. Joe got up and let in the othermembers of our Friday night poker group. I tried to move and couldn't.
Fred raised his eyebrows when he saw Joe's face and hands. "Jerryisn't here yet? Relaxing a little?" Then he saw me sitting there andwhistled. "Oh, you slipped up, eh?"
Joe nodded. "You were late, and I was hungry, so I thought I'd goahead and take my share. I gave him a big kick, and he really pouredit out ... radiated like all hell. I took it in so fast that I_fluhped_ and lost my plasmic control."
"We might as well eat now, then," Ray said, "before we get down toplaying cards." He sat down across the table, his eyes--now suddenlyenormous and black--eagerly on me. "I hate like hell waiting until youdeal him a big pot--"
"_No_," Joe said sharply. "Too much at one time, and he'd wonder whathit him. We'll do it just like al
ways ... one of us at a time, andonly a little at a time. Get him when he rakes in the loot. They nevermiss it when they feel like that."
"He's right," Fred said. "Take it easy, Ray." He went over to thesideboard and began mixing drinks.
Joe looked down at me with his black end-of-eggplant eyes.
"Now to fix things," he said.
... I blinked and shook my head. "You owe me fifteen bucks!" I said.
"Lord," Joe wailed, "did this gonif just take me!"
Ray groaned sympathetically from the chair across the table, wherehe'd been watching the slaughter. "And how!"
Joe pushed fifteen blue chips at me. I began stacking them.