The Change War

by Fritz Leiber

  But however uncomfortable it was, I had this reaction to my devout early pacifism, as I say. At first I took it out only in reading. I devoured war books, current and historical, fact and fiction. I tried to soak up the military aspects and jargon of all ages, the organization and weapons, the strategy and tactics. Characters like Tros of Samothrace and Horatio Hornblower became my new secret heroes, along with Heinlein’s space cadets and Bullard and other brave rangers of the spaceways.

  But after a while reading wasn’t enough. I had to have some real soldiers and I finally found them in the little gang that gathered nightly at Sol’s liquor store. It’s funny but liquor stores that serve drinks have a clientele with more character and comradeship than the clienteles of most bars—perhaps it is the absence of juke-boxes, chromium plate, bowling machines, trouble-hunting, drink-cadging women, and—along with those—men in search of fights and forgetfulness. At any rate, it was at Sol’s liquor store that I found Woody and the Leutnant and Bert and Mike and Pierre and Sol himself. The casual customer would hardly have guessed that they were anything but quiet souses, certainly not soldiers, but I got a clue or two and I started to hang around, making myself inconspicuous and drinking my rather symbolic soda pop, and pretty soon they started to open up and yam about North Africa and Stalingrad and Anzio and Korea and such and I was pretty happy in a partial sort of way.

  And then about a month ago Max had turned up and he was the man I’d really been looking for. A genuine soldier with my historical slant on things—only he knew a lot more than I did, I was a rank amateur by comparison—and he had this crazy appealing gag too, and besides that he actually cottoned to me and invited me on to his place a few times, so that with him I was more than a tavern hanger-on. Max was good for me, though I still hadn’t the faintest idea of who he really was or what he did.

  Naturally Max hadn’t opened up the first couple of nights with the gang, he’d just bought his beer and kept quiet and felt his way much as I had. Yet he looked and felt so much the soldier that I think the gang was inclined to accept him from the start—a quick stocky man with big hands and a leathery face and smiling tired eyes that seemed to have seen everything at one time or another. And then on the third or fourth night Bert told something about the Battle of the Bulge and Max chimed in with some things he’d seen there, and I could tell from the looks Bert and the Leutnant exchanged that Max had “passed”—he was now the accepted seventh member of the gang, with me still as the tolerated clerical-type hanger-on, for I’d never made any secret of my complete lack of military experience.

  Not long afterwards—it couldn’t have been more than one or two nights—Woody told some tall tales and Max started matching him and that was the beginning of the time-and-space-soldier gag. It was funny about the gag. I suppose we just should have assumed that Max was a history nut and liked to parade his bookish hobby in a picturesque way—and maybe some of the gang did assume just that—but he was so vivid yet so casual in his descriptions of other times and places that you felt there had to be something more and sometimes he’d get such a lost, nostalgic look on his face talking of things fifty million miles or five hundred years away that Woody would almost die laughing, which was really the sincerest sort of tribute to Max’s convincingness.

  Max even kept up the gag when he and I were alone together, walking or at his place—he’d never come to mine—though he kept it up in a minor-key sort of way, so that it sometimes seemed that what he was trying to get across was not that he was the Soldier of a Power that was fighting across all of time to change history, but simply that we men were creatures with imaginations and it was our highest duty to try to feel what it was really like to live in other times and places and bodies. Once he said to me, “The growth of consciousness is everything, Fred—the seed of awareness sending its roots across space and time. But it can grow in so many ways, spinning its web from mind to mind like the spider or burrowing into the unconscious darkness like the snake. The biggest wars are the wars of thought.”

  But whatever he was trying to get across, I went along with his gag—which seems to me the proper way to behave with any other man, screwball or not, so long as you can do it without violating your own personality. Another man brings a little life and excitement into the world, why try to kill it? It is simply a matter of politeness and style.

  I’d come to think a lot about style since knowing Max. It doesn’t matter so much what you do in life, he once said to me—soldiering or clerking, preaching or picking pockets—so long as you do it with style. Better fail in a grand style than succeed in a mean one—you won’t enjoy the successes you get the second way.

  Max seemed to understand my own special problems without my having to confess them. He pointed out to me that the soldier is trained for bravery. The whole object of military discipline is to make sure that when the six seconds of testing come every six months or so, you do the brave thing without thinking, by drilled second nature. It’s not a matter of the soldier having some special virtue or virility the civilian lacks. And then about fear. All men are afraid, Max said, except a few psychopathic or suicidal types and they merely haven’t fear at the conscious level. But the better you know yourself and the men around you and the situation you’re up against (though you can never know all of the last and sometimes you have only a glimmering), then the better you are prepared to prevent fear from mastering you. Generally speaking, if you prepare yourself by the daily self-discipline of looking squarely at life, if you imagine realistically the troubles and opportunities that may come, then the chances are you won’t fail in the testing. Well, of course I’d heard and read all those things before, but coming from Max they seemed to mean a lot more to me. As I say, Max was good for me.

  So on this night when Max had talked about Copenhagen and Copernicus and Copeybawa and I’d imagined I’d seen a big black dog with red eyes and we were walking the lonely streets hunched in our jackets and I was listening to the big clock over at the University tolling eleven…well, on this night I wasn’t thinking anything special except that I was with my screwball buddy and pretty soon we’d be at his place and having a nightcap. I’d make mine coffee.

  I certainly wasn’t expecting anything.

  Until, at the windy corner just before his place, Max suddenly stopped.

  Max’s junky front room-and-a-half was in a smoky brick building two flights up over some run-down stores. There is a rust-flaked fire escape on the front of it, running past the old-fashioned jutting bay windows, its lowest flight a counter-balanced one that only swings down when somebody walks out onto it—that is, if a person ever had occasion to.

  When Max stopped suddenly, I stopped too of course. He was looking up at his window. His window was dark and I couldn’t see anything in particular, except that he or somebody else had apparently left a big black bundle of something out on the fire-escape and—it wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen that space used for storage and drying wash and what not, against all fire regulations, I’m sure.

  But Max stayed stopped and kept on looking.

  “Say, Fred,” he said softly then, “how about going over to your place for a change? Is the standing invitation still out?”

  “Sure Max, why not,” I replied instantly, matching my voice to his. “I’ve been asking you all along.”

  My place was just two blocks away. We’d only have to turn the corner we were standing on and we’d be headed straight for it.

  “Okay, then,” Max said. “Let’s get going.” There was a touch of sharp impatience in his voice that I’d never heard there before. He suddenly seemed very eager that we should get around that corner. He took hold of my arm.

  He was no longer looking up at the fire escape, but I was. The wind had abruptly died and it was very still. As we went around the corner—to be exact as Max pulled me around it—the big bundle of something lifted up and looked down at me with eyes like two red coals.

  I didn’t let out a gasp or say anything. I
don’t think Max realized then that I’d seen anything, but I was shaken. This time I couldn’t lay it to cigarette butts or reflected tail lights, they were too difficult to place on a third-story fire escape. This time my mind would have to rationalize a lot more inventively to find an explanation, and until it did I would have to believe that something…well, alien…was at large in this part of Chicago.

  Big cities have their natural menaces—hold-up artists, hopped-up kids, sick-headed sadists, that sort of thing—and you’re more or less prepared for them. You’re not prepared for something…alien. If you hear a scuttling in the basement you assume it’s rats and although you know rats can be dangerous you’re not particularly frightened and you may even go down to investigate. You don’t expect to find bird-catching Amazonian spiders.

  The wind hadn’t resumed yet. We’d gone about a third of the way down the first block when I heard behind us, faintly but distinctly, a rusty creaking ending in a metallic jar that didn’t fit anything but the first flight of the fire escape swinging down to the sidewalk.

  I just kept walking then, but my mind split in two—half of it listening and straining back over my shoulder, the other half darting off to investigate the weirdest notions, such as that Max was a refugee from some unimaginable concentration camp on the other side of the stars. If there were such concentration camps, I told myself in my cold hysteria, run by some sort of supernatural SS men, they’d have dogs just like the one I’d thought I’d seen…and, to be honest, thought I’d see padding along if I looked over my shoulder now.

  It was hard to hang on and just walk, not run, with this insanity or whatever it was hovering over my mind, and the fact that Max didn’t say a word didn’t help either.

  Finally, as we were starting the second block, I got hold of myself and I quietly reported to Max exactly what I thought I’d seen. His response surprised me.

  “What’s the layout of your apartment, Fred? Third floor, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Well…”

  “Begin at the door we’ll be going in,” he directed me.

  “That’s the living room, then there’s a tiny short open hall, then the kitchen. It’s like an hour-glass, with the living room and kitchen the ends, and the hall the wasp waist. Two doors open from the hall: the one to your right (figuring from the living room) opens into the bathroom; the one to your left, into a small bedroom.”

  “Windows?”

  “Two in the living room, side by side,” I told him. “None in the bathroom. One in the bedroom, onto an air shaft. Two in the kitchen, apart.”

  “Back door in the kitchen?” he asked.

  “Yes. To the back porch. Has glass in the top half of it. I hadn’t thought about that. That makes three windows in the kitchen.”

  “Are the shades in the windows pulled down now?”

  “No.”

  Questions and answers had been rapid-fire, without time for me to think, done while we walked a quarter of a block. Now after the briefest pause Max said, “Look, Fred, I’m not asking you or anyone to believe in all the things I’ve been telling as if for kicks at Sol’s—that’s too much for all of a sudden—but you do believe in that black dog, don’t you?” He touched my arm warningly. “No, don’t look behind you!”

  I swallowed. “I believe in him right now,” I said.

  “Okay. Keep on walking. I’m sorry I got you into this, Fred, but now I’ve got to try to get both of us out. Your best chance is to disregard the thing, pretend you’re not aware of anything strange happened—then the beast won’t know whether I’ve told you anything, it’ll be hesitant to disturb you, it’ll try to get at me without troubling you, and it’ll even hold off a while if it thinks it will get me that way. But it won’t hold off forever—it’s only imperfectly disciplined. My best chance is to get in touch with headquarters—something I’ve been putting off—and have them pull me out. I should be able to do it in an hour, maybe less. You can give me that time, Fred.”

  “How?” I asked him. I was mounting the steps to the vestibule. I thought I could hear, very faintly, a light pad-padding behind us. I didn’t look back.

  Max stepped through the door I held open and we started up the stairs.

  “As soon as we get in your apartment,” he said, “you turn on all the lights in the living room and kitchen. Leave the shades up. Then start doing whatever you might be doing if you were staying up at this time of night. Reading or typing, say. Or having a bite of food, if you can manage it. Play it as naturally as you can. If you hear things, if you feel things, try to take no notice. Above all, don’t open the windows or doors, or look out of them to see anything, or go to them if you can help it—you’ll probably feel drawn to do just that. Just play it naturally. If you can hold them…it…off that way for half an hour or so—until midnight, say—if you can give me that much time, I should be able to handle my end of it. And remember, it’s the best chance for you as well as for me. Once I’m out of here, you’re safe.”

  “But you—” I said, digging for my key, “—what will you—?”

  “As soon as we get inside,” Max said, “I’ll duck in your bedroom and shut the door. Pay no attention. Don’t come after me, whatever you hear. Is there a plug-in in your bedroom? I’ll need juice.”

  “Yes,” I told him, turning the key. “But the lights have been going off a lot lately. Someone has been blowing the fuses.”

  “That’s great,” he growled, following me inside.

  I turned on the lights and went in the kitchen, did the same there and came back. Max was still in the living room, bent over the table beside my typewriter. He had a sheet of light-green paper. He must have brought it with him. He was scrawling something at the top and bottom of it. He straightened up and gave it to me.

  “Fold it up and put it in your pocket and keep it on you the next few days,” he said.

  It was just a blank sheet of cracklingly thin light-green paper with “Dear Fred” scribbled at the top and “Your friend, Max Bournemann” at the bottom and nothing in between.

  “But what—?” I began, looking up at him.

  “Do as I say!” He snapped at me. Then, as I almost flinched away from him, he grinned—a great big comradely grin.

  “Okay, let’s get working,” he said, and he went into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

  I folded the sheet of paper three times and unzipped my wind-breaker and tucked it inside the breast pocket. Then I went to the bookcase and pulled at random a volume out of the top shelf—my psychology shelf, I remembered the next moment—and sat down and opened the book and looked at a page without seeing the print.

  And now there was time for me to think. Since I’d spoken of the red eyes to Max there had been no time for anything but to listen and to remember and to act. Now there was time for me to think.

  My first thoughts were: This is ridiculous! I saw something strange and frightening, sure, but it was in the dark, I couldn’t see anything clearly, there must be some simple natural explanation for whatever it was on the fire escape. I saw something strange and Max sensed I was frightened and when I told him about it he decided to play a practical joke on me in line with that eternal gag he lives by. I’ll bet right now he’s lying on my bed and chuckling, wondering how long it’ll be before I—

  The window beside me rattled as if the wind has suddenly risen again. The rattling grew more violent—and then it abruptly stopped without dying away, stopped with a feeling of tension, as if the wind or something more material were still pressing against the pane.

  And I did not turn my head to look at it, although (or perhaps because) I knew there was no fire escape or other support outside. I simply endured that sense of a presence at my elbow and stared unseeingly at the book in my hands, while my heart pounded and my skin froze and flushed.

  I realized fully then that my first skeptical thoughts had been the sheerest automatic escapism and that, just as I’d told Max, I believed with my whole mind in the black dog. I believe
d in the whole business insofar as I could imagine it. I believed that there are undreamed of powers warring in this universe. I believed that Max was a stranded time-traveler and that in my bedroom he was now frantically operating some unearthly device to signal for help from some unknown headquarters. I believed that the impossible and the deadly was loose in Chicago.

  But my thoughts couldn’t carry further than that. They kept repeating themselves, faster and faster. My mind felt like an engine that is shaking itself to pieces. And the impulse to turn my head and look out the window came to me and grew.

  I forced myself to focus on the middle of the page where I had the book open and start reading.

  Jung’s archetype transgress the barriers of time and space. More than that: they are capable of breaking the shackles of the laws of causality. They are endowed with frankly mystical “prospective” faculties. The soul itself, according to Jung, is the reaction of the personality to the unconscious and includes in every person both male and female elements, the animus and anima, as well as the persona or the persons reaction to the outside world…

  I think I read that last sentence a dozen times, swiftly at first, then word by word, until it was a meaningless jumble and I could no longer force my gaze across it.

  Then the glass in the window beside me creaked.

  I laid down the book and stood up, eyes front, and went into the kitchen and grabbed a handful of crackers and opened the refrigerator.

  The rattling that muted itself in hungry pressure followed. I heard it first in one kitchen window, then the other, then in the glass in the top of the door. I didn’t look.

  I went back in the living room, hesitated a moment beside my typewriter, which had a blank sheet of yellow paper in it, then sat down again in the armchair beside the window, putting the crackers and the half carton of milk on the little table beside me. I picked up the book I’d tried to read and put it on my knees.