Bellamy within—do you hate me?
My life has not been easy. It isn't easy now. The stubborn flesh fights against the immortal future, urging a man to be weak. But if you are weak, how long can you hope to keep your head on your shoulders?
The Populi sleep with their wives. I have never even kissed any of mine. (Is it you who have sent me those dreams?) My children? Yes, they are mine; artificial insemination is the answer. I sleep on a hard bed. Sometimes I wear a hair shirt. I drink only water. My food is tasteless. With my trainers I exercise every day, until I am very tired. The life is hard—but in the end we shall stand forever in a plastic monument, you and I, while the world envies and admires. I shall die a Hunter and I shall be immortal.
The proof is in the glass cases down there in my reception hall. The heads, the heads—look, Bellamy, so many heads! Stratton, my first. I killed him in Central Park with a machete. This is the scar on my temple that he gave me that night. I learned to be more deft. I had to.
Each time I went into Central Park, fear and hate helped me. Often it is dreadful in the Park. We go there only at night, and sometimes we stalk for many nights before we take a head. The Park is forbidden, you know, to all but Hunters.
It is our hunting ground.
I have been shrewd and cunning and resourceful. I have shown great courage. I have stopped my fears and nursed my hate, there in the Park's shadows, listening, waiting, stalking, never knowing when I might feel sharp steel burning through my throat. There are no rules in the Park. Guns or clubs or knives—once I was caught in a man-trap, all steel and cables and sharp teeth. But I had moved in time, and fast enough, so I kept my right hand free and shot Miller between the eyes when he came to take me. There is Miller's head down in that case. You would never know a bullet had gone through his forehead, for the thanologists are clever. But usually we try not to spoil the heads.
What is it that troubles you so, Bellamy within? I am one of the greatest Hunters in New York. But a man must be cunning. He must lay traps and snares a long way in advance, and not only in Central Park. He must keep his spies active and his lines of contact taut in every mansion in the city. He must know who is powerful and who is not worth taking. What good would it do to win against a Hunter with only a dozen heads in his hall, while risking your own collection and your own head?
I have hundreds. Until yesterday, I stood ahead of every man in my age-group. Until yesterday, I was the envy of all I knew, the idol of the Populi, the acknowledged master of half New York. Half New York! Do you know how much that meant to me? That my rivals loathed me and acknowledged me their better?
You do know, Bellamy. It was the breath of life that True Jonathan Hull and Good Ben Griswold ground their teeth when they thought of me, and that Black Bill Lindman and Whistler Cowles counted their trophies and then called me on the TV phone and begged me with tears of hate and fury in their eyes to meet them in the Park and give them the chance they craved.
I laughed at them. I laughed Black Bill Lindman into a berserker rage and then almost envied him, because I have not been berserker myself for a long while now. I like that wild unloosening of all my awareness but one—the killing instinct, blind and without reason. I could forget even you then, Bellamy within.
But that was yesterday.
And yesterday night, Good Ben Griswold took a head. Do you remember how we felt when we learned of it, you and I? First I wanted to die, Bellamy. Then I hated Ben as I have never hated anyone before, and I have known much hate. I would not believe he had done it. I would not believe which head he took.
I said it was a mistake, that he took a head from the Populi. But I knew I lied. No one takes a common head. They have no value. Then I said to myself, "It can't be the head of True Jonathan Hull. It can't be. It mustnot be!" For Hull was powerful. His hall held almost as many heads as mine. If Griswold were to have them all, he would be far more powerful than I.
The thought was a torment I could not endure.
I put on my Status Cap, with one bell on it for each head I have taken, and I went out to see. It was true, Bellamy.
The mansion of Jonathan Hull was being emptied. The mob was surging in and out, while Hull's wives and children were leaving in little, quiet groups. The wives did not seem unhappy, but the boys did. (The girls had been sent to the Populi at birth, naturally; they are worthless.) I watched the boys for a while. They were all wretched and angry. One was nearly sixteen, a big, agile lad who must have nearly finished his training. Someday I might meet him in the Park.
The other boys were all too young. Now that their training had been interrupted, they would never dare enter the Park. That, of course, is why none of the Populi ever become Hunters. It takes long years of arduous training to turn a child from a rabbit to a tiger. In Central Park, only the tigers survive.
* * *
I looked through True Jonathan's view-windows. I saw that the glass cases in his reception hall were empty.
"So it is not a nightmare or a lie—Griswold does have them," I thought, "and True Jonathan's, besides."
I went into a doorway and clenched my fists and beat them against the brownstone and groaned with self-contempt.
I was no good at all. I hated myself, and I hated Griswold, too. Presently it was only that second hate that remained, so I knew what I had to do.
"Today," I thought, "he stands where I stood yesterday. Desperate men will be talking to him, begging him, challenging him, trying every means they know to get him into the Park tonight. But I am crafty. I make my plans far ahead. I have networks that stretch into the mansions of every Hunter in the city, crossing their own webs."
One of my wives, Nelda, was the key here. Long ago I realized that she was beginning to dislike me. I never knew why, but I fostered that dislike until it became hate. I saw to it that Griswold would learn the story. It is by stratagems like this that I became as powerful as I was then—and will be again, will surely be again.
I put on a glove, with hair and knuckle-lines and nails painted on to look like a hand, and I went to my TV phone and called Good Ben Griswold. He came grinning to the screen.
"I challenge you, Ben," I said. "Tonight at nine, in the Park, by the carousel site."
He laughed at me. He was a tall, heavily muscled man with a thick neck.
I looked at his throat.
"Tonight at nine," I repeated.
He laughed again. "Oh, no, Roger," he said. "Why should I risk my head?"
"You're a coward."
"Certainly I'm a coward," he agreed, still grinning, "when there's nothing to gain and everything to lose. Was I a coward last night, when I took Hull's head? I've had my eye on him a long time, Roger. I'll admit I was afraid you'd get him first. Why didn't you, anyway?"
"It's your head I'm after, Ben."
"Not tonight," he said. "Not for quite a while. I'm not going back to the Park for a long time; I'll be too busy. You're out of the running, anyhow, Roger. How many heads have you?"
He knew, damn him, how far ahead of me he was—now. I let the hate show in my face.
"The Park at nine tonight," I yelled. "The carousel site. Or else I'll know you're afraid."
"Eat your heart out, Roger," he mocked me. "Tonight I lead a parade. Watch me. Or don't—but you'll be thinking about me. You can't help that."
"You swine! You rotten, cowardly swine!"
He laughed; he derided me, he goaded me, as I had done so many times to others. I did not have to pretend anger. I wanted to reach into the screen and sink my fingers in his throat. The furious rage was good to feel. It was very good. I let it build until it seemed high enough. I let him laugh and enjoy it.
Then at last I did what I had been planning. At the right moment, when it looked convincing, I let myself lose all control and I smashed my fist into the TV screen. It shattered. Griswold's face flew apart; I liked that. It was very satisfying.
The connection was broken, of course. But I knew he would check quickly back. I sli
pped the protective glove from my right hand and called a servant I knew I could trust. (He is a criminal; I protect him. If I die, he will die and he knows it.) He bandaged my unharmed right hand and I told him what to say to the other servants. I knew the word would reach Nelda quickly, in the harem, and I knew that Griswold would hear within an hour.
I fed my anger. All day, in the gymnasium, I practiced with my trainers, machete and pistol in my left hand only. I made it seem that I was approaching the berserker stage, the killing madness that overcomes us when we feel we have completely failed.
That kind of failure can have one of two results only. Suicide is the other. You risk nothing then, and you know your body will stand by the Park in its plastic monument. But sometimes the hate turns outward and there is no fear left. Then the Hunter is berserker, and while this makes him very dangerous, he is also good quarry then—he forgets his cunning.
It was dangerous to me, too, for that kind of forgetfulness is very tempting, the next best thing to oblivion itself.
Well, I had set the lure for Griswold. But it would take more than a lure to bring him out when he thought he had nothing to gain by such a risk. So I set rumors loose. They were very plausible rumors. I let it be whispered that Black Bill Lindman and Whistler Cowles, as desperate as I at Griswold's triumph over us all, had challenged each other to a meeting in the Park that night. Only one could come out alive, and that one would be master of New York so far as our age-group counted power. (There was, of course, old Murdoch with his fabulous collection accumulated over a lifetime, but it was only among ourselves that the rivalry ran so high.)
With that rumor abroad, I thought Griswold would act. There is no way to check such news. A man seldom announces openly that he is going into the Park. It could even be the truth, for all I knew. And for all Griswold knew, his supremacy was in deadly peril before he had even enjoyed his Triumph. There would be danger, of course, if he went out to defend his victory. Lindman and Cowles are both good Hunters. But Griswold, if he did not suspect my trap, had a chance at one sure victory—myself, Honest Roger Bellamy, waiting in berserker fury at a known rendezvous and with a right hand useless for fighting. Did it seem too obvious? Ah, but you don't know Griswold.
When it was dark, I put on my hunting clothes. They are bulletproof, black, close-fitting, but very easy with every motion. I blacked my face and hands. I took gun, knife and machete with me, the metal treated so that it would not catch or reflect the light. I like a machete especially—I have strong arms. I was careful not to use my bandaged hand at all, even when I thought no one watched me. And I remembered that I must seem on the verge of berserker rage, because I knew Griswold's spies would be reporting every motion I made.
I went toward Central Park, the entrance nearest the carousel site. That far Griswold's men could track me, but no farther.
At the gate I lingered for a moment—do you remember this, Bellamy within me? Do you remember the plastic monuments we passed on the edge of the Park? Falconer and Brennan and the others, forever immortal, standing proud and godlike in the clear, eternal blocks. All passion spent, all fighting done, their glory assured forever. Did you envy them, too, Bellamy?
I remember how old Falconer's eyes seemed to look through me contemptuously. The number of heads he had taken is engraved on the base of his monument, and he was a very great man.
"Wait," I thought. "I'll stand in plastic, too. I'll take more heads than even you, Falconer, and the day that I do, it will be the day I can lay this burden down . . ."
Just inside the gate, in the deep shadows, I slipped the bandage from my right hand. I drew my black knife and, close against the wall, I began to work my way rapidly toward the little gate which is nearest Griswold's mansion. I had, of course, no intention of going anywhere near the carousel site. Griswold would be in a hurry to get to me and out again, and he might not stop to think. Griswold was not a thinker. I gambled on his taking the closest route.
I waited, feeling very solitary and liking the solitude. It was hard to stay angry. The trees whispered in the darkness. The moon was rising from the Atlantic beyond Long Island. I thought of it shining on the Sound and on the city. It would rise like this long after I was dead. It would glitter on the plastic of my monument and bathe my face with cold light long after you and I, Bellamy, are at peace, our long war with each other ended.
Then I heard Griswold coming. I tried to empty my mind of everything except killing. It was for this that my body and mind had been trained so painfully ever since I was six years old. I breathed deeply a few times. As always, the deep, shrinking fear tried to rise in me. Fear, and something more. Something within me—is it you, Bellamy?—that says I do not really want to kill.
Then Griswold came into sight, and the familiar, hungry hatred made everything all right again.
I do not remember very much about the fight. It all seemed to happen within a single timeless interval, though I suppose it went on for quite a long while. It was a hard, fast, skillful fight. We both wore bulletproof clothing, but we were both wounded before we got close enough to try for each other's heads with steel. He favored a saber, which was longer than my machete. Still, it was an even battle. We had to fight fast, because the noise might draw other Hunters, if there were any in the Park tonight.
But in the end I killed him.
I took his head. The Moon was not yet clear of the high buildings on the other side of the Park and the night was young.
I summoned a taxi. Within minutes, I was back in my mansion, with my trophy. Before I would let the surgeons treat me, I saw to it that the head was taken to the laboratory for a quick treatment, a very quick preparation. And I sent out orders for a midnight Triumph.
While I lay on the table and the surgeons washed and dressed my wounds, the news was flashing through the city already. My servants were in Griswold's mansion, transferring his collections to my reception hall, setting up extra cases that would hold all my trophies, all True Jonathan Hull's and all of Griswold's, too. I would be the most powerful man in New York, under such masters as old Murdoch and one or two more. All my age-group and the one above it would be wild with envy and hate. I thought of Lindman and Cowles and laughed with triumph.
I thought it was triumph—then.
I stand now at the head of the staircase, looking down at the lights and the brilliance, the row upon row of trophies, my wives in all their jewels. Servants are moving to the great bronze doors to swing them ponderously open. What will be revealed? The throng of guests, the great Hunters coming to give homage to a greater Hunter? Or—suppose no one has come to my Triumph, after all?
The bronze doors are beginning to open. And I'm afraid. The fear that never leaves a Hunter, except in his last and greatest Triumph, is with me now. Suppose, while I stalked Griswold tonight, some other Hunter ambushed even bigger game—what if, for example, someone has taken old Murdoch's head? Then someone else would be having a Triumph in New York tonight, a greater Triumph than mine!
The fear is choking me. I've failed. Some other Hunter has beaten me. I'm no good . . .
No. Listen. Listen to them shouting my name! Look, look at them pouring in through the opened doors, all the great Hunters and their jewel-flashing women, thronging in to fill the bright hall beneath me. I feared too soon. I was the only Hunter in the Park tonight, after all. So I have won, and this is my Triumph.
There's Lindman. There's Cowles. I can read their expressions very, very easily. They can't wait to get me alone tonight and challenge me to a duel in the Park.
They all raise their arms toward me in salute. They shout my name.
I beckon to a servant. He hands me the filled glass that is ready. Now I look down at the Hunters of New York—I look down from the height of my Triumph—and I raise my glass to them.
I drink.
Hunters, you cannot rob me now.
I shall stand proud in plastic, godlike in the eternal block that holds me, all passion spent, all fighting done,
my glory assured forever.
The poison works quickly.
This is the real Triumph!
Shambleau, by C. L. Moore
Preface by David Drake
Catherine L. Moore is rightly regarded as one of the most remarkable stylists in the SF field. She once described the basic thread of her fiction as, "Love is the most dangerous thing."
"Shambleau" is a perfect illustration of both the above statements. It's about hard-bitten adventurers ranging the spaceways, meeting violence with violence . . . and it's nothing like any of the many other stories using the same elements being written then or written since then.
It was Moore's first story, written in a bank vault during the Depression because she had a typewriter and no work to do.
Her first story.
Shambleau! Ha . . . Shambleau!" The wild hysteria of the mob rocketed from wall to wall of Lakkdarol's narrow streets and the storming of heavy boots over the slag-red pavement made an ominous undernote to that swelling bay, "Shambleau! Shambleau!"
Northwest Smith heard it coming and stepped into the nearest doorway, laying a wary hand on his heat-gun's grip, and his colorless eyes narrowed. Strange sounds were common enough in the streets of Earth's latest colony on Mars—a raw, red little town where anything might happen, and very often did. But Northwest Smith, whose name is known and respected in every dive and wild outpost on a dozen wild planets, was a cautious man, despite his reputation. He set his back against the wall and gripped his pistol, and heard the rising shout come nearer and nearer.
Then into his range of vision flashed a red running figure, dodging like a hunted hare from shelter to shelter in the narrow street. It was a girl—a berry-brown girl in a single tattered garment whose scarlet burnt the eyes with its brilliance. She ran wearily, and he could hear her gasping breath from where he stood. As she came into view he saw her hesitate and lean one hand against the wall for support, and glance wildly around for shelter. She must not have seen him in the depths of the doorway, for as the bay of the mob grew louder and the pounding of feet sounded almost at the corner she gave a despairing little moan and dodged into the recess at his very side.
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One Page 133