“‘Do you not understand, dear Puckett?’ she asked me. ‘Oh, surely you understand! With us on Demetrio Four it is not the same as with folk elsewhere. We maintain our own most peculiar custom in this.’
“I hadn’t known of that custom at all, but I was caught by it. On Demetrio Four it was not as it is elsewhere. I had heard the vaunt, ‘The men of Demetrio accomplish what no man else has ever done,’ but I had not understood it. With my dear Miseremos on Demetrio Four, it was I who had become pregnant.”
“It reminds me of the young wife,” said Horace the Snake, “who complained to her mother, ‘My Robert is the most wonderful man in the world, but he simply can’t bear children.’ ”
“My period was an easy one,” said Captain Puckett, “and at length I gave birth by the natural method. It was a beautiful baby boy. Our joy was almost complete, and I had no suspicion that my time of shameful failure was at hand. Ah, better I had died in childbirth than have endured such shame!”
“What was it, good Captain Puckett?” asked the President-Emeritus. “In what did you fail shamefully?”
“Couldn’t lactate,” said Puckett. “My wife’s brother had to nurse the child.”
The Club members conferred among themselves. Puckett and Roadstrum and all the crewmen were being weighed in the balance. Was it good enough? Would the hasty tale of Puckett get them into the Club before the crisis (which they all felt but none of them understood) broke?
“Puckett, I didn’t know you were ever on Demetrio Four or in the Daedalian Chersonese at all. It isn’t in your record,” Roadstrum whispered. “And the custom isn’t mentioned in Fisher’s Customs of the Nineteenth Sector. And, come to think of it, there are Demetrios One, Two, and Three, but there isn’t any Demetrio Four.”
“Be a little less of a boy for the moment, Roadstrum,” whispered Puckett. “If we fail the Club, we have our throats slit. If we get into it, there is still a threat mounted here against our lives and liberties, but I believe we can claim asylum as members of the rarest club of them all.”
“For one crime there is no asylum even in the Club,” whispered Horace the Snake, who had sharp ears for whispering. “For all other crimes we give asylum, but for the most heinous crime in the universe we give no asylum.”
“What is the most heinous crime in the universe?” Roadstrum asked.
“Killing a songbird.”
The President himself came in dressed in the robes of his office. He conferred with the President-Emeritus and with the others. They were being very grim about the matter.
“I believe I understand it now,” Crewman Bramble whispered to the Captains. “The arrival of a little while ago, he who looks at us so balefully, is not a man but a sherlocker. We are tracked down.”
Yes, they could all see it now. The thing was a sherlocker, a sky-dick, a snuffling hound. It was a ratter, and they were the rats tracked down. The pipe and the deer-stalker hat were not adjuncts, but parts of its contrived head. It was a burlesque of an old archetypical human head, the Baker Street prototype, but the thing was a hound and it went on four legs (which they had not noticed before).
The President of the Club spoke now.
“In great sorrow I speak. All you the crewmen are accepted as members and are duly inscribed. But that members of the highest Club of all should be guilty of the most heinous crime in the universe! We will meet no more for one year, and we will deck our halls in mourning for a nine year period. Your accuser will speak now, and we share your contempt for him. But as for yourselves—how the shining ones have fallen!”
The thing, the dog, the sherlocker, the sky-dick, the ratter cleared his throat and began.
“I am the latest model of sherlocker, the finest tracker in the universe. Here I had no real starting place since the site of the crime was a contingent one, having no regular location in real space. I had only the smell of a toy that the Roadstrum had played with when he was three years old, some knowledge of the thought patterns of the Bramble, and the information that Margaret the houri had no heartbeat and no heart.
“With great good fortune I first cut the trail after cruising nine megaparsecs at random. A little later I spied a bent clump of grass in empty space, and still later three twigs that pointed. Here and there I noticed that the hydrogen atoms were all bent in a certain direction. Shrewdly I noticed variations in the cosmic flux; something had passed to alter it. Then I cut the trail for the second time and had my direction.
“I am the snufflingest tracker ever, and I can read any patteran ever laid; one of my ancestors was a Gypsy dog. As I closed in on them I deducted a multitude of details. I was able to deduce the middle name of Crewman Trochanter’s maternal grandfather (from the asphyxan in the wake of the hornet), the secret fantasies of Crewman Ursley (from a muted resonance in the Hondstarfer stone-drive), the scalp-itch of Captain Puckett (he is allergic to the Stoimenof salt in the galley of the hornet). It is all down in my notes. I tracked them here. There they sit confounded! Arrest the criminals!”
“Slit his throat!” Roadstrum howled, coming to his feet in the grip of what seemed to be a good idea. “He has told the truth at a meeting of the High Liars. Kill him! Kill him!”
“Of course we’ll kill him,” said the sad President. “We’ll slit his throat, and we’ll drop him through the trap like the dog he is. But not before he’s blown the whistle on you.”
The sherlocker blew an old-style police whistle. Three hundred coppers boiled into the room, manacled the brave hornet-men, and dragged them away to the terrible place from which, it is said, there is no returning.
The place itself, and ne’er a good word spoke of it,
You shiver when you even make a joke of it.
Though some go cocky, gaily in hand-basket there,
The most fare sadly in a clammy casket there,
Where Dante doled “l’orrible soperchio
Del puzzo—e gran pietre in cerchio.”
Undying pain and gaping loss, no doubt of it.
A wide way leading in and no way out of it!
But none have told the blackest horror shrouded there—
Tall teeming terror—but it sure is crowded there!
Ibid
They were taken as prisoners to Hellpepper Planet. They were up in court there before Tiresias, the blind Theban prophet, who had considerable to say about the workings of this place. Tiresias was not really blind; but he had weak eyes and he wore blue glasses. His underlings called him Blinky.
“You are up for the rape and murder of the person and planet of Aeaea,” said Blinky. “I assure you all that a shudder ran through Hell itself here at the news of your crime. Have any of you regrets?”
“Regrets?” Roadstrum asked in a hollow voice. “My only regret is that I didn’t get to hear that fellow tell more of his story at the Club. There were these space warriors, you see, Blinky, and there was their noble and heroic leader, and they—”
“Roadstrum, Roadstrum,” Puckett protested. “It was our old story that he told. ’Twas of ourselves.”
“I know that, but he told it so much better than it happened. How can I be happy in Hell with my ears itching for more of it?”
“A little order here,” Tiresias requested severely. “Something is wrong. This babbling fool cannot be Roadstrum himself?”
“Something is indeed wrong, Blinky,” Roadstrum said evenly. “This silly place cannot be Hell itself?”
“I own a certain disappointment in both,” said one of Tiresias’ lieutenants, “but it is, and apparently you are. If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place.”
“Have you any defense for your damnable crime?” Tiresias asked sharply.
“Do you want a lawyer?” the lieutenant asked. “There are plenty of them to be had here.”
“We’ll be wanting no lawyers,” said big Roadstrum. “We’ve made our pan, so we’ll fry in it. Is that the way the saying goes? Let’s just take a look at the accomm
odations here, fellows.”
“You are not free men to be making examinations,” said Tiresias. “You show signs of levity, and that is the one thing not permitted here. This place is for serious persons only. If you are not serious now, by hell you’ll get serious pretty quick! Hear it! You are sentenced to durance forever. Process them, minions.”
“Hold it!” Roadstrum roared. “Hell, this isn’t Hell! Crewman Bramble, you’re the nearest thing to an intelligent man we have in our party. Can this hayseed place with that pathetic ineptitude on the bench be Hell itself?”
“ ‘They order things so damnably in Hell,’ as the philosopher said. I don’t know, Captain; I just don’t know. It might be.”
“Puckett, go that way,” Roadstrum ordered. “Trochanter, go the other. Blinky, shut up. Report back to me within the hour on the size of this place and the torture facilities here. Now then, Blinky, while they’re about it, I’ll just have a look at that register of yours there and see who is signed into this place. Kstganglfoofng!! It’s hot!” (Roadstrum sometimes used high-Shelta swear words, as did many skymen.)
“Of course it’s hot, Roadstrum. Everything is hot here,” said Blinky Tiresias, “and you won’t get used to it.”
“That’s all right; that makes it a little more like the real thing. A man’d have to have asbestos hands to handle that register, but why are the names in it writ so small?”
“Everything is writ small here, Roadstrum. There’s such a lot to be crowded in.”
“But you do torture, you do rend and tear, and break and burn?”
“Certainly, certainly, Roadstrum.”
“You have all the monsters and stenches, all the white-hot rocks, all the pits of flame, all the soul-burning regret, all the horror and shrieking without end?”
“We have it all, Roadstrum. You will have your surfeit of it.”
“But it bedevils me, Blinky, where you have room for it. This is a small place.”
“We haven’t room for it. It’s awfully crowded. Millions and millions, you know.”
Looking generally bedraggled and with their feet smoking, Puckett and Trochanter were back from their explorations.
“I believe it’s a fake, Roadstrum,” said Puckett with deep disappointment. “This isn’t the Hell I believed in. It’s as though we looked at it all through the wrong end of the glass. Oh, there’s torture enough, crude and raw, and there are the millions of sufferers. But it’s all too small, too small.”
“It isn’t a hundred meters across,” declared Trochanter. “And the tortures are repetitious. No real imagination in them. Not what you’d like. I think we’d better shop around for a better Hell before we commit ourselves here.”
“You can’t,” said Tiresias. “You’re already committed here. This is all the Hell there is.”
“Be reasonable, Blinky,” said Roadstrum. “What reason have we to believe you? It seems inadequate to my men and it seems inadequate to me. This petty place cannot be—”
“This petty place cannot be Hell, Roadstrum? Ah, but it is, my friend. That, you see, is the hell of it. Minions, minions, we waste time. Prepare them.”
“Blinky, where are the towering flames?” Roadstrum demanded.
“It’s all high-frequency cookers, Roadstrum. No smoke, no flame, no mess.”
“But it’s too small. There is not even room for all the old-time horse-thieves.”
“It is crowded, yes, but we make room. Get with it, minions. First you will miniaturize them.”
“Miniaturize!!!” howled Roadstrum. “Miniaturize!!!” howled they all.
“Nobody will ever miniaturize me!” Roadstrum roared. And then he broke loose with an inexcusable display of shouting and bad manners:
“It stifles, it shrinks! Where are great fires and the bottomless pits? Where is the howling of the triply-damned, and the clanking of monsters? I’d go to Hell in black glory if it fell to my lot, but I will not abide in this place! It’s a rumble, men; rise in your wrath! Break out of it!”
“It’s a rumble,” they roared like cresting waves, great Puckett and Trochanter and Clamdigger and Threefountains and all.
Man-a-bleeding, but they broke out of that place! You say it can’t be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them.
In a way, this was their greatest feat. No one else had ever broken out of there before. But they were still in sad straits, without craft, lost and in great pain, mired in the boiling swamps a little to the south of Hell. How, how would they ever get off of Hellpepper Planet? Was it possible that any of them should live through this thing?
CHAPTER EIGHT
More gory episodes omit we ken of them;
The Chantey sings ten years filled up with ten of them.
Of crewmen dead we weep, and what a row they had!
And some had gotten home but none knows how they had.
All high adventures, twined as vermicellio,
Through carpers carp “the thing’s distinctly paleo.”
Great Road-Storm wished he’d never seen the first of it,
He didn’t guess the last would be the worst of it.
Penultimate we give with wry apology
This mithermenic of a new mythology.
Aliunde
ROADSTRUM always said that he walked home from Mars, the last lap of his journey. This may not have been true. He had fallen into habits of untruth somewhere along the way. But he came home, home to Big Tulsa the marvelous, the Capital of World.
He arrived alone, in evil case, to find troubles in his house. He was broke and bewhiskered and tired to the marrow of his bones. And yet he was a man of means, so he made a short visit to replenish those means.
The bank had been modernized. It was a transparent young lady who waited on him. It wouldn’t have startled him on one of the other worlds, but it did at home.
“I am unsure,” he said. “Are you people?”
“I also am unsure,” said the young lady, “since our position is presently under litigation. Actually we are the newest thing in people. Soon there will be none produced in the old manner. You will have to admit that it was a very grotesque arrangement. Here is your account, Mr. Roadstrum, supplementary name Great Road-Storm.”
“Ah, it shocks me to see how it has shrunken.” Roadstrum studied it. “It may yet be enough for a modest life, but something has gone amiss with it.”
“There have been some fabulous withdrawals, sir. Not many fortunes would have survived such. Is this all you wish to withdraw now, sir?”
“That is enough for now. And block the account.”
“Block the account? Penny will be furious.”
“I hope so. Thank you, young, er—lady.”
Roadstrum went to his house. Little Tele-Max was playing out front. Tele-Max was still little. Roadstrum had been gone for twenty years, what with one thing and another. The kid was a runt or he’d have grown bigger than that.
“Hello, Papa,” Tele-Max said.
“Hello, Tele-Max. How did you know me?”
“From your pictures. You have become a legend; but that was several years ago; you’re pretty much on the shelf now. There is nothing older than yesterday’s legends.”
“I know it. But what is that hellish racket, Tele-Max? You’d think even the trees would drop dead from that terrible noise.”
“Oh, that’s Mama and the suitors, and the song they always play. The trees did die from the noise. These are artificial trees.”
“Suitors? What are they doing, having a party?”
“Papa, they’ve been having a party for twenty years.”
“What do the neighbors say?”
“I don’t remember any neighbors. I guess they all left a long time ago.”
“That song is like salt in an open wound, Tele-Max. Did not your mother used to play it to excess many years ago? Did I not once destroy the tape of it?”
“So family tradition has it, Father. But they hav
e worn out more than five hundred tapes of it since. That is the latest version they are playing now, by the Chowder Heads. You could hardly have heard it before.”
“All thanks for small favors. I’ve been made a monkey out of by singing that was singing, and should I fall to this? I tell you what, Tele-Max, your mother has not seen me for twenty years. Another couple of hours will not matter. I will have to find the strength to face this. I wonder what I did about the suitors the first time. Wasn’t there a first time?”
“The first time, Papa? The story is that you impressed them by shooting an arrow through twelve holes in a row. Later you killed them.”
“What is an arrow, Tele-Max?”
“I don’t know either, Papa.”
There is one place where all the important persons of World come at least once a day, the Plugged Nickel Bar; and Roadstrum’s old mates were all, in their own way, important persons. Roadstrum entered the portal (it had only a single narrow door) and the only one of his old friends he saw was Margaret the houri.
“Are you ship, shape?” he asked her.
“I am always ship,” said Margaret. “I remember you a little. Were you not a pet monkey that I once had?”
“I was a pet monkey, but you didn’t have me,” he said. “Want to tie one on, Maggy?”
“Maggy? I, sir, am Charisse, or perhaps I am Chiara. I have been trying on roles. This time I shall assume a very arty role. Everything has become very arty on World.”
“Ah well, Charisse or whoever, want to swing a gantry?”
“What an antiquated expression! No, I do not. No offense, but not with you. You are a space-ace. Don’t you know that they’re dead?”
“Most of them are.”
“Oh, they’re finished. The swish boys are all the thing again. I will get me a very delicate one, a limp limpet. It is all the thing to be very delicate and a little weary.”
Space Chantey Page 14