Orbit 12 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  Something far back in Tom’s memory stirred. He said, “Why don’t I get half the kingdom and the daughter?”

  “We don’t do it that way.”

  Swinging his feet around and sitting on the ring, Tom looked across the grass at Flax. “Does he have any gold?”

  “We don’t use it. But he has a twenty-story palace so full of zox he has to sleep in a hotel.”

  “Zox?”

  “It’s the equivalent of a compound in your world. I believe you call it clay.”

  “Your king collects clay?”

  The fat man looked apologetic. “He plays with it.”

  “Oh? How about diamonds?”

  Gute looked apologetic again. “Flax has mountains of diamonds but you couldn’t get them through that measly ring. The smallest ones are bigger than houses.”

  “We’ll break them.”

  “Impossible.”

  “We’ll make the ring larger.”

  “Can’t be done.”

  “Hmmm. What about rubies, sapphires, emeralds, jade, cameo, ivory?”

  “Too big and hard.”

  “Platinum, silver . . .” Tom snapped his fingers. “The Glofs. They’re silver dollars. I’ll take all you have.”

  A pained expression grew on Gute’s long face. “The Glofs create illusions. If you say they were silver dollars it’s because you wanted to see silver dollars when you looked at them.”

  “They were right there. I had them in my hand.”

  “You thought you had. The Glofs have no three-dimensional form. They’re basically harmless and are as much a natural part of our atmosphere as oxygen or this ring which is nothing more than a bit of ruptured space, but they can do considerable damage to weak psyches. A lot of people panic when the Glofs come out to play. Flax panics. I don’t know what he saw but it looked as if he was about to scare himself to death. However, you came along and now you get your reward.”

  Tom smiled without humor. “Do I? Why don’t you just come right out and admit that you have nothing of value?”

  “Oh, but we have. There’s Delp.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The king’s daughter.”

  “But I can get all the girls I want in my own world.”

  “Not like Delp.”

  “You’re wasting my time. I’ll think of something. How about radium or uranium or something like that?”

  “We don’t have enough to fill a hollow tooth.”

  “The fact is you haven’t a nickel’s worth of anything,” said Tom. “This isn’t a world, it’s a balloon.”

  Showing no offense at the words, Gute shrugged and smiled. “It looks like you’re stuck with Delp.”

  The crowd still milled about the king and Tom turned toward them. His indifferent glance slid over bare backs and chests, darted up and down bare legs, touched upon an impossible anatomy and moved onward only to swing back and become fixed.

  What he stared at was a titan the likes of which made his lip curl in a sneer. Too much of anything was always undesirable, eh? She was more than six feet tall, this giantess with a face as fresh as new snow. Hair the color of a pear flowed down her satiny back and danced upon tremendous thighs. For once in his life Tom forgot money and found inspiration in fundamentals. Instinct told him there was nothing like this back home, that there was nothing like this anywhere.

  “Who is that?” he said and pointed.

  “That’s Delp.”

  Slowly getting to his feet, Tom smiled. “Maybe we could make this a permanent arrangement. Maybe I could come back once in a while.”

  The fat man shook his head. “The ring won’t stay where it is. It moves around.”

  “You mean I might be stranded here?”

  “It isn’t due to move for some time. When it does it’ll show up somewhere else and we’ll get some more visitors. I must say they aren’t always pleasant Some pretty weird things stick their heads through that hole.”

  “Then let’s hurry and get on with it. Who’s going to tell the king? I suppose he’ll kick up a fuss.”

  “Goodness, no, we all do this,” said Gute. He sounded surprised. “How else can folks discover the facts of lives? Wait here and I’ll tell him.”

  Tom rocked on his heels and enjoyed the sun. After a while the object of his thoughts came gliding across the grass to him. She stepped up close and stared into his eyes and he was captured by a vision of a mountain, virgin and sleek, with the hot sun shining on it and the breezes blowing a whirlwind.

  Without a word Delp turned and walked back to her father and Gute.

  A minute later the fat man returned. “You wouldn’t want to reconsider?”

  “Why?”

  “Frankly, the girl isn’t too impressed with you.”

  “She backed out?”

  “Nothing of the sort. I only thought I ought to tell you that she’s reluctant.”

  “You’ve told me.”

  “In that case, shall we proceed?”

  The crowd behind them, the two men followed a path through yellow weeds and pale-brown blossoms to a valley where a village sat glistening in the sun. In the center of the village was a white building and it was toward this that Gute led Tom. They left the crowd outside and went through a foyer into a large room.

  With an expression of pride, Gute gestured toward the neat furnishings and immaculate walls. “This is our Recreation Center.”

  Tom didn’t see what white slabs, test tubes and tables had to do with recreation.

  The fat man took him by the arm and drew him to a cabinet that contained some small bottles.

  “State your preference,” he said.

  “What?”

  Gute opened the cabinet, removed four bottles and placed them on a nearby table. “Which one do you prefer? I’m afraid there are only the four. We have several others but they’re for people with really wild anatomies.”

  Frowning at the bottles, Tom said, “I don’t understand.”

  The glance Gute gave him was one of surprise. “You don’t? I’ll run through them to refresh your memory. This first bottle is labeled Primate. That, if you remember your elementary biology, is man. Naturally this one doesn’t count in your situation but I always like to show off whenever I get a chance. The second one is Suidae. That’s . . . darn and confound . . . for some reason I can’t think of the beast’s name. I’m sure you’re familiar with it. It has unsanitary habits, rolls in mud and other revolting substances. Help me think of the name. This creature is fat, sloppy and filthy and people in your world eat it.”

  Tom began to scowl.

  “It makes a noise that sounds like ‘oink.’”

  “Pig,” Tom said automatically.

  “Of course, a pig. How could I have forgotten? Well, we have that one cleared out of the way. This third label is Canidae. That’s the dog species. And here we have the Arachnidae. That, I’m sure you recall, is the—”

  “Spider, but just what—”

  “I can understand if you’re going to say you don’t like the little demons. I don’t care for them myself. But hurry up and tell me which of these species you like best Time is scurrying away and we have a deadline to meet” Gute drummed his fingers on the tabletop and squinted through bright eyes.

  Squinting back at him, Tom said, “Which do I like best? No gold, no jewels and a simple biological function is a complicated ritual.” His own fingers drummed on the table. “Okay. Personally I can’t stand pigs or spiders and since men don’t count I guess that just leaves dogs.”

  Apparently satisfied, Gute nodded. “If you’ll step into that cage over there and take off your clothes I’ll go and fetch Delp. I think shell like your choice.”

  As he started to walk away he looked back with a serious expression. “Just remember that this stuff is dynamite so don’t get any funny ideas.”

  Tom felt his forehead. It was cool so he had no fever. He stuck out his tongue and though he could see only the tip it looked normal. He felt his pu
lse. It was rapid. He squared his shoulders and thumped his belly. Somewhere he had gotten off the right track. In a second or two he would get back on.

  He stepped inside the cage in the corner. It didn’t look much like a cage but was more like a big box with snow-white walls and flooring. He began pulling off his clothes.

  It was a relief when he heard the outside door open and more of a relief when he heard Gute and Delp talking. He bent over to take off his sock just as something stabbed him in the rump. He leaped off the floor with a bellow. Gute stood beside him with a pleased smile on his face and an enormous hypodermic in his hand.

  “Time for my discreet exit,” said the fat man and went out and shut the cage door.

  Tom launched himself at it. It was locked. He swore. He turned to snarl at Delp but backed away from her when he saw her face. Something was wrong with it.

  “I hope you like what you’re going to get,” she said coldly.

  He heard Gute yelling something outside the cage but it was hard to catch the words. “That damned girl changed the labels,” was what he thought he heard. The door burst open and he discovered that he had to raise his head in order to see Gute’s face. He knew he was taller than the other man, yet he had to look up . . . and up . . .

  “Too late now,” Gute said in a faraway voice. “But it will make no difference. If everything didn’t get a kick out of it there wouldn’t be anything.”

  The door slammed.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” yelled Tom. “I don’t care about the reward. I don’t want—” His voice suddenly cracked and broke off and his teeth began to chatter as if he had been dumped into a lake of ice. Off in a corner Delp was shrinking into a dark lump. Tom grabbed at his thundering heart and started spinning like a top. Just as the tips of his toes were all that touched the floor he pitched into a flat spiral and thudded to the floor.

  When he came to, he was afraid to open his eyes. This made him angry so he looked down at himself. What he saw made him shriek. Extending before him and containing enough feeling to convince him that it was an appendage of his own was a long, crooked, hairy spider leg. He wriggled it and saw the tiny hairs sway in the breeze. He ducked his head to take a look at the rest but his practically nonexistent neck allowed him no more than a glimpse of a mound of hairy gruesomeness from which extended seven more legs.

  He leaped up for a frantic rush across the floor. The two feet that his mind told him he possessed and the eight attached to his carcass clashed. Three legs slid backward while the remainder wound up like a licorice stick. He fell on his head.

  Again he tried to run and took another fall, this time landing on his back. The sight of his eight legs pawing the air made him sick.

  It was then that he remembered Delp and his legs miraculously untangled enough to let him stagger up. His span of perception was so narrow that he had to turn his body eight times in order to examine one corner. He found Delp sitting on his right

  She was hair-raising. She was also bigger than he, nearly twice his size, and the implications in this fact made him back away from her. He hoped she hadn’t seen him but he had no sooner finished the thought than she raised her head and gave him a long stare.

  Suddenly she arose and began moving toward him. He scooted on his tail and prayed for a hole to open in the floor. Quick annihilation was preferable to torture by a monster with a balloon for a body and incisors the length of darning needles.

  But spiders didn’t have teeth, he told himself. Correction: Earth spiders didn’t have teeth. Delp continued to follow him. She undulated after him like a mountain balanced on toothpicks.

  “Stop,” he tried to say. A faint crackling sound came out of his mouth.

  Then his back was against the wall and she was in front of him. As he tried to yell she lazily reached out with a feeler and touched him. His eyes widened in astonishment. He sighed and quivered. Rippling sensations shot through his fat body and he entwined his feelers and twitched three of his legs.

  With a coy swing of her body Delp shoved him and he was knocked flat. His brain drugged with visions of moonlight and hot kisses, he reached out and clasped her to him. He couldn’t have loved her more earnestly if she’d been human.

  It seemed to him that it was a long time later when he sank back in an exhausted slump. He was wholly satisfied and pleased with himself. As Delp waddled away he leered at her and tried to whistle. She settled down a few yards away and washed her feet. While she did this he lay and admired the round curves of her figure.

  He was surprised when she raised her head and gave him an ugly stare. She dipped her head at intervals to attend to her washing but she continued to sneak hard peeks at him. After minutes of this routine he grew uneasy.

  Suddenly she stood up. He tensed. She came toward him again, slowly this time, and he backed against the wall. She stopped when she was an inch away, rose to her full height, then seemed to brace herself. It was then that he got a good look at her belly. Squarely in the center of that pulsating globe was a neat red hourglass.

  He tried to yell.

  She leaned over him, fangs dripping, and he raised one leg to fend her off. Her fangs closed on the sensitive tip of his foot. He felt an excruciating pain as the tip separated from the rest of him. A silent scream ripped from his mouth.

  Delp took hold of the wounded leg and severed it at the base. Retreating a short distance, she sat on the floor, took a firm grip on the bloody limb and began to munch on it. As soon as she was finished she started back across the cage.

  This time his scream had sound. Caught in a tornado of pain and terror he bellowed even after he had flopped over in a swoon.

  He was his normal self when he opened his eyes. Delp lay in a corner blinking her eyes and kicking her long legs.

  Taking time to check and make sure he was all in one piece, he bolted for the door. He hit it with the flat of his shoulder and tore it off the hinges in a charge that sent him hurtling across the lab and careening into a table. It buckled beneath his weight and dumped its contents into his lap as he fell. He was about to push away the debris when his hand touched a small bottle. Blinking through tears of fright, he read the label: Canidae. His hand closed on the bottle before he looked up and saw Gute standing over him.

  “You almost got me killed!”

  The fat man stood pale and shaken. His hands plucked at his hairy chest. “I saw it through the scanner. Good grief, I didn’t know it was widow modulate. I didn’t even know we had any.”

  Tom saw his clothes on a bench and leaped for them.

  “What a horrible mistake,” groaned Gute.

  “Mistake, my eye. You and that leggy slut planned this.”

  “I swear I had nothing to do with it. Delp did it. She must be crazy.”

  “I’m lucky to be alive. I’m getting out of this screwy world before you think up another reward.”

  Gute mopped his brow. “You’ll probably never forgive us for this. That damned girl has ruined my reputation. I’m in for one hell of a political fracas.”

  “Don’t expect me to shed any tears.” Tom yanked his coat on and headed for the door.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” said Gute in a worried tone.

  “Not a thing.”

  “Don’t try to take the bottle.”

  “What bottle?”

  “The one you put in your pocket.”

  Tom opened the door and ran out.

  “Don’t do it!” said Gute. “Leave it here.”

  “Not on your life.”

  The fat man hurried after him. “Don’t be a goose. That modulate won’t remain stable in any other dimension. It has a retroactive element that is controlled by our gravity.”

  Looking back over his shoulder, Tom yelled, “I’ll make a fortune with this stuff. I got them both after all, half the kingdom and the girl, and she wasn’t bad for a bug.”

  The streets were empty. Through the village and across the yellow meadow he ran with Gute staggering af
ter him.

  The ring was still there in the same place where he had first entered it. He lengthened his stride.

  “I have to show you your angle!” cried Gute. “Don’t—”

  Tom launched himself into a low flat dive. He sailed through the ring and landed on the other side with a solid thump.

  He stood up and dusted himself off, then looked back at the ring. It was beginning to shrink. Good riddance, he thought. He made as if to walk away and fell flat on his face.