HE rolled his small, agonized eyes from face to face. He lowered his head between the heavy golden shoulders and it seemed to me he was about to lumber forward with his bulldozer gait to crush down opposition and force obedience again. But the opposition was too intangible for crushing. He couldn’t crush a world. There was only one thing left which he could trample under, if he hoped to save his face—himself.
Looking back now, I can see that he had no real choice. It wasn’t only that the world he had ruled without question all his life suddenly presented an unbroken front of flat rebellion to him.
There’s just the barest possibility that if he’d attacked the rebellion openly he might have breached it and lived. I don’t think he could have succeeded but he might have.
There was much more to his surrender than that. Because to overcome the opposition he’d have had to expose his own trickery. He’d have had to stand self-confessed before the people and the priests as a murderer, a liar and a blasphemer against Alchemy. And that he couldn’t do. Hubris can be a force for good as well as for evil in such a case as his. Unwittingly I’d given him a choice between death and glory or life and disgrace, and once he realized what the choice was he never faltered.
For what he did then I had to concede him respect. He straightened, throwing his fat shoulders back so that the golden robes swung magnificently. There was a definite note of baiting in the farewells that roared from the crowd below now. But as he lifted his head they slackened a little to see what he would do.
He made them all a stiff, proud bow.
The little byplay on the platform had been lost upon the throng, who could neither hear nor see it. But something in the attitude of the Hierarch and the priests seemed to convey to them at least that something was about to happen which they didn’t expect.
The baiting note faded from their yells but the volume of the noise did not slacken. They meant him to go. There was a dogged quality in their voices that would not cease while he stood here in their world. He would not again hear any sound in Malesco except the roaring of the people urging him toward Paradise.
There was nothing left for him to do but accept the honor and the glory that was being thrust upon him. He turned with a regal sweep of his robes and with sudden firmness strode unhesitatingly toward the Earth-Gates. He knew what he was doing. He knew better than any of us just then. But he never faltered.
He moved like a juggernaut to the last. He’d always crushed opposition. Now, when it was his own life that stood in the way of the prestige he’d built up and lived by for so long, his hubris sustained him and he crushed that too. He rolled forward with grim pride, refusing to depart from Malesco in anything less than the full dignity of his office. In his own way he was magnificent.
With majestic stride he stepped up on the brink of the Earth-Gates. The blurred sounds of New York traffic and the blurred motions of the lights flickered in his very face as he stood there. He did not hesitate or look back. He raised one arm in a gesture of farewell to the watchers and stepped forward over the threshold.
The last sound he heard must have been the roar of his people driving him out of Malesco and into Paradise.
The people couldn’t see what we saw, on the dais. He’d planned it that way naturally. He hadn’t wanted anybody but the priests to see the trap he’d set for Lorna and me.
He’d had no intention of letting living people return to New York and open the way for more angels from Paradise. He’d had trouble enough as it was. So the Earth-Gates were set to insure that no living person could pass between the worlds.
There was a flare of bright gold when he touched the surface of the screen. The flare was blinding. From below, in the hall, all anybody could see was the upper area of that flash. But from where I stood I saw the figure in the gleaming robes pause for an instant between two worlds, in that singing void I remembered so well myself. He was balanced on the crossbar of the Alchemic A, in effect, the bridge narrow under his feet.
Then fire sprang out all around him.
I saw the golden robes catch and go up in colored flames. I saw his hair catch and burn like a crown. But when the fire took hold on the man himself its brilliance increased suddenly a hundredfold and the Hierarch vanished in a furnace glare which no one who watched could endure to gaze at.
I shut my eyes. Inside the lids for a moment or two the outlines of the burning man were etched clearly, an afterimage incised by the brilliance of the flame that destroyed him. He stood in full outline upon my inner lids for longer than the man himself stood in his own body. I think he was consumed and destroyed before his image faded against my closed eyes.
AND that’s how it happened that Lorna Maxwell and I stepped through onto the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street at three in the morning, dressed in fantastic garments. The lumbering buses and the stone lions were a lot less real to us than the world we’d just left.
When you think about it you have to realize that a lot of clichés are self-fulfilling by definition. Given a particular set-up plus a particular stimulus, the chances are strong that a particular result will follow, trite because it’s more or less inevitable. It wasn’t yet dawn in Malesco when we fulfilled our own cliché and rounded out the ceremony by departing with full grandeur through the Earth-Gates, back to Paradise.
Of course I could have made a speech before I left. I could have said, “There’s no point in making a ceremony of this because your whole religion is based on a fraud. New York’s no more a Paradise than Malesco. The theory of reincarnation is stultifying and alchemy as a religion isn’t going to get you anywhere no matter how hard you try.”
They would probably have mobbed me if I’d said it. You can’t change the thinking patterns of a world overnight by administering a few home truths. It will be a long slow subtle process if it takes place at all. That’s Coriole’s problem, to be tackled sometime in the future. His immediate problem that night was to get rid of Lorna and me quickly.
I had played Prometheus and my part was over. Lorna had been too much the tool of the Hierarch to be welcome in Malesco. The sooner, we were shunted back to Paradise and the Earth-Gates firmly closed behind us, the better.
So we left Malesco. And the gates were closed. I doubt if they will open again in our lifetime. The things that are going on behind it now are probably very interesting and exciting—for Malescans—but they’re no business of ours. Coriole knows what he wants and traffic with earth isn’t on the list.
We left the rose-red city in the throes of its own revolution and came home to Paradise.
EPILOGUE
SHE calls herself Malesca now. You can see why.
And she’s beautiful, all right. Probably her press agent’s telling the truth when he says she’s the most beautiful girl in the world—if you like that kind of beauty. It’s saccharine. I know I couldn’t live with it myself.
Still, the Malescan priesthood knew what it was doing. They were clever psychologists. They worked out all the features that would appeal most strongly to Malescans—who are extremely human.
Pygmalion fell in love with Galatea, didn’t he? Even though he knew she was nothing but a chunk of stone. But the beauty that shaped the stone was irresistible.
Lorna says she loves me. That began a long time ago, before the episode in Malesco. She says she hasn’t changed. But she has, of course. Malesco changed her quite a lot.
She had nothing I wanted before the change and the essential Lorna, the woman behind all that beauty, is exactly the same. I know it. I wish I could forget it. The forces that drive a man or a nation or a world are inarguable. I can’t fight them, myself. I wish I could.
Because—blast all clichés—I love her. In my own way. After a fashion. I couldn’t live with her. You know what she’s like. And that’s why I’d never have gone to the place that night if I’d known she was singing there.
But I sat clinking ice in my glass, listening to Malesca sing. They gave her a beautiful voice. I kept
repeating axioms to myself to drown out the sweetness of the song that was hypnotizing everyone else in the room. “Beauty is only skin deep,” I thought. “Handsome is as handsome does. A bird in the hand—”
Applause in a sudden storm interrupted me. I looked up to see Malesca bowing, making every motion a symphony of grace. Her luminous blue eyes were searching the dimness for me, bewildered and determined as they always were whenever she looked at me.
She wasn’t going to accept refusal. She was going to come to me again as soon as the applause stopped. She was going to sit down beside me and plead against in that lovely throaty voice, soft as velvet and sweet as honey.
I finished my drink in one quick gulp, jumped up and started toward the exit. Behind me the applause died and I heard Malesca’s voice calling, “Eddie, Eddie!”
When I reached the door I was almost running.
COLD WAR
When the Pughs become a mite too troublesome, Grandpa Hogben proves himself a creature of infinite resource!
CHAPTER I
Last of the Pughs
I’LL NEVER have a cold in the haid again without I think of little Junior Pugh. Now there was a repulsive brat if ever I saw one. Built like a little gorilla, he was. Fat, pasty face, mean look, eyes so close together you could poke ’em both out at once with one finger. His paw thought the world of him though. Maybe that was natural, seeing as how little Junior was the image of his pappy.
“The last of the Pughs,” the old man used to say stickin’ his chest out and beamin’ down at the little gorilla. “Finest little lad that ever stepped.”
It made my blood run cold sometimes to look at the two of ’em together. Kinda sad, now, to think back to those happy days when I didn’t know either of ’em. You may not believe it but them two Pughs, father and son, between ’em came within that much of conquerin’ the world.
Us Hogbens is quiet folks. We like to keep our heads down and lead quiet lives in our own little valley, where nobody comes near withouten we say so. Our neighbors and the folks in the village are used to us by now. They know we try hard not to act conspicuous. They make allowances.
If Paw gets drunk, like last week, and flies down the middle of Main Street in his red underwear most people make out they don’t notice, so’s not to embarrass Maw. They know he’d walk like a decent Christian if he was sober.
The thing that druv Paw to drink that time was Little Sam, which is our baby we keep in a tank down-cellar, startin’ to teethe again. First time since the War Between the States. We’d figgered he was through teething, but with Little Sam you never can tell. He was mighty restless, too.
A perfesser we keep in a bottle told us once Little Sam emitted subsonic somethings when he yells but that’s just his way of talking. Don’t mean a thing. It makes your nerves twiddle, that’s all. Paw can’t stand it. This time it even woke up Grandpaw in the attic and he hadn’t stirred since Christmas. First thing after he got his eyes open he bust out madder’n a wet hen at Paw.
“I see ye, wittold knave that ye are!” he howled. “Flying again, is it? Oh, sic a reowfule sigte! I’ll ground ye, ywis!” There was a far-away thump.
“You made me fall a good ten feet!” Paw hollered from away down the valley. “It ain’t fair. I could of busted something!”
“Ye’ll bust us all, with your dronken carelessness,” Grandpaw said. “Flying in full sight of the neighbors! People get burned at the stake for less. You want mankind to find out all about us? Now shut up and let me tend to Baby.”
Grandpaw can always quiet the baby if nobody else can. This time he sung him a little song in Sanskrit and after a bit they was snoring a duet.
I was fixing up a dingus for Maw to sour up some cream for sour-cream biscuits. I didn’t have much to work with but an old sled and some pieces of wire but I didn’t need much. I was trying to point the top end of the wire north-northeast when I seen a pair of checked pants rush by in the woods.
It was Uncle Lem. I could hear him thinking. “It ain’t me!” he was saying, real loud, inside his haid. “Git back to yer work, Saunk. I ain’t within a mile of you. Yer Uncle Lem’s a fine old feller and never tells lies. Think I’d fool ye, Saunkie boy?”
“You shore would,” I thunk back. “If you could. What’s up, Uncle Lem?”
AT that he slowed down and started to saunter back in a wide circle.
“Oh, I just had an idy yer Maw might like a mess of blackberries,” he thunk, kicking a pebble very nonchalant. “If anybody asks you say you ain’t seen me. It’s no lie. You ain’t.”
“Uncle Lem,” I thunk, real loud, “I gave Maw my bounden word I wouldn’t let you out of range without me along, account of the last time you got away—”
“Now, now, my boy,” Uncle Lem thunk fast. “Let bygones be bygones.”
“You just can’t say no to a friend, Uncle Lem,” I reminded him, taking a last turn of the wire around the runner. “So you wait a shake till I get this cream soured and we’ll both go together, wherever it is you have in mind.”
I saw the checked pants among the bushes and he come out in the open and give me a guilty smile. Uncle Lem’s a fat little feller. He means well, I guess, but he can be talked into most anything by most anybody, which is why we have to keep a close eye on him.
“How you gonna do it?” he asked me, looking at the creamjug. “Make the little critters work faster?”
“Uncle Lem!” I said. “You know better’n that. Cruelty to dumb animals is something I can’t abide. Them there little critters work hard enough souring milk the way it is. They’re such teentsy-weentsy fellers I kinda feel sorry for ’em. Why, you can’t even see ’em without you go kinda crosseyed when you look. Paw says they’re enzymes. But they can’t be. They’re too teeny.”
“Teeny is as teeny does,” Uncle Lem said. “How you gonna do it, then?”
“This here gadget,” I told him, kinda proud, “will send Maw’s creamjug ahead into next week some time. This weather, don’t take cream more’n a couple of days but I’m giving it plenty of time. When I bring it back—bingo, it’s sour.” I set the jug on the sled.
“I never seen such a do-lass brat,” Uncle Lem said, stepping forward and bending a wire crosswise. “You better do it thataway, on account of the thunderstorm next Tuesday. All right now, shoot her off.”
So I shot her off. When she come back, sure enough, the cream was sour enough to walk a mouse. Crawling up the can there was a hornet from next week, which I squashed. Now that was a mistake. I knowed it the minute I touched the jug. Dang Uncle Lem, anyhow.
He jumped back into the underbrush, squealing real happy.
“Fooled you that time, you young stinker,” he yelled back. “Let’s see you get your thumb outa the middle of next week!”
It was the time-lag done it. I mighta knowed. When he crossed that wire he didn’t have no thunderstorm in mind at all. Took me nigh onto ten minutes to work myself loose, account of some feller called Inertia, who mixes in if you ain’t careful when you fiddle around with time. I don’t understand much about it myself. I ain’t got my growth yet. Uncle Lem says he’s already forgot more’n I’ll ever know.
With that head start I almost lost him. Didn’t even have time to change into my store-bought clothes and I knowed by the way he was all dressed up fit to kill he was headed for somewheres fancy.
He was worried, too. I kept running into little stray worrisome thoughts he’d left behind him, hanging like teeny little mites of clouds on the bushes. Couldn’t make out much on account of they was shredding away by the time I got there but he’d shore done something he shouldn’t. That much anybody coulda told. They went something like this:
“Worry, worry—wish I hadn’t done it—oh, heaven help me if Grandpaw ever finds out—oh, them nasty Pughs, how could I a-been such a fool? Worry, worry—pore ole feller, such a good soul, too, never done nobody no harm and look at me now.
“That Saunk, too big for his britches, teach him a thing or two, ha-
ha. Oh, worry, worry—never mind, brace up, you good ole boy, everything’s bound to turn out right in the end. You deserve the best, bless you, Lemuel. Grandpaw’ll never find out.”
Well, I seen his checkered britches high-tailing through the woods after a bit, but I didn’t catch up to him until he was down the hill, across the picnic grounds at the edge of town and pounding on the sill of the ticket-window at the railroad station with a Spanish dubloon he snitched from Paw’s seachest.
It didn’t surprise me none to hear him asking for a ticket to State Center. I let him think I hadn’t caught up. He argued something turrible with the man behind the window but finally he dug down in his britches and fetched up a silver dollar, and the man calmed down.
The train was already puffing up smoke behind the station when Uncle Lem darted around the corner. Didn’t leave me much time but I made it too—just. I had to fly a little over the last half-dozen yards but I don’t think anybody noticed.
ONCE when I was just a little shaver there was a Great Plague in London, where we were living at the time, and all us Hogbens had to clear out. I remember the hullabaloo in the city but looking back now it don’t seem a patch on the hullabaloo in State Center station when the train pulled in. Times have changed, I guess.
Whistles blowing, horns honking, radios yelling bloody murder—seems like every invention in the last two hundred years had been noisier than the one before it. Made my head ache until I fixed up something Paw once called a raised decibel threshold, which was pure showing-off.
Uncle Lem didn’t know I was anywhere around. I took care to think real quiet but he was so wrapped up in his worries he wasn’t paying no mind to nothing. I followed him through the crowds in the station and out onto a wide street full of traffic. It was a relief to get away from the trains.
Collected Fiction Page 694