The R a Lafferty Fantastic Megapack

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Shall we?” asked one of the investigators.

  “Yes,” said the mayor. “It’s our only hope. Get her anything she wants.”

  And it was all assembled.

  “Why does she get all the attention?” asked Clarence. “I was the one who made all the things disappear. How does she know how to get them back?”

  “I knew it!” cried Clarissa with hate. “I knew he was the one that did it. He read in my diary how to make a disappearer. If I was his mother I’d whip him for reading his little sister’s diary. That’s what happens when things like that fall into irresponsible hands.”

  She poised the hammer over the mayor’s gold watch, now on the floor.

  “I have to wait a few seconds. This can’t be hurried. It’ll only be a little while.”

  The second hand swept around to the point that was preordained for it before the world began. Clarissa suddenly brought down the hammer with all her force on the beautiful gold watch.

  “That’s all,” she said. “Your troubles are over. See, there is Blanche Manners’ cat on the sidewalk just where she was seven days ago.”

  And the cat was back.

  “Now let’s go down to the Plugged Nickel and watch the fireplugs come back.”

  They had only a few minutes to wait. It came from nowhere and clanged into the street like a sign and a witness.

  “Now I predict,” said Clarissa, “that every single object will return exactly seven days from the time of its disappearance.”

  The seven-day terror had ended. The objects began to reappear.

  “How,” asked the mayor, “did you know they would come back in seven days?”

  “Because it was a seven-day disappearer that Clarence made. I also know how to make a nine-day, a thirteen-day, a twenty-seven day, and an eleven-year disappearer. I was going to make a thirteen-year one, but for that you have to color the ends with the blood from a little boy’s heart, and Cyril cried every time I tried to make a good cut.”

  “You really know how to make all of these?”

  “Yes. But I shudder if the knowledge should ever come into unauthorized hands.”

  “I shudder, too, Clarissa. But tell me, why did you want the chemicals?

  “For my chemistry set.”

  “And the black velvet?”

  “For doll dresses.”

  “And the pound of rock candy?”

  “How did you ever get to be mayor of this town if you have to ask questions like that? What do you think I wanted the rock candy for?”

  “One last question,” said the mayor. “Why did you smash my gold watch with the hammer?”

  “Oh,” said Clarissa, “that was for dramatic effect.”

  DAY OF THE GLACIER

  Originally published in Science Fiction Stories, January 1960.

  The Fifth or Zurichthal glaciation of the Pleistocene began on the morning of April 1, 1962, on a Sunday about nine o’clock by eastern time. This was about twenty-five hours earlier than Doctor Ergodic Eimer had calculated; it threw him into panic, as his preparations were not entirely completed.

  Lesser persons had been thrown into a panic nearly an hour before by a series of lesser events. And yet on an ordinary day they would have been of major magnitude.

  It was that the thirty-three ICBM launching buses of the United States and Canada had been destroyed simultaneously. Full details were not immediately available, and now due to subsequent catastrophes they are lost forever.

  Radio and TV news flashes tried to give a warning and fragmentary details, but on every channel and frequency the same cool voice would always cut in: “This is an April Fools Day simulated news broadcast. Do not be alarmed. This program is fictional.”

  Congress had been in session for three months, and the new Peace Faction was completely dominant. As is known to all who are acquainted with Mergendal’s Law of Parliamentary Subversion, in all of the once free countries that had succumbed to the Controlled Statists (now thirty-seven) it was subsequently discovered that twenty percent of the elected had clandestinely been working for the Controlled Statists all along; that sixty percent had no true principles or basis of belief of any sort and no practical aim except to be on the winning side, and that a final twenty percent were to some degree die-hards, more or less devoted to the old way.

  * * * *

  Incidentally, at this moment the latter percent had virtually ceased to exist. A series of nearly one hundred mysterious early morning murders in Washington, Chevy Chase, Silver Spring, New York and other not-too-widely scattered locations had done for most of them. This was not widely known even now, several hours later; although curiously the accounts of several of their deaths were in the Metropolitan papers before they happened. In the case of one, at least, it did not happen at all; he had forewarning and was miles away at the time of the attempt.

  It had been unseasonably warm and dry for six weeks, for which reason nearly everyone except Doctor Ergodic Eimer and his cronies were surprised by the sudden chill and quick heavy snow.

  They were in feverish preparation, having to telescope many hours of work into one. When they got to the airport, three inches of snow had already fallen, and it was as though it had only begun. They left quickly in three chartered planes, the last ever to leave there.

  In the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard, only a little over five inches of snow fell in the first hour; but in the second hour more than seventeen. Many people of the nation seeing the fantastic accumulation simply went to bed for the day. And millions of them stayed there till they died; there was no way out.

  America died that week except for a few lingering communities on the Gulf of California, and the lower Mexican deserts, and the snow dusted Indies. Europe died, and most of Asia, and the southern continents froze from the bottom up. Melbourne and Sydney and Port Elizabeth were buried, as well as Buenos Aires; and even Rio right on the tropic had seven feet of snow.

  * * * *

  “The last time it happened,” said Doctor Eimer, “the Padiwire Valley was a good place. We know this from our previous studies and our preparatory expedition there last year.”

  “Who would have thought,” asked Professor Schubert, “that an ice age could have come so suddenly?”

  “Apparently only myself,” replied the good doctor. “I told everybody worth telling but had very little response for my trouble. It isn’t as though we haven’t had four very recent ones to study. It isn’t as though it weren’t written plainly in the rocks for everyone to see. Though I must say,” he continued as he shivered in his great coat, “that this was a mighty short inter-glacial—actually less than twenty thousand years of what we might call really nice weather.”

  “Will it snow long?” asked Violet, his somewhat overcharming secretary. Dr. Eimer often said that he kept Violet for her looks only, as she was not much smarter than the average PhD.

  “I think not,” he answered. “Possibly not more than ninety thousand years of maintained snow, and the accumulation itself will come in the first fraction of that period; a very short duration. This will be a sort of sport among the ice ages. There is no good reason for it to happen, and it could have been prevented. However, once the balance is tipped, it takes it a little while to swing back. We can be thankful that it will not be as long nor as cold as Wurm.”

  “Or Mindel or Riss,” said Professor Schubert.

  “Or Gunz,” said Professor Gilluly. “I’d hate to have to go through that one again.”

  “None of you act as though it were serious,” said Violet.

  “Yes,” said Doctor Eimer, “the world is dying and that is serious. But we will save ourselves, and part of the luggage we take with us is a little good humor. If we are too serious, we will die also. The serious always die first.”

  * *
* *

  “What was wrong with your calculations?” asked Professor Schubert. “If we hadn’t cut and run for it, we’d never have made it. Another half hour and we’d have been trapped for good.”

  “My calculations, as always, were perfect. But the balance was so delicate that a bit of unlooked for turbulence set it off.”

  “Turbulence?”

  “Possibly less than two hundred fission warheads that struck our launching bases. Who would have believed that such a little thing could upset the balance a day early. But the balance was delicate.”

  “LaPlace-Mendira said that an ice age must be preceded by a thirty thousand year cooling-off period.”

  “LaPlace-Mendira is an idiot. The Siberian mammoths were frozen solid with green grass between their teeth. There was no more a cooling-off period then than now. In ninety or a hundred thousand years from now, black Angus cattle will be found in the Kansas snow frozen solid with green grass in their several stomachs. It will be a wonder—black, proto-bovine animals with incredibly short legs, and looking almost like a cross between a pig and a cow. You know, of course, that all cattle at the beginning of the fifth interglacial will be red, or red and white, and quite tall.”

  “I had not known that.”

  “It seems that almost anybody would be able to predict the way the combination color and shoulder-height-coefficient gene would respond under moderately prolonged glacial stress.”

  “To tell you the truth, Doctor, I’ve never given it a thought.” Professor Gilluly, in some ways, seemed not to have a complete scientific devotion.

  “But it never before glaciated the whole surface of the earth.”

  “Nor will it now.”

  “But you said that even the Padiwire Valley where we are going will have ice and snow.”

  “Oh, that is only temporary—a period of so short duration that we can disregard it, except of course to take precautions that we don’t freeze to death. I venture that it will not have fallen to within fifteen degrees above zero when we land there, and there will be less than nine inches of snow. You must remember that it is nearly on the equator, and we are less than two weeks from the vernal equinox. The quick-freeze period will last less than ten days. Then the clouds will clear, for the simple reason that all the moisture will have fallen, and the sun will have come through. And here, at least, the snow will somewhat melt—though further north and south it will not.

  “For a period of about seven years there will be very heavy snowfall and the ocean depth will drop about five feet a year. Then we enter the next phase—which will last no more than eighty-five years—when the snow will continue to accumulate on earth, but at a reduced rate, and the sea level will drop only about a foot a year. After that, the ice age will be barely able to maintain itself and will essentially be over.

  “It is true that the snow will linger for another eighty-thousand years, but it will not greatly increase. And one day it will begin to diminish, and this will be much more rapid than experts believe. Then the oceans will rise at the rate of a foot a year for a hundred years, and a large part of the land will have different and larger rivers, and some former islands will be joined to the mainland, and new islands will be sliced off.”

  “You can predict ninety-thousand years, but can you tell us what is happening right now? How did the other two planes get ahead of us?”

  “If they did, then I can only say that they passed us in the snow for it does look as though two planes have already landed.”

  “Well, does it look as if we have already landed too?” asked Violet. “There is a third plane down there. Is that us?”

  “Obviously it is not. Are you getting light-headed? There are, if you will look closely, at least seven planes there. Well, we have made no preparations for landing elsewhere. We will land as we planned.”

  And as soon as they touched down they were taken into custody.

  * * * *

  Nauchnii-Komandir Andreyev, known in scientific circles as the Anagallic, was pleased and perfunctory.

  “Ah, liddle Doctor Eimer, is it true you are not a complete idiot? I had thought you were nearly complete. An idiot may, or may not know enough to come in out of the rain, but you have come in out of the snow. You surprise me. As you see we are in total control. These three are your only planes?”

  “No. No. We have quite an armada on the way.”

  “Those who are not practiced should lie little or not at all. But there has been stupidity all around. This morning our leaders thought they would have the whole world in their hand, and this afternoon it is some of their delegates who do have all that will be left of it. It pleases me the way it happened. I would not have changed it if I could. I am now the commander of the world.”

  “You are not our commander.”

  “You are dogs. Learn that. We have studied the Eskimo, and one rule they have: the dogs do not sleep in the house or the tent. The dogs grow lazy if they sleep inside. We have your equipment. You are the dogs and you will sleep in the snow and learn your place.”

  “We will see.”

  “We have already seen. We have you outnumbered now by three hundred to fifty. It will not always be so we hope—the working dogs should outnumber the men. But our positions will not change. You know (though few others hold theories that coincide with my own) that during the last ice age, the Wurm, there were two types of men or near-men: the Neanderthal who were the masters, and the Grimaldi who were their slaves. We are the new Neanderthalan and you are the new Grimaldi. We had thought to use a few jungle Indian remnants for that, but now we will use you.

  “But you must be more numerous. There seems to be only twenty-seven women among you, and my census clerk has just reported that fifteen of them are without mates. This will be corrected. Arrange it among yourselves, but arrange it by nightfall. And remember, we expect fruition within nine months. I believe that in one of your obsoleted books there is a phrase about cutting down the tree that will not bear fruit. And do not any of you get peculiar ideas about resisting. We have with us a sadist group. I shudder at these things myself, but those to whom I delegate them will not shudder.”

  * * * *

  They were in a white and brown world. The savanna vegetation on the fringe of the jungle, unacquainted with frost for thousands of years, withered at its touch. Every growing thing seemed suddenly to die. Yet the snow could not yet cover it all, it was too lush and high and thick; the small trees would bend with its weight, and then spring free and shake it off their crowns, so that when it finally covered them it covered them from the bottom up.

  “Can we even live here?” asked Violet. “It seems that we could starve or freeze here as easily as at home. We might not freeze quite as hard, if that is any comfort.”

  “No, we will do neither,” said Gully Gilluly. “We will not have it bad. By dark tonight a million birds will descend on this valley. They will perch on every tree and bush and on the ground. We can knock ten thousand of them in the heads and stack them in the snow.

  “We cannot lack for fuel. Enough trees for a hundred years have been struck dead here within several hours. And within ten days there will be better adapted new vegetation start through the old. Dr. Eimer says this always happens; that seeds that have been here dormant since Wurm will now come to life. And by that time there will be patches through the snow. We will have two three-month periods a year when much of the snow will disappear, and we will be in the middle of one of them. It will not be bad. Of course we will have to get the jump on our little red minded brothers. That will not be easy.”

  “Oh, don’t hurry about that. They have one good idea. I would kind of like to have a mate by evening. Do you have any ideas?”

  “I have an idea about what your idea is. But what is that look on your face? If it’s a smile, it surely has some odd overtones. Viol
et, don’t look at me like that. I can’t get married. Violet—I have my work to do.”

  “Your work is back in New York under quite a few feet of snow. Think how deep it’ll be by morning. And just remember, it will be nearly ninety thousand years before you can get back to it. That’s a long time to be a bachelor.”

  “Yes, that’s a long time, Violet—I never thought about it that way.”

  “Which would you rather have, me or the sadist group?”

  “I don’t know, Violet. There’s a lot to be said against both of you. Oh, I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. I would prefer you immeasurably to the sadist group. But I have a stubborn streak. I will not be forced by these jokers.”

  “Couldn’t you be stubborn about something else? There will be much you can be stubborn about under these new circumstances.”

  “I will be stubborn about this. Maybe it is only about fifteen above zero, maybe there are only seven or ten inches of snow. And even though it will moderate within ten days it will be bitter tonight. Be a good girl, get your bolo, and see how much wood you can cut.”

  “I had a date tonight for the opening of ‘Pink Snow’. Now I don’t believe there will be any opening, and my boyfriend has probably frozen to death.”

  They worked hard as the afternoon wore on. Commander Andreyev kept buzzing around them; and, though he was insulting, yet he seemed to want their company.

  “Professor Gilluly, you are high in the confidence of Dr. Eimer. Has he any particular ideas of governing this colony?”

  “None that I know of. Ask him. Here he comes.”

  “No. None, Andy—we figured it would take care of itself.”

  “And now providently we have taken that worry from you.”

  “There was no worry, and you have taken nothing from us.”

  “I am the commander of the world,” said Andreyev.

  “You said that before.”