The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

by Fritz Reuter Leiber

  “My cousin just landed in San Francisco,” she told him. “Look at the souvenir he smuggled in for me." He got up carefully and took it from her.

  “Must be your dumb cousin, the one from downstate."

  “Why?"

  “Because, unless I'm very much mistaken, this is a live hand grenade. Look, you'd just have to pull this pin—"

  “Give it to me!"

  But he fended her off, grinning, holding the grenade in the air.

  “Don't be frightened,” he told her, “this is nothing. It's just a flash in the pan, a match head. Haven't you heard of the atom bomb? That's all that counts from now on."

  He enjoyed her fear so much that he kept up his teasing for some time, but after a while he yielded and laid the grenade gingerly away in the back of the closet.

  * * * *

  Afterwards he found he could talk to her more easily than ever before. He told her about the Atomic Age, how they'd be driving around in an airplane with a fuel-tank no bigger than a peanut, how they'd whisk to Europe and back on a glass of water. He even told her a little about his crazy fears. Finally he got philosophical.

  “See, we always thought everything was so solid. Money, automobiles, mines, dirt. We thought they were so solid that we could handle them, hold on to them, do things with them. And now we find they're just a lot of little bits of deadly electricity, whirling around at God knows what speed, by some miracle frozen for a moment. But any time now—” He looked across at her and then reached for her. “Except you,” he said. “There aren't any atoms in you."

  “Look,” he said, “there's enough energy inside you to blow up the world—well, maybe not inside you, but inside any other person. This whole city would go pouf!"

  “Stop it."

  “The only problem is, how to touch it off. Do you know how cancer works?"

  “Oh shut up."

  “The cells run wild. They grow any way they want to. Now suppose your thoughts should run wild, eh? Suppose they'd decide to go to work on your body, on the atoms of your body."

  “For God's sake."

  “They'd start on your nervous system first, of course, because that's where they are. They'd begin to split the atoms of your nervous system, make them, you know, radioactive. Then—"

  “Frank!"

  He glanced out of the window, noticed the light was still in Dr. Jacobson's office. He was feeling extraordinarily good, as if there were nothing he could not do. He felt an exciting rush of energy through him. He turned and reached for Myna.

  Myna screamed.

  He grabbed at her.

  “What's the matter?"

  She pulled away and screamed again.

  He followed her. She huddled against the far wall, still screaming.

  Then he saw it.

  Of course, it was too dark in the room to see anything plainly. Flesh was just a dim white smudge. But this thing beside Myna glowed greenishly. A blob of green about as high off the floor as his head. A green stalk coming down from it part way. Fainter greenish filaments going off from it, especially from near the top and bottom of the stalk.

  It was his reflection in the mirror.

  Then the pains began to come, horrible pains sweeping up and down his nerves, building a fire in his skull.

  He ran out of the bedroom. Myna followed him, saw him come out of the closet, bending, holding something to his stomach. About seconds after he'd gotten through the hall door, the blast came.

  Dr. Jacobson ran out of his office. The corridor was filled with acrid fumes. He saw a woman in a dressing gown trying to haul a naked man whose abdomen and legs were tattered and dripping red. Together they carried him into the office and laid him down.

  Dr. Jacobson recognized his patient.

  “He went crazy,” the woman yelped at him. “He thought he was going to explode like an atom, and something horrible happened to him, and he killed himself."

  Dr. Jacobson, seeing the other was beyond help, started to calm her.

  Then he heard it.

  His thick glasses, half dislodged during his exertions, fell off. His red-rimmed naked eyes looked purblind, terrified.

  He could tell that she heard it too, although she didn't know its meaning. A sound like the rattle of a pygmy machine gun.

  The Geiger-Muller counter was ticking like a clock gone mad.

  IN THE X~RAY

  “Do the dead come back?” Dr. Ballard repeated the question puzzeledly. “What's that got to do with your ankle?"

  “I didn't say that,” Nancy Sawyer answered sharply. “I said: ‘I tried an ice pack.’ You must have misheard me."

  “But...” Dr. Ballard began. Then, “Of course I must have,” he said quickly. “Go on, Miss Sawyer."

  The girl hesitated. Her glance strayed to the large, gleaming window and the graying sky beyond. She was a young woman with prominent eyes, a narrow chin, strong white teeth, reddish hair, and a beautiful, doe-like figure which included legs long and slim—except for the ankle of the one outstretched stockingless on the chair before her. That was encircled by a hard, white, somewhat irregular swelling.

  Dr. Ballard was a man of middle age and size, with strong, soft-skinned hands. He looked intelligent and as successful as his sleekly-furnished office.

  “Well, there isn't much more to it,” the girl said finally. “I tried the ice pack but the swelling wouldn't go down. So Marge made me call you."

  “I see. Tell me, Miss Sawyer, hadn't your ankle bothered you before last night?"

  “No. I just woke up from a nightmare, frightened because something had grabbed my foot, and I reached down and touched my ankle—and there it was."

  “Your ankle didn't feel or look any different the day before?"

  “No."

  “Yet when you woke up the swelling was there?"

  “Just as it is now."

  “Do you think you might have twisted your foot while you were asleep?"

  “No."

  “And you don't feel any pain in it now?"

  “No, except a feeling of something hard clasped snugly around it and every once in a while squeezing a bit tighter."

  “Ever do any sleepwalking?"

  “No."

  “Any allergies?"

  “No."

  “Can you think of anything else—anything at all—that might have a bearing on this trouble?"

  Again Nancy looked out the window. “I have a twin sister,” she said after a moment, in a different voice. “Or rather, I had. She died more than a year ago.” She looked back quickly at Dr. Ballard. “But I don't know why I should mention that,” she said hurriedly. “It couldn't possibly have any bearing on this. She died of apoplexy."

  There was a pause.

  “I suppose the X-ray will show what's the matter?” she continued.

  The doctor nodded. “We'll have it soon. Miss Snyder's getting it now."

  Nancy started to get up, asked, “Is it all right for me to move around?” Dr. Ballard nodded. She went over to the window, limping just a little, and looked down.

  “You have a nice view, you can see half the city,” she said. “We have the river at our apartment. I think we're higher, though."

  “This is the twentieth floor,” Dr. Ballard said.

  “We're twenty-three,” she told him. “I like high buildings. It's a little like being in an airplane. With the river right under our window I can imagine I'm flying over water."

  There was a soft knock at the door. Nancy looked around inquiringly. “The X-ray?” He shook his head. He went to the door and opened it.

  “It's your friend Miss Hudson."

  “Hi, Marge,” Nancy called. “Come on in."

  * * * *

  The stocky, sandy-haired girl hung in the doorway. “I'll stay out here,” she said. “I thought we could go home together though."

  “Darling, how nice of you. But I'll be a bit longer, I'm afraid."

  “That's all right. How are you feeling, Nancy?"

 
“Wonderful, dear. Especially now that your doctor has taken a picture that'll show him what's inside this bump of mine."

  “Well, I'll be out here,” the other girl said and turned back into the waiting room. She passed a woman in white who came in, shut the door, and handed the doctor a large, brown envelope.

  He turned to Nancy. “I'll look at this and be back right away."

  “Dr. Myers is on the phone,” the nurse told him as they started out. “Wants to know about tonight. Can he come here and drive over with you?"

  “How soon can he get here?"

  “About half an hour, he says."

  “Tell him that will be fine, Miss Snyder."

  The door closed behind them. Nancy sat still for perhaps two minutes. Then she jerked, as if at a twinge of pain. She looked at her ankle. Bending over, she clasped her hand around her good ankle and squeezed experimentally. She shuddered.

  The door banged open. Dr. Ballard hurried in and immediately began to reexamine the swelling, swiftly exploring each detail of its outlines with gentle fingers, at the same time firing questions.

  “Are you absolutely sure, Miss Sawyer, that you hadn't noticed anything of this swelling before last night? Perhaps just some slight change in shape or feeling, or a tendency to favor that ankle, or just a disinclination to look at it? Cast your mind back."

  Nancy hesitated uneasily, but when she spoke it was with certainty. “No, I'm absolutely sure."

  He shook his head. “Very well. And now, Miss Sawyer, that twin of yours. Was she identical?"

  Nancy looked at him. “Why are you interested in that? Doctor, what does the X-ray show?"

  “I have a very good reason, which I'll explain to you later. I'll go into the details about the X-ray then, too. You can set your mind at rest on one point, though, if it's been worrying you. This swelling is in no sense malignant."

  “Thank goodness, Doctor."

  “But now about the twin."

  “You really want to know?"

  “I do."

  Nancy's manner and voice showed some signs of agitation. “Why, yes,” she said, “we were identical. People were always mistaking us for each other. We looked exactly alike, but underneath...” Her voice trailed off. There was a change hard to define. Abruptly she continued, “Dr. Ballard, I'd like to tell you about her, tell you things I've hardly told anyone else. You know, it was she I was dreaming about last night. In fact, I thought it was she who had grabbed me in my nightmare. What's the matter, Dr. Ballard?"

  * * * *

  It did seem that Dr. Ballard had changed color, though it was hard to tell in the failing light. What he said, a little jerkily, was: “Nothing, Miss Sawyer. Please go ahead.” He leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on the desk, and watched her.

  “You know, Dr. Ballard,” she began slowly, “most people think that twins are very affectionate. They think stories of twins hating each other are invented by writers looking for morbid plots.

  “But in my case the morbid plot happened to be the simple truth. Beth tyrannized me, hated me, and ... wasn't above expressing her hate in a physical way.” She took a deep breath.

  “It started when we were little girls. As far back as I can remember, I was always the slave and she was the mistress. And if I didn't carry out her orders faithfully, and sometimes if I did, there was always a slap or a pinch. Not a little-girl pinch. Beth had peculiarly strong fingers. I was very afraid of them.

  “There's something terrible, Dr. Ballard, about the way one human being can intimidate another, crush their will power, reduce to mush their ability to fight back. You'd think the victim could escape so easily —look, there are people all around, teachers and friends to confide in, your father and mother—but it's as if you were bound by invisible chains, your mouth shut by an invisible gag. And it grows and grows, like the horrors of a concentration camp. A whole inner world of pain and fright. And yet on the surface —why, there seems to be nothing at all.

  “For of course no one else had the faintest idea what was going on between us. Everyone thought we loved each other very much. Beth especially was always being praised for her ‘sunny gaiety.’ I was supposed to be a little ‘subdued.’ Oh, how she used to fuss and coo over me when there were people around. Though even then there would be pinches on the sly—hard ones I never winced at. And more than that, for..."

  Nancy broke off. “But I really don't think I should be wasting your time with all these childhood gripes, Dr. Ballard. Especially since I know you have an engagement for this evening."

  “That's just an informal dinner with a few old cronies. I have lots of time. Go right ahead. I'm interested.

  * * * *

  Nancy paused, frowning a little. “The funny thing is,” she continued, “I never understood why Beth hated me. It was as if she were intensely jealous. She was the successful one, the one who won the prizes and played the leads in the school shows and got the nicest presents and all the boys. But somehow each success made her worse. I've sometimes thought, Dr. Ballard, that only cruel people can be successful, that success is really a reward for cruelty ... to someone."

  Dr. Ballard knit his brows, might have nodded.

  “The only thing I ever read that helped explain it to me,” she went on, “was something in psychoanalysis. The idea that each of us has an equal dose of love and hate, and that it's our business to balance them off, to act in such a way that both have expression and yet so that the hate is always under the control of the love.

  “But perhaps when the two people are very close together, as it is with twins, the balancing works out differently. Perhaps all the softness and love begins to gather in the one person and all the hardness and hate in the other. And then the hate takes the lead, because it's an emotion of violence and power and action—a concentrated emotion, not misty like love. And it keeps on and on, getting worse all the time, until it's so strong you feel it will never stop, not even with death.

  “For it did keep on, Dr. Ballard, and it did get worse.” Nancy looked at him closely. “Oh, I know that what I've been telling you isn't supposed to be so unusual among children. ‘Little barbarians,’ people say, quite confident that they'll outgrow it. Quite convinced that wrist-twisting and pinching are things that will automatically stop when children begin to grow up."

  Nancy smiled thinly at him. “Well, they don't stop, Dr. Ballard. You know, it's very hard for most people to associate actual cruelty with an adolescent girl, maybe because of the way girls have been glorified in

  advertising. Yet I could write you a pretty chapter on just that topic. Of course a lot of it that happened in my case was what you'd call mental cruelty. I was shy and Beth had a hundred ways of embarrassing me. And if a boy became interested in me, she'd always take him away."

  “I'd hardly have thought she'd have been able to,” remarked Dr. Ballard.

  “You think I'm good-looking? But I'm only good-looking in an odd way, and in any case it never seemed to count then. It's true, though, that twice there were boys who wouldn't respond to her invitations. Then both times she played a trick that only she could, because we were identical twins. She would pretend to be me—she could always imitate my manner and voice, even my reactions, precisely, though I couldn't possibly have imitated her—and then she would ... do something that would make the boy drop me cold."

  “Do something?"

  Nancy looked down. “Oh, insult the boy cruelly, pretending to be me. Or else make some foul, boastful confession, pretending it was mine. If you knew how those boys loathed me afterwards ...

  “But as I said, it wasn't only mental cruelty or indecent tricks. I remember nights when I'd done something to displease her and I'd gone to bed before her and she'd come in and I'd pretend to be asleep and after a while she'd say—oh, I know, Dr. Ballard, it sounds like something a silly little girl would say, but it didn't sound like that then, with my head under the sheet, pressed into the pillow, and her footsteps moving slowly around the bed—she
'd say: ‘I'm thinking of how to punish you.’ And then there'd be a long wait, while I still pretended to be asleep, and then the touch ... oh, Dr. Ballard, her hands! I was so afraid of her hands! But ... what it is, Dr. Ballard?"

  “Nothing. Go on."

  “There's nothing much more to say. Except that Beth's cruelty and my fear went on until a year ago, when she died suddenly—I suppose you'd say tragically—of a blood clot on the brain. I've often wondered since then whether her hatred of me, so long and cleverly concealed, mightn't have had something to do with it. Apoplexy's what haters die of, isn't it, doctor?"

  * * * *

  “I remember leaning over her bed the day she died, lying there paralyzed, with her beautiful face white and stiff as a fish's and one eye bigger than the other. I felt pity for her (you realize, doctor, don't you, that I always loved her?) but just then her hand flopped a little way across the blanket and touched mine, although they said she was completely paralyzed, and her big eye twitched around a little until it was looking almost at me and her lips moved and I thought I heard her say: ‘I'll come back and punish you for this,’ and then I felt her fingers moving, just a little, on my skin, as if they were trying to close on my wrist, and I jerked back with a cry.

  “Mother was very angry with me for that. She thought I was just a little selfish, thoughtless girl, afraid of death and unable to repress my fear even for my dying sister's sake. Of course I could never tell her the real reason. I've never really told that to anyone, except you. And now that I've told you I hardly know why I've done it."

  She smiled nervously, quite unhumorously.

  “Wasn't there something about a dream you had last night?” Dr. Ballard asked softly.

  “Oh yes!” The listlessness snapped out of her. “I dreamed I was walking in an old graveyard with gnarly grey trees, and overhead the sky was grey and low and threatening, and everything was weird and dreadful. But somehow I was very happy. But then I felt a faint movement under my feet and I looked down at the grave I was passing and I saw the earth falling away into it. Just a little cone-shaped pit at first, with the dark sandy earth sliding down its sides, and a small black hole at the bottom. I knew I must run away quickly, but I couldn't move an inch. Then the pit grew larger and the earth tumbled down its sides in chunks and the black hole grew. And still I was rooted there. I looked at the gravestone beyond and it said ‘Elizabeth Sawyer, 1926-48.’ Then out of the hole came a hand and arm, only there were just shreds of dark flesh clinging to the bone, and it began to feel around with an awful, snatching swiftness. Then suddenly the earth heaved and opened, and a figure came swiftly hitching itself up out of the hole. And although the flesh was green and shrunken and eaten and the eyes just holes, I recognized Beth—there was still the beautiful reddish hair. And then the ragged hand touched my ankle and instantly closed on it and the other hand came groping upward, higher, higher, and I screamed ... and then I woke up."