Nothing is there.
Trembling now, after the fact, John begins to walk downstairs. It is like wading through hardening glue, and with every step the glue gets deeper and stiffer. He holds very tightly to the one proper thought, because he knows now what happens to people-seeds who are caught too tightly by the world, unable to sink completely out but unable to stop trying to sink—they go insane. They become psychotic: catatonic, schizophrenic, autistic, God knows what else. Ghosts, maybe. Poltergeists, throwing things around in fits of hapless rage because no one in the world will notice them anymore—those who’ve sunk too far out to be seen by normals, but not far enough to escape. What percentage of seeds did make it through, and how many of those took? How barren was the field the continuum was attempting to seed? Who knows, God knows—the same answer, and the only one there was.
John reaches the foot of the stairs, and it feels now like he is in glue up to his armpits—on the way across the living room it is over his head completely and he is swimming through murky syrup. By the time he has reached the outside door he has to batter and buffet against the air for every step, as if he is a man trying to bull his way through a high snowdrift, breasting it, breaking it down. One flailing hand catches and holds the doorknob. He turns it and pushes, throwing his weight against the door. It is like slamming into a mountain. He surges against the door twice more, feeling the blood drain from behind his eyes, feeling himself starting to black out. Then, all at once, the door flies open with a despairing crack and groan, and John stumbles outside. He has one glimpse of ghostly white birches, and then the flagstone path is drifting slowly up toward his face. He is puzzled for a moment, as the flagstone inches closer, and then he realizes that he must be falling. His face touches, and is pressed flat against the flagstone, eyes still open, and he continues to fall, into the stone, into the earth, going down.
Asleep—floating in suspension somewhere, turning over and over, falling endlessly—John dreams of the infinitely complex question that is life, that is the world. And, without the encumbrance of mind or body or ego, he can see the problem clearly and completely for the first time, and he numbers each of the millions of hidden relationships and cross-relationships, totals them, and comes up with the one underlying, unifying relationship: the lowest common denominator. The Answer to It All. And he laughs in his sleep, as he falls. It was so absurdly simple after all.
John comes awake with a faint bump, as if he is a feather, falling weightlessly for a million miles, that has finally drifted to the ground. He rolls over, scattering leaves and leaf mulch, and sits up. He opens his eyes, and is dazzled by the day. The light, he thinks, dazedly, the quality of the light. He staggers to his feet, falls, lurches up again, filled with a thousand wild terrors, his throat clogged with primordial horror, his mouth strained wide to scream. And then he stops, abruptly, and sinks again to his knees, his mouth slowly closes, and his shoulders unhunch, and the tension goes out of his frame muscle by slow muscle, and something suspiciously like peace begins to seep, grudgingly and gradually, into his haggard face.
By the sun, he is on the east-facing slope of a mountain, a small wooded, rolling mountain like those he can remember seeing on his original ride in from town—in fact, it seems, as far as he can tell, to be one of the same mountains. But now, a hundred feet below him, breaking in gentle waves against a rocky scrub beach, and rolling back from there to the horizon, breathing and calm and shining, with the rising sun painting a red road through its middle and touching every whitecap with flecks of deep crimson, with seagulls wheeling over it and skimming across it in search of breakfast, with its damp salt stink and the eternal booming hiss of its voice—stretched out below him now, deep and full of life, is the ocean.
And the rich black dirt under his fingers.
The earth is fertile. There will be a crop.
Afternoon at Schrafft’s
Introduction to Afternoon at Schrafft’s
Here is a story of a wizard and his cat. “Afternoon at Schrafft’s,” though a jape at heart, surprisingly has heart to spare—and depth yet. Could that be because it’s a true story—Gardner’s?
I dropped in on Gardner once with a gang of scribblers from the Sycamore Hill writers workshop. From our palatial accommodations at the Brown University campus we descended on his close dense digs booming, between Gardner’s own genius and his wife, writer Susan Casper’s, with creativity and charm. Here was his “real” world, humble and strait, and there, everywhere, was the man’s art, gratia gratis, apparently, by the lights of these United States.
The Tarot’s Fool steps blissfully from the precipice. Man does not live by bread alone. The wizard’s change-purse (back to the story now) is battered and empty of all but lint—well, and a polished bat skull (or a lucite Hugo?). His familiar, the cat, berates the wizard’s profitless senescence. “Without me you couldn’t even pay the check,” Gardner has it say. What wizard, what artist, what science fiction writer (hell, what soul) is quite free of that nagging voice?
In his kind letters to me, between rejection slips, Gardner half-jokingly bemoaned his sparse hair and (what he saw to be) his sparse(!) achievements as a writer. This was usually in the same graph that he announced yet another limb he was climbing out on to publish my gonzo screeds. Robust and redoubtable codger! Wizard, let’s say. Is he dogged by a certain cat? “Afternoon at Schrafft’s” is crafted via recurrent oppositions of sublime and ridiculous, the low comedian’s stock in trade—and the high philosopher’s: fantasy vs. convention, the esoteric vs. the quotidian, down-and-dirty New Yorker Yiddishisms vs. the urbane Manhattan sophistication that, if the world turns upside-down (and it does), will never lift a brow. Shades of Avram Davidson (another beneficiary of Dozois’ editorial largess), whose “Golem” pitted, to hilarious effect, the august and numinous pronouncements of the creature against an old Jewish couple’s suburban banalities. Or think of recent Nebula winner Leslie What (yet another Dozois find), likewise a master of the art of the underclass, who finds transcendent nobility in a flash frozen chicken breast—or vice versa.
“’Reality,” said Nietzsche, “is a word that deserves always to be put between goosefeet.” I.e., quotes. Or cat’s paws rather? The trick of this short story is that, in the end, all the poles are reversed. The “real,” what seemed pat and solid, becomes outrageous—though smug as ever—while the fantastic is seen to be the more durable realm. And, not to let the cat quite out, the soul (wizard) and its worldly critic (cat) attain a certain harmony here, a certain love, even, sweet as Bradbury, restoring the hair and celebrating the art of all Gardner’s magical artisan ilk, though their purses be full of lint, polished bat skulls, and nothing.
Eliot Fintushel
Afternoon at Schrafft’s
by Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann,
and Michael Swanwick
The wizard sat alone at a table in Schrafft’s, eating a tuna sandwich on rye. He finished off the last bite of his sandwich, sat back, and licked a spot of mayonnaise off his thumb. There was an ozone crackle in the air, and his familiar, a large brindle cat, materialized in the chair opposite him.
The cat coldly eyed the wizard’s empty plate. “And where, may I ask, is my share?” he demanded.
The wizard coughed in embarrassment.
“You mean you didn’t even leave me a crumb, is that it?”
The wizard shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “There’s still a pickle left,” he suggested.
The cat was not mollified.
“Or some chips. Have some potato chips.”
“Feh,” sneered the cat. “Potato chips I didn’t want. What I wanted was a piece of your sandwich, Mister Inconsiderate.”
“Listen, aggravation I don’t need from you. Don’t make such a big deal—it’s only a tuna fish sandwich. So who cares!”
“So who cares?” the cat spat. “So I care, that’s who. Listen, it’s not just the sandwich. It’s everything! It’s your attitude.”
“Don’t tal
k to me about my attitude—”
“Somebody should. You think you’re so hot. Mister Big Deal! The big-time Wizard!” The cat sneered at him. “Hah! You need me more than I need you, believe me, Mister Oh-I’m-So-Wonderful!”
“Don’t make me laugh,” the wizard said.
“You couldn’t get along without me, and you know it!”
“I’m laughing,” the wizard said. “It’s such a funny joke you’re making, look at me, I’m laughing. Hah. Hah. Hah.”
The cat fluffed itself up, enraged. “Without me, you couldn’t even get through the day. What an ingrate! You refuse to admit just how much you really need me. Why, without me, you couldn’t even—” The cat paused, casting about for an example, and his gaze fell on the check. “Without me, you couldn’t even pay the check.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Even something as simple as that, you couldn’t do it by yourself. You couldn’t handle it.”
“Sure I could. Don’t get too big for your britches. Stuff like this I was handling before you were even weaned, bubbie, let alone housebroken. So don’t puff yourself up.”
The cat sneered at him again. “Okay, so go ahead! Show me! Do it!”
“Do what?” said the wizard, after a pause, a trace of uneasiness coming into his voice.
“Pay the check. Take care of it yourself.”
“All right,” the wizard said. “All right, then, I will!”
“So go ahead already. I’m watching. This ought to be good.” The cat smiled nastily and faded away, slowly disappearing line by line—the Cheshire cat was one of his heroes, and this was a favorite trick, although for originality’s sake he left his nose behind instead of his grin. The nose hung inscrutably in midair, like a small black-rubber UFO. Occasionally it would give a sardonic twitch.
The wizard sighed, and sat staring morosely down at the check. Then, knowing in advance that it would be useless, he pulled out his battered old change-purse and peered inside: nothing, except for some lint, the tiny polished skull of a bat, and a ticket-stub from the 1876 Centennial Exposition. The wizard never carried money—ordinarily, he’d have just told the cat to conjure up whatever funds were necessary, an exercise so simple and trivial that it was beneath his dignity as a Mage even to consider bothering with it himself. That was what familiars were for, to have tasks like that delegated to them. Now, though . . .
“Well?” the cat’s voice drawled. “So, I’m waiting . . .”
“All right, all right, big shot,” the wizard said. “I can handle this, don’t worry yourself.”
“I’m not worried—I’m waiting.”
“All right already.” Mumbling to himself, the wizard began to work out the elements of the spell. It was a very small magic, after all. Still . . . He hesitated, drumming his fingers on the table . . . Still, he hadn’t had to do anything like this for himself for years, and his memory wasn’t what it used to be . . . Better ease his hand in slowly, try a still smaller magic first. Practice. Let’s see now . . . He muttered a few words in a hissing sibilant tongue, sketched a close pattern in the air, and then rested his forefinger on the rim of his empty coffee cup. The cup filled with coffee, as though his finger was a spigot. He grunted in satisfaction, and then took a sip of his coffee. It was weak and yellow, and tasted faintly of turpentine. So far, so good, he thought . . .
Across the table, the nose sniffed disdainfully.
The wizard ignored it. Now for the real thing. He loosened his tie and white starched collar and drew the pentagram of harmony, the Sephiroth, using salt from the shaker, which was also the secret symbol for the fifth element of the pentagram, the akasha, or ether. He made do with a glass of water, catsup, mustard, and toothpicks to represent the four elements and the worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Action. He felt cheap and vulgar using such substitutes, but what else could he do?
Now . . . he thought, that is the pentagram of harmony . . . isn’t it? For an instant he was uncertain. Well, it’s close enough . . .
He tugged back his cuffs, leaving his wrists free to make the proper passes over the pentagram. Now . . . what was the spell to make money? It was either the first or the second Enochian Key . . . that much he did remember. It must be the second key, and that went . . . : “Piamoel od Vaoan!” No, no, that wasn’t it. Was it “Giras to nazodapesad Roray I?” That must be it.
The wizard said the words and softly clapped his hands together . . . and nothing seemed to happen.
For an instant there was no noise, not even a breath. It was as if he was hovering, disembodied, between the worlds of emanation.
There was a slow shift in his equilibrium, like a wheel revolving ponderously in darkness.
But magic doesn’t just disappear, he told himself querulously—it has to go somewhere.
As if from the other side of the world, the wizard heard the soft voice of his familiar, so faint and far away that he could barely make it out. What was it saying?
“Putz,” the cat whispered, “you used the Pentagram of Chaos, the Qliphoth.”
And suddenly, as if he really had been turned upside-down for a while, the wizard felt everything right itself. He was sitting at a table in Schrafft’s, and there was the usual din of people talking and shouting and pushing and complaining.
But something was odd, something was wrong. Even as he watched, the table splintered and flew to flinders before him; and his chair creaked and groaned and swayed like a high-masted ship in a strong wind, and then broke, dumping him heavily to the floor. The room shook, and the floor cracked and starred beneath him.
What was wrong? What aethers and spheres had he roiled and foiled with his misspoken magicks? Why did he feel so strange? Then he saw himself in the goldflecked smoked-glass mirrors that lined the room between rococo plaster pillars, and the reflection told him the terrible truth.
He had turned himself into some kind of giant lizard. A dinosaur. Actually, as dinosaurs go, he was rather small. He weighed about eight hundred pounds and was eleven feet long—a Pachycephalosaurus, a horn-headed, pig-snouted herbivore that was in its prime in the Upper Cretaceous. But for Schrafft’s, at lunch time—big enough. He clicked his stubby tusks and tried to say “Gevalt!” as he shook his head ruefully. Before he could stop the motion, his head smashed into the wooden booth partition, causing it to shudder and crack.
Across from him, two eyes appeared, floating to either side of the hovering black nose. Slowly, solemnly, one eye winked. Then—slowly and very sinisterly—eyes and nose faded away and were gone.
That was a bad sign, the wizard thought. He huddled glumly against the wall. Maybe nobody will notice, he thought. His tail twitched nervously, splintering the booth behind him. The occupants of the booth leaped up, screaming, and fled the restaurant in terror. Out-of-towners, the wizard thought. Everyone else was eating and talking as usual, paying no attention, although the waiter was eying him somewhat sourly.
As he maneuvered clumsily away from the wall, pieces of wood crunching underfoot, the waiter came up to him and stood there making little tsking noises of disapproval. “Look, mister,” the waiter said. “You’re going to have to pay up and go. You’re creating a disturbance—” The wizard opened his mouth to utter a mild remonstrance, but what came out instead was a thunderous roaring belch, grindingly deep and loud enough to rattle your bones, the sort of noise that might be produced by having someone stand on the bass keys of a giant Wurlitzer. Even the wizard could smell the fermenting, rotting-egg, bubbling-prehistoric-swamp stink of sulphur that his belch had released, and he winced in embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” the wizard said, enunciating with difficulty through the huge, sloppy mouth. “It’s the tuna fish. I know I shouldn’t eat it, it always gives me gas, but—” But the waiter no longer seemed to be listening—he had gone pale, and now he turned abruptly around without a word and walked away, ignoring as he passed the querulous demands for coffee refills from the people two tables away, marching in a straight line through the
restaurant and right out into the street.
The wizard sighed, a gusty, twanging noise like a cello being squeezed flat in a winepress. Time—and past time—to work an obviation spell. So, then. Forgetting that he was a dinosaur, the wizard hurriedly tried to redraw the pentagram, but he couldn’t pick up the salt, which was in a small pile around the broken glass shaker. And everything else he would need for the spell was buried under the debris of the table.
“Not doing so hot now, Mister Big Shot, are you?” a voice said, rather smugly.
Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois Page 45