by Neil Gaiman
When the general and his pack reached the place by the sea, the Cossack stopped. For some minutes he stood regarding the blue-green expanse of water. He shrugged his shoulders. Then he sat down, took a drink of brandy from a silver flask, lit a perfumed cigarette, and hummed a bit from Madame Butterfly.
General Zaroff had an exceedingly good dinner in his great paneled dining hall that evening. With it he had a bottle of Pol Roger and half a bottle of Chambertin. Two slight annoyances kept him from perfect enjoyment. One was the thought that it would be difficult to replace Ivan; the other was that his quarry had escaped him; of course, the American hadn’t played the game—so thought the general as he tasted his after-dinner liqueur. In his library he read, to soothe himself, from the works of Marcus Aurelius. At ten he went up to his bedroom. He was deliciously tired, he said to himself, as he locked himself in. There was a little moonlight, so, before turning on his light, he went to the window and looked down at the courtyard. He could see the great hounds, and he called, “Better luck another time,” to them. Then he switched on the light.
A man who had been hiding in the curtains of the bed, was standing there.
“Rainsford!” screamed the general. “How in God’s name did you get here?”
“Swam,” said Rainsford. “I found it quicker than walking through the jungle.”
The general sucked in his breath and smiled. “I congratulate you,” he said. “You have won the game.”
Rainsford did not smile. “I am still a beast at bay,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice. “Get ready, General Zaroff.”
The general made one of his deepest bows. “I see,” he said. “Splendid! One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford…”
He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.
The Small Assassin
BY RAY BRADBURY
Kids. They do the darndest things.
Back in the 1940s, before establishing his rep as one of America’s most beloved sf/fantasists, Ray Bradbury honed his prodigious chops with landmark stories of horror, crime, and suspense. Many of the best of these were collected in Dark Carnival (1947), which was then expanded into 1955’s incomparable The October Country.
This is where I first fell in love with his work: some already laced with his poetic grace and whimsy; others charged with a grittier, more muscular, tragic realism.
And at the top of my love list was the glittering gem that follows: a nifty little slice of postpartum paranoia, with a punch line I’ve been able to quote verbatim since I was nine years old.
Just when the idea occurred to her that she was being murdered she could not tell. There had been little subtle signs, little suspicions for the past month; things as deep as sea tides in her, like looking at a perfectly calm stretch of tropic water, wanting to bathe in it and finding, just as the tide takes your body, that monsters dwell just under the surface, things unseen, bloated, many-armed, sharp-finned, malignant and inescapable.
A room floated around her in an effluvium of hysteria. Sharp instruments hovered and there were voices, and people in sterile white masks.
My name, she thought, what is it?
Alice Leiber. It came to her. David Leiber’s wife. But it gave her no comfort. She was alone with these silent, whispering white people and there was great pain and nausea and death-fear in her.
I am being murdered before their eyes. These doctors, these nurses don’t realize what hidden thing has happened to me. David doesn’t know. Nobody knows except me and—the killer, the little murderer, the small assassin.
I am dying and I can’t tell them now. They’d laugh and call me one in delirium. They’ll see the murderer and hold him and never think him responsible for my death. But here I am, in front of God and man, dying, no one to believe my story, everyone to doubt me, comfort me with lies, bury me in ignorance, mourn me and salvage my destroyer.
Where is David? she wondered. In the waiting room, smoking one cigarette after another, listening to the long tickings of the very slow clock?
Sweat exploded from all of her body at once, and with it an agonized cry. Now. Now! Try and kill me, she screamed. Try, try, but I won’t die! I won’t!
There was a hollowness. A vacuum. Suddenly the pain fell away. Exhaustion, and dusk came around. It was over. Oh, God! She plummeted down and struck a black nothingness which gave way to nothingness and nothingness and another and still another…
Footsteps. Gentle, approaching footsteps.
Far away, a voice said, “She’s asleep. Don’t disturb her.”
An odor of tweeds, a pipe, a certain shaving lotion. David was standing over her. And beyond him the immaculate smell of Dr. Jeffers.
She did not open her eyes. “I’m awake,” she said, quietly. It was a surprise, a relief to be able to speak, to not be dead.
“Alice,” someone said, and it was David beyond her closed eyes, holding her tired hands.
Would you like to meet the murderer, David? she thought. I hear your voice asking to see him, so there’s nothing but for me to point him out to you.
David stood over her. She opened her eyes. The room came into focus. Moving a weak hand, she pulled aside a coverlet.
The murderer looked up at David Leiber with a small, red-faced, blue-eyed calm. Its eyes were deep and sparkling.
“Why!” cried David Leiber, smiling. “He’s a fine baby!”
Dr. Jeffers was waiting for David Leiber the day he came to take his wife and new child home. He motioned Leiber to a chair in his office, gave him a cigar, lit one for himself, sat on the edge of his desk, puffing solemnly for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat, looked David Leiber straight on and said, “Your wife doesn’t like her child, Dave.”
“What!”
“It’s been a hard thing for her. She’ll need a lot of love this next year. I didn’t say much at the time, but she was hysterical in the delivery room. The strange things she said—I won’t repeat them. All I’ll say is that she feels alien to the child. Now, this may simply be a thing we can clear up with one or two questions.” He sucked on his cigar another moment, then said, “Is this child a ‘wanted’ child, Dave?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s vital.”
“Yes. Yes, it is a ‘wanted’ child. We planned it together. Alice was so happy, a year ago, when—”
“Mmmm—That makes it more difficult. Because if the child was unplanned, it would be a simple case of a woman hating the idea of motherhood. That doesn’t fit Alice.” Dr. Jeffers took his cigar from his lips, rubbed his hand across his jaw. “It must be something else, then. Perhaps something buried in her childhood that’s coming out now. Or it might be the simple temporary doubt and distrust of any mother who’s gone through the unusual pain and near-death that Alice has. If so, then a little time should heal that. I thought I’d tell you, though Dave. It’ll help you be easy and tolerant with her if she says anything about—well—about wishing the child had been born dead. And if things don’t go well, the three of you drop in on me. I’m always glad to see old friends, eh? Here, take another cigar along for—ah—for the baby.”
It was a bright spring afternoon. Their car hummed along wide, tree-lined boulevards. Blue sky, flowers, a warm wind. Dave talked a lot, lit his cigar, talked some more. Alice answered directly, softly, relaxing a bit more as the trip progressed. But she held the baby not tightly or warmly or motherly enough to satisfy the queer ache in Dave’s mind. She seemed to be merely carrying a porcelain figurine.
“Well,” he said, at last, smiling. “What’ll we name him?”
Alice Leiber watched green trees slide by. “Let’s not decide yet. I’d rather wait until we get an exceptional name for him. Don’t blow smoke in his face.” Her sentences ran together with no change of tone. The last statement held no motherly reproof, no interest, no irritation. She just mouthed it and it was said.
The husband, disquieted, dropped
the cigar from the window. “Sorry,” he said.
The baby rested in the crook of his mother’s arm, shadows of sun and tree changing his face. His blue eyes opened like fresh blue spring flowers. Moist noises came from the tiny, pink, elastic mouth.
Alice gave her baby a quick glance. Her husband felt her shiver against him.
“Cold?” he asked.
“A chill. Better raise the window, David.”
It was more than a chill. He rolled the window slowly up.
Suppertime.
Dave had brought the child from the nursery, propped him at a tiny, bewildered angle, supported by many pillows, in a newly purchased high chair.
Alice watched her knife and fork move. “He’s not high-chair size,” she said.
“Fun having him here, anyway,” said Dave, feeling fine. “Everything’s fun. At the office, too. Orders up to my nose. If I don’t watch myself I’ll make another fifteen thousand this year. Hey, look at Junior, will you? Drooling all down his chin!” He reached over to wipe the baby’s mouth with his napkin. From the corner of his eye he realized that Alice wasn’t even watching. He finished the job.
“I guess it wasn’t very interesting,” he said, back again at his food. “But one would think a mother’d take some interest in her own child!”
Alice jerked her chin up. “Don’t speak that way! Not in front of him! Later, if you must.”
“Later?” he cried. “In front of, in back of, what’s the difference?” He quieted suddenly, swallowed, was sorry. “All right. Okay, I know how it is.”
After dinner she let him carry the baby upstairs. She didn’t tell him to; she let him.
Coming down, he found her standing by the radio, listening to music she didn’t hear. Her eyes were closed, her whole attitude one of wondering, self-questioning. She started when he appeared.
Suddenly, she was at him, against him, soft, quick; the same. Her lips found him, kept him. He was stunned. Now that the baby was gone, upstairs, out of the room, she began to breathe again, live again. She was free. She was whispering, rapidly, endlessly.
“Thank you, thank you, darling. For being yourself, always. Dependable, so very dependable!”
He had to laugh. “My father told me, ‘Son, provide for your family!’”
Wearily, she rested her dark, shining hair against his neck. “You’ve overdone it. Sometimes I wish we were just the way we were when we were first married. No responsibilities, nothing but ourselves. No—no babies.”
She crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face.
“Oh, Dave, once it was just you and me. We protected each other, and now we protect the baby, but get no protection from it. Do you understand? Lying in the hospital I had time to think a lot of things. The world is evil—”
“Is it?”
“Yes. It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren’t laws, then love does the protecting. You’re protected from my hurting you, by my love. You’re vulnerable to me, of all people, but love shields you. I feel no fear of you, because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, hatreds and immaturities. But—what about the baby? It’s too young to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it. And in the meantime be vulnerable to it.”
“Vulnerable to a baby?” He held her away and laughed gently.
“Does a baby know the difference between right and wrong?” she asked.
“No. But it’ll learn.”
“But a baby is so new, so amoral, so conscience-free.” She stopped. Her arms dropped from him and she turned swiftly. “That noise? What was it?”
Leiber looked around the room. “I didn’t hear—”
She stared at the library door. “In there,” she said, slowly.
Leiber crossed the room, opened the door and switched the library lights on and off. “Not a thing.” He came back to her. “You’re worn out. To bed with you—right now.”
Turning out the lights together, they walked slowly up the soundless hall stairs, not speaking. At the top she apologized. “My wild talk, darling. Forgive me. I’m exhausted.”
He understood, and said so.
She paused, undecided, by the nursery door. Then she fingered the brass knob sharply, walked in. He watched her approach the crib much too carefully, look down, and stiffen as if she’d been struck in the face. “David!”
Leiber stepped forward, reached the crib.
The baby’s face was bright red and very moist; his small pink mouth opened and shut, opened and shut; his eyes were a fiery blue. His hands leapt about on the air.
“Oh,” said Dave, “he’s just been crying.”
“Has he?” Alice Leiber seized the crib-railing to balance herself. “I didn’t hear him.”
“The door was closed.”
“Is that why he breathes so hard, why his face is red?”
“Sure. Poor little guy. Crying all alone in the dark. He can sleep in our room tonight, just in case he cries.”
“You’ll spoil him,” his wife said.
Leiber felt her eyes follow as he rolled the crib into their bedroom. He undressed silently, sat on the edge of the bed. Suddenly he lifted his head, swore under his breath, snapped his fingers. “Damn it! Forgot to tell you. I must fly to Chicago Friday.”
“Oh, David.” Her voice was lost in the room.
“I’ve put this trip off for two months, and now it’s so critical I just have to go.”
“I’m afraid to be alone.”
“We’ll have the new cook by Friday. She’ll be here all the time. I’ll only be gone a few days.”
“I’m afraid. I don’t know of what. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I guess I’m crazy.”
He was in bed now. She darkened the room; he heard her walk around the bed, throw back the cover, slide in. He smelled the warm woman-smell of her next to him. He said, “If you want me to wait a few days, perhaps I could—”
“No,” she said, unconvinced. “You go. I know it’s important. It’s just that I keep thinking about what I told you. Laws and love and protection. Love protects you from me. But, the baby—” She took a breath. “What protects you from him, David?”
Before he could answer, before he could tell her how silly it was, speaking of infants, she switched on the bed light, abruptly.
“Look,” she said, pointing.
The baby lay wide-awake in its crib, staring straight at him, with deep, sharp blue eyes.
The lights went out again. She trembled against him.
“It’s not nice being afraid of the thing you birthed.” Her whisper lowered, became harsh, fierce, swift. “He tried to kill me! He lies there, listens to us talking, waiting for you to go away so he can try to kill me again! I swear it!” Sobs broke from her.
“Please,” he kept saying, soothing her. “Stop it, stop it. Please.”
She cried in the dark for a long time. Very late she relaxed, shakingly, against him. Her breathing came soft, warm, regular, her body twitched its worn reflexes and she slept.
He drowsed.
And just before his eyes lidded wearily down, sinking him into deeper and yet deeper tides, he heard a strange little sound of awareness and awakeness in the room.
The sound of small, moist, pinkly elastic lips.
The baby.
And then—sleep.
In the morning, the sun blazed. Alice smiled.
David Leiber dangled his watch over the crib. “See, baby? Something bright. Something pretty. Sure. Sure. Something bright. Something pretty.”
Alice smiled. She told him to go ahead, fly to Chicago, she’d be very brave, no need to worry. She’d take care of baby. Oh, yes, she’d take care of him, all right.
The airplane went east. There was a lot of sky, a lot of sun and clouds and Chicago running over the horizon. Dave was dropped into the rush of ordering, planning, banqueting, telephoning, arguing in conference. But he wrote letters each day and sent telegrams to Alice and the baby.
>
On the evening of his sixth day away from home he received the long-distance phone call. Los Angeles.
“Alice?”
“No, Dave. This is Jeffers speaking.”
“Doctor!”
“Hold onto yourself, son. Alice is sick. You’d better get the next plane home. It’s pneumonia. I’ll do everything I can, boy. If only it wasn’t so soon after the baby. She needs strength.”
Leiber dropped the phone into its cradle. He got up, with no feet under him, and no hands and no body. The hotel room blurred and fell apart.
“Alice,” he said, blindly, starting for the door.
The propellers spun about, whirled, fluttered, stopped; time and space were put behind. Under his hand, David felt the doorknob turn; under his feet the floor assumed reality, around him flowed the walls of a bedroom, and in the late-after-noon sunlight, Dr. Jeffers stood, turning from a window, as Alice lay waiting in her bed, something carved from a fall of winter snow. Then Dr. Jeffers was talking, talking continuously, gently, the sound rising and falling through the lamplight, a soft flutter, a white murmur of voice.
“Your wife’s too good a mother, Dave. She worried more about the baby than herself…”
Somewhere in the paleness of Alice’s face, there was a sudden constriction which smoothed itself out before it was realized. Then, slowly, half-smiling, she began to talk and she talked as a mother should about this, that and the other thing, the telling detail, the minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour report of a mother concerned with a dollhouse world and the miniature life of that world. But she could not stop; the spring was wound tight, and her voice rushed on to anger, fear and the faintest touch of revulsion, which did not change Dr. Jeffers’ expression, but caused Dave’s heart to match the rhythm of this talk that quickened and could not stop:
“The baby wouldn’t sleep. I thought he was sick. He just lay, staring, in his crib, and late at night he’d cry. So loud, he’d cry, and he’d cry all night and all night. I couldn’t quiet him, and I couldn’t rest.”