His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Flying through the air, turning over and over, the droning roar became one continual crash that battered against his body with physical force.

  There was one indescribable, utterly, incomparably violent noise that nearly blew his brain out like an overload of electricity. Then things became more or less quiet, and he tumbled onto a marshy sort of ground.

  "All clear?" he asked, without opening his eyes. "Yes," said Moira. "You were magnificent."

  He lifted his lids warily and saw that he sat on a stretch of forest sward.

  Looking behind him

  "My God!" he screamed. "Did we go through that?"

  "Yes," said Moira. "It's a ghost—unless you're afraid of it, it can't hurt you."

  Behind them, the thousand-foot blades of a monstrous electric fan swirled brilliantly at several hundred r.p.s. The noise reached them in a softening blur of sound. Gently it faded away.

  Almarish of Ellil leaned back quietly.

  "The big calf!" muttered Moira. "Now he faints on me!"

  10

  "Now," said Almarish, "what about this happy animal?"

  "La Bete Joyeux?" asked the little creature.

  "If that's what its name is. Why this damned nonsense about tears?"

  "It's a curse," said Moira grimly. "A very terrible curse."

  "Then it'll keep. Who's in there?"

  He pointed to a stony hut that blocked the barely defined trail they were following. Moira shaded her tiny eyes and wrinkled her brow as she stared. "I don't know," she admitted at last. "It's something new."

  Almarish prepared to detour. The stone door slid open. Out looked a wrinkled, weazened face, iron-rimmed spectacles slid down over the nose. It was whiskered, but not as resplendently as Almarish's, whose imposing mattress spread from his chin to his waist. And the beard straggling from the face was not the rich mahogany hue of the sorcerer's, but a dirty white, streaked with gray and soup stains.

  "Hello," said Almarish amiably, getting his fingers around the invincible dirk.

  "Beaver!" shrilled the old man, pointing a dirty-yellow, quavering, derisive finger at Almarish. Then he lit a cigarette with a big, apparently homemade match and puffed nervously.

  "Is there anything," inquired the sorcerer, "we can do for you?

  Otherwise we'd like to be on our way."

  "We?" shrilled the old man.

  Almarish realized that Moira had retreated into his pocket again. "I mean I," he said hastily. "I was a king once—you get into the habit."

  "Come in," said the old man quaveringly. By dint of extraordinarily hard puffing, he had already smoked down the cigarette to his yellowed teeth. Carefully he lit another from its butt.

  Almarish did not want to come in. At least he had not wanted to, but there was growing in his mind a conviction that this was a very nice old man, and that it would be a right and proper thing to go in. That happy-animal nonsense could wait. Hospitality was hospitality.

  He went in and saw an utterly revolting interior, littered with the big, clumsy matches and with cigarette butts smoked down to eighth-inches and stamped out. The reek of nicotine filled the air; ashtrays deep as water buckets overflowed everywhere onto the floor.

  "Perhaps," said the sorcerer, "we'd better introduce ourselves. I'm Almarish, formerly of Ellil."

  "Pleased to meet you," shrilled the ancient. Already he was chain-smoking his third cigarette. "My name's Hopper. I'm a geasan."

  "What?"

  "Geasan—layer-on of geases. A geas is an injunction which can't be disobeyed. Sit down."

  Almarish felt suddenly that it was about time he took a little rest.

  "Thanks," he said, sitting in a pile of ashes and burned matches. "But I don't believe that business about you being able to command people."

  The geasan started his sixth cigarette and cackled shrilly. "You'll see.

  Young man, I want that beard of yours. My mattress needs restuffing.

  You'll let me have it, of course."

  "Of course," said Almarish. Anything at all for a nice old man like this, he thought. But that business about geases was too silly for words.

  "And I may take your head with it. You won't object." "Why, no," said the sorcerer. What in Hades was the point of living, anyway?

  Lighting his tenth cigarette from the butt of the ninth, the geasan took down from the wall a gigantic razor.

  A tiny head peeked over the top of the sorcerer's pocket.

  "Won't you," said a little voice, "introduce me, Almarish, to your handsome friend?"

  The eleventh cigarette dropped from the lips of the ancient as Almarish brought out Moira and she pirouetted on his palm. She cast a meaningful glance at the geasan. "Almarish is such a boor," she declared. "Not one bit like some men…."

  "It was the cigarettes that gave him his power, of course," decided the sorcerer as he climbed the rocky bluff.

  "My size," purred Moira, "only a little taller, of course. Women like that." She began to snore daintily in his pocket.

  Almarish heaved himself over the top of the bluff, and found himself on a stony plain or plateau scattered with tumbled rocks.

  "Vials, sir?" demanded a voice next to his ear.

  "Ugh!" he grunted, rapidly sidestepping. "Where are you?"

  "Right here." Almarish stared.

  "No—here." Still he could see nothing.

  "What was that about vials?" he asked, fingering the dirk.

  Something took shape in the air before his eyes. He picked it out of space and inspected the thing. It was a delicate bottle, now empty, designed to hold only a few drops. Golden wires ran through the glass forming patterns suggestive of murder and other forms of sudden death.

  "How much?" he asked.

  "That ring?" suggested the voice. Almarish felt his hand being taken and one of his rings being twisted off. "Okay," he said. "It's yours."

  "Thanks ever so much," replied the voice gratefully. "Miss Megaera will love it."

  "Keep away from those Eumenides, boy," Almarish warned. "They're tricky sluts."

  "I'll thank you to mind your own business, sir," snapped the voice. It began to whistle an air, which trailed away into the distance.

  From behind one of the great, tumbled cairns of rock slid, with a colossal clashing of scales, a monster. "Ah, there," said the monster.

  Almarish surveyed it carefully. The thing was a metallic cross among the octopus, scorpion, flying dragon, tortoise, ape and toad families. Its middle face smiled amiably, almost condescendingly, down on the sorcerer.

  "You the Bête Joyeux?" asked Almarish.

  "See here," said the monster, snorting a bit and dribbling lava from a corner of its mouth. "See here—I've been called many things, some unprintable, but that's a new one. What's it mean?"

  "Happy animal, I think," said Almarish.

  "Then I probably am," said the monster. It chuckled. "Now what do you want?"

  "See this vial? It has to be filled with your tears."

  "So what?" asked the monster, scratching itself.

  "Will you weep for me?"

  "Out of sheer perversity, no. Shall we fight now?"

  "I suppose so," said Almarish, heavyhearted. "There's only one other way to get your tears that I can think of. Put up your dukes, chum."

  The monster squared off slowly. It didn't move like a fighter; it seemed to rely on static fire power, like a battle-tank. It reached out a tentacle whose end opened slowly into a steaming nozzle. Almarish snapped away as a squirt of sulfurous matter gushed from the tip.

  With a lively blow the sorcerer slashed off the tentacle, which scuttled for shelter. The monster proper let out a yell of pain. One of its lionlike paws slapped down and sidewise at Almarish; he stood his ground and let the thing run into the dirk its full length, then jumped inside the thing's guard and scaled its shoulder.

  "No fair!" squalled the monster.

  He replied with a slash that took off an ear. The creature scratched frantically for him, but he easi
ly eluded the clumsy nails that raked past its hide. As he danced over the skin, stabbing and slashing more like a plowman than a warrior, the nails did fully as much damage as he did.

  Suddenly, treacherously, the monster rolled over. Almarish birled it like a log in a pond, harrowing up its exposed belly as it lay on its back.

  Back on its feet again, the thing was suddenly still. The sorcerer, catching his breath, began to worry. The squawking pants that had been its inhalations and exhalations had stopped. But it wasn't dead, he knew. The thing was holding its breath. But why was it doing that?

  The temperature of the skin began to rise, sharply. So, thought Almarish, it was trying to smoke him off by containing all its heat! He scrambled down over its forehead. The nostril flaps were tight shut.

  Seemingly, it breathed only by its middle head, the one he was exploring.

  His heels were smoking, and the air was growing superheated.

  Something had to be done, but good and quick. With a muttered prayer, Almarish balanced the dirk in his hand and flung it with every ounce of his amazing brawn. Then, not waiting to see the results, he jumped down and ran frantically to the nearest rock. He dodged behind it and watched.

  The dirk had struck home. The nostril flaps of the monster had been pinned shut. He chuckled richly to himself as the thing pawed at its nose. The metallic skin way. beginning to glow red-hot, then white.

  He ducked behind the rock, huddled close to it as he saw the first faint hairline of weakness on the creature's glowing hide.

  Crash! It exploded like a thunderclap. Parts whizzed past the rock like bullets, bounced and skidded along the ground, fusing rocks as they momentarily touched.

  Almarish looked up at last. La Bete Joyeux was scattered over most of the plateau.

  Almarish found the head at last. It had cooled down considerably; he fervently hoped that it had not dried out. With the handle of his dirk he pried up the eyelid and began a delicate operation.

  Finally the dead-white sac was in his hands. Unstoppering the vial, he carefully milked the tear gland into it. "Moira," he said gently, shaking her.

  "You ox!"

  She was awake in a moment, ill-tempered as ever. "What is it now?"

  "Your vial," he said, placing it on his palm beside her.

  "Well, set it down on the ground. Me, too." He watched as she tugged off the stopper and plunged her face into the crystal-clear liquid.

  Then, abruptly, he gasped. "Here," he said, averting his eyes. "Take my cloak."

  "Thanks," said the tall young lady with a smile. "I didn't think, for the moment, that my clothes wouldn't grow when I did."

  "Now—would you care to begin at the beginning?"

  "Certainly. Moira O'Donnel's my name. Born in Dublin.' Located in Antrim at the age of twenty-five, when I had the ill luck to antagonize a warlock named McGinty. He shrank me and gave me a beastly temper.

  Then, because I kept plaguing him, he banished me to these unreal parts.

  "He was hipped on the Irish literary renaissance—Yeats, AE, Joyce, Shaw and the rest. So he put a tag on the curse that he found in one of Lord Dunsany's stories, about the tears of la Bete Joyeux. In the story it was 'the gladsome beast,' and Mac's French was always weak.

  "What magic I know I picked up by eavesdropping. You can't help learning things knocking around the planes, I guess. There were lots of bits that I filed away because I couldn't use them until I achieved full stature again. And now, Almarish, they're all yours. I'm very grateful to you."

  He stared into her level green eyes. "Think you could get us back to Ellil?"

  "Like that!" She snapped her fingers.

  "Good. Those rats—Pike and the rest—caught me unawares, but I can raise an army anywhere on a week's notice and take over again."

  "I knew you could do it. I'm with you, Almarish, Packer, or whatever your name is."

  Diffidently he said, "Moira, you grew very dear to me as you used to snore away in my pocket."

  "I don't snore!" she declared.

  "Anyway—you can pick whichever name you like. It's yours if you'll have it."

  After a little while she said, smiling into his eyes: "My size. Only a little taller, of course."

  With These Hands

  [Galaxy, December 1951]

  Halvorsen waited in the Chancery office while Monsignor Reedy disposed of three persons who had preceded him. He was a little dizzy with hunger and noticed only vaguely that the prelate's secre-tary was beckoning to him. He started to his feet when the secretary pointedly opened the door to Monsignor Reedy's inner office and stood waiting beside it.

  The artist crossed the floor, forgetting that he had leaned his port-folio against his chair, remembered at the door and went back for it, flushing. The secretary looked patient.

  "Thanks," Halvorsen murmured to him as the door closed.

  There was something wrong with the prelate's manner.

  "I've brought the designs for the Stations, Padre," he said, opening the portfolio on the desk.

  "Bad news, Roald," said the monsignor. "I know how you've been looking forward to the commission—"

  "Somebody else get it?" asked the artist faintly, leaning against the desk. "I thought his eminence definitely decided I had the—"

  "It's not that," said the monsignor. "But the Sacred Congregation of Rites this week made a pronouncement on images of devotion.

  Stereopantograph is to be licit within a diocese at the discretion of the bishop. And his eminence—"

  "S.P.G.—slimy imitations," protested Halvorsen. "Real as a plastic eye.

  No texture. No guts. You know that, Padre!" he said accusingly.

  "I'm sorry, Roald," said the monsignor. "Your work is better than we'll get from a Stereopantograph—to my eyes, at least. But there are other considerations."

  "Money!" spat the artist.

  "Yes, money," the prelate admitted. "His eminence wants to see the St.

  Xavier U. building program through before he dies. Is that wrong, Roald? And there are our schools, our charities, our Venus mission.

  S.P.G. will mean a considerable saving on procurement and maintenance of devotional images. Even if I could, I would not disagree with his eminence on adopting it as a matter of diocesan policy."

  The prelate's eyes fell on the detailed drawings of the Stations of the Cross and lingered.

  "Your St. Veronica," he said abstractedly. "Very fine. It suggests one of Caravaggio's careworn saints to me. I would have liked to see her in the bronze."

  "So would I," said Halvorsen hoarsely. "Keep the drawings, Padre." He started for the door.

  "But I can't—"

  "That's all right."

  The artist walked past the secretary blindly and out of the Chan-cery into Fifth Avenue's spring sunlight. He hoped Monsignor Reedy was enjoying the drawings and was ashamed of himself and sorry for Halvorsen. And he was glad he didn't have to carry the heavy portfolio any more. Everything was heavy lately—chisels, hammer, wooden palette. Maybe the padre would send him something and pretend it was for expenses or an advance, as he had in the past.

  Halvorsen's feet carried him up the Avenue. No, there wouldn't be any advances any more. The last steady trickle of income had just been dried up, by an announcement in Osservatore Romano. Religious conservatism had carried the church as far as it would go in its ancient role of art patron. When all Europe was writing on the wonderful new vellum, the church stuck to good old papyrus. When all Europe was writing on the wonderful new paper, the church stuck to good old vellum. When all architects and municipal monument committees and portrait bust clients were patronizing the stereopantograph, the church stuck to good old expensive sculpture. But not any more.

  He was passing an S.P.G. salon now, where one of his Tuesday night pupils worked: one of the few men in the classes. Mostly they consisted of lazy, moody, irritable girls. Halvorsen, surprised at himself, entered the salon, walking between asthenic semi-nude stereos executed hi transparent p
lastic that made the skin of his neck and shoulders prickle with gooseflesh. Slime! he thought. How can they— "May I help—oh, hello, Roald. What brings you here?" He knew suddenly what had brought him there. "Could you make a little advance on next month's tuition, Lewis? I'm strapped." He took a nervous look around the chamber of horrors, avoiding the man's condescending face.

  "I guess so, Roald. Would ten dollars be any help? That'll carry us through to the twenty-fifth, right?"

  "Fine, right, sure," he said, while he was being unwillingly towed around the place.

  "I know you don't think much of S.P.G., but it's quiet now, so this is a good chance to see how we work. I don't say it's Art with a capi-tal A, but you've got to admit it's an art, something people like at a price they can afford to pay. Here's where we sit them. Then you run out the feelers to the reference points on the face. You know what they are?"

  He heard himself say dryly: "I know what they are. The Egyptian sculptors used them when they carved statues of the pharaohs."

  "Yes? I never knew that. There's nothing new under the Sun, is there?

  But this is the heart of the S.P.G." The youngster proudly swung open the door of an electronic device in the wall of the por-trait booth. Tubes winked sullenly at Halvorsen.

  "The esthetikon?" he asked indifferently. He did not feel indifferent, but it would be absurd to show anger, no matter how much he felt it, against a mindless aggregation of circuits that could calculate layouts, criticize and correct pictures for a desired effect— and that had put the artist of design out of a job.

  "Yes. The lenses take sixteen profiles, you know, and we set the esthetikon for whatever we want—cute, rugged, sexy, spiritual, brainy, or a combination. It fairs curves from profile to profile to give us just what we want, distorts the profiles themselves within limits if it has to, and there's your portrait stored in the memory tank waiting to be taped. You set your ratio for any enlargement or reduction you want and play it back. I wish we were reproducing today; it's fascinating to watch. You just pour in your cold-set plastic, the nozzles ooze out a core and start crawling over to scan—a drop here, a worm there, and it begins to take shape.