“Ten toes.”
“Right. Check.”
And so on, everything perfect, as she giggles uncontrollably, a strand of that beautiful hair in her eyes.
“Well?” the “mayor” wants to know.
“One thing at a time . . . What’s-your name, girl?”
“My name?”
“Yes. What do they call you?”
She makes an abrupt movement to brush the hair out of her eyes, and the blanket falls to the ground.
“Take your time. Take your finger out of your mouth and answer me. You needn’t be afraid.”
“Her name is Lila,” says the “mayor” in his deep voice.
“Is that what they call you?”
“Lila,” she repeats, after a pause, blinking her eyes.
“Take your time. Do you know what I am, Lila?” I ask.
“Lila.”
“Yes, yes. You told me. But what about me? Do you know why I’m here? I’ve come to take you away. You’re to be the bride of an officer, Lila, do you know what that means?”
“Lila . . .”
“Yes, that’s right. Your name is Lila. Very good. But do you know what an officer is? He’s a man, a perfectly formed human being, just like yourself. You will be his wife, and bear his children, as befits you, as is your duty. Can you understand that?”
She turns away. “Well, Captain?” asks the “mayor” again, when we are outside.
“We’ll see . . .” He waddles by my side in silence, with the peculiar rolling gait characteristic of the species. A peal of high-pitched laughter comes from the interior of the hut, reverberating in the stifling, dusty air that shimmers from the heat of the sun. We squat in the shadow of the wall. Once again, even louder than before, she laughs . . .
~ * ~
Later
. . . We leave tomorrow, first thing. The men are preparing a litter in which to carry her, a hammock made out of a blanket to be slung between two poles cut from the pines. They curse from the effort of packing up all the gear, irritable from the unseasonable heat and, although they say nothing, of course, the prospect of making the long march back home inadequately armed—responsibility for which I take entirely upon myself. Thurmond and Feeney are witnesses. Under the circumstances, after arguing for more than four hours in the broiling sun, there was nothing I could do but yield to his insistence and make the trade on his terms, or not at all, for eight of the M-1s and a hundred rounds of ammunition apiece. “Take it or leave it, Captain, that’s it . . .”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it, sir,” Thurmond assures me. “With the BAR and the Thompsons we’ll be all right. The only thing we have to watch out for is the wild dogs, and what’s a few dogs . . .”
This in a voice loud enough for all the men to hear. He may be right, at that; still, what haunts us all is the possibility of betrayal, that somewhere between here and the mountains, they’ll ambush us with our own weapons to get the lot—which Thurmond admits in confidence is a possibility, particularly at night, although he seriously doubts it— they as well as we having to contend with the roving packs of dogs in more or less unfamiliar terrain.
“No, I don’t think they’d dare,” he chews on the ragged ends of his beard, poring over the maps I have spread out on the ground. So far, anyway, the lookouts I have posted report that there’s no unusual activity in the compound, although Thurmond and I agree that if they did intend to send out an ambush party to steal a march on us, they’d do it after dark.
“A chance we’ll just have to take,” says Thurmond with a smile that crinkles up his eyelids, glancing at the girl who has curled up on the pine needles, covered by a blanket, with one -hand under her cheek and the thumb of the other in her mouth. Is she sleeping? Her eyes are closed. The lids quiver.
Thurmond holds on to the rope which is still looped about her neck. Now, apparently bothered by the buzzing flies, she opens her eyes and sits up, her long, tangled hair flowing over her naked shoulders, covering one breast. Her nipples are an orange brown.
“Lila Lila Lila Lila,” she laughs, drawing up her legs.
Wilson Wilson Wilson Wilson is all I can think of. I can picture DeWitt at the wedding in the officers’ mess in section five, peering at her over the tops of his rimless glasses, as he makes the usual speech in his soft voice that is just barely audible over the whir of the ventilator fans.
“. . . Perfectly formed . . . pure and undefiled ... a fitting vessel for the perpetuation of the race which will one day soon regain its rightful domination . . .” etc. etc. while Wilson fidgets impatiently in front of him, pulling at the collar of his dress uniform which is too tight for his fat neck, licking his dry lips as he reaches for her hand, the son of a bitch.
How lucky can you get?
<
~ * ~
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
BY JOHN ATHERTON
“Think big” would seem to be the axiom of science-fiction writers, for the customary stuff of sci-fi is vast and glamorous—space travel, time travel, the fourth dimension, humanoid robots, the totalitarian technocracies of the far future. John Atherton chose to be different and selected a homelier subject for the following story: trash disposal.
~ * ~
THE SIX MEN FILED IN. Barnes, of the Interior.
Hoop, representing Asio-Africo. Gosboy, of the Russkers Group. A stringly little gnome from the Arctic Combines. Edestone, Commerce. The chairman, Leader Maskisson of the Amerrikabloc, started at once.
“I have evidence, gentlemen, of dumping in the Indian Ocean. Leader Hoop’s beach plants are flooding-”
Everyone stared at the ceiling in agonized embarrassment. Always The Problem. Never a solution.
“You know,” Maskisson went on, “that this has been coming upon us for years, ever since Ben Salter, on that memorable day in April 1997, found that every razor-blade slot in his house was overflowing.”
The other men nodded glumly. As if they didn’t know when The Problem first began.
“And now there just isn’t any more room,” Maskisson continued, “and we, the Leaders, must find a way. But, as we well know, it is our duty to foster short-life permanent-expendables.”
All the men stood up together and murmured reverently, “Bless Waste.”
Then they all sat down and shook their heads. All except Barnes, of the Interior. He waved his hand to attract the chairman.
“I have a contractor. I have proof. He will get rid of it all,” he broke out. He seemed oblivious to the hostile stares of the others, who remembered that Barnes had tried this stunt before. That “contractor” had tried to resell waste. He had been given 20 years for seven counts of extended overuse, and The Problem was worse than ever. Now here was that fool Barnes with another one.
But even before Maskisson could protest, Barnes had swung open the door to the conference room and led in a little, smiling, plump man in a sparkling weldcloth suit.
“Now, Leaders, Mr. Gripfiler will show you,” he said proudly.
Mr. Gripfiler smiled still more. He snapped open his eternametal handcase and revealed a beautifully constructed device made of transparent life-rock and polished durametal. In its center, cradled in a mesh of platinum filament wires, was a hollow durametal hopper, with a clamshell mouth.
“This, sirs, is my Wondergrinder,” said Mr. Gripfiler. “It will dispose of anything. Permanently, and with not a trace of vapor, smog, residue or sludge.”
“Even an absoblade?” smiled Hoop, trying to make a dismal joke. Everyone knew that nothing made by man’s perfect technology was more difficult to dispose of after its time than one of these deadly little shining blades. Made of special alloy eternametal, they never lost their cutting edge, and with the recent up in quotas for the Absoblade Combine no one was permitted to use one for more than a single shave. Any such reactionism would start a dangerous autocycle.
“Do you have one handy?” asked Mr. Gripfiler.
A blade was found in the stainless f
lint tile washroom just off the conference chamber. Flicking open the tiny clamshell jaws with a chubby finger, Mr. Gripfiler dropped the absoblade in the hopper. The jaws snapped shut. Mr. Gripfiler twisted a knob. The filament wires glowed red for a second, then faded to a dull white.
Mr. Gripfiler flicked open the jaws of the hopper. The absoblade was gone. Each Leader felt that he had witnessed some expert sleight-of-hand. So they gave him pocket tissues, folding knives, watches—all the intricate little articles they would soon have to drop into waste-chutes and replace with new models. And each time, no matter how full they stuffed the little hopper, Mr. Gripfiler made them vanish. Without a trace.
Maskisson broke the silence. “I’m convinced,” he said, “but I should get the feeling of the others--”
The Leaders looked at him. They nodded.
“Take it,” said Gosboy.
“Sign paper now,” urged the Arctic Leader.
They accepted Mr. Gripfiler’s terms. He was as good as his word, and soon 500 full-scale Wondergrinders were operating in each disposal sector of World-fed, obediently swallowing every shred of rejected waste.
But no one thought to ask Mr. Gripfiler where it went.
No one cared. The Problem was solved.
~ * ~
Blurro IV sat gracefully on a magnesium bench and indolently arranged his fibroid toga. In Blurro’s world of 80,704 there were no problems. Progress had outmoded itself at least 30 thousand years ago, largely due to the Wonder-grinder, reputed to have been created out of the mud of the Nile in the Year of Troubles, 2080, or thereabouts. No one cared much for history. They only knew that those blessed machines with their clamshell jaws took care of all the junk that man could produce. It all went into the Divine Wonder-grinder and vanished. Blurro’s world was tidy and at peace. There were no problems.
But now, on this day of June 80,704, the air before Blurro’s eyes seemed to become pregnant. It struggled to give birth to an object. Then, with a tiny flop of gratified release, a small object fell at Blurro’s feet. He picked it up, and promptly cut his finger. Then other objects fell, like solid rain. Two tiny ticking machines. Some crumpled pieces of paper. A folding knife.
In a month the garden world of the year 80,704 was a mess. An ugly and dangerous mess, for everywhere came the steady shower of deadly sharp absoblades.
It took the wisest thinker, Clarol III, to solve the problem. With a stroke of mind as brilliant and as irresponsible as the original Gripfiler’s, Clarol not only reset, but reoriented, the Wondergrinders. Now they sent the junk on, not only in time, but also in space.
No one asked Clarol where it went. No one cared. The Problem was solved.
~ * ~
Thirty million light years away, on the grubby little planet Omicron, the last remaining pair of great scaled Longfipes dragged their 80 feebly twitching legs across the bone-strewn wastes of granite and basalt. Death faced this pair, for they had eaten the last loose chunks of metallic ore they could paw from the ground.
The huge male could only belch a feeble smoke puff from his cavernous mouth. Then something flickered in the air before the tired female’s half-shut eye. Then another flicker, and she caught the morsel with her upper feeder palp. It was tiny, but it crunched with metallic promise. More shreds fell. She nudged her vast mate. He opened one of his five eyes to see manna falling from heaven.
When the four yellow moons had circled Omicron again, the two Longfipes were browsing contentedly through a vast stack of non-refillable metabotts, stainless durametal cans, and permanent metaloid furniture which fell in a steady stream from the upper stratosphere. Their digestive fires flared with a healthy crackling roar, and as the male raised his huge upper jaw, a long swirling blast of white flame seared the enamel from a pile of old autobodies before him.
Gamboling clumsily behind their parents were two Long-fipe cubs, scooping up mouthfuls of the shining absoblades which covered the plain like petals from a metallic flower.
And they didn’t stop to ask where this blessed provender came from.
They didn’t care—they just ate and were content.
<
~ * ~
THE DOT AND DASH BIRD
BY BERNARD WOLFE
Hollywood has been good to Bernard Wolfe— unwittingly. The film city and its fantastic fauna have furnished him with rich grist for his fiction mill. His corrosively acerbic playboy stories of Hollywood writer Gordon Rengs must be ranked with Nathanael West and Evelyn Waugh in the literature of filmdom: When Walter Wanger read them under the collective book title of “Come On Out, Daddy,” he said, “Wolfe’s Hollywood is one of the most amazing I have encountered.” The fantasy which follows is not a Gordon Rengs story, although its -principal character is a Hollywood writer—one Walter Jack Commice. Wolfe assures us that any resemblance between Commice and himself is purely coincidental. There is also very little resemblance between this bracing dash of bitters and “The Never Ending Penny” the amiable Wolfe story that appears earlier in these pages, for “The Dot and Dash Bird” is comedie noire at its deepest, most ebon shade of noire.
~ * ~
THE MYNA, in black pomposity of feathers, with chief justice’s leveling eyes, worked at its chuffy song, gurrah, gurree, gruh-greeg. Walter Jack Commice ticked out the beat on the surface of his free-shape pale-lemon Formica desk, bop, bop, bop-bop.
When he became aware of what his fingers were doing, he looked up quickly from the puce-colored IBM typewriter to study the dark presiding figure in its curlicued brass cage.
“I spit on your trivialized smut guts, too, scum eyes.”
He was not pleased with himself for hating a small incarcerated animal. But facts were facts. Small black magisterial clump of nothing with a sheen of no sympathy in the eye and answering to the name of Jonnikins.
“Jonnikins, your Jerkiness. You and your witch friend Daisy-Dear. Long-term mononucleosis to you both.”
Neither did he enjoy malicious thoughts about his mother-in-law. He never laughed at mother-in-law jokes, because he sensed in them a displeasure with women which he believed more suited to fairies, whom he truly hated. Yet how deny he had a mother-in-law who doted on the name Daisy-Dear and insisted on keeping a filthy rotten myna bird she insisted on calling Jonnikins? Keeping the miserable squawker in his study, at his elbow? Not bad enough she had to live here. She had to buddy up to rotten filthy birds that eyed you and made nasty Huntley-Brinkley commentaries you couldn’t understand about you and yours. Birds that sat on a stack of statute books handing down sentences and making mucoid rock ‘n’ roll in their throats. In his study. At his elbow.
“Jonnikins, if you want to know what I think, I think you’re a fairy, a feather-bearing damn fairy. I would dance in the streets to see you stretched out conclusively dead with your ugly claws sticking straight up. As for your side-kick and bird of a feather, Daisy-Dear . . .”
Drawing back from the darkening thought, he shifted his eyes to the picture window to consider the sunny spread of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills below. From his rose-carpeted and rose-draped study here high over Coldwater Canyon he could make out all the landmarks of the sprawled enterprise called Walter Jack Commice, the California Bank Building, where agents sat collecting his moneys, the Sunset Tower, where business managers were busy disbursing his moneys, the Beverly Hilton, in whose penthouse Escoffier Room he met regularly with television producers and story editors to firm up new assignments, the Park La Brea Towers, where his secretary was at this moment typing up his last script for the Yucca Yancy series, the Bekins warehouse, where he was obliged to store his many bound volumes of old television scripts now that Daisy-Dear insisted on using the closet of his study for Jonnikin’s feeds and vitamins and assorted goodies. About him this network of institutions operating on the premise that his hands would continue to fly plottingly and dialogingly over the puce IBM, but when he looked down at a wide city dependent on his ten fingers, the fingers went truant and jogged the myna’
s growling rhythms.
Bop, bop, they went. Bop, bop-bop.
Daisy-Dear came in slapping her too-large fluffy mules and crossed to her darling’s cage.
“Don’t mind me,” she said, as usual. He was again struck by how much she sounded like her feathered friend, a rasper, a growler. He kept expecting her to grow a beak; she already had the beadiness of eye. “Just want to see how Boy-Boy is.”
Sometimes it wasn’t Jonnikins. When that love welled up it could be Boy-Boy.
“It would be easier to not mind you,” he said, not loudly, “if you didn’t start yapping the minute you came in.” He added with no loudness at all, “Easier still if you took a slow train to Anchorage.”
But by this time she was crooking her finger through the brass bars at Jon-Boy-Boy and saying in a coo, “Are you maybe under the weather, little man? You look peak-ed, definitely.”
The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Page 35