Jim Baens Universe-Vol 2 Num 5

by Eric Flint

  The sky was clear, hung with stars and a huge, close, golden moon, but it was bitterly cold, and his breath hung in white clouds before his face.

  A deep sigh behind him made him spin in the direction whence it had come, and he found himself looking at a wizened old man, bent with age, his sparse hair white and straggly across the collar of his robe. He leaned heavily on a carved staff, both gnarled and twisted hands, bare of gloves, upon its head. There was nothing in this ancient being to suggest the almost childlike youth of Aris's erstwhile host, Bek. But then the old man looked up, and the eyes were the same glowing embers of blue fire.

  "The Eternal Hour was a high fee to choose, gleeman," the creature that was Bek said in a low voice cracked with the passage of time.

  "The Eternal Hour?" repeated Aris blankly.

  "What you hold," Bek said, "made me and my home timeless. You could have spent a century inside my room and emerged young and beautiful the next morning."

  Aris picked up the hourglass gingerly and held it out. "But I don't . . ."

  Bek shook his head. "Too late. It is in your hand now. I mean—take a look around you . . . nothing made it that was not part of your immediate environment when you touched the glass. Your own belongings, the pallet you slept on, the mug you drank from, the chair you sat on . . ." This was correct; only now did Aris notice these items, incongruous in the snow. "And one careless cat." Bek chuckled, with real amusement. "Well, they're yours now, cat and all. And the hourglass. You control it now, to use however you choose. You may take whomever you wish into the stasis with you, and they may then leave unmolested . . . unless they touch the glass, and you may not warn them directly not to do so. Just be warned—it is a treasure with a price."

  Aris shivered, and not with cold. "What?"

  "Keep it too long, and you forget what time is," said Bek. "I received it when I was very, very young . . . and kept it for too many centuries." He coughed. "They do catch up with you."

  "But I don't want it," Aris said, a hint of panic in his voice.

  "Then," said Bek, "you had better give it away within this hour—before the sand runs out to the last few grains, then stops, starting your Eternal Hour."

  "But if someone else . . ."

  "If someone else turns the hourglass over before the end of the hour, it is theirs," said Bek. "But just as you may not warn them not to touch it when it belongs to you, so you may not hide its nature while it is still free. It may be taken in ignorance or innocence, but never passed on willingly under the same geas. If you give it away, you give away everything—including the knowledge of its power." Bek chuckled. "And you may find it hard to find people who love eternal life enough to take it over by choice."

  He began to flicker and to fade against the gleaming moonlit snow. Aris threw out an imploring hand. "No! Wait!"

  "Be careful with your gift . . ." Bek's voice came drifting back, then he was gone, completely gone, leaving Aris alone in an empty wilderness with an hourglass that held his destiny. He sank down onto the furs that had been his pallet, dropping the hourglass beside him in the snow, and buried his head in his hands.

  The cat came high-stepping daintily back to the furs. It approached and butted Aris's knee with its head, purring loudly. When Aris didn't move, the cat settled against the side of his leg.

  Spend the winter in Ghulkit.

  Aris allowed himself a bitter chuckle at the memory of a thought that had accompanied him on the road before he had found Bek's house—a thought that took on the force of premonition, seen with hindsight. If he wasn't careful, he was in real danger of spending eternity here.

  The cat leaned more insistently against him, letting out a small whimper. Aris lifted his head and turned to look at it, resting his chin on hands folded on his knees.

  "Poor beast," he murmured, "you hardly asked for this . . ."

  He reached for the cat, awkwardly, at an angle; the cat shied, backing away. Its hind leg slipped off the edge of the fur, onto snow . . . and into the side of the hourglass.

  Which tumbled slowly, then righted itself.

  On the opposite end.

  Sand began flowing back into the chamber it had just left.

  Aris sat frozen in midmotion, staring, unable to believe his eyes. He had not fulfilled the geas of explaining the nature of the hourglass to the cat, but the cat was an animal—would such an explanation have made any difference? And could he really take a serendipitous accident as a gift from the gods and walk away, free?

  Aris carefully rose from the pallet furs, slung his harp-pack across his shoulder, and reached for his pack. Slowly, quietly, like a thief stealing away, he backed away from the cat that would never die. He gained the edge of the road he had been traveling before he had found Bek's house, and hesitated, very briefly, as he cast a glance first in the direction in which he had been heading, then back along the way he had already come.

  I could get RICH in Ghulkit!

  Aris shivered, irresolute for a moment under the golden moon. He glanced back briefly then turned, staring. The pewter mug and the chair in which he had sat in Bek's house were still there—but the pallet, its furs and the cat were gone. And so was the hourglass.

  A voice inside his mind screamed to flee this enchanted place, to seek familiar places and more hospitable lands. But there was a shimmer of moonlight on the horizon, and the snow gleamed with promise underneath the stars. He was Aris, gleeman, storyteller, and there were more stories out there to be found.

  There was no choice at all.

  The moon pooled and shimmered in the footsteps of the trail he left behind him, following the snow-mantled road into the future.

  Sluggo

  Written by Mike Resnick

  Illustrated by Karl Nordman

  He was born in the charity ward at 3:07 a.m. on March 5, 1931. There were two nurses in attendance.

  The first took one look at him and fainted.

  The other ran screaming from the room, raced out into the cold Chicago night, and refused ever to come back even to pick up her pay.

  The doctor who delivered him wanted him destroyed, but as a practicing Catholic he could not bring himself to do so until the baby had been baptized. His parish priest looked at the baby in its incubator, crossed himself, and left. Three more priests refused to baptize the infant, and finally the doctor reluctantly decided to let him live.

  His mother committed suicide two months later.

  His father left town a month after that, never to return, and he became a ward of the state.

  He was placed in an institution for the insane, though there was nothing wrong with his mind. Thirty-seven nurses were offered triple pay if they would care for him. Thirty-three decided that triple pay wasn't anywhere near enough. The four who agreed worked in six-hour shifts and found ways to cover for each other on the weekends.

  He had no birth certificate, and hence no name. One of the nurses referred to him as a grotesque slug, and from that day on, Slug was what they called him, and Slug was what he answered to.

  No other inmate was ever allowed to see him. He lived alone in his windowless room, unable to read, unable to interact with anyone but his nurses, who kept him at arm's length whenever possible. This was before the days of television, so his entire knowledge of the outside world came from the few picture books they allowed him to see. No one knew how strong he was, or what his abilities might be, so the pulps—and especially the horror pulps and comics—were forbidden to him. Gradually, despite the shape of his mouth, he learned to speak; after all, he had a lot of time on his hands.

  It was assumed that he would remain in the institution for the duration of his life, but there was some graft, as there always is in Chicago, and one day the place had to close its doors for lack of funding. They tried to find another institute or asylum that would take the Slug, but after one look each refused, some cordially, some in terror.

  What was to be done with a being—it was difficult to think of him as a twenty-two
-year-old man, or indeed any kind of man at all—that no one wanted but could no longer be kept hidden?

  Actually, the answer was really quite simple.

  Remember Riverview?

  For half a century it was the country's second-biggest amusement park, behind only Coney Island. (They weren't "theme parks" prior to Disneyland.) From early spring until late fall, its seventy-four acres were jammed from dawn until far into the night with thrillseekers from all across the country. People came from as far away as Paris and Buenos Aires just to ride the Bobs, which was the most famous roller coaster in the world. And when they were through with the Bobs, they'd test their courage and their stomachs with the Blue Streak, the Silver Flash, the Big Dipper, the Wild Mouse, and the Skyrocket.

  Even by day you could spot the two-hundred-foot-high Pair-o-Chute tower from more than a mile away. And at night you could see Super Eli, the world's biggest Ferris wheel, lit up like a Christmas tree, from almost as far away.

  There was the Rotor, which held you suspended in space, and the Flying Turns, which damned near sent you off into space, and on hot summer days people would wait for half an hour to take the long slide into the water on the Chute-the-Chutes. They'd play Skee-Ball and dozens of other games imported from the midway. There was the Ghost Train, a haunted house on wheels that drove through winding darkened tunnels, and the Tunnel of Love, for those who craved a different kind of excitement in the dark.

  And there was the Congress of Oddities, although most people just called it the freak show. It was the one place in the whole of Chicago where it was felt that the Slug might earn his keep.

  They put him on display there at noon on August 17, 1953.

  People screamed, just like they were supposed to.

  But then, like the nurses twenty-two years earlier, they fainted. And had hysterics. And vomited. And raced out of the tent, and didn't stop running until they were forcibly (and twice fatally) stopped by traffic beyond Riverview's front entrance. Even the 700-Pound Lady and the Four-Armed Boy refused to appear with the Slug.

  They took him off display, permanently, at 1:22 p.m. on August 17, 1953.

  But he had no place to go, and they couldn't just turn him loose and let him wander the streets of Chicago, not with the reactions his appearance caused. Then somebody came up with the bright idea of Aladdin's Castle.

  The Castle was the biggest fun house in existence. It took better than a half hour to go through the whole thing. And there were some pitch-black winding corridors where hideous monsters popped into existence, scaring the hell out of the patrons. What if, it was suggested, they let the Slug wander around those darkened areas, never close enough for the public to see that he was anything more than an illusion. He'd frighten them a lot more than any of the stuff they had right now. And since there were a number of hidden storage areas, he could even live there.

  The management was divided on the notion until it was pointed out that he'd be working for his room and board, which is to say: no money would change hands. That settled it. They closed the Congress of Oddities for the rest of the day, and then at midnight they had a couple of their braver maintenance men walk him over to Aladdin's Castle.

  "I wonder what it eats?" said one of them as if the Slug weren't right alongside them.

  "Little kids, probably," said the other. "Or maybe just mounds of dirt. Anyway, it ain't our problem."

  The night watchman took one look at him and decided he had urgent business elsewhere for the next two or three lifetimes, but they found the room he'd set up. It had a cot, a chair, a radio (which could only be played after closing), a portable toilet, and a lamp. There was a flap at the bottom of the door where his meals could be shoved through so no one had to come into contact with him.

  The Slug thought it was the most luxurious room he'd ever seen.

  They showed him where he was supposed to loiter when the Castle was open, then got the hell out of there as fast as they could.

  The Slug began exploring his new universe. He'd never had much chance to develop his muscles or practice his balance, so the vibrating room and rolling barrel both disoriented him and caused him to fall down painfully. Then he came to the Hall of Mirrors.

  He knew what men and women looked like, because he'd seen pictures of them in books and magazines, but except for looking at his arms and legs, he had never seen himself before. Now he found he could stand in front of a row of near-magical mirrors that distorted reality: this one made him look, if not human, at least a little less grotesque than he'd been led to believe he was; that one gave him almost normal proportions, though of course it couldn't do much for his skin or features. Because he had never seen any kind of mirror, he thought for a moment that he had miraculously become less of whatever he was. Then he stepped back, and his image changed, and he realized that it was not a true image at all and he remained what he had always been. Still, it fascinated him, this room that made him seem not quite the monstrosity that he was, and he spent almost an hour there, staring at the various Slugs that were reflected back at him.

  The next day the Slug began working at the only job he would ever have. Within a week Aladdin's Castle had passed the Bobs as Riverview's biggest moneymaker.

  * * *

  In his first two years, he only met one employee, though "met" is the wrong word, because Andrew Varda never got near him, never said a word to him, always averted his eyes when the Slug chanced to be in his vicinity.

  Andrew was the only person on display at the Castle. Ostensibly he was a guard, and he dressed the part—dark blue shirt and pants, phony badge, realistic-looking toy gun. But Andrew was there for one thing only. There was a slanted room where people got terribly disoriented and usually had to grab a railing just to make their way to the end of it—and the end of it was a small door leading to an outdoor staircase that in turn led up to the second level. Varda's job was to watch each person as they exited the slanted room and began climbing the stairs, and every time a pretty girl in a skirt emerged, he pressed a hidden button and an air hose embedded in the stairs would blow the girl's skirt up almost to her head. About once a month there'd be a girl who was wearing nothing underneath, and about once a year a girl would turn out to be a very mixed-up boy who was wearing nothing underneath, but usually it was done, and accepted, in good fun.

  The Slug thought Varda had a fascinating job. He got to sit outside, in the fresh air, and to see and interact with people—the same people who screamed in terror or turned away in revulsion, even when they thought he was a wax figure or a projection.

  Then, in the summer of 1955, while most of Chicago was rooting for the resurgent "Go-Go Sox" or awaiting the much-heralded Nashua-Swaps match race, the Slug, who had never spoken to anyone but a doctor or a nurse, had his very first real conversation. It didn't last long, which was just as well because he didn't know a lot of words, but that it took place at all was remarkable.

  He was trudging from his room to one of the spots from which he would jump out and scare the customers when he heard a sound he had never heard before. Curious, he approached it, and found a small girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, crying softly. He knew he shouldn't stand where she could see him, that the sight of him would terrify her as it terrified everyone else, but he couldn't help himself. He had never been this close to anyone other than a doctor, a nurse, or, just for a few minutes, the two men who walked him over from the Congress of Oddities, and he was fascinated.

  He must have made a sound—in fact, it was almost impossible for him to breathe silently—and the girl looked up.

  The Slug backed away, waiting for the inevitable scream of terror.

  "Don't be afraid," said the girl. "I won't hurt you."

  The Slug stopped and stared at her.

  "My Daddy told me all about you," she said. "You live here."

  The Slug remained motionless, unsure of what to do next.

  "He's the one who works the blowers and makes the girls' skirts go up," she continued. "U
sually they laugh, but sometimes they cry. He said I was getting in everyone's way, and that I should go backstage until Aladdin's Castle closed." She looked around. "I guess this is backstage. It must be, since you're here."

  He had never heard the word "backstage" before. He didn't know what to say.

  "Can you talk?" she asked.

  It had been a long time, but he remembered how to form the word. "Yes," he grated.

  "My name is Nancy. Do you have a name, or are you just a thing like Daddy says?"

  "Slug." Slowly he forced the words out. "I am Slug."

  She smiled happily. "Then we're Nancy and Sluggo, just like in the comic strip. We're a team."

  He tried to mouth the word. "Nancy."

  "You're very ugly," she noted. "But the world is full of ugly things. Today I saw birds pulling apart a dead cat in the alley behind our apartment, eating its insides, and it was much uglier than you. I don't know why everyone is afraid of you." She stared curiously at him. "You don't really eat babies, do you?"

  "Baby spiders," he said. "And sometimes baby mice."

  "But not baby people?" she persisted.

  "I have never seen a baby person," said the Slug. "Until you."

  "I'm not a baby," she explained seriously. "I'm a girl."

  "Girl," he repeated.

  Suddenly she looked around. "It's not as crowded now. I think I should leave before Daddy comes looking for me. He'll be very mad if he thinks I have been visiting with you."

  The Slug thought it was probably an understatement, but made no reply.

  "May I come visit you again?" she asked.

  The thought that anyone might want to see him again so surprised him that he was speechless.

  "I'm sorry," she said after a moment. "I didn't mean to make you angry. I apologize."

  She turned to leave.

  "Yes!" he yelled in his inhuman voice, and the few people in the Castle tried to figure out where the sound came from. He spoke more softly. "Please."

  "Tomorrow, when it's busy," she promised. "Good-bye, Sluggo."