“No, of course not,” I said.
“Eh?”
“Sure, sure, Corporal.”
“Good,” said Corporal Cuckoo. “Now in case you think I’m kidding, take a look at this. You saw what I done?”
“I saw, Corporal.”
“Look,” he said, thrusting his left hand under my nose. It was covered with blood. His shirt cuff was red and wet. Fascinated, I saw one thick, sluggish drop crawl out of the cloth near the buttonhole, and hang, quivering, before it fell on my knee. The mark of it is in the cloth of my trousers to this day.
“See?” said Corporal Cuckoo, and he licked the place between his fingers where his knife had cut down. A pale area appeared. “Where did I cut myself?” he asked.
I shook my head; there was no wound—only a white scar. He wiped his knife on the palm of his. hand—it left a red smear—and let the blade fall with a sharp click. Then he wiped his left hand on his right, rubbed both hands clean upon the backs of his trouser legs, and said; “Am I kidding?”
“Well!” I said, somewhat breathlessly. “Well—”
“Oh what the hell!” groaned Corporal Cuckoo, weary beyond words, exhausted, worn out by his endeavors to explain the inexplicable and make the incredible sound reasonable. “. . . Look. You think this is a trick? Have you got a knife?”
“Yes. Why?”
“A big knife?”
“Moderately big.”
“Okay. Cut my throat with it, and see what happens. Stick it in me wherever you like. And I’ll bet you a thousand dollars. I’ll be all right inside two or three hours. Go on. Man to man, it’s a bet. Or go borrow an ax if you like; hit me over the head with it.”
“Be damned if I do,” I said, shuddering.
“And that’s how it is,” said Corporal Cuckoo, in despair. “And that’s how it is every time. There they are, making fortunes out of soap and toothpaste, and here I am, with something in my pocket to keep you young and healthy forever—ah, go chase yourself! I never ought to’ve drunk your rotten Scotch. This is the way it always is. You wear a beard just like I used to wear before I got a gunpowder-burn in the chin at Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sidney got his; or I wouldn’t have talked to you. Oh, you dope! I could murder you, so help me I could! Go to hell.”
Corporal Cuckoo leaped to his feet and darted away so swiftly that before I found my feet he had disappeared. There was blood on the deck close to where I had been sitting—a tiny pool of blood, no larger than a coffee saucer, broken at one edge by the imprint of a heel. About a yard and a half away I saw another heel mark in blood, considerably less noticeable. Then there was a dull smear, as if one of the bloody rubber heels had spun around and impelled its owner toward the left. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” I shouted. “Oh, Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”
But I never saw Corporal Cuckoo again, and I wonder where he can be. It may be that he gave me a false name. But what I heard I heard, and what I saw I saw; and I have five hundred dollars here in an envelope for the man who will put me in touch with him. Honey and oil of roses, eggs and turpentine; these involve, as I said, infinite permutations and combinations. So does any comparable mixture. Still, it might be worth investigating. Why not? Fleming got penicillin out of mildew. Only God knows the glorious mysteries of the dust, out of which come trees and bees, and life in every form, from mildew to man.
I lost Corporal Cuckoo before we landed in New York on July 11th, 1945. Somewhere in the United States, I believe, there is a man tremendously strong in the arms and covered with terrible scars who has the dreadfully dangerous secret of perpetual youth and life. He appears to be about thirty-odd years of age, and has watery, greenish eyes.
<
* * * *
RICHARD MATHESON
On one day the world of science fiction was as ignorant of the name “Richard Matheson” as of the name of the owner of your corner delicatessen; on the next the name ranked in the same rarefied levels as most of the contributors to this volume. What worked the change? It was a simple-enough event; it was the publication of an issue ofThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, outwardly no different from any other issue of that very good magazine, but internally distinguished by a story called “Born of Man and Woman.” That was Richard Matheson’s first, and it was a scary, creepy beauty. And let no man tell you he has since lost the knack; for the proof that he has it still—
Dance of The Dead
I wanna RIDE!
with my Rota-Mota honey
by my SIDE!
As we whiz along the highway
"We will HUG and SNUGGLE and we'll have a little STRUGGLE!"
struggle (strug'l), n., act of promiscuous loveplay; usage evolved during W.W.III.
Double beams spread buttery lamplight on the highway. Rotor-Motors Convertible, Model C, 1987, rushed after it. Light spurted ahead, yellow glowing. The car pursued with a twelve-cylindered snarling pursuit. Night blotted in behind, jet and still. The car sped on.
"I wanna FLY!" they sang, "with the Rota-Mota apple of my EYE!" they sang. "It's the only way of living.…"
The quartet singing: Len, 23.
Bud, 24.
Barbara, 20.
Peggy, 18.
Len with Barbara, Bud with Peggy, Bud at the wheel, snapping around tilted curves, roaring up black-shouldered hills, shooting the car across silent flatlands. At the top of the three lungs (the fourth gentler), competing with wind that buffeted their heads, that whipped their hair to lashing threads—singing:
"You can have your walkin' under MOONLIGHT BEAMS!
At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!"
Needle quivering at 130, two 5-m.p.h. notches from gauge's end. A sudden dip! Their young frames jolted and the thrown-up laughter of three was wind-swept into night. Around a curve, darting up and down a hill, flashing across a leveled plain—an ebony bullet skimming earth.
"In my ROTORY, MOTORY, FLOATERY, drivin' machi-i-i-i-ine!"
In the back seat: "Have a jab, Bab."
"Thanks, I had one after supper"
(pushing away needle fixed to eye-dropper).
In the front seat: You meana tell me this is the first time you ever been t' Saint Loo!"
"But I just started school in September."
"Hey, you're a frosh!"
Back seat joining front seat: "Hey, frosh, have a mussle-tussle."
(Needle passed forward, eye bulb quivering amber juice.)
"Live it, girl!"
mussle-tussle (mus'l-tus'l), n., slang for the result of injecting a drug into a muscle; usage evolved during W.W.III.
Peggy's lips failed at smiling. Her fingers twitched.
"No, thanks, I'm not …"
"Come on, frosh!" Len leaning hard over the seat, white-browed under black blowing hair. Pushing the needle at her face. "Live it, girl! Grab a li'l mussle-tussle!"
"I'd rather not," said Peggy. "If you don't—"
"What's 'at, frosh?" yelled Len and pressed his leg against the pressing leg of Barbara.
Peggy shook her head and golden hair flew across her cheeks and eyes. Underneath her yellow dress, underneath her white brassiere, underneath her young breast—a heart throbbed heavily. Watch your step, darling, that's all we ask. Remember, you're all we have in the world now. Mother words drumming at her; the needle making her draw back into the seat.
"Come on, frosh!"
The car groaned its shifting weight around a curve and centrifugal force pressed Peggy into Bud's lean hip. His hand dropped down and fingered at her leg. Underneath her yellow dress, underneath her sheer stocking—flesh crawled. Lips failed again; the smile was a twitch of red.
"Frosh, live it up!"
"Lay off, Len, jab your own dates."
"But we gotta teach frosh how to mussle-tussle!"
"Lay off, I said! She's my date!"
The black car roaring, chasing its own light. Peggy anchored down the feeling hand with hers. The wind whistled over them and grabbed down chilly fingers at their hai
r. She didn't want his hand there but she felt grateful to him.
Her vaguely frightened eyes watched the road lurch beneath the wheels. In back, a silent struggle began, taut hands rubbing, parted mouths clinging. Search for the sweet elusive at 120 miles-per-hour.
"Rota-Mota honey," Len moaned the moan between salivary kisses. In the front seat a young girl's heart beat unsteadily.
"No kiddin', you never been to Saint Loo?"
"No, I …"
"Then you never saw the loopy's dance?"
Throat contracting suddenly. "No, I … Is that what … we're going to—"
"Hey, frosh never saw the loopy's dance!" Bud yelled back.
Lips parted, slurping; skirt was adjusted with blasé aplomb. "No kiddin'!" Len fired up the words. "Girl, you haven't lived!"
"Oh, she's got to see that," said Barbara, buttoning a button.
"Let's go there then!" yelled Len. "Let's give frosh a thrill!"
"Good enough," said Bud and squeezed her leg. "Good enough up here, right, Peg?"
Peggy's throat moved in the dark and the wind clutched harshly at her hair. She'd heard of it, she'd read of it but never had she thought she'd—
Choose your school friends carefully darling. Be very careful.
But when no one spoke to you for two whole months? When you were lonely and wanted to talk and laugh and be alive? And someone spoke to you finally and asked you to go out with them?
"I yam Popeye, the sailor man!" Bud sang.
In back, they crowed artificial delight. Bud was taking a course IN PRE-WAR COMICS AND CARTOONS—2. This week the class was studying Popeye. Bud had fallen in love with the one-eyed seaman and told Len and Barbara all about him; taught them dialogue and song.
"I yam Popeye, the sailor man! I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women! I yam Popeye, the sailor man!"
Laughter. Peggy smiled falteringly. The hand left her leg as the car screeched around a curve and she was thrown against the door. Wind dashed blunt coldness in her eyes and forced her back, blinking. 110—115—120 miles-per-hour.
Be very careful, dear.
Popeye cocked wicked eye.
"O, Olive Oyl, you is my sweet patootie."
Elbow nudging Peggy. "You be Olive Oyl—you."
Peggy smiled nervously. "I can't."
"Sure!"
In the back seat, Wimpy came up for air to announce, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Three fierce voices and a faint fourth raged against the howl of wind. "I fights to the fin-ish 'cause I eats my spin-ach! I yam Popeye, the sailor man! Toot! Toot!
"I yam what I yam," reiterated Popeye gravely and put his hand on the yellow-skirted leg of Olive Oyl. In the back, two members of the quartet returned to feeling struggle.
The black car roared through the darkened suburbs. "On with the nosies!" Bud sang out. They all took out their plasticate nose-and-mouth pieces and adjusted them.
Ance (anse), n., slang for anticivilian germs; usage evolved during W.W.III.
"You'll like the loopy's dance!" Bud shouted to her over the shriek of wind. "It's sensaysh!"
Peggy felt a cold that wasn't of the night or of the wind. Remember, darling, there are terrible things in the world today. Things you must avoid.
"Couldn't we go somewhere else?" Peggy said but her voice was inaudible. She heard Bud singing, "I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women!" She felt his hand on her leg again while, in the back, was the silence of grinding passion without kisses.
Dance of the dead. The words trickled ice across Peggy's brain.
The black car sped into the ruins.
* * * *
It was a place of smoke and blatant joys. Air resounded with the bleating of revelers and there was a noise of sounding brass spinning out a cloud of music—1987 music, a frenzy of twisted dissonances. Dancers, shoe-horned into the tiny square of open floor, ground pulsing bodies together. A network of bursting sounds lanced through the mass of them; dancers singing:
"Hurt me! Bruise me! Squeeze me TIGHT!
Scorch my blood with hot DELIGHT!
Please abuse me every NIGHT!
LOVER, LOVER, LOVER, be a beast-to-me!"
Elements of explosion restrained within the dancing bounds—instead of fragmenting, quivering. "Oh, be a beast, beast, beast, Beast, BEAST to me!"
"How is this, Olive old goil?" Popeye inquired of the light of his eye as they struggled after the waiter. "Nothin' like this in Sykesville, eh?"
Peggy smiled but her hand in Bud's felt numb. As they passed by a murky lighted table, a hand she didn't see felt at her leg. She twitched and bumped against a hard knee across the narrow aisle. As she stumbled and lurched through the hot and smoky, thick-aired room, she felt a dozen eyes disrobing her, abusing her. Bud jerked her along and she felt her lips trembling.
"Hey, how about that!" Bud exulted as they sat. "Right by the stage!"
From cigarette mists, the waiter plunged and hovered, pencil poised, beside their table.
"What'll it be!" His questioning shout cut through cacophony.
"Whiskey-water!" Bud and Len paralleled orders, then turned to their dates. "What'll it be!" the waiter's request echoed from their lips.
"Green Swamp!"Barbara said and, "Green Swamp here!" Len passed it along. Gin, Invasion Blood (1987 Rum), lime juice, sugar, mint spray, splintered ice—a popular college girl drink.
"What about you, honey?" Bud asked his date.
Peggy smiled. "Just some ginger ale," she said, her voice a fluttering frailty in the massive clash and fog of smoke.
"What?" asked Bud and, "What's that, didn't hear!" the waiter shouted.
"Ginger ale."
"What?"
"Ginger ale!"
"GINGER ALE!" Len screamed it out and the drummer, behind the raging curtain of noise that was the band's music, almost heard it. Len banged down his fist. One—Two—Three!
CHORUS: Ginger Ale was only twelve years old! Went to church and was as good as gold. Till that day when—
"Come on, come on!" the waiter squalled. "Let's have that order, kids! I'm busy!"
"Two whisky-waters and two Green Swamps!" Len sang out and the waiter was gone into the swirling maniac mist.
Peggy felt her young heart flutter helplessly. Above all, don't drink when you're out on a date. Promise us that, darling, you must promise us that. She tried to push away instructions etched in brain.
"How you like this place, honey? Loopy, ain't it?" Bud fired the question at her; a red-faced, happy-faced Bud.
loopy (loo pi), adj., common alter. of L.U.P. (Lifeless Undeath Phenomenon).
She smiled at Bud, a smile of nervous politeness. Her eyes moved around, her face inclined and she was looking up at the stage. Loopy. The word scalpeled at her mind. Loopy, loopy.
The stage was five yards deep at the radius of its wooden semicircle. A waist-high rail girdled the circumference, two pale purple spotlights, unlit, hung at each rail end. Purple on white—the thought came. Darling, isn't Sykesville Business College good enough? No! I don't want to take a business course, I want to major in art at the University!
The drinks were brought and Peggy watched the disembodied waiter's arm thud down a high, green-looking glass before her. Presto!—the arm was gone. She looked into the murky Green Swamp depths and saw chipped ice bobbing.
"A toast! Pick up your glass, Peg!" Bud clarioned.
They all clinked glasses:
"To lust primordial!" Bud toasted.
"To beds inviolate!" Len added.
"To flesh insensate!" Barbara added a third link.
Their eyes zeroed in on Peggy's face, demanding. She didn't understand.
"Finish it!" Bud told her, plagued by freshman sluggishness.
Star Science Fiction 3 - [Anthology] Page 14