You're All Alone (illustrated)

by Fritz Leiber

  “After tonight? He’s my friend no longer. Besides, fear will make him do anything. He can’t be trusted.”

  “But I can help you,” Carr insisted stubbornly. “I had a sign in a dream last night.”

  “What was that?”

  “It’s fuzzy now, but you and I were prisoners somewhere, all tied up, and I cut your bonds and we escaped.”

  “Was that the finish?”

  He frowned. “I’m not sure. Maybe something got us in the end.”

  “You see?”

  “But that was only a dream,” he protested.

  “And a sign, you said.”

  “Jane, don’t you understand? I have to help you.” He started to put his arms around her, but she quickly got up and turned away.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, following her.

  She held her shoulders stiffly, but she had trouble speaking. “Go away, Carr. Go away right now.”

  “I can’t, Jane.”

  “Now, Carr. Please.”

  “No, Jane, I won’t.”

  She stood there a moment longer. Then her shoulders sagged. Carr felt the tension go out of him too. He rubbed his eyes.

  “Lord,” he exclaimed, “I wish I had another drink.”

  She turned around and her face was radiant. Carr looked at her in amazement. She seemed to have dropped her cloak of fear and thrown around her shoulders a garment that glittered.

  “Come on,” she said.

  He followed her as if she were some fairy-tale princess—and she did seem to have grown taller—as she went three aisles over, pulled on a light, took down from an upper shelf three copies of Marius the Epicurean, stuck her hand into the gap and brought out a fifth of scotch.

  His eyes widened. “You certainly do yourself proud.”

  She laughed. “Would you really like to see?” And recklessly tumbling down other clutches of books, she showed him a packrat accumulation of hankerchiefs, peanuts and candy, jewelry, cosmetics, even a long golden wig (she held that to her cheek a moment, asking him if he liked blondes), shoes, stockings, dresses, scarves, and all sorts of little boxes and bottles, cups, plates, and glasses.

  Taking two of the latter, crystal-bright and long stemmed, she said, “And now will you have a drink with me, prince, in my castle?”

  CHAPTER XIV

  There’s one nice thing about the world being an engine. It gives you something exciting to watch. You can even have some fun with it, kid it a little. But don’t hurt the poor puppets . . .

  LIKE TWO drunken pirate stowaways from the hold of a Spanish galleon, tipsily swaying and constantly shushing each other, Carr and Jane went up a narrow stair, groped through the foreign language section, and crossed the library’s unlighted rotunda. Carr’s heart went out to the shadows festooning the vast place. He felt he could fly up to them if he willed, wrap them around him fold on fold. They looked as warm and friendly as the scotch felt inside him.

  Then, weaving behind Jane down a broad white stairway, it occurred to him that they might be prince and princess stealing from a marble castle, bound on some dangerous escapade. Here within, all gloom and silent grandeur, save where an unseen guard rattled his pike—say over there, by the elevator, or behind that high glass case. Outside, the city, restless and turbulent, holding wild carnival, but full of rebellious mutterings, “. . . in a nasty mood,” the old Archduke had said, tugging his silvered sideburns. “ ’Twere well your majesties not show yourselves. I have given order to double the palace guard. If only we could set hand on those two young firebrands who raise this malcontent!” Here he knotted his veiny white fist, “The Flame, the girl is called. ’Tis said she bears a likeness to your majesty. Our spies are everywhere, we have set traps at every likely gathering place, but still the two elude us!”

  Then, just as the Archduke was launching into his baritone solo, “The awful grandeur of the state strikes terror in men’s souls,” Carr realized that Jane had got through the door to the street. He followed her outside and halted, entranced. For there, beyond the wide sidewalk, was a most fitting continuation of his fantasy—a long low limousine with silvery fittings and softly glowing interior.

  Then he saw that it was no pumpkin coach, at least not for himself and Jane, for approaching it at a stately waddle came two well-fed elderly couples, the men in top hats. Under the street lights, the features of all four were screwed up into an expression of germicidal haughtiness. While they were still some yards away, a Negro chauffeur opened the door and touched his visored cap.

  Jane suddenly scampered straight at the sedate waddlers. Carr watched in growing amazement and delight as she veered off at the last moment, but in passing reached out and knocked off the nearest top hat. And the old fool wearing it marched on without even turning his head.

  It hit Carr with all the instant impact of that crucial drink which opens the door to wonderland. There at his feet and Jane’s lay the city—a playground, a nursery, a zoo, a congregation of lock-stepping robots, of mindless machines. You could do anything! No one could stop you!

  With a whoop he raised his arms and ran lurchingly across the sidewalk at a wide angle that caught him up with Jane so that they raced around the corner hand in hand.

  And now they were prince and princess no longer, but wizard’s children with stolen cloaks of invisibility. Under their winged feet the pavement fled. Horns and streetcar bells struck up a dulcet, nerve-quickening music, as if for acrobats preparing for their star turn.

  Across their path a theater lobby spilled a gabbling, cigarette-puffing, taxi-hailing horde. Oh, the beautiful joy of rushing through them, of jostling powdered shoulders, of hopelessly tangling half-donned overcoats, of plucking at ties and shawls under the glare of yellow lights, of bobbing up and gibbering like apes into stuffy, unseeing faces.

  NEXT, IN an exhibition of hair-raising daring and split-second dexterity, to spring from the sidewalk and dart between speeding cab and green sedan, to jeer at the blind drivers, almost to slip and sprawl on gleaming tracks in front of a vast rhinoceros of a streetcar, to regain balance deftly and glide between moving chromium bumpers just beyond, finally to gain the opposite sidewalk, your ears ringing with a great about of applause—and to realize you had uttered that shout yourself!

  Oh, to hiss into the ear of a fat woman with smug suburban face, “The supreme court has just declared soap-operas unconstitutional,” to scream at a solemn man with eleven-dollar shirt, “The Communists have set up a guillotine in Grant Park!” to say to a mincing, dopey-eyed sweater-girl, “I’m a talent scout. “Follow me,” to a well-dressed person with an aura of superiority, “Gallop Poll. Do you approve of Charlemagne’s policies toward the Saxons?” to a slinking clerk, “Burlesque is back,” to a dull, beefy jerk in overalls, “Free beer behind the booths, ask for Clancy,” to a fishfaced bookie, “Here, hold my pocket-book,” to a youth, “Follow that man,” to a slim intellectual with briefcase, at court-stenographer speed, “Watch the sky. A wall of atomic catastrophe, ignited by injudicious Swedish experiments, is advancing across Labrador, great circle route, at the rate of seventeen hundred and ninety-seven miles an hour.”

  And finally, panting, sides needled by delicious breathlessness, to sink to a curb and sit with back resting against metal trash box and laugh gaspingly in each other’s faces, doubling up after each new glimpse of the blind, grotesque faces on the conveyor-belt called a sidewalk.

  Just then a police siren sounded and a large gray truck grumbled to a stop in front of them. Without hesitation, Carr scooped up Jane and sat her on the projecting backboard, then scrambled up beside her.

  The light changed and the truck started. The siren’s wail rose in volume and pitch as a paddy wagon turned into their street a block behind them. It swung far to the left around a whole string of traffic and careened into a pocket just behind them. They looked into the eyes of two red-jowled coppers. Jane thumbed her nose at them.

  The paddy wagon braked to a stop and several policemen po
ured out of it and into a dingy hotel.

  “Won’t find us there,” Carr smirked. “We’re gentlefolk.” Jane squeezed his hand.

  The truck passed under the dark steel canopy of the elevated. Its motor growled as it labored up the approach to the bridge.

  Carr pointed at the splintered end of a barrier. “Your friend did that on the way down,” he informed her amiably. “I wish he were along with us.” He looked at Jane. “No, I don’t,” he added. “Neither do I,” she told him.

  His face was close to hers and he started to put his arms around her, but a sudden rush of animal spirits caused him instead to plant his palms on the backboard and lift himself up and kick his feet in the air.

  He fell backwards into the truck as Jane yanked at him. “You’re still quite breakable, you know,” she told him and kissed him and sat up quickly-

  As he struggled up beside her, the truck hustled down the worn brick incline at the opposite end of the bridge and grated to a stop at a red light. A blue awning stretched to the edge of the sidewalk. Above the awning, backed by ancient windows painted black, a bold blue neon script proclaimed: “Goldie’s Casablanca.”

  “That’s for us,” Carr said. He hopped down and lifted Jane off the truck as it started up again.

  INSIDE the solid glass door beneath the awning, a tall, tuxedo-splitting individual with the vacant smile of a one-time sparring partner, was wagging a remonstrating hand at a fist-swinging fat man he held safely pinned against the wall with the other. Carr and Jane swept past them. Carr whipped out several dollar bills importantly, then remembered that the world is a machine and dropped them on the floor. They descended a short flight of stairs and found themselves in the most crowded nightclub in the world.

  The bar, which ran along the wall to their left, was jammed three deep. Behind it towered two horse-faced men in white coats. One was violently shaking a silver cylinder above his head, but its rattle was lost in the general din.

  Packed tables extended from the foot of the stairs to a small, slightly raised dance floor, upon which, like some thick vegetable stew being stirred by the laziest cook in creation, a solid mass of hunchedly embracing couples was slowly revolving. The tinkly and near-drowned musical accompaniment tor this elephantine exercise came from behind a mob of people at the far end of the wall to the right, which was lined with shallow booths.

  Like tiny volcanos in the midst of a general earthquake, all the figures were spewing words and cigarette smoke.

  Two couples marched straight at Carr. He swung aside, lightly bumping a waiter who was coming around the end of the bar, with a tray of cocktails. The waiter checked himself while the couples passed and Carr deftly grabbed two of the cocktails just as another couple came between them. He turned to present one of the cocktails to Jane. But she had already left him and was edging through the press along the booths. Carr downed one of the cocktails, put the empty glass in his pocket and followed her, sipping at the other. But as soon as he reached the first booth, he stopped to stare.

  Marcia was sitting opposite a handsome young man with stupid eyes and not much of a chin. He sported white tie and tails. Marcia was wearing her silver lame, a dress with two fantastic flounces and a plunging neckline.

  “Still, you tell me you’ve had a lot of dates with him,” the young man was saying,

  “I always have lots of dates, Kirby,” Marcia replied sparklingly.

  “But this . . . er . . . what’s his name . . . Carr chap . . .” Kirby began.

  “I sometimes go slumming,” was Marcia’s explanation.

  Carr planked his elbow on their table and put his chin in his hand. “Pardon this intrusion from the underworld,” he said loudly.

  They didn’t look at him. “Slumming can be amusing,” Kirby observed.

  “It can,” Marcia agreed brightly, “for a while.”

  “And this . . . er . . .”

  “The name’s Carr Mackay,” Carr said helpfully.

  “. . . er . . . Carr chap . . .”

  “Believe me, Kirby, I’ve always had lots of dates,” Marcia repeated. “I always will have lots of dates.”

  “But not so many with one man,” Kirby objected.

  “Why not?” she asked, giving him the eye, which seemed to put a new gleam in Kirby’s. “How about starting tonight?” he asked.

  “Dating?” Marcia said blankly. “Darling, we are.”

  “I mean at my place,” Kirby explained. “You’d like it there,”

  “Would I?” Marcia asked mystically.

  Carr reached his hand toward her, a gloating smile on his lips. Then suddenly he grimaced with self-disgust, drew back his hand, and turned his back on them.

  CHAPTER XV

  Love doesn’t make the world go round, but it sure puts a spark of life in the big engine . . .

  THERE HAD been quite a change in Goldie’s while Carr’s back was turned. The dancers had all squeezed themselves into hitherto imperceptible nooks and crannies around the tables.

  The mob had dispersed to reveal a grossly fat man whose paunch abutted the keyboard of a tiny, cream colored piano. A short apish individual who looked ail dazzling white shirt-front—Goldie, surely, at last—was standing on the edge of the empty dance floor and saying in a loud harsh voice that would have been very suitable for a carp: “And now let’s give the little chick a great big ovation.”

  Half the audience applauded violently. Goldie, ducking down from the platform, rewarded them with a cold sneer. The fat man’s hands began to scuttle up and down the keyboard. And a blonde in a small black dress stepped up on the platform. She held in one hand something that might have been a shabby muff.

  But even as the applause swelled, most of the figures at the tables were still jabbering at each other.

  Carr shivered. Here it is, he thought suddenly—the bare stage, the robot audience, the ritual of the machine. Not a bacchanal, but a booze-fest to the music of a mindless Pan who’d gone all to watery flesh and been hitting the dope for two thousand years. The dreadful rhythm of progress without purpose, of movement without mind.

  The blonde raised her arm and the muff unfolded to show, capping her unseen hand, a small face of painted wood that was at once foolish, frightened, and lecherous. Two diminutive hands flapped beside it. The blonde began to hum to the music.

  Continuing to toy with the piano, the fat man glanced around briefly. In a tittering voice he confided, “And now you shall hear the sad tale of that unfortunate creature, Peter Puppet.”

  Carr shivered, finished his second drink in a gulp, looked around for Jane, couldn’t see her.

  “Peter was a perfect puppet,” the fat man explained leisurely, accompanying himself with suitable runs and chords. “Yes, Peter was the prize Pinnochio of them all. He was carved out of wood to resemble a human being in complete detail, oh the most complete detail.”

  The puppet made eyes at the blonde. She ignored him and began to dance sketchily.

  The fat man whirled on the tables, beetling his brows. “But he had one fault!” he half shrieked. “He wanted to be alive!” Again Carr shivered.

  Going back to the lazy titter, the fat man remarked, “Yes, our Peter wanted to be a man. He wanted to do everything a man does.”

  Some guffaws came through the general jabber. The fat man’s hands darted venomously along the keyboard, eliciting dreamy, pastoral tones.

  “Then one lovely spring day while Peter was wandering through the meadows, wishing to be a man, he chanced to see a beautiful, a simply un-be-lievably be-yutiful be-londe. Peter . . . ah, Peter felt a swelling in his little wooden . . . heart.”

  With all sorts of handclasps and hopeful gawkings, the puppet was laying siege to the blonde. She closed her eyes, smiled, shook her head, went on humming.

  Carr saw Jane picking her way through the tables toward the platform. He tried to catch her eye, but she didn’t look his way.

  “. . . and so Peter decided to follow the blonde home.” The fat man made f
ootsteps in an upper octave. “Pink-pink-pink went his little wooden tootsies.”

  Jane reached the platform and, to Carr’s amazement, stepped up on it. Carr started forward, but the packed tables balked him.

  THE BLONDE was making trotting motions with the puppet and the fat man was saying, “Peter found that the blonde lived right next door to a furniture factory. Now Peter had no love for furniture factories, because he once very narrowly escaped becoming part of a Sheraton table leg. The screaming of the saw and the pounding of the hammers . . .” (He did buzzy chromatic runs and anvil-chorusings) “. . . terrified Peter. He felt that each nail was being driven right into his little wooden midriff!”

  Jane was standing near the blonde. Carr at last caught her eye. He motioned her to come down, but she only smiled at him wickedly. Slowly she undid the gilt buttons of her coat and let it drop to the floor.

  “Finally conquering his terror, Peter raced past the furniture factory and darted up the walk to the blonde’s home . . . pink-pink-pink-pink-pink!”

  Jane had coolly begun to unbutton her white blouse. Blushing, Carr tried to push forward, motioning urgently. He started to shout at her, but just then he remembered that the world is a machine and looked around.

  The crowd wasn’t reacting. It was chattering as loudly as ever.

  “Peter followed the blonde up the stairs. He felt the sap running madly through him.”.

  Jane dropped her blouse, was in her slip and skirt. Carr stood with his knee pushed against a table, swaying slightly.

  “Peter’s throat was dry as sawdust with excitement.” The fat man’s hands tore up and down the piano. “The blonde turned around and saw him and said, ‘Little wooden man, what now?’”

  Jane looked at Carr and let her slip drop. Tears stung Carr’s eyes. Her breasts seemed far more beautiful than flesh should be.

  And then there was, not a reaction on the part of the crowd, but the ghost of one. A momentary silence fell on Goldie’s Casablanca. Even the’ fat man’s glib phrases slackened and faded, like a phonograph record running down. His pudgy hands hung between chords. While the frozen gestures and expressions of the people at the tables all hinted at words halted on the brink of utterance. And it seemed to Carr, as he stared at Jane, that heads and eyes turned toward the platform, but only sluggishly and with difficulty, as if, dead, they felt a faint, fleeting ripple of life.