by Damon Knight
Louise was forty or thereabouts, at least five years older than Smith. He often wondered how old she thought she was. The shock of seeing whatever it was that had happened to the hospital, the patients she had cared for, had sent her mind scuttling back to her childhood. She tacitly admitted that everyone else in the world was dead, but she seemed to regard it as something one did not mention.
A hundred times in the last three weeks, Smith had felt an almost irresistible impulse to break her thin neck and go his own way. But there was no help for it; she was the only woman in the world, and he needed her. If she died, or left him, he died. Old bitch! he thought to himself furiously, and carefully kept the thought from showing on his face.
“Louise, honey,” he told her gently, “I want to spare your feelings as much as I can. You know that.”
“Yes, Rolf,” she said, staring at him with the face of a hypnotized chicken.
Smith forced himself to go on. “We’ve got to face the facts, unpleasant as they may be. Honey, we’re the only man and the only woman there are. We’re like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.”
Louise’s face took on a slightly disgusted expression. She was obviously thinking of fig leaves.
“Think of the generations unborn,” Smith told her, with a tremor in his voice. Think about me for once. Maybe you’re good for another ten years, maybe not. Shuddering, he thought of the second stage of the disease—the helpless rigidity, striking without warning. He’d had one such attack already, and Louise had helped him out of it. Without her. he would have stayed like that till he died, the hypodermic that would save him within inches of his rigid hand. He thought desperately, If I’m lucky, I’ll get at least two kids out of you before you croak. Then I’ll be safe.
He went on, “God didn’t mean for the human race to end like this. He spared us, you and me, to—” he paused; how could he say it without offending her? “parent” wouldn’t do—too suggestive “—to carry on the torch of life,” he ended. There. That was sticky enough.
Louise was staring vaguely over his shoulder. Her eyelids blinked regularly, and her mouth made little rabbitlike motions in the same rhythm.
Smith looked down at his wasted thighs under the tabletop. I’m not strong enough to force her, he thought. Christ, if I were strong enough!
He felt the futile rage again, and stifled it. He had to keep his head, because this might be his last chance. Louise had been talking lately, in the cloudy language she used about everything, of going up in the mountains to pray for guidance. She had not said ” alone”, but it was easy enough to see that she pictured it that way. He had to argue her around before her resolve stiffened. He concentrated furiously and tried once more.
The pattern of words went by like a distant rumbling. Louise heard a phrase here and there; each of them fathered chains of thought, binding her reverie tighter. “Our duty to humanity…” Mama had often said—that was in the old house on Waterbury Street, of course, before Mama had taken sick—she had said, “Child, your duty is to be clean, polite, and God-fearing. Pretty doesn’t matter. There’s plenty of plain women that have got themselves good, Christian husbands.”
Husbands… To have and to hold… Orange blossoms, and the bridesmaids; the organ music. Through the haze, she saw Rolf’s lean, wolfish face. Of course, he was the only one she’d ever get; she knew that well enough. Gracious, when a girl was past twenty-five, she had to take what she could get.
But I sometimes wonder if he’s really a nice man, she thought.
“… in the eyes of God…” She remembered the stained-glass windows in the old First Episcopalian Church, and how she always thought God was looking down at her through that brilliant transparency. Perhaps He was still looking at her, though it seemed sometimes that He had forgotten. Well, of course she realized that marriage customs changed, and if you couldn’t have a regular minister… But it was really a shame, an outrage almost, that if she were actually going to marry this man, she couldn’t have all those nice things… There wouldn’t even be any wedding presents. Not even that. But of course Rolf would give her anything she wanted. She saw his face again, noticed the narrow black eyes staring at her with ferocious purpose, the thin mouth that jerked in a slow, regular tic, the hairy lobes of the ears below the tangle of black hair.
He oughtn’t to let his hair grow so long, she thought. It isn’t quite decent. Well, she could change all that. If she did marry him, she’d certainly make him change his ways. It was no more than her duty.
He was talking now about a farm he’d seen outside town—a good big house and a barn. There was no stock, he said, but they could get some later. And they’d plant things, and have their own food to eat, not go to restaurants all the time.
She felt a touch on her hand, lying pale before her on the table. Rolf’s brown, stubby fingers, black-haired above and below the knuckles, were touching hers. He had stopped talking for a moment, but now he was speaking again, still more urgently. She drew her hand away.
He was saying, “… and you’ll have the finest wedding dress you ever saw, with a bouquet. Everything you want, Louise, everything…”
A wedding dress! And flowers, even if there couldn’t be any minister! Well, why hadn’t the fool said so before?
Rolf stopped halfway through a sentence, aware that Louise had said quite clearly, “Yes, Rolf, I will marry you if you wish.”
Stunned, he wanted her to repeat it but dared not ask, “What did you say?” for fear of getting some fantastic answer, or none at all. He breathed deeply. He said, “Today, Louise?”
She said, “Well, today… I don’t know quite… Of course, if you think you can make all the arrangements in time, but it does seem…”
Triumph surged through Smith’s body. He had the advantage now, and he’d ride it. “Say you will, dear,” he urged her. “Say yes, and make me the happiest man…”
Even then, his tongue balked at the rest of it; but it didn’t matter. She nodded submissively. “Whatever you think best, Rolf.”
He rose, and she allowed him to kiss her pale, sapless cheek. “We’ll leave right away,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me for just a minute, dear?”
He waited for her “Of course” and then left, making footprints in the furred carpet of dust down toward the end of the room. Just a few more hours he’d have to speak to her like that, and then, in her eyes, she’d be committed to him for ever. Afterward, he could do with her as he liked—beat her when he pleased, submit her to any proof of his scorn and revulsion, use her. Then it would not be too bad, being the last man on earth—not bad at all. She might even have a daughter…
He found the washroom door and entered. He took a step inside, and froze, balanced by a trick of motion, upright but helpless. Panic struck at his throat as he tried to turn his head and failed; tried to scream, and failed. Behind him, he was aware of a tiny click as the door, cushioned by the hydraulic check, shut for ever. It was not locked; but its other side bore the warning MEN.
BABEL II
From the front he looked a little like Happy Hooligan, if you remember that far back. From the side, where you got a better view of that silver-white crest, he looked more like a cross between George Arliss and a cockatoo.
He stood just under four feet tall, big head, crest and all. He had a wrinkled violet-grey skin, curious S-whorled ears, and a Tweedledum tummy; he was dressed in an electric-blue jacket and small-clothes of some crinkly material that glittered when he moved, with jackboots on his stubby legs and a white-metal disk, a quarter as big as he was, slung by a baldric from one narrow shoulder.
Lloyd Cavanaugh saw the apparition first, at eleven o’ clock on a Wednesday morning in May, in the living room of his studio apartment on East 50th Street in Manhattan. It stepped into view, seemingly, from behind the drawing table at the far end of the room.
Which was nonsense. The drawing table, with its top horizontal and the breakfast dishes still on it, was shoved back against the closed drapes of
the window. On the right, between the table and the record cabinet, there was about six inches clearance; on the left, between the table and the keg he kept his ink and brushes on, even less.
Cavanaugh, a bad-tempered young man with a long morose face casually connected to a knobbly, loose-jointed body, scowled across the pool of brilliance on the model table and said, “What the hell?” He switched off the floods and turned on the room lights.
Suddenly illuminated, the Hooligan-thing blazed at him like a Christmas tree ornament. Its eyes blinked rapidly; then the long upper lip curled up in an astonishing crescent-shaped bucktoothed smile. It made a sound like “Khakhptui!” and nodded its head several times.
Cavanaugh’s first thought was for the Hasselblad. He picked it up, tripod and all, carried it crabwise backward to safety behind the armchair, then crossed the room and took a poker out of the fireplace rack. Gripping this weapon, he advanced on the Hooligan.
The tiling came to meet him. grinning and nodding. When they were two strides apart it stopped, bowed jerkily, and lifted the white disk at the end of the baldric, holding it at the top, with one of the flat sides toward Cavanaugh.
A picture formed in the disk.
In stereo and full colour, it showed a ten-inch Cavanaugh bending over something on a tripod. The hands moved swiftly, fitting pieces together; then the figure stepped back and stared with evident approval at an oblong box shape at the top of the tripod, with a chromed cylinder projecting from the front of it. The Hasselblad.
Cavanaugh lowered the poker. Jaw unhinged, he stared at the disk, which was now blank, then at the Hooligan’s violet face and the silvery growth above it, which was neither hair nor feathers, but something in between… “How did you do that?” he demanded.
“Szu szat,” said the Hooligan alertly. He jiggled the disk at Cavanaugh, pointed to his head, then to the disk, then to Cavanaugh’s head, then to the disk again. Then he held the thing out at arm’s length, cocking his head to one side.
Cavanaugh took the disk gingerly. Gooseflesh was prickling along his arms. “You want to know if I made the camera?” he said tentatively. “Is that it?”
“Szat it,” said the Hooligan. He bowed again, nodded twice, and opened his eyes very wide.
Cavanaugh reflected. Staring at the disk, he imagined an enormous machine with a great many drive belts and moving parts, all whirling furiously. There it was, a little blurred, but not bad. He put a hopper on one side of it, made a man walk up and pour in a bucketful of scrap metal, and then showed a stream of cameras coming out the other side.
The Hooligan, who had been peering intently at the other side of the disk, straightened up and took the disk back with another bow. Then he whirled around rapidly three times, holding his nose with one hand and making violent gestures with the other.
Cavanaugh fell back a step, gripping his poker more firmly.
The Hooligan darted past him, moving so fast his legs twinkled, and fetched up with his chin on the edge of the model table, staring up at the setup in the middle of the tabletop.
“Hey!” said Cavanaugh angrily, and followed him. The Hooligan turned and held out the disk again. Another picture formed: Cavanaugh bending over the table, this time, putting tiny figures together and arranging them in front of a painted backdrop
… Which was substantially what had happened. Cavanaugh was, by profession, a comic-book artist. He was indifferent to the work itself; it was automatic; it paid him well; but it had ruined him as a draftsman. He couldn’t draw, paint or etch for fun any more. So he had taken up photography—specifically, tabletop photography.
He built his models out of clay and papier-mache and wire and beads and bits of wood and a thousand other things; he painted or dyed them, composed them, lighted them—and then, with the Hasselblad and a special, very expensive shallow—focus lens, he photographed them. The results, after the first year, had begun to be surprising.
The setup on the table now was a deceptively simple one. Background and middle distance were a tangle of fir and mountain laurel, scaled half an inch to a foot. In the foreground were three figures grouped around the remains of a campfire. They were not human; they were attenuated, grey, hairless creatures with big mild eyes, dressed in oddly cut hiking clothes.
Two, with their backs to a block of crumbling masonry half sunken in the ground, were leaning together over a sheet of paper unrolled from a metal cylinder. The third was seated on a stone, nearer the camera, with a shank of meat in its hand. The shape of the half-gnawed bones was disturbingly familiar; and when you looked more closely you would begin to wonder if those projections at the end could be fingers, all but concealed by the eater’s hand. As a matter of fact, they were; but no matter how long you looked at the photograph you would never be quite sure.
The Hooligan was thrusting the disk at him again, grinning and winking and teetering on his heels. Cavanaugh, suppressing annoyance in favour of curiosity, accepted it and ran through the same sequence the Hooligan had shown him.
“That’s right,” he said. “I made it. So what?”
“Szo khvat!” The Hooligan’s hand made a gesture, too swift to follow, and suddenly contained what looked like a large fruit, like a purple pear with warts. Seeing Cavanaugh’s uncomprehending expression, he put it back wherever it had come from and produced a wadded mass of translucent pink threads. Cavanaugh scowled irritably. “Look—” he began.
The Hooligan tried again. This time he came up with a brilliant, faceted white stone about the size of a cherry.
Cavanaugh felt his eyes bulging. If that was a diamond…
“Khoi-ptoo!” said the Hooligan emphatically. He pointed to the stone and to Cavanaugh, then to himself and the model setup. His meaning was clear; he wanted to trade.
It was a diamond, all right; at least, it scribed a neat line in the glass of an empty beer bottle. It was also brilliant, pure white and, so far as Cavanaugh could tell, flawless. He put it on his postage scale; it weighed a little less than an ounce. Say twenty grams, and a carat was two hundred milligrams… It worked out to a preposterous one hundred carats, a little less than the Hope diamond in its prime.
He stared at the thing suspiciously. There had to be a catch in it, but with the best will in the world he couldn’t see any. The models were a means to an end; once he was finished with them, they simply took up room. So what could he lose?
The Hooligan was gazing at him, owl-eyed. Cavanaugh picked up the disk and gave him his answer: a series of pictures that showed Cavanaugh photographing the models, processing the film, and then ceremoniously accepting the diamond and handing the models over.
The Hooligan bowed repeatedly, capered, stood briefly on his hands, and patted Cavanaugh’s sleeve, grinning. Taking this for consent, Cavanaugh put the Hasselblad back in place, turned on the floods, and began where he had left off. He took half a dozen colour shots, then reloaded with black-and-white film and took half a dozen more.
The Hooligan watched everything with quivering attention. He followed Cavanaugh into the darkroom and goggled over the edge of the workbench while Cavanaugh developed the black-and-white film, fixed it, washed and dried it, cut it apart and printed it.
And as soon as the first print came out of the frame, the Hooligan made urgent gestures and held out another diamond, about half the size of the first. He wanted the prints, too!
Sweating, Cavanaugh dug into his files and brought up colour prints and transparencies of his other work: the Hansel and Gretel series, Cavor and the Grand Lunar, Walpurgisnacht, Gulliver extinguishing the palace fire in Lilliput, the Head of the N.I.C.E. The Hooligan bought them all. As each bargain was struck, he picked up his purchase and put it away wherever it was that he got the diamonds. Cavanaugh watched him closely, but couldn’t figure out where they went.
For that matter, where had the Hooligan come from?
Assured that Cavanaugh had no more pictures, the Hooligan was darting around the room, peering into corners, bending to look
into bookshelves, standing on tiptoe to see what was on the mantelpiece. He pointed at a five-inch wooden figurine, a squatting, hatchet-faced man-shape with its arms crossed, elbows on knees—an Ifugao carving that Cavanaugh had brought home from the Philippines. In the disk, a copy of the Goldberg machine Cavanaugh had used, to explain cameras, appeared for an instant. The Hooligan cocked his head at him.
“No,” said Cavanaugh. “Handmade.” He took the disk and gave the Hooligan a view of a brown-skinned man gouging splinters out of a block of mahogany. Then, for kicks, he made the man shrink to a dot on an island on a globe that slowly turned, with Asia and Australia vanishing around one limb while the Americas rolled into sight from the other. He made a red dot for New York, and pointed at himself.
“Khrrrzt,” said the Hooligan thoughtfully. He turned away from the Ifuago and pointed to a bright diamond-patterned rug on the wall over the couch. “Khandmate?”
Cavanaugh, who had just made up his mind to give up the Ifugao for another diamond, was nonplussed. “Wait a minute,” he said, and made another moving picture in the disk: himself handing over the Ifugao for the standard emolument.
The Hooligan leaped back, ears flapping, crest aquiver. Recovering somewhat, he advanced again and showed Cavanaugh a revised version: the Hooligan receiving a wood carving from, and handing a diamond to, the brown-skinned man Cavanaugh had pictured as its creator.
“Khand-mate?” he said again, pointing to the rug.
Somewhat sourly, Cavanaugh showed him the rug being woven by a straw-hatted Mexican. Still more sourly, he answered the Hooligan’s pictographed “Where?” with a map I of Mexico; and more sourly still, he identified and located the artists responsible for a Swedish silver pitcher, a Malay kris, an Indian brass hubble-bubble, and pair of loafers hand-cobbled in Greenwich Village.
The Hooligan, it appeared, bought only at the source.
At any rate, if he wasn’t going to get any more diamonds, he could get some information. Cavanaugh took the disk and projected a view of the Hooligan popping into sight and moving forward across the room. Then he ran it backward and looked inquiringly at the Hooligan.