Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Stop babbling,” Ragore said hoarsely. “I’ll do anything you say, but let me out.”

  “Hmmm.” Reggie said. He thought a moment. “This car-parking scheme of yours and old Ardleigh’s. Goodish deal?”

  “Oh, the best. Do you want my interest? I’ll sign it over gladly. I have the papers with me.”

  “Word of honor?”

  “On my honor as a Genii.”

  Reggie unstoppered the bottle and while the smoke was issuing from it and forming back into Ragore’s shape, he got a fountain pen from the desk and tested it with a cheerful smile. When he turned around Reggie was standing in the room, a film of perspiration on his forehead.

  The Genii took a document from his inner pocket and grabbed the pen from Reggie’s hand. He signed his name with trembling fingers and thrust the paper at Reggie.

  “Now we’re even,” he said.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Reggie said reluctantly. “I’m still up to my neck in the old glue because of the trick you pulled on Big Foot. He thinks I informed on him when it was really you.” Reggie shrugged. “Well, I’ll have to take my chances on that. Right now I’m going out to talk things over with my partner. That should be fun, eh?” He dashed for the door . . .

  Mimi came in as the door banged. She stared at Ragore with a puzzled frown. “What got into him?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Ragore said, wiping his forehead. He stared at Mimi’s smooth and practically unveiled loveliness and gradually he began to smile. “We’re all alone it seems,” he murmured.

  “Sure enough,” Mimi said, after considering the matter for a moment.

  With languid grace she stretched out on the lounge. She pulled the folds of the robe across her slim bare legs with grace.

  Ragore sat beside her with a lump in his throat like a soccer ball.

  “Hey!” Mimi said suddenly. “What about the trick?”

  “Trick?”

  “Yeah.” Mimi put her drink down. “You were going to get into that vase.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “Ha, likely story,” Mimi said.

  “No, I did it,” Ragore insisted desperately.

  “Well, do it again.”

  “No—no I don’t want to.”

  “Well, that’s a fine note. Do it for anybody who comes along but not for me, eh? Well, I can be mean, too.”

  RAGORE obviously got her point because he stood and with a resigned expression, said, “Very well, I’ll do it one more time.”

  When his body began to shimmer and become transparent, Mimi clapped her hands excitedly. “Wonderful,” she said.

  The form of Ragore faded away slowly into shimmering drifting smoke, and while Mimi watched with a delighted smile, the smoke streamed into the mouth of the vase and disappeared.

  “Well, that’s a good one,” she said, impressed.

  Suddenly a closet door in the room swung open and Big Foot Maguire tip-toed swiftly across the floor to the vase. He put his banana-thick finger across his lips as Mimi started to scream, and then grabbed the wooden stopper and plunged in into the neck of the vase.

  “There, you rat!” he shouted.

  “Big Foot!” Mimi sobbed.

  Big Foot cuffed her kindly across the mouth, and said, “Okay, okay, you’re forgiven this time.” He pointed dramatically at the vase. “That’s the creep who tipped off the cops. It wasn’t Reggie at all.”

  “Why the dirty bum,” Mimi said. From within the vase, a plaintive voice cried: “Let me out of here.”

  Big Foot laughed gleefully.

  He put his arm around Mimi and she began to laugh. They pointed at the vase and laughed harder, doubling over in their mirth.

  “He wants to get out!” Big Foot bellowed.

  “Character!”

  They quieted down after a while and Big Foot dropped the vase into his topcoat pocket, “The boys’ll take care of this,” he said, casually. “You see, baby, I heard you make that date with Reggie, so I came over ahead of you. And I found out he was on the square.”

  “Well, everything turned out for the best,” Mimi said, philosophically.

  Reggie banged on the Ardleigh door with enthusiasm and when it was opened he strode into the foyer with a swagger that all three of the three Musketeers working in unison couldn’t have equaled.

  Deborah saw him from the second-floor landing and hurried down the curving staircase with a worried frown on her otherwise delightful face.

  “Ha!” cried Reggie, jubilantly. “Ho!”

  “Do stop bellowing like you’re driving a mule train,” Deborah said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  The door of the study opened with a crash and old man Ardleigh stamped into the foyer.

  “Can’t you come in like a human being?” he roared. “Every time you enter this house it sounds like we’re being sacked by an armored division.”

  Reggie took the document he’d gotten from Ragore from his pocket and with an elaborately casual gesture, handed it to old man Ardleigh. Then he chuckled and put his arm about Deborah’s waist.

  “Reggie, what is it?” she whispered.

  Old man Ardleigh read the document with bulging eyes and a steadily reddening flush. Finally he gazed at Reggie with a horrible look.

  “We’re partners!” he gasped.

  “Yes, and I control fifty one per cent of the stock,” Reggie said grandly.

  “Oh, Reggie,” Deborah cried.

  “Now,” Reggie said, fixing a sternish eye on Mr. Ardleigh. “What have you to say?”

  Mr. Ardleigh studied Reggie for several seconds and then he beamed and slapped him heartily on the back.

  “I say let’s have a drink,” he said cheerfully.

  Together they walked into the study and Ardleigh got out the brandy while Reggie embraced Deborah and mused on the mysteries of the capitalistic system. Why, he was thinking to himself, all a chap needed was a few million of the old ready, and everybody treated him like a king.

  He kissed Deborah and decided it was a wonderful country.

  SURVIVAL

  First published in the July 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  Kirkstar knew that drastic measures had to be effected to save mankind when the Comet struck—but his plan was too perfect!

  NO ONE accepted the news at first; except of course the scientists who discovered the comet and a handful of cynical people who regarded the whole idea—the destruction of earth, that is—as a choice and fitting joke.

  The rest of the world literally would not believe the awesome truth. They read the first report in screaming headlines, and heard it confirmed sorrowfully by the leaders of all nations; yet the rank-and-file, the man-in-the-street, rejected the news as being preposterous and delirious.

  It was treated as a somewhat dubious joke for perhaps forty-eight hours. People waited to be told that it was just a vast hoax; and while waiting smiled nervously at the funny things the radio comedians were saying about the comet.

  That was the first stage.

  Then the truth was accepted. It could no longer be denied or ignored. The fact was that a saucer-shaped comet, larger than Venus and swinging in an orbit so vast that it would not reappear again for a trillion light years, was going to collide with earth before the year was out. And this was late Spring.

  Newspaper artists presented their readers with a picture of the comet that looked like a giant whirling disc. One paper in the interests of pure grue portrayed it as a spinning buzzsaw—but the unadorned truth was so frightening that any man-made embellishments seemed silly.

  When the people finally realized that the world was going to be destroyed they reacted characteristically, that is. to the extent that their usual predilections, prejudices, pressures, convictions and needs were intensified. The religious people rushed to church, debauchees plunged into even more riotous living, the degenerates sought new variations on the theme of sensation, and the weak committed suicide.

  There were a great many suicides the
first several weeks. The newspapers printed daily tables of the suicides, breaking them down into various categories. Pregnant women were the most greivously affected by the news according to these box scores, for they led the list day after day. Following them were editors, advertising men, used car dealers, and, oddly enough, television performers.

  The tempo of living throughout the world was stepped up tremendously by the realization that the earth and all its people had just about six months left to live.

  Marriages reached an all-time high that month; and thousands of businesses were started, shut-up, expanded, or curtailed; partnerships were made and dissolved, as people tried desperately to do the things they’d always wanted to do, to fulfill their dreams.

  Monthly magazines switched to weekly production, and the weeklies to dailies, in an attempt to use up their inventories of articles and fiction; and this caused so much confusion that one could occasionally find features on the end of the world running alongside articles on pension plans.

  The normal commerce of the world broke down completely, however. Goods rotted on wharves, or lay stacked in warehouses. Trains and busses ran erratically. No one wanted to spend his last six months working, of course, so nothing got done. People lived frenziedly, frantically, trying to squeeze the last drop of juice from life before it was torn from their hands.

  Then, in this nightmare of fear and confusion, a slender ray of hope dawned.

  ONE OF the scientists who discovered the onrushing comet made the cautious comment that the impact would not necessarily destroy the earth, and that it was not beyond the bounds of probability to assume that both parts of earth might exist and sustain life after the comet had gone on its way.

  Interpreted this seemed to mean that there was a chance after all; that while the earth was going to be cut in half, the two parts would still travel about the sun just as before.

  Scientists in all parts of the world began figuring away on the backs of envelopes and after a while added a cautious confirmation to their colleague’s theory.

  Yes, they seemed to agree, given any luck the human race had a fair chance of surviving the collision. The comet would slice through earth on an East-West line, cutting it into two sections. The top, or North section was going to be considerably larger than the bottom, or South section, but people could live on both parts without any trouble.

  This news caused great rejoicing.

  The cloud of despair lifted and people danced in the streets and hugged their neighbors in spontaneous outbursts of relief and happiness.

  However, when the first giddy excitement faded, it became obvious that the new state of things was going to raise a variety of ticklish problems.

  Economically, of course, the world was in for trouble. The splitting of the earth would ruin many airlines, steamship companies, export-import firms and, in short, any business which depended on the flow of commerce between nations. Also, there were knotty social considerations in the new order. Previously one lived on earth because there was no alternative—but now there was a choice. One could plan to live on the North or South half and this caused a lot of worry because no one knew yet which was going to be the smart and sophisticated place to live.

  As in any crisis the heads of governments met to mull the issues and increase the tension. The council of nations convened at London and each delegate was armed with the extraordinary power to commit his country to the policy decreed by the majority. This authority was obviously imperative for it is axiomatic in meetings of nations that the graver the issues the less time there is for deliberation.

  After two weeks of parliamentary procedure to establish chairmen and committees, the gathering was addressed by a man named Kirkstar—a stocky person with a bullet-shaped head and piercing black eyes. Kirkstar was permanent chairman of the council and hailed from a mid-European country.

  Kirkstar said: “The impending catastrophe is a challenge to our courage and integrity. Never in history has such an epochal event occurred; and therefore our decisions must be made without help from the past. I say to you now, bluntly and unequivocally, that the prime concern of this council must be the preservation of the best things of the earth, and that applies to human beings as well as everything else.”

  This caused a buzz of puzzled comment. What was Kirkstar getting at? Kirkstar didn’t keep them in suspense. He silenced the whisperings with an imperiously raised hand.

  “We must face this brute fact,” Kirkstar said, as his magnetic eyes swept burningly over the great hall. “There are degrees of desirability in men and women. There are inferior people. And in courage and strength we must select the most desirable people to inhabit one half of the earth and relegate the remaining undesirable people to—”

  The last of his words were drowned in a swelling roar of protest from some sections of the auditorium; but the noise died as Kirkstar’s gavel rang commandingly.

  “I will call upon the chairman of the Analysis sub-committee at this time,” Kirkstar said blandly. “Mr. Anthony Margate.”

  Mr. Margate was a thin blond Englishman with the stooped shoulders and myopic stare of the scholar. He peered closely at his notes for several moments and then lifted his head like a startled crane and began to speak in a dry precise voice.

  HE TALKED at great length of industrial potentials, financial ratios, population percentages, and when he eventually sat down one fact emerged in startling clarity from his welter of statistics. The Northern half of Earth was going to be infinitely richer, more abundant, and larger than the Southern section.

  Some of the delegates now found

  Kirkstar’s point of view quite interesting in the light of Mr. Margate’s findings. Kirkstar seemed to be saying that the best people should live on the best section of the planet and that was, all in all, a fairly sound idea.

  The delegate from the United States, however, didn’t like the proposal at all. He was a tall man in his early forties and his name was Cooper. Addressing the chair after Mr. Margate sat down, he said: “I stand unalterably opposed to any plan which will discriminate against people for such misty reasons as the chairman has set forth.”

  Kirkstar smiled and said, “We of the council are well aware of the leading position your country has always taken in the race for human rights and equality. However, the present situation cannot be solved with the techniques and attitudes of the past. Individual rights are absurd when the safety of the group is at stake. The group must act for the best interests of the best people in this situation, regardless of the fate of any single individual.”

  The meeting was adjourned amid stormy argument; but at a later session Kirkstar’s position was put forward in a motion and carried by an overwhelming majority.

  Cooper stormed impotently from the hall for despite his personal feelings America was committed with the rest of the council.

  Kirkstar became head of the twelve-man commission which was given the authority to classify all people as either desirable or undesirable and, further, to transport the undesirable ones to the South section of earth. This process, so clean and logical in theory, however, met a thousand difficulties in execution, chiefly because there was no precise, inclusive definition of the term, “undesirable person”. Everyone knew vaguely what it meant—that is they felt it applied to someone else. But in particular cases the label often refused to stick.

  Two of the things that made a person desirable, according to the definition of the term in the original enactment, were money and property. This was too obvious a point to need explaining, for in an economic society the person without money was obviously lacking in the skills and techniques that were respected in his group. And he was, therefore, undesirable.

  This rationale worked excellently with the population in India and Africa and Russia where the poverty was obvious; but the screening teams ran into trouble when they began examining such people as writers, clergymen, musicians, and so forth, most of whom had no property at all and miniscule incomes.
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br />   Obviously they were undesirable people financially and whether or not their cultural contribution to the group was enough to counter-balance their lack of money was a moot point. The solution to the problem was made additionally difficult by the fact that such people had the most enormous opinion of their own worth. Kirkstar finally sent down a directive ordering his teams to cease dallying and procrastinating and arguing, and to send low-income types South regardless of their backgrounds or professions. This simplified everything, and hordes of professors, musicians and writers joined the tired streams of humanity that were being herded down into the Southern section of Earth.

  The people didn’t object to being shoved around like chess pieces, oddly enough, because they were aware that a time of crisis was at hand and that their very lives and freedom were in danger. They worried about the comet; they didn’t worry about Kirkstar.

  The undertaking was so complex that it would have collapsed into utter confusion if hadn’t been for the dedicated zeal of Kirkstar and twelve-man commission.

  KIRKSTAR was the prime mover.

  He worked furiously, fanatically, issuing directives, establishing codes of operation, and, chiefly, ferreting out cells of undesirable people. Kirkstar was driven by a cold and beautiful dream that had haunted his sleep since he was a young man. In his dream Kirkstar saw a clean orderly world populated by superior human beings, all living in mindless harmony and enjoying the best fruits of the earth in methodical contentment. Now that dream was becoming a reality. Kirkstar was forging it with his steel-hard soul, breathing life into it with his indomitable will.

  Each morning Kirkstar faced deskfuls of charts and graphs, mountains of orders, requests, forms. Standing, he would glare down upon them ferocious ecstacy. There was never enough time, never enough time.

  Grabbing up lists of suspected undesirables he would hurl them at an assistant.

  “Send them South,” he would cry. “And these and these,” he would add, shoving additional lists into his assistant’s arms.

  The world was so full of inferior and undesirable people that Kirkstar occasionally groaned aloud at the magnitude of his task. He could have used an entire lifetime to do the job right, but he had only five months. When this thought came to him he would re-double his efforts in frenzied panic. There just wasn’t time! The numbers of people who were undesirable because of pigmentation, for instance, were so great that he might have spent five years on that classification alone. And he had to do it in months! And then there were those who were undesirable because of their attitudes, their convictions, their religions, their illnesses, their appearance—the list was endless.