My mad friend was oblivious to her. “Where in the name of Our Lord and Saviour did he ever get ice?” he wondered. It flabber-goosed me too; the nearest natural ice was hundreds of miles higher in the sierra and the nearest machine at least 100 km below us at Road’s End.
The postman returned with a dish of ice cubes and Desdemona ceased her siren act. My mad friend sipped resignedly at his coffee while I and the postman tried to forget the taste of tizwín. “This Murphy plot,” I pursued, “What did you say was the name of the book?”
Beguiled by the smoothness of my K ration, the postman was underestimating its effect. “Don’t know,” he slurred, “Not finished yet.”
My mad friend raised eyebrows and I nodded. “He’s been describing the one my shill sent me here to get finished.” I turned back to the postman. “Now when,” I insisted, “do I see S. Murphy?”
The little man’s eyes flickered and he was suddenly cautious. “Not possible. Much distance.”
The siren remained silent and watchful in her corner. I sneaked a glance at her and wondered why Murphy had hesitated. The postman caught me looking so I hastily poured him another drink. “What happened,” my mad friend asked, “To the pink-eyed cop who shrinks stars?”
“He doesn’t.” I marvelled at the mailman’s ability to switch subjects as rapidly as my mad friend. He skipped hurriedly through the rest of the story: “The good people paid him to watch out for the bad ones—delincuentes juveniles—he called them.” Abruptly, the mailman lurched to his feet and staggered past the Mother cross into the darker portion of the patio. I heard sounds which suggested an incompatibility between squash blossoms and emergency ration.
My mad friend glanced meaningly to my left and as a mezquite twig flickered I saw the 15 year old still studying us unblinkingly from her dark corner. “I think,” I said in English, “We observe the reason why Murphy has not finished his book.”
My friend reflected a half second. “Still making up his mind how to end it?”
I guessed so.
‘Where do you suppose he’s hiding and why won’t he see us?”
I grinned. “Even without badge and nightstick there is in your freudian corpus a certain aura which probably shows—even through binoculars.
My mad friend sighed and again began whistling Gilbert and Sullivan. “So what do we do?” he wondered.
I shrugged. “There’s at least one member of the family who’d love to have us stay.”
My friend glanced worriedly at her. The siren protuberated visibly when she saw him looking.
Wiping away the remains of a cold sweat, the mailman returned to sit between us. “The pink-eyed man asked me,” he continued, “if I had ever sat by a fire as someone in drunken glee galloped a horse through it. I remembered when Mexican soldiers amused themselves that way at the expense of the meal my mother was cooking. Thinking about it, I was almost ready again to kill the pink-eyed man when he asked, ‘How would you like it if someone rode a great horse—’ “. The mailman stopped perplexed and looked at us. “I’ve seen horses drag men and cows but what kind of horse can drag a whole field with it?”
My mad friend looked blankly at me.
‘The pink eyed one spoke of galloping too close to the sun and one field interfering with another until the fire flared and went out just as when the soldiers used to ride through our village. It was annoying when people had to leave their earth and synthesize new homes. It could even be dangerous for people who do not—what means teleport?”
My mad friend sipped coffee. “Well, Dr. OneStone, there’s the missing link in your Unified Field Theory.”
I looked at the mailman. “Possibilities,” I said. “I can’t remember it’s being used in sf before. Where did you get this idea?”
“That’s what the pink-eyed man said. I don’t understand it.” He threw a stick on the fire.
“After smoking a cigarette I went back to sleep. At dawn the all-white man’s radio began sizzling like frying beans. He asked questions in that other language and finally put the small radio away. He opened the cold box and took out beer. ‘I must leave,’ he said, handing me one and biting the top from his own. ‘Do you like cold drinks?’ I nodded for the sun had been up 10 minutes and the day was already hot. ‘Keep the box,’ he said, ‘Do not open the bottom and it will never harm you. Treat it with respect and it will run forever. Anything you put in it will be cold.’
“ ‘I am poor’ I protested, What can I give you?’ The all-white man gave a strange, twisted smile. ‘To me, nothing. But next time you’re ready to kill a cop, stop and think how your world would be if there were none.’
“I tried to understand what he meant. I was asking him to explain when I noticed that he was gone. I looked all around the hacienda buildings but did not find him.”
My mad friend sipped coffee and whistled Policeman’s Lot in a minor key. It was quite late and I wondered where we would unroll our sleeping bags. A mezquite twig flared and illuminated the mailman’s mahogany face. Some trick of the light reminded me of an idol on a vine-tangled trail halfway between Persepolis and San Francisco.
“Naguales,” my friend grunted, and halfheartedly mumbled an exorcism. I decided to make a final lunge toward the main chance, “¿y Murphy?”
The brown man emerged from his white study. “Wonderful writer.” He fished a melting ice cube from the dish and bathed it with K ration. I admired his fortitude. He took a long swallow which wavered briefly in his gullet before going down. “The ending is written. The pages will leave for New York whenever the post office makes up a bag.”
“Didn’t he send them airmail?”
“Is there need for haste?”
“Much need,” I groaned, “Also much need to see Murphy.”
The postman ignored this. “Two endings,” he continued, “Which is most artistically satisfying? Should the bumbling stranger marry the girl and live happily or should he be consistent and put his foot in this as in everything else?”
My mad friend and I waited with unbated breath. The postman took another swallow and continued more slowly: “The stranger did not even realize that to visit the girl’s father so often constituted a form of engagement. If he did not marry her the girl would never find another husband in the village.”
My mad friend yawned. “And you never saw the pink-eyed cop again?”
The mailman wagged his finger.
“Good idea,” I said “But it has the same defect as Murphy’s book. You’ll never get away with these up-in-the-air endings. Pin it down now—what happened to your all-white cop?—just as Murphy’ll have to pin down what happened to his multiple-thumbed hero.”
“Murphy had an ending,” the mailman said.
My mad friend fanned himself and assassinated a brace of mosquitoes. “Might drag that wireless icebox back into the plot somehow,” he maundered, “By the way, where’re you getting all this ice?”
“From the icebox?”
“That one?”
“Couldn’t be,” I said in English. “No electricity; he’s probably got a kerosene powered Servel.”
The postman shook his head. “Please,” my mad friend said tiredly, “No extraterrestrials at this hour of the morning.”
“I’ll bring it,” the mailman said. He staggered to his feet and left the circle of firelight. In a moment I heard the sound of K ration leaving by that same door wherein it went.
“I wonder what Monkey Ward Marvel he’s going to palm off on us?” my friend mused.
I shrugged. “You may have noticed certain obvious parallels in this Murphy book,” I began, “Also, a certain talent in our host.” My friend nodded. “Suppose he learned all his English in the last year from Murphy?”
“Probably chopped beets or picked lettuce in the States between revolutions.”
“Have you considered,” my friend asked, “How far we are from civilization and/or law enforcement?”
I nodded. “Suppose they’ve burnt any ñaguales around
here recently?”
My mad friend tossed a gnarled mezquite branch on the fire and waited til it blazed. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear the mailman retching.
“You mentioned that Murphy’s style changed. What about his typing?”
“Suddenly every letter was slammed home as if he were whacking them out with a chisel.”
“Sure mark of a one finger typist.”
The retching had stopped and I could hear the postman rummaging somewhere in his house. The branch flared up and I saw the fifteen year old still regarding us unwinkingly from the shadows. She commenced protuberating.
“He said Murphy had an end,” I mused. “Also mentioned that a visit constitutes formal engagement.” From the house I heard footsteps as the postman approached us. My mad friend looked at me and I looked at him. We both glanced at the hopeful sprite.
The postman stepped into the circle of firelight bearing a rectangular box, subtly different from anything I’d ever seen. “This is the refrigerator which works forever without fuel,” he said.
The girl stretched and protuberated some more. I caught my friend’s eye and we shared a common thought about an uncommon discovery. Suddenly we knew why Murphy’s typewriter was being one-fingered, why his spelling had suddenly gone to playing by ear, and what had happened to S. Murphy. My mad friend tilted his straight backed chair forward and began rising.
But I beat him out the door.
It was very late of a dark and moonless night. Crouching in thorny desert flora, we listened. “I don’t believe it,” my mad friend muttered.
“So what are we running for?” I whispered back.
Somewhere in the distance a bit clinked. We shrank behind an ocotillo while a rider with rifle at ready light-footed down the trail. “They’re ahead of us now,” I whispered.
My mad friend pointed skyward. I sighted along his forearm at a line of minor but fixed stars which was slowly winking out. “Coming this way,” I whispered. “You suppose that starcop was for real?”
My friend was muttering something in Latin.
“Maybe we could teleport?” I suggested.
“Please,” he hissed “I’ve got enough troubles already!”
We started running again.
1964
The Third Bubble
From his home on a flowery street leading straight down hill to the Pacific Ocean, G.C. Edmondson sends us another story of the adventures he and his Mad Friend enjoy—if that is the proper word—in the United Mexican States. And considers certain problems in the realms of cosmogony, topography, and other things. The barge used in preliminary drilling for Project Mohole [he writes] was named CUSS I. I feel my nomenclature is more appropriate.
THE YOUNG MAN WORE A white shirt opened nearly to his navel and tight black trousers. With the disdainful deliberation of a matador he aimed the blunt end of an ax. The turtle ceased moving and faced the end with a stoicism marred only by a hissing sigh and large oily tears.
The ax crunched like a claw hammer hitting a ripe cantaloupe. Flippers thrilled. “The life is in the head,” a policeman standing next to me said, somewhat unnecessarily, I thought.
“Or occasionally in the gonads,” my mad friend added sotto voce and in English.
With an effortless flourish the young man cut around the bottom shell and lifted it to disclose an interesting array of innards and seven assorted hearts, all still beating. A semicylindrical swipe removed head and neck. Two slashes removed front flippers. The young man’s white shirt remained immaculate despite the welter of blood.
I wondered at his flamboyance until I saw her. She was about seventeen, with long hair which would have looked more natural north of a southbound palomino. She wore a white blouse like the turtle butcher’s save that hers bulged more attractively. Her capris fit like epidermis burnished with stove blacking. She was witnessing the rite with none of those minuscule shrieks and head turnings which Anglosaxon females employ to disguise their taste for blood.
Another magnificent slash and the turtle butcher lifted legs and tail. A shred of flesh held. He twisted. A sizeable sac of body fluids wrung out and wrought posthumous vengeance on his white shirt, face, and most of his trousers.
“Ay ay ay!” the palomino exclaimed between giggles.
My mad friend raised an eyebrow. “Pocha,” I muttered. My judgment was vindicated when she spoke Californian Spanish to her progenitors.
Utterly crushed, the matador of sea turtles sloshed himself with clean water. He finished butchering silently, without flourishes.
“He jests at scars who never felt a wound,” my friend quoted. I sighed and we trudged on through soft sand. The humidity approached turkish bath proportions. “What ever induced you to come to this Latin Limbo before we got the magazine launched?” my friend asked.
“The Mohorovicic Discontinuity achieves a record thinness some miles due W of here.”
My friend gazed at breaking surf and as we passed a cross where some fisherman had washed ashore he crossed himself. “How do you hold still long enough to drill a hole?”
“Four engines,” I explained, “Propellors pointing in. different directions. One man sits before a radarscope pushing buttons.
“My feet,” I groaned, “How much farther?”
My mad friend hailed a capitalist with two burros.
Built since the last hurricane, our hotel already showed signs of decay. Holes in its palm frond walls admitted mosquitoes, bats, and small pterodactyls. I glanced at the newspaper on a table across from the bar. It was in Spanish and its front page was filled with poorly reproduced pictures and misspelled names of the astronauts in the Russ-American two-weeks-in-orbit shot. “Outer space!” I groused, “When’ll we get enough money for some work on Inner Space?”
My mad friend shrugged.
“You should be on my side. The seas’ll fill more stomachs and save more souls than all that hardware. How long d’you think this Bruderschaft’s going to last before the comrades go off on a new kick anyhow?”
“I didn’t vote for him,” my friend said.
The barman was frantically sloshing booze into a row of glasses. His assistant struggled to extricate himself from a bulletheaded football type who was telling a story in some language the assistant didn’t know. He escaped and I saw he was the self-petarded turtle butcher.
“Café,” my friend said, “And do you have some Noche Buena left from Christmas?”
“I shall see.” The young man ducked the bulletheaded giant’s embrace on his way into the back room. The giant began staggering in our direction.
“The End of a Perfect Day,” my friend growled, but a pair of companions hastily steered the giant back to the bar. One was dressed in subtly ill-proportioned trousers and a flowered sport shirt with a vaguely muscovite look. The other athletic looking young man had splurged himself for some American clothes. “Off some iron curtain freighter,” my friend hazarded.
I heard occasional vowels, each within a fortification of high explosive consonants. “Couldn’t be,” I said, “No ships in except my tender.”
The turtle butcher brought bituminous coffee and a bottle with a bright poinsettia label. “Real beer!” I marvelled. My mad friend smiled wistfully. “They only make it once a year,” he said.
Two rather attractive latin women stood in the doorway. The sun made it apparent that they wore no slips. They removed wraparound skirts to reveal bermudas and the athletic types at the bar lost interest.
“That wasn’t exactly cricket,” my mad friend said as they collapsed at our table. “If they don’t like it,” one replied, “Send a gunboat.”
“Noche Buena!” the other wife exclaimed, “Where did you get it this time of year?”
“Millinery secret,” my friend grunted.
“Keeps it under his hat,” I explained.
“Speaking of secrets,” my friend continued, “Why aren’t you still out on Blaspheme II?”
“After months of mud, silt, strata of th
is’n thata, we hit something hard. I brought the tender in to pick up some diamond drill heads.”
Wives abruptly ceased discussing whether haystack hair went with the new botch look. “Did somebody say diamonds?”
“Too cheap to smuggle,” I said, “And you’d look better with a string of carborundum around your neck.”
There was sudden laughter at the bar. “That short one,” a wife said, “Is a woman.” My mad friend glanced at me and laughed.
“Qué hubo?” a wife asked. “Everybody was well into the third reel of Eisenstein the Terrible before I could sort the boys from the girls.”
A shadow fell across the table. The entire band of bulletheads was smiling hopefully.
“Blow,” my friend said pleasantly in English. “These ladies don’t need any Cuban rubles.”
They stared in mute Slavic incomprehension. The one in American clothes was opening his mouth when a small dark man elbowed through and bared brilliant teeth in a coprophagous grin.
“I don’t believe it,” a wife said.
The Byzantine had a way of popping up just as we were getting comfortable. No one had ever learned more of his past than he cared to divulge. These usually conflicting stories centered about a time machine and his birthdate some 500 years in a nonexistent future. I had seen him once as mate on a seagoing ferry, once as a Mexican army officer, once as an alleged Secret Service man. “What,” I asked, “Are you up to now?”
In archaic Sephardic Spanish he said, “I conduct a tour.”
A bullethead winked at a wife. The wife withered him. My mad friend coughed into his handkerchief.
“You could pass for American,” I told the withered one.
With drunken solemnity he said, “My primary allegiance, suh, is to the sovereign State of Texas.”
What kind of travel agency would mix up a group like this?
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 19