“Uh . . . one additional item,” he said. “That mirror in the foyer . . . remove it. And, I might add, any others that my friends and I might chance upon during our stay in your parlors.”
The man raised one gray-gloved hand. “And now good night.”
When Morton Silkline reached the hall, his customer was just flapping out a small window. Quite suddenly, Morton Silkline found the floor.
—
They arrived at 8:30, conversing as they entered the foyer of Clooney’s to be met by a tremble-legged Morton Silkline about whose eyes hung the raccoon circles of sleepless nights.
“Good evening,” greeted the tall man, noting, with a pleased nod, the absence of the wall mirror.
“Good—” was the total of Silkline’s wordage.
His vocal cords went slack and his eyes, embossed with daze, moved from figure to figure in the tall man’s coterie—the gnarl-faced hunchback whom Silkline heard addressed as Ygor; the peak-hatted crone upon whose ceremented shoulder a black cat crouched; the hulking hairy-handed man who clicked yellow teeth together and regarded Silkline with markedly more than casual eyes; the waxen-featured little man who licked his lips and smiled at Silkline as though he possessed some inner satisfaction; the half-dozen men and women in evening dress, all cherry-eyed and -lipped and—Silkline cringed—superbly toothed.
Silkline hung against the wall, mouth a circular entrance-way, hands twitching feebly at his sides as the chatting assemblage passed him by, headed for the Eternal Rest Room.
“Join us,” the tall man said.
Silkline stirred fitfully from the wall and stumble-wove an erratic path down the hallway, eyes still saucer-round with stupor.
“I trust,” the man said pleasantly, “everything is well prepared.”
“Oh,” Silkline squeaked. “Oh—oh, yes.”
“Sterling,” said the man.
When the two of them entered the room, the others were grouped in an admiring semicircle about the casket.
“Is good,” the hunchback was muttering to himself. “Is good box.”
“Aye, be that a casket or be that a casket, Delphinia?” cackled the ancient crone and Delphinia replied, “Mrrrrow.”
While the others nodded, smiling felicitous smiles and murmuring, “Ah. Ah.”
Then one of the evening-dressed women said, “Let Ludwig see,” and the semicircle split open so the tall man could pass.
He ran his long fingers over the gold work on the sides and top of the casket, nodding appreciatively. “Splendid,” he murmured, voice husky with emotion. “Quite splendid. Just what I always wanted.”
“You picked a beauty, lad,” said a tall white-haired gentleman.
“Well, try it on fer size!” the chuckling crone declared.
Smiling boyishly, Ludwig climbed into the casket and wriggled into place. “A perfect fit,” he said, contentedly.
“Master look good,” mumbled Ygor, nodding crookedly. “Look good in box.”
Then the hairy-handed man demanded they begin because he had an appointment at 9:15, and everyone hurried to their chairs.
“Come, duck,” said the crone, waving a scrawny hand at the ossified Silkline. “Sit by my side. I likes the pretty boys, I do, eh, Delphinia?” Delphinia said, “Mrrrrrow.”
“Please, Jenny,” Ludwig Asper asked her, opening his eyes a moment. “Be serious. You know what this means to me.”
The crone shrugged. “Aye. Aye,” she muttered, then pulled off her peaked hat and fluffed at dank curls as the zombie-stiff Silkline quivered into place beside her, aided by the guiding hand of the little waxen-faced man.
“Hello, pretty boy,” the crone whispered, leaning over and jabbing a spear-point elbow into Silkline’s ribs.
Then the tall white-haired gentleman from the Carpathian zone rose and the service began.
“Good friends,” said the gentleman, “we have gathered ourselves within these bud-wreathed walls to pay homage to our comrade, Ludwig Asper, whom the pious and unyielding fates have chosen to pluck from existence and place within that bleak sarcophagus of all eternity.”
“Ci-git,” someone murmured. “Chant du cygne,” another. Ygor wept and the waxen-featured little man, sitting on the other side of Morton Silkline, leaned over to murmur, “Tasty,” but Silkline wasn’t sure it was in reference to the funeral address.
“And thus,” the gentleman from Carpathia went on, “we collect our bitter selves about this, our comrade’s bier; about this litter of sorrow, this cairn, this cromlech, this unhappy tumulus—”
“Clearer, clearer,” demanded Jenny, stamping one pointy-toed and petulant shoe. “Mrrrrrow,” said Delphinia and the crone winked one blood-laced eye at Silkline who shrank away only to brush against the little man who gazed at him with berry eyes and murmured once again, “Tasty.”
The white-haired gentleman paused long enough to gaze down his royal nose at the crone. Then he continued, “—this mastaba, this sorrowing tope, this ghat, this dread dokhma—”
“What did he say?” asked Ygor, pausing in mid-sob. “What, what?”
“This ain’t no declamation tourney, lad,” the crone declared. “Keep it crisp, I say.”
Ludwig raised his head again, a look of pained embarrassment on his face. “Jenny,” he said. “Please.”
“Aaaaah . . . toad’s teeth!” snapped the crone jadedly, and Delphinia moaned.
“Requiescas in pace, dear brother,” the Count went on, testily. “The memory of you shall not perish with your untimely sepulture. You are, dear friend, not so much out of the game as playing on another field.”
At which the hairy-handed man rose and hulked from the room with the guttural announcement, “Go,” and Silkline felt himself rendered an icicle as he heard a sudden padding of clawed feet on the hallway rug and a baying which echoed back along the walls.
“Ullgate says he has a dinner appointment,” the little man asided with a bright-eyed smile. Silkline’s chair creaked with shuddering.
The white-haired gentleman stood tall and silent, his red eyes shut, his mouth tight-lipped with aristocratic pique.
“Count,” pleaded Ludwig. “Please.”
“Am I to endure these vulgar calumnies?” asked the Count. “These—”
“Well, la-de-da,” crooned Jenny to her cat.
“Silence, woman!” roared the Count, his head disappearing momentarily in a white, trailing vapor, then reappearing as he gained control.
Ludwig sat up, face a twist of aggravation. “Jenny,” he declared, “I think you’d better leave.”
“You think to throw old Jenny of Boston out?” the crone challenged. “Well, you got a think that’s coming then!”
And, as a shriveling Silkline watched, the crone slapped on her pointed hat and sprouted minor lightning at the fingertips. A snail-backed Delphinia bristled ebony hairs as the Count stepped forward, hand outstretched, to clamp onto the crone’s shoulder, then stiffened in mid-stride as sizzling fire ringed him.
“Haa!” crowed Jenny while a horror-stricken Silkline gagged, “My rug!”
“Jen-ny!” Ludwig cried, clambering out. The crone gestured and all the flowers in the room began exploding like popcorn.
“No-o,” moaned Silkline as the curtains flared and split. Chairs were overthrown. The Count bicarbonated to a hissing stream of white which flew at Jenny—who flung up her arms and vanished, cat and all, in an orange spume as the air grew thick with squeaks and rib-winged flapping.
Just before the bulbous-eyed Morton Silkline toppled forward, the waxen-faced man leaned over, smiling toothfully, squeezed the Director’s numbed arm and murmured, “Tasty.”
Then Silkline was at one with the rug.
—
Morton Silkline slumped in his sable-leathered chair, still twitching slightly even though a week had passed since the nerve-splitting
event. On his desk lay the note that Ludwig Asper had left pinned to his unconscious chest.
Sir, it read. Accept, in addition to this bag of gold (which I trust will cover all costs) my regrets that full decorum was not effected by the guests at my funeral. For, save for that, the entire preparation was most satisfactory to me.
Silkline put down the note and grazed a loving touch across the hill of glinting coins on his desk. Through judicious inquiry, he had gleaned the information that a connection in Mexico (namely, a cosmetician nephew in Carillo’s Cut-Rate Catacomb) could safely dispose of the gold at mutual profit. All things considered, the affair had not been really as bad as all—
Morton Silkline looked up as something entered his office.
He would have chosen to leap back screaming and vanish in the flowered pattern of the wallpaper but he was too petrified. Once more gape-mouthed, he stared at the huge, tentacled, ocher-dripping shapelessness that weaved and swayed before him.
“A friend,” it said politely, “recommended you to me.”
Silkline sat bug-eyed for a lengthy moment but then his twitching hand accidently touched the gold again. And he found strength.
“You’ve come,” he said, breathing through his mouth, “to the right place—uh . . . sir. Pomps—” He swallowed mightily and braced himself “—for all circumstances.”
He reached for his pen, blowing away the yellow-green smoke which was beginning to obscure his office.
“Name of the deceased?” he asked, businesslike.
THIRD FROM THE SUN
His eyes were open five seconds before the alarm was set to go off. There was no effort in waking. It was sudden. Coldly conscious, he reached out his left hand in the dark and pushed in the stop. The alarm glowed a second, then faded.
At his side, his wife put her hand on his arm.
“Did you sleep?” he asked.
“No, did you?”
“A little,” he said. “Not much.”
She was silent for a few seconds. He heard her throat contract. She shivered. He knew what she was going to say.
“We’re still going?” she asked.
He twisted his shoulders on the bed and took a deep breath.
“Yes,” he said, and he felt her fingers tighten on his arm.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“About five.”
“We’d better get ready.”
“Yes, we’d better.”
They made no move.
“You’re sure we can get on the ship without anyone noticing?” she asked.
“They think it’s just another test flight. Nobody will be checking.”
She didn’t say anything. She moved a little closer to him. He felt how cold her skin was.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
He took her hand and held it in a tight grip. “Don’t be,” he said. “We’ll be safe.”
“It’s the children I’m worried about.”
“We’ll be safe,” he repeated.
She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it gently.
“All right,” she said.
They both sat up in the darkness. He heard her stand. Her night garment rustled to the floor. She didn’t pick it up. She stood still, shivering in the cold morning air.
“You’re sure we don’t need anything else with us?” she asked.
“No, nothing. I have all the supplies we need in the ship. Anyways . . .”
“What?”
“We can’t carry anything past the guard,” he said. “He has to think you and the kids are just coming to see me off.”
She began dressing. He threw off the covering and got up. He went across the cold floor to the closet and dressed.
“I’ll get the children up,” she said.
He grunted, pulling clothes over his head. At the door she stopped. “Are you sure . . .” she began.
“What?”
“Won’t the guard think it’s funny that . . . that our neighbors are coming down to see you off, too?”
He sank down on the bed and fumbled for the clasps on his shoes.
“We’ll have to take that chance,” he said. “We need them with us.”
She sighed. “It seems so cold. So calculating.”
He straightened up and saw her silhouette in the doorway.
“What else can we do?” he asked intensely. “We can’t interbreed our own children.”
“No,” she said. “It’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“Nothing, darling. I’m sorry.”
She closed the door. Her footsteps disappeared down the hall. The door to the children’s room opened. He heard their two voices. A cheerless smile raised his lips. You’d think it was a holiday, he thought.
He pulled on his shoes. At least the kids didn’t know what was happening. They thought they were going to take him down to the field. They thought they’d come back and tell all their schoolmates about it. They didn’t know they’d never come back.
He finished clasping his shoes and stood up. He shuffled over to the bureau and turned on the light. It was odd, such an undistinguished looking man planning this.
Cold. Calculating. Her words filled his mind again. Well, there was no other way. In a few years, probably less, the whole planet would go up with a blinding flash. This was the only way out. Escaping, starting all over again with a few people on a new planet.
He stared at the reflection.
“There’s no other way,” he said.
He glanced around the bedroom. Goodbye, this part of my life. Turning off the lamp was like turning off a light in his mind. He closed the door gently behind him and slid his fingers off the worn handle.
His son and daughter were going down the ramp. They were talking in mysterious whispers. He shook his head in slight amusement.
His wife waited for him. They went down together, holding hands.
“I’m not afraid, darling,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sure it will.”
They all went in to eat. He sat down with his children. His wife poured out juice for them. Then she went to get the food.
“Help your mother, doll,” he told his daughter. She got up.
“Pretty soon, haah, pop?” his son said. “Pretty soon, haah?”
“Take it easy,” he cautioned. “Remember what I told you. If you say a word of it to anybody I’ll have to leave you behind.”
A dish shattered on the floor. He darted a glance at his wife. She was staring at him, her lips trembling.
She averted her eyes and bent down. She fumbled at the pieces, picked up a few. Then she dropped them all, stood up and pushed them against the wall with her shoe.
“As if it mattered,” she said nervously. “As if it mattered whether the place is clean or not.”
The children were watching her in surprise.
“What is it?” asked the daughter.
“Nothing, darling, nothing,” she said. “I’m just nervous. Go back to the table. Drink your juice. We have to eat quickly. The neighbors will be here soon.”
“Pop, why are the neighbors coming with us?” asked his son.
“Because,” he said vaguely, “they want to. Now forget it. Don’t talk about it so much.”
The room was quiet. His wife brought their food and set it down. Only her footsteps broke the silence. The children kept glancing at each other, at their father. He kept his eyes on the plate. The food tasted flat and thick in his mouth and he felt his heart thudding against the wall of his chest. Last day. This is the last day.
“You’d better eat,” he told his wife.
She sat down to eat. As she lifted the eating utensil the door buzzer sounded. The utensil skidded out of her nerveless fingers and clattered on
the floor. He reached out quickly and put his hand on hers.
“All right, darling,” he said. “It’s all right.” He turned to the children. “Go answer the door,” he told them.
“Both of us?” his daughter asked.
“Both of you.”
“But . . .”
“Do as I say.”
They slid off their chairs and left the room, glancing back at their parents.
When the sliding door shut off their view, he turned back to his wife. Her face was pale and tight; she had her lips pressed together.
“Darling, please,” he said. “Please. You know I wouldn’t take you if I wasn’t sure it was safe. You know how many times I’ve flown the ship before. And I know just where we’re going. It’s safe. Believe me it’s safe.”
She pressed his hand against her cheek. She closed her eyes and large tears ran out under her lids and down her cheeks.
“It’s not that so m-much,” she said. “It’s just . . . leaving, never coming back. We’ve been here all our lives. It isn’t like . . . like moving. We can’t come back. Ever.”
“Listen, darling,” his voice was tense and hurried. “You know as well as I do. In a matter of years, maybe less, there’s going to be another war, a terrible one. There won’t be a thing left. We have to leave. For our children, for ourselves . . .”
He paused, testing the words in his mind.
“For the future of life itself,” he finished weakly. He was sorry he said it. Early in the morning, over prosaic food, that kind of talk didn’t sound right. Even if it was true.
“Just don’t be afraid,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”
She squeezed his hand.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I know.”
There were footsteps coming toward them. He pulled out a tissue and gave it to her. She hastily dabbed at her face.
The door slid open. The neighbors and their son and daughter came in. The children were excited. They had trouble keeping it down.
“Good morning,” the neighbor said.
The neighbor’s wife went to his wife and the two of them went over to the window and talked in low voices. The children stood around, fidgeted and looked nervously at each other.
The Best of Richard Matheson Page 25