The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  The bosuns boxed his ears, and he subsided. “Later ve take you to be fixed,” she promised him. “First ve must do something for die big Beetlegooser vomen who haff been nice to me, und who haff troubles—”

  Briefly, then, she outlined their problem, repeating its most important points to make sure he understood, and explaining how, though she herself had not solved the problem of Beetlegoosian sterility, her Gustav-Adolf had.

  “Und so,” she announced gloatingly, “I tell you vhat ve do. All your life you shtay avay at night und chase die naked vomen, nicht wahr? Und I haff heard how you said to Heinrich Luedesing how vunce in a vhile a lidtle piece vill keep you full mit vinegar, nicht so? Veil, on Beetlegoose iss a whole planet full of naked vomen, und you can get to vork, chust like mein Gustav-Adolf. You shtart at der top maybe, mit die Mama-President, und you vork down. Imachine—a billion naked vomen inshtead of chust vun lidtle piece! You vill be mein Piece Corps. I charge a fee, like Cousin Alois mit der bull.”

  It took some time for all the implications of her plan to penetrate, but when they did the effect was cataclysmic. Papa Schimmelhorn stared wildly at his captors, and his imagination multiplied them infinitely, showing each one uglier than her sisters. He moaned in anguish; he sobbed, shed tears by the bucketful, apologized for all his errors of the past, made any number of unlikely promises; he wrung his hands and tore his noble beard.

  The Mother-Empress was unmoved. “I haff shpoken!” she proclaimed royally. “Take him avay. Put him back in der room vith Tuptup, und tie him by der leg so he can’t get avay!”

  The bosuns dragged him off and, while Tuptup snickered and made rude remarks, manacled him securely to his bed.

  * * *

  The next six weeks were dreadful ones. Every day, Mama Schimmelhorn had him brought in to hear lengthy sermons on the nastiness of his behavior, with vivid instructions on how to perform his destined diplomatic role on their arrival. Every day, she reminded him unkindly of the other fate awaiting him. Even when she passed out his bowser-bag, which now contained only the coarsest fare, she explained that it was just to preserve his vinegar so that he might be a credit to her Piece Corps.

  At night, his dreams alternated between hideous visions of the veterinarian and even more frightful ones of the Beetlegoosian women, festooned with wisps of hair and scraps of clothing, cued up from dawn to dusk awaiting his attentions. During the endless days, Tuptup sneered at him openly, bringing his little cronies in to join the fun, and the big bosuns kept him under a hostile surveillance. Even when Pukpuk, conscience-stricken at having been the instrument of his betrayal and downfall, took to dropping in with little presents of fresh catnip and, when they could be discreetly whispered, words of affection and concern from Lali, he was in no way heartened. Days passed before he even realized despairingly that his only hope of escaping the dark future lay in solving the problem of the little men’s sterility—and that, fettered as he was, his chances of success were less than zero.

  During those weeks, the only person who did not treat him with contempt was Pukpuk, who tiptoed in two or three times a week to cheer him with tidings from the ifk room: how he himself was getting thoroughly dissatisfied with the shrimpy gruel, and how dear Lali was sharing her own rations with him; and how invigorating the catnip was; and how his muscles had been growing and hardening up; and, finally and triumphantly, how hair had actually started growing on his chest, just as Lali had said it grew on Papa Schimmelhorn’s.

  And Papa Schimmelhorn would listen to him, and munch the catnip, and—until he again realized the hopelessness of his predicament—would feel somewhat cheered, and would try to goose his subconscious into finding a solution to the problem.

  The days and weeks dragged by; the ship drove on toward its destination; and the Mother-Empress presided over a court which she found ever duller and more tedious—something she never would have admitted under the circumstances. Every few days, the Captain announced joyously that another of her ship’s cats was pregnant; Gustav-Adolf became the hero of the hour; and each feline pregnancy was held up as an object lesson for the unwilling Piece Corps.

  Then, on the day before they were to make planetfall, the Captain came before the Throne in a state of unprecedented excitement and elation.

  “Und now vhat iss?” enquired Mama Schimmelhorn, a little wearily. “Ve haff more kittens?”

  “Oh, no, Your Lusciousness!” the Captain cried ecstatically. “It’s much, much more important! We knew you’d solve the problem for us—and not just with cats! It’s Lali, that silly ifk room girl! Your Magnificence, she’s—she’s going to have a baby!”

  “She vhat?”

  “She’s going to have a baby—and it’s the first one in years and years and years! Oh, Your Deliciousness—we owe it all to you!”

  Mama Schimmelhorn stood up, her Piece Corps plans forgotten utterly. “But it iss nodt possible!” she whispered. “It iss six veeks, und ve vould haff known before. Also, he has been by der leg to der bed ge-tied. It cannodt be!”

  The Captain laughed. “Dear Mother-Empress, you’re joking, aren’t you? Of course, it couldn’t have been your cat-bearer. It was that awful Pukpuk. They’ve both confessed it, and she’s going to marry him. We ought to punish them, but it’s really too important an occasion. I hope you’ll tell us how you managed it.”

  Mama Schimmelhorn sat down again. Rolling with the punches, she smiled serenely. “I haff nodt said before,” she declared, “because I am nodt sure it vorks. Now ve vait a lidtle vhile, und maybe vhen ve get to Beetlegoose I tell your Mama President.” And to herself she said, Ach, probably it iss Papa’s chenius in der subconscience. Maybe if I am shmart I can make him tell vhat he has done to Lali und der lidtle man, so die big ladies shtill think it vas by me.

  She dismissed the Captain, and had Papa Schimmelhorn brought before her, where he was forced to kneel in all humility.

  “So!” she said, giving him a look of malicious triumph. “Maybe you hear der news—how dot shtupid Lali now iss pregnant, und lidtle Herr Pukpuk iss der papa?”

  He had indeed heard the news, for Pukpuk had boasted of it right away, displaying a most unBeetlegoosian machismo.

  “Und you haff guessed maybe vhat it means, nicht wahr? Now iss no problem for die big vomen aboudt babies. Ve do nodt need a Piece Corps.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn nodded apprehensively.

  “So ve cut der budget,” she told him with a fiendish smile. “Und nodt chust der budget! Shtraight avay vhen ve land—to der vet’s.” Her fingers made the scissors gesture. “Shnip!” Once again, her husband panicked. Once again, he begged and whined and pleaded, resorting to every emotional appeal—and all in vain.

  Transfixing him with her Medusa stare, she said, “Giff me vun good reason vhy nodt? Maybe because Miss Prudence Pilgrim vould nodt like? Maybe some oder pretty lidtle pussycat?”

  “Mama,” he wept, “only listen! It iss nodt chust for me! About die big vomen und die babies shtill ve are nodt sure. Maybe der catnip vorks only for lidtle Pukpuk, und nodt for eferybody. Maybe for too many years die lidtle men haff eaten gruel mit shrimps. Maybe for them already iss too late!”

  Ah-ha! said the Mother-Empress to herself. From der catnip maus—so dot’s der secret! But she remained silent while he poured out his frantic story of the effect the ifk had had upon the catnip, and the effect the mutated plants had had upon the ifk and Pukpuk and the little tomcats. So upset was he that he did not even think to take credit for the scientific miracle—an oversight which she herself had no intention of repeating.

  Finally she clapped her hands sharply to end the interview, and signed to the bosuns to remove him. “Tomorrow, vhen ve get to Beetlegoose, ve see!” she announced ominously. “Maybe die Mama-President iss grateful, und giffs me a nice testimonial dinner.”

  * * * *

  Actually, the festi
vities honoring Mama Schimmelhorn and her scientific triumph lasted a full week. They opened with a Banquet of State at which long speeches were made by the Mother-President, a brawny lady with a harsh bass voice and more than the ghost of a moustache, and by many representatives of Beetlegoosian officialdom. The Captain, newly promoted to Flag rank, was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Yeelil Huh for discovering and bringing back the agent of their salvation, and decorations were bestowed on all her officers. Gifts and honors without number were showered upon the Mother-Empress, chief of them being a large oil painting of a demure little man with nothing on stepping out of a seashell on the shore. (This, Mama Schimmelhorn gave to the Salvation Army shortly after her return, and it ended up over the entrance to the men’s room in a gay bar not far from Pennsylvania Avenue.) In an unprecedented public ceremony, Lali and Pukpuk were joined in matrimony, and Lali was formally declared to have at last achieved full womanhood.

  Then Pukpuk and Papa Schimmelhorn and Gustav-Adolf were placed on exhibition for three days in the window of Madame Ipilu’s swank husband shop, much to the chagrin of poor Tuptup. Pukpuk did his best to reassure his large benefactor, telling him that the Mother-Empress had told the Captain definitely that she had no intention of subjecting him to surgery, but Papa Schimmelhorn would not be comforted until, on the third day, she herself informed him that, if he promised to be good as gold, he could return to Earth intact.

  And Papa Schimmelhorn was very good indeed. He ignored completely the few pretty pussycats who, once in a long while, showed their faces in the surging throngs of huge women and wistful little men who came from every quarter of the planet to stare at him. He maintained an austere visage and practically sat on his hands on the occasions when Lali was brought in to greet her bridegroom. But after nightfall, when the window curtains had been drawn by Madame Ipilu in person, and once he and Pukpuk had eaten their supper, not of shrimpy gruel but of real woman’s food—a point the Mother-Empress had generously insisted on—he revealed that even his harrowing experiences could not really quell his spirit.

  “You listen, chunior,” he would tell Pukpuk, as they munched their crispy catnip in the dark. “Eferything iss nodt ofer. Vhen I go back to Earth, you do chust like I say, und eat der catnip, und giff a lidtle maybe to your Lali. But you must safe die seeds und plant them eferyvhere. For Beetlegoose, you must become der Chonny Catnipseed. A few veeks und things begin to change, und someday maybe efen Tuptup gets hairs on der chest. But you be careful. Vhen die big ladies find out vhat really happens, und dot die men all are becoming men again, probably they try to make catnip—how do you say it?—a subscription drug, so you get it only vhen they vant a baby. Und dot vay nobody has any fun.”

  Then he and Pukpuk would laugh themselves to sleep at the thought of their subversion and of the revolution it would bring about.

  After four days, Mama Schimmelhorn found herself thoroughly bored with the unending round of dull entertainments. By the fifth, she decided she’d go crazy if she had to attend even one more noisy doe party where little men did naughty things which reminded her of a summer she had spent as house-mother at a school for more-or-less delinquent urchins. On the sixth, she announced her inflexible intention of returning home forthwith, which of course meant that she had to endure one more banquet (at which she presented the world’s most perfect cuckoo clock to the Mother-President with her compliments.) And on the seventh, she and her entourage re-embarked on the Vilvilkuz Snar Tuhl Tt.

  The return trip took less than half the time the outward journey had. The ifk achieved an almost unbelievable acceleration, aided perhaps by the fact that each of their pots was now lush with mutant catnip. Lali and Pukpuk were still in charge of them, Lali having been given the brand new rank of Chief Engineer, suggested by the Mother Empress as a reward for her approaching labor; and Papa Schimmelhorn, though he was still strictly confined to quarters, was allowed to entertain the happy couple under proper supervision.

  Finally there came a day when the bosuns brought him his shirt and pants and jacket and ordered him to put them on. The ship was hovering squarely over the center of New Haven, and at the Captain’s orders a lifeboat, rather than the snap-net, had been made ready. The farewells said, and the gratitude expressed, were fervent and sincere, and many an invitation was extended to the Mother-Empress to visit Beetlegoose again.

  “Next time you haff trouble mit die lidtle men, don’dt ask for help from Mama!” she declared, flourishing her umbrella as she stepped through the port. “Vunce iss too much!”

  The boat descended swiftly. It deposited them just a half-block from their residence, and Mama Schimmelhorn did not even wave as it took off.

  “Nefer again!” she declared, prodding her husband with the point of the umbrella. “I haff enough nasty naked vomen monkeyshines!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn assured her that he could not agree more fully; and he and Gustav-Adolf followed her docilely through the door.

  Shaken by his experiences, he did not leave the house for a good three weeks except to go to work at Heinrich Luedesing’s and, on Sundays, to worship at Pastor Hunhammer’s church. His spare time he devoted to his workshop, contriving parts for his Stanley Steamer’s anti-gravity device.

  Nobody believed them when they told of their adventures—nobody except Willie Fledermaus, who was too young to count. Even Heinrich Luedesing did not take the story seriously when he was presented with a flourishing sprig of mutant catnip in a pot, and told that it was a sovereign specific for restoring lead to pencils.

  Gradually, though, the painful past receded, and the vital juices in Papa Schimmelhorn’s vast frame began to flow again until one evening, as he was nibbling catnip, he thought again of Ms. Pilgrim. “Ach!” he sighed. “Meine pretty lidtle pussycat. Maybe chust vunce I go to see her und make a lidtle date.”

  There was no time like the present. Carefully, he opened the well-oiled garage door. Upstairs, all was still. He started to tiptoe out—

  And down the street came a vivid scarlet Stingray, its exhaust giving forth a full-throated masculine roar. At the wheel was a transformed Heinrich Luedesing, one arm around Ms. Prudence Pilgrim, who was cuddling up to him.

  At that instant, without a sound, Mama Schimmelhorn came up behind her husband. She seized him cruelly by the ear. Her umbrella caught him in the ribs.

  “So!” she hissed. “Dirty old man! Vhere are you going?”

  “I guess novhere,” Papa Schimmelhorn answered meekly, gazing after the vanishing red Stingray.

  “Okay, back inside!” she ordered, with a final poke of her umbrella; and he followed her obediently.

  But he winked slyly at Gustav-Adolf as he did so. “You chust vait till ve get der anti-grafity in der Stanley Shteamer!” he whispered.

  COUNT VON SCHIMMELHORN AND THE TIME-PONY

  It was General of the Armies Powhattan Fairfax Pollard, U.S.A. (Retired,) who saved Europe from the Mongols and Western Civilization from destruction. But even he—the greatest military leader of the Thirteenth and Twentieth Centuries—could never have managed it without Papa Schimmelhorn’s birthday present.

  Papa Schimmelhorn took a whole day off from the cuckoo clock factory to put the finishing touches on that present. Full of the joy of giving, he sang as he worked away, adjusting the handlebars, fussing with the sprockets, tightening a bolt here and a nut there. Finally, when everything mechanical had been completed, he buckled a brand new imitation-leather tool kit to the seat and stood back to admire his handiwork.

  “Ach, ja!” he whispered, stroking his huge gray beard soberly. “Papa, you are a chenius! Und now chust vun more thing—”

  He picked up a freshly painted, dappled hobbyhorse head. It was decidedly impressionistic and rather wild-eyed, but its crest was adorned with genuine horsehair. This he fastened to the frame ahead of the handlebars. Then, behind the seat, he added a horsehair ponyt
ail. Finally, lifting the device with one gigantic hand, he carried it up to the living room, where his wife was sitting very stiffly in a straight-backed chair, knitting.

  “See!” he exclaimed, as he set it down in front of her. “Is it not beauditful?”

  Mama Schimmelhorn, whose countenance often reminded people of the less optimistic passages in the Book of Revelation, regarded him without enthusiasm. “You haff shpoiled a bicycle,” she observed quite accurately.

  Papa Schimmelhorn was hurt. “It iss not shpoiled,” he protested. “I haff die vheels remofed, und made instead four feet vith inzulators. It iss now a time machine.”

  His wife rose menacingly. Her black dress crackling, she advanced upon him. “A time machine?” she hissed. “So you can maybe make more gnurrs come from der voodvork out to eat up people’s trousers? So you, at eighty years, can maybe run avay, und shtay up late at night vith naked girls? Ha! This time you do not get avay vith! I am too shmart!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn retreated, blushing at her obvious reference to the episode which had started his friendship with the general. “Nein, nein! Mama, listen! It iss only for der soldier boy I make this time machine! He iss not happy, Mama. They haff made him retire because he beliefes in cafalry. So now I fix. On my machine, he can go back vhere iss plenty of horses—Vaterloo! Chulius Caesar! Bulls Run! Only listen—”

  Opening a triangular wooden box attached to the crossbar, he exhibited a singular mess—coils, cogs, gears, a large horseshoe magnet painted red, a big brass escapement, and something that looked like an L-shaped chunk of broken beer bottle. He pointed out how this last object revolved briskly when the pedals were pushed.