The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Mr. Peng bowed profoundly, and thanked the Empress, the Emperor, and the great Chu-t’sai for their trust in him and their munificence.

  Then the Empress clapped her hands, and there was music. The audience was at an end, and everyone turned to a late luncheon served there on the meadow, after which the rest of the Imperial presents were brought out, boxes in and ebony and lacquer, wrapped in silks of an unimaginable richness, and loaded into the carriage and into the Ferrari.

  “We hate to see you go,” the Empress said, “but I assure you it’s for the best.”

  The most cordial farewells echoed from every side, and Papa Schimmelhorn embraced the great Chu-t’sai’s right nostril. “Herr Drache,” he declared, “I vish I shpeak your langvidge.”

  The great Chu-t’sai whiffled at him softly.

  “Ja!” said Papa Schimmelhorn. “I bet ve could tell each oder plenty of shtories—” He saw Mama’s eye transfixing him, and patted the huge nostril once again with a sigh. “Auf wiedersehn!” he called back over his shoulder. The carriage started down the road; the

  Ferrari followed; the escort fell in to either side and overhead. The road and landscape unrolled before them, faster, faster—

  Then, as abruptly as they had left it, they were back inside the godown, with only a very tired and worried Colonel Li waiting to welcome them. As the Ferrari’s rear bumper cleared the gate, behind them they heard a soft implosion, and for an instant the air seemed to scintillate and crackle. They turned—and the gate was gone. Only the Stanley Steamer stood there, a thread of smoke and the smell of burning insulation issuing from its hood.

  There was a long, long silence, which Mr. Plantagenet finally broke with a harrumph.

  Mr. Peng turned to him dolefully.

  “Cheer up, old lad,” said Mr. Plantagenet. “We do have the dragon’s eggs, you know. When they hatch out we’ll have proper dragons!”

  “Richard,” answered Mr. Peng, “do you know how long dragon’s eggs take to hatch? One thousand years—and even though our Chinese thousand is often an indeterminate number, it’s still going to be a dismally long time.”

  * * * *

  The Pengs and the Plantagenets very kindly invited the Schimmelhorns to spend a few more days in Hong Kong as their guests, but Mama Schimmelhorn refused, saying she was ashamed to be seen with Papa in polite society. She insisted they drive directly to the airport; and this they did, delaying only long enough for Little Anton to retrieve Papa Schimmelhorn’s carpetbag and stow it in the Stanley’s trunk, for Mama to accept a substantial check (made out in her name) from Mrs. Plantagenet, and for their presents from the Empress to be put aboard.

  During the drive, not a word was said, even Little Anton remained silent, and the only sound was the occasional sharp tapping of the umbrella’s point against the back of the driver’s seat. The Imperial yellow jet was awaiting them with its ramp down, but this time Papa Schimmelhorn knew he could not fly it in. His drive up the ramp was positively funereal.

  Despite the courteous and considerate crew, the splendid service and superb cuisine, their return was by no means a fun flight—and the fact that Colonel Li, in a mistaken effort to do his friend a final favor, had assigned the two pretty Balinese as hostesses did nothing to improve the atmosphere or alleviate Papa Schimmelhorn’s despondency. All the way, Mama Schimmelhorn sat grimly in her seat, never breaking silence except to elaborate on the misdeeds of Dirty Old Men, and how promising youths like Little Anton would do well to pay them no attention and think rather of Confucius.

  They landed at New Haven. Mama Schimmelhorn tipped each of the crew fifty cents. The ramp extruded. They climbed into the car.

  A tear in his eye, Papa Schimmelhorn cast one last lingering look at the pair of Balinese, and mutely shook Little Anton by the hand. Luckily, he had presence of mind enough quickly to palm and pocket the small piece of paper his grand-nephew passed to him.

  “Ve drife shtraight home,” ordered Mama Schimmelhorn, and he obeyed.

  “Ve put der car in der garage,” she told him, unlocking the door, waiting until he had driven in, then locking it again and pocketing the key.

  “Und now ve go upshtairs und open up die presents from die Empress.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn picked them up and followed her. There were two long boxes in cases of figured silk, fastened with silken cords. There was a large square box similarly wrapped. Mama Schimmelhorn opened the long ones first. Lacquered, each contained a scroll on silk, with carved ivory ends. She unrolled the first. It was a classical Chinese ancestral portrait of Papa Schimmelhorn seated in a great teak chair and garbed in the handsome robes of a jade-button mandarin and Assistant (Honorary) Keeper of the Imperial Dragon Hatchery.

  “Ach!” she exclaimed. “Dot iss how you should look—nodt alvays leering und vinking und thinking about naked vomen.”

  She unrolled the second. A counterpart of the first, it showed her in the role of the high mandarin’s wife, appropriately attired, except that her black hat was set firmly on her head and that her right hand, relentlessly, held her umbrella. On her lap, the painter had depicted Gustav-Adolf, whom Mrs. Peng and Mrs. Plantagenet had described carefully to the Empress.

  “It iss beaudtiful!” murmured Mama Schimmelhorn. “Ve hang vun each side of der fireplace.”

  Then she opened the third package, and out of a box of ebony took a large bronze ting, an ancient sacrificial vessel of great rarity and value.

  “Vot iss?” grumbled Papa Schimmelhorn. “To cook die beans?”

  “Shtupid!” she snapped. “It iss to plant maybe petunias. Now go downstairs und get your bag, und bring up poor Gustav-Adolf.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn departed gladly, and as soon as he determined that he and Gustav-Adolf were indeed alone, he read the message Little Anton had passed to him. It said,

  Dear Papa,

  There’s another present, just for you. It’s from the Emperor and your dragon chum. I sneaked it out in my own little universe so that Prince Wen wouldn’t catch on.

  It’s out of one of those air-cars of theirs, and I’ve translated what it says on the outside.

  Have fun, old boy!

  Love,

  Anton

  Papa Schimmelhorn hurried to the trunk. Behind his carpetbag, there was a plain cardboard carton with Chinese characters, and under these was the translation:

  Imperial Air-Car Factory (it read)

  Anti-Gravity Unit

  To Be Installed in Steam-Propelled Vehicles Only

  (1.3 Dragonpower)

  Warranted Black-Hole-Free

  Quickly he put it back again and closed the trunk. He hoisted the carpetbag to one huge shoulder and Gustav-Adolf, who had been sniffing at the Stanley Steamer, to the other. As he went up to rejoin Mama Schimmelhorn, he did his very best to look downcast and shame-stricken. But he didn’t make a very good job of it.

  He was thinking of fluffy white clouds at two thousand feet, of warm summer breezes, and of Dora Grossapfel’s stretchpants.

  PAPA SCHIMMELHORN AND THE S.O.D.O.M. SERUM

  It was Mama Schimmelhorn’s own fault that, at the ripe old age of eighty-plus, in the very prime of his manhood and virility, Papa Schimmelhorn invented his longevity serum, designed to extend the human life span—or at least the Papa Schimmelhorn life span—by five hundred years. Had she not surprised him in flagrante with the lush, forty-year-old Widow Siracusa, and had she—when her suspicions were confirmed—refrained from inviting Pastor Hundhammer to witness the intensely painful confrontation, the Pastor would never have delivered his vitriolic diatribe on the imprudence of old men who wasted their declining years in lust and lechery, Papa Schimmelhorn would not have taken it so much to heart, and Bambi Siracusa would have had no reason to call in the Mafia Family to which her late husband, Jimmy “Fickle Finger” Sir
acusa, had belonged—though that, of course, was only after she and Mama Schimmelhorn had formed their infamous alliance.

  As soon as possible, after listening to his wife recite the endless catalogue of his infidelities, Papa Schimmelhorn took refuge in his basement workshop. It was there, in his leisure hours, when he was neither working at his job as foreman at Heinrich Luedesing’s cuckoo-clock factory nor pursuing his more serious hobby, that his soul found solace and his genius its full fruition. On this occasion, he remained uncomforted. Tenderly touching his bruised left ear, by which Mama Schimmelhorn had led him home, and ruefully feeling his injured ribs, which had felt the impact of her black umbrella’s pointed ferrule, he sat down on his workbench. There, before him, was his 1922 Stanley Steamer touring car, painted British Racing Green, in which he had once installed an anti-gravity device of his own invention. There was his treasury of old bicycle frames, eviscerated typewriters, snaggle-toothed gears, and tangled springs. Beside him were his drills and chisels, vises, wood-shavings, and unlikely power tools seemingly derived from dead vacuum cleaners. And next to them was his old friend Gustav-Adolf, lashing his long, striped tail, purring loudly, and obviously enjoying the plump mouse he was devouring.

  “Ach, Gustav-Adolf, you do not understand!” Flexing his mighty biceps, Papa Schimmelhorn groaned dismally. “Look at me! I am as good as new—chust ask my lidtle Bambi if you don’t beliefe! But old Hundhammer iss right. Maybe only ten years, maybe fifteen—then no more chasing pretty lidtle pussycats. It iss all ofer—such a vaste!”

  At the thought of all the ladies, young and middle-aged and even well-preserved elderly, now destined to be irremediably deprived, a tear appeared at the corner of his bright blue eye; and Gustav-Adolf, who understood him perfectly, growled in sympathy, pushed the remains of the mouse toward him with a paw, and said, “Go on an’ eat it, chum—you’ll feel lots better!” in Cat. He waited for a moment and, when his offer was ignored, philosophically polished off the mouse himself.

  “But it iss not chust pussycats,” sighed Papa Schimmelhorn. “It iss der vorld. Remember, Gustav-Adolf, I am a chenius. For a vhile in Geneva, Herr Doktor Jung paid me to sit und listen, und read die old books und a lot of foolish new vuns, und vhen I asked him vhy he vould chust chuckle und say, ‘Don’t vorry, Papa. Someday from der subconscience it pops out.’ Und he vas right. Und also—” He pointed at a newly contrived and splendid cuckoo-clock hanging on the wall. “—also I am an artist. Look! I make it for my lidtle Bambi—der vorld’s only X-rated cuckoo-clock, adjusted mit tvelve positions, und vith a qvartet of cuckoos instead of only vun.”

  Sadly he turned the hands to twelve o’clock. The quartet of cuckoos—two tenors, a baritone, a bass—obligingly came out and sang the hour.

  Gustav-Adolf tensed; then, remembering previous experiences with the Schimmelhorn variety of avifauna, relaxed disgustedly.

  The cuckoos went back in. A larger door beneath them opened wide; a tiny Louis XVI bedstead emerged luxuriously; on it, in miniature, lay Mrs. Siracusa and an anonymous young man. Papa Schimmelhorn watched them sentimentally for quite a while. “I do not put myself,” he explained to Gustav-Adolf. “It iss modesty, because I am a chenius.” He sighed. “Und now Mama has made my lidtle-Bambi angry, und Pastor Hundhammer has lowered der boom.” He shook his head self-pityingly. “A trachedy—imachine! Eferything cut off chust vhen I feel good for maybe fife hundred more years—”

  He stopped. That subconscious which had so fascinated Jung—and which probably would have proved even more intriguing to Herr Doktor Freud—had slipped swiftly and silently into top gear. His eyes narrowed calculatingly. “Und vhy not?” he asked Gustav-Adolf. “Fife hundred years perhaps iss no more difficult than anti-grafity or gnurrs!” He paused to contemplate the possibilities. The number of pretty pussycats who could be chased successfully in half a thousand years seemed pretty much unlimited. He beamed. “Maybe it vorks!” he exclaimed delightedly. “Anyhow ve try. Und if I fix it, Gustav-Adolf, also I giff you some. Maybe it lasts you vun hundred years only, because you are a cat, but dot’s better than chust two or three, nicht wahr?”

  “Mrrow!” declared Gustav-Adolf emphatically.

  Papa Schimmelhorn winked at him. He pointed warningly at the floor above. “Only remember!” he whispered. “To Mama, not a vord!”

  For several weeks, he was a model husband. When he was not toiling at the cuckoo-clock factory, most of his spare time was spent either in his workshop or at the public library poring laboriously over treatises on genetics, cytology, cytogenetics, biochemistry, and any number of other subjects he did not understand—but which his subconscious absorbed very effectively indeed. He dipped into learned works on the mating habits of the bower bird, the decoction of ethers and esters and imitation Irish whiskey, the electronic marvels of the Space Age, proctology made easy, hypnotism, herpetology, and the magical and therapeutic properties of the ancient Chinese pharmacopoeia. Occasionally, he made mysterious small purchases, and after a while Mama Schimmelhorn began to notice strange vapors coming from the basement, some pleasant and actually enticing, others noxious and repellent, but his behavior lulled her suspicions temporarily. Every Sunday, for the first time in their sixty-three years of married life, he now accompanied her to church, and much to the astonishment of all it was his mighty voice that took the lead in every hymn. Indeed, on his first visit, when Pastor Hundhammer abandoned his prepared sermon to deliver an extemporaneous one on “Sodom”—which in Biblical times had been a wicked city, but now could be taken to mean “Shame On Dirty Old Men”—the AMEN! to which he gave utterance was positively heart-rending.

  Mama Schimmelhorn’s female friends rejoiced, with Pastor Hundhammer, in his reformation. The male members of the congregation, including his employer, old Heinrich Luedesing, began to whisper gloatingly that Papa was finally losing the powers they envied him. And in the meantime the R & D program in the basement proceeded toward its triumphant denouement.

  Naturally, Papa Schimmelhorn was excited—but he was not a man to leave anything to chance. “Ve giff it first to mices,” he told Gustav-Adolf, eyeing a murky, evil-odored fluid in a pickle-jar. “Maybe you vork hard und catch? At first ten or tvelve vould be enough.” He glanced into his friend’s green, unwinking eyes, sighed, and went out to buy white mice from a pet shop. We need not detail either the ingredients that went into his final product or the seemingly disconnected and decidedly unsanitary processes by which it was arrived at, but there had been contributions from his own anatomy, one or two minor ones (reluctantly) from Gustav-Adolf’s, and a variety of others from unlikely areas of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. Finally, the pickle-jars had been subjected to subtle treatments under an antique X-ray machine, the veteran of several dentists’ offices, before which a strangely twisted crystal did a clockwork dance over what looked like a drunken diffraction grating. Three fluids had resulted: the one already mentioned, another like a liquid Gorgonzola with things wiggling in it, and a bright red preparation which threw off fumes, sizzled slightly, and smelled of clams.

  The first white mice arrived, were left with no protection but a shoebox, and perished promptly when Papa Schimmelhorn left the room for a few minutes. The second batch, given the yellow fluid while Gustav-Adolf was digesting their predecessors, rolled up their beady eyes and died immediately. The third absorbed the liquid Gorgonzola, flickered eerily for about thirty seconds, and disappeared.

  “Ach!” murmured Papa Schimmelhorn. “I haff made der mistake vith der wrong dimension. Okay, ve try again!”

  The fourth batch, approximately of platoon strength, drank up the clammy preparation greedily. Then, one by one, they weakened rapidly. They shriveled. Their fur thinned and dulled. Their eyes grew dim. They too gave up and died.

  There was just one exception—a rather bristly mouse a bit larger than the rest. He too had seemed to shrivel. His fur had changed its t
exture and its hue. But his eyes had kept their brilliance, and now he actually seemed stronger than before.

  Papa Schimmelhorn picked him up with a glad shout. He flung the door open to admit a much irritated Gustav-Adolf, exiled since the debacle of the first mice.

  “Look, Gustav-Adolf!” he cried out. “Maybe it vorks! Herr Maus iss alife und veil!” He put the mouse down Under his cat’s nose—and the mouse squeaked once, stood up, and bit it savagely.

  Never, not even in his rough-and-tumble kittenhood, had Gustav-Adolf been bitten by a mouse. Shocked to the core, he yowled, leaped backward, and crouched, growling suspiciously. The mouse jumped from the workbench and escaped through the door.

  “It vorks!” shouted Papa Schimmelhorn. “For mices, it giffs maybe ten years, for cats vun hundred, for me fife hundred—imachine! Fife hundred years of chasing pretty pussycats!” He danced a jig. “Blondes, Gustav-Adolf! Brunettes und redheads und shlender vuns und plump vuns und maybe lidtle girls from China und Chapan!”

  He looked down. Gustav-Adolf, forgetful of the mouse, was just lapping up the remaining liquid in the saucer.

  “Mein Gott!” Papa Schimmelhorn reached out to stop him. “Not yet, Gustav-Adolf! First ve make experiments! It iss too dancherous—”

  He was too late. Gustav-Adolf gave the plate a final swipe, and sat up to lick his chops. Papa Schimmelhorn regarded him with trepidation—and nothing happened. He did not shrivel. His fur and eyes retained their accustomed brilliance. Perhaps his chops seemed suddenly a little grayer, but even that was not quite certain.

  The truth dawned suddenly on Papa Schimmelhorn. “Okay!” he roared, lifting the pickle-jar like a Viking drinking horn. “It vorked on Herr Maus because he vas a Dirty Old Man maus! It vorks for Gustav-Adolf because he iss a Dirty Old Man tomcat! Ach, because of Hundhammer, ve must call it der S.O.D.O.M. Serum!” The bright red liquid fumed and bubbled. “So down der hatch! Look—chust like Herr Doktor Chekyll und Mr. Hyde!” He took a mighty gulp.