The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  For another hour or two, the alchemist kept up his pacing, pausing occasionally to wring his hands or to look up some hopefully helpful passage in his books. As he paced, he addressed a monologue, sometimes to himself, sometimes to his familiar, and sometimes, imploringly, to the absent Fräulein. Finally, he stopped decisively and phoned her home in Zürich.

  “What do you want, Gaspar?” she demanded. “Mavronides has already told me that Schimmelhorn and his friends arrived safely, and I happen to be busy.”

  Gaspar Gansfleisch apologized profusely. Never, he averred, would he have called had he known that he was interrupting her; surely she knew that her convenience was always foremost in his thoughts; was he not her ever-devoted servant? But—but he had felt she ought to know. Schimmelhorn had come there with a cat.

  “And what of that?” His employer’s voice was glacial.

  “It—it is impossible to conduct spagyric operations with cats in the vicinity, as—as I’m sure you know.”

  The phone’s response was a deadly silence.

  “B-besides,” said Meister Gansfleisch lamely, “I—I am allergic to them.”

  “Don’t be absurd! You will ignore this cat. You will make no attempt to harm it. You will, if necessary, take it up on your lap and make much of it. You will continue to do so until I arrive there, probably in a few days. Is that clear?”

  Before he could declare that he would obey her to the letter, the phone went dead.

  By now, the sun had long since set; a fine half-moon had risen. Meister Gansfleisch staggered to the window and stared out at the sea. For a moment, he stood beside his telescope; then the thought came that contemplation of some far nebula, some distant galaxy, might bring him solace. He bent down and peered into the eyepiece. But he did not behold the glory of the heavens. He had left the telescope aimed at the moonlit beach, at the warm, sparkling, gentle surf.

  And there, in the bright circle of his vision, rising like Father Neptune from the sea, was Papa Schimmelhorn, wearing only his beard, muscles, and those other adornments with which nature had endowed him. He had an arm around each of his two nereids, and he was very obviously enjoying life.

  Meister Gansfleisch turned from his instrument with a hoarse sob, and that night, for the first time in many a year, drank down a powerful sleeping draught of his own decoction.

  * * * *

  At daybreak, Papa Schimmelhorn awakened, marvelously refreshed by the various exertions in which he had indulged. He stretched luxuriously in his vast four-poster bed. Affectionately, he patted a sleek, dark head and fondled both aspects of a pink behind. His accommodations, though they were in the other turret of the keep, were by no means as uninviting as Meister Gansfleisch’s, having been expensively redecorated by a sybaritic eighteenth-century ancestor of the Fräulein’s, who had filled it with rare erotica. Rich tapestries and magnificent Italian mirrors graced the paneled walls; Boulle desks and dressing tables, fantastically curved and inlaid, were everywhere; Capo di Monte and Meissen figurines simpered from the shelves of dainty cabinets, and there were secret compartments here and there if one cared to look for them. A lush modem bathroom held not only all the ordinary facilities, but also an antique porcelain sitz bath, adorned with nymphs and satyrs, which Mavronides had provided as Gustav-Adolf’s catbox. Finally, in a place of honor where he had placed it after unpacking his carpetbag the night before, there stood a small color TV Papa Schimmelhorn had brought along to make sure that he’d be able to demonstrate his cuckoo watch to all and sundry.

  Glorying in the sunlight, he helped his companions shower; appreciatively, he watched them dress. He and they ate a hearty breakfast, served by two giggling servant girls. Then Mavronides was at the door to lead him down to the laboratory where he and Meister Gansfleisch were to work together.

  Kissing his pretty pussycats, and telling them to take good care of Gustav-Adolf, he let himself be led away, the cuckoo watch singing out the hours and minutes as they strode through a dark, portrait-lined corridor and down a curving flight of stairs.

  The laboratory was still in the keep, but on the floor below the turrets. Mavronides said nothing until he came to a huge oaken door reinforced with iron. There he stopped. “Please pay no attention if Meister Gansfleisch is offensive,” he said in a low, tense voice. “It will be noise, nothing more. I shall tell you something—in her own right, the Fräulein is a Princess. She knows many ancient secrets. Always he will obey her—he would not dare do otherwise. And she has given him strict orders. Later I will tell you more.”

  “Don’dt vorry, Herr Zorba!” Papa Schimmelhorn slapped him cheerfully on the back. “If he does nodt behafe, maybe I let Gustav-Adolf catch him. Ho-ho-ho!”

  Mavronides knocked sharply on the door three times. They waited. Presently there came the sound of bars being pushed back, of a great key turning. Slowly and heavily, the door swung open.

  Meister Gansfleisch stood there, looking much the worse for wear. Instead of his best suit, he was now attired in a stained black robe with strange devices on it. He glared at his visitor with bloodshot eyes, and made no response to Papa’s booming, “Goot morning, Herr Meister Gassi. Maybe you haff nodt shlept all night? Vell, after ve vork togeder a lidtle vhile, I promise you haff lots more vinegar!” He shrank away as Papa Schimmelhorn moved into the room, and as soon as Mavronides departed he made haste to triple-bolt the door.

  For a moment, they stood there looking at each other, Papa Schimmelhorn shaking his head sadly. Then, with an effort, the alchemist began his orientation lecture.

  “It is my duty, Herr Schimmelhorn,” he declared, “to—to show you everything in this laboratory. You will understand that it has a long and very interesting history—”

  “Maybe iss bedter I sit down,” said Papa Schimmelhorn, pushing aside a flagon full of a murky greenish fluid to make room on an ancient tabletop.

  “If it pleases you to do so,” Meister Gansfleisch frowned. “I shall stand. This laboratory was established more than three hundred years ago by a direct ancestress of Fräulein von Hohenheim’s, who was herself an able alchemist and thaumaturge. That was on her mother’s side, where she is descended from a Paleologus, from the family of the Emperors of Byzantium. So, on both sides, she comes from alchemists. Her father, Professor Ulrich Bombast von Hohenheim, inherited all the books and manuscripts, even the laboratory equipment, of his famous relative, of whom even you may perhaps have heard.”

  “Ja,” said Papa Schimmelhorn. “I haff heard. I read inside his books vhen I am vorking for Pêng-Panflageolet und die Chinesers. His shtuff did nodt make sense.”

  “Did not make sense?” Meister Gansfleisch almost screamed his outrage. “Do you realize whom you are criticizing? Paracelsus, the genius of a thousand incomparable discoveries, in alchemy, in medicine, the first man to prescribe the mercury treatment for syphilis!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn snickered. “Maybe I am chust lucky. Imachine—all my life I nefer catch!” He shrugged. “You must be patient vith me, Meister Gassi. Vhen I say die books of Para-vot’s-his-name do nodt make sense, I only mean to me. You must undershtand, it iss chust like Herr Doktor Jung has told me—I am a chenius only in der subconscience; I am nodt shmart in der IQ.”

  The alchemist managed to control himself. “Very well,” he said. “I shall show you everything with which we work. Also, I shall try to explain in simple words. First, regard the furnaces…”

  Papa Schimmelhorn did his best to listen attentively. After all, he told himself, it iss for Mama und der shteeple, und here vhen I do nodt vork I am haffing a goot time, so ve let Herr Gassi talk, und vhile my subconscience maybe finds how to make der gold I think about my predty pussycats.

  In front of him, Meister Gansfleisch paced up and down, his hairy forearms waving like mandibles as he pointed out furnaces and crucibles, tongs, bellows, pincers; as he explained ingots
of unknown metals, great glass flasks and flagons holding mysterious and presumably potent liquids, jars of rare and odorous unguents; as he elucidated cabalistic symbols graven on bronze mortars and pestles, the titles and contents of tomes and notebooks inherited from Paracelsus and his successors; and finally, though disapprovingly and with reluctance, as he pointed out a variety of modern gadgets added by the Fräulein, starting with neon lights overhead and finishing with what Papa Schimmelhorn, harking back to his days as a janitor at the Institute for Higher Physics, thought might be an electron microscope.

  The lecture continued through the morning, interrupted only occasionally when Papa Schimmelhorn could not resist asking his cuckoo watch the time. On these occasions, Twitchgibbet always stuck his ugly black head out of a pocket of the robe, bared his teeth, and glared at the intruder angrily, demonstrations to which Papa Schimmelhorn invariably replied by doing his best to look like Gustav-Adolf and making fierce faces while Meister Gansfleisch wasn’t looking.

  At noon, Mavronides knocked on the door again to announce luncheon, and Papa Schimmelhorn returned thankfully to his quarters for two hours of well-deserved rest and recreation, of which he made the best use possible. Then, for the balance of the afternoon, he went back to the laboratory to endure more of the same, paying as little heed as possible to his mentor, and amusing himself with his watch and by surreptitiously teasing Twitchgibbet. Every once in a while he would ask questions suggested by his subconscious, some of which Meister Gansfleisch ignored, some of which he contemptuously answered in words of one syllable, and one or two of which appeared to send him into a momentary state of shock, as though by asking them Papa Schimmelhorn had violated alchemical security.

  At the end of the working day, the alchemist was utterly exhausted. When Papa Schimmelhorn thanked him, affirming that he himself had been having lots of fun and was looking forward eagerly to tomorrow’s session, he replied curtly that he wasn’t at all sure about tomorrow: trying to explain things to someone totally unable to understand had been too wearing; he had a headache; also there were several critical experiments he had in progress…

  Papa Schimmelhorn told him not to worry. Winking, he said that there were one or two little experiments of his own he wanted to work on with his pretty pussycats. “Maybe,” he suggested eagerly, “if ve vork efery oder day, it iss enough?”

  Meister Gansfleisch hurried him to the door, where Mavronides was waiting, bolted it hastily after him, and collapsed onto a workbench. For a few minutes, he just sat there breathing heavily, then poured himself a terrible draught from a beaker kept in a locked cabinet. His eyes rolled; he shuddered; he straightened his thin shoulders, onto one of which Twitchgibbet had climbed.

  “Am I or am I not Europe’s greatest alchemist?” he asked rhetorically. “So! Am I man—or mouse?”

  “That’s a good question, boss,” squeaked Twitchgibbet, gnashing his teeth. “But just wait till you hear what that old bastard did to me.”

  “But what could he do to you?”

  “He could make cat-faces at me every time your back was turned. Boss, ain’t it bad enough we can smell that damn cat of his all the way through this stupid castle? Do we gotta hold still for him treating me like I was just any kind of rat? Okay, you said it—are you man or mouse?”

  “Get back into my pocket!” snapped his master.

  “But, boss—”

  “Do not argue! I shall do my best.”

  He rose. He poured himself another stiffener from the beaker. He left the laboratory by a secret stairway and ascended slowly to his own rooms. Presently, he mustered up the courage to put another call through to Zürich, and to report the day’s events to his employer.

  Though she did not interrupt him, he felt the temperature drop rapidly while he was talking. Yet finally he informed her that in his opinion (which was, as she knew, an expert one) Papa Schimmelhorn was a menace, not only to himself, but to the art and science of alchemy, to her project, her castle, her servants, the reputation of her family, and everything she held most dear. Furthermore, he was lazy—now he wanted to work only every other day. He urged her, indeed he begged her, to send him back to the United States immediately.

  “Is that all?” the Fräulein demanded.

  He admitted that it was.

  “Then,” she said, in a voice that reminded him of a striking cobra, “you will continue to do exactly as you have been told, my little Gaspar. If Schimmelhorn does not wish to work every day, you will work with him when he wants to. He will tell you what he wants to know, and you will teach him. And you will be very nice to him. Listen carefully. If, when I return to Little Palaeon, I learn that you have not obeyed me to the letter, I shall have you placed inside the Labyrinth, you and that unpleasant rat of yours, and left there. Both of you know what that will mean. Do not dare to trouble me again!”

  The phone clicked decisively, but for a time he just sat there staring at it.

  “Twitchgibbet.” he whispered, “our question has been answered. Where she is concerned, I am a mouse.”

  “Me too,” Twitchgibbet squeaked back. “But, hey boss, couldn’t I just get in touch with, like, some of the higher-ups down below? There’s plenty of ’em could even fix what she’s got in that there Labyrinth.”

  Meister Gansfleisch did not answer him. He replaced the phone. He went down his secret stairway again, fetched the beaker back with him, and spent the next few hours finishing its contents. His despair did not dissolve, but it did recede into the background of his mind; and Twitchgibbet, listening to him, was pleased to see that fear, anger, and resentment were at least starting to generate dark plans and desperate expedients.

  Not once during the evening did the alchemist put an eye to his brass telescope—which was probably just as well, for had he done so he might very well have witnessed an interesting experiment Papa Schimmelhorn and Niki carried out behind a moonlit hummock on the beach while Emmy fanned them lazily with an eighteenth-century French fan of painted silk and fretted ivory, borrowed for the occasion from the collection of the Fräulein’s sybaritic ancestor.

  IV.

  Shopping Lists

  While these events were taking place, Mama Schimmelhorn, Papaless and free of care, was enjoying herself thoroughly at the nuptials of her grandniece. It pleased her to see that only one of her husband’s relatives, his respectable cousin Alois, noted for his artistry on the bassoon, had been invited; it pleased her even more to be treated as an absolute oracle in all matters involving men and marriage, presumably because of her long experience and endurance; and she was delighted to be able to shake her head and hold a finger to her lips importantly when anyone asked her what Papa Schimmelhorn was up to. True to her word, she did no more than hint delicately that secret dealings of great moment were involved, carefully satisfying no one’s curiosity. More than a week went by before she rather reluctantly phoned Dr. Rumpler and asked him to arrange her passage home.

  This he did without demur. Fräulein von Hohenheim had briefed him on Papa Schimmelhorn’s progress, carefully deleting all reference to Meister Gansfleisch’s anxieties—not because she especially wanted to delude him, but simply because she felt that, as a mere man, it was no affair of his. Indeed, despite the alchemist’s two harried calls, she was in no way apprehensive. Even without resorting to the powers and prestige she had inherited, she had never failed to handle any man effectively and expeditiously, and now she saw no reason to anticipate that events would take any course other than the one she had ordained. In Zürich, she went about the usual business of her prosperous Schweitserische Frauenbank, laughing to herself at the thought of how thoroughly she had breached the hitherto male bulwark of Swiss banking, and taking time off occasionally to make discreet enquiries about stocks of lead that could be purchased to advantage.

  For Papa Schimmelhorn, the time passed pleasantly. Now, during ea
ch session with Meister Gansfleisch, he knew he could look forward to a whole day of fun and games, without so much as a frown from his mentor or a squeak from Twitchgibbet. This did not mean that he forgot his obligation to Dr. Rumpler, to Mama, or to Pastor Hundhammer’s steeple. On the contrary, he spent each of his free mornings lying luxuriously in bed, dallying absentmindedly with his pussycats, and boning up on the various learned works he had brought with him in his carpetbag, some dating back to his employment with Pêng-Plantagenet, others hastily selected by his subconscious from the New Haven Public Library shortly before his departure: two favorite volumes of the 11th edition of the Britannica, the instruction manual that had come with Willy Fledermaus’s JUNIOR ELECTRONIC EXPERIMENTERS kit, various works of Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger which consciously he didn’t understand at all, a biography of Nikola Tesla in iambic pentameter, a copy of Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, and assorted books on the theory of numbers, chemistry in ancient China, and UFOs as a source of air pollution. Some he read; others Niki and Emmy read aloud to him; and he could tell, by his consequent feeling of self-satisfaction and well-being, that his subconscious was being immeasurably enriched.

  After each such morning of intensive study, Mavronides, at his behest, would bring a loaded picnic basket, and would accompany them on explorations of Little Palaeon, its flora, its springtime-drunken fauna, and its ancient ruins. Only one area appeared to be taboo—an enormous mound at the island’s end, bordered by groves of trees and crowned with more ruins, which Mavronides avoided like the plague—and in this Papa Schimmelhorn was totally disinterested.

  The island’s inhabitants—at first deeply suspicious of him—finally took him to their collective bosom after he had made friends with all their children, demonstrated his cuckoo watch, told them wonderful stories (with Niki and Mavronides interpreting) of his adventures in time and space, and quite jovially thrown over his shoulder two unwise young men who thought they could outwrestle him. Even their initial disapproval of his evening skinny-dipping with his pussycats vanished after he saved a reckless grandson of Mavronides from drowning and then, to make sure the boy had learned his lesson, paddled his dripping bottom in front of everyone. They soon found out, too, that Meister Gansfleisch was actively antagonistic to him. Nothing more was needed to make him persona grata where the Fräulein’s retainers were concerned.