The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  “Sarpedon,” she said, smiling at him regally, “be seated and listen closely to what I have to say.”

  Then, mincing no words, she told him exactly what had happened, of Papa Schimmelhorn’s immense effrontery and what was being done about it.

  “Meister Gansfleisch,” she informed him, “will bring the prepared formulas to me tonight. I want you to wait up until I send Niobe down with the one for Schimmelhorn. This must be served to him in his breakfast, and there must be no mistake. Therefore I entrust the task to you. You are to put it in a dish only he will eat, and you must serve it to him personally. Is that clear?”

  While she was speaking, Mavronides’s face had mirrored first his shock and incredulity at Papa Schimmelhorn’s unbelievable impertinence, then the acquiescence born of a lifetime’s loyalty.

  “It is clear,” he answered. “My lady, Schimmelhorn shall have it in the morning.”

  VI.

  Der Lead in der Pencil

  Next morning, when the serving maids arrived with breakfast for Papa Schimmelhorn and his pussycats, they were ceremoniously accompanied by a thoroughly cheerless Mavronides, who supervised the setting of the table and personally uncovered the steaming dishes. The largest serving of scrambled eggs, small sausages, ham, and hash-brown potatoes—a Schimmelhorn favorite—he placed before his victim.

  “You are unhappy, Herr Zorba?” roared Papa Schimmelhorn, digging in heartily. “Something iss maybe wrong? Sit down und haff some coffee, und I vill tell you shtories aboudt how I haff shtayed so full with vinegar!”

  Reluctantly, Mavronides sat; reluctantly, he sipped at the cup of coffee Niki poured for him. He informed Papa Schimmelhorn that, no, there was nothing wrong; it was just that he had soon to get about his duties; there were so many things to do, so many problems. He sighed, and Papa Schimmelhorn, who by this time was beginning to suspect that he himself might possibly have caused a problem by his ill-considered overture to the Fräulein, decided to question him more closely when they were alone. When Mavronides finally left, he made no effort to detain him.

  “Poor Zorba!” he remarked as he cleaned his plate and stole an extra sausage from Miss Emmy. “Alvays responsibilities! Vot he needs iss a vacation. I vill tell him he must go to Schvitzerland und maybe climb die Alps.” He removed his napkin and stood up. “Vell, I see you later. Now I must go to vork vith Meister Gassi.”

  He had been surprised, not just by Mavronides’s attendance at his morning meal, but also by his dark solemnity. Now another surprise awaited him. Meister Gansfleisch, in his laboratory, was no longer his usual rude and sour self; instead, he smiled, patted his coworker on the back, asked him many a solicitous question about his health, told him how well he looked, how strong and hearty, and appeared to be doing everything in his power to assist instead of hinder him.

  Vot iss? thought Papa Schimmelhorn. All at vunce, Meister Gassi becomes maybe der bluebeard of happiness? Vell, it more easy, so okay.

  All day they worked together in harmony. Papa Schimmelhorn set up the coat hanger trellis on which to grow his crystal in a huge glass vessel which previously the alchemist would not even let him touch; he filled it with noxious fluids of his own brewing, compounded by substances that Meister Gansfleisch provided without a murmur; he added item after item to his shopping list without evoking even a single protest—batteries, a generator, and a great many outlandish electronic components. Each one was cheerfully noted down, and the few questions the alchemist came up with were obviously asked only to make everything quite clear. Twitchgibbet was conspicuous by his absence.

  He worked away until late in the afternoon, when he announced that the day’s tasks had been accomplished, and that he would have to hurry so that before supper he could do his setting-up exercises—ho-ho-ho!—which kept him young and virile despite his years.

  To his astonishment again, Meister Gansfleisch actually seemed pleased. Almost literally dancing from one foot to the other, he accompanied his enemy to the door, cackling about how much he envied him, and wishing him all the pleasures promised by the company of such pretty pussycats. Only when he had locked and barred his door did his expression change. His face became a mask of gloating malice. He whirled around three times, widdershins. He clapped his hands. Unlimbering his favorite flagon, he drank down a tremendous toast to the defusing of Papa Schimmelhorn. Then, as quickly as he could, he hurried back to his own turret to see if, during the next hour or two, his telescope might show him some dramatic evidence of his accomplishment.

  As for Papa Schimmelhorn, all unsuspecting, he too returned to his apartment, imagining as he strode the warmth with which his pussycats would welcome him. He found them, appropriately garbed for the sport in which they expected to indulge, hiding coyly behind the bedroom door. As he entered, they both kissed him. Then Niki, giggling, led him to the bed, pushed him down on it playfully, and started working on his shirt-buttons, while Emmy applied herself more intimately to his zipper. After a few minutes of fun and games, they had him wearing nothing but the hair on his great chest.

  And nothing happened.

  The pretty pussycats played a little harder, and Papa Schimmelhorn started getting worried. “How stranche!” he muttered. “Nefer since I am maybe eight years old—”

  For the next half-hour, Emmy and Niki, who were very talented, applied all their cunning, all their tricks and artifices, to the problem of arousing him—to no avail. For the first time, he would not arouse. For the first time, his vinegar had failed him.

  Finally, in shock, he sat up on the edge of the bed, and a tear flowed down his cheek into the forest of his beard. “Ach, it iss no use!” he moaned. “Now I am chust a poor old man like Heinrich Luedesing. I am like Ismail, only vithoudt der shnipping.”

  “Maybe you’re just tired?” murmured Emmy consolingly.

  “You haven’t been out laying those island girls?” suggested Niki more practically.

  “Nein,” he mourned. “I haff been goot all day, efer since this morning before breakfast. All I do iss vork vith Meister Gassi, like I tell you.” He shook his head slowly, like the tolling of a doomsday bell. “Nein, it iss because now I am an old man and no goot anymore.” Suddenly he pictured himself relegated to some New Haven rest home, hobbling around with a cane or perhaps even in a wheelchair, cackling with other impotent old men, and visited pityingly by the ladies of Pastor Hundhammer’s church bearing small comforts and uplifting literature. He groaned tragically.

  Niki and Emmy, wounded in their professional pride, renewed their efforts, but again without effect. His gloom deepened. His pronouncements regarding his condition became even more dismal. Finally, they gave it up, but they kept on trying to cheer him: probably he’d be back to normal by next morning; perhaps he’d simply been over-exercising his subconscious; probably all he needed was a tonic—

  “Nein, nein,” he told them. “I feel it in die bones. Vun oder two more years, und—poof!—no more Schimmelhorn. All I am goot for now is to do der vork vith Meister Gassi und maybe make vun or two more cuckoo clocks vhen I go home. But you are predty pussycats, young und full vith vinegar. You must nodt vaste your time vith a poor old man vhen on der island iss so many fine young shqvirts.” He sobbed heartrendingly, and Gustav-Adolf jumped up on his lap, making feline noises of concern. “Now I must be brafe, und pet mein Gustav-Adolf inshtead of lidtle pussycats, und be alone to forget maybe dot I haff no lead anymore in der pencil, und—und chust be a chenius. So, Niki und Emmy, you take a nice long valk on der seashore like ve used to, und listen to die vafes, und schvim vith porpoises, und vhen you come back for supper I am perhaps more cheerful.”

  They kissed him; they caressed him; they helped him dress. Then, obediently, they did as they were bidden—and Meister Gansfleisch, seeing them through his brass telescope, crowed triumphantly and set off instantly to tell the Princess that her formula had been
successful.

  * * * *

  The next few days were anguished ones for Papa Schimmelhorn. Not only did he have to endure the awful burden of his infirmity, but suddenly the population of Little Palaeon, until now so friendly, had become remote and almost fearful; on several occasions, he was sure that children, seeing him shamble by with drooping shoulders and dismal countenance, made surreptitious signs against the evil eye. Only Ismail, covertly and from a safe distance, occasionally gave him the sympathetic glance of a fellow sufferer. Despairingly, he composed a radiogram to Mama Schimmelhorn, not very subtly imploring her to send him a small quantity of his mutated catnip immediately “for a friend,” and bribed a Cretan fisherman to fetch it from the main island. He received no answer, Mama Schimmelhorn having read it with many a snort and chuckle.

  However, his work progressed; the curious crystal, immersed in its strange, bubbling, stirring fluids, began to grow even without the electric currents to which he was going to subject it. Still, nothing seemed to go exactly right. Meister Gansfleisch’s exaggerated solicitude for his health, always expressed at precisely the wrong moment, invariably agitated him into the most vivid daydreams of pretty pussycats and of the magnificent performances of which he always had been capable.

  Niki and Emmy, doing their duty by the Rumpler Bank, tried their utmost to console and encourage him. During his free daylight hours, they tried to get him to play with them along the beach or in the water, or at least to take some interest in the island’s ancient ruins, its domestic fauna, or the many legends they had heard from its inhabitants. At night, they cuddled closely to him in the enormous bed, trying to soothe his restlessness and quiet his tragic sighs. It was all in vain. Innocent play reminded him only too bitterly of more exciting pastimes; the ruins recalled his own decrepitude; the fauna inconsiderately seemed to think of nothing but reproducing their own kind; and the legends, cruelly, dealt invariably with Olympian seductions. More and more frequently, he sent the girls to wander by themselves while in his solitude he either worked away or, almost as frequently, apathetically surrendered to despair. Gustav-Adolf his only company.

  Finally, reaching for a straw, he buttonholed Sarpedon Mavronides, who had been avoiding him, and confided all his troubles.

  Mavronides listened, frowning ominously.

  “Ach, Gott!” Papa Schimmelhorn finished his recital. “I do nodt undershtand, Herr Zorba! All of a sudden—chust like dot! Nefer before in all mein life it happens, nefer! Vot iss wrong?”

  For a moment, Mavronides’s black eyes stared at him piercingly. Then, with a glance over his shoulder and in a very low and apprehensive voice, he said, “The Gods have punished you. You had been told—the Fräulein von Hohenheim is a Princess and a Priestess! She is the guardian of our Sacred Mysteries. She—she herself is sacred. And you—you have dared to make unclean advances to her! Do you wonder that the Gods are vengeful, that they have deprived you of your manhood? You are fortunate that they did not destroy you—that she did not order you dragged away to—to the Labyrinth!”

  Without another word, he turned and left, leaving Papa Schimmelhorn even more disheartened than before.

  Miserably, the hours and days dragged by; more and more often he found himself thinking sentimentally of home and Mama, of his own deep bass voice dominating the choir at Pastor Hundhammer’s services, of working at Heinrich Luedesing’s and at his basement bench, but even these nostalgic maunderings invariably evoked other memories—of pretty Misses Kittikool and MacTavish in bed with him en route to Hong Kong, of Dora Grossapfel’s tight stretch-pants and how easily they could be removed, of… It was almost too much for him to bear.

  Yet the work went on, and on the fifth day after the Fräulein’s departure, the time arrived for Meister Gansfleisch to go to Athens on his shopping tour.

  * * * *

  The alchemist had been enjoying himself hugely. Frequently, as he watched Papa Schimmelhorn shuffling around the laboratory, he had restrained his laughter only with the greatest difficulty. Indeed, he now felt so secure in his victory that he scarcely resented the errand the Fräulein had commanded him to carry out.

  Every day, in the privacy of his turret, he gloated to poor Twitchgibbet, praising his own cunning and perspicacity, and making it quite clear that really competent thaumaturgists had no need for the Powers of Darkness, and especially for fiends as low in the Hellish pecking order as his familiar.

  Twitchgibbet, his plans for his and Meister Gansfleisch’s futures ruined, watched him angrily with his glowing-ember eyes, confined his comments to an occasional rattish squeak, and in his mind reviewed the contract that bound him to the alchemist, the orders he had been enjoined to obey, and all the ways to circumvent them and get at least the satisfaction of revenge. I gotta be nice to that stupid homunculus when I let him out to feed him, he muttered to himself, like I gotta be perlite to that damn cat—but ain’t nobody said I can’t pertect myself if that cat attacks me, if he comes in that there window and goes after—hey, that’s better!—I’ll say he busted in and went right after Humphrey! That’s what I’ll tell the old fart when he gets back home. Thinks he can get by without us, huh? Well, I’ll learn him better. And won’t they be pleased down below when I explain it!

  Meister Gansfleisch arrayed himself in his ill-fitting suit; he brushed at his scuffed yellow shoes; he made sure that everything too secret was safely stowed away, that every window was secured. “I shall be gone two days at least,” he informed Twitchgibbet, “depending on how long it takes me to find the trash that fool Schimmelhorn has ordered. Be sure you nourish Humphrey once a day, you hear me? And don’t let him get more than a foot or so away from his bottle. You’ll be responsible, and just remember”—he cackled merrily—“if you slip up I’ll complain to the management.”

  Picking up an old-fashioned straw suitcase, and putting on an ancient, shapeless hat, he left, double-locking the door behind him.

  As soon as he was sure that he now definitely would be alone, Twitchgibbet, who had been crouching all the while beside the bottle containing Humphrey, went over to the window to which he had referred in his soliloquy. In the corner of the turret nearest the parapet, it was tall and narrow, formed of three hinged-and-leaded sections that opened separately; and he knew, having experimented previously, that he could twist the catch with his agile rat’s paws and pull it open. He also knew that under it, much less than a good cat’s-leap distant, ran a leaden rain-gutter, which could be reached also from the battlements, where, though barred from the rest of the chateau, Gustav-Adolf sunned himself, took his exercise, and sniffed the breezes. He knew, too, that Gustav-Adolf was aware of exactly where he was, for many a time he had heard him jump from parapet to gutter to windowsill, sniffing at the smell of rat, growling softly in his throat, and then departing angrily when he found that he could go no farther.

  Meister Gansfleisch had always been extremely careful to let no unhealthy fresh air into his living quarters, but he never had issued orders on the subject, so Twitchgibbet felt perfectly free to open up the window. I gotta watch till I see that cat coming my way, he told himself. I gotta watch real careful. Chances are he won’t do nothin’ till late afternoon, but I can’t take no chances. He scuttled to the window directly overlooking the parapet, from which his master had watched Papa Schimmelhorn’s turret for incriminating evidence, and waited patiently.

  Gustav-Adolf emerged two or three times during the day, once to use his cat box, which he preferred out-of-doors, and once to take a two-hour nap in the warm afternoon sunlight. Finally he came out again, stretched luxuriously, and said a few consolatory words in Cat to Papa Schimmelhorn who, crushed by despondency, was staring bleakly out over the sea. Then he swaggered along the parapet’s very edge toward the trap awaiting him.

  As a fiend in rat’s clothing, Twitchgibbet—as he had bragged to Meister Gansfleisch—had never had any trouble ki
lling any cat. He squeaked, trying to sound as much like a badly frightened rat as possible, and gleefully saw Gustav-Adolf look up, lay back his ears, and bush his long, striped tail. He hurried back to the homunculus. “Okay, Hump,” he snapped, “let’s get you outa there.”

  As well as he could, he helped Humphrey climb out of his bottle, which he did with difficulty, and then seated him in the small chair next to it. “You stay there, you little turd,” he said. “I’m goin’ to put on a show for you, a real good show!”

  His plan was simple. He was going to leave the window open, crouch behind it, let Gustav-Adolf enter, then bang it shut again and have it latched before his victim, finding out that he was up against a rat-fiend rather than a rat, could panic and escape. He scurried to the window and made ready.

  Gustav-Adolf, knowing none of this, advanced against him as, in his young cathood aboard a Scandinavian merchant vessel, he had advanced against the dock rats of Port Said and Marseilles, the godown rats of Singapore, and all their kin from Rio to New Orleans. Cats are patient creatures, and it was fun to stalk a rat even if you were sure there’d be no way to get at it. He launched himself down to the rain-gutter, looked up—and to his delight and astonishment, saw that the window was open wide. “Hey, wouldja look at that?” he growled—and leaped.

  He landed squarely on the sill, half in, half out. He paused for an instant, his eyes adjusting to the gloom of Meister Gansfleisch’s residence. The opened window barred him to the left, so he turned right to reconnoiter, crouching, lashing his tail.

  And Twitchgibbet swiftly banged the window shut. Gustav-Adolf whirled—but he was not quick enough. The latch, which his own paws could never have manipulated, had snapped to. They faced each other. He looked into Twitchgibbet’s red eyes, at his long teeth. He was an astoundingly big rat.