The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  “Cat,” hissed Twitchgibbet, tensing himself to spring, “yer gonna be dead, dead, dead!” He licked his lips, already tasting cat’s blood.

  Gustav-Adolf looked at him quite undismayed. “Yuh gotta be kiddin’, punk!” he growled. “I could beat hell outa two lousy rats like you with three paws tied behind m’back!”

  Twitchgibbet snickered evilly. “You think I’m just a rat, huh? I’m a fiend from Hell! Get it, dimwit? You ain’t got a—”

  And it was at this instant that, for the first time, Twitchgibbet saw the devices Mrs. Laubenschneider had woven into Gustav-Adolf’s flea collar—and realized that they were very potent ones indeed, guaranteed to keep much bigger and more powerful fiends at bay.

  “To me a goddam rat’s a goddam rat!” shouted Gustav-Adolf, lashing his tail even more ferociously.

  Twitchgibbet uttered one completely rattish squeak and bolted. He did not even hit the floor before Gustav-Adolf had him. His powerful teeth bit into his neck; they reached his spine; they crunched down inexorably. Gustav-Adolf shook him savagely until the rat body he had infested was quite limp and dead. The fiend who was the real Twitchgibbet remained only for a second; then he felt himself suddenly sucked back, by forces against which he was quite powerless, to face what he knew would be, if not a general court, at least severe company punishment. He vanished utterly, leaving behind a strong sulphurous stink, at which Gustav-Adolf wrinkled his sensitive nostrils.

  Well, another day, another dollar! thought Gustav-Adolf. Don’t tell me there’s a rat anywhere I can’t clobber!

  “I have killed a rat! A great, big, dirty rat!” he boasted loudly, as cats will when they wish to proclaim such successes. “Said he was a fiend from Hell, he did—”

  At this point, he became aware that he was not alone. Across the room, from a tabletop, a thin, tiny voice was calling out, “Oh, bravely done, Grimalkin! Indeed bravely done! Thou hast slain the magician’s filthy rat, his foul fiend! Oh, God will bless you for it, I do promise you!”

  Gustav-Adolf stared. He had never in his life beheld so small a person. He crossed the room, jumped up on the table, and sniffed at him. He smelled quite human and seemed extremely friendly. With a tiny hand, he scratched Gustav-Adolf behind the ears.

  Gustav-Adolf purred. Then he decided that, even if he could not bring his prey to Papa Schimmelhorn, he would at least have to apprise him of the victory, so, alternately at the door and at the window, he began singing again his loud song. His voice was quite as robust as his master’s, and his production even more determined.

  “I have killed a rat! The grandfather of all dirty, nasty rats! I have—”

  He carried the rat’s remains to the door, and started in again.

  * * * *

  So abstracted was Papa Schimmelhorn that many minutes passed before he began to get the message. He knew that Gustav-Adolf had gone out on the parapet, and that normally there was nowhere he could go from there. But his voice sounded strangely far away and muffled.

  Papa Schimmelhorn went out on the parapet himself, and found that he could hear more clearly and that now the sounds appeared to be coming from the Gansfleisch turret. He frowned. He has caught a maus, he told himself, oder a rat, but how—? He broke off abruptly. He knew of only one rat in the vicinity, and that was the alchemist’s rat-in-residence—and Twitchgibbet wasn’t any ordinary rat. “Mein Gott!” he cried aloud. “Vot happens? Maybe Gustav-Adolf has been hurt! Maybe inside Meister Gassi’s haus he iss getrapped!”

  He hurried across to the other turret, and found every window tightly shut. But now it was quite clear that Gustav-Adolf was inside.

  Forgetting his own sorrows, he at once made up his mind. “Ach,” he muttered, “efen if I get more trouble, I must safe him! It iss lucky mein old Uncle Georg vas a lockschmidt und taught me how to open up.” Hastening in again, he rummaged in his carpetbag, found a small, neat package of old tools, dashed down the stairs to the corridor beneath the battlements and up the stairs at its other end.

  “You chust vait, Gustav-Adolf!” he called out. “Don’dt let der rat bite! In a few minutes I haff you oudt!”

  He set to work on the enormous ancient locks, hoping no one would hear either him or Gustav-Adolf, and telling himself that the servants always stayed as far from Meister Gansfleisch and his familiar as possible. The first lock gave him little trouble; he had it open in three minutes. The second took a little longer. He worked to the accompaniment of vociferous feline boasting from behind the door, and occasionally he asked Gustav-Adolf please to be a goot boy und patient. Once or twice, he thought he heard a tiny, tiny voice added to the chorus, but he was too busy to pay it any heed.

  Finally the second lock yielded to his expertise. He pushed the door open.

  He looked around. “Bah, such a shtink!” he exclaimed. “I think Meister Gassi und his rat maybe are nodt housebroken.” His eyes searched the room for where Twitchgibbet might be lurking.

  Gustav-Adolf was doing a victory march back and forth against his legs, purring and trying to call attention to his victim.

  “Donnerwetter!” gasped Papa Schimmelhorn, looking down and seeing the corpse. “You have killed der rat!”

  “Yer goddam right!” replied Gustav-Adolf in Cat. “Deader’n a doornail!”

  “Vell, you are a clefer cat”—somberly he shook his head—“but I think Meister Gassi vill be very angry vith us, und maybe die Prinzessin too. Iss bedter ve get rid of right avay, und then lock up again, so no vun knows.” He picked up Twitchgibbet by his naked tail. “Ve must hurry!”

  Suddenly, just behind him, a very small voice spoke. “Pray, good and kindly sir,” it said, “do not berate your gib-cat. He is a noble creature. Alone he slew the foul fiend who served the wicked Gaspar Gansfleisch and who has tormented me these many years.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn dropped the rat. He turned. On a little chair on a tabletop, he beheld a being ten or eleven inches tall garbed in worn and faded Elizabethan clothing: miniature doublet and hose, a tiny ruff. It wore an infinitesimal moustache and beard very like William Shakespeare’s, and its white hair and pallid, sunken cheeks showed every evidence of extreme old age.

  “Aber—aber nefer haff I seen anybody so shmall!”

  “No doubt, no doubt!” answered the little man. “In my present form, my name is Humphrey, and I am what thaumaturges and necromancers call a homunculus. I was a free spirit, trapped by arts magical into this small body artificially created by the famous Dr. Dee, who lived four hundred of your years ago. Pray seat yourself if you would hear my tale….”

  Papa Schimmelhorn, dismayed, pulled up a chair, and Gustav-Adolf jumped into his lap. He listened while his small new acquaintance explained how he had been brought into existence, interrupting only twice, once to remark that it did nodt sound like much fun, nodt like making babies, and again to ask incredulously whether for four hundred years Humphrey had actually lived inside that bottle?

  “Und all alone?” he said. “Vithoudt efen vunce in a vhile a predty lidtle girl hum-uncle-us?”

  Humphrey nodded sadly. He described his months and years within the fluid the bottle held, without which he could survive for only a few hours. He explained that fortunately it usually kept him in a somnolent condition, from which he could rouse himself only with great effort, except when he was taken out to receive nourishment or to serve the arcane purposes of those into whose possession he had come over the centuries. He spoke of Dr. Dee, who had used him courteously and, withal, kindly enough; he spoke of the rapacity and greed of alchemists and princes, of treacheries meditated and contrived by men and women of high station, of the cruelties practiced upon his small person by any number of vicious charlatans and even more vicious practitioners of the darker arts. “But the worst of all, by far the most accomplished in his cruelty,” he declared, “has been this Gansfleisch. Were
I, sir, to recite to you one jot, one tittle, of what he and his fiend have done to me, it would, I do aver, bring tears to your gentle eyes. But now your rare, heroic cat has saved me from the rat-fiend—much to my astonishment, for I have seen that creature more cruelly kill any number of ordinary cats! And I do implore you, sir, that you, when you depart, will take me with you and save me also from his master.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn’s heart went out to him. Suddenly he remembered the secret compartment installed by the Fräulein’s ancestor behind the carved marble surrounding the fireplace, which he hadn’t mentioned to Niki or to Emmy: and he realized that it was quite big enough for Humphrey in his jar. Und vhy nodt? he asked himself. Ve get rid of der dead rat, und here I lock up efery thing chust like it vas, und lidtle Herr Humphrey iss qvite safe in der bottle put avay. Vhen Meister Gassi gets back from der trip, perhaps he thinks der Defil has—how do you say vith used cars?—repossessed Tvitchgibbet, maybe because he does nodt make die payments, und also shtolen lidtle Herr Humphrey.

  “Gustav-Adolf iss a goot cat,” he explained to Humphrey, “but I think vhy he can kill der rat iss because of Mrs. Laubenschneider’s collar for die fleas. Okay, ve take you vith us vhen ve go, und sometimes you can tell me shtories aboudt machicians, und I vill tell you aboudt predty pussycats und how I am a chenius.”

  While Humphrey stared and listened in amazement, he consulted his cuckoo watch to see how much time remained before the girls returned for dinner, found that he had two hours at least, and set to work removing all evidence of Gustav-Adolf’s battle, wrapping the rat’s remains in a discarded plastic bag. At Humphrey’s suggestion, he lifted him, chair and all, and lowered him gently back into the jar. The fluid in it was vaguely fragrant, and he was surprised to find that, though it undoubtedly was a fluid, it actually wet neither Humphrey nor his own hands. After Gustav-Adolf jumped up on his shoulder, he carried the jar out to the corridor, put it down, and with his locksmith’s tools, locked the door again. Then he picked up the jar and the packaged rat, and in a matter of minutes, observed by no one, they were all back in his own quarters.

  He lifted Humphrey out again, set him on a table by the fireplace, and sat down next to him. “You are indeed a good and very great magician!” piped Humphrey, his tiny eyes fastened on the cuckoo watch. “And I am grateful beyond measure for the refuge you are providing me. But now, tell me, sir, what it is that you want from me? We homunculi are but feeble creatures, even in our youth, and I, as you know, am very old and tired. Were it not for the nutrient fluid which I dare not leave for more than an hour or so a day, I would not be long for this world. So I do pray you, do not ask of me that which would exhaust me utterly.”

  “But Herr Hum-uncle-us,” replied Papa Schimmelhorn in puzzlement, “I do nodt vant anything from you.”

  “What?” Humphrey touched him with a minuscule hand. “Your goodness is beyond belief! All magicians want something from us.”

  “I am nodt a machician,” said Papa Schimmelhorn. “I am chust a chenius who makes cuckoo clocks und vatches and sometimes antigrafity und time machines.”

  “Then I must reward you without your asking. Benevolent Genius, if that is what you declare you are, having listened to Gansfleisch and his fiend, I have learned what they have done to you. Be not deceived! Your sudden impotence was not the work of Fate. Indeed not! It was a work of malice. Gansfleisch himself suggested it to the Princess in her wrath, and it was he that very night who compounded the prescription she gave him, which next morning was administered to you. Oh, I have heard him gloating about it with his fiend, telling how he also made up the antidote, now in her possession, which she has sworn to withhold from you!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn groaned sepulchrally. The knowledge that there was an antidote, a substance that would restore his full functioning, but that it was permanently and probably irrevocably denied to him, suddenly made his sad state even sadder.

  “But—but Herr Humphrey, you do not have this antidote vhich puts der lead back inside der pencil?” he asked hopelessly.

  The homunculus touched his hand again. “No, Master Schimmelhorn, I do not have it. But I believe I can do even better for you. I can convey to you the secret of the world’s most powerful love potion, one confected by Count Cagliostro for Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland—the very same potion which enabled him to prevail over the mothers of his three hundred and fifty-two acknowledged bastard children. It is most simple to compound, and I doubt not all its ingredients can be found among Meister Gansfleisch’s substances. Aye, simple as it is, it is most subtile and efficacious. It need not be swallowed, nor administered in food or drink. It hath no odor. A gentle spray under the nose of the intended lover or intended mistress—that is enough. It is instantly volatile. I shall whisper it in your ear. A single breath, and the Princess shall at once be your slave. In all the world, you alone shall exist for her! Stricken by conscience, begging for forgiveness, she’ll bring the antidote to you. Oh, she will play a pretty Titania to your Bottom, I warrant you!”

  “Ach, die Greek customs I do nodt know about,” said Papa Schimmelhorn suspiciously.

  “It is but a figure of speech,” Humphrey told him, “from a play of Master Will’s. But now I weary. Lean forward to me so I may whisper it…”

  Papa Schimmelhorn leaned forward obediently, and Humphrey stood on tiptoe to reach his ear. He whispered the formula. Three times he repeated it. “Remember,” he said urgently, “its power is incalculable. The last ingredient especially must only be added just before you tightly seal the bottle. And you yourself must never breathe a bit of it. Use it when you and the Princess are quite alone, or at least when she looks directly at you, for she will be affected even as a new-hatched gosling is upon emerging from the egg!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn promised him that he’d exercise the utmost care, thanked him from the bottom of his heart, restored him tenderly to his jar, and secreted it safely in the compartment.

  Then he hastened down to the laboratory and set immediately to work.

  Hope welled within his breast, but he controlled himself. He first made sure that the former Twitchgibbet had been completely incinerated in the hottest of Meister Gansfleisch’s several furnaces and the ashes flushed tidily down the john. Then, eagerly, he searched the alchemist’s shelves and cupboards for the substances Humphrey had specified. In a few minutes he found every one of them. Excitedly, he poured and weighed, mixed and measured. Some of the substances clearly were organic and of dubious origin; others were mineral; one or two of them fumed and sizzled when they were brought together. Finally, his vial held about a jiggerful, looking disappointingly thick and grayish-green, to which Humphrey had warned him he was not to add more than one drop of the final ingredient, a thin, purplish fluid in a pipette.

  For a few moments, he contemplated it, holding the pipette over the vial with his right hand, the vial’s special cork in his left. So Herr Humphrey said vun drop only, he thought, und maybe he iss right. But he iss so shmall, maybe he thinks vun drop iss bedter for hum-uncle-usses. Die Prinzessin iss maybe nodt as tall as Mama, but she iss a big girl….

  Deciding to take no chances, he held his breath, added three drops as quickly as he could, and clapped the cork in. To his amazement, he saw that the fluid in the vial was no longer murky; instead, it was crystal-clear. He stared at it, and his infallible subconscious spoke to him. “Papa,” it declared, “dot shtuff vill vork! Predty soon—ho-ho-ho!—der lead iss back inside der pencil chust like old times.”

  He was so inspired by the thought that he stayed in the laboratory until dinnertime, working at various parts and pieces of his gold-making machine and letting his fancy wander once again among the pretty pussycats he had known in years gone by and the many more he now could hope to know in the years to come, and every once in a while he even thought about the Princess.

  At dinner, Niki a
nd Emmy found him so much like his old self that at first they thought he had already been miraculously restored and tried to tempt him into bed. But he was forced to make it known that nothing of the sort had happened, and to urge them to take a walk down to the village as they had planned, so that some of the local youths—he made a great show of sighing—could show them the more picturesque of Little Palaeon’s ruins by moonlight.

  He returned their parting kisses; he gave each of them a grandfatherly embrace; he told them nodt to do anything he vouldn’t do. Then, as soon as he was sure of their departure, he took Humphrey’s jar out of the compartment, and lifted him out again.

  “Ah, Master Schimmelhorn,” said the homunculus when he had awakened fully, “were you able to decoct the potion?”

  Papa Schimmelhorn took the vial out of his pocket and showed it to him.

  “And it is well and truly sealed?”

  “Ja gewiss.”

  “And you were careful not to add more than the small portion of the last ingredient, as I did warn you?”

  Untruthfully, Papa Schimmelhorn informed him that he had added one drop only. “But now I haff der problem,” he went on. “Die Prinzessin hates me. How can I fix so she und I are all alone? Oder so ve are close togeder und she looks only at me vhen she shniffs der potion?”

  Humphrey’s tiny brow wrinkled in thought. “Have you no friends within this castle?” he asked. “I have heard Gansfleisch speak of a Grecian named Mavronides, whom he dislikes and who is reputed to have great influence with the Princess.”

  “Ja, dot iss Herr Sarpedon Mavronides, der major-domo, only I call him Zorba. He vas mein friend until I chase her. Since then, he iss angry vith me, und does nodt shpeak. Also iss Ismail, whom die Arabs shnip vhen he iss a lidtle boy so he vorks in der harem.”