The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Vandercook put on nine pounds. He was almost ready to burst when, after the third banquet on Thursday, President Bearpossum shook his hand at the door, and said how nice it had been to have him there as a house-guest—no trouble at all—and assured him that they’d all be delighted to come to any party he wanted to give, any time, and patted his back, and whispered that Dr. Birdmouse had something delightful to tell him about what they’d decided.

  He was in very high spirits as he and the Doctor made their way back over the splendid red carpets. He stayed in high spirits even though the Doctor kept giggling and wouldn’t tell him a thing except, “It’s a lovely surprise—just too, too lovely for words.”

  They came to the in-grove, to the corner where the trellis-trees opened out on the clearing. “You must close your eyes, dear boy,” Dr. Birdmouse declared. “That’ll be half the fun.”

  Vandercook closed his eyes, expecting in a moment to see Dr. Birdmouse’s friends—either as a cultural mission with their suitcases packed or as an eager little partying group. He didn’t care which. Then Dr. Birdmouse led him around the corner and several feet forward. He opened his eyes—

  “There!” Dr. Birdmouse exclaimed. “Isn’t it darling? We’ve built you a house!”

  Vandercook stared. The cultural mission was nowhere in sight. Before him he saw a round metal house like a very fat toadstool, with an outrigger porch and some round porthole windows. As Dr. Birdmouse guided him forward, he had a horrible feeling that somewhere he’d seen it before.

  “Wh-where did you g-get it?” he gasped. “Th-that metal?”

  “Out of your nasty old spaceboat,” replied Dr. Birdmouse with pride. “We melted it down. We were sure you wouldn’t mind, dear boy.”

  Vandercook followed him in through the door. He looked around at the spaceboat’s tables and chairs, and at new pieces of furniture contrived from its once-working parts. He looked at his chrome-and-gold-plated piano, with the glamorous old-fashioned oil-lamps on it. Dr. Leopardsheep, Miss Moosevulture, and young Mr. Snakepig were all waiting there, wearing the self-satisfied expressions typical of welcoming committees.

  “My G-God!” Vandercook croaked. “I—I’m marooned!”

  “Dear boy,” Dr. Birdmouse exclaimed. “How clever you are. You hit the sweet little nail right on the head!”

  Everyone but Vandercook seemed tremendously pleased. All at once, the enormity of what had occurred burst on him. The light-years between Earth and Eetwee, instead of being just a short three-weeks hop, stretched out to their full awful length. The prospect of easy wealth derived from the sale of Dr. Birdmouse’s friends vanished in cold, desolate darkness. So did the ladies who had been going to impress Hughie.

  It was too much. Ranting and raving, Vandercook stamped up and down. Waving his plump, hirsute hands, he threatened the destruction of Eetwee and all its inhabitants. He used impolite terms to describe Dr. Birdmouse and all other Eetweeans, and spoke very unpleasantly about how superior Man was to the whole brute creation, of which, despite their intelligence, they were a part.

  Dr. Birdmouse and his friends didn’t interrupt him at all. Once, Dr. Birdmouse remarked, “Poor lad, he’s delirious with joy,” sotto voce; and Dr. Leopardsheep whispered something to his wife about “…sedatives?” But otherwise they said nothing until he ran down.

  This happened quite suddenly. One moment he was getting all set to commit personal violence; the next, he had realized that, even though they were pacifists, Dr. Leopardsheep and Miss Moosevulture and young Mr. Snakepig were either horrifyingly fanged, impressively hoofed, or frighteningly muscled. He sat down abruptly.

  Instantly, Miss Moosevulture came to him and began stroking his hand. Dr. Leopardsheep hemmed and hawed sympathetically. Dr. Birdmouse fluttered and swished, and said, “Dear, dear boy. It’s all for the best. We’ve discussed and discussed you, and we’re doing just the right thing.”

  He went on to explain that they had taken a liking to Vandercook the moment they saw him, but that for a long time they hadn’t been sure whether they ought to keep him on Eetwee. They could tell that he was an artist at heart, and that he hadn’t been happy moving around from world to world all the time—but still there was his career, and he seemed always so anxious to start off again. It was a real puzzle. The best minds on Eetwee had wrestled with it day and night.

  “And you’ll just never guess,” Dr. Birdmouse said with a giggle, “what a silly thing I suggested at first. I thought that you liked diplomacy and skipping from planet to planet—just imagine! I should have guessed right away that you hated it all, and that you really wanted to settle down somewhere and make all sorts of ducky arrangements—”

  The thought of ducky arrangements evoked a sharp mental picture. Vandercook shivered. “What do you know about it?” he said rudely. “Next you’ll be telling me that you can read my mind!”

  “Dear me, no,” Dr. Birdmouse replied. “I can’t—but Miss Cowturtle can. Bless her soul! Such a nice person. She was really quite good at it too, considering how strange it was to her. She caught several glimpses of some plans you were making. They were awfully romantic, but somehow you didn’t seem to be really too happy about them. I mean, you didn’t seem awfully ardent. But she understood why with the first little peek: whoever it was you were thinking of seemed so dowdy and plain. And then—well, then she found out how badly you wanted to take some of us with you, and she got the feeling that you valued us very highly. We were so touched, dear boy. After that, President Bearpossum and Dr. Leopardsheep and young Mr. Snakepig and I all agreed that you were torn between love and duty, and that what you really wanted deep down inside was to stay here on dear little Eetwee—”

  There was a small, timid knock on the door, and Dr. Birdmouse called out, “Come i-in,” and Miss Cowturtle entered.

  Vandercook regarded her with frank loathing. “You mean that thing read my mind?” he demanded. “That—that goddam cowturtle freak?”

  “Oh, she isn’t Miss Cowturtle any more,” Dr. Birdmouse put in. “She’s Mrs. Vandercook now.”

  “SHE’S WHAT?” Vandercook screamed.

  “Mrs. Vandercook,” Dr. Birdmouse repeated. “You can make your arrangements together. Won’t that be nice?”

  Vandercook looked around for an exit. There was only one, and Dr. Leopardsheep was showing his teeth right beside it. He though of the old days, and the rows and rows of sweet, lean young women, and sweet, panting middle-aged women, and darling, wistful old women all eating him up with their lovely moist eyes. He burst into tears.

  At once, Dr. Birdmouse and young Mr. Snakepig helped him into a chair. “You don’t have to take on so, dear boy,” said the Doctor. “I know it’s wonderful, wonderful news, but you mustn’t let it affect you so much. After all, we did bring you to the honeymoon-groves every day, over the proper red carpets, and with all the best men and bridesmaids making their loveliest gestures, and we did build your house right here in the middle to prepare you psychologically. We even saved your piano out for you. And now, dear boy”—he held out a small cordial—“just drink this and you’ll feel so much better.”

  Blindly, Vandercook reached for the glass.

  “Down the hatch,” remarked young Mr. Snakepig.

  Vandercook swallowed it all, felt instantly better, and realized a little too late that it was flavored with licorice.

  Miss Moosevulture clapped her wing-hands. “There!” she cried out delightedly. “I told you he wouldn’t dissolve! I was sure all that was nonsense about Man being different from everyone else.”

  “I’m so glad,” mooed Miss Cowturtle ardently.

  “This is splendid,” declared Dr. Leopardsheep. “For the first time in hundreds of years we have an entirely new species to work with. Mr. Vandercook, you will go down in history.”

  Vandercook saw the future in its full four dim
ensions—and found all of them utterly hideous. He showed the whites of his eyes, and pointed a palsied forefinger at Miss Cowturtle. “No, no, n-n-no!” he gibbered. “I c-c-can’t be stuck here with that!”

  Dr. Birdmouse laughed gently. “You won’t be, dear boy. We understand you better than that. After all, this sweet person—” he bowed “—saw that your being an ambassador was just sublimation, and that you really wanted to spend the rest of your life flitting from one little mate to another like a dear little bee. Miss Cowturtle is just the first Mrs. Vandercook. Look out of the window.”

  Vandercook turned his head like a robot. Outside, at the door, they were patiently waiting—Miss Camelbat and Miss Hippogiraffe, Miss Goosemonkey and funny little Miss Frogterrier, Miss Yakpigeon and Miss Sealweasel and the fat, elderly Widow Horserabbit, and all their nice friends. The line ran from the door, through the place where the gestures were made, and the outgrove, all the way to the patch where the spaceboat had been.

  Slowly, through his despair, Vandercook realized that they looked awfully familiar. Slowly, he began to feel strangely comforted.

  He sobbed only once more. Then he went to the piano, and turned on his famous, soft smile, and—never taking his eyes from the ladies—began the Moonlight Sonata.

  THE MAN ON TOP

  Who was the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest? Barbank, of course. Any school kid can tell you—highest mountain in the world, 29,141 feet, conquered finally by Geoffrey Barbank.

  I was forgotten—I was just the fellow who went along. The press gave him the credit. He was the Man on Top, the Man on the Top of the World.

  Only he wasn’t, really. He knows that it’s a lie. And that hurts—especially when he thinks of me, and of the Holy Man.

  Jealous of Barbank? I don’t think I am. And you won’t either, presently.

  I hated him. A mountain is a quest, a mystery, a challenge to the spirit. Mallory, who died on Everest, knew that—and his was the best reason for trying to climb it. “Because it is there,” he said.

  But Barbank climbed it to keep some other man from being first on top. He climbed it because he knew no other way of getting there. Mysteries did not exist for him, and anyone who felt the sense of mystery was a fool. All men were fools to Barbank—or enemies. They had to be.

  I found that out the day I joined the expedition in Darjeeling. “The town’s in a sweat about some flea-bag Holy Man,” he told me after lunch. “Sort of a ten-goal saint, complete with extra supernatural powers. Let’s go and look the old fraud over. Might have a bit of fun.”

  So the two of us walked down from the hotel, and, all the way, he boasted of his plans. I can still see his face, big, cold, rectangular, as he discussed the men who’d tried and failed—

  Of course, they’d muffed it. You couldn’t climb Everest on the cheap. He’d do things differently. All his equipment was better than the best. Because he had designed it. Because it cost a mint. Because—

  It made me angry. But I had come too far to be turned back. I let him talk.

  We turned into the compound of a temple. There was a quiet crowd there, squatting in the dust, and many monkeys. By a stone wall, under a huge umbrella, the Holy Man was seated on a woven mat. His long, white hair framed the strangest face I’ve ever seen—moon-round, unlined, perfectly symmetrical. His eyes were closed. Against the pale brown skin, his full lips curved upward like the horns of a Turkish bow. It was a statue’s face, smiling a statue’s smile, utterly serene.

  The people seemed waiting for something to begin. As we came through the crowd, it was so still. But Barbank paid no heed. We halted up in front. We stood there in the sun. And he talked on.

  “What’s more,” he said, “I don’t intend to bother with filthy Sherpa porters for the upper camps. Planes will drop the stuff. I’m making sure I’ll be the man on top.”

  That set me off. “The Sherpa are brave men,” I told him, “good mountaineers. Besides, it’s more their mountain than it is ours.”

  “Rot,” he snapped. “They’re beasts of burden. There’s nothing they can do that a machine can’t do better. Natives are all the same.” He pointed at the Holy Man. “Now, there’s a sample for you. Look at that smirk. Pleased as punch with his own hocus-pocus—dirt, nakedness, and all. They’ve made no progress since the Year One.”

  The Holy Man was naked, or nearly so, but he was clean; his loincloth was spotless white. “Perhaps,” I answered, “they’re trying for something else?”

  And slowly, then, the Holy Man looked up. He spoke to Barbank. “We are,” he said.

  I flushed, knowing that he had understood.

  An instant later, I forgot embarrassment. I met his eyes—and suddenly the statue came alive. It was as though I had seen only the shell of his serenity, and now I saw its source. I felt that it was born, not in any rejection of the world, but in a knowledge of every human agony and joy—in a sophistication so complete that it was frightening.

  “Yes, we are trying,” the Holy Man went on. His voice was beautiful and strangely accented, and there was humor in it, and irony. “But for something else? I do not think so. It is just that we are trying differently, we of the East and West—and sometimes one cannot succeed without the other.” Pausing, he measured Barbank with those eyes. “That is why I can help you, if you will only ask.”

  Barbank’s mouth curled. “He’s heard the gossip down in the bazaar,” he said aside. “Well, he won’t get a penny out of me.”

  The smile danced infinitesimally. “Must I explain? There is a thing you do not understand. A mountain is much more than rock and ice—especially if it is the highest in the world. No man can conquer such a mountain. His conquest can be only of himself.”

  I shivered. That was what Mallory had said.

  “You damned old humbug!” Barbank’s laugh roared out. “Are you trying to tell me that you can sit here on your dusty tail and help me reach the top?”

  “I think I’d put it differently,” the Holy Man replied. His fluid syllables were gently mocking now. “To be precise, I must say this. You never will achieve your heart’s desire without my aid. Your way of doing things is not quite good enough.”

  Barbank’s neck reddened. Fists clenched, he advanced a pace. Then he controlled himself. “Oh, isn’t it?” he snarled. “Well, come along and watch! I can use one more mangy porter, I suppose. Damn you, you’ll have a bird’s-eye view!”

  The Holy Man raised both his fragile hands. “Thank you—but no,” he said; and his gentle irony cut with a fine, cruel edge. “I’d rather wait for you.”

  Barbank spat in the dust. He pivoted and strode off, pushing roughly through the murmuring crowd.

  It was then I decided that he must never be the Man on Top.

  It is a long way from Darjeeling through Tibet to Chomo Lungma, the Mother Goddess of the Snows, which we call Everest. The journey takes some weeks.

  We were eleven white men, but we soon found that we were not an expedition in the usual sense. We were Barbank’s retainers, walled off by his contempt.

  The others left him pretty much alone. I couldn’t. The Holy Man’s prediction was my obsession now. I took it as my cue, and laid my plans.

  At every chance, I talked to Barbank about the mysteries of the peak—the awful Snow Men, whom the Tibetans all swear exist, and the dark, pulsating, flying things which Smythe had seen. I said that, very possibly, Mallory and Irvine had reached the summit first—that he might get to be the Man on Top only to find some evidence they’d left. I even suggested that the Sherps might have climbed it long ago. And always I shook my head, quoted the Holy Man, and told him he would fail.

  When we reached our Base Camp on the Rongbuk Glacier, I was his enemy, who had to be defeated, cheapened, put to shame. And there was only one way to do that. Though Kenningshaw and Lane were better men,
he chose me for the assault. I had to be there, to see the Man on Top with my own eyes.

  And that was fine. Because I could only stop Barbank from being first on top by being there—by being first myself.

  We followed the traditional approach—up the East Rongbuk Glacier and the East Wall of the North Col—up to Camp Five, five miles above the sea. Below Camp Four, beyond which Barbank would not let them go, the porters gave him endless trouble—naturally. And, all the way, the mountain laughed at us. Against us, it sent its cruel light cavalry, the wind, the mist, the snow—harassing us, keeping us constantly aware of deadly forces held in close reserve.

  Yet, when Barbank and I and Konningshaw and Lane stood at Camp Five and watched the plane from India trying to drop the final camp higher than any man had camped before, the sky was clear.

  We watched the pilot try, and circle, and lose eight separate loads. And then the ninth remained; its grapples held.

  “I bought two dozen, all identical,” said Barbank. “I told you there’s nothing these damn natives do that we can’t do better.” And we all hated him.

  He and I reached Camp Six, at close to 28,000 feet, late the next afternoon. We set the tent up, and weighted it with its own cylinders of oxygen. Silently, we ate supper out of self-heating cans. We crawled into our sleeping bags. Restlessly, waking to fight the subtle, dreadful cold, we slept.

  We rose before the dawn, and found that the fine weather still held, and that there wasn’t even a hint of the monsoon. We breakfasted. We drank our tea. We made ready to set off.

  Barbank stood there, on the narrow ledge. He looked at the vast dark mountain, at the broad yellow band beneath the summit pyramid, at the depths of rock and glacial ice below. He looked at me.

  “And so I won’t succeed in my desire?” he taunted me. “You bloody fool.”