The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  King Fungo, naive though he was, was by no means stupid. He stood. He looked at Clysomel’s step-uncle. “Mother Gabor,” he said to the Gypsy, “you can read the future, and you can delve into the natures of men. Who is the most righteous man in my kingdom?”

  “Who but your esteemed royal astrologer?” replied Mama Gabor.

  King Fungo thereupon drew the glistening sword of power. “She speaks truth!” he declared. “I, Fungo the Unrighteous, shall commence my reign with the most unrighteous deed anyone can imagine. Ho! To me, generals of the Guard!”

  They came to him at the double.

  “Seize that man!” he ordered, pointing at Kostra. “Bind him hand and foot. Throw him into a dung-cart, and take him forthwith to the stinking bogs and fens of our Lower Vuthland. There let him be thrown to the cwisamps (those of the footless variety) who now are in rut!”

  Kostra Karbunkel struggled to prostrate himself at the King’s feet, but the generals restrained him. “Merciful Lord!” he shrieked. “How can you do so evil a deed? Don’t you know that footless cwisamps in rut are so mad and mindless that they have no idea of species at all? Think what will become of me!”

  “I am,” King Fungo replied levelly, and the generals bound the weeping man hand and foot and bore him away. “And I think all my loyal subjects, gathered here together, will agree that it’s about as beautifully unrighteous as anything you could imagine. And now, Mother Gabor, who is the second most righteous man in the kingdom?”

  She did not answer, but both she and the King turned to look at the first assistant royal astrologer, a very fat man named Whelpstone.

  The King nodded. “Yes, I think so,” he said with a very cold smile. “Yes, indeed.”

  At that, poor Whelpstone came forward, quivering and shaking. “Majestic King!” he exclaimed. “I—I—we—that is—we’ve been considering those entrails. Yes, we have. We have reached a conclusion. Kostra Karbunkel misread those entrails. Oh yes, completely. His prognostication was full of gross errors. May we have your royal permission to examine them one more time?”

  “If you hurry!” King Fungo replied. “You may consider them while the crowd sings our royal anthem. After that, I want them thrown away. Those flies are unbearable.”

  It was later remarked that never had the 28 verses of the anthem been sung so enthusiastically, and when the last mighty chords had died away, the whole square seemed to be waiting.

  “Well?” King Fungo said to Whelpstone.

  “Your Heroic Majesty, yes, yes, we have reexamined the entrails—and they’ve been thrown away, as you ordered, though I must say they were as fine a set of entrails as ever I’ve seen. I can’t understand how Karbunkel, poor old man, went so far wrong with them. They were clear as crystal, Noble Sire—”

  “Come to the point,” ordered the King.

  “Ha-ha! I shall, I shall. The point is that, first and foremost, it should not have been Unrighteous. No, never. The entrails were explicit. Sir, you should have been Fungo the Uprighteous, a horse of a very different color_”

  “Very,” the King agreed.

  “And he wasn’t only wrong about that, no indeed! He also was wrong about what you would do, for it was indisputable that under your benign, wise rule crops will improve, there’ll be no crime to speak of, we’ll have excellent foreign relations and a most favorable balance of trade, and you’ll lower taxes and imposts dramatically. And not only that, my Lord, not only that—he was also wrong about the length of your reign, which will last 55 years 11 months, and at least 19 days, after which you and your Queen will succumb very peacefully of old age—”

  “My Queen?” said King Fungo, with an edge to his voice.

  “Oh, yes, Majesty, he was wrong about that, too. You aren’t going to marry Princess Savaka. I can’t imagine how he could’ve missed it—you’re going to marry Lady Clysomel, his very own step-niece, and you’re going to marry her this very day, right after supper!”

  At that point, Mama Gabor’s companion dropped her veil, and King Fungo saw that she was indeed Clysomel. Instantly, he stepped down from the throne, put his arm around her, and brought her to sit there beside him. (It was a very wide throne.)

  Of course, the heralds had dutifully echoed everything that was said, and now the assembled Vuthlanders became almost hysterical, shouting LONG LIVE GOOD KING FUNGO! LONG LIVE FUNGO THE UPRIGHTEOUS! and singing verses of the royal anthem.

  In the midst of it, Whelpstone approached the royal couple. “Would Your Majesties, er, that is—would you consider me staying on as—as astrologer general?” he asked timidly.

  “As long as you mind your Ps and Qs,” answered good King Fungo.

  That night there was revelry in all three Vuthlands, singing and carousing and good humor and dancing in the streets.

  King Fungo and Queen Clysomel had been duly married and put to bed, destined to reign for at least 55 years, 11 months, and 19 days, to have several beautiful and intelligent children, and to leave behind them a country happier and more prosperous than it every had been.

  And as to what befell Kostra Karbunkel in the stinking bogs and fens of Lower Vuthland, the less said the better.

  ALL THE TEA IN CHINA

  It was mighty lucky for me that my Grandma Whitford caught on in time. If she hadn’t, chances are I would’ve grown up just like her Great-uncle Jonas Hackett, and come to the same sort of end, shaking hands with the Devil himself before breakfast, and with not even a Christian tombstone over me at the last for folks to come look at.

  I was down in an empty stall in the barn, making a trade with Jim Bledsoe. Jim was snivelling and crying and begging me not to make him go through with the trade, and I wasn’t giving an inch.

  He picked up his 12-gauge Iver-Johnson, and his two Belgian hares, and his skates, and fondled them kind of, and put them back down with the rest of his stuff; and he said, maybe for the twentieth time, “Aw, B-Bill, you—you can have all the rest. But p-p-please lemme keep my old shotgun, p-please.”

  And I said, “Not for all the tea in China, I won’t. No sirree bob!”

  It was right then Grandma showed up, her little eyes crackling and sparkling, and her lips set as tight as when she was mad at some fresh city peddler. Small as she was, she grabbed my left ear and twisted real hard.

  “Ow!” I said.

  She twisted again. “All the tea in China, indeed!” she snapped. “I’ll all-the-tea-in-China you, boy. Now you give those things back to Jimmy—this instant! And Jimmy, you take ’em and skeddaddle on home.”

  “Aw, Gran’ma,” I grumbled, “we’re only making a trade. There’s nothing wrong with just—Yow!”

  “Don’t lie to me, boy. You were chiseling him out of his eyeteeth. That whole big pile for a one-bladed jackknife and a busted war sword! It’s that bad Hackett blood in you, I do declare. You’re getting to be as wicked and sinful as Great-uncle Jonas.”

  She looked at Jimmy again, who was fiddling around, still scared to pick up his things. “Go ahead, take ’em,” she told him. “The sheriff won’t ever hear how you burned down his outhouse—that’s a promise. When I get through with Bill here, he won’t say a word.” She twisted my ear harder than ever. “No sirree bob—not for all the tea in China, he won’t!”

  And as soon as Jimmy had beat it, she marched me out of the barn, and straight past the house while the hired-hand snickered, and around the big corn-patch and right up the east slope of Hackett’s Hill. She didn’t slow down or let go of my ear till we got clean to the top; and even though Hackett’s Hill isn’t more than a couple hundred feet high, I was just about out of breath.

  She told me to sit. “Wonder why I brought you here?”

  Hackett’s Hill wasn’t worth climbing. It was sort of lumpy and brown, with nothing but scrubby dry weeds growing on it. All you could see from the top
was the Post Road winding around it before straightening out down the valley, and our house, and Smathers’. So I nodded.

  “I brought you,” she said, “because it was right about here that Jonas Hackett’s place was before he was took by the Devil, and because I can see his spirit’s strong in you, and because I aim to drive it clean out.”

  She stared at me till it seemed that a cold little wind blew across Hackett’s Hill and into my spine. “Boy,” she asked, “what do you want to be when you’ grown?”

  I looked down at my shoes. “I want to be rich,” I told her defiantly. “I want to move down to Boston, and have a big house, and a carriage, and a gold watch and chain, and tell folks what to do.”

  “I thought so,” she said. “Well, that’s all right for some, whose natures are honest and can stand off temptation—but it isn’t for you. You’re going to Harvard College instead, and let ’em make you a doctor.”

  “No, ma’am,” I answered right back. “I wouldn’t do that. No, siree bob. Not for—” Then I remembered my ear and shut up.

  “Not for all the tea in China,” she finished up for me. “No siree bob. And that’s just what Great-uncle Jonas answered them back when they wanted him to go down to Harvard. Now you sit real still, and don’t interrupt, and I’ll tell you the story. Only don’t go telling anyone else, because it’s nothing we’re proud of, and it’s best kept in the family.”

  She gave me a look, and I promised.…

  * * * *

  By the time Jonas was 40 (Grandma said), he was a fine-looking man. Maybe he was a little too lean, and I guess his eyes looked a little too much like cold chunks of gray glass in dark caves. They say, too, that his big, pale hands were always opening and closing all by themselves, as if they were hungry. But he had curly black hair, and a good set of white teeth, and a walk like a lion out hunting.

  (In my mind, I saw Great-uncle Jonas clear as could be, and I shivered.)

  Besides (she went on), by that time he owned a good part of the land around here, and had loans out on lots more. He had some business in Boston, and down in New York, which he kept to himself. But everyone knew that he owned a three-quarter share in the tea-clipper Queen of the East, because everyone knew young Middleton Martin, who was her first mate and the one friend Jonas had in the world.

  You’d have thought there’d have been lots of men willing to call him their friend, and plenty of women hereabouts to marry him at the drop of a hat. But there weren’t. Only Middleton Martin forgave him for the things he had done—maybe because he’d been off to sea so much of the time, and never seen Jonas at work. You see, boy, Jonas was never content just making a dollar. He had to make it off someone, so it hurt—and the more it hurt the better he liked it.

  Let’s say a neighbor had something that’d just about kill him if anyone knew, and Jonas found out. Pretty soon he’d show up and offer to buy the man’s team, or his pasture, or even his house. He’d look it over, taking his time, and they’d have a talk, friendly like, and finally they’d get to the price—and Jonas’d offer a dollar, or maybe fifteen, or fifty at the outside. Usually his neighbor would shout he was crazy. Then Jonas would tighten the screws. He’d whisper what he’d found out. He’d let the man cuss and threaten, and argue and beg. He’d pretend to give in. And right at the last, he’d tighten his jaw and say, “No siree bob. Not for all the tea in China, I won’t”

  (Grandma paused for a minute, but I just pulled at the dry grass at my feet instead of looking up at her.)

  He always did it that way (Grandma said). It was the same when he’d clamp down on a loan. He was hated by every man, woman, and child within fifteen miles. He’d built a fine, big, new house, and he lived there alone except for two foreign servants he’d brought in from the city. He never went out to visit, even his kin, or showed up at church, or had anyone over except Middleton Martin. And all through the years, he never so much as looked at one of the girls. Then all of a sudden, when he’d turned 40, he started courting Mary Ann Thorpe.

  She was the prettiest girl in the valley, 20 years younger than he, with hair like honey. It was known that Jonas had a money hold on her father, but what really started tongues wagging was that she’d been promised to Middleton Martin for close on three years. A few said it was queer that Jonas Hackett would do such a thing to the one friend he had, but mostly folks thought it was just like his nature. She was Middleton’s girl, and no man could find anyone finer; and betraying a friendship just made him want her the more. The whole valley waited for the Queen of the East to come back with her cargo of tea. And because Jonas was Middleton’s friend, and for fear of what he could do to her father, Mary Ann let him sit on her porch in the evenings, and tried to pretend she didn’t know what he’d come for.

  That went on for three months, with Mary Ann crying herself quietly to sleep every night; and after a while there was even some lowdown gossip that she was going to accept Jonas Hackett for his money, and because of what he might do, and because his house was the finest house in the county, in the prettiest place.

  (Grandma broke off, and I thought to myself she was making it up, because Hackett’s Hill was the ugliest place in the county, not the prettiest. Besides, searching around, I couldn’t see any sign of where a house might have been, not even a small one. But her face looked as if she was telling the truth. It made me feel queer.)

  Then (Grandma said), the Queen of the East came in from the sea with Middleton Martin aboard, and he took the stage straight for home, wanting to get back to Mary Ann as fast as he could. But first, not knowing a thing, and it being right on the way, he stopped off a minute or two to leave Jonas a present. Jonas shook hands with him just as if nothing had happened, and Middleton gave him a bundle tied up in canvas, which he’d brought all the way from Foochow.

  “Open it up,” Middleton said.

  So Jonas took off the canvas, and there was a sort of a cage about two feet square. It was made of lacquered wood and bamboo, and pieces of fancy red cord laced around and crisscrossed inside, and there were bits of silk like bright little flags at the corners, with Oriental writings.

  “What is it?” asked Jonas.

  “A tea merchant had it,” Middleton told him. “He’d got it from one of the caravan men, who’d brought it in from the mountains out behind China. It’s a demon trap. Suppose you want to catch you a demon. You set it down by some track where they run, and by morning most likely you’ll find a big fat one.” He slapped Jonas’ back, and roared with laughter. “Works every time. Doesn’t even need bait. It’s just what you need!”

  “What do they do with the demon?” Jonas asked him, not laughing at all.

  Middleton cocked a red eyebrow, but he saw that Jonas was serious, so he made out like he was. “If he’s a water-demon,” he said, “they burn him up right there in the cage, but if he’s a fire-demon—you can tell by the smell—then they chuck him into a well or a lake, cage and all.”

  Jonas frowned. Quickly he shoved the cage back behind him, as if to protect it. “I wouldn’t do that,” he declared.

  Then Middleton told him good-bye, and went on up to Mary Ann’s house. But that was just the first time he saw Jonas Hackett that day.

  (Grandma snorted.) He found out soon enough. He was back inside half an hour, and Jonas, standing out on the porch, saw by the look on his face that he knew.

  “Well?” he said.

  Middleton spoke very softly. “Jonas, I didn’t use to believe what folks said about you. I almost do now. What do you want with my Mary Ann?”

  “I’m going to marry her,” Jonas answered.

  “Suppose she says no?”

  “I can ruin her dad,” Jonas said.

  The shoulders of Middleton Martin’s blue jacket went tight. “Suppose I say no, Jonas?”

  “Berths are scarce, and you won’t have your
s,” Jonas told him. “The Queen is my ship.”

  For a while they looked at each other without saying a word. Then Middleton said, “We’ve been friends, Jonas. We’ve been friends a long time. I guess we can still be. Just say you don’t want her—that it’s been a mistake. Give her up, Jonas.”

  All the blood left Jonas’ lips. “Not for all the tea in China!” he snapped.

  Middleton laughed in his face. “All right, have it your way. I’ve talked to Mary Ann. I’ve talked to her father. We’re getting married next week. Wreck him—he’ll be living with us. Take my berth—I’ve got a new one, a command of my own, bigger and faster.” And with that he turned his back and walked off.

  (Grandma shaded her eyes from the sun, and pointed east of the road.) The Thorpe place was just beyond Smathers’. Even now, you can hardly see it from here. Jonas spent some bad nights, I’ve been told, pacing the floor and saying never a word, all eaten inside because not two miles off were three people who’d told him where to head in. The truth was he’d gone off half-cocked. Middleton and Mary Ann and her pa knew the worst he could do, and they just didn’t care. He kept thinking of Mary Ann being Mrs. Middleton Martin, and how folks in the valley would laugh in his face; and the closer they got to the wedding, the worse he became. Those who saw him said his hands were clinching and clenching harder than ever, and he walked with his teeth skinned back like a wolf’s. Then, just two nights before the wedding was set to take place, he got his idea.

  He was sitting in the dark in his parlor, thinking what he’d like to do to Middleton Martin, and racking his brains for some new dirty trick, when all of a sudden he stretched out his hand—and there was the demon-trap, which he’d completely forgotten. As soon as he touched it, the idea came into his head.