The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Jonas knew that Orientals know a lot of things better not known, and he figured that if they took the time to build demon-traps, those traps would most likely catch demons. Also, he knew there’d been demons and devils aplenty in Massachusetts back in the old Salem days, and that Satan himself still had business in Boston, because he’d been mixed up in it often enough. And he reasoned that if a little trap’d catch little devils, why it’d only take a great big one to catch the biggest of all.

  Showing his teeth in the moonlight, Jonas walked out in the night to the Post Road, which ran right past his gate, and he looked up and down. In those days, it was straight as an arrow all the way down the valley, and he guessed that it was the track the Devil would use when he went up to Boston. Right away, he made up his mind that he’d catch him—but he wasn’t intending to waste him by chucking him, sizzling and sputtering, into the ocean—not Jonas! He was going to keep him right there in the cage till he fixed it so he could get Mary Ann.

  Jonas looked at the moon, and laughed without making a sound, and he went back in the house, and woke up his two foreign servants, a man and a woman, and sent them off into town to buy stuff—lumber and silk, and red-colored paint, and cord and bamboo. Later that day, old Lem Smathers saw him hammering away in the yard like a madman, with the big trap darned near finished, but he wouldn’t tell Lem anything. It was the servants that told it next day, after it happened, because right at the last they found out what he was up to and ran off and quit him. The rest folks just figured out.

  Night came, dark and angry, with storm clouds drowning the stars and hiding the moon except once in a while for just a few seconds. And Great-uncle Jonas hitched a team to his devil trap—for, making it strong, he’d built it too heavy to carry—and dragged it out, and set it up by the road right under his window. Then he went back in to stay up and watch, leaving the window propped open in spite of the weather so he could hear if anything happened. It stormed and it rained, and the wind blew and blew, and several times he had to go take a look, just in case, and he got soaked to the skin. But he didn’t think about that. Then, toward three o’clock, the sky started to clear, and gales up aloft tore the black clouds to shreds—and all of a sudden, down by the trap, Jonas heard a stumbling and stamping, and a roaring and ranting like he’d never heard in his life.

  Jonas knew that the worst thing you could do, going into a deal, was to seem to be anxious, so he walked down as slow as he could, his hands in his pockets. Sure enough, there was his trap, with its little silk flags fluttering their Oriental letters in the cold breeze. And sure enough, in it, all tangled up in the strings, was the Devil.

  He didn’t have hoofs or a tail, or anything like it. He was six-foot tall, dark and handsome. He wore a big beaver hat, and a greatcoat, and flowers all over his vest, and a gold watch and chain. When he saw Jonas Hackett, he quit his struggling and swearing, and tried to pretend not to be mad, and actually smiled.

  “Good mawnin’, suh,” he said, bowing. “Mah name is Legree. Ah’m a tobacco auctioneer from No’th Carolina, headin’ for Boston. Ah seem to have blundered into this heah Yankee contraption.”

  Jonas didn’t bow back. “That’s right,” he agreed, “sure seems like you have. But you’re no auctioneer, no more’n I am.”

  The Devil shrugged just a little, and fixed up his smile. “Ah see, suh,” he said, “that Ah’m dealin’ with a true judge of man’s nature. Ah was lyin’, suh, Ah admit it. But Ah was only tryin’ to spare the Abolitionist sentiments heahabouts. Truth is, Ah’m a slave-dealer from way down in Memphis. And now, suh, Ah’ll oblige you to set me free from this gadget—”

  “You’re a slave-dealer, right enough,” Jonas answered, “but not like you meant it. Down South, you’d show up as a Yankee. I know you, Satan.”

  At that, the Devil couldn’t help letting a wisp of steam, smoke, and flame leak out of his nostrils, and he quickly lit a cheroot trying to cover it up. Then he smiled again, a smile that would’ve scared most any man clean out of his skin. “You’d best open the door of this thing,” he suggested, “before I break it down and come get you.”

  Jonas just shook his head. “If you could’ve, I guess you’d have got me already,” he said coldly.

  Well, the Devil couldn’t control himself any longer, and the show he put on made all the cussing and roaring he’d gone in for before seem like nothing at all. He described the things that would happen to Jonas if he ever got out. He spouted out cinders and sparks, and smoke poured from him, and red flames; and the sulphur and brimstone smelled up the valley for days. He even took his true natural shape a few times.

  But Jonas hung on, and didn’t heed him at all, because he knew he could force him into a deal. And, watching real close, after almost an hour he saw him beginning to tire.

  Finally, the Devil worked himself up to a real fever pitch. He grabbed the bars of the cage, and shook them till all the ground quaked, and in a voice like thunder and lightning he bawled, “OPEN THE DOOR!”

  And Jonas knew at once that the Devil was just about done. He looked him right in the eye. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said firmly. “Not for all the tea in China. No siree bob.”

  There was a great dreadful hush, as if everything over the world had just stopped. Slowly, the Devil eased up. He lit another cheroot. He twirled his mustache. “Wouldn’t you?” he said with a smile. “Wouldn’t you, Jonas?”

  Then and there, Jonas forgot all about Mary Ann, and what all the neighbors would say, and Middleton Martin. All he could think of was how much money there would be in that tea. “We-ell,” he said to the Devil, “maybe I would.”

  “That’s fine,” said the Devil. “It’s a deal!”

  Jonas backed away from the door. He knew that the Devil had to keep that sort of a bargain. “Hold on a minute. That tea’ll have to be packed in tea chests and bales, and set down right here.”

  “You’re a hard man,” the Devil declared, “but you’ve got me. That’s the way it’ll be.”

  “Shake,” said Great-uncle Jonas; and they shook.

  And then he opened the door.…

  * * * *

  Grandma eyed me very severely. “That was how Jonas Hackett came to his end,” she said after a minute. “Let it be a lesson to you, boy. Don’t you ever forget it!”

  “Did—did he get all that tea from the Devil?” I gasped.

  “Every last bit. There was one peal of thunder, and a flash from one end of the sky to the other, and, sure enough, there it was.”

  She paused. With a heel, she kicked at the thin inch of topsoil covering up Hackett’s Hill. Under it was a thick, dark brown leaf-mold, and some rotten wood like the corner of a broken old chest; and the smell of tannin came up as strong as could be.

  We looked at the Hill, most than 200 feet high and 1,000 feet long, sitting squarely on top of where Jonas’ place used to be.

  “All the tea in China,” Grandma said. “Yes siree bob. There was a lot of it, too.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (5)

  Ferdinand Feghoot explored the system of the star ɣ-Turista during the Third Franco-Mexican Empire. The expedition was sponsored by His Cosmic Majesty Maximilliano Ixtlhuatl XXII, who decreed patriotically that only Mexican food might be served aboard ship.

  In 3002, Feghoot returned and was ushered directly into the Presence.

  “What did you find?” asked the Emperor.

  “Sire,” replied Feghoot, “most marvelous of all are our Ixixixangos.” He pointed to a couple of creatures who looked like vitrified anteaters and clanked when they walked. “All other life-forms are either carbon or silicon based. Only the Ixixixango has a chemistry based on both and require both for its substance.”

  “You mean they can’t eat what everyone eats?”

  “No indeed. We fed them ground glass and mea
t.”

  “Ha!” cried the Emperor. “So that’s how you follow my orders, Ferdinand Feghoot. Ground-glass-and-meat isn’t Mexican food!”

  “It is too!” said Feghoot. “It’s silicon carne.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (9)

  The Ismaili Institute of Higher Studies always rewarded the annual Hayworth Memorial Lecturer with his weight in diamonds—but only if he withstood the attacks of the faculty.

  Ferdinand Feghoot, lecturing on “Space Colonization and the Human Emotions,” ran this gauntlet succesfully in 2883. “Everywhere man has gone,” he declared, “and no matter how he has changed, you always find some small, homey, nostalgic reminder of old Mother Earth.”

  At once he was challenged. “What about the planet Candide?” a professor demanded. “They are infidels, cannibals! How could anything there remind one of Earth?”

  For an instant, Feghoot was taken aback. Then he smiled.

  “I would have said you were right,” he replied, “if it hadn’t been for one thing. As you know, the Candideans especially relish the plump juicy buttocks of slaves raised on large farms for that purpose. And it was on one of these farms that I saw something which took me right back to my boyhood and brought tears to my eyes.”

  “What was it?” everyone asked.

  “It stood on a shelf in the kitchen,” sighed Ferdinand Feghoot. “It was just an old Fanny Farmer’s Cook Book.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (11)

  It was Ferdinand Feghoot who, in 3312, first proved that fish were highly intelligent and that men could converse with them. He was accorded the honor of signing the ensuing Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce, and Navigation—which was also endorsed by an imposing elderly shark.

  “I spent seventeen months eavesdropping on fish conversations and analyzing their language,” he told reporters after the ceremony. “Then I slipped overboard with my skin-diving gear and asked for their leader. They took me to the Generalissimo here, and I’ll never forget my first sight of him, completely at ease in the lovely blue water, with that busy little fish hovering right by his head all the time. He received me most courteously in spite of my abominable accent. Why, he was so polite and tactful that it was almost a week before I realized he is as deaf as a post.”

  “But—how could he understand you?” asked the reporters.

  “That’s simple,” said Ferdinand Feghoot. “The little fish is his herring aide.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (13)

  In 2961, Ferdinand Feghoot persuaded the Council of Worlds to admit Little Stravinsky. After Dr. Hassan ben-Sabah had finished denouncing that planet, Feghoot said:

  “Gentlemen, our learned colleague has accused the Little Stravinkians of ‘the utmost barbarity’—even though they have achieved automation and space travel. Why? Because they cling to their old, picturesque customs. They shackle their King to his throne with a Chain of Gold which is the equivalent of the Crown. Every year, they choose fifty singers with seven-stringed harps to serve this Chain, as they put it, entertaining the Monarch with ballads and lays. And the end of each year, they have a great contest in which the singers belabor each other with whips until the last one on his feet gets the Grand Prize. Well, what of it?”

  “The Grand Prize is a beautiful virgin!” screamed Dr. ben-Sabah. “She is called Miss Little Stravinsky of, say, 2961. The winner gets her for his concubine. It is shocking! Immoral! Uncivilized! Nothing like this ever happened on Earth!”

  “Nonsense!” laughed Ferdinand Feghoot. “Why, we even have an old saying: Bards of a fetter flog to get ’er.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (77)

  On the planet Greenthumb, the flowers of Earth not only burgeoned but mutated fantastically. In fifty years, they were mobile; in a hundred, intelligent. Soon they formed social structures like man’s—marrying, having love affairs, raising their offspring, fighting their neighbors.

  Finally, out of nowhere, a leader appeared who threatened all institutions, human and vegetable.

  Ferdinand Feghoot was asked to investigate and offer a remedy. Presently he reported: “Some years ago, an especially lovely young flower—indeed, she was Miss Greenthumb of 3887—was seduced by a handsome, unscrupulous male begonia, intrigued by the slight difference between his species and hers. She abandoned the unfortunate fruit of this union, who had to live by his wits, pilfering fertilizer, putting down roots wherever he could. He grew up embittered. Today, he swears he’ll rule the whole planet as absolute dictator.”

  “What can we do?” cried the people and flowers alike. “How can we stop him?”

  “You cannot,” siad Ferdinand Feghoot. “Don’t you see? This is no common conqueror. You cannot resist—this is the Waif of the Fuchsia!”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (95)

  During the science fiction boom of the late 1980s, Ferdinand Feghoot became Executive Managing Editor-in-Chief of an entire chain of famous magazines: Tri-Sexual Space Tales, Future Porn, Abysmal Monster Stories, and any number of others. Most of his writers, of course, sent their work in my interfax, but Frieda Claptrap, the militant feminist, absolutely refused. Three or four times a week, she came stamping into his office in her lumberjack boots, and sometimes she picketed the building for days at a time, carrying placards accusing his male editors of being chauvinist pigs and their female counterparts of being their sex-slaves; and as always she came loaded with more and more manuscripts.

  Before many months had gone by, staff efficiency began to drop sharply. Resignations, hard drinking, and nervous breakdowns took their toll. It became harder and harder to make deadlines. Then one day Feghoot came back from lunch to find the building seething with excitement and police. In the middle was a disheveled Ms. Claptrap, screaming she’d been raped by all the men on the staff while all the women did nothing to help her.

  “Is this true, Mr. Feghoot?” asked the inspector in charge. “Was this really a gang rape?”

  “I hardly think so,” replied Ferdinand Feghoot. “I suspect it was simply a multiple submission.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (101)

  In 1908, shortly before the death of the formidable Empress Dowager, Tzu Hsi, Ferdinand Feghoot sentimentally tried to save her doomed Chinese Empire. (He had ruled as Emperor Fei Hu, 357-329 B.C.) Though she paid no heed to his counsels, his mission was by no means an absolute failure. He did save the life of her Master Chef, venerable Mao Shih-pen.

  A young lion had escaped from the zoo, and the Empress decreed that when it was cornered and shot it would be the pièce de résistance at a most splendid banquet. The top mandarins were invited, and the whole diplomatic corps. After any number of delicate dishes were served, finally in came Mao’s masterpiece.

  Everyone set to eagerly—and there was a sudden dead silence. The dish tasted awful. The French ambassador actually spat his first bite into his napkin.

  The furious Empress had Mao dragged before her. “Such insulting incompetence,” she screamed, “must be punished!” And she sentenced him to the death of a thousand cuts.

  Instantly Feghoot threw himself at her feet. “Be merciful, Heavenborn!” he cried out. “Master Mao wasn’t responsible! Your political enemies have been spiking his tea with straight alcohol! He was drunk without knowing it!”

  “How do you know this?” she demanded.

  “It was obvious,” replied Ferdinand Feghoot. “The poor old man couldn’t even wok a strayed lion.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (108)

  Ferdinand Feghoot incurred the enmity of Dr. Gropius Volkswagen, then President of the Society for the Aesthetic Rearrangement of History, when that elderly scholar presented his monumental paper on “Saving the World by Removing the Internal Combustion Engine from the Twentieth Ce
ntury.”

  He listened politely until comments were called for. Then he addressed himself to the podium.

  “My dear Doctor,” he said, “while I appreciate the depth of your learning and your mountains of data, I must take issue with a few of your points.”

  Dr. Volkswagen sneered.

  Feghoot continued, “The Datsun was not, as you’ve stated, ‘a long German dog used to hunt badgers.’ Nor did the Audubon Society conduct high-speed races on Germany’s freeways. Finally, the novel Vespers in Vienna was not concerned with the Austrian importation of Italian motor-scooters.”

  Dr. Volkswagen’s face grew redder and redder. “SO!” he exploded. “By quibbling you think you make a monkey out of Gropius Volkswagen, Ph.D., Ph.D., Ph.D.? I am right. If we do not the filthy internal combustion engine remove, it is the end of the world!”

  “That would be a shame!” said Ferdinand Feghoot, “To end not with a bang, not with a whimper, but just with a Saab.”

  THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (EPSILON)

  When the redoubtable Esmeralda Birdbath, Executive Professor of English Literature and Gracious Living at Weekatonk University, assumed the Presidency of the Society for the Aesthetic Rearrangement of History, she at once sent Ferdinand Feghoot off to 2882 to learn whether her pet program—for the Butlerization of Literary Criticism—was to succeed.

  “I must know!” she cried. “Return instantly, to this precise moment!” And she pushed him into the Society’s )(.[1]

  A tense few minutes later, he reappeared.

  “You have triumphed!” he announced. “In 2882, Samuel Butler’s great dictum that the true test of literary genius is not the ability to write an inscription but the ability to name a kitten dominates all literary criticism, and I’m happy to say that I, in the three weeks I spent there, won their much-coveted Samuel Butler Memorial Gold Medal by doing so. I and five hundred others were in the finals, and the names we chose had to reflect our kittens’ backgrounds and breeds. They brought me a delightful blue-point Siamese, a tom, and I named him instantly—Levi Strauss—to tremendous applause.”