by Larry Niven
“Sister?”
Dunyazad crumpled gracefully.
“Guards! Help!”
The two eunuchs came running. There was foam at the corners of Dunyazad’s mouth, and her eyes were rolled up nearly out of sight. Scheherezade wrung her hands. “Is there a place for the sick? Well inside, away from the night air?”
“Yes, O queen.”
“Take her there. Then get me cold perfumed water and the doctor.” Doctor Saburin was already running toward them. “Maybe she only needs rest. Oh, she’s looked so tired lately!”
She kept Saburin until midnight, then repeated her final instructions and sent him to his bed.
The shape under the bedclothes was quite covered up, with only black hair showing. The covers moved shallowly and rapidly; the occupant was panting.
Scheherezade sipped a sugar sherbet. Presently she set the empty goblet down and went to sit on the bed. Her hand beneath the blanket felt the heat of neck and shoulder. She said, “I haven’t been so frightened in four years.”
There was only the panting, and a twitch of the quilts.
“Dunyazad is seen to be taken ill. She is carried inside. Guards describe the room. One who finds the room will find Scheherezade nursing the poor creature. I wish you could understand. Never tell a story when you can show it!”
The curtains moved back. A eunuch guard stood in the doorway. She’d seen him before: a pudgy fellow, not too bright. Scheherezade snapped, “What do you want?”
The guard grinned. Leered. “Both of you.”
“What? Oh, Allah preserve me!” He was changing shape.
He was taller, leaner. His clothing distorted itself to fit. His skin darkened, his lips and nose filled out. “Your sister is mine already,” he said. “I want you too.”
Scheherezade’s knife was in her fist, the point at her heart. “You may have me dead.”
“You know what I am?”
“A Jinni. Of course. Did you cause my sister’s sickness?”
“We’ll let her rest.” He brushed past her. “We’ll move her from the bed and—”
“Leave her alone!”
“You do not give me orders, Queen Scheherezade. Let me tell you what will happen if you use that knife. First, your corpse will disappear into the desert. But none will know that, because you will be seen to leave this room. Then you will be seen to do dreadful things.”
“Nonsense.” Scorn and disbelief.
The Jinni was still changing. Now it was like looking into a mirror, even to the clothing. “You slight the Jinni if you doubt me,” said Scheherezade’s voice. “Your husband will find his wife taking her pleasure with some slave in the market at high noon.”
“No slave would dare.”
“The slave would be my companion.”
It was one of the skills of the storyteller: Scheherezade’s face showed withering contempt. “Companion! You’re really not very convincing. Did you cozen my poor sister with this tale?”
“I can make my threats real, but let us have done with threats.” Scheherezade moved close; she put her hands on Scheherezade’s arms. Scheherezade screamed at once, and Scheherezade released her with a frown of distaste. “Don’t be foolish. I’ve put them all to sleep.” But she glanced down and saw blood on the tip of Scheherezade’s knife.
Scheherezade had known the risk.
“I can be of any shape you like,” the Jinni said. “Man, woman, old or young, human or slightly different or wildly different. Only name your desire.”
“To see you gone. Companion? The Jinni don’t have companions. How could even you tolerate the company of a Jinni?” Her arms were getting tired; she still held the knife poised above her heart.
“You are a highly opinionated fool.” The woman considered. “Very well. Wait here.”
The Jinni had been gone for more than a minute before Scheherezade gave vent to a shuddering sigh. And drew breath as if there were no air anywhere. And hiccoughed painfully when the curtain was thrown back.
Two Scheherezades entered, identical in every respect. “Show, don’t tell. Isn’t that what you were saying, storyteller? So, this is what the whole city will see tomorrow unless you grant my will,” one said. “But you shall be first.”
That one changed. It became the man she had seen with Dunyazad; and then it was Shahryar. Shahryar and the Scheherezade-shape moved to each other. Their hands moved beneath each other’s clothing, then clothing began to fall away. Scheherezade watched as if mesmerized. The blade sagged in her hands.
Robes and undergarments and slippers faded into air as they fell away. Both Jinni seemed to have forgotten her until, just once, the woman turned to smile at her. “We take turns,” she said. “Oh!” as the man entered her.
The sounds were those of Scheherezade’s wedding night. Had they watched? She covered her eyes; she turned her back; she staggered from the room, retching. She heard a chuckle behind her. They need hardly fear that she would call guards to see this!
Now she moved in frantic haste. The new door was wide open, flat against the wall, behind a second curtain. She’d counted on help for the heavy door; now she saw guards sprawled everywhere, snoring. But Dunyazad came running down the hall, struck the door and wrestled it like an enemy.
It slammed shut. The seal of Solomon was painted across it in bright scarlet. A third curtain concealed the pot of wax on its brazier. Dunyazad picked it up in both arms. She poured wax down each side of the door, while Scheherezade stamped the best of four seals (two jewelers had been late) along the congealing wax. The sounds from inside had stopped.
They both lifted the pot and poured along the top of the door, knelt and poured along the bottom. Scheherezade stamped carefully, making each mark perfect. Without turning she asked, “Are you all right?”
“When they don’t come through that door, then I’m all right! Here, I’ve got the nails—”
A voice spoke through the door. “Open this door at once, or suffer the agonies of the damned!”
Scheherezade ignored that. The door shuddered, and some large animal squealed in pain. Another thump, another incredulous yelp. Her belly unfolded like a tight fist relaxing.
“They can’t touch the door. It burns them,” Dunyazad realized. “It worked. I can’t believe it worked!”
“Why not? It’s just a big bottle like the one the fisherman found. Putting Arrow in the bed was brilliant. I was going to just cover up some pillows. He didn’t smell at all—”
“We washed him half to death.”
“He panted like you were really sick, and he kicked just enough.”
“Oh, I wish I could get him out of there.”
“The poppy will kill him, sister. Two Jinni and a dead lamb in there forever.”
“She’s still sleeping,” Scheherezade told her husband. “I won’t disturb her. She earned it.”
“So did you, my warrior.”
“I can’t sleep. I’m still shaking.”
“The harem doctor might have something.”
Scheherezade seemed not to hear. “We’ve warned everybody. We’ve posted warnings on the door. Now they’re building another wall outside it. Brick. The seal on each brick. Better not forget to brick the roof up too. Oh, Allah, what can we tell Zaman?”
“I’ve thought about that.” Shahryar sampled a sweetmeat, at leisure. “My brother is a bit in awe of you. We’ll tell him part of the truth. You tricked a pair of Jinni in there and walled them up. You had your sister’s help, but you never told her any more than what to do. The workmen won’t know any different. I’ll talk to the eunuchs who watch the garden. When Zaman comes home you’ll have some tale to tell him. Something to sear the hair off his ears.”
“I cherish your faith in me, my love. So it’s not over yet, is it?”
“It will never be over. Zaman will build a new harem, now that there have been Jinni in it, but we can’t keep everyone away forever. Suppose those things make promises through the door? One day they’ll get loose,
whatever we do…”
“It may not happen until we’re all dead.” Scheherezade was beginning to relax, finally. “A pity I can’t ever tell the tale.”
“Living through it was something Allah might have spared us. All of us. All these ten years.”
“Some stories are like that.”
“I wouldn’t have minded hearing it sometime,” the King said. “As something that happened to some half-forgotten people, long ago, far away.”
• • •
• • •
Toward dawn the frantic sky became even more frantic. There was a bright spot in there. If it was the head, it was hard to see, looking down through the luminous tunnel of the tail. Cold light and shifting shadows, faint color splashes of aurora even in daytime. Then the light was afire with dawn, but the light was still funny. Elfin. Gordie shivered.
LUCIFER’S HAMMER, 1977
MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE
Sometimes an idea suggests a story, and then has to be discarded. And every writer learns this; but then he must learn when.
I was following Fred Pohl’s suggestion: writing about the odd pockets of the universe. [Truly, I’ve never stopped.] I looked at a painting of the galaxy seen along its axis, and pictured two ships departing at the edge of light-speed, the first fleeing the other, the second being flown by a computer program and a dead man…
“The Ethics of Madness” evolved into a very different story. I started with the ending, but I should have thrown that away. It no longer applied; it wasn’t what I was trying to say. The theme got lost.
This time I think I got it right.
“Madness Has Its Place” came about because Jim Baen suggested throwing the Man-Kzin Wars period of Known Space open to selected authors. I’m not good at war stories—I’ve never been in any armed forces—and this scheme lets me read Known Space stories without writing them first.
When I first started, I was trying to write like Poul Anderson. Jerry Pournelle, when we first began collaborating, told me that he wouldn’t work in Known Space. He couldn’t buy the sociology. But both writers have been at play within THE MAN-KZIN WARS.
I was hoping the new stories would inspire me, as the “Warlock’s World” stories did. It’s worked. “Madness Has Its Place” is the first Known Space story since THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
I
A lucky few of us know the good days before they’re gone.
I remember my eighties. My job kept me in shape, and gave me enough variety to keep my mind occupied. My love life was imperfect but interesting. Modern medicine makes the old fairy tales look insipid; I almost never worried about my health.
Those were the good days, and I knew them. I could remember worse.
I can remember when my memory was better too. That’s what this file is for. I keep it updated for that reason, and also to maintain my sense of purpose.
The Monobloc had been a singles bar since the 2320s.
In the ’30s I’d been a regular. I’d found Charlotte there. We held our wedding reception at the Monobloc, then dropped out for twenty-eight years. My first marriage, hers too, both in our forties. After the children grew up and moved away, after Charlotte left me too, I came back.
The place was much changed.
I remembered a couple of hundred bottles in the hologram bar display. Now the display was twice as large and seemed more realistic—better equipment, maybe—but only a score of bottles in the middle were liquors. The rest were flavored or carbonated water, high-energy drinks, electrolytes, a thousand kinds of tea; food to match: raw vegetables and fruits kept fresh by high-tech means, arrayed with low-cholesterol dips; bran in every conceivable form short of injections.
The Monobloc had swallowed its neighbors. It was bigger, with curtained alcoves, and a small gym upstairs for working out or for dating.
Herbert and Tina Schroeder still owned the place. Their marriage had been open in the ’30s. They’d aged since. So had their clientele. Some of us had married or drifted away or died of alcoholism, but word of mouth and the Velvet Net had maintained a continuous tradition. Twenty-eight years later they looked better than ever…wrinkled, of course, but lean and muscular, both ready for the Gray Olympics. Tina let me know before I could ask: she and Herb were lockstepped now.
To me it was like coming home.
For the next twelve years the Monobloc was an intermittent part of my life.
I would find a lady or she would find me, and we’d drop out. Or we’d visit the Monobloc and sometimes trade partners; and one evening we’d go together and leave separately. I was not evading marriage. Every woman I found worth knowing, ultimately seemed to want to know someone else.
I was nearly bald even then. Thick white hair covered my arms and legs and torso, as if my head hairs had migrated. Twelve years of running construction robots had turned me burly. From time to time some muscular lady would look me over and claim me. I had no trouble finding company.
But company never stayed. Had I become dull? The notion struck me as funny.
I had settled myself alone at a table for two, early on a Thursday evening in 2375. The Monobloc was half empty. The earlies were all keeping one eye on the door when Anton Brillov came in.
Anton was shorter than me, and much narrower, with a face like an ax. I hadn’t seen him in thirteen years. Still, I’d mentioned the Monobloc; he must have remembered.
I semaphored my arms. Anton squinted, then came over, exaggeratedly cautious until he saw who it was.
“Jack Strather!”
“Hi, Anton. So you decided to try the place.”
“Yah.” He sat. “You look good.” He looked a moment longer and said, “Relaxed. Placid. How’s Charlotte?”
“Left me after I retired. Just under a year after. There was too much of me around and I…maybe I was too placid? Anyway. How are you?”
“Fine.”
Twitchy. Anton looked twitchy. I was amused. “Still with the Holy Office?”
“Only citizens call it that, Jack.”
“I’m a citizen now. Still gives me a kick. How’s your chemistry?”
Anton knew what I meant and didn’t pretend otherwise. “I’m okay. I’m down.”
“Kid, you’re looking over both shoulders at once.”
Anton managed a credible laugh. “I’m not the kid anymore. I’m a weekly.”
The ARM had made me a weekly at forty-eight. They couldn’t turn me loose at the end of the day anymore, because my body chemistry couldn’t shift fast enough. So they kept me in the ARM building Monday through Thursday, and gave me all of Thursday afternoon to shed the schitz madness. Another twenty years of that and I was even less flexible, so they retired me.
I said, “You do have to remember. When you’re in the ARM building, you’re a paranoid schizophrenic. You have to be able to file that when you’re outside.”
“Hah. How can anyone—”
“You get used to the schitz. After I quit, the difference was amazing. No fears, no tension, no ambition.”
“No Charlotte?”
“Well…I turned boring. And what are you doing here?”
Anton looked around. “Much the same thing you are, I guess. Jack, am I the youngest one here?”
“Maybe.” I looked around, double-checking. A woman was distracting me, though I could see only her back and a flash of a laughing profile. Her back was slender and strong, and a thick white braid ran down her spine, two and a half feet of clean, thick white hair. She was in an animated conversation with a blond companion of Anton’s age plus a few.
But they were at a table for two: they weren’t inviting company. I forced my attention back. “We’re gray singles, Anton. The young ones tend to get the message quick. We’re slower than we used to be. We date. You want to order?”
Alcohol wasn’t popular there. Anton must have noticed, but he ordered guava juice and vodka and dran
k as if he needed it. This looked worse than Thursday jitters. I let him half finish, then said, “Assuming you can tell me—”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I know the feeling. What should you know?”
The tension eased behind Anton’s eyes. “There was a message from the Angel’s Pencil.”
“Pencil…oh.” My mental reflexes had slowed down. The Angel’s Pencil had departed twenty years ago for…was it Epsilon Eridani? “Come on, kid, it’ll be in the boob cubes before you have quite finished speaking. Anything from deep space is public property.”
“Hah! No. It’s restricted. I haven’t seen it myself. Only a reference, and it must be more than ten years old.”
That was peculiar. And if the Belt stations hadn’t spread the news through the solar system, that was peculiar. No wonder Anton was antsy. ARMs react that way to puzzles.
Anton seemed to jerk himself back to the here and now, back to the gray singles regime. “Am I cramping your style?”
“No problem. Nobody hurries in the Monobloc. If you see someone you like—” My fingers danced over lighted symbols on the rim of the table. “This gets you a map. Locate where she’s sitting, put the cursor on it. That gets you a display…hmm.”
I’d set the cursor on the white-haired lady. I liked the readout. “Phoebe Garrison, seventy-nine, eleven or twelve years older than you. Straight. Won a Second in the Gray Jumps last year…That’s the Americas Skiing Matches for seventy and over. She could kick your tail if you don’t watch your manners. It says she’s smarter than we are, too.
“Point is, she can check you out the same way. Or me. And she probably found this place through the Velvet Net, which is the computer network for unlocked lifestyles.”
“So. Two males sitting together—”
“Anyone who thinks we’re bent can check if she cares enough. Bends don’t come to the Monobloc anyway. But if we want company, we should move to a bigger table.”
We did that. I caught Phoebe Garrison’s companion’s eye. They played with their table controls, discussed, and presently wandered over.