Terror in the Modern Vein Read online

  The early-morning sounds from the adjacent ward penetrated the sleep-laden body which served him here and gradually recalled him to awareness of the hospital room. The transition was so gentle that he carried over full recollection of what he had been doing and why. He lay still, a gentle smile on his face, and savoured the uncouth, but not unpleasant, languor of the body he wore. Strange that he had ever forgotten despite their tricks and stratagems. Well, now that he had recalled the key, he would quickly set things right in this odd place. He would call them in at once and announce the new order. It would be amusing to see old Glaroon's expression when he realized that the cycle had ended

  The click of the peephole and the rasp of the door being unlocked guillotined his line of thought. The morning attendant pushed briskly in with the breakfast tray and placed it on the tip table. "Morning, sir. Nice, bright day - want it in bed, or will you get up?"

  Don't answer! Don't listen! Suppress this distraction! This is part of their plan - But it was too late, too late. He felt himself slipping, falling, wrenched from reality back into the fraud world in which they had kept him. It was gone, gone completely, with no single association around him to which to anchor memory. There was nothing left but the sense of heartbreaking loss and the acute ache of unsatisfied catharsis.

  "Leave it where it is. I'll take care of it."

  "Okey-doke." The attendant bustled out, slamming the door, and noisily locked it.

  He lay quite still for a long time, every nerve end in his body screaming for relief.

  At last he got out of bed, still miserably unhappy, and attempted to concentrate on his plans for escape. But the psychic wrench he had received in being recalled so suddenly from his plane of reality had left him bruised and emotionally disturbed. His mind insisted on rechewing its doubts, rather than engage in constructive thought. Was it possible that the doctor was right, that he was not alone in his miserable dilemma? Was he really simply suffering from paranoia, delusions of self-importance?

  Could it be that each unit in this yeasty swarm around him was the prison of another lonely ego - helpless, blind and speechless, condemned to an eternity of miserable loneliness? Was the look of suffering which he had brought to Alice's face a true reflection of inner torment and not simply a piece of play-acting intended to manoeuvre him into compliance with their plans?

  A knock sounded at the door. He said "Come in," without looking up. Their comings and goings did not matter to him.

  "Dearest -" A well-known voice spoke slowly and hesitantly.

  "Alice!" He was on his feet at once, and facing her. "Who let you in here?"

  "Please, dear, please - I had to see you."

  "It isn't fair. It isn't fair." He spoke more to himself than to her. Then: "Why did you come?"

  She stood up to him with a dignity he had hardly expected. The beauty of her childlike face had been marred by line and shadow, but it shone with unexpected courage. "I love you," she answered quietly. "You can tell me to go away, but you can't make me stop loving you and trying to help you."

  He turned away from her in an agony of indecision. Could it be possible that he had misjudged her? Was there, behind that barrier of flesh and sound symbols, a spirit that truly yearned towards his? Lovers whispering in the dark - "You do understand. don't you?"

  "Yes, dear heart, I understand."

  "Then nothing that happens to us can matter, as long as we are together and understand -" Words, words, rebounding hollowly from an unbroken wall

  No, he couldn't be wrong! Test her again - "Why did you keep me on that job in Omaha?"

  "But I didn't make you keep that job. I simply pointed out that we should think twice before -"

  "Never mind. Never mind." Soft hands and a sweet face preventing him with mild stubbornness from ever doing the thing that his heart told him to do. Always with the best of intentions, the best of intentions, but always so that he had never quite managed to do the silly, unreasonable things that he knew were worth while. Hurry, hurry, hurry, and strive, with an angel-faced jockey to see that you don't stop long enough to think for yourself

  "Why did you try to stop me from going back upstairs that day?"

  She managed to smile, although her eyes were already spilling over with tears. "I didn't know it really mattered to you. I didn't want us to miss the train."

  It had been a small thing, an unimportant thing. For some reason not clear even to him he had insisted on going back upstairs to his study when they were about to leave the house for a short vacation. It was raining, and she had pointed out that there was barely enough time to get to the station. He had surprised himself and her, too, by insisting on his own way in circumstances in which he had never been known to be stubborn.

  He had actually pushed her to one side and forced his way up the stairs. Even then nothing might have come of it had he not - quite unnecessarily - raised the shade of the window that faced towards the rear of the house.

  It was a very small matter. It had been raining, hard, out in front. From this window the weather was clear and sunny, with no sign of rain.

  He had stood there quite a long while, gazing out at the impossible sunshine and rearranging his cosmos in his mind. He re-examined long-suppressed doubts in the light of this one small but totally unexplainable discrepancy. Then he had turned and had found that she was standing behind him.

  He had been trying ever since to forget the expression that he had surprised on her face.

  "What about the rain?"

  "The rain?" she repeated in a small, puzzled voice.

  "Why, it was raining, of course. What about it?"

  "But it was not raining out my study window."

  "What? But of course it was. I did notice the sun break through the clouds for a moment, but that was all."

  "Nonsense!"

  "But, darling, what has the weather to do with you and me? What difference does it make whether it rains or not - to us?" She approached him timidly and slid a small hand between his arm and side. "Am I responsible for the weather?"

  "I think you are. Now please go."

  She withdrew from him, brushed blindly at her eyes, gulped once, then said in a voice held steady: "All right. I'll go. But remember - you can come home if you want to. And I'll be there, if you want me." She waited a moment, then added hesitantly: "Would you... would you kiss me good-by?"

  He made no answer of any sort, neither with voice nor eyes. She looked at him, then turned, fumbled blindly for the door, and rushed through it.

  The creature he knew as Alice went to the place of assembly without stopping to change form. "It is necessary to adjourn this sequence. I am no longer able to influence his decisions."

  They had expected it, nevertheless they stirred with dismay.

  The Glaroom addressed the First for Manipulation. "Prepare to graft the selected memory track at once."

  Then, turning to the First for Operations, the Glaroon said. "The extrapolation shows that he will tend to escape within two of his days. This sequence degenerated primarily through your failure to extend that rainfall all around him. Be advised."

  "It would be simpler if we understood his motives."

  "In my capacity as Dr. Hayward, I have often thought so," commented the Glaroon acidly, "but if we understood his motives, we would be part of him. Bear in mind the Treaty! He almost remembered."

  The creature known as Alice spoke up. "Could he not have the Taj Mahal next sequence? For some reason he values it."

  "You are becoming assimilated!"

  "Perhaps. I am not in fear. Will he receive it?"

  "It will be considered."

  The Glaroon continued with order: "Leave structures standing until adjournment. New York City and Harvard University are now dismantled. Divert him from those sectors.

  "Move!"

  FRITZCHEN

  by Charles Beaumont

  The ghosts and goblins of the olden days must have derived at least part of their substance from the sure c
ertainty of our ancestors that there were myriads of living beings in the world that had not been uncovered and named. Today we like to suppose that the mapping of our world's flora and fauna has been virtually completed. We know so very many animals! And - yet - do we really? There are strange footprints in the Himalayas. There are strange fragments washed ashore from uncharted depths. There are strange visions in our skies....

  IT had once been a place for dreaming. For lying on your back in the warm sand and listening to the silence and making faraway things seem real. The finest place in all the world, for all the reasons that ever were.

  But it had stopped being this long ago. Now, he supposed, it wasn't much more than a fairly isolated cove, really: a stretch of land bleeding into the river at one of its wide points, cut off like a tiny peninsula; a grey, dull place, damp and unnatural from its nights beneath the tidewaters - decaying, sinking slowly, glad to be eaten by the river. As Edna had put it: Just a lot of dirty wet sand. Not a place for dreaming anymore.

  Mr. Peldo shifted his position and sighed as he remembered. He took from his mouth the eviscerated end of a lifeless cigar, flipped it away distastefully, watched as the mud whitened and oozed where it landed and the spiders lumbered clumsily away in fright.

  The spiders made him think of his snakes. And soon he was thinking, too, of rabbits and goldfish and ooo wow-wow puppy dogs, all flop-eared and soft, common as a blade of grass-and his bread-and-butter. His living.

  He was almost relieved to hear Edna's coarse voice beside him.

  "Jake."

  She would now make some complaint about the foolishness of this whole trip, adding that it made her sinuses runny.

  "Yes, Chicken, what is it?"

  "Go and see to Luther."

  Go-and-see-to-Luther. Eight-year-old kid ought to be able to see to himself, by God.

  "All right. Where'd he go?"

  "Somewhere over in that direction, there by the trees. I'm worried he might think of going in the water or get lost."

  Mr. Peldo grunted softly as he pulled his weight erect. Exertion. Oh well, that was all right. Soon he would have started with the frustration, thinking about the lousy pet shop and his lousy life. Better to hunt in the trees for spoiled brats.

  It was hard going. Had to end in a few yards of course, but still, it was... exciting, in a small, tired, remembering way. He pushed aside a drenched fern, and another, needles of wet hitting him.

  "Luther."

  Mr. Peldo continued for a few feet, until he could distinctly hear the current. A wall of leaves rose at the curve, so he stopped there, let the last of the thrill fall loose from him, then listened.

  "Luther. Hustle, boy."

  Only the water. The vibrant, treacherous river water, hurrying to join the Sound and to go with it to the ocean.

  "Hey, Luu-therr."

  Mr. Peldo stabbed his hands into the foliage and parted it. From the window, by peering close, he could see his son's back.

  "Boy, when your father calls you, answer him, hear!"

  Luther looked around disinterestedly, frowned and turned his head. He was sitting in the mud, playing.

  Mr. Peldo felt the anger course spastically through him. He pushed forward and stopped, glared.

  "Well?"

  Then he glimpsed what his son had been playing with. Only a glimpse, though.

  "Fritzchen!" Luther pronounced defiantly, shielding something in his hands. "Fritzchen like I wanted to call Sol's birdie."

  Mr. Peldo felt his eyes smart and rubbed them. "What have you got there?"

  "Fritzchen, Fritzchen," the boy wailed. There was another sound then. A sound like none Mr. Peldo had ever heard: high-pitched, whiny, discordant. The sound an animal makes when it is in pain.

  Mr. Peldo reached down and slapped at his son's mouth, which had fastened like a python's about the calf of his left leg. Then, by holding his thumb and forefinger tightly on Luther's nose, he forced him to drop the thing he had been hiding.

  It fell on to the slime and began to thrash.

  Mr. Peldo gasped. He stared for a moment, like an idiot at a lamp-shade, his mouth quite open and his eyes bulged.

  A thin voice from across the trees called: "Jake, is there anything wrong? Answer me!"

  He pulled off his sport coat and threw it about the squirmy thing. "No, no, everything's okay. Kid's just acting up is all. Hold your horses!"

  "Well, hurry! It's getting dark!"

  Mr. Peldo blocked Luther's charge with his foot.

  "Where did you get that?"

  Luther did not answer. He glowered sullenly at the ground, mumbling. "He's mine. I found him. You can't have him."

  "Where did it come from?" Mr. Peldo demanded.

  Luther's lower lip resembled a bloated sausage. Finally he jerked his thumb in the direction of the river bank.

  "You can talk!"

  Luther whimpered, tried once again to get at the wriggling bundle on the sand, sat down and said, "I found him in the water. I snuck up on him and grabbed him when he wasn't looking. Now he's mine and you can't have -"

  But Mr. Peldo, having recovered himself, had plucked off the coat and was staring.

  A place for dreaming.

  Roadsters that would go over two hundred miles per hour. Promontoried chateaux with ten bathrooms. Coveys of lithe young temptresses, vacant-minded, full-bodied, infinitely imaginative, infinitely accessible....

  "JAAAAke! Are you trying to scare me to death? It's cold and my sinuses are beginning to run!"

  Luther looked at his father, snorted loudly and started for the trees.

  "He's Fritzchen and he's mine!" he called back as he ran. "All right - I'll get even! You'll see!"

  Mr. Peldo watched the small creature, fascinated, as all its legs commenced to move together, dwarfed, undeveloped legs, burrowing into the viscous ground. Shuddering slightly, he replaced the coat, gathered it into the form of a sack and started through the shrubbery.

  Edna's nose had turned red. He decided not to show Fritzchen to her, for a while.

  "Got no empties," Sol said slowly, eyeing the bundle Mr. Peldo held at arms' length. Sol didn't care for animals. He was old; his mind had fallen into a ravine; it paced the ravine; turned and paced, like a contented baboon. He was old.

  Mr. Peldo waited for Edna and Luther to go around to the living quarters in the back. "Put the capuchin in with Bess," he said, then. "Ought to have a stout one. Hop to it, Sol, I can't stand here holding this all day."

  " 'nother stray?"

  "You - might say."

  Sol shrugged and transferred the raucous little monkey from his carved wood cage to the parrot dome.

  Then he looked back. Peldo was holding the jacket-bundle down on a table with both hands. Whatever was inside was moving in violent spasms, not the way a dog moves or a rabbit. There were tiny sounds.

  "Give me a hand," Mr. Peldo said, and Sol helped him put the bundle, jacket and all, into the cage. They locked it.

  "This'll do for a while," Mr. Peldo said, "until I can build a proper one. Now mind, Sol, you keep your mouth strictly shut about this. Shut."

  Sol didn't answer. His nose had snapped upward and he held a conched hand behind his ear.

  "Listen, you," Sol said.

  Mr. Peldo took his fingers off the sport coat, which had begun to show a purplish stain through.

  "First time it ever happened in sixteen years," Sol said.

  The silence roared. The silent pet shop roared and burst and pulsed with tension, quiet electric tension. The animals didn't move anywhere in the room. Mr. Peldo's eyes darted from cage to cage, seeing the second strangest thing he had ever seen: unmoving snakes, coiled or supine, but still, as though listening; monkeys hidden in far corners, haunched; rabbits -even their noses quiet and frozen -; white mice huddled at the bottom of mills that turned in cautious, diminishing arcs, frightened, staring creatures.

  The phlegm in Mr. Peldo's throat racked loose.

  Then it was quiet again. T
hough not exactly quiet.

  Sol quit his survey of the animals and turned back to the occupant of the capuchin's cage.

  The sport jacket glistened with stain now and from within the dark folds there was a scrabbling and a small gurgling sound.

  Then the jacket fell away.

  "Tom-hell, Jake!" Sol said.

  The animals had begun to scream, all of them, all at once.

  "Not a word to anyone now, Sol! Promise."

  Mr. Peldo feasted. He stared and stared, feeling satisfaction.

  "What in glory is it?" Sol inquired above the din.

  "A pet," Mr. Peldo answered, simply.

  "Pet, hey?"

  "We'll have to build a special cage for it," Mr. Peldo beamed. "Say, bet there ain't many like this one! No, sir. We'll have to read up on it so's we can get the feeding right and all ..."

  "You read up." Sol's eyes were large. The air was filled with the wild beating of birds' wings.

  Mr. Peldo was musing. "By the way, Sol, what you suppose it could be?"

  The old man cocked his head to one side, peered from slitted eyes, picked out the crumpled sport jacket quickly and let it fall to the floor. It dropped heavily and exuded a sick water smell. Sol shrugged.

  "Cross between a whale," he said, "and a horsefly, near's I can see.""Maybe it's valuable - you think?" Mr. Peldo's ideas were growing."Couldn't say. Most likely not, in the face of it."The chittering sound rose into a sort of staccato wail, piercing, clear over the frantic pets."Where in thunder you get it?""He didn't. I did." It was Luther, scowling, in his nightclothes."Go to bed. Go away.""I found Fritzchen in the water. He likes me.""Out!""Dirty stinking rotten lousy rotten stealer!"Sol put his fingers into his cars and shut his eyes.Luther made a pout and advanced towards Fritzchen's cage. The sobbing noises ceased."He hadda lock you up. Yeah. I was gonna let you loose again." The boy glared at his father. "See how he loves me." Luther put his face up to the cage, and as he did so the small animal came forward, ponderously, with suctionlike noises from its many legs.