6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction Read online

  In taming any animal, you must replace the mother of the young animal so that it fixes its affection on you instead of on its dam; or, in the case of animals that hunt in packs, you must become the leader of the pack.

  This is what I do when I hunt with my hounds. Though I carry a rifle, a knife, and a pistol, I would not try to handle my pack without a bull whip and a short club. Every now and then a young dog, never a bitch, challenges me. Weighing as much as or more than I do, he might pull me down if I were not ready for him. On one occasion I killed—with my bare hands—a dog that weighed two hundred and five pounds (I had the curiosity to weigh him.) His name was Racketeer, and his breeding was Great Dane, police dog, Saint Bernard and Afghan.

  Racketeer was a lovely beast, but suddenly he challenged me. I had put the pack onto a bear spoor. It was spring, and the spoor was very clear in the moist ground, but Racketeer wanted to follow a lynx. When I began to whip him off—this was before I carried a club—he turned on me, while the pack waited to see which would be master. I saw him crouch for the jump, and as he leaped for my throat I struck him straight in the nose with my fist. As he fell I jumped on him; leaping into the air, I brought both feet down on him, smashing his ribs. Then I raised him in my arms and threw him back to the waiting pack.

  But all this discourse has been an evasion of the description of the death of Annie, my pinscher. The past is still too near to make it easy to discuss. But the way it went was this: I held her on my knee, with my left hand over her shoulder, and brought the hammer down on her skull, cracking it with a single blow. I then cleaned and skinned her and we ate her, for though we had canned food we were trying to conserve it for the days that were to come. When it became known that I had killed my pets and eaten them, a woman burst into the apartment and called me a cannibal and a brute. She said it was like eating a human being, and I said, “We may be doing that yet.” There had been cannibalism in the German concentration camps at Dachau and elsewhere, but this good woman had forgotten or had never believed it. On the other side of the same penny were the people who wanted me to kill their dogs for them because they could not bring themselves to do it. I killed a number of dogs that I had known quite well, many of them having lived in the hotel as long as I had. I charged half the dog for killing and dressing it, and became accustomed to dog soup and stew.

  During this period the destroyed part of the city was walled off, the rubble of the fallen buildings being used to close off the streets. It made me think of the walled-off ghettos of the German occupation in Poland, and of the way situations tended to repeat themselves, death being enclosed by walls in both cases. It was a defense mechanism on our part against the knowledge that death had us hemmed, walled in, and was one of our final tributes to complacency, to the idea that if we could not see a thing we stopped its existing. But you could not help smelling it. All over the city there was a stench of death in the air.

  Order, as I say, had been for a while somewhat restored and a few minimum services functioned, but everything worked on a kind of reflex. Policemen remained policemen because it was their habit and they did not know what else to do; for a few days garbage collectors still collected garbage for the same reason. But there was neither credit nor currency, central authority having disappeared. Public servants were paid in food from the stock that was available in the city warehouses, a system that obviously could not continue for long.

  There were amazing tales of the fights put up by farmers against the influx of city dwellers who had run out of the metropolis and had flung themselves upon anything edible in the country—a swarm of human locusts that the country people resisted in every manner possible. There was a pitched battle on the Canadian border in the vicinity of Niagara Falls. The Canadians appeared to be a little better off than we were, having retained their central government, and they used troops to turn back the unwelcome thousands, many of whom had known the Falls only as a honeymoon resort. We got the story from one of the survivors and his wife. She was a lovely blond night-club singer who now looked like an old and shrunken woman; he had played a hot trumpet and was at one time internationally famous through his recordings. I recall the incident because, despite everything, he had held onto the silver trumpet that had made him famous— a remarkable young man who no doubt died tooting on his instrument.

  ~ * ~

  All this took place in the first few months. I was proved to have been wise in my decision to stay in New York: there was more food here than in the country. There were still some pigeons, and there were plenty of cats, for with the departure of mankind and the failure of all city services, the rodents had increased in a phenomenal manner and naturally the city cats had increased with them. I had eaten cat as a child (our gardener in France, who trapped them, had once given me some), and both Mildred and I found them excellent. There were still some dogs in the street, which lived, literally, by dog eating dog, and these I shot with my .22. Our system of hunting was to go out together; I went a pace in front with the .22 and Mildred followed with the heavier rifle, the 303, which she, like a gunbearer in Africa, put into my hand if I asked for it. Some of the big dogs could not be stopped by a small-bore rifle; and there were human wolves, too, who had to be destroyed. Mildred was in no danger now as a woman, having like all other surviving women, lost any visible sexual charm which she had ever had, near starvation having reduced the sexual curves that characterize women; and the sex fiends, who had run riot in the early days, raping and murdering, had either been eliminated or had been reduced by the food shortages to seeking nourishment rather than other satisfactions.

  For a change, we used to fish in Central Park. Mildred, being better at it than I, would watch her float bob in the water while I stood guard with the rifle. We cooked out on the roof where, when first we had taken the apartment, I had had built a little barbecue. Water was now obtained with difficulty. Some we brought from Central Park, some we collected by damming up a section of our roof.

  At this time there were very few people left in the city—only a few thousand—because everything had broken down with the breakdown of credit. People simply would not work without money. They were not even ready to save their lives by co-operative effort. So deeply had our competitive system bitten into us that they preferred to sit around and starve, or else they ran away and starved— except the few who, like ourselves, lived on what they could find or loot from the stores. The word “loot” persists, though obviously it was no longer looting. It remained, however, an operation of some danger because of the darkness of the stores and the maniacs who had taken up their abode in many of them—savages who resented any intrusion into their territory. I remember one man that I shot at Gimbel’s while Mildred held the flashlight on him. He was an immense man who ran at us roaring with rage as he brandished a meat cleaver. We had gone to Gimbel’s for caviar and pâté de foie gras. They had a lot of it, for apparently the other looters, having less sophisticated tastes than ours, left it alone.

  For anyone who liked adventure I suppose this would have been very interesting, but to us who had become almost sedentary and were quite unaccustomed to swift movement, hard living, or even loud noises, the adjustment was most difficult. Yet in this twilight world, we succeeded in living and forming a pattern of life, even remembering the days with some semblance of accuracy. I, who had always hated a schedule of any kind, now invented one. Monday: Central Park, fishing; Wednesday and Friday: food-looting expeditions. Inevitably, though, the human instinct being what it is, more was collected than food. We found some beautiful fur coats—stone marten, blue mink, Russian sable, and ermine. The ermine came in very handy for winter hunting in the snow. We picked up some wonderful diamond rings of fifteen or twenty carats, ruby clips, necklaces and bracelets. We both looked like pirates. We were far from clean but we were dressed in suede, silk and satin; we wore rare fur coats from which I had cut the arms to give greater freedom. We had silk sashes around our waists, carried an arsenal of daggers and pistols, and
over our shoulders were slung the best guns New York could provide.

  We had begun by this time to collect our big dogs. We needed them for protection and hunting. In the beginning we had a boxer and a police dog. We hunted other dogs to feed on. The transition of my wife from a charming, rather fastidious young American girl to a primeval savage was most interesting. She soon learned to use a knife and to skin an animal as well as I did. She was never a good shot, having difficulty in closing her left eye, so I got her a shotgun and a .32-caliber Colt. I told her that if anyone attacked, she was to wait till he was right on her, then push the muzzle of the pistol into his stomach—she would feel it go in—and then continue pulling the trigger till she passed out. No girl could have had better instructions. Fortunately, she never had to follow them. The only near disaster occurred once when I was some distance away, but her assailant was pulled down by the dogs, and when I arrived, the man who had approached her was dead. This reassured me because I had not been, until that moment, quite certain how the dogs would act, as they were young and unused to dangerous work.

  This was about the time that we heard the first stories of the Red Death, the strange dancing disease that was, according to the information we had, sweeping not only the country, but the world. We soon saw evidences of it. In fact, one of these dancers was the second man our dogs killed. The disease was contagious. The first symptom was the appearance of great health and gaiety, which was followed by a mad happiness; we would see rosy-faced couples dancing and singing in the streets as the disease began to spread. In the later phase, the victim either fell into a coma or attacked anyone in the vicinity without warning. This is what happened one evening as we were about to cross Sixth Avenue: a man and a woman suddenly appeared and began pirouetting and jitterbugging. I hoped they would pay no attention to us, but the man saw us. I knew that we were in for trouble, for he suddenly got beyond the happy stage and became murderous. He reached me with incredible speed and had me down before I could do anything to defend myself. But as he gripped me, my wife fired three shots into him from her .32 and the dogs attacked him, the boxer grasping his thigh and the police dog his shoulder. They knocked him onto his back and quickly finished him off.

  I picked up the sack I had been carrying and felt very shaken, for I was certain I had been contaminated, and now had to work out plans for a method of restraint that my wife could use which would prevent my hurting her when I reached the paroxysms of fury that were the final symptoms of the disease. I had my own theory and was certain that if she did not touch me she would be all right. Naturally, no one knew much about the disease, but I had the idea that with restraint there was the possibility of survival, death occurring through the berserk rage, which had the effect of burning up the victim. I therefore conceived the plan of going to the local police station— we had dumped our sack of loot—and getting a pair of handcuffs and some chains. The incubation period was said to be a week, but to take no chances I found a ring bolt, fastened it in the floor of the apartment and attached the chain and handcuffs to it at once. All I had to do now, the minute I got the first symptoms, the feeling of joy and the flush that went with it, was to handcuff myself and then hope for the best. I told Mildred of this plan and gave her her instructions. She was to keep out of my reach, give me no food but plenty of water. This she was to put in a tin measuring cup and push into my reach.

  The precautions I had taken frightened my wife, and I had to spend the next few days reassuring her, telling her that there was nothing to fear and that it was all done “just in case.” For my own part, I, was certain that I could not have failed to contract the disease, and so we spent our time hunting furiously for more canned provisions and collecting a reserve of wood and water. I also obtained more ammunition for the shotgun, because this was the best weapon for Mildred: a scattergun to point in the general direction of anything that frightened her was more likely to be of use than any other kind.

  What follows is all that I can remember of the days that ensued. I do not actually remember them at all and have reconstructed the story from what I remember of what Mildred told me when it was over.

  It seems, according to what she said, that on the seventh day—our guess about the incubation period had apparently been right—I woke in great form in the morning and began to sing opera. The remarkable thing was that I sang in tune, which was extraordinary, for I have no ear for music. This proved that I was ill. With expanded chest and wide-open mouth I stood on the roof singing to the silent city. Then I dressed, putting on a brown suit with a white pin stripe. I also put on my gaudiest tie, one that I had bought when we were working in Hollywood. It was a red-white-and-green affair made of silk, hand blocked, and about a foot wide at the wide end. I had never dared to wear it before. I then danced all by myself, tripping lightly up and down to unheard music, and then undressed and broke into a series of Zulu war dances. At this moment some glimmering of sanity must have returned to me, because Mildred said I covered my face with my hands and burst into tears; when the paroxysm was over I picked up the handcuffs, clipped them over my wrists, and lay down like a chained dog to sleep.

  What came next must have been completely terrifying for my wife. I am a big man, six feet two, and I weighed two hundred pounds. Having slept for some hours, I woke in the fury that is the secondary symptom of the disease. Having circled the room to test the length of my chain, I crouched on my haunches like an animal and leaped at her. Fortunately, the right bolt held and I was dragged back, being pulled onto my shoulders and falling on my back with my handcuffed hands between my legs. This seemed to have knocked me out for a moment, but I was only playing possum. Forgetting what I had told her, and with a wife’s instinct of solicitude, she came to see if I were hurt. In a second I was up, and raising my manacled hands, I swung them down at her head in an attempt to stun her. She jumped back just in time and then decided to obey the instructions I had given her. Fetching a tin cup full of water, she pushed it into my reach with the tip of a jointed fishing rod. I seized it and tried to draw her to me, but the tip came off in my hand.

  For ten days I remained in alternating states of animal fury and animal sleep. The sitting room resembled the den of a beast. Filthy, naked except for a blanket that I used not for modesty but for warmth, I growled and sulked, wringing my fingers and licking my wrists where the steel had bitten into the flesh and worn away the skin so that it was a ring of festering sores. I drank quantities of water, cup after cup, and each time I had done so I threw the cup at Mildred’s head with a clumsy two-handed throw. My ribs stood out in arcs about my chest, my stomach was sunken, my eyes stared wildly; my whole skin was pink shading into red, almost scarlet; while my face and neck, in contrast to the rest of my body, were swollen, apparently suffused with blood to the point where I was unrecognizable. For some reason, the sebaceous glands were stimulated by the fever, and hair grew in great profusion all over my body.

  This, then, is the story of my illness as reported by my wife and as I remember it. On the eleventh day it ended as suddenly as it had begun. My face was now white with illness; my eyes, no longer dilated, were sunken; and, instead of having the strength of ten, I could hardly lift my hands to my head. The fever had burned itself out, and I was alive. That was my first conscious thought. I was rational. I said, “I think it’s over.” Mildred said, “Yes,” and burst into tears. I said, “You can let me go now,” and for a while it seemed doubtful that she would be able to, because she had put the handcuff key away so safely that she could not remember where it was. She found it at last in an empty flower vase.

  A period of convalescence and reflection followed. It is easy to reflect when one is ill; there is nothing else to do. Our reserves of food being ample, we just sat around and talked. The ten days of my illness had been notable for the final evacuation of the hotel. As far as we knew, we were now the only people in it.

  ~ * ~

  I was now the most intelligent man in the world. I knew answers that should
have been obvious by implication to everyone when the first bomb burst in the New Mexican desert. I had survived the Red Death by a miracle and was therefore even more special, because a lot of people had survived the blast, but so far as I knew, I was the only man to recover from the plague. All that came out of this period of reflection, during which I regained some measure of my strength, was the certainty that what had been wrong with us was nothing but stupidity. We had been too stupid to be afraid, or too afraid to acknowledge our fear.

  What I’d feared now happened. Mildred came down with the fever. Her symptoms followed the accepted pattern of dancing and singing, but considering our differences in size (she was under five feet tall and weighed only ninety-three pounds) I could not bring myself to tie her up, with the result that when she turned on me, suddenly leaping like a tiger cat onto my shoulder and sinking her teeth into my neck, I had great difficulty in escaping her. As soon as I got my hands free I threw her down and put the handcuffs on her. Her hands were so small that she wriggled out of them till I succeeded in padding them with a handkerchief. She bit, scratched, and kicked fiercely all the time I was restraining her. Having recovered from the disease, I was “salted,” as we used to say in Africa of horses that had had horse sickness, and so I was able to take better care of her than she had of me. Nor was she hard to handle because she would seize any lure, like a bath towel, that I offered to her, and worry it, which kept her occupied till I could get right up to her— for a woman, like a horse or any other animal, is less dangerous when she is quite close to you. A kick or a blow has to travel to gain strength. Nevertheless, despite all my efforts—my keeping her covered and hand-feeding her— she weakened and died the day that the fever ended, curling up in my arms so that I thought she was just sleeping and did not know she was dead till I put her down.