Universe 7 - [Anthology] Read online

  And now I was scared yellow myself, and wishing to hell that I’d taken Gimpy just a trifle more seriously. As a matter of fact, I was scared out of my own filthy mind, and right now I was coward enough to admit it. I wanted to get out of here with my skin intact, and once I was out I’d figure some way of getting my own back—I had some boys under me who were pretty slick at arranging that sort of thing. I’d call them in and make arrangements, because nobody and nothing was going to get away with doing things like this to me—after all, I had my reputation to uphold. I was mean not just because I enjoyed it, but also because it paid; and I wasn’t going to compromise with good business practice just because I was scared as hell right at this moment. No sir, I wasn’t the type that compromised—not me.

  I’m making all this sound a good deal more orderly and coherent than it actually was, because The Fat Man’s mind was pretty confused at this particular moment, and what I picked up from it I picked up in bits and snatches. I fitted it all together later, just about the way I’ve told it to you (except that I’ve left out a few of the nastier details; there are some things it’s better for your peace of mind not to know); but the way it actually came out like I said, was sort of in little spurts of lucidity between the terrified gibberings, like this: Jee-zus, they’re gonna kill me if they keep up with this . . . doctor says I gotta watch out for my heart . . . Jeez, it felt like it stopped just then . . . should of listened to that goddamn Gimpy ... if I can only get out of here, I’m gonna call up the Creep—he’ll know what to do . . . burn the place up, maybe; no, burning’s too good for them . . . owww, that hurt! . . . gotta get outa here . . . remember what happened to the Don: heart attack, the doc said . . . shows what he knows . . . the Creep knows some pretty clever tricks . . . don’t leave no traces, neither; nothing for the goddamn cops to latch onto . . . that goddamn bartender: maybe I could get my hands on that wife of his . . . Jee-zus, that hurts! . . . oughta be a law against them ghosts or goblins or whatever they’re called . . . they got no right to treat me like this! . . . oooow, the pain, the pain, the pain . . . Kee-rist, I feel like I’m gonna die or something . . . gotta get outa here. . . gotta get out . . . get out . . .

  Well, you get the general idea. Only I can’t find words to make you feel the rancid sliminess of it all, or the cold hard meanness that writhed beneath it—there aren’t any words for that; you have to be trapped in the midst of it to know what it’s like. As I was just then—drowning in slime, it felt like. And meanwhile the Probability Storm was raging on all around me (every now and then I could feel little side-eddies from it pulsing through me), and anomalies were pyramiding up in incredibly implausible sequences—and there I was, missing all the fun, stuck there inside of The Fat Man and screaming to get out.

  I don’t know how long it took, because I lost track of time in there. I struggled and struggled, but he seemed determined to suck me down. God, he was strong in his meanness!—toward the end I was beginning to feel desperately afraid that he was even stronger than I was. And then I thought of Moira, and that thought gave me strength. It was as if she were there beside me, fighting along with me. And slowly, with her help, I fought my way up to the surface.

  And then, at last, I’d made it and kicked free of him. I can’t tell you what a relief that was; it was like something had been suffocating me and finally I was able to breathe again. I flexed myself all over and expanded, spiralwise, almost singing with the sheer joy of being able to move freely once more. For a moment I felt as uninhibitedly loose and carefree as the gremlins must. You have to have been trapped inside a Fat Man, even if it’s only for a few suffocating minutes, in order to appreciate what a joyous thing freedom is.

  For a while I was almost dizzy with happiness. And then I began to worry. It wasn’t the Storm that was bothering me: that, I could see, was beginning to die down now, and Rafferty’s had stood firm, as always. I’d expected it to: Rafferty’s is a good, soundly built place—it can weather practically anything. It has to be, of course, being located slap-bang on top of a statistical pole—for which fact you should be grateful, if you aren’t already, because if it weren’t for the solidity of Rafferty’s and its regulars a whole lot of anomalies would come spilling out to expend themselves elsewhere, and the local citizenry would find themselves in all kinds of messes that they wouldn’t even have thought possible, the very least of which would be having a whole plague of footloose gremlins on their hands. Tear down Rafferty’s and all the other places like it, and the world would find itself halfway to being deontologized without the need of a Barnabas Tobin to help the process along.

  And that was what was worrying me, because I knew what was in The Fat Man’s mind, and it didn’t bode well for Rafferty’s. People like that are dangerous: they don’t appreciate what precarious foundations Reality is built on, and they don’t realize how easily the whole thing might be toppled if those foundations are undermined. They’ve been warned often enough, but they stubbornly refuse to believe in the pundits’ warnings—which is pretty damn foolish of them, as I’m in a position to know. Just think what would happen if the whole world were suddenly deontologized, without any warning—and you along with it. Sure, I’ve adjusted to it all right-but how do you think you’d react? And even if you could take it, what about your Grandpa Julius and Aunt Maude and all the rest of your family and friends and acquaintances? Half of them would go crazy, at the very least; and what do you think the cosmos would be like if it were half filled with crazy sub-corporeal entities, all interpenetrating and intermingling with the sane ones like you and me? It’d make Edgar Allen Schwarzkopf’s worst nightmares look like a Shriners’ Circus. And that state of things was precisely what The Fat Man and the others of his unbelieving ilk were working to bring on, even though their selfish little souls didn’t know it. I shuddered subcorporeally at the very thought.

  Something had to be done, and quickly, because I knew that if The Fat Man got out of there and followed through with his schemes, then Rafferty’s was in trouble. Fortunately— or maybe it wasn’t just fortunate: maybe it was The Scheme of Things using me as an instrument to right its balance—I knew precisely what to do. The trouble was, it depended on enlisting the gremlins to come to my aid.

  Now that was a problem, because you can’t talk reason to a gremlin. As a matter of fact, there’s practically no way of persuading him to go along with anything at all, because there’s no way of getting him to hold still and listen. Unless, that is, you have The Power, like Rafferty and Moira; and that was something I’d never been blessed with. The only way I could think of to get the gremlins’ co-operation was to start off doing what I had in mind on my own bat, and then hope they’d see it as a new kind of game and join in just for the sheer hell of it.

  So I concentrated all my energies and directed them, not toward The Fat Man, but toward the thin man inside him who was screaming to be let out. That thin man was a pretty decent sort actually, as I’ve already said, and there had to be a finite probability that he might have come into being in The Fat Man’s place; otherwise he wouldn’t have been there at all. The trouble was, that probability was mighty low; it was only the event of the Storm that had actualized it at all. And while I had some voluntary control over probabilities, just as the gremlins did, I didn’t have very good co-ordination of it, and I knew damn well that I didn’t have the ability all on my own to realize something as inherently improbable as the thin man’s having grown up in The Fat Man’s place. The gremlins could manage it, if I got enough of them in there all pulling together; that was why I needed their help.

  So I focused all my attention on the thin man, as I said, and tried my damnedest to imagine what he might be like. It was hard, I can tell you—and not just because, as you may already have gathered, my attention has a tendency to wander at times. It was hard apart from that, hard to imagine The Fat Man being anything other than The Fat Man, all piggish and jowly and mean, let alone to imagine him as slender and dapper and brimming with good-he
arted benevolence. But that was the way it had to be.

  Slowly a picture of the thin man began to build up in my mind. There was something graceful about him—something catlike and just a little bit effeminate. A delicate smile played on his face, so delicate that you almost had to look twice to be sure it was really there. There was a sort of Old World courtesy about him, and it was easy to picture him helping an old lady across the street or stopping to pat a passing child on the head (somewhat fastidiously) just because he was benevolently taken with its innocent beauty. It was obvious that he would wear a carnation in his buttonhole—a white carnation— and probably he’d put on white gloves when he went out for a stroll, and carry a little Charlie Chaplin cane. Yes, I decided, I definitely liked him—he was a little ridiculous, but kind and amusing. Rather like W. Worthington Enderby, in fact . . . but no, I mustn’t let my mind wander.

  From one corner of my awareness, I noticed that a couple of gremlins had stopped by to watch what I was doing. They were definitely curious. I risked a slight flicker in their direction in order to catch their attention; but they shied away. Disappointed, I went back to my task. Presently I noticed they were back, and one or two others with them. I redoubled my efforts.

  At last one of the gremlins caught on. The game amused him, as I’d hoped it would, and I felt him alongside me pitching in. The image of the thin man grew clearer in my mind, but I was still all too aware that it was The Fat Man who was in reality sitting in front of me, grunting to himself and porkily sweating beneath the strain of my efforts.

  But I was lucky: my game was catching on. More of the gremlins joined in, singly at first and then by twos and threes, and I felt their whoops of excitement as they warmed to the task. Presently there were enough of them at it so that I felt safe to drop out; from now on they could do a better job without my own unskilled fumblings to interfere with what they were doing. I withdrew, distancing myself in order to get a better view of the proceedings.

  At first I could see nothing out of the ordinary, except for a slight golden haze that seemed to cling to The Fat Man and blur his outlines a little. And then he started to melt. I mean that literally: great rolls of fat were oozing down from him and evaporating away into immaterial ectoplasm. Slowly what remained of him dissolved into transparency, and within it the lineaments of the thin man began to waver into form. Once, briefly, the old Fat Man seemed all at once to flicker back into being and sit there, flabbily impenetrable—I told you he was strong; and after all he was fighting for his life, such as it was. His lips were shaping the same words over and over and over, as if they were an incantation by which he hoped to save himself: “I don’t believe it... I don’t believe it ... I don’t believe it . . .” But he’d picked the wrong last refuge to fall back on: unbelieving can never save you, as I think I’ve already said. It didn’t save him, certainly: all at once he blinked entirely out of existence, and the thin man was sitting there in his place. His hands were folded on the table in front of him, and a delicately self-satisfied smile was playing on his lips. I think he saw me, somehow—maybe I’d been concentrating so hard that I was partially materialized there in front of him— because he rose from the booth and picked up his cane and made a courteous little bow in my general direction. Then, after turning to brush the bench off fastidiously, he seated himself again. He was wearing white gloves, just as I’d imagined him, and a white carnation in his buttonhole.

  The gremlins dispersed; they’d had their fun. One by one they flickered out; the Storm had died away now, and I guess they figured they’d find more amusement over on The Other Side where the waves wouldn’t quite have spent themselves yet. I let my awareness spread outward once more to take in the whole of Rafferty’s.

  Rafferty himself was standing imperturbably behind the bar, with his arm around Moira. In the rear booth, James Clerk Maxwell was curled up, sound asleep; I took a peek into his mind, and he was dreaming of mice. Across from him, Spassky and Fischer were still immersed in their three-dimensional chess—it was shaping up to a stalemate, just as I’d figured, but the moves they’d been making would give them conversational material for years to come. Byron Wilcox was sitting staring vaguely off into space; I couldn’t tell whether he was inspired or simply in a stupor. At the bar, Louella van Doren had her arm around Isherwood Foster; the poor fellow was still as rigid as a post, but Louella didn’t seem to mind. Soleful Susie stood dabbing at her eyes—her memories of Sam hadn’t quite dissolved away as yet, apparently—while in front of her John Edgar Harding sat hunched forward on the bar, with his chin cradled in his hands. I took a peek at him, and saw that he was mulling over a new insight he’d just had into the nature of the Unrequited Middle.

  The thin man leaned out from his booth and waved delicately to Soleful Susie. She nodded at him, shoved her handkerchief back into her sleeve, and went behind the bar to fetch him another drink. Rafferty let go of Moira and set about mixing it. There was a smile on Moira’s face as she watched him work—a smile of total devotion. I felt a pang of jealousy shimmer through me, but I held it in.

  The thin man got up from his booth and walked gracefully across to the bar. He seated himself on the same stool The Fat Man had occupied earlier. “Nice place you have here,” he said to Rafferty. “A very pleasant atmosphere—very pleasant indeed.”

  “We try to keep things cheerful,” said Rafferty, and Moira nodded approvingly.

  The thin man looked across at Soleful Susie. He smiled at her and she smiled weakly back. Then he turned to Moira. “An attractive young woman, that,” he said to her, loud enough so that Susie could hear. ‘The two of you add a most agreeable touch to the decor.”

  “I like to think so,” Moira said, smiling. And Soleful Susie flushed with pleasure.

  Rafferty turned and set the drink down in front of the thin man.

  “That will be a dollar twenty-five, will it not?” said the thin man, reaching for his billfold.

  Rafferty waved him off. “Oh, no,” he said. “Tonight it ain’t necessary. Tonight I got something to celebrate—drinks are on the house.”

  “On the house?” Louella van Doren said “Isn’t that wonderful, Ishy?” But Isherwood Foster made no reply.

  Byron Wilcox overheard, too. He snapped out of his trance and waved enthusiastically at Susie. But Susie’s attention was fixed on the thin man, so Moira went to take the order instead.

  Old John Edgar Harding raised his head and winked at me. At least, he winked in the general direction of the shelves behind the bar, which was where my major focal node was concentrated just at that moment. I summoned up the energy to half-materialize, and gave him an ectoplasmic wink in return.

  Then I decided to fade—I was interested in seeing how things were going over on The Other Side. I refocused myself, gave myself a Moebius twist, and flipped over. I was feeling more cheerful than I had in a long time—maybe I was finally beginning to get over my unrequited passion for Moira—and I wanted to see what the gremlins had come up with for their latest game. Maybe they’d let me join in; I felt like it just then.

  And that’s the end of this story—at least, it’s as good an end as any. All endings are arbitrary, anyway; there aren’t any such things in Reality. Everything that is stretches on and on and on.

  Maybe you don’t believe that; but you’ll learn eventually. Howard Hopper did, after all; and so did General Wilbur Prescott and Isadora Edison and Lady Beatrice Annabelle Scraggs. Even Edward Everett Peaslake had his intimations, and Ludwig Kleinsdorfer had a theory, as usual. And then there was Barnabas Tobin, of course—he learned his lesson in the end; the Scheme of Things saw to that. Just as it saw to The Fat Man, and just as it’s seen to me.

  Unbelieving can be dangerous, as I told you before. But don’t worry about that—Rafferty has a tonic for it

  You’ll be around sometime, I know. I’m looking forward to seeing you.

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  * * * *

  Science fiction frequently deals with the t
ensions between human nature and technological change . . . and one of its insights is that people are often more rigid than their machines. Take the phenomenon of a new art form: no matter how marvelous it may seem to us today, we can be sure tomorrow’s critics will manage to view its products with a jaundiced eye. So don’t be surprised if Robert Chilson’s critic of the future sounds remarkably like Pauline Kael or John Simon, for a true critic can’t afford to indulge in simple Wonder.