If I Were You (9 page)

The razor-ax went
swish,
but O’Brien had jumped back just before it arrived. His agility surprised both himself and Guanella, who had never fought under these grasshoppery conditions.

Around they went. O’Brien, despite his chill, did not feel at all tired, though a corresponding amount of exercise would have laid him up if he had been his normal size. The laughter of the men thundered through the room. O’Brien thought unhappily that as soon as they became bored with this spectacle they would tie a weight to him to make him easier game for their man.

Then a reflection caught his eye. It was a silvery spike lying in a crack of the floor. He snatched it up. It was an ordinary pin, not at all sharp, to his vision, but it would do for a dagger.

Guanella approached, balancing his ax. The minute he raised it, O’Brien leaped at him, stabbing. The point bounced back from Guanella’s hide, which seemed much tougher than ordinary human skin had a right to be. Down they went. Their mutual efforts buffeted O’Brien about so that he hardly knew what he was doing. But he got a glimpse of Guanella’s arm flat on the floor, the handle—the eraser end—of the ax gripped in his fist. With both hands O’Brien drove the point of his pin into the arm. It went in and through and into the wood. Guanella shouted. O’Brien caught up the ax and raced for the door.

He moved so quickly, compared to his normal ponderousness, that the gangsters were caught flat-footed. O’Brien slashed with the rear edge at the ankle of the man at the door. He saw the sock peel down, and the oozing skin after it. Vic roared and jumped, almost stepping on O’Brien, who dashed through and out.

He raced to the bar; a mighty jump took him to the top of a stool, and thence he jumped to the bar-top. He gathered the thermos bottle under his arm. It was a small thermos bottle, but it was still almost as big as he was. But he had no time to ponder on the wonders of size. There was a thunderous explosion behind him, and a bullet ripped along the bar, throwing splinters large enough to bowl him over. He hopped off onto a stool, and thence to the floor, and raced out. He zigzagged, and the shots that followed him went wide.

Outside, he yelled, “Orson!”

Orson Crow, O’Brien’s favorite
hackman
, looked up from his tabloid. Seeing O’Brien bearing down on him, he muttered something about seeing things, and trod on the starter.

“Wait!” shouted O’Brien. “It’s me, Obie! Let me in, quick! Quick, I say!”

He pounded on the door of the cab. Crow still did not recognize him, but at that minute a gangster with a pistol appeared at the door of the Hole in the Wall. Crow at least understood that this animated
billiken
was being pursued with felonious intent. So he threw open the door, almost knocking O’Brien over. O’Brien leaped in.

“McGraw-Hill building, quick!” he gasped. Crow automatically started to obey the order. As the cab roared down Eighth Avenue, O’Brien explained what he could to the bewildered driver.

“Well, now,” he said, “have you got a handkerchief?” When Crow produced one, not exactly clean, O’Brien tied it diaperwise around his middle.

When they reached the McGraw-Hill building, they did not have to ask where McLeod was. There was a huge crowd, and many firemen and policemen in evidence. Some men were trying to rig up a derrick. A searchlight on a firetruck played on the unfortunate McLeod, whose fingers clutched the twenty-first story of the building, and whose feet rested on the pavement. He had had difficulty in the matter of clothes similar to that experienced by O’Brien and Guanella, except that he had, of course, grown out of his clothes instead of shrinking out from under them. Around his waist was wound several turns of rope, and through this in front was thrust an uprooted tree, roots up.

A cop stopped the cab. “You can’t go no closer.”

“But—” said Crow.

“Gawan, I says you can’t go no closer.”

O’Brien said, “Meet me on the south side of the building, Orson. And open this damn door first.”

Crow opened the door. O’Brien scuttled out with his thermos bottle. He scurried through the darkness. The first cop did not even see him. The other persons who saw him did not have a chance to investigate, and assumed that they had suffered a brief illusion. In a few minutes he had dodged around the crowd to the front doors of the building. A fireman saw him coming, but watched him, popeyed, without trying to stop him as he raced through the front door. He kept on through the green-walled corridors until he found a stairway, and started up.

After one flight, he regretted this attempt. The treads were waist-high, and he was getting too tired to leap them, especially with his arms full of thermos bottle. He bounced around to the elevators. The night elevators were working, but the button was far above his reach.

He sat down, panting, for a while. Then he got up and wearily climbed down the whole flight of steps again. He found the night elevator on the ground floor, with the door open.

There was nothing to do but walk in, for all the risks of delay and exposure to Guanella’s friends that such a course involved. The operator did not notice his entrance, and when he spoke the man jumped a foot.

“Say,” he said, “could you take me up to the floor where the giant’s head is?”

The operator looked wildly around the cab. When he saw O’Brien he recoiled as from an angry rattlesnake.

“Well, now,” said O’Brien, “you don’t have to be scared of me. I just want to go up to give the big guy his medicine.”

“You can go up, or you can go back to hell where you came from,” said the operator. “I’m off the stuff for life, I swear!” and then he bolted.

O’Brien wondered what to do now. Then he looked over the controls. He swarmed up onto the operator’s stool, and found that he could just reach the button marked “18” with his thermos bottle. He thumped the button and pulled down on the starter handle. The elevator started up with a rush.

When it stopped, he went out and wandered around the half-lit corridors looking for the side to which McLeod clung. He was completely turned around by now. But his attention was drawn by a rushing, roaring, pulsating sound coming from one corridor. He trotted down that way.

It was all very well to be able to move more actively than you could ordinarily, but O’Brien was beginning to get tired of the enormous distances he had to cover. And the thermos bottle was beginning to weigh tons.

Euclid O’Brien soon found what was causing the racket. It was the tornado of breath going in and out of McLeod’s nose, a part of which could be seen directly in front of the window at the end of the corridor. The nose was a really alarming spectacle. It was lit up with a crisscross of lights from the street lamps and searchlights outside, and by the corridor lights inside. The pores were big enough for O’Brien to stick his thumb into. Sweat ran down it in rippling sheets.

He took a deep breath and jumped from the floor to the windowsill. He could not possibly open the window. But he took a tight grip on the thermos bottle and banged it against the glass. The glass broke.

O’Brien set the thermos bottle down on the sill, put his hands to his mouth, and yelled, “Hey, Mac!”

Nothing happened. Then O’Brien thought about his voice. He remembered that Guanella’s had gone up in pitch when Guanella had drunk the shrinko. No doubt his, O’Brien’s, voice had done likewise. But his voice sounded normal to him, whereas those of ordinary-sized men sounded much deeper. So it followed that something had happened to his hearing as well. Which, for O’Brien, was pretty good thinking.

It was reasonable to infer that both McLeod’s voice and McLeod’s hearing had gone down in pitch when McLeod had gone up in stature. So that to McLeod, O’Brien’s voice would be a batlike squeak, if indeed he could hear it at all.

O’Brien lowered his voice as much as he could and bellowed, in his equivalent of a deep bass, “Hey, Mac! It’s Obie!”

At last the nose moved, and a huge watery eye swam into O’Brien’s vision.

“Ghwhunhts?” said McLeod. At least it sounded like that to O’Brien—a deep rumbling, like that of an approaching subway train.

“Raise your voice!” shouted O’Brien. “Talk—you know—falsetto!”

“Like this?” replied McLeod. His voice was still a deep groan, but it was at least high enough to be intelligible to O’Brien, who clung to the broken edge of the glass while the blast of steamy air from McLeod’s lungs tore past him, whipping his diaper.

“Yeah! It’s Obie!”

“Who’d you say? Can’t recognize you.”

“Euclid O’Brien! I got some stuff to shrink you back with!”

“Oh, Obie! You don’t look no bigger’n a fly! Did you get shrunk, or have I growed some more?”

“Frankie Guanella’s mob shrunk me.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake do something for me! I can’t get my breath, and I’m gonna pass out with the heat, and my legs are gonna bust any minute! I can’t hold on to this building much longer!”

O’Brien waved the thermos bottle.

McLeod thundered: “Whazzat, a pill?”

“It’s a shrinko cocktail! It’ll work all right, on account of that’s what shrunk me. If I can get it open . . .” O’Brien was wrestling with the screw cap. “Here! Can you take this cap between your fingernails and hold on while I twist?”

Carefully McLeod released the grip of one of his hands on the windowsills. He groaned at the increased strain on his legs, but the overloaded bones held somehow. He put his free hand up to O’Brien’s window. O’Brien carefully inserted the cap between the nails of the thumb and forefinger.

“Now pinch, slowly,” he cried. “Not too tight. That’s enough!” He turned the flask while McLeod held the cap.

“All right now, Mac, drop the cap and take hold of the cork!” McLeod did so. O’Brien maneuvered the thermos so that its neck was braced in an angle of the hole in the glass. “Now pull, slow!” he called. The cork came out. O’Brien almost fell backwards off the sill. He clutched at the edge of the glass. It would have cut his hand if he had been larger.

“Stick your mouth up here!”

O’Brien never realized what a repulsive thing a human mouth can be until McLeod’s vast red lips came moistly pouting up at him.

“Closer!” he yelled. He poured the cocktail into the cavern. “Okay, you’ll begin to shrink in a few seconds—I hope.”

Presently he observed that McLeod’s face was actually a little lower.

“You’re shrinking!” he shouted.

The horrible mouth grinned up at him. “You got me just in time!” it roared. “I’d ’a been a dead bartender in another minute.”

“There he is!” shouted somebody behind O’Brien in the corridor. O’Brien looked around. Down toward him ran the three unshrunken gangsters.

He yelled to McLeod, “Mac! Put me on your shoulder, quick!”

McLeod reached for him. O’Brien scrambled out on the window ledge and jumped onto the outstretched palm, which transferred him to McLeod’s bare shoulder. He observed that McLeod’s fingers were bruised and bloody from the strain they had taken in contact with the windowsills. He found a small hair and clung to this. The gangsters’ faces appeared at the window a few feet above him. One of them pointed a gun out through the hole in the pane. McLeod made a snatch at the window with his free hand. The faces disappeared like magic, and O’Brien, over the roar of McLeod’s breath and the clamor in the street far below, fancied he heard the clatter of fleeing feet in the building.

“What happened?” asked McLeod, turning his head slightly and rolling his eyes in an effort to focus on the
mite
on his shoulder.

O’Brien explained, as the windows drifted up past him, shouting up into McLeod’s ear. As they came nearer the street, O’Brien saw hats blown off by the hurricane of McLeod’s breathing. He also saw an ambulance on the edge of the crowd. He figured the ambulance guys must have felt pretty damn silly when they saw the size of their patient.

“What you gonna do next?” asked McLeod. “Swell yourself up? I’d like to help you against Frankie’s gang, but I gotta go to the hospital. My arches are ruined if there isn’t anything else wrong with me.”

“No,” said O’Brien. “I got a better idea. Yes, sir. You just put me down when you get small enough to let go the building.”

Story by story, McLeod lowered himself as he shrank. Soon he was a mere twenty feet tall.

He said, “I can put you down now, Obie.”

“Okay,” said O’Brien. At McLeod’s sudden stooping movement, the nearest people started back. McLeod was still something pretty alarming to have around the house. O’Brien started running again. And again his small size and the uncertain light enabled him to dodge through the crowd before anybody could stop him. He tore around the corner, and then around another corner, and came to Orson Crow’s cab. He banged on the door and hopped in.

“Frankie’s mob is after me!” he gasped.

“Where you wanna go, Chief?” asked Crow, who was now fazed by few things.

“Where could a guy a foot tall buy a suit of clothes this time of night? I’m cold.”

Crow thought for a few seconds. “Some of the big drugstores carry dolls,” he said doubtfully.

“Well, now, you go round to the biggest one you can find, Orson.”

They drew up in front of a drugstore.

O’Brien said, “Now, you go in and buy me one of these dolls. And phone one of the papers to find out what pier a boat for the Far East sails from.”