Nightmares & Geezenstacks (8 page)

If you’ve ever seen an expectant father pacing the waiting room of a hospital lighting cigarette after cigarette-usually at the wrong end if it’s a filter-tip—you know how worried he acts.

But if you think that that is worry, take a look at Jonathan Quinby, pacing the room outside a delivery room. Quinby is not only lighting the wrong ends of his filter-tips but is actually smoking them that way, without tasting the difference.

He’s really got something to worry about. It had started when they had last visited a zoo one evening. “Last visited” is true in both senses of the phrase; Quinby would never go within miles of one again, ever, nor would his wife. She had fallen, you see, into—

But there is something that must be explained, so you may understand what happened that evening. In his younger days Quinby had been an ardent student of magic—real magic, not the slight-of-hand variety. Unfortunately charms and incantations did not work for him, however effective they might be for others.

Except for one incantation, one that let him change a human being into any animal he chose and (by saying the same incantation backward) back again into a human being. A vicious or vengeful man would have found this ability useful, but Quinby was neither vicious nor vengeful and after a few experiments—with subjects who had volunteered out of curiosity—he had never made use of it.

When, ten years ago at the age of thirty, he had fallen in love and married, he had used it once more, simply to satisfy his wife’s curiosity. When he had told her about it, she had doubted him and challenged him to prove it, and he had changed her briefly into a Siamese cat. She had then made him promise never to use his supernormal ability again, and he had kept that promise ever since.

Except once, the evening of their visit to the zoo. They had been walking along the path, with no one in sight but themselves, that led past the sunken bear pits. They’d looked for bears but all of them had retired into the cave portion of their quarters for the night. Then—well, his wife had leaned a little too far over the railing; she lost her balance and fell into a pit. Miraculously, she landed unhurt.

She was getting to her feet and looking up at him; she put her finger to her lips and then pointed to the entrance to the den. He understood; she wanted him to get help but quietly, lest any sound might waken the sleeping bear in its den. He nodded and was turning away when a gasp from his wife made him look down again—and see that it would be too late to get help.

A young male grizzly bear was already coming out of the den entrance. Growling ominously and heading toward her, ready to kill.

There was only one thing that could possibly be done in time to save his wife’s life, and Jonathan Quinby did it. Male grizzly bears do not kill female grizzly bears.

They have other ideas though. Quinby stood wringing his hands in helpless anguish as he was forced to witness what was happening to his wife in the bear pit. But after a while the male grizzly went back into his den and—ready ‘to change her back on a second’s notice if the male should again emerge—Quinby said the incantation backward and brought his wife back to her proper form. He told her that if she could find footholds in the rocks and climb part way up, he could reach down and pull her the rest of the way. In a few minutes she was safely out of the pit. White and shaken, they had taken a taxi home. Once there, they agreed never to discuss the matter again; there was nothing else he could have done but watch her be killed.

Nor had they discussed it again, for a few weeks. But then-well, they’d been married ten years and had wanted children but no children had come. Now three weeks after her horrible experience in the pit she was—with
child?

Have you ever seen an expectant father pacing a hospital waiting room, looking like the most worried man on Earth? Then consider Quinby, who’s right now pacing and waiting. For what?

There was a greenish, hellish tinge to the light within the metal cube. It was a light that made the dead-white skin of the creature seated at the controls seem faintly green.

A single, faceted eye, front center in the head, watched the seven dials unwinkingly. Since they had left Xandor that eye had never once wavered from the dials. Sleep was unknown to the race to which Kar-388Y belonged. Mercy, too, was unknown. A single glance at the sharp, cruel features below the faceted eye would have proved that.

The pointers on the fourth and seventh dials came to a stop. That meant the cube itself had stopped in space relative to its immediate objective. Kar reached forward with his upper right arm and threw the stabilizer switch. Then he rose and stretched his cramped muscles.

Kar turned to face his companion in the cube, a being like himself. “We are here,” he said. “The first stop, Star Z-5689. It has nine planets, but only the third is habitable. Let us hope we find creatures here who will make suitable slaves for Xandor.”

Lal-16B, who had sat in rigid mobility during the journey, rose and stretched also. “Let us hope so, yes. Then we can return to Xandor and be honored while the fleet comes to get them. But let’s not hope too strongly. To meet with success at the first place we stop would be a miracle. We’ll probably have to look a thousand places.”

Kar shrugged. “Then we’ll look a thousand places. With the Lounacs dying off, we must have slaves else our mines must close and our race will die.”

He sat down at the controls again and threw a switch that activated a visiplate that would show what was beneath them. He said, “We are above the night side of the third planet. There is a cloud layer below us. I’ll use the manuals from here.”

He began to press buttons. A few minutes later he said, “Look, Lal, at the visiplate. Regularly spaced lights—a city! The planet is inhabited.”

Lal had taken his place at the other switchboard, the fighting controls. Now he too was examining dials. “There is nothing for us to fear. There is not even the vestige of a force field around the city. The scientific knowledge of the race is crude. We can wipe the city out with one blast if we are attacked.”

“Good,” Kar said. “But let me remind you that destruction is not our purpose—yet. We want specimens. If they prove satisfactory and the fleet comes and takes as many thousand I slaves as we need, then will be time to destroy not a city but the whole planet. So that their civilization will never progress to the point where they’ll be able to launch reprisal raids.”

Lal adjusted a knob. “All right. I’ll put on the megrafield I and we’ll be invisible to them unless they see far into the ultraviolet, and, from the spectrum of their sun, I doubt that they do.”

As the cube descended the light within it changed from green to violet and beyond. It came to a gentle rest. Kar manipulated the mechanism that operated the airlock.

He stepped outside, Lal just behind him. “Look,” Kar said, “two bipeds. Two arms, two eyes—not dissimilar to the Lounacs, although smaller. Well, here are our specimens.”

He raised his lower left arm, whose three-fingered hand held a thin rod wound with wire. He pointed it first at one of the creatures, then at the other. Nothing visible emanated from the end of the rod, but they both froze instantly into statuelike figures.

“They’re not large, Kar,” Lal said. “I’ll carry one back, you carry the other. We can study them better inside the cube, after we’re back in space.”

Kar looked about him in the dim light. “All right, two is enough, and one seems to be male and the other female. Let’s get going.”

A minute later the cube was ascending and as soon as they were well out of the atmosphere, Kar threw the stabilizer switch and joined Lal, who had been starting a study of the specimens during the brief ascent.

“Vivaparous,” said Lal. “Five-fingered, with hands suited to reasonably delicate work. But—let’s try the most important test, intelligence.”

Kar got the paired headsets. He handed one pair to Lal, who put one on his own head, one on the head of one of the specimens. Kar did the same with the other specimen.

After a few minutes, Kar and Lal stared at each other bleakly.

“Seven points below minimum,” Kar said. “They could not be trained even for the crudest labor in the mines. Incapable of understanding the most simple instructions. Well, we’ll take them back to the Xandor museum.”

“Shall I destroy the planet?”

“No,” Kar said. “Maybe a million years from now—if our race lasts that long—they’ll have evolved enough to become suitable for our purpose. Let us move on to the next star with planets.”

The make-up editor of the
Milwaukee Star
was in the composing room, supervising the closing of the local page. Jenkins, the head make-up compositor, was pushing in leads to tighten the second last column.

“Room for one more story in the eighth column, Pete,” he said. “About thirty-six picas. There are two there in the overset that will fit. Which one shall 1 use?”

The make-up editor glanced at the type in the galleys lying on the stone beside the chase. Long practice enabled him to read the headlines upside down at a glance. “The convention story and the zoo story, huh? Oh, hell, run the convention story. Who cares if the zoo director thinks two monkeys disappeared off Monkey Island last night?”

Robert Palmer met his mermaid one midnight along the ocean front somewhere between Cape Cod and Miami. He was staying with friends but had not yet felt sleepy when they retired and had gone for a walk along the brightly moonlit beach. He rounded a curve in the shoreline and there she was, sitting on a log embedded in the sand, combing her beautiful, long black hair.

Robert knew, of course, that mermaids don’t really exist—but, extant or not, there she was. He walked closer and when he was only a few steps away he cleared his throat.

With a startled movement she threw back her hair, which had been hiding her face and her breasts, and he saw that she was more beautiful than he had thought it possible for any creature to be.

She stared at him, her deep-blue eyes wide with fright at first. Then, “Are you a man?” she asked.

Robert didn’t have any doubts on that point; he assured her that he was. The fear went out of her eyes and she smiled. “I’ve heard of men but never met one.” She motioned for him to sit down beside her on the embedded log.

Robert didn’t hesitate. He sat down and they talked and talked, and after a while his arm went around her and when at last she said that she must return to the sea, he kissed her good night and she promised to meet him again the next midnight.

He went back to his friends’ house in a bright daze of happiness. He was in love.

For three nights in a row he saw her, and on the third night he told her that he loved her, that he would like to marry her—but that there was a problem—

“I love you too, Robert. And the problem you have in mind can be solved. I’ll summon a Triton.”

“Triton? 1 seem to know the word, but—”

“A sea demon. He has magical powers and can change things for us so we can marry, and then he’ll marry us. Can you swim well? We’ll have to swim out to meet him; Tritons never come quite to the shore.”

He assured her that he was an excellent swimmer, and she promised to have the Triton there the next night.

He went back to his friends’ house in a state of ecstasy. He didn’t know whether the Triton would change his beloved into a human being or change him into a merman, but he didn’t care. He was so mad about her that as long as they would both be the same, and able to marry, he didn’t care in which form it would be.

She was waiting for him the next night, their wedding night. “Sit down,” she told him. “The Triton will blow his conch shell trumpet when he arrives.”

They sat with their arms around each other until they heard the sound of a conch shell trumpet blowing far out on the water. Robert quickly stripped off his clothes and carried her into the water; they swam until they reached the Triton. Robert treaded water while the Triton asked them, “Do you wish to be joined in marriage?” They each said a fervent “I do.”

“Then,” said the Triton, “I pronounce you merman and merwife.” And Robert found himself no longer treading water; a few movements of a strong sinuous tail kept him at the surface easily. The Triton blew a note on his conch shell trumpet, deafening at so close a range, and swam away.

Robert swam to his wife’s side, put his arms around her and kissed her. But something was wrong; the kiss was pleasant but there was no real thrill, no stirring in his loins as there had been when he had kissed her on shore. In fact, he suddenly realized, he had no loins that he could detect. But how—?

“But how—?” he asked her. “I mean, darling, how do we—?”

“Propagate? It’s simple, dear, and nothing like the messy way land creatures do it. You see, mermaids are mammalian but oviparous. I lay an egg when the time comes and when it hatches I nurse our merchild. Your part—”

“Yes?” asked Robert anxiously.

“Like other fishes, dear. You simply swim over the egg and fertilize it. There’s nothing to it.”

Robert groaned, and suddenly deciding to drown himself, he let go of his bride and started swimming toward the bottom of the sea.

But of course he had gills and didn’t drown.

Three little owls lived with their mother in a hollow tree in the middle of the woods.

“My children,” she would say to them, “you must
never, never
go out in the daytime. Night is the time for little owls to be out. Never when the sun is shining.”

“Yes, Mother,” the three little owls would chorus.

But, thought each little owl to himself, I’d like to try it just once to find out why I shouldn’t.

As long as their mother was there by day to watch them, they minded her. But one day she went away for a while.

The first little owl looked at the second little owl and said, “Let’s try it.” And the third little owl looked at both of them and said, “What are we waiting for?”

Out of the hollow tree they went, into the bright sunlight in which owls, whose eyes are made for night, can see but poorly.

The first little owl flew to the next tree. He sat on a limb and blinked in the bright sunlight.

Just then bang! went a gun under the tree and a bullet took a feather out of his tail. “
Hooooo
,” said the first little owl and he flew home again before the hunter could shoot a second time.

The second little owl flew down to the ground. He blinked twice and looked around him, and just as he turned his head he saw a big red fox come from behind a bush.

“Grrrrr,” said the fox, and he jumped at the second little owl. “
Hooooo
,” said the second little owl and, just in time, he flew away, back to the hollow tree.

The third little owl flew up as high as he could fly. When his wings were tired he soared down again toward the hollow tree that was his home, and perched on its highest branch to rest.

He looked down and saw that a big wildcat crouched on a limb of the tree. The wildcat had not seen the third little owl, perched above him, but he was watching the round black hole in the tree that led to home and safety for the third little owl.

“
Hooooo
,” said the third little owl, but he said it to himself so the wildcat would not hear. He looked about him to find a way to get safely home.

He saw a thorn tree nearby and flew to it. He broke off a thorn with his beak and held it very tightly. Without making a sound he flew back and stuck the sharp thorn into a tender part of the wildcat, just as hard as he could.

“
Eeeeeeouw
,” said the wildcat. He tried to get up and to turn and to jump, all at once, and he fell off the limb. The wildcat’s head hit the limb below and then he fell on down and landed right on top of the hunter’s head. The hunter dropped his gun. and fell, and the gun went off
bang!
and shot the fox, who had been hiding behind a bush.

“
Hooooo
,” said the third little owl. His beak hurt badly because he had held the thorn very tightly and had thrust it as hard as he could, but he did not mind that now.

He went proudly into the hollow tree and told his two brothers that he had killed a wildcat, a hunter, and a fox.

“You must have dreamed it,” said the first little owl.

“You certainly must have dreamed it,” said the second little owl.

“Wait until night and I’ll show you,” said the third little owl.

The wildcat and the hunter were only stunned. After a while the wildcat came to, and slinked away. Then the hunter woke up; he found the fox that his gun had shot when he dropped it, and took the fox and went home.

When night came, the three little owls came out of the tree.

The third little owl looked and looked, but he could not find the wildcat, the hunter, or the fox. “
Hooooo
,” he said. “You are right. I must have dreamed it.”

They all agreed that it was not safe to go out when the sun was shining, and that their mother had been right. The first little owl thought so because he had been shot at by a hunter, and the second little owl thought so because he had been jumped at by a fox.

But the third little owl thought so most of all, because the dream he had dreamed had left his beak very tender and it hurt him so badly to try to eat that he went hungry all day.

MORAL:
Stay home by day. Matinees can get you in trouble.