Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley (46 page)

The Milanese businessman looked at the crowd, now swollen to perhaps fifty thousand. Dear God, he thought, if only the Goths would descend again and exterminate these leering Romans! If only the ground would open up and swallow this insane Frenchman! If only he, Giancarlo Morelli, had a dull spoon with which to open up the veins of his wrist!

Jets from the Sixth Fleet thundered overhead, hoping to avert the long-expected
coup d'état
.

The Milanese businessman's own wife was shouting abuse at him: Tonight he would cut out her faithless heart and mail it back to her mother.

What was there to do? In Milan, he would have had this Frenchman's head on a platter. But this was Rome, a southern city, an unpredictable and dangerous place. And legalistically, he was possibly in the wrong, which left him at a further disadvantage in the argument.

“Very well,” he said. “The blowing of the horn was perhaps truly unnecessary, despite the provocation.”

“I insist on a genuine apology,” insisted Cordle.

There was a thundering sound to the east: Thousands of Soviet tanks were moving into battle formation across the plains of Hungary, ready to resist the long-expected NATO thrust into Transylvania. The water supply was cut off in Foggia, Brindisi, Bari. The Swiss closed their frontiers and stood ready to dynamite the passes.

“All right, I apologize!” the Milanese businessman screamed. “I am sorry I provoked you and even sorrier that I was born! Again, I apologize! Now will you go away and let me have a heart attack in peace?”

“I accept your apology,” Cordle said. “No hard feelings, eh?” He strolled back to his car, humming “Blow the Man Down,” and drove away as millions cheered.

War was once again averted by a hairbreadth.

Cordle drove to the Arch of Titus, parked his car, and—to the sound of a thousand trumpets—passed through it. He deserved this triumph as well as any Caesar.

God, he gloated, I was
loathsome!

In England, Cordle stepped on a young lady's toe just inside the Traitors' Gate of the Tower of London. This should have served as an intimation of something. The young lady was named Mavis. She came from Short Hills, New Jersey, and she had long straight dark hair. She was slender, pretty, intelligent, energetic, and she had a sense of humor. She had minor faults, as well, but they play no part in this story. She let Cordle buy her a cup of coffee. They were together constantly for the rest of the week.

“I think I am infatuated,” Cordle said to himself on the seventh day. He realized at once that he had made a slight understatement. He was violently and hopelessly in love.

But what did Mavis feel? She seemed not unfond of him. It was even possible that she might, conceivably, reciprocate.

At that moment, Cordle had a flash of prescience. He realized that one week ago, he had stepped on the toe of his future wife and mother of his two children, both of whom would be born and brought up in a split-level house with inflatable furniture in Summit, New Jersey, or possibly Millburn.

This may sound unattractive and provincial when stated baldly; but it was desirable to Cordle, who had no pretensions to cosmopolitanism. After all, not all of us can live at Cap Ferrat. Strangely enough, not all of us even want to.

That day, Cordle and Mavis went to the Marshall Gordon Residence in Belgravia to see the Byzantine miniatures. Mavis had a passion for Byzantine miniatures that seemed harmless enough at the time. The collection was private, but Mavis had secured invitations through a local Avis manager, who was trying very hard, indeed.

They came to the Gordon Residence, an awesome Regency building in Huddlestone Mews. They rang. A butler in full evening dress answered the door. They showed the invitations. The butler's glance and lifted eyebrow showed that they were carrying second-class invitations of the sort given to importunate art poseurs on seventeen-day all-expense economy flights, rather than the engraved first-class invitations given to Picasso, Jackie Onassis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Norman Mailer, Charles Goren, and other movers and shakers of the world.

The butler said, “Oh, yes....” Two words that spoke black volumes. His face twitched, he looked like a man who has received an unexpected visit from Tamerlane and a regiment of his Golden Horde.

“The miniatures,” Cordle reminded him.

“Yes, of course.... But I am afraid, sir, that no one is allowed into the Gordon Residence without a coat and necktie.”

It was an oppressive August day. Cordle was wearing a sport shirt. He said, “Did I hear you correctly? Coat and necktie?”

The butler said, “That is the rule, sir.”

Mavis asked, “Couldn't you make an exception this once?”

The butler shook his head. “We really must stick by the rules, miss. Otherwise ...” He left the fear of vulgarity unsaid, but it hung in the air like a chrome-plated fart.

“Of course,” Cordle said, pleasantly. “Otherwise. So it's a coat and tie, is it? I think we can arrange that.”

Mavis put a hand on his arm and said, “Howard, let's go. We can come back some other time.”

“Nonsense, my dear. If I may borrow your coat....”

He lifted the white raincoat from her shoulders and put it on, ripping a seam. “There we go, mate!” he said briskly to the butler. “That should do it,
n'est-ce pas
?”

“I think
not
,” the butler said, in a voice bleak enough to wither artichokes. “In any event, there is the matter of the necktie.”

Cordle had been waiting for that. He whipped out his sweaty handkerchief and knotted it around his neck.

“Suiting you?” he leered, in an imitation of Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto, which only he appreciated.

“
Howard! Let's go!”

Cordle waited, smiling steadily at the butler, who was sweating for the first time in living memory.

“I'm afraid, sir, that that is not—”

“Not what?”

“Not precisely what was meant by coat and tie.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” Cordle said in a loud, unpleasant voice, “that you are an arbiter of men's clothing as well as a door opener?”

“Of course not! But this impromptu attire—”

“What has ‘impromptu' got to do with it? Are people supposed to prepare three days in advance just to pass your inspection?”

“You are wearing a woman's waterproof and a soiled handkerchief,” the butler stated stiffly. “I think there is no more to say.”

He began to close the door. Cordle said, “You do that, sweetheart, and I'll have you up for slander and defamation of character. Those are serious charges over here, buddy, and I've got witnesses.”

Aside from Mavis, Cordle had collected a small, diffident, but interested crowd.

“This is becoming entirely too ridiculous,” the butler said, temporizing, the door half closed.

“You'll find a stretch at Wormwood Scrubs even more ridiculous,” Cordle told him. “I intend to persecute—I mean prosecute.”

“
Howard!”
cried Mavis.

He shook off her hand and fixed the butler with a piercing glance. He said, “I am Mexican, though perhaps my excellent grasp of the English has deceived you. In my country, a man would cut his own throat before letting such an insult pass unavenged. A woman's coat, you say?
Hombre
, when I wear a coat, it becomes a
man's
coat. Or do you imply that I am a
maricón
, a—how do you say it?—homosexual?”

The crowd—becoming less modest—growled approval. Nobody except a lord loves a butler.

“I meant no such implication,” the butler said weakly.

“Then is it a man's coat?”

“Just as you wish, sir.”

“Unsatisfactory! The innuendo still exists. I go now to find an officer of the law.”

“Wait, let's not be hasty,” the butler said. His face was bloodless and his hands were shaking. “Your coat is a man's coat, sir.”

“And what about my necktie?”

The butler made a final attempt at stopping Zapata and his blood-crazed peons.

“Well, sir, a handkerchief is demonstrably—”

“What I wear around my neck,” Cordle said coldly, “becomes what it is intended to be. If I wore a piece of figured silk around my throat, would you call it ladies' underwear? Linen is a suitable material for a tie,
verdad?
Function defines terminology, don't you agree? If I ride to work on a cow, no one says that I am mounted on a steak. Or do you detect a flaw in my argument?”

“I'm afraid that I don't fully understand it....”

“Then how can you presume to stand in judgment over it?”

The crowd, which had been growing restless, now murmured approval.

“Sir,” cried the wretched butler, “I beg of you ...”

“
Otherwise,”
Cordle said with satisfaction, “I have a coat, a necktie, and an invitation. Perhaps you would be good enough to show us the Byzantine miniatures?”

The butler opened wide the door to Pancho Villa and his tattered hordes. The last bastion of civilization had been captured in less than an hour. Wolves howled along the banks of the Thames, Morelos's barefoot army stabled its horses in the British Museum, and Europe's long night had begun.

Cordle and Mavis viewed the collection in silence. They didn't exchange a word until they were alone and strolling through Regent's Park.

“Look, Mavis,” Cordle began.

“No, you look,” she said. “You were horrible! You were unbelievable! You were—I can't find a word rotten enough for what you were! I never dreamed that you were one of those sadistic bastards who get their kicks out of humiliating people!”

“But, Mavis, you heard what he said to me, you heard the way—”

“He was a stupid, bigoted old man,” Mavis said. “I thought you were not.”

“But he said—”

“It doesn't matter. The fact is, you were enjoying yourself!”

“Well, yes, maybe you're right,” Cordle said. “Look, I can explain.”

“Not to me, you can't. Ever. Please stay away from me, Howard. Permanently. I mean that.”

The future mother of his two children began to walk away, out of his life. Cordle hurried after her.

“Mavis!”

“I'll call a cop, Howard, so help me, I will! Just leave me alone!”

“Mavis, I love you!”

She must have heard him, but she kept on walking. She was a sweet and beautiful girl and definitely, unchangeably, an onion.

Cordle was never able to explain to Mavis about The Stew and about the necessity for experiencing behavior before condemning it. Moments of mystical illumination are seldom explicable. He
was
able to make her believe that he had undergone a brief psychotic episode, unique and unprecedented and—with her—never to be repeated.

They are married now, have one girl and one boy, live in a split-level house in Plainfield, New Jersey, and are quite content. Cordle is visibly pushed around by Fuller Brush men, fund solicitors, headwaiters, and other imposing figures of authority. But there is a difference.

Cordle makes a point of taking regularly scheduled, solitary vacations. Last year, he made a small name for himself in Honolulu. This year, he is going to Buenos Aires.

I
T WAS
Land Race Day—a time of vaunting hope and unrelieved tragedy, a day which epitomized the unhappy twenty-first century. Steve Baxter had tried to reach the starting line early, like the other contestants, but had miscalculated the amount of time he would require. Now he was in trouble. His Participant's Badge had got him through the outer exocrowd without incident. But neither badge nor brawn could be relied upon to carry a man through the obdurate inner core of humanity which made up the endocrowd.

Baxter estimated this inner mass at 8.7 density—not far from the pandemic level. A flash point might occur at any moment, despite the fact that the authorities had just aerosoled the endocrowd with tranquillizers. Given enough time, a man might circle around them; but Baxter had only six minutes before the race began.

Despite the risk, he pushed his way directly into their ranks. On his face he wore a fixed smile—absolutely essential when dealing with a high-density human configuration. He could see the starting line now, a raised dais in Jersey City's Glebe Park. The other contestants were already there. Another twenty yards, Steve thought; if only the brutes don't stampede!

But deep within the corecrowd he still had to penetrate the final nuclear mob. This was composed of bulky, slack-jawed men with unfocused eyes—agglutinating hysterophiliacs, in the jargon of the pandemiologists. Jammed together sardine fashion, reacting as a single organism, these men were incapable of anything but blind resistance and irrational fury towards anything that tried to penetrate their ranks.

Steve hesitated for a moment. The nuclear mob, more dangerous than the fabled water buffaloes of antiquity, glared at him, their nostrils flared, their heavy feet shuffling ominously.

Without allowing himself time to think, Baxter plunged into their midst. He felt blows on his back and shoulders and heard the terrifying
urrr
of a maddened endomob. Shapeless bodies jammed against him, suffocating him, relentlessly pressing closer and closer.

Then, providentially, the authorities turned on the Muzak. This ancient and mysterious music, which for over a century had pacified the most intractable berserkers, did not fail now. The endomob was decibeled into a temporary immobility, and Steve Baxter clawed his way through to the starting line.

The chief judge had already begun to read the Prospectus. Every contestant and most of the spectators knew this document by heart. Nevertheless, by law the terms had to be stated.

“Gentlemen,” the judge read, “you are here assembled to take part in a race for the acquisition of public-domain lands. You fifty fortunate men have been chosen by public lottery from fifty million registrants in the South Westchester region. The race will proceed from this point to the registration line at the Land Office in Times Square, New York—an adjusted approximate mean distance of 5.7 statute miles. You contestants are permitted to take any route; to travel on the surface, above, or below ground. The only requirement is that you finish in person, substitutes not being permitted. The first ten finalists—”