Short Fiction Fritz Leiber (free e books to read .txt) 📖

His face gleamed. He was rubbing butter into it.

“Another day, another pack of troubles,” he said cheerfully.

The tone of his remark jangled my nerves, as that tone generally does early in the morning. I squeezed my eyes. “Where are we?” I asked.

He poked his elbow toward the North America screen. The two green dots were almost one.

“My God, we’re practically there,” Alice said for me. She’d waked fast, Deathlands style.

“I know,” Pop said, concentrating on what he was doing, “but I aim to be shaved before they commence landing maneuvers.”

“You think automatic will land us?” Alice asked. “What if we just start circling around?”

“We can figure out what to do when it happens,” Pop said, whittling away at his chin. “Until then, I’m not interested. There’s still a couple of bottles of coffee in the sack. I’ve had mine.”

I didn’t join in this chitchat because the green dots and Alice’s first remark had reminded me of a lot deeper reason for my jangled nerves than Pop’s cheerfulness. Night was gone, with its shielding cloak and its feeling of being able to talk forever, and the naked day was here, with its demands for action. It is not so difficult to change your whole view of life when you are flying, or even bumping along above the ground with friends who understand, but soon, I knew, I’d be down in the dust with something I never wanted to see again.

“Coffee, Ray?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I took the bottle from Alice and wondered whether my face looked as glum as hers.

“They shouldn’t salt butter,” Pop asserted. “It makes it lousy for shaving.”

“It was the best butter,” Alice said.

“Yeah,” I said. “The Dormouse, when they buttered the watch.”

It may be true that feeble humor is better than none. I don’t know.

“What are you two yakking about?” Pop demanded.

“A book we both read,” I told him.

“Either of you writers?” Pop asked with sudden interest. “Some of the boys think we should have a book about us. I say it’s too soon, but they say we might all die off or something. Whoa, Jenny! Easy does it. Gently, please!”

That last remark was by way of recognizing that the plane had started an authoritative turn to the left. I got a sick and cold feeling. This was it.

Pop sheathed his knife and gave his face a final rub. Alice belted on her satchel. I reached for my knapsack, but I was staring through the viewport, dead ahead.

The haze lightened faintly, three times. I remembered the St. Elmo’s fire that had flamed from the cracking plant.

“Pop,” I said⁠—almost whined, to be truthful, “why’d the bugger ever have to land here in the first place? He was rushing stuff they needed bad at Atla-Hi⁠—why’d he have to break his trip?”

“That’s easy,” Pop said. “He was being a bad boy. At least that’s my theory. He was supposed to go straight to Atla-Hi, but there was somebody he wanted to check up on first. He stopped here to see his girlfriend. Yep, his girlfriend. She tried to warn him off⁠—that’s my explanation of the juice that flared out of the cracking plant and interfered with his landing, though I’m sure she didn’t intend the last. By the way, whatever she turned on to give him the warning must still be turned on. But Grayl came on down in spite of it.”

Before I could assimilate that, the seven deformed gas tanks materialized in the haze. We got the freeway in our sights and steadied and slowed and kept slowing. The plane didn’t graze the cracking plant this time, though I’d have sworn it was going to hit it head on. When I saw we weren’t going to hit it, I wanted to shut my eyes, but I couldn’t.

The stain was black now and the Pilot’s body was thicker than I remembered⁠—bloated. But that wouldn’t last long. Three or four vultures were working on it.

VII

Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.

“A Forsaken Garden”, by Charles Swinburne

Pop was first down. Between us we helped Alice. Before joining them I took a last look at the control panel. The cracking plant button was up again and there was a blue nimbus on another button. For Los Alamos, I supposed. I was tempted to push it and get away solo, but then I thought, nope, there’s nothing for me at the other end and the loneliness will be worse than what I got to face here. I climbed out.

I didn’t look at the body, although we were practically on top of it. I saw a little patch of silver off to one side and remembered the gun that had melted. The vultures had waddled off but only a few yards.

“We could kill them,” Alice said to Pop.

“Why?” he responded. “Didn’t some Hindus use them to take care of dead bodies? Not a bad idea, either.”

“Parsees,” Alice amplified.

“Yep, Parsees, that’s what I meant. Give you a nice clean skeleton in a matter of days.”

Pop was leading us past the body toward the cracking plant. I heard the flies buzzing loudly. I felt terrible. I wanted to be dead myself. Just walking along after Pop was an awful effort.

“His girl was running a hidden observation tower here,” Pop was saying now. “Weather and all that, I suppose. Or maybe setting up a robot station of some kind. I couldn’t tell you about her before, because you were both in a mood to try to rub out anybody remotely connected with the Pilot. In fact, I did my best to lead you astray, letting you think I’d been the one to scream and all. Even now, to be honest about it, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing telling and showing you all this, but a man’s got to take some risks whatever he does.”

“Say, Pop,” I said