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

drew away from us with a look of loathing. She didn’t say a word, but the look stayed.

Pop drew me aside and whispered, “I think it would be a nice gesture if you and Alice took a blanket and went up and sewed him into it. I noticed a big needle and some thread in her satchel.” He looked me in the eye and added, “You can’t expect this woman to feel any other way toward you, you know. Now or ever.”

He was right of course. I gave Alice the high sign and we got out.

No point in dwelling on the next scene. Alice and me sewed up in a blanket a big guy who’d been dead a day and worked over by vultures. That’s all.

About the time we’d finished, Pop came up.

“She chased me out,” he explained. “She’s getting dressed. When I told her about the plane, she said she was going back to Los Alamos. She’s not fit to travel, of course, but she’s giving herself injections. It’s none of our business. Incidentally, she wants to take the body back with her. I told her how we’d dropped the serum and how you and Alice had helped and she listened.”

The Pilot’s woman wasn’t long after Pop. She must have had trouble getting up the shaft, she had a little trouble even walking straight, but she held her head high. She was wearing a dull silver tunic and sandals and cloak. As she passed me and Alice I could see the look of loathing come back into her eyes, and her chin went a little higher. I thought, why shouldn’t she want us dead? Right now she probably wants to be dead herself.

Pop nodded to us and we hoisted up the body and followed her. It was almost too heavy a load even for the three of us.

As she reached the plane a silver ladder telescoped down to her from below the door. I thought, the Pilot must have had it keyed to her some way, so it would let down for her but nobody else. A very lovely gesture.

The ladder went up after her and we managed to lift the body above our heads, our arms straight, and we walked it through the door of the plane that way, she receiving it.

The door closed and we stood back and the plane took off into the orange haze, us watching it until it was swallowed.

Pop said, “Right now, I imagine you two feel pretty good in a screwed-up sort of way. I know I do. But take it from me, it won’t last. A day or two and we’re going to start feeling another way, the old way, if we don’t get busy.”

I knew he was right. You don’t shake Old Urge Number One anything like that easy.

“So,” said Pop, “I got places I want to show you. Guys I want you to meet. And there’s things to do, a lot of them. Let’s get moving.”

So there’s my story. Alice is still with me (Urge Number Two is even harder to shake, supposing you wanted to) and we haven’t killed anybody lately. (Not since the Pilot, in fact, but it doesn’t do to boast.) We’re making a stab (my language!) at doing the sort of work Pop does in the Deathlands. It’s tough but interesting. I still carry a knife, but I’ve given Mother to Pop. He has it strapped to him alongside Alice’s screw-in blade.

Atla-Hi and Alamos still seem to be in existence, so I guess the serum worked for them generally as it did for the Pilot’s Woman; they haven’t sent us any medals, but they haven’t sent a hangman’s squad after us either⁠—which is more than fair, you’ll admit. But Savannah, turned back from Atla-Hi, is still going strong: there’s a rumor they have an army at the gates of Ouachita right now. We tell Pop he’d better start preaching fast⁠—it’s one of our standard jokes.

There’s also a rumor that a certain fellowship of Deathlanders is doing surprisingly well, a rumor that there’s a new America growing in the Deathlands⁠—an America that never need kill again. But don’t put too much stock in it. Not too much.

Kreativity for Kats

Gummitch peered thoughtfully at the molten silver image of the sun in his little bowl of water on the floor inside the kitchen window. He knew from experience that it would make dark ghost suns swim in front of his eyes for a few moments, and that was mildly interesting. Then he slowly thrust his head out over the water, careful not to ruffle its surface by rough breathing, and stared down at the mirror cat⁠—the Gummitch Double⁠—staring up at him.

Gummitch had early discovered that water mirrors are very different from most glass mirrors. The scentless spirit world behind glass mirrors is an upright one sharing our gravity system, its floor a continuation of the floor in the so-called real world. But the world in a water mirror has reverse gravity. One looks down into it, but the spirit-doubles in it look up at one. In a way water mirrors are holes or pits in the world, leading down to a spirit infinity or ghostly nadir.

Gummitch had pondered as to whether, if he plunged into such a pit, he would be sustained by the spirit gravity or fall forever. (It may well be that speculations of this sort account for the caution about swimming characteristic of most cats.)

There was at least one exception to the general rule. The looking glass on Kitty-Come-Here’s dressing table also opened into a spirit world of reverse gravity, as Gummitch had discovered when he happened to look into it during one of the regular visits he made to the dressing table top, to enjoy the delightful flowery and musky odors emanating from the fragile bottles assembled there.

But exceptions to general rules, as Gummitch knew well, are only doorways to further knowledge and finer classifications. The wind could not