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

“You could walk us over there.”

“Well, maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”

“While you’re deciding, we’ll get swimming. Come along, Joggy.”

Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: Keep on the grass.

He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn’t be hurt. You couldn’t pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: Keep off the grass.

With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.

Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.

“Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!” the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. “Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy.”

“Oh, all right.” Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.

Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.

Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.

It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.

The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.

“There’s the Theater,” Joggy announced.

“I know,” the Butcher said irritably.

But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.

“My father remembers when there wasn’t a Time Theater,” Hal said softly as he scanned the façade’s glowing charts and maps. “Say, they’re viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the BC-AD time scale. It should be interesting.”

“Will it be about Napoleon?” the Butcher asked eagerly. “Or Hitler?” A redheaded adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher’s forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.

“Wrong millennium,” Hal said.

“Tamerlane then?” the Butcher pressed. “He killed cities and piled the skulls. Bloodbath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies.”

Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. “Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can’t see it. How about it, Joggy?”

“They won’t let me in, either.”

“Yes, they will. You’re five years old now.”

“But I don’t feel any older,” Joggy replied doubtfully.

“The feeling comes at six. Don’t worry, the usher will notice the difference.”

Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tightlipped silence like an ancient soldier⁠—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The redheaded adult’s face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.

Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.

Hal looked back. “Honestly, the usher will stop you.”

The Butcher shook his head. “I’m going to think my way in. I’m going to think old.”

“You won’t be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren’t allowed in the Time Theater. There’s a good reason for it⁠—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside.”

“Why?”

“I don’t exactly know, but something.”

“Hah! I bet they’re scared we’d go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement.”

“They are not. I guess they just know you’d get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don’t worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you.”

“Shut up⁠—I’m thinking I’m World Director,” the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.

Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.

But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.

“Do you suppose something’s the matter with his circuits?” Joggy whispered. “Maybe he’s getting racial memories from the Scands.”

“Of course not,” Hal said irritably.

“Brute, get over there,” the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.

The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.

“I told you you couldn’t fool the usher,” Hal said.

The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall