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

red like the blood⁠—as we shifted our gaze back from the puddle to the dead man, we saw that at three points (points over where you’d expect pockets to be) his gray clothing had charred in small irregularly shaped patches from which threads of black smoke were twisting upward.

Just at that moment, so close as to make me jump in spite of years of learning to absorb shocks stoically⁠—right at my elbow it seemed to (the girl jumped too, I may say)⁠—a voice said, “Done a murder, hey?”

Advancing briskly around the skewily grounded plane from the direction of the cracking plant was an old geezer, a seasoned, hard-baked Deathlander if I ever saw one. He had a shock of bone-white hair, the rest of him that showed from his weathered gray clothing looked fried by the sun’s rays and others to a stringy crisp, and strapped to his boots and weighing down his belt were a good dozen knives.

Not satisfied with the unnerving noise he’d made already, he went on brightly, “Neat job too, I give you credit for that, but why the hell did you have to set the guy afire?”

III

We are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow.

The Undiscovered Self, by Carl Jung

Ordinarily scroungers who hide around on the outskirts until the killing’s done and then come in to share the loot get what they deserve⁠—wordless orders, well backed up, to be on their way at once. Sometimes they even catch an after-clap of the murder urge, if it hasn’t all been expended on the first victim or victims. Yet they will do it, trusting I suppose to the irresistible glamor of their personalities. There were several reasons why we didn’t at once give Pop this treatment.

In the first place we didn’t neither of us have our distance weapons. My revolver and her dart gun were both tucked in the cave back at the edge of the freeway. And there’s one bad thing about a bugger so knife-happy he lugs them around by the carload⁠—he’s generally good at tossing them. With his dozen or so knives Pop definitely outgunned us.

Second, we were both of us without the use of an arm. That’s right, the both of us. My right arm still dangled like a string of sausages and I couldn’t yet feel any signs of it coming undead. While she’d burned her fingers badly grabbing at the gun⁠—I could see their red-splotched tips now as she pulled them out of her mouth for a second to wipe the Pilot’s blood out of her eyes. All she had was her stump with the knife screwed to it. Me, I can throw a knife left-handed if I have to, but you bet I wasn’t going to risk Mother that way.

Then I’d no sooner heard Pop’s voice, breathy and a little high like an old man’s will get, than it occurred to me that he must have been the one who had given the funny scream that had distracted the Pilot’s attention and let us get him. Which incidentally made Pop a quick thinker and imaginative to boot, and meant that he’d helped on the killing.

Besides all that, Pop did not come in fawning and full of extravagant praise, as most scroungers will. He just assumed equality with us right from the start and he talked in an absolutely matter-of-fact way, neither praising nor criticizing one bit⁠—too damn matter-of-fact and open, for that matter, to suit my taste, but then I have heard other buggers say that some old men are apt to get talkative, though I had never worked with or run into one myself. Old people are very rare in the Deathlands, as you might imagine.

So the girl and me just scowled at him but did nothing to stop him as he came along. Near us, his extra knives would be no advantage to him.

“Hum,” he said, “looks a lot like a guy I murdered five years back down Los Alamos way. Same silver monkey suit and almost as tall. Nice chap too⁠—was trying to give me something for a fever I’d faked. That his gun melted? My man didn’t smoke after I gave him his quietus, but then it turned out he didn’t have any metal on him. I wonder if this chap⁠—” He started to kneel down by the body.

“Hands off, Pop!” I gritted at him. That was how we started calling him Pop.

“Why sure, sure,” he said, staying there on one knee. “I won’t lay a finger on him. It’s just that I’ve heard the Alamosers have it rigged so that any metal they’re carrying melts when they die, and I was wondering about this boy. But he’s all yours, friend. By the way, what’s your name, friend?”

“Ray,” I snarled. “Ray Baker.” I think the main reason I told him was that I didn’t want him calling me “friend” again. “You talk too much, Pop.”

“I suppose I do, Ray,” he agreed. “What’s your name, lady?”

The girl just sort of hissed at him and he grinned at me as if to say, “Oh, women!” Then he said, “Why don’t you go through his pockets, Ray? I’m real curious.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I felt that he’d put me on the spot just the same. I was curious about the guy’s pockets myself, of course, but I was also wondering if Pop was alone or if he had somebody with him, and whether there was anybody else in the plane or not⁠—things like that, too many things. At the same time I didn’t want to let on to Pop how useless my right arm was⁠—if I’d just get a twinge of feeling in that arm, I knew I’d feel a lot more confident fast. I knelt down across the body from him, started to lay Mother aside and then hesitated.

The girl gave me an encouraging look, as if to say, “I’ll take