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

like we were going to have any more murders today⁠—Pop had got through the preliminary ingratiations pretty well and the girl and me had had our catharsis⁠—but that would be no excuse for any such stupidity as letting the two of them get near my .38.

Strolling to the cave and back I eased the situation a bit more by saying, “That scream you let off, Pop, really helped. I don’t know what gave you the idea, but thanks.”

“Oh that,” he said. “Forget about it.”

“I won’t,” I told him. “You may say you’ve quit killing, but helped on a do-in today.”

“Ray,” he said a little solemnly, “if it’ll make you feel any happier, I’ll take a bit of the responsibility for every murder that’s been done since the beginning of time.”

I looked at him for a while. Then, “Pop, you’re not by any chance the religious type?” I asked suddenly.

“Lord, no,” he told us.

That struck me as a satisfactory answer. God preserve me from the religious type! We have quite a few of those in the Deathlands. It generally means that they try to convert you to something before they kill you. Or sometimes afterwards.

We completed our errands. I felt a lot more secure with Old Financier’s Friend strapped to my middle. Mother is wonderful but she is not enough.

I dawdled over inspecting the Pilot’s pockets, partly to give my right hand time to come back all the way. And to tell the truth I didn’t much enjoy the job⁠—a corpse, especially such a handsome cadaver as this, just didn’t go with Pop’s brand of light patter.

Pop did up the girl’s hand in high style, bandaging each finger separately and then persuading her to put on a big left-hand work glove he took out of his small pack.

“Lost the right,” he explained, “which was the only one I ever used anyway. Never knew until now why I kept this. How does it feel, Alice?”

I might have known he’d worm her name out of her. It occurred to me that Pop’s ideas of scrounging might extend to Alice’s favors. The urge doesn’t die out when you get old, they tell me. Not completely.

He’d also helped her replace the knife on her stump with the hook.

By that time I’d poked into all the Pilot’s pockets I could get at without stripping him and found nothing but three irregularly shaped blobs of metal, still hot to the touch. Under the charred spots, of course.

I didn’t want the job of stripping him. Somebody else could do a little work, I told myself. I’ve been bothered by bodies before (as who hasn’t, I suppose?) but this one was really beginning to make me sick. Maybe I was cracking up, it occurred to me. Murder is a very wearing business, as all Deathlanders know, and although some crack earlier than others, all crack in the end.

I must have been showing how I was feeling because, “Cheer up, Ray,” Pop said. “You and Alice have done a big murder⁠—I’d say the subject was six foot ten⁠—so you ought to be happy. You’ve drawn a blank on his pockets but there’s still the plane.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, brightening a little. “There’s still the stuff in the plane.” I knew there were some items I couldn’t hope for, like .38 shells, but there’d be food and other things.

“Nuh-uh,” Pop corrected me. “I said the plane. You may have thought it’s wrecked, but I don’t. Have you taken a real gander at it? It’s worth doing, believe me.”

I jumped up. My heart was suddenly pounding. I was glad of an excuse to get away from the body, but there was a lot more in my feelings than that. I was filled with an excitement to which I didn’t want to give a name because it would make the letdown too great.

One of the wide stubby wings of the plane, raking downward so that its tip almost touched the concrete, had hidden the undercarriage of the fuselage from our view. Now, coming around the wing, I saw that there was no undercarriage.

I had to drop to my hands and knees and scan around with my cheek next to the concrete before I’d believe it. The “wrecked” plane was at all points at least six inches off the ground.

I got to my feet again. I was shaking. I wanted to talk but I couldn’t. I grabbed the leading edge of the wing to stop from falling. The whole body of the plane gave a fraction of an inch and then resisted my leaning weight with lazy power, just like a gyroscope.

“Antigravity,” I croaked, though you couldn’t have heard me two feet. Then my voice came back. “Pop, Alice! They got antigravity! Antigravity⁠—and it’s working!”

Alice had just come around the wing and was facing me. She was shaking too and her face was white like I knew mine was. Pop was politely standing off a little to one side, watching us curiously. “Told you you’d won a real prize,” he said in his matter-of-fact way.

Alice wet her lips. “Ray,” she said, “we can get away.”

Just those four words, but they did it. Something in me unlocked⁠—no, exploded describes it better.

“We can go places!” I almost shouted.

“Beyond the dust,” she said. “Mexico City. South America!” She was forgetting the Deathlander’s cynical article of belief that the dust never ends, but then so was I. It makes a difference whether or not you’ve got a means of doing something.

“Rio!” I topped her with. “The Indies. Hong Kong. Bombay. Egypt. Bermuda. The French Riviera!”

“Bullfights and clean beds,” she burst out with. “Restaurants. Swimming pools. Bathrooms!”

“Skindiving,” I took it up with, as hysterical as she was. “Road races and roulette tables.”

“Bentleys and Porsches!”

“Aircoups and DC-4s and Comets!”

“Martinis and hashish and ice cream sodas!”

“Hot food! Fresh coffee! Gambling, smoking, dancing, music, drinks!” I was going to add women, but then I thought of how hard-bitten little Alice would look beside the dream creatures I had in mind. I