The R a Lafferty Fantastic Megapack Page 4

  “No tricks from you now. I will not be taken.”

  “Just one to show I have the power. Stand back so I can’t reach you.”

  “I’m not likely to let you.”

  “And hold up a pound note in one hand as tightly as you can. I will only flick my handkerchief and the note will be in my hand and no longer in yours.”

  “Man I defy you. You cannot do it.”

  He held the note very tightly and closed his eyes with the effort. Mazuma flicked his handkerchief, but the Scotsman was right. He could not do it. This was the only time that Mazuma ever failed. Though the world quivered on its axis (and it did) yet the note was held so tightly that no power could dislodge it. But when the world quivered on its axis the effect was that Mazuma was now standing outside the cell and the Scotsman was within. And when the Chief came some minutes later Mazuma was gone and the Scotch jailer stood locked in the cell, his eyes still closed and the pound note yet held aloft in a grip of steel. So he was fired, or cashiered as the Old Worlders call it, for taking a bribe and letting a prisoner escape. And this is what usually comes as punishment to overly suspicious persons.

  * * * *

  Katie still used the Inverted Pyramid and very effectively. Mazuma did not really have an unfailing talent for picking winners. He’d only said that to get Kate to marry him, and it was the best lie he ever told. But he did have an infallible talent for many things, and they thrived.

  The first little cloud in the sky came once when they passed a plowman in a field in the fat land of Belgium.

  “Ah, there is a happy man,” said Mazuma. “Happy at work.”

  “Happy at work? O my God, what did you say? What kind of words are these, my husband?”

  But in the months and years that followed, this frightening incident was forgotten.

  The couple became the pride of Wreckville when they returned as they did several times a year and told their stories. Like the time the state troopers ran them down and cornered them with drawn guns.

  “O, we don’t want to take you in. We’ll report that we couldn’t catch you. Only tell us how you do it. We don’t want to be troopers all our lives.”

  And the time they ran a little house in Faro Town itself. It was a small upstairs place and Katie played the piano, and they had only one bartender, a faded little blonde girl with a cast in one eye, and only one table where Mazuma presided. And this where all the other Casinos were palaces that would make Buckingham look like a chicken coop.

  And the funny thing is that they took in no money at all. The barmaid would always say all drinks were ten dollars, or failing that they were on the house; as they used no coin and had trays in the register for only tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands. It was too much trouble to do business any other way.

  Katie would bait her money jar with several hundred dollar bills and one or two larger, and demurely refuse anything smaller for selections as she didn’t want the jar filled up with wrapping paper. So she would tinkle along all night and all drinks were on the house, which was not too many as only three could sit at the bar at once.

  And Mazuma never shook or dealt a game. He had only blue chips as he said any other color hurt his eyes. And no matter what the price of the chips, it was legendary and gained zeros as it was retold.

  Several of the larger sports came up the stairs out of curiosity. And their feelings were hurt when they were told they were too little to play, for they weren’t little at all. So Mazuma sat all night Monday through Friday and never cut a hand or shook a bone.

  Then on Saturday night the really big boys came upstairs to see what it was about. They were the owners of the nine big Casinos in town, and six of these gentlemen had to sit on boxes. Their aggregate worth would total out a dollar and thirteen cents to every inhabitant of the U.S.

  Katie tinkled tunes all night for a hundred to five hundred dollars a selection, and Mazuma dealt on the little table. And when the sun came up they owned a share of all nine of the big Casinos, and had acquired other assets besides.

  Of course these stories of Katie and Mazuma were topped, as about half the Wrecks went on the road, and they had some fancy narrations when they got back to Wreckville.

  * * * *

  And then the bottom fell out of the world.

  They had three beautiful children now. The oldest was three years old and he could already shake, deal, shuffle, and con with the best of them. He knew the Golden Gambit and the Four Quarters and the Nine Dollar Dog and Three Fish Out. And every evening he came in with a marble bag full of half dollars and quarters that he had taken from the children in the neighborhood. The middle child was two, but already she could calculate odds like lightning, and she picked track winners in her dreams. She ran sucker ads in the papers and had set up a remunerative mail-order business. The youngest was only one and could not yet talk. But he carried chalk and a slate and marked up odds and made book, and was really quite successful in a small way. He knew the Four Diamond trick and the Two Story Chicken Coop, the Thimbling Reverse and the Canal Boat Cut. They were intelligent children and theirs was a happy home.

  * * * *

  One day Mazuma said, “We ought to get out of it, Kate.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Get out of the business. Raise the children in a more wholesome atmosphere. Buy a farm and settle down.”

  “You mean the Blue Valley Farmer trick? Is it old enough to be new yet? And it takes nearly three weeks to set it up, and it never did pay too well for all the trouble.”

  “No, I do not mean the Blue Valley Farmer trick. I don’t mean any trick, swindle, or con. I think we should get out of the whole grind and go to work like honest people.”

  And when she heard these terrible words Katie fell into a dead faint.

  * * * *

  That is all of it. He was not a Wreck. He was a common trickster and he had caught the sickness of repentance. The bottom had fallen out of the world indeed. The three unsolvable problems of the Greeks were squaring the circle, trisecting the angle, and re-bottoming the world. They cannot be done.

  * * * *

  They have been separated for many years. The three children were reared by their father under the recension and curse of Adam. One is a professor of mathematics, but I doubt if he can figure odds as rapidly as he could when he was one year old. The middle one is now a grand lady, but she has lost the facility of picking track winners in her dreams and much else that made her charming. And the oldest one is a senator from a state that I despise.

  And Katie is now the wisest old witch in Wreckville. But she has never quite been forgiven her youthful indiscretion when she married an Adamite who felt like his ancient father and deigned to work for a living.

  SEVEN-DAY TERROR

  Originally published in If, March 1962.

  “Is there anything you want to make disappear?” Clarence Willoughby asked his mother.

  “A sink full of dishes is all I can think of. How will you do it?”

  “I just built a disappearer. All you do is cut the other end out of a beer can. Then you take two pieces of red cardboard with peepholes in the middle and fit them in the ends. You look through the peepholes and blink. Whatever you look at will disappear.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I don’t know if I can make them come back. We’d better try it on something else. Dishes cost money.”

  As always, Myra Willoughby had to admire the wisdom of her nine-year-old son. She would not have had such foresight herself. He always did. “You can try it on Blanche Manners’ cat outside there. Nobody will care if it disappears except Blanche Manners.”

  “All right.”

  He put the disappearer to his eye and blinked. The cat disappeared from the sidewalk outside.

  His mother was interested. “I wond
er how it works. Do you know how it works?”

  “Yes. You take a beer can with both ends cut out and put in two pieces of cardboard. Then you blink.”

  “Never mind. Take it outside and play with it. You hadn’t better make anything disappear in here till I think about this.”

  But when he had gone his mother was oddly disturbed.

  “I wonder if I have a precocious child. Why, there’s lots of grown people who wouldn’t know how to make a disappearer that would work. I wonder if Blanche Manners will miss her cat very much?”

  Clarence went down to the Plugged Nickel, a pot house on the corner.

  “Do you have anything you want to make disappear, Nokomis?”

  “Only my paunch.”

  “If I make it disappear it’ll leave a hole in you and you’ll bleed to death.”

  “That’s right, I would. Why don’t you try it on the fireplug outside?”

  This in a way was one of the happiest afternoons ever in the neighborhood. The children came from blocks around to play in the flooded streets and gutters, and if some of them drowned (and we don’t say that they did drown) in the flood (and brother! it was a flood), why you have to expect things like that. The fire engines (whoever heard of calling fire engines to put out a flood?) were apparatus-deep in water. The policemen and ambulance men wandered around wet and bewildered.

  “Resuscitator, resuscitator, anybody wanna resuscitator,” chanted Clarissa Willoughby.

  “Oh, shut up,” said the ambulance attendants.

  Nokomis, the bar man in the Plugged Nickel, called Clarence inside.

  “I don’t believe, just for the moment, I’d tell anyone what happened to that fireplug.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” said Clarence.

  Officer Comstock was suspicious. “There’s only seven possible explanations: one of the seven Willoughby kids did it. I dunno how. It’d take a bulldozer to do it, and then there’d be something left of the plug. But however they did it, one of them did it.”

  Officer Comstock had a talent for getting near the truth of dark matters. This is why he was walking a beat out here in the boondocks instead of sitting in a chair downtown.

  “Clarissa!” said Officer Comstock in a voice like thunder.

  “Resuscitator, resuscitator, anybody wanna resuscitator?” chanted Clarissa.

  “Do you know what happened to that fireplug?” asked Officer C.

  “I have an uncanny suspicion. As yet it is no more than that. When I am better informed I will advise you.”

  Clarissa was eight years old and much given to uncanny suspicions.

  “Clementine, Harold, Corinne, Jimmy, Cyril,” he asked the five younger Willoughby children. “Do you know what happened to that fireplug?”

  “There was a man around yesterday. I bet he took it,” said Clementine.

  “I don’t even remember a fireplug there. I think you’re making a fuss about nothing,” said Harold.

  “City hall’s going to hear about this,” said Corinne.

  “Pretty dommed sure,” said Jimmy, “but I won’t tell.”

  “Cyril!” cried Officer Comstock in a terrible voice. Not a terrifying voice, a terrible voice. He felt terrible now.

  “Great green bananas,” said Cyril, “I’m only three years old. I don’t see how it’s even my responsibility.”

  “Clarence,” said Officer Comstock.

  Clarence gulped.

  “Do you know where the fireplug went?”

  Clarence brightened. “No, sir. I don’t know where it went.”

  A bunch of smart alecs from the water department came out and shut off the water for a few blocks around and put some kind of cap on in place of the fireplug. “This sure is going to be a funny-sounding report,” said one of them.

  Officer Comstock walked away discouraged. “Don’t bother me, Miss Manners,” he said. “I don’t know where to look for your cat. I don’t even know where to look for a fireplug.”

  “I have an idea,” said Clarissa, “that when you find the cat you will find the fireplug in the same place. As yet it’s only an idea.”

  Ozzie Murphy wore a little hat on top of his head. Clarence pointed his weapon and winked. The hat was no longer there, but a little trickle of blood was running down the pate.

  “I don’t believe I’d play with that any more,” said Nokomis.

  “Who’s playing?” said Clarence. “This is for real.”

  This was the beginning of the seven-day terror in the heretofore obscure neighborhood. Trees disappeared from the parks; lamp posts were as though they had never been; Wally Waldorf drove home, got out, slammed the door of his car, and there was no car. As George Mullendorf came up the walk to his house his dog Pete ran to meet him and took a flying leap to his arms. The dog left the sidewalk but something happened; the dog was gone and only a bark lingered for a moment in the puzzled air.

  But the worst were the fireplugs. The second plug was installed the morning after the disappearance of the first. In eight minutes it was gone and the flood waters returned. Another one was in by twelve o’clock. Within three minutes it had vanished. The next morning fireplug number four was installed.

  The water commissioner was there, the city engineer was there, the chief of police was there with a riot squad, the president of the Parent-Teachers Association was there, the president of the university was there, the mayor was there, three gentlemen of the FBI, a newsreel photographer, eminent scientists and a crowd of honest citizens.

  “Let’s see it disappear now,” said the city engineer.

  “Let’s see it disappear now,” said the police chief.

  “Let’s see it disa—it did, didn’t it?” said one of the eminent scientists.

  And it was gone and everybody was very wet.

  “At least I have the picture sequence of the year,” said the photographer. But his camera and apparatus disappeared from the midst of them.

  “Shut off the water and cap it,” said the commissioner. “And don’t put in another plug yet. That was the last plug in the warehouse.”

  “This is too big for me,” said the mayor. “I wonder that Tass doesn’t have it yet.”

  “Tass has it,” said a little round man. “I am Tass.”

  “If all of you gentlemen will come into the Plugged Nickel,” said Nokomis, “and try one of our new Fire Hydrant Highballs you will all be happier. These are made of good corn whiskey, brown sugar, and hydrant water from this very gutter. You can be the first to drink them.”

  Business was phenomenal at the Plugged Nickel, for it was in front of its very doors that the fireplugs disappeared in floods of gushing water.

  “I know a way we can get rich,” said Clarissa several days later to her father, Tom Willoughby. “Everybody says there going to sell their houses for nothing and move out of the neighborhood. Go get a lot of money and buy them all. Then you can sell them again and get rich.”

  “I wouldn’t buy them for a dollar each. Three of them have disappeared already, and all the families but us have their furniture moved out in their front yards. There might be nothing but vacant lots in the morning.”

  “Good, then buy the vacant lots. And you can be ready when the houses come back.”

  “Come back? Are the houses going to come back? Do you know anything about this, young lady?”

  “I have a suspicion verging on a certainty. As of now I can say no more.”

  * * * *

  Three eminent scientists were gathered in an untidy suite that looked as though it belonged to a drunken sultan.

  “This transcends the metaphysical. It impinges on the quantum continuum. In some way it obsoletes Boff,” said Dr. Velikof Vonk.

  “The contingence of the intransigenc
e is the most mystifying aspect,” said Arpad Arkbaranan.

  “Yes,” said Willy McGilly. “Who would have thought that you could do it with a beer can and two pieces of cardboard? When I was a boy I used an oatmeal box and red crayola.”

  “I do not always follow you,” said Dr. Vonk. “I wish you would speak plainer.”

  So far no human had been injured or disappeared—except for a little blood on the pate of Ozzie Murphy, on the lobes of Conchita when her gaudy earrings disappeared from her very ears, a clipped flinger or so when a house vanished as the front doorknob was touched, a lost toe when a neighborhood boy kicked a can and the can was not; probably not more than a pint of blood and three or four ounces of flesh all together.

  Now, however, Mr. Buckle the grocery man disappeared before witnesses. This was serious.

  Some mean-looking investigators from downtown came out to the Willoughbys. The meanest-looking one was the mayor. In happier days he had not been a mean man, but the terror had now reigned for seven days.

  “There have been ugly rumors,” said one of the mean investigators, “that link certain events to this household. Do any of you know anything about them?”

  “I started most of them,” said Clarissa. “But I didn’t consider them ugly. Cryptic, rather. But if you want to get to the bottom of this just ask me a question.”

  “Did you make those things disappear?” asked the investigator.

  “That isn’t the question,” said Clarissa.

  “Do you know where they have gone?” asked the investigator.

  “That isn’t the question either,” said Clarissa.

  “Can you make them come back?”

  “Why, of course I can. Anybody can. Can’t you?”

  “I cannot. If you can, please do so at once.”

  “I need some stuff. Get me a gold watch and a hammer. Then go down to the drug store and get me this list of chemicals. And I need a yard of black velvet and a pound of rock candy.”