Short Tall Tales, page 3
Huh! They didn’t listen to Him, either.
And so “The End,” but not the very end, not yet awhile. For in a mainly dead world, down in the deeps, a future me shall be a scurry of life on the rim of a great black smoker, a shrimpy sort of thing feeding on the even smaller feeders on vile chemical soups ejected from the abyss. And I shall be him for quite some time—far too long for my liking…
But there, enough is enough and I won’t go on. These memories of mine get longer with each visit, and I foresee the approach of a time when I shall be a slime mould again—perhaps permanently. That is something I dare not contemplate.
And anyway it’s almost teatime, when I shall complain that my room is far too small; also that the padding in the walls is tasteless and completely indigestible…
THE LECTURE
Kids? Who would be a teacher, eh?
* * *
The old professor was nearing the end of his lecture now, and with all his years of experience he had it timed to perfection. Glancing at his timepiece, he gave a low grunt of satisfaction; the bell was due at any moment now, and then this lot would go on to their next classroom, their next period of instruction.
It wasn’t just an immaculate sense of timing, however, that gave the professor his warm glow of satisfaction; but this time he felt he’d actually managed to impart a degree of knowledge—felt that this motley band of students had got something out of it—which in this day and age was an accomplishment in itself. For him and them both!
But then again his subject, “prehistoric mass extinctions,” had been especially fascinating. Of course, the professor would consider it so—as would he consider almost any facet of life in the ancient world—because he was a paleontologist. But as for his class…ordinarily, the only rocks he might expect to excite their interest wouldn’t be fossils. Rocks as in rock-’n-roll, yes—or maybe (though heaven forbid) rocks as in certain dreadful mind-destroying drugs—and quite definitely rocks as in “getting them off.” Oh yes! Sex, drugs, and rock-’n-roll. It had always been so, and he wasn’t so old that he’d forgotten…
Ah, but this time the professor had chosen a subject that was irresistible—one that he considered the single infallible spear-point in his entire paleontological arsenal—the subject that was guaranteed to penetrate even that seething mental smog known to obscure every young adult’s hormone- and/or pheromone-driven mind.
As for why this was so, perhaps it was terror: the thought that it could, might, and probably would happen again. An even bigger mass extinction which nothing would survive—including them. After all, there were plenty of asteroids out there even now; not to mention colossal swarms of comets, those so-called “dirty snowballs” that were so very much harder than snow. And all of this free-floating stony debris being lured by the sun, drawn in from far beyond the solar system’s rim.
Or perhaps it was simply the “natural” hypnotic attraction (well, to the young and immature) of the invisible threat: the possibility, however remote, of planetary catastrophe, felt in their inner beings as the tremblings of adventurous expectancy, the thrill of a challenge yet to be faced. Ah, for when one is young life is forever! But when one is old…
The professor blinked and brought his meandering mind back to the present, for it was now time to finish up.
“So there you have it,” he said, glancing from face to rapt face. “The fossil record cannot be denied; we know it happened, and more than once, but still we can’t be sure—not absolutely sure—exactly how it happened. And while the controversy rages on, I believe it degrades the science of paleontology that such mass extinction theories as are propounded today range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Having said that, however, it is my intention to make such theories the subject of my next lecture. Which is why, before closing, I’ll merely skim over them.
“The two most likely theories involve, one: the collision of our world with huge space rocks, which is to say meteors or comets, slamming into the Earth at unthinkable velocities; and two: extensive volcanic activity releasing vast lava flows and clouds of poisonous gases. Better still—or perhaps worse—you might want to consider a combination of the two: first, the hugely destructive collision, causing atmospheric depletion and fearful earthquakes, followed at once by vast floods of molten rock erupting through the planet’s shattered crust. That would be my personal preference.
“As for some of those rather more fanciful theories that I mentioned…well, I did warn you that several were ridiculous. For example:
“The planet was overpopulated, infested by so many diverse species that they virtually farted themselves to death, killed off by their own methane emissions!” (As usual the professor’s unanticipated ribaldry sufficed to produce a stamping of feet, broad grins right across the class, and snorts of scatological amusement…all of which encouraged him to draw a deep breath and continue.)
“Or how about this:
“In the future—in a period when we’re being eaten out of house and planet by lesser species—we’ll invent time travel and journey into the past to murder them in their evolutionary infancy, thus ensuring our presence today.” (More chuckles and snorting and stamping of feet.)
“And finally, silliest of all, there’s this one:
“Converging parallel universes—if you believe in such—glance off each other, and in the ensuing chaos all life except the hardiest of land creatures, certain aquatic worms, and the deep-sea crustacea which thrive around black smokers are wiped out en masse. Which tends to make us—or rather you, since I exclude myself—the descendants of primitive burrowers, or of rock-boring worms, or of…shrimps? Well, personally speaking, and judging by this class, I’d be inclined to accept the latter before the former. For while I cannot admit of parallel worlds, just a single glance at certain members of my current audience would seem to me to offer abundant proof of severe degenerative as opposed to the usual evolutionary processes!
“But of course—” The professor raised his voice against a rising gale of laughter, “—of course, we must first believe in parallel universes. Including, one must assume, those where our species were the unfortunate victims of these extinctions…”
That quietened them a little, and in the momentary lull the professor glanced again at his timepiece. Ah! Dead on time!
And proving it conclusively, the bell sounded.
“Leave the room just as you found it—in good order!” The old professor’s rasping, vibrating voice rang out again.
But rising from their great stone benches, crowding noisily through the towering arched exit from the massive lecture hall, the students were already leaving.
Such a thunderous stampede!
As usual the pack of raptor youths led the exodus, while a female triceratops brought up the rear. Not so much because she was slow, but mainly because she waited shyly to lay the fresh, juicy branch of a flowering tree fern on the professor’s marble lectern…
HELL IS A PERSONAL PLACE
But then again, how’s your personality?
* * *
The uniformed man in the bunker gave a last stiff-armed salute—or it should have been but most of the stiffness had disappeared now, and his uniform with its black leather cross-strap was less than crisp; indeed it was dusty with a fine layer of the concrete powder which kept drifting down from the low ceiling as the thudding concussions crept closer and closer—then put the muzzle of his pistol to his head. With feeble cries of Heil Hitler ringing in his ears from those whose pale, sickly faces surrounded him—cries so feeble and faces so sickly he felt he really should shoot these knock-kneed imbeciles first, or even instead; except that would mean being alone, and maybe not enough ammunition left to finish the job—he pulled the trigger.
It was so simple it was great, he thought. Even glorious!
At the last moment he had closed his eyes. Small in stature but hardly insignificant, not now, anyway, with his hair parted in its distinctive style, which so bloody many enemies of the Reich found so bloody funny!, he reeled from the expected devastation of his brain as the hammer bullet fell on his grape head…
…And reeled again as the realization dawned that he’d felt nothing!
“What?” he cried in astonishment, and then rage: “What! What, what, WHAT? A gun that doesn’t work? But should I be surprised? Of course not! Why should I be surprised? My army didn’t work, my navy didn’t work, my air force certainly didn’t work, so why should one small pistol? Am I the only one in the entire bloody Vaterland who has bloody worked?”
He turned to hurl the offending weapon in the nearest sickly face, only to discover that his hand was empty and that the nearest face had no flesh, sickly or otherwise.
A tall, thin figure in black sat on a flat-topped rock and gazed at him through empty orbs from beneath the peaked cowl of his robe. At his feet there lay a rusting, neglected scythe and a bone-dry whetstone.
“What?” said Hitler. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” said the man in black. He shuffled his sandaled feet a little, and the knuckles of his toes gleamed bone-white through a lattice of ancient leather.
“Explain!” Hitler cried, advancing a short, sharp pace. But then he paused, looked beyond the somber figure seated on the rock, gazed upon three distinct arcs of a distant horizon. One arc lay in a dark blue, near-impenetrable shadow.
“Limbo,” said the skeletal man in black. “For those who are blameless but desire only rest—an eternity of rest.”
Hitler’s eyes went to the next arc of the horizon, where golden rays lanced skywards into azure heavens from the gleaming minarets and domes of a city unthinkably beautiful. And the cowled figure explained: “Reward—for those who have loved and aspired to even greater love, and who now in their turn are loved.”
Finally there remained only the third arc. Red and yellow fires leaped there, and a faint wind brought a sulphur reek, mixed with which Hitler believed he could hear, very distantly, tumultuous cries of torture and terror. It seemed a familiar sort of place, and the man in black offered no explanation but merely gloomed on Hitler from the deep, dark sockets of his eyes. He stood up, and Hitler saw how tall and thin he was. But of course, he would be.
“So you are Death,” the little man mused. “Strange, I never really believed in you—not for myself.
“But for many, many others,” Death answered. “So many, indeed, that I was beginning to think you’d be the last of all. Why, you’re a legend!”
Hitler preened a little. “I am?” Then he frowned. “But of course I am! I know that!”
“You very nearly did me out of my job,” Death went on. “They came so thick and fast I couldn’t keep up! See my scythe there, all rusted where once it gleamed silver? Ah, well, and now I’ll have to get it bright again. But yes, you are a legend. So was Atilla, and the Asian wizard who first created the Black Death and sent it scurrying westward, and Cain, who was the greatest murderer of them all.”
“Cain?” Hitler wrinkled his brow. Who was this upstart Cain?
“With a single stroke, he killed one fourth of the world’s population,” Death explained, as if he’d read the little dictator’s thoughts. “Even you haven’t managed that!”
Hitler struck a pose, peered at the three different arcs of horizon. “That was never my intention,” he said (Death’s wit escaping him entirely). “I intended only the elimination of certain—or several—ethnic groups. Large ethnic groups, true, but—” And he paused, then scowled, then looked amazed as he took a first involuntary step toward the arc of smoldering fire and sulphur stench. Involuntary, yes—invoked by the will of some Other.
“Your time’s up,” Death explained.
Hitler looked again at the three distinct horizons, keeping till last that direction in which he felt compelled. The way to Limbo was a broad swath of deep green grass, blown languidly in a cool, pleasantly-scented breeze. The way to Just Reward was paved with blue crystal tiles of infinite delicacy, where fountains played every now and then, and strange, delicious-seeming fruit grew on low golden bushes by the roadside. Alas, the path to Hell was parched, where the earth was cracked open and scarred like scrubland in a drought.
The ex-dictator fought against the next step, leaned back against its pull, to no avail. His jackboot came up, moved forward and plumped down, pointing him unmistakably along the desiccated track. He stumbled, half-turned, said: “Wait! I have not interrogated—I mean questioned—I mean you have not told me the things I need to…”
“There is nothing else,” Death was brief. “The rest lies in the hands of der Führer.”
“Der Fü—?” Hitler was astonished, outraged—his blood boiled! He would have stamped his foot, but when he lifted it, it took another involuntary pace toward Hell. “Is that what he calls himself, this … this devil?”
Death came pacing after, loping like a long shadow to overtake Hitler’s every-quickening march. “Hell is a personal place,” he said, “and Satan has many forms. One for every damned soul. For yours he is der Führer.”
Hitler paled a very little. “What’s he like, this Satan?”
“Very handsome,” Death shrugged, walking alongside the new arrival. “And not a little conceited. Alas, that was always his trouble. Oh!—and of course he’s not an Aryan…”
“Not an Aryan?” Hitler repeated him, dazedly. Then his eyes suddenly brightened into feverish intensity. “Not an Aryan!” His nostrils flared. “Hah!” he gave a stiff-armed salute. “Then it’s time there were some changes around here! Big changes!”
Death chuckled, however humourlessly. “But aren’t you a rather small man, Adolf,” he said, “to be dreaming of such sweeping changes? After all, he is very big.”
“I was small once before,” Hitler snapped. “But a man’s destiny is fashioned by his dreams, not by his stature.”
“That might well be true,” Death answered, “but where you’re going Satan fashions the dreams. All of them. And each and every one, a nightmare! And before I forget—” he produced a black patch in the shape of a six-pointed star and quickly slapped it on Hitler’s left breast just under the cross-strap. The star at once seared through jacket and shirt, burning itself into flesh.
Hitler yelped, tore open his smoking jacket and shirt, then tucked in his quivering chin and stared down in horror at the star which was now part of him, like a great black birthmark or some hideous melanoma, made that much more hideous by what it conveyed.
“Preposterous!” he sputtered then through tears of pain and rage. “I am not a Jew!”
“And I repeat,” said Death, enigmatically, “that Satan is not an Aryan. But in Hell, each has his role to play.”
Hitler’s shoulders slumped, but his jackboots kept marching. The fiery horizon was that much closer now; heat came gusting in scorching waves, carrying the worst possible stenches; the cries of tortured millions were loud and growing louder.
“Verdammt!” Hitler’s frustration overflowed. “Where is my Third Reich now?” Tears, apparently of anguish, flowed down his face.
“Gone,” Death answered his question, “but the Fourth lies directly ahead. Except it is not yours. Vorwärts!”
Then the Grim Reaper came to a halt, and watched as Hitler went striding off toward his ultimate solution. The ex-dictator glanced back once, fearfully, at Death, but already the gaunt figure of that timeless being had been left far behind. Hitler sighed his resignation and faced front.
In the near distance, curling over the balefires, a huge black swastika was blazoned on the sprawl of a vast scarlet flag…
PROBLEM CHILD
And you think pubic hair’s an itchy bitch!
* * *
My symptoms, Dr. Trent said, were those of developing schizophrenia, split personality, but I could “counter such tendencies by recording details of them diary-wise, or by talking to yourself about them, thus recognizing and resolving the peculiarities of your dualism when controlled by your more ‘normal’ archetype.” Ye Gods! Do they all talk like that, I wonder? Still, he sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and so—
Since my hands weren’t much for writing, I started to talk to myself. And you know, his idea was all right in a way; that is, chatting to myself about it did seem to help—initially. But now, well, I don’t see old Trent anymore, I haven’t for a long, long time.
Wonder how he’s getting on. Trent the quack—the so-called “psychiatrist”—the head-shrinker. I should never have taken my problem to him in the first place.
My “problem!”
I suspect that old Trent was laughing at me really, that he never did believe me. Even then, though, I could have proved the things I told him…if I had really wanted to. I could have cut my nails for him—and then stayed around while they grew again!
“Six times a day?” I remember him asking. “You cut your nails six times a day? Well, they look perfectly normal nails to me!”
And it was true, they were perfectly normal nails—to look at! But they simply grew too fast. They still do; in fact the speed at which they grow has increased! Until recently I was cutting them up to eight times daily. Now I just don’t bother. And I remember how, if I slept for more than three hours at a stretch…
It’s murder to wake up and find your nails long and black—and hooked!
And I used to worry about getting jackets to fit my hump; but knowing what I know now—well, who needs jackets?
My hump: I remember when I was a kid, just a little kid, how my friends used to say I had a small hump. Now I have a big hump. I once went for treatment for curvature of the spine…Hah! There’s a laugh. “Curvature of the spine,” indeed! It made life hell at the orphanage, though.
