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Fiction Complete
Gene Hunter
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Bibliography
Bargain with Beelzebub
Journey
The Betrayers
The Gods Fear Love
Aunt Liz
faint-heart
Field Trip
The Glad Season
A Look at the Stars
Martian Interlude
The King Who Became a Prince
Martian Interlude (alternate version)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chapbooks
Field Trip (2009)
Fiction
Bargain with Beelzebub, Fantasy Book #2, February 1948
Journey, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1951
The Betrayers, Amazing Stories, September 1951
The Gods Fear Love, Future Science Fiction, September 1952
Aunt Liz, Vortex Science Fiction, 1953
Faint-Heart, Fantastic Worlds, Spring 1953
Field Trip, If, May 1953
The Glad Season, Spaceway, December 1953
A Look at the Stars, Spaceway, February 1954
Martian Interlude, Spaceway, April 1955
The King Who Became a Prince, Escapade, January 1957
Martian Interlude (alternate version), Spaceway, September/October, October 1969
Bargain with Beelzebub
“Tell you what,” said the little man from Hades, “I grant your wish even before you make it . . .”
SOMETIME DURING the evening, George Langdon had accumulated a full quart of scotch and—a midget. He weaved along the almost deserted side streets in the cold, early morning, the little dwarf trudging unnoticed at his heels. It had, he reflected, been a wonderful party. He didn’t remember leaving. He didn’t remember much that had happened after midnight, in fact, but now the crisp pre-dawn air was having a sobering effect. It was a highly unpleasant feeling.
Langdon broke the seal on the bottle of Scotch and was putting its mouth to his own when a voice behind him said: “It’s cold out hers. You could at least offer a man a drink.”
Langdon wheeled, nearly stumbling over the little creature who didn’t quite come up to his knees. Langdon had a knack of meeting strange people, especially while on one of his binges, but this was the first time he’d ever picked up a midget. Not a midget, really, he thought. Midgets were supposed to be perfectly formed little people. This was a twisted, evil thing. A gnome, Langdon decided. A dwarf.
He was by nature a generous and convivial soul, and he gravely handed the bottle to the little man without a word. The dwarf held the bottle in both hands, tilted his misshapen head back, and let the fiery stuff drain down his throat.
Langdon stared in amazement. What a capacity this creature had! He reached down and angrily retrieved the liquor, but not before the gnome had consumed almost a third of it. “Go away, parasite,” Langdon said. “I can’t afford to buy Scotch for alcoholic midgets.”
“I’m not a midget,” the thing said, “and you didn’t buy it. You picked it up when you left the party.”
“Were you there?” Langdon asked. “ ’S funny, I don’t remember you.” He tried to recall the last thing he did remember. He’d had a terrific argument with some writer from out of town—Milwaukee, or some such absurd place. What was his name again? Black? Bleak? Something like that.
This character had been a fantasy writer, he recalled, and their argument had stemmed from Langdon’s scoffing at such literature. He remembered that they had gotten into a heated discussion of selling one’s soul to the devil, and Langdon had repeatedly suggested that the writer could go directly to his Satanic Majesty’s domain.
“I,” Langdon had said, “maintain that ish—it’s impossible.”
“Nonsense,” the other had replied. “If there wasn’t a foundation for so many legends, they’d have died out long ago. Werewolves, vampires, demons—all must have some basis in fact, as well as in fiction.”
Langdon, as usual drunker than anyone else and still on his feet, had said: “You mean that I could, f’r instance, conjure up a demon or somethin’ ? Bosh!”
“No,” the writer had answered. “Perhaps not you, nor me, nor anyone else today, but sometime in the past there were men who could—and did.”
There was a long, blank space in which Langdon could remember nothing. He had a faint recollection of kneeling on the floor with the fantasy author, while both of them made strange gestures and his more sober companion mumbled inane incantations that sounded the way Sanskrit looked in print.
Then Langdon was wandering home in the wee small hours, with a drinking midget—or gnome. In trying to recall the party, he had almost forgotten the little man behind him until the other began to feel the effects of the liquor and burst into song.
“When I was a l-a-a-a-d, an’ in my teens,
I met a g-i-i-i-r-l from New Orleans,
Her hair was red an’ her eyes were blue—”
Langdon shuddered. The gnome had a voice like the door to the Inner Sanctum. It was, in fact, the most hellish voice he had ever heard. He pulled the bottle of liquor from his frayed coat pocket and handed it to the little man to quiet him. The dwarf repeated his performance of a few minutes before, and again Langdon moved to take the bottle back by force. He took a long drink himself.
Langdon staggered on until he reached his apartment with the drunken midget close behind him, the two of them completing the song’s many verses in discordant harmony.
Langdon was floating peacefully on a snow-white cloud in the bright blue sky of some fantastic never-never land, all worries and cares forgotten. Then suddenly little men—funny, wicked little men—were invading his cloud castle. He tried to fight them off, but they kept coming back.
He swore. One of them was shaking him by the shoulder. He awoke to see a twisted face peering into his own. He groaned and turned away, and the face spoke. “Come on, Langdon,” it pleaded, “quit pushing me off th’ bed, huh? Getup. We got work to do.”
Langdon sat up. “Who the devil are you?” he growled.
“Well, not ’s drunk as I thought. You seem to rec’nize me.”
“I don’t recognize you,” Langdon said flatly. “I don’t want to recognize you. I am drunk. Tired. Sleepy. Go ’way.”
“I wish you’d make up y’r mind,” the little man grumbled. “After all th’ trouble you went to to get me here, you don’t want me. Gimmie drink.”
“Will you get the hell off my cloud,” Langdon rasped. “This was a beau’ful dream—you’re changing it into a nightmare.”
“ ’S no dream, Langdon,” the gnome said.
Langdon was by this time awake enough to remember the little man-thing that had followed him home. “Midgets!” he said disgustedly.
The gnome smiled evilly. “I’m no midget,” he corrected. He drew himself up proudly, an effect that was somewhat spoiled when he nearly tumbled off the edge of the bed. “Z am a demon.”
Langdon thought this over with due deliberation. He took a long drink and handed the bottle to the little man beside him. He jerked it away just before the self-styled demon drank it all.
“Thank you,” the demon said politely. “Now let’s get on with th’ business in hand.”
Langdon eyed the nearly empty bottle uncertainly, not sure whether to kill it now or wait for further explanation from this surprising creature. He decided he had better wait. “Business?” he asked.
“I am an em’sary from His Maj’sty, the Prince of Darkness,” the demon went on calmly. “You conjured me up—you an’ that writer, an’ I followed you home. You spoke ’bout selling your soul, I believe.”
“Oh,” said Langdon blankly, waiting for more.
“First, I grant you one wish, such as money, fame, power—whatever y’ want. In return, we get y’r soul when you kick off.”
Langdon was seldom so drunk that he could not reason, and he was becoming more sober by the minute. He was wondering just how one humored an insane midget, when the creature put a twisted arm around his shoulder.
“One wish,” said the drunken little man from Hades. “Anything tall. Tell you what—I grant y’r wish even ’fore you ask it. Anything be fairer than that? Y’r m’ pal,” he added confidentially.
“Thank you,” said Langdon, uncertain of what to say.
“Y’ ready? Whatcha want in return for your soul?”
Langdon began to think more clearly. What was it that fantasy writer had said? Something about there having been people in the past who had been able to conjure demons? After all, he reflected, his mind working just under the speed of light, he’d be a complete idiot not to take advantage of a good thing. What if there was something to this business, after all?
“I think you’re nothing but a drunken refugee from a sideshow,” he said warily. “You prove to me that you’re a representative from the devil, and then maybe we’ll do business.”
The demon mumbled something about doubting Thomases. Well, what d’you want? A li’l atmosphere?” He closed his eyes tightly, concentrating. Misty smoke began to emanate from around his misshapen little body, and Langdon could smell the strong odor of sulphur. The demon seemed to glow, and the man reached out and carefully touched him.
&nb
The demon relaxed, and the sulphurous smoke began to fade away. “All right,” Langdon said weakly. “I believe you. You’re the real thing.”
The demon was critical. “I can do a lot better,” he said, “when I’m sober. You’re convinced now? Y’ ready?”
“Y—Yes; I’m ready.”
“Anything’t all,” the demon repeated. “You name it; I grant it.”
“Very well,” Langdon said, assuming a business-like manner. “I’ll tell you want I want for this soul of mine.”
“Whatever you want, ’s all ready granted. Just name it.”
“I want—immortality!” Langdon said. “To live forever, never to die or be killed, always appearing the same age as I am now.”
He held his breath, not quite sure what was going to happen. The demon’s bloodshot eyes widened in horror and surprise. He was no longer drunk. Suddenly he had been shocked into sobriety—and anger.
“Damn you,” he howled, “you can’t do that! It’s unheard of. It’s—” He stammered helplessly, unable to continue.
Langdon eyed the demon appraisingly, and smiled wickedly. “You granted my request before I made it,” he pointed out triumphantly. “In exchange, you get—my soul.”
“But—but—I was supposed to warn you about things like that,” the demon screamed. “You liquored me up and I forgot.” The little man from Hell was miserable. “How are we going to get your soul if you don’t die? It’s unheard of, I tell you. It’s against tradition! I’ll probably be banished to some infernal desk job in Purgatory for this stunt.”
“Tough luck,” Langdon said.
“By Satan,” the demon swore, “nothing like this has happened since time began! Of all the . . .” He stopped suddenly. “Langdon,” he said softly, “you’re sure you don’t want to change your mind.”
“Positive.”
The demon’s wicked little eyes narrowed. “Very well—then you are immortal. But there are a few things you’ll have to know.”
“Such as . . .?”
“Such as the fact that you made no provision for money, Langdon. All your life—all your cursed, immortal life—you’ll probably have to work. It’s going to be a long time. A long, long time.”
“For eternal youth,” Langdon remarked, “a small price to pay. Besides, with all the time I’m going to have, I can figure out plenty of ways to make easy money.”
The demon continued, as if he had not heard. “And don’t forget, evolution is still going to change into—something else. That’ll leave you a freak, Langdon, to be stared at by . . .”
“By that time,” Langdon interrupted coolly, “men will have reached the stars and planets. They’ll settle those, and each world will have its own cycle of life. There’ll always be men, chum. Always.”
“Nothing frightens you, does it?” the demon snarled mockingly. “Nothing can go wrong now, can it, Immortal Man?”
“I can’t see how,” Langdon said confidently.
“Everything that has a beginning must also have an end—except you, of course. You can never die—can never be destroyed.”
Langdon nodded.
“Then all the time that you’re enjoying your immortal life, remember that you can have but one possible destiny. Remember that time had a beginning, and it will also have an end. Someday the entire universe will stop, just as quickly as it began.
“But you can’t be destroyed, Langdon. You’ll go on living—existing—whatever you care to call it. Can you imagine a state of complete nothingness, my friend? You’d better try, because that’s what it will be, you know. Where the Universe had once been, there’ll be nothing but you, the man who can never die, alone forever and ever and ever . . .”
With these words the demon departed for Hell, leaving Langdon alone in his.
Journey
A time machine has been described as everything from a thing of “nickel . . . ivory . . . and twisted crystalline bars” to an abstract formula involving . It took the fresh approach of Gene Hunter to reveal that the trip through time might, in a perfectly normal and convincing manner, occur on a streetcar. And with the same fresh realism, Mr. Hunter describes time travel in terms, not of tomorrow’s galaxies, but of today’s Suburbia, not of the Intertemporal Patrol, but of thirteen-year-old Bobby Holcomb. This is a story which brings you no time-travel marvels of another age, past or future—only the quietly perturbing realisation of what an encounter with your self-at-another-time-point might mean.
IT didn’t strike him that this particular morning was different from any other until he was in the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face. Then it hit him so hard that he stopped and straightened up over the sink, staring at his face in the cloudy mirror.
“Bobby! Are you in the bathroom?”
He found his voice long enough to mutter a stammering: “Ye—yeah, Mom.”
The woman on the other side of the door gasped. “For Heaven’s sake! This is the first time in years I haven’t had to shake you three times to get you up for school. Are you sick?”
“No, Mom.”
“Well, hurry up for breakfast. It’s nearly seven thirty.” The sound of her footsteps faded away down the hall. Bobby Holcomb looked at himself in the mirror again, brushing away the fog that his breath made with a trembling hand.
Yesterday had been the Fifth of December, 1935. He had come home from school, played, touch football out in the street for an hour and a half before dinner, and later read the comics in his room instead of studying.
He was Bobby Holcomb, thirteen years old. He lived in Inglewood, California, he was in the eighth grade, and he was going to grow up to be a mining engineer and go to South America. He knew all that beyond a question.
But last night had been the Fifth of December, 1950. He had had dinner with his wife, Madge, read a book, and gone to bed. He was Robert Holcomb, twenty-eight, Los Angeles architect. He shared a suite of offices with his father’s brother, Uncle Bill Holcomb. Before very long he’d be a full partner in the firm. When his uncle died or retired, he would take over the business.
Bobby Holcomb came back to the present, trembling as if he had seen a vision. “What the hell,” he said in a hoarse, adolescent whisper.
He dried his face and left the bathroom. He was halfway downstairs before he noticed he’d forgotten to put on his socks and sneakers. He went back to his room and sat down on the edge of the bed.
He hated the office, and he hated Madge. He hated the ’49 Pontiac convertible he drove to and from work every day, and he hated his home in suburban Sierra Bonita. He remembered the arguments when they had planned it. He had wanted Spanish stucco—Madge had wanted Colonial. They lived in a Colonial.
He was still sitting there on the bed with one sneaker in his hand when his mother called from the foot of the stairs.
“All right, Madge. I’m coming.”
“What? Bobby, what did you say?”
“Huh? I’m sorry, Mom. Be right down.”
He finished dressing and hurried down to breakfast in time to hear his mother saying: “I hope you can understand your son. I can’t.”
“Oh, now, Kay,” Ben Holcomb said, “you women weren’t meant to understand us men.” He winked at his son. Bobby grinned feebly back.
Bobby ate his oatmeal without tasting it, concentrating on his sudden and upsetting dual memory. He was still too excited to recall very much of the past life of the 1950 Holcomb, but he knew him. He was him.
He was also Bobby Holcomb, age thirteen, and very close to being late for his first period class. His mother reminded him of that fact loudly. “See what I mean?” she said, appealing to her husband. “I have to say everything to him three times.”
“Better hurry now, son,” Ben Holcomb said gently. “It’s getting late.”
Bobby gulped down the last of his milk, scooped up the jacket and books beside him, and dashed for the door, stumbling over the big chair in the living room.
Kay Holcomb shook her head as if she suddenly realized she had brought a microcephalic idiot into the world, while her husband chuckled softly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The boy’s getting to that age, you know.”
Out on the street, Bobby found himself in a turmoil. That future Robert Holcomb couldn’t be him, he tried to reason. He was going to grow up and go to South America. That was the only future he talked, thought, or dreamed about. Yet the clarity of that other life so forced itself upon him that his head began to ache.
