Collected Short Fiction, page 255
It hit his chin solid, swiveling his head. His eyes glazed over.
I bored in, throwing the right again and a left and a right, battering his foolish, young head from side to side, muttering, “This is for you, Johnny. This is for you.”
They tell me I was still saying it after Johnny was out cold on the canvas. I wouldn’t know. I was on my back for two hours.
The surgeon took three stitches in the cut over my right eye, and I laid on the dressing room table feeling very old and very, very tired.
The door opened. Johnny walked in, looking young and fresh and unmarked. “Hello, Champ,” he said.
“I’m hanging up my gloves, Johnny,” I said. “That was my last fight.”
“About time,” he said. He stood silent and cleared his throat. Uh-Manny says you own me.”
“Nobody owns you, Johnny,” I said. “Doc, give him the contract. Nobody will ever own you again.”
Johnny put his hands behind him. “Who wants it?” he asked quickly. “Somebody’s got to handle me. Somebody’s got to bring in some money, now you’re retired. All I want to know is when do I fight again?”
“Not for a while,” I said, and grinned at him, feeling not so old and not tired at all. “Not till you stop being a sucker for a left hand feint.”
Maybe there’d be another champion in the family, a champion we could be proud of.
Pest House
If Kevin Motley had not been almost blind, he wouldn’t have been quite so much in the dark later. He might have seen a silvery saucer—about the size of a pizza pan—sail into the house through the open window, tilt as it banked around a corner, and lower itself toward the green-tiled kitchen floor. He might have recognized an interesting fact other saucer observers had overlooked: the saucers were not so fast nor so maneuverable as they seemed. They were small and close; it was a matter of perspective.
Kevin’s perspective was all awry. He had been sitting in front of that window for hours, sipping from the bottle beside him every time he thought of Mary Ann. He thought of Mary Ann often. By sunset—a gorgeous splash of red, gold, blue, and purple against the western sky—the sting was almost gone. So was the bourbon. So was his eyesight.
Kevin was not a common lush. He was a man in love. This is meant to cast no aspersions on love but on Mary Ann.
Kevin was a warm-hearted, demonstrative young man with only two ambitions in life: to make enough money so that he would never need to work again and to bring Mary Ann home to this house as a bride. So far he had been eminently unsuccessful at both.
He had never been faced, like some gray-flannel-types, with the hard choice between patched-pants integrity and patched-mind servitude. It was not so much that he had sold his soul to the advertising business; he had given it freely. All he asked of fortune now was to invent a resounding slogan that would assure his success for once and for all.
At the precise moment, however, it had taken everything he could scrape together to make the downpayment on this suburban ranch house, that rambled—but not far—across a lot where the bermuda fought a losing battle with the dandelions, the chick weed, and the crab grass. He had the house, a mortgage that would take $100 out of his paycheck for the next 30 years, but no Mary Ann.
Mary Ann, now, was a lovely, long-stemmed creature, whose magnificent dark eyes in a tanned face sparkled with intelligent acquisitiveness. She had a smile that dimpled her cheeks charmingly, and she knew it. She had a disciplined body that did what she told it to without complaining. Her mind did the same.
She knew what she wanted: she wanted security. She was going to wait, with proper caution, until she got it. So far, although she liked Kevin more than she let herself believe, Kevin did not look like security.
All this Kevin knew when he was sober. In a way, it didn’t matter; he still loved her. But it drove him to drink, and this made Mary Ann even less approachable. She did not approve of drinking for good economic reasons.
In the kitchen, where Mary Ann did not preside, the silver saucer sank through the green linoleum squares as if they were sand and made a miniature crater in the floor boards before it stopped.
Idiot! said a small voice in a corner of Kevin’s mind. You I keep telling—Jupiter this world is not. At the surface to stop, the anti-grav units we must be using. Women drivers!
Well, here I got you, said another voice.
Here is where?
Where we aimed. The tiny planet. Surveyed it we have. Now contact it is time to make.
Ay! What a lousy navigator and pilot you are. Tangled are my antennae. We are supposed to make contact with what?
With the natives. In case you have forgotten, help we are seeking so that our forces we can rebuild, to Jupiter we can return, and the tyrants we can overthrow.
That I know, dumbhead, but what natives? A thousand times around this world we have been, I swear, and a member of the dominant race we have yet to see. Artifacts like the one in which we are, yes! People, no. Unless the creatures too small to be seen are.
Men! Just because the world small is, small the natives need not be. The reverse! Because of the light gravity, ten-twenty times our size they might be. The size of the artifacts that would help account for.
The size of the artifacts to account for, numbskull, would a creature five hundred times our size require!
This no time to argue is. I must get busy with the eggs.
The voices stopped. Kevin was sitting bolt upright in his chair, his eyes wide and incredulous. He shook his head and stared down at the bottle in his hand. Automatically it started toward his lips, but he stopped it. If he had begun hearing voices, he had reached his limit. Next he would be seeing things.
With infinite care, he screwed the metal cap on the bottle, put it down beside the chair, stood up, waited until the room settled down, and felt his way into the kitchen. The only kind of drink he needed was coffee.
He froze in midstep—a feat worthy of a more sober man. He had almost stepped on a silver saucer about the size of a pizza pan imbedded in a crater in his kitchen floor. And the voices had started again.
Quakes! Shades of Jupiter. For homesick it makes.
For once right you are, lamebrain. The rocking! It delights! But artificial it seems. Is this for our benefit done?
Could it be so? Sensed are we before sensing? If so, a brilliant, sympathetic race have we chanced upon indeed.
Up antennae! Rapidly!
Before Kevin’s incredulous eyes, a slender silver rod sprouted from the top of the pizza pan. He kicked at it and immediately grabbed his foot and began hopping with the other, screaming and moaning.
The rod was unhurt.
See? Response instantaneous!
Contact let us make!
Kevin forgot about the coffee. He retreated, limping, toward the living room. Just as he reached the bottle and the bottle reached his lips, the voices started again.
A response!
Something I’m pulling in, but feeble. Muddled brainwaves. Short circuits. Crossed neurons. Could this member of the race an idiot be?
The bottle gurgled. For a moment the voices faded, and then they came back.
Help the poor thing! Straighten out its mind!
A blue glow grew on the tip of the silver antenna, like St. Elmo’s fire. In a moment it detached itself and floated swiftly through the air toward Kevin’s head, growing as it came. For a moment Kevin stared at it with shocked eyes, and then he dodged, staggered back, and tripped over the edge of the rug. He sat down heavily.
The fireball dipped with him. Kevin batted at it ineffectually. “Beat it! Scram!” But he felt nothing, and the fireball, undeterred, passed into his head and was gone.
With an awful clarity, Kevin knew that he was sober. He was more sober than he had ever been. He saw himself with merciless clarity.
He had been drinking for nothing. Mary Ann was what she was, and nothing would change that except maybe a few drinks which she would never take because it might interfere with her self-possession. And he was what he was, and bourbon would only keep him from Mary Ann.
He had been frightfully drunk, sitting here all yesterday afternoon, staring at the sunset, hearing things, seeing things. He had really been loaded! Then he must have passed out and slept until dawn.
He raised himself and looked out the window. Yes, the sky was getting light. No, by Jupiter! It was getting dark. No wonder he was sober; he had slept the day around.
Personally, said a small voice in his head, much improvement I do not see.
A chance give him, dimbrain. For so long he’s been a moron, time he needs under control his thoughts to get.
Kevin grabbed at his too sober head and tried under control his thoughts to get. He realized for the first time that he still had the bourbon in his hand. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours at all. It had been instantaneous. Outside was the same sunset he had been watching when the voices started.
It wasn’t the D.T.‘s. He was going mad.
He raised the bottle to his lips and let the fiery liquid burn its way down his throat. It lay in his stomach for a moment, curling, sending out warm tendrils, and then slowly it dissipated.
He was still stone sober.
He took another pull and another. It was useless. He might as well have been drinking distilled water.
Somehow, something had condemned him to cold sobriety.
Now somewhere we are getting. I think perhaps for contact he may be ready.
“No!” Kevin screamed, smashing the bottle against the thing in the kitchen crater. “For contact I’ll never be ready!”
He raced for the front door. Before he could get out of the house and out of range, he heard a final remark:
A hydrocarbon! And our storerooms refilling needed. Don’t waste a drop.
A race this kind, this considerate, this understanding, too good to be true is.
Kevin had the door open. He fled down the walk, screaming silently.
An hour later he came back down the same walk protesting vigorously to a tall, tanned girl with magnificent dark eyes and a smile that dimpled her cheeks charmingly. But right now she wasn’t smiling.
Kevin raised his hand. “I swear that I haven’t been drinking. That is,” he amended, “that I’m cold sober now. Too sober. It happened, just like I told you. Now I can’t even get drunk to forget it.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Mary Ann said, striding briskly toward the door. “The drinking, I mean.”
Kevin hung back. “I don’t think you should go in.”
She turned on him sharply. “I’m going to prove once and for all, Kevin Motley, that you’re going on the wagon or in it, There’s nothing in there like this wild story you’ve been babbling. There couldn’t be. It’s all in your head.”
You’re half right anyway, Kevin thought dismally.
Mary Ann opened the door and stalked into the house as if it were already hers.
The creature returns, a voice said. And with another.
This one different is. Hard and disciplined is its mind.
“There!” Kevin said triumphantly. “Did you hear that?”
Mary Ann looked at him. “Should I have heard something?”
She had, Kevin thought. She had. Surely she had. But she wouldn’t admit it. She’d rather drive him mad.
“Well,” she said impatiently, “where is it?” Her nose wrinkled. “It smells like a distillery. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything you saw.”
Kevin pointed at the center of the kitchen floor. “There!” But the crater was gone, and the kitchen floor was smooth and green. “Look! See that tiny silver antenna!” At least that was still there.
“That’s a pin!” But she didn’t offer to touch it. “Look at that floor. It’s filthy!”
There was broken glass scattered around, but it wasn’t filthy. The bourbon was all gone.
One there is who the verdict of its senses will not accept but believes, and one who its senses will not deny yet refuses to believe.
Dimbrain! The second a female is. Come! Into our suits. Them we cannot perceive directly, but perhaps they can us perceive.
Kevin looked at Mary Ann, but her face was clear and unperturbed. Her head, though, was unnaturally rigid. The little faker! She was listening. And pretending not to hear! How typical!
“Kevin!” she screamed, jumping back. “Cockroaches! I can’t stand the creatures. Step on them!”
On the floor beside the antenna were two flat little many legged silvery things. To Kevin they didn’t look like cockroaches, but there was no arguing with Mary Ann. He stepped on them. The sole of his shoe gave.
Ah, the pressure! The beautiful sensation! So good I have not felt since Jupiter we left.
The goodness, the thoughtfulness of these creatures. . . .
Kevin lifted his foot. The silver things were unhurt, but his shoe had dents in it. He went to the utility room and took down a hammer from its place on the peg board. He knelt down vindictively beside the little creatures and hit one. The hammer bounced off harmlessly.
There! Again! Exquisite! I can’t stand it!
Where? Where? What is it?
Kevin swung the hammer in a vicious arc, but he only succeeded in driving the shiny thing into the linoleum. It lifted itself out with no difficulty, Kevin whacked it again and made another dent. He took a swing at the needle-like antenna. It made his hand sting so bad that he dropped the hammer. The antenna did not move.
He looked up helplessly. Mary Ann was gone. He ran into the living room. The front door stood open. He ran to it. Mary Ann was halfway down the walk to the car.
“Mary Ann!”
She turned toward him a face that was cool and unruffled.
“I simply can’t stand dirty insects, I won’t go in that house again, Kevin, until you get rid of them.”
“Get rid of them?” Kevin wailed. “How?”
She slid into the car, slammed the door, and leaned her head out the window. “Try insect powder. If that doesn’t work, get an exterminator. If that doesn’t work, get another girl.” The car pulled away from the curb.
It was Kevin’s car, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Mary Ann was like that. She borrowed things.
Kevin turned and stared moodily at the brown ranch house that was to have been his and Mary Ann’s honeymoon cottage. Now it was a white elephant that he had to keep meeting the payments on, a pest house taken over by telepathic insects that he couldn’t even believe in.
If the voices in his head could be believed, they were refugees from Jupiter seeking some kind of help from Earth.
Refugees from Jupiter! he scoffed.
He needed his head examined. He needed a drink!
He went through the front door and marched through the living room. He didn’t want to go into the kitchen, but that was where the bottle was. The two little silvery shapes were scurrying about the floor, but Kevin ignored them loftily and went to the cabinet above the sink. He took out an unopened fifth of bourbon. Methodically he stripped off the plastic strip and unscrewed the cap. He raised it to his lips and let it gurgle down his throat, neat.
He waited for a feeling of peace to sweep over him. In vain. He took another pull on the bottle. Still nothing. Impatiently he killed a third of it before he lowered it.
The spell was still working. These happy insects, these jovial Jovians had removed his ability to react to alcohol. With that blue ball of fire they had given him a cure to end all cures. He could drink all day and it wouldn’t matter. Why drink?
Kevin sighed, capped the bottle, and put it away. He looked under the sink. The insecticide was in a round can with a flat, pry-up lid. The label said:
POISON
Keep away from children and pets
Sprinkle around edges of area where insects are found.
Active ingredients: sodium fluoride
and barium fluosilicate.
He sprinkled the powder in a circle around the tiny antenna and the bright bugs. Then he perched on a stool, put his chin in his hands, and watched them. One of them blundered into the circle of powder and stopped. In a moment the other came rushing to its side.
Kevin watched them, but they did not move. He sighed a giant sigh. He had been afraid that his life was ruined, but perhaps after all it was only crippled. It was going to be all right.
He realized suddenly that he hadn’t heard a voice since he came back into the house. Or was it that he had heard them and hadn’t listened?
With the thought the voices returned loud and clear:
Whoopee!
Can’t over over over-est’mate symp’thy ‘n’ gen’rosity of natives. Whee!
You know what? You’re drunk!
So’re you!
True, true. As gov’nor of North Jupiter said to gov’nor of South Jup’ter, “A long time between snifters it is.”
Seri seri seri’sly. Trace element this is for eggs. Now to thorax’s content can hatch.
Kevin stared numbly at the tiny insects. Everything he did turned out wrong. The nasty little things had cost him Mary Ann. They were taking over his mortgaged house. They had even taken away his ability to forget his troubles.
Tears of self-pity sprang into his eyes. He dashed them away. He’d get them, that’s what he’d do. He’d call an exterminator. He didn’t care if they had to fumigate the whole house.
He left the disgusting little drunks nuzzling the sodium fluoride and the barium fluosilicate and went to the phone. In the phone book, the exterminators were listed under “pest control service.” Under that heading was a page of phone numbers and advertisements.
One ad drew his eyes. It was headed:
DEATH SPECIALIST
We don’t “control”—We KILL!
One application with a oneyear written guarantee to eliminate
moths, silverfish, carpet beetles, roaches, waterbugs, etc.
AJAX EXTERMINATORS
A.J. “Andy” Andrews, Mgr.
The “etc.,” Kevin decided—that’s what he had.
Andy was a red-eyed whiskery middle-aged man. He drove up in front of the house in an old pick-up. It had his motto in faded lettering on the side.
