WOLFE
THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH
AND OTHER STORIES
Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys. You turn your back to the sea, and with the sharp end of a stick found half-buried write in the wet sand Tackman Babcock.
Then you go home, knowing that behind you the Atlantic is destroying your work.
Home is the big house on Settlers Island, but Settlers Island, so called, is not really an island and for that reason is not named or accurately delineated on maps. Smash a barnacle with a stone and you will see inside the shape from which the beautiful barnacle goose takes its name. There is a thin and flaccid organ which is the goose’s neck and the mollusc’s siphon, and a shapeless body with tiny wings. Settlers Island is like that.
The goose neck is a strip of land down which a county road runs. By whim, the mapmakers usually exaggerate the width of this and give no information to indicate that it is scarcely above the high tide. Thus Settlers Island appears to be a mere protuberance on the coast, not requiring a name—and since the village of eight or ten houses has none, nothing shows on the map but the spider line of road terminating at the sea.
The village has no name, but home has two: a near and a far designation. On the island, and on the mainland nearby, it is called the Seaview place because in the earliest years of the century it was operated as a resort hotel. Mama calls it The House of 31 February, and that is on her stationery and is presumably used by her friends in New York and Philadelphia when they do not simply say Mrs. Babcock’s.
Home is four floors high in some places, less in others, and is completely surrounded by a veranda; it was once painted yellow, but the paint—outside—is mostly gone now and The House of 31 February is gray.
Jason comes out the front door with the little curly hairs on his chin trembling in the wind and his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his Levi’s. Come on; you’re going into town with me. Your mother wants to rest.
Hey tough!
Into Jason’s Jaguar, feeling the leather upholstery soft and smelly; you fall asleep.
Awake in town, bright lights flashing in the car windows. Jason is gone and the car is growing cold; you wait for what seems a long time, looking out at the shop windows, the big gun on the hip of the policeman who walks past, the lost dog who is afraid of everyone, even you when you tap the glass and call to him.
Then Jason is back with packages to put behind the seat. Are we going home now?
He nods without looking at you, arranging his bundles so they won’t topple over, fastening his seat belt.
I want to get out of the car.
He looks at you.
I want to go in a store. Come on, Jason.
Jason sighs. All right, the drugstore over there, okay? Just for a minute.
The drugstore is as big as a supermarket, with long, bright aisles of glassware and notions and paper goods. Jason buys fluid for his lighter at the cigarette counter, and you bring him a book from a revolving wire rack. Please, Jason?
He takes it from you and replaces it in the rack, then when you are in the car again takes it from under his jacket and gives it to you.
It is a wonderful book, thick and heavy, with the edges of the pages tinted yellow. The covers are glossy stiff cardboard, and on the front is a picture of a man in rags fighting a thing partly like an ape and partly like a man, but much worse than either. The picture is in color, and there is real blood on the ape-thing; the man is muscular and handsome, with tawny hair lighter than Jason’s and no beard.
You like that?
You are out of town already, and without the streetlights it’s too dark in the car, almost, to see the picture. You nod.
Jason laughs. That’s camp. Did you know that?
You shrug, riffling the pages under your thumb, thinking of reading, alone, in your room tonight.
You going to tell your mom how nice I was to you?
Uh-huh, sure. You want me to?
Tomorrow, not tonight. I think she’ll be asleep when we get back. Don’t you wake her up.
Jason’s voice says he will be angry if you do.
Okay.
Don’t come in her room.
Okay.
The Jaguar says hutntntaaa . . . down the road, and you can see the whitecaps in the moonlight now, and the driftwood pushed just off the asphalt.
You got a nice, soft mommy, you know that? When I climb on her it’s just like being on a big pillow.
You nod, remembering the times when, lonely and frightened by dreams, you have crawled into her bed and snuggled against her soft warmth—but at the same time angry, knowing Jason is somehow deriding you both.
Home is silent and dark, and you leave Jason as soon as you can, bounding off down the hall and up the stairs ahead of him, up a second, narrow, twisted flight to your own room in the turret.
I had this story from a man who was breaking his word in telling it. How much it has suffered in his hands—I should say in his mouth, rather—I cannot say. In essentials it is true, and I give it to you as it was given to me. This is the story he told.
Captain Phillip Ransom had been adrift, alone, for nine days when he saw the island. It was already late evening when it appeared like a thin line of purple on the horizon, but Ransom did not sleep that night. There was no feeble questioning in his wakeful mind concerning the reality of what he had seen; he had been given that one glimpse and he knew. Instead his brain teemed with facts and speculations. He knew he must be somewhere near New Guinea, and he reviewed mentally what he knew of the currents in these waters and what he had learned in the past nine days of the behavior of his raft. The island when he reached it—he did not allow himself to if—would in all probability be solid jungle a few feet back from the water’s edge. There might or might not be natives, but he brought to mind all he could of the Bazaar Malay and Tagalog he had acquired in his years as a pilot, plantation manager, white hunter, and professional fighting man in the Pacific.
In the morning he saw that purple shadow on the horizon again, a little nearer this time and almost precisely where his mental calculations had told him to expect it. For nine days there had been no reason to employ the inadequate paddles provided with the raft, but now he had something to row for. Ransom drank the last of his water and began stroking with a steady and powerful beat which was not interrupted until the prow of his rubber craft ground into beach sand.
Morning. You are slowly awake. Your eyes feel gummy, and the light over your bed is still on. Downstairs there is no one, so you get a bowl and milk and puffed, sugary cereal out for yourself and light the oven with a kitchen match so that you can eat and read by its open door. When the cereal is gone you drink the sweet milk and crumbs in the bottom of the bowl and start a pot of coffee, knowing that will please Mother. Jason comes down, dressed but not wanting to talk; drinks coffee and makes one piece of cinnamon toast in the oven. You listen to him leave, the stretched buzzing of his car on the road, then go up to Mother’s room.
She is awake, her eyes open looking at the ceiling, but you know she isn’t ready to get up yet. Very politely, because that minimizes the chances of being shouted at, you say, How are you feeling this morning, Mama?
She rolls her head to look. Strung out. What time is it, Tackie?
You look at the little folding clock on her dresser. Seventeen minutes after eight.
Jason go?
Yes, just now, Mama.
She is looking at the ceiling again. You go back downstairs now, Tackie. I’ll get you something when I feel better.
Downstairs you put on your sheepskin coat and go out on the veranda to look at the sea. There are gulls riding the icy wind, and very far off something orange bobbing in the waves, always closer.
A life raft. You run to the beach, jump up and down, and wave your cap. Over here. Over here.
The man from the raft has no shirt, but the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. He holds out his hand and says, Captain Ransom,
and you take it and are suddenly taller and older; not as tall as he is or as old as he is, but taller and older than yourself. Tackman Babcock, Captain.
Pleased to meet you. You were a friend in need there a minute ago.
I guess I didn’t do anything but welcome you ashore.
The sound of your voice gave me something to steer for while my eyes were too busy watching that surf. Now you can tell me where I’ve landed and who you are.
You are walking back up to the house now, and you explain to Ransom about you and Mother, and how she doesn’t want to enroll you in the school here because she is trying to get you into the private school your father went to once. And after a time there is nothing more to say, and you show Ransom one of the empty rooms on the third floor where he can rest and do whatever he wants. Then you go back to your own room to read.
"Do you mean that you made these monsters?"
"Made them? Dr. Death leaned forward, a cruel smile playing about his lips.
Did God make Eve, Captain, when he took her from Adam’s rib? Or did Adam make the bone and God alter it to become what he wished? Look at it this way, Captain. I am God and Nature is Adam."
Ransom looked at the thing who grasped his right arm with hands that might have circled a utility pole as easily. Do you mean that this thing is an animal?
Not an animal,
the monster said, wrenching his arm cruelly. Man.
Dr. Death’s smile broadened. Yes, Captain, man. The question is, what are you? When I’m finished with you we’ll see. Dulling your mind will be less of a problem than upgrading these poor brutes; but what about increasing the efficacy of your sense of smell? Not to mention rendering it impossible for you to walk erect.
"Not to walk all-four-on-ground, the beast-man holding Ransom muttered,
that is the law."
Dr. Death turned and called to the shambling hunchback Ransom had seen earlier, Colo, see to it that Captain Ransom is securely put away; then prepare the surgery.
A car. Not Jason’s noisy Jaguar, but a quiet, large-sounding car. By heaving up the narrow, tight little window at the corner of the turret and sticking your head out into the cold wind you can see it: Dr. Black’s big one, with the roof and hood all shiny with new wax.
Downstairs Dr. Black is hanging up an overcoat with a collar of fur, and you smell the old cigar smoke in his clothing before you see him; then Aunt May and Aunt Julie are there to keep you occupied so that he won’t be reminded too vividly that marrying Mama means getting you as well. They talk to you: How have you been, Tackie? What do you find to do out here all day?
Nothing.
Nothing? Don’t you ever go looking for shells on the beach?
I guess so.
You’re a handsome boy; do you know that?
Aunt May touches your nose with a scarlet-tipped finger and holds it there.
Aunt May is Mother’s sister, but older and not as pretty. Aunt Julie is Papa’s sister, a tall lady with a pulled-out, unhappy face, and makes you think of him even when you know she only wants Mama to get married again so that Papa won’t have to send her any more money.
Mama herself is downstairs now in a clean new dress with long sleeves. She laughs at Dr. Black’s jokes and holds on to his arm, and you think how nice her hair looks and that you will tell her so when you are alone. Dr. Black says, How about it, Barbara, are you ready for the party?
and Mother, Heavens no. You know what this place is like—yesterday I spent all day cleaning and today you can’t even see what I did. But Julie and May will help me.
Dr. Black laughs. After lunch.
You get into his big car with the others and go to a restaurant on the edge of a cliff, with a picture window to see the ocean. Dr. Black orders a sandwich for you that has turkey and bacon and three pieces of bread, but you are finished before the grown-ups have started, and when you try to talk to Mother, Aunt May sends you out to where there is a railing with wire to fill in the spaces like chicken wire, only heavier, to look at the view.
It is really not much higher than the top window at home. Maybe a little higher. You put the toes of your shoes in the wire and bend out with your stomach against the rail to look down, but a grown-up pulls you down and tells you not to do it, then goes away. You do it again, and there are rocks at the bottom which the waves wash over in a neat way, covering them up and then pulling back. Someone touches your elbow, but you pay no attention for a minute, watching the water.
Then you get down, and the man standing beside you is Dr. Death.
He has a white scarf and black leather gloves and his hair is shiny black. His face is not tanned like Captain Ransom’s but white, and handsome in a different way like the statue of a head that used to be in Papa’s library when you and Mother used to live in town with him, and you think: Mama would say after he was gone how good-looking he was. He smiles at you, but you are no older.
Hi.
What else can you say?
Good afternoon, Mr. Babcock. I’m afraid I startled you.
You shrug. A little bit. I didn’t expect you to be here, I guess.
Dr. Death turns his back to the wind to light a cigarette he takes from a gold case. It is longer even than a 101 and has a red tip, and a gold dragon on the paper. While you were looking down, I slipped from between the pages of the excellent novel you have in your coat pocket.
I didn’t know you could do that.
Oh, yes. I’ll be around from time to time.
Captain Ransom is here already. He’ll kill you.
Dr. Death smiles and shakes his head. Hardly. You see, Tackman, Ransom and I are a bit like wrestlers; under various guises we put on our show again and again—but only under the spotlight.
He flicks his cigarette over the rail and for a moment your eyes follow the bright spark out and down and see it vanish in the water. When you look back, Dr. Death is gone, and you are getting cold. You go back into the restaurant and get a free mint candy where the cash register is and then go to sit beside Aunt May again in time to have coconut cream pie and hot chocolate.
Aunt May drops out of the conversation long enough to ask, Who was that man you were talking to, Tackie?
A man.
In the car Mama sits close to Dr. Black, with Aunt Julie on the other side of her so she will have to, and Aunt May sits way up on the edge of her seat with her head in between theirs so they can all talk. It is gray and cold outside; you think of how long it will be before you are home again, and take the book out.
Ransom heard them coming and flattened himself against the wall beside the door of his cell. There was no way out, he knew, save through that iron portal.
For the past four hours he had been testing every surface of the stone room for a possible exit, and there was none. Floor, walls, and ceiling were of cyclopean stone blocks; the windowless door of solid metal locked outside.
Nearer. He tensed every muscle and knotted his fists.
Nearer. The shambling steps halted. There was a rattle of keys and the door swung back. Like a thunderbolt of purpose he dived through the opening. A hideous face loomed above him and he sent his right fist crashing into it, knocking the lumbering beast-man to his knees. Two hairy arms pinioned him from behind, but he fought free and the monster reeled under his blows. The corridor stretched ahead of him with a dim glow of daylight at the end and he sprinted for it. Then—darkness!
When he recovered consciousness he found himself already erect, strapped to the wall of a brilliantly lit room which seemed to share the characters of a surgical theater and a chemical laboratory. Directly before his eyes stood a bulky object which he knew must be an operating table, and upon it, covered with a sheet, lay the unmistakable form of a human being.
He had hardly had time to comprehend the situation when Dr. Death entered, no longer in the elegant evening dress in which Ransom had beheld him last, but wearing white surgical clothing. Behind him limped the hideous Golo, carrying a tray of implements.
Ah!
Seeing that his prisoner was conscious, Dr. Death strolled across the room and raised a hand as though to strike him in the face, but, when Ransom did not flinch, dropped it, smiling. My dear Captain! You are with us again, I see.
I hoped for a minute there,
Ransom said levelly, that I was away from you. Mind telling me what got me?
A thrown club, or so my slaves report. My baboon-man is quite good at it. But aren’t you going to ask about this charming little tableau I’ve staged for you?
I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.
But you are curious.
Dr. Death smiled his crooked smile. I shall not keep you in suspense. Your own time, Captain, has not come yet; and before it does I am going to demonstrate my technique to you. It is so seldom that I have a really appreciative audience.
With a calculated gesture he whipped away the sheet which had covered the prone form on the operating table.
Ransom could scarcely believe his eyes. Before him lay the unconscious body of a girl, a girl with skin as white as milk and hair like the sun seen through mist.
You are interested now, I see,
Dr. Death remarked drily, and you consider her beautiful. Believe me, when I have completed my work you will flee screaming if she so much as turns what will no longer be a face toward you. This woman has been my implacable enemy since I came to this island, and the time has come for me to
—he halted in midsentence and looked at Ransom with an expression of mingled slyness and gloating—for me to illustrate something of your own fate, shall we say.
While Dr. Death had been talking his deformed assistant had prepared a hypodermic. Ransom watched as the needle plunged into the girl’s almost translucent flesh, and the liquid in the syringe—a fluid which by its very color suggested the vile perversion of medical technique—entered her bloodstream. Though still unconscious the girl sighed, and it seemed to Ransom that a cloud passed over her sleeping face as though she had already begun an evil dream. Roughly the hideous Golo turned her on her back and fastened in place straps of the same kind as those that held Ransom himself pinned to the wall.
What are you reading, Tackie?
Aunt May asked.
Nothing.
He shut the book.
Well, you shouldn’t read in the car. It’s bad for your eyes.
Dr. Black looked back at them for a moment, then asked Mama, Have you gotten a costume for the little fellow yet?
For Tackie?
Mama shook her head, making her beautiful hair shine even in the dim light of the car. No, nothing. It will be past his bedtime.
Well, you’ll have to let him see the guests anyway, Barbara; no boy should miss that.
And then the car was racing along the road out to Settlers Island. And then you were home.
Ransom watched as the loathsome creature edged toward him. Though it was not as large as some of the others its great teeth looked formidable indeed, and in one hand it grasped a heavy jungle knife with a razor edge.
For a moment he thought it would molest the unconscious girl, but it circled around her to stand before Ransom himself, never meeting his eyes.
Then, with a gesture as unexpected as it was frightening, it bent suddenly to press its hideous face against his pinioned right hand, and a great, shuddering gasp ran through the creature’s twisted body.
Ransom waited, tense.
Again that deep inhalation, seeming almost a sob. Then the beast-man straightened up, looking into Ransom’s face but avoiding his gaze. A thin, strangely familiar whine came from the monster’s throat.
Cut me loose,
Ransom ordered.
Yes. This I came to. Yes, Master.
The huge head, wider than it was high, bobbed up and down. Then the sharp blade of the machete bit into the straps holding Ransom. As soon as he was free he took the blade from the willing hand of the beast-man and freed the limbs of the girl on the operating table. She was light in his arms, and for an instant he stood looking down at her tranquil face.
Come, Master.
The beast-man pulled at his sleeve. Bruno knows a way out. Follow Bruno.
A hidden flight of steps led to a long and narrow corridor, almost pitchdark. No one use this way,
the beast-man said in his harsh voice. They not find us here.
Why did you free me?
Ransom asked.
There was a pause; then almost with an air of shame the great, twisted form replied, You smell good. And Bruno does not like Dr. Death.
Ransom’s conjectures were confirmed. Gently he asked, You were a dog before Dr. Death worked on you, weren’t you, Bruno?
Yes.
The beast-man’s voice held a sort of pride. A St. Bernard. I have seen pictures.
Dr. Death should have known better than to employ his foul skills on such a noble animal,
Ransom reflected aloud. Dogs are too shrewd in judging character; but then the evil are always foolish in the final analysis.
Unexpectedly the dog-man halted in front of him, forcing Ransom to stop too. For a moment the massive head bent over the unconscious girl. Then there was a barely audible growl. You say, Master, that I can judge. Then I tell you Bruno does not like this female Dr. Death calls Talar of the Long Eyes.
You put the open book facedown on the pillow and jump up, hugging yourself and skipping bare heels around the room. Marvelous! Wonderful!
But no more reading tonight. Save it; save it. Turn the light off, and in the delicious dark put the book reverently away under the bed, pushing aside pieces of the Tinkertoy set and the box with the filling station game cards. Tomorrow there will be more, and you can hardly wait for tomorrow. You lie on your back, hands under head, covers up to chin, and when you close your eyes you can see it all: the island, with jungle trees swaying in the sea wind; Dr. Death’s castle lifting its big, cold grayness against the hot sky.
The whole house is still; only the wind and the Atlantic are out, the familiar sounds. Downstairs Mother is talking to Aunt May and Aunt Julie and you fall asleep.
You are awake! Listen! Late, it’s very late, a strange time you have almost forgotten. Listen!
So quiet it hurts. Something. Something. Listen!
On the steps.
You get out of bed and find your flashlight. Not because you are brave, but because you cannot wait there in the dark.
There is nothing in the narrow, cold little stairwell outside your door. Nothing in the big hallway of the second floor. You shine your light quickly from end to end. Aunt Julie is breathing through her nose, but there is nothing frightening about that sound; you know what it is: only Aunt Julie, asleep, breathing loud through her nose.
Nothing on the stairs coming up.
You go back to your room, turn off your flashlight, and get into bed. When you are almost sleeping there is the scrabbling sound of hard claws on the floorboards and a rough tongue touching your fingertips. Don’t be afraid, Master; it is only Bruno.
And you feel him, warm with his own warm and smelling of his own smell, lying beside your bed.
Then it is morning. The bedroom is cold, and there is no one in it but yourself. You go into the bathroom where there is a thing like a fan but with hot electric wires to dress.
Downstairs Mother is up already with a cloth thing tied over her hair, and so are Aunt May and Aunt Julie, sitting at the table with coffee and milk and big slices of fried ham. Aunt Julie says, Hello, Tackie,
and Mother smiles at you. There is a plate out for you already and you have ham and toast.
All day the three women are cleaning and putting up decorations—red and gold paper masks Aunt Julie made to hang on the wall, and funny lights that change color and go around—and you try to stay out of the way, and bring in wood for a fire in the big fireplace that almost never gets used. Jason comes, and Aunt May and Aunt Julie don’t like him, but he helps some and goes into town in his car for things he forgot to buy before. He won’t take you, this time. The wind comes in around the window, but they let you alone in your room and it’s even quiet up there because they’re all downstairs.
Ransom looked at the enigmatic girl incredulously.
You do not believe me,
she said. It was a simple statement of fact, without anger or accusation.
You’ll have to admit it’s pretty hard to believe,
he temporized. A city older than civilization, buried in the jungle here on this little island.
Talar said tonelessly, When you were as he
—she pointed at the dog-man—is now, Lemuria was queen of this sea. All that is gone, except my city. Is not that enough to satisfy even Time?
Bruno plucked at Ransom’s sleeve. Do not go, Master! Beast-men go sometimes, beast-men Dr. Death does not want; few come back. They are very evil at that place.
You see?
A slight smile played about Talar’s ripe lips. Even your slave testifies for me. My city exists.
How far?
Ransom asked curtly.
Perhaps half a day’s travel through the jungle.
The girl paused, as though afraid to say more.
What is it?
Ransom asked.
You will lead us against Dr. Death? We wish to cleanse this island which is our home.
Sure. I don’t like him any more than your people do. Maybe less.
Even if you do not like my people you will lead them?
If they’ll have me. But you’re hiding something. What is it?
You see me, and I might be a woman of your own people. Is that not so?
They were moving through the jungle again now, the dog-man reluctantly acting as rear guard.
Very few girls of my people are as beautiful as you are, but otherwise yes.
And for that reason I am high priestess to my people, for in me the ancient blood runs pure and sweet. But it is not so with all.
Her voice sunk to a whisper. When a tree is very old, and yet still lives, sometimes the limbs are strangely twisted. Do you understand?
Tackie? Tackie are you in there?
Uh-huh.
You put the book inside your sweater.
Well, come and open this door. Little boys ought not to lock their doors. Don’t you want to see the company?
You open, and Aunt May’s a gypsy with long hair that isn’t hers around her face and a mask that is only at her eyes.
Downstairs cars are stopping in front of the house and Mother is standing at the door dressed in Day-Glo robes that open way down the front but cover her arms almost to the ends of her fingers. She is talking to everyone as they come in, and you see her eyes are bright and strange the way they are sometimes when she dances by herself and talks when no one is listening.
A woman with a fish for a head and a shiny, silver dress is Aunt Julie. A doctor with a doctor’s coat and listening things and a shiny thing on his head to look through is Dr. Black, and a soldier in a black uniform with a pirate thing on his hat and a whip is Jason. The big table has a punch bowl and cakes and little sandwiches and hot bean dip. You pull away when the gypsy is talking to someone and take some cakes and sit under the table watching legs.
There is music and some of the legs dance, and you stay under there a long time.
Then a man’s and a girl’s legs dance close to the table and there is suddenly a laughing face in front of you—Captain Ransom’s. What are you doing under there, Tack? Come out and join the party.
And you crawl out, feeling very small instead of older, but older when you stand up. Captain Ransom is dressed like a castaway in a ragged shirt and pants torn off at the knees, but all clean and starched. His love beads are seeds and seashells, and he has his arm around a girl with no clothes at all, just jewelry.
Tack, this is Talar of the Long Eyes.
You smile and bow and kiss her hand, and are nearly as tall as she. All around people are dancing or talking, and no one seems to notice you. With Captain Ransom on one side of Talar and you on the other you thread your way through the room, avoiding the dancers and the little groups of people with drinks. In the room you and Mother use as a living room when there’s no company, two men and two girls are making love with the television on, and in the little room past that a girl is sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, and men are standing in the corners. Hello,
the girl says. Hello to you all.
She is the first one to have noticed you, and you stop.
Hello.
I’m going to pretend you’re real. Do you mind?
No.
You look around for Ransom and Talar, but they are gone and you think that they are probably in the living room, kissing with the others.
This is my third trip. Not a good trip, but not a bad trip. But I should have had a monitor—you know, someone to stay with me. Who are those men?
The men in the corners stir, and you can hear the clinking of their armor and see light glinting on it and you look away. I think they’re from the City. They probably came to watch out for Talar,
and somehow you know that this is the truth.
Make them come out where I can see them.
Before you can answer, Dr. Death says, I don’t really think you would want to,
and you turn and find him standing just behind you wearing full evening dress and a cloak. He takes your arm. Come on, Tackie; there’s something I think you should see.
You follow him to the back stairs and then up, and along the hall to the door of Mother’s room.
Mother is inside on the bed, and Dr. Black is standing over her filling a hypodermic. As you watch, he pushes up her sleeve so that all the other injection marks show ugly and red on her arm, and all you can think of is Dr. Death bending over Talar on the operating table. You run downstairs looking for Ransom, but he is gone and there is nobody at the party at all except the real people and, in the cold shadows of the back stoop, Dr. Death’s assistant Golo, who will not speak, but only stares at you in the moonlight with pale eyes.
The next house down the beach belongs to a woman you have seen sometimes cutting down the dry fall remnant of her asparagus or hilling up her roses while you played. You pound at her door and try to explain, and after a while she calls the police.
. . . across the sky. The flames were licking at the roof timbers now. Ransom made a megaphone of his hands and shouted, Give up! You’ll all be burned to death if you stay in there!
but the only reply was a shot and he was not certain they had heard him. The Lemurian bowmen discharged another flight of arrows at the windows.
Talar grasped his arm: Come back before they kill you.
Numbly he retreated with her, stepping across the massive body of the bull-man, which lay pierced by twenty or more shafts.
You fold back the corner of a page and put the book down. The waiting room is cold and bare, and although sometimes the people hurrying through smile at you, you feel lonely. After a long time a big man with gray hair and a woman in a blue uniform want to talk to you.
The woman’s voice is friendly, but only the way teachers’ voices are sometimes. I’ll bet you’re sleepy, Tackman. Can you talk to us a little still before you go to bed?
Yes.
The gray-haired man says, Do you know who gave your mother drugs?
I don’t know. Dr. Black was going to do something to her.
He waves that aside. Not that. You know, medicine. Your mother took a lot of medicine. Who gave it to her? Jason?
I don’t know.
The woman says, Your mother is going to be well, Tackman, but it will be a while—do you understand? For now you’re going to have to live for a while in a big house with some other boys.
All right.
The man: Amphetamines. Does that mean anything to you? Did you ever hear that word?
You shake your head.
The woman: Dr. Black was only trying to help your mother, Tackman. I know you don’t understand, but she used several medicines at once, mixed them, and that can be very bad.
They go away and you pick up the book and riffle the pages, but you do not read. At your elbow Dr. Death says, What’s the matter, Tackie?
He smells of scorched cloth and there is a streak of blood across his forehead, but he smiles and lights one of his cigarettes.
You hold up the book. I don’t want it to end. You’ll be killed at the end.
And you don’t want to lose me? That’s touching.
You will, won’t you? You’ll burn up in the fire and Captain Ransom will go away and leave Talar.
Dr. Death smiles. But if you start the book again we’ll all be back. Even Golo and the bull-man.
Honest?
Certainly.
He stands up and tousles your hair. It’s the same with you, Tackie. You’re too young to realize it yet, but it’s the same with you.
AFTERWORD
This story got me the friendship of Isaac Asimov and fathered three sequels, two of which are in this book. It was, you see, my first ever Nebula nomination, so Rosemary and I journeyed to New York for the banquet. Isaac was announcing the winners, beginning with Best Short Story. And he named this story.
I rose to accept, and the committee swarmed on Isaac. He had been given a list, not just the winner but the second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-place finishers. The winner had been No Award—which Isaac, understandably assuming that some story would have won, had skipped. He apologized profusely, then and afterward, and I explained repeatedly that he had honored me.
He’d also gotten me a great deal of sympathy in SFWA. Grinning, John Jakes said, You know, Gene, if you’d just write ‘The Death of Doctor Island’ now, you’d win.
He thinks I can’t do it, I thought. We’ll see about that! But that’s another story, one you’ll find later in this book.
THE TOY THEATER
Eight hours before we were due to land on Sarg they dropped a pamphlet into the receiving tray of the two-by-four plastic closet that was my stateroom
for the trip. The pamphlet said landing on Sarg would be like stepping into a new world. I threw it away.
Landing on Sarg was like stepping into a new world. You expect a different kind of sunlight and a fresh smell to the air, and usually you don’t get them. Sarg had them. The light ran to sienna and umber and ocher, so that everything looked older than it was and made you think of waxed oak and tarnished gold. The air was clear and clean. Sarg wasn’t an industrial world, and since it was one of the lucky ones with no life of its own to preserve, it had received a flora en masse from Earth. I saw Colorado spruce, and a lot of the old, hardy, half-wild roses like Sarah Van Fleet and Amelie Gravereaux.
Stromboli, the man I was coming to see, had sent a buggy and a driver for me (if you don’t want industry there are things you can’t have, lots of them) and I got a good view of the firs on the mountains and the roses spilling down the rocks as we rattled along. I suppose I dropped some remark about the colors, because my driver asked, You are an artist?
Oh, no. A marionettist. But I carve and paint my own dolls—that’s an art, if you like. We try to make it one.
That is what I meant. It is mostly such artists who come here to see him, and the big box which I loaded for you was suggestive. That is your control you carry?
Yes.
I took it out of its leather case to show him.
He peered at the tiny dials and levers. The signor has such a one. Not, you understand, identical, but similar. Perhaps you could . . . ?
He glanced back to where Charity reposed in her box. It might help to pass the time.
I made her throw open her lid and climb up to sit on the seat with us, where she sang to the driver in her clear voice. Charity is a head taller than I am, blond, long legged, and narrow waisted; a subtle exaggeration, or so I like to think, of a really pretty showgirl. After I had made her kiss him, dance ahead of the horse for a while, then climb back into her home and slam the lid, the driver said, That was very good. You are an artist indeed.
I forgot to mention that I call her Charity because that’s what I have to ask of my audiences.
No, sir; you are very skilled. The skipping down the road—anyone can make them to skip for a few steps, but to do so for so long, over the uneven ground and so rapidly, I know how difficult it is. It deserves applause.
I wanted to see how far he would go, so I asked, As good as the signor?
No.
He shook his head. Not as good as Signor Stromboli. But I have seen many, sir. Many come here and you are far better than most. Signor Stromboli will be pleased to talk to you.
The house was smaller than I had expected, of the Italian Alpine style. There was a large, informal garden, however, and a carriage house in the rear. The driver assured me that he would see to my baggage, and Madame Stromboli, who I assume had been following our progress up the road from a window, met me at the gate. She was white haired now, but the woman she had once been, olive skinned and beautiful with magnificent dark eyes, still showed plainly in her face. Welcome,
she said. We are so glad that you could come.
I told her that it was a great honor to be there.
It is a great expense for you; we know that. To travel between the suns. Once when we were much younger my husband went, to make money for us. I could not go; it cost too much. Only him, and the dolls. For years I waited, but he returned to me.
I said, It must have been lonely.
It was, very lonely. Now we are here where very few can come and see us. It is beautiful, no? But lonely. But my husband and I, we are lonely together. That is better. You will wish to wash, and perhaps change your clothing. Then I will take you to see him.
I thanked her.
"He will be kind to you. He likes young men who follow the old art. But be content with what he shows you. Do not say: How do you do this? Or Do that! Let him show you what he wishes and he will show you a great deal."
He did. I will not pretend to condense all the interviews I had with Stromboli into a single scene, but he was generous with his time—although the mornings, all morning, every day, were reserved for his practice, alone, in a room lined with mirrors. In time I saw nearly everything of his that I had heard described, except the famous comic butler Zanni. Stromboli showed me how to keep five figures in motion at a time, differentiating their motions so cleverly that it was easy to imagine that the dancing, shouting people around us had five different operators, provided that you could remember, even while you watched Stromboli, that they had an operator at all.
They were little people once, you know,
he said. "You have read the history? Never higher than your shoulder—those were the biggest—and they moved with wires. In those days the most any man could do well was four; did you know that? Now they are as big as you and me, they are free, and I can do five. Perhaps before you die you will make it six. It is not impossible. As they pile the flowers onto your casket they will be saying, He could do six."
I told him I would be happy just to handle three well.
You will learn. You have already learned more difficult things. But you will not learn traveling with just one. If you wish to learn three, you must have three with you always, so that you can practice. But already you do the voice of a woman speaking and singing. That was the most difficult for me to learn.
He threw out his big chest and thumped it. I am an old man now and my voice is not so deep as it was, but when I was young as you it was very deep, and I could not do the voices of women, not with all the help from the control and the speakers in the dolls pitched high. But now listen.
He made Julia, Lucinda, and Columbine, three of his girls, step forward. For a moment they simply giggled; then, after a whispered but audible conference, they burst into Rosine’s song from The Barber of Seville—Julia singing coloratura soprano, Columbine mezzo-soprano, and Lucinda contralto.
Don’t record,
Stromboli admonished me. It is easy to record and cheat; but a good audience will always know, the amateurs will want you to show them, and you can’t look at yourself and smile. You can already do one girl’s voice very good. Don’t ever record. You know how I learned to do them?
I expressed interest.
When I was starting—not yet married—I did only male voices. And the false female speaking singsong, the falsetto. Then I married and little Maria, I mean Signora Stromboli my wife, began to help. In those days I did not work always alone. She did the simpler movements and the female voices.
I nodded to show I understood.
So how was I to learn? If I said, ‘Little Maria, you sit in the audience tonight,’ she would say, ‘Stromboli, it is not good. It is better when I do them.’ So what did I do? I made the long tour outworld. The cost was very high, but the pay was very high too, and I left little Maria at home. When I came back we could do this.
Columbine, Lucinda, and Julia bowed.
The signor and I said our good-byes on the day before I was to leave Sarg. My ship would blast off at noon, and the morning practice sessions were sacred, but we held a party the night before with wine in the happy, undrunken Italian way and singing—just Stromboli and his wife and I. In the morning I packed hurriedly, and discovered that my second best pair of shoes was missing. I said to hell with them, gave my last suitcase to Stromboli’s man of all work, said goodbye again to Maria Stromboli, and went out to the front gate to wait for the man of all work to bring the buggy around.
Five minutes passed, then ten. I still had plenty of time, a couple of hours if he drove fast, but I began to wonder what was keeping him. Then I heard the rattle of harness. The buggy came around a curve in the road, but its driver was a dark-haired woman in pink I had never seen before. She pulled up in front of me, indicated my luggage, which was neatly stowed on the back of the buggy, with a wave of her hand, and said, Climb up. Antonio is indisposed, so I told the Strombolis I would drive you. I am Lili. Have you heard of me?
I got into the seat beside her and told her I had not.
You came here to see Stromboli, and you have not heard of me? Ah, such is fame! Once we were notorious, and I think perhaps that it was because of me that he retired. He lives with his wife now and wishes the world to think that he is a good husband, you understand; but my little house is not far away.
I said something to the effect that I had been unaware of any other houses in the neighborhood.
A few steps would have brought you in sight of it.
She cracked her whip expertly over the horse’s back, and he broke into a trot. Little Maria does not like it, but I am only a few steps away for her husband too. But he is old. Do you think I am getting old also?
She leaned back, turning her head to show me her profile—a tip-tilted nose, generous lips salved carmine. My bust is still good. I’m perhaps a little thicker at the waist, but my thighs are heavier too, and that is good.
You’re very beautiful,
I said, and she was, though the delicately tinted cheeks beneath the cosmetics showed craquelure.
Very beautiful but older than you.
A few years, maybe.
Much more. But you find me attractive?
Most men would find you attractive.
I am not, you understand, a tart. Many times with Signor Stromboli, yes. But only a few with other men. And I have never been sold—no, not once for any price.
She was driving very fast, the buggy rattling down the turns.
After a few moments of silence she said, There is a place, not far from here. The ground is flat and you may drive off the road to where a stream comes down from the mountain. There is grass there, and flowers, and the sound of the water.
I have to catch my ship.
You have two hours. We would spend perhaps one. For the other you can sit in a chair down there, yawning and thinking nice thoughts about Sarg and me.
I shook my head.
"You say that Signor Stromboli has taught you much. He has taught me much too. I will teach it to you. Now. In an hour." Her leg pressed hard against mine.
I’m sorry,
I said, but there’s somebody else.
It wasn’t true, but it seemed the best way of getting free of an embarrassing situation. I added, Someone I can’t betray, if I’m going to live with myself.
Lili let me off at the entrance to the spaceport, where I could pile my bags directly on the conveyor. As soon as the last of them were gone she touched the horse’s rump with the lash of her whip, and she, with the horse and the rattling buggy, disappeared in rising dust. A coin-operated machine inside the port vacuumed most of it out of my clothes.
As she had said, I had almost two hours to kill. I spent them alternately reading magazines and staring at the mountains I would be leaving.
For the Sol system and Vega. Gate five. You have fifteen minutes before departure.
I picked myself up in a leisurely way and headed toward Gate Five, then stopped. Coming toward me was a preposterous figure, familiar from a thousand pictures.
Sir!
(Actually it sounded more like SeeraughHa!
given a rising intonation all the way—the kind of sound that might have come from a chummy, intoxicated, dangerous elephant.)
Sir!
The great swag belly was wrapped in a waistcoat with blue and white stripes as broad as my hand. The great shapeless nose shone with an officious cunning. Sir, your shoes. I have your shoes!
It was Zanni the Butler, Stromboli’s greatest creation. He held out my secondbest shoes, well brushed. In his flipper of a hand they looked as absurd as I felt. People were staring at us, and already beginning to argue about whether or not Zanni was real.
The master,
Zanni was saying, insisted that I restore them to you. You will little credit it, sir, but I have run all the way.
I took my shoes and mumbled, Thank you,
looking through the crowd for Stromboli, who had to be somewhere nearby.
The master has heard,
Zanni continued in a stage whisper that must have been audible out in the blast pits, of your little talk with Madame Lili. He asks—well, sir, we sometimes call our little world the Planet of Roses, sir. He asks that you consider a part of what you have learned here—at least a part, sir—as under the rose.
I nodded. I had found Stromboli at last, standing in a corner. His face was perfectly impassive while his fingers flew over the levers of Zanni’s controller. I said, Joruri.
"Joruri, sir?"
The Japanese puppet theater. The operators stand in full view of the audience, but the audience pretends not to see them.
That is the master’s field, sir, and not mine, but perhaps that is the best way.
Perhaps. But now I’ve got to catch my ship.
So you said to Madame Lili earlier, sir. The master begs leave to remind you that he was once a young man very like yourself, sir. He expresses the hope that you know with whom you are keeping faith. He further expresses the hope that he himself does not know.
I thought of the fine cracks I had seen, under the cosmetics, in Lili’s cheeks, and of Charity’s cheeks, as blooming as peaches.
Then I took my second-best pair of shoes, and went out to the ship, and climbed into my own little box.
AFTERWORD
Now it seems that all toys are high tech. Goodness knows there’s nothing wrong with high-tech toys, but it seems to me that we had just as much fun with low. Can I have been alone in playing with puppets and marionettes?
There was once a marionette in the form of a robot with a spiked club, and a blond boy with a sword who was to fight him. Best of all, there was a puppet, just one puppet, a grinning monkey. I wish I had him still.
G. K. Chesterton had a toy theater, doubtless with a princess, Saint George, and a dragon. Back then they were a penny plain and tuppence colored, but if you got the plain sort you had the pleasure of coloring everything to suit yourself. You might have a princess with fiery red hair, if you liked, and a flaxen dragon. Years after my monkey had returned to the jungle (or wherever), I read about Chesterton’s theater with pleasure. By then I already knew of certain sad toys possessed by adult men.
And long years after I had finished this story and sold it, and almost forgotten it, I set out to write a circus story to be called On a Vacant Face a Bruise.
Chesterton had never really forgotten his toy theater, and I soon learned that I had never really forgotten mine.
THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf’s young.
—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
When I was a boy my brother David and I had to go to bed early whether we were sleepy or not. In summer particularly, bedtime often came before sunset; and because our dormitory was in the east wing of the house, with a broad window facing the central courtyard and thus looking west, the hard, pinkish light sometimes streamed in for hours while we lay staring out at my father’s crippled monkey perched on a flaking parapet, or telling stories, one bed to another, with soundless gestures.
Our dormitory was on the uppermost floor of the house, and our window had a shutter of twisted iron which we were forbidden to open. I suppose the theory was that a burglar might, on some rainy morning (this being the only time he could hope to find the roof, which was fitted out as a sort of pleasure garden, deserted), let down a rope and so enter our room unless the shutter was closed.
The object of this hypothetical and very courageous thief would not, of course, be merely to steal us. Children, whether boys or girls, were extraordinarily cheap in Port-Mimizon; and indeed I was once told that my father, who had formerly traded in them, no longer did so because of the poor market. Whether or not this was true, everyone—or nearly everyone—knew of some professional who would furnish what was wanted, within reason, at a low price. These men made the children of the poor and the careless their study, and should you want, say, a brown-skinned, red-haired little girl or one who was plump or who lisped, a blond boy like David or a pale, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy such as I, they could provide one in a few hours.
Neither, in all probability, would the imaginary burglar seek to hold us for ransom, though my father was thought in some quarters to be immensely rich. There were several reasons for this. Those few people who knew that my brother and I existed knew also, or at least had been led to believe, that my father cared nothing at all for us. Whether this was true or not I cannot say; certainly I believed it, and my father never gave me the least reason to doubt it, though at the time the thought of killing him had never occurred to me.
And if these reasons were not sufficiently convincing, anyone with an understanding of the stratum in which he had become perhaps the most permanent feature would realize that for him, who was already forced to give large bribes to the secret police, to once disgorge money in that way would leave him open to a thousand ruinous attacks; and this may have been—this and the fear in which he was held—the real reason we were never stolen.
The iron shutter is (for I am writing now in my old dormitory room) hammered to resemble in a stiff and oversymmetrical way the boughs of a willow. In my boyhood it was overgrown by a silver trumpet vine (since dug up) which had scrambled up the wall from the court below, and I used to wish that it would close the window entirely and thus shut out the sun when we were trying to sleep; but David, whose bed was under the window, was forever reaching up to snap off branches so that he could whistle through the hollow stems, making a sort of panpipe of four or five. The piping, of course, growing louder as David grew bolder, would in time attract the attention of Mr. Million, our tutor. Mr. Million would enter the room in perfect silence, his wide wheels gliding across the uneven floor while David pretended sleep. The panpipe might by this time be concealed under his pillow, in the sheet, or even under the mattress, but Mr. Million would find it.
What he did with those little musical instruments after confiscating them from David I had forgotten until yesterday; although in prison, when we were kept in by storms or heavy snow, I often occupied myself by trying to recall it. To have broken them or dropped them through the shutter onto the patio below would have been completely unlike him; Mr. Million never broke anything intentionally, and never wasted anything. I could visualize perfectly the half-sorrowing expression with which he drew the tiny pipes out (the face which seemed to float behind his screen was much like my father’s) and the way in which he turned and glided from the room. But what became of them?
Yesterday, as I said (this is the sort of thing that gives me confidence), I remembered. He had been talking to me here while I worked, and when he left it seemed to me—as my glance idly followed his smooth motion through the doorway—that something, a sort of flourish
