A large anthology of sci.., p.254
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 254
There was no answer and the blue world mounted higher. In that moment I knew that the new race of Man, of total Man, had come, and that Ahriman favored this race and that I was marked for death.
In fear I stared about me and with a tremendous leap launched myself, swimming, through space, back to death-ridden Earth. Swift-flying hands rushed toward me and then my brother spoke.
“No,” my brother said. “Let the last beast live a little longer. Would you have it die so easily?” My brother laughed. Other laughter joined his and all the laughter was like the rush of a million wings.
The peaks of Earth were groaning, for Ahriman waited there. But he did not speak. In the cabin I made ready, strapping on the long knife of my father and wearing the ring of my mother’s people, and rekindling the dying fire to preserve the body of my brother.
Down the vast peaks to the dwelling places of Earth I marched and there was no other living moving thing in all the world except the shadows of Ahriman. Across the Earth they pursued me, often taking the shapes of animals and human beings to attack me.
Europe was a flat, motionless sea; Asia, a desert; and the Atlantic, a bottomless pit over which I flew for days as the son of Ahriman had taught my father. The continents of North and South America had been rounded together in a great smooth ball on the surface of which the imprints of the bodies of two hundred million human beings spread flat in the two dimensions of the sickness.
ON THE summit of this ball drove a stake and although the shadows of Ahriman were near and Earth trembled with the weight and blackness of Ahriman himself I said, “I claim this planet for the human beings. If we are beasts, if we hunger and hate and lust and make war—if we are evil—we are also good. We are better than the mad, terrible hands of my brother—the All-hands of the new Man, the total Man.”
A soft cry sounded beside me. I turned to see a child lying bleeding at my feet, lying exhausted as if from a long, dragging journey. Beating the child was a shadow of Ahriman in the guise of a human being.
Seizing up the stake I had just driven I leaped at the shadow. It straightened and tore the stake from my grasp and hit me hard across the eyes. Blindly I drew the knife of my father and whirled it around my head hoping to catch the shadow in its arc. When I could see again the shadow was waiting safely beyond the arc. I stopped the knife-whistling. I set myself and threw the blade with great suddenness. It struck the shadow, pinning it to Earth where it struggled futilely a moment and vanished.
The child whimpered at my feet and kneeling I lifted it in my arms. In that instant I knew my error. Strong, terrible hands closed on my throat for the child was but another shadow. Bitterly we struggled. The child vanished and only terrible, invisible hands remained choking out my breath. Blackness came.
“You are dying,” I thought, “the last human being tricked by an impulse of mercy, dying on the heap of two dead continents . . .”
BUT THE air parted with a clean swift rush and the son of Ahriman stood beside me and the hands were gone. “Fool!” he snapped, but his eyes were kind. Together we drove down the stake, and all the shadows of Ahriman withdrew.
“It is war now,” said the son of Ahriman. “I have openly defied my father’s shadows. There is no time to be lost. Soon your brother’s night-world will be transported to Earth and then you and your race are lost forever.”
I sobbed in fear.
“Silence. You are not alone. With you are the Unconquered of all ages, and I—the son of Ahriman!”
“We must attack, then,” I said. “We must destroy the night-world of my brother’s hands!”
We counselled and at daybreak, parted. I returned to the cabin and as the sun came over the peaks my brother’s hands, soiled and bleeding from the night’s labor, swept into the room, and joined his body.
For a moment we looked at each other in silence. I was thinking, “He is my brother. Once we played together. Once we were friends. Now one of us must destroy the other, for one is beast and one is Man.”
Turning to the fire I stirred the kettle holding yesterday’s broth and dipped a bowlful for my brother. In silence we ate. When we had finished I said, “Kaven, one of us must destroy the other, but we are brothers and we must remain friends. Whoever wins, let us not have any hard feelings.”
His strange eyes gazed at me and he was holding his wrists. “Fool!” Going to the window he drew the blind, then swiftly his terrible hands seized me, dragged me to my cot and struck me unconscious.
WHEN REASON returned it was night again and the body of my brother sprawled on the floor. Hastily I re-built the fire, covered the body and strapping on my father’s knife and wearing the ring of my mother’s people I swam through space to the night-world.
There, in the central garden, as we had counselled, were the Legion with the weapons of all ages, and at their head was the son of Ahriman resplendent in armor of light, most hateful of. all things to his dread father? Quickly we placed the lancers and archers in front, then the riflemen and the modern artillery, and with a battlecry of many tongues and times we attacked the night-world of total Man.
Wings beat toward us and gradually slowed becoming visible. Covering the spires, the minarets, filling the air were millions upon millions of terrible winged hands, and leading them were the dark, almighty ones of Kaven my brother.
THEY CAME at us in a giant V formation. Our artillery roared, the archers’ strings twanged. The air was filled with beatings and screarnings and the awful indescribable noise” of bleeding, dying hands. For the hands fell before us and we remained unscathed. The hands fell until they piled in heaps all about us, and still they came led and urged on by Kaven.
And then suddenly our guns were stilled and a black silence fell. Ahriman walked. Ghosts of the dead hands flew silently away. The whole night-world misted over and became whole and perfect again.
“It is unfair,” Ahriman said.
“My new race of total Man is mortal and the human beast is aided by my son and by the Immortals of the Legion. Let mortal fight mortal.”
When the mist rolled back I stood alone facing the hundred million winged hands. The Legion was gone and all that remained of the son of Ahriman was the memory of his voice saying, “Courage. I go to the region of the gods to fight there a last battle with my dread father. If I win all will be well for you. Courage.” And as he departed he stripped me of memory of space-flying.
The terrible hands closed in upon me, battering, choking, beating, and then the voice of my brother: “Spare the last human beast. We are not ready yet for his death!” And I was bound in golden chains and placed in the middle of the garden to see the night-world transported to Earth.
Deep beneath me the turbine-hum increased, the blue world rose and swam through space to settle noiselessly over the battered face of Earth. Then the only sound was the last fitful lap of water and the last small spit of fire, and Earth was gone, covered over by the night-world of the new and total Man.
TEARS filled my eyes. Never again the sun, the moon, the stars. Never again the cry of hungry children, the laugh of a man, the love of a woman. Nothing human, now, left in all the universe but my approaching human death. Then: Only the hideous, perfect night-world of mechanism and all-wise hands.
With a horror in me I remembered the blade of my father and the ring of my mother’s people and with a mad human shout I tore off the chains of gold and stood upright feeling for the last time the valor of my kind. I marched out over that blue perfect world seeking total Man to destroy him, but there was nothing about me but whispering laughter and the beat of unseen wings.
“Ahriman!” I cried, but he was away in the region of the gods fighting his son.
“Kaven!” I said, but there was only laughter.
“Kill me, then,” I cried. “I can’t live in this blue night-world of sameness, of Perfection, of no contrast, of neither good nor evil!”
The air was filled with the fluttering of a million hands.
The time of total Man had come.
In the central garden of the world I lifted my head. Above me were the spires and minarets of perfection, the hideous sameness of the perfect world. “Son of Ahriman!” I cried out. “If you defeat your dread father and return to champion my race, take away our terrible hands! O, son of Ahriman, give us stupid paws! Give us muffled pads! Let us crawl on our bellies like the wise serpents! But save us from the perfection of our terrible, our allwise, hands!” Then I knelt weeping, and I waited.
But no answer came from the son of Ahriman, and I waited alone, the last human beast in the perfect world of Man.
THE ULTIMATE WISH
E. Mayne Hull
A new tale of an old plot—the use of a granted wish. Old in folklore, the problem is presented thus: how could a single wish best help a person twisted and ugly not only in body, but in mind?
Lola Pimmons limped into the office of Hoskins, Craig & Co., contractors, gloating joy almost exuding from her pores. Her body wriggled a little, as she hobbled toward her desk, an oddly unpleasant physical trembling, result of the glow, of malevolent triumph that made thrill after thrill ooze along her nerves.
Behind her, she heard the office boy whisper to somebody: “Cripes, what’s happened? Pimples looks as if she’s struck it rich!”
The answer came in the unmistakable sotto voce of the lean bookkeeper: “I hope it’s nothing good. I’ve met six hunchbacks in my life. The others were fine people; she’s the only one that makes me think of snakes or worms.”
There was a snicker from the girl at the telephone desk; and some of the high, almost abnormal happiness drained from Lola.
Her thin lips twisted into a startling likeness of a snarl. Her plump nose seemed to swell. The forty or fifty pimples on her round, pasty face, the effect of endless sweets on a basically unbalanced metabolism, took on a purplish tinge. She half turned to send a futile glare of rage at her tormentors—and then she remembered.
Her intense fury made the memory such a violent pattern of compensatory exultation that—
There was a green flash in the air, and a small creature stood before her. Two red horns grew out of the forehead of its semihuman green face; the thing snapped at her.
“Don’t get scared. I told you the first time that I could never appear twice in the same shape to a human being. And don’t worry about these others. Time stops for you when I come. They can’t hear or see us talking.”
Lola’s spasm of fear dwindled. The funny part was that she was not afraid of the creature. It had been the same that morning, when it had first appeared, as she finished dressing—she had actually managed to suppress the scream that formed in her throat.
She licked her lips now with a smacking sound of purest animal elation; behind that joy was a swift kaleidoscopic mind picture of all the frustration wishes that had ever distorted her daydreams and nightmares. She said:
“No, I haven’t decided yet; and I’m not going to rush it. I want the best wish there is, and you said that I had till six o’clock.”
“Yes, yes!” The green thing stamped impatiently with a froglike leg. “If you haven’t decided, why did you call me? Is it questions you want to ask?”
“N-no!” Then: “Wait!” she said.
She stared at it more brightly, with a quivering eagerness, dimly amazed at her confidence. All her life she had stored the juices of her myriad resentments and hatreds until her body and mind were vile with the rancid stuff.
But with this creature, she felt—opened out, almost unpleasantly at ease. In a vague way, it was unpleasant to think that she and this—this fantastic being were kindred souls.
She forgot the thought. She stood very still, crouching a little from the abnormal flame of her happiness; the posture accentuated the great weight of misshaped bone and flesh she carried on her back.
A wish! One wish—for anything! Her mind soared with a deadly glee. For the very existence of it, the unearthly thing that it was, was evidence that here was no dream, but a stupendous reality.
It had come, it had said, because—
“All right, all right,” the harsh voice spat at her. “Quit daydreaming. The facts are simple. I won a bet from . . . never mind from whom. And naturally I had to give you a wish.”
Her mind couldn’t concentrate on the words. Her thought was floating along like a balloon caught in a tornado, ripping through clouds, higher, higher.
“I want the best wish there is,” she began, “the . . . the ultimate wish! And I’ve got to think . . . to feel—”
She stopped. She had a dizzy sensation that she was spinning through a world of light; and it wasn’t altogether a pleasant feeling, for it brought a queer emptiness in the region of her stomach.
“Anything?” she asked. “I can have anything! Anything?”
“Within limits, of course,” rasped the dwarf, “the limits of my power. I can only, for instance, kill twelve people for you. That’s included under one wish. But you can have what you please, wealth, beauty, love—”
“Love!” said Lola; and squirmed mentally and physically, an astoundingly coarse movement, half shudder of pleasure, half wiggle.
She said, almost giggling: “I’ve got to think it over . . . give me time—”
“Awrk!” snarled the green monster, “Make up your mind.”
It flicked out of sight, as if it had drawn itself through a slit. Lola stood gawking at the spot where it had been, her mouth open. She was standing there when her desk buzzer rang.
“Miss Pimmons,” said a mechanical, baritone voice, “I want you to take some letters.”
Her fingers shook, as she turned the knob of the door that led into the private office of John Russell Craig, the junior partner. He was standing looking out of the window, as she entered, a tall, clean-cut, worldly-looking young man of thirty-five. He must have heard her enter, for he turned and walked toward his desk. But he did not so much as glance at her.
Lola watched him with pale-blue eyes that watered behind her horn-rimmed glasses, and in spirit she could feel his strong arms crushing her tender body, his lips pressing her thin, moist mouth.
It was not the first time she had thought of him as a lover; a hundred nights spent in a futile fury of imagined orgies with this man had sharpened her sense of ecstasy to an intolerable pitch.
“I want him,” she thought, “him!”
And then she quavered with the temerity of her wish, quaked with a sudden, immense doubt. How could she, Lola Pimmons, being what she was, ever get the handsome, wealthy John Craig as a husband?
Nevertheless—she glared at him defiantly—she wasn’t going to back down. She’d have to find out how, have to—
Abruptly, an old woman loomed before her; an old woman with snapping black eyes and a long nose. Lola shrank, sent a dismayed glance at her employer, then relaxed as she saw how still he had become, as if he had frozen in the midst of a movement. He stood, rather he half crouched on the very verge of sitting down. The old woman chuckled:
“That’s right, my dear, don’t worry about him. Ah, I see you’ve made your wish.”
“I want to know first how you’d do it.”
The crone leered: “You’re a sharp one, eh? Well, all right. What do you want? Love or marriage?”
Lola tightened her lips, narrowed her eyes, snapped: “Don’t try to kid me. I want enough love for marriage.”
“Nope. That’s two wishes. One’s spiritual. The other’s physical.”
The old one wrinkled her long, hideous nose, added:
“I guess the likes of you won’t be wanting the first.”
“What do you mean?” Lola said, stung. Her eyes flashed a darker blue, with abrupt, easy hatred.
“The kind of love you can get,” said the old wretch coolly, “doesn’t pay dividends.”
Lola was thoughtful. Her round, her too-round face twisted with a sullen moue. “What kind of love can I get?” she demanded.
“Better than the kind you give, my dear,” smirked the other. Her voice softened, glowed a picture into words: “He’ll start feeling sorry for you. Bring you an occasional box of chocolates, talk to you oftener; it’ll be a sort of pity love,” she finished.
Lola waited, then as the other made no attempt to go on, she said, amazed: “Is that all?” The black eyes snapped; the old woman said: “I can only work with the material you offer. I might manage a kiss for you every Christmas.” Lola squirmed with a curious, unsightly movement of her body. She was not aware of the graceless action, and she would have been amazed if someone had told her that the maneuver was a physical expression of the thought that had come into her mind.
“Suppose I wanted to be his mistress?”
The moment she had spoken, she shivered. She hadn’t intended to put it so baldly. For the barest instant she had the feeling that her soul had come out of her body with the words, and it was lying in the waste-paper basket beside her, a dirty, crumpled thing, for all to see and shudder at.
The grisly feeling passed, as the old woman chuckled slyly, and, seeming to understand what had passed through her mind, said: “Don’t worry, my dear, we have no secrets from each other.” All reticence gone, Lola sat with open-mouthed eagerness. “Well?” she urged.
“An accident would do the trick,” was the chilling answer. “Both his legs amputated, his face torn and scarred for life. Afterward, he’d feel that you were the best he could do.”
“Ugh!” said Lola, and looked sick in her unbeautiful way. “What do you think I am?”
“My dear,” crooned the old woman, “I know what you are. Let’s not go into that.”
Slowly, the black sense of limitation faded; Lola stared up at the creature woman, her crushed hopes bulging back into position. After a moment, the sustained quality of them brought a pouting belligerence to her attitude.
“What about marriage? I can marry him, I suppose.”
The implied doubt held in it not an iota of sarcasm. Satire was simply not in her make-up; the whole business was too devastatingly important.
