Short Fiction - Fritz Leiber (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

he didn’t recognize.

“Flown from Africa,” someone explained to him.

These sly scientists, he thought, living behind their security curtain in the most improbable world!

When they were sitting with coffee and wine, and the children had finished their concert and were busy at another table, he asked, “How do you manage all this?”

Jock, the gay pharaoh, shrugged. “It’s not difficult.”

Rachel, the slim Negro, chuckled in her throat. “We’re just people, Tom.”

He tried to phrase his question without mentioning money. “What do you all do?”

“Jock’s a uranium miner,” Larry (the beard) answered, briskly taking over. “Rachel’s an algae farmer. I’m a rocket pilot. Lois⁠—”

Although pleased at this final confirmation of his guess, Tom couldn’t help feeling a surge of uneasiness. “Sure you should be telling me these things?”

Larry laughed. “Why not? Lois and Jokichi have been exchange-workers in China the last six months.”

“Mostly digging ditches,” Jokichi put in with a smile.

“⁠—and Sasha’s in an assembly plant. Helen’s a psychiatrist. Oh, we just do ordinary things. Now we’re on grand vacation.”

“Grand vacation?”

“When all of us have a vacation together,” Larry explained. “What do you do?”

“I’m an artist,” Tom said, taking out a cigaret.

“But what else?” Larry asked.

Tom felt an angry embarrassment. “Just an artist,” he mumbled, cigaret in mouth, digging in his pockets for a match.

“Hold on,” said Joyce beside him and pointed a silver pencil at the tip of the cigaret. He felt a faint thrill in his lips and then started back, coughing. The cigaret was lighted.

“Please mutate my poppy seeds, Mommy.” A little girl had darted to Joyce from the children’s table.

“You’re a very dirty little girl,” Joyce told her without reproof. “Hold them out.” She briefly directed the silver pencil at the clay pellets on the grimy little palm. The little girl shivered delightedly. “I love ultrasonics, they feel so funny.” She scampered off.

Tom cleared his throat. “I must say I’m tremendously impressed with the wood carvings. I’d like to photograph them. Oh, Lord!”

“What’s the matter?” Rachel asked.

“I lost my camera somewhere.”

“Camera?” Jokichi showed interest. “You mean one for stills?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“A Leica,” Tom told him.

Jokichi seemed impressed. “That is interesting. I’ve never seen one of those old ones.”

“Tom’s a button man,” Lois remarked by way of explanation, apparently. “Was the camera in a brown case? You dropped it where we met. We can get it later.”

“Good, I’d really like to take those pictures,” Tom said. “Incidentally, who did the carvings?”

“We did,” Jock said. “Together.”

Tom was grateful that the scamper of the children out of the room saved him from having to reply. He couldn’t think of anything but a grunt of astonishment.

The conversation split into a group of chats about something called a psych machine, trips to Russia, the planet Mars, and several artists Tom had never heard of. He wanted to talk to Lois, but she was one of the group gabbling about Mars like children. He felt suddenly uneasy and out of things, and neither Rachel’s deprecating remarks about her section of the wood carvings nor Joyce’s interesting smiles helped much. He was glad when they all began to get up. He wandered outside and made his way to the children’s lean-to, feeling very depressed.

Once again he was the center of a friendly naked cluster, except for the same solemn-faced little girl skipping rope. A rather malicious but not very hopeful whim prompted him to ask the youngest, “What’s one and one?”

“Ten,” the shaver answered glibly. Tom felt pleased.

“It could also be two,” the oldest boy remarked.

“I’ll say,” Tom agreed. “What’s the population of the world?”

“About seven hundred million.”

Tom nodded noncommittally and, grabbing at the first long word that he thought of, turned to the eldest girl. “What’s poliomyelitis?”

“Never heard of it,” she said.

The solemn little girl kept droning the same ridiculous chant: “Gik-lo, I-o, Rik-o, Gis-so.”

His ego eased, Tom went outside and there was Lois.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

She took his hand. “Have we pushed ourselves at you too much? Has our jabbering bothered you? We’re a loud-mouthed family and I didn’t think to ask if you were loning.”

“Loning?”

“Solituding.”

“In a way,” he said. They didn’t speak for a moment. Then, “Are you happy, Lois, in your life here?” he asked.

Her smile was instant. “Of course. Don’t you like my group?”

He hesitated. “They make me feel rather no good,” he said, and then admitted, “but in a way I’m more attracted to them than any people I’ve ever met.”

“You are?” Her grip on his hand tightened. “Then why don’t you stay with us for a while? I like you. It’s too early to propose anything, but I think you have a quality our group lacks. You could see how you fit in. And there’s Joyce. She’s just visiting, too. You wouldn’t have to lone unless you wanted.”

Before he could think, there was a rhythmic rush of feet and the Wolvers were around them.

“We’re swimming,” Simone announced.

Lois looked at Tom inquiringly. He smiled his willingness, started to mention he didn’t have trunks, then realized that wouldn’t be news here. He wondered whether he would blush.

Jock fell in beside him as they rounded the ranch house. “Larry’s been telling me about your group at the other end of the valley. It’s comic, but I’ve whirled down the valley a dozen times and never spotted any sort of place there. What’s it like?”

“A ranch house and several cabins.”

Jock frowned. “Comic I never saw it.” His face cleared. “How about whirling over there? You could point it out to me.”

“It’s really there,” Tom said uneasily. “I’m not making it up.”

“Of course,” Jock assured him. “It was just an idea.”

“We could pick up your camera on the way,” Lois put in.

The rest of the group had turned back from the huge oval pool and the dark blue and flashing thing beyond it, and stood gay-colored against the pool’s pale blue shimmer.

“How about it?” Jock asked them. “A whirl before we bathe?”

Two or three said yes besides Lois, and Jock led the way toward the helicopter that Tom now saw standing beyond