Margaret St. Clair (17 page)

Mortensen sat down in the chair the gnole indicated and opened his sample case. He got out henequen cable-laid rope, an assort ment of ply and yarn goods, and some superlative slender abaca fiber rope. He even showed the gnole a few soft yarns and twines made of cotton and jute.

On the back of an envelope he wrote prices for hanks and cheeses of the twines, and for fifty-and hun dred-foot lengths of the ropes. Laboriously he added details about the strength, durability, and resistance to climatic conditions of each sort of cord. The senior gnole watched him intently, putting his little feet on the top rung of his chair and poking at the facets of his left eye now and then with a tentacle. In the cellars from time to time someone would scream.

Mortensen began to demonstrate his wares. He showed the gnole the slip and resilience of one rope, the tenacity and stubborn strength of an other. He cut a tarred hemp rope in two and laid a five foot piece on the parlor floor to show the gnole how absolutely “neutral” it was, with no tendency to untwist of its own accord. He even showed the gnole how nicely some of the cotton twines made up a square knotwork.

They settled at last on two ropes of abaca fiber, 3/16 and 5/8 inch in diameter. The gnole wanted an enormous quantity. Mortensen’s comment on those ropes, “unlimited strength and durability,” seemed to have attracted him.

Soberly Mortensen wrote the particulars down in his order book, but ambition was setting his brain on fire. The gnoles, it seemed, would be regular customers; and after the gnoles, why should he not try the gibbelins? They too must have a need for rope.

Mortensen closed his order book. On the back of the same envelope he wrote, for the gnole to see, that delivery would be made within ten days. Terms were 30 per cent with order, balance upon receipt of goods.

The senior gnole hesitated. Shyly he looked at Mortensen with his little red eyes. Then he got down the smallest of the emeralds from the wall and handed it to him.

The sales representative stood weighing it in his hands. It was the smallest of the gnoles’ emeralds, but it was as clear as water, as green as g rass. In the outside world it would have ransomed a Rockefeller or a whole family of Guggenheims; a legitimate profit from a transaction was one thing, but this was another; “a high ethical standard” —any kind of ethical standard —would forbid Mortensen to keep it. He weighed it a moment longer. Then with a deep, deep sigh he gave the emerald back.

He cast a glance around the room to see if he could find something which would be more negotiable. And in an evil moment he fixed on the senior gnole’s auxil iary eyes.

The senior gnole keeps his extra pair of optics on the third shelf of the curiosity cabinet with the glass doors. They look like fine dark emeralds about the size of the end of your thumb. And if the gnoles in general set store by their gems, it is nothing at all compared to the senior gnole’s emotions about his extra eyes. The concern good Christian folk should feel for their soul’s welfare is a shadow, a figment, a nothing, compared to what the thoroughly heathen gnole feels for those eyes. He would rather, I think, choose to be a mere miserable human being than that some vandal should lay hands upon them.

If Mortensen had not been elated by his success to the point of anaesthesia, he would have seen the gnole stiffen, he would have heard hi m hiss, when he went over to the cabinet. All innocent, Mortensen opened the glass door, took the twin eyes out, and juggled them sacrilegiously in his hand; the gnole could feel them clink. Smiling to evince the charm of manner advised in the Manual, and raising his brows as one who says, “Thank you, these will do nicely,” Mortensen dropped the eyes into his pocket.

The gnole growled.

The growl awoke Mortensen from his trance of euphoria. It was a growl whose meaning no one could mistake. This was clearly no time to be doggedly persistent. Mortensen made a break for the door.

The senior gnole was there before him, his network of tenta cles outstretched. He caught Mortensen in them easily and wound them, flat as bandages, around his ankles and his hands. The best abaca fiber is no stronger than those tentacles; though the gnoles would find rope a convenience, they get along very well wi t hout it. Would you, dear reader, go naked if zippers should cease to be made? Growling indignantly, the gnole fished his ravished eyes from Mortensen’s pockets, and then carried him down to the cellar to the fattening pens.

But great are the virtues of legitimate commerce. Though they fattened Mortensen sedulously, and, later, roasted and sauced him and ate him with real appetite, the gnoles slaughtered him in quite a humane manner and never once thought of torturing him. Th a t is unusual, for gnoles. And they ornamented the plank on which they served him with a beautiful border of fancy knotwork made of cotton cord from his own sample case.

1951.
Mercury Press, Inc.

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The Causes

“God rot their stinking souls,” the man on the bar stool next to George said passionately. “God bury them in the lowest circle of the pit, under the flaying ashes. May their eyeballs drip blood and their bones bend under them. May they thirst and be given molten glass for liquid. May they eat their own flesh and sicken with it. May they —” He seemed to choke over his rage. After a moment he lifted his glass of stout and buried his nose in it.

“You Irish?” George asked with interest.

“Irish? No.” The man with the stout seemed surprised. “I’m from New Zealand. Mother was Albanian. I’m a mountain climber. Why?”

“Oh, I just wondered. What are you sore about?”

The man with the moustache patted the newspaper in his pocket. “I’ve been reading about the H-bomb,” he sa id. “It makes me sick. I’m cursing the scientists. Do they want to. kill us all? On both sides, I’m cursing them.”

“Yes, but you have to be reasonable,” the man on the second bar stool beyond George argued, leaning toward the other two. “None of us like that bomb, but we have to have it. The world’s a bad place these days, and those Russians —they’re bad cookies. Dangerous.” Uneasily he shifted the trumpet case he was holding on his lap.

“Oh, sure, they’re dangerous.” The man with the stout hesitated, sucking on his moustache. “But basically, the Russians have nothing to do with it,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I know what you’re going to say, but it’s not true. Our real trouble isn’t the Russians … We’re in the mess we’re in because we’ve lost our gods.”

“Hunh?” said the man on the second bar stool. “Oh, I get it. You mean we’ve become anti-religious, materialistic, worldly. Ought to go back to the old-time religion. Is that what you mean?”

“I did not,” the man with the stout said irritably. “I meant what I said. The gods —our real gods —are gone. That’s why everything is so fouled up these days. There’s nobody to take care of us. No gods.”

“No gods?” asked the man on the second bar stool.

“No gods.”

The interchange began to irk George. He finished his drink —bourbon and soda —and motioned to the bartender for another. When it came, he said to the man with the moustache, “Well, if we haven’t got any gods, what’s happened to them? Gone away?”

“They’re in New Zealand,” the man with the moustache said.

He must have sensed the withdrawal of his auditors, for he added hastily, “It’s all true dinkum. I’m not making it up. They’re living on Ruapehu in Wellington —it’s about 9,000 feet —now instea d of Olympus in Thrace.”

George took a leisurely pull at his drink. He was feeling finely credulous. “Well, go on. How did they get there?” he asked.

“It started when Aphrodite lost her girdle —”

“Venus!” said the man on the second bar stool. He rol led his eyes. “This ought to be hot. How’d she lose it?”

“Her motives were above reproach,” the man with the stout said stiffly. “This isn’t a smutty story. Aphrodite lent the girdle to a married woman who was getting along badly with her husband for the most usual reason, and the girl was so pleased with the new state of things that she forgot to return it. The couple decided to take a long cruise as a sort of delayed honeymoon, and the woman packed the girdle in her trunk by mistake. When Aphrodite mis s ed it —Olympian society goes all to pieces without the girdle; even the eagles on Father Zeus’s throne start fighting and tearing feathers —it was too late. The ship had gone so far she couldn’t pick up any emanation from it.”

“When did all this happen?” George asked.

“In 1913. You want to remember the date.”

“Well, as I was saying, she couldn’t pick up any emanation from the girdle. So finally they sent Hermes out to look for it —he’s the divine messenger, you know. And he didn’t come back.”

“Why not?” the man on the second bar stool asked.

“Because, when Hermes located the ship, it had put in at New Zealand. Now, New Zealand’s a beautiful country. Like Greece, I guess —I’ve never been there —but better wooded and more water. Hermes picked up the girdle. But he liked the place so much he decided to stay.

“They got worried then, and they sent others of the Olympians out. Iris was first, and then the Muses and the Moirae. None of them came back to Olympus. Those left got more and more alarmed, and one big shot after another went out hunting the girdle. Finally by 1914 there wasn’t anybody left on Olympus except Ares. He said he didn’t much care for the girdle . Things looked interesting where he was. He guessed he’d stay.

“So that’s the situation at present. All the gods except Ares, and once in a while Athena, are on Ruapehu. They’ve been there since 1914. The Maori are a handsome people anyhow, and you ought to see some of the children growing up in the villages around there. Young godlings, that’s what they are.

“Athena doesn’t like it there as well as the others. She’s a maiden goddess, and I suppose there isn’t so much to attract her. She keeps going back to Europe and trying to help us. But somehow, everything she does, no matter how wel l she means it, always turns out to help that hulking big half-brother of hers.”

“Interesting symbolism,” George said approvingly. “All the gods we’ve got left are Ares, the brutal war god, and Athena, the divine patroness of science. Athena wants to hel p us, but whatever she does helps the war god. Neat. Very neat.”

The man with the moustache ordered another bottle of stout. When it came, he stared at George stonily. “It is not symbolism,” he said, measuring his words. “It’s the honest truth. I told yo u I was a mountain climber, didn’t I? I climbed Ruapehu last summer. I saw them there.”

“What did they look like?” George asked lazily.

“Well, I really only saw Hermes. He’s the messenger, you know, and it’s easier for people to look at him without being blinded. He’s a young man, very handsome, very jolly-looking. He looks like he’d play all kinds of tricks on you, but you wouldn’t mind i t. They’d be good tricks. He —you could see him shining, even in the sun.”

“What about the others?”

The man with the stout shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. You wouldn’t understand me. They’re too bright. They have to put on other shapes when they go among men.

“But I think they miss us. I think they’re lonesome, really. The Maori are a fine people, very i ntelligent, but they’re not quite what the gods are used to. You know what I think?” The man with the moustache lowered his voice solemnly. “I think we ought to send an embassy to them. Send people with petitions and offerings. If we asked them right, ask e d them often enough, they’d be sorry for us. They’d come back.”

There was a stirring four or five stools down, toward the middle of the bar. A sailor stood up and came toward the man with the moustache. “So you don’t like the government?” he said menacin gly. There was a beer bottle in his hand.

“Government?” the man with the moustache answered. George noticed that he was slightly pop-eyed. “What’s that got to do with it? I’m trying to help.”

“Haaaaaa! I heard you talking against it,” said the sailor. He swayed on his feet for a moment. Then he aimed a heavy blow with the beer bottle at the center of the moustache.

The man with the moustache ducked. He got off the bar stool, still doubled up. He drew back. He rammed the sailor hard in the pit of the s tomach with his head.

As the sailor collapsed, the man from New Zealand stepped neatly over him. He walked to the front of the bar and handed a bill to the bartender who was standing, amazed, near the cash register. He closed the door of the bar behind h im.

After a moment he opened it again and stuck his head back in. “God damn everybody!” he yelled.

After the sailor had been revived by his friends and pushed back on a bar stool, the man with the trumpet case, who had been on the far side of the stout drinker, moved nearer to George.

“Interesting story he told, wasn’t it?” he said cheerily. “Of course, there wasn’t anything to it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” George answered perversely. “There might have been.”

“Oh, no,” the man with the trumpet case said positively. He shook his head so vigorously that the folds of his pious, starchy, dewlapped face trembled. “Nothing like that.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because …” He hesitated. “Because I know what the real reasons for our difficulties are.”

“Well, what’s your explanation?”

“I — I don’t know whether I ought to say this,” the starchy man said coyly. He put his head on one side and looked at George bright-eyed. Then, as if fearing George’s patience might be on the edge of exhaustion, he said, q uite quickly, “It’s the last trump.”

“Who’s the last trump?” the man on the bar stool around the corner from George asked, leaning forward to listen. George knew him by sight; his name was Atkinson.

“Nobody,” the starchy man answered. “I meant that the last trump ought to have been blown ages ago. The world is long overdue for judgment.”

“H. G. Wells story,” George murmured.

“I beg your pardon?” said the starchy man.

“Nothing.” George motioned to the bartender and ordered a round of drinks. Atkins on took gin and ginger ale, and the starchy man kirschwasser.

“Why hasn’t the trump been blown?” Atkinson asked, with the air of one tolerating noisy children.