Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley (15 page)

“Good-bye, Granpa,” Morton called. He got up and closed his door.

“That does it,” Mr. Dee said. “The boy is too cocksure of himself. We must call up Boarbas.”

“No!” his wife said.

“What, then?”

“I just don't know anymore,” Mrs. Dee said, on the verge of tears. “You
know
what Boarbas does to children. They're never the same afterwards.”

Mr. Dee's face was hard as granite. “I know. It can't be helped.”

“He's so young!” Mrs. Dee wailed. “It—it will be traumatic!”

“If so, we will use all the resources of modern psychology to heal him,” Mr. Dee said soothingly. “He will have the best psychoanalysts money can buy. But the boy must be a wizard!”

“Go ahead then,” Mrs. Dee said, crying openly. “But please don't ask me to assist you.”

How like a woman, Dee thought. Always turning into jelly at the moment when firmness was indicated. With a heavy heart, he made the preparations for calling up Boarbas, Demon of Children.

First came the intricate sketching of the pentagon, the twelve-pointed star within it, and the endless spiral within that. Then came the herbs and essences; expensive items, but absolutely necessary for the conjuring. Then came the inscribing of the Protective Spell, so that Boarbas might not break loose and destroy them all. Then came the three drops of hippogriff blood—

“Where is my hippogriff blood?” Mr. Dee asked, rummaging through the living room cabinet.

“In the kitchen, in the aspirin bottle,” Mrs. Dee said, wiping her eyes.

Dee found it, and then all was in readiness. He lighted the black candles and chanted the Unlocking Spell.

The room was suddenly very warm, and there remained only the Naming of the Name.

“Morton,” Mr. Dee called. “Come here.”

Morton opened the door and stepped out, holding one of his accounting books tightly, looking very young and defenseless.

“Morton, I am about to call up the Demon of Children. Don't make me do it, Morton.”

The boy turned pale and shrank back against the door. But stubbornly he shook his head.

“Very well,” Mr. Dee said. “BOARBAS!”

There was an ear-splitting clap of thunder and a wave of heat, and Boarbas appeared, as tall as the ceiling, chuckling evilly.

“Ah!” cried Boarbas, in a voice that shook the room. “A little boy.”

Morton gaped, his jaw open and eyes bulging.

“A naughty little boy,” Boarbas said, and laughed. The demon marched forward, shaking the house with every stride.

“Send him away!” Mrs. Dee cried.

“I can't,” Dee said, his voice breaking. “I can't do anything until he's finished.”

The demon's great horned hands reached for Morton; but quickly the boy opened the accounting book. “Save me!” he screamed.

In that instant, a tall, terribly thin old man appeared, covered with worn pen points and ledger sheets, his eyes two empty zeroes.

“
Zico Pico Reel!
” chanted Boarbas, turning to grapple with the newcomer. But the thin old man laughed, and said, “A contract of a corporation which is
ultra vires
is not voidable only, but utterly void.”

At these words, Boarbas was flung back, breaking a chair as he fell. He scrambled to his feet, his skin glowing red-hot with rage, and intoned the Demoniac Master-Spell: “VRAT, HAT, HO!”

But the thin old man shielded Morton with his body, and cried the words of Dissolution. “Expiration, Repeal, Occurrence, Surrender, Abandonment, and Death!”

Boarbas squeaked in agony. Hastily he backed away, fumbling in the air until he found The Opening. He jumped through this, and was gone.

The tall, thin old man turned to Mr. and Mrs. Dee, cowering in a corner of the living room, and said, “Know that I am The Accountant. And Know, Moreover, that this Child has signed a Compact with Me, to enter My Apprenticeship and be My Servant. And in return for Services Rendered, I, THE ACCOUNTANT, am teaching him the Damnation of Souls, by means of ensaring them in a cursed web of Figures, Forms, Torts, and Reprisals. And behold, this is My Mark upon him!”

The Accountant held up Morton's right hand, and showed the ink smudge on the third finger.

He turned to Morton, and in a softer voice said, “Tomorrow, lad, we will consider some aspects of Income Tax Evasion as a Path to Damnation.”

“Yes,
sir
,” Morton said eagerly.

And with another sharp look at the Dees, The Accountant vanished.

For long seconds there was silence. Then Dee turned to his wife.

“Well,” Dee said, “if the boy wants to be an accountant
that
badly, I'm sure I'm not going to stand in his way.”

T
HE SPACE
station revolved around its planet, waiting. Properly speaking it was without intelligence, for intelligence was unnecessary. It had awareness, however, and certain tropisms, affinities, reactions.

It was resourceful. Its purpose was stamped into the very metal, impressed into the circuits and tubes. And perhaps the machine retained some of the emotions that had gone into its building—the wild hopes, the fears, the frenzied race against time.

But the hopes had been in vain, for the race was lost, and the great machine hung in space, incomplete and useless.

But it had awareness, and certain tropisms, affinities, reactions. It was resourceful. It knew what it needed. So it scanned space, waiting for its missing components.

In the region of Bootes he came to a little cherry-red sun, and as the ship swung in, he saw that one of its planets was the rare, beautiful blue-green color of Earth.

“Look at this!” Fleming shouted, turning from the controls, his voice breaking with excitement. “Earth type. It
is
Earth type, isn't it, Howard? We'll make a fortune on this one!”

Howard came forward slowly from the ship's galley, munching on a piece of avocado. He was short and bald, and he carried a dignified paunch the size of a small watermelon. He was irritated, for he had been deeply involved in making dinner. Cooking was an art with Howard, and had he not been a businessman, he would have been a chef. They ate well on all their trips, because Howard had a way with fried chicken, served his roasts with Howard sauce, and was especially adept at Howard salad.

“It might be Earth type,” he said, staring coldly at the blue-green planet.

“Of course it is,” Fleming said. Fleming was young, and more enthusiastic than any man had a right to be in space. He was gaunt, in spite of Howard's cooking, and his carroty hair fell messily over his forehead. Howard tolerated him, not only because Fleming had a way with ships and engines; above all, Fleming had a businesslike attitude. A businesslike attitude was most necessary in space, where it cost a small fortune just to raise ship.

“If only it's not populated,” Fleming was praying in his enthusiastic, businesslike way. “If only it's all ours.
Ours
, Howard! An Earthtype planet! God, we can sell the real estate alone for a fortune, to say nothing of mineral rights, refueling rights, and everything else.”

Howard swallowed the last of his avocado. Young Fleming still had a lot to learn. Finding and selling planets was a business, exactly like growing and selling oranges. There was a difference, of course; oranges aren't dangerous, and planets sometimes are. But then, oranges don't make the profits a good planet can.

“Shall we land on our planet now?” Fleming asked eagerly.

“By all means,” Howard said. “Only—that space station ahead leads me to believe that the inhabitants might consider it
their
planet.”

Fleming looked. Sure enough, a space station, previously hidden by the planet's bulk, was swinging into sight.

“Oh, damn,” Fleming said, his narrow freckled face twisting into a pout. “It's populated, then. Do you suppose we could—” He left the sentence unfinished, but glanced at the gunfire controls.

“Hmm.” Howard looked at the space station, appraised the technology that had built it, then glanced at the planet. Regretfully he shook his head. “No, not here.”

“Oh, well,” Fleming said. “At least we have first trading rights.” He looked out the port again and caught Howard's arm. “Look—the space station.”

Across the gray metal surface of the sphere bright lights were winking in sequence.

“What do you suppose it means?” Fleming asked.

“I have no idea,” Howard told him, “and we'll never find out here. You may as well land on the planet, if no one tries to stop you.”

Fleming nodded, and switched the controls to manual. For a few moments, Howard watched.

The control board was covered with dials, switches, and gauges, which were made of metal, plastics, and quartz. Fleming, on the other hand, was flesh and blood and bone. It seemed impossible that any relationship could exist between them, except the most perfunctory. Instead, Fleming seemed to merge into the control board. His eyes scanned the dials with mechanical precision, his fingers became extensions of the switches. The metal seemed to become pliable under his hands, and amenable to his will. The quartz gauges gleamed red, and Fleming's eyes shone red, too, with a glow that didn't seem entirely reflection.

Once the deceleration spiral had been entered, Howard settled himself comfortably in the galley. He estimated his fuel and food expenditures, plus depreciation on the ship. To the sum he added a safe third, and marked it down in a ledger. It would come in useful later, for his income tax.

They landed on the outskirts of a city, and waited for the local customs officials. No one came. They ran the standard atmosphere and microorganism tests, and continued waiting. Still no one came. After half a day, Fleming undogged the hatch, and they started toward the city.

The first skeletons, scattered across the bomb-torn concrete road, puzzled them; it seemed so untidy. What civilized people left skeletons in their roads? Why didn't someone clean up?

The city was populated only by skeletons, thousands, millions, packed into crumbling theaters, fallen at the doorways of dusty stores, scattered across the bullet-ripped streets.

“Must have had a war on,” Fleming said brightly.

In the center of the city they found a parade grounds where rank upon rank of uniformed skeletons lay upon the grass. The reviewing stands were packed with skeleton officials, skeleton officers, skeleton wives and parents. And behind the stands were skeleton children, gathered to see the fun.

“A war, all right,” Fleming said, nodding his head with finality. “They lost.”

“Obviously,” Howard said. “But who won?”

“What?”

“Where are the victors?”

At that moment the space station passed overhead, casting a shadow across the silent ranks of skeletons. Both men glanced up uneasily.

“You think everyone's dead?” Fleming asked hopefully.

“I think we should find out.”

They walked back to the ship. Fleming began to whistle out of sheer high spirits, and kicked a mound of pocked bones out of his way. “We've struck it rich,” he said, grinning at Howard.

“Not yet,” Howard said cautiously. “There may be survivors—” He caught Fleming's look and smiled in spite of himself.

“It
does
look like a successful business trip.”

Their tour of the planet was brief. The blue-green world was a bomb-splattered tomb. On every continent, the towns contained their tens of thousands of bony inhabitants, each city its millions. The plains and mountains were scattered with skeletons, and there were skeletons in the lakes, and skeletons in the forests and jungles.

“What a mess!” Fleming said at last, as they hovered over the planet. “What do you suppose the population was here?”

“I'd estimate it at nine billion, give or take a billion,” Howard said.

“What do you suppose happened?”

Howard smiled sagely. “There are three classic methods of genocide. The first is pollution of the atmosphere by poison gas. Allied to that is radioactive poisoning, which kills the plant life as well. And finally, there are mutated laboratory germs, created solely for the purpose of attacking whole populations. If they get out of hand, they can wipe out a planet.”

“Think that happened here?” Fleming asked, with lively interest.

“I believe so,” Howard said, wiping an apple on his arm and biting into it. “I'm no pathologist, but the marks on those bones—”

“Germs,” Fleming said. he coughed involuntarily. “You don't suppose—”

“You'd be dead already, if they were still active. All this must have happened several hundred years ago, to judge by the weathering of the skeletons. The germs die for lack of a human host.”

Fleming nodded emphatically. “That's made to order. Oh, it's too bad about the people. Fortunes of war and all that. But this planet really is ours!” He peered out the port at the rich green fields below. “What'll we call it, Howard?”

Howard looked at the fields, and the wild, overgrown pastureland that bordered the concrete roads. “We might call it Paradise II,” he said. “This place ought to be a farmer's heaven.”

“Paradise II! That's pretty good,” Fleming said. “I suppose we'll have to hire a gang to clear off those skeletons. Looks too weird-like.”

Howard nodded. There were many details to be attended to. “We'll do that after—”

The space station passed over them.

“The lights!” Howard cried suddenly.

“Lights?” Fleming stared at the receding sphere.

“When we came in. Remember? Those flashing lights?”

“Right.” Fleming said. “Do you suppose someone is holed up in the station?”

“We'll find out right now,” Howard said grimly. He took a determined bite of his apple as Fleming turned the ship.

When they reached the space station the first thing they saw was the other ship, clinging to the station's polished metal as a spider clings to its web. It was small, a third the size of their ship, and one of its hatches was ajar.