STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS (19 page)

The count was so shaken that he dropped his revolver, which fell to the floor. There was a sharp crack as it fired, the bullet, fortunately, imbedding itself in the wall rather than hitting the count. “I am Count Ernst Frederick von Brautisch” he managed to answer.

“Permit me to introduce myself,” the thing from the fireplace said. My name is Astaroth.”

He shook himself daintily, some ashes falling off him.

“Are you the Devil?” the Count asked. “Have you come to offer me something in exchange for my soul?”

“Oh, no,” Astaroth replied. “I’m one of his assistants.”

So you don’t want my soul?” von Brautisch was somewhat disappointed. After all, his soul wasn’t doing him any particular good right now and trading it off for something useful like great wealth would have solved his immediate predicament.

“Only my boss can barter for souls,” the demon explained. “Actually, I’m here on personal business.”

The count’s innate politeness came into play. He was after all the host. He would have offered Astaroth a drink if he had any in the castle.

What can I do for you?” he asked.

“A mere trifle I assume you are still unmarried.”

“I am.”

“Good,” said the demon. “My sister has been nagging me incessantly to find a husband for my nice, Brunhilda. The girl is determined to marry a nobleman. You would be the perfect match for her.”

“And in return for marrying your niece,” the count said, “You will grant me great wealth.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Astaroth answered. “Only the boss can do that.”

“Well, just what are you offering in exchange?”

“I’m certain,” the demon answered, that I can persuade your bankers in Florence to refinance the mortgage on your castle. With a longer period for paying it off, you would be able to reduce your annual payments to a quarter of your military pay, which should end your worries about losing your castle.’

“That’s preposterous! The count exclaimed. Take on your niece as my wife for only a loan rescheduling!”

Astaroth shrugged. He took out a long list from one of the folds of his body and examined it. “There are quite a few impoverished noblemen; I dare say, who will accept my offer.”

The count reconsidered. “All right,” he said, “Let me take a look at Brunhilda. If she’s not too bad looking, I may accept your offer.

“That’s a reasonable position,” the demon said. He returned to the fireplace and disappeared. A few seconds later there was another flash of flames in the fireplace and Astaroth emerged, followed by a young woman. She was taller than Astaroth, but still quite tiny. Her hair was piled up on her head, covering up any horns she might have had. All in all, she was a relatively attractive young woman.

“All right,” said von Brautisch, “I’ll marry her.”

“Thank you, Count,” Brunhilda said. “I’ll be the perfect wife for you.”

“You realize,” the count said, looking at them both, “That I don’t have any funds to pay for the wedding. I don’t even have enough to give to the clergyman who performs the ceremony.”

Astaroth looked shocked, and he crossed himself backwards. “God damn it! He exclaimed, “If I may be forgiven for using that expression. We will have to have a civil ceremony, nothing religious!”

And so it was. The only guest at the wedding was von Brautisch’s orderly, who doubled as best man. The count found himself pleased with his wife as the months passed. She was frugal, helping him to lower his expenses and turned out to be an astonishingly good cook. Even more important, she was fabulous in bed. The colonel of von Brautisch’s regiment, upon meeting Brunhilda, was taken by her charm. He assured the count that with a wife like that to help him, he could not fail to become a general.

The count prudently did not attempt to determine whether Brunhilda was a demon or a human. She always refused to disrobe and get into bed unless the bedroom was completely dark. Von Brautisch always remembered during their love making not to caress her too far down the back to where a tail, if she had one, would be.

Unfortunately after several years of married bliss, disaster struck. Von Brautish found himself unable to refuse the invitation of three of his brother officers to accompany them to a local tavern. They all drank far more than they should have as they exchanged ribald jokes and stared lasciviously at the entertainer, the most voluptuous woman von Brautish had ever seen. When she took a break in her singing, one of the officers invited her to join them at their table.

At the table, the woman surprisingly concentrated her attentions on the count, ignoring the other three officers. She stared into his eyes, licking her crimson lips with a lewd smile. As she leaned towards him, her low cut costume appeared to slip, revealing virtually all of her bosom. Then von Brautisch felt her hand on his thigh, squeezing it.

The count was far from being a ladies’ man, and he sincerely wished to be faithful to his wife, but he had drunk too much to have a clear head. Then one of his brother officers stood up and declared in a loud voice that he had to return to his quarters as he had duty tomorrow. A second of von Brautisch’s comrades did the same. Wobbling and trying clumsily to help each other, they headed for the door. The count looked at the third officer. He was slumped down, his head on the table, snoring loudly.

“Come, Ernst,” said the woman, addressing him by his given name. “Why don’t we go up to my room? We will be much more comfortable there.” He struggled to stand and then managed to walk, following her up the stairs to her room.

Lorelei, as she had identified herself to the count, turned and faced him. He thought she was even more voluptuous woman than she had seemed downstairs and desired to possess her with every pore of his body. Slowly, seductively, she lowered the light in the bedroom, until the count could barely see her figure, illuminated by a bit of moonlight, streaming in through the window. Then she removed her costume with a single gesture and stood there naked facing him.

The count ripped off her clothes and pushed her down upon the bed, then climbed atop her. Pressing himself against her, he experienced the most wonderful sex he had ever knowb1n. She bit him hard upon the lips, which only excited him more. His hands caressed her body until, to his sudden shock; he felt a furry tail. Then she bit him savagely on the neck, breaking it.

The last conscious thought von Brautisch had before he expired was of some advice his father had given him, so many years ago. “My son,” he had said, “Always take care. Remember, the devil you know is far better than the devil you don’t.”

The possibility of some form of life existing in the center of the earth has been the subject of occasional science fiction stories but until recently was not an area of series scientific exploration. This gap or supposed gap in human knowledge was closed by the inauguration of the Vulcan Project. The concept originated in the mind of Senator Nettles, widely considered to be the most influential member of the U.S. Senate. Nettles was not in the least interested in scientific research. His motivation came from the unhappy situation in his statement, which was suffering from the highest unemployment rate in the country due to the closure of many mines coinciding with the upcoming Congressional elections. No political observer could be found with the temerity that the Senator might possibly be re-elected.

Nettles at first tried to pursue the standard remedies. However, government social welfare had lost the public’s support because of their total lack of success. As a result, he made no headway when he tried to increase the time the residents of his state would be eligible for unemployment insurance or to obtain government-financed retraining. The Vulcan Project, as he conceived it, met the need perfectly. He proposed to spend a trillion dollars over a ten-year period to finance the digging of a giant hole to the center of the earth to determine whether there was any life form there. Since it was a government project, the total lack of any rational element in the project was of no importance.

Naturally, the mouth of the hole would be situated in Nettles’ home state, which was justified on the basis of the many experienced miners living there. Even if the project had some scientific purpose, a hole with a diameter of say three feet would have been more than adequate. However, such a tunnel would have appeared to be a mere pinprick, totally insufficient for publicity purposes. Therefore, it was to be a round hundred feet in diameter, or more than twice the size of the widest tunnel in the world, that under the Yangzi River in China.

As powerful as he was, Senator Nettles alone could not assure Senatorial passage of his Vulcan Project bill. Looking at possible allies, he selected Senator Cooper, another powerful member of that body. Like Nettles, Cooper had not the least interest in promoting scientific research. However, his home state was the site of numerous plants involved in the automobile manufacture. Declining American car sales and the steady rise in production costs and wages had pushed virtually all of these firms close to bankruptcy, many for the third time in the previous five years. C

Copper readily agreed to back the Vulcan bill, provided it was amended to include a few minor provisions. These all boiled down to the bailing out of the auto companies in his state. Since previous such bailouts had aroused bitter attacks of unfairness from those parties not included in the bailout, the provisions of the new bill were slightly altered. Not just workers’ pensions, but also workers’ wages, bond holders, senior executives and stock owners were all guaranteed against financial loss. The bill for this was a comparatively modest four hundred billion dollars, which was added to the original one trillion dollar proposal.

With Cooper’s support, passage of the plan was virtually assured. However, Nettles was not in the mood to gamble. Fortunately, Senator Zeiss offered voluntarily to deliver his support. Unlike Nettles and Cooper, Zeiss was one of the few members of the Senate to actually consider what might be beneficial for the entire country.

Zeiss was the only member of the Senate to hold a Ph.D. degree, which was in the field of chemistry. He was passionately motivated to improve scientific research in the U.S., which he felt was suffering as a result of most students concluding that neither graduate school nor a basic college education paid off financially in view of the difficulty in obtaining suitable jobs after graduation. Indeed, all but a handful of graduates were forced to take minimum wage job in the fast food industry or in the fast growing hallucinogenic drug retail business.

With Zeiss expressing great gratification, the Vulcan Project bill was further amended to include an additional two hundred billion dollars.Half of the added amount was to go in fellowships to worthy students in biology, chemistry, physics and engineering and the other half in grants to schools around the country to finance expansion of their facilities for scientific education and research. The final version of the bill now financed at three trillion, four hundred million dollars over ten years passed the Senate with an overriding majority and then sailed through the House of Representatives. The path to approval was smoothed by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System. He endorsed the Vulcan bill. In return he obtained the commitment by Senators and Cooper to free him from the requirement to appear periodically before Congressional Committees to testify on the actions of the Federal Reserve and on economic conditions in general.

The President, far from opposing the plan, warmly endorsed it and then claimed full credit for the idea. His popularity in the public opinion polls had fallen to such a low level that he now spent over three hundred days each year playing golf in the hinterland to avoid the unpleasant reminders in Washington of his ineptitude. His impact on the public matters was now so minimal that even the Sunday morning TV network news shows turned down out of hand his pleadings to appear as their guest.

Having no accomplishments of which to boast, at the State of the Union Message to Congress he blatantly declared that the Vulcan Project was the most important U.S. Government program since President Kennedy’s launching in March 1961 of the program to land a man on the moon. Attempting to duplicating the fine Kennedy rhetoric, the President declared that “Just as this country became the first nation to place a man on the moon, we will be the first nation to place a man in the center of the earth.”

The speed with which work on the Vulcan project began reflected the crescendo of support from all political factions in Congress which followed the President’s State of the Union Speech. First priority went to the construction of a large media center at the planned site of the excavation in view of the urgency of assuring favorable media coverage of the project. No expense was spared. The complete included two Olympic sized swimming pools, a complete motion picture theater and an eighteen hole golf course. Three separate restaurants, each directed by a celebrity chef, supplied meals to the media representatives, all without charge. Due to various government regulations, free liquor could not be served, but lengthy “happy hours” which lasted for most of each day saw alcoholic beverages sold for a token price which as further cut on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

To ensure that the facility was readily available to the media, free government air transportation was provided to it from all major cities. In the center auditorium, media representatives were given informative briefings on the state of the project, with considerable free time for them to prepare their news stories and also to enjoy the many amenities such as the golf course. Because of the press of demand, most stays at the center had to be limited to no more than three weeks, particularly when the media representatives were accompanied by their spouses and children.

Following the completion of the media center, the next structure constructed was Mission Control. This facility was the home for several hundred scientists and researchers who sat at large mahogany desks studying computer screens and a wide variety of gauges and graphic displays. These graphic displays were designed with priority assigned to providing interesting video footage when they were shown on TV programs. The actual data provided by them had nothing at all to do with the actual project, measuring developments which had no bearing at all on the project such as the weather in Greenland or the daily tidal range in Portland, Maine.