STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS (25 page)

A very large number of people had sought space on one of the submersibles as the only chance of escaping death from the cold. To handle the choice fairly, most of the slots were allotted in equal numbers to adults of childbearing age who met extremely high health and intelligence requirements. Even with the pool of possible selectees thus limited, each slot could have been filled many hundreds of thousands over. Once it was revealed that the submersibles could carry only a single adult, the number of people interested dropped precipitously; few looked forward to spending years alone in a small vessel in the ocean depths.

Even so, George was fortunate to be awarded a place. He was aided by having access to a small pool of slots reserved for individuals working on the program. Naturally, a much larger special allotment was assigned to prominent government officials and their friends and relatives. There were even unconfirmed rumors that a special ten-person submersible had been constructed for the use of the President, his family and escorting Secret Service agents and press advisors.

George’s initial relief at gaining one of the prized slots quickly turned to unhappiness after spending six months in the craft. The cramped quarters, the monotony of the diet and, worst of all, the isolation, ate at him. Often he thought that the people who had been left behind to die in the cold were perhaps the lucky ones.

One day, as George was just finishing a lunch of franks and beans, with very little meat, he heard a violent pounding at the front of the submersible. He rushed to the sonar apparatus and studied the screen. On two previous occasions he had heard similar sounds; consulting the sonar had revealed the noise was caused by large maritime creatures hitting the ship. He was startled to find the sonar set displaying a figure at the bow of the submersible unlike that of a whale or giant squid. Instead, it seemed to resemble a human.

The submersible had in its bow a single opening in the heavy metal outer shell, a tiny porthole. Normally, it was covered with a heavy metal porthole cover to lessen the possibility of the porthole glass breaking and water flooding into the submersible. George hastily unlocked the porthole cover, opened it and peered through the heavy glass. The vessel was at so great a depth that almost no light penetrated that far down.

George was amazed to see staring at him from the other side of the porthole a human face. He thought it must have been his imagination and stared again. There was no doubt. It was a human face. George was not certain if the creature, man or fish could see into the submersible. He stepped back and waved and smiled, hoping to establish communication. He thought he saw it wave back before it turned and swam away.

As he sat down, trying to decide exactly what he had seen and its significance to him, he recalled something he had overheard as he was boarding the submersible. Forced to recognize the limited prospects of success from the submersible program or the tunneling effort, the government had shifted its attention to DNA experimentation, hoping to so modify the DNA of cloned human specimens to permit them to survive living in the ocean bottoms. He now realized that whether he survived or not, whether life on land was now possible thanks to renewed solar activity, the role of mankind as he had known it was finished. Man would no longer be the dominant species on Earth.

It was Halloween, the one night each year when the shades of the damned buried in Boot Hill are permitted to walk the earth. Black Jack McBride, widely rumored to have killed fourteen men, not counting Indians or Mexicans, was seated disconsolately on a tombstone, smoking a cigarette. On his chest, the wounds of the shotgun blast from the sheriff who had killed him were visible in all their glory. Smoking a cigarette each Halloween was about the only pleasure he had left. Fortunately, when he was shot by that sheriff, he had the cigarettes in his pocket. They were, therefore, available now to his ghost. Unfortunately, the stock of cigarettes was not being replaced, and he calculated he had only enough for a few more years.

He heard a sound and looked up. It was the ghost of Frank Hollister. Around his neck, the marks of the rope with which he had been hanged were clearly visible. Black Jack shuddered. Of all the damned souls who arose from Boot Hill on Halloween, the most annoying was Hollister. He was always complaining, not about being hanged but about his bungling the affair. He was fond of telling everyone about how he had murdered his wife and two stepsons to gain possession of the richest silver mine in Nevada. “If only,” he kept repeating in a lachrymose voice, “I had used some of that silver to bribe the jury, I would never have been convicted.”

Hollister stared enviously at Jack’s cigarette. You’re damned lucky to be able to smoke a cigarette,” he said. “When they hanged me, I couldn’t have anything I wanted on me. If I still had a soul, I’d cheerfully trade it to have a bottle of whisky in my pocket.”

In an effort to shut him up, Black Jack regretfully offered Hollister one of his few reaming cigarettes. Hollister looked like he was about to resume his sad regrets when Black Jack was elated to see a third figure approach. It was the ghost of Injun Joe. He had been killed by numerous shots in his back, whose wounds formed a tight pattern.

“How,” said Injun Joe, raising his right hand in greeting and looking for all the world to see like a cigar store Indian. “I see white man smoking cigarette. Can give one to Injun Joe?”

Injun Joe had actually attended a one-room log cabin school house for five years, thanks to the influence of his white father. When the latter had untimely died, complaints by the parents of the other students over having their children attend classes with an Indian had led to his expulsion, but not before he had acquired the ability to read, write and speak English reasonably well. Still, he believed he had to live up to the stereotype his name suggested.

On several previous Halloweens, the other shades of the damned souls buried in Boot Hill had discussed Injun Joe’s case. They all wondered how he had ended up a ghost, given his lack of serious crimes while alive. As Injun Joe explained it, he had been shot as a result of a misunderstanding with a bartender who thought he was attempting to take a bottle of whisky from the bar without paying for it. According to Injun Joe, he had been drunk at the time because of several drinks given him by other bar patrons anxious to see how many drinks were needed to get an Indian drunk. As a result of his inebrieation, he admitted, he might have inadvertently not paid the right price for the bottle or indeed anything at all.

Remembering the Indian’s sad story, Black Jack handed him a cigarette. “Thamk you,” said Injun Joe, “I can really use a smoke,” before realizing he had inadvertently stepped out of character. He relaxed when he saw that the others had apparently not noticed his slip. All three sat on their tombstones silently smoking. It was no longer fun, Black Jack thought, to be sprung from Boot Hill every Halloween and walk the earth. Living people no longer believed in ghosts. If anyone saw him from a distance, they thought he was a child in costume collecting his treat or trick candy. Up close, when they could see he was an adult, they would assume him to be someone going to a Halloween masquerade party.

Black Jack’s sad reflections were interrupted by a flash of light and the appearance of a figure before him. It was a man, wearing a white robe, with a halo above his head and wings. In his left hand, he held a harp.

“Am I speaking to Black Jack McBride?” he asked politely.

“That’s me,” came back the answer. “Who are you?”

Permit me to introduce myself,” the man said. “I am the angel Mordecai. I come to you with a very important message.”

“What is it?” Black Jack asked. He was startled to think that an angel would have a message for him.

“You probably are not aware of it, being in Boot Hill that we are computerizing our records in Heaven. While imputing your information into the computer, it was discovered that an unfortunate administrative error was made. Instead of the fourteen individuals you are credited with killing, the correct number is four, and two of them were apparently cases of justifiable self defense.”

“Does that mean I can get out of here?” Black Jack asked hopefully.

“I’m afraid not,” came back the answer. “The error was purely an administrative one, not one of substance. “Still,” the angel continued, we do feel we owe you a sincere expression of regret.”

A lot of good that does me, Black Jack thought to himself. Then he was heartened when he heard Mordecai continue. “As a concrete token of our regret, henceforth your supply of cigarettes will automatically replenish itself.”

“For a long time?” Black Jack asked eagerly.

“Oh, for all eternity.”

There was another flash of light and the angel departed skyward. Black Jack reached into his pocket and gave Hollister and Injun Joe each another cigarette. They sat there smoking without speaking. Then Black Jack broke the silence, speaking more to himself than to the others. “For a shade living in Boot Hill,” he said, “It’s rather a nice present.” The others nodded in agreement. It was the most pleasant Halloween any of them had had for a long time.