The Ultimate Egoist (45 page)

The substance of its feet spread slowly under the tremendous strain and at its shoulder appeared a slight crack. It widened as the monster unfeelingly crushed itself against the rock, and suddenly a large piece of the shoulder came away and the being twisted slushily three feet farther in. It lay quietly with its muddy eyes fixed on her, and then brought one thick arm up over its head and reached.

Babe scrambled in the inch farther she had believed impossible, and the filthy clubbed hand stroked down her back, leaving a trail of muck on the blue denim of the shirt she wore. The monster surged suddenly and, lying full length now, gained that last precious inch. A black hand seized one of her braids, and for Babe the lights went out.

When she came to, she was dangling by her hair from that same crusted paw. The thing held her high, so that her face and its featureless head were not more than a foot apart. It gazed at her with a mild curiosity in its eyes, and it swung her slowly back and forth. The agony of her pulled hair did what fear could not do—gave her a voice. She screamed. She opened her mouth and puffed up her powerful young lungs, and she sounded off. She held her throat in the position of the first scream, and her chest labored and pumped more air through the frozen throat. Shrill and monotonous and infinitely piercing, her screams.

The thing did not mind. It held her as she was, and watched. When it had learned all it could from this phenomenon, it dropped her jarringly, and looked around the half-cave, ignoring the stunned and huddled Babe. It reached over and picked up the leather briefcase and tore it twice across as if it were tissue. It saw the sandwich Babe had left, picked it up, crushed it, dropped it.

Babe opened her eyes, saw that she was free, and just as the thing turned back to her she dove between its legs and out into the shallow pool in front of the rock, paddled across and hit the other bank screaming. A vicious little light of fury burned in her; she picked up a grapefruit-sized stone and hurled it with all her frenzied might. It flew low and fast, and struck squashily on the monster’s ankle. The
thing was just taking a step toward the water; the stone caught it off balance, and its unpracticed equilibrium could not save it. It tottered for a long, silent moment at the edge and then splashed into the stream. Without a second look Babe ran shrieking away.

Cory Drew was following the little gobs of mold that somehow indicated the path of the murderer, and he was nearby when he first heard her scream. He broke into a run, dropping his shotgun and holding the .32–40 ready to fire. He ran with such deadly panic in his heart that he ran right past the huge cleft rock and was a hundred yards past it before she burst out through the pool and ran up the bank. He had to run hard and fast to catch her, because anything behind her was that faceless horror in the cave, and she was living for the one idea of getting away from there. He caught her in his arms and swung her to him, and she screamed on and on and on.

Babe didn’t see Cory at all, even when he held her and quieted her.

The monster lay in the water. It neither liked nor disliked this new element. It rested on the bottom, its massive head a foot beneath the surface, and it curiously considered the facts it had garnered. There was the little humming noise of Babe’s voice that sent the monster questing into the cave. There was the black material of the briefcase that resisted so much more than green things when he tore it. There was the little two-legged one who sang and brought him near, and who screamed when he came. There was this new cold moving thing he had fallen into. It was washing his body away. That had never happened before. That was interesting. The monster decided to stay and observe this new thing. It felt no urge to save itself; it could only be curious.

The brook came laughing down out of its spring, ran down from its source beckoning to the sunbeams and embracing freshets and helpful brooklets. It shouted and played with streaming little roots, and nudged the minnows and pollywogs about in its tiny backwaters. It was a happy brook. When it came to the pool by the cloven rock it found the monster there, and plucked at it. It soaked the foul substances and smoothed and melted the molds, and the waters below
the thing eddied darkly with its diluted matter. It was a thorough brook. It washed all it touched, persistently. Where it found filth, it removed filth; if there were layer on layer of foulness, then layer by foul layer it was removed. It was a good brook. It did not mind the poison of the monster, but took it up and thinned it and spread it in little rings round rocks downstream, and let it drift to the rootlets of water plants, that they might grow greener and lovelier. And the monster melted.

“I am smaller,” the thing thought. “That is interesting. I could not move now. And now this part of me which thinks is going, too. It will stop in just a moment, and drift away with the rest of the body. It will stop thinking and I will stop being, and that, too, is a very interesting thing.”

So the monster melted and dirtied the water, and water was clean again, washing and washing the skeleton that the monster had left. It was not very big, and there was a badly healed knot on the left arm. The sunlight flickered on the triangular silver plate set into the pale skull, and the skeleton was very clean now. The brook laughed about it for an age.

They found the skeleton, six grimlipped men who came to find a killer. No one had believed Babe, when she told her story days later. It had to be days later because Babe had screamed for seven hours without stopping, and had lain like a dead child for a day. No one believed her at all, because her story was all about the bad fella, and they knew that the bad fella was simply a thing that her father had made up to frighten her with. But it was through her that the skeleton was found, and so the men at the bank sent a check to the Drews for more money than they had ever dreamed about. It was old Roger Kirk, sure enough, that skeleton, though it was found five miles from where he had died and sank into the forest floor where the hot molds builded around his skeleton and emerged—a monster.

So the Drews had a new barn and fine new livestock and they hired four men. But they didn’t have Alton. And they didn’t have Kimbo. And Babe screams at night and has grown very thin.

I
WAS STILL
melancholic about chasing the Ether Breather out of the ken of man, the day I got that bright idea of bringing the Breather back. I should have let it stay in idea form. I should not have gone to see Berbelot about it. I also should have stayed in bed. I’ve got brains, but no sense. I went to see Berbelot.

He wasn’t glad to see me, which he did through the televisor in his foyer. Quite a gadget, that foyer. I knew that it was an elevator to take guests up to his quarters in the mansion, the “House that Perfume Built.” I hadn’t known till now that it was also a highly efficient bouncing mechanism. I had no sooner passed my hand over the sensitized plate that served as a doorbell when his face appeared on the screen. He said “Hmph! Hamilton!” and next thing I knew the foyer’s walls had extended and pinned me tight. I was turned upside down, shaken twice, and then dropped on my ear outside the house. I think he designed that bouncer just for me. He was a nice old boy, but, man, how he could hang on to a grouch. A whole year, this one had lasted. Just because I had been tactless with the Breather.

I got up and dusted myself off and swore I’d never bother the irascible old heel again. And then I hunted a drugstore to call him up. That’s the way it was. Berbelot was a peculiar duck. His respect for me meant more than anger against him could make up for. He was the only man I ever met that ever made me sorry for anything.

I went into the visiphone booth and pressed my identification tab against the resilient panel on the phone. That made a record of the call so I could be billed for it. Then I dialed Berbelot. I got his bun-faced valet.

“I want to speak to Mr. Berbelot, Cogan.”

“Mr. Berbelot is out, Mr. Hamilton.”

“So!” I snapped, my voice rising. “You’re the one who tossed me
out just now with that salesman mangler on your doorstep! I’ll macerate you, you subatomic idiot!”

“Oh … I … I didn’t, Mr. Hamilton, really. I—”

“Then if you didn’t Berbelot did. If he did, he’s home. Incidentally, I saw him in the viewplate. Enough of the chitchat, doughface. Tell him I want to speak to him.”

“B-but he won’t speak to you, Mr. Hamilton. He gave strict orders a year ago.”

“Tell him I’ve thought of a way to get in touch with the Ether Breather again. Go on. He won’t fire you, you crumb from the breadline. He’ll kiss you on both cheeks. Snap into it!”

The screen went vacant as he moved away, and I heard Berbelot’s voice—“I thought I told you”—and then the bumble of Cogan’s, and then “WHAT!” from the old man, and another short bumble that was interrupted by Berbelot’s sliding to a stop in front of the transmitter. “Hamilton,” he said sternly into the visiplate, “if this is a joke of yours … if you think you can worm your way into my confidence with … if you dare to lead me on some wild-goose cha … if you—”

“If you’ll give me a chance, King of Stink,” I said, knowing that if I got him really mad he’d listen to me, being the type that got speechless with rage, “I’ll give you the dope. I have an idea that I think will bring the Breather back, but it’s up to you to carry it out. You have the apparatus.”

“Come up,” he whispered, his wattles quivering. “But I warn you, if you dare to take this liberty on a bluff, I shall most certainly have you pried loose from your esophagus.”

“Comin’ up!” I said. “By the way, when I get into that foyer again, please be sure which button you push.”

“Don’t worry,” he growled, “I have a dingus up here that is quite as efficient. It throws people from the sixtieth floor. Do come up.” The screen darkened. I sighed and started for the “House that Perfume Built.”

The elevator glided to a stop that made my stomach feel puffy, and I stepped out. Berbelot was standing in front of it looking suspicious as a pawnbroker. I held out my hand with some remark about
how swell it was to see him again, and he just stared at it. When I thought he was going to forego the honor of shaking it, he put his hand into mine, withdrew it quickly, looked at it, and wiped it carefully on his jacket. Without his saying a word I gathered that he wasn’t glad to see me, that he thought I was an undesirable and unsanitary character, and that he didn’t trust me.

“Did I ever tell you,” I said as calmly as I could, “that I am terribly sorry about what happened?”

Berbelot said, “I knew a man who said that after he murdered somebody. They burned him anyway.”

I thought that was very nice. “Do you want to find out about my idea or not?” I gritted. “I don’t have to stay here to be insulted.”

“I realize that. You’re insulted everywhere, I imagine. Well, what’s your idea?”

I saw Cogan hovering over the old man’s shoulder and threw my hat at him. Since Berbelot apparently found it difficult to be hospitable, I saved him the trouble of inviting me to sit down by sitting down.

“Berbelot,” I said, when I had one of his best cigarettes fuming as nicely as he was, “you’re being unreasonable. But I have you interested, and as long as that lasts you’ll be sociable. Sit down. I am about to be Socratic. It may take a little while.”

“I suffer.” He sat down. “I suffer exceedingly.” He paused, and then added pensively, “I never thought I could be so irritated by anyone who bored me. Go ahead, Hamilton.”

I closed my eyes and counted ten. Berbelot could manufacture more printable invective than anyone I ever met.

“Question one,” I said. “What is the nature of the creature you dubbed Ether Breather?”

“Why, it’s a … well, apparently a combination of etheric forces, living in and around us. It’s as if the air in this room were a thinking animal. What are you—”

“I’ll ask questions. Now, will you grant it intelligence?”

“Of course. A peculiar kind, though. It seems to be motivated by a childish desire to have fun—mostly at some poor human’s expense.”

“But its reactions were reasonable, weren’t they?”

“Yes, although exaggerated. It reached us through color television;
that was its only medium of expression. And it raised particular hell with the programs—a cosmic practical joker, quite uninhibited, altogether unafraid of any consequences to itself. And then when you, you blockhead, told it that it had hurt someone’s feelings and that it ought to get off the air, it apologized and was never heard from again. Again an exaggerated reaction. But what has that got to do with—”

“Everything. Look; you made it laugh easily. You made it ashamed of itself easily. It cried easily. If you really want to get in touch with it again, you just have to go on from there.”

Berbelot pressed a concealed button and the lights took on a greenish cast. He always claimed a man thought more clearly under a green light. “I’ll admit that that particular thought sequence has escaped me,” he nodded, “since I do not have a mind which is led astray by illogical obscurities. But in all justice to you—not that you deserve anything approaching a compliment—I think you have something there. I suppose that is as far as you have gone, though. I’ve spent hours on the problem. I’ve called that creature for days on end on a directional polychrome wave. I’ve apologized to it and pleaded with it and begged it and told it funny stories and practically asked it to put its invisible feet out of my television receiver so I could kiss them. And never a whisper have I had. No, Hamilton; the Ether Breather is definitely miffed, peeved, and not at home. And it’s all your fault.”

“Once,” I said dreamily, “I knew a woman whose husband went astray. She knew where he was, and sent him message after message. She begged and she pleaded and she wept into visiphones. It didn’t get her anywhere. Then she got a bright idea. She sent him a telefacsimile letter, written on her very best stationery. It described in great detail the nineteen different kinds of heel she thought he was.”

“I don’t know what this has to do with the Breather, but what happened?” asked Berbelot.