Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

And Stet was mad. He was waiting in the newsroom, his emerald-blue eyes blazing as if he had not only polished but lacquered them.

“What’s the idea of taking six hours to cover a simple story!” he shouted as soon as the door began to open. “Aside from the trivial matter of a deadline to be met—Griblo, where’s Tarb? Nothing’s happened to her, has it?”

“Naaah,” Griblo said, unslinging his camera. “She took a short cut, only she got held up by a terrace. Snagged her umbrella on it, I believe. I heard her yelling when I was waiting for the elevator; I didn’t know nice girls knew language like that. She should be up any minute now…. There she is.”

He pointed to a window, through which the lissome form of the young feature writer could be seen, tapping on the glass in order to attract attention.

“Somebody better open it for her,” the cameraman suggested. “Probably not meant to open from the outside. Not many people come in that way, I guess.”

Open-mouthed, the whole newsroom stared at the window. Finally the Copy Editor got up and let a dripping Tarb in.

“Nearly thought I wouldn’t make it,” she observed, shaking herself in a flurry of wet pink feathers. The rest of the staff ducked, most of them too late. “Umbrella didn’t do much good,” she continued, closing it. It left a little puddle on the rug. “My wings got soaked right away.” She tossed her wet crest out of her eyes. “Golly, but it’s good to fly again. Haven’t done it for months, but it seems like years.” Her eye caught Miss Snow’s. “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

“Tarb,” Stet thundered, “you’ve been drinking coffee! Griblo!” But the cameraman had nimbly sought sanctuary in the dark-room.

“You’d better go home, Tarb.” When Stet’s eye tufts met across his nose, he was downright ugly, she realized. “Griblo can give me the dope and I’ll write up the story myself. I can fill it out with canned copy. And you and I will discuss this situation in the morning.”

“Won’t go home when there’s work to be done. Duty calls me.” Giving a brief and quite recognizable imitation of a Terrestrial trumpet, Tarb stalked down the corridor to her office.

Drosmig looked up from his perch, to which he was still miraculously clinging at that hour. “So it got you, too?… Sorry… nice girl.”

“It hasn’t got me,” Tarb replied, picking up a letter marked Urgent. “I’ve got it.” She scanned the letter, then made hastily for Stet’s office.

He sat drumming on his desk with the antique stainless steel spatula he used as a paperknife.

“Read this!” she demanded, thrusting the letter into his face. “Read this, you traitor—sacrificing our whole civilization to what’s most expedient for you! Hypocrite! Cad!”

“Tarb, listen to me! I’m—”

“Read it!” She slapped the letter down in front of him. “Read it and see what you’ve done to us! Sure, we Fizbians keep to ourselves and so the only people who know anything about us are the ones who want to sell us brushes, while the people who want to help us don’t know a damn thing about us and—”

“Oh, all right! I’ll read it if you’ll only keep quiet!” He turned the letter right-side up.

Johannesburg

Dear Senbot Drosmig:

I represent the Dzoglian Publishing Company, Inc., of which I know you have heard, since your paper has seen fit to give our books some of the most unjust reviews on record. However, be that as it may, I have opened an office on Earth with the laudable purpose of effecting an interchange of respective literatures, to see which Terrestrial books might most profitably be translated into Fizbian, and which of the authors on our own list might have potential appeal for the Earth reader.

Dealing with authors is, of course, a nerve-racking business and I soon found myself in dire need of mental treatment. What was my horror to find that this primitive, although charming, planet had no neurotones, no psychoscopes, not even any cerebrophones—in fact, no psychiatric machines at all! The very knowledge of this brought me several degrees closer to a breakdown.

Perhaps I should have consulted you at this juncture, but I admit I was a bit of a snob. “What sort of advice can a mere journalist give me,” I thought, “that I could not give myself?” So, more for amusement than anything else, I determined to consult a native practitioner. “After all,” I said to myself, “a good laugh is a step forward on the road to recovery.”

Accordingly, I went to see this native fellow. They work entirely without machines, I understand, using something like witchcraft. At the same time, I thought I might pick up some material for a jolly little book on primitive customs which I could get some unknown writer to throw together inexpensively. Strong human interest items like that always have great reader-appeal.

The native chap—doctor, he calls himself—was most cordial, which he should have been at the price I was paying him. One thing I must say about these natives—backward they may be, but they have a very shrewd commercial sense. You can’t even imagine the trouble I had getting those authors to sign even remotely reasonable contracts… which in part accounts for my mental disturbance, I suppose.

Well, anyway, I handed the native a privacy waiver carefully filled out in Terran. He took it, smiled and said, “We’ll discuss this afterward. My contact lenses have disappeared; I suppose one of my patients has stolen them again. Can’t see a thing without them.”

So we sat down and had a bit of a chat. He seemed remarkably intelligent for a native; never interrupted me once.

“You are definitely in great trouble,” he told me when I’d finished. “You need to be psycho-analyzed.”

“Good, good,” I said. “I see I’ve come to the right shop.”

“Now just lie down and make yourself comfortable.”

“Lie down?” I repeated, puzzled. I have an excellent command of Terran, but every now and then an idiom will throw me. “I tell the truth, sir, and when I am required by force of circumstances to lie, I lie up.”

“No,” he said, “not that kind of lying. You know, the kind you do at night when you go to sleep.”

“Oh, I get you,” I said idiomatically. Without further ado, I flung off my ulster and flew up to a thingummy hanging from the ceiling—chandelier, I believe, is the native term—flipped upside down, and hung from it by my toes. Wasn’t the Presidential Perch, by any means, but it wasn’t bad at all. “What do I do next?” I inquired affably.

“My dear fellow,” the chap said, whipping out a notebook from the recesses of his costume, “how long have you had this delusion that you are a bird—or is it a bat?”

“Sir,” I said as haughtily as my position permitted, “I am neither a bird nor a bat. I am a Fizbian. Surely you have heard of Fizbians?”

“Yes, yes, of course. They come from another country or planet or something. Frankly, politics is a bit outside my sphere. All I’m interested in is people—and Fizbians are people, aren’t they?”

“Yes, certainly. If anything, it’s you who…. Yes, they are people.”

“Well, tell me then, Mr. Liznig, when was it you first started thinking you were a bat or a bird?”

I tried to control myself. “I am neither a bird nor a bat! I am a Fizbian! I have wings! See?” I fluttered them.

He peered at me. “I wish I could,” he said regretfully. “Without my glasses, though, I’m as blind as a bat—or a bird.”

Well, the long and the short of it is that the natives are planning to certify me as insane and incarcerate me, pending the doctor’s decision as to whether my delusion is that I am a bird or a bat. They are using my privacy waiver as commitment papers.