Альфред Бестер - Star of Stars [Anthology]

I heard myself saying, in a sickly, stupid voice, "Why didn't you save some of your pay, all those years?"

Corporal Cuckoo replied, with scorn, "Why didn't I save my pay! Because I'm what I am, you mug! Hell, once upon a time, if I'd kept away from cards, I could've bought Manhattan Island for less than what I lost to a Dutchman called Bruncker, drawing ace-high for English guineas! Save my pay! If it wasn't one thing it was another. I lay off liquor. Okay. So if it's not liquor it's a woman. I lay off women. Okay. Then it's cards or dice. I always meant to save my pay; but I never had it in me to save my goddam pay! Doctor Pares stuff fixed me—and when I say it fixed me, I mean, it fixed me, just like I was, and am, and always will be. See? A foot-soldier, ig­norant as dirt. It took me nearly a hundred years to learn to write my name, and four hundred years to get to be a corporal. How d'you like that? And it took will power, at that! Now here's my proposition: fifty-fifty on the story. Once I get proper publicity in a magazine, I'll be able to let the Digestive out of my hands with an easy mind,see? because nobody'd dare to try any funny business with a man with nationwide publicity. Eh?"

"No, of course not," I said.

"Eh?"

"Sure, sure, Corporal."

"Good," said Corporal Cuckoo. "Now in case you think I'm kidding, take a look at this. You saw what I done?"

"I saw, Corporal."

"Look," he said, thrusting his left hand under my nose. It was covered with blood. His shirt cuff was red and wet. Fascinated, I saw one thick, sluggish drop crawl out of the cloth near the buttonhole, and hang, quivering, before it fell on my knee. The mark of it is in the cloth of my trousers to this day.

"See?" said Corporal Cuckoo, and he licked the place between his fingers where his knife had cut down. A pale area appeared. "Where did I cut myself?" he asked.

I shook my head; there was no wound—only a white scar. He wiped his knife on the palm of his hand—it left a red smear—and let the blade fall with a sharp click. Then he wiped his left hand on his right, rubbed both hands clean upon the backs of his trouser legs, and said: "Am I kidding?"

"Well!" I said, somewhat breathlessly. "Well"

"Oh, what the hell!" groaned Corporal Cuckoo, weary beyond words, exhausted, worn out by his endeavors to explain the inexplicable and make the incredible sound reasonable. "... Look. You think this is a trick? Have you got a knife?"

"Yes. Why?"

"A big knife?"

"Moderately big."

"Okay. Cut my throat with it, and see what happens. Stick it in me wherever you like. And I'll bet you a thousand dollars I'll be all right inside two or three hours. Go on. Man to man, it's a bet. Or go borrow an ax if you like; hit me over the head with it."

"Be damned if I do," I said, shuddering.

"And that's how it is," said Corporal Cuckoo, in despair. "And that's how it is every time. There they are, making fortunes out of soap and toothpaste, and here I am, with something in my pocket to keep you young and healthy forever—ah, go chase yourself! I never ought to've drunk your rotten Scotch. This is the way it always is. You wear a beard just like I used to wear before I got a gunpowder burn in the chin at Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sidney got his; or I wouldn't have talked to you. Oh, you dope! I could murder you, so help me I could! Go to hell."

Corporal Cuckoo leaped to his feet and darted away so swiftly that before I found my feet he had disappeared. There was blood on the deck close to where I had been sitting—a tiny pool of blood, no larger than a coffee sau­cer, broken at one edge by the imprint of a heel. About a yard and a half away I saw another heel mark in blood, considerably less noticeable. Then there was a dull smear, as if one of the bloody rubber heels had spun around and impelled its owner toward the left. "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" I shouted. "Oh, Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

But I never saw Corporal Cuckoo again, and I wonder where he can be. It may be that he gave me a false name. But what I heard I heard, and what I saw I saw; and I have five hundred dollars here in an envelope for the man who will put me in touch with him. Honey and oil of roses, eggs and turpentine; these involve, as I said, infinite permutations and combinations. So does any comparable mixture. Still, it might be worth investigating. Why not? Fleming got penicillin out of mildew. Only God knows the glorious mysteries of the dust, out of which come trees and bees, and life in every form, from mildew to man.

I lost Corporal Cuckoo before we landed in New York on July 11th, 1945. Somewhere in the United States, I believe, there is a man tremendously strong in the arms and covered with terrible scars who has the dreadfully dangerous secret of perpetual youth and life. He appears to be about thirty-odd years of age, and has watery, green­ish eyes.

In Cyril Kornbluth was a sharp tooth, just right for puncturing, and he used it with wit and passion. His stories had bite. He was sensitive toward hypoc­risy and remorseless to poses ... and it is all very well, he kept saying through his life, to invent these faster-than-light radium-bearinged plastic dishwash­where he might have gone; but he died young. This a writer, Cyril grew and grew. There is no telling ers; but let us not forget that they will be paid for overs, who are in the doghouse with their wives. As on the installment plan by fretful men with hang-is almost his last story. He wrote it when he was thirty-five, and before it saw print he was dead.

It came to pass in the third quarter of the fiscal year that the Federal Reserve Board did raise the rediscount rate and money was tight in the land. And certain bankers which sate hi New York sent to Ben Graffis in Hollywood a writing which said, Money is tight in the land so let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes.

Whereupon Ben Graffis made to them this moan:

O ye bankers, Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh and you have made of him a devouring dragon. Once was I content with my studio and my animators when we did make twelve Poopy Pandas a year; cursed be the day when I floated a New York loan. You have commanded me to make feature-length cartoon epics and I did obey, and they do open at the Paramount to sensational grosses, and we do re-release them to the nabes year on year, without end. You have commanded me to film live adventure shorts and I did obey, and in the cutting room we do devilishly splice and pull frames and flop neg­atives so that I and my cameras are become bearers of false witness and men look upon my live adventure shorts and say lo! these beasts and birds are like unto us in their laughter, wooing, pranks, and con­tention. You have commanded that I become a mountebank for that I did build Poopy Pandaland, whereinto men enter with their children, their silver, and their wits, and wherefrom they go out with their children only, sandbagged by a thousand catch-penny engines; even this did I obey. You have commanded that Poopy Panda shill every weekday night on television between five and six for the Poopy Panda Pals, and even this did I obey, though Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh.

But O ye bankers, this last command will I never obey.

Whereupon the bankers which sate in New York sent to him an­other writing that said, Even so, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, and they said, Remember, boy, we hold thy paper.

And Ben Graffis did obey.

He called unto him his animators and directors and cameramen and writers, and his heart was sore but he dissembled and said:

In jest you call one another brainwashers, forasmuch as you addle the heads of children five hours a week that they shall buy our spon­sors' wares. You have fulfilled the prophecies, for is it not written in the Book of the Space Merchants that there shall be spherical trusts? And the Poopy Panda Pals plug the Poopy Panda Magazine, and the Poopy Panda Magazine plugs Poopy Pandaland, and Poopy Pandaland plugs the Poopy Panda Pals. You have asked of the Motiva­tional Research boys how we shall hook the little bastards and they have told ye, and ye have done it. You identify the untalented kid viewers with the talented kid performers, you provide in Otto Clodd a bumbling father image to be derided, you furnish in Jackie Whipple an idealized big brother for the boys and a sex-fantasy for the more precocious girls. You flatter the cans off the viewers by ever saying to them that they shall rule the twenty-first century, nor mind that those who shall in good sooth come to power are doing their homework and not watching television programs. You have created a liturgy of opening hymn and closing benediction, and over all hovers the spirit of Poopy Panda urging and coaxing the viewers to buy our sponsors' wares.