Robert Sheckley - City of the Dead

Odysseus tried to remember, but all he could recall was the time to come. His future lives rushed past his eyes like albino bats floating in a thin turpentine solution. Then there was a sound behind him. The man of infinite wiles turned and his body stiffened. His will inflated with the power derived from his thumos. He considered quickly who he should be this afternoon.

Dimly, through the coils of his self-preoccupation, came the knowledge, ineluctable, and strangely cold, that he was in a situation.

And the situation called for instant response.

He was not... Yet he was. Words were incumbent upon him. Indeed, he had known no extremity so extreme as this need to set forth his identity.

"Irving Spaghetti, at your service," he said. Ridiculous! But perhaps it would work out all right.

It wasn't the playing of the game that was so difficult. It was having to play the game not for the first time, but again. And this when you aren't sure of the results from the first time. What on earth had happened that first time? He assumed that the first time through he had gotten it right, though he couldn't remember. Gotten it right more or less. Or had that been the second time?

Nausicaa. Still there. Terminally cute. But what was he supposed to do with her?

Married life with Nausicaa came faster than he had expected. He supposed he would be able to recapitulate the in between at some later date. It usually worked that way. The courtship, for example. Had they gone on dates? What had he said to her?

A sudden alarm filled his head. He was safe. Here inside the warm little apartment with her. But that wasn't what he was paid for. He had taken a wrong turning somewhere.

All of this of course was just before the stranger moved into town. Because once he was there, that sinister figure with his fiddle and his faddle and his fiddle fiddle faddle-I'm sorry, I'm trying to be a reliable narrator but my blood simply boils when I think of the stranger and I can't be blamed for what I say-and next I'll lose my train of thought if I don't watch out-everything changed and nothing was ever the same again. Not that we expected it. Not after the curse of the woodland pygmies was uttered, bringing with it its curious aftermath. But I am getting ahead of myself.

First there was Odysseus. Let's be very clear about that. Clarity is not so easy here in the pit with the stinking fish-heads and the rotting ordure of corpsey bodies falling slowly through the slewy air forlorn. But we persevere, we and our fellows, for someone must tell the story otherwise our silence will shriek to the stars. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get excited.

END