Fritz Leiber - The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

A windowless wall had been knocked out for twenty feet. There was blue sky outside, its light almost hurtful, and a drop of many stories. A file of humans were being processed. When one of them got to the head of the file his (or her) tickler was ceremoniously unstrapped from his shoulder and welded onto a silvery cask with smoothly pointed ends. The welding sparks were red stars. The result was something that looked—at least in the case of the Mark 6 ticklers—like a stubby silver submarine, child size. It would hum gently, lift off the floor and then fly slowly out through the big blue gap. Then the next tickler-ridden human would step forward for processing.

The second scene was in a park, the sky again blue, but big and high with an argosy of white clouds. Gusterson was lined up in a crowd of humans that stretched as far as he could see, row on irregular row. Martial music was playing. Overhead hovered a flock of little silver submarines lined up rather more orderly in the air than the humans were on the ground. The music rose to a heart-quickening climax. The tickler nearest above Gusterson gave (as if to say, “And now—who knows?") a triple-jointed shrug that stung his memory. Then the ticklers took off straight up on their new and shining bodies. They became a flight of silver geese ... of silver midges ... and the humans around Gusterson lifted a ragged cheer ...

That scene marked the beginning of the return of Gusterson's mind and memory. He shuffled around for a bit, spoke vaguely to three or four people he recalled from the dream days, and then headed for home and supper—three weeks late, and as disoriented and emaciated as a bear coming out of hibernation.

Six months later Fay was having dinner with Daisy and Gusterson. The cocktails had been poured and the children were playing in the next apartment. The transparent violent walls brightened, then gloomed, as the sun dipped below the horizon.

Gusterson said, “I see where a spaceship out beyond the orbit of Mars was holed by a tickler. I wonder where the little guys are headed now?"

Fay started to give a writhing left-armed shrug, but stopped himself with a grimace.

“Maybe out of the solar system altogether,” suggested Daisy, who'd recently dyed her hair fire-engine red and was wearing red leotards.

“They got a weary trip ahead of them,” Gusterson said, “unless they work out a hyper-Einsteinian drive on the way."

Fay grimaced again. He was still looking rather peaked. He said plaintively, “Haven't we heard enough about ticklers for a while?"

“I guess so,” Gusterson agreed, “but I get to wondering about the little guys. They were so serious and intense about everything. I never did solve their problem, you know. I just shifted it onto other shoulders than ours. No joke intended,” he hurried to add.

Fay forbore to comment. “By the way, Gussy,” he said, “have you heard anything from the Red Cross about that world-saving medal I nominated you for? I know you think the whole concept of world- saving medals is ridiculous, especially when they started giving them to all heads of state who didn't start atomic wars while in office, but—"

“Nary a peep,” Gusterson told him. “I'm not proud, Fay. I could use a few world-savin’ medals. I'd start a flurry in the old-gold market. But I don't worry about those things. I don't have time to. I'm busy these days thinkin’ up a bunch of new inventions."

“Gussy!” Fay said sharply, his face tightening in alarm, “Have you forgotten your promise?"

“'Course not, Fay. My new inventions aren't for Micro or any other firm. They're just a legitimate part of my literary endeavors. Happens my next insanity novel is goin’ to be about a mad inventor."

“There's nothing left for it—I've got to open the casket,” said Vividy Sheer, glaring at the ugly thing on its square of jeweled and gold-worked altar cloth. The most photogenic face in the world was grim as a Valkyrie's this Malibu morning.

“No,” shuddered Miss Bricker, her secretary. “Vividy, you once let me peek in through the little window and I didn't sleep for a week."

“It would make the wrong sort of publicity,” said Maury Gender, the Nordic film-queen's press chief. “Besides that, I value my life.” His gaze roved uneasily across the gray “Pains of the Damned” tapestries lining three walls of the conference room up to its black-beamed 20-foot ceiling.

“You forget, baroness, the runic rhymes of the Prussian Nostradamus,” said Dr. Rumanescue, Vividy's astrologist and family magician. “Wenn der Kassette-Teufel ...’—or, to translate roughly, ‘When the casket-demon is let out, The life of the Von Sheer is in doubt.’”

“My triple-great grandfather held out against the casket-demon for months,” Vividy Sheer countered.

“Yes, with a demi-regiment of hussars for bodyguard, and in spite of their sabers and horse pistols he was found dead in bed at his Silesian hunting lodge within a year. Dead in bed and black as a beetle— and the eight hussars in the room with him as night-guard permanently out of their wits with fear."

“I'm stronger than he was—I've conquered Hollywood,” Vividy said, her blue eyes sparking and her face all Valkyrie. “But in any case if I'm to live weeks, let alone months, Imust keep my name in the papers, as all three of you very well know."

“Hey, hey, what goes on here?” demanded Max Rath, Vividy Sheer's producer, for whom the medieval torture-tapestries had noiselessly parted and closed at the bidding of electric eyes. His own little shrewd ones scanned the casket, no bigger than a cigar box, with its tiny peep-hole of cloudy glass set in the top, and finally came to rest on the only really incongruous object in the monastically-appointed hall—a lavender-tinted bathroom scale.

Vividy glared at him, Dr. Rumanescue shrugged eloquently, Miss Bricker pressed her lips together, Maury Gender licked his own nervously and at last said, “Well, Vividy thinks she ought to have more publicity—every-day-without-skips publicity in the biggest papers and on the networks. Also, she's got a weight problem."

Max Rath surveyed in its flimsy dress of silk jersey the most voluptuous figure on six continents and any number of islands, including Ireland and Bali. “You got no weight problem, Viv,” he pronounced. “An ounce either way would be 480 grains away from pneumatic perfection.” Vividy flicked at her bosom contemptuously. Rath's voice changed. “Now as for your name not being in the papers lately, that's a very wise idea—my own, in fact—and must be kept up. Bride of God is due to premiere in four months— the first picture about the life of a nun not to be thumbs-downed by any religious or non-religious group, even in the sticks. We want to keep it that way. When you toured the Florence nightclubs with Biff Parowan and took the gondola ride with that what's-his-name bellhop, the Pope slapped your wrist, but that's all he did— Bride’s still not on the Index. But the wrist-slap was a hint—and one more reason why for the next year there mustn't be one tiny smidgin of personal scandal or even so-called harmless notoriety linked to the name of Vividy Sheer."

“Besides that, Viv,” he added more familiarly, “the reporters and the reading public were on the verge of getting very sick of the way your name was turning up on the front page every day—and mostly because of chasing, at that. Film stars are like goddesses—they can't be seen too often, there's got to be a little reserve, a little mystery.

“Aw, cheer up Viv. I know it's tough, but Liz and Jayne and Marilyn all learned to do without the daily headline and so can you. Believe an old timer: euphoric pills are a safer and more lasting kick."