Fritz Leiber - The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

Vividy, who had been working her face angrily throughout Rath's lecture, now filled her cheeks and spat out her breath contemptuously, as her thrice-removed grandfather might have at the maunderings of an aged major domo.

“You're a fool, Max,” she said harshly. “Kicks are for nervous virgins, the vanity of a spoilt child. For me, being in the headlines every day is a matter of life or death ."

Rath frowned uncomprehendingly.

“That's the literal truth she's telling you, Max,” Maury Gender put in earnestly. “You see, this business happens to be tied up with what you might call the darker side of Vividy's aristocratic East Prussian heritage."

Miss Bricker stubbed out a cigarette and said, “Max, remember the trouble you had with that Spanish star, Marta Martinez, who turned out to be a bruja —a witch? Well, you picked something a little bit more out of the ordinary, Max, when you picked a Junker."

The highlights shifted on Dr. Rumanescue's thick glasses and shiny head as he nodded solemnly. He said, “There is a rune in the Doomsbook of the Von Sheers. I will translate.” He paused. Then: “'When the world has nothing more to say, The last of the Sheers will fade away.’”

As if thinking aloud, Rath said softly, “Funny, I'd forgotten totally about that East Prussian background. We always played it way down out of sight because of the Nazi association—and the Russian too.” He chuckled, just a touch nervously. “'...fade away,'” he quoted. “Now why not just ‘die'? Oh, to make the translation rhyme, I suppose.” He shook himself, as if to come awake. “Hey,” he demanded, “what is it actually? Is somebody blackmailing Vividy? Some fascist or East German commie group? Maybe with the dope on her addictions and private cures, or her affair with Geri Wilson?"

“Repeat: a fool!” Vividy's chest was heaving but her voice was icy. “For your information, Dr. ‘Escue's translation was literal. Day by day, ever since you first killed my news stories, I have been losing weight ."

“It's a fact, Max,” Maury Gender put in hurriedly. “The news decline and the weight loss are matching curves. Believe it or not, she's down to a quarter normal."

Miss Bricker nodded with a shiver, disturbing the smoke wreathes around her. She said, “It's the business of an actress fading out from lack of publicity. But this time, so help me,it's literal ."

“I have been losing both weight and mass ,” Vividy continued sharply. “Not by getting thinner, but less substantial . If I had my back to the window you'd notice it."

Rath stared at her, then looked penetratingly at the other three, as if to discover confirmation that it was all a gag. But they only looked back at him with uniformly solemn and unhappy—and vaguely frightened —expressions. “I don't get it,” he said.

“The scales, Vividy,” Miss Bricker suggested.

The film star stood up with an exaggerated carefulness and stepped onto the small rubber-topped violet platform. The white disk whirled under the glass window and came to rest at 37.

She said crisply, “I believe the word you used, Max, was ‘pneumatic.’ Did you happen to mean I'm inflated with hydrogen?"

“You've still got on your slippers,” Miss Bricker pointed out.

With even greater carefulness, steadying herself a moment by the darkly gleaming table-edge, Vividy stepped out of her slippers and again onto the scales. This time the disk stopped at 27.

“The soles and heels are lead, fabric-covered,” she rapped out to Rath. “I wear them so I won't blow over the edge when I take a walk on the terrace. Perhaps you now think I ought to be able to jump and touch the ceiling. Convincing, wouldn't it be? I rather wish I could, but my strength has decreased proportionately with my weight and mass."

“Those scales are gimmicked,” Rath asserted with conviction. He stooped and grabbed at one of the slippers. His fingers slipped off it at the first try. Then he slowly raised and hefted it. “What sort of gag is this?” he demanded of Vividy. “Dammit, it does weigh five pounds."

She didn't look at him. “Maury, get the flashlight,” she directed.

While the press chief rummaged in a tall Spanish cabinet, Miss Bricker moved to the view window that was the room's fourth wall and flicked an invisible beam. Rapidly the tapestry-lined drapes crawled together from either end, blotting out the steep, burnt-over, barely regrown Malibu hillside and briefly revealing in changing folds “The Torments of Beauty” until the drapes met, blotting out all light whatever.

Maury snapped on a flashlight long as his forearm. It lit their faces weirdly from below and dimly showed the lovely gray ladies in pain beyond them. Then he put it behind Vividy, who facing Rath, and moved it up and down.

As if no thicker anywhere than fingers, the lovely form of the German film star became a twin-stemmed flower in shades of dark pink. The arteries were a barely visible twining, the organs blue-edged, the skeleton deep cherry.

“That some kind of X-ray?” Rath asked, the words coming out in a breathy rush.

“You think they got technicolor, hand-size, screenless X-ray sets?” Maury retorted.

“I think they must have,” Rath told him in a voice quiet but quite desperate.

“That's enough, Maury,” Vividy directed. “Bricker, the drapes.” Then as the harsh rectangle of daylight swiftly reopened, she looked coldly at Rath and said, “You may take me by the shoulders and shake me. I give you permission."

The producer complied. Two seconds after he had grasped her he was shrinking back, his hands and arms violently trembling. It had been like shaking a woman stuffed with eiderdown. A woman warm and silky-skinned to the touch, but light almost as feathers. A pillow woman.

“I believe, Vividy,” he gasped out. “I believe it all now.” Then his voice went far away. “And to think I first cottoned to you because of that name Sheer. It sounded like silk-stockings—luxurious, delicate ... insubstantial . Oh my God!” His voice came part way back. “And you say this is all happening because of some old European witchcraft? Some crazy rhymes out of the past? How do you really think about it, how do you explain it?"

“Much of the past has no explanation at all,” Dr. Rumanescue answered him. “And the further in the past, the less. The Von Sheers are a very old family, tracing back to pre-Roman times. The runes themselves—"

Vividy held up her palm to the astrologist to stop.

“Very well, you believe. Good,” she said curtly to Rath, carefully sitting down at the table again behind

the ugly black casket on its square of altar cloth. She continued in the same tones. “The question now is: how do I get the publicity I need to keep me from fading out altogether, the front-page publicity that will perhaps even restore me, build me up?"

Like a man in a dream Rath let himself down into a chair across the table from her and looked out the window over her shoulder. The three others watched them with mingled calculation and anxiety.

Vividy said sharply, “First, can the release date on Bride of God be advanced—to next Sunday week, say? I think I can last that long."

“Impossible, quite impossible,” Rath muttered, still seeming to study something on the pale green hillside scrawled here and there with black.

“Then hear another plan. There is an unfrocked Irish clergyman named Kerrigan who is infatuated with me. A maniac but rather sweet. He's something of a poet—he'd like me light as a feather, find nothing horrible in it. Kerrigan and I will travel together to Monaco—"

“No, no!” Rath cried out in sudden anguish, looking at her at last. “No matter the other business, witchcraft or whatever, we can't have anything like that! It would ruin the picture, kill it dead. It would mean my money and all our jobs. Vividy, I haven't told you, but a majority committee of stockholders wants me to get rid of you and reshootBride , starring Alicia Killian. They're deathly afraid of a last- minute Sheer scandal. Vividy, you've always played square with me, even at your craziest. You wouldn't... "