Fritz Leiber - The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

“No, I wouldn't, even to save my life,” she told him, her voice mixing pride and contempt with an exactitude that broke through Maury Gender's miseries and thrilled him with her genuine dramatic talent. He said, “Max, we've been trying to convince Vividy that it might help to use some routine non- scandalous publicity."

“Yes,” Miss Bricker chimed eagerly, “we have a jewel robbery planned for tonight, a kitchen fire for tomorrow."

Vividy laughed scornfully. “And I suppose the day after that I get lost in Griffith Park for three hours, next I rededicate an orphanage, autograph a Nike missile, and finally I have a pool side press interview and bust a brassiere strap. That's cheap stuff, the last resort of has-beens. Besides, I don't think it would work."

Rath, his eyes again on the hillside, said absently, “To be honest, I don't think it would either. After the hot stuff you've always shot them, the papers wouldn't play."

“Very well,” Vividy said crisply, “that brings us back to where we started. There's nothing left for it— I've got to..."

“Hey wait a second!” Rath burst out with a roar of happy excitement. “We've got your physical condition to capitalize on! Your loss of weight is a scientific enigma, a miracle—and absolutely non- scandalous! It'll mean headlines for months, for years. Every woman will want to know your secret. So will the spacemen. We'll reveal you first to UCLA or USC, then the Mayo Clinic and maybe John Hopkins ... Hey, what's the matter, why aren't you all enthusiastic about this?"

Maury Gender and Miss Bricker looked toward Dr. Rumanescue, who coughed and said gently, “Unfortunately, there is a runic couplet in the Von Sheer Doomsbook that seems almost certainly to bear on that very point. Translated: ‘If a Sheer be weighed in the market place, He'll vanish away without a trace.’”

“In any case, I refuse to exhibit myself as a freak,” Vividy added hotly. “I don't mind how much publicity I get because of my individuality, my desires,my will —no matter how much it shocks and titillates the little people, the law-abiders, the virgins and eunuchs and moms—but to be confined to a hospital and pried over by doctors and physiologists ... No!"

She fiercely brought her fist down on the table with a soft, insubstantial thud that made Rath draw back and set Miss Bricker shuddering once more. Then Vividy Sheer said, “For the last time: there's nothing left for it—I've got to open the casket!"

“Now what's in the casket?” Rath asked with apprehension.

There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Dr. Rumanescue said softly, with a little shrug, “The casket-demon. The Doom of the Von Sheers.” He hesitated. “Think of the genie in a bottle. A genie with black fangs."

Rath asked, “How's that going to give Vividy publicity?"

Vividy answered him. “It will attack me, try to destroy me. Every night, as long as I last. No scandal, only horror. But there will be headlines—oh yes, there will be headlines. And I'll stop fading."

She pushed out a hand toward the little wrought-iron box. All their eyes were on it. With its craggy, tortured surface, it looked as if it had been baked in Hell, the peep-hole of milky glass an eye blinded by heat.

Miss Bricker said, “Vividy, don't."

Dr. Rumanescue breathed, “I advise against it."

Maury Gender said, “Vividy, I don't think this is going to work out the way you think it will. Publicity's a tricky thing. I think—"

He broke off as Vividy clutched her hand back to her bosom. Her eyes stared as if she felt something happening inside her. Then, groping along the table, hanging onto its edge clumsily as though her fingers were numbed, she made her way to the scale and maneuvered herself onto it. This time the disk stopped at 19.

With a furious yet strengthless haste, like a scarecrow come alive and floating as much as walking, the beautiful woman fought her way back to the box and clutched it with both hands and jerked it towards her. It moved not at all at first, then a bare inch as she heaved. She gave up trying to pull it closer and leaned over it, her sharply bent waist against the table edge, and tugged and pried at the casket's top, pressing rough projections as if they were parts of an antique combination-lock.

Maury Gender took a stop toward her, then stopped. None of the others moved even that far to help.

They watched her as if she were themselves strengthless in a nightmare—a ghost woman as much tugged by the tiny box as she was tugging at it. A ghost woman in full life colors—except that Max Rath, sitting just opposite, saw the hillside glowing very faintly through her.

With a whir and a clash the top of the box shot up on its hinges, there was a smoky puff and a stench that paled faces and set Miss Bricker gagging, then something small and intensely black and very fast dove out of the box and scuttled across the altar cloth and down a leg of the table and across the floor and under the tapestry and was gone.

Maury Gender had thrown himself out of its course, Miss Bricker had jerked her feet up under her, as if from a mouse, and so had Max Rath. But Vividy Sheer stood up straight and tall, no longer strengthless- seeming. There was icy sky in her blue eyes and a smile on her face—a smile of self-satisfaction that became tinged with scorn as she said, “You needn't be frightened. We won't see it again until after dark. Then—well, at least it will be interesting. Doubtless his hussars saw many interesting things during the seven months my military ancestor lasted."

“You mean you'll be attacked by a black rat?” Max Rath faltered.

“It will grow,” said Dr. Rumanescue quietly.

Scanning the hillside again, Max Rath winced, as if it had occurred to him that one of the black flecks out there might now beit. He looked at his watch. “Eight hours to sunset,” he said dully. “We got to get through eight hours."

Vividy laughed ripplingly. “We'll all jet to New York,” she said with decision. “That way there'll be three hours’ less agony for Max. Besides, I think Times Square would be a good spot for the first ... appearance. Or maybe Radio City. Maury, call the airport! Bricker, pour me a brandy!"

Next day the New York tabloids carried half-column stories telling how the tempestuous film star Vividy Sheer had been attacked or at least menaced in front of the United Nations Building at 11:59 P.

M. by a large black dog, whose teeth had bruised her without drawing blood, and which had disappeared, perhaps in company with a boy who had thrown a stink bomb, before the first police arrived. The Times and the Herald Tribune carried no stories whatever. The item got on Associate Press but was not used by many papers.

The day after that The News of the World and The London Daily Mirror reported on inside pages that the German-American film actress Vividy Sheer had been momentarily mauled in the lobby of Claridge's Hotel by a black-cloaked and black-masked man who moved with a stoop and very quickly—as if, in fact, he were more interested in getting away fast than in doing any real damage to the Nordic beauty, who had made no appreciable effort to resist the attacker, whirling in his brief grip as if she were a weightless clay figure. The News of the World also reproduced in one-and-a-half columns a photograph of Vividy in a low-cut dress showing just below her neck an odd black clutch-mark left there by the attacker, or perhaps drawn beforehand in India ink, the caption suggested. In The London Times was a curt angry editorial crying shame at notoriety-mad actresses and conscienceless press agents who staged disgusting scenes in respectable places to win publicity for questionable films—even to the point of setting off stench bombs—and suggesting that the best way for all papers to handle such nauseous hoaxes was to ignore them utterly—and cooperate enthusiastically but privately with the police and the deportation authorities.