Fritz Leiber - The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

In his bemused high spirits he even watered the nameless little plant growing in the pot between his and Erica's, but nearer his own.

There was a sharp bzzz! It was evidence of the amount of nervous apprehension still floating around in him under the camouflage of his high spirits, that he dropped the red watering can.

Damn that phone, he thought as he stooped and righted the trickling can. It had no right to sound so much like a bee coming in for the kill. He must have the tone altered at once—would have had it altered before, except he'd been reluctant to admit his fear of bees was so great.

But that was silly. Bees were his great ineradicable dread, and he might as well face up to it, just as he'd faced up now to the existence of the Taggart-plant. Why, if it weren't for his dread of bees, he'd have long ago tried experiments in insect pollenization. It was titillating to think of bees crawling all over his flower-girls, buzzing lazily from one to the next—except that he was himself so terrified of the six­ legged monsters with the built-in torture hypodermic.

But who the devil could be calling him here?—he asked himself as he reached for the phone. Better not any of his magazine-flunkies now Kittens was abed—he'd chew their ears off, or rather say them one poisonously sweet word and fire them tomorrow. Not more than a dozen people knew this number—the last person he'd given it to had been the President.

A charming voice said, “Erica Slyker here. Hello, Taggart-blaggart-waggert-haggert-sleep-sleep-sleep! Now that I've given you the cue we agreed on, you will answer any questions I put to you. You will do whatever I tell you. Can you hear me clearly?"

In his imagination Taggart slammed down the phone, rushed upstairs, called another secret number, and —using the latest underworld code—hired two reliable, conscienceless mobsters to beat up Erica Slyker, being sure to black both eyes and kick her in the stomach.

In actuality he said in a sing-song voice, “Yes, I can."

“Good. You're in the garden?"

“Yes, I am."

“Excellent. Place a chair by the table so you can watch both our plants. Then sit down in it."

He managed to face the chair away from the table, but it turned out this only meant he had to straddle it, resting his forearms and the phone on its back.

“You're sitting in the chair watching our plants? How's the vamp doing?"

Obediently Tag focused on the little plant next to his own, only now learning what it was. He'd planted two of those horrors six years ago and decided never again—the tendrils of the one of them had strangled a promising Gina, while those of the other had whipped out and caught a little finger he'd brought incautiously close, inflicting tiny but nasty wounds with their microscopic suckers. Even Great- aunt Veronica had been a little doubtful about the benefit to humanity of her vampire plants. She had suggested their use to protect tropical dwellers from scorpions, centipedes, giant spiders, and the like and —tentatively—in the conquest of Mars.

“It is doing quite well,” he reported into the phone. “The forehead is showing and I can count six ... no, seventeen pale red tendrils. They are about an inch long and have begun to wave a little."

“Bravo! Keep watching that plant too. Now hang up the phone and await further instructions."

Taggart Adams obeyed and then eternity set in for him. An eternity the passing of whose centuries were marked by calls from Erica only to repeat the “blag-wag-hag” formula, whose millennia were each signalized by an additional inch growth of the red tendrils of the vamp.

After about thirty-five hundred years the face of the vamp became fully visible. As he'd long since guessed from the color of the tendrils, it was that of the off-Broadway red head talent—evidently the picture and the three green nail parings had been able to do their work from the floor, as being the nearest picture-and-token available and otherwise unoccupied.

She had a great talent for the evil eye, Tag decided after a thousand years of being glared at. And for writhing her lips back from her tiny white fangs. And for waving suggestively close to the Taggart-plant those wire-worm tendrils that arched around her face like the hair of Medusa.

Meanwhile the Erica and the Taggart were developing their proper bulges and finally splitting their green stem-sheathes down the front: the slowest and least titillating strip-tease in the universe.

The Erica looked back at him with a contempt that only became more smiling as the ages passed.

The Taggart, on the other hand, grimaced and grinned and winked its left eye at him unceasingly. Tag became dully infuriated with the little idiot's irrationally high spirits—and bored, horribly bored. If that was the way he'd looked all his life to other people ...

He felt the ache of thirst and the sickness of hunger, but they were dulled by a titanic listlessness.

A million times he told himself that a man couldn't be held hypnotized like this against his will, surely not after a one-session indoctrination into which he'd somehow been tricked by a mere abominable girl. Not one of the most powerful men in the world, not the sex-puppet master, not the publisher of Kittens, not Veronica's Grand-nephew, not the Lord of Kitten Kastle, not the girl-gardener ...

A million times a little voice from a dark high corner of his mind replied only, “Blag-wag-hag."

Thrice there were “nights” lasting for many centuries.

After twelve thousand years he heard the secret panel open and footsteps drag up the aisle. Someone

stopped and retrieved the red watering can. It was Anselmo, he could tell from the corner of his eye—no mistaking that hand like a bleached ham, that face big as that of a white horse, for in addition to being a submoronic deaf-mute, the ancient Sicilian had acromegaly.

Tag tried to shout, to whisper, to beckon with a finger, just to lift one—to no avail. Without even a single curious glance toward his employer, so far as Tag could tell, Anselmo went about his chores.

For decades and scores of years his big shoes scrapped the concrete and there came the periodic gush of the tap as he patiently watered and fertilized and sprayed. Twice the phone bzzd for a repetition of the inevitable formula, but there was no alteration in the sound of Anselmo's movements. Both times Tag tried to drop the phone on the floor—and only set it the more carefully back.

A third time the phone bzzd—much sooner than the once-a-century rhythm called for. A brisk grating voice said, “Tag George. All ready to pop those lions, boy? Rhodesia's waiting for us.” To Tag's horror all he could say was, “No, thanks,” and all he could do was hang up.

Finally Anselmo arrived at the potting table and began methodically to care for the three plants there, insensible to Tag's mental screams, even when Anselmo's sprinkling reawakened Tag's searing thirst and they became the inward shriek, “For the love of God, pour some of that in my mouth!"

Anselmo finished with the Erica, the vamp (a bit cautious with his huge hands there as they moved around the foot-long tendrils), and finally the Taggart. Only then did his behavior alter. He stood ox-still and stared an interminable time at the smirking walnut-head of the Taggart. Hope rekindled in Tag.

Then Anselmo turned and stared for almost an equally long period at his life-size employer. Tag's hope flamed. If only there were some readable expression in that white face big as a washbowl ...

Then Anselmo looked back at the walnut-head, puzzledly shook his own in three wide horse-like swings, shrugged his sloping shoulders, and dragged off down the aisle. The secret door opened, then closed behind him.

A trapdoor opened in the corridor and Anselmo plummeted into the hottest room in hell—in Tag's imagination.