Charles Beaumont - Selected Stories Part 55

"I, Claude," "The Guests of Chance;" "The Rest of Science Fiction') which Beaumont had written in collaboration with Chad Oliver. "The series," explains Oliver--which appeared in _F&SF_ magazine--was the result of"a mutual dislike for all of the cliches that had crept into science fiction. We decided to just take all of them we could possibly cram into one story and just get rid of them.

_Forever_. And, of course, we used an Adam and Eve frame, which was about as trite as you could possibly get . . ."

Introduction to

TO h.e.l.l WITH CLAUDE.

by Chad Oliver

January 10, 1987 Dear Chuck: A lot of years, as Claude might say. You'll remember. We roughed out this story in 1955, rolling around on the floor and howling like maniacs. You wrote your part and sent it to me in April, 1956. 1 wrote the rest and finished it up last night. Who knows, maybe we have set some kind of record for procrastination. In any event, what with one thing and another, it came out about half Beaumont and half Oliver, as usual. We'll leave it to the Claude scholars to figure out who wrote what.

There are probably a few things I forgot to tell you the last time we talked. You know how it is.

Did I mention how much I treasured your friends.h.i.+p? Did I mention how much I admired your magic with words? Did I tell you how proud of you I was? I suppose we were always too busy having fun to speak what was in our hearts.

Writing this was pure joy for me. It brought you back for a few days. Chuck, I can hear you laughing, and that is as it should be. That's how I remember you.

If there is a sadness--a fly in the old ointment, so to speak--it is because there can never be another Claude story in this world. That's all she wrote Claude, dear Claude, whatever he was, belonged to both of us. Where else could Tony Boucher, who bought the first Claude stories, appear as a character in the final epic? (Yes, and Mick McComas too, offstage but present in spirit.) I am a little older now. Beje and I think of you often. I have looked a short distance down that last road you travelled. Not far, and a different bug, but I understand what you faced. Cheers, Chuck.

Hey, I'm not in any hurry. I'll hold the fort here for another decade or two. But when I see you again, what think you? Wouldn't it be great to do it all again, one last time?

Old friend, Claude awaits. He won't let go of us.

With love, Chad------------------------------------------- TO h.e.l.l WITH CLAUDE.

by Charles Beaumont and Chad Oliver -------------------------------------------.

There was a breeze, sun-warmed and gentle; the smell of magnolia blossoms; and, from the work fields, happy voices raised in song. To another, the day might have spelled Peace. But to Claude Adams, thrice father of the Earth's population, old now and tired, tired, but still possessed of a mind sharper than any razor, there was little to cheer about. He fingered the bulky object in his lap for a fleeting moment and then sent it hurtling across the room.

"Books!" he snorted.

"Now, Dad," his wife said.

"Books!" he repeated. "Confound it, Woola, it is not fair. It is lacking in justice. I get a civilization ticking, tune it finally to perfection, and what happens? The seeds of decay are planted. The rumblings of revolution. By all the G.o.ds, woman, am Ito have no rest?"

Woola wheeled herself to her husband's side and ran desiccated, though cool, fingers through his stone-white hair. "I know, I know," she wheezed in what she fondly imagined to be a soothing manner.

"You've worked so hard. But isn't it possible that you're getting your dander up over nothing?"

"Be d.a.m.ned to dander!" Claude had his blood up. "Nothing? Do you call those nothing?" He gestured toward the stack of ill-bound volumes in the corner and trembled like a wind-whipped sapling.

Woola could not reply.

"Here's the thing," Claude said, aware that he had startled the old lady. "We've got a pretty neat little lifeway working now. Nothing fancy, mind you, but it clicks right along, one-two, one-two, and. .

Ah, but what was the use? The former Sarboomian princess had a doll's face and, he had to admit, a mind to match: how could he expect her to grasp the true complexities of the problem? Poor, frightened little bird, there was no way for her to understand that it was books of the imagination, not armies, not diseases, but books--these innocent-looking, silent volumes--that destroyed worlds .

"Go to your room," he commanded. "I must think. Wait!" He grasped her arm. "What are you hiding?"

Woola's eyes widened in terror. "Hiding?" she quavered. "Why, n-nothing. Claude, I implore you. You're hurting your Woola."

"No secrets, woman. Give it to me."

Woola went limp. Listlessly she reached into her literally voluminous bodice.

Claude reeled back as though struck by a crowbar. "What's this, what's this?" he cried.

"It's called," his wife said, softly, "_Alice in Wonderland_."

"Under my own roof! My own wife . . ."

"Oh, Claude, I'm so sorry. But I didn't see where it would do any harm. Just a little light reading before I went to bed--"

Claude tossed the book onto the pile. "Depart," he said, crisply.

Then, when the crash of crineline and tattoo of sobs had diminished down the hall, he moved to the bell-cord and gave it a stiff yank.

Everything, he mused dispiritedly, had been going so well. He should have known. It was everthus when the serpent slithered into Eden.

Recalling the errors of advanced technological civilizations, Claude had built this new world along simple, almost spartan lines. Medieval-Virginian, he had dubbed it, allowing the whimsical part of his nature some small leeway. It combined the severe serious-mindedness of the Thirteenth Century with the graceful _joie d'vivre_ of the pre-bellum Southern states. It worked so perfectly. Everyone had slaves and yet were slaves themselves: an aristocratic bourgeoisie, so to speak. And Claude, from whose remarkable loins all these teeming millions had come, was alone the government, the ministry, and The King; he ruled, benignly, mercifully, but strictly, from Redolent Pines, the grandest plantation of them all and Seat of World Government; and he was revered.

It was a happy, prosperous world. No television, no motion pictures, in fact, no entertainment of any sort whatever: the people had plenty to do with their hands, and you didn't find them slouching about imagining things or dreaming. If they were inclined to be a trifle sluggish, well, Claude reasoned, that was a small price to pay for harmony.

And now it was ending. He thought he had destroyed the menace, fantasy, for good in the Forest of Darkness on far Sarboom; but he had not. The growth still flourished, and, if not checked, would cause another revolution, sure as shooting.

"You rang, Colonel?"

Claude turned to face Ezra, his faithful retainer. Ezra seemed even paler than usual. In fact, Claude thought, the man looked like a ghost, much as Claude detested the expression.

"Ezra," he said, "the way I have doped it out, one man is responsible for these treasonable machinations. Knock him out and you have wiped out the trouble. Well?"

"You are probably right, Colonel."

Claude permitted himself a smile. He had a weakness for yes-men. "Dammit, I know I'm right,"

he advised, with some acerbity. "Oh, he's clever, I'll give him that. But I did not just fall off the turnip truck myself. I have, if I may say so, been around the barn a few times. I shall flush him out no matter what the cost!" He flipped his black string tie. "You know, of course, that the greatest concentration of fantasy books has been in Plainville in one of the states of the effete east. You are perhaps aware that the town has secretly changed its name to Arkham. You doubtless are cognizant of the fact that at Miskatonic University there is a veritable hotbed of fantasy activity."

"All news to me, Colonel. I didn't know."

"Well, Ezra, I make it my business to know. That is why I am Claude and you are Ezra. Between you and me and the old gatepost, I'd say our man is lurking in Plainville. But he is a shrewd firebrand or I miss my guess. If he thinks we're after him, he'll belt. So we must be foxy, eh? Ezra, summon the Royal Atom-Arranger: I believe the time has come for action!"

The retainer, ever faithful, bowed silently and shuffled away.

Claude's ancient brow furrowed as his plan took form. Devilish clever it was, but dangerous.

Very dangerous.

Still, he thought, thumbing down a goblet of damp s.h.a.g and lighting his aged briar with a wooden stick match, this will not be the first tight squeak I've seen; and--one might as well confess it--there is a certain sameness to plantation life. Of all men, he knew that perfection had its flaws.

He stepped from his wheelchair and clapped his hands. Action! That was the ticket.

Ezra shambled back, not too fast. "You called, Colonel?"

"Yes," Claude snapped. "I will need a bit of equipment. Specifically, I want a mirror, a sprig of garlic, a wooden stake--no, make it two--a crossroads, seven silver bullets, and a stream of running water. Get on it, man!"

Ezra paled almost to transparency.

"And Ezra?"

"Yes, My Lord?"

"Tell the Royal Atom-Arranger to make it snappy!"The hansom jounced and squealed and strained, uttering its weary song of the road. Claude held to the seat. From time to time he would turn his gaze to the pa.s.sing countryside, and moan, gently: it was a long way to travel.

When at last he saw the sign marked PLAINVILLE, and the shadowed little twisting road, he put his discomfort aside and rapped sharply with his cane. "Turn off here, driver!"

The hansom shrilled to a halt, throwing up plumes of oddly-shaped dust. The driver pulled open the door, his seamed face a study in fear. "Sorry I be," he said, "but that there is a road I'll not be traveling, Lord and Master."

"But," observed Claude, "there is no other way to Plainville."

"_Plainville!_" The driver laughed mirthlessly, spat, shook his head, grimaced, blenched, and trembled. "Look here," he said, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "I'm not what you would call, now, a coward. But, say, there's no power on this Earth of yours that'd get me to go into that ancient, time-snubbed Abode of Evil!"

"You seem to have strong feelings on the subject."

"Indeed, Lord and Master." The driver climbed back up to the cab. He was shaking horribly.

Somewhere, an owl laughed. "I beg you to reconsider. Why not give Harvard a try? There's a nice, friendly, respectable school."

Claude was about to answer, when the horse--which had been frantically pawing the ground and whinnying--rose, suddenly, eyes red as flame, flailed the fetid air with its hoofs, and galloped perempterially away, the hansom clattering behind.

In moments, Claude was alone.

"Superst.i.tious peasants," he muttered. Confound it, he had lost his equipment. He adjusted his beanie at a jaunty angle and set forth down the road. Precisely as planned, the touch of the beanie triggered a transformation that bordered on the awesome. To the untrained eye, Claude had become a typical college freshman, smooth of cheek and innocent of guile, a lad in his teens. The Royal Atom-Arranger had done his job well.

Yet, Claude knew, for all the plan's cunning, it was well not to count one's chickens before they were hatched. He was pleased with the turn of phrase.

He proceeded cautiously, noting that the sun had tucked itself behind a dreary clump of clouds, and that the trees were increasingly gnarled: naked reptilian shapes against the sulphurous sky. "Like fingers," Claude observed, admiring his simile.

He pressed on. The air turned into thick fog and the signposts now read: ARKHAM. Did the fools think that because they were a small village, off the beaten track as it were, they could escape notice?

A sound caused him to stop, abruptly. He listened: it came from the shrouded moor to his immediate left, the sinister side. It was a sing-song sort of chant: "_Ia ia shub niggurath_ . . ."

Claude blinked. "Cthulhu," he sneezed. The fog was so heavy that he could hardly see the road.

He walked carefully in the direction of the chanting.

The scene before him became momentarily clear.

In an unspeakable grave there were five nameless beings. All were reading the Bible backwards.

Across the damp sward lay five couples engaged in abominations. There was a hideous stone idol, barnacled with age, infinitely evil, and a man dressed entirely in black. The man was doing something vile to a sheep.

Claude surmised instantly that he was on the right trail.

But now was not the time for decisive action. Patience!

"I beg your pardon," he said, when the man had finished the act he had begun, "but I seem to have lost my way. Would you be so kind as to direct me to Arkham?"

"_Ia, ia_," the man said, advancing in what might be construed as an unfriendly manner.

"How's that?"

"_Dia ad aghaidh's ad aodaun. Agus bas dunach ort! Ungl, ungl. Rrlh chchch_ . . .""Speak up, can't you? Don't mumble. My name is, ah, Smada, and I'm on my way to the University."

"_Ia, ia. Smerk ygdrsll yanter!_"

"Oh, let it pa.s.s, let it pa.s.s." Claude snapped his fingers with disdain, turned from the black-robed figure, and found the road again. "Pesky Foreigners," he stated to n.o.body in particular.

At last the trail became cobbled, and, topping a rise, Claude saw it.

The town was sunken in fog, of course, but one could discern gray chimneys, rotting towers, flickering gas lamps, scurrying figures, and time-lost streets.

Plainville? Claude shook his head, suffused with sadness. No, indeed.

Arkham. Why, he could _smell_ the legends.

He stopped a hooded citizen whose face was deathly white, and inquired, in what he trusted was a callow fas.h.i.+on, "Where, pray tell, might I find Miskatonic U.?"

The creature pointed with a shaking finger to a wavering gray stone mansion, eaten by moss and consumed by years. It stank of decay. "Go half a mile down Providence Road, turn off at Lonely Yew Lane, go past Hangman's Corner, take thirteen steps and take a left at Sorcerer's Nook. You can't miss it."

"Clear as crystal," Claude said. "It is good to hear plain English again, and I offer my thanks."

The pale citizen pulled his hood across his face.

Claude s.h.i.+fted his satchel of school books, sighed with both excitement and resignation, and made his way down the cobble-stoned hill.

The game, he knew, was now afoot.

The Dean of Admissions was having trouble with his ice cream. The bats hanging in the rafters kept dropping ghastly pods into it. He stroked his lantern jaw and wiped his wig with a soiled cloth.