Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 2

Bentley said, "Ahhh." Bentley was a mid-teener who wore jeans cut off at the knees and sneakers with the toes, insteps, and heels removed. He was naked to the waist and across his suntanned and hairless chest, in a neat curve commencing just over his left nipple and terminating just under his right nipple, was the word VIPERS stenciled in red paint.

"Ahhh," said Bentley Benson. "Any pepsies?"

"Well, I'd asked you to bring some," his mother said, mildly. "Make a nice,big pitcher of gin-and-cider, Bentley, please, but only a little gin for yourself, in a separate gla.s.s, remember now."

Bentley said, "Ahhh," and departed, scratch-ing on his chest right over the bright, red S.

Bob's relaxed gaze took in, one by one, the pictures on the mantelpiece. He sat up a bit, pointed. "Who is that?" he asked. The young man looked something like Bentley and something like Bentley's father.

"That's my oldest boy, Barton, Junior," said Mother B. "You see that nice vest he's wearing? Well, right after the War, Bart, he was in the Navy then, picked up a piece of lovely brocade over in j.a.pan, and he sent it back home. I thought of making a nice bed-jacket out of it, but there wasn't enough material. So I made it into a nice vest, in-stead. Poor old Uncle Peter, he liked that vest, took a picture of Bart in it. Well, what do you know, a few years later fancy vests became quite popular, and of course, by that time Bart was tired of his ("Of course," Bob murmured), so he sold it to a college boy who had a summer job at Little and Harpey's. Got $25 for it, and we all went out to dinner downtown that night."

Kitty delicately stenciled another star on her toenails.

"I see," Bob said. After a moment, "Little and Harpey's?" he repeated.

Yes, that same. The publishers. Bart, and his younger brother Alton, were publishers' readers. Alt had been with Little and Harpey but was now with Scribbley's Sons; Bart had worked for Scribbley's at one time, too. "They've been with all the biggest publis.h.i.+ng houses," their mother said, proudly.

"Oh, they aren't any of your stick-in-the muds, no siree." Her hands had been fiddling with a piece of bright cloth, and then, suddenly, cloth and hands went up to her head, her fingers flashed, and-complete, perfect-she was wearing an intricately folded turban.

Bentley came in carrying a pitcher of drink in one hand and five gla.s.ses-one to each finger-in the other. "I told you to mix yours separately, I think," his mother said. Taking no notice of her youngest's Ahhh, she turned to Bob. "I have a whole basket of these pieces of madras," she said, "some silk, some cotton ... and it's been on my mind all day. Now, if I just remember the way those old women from the West Indies used to tie them on their heads when I was girl ... and now, sure enough, it just came back to me! How does it look?" she asked.

"Looks very nice, Mommy," said Bart Sr. And added, "I bet it would cover up the curlers better than those babush-kas the women wear, you know?"

Bob Rosen bet it would, too.

So here it was and this was it. The sources of the Nile. How old Peter Martens had discovered it, Bob did not know. By and by, he supposed, he would find out. How did they do it, was it that they had a panache-? or was it a "wild talent," like telepathy, second sight, and calling dice or b.a.l.l.s?He did not know.

"Bart said he was reading a real nice ma.n.u.script that came in just the other day," observed Mrs. Benson, dreamily, over her gla.s.s. "About South America. He says he thinks that South America has been neglected, and that there is going to be a revival of interest in non-fiction about South America."

"No more Bushmen?" Barton Sr., asked.

"No, Bart says he thinks the public is getting tired of Bushmen. He says he only gives Bushmen another three months and then-poo-you won't be able to give the books away." Bob asked what Alton thought. "Well, Alton is read-ing fiction now, you know. He thinks the public is getting tired of novels about murder and s.e.x and funny war experi-ences. Alt thinks they're about ready for some novels about ministers. He said to one of the writers that Scribbley's publishes, 'Why don't you do a novel about a minister?" he said. And the man said he thought it was a good idea."

There was a long, comfortable silence.

There was no doubt about it. How the Bensons did it, Bob still didn't know.

But they did do it. With absolute unconsciousness and with absolute accuracy, they were able to predict future trends in fas.h.i.+on. It was marvelous. It was uncanny. It-Kitty lifted her lovely head and looked at Bob through the long, silken skein of hair, then brushed it aside. "Do you ever have any money?" she asked. It was like the sound of small silver bells, her voice. Where, compared to this, were the flat Long Island vocables of, say, Noreen? Nowhere at all.

"Why, Kitty Benson, what a question," her mother said, reaching out her gla.s.s for Bentley to refill. "Poor Peter Martens, just to think-a little more, Bentley, don't think you're going to drink what's left, young man."

"Because if you ever have any money," said the voice like the Horns of Elfland, "we could go out somewhere together. Some boys don't ever have any money," it concluded, with infinitely loving melancholy.

"I'm going to have some money," Bob said at once. "Abso-lutely. Uh-when could-"

She smiled an absolute enchantment of a smile. "Not to-night," she said, "because I have a date. And not tomorrow night, because I have a date.

But the day after tomorrow night, because then I don't have a date."

A little voice in one corner of Bob's mind said, "This girl has a brain about the size of a small split pea; you know that, don't you?" And another voice, much less little, in the op-posite corner, shrieked, "Who cares? Who cares ?" Furthermore, Noreen had made a faint but definite beginning on an extra chin, and her bosom tended (unless artfully and arti-ficially supported) to droop. Neither was true of Kitty at all, at all.

"The day after tomorrow night, then," he said. "It's a date."All that night he wrestled with his angel. "You can't ex-pose these people to the sordid glare of modern commerce," the angel said, throwing him with a half-nelson. "They'd wither and die. Look at the dodo-look at the buffalo.

Will you look?"

"You look," growled Bob, breaking the hold, and seizing the angel in a scissors-lock. "I'm not going to let any d.a.m.ned account executives get their chicken-plucking hands on the Bensons. It'll all be done through me, see?

Through me!" And with that he pinned the angel's shoulders to the mat.

"And besides," he said, clenching his teeth, "I need the money..."

Next morning he called up his agent. "Here's just a few samples to toss Mr.

Phillips Anhalt's way," he said grandi-osely. "Write 'em down. Soupbowl haircuts for men. That's what I said. They can get a sunlamp treatment for the backs of their necks in the barber-shops. Listen. Women will stencil stars on their toenails with nail polish. Kate Greenaway style dresses for women are going to come in. Huh? Well, you bet your b.u.t.t that Anhalt will know what Kate Greenaway means. Also, what smart women will wear will be madras kerchiefs tied up in the old West Indian way. This is very complicated, so I guess they'll have to be pre-folded and pre-st.i.tched. Silks and cottons ... You writing this down? Okay.

"Teen-agers will wear, summer-time, I mean, they'll wear shorts made out of cut-down blue jeans. And sandals made out of cut-down sneakers. No s.h.i.+rts or unders.h.i.+rts-bare-chested, and-What? NO, for cry-sake, just the boys!"

And he gave Stuart the rest of it, books and all, and he demanded and got an advance. Next day Stuart reported that Anhalt reported that Mac Ian was quite excited. Mac had said-did Bob know what Phil said Mac said? Well, Mac said, "Let's not spoil the s.h.i.+p for a penny's worth of tar, Phil."

Bob demanded and received another advance. When Noreen called, he was brusque.

The late morning of his date-day he called to confirm it. That is, he tried to. The operator said that she was sorry, but that number had been disconnected. He made it up to the Bronx by taxi. The house was empty. It was not only empty of people, it was empty of everything. The wallpaper had been left, but that was all.

Many years earlier, about the time of his first cigarette, Bob had been led by a friend in the dead of night (say, half-past ten) along a quiet suburban street, pledged to confidence by the most frightful vows. Propped against the wall of a garage was a ladder-it did not go all the way to the roof: Bob and friend had pulled themselves up with effort which, in another context, would have won the full approval of their gym teacher. The roof made an excellent post to observe the going-to-bed preparations of a young woman who had seemingly never learned that window shades could be pulled down. Suddenly light went on in another house, illuminating the roof of the garage; the young woman had seen the two and yelled; and Bob, holding onto the parapet with sweating hands and reaching for the ladder withsweating feet, had discovered that the ladder was no longer there...

He felt the same way now.

Besides feeling stunned, incredulous, and panicky, he also felt annoyed.

This was because he acutely realized that he was acting out an old moving picture scene. The scene would have been closer to the (film) realities had he been wearing a tattered uniform, and in a way he wanted to giggle, and in a way he wanted to cry. Only through obligation to the script did he carry the farce farther: wandering in and out of empty rooms, calling out names, asking if anyone was there.

No one was. And there were no notes or messages, not even Croatan carved on a doorpost. Once, in the gathering shadows, he thought he heard a noise, and he whirled around, half-expecting to see an enfeebled Mr.

Benson with a bacon-fat lamp in one hand, or an elderly Negro, perhaps, who would say, tearfully, "Ma.r.s.e Bob, dem Yankees done burn all de cotton..." But there was nothing.

He trod the stairs to the next house and addressed in-quiries to an old lady in a rocking-chair. "Well, I'm sure that I don't know," she said, in a paper-thin and fretful voice. "I saw them, all dressed up, getting into the car, and I said, 'Why, where are you all going, Hazel?' ("Hazel?" "Hazel Benson. I thought you said you knew them, young man?" "Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Please go on.") Well, I said, 'Where are you all going, Hazel?' And she said, 'It's time for a change, Mrs. Machen.' And they all laughed and they waved and they drove away. And then some men came and packed everything up and took it away in trucks. Well! 'Where did they all go?' I asked them. 'Where did they all go?' But do you think they'd have the common decency to tell me, after I've lived here for fifty-four years?

Not-a-word. Oh-"

Feeling himself infinitely cunning, Bob said, offhandedly, "Yes, I know just the outfit you mean. O'Brien Movers."

"I do not mean O'Brien Movers. Whatever gave you such an idea? It was the Seven Sebastian Sisters."

And this was the most that Bob Rosen could learn. In-quiries at other houses either drew blanks or produced such probably significant items as, "Kitty said, 'Here are your curlers, because I won't need them anymore' "; "Yes, just the other day I was talking to Bart, Senior, and he said, 'You know, you don't realize that you're in a rut until you have to look up to see the sky.' Well, those Bensons always talked a little crazy, and so I thought nothing of it, until-"; and, "I said to Bentley, 'Vipe, how about tomorrow we go over to Williamsbridge and pa.s.s the chicks there in review?' and he said, 'No, Vipe, I can't make that scene tomorrow, my ancients put another poster on the billboard.' So I said, 'Ay-las,' and next thing I know-"

"His who did what?"

"Fellow, you don't wot this Viper talk one note, do you? His family, see, they had made other plans. They really cut loose, didn't they?"They really did. So there Bob was, neat and trim and sweet-smelling, and nowhere to go, and with a pocketful of money. He looked around the tree-lined street and two blocks away, on the corner, he saw a neon sign.

Harry's, it flashed (green). Bar and Grill (red).

"Where's Harry?" he asked the middle-aged woman be-hind the bar.

"Lodge meeting," she said. "He'll be back soon. They aren't doing any labor tonight, just business. Waddle ya have?"

"A ball of Bushmill," he said. He wondered where he had heard that, last. It was cool in the bar. And then he remembered, and then he shuddered.

"Oh, that's bad," Stuart Emmanuel moaned. "That sounds very bad ... And you shouldn't've gone to the moving van people yourself. Now you probably muddied the waters."

Bob hung his head. His efforts to extract information from the Seven Sebastian Sisters-apparently they were septuplets, and all had gray mustaches-had certainly failed wretchedly. And he kept seeing Kitty Benson's face, framed in her golden hair like a sun-lit nimbus, kept hearing Kitty Benson's golden voice.

"Well," Stuart said, "I'll do my d.a.m.ndest." And no doubt he did, but it wasn't enough. He was forced to come clean with Anhalt. And Anhalt, after puttering around, his sweet smile more baffled than ever, told Mac everything. Mac put the entire force majeure of the T. Oscar Rutherford organiza-tion behind the search. And they came up with two items.

Item. The Seven Sebastian Sisters had no other address than the one on Purchase Place, and all the furniture was in their fireproof warehouse, with two years' storage paid in advance.

Item. The owner of the house on Purchase Place said, "I told them I'd had an offer to buy the house, but I wouldn't, if they'd agree to a rent increase.

And the next thing I knew, the keys came in the mail."

Little and Harpey, as well as Scribbley's Sons, reported only that Alt and Bart, Junior, had said that they were leaving, but hadn't said where they were going.

"Maybe they've gone on a trip somewhere," Stuart sug-gested. "Maybe they'll come back before long. Anhalt has ears in all the publis.h.i.+ng houses, maybe he'll hear something."

But before Anhalt heard anything, Mac decided that there was no longer anything to hear. "I wash my hands of it," he declared. "It's a wild goose chase. Where did you ever pick up this crackpot idea in the first place?"

And Phillips Anhalt's smile faded away. Weeks pa.s.sed, and months.

But Bob Rosen has never abandoned hope. He has checked with the Boardof Education about Bentley's records, to see if they know anything about a transcript or transfer. He has haunted Na.s.sau Street, bothering-in particular-dealers specializing in Pseudo-Arabian airmail issues, in hopes that Mr. Benson has made his whereabouts known to them. He has hocked his watch to buy hamburgers and pizzas for the Vipers, and innumerable Scotches on innumerable rocks for the trim young men and the girls fresh out of Bennington who staff the offices of our leading publishers. He- In short, he has taken up the search of Peter Martens (Old Pete, Sneaky Pete). He is looking for the sources of the Nile. Has he ever found anything ? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he has.

The strange nature of cyclical coincidences has been sum-med up, somewhere, in the cla.s.sical remark that one can go for years without seeing a one-legged man wearing a base-ball cap; and then, in a single afternoon, one will see three of them. So it happened with Bob Rosen.

One day, feeling dull and heavy, and finding that the elfin notes of Kitty Benson's voice seemed to be growing fainter in his mind, Bob called up her old landlord.

"No," said the old landlord, "I never heard another word from them. And I'll tell you who else I never heard from, either. The fellow who offered to buy the house. He never came around and when I called his office, he just laughed at me. Fine way to do business." "What's his name?" Bob asked, listlessly. "Funny name," said the old landlord. "E. Peters Shadwell?

Something like that. The h.e.l.l with him, anyway."

Bob tore his rooms apart looking for the card with the perforated top edge which Shadwell had-it seemed so very long ago-torn off his little book and given him. Also, it struck him, neither could he find the piece of paper on which he had scribbled old Martens' last message, with the Bensons'

name and street on it. He fumbled through the Yellow Book, but couldn't seem to locate the proper category for the mantis-man's business. And he gave up on the regular directory, what with Shad, Shadd, -wel, -well, -welle, etc.

He would, he decided, go and ask Stuart Emmanuel. The dapper little agent had taken the loss of the Bensons so hard ("It was a beauty of a deal,"

he'd all but wept) that he might also advance a small sum of money for the sake of the Quest. Bob was in the upper East 40s when he pa.s.sed a bar where he had once taken Noreen for c.o.c.ktails-a mis-take, for it had advanced her already expensive tastes an-other notch-and this reminded him that he had not heard from her in some time. He was trying to calculate just how much time, and if he ought to do something about it, when he saw the third one-legged man in the baseball cap.

That is to say, speaking nonmetaphorically, he had turned to cross a street in the middle of a block, and was halted by the absence of any gap between the two vehicles (part of a traffic jam caused by a long-unclosed incision in the street) directly in front of him. Reading from right to left, the vehicles consisted of an Eleanor-blue truck reading Grandma Goldberg's Yum-Yum Borsht, and an Obscene-pink Jaguar containing T. PettysShadwell and Noreen.

It was the moment of the Shock of Recognition. He under-stood everything.

Without his making a sound, they turned together and saw him, mouth open, everything written on his face. And they knew that he knew.

"Why, Bob," said Noreen.

"Ah, Rosen," said Shadwell.

"I'm sorry that we weren't able to have you at the wed-ding," she said. "But everything happened so quickly. Pete just swept me off my feet."

Bob said, "I'll bet."

She said, "Don't be bitter"-seeing that he was, and en-joying it. Horns sounded, voices cursed, but the line of cars didn't move.

"You did it," Bob said, coming close. Shadwell's hands left the wheel and came together at his chest, fingers down. "You saw that crisp green money he left and you saw his card and got in touch with him and you came in and took the note and-Where are they?" he shouted, taking hold of the small car and shaking it. "I don't give a d.a.m.n about the money, just tell me where they are! Just let me see the girl!"

But T. Pettys Shadwell just laughed and laughed, his voice like the whisper of the wind in the dry leaves. "Why, Bob," said Noreen, bugging her eyes and flas.h.i.+ng her large, coa.r.s.e gems, and giving the scene all she had, "why, Bob, was there a girl? You never told me."

Bob abandoned his anger, disclaimed all interest in the commercial aspect of the Bensons, offered to execute bonds and sign papers in blood, if only he were allowed to see Kitty. Shadwell, fingering his tiny carat of a mustache, shrugged. "Write the girl a letter," he said, smirking. "I as-sure you, all mail will be forwarded." And then the traffic jam broke and the Jag zoomed off, Noreen's scarlet lips pursed in blowing a kiss.

"Write?" Why bless you, of course Bob wrote. Every day and often twice a day for weeks. But never a reply did he get. And on realizing that his letters probably went no farther than Noreen (Mrs. T. Pettys) Shadwell, who doubt-less gloated and sneered in the midst of her luxury, he fell into despair, and ceased. Where is Kitty of the heart-shaped face, Kitty of the light-gold hair, Kitty of the elfin voice? Where are her mother and father and her three brothers? Where now are the sources of the Nile? Ah, where?

So there you are. One can hardly suppose that Shadwell has perforce kidnapped the entire Benson family, but the fact is that they have disappeared almost entirely without trace, and the slight trace which remains leads directly to and only to the door of T. Pettys Shadwell a.s.sociates, Market Research Advisors. Has he whisked them all away to some sylvan retreat in the remote recesses of the Great Smoky Mountains?Are they even now pursuing their prophetic ways in one of the ever-burgeoning, endlessly proliferating suburbs of the City of the Angels?

Or has he, with genius diabolical, located them so near to hand that far-sighted vision must needs forever miss them?

In deepest Brooklyn, perhaps, amongst whose labyrinthine ways an army of surveyors could scarce find their own stakes?-or in fathomless Queens, red brick and yellow brick, world without end, where the questing heart grows sick and faint?

Rosen does not know, but he has not ceased to care. He writes to live, but he lives to look, now selling, now search-ing, famine succeeding feast, but hope never failing.

Phillips Anhalt, however, has not continued so successfully. He has not Bob's hopes. Anhalt continues, it is true, with the T. Oscar Rutherford people, but no longer has his corner office, or any private office at all.

Anhalt failed: Anhalt now has a desk in the bull pen with the other failures and the new apprentices.

And while Bob ceaselessly searches the streets-for who knows in which place he may find the springs bubbling and welling?-and while Anhalt drinks bitter tea and toils like a slave in a salt mine, that swine, that cad, that most despicable of living men, T. Pettys Shadwell, has three full floors in a new building of steel, aluminum, and blue-green gla.s.s a block from the Cathedral; he has a box at the Met, a house in Bucks County, a place on the Vineyard, an apartment in Beekman Place, a Caddy, a Bentley, two Ja-guars, a yacht that sleeps ten, and one of the choicest small (but ever-growing) collections of Renoirs in private hands today...

______________________________.

There were not many of them left, and it was vital to take every precaution against harm from a probably hostile environment. But life could become unbearably boring, par-ticularly for the young, inside the dome.

SOMEBODY TO PLAY WITH.

by Jay Williams

The children usually met before school near the emer-gency air-lock, behind a mountain of crates full of spare parts and supplies. Through the foggy plastic of the dome they could see the gritty landscape with its fringe of eroded hills, and not far away the spongy upper branches of a fun-gus forest which grew in a deep ravine they called Grand Canyon, after a place on Earth they knew only from their Social Studies cla.s.s.