Giftlippen rose, crouching. I stared in horror at his face. It had been broken by Bird’s kick, literally crumbled. As I stood frozen, he reached up and tore away the rest of the covering. I could not believe my eyes. Then he quickly doffed his robe and kicked off his slippers. I was even more incredulous. This state of shock, I am ashamed to admit, was my undoing. Before I could lift my rifle and start firing, his hand moved and the sinking sun glittered on something streaking toward me.
The fellow, if I may call him that, had depended upon the shock of recognition to paralyze me. It succeeded just long enough for him to pluck a knife from the scabbard at his belt and hurl it. I felt a shock in my right arm; the rifle clattered on the deck; I was suddenly weak. I looked down. The knife had penetrated the muscle of my right shoulder. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it certainly was unnerving.
Giftlippen, chattering, was on me then, had knocked me down, had gone on. I sat up while Bird and Ralph ran toward the poopdeck. I groped for the weapon, could not find it, and thus was unable to prevent Giftlippen’s escape.
He was quick, oh, so quick! Even the speedy Bird and the swift Ralph could not catch him in time. He had leaped into the wheelchair, punched some buttons on the control panel, and then was gone. Hidden, rather, I should say. Panels had slid up from the sides of the enormous wheelchair and closed over him. Behind a glass port, his mouth worked devilishly. The two giant front teeth, incisors like daggers, or perhaps I should say, a rodent’s, gleamed.
His hands moved again, and the muzzles of two automatic rifles sprang out of the sides. I rolled off the slight elevation of the poopdeck, falling to the deck. Bullets chopped off pieces of the teakwood and then were spraying the deck. Bird dived down the hatch, head first, the deck exploding around him. Ralph raced forward and then rolled in toward me, safe from the fire.
He looked at the protruding dagger. “Are you hurt, buddy?”
“Not severely,” I said. “But what next?”
“He could hold us here, but he’ll abandon ship at once. The bomb’s too close to going off. Ah, there he goes!”
The rifles had suddenly ceased their terrifying racket. A few seconds later, there was a splash. Ralph stood on his hind legs. He said, “All clear now.”
I stood up. There was no sign of the wheelchair or the thing that had been in it. But it was obvious where they had gone. The railing had been destroyed by the rifle fire to make a passage to the sea.
“There’s no use trying to get him now,” he said. “That wheelchair is obviously submersible, and it’s also jet-propelled. He’ll go underwater to the shore. But, unless he has another disguise cached away somewhere, he will be easily spotted.”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s nothing that will attract more attention than a six-foot-six-inch-high squirrel.”
7
There was no opportunity for explanations. Somewhere in the barque, a time bomb was ticking away. We could have escaped in the mini-sub, but that would have meant leaving sixty or so people to perish. They did deserve to die, but we would not abandon them. It was impossible to carry them into the submarine in the little time left. Besides, there wasn’t room for that many.
Bird stuck his head out of the hatch. Ralph shouted at him to look for the bomb. There was only five minutes left. We would help him after we secured Smigma and Saugpumpe.
Bird said, “Right on!” and he disappeared.
Both the culprits were still unconscious. I tied up the woman while Ralph stood guard in case the man aroused. Then I used his belt to bind him. He was a sorry-looking mess, covered with lettuce, mushrooms, anchovies, sliced peppers, and a garlicky oil.
Ralph chuckled and said, “I smote the saladed Polack.”
“A slightly altered line from a speech by Horatio, Hamlet, Act I, scene i,” I said. “Good heavens, Ralph, this is no time for your atrocious puns.”
We hastened below deck where we found Bird frantically opening boxes. Though handicapped by my wound, I pitched in. Ralph, cursing his lack of hands, paced back and forth.
“Jumping jellybeans!” Bird said. “Only two minutes to go!”
“It’s too late to get into the sub,” I said. I was sweating profusely, but I like to think that that was caused by my wound, not panic.
“Sixty more seconds, and we’ll have to jump into the sea,” Ralph said. “Wait! I have it! Quiet, you two! Absolutely quiet!”
We stood still. The only sound was the lapping of the waves against the hull. Ralph stood, ears cocked, turning this way and that. He had a much keener sense of hearing than we two humans. Even so, if the timing mechanism was not clockwork or if it was covered with some insulating material...
Suddenly, he barked. Then he said, “Damn! My instincts again! That box on the pile by you, Doc! Third one under!”
I toppled off the top two with one hand while Bird and Ralph danced around. “Forty-five seconds!” Bird shrilled.
The third box was of cardboard, its top glued down. Bird jumped in and tore it open savagely. Ralph stood up on his hind legs to look within. All three of us stared at a curious contrivance. It was of plastic, cube-shaped, and had two small cubes on its top. On the inner side of the left-hand one was a metal disk. Moving slowly from the inner wall of the other one was a thin cylinder of steel. Its tip was only about two-sixteenths of an inch from the disk.
As we stared, the slender cylinder moved a sixteenth of an inch.
“Quick, Weisstein, the needle!”
I snatched my handkerchief from my pocket, but I wasn’t quick enough to satisfy Bird. He grabbed it from me and interposed a corner between the disk and cylinder. One more second, and the electrical contact would have been made. I shudder even now as I write of this and a certain sphincter muscle tightens up.
Bird threw the bomb overboard. “Whew! Okay, I’ll get the sub going, and we’ll mosey back to Venice. But first, what the hell was Giftlippen? I know what I saw, but I still don’t believe it.”
“I had suspected for some time that it was Nucifer,” Ralph said. “There were clues, though only I had the background to interpret them. You see, one of the institute animals supposedly wiped out by the explosion was a giant squirrel. Nucifer, Professor Sansgout called him. Nut-bearing. From the Latin.
“Obviously, he wasn’t killed. He took to a life of crime, murdered the real Giftlippen, and took over his gang. Smigma joined the gang after Giftlippen was well launched on his career, you know. He may have been surprised to find that his friend and agent was now a giant rodent. On the other hand, Giftlippen was always a little squirrelly. I should feel bad about the Liechtensteiner’s murder... but, after the way he murdered my book... well, no matter.
“Anyway, when Giftlippen—Nucifer, I mean—decided on the Venetian caper, he set up a whole new identity. He triggered off that landslide... cold-blooded massacre of the villagers... and emerged as Granelli, the reincarnation of Doge Dandolo.
“But now he was in the public eye. So, he put on a wax-and-putty head to conceal his bestial features and gloves to disguise his paws. He stayed in a wheelchair when on display, covering his unhuman legs with the tigerskin. He stuck his bushy tail down a hole in the chair’s seat. When he was in that Arabian costume, he strapped his tail to a leg, as you saw.
“He also made sure that his distinctive squirrel’s odor was covered by a heavy perfume. He knew that I was on his trail and that I could expose him after one whiff.”
“But why did Smigma also use perfume?”
“Same reason. After Smigma’s accident, he suffered a metabolic imbalance, you know. He emitted a cheesy odor which even humans could detect.
“The immobile features, the covering of the legs, the gloves, the perfume all suggested to me his true identity. His addiction to nuts cinched the matter.”
“Elementary,” I said.
“No, alimentary.”
Bird started away. I said, “Wait a minute. However did you manage to appear so conveniently—for us—inside the barque?”
> “Easy,” Bird said, grinning. Then: “Well, I won’t lie to you; it wasn’t a breeze. I swam toward the sea to give the impression I was escaping that way. But I returned, working my way through the fallen blocks of stone. Then I swam through the tunnel to the cave. I almost didn’t make it. I got to the mini-sub before the bandits came down. I hid in its engine room, behind the batteries. When everybody left the sub, I came out. I used the sub’s radio to send a fake message that I’d been captured. I was taking a chance. If the chopper overheard me, they’d warn Smigma. But Smigma turned the walkie-talkie off right after he got my message.
“First, though, I listened in on him and the chopper. That way, I learned the code words they were using for identification. Giftlippen’s—Nucifer’s—was California. Isn’t that strange? No other names of states were used.”
“The squirrel’s a double-dyed villain,” Ralph said. “But he has a sense of humor. California has the world’s biggest collection of nuts.”
8
Nucifer eluded detection. Smigma later escaped from prison and rejoined Nucifer. How Ralph and I caught up with them is described in The Four Musicians of Bremen.
Bird used the walkie-talkie to summon the police. They arrested the few crooks in the cave. I say few because, as Ralph had suspected, the gang in the plastic bag had been drowned by their compatriots in the U-boat.
All the art treasures were recovered. And it turned out that Nucifer had lied about the acidic effect of the plastic spray. The authorities would have had no way of knowing this, of course, and undoubtedly would have paid millions for a useless formula.
We stayed two weeks for the festivities in our honor. We were made honorary citizens of Venice, and a local artist was commissioned to cast in bronze a commemorative monument of us. It can be seen today in St. Mark’s Square. It’s well done, though it always causes children, unacquainted with our story, to ask why the dog is grabbing the big squirrel by its tail. Artists, like TV/movie directors, feel no obligation to be historically accurate.
While we were waiting at the Lido Airport, I made another long-distance call to Lisa. Ralph paced back and forth nervously, whining now and then despite his vow to repress this canine characteristic. Cordwainer Bird sat on a bench nearby, writing in longhand his latest novel, Adrift Just Off the Eyelets of My Buster Browns. Both, seeing my approach, stopped what they were doing. Bird rose from the bench, though not very far.
“She gave the final ultimatum, Ralph,” I said. “It’s either she or you. I had to make the final decision right there.”
“No need to tell me what it is,” he said. “If your long face wasn’t enough, the odor of resignation mixed somewhat with that of repressed joy, would inform me.”
“Then it’s goodbye,” I said, choking.
“Das Ewig-Weibliche/Zieht uns hinan,” he said.
“The Eternal-Feminine/Draws us on,” I said. “The last line of Goethe’s The Gothic Chamber. He was a wise man.”
“A very horny one, too. I’ll miss you, Doc. It’ll be a new and exciting life in Los Angeles—provided I can get my citizenship papers in the States. But...”
The loudspeaker blared, informing us in Italian, French, German, and English that passengers for Hamburg must enter customs. At least, I thought that was what was said. Like airport announcers everywhere, he managed to make almost everything unintelligible, no matter what the language.
Bird said, “I’ll go change our reservations for the plane to LA.” He held out his hand. “Sorry about this, Doctor. I don’t like to rip off Ralph from you. But it’s your decision.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “Sooner or later, it would have come. But be sure to get in touch with me.”
“I’m not much for letter writing. Ralph’ll have to do that. Auf Wiedersehen, Doc.”
He walked away. I looked at Ralph. Then my German reserve shattered, and I knelt down and put my arms around that furry neck and wept. Ralph whined, and he said, “Come on, buck up, sweetheart. You know it’s all for the best. You’ll lead a dog’s life, it’s true. But that ain’t necessarily bad. Take it from one who knows.”
I stroked his ears, shed a few more tears, then rose. “Auf Wiedersehen. Though I have this feeling that I’ll never see you again.”
“Hit the road, Doc, before my guts lose their anchors. Gott! If only I had tear ducts! You humans don’t know how lucky you are. But we’ll see each other now and then. Maybe sooner than you think.”
I picked up my bags and walked away, never once looking back. I thought he was just talking to make me feel better. I didn’t know how prophetic his words were. Or how distressed I would be to see him. But that is all chronicled in the bewildering adventure of adulation and adulteration, private sin and public confession, branding irons and preachers: The Scarletin Letter.
PULP
INSPIRATIONS
SKINBURN
BY PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER
Philip José Farmer’s preface to “Skinburn” states that pulp devotees “might deduce Kent Lane’s identity from his fire opal ring and his name.” The implication is that Lane got the fire opal ring from his father, whom Farmer identified, in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, as Wold Newton Family member Allard Kent Rassendyll—the real name of the man whose exploits were immortalized in the pages of the long-running pulp magazine The Shadow (1931-1949). While many who are casually familiar with The Shadow might identify his alter-ego as man-about-town Lamont Cranston, pulp aficionados know that he was, in truth, aviator and adventurer Kent Allard. Kent Lane’s mother is The Shadow’s friend and companion, Margo Lane, who made her way into the pulp series in 1941 after being introduced as a radio character in 1937.
PREFACE
It makes no difference in the story itself, but devotees of old pulp-magazine fiction might deduce Kent Lane’s identity from his fire opal ring and his name. The surname implies, of course, that his parents were never married. I have plans for Lane, who will carry on his distinguished father’s career, though in a less violent manner.
This story is about Love, which means that it is also about Hate. One of the themes that run through much of my work is that for every advantage you gain there is a disadvantage, that the gods, or whoever, require payment, that the universe in all its aspects, which include the human psyche, is governed by a check and balance system.
“Your skin tingles every time you step outdoors?” Dr. Mills said. “And when you stand under the skylight in your apartment? But only now and then when you’re standing in front of the window, even if the sunlight falls on you?”
“Yes,” Kent Lane said. “It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s night or day, the skies are cloudy or clear, or the skylight is open or closed. The tingling is strongest on the exposed parts of my body, my face and hands or whatever. But the tingling spreads from the exposed skin to all over my body, though it’s much weaker under my clothes. And the tingling eventually arouses vaguely erotic feelings.”
The dermatologist walked around him. When he had completed his circuit, he said, “Don’t you ever tan?”
“No, I just peel and blister. I usually avoid burning by staying out of the sun as much as possible. But that isn’t doing me any good now, as you can see. I look as if I’d been on the beach all day. That makes me rather conspicuous, you know. In my work, you can’t afford to be conspicuous.”
The doctor said, “I know.”
He meant that he was aware that Lane was a private detective. What he did not know was that Lane was working on a case for a federal government agency. CACO—Coordinating Authority for Cathedric Organizations—was short of competent help. It had hired, after suitable security checks, a number of civilian agents. CACO would have hired only the best, of course, and Lane was among these.
Lane hesitated and then said, “I keep getting these phone calls.”
The doctor said nothing. Lane said, “There’s nobody at the other end. He, or she, hangs up just as soon as I pick the phone up.”
&nbs
p; “You think the skinburn and the phone calls are related?”
“I don’t know. But I’m putting all unusual phenomena into one box. The calls started a week after I’d had a final talk with a lady who’d been chasing me and wouldn’t quit. She has a Ph.D. in bioelectronics and is a big shot in the astronautics industry. She’s brilliant, charming, and witty, when she wants to be, but very plain in face and plane in body and very nasty when frustrated. And so...”
He was, he realized, talking too much about someone who worked in a top-secret field. Moreover, why would Mills want to hear the sad story of Dr. Sue Brackwell’s unrequited love for Kent Lane, private eye? She had been hung up on him for some obscure psychological reason and, in her more rational moments, had admitted that they could never make it as man and wife, or even as man and lover, for more than a month, if that. But she was not, outside of the laboratory, always rational, and she would not take no from her own good sense or from him. Not until he had gotten downright vicious over the phone two years ago.
Three weeks ago, she had called him again. But she had said nothing to disturb him. After about five minutes of light chitchat about this and that, including reports on their health, she had said goodbye, making it sound like an ave atque vale, and had hung up. Perhaps she had wanted to find out for herself if the sound of his voice still thrilled her. Who knew?
Lane became aware that the doctor was waiting for him to finish the sentence. He said, “The thing is, these phone calls occurred at first when I was under the skylight and making love. So I moved the bed to a corner where nobody could possibly see it from the upper stories of the Parmenter Building next door.
“After that, the phone started ringing whenever I took a woman into my apartment, even if it was just for a cup of coffee. It’d be ringing before I’d get the door open, and it’d ring at approximately three-minute intervals thereafter. I changed my phone number twice, but it didn’t do any good. And if I went to the woman’s apartment instead, her phone started ringing.”