“Indeed.”
“Can the ghosts be stayed and prevented?”
“Indeed; in a box of light, the which I can effect by a thought. Yes, a ghost we must have.” Kerlin raised his head. “Baton! one ghost; admit a ghost!”
A moment passed; Kerlin held up his hand. There was a faint scratch at the door, and a soft whine could be heard without. “Open,” said a voice, full of sobs and catches and quavers. “Open and let forth the youthful creatures to Blikdak. He finds boredom and lassitude in his vigil; so let the two come forth to negate his unease.”
Kerlin laboriously rose to his feet. “It is done.”
From behind the door came a sad voice, “I am pent, I am snared in scorching brilliance!”
“Now we discover,” said Guyal. “What dissolves the ghost dissolves Blikdak.”
“True indeed,” assented Kerlin.
“Why not light?” inquired Shierl. “Light parts the fabric of the ghosts like a gust of wind tatters the fog.”
“But merely for their fragility; Blikdak is harsh and solid, and can withstand the fiercest radiance safe in his demon-land alcove.” And Kerlin mused. After a moment he gestured to the door. “We go to the image-expander; there we will explode the ghost to macroid dimension; so shall we find his basis. Guyal of Sfere, you must support my frailness; in truth my limbs are weak as wax.”
On Guyal’s arm he tottered forward, and with Shierl close at their heels they gained the gallery. Here the ghost wept in its cage of light, and searched constantly for a dark aperture to seep his essence through.
Paying him no heed Kerlin hobbled and limped across the gallery. In their wake followed the box of light and perforce the ghost.
“Open the great door,” cried Kerlin in a voice beset with cracking and hoarseness. “The great door into the Cognative Repository!”
Shierl ran ahead and thrust her force against the door; it slid aside, and they looked into the great dark hall, and the golden light from the gallery dwindled into the shadows and was lost.
“Call for Lumen,” Kerlin said.
“Lumen!” cried Guyal. “Lumen, attend!”
Light came to the great hall, and it proved so tall that the pilasters along the wall dwindled to threads, and so long and wide that a man might be winded to fatigue in running a dimension. Spaced in equal rows were the black cases with the copper bosses that Guyal and Shierl had noted on their entry. And above each hung five similar cases, precisely fixed, floating without support.
“What are these?” asked Guyal in wonder.
“Would my poor brain encompassed a hundredth part of what these banks know,” panted Kerlin. “They are great brains crammed with all that is known, experienced, achieved or recorded by man. Here is all the lost lore, early and late, the fabulous imaginings, the history of ten million cities, beginnings of time and the presumed finalities; the reason for human existence and the reason for the reason. Daily I have labored and toiled in these banks; my achievement has been a synopsis of the most superficial sort: a panorama across a wide and multifarious country.”
Said Shierl, “Would not the craft to destroy Blikdak be contained here?”
“Indeed, indeed; our task would be merely to find the information. Under which casing would we search? Consider these categories: Demonlands; Killings and Mortefactions; Expositions and Dissolutions of Evil; History of Granvilunde (where such an entity was repelled); Attractive and Detractive Hyperordnets; Therapy for Hallucinants and Ghost-takers; Constructive Journal, item for regeneration of burst walls, subdivision for invasion by demons; Procedural Suggestions in Time of Risk. . . . Aye, these and a thousand more. Somewhere is knowledge of how to smite Blikdak’s abhorred face back into his quasiplace. But where to look? There is no Index Major; none except the poor synopsis of my compilation. He who seeks specific knowledge must often go on an extended search . . .” His voice trailed off. Then: “Forward! Forward through the banks to the Mechanismus.”
So through the banks they went, like roaches in a maze, and behind drifted the cage of light with the wailing ghost. At last they entered a chamber smelling of metal; again Kerlin instructed Guyal and Guyal called, “Attend us, Lumen, attend!”
Through intricate devices walked the three, Guyal lost and rapt beyond inquiry, even though his brain ached with the want of knowing.
At a tall booth Kerlin halted the cage of light. A pane of vitrean dropped before the ghost. “Observe now,” Kerlin said, and manipulated the activants.
They saw the ghost, depicted and projected: the flowing robe, the haggard visage. The face grew large, flattened; a segment under the vacant eye became a scabrous white place. It separated into pustules, and a single pustule swelled to fill the pane. The crater of the pustule was an intricate stippled surface, a mesh as of fabric, knit in a lacy pattern.
“Behold!” said Shierl. “He is a thing woven as if by thread.”
Guyal turned eagerly to Kerlin; Kerlin raised a finger for silence. “Indeed, indeed, a goodly thought, especially since here beside us is a rotor of extreme swiftness, used in reeling the cognitive filaments of the cases. . . . Now then observe: I reach to this panel, I select a mesh, I withdraw a thread, and note! The meshes ravel and loosen and part. And now to the bobbin on the rotor, and I wrap the thread, and now with a twist we have the cincture made . . .”
Shierl said dubiously, “Does not the ghost observe and note your doing?”
“By no means,” asserted Kerlin. “The pane of vitrean shields our actions; he is too exercised to attend. And now I dissolve the cage and he is free.”
The ghost wandered forth, cringing from the light.
“Go!” cried Kerlin. “Back to your genetrix; back, return and go!”
The ghost departed. Kerlin said to Guyal, “Follow; find when Blikdak snuffs him up.”
Guyal at a cautious distance watched the ghost seep up into the black nostril, and returned to where Kerlin waited by the rotor. “The ghost has once more become part of Blikdak.”
“Now then,” said Kerlin, “we cause the rotor to twist, the bobbin to whirl, and we shall observe.”
The rotor whirled to a blur; the bobbin (as long as Guyal’s arm) became spun with ghost-thread, at first glowing pastel polychrome, then nacre, then fine milk-ivory.
The rotor spun, a million times a minute, and the thread drawn unseen and unknown from Blikdak thickened on the bobbin.
The rotor spun; the bobbin was full—a cylinder shining with glossy silken sheen. Kerlin slowed the rotor; Guyal snapped a new bobbin into place, and the unraveling of Blikdak continued.
Three bobbins—four—five—and Guyal, observing Blikdak from afar, found the giant face quiescent, the mouth working and sucking, creating the clacking sound which had first caused them apprehension.
Eight bobbins. Blikdak opened his eyes, stared in puzzlement around the chamber.
Twelve bobbins: a discolored spot appeared on the sagging cheek, and Blikdak quivered in uneasiness.
Twenty bobbins: the spot spread across Blikdak’s visage, across the slanted fore-dome, and his mouth hung lax; he hissed and fretted.
Thirty bobbins: Blikdak’s head seemed stale and putrid; the gunmetal sheen had become an angry maroon, the eyes bulged, the mouth hung open, the tongue lolled limp.
Fifty bobbins: Blikdak collapsed. His dome lowered against the febrile mouth; his eyes shone like feverish coals.
Sixty bobbins: Blikdak was no more.
And with the dissolution of Blikdak so dissolved Jeldred, the demonland created for the housing of evil. The breach in the wall gave on barren rock, unbroken and rigid.
And in the Mechanismus sixty shining bobbins lay stacked neat; the evil so disorganized glowed with purity and iridescence.
Kerlin fell back against the wall. “I expire; my time has come. I have guarded well the Museum; together we have won it away from Blikdak. . . . Attend me now. Into your hands I pass the curacy; now the Museum is your charge to guard and preserve.”
&n
bsp; “For what end?” asked Shierl. “Earth expires, almost as you. . . . Wherefore knowledge?”
“More now than ever,” gasped Kerlin. “Attend: the stars are bright, the stars are fair; the banks know blessed magic to fleet you to youthful climes. Now—I go. I die.”
“Wait!” cried Guyal. “Wait, I beseech!”
“Why wait?” whispered Kerlin. “The way to peace is on me; you call me back?”
“How do I extract from the banks?”
“The key to the index is in my chambers, the index of my life . . .” And Kerlin died.
GUYAL AND SHIERL CLIMBED TO the upper ways and stood outside the portal on the ancient flagged floor. It was night; the marble shone faintly underfoot, the broken columns loomed on the sky.
Across the plain the yellow lights of Saponce shone warm through the trees; above in the sky shone the stars.
Guyal said to Shierl, “There is your home; there is Saponce. Do you wish to return?”
She shook her head. “Together we have looked through the eyes of knowledge. We have seen old Thorsingol, and the Sherrit Empire before it, and Golwan Andra before that and the Forty Kades even before. We have seen the warlike green-men, and the knowledgeable Pharials and the Clambs who departed Earth for the stars, as did the Merioneth before them and the Gray Sorcerers still earlier. We have seen oceans rise and fall, the mountains crust up, peak and melt in the beat of rain; we have looked on the sun when it glowed hot and full and yellow. . . . No, Guyal, there is no place for me at Saponce. . . .”
Guyal, leaning back on the weathered pillar, looked up to the stars. “Knowledge is ours, Shierl—all of knowing to our call. And what shall we do?”
Together they looked up to the white stars.
“What shall we do . . .”
A PAIL OF AIR
— FRITZ LEIBER —
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
FRITZ LEIBER MADE HIS FIRST impact on readers of science fiction and fantasy in the 1940s with the potent and mysterious novel of modern witchcraft Conjure Wife, and then with Gather, Darkness, a memorable portrayal of a future earth dominated by a religious cult that used its command of science to produce “miracles.” During those years, also, he produced the first works in a long series of picaresque fantasies featuring the exploits of two rollicking adventurers, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
It was with the advent of Galaxy Magazine in 1950 that Leiber began to show the dark side of his fertile imagination to its fullest advantage, first with “Coming Attraction,” an astonishing foreshadowing of the brutal world we live in six decades later, and then with a steady succession of other noteworthy stories—“The Nice Girl with Five Husbands,” “The 64-Square Madhouse,” “Poor Superman,” and, one of the most notable of the group, the classic post-apocalyptic tale reprinted here, “A Pail of Air,” first published in Galaxy Magazine’s December 1951 issue. Dark as it is, with that special Leiberesque darkness, it manages nonetheless to demonstrate human fortitude and resilience even after the end of the world.
—R. S.
A PAIL OF AIR
— FRITZ LEIBER —
PA HAD SENT ME OUT to get an extra pail of air. I’d just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing.
You know, at first I thought it was a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady’s face all glowing in the dark and looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I’d never seen a live young lady before, except in the old magazines—Sis is just a kid and Ma is pretty sick and miserable—and it gave me such a start that I dropped the pail. Who wouldn’t, knowing everyone on Earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and you?
Even at that, I don’t suppose I should have been surprised. We all see things now and then. Ma has some pretty bad ones, to judge from the way she bugs her eyes at nothing and just screams and screams and huddles back against the blankets hanging around the Nest. Pa says it is natural we should react like that sometimes.
When I’d recovered the pail and could look again at the opposite apartment, I got an idea of what Ma might be feeling at those times, for I saw it wasn’t a young lady at all but simply a light—a tiny light that moved stealthily from window to window, just as if one of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate why the Earth had gone away from the Sun, and maybe to hunt down something to torment or terrify, now that the Earth didn’t have the Sun’s protection.
I tell you, the thought of it gave me the creeps. I just stood there shaking, and almost froze my feet and did frost my helmet so solid on the inside that I couldn’t have seen the light even if it had come out of one of the windows to get me. Then I had the wit to go back inside.
Pretty soon I was feeling my familiar way through the thirty or so blankets and rugs Pa has got hung around to slow down the escape of air from the Nest, and I wasn’t quite so scared. I began to hear the tick-ticking of the clocks in the Nest and knew I was getting back into air, because there’s no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last blankets—Pa’s got them faced with aluminum foil to hold in the heat—and came into the Nest.
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT the Nest. It’s low and snug, just room for the four of us and our things. The floor is covered with thick woolly rugs. Three of the sides are blankets, and the blankets roofing it touch Pa’s head. He tells me it’s inside a much bigger room, but I’ve never seen the real walls or ceiling.
Against one of the blankets is a big set of shelves, with tools and books and other stuff, and on top of it a whole row of clocks. Pa’s very fussy about keeping them wound. He says we must never forget time, and without a sun or moon, that would be easy to do.
The fourth wall has blankets all over except around the fireplace, in which there is a fire that must never go out. It keeps us from freezing and does a lot more besides. One of us must always watch it. Some of the clocks are alarms and we can use them to remind us. In the early days there was only Ma to take turns with Pa—I think of that when she gets difficult—but now there’s me to help, and Sis too.
It’s Pa who is the chief guardian of the fire, though. I always think of him that way: a tall man sitting cross-legged, frowning anxiously at the fire, his lined face golden in its light, and every so often carefully placing on it a piece of coal from the big heap beside it. Pa tells me there used to be guardians of the fire sometimes in the very old days—vestal virgins, he calls them—although there was unfrozen air all around then and you didn’t really need one.
He was sitting just that way now, though he got up quick to take the pail from me and bawl me out for loitering—he’d spotted my frozen helmet right off. That roused Ma and she joined in picking on me. She’s always trying to get the load off her feelings, Pa explains. Sis let off a couple of silly squeals too.
Pa handled the pail of air in a twist of cloth. Now that it was inside the Nest, you could really feel its coldness. It just seemed to suck the heat out of everything. Even the flames cringed away from it as Pa put it down close by the fire.
Yet it’s that glimmery white stuff in the pail that keeps us alive. It slowly melts and vanishes and refreshes the Nest and feeds the fire. The blankets keep it from escaping too fast. Pa’d like to seal the whole place, but he can’t—building’s too earthquake-twisted, and besides he has to leave the chimney open for smoke.
Pa says air is tiny molecules that fly away like a flash if there isn’t something to stop them. We have to watch sharp not to let the air run low. Pa always keeps a big reserve supply of it in buckets behind the first blankets, along with extra coal and cans of food and other things, such as pails of snow to melt for water. We have to go way down to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip, and get it through a door to outside.
You see, when the Earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket ten feet thick or so ev
erywhere, and then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air, making another white blanket sixty or seventy feet thick maybe.
Of course, all the parts of the air didn’t freeze and snow down at the same time.
First to drop out was the carbon dioxide—when you’re shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don’t go too high and get any of that stuff mixed in, for it would put you to sleep, maybe for good, and make the fire go out. Next there’s the nitrogen, which doesn’t count one way or the other, though it’s the biggest part of the blanket. On top of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there’s the oxygen that keeps us alive. Pa says we live better than kings ever did, breathing pure oxygen, but we’re used to it and don’t notice. Finally, at the very top, there’s a slick of liquid helium, which is funny stuff. All of these gases in neat separate layers. Like a pussy caffay, Pa laughingly says, whatever that is.
I WAS BUSTING TO TELL them all about what I’d seen, and so as soon as I’d ducked out of my helmet and while I was still climbing out of my suit, I cut loose. Right away Ma got nervous and began making eyes at the entry-slit in the blankets and wringing her hands together—the hand where she’d lost three fingers from frostbite inside the good one, as usual. I could tell that Pa was annoyed at me scaring her and wanted to explain it all away quickly, yet could see I wasn’t fooling.
“And you watched this light for some time, son?” he asked when I finished.
I hadn’t said anything about first thinking it was a young lady’s face. Somehow that part embarrassed me.
“Long enough for it to pass five windows and go to the next floor.”
“And it didn’t look like stray electricity or crawling liquid or starlight focused by a growing crystal, or anything like that?”
He wasn’t just making up those ideas. Odd things happen in a world that’s about as cold as can be, and just when you think matter would be frozen dead, it takes on a strange new life. A slimy stuff comes crawling toward the Nest, just like an animal snuffing for heat—that’s the liquid helium. And once, when I was little, a bolt of lightning—not even Pa could figure where it came from—hit the nearby steeple and crawled up and down it for weeks, until the glow finally died.