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have a look around outside." He switched on his flash-light and left the
house. In another minute Waldo joined him, knocking on Scott's door as he
passed.
The ashes of the fire still smoldered, making a dull red glow. It was very
cold. Jenkins said, "Look here, Waldo
look." Waldo followed the flash-light's beam, said he didn't see anything.
"It's the grass ... it was green last night.
It's all dead and brown now. Look at it ..."
Waldo shivered. "Makes no difference. We'll get it green again. The land's
ours now."
Scott joined them, his overcoat hugging his ears. "Why is it so cold?" he
asked. "What's happened to the clock?
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Who was tinkering with the clock? It's past eight by the clock it ought to be
light by now. Where did all the
Tickisalls go to? What's happening? There's something in the air I don't like
the feel of it. I'm sorry I ever agreed to work with you, no matter what you
paid me "
Waldo said, roughly, nervously, "Shut up. Some damned
Indyin sneaked in and must of fiddled with the clock. Hell with um.
Govermint's on our side now. Soons it's daylight we'll clear um all out of
here f'r good."
Shivering in the bitter cold, uneasy for reasons they only
320 Avram Davidson dimly perceived, the three white men huddled together alone
in the dark by the dying fire, and waited for the sun to rise.
And waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. . . .
Like every successful form of fiction, fantasy is full of memorable
characters. Harold Shea and
Bilbo Baggins, Scheherazade and Sinbad stick in our minds long after the rest
of the fictional fireworks may have faded. Usually they do so because they're
strong personalities; great rug-
ged heroes or utterly despicable villainesses.
They move, they motivate, they thrust the story forward and keep us reading.
This is by way of suggesting that there are not many memorable failures in the
lexicon of fan-
tasy. Those who can't perform are usually ac-
corded the same fate in our memories as a gigolo from Jersey afflicted with
the same conundrum.
Which is what makes the occasional memora-
ble failure all that more exceptional. So this anthology ends not with a bang,
with a protag-
onist mighty-thewed (as E. Fudd might say), but with a whimper. More
correctly, with a whimperer.
But a memorable one.
Snulbug
ANTHONY BOUCHER
"THAT'S A HELL of a spell you're using," said the demon,
"if I'm the best you can call up."
He wasn't much. Bill Hitchens had to admit. He looked
321
322 Anthony Boucher lost in the center of that pentacle. His basic design was
impressive enough snakes for hair, curling tusks, a sharp-
tipped tail, all the works but he was something under an inch tall.
Bill had chanted the words and lit the powder with the highest hopes. Even
after the feeble flickering flash and the damp fizzling zzzr which had
replaced the expected thunder and lightning, he had still had hopes. He had
stared up at the space above the pentacle waiting to be awe-struck until he
had heard that plaintive little voice from the floor wailing, "Here I am."
"Nobody's wasted time and power on a misfit like me for years," the demon went
on. "Where'd you get the spell?"
"Just a little something I whipped up," said Bill mod-
estly.
The demon grunted and muttered something about people that thought they were
magicians.
"But I'm not a magician," Bill explained. "I'm a biochemist."
The demon shuddered. "I land the damnedest cases,"
he mourned. "Working for that psychiatrist wasn't bad enough, I should draw a
biochemist. Whatever that is."
Bill couldn't check his curiosity. "And what did you do for a psychiatrist?"
"He showed me to people who were followed by little men and told them I'd
chase the little men away." The demon pantomimed shooing motions.
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"And did they go away?"
"Sure. Only then the people decided they'd sooner have little men than me. It
didn't work so good. Nothing ever does," he added woefully. "Yours won't
either."
Bill sat down and filled his pipe. Calling up demons wasn't so terrifying
after all. Something quiet and homey about it. "Oh, yes it will," he said.
"This is foolproof."
"That's what they all think. People " The demon wistfully eyed the match as
Bill lit his pipe. "But we might as well get it over with. What do you want?"
SNULBUG 323
"I want a laboratory for my embolism experiments. If this method works, it's
going to mean that a doctor can spot an embolus in the blood stream long
before it's dangerous and remove it safely. My ex-boss, that screwball old
occultist Reuben Choatsby, said it wasn't practical
meaning there wasn't a fortune in it for him and fired me.
Everybody else thinks I'm wacky too, and I can't get any backing. So I need
ten thousand dollars."
"There!" the demon sighed with satisfaction. "I told you it wouldn't work.
That's out for me. They can't start fetching money on demand till three grades
higher than me.
I told you."
"But you don't," Bill insisted, "appreciate all my fiend-
ish subtlety. Look Say, what is your name?"
The demon hesitated. "You haven't got another of those things?"
"What things?"
"Matches."
"Sure."
"Light me one, please?"
Bill tossed the burning match into the center of the pentacle. The demon
scrambled eagerly out of the now cold ashes of the powder and dived into the
flame, rubbing himself with the brisk vigor of a man under a needle-
shower. "There!" he gasped joyously. "That's more like it."
"And now what's your name?"
The demon's face fell again. "My name? You really want to know?"
"I've got to call you something."
"Oh, no you don't. I'm going home. No money games for me."
"But I haven't explained yet what you are to do. What's your name?"
"Snulbug." The demon's voice dropped almost too low to be heard.
"Snulbug?" Bill laughed.
324 Anthony Boucher
"Uh-huh. I've got a cavity in one tusk, my snakes are falling out, I haven't
got enough troubles, I should be named Snulbug."
"All right. Now listen, Snulbug, can you travel into the future?"
"A little. I don't like it much, though. It makes you itch in the memory."
"Look, my fine snake-haired friend. It isn't a question of what you like. How
would you like to be left there in that pentacle with nobody to throw matches
at you?" Snulbug shuddered. "I thought so. Now, you can travel into the
future?"
"I said a little."
"And," Bill leaned forward and puffed hard at his corncob as he asked the
vital question, "can you bring back material objects?" If the answer was no,
all the fine febrile fertility of his spell-making was useless. And if that
was useless, heaven alone knew how the Hitchens Embolus [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]