First Person Peculiar Page 14

  “But they say he’s the dirtiest fighter on the whole Inner Frontier!”

  “Good,” I said. “I hate it when a fight ends too soon.”

  She stared at me. “How long do your fights usually last?”

  “Oh, maybe six or seven seconds,” I answered.

  She blinked very rapidly. “Really?”

  “Heroes don’t never lie, ma’am.”

  “I find that very exciting,” she said, throwing her arms around me and nibbling a little on my lower lip.

  I kissed her back, then disengaged myself. “We got time for this later,” I said, “but right now I think I should be confronting this villain and getting back what was stolen. Where’s he likely to be?”

  “Probably in one of the bars,” she said, “carousing with drunken friends and cheap women.”

  “He got a name, ma’am?”

  She wrinkled her nose and frowned. “Cutthroat Hawke,” she replied.

  “He any relation to Cutthroat McGraw?” I asked. She just stared at me. “I guess not,” I said. “Well, let’s go find him and retrieve Mr. Leibowitz’s goods.”

  She led the way past two well-lit taverns to a little hole in the wall with bad lighting and a worse smell. I stood in the doorway and looked around. There were a bunch of aliens, most of ‘em kind of animal, at least one vegetable, and a couple I’ll swear wasn’t even mineral, and none of ‘em looked all that happy to see me.

  Then I spotted the one human, sitting alone in the farthest corner, and I knew he had to be Cutthroat Hawke. He was wearing a leather tunic, and metallic pants, and well-worn boots, and it was clear that shaving wasn’t his favorite sport. He was nursing a glass of something blue with a bunch of smoke coming out of it, and he didn’t pay me any attention at all when I took a step or two into the room.

  “Cutthroat Hawke!” I bellowed. “Your destiny has found you out! Are you going to turn over what you stole and come along peaceably, or am I going to enjoy the hell out of the next half minute?”

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  “I’m Catastrophe Baker, freelance hero by trade, and I’m here to right the terrible wrong you done to Saul Leibowitz and Voluptua von Climax.”

  “Voluptua?” he repeated, looking around. “Is she here?”

  “Never you mind,” I said. “You got your hands full with me.”

  “She put you up to this, didn’t she?” he snarled.

  “I won’t have you defaming the woman I momentarily love,” I told him harshly. “Now, are you coming peaceably or are you coming otherwise? There ain’t no third choice.”

  And no sooner had the words left my lips (which were still a little sore from all those love bites) than half a dozen aliens got up and blocked my way.

  “Leave him alone,” said one of them ominously.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “He’s a thief and a villain.”

  “He robbed a human,” replied the alien. “We approve.”

  “I don’t want no trouble,” I said, “but you’re standing between me and the object of my noble quest.”

  He reached for a weapon, and suddenly he wasn’t standing between us no more. And I’m sure he’ll walk again someday, once he gets out of whatever hospital they took him to after I got a little hot under the collar and flang him into a wall forty feet away. Then a snake-like alien started coiling himself around me and squeezing for all he was worth, so I grabbed him by his neck (which was about twenty feet long, but I latched onto the part right behind his head) and did a little squeezing of my own, and I don’t doubt for a second that they can fix all them vertebrae I shook loose if he ever stops twitching long enough for them to go to work on him.

  The other aliens suddenly decided they had urgent business elsewhere, and suddenly I found myself face to face with Cutthroat Hawke. Well, let me be more precise: suddenly I found myself looking down the barrel of Cutthroat Hawke’s blaster.

  I was too far away to grab it out of his hand, so I decided to try a heroic ruse.

  “Hey, Cutthroat,” I said, “your shoelace is untied.”

  “I wear boots,” he replied.

  “And your fly is unzipped.”

  “I use magnetic closures.”

  “And there’s something with about fifteen legs crawling up your sleeve.”

  “Boy,” he said, “if you’re the best and the brightest, the hero business has fallen on hard times.”

  He’d have said something more, but just then the fifteen-legged spider bit him on the shoulder, right through his sleeve, and he turned to slap it away, and whilst he was doing so I kicked the blaster out of his hand and picked him up by the neck and held him a few feet above the ground.

  “Now ain’t you sorry you put me to all this trouble?” I said.

  He tried to answer, but he was turning blue from lack of air, and finally he just nodded his head.

  “And if I put you down, you ain’t going to try to escape or go for a weapon, right?” I said.

  And I’m sure he’d have said “Right” if he’d still been awake, but he’d passed out from lack of air while I was asking the question, so I just released my grip and he fell to the floor in a heap.

  I examined his pockets, but there wasn’t anything there except a few credits, just enough to pay for his drinks, so I walked to the middle of the bar, stuck a couple of fingers in my mouth, and whistled to get all the aliens’ attention.

  “I need to know where Cutthroat Hawke stored his worldly possessions,” I announced.

  They all just stared at me, sullen and silent.

  “I’d really appreciate your help,” I said.

  No answer.

  “Okay,” I said, busting a chair apart and holding a leg up. “I guess one of you is going to have to volunteer to help me look for it.”

  Suddenly every alien in the joint was telling me that he kept his goods in a box under his bed in room 17 of the boarding house next door. I walked out, met Voluptua, told her to keep an eye on Cutthroat Hawke (not that he was going anywhere), and then I went up to Hawke’s room.

  Sure enough there was a small box under the bed. In it was a diamond ring and a matching bracelet, wrapped up on some old wrinkled paper. I looked around for something that might be a canticle and couldn’t find it, and finally figured, well, at least Mr. Leibowitz could pawn the diamonds to keep the play running an extra week or two, so I stuffed the whole package in my pocket.

  I gathered Voluptua and Hawke up, carried him over a shoulder to my ship, bound his hands and feet with negatronic manacles for safe keeping, stuck him in a corner where we couldn’t trip over him, and a minute later we’d reached light speeds and were headed back to Calliope.

  Once again Voluptua decided it was too warm for clothes, and she doffed hers and came over and started helping me out of mine. Finally I felt a certain familiar sense of urgency and carried her over to the bed.

  “But you’re still wearing your pants,” she protested.

  “But unlike Hawke’s,” I said, “mine got a zipper.”

  And I demonstrated it to her, and then she demonstrated some things to me, and then it felt like the ship was vibrating again, and then she was covering me with painful (but loving) little bites, and finally she plumb wore me out and I fell asleep.

  I woke up when I felt a hand in my pocket that almost certainly wasn’t mine, and sure enough it belonged to Voluptua.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “I was just smoothing out your pants pocket, my love,” she said.

  “From the inside?” I asked.

  Before she could answer I got the distinct impression that something was missing. I sat up and looked around, and it turns out that what was missing was Cutthroat Hawke.

  Well, let me amend that. Most of him was missing. What was left were his clothes and a few bones.

  I walked over to make sure, though in my experience mighty few people walk off and leave their bones behind.

  “What the hell happened her
e?” I demanded.

  She gave me an innocent smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about losing an entire prisoner while we’re cruising along at light speeds,” I said.

  She gave me an unconcerned shrug. “These things happen.”

  “Not on my ship, they don’t!” I said.

  She gave me a very unladylike burp.

  I looked from the bones to her to the bones and back to her again.

  “You ate an entire prisoner?” I said.

  “I’d have saved some for you, my love,” she said, “but they don’t keep well.”

  “You ate him!” I repeated.

  “What are you getting so upset about?” she said. “I didn’t use your galley, and I cleaned up after myself.”

  “If you were hungry, why didn’t you just say so?” I said. “I’d have been happy to stop off at a restaurant.”

  “I was going to have to kill him anyway,” she said. “He betrayed me.”

  “How?”

  “He was my partner. We stole the canticle together, but then he decided not to share the proceeds with me.” She made a face. “He was a terrible man! I’m glad I ate him!”

  “Do you do this a lot?” I asked.

  “Steal canticles?” she replied. “This was my first.”

  “I meant, eat your partners,” I said.

  “My partners? Not very often.”

  “Well, I ain’t no policeman,” I said, “so I ain’t turning you in. We’ll let Mr. Leibowitz decide what to do with you.”

  “You don’t have to tell him,” she said, putting her arms around me. “I love you, Catastrophe Baker.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I got the love bites to prove it.”

  “You know you loved them.”

  “It was an interesting experience,” I admitted. “I ain’t ever been an appetizer before.”

  She laughed, and while she did I took a quick look to see if her teeth were filed.

  We talked about this and that and just about everything except our favorite foods, and finally the ship touched down, and a couple of minutes later the two of us walked into Leibowitz’s office.

  “That was fast!” said Leibowitz, obviously impressed. “I didn’t expect you back for two or three more days.”

  “Us heroes don’t waste no time,” I said. “I’m pleased to announce that the culprit that robbed you is no longer among the living.”

  “You killed him?” asked Leibowitz.

  “No, your lady friend put him out of his misery.”

  He looked surprise. “Really?”

  “Ask her yourself,” I said.

  He turned to Voluptua. “How did you do it? With a blaster? A knife? Poison?”

  “You got seventeen more guesses,” I said, “and my bet is that you’re going to need ‘em all.”

  He got up, walked around his desk until he was standing right in front of her, and hugged her. “As long as you’re safe, that’s all that matters,” he said.

  He kissed her, she kissed him, he flinched, and I could see he was missing a little bit of lip when they parted.

  “Always enthusiastic, that’s my Voluptua,” he said, turning to me. “And did you bring me back my canticle?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said, pulling the package out of my pocket. “All he had were these diamonds.”

  I started unwrapping them when he grabbed the wrapping paper out of my hand, unfolded it, and held it up to the light.

  “My canticle!” he cried happily after he’d read it over.

  “I always thought a canticle was some kind of a fruit, like a honeydew melon,” I said.

  He laughed as if I had made a joke, then summoned his staff to tell them that he’d got his canticle back, and since everyone was busy admiring the canticle and praising Voluptua for her bravery, I decided no one would notice or mind if I kept the diamonds for myself, since they didn’t rightly belong to anyone, or at least anyone that wasn’t thoroughly digested by now.

  And that’s the way I left them: Leibowitz, Voluptua, and the canticle.

  * * *

  Hurricane Smith downed his drink.

  “So how much was your nine percent of the play worth?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “The damned thing closed on opening night. The critics said it was the worst hymn anyone ever heard.”

  Hurricane chuckled. “That’s critics for you. They’re never happy unless they’re convincing you that what you like just isn’t any good.” He poured himself another one. “Still, it was an interesting story. They still together, the producer and the lady?”

  “Far as I know,” I answered. “I guess it was pretty interesting at that. Maybe I’ll write it up for one of them true adventure holodisks.”

  “Why not?” he agreed. “You got a title?”

  “I thought I’d call it A Canticle for Leibowitz.”

  He shook his head. “You may get top marks as a space hero, but you ain’t ever going to make it as a writer if you think something called A Canticle for Leibowitz is going to sell more than ten copies.”

  “It does lack a little punch,” I admitted. “What would you call it?”

  “That’s easy enough,” said Hurricane. “I’d call it A Cannibal for Leibowitz.”

  It made perfect sense to me, and if I ever write this heroic epic up, that’s exactly what I’m going to call it, unless some effete namby-pamby editor changes it to something else.

  ***

  I was browsing the Aboriginal SF table in the dealer’s room of a Worldcon, and the editor, who was also hawking the magazine, asked me for a story. And off the top of my head I suggested the following title. He bought it on the spot, told me he wouldn’t allow a title change, and then I had to go home and think of a story that fit it. And, crazily enough, it won France’s Prix Ozone a few years later.

  How I Wrote the New Testament,

  Ushered in the Renaissance,

  and Birdied the 17th Hole

  at Pebble Beach

  So how was I to know that after all the false Messiahs the Romans nailed up, he would turn out to be the real one?

  I mean, it’s not every day that the Messiah lets himself be nailed to a cross, you know? We all thought he was supposed to come with the sword and throw the Romans out and raze Jerusalem to the ground—and if he couldn’t quite pull that off, I figured the least he could do was take on a couple of the bigger Romans, mano a mano, and whip them in straight falls.

  It’s not as if I’m an unbeliever. (How could I be, at this late date?) But you talk about the Anointed One, you figure you’re talking about a guy with a little flash, a little style, a guy whose muscles have muscles, a Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger-type of guy, you know what I mean?

  So sure, when I see them walking this skinny little wimp up to Golgotha, I join in the fun. So I drink a little too much wine, and I tell too many jokes (but all of them funny, if I say so myself), and maybe I even hold the vinegar for one of the guards (though I truly don’t remember doing that)—but is that any reason for him to single me out?

  Anyway, there we are, the whole crowd from the pub, and he looks directly at me from his cross, and he says, “One of you shall tarry here until I return.”

  “You can’t be talking to me!” I answer, giving a big wink to my friends. “I do all my tarrying at the House of Young Maidens over on the next street!”

  Everybody else laughs at this, even the Romans, but he just stares reproachfully at me, and a few minutes later he’s telling God to forgive us, as if we’re the ones who broke the rules of the Temple, and then he dies, and that’s that.

  Except that from that day forth, I don’t age so much as a minute, and when Hannah, my wife, sticks a knife between my ribs just because I forgot her birthday and didn’t come home for a week and then asked for a little spending money when I walked in the door, I find to my surprise that the second she removes the knife I am instantly healed with not even a scar
.

  Well, this puts a whole new light on things, because suddenly I realize that this little wimp on the cross really was the Messiah, and that I have been cursed to wander the Earth (though in perfect health) until he returns, which does not figure to be any time soon as the Romans are already talking about throwing us out of Jerusalem and property values are skyrocketing.

  Well, at first this seems more like a blessing than a curse, because at least it means I will outlive the yenta I married and maybe get a more understanding wife. But then all my friends start growing old and dying, which they would do anyway but which always seems to happen a little faster in Judea, and Hannah adds a quick eighty pounds to a figure that could never be called svelte in the first place, and suddenly it looks like she’s going to live as long as me, and I decide that maybe this is the very worst kind of curse after all.

  Now, at about the time that Hannah celebrates her 90th birthday—thank God we didn’t have cakes and candles back in those days or we might have burnt down the whole city—I start to hear that Jerusalem is being overrun by a veritable plague of Christians. This in itself is enough to make my good Jewish blood boil, but when I find out exactly what a Christian is, I am fit to be tied. Here is this guy who curses me for all eternity or until he returns, whichever comes first (and it’s starting to look like it’s going to be a very near thing), and suddenly—even though nothing he promised has come to pass except for cursing a poor itinerant businessman who never did anyone any harm—everybody I know is worshipping him.

  There is no question in my mind that the time has come to leave Judea, and I wait just long enough for Hannah to choke on an unripe fig which someone has thoughtlessly served her while she laid in bed complaining about her nerves, and then I catch the next caravan north and book passage across the Mediterranean Sea to Athens, but as Fate would have it, I arrive about five centuries too late for the Golden Age.

  This is naturally an enormous disappointment, but I spend a couple of decades soaking up the sun and dallying with assorted Greek maidens, and when this begins to pall I finally journey to Rome to see what all the excitement is about.

  And what is going on there is Christianity, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, since to the best of my knowledge no one else he ever cursed or blessed is around to give testimony to it, and I have long since decided that being known as the guy who taunted him on the cross would not be in the best interests of my social life and so I have kept my lips sealed on the subject.