The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde Page 2

  He made a left, cut across three lanes and made a right down toward a lymph node. And then he saw it—a pile of white cells like a twelve-car collision, and speeding towards him a leering motorcyclist.

  Black, the cycle. Black, the riding leathers. Black, dull black, the face of the rider save for two glowing blood-red eyes. And emblazoned across the front and back of the black motorcycle jacket in shining scarlet studs the legend: “Carcinoma Angels.”

  With a savage whoop, Wintergreen gunned his analogical car down the hypothetical freeway straight for the imaginary cyclist, the cancer cell.

  Splat! Pop! Cuush! Wintergreen’s car smashed the cycle and the rider exploded in a cloud of fine black dust.

  Up and down the freeways of his circulatory system Wintergreen ranged, barreling along arteries, careening down veins, inching through narrow capillaries, seeking the black-clad cyclists, the Carcinoma Angels, grinding them to dust beneath his wheels…

  And he found himself in the dark moist wood of his lungs, riding a snow-white analogical horse, an imaginary lance of pure light in his hand. Savage black dragons with blood-red eyes and flickering red tongues slithered from behind the gnarled boles of great airsac trees. St. Wintergreen spurred his horse, lowered his lance and impaled monster after hissing monster till at last the holy lung-wood was free of dragons…

  He was flying in some vast moist cavern, above him the vague bulks of gigantic organs, below a limitless expanse of shining slimy peritoneal plain.

  From behind the cover of his huge beating heart, a formation of black fighter planes, bearing the insignia of a scarlet “C” on their wings and fuselages, roared down at him.

  Wintergreen gunned his engine and rose to the fray, flying up and over the bandits, blasting them with his machine-guns, and one by one and then in bunches they crashed in flames to the peritoneum below…

  In a thousand shapes and guises, the black and red things attacked. Black, the color of oblivion, red, the color of blood. Dragons, cyclists, planes, sea-things, soldiers, tanks and tigers in blood vessels and lungs and spleen and thorax and bladder—Carcinoma Angels, all.

  And Wintergreen fought his analogical battles in an equal number of incarnations, as driver, knight, pilot, diver, soldier, mahout, with a grim and savage glee, littering the battlefields of his body with the black dust of the fallen Carcinoma Angels.

  Fought and fought and killed and killed and finally…

  Finally found himself knee-deep in the sea of his digestive juices lapping against the walls of the dank, moist cave that was his stomach. And scuttling towards him on chitinous legs, a monstrous black crab with blood-red eyes, gross, squat, primeval.

  Clicking, chittering, the crab scurried across his stomach towards him. Wintergreen paused, grinned wolfishly, and leapt high in the air, landing with both feet squarely on the hard black carapace.

  Like a sun-dried gourd, brittle, dry, hollow, the crab crunched beneath his weight and splintered into a million dusty fragments.

  And Wintergreen was alone, at last alone and victorious, the first and last of the Carcinoma Angels now banished and gone and finally defeated.

  Harrison Wintergreen, alone in his own body, victorious and once again looking for new worlds to conquer, waiting for the drugs to wear off, waiting to return to the world that always was his oyster.

  Waiting and waiting and waiting…

  Go to the finest sanitarium in the world, and there you will find Harrison Wintergreen, who made himself Filthy Rich, Harrison Wintergreen, who Did Good, Harrison Wintergreen, who Left his Footprints in the Sands of Time, Harrison Wintergreen, catatonic vegetable.

  Harrison Wintergreen, who stepped inside his own body to do battle with Carcinoma’s Angels, and won.

  And can’t get out.

  The Age of Invention

  One morning, having nothing better to do, I went to visit my cousin Roach. Roach lived in one of those lizard-infested caves on the East Side of the mountain. Roach did not hunt bears. Roach did not grow grain. Roach spent his daylight hours throwing globs of bearfat, bison-chips and old rotten plants against the walls of his cave.

  Roach said that he was an Artist. He said it with a capital “A.” (Even though writing has not yet been invented.)

  Unlikely as it may seem, Roach had a woman. She was, however, the ugliest female on the mountain. She spent her daylight hours lying on the dirty floor of Roach’s cave and staring at the smears of old bearfat, moldy bison-chips and rotten plants on the wall.

  She used to say that this was Roach’s Soul. She would also say that Roach had a very big soul.

  Very big and very smelly.

  As I approached the mouth of Roach’s cave, I smelt pungent smoke. In fact, the cave was filled with this smoke. In the middle of the cave sat Roach and his woman. They were burning a big pile of weeds and inhaling the smoke.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Turning on, baby,” said Roach. “I’ve just invented it.”

  “What does ‘turning on’ mean?”

  “Well, you get this weed, dig? You burn it, and then you honk the smoke.”

  I scratched my head, inadvertently killing several of my favorite fleas.

  “Why do that?” I asked.

  “It like gets you high.”

  “You don’t seem any further off the ground than I am,” I observed. “And you’re still kinda runty.”

  Roach snorted in disgust. “Forget it, man,” he said. “It’s only for Artists, Philosophers and Metaphysicians, anyway. (Even though Philosophy and Metaphysics have not yet been invented.) Dig my latest!”

  On the nearest wall of the cave, there was this big blob of bear-fat. In the middle of it was this small piece of bison-chip. Red and green and brown plant stains surrounded this. It smelt as good as it looked.

  “Uh… interesting…” I said.

  “Like a masterpiece, baby,” Roach said proudly. “I call it ‘The Soul of Man’.”

  “Uh… ‘The Sole of Man’? Er… it does sort of look like a foot.”

  “No, no, man! Soul, not sole!”

  “But Roach, spelling hasn’t been invented yet.”

  “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “Anyway,” I said, trying to make him feel a little better, “it’s very Artistic.” (Whatever that meant.)

  “Thanks, baby,” Roach said sulkily.

  “What’s the matter, Roach?” I asked. He really looked awful.

  “We haven’t eaten in a week.”

  “Why don’t you go out and kill a bear or something?” I suggested.

  “I don’t have the time to waste on hunting,” Roach said indignantly. “I must live for Art!”

  “It appears that you are dying for Art,” I replied. “You can’t do very much painting when you are dead.”

  “Well anyway,” said Roach, in a very tiny voice, “I’m a pretty lousy hunter in the first place. I would probably starve even if I spent the whole day hunting. Or maybe a bear would kill me. This way, I’m at least like starving for a Reason.”

  I must admit it made a kind of sense. Roach is terribly nearsighted. Also amazingly scrawny. The original 90 pound weakling.

  “Mmmmmmm…” I observed.

  “Mmmmmmm… what?” asked Roach.

  “Well, you know old Aardvark? He can’t hunt either. So what he does is he makes spearheads and trades them for bears. Maybe you could…?”

  “Go into business?” Roach cried. “Become bourgeois? Please! I am an Artist. Besides,” he added lamely, “I don’t know how to make spearheads.”

  “Mmmmm…”

  “Mmmmm…”

  “I know!” I cried. “You could trade your paintings!”

  “Cool, baby!” exclaimed Roach. “Er… only why would anyone want to trade food for a painting?”

  “Why because… er… ah…”

  “I guess I’ll just have to starve.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Er… if I can get someone to trade food for your paintin
gs, will you give me some of the food, say… oh, one bear out of every ten?”

  “Sure,” said Roach. “What’ve I got to lose?”

  “It’s a deal then?”

  “Deal, baby!”

  I had just invented the Ten-Percenter.

  So I went to see Peacock. Peacock lived in the weirdest cave on the mountain—all filled up with stuff like mooseskins dyed pink, stuffed armadillos, and walls covered with withered morning-glories. For some reason which I have not yet been able to fathom, the women of the more henpecked men on the mountain give Peacock bears to make the same kind of messes in their caves.

  Peacock is pretty weird himself. He was dressed in a skin-tight sabertooth skin dyed bright violet.

  “Hello sweets,” Peacock said, as I entered his perfumed cave.

  “Hello, Peacock,” I said uneasily. “Heard about Roach?”

  “Roach?” shrilled Peacock. “That dirty, dirty man? That beatnik with the positively unspeakable cave?”

  “That’s him,” I said. “Roach the Artist. Very good Artist, you know. After all, he invented it.”

  “Well what about that dreadful, dreadful creature?”

  “Well you know your friend Cockatoo—?”

  “Please, sweets!” shrieked Peacock. “Do not mention that thing Cockatoo in my presence again! Cockatoo and I are on the outs. I don’t know what I ever saw in him. He’s gotten so unspeakably butch.”

  Cockatoo was this… uh… friend of Peacock’s… or was. They… uh… invented something together. Nobody is quite sure what it was, but we’ve organized a Vice Squad, just in case.

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Well anyway, Cockatoo is paying Roach twenty bears to do a painting in his cave. He says that having an Original Roach in his cave will make your cave look like… er… ‘A positive sloth’s den, bubby,’ I think his words were.”

  “Oooooh!” shrieked Peacock. “Oooooh!” He began to jump around the cave, pounding his little fists against the walls. “That monster! That veritable beast! Oooh, it’s horrid, that’s what it is! What am I going to do, sweets, whatever am I going to do?”

  “Well,” I suggested, “Roach is my cousin, you know, and I do have some pull with him. I suppose I could convince him to do a painting in your cave instead of Cockatoo’s. Especially if you paid thirty bears instead of twenty…”

  “Oh, would you sweets? Would you really?”

  “Well I don’t know. I do kind of like you, Peacock, but on the other hand…”

  “Pretty, pretty, pretty please?”

  I sighed heavily. “Okay, Peacock,” I said. “You’ve talked me into it.”

  So Peacock got his Original Roach for thirty bears. Next week, I went to see Cockatoo, and I told him the story.

  I got him to pay forty bears. Forty and thirty is seventy. Which gave me seven. Not bad for a couple hours’ work. I better watch out, or someone’ll invent income tax.

  I saw Roach last week, the ingrate. He has moved to a bigger cave on the West Side of the mountain. He has a fine new leopard skin and three new women. He has even invented the Havana cigar, so he can have something expensive to smoke.

  Unfortunately, he has discovered that he no longer needs me to make deals for him. His going price is eighty bears a painting. I, like a dope, neglected to invent the renewable exclusive agency contract. Can’t invent ’em all, I suppose.

  Roach has become truly insufferable, though. He now talks of “art” with a small “a” and “Bears” with a capital “B”. He is the first Philistine.

  He is going to get his.

  How do you like my fine new leopard skin? Would you like one of my Havana cigars? Have you met this new woman yet? Have you seen my new cave?

  I can buy and sell Roach now. I am the first tycoon. How did I do it? Well…

  Hog was the mountain bum. He never trimmed his beard. He didn’t have a woman, not even an ugly one. He laid around his filthy cave all day, doing nothing but belching occasionally. A real slob.

  But even a jerk like Hog can throw bearfat and bison-chips against a cave wall.

  I made an Artist out of Hog. I did this by telling him he could make fifty bears a day just by throwing bearfat and bison-chips against the walls of other people’s caves.

  This appealed to Hog.

  This time I did not neglect to invent the renewable exclusive agency contract. It was another ten percent deal.

  Hog gets ten percent.

  Then I went to Peacock’s cave. I stared in dismay at Roach’s painting. “What is that?” I sneered.

  “That, sweets, is an Original Roach,” Peacock crooned complacently. “Isn’t it divine? Such sensitivity, such style, such grace, such—”

  “Roach?” I snorted. “You can’t be serious. Why that Neopseudoclassicalmodern stuff went out with the Brontosaurs. You’re miles behind the times, Peacock,” I said, thereby inventing the Art Critic. “The Artist today is of course the Great Hog.”

  “Hog?” whined Peacock. “Hog is beastly, beastly. A rude, stupid, smelly thing, a positive slob. Why his whole cave is a wretched mass of slop!”

  “Exactly,” I answered. “That’s the source of his greatness. Hog is the mountain’s foremost Slop Artist.”

  “Oooooh… How much do the Great Hog’s paintings cost?”

  “One hundred bears apiece,” I said smugly. “Cockatoo is already contracting to—”

  “I told you never to mention that creature to me again!” Peacock shrieked. “He must not steal an Original Hog from me, do you hear? I simply couldn’t bear it! But all this is getting so expensive…”

  I gave Peacock my best understanding smile. “Peacock, old man,” I said, “I have a little business proposition for you…”

  Well, that’s all there was to it. You guessed it, now when Peacock makes one of his messes in some henpecked caveman’s cave, it always includes at least one Original Hog, or maybe a couple Original Treesloths—Treesloth being another jerk Artist I have under contract. I sell the painting to Peacock for a hundred bears, and he charges his suck—er, client, two hundred bears for the same mess of bearfat and bison-chips. Peacock calls this Interior Decorating.

  I call it “Civilization.” Maybe it’ll last for a couple of months, if I’m lucky.

  Outward Bound

  Captain Peter Reed floated closer to the big central viewport of the conning globe.

  Before him, filling half his field of vision, was the planet Maxwell, green continents and blue seas reminding him of Earth.

  He shook his white-haired head. Earth was fifty light-years off, or to put it another way, seventy years ago, or in another way, only four months.

  Reed shrugged, not an easy task for a seventy-year-old man in free fall. Or to put it another way, an eight-hundred-year-old man.

  Reed could not help laughing aloud. Fifty subjective years in space, he thought, eight hundred years in objective time, and still it has its wonder for me.

  As he watched, a mote of light detached itself from the disk of Maxwell, and arced upward.

  That would be Director Horvath’s ship, thought Reed. Last time the Outward Bound was at Maxwell, it had been ruled by a hereditary king. But that was three hundred years ago. King La Farge, thought Reed sadly, dead and gone three hundred years.

  This Lazlo Horvath, now. He seems to be a different proposition. Ambitious, dangerous.

  Reed smiled wryly. If he keeps up this way, he may soon be honored by a visit from Jacob ben Ezra.

  The captain spoke into the communicator. “Rog, get the reception room ready. Our customer’s on the way.”

  He paddled awkwardly to the rear of the conning globe, grabbed a guard rail, and pulled himself through the rotating doorway, into the main cylinder of the Outward Bound.

  Immediately, he felt the tug of gravity. The Outward Bound was an untidy collection of cylinders and globes, held together by spars. While in orbit, the whole conglomeration spun about a central axis, creating an artificial gravity. But, of course, it was ne
cessary that the conning globe be stationary, so it hung in front of the main cylinder, mounted on frictionless bearings, so that it alone did not share the ship’s rotation.

  Captain Reed made his way to the reception room. Lazlo Horvath should be an eager customer. The last tradeship to hit Maxwell had been the Star god, one hundred years ago, and that was still in the days of the Kingdom.

  Director Horvath was new and ambitious, and like all planetary leaders, he chafed under the yoke of Earth. An ideal customer.

  Roger Reed was already in the reception room when his father arrived. There was some family resemblance. He had his father’s large frame, but on him it was well-muscled, not hung with loose flesh. His hair was a flamboyant red, and he was going through one of his periods of experimentation with mustaches. This one was only a week old, and its ultimate nature could not yet be discerned.

  “Horvath’s on board, Dad,” he said.

  “Please, Roger,” said the old man, with a weariness born of endless repetition, “at least when there is a customer aboard, don’t call me ‘Dad’.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Captain Reed looked about the reception room. It was the one area of calculated ostentation on the ship. It was paneled in real knotty pine. A genuine wool carpet lined it from wall to wall. The captain sat behind a huge mahogany desk, on a genuine red leather covered chair. Three other such chairs were scattered about the room. A viewer was built into one wall.

  The room always made Peter Reed feel uncomfortable.

  “Well, Roger,” said the captain, “do you think this’ll be a good haul?”

  “Don’t see why not, da… sir. The Directory of Maxwell seems to be at that stage when they think that with a little help, they can break the Terran hegemony. They ought to go quite high for the force field, for instance.”

  The old man sighed. “They never learn, do they?” he said. “No doubt Horvath will think that the force field is an ultimate weapon. He’ll never stop to realize that on Earth, it’s already seventy years old.”

  “Why so glum, captain?” said the younger Reed. “After all, it’s our stock in trade.”

  “So it is, so it is.”