A Natural History of Hell: Stories (16 page)

“Purdom lives in Philly,” I said. “He’s probably here at the convention.”

“That guy’s got a story in
Asimov’s
this month,” said Breelyn. She looked at the ceiling. “I think it’s called ‘Civilians.’ ”

“You can’t mention this book to him. He’ll say nothing about it. In 1983, I ran into him at the Worldcon in Baltimore. He told me how important that confiscated work was to him. He rewrote it, taking all the space opera elements out and setting it on Earth in the twenty-first century. I think ACE was gonna publish it as a stand-alone, but Purdom was so set back by them initially pulling the title that he missed the deadline by three months and that was it. Having
Mind Barons
confiscated was a kick in the nuts. I didn’t have it in me to tell him the truth, about the
Icarus
and everything.”

Breelyn put the book back on the bar and slid it toward me. I picked it up, took one more look at each side, and handed it toward Werber. I was amazed to see that the fourth gin was already gone. He waved his hands in front of him and said, “You keep it. I don’t want it anymore.”

“Sure you do,” I said.

He slurred his words. “Seriously, I’m through with it,” he said and belched. He smiled and put his head down on the bar. An instant later, he was out cold. Breelyn called the cab company. While we waited, she swept up and wiped down the bar. I sat there and finished my second forty. The taxi finally arrived and I helped her cart Werber to it. He’d roused a little by then and almost walked on his own. He shook our hands, and we poured him into the backseat of the cab. Breelyn told me that her father didn’t want her working in the bar by herself at night. The sun was starting to go down, and it’s not like there was a mob of customers, so she decided to close up. She went inside and turned the lights out. After closing the door behind her, she pulled the metal curtain across the front of the bar and padlocked it.

She walked along with me back toward the convention.

“That’s one buggin’ white man,” she said. “Like what’s a
space diamond
?”

“Yeah, he’s a hundred percent sense of wonder, but what about the book?” I said.

“That is weird.”

We walked a block in silence, and at the next corner she had to turn left. I held
Rocket Ship to Hell
out to her and said, “Do you want it?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got other destinations in mind.”

“Fair enough,” I said. Then I told her, “I’ll look for your name in the magazines.”

“I’ll look for yours,” she said. She flashed me a Spock and was off down the street.

Before heading back to Jersey the next day, I went to the dealer’s room at the convention. The bookseller Joe Berlant had a long table stocked three rows deep with old paperbacks. When no one was looking, I took the book out of my back pocket, shoved it in between two others, and walked away. Now, a dozen years later, and well into the new century, I sit by the window and dream of that book when evening comes on.

* Story Note:
A tip of the hat to my friend Tom Purdom, who let me use his good name in this story. Tom’s been writing and publishing science fiction since 1957. Back in the ’60s, he actually did have three short novels appear as ACE doubles. His recent work has appeared in
Asimov’s Magazine
and Gardner Dozois’
Year’s Best Science Fiction,
and an excellent career retrospective story collection,
Lovers & Fighters, Starships & Dragons,
has recently been published.

The Fairy Enterprise

Once upon a time, prior to the mastication of mill gears, the clang and hellfire of factories, before smog and black snow, fairies grew up naturally from out of the earth, out of the bodies of the dead, and found life again in one of the four elements. They gamboled invisibly but oft enough appeared as lovely women or tiny men or a demon come to lead you astray.

Their boons and curses were a thread of magic in our lives. It was just the old world’s way of showing us its dreams. But fairies can’t survive on soot and fetid water. Cold iron is murder to them. Manufacture drove them away, to the desolate places, where, eventually, the miasma of commerce found them and cast its deadly spell.

From the street to the palace, the fall of the fairy realm was roundly lamented, all the while industry spread like the cholera. Where others saw an unavoidable tragedy, though, and looked away, Mr. Hollis Lackland Benett, a man of a peculiar nature and vast capital, saw opportunity. It came to him on a carriage ride one mid-December night. The wind was frigid and the driving black snow gave the streets a grimly festive appearance.

When leaving the industrialists’ soiree at Thrashner’s mansion, Benett gave orders to his shivering driver, Jib, who held the carriage door. “Take the long way home, old man, I need a rest.” It was said of Benett that his mind was steady as the movement of a watch but one whose gears were greased to speed ahead of the thoughts of others. He found it difficult to sleep at night. Only while the wheels of the carriage turned, pulling him ever forward, was he content to lay aside his ambition for a few hours. Sleep for Benett was utter darkness; he never dreamed.

Wrapped in a bearskin throw, he leaned into the corner of the carriage and closed his eyes. For a few moments he was aware of the sounds of the wheels on cobblestones, Jib’s chattering teeth, the murmur of the wind, the hard snow pelting the window he leaned upon . . . and then he wasn’t. Sometime later, he woke suddenly and sat forward. Rubbing his eyes, he ducked his head to look out the window and immediately realized they were passing Milner’s Bakery. Then he noticed, only for a flashing instant, a tiny white figure of a man, no bigger than a finger, ice-skating horizontally across the place’s window pane, leaving a gleaming streak in his wake.

Before Benett could register his amazement, the scene was out of sight, the carriage moving on. He banged three times on the ceiling with his walking stick, a signal to Jib to now head directly home. His mind was sprinting forward toward the assumption that the strange sight was merely an optical illusion caused by the snow blowing through the light of the street lamp until somewhere in its course it tripped and fell into a memory.

He was in his childhood bed, the counterpane pulled up to his chin. The elm outside the open window rustled and a soft breeze blew in to gutter the candle flame. His mother rested back in the rocker, and like every night, when she returned late from the mill, she told him stories. If he woke early enough before dawn, he might find her gaunt figure, like a ghost in the moonlight, asleep in the chair. The gleaming creature he’d seen on the baker’s window was like something from one of her tales.

The memory of his mother faded into a memory from the gathering earlier that evening, at Thrashner’s. Binsel, the butler, freshened every one’s brandy, and the conversation turned to predictions of the next development in the bounding evolution of industry. Cottard spoke of electricity and the experiments of Edison. Dodin resurrected the specter of Malthus before suggesting that a factory-like approach to thinning the herds of the poor might catch on with the moneyed set. The economic theories of Mills and Carey made the rounds until Thrashner laughed aloud. “Bollocks to all that rubbish,” he said. “It’s simple. Ask yourselves, ‘What is it people want?’ People with money, that is.”

The vision of the fairy, the two odd memories, seeped and mingled together behind Benett’s eyes. Perspiration on his mustache, a prickling of his scalp, were definite signs forecasting a brainstorm. His mind sped to meet it. When the carriage finally came to a halt outside Whitethorn Hall, he looked up to see the sun shining. Jib had driven in circles all night through the storm. Upon disembarking the carriage, Benett discovered his man frozen solid, icicles hanging from the eyes and nostrils, the ends of the hair. It was the horses who had eventually brought them home. He petted their snouts, and, taking a last look at Jib, whispered, “A pity, old boy,” and then went in to warm up.

After a nap, a bit of lamb stew and a bath, Benett, wearing his yellow silk lounging attire, settled down at the desk in his study with a pot of tea by his side. He lifted his pen and began to jot down the plans for his new factory. He worked all afternoon and was only disturbed once, by his butler, Jennings, who approached to inform him that Jib could not be buried; the ground was frozen.

“Put him in one of those old whisky barrels, sprinkle some kerosene on him, and torch the blighter,” said Benett impatiently. In a second, he was back to work. Jennings cleared his throat and timidly asked, “And what, sir, should we tell his family?” “Good question,” said the master of the house, and looked out the window. “Send them three farthings and my condolences.” The pen went back to the paper.

He was finished work for the day, sitting by the window, with a glass of port and his pipe. Through the twilight, he could make out Jennings and son, rolling a barrel into the courtyard. This was set upright on the snow-covered walk. Next they passed his view carrying the pale Jib, stiffened in the posture of the driver’s box. Benett heard a terrible crack as they shoved the corpse into the barrel. Then Jennings’ boy had the kerosene and Jennings had the matches.

A moment later, Benett was outside, in only his slippers and billowing yellow silk, waving his walking stick and directing the immolation of Jib. “Don’t be cheap with the kerosene, boy,” said the master. For the lad’s trouble, he slapped him across the backs of his thighs with the stick. “Three matches at once, you dolt,” he yelled at Jennings. The butler threw the lit matches, and there was a sudden puff of flame. A few minutes later, Jib began smoldering. “Good Lord, he smells like the queen’s own turd,” cried Benett. “Quite,” said Jennings, whose son nodded.

More cans of kerosene were called for, and when Jennings threw the matches this time, there was a great whoosh of flame reaching eight feet into the night. It quickly settled down to merely a steady fire, and the three of them moved closer to it for warmth. They each stared into the burning barrel at where Jib’s left leg jutted up. The ankle turned black; the old shoe melted. Suddenly there was a great pop, and Benett jumped back a step.

“That’d be the head popping. Right, Pa?” said the boy.

“For certain,” said Jennings. “Now watch for the libban.” He and his son stood leaning forward in anticipation.

“What are we looking for?” asked Benett.

“A certain spark that always flies up when the skull cracks in the heat. The libban. The other sparks die out just above you, but this one stays lit, no matter how high or far it goes. As long as you can see it, it burns. From the soft core of the nut,” said Jennings and knocked twice on his forehead with his knuckle.

“There now!” said the boy and pointed up.

Benett cocked back his head and caught sight of the so-called libban. He watched for a long while as the winter wind carried it high away over the dark silhouette of treetops.

“Like a soul?” he asked, still staring into the distance.

“Like a seed,” said Jennings.

“From a will-o’-the-wisp,” said Jennings’ son as if reciting.

The master wondered just how many bodies the boy had seen burned.

For the remainder of the winter and well into spring, Benett applied himself as a student of the vanished fairy realm. He spent a small fortune on books, most of them ancient, their yellowed pages crumbling to dust once read and turned. The gears of his mind became tarred with fairy lore, and the mechanism slowed to a crawl. He was struck by long bouts of lassitude and imagination. These creatures that were the object of his scrutiny were elusive, and understanding came to him only in glimpses. He persevered, though, through long hours, pots of tea and pipes, and eventually reached a point where his natural disdain for the fanciful turned to admiration and respect.

The natural settings of the tales and histories he consumed made him long for a journey to the forest. So, in the first fair days of May, he set out in the carriage, his new driver the Jennings boy, and headed south, away from the city, toward a small village, Ilferin, on the edge of the wild. Enormous stones stood in a meadow nearby. A steady stream of fairy sightings had poured forth from the place, down through the ages.

They found lodging at the Inn of the Green Dog, Benett renting out the entire second floor of rooms, young Jennings getting a tattered blanket and a half bushel of hay in a corner of the stable. Mr. Yallerin, the owner of the establishment, was delighted to have Mr. Benett and Mr. Benett’s money staying beneath his roof. Over a welcoming glass of spirits on the front porch, the industrialist asked his host where he might find someone who could speak to the local fairy lore. Yallerin rubbed his bald pate, drew on his pipe, and said, “We call her the crone, just for a laugh, of course. They say she’s over a hundred. Lives out past the meadow in an ancient stone cottage next to the stream.”

“And you,” said Benett, “have you seen the good folk in your years here?”

“As a scamp, I saw them once,” said the innkeeper. “My grandpa was laid out for burial in the sitting room of our house. His box, lid off, rested atop two sawhorses next to the hearth. I woke in the middle of the night from a frightener in which the old man called to me. I crawled out of bed, lit a candle, and crept out to where he lay. I didn’t want to, but I did hold the candle high to see one last time his death expression. Shock, sir, shock and zero to the bone when I discovered a half-dozen tiny violet men with pointed heads perched upon his forehead, cheekbones, and chin, using long-handled spades to dig out his eyeballs. Only for a moment before the candle blew out, and then I fell through the dark.”

“His eyes?” asked Benett and took a small notebook and pencil from his jacket.

“The next morning, I found myself in bed. When I went out into the sitting room, the lid was on the box and my ma and pa were crying.”

“Did they explain?”

“I knew not to speak of it.”

“What did it mean, their taking his eyes?”

“Mr. Benett, even a brilliant gentleman such as yourself can never know the ways of the fairies. They seem to us crazy as a mad woman’s poo.”

The industrialist jotted down
mad woman’s poo
.

The next morning, after a hardy breakfast of bacon and potatoes for the master and a dry biscuit and a hunk of cold fat for his driver, the two set out on foot. The sun was warm, the sky was blue, and there was a breeze coming out of the forest, carrying the scent of blooming life. Benett had had a suit of clothes made for this very occasion—a jacket and trousers, a shirt and vest—all the same color of grass. He swung his walking stick and whistled. The boy ran to keep up with him.

They set out across the meadow. At the very center of the rings of silent sentinels, there stood a thin, ten-foot-high pointed stone, like a crooked finger, accusing the sky. Here Benett stopped and put his arms around the crude obelisk. Young Jennings watched as his employer touched his lips against the hard rock. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth and told the boy to do as he had done. The lad stood wide-eyed, unable to move. Benett employed the stick. “Kiss it good,” he commanded. “Hug it tight.”

When the boy completed his duty, his master inquired, “So, did you feel the enchantment?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Jennings.

“You’re a chip off your father’s block head,” said Benett.

“I should hope so, sir.”

Across the meadow, at the tree line, they found a path that led in amid the Wych Elms and Ashes. Sunlight dappled the forest floor as the leaves rustled. Benett breathed deeply, taking in the heady green fizz of nature. Before long, they came upon a brook, and the sound of the water moving swiftly over the rocks reminded him of his mother’s voice, when, with eyes closed, she’d continue to murmur her tales from the other side of sleep.

At the brook they turned west as instructed by Mr. Yallerin of the Green Dog, and before long they came upon a small clearing inhabited by a trio of deer. “Be gone, demons,” said Benett and swung his stick over his head. The gentle creatures fled, clearing a pathway to the stone cottage. Smoke issued from the chimney, a grumbled song from the open window. Just before reaching the steps to the door of the place, the industrialist put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and stayed him. “Take this,” he said, a silver derringer in his hand. “It’s loaded. Remain outside here and keep an eye. If I call for help, you must rush to my assistance. Should the necessity arise, you’ll be ready to shoot?”

The boy took the gun and put it in his coat pocket. “Yes,” he said.

“There’s hope for you, Jennings,” said Benett and took the steps. He knocked. There was movement inside, and then the door slowly opened. A squat old woman with white hair and large forearms appeared. Her simple gray dress was much mended, her kindly smile was a grimace. “You’re the gentleman about the fairies,” she said in a gruff voice. “I had word you were coming.”

The hair on her pointed chin was disconcertingly long, and it took Benett a moment to focus. “From whom?” he asked.

She turned slowly and retreated back into the place. He followed her inside and shut the door behind him. There was a large room at the front of the cottage, and they settled down at a table by its window. A steaming pot of tea, cups and saucers, awaited them. She lit her clay pipe and moved it to the side of her mouth. “Name, sir,” she said, squinting at him.

“Hollis Lackland Benett,” he said.

“Tima Loorie.” She nodded.

“I heard it said in the village that you’re over a hundred.”

“Are you a gullible man, Mr. Benett?”

“Not usually.”

“Then there’s no reason to begin now. Give me your hand,” she demanded.

He reluctantly offered it to her.

She squeezed his wrist with a powerful grip and turned it so his palm was facing her. “I see you’re a self-made man,” she said, “Come from the salt and now a king of factories. Wealthy. When you sleep, unbeknown to yourself, you call out in the dark. Always the same word.”

“Progress?” he asked and smiled.

She shook her head. “You’re not to know.”

“All right then,” said Benett. “Tell me something else. I want you to tell me where fairies come from.”

“They come from whereever they are,” she said.