Donnough stopped walking and kneeled beside the wide, dark eyes. “Honey, you remember one thing, no matter what anybody tells you:
“Blacks are good. Whites are bad. That’s the truth, sweetie. And nobody’s going to kilt daddy, because he’s going to rip it up come tomorrow. Now do you believe that?”
She bobbled her bead very quickly.
“Blacks is good, an’ Whites is big stinks.”
He patted her head with affection. “The grammar is lousy, baby, but the sentiment is correct. Now. Let’s eat.”
They went in, and the children were silent with heads only half-bowed—half staring at the hot dishes that popped out of the egress slot in the long table—while Donnough said the prayer:
“Dear God above, thank you for this glorious repast. and watch over these people, and insure a victory where a victory is deserved. Preserve us and our state of existence…Amen. “
“Amen.” Massaro.
“Amen.” Lotus Massaro.
“Aye-men!” the children.
Then the forks went into the food, and mouths opened and dinner was underway. As they sat and discussed what Was what, and who had gotten his, and wasn’t it wonderful how the moon was the battlefield, while the Earth was saved from more destruction such as those 20th Century barbarians had dealt it.
“Listen, Bill,” Massaro jabbed the fork into the air, punctuating his words, “next Sunday you and Yo and the kids come on over to our hovel. It’ll cost you for a robositter next week. We’re sick of laying out the credits.” They smiled and nodded and the dinner date for next Sunday was fumed up.
The commuter platforms. The ships racked one past another, pointed toward the faint light they could not see. The light of the dead battlefield. Moon. The Blacks in their regal uniforms queueing up to enter the vessels, the Whites in splendid array, about to board ship.
A Black ship lay beside a White one.
Bill Donnough boarded one as he caught a glance at the ship beside. Massaro was in line there. “Go to hell, you White bastard!” he yelled. There was no friendliness there. No camaraderie. “Die, you slob-creepin’ Black! Drop!” he was answered.
They boarded the ships. The flight was short. Batteries opened that day—the five thousand and fifty-ninth day of the war—at 0550. Someone had chopped down the eagerbeaver.
At 1149 precisely, a blindbomb with a snooper attachment was launched by 2/Lt William Larkspur Donnough, BB XO in charge of strafing and collision, which managed to worm its devious way through the White defense perimeter force screens. The blindbomb—BB—fell with a skit-course on the bunkerdome housing a firebeam control center, and exploded the dome into fragments.
Later that evening, Bill Donnough would start looking for another home to attend, the following Sunday. Who said war was hell? It had been a good day on the line.
The pun, a sadly-misunderstood delicacy in the confectionary of humor, holds for me the same kind of infectious hilarity as a vision of three brothers named Marx, chasing a turkey around a hotel room, or wiry Lenny Bruce retelling his hazards and horrors on a two-week gig in Milwaukee, or Charlie Chaplin, caught among the gears of mechanized insanity in “Modern Times.” Humor comes packaged every which way, and profundities about its various guises and motivations do nothing whatsoever to explain why one man’s chuckle is another’s chilblain. In science fiction, with the notable exception of the work of Kuttner, when he was wry and wacky, the pun and humor in general have come of} rather badly. Perhaps “funny” and “science fiction” are incompatible, or perhaps the fantasist takes himself, his Times, and its problems too seriously. Whatever the reasons, from time to time I have tried to make sport of the established genres of science fantasy, as in this fable called
There was really quite a simple reason for Maxim Hirt’s presence in the death cell. He had bungled the murder badly. The reason for his bungling was even simpler. Maxim Hirt was awfully stupid.
He had fancied himself an actor, and for a while, had even managed to convince a few people that such was the case. Then came the advent of television, and he had taken a healthy swing at appearing weekly in the homes of the nation. The paucity of his talent was painfully apparent to anyone viewing Clipper Ship, his series (where. in he played a clipper ship pilot for hire, the networks being anxious to avoid the hackneyed soldier-of-fortune for hire theme) for a famous beer concern.
It was only after the first thirteen weeks, when signs of sponsors on the horizon were dim, very dim, for renewal, that Maxim Hirt took to the telephones, to call the critics.
“Hello, Sid?”
“Who’s this?”
“Max, Sid. Old Maxie Hirt, out in Coldwater Canyon.”
“Yeah, Max. What can I do ya?”
“Just wanted to call, let you know my new series, y’know Clipper Ship—”
“Yeah, Max, I know.”
“—let you know it’s got a real winger comin’ up this Thursday night. Filmed it down in Balboa. Real coo- coo, see it’s about this broad, she’s got an uncle who found a cache of diam—”
“What is it ya want, Max? A plug? So all right, so I’ll give you a plug. Now…anything else, Max, I’m busy.” “No, no, nothing else, Sid. Just thanks a lot. I, uh, I need this plug, Sid.”
“So okay, Maxie, okay, so take it easy. G’bye.”
The review, ghosted by a writer of true action adventures for the hairy-chested men’s magazines, read: We caught Maxim Hirt’s new series Clipper Ship last night. Somehow we got the impression it was about a rugged, handsome guy who rents his plane and his talent to the highest bidder. Now that the light from the idiot box has faded, we don’t know where we could have gotten that idea, because the paunchy, punchy bumbling of Hirt indicates no talent whatsoever. With luck, this abomination will not see renewal and Hirt can fold his tent…
Etcetera. The use of the word “bumbling” seemed almost mandatory when speaking of Maxim Hirt. Which was the reason, when he killed Sidney Gross, the columnist (after Clipper Ship folded its chocks and silently so forth), that he was apprehended. It was also the reason he managed to bungle away his lawyer’s defense, and talked himself right into the death house.
Where he now sat, pad and pencil in hand, jotting down notes on what he would like for his last supper. Maxim, being what he was, and being basically stupid, had managed to jot only one delicacy for that final repast. Baked beans.
He was sitting on the hard-tick mattress, doodling, trying to think of something else for dinner, when the air just beyond his nose shivered, shimmered and solidified into the form of a medium-sized man. The man wore a pair of tight jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and thong sandals. His beard had a definitely Mephistophalean point to it.
“Aaargh!” aaarghed Maxim as the tail which protruded from a slash in the seat of the jeans whipped across his legs.
“Oh, sorry, man,” said the bearded one. “Reflex, like a shiver, every time I get summoned. Wildsville, y’know, man.”
Maxim Hirt was not very bright, but he knew a devil when he saw one. Even one who looked as beat as this item. “Y -y-y-yough, “ Maxim pontificated.
“Oh, excuse the far out garb, daddy-cool. I just came from a set with a Tin Pan Alley song plugger. He wanted a hit, y’know. Hell, his soul ain’t worth much, but then, business is business.”
“I—I d-didn’t summon y-y-you…” Maxim warbled heavily.
“Sure ya did. The doodle there,” he pointed a sharp, dirty fingernail at the pad, “that’s the sacred symbol, man. Like the hippest.”
“But I was just d-d-doodling,” Maxim argued.
“Cuts no ice, Father,” said the devil. “The song plugger didn’t know he was summoning, either. You’d be surprised how close to the ancient runes some of them rock n’ roll lyrics get.”
Maxim Hirt felt sweat coolly crawling. “What do you want from me?”
The turtled neck went up and down. “Me? Man, I don’t want nothin’. I mean, like you invited me to the pad. What do you want?”
Maxim Hirt fed a bitter laugh to his lips. “There’s not much you can do for me…by the way, do you have a name? Are you…are you Satan?”
The bearded one doubled with laughter, fell to the concrete floor and flopped about helplessly, his tail thrashing the walls, floor and bunk with terrible cracks. Finally he settled to rest, leaned his feet against the wall and mumbled, “Oh, man, you gas me. Satan; Satan, yet! Hell, we retired the old man aeons ago. Kicked him downstairs to a desk job. Hell, you’d never catch him out in the field. Thinks he’s too good; shows you what a good press agent can do. Makes a personality out of a cat, next thing you know he’s holding you up for elevator clauses, the whole schlepp.”
“But who’re you’!” Hirt persisted. (The madness of it all hadn’t really caught up with him yet.) “Oh, man, if you must hang a tag, lay it on me like Skidoop. You dig’!”
“Y-yes, I suppose so.”