"Sure," said Corporal Cuckoo. "Watch this." He pushed the almost-severed thumb back into place, and held it down with his right hand. "It's okay," he said, "there's no need to look sick. I'm showing you, see? Don't go—sit down. I'm not kidding. I can give you a hell of a story, a fact-story. I can show you Pares little notebook and everything. You saw what I showed you when I pulled up my shirt? You saw what I've got right here, on the left side?"
I said, "Yes"
"Well, that's where I got hit by a nine-pound cannon-ball when I was on the Mary Ambree, fighting against the Spanish Armada—it smashed my chest so that the ribs went through my heart—and I was walking about in two weeks. And this other one on the right, under the ribs—tomorrow I'll show you what it looks like from the back—I got that one at the Battle of Fontenoy; and there's a hell of a good story there. A French cannonball came down and hit a broken sword that a dead officer had dropped, and it sent that sword flying right through me, lungs and liver and all. So help me, it came out through my right shoulderblade. The other one lower down was a bit of bombshell at the Battle of Waterloo—I was opened up like a pig—it wasn't worth the surgeon's while to do anything about it. But I was on my feet in six days, while men with broken legs were dying like flies. I can prove it, I tell you! And listen—I marched to Quebec with Benedict Arnold. Sit still and listen—my right leg was smashed to pulp all the way down from the hip to the ankle at Balaklava. It knitted together before the surgeon had a chance to get around to me; he couldn't believe his eyes—he thought he was dreaming. I can tell you a hell of a story! But it's worth dough, see? Now, this is my proposition: I'll tell it, you write it, and we'll split fifty-fifty, and I'll start my farm. What d'you say?"
I heard myself saying, in a sickly, stupid voice, "Why didn't you save some of your pay, all those years?"
Corporal Cuckoo replied, with scorn, "Why didn't I save my pay! Because I'm what I am, you mug! Hell, once upon a time, if I'd kept away from cards, I could've bought Manhattan Island for less than what I lost to a Dutchman called Bruncker, drawing ace-high for English guineas! Save my pay! If it wasn't one thing it was another. I lay off liquor. Okay. So if it's not liquor it's a woman. I lay off women. Okay. Then it's cards or dice. I always meant to save my pay; but I never had it in me to save my goddam pay! Doctor Pares stuff fixed me—and when I say it fixed me, I mean, it fixed me, just like I was, and am, and always will be. See? A foot-soldier, ignorant as dirt. It took me nearly a hundred years to learn to write my name, and four hundred years to get to be a corporal. How d'you like that? And it took will power, at that! Now here's my proposition: fifty-fifty on the story. Once I get proper publicity in a magazine, I'll be able to let the Digestive out of my hands with an easy mind,see? because nobody'd dare to try any funny business with a man with nationwide publicity. Eh?"
"No, of course not," I said.
"Eh?"
"Sure, sure, Corporal."
"Good," said Corporal Cuckoo. "Now in case you think I'm kidding, take a look at this. You saw what I done?"
"I saw, Corporal."
"Look," he said, thrusting his left hand under my nose. It was covered with blood. His shirt cuff was red and wet. Fascinated, I saw one thick, sluggish drop crawl out of the cloth near the buttonhole, and hang, quivering, before it fell on my knee. The mark of it is in the cloth of my trousers to this day.
"See?" said Corporal Cuckoo, and he licked the place between his fingers where his knife had cut down. A pale area appeared. "Where did I cut myself?" he asked.
I shook my head; there was no wound—only a white scar. He wiped his knife on the palm of his hand—it left a red smear—and let the blade fall with a sharp click. Then he wiped his left hand on his right, rubbed both hands clean upon the backs of his trouser legs, and said: "Am I kidding?"
"Well!" I said, somewhat breathlessly. "Well"
"Oh, what the hell!" groaned Corporal Cuckoo, weary beyond words, exhausted, worn out by his endeavors to explain the inexplicable and make the incredible sound reasonable. "... Look. You think this is a trick? Have you got a knife?"
"Yes. Why?"
"A big knife?"
"Moderately big."
"Okay. Cut my throat with it, and see what happens. Stick it in me wherever you like. And I'll bet you a thousand dollars I'll be all right inside two or three hours. Go on. Man to man, it's a bet. Or go borrow an ax if you like; hit me over the head with it."
"Be damned if I do," I said, shuddering.
"And that's how it is," said Corporal Cuckoo, in despair. "And that's how it is every time. There they are, making fortunes out of soap and toothpaste, and here I am, with something in my pocket to keep you young and healthy forever—ah, go chase yourself! I never ought to've drunk your rotten Scotch. This is the way it always is. You wear a beard just like I used to wear before I got a gunpowder burn in the chin at Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sidney got his; or I wouldn't have talked to you. Oh, you dope! I could murder you, so help me I could! Go to hell."
Corporal Cuckoo leaped to his feet and darted away so swiftly that before I found my feet he had disappeared. There was blood on the deck close to where I had been sitting—a tiny pool of blood, no larger than a coffee saucer, broken at one edge by the imprint of a heel. About a yard and a half away I saw another heel mark in blood, considerably less noticeable. Then there was a dull smear, as if one of the bloody rubber heels had spun around and impelled its owner toward the left. "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" I shouted. "Oh, Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
But I never saw Corporal Cuckoo again, and I wonder where he can be. It may be that he gave me a false name. But what I heard I heard, and what I saw I saw; and I have five hundred dollars here in an envelope for the man who will put me in touch with him. Honey and oil of roses, eggs and turpentine; these involve, as I said, infinite permutations and combinations. So does any comparable mixture. Still, it might be worth investigating. Why not? Fleming got penicillin out of mildew. Only God knows the glorious mysteries of the dust, out of which come trees and bees, and life in every form, from mildew to man.
I lost Corporal Cuckoo before we landed in New York on July 11th, 1945. Somewhere in the United States, I believe, there is a man tremendously strong in the arms and covered with terrible scars who has the dreadfully dangerous secret of perpetual youth and life. He appears to be about thirty-odd years of age, and has watery, greenish eyes.
C. M. KORNBLUTH
The Advent on Channel Twelve
In Cyril Kornbluth was a sharp tooth, just right for puncturing, and he used it with wit and passion. His stories had bite. He was sensitive toward hypocrisy and remorseless to poses ... and it is all very well, he kept saying through his life, to invent these faster-than-light radium-bearinged plastic dishwashwhere he might have gone; but he died young. This a writer, Cyril grew and grew. There is no telling ers; but let us not forget that they will be paid for overs, who are in the doghouse with their wives. As on the installment plan by fretful men with hang-is almost his last story. He wrote it when he was thirty-five, and before it saw print he was dead.
It came to pass in the third quarter of the fiscal year that the Federal Reserve Board did raise the rediscount rate and money was tight in the land. And certain bankers which sate hi New York sent to Ben Graffis in Hollywood a writing which said, Money is tight in the land so let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes.