“Then why does our horse have a horn?”
“That’s why I thought it was wild, the first time I saw it. I suppose they didn’t start cutting off horns until later in history.”
Ra Chen nodded in gloomy satisfaction. “I thought so too. Our problem is that the Secretary-General is barely bright enough to notice that his horse has a horn, and the picture-book horse doesn’t. He’s bound to blame me.”
“Mmm.” Svetz wasn’t sure what was expected of him.
“I’ll have to have the horn amputated.”
“Somebody’s bound to notice the scar,” said Svetz.
“Tanj it, you’re right. I’ve got enemies at court. They’d be only too happy to claim I’d mutilated the Secretary-General’s pet.” Ra Chen glared at Svetz. “All right, let’s hear your idea.”
Svetz was busy regretting. Why had he spoken? His vicious, beautiful horse, tamely docked of its killer horn…He had found the thought repulsive. His impulse had betrayed him. What could they do but remove the horn?
He had it. “Change the picture book, not the horse. A computer could duplicate the book in detail, but with a horn on every horse. Use the Institute computer, then wipe the tape afterward.”
Morosely thoughtful, Ra Chen said, “That might work. I know someone who could switch the books.” He looked up from under bushy black brows. “Of course, you’d have to keep your mouth shut.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t forget.” Ra Chen got up. “When you get out of the diagnostician, you start a four-week vacation.”
“I’m sending you back for one of these,” Ra Chen told him four weeks later. He opened the bestiary. “We picked up the book in a public park around ten PostAtomic; left the kid who was holding it playing with a corundum egg.”
Svetz examined the picture. “That’s ugly. That’s really ugly. You’re trying to balance the horse, right? The horse was so beautiful, you’ve got to have one of these or the universe goes off balance.”
Ra Chen closed his eyes in pain. “Just go get us the Gila monster, Svetz. The Secretary-General wants a Gila monster.”
“How big is it?”
They both looked at the illustration. There was no way to tell.
“From the looks of it, we’d better use the big extension cage.”
Svetz barely made it back that time. He was suffering from total exhaustion and extensive second-degree burns. The thing he brought back was thirty feet long, had vestigial batlike wings, breathed fire, and didn’t look very much like the illustration; but it was as close as anything he’d found.
The Secretary-General loved it.
11
Two of my very favorite writers, growing up, were SAMUEL R. DELANY, who wrote books like Nova and The Einstein Intersection, which I loved even if I didn’t understand them; and James Thurber, who wrote The 13 Clocks, which may be the best book in the world. Here Mr. Delany (Chip, to his friends) writes a story that may owe its inspiration to Thurber, but is very much his own tale. And what is inside the steamer trunk?
A very thin and very grey man arrives in a tavern with a large steamer trunk, which contains his “nearest and dearest friend.” The man offers to pay for the assistance of the quick-witted Amos in procuring the cure his friend needs. Off Amos goes, questing for three shards of magical mirror….
ONCE THERE WAS A POOR MAN NAMED AMOS. He had nothing but his bright red hair, fast fingers, quick feet, and quicker wits. One grey evening when the rain rumbled in the clouds, about to fall, he came down the cobbled street toward Mariners’ Tavern to play jackstraws with Billy Belay, the sailor with a wooden leg and a mouth full of stories that he chewed around and spit out all evening. Billy Belay would talk and drink and laugh and sometimes sing. Amos would sit quietly and listen and always won at jackstraws.
But this evening as Amos came into the tavern, Billy was quiet; and so was everyone else. Even Hidalga, the woman who owned the tavern and took no man’s jabbering seriously, was leaning her elbows on the counter and listening with opened mouth.
The only man speaking was tall, thin, and grey. He wore a grey cape, grey gloves, grey boots, and his hair was grey. His voice sounded to Amos like wind over mouse fur, or sand ground into old velvet. The only thing about him not grey was a large black trunk beside him, high as his shoulder. Several rough and grimy sailors with cutlasses sat at his table—they were so dirty they were no color at all!
“…and so,” the soft grey voice went on, “I need someone clever and brave enough to help my nearest and dearest friend and me. It will be well worth someone’s while.”
“Who is your friend?” asked Amos. Though he had not heard the beginning of the story, the whole tavern seemed far too quiet for a Saturday night.
The grey man turned and raised grey eyebrows. “There is my friend, my nearest and dearest.” He pointed to the trunk. From it came a low, muggy Ulmphf.
All the mouths that were hanging open about the tavern closed.
“What sort of help does he need?” asked Amos. “A doctor?”
The grey eyes widened, and all the mouths opened once more.
“You are talking of my nearest and dearest friend,” said the grey voice, softly.
From across the room Billy Belay tried to make a sign for Amos to be quiet, but the grey man turned around, and the finger Billy had put to his lips went quickly into his mouth as if he were picking his teeth.
“Friendship is a rare thing these days,” said Amos. “What sort of help do you and your friend need?”
“The question is: would you be willing to give it?” said the grey man.
“And the answer is: if it is worth my while,” said Amos, who really could think very quickly.
“Would it be worth all the pearls you could put in your pockets, all the gold you could carry in one hand, all the diamonds you could lift in the other, and all the emeralds you could haul up from a well in a brass kettle?”
“That is not much for true friendship,” said Amos.
“If you saw a man living through the happiest moment of his life, would it be worth it then?”
“Perhaps it would,” Amos admitted.
“Then you’ll help my friend and me?”
“For all the pearls I can put in my pockets, all the gold I can carry in one hand, all the diamonds I can lift in the other, all the emeralds I can haul up from a well in a brass kettle, and a chance to see a man living through the happiest moment of his life—I’ll help you!”
Billy Belay put his head down on the table and began to cry. Hidalga buried her face in her hands, and all the other people in the tavern turned away and began to look rather grey themselves.
“Then come with me,” said the grey man, and the rough sailors with cutlasses rose about him and hoisted the trunk to their grimy shoulders —Onvbpmf came from the trunk—and the grey man flung out his cape, grabbed Amos by the hand, and ran out into the street.
In the sky the clouds swirled and bumped each other, trying to upset the rain.
Halfway down the cobbled street the grey man cried, “Halt!”
Everyone halted and put the trunk down on the sidewalk.
The grey man went over and picked up a tangerine-colored alley cat that had been searching for fish heads in a garbage pail. “Open the trunk,” he said. One of the sailors took an iron key from his belt and opened the lock on the top of the trunk. The grey man took out his thin sword of grey steel and pried up the lid ever so slightly. Then he tossed the cat inside.
Immediately he let the lid drop, and the sailor with the iron key locked the lock on the top. From inside came the mew of a cat that ended with a deep, depressing Elmblmpf.