“Don’t mind the screams and shouts out there, son,” the old man said. “Just an idea of the management to discourage walkouts. Keeps people browsing till the storm’s over.”
The young man didn’t want to, but he suddenly found himself walking. Toward the rear of the shoppe. Toward the old man in the rocking chair. He tried to make his feet stop moving, but they placed themselves one in front of the other and he kept walking. But no matter how long he walked, the young man realized he was drawing no closer to the figure in the rocker.
He walked and walked, down among the fossilized remains of jabberwocks and eohippuses and broken reel-to-reel tape recorders, until his ankles began to blaze with pain from the walking. As if he had been striding uphill on a thirty degree slope. He found he was able to stop walking; he sat down on a three-legged stool to rest.
The old man said, “That’s a nice item, that one. Belonged to William Rufus, the Incarnate King; had a nasty dustup with The Lady of the Lake, he did; something silly about a macaronic song, I believe. Or maybe it was who had the louder climax. Can’t recall. Something like that. Let it go cheap if you’re interested. Sitting on it’s guaranteed to cure constipation instantly.”
The grubby young man leaped off the stool.
The old man was chuckling in a very friendly key. “ A w, hell, kid, come on over; I’ll stop playing around with you.”
The young man started walking. He was able to approach the old man. In a few moments he was standing beside him.
“Now. What can I do for you?”
The young man stared at him with faintly glazed eyes lit by a peculiar light. Just stared. He didn’t know what to say; he was actually, for the first time in his life, frightened down to the marrow. Even when he had been strapped in the orphanages, or beaten in the reformatories, or ganged in jail, he had never really known fear; it wasn’t in him to understand that kind of fear. But here, in this strange matrix of imponderables, with the brutal bellowing of shuffling autochthones filling the air just beyond the fogged windows, he was paralyzed with fear. He could not speak, did not know what he could ask for, did not know what he could have.
But knew he could have anything, just for the asking, just for the buying. That was what this shoppe was here for.
The old man seemed to understand his problem. He stood up and patted the young man on the shoulder. “Well, truth in advertising, young feller. We’re just what the sign says, a shoppe of wonders; your heart’s desire is here, somewhere. Just have to figure out what it is. You only get one chance, you know. Purchases limited one to a customer.”
He seemed about to say something more, but caught himself as his mouth opened. He looked at the young man a good deal more closely, and lines of worry appeared in his forehead. When he spoke again, there was an appreciable coolness in his manner. More businesslike, infinitely less friendly and playful. A bit more menacing.
“All sorts of items,” he said. “Complete set of books listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, including Bergson’s ‘L’Evolution Créatrice.’ Cloak of invisibility. Just got in a fresh supply of black cobra blood from the Dinka; best black cobra blood on the market, you know; southern Sudanese; just smear some on the houseposts of your enemies. One hundred per cent guaranteed to produce incredible anguish and death. Love philters. Antigravitation discs. Dildos. Pills you can drop in your gas tank, just add water and it makes pure octane. Just name it, we’ve got it.”
For the first time the young man spoke. “When I leave here, will this shop vanish the way they do in the stories?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Why do they always do that?”
The old man sighed. “You know, you’re the first one who ever asked me that.”
But he didn’t answer the question.
He walked toward a case filled with small objects. “Hey, come on over here. Maybe we have something in here to suit your fancy.”
The young man scratched at his chest where his shirt lay open minus a button. He scratched at a bug bite. It was an angry red welt. He walked to the showcase and looked in. Eyes of newts. Toes of frogs. Other things.
They stood silently on opposite sides of the case for a few minutes. Finally in a strong young voice, the old man said, “Okay, bud, what’s your heart’s desire?”
The young man did not look up. “Power,” he said.
“What kind of power?”
“I want people to do what I want them to do.”
“That’s easy enough.” The old man reached into the case and brought out a black velvet pad on which lay a group of stones. They seemed to glisten and scintillate as though encrusted with dendrites. “Powerstones,” the old man said. “To make others do your bidding. Two bucks a shot.”
The young man looked up. “Why so cheap?”
The old man shrugged. He gave a little laugh that was no, laugh at all. “Cheapest things in the universe. Two dollars each is a good price.”
The young man reached for an octagonal-shaped stone. The old man stopped him with a word. “No!” The young man pulled back his hand. The old man picked up another one, diamondshaped. “Here. This one.”
“What was wrong with the other one?”
“Wouldn’t have served your need. Take my word for it, this’s the one you want. Two dollars. A steal at twice the price.”
The young man took it from him. It was warm to the touch. He closed his fist around it. The heat grew in his palm. He opened his hand and stared down at the glowing rock. “How do I use it?”
“Just carry it with you. Heat it in your hand from time to time. It’ll do the rest.”
The young man fished around in his jeans pocket, brought up two moist and wrinkled dollar bills. He gave them to the old man. The old man took the bills, walked back to the area where the rocking chair sat under the beaded lamp, and reached into an open drawer. He brought out a ledger and a quill pen.
“I’ll just enter the transaction,” he said. He brought the ledger over to the showcase, laid it down, opened it, and wrote a few words on the first empty line. He looked up from the ledger; the young man didn’t like the look at all. “I’ll need a tear,” the old man said.
“A tear?”
“Yes, a tear.”
“Not blood?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Sign these things in blood; isn’t that supposed to be the way of it?”
“Just a tear, thank you.”
“And how do I do that?”
“No problem.”
The young man suddenly felt his eyes well up with tears. One rolled down his face, hung from his chin for a moment and then dropped onto the glass of the showcase. “Very good,” the old man said, and dipped the quill in the tear. He wrote a few more words.
He closed the ledger slowly, and looked at the young man. “That’s it,” he said. “Anything else?” In fact, it was a dismissal. The young man paused a moment, as if trying to brazen out the instant; but the old man quite clearly did not want him in the shoppe any longer. He turned toward the door. It was clear afternoon out there.
“You wrote down my name, didn’t you?”
“Goodbye,” said the old man. “Come again.”
“How did you know my name? I didn’t say my name.”
“Goodbye.”
The young man got a nasty look on his face and seemed about to say something. He clutched the powerstone in his hand and waited for it to work. But he knew it wouldn’t work on the shoppe keeper. He had once bought a revolver from a pawnbroker, and the hockshop owner had sold him the bullets in a sealed cartridge carton, with a band around it. Shopkeepers always took precautions so the merchandise wouldn’t be turned against them.