He thought of some of the tunes he’d heard in the wine cellar, and his fingers played them. In ecstasy, he relaxed and played as he had never played a clarinet. Again, as when Otto had played, he was struck by the purity and richness of the tone, so like the chalumeau register of his own clarinet, but extending even to the highest notes.
He played, and a thousand sounds blended into one. Again the sweet melody of paradoxes, black and white blending into a beautiful radiant gray of haunting music.
And then, seemingly without transition, he found himself playing a strange tune, one he’d never heard before. But one that he knew instinctively belonged to this wonderful instrument. A calling, beckoning tune, as had been the music Otto had played when the girls, real or imaginary, had click-clicked their way to him, but different this—was it a sinister instead of a sensual feeling underlying it?
But it was beautiful and he couldn’t have stopped the dance of his fingers or stopped giving it life with his breath if he’d tried.
And then, over or under the music, he heard another sound. Not this time a click-click of high heels but a scraping, scrabbling sound, as of thousands of tiny clawed feet. And he saw them as they spilled suddenly out of many holes in the wood-work that he had not before noticed, and ran to the bed and jumped upon it. And with paralyzing suddenness the bits and pieces fell into place and by an effort that was to be the last of his life Dooley tore the accursed instrument from his mouth, and opened his mouth to scream. But they were all around him now, all over him: great ones, tawny ones, small ones, lean ones, black ones…And before he could scream out of his opened mouth the largest black rat, the one who led them, leaped up and closed its sharp teeth in the end of his tongue and held on, and the scream aborning gurgled into silence.
And the sound of feasting lasted far into the night in Hamelin town.
Solipsist
WALTER B. JEHOVAH, for whose name I make no apology since it really was his name, had been a solipsist all his life. A solipsist, in case you don’t happen to know the word, is one who believes that he himself is the only thing that really exists, that other people and the universe in general exist only in his imagination, and that if he quit imagining them, they would cease to exist.
One day, Walter B. Jehovah became a practicing solipsist. Within a week, his wife and run away with another man, he’d lost his job as a shipping clerk and he had broken his leg chasing a black cat to keep it from crossing his path.
He decided, in a hospital, to end it all.
Looking out the window, staring up at the stars, he wished them out of existence, and they weren’t there anymore. Then he wished all other people out of existence, and the hospital became strangely quiet, even for a hospital. Next the world, and he found himself suspended in a void. He got rid of his body quite easily and then took the final step of willing himself out of existence.
Nothing happened.
Strange, he thought, can there be a limit to solipsism?
“Yes” a voice said.
“Who are you?” Walter B. Jehovah asked.
“I am the one who created the universe which you have just willed out of existence. And now that you have taken my place-” there was a deep sigh “ I can finally cease my own existence, find oblivion, and let you take over.”
“But how can I cease to exist? That’s what I’m trying to do, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” said the voice. “You must do it the same way I did. Create a universe. Wait until someone in it really believes what you believed and wills it out of existence. Then you can retire and let him take over. Good-by now.”
And the voice was gone. Walter B. Jehovah was alone in the void and there was only one thing he could do. He created the heaven and the earth.
It took him seven days.
The Gamblers
YOU LIE there cold and sweating at the same time. You’re nauseated and your insides hurt from all the retching you’ve done. Your throat burns a little too. But you’re a gambler and this is your gamble to keep alive until your ship comes in—the space-ship that is, for you, so aptly named the Relief.
You’ve got to stay alive for longer, than you care to think about. How many more days? You don’t know—you’ve lost track of time and of day and night. Thirty-nine days—Terrestrial days—altogether from the time the Relief left you here until it’s due to pick you up again. But you don’t know right now how many days have gone by and how many remain. Why did you forget to wind your watch and make marks on the wall for days, as a prisoner does in his cell; to count the days until he’ll be free again?
You can’t read to help pass the time, even if you felt well enough to enjoy reading, because the Aliens took all your books. You’d gladly give up your life to be able to write but you can’t write a word because of that psychic compulsion they put on you under hypnosis. You can’t remember the shape of a single letter, even the sound of a single letter, let alone how to spell a whole word.
You’ll have to learn to write all over again unless it turns out that the sight of printing or writing brings back your memory when you have a chance to see some again. They saw to it that there isn’t a letter of printing anywhere in this tiny dome. Not so much as a serial number on an oxygen tank or a label on a tube of toothpaste.”
Of course they took all writing materials and paper too, but you could probably find. something to scratch on the wall with if only you knew how to write. You try—you think the word cat and you know the sound of it and what a cat is but for the life of you you can’t imagine how it would be written, whether with two letters or ten. The very concept of what a letter is almost eludes you. You don’t quite see how you can put a sound on paper. Yes, it’s hopeless without help to try to break that block they put in your mind. You might as well quit struggling against it.
At least you’ll be able to talk if you manage to live until your ship comes in. And you’ve got to live so you’ll be able to tell them. Not that you want to live, the way you feel now. But’ you’ve got to. If you have to fight for every breath, then all right, you’ll fight. Your own life is the least of it.
You’re getting sick at your stomach again: Well, don’t think about it. Think about something else. Remember your trip here from Earth, good old Earth. Think about it to get your mind off your guts.
REMEMBER the take-off. How much it scared you and how much you marveled at all that you knew—directly or indirectly—was going on. The valves opening, the pumps beginning to stir, the liquid hydrogen and the ozone of the booster device beginning to gush into the motor. The vibration that told you the initial ignition was taking place. The Relief stirring sluggishly on its apron.
The roar of the booster, already clearly audible miles away. Inside the ship the sound was heavy, thunderous, penetrating. And then the unknown un-. analyzable terrors brought on by the subsonic vibrations. There was noise on every level of sound, those that human ears could hear and those they couldn’t hear. No ear plugs could block out the supersonics and the subsonics. You didn’t really hear them with your ears at all but with your whole body.