The hebetude into which my parents sank claims me also. I shall not live much longer now. Most of my time, when not sleeping, I spend gazing through the fuselage window. At night the unbreakable glass becomes a mirror which returns my tired face. To be honest it is a handsome face. The nose is strong, the lips are full, the eyes are sensitive—but withdrawn. And the hair, brushed neatly back, is prematurely white. In fact the whole face looks about thirty years older than it really is and its calmness, one sees after a while, is a forced, resigned calmness. Anyway, now that, with a frank feeling of relief, I contemplate my approaching death, I will go through the formality of setting forth final arrangements. To anyone who can use it I bequeath the legacy left to me by my father: two second-class one-way air tickets from Nairobi to London, still valid. For my epitaph I choose yet another quotation from that prophetic New Testament, and one which demonstrates even more clearly the applicability of the gospels to our time: “The birds have their nests, the foxes have their holes, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
Wizard Wazo’s Revenge
Wizard Wazo was angry and exasperated as he quit the planet Nekferus. A Mighty One of the Galactic Observance was accustomed to being obeyed; yet the benighted inhabitants of that infernal place seemed not even to understand what it meant to face a galactic wizard!
No member of his order could have been active in the region recently, for there would have been no question about it a few millennia ago. As it was he had intended only a short stay, to carry out an experiment that on the prompting of the moment had suddenly occurred to him, and he had made no excessive demands. All he required was a hundred or so female concubines, premises and provisions consistent with his comfort, and the instruments necessary for the experiment itself, which would not have engaged more than a third of the planet’s industrial capacity. Yet his modest requests had met with incredulity and laughter! It had not at first penetrated to him that these wretches were actually refusing his demands. When it did his temper had broken, and he had laid a curse on them for their recalcitrance.
“I cast a mental screen around this world,” he had mouthed. “Henceforth nothing that is original in thought shall reach this planet. Your children, and their children, and so ad infinitum, shall live in the greyness of thought already much used, shall never discover a new idea, for this screen is impassable to ideas and all new perceptions, which come, though you know it not, from outermost space. Thus I punish you for the absence of your imagination!”
And in a sputter of sparks he had disappeared from their view.
So it was that Wizard Wazo was already bad-tempered when, upon dismissing the experiment from his mind (it was not important), he instead decided to visit various places so as to collect the property he had left in safekeeping before embarking on his pilgrimage.
In space now, a glance at the surrounding stars located his first destination: the planet Earth. With the immediacy of directed thought, faster than light, faster than causality, he set forth. Transient bodies formed and dissipated about his presence as he entered first the nimbus of Earth’s sun and then the nimbus of the planet itself: bodies of light, of magnetism, of radioactivity, of air and vapour. Speeding down through the atmosphere, he saw below him some pyramidal structures erected during his last stay here, and while pleased to see that they still stood, he remarked grumpily to himself that it would have been a simple matter to keep their original limestone dressings in good order. But Egypt, as it happened, was not his destination, for it was not where his property was currently to be found. He materialised instead on the sidewalk of a busy city street, somewhere to the north-west.
All around him was an irregular roaring, confused and continuous. This noise was accompanied by copious exhalations of carbonised fumes and was created, he saw, by a steady stream of automotive conveyances that passed through the central concourse.
At least it was no worse, he told himself, than the stink expelled from the rear of that execrable Earth animal the horse, that had made the streets of Memphis almost unendurable.
Terraces of tall buildings, many of them glass-fronted, lined the avenue. Behind the transparent panes goods and services were on offer. One could, for instance, repose for a while and consume food and drink. He would take up this offer, Wizard Wazo told himself, but first he must find the custodian of his property.
He inspected the body that had finally formed around his presence. He found it to be a handsome specimen of the species inhabiting Earth, sturdily built, a little over average height, clad in a grey check suit. His skin was swarthy; bushy mustachios grew on his upper lip. An unusual feature, for this city, was the headgear he wore—a fez, which he believed was currently more characteristic of the Egypt he had previously visited.
Wizard Wazo walked along the crowded pavement, requiring all others to make way for him. He did not falter when he came to a road junction but sauntered across it with the same confidence, sensing the oil-driven vehicles as they surged around him and knowing that none would strike him.
Here, now, was something of interest. A small, crouched man in a scruffy white gown dispensed dollops of frozen confectionery scooped into wafer cones from a trolley. Wizard Wazo was reminded of the iced drinks that had been available in ancient Egypt, and it brightened him to see that the art of making ice had not been lost since then.
At any rate he decided to sample this delicacy. Halting by the trolley, he pointed to a customer just leaving and nodded his head. Slowly the vendor filled another wafer cone, avoiding Wizard Wazo’s eye and pursing his lips calculatingly.
“Forty pence,” he said peremptorily as he held out the cone.
After a pause Wizard Wazo reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a leather folder. He found therein some pieces of richly engraved paper which he divined were notes of currency. Drawing out one bearing the legend “Ten Pounds”, he handed it over, receiving in exchange the ice cream cone.
Ostentatiously the vendor rummaged in a tray of metal discs. “Ten, twenny, firty, sixty, there y’are then, that’s all yer get,” he said, throwing coins into Wizard Wazo’s hand. Dismissively he turned away. Wizard Wazo did not move. He looked into the pinched, hostile face of the ice-cream vendor.
Then, knowing already what he would find there, he looked into the man’s mind.
Yes, this wretch had attempted to cheat him! Had taken a note of large denomination and had given trifling tokens in exchange, leaving an enormous discrepancy between them and the proper price of the delicacy! And why? Because he hoped, from Wizard Wazo’s foreign appearance, that he would not know the value of the local currency!
“Thief!” Wizard Wazo thundered. “Give me my money this instant!”
The vendor’s response was aggressive. “Yer’ve ‘ad yer lot, mate, don’t come ‘ere wiv yer bleedin’—”
Wizard Wazo bridled. One word from him and the contents of the ice-cream tub would turn to a vilely stinking mass. But he did no more than throw down the cone he had purchased and, with a gesture of disgust, continue on his way.
Further down the street he stopped again and peered through the plate-glass window of a somewhat shabby restaurant. Within, men and women sat at bare board tables, drinking tea and coffee, reading books and newspapers, talking to one another, wasting time. The man he sought sat alone in a corner, sometimes watching those around him, sometimes reading a book he held in one hand. From outside, Wizard Wazo read the title: Flying Saucers: The Conspiracy of Silence. The man was lantern-jawed, with straight black hair, and had an air of unsettled energy. He puffed nervously on a cigarette, which he put down from time to time to sip coffee from a cup in front of him.