American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (3 page)

“Huh? No, no, no! I want you to change your face—on the outside chance that someone might recognize you as we leave here. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

I answered stiffly that being recognized in public was a burden that all celebrities were forced to carry. I did not add that it was certain that countless people would recognize The Great Lorenzo in any public place.

“Okay. So change your phiz so it’s not yours.” He left abruptly.

I sighed and looked over the child’s toys he had handed me, no doubt thinking they were the working tools of my profession—grease paints suitable for clowns, reeking spirit gum, crepe hair which seemed to have been raveled from Aunt Maggie’s parlor carpet. Not an ounce of Silicoflesh, no electric brushes, no modern amenities of any sort. But a true artist can do wonders with a burnt match, or oddments such as one might find in a kitchen—and his own genius. I arranged the lights and let myself fall into creative reverie.

There are several ways to keep a well-known face from being recognized. The simplest is misdirection. Place a man in uniform and his face is not likely to be noticed—do you recall the
face
of the last policeman you encountered? Could you identify him if you saw him next in mufti? On the same principle is the attention-getting special feature. Equip a man with an enormous nose, disfigured perhaps with
acne rosacea
; the vulgar will stare in fascination at the nose itself, the polite will turn away— but neither will see the face.

I decided against this primitive maneuver because I judged that my employer wished me not to be noticed at all rather than remembered for an odd feature without being recognized. This is much more difficult; anyone can be conspicuous but it takes real skill not to be noticed. I needed a face as commonplace, as impossible to remember as the true face of the immortal Alec Guinness. Unfortunately my aristocratic features are entirely too distinguished, too handsome—a regrettable handicap for a character actor. As my father used to say, “Larry, you are too damned pretty! If you don’t get off your lazy duff and learn the business, you are going to spend fifteen years as a juvenile, under the mistaken impression that you are an actor—then wind up selling candy in the lobby. ‘Stupid’ and ‘pretty’ are the two worst vices in show business—and you’re
both
.”

Then he would take off his belt and stimulate my brain. Father was a practical psychologist and believed that warming the
glutei maximi
with a strap drew excess blood away from a boy’s brain. While the theory may have been shaky, the results justified the method; by the time I was fifteen I could stand on my head on a slack wire and quote page after page of Shakespeare and Shaw—or steal a scene simply by lighting a cigarette.

I was deep in the mood of creation when Broadbent stuck his face in. “Good grief!” he snapped. “Haven’t you done anything yet?”

I stared coldly. “I assumed that you wanted my best creative work—which cannot be hurried. Would you expect a
cordon bleu
to compound a new sauce on the back of a galloping horse?”

“Horses be damned!” He glanced at his watch finger. “You have six more minutes. If you can’t do anything in that length of time, we’ll just have to take our chances.”

Well! Of course I prefer to have plenty of time—but I had understudied my father in his quick-change creation,
The Assassination of Huey Long
, fifteen parts in seven minutes—and had once played it in nine seconds less time than he did. “Stay where you are!” I snapped back at him. “I’ll be with you at once.” I then put on “Benny Grey,” the colorless handy man who does the murders in
The House with No Doors
—two quick strokes to put dispirited lines into my cheeks from nose to mouth corners, a mere suggestion of bags under my eyes, and Factor’s #5 sallow over all, taking not more than twenty seconds for everything—I could have done it in my sleep;
House
ran on boards for ninety-two performances before they recorded it.

Then I faced Broadbent and he gasped. “Good God! I don’t believe it.”

I stayed in “Benny Grey” and did not smile acknowledgment. What Broadbent could not realize was that the grease paint really was not necessary. It makes it easier, of course, but I had used a touch of it primarily because he expected it; being one of the yokels, he naturally assumed that make-up consisted of paint and powder.

He continued to stare at me. “Look here,” he said in a hushed voice, “could you do something like that for
me?
In a hurry?”

I was about to say no when I realized that it presented an interesting professional challenge. I had been tempted to say that if my father had started in on him at five he might be ready now to sell cotton candy at a punkin’ doin’s, but I thought better of it. “You simply want to be sure that you will not be recognized?” I asked.

“Yes, yes! Can you paint me up, or give me a false nose, or something?”

I shook my head. “No matter what we did with make-up, it would simply make you look like a child dressed up for Trick or Treat. You can’t act and you can never learn, at your age. We won’t touch your face.”

“Huh? But with this beak on me——”

“Attend me. Anything I could do to that lordly nose would just call attention to it, I assure you. Would it suffice if an acquaintance looked at you and said, ‘Say, that big fellow reminds me of Dak Broadbent. It’s not Dak, of course, but looks a little like him.’ Eh?”

“Huh? I suppose so. As long as he was sure it wasn’t me. I’m supposed to be on . . . Well, I’m not supposed to be on Earth just now.”

“He’ll be quite sure it is not you, because we’ll change your walk. That’s the most distinctive thing about you. If your walk is wrong, it cannot possibly be
you
—so it must be some other big-boned, broad-shouldered man who looks a bit like you.”

“Okay, show me how to walk.”

“No, you could never learn it. I’ll force you to walk the way I want you to.”

“How?”

“We’ll put a handful of pebbles or the equivalent in the toes of your boots. That will force you back on your heels and make you stand up straight. It will be impossible for you to sneak along in that catfooted spaceman’s crouch. Mmm . . . I’ll slap some tape across your shoulder blades to remind you to keep your shoulders back, too. That will do it.”

“You think they won’t recognize me just because I’ll walk differently?”

“Certain. An acquaintance won’t know why he is sure it is not you, but the very fact that the conviction is subconscious and unanalyzed will put it beyond reach of doubt. Oh, I’ll do a little something to your face, just to make you feel easier— but it isn’t necessary.”

We went back into the living room of the suite. I was still being “Benny Grey” of course; once I put on a role it takes a conscious effort of will to go back to being myself. Dubois was busy at the phone; he looked up, saw me, and his jaw dropped. He hurried out of the hush locus and demanded, “Who’s
he?
And where’s that actor fellow?” After his first glance at me, he had looked away and not bothered to look back—“Benny Grey” is such a tired, negligible little guy that there is no point in looking at him.

“What actor fellow?” I answered in Benny’s flat, colorless tones. It brought Dubois’ eyes back to me. He looked at me, started to look away, his eyes snapped back, then he looked at my clothes. Broadbent guffawed and clapped him on the shoulder.

“And
you
said he couldn’t act!” He added sharply, “Did you get them all, Jock?”

“Yes.” Dubois looked back at me, looked perplexed, and looked away.

“Okay. We’ve got to be out of here in four minutes. Let’s see how fast you can get me fixed up, Lorenzo.”

Dak had one boot off, his blouse off, and his chemise pulled up so that I could tape his shoulders when the light over the door came on and the buzzer sounded. He froze. “Jock? We expecting anybody?”

“Probably Langston. He said he was going to try to get over here before we left.” Dubois started for the door.

“It might not be him. It might be—––” I did not get to hear Broadbent say who he thought it might be as Dubois dilated the door. Framed in the doorway, looking like a nightmare toadstool, was a Martian.

For an agony-stretched second I could see nothing but the Martian. I did not see the human standing behind him, nor did I notice the life wand the Martian cradled in his pseudo limb.

Then the Martian flowed inside, the man with him stepped in behind him, and the door relaxed. The Martian squeaked, “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Going somewhere?”

I was frozen, dazed, by acute xenophobia. Dak was handicapped by disarranged clothing. But little Jock Dubois acted with a simple heroism that made him my beloved brother even as he died . . . He flung himself at that life wand. Right at it —he made no attempt to evade it.

He must have been dead, a hole burned through his belly you could poke a fist through, before he hit the floor. But he hung on and the pseudo limb stretched like taffy—then snapped, broken off a few inches from the monster’s neck, and poor Jock still had the life wand cradled in his dead arms.

The human who had followed that stinking, reeking thing into the room had to step to one side before he could get in a shot—and he made a mistake. He should have shot Dak first, then me. Instead he wasted his first one on Jock and he never got a second one, as Dak shot him neatly in the face. I had not even known Dak was armed.

Deprived of his weapon, the Martian did not attempt to escape. Dak bounced to his feet, slid up to him, and said, “Ah, Rrringriil. I see you.”

“I see you, Captain Dak Broadbent,” the Martian squeaked, then added, “You will tell my nest?”

“I will tell your nest, Rrringriil.”

“I thank you, Captain Dak Broadbent.”

Dak reached out a long bony finger and poked it into the eye nearest him, shoving it on home until his knuckles were jammed against the brain case. He pulled it out and his finger was slimed with a green ichor. The creature’s pseudo limbs crawled back into its trunk in reflex spasm but the dead thing continued to stand firm on its base. Dak hurried into the bath; I heard him washing his hands. I stayed where I was, almost as frozen by shock as the late Rrringriil.

Dak came out, wiping his hands on his shirt, and said, “We’ll have to clean this up. There isn’t much time.” He could have been speaking of a spilled drink.

I tried to make clear in one jumbled sentence that I wanted no part of it, that we ought to call the cops, that I wanted to get away from there before the cops came, that he knew what he could do with his crazy impersonation job, and that I planned to sprout wings and fly out the window. Dak brushed it all aside. “Don’t jitter, Lorenzo. We’re on minus minutes now. Help me get the bodies into the bathroom.”

“Huh? Good God, man! Let’s just lock up and run for it. Maybe they will never connect us with it.”

“Probably they wouldn’t,” he agreed, “since neither one of us is supposed to be here. But they would be able to see that Rrringriil had killed Jock—and we can’t have
that
. Not now we can’t.”

“Huh?”

“We can’t afford a news story about a Martian killing a human. So shut up and help me.”

I shut up and helped him. It steadied me to recall that “Benny Grey” had been the worst of sadistic psychopaths, who had enjoyed dismembering his victims. I let “Benny Grey” drag the two human bodies into the bath while Dak took the life wand and sliced Rrringriil into pieces small enough to handle. He was careful to make the first cut below the brain case so the job was not messy, but I could not help him with it—it seemed to me that a dead Martian stank even worse than a live one.

The oubliette was concealed in a panel in the bath just beyond the bidet; if it had not been marked with the usual radiation trefoil it would have been hard to find. After we had shoved the chunks of Rrringriil down it (I managed to get my spunk up enough to help), Dak tackled the messier problem of butchering and draining the human corpses, using the wand and, of course, working in the bathtub.

It is amazing how much blood a man holds. We kept the water running the whole time; nevertheless, it was bad. But when Dak had to tackle the remains of poor little Jock, he just wasn’t up to it. His eyes flooded with tears, blinding him, so I elbowed him aside before he sliced off his own fingers and let “Benny Grey” take over.

When I had finished and there was nothing left to show that there had ever been two other men and a monster in the suite, I sluiced out the tub carefully and stood up. Dak was in the doorway, looking as calm as ever. “I’ve made sure the floor is tidy,” he announced. “I suppose a criminologist with proper equipment could reconstruct it—but we are counting on no one ever suspecting. So let’s get out of here. We’ve got to gain almost twelve minutes somehow. Come on!”

I was beyond asking where or why. “All right. Let’s fix your boots.”

He shook his head. “It would slow me up. Right now speed is more essential than not being recognized.”

“I am in your hands.” I followed him to the door; he stopped and said, “There may be others around. If so, shoot first— there’s nothing else you can do.” He had the life wand in his hand, with his cloak drawn over it.

“Martians?”

“Or men. Or both.”

“Dak? Was Rrringriil one of those four at the Mañana bar?”

“Certainly. Why do you think I went around Robinson’s barn to get you out of there and over here? They either tailed you, as we did, or they tailed me. Didn’t you recognize him?”

“Heavens, no! Those monsters all look alike to me.”

“And
they
say
we
all look alike. The four were Rrringriil, his conjugate-brother Rrringlath, and two others from his nest, of divergent lines. But shut up. If you see a Martian, shoot. You have the other gun?”

“Uh, yes. Look, Dak, I don’t know what this is all about. But as long as those beasts are against you, I’m with you. I despise Martians.”

He looked shocked. “You don’t know what you are saying. We’re not fighting Martians; those four are renegades.”