Title: The Moon is Green
Author: Leiber, Fritz, 1910-1992
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Moon is Green" ***


 _THE MOON
        IS GREEN_

By FRITZ LEIBER

Illustrated by DAVID STONE


 _Anybody who wanted to escape death could, by
 paying a very simple price--denial of life!_


"Effie! What the devil are you up to?"

Her husband's voice, chopping through her mood of terrified rapture,
made her heart jump like a startled cat, yet by some miracle of feminine
self-control her body did not show a tremor.

_Dear God_, she thought, _he mustn't see it. It's so beautiful, and he
always kills beauty._

"I'm just looking at the Moon," she said listlessly. "It's green."

_Mustn't, mustn't see it._ And now, with luck, he wouldn't. For the
face, as if it also heard and sensed the menace in the voice, was
moving back from the window's glow into the outside dark, but slowly,
reluctantly, and still faunlike, pleading, cajoling, tempting, and
incredibly beautiful.

"Close the shutters at once, you little fool, and come away from the
window!"

"Green as a beer bottle," she went on dreamily, "green as emeralds,
green as leaves with sunshine striking through them and green grass to
lie on." She couldn't help saying those last words. They were her token
to the face, even though it couldn't hear.

"Effie!"

She knew what that last tone meant. Wearily she swung shut the ponderous
lead inner shutters and drove home the heavy bolts. That hurt her
fingers; it always did, but he mustn't know that.

"You know that those shutters are not to be touched! Not for five more
years at least!"

"I only wanted to look at the Moon," she said, turning around, and then
it was all gone--the face, the night, the Moon, the magic--and she was
back in the grubby, stale little hole, facing an angry, stale little
man. It was then that the eternal thud of the air-conditioning fans and
the crackle of the electrostatic precipitators that sieved out the dust
reached her consciousness again like the bite of a dentist's drill.

"Only wanted to look at the Moon!" he mimicked her in falsetto. "Only
wanted to die like a little fool and make me that much more ashamed of
you!" Then his voice went gruff and professional. "Here, count
yourself."

She silently took the Geiger counter he held at arm's length, waited
until it settled down to a steady ticking slower than a clock--due only
to cosmic rays and indicating nothing dangerous--and then began to comb
her body with the instrument. First her head and shoulders, then out
along her arms and back along their under side. There was something
oddly voluptuous about her movements, although her features were gray
and sagging.

The ticking did not change its tempo until she came to her waist. Then
it suddenly spurted, clicking faster and faster. Her husband gave an
excited grunt, took a quick step forward, froze. She goggled for a
moment in fear, then grinned foolishly, dug in the pocket of her grimy
apron and guiltily pulled out a wristwatch.

He grabbed it as it dangled from her fingers, saw that it had a radium
dial, cursed, heaved it up as if to smash it on the floor, but instead
put it carefully on the table.

"You imbecile, you incredible imbecile," he softly chanted to himself
through clenched teeth, with eyes half closed.

She shrugged faintly, put the Geiger counter on the table, and stood
there slumped.

He waited until the chanting had soothed his anger, before speaking
again. He said quietly, "I do suppose you still realize the sort of
world you're living in?"

       *       *       *       *       *

She nodded slowly, staring at nothingness. Oh, she realized, all right,
realized only too well. It was the world that hadn't realized. The world
that had gone on stockpiling hydrogen bombs. The world that had put
those bombs in cobalt shells, although it had promised it wouldn't,
because the cobalt made them much more terrible and cost no more. The
world that had started throwing those bombs, always telling itself that
it hadn't thrown enough of them yet to make the air really dangerous
with the deadly radioactive dust that came from the cobalt. Thrown them
and kept on throwing until the danger point, where air and ground would
become fatal to all human life, was approached.

Then, for about a month, the two great enemy groups had hesitated. And
then each, unknown to the other, had decided it could risk one last
gigantic and decisive attack without exceeding the danger point. It had
been planned to strip off the cobalt cases, but someone forgot and then
there wasn't time. Besides, the military scientists of each group were
confident that the lands of the other had got the most dust. The two
attacks came within an hour of each other.

After that, the Fury. The Fury of doomed men who think only of taking
with them as many as possible of the enemy, and in this case--they
hoped--all. The Fury of suicides who know they have botched up life for
good. The Fury of cocksure men who realize they have been outsmarted by
fate, the enemy, and themselves, and know that they will never be able
to improvise a defense when arraigned before the high court of
history--and whose unadmitted hope is that there will be no high court
of history left to arraign them. More cobalt bombs were dropped during
the Fury than in all the preceding years of the war.

After the Fury, the Terror. Men and women with death sifting into their
bones through their nostrils and skin, fighting for bare survival under
a dust-hazed sky that played fantastic tricks with the light of Sun and
Moon, like the dust from Krakatoa that drifted around the world for
years. Cities, countryside, and air were alike poisoned, alive with
deadly radiation.

The only realistic chance for continued existence was to retire, for the
five or ten years the radiation would remain deadly, to some well-sealed
and radiation-shielded place that must also be copiously supplied with
food, water, power, and a means of air-conditioning.

Such places were prepared by the far-seeing, seized by the stronger,
defended by them in turn against the desperate hordes of the dying ...
until there were no more of those.

After that, only the waiting, the enduring. A mole's existence, without
beauty or tenderness, but with fear and guilt as constant companions.
Never to see the Sun, to walk among the trees--or even know if there
were still trees.

Oh, yes, she realized what the world was like.

       *       *       *       *       *

"You understand, too, I suppose, that we were allowed to reclaim this
ground-level apartment only because the Committee believed us to be
responsible people, and because I've been making a damn good showing
lately?"

"Yes, Hank."

"I thought you were eager for privacy. You want to go back to the
basement tenements?"

_God, no! Anything rather than that fetid huddling, that shameless
communal sprawl. And yet, was this so much better? The nearness to the
surface was meaningless; it only tantalized. And the privacy magnified
Hank._

She shook her head dutifully and said, "No, Hank."

"Then why aren't you careful? I've told you a million times, Effie, that
glass is no protection against the dust that's outside that window. The
lead shutter must never be touched! If you make one single slip like
that and it gets around, the Committee will send us back to the lower
levels without blinking an eye. And they'll think twice before trusting
me with any important jobs."

"I'm sorry, Hank."

"Sorry? What's the good of being sorry? The only thing that counts is
never to make a slip! Why the devil do you do such things, Effie? What
drives you to it?"

She swallowed. "It's just that it's so dreadful being cooped up like
this," she said hesitatingly, "shut away from the sky and the Sun. I'm
just hungry for a little beauty."

"And do you suppose I'm not?" he demanded. "Don't you suppose I want to
get outside, too, and be carefree and have a good time? But I'm not so
damn selfish about it. I want my children to enjoy the Sun, and my
children's children. Don't you see that that's the all-important thing
and that we have to behave like mature adults and make sacrifices for
it?"

"Yes, Hank."

He surveyed her slumped figure, her lined and listless face. "You're a
fine one to talk about hunger for beauty," he told her. Then his voice
grew softer, more deliberate. "You haven't forgotten, have you, Effie,
that until last month the Committee was so concerned about your
sterility? That they were about to enter my name on the list of those
waiting to be allotted a free woman? Very high on the list, too!"

She could nod even at that one, but not while looking at him. She turned
away. She knew very well that the Committee was justified in worrying
about the birth rate. When the community finally moved back to the
surface again, each additional healthy young person would be an asset,
not only in the struggle for bare survival, but in the resumed war
against Communism which some of the Committee members still counted on.

It was natural that they should view a sterile woman with disfavor, and
not only because of the waste of her husband's germ-plasm, but because
sterility might indicate that she had suffered more than the average
from radiation. In that case, if she did bear children later on, they
would be more apt to carry a defective heredity, producing an undue
number of monsters and freaks in future generations, and so
contaminating the race.

Of course she understood it. She could hardly remember the time when she
didn't. Years ago? Centuries? There wasn't much difference in a place
where time was endless.

       *       *       *       *       *

His lecture finished, her husband smiled and grew almost cheerful.

"Now that you're going to have a child, that's all in the background
again. Do you know, Effie, that when I first came in, I had some very
good news for you? I'm to become a member of the Junior Committee and
the announcement will be made at the banquet tonight." He cut short her
mumbled congratulations. "So brighten yourself up and put on your best
dress. I want the other Juniors to see what a handsome wife the new
member has got." He paused. "Well, get a move on!"

She spoke with difficulty, still not looking at him. "I'm terribly
sorry, Hank, but you'll have to go alone. I'm not well."

He straightened up with an indignant jerk. "There you go again! First
that infantile, inexcusable business of the shutters, and now this! No
feeling for my reputation at all. Don't be ridiculous, Effie. You're
coming!"

"Terribly sorry," she repeated blindly, "but I really can't. I'd just be
sick. I wouldn't make you proud of me at all."

"Of course you won't," he retorted sharply. "As it is, I have to spend
half my energy running around making excuses for you--why you're so odd,
why you always seem to be ailing, why you're always stupid and snobbish
and say the wrong thing. But tonight's really important, Effie. It will
cause a lot of bad comment if the new member's wife isn't present. You
know how just a hint of sickness starts the old radiation-disease rumor
going. You've _got_ to come, Effie."

She shook her head helplessly.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, come on!" he shouted, advancing on her. "This is
just a silly mood. As soon as you get going, you'll snap out of it.
There's nothing really wrong with you at all."

He put his hand on her shoulder to turn her around, and at his touch her
face suddenly grew so desperate and gray that for a moment he was
alarmed in spite of himself.

"Really?" he asked, almost with a note of concern.

She nodded miserably.

"Hmm!" He stepped back and strode about irresolutely. "Well, of course,
if that's the way it is ..." He checked himself and a sad smile crossed
his face. "So you don't care enough about your old husband's success to
make one supreme effort in spite of feeling bad?"

Again the helpless headshake. "I just can't go out tonight, under any
circumstances." And her gaze stole toward the lead shutters.

He was about to say something when he caught the direction of her gaze.
His eyebrows jumped. For seconds he stared at her incredulously, as if
some completely new and almost unbelievable possibility had popped into
his mind. The look of incredulity slowly faded, to be replaced by a
harder, more calculating expression. But when he spoke again, his voice
was shockingly bright and kind.

"Well, it can't be helped naturally, and I certainly wouldn't want you
to go if you weren't able to enjoy it. So you hop right into bed and get
a good rest. I'll run over to the men's dorm to freshen up. No, really,
I don't want you to have to make any effort at all. Incidentally, Jim
Barnes isn't going to be able to come to the banquet either--touch of
the old 'flu, he tells me, of all things."

He watched her closely as he mentioned the other man's name, but she
didn't react noticeably. In fact, she hardly seemed to be hearing his
chatter.

"I got a bit sharp with you, I'm afraid, Effie," he continued
contritely. "I'm sorry about that. I was excited about my new job and I
guess that was why things upset me. Made me feel let down when I found
you weren't feeling as good as I was. Selfish of me. Now you get into
bed right away and get well. Don't worry about me a bit. I know you'd
come if you possibly could. And I know you'll be thinking about me.
Well, I must be off now."

He started toward her, as if to embrace her, then seemed to think better
of it. He turned back at the doorway and said, emphasizing the words,
"You'll be completely alone for the next four hours." He waited for her
nod, then bounced out.

       *       *       *       *       *

She stood still until his footsteps died away. Then she straightened up,
walked over to where he'd put down the wristwatch, picked it up and
smashed it hard on the floor. The crystal shattered, the case flew
apart, and something went _zing!_

She stood there breathing heavily. Slowly her sagged features lifted,
formed themselves into the beginning of a smile. She stole another look
at the shutters. The smile became more definite. She felt her hair, wet
her fingers and ran them along her hairline and back over her ears.
After wiping her hands on her apron, she took it off. She straightened
her dress, lifted her head with a little flourish, and stepped smartly
toward the window.

Then her face went miserable again and her steps slowed.

No, it couldn't be, and it won't be, she told herself. It had been just
an illusion, a silly romantic dream that she had somehow projected out
of her beauty-starved mind and given a moment's false reality. There
couldn't be anything alive outside. There hadn't been for two whole
years.

And if there conceivably were, it would be something altogether
horrible. She remembered some of the pariahs--hairless, witless
creatures, with radiation welts crawling over their bodies like worms,
who had come begging for succor during the last months of the
Terror--and been shot down. How they must have hated the people in
refuges!

But even as she was thinking these things, her fingers were caressing
the bolts, gingerly drawing them, and she was opening the shutters
gently, apprehensively.

No, there couldn't be anything outside, she assured herself wryly,
peering out into the green night. Even her fears had been groundless.

But the face came floating up toward the window. She started back in
terror, then checked herself.

For the face wasn't horrible at all, only very thin, with full lips and
large eyes and a thin proud nose like the jutting beak of a bird. And no
radiation welts or scars marred the skin, olive in the tempered
moonlight. It looked, in fact, just as it had when she had seen it the
first time.

For a long moment the face stared deep, deep into her brain. Then the
full lips smiled and a half-clenched, thin-fingered hand materialized
itself from the green darkness and rapped twice on the grimy pane.

Her heart pounding, she furiously worked the little crank that opened
the window. It came unstuck from the frame with a tiny explosion of dust
and a _zing_ like that of the watch, only louder. A moment later it
swung open wide and a puff of incredibly fresh air caressed her face and
the inside of her nostrils, stinging her eyes with unanticipated tears.

The man outside balanced on the sill, crouching like a faun, head high,
one elbow on knee. He was dressed in scarred, snug trousers and an old
sweater.

"Is it tears I get for a welcome?" he mocked her gently in a musical
voice. "Or are those only to greet God's own breath, the air?"

       *       *       *       *       *

He swung down inside and now she could see he was tall. Turning, he
snapped his fingers and called, "Come, puss."

A black cat with a twisted stump of a tail and feet like small boxing
gloves and ears almost as big as rabbits' hopped clumsily in view. He
lifted it down, gave it a pat. Then, nodding familiarly to Effie, he
unstrapped a little pack from his back and laid it on the table.

She couldn't move. She even found it hard to breathe.

"The window," she finally managed to get out.

He looked at her inquiringly, caught the direction of her stabbing
finger. Moving without haste, he went over and closed it carelessly.

"The shutters, too," she told him, but he ignored that, looking around.

"It's a snug enough place you and your man have," he commented. "Or is
it that this is a free-love town or a harem spot, or just a military
post?" He checked her before she could answer. "But let's not be
talking about such things now. Soon enough I'll be scared to death for
both of us. Best enjoy the kick of meeting, which is always good for
twenty minutes at the least." He smiled at her rather shyly. "Have you
food? Good, then bring it."

She set cold meat and some precious canned bread before him and had
water heating for coffee. Before he fell to, he shredded a chunk of meat
and put it on the floor for the cat, which left off its sniffing
inspection of the walls and ran up eagerly mewing. Then the man began to
eat, chewing each mouthful slowly and appreciatively.

From across the table Effie watched him, drinking in his every deft
movement, his every cryptic quirk of expression. She attended to making
the coffee, but that took only a moment. Finally she could contain
herself no longer.

"What's it like up there?" she asked breathlessly. "Outside, I mean."

He looked at her oddly for quite a space. Finally, he said flatly, "Oh,
it's a wonderland for sure, more amazing than you tombed folk could ever
imagine. A veritable fairyland." And he quickly went on eating.

"No, but really," she pressed.

Noting her eagerness, he smiled and his eyes filled with playful
tenderness. "I mean it, on my oath," he assured her. "You think the
bombs and the dust made only death and ugliness. That was true at first.
But then, just as the doctors foretold, they changed the life in the
seeds and loins that were brave enough to stay. Wonders bloomed and
walked." He broke off suddenly and asked, "Do any of you ever venture
outside?"

"A few of the men are allowed to," she told him, "for short trips in
special protective suits, to hunt for canned food and fuels and
batteries and things like that."

"Aye, and those blind-souled slugs would never see anything but what
they're looking for," he said, nodding bitterly. "They'd never see the
garden where a dozen buds blossom where one did before, and the flowers
have petals a yard across, with stingless bees big as sparrows gently
supping their nectar. Housecats grown spotted and huge as leopards (not
little runts like Joe Louis here) stalk through those gardens. But
they're gentle beasts, no more harmful than the rainbow-scaled snakes
that glide around their paws, for the dust burned all the murder out of
them, as it burned itself out.

"I've even made up a little poem about that. It starts, 'Fire can hurt
me, or water, or the weight of Earth. But the dust is my friend.' Oh,
yes, and then the robins like cockatoos and squirrels like a princess's
ermine! All under a treasure chest of Sun and Moon and stars that the
dust's magic powder changes from ruby to emerald and sapphire and
amethyst and back again. Oh, and then the new children--"

"You're telling the truth?" she interrupted him, her eyes brimming with
tears. "You're not making it up?"

"I am not," he assured her solemnly. "And if you could catch a glimpse
of one of the new children, you'd never doubt me again. They have long
limbs as brown as this coffee would be if it had lots of fresh cream in
it, and smiling delicate faces and the whitish teeth and the finest
hair. They're so nimble that I--a sprightly man and somewhat enlivened
by the dust--feel like a cripple beside them. And their thoughts dance
like flames and make me feel a very imbecile.

"Of course, they have seven fingers on each hand and eight toes on each
foot, but they're the more beautiful for that. They have large pointed
ears that the Sun shines through. They play in the garden, all day long,
slipping among the great leaves and blooms, but they're so swift that
you can hardly see them, unless one chooses to stand still and look at
you. For that matter, you have to look a bit hard for all these things
I'm telling you."

"But it is true?" she pleaded.

"Every word of it," he said, looking straight into her eyes. He put down
his knife and fork. "What's your name?" he asked softly. "Mine's
Patrick."

"Effie," she told him.

He shook his head. "That can't be," he said. Then his face brightened.
"Euphemia," he exclaimed. "That's what Effie is short for. Your name is
Euphemia." As he said that, looking at her, she suddenly felt beautiful.
He got up and came around the table and stretched out his hand toward
her.

"Euphemia--" he began.

"Yes?" she answered huskily, shrinking from him a little, but looking up
sideways, and very flushed.

"Don't either of you move," Hank said.

The voice was flat and nasal because Hank was wearing a nose respirator
that was just long enough to suggest an elephant's trunk. In his right
hand was a large blue-black automatic pistol.

       *       *       *       *       *

They turned their faces to him. Patrick's was abruptly alert, shifty.
But Effie's was still smiling tenderly, as if Hank could not break the
spell of the magic garden and should be pitied for not knowing about
it.

"You little--" Hank began with an almost gleeful fury, calling her
several shameful names. He spoke in short phrases, closing tight his
unmasked mouth between them while he sucked in breath through the
respirator. His voice rose in a crescendo. "And not with a man of the
community, but a pariah! _A pariah!_"

"I hardly know what you're thinking, man, but you're quite wrong,"
Patrick took the opportunity to put in hurriedly, conciliatingly. "I
just happened to be coming by hungry tonight, a lonely tramp, and
knocked at the window. Your wife was a bit foolish and let
kindheartedness get the better of prudence--"

"Don't think you've pulled the wool over my eyes, Effie," Hank went on
with a screechy laugh, disregarding the other man completely. "Don't
think I don't know why you're suddenly going to have a child after four
long years."

At that moment the cat came nosing up to his feet. Patrick watched him
narrowly, shifting his weight forward a little, but Hank only kicked the
animal aside without taking his eyes off them.

"Even that business of carrying the wristwatch in your pocket instead of
on your arm," he went on with channeled hysteria. "A neat bit of
camouflage, Effie. Very neat. And telling me it was my child, when all
the while you've been seeing him for months!"

"Man, you're mad; I've not touched her!" Patrick denied hotly though
still calculatingly, and risked a step forward, stopping when the gun
instantly swung his way.

"Pretending you were going to give me a healthy child," Hank raved on,
"when all the while you knew it would be--either in body or germ
plasm--a thing like _that_!"

He waved his gun at the malformed cat, which had leaped to the top of
the table and was eating the remains of Patrick's food, though its
watchful green eyes were fixed on Hank.

"I should shoot him down!" Hank yelled, between sobbing, chest-racking
inhalations through the mask. "I should kill him this instant for the
contaminated pariah he is!"

All this while Effie had not ceased to smile compassionately. Now she
stood up without haste and went to Patrick's side. Disregarding his
warning, apprehensive glance, she put her arm lightly around him and
faced her husband.

"Then you'd be killing the bringer of the best news we've ever had," she
said, and her voice was like a flood of some warm sweet liquor in that
musty, hate-charged room. "Oh, Hank, forget your silly, wrong jealousy
and listen to me. Patrick here has something wonderful to tell us."

       *       *       *       *       *

Hank stared at her. For once he screamed no reply. It was obvious that
he was seeing for the first time how beautiful she had become, and that
the realization jolted him terribly.

"What do you mean?" he finally asked unevenly, almost fearfully.

"I mean that we no longer need to fear the dust," she said, and now her
smile was radiant. "It never really did hurt people the way the doctors
said it would. Remember how it was with me, Hank, the exposure I had and
recovered from, although the doctors said I wouldn't at first--and
without even losing my hair? Hank, those who were brave enough to stay
outside, and who weren't killed by terror and suggestion and panic--they
adapted to the dust. They changed, but they changed for the better.
Everything--"

"Effie, he told you lies!" Hank interrupted, but still in that same
agitated, broken voice, cowed by her beauty.

"Everything that grew or moved was purified," she went on ringingly.
"You men going outside have never seen it, because you've never had eyes
for it. You've been blinded to beauty, to life itself. And now all the
power in the dust has gone and faded, anyway, burned itself out. That's
true, isn't it?"

She smiled at Patrick for confirmation. His face was strangely veiled,
as if he were calculating obscure changes. He might have given a little
nod; at any rate, Effie assumed that he did, for she turned back to her
husband.

"You see, Hank? We can all go out now. We need never fear the dust
again. Patrick is a living proof of that," she continued triumphantly,
standing straighter, holding him a little tighter. "Look at him. Not a
scar or a sign, and he's been out in the dust for years. How could he be
this way, if the dust hurt the brave? Oh, believe me, Hank! Believe what
you see. Test it if you want. Test Patrick here."

"Effie, you're all mixed up. You don't know--" Hank faltered, but
without conviction of any sort.

"Just test him," Effie repeated with utter confidence, ignoring--not
even noticing--Patrick's warning nudge.

"All right," Hank mumbled. He looked at the stranger dully. "Can you
count?" he asked.

Patrick's face was a complete enigma. Then he suddenly spoke, and his
voice was like a fencer's foil--light, bright, alert, constantly
playing, yet utterly on guard.

"Can I count? Do you take me for a complete simpleton, man? Of course I
can count!"

"Then count yourself," Hank said, barely indicating the table.

"Count myself, should I?" the other retorted with a quick facetious
laugh. "Is this a kindergarten? But if you want me to, I'm willing." His
voice was rapid. "I've two arms, and two legs, that's four. And ten
fingers and ten toes--you'll take my word for them?--that's twenty-four.
A head, twenty-five. And two eyes and a nose and a mouth--"

"With this, I mean," Hank said heavily, advanced to the table, picked up
the Geiger counter, switched it on, and handed it across the table to
the other man.

But while it was still an arm's length from Patrick, the clicks began to
mount furiously, until they were like the chatter of a pigmy machine
gun. Abruptly the clicks slowed, but that was only the counter shifting
to a new scaling circuit, in which each click stood for 512 of the old
ones.

       *       *       *       *       *

With those horrid, rattling little volleys, fear cascaded into the room
and filled it, smashing like so much colored glass all the bright
barriers of words Effie had raised against it. For no dreams can stand
against the Geiger counter, the Twentieth Century's mouthpiece of
ultimate truth. It was as if the dust and all the terrors of the dust
had incarnated themselves in one dread invading shape that said in words
stronger than audible speech, "Those were illusions, whistles in the
dark. This is reality, the dreary, pitiless reality of the Burrowing
Years."

Hank scuttled back to the wall. Through chattering teeth he babbled,
"... enough radioactives ... kill a thousand men ... freak ... a
freak ..." In his agitation he forgot for a moment to inhale through
the respirator.

Even Effie--taken off guard, all the fears that had been drilled into
her twanging like piano wires--shrank from the skeletal-seeming shape
beside her, held herself to it only by desperation.

Patrick did it for her. He disengaged her arm and stepped briskly away.
Then he whirled on them, smiling sardonically, and started to speak, but
instead looked with distaste at the chattering Geiger counter he held
between fingers and thumb.

"Have we listened to this racket long enough?" he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he put down the instrument on the table.
The cat hurried over to it curiously and the clicks began again to
mount in a minor crescendo. Effie lunged for it frantically, switched it
off, darted back.

"That's right," Patrick said with another chilling smile. "You do well
to cringe, for I'm death itself. Even in death I could kill you, like a
snake." And with that his voice took on the tones of a circus barker.
"Yes, I'm a freak, as the gentleman so wisely said. That's what one
doctor who dared talk with me for a minute told me before he kicked me
out. He couldn't tell me why, but somehow the dust doesn't kill me.
Because I'm a freak, you see, just like the men who ate nails and walked
on fire and ate arsenic and stuck themselves through with pins. Step
right up, ladies and gentlemen--only not too close!--and examine the man
the dust can't harm. Rappaccini's child, brought up to date; his
embrace, death!

"And now," he said, breathing heavily, "I'll get out and leave you in
your damned lead cave."

He started toward the window. Hank's gun followed him shakingly.

"Wait!" Effie called in an agonized voice. He obeyed. She continued
falteringly, "When we were together earlier, you didn't act as if ..."

"When we were together earlier, I wanted what I wanted," he snarled at
her. "You don't suppose I'm a bloody saint, do you?"

"And all the beautiful things you told me?"

"That," he said cruelly, "is just a line I've found that women fall for.
They're all so bored and so starved for beauty--as _they_ generally put
it."

"Even the garden?" Her question was barely audible through the sobs that
threatened to suffocate her.

He looked at her and perhaps his expression softened just a trifle.

"What's outside," he said flatly, "is just a little worse than either of
you can imagine." He tapped his temple. "The garden's all here."

"You've killed it," she wept. "You've killed it in me. You've both
killed everything that's beautiful. But you're worse," she screamed at
Patrick, "because he only killed beauty once, but you brought it to life
just so you could kill it again. Oh, I can't stand it! I won't stand
it!" And she began to scream.

Patrick started toward her, but she broke off and whirled away from him
to the window, her eyes crazy.

"You've been lying to us," she cried. "The garden's there. I know it is.
But you don't want to share it with anyone."

[Illustration]

"No, no, Euphemia," Patrick protested anxiously. "It's hell out there,
believe me. I wouldn't lie to you about it."

"Wouldn't lie to me!" she mocked. "Are you afraid, too?"

With a sudden pull, she jerked open the window and stood before the
blank green-tinged oblong of darkness that seemed to press into the room
like a menacing, heavy, wind-urged curtain.

At that Hank cried out a shocked, pleading, "Effie!"

She ignored him. "I can't be cooped up here any longer," she said. "And
I won't, now that I know. I'm going to the garden."

Both men sprang at her, but they were too late. She leaped lightly to
the sill, and by the time they had flung themselves against it, her
footsteps were already hurrying off into the darkness.

"Effie, come back! Come back!" Hank shouted after her desperately, no
longer thinking to cringe from the man beside him, or how the gun was
pointed. "I love you, Effie. Come back!"

Patrick added his voice. "Come back, Euphemia. You'll be safe if you
come back right away. Come back to your home."

No answer to that at all.

They both strained their eyes through the greenish murk. They could
barely make out a shadowy figure about half a block down the near-black
canyon of the dismal, dust-blown street, into which the greenish
moonlight hardly reached. It seemed to them that the figure was scooping
something up from the pavement and letting it sift down along its arms
and over its bosom.

"Go out and get her, man," Patrick urged the other. "For if I go out for
her, I warn you I won't bring her back. She said something about having
stood the dust better than most, and that's enough for me."

But Hank, chained by his painfully learned habits and by something else,
could not move.

And then a ghostly voice came whispering down the street, chanting,
"Fire can hurt me, or water, or the weight of Earth. But the dust is my
friend."

Patrick spared the other man one more look. Then, without a word, he
vaulted up and ran off.

Hank stood there. After perhaps a half minute he remembered to close his
mouth when he inhaled. Finally he was sure the street was empty. As he
started to close the window, there was a little _mew_.

He picked up the cat and gently put it outside. Then he did close the
window, and the shutters, and bolted them, and took up the Geiger
counter, and mechanically began to count himself.

                                                        --FRITZ LEIBER



Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ April 1952.
    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
    typographical errors have been corrected without note.





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