CHING WITCH!

Ross Rocklynne

 

The tintinabula was very ching that night, just before old Earth blew.

The dance appropriately enough was the ching-maya.

Captain Ratch Chug pin-wheeled, somewhere up there in the misty blue-green of the dance-globe. He threw his hip up in the crawfish modification of the dance which he himself had invented just last week in Rangoon, right in the middle of the war. To his own distaste, he heard his purr-engine wind up when the bundle of groomed pink flesh hanging onto his fingertips glowed her delight.

"You are ching," she squealed rather noisily into his pointy ear, "ching," but this was merely part of the dance and may not have been admiration at all. There is no question but that the slitted glitter of his eyes was a fascination to her, though, no less than the fabulous whiskery waxed mustache he wore in defiance of all the customs. "How ching," she hooted dreamily, free-falling against him from five feet up at the convulsive reechoing conclusion of the tintinabular construction. She would give him thirty seconds of her life lying here, and during this time he could say pretty much what he pleased.

"How's 'bout going off this planet with me?" was what Chug said, the air around him warbling and humming the last notes of that ching wappo.

"How far off this planet with you?" she pouted, calculating, using the final echoes of uranium-borrowed music to ride the question in. "Just how far would you say, old man of space? How far?" That was ten seconds right there!

"Ten light years, no less."

Chug was startled. Something had started screaming at him, inside him.

"To Zephyrus!" he cried.

Then he caught himself. He crooned, enticing, "Voyage with me to the god of the south!"

His runty thick brown fingers, curved of claw, tightened around her naked pink shoulders so that her eyes smiled and her pouty sweet lips writhed.

"What's the tear drops for, man of space? What are they, tears for me, 'cause you know I ain't going with you? You got the face of a crazy. This dance is over. You used your thirty. I go find another man."

"You ain't got time to find another man," he moaned, letting the tears squeeze out. "They pulled that lever! The war's gonna be over! Earth's gonna blow! I'm getting off!

"You got to go with me, young pink thing. I ain't no human, you know, one-fifth of me ain't, and there ain't nobody like me on Earth, and that's the reason I know! Coming with me? How's about it, you gonna keep that pink skin? You won't regret it. I'm nice, you'll like me, and there ain't no time for me to find another squud. Give up!"

But no approach would work. She slid away still pink, and he watched her float in the reduced field toward a group of watching couples, who smiled at what seemed a familiar scene. Chug pulled his shiny black and green 2nd Repellor Corps uniform jacket down around his trim hips, and kicked himself smartly by habit toward the floating bar.

Lights glinted in racing rippling patterns off glasses and goblets as the bar whirled around him in an improvised dance-step which enticed the numb Captain Ratch Chug into an allemande left. He stopped that, and ordered two drinks. The tomatoed bartender paid him, but Chug left the cards hanging, and drank fast. Then he began to cry in earnest, his thin pocked brown face worked, and his teeth began chattering; and his nose twitched as the ends of his whiskery mustache vibrated. He left the great room, and went toward the spaceport about three miles up.

 

"I'm gonna be dancing and watching Earth in the mirror when she blows," vowed Chug, staring at his swollen eyes and vexed lips. "When the first alphas and gammas hit, I'm gonna be doing a Hopi rain jig. Or the Lambeth Walk. Maybe the Bunny Hop! That's what I think of you, ol' Earth. So give me another drink."

He had reduced his speed to just below a light. His fast track from Earth was a dotted line as the ship sewed itself in and out of space. Earthlight soon would catch up with him. He drank the drinks the tomatoed equipment dutifully prepared. Wowie, he thought, dreaming. That ching-maya was a wappo! But how about the Irish Lilt? Particularly when you got a tomato knows how to manufacture good Irish whipskey—let's try again, ol' man of space, Irich whiskey. About that time, he saw old Earth blow. Captain Ratch Chug, late of the late 2nd Repellor Corps, saw it blow in the pick-up mirror. He cried horribly, in spite of the fact he didn't give a damn. Also, he didn't dance. And he told the tomato to quit making those stupid drinks. And he turned off the mirror, thinking of the young pink thing.

She wasn't very pink.

Her fault.

Captain Ratch Chug made a correction in his flight to Zephyrus, setting his effective speed at one and one-half times the speed of light, this being commensurate with his fuel supply.

Chug would arrive on Zephyrus how many years before the wave-front of fractured light arrived from Earth? Interesting question.

Just before he went into his long sleep, Chug lay weeping alcoholically on his pallet. Suddenly he shouted at the winding tubes of freezing gel advancing toward him, "What the hell! There's other planets, and other women to play with! And that's what I'm gonna be doing a good long time before I break the news to them Zephrans. I tell you, this is a sad business. I feel like hell!"

 

Zephyrus was named after the gentle and lovable god of the south wind, because it was the only human-populated planet south of the ecliptic plane.

Earth was on the outs with Zephyrus—had been for one hundred and three years. No Earth ship climbing the thready beams of space had pulled itself to Zephyrus in all that time. Furthermore, Earth had disrupted its communicator systems, making it a radio-hole in the sky so far as Zephyrus was concerned, and had departed with all its high-speed ships and the secrets of manufacturing same. Zephyrus was isolated!

Why was this? Simple. Make up all the fancy political and socio-economic reasons you want to, it all boils down to the prime fact that Earth people, every man, woman, and child of them, were mean, sneaky, commercial, undernourished and puny, and pleasure-loving. Not fun-loving—pleasure-loving. The Zephrans were noble, generous, tall, godly, and worshipful of the Mother Planet. Naturally they were an affront to the worthless, degraded Earthlings, so the Earthlings snubbed them out of practical existence. This was not a kind thing to do, but that was old Earth for you.

The sight of an Earth ship coming to the Zephran skies woke up the whole planet. It was as if every person on that planet bloomed, turning his petals toward the vast surprise. Not that they were flower-people, don't get me wrong; they were as human as you or I—or as human as we used to be; (but that's another story.)

"Hail Zephrans," said Chug weakly as the last remnants of the preserving gel slid away. "I bring you greetings from the home planet. As the solely constituted representative of Earth—" But he hadn't meant to say that. He was still drunk, his alcoholic state having been preserved intact by the process. He arose staggering.

A pleasant voice now said: "We hear you, Earthman. We'll get your ship docked in—oh, say an hour; so why not lie down again and sleep it off?"

"What?"

Chug felt his back arching.

He felt curling sensations in his fingernails.

"Look," he said. "Whoever you—"

"You're drunk, son," interrupted the pleasant voice. "But that's all right. That's just between you and me. And we aren't going to tell anybody, are we? Of course not, old chap, old buddy."

"Whyn't you talk English!" Chug spat. "You got a hell of a accent." He weaved under the bright lights in his cabin filled with a ghastly surprise. First, there was that arching of his spine, and the feeling of claws on the ends of his fingers. He'd overcome that! He had, had! But now it was back, the first time somebody caught him at a disadvantage. Second, here was this supposedly worshipful Zephran, who wasn't worshipful at all, but was blowing a distinct north wind.

"You ain't no Zephran!"

"But also I ain't no Earthling," the other said. "Please listen, my dear man. I'm entrusted with the task of bringing your ship in. It is not my purpose to spoil your little game."

"WHAT GAME? What the hell game you talking about?" There it was again—and Chug almost wept—the feeling of long eye-teeth, of lips drawn back; damn damn damn.

"Oh my." The other sighed and rolled his eyes; it was a gesture that had to be there. "Look, son. Do it my way. Get yourself sobered up and cleaned up. Look smart! Back straight! Shoes shined! Hup!"

"Oh-h-h-h-h," groaned Chug, sagging to a seat droop-shouldered.

"Be not alarmed, dear boy. Zephran society is eagerly awaiting you. My, what a treasure you will be to the worshipful elders and teeming teenagers of Zephyrus who even now are assembling to welcome you!

"One hour."

The blankness following this gave ample indication that communication had been cut off.

 

One hundred top-ranking Zephrans variously stood or sat in the great auditorium of the floating winged palace of the mayor of the city of Matchley. Chug, having been transported in style from his ship on, naturally, a winged green horse, stood facing them. Thin television screens, also equipped with wings, dipped and dived by the hundreds through the air and each screen was packed with intent teenage faces.

Captain Ratch Chug, late of the 2nd Repellor Corps, was a triumph! He looked splendid. Where else in the universe could you find anybody wearing a uniform these days, and particularly a uniform edged and pinked in gold and red, and with moppish epaulets that as they swung seemed to beat out a martial air? Nowhere but on someone from Earth, because that was the only place anybody had wars.

Chug was striking a pose. Something was humming away inside him, the product of a vast, anticipatory content. He stood gracefully with one polished boot stiffly ahead of the other one. He twirled and twirled his dandy whiskery waxed mustache. His eyes glittered and appraised and swept the murmuring crowds of notables, as well as the clouds of bewinged thin television screens bursting with the excited faces of worshiping Zephran teenagers. He felt fine for now, having overcome for the moment his terrible grief over the blow-up of Mother Earth, and he was determined to bask in the glowing worship these Zephrans radiated.

He already had been asked some questions, all about Earth.

"Wars? Wars? Nope, ain't no more wars on Earth," Chug answered truthfully.

"This is splendid," he was told.

(Everybody on the planet was listening to this conversation, except that it was the gort season, and therefore a hundred thousand Zephrans were out hunting gorts. These gorts—however, that is not a part of this story.)

"What can you tell us in general terms about the possible future relations of Earth and Zephyrus?"

"The relations will be the very best," Chug assured them. Ya damn betcha: No Earth.

"Is it perhaps true that you, acting for Earth, will return to us the secret of faster-than-light ships?"

A question to flutter the heart. Avowed Chug, crossing a finger, "I aim to give it to ya!"

"Is it perhaps true that our ships will then be allowed in Earth's skies?"

"Better not make it for a couple Zephran years!" Chug said, hastily computing. "And approach kinda slow in case there's some kind of—er—flare-up!"

"Then our age-old offense against the Mother World has been forgiven?"

"Ain't nobody holding a thing against ya!"

His questioner, an elderly and most handsome man who was in the position of mayor of the welcoming city of Matchley, said apologetically, "If you will speak more slowly. The refinements of the mother tongue have been lost to us."

While he talked, while he equivocated, the contented purring in Chug stopped. In fact, his purr-engine had been running down for some time. Because there was someone in this room who made his fur—what the hell!—who made his skin crawl. He knew who it was: the non-Zephran who had brought his ship in and who had made unkind remarks that no Zephran would make to a worshiped Earthling. Where was he, who was he?

In that crowd of worshiping faces, Chug had no idea.

If he could just find somebody who wasn't worshiping him.

Just then a small warm hand slipped into Chug's hand. Startled at first, he looked down into the peachiest face he had ever seen; peachy and creamy and plump all the way down to its pink toes. "Why, hullo!" said Chug, showing his delight at this intrusion by instantly clicking around facing her, and giving her all the attention he had given the officials crowding the room. "I am delighted!" he said for emphasis. It never failed! Here he was, crowding forty, and a bachelor, and this eighteen-year-old knew what he was: she knew!

"Hi hi," she said. "Ips!"

"Ips!" said Chug.

"Rightly. What we want to know, we, the teeming teenagers of our worshiping planet, what we want to know is, what does it on Earth?"

"What—uh—does it?"

"Yah. Flickly. What's the WORD?"

"The word," said Chug. "Hah! The WORD!?? Ah." Out of his intuition, he desperately selected the answer. "Ching—that's the word!"

"Ching!" she screamed on sudden tip-toe, then clapping her hand over her mouth. "Halla-hoo! I'm sorry!" she said to the assembled officials who nonetheless watched her and listened to her with what seemed a supreme indulgence. She raised her voice again, however, and she had one of those healthy, tingly, musical female voices that could knock over fences.

"Hah, all witches," she shouted. "Ching's the WORD! That's what does it!"

The bewinged television screens flipped and sailed and a myriad thin screams sounded.

Chug realized she must be getting her message across to all the teenagers on the planet; (except those who might be out hunting gorts).

"This is miraculous," she said, still snuggling her warm hand in his. "You've come all the way from Earth to give us the WORD. Already ching is the big thing. I myself am already a ching-witch, if you follow. My name is Alise."

"And my name is Humpty Dumpty."

"Break a leg," she acknowledged. "By any chance, Sir Chug, would you happen to know, uh, just one Earth dance?"

"Just one? I ain't no peanut-vender, girl! Watch this!" Chug's legs moved in entrechat and cabriole, his feet and knees jiggered, and his arms were all over, finally clapping his hips. "See that? Up in the air and down on the ground, all in one breath." She became very faint at this. Her eyes crossed. Chug took the opportunity to try to settle a nagging fear. He turned smartly to his host, the mayor of Matchley.

"As you can see, sir," he began, "I ain't up on the pecking order in this situation. Here are you gentlemen, and here's this very ching young lady, really a credit to the teeming teenagers of Zephyrus—"

"There is really no difficulty, here," he was assured. "Our teenagers are alert, kind, and intelligent, and outnumber us. Ips!"

"Ips," said Chug, and was fascinated by the chorus of "ips" that ran around the room. Moreover, the mayor of Matchley's feet were tapping, and his eyes were bright and glistening as if in anticipation, or some other emotion Chug failed to recognize. Chug's own feet were tingling. His fingers were feeling a little snappy. Zephyrus, what a place. "Mr. Mayor," he hummed, "you people were ching before I ever got here. And I'm glad of that, I'm glad of that."

"He's glad of that, he's glad of that," hummed Alise, by this time standing very close and examining his chest medals.

"And I want to thank you, yes, all of you, indeed I do, before I demonstrate, before I do, a few of the more popular dance numbers they used to have—well, that they got on Earth. But in particular I would like to thank the wappo gentleman who brought my ship to dock."

"Wappo," mused Alise warmly. "Wappo!" Her index finger shot up into the air.

"And I would like to thank him personal," amended Chug, tapping his foot unconsciously to some hot music suddenly coming from somewhere!

Chug's host nodded somewhat dubiously, and spoke to an aide; who moved a few steps to another aide, who then spoke to his aide, who disappeared through a door. A minute later another aide hurried back into the room, and spoke hurriedly to the mayor, who then began to turn very red. The elements of the small comic opera did not escape Chug.

What the hell! he thought, astonished. They run questions around in circles. Nobody knows nothing. "Your pardon, sir," he said out loud while he felt his fingers snapping uncontrollably in his head, "it don't matter right now, not when we got to show this here young miss some of the vital folk dances of old Earth. But—"

"You see," the mayor of Matchley said, wiping his face, "nobody seems to know who was on the landing board at that hour. Now on a civilized planet like Earth, tomatoed equipment would have brought your craft in, but here on Zephyrus we still work—sometimes as much as an hour a day. It's possible that some records have been kept, and that the man or woman who brought you in—"

"A man!" said Chug. "A man's voice!"

"Well, perhaps not, Sir Chug, if you'll pardon me. You see, the voder is usually programmed in the masculine range—"

Chug felt giddy. Of a sudden his population of possible enemies was doubled. Somebody who was very knowledgeable knew things about him. How much did that person know? Maybe old Chug better give up and give them the bad news. About Earth. About there ain't no Earth, kiddies, there ain't no ching dances, there ain't no Earth left to forgive you! Then what becomes of old Chug? Old Chug—a dried-out piece of Earth dung, that's what! He almost wept at the thought.

But the way things were—ah!

He snapped his fingers and twittered his feet to the beat of the invisible music that ching-witch Alise turned on.

The way things were, he was a hot-shot and duly constituted representative of Earth's billions. Let it be.

"Let it be," he told his charmed audience who were watching his twittering feet and quite forgetting that they were notables greeting the duly constituted representative of Earth's billions. "Let it be," said Chug, becoming motionless in a slight crouch. "That's the name of the newest hot-shot dance on old Earth. You don't do nothing! You do all your dancing with your thinking, and your thinking moves your muscles around inside 'til you think you're gonna tear apart.

"The tintinabula is tearing the air apart meanwhile, and then we come to the last eight bars, and that's when we can let go. We're wound up like springs, and we go flying up in the air, if the anti-gravs are on, pin-wheeling and gyring and gimbaling in the wabe.

"And then there's the ching-honey-cha-cha."

"Ching-honey-cha-cha!" screamed Alise, clapping her hand to her mouth. "Halla-hoo! I'm sorry!" she said to everybody.

"The ching-honey-cha-cha goes like this," said Chug, calling it out in rhythm. "Begging your pardon, Your Honor."

"Ips, ips," protested His Honor the mayor. "We quite understand." He pressed back, creating a space.

"Come on in, young pink thing," droned Chug, snapping his fingers. "Watch my feet. You come on in now."

Alise came in. That girl knew what she was doing. She and old Chug danced for the whole planet, except for the gort-hunters. Alise came in and knew what she was doing. Those feet with the peachy pink toes had been around.

Alise was under his ching, giggling, her thready red hair scalloped in front to the unexpected shape of two devil's horns.

"Sir Chug, you got the pointiest ears!"

That was unsettling.

"Not that pointy," said Chug, growling. "You watch your language, miss."

"Pointy!" giggled Alise. "Like a cat!"

"I got claws, too, if you wanna know. And you're gonna get scratched!"

"I've been scratched before, mister! You got sharper claws?"

So that was the way it was gonna be.

 

That was the way it was with Sir Captain Ratch Chug and the ching-witch Alise.

Alise was a witch, besides being very ching, and you could well believe it if you had seen them nights taking off on degravitized brooms whizzing through the sky to their rendezvous with ching teenagers who wore faddy black peaked hats and twirled sorcerers' mustachios. Sir Captain Ratch Chug, sallow and pocked of face, runty and stunted, mean and sneaky to the core, was a fair representative of the glory of old Earth. The Zephran kids in no time at all reflected this significant collision with another and superior culture by wearing smart uniforms, sporting pointy ears, and looking sallow.

"I'm gonna crash!" moaned Chug early in his Zephran career steering his broom one night over the spitting sparkling lights of Puckley, a fun-city run by teenagers. "We're gravving down too fast!"

"All the extra lives you got," the whizzing Alise informed him, "you don't have to worry!"

"What!" gasped Chug. "Who's got extra lives?"

"You have, else you wouldn't purr afterwards! Halla-hoo," cried the whizzing Alise to the packed teenagers on the roof below as she upended and landed with Chug safe behind her. "Hah, all witches! Tonight Sir Captain Ratch Chug of the worshiped Mother World brings us the California Schottishe! The Badger Gavotte! The Patty Cake Polka! The Ching-adaidy-do! Position, varsouvienne!"

"I don't know no Badger Gavotte," snarled Chug in her peachy pink ear. "How come you know what I don't know half the time?"

"I know," said Alise, bobbing her hairy horns wisely, "I read it in a book in a place I happen to know name of Flora," as the worshipful Zephran kids swarmed around and the 4/4 beat took over.

So that was the way it was, until hyacinthus-time.

 

Hyacinthus-time, however, was of the future, and Chug was by his nature very much of the present.

A lot could be said about the life of Sir Captain Ratch Chug on the planet Zephyrus. He was the sensation of the season and the season after that, and then the one after that. What he did was to sustain a pitch, and just before it broke bring in some drums; and then he wouldn't let those drums get quite off the ground until he was manufacturing new sounds. In fact, he did help some music technicians build a tintinabula (translates random atomic motion into orchestrated sound) just so he could dance the ching-maya. Those split sounds drove the Zephran kids wild.

"All is illusion," Chug told the Zephran kids. "That's what the ching-maya and the tintinabula are telling you. You don't really hear that music, you don't really do them steps. The sound is just split up to sound in your head, and what you think is motion is just repetitive creation."

"All hail Chug the guru!" cried the sometimes too-spirited Alise.

Chug lived in a palace, a floating palace, with big golden eagle wings that flapped him around the planet. Quite a sight. Of course, the flapping wings were illusion too, because anti-gravs were built into the wings and everytime they flapped they nullified gravity in certain directions so that he went where he wanted to or up or down.

He was down most of the time, sampling the wild social life of the planet. But he was up much of the time too, receiving visitors, all of whom worshiped him. He had thirty rooms to receive people in, rooms thick with the green and yellow furs of gorts on floors and walls, and with big roomy couches, and pillows of soft eider in every corner, and numerous mirrors which caught slanting beams of soft and sometimes whirling light proceeding out of mysterious alcoves set into the ceilings and walls. Here and there were pools with fountains where fish swam, and cages where canaries flew, and goldfish bowls. Truly, Chug's palace was a place to relax in. And Chug, when he wasn't out bringing Earth culture to Zephyrus, or conferring with historians, or fending off some of the delicately probing inquiries of Zephran scientists, usually could be found relaxing, his purr-engine revved up, sunk into a couch surrounded by pillows, or in bed with eyes half-closed, listening for the soundless approach of a servant announcing visitors. Ah, Chug was happy happy happy. This was what he had been looking for all his life.

Only sour note was that non-Zephran, whoever he-she was, who knew all about him.

Ugh! Better forget that.

Until Earth's wave-front of tell-tale light caught up with him and wrote across the sky for all to see:

LIAR!

And so, at last, came hyacinthus-time.

 

"You're such a fibber," said Alise, peachier than ever and two Zephran years (equal to one Earth year) older. "Last night you was out prowling—catting around, as it were; and you told me you was having a interview with the scientist fellas. That's all right."

"Well," said Chug. "Come here."

"Thank you," said Alise.

Indeed he had been out prowling and catting around but it had been with the scientist fellas themselves after an exhausting interview. They went into a whiz-bar where the worshipful Zephrans fought to buy him drinks. What with the drinks and the fact that the whiz-bar actually was whizzing through the air with fascinating changes of liquor-sloshing grav-speed Chug almost offered to take them for a ride in his faster-than-light space-ship!

He groaned to think about it.

"Then what happened?" asked Alise, delightfully pulling at his whiskery mustache. "What happened after you said you wouldn't?"

"Nothing happened!"

Except somebody ordered drinks from the tomato and everybody in the bar crowded around toasting Chug, the revered man from the Mother World.

"What kind of a drink?"

"A Blue Hyacinth."

"To Sir Captain Ratch Chug!" the worshipful Zephrans cried, hoisting the drinks high, and after that the revellers worshipfully helped Chug back to his sky-high home, and flew for a while outside his door chanting a drunken song which went, "AI! AI! AI!"

"Flickly," said Alise, "I never heard of no song like that, and I never heard of no drink like that! Tomorrow night at the Skitterly festival we'll order Blue Hyacinths and find somebody that knows AI! AI! AI!"

"No!" said Chug, stiffening. "Look, girl, I do the ordering and I do the singing. I don't want no Blue Hyacinth and I don't want no song that goes AI! AI! AI!"

"Why not?" asked Alise. "What's wrong with a Blue Hyacinthus?" she asked, mispronouncing. "What's wrong with a song goes AI! AI! AI!" she asked, crooning into his pointy ear so it sounded like a Greek lament.

 

Hyacinthus! Hyacinthus! Hyacinthus! Very nearly inaudible, the name beat against Chug's micro-consciousness with the chat-a-chat flutter of tiny wings.

Then he awoke one morning and things were very bad.

Hyacinthus!

He was feeling it. Something wrong, not like before old Earth blew, but something different. Like music, old music, thinly off in the distance, calling him awake like a broken bugle. Like the old days, when the screamers were coming!

Here he was, safe, high above the city in his floating flying palace, halfway out of his lovely dreams, and something was terribly wrong.

"Hi hi, Old Hump," said Alise, sitting with a thump on his bed with its golden coverlets while he opened a slitted eye.

"You used to call me Sir Chug," said Chug. "Now you call me Old Hump. What you got there?"

"I brung you a present," said Alise, who prided herself on having learned the new lingua Ge which Chug brought to this planet almost three Earth years ago. "It's that bowl of goldfish you was admiring in the shop in Stickley last weeklette when we was on that party where you taught us worshipful Zephrans the Charleston."

"The Charleston? That wasn't supposed to be for six months," he groaned out loud, sitting up. "I was drunk! I'm gonna run out of dances!"

"You know lots of dances." Alise patted her red hairy horns and turned a mirror on to view herself in. "What about the Jarabe Tapatio? That's the Mexican Hat dance."

"I know! But how do you know?"

"I read it in a book, up on a planet I know named Flora."

"Flora! Ain't no planet named Flora!"

"It's a kind of invisible planet which I just happen to know. Then there's the Chug Step. Kinda pushy."

He glared.

"Then," she went on, one-half an eye on him, "there's a waltz they had in a place they used to call Denmark called Little Man In A Fix."

"WHAT?"

Here was this girl, this peachy, creamy girl, this adored, lovely, once-in-a-lifetime girl, needling and prodding him. He was certain of it. She knew things about him! She was the one who brought his ship in! It couldn't be; no, no!

"How's about some square dances?" she asked brightly. "There's one called Somebody Goofed!

"How's about Birdie In A Cage?" She chanted, talking it up,

 

"Up and down and around and around
Allemande left and allemande aye
Ingo, Bingo, six penny high,
Big cat little cat
Root hog or DIE!
 

"Besides," she said, catching one of his astounded eyes in the mirror, "do you have six months?"

"Do I have six months," Chug croaked from a dry throat.

The tiny wings were the pinions of bats, flapping in the caverns of his intuition. Hyacinthus, they flapped, before he was able to close off the hideous sound.

"Whaddya mean, do I have six months?" he snarled, swinging out of bed in his silken glitter of mandarin pajamas. Then in fright he squeezed the thought back. HYACINTHUS!!

"And whaddya mean, giving me goldfish for a present?" he gasped. "I'm onto you, girl. You're after me. You always have been!

"Here I am, the most respected man on the planet. I'm a goldmine of information about the Mother World. Savants have written books about me. I'm important. Big. Beloved. I've changed the cultural life of the teeming teenagers of Zephyrus. Given 'em fads, whooped 'em up, taught 'em jitterbugging—"

She was under his chin and pressing his nose in with a curved forefinger. She cooed, "I know. You're a cool cat."

"And whaddya give me?" he raved. "Goldfish!"

"But you like goldfish!"

"Only to look at!"

"That's what I brung 'em for, to look at. What else do you do with 'em?"

"Eat 'em!" snarled Chug. "Like I'm gonna eat you one of these days!"

She giggled. "You are a cat," she said. "I knowed that when I first seen you. They took your mom and dad's chromosomes and tweezered in some cat genes, now didn't they? You come out of a laboratory, Old Hump. You come out mewing and spitting and clawing. Then they passed a law because they didn't want any more human cats.

"You're a cat, Old Hump. And that's the reason you always land on your feet!"

Old Chug was on his feet and stalking and circling and spitting and pulling frustratedly at the long hairs of his dandy, waxed, whiskery mustache.

"You're a little bit telepathic?" he inquired.

"A little bit," she admitted. "Like you! Flickly, you know when there's trouble ahead—like now.

"Wanna meet my father?"

"I guess I better," said Chug trailing stupidly after her through the thirty rooms of his cushion-strewn furry-rugged palace with its whispering tinkling fountains and its shiny gold canary cages where he had lived his dream of purring contentment when he had been able to stop thinking of that demon wave-front of shattered Earth's light catching up with him! Now! soon!—it would all explode out of time, like the plaint of a brook, like the juice of a leaf!

Soon Alise was lashing her horse-and-buggy across the sunny skies of Zephyrus. Every time those anti-grav hooves kicked at the air the buggy shot ahead. "Gee!" cried Alise, hanging onto the reins. "Haw!" she said, and "Haw!" again for a left U-turn, and finally, "Whoa!" The motors quieted down.

Alise's father had horns growing out of his head.

"They aren't real horns," the slim father confessed shyly, taking off his headpiece and hanging it on an air-peg where it bobbed fitfully. "My real ones were sawed off when they sent us from Flora to study the cultural life of Zephyrus."

"Flora was nowhere," said Alise helpfully, standing close to Chug and stroking his arm. "We didn't have nothing to do. Nothing. We come here, flickly, to bring back some dances and some fads and wild things. And guess what, Old Hump? We found you! Wasn't we lucky?"

Chug was sweating, gazing upon these two who gazed back upon him benignly and pleasantly and most alarmingly. He attempted to move away from Alise and her stroking hand.

"Aw," she said, her peachy pink lips drooping. Chug sat weakly down, his head throbbing. Now he was really feeling it, the terrible thing that had gone wrong with his world. "Flora," he muttered.

"Yes," said the father in his shy manner. "Flora, wife of Zephyrus, but divorced for some time, as it were. We keep our planet shielded from the Zephrans, invisible to them, one might say, to keep them from destroying us."

Chug's head came up. "Zephrans? Destroy you?"

"Oh, yes," said Alise, happily placing herself on Chug's knee and diddling her fingers under his ear. "The Zephrans would tear us apart like that if they knew we were on their planet. So we had to saw off our horns.

"Oh, yes. We grow horns. Something about the climate, I'm sure."

Chug looked askance at the beauteous head and then shuddered his glance away. "The Zephrans are noble, gentle, tall, courteous and godly. They wouldn't hurt anybody!"

Both Alise and her father laughed gently.

"Hyacinthus," said the father, removing his headpiece from the air-peg and placing it back on his head and then turning on a mirror while he fitted it. "Surely you remember the Greek god Zephyrus who was jealous of Hyacinthus and caused his death. Zephrans think of Earth as Hyacinthus."

Chug was ill. He looked past Alise into the mirror, where he saw the horned man who suddenly looked very sinister. "You're him," cried Chug hysterically, all his accumulated fears centered on this apparition. "The one who brung me in." He leaped up as if to flee a terrible danger, but caught Alise so she wouldn't fall and stood trembling.

"Yes," said the father, nodding, and smiling inwardly as if at himself. "You'll forgive me my rudeness, but it was necessary to sharpen you up so you could put on a convincing show."

"WHAT show?" Chug cried.

"Oh," said the father, flinching. "That again."

Alise snuggled against the mandarin pajamas Chug still wore. She said dreamily, "We knew all about you, but it didn't matter. You were what we were looking for, so we tested you. Here on Zephyrus. But it's time to go now. To Flora. You'll probably grow horns. You understand, Hyacinthus?"

"Don't call me Hyacinthus!" Chug pushed her away, spitting his fury. His hair again felt as if it were standing up like fur, and again he could feel retractile muscles pulling at his fingernails. He crouched and arched his back and lashed out a paw at the smiling peachy pink girl.

"Zephrans ain't gonna kill me!" he said. "Zephrans worship me!"

"Their worship was a barrier to keep you from penetrating to their hate. You were too quick to drink the Blue Hyacinth," said the father, now seeming not quite so shy.

His finger ran sharply through the air and the mirror in which he ostensibly was admiring himself turned into a television screen.

"All over the planet the word has gone out," he said. "Hyacinthus, they are screaming, Hyacinthus!"

Chug could not believe eyes or ears. He was looking at his floating palace with its lazy golden eagle wings. It was surrounded by winged cars, and the cars were full of worshipful Zephrans.

They were not too worshipful.

"Hyacinthus!" they were screaming. Weapons in their hands were discharging projectiles and rays at the floating palace. "Hyacinthus!" the terrible screaming came. Chug's palace was coming down.

Tears were in Chug's eyes. Sympathetically Alise petted the back of his head.

"They've been hating us for a long time," she said, "but they've been hating Earth longer! They've been out into space, Old Hump. While you were entertaining us worshipful teenagers and making things really ching, they were stealing the faster-than-light secret from your ship. They've seen Earth explode at last—only about six months from here. They know you've been fooling them. They know they don't have to be afraid of Earth anymore.

"We're going back to Flora, Old Hump. The teeming teenagers of Flora need fads, dances, and songs and a tintinabula or two. Everybody will love you. You can come and go as you please. Stay out at night and yowl, as it were. Ips."

"Ips," said Chug weakly. He was drained, watching the destruction of his august mansion of the air. Then he could watch no longer. The doom he had closed out of his mind for so long at last was upon him. His purr-engine seemed dead, Earth was gone, and what was left? Strangely enough, plenty and everything. Almost as fast as old Chug reached bottom, he started back up. Uncomplicated by worry and fear, a new destiny beckoned.

Already he was beginning to hum again. Already, the dread moment of betrayal from the hateful Zephrans was being put behind him. He opened an eye, sadly, to watch the burning eagle wings.

Moreover, maybe that witch Alise at last saw in him a person of talents and importance.

He hoped.

"You'll go with us?" cried Alise, steepling her hands entreatingly under his nose.

"Let it be," sighed Chug blackly as his palace crashed.

"Let it be," cried Alise, whirling into an excited pirouette and fouette, then flinging herself into old Chug's arms for an ecstatic sashay. "You'll love your new home, Old Hump. You'll be warm and cozy, and we'll take care of you—"

Chug preened a bit, but dour experience flashed signals. "You mean," he inquired suspiciously, "you're gonna take me to Flora like some blue-ribbon, prize-winning cat?"

"Halla-hoo!" cried Alise wide-eyed. "We wasn't thinking of no prize-winning cat! What we had in mind was, more like a house-pet!"

(So that was the way it was gonna be.)

 

Afterword

Haight-Ashbury, 1966. I visited there for 10 days in November of that year, staying in a semi-hippie type apartment run by my two sons and one other. One son worked, the other went to school at San Francisco State, and the other boy worked at night and tried to sleep during the day. Bodies came and went at all hours. There was a stereo. The cow-moo voice of Bob Dylan blew on the wind; and Joan Baez guitared. After the first shock, I appreciated both of them and do. There was also Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, played quiet. There was food eaten by anybody and provided by anybody. Disarray in kitchen and bedroom was the rule; suddenly someone would clean up the joint. Pot there was not (that I knew). The older son handed me a stack of Marvel comics and remarked, incredibly, that Stan Lee and what he was saying was part of the religion of the Berkeley/Haight-Ashbury scene. I was entranced with The Hulk, with Prince Namor of Atlantis, with The Fantastic Four, with Doctor Strange, the Mighty Thor, and others. I lay on the bed face close to the floor and read and glutted myself in leisure.

On the first day, a Sunday, that I was there, I walked with sons and their friends drinking beer down to the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park where a love-in was in progress. The flower children were beginning now. Girls with painted faces and bare soiled feet. Naked-to-the-waist painted men gyrating in dances to strange Eastern instruments. Paints, brushes, and frames with paper thumb-tacked on them were there for those who wanted to express themselves artistically. A rock band tore the air. Couples danced, roiled, sprawled. Older people, very cubic like me, looked on. Children ran, screamed, danced, sang, automatically knew what their thing was: anybody over ten had to think it out.

On the second day, the older son hesitantly asked if I minded riding pillion on the motorcycle. "It's the only transportation we've got." I did mind. As the motorcycle started off, me tethered behind, it made a sound which went "ratch-chug." My son explained, his voice blowin' back in the wind, "The kind of sound you can expect from our machine-oriented culture." We chugged on down Cole St., past the psychedelic shops and the little food shops and ice-cream shops run by young people with humble shoulders and Indian head-dress, young and older girls smiling hopefully that love had come to stay, not knowing that the cycle would swing as it does with all things—but that's another story.

The next day, having plenty of time, and having chased a tomcat off the back porch where it was stealing the little cat's food, I sat down with a typewriter and some paper and without too much trouble wrote ten silly pages. My older son read the pages, and jolted me with, Did I get my inspiration from the Marvel Comics? "Not that I know of," I replied. Younger son said, "You going back to writing, Dad? Maybe you should finish this one." I told him I definitely would finish it . . .someday; that was a promise.

The above indicates how the elements of the story may have fused together. The story is not supposed to have any theme, or any significance, nor does it seem to attempt to solve any social problems. I tried not to make it timely.

The story was finished up, and rewritten a bit for Again, Dangerous Visions, but it was not the story I started to write. That story dealt with a priest who scoffed at the idea of light-speed being the limiting velocity in our universe, and with God's help got to Alpha Centauri in no time at all. The difficulties in this theme became enormous, and I turned to the almost forgotten ten pages turned out in a lost San Francisco world. To Keith and Jeff, here 'tis.