A Specter Is Haunting Texas Read online

  A SPECTER IS HAUNTING TEXAS

  FRITZ LEIBER

  GALAXY, July 1968

  Illustrated by Gaughan

  Part 1 of 3

  Scully found a pliant, 8-foot-2 maid in Dallas Texas, Texas.

  She cast him as a Circumluanr Skeleton in a play of politics gone mad!

  Table of Contents

  |P1 |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |P2 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |P3 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17|

  - I -

  TERRIBLE TERRA

  “Son, you look like a Texan what got the hormone, but been starved since birth. Like your Ma, Lyndon bless her, lifted a leg and dropped you into a big black bag, and after you nothing but a crust and mini-carton of milk once a month.”

  “True enough, noble sir. I was raised in the Sack and I am a Thin,” I answered the Portly Giant in a voice like distant thunder, which almost made me wet my tights, because up until this moment of my life I had been a high baritone.

  My senses told me I was whirling at a punishing six lunagravs in a large cubical centrifuge. In fact, I could see the spinning and feel it in my inner ears until my senses gradually adjusted. On the same surface as I, were two giants and a giantess in cowboy costumes and also three barefoot, hunchbacked, swarthy dwarfs in dirty shirts and pants. They were all poised expertly on their feet, riding the centrifuge with elan. While under my black hood and cloak I was doubled up like a large bone-and-titanium lazy-tongs, trying to make the left knee-motor of my exoakeleton behave — it either hunted wildly or wouldn’t respond at all to the myoelectric impulses from the ghost-muscles of my left leg.

  I realized that the Portly Giant must have seen me without my cloak, which now might be hiding an erect short Fat as readily as a folded tall Thin.

  I was hazy about how I’d debarked from the Tsiolkovsky. When the Longhairs dope you to take accelerations of 24 lungravs, they don’t use aspirin. Even when you’re sandwiched between water mattresses.

  But I knew that outside the centrifuge lay the spaceport aod city of Yellowknife, Canada, Terra.

  The centrifuge’s two ends and two adjoining sides (but which were which?) were covered with a child-simple mural of huge chalk-white cowboys on horses like elephants chasing tiny lipstick-red Indians on ponies like chihuahua dogs across a cactus-studded landscape. This battle of cockroaches and behemoths was signed with a huge “Grandma Aaron”. The figures and scene seemed as inappropriate for frosty Yellowknife as my companions’ costumes, which should have been parhas and snowshoes.

  But who is a greenhorn, who has lived all his life in free fall a few thousand miles from Mother Luna, to pronounce on the customs of Terrible Terra?

  The opposite surface was crowded with dazzling sunbursts, like a star cluster going nova.

  In one of the adjoining surfaces were two rectangular openings side by side. Each was three feet wide, but one was more than ten feet long, the other less than five. I peered into them in vain to see stars or sections of Terra whipping past, but the rectangles were only hatches leading into another part of the centrifuge. Why there were two and so different in shape and size, where one would have done, I couldn’t imagine.

  As I tried to coax my knee-motor properly alive and felt the six centrifugal lunagravs cruelly press the support bands of my exoskeleton into my skin and bones at armpits, thighs, crotch, etcetera, I asked myself: If this is what they use to toughen you up for Terra, what will Terra’s naked surface be like?

  Meanwhile I spoke aloud in the same inaudibly deep voice-from-grave, which indeed fitted my appearance of a black-shrouded burial mound with the central bump of my hooded head. I asked, “Kindly direct me to the Yellowknife Registry of Mining Claims.”

  The Portly Giant regarded me with’s benign interest. That one really rode the centrifuge with serenity. I marveled at his ability to handle so casually a mass at least five times my own with exoskeleton. The three shoulder-bent dwarfs peered apprehensively from close behind him, fear-frowns furrowing their low foreheads under their greasy black hair. The Square Giant — I called him that because he was all sharp shoulder and jaw-angles, like William S. Hart of ancientest cinema — glanced up suspiciously from my open luggage.

  The Giantess went into a tizzy.

  “There you go again!” she whined. “I try to hostess you the best I can. After all, you’re our first visitor from space in a hundred years. But you keep booming at me like all the rest of them fearful furry Russians and drumming Afric foreigners. And you keep booming mysteries. Where in the name of Jack is Yellowknife?”

  She had long yellow hair outside and big tits, or their simulacrums, inside her quasi-military, mini-skirted cowgirl costume; but her fluttery stupidity was flattening my libido as well as my sanity. I recalled my father telling me that drum majorettes had been one of the chief ruinations of Terra, along with female-clad Communist athletes of whichever sex.

  “Here!” I thunder-rumbled from my hood. “Right here, where the Tsiolkovsky debarked me on direct orbit from Circumluna. Incidentally, I’m not Russian, but of Anglo-Hispanic ancestry, though it’s true there are as many Russians as Americans in Circumluna.”

  “The Tchaikovsky debarked you all right — in a stretcher, in case you’ve forgotten, and all wrapped up in that black blanket, like a candidate for a coffin. Say, what are Mericans? Ancient greasers? But what I mostly meant to ask you was: Where do you think here is?”

  “Tsiolkovsky!” I thunder-corrected. My new double-base voice was making me nasty. “Great space pioneer, not gay composer of slurpy music. And Americans. A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n-s. While here,” I thunder-crashed, “is Spaceport Yellowknife, Northwest Territory, Canada, Terra!”

  “Name of Jack and Jackie!” she wailed, clapping her hands to her ears. “Where and what is Canada?”

  The Square Giant looked up again and asked ominously, “Stranger, why does your luggage consist chiefly of 47 isotopic and lithium-gold batteries of the sort used in portable power weapons?”

  “They’re spares for my exo-skeleton,” I tossed him, while at the Giantess I rumbled scornfully, “Don’t they teach you any geography on this planet? You a space hostess!”

  “It’s you don’t know geography,” she whimpered back at me, still holding her ears. “Up there in space, jumping from star to star and never caring which. Gun you, you’re making me cry, you animated black laundry basket!” Whereupon very large tears did begin to plop from the inner corners of her blue eyes.

  If only the centrifuge would stop, I thought. I could no longer see spin, but I was whirling inside.

  “Stranger, what class of weapon is an X-O-Skeleton?” the Square Giant demanded, his mouth and eyes thinning to slits. “And watch' your language when conversing with a cultured lady.”

  “You’ll find out when you’re kicked by one I” I snarled, meaning Faithful Old Titanium, not that female boob. “Cultured lady!” I continued zestfully. “Cultured in an algae vat! You yeast-brain. How can you and that right-angle cowpoke mention culture when you confuse satellites with stellar furnaces, don’t know where Canada is, don’t understand the needs of a Thin visiting a solar gravity satellite and are unfamiliar with well known prosthetic devices?”

  The Giantess began to blubber. The fright-frowns deepened and rose in the dwarfs’ foreheads, their greasy hair stirred, and their flight-muscles tightened.

  The Square Giant whipped from his belt a lightning-pistol I knew could numb or fry me, according to how much power he used. He took a step toward me and barked, “hand over that X-O-Skeleton, Stranger, without you cock it. And whatever other weapons you’re hiding under that black serape. Everything down to hatpins and pinknives is confiscated at the Republic’s borders — you’ll get claim checks. But don’t make any sudde
n movements!” The tension sizzled. I stayed squat-crouched under my cloak and prepared to spit more insults from my hood. In fact, something violent might well have happened, most likely to me, if the Portly Giant hadn’t intervened.

  That one said in resonant, relaxed tones that muffed not a word (I’d been suspecting he was a fellow actor), “Simmer down, all of you, for Lyndon’s sake, that secular saint of peace. There’s been some natural mistakes made and some natural tempers roused. Bill, go easy with that shock-spitter. And, Suzy, sweetheart, dry your tears and unsnuffle that cute little nose of yours.

  ... fruitful plains, waving with amber grain, cattle-nurturing thornless cactus, the pseudo-pods of nutritious amoebae, and Lone Star flags.

  Ever since Lyndon ousted Jack in the Early Atomic Age, the term of a President of Texas has been from inauguration to assassination. Murder is merely the continuation of politics by other means.

  Power ennobles, but Petrolium Power ennobles absolutely.

  The end of life is liberty. Texans are empowered to enjoy, exploit and handle liberty; while Mexes, Injuns, and Nigras — all those having dark faces or a dark hole in their pocketbooks — have the privilege of serving liberty and keeping their hands off it.

  Ego was made to be used. It rises from the dark unconscious, energizes awareness and transforms society. It is the oilfields of the human personality.

  Longhairs have less brains than longhorns and less ability to stand on their own hind legs. Most Longhairs perished in the Atomic War or were exiled to that sick-cow-corral, Circumluna, and her unspeakable udder, the Sack. Praise the Lord and puff the marijuana!

  The Battles of the Alamo, San Jacinto, El Salvador, Sioux City, Schenectady, and Saskatchewan .. .

  —random excerpt from how to Stand and Understand Texans: Their Fantasies. Foibles, Folkways, and Fixed Ideas as Seen in Their Own Writings, Nitty-Gritty Press, Watts-Angeles, Acificpay Ackblay Epublicray

  “Scully,” he addressed to me, “Scully — for that’s what you look like from what I can glimpse of your face, a sort of sensitive-featured skull. No offense intended! My own handle’s 12 Elmo, and I’m as fat as and got a face like a hog, cross-bred with a hyena. But well, Scully, I’m afraid that they truly didn’t teach you quite all of modern geography up there in the sky. Yep, there’s a few things been happening here and there on this little old planet during the century you been sailing around the moon in your ivory tower with its attendant soap bubbles.

  “Because there is a Yellowknife, you see, Scully, but now we call it Amarillo Cuchillo, and it’s situated in Northern Texas. While Canada is a gone land, like Sumeria or Burgundy or Vietnam.”

  A cold and dizzy feeling — as if I hadn’t been centrifuged dizzy enough — touched me. A feeling of history altering like the colors in a kaleidescope and no patch of reality sure. I already knew, you see, that my father, who taught me everything, was weak on recent Terran geography and history, though expert in historical dramas and over-all theory. He would wave at Spengler’s dogeared, accordion-opened Decline of the West floating by our book-rack, then through the curving wall of the Sack at Terra splendid against the stars, and say, “They are all fellahin down there, Christopher, all of them. Fellahin swarming like moths over the embers of dead cultures. Ah, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” (What is moths?) A picturesque and even ego-inflating generality, especially to one living a quarter of a million miles or so from Earth, but admittedly weak on details.

  And now at last I was learning just how weak.

  I looked up apprehensively at Elmo as the Portly Giant continued, “And I’m afraid, Scully, that the Russo-Yankee officers of the Tsiolkovsky are a little feeble on modern politico-geography too, because where they landed you — namely, here — is some two thousand miles south of Amarillo Cuchillo. Scully, my friend, you have the Honor of being in Dallas, Texas, Texas — the heart of the human universe and the golden laurel-crown of her culture.”

  “Texas includes Canada?” I asked in a quavering base. “Is an independent nation?”

  “Scully, I hate to voice the least criticism of a man's educational background — shucks, there's been notable brains ’mongst refugees from New York City College and Berkeley — but I do believe your heavenly geography instructors have been notably remiss and maybe — no offense meant here neither — touched with Black or Slavic bias.

  “Scully son, ever since the Great Texasward Industrial Migration and World War Three, Texas has extended from the Nicaraguan Canal to the North Pole, including most of Central America, all of Mexico, nearly all of Canada and all that matters of the Flibberty-gibbet Forty-Seven — I mean the former United States of America.

  “That is, at present. We Texans might take a fancy to extend our boundaries any day. There’s Cuba to be reconquered and Indo-China and Ireland and Hawaii and Hither Siberia.

  “But on the whole, we Texans are a peaceable, tolerant, shoot-amd-let-shoot people. We whipped the Cherokees and the Mexicans, and we tied the Russians and Chinese, and we’re inclined to rest on our laurels — unless, of course, roused, when we get dynamic as an automated cotton-picking rig goosed by the program for an Irish jig.

  “But as for being independent, let me tell you, Scully my boy, Texas is the goldurnedest independentest nation in the entire annals of political science. Nobody, bar some wise old Hellenes, really understood what individual freedom meant until Texas came along. But anyhow, welcome to Texas, Scully, welcome to God’s Planet! Welcome down from the vastness of space, amigo — though you know, Scully, there’s really more functional space in Texas than there is in the entire twiddling universe of free fall and galaxies and other foolishness. So in Lyndon’s name lift yourself up from that black heap you’re in, boy, and put her here!” (Now I was sure he was an actor, though of ancient oratorical school.)

  He advanced, followed closely by the swarthy dwarfs, acting like timid children, and held out toward me a big open Hand.

  I did not respond, though truly touched by his hammy hospitality. (At heart all actors are hams and love it.)

  I was simply too tired and dizzy.

  For many minutes I had been balancing hunched-crouched in a souped-up crazy-house of a centrifuge that was making my brain woozy as well as drowning my meager flesh in fatigue poisons. I had been fumbling futilely with tiring fingers at my balky knee-motor. I had been forcing my aching diaphragm to drag into my burning lungs an atmosphere like yeast stew flavored with hydrogen sulphide. I had been putting up with rude nonsense from a dithery female and a fake cowboy baggage inspector. I was still groggy from anti-grav drugs and bone-crushing, organ-popping accelerations aboard the Tsiolkovsky.

  I had become deadly sick of Terra while they were still getting me ready for her.

  So now this news that I’d been stranded two thousand gravity-paved miles from my destination was the last weight, you might say, in my centrifuge training-belt.

  (The centrifuge on Circumluna only builds up to two luna-gravs, and I’d weighted my exoskeleton to make it nearer earth-grav.)

  “My unfolded handle is Elmo Oilfield Earp, lineal descendant of the noted gunslinger,” the Portly Giant coaxed. “What’s yours, Scully?”

  At that instant a second female waltzed into our section of the centrifuge through the shorter of the two side-by-side hatches. At the sight of her, my spirits skyrocketed as if I’d just got simultaneous shots of speed-euphorin in seven different veins or been invited by Idris McIllwraith’ into her cubical to help her dress for Eve in Shaw’s Back to Methuselah. What is it that some girls have can turn me on? — while the yellow-haired, tearful, sincere, big-tit Susies can extinguish me. I know, sex.

  This new girl was dark as the hunchbacked dwarfs, and she wasn’t too much more than four feet tall; but she carried herself as if she were ten, her back flagstaff-straight with her glossy black hair for a banner. She had a form like a scaled-down Venus de Milo. She was shod with gleaming black slippers with heels almost
as high as her dainty feet were long. A red skirt swirled around her black-netted dancer’s legs, a yellow blouse bared her coffee-and-cream shoulders, while her dark eyes snapped bright black light as castanets do bright black sound.

  I was so taken with her mere looks that I forgot to admire the skill with which she moved gracefully across areas having different acceleration vectors.

  And then she gave it to me. The eye, I mean. Yes, she halted in mid-twirl, and she looked at me — yes, at miserable me, huddled under my cloak like a sick giant spider monkey — and then her delicious eyes were fixed on my hooded, deep-socketed ones and glowing love into me, while her previously saucy lips were parted in a rapt smile of delight, as if I were the answer to some extremely private dream she’d been having ever since the first downy shiver of puberty.

  My depression vanished like black magic routed by the White Goddess leading a train of nymphomaniac nymphs. What were six lunagravs? Terra was mine! I was the Count of Monte Cristo! — a part I have twice played already.

  Still operating wholly under my cloak, I untelescoped slim canes from my titanium exo-forearm-bones and with them and my good leg pushed myself erect and then still more erect until my head was on a level with those of the giants. The dwarfs’ eyes, steadily widening, followed me up. I noted that although they were of different heights, the dwarfs were all shoulder-bent to an equal four and a half feet — an odd detail.

  Once fully erect — now I topped the giants by a half head — I pushed down bolts to lock booth knee-joints of my exoskeleton and stood on my two feet only, my exo-legs rigid rods from ankle to hip. Though teetery, it was practical — the taller the object, the easier it is to balance. I quickly retelescoped my canes — if Bill the Square Giant glimpsed them, he would surely cry, “Concealed weapons!”