'Yes, ma'am,' Henry said. He reached out cautiously for his piece of turnip and the rabbit bit him and then went back to its nibbling.
'Young man,' Miss Phoebe said to me, 'what's wrong? You're giving in to despair. You mustn't do that. Chapter Nine, Rule Three.'
I pulled myself together enough to say: 'This is Professor Leuten. He's dying.'
Her eyes widened. 'The Professor Leuten?' I nodded. 'How to Live on the Cosmic Expense Account?' I nodded.
'Oh, dear! If only there were something I could do!'
Heal the dying? Apparently not. She didn't think she could, so she couldn't.
'Professor,' I said. 'Professor.'
He opened his eyes and said something hi German, then, hazily:
'Woman shot me. Spoil her—racket, you call it? Who is this?' He grimaced with pain.
'I'm Miss Phoebe Bancroft, Professor Leuten,' she breathed, leaning over him. 'I'm so dreadfully sorry; I admire your wonderful book so much.'
His weary eyes turned to me. 'So, Norris,' he said. 'No time to do it right. We do it your way. Help me up.'
I helped him to his feet, suffering, I think, almost as much as he did.
The wound started to bleed more copiously.
'No!' Miss Phoebe exclaimed. 'You should lie down.'
The professor leered. 'Good idea, baby. You want to keep me company?'
'What's that?' she snapped.
'You heard me, baby. Say, you got any liquor in your place?'
'Certainly not! Alcohol is inimical to the development pf the higher functions of the mind. Chapter Nine—'
'Pfui on Chapter Nine, baby. I chust wrote that stuff for money.'
If Miss Phoebe hadn't been in a state resembling surgical shock after hearing that, she would have seen the pain convulsing his face. 'You mean …?' she quavered, beginning to look her age for the first time.
'Sure. Lotta garbage. Sling fancy words and make money. What I go for is liquor and women. Women like you, baby.'
The goose did it.
Weeping, frightened, insulted and lost she tottered blindly up the neat path to her house. I eased the professor to the ground. He was biting almost through his lower lip.
I heard a new noise behind me. It was Henry, the redhead with the adam's apple. He was chewing his piece of turnip and had hold of the big rabbit by the hind legs. He was flailing it against a tree. Henry looked ferocious, savage, carnivorous and very, very dangerous to meddle with. In a word, human.
'Professor,' I breathed at his waxen face, 'you've done it. It's broken.
Over. No more Plague Area.'
He muttered, his eyes closed: 'I regret not doing it properly …but tell the people how I died, Norris. With dignity, without fear. Because of Functional Epistemology.'
I said through tears: 'I'll do more than tell them, professor. The world will know about your heroism.
'The world must know. We've got to make a book of this—your authentic, authorized, fictional biography— and Hopedale's West Coast agent'll see to the film sale—'
'Film?' he said drowsily. 'Book …?'
'Yes. Your years of struggle, the little girl at home who kept faith in you when everybody scoffed, your burning mission to transform the world, and the climax—here, now!—as you give up your life for your philosophy.'
'What girl?' he asked weakly.
'There must have been someone, professor. We'll find someone.'
'You would,' he asked feebly, 'document my expulsion from Germany by the Nazis?'
'Well, I don't think so, professor. The export market's important, especially when it comes to selling film rights, and you don't want to go offending people by raking up old memories. But don't worry, professor. The big thing is, the world will never forget you and what you've done.'
He opened his eyes and breathed: 'You mean your version of what I've done. Ach, Norris, Norris! Never did I think there was a power on Earth which could force me to contravene The Principle of Permissive Evolution.' His voice became stronger. 'But you, Norris, are that power.' He got to his feet, grunting. 'Norris,' he said, 'I hereby give you formal warning that any attempt to make a fictional biography or cinema film of my life will result in an immediate injunction being—
you say slapped?—upon you, as well as suits for damages from libel, copyright infringement and invasion of privacy. I have had enough.'
'Professor,' I gasped. 'You're well!'
He grimaced. 'I'm sick. Profoundly sick to my stomach at my contravention of the Principle of Permissive—'
His voice grew fainter. This was because he was rising slowly into the air. He leveled off at a hundred feet and called: 'Send the royalty statements to my old address in Basle. And remember, Norris, I warned you—'
He zoomed eastward then at perhaps one hundred miles per hour. I think he was picking up speed when he vanished from sight.
I stood there for ten minutes or so and sighed and rubbed my eyes and wondered whether anything was worthwhile. I decided I'd read the professor's book tomorrow without fail, unless something came up.
Then I took my briefcase and went up the walk and into Miss Phoebe's house. (Henry had made a twig fire on the lawn and was roasting his rabbit; he glared at me most disobligingly and I skirted him with care.) This was, after all, the payoff; this was, after all, the reason why I had risked my life and sanity.
'Miss Phoebe,' I said to her taking it out of the briefcase, 'I represent the Hopedale Press; this is one of our standard contracts. We're very much interested in publishing the story of your life, with special emphasis on the events of the past few weeks. Naturally you'd have an experienced collaborator. I believe sales in the hundred- thousands wouldn't be too much to expect. I would suggest as a title—that's right, you sign on that line there — How to be Supreme Ruler of Everybody….'
Friend to Man
call him, if anything, Smith. He had answered to that and to other names in the past. Occupation, fugitive. His flight, it is true, had days before slowed to a walk and then to a crawl, but still he moved, a speck of gray, across the vast and featureless red plain of a planet not his own.
Nobody was following Smith, he sometimes realized, and then he would rest for a while, but not long. After a minute or an hour the posse of his mind would reform and spur behind him; reason would cry no and still he would heave himself to his feet and begin again to inch across the sand.
The posse, imaginary and terrible, faded from front to rear. Perhaps in the very last rank of pursuers was a dim shadow of a schoolmate. Smith had never been one to fight fair. More solid were the images of his first commercial venture, the hijacking job. A truck driver with his chest burned out namelessly pursued; by his side a faceless cop. The ranks of the posse grew crowded then, for Smith had been a sort of organizer after that, but never an organizer too proud to demonstrate his skill. An immemorially old-fashioned garroting-wire trailed inches from the nape of Winkle's neck, for Winkle had nearly sung to the police.
'Squealer!' shrieked Smith abruptly, startling himself. Shaking, he closed his eyes and still Winkle plodded after him, the tails of wire bobbing with every step, stiffly.
A solid, businesslike patrolman eclipsed him, drilled through the throat; beside him was the miraculously resurrected shade of Henderson.
The twelve-man crew of a pirated lighter marched, as you would expect, in military formation, but they bled ceaselessly from their ears and eyes as people do when shot into space without helmets.
