Unnatural Creatures

Svetz was sitting up in a hospital bed, with his arm up to the elbow in a diagnostician. There was always the chance that he too had located some long-extinct bacterium. He shifted uncomfortably, being careful not to move the wrong arm, and asked, “Did you ever find an anesthetic that worked?”

“Nope. Sorry about that, Svetz. We still don’t know why your needles didn’t work. The tanj horse is simply immune to tranks of any kind.

“Incidentally, there was nothing wrong with your air plant. You were smelling the horse.”

“I wish I’d known that. I thought I was dying.”

“It’s driving the interns crazy, that smell. And we can’t seem to get it out of the Center.” Ra Chen sat down on the edge of the bed. “What bothers me is the horn on its forehead. The horse in the picture book had no horns.”

“No, sir.”

“Then it must be a different species. It’s not really a horse, Svetz. We’ll have to send you back. It’ll break our budget, Svetz.”

“I disagree, sir—”

“Don’t be so tanj polite.”

“Then don’t be so tanj stupid, sir.” Svetz was not going back for another horse. “People who kept tame horses must have developed the habit of cutting off the horn when the animal was a pup. Why not? We all saw how dangerous that horn is. Much too dangerous for a domestic animal.”

“Then why does our horse have a horn?”

“That’s why I thought it was wild, the first time I saw it. I suppose they didn’t start cutting off horns until later in history.”

Ra Chen nodded in gloomy satisfaction. “I thought so too. Our problem is that the Secretary-General is barely bright enough to notice that his horse has a horn, and the picture-book horse doesn’t. He’s bound to blame me.”

“Mmm.” Svetz wasn’t sure what was expected of him.

“I’ll have to have the horn amputated.”

“Somebody’s bound to notice the scar,” said Svetz.

“Tanj it, you’re right. I’ve got enemies at court. They’d be only too happy to claim I’d mutilated the Secretary-General’s pet.” Ra Chen glared at Svetz. “All right, let’s hear your idea.”

Svetz was busy regretting. Why had he spoken? His vicious, beautiful horse, tamely docked of its killer horn…He had found the thought repulsive. His impulse had betrayed him. What could they do but remove the horn?

He had it. “Change the picture book, not the horse. A computer could duplicate the book in detail, but with a horn on every horse. Use the Institute computer, then wipe the tape afterward.”

Morosely thoughtful, Ra Chen said, “That might work. I know someone who could switch the books.” He looked up from under bushy black brows. “Of course, you’d have to keep your mouth shut.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t forget.” Ra Chen got up. “When you get out of the diagnostician, you start a four-week vacation.”

“I’m sending you back for one of these,” Ra Chen told him four weeks later. He opened the bestiary. “We picked up the book in a public park around ten PostAtomic; left the kid who was holding it playing with a corundum egg.”

Svetz examined the picture. “That’s ugly. That’s really ugly. You’re trying to balance the horse, right? The horse was so beautiful, you’ve got to have one of these or the universe goes off balance.”

Ra Chen closed his eyes in pain. “Just go get us the Gila monster, Svetz. The Secretary-General wants a Gila monster.”

“How big is it?”

They both looked at the illustration. There was no way to tell.

“From the looks of it, we’d better use the big extension cage.”

Svetz barely made it back that time. He was suffering from total exhaustion and extensive second-degree burns. The thing he brought back was thirty feet long, had vestigial batlike wings, breathed fire, and didn’t look very much like the illustration; but it was as close as anything he’d found.

The Secretary-General loved it.

11

Two of my very favorite writers, growing up, were SAMUEL R. DELANY, who wrote books like Nova and The Einstein Intersection, which I loved even if I didn’t understand them; and James Thurber, who wrote The 13 Clocks, which may be the best book in the world. Here Mr. Delany (Chip, to his friends) writes a story that may owe its inspiration to Thurber, but is very much his own tale. And what is inside the steamer trunk?

A very thin and very grey man arrives in a tavern with a large steamer trunk, which contains his “nearest and dearest friend.” The man offers to pay for the assistance of the quick-witted Amos in procuring the cure his friend needs. Off Amos goes, questing for three shards of magical mirror….

ONE

ONCE THERE WAS A POOR MAN NAMED AMOS. He had nothing but his bright red hair, fast fingers, quick feet, and quicker wits. One grey evening when the rain rumbled in the clouds, about to fall, he came down the cobbled street toward Mariners’ Tavern to play jackstraws with Billy Belay, the sailor with a wooden leg and a mouth full of stories that he chewed around and spit out all evening. Billy Belay would talk and drink and laugh and sometimes sing. Amos would sit quietly and listen and always won at jackstraws.

But this evening as Amos came into the tavern, Billy was quiet; and so was everyone else. Even Hidalga, the woman who owned the tavern and took no man’s jabbering seriously, was leaning her elbows on the counter and listening with opened mouth.

The only man speaking was tall, thin, and grey. He wore a grey cape, grey gloves, grey boots, and his hair was grey. His voice sounded to Amos like wind over mouse fur, or sand ground into old velvet. The only thing about him not grey was a large black trunk beside him, high as his shoulder. Several rough and grimy sailors with cutlasses sat at his table—they were so dirty they were no color at all!

“…and so,” the soft grey voice went on, “I need someone clever and brave enough to help my nearest and dearest friend and me. It will be well worth someone’s while.”

“Who is your friend?” asked Amos. Though he had not heard the beginning of the story, the whole tavern seemed far too quiet for a Saturday night.

The grey man turned and raised grey eyebrows. “There is my friend, my nearest and dearest.” He pointed to the trunk. From it came a low, muggy Ulmphf.

All the mouths that were hanging open about the tavern closed.

“What sort of help does he need?” asked Amos. “A doctor?”