Other Times, Other Worlds

Game for Blondes

Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1952.

Being a collector can be fun but is a collection cool and collected if it’s collected?

Martin Greynor was very very drunk, not gayly drunk, not freshly six-quick-ones drunk, but drunk in varying degrees since December tenth at ten P.M. Two big red 10s in his mind, always with him — zeroes like a pair of headlights. Ruth beside him, sweet-scented, fur-clad. And one of his fits of stupid, vicious, reckless anger. December 10. 10 P.M. Hitting the slick black curves hard, motor droning, forcing her to tell him he was going too fast. Once she said it, he could slow down and that would be a little victory.

“Too fast, Marty!” she said. They were the last words she ever spoke.

Fat headlights and the long whining skid, and the crash, and the jangle that went on forever. Ripped fur and blood and gone the sweet scent.

Now it was New Year’s Eve. Ruth was gone. His job was gone, the car gone. Money was left, though, money a-plenty. Funny about drinking. The wobbling, falling down, sick stage lasts about twelve days, he discovered. Important discovery. Boon to science. Then you’re armor-plated. Liquor drops into a pit, clunk. Walk steady, talk steady. But in come the illusions on little soft pink feet.

Ruth ahead of you, hurrying down a dark street. “Ruth! Wait!”

Hurriedly she puts on a wattled mask, turns and grimaces at you, rasps in a mocking gin-husky voice. “Ya wan something, sweetie?”

She has slipped around the next corner. Run, now, and see her in the next block. Cake the wet December slush on the shrinking, stiffening leather of the shoes that came out of that store window.

“Marty, let’s buy you a pair of those. I like those shoes.”

Suit she liked. Now a bit dribbled, a shade rancid. Apartment the way they had left it that night. Never gone back. Beds not made, no doubt.

Walk through the night streets, looking for punishment. Looking for a way to release the load of guilt. Now the old places don’t want you. “Sorry, Mr. Greynor. You’ve begun to stink.” The little bars don’t care.

“HAP-PEEE NEW YEAR!”

The bar mirrors are enchanted. Ruth stands behind you. She said, “Never run away from me, darling. You’d be too easy to find. Wanted — a redheaded man with one blue eye and one brown eye. See? You couldn’t get away with it.”

The face that looks back has been gaunted, because you stopped eating.

He bent low over the bar until his lips almost touched the shot glass, then lifted it in a hard arc, tossing his head back. It burned its way down into the nothingness. The bartender slapped the change down. Martin Greynor fumbled with it, pushed a quarter over to the far edge. The bartender slipped it off the bar with a surly grunt and clinked it into a glass on the back bar.

Martin turned around and saw the three girls again. He wondered if it was again, or if he was seeing them for the first time. The mind performs such odd little hop, skip, jumps. He debated it solemnly, got nowhere.

They were at a table. They were all looking at him with an air of watchfulness. That could be imagined, too. Three lovelies like that are not going to make the weary ginmill rounds with you and keep watching you. You ain’t that purty, Martin.

When in doubt, you write it down on top of your mind and underline it very firmly and hope that when the situation occurs again, you can find the place where you wrote it down.

He walked out steadily and stood on the sidewalk. He had the strong impression that Ruth was stretched flat on the roof, her head over the edge of the building, grinning down at him. He turned sharply and looked up. The Moon hung misty over Manhattan, debauched by neon.

Next block. Don’t turn right. That will take you toward midtown, toward the higher prices, toward the places where they let you get three steps inside the door, then turn you firmly and walk you back out. Stay over here, buster.

They’d rolled him a few times that first week. Made a nuisance to go to the bank and get more cash each time. Now they’d stopped bothering. One of the times they’d left him sitting, spitting out a tooth. His tongue kept finding the hole.

Neon in the middle of the next block. Two couples sitting on the curb.

“Down by-ee the old mill streeeeeeem...”

Spotted by the prowl car.

“Break it up! Move along there!”

He looked back. Three female silhouettes, arm in arm, step in step, ticktock-tick of the pretty stilt heels avoiding the gray smears of slush.

He ducked into the door under the neon. This was a dark one. Dancing was going on back there somewhere to the cat-fence yowl of a clarinet and pulse-thump of piano. He edged in at the bar. The bartender came over fast, with that trouble-look on his face. Martin shoved the five out fast.

“Rye straight,” he said.

The bartender paused for a count of three, then turned back to the rye department.

Martin looked over and saw them come in. He hunted on top of his mind and found the heavily underlined place. He read it off. Three blondes. Three arrogant, damp-mouthed, hot-eyed, overdressed blondes — sugary in the gloom. Same ones.

It brought him up out of himself, hand clutching the rim of his soul, for a quick look over the edge. One lone blonde in this place would have pivoted heads in tennis-match style. Two would bring hot and heartfelt exhalations. Three, he saw, seemed to stun the joint. It put a crimp in the rumble of bar-talk. It ran furry fingers down male spines.

They were watching him. He stared back until he was certain. Okay. Fact confirmed. Three blondes following him from joint to joint. Watching him. Next step — watch real close, see if anybody walks through them.

They got a table along the wall. He watched. A hefty young man strutted over to their table, hiking up his pants, making with the bold smile. He bent over the table. They all gave him cold looks. One shook her shining head. He persisted.

The young man turned fast and hard and went high and rigid into the air. Martin saw him go up in that jet-leap of spasmed muscles, head thrown back, agony-masked face. He fell like something pushed out of a window. People gathered around him. They blocked Martin’s view.

He looked at the blondes. They were watching him. In an empty lot in the back of his mind, a rabbit bounded for cover, where there was no cover, and the dogs sat watching, tongues lolling. Cold started at a spot at the base of his spine. It crept nuzzling into his armpits.

He drank and scooped up his change and left.

He ran to the corner and stood, and the trembling went away. The slush was beginning to freeze. It crunched a bit under his shoes. That was another thing. You didn’t have to eat, and you didn’t get cold. Ergo, one should be beyond fear. Go around being afraid of blondes and people will begin to point at you.

He snickered. The sound was as rigid as the rind of freeze atop the sidewalk slush. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Problem for the class: You got a guy, see. He’s dying of cancer or something, see. He’s in agony and somebody comes into his room and stands by his bed and lifts a big club to hammer him one. Is the guy afraid? If so, why? If he is, it means that fear is something divorced from an objective and intellectual appraisal of the total situation. It means fear is spawned in the guts, down there where the animal lives, down where the rabbit blood is.

A piece of paper scuttered around the corner and embraced his leg. He bent over, picked it loose and sent it on its way.

“Hell of a big hurry, aren’t you?” he said.

Tick, tack, tick, tack. By God, perfect marching. Ex-WACs? All blonde and all coming along. So what can blondes do to you? He stood his ground for a slow count of ten.

Tick, tack.

Fear rocketed into his throat and burst out his ears and he ran like hell.

A cruiser nailed him in the spotlight, tracking him like a floorshow, making him feel as though he were running, running, running in one spot. He stopped and leaned against a building, panting. The spot still held him. It nailed his eyes to the wall behind him. Big shoulders blocked it. Creak of leather and brass gleam.

“What you running for, chief?”

“It’s... a cold night. Keeping warm.”

The cuff slid him along the wall and the hand on his rancid suit yanked him back upright. “What you running for, I said?”

“Those three blondes coming. They’re after me.” He could hear them coming. The spot went away. He was blind. But he could hear them.

“After you, you creep?”

“Yes, I...”

“Johnny, we better dump the chief here off at the ward. Come on, Mr. Irresistible.”

Tick, tack, tock, tick. Silence.

“What do you girls want?”

Brass buttons took a high, hard, stiff-legged, stiff-armed leap. Martin fell into slush and rolled. Inside the cruiser, the driver stiffened, his head going bong on the metal roof.

Martin ran, bleating. An empty field and no cover. The wise eyes of the hunting dogs. Wait until he comes around again, fellows.

He turned, skidding in the freezing slush, and ran into an alley, tangling his legs in a bunch of trash, sprawling, clawing his way up again, running into a wall, stinging his hands. He turned. Three female silhouettes in the alley mouth. High-waisted, long-legged, stilt-heeled, cream-headed.

He made little sounds in his throat and pawed his way along the wall. An alley like a shoe box with one end missing — the end they were at.

He sat down and covered his eyes. Count to ten and they’ll go away. One-a-larry, two-a-larry, three-a-larry, four.

New spotlight. This was a different one. It came at him from a lot of little directions, like one of those trick showers with a dozen spray heads.

“Got um,” a blonde voice said.

“Up to spec, no?”

They stood outside the radiance.

“Color and out,” one said.

“Take um.”

Something grew in front of him, a red happy-new-year balloon. So it was a gag, maybe. It lobbed through the air toward him, turning in iridescence. He caught it. It was red jelly with a cellophane skin. It kept trying to slide down between his fingers.

“Yah-hah!” one of the blondes said.

It broke in his hands, showered green needles up to his nose to sizzle in his brain fat.

The sky broke in half and he went over backward and down, heels up and over, sizzling.

Martin slid naked across a mirrored floor. He was bug-sized and it was the mirror on his mother’s dressing table a million years ago. He stopped sliding and tried to sit up. The bracing hand skidded and he hit his head.

He tried more cautiously. He could sit up by carefully shifting his weight, but he couldn’t stand. The surface was frictionless. Compared to it, glare ice was like sandpaper.

He lay down and looked up. Overhead was nothing. He thought about that for quite a while. Nothing. No thing. Nothing, with a flaw in it. A little flaw. He peered at it. It was in the shape of a tiny naked man. He moved a leg. The tiny naked man moved a leg. Everything clicked into focus. A mirror under him and, at an incredible height above him, another.

Now, he thought, I’m a germ on a big microscope. His body felt odd. He managed to sit up again. He looked at himself. Clean. Impossibly, incredibly clean. His fingernails were snowy. His toenails were like white paper. His skin was clean and pink with a glow of health, but the old heart went thudding slowly and sickly along.

Silence. All he could hear was the roar of his blood in his ears. Like listening to a sea shell. There had been a big pink conch in his grandfather’s house.

“Hear the sea, Marty?”

The mirror tilted and he slid into a hole that wasn’t there before. He came out into a square blue room.

His three blondes were there, watching him. We don’t get pink elephants. We don’t get snakes and bugs. We get blondes.

He stood up, too aware of his nudity. They watched him calmly, ignoring it.

“Now, look,” he said, “can’t we be friends?”

They had changed. Their mouths were different — vivid green paint in a perfect rectangle. They looked at him with that calm pride of ownership. Nice doggy.

“Now, look,” he began again, and stopped when he noticed their strange dresses. He looked closer. Ladies, please, you can’t dress with a paint spray. But they had.

“This,” he said, “is a nightmare by Petty, out of Varga.”

The paint job was nicely shaded at the edges, but just a paint job. One of them stepped to him, grabbed him by the hair and tilted his head back. She looked into his eyes and made a little clucking sound. She turned and pointed to the corner.

“Yup now,” she said.

“How does one go about yupping?” he asked vacantly.

She looked at one of the other blondes, who said slowly and precisely. “Hurry — up — now, late.”

There was a pile of clothes in the comer. He went over, glad for a chance of regaining pants, even in a dream world. The garments were recognizable, the material wasn’t. A sartorial cartoon of the American male, mid-twentieth century. Every incongruity of the clothing exaggerated. Sleeve buttons like saucers. Shoulders padded out a foot on each side. No buttons, no snaps, no zippers. You just got inside them and they were on, somehow. The buttons on the suit were fakes. The suit was bright blue with a harsh red stripe.

Dressed, he felt like a straight man in a burlesque.

From a distance he heard a great shout. It sounded like “Yah-hah!” from ten thousand throats. He suddenly had the strong hunch that he was going on display.

The nearest blonde confirmed that hunch. She stepped over and clamped a metal circlet around his forehead.

Three golden chains dangled from his headpiece. Each blonde took one chain. The nearest one to one of the blue walls touched it. A slit appeared and folded back. They went through. The blondes began to strut. A midway strut. A stripper stomp.

“Here comes Martin,” he said feebly.

He was in the middle of a garden. The clipped turf underfoot was springy. Tailored terraces rose on three sides. A fat sun and a billion flowers and several thousand exceptionally handsome people wearing paint jobs and nothing else.

The center arena had some people in it, people fastened to chains as he was, each one held by three blondes. The spectators were all on the terraces. There was a picnic atmosphere.

They went into the middle of the arena. The other captives were being led in an endless circle.

“Yah-hah!” the multitude yelled. “Yah-hah-hah!”

They posed in the center and then began the circling. Martin stared at his fellow captives. Some were men and some were women. One wore animal skins; another wore armor. One was dressed like the pictures of George Washington. Some wore clothing he’d never seen before.

He was led around and around. More performers took their center ring bow. Something was bothering him, some silly small thing. He couldn’t fit his mind over it. Too much was going on in this delirium.

Then he got it — all the captives had red hair.

He turned and looked at the scared woman who walked behind him. She had red hair, one blue eye and one brown eye. She wore gingham and a sunbonnet.

He sneaked looks at the others. One blue eye. One brown eye. Red hair.

Everyone stopped walking. There was a great and final, “Yah-hah.” Three sets of blondes stood in the center ring without captives. Their heads were bowed.

His blondes trotted him over, took off the circlet and flipped him back into the blue room. The slit was closed. He pinched his leg.

“Hell,” he said softly.

The slit opened after what he imagined to be an hour had passed. One of his blondes came back. She had a man with her, a chesty citizen dressed in cerise paint.

“Talkit ya tempo,” she said, pointing at the chesty man.

He beamed at Martin. “Blessings,” he said.

“Blessings yourself.”

“Indebted. Thanking very much.”

“Your welcoming very much, bud.”

“Knowing all?” the man asked with a wide arm sweep.

“Knowing nothing. Not a damned thing! What’s this all about?”

The chesty man beamed some more. He scratched his paint job lightly. He frowned. “Hard to say. You past, I future. Is party. My party. My house. My garden. Having game. Sending ladies your tempo, lot of tempos. All same thing. Bringing only with red on hair, eye brown, eye blue. Hard to find. For game.”

Martin goggled at him. “You mean a scavenger hunt through time?”

“Not knowing. Is only game. Some ladies failing. Too bad.”

“What happens to them?”

The man grinned. “No present for them. Now, present for you. Returning. Any place in tempo yours. To place taken. To other place. Sooner, later. Your choice.”

“Return me to any... moment in my life?”

“All tempo function. You say — how? — resonance.”

“Send me to December 10th, eight P.M.”

Martin Greynor was sitting on the edge of his bed. He had just yanked his shoelaces tight in the left shoe. The tipped laces were still in his hands. He let go of them. He heard a shower pouring. The sound stopped suddenly.

His throat was full of rusty wire. “Ruth?”

She opened the bathroom door. She was wrapped in a big yellow towel.

“What is it now, Marty? My goodness, you’ve been needling me all evening. You’re in a perfectly foul humor. I’m hurrying just as fast as I can.”

“Ruth, I...” He tried to smile. His lips felt split.

She came to him, quick with concern. “Marty! Are you all right, darling? You look so odd.”

“Me? I’ve never been more all right.” He pulled her down beside him.

“Hey, you! I’m soaking wet.”

“Baby, do we have to drive way out there tonight? Do we?”

She stared at him. “Good Lord, it was your idea. I detest both of them. You know that.”

“Let’s stay home. Just the two of us. Bust open that brandy, maybe. Use up some of those birch logs.”

“But we accepted and...”

He held her tightly. He would never let her go.

She whispered, “I like you better this way, instead of all snarly and grouchy.” She giggled. “I think we could phone and tell them you have a fever, darling. It wouldn’t really be a lie.”

She made the call, winking at him as she gave worried noises about his symptoms. She hung up and said, “She was huffy and painfully sweet. Tonight the Greynors are at home. Darling, it would have been a crummy evening.”

“A... disastrous evening.”

“They play kid games all the time. That’s what irks me. Remember in the summer? They had a scavenger hunt. If that isn’t the height of silliness!”

He looked at the fire glow reflected in her hair.

“It isn’t a bad game, baby.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Guess it depends on who’s playing it and what the prize is.”