The Best of Margaret St. Clair

THE NUSE MAN

I don’t know why; really, the nuse man comes to call on me. He must realize by now I’ll never order a nuse installation or an ipsissifex from him; I consider them as dangerous as anything our own lethal age has produced. Nuse, which is a power source that the nuse man describes as originating on the far side of 3000 A.D., IS THE WORSE OF THE TWO, BUT THE IPSISSIFEX, A MATTER DUPLICATOR, IS BAD ENOUGH. AND THOUGH I LISTEN TO THE NUSE MAN’S STORIES, I CAN HARDLY BE CONSIDERED A SYMPATHETIC AUDIENCE. I SUPPOSE HE DROPS IN BECAUSE I CAN ALWAYS BE DEPENDED ON FOR A CUP OF TEA AND SOME TOAST AND MARMALADE.

“Hello,” he said as I answered the bell. “You’ve aged in the last six months.”

Before I could wrap my tongue around the obvious ettu (he was looking terrible—his clothes looked as if they had been slept in by machinery, and there were bruises and cuts and lumps all over his face)—he had pushed past me into the living room and was sitting down in my husband’s easy chair. The dachshunds, who have never liked the nuse man, were growling at him earnestly. He put his feet up on the fireplace and lay back in the chair on his spine.

“Ahhhhhh!” he sighed, and then, to me, “Put more butter on the toast than you did last time.”

When I came back with the tea, he was standing by one of the bookcases looking at Woolley’s little book, Ur: The First Phases.

“Silly book,” he grumbled. “That stuff about the plano-convex bricks is all wrong.”

“What do you know about it?” I asked him.

“I sold a nuse installation to King Nebu-kalam-dug of Ur of the Chaldees on this last trip.”

“Oh, yes? Well, the home office ought to be pleased with you. Perhaps they’ll give you a vacation back in your own time.”

The nuse man made no direct answer, but his battered, lumpy face grew dark. He bit into a slice of toast so savagely that I feared for his iridium alloy teeth.

“Don’t tell me that something went wrong with the nuse again!” I cried.

This time he couldn’t have answered if he had wanted to. He had choked over some toast crumbs, and I had to beat him on the back and pour tea down him before he could speak.

“Why are you so prejudiced against nuse?” he demanded at last. “The nuse had nothing to do with it. It was the king and the priests that birded it up.”

“I’ll bet.”

The nuse man’s face turned even redder. It was a shade or two darker than the lapels around the waist of his trousers. “I’ll tell you all about it!” he said passionately. “You be the judge!”

“Oh, Lord.” There was no polite way of getting out of it. “All right,” I said.

“Everything was going fine,” the nuse man began, “until the old king Nebu-kalam-dug, died. I’d sold him a nuse installation—”

“General or special?”

“Special, of course. Do I look like fool enough to put a general nuse installation into the hands of a lot of 3000 B.C. yaps? I sold him a special nuse installation in exchange for a stated number of Sumerian gold artifacts, so many on installation and so many each lunar month until the price was paid.”

“What were the artifacts?”

“Gold wreaths and necklaces and jewelry. Of course, gold’s nothing. Only good for lavatory daises. But the workmanship was interesting and valuable. I knew the home office would be pleased. Then the old yoop died.”

“What killed him?”

“His son, Nebu-al-karsig, poisoned him.”

“Oh.”

“Everybody in the court knew it, but of course nobody would talk about it. I was sorry the old king died, but I wasn’t worried, because I thought I could work out the same sort of deal with the new king. Even when I saw how scared the court ladies looked when they were getting ready for the funeral, I didn’t apperceive. And then the soldiers came and arrested me!”

“What had you done?” I asked suspiciously.

“Nothing. They were short little tzintes with big muscles, and they wore sort of skirts out of sheepskin with the wool twisted into bunches to look elegant. They wouldn’t say a word while they were arresting me. Then I found out I was supposed to be strangled and put in the royal tomb with the dead king.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d been one of the old man’s special friends. At least, that was what young Nebu-al-karsig said. The prime minister and two or three of the councilors were being strangled along with me.”

“Gosh.”

“I argued and argued, and talked and talked. I told the young king we hadn’t been such good friends as all that. And finally he said, very well, I could go with the court ladies in the death pit.”

“Were you scared?”

“Of course I was scared,” the nuse man said irritably. “I didn’t have my chronnox—they’d arrested me in too much of a hurry for that—so I couldn’t get into another time. And I had no way of getting in touch with the home office. Certainly I was scared. And then there was the indignity—somebody from when I come from to be killed by a lot of primitive button heads. It made me sore.”

He slurped at his tea. “When we got to the pit.” he continued, “they were just closing the old king’s tomb up. You understand the tomb was at the bottom of the pit, and there was a ramp leading down into it. They hung matting over the sides of the pit, to cover the earth, and then they backed old Nebu-kalam-dug’s war chariot down the ramp; he’d want his chariot in the next world. Then the rest of us went down the ramp into the pit.”

“Who was ‘us’?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, harpists and singers and court ladies and slaves and soldiers and attendants. If anybody didn’t want to go, the soldiers had spears they used for prodding. I counted, and there were fifty-eight of us.”

“Pretty barbarous,” I said sympathetically.

“Nobody from your period has any right to call anything barbarous,” the nuse man said severely. “I’ve seen some bad ages, but yours—! Anyway, there we were.

“The funeral services began. The harpists twanged on their harps and the singers sang in high falsetto voices. It sounded awful. The priests chanted prayers from the edge of the pit above. The soldiers passed around an opiate in little bronze cups for us to drink. The priests prayed some more. It was beginning to get dark. Then they started shoveling earth in on us.”

“Were you sorry for the others?” I asked.

“I was more sorry for myself. It was their era, and if they wanted to die in it, that was their business. After all, they thought that when they woke up they’d go on serving old Nebu-kalam-dug in the next world. I didn’t—and even if I had, he was nobody I’d want to serve.”

“How did you get out?” I asked quickly. I did not like the thought of the scene in the death pit, even if it had taken place so many thousands of years ago.

“I got under the car of the chariot to shelter myself from being crushed. After a long while, the earth stopped coming in and I decided the mourners had gone away. I didn’t have my chronnox, and, as I told you, I couldn’t get in touch with the home office. But I was wearing an ipsissifex. I started materializing myself up through the earth of the pit.”

“You didn’t!” I said incredulously.

“I did, though. Each ‘me’ was a little farther up through the earth layer of the pit.”

“You mean there are five or six ‘you’s buried back there in Ur of the Chaldees?”

“Seven. Of course they weren’t really alive—you know how an ipsissifex is.”

It was the first time I had ever heard the nuse man admit that one of the devices he was peddling might have a flaw.

“I clawed my way up through the last few inches of dirt without any more materializations,” he said, “and started walking up the ramp. There was a soldier on guard at the top. When he saw me, his spear began to shake. It shook so much he could hardly hold it. The moon was coming up, and my shadow fell in front of me on the ramp.

“He licked his lips and swallowed before he could say anything. ‘Get back in the pit and die,’ he said finally. “What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to serve our lord Nebu-kalam-dug in the other world. Go on back and be dead.’

“I didn’t say anything. I just kept walking closer to him. When I was about two feet away, he dropped his spear and ran.

“I didn’t have any trouble getting in at the palace, either. Young Nebu-al-karsig was playing checkers on a fiddle-shaped board with one of his girls when I walked into the great hall. When he saw me, he jumped up and the board fell to one side and the pieces rolled over the floor. I said, ‘My lord Nebu-al-karsig, I am harder to kill than your noble father was.’

“He had turned a dirty greenish tan. He said, ‘I saw—I saw—’

“I sat down on the floor in front of him and bumped my head on it a couple of times to show I was going to be polite. Then I said, in a deep, serious voice, ‘A magician cannot die until his time has come, my lord. Shall we discuss extending the nuse installation I made for your respected sire?’ And he said, ‘Yes, let’s.’”

“It’s a wonder he didn’t try to poison you,” I commented.

“Scared to,” the nuse man said briefly. “Anyhow, we agreed I was to increase the nuse installation by one third, and in return Nebu-al-karsig was to pay me twice as many gold artifacts each lunar month as his father had, and for half again as long. It took a lot of figuring and explaining by the royal scribes before the king could understand the terms of the agreement, but he finally was satisfied with the arithmetic. Oh, and I got my old rooms in the palace back.”

“What did the special installation do?” I poured the last of the tea into the nuse man’s cup and went out to the kitchen to put water on to heat for more.

“It made bricks,” he said when I came back. “Beautiful, even, true, symmetrical mud bricks. Nebu-kalam-dug had been crazy about those bricks, and even Nebu-al-karsig thought they were pretty neat. You should have seen the adobe junk the brickmakers had been turning out by hand—sloppy, roundish affairs, all different sizes, with straw sticking out of them. Yes, my installation made bricks.”

“What did they use the bricks for?” I asked.

“For ziggurats—stepped temple pyramids. They made the first story black, the second white, the third red, and the last blue. Sometimes, just for a change, they’d do an all-blue or an all-red pyramid.

“For a while, everything was fine. Ziggurats were going up all over the place, and the skyline of Ur altered rapidly. The priests were pleased because all those ziggurats meant more priests were needed. Nebu-al-karsig was pleased because he was going down in history as the greatest ziggurat builder of his dynasty. And I was pleased because I was getting a lot of elegant artifacts. Then things started to sour.”

“The nuse,” I murmured. “I knew it.”

The nuse man glared at me.

“It… was… not… the… nuse!” he said, biting off the words. “What happened was the brickmakers sta rted to get sore. They were out of jobs, you see, because of the nuse. And the bricklayers were almost as badly off. They were working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, without any overtime, trying to use up all the bricks. Pretty soon there would be riots in the streets.

“Nebu-al-karsig asked me what I thought he ought to do. I told him, let the brickmakers into the bricklayers’ guild. That way he’d have twice as many men to build ziggurats. So he issued a decree. And then there were riots in the st reets.

“‘What,’ said the bricklayers, ‘let those dirty sheep’s livers into our union? When they haven’t served a seven years’ apprenticeship?’ ‘What,’ said the brickmakers, ‘be forced to give up our noble art, sacred to Nintud since time immemorial, in exchange for slicking mud paste over heartless mechanical bricks?’ Then both sides shrieked ‘Never!’ and barricades, made out of brick baskets and cobblestones, began to go up everywhere.

“I suppose the fuss would have died down in time. People—as your age has learned—can get used to anything. But Nebu-al-karsig was sleeping badly. Palace gossip had it that he’d wake up screaming from dreams about his father. He asked the priests what the cause of the trouble was, and they told him that some of the minor gods, those who hadn’t got ziggurats yet, were mad at him. The people in Ur had about four thousands gods. So he decided to have the nuse installation turn out more bricks.

“Every morning, as soon as it was daylight, a bunch of shave-headed priests would file into the nuse factory. They’d stand in front of the installation, concentrating, for an hour, and then a new batch of priests would come. They kept that up all day. Nuse, of course, is basically a neural force. By the end of the day, bricks would be simply pouring out of the brick hoppers. Even to me, who had nothing to do with laying them, seeing all those mountains and mountains of bricks was very discouraging.

“I tried to argue with Nebu-al-karsig about it. I told him as politely as I could that he was endangering his throne. But he’d never liked me, and after the episode of the brickmakers’ guild, he hadn’t trusted me. He wouldn’t listen. I decided it was time I got out of Ur.

“I had one more installment of artifacts due me. I would collect that and then leave. By now the chest of artifacts in my bedroom was almost full.

“The day of the installment came and went, and no artifacts. I mentioned it to Nebu-al-karsig and he showed his teeth at me. But on the next day, ten or twelve priests came to my rooms with a little box. The head priest opened it and gave it to me. In it were the missing artifacts.

“They weren’t quite what my contract called for, but I was glad to get them. I thanked the head priest for them as nicely as I knew how, and he smiled and suggested that we have a drink. I said, fine, and he poured it out. One of the minor priests was carrying goblets and the wineskin. I put out my hand for the cup and the head priest—did I tell you I’d put a small general nuse installation in my rooms?”

I thought back. “No, you didn’t.”

“Well, I had,” said the nuse man. “I wasn’t going to be bothered with slow, stupid slaves waiting on me. I put out my hand for the cup and the priest went sailing up in the air. He hit on the ceiling with a considerable thump. Then he went around the room, floating just at eye-level, and whacked solidly against each of the four corners. He hit the fourth corner harder and faster than he had the first. I could see that his mouth was open and he looked scared.

“There was a kind of pause while he hovered in the air. Then he went up and hit the ceiling, came down toward the floor, up to the ceiling, down again, up, hovered, and then came down on the floor for the last time with a great crashing whump! He landed so hard I thought I felt the floor shake. I knew he must be hurt.

“I stood there frozen for a moment. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. Then it came to me. The drink in my cup had been poisoned. I suppose Nebu-al-karsig hadn’t had nerve enough to do it himself. And the nuse installation in my room hadn’t let the head priest get away with it.

“A nuse never makes a mistake. ‘The airy servitor. Don’t think, use nuse.’ The more I sell it, the more I’m convinced that it’s wonderful stuff. This time it had saved my life. I couldn’t help wishing for a minute, though, that it had just tipped over the poisoned cup quietly, because banging a priest around like that was sure to be sacrilege.

“The other priests had been as surprised as I was. Now they began to mutter and heft the clubs they were carrying. The nuse might be able to handle all of them at once, but I didn’t wait to find out. I made a dash into the next room and bolted the door.

“I was wearing my chronnox. All I had to do was grab my chest of artifacts and go to some other time. I made a dive under the bed for the chest. And it wasn’t there.”

“Stolen?” I asked helpfully.

The nuse man shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Not with a nuse installation on guard. I think the nuse had levitated the chest to some safe place for extra security. I concentrated on getting the nuse to bring the chest back, and I did hear noises, levitation noises, as though it were trying to obey me. But it had all it could do to handle the priests in the next room.

“By now there was a considerable commotion in the palace. Doors were opening, people were shouting. I heard soldiers outside in the hall. Thumps and bumps from my sitting room showed that the nuse was still doing what it could with the priests, but several people were throwing themselves as hard as they could against the connecting door. I didn’t know how much longer the bolts would hold.

“I tried concentrating on getting the nuse to abandon the priests and bring me my chest. I’m sure it would have worked in another minute. But then there was a lot of yelling and they began using a ram on the door. One of the panels busted. The hinges were sagging. I had to go.”

The nuse man looked so depressed that I poured him out more tea. Just as I had suspected in the beginning, the nuse—always incalculable, always tricky, the essence of unreliability—the nuse had been at the bottom of his troubles. It always was. I had too much sense to say so, though.

“What was the point you were making about the plano-convex bricks?” I finally asked.

The nuse man looked even more gloomy. I wished I hadn’t mentioned it. He picked a leaf out of his tea with his spoon and frowned savagely at it.

“I went back to Ur,” he said finally. “I wanted to see what had happened about the bricks, and of course I wanted my chest. I picked a time about ten years later.”

“Well?”

“The first thing I noticed was the skyline. Every one of the ziggurats Nebu-al-karsig had put up was gone. I walked up to where one of them had been, and there was nothing but a heap of bricks, and the bricks looked as if people had pounded them with hammers.

“I walked on to the center of town where the royal palace had been. It was gone, too, and what looked like a new royal palace was going up to the north of it. It was plain what had happened. There had been a revolution, Nebu-al-karsig had been overthrown, Ur had a new king. I ought to have gone then. But I was still curious about my chest.

The nuse factory had been just outside the palace walls. It had been razed too—my beautiful installation!—but I could see people working around where it had been. I went over to talk to them.

“When I got up to them, I saw they were making bricks. Making them by hand, in the dumb, inefficient, old-fashioned way. But these weren’t rectangular bricks. The way the ones before my nuse bricks had been. These were rectangular on the sides and bottom, but they had round tops, like loaves of bread.”

“In other words,” I said, “plano-convex bricks.”

“Yes. It was the most impractical idea in the world. Their changing to such a silly shape made me realize how much the brickmakers had hated the nuse bricks. By the way—I know how curious you are—you’ll be interested to learn that walls made with bricks of that kind don’t look especially different from ordinary walls.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’d been wondering about that.”

“I thought you’d be glad to know,” said the nuse man. “Well, I went up close to one of the brickmakers and watched him working. The pace he was going, he’d be lucky if he got ten bricks done in a day. He smoothed his brick and rounded it and patted it. He put more mud on it and stood back to watch the effect. He pushed a wisp of straw into the surface with the air of an artist applying a spot of paint. He just loved that brick.

“I cleared my throat, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I said, ‘Say, I heard they found a chest with gold and jewels in the ruins of the old palace yesterday.’

“ ‘Another one?’ he answered, without looking up. ‘You know, they found one on the south side of the palace about five years ago. Full of treasure. Some people have all the luck. Me, I never find anything.’

“The south side of the palace was where my rooms had been. I made a sort of noise.

“Up to then the worker had been too busy patting his round-topped brick to pay any attention to me. Now he looked up. His eyes got wide. His jaw dropped. He stared at me. ‘Aren’t you—are you—’ he said doubtfully.

“Then he made up his mind. ‘Brothers! Brothers!’ he shouted. ‘It’s the foreign magician, come back to curse us again! Hurry! Kill him! Kill him! Kill the stinking sheep liver! Quick!’

“You wouldn’t have thought that people who were working as slowly as they were could move so quick. As soon as they heard the words ‘foreign magician,’ they went into action, and before he got to the second ‘Kill him!’ the air was black with flying bricks.”

“So that’s how your face—”

“Yes. Of course, not all the bricks were dry. If they had been—but even a wet brick can be painful.”

“And you never got your chest back.”

“No. All I got were the artifacts the priest brought me just before the nuse levitated him. Would you like to see them?”

He sounded as if he wanted to show them to me. I said, “Yes, I’d like to.”

He got out a little box and opened it. Inside was a piece of lapis lazuli that he said was a whetstone, two crude gold rings with roughly cabochon cut blackish stones, and a handsome gold necklace with lapis lazuli beads and gold pendants shaped like some sort of leaf.

“Very pretty,” I said, examining them.

“You should have seen the stuff I had! But this is better than nothing. The home office will be glad to see it. I don’t usually get even this much.”

This was true, and he looked so depressed when he said it that I felt a burst of sympathy for him. I didn’t know what to say.

He picked up his last piece of toast on the plate and looked at it.

“Burned,” he said sourly, “and one of the other slices was, too. Listen, why don’t you let me put in a nuse installation for you? Then your toast would never be burned. It’s this housework that’s getting you down. You might get so you didn’t look any older than your real age if you used nuse.”

“You should live so long,” I said.