The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

A BARGAIN WITH CASHEL Gerald Kersh

If this is a hangover—and if it is not, the joke is on me, with a vengeance—the devil take the vintage! I am no stranger to that sense of half-belonging which comes with the morning after a heavy night. But I never felt so odd as this. “Odd” is the word, like three gloves or half a haircut.

I woke as usual, clambering from a miry sleep joint by joint like a dinosaur coming out of the mud. A smudged lithograph of consciousness came back in a swirl of little black dots. I remembered having drunk champagne with friends and—most remarkable—having paid the check for all of us.

I sat up then and groped for my glasses. The room sprang into focus. It was mine—there was no doubt about that—but, while I was familiar with every dusty corner of it, I felt as a ghost might feel if it returned to haunt a place where it had lived. There should be some revaluation of dimensions—that place would seem ghostly; only the ghost would think itself solid. And that might be an idea for a story to sell Cashel, I thought.

There was nothing unmaterial about my bare foot, or the chair I stubbed it against. No, no, I was myself, the reprehensible Ira Noxon and none other; and I was at home. There lay my Afghan rug, and there stood my divan and writing desk, and there was the “room divider” made of unpainted bookshelves, beyond which I kept my little stove and my icebox. And there was no getting away from the throbbing of machinery in the cloak-and-suiter’s loft on the floor below. I liked living in a house supposed to be strictly nonresidential, down in the garment district; the quiet of the streets by night; the naughtiness of making neat packages of my garbage—mostly coffee grounds and bottles—and dropping them in strange doorways. Squalor and solitude suit me.

The place pleased me, generally. But not this morning. A subtle, indefinable atmosphere of uneasiness prevailed. Something was lost. Or was something here that ought not to be? Could it be that I had brought home a guest last night, who had left behind some unfamiliar scent, some aura, some memory? Had I made some scandalous fool of myself in the course of the night?

No, not I. A clown, perhaps; yes. But a fool, never— drunk or sober.

My clothes hung over the chair where I had thrown them. I turned out the pockets and discovered to my astonishment that I had $55 in bills and $4.50 in change. Yesterday’s newspaper was dated April 27. Between this date and the first of the following month, when my aunt’s check was due, I could not possibly have had more than a dollar or two—unless I had borrowed money somewhere. In that case I must have met a rich stranger, I thought; nobody I know would lend me this much money, even if he had it.

I filled my percolator and set it to heat, and went to my tiny bathroom, where I switched on the light and had a long, close look at myself. I was relieved to see my own image in the mirror. I like the way I look, and go to some pains to look that way. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile, they say. They ought to practice the Gothic-arched fixed grin I offer the world. I have a way of never meeting your gaze—I offer my colorless gray eyes for inspection beneath strong lenses in a manner which seems to say, In these apparently clear drops of stagnant water curious creatures creep and crawl. It is said that somewhere in the ruined labyrinth of my mind there wanders the ghost of a lost genius, but that some small, necessary bit of me is missing. Either it was knocked out when I was young or it never grew at all. As I am, like a boy who has lost a front tooth, I have what others have not—a perfect space to spit through—and I use it. I am a master of the studied insult.

I had no fault to find with my appearance, then, as I turned from the mirror. But black coffee was slow in settling my mind. There was some brandy in the cupboard. That helped. Then I found myself feeling in the handkerchief pocket of my coat and sighing with relief as I found and lit a long, thin cigar.

I had never smoked a cigar in my life before.

Could it be perhaps that last night, under the influence of whatever I was drinking, I had smoked a cigar and liked it? This was an expensive cigar. Perhaps the rich man who lent me all that money gave me cigars as well?

And then I remembered that Mourne Cashel had given me the money. That was the most astounding thing of all. Cashel is proprietor and editor of a pulpy little magazine devoted to tenth-rate science fiction. Since storytelling is a dying art and conjecture is its last gasp, little Cashel’s back is bowed from stooping to scrape the bottom of an oft-rinsed barrel. He has to adulterate the aqueous solution of strained imagination that he dispenses, with syrupy editorial introductions. Only people who read such stuff are bemused enough to write it, so Cashel’s shabby book is subscribed to mainly by part-time hacks who get their livings teaching school or monitoring I.B.M. installations. At less than fifty cents a copy, having a circulation of twenty thousand and carrying no advertisements, the magazine is a dead loss, says Cashel. He will pay a few paltry dollars for a six thousand-word story, the month after publication. He never lent anybody a penny. “I haven’t got it,” he says, almost in physical agony. I believe he really does suffer when he has to say no to a request for a small loan.

This was one of the reasons why, having little else to do, I went out to annoy Mourne Cashel yesterday morning. For, as some men dread cats, so he seemed to dread me. And since some men are fascinated by what they most abhor, Cashel appeared to be attracted to me.

It all came back with vivid clarity while I smoked that inexplicable cigar.

For Cashel’s sake I had made an especially careful toilet. Now some men dress to kill. I dress to wound. My contempt for appearances is real and deep. My best suit is black alpaca, carefully made by a theatrical tailor not to fit, skillfully padded and draped to hang just wrong enough to irritate those who notice such things. The left sleeve is a shade longer than the right; the right lapel is a trifle wider than the left; the trousers are too low in the waist, and their legs are of different lengths and widths; the waistcoat is too high at the neck and appears to be buttoned up askew. My shoes are made to give me the appearance of having two left feet. I am perfectly comfortable, however: You are the one who is ill-at-ease, and it serves you right for taking stock of such trivia!

So dressed and, in a manner of speaking, armed, I walked uptown with only eighty-five cents left of my allowance and ran poor Cashel to earth just as he was going out to lunch. Now, while thumbscrews could not get money from him, Cashel was always good for a lunch. Yesterday, with a stifled sigh, he took me to the Crepuscule, the darkest restaurant in New York. It has a domed ceiling, lit only by tiny inset bulbs widely spaced in the designs of the better-known constellations.

Cashel had a cocktail made with vodka because it does not smell. I had one made with rum, because it does smell. “Are you writing anything these days, Ira?” he asked.

“I am more than halfway through my novel,” I told him.

“I’d love to read it, my dear fellow.”

I said to him, “You don’t know how to read, little man, any more than you know how to edit. Having skimmed, you give marks. Once a schoolteacher, always a schoolteacher. You can read my book when it’s out, if you’ve got the price of a copy. Touching that matter, Cashel, I find myself somewhat short of housekeeping money. Lend me fifty.”

“I haven’t got it!” he said, in a kind of wail.

I laughed. I had known exactly what he would say, of course. I said, “I didn’t really mean a loan. I meant an advance. I’ll write a story for you, Cashel—there now. And knowing, as you do what I think of your horrible little magazine, you’ll realize that when I offer to write you a story I’ve touched rock bottom. Well?”

He called for more drinks. “I can’t advance! I haven’t got it. The accountants—” He half stifled a sigh. “You have so much talent,” he said. “Why do you use it to torment people?”

“Can one go through life without treading on worms?” I asked. “But my story. Listen. The title is Dreadful Little Brat. Now it seems there is a child of the ash cans who has an utterly evil character. The things she does are something shocking. But she has a face like a flower. Free-lance photographers are always snapping her sitting on doorsteps, looking up to the sky, because she looks so like an angel. Actually she’s scheming how to blackmail the candy-store man out of a dollar to buy lipstick. She is a truly dreadful little brat. Now one morning she is loitering by a lamppost, having forged a letter saying she’s too sick to go to school, reading a theatrical magazine she has stolen from the drugstore. Her attention is caught by a photograph of a sublimely beautiful actress curtsying within a circle of bouquets on a stage. ‘What wouldn’t I give to be her!’ she says aloud. ‘Your soul, for example?’ says a voice, and there stands a man with a black box. She nods. ‘Step inside, please,’ says the man. She does so, and he presses a button.”

Cashel said, “Oh, dear; oh, dear!” and ordered more cocktails.

I went on, “Now somewhere in Palm Springs a loathsome old harridan, almost destroyed by her frightful debaucheries, flips through an old album. She finds a picture of a flower-faced little angel sitting on a doorstep. ‘What wouldn’t I give to be her!’ she cries. ‘Your soul?’ says a voice, and there stands a man with a black box. She nods. ‘Step inside, please,’ says the man. She does so, and he presses a button.”

“I don’t want to interrupt—” Cashel began.

“Then be quiet. Now that old harridan and that flower-faced child are one and the same person, with fifty years of time between them. The sublime creature on the stage is the harridan as she was thirty years ago and the child as she will be twenty years hence. As the one rushes forward, the other rushes back; the two parts of the same self meet in the person of the curtsying actress at the peak of her triumph. But that actress is in intolerable agony. Not only has she an appalling Charley horse; she knows that the moment she rises something unthinkably embarrassing is going to happen. And she is doomed so to remain forever.”

“It won’t do; it won’t do at all,” said Mourne Cashel with vehemence. “It’s irrational. It’s unworkable. Things simply aren’t done like that!”

“Oh, come off it! It’s as rational as all your goo about galaxies and space-time continua and passionate robots and whatnot. Time is only imaginary, anyway,” I said. “Fifty dollars, please!”

“Even if I liked the story, I couldn’t. Won’t you order?”

“Tripe,” I said. “Tripe a la mode.”

He ordered an omelet glumly. I was enjoying myself.

“Order a bottle of wine,” I said, “and you may advance me a mere twenty-five.”

“Wine, by all means,” said he, beckoning. “But money, no. You know you’re only teasing me. Why do you do it? It upsets me; you know it does. And time is not imaginary, if you know how to use it, Ira. With your youth— How old are you, by the way?”

“Thirty-three.”

“With your youth and your talent.... What—time imaginary? Oh, far, far from it—ever so far from imaginary!”

“Imaginary,” I said. “But let’s assume otherwise, if you like. There’s a story in it. You can let me have something on—”

“Ira, please, not again!” _N

“For example,” I said. “You say to an office boy loafing at the water cooler ‘Don’t loaf on my time.’ For x dollars a year you are actually buying that boy’s time. He wants to use that time otherwise. He wants to see people playing baseball. But that time is yours. If you fire him he couldn’t say to you, ‘Here’s your money back, Mr. Cashel; please give me back eighteen months.’ “

Cashel said solemnly—for there is no more inveterate enterer-into-the-spirit-of-things than your science fantasist —”No, of course not. It would be used-up time. It wouldn’t be any good to him any more; don’t you see?”

I pretended to be grave in turn. “One thing I’d like to know,” I said, “is, where do people like you get all their time? Because they evidently use up far more than they’ve got. You know the soapy little biographical bits you slip into your blotted little pulp: ‘Lucy Lockett is the author of sixteen novels and more than eleven hundred short stories. She is married to an archaeologist, whom she accompanies on most of his expeditions. Mrs. Lockett keeps house for her husband and six children. She lectures three times a week on ceramics at the Home for Wayward Wives. In her spare time she practices psychiatry.’

“How can she? I repeat, where does she find the time?”

“Well—” Cashel began.

I went on: “ ‘Brass Williams is thirty-four, happily married, and father of eleven sons and a daughter (Peewee). He is Professor of astrophysics at East-Western University and has been a gas fitter, a theatrical-costume Designer, a heavyweight boxer, a test pilot, a puddler in a steel mill and an optometrist. His published works include three encyclopedias, seven textbooks, nine novels, ten plays, sixteen filmscripts, and he conducts a daily syndicated column. Under three noms de plume he has written sixteen hundred short stories and novellas. In his spare time he makes bent-iron gates. His hobby is watchmaking.’

“How? Above all, when? There’s your story, Cashel; there’s your story! These people go about picking up loafers. ‘Have you a little time to spare?’ they ask. ‘All the time in the world, bud!’ A bottle of Sneaky Pete changes hands—”

“No, no, no!” Cashel almost squeaked in his excitement. “That couldn’t be the way of it. Time, per se, wouldn’t be the way of it. Time, per se, wouldn’t be of any use at all unless it were connected with a certain human potential. Your born loafer, your irreclaimable skid-row wino, would have destroyed his potential. His time wouldn’t be of any value! The only time worth buying would be that of a man who had disciplined himself to the use of time.”

I said, “Jargon, little man, jargon! But I love the way you creatures of the scientific fairy-tale clique take yourselves seriously. If you care to purchase a little of my time, by the bye, a small advance will secure—”

“No, please, Ira! I concede we fantasy fellows do form a clique. We have to. Who else talks our language? We make it our business to say ‘Let us assume’ in such a manner as to stimulate the technologists to think Why not? We rationalize the if. We—”

“You do nothing of the sort. You fill a blunderbuss with nightmares and fire it into a crowd. If one slug grazes anything, you call yourselves prophets. But we were talking about time—as a commodity. Here’s an idea for you. Assume that you are a man who needs time.”

“I am; I do,” sighed Cashel.

“Ah, but assume you aren’t Mourne Cashel, who whimpers ‘I haven’t got it’ when a gentleman mentions a lousy fifty dollars. Imagine yourself to be Mr. X, solvent and in the market for time.”

“Hadn’t you better have a brandy?” Cashel almost begged.

“Certainly I had better. To continue: Being such a man, you look around for somebody with what you call potential. As you say, an idiot’s time isn’t worth having. And as luck will have it, you meet Ira Noxon.”

Cashel said, “Ah, your time would certainly be worth having. You are a hard worker, Ira.”

“Are you trying to be funny?” I asked.

“Not at all. You have a stupendous potential. Just the energy you have put into doing nothing would supply current for a small town.”

“Be less familiar, little man,” I said. “Now you have met me. You ask, ‘How much do you want for some of your time?’ Words to that effect. I reply, naturally, ‘I am no huckster. This is a buyer’s market. How much are you paying per unit of time? How much an hour, or day, or month?”

Cashel, engrossed in the spirit of the thing, cried, “No, no, no! Years—it must be a term of years.”

“Hold hard,” I said. “Would that imply a term of servitude? I couldn’t go for that, you know.”

“Certainly not. Just your time, pure and simple. You wouldn’t even miss it, necessarily,” said Cashel.

“This being the case, I say to Mr. X, ‘I can let you have five years.’”

“But not of your past, as in the analogy of the boss and the office boy,” said Cashel. “That couldn’t possibly suit, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “Future.”

Cashel said owlishly, after calling for more brandy, “But they’d have to be consecutive years.”

“Oh, yes, by all means,” I said, “as consecutive as you please. So Mr. X says, ‘How about ten thousand a year?’ “

“Too much, too much—can’t run to it!” cried Cashel.

“Shut up. I say to Mr. X, ‘You are talking like an inky little plagiarist I know called Mourne Cashel. I wouldn’t consider a penny less than fifteen thousand a year. Think of all the potential!’ Mr. X thinks and thinks.”

“I can see by your face you have something naughty up your sleeve,” said Cashel.

“Wait. I go on to say, ‘Naturally, I have read about deals with the devil, and so forth; how deadly it can be to sell even a second of one’s time, in which one may utter a fateful word or pull a trigger. I stipulate, none of that! The time I sell may not be used in any way to hurt me or—to be on the safe side—to hurt anyone else. You get into trouble on your own time, not on the valuable time you buy from me.’”

“He’d have to agree to that,” said Cashel. “But he’d say, ‘Fifteen thousand dollars a year is too much.’ “

“My Mr. X is no such cheapjack higgler,” I said. “But let us assume that I let myself be beaten down to twelve thousand five hundred a year.”

“Very well,” said Cashel grudgingly—he was careful with money even in fantasy. “But the five years of time would have to be handed over on the spot.”

“Just what I was coming to. Mr. X and I reach an agreement. The whole five years’ pay is to be in advance—and on the nail, you know?”

“Of course,” said Cashel.

“Tax-free,” I said.

“Ye-es, yes. Tax-free.”

“Fine.” Seeing Cashel writing on the back of a menu, I said, “Making a note of this, little man? I’ll be damned if it doesn’t cost you!”

“I was doing figures,” he said. “Five years at twelve and a half makes sixty-two thousand, five hundred.”

“I daresay it does. And this sum of money I secure before I deliver. Very well. Then I say to my Mr. X, “Thank you, sir, and good day to you. It has been a pleasure doing business with you. I hope you enjoyed the time I sold you.’ Mr. X says, ‘What do you mean?’ I reply, ‘You purchased five consecutive years of my time. I have sold you exactly two and a half years forward and two and a half years back!’ So saying, I walk out with my satchel of money.”

Cashel blinked and said, “Coffee?”

“Yes, and another brandy. A neat story, I flatter myself?”

“It couldn’t work quite like that,” said Cashel. “Two and a half years forward and two and a half years back wouldn’t leave you in exactly the same place at the same time of day.”

“Why not?”

“Because time bends, the same way light does. There’s no such thing as ‘instantaneous’—as yet. Also, the universe moves, as you must know. There’d have to be a few hours and a few miles of difference. As for the gimmick about time forward and time back, it isn’t as clever as you might think. Consider: Your Mr. X would be richer by two and a half years of foresight and two and a half years of hindsight—to say nothing of the time itself. He’d get a good sixty-two thousand dollars’ worth.”

“Sixty-two thousand, five hundred,” I said.

“All right.”

“Now do I get fifty dollars on account of this fine story?”

“I can’t, Ira,” said Cashel, “but I wish you’d drink this brandy for me. It makes me sleepy...No, on policy, I can’t advance on a story.” He sounded slightly tipsy. “But I certainly would like to buy five years of the time a man with a brain like yours fritters away.”

“Right!” I said, bored now that I had had my fun. “Sixty-two thousand, five hundred dollars on the nail, and it’s yours—two and a half forward, two and a half back.”

“You really would sell it, I think,” Cashel murmured. He was making calculations on the menu, and looking at his watch—one of those complicated stop watches studded with incomprehensible winders, such as artillerymen use.

“Like a shot!” I replied, helping myself to his brandy.

“It’s fascinating, really,” said Cashel. He took out a little ivory slide rule and made further calculations. “As it would turn out,” he said brightly, “there’d actually be a discrepancy of about twenty-one hours, in going from here to June, 1965, and back. So you wouldn’t be able to get the money until about noon tomorrow.”

“Free of tax, mind,” I said, playing the owl like Cashel, but making a grotesquerie of it. “Of course, this mustn’t shorten my life in any way, you understand.”

“Of course not, Ira. It’s simply a matter of your unused time—you don’t even miss it.”

“Do I sign a contract?” I asked.

“No, we just shake hands on it.”

“Before we do, let’s go back to the question of money,” I said. “Sixty-odd thousand tomorrow is very nice to contemplate. How about something on account?”

His face fell. Then he sighed and said, “There you go! But assuming that I make this deal with you, I can’t talk thousands, Ira—you know that. I think you said it was fifty you wanted?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “For five years of the time a man of talent fritters away? Fifty dollars?” I pretended to be indignant. “Why, I’d want five hundred at least, and spot cash. Two and a half years forward, two and a half years back—and I couldn’t be on the same spot, since a pendulum doesn’t swing exactly along the same line, or however it is you work it out. You don’t catch me with an offer like that, little man. Give me five hundred and another brandy, and it’s a deal.”

“I haven’t got it,” he said.

“Come on,” I said, like a pushcart peddler. “Four hundred.”

“I tell you I haven’t got it!”

The game was about worn out. “How much have you got? A hundred and fifty?” I asked, waiting for the inevitable “I never carry more than I can afford to lose, so I haven’t got anything.”

To my surprise he looked in his wallet and said, “All the ready cash I have in the world is a hundred and twenty dollars, Ira.”

“I’m sorry,” I said firmly. “I can’t possibly sell time like mine at less than thirty dollars a year, you know. Give me the hundred and twenty, then, but you can only have two years forward and two years back. One has one’s pride, damn it all!”

Cashel amazed me by saying, “Oh, very well.” He gave me the one hundred twenty dollars, and we shook hands. “You’ve got more in your wallet,” I said, bending forward to look.

“Only a few dollars I need for expenses,” he said.

“What a skinflint you are!” I cried. “I offer you over sixty-two thousand dollars’ worth of my precious time for a hundred and fifty, and you beat me down another thirty!” But I put the money in my pocket, thinking, This is the easiest bit of cash I ever bullied anybody out of. “And what about that brandy?” I demanded.

“If you’re sure you haven’t had enough already.”

“And you’ve got to have one too.”

“Yes, we must seal the bargain.”

So we drank for the last time, and he signed the bill and darted away. I remained and had more brandy, until the bartender said if I didn’t mind he’d rather not serve me again just now.

I must have left then and made my zigzag way down to the village from the Crepuscule, but I could not recall how. I recollected vaguely the smoky interior of the Café Verlaine, an old haunt of mine, and my penetrating voice crying, “Drinks are on me! The impossible is achieved! I have put the bite on Mourne Cashel!”

And so to my distasteful awakening this morning, and my confusion.

The coffeepot was empty now, and the brandy was gone. I decided to visit the Cafe Verlaine again for a late breakfast.

“Well, well, well!” said Lonergan, the bartender. “Look who’s here! Champagne Charlie!”

“I can’t get the taste of the vile stuff out of my mouth,” I said. “Give me a double cognac and a cup of coffee.”

“Oh, come,” said Lonergan. “It wasn’t Veuve Cliquot, but it couldn’t have been as bad as all that.”

“How many bottles did I buy, may I ask?”

“Let me see,” he said, scratching his head. “It was six or seven bottles, I believe. ‘I have put the bite on Mourne Cashel!’ says you. And, man, you made an evening of it! Here, have this one on the house, Mr. Noxon. Mourne Cashel, and you’d put the bite on him, you said. Ah, that was a sad business, a sad business, with Mourne Cashel!” He shook his big Irish head. “What do you think of it all?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Why, don’t you read the papers?”

“Occasionally. What’s this sad business with little Cashel?”

“Why, the fortune he made with his publishing empire and his television programs and all. But that’s the way of it—the bigger they are the harder they fall, and what with the taxes and the overheads it’s a case of rob Peter to pay Paul. And there’s many’s the big shot that, if he was called on to lay down all his cards this very minute, it would be seen that all was paper and credit. It’s always a little playing for time here and a bank renewal there. Poor Mr. Cashel, I served him at this very bar more than once. And to jump out of a thirtieth-story window! A man must be desperate indeed to do such a terrible thing!”

“When was this?” I asked.

“This very morning. He was down by twenty million, and an inquiry pending. But if they had not pushed him to the wall, the Madison Avenue and the Wall Street men, why, given another three months he’d have doubled the money and nobody would have been the wiser or the worse.”

“Thirty dollars would have got the cheapskate six months more,” I said. “But I never heard anything of Cashel’s publishing empire and television programs and whatnot.”

Lonergan said, “I don’t get the gag.”

“Never mind. Since when was Cashel a magnate, for heaven’s sake?”

Lonergan stared at me. “Why,” he said, “everybody in this whole world knew about Mourne Cashel. Where on God’s earth have you been these past two years, Mr. Noxon?”