Soft and Others, page 1
SOFT & OTHERS
Stories of Wonder and Dread
by
F. Paul Wilson
Dedication
To the editors who variously inspired, encouraged, niggled, nit-picked, nursed, and guided these stories into print.
John W. Campbell, Jr.
Robert A. W. Lowndes
George Scithers
Stanley Schmidt
Alan Ryan
J. N. Williamson
Stuart David Schiff
Alan Rogers
Charles L. Grant
Edward Ferman
John Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer
David J. Schow
Richard Laymon
Richard Chizmar and Bob Morrish
Ed Gorman
Rob Meades and David Wake
THE STORIES
THE CLEANING MACHINE
Foreward
Nowadays I like to think of the device in this story as one of the Seven Infernals listed in the Compendium of Srem, but it started off with no pedigree.
I wrote “The Cleaning Machine” (now there’s a gripping title) in 1969 during medical school. I thought of it as a science-fiction horror story. I mean, it had a weird machine, so that made it sf, right? And bad things happened to people, so that made it horror, sort of. Whatever the genre, it was the best thing I’d written so far.
And I couldn’t give it away.
The story earned form-letter rejections from every sf and fantasy periodical I could find an address for. Only John W. Campbell (Yes! I sent a horror story to Analog! What was I thinking?) had the courtesy to tell me why it did not suit his editorial needs at that time. (He always told me why he was rejecting my stories, and I always will revere him for that. When he’d accept one, however, he sent only a check.)
He wrote: “It’s not a story because it doesn’t go anywhere. (The tenants did but the story doesn’t!) It’s a vignette.”
Cool. I’d written a vignette, whatever that was—sounded like those sugary things they serve at Café Du Monde in the French Quarter. But I still didn’t have a sale.
And Campbell was right, as usual. “The Cleaning Machine” didn’t work as science fiction, but I had faith in it. Vignette or not, I felt it was a decent piece of quiet horror. Trouble was, hardly anyone was publishing horror in 1969. I’d tried Joseph Payne Brennan’s Macabre—he liked it but wrote back that he was overstocked and not accepting new material.
But then in 1970 I stumbled on a pair of magazines Robert A. W. Lowndes was editing for Health Knowledge, Inc.: The Magazine of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories. Lowndes wrote informative editorials which he followed with reprints of hoary yarns from Weird Tales, Strange Tales, Argosy, and other Depression-era pulps. But he also published one new story per issue by newcomers with names like Stephen King and Greg Bear. Hey, if these nobodies could sell to Lowndes, so could I.
So I sent him “The Cleaning Machine”...and a few months later he wrote back to say he was taking it for Startling Mystery Stories. This was my second sale in a month; a few weeks earlier John Campbell had bought “Ratman” for Analog. The big difference was that Campbell had sent a $375 check on acceptance. Lowndes’s company paid on publication.
So I waited. Even though it was my second sale, “The Cleaning Machine” became my first published story, appearing March 1971 in Startling Mystery Stories #18—with my name on the cover, no less.
I had arrived!
Unfortunately, the check never did. Health Knowledge Inc. folded Startling Mystery Stories with that issue. I contend that this was pure synchronicity. “The Cleaning Machine” had nothing to do with the failure of the magazine. Nothing.
But that’s not the end of the story. Fifteen years later I’m signing books at a convention and here comes a reader with the August 1971 issue of an illustrated sf magazine called Galaxy Mission. I ask him what he wants me to do with it. He says a signature on the title page of my story would be greatly appreciated. What story? I’ve never even heard of Galaxy Mission, let alone sold to it. So he opens to the only text piece in the issue, and there’s “The Cleaning Machine” (as "The Machine") under my byline.
The story I initially couldn’t give away had been pirated and reprinted within months of its first publication, and I still hadn’t seen a penny for it.
And people wonder why so many writers die drunk or mad.
The Cleaning Machine
Dr. Edward Parker reached across his desk and flipped the power switch on his tape recorder to the "on" position.
"Listen if you like, Burke," he said. "But remember: She has classic paranoid symptoms; I wouldn't put much faith in anything she says."
Detective Ronald Burke, an old acquaintance on the city police force, sat across from the doctor.
"She's all we've got," he replied with ill-concealed exasperation. "Over a hundred people disappear from an apartment house and the only person who might be able to tell us anything is a nut."
Parker glanced at the recorder and noticed the glowing warm-up light. He pressed the button that started the tape.
"Listen."
*
…and I guess I'm the one who's responsible for it but it was really the people who lived there in my apartment who drove me to it—they were jealous of me.
The children were the worst. Every day as I'd walk to the store they'd spit at me behind my back and call me names. They even recruited other little brats from all over town and would wait for me on corners and doorsteps. They called me terrible names and said that I carried awful diseases. Their parents put them up to it, I know it! All those people in my apartment building laughed at me. They thought they could hide it but I heard it. They hated me because they were jealous of my poetry. They knew I was famous and they couldn't stand it.
Why, just the other night almost I caught three of them rummaging through my desk. They thought I was asleep and so they sneaked in and tried to steal some of my latest works, figuring they could palm them off as their own. But I was awake. I could hear them laughing at me as they searched. I grabbed the butcher knife that I always keep under my pillow and ran out into the study. I must have made some noise when I got out of bed because they ran out into the hall and closed the door just before I got there. I heard one of them on the other side say, "Boy, you sure can't fool that old lady! "
They were fiends, all of them! But the very worst was that John Hendricks fellow next door who was trying to kill me with an ultra-frequency sonicator. He used to turn it on me and try to boil my brains while I was writing. But I was too smart for him. I kept an ice pack on my head at all hours of the day. But even that didn't keep me from getting those awful headaches that plague me constantly. He was to blame.
But the thing I want to tell you about is the machine in the cellar. I found it when I went downstairs to the boiler room to see who was calling me filthy names through the ventilator system. I met the janitor on my way down and told him about it. He just laughed and said that there hadn't been anyone down in the boiler room for two years, not since we started getting our heat piped in from the building next door. But I knew someone was down there—hadn't I heard those voices through the vent? I simply turned and went my way.
Everything in the cellar was covered with at least half an inch of dust—everything, that is, except the machine. I didn't know it was a machine at that time because it hadn't done anything yet. It didn't have any lights or dials and it didn't make any noise. Just a metal box with sides that ran at all sorts of odd angles, some of which didn’t seem to meet properly.
It just sat there being clean.
I also noticed that the floor around it was immaculately clean for about five foot in all directions. Everywhere else was filth. It looked so strange, being clean. I ran and got George, the janitor.
He was angry at having to go downstairs but I kept pestering him until he did. He was mighty surprised.
"What is that thing?" he said, walking toward the machine.
Then he was gone! One moment he had been there, and then he was gone. No blinding flash or puff of smoke...just gone! And it happened just as he crossed into that circle of clean floor around the machine.
I immediately knew who was responsible: John Hendricks! So I went right upstairs and brought him down. I didn't bother to tell him what the machine had done to George since I was sure he knew all about it. But he surprised me by walking right into the circle and disappearing, just like George.
Well, at least I wouldn't be bothered by that ultra-frequency sonicator of his anymore. It was a good thing I had been too careful to go anywhere near that thing.
I began to get an idea about that machine—it was a cleaning machine! That's why the floor around it was so clean. Any dust or anything that came within the circle was either stored away somewhere or destroyed.
A thought struck me: Why not "clean out" all of my jealous neighbors this way? It was a wonderful idea!
I started with the children.
I went outside and, as usual, they started in with their name-calling. (They always made sure to do it very softly but I could read their lips.) About twenty of them were playing in the street. I called them together and told them I was forming a club in the cellar and they all followed me down in a group. I pointed to the machine and told them that there was a gallon of chocolate ice cream behind it and that the first one to reach it could have it all. Their greedy little faces lighted up and they scrambled away in a mob.
Three seconds later I was alone in the cellar.
I then went around to all the other apartments in the building and told all those hateful people that their sweet little darlings were playing in the old boiler room and that I thought it was dangerous. I waited for one to go downstairs before I went to the next door. Then I met the husbands as they came home from work and told them the same thing. And if anyone came looking for someone, I sent him down to the cellar. It was all so simple: In searching the cellar they had to cross into the circle sooner or later.
That night I was alone in the building. It was wonderful—no laughing, no name-calling, and no one sneaking into my study. Wonderful!
A policeman came the next day. He knocked on my door and looked very surprised when I opened it. He said he was investigating a number of missing-persons reports. I told him that everyone was down in the cellar. He gave me a strange look but went to check. I followed him.
The machine was gone! Nothing was left but the circle of clean floor. I told the officer all about it, about what horrible people they were and how they deserved to disappear. He just smiled and brought me down to the station where I had to tell my story again. Then they sent me here to see you.
They're still looking for my neighbors, aren't they? Won't listen when I tell them that they'll never find them. They don't believe there ever was a machine. But they can't find my neighbors, can they? Well, it serves them right! I told them I'm the one responsible for "cleaning out" my apartment building but they don't believe me. Serves them all right!
*
"See what I mean?" said Dr. Parker with the slightest trace of a smile as he turned the recorder off. "She's no help at all."
"Yeah, I know," Burke sighed. "As loony as they come. But how can you explain that circle of clean floor in the boiler room with all those footprints around it?"
"Well, I can't be sure, but the 'infernal machine' is not uncommon in the paranoid's delusional system. You found no trace of this 'ultra-frequency sonicator' in the Hendricks apartment, I trust?"
Burke shook his head. "No. From what we can gather, Hendricks knew nothing about electronics. He was a short-order cook in a greasy spoon downtown."
"I figured as much. She probably found everybody gone and went looking for them. She went down to the boiler room as a last resort and, finding it deserted, concluded that everybody had been 'cleaned out' of the building. She was glad but wanted to give herself the credit. She saw the circle of clean floor—probably left there by a round table top that had been recently moved—and started fabricating. By now she believes every word of her fantastic story. We'll never really know what happened until we find those missing tenants."
"I guess not," Burke said as he rose to go, "but I'd still like to know why we can find over a hundred sets of footprints approaching the circle but none leaving it."
Dr. Parker didn't have an answer for that one.
RATMAN
Foreward
"Ratman" was my first sale. After years of detailed rejection slips from John W. Campbell, editor of Analog, I finally broke the barrier: A check from Conde Nast for $375 arrived in the mail. A nickel a word and no comment from Campbell. Just a check. Typical. He was the kind of guy who liked to argue. If he disagreed with you, he could go on for pages. If he agreed, he had nothing to say. The check said it all.
I was a first-year medical student at the time, with a wife, no job, no money, and a baby on the way. You can't imagine how $375 looked to us.
"Ratman" grew out of the psychopharmacological research I did at CIBA between pre-med and med school. Day in, day out, we dosed white rats with new drugs and placed them in Skinner boxes. Lots of times I felt sorry for the rats. But there were times when I thought they might be doing a number on us fellows in the white coats. After all, intraperitoneal injections of amphetamine were part of the protocol.
(Please forgive the size of the computers mentioned here. "Ratman" was written in 1970, years before Steve Jobs began playing with microchips.)
RATMAN
Since its purpose was neither to load nor unload cargo, his converted tramp freighter was directed to a landing pad at the far end of the field where it wouldn't get in the way. Orz, red-haired and of average height and build, though somewhat stoop-shouldered, didn't mind. As long as he was in the general area his efficiency would be unimpaired.
When the viewscreen picked up an approaching ground car, Orz snapped his fingers and a half-kilo space rat leaped from the control console to his shoulder.
"Let's go, 62," he said to his favorite employee.
The space rat grasped the fabric of his master's shirt tightly in his tiny paws and lashed his tail about nervously. He didn't like meeting strangers, but it was part of his job; his master had found that there was a definite psychological advantage in appearing with a space rat on his shoulder.
Orz and 62 reached the hatch just as the ground car pulled up alongside. They scrutinized the two occupants as the freighter's loading ramp descended.
The first to debark was a portly little man wearing a stylish orange tunic that should have been two sizes larger. His companion probably weighed as much but was taller and better proportioned.
Orz's long legs carried him swiftly down the ramp after it had settled and the portly one came forward to meet him.
"Mr. Samuel Orzechowski?" he asked, mangling the pronunciation.
Orz smiled. 'That's right, but you can call me Sam, or Orz, or, as some people prefer, Ratman."
And being a client, he thought, you'll no doubt choose the last one.
"Well," the little man replied, "I guess 'Ratman' will do. I'm Aaron Lesno, president of the Traders League, and this is Evan Rabb, our treasurer," he said, indicating the man beside him. "Welcome to Neeka," said Lesno.
"Could I ask you something, Ratman?" Rabb hastily interjected. He couldn't take his eyes off 62."Is that a space rat?"
Orz nodded. "A small one. A baby, really."
"Aren't you afraid of...?"
"Losing my ear?" he grinned."Not at all. I imagine you two and the rest of the League are somewhat in the dark as to my methods, and you've probably got a lot of questions. I've found it best in the past to get everyone together and explain things to everybody at once. It saves me time and you money."
"An excellent idea!" Lesno agreed. "We've all been anxiously awaiting your arrival..." He corrected himself with a glance at Rabb. "Well, almost all...but I'm sure there would be no problem in getting everyone together."
"What did you mean by almost all'?" Orz asked.
Rabb spoke up. "One of our more influential members was vehemently opposed to the idea of retaining you."
"Oh, really? Why?"
"Have no fear, Ratman," Lesno assured him with a smile. "He'll let you know why at the meeting tonight."
"Fair enough," Orz said. "Can someone come back and pick me up in a few hours for the meeting?"
"Why not come with us now and let us show you around a bit?" Lesno offered.
Orz shook his head and gestured over his shoulder to the ship. "Sorry... feeding time."
Rabb and Lesno stiffened and glanced nervously from 62 to the open hatch.
"Yes, quite," Lesno muttered. "Very well, then, we'll have someone call for you in, say, three hours."
"That'll be fine." This settled, the two-man welcoming committee lost little time in putting some distance between themselves and the squat little freighter.
"Seem like pretty decent fellows," Orz told 62 as he made his way up the ramp and down the central corridor. As they approached the rat room, 62 began to prance excitedly on his master's shoulder and was literally doing a dance by the time Orz hit the door release.
His several hundred fellow employees inside took up the same excited dance at the sound of the door sliding open. The cages were arranged five high along the walls of the long, narrow room. They were simple, steel-sided boxes with front doors of quarter-inch steel mesh; each was self-cleaning, had its own water supply, and was equipped with an automatic feeder.
