Collected Fiction, page 249
Macklin found himself entering a gigantic office. The door closed behind him; Broscop was gone. He looked across several acres of bare, gleaming desk, at a gentleman with horns.
Old Growly was a repulsively fat creature with the plated dark skin of an alligator, a bulldog face, and two stubby horns that grew in the conventional place. He slammed huge fists on the desk and bellowed, “You’re Timothy Macklin! I’ll tell you right now that I can’t afford to waste time. Shut up and listen!”
Macklin found himself growing angry. Even in a madman’s dream, he had his rights. He said so. Old Growly wasn’t listening.
“You’re assigned to dreammaking. Now listen! Where do you suppose dreams come from?”
“The subconscious,” Macklin said automatically.
Old Growly seemed slightly taken aback. “All right,” he said at last. “But it isn’t like taking rabbits out of a hat. Dreams are written, see? We’ve got a whole crew of workers framing ’em up. And we never have enough writers on the job. We gotta supply the whole universe, and population keeps increasing. So we get recruits all the time. We got scouts out looking for likely talent. When they find a good prospect, they sign him up. Who signed you up? Belphegor’s covering Earth this month—it was him, huh?”
“It was he,” Macklin corrected instinctively. “I mean it wasn’t he. Nobody signed me up.”
“Trying to reneg, huh? We got your John Henry on the contract—”
“John Hancock.”
“Shut up!” screamed the infuriated creature behind the desk. “Don’t go correcting what I say! Blood of Cain, for two pins I’d assign you to the nightmare department! Just remember this, Mr. Timothy Macklin—you’re a cog in a big machine here. Just a cog, that’s all. And I’m your boss. What I say goes.”
“Now wait a minute,” Macklin interrupted. “Even if this is a dream, I want to set you right on a few things. Nobody signed me up to anything. I don’t understand the set-up here, and I don’t want to.”
“By Father Satan,” said Old Growly softly, “you do talk big, don’t you? Well, you’ll learn—you’ll learn. Now listen, once and for all. This is the dimension of the dream-makers. It’s the place where the dreams are manufactured for every intelligent being in the universe. Belphegor saw you, signed you up, and you’re here, like it or not. And you’re going to get to work here and like it!”
“And I tell you I don’t know anybody named Belphegor,” Macklin snapped. “A guy named Dunn sent me here. He—”
“Well?”
“Why . . . uh . . . nothing.” Macklin was staring at the parchment roll he still clutched in his left hand. The return ticket—
Suppose Dunn actually was a magician? Suppose—then something must have gone wrong. Macklin had landed in the wrong dimension. Instead of going to the Elysian Fields, he had arrived here.
But he still had the return ticket! Hastily Macklin snatched out his cigarette lighter. The flame didn’t spring into existence the first time he tried it. Before he could make another attempt, a burly thunderbolt had hurled itself across the desk and seized the scrip.
“What’s this?” Old Growly snarled, examining the parchment. “Magic?”
“Give me that!” Macklin tried to recover the lost scrip. The other held him back with one long arm.
“I thought so,” Old Growly nodded. “A spell. Satan knows what! Well, it’s against the rules to work magic here. You’ll learn to obey the rules, Mr. Timothy Macklin.” So saying, he crumpled the parchment into a ball, thrust it into his capacious mouth, and ate it.
“Only way to get rid of spells,” he said inarticulately. “Burn ’em and . . . mph . . . never know what’ll happen. Now you get to work or I’ll give you a week’s leave in Hell.”
Macklin breathed hoarsely. “You . . . you—”
“Shut up, see? I’m the boss here, and what I say goes!”
“O.K.,” Macklin whispered, his eyes ablaze. “But you can’t do this to me—”
Old Growly laughed coarsely. “He says!”
“Yeah. I’ll bust this racket of yours wide open. I’ve worked in Hollywood, Mister. All I’ve got to say is—just wait!”
The telephone rang. Old Growly answered it. “Yeah, it’s me. Whatchawant? Huh? But that super-special’s gotta go out tonight, Broscop. You can’t . . . oh, he is? Well, that’s different. Sure, you can have this new guy for a while. If you want the nuisance of breaking him in. Still, he may have some good ideas . . . O.K.”
Old Growly hung up. “Broscop wants to work with you. Scram outta here. I gotta date.
There’s a new gambling hell—didn’t ya hear me tell ya to get out? The door, see? Out!”
Macklin’s impotent fury was arrested when the leprechaun popped in and beckoned urgently. With a parting glare for Old Growly, he followed Broscop into the hall.
“What happened, Tim, me lad?”
Macklin explained as the leprechaun led him through a labyrinth of corridors, past a series of closed doors. Broscop shook his smooth, green grapefruit of a head.
“Better not get too tough with Old Growly. There’s only one punishment for insubordination, but that’s a dilly. A few days in Hell.”
“This is Hell,” Macklin groaned.
“No, it’s another dimension entirely. But there’s a trans-spatial service there.”
“There wouldn’t be a trans-spatial service to Earth, world there?”
“Nope. You’re here to stay. If you didn’t want the job, why’d you sign the contract?”
“I didn’t!” Macklin snapped. “Damn it all, I . . . I was mis-sent. I was supposed to go to the Elysian Fields.”
“Well, that’s your story,” the leprechaun said doubtfully. “Here’s the office. Take it easy. I’ll do all the work till you get used to it. Been a long time since I’ve seen an Irishman. You wouldn’t know the Kerry Dance, would you?”
“Sure.” Macklin hummed a few bars. His voice wasn’t bad.
Broscop capered with delight. “Och, that does me a world of good! Now sit down; I’ll explain. This’ll be your office. I’m right next door.” He pointed to a door.
Macklin sank into a chair before a desk and glanced around. The room was sparsely furnished, with a dictaphone handy; there were no windows, he noticed.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Write dreams,” the leprechaun advised. “Me, I was the greatest minstrel among the Little Folk in my day. That’s why I was signed up. It isn’t a bad life here. I do Irish dreams mostly. You . . . I dunno. Here’s the way we work it.” Broscop clicked a button on the dictagraph. “File on Agara Zohn, Sunsa, Rigel. Yeah.” He grinned at Macklin. “I’m composing a dream for him . . . we both are, I mean. He’s right up my alley. A mystic type.” The top of the desk popped open,-and a bundle of closely typed cards appeared. Broscop seized the sheaf.
“You see,” he explained, “we keep files on everybody. We have to, or people would be dreaming the wrong dreams. That’d never do. We have to write the dreams to fit the psychology of the individual. Let’s see this case-history, now. Agara Zohn. As a child, afraid of the dark. Check that. Once was badly clawed by a zoptanga. Dissatisfied with his job. He’s a hunter. Hates his superior officer—who uses musk perfume. We’ll use musk as the dream motif. Subconscious desires . . . hm-m-m. Well, let that go. What’s next? Wants power, sure—they all do. Hated his father, but never realized it consciously. How can we work that in?”
Broscop touched the dictaphone button, and the wax cylinder began to spin. “Agara Zohn—rough notes. Mm-m—they’re having a heat wave on his planet just now. Start off with Zohn in a volcano. His . . . yeah—I got it! . . . there’s a lot of stepping-stones leading to a ladder hanging down inside the crater. No—change that. Cut out the ladder; the censors would be sure to cut it. Make it an elevator. Agara runs across the stepping-stones toward the elevator. Each stone, as he steps on it, turns out to be his father’s head. He feels sorry as hell, but he can’t do anything about it now.
Maybe he goes back to help his old man. It’s too late, of course. Tim, reach me that Jung from the shelf, will you? And the Adler beside it. No, not the Freud—he’s out-dated. We only use him on New Yorkers. Now—” Broscop turned back to the dictaphone.
“Where was I? Agara goes up in the elevator. He smells musk. It chokes him. There’s something crouching on top of the elevator. It’s a zoptanga! Yeah! Now look, it gets dark all of a sudden. And then . . . and then . . . and then—” The leprechaun slowed down and stopped. After a moment he shrugged.
“That’s enough to start on. I’ll leave you here. Get acquainted. I’ll be in the next office if you want me.” He seized the dictaphone roll and scurried out, leaving a dazed Macklin glaring after him.
Merciful Heaven! This was worse than Summit Studio! What sort of damnable poetic justice had landed Macklin here—
He shut his eyes and tried to think. Jerome Dunn, very obviously, was a real magician, But how . . . why—
“First of all,” Macklin said silently, “I’ll have to work from an impossible premise. Magic. Dunn sent me off to the Elysian Fields and, somehow, I got short-circuited and landed here. Now how did that happen?”
He gave it up, for the while. Instead, he used the telephone and called Old Growly. It was some time before an answer came.
“You!” said Old Growly, in a blaze of furious profanity. “What the devil is it now? I’m a busy man! Who do you think you’re—”
“Wait,” Macklin said, trying to make his voice friendly. “I just want to ask you something. You say I signed a contract. Can I get a look at it?”
“No, you can’t!” Old Growly yelled. “We can’t go searching through a mountain of files just to amuse you!”
“But that’s just it. There isn’t any contract. If you’d only have somebody look and—”
“There is a contract or you wouldn’t be here. Shut up. If I hear anything from you for at least a week, I’ll shoot you to Hell so fast you’ll burn to a crisp before you get there.”
There was a crash that shook Macklin’s eardrum. Seething, he pronged the receiver and let loose with a few soul-satisfying oaths. Of all the unfair, tyrannical—
Wait a minute. It was a bit of shockingly bad luck that Macklin had landed here, of all places, but the blackness of the cloud might indicate a silver lining. Macklin knew the ropes in a Hollywood studio. If the same ropes existed here, he might be able to get out of the mess. Though it seemed quite improbable.
He used the telephone again. “Hello? I want the file on Jerome Dunn, Hollywood, Earth.”
“Earth? I’m sorry, sir. but—oh. I remember. Earth! It’ll be right up.”
A moment later the desk popped open again, and a sheaf of cards was revealed. Macklin fell upon it with avid fingers.
“Jerome Dunn, born April 7, 1896, in Pittsburgh.” There was a mass of psychological data which Macklin ignored, for the moment. He was interested in practical, hard facts. And he found them.
“In 1938 Dunn sold his soul to Satan, in exchange for magic powers. Dunn is noted for careless workmanship. Has not the logical mind necessary for an accomplished sorcerer. Actually a dilettante. Works in a very slipshod manner; confuses love potions with blue magic, and makes similar errors. His thoughts are pre-empted by money. Has no sense of loyalty; is completely ruthless in his desire to acquire riches.”
Macklin grinned with mirthless fury. “Slipshod—careless workmanship-r—” So it was Dunn’s fault, after all! Macklin thought wildly of the crying need for a strict union among sorcerers. He was the victim of a magician who had done a sloppy job. Instead of going to the Elysian Fields, he was in the dimension of the dream-makers. But why here, of all places?
After pondering vainly for a while, Macklin phoned for a file of information on magical spells. He explained what he wanted. When finally the bulky volume arrived, he found that whole pages had been removed, and lines here and there were blacked out. Censorship, naturally. It was against the rules to work magic here.
He found a few revealing paragraphs—enough to enable him to fit the jig saw together. There were innumerable dimensions, and it was possible to visit most of them by means of certain spells. “The parchment scrip” was cited as one of the methods. If, however, the spell was carelessly made, the person using it would not arrive at his destination. He would be cast out at random into trans-spatial existence. Thence he would gravitate, instantly and naturally, to the plane for which he had the most in common. “A devil would probably fall into Alpha Centauri,” said the footnote. “A miser would reach Ghel; a warrior, Valhalla.”
Macklin was a writer. So, of course—
“Hell!” he said, with baffled fury, wondering what good this new information would be to him. Very little, he felt sure. What he needed was a way to get out of this impossible world.
And there was no way, unless—unless—
Macklin’s eyes brightened. If you fell in a well, you’d scream for help. And you’d scream for somebody with a rope.
Well, there was one man who had such a rope, figuratively speaking. That was Jerome Dunn, Consulting Sorcerer. He might demand an exorbitant sum for rescuing Macklin, but money was certainly no object, under the circumstances. Besides, once Macklin got back to Earth, he could arrange matters to suit himself. His fist clenched, Macklin pounded reflectively against his knee.
How could he get a message through to Dunn? Not by telephone—that was clear. He scowled at the card that lay before him on the desk.
“Jerome Dunn, born April 7, 1896—”
Macklin suddenly gasped in awe of his own brilliance. Of course! That was it! He’d simply compose a—dream for Dunn—a dream that would explain the situation to the magician. “Don’t write—dream,” Macklin paraphrased, and beamed happily.
He whirled to the dictaphone and began to talk rapidly into the mouthpiece.
A half hour later Broscop came back into the office. The little leprechaun was grinning.
“All done, Tim me lad. I just shot it down to the producer. You’ll get dream-credit on the job, too.” He paused to stare. “Hey, what’s going on? Working?”
“Why not? It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”
Broscop picked up Dunn’s file cards from the desk. “An Earthman—fair enough. Let’s hear what you’ve got?”
“Sure.”
The dictaphone played back. Broscop’s expression changed. He looked at Macklin askance.
“What’s wrong?”
Broscop stopped the cylinder’s revolution. “Och, it’s no good! Lad, that’d never pass the board of censors. You don’t understand how we work here. Did you study this man Dunn’s psychology?” He put a stubby finger on a file card.
“Why—”
“Of course not! Dreams have to be fitted to the individual. Like—well, when I used to compose ballads for Titania, she was always the heroine. And Oberon was hero, except when the two were squabbling. There are rules to follow. The censors are very strict indeed.”
“Well,” Macklin hesitated, “maybe I can change this a bit—”
Broscop shook his head. “It won’t do. No, it won’t do at all. Your continuity doesn’t fit in with Dunn’s psychology the least bit. He wants money, it says. So start, perhaps, with a sequence in which he’s Midas. That’s a wish-fulfillment dream—if it’s a fear dream, you’d handle it different.”
Macklin considered. “Do the censors have a dope-sheet?”
“A list of what’s forbidden? Sure. I’ll get me one. You’ll have to hew to the line. You won’t even be assigned to doing Dunn’s dreams unless there’s good cause. You may be better suited to handling other types.”
“That so? Hm-m-m.”
“I’ve got to report to Old Growly about you—I’ll tell him you’re getting along swell—and then I’ll come back and we can go out for a bite. That suit you?”
“That’s fine. Listen, Broscop!”
“What?”
“I’ve got to be assigned to writing Dunn’s dreams. I’ve just got to!”
The leprechaun bit his lip. “That takes a bit of doing. Let’s see, now. If you only had an in with Skull—”
“Who?”
“Skull. He’s one of the partners. The only one who’s active in the business now. He’s the guy who runs this factory, Timothy lad. Tell you what, we’ll hunt up Skull tonight and see what we can do. If he takes a shine to you, you can do pretty much as you like. I must scram. Wait here for me.”
Macklin waited, brooding blackly, till the small leprechaun returned. “I gave Old Growly the oil,” he grinned. “Buttered him up. Said you’d caught on right away.”
“Maybe I have,” the other remarked cryptically. “What now?”
“We feed. Then we look for Skull. He’s probably at one of the hot spots. About the only fun we have,” Broscop said mournfully, “is night-clubbing. Still, that ain’t hay.” He brightened. “Come on. I’m starving.”
Macklin was not averse. So far, he had seen nothing of this world but three offices and a hall. But when he was ushered into a dining room, he rather regretted it.
It reminded him of a studio commissary, crowded noisy, and garishly lighted. That didn’t matter. What mattered were the people who thronged it. None of them was human. A rarer assortment of freaks Macklin had never seen.
“You’ll get used to ’em,” Broscop said, in an amused voice. “Still, maybe we’d better sit in a booth tonight. Over here. Yeah. Ah, the rosy cheeks on ye, mavournin,” he ended, and Macklin looked up, startled, to see the leprechaun ogling a waitress with two heads. He gulped and looked away.
“You order for me, Broscop, I . . . how about a drink?”
“Why, sure. A fine idea. Two Hellfire cocktails, double quick and double strong. How do you feel about eels?” the leprechaun inquired suddenly.
Seeing the little man’s eyes were fixed on him, Macklin groped for an answer. “Why, I . . . eels? Don’t tell me they’ve got eels working here!”
“For dinner, I mean,” Broscop said shortly. “Stewed eels. Not bad, either. How about it?”
