The Sci-Fi Stories - Cyril M. Kornbluth Edition. Cyril M. Kornbluth

things were looking up when a slave appeared with a message.

      Sorghum's host read from it: The Lady Livia will be pleased to see Sorghum Hackett, the guest of the Senator Asinius Gallo. She believes that there are many mutual interests which it will be profitable to discuss.

      "Right kind of her," said Sorghum.

      "Hah!" groaned his backer. "You don't know the old hag. Sorghum Hackett, you're as good as dead, and it's no use hoping otherwise. She's always been down on me, but she never dared to strike at me direct because of my family. Now you're going to get it. Oh, I'm sorry, friend. And I thought I'd kept you a pretty close secret. Well, go on—no use postponing fate."

      Sorghum grinned slowly. "We'll see," he said. He picked up two bottles of the latest run and rammed them into his boot tops. "Goodbye, Mr. Gallo," he said, entering the sedan chair that was waiting for him.

      The bearers let him off at the Augustan Palace and conducted him to a side entrance. He waited only a moment before the door opened and a cracked voice bade him enter. "Come in, young man; come in!" it shrilled.

      Sorghum closed the door behind him and faced the notorious Livia, mother of the Emperor Tiberius, poisoner supreme and unquestioned ruler of Rome. "Pleased t' meet-cha, ma'am," he said.

      "You're the Hackett they tell me about?" she demanded.

      He studied her wispy white hair and the bony, hooked nose as he answered, "I'm the only Hackett in these parts."

      "It's true!" she shrilled. "You are a magician—your body waves like a flame, and your language is strange, but I can understand it. Everything they said is true!"

      "I reckon so, ma'am," admitted Sorghum.

      "Then you're condemned," she said promptly. "I won't have any magicians going about in my empire. Can't tax the brutes—they're unfair. You're condemned, young man!"

      "To what?" asked the Tennessean.

      "Amphitheater," she snapped. "Wild beasts. Take him away, you fools!"

      Sorghum's arms were grabbed by two of the biggest, ugliest people he had ever seen in his born days and he was hustled down flights of stairs and hurled into something of a dungeon with other condemned magicians.

      "You got in just under the wire," one of them informed him helpfully. "We're going to get chased out into the arena in a few minutes."

      "What can I do?" asked Sorghum.

      "Don't struggle. Don't shield your throat—let the animals tear it out as soon as possible. That way it's over with at once and you cheat the mob of watching you squirm."

      "I reckon so," said Sorghum thoughtfully. He remembered his courtesy and the bottles in his boots. "Have a drink?" he asked, producing them. The magicians clustered around him like flies around honey.

      * * * * *

      The afternoon games were to consist of such little things as a pack of craven magicians and fortunetellers being killed in a mass by leopards. Consensus favored the leopards; odds were quoted as something like eighty to one against the magicians.

      Tiberius waved his hand from the emperor's box in one end of the colossal amphitheater, and the gate which admitted the beasts opened. There was a buzz from the audience as the magnificent animals came streaming through like a river of tawny fur.

      The emperor waved again, and the public prepared to be amused by the customary sight of unwilling victims being prodded out into the arena by long-handled tridents. But something must have gone wrong, for the craven magicians came striding boldly out, roaring some song or other. At their head was a curiously shimmering figure who was beating time with two enormous bottles, both empty.

      It roared in a titanic voice, as it sighted the animals, "Look out, ye hell-fired pussycats! I'm a-grapplin'!" The magicians charged in a body to the excited screams of the mob.

      Roughly there was one cat to every man, and that was the sensible way that the men went about eliminating the cats. The favorite grip seemed to be the tail—a magician would pick up a leopard and swing it around heftily two or three times, then dash its head to the sand of the arena. The rest would be done with the feet.

      In a surprisingly short time the magicians were sitting on the carcasses of the cats and resuming their song.

      "Let out the lion!" shrilled Tiberius. "They can't do this to me!" The second gate opened, and the king of the jungle himself stalked through, his muscles rippling beneath his golden skin, tossing his huge mane. He sighted the magicians, who weren't paying him any attention at all, and roared savagely.

      The shimmering figure looked up in annoyance. "Another one!" it was heard to declare. The song broke off again as the grim, purposeful body of men went for the lion. He eyed them coldly and roared again. They kept on coming. The king of the jungle grew somewhat apprehensive, lashing his tail and crouching as for a spring. The bluff didn't work, he realized a second later, for the men were on him and all over him, gouging his face cruelly and kicking him in the ribs. He tumbled to the sand rather than suffer a broken leg and grunted convulsively as the magicians sat heavily on his flanks and continued their song.

      "It was dow-wen in the Raid River Vail-lee—" mournfully chanted the leader—he with the empty bottles.

      Tiberius stamped his feet and burst into tears of rage. "My lion!" he wailed. "They're sitting on my lion!"

      The leader dropped his bottles and sauntered absently about the arena. One of the deep-driven iron posts of the inside wall caught his eye. He reached out to touch it and—was gone, with a shimmer of purple light.

      * * * * *

      Sorghum's reappearance was as unchronicled as his disappearance. He didn't tell anybody until they asked him, and then he told them from beginning to end, substantially as I have told it here.

      But every once in a while he remarks, "Foreigners are sartinly peculiar people. I know—I've lived among them. But some day I'm going to get me some money and take a boat back there and see that Mr. Gallo to find out if he ever did get the hang of running the mash. Foreigners are sartinly peculiar—behind the times, I call 'em."

      That's what Sorghum says.

      The City in the Sofa

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      Lieutenant J. C. Battle tweaked the ends of his trim little military moustache and smiled brilliantly at the cashier.

      "Dear lady," he said, "there seems to have been some mistake. I could have sworn I'd put my wallet in this suit—"

      The superblond young lady looked bored and crooked a finger at the manager of the cafeteria. The manager crooked a finger at three muscular busboys, who shambled over to the exit.

      "Now," said the manager, "what seems to be the trouble?"

      The lieutenant bowed. "My name," he said, "is Battle. My card, sir." He presented it.

      "A phony," said the manager with the wickedest of smiles. "A deadbeat. The check says thirty cents, Major—do you cough up or wash dishes?" He flung the card aside, and an innocent-appearing old man, white-haired, wrinkled of face and shabbily dressed, who had been patiently waiting to pay his ten-cent check, courteously stooped and tapped the manager on the shoulder.

      "You dropped this," he said politely, extending the card.

      "Keep it," snarled the manager. The innocent old man scanned the card and stiffened as though he had been shot.

      "If you will allow me," he said, interrupting Battle's impassioned plea for justice, "I shall be glad to pay this young man's check." He fished out an ancient wallet and dropped a half dollar into the superblond's hand.

      "May I have your address, sir?" asked Battle when they were outside. "I shall mail you the money as soon as I get back to my club."

      The