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"You're closed down!" he bellowed. "Your goddamn flying goats ate half my car in the parking lot! This is the last straw! I'm canceling all your government contracts!"
Drs. Kerls, Lorenzo, and Mough sprang to their feet and their heads met. The result was a loud thunk and cries of pain as they reeled back clutching their heads.
The alarm attached to the thingamajig whooped, and a bright orange light flashed.
"Oh, my God!" Kerls screamed. "It's happened!"
"What? What?" van Skant and Desdemona cried. Desdemona had been behaving rather woodenly lately, but she was aroused now.
Dr. Kerls, half-fainting, grabbed Mough.
A green thread was streaking through the mud-brown liquid in the pipes on the thingamajig.
Dr. Mough felt so sorry for his colleague, he did not hit him for having put his hands on him.
Dr. Legzenbreins raced out of the virus section, leaving the door open.
"What is it? What is it?"
Dr. Mough said, "It's the biggest..."
Boom!
Clouds of brown vapor and sprays of green liquid filled the laboratory.
By the time the scientists and Desdemona got back onto their feet, they could see clearly. The clouds were gone, revealing a wrecked laboratory and ruptured walls behind which had been the virus section and the zoological room.
"The green doesn't count," Kerls mumbled. "I had my fingers crossed when we swore to abide by the decision of the thingamajig."
"You'll marry Desdemona or else," Dr. Mough said.
"Or else what?" Kerls squeaked.
"Or else this!" Mough said, and he broke a beaker of yellow liquid over Kerls's head and then rammed the flaming end of a Bunsen burner against Kerls's rear when Kerls turned away from him.
Desdemona spat out green liquid.
"Gee, I feel fu
"Think she's all right?" van Skant said. "That virus got blown all over the place, and God knows what the chemicals in the thingamajig will do."
"Won't hurt nothing," Mough said. "I'll stake my reputation on that."
"We're lost!" van Skant said, and he staggered out of the room.
Desdemona wandered around, singing, until she found a vacant lot, one in which the good earth was uncovered. And there she stood motionless, arms extended to the sides, while roots, still half-flesh, sprouted and drove into the ground through her shoes.
The fourth day, she put out buds.
The sixth day, a pigeon spotted her and landed to build a nest.
By then, hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians were undergoing similar metamorphoses.
The polluters were changing into something which could not pollute and which converted carbon dioxide into the much-needed oxygen. Serendipitous had found the ideal solution.
Only one was left unmetamorphosed. She had been wearing a protective suit at the time of the explosion and had not taken it off until she was certain that the danger was over.
She was the only human being left in the world.
The doorbell rang.
She got up and out of bed, walked through the house, and opened the front door.
Three man-sized trees stood on the porch.
"Kerls, Lorenzo, and Mough!" Dr. Legzenbreins cried.
Somehow, they had dragged up their roots and tracked her down. Love conquers all.
They tried to get through the door at the same time. Even if they had still been human beings, they would have gotten stuck. But with their extended arms -- branches -- they could never make it through alone.
Dr. Legzenbreins finally led them around to the backyard, where they took root with a shudder of relief. She went back to bed without closing the window, which was a mistake. She awoke with two branches caressing what she considered to be intimate places.
The other trees were hitting their branches against the one that had hold of her.
She reached up and plucked some of Mough's fruits -- she thought it was Mough -- and the tree quivered. Then the branches drooped and relaxed their hold.
The others continued to beat him with their branches.
But the next day all three were as rigid and motionless as trees should be, and their skin had become completely bark.
Spring came. Something popped deep within Dr. Legzenbreins.
She wished that she had not eaten Mough's fruit.
The Last Rise of Nick Adams
This story has a curious history, but then, don't they all?
A young man named Brad Lang, author of some very good private-eye novels, decided to start a magazine, Popular Culture, which would be devoted to just what the title implied. He got hold of me and asked me if I'd write a short story for him. It so happened that I had one on hand, a tale which Ed Ferman of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction had not liked. So I rewrote it and sent it out with the same title and byline I'd sent to Ferman. This was "The Impotency of Bad Karma" by Cordwainer Bird.
The explanation of title and byline may be a little complicated, but bear with me. Cordwainer Bird is the name Harlan Ellison puts on the credits of a movie he's written when he feels that the producer or director or whoever has rewritten his script and ruined it. Harlan insists on a clause in his contracts which permits him to do this.
Now, as you may or may not know, I've written a number of short stories and two novels under bylines which are the names of characters in fiction who are writers. Examples: Kilgore Trout, John H. Watson, M.D., Paul Chapin (a writer in a Nero Wolfe novel), David Copperfield, Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor (one of my own fictional authors), Lord Greystoke (surely you know who he is), and some others. I wanted to write a story by Cordwainer Bird, but the trouble with that was that he was not a fictional author. So, to remedy this, I first put Bird in the genealogy in the appendix to my biography of the famous pulp-era hero, Doc Savage. Then I made Bird a character in a story titled "The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight." Having established that Bird was a character in fiction who was also a writer, I then wrote a story by Bird.
All this was done with Harlan's permission, of course.
At the time, though, I didn't know that Harlan had long before written some stories under the Bird byline.
"The Impotency of Bad Karma" (Harlan's suggestion for a title) appeared in the first and, alas!, last issue of Popular Culture. It was interesting, even stimulating, but Brad Lang couldn't get the financing needed to continue it. It also happened that Barry Malzberg had an article, "What Happened to Science Fiction?", in that issue. He read the story by "Bird" and didn't care for the parody of himself (as Michael B. Hopsmount). This, despite the fact that he's parodied others. I only parody those writers whose works I like, so, in a sense, the character of Hopsmount was my tribute to Malzberg.
Sometime later, Roy Torgesson asked me for a story. I explained about "The Impotency of Bad Karma" and the Bird byline and the extremely limited circulation of Popular Culture. Roy said he'd take it, and I sat down and rewrote the story again, including removing Hopsmount, and it appeared as "The Last Rise of Nick Adams" in Chrysalis 2.
The genesis of the original idea for the story, the basic concept, came one day while I was considering the inflating or deflating effects of good or bad reviews of my works, of good or bad royalty reports, and so on. This story exaggerates the effects, though not very much.
Readers (not very many) have asked me if the Nick Adams in my story could be the son of Hemingway's Nick Adams. I'm not just now in a position to confirm or deny that.
Nick Adams, Jr., science-fiction author, and his wife were having the same old argument.