Ming the Merciless

Sitting there on the park bench with the United States of America freshly at war with Japan, Ger­many and Italy, I decided to do my next adventure as a private eye in Babylon in the form of a serial that would have fifteen chapters.

I of course would be the hero and Nana-dirat the heroine, my faithful and loving secretary. I decided to borrow Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon to be the villain.

I had to change his name and alter his character slightly to fit my needs. That wouldn't be hard. Actually, it would be an immense amount of pleasure for me. I had spent a very pleasant part of eight years making up situations and charac-

ters in Babylon, unfortunately to the point of being a detri­ment to my real life, such as it was.

I'd much rather be in ancient Babylon than in the Twen­tieth Century trying to put two bits together for a ham­burger and I love Nana-dirat more than any woman I've ever met in the flesh.

First, what to do with Ming the Merciless? Change his name. That was the first thing that had to be done. In my serial he would be Dr. Abdul Forsythe, publicly known as one of the most generous and kindest men in Babylon but secretly he had a laboratory under the clinic that he used to provide free medical services for the poor. In the laboratory he was constructing a powerful and evil ray that he was going to conquer the world with.

The ray changed people into shadow robots that were totally subservient to Dr. Forsythe and would do his evil work, responding to his slightest beckoning.

He had a plan for creating artificial night composed of his shadow robots that would move during the real night from town to town conquering unsuspecting citizens and changing them into more shadow robots.

It was an ingenious plan and he had already changed thousands of unsuspecting and helpless poor people that came to his clinic seeking free medical help into shadow robots.

They came to be helped by Dr. Forsythe and then disappeared from the face of the earth. Their absence was hardly noticed in Babylon because they were poor. Sometimes relatives or friends would come by and inquire into their disappearance. Often, they, too, would disappear.

The fiend!

He needed only one more ingredient to put his plan into action. After he changed them into shadow robots, he stacked them like newspapers in a hidden warehouse nearby, waiting for the time to come when he could turn them loose on the world as artificial night.

The Magician

Escitybrell. Escitybrell.

I heard a sound in the distance that was directed toward me but I couldn't make it out.

"Excuse me. Excuse me."

The sound was words.

Babylon fell over on its side and lay there.

"Excuse me, C. Card, is that you?"

I looked up, totally returned to the so-called real world. The voice belonged to an old comrade in arms from the Spanish Civil War. I hadn't seen him in years.

"Well, I'll be," I said. "Sam Herschberger. Those nights in Madrid. Those were the days."

I stood up and we shook hands. I had to shake his left hand because his right hand wasn't there. I remembered when he'd gotten it blown off. It had not been a good day for him because he was a professional juggler and magician. When he looked at his blown-off hand lying on the ground nearby, all he could say was, "This is one trick I'll never be able to duplicate."

"You seemed a million miles away," he said, now years later in San Francisco.

"I was daydreaming," I said.

"Just like the good old days," he said. "I think half the time I knew you in Spain you weren't even there." I decided to change the subject. "What are you up to these days?" I said. "I'm working just as much as all the other one-armed jugglers and magicians are." "That bad, huh?"

"No, I can't complain. I married a woman who owns a beauty parlor and she's got a thing for people with missing limbs. Sometimes she hints that I would be twice as sexy as I am now if I only had one leg, but that's the way it goes. It beats working for a living."

"What about the Party?" I said. "I thought they loved you."

"With two arms they loved me," he said. "I wasn't much use to them with only one. They used me as a warm-up act for recruiting farm workers over in the valley. They'd gather around to watch me juggle and do tricks and then they'd hear about Karl Marx and how great Soviet Russia was and Lenin. Oh, well, that was a long time ago. A guy's got to keep moving. If you don't the grass will grow on you. What have you been doing? The last time I saw you, you had a couple of bullet holes in your ass and you were going to be a doctor. How'd you get shot in the ass, anyway? As I remember the Fascists were on our left flank and there was nobody behind us and you were in a trench. Where did the bullets come from that got you? That's always been a mystery to me."

I wasn't going to tell him that I slipped while I was taking a shit and sat down on my pistol causing it to go off and blow a couple of holes clean through both cheeks of my ass.

"Water under the bridge," I said. "It hurts just to think about it."

"I know what you mean," he said, looking down at the place where his right hand used to be. "Anyway, did you become a doctor?" "No," I said. "That didn't work out the way I planned it." "What are you doing, then?" "I'm a private eye," I said. "A private eye?" he said.

"Then forget it," I said. "No big deal." Then I started to change the subject—

"Wait a minute," he said. He had always been an unscrupulously honest person. "I don't remember borrowing five dollars from you. When was that?"

"In Barcelona. A week before we left, but forget it. It's OK. If you don't remember it, I don't want to bring it up. It's the past. Forget it," and I started to change the subject again.

A few moments later, after he had given me the five bucks, with a curious expression on his face he walked up Washington Street and out of my life.

Barcelona

The last time I'd seen Sam had been in Barcelona in '38. He had been a hell-of-a-good juggler and magician. Too bad about his arm, but it sounded to me as if he was using its absence to best advantage. A guy's got to make do.

We shared some Spanish Civil War memories and then I hit him up for five bucks. I try not to let a chance go by.

"By the way," I said. "Did you ever repay me that five you borrowed in Barcelona?"

"What five?" he said.

"You don't remember?" I said.

"No," he said.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14