The Big Time, Fritz Leiber [book recommendations website TXT] 📗

from the Snakes in 1883. Yes, the Snakes got him, Liebchen, only a few sleeps back, endangering the West’s whole victory over Russia⁠—”

“⁠—which gave your dear little Hitler the world on a platter for fifty years and got me loved to death by your sterling troops in the Liberation of Chicago⁠—”

“⁠—but which leads to the ultimate victory of the Spiders and the West over the Snakes and Communism, Liebchen, remember that. Anyway, our counter-snatch didn’t work. The Snakes had guards posted⁠—most unusual and we weren’t warned. The whole thing was a great mess. No wonder Bruce lost his head⁠—not that it excuses him.”

“The New Boy?” I asked. Sid hadn’t got to him and he was still standing with hooded eyes where Erich had left him, a dark pillar of shame and rage.

“Ja, a lieutenant from World War One. An Englishman.”

“I gathered that,” I told Erich. “Is he really effeminate?”

“Weibischer?” He smiled. “I had to call him something when he said I was a coward. He’ll make a fine Soldier⁠—only needs a little more shaping.”

“You men are so original when you spat.” I lowered my voice. “But you shouldn’t have gone on and called him a Snake, Erich mine.”

“Schlange?” The smile got crooked. “Who knows⁠—about any of us? As Saint Petersburg showed me, the Snakes’ spies are getting cleverer than ours.” The blue eyes didn’t look sweet now. “Are you, Liebchen, really nothing more than a good loyal Spider?”

“Erich!”

“All right, I went too far⁠—with Bruce and with you too. We’re all hacked these days, riding with one leg over the breaking edge.”

Maud and Beau were supporting the Roman to a couch, Maud taking most of his weight, with Sid still supervising and the New Boy still sulking by himself. The New Girl should have been with him, of course, but I couldn’t see her anywhere and I decided she was probably having a nervous breakdown in the Refresher, the little jerk.

“The Roman looks pretty bad, Erich,” I said.

“Ah, Mark’s tough. Got virtue, as his people say. And our little starship girl will bring him back to life if anybody can and if⁠ ⁠…”

“… you call this living,” I filled in dutifully.

He was right. Maud had fifty-odd years of psychomedical experience, 23rd Century at that. It should have been Doc’s job, but that was fifty drunks back.

“Maud and Mark, that will be an interesting experiment,” Erich said. “Reminiscent of Goering’s with the frozen men and the naked gypsy girls.”

“You are a filthy Nazi. She’ll be using electrophoresis and deep suggestion, if I know anything.”

“How will you be able to know anything, Liebchen, if she switches on the couch curtains, as I perceive she is preparing to do?”

“Filthy Nazi I said and meant.”

“Precisely.” He clicked his heels and bowed a millimeter. “Erich Friederich von Hohenwald, Oberleutnant in the army of the Third Reich. Fell at Narvik, where he was Recruited by the Spiders. Lifeline lengthened by a Big Change after his first death and at latest report Commandant of Toronto, where he maintains extensive baby farms to provide him with breakfast meat, if you believe the handbills of the voyageurs underground. At your service.”

“Oh, Erich, it’s all so lousy,” I said, touching his hand, reminded that he was one of the unfortunates Resurrected from a point in their lifelines well before their deaths⁠—in his case, because the date of his death had been shifted forward by a Big Change after his Resurrection. And as every Demon finds out, if he can’t imagine it beforehand, it is pure hell to remember your future, and the shorter the time between your Resurrection and your death back in the cosmos, the better. Mine, bless Bab-ed-Din, was only an action-packed ten minutes on North Clark Street.

Erich put his other hand lightly over mine. “Fortunes of the Change War, Liebchen. At least I’m a Soldier and sometimes assigned to future operations⁠—though why we should have this monomania about our future personalities back there, I don’t know. Mine is a stupid Oberst, thin as paper⁠—and frightfully indignant at the voyageurs! But it helps me a little if I see him in perspective and at least I get back to the cosmos pretty regularly, Gott sei Dank, so I’m better off than you Entertainers.”

I didn’t say aloud that a Changing cosmos is worse than none, but I found myself sending a prayer to the Bonny Dew for my father’s repose, that the Change Winds would blow lightly across the lifeline of Anton A. Forzane, professor of physiology, born in Norway and buried in Chicago. Woodlawn Cemetery is a nice gray spot.

“That’s all right, Erich,” I said. “We Entertainers Got Mittens too.”

He scowled around at me suspiciously, as if he were wondering whether I had all my buttons on.

“Mittens?” he said. “What do you mean? I’m not wearing any. Are you trying to say something about Bruce’s gloves⁠—which incidentally seem to annoy him for some reason. No, seriously, Greta, why do you Entertainers need mittens?”

“Because we get cold feet sometimes. At least I do. Got Mittens, as I say.”

A sickly light dawned in his Prussian puss. He muttered, “Got mittens⁠ ⁠… Gott mit uns⁠ ⁠… God with us,” and roared softly, “Greta, I don’t know how I put up with you, the way you murder a great language for cheap laughs.”

“You’ve got to take me as I am,” I told him, “mittens and all, thank the Bonny Dew⁠—” and hastily explained, “That’s French⁠—le bon Dieu⁠—the good God⁠—don’t hit me. I’m not going to tell you any more of my secrets.”

He laughed feebly, like he was dying.

“Cheer up,” I said. “I won’t be here forever, and there are worse places than the Place.”

He nodded grudgingly, looking around. “You know what, Greta, if you’ll promise not to make some dreadful joke out of it: on operations, I pretend I’ll soon be going backstage to court the world-famous