The Green Millennium (eBook)

Erik Schreiber (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
262 Seiten
neobooks Self-Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-7565-6317-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Fritz Leiber is one of the most widely read authors of fantasy. He is an author who was influenced by H. P. Lovecraft and influenced many authors himself. His most famous characters are Ffahrd and the gray mouser, as they are called in Germany. Leiber's work is characterized by diversity. He knew how to express himself with equal artistic energy and quality in different genres or to mix the genres - for example, horror with science fiction in the story The Oldest Soldier, 1960 (Engl. Nachhutgefechte, 1974) - seemingly effortlessly. Leiber did not see science fiction, horror, and fantasy as distinct genres, but rather as narrative possibilities that could be freely combined.

Leiber had German roots. His parents were both Shakespearean actors. Leiber studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Chicago. In 1936, he married Welsh poet Jonquil Stephens. She brought to Leiber's attention the author H. P. Lovecraft, with whom he subsequently corresponded intensively for eight months until Lovecraft's death in 1937. Leiber enjoyed a reputation, especially in the U.S. as an author of idiosyncratic, detailed Weird Fiction since about the mid-1950s.

Textauszug

II

 

The street snarled at Phil. The snarl came chiefly from a charged-up electric hot rod that swerved close to the curb to remove a triangular chunk from the rump of a fat man who had been too slow in skittering to safety. A second look showed he was not a fat man, but a thin man in a balloon suit. It deflated rapidly, and he sat down in its limp folds on the curb and began to sob. Balloon suits were of no real protection to pedestrians, except by increasing the apparent target, but they continued as a fad. During the last war they had been pumped full of hydrogen as a shield against neutrons until a couple of small but unpleasant explosions in crowded shelters had caused the government to crack down.

After snarling, the street continued to growl deep in its throat--it had two lower levels. The growl was composed of the hum of electrics, the subterranean rumble of heavier traffic, the yak-yak of competing vocal advertisements, and the nervous shuffle of feet that was the same when Rome and Babylon were young, but that was intensified here because most of the women's feet were on platforms three to ten inches high.

Neither the growl nor the snarl disturbed Phil. Normally he'd already have had his ear plugs tucked in, his face fixed straight ahead, his eyes nervously questing for hot rods, which were known to jump curbs. But today he simply wanted to drink it all in, to see the things he'd always been blind to, to note the anxious but apathetic expressions on the faces of the pedestrians, to sense the invisible lines of force that, like spider webs or marionette strings, joined them to the space-overflowing advertisements, which ranged from the crisp, „Learn to Break Necks!“ and the cute „A Strip-Tease Doll All Your Own!“ to the „Why Not Lobotomy?“ and the imagination-tantalizing „Glamorize Your Figure with a Sprayed-on Evening Dress! Plasticfabric cures in a jiffy, breathes. No heat, no adhesions! Special forms flare the skirt, shape the bosom! Designed by artists right on your body!“

Lucky seemed no more frightened of the street than Phil. He scampered along close to the base of Skyway Towers' monumental façade, the camouflaging green color of which may have explained why none of the pedestrians took note of him--not that any explanation was needed as to why those walking nerve-bags didn't see things right under their noses!

A gleaming sales-robot veered toward Phil on its silent wheels, but Phil deftly interposed another balloon-suited man between himself and it. The balloon-suited man began to get a slick reducing pill sales talk; evidently the robot had scanned his profile. Phil hurried around the corner after Lucky, who had turned down garish Opperly Avenue.

As if he had picked up a scent, Lucky abruptly left the wall, glided across the sidewalk and padded across Opperly Avenue between the passing cars. Phil followed, not without a certain heart pounding, but with no real anxieties. Something allowed him to sense easily the intentions of all the cars in the block--dodging them was almost fun.

He reached the opposite curb a good five feet ahead of a playful youth in a jalopy with a tin body like a space jeep scribbled over with such signs as „Oh, You Venusian!“ and „Girls beware--escape speed zero.“ Effortlessly recovering his breath, Phil found himself facing an ornate cave mouth flanked with old-fashioned fluorescent posters, the largest lettering on which read: „TONIGHT! Juno Jones, the Man-Maiming Amazon vs. Dwarf Zubek, the Bone-Crushing Misogynist.“

But he had no time to read the rest of the bill, for Lucky was dancing up the broad corridor lined with giant stereographs of menacing, half-naked men and women, looking in the dim light like genies freshly materialized from smoke.

Ordinarily Phil would have felt a certain amount of disgust mixed with fear and uneasy fascination at entering, or even passing, a wrestling palace specializing in male-female, but today it seemed simply a part of life. It never occurred to him not to follow Lucky.

Just short of some turnstiles and a robot ticket taker lost in shadows, a side corridor spilled light. Lucky whisked into it. Phil had barely rounded the corner after him when a long, handless, boneless gray arm shot out of the wall and slapped itself firmly against Phil's middle.

„Where you think you're going, Mack?“ a voice rasped from the wall. „On your way.“ And it gave him a quick shove toward the ticket taker.

Phil could see Lucky mincing inquisitively down the side corridor, which was lined with doors. He tried to go around the arm, but it extended itself until it stretched from wall to wall.

„Still here?“ the rasping wall inquired. „Look, Mack, I don't know your voice. If you got business with somebody, name me their name and the word they gave you.“

„I just want to get my cat,“ Phil answered. Lucky had reached the end of the corridor and was peering into the last doorway. „Here, Lucky,“ he called, but the cat took no notice.

„Means nothing to me,“ the wall rasped on. „You still ain't named me no names that tripped any of my relays.“

Lucky disappeared through the doorway. Phil said, „Please let me through a minute to get my cat,“ trying to sound as sincere as he could. „I'll be right back.“

„I ain't letting nobody through,“ the wall asserted. „Give me a name and word, quick, Mack.“

At that instant an appalling spasm of fear went through Phil, as if a light had been turned out inside his mind and his heart sprayed with liquid ice. He knew that something had happened to Lucky. He ducked under the gray arm and darted forward, but before he had taken five steps he felt himself grabbed. The corridor whirled as he was roughly spun back. Looking down he saw the elastic arm wrapped around him like a gray python, while the wall grated in his ear, „No go, Mack. Now I'll have to hold you till the man comes.“

„Let me go. I've got to get in there, do you hear!“ Phil yelled. He struggled futilely to release his arms, yet all the while he kept his eyes on the doorway through which Lucky had vanished. „Let me go!“

„Hey, what goes on?“ A large, tall woman with close cropped blonde hair, a broken nose, an out-size jaw and big blue eyes had stepped out of the nearest doorway. „Cool down, son,“ she boomed out, coming toward him. „What did you want?“

„My cat ran in here,“ he explained, trying to speak calmly. „It ran in that room down there at the end.“ He nodded his head toward it. „I tried to go after it and this thing grabbed me.“

„Your cat?“

„Yes, a pet.“

She thought. He noticed for the first time, perhaps because he was watching the far doorway so closely, that she wore maroon tights and was stripped to the waist. Her breasts were small, her shoulders sloped steeply and were heavily, though not cordily, muscled.

„Okay,“ she said after a bit. „Let him go,“ she told the wall.

„Didn't give a name or word,“ the wall complained. „Tried to duck through. Got to hold him till the man comes.“

„Which'll be at least an hour, if I know Jake. Let him go, you dumb robot,“ she said in a majestic bass. „This man is my friend. I am inviting him in.“

„All right, Mrs. Jones,“ the wall said, sounding almost sulky. The gray arm unwrapped from Phil and shot back into the wall.

„Now go find your cat and then beat it,“ the giantess told him.

„Thank you very much,“ Phil said, half turning to her, but keeping the far doorway in the corner of his gaze. But she didn't answer, only stared after him doubtfully, still appearing quite unconscious of her partial nakedness.

Phil tried not to hurry, although the corridor seemed endless. He kept telling himself that nothing had happened to Lucky, and wished very hard he could believe it. He didn't feel big any more, or adventurous. He passed the woman's door, vaguely noticing heaps of untidy clothes and a stationary rubber-armed robot for wrestling practice. He came to the door at the end, having observed that all the others were tightly shut. He hesitated. He couldn't hear a sound. He stepped inside.

The room was large, low ceilinged, and lined with lockers and benches. At the far end was a closed door, flanked by two low mechanical massage tables, their jointed rubber-fisted arms extended crookedly upward and making them look like two beetles on their backs. There were a few other pieces of apparatus, none of which Phil recognized, but most of the floor was empty.

Almost in the center of the floor was a brown box about a foot square. Staring at it, their backs turned to Phil, were two men. One was rather small but quick looking, dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and tight black trousers, and holding some sort of gun. The other was smaller and slighter, and similarly clad in blue. He held a wire leading to the box.

Phil cleared his throat. The two men eyed him expressionlessly, then turned back to the box. Phil edged forward into the room, peering into the corners for Lucky. Then he jerked back. He had almost stepped on a dead mouse.

Looking more closely, he saw there were half a dozen dead mice scattered around the floor.

He cleared his throat again, louder, but this time the men didn't even look around. He started forward again, stepping gingerly over the dead mouse.

There was a click. A tiny door opened in the top of the brown box and a mouse catapulted out. Hitting the floor, it made off in frantic zig-zags, skidding at each turn. Phil stared, suddenly expecting Lucky to come darting out of a corner after it. The man in black followed the zig-zags with his gun. There was no sound or flash from the gun, but the mouse...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.8.2023
• Reihe/Serie: the green adventuresbook
• Reihe/Serie: the green adventuresbook
• Verlagsort: Berlin
• Sprache: deutsch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Horror
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Fantasy • Fritz_Leiber • science_fiction
• ISBN-10: 3-7565-6317-0 / 3756563170
• ISBN-13: 978-3-7565-6317-3 / 9783756563173