Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber Read Online Free PDF Page A

shook his head jerkily, and managed to say, “No, I’m just leaving. I was doing some extra work myself.”
“But you look sick,” she insisted, and walked over toward him. He inconsequentially realized she must have stepped in mud, for her high-heeled shoes left neat black prints.
“Yes, I’m sure you must be sick. You’re so terribly pale.” She sounded like an enthusiastic, incompetent nurse. Her face brightened with a sudden inspiration. “I’ve got something in my bag that’ll fix you up right away,” she said. “It’s for indigestion.”
She fumbled at her stuffed oblong purse. He noticed that she was absent-mindedly holding it shut with one hand while she tried to open it with the other. Then, under his very eyes, he saw her bend back the thick prongs of metal locking the purse as if they were tinfoil, or as if her fingers had become a pair of steel pliers.
Instantly his memory recited the words he had spoken to Millick that afternoon. “It couldn’t hurt you physically—at first… gradually get its hooks into the world… might even get control of suitably vacuous minds. Then it could hurt whomever it wanted.” A sickish, old feeling came to a focus inside him. He began to edge toward the door.
But Miss Millick hurried ahead of him.
“You don’t have to wait, Fred,” she called. “Mr. Wran’s decided to stay a while longer.”
The door to the cage shut with a mechanical rattle. The cage creaked. Then she turned around in the door. “Why, Mr. Wran,” she gurgled reproachfully, “I just couldn’t think of letting you go home now. I’m sure you’re terribly unwell. Why, you might collapse in the street. You’ve just got to stay here until you feel different.”
The creaking died away. He stood in the center of the office motionless. His eyes traced the course of Miss Millick’s footprints to where she stood blocking the door. Then a sound that was almost a scream was wrenched out of him, for he saw that the flesh of her face was beginning to change color; blackening until the powder on it was a sickly white dust, rouge a hideous pinkish one, lipstick a translucent red film. It was the same with her hands and with the skin beneath her thin silk stockings.
“Why, Mr. Wran,” she said, “you’re acting as if you were crazy. You must lie down for a little while. Here, I’ll help you off with your coat.”
The nauseously idiotic and rasping note was the same; only it had been intensified. As she came toward him he turned and ran through the storeroom, clattered a key desperately at the lock of the second door to the corridor.
“Why, Mr. Wran,” he heard her call, “are you having some kind of fit? You must let me help you.”
The door came open and he plunged out into the corridor and up the stairs immediately ahead. It was only when he reached the top that he realized the heavy steel door in front of him led to the roof. He jerked up the catch.
“Why, Mr. Wran, you mustn’t run away. I’m coming after you.”
    Then he was out on the gritty tar paper of the roof. The night sky was clouded and murky, with a faint pinkish glow from the neon signs. From the distant mills rose a ghostly spurt of flame. He ran to the edge. The street lights glared dizzily upward. Two men walking along were round blobs of hat and shoulders. He swung around.
    The thing was in the doorway. The voice was no longer solicitous but moronically playful, each sentence ending in a titter.
“Why, Mr. Wran, why have you come up here? We’re all alone. Just think, I might push you off.” The thing came slowly toward him. He moved backward until his heels touched the low parapet. Without knowing why or what he was going to do, he dropped to his knees. The black, coarsegrained face came nearer, a focus for the worst in the world, a gathering point for poisons from everywhere. Then the lucidity of terror took possession of his mind, and words formed on his lips.
“I will obey you. You are my god,” he said. “You