Dreams That Burn In The Night (24 page)

We all thought he
was devilishly clever. It was so unexpected of him.

The Most High
Poobob spent a week in a tree over the inci­dent. To his credit, he was able to maintain a lively
sense of humor throughout this period.

If I can recall it,
he said, "It is a remarkable thing. One may grow attached to a dog but never, never consider that
that same dog may become attached to us."

This observation
was made at the time the Most High Poobob was privileged to witness one of our former leading
citizens draw­ing the rather reluctant mad dog down the street by the seat of his
pants.

I have always felt
the Most High Poobob showed markedly good sense in not mingling with the mad dog and filling his
sys­tem full of dog virus. Some who experimented with it are, sadly enough, no longer with us. We
have, however, preserved some of
t
heir teeth marks in the
furniture of this district. It is on view five days a week in the museum.

Of course, it was
an Earth man who finally provided us with enough excitement to pull us out of our planetary
slump. (The astronomers claimed our depression had put a dip in our orbit. Not a very deep dip,
mind you, but if you weren't watching the road, you could get quite a jolt out of it.) We never
did figure how he got here, not that we minded much one way or the other. It was enough that he
was here. Some people even went so far as to say that it was too much.

He kept claiming he
was an astronaut, but we weren't fooled in the least. For one thing, he had a funny white
coverall suit on, so unlike the space suits on television. He was awfully clumsy too, continually
tripping over things, really making a monkey out of himself. We finally had to take that
ridiculous suit away from him. He kept wading through the tomato plants and killing the vines
with his heavy metal boots.

The Most High
Poobob suggested that the Earth man had es­caped during the night from some sort of institution,
pointing out, in support of his theory, the clumsy suit the Earth man wore. They did look very
like pajamas, I will grant you, but few of us could reconcile ourselves to this. Had the Earth
man carried a teddy bear, though, I believe we would have been convinced.

I must admit that
no one on the planet really expected we would get so much entertainment out of him. He talked a
great deal, of course, and that was mildly entertaining. But only for ten minutes or so. After
that, it became evident that he could go at it all night if given the chance. It soon became
inflationary, as he began saying more words to say less.

He was forever
after us to help him radio Earth to get help. We offered him the help of our best doctors, but I
believe he must have had some phobia about hammers. He would never let one of our medical people
get close enough to administer an anesthetic.

It seems he wanted
us to help him put up some sort of radio tower which would then enable him to reach Earth. We
could never see any advantage in it, but finally the Most High Poobob agreed to it on the
condition that we be allowed to use the radio tower as a trellis for grapes.

The Earth man
always had a poor head for agriculture, which is why, I suppose, he only agreed to our request
with some reluctance. We helped him build the tower to his specifications. It was an expensive
project. Metal is very dear to us here, since most of it comes by mail from Sears,
Roebuck.

At least twice a
week, the Most High Poobob pointed out the economic advantages of building the radio tower out of
wood, but the Earth man would have nothing to do with it. We are a mild sort of people, so we let
him have his way.

But even mild
people can be pushed past their limits. We had completed work on the radio tower. I believe it
was on a Tues­day. We were wondering when we could set it up and some of us were more than a
little bit proud of our efforts. To our knowl­edge, our planet has never known such a huge grape
trellis in all of its history. Oh, we used to let grapes grow on old dinosaurs who had given up
on life, but we could hardly claim to have built the dinosaurs. Besides, they were so unreliable.
Often, a whole year's grape harvest would go crashing off into the jungle as it be­came obvious
that the dinosaur we had picked had only been playing dead. The dinosaurs were always terrible
practical jokers, never able to take even their own deaths seriously. The Most High Poobob had
always maintained that that is the very reason they are now extinct. Others say it was
transportation that killed them. What did you think?

At any rate, we had
finished the radio tower and the Earth man made us load it up and carry it to the opera house. We
rigged up a block and tackle and the Earth man attached it to the top of the opera house. Even
then, we were unaware of what he intended to do with the tower.

Throughout this
stage of the matter, I feel we were slightly naive. It was only when we had hoisted the radio
tower to the roof that it became obvious to us that the Earth man intended to place the radio
tower on top of the roof! What an unspeakably unagricultural thing to do! A roof is no place to
grow grapes. Any fool knows that, even the Most High Poobob!

I think we pretty
clearly stated our disapproval of the whole project. To a man, we deserted the company of the
Earth man, leaving him to figure out a way to erect the radio tower on his own, since it was
obvious to us now that he had no interest in ag­riculture, in fact was quite hopelessly retarded
on the subject.

He stayed up there
on the opera house roof, banging around with hammers and swearing a great deal. This was mildly
amusing at first but soon palled. In the general course of things, I guess we forgot all about
him.

I had tickets to
the opera. The opera is a popular sport here. We only have one opera, so we only try to run it
twice a week so as not to taint it by familiarity. I guess we could have had other operas, but we
only had one man who wrote opera. At the time he had written our opera, which was called
The
Smut Is in the Corn and the Blight Is Looking Very Seriously at the Tomatoes,
there was very
little demand for opera. We were still experiencing dinosaurs and had little time for high
culture.

Now, however, the
dinosaurs having left the fold, we are hungry for operatic divertissement. The house was packed
since one of our finest opera stars had announced she would sing that very night. We only had two
opera stars, so it wasn't much of an an­nouncement, but she was the only opera star we had with
big bazooms, so I guess that counted for something.

The Earth man was
up on the roof, of course, still fiddling with his radio tower but, thankfully, doing it quietly.
Of course, opera is frightfully boring and only passes as the lowest form of enter­tainment. The
only real excitement in opera for us was juggling for seats in the balcony so that the lucky seat
holder might get a good view down at the top of our greatest opera singer's dress. She really did
have the most incredible pair of bazooms we had ever seen. She was often the center of much
agricultural specula­tion in this regard.

It just so happened
that the weather bureau had forecast, for the very same night of the opera, a great deal of
weather. In fact, they forecast more weather than we have had in recent months. It has always
been exciting for me to hear weather forecast. It's such a disappointment when we have a month
with no weather.

Well, the place was
packed, I assure you. Those bazooms of hers had preceded her.

The show had hardly
commenced when we heard the good, honest bleat of a lightning bolt. The lightning struck the
Earth man's radio tower, ran down his leg, took a drag on his cigarette, turned his boots wrong
side out, convinced him to change socks, toyed with the hair on his arms, and took a loose tooth
out and put it in his ear. All of this was done very briefly. The thing was plainly visible to us
because the lightning, with some foresight and a flair for the dramatic, broke the glass in the
skylight and
deposited the skylight and
the Earth man in a section of the house that happened to be empty because the ticket scalpers
couldn't get more than $150 apiece for the seats.

The Earth man's
appearance in this manner was truly electrify­ing. A bolt of the yellow glow shot off one of his
arms and out of the window, where it hit a light pole fifty feet high and carved it into
double-pointed toothpicks.

Another bolt of the
electric fluid danced around his feet and seared the carpet quite a bit. It was quite an
entertaining display and I doubt if any who experienced it will forget it soon. It was such an
explosive sort of thing to do, we never knew where he would hit next.

He made the rabid
dog seem like an idle amusement, a child's toy by comparison. Of course, we could see it was an
effort on his part, and in his face, I believe, we could see the strain of main­taining that
extreme state of high conductivity.

He thrashed about a
great deal, touching one of our ushers briefly. Sad to say, this contact was fatal for the usher.
Our fa­vorite opera singer felt decidedly upstaged at this point and, I suppose, got careless.
She got a high note out backward and had to be rushed to a hospital for an immediate chest X ray.
The news­papers later reported that twelve teams of doctors had examined her chest and that all
of them had found it.

The Earth man had
certainly had his moment. I am sure the moment of his appearance made two thousand men think of
their wasted lives, and two thousand women feel for their back hair to see if it was still there.
It was quite successful and caused no end of discussion in the balcony where he had
fallen.

Eventually the
electricity departed him and he tumbled some­what wearily over the balcony in a rather
unnecessary manner and plunged into the orchestra. It seemed somewhat anticlimactic. Some people
simply do not know when to call it quits.

Ah, thinking back
on it now, I do not think I shall ever forget how proud and buoyant he looked as he sailed in
with that light­ning bolt at his back, fireballs resting lightly in his hair, and how grieved and
hurt he seemed when we later took him up in a body and gave him a swinging arc that carried him
well over the street as we showed him the way out.

And that, when one
reflects on it, was the entertainment from Earth we enjoyed the most.

"Blood is man's
most alarming treasure," said Dr. Vada.

The corpse did not
reply.

The white-coated
medical students stirred restlessly in their seats. A green-faced freshman in the second row was
already hav­ing difficulty and Dr. Vada had just barely begun.

Dr. Vada took a
scalpel from a tray at his side. He turned and watched the faces of the students in the
auditorium. Good. All eyes were on him. He placed the sharpened point on the chest of the
corpse.

"What is the only
thriving wildlife as yet relatively untouched by man?" he asked.

It was not meant to
be answered. He meant to supply the an­swer himself.

Bellamy, in the
first row, could not resist.

"The Dean's wife,
Dr. Vada. I don't know about her thriving, but they say she's wild all right!"

There was a roar of
laughter from the students at his back. Bellamy turned and faced his audience, bowing slightly.
He was enormously pleased with himself.

Dr. Vada's face
burned with fury. "That is the last time I will have my class interrupted by . . . by a . .
."

Bellamy spread his
hands. "My most humble apologies." He laughed. "Don't forget who I am, Dr. Vada. My father is
presi­dent of the university and . . ."

"And his son is a
fool. Sit down, Bellamy." Dr. Vada's hands trembled and the scalpel bit into the flesh of the
corpse. His eyes burned with rage. The hostility between himself and young Bel­lamy was bitter
and of long standing.

"As I was saying,"
he continued, "the wildlife I referred to
that has barely been touched by man is the hot, poorly lit world within himself. We have
never learned to admire the absolute beauty of the blood."

Dr. Vada licked his
lips. His eyes flashed with excitement. "Blood is misunderstood. We hate the pain that always
appears with it and that pain has taught us to hate it, to hate the sight of blood."

Dr. Vada stared at
his students. "And thereby, man blinds him­self to one of the most beautiful things in creation.
Our own rich, red, human blood."

"Taking hematology
from a lunatic!" muttered Bellamy to the girl in the seat next to him. Dr. Vada heard him, as he
was meant to. Except for a certain tightening of the muscles in his face, he chose to ignore
it.

The scalpel was
again pressed to the chest of the corpse.

"I'm a nature lover
but the only scenery I prefer is inside the body." The doctor's arm flexed. The knife bit into
cold flesh, slashing a deep cavity across the cadaver's chest. Sightless eyes stared blankly up
at the smile of pleasure that spread across Dr. Vada's face.

"How can one not
admire the wondrous shape of the glands, the fragile transparent lungs, the world within worlds
of the infinitely complex brain cell mass. And through it all and always, streams the
blood."