Down in the Black Gang and Other Stories by Philip José Farmer

Author:Philip José Farmer [Farmer, Philip José]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0451048059
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1971-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

HOROWITZ

A fierce meat-eating giant

bird of the planet Feral.

Highly intelligent. Named

after its discoverer,

Alexander Horowitz.

Please do not tease.

This area monitored.

The girl reached out a hand and stroked Brer John’s chin. “Some scratch,” she said.

She turned to the youth and jerked her thumb in an invitation for him to leave.

“Whyn’t some ionize?” she said.

He narrowed his eyes and said, “Me? Summun want rigor mortis?”

“Me never no monk-monk before,” said the girl, and she laughed, while her blue eyes looked at Brer John with a look he knew too well.

The boy snarled, “Monk-monk?” and then Brer John understood that the girl was punning. Monk-monk, he remembered now, was an extremely vulgar word which had replaced one of the formerly tabooed four-letter words.

“Monk-monk the monk-monk,” said the boy. “Me monk-monk summun if summun ain’t getting the monk-monk off the pad.”

He turned to Brer John. “Ionize, gutbutt!”

Suddenly, a knife was in the girl’s hand, and the point was at the boy’s throat. “Me seesaw rigor mortis,” she said crooningly.

“Some?” said the boy amazedly, jerking his thumb at Brer John.

The girl nodded her head. “Me some. Never no monk-monk a monk-monking monk, comprendo? You ionize sooner than later. Some seesaw rigor mortis, no?”

The boy put his hands on the ground behind him and tried to back away from her. She followed him, the knife held to his throat.

As she did so, Brer John’s hand flashed out and knocked the knife from her grasp. All three dived for it, and their heads came together. Brer John saw stars; by the time he’d recovered, the youth had grabbed him by the throat and was trying to strangle him. Brer John fought back; his stiff fingers plunged into the boy’s stomach, the boy said, “Oof!” and released his hold. The girl, knife in hand, leaped at the boy. He turned and hit her on the jaw with his fist and knocked her unconscious to the ground. Then, before Brer John could move in close enough, the boy grabbed him by the front of the robe and lifted him high and helpless in the air. And the next Brer John knew, he was flying over the fence. He hit the ground hard, rolled over, felt the world slipping away beneath him, knew briefly that he was falling into the moat, fell backwards, and then … heard a voice shrieking, “Hey, John, hey, John! Here I am, John!”

He woke to hear the same voice calling, “Hey, John! Here I am!”

He was flat on his back, staring upwards past the grey walls of the moat and up at the roof of the city. The roof was no longer transparent, allowing the blue of the Arizona sky to come through undiminished. Night had fallen outside the roof, and now the roof itself was a glow bright as day, shining with energy stored during the day and released at sunset.

Brer John groaned and tried to sit up to see if he had any broken bones. But he could not move.

“Holy Mother!” he breathed. “I’m paralyzed! St.

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