Mike Resnick by Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders

Author:Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-01-08T12:40:51+00:00

I couldn’t believe the change in Maury. That night he skipped two of his strongest pain medications, and the next afternoon he actually shuffled a deck of cards. He hadn’t been able to do that in years. The doctors claimed that it was a semi-miracle, that sometimes arthritis went into remission—but never this fast or this completely. Maury listened politely to them, but when we were alone together he told me that there was no question in his mind that it was all due to Alastair Baffle.

He cashed a couple of bonds—I don’t know what he was saving them for anyway—and the next week we went down to the Emporium of Wonders again.

“Welcome back, my once-young friends,” said Baffle as we entered the shop. “What shall I show you gentlemen this time?”

“Anything you want,” answered Maury.

“Let me think,” said Baffle. “Ah! I have just the thing!” He went into his back room and emerged a moment later with a small white lab rat in a cage that could have held a sixty-pound dog.

“The Neptunian Spin-Devil,” he announced. “One of the rarest creatures in the Solar System, if not the galaxy.”

“Sure it is,” I said in bored tones.

“You doubt it?” he asked in that tone that made me feel like he was a cat playing with its food, and that I was its meal.

“Of course I doubt it.”

“Oh, ye of little faith. What troubles you about it?”

“Other than its appearance, you mean?” I said. “Does it breathe?”

“Certainly,” replied Baffle. “Why should you ask, Master Silver?”

“Because Neptune is a gas giant with no oxygen.”

Baffle looked genuinely surprised. “Really?”

“Really,” I said.

He shrugged. “Well, they told me it was Neptune, but I suppose it could just as easily have been Pollux IV.”

“Come on,” I said. “It’s a white mouse, and it’s from the pet shop down the street.”

“If you say so, Master Silver,” said Baffle. Suddenly he leaned over the cage and said “Boo!”

The mouse became a tawny fifty-pound something in the blink of an eye, growling, spinning in circles, flapping two sets of vestigial wings.

“What the hell is it?” I demanded.

“I already told you,” answered Baffle with a smug smile. “You live in a changing universe, Master Silver. You must never assume that all things change at the same pace.”

He held the Spin-Devil up for Maury to see, then carried its cage to the back room.

“This guy is half nuts and wholly dangerous,” I whispered to Maury. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You do what you want,” he replied. “He’s a miracle worker, and I need another miracle. I’m staying.”

I could see it was pointless to argue with him, so I just sat and stared at a tribal death mask that was hanging on the wall, and tried to ignore the feeling that it was grinning at me.

“You’re looking better today, Master Gold,” said Baffle when he’d rejoined us. “I am delighted to see that your condition was not permanent.”

“It was until I met you,” said Maury.

“I’m flattered that you should think so,” said Baffle, “but I’m just a shopkeeper.

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