Star Science Fiction No 3 by Frederik Pohl (ed.)

Author:Frederik Pohl (ed.)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi., Science Fiction, Anthology
Publisher: Ballentine Books
Published: 1961-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Lecoq, lecoq, lecoq,

Lecoq, lecoq, lecocu.

I got the hell out of it and joined the army. . . . I’m not giving you anything you can make anything of, see? This is the layout, see? . . . Okay. I was about thirty, then, and in pretty good shape. Well, so when King Francois sent us to Turin—Monsieur de Montagan was Colonel-General of Infantry—my Commander, Captain Le Rat, led us up a hill to a position, and we sure had a hot five minutes! It was anybody’s battle until the rest cut through, and then we advanced, and I got this.”

The Corporal touched his head. I asked, “How?”

“From a halberdier. You know what a halberd is, don’t you? It’s a sort of heavy ax on the end of a ten-foot pole. You can split a man down to the waist with a halberd, if you know how to handle it. See? If it had landed straight— well, I guess I wouldn’t be here right now. But I saw it coming, see, and I ducked, and just as I ducked my foot slipped in some blood, and I fell sideways. But all the same that halberdier got me. Right here, just where the scar is. See? Then everything went sort of black-and-white, and black, and I passed out. But I wasn’t dead, see? I woke up, and there was the army doctor, with a cheap steel breastplate on—no helmet—soaked with blood up to the elbows. Our blood, you can bet your life—you know what medical officers are?”

I said soothingly, “Oh yes, I know, I know. And this, you say, was in 1537?”

“Maybe 1536, I don’t remember exactly. As I was saying, I woke up, and I saw the doctor, and he was talking to some other doctor that I couldn’t see; and all around men were shouting their heads off—asking their friends to cut their throats and put them out of their misery.. asking for priests ... I thought I was in hell. My head was split wide open, and I could feel a sort of draft playing through my brains, and everything was going bump-bump, bumpety-bump, bump-bump-bump. But although I couldn’t move or speak I could see and hear what was going on. The doctor looked at me and said . . .”

Corporal Cuckoo paused. “He said?” I asked, gently.

“Well,” said Corporal Cuckoo, with scorn, “you don’t even know the meaning of what you were reading in your little book—Pipeur ou hasardeur de dez, and all that— even when it’s put down in cold print. I’ll put it so that you’ll understand. The doctor said something like this: ‘Come here and look, sir, come and see! This fellow’s brains were bursting out of his head. If I had applied Theriac, he would be buried and forgotten by now. Instead, having no Theriac, for want of something better, I applied my Digestive. And see what has happened. His eyes have opened! Observe, also that the bones are creeping together and over this beating brain a sort of skin is forming.

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