Smith's Monthly #25 Read online

Stan frowned. “Harold is the God of Mathematics. He and the God of Physics, Merle, and the God of Chemistry, Bettie, hang around together and pretty much look down their noses at all the Gambling Gods and even the other science gods. They pretty much run their own area. I don’t know if they actually report in to anyone these days. Why?”

  “We found Laverne,” I said, nodding to the dark house. “Is there any bad blood between them and Laverne?”

  “You found her!” Stan said.

  “Hang on,” I said, stopping Stan from rushing into the house. “We don’t really know what’s going on yet and I think we had better find out before doing anything. So any bad blood between Laverne and any of the science gods?”

  Stan shook his head, “None that I know of.”

  A moment later a heavy-set man wearing a three-piece suit appeared beside Stan. He had an unlit cigar in one hand. He glanced around and then wrinkled his nose. “The Bookkeeper’s place I assume?”

  Stan nodded.

  Patty, Screamer, and I said nothing. It wasn’t often that the god who was second in command to Laverne just appeared in front of you. Burt scared me, but not half as bad as Laverne did.

  “Any fights lately between Laverne and the science geeks?” Stan asked.

  “Nothing that I know of,” Burt said. “Why?”

  “Then we need them here,” I said, “and maybe the god in charge of humanities or human nature as well.”

  Burt stared at me like I was a fly on a steak he was about to eat. I stood my ground, even though every sense in my body wanted me to just cower away.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  I quickly told him what we had found in there, and what The Bookkeeper had done and was now trying to undo. I finished with “He needs help, and it isn’t the kind of help any of us can give him. In fact, if we try anything, we might end up completely killing Laverne.”

  “Poker Boy is right,” Screamer said. “The Bookkeeper might be able to prove that luck doesn’t exist, but proving luck exists is another matter.”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I said nothing more.

  Burt stared at Screamer, then at me, then at Patty. A moment later we were all standing in a very large, very plush library office, with books that went up all four walls to a very high ceiling. As far as I could see in all directions, it was library walls and books. There had to be millions of books in here. Just the thought of that gave me a headache. I got a lot of headaches back in my college days.

  A crackling fire filled a large stone fireplace on one wall, and three overstuffed leather chairs circled the fireplace. Clearly this was where Harold, Merle, and Bettie spent a lot of time.

  At the moment all three were standing, as if informed we were coming.

  “What do we owe this Christmas Eve visit to?” asked a man with a heavy cardigan sweater and an unlit pipe in his hand. Another man with thick round glasses and a bald head stood beside him, and Bettie stood slightly off to one side looking the perfect image of an old school teacher from the Wild West.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Harold,” Burt said.

  “What is that odor?” Bettie said, waving her hand in front of her nose. Then the God of Chemistry waved her hand at me and Screamer and Patty and the foul stench of The Bookkeeper’s house vanished.

  I wanted to thank her, but instead kept silent as Burt quickly explained what one of their lowly superheroes had done to Lady Luck.

  “The Bookkeeper did that?” Harold said, smiling to himself. “I am impressed.”

  “That explains the smell,” Bettie said, nodding to us. “You went to see him, didn’t you?”

  “It would be impressive,” Burt said, “Except that Laverne is trapped by his equations, and slowly fading from existence.”

  “And The Bookkeeper is working as fast as he can to prove that luck does exist to bring her back,” I said. “But he needs help.”

  Harold smiled and nodded. “I can imagine he would at that. He would make the equations far, far harder than they would need to be.”

  Merle nodded. “It’s like a quantum physics problem, actually. The Bookkeeper might have been able to prove that, in perfect conditions, statistics prove that luck does not exist. That would have been enough to trap Laverne without warning. But luck is governed and influenced by the observer. And thus the observer changes the equation by simply observing it. Simple, actually.”

  I didn’t think it was so simple, but clearly Harold and Bettie understood him. Burt, Stan, and the three of us were just nodding, as if we actually understood any of that.

  “Can you help The Bookkeeper reverse what he has done to Laverne?” Burt asked.

  Harold nodded and turned to me and Patty and Screamer. “Since the three of you have been in that house once tonight, I assume you can go back in. Correct?”

  We all nodded.

  “Tell The Bookkeeper I told him to add into his equation the factor of an observer. That should break what is holding Laverne. But tell him to go slowly. Very slowly.”

  Burt nodded. “Thanks. I’m sure Laverne will stop by to thank you as well.”

  FIVE

  An instant later we were back out in front of The Bookkeeper’s home.

  I glanced at Stan and Burt, then turned to Patty and Screamer. “No need for the two of you to go in there again.”

  The moment I said that, I knew that I was wrong.

  Patty shook her head and Screamer looked worried.

  “I think we all need to do this,” Patty said.

  Burt and Stan both nodded. “Harold told all three of you to do it, so it’s going to take the three of you for some strange reason.

  I couldn’t argue with my two bosses, and my little voice, the one that controlled most of my actions, both at a poker table and away from it, was now happy again.

  Bracing ourselves once more against the smell, which is just damned impossible to do, we fought our way upstream through the front room and back to where The Bookkeeper pounded the keys.

  Laverne looked very, very faint.

  My little voice told me that I needed to get us all close together and be ready to get us out of real time very quickly. Harold had said that what I was to tell The Bookkeeper would break the equations holding Laverne. I didn’t like the sounds of the word “break” at all.

  “Bookkeeper,” I said when Screamer and Patty were in position beside me, “we went to see Harold.”

  The Bookkeeper just kept working, his fingers pounding the keyboard, the screens in front of him flashing numbers and calculations faster than I could follow, even if I knew what I was looking at.

  “Harold said to add in the factor of an observer into your equation.”

  “Sure he did, sure,” The Bookkeeper said.

  Laverne seemed to fade a little more and The Bookkeeper just kept working.

  I clicked us out of time and turned to Screamer. “He doesn’t believe me, he’s so trapped and scared.”

  “I can show him the image of Harold and Merle and Bettie,” Screamer said.

  “Patty, can you calm him down?” I asked. I knew that another of Patty’s special abilities is to get a person to calm down when they are very, very upset.

  “I can,” Patty said. She looked worried still.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, staring as best I could in the dim light into her dark brown eyes.

  “I’m worried about what’s going to happen when the spell holding one of the most powerful women in all of time breaks.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “And I don’t think The Bookkeeper, to rescue Laverne, can go slowly. I don’t think there’s enough time.”

  Screamer nodded that he too had thought about that.

  Patty looked at me. “If he can’t do it slowly, you need to surround The Bookkeeper as well the moment he types in the equation that will break the hold on Laverne.”

  I nodded. “The timing on this is going to be critical. Screamer, you be touching The Bookkeeper and Patty and I will
be touching you, so we know the instant we need to move.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  I wanted to take a deep breath and say, “Let’s do it.” But a deep breath of this air might knock me out, so instead I just nodded and released us back into real time.

  As a unit we stepped over behind The Bookkeeper. I held Patty’s hand and then touched Screamer’s shoulder, keeping my mind focused on an area around the four of us.

  When Patty touched Screamer an instant later, I got a sense of her thoughts, her worries. They were the same as mine. And Screamer’s. We were all scared to death.

  Screamer reached forward and touched the back of The Bookkeeper’s shoulder. All I could feel at that point was massive panic and fear.

  Patty quickly calmed him down, and me and Screamer as well with a simple thought.

  “I see, I see, I understand,” The Bookkeeper said, nodding as Screamer transferred the images from the vast library into his head.

  “But I can’t go slowly.”

  He stopped and turned to us, but because we were all touching Screamer, we all knew exactly what he meant. Laverne was too far gone. Going slowly was not an option, and we all knew it because we were all linked.

  So Screamer put in The Bookkeeper’s head what we planned on doing, and The Bookkeeper nodded. “Only chance we have.”

  He turned back to his keyboard, paused only for a second, then began quickly typing again.

  In the corner Laverne started to firm up, slowly, her image not so faint.

  The Bookkeeper kept pounding the keys.

  Patty kept us all calm.

  Screamer kept the communication links opened.

  And I stood ready to snap us out of time and away from any danger.

  “That should do it,” The Bookkeeper said, pounding one finger on the enter key.

  Now!

  The thought from Screamer was like a shout in my head.

  I snapped us out of time a tiny fraction of a second before the explosion started to tear through the house and all space around us.

  Close. Too damned close.

  Screamer grabbed The Bookkeeper and yanked his small frame out of the chair, carrying him as we all turned for the door.

  “Stay near me,” I said, working to hold the bubble around all four of us as we worked our way toward the front door. Patty kept her hand in mine, sending as much strength and energy into me as she could to help me hold the field as long as I could.

  Outside, on the driveway, Stan and Burt were standing frozen, clearly waiting for us to come out, not realizing I had taken us out of time. The four of us moved down the driveway toward them, and I surrounded them as well with my field, barely holding it.

  “Stan,” I said, the moment he and Burt were inside the bubble and could see us, “I need help holding this time bubble.”

  Instantly Stan took over and I almost slumped to the ground with the release. I was still creating the bubble, but Stan was powering it.

  “I have a hunch we need to be a little farther away than this,” Screamer said.

  “I agree,” The Bookkeeper said, his breath worse than the smell of his house.

  “No need to worry,” Burt said. “Stan can you hold this for another few seconds?”

  “No problem,” Stan said.

  Burt closed his eyes and focused for a moment, then nodded and opened them. “It’s been a while since I needed to do that.”

  “What?” Patty asked.

  “I put a force field cone around the house, so that any explosion will be focused upward about five hundred feet. We’re outside that cone, so it’s safe to let us go.”

  Stan nodded to me and I released us all back into real time.

  The explosion was deafening as The Bookkeeper’s house just flat vanished into a dust cloud that went straight up.

  A very smelly dust cloud. The neighbors, and much of Las Vegas, were not going to be happy with that smell.

  Out of the dust cloud and force field that Burt had raised walked Laverne. She was totally nude, since the explosion had vaporized her clothes. And she looked really pissed off.

  “Someone want to explain to me just what the hell is going on?”

  Burt sort of pointed at Laverne’s midsection and at that moment Laverne noticed she was nude. I had to admit, for such an ancient god, she kept in pretty good shape.

  Clothes appeared on her and she didn’t blink, keeping her stare on Burt. Clearly they were communicating in a way I didn’t want to think about.

  After a moment, she turned on The Bookkeeper. But before she could do anything to him, Harold appeared beside the smelly man and nodded. “Glad to see you well, Laverne. I’ll take care of The Bookkeeper. Very sorry for the bother.”

  And then they were gone.

  Laverne took a deep breath, then coughed. Into the air she shouted “Bettie, can you do something about this smell?”

  A moment later the air around us smelled like a spring meadow. Even my jacket and hat smelled like a freshly mown lawn.

  Up and down the street people were coming out to stare at the giant hole where The Bookkeeper’s house used to be. No doubt, the property values in the neighborhood had just taken a huge jump, but I was going to be real curious to know how the police explained this one to the press.

  Laverne turned to the three of us, and stared first at me.

  I wanted to melt right there into the driveway, but instead stood my ground and stared back at her, giving her my best poker face. I couldn’t talk, but I could stare just fine.

  “It seems,” she said after a very, very long moment, “that I once again owe you three a thank you.”

  “It’s just our job,” Patty said, smiling.

  “Well,” Laverne said, “thank you for doing your job so well, and for saving me. I hope you have a great holiday. You all three deserve some time off.”

  With that, she and Burt vanished.

  Stan turned to us and just smiled. “Nice job, guys.” Then he too vanished.

  Screamer clapped his hands together and laughed. “Damned if we didn’t do it again.”

  I was still too stunned to say anything. Seems face-to-face meetings with Lady Luck just did that to me.

  “There’s a large steak waiting for me down at the MGM Grand,” Screamer said. “You two want to join me?”

  Patty put her arm around my waist and smiled. “I think we’ll take a rain check on that.”

  Two hours later, after a long, long shower with far too much use of soap between us, and a long, wonderful time in bed, I stared at the beautiful women lying next to me.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  I just leaned in and kissed her as a response.

  Right at that moment all was well in the world. There was no doubt that luck still existed.

  And that I was the luckiest man alive.

  The world destroyed by an asteroid in five days?

  What would you do? We all like to think we wouldn’t act like Peter. Or maybe we would.

  A close-up look at the end of the world. Maybe.

  PETER THE HERMIT

  ONE

  The apartment smelled like stale socks, soured milk, and pee. More pee than soured milk, but the combination of the odors was starting to get through Peter’s drunken state and make the beer taste funny. Ruining the taste of a good beer was a crime against nature, especially if the beer was the best he could find down at the corner Circle K an hour after they had announced the asteroid was going to hit Earth and destroy all life.

  Actually, he had managed to get the last five cases of the good stuff, and with the power off the last two days had grown to enjoy it warm.

  He finished off the can with a deep gulp, and without looking tossed the dead soldier in the general direction of the overflowing trashcan he had put as a target in the corner of the living room. Then he turned to see if his shot found its mark.

  The can bounced once off the wall spraying beer on the console big-screen television next
to the garbage can, clanged against some soup cans he’d put on top of the pile of trash at some point earlier in the day, and then bounced back toward him across the floor.

  It came to rest halfway across his wood dining room floor against another beer can he’d tossed yesterday.

  Damn! One of his worst shots. And they said practice made perfect. Well, it looked as if he needed more practice.

  And that meant he needed another beer.

  He pushed himself up out of the brown leather armchair and scratched his nuts. The T-shirt and loose boxer shorts he’d been wearing for two days stuck to him like his first wife, clinging and itching. He pulled them away from his skin, just like he’d done with her. He was glad both she and his second wife were gone. Good riddance to both of them.

  He was sweating harder now than he had in days. Too bad he couldn’t open a few windows and cool this place down a little, and get rid of some of the smell. But he didn’t dare even open his blinds at this point. Too damn dangerous.

  Besides, he didn’t want that world out there coming into his life any more than it already was. He was finished with that world.

  His comb-over hung down beside his head, and his whiskers were headed toward a new beard. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, he had broken the mirrors in the bathroom and on his closet door so that he would never have to look at himself again.

  Peter yawned, sticking out his gut like it was a prize to show the world, unlike the old days when he used to hide it under expensive suits and work in the gym at tightening his stomach.

  Now that all seemed so damned stupid.

  He turned and headed for the bathroom, the dim light through the blinds making the apartment seem like it was out of focus and in black and white. At least when he was drinking beer he got exercise standing and going to the bathroom. Why hadn’t he thought of that before the “big day of doom” was announced?

  Five minutes later he was back in his chair, an opened can of Campbell’s Pork and Beans in one hand, a beer in the other. It had taken him a good three of those minutes figuring out how to use the old manual can opener. He managed it fine when sober, but that thing always became the puzzle of the ages after ten or fifteen beers.