The Big Time by Fritz Leiber (early reader chapter books .txt) 📕

teasing a clutch of his tentacles out of my other hand and squeaking reproachfully, “Greta girl, don’t ever do that.”

Erich was standing on the chest and I noticed that his boots carefully straddled the circle of skulls, and I should have known anyway you could hardly push them in the right order by jumping on them, and he was pointing at Bruce and saying, “⁠—and that means mutiny, my young sir. Um Gottes willen, Bruce, listen to me and step down before you say anything worse. I’m older than you, Bruce. Mark’s older. Trust in your Kameraden. Guide yourself by their knowledge.”

He had got my attention, but I had much rather have him black my eye.

“You older than me?” Bruce was grinning. “When your twelve-years’ advantage was spent in soaking up the wisdom of a race of sadistic dreamers gone paranoid, in a world whose thought-stream had already been muddied by one total war? Mark older than me? When all his ideas and loyalties are those of a wolf pack of unimaginative sluggers two thousand years younger than I am? Either of you older because you have more of the killing cynicism that is all the wisdom the Change World ever gives you? Don’t make me laugh!

“I’m an Englishman, and I come from an epoch when total war was still a desecration and the flowers and buds of thoughts not yet whacked off or blighted. I’m a poet and poets are wiser than anyone because they’re the only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time. Right, Sid? When I talk to all of you about a peace message, I want you to think about it concretely in terms of using the Places to bring help across the mountains of time when help is really needed, not to bring help that’s undeserved or knowledge that’s premature or contaminating, sometimes not to bring anything at all, but just to check with infinite tenderness and concern that everything’s safe and the glories of the universe unfolding as they were intended to⁠—”

“Yes, you are a poet, Bruce,” Erich broke in. “You can tootle soulfully on the flute and make us drip tears. You can let out the stops on the big organ pipes and make us tremble as if at Jehovah’s footsteps. For the last twenty minutes, you have been giving us some very charmante poetry. But what are you? An Entertainer? Or are you a Soldier?”

Right then⁠—I don’t know what it was, maybe Sid clearing his throat⁠—I could sense our feelings beginning to turn against Bruce. I got the strangest feeling of reality clamping down and bright colors going dull and dreams vanishing. Yet it was only then I also realized how much Bruce had moved us, maybe some of us to the verge of mutiny, even. I was mad at Erich for what he was doing, but I couldn’t help admiring his cockiness.

I was still under the spell of Bruce’s words and the more-than-words behind them, but then Erich would shift around a bit and one of his heels would kick near the death’s-head pushbuttons and I wanted to stamp with spike heels on every death’s-head button on his uniform. I didn’t know exactly what I felt yet.

“Yes, I’m a Soldier,” Bruce told him, “and I hope you won’t ever have to worry about my courage, because it’s going to take more courage than any operation we’ve ever planned, ever dreamed of, to carry the peace message to the other Places and to the wound-spots of the cosmos. Perhaps it will be a fast wicket and we’ll be bowled down before we score a single run, but who cares? We may at least see our real masters when they come to smash us, and for me that will be a deep satisfaction. And we may do some smashing of our own.”

“So you’re a Soldier,” Erich said, his smile showing his teeth. “Bruce, I’ll admit that the half-dozen operations you’ve been on were rougher than anything I drew in my first hundred sleeps. For that, I am all honest sympathy. But that you should let them get you into such a state that love and a girl can turn you upside down and start you babbling about peace messages⁠—”

“Yes, by God, love and a girl have changed me!” Bruce shouted at him, and I looked around at Lili and I remembered Dave saying, “I’m going to Spain,” and I wondered if anything would ever again make my face flame like that. “Or, rather, they’ve made me stand up for what I’ve believed in all along. They’ve made me⁠—”

“Wunderbar,” Erich called and began to do a little sissy dance on the bomb that set my teeth on edge. He bent his wrists and elbows at arty angles and stuck out a hip and ducked his head simperingly and blinked his eyes very fast. “Will you invite me to the wedding, Bruce? You’ll have to get another best man, but I will be the flower girl and throw pretty little posies to all the distinguished guests. Here, Mark. Catch, Kaby. One for you, Greta. Danke schön. Ach, zwei Herzen in dreivierteltakt⁠ ⁠… ta-ta⁠ ⁠… ta-ta⁠ ⁠… ta-ta-ta-ta-ta⁠ ⁠…”

“What the hell do you think a woman is?” Bruce raged. “Something to mess around with in your spare time?”

Erich kept on humming “Two Hearts in Waltz Time”⁠—and jigging around to it, damn him⁠—but he slipped in a nod to Bruce and a “Precisely.” So I knew where I stood, but it was no news to me.

“Very well,” Bruce said, “let’s leave this Brown Shirt maricón to amuse himself and get down to business. I made all of you a proposal and I don’t have to tell you how serious it is or how serious Lili and I are about it. We not only must infiltrate and subvert other Places, which luckily for us are made for infiltration, we also must make contact with