Part 1

THE VENGEANCE OF TOFFEE

By Charles F. Myers

The world was on the brink of atomic war and nothing, it seemed, could prevent it. But Toffee had a plan--and a little magic to boot!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1951 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The bombs ticked--in remote places--behind locked and guarded doors. The bombs ticked, and the terrible sound was distinct in the farthest corners of the world--wherever a man picked up a newspaper, turned on a radio--or paused to listen to the beating of his own heart. A Bomb ... H Bomb ... X Bomb--the bombs ticked louder and louder with the growing hours--and each man dwelt alone now with the dark spectre of his own trembling fear.

"_Yesterday we perfected a new kind of totalitarian death...._" (It was difficult to remember the pleasant, relaxed voice which had once given the announcer his popularity, for now it seemed that his breath passed over taut nerves rather than vocal cords. But no one noticed; it was only what he said that mattered now, not how he said it. Fear fed on fear with an avid, indiscriminate appetite--and flourished from the diet.)

"_Today we can only be certain that the foreign powers will have caught up with us within the next few hours._

"_Can you remember the Atomic Age, ladies and gentlemen? How long ago that was! And yet how swiftly we have progressed from that to the Age of Human Terror._

"_The X Bomb--the incomprehensible unit of power and destruction which dwarfs the human soul and reduces it to a negligible fraction of quivering fright--just one small fraction contributing to the monstrous organism of terror which has lately become our modern civilization. How wretched we are to be living in a civilization in which the word 'city' has been rendered obsolete by the word 'target.' The New York Target ... the Chicago Target ... the Salt Lake and San Francisco Targets. How wretched we are._

"_And is it strange that these targets which were once cities are being deserted? Is it strange that men have begun to run from the bombs even before they have begun to fall? That is the nature of terror._

"_For the first time in its history the nation looks upon a nomadic society--largely that group of the working people who have ceased working to wander aimlessly, seeking safety within our own borders--living by thievery and lawlessness. Crime has increased so rapidly of late that a comparative estimate is impossible. That, too, is the nature of terror._

"_Today the government would force these erstwhile workers back to the hearts of the targets--force them by law back to the factories to engage again in the production of death and destruction._

"_'Necessary,' the statesmen say. 'Necessary to national safety.' But with the statesmen's words comes the obvious question: Is there still any national safety left for any nation? Does it exist anywhere, to be preserved? Haven't the fleeing nomads asked themselves this question already, turning their frightened eyes to the unprotecting skies?_

"_But the statesman must speak--and he must speak logic, even now when logic has deserted us, and words can no longer save us. Every man--statesman or otherwise--knows that it is no longer a question of whether the bombs will drop--but when they will drop--and who will drop them--we or they?_

"_It is true that no nation has declared war, but terror declares its own war. Can we wait another day to take the initiative? Can they? The undeclared enemy may destroy us tomorrow--or tonight--even within the next few minutes. I may not live to finish this broadcast--and you may not live to hear it...._"

* * * * *

Suddenly there was a sharp click, and the voice stopped, silenced as effectively as though a wire had been knotted about the speaker's throat. Marc Pillsworth, startled at the sudden silence, snapped forward in his chair and looked up. Julie, the lamp light slanting sharply across her face, glared down at him with tense irritation. She removed her hand significantly from the radio switch.

"I'm telling you, Marcus Pillsworth," she said menacingly, "I can't stand any more of it. If you turn on that bloody instrument again--if you so much as twitch your bony finger in its direction--one of us is going to die of unnatural causes, and you may have read that the female is notoriously more long-lived than the male."

Marc stared at her incredulously through the chill dimness of the living room. Then he sighed heavily. This also was the nature of human terror: every man was married to a shrew these days. Women simply weren't up to it.

But Julie had been better than most--until now. He looked at the tightly drawn lips, the circled eyes and tried to remember his wife's cool blonde beauty as it had been only a month ago. The contrast was disquieting. Well, these were harrowing times for her.

But they were just as harrowing for everyone else--for him. She ought to realize that. Suddenly, unaccountably, Marc felt his self-control slipping away from him with all the sleazy inevitability of a pair of silk shorts with rotten elastic. Suddenly the distorted face across the room was not at all the face of his wife, but the face of a vindictive stranger who had invaded his rights and his privacy with definite malice in mind. Reason left him, and, with a black sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he felt the last measure of his reserve trickle down the drain. Gripping the arms of his chair, he jutted his face out into the light and deliberately leered.

"With the world coming down around our ears," he snarled, "I suppose you expect me to sit here complacently simpering and snickering and snapping my gum like an addled adolescent? Don't you care that we may all go to blazes in the next few minutes?"

"No!" Julie screamed, fitting a direct answer to a direct question. "No, I don't care. I'm tired of caring. I'm tired through with caring. And I'm tired of you sitting there with those great elephantine ears of yours hinged to that radio. You've been at it day in, day out, day in, day out, day in...!"

"Stop repeating yourself like some idiot tropical bird," Marc snapped.

"Why don't you ever go down to the office any more?" Julie asked with womanly logic. "Why don't you get out of here and leave me alone?"

* * * * *

In heavy martyrdom Marc lifted his eyes to the ceiling. What was the use? Why go through it all again? He'd explained to her a million times that he no longer had any _reason_ to go to the office. The advertising business had been one of the first to suffer. Who cared what the advertising industry had to say at a time like this? Who wanted to be beautiful or healthy or envied when there wasn't any future in it?

"Turn the radio on," he said steadily.

Julie's eyes actually sparked flame. "_What?_ Do you really have the grassy green gall to ask me to turn that thing on again? I don't believe my ears!"

"I'm not asking," Marc said slowly, "I'm _instructing_ you to."

"Hah!" Julie snorted to some invisible spectator. "Listen to him!" She eyed him nastily. "Ask me to shinny up the doorsill and do a swan dive into my cocktail. I'll do that sooner."

Marc met her gaze for a moment and momentarily declined the challenge. "I suppose you just want to sit here and never know what hit you?"

"Exactly," Julie said. "For heaven's sake what does it matter what hits us after we're dead? At least I don't want to sit here chewing my nails while some morbid-minded deficient drives me into a state of complete nervous collapse."

Marc disengaged himself from his chair. She had a point there, though he'd rot before he admitted it. With considerable unconcern he moseyed across the room and glanced out the window. Then he stopped and leaned closer to the pane. Across the street the world was already ablaze. The night sky glowed red with flame.

"My God!" he cried. "The Fredericks are on fire!"

Julie moved to his side and stared out the window.

"Who are those people?" she asked. "The ones sitting on the lawn there?"

Marc directed his gaze to the right. He should have seen them sooner, except that one's sense of logic, when one is witnessing a fire, does not readily encompass a group of people lounging on blankets in the glowing radiance--especially when those people are concerned more with food, drink and cards than with the fire--and more especially when the owners of the flaming dwelling are prominent among those present....

"Aren't those the Fredericks?" Julie asked.

"Do you suppose they've noticed the house?" Marc asked. "But I suppose they must."

"Maybe not," Julie said. "They've been drunk for days. It started out as a house warming party. Do you suppose this is their idea of a joke?"

* * * * *

Marc turned away. "The papers are full of this sort of thing. The anxiety has driven people mad." Then suddenly he stiffened. "Maybe they've heard something! Maybe they've decided to burn their home rather than let the enemy do it for them." He ran to the radio and snapped the switch.

"_Beside every man stalks the black shadow of doom...!_" the announcer groaned.

At the window Julie instantly snapped to a position of rigid erectness. With cold fury she turned and regarded Marc's lank figure bent attentively to the radio speaker. Her eyes rested on her husband's impassive posterior, and glittering, unbridled madness flickered in their depths.

"_When will the attack fall?_" the announcer inquired, and Julie answered him without hesitation. "Now, brother," she murmured. "Right now!"

Unaware of the declaration of hostilities from the rear, Marc hung on the words of the announcer: "_We can only brace ourselves and hope...._"

It was a pity he did not have the foresight--or perhaps hindsight--to follow the announcer's advice. In the next moment Julie's foot, propelled so as to accomplish the same work as an iron sledge, completed an arc that terminated in what might crudely be called a bull's eye.

With a scream of mortal agony, Marc started forward, and jutted his head forthwith into the speaker of the radio. There was a dreadful splintering sound, and then with a squeal, not unlike Marc's, the announcer fell silent.

Marc was unaware of this latter development; both his soul and body were too consumed with throbbing pain to be concerned any longer with such trivialities as the X Bomb and the demise of the world. The world could go to hell in beach sandals and it would be as nothing to the awful thing which had befallen him. Thrusting his hands forcibly to the seat of his anguish, he dislodged his head from the radio and regarded Julie from a crouching position. Clutching himself in a most unmindful way he stared up at his mate with almost animal loathing.

"What a rotten thing to do!" he rasped. "And what a fiendish place to do it! You ... you're ... you're _inhuman_!"

Julie laughed evilly. "I warned you, you reptile! I told you I couldn't stand any more!"

* * * * *

Marc grimaced as a new wave of pain surged upward through his body. "I just hope you're proud, waiting until a man's got his back turned and then kicking him in the...!"

"There's no need to be crude about it," Julie cut in quickly.

"That's funny, that is!" Marc snapped, baring his teeth. "_Me_--crude! What about you? I suppose you've been the perfect little lady in this affair? I'm not surprised you can't bear to face your crime!"

"Vulgar!" Julie yelled. "Vulgar, skinny man!"

Marc glanced at the radio. "You've ruined it!"

"You ruined it yourself. Though I will say that if you hadn't, I had every intention of taking a meat axe to it."

"And to me, too, I dare say. A nice way for a wife to go on to a husband who has cherished and protected her."

"Oh, stop it, you ninny," Julie said. "Stop carrying on as though I'd murdered you."

"I'd have preferred to be murdered," Marc said, shuddering with pain.

"Stop crouching like that," Julie said. "And stop holding yourself in that suggestive way. You look like a child with uncertain habits. Straighten up."

Marc considered the matter of straightening up; never had he felt so strongly the need to rise to his full height. He relinquished his grip on himself and tried to unbend. Instantly he fell back into the crouching position with a cry of pain.

"I can't!" he cried. "I can't straighten up!"

Julie's expression swiftly undertook a series of transformations ranging from suspicion to chagrin to abject contrition.

"Of course you can," she said anxiously. "Try."

"I can't, I tell you!" Marc gritted. "And it serves you right. As a matter of fact I hope I stay this way, and you have to spend the rest of your days explaining to everyone how it happened. You've dislocated my sacroiliac, that's what you've done, you brutish female!"

"Oh, no!" Julie gasped. "Oh, Marc!" She ran toward him.

"Get away from me!" Marc snarled. "Don't you touch me, you Judith Iscariot!"

"Oh, dear!" Julie wailed. She held our a hand. "I'll get a doctor, the one down the block. Don't do anything. I'll be right back." She started toward the door.

"Tell him how it happened!" Marc called after her spitefully. "Tell him how you kicked your own husband in the...!"

But the door slammed as Julie hurried out of the house and down the steps.

Marc returned his hands gingerly to his pulsing bottom and stared gloomily at the floor.

"Damn!" he said. "Damn, damn, damn!"

* * * * *

The doctor strapped a final length of adhesive across Marc's back and helped him into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

"It may be tender for a day or two," he said. He helped Marc into his pajama coat. "You'll be all right, though. You can have Mrs. Pillsworth take that tape off for you at the end of the week."

"I'll wear it to my grave," Marc snapped, "before I'll permit that woman to touch me again."

"Now, now, Mr. Pillsworth," the doctor temporized. "You'll feel better in the morning." He turned and picked up his case. "I imagine those sedatives will take care of everything for tonight."

"Thank you, doctor," Marc said gratefully, and sank back rigidly on the bed. Lying down, held stiffly by the tape, he was forced to watch the doctor from the corner of his eye.

"Goodnight, doctor."

"Goodnight." The doctor nodded from across the room and opened the door to leave. Julie was revealed wringing her hands in the hallway. She stepped forward.

"How is he, doctor?" she asked. "May I see him now?"

"Keep her out!" Marc growled from his pillow. "If she so much as sticks a hand in here I'll bite it!"

The doctor took Julie's arm. "Don't worry," he said. "Everyone's a little neurotic these days." He guided her back into the hall and closed the door.

Marc shifted his gaze from the door to the ceiling. The laughter of the Fredericks and their guests drifted in through the open window, and he reflected on its quality: it was the laughter of desperation, not abandoned. Then the scream of a fire siren sounded faintly in the distance, and a woman echoed the cry weirdly from somewhere down the block--another patient for the good doctor.

Marc closed his eyes and waited for the sedatives to work. An echo of pain throbbed along his spine. He tried to shift a bit, but the tape held him in place, and the pain was only worse for the effort. He looked at the ceiling again and noted its singular blankness without pleasure. Finally he decided to turn his mind to other things--to the past and happier circumstances. Instantly, without any conscious cooperation, Toffee's pert face stirred in his memory. The ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

Not that the thought of Toffee was undilutedly pleasant. The gamin creature of his mind had a strong predisposition for trouble as well as pleasure--a sort of special magnetism that drew calamity to herself as well as the hapless souls around her. And yet the basic feeling, when thinking of Toffee, was one of distinct cheer. If trouble came to her it was never altogether unmixed with a certain element of hilarity. There was always a dash of excitement at least.

* * * * *

Naturally Toffee had not been in Marc's mind at all these last few months. For one thing he had been much too concerned with the perilous state of the world, and Toffee, not a consistent inhabitant of this world, or much of any other, was difficult to picture in conjunction with truly worldly matters.

If it could be said that Toffee lived at all, it would have to be the Valley of Marc's mind. Not that she wasn't quite real; it was just that she did not exist materially unless she was projected into the material world through Marc's imagination. After that she was as flesh and blood as anyone--indeed, to an almost overwhelming degree at times.

If Marc had grown used to this strange circumstance--that his mind could actually create a living, breathing perfect hellion of a redhead--it was only by virtue of repetition. The human mind can adjust to the wildest of impossibilities in time, if it is only subjected to them often enough.

The smile grew on Marc's lips as he considered the provocative form and features of Toffee. It was a vision to prod the sternest lips into a smile.

Then the smile vanished as Julie's footsteps sounded outside in the hallway. Marc listened to their approach, turning his eyes toward the door.

He could almost see her standing there in the hallway beyond the closed door. Desolated with remorse, she would be, undecided. A trickle of compassion gullied the surface of Marc's resentment. After all, she had really meant to hurt him. He would have called out to her, but the footsteps sounded anew and retreated down the hall. A moment later a door opened and closed. Marc sighed; tomorrow would be time enough to make it up to her.

He closed his eyes as a slow drowsiness began to seep through his lean body--probably the sedatives going to work. His mind wandered aimlessly for a moment, then collided, quite forcibly, with a sudden realization; during the last hour--for the first time in weeks--his thoughts had turned away from the dismal state of the world and centered on himself. For a whole hour his interest had been entirely absorbed in a simple domestic crisis--a little thing like a fight over the radio!

Marc's mind spun with the thought. In the last few months things--the matters of men's lives--had somehow gotten themselves all turned around backwards. People had ceased to concern themselves with the really important things--fighting over a radio, for instance--and had turned to the childish business of blowing up the world.

Marc paused to sum up these thoughts. Somewhere they contained a very great and very simple truth, though they were all snarled up. Somehow his dislocated sacroiliac and the troubles of the world were subtly related....

The drowsiness washed over his mind again, and the thought was carried away on the crest. He reached after them, but couldn't quite make it. There was but one last glimmer:

"What this world needs," Marc murmured, "is a good five ton kick in the...."

His eyes closed, and instantly his chest began to rise and fall with the deep, regular breathing of complete sleep.

* * * * *

A warm breeze dusted the edge of the curtain and set it rippling. Somewhere in the night, in the distance across the city, a siren wailed with inconsolable melancholy. A cat stalked the intersection, as silent and intense as his leopard-long shadow. In his narcotic slumbers Marc rolled a bit to one side and made a small whimpering sound as the adhesive pulled at his back. He lay back and was still.

But Marc had dismissed all conscious memory of his injury some time hence. In the same moment when he had fallen asleep he had left the room of the rippling curtain and unhappy echoes and had passed into the untroubled, all-black world of unconsciousness.

Now, however, he stirred again, and with that almost indiscernible movement, leaped from the darkness into lighter regions; into the secret, all-things-are-possible world of his subconscious--into the world where dreams can become more real than reality itself. Marc paused on the brink of this world for one tremulous moment, then plunged forward....

Brilliant light shot up to meet him so that he had to close his eyes against the glare. Then, slowly, he opened them again. Much like the sensation of stepping onto cool lawn after having walked barefoot on scorching concrete, pain was swiftly followed by almost unbearable pleasure.

Before Marc's gaze a soft greenness stretched away from him into graceful rising slopes and cool shadowed hollows--artfully like a display of green velvet in a shop window. On the rise of the most distant knoll stretched a forest of strange trees which held at once a cathedral of stateliness and a feathery pliability. Weaving slightly with the breeze they were mindful of nothing so much as a handful of royal plumes stuck into the earth at the whim of a bemused child. The Valley of The Subconscious Mind....

Marc knew instantly where he was; he'd been there often enough before. He glanced around in search of some movement, some flash of animated color. But there was nothing. He started up the rise, stretching his long legs purposefully before him. Surely she would be there, probably among the trees.

But she was not. Nor was there any sign of her. Marc moved to the crest of the knoll where the trees were the thickest, but the far horizon proved to be obscured by a blue mist that swirled and disported itself in the way of something alive. He stood there for a long moment, turning slowly, watching anxiously for any sign, but there was none. Finally he sat down, braced his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hand. Disappointment welled inside him--and hurt too; always before she had been right there to meet him at the moment of his arrival.

* * * * *

He stiffened with a sudden, dreadful thought: what if Toffee wasn't there at all? What if she had ceased to exist? Wasn't it possible since she was only a product of his imagination? He stood up and again scanned the horizon. He bent down to peer into the shifting frontiers of the mists.

And then it happened. It was low and mean and sharply reminiscent of a similar agony which had befallen him in another time and place that he couldn't rightly remember. Grabbing himself uninhibitedly he doubled forward and sat down heavily on the ground.

Then it was over as swiftly and surprisingly as it had begun. The air rippled with musical, feminine laughter, somewhere behind him. Marc swung around.

Lovely as ever, her mist-textured tunic only served to cast a cool greenish tint on the flesh of the outrageously perfect body beneath it. As she moved from beneath the trees, her flaming hair fell loose about her shoulders, as free and wild as the spirit it adorned. Though her full red lips quivered with laughter, the real laughter was in the depths of her green eyes. She paused for a moment, then ran forward and sat down lightly at his side. She eyed him with mischievous amusement.

"You dilapidated old despot," she smiled. "It's about time you showed that simpering old face of yours around here again."

Marc, mindful of his recent discomfiture, returned her gaze with chilly suspicion. But if Toffee noticed she pretended not to. With a quick maneuver which was executed with the skill and precision obtainable only through long and diligent practice, she twined her arms about his neck and kissed him full upon the mouth. Marc received the kiss with unblinking aloofness. His gaze remained hostile even as she leaned back from him.

"You kicked me," he said injuredly.