[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Startling Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The way it started, Leo Stern decided I should make a publicity
appearance at this soiree up in Bel Air. I wasn't happy about the deal.
These Bel Air soirees are usually loaded with earnest intellectuals,
and if there's one thing that upsets me it's mingling with earnest
intellectuals. But Leo is my manager. What he decides I should do, I do.
"Being seen at this brain brawl will be smart box office, Freddy," Leo
told me. "You can use a little high-brow publicity."
I could have used a little premonition and second sight too. It would
have kept me from getting mixed up with Panda, the beautiful Ph.D.
It would have kept me from taking that fatal fall to Dr. Stanley
MacCluett's synthetic symbiotic wave. I could have gone on for the rest
of my life being the same old obnoxious Freddy Booten.
That's my legal name--Freddy Booten. Professionally I am known as Don
Diablo. This is because I am supposed to look very sinister. I have
basilisk black eyes, a satanic-type Vandyke and I am all over with
muscle. I am what is very loosely termed a wrestler.
Very, very loosely. On any given day you can pick up at least a
hundred heavies around and about the country who can easily whip me no
hands. The reason they consistently refrain from doing this is merely
because promoters dearly love to amass money. Time and time again cash
customers will come back to the arena in the hopes of seeing some
clean-cut American kid twist me up like a cruller.
This never happens, of course. What happens is I leave the clean-cut
American kid writhing in frightful agony on the canvas. Sneering
horribly, a red nylon robe tossed rakishly around my shoulders, I make
my victory strut up the aisle. While I strut and sneer, kindly old
ladies try to beat me to death with their canes. I am indeed a very
obnoxious character.
Being obnoxious never bothered me. It was, I always figured, a fast way
to stack a buck on top of a buck. In a year or two, if some kindly old
lady didn't maim me first, I'd have enough to retire to my pig farm
back in Fishhook, Illinois. I'm proud of that pig farm. People may
detest me, but I get along fine with pigs. We're real compatible.
* * * * *
The party Leo picked out for me to attend that night was being held
in one of those mansions which come equipped with their own private
mountain. It was jammed clear to the upstairs maid with artists, swamis
and people, and I was prepared to have a very dull night. What I wasn't
prepared for was to meet Panda.
At the time, I didn't know that's who she was. All I knew was suddenly
here was this spectacular girl with the glossy white streak in her
satin black hair standing in front of me. She had an orange juice and
vodka in one hand and an expression of mild revulsion on her beautiful
face.
"I can tell by that silly beard you're a male," she snarled. "But a
male what?"
Then she reached up and dumped the orange juice and vodka over me.
It wasn't anything to get sore about. Lots of women throw drinks at me.
I'm used to it by now. When it happens, I merely draw myself up to my
full six-feet-four and drip disdainfully down on the drink-tosser. Then
I stalk away. If there's a photographer around, I pause and lash my
beard a couple of times for the camera. It is, Leo says, very smart box
office.
It wasn't anything to get sore about, but that's what I did. Something
sputtered in my head and I broke out in flame. Without even bothering
to clear it with my conscience I lifted a foot and planted it on the
girl's instep. Not hard enough to break any bones, you understand; just
enough pressure to cause her to shriek in mortal anguish.
That shriek got a rousing reaction. Those earnest intellectuals
suddenly came boiling toward me in a red wave of wrath. There was a
scrawny blonde, built like the ruins of Pompeii, in the lead.
"Let me have him, girls!" I heard that scrawny blonde whinny. "Ten
years ago I took some jujutsu lessons to help protect me from men. Now
I want to see if I wasted my money."
I guess she never did find out if she wasted her money. Before she
could get her girlish talons into me some lily-livered flunky pulled
the main light switch.
In the thick darkness I barreled my way through the screaming mob. I
didn't stop until I climbed into my car. Somebody plopped down into the
seat beside me just as I hit the starter.
"Better roll it out of here fast!" a girl's voice yipped excitedly in
my ear. "There's a berserk gorilla loose in there!"
I wanted to explain that the berserk gorilla wasn't loose in there any
more. I wanted to say, Look, sis, that berserk gorilla is me. But,
judging from the way the riot was building up, I just didn't have the
time to spare. I rolled out of there fast.
It wasn't until we swung into the lighted boulevard that I realized I
had picked up the furious little female with the striped hair.
She recognized me at the same instant. "Yipes!" she squalled. "The
bearded Gargantua!" She drew back her foot and aimed a quick kick at
my shin. Her open-toed sandal whizzed by my leg and thudded into the
dashboard. She grabbed her foot and squalled some more. "Crumpled it up
like a balsa kite!" she screeched. "Bones sticking out all over! Stop
this chartreuse tumbrel! Let me out of here!"
I stopped the car. The mood she was in I felt she just wasn't safe to
have around.
"I don't want to rush you, sis," I said, "but there'll probably be a
broom coming along any minute. Maybe if you crawl out fast you can grab
a ride home."
She counted up to ten, cooling off faster than a strip-teaser in a
drafty igloo.
"This is ridiculous," she sputtered. "Why is it I keep blowing my top
like this?"
I was beginning to feel sorry for her. After all, it wasn't her fault
I was so obnoxious. "Don't let it throw you," I sighed. "You're merely
acting normal. Everybody hates me."
* * * * *
She stopped massaging her foot and turned to stare incredulously at me.
"Everybody?" she gasped.
I nodded. "Including kindly old ladies and small dogs," I said. I mean,
I wasn't boasting or anything. Just trying to paint a clear picture
for her.
She thought it over carefully. I could see an idea begin to form in her
big brown eyes.
"This is remarkable," she murmured. "This is really remarkable. Mind
driving around a bit?"
While I drove around she told me about herself. Her name, she said, was
Marsha Carson, though her friends all called her Panda. She worked for
the Keevan Research Foundation. Her boss was Dr. Stanley MacCluett, the
famous bio-electronicist, who was presently doing some important work
on waveform mutuality.
"I have a very good reason for filling you in on all this background
material," she went on to explain. "Because of the type of biological
electronic research we are carrying on at Keevan I feel I am in an
excellent position to offer a logical explanation as to why everybody
finds you so detestable."
I told her there wasn't any mystery about that. "I am detestable," I
said.
She nodded somberly. "You're an abominable cluck, and that's a
mink-lined fact," she agreed. "But this is in no way your fault.
You are simply an unfortunate victim of an extreme variation from
the electric norm. You have what we bio-electronicists call a rogue
symbiotic waveform."
She could be right. Big-electronics was a little out of my line. I
didn't feel I knew enough about the subject to argue.
"What throws me," I said, "is why I should reciprocate your revulsion.
I mean, ordinarily I am a sort of good-natured slob. I don't often get
mad--not even at kindly old ladies."
It seemed Panda also had a theory about that. "This antagonism
undoubtedly stems from the fact that we are at opposite ends of the
symbiotic scale," she said. "We are a hundred per cent incompatible."
We drove around for a couple of hours before I dropped her off at her
apartment in Santa Monica. When I finally left, I found I was committed
to escorting her down to Long Beach, where I was wrestling that next
night. I wanted that date the way a guy on his way to the electric
chair wants to sit down.
The Long Beach match turned out to be one of my best performances. The
sight of Panda sitting there in the front row, her face contorted in a
livid mask of hatred, was positively inspiring. When I finally made my
victor's march up the aisle, the place was a howling bedlam.
Those kindly old ladies were leaping from seat to seat like
spindle-legged Tarzans.
Leo was all molars by the time we got back down to the dressing
room. "Freddy," he chortled, "tonight you were great. I hear the TV
switchboard is jammed with people calling up to swear they will slay
you on sight. But slow and painful!"