The Best of Robert Bloch

  The governing power . . .

  Mok turned the clay containers this way and that, noting the clumsiness with which they had been fashioned, noting the irregularities of their surface. He could so easily correct that clumsiness, he could so surely smooth and reshape that clay. Govern the earth, govern the creatures, impart and instruct that which would shape them anew.

  And then the ultimate realization came.

  This would be duty and destiny, function and fulfillment. Within the prison of space and time, he would mould the little lives.

  Now he knew his own fate.

  He would be their god.

  4

  It was a strange role, but Mok played it well.

  There were obstacles, of course; the first to be faced was the fear in which they held him. He was an alien, and to the primitive minds of these creatures, anything alien was abhorrent. His very appearance provoked reactions which prevented him from approaching them, and for a time Mok despaired of overcoming this communication-barrier. Then, slowly, he came to realize that their fear was in itself a tool he could employ to positive ends; with it he could invoke awe, authority, awareness of his powers.

  Yes, that was the way. To accept his condition and stay apart from them always, confident that in time their own curiosity would drive them to seek him out.

  So Mok kept to the caves, and gradually the contacts were made. Not all of the hominids came to him, of course, only the boldest and most enterprising, but these were the ones he awaited. These were the ones most fitted to learn; to dream, to dare, to do.

  As he expected, the experience of his captives became a legend and the legend led to worship. It was useless for Mok to discourage this, impossible even to make the attempt; in the light of their primitive reasoning, a barter-system must prevail—offerings and sacrifices were the price they must pay in return for wisdom. Mok scanned his own primordial memories, assigning an order to the learning he imparted; the gift of fire, the secret of cultivation, the firing of clay, the shaping of weapons, the subjugation and domestication of lesser life-forms, the control and eradication of others. Slowly a more sophisticated system of communication evolved, first on the verbal and then on the visual level.

  The creatures disseminated his wisdom, absorbing it into their crude culture. They learned the uses of wheel and lever, then reached the gradual abstraction of the numeral concept. Now they were capable of making their own independent discoveries; language and mathematics stimulated self-development.

  But in times of crisis there was still a need for further enlightenment. Natural forces beyond their limited powers of control brought periodic disaster to life-patterns on the surface of the planet, and with every upheaval came a resurgence of the worship and sacrifices Mok secretly abhorred. Yet these creatures seemed to feel the necessity of making recompense for the skills he could grant them and the boons these skills conferred, and Mok reluctantly accepted this.

  It was harder for him to accept the continuation of their fear.

  For a time he hoped that as their enlightenment increased they would revise their attitudes; instead, their dread actually increased. Mok attempted to observe their progress at first hand, but there was no opportunity for open contact and communication and his mere appearance provoked panic. Even those who sought him in secret, or led the rituals of worship, seemed to be afraid of acknowledging the fact, lest it lessen their own superior status within the group. Acknowledging and acclaiming the existence of their god, they nevertheless avoided his physical presence.

  Perhaps it was because sects and schisms had sprung up, each with its own hierarchy, its own dogma regarding the true nature of what they worshipped. Mok remembered, wryly, that in organized religion the actual presence of a god is an embarrassment.

  So Mok refrained from further visitations, and as time passed he retreated deeper and deeper into the caverns. Now it was almost unnecessary for him to maintain even token contact, for these creatures had evolved to a stage where they were capable of self-development.

  But even gods grow lonely, and take nurture in pride. Thus it was that at rare intervals, and in utmost secrecy, Mok ventured forth for a hasty glimpse of his domain.

  One evening he came forth upon a mountain-top. Here the stars still glittered coldly, but there was an even greater glitter emanating from the expanse below—the huge city-complex towering as a testament to the wisdom of these creatures, and his own.

  Mok stared down and the sweet surges of pride coursed through him as he contemplated what he had wrought. These toys, these trifles with which he played, now toyed and trifled with the prime forces of the universe to create their own destiny.

  Perhaps he, as their god, was misunderstood, even forgotten now—but did it matter? They had achieved independence, they didn't need him anymore.

  Or did they?

  The concept came, and it was more chilling to Mok than the wind of mountain night.

  These creatures created, but they also destroyed. And their motivations—their greeds, their hungers, their lusts, their fears—were still those of the beasts they had been. The beasts they could become again, if spiritual awareness did not keep pace with material attainment.

  There was still need here, a need greater than before—and now Mok felt no pride, only a perplexity which pierced more poignantly than pain.

  How could he help them?

  "You cannot."

  The communication came and Mok whirled.

  Absorbed, he had not sensed the silent streaking of the ship from sky to surface, but it was here now, remembered and recognized. The ship which had captured and conveyed him, the strangely-shaped ship which was Ser—or at least the present avatar of Ser's essence.

  It hovered incandescently against the horizon of infinity, and as if communication had been a signal, Mok found himself caught up in a long-discarded reaction. He was contemplating Ser.

  And in that colloquy, Ser's concepts flowed to him.

  "Valid. You cannot fulfill their needs. Already you have done too much."

  Despite conscious volition, Mok felt the stubborn resurgence of his pride. But there was no need to formulate the reasons, for Ser's contemplation was complete.

  "You are in error. I sensed your rebellion, overcame you, brought you here—but it was not a punishment. You were placed for a purpose. Because this pride, this urge to invest identity through achievement, could be of use at this time, in this place. Like the others—"

  "Others?" Confusion colored Mok's contemplation.

  "Did you conceive of yourself as the only rebel? Not so—there have been more, many more. And they have served their purposes on other worlds throughout the cosmos. Worlds where the seeds of life needed cultivation and careful nurturing. I chose them for their tasks, just as I chose you. And you have not failed."

  Mok considered, then communicated with an urgency which surprised him with its sheer intensity.

  "Then let me continue! Endow me with what is necessary to help them now!"

  Ser's concept came. "It is not possible."

  Mok contemplated in final effort. "But it is my right to do so. I am their god."

  "No," Ser answered. "You have never been their god. You were chosen for what you were—to be their devil."

  Devil . . .

  There was no contemplation now, only maddening meditation as Mok scanned through concepts long-discarded from incarnations long-lost save in immutable memory. Concepts of good, evil, right, wrong—concepts embodied in the primitive religions of a million primitive pasts. God arose from those concepts, and so did the embodiment of an opposing force. And in all the legends in each of the myriad myths, the pattern was the same. A rebel cast down from the skies to tempt with teaching, to furnish forbidden knowledge at a price. A being in the form of a beast, skulking in darkness, in the pit where inner fires flamed forever. And he had been this being, it was true, he was a devil.

  Only pride had blinded him to the truth; the pride which had prompted him
to play god.

  "A pride of which you have been purged," Ser's communication continued. "One can sense in you now only mercy and compassion for these creatures and their potential peril. One can sense love."

  "It is true," Mok acknowledged. "I feel love for them."

  Ser's assent came. "With your aid, these creatures evolved. But you have evolved too—losing pride, gaining love. In so doing, you cannot function for them as their devil any longer. Your usefulness here is ended."

  "But what will happen—?"

  The answer came not as a concept but as an accomplishment.

  Suddenly Mok was no longer in the tawny body of the beast. He was in the ship, hovering and gazing down at that body; gazing down at the creature which lashed its tail and stared up at him with bulging eyes. The creature which now contained the essence of Ser.

  And Ser communicated. "For a span you shall take my place, as you once desired. You will seed the stars, instill order in chaos, lead the others in contemplation. You will do so in understanding, and in love."

  "And you?" Mok asked.

  The being in the bestial body formed a final concept. "I take your role and your responsibility. There is that within me which must also be purged, and it may be I will destroy much of what you have created here. But in the end, even as their devil, I may bring them to an ultimate salvation. The cycle changes."

  The cycle changes . . .

  Mok willed the celestial machine in which his essence dwelt, willed it to rise, and like a fiery chariot it ascended to the realms of glory awaiting him in the skies beyond.

  As he did so, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Ser.

  The beast had turned to descend the mountain. Padding purposefully, the devil was entering his kingdom.

  Mok's comprehension faltered. Cycle? Ser had been a god and now he was a devil. Mok had been a devil and now he was a god. But he could never have become a god if Ser hadn't willed the exchange of roles.

  Was this Ser's intent all along—to allow Mok to evolve as devil and then usurp his identity?

  In that case, Ser was actually a devil from the beginning, and Mok had been right in opposing him, for Mok was truly godlike.

  Or were they all—Mok, Ser, the others, even the primitive mammalian creatures on this planet—both gods and devils?

  It was a matter, Mok decided, which might require an eternity of contemplation . . .

  The Movie People

  TWO THOUSAND STARS.

  Two thousand stars, maybe more, set in the sidewalks along Hollywood Boulevard, each metal slab inscribed with the name of someone in the movie industry. They go way back, those names; from Broncho Billy Anderson to Adolph Zukor, everybody's there.

  Everybody but Jimmy Rogers.

  You won't find Jimmy's name because he wasn't a star, not even a bit-player—just an extra.

  "But I deserve it," he told me. "I'm entitled, if anybody is. Started out here in 1920 when I was just a punk kid. You look close, you'll spot me in the crowd shots in The Mark of Zorro. Been in over 450 pictures since, and still going strong. Ain't many left who can beat that record. You'd think it would entitle a fella to something."

  Maybe it did, but there was no star for Jimmy Rogers, and that bit about still going strong was just a crock. Nowadays Jimmy was lucky if he got a casting-call once or twice a year; there just isn't any spot for an old-timer with a white muff except in a Western barroom scene.

  Most of the time Jimmy just strolled the Boulevard; a tall, soldierly-erect incongruity in the crowd of tourists, fags, and freak-outs. His home address was on Las Palmas, somewhere south of Sunset. I'd never been there but I could guess what it was—one of those old frame bungalow-court sweatboxes put up about the time he crashed the movies and still standing somehow by the grace of God and the disgrace of the housing authorities. That's the sort of place Jimmy stayed at, but he didn't really live there.

  Jimmy Rogers lived at the Silent Movie.

  The Silent Movie is over on Fairfax, and it's the only place in town where you can still go and see The Mark of Zorro. There's always a Chaplin comedy, and usually Laurel and Hardy, along with a serial starring Pearl White, Elmo Lincoln, or Houdini. And the features are great—early Griffith and De Mille, Barrymore in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Valentino in Blood and Sand, and a hundred more.

  The bill changes every Wednesday, and every Wednesday night Jimmy Rogers was there, plunking down his ninety cents at the box-office to watch The Black Pirate or Son of the Sheik or Orphans of the Storm.

  To live again.

  Because Jimmy didn't go there to see Doug and Mary or Rudy or Clara or Gloria or the Gish sisters. He went there to see himself, in the crowd shots.

  At least that's the way I figured it, the first time I met him. They were playing The Phantom of the Opera that night and afterwards I spent the intermission with a cigarette outside the theatre, studying the display of stills.

  If you asked me under oath, I couldn't tell you how our conversation started, but that's where I first heard Jimmy's routine about the 450 pictures and still going strong.

  "Did you see me in there tonight?" he asked.

  I stared at him and shook my head; even with the shabby hand-me-down suit and the white beard, Jimmy Rogers wasn't the kind you'd spot in an audience.

  "Guess it was too dark for me to notice," I said.

  "But there were torches," Jimmy told me. "I carried one."

  Then I got the message. He was in the picture.

  Jimmy smiled and shrugged. "Hell, I keep forgetting. You wouldn't recognize me. We did The Phantom way back in '25. I looked so young they slapped a mustache on me in Make-up, and a black wig. Hard to spot me in the catacombs scenes—all long-shots. But there at the end, where Chaney is holding back the mob, I show up pretty good in the background, just left of Charley Zimmer. He's the one shaking his fist. I'm waving my torch. Had a lot of trouble with that picture, but we did this shot in one take."

  In weeks to come I saw more of Jimmy Rogers. Sometimes he was up there on the screen, though truth to tell, I never did recognize him; he was a young man in those films of the Twenties, and his appearances were limited to a flickering flash, a blurred face glimpsed in a crowd.

  But always Jimmy was in the audience, even though he hadn't played in the picture. And one night I found out why.

  Again it was intermission time and we were standing outside. By now Jimmy had gotten into the habit of talking to me and tonight we'd been seated together during the showing of The Covered Wagon.

  We stood outside and Jimmy blinked at me. "Wasn't she beautiful?" he asked. "They don't look like that anymore."

  I nodded. "Lois Wilson? Very attractive."

  "I'm talking about June."

  I stared at Jimmy and then I realized he wasn't blinking. He was crying.

  "June Logan. My girl. This was her first bit, the Indian attack scene. Must have been seventeen—I didn't know her then, it was two years later we met over at First National. But you must have noticed her. She was the one with the long blond curls."

  "Oh, that one." I nodded again. "You're right. She was lovely."

  And I was a liar, because I didn't remember seeing her at all, but I wanted to make the old man feel good.

  "Junie's in a lot of the pictures they show here. And from '25 on, we played in a flock of 'em together. For a while we talked about getting hitched, but she started working her way up, doing bits—maids and such—and I never broke out of extra work. Both of us had been in the business long enough to know it was no go, not when one of you stays small and the other is headed for a big career."

  Jimmy managed a grin as he wiped his eyes with something which might once have been a handkerchief. "You think I'm kidding, don't you? About the career, I mean. But she was going great, she would have been playing second leads pretty soon."

  "What happened?" I asked.

  The grin dissolved and the blinking returned. "Sound killed her."
r />   "She didn't have a voice for talkies?"

  Jimmy shook his head. "She had a great voice. I told you she was all set for second leads—by 1930 she'd been in a dozen talkies. Then sound killed her."

  I'd heard the expression a thousand times, but never like this. Because the way Jimmy told the story, that's exactly what had happened. June Logan, his girl Junie, was on the set during the shooting of one of those early All Talking—All Singing—All Dancing epics. The director and camera crew, seeking to break away from the tyranny of the stationary microphone, rigged up one of the first travelling mikes on a boom. Such items weren't standard equipment yet, and this was an experiment. Somehow, during a take, it broke loose and the boom crashed, crushing June Logan's skull.

  It never made the papers, not even the trades; the studio hushed it up and June Logan had a quiet funeral.

  "Damn near forty years ago," Jimmy said. "And here I am, crying like it was yesterday. But she was my girl—"

  And that was the other reason why Jimmy Rogers went to the Silent Movie. To visit his girl.

  "Don't you see?" he told me. "She's still alive up there on the screen, in all those pictures. Just the way she was when we were together. Five years we had, the best years for me."

  I could see that. The two of them in love, with each other and with the movies. Because in those days, people did love the movies. And to actually be in them, even in tiny roles, was the average person's idea of seventh heaven.

  Seventh Heaven, that's another film we saw with June Logan playing a crowd scene. In the following weeks, with Jimmy's help, I got so I could spot his girl. And he'd told the truth—she was a beauty. Once you noticed her, really saw her, you wouldn't forget. Those blond ringlets, that smile, identified her immediately.