The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

later that the first generation of adults who were less than three feet tall reached their maturity.
    But we must not abandon this small tribute without noting that when Milty’s will was read, it disposed of no more than a few thousand dollars and a handful of things that were beloved of him. Such was the nature of the man who earned millions only to give them away. Naturally, there are those who claim that since reading a book in his very early youth, titled How to Avoid Probate, Milty was never subsequently without it—that is, without this precious volume—and that eventually he memorized all of its contents and could quote chapter and verse at will.
    But where is there a great man who has not suffered the barbs of envy and hatred? Slander is the burden the great must carry, and Milton Boil carried it as silently and patiently as any man.
    On the modest headstone that graces his final resting place, an epitaph written by Milty himself is carved:
    â€œHe found them tall and left them small.”
    To which our generation, standing erect and proud under our three-foot ceilings, can only add a grateful amen.

THE MOHAWK
    W HEN Clyde Lightfeather walked up the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, he was wearing an old raincoat of sorts; and then he took it off and sat down cross-legged in front of the great doors. Underneath he was dressed just like the bang-bang man in an old Indian medicine show—that is, he wore soft doeskin leggings, woods moccasins, and nothing at all from the waist up. His hair was cut in the traditional central brush style of the scalp lock, with one white feather through the little braid at the back of his neck. He was altogether a very well-built and prepossessing young full-blooded Mohawk Indian.
    A crowd gathered because it doesn’t take anything very much to gather a crowd in New York, and Father Michael O’Conner came out of the cathedral and Officer Patrick Muldoon came up from the street, and the gentle June sun shone down upon everyone.
    â€œNow just what the hell are you up to?” Officer Muldoon asked Clyde Lightfeather. There was a querulous note in Officer Muldoon’s voice, for he was sick and tired of freaks, hard-core hippies, acid-heads, pot-heads, love children and flower children, black power folk, SDS, sit-ins and demonstrations-out; and while he was fond of saying that he had seen everything, he had never before seen a Mohawk Indian sitting cross-legged in front of St. Patrick’s.
    â€œGod and God’s grace, I suppose,” Clyde Light-feather answered.
    â€œNow don’t you know,” said Muldoon, his voice taking that tired, descending path of patience and veiled threat, “that this is private property and that you cannot put a feather in your hair and just sit yourself down and attract a crowd and make difficulties for honest worshipers?”
    â€œWhy not? This isn’t private property. This is God’s property, and since you don’t work for God, why don’t you take your big, fat blue ass out of here and leave me alone?”
    Officer Muldoon began to make the proper response to such talk, Mohawk Indian or not—with the crowd grinning and half disposed toward the Indian—when Father O’Conner intervened and pointed out to Officer Muldoon that the Indian was absolutely right. This was not private property but God’s property.
    â€œThe devil you say!” Officer Muldoon exclaimed. “You’re going to let that heathen sit there?”
    Up until that moment Father O’Conner had been of a mind to say a few reasonable words that would be persuasive enough to move the Indian away. Now he abruptly changed his position.
    â€œMaybe I will,” he declared.
    â€œThank you,” Lightfeather said.
    â€œProviding you give me one good reason why I should.”
    â€œBecause I am here to meditate.”
    â€œAnd you consider this a proper place for meditation,