I’d like to enter Prunella in the five-thousand-dollar claimer." The racing secretary smiled. "Well, Mr. Watson, you don’t have to be afraid that anybody’ll claim her. Godlove has spread the word around. Now everybody’s afraid to claim a Watson horse."
Prunella won handily in her claimer and Incubus breezed to victory in her allowance. "Bet on Watson horses," the word went round the tracks. Incubus won a Class C, Class B and Class A handicap in swift progression. Prunella came in first in two seven-thousand-dollar claimers and second in a ten- thousand-dollar one.
And then Incubus came in last in a stake race at Aqueduct.
"What’s the matter with you, Incubus?" Watson demanded. "You can run ten times around the track before any of these nags could reach the quarter-mile pole."
Incubus lay on her back in the hay and chewed reflectively on a straw. "You know, Watson," she said, "there are finer things in life than racing."
"What, for instance?"
She simpered. "I’ve been talking to Pamplemousse—you know, Godlove’s horse—and he says it isn’t ethical what I’m doing, that I’m competing with horses way below my class, that it isn’t fair."
"But there aren’t any horses in your class."
"I know," she sighed. "Sometimes superiority can have its disadvantages. That’s what Pamplemousse says—he says it isn’t fair for me to run at all. Says woman’s place is in the home. Do you think woman’s place is in the home, Watson?"
Prunella neighed in the adjoining stall.
"That’s a dirty lie!" Incubus shrieked, getting up. "I double dare you to say it once more." Prunella kept silence.
"You’re in love, Incubus?" Watson asked gently.
She bowed her head. "I didn’t know I could be—I thought I was too tough. But you’re never too tough. Oh, I know I’m a stake horse and he’s still only a claimer but I love him just the same."
"Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, Inky, I guess you have a tight to. Only"—he gulped—"I’d entered you in the Belmont Futurity and it means . . . so much to me."
Incubus wiped away a tear with a wisp of hay. "All right, Watson, I’ll win the Futurity for you. After all you have first claim on my loyalty. Who brought me out of obscurity? You! Who recognized my potentialities? You! Who made a horse out of me? You!"
Incubus won the Belmont Futurity and was carried off the track on the shoulders of a cheering crowd. Retouched photographs of the big black horse hit not only the sport pages but the front page of every newspaper in the country.
But the question of her racing again was shelved for the nonce. Shortly after the Futurity, Watson discovered that Incubus was pregnant. "Pamplemousse?" he asked.
She nodded shyly.
"But how could you do it? You two were in separate stalls."
Incubus snickered. "I have my methods, Watson."
"He’s a low cad," said Watson. "I knew what I was doing. I went into it with my eyes open."
He wondered just how he was going to enter the foal in the stud book Although it would be of impeccable ancestry its escutcheon would be married by a bend sinister.
Some months later, Incubus called Watson to her stall.
"What is it, Inky?"
"I don’t know how to tell you this, Watson. I’ve got to go back."
"Back! Back where, Inky girl?"
"Back where I came from. Oh, I might have known it was never to be, that you can’t wipe out the past. Still I’d hoped that somehow—some way. . . . But the Big Bookie says no. I’ve got to go back where I came from—I don’t belong here. He says I was sent as a punishment, not as a reward."
She extended a hoof toward Watson’s hand. "I had my baby tonight, Watson. Take good care of her—she’s half equine, so she can stay here—and she’ll be the fastest thing on earth when she grows up. Prunella’ll help you raise her and support the family."
Watson wiped his streaming eyes. "I’ll take care of your baby, Incubus," he vowed. "I’ll call her Incubus Two and I’ll treat her as if she were my own daughter."
"I knew I could count on you, Watson. Well—this is goodbye."
Incubus slowly vanished.
It was hard losing Incubus. He’d grown attached to her, looking on her not only as a horse but a friend. Still, at least he had the colt. In two years she would take up where her mother had left off and again the Watson name would reverberate through the racetracks.
He went inside the stall, looked down at Incubus’ daughter, who reposed on the hay looking up at him with big blue eyes. He gasped.
He had forgotten. Incubus was not a real horse, she was merely a demon in the shape of a horse.
Incubus Two was not in the shape of a horse.
Collector’s Item
by Robert F. Young
We’ve often wondered what would happen if Robert Young should cease to be a lyrically intense writer for a story or two, forsaking the bright, poetic worlds of miss katy three and the first sweet sleep of night to become dispassionately analytical on a cosmic scale. Now we know! He’d chill us to the bone by setting two squixes to brooding over a never-to-be born Earth, exactly as he has done here. And thrill us, too—with the liveliest kind of entertainment.
Very trivial things can go into the weaving of a nest. The human race, for instance—
The condensation of the histories of ten thousand races into a text concise enough to fit into a single volume had been a task of unprecedented proportions. There had been times when the Galactic Historian had doubted whether even his renowned abilities were up to the assignment that the Galactic Board of Education had so lightly tossed his way, times when he had thrown up his hands—all five of them—in despair. But at last the completed manuscript lay before him on his desk with nothing but the final reading remaining between it and publication.
The Galactic Historian repeatedly wiped his brows as he turned the pages. It was a warm night, even for Mixxx Seven. Now and then, a tired breeze struggled down from the hills and limped across the lowlands to the Galactic University buildings. It crept into the Galactic Historian’s study via the open door and out again via the open windows, fingering the manuscript each time it passed but doing nothing whatsoever about the temperature.
The manuscript was something more than a hammered-down history of galactic achievement. It was the ultimate document. The two and seventy thousand jarring texts that it summarized had been systematically destroyed, one by one, after the Galactic Historian had stripped them of their objective information. If an historical event was not included in the manuscript, it failed as an event. It ceased to have reality.
The responsibility was the Galactic Historian’s alone and he did not take it lightly. But he had a lot on his minds and, of late, he hadn’t
