Collins was the first to go. He died hard, as all men die hard when infected by the peculiar virus of Landro. Before he was dead, Peabody had taken to his bed with the dull headache that heralded the onset of the malady. After that the men went down like tenpins. They screamed and moaned in delirium, they lay as dead for days before they finally died, while the fever ate at them like some ravenous animal that had crept in from the moors.
There was little that anyone could do. Make them comfortable, keep them bathed and the bedding washed and changed, feed them broth that Bat Ears made in big kettles on the stove, be sure there was fresh, cold water always available for the fever-anguished throats.
At first the graves were deep and wooden crosses were set up, with the name and other information painted on the cross bar. Then the graves were only shallow holes because there were less hands to dig them and less strength within the hands.
To Warren it was a nightmare of eternity—a ceaseless round of caring for his stricken men, of helping with the graves, of writing in the record book the names of those who died. Sleep came in snatches when he could catch it or when he became so exhausted that he tottered in his tracks and could not keep his eyelids open. Food was something that Bat Ears brought and set in front of him and he gulped without knowing what it was, without tasting what it was.
Time was a forgotten thing and he lost track of days. He asked what day it was and no one knew nor seemed to care. The sun came up and the sun went down and the moors stretched to their gray horizons, with the lonely wind blowing out of them.
Vaguely he became aware of fewer and fewer men who worked beside him, of fewer stricken men upon the cots. And one day he sat down in his tent and looked across at another haggard face and knew it was nearly over.
“It’s a cruel thing, sir,” said the haggard face.
“Yes, Mr. Barnes,” said Warren. “How many are there left?”
“Three,” said the chaplain, “and two of them are nearly gone. Young Falkner seems to be better, though.”
“Any on their feet?”
“Bat Ears, sir. Just you and I and Bat Ears.”
“Why don’t we catch it, Barnes? Why are we still here?”
“No one knows,” the chaplain told him. “I have a feeling that we’ll not escape it.”
“I know,” said Warren. “I have that feeling, too.”
Bat Ears lumbered into the tent and set a pail upon the table. He reached into it and scooped out a tin cup, dripping, and handed it to Warren.
“What is it, Bat Ears?” Warren asked.
“Something I cooked up,” said Bat Ears. “Something that you need.”
Warren lifted the cup and gulped it down. It burned its way clear into his stomach, set his throat afire and exploded in his head.
“Potatoes,” said Bat Ears. “Spuds make powerful stuff. The Irish found that out, years and years ago.”
He took the cup from Warren, dipped it again and handed it to Barnes.
The chaplain hesitated.
Bat Ears shouted at him. “Drink it, man. It’ll put some heart in you.”
The minister drank, choked, set the cup back on the table empty.
“They’re back again,” said Bat Ears.
“Who’s back?” asked Warren.
“The natives,” said Bat Ears. “All around us, waiting for the end of us.”
He disdained the cup, lifted the pail in both his hands and put it to his lips. Some of the liquor splashed out of the corners of his mouth and ran darkly down his shirt.
He put the pail back on the table, wiped his mouth with a hairy fist.
“They might at least be decent about it,” he declared. “They might at least keep out of sight until it is all over. Caught one sneaking out of Falkner’s tent. Old gray buck. Tried to catch him, but he outlegged me.”
“Falkner’s tent?”
“Sure. Snooping around before a man is dead. Not even waiting till he’s gone. Didn’t take nothing, though, I guess. Falkner was asleep. Didn’t even wake him.”
“Asleep? You sure?”
“Sure,” said Bat Ears. “Breathing natural. I’m going to unsling my gun and pick off a few of them, just for luck. I’ll teach them…”
“Mr. Brady,” asked Barnes, “you are certain Falkner was sleeping naturally? Not in a coma? Not dead?”
“I know when a man is dead,” yelled Bat Ears.
Jones and Webster died during the night. Warren found Bat Ears in the morning, collapsed beside his stone-cold stove, the empty liquor pail beside him. At first he thought the cook was only drunk and then he saw the signs upon him. He hauled him across the floor and boosted him onto his cot, then went out to find the chaplain.
He found him in the cemetery, wielding a shovel, his hands red with broken blisters.
“It won’t be deep,” said Mr. Barnes, “but it will cover them. It’s the best that I can do.”
“Bat Ears has it,” Warren told him.
The chaplain leaned on his shovel, breathing a little hard from digging.
“Queer,” he said. “Queer, to think of him. Of big, brawling Bat Ears. He was a tower of strength.”
Warren reached for the shovel.
“I’ll finish this,” he said, “if you’ll go down and get them ready. I can’t…I haven’t the heart to handle them.”
The chaplain handed over the shovel. “It’s funny,” he said, “about young Falkner.”
“You said yesterday he was a little better. You imagined it?”
Barnes shook his head. “I was in to see him. He’s awake and lucid and his temperature is down.”
They stared at one another for a long time, each trying to hide the hope that might be upon his face.
“Do you think …”
“No, I don’t,” said Barnes.
But Falkner continued to improve. Three days later he was sitting up. Six days later he stood with the other two beside the grave when they buried Bat Ears.
And there were three of them. Three out of twenty-six.
The chaplain closed his book and put it in his pocket. Warren took up the shovel and shoveled in the dirt. The other two watched him silently as he filled the grave, slowly, deliberately, taking his time, for there was no other task to hurry him—filled it and mounded it and shaped it neat and smooth with gentle shovel pats.
Then the three of them went down the slope together, not arm in arm, but close enough to have been arm in arm—back to the white tents of the camp.
Still they did not talk.
It was as if they understood for the moment the dedicatory value of the silence that lay upon the land and upon the camp and the three that were left out of twenty-six.
Falkner said: “There is nothing strange about me. Nothing different than any other man.”
“There must be,” insisted Warren. “You survived the virus. It hit you and you came out alive. There must be a reason for it.”
“You two,” said Falkner, “never even got it. There must be some reason for that, too.”
“We can’t be sure,” said Chaplain Barnes, speaking softly.
Warren rustled his notes angrily.
“We’ve covered it,” he said. “Covered everything that you can remember—unless you are holding back something that we should know.”
“Why should I hold back anything?” demanded Falkner.
“Childhood history,” said Warren. “The usual things. Measles, a slight attack of whooping cough, colds—afraid of the dark. Ordinary eating habits, normal acceptance of schools and social obligations. Everything as if it might be someone else. But there has to be an answer. Something that you did…”
“Or,” said Barnes, “even something that he thought.”
“Huh?” asked Warren.
“The ones who could tell us are out there
on the slope,” said Barnes. “You and I, Warren, are stumbling along a path we are not equipped to travel. A medical man, a psychologist, even an alien psychologist, a statistician—any one of them would have had something to contribute. But they are dead. You and I are trying to do something we have no training for. We might have the answer right beneath our noses and we would not recognize it.”
“I know,” said Warren. “I know. We only do the best we can.”
“I have told you everything I can,” said Falkner, tensely. “Everything I know. I’ve told you things I would not tell under any other circumstances.”
“We know, lad,” said Barnes gently. “We know you have.”
“Somewhere,” persisted Warren, “somewhere in the life of Benjamin Falkner there is an answer—an answer to the thing that Man must know. Something that he has forgotten. Something that he has not told us, unintentionally. Or, more than likely, something that he has told us and we do not recognize.”
“Or,” said Barnes, “something that no one but a specialist could know. Some strange quirk in his body or his mind. Some tiny mutation that no one would suspect. Or even…Warren, you remember, you talked to me about a miracle.”
“I’m tired of it,” Falkner told them. “For three days now you have gone over me, pawed me, questioned me, dissected every thought…”
“Let’s go over that last part again,” said Warren wearily. “When you were lost.”
“We’ve gone over it,” said Falkner, “a hundred times already.”
“Once again,” said Warren. “Just once again. You were standing there, on the path, you say, when you heard the footsteps coming up the path.”
“Not footsteps,” said Falkner. “At first I didn’t know they were footsteps. It was just a sound.”
“And it terrified you?”
“It terrified me.”
“Why?”
“Well, the dark and being lost and …”
“You’d been thinking about the natives?”
“Well, yes, off and on.”
“More than off and on?”
“More than off and on,” Falkner admitted. “All the time, maybe. Ever since I realized I was lost, perhaps. In the back of my mind.”
“Finally you realized they were footsteps?”
“No. I didn’t know what they were until I saw the native.”
“Just one native?”
“Just one. An old one. His coat was all gray and he had a scar across his face. You could see the jagged white line.”
“You’re sure about that scar?”
“Yes.”
“Sure about his being old?”
“He looked old. He was all gray. He walked slowly and he had a limp.”
“And you weren’t afraid?”
“Yes, afraid, of course. But not as afraid as I would have expected.”
“You would have killed him if you could?”
“No, I wouldn’t have killed him.”
“Not even to save your life?”
“Oh, sure. But I didn’t think of that. I just…well, I just didn’t want to tangle with him, that is all.”
“You got a good look at him?”
“Yes, a good look. He passed me no farther away than you are now.”
“You would recognize him again if you saw him?”
“I did recognize…”
Falkner stopped, befuddled.
“Just a minute,” he said. “Just a minute now.”
He put up his hand and rubbed hard against his forehead. His eyes suddenly had a stricken look.
“I did see him again,” he said. “I recognized him. I know it was the same one.”
Warren burst out angrily: “Why didn’t you tell…”
But Barnes rushed in and headed him off:
“You saw him again. When?”
“In my tent. When I was sick. I opened my eyes and he was there in front of me.”
“Just standing there?”
“Standing there and looking at me. Like he was going to swallow me with those big yellow eyes of his. Then he…then he…”
They waited for him to remember.
“I was sick,” said Falkner. “Out of my head, maybe. Not all there. I can’t be sure. But it seemed that he stretched out his hands, his paws rather—that he stretched them out and touched me, one paw on each side of my head.”
“Touched you? Actually, physically touched you?”
“Gently,” said Falkner. “Ever so gently. Just for an instant. Then I went to sleep.”
“We’re ahead of our story,” Warren said impatiently. “Let’s go back to the trail. You saw the native—”
“We’ve been over that before,” said Falkner bitterly.
“We’ll try it once again,” Warren told him. “You say the native passed quite close to you when he went by. You mean that he stepped out of the path and circled past you…”
“No,” said Falkner, “I don’t mean that at all. I was the one who stepped out of the path.”
You must maintain human dignity, the manual said. Above all else, human dignity and human prestige must be upheld. Kindness, yes. And helpfulness. And even brotherhood. But dignity was ahead of all.
And too often human dignity was human arrogance.
Human dignity did not allow you to step out of the path. It made the other thing step out and go around you. By inference, human dignity automatically assigned all other life to an inferior position.
“Mr. Barnes,” said Warren, “it was the laying on of hands.”
The man on the cot rolled his head on the pillow and looked at Warren, almost as if he were surprised to find him there. The thin lips worked in the pallid face and the words were weak and very slow in coming.
“Yes, Warren, it was the laying on of hands. A power these creatures have. Some Christ-like power that no human has.”
“But that was a divine power.”
“No, Warren,” said the chaplain, “not necessarily. It wouldn’t have to be. It might be a very real, a very human power, that goes with mental or spiritual perfection.”
Warren hunched forward on his stool. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “I simply can’t. Not those owl-eyed things.”
He looked up and glanced at the chaplain. Barnes’ face had flushed with sudden fever and his breath was fluttery and shallow. His eyes were closed and he looked like a man already dead.
There had been that report by the third expedition’s psychologist. It had said dignity and an exact code of honor and a rather primitive protocol. And that, of course, would fit.
But Man, intent upon his own dignity and his own prestige, had never accorded anyone else any dignity. He had been willing to be kind if his kindness were appropriately appreciated. He stood ready to help if his help were allowed to stand as a testament to his superiority. And here on Landro he had scarcely bothered to be either kind or helpful, never dreaming for a moment that the little owl-eyed native was anything other than a stone age creature that was a pest and nuisance and not to be taken too seriously even when he turned out, at times, to be something of a menace.
Until one day a frightened kid had stepped out of a path and let a native by.
“Courtesy,” said Warren. “That’s the answer: courtesy and the laying on of hands.”
He got up from the stool and walked out of the tent and met Falkner coming in.
“How is he?” Falkner asked.
Warren shook his head. “Just like the others. It was late in coming, but it’s just as bad.”
“Two of us,” said Falkner. “Two of us left out of twenty-six.”
“Not two,” Warren told him. “Just one. Just you.”
“But, sir, you’re all…”
Warren shook his head.
“I have a headache,�
� he said. “I’m beginning to sweat a little. My legs are wobbly.”
“Maybe…”
“I’ve seen it too many times,” said Warren, “to kid myself about it.”
He reached out a hand, grasped the canvas and steadied himself.
“I didn’t have a chance,” he said. “I stepped out of no paths.”
The Voice in the Void
One of the earliest of Clifford Simak’s stories, “The Voice in the Void” is a melodramatic account of obsession, set largely on a fictional version of the planet Mars that probably indicates Cliff Simak had read the John Carter novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of Cliff’s journals shows that a story named “The Bones of Kell-Rabin” was sent to Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories on January 12—but no year is indicated in that entry. However, since the story then appeared in the Spring 1932 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, one can only conclude that either the story was rushed into print—or that it was purchased the preceding year (which would indicate that it had been written in 1930, which in turn might make it Cliff’s oldest known story—perhaps information will turn up one day to clarify that matter).
A different journal entry indicates that Cliff was paid $37 “on account” in June 1932, which would have, by itself, been a terribly small price for a story of this length: Does this mean he received a larger total price for the story, and was paid in installments? Again, it cannot be told from the available record. Or was Gernsback having difficulty in making payments?
The format of the magazine at that time was to include a line drawing of each author at the beginning of his story. The drawing of Cliff shows a very young face; and I believe it was drawn by legendary science fiction artist Frank R. Paul, who was the magazine’s art director, and who apparently also created the cover and all interior illustrations. That same issue included stories by Manley Wade Wellman and Jack Williamson.
—dww
“I would give my left eye to have a chance at studying the bones of Kell-Rabin,” I said.
Kenneth Smith grunted.
“You would give more than your left eye,” he grumbled. “Yes, you would give a damn sight more than your left eye, whether you want to or not.”
Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories Page 12
