Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Robert Abernathy

  Bogomazov sensed the slow rise of dark superstitious fear around him, and he moved about the village, the faithful Ivanov trotting at his heels, scolding, coaxing, exhorting, all to scant avail; to combat the villagers’ fears was like wrestling with an amorphous thing in a nightmare. Once upon a time a local administrator could have reached for the telephone and conjured up an impressive caravan of Party officials in shiny automobiles, with uniforms, medals, and manners which would leave the yokels for many weeks incapable of saying anything but “Yes, Comrade.” Or he might have pointed to airplanes droning across the sky as visible signs of the omnipotence of the Soviet State. But now there was no telephone, and all that flew was the migrant birds, passing northward day after day as if fleeing from some terror in the South.

  “We are on our own now,” thought Bogomazov, then scowled as he remembered that the American had said it.

  The end came suddenly.

  Smith had gone out with half a dozen peasants to inspect the growing wheat. All at once they looked up and saw, across the narrow width of a field, a little group of horsemen, no more than their own number, quietly sitting their shaggy ponies, watching. How they had come up so silently and unseen was a mystery; it was as if the world had changed to that fairytale plenum of possibilities in which armed bands spring up from seed sown in the earth.

  These watchers carried a bizarre mixture of modern and primitive armament; some had rifles, but cavalry sabers dangled against their thighs, and some bore spears whose hammered iron points flashed in the sun.

  The two parties were motionless, confronting one another for a minute or two like strangers from different worlds. Then the interlopers wheeled about without haste and trotted away over a rise.

  “Come on!” said Smith quietly, and set out at a run for the village.

  Bogomazov, face impassive, heard the news that the danger was again upon them. He produced his key and opened the padlocked shed door—and stood frozen in dismay, for the shed was empty. Someone had employed the winter’s leisure to tunnel under a side wall and remove all the guns.

  “Who did this?” shouted the Communist at the villagers assembling in the square.

  “Not I, Comrade . . .”

  “It wasn’t I, Comrade . . .”

  Uniformly, the peasant faces reflected the transparent guilt of naughty children.

  “Very well!” said Bogomazov bitterly. “You’re all in it. You’ve stolen the guns and hidden them, in the thatch, under the floor, no matter where. But now, bring them out—do you hear?”

  They stirred uneasily, but did not move to obey.

  “Apparently,” said a sardonic voice, “the Soviet Constitution has been amended.”

  “You! . . . Werz you behind this thievery?”

  “Certainly not,” said Smith. “They don’t trust me too far either—they have a hazy notion that I’m one of your kind, one of the rulers they hate but haven’t learned to do without.”

  He swung around and said, without raising his voice, to the men nearest: “You’ve taken the guns for your own protection—if you intend to use them that way, now’s the time. The main body of the razbóiniki won’t be far behind the scouting party we saw. Do you propose to defend yourselves, the houses you’ve built and the fields you’ve plowed?”

  They murmured among themselves, and began to drift off by twos and threes. Presently men were emerging from all the huts, awkwardly carrying the missing rifles.

  It was all of a taut hour before they had sight again of the enemy, but for a good part of that hour they heard the mournful creaking of wagons in the steppe, out of view beyond the higher ground. The sound was disembodied, sourceless, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere.

  The men of Novoselye clustered in uneasy groups, waiting, fingering their weapons unsteadily. Bogomazov took charge, ordering them here and there, lashing the village into a posture of defense; they obeyed him, but halfheartedly, with the look of dumb driven cattle on their faces.

  One moment there was no sign of the foe save for the creaking of unseen wheels. The next, a dozen mounted figures were briefly silhouetted along the skyline, dipped down the green wave of the grassy slope toward the fields, and were followed by others and yet others, till—to eyes wavering in beginning panic—the whole hillside seemed sliding down in an avalanche of men and horses.

  “Steady!” snapped Bogomazov. “Hold your fire—”

  Abruptly one man let his rifle fall and turned, sobbing, to flee; it was Ivanov, the other Communist. Bogomazov intercepted him in two long strides and felled him with a full-armed blow, the pistol weighting his hand.

  “Get up, get back to your post!” he spat into the dazed and bloody face.

  But the villagers had already begun to fall back down the street, in a concerted tide of fear that threatened momentarily to become a total rout.

  Smith, looming conspicuous by his height among them, shouted in a carrying voice, “Don’t drop your guns! We’ll make a stand in the square!” The American materialized at Bogomazov’s side and wrenched urgently at his arm, dragging him, dazed with fury and disappointment, after the retreating mob. “Come on! If we can hold the men together for a few minutes, maybe we can still rally them.”

  The razbóiniki were jogging across the planted ground, trampling ruthlessly over the new wheat. From the street’s other end rose a cry, “Here they come!” and almost simultaneously someone screamed and pointed across the river, where a third troop had come into view on the opposite bank, as if posted to cut off the last possible escape.

  As the invaders, with jingling bridles and clattering hooves, swept from two sides into Novoselye, its able-bodied inhabitants huddled in the square; those who still clutched their weapons and those without wore the same look of hopeless waiting for an expected blow.

  The razbóiniki closed in cautiously. Their leader, a squat leathery-looking man with a wide Kalmyk face, rode near; he reined in and looked down expressionlessly—at the Novoselyane. He said loudly, in stumbling Russian. “We—not want kill you. You give up—we burn village, go. Be peace.” He repeated, “Peace!” watching for their response with almost a benevolent air, the while he tightened the strap of his slung rifle—it was his most prized possession, a German rifle that could hit targets at a thousand yards, and he had no intention of wasting his few remaining cartridges in close fighting. An old saber hung loose in its sheath at his side.

  Smith pushed forward and spoke slowly and distinctly: “We too desire peace, between your people and ours. Why should we fight and waste lives, when so few are left after the great war? You are wanderers, we farm the land—only a little of the land, so there is room for both of us.”

  He watched the stolid Asiatic face keenly for any hint of response. Did the razbóiniki leader realize that the villagers wouldn’t fight, that—so far as this outpost was concerned—the resistance of Civilization was at an end?

  “Village—bad,” the Kalmyk declared, with unhelpful gestures. “Build houses, plow land—then, boom! No good . . .” He gave up, and half-turned in the saddle, beckoning to a young man with Slavic features. The latter advanced a couple of paces, and said glibly in Russian:

  “The vozhd’ means that it is dangerous to live in towns. If people live in towns, sooner or later the American bombers come, many are killed and others sickened with burns and bowels turning to water; the death blows even across the steppes and kills animals and men. . . . We cannot allow you to live in such danger. So we will burn this town, and in return for the favor we do you we will take only half the cattle, and such ammunition as you may have that will fit the guns we possess; for the rest, you may keep your arms and movable property, and go freely where you like. Whoever may wish to join us is welcome.”

  “Your terms are too hard,” said Smith steadily. “And you—”

  He was interrupted. Bogomazov, pale with determination, thrust him aside and shouted in a voice of command, “That man is a traitor to the motherland! Citizens, follow me!”<
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  The pistol in his hand roared, but in the instant as he aimed the young spokesman had thrown himself flat over his horse’s neck. Simultaneously the Kalmyk leader leaned far out of the saddle, and his saber descended like a silent flash of lightning.

  The villagers on one side, the raiders on the other, stared unmoving, unmoved, at the fallen man. Smith bent over him, almost under the nervously dancing feet of the Kalmyk’s pony.

  Bogomazov made a great effort to rise, and failed. His eyes looked unfocusedly up into the American’s face; his expression was one of incredulity.

  He strove to speak, choking on blood. Smith leaned close, and thought he understood the dying man’s last words, uttered with that look of dazed wonder: “Even a Bolshevik . . .”

  The nomad spokesman rode forward again, red in the face, and shouted fiercely, “Are there any more dissenters?”

  Smith stood up and faced them. The game was lost and the enemy knew it now, but he still had to try the last card he possessed. He said tensely, “You are mistaken. The American bombers aren’t coming any more.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Because I myself am an American.”

  There was a dead hush, in which Smith heard clearly the noise of a carbine’s hammer being drawn back. The Kalmyk’s slanted eyes rested inscrutably upon him. Then the man grinned under his straggling mustache, and said something, a rapid string of Asiatic syllables.

  “The vozhd’ says: That may or may not be true. To him you seem to be a man much like other men.”

  “But—” Smith began.

  “But we’re taking no chances. We burn the village in half an hour; you have that long to assemble your goods. Those who wish to move on with us will signify by gathering in the field yonder. Kryshka—that’s all!” Smith let his hands fall to his sides. Some of the villagers had already begun to drift toward the indicated assembly point.

  Some way out in the steppe there was a kurgán, an ancient grass-grown burial mound of some forgotten people. Civilizations, wars, and disasters had passed it by and it was the same. It was the highest point for many miles. From it Smith watched the glowing embers of the New Settlement.

  All around was the plain, immense and darkening in the spring twilight. Thousands of miles, months of footsore march, it must be to reach any place where there would be a doubtful security and a chance to begin anew. Time and space—once man had conquered them, but now man was a rare animal again in a world where time and space mocked him. Smith wondered: Would they be conquered again in his own lifetime, or that of his grandchildren? Bogomazov had been lucky in a way; his training had enabled him to disbelieve what he knew to be true, so that he had never been forced to recognize the meaning of what had happened—or had he, there at the end?

  In the West the horizon was empty, or at least his eyes could no longer make out against the sunset the black specks of the westward-marching horde. About half of the uprooted villagers had gone with it—with few exceptions, those who had come originally from the cities, the factories; the peasants remained. They were encamped now about the ancient mound.

  Behind Smith a voice asked plaintively, “Comrade American—what will we do? Some of us think we should go on south, toward . . .”

  “Don’t bother me now!” Smith said harshly; then, as the man drew back abashed: “Tomorrow . . . we’ll see, tomorrow.”

  The retreating feet were soundless on the grassy slope. Down by the river the last sparks were dying. Somewhere far off in the steppe shuddered a mournful cry that Smith did not know—perhaps it was the howl of a wolf. In the West the light faded, and night fell with the darkness sweeping on illimitable wings out of Asia.

  PYRAMID

  One who thinks in terms of balanced ecologies can be thrown way off on his calculations—if he imports a species not properly a member of that ecology!

  The specially trained snig snuffed Earth’s air greedily, blunt head weaving as it shuffled along the sparsely wooded hillside. It made little interrogative noises as it cast about for a scent.

  Those who had trained it for its present task trudged after it, fretting beneath a noonday sun a little hotter than their own. They were thagathla—beings six-limbed like the snig to which they were kin, but with crested heads carried erect and forelimbs that ended in clever fingers instead of the snig’s shovel like digging paws. One of them wore the communicator which kept them in touch with their scout-ship, out of sight beyond tree-grown ridges; another carried a gas gun; the remaining one, whose name was Zilli, was a junior biologist with a future. Since she was the only scientist in the landing party, Zilli was its ex officio leader.

  All three thagathla were tense and watchful. Unless the maps were wrong—the old charts resurrected from the Interstellar Museum on Thegeth, where they had moldered since the First Earth Expedition four hundred years earlier—here was the home ground of the enemy whom this, the Second Expedition, had come thirty parsecs to seek.

  The thegethli in the lead clucked and pointed. Still following the questing snig, they had reached the hilltop. In the swale beyond, half-hidden among verdure that grew dense along a little stream two hundred yards away, rose a dozen or more roughly conical structures, apparently fashioned of skins or fabric stretched upon poles. In the brush they glimpsed flickers of motion, heard rustlings; then everything was still, but the thagathla sensed concealed eyes watching them.

  “Well, Zilli?” the one who had pointed demanded. “What will those be?”

  The biologist hesitated, reviewing in her mind the records she had studied. She said judicially, “Evidently shelters built by the bipeds that the First Expedition reported as the dominant species over most of the planet—though their presence in this region wasn’t mentioned; they must have migrated here since then. Probably not dangerous, but keep your eyes open—”

  An ecstatic moan from the snig focused the party’s attention once more. The squat shovel-footed creature had halted in its prowling along the farther slope, sniffed loudly at the earth in the lee of a projecting boulder, and all at once began to dig prodigiously. The thagathla clustered expectantly round it.

  The snig paused, moaned eagerly again, and its blunt head darted forward in a surprisingly quick strike. It backed out of its excavation and, with head held high and its prey squirming in powerful jaws, trotted proudly back to Zilli.

  The biologist accepted the find, which promptly bit her; she got a safer grip and held it up for close inspection. Beady eyes glared at her from a round furry head with bulging cheek-pouches, attached to a plump tawny body that ended in a stubby tail. The hamster kicked and squeaked, then, deciding that all was lost, curled itself into a ball.

  Deliberately Zilli checked point by point of the little animal’s external features. At last she nodded with quiet satisfaction to the thegethli carrying the radio. “All right. You can tell them this is it.”

  The crew member began talking into her microphone. Back to the scout ship, thence to be relayed to the interstellar mother vessel out in its orbit, went the word: word that contact had been made with the enemy, that formidable foe which had overrun all Thegeth, undermined its economy and depleted its resources, and even now gnawed with innumerable rodent teeth at the very foundations of Thagathlan civilization.

  From the scout ship came acknowledgment. “Right—we’re on our way.”

  Zilli was busy stowing the captured hamster in a perforated specimen case, when the snig bounded up with a mournful cry of warning. Zilli spun round and ducked, barely in time; an arrow went past her with a vicious whick! and glanced from a tree trunk and skittered off down the hillside.

  The thegethli with the gas gun crouched low and pointed her clumsy weapon. Shells burst with hollow plops in the brush on the hillcrest; from up there came thrashing sounds, then silence fell again. In the thicket by the stream below rose a whimpering cry, abruptly stifled.

  Cautiously the thagathla trotted up the slope, circling upwind to avoid the gas which, specially compounded
to produce anaesthesia in Terrestrial organisms, would have had considerable effect on the closely similar Thagathlan body chemistry.

  The would-be attackers, four of them, lay sprawled, breathing stertorously, where the gas had overcome them. They were clad in roughly-prepared animal skins, and the spears and arrows which they had caught up to defend their homes against the invaders from the stars had points of polished stone.

  Zilli eyed the new specimens with interest. From her point of view, their structural resemblances to the hamsters were striking, but so were differences—after sheer size, of course, their adaptation to an upright gait. Their virtual hairlessness pointed to a tropical origin, their artifacts to marked intelligence. It would be intriguing to investigate these creatures further.

  The scout-craft came coasting over the treetops and descended toward the waiting group. The hamster imprisoned in Zilli’s specimen case stirred and chittered. Recalled to the fact that she was not here to indulge idle curiosity, Zilli sighed and turned toward the ship—and then it was that Zilli had her great idea: an idea which, if it worked out, would make her renowned back home on Thegeth and bring certain promotion. She jerked round and stared fixedly again at the stunned natives, who were beginning to groan and move a little.

  The communications operator approached from a hurried conference with the crew of the scout. She said breathlessly, “The coordinator requests a more detailed report.”

  “Tell her—” Zilli hesitated, then recklessly cast the die. “Tell her that we are making rapid progress. Not only have I confirmed the presence of the enemy”—she tapped the specimen case at her side—“but I have already found a potential weapon against it!”

  Her Fertility Mnigli was eight hundred years old; she had outlived twenty generations of the short-lived males of her species, and her title-of-address had become purely honorific. Her skin hung loose and her crest was green with age. She was an ecological coordinator, the Thagathlan equivalent of a senator, an elector, and a cardinal archbishop; so her tone with Zilli, a mere junior biologist, was abrupt.