The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Another striking fact was that George Vinson was evidently a big man in this underground world. The way his return was being heralded, Bill wondered if he might be the ruler.

  At any rate these were Vinson’s home people. That was a certainty—a very disturbing one. After all the years Bill had known Vin and been allowed to wonder over Vin’s peculiarities—his inevitable gloves—his mane of fine hair that flowed over the back of his neck—at last Bill was seeing the man’s roots for the first time.

  It may have been midnight or later when a silent phone message came to Bill.

  He had almost dozed away, listening to the profuse speeches of welcome, hearing the flowery address by Thork, first assistant to the spiny-man ruler.

  But soon after the whole underground world had seemingly tucked itself away for the night, a crystal-clear thought-wave came over the wires.

  “Bill Pierce . . . I’m calling Bill Pierce . . . He may be here as a prisoner—oh, you’re there, Bill! You made it! That’s remarkable. I was horribly worried.”

  “I’m all right, Vin,” Bill spoke the words aloud in his enthusiasm. “Everything’s okay, I guess.”

  “You sound nervous. Sick or anything?”

  “No—that is, my backbone’s healing up all right.”

  “Oh—too bad, fellow. So a horse-fish got you, eh? I was afraid of it. Those things can be fatal, you know. But if luck’s with you, you come through with a friend. You know what I mean?”

  “I guess so,” said Bill. “Yellow Z—”

  “I’ll get in touch with you just as soon as I can make it. I’ll be tied up with more or less ceremony through tomorrow. It’s inescapable. You’ll understand, Bill, after I’ve had a chance to explain.”

  Bill made no answer. He felt that his limping conversation was widening into a social chasm between them.

  “Don’t be downhearted, fellow.” Vinson mustered a hearty manner. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think we’ll find Bea Riley alive. I think the horse-fish took her by chance and got away with her. If they did they’ll put her to work somewhere near these caverns. So don’t lose hope—er—” Vin broke off abruptly.

  Bill struggled to suppress what leaped to the surface of his mind. Vinson, at the other end of the thought-wave telephone, must have sensed his confusion.

  “You haven’t seen her, have you, Bill . . . Oh, you have . . . Alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “You talked with her?”

  “A little,” Bill admitted.

  “M-m-m.” Vin was slightly defensive. “Then she told you—er—about me”

  “She said she’d known you before. She mentioned you were a right guy—but she’s always said that.”

  “We’ve got to save her, Bill. It’s more than simply saving a life. She’s a potential contributor to the race. My race. The future generations need her.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Bill retorted bluntly. “But I need her.”

  “I’ve got to see you, Bill. Where are you?”

  Bill described the prison chamber.

  He mentioned that Windy Muff had found his way into the same jail.

  “Have you seen anyone, other than horse-fish?” Vinson asked. “Any spiny-men, I mean?”

  “Only one at close range,” said Bill, and he described the fight that had taken place outside his window.

  “That spiny-man was Thork, the king’s lieutenant,” said Vinson, and the mood of his thought-waves tightened with a self-enforced tolerance.

  In a more eager humor he returned to the subject of Beatrice Riley.

  “You don’t happen to know,” Vin’s thoughts asked, “what they did with Bea—which way they took her—whether she was on foot or in a cylinder-cart—whether they put her to work on a batch of horse-fish eggs, or—”

  “Eggs!”

  Bill echoed the word with such amazement that Windy bounced up wondering what was the matter.

  “If you’re orderin’ breakfasts,” Windy hissed, “make mine—”

  Bill waved him away. But Windy’s intrusion, he knew was his own good fortune. It enabled him to suppress some answers that might otherwise have leaped over the phone from his mind to Vin’s.

  That mustn’t happen. Bea Riley had made it plain that Bill’s good friend Vin wasn’t to cross her path.

  “I’ll talk with you later,” Bill managed to say.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Vin concluded as heartily as. ever.

  Bill, perspiring, moved away from the pink-globed phone, made for the fresh water spring. He needed a cool bath. That conversation had been an ordeal. For all he knew he might have revealed the very thoughts he meant to suppress.

  CHAPTER IX

  A slush-slush-slush of a distant waterfall beat on Bill’s ears. Other than this low intermittent roaring the night was silent. All lights had been dimmed throughout the cavern.

  Slush-slush-slush—as rhythmic as the ticking of a grandfather clock.

  From the barred window Bill could make out the narrow ribbon of water that plunged down a series of falls. The falls were beyond the spiny-men’s city, in a high crevice-like branch of the cavern. Earlier in the evening, Bill knew, these falls hadn’t been visible. They must have come with the high tides, he reasoned, they would go silent when the waters receded.

  Slush-slush-slush. Bill went to work with a chunk of stone, synchronized his strokes to the rhythmic roar, chopped at the wall around the steel-barred window. Probably there were no guards to listen; at any rate the sounds of his battering would be submerged.

  Windy roused up from sleep and took his turn at stone-cutting while Bill rested.

  “You’re a bear for work,” he said, as Bill went back to the task. Slowly the stubborn stone wore thin.

  One steel bar had just begun to give when the lights of morning began to turn on.

  Soon shafts of pink sunlight pressed through the vast ceiling over pie eastern section of the big cavern. Meanwhile the wall grew brighter, voices of spiny-children began to echo from across the river. Nearer at hand the brilliant green heads of horse-fish nosed across ponds and inlets. Horse-fish padded across yards of wet sand, gathered in groups, gestured to each other in their own language of signs.

  “See if there’s anything on the phone, Windy,” Bill ordered. “The day’s beginning.”

  Windy groaned out of his sleep, yanked at his towsled red hair as if trying to remember where he was. Then he came up with a start.

  “Didja get through, Bill?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Dammit, I shouldn’t have slept. Why’d you let me do it?”

  “You were all in, Windy. Anyway one bar’s beginning to loosen. But we’ll have to slack up now . . . Oh-oh, they’re at the door.”

  Bill kicked some dust to hide the stone chips at his feet, brushed sand over his ripped and bleeding hands. By the time the circular steel door opened he was lying in the sand, pretending to be half asleep.

  The visitors were the four servant horse-fish bringing a tray of breakfast—more fried sea foods on plates of shell. The horse-fish looked around, satisfied themselves that all was well, and went on their way.

  Bill and Windy breakfasted and listened at the telephone by turns, but no messages of consequence came through.

  Meanwhile the horse-fish with the yellow Z on his sides paddled up to the sea-window to begin his day of watching.

  “He makes me nervous,” Windy muttered, casting sidewise glances at the sea cavern.

  “I wish I could get him on the phone once and see what’s eating on him,” said Bill. “He’s going to cramp our style. Especially if he tells on us.”

  “He can’t see our escape window from his post,” said Windy. “We could go ahead—”

  “Risky,” said Bill. “The tide’s going down and the waterfall has nearly stopped. We’d be heard. But we may have to take a chance—”

  Bill broke off with a low whistle. He brushed his br
eakfast aside and sprang to the sea window. A cylinder was floating past.

  “That’s your gal friend again, ain’t it?” said Windy.

  Bill scarcely heard, he was too busy pounding on the window and beckoning. The upper third of the upright cylinder was floating above the surface of the water. Through the transparent domed lid he could see Beatrice. The same instrument was clamped to her head. Her eyes were closed. She looked pale. She was sleeping. Or was she ill—or even—

  Sharp chills pierced through Bill’s arms down to his fingertips.

  But no, she was not dead. She was breathing slowly. He could see her plainly. The cylinder was wafted along by sluggish currents. Passing within twenty feet of the big window it caught light from the prison chamber.

  Bill watched, motionless, half hypnotized by the sight. Bea’s pallid face revealed such a resigned calmness and patience. As ever, there was that deep, mysterious beauty—

  Bill caught his breath.

  The cylinder was floating past, now, turning so he could no longer see her.

  A strange terror seized him. He drew back from the window clenching his fists. His dread of the unknown suddenly welled up into a nameless horror.

  “I don’t know what’s happening. Watch her, Windy, till I—”

  His feet were ahead of his words. He dashed back to the other end of the chamber and into the little stone-walled vestibule with the barred window. He rattled the loosened bar.

  Then he heard Windy calling him to come back.

  “Look, Bill. What’s Yellow Z up to?”

  Bill returned on the run. In the preceding moments he had ignored the curious blinking eyes of the horse-fish. But now he saw what the creature was doing. Yellow Z was pushing the cylinder back toward the window, turning it so that the girl’s face was toward them.

  “How’d he know I wanted her to come back?” Bill uttered nervously.

  “Damned if he ain’t on our side!” Windy chuckled.

  “Either that or he’s scheming . . . What the hell!”

  The yellow-marked horse-fish whirled the cylinder with astonishing suddenness, grabbed it by a choice hand-hold and went swimming off with it as hard as he could go.

  Bill smacked his head against the glass in his eagerness to see where the cylinder was going. That end of the underground lake was too dark to see far. Bill watched until the object diminished to shadowy bubble. It cut an arc through the dark waters and disappeared from sight.

  Bill stepped down from the window with the air of a caged lion.

  “That durned horse-fish,” Windy muttered, “has got a screw loose. He’s the most inconsistent critter—”

  “I’m gonna get out of here!” Bill yelled, kicking at the sand.

  “Didn’t he fight you one minute and save you the next? . . . Huh? . . . Look, Bill! There’s some more comin’. Yellow Z musta seen ’em.”

  Bill whirled back to the window in time to see a black-haired spiny-man swim into view. It was the same stony-featured spiny-man who had fought here the day before. Thork was the name, Bill recalled. This fellow, according to the telephone messages, was the lieutenant to the king.

  The swimmer stopped directly before the window, turned to beckon to someone back of him. Over the silver-tinted waters to the east a few other swimming creatures were following in his wake.

  Thork waited, watching them approach. Once he turned his head toward the prison window, and his first half-minute stare at Bill and Windy brought a sour scowl to his face. He did not appear to be particularly surprised—and Bill guessed that he had probably heard rumors of their capture. He shrugged and looked away.

  Now the rest of the party swam into view; three horse-fish and one more spiny-man. It was not a chase this time. It was more nearly a council. Thork had evidently led the others to this spot to explain what had happened in yesterday’s fight, for he began talking and pointing with great animation. A faint rumble of his low voice echoed through the glass, though Bill could understand nothing.

  But obviously the three horse-fish were listening critically. They punctuated Thork’s rapid-fire story with gestures, occasionally forcing him to change his claims.

  Then, for the first time, the face of the second spiny-man came into view. It might have struck Bill as being a handsome face for a human creature whose backbone was lined with little horn-like spines, and whose fingers were connected with webs. But this face was more than handsome—it was intelligent, honest—and definitely familiar. This was George Vinson.

  Bill should have been prepared for the shock. But somehow he was not. He had never seen Vin before except as a neat little man dressed in white, and never without white gloves. Never without his artistic head of hair flowing loosely to the back of his neck.

  In the heat of the conference with Thork and the three horse-fish, George Vinson’s bright beady eyes shot a look at Bill. It was a look that said, “I know you’re there, friend. I’ll get to you when this job’s over. One trouble at a time. I’m a busy man down in this world.”

  It was startling how much genuine importance there was about Vinson, even when stripped of his fine clothes and swimming about in bathing trunks. Even when arguing with a fellow spiny-man and three horse-fish. When Vin spoke, his words counted.

  And they were counting now. He was reeling off his opinions, wasting no words. The horse-fish nodded their agreement. Thork appeared to be swallowing a bitter pill, but he finally nodded too.

  Vin gave a wave that seemed to indicate everything was settled.

  Then Thork did some more pointing, this time in the direction that Yellow Z had swum away with the cylinder.

  “Thork’s changed the subject,” Windy observed shrewdly. “He lost his argument about the fight, so he’s tryin’ to start somethin’ else.”

  Bill breathed uneasily. “Do you suppose he saw Bea?”

  “What if he did?” said Windy. “Would that be bad?”

  “Plenty. She doesn’t want to be seen by these spiny-men. She’s got some mysterious connections down here. She’ll blow up if they find her. Rather than face them, she’d—” Bill’s agitation broke loose in a violent snarl.

  I’ve got to get out of this trap!”

  He caught himself, stopped his nervous pacing. The whole group outside the window were watching him. Expressions of curiosity were on their faces.

  “They’re talkin’ about her, all right, an’ us too,” Windy whispered. “They’ll be in here quizzin’ us next. If they do, I won’t know whether I’m comin’ or goin’, that’s the devil’s truth . . . There they go.”

  Bill saw Vin disperse the party with a wave of his webbed hand. But the creatures did not all swim away in the same direction. The stony-faced Thork, shooting another cold glance into the prison chamber, sped off in the direction Yellow Z had taken the cylinder.

  The instant the sea-window was cleared of spiny-men and horse-fish, Bill strode back to the other corner of the chamber. He grabbed a rock, went to work battering the steel bar like a mad man.

  Windy spelled him off. In a matter of minutes they succeeded in jerking the first bar out of its sockets. But Bill jammed it back and he and Windy both ducked—none too soon. A gang of horse-fish led by “Bull’s-Eye” had trailed into view. Bill could hear them padding along the sandy trail.

  Presently they were out of hearing. But other footsteps were approaching. A knock sounded at the circular metal door.

  “It’s Vin, Bill,” came the voice from the other side of the door. “I had to come back the long way around. Are you all right in there? Plenty of food and water?”

  “We’re okay,” said Bill.

  “Then I’ll settle up this murder mess of Thork’s before I come back to get you out,” Vin called. “These horse-fish have their rights, you know, and it pays to handle them with gloves. You won’t worry if it’s two or three hours?”

  “We won’t worry,” said Bill.

  There was a moment of silence.

  Bill realized his answers ha
d been terse, far from cordial. He added, “Take your time, Vin.”

  “That’s the spirit, Bill.” Vin’s heartiness was quick to respond. “I’ll have this door open before noon. And you must be ready to tell me what you know about Bea.”

  Another silence.

  “Did you hear what I said, Bill? You’ll have to help me with Bea.”

  “I heard.”

  “Good. We’ll have to work some tall strategy on the horse-fish to get her. They’re killers, you know, under certain conditions. It’s a constant job to hold down the number of fights with them. And we’re having to bargain with them, just now, for too many favors. Do you understand the source of their treachery, Bill?”

  “Not altogether.” Bill was kneeling at the keyhole of the circular door, listening eagerly.

  “Then I’d better tip you off right now,” came Vinson’s voice. “They can be your best friends—or your worst enemies. They’re our cousins, in a sense, and they’ve got a streak of intelligence you won’t find a match for anywhere in the upper world. But their emotions are unstable. You understand?”

  “Yes,” said Bill.

  “Their prickly spines may not look like blotters, but that’s exactly what they are. Blotters. They absorb the emotions and desires and sentiments of other creatures. If one of them tears along your backbone while he’s fighting you, he picks up a whole set of feelings from you.”

  “So that’s it!” Bill gasped. “That’s why Yellow Z let me off easy after that first gash.”’

  “Right. Your feelings became his feelings. That’s why they’re treacherous, Bill. You may think you’ve got a horse-fish friend—one that’ll stall off all possible trouble—but if he scrapes the back of your enemy and picks up a new set of feelings—look out”

  “I get it,” said Bill.

  “Now you see what we’ve got to work with,” Vinson concluded. “The sooner we can get Beatrice out of their clutches, without upsetting the applecart, the better for everyone. And believe me, Bill, the city of spiny-men will have one tall celebration when they learn that Bea-Bea has come back to them. So long, Bill.”