The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “I didn’t plan the experiment.” I spoke sullenly. My throaty voice was naturally edged with a slight rasping which always tended to create suspicions among strangers.

  One of the two newsmen jotted my words in his notebook; they were sharp to snatch at any hint of cynicism or rebellion on my part.

  “Save your talk, men,” Flanger said, “till we get outside.”

  I saw him lower his straight black eyebrows meaningfully at the two newsmen. He didn’t want anything to upset me. He had given me several curtain lectures recently, urging my cooperation. And since I hadn’t snapped back at him with ugly words he was hopeful that I was in an obedient mood.

  I overheard the newsmen mumbling comments about Flanger. Flanger handled me shrewdly, they said, in spite of my obstreperous nature. They considered him a smart business man, destined to become one of Karloora’s financial magnates. There was no doubt that he would make the most of me—and eventually thousands more like me.

  The chain on my left foot was annoying. I gave a savage kick as they led me across the room.

  “Why the shackles, Wooden Face?” I cracked, turning my eagle eyes full on Flanger. I could always make him uncomfortable by pressing a square gaze on him, or by talking when he wanted silence. But to call him Wooden Face, especially while he was parading his importance before his subordinates, was like touching him with a flame gun. I repeated, “Why the shackles, Wooden Face?”

  “Wooden Face,” one of the newsmen grinned, and he scrutinized Flanger’s tight hard features with new interest.

  Flanger chose to ignore the insult and enter into no disciplinary ceremonies under these conditions. “The shackles are for your protection, Eagle Boy.” He was trying so hard to be patient that his voice was silky.

  “Protection?” I squawked. “Am I in danger?”

  “You might be if you fly too far.”

  “I won’t fly too far.”

  “This new gravity will give you a lift. You might fly too far before you mean to.”

  “Then I’ll fly back,” I said.

  “You might run into some of those dragon-like beasts—the growsers. This satellite isn’t tamed, you know.”

  “Then it’s a poor place to bring a creature like me,” I said. “I’ve had so much taming I’m weighed down with it. I’m so tame that Tokel and York only get to beat me twice a day.”

  “Stop that squawk, will you?” Tokel gave me a nasty look.

  “Quiet, men,” said Flanger. He pushed me along through the corridor of the ship, pressing my elbow in silent warning. In a low voice he said, “No more of your smart talk, or you won’t fly. You won’t be able.”

  “I know,” I retorted sarcastically.

  “You’ll beat me till my feathers fall out.”

  “Not only your feathers. Your heart and your guts.”

  “After all the money you’ve spent to get me here? Very likely.” I didn’t try to hold back my sarcastic tones. “You didn’t bring me here to bury me, Wooden—” I broke off with a sharp click of my beak. “What’s the meaning of the guns?”

  I pointed ahead to Tokel and York and two other assistants preceding us down the steps to the air-locks. All of them were packing late-model disintegration guns.

  One of the men turned back to laugh at me. “Don’t get nervous, Eagle Boy. We won’t use them on you.”

  There was considerable light banter about the chances of having to use the disint guns. A few of the men had visited this moon before, and they declared, all joking aside, that there could be trouble. The growsers were as nimble as herds of wild horses, and as treacherous as any breed of dragons in this planetary system.

  “And yet the growsers can be domesticated, you know,” someone said. “There’s a race of growser-riders here on the Blue Moon—men like ourselves, only savage.”

  “And that isn’t all,” said one of the newsmen. “There’s a big race of—”

  “Shut up!” Flanger exploded. Then suddenly several of the party seemed to be watching me out of the corners of their eyes, as if wondering whether I had caught the drift of the suppressed talk. I was in the dark.

  We passed through the air-locks and out into the open. The coolness of thick grasses felt good against the cushions of my scaled feet. An exhilaration came upon the party, as if they might have been the sole discoverers of this picturesque valley. Obviously they had chosen a good landing spot for our short stay, for there were no likely hiding places for wild beasts.

  At least not in our immediate vicinity. The soft meadow stretched like a mile-wide carpet all around us. Under the triangle of Karloora’s suns it was as bright and glossy as fresh paint. But not to be mistaken for a park on Karloora. Two things were utterly new and different—the air and the gravity.

  For several minutes we all indulged in clownish antics of jumping, tumbling, and running, to adjust our muscles to our new weightlessness.

  Tokel and York found that they could leap to the fins of the space ship and land on their feet. I followed suit. It was easy. In fact I could have jumped clear over the ship without any help from my wings, if I had only been bound by a longer leash, for jumping was one of my special talents.

  What might I do with my wings?

  That remained to be seen. But I realized, all at once, that those thousands of hours of fruitless flying practice in my pen back in Karloora were mobilizing into new sensations of readiness. I was sure I could fly.

  Every breath filled me with confidence. There was something about this thin fragrant air—something my lungs seemed to have known and forgotten—

  “All right, Eagle Boy, this is your big chance to make a name.” Flanger approached me with stolid determination.

  “A name for myself,” I said, “or for you?”

  “Be a good fellow, now. The newsmen have got their cameras on you. Let’s don’t have any foolishness—”

  “Or York and I will slap your beak down your throat,” Tokel interpolated.

  “All right, boys, take it easy,” Flanger cooed. “He’ll be all right. When we get him hitched up, you two can follow along after him and keep him working till he learns to take off. Now, let’s have the end of that cable.”

  They evidently expected me to fly.

  At least they had come prepared to give me plenty of cruising range—a radius of seventy-five yards. They unwound the long flexible line of claytung wire from the spool they had fastened on the uppermost point of the space ship hull. Obviously they didn’t intend for me to break away, for that line was stronger than steel. It would have held a mad three-ton growser charging down a hill. They fastened it to the claytung chain on my left foot and led me out over the meadow until the line tightened.

  “Kick,” Flanger said.

  “Why?”

  “To make sure it’s solid.”

  “You mean I’ve got to fly with all that weight hanging to me?”

  “Claytung isn’t heavy,” Flanger said. “Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler just to turn me loose and let me fly?”

  Flanger didn’t answer, and his straight black eyebrows were like two dabs of paint on an expressionless carved-wood face. Was he considering my suggestion? I couldn’t tell. His two assistants exchanged sly nudges.

  “Unfasten me and give me a chance to fly,” I said, glaring hard at Flanger. “Don’t you trust me?”

  Tokel’s lips twisted sardonically. “You wouldn’t think of running away, would you, Eagle Boy?”

  “Leave my nice warm cage? Why should I?” My squawking retort rasped with telltale cynicism, and suddenly the venom was spilling off my tongue. “I’d be lost without my daily beatings. I’d get homesick for someone to swing at my head with a club—”

  At that instant York lashed out at me with his fist. I ducked the blow as easily as if I had had a five minute warning. But the next thing I knew they gave my chain a jerk and the two of them grabbed me and threw a few slaps at my eagle head. York and Tokel were both enormous men, the team of them outweighing me more
than three to one. It was chiefly their brute strength that had qualified them to serve as my educators.

  In a moment Flanger called them off, looking about to make sure the rest of the party hadn’t taken this bit of diversion too seriously. Most of the men had gone to their assigned stations around the wide circle within which I was supposed to fly. But the newsmen were still close by, and Flanger warned them they must cut that last scene from their films.

  Now at the end of my tether I obediently kicked to make sure the fastenings were solid.

  “That’s good.” Flanger turned to the newsmen. “Be sure you get his feet in. I’m counting on your pictures to show any drag from the weight of the line. And don’t forget—we want to run these films as soon as possible on the trip back. I’ll direct the cutting myself . . . All set, Eagle Boy?”

  The precautions they had taken might have been calculated to make me blind with rage. It was plain that the ten men stationed around the ship in a big circle, each armed with a disintegration gun, were not there simply to guard against a possible attack from growsers or other wild beasts. They were stationed to form a fence of fire around me, in case I should happen to make a break.

  These modern disint guns, as everyone knew, could cut a stream of death for precisely fifty yards—no farther.

  Flanger was a foresighted business man, all right. He wasn’t going to let me get away.

  The show began as soon as Flanger, armed with a disint of his own, marched back to the ship and perched himself on its tail. From that vantage point he could call directions to all the surrounding circle. He shouted at me and I went into action.

  I did everything except what Flanger wanted me to do.

  I hopped. I ran. I leaped and danced in all manner of awkward steps. Yes, and I flapped my wings with such vigor that part of the time they were convinced I was trying.

  But I wasn’t. I was biding my time until Tokel and York grew careless and some of the ten guards drifted away from their original positions.

  The long line of claytung wire scraped over the green meadow in a gently curved loop as I dragged it on, round after round. Gradually I circled in closer, and the guards unconsciously moved a few feet inward. Particularly one tall skinny guard with sleepy eyes.

  And all the while I continued my pretense of trying to fly. Every new suggestion that Flanger or the others shouted at me I tried—or made a show of trying.

  Then suddenly I struck with all the speed and cunning at my command.

  It happened as I was approaching the tall skinny guard. His disint gun was hanging loosely in his hip pocket.

  I took off with a swift leap, and flew.

  I flew around the outside of him so fast that he never knew what struck him. It was the claytung wire, of course. It caught him at the knees and threw him just as he started to spin around.

  The impact hurled him off the ground. It hurled the gun still higher. I whirled on my wings and darted for

  it—yes, and snatched it out of the air.

  By the time York and Tokel caught their breath to shout, I was firing a disint stream squarely. at the long wire that bound me.

  I meant to disintegrate it. One break in that wire would set me free.

  But it didn’t break. My disint fire spilled off it like water off a greased log. I flew straight back over the curved line, spraying it with the gun’s ray. It refused to disintegrate.

  Then I remembered. High-grade claytung is the one common metal that disint guns can’t penetrate.

  I flew like the wind, straight for the center of the circle—the space ship.

  Why?

  Because there was still one hope that I might sever the line and gain my freedom. It was a desperate chance, but I had to take it. I was over my head in rebellion and there was no turning back.

  My goal was the bolt in the top of the space ship to which the claytung spool was fastened.

  Flanger saw me coming. He leaped high off his perch—the tail of the ship—momentarily forgetting his adjustments to the lighter gravity. He spilled down to the ground in a heap, but came bounding up again, running toward the slack line of wire that lay in the grass. Did he think he could hold me back?

  I swept over him like a gust of wind. Shooting on across the ship I felt that I might be turned into a gust of wind any instant. With everyone yelling at me madly, someone was sure to lose his head and fire a blaze of disint at me.

  Above the center of the ship I cut my speed and criss-crossed my gunfire over the claytung spool. The bolt that held it disintegrated. The spool slipped loose and slid down over the hull. I was free.

  Free, except for the weight of a seventy-five yard wire clinging to my left foot.

  The guards were running in toward me, setting up their fence of purple disint fire to surround me. They didn’t believe I could fly straight up, burdened down with such a weight.

  But I thought otherwise. When it’s a matter of freedom or bondage a man can muster superhuman powers—and so can an eagle man.

  I spiralled upward so swiftly that I felt a terrific jerk on my legs as I hoisted the full weight of chain, wire, and spool. My wings trembled for an instant and the muscles of my back fought furiously.

  Then it was won—my good wings were holding me—I was still rising—up—up

  I glanced back and caught a brief sight of the guards far below me. I was above the range of their guns, now. They would never get me back within range again—not if I could help it.

  Nor within range of their voices. Whatever this strange new world might hold for me, I was done with bondage.

  I sped straight for the narrowing purple canyon, some four or five miles ahead.

  Then as I looked down for the first time at the seventy-five yard wire swinging from my left foot, I saw there was something more than the claytung spool hanging to it.

  There was Flanger, riding astride that spool, looking up at me, shaking his fist.

  CHAPTER II

  My wings almost dropped me. I looked again—yes, Flanger meant to ride me down. It was more than a fist he was shaking at me. It was a deadly gleaming disint. My wing twinged. I was cutting over the land at high speed, but that twinge started me darting down at a steep angle.

  I heard Flanger’s cry, then. He thought he was going to crash to the ground. I pulled up sharply, and my passenger, swinging seventy-five yards below me, barely skimmed over an outcropping of rocks.

  At once I spiralled for more elevation, and again he was yelling up at me, waving his gun.

  What had happened to my own disint? It was gone. I must have dropped it during that tense moment of climbing the air above the space ship. I had released all impediments during that crucial moment.

  I was going to miss that gun. There was trouble ahead. There’s nothing like a gun when you’ve got to argue your way through trouble. It gives you confidence somehow, and that was what I needed.

  That was all. I didn’t want to kill the man. In all my seventeen years of hating him my passion to kill had seldom ever been wasted on Flanger. On Tokel and York—yes. But Flanger—I only wanted to escape him.

  To me, Flanger was symbolical of nearly all men, as I knew them—tough-minded, stubborn, hard-working, bent on business goals that made them willing to endure the prison-like confinement and routine of civilized life. I wanted to escape all men.

  I made surprising speed toward the higher purple cliffs up the valley. To be able to fly at all was intoxicating. But the thrill of cutting through the air faster than a dart was enough to blind me with joy.

  The valley rose toward a distant range of dark mountains and already I was skimming over narrowing canyons. I fought for more altitude. High tree tops were threatening to dust the seat of Flanger’s pants.

  “Get back to the ship,” he was yelling. I smiled down at him. The ship was four miles back of us—a dark dot on a small patch of green. The confusion of its passengers could no longer be seen.

  “Enjoying your ride, Wooden Face?” I squawked,
though I don’t think he heard me. And I don’t think his face was wooden, but rather like glowing coals, and decidedly contorted.

  I soared back and forth over a fork of the canyon and combed it for what it might offer. By this time Flanger was yelling threats at me. He thought I couldn’t keep flying much longer, and when I let him down he was going to give me some discipline I wouldn’t forget.

  “You’ve proved you can fly,” he shouted. “Your act is over. I’ll blast your damned wings full of holes—”

  I swooped down and let a passing treetop smack him across the breeches. It might have been an electric shock from the way he jumped and yelled. He bounced back on his seat, hugging the wire for dear life.

  That little incident almost pulled a ligament in my wings. It served as a sharp warning that I couldn’t afford any foolishness. It was time I set my burden down.

  But how?

  I circled, trying to spot a tree suitable for a perch. The giant timbers were as much as two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet tall.

  “What are you trying to do, hang me?” Flanger was swinging perilously among the branches and he was blazing mad. “Set me down or I’ll shoot your damned head off.”

  “Good joke!” I yelled back. The length of the wire put me twenty-five yards beyond his range, and he knew it. “Better do your shooting at the trees.”

  The suggestion wasn’t funny to him. He took it, and the game grew lively. When he saw himself in danger of crashing into a branch, he fired his disint gun to dissolve it.

  The severed branches would go crashing down into the shadowy forest far below. Once after such a crash I heard a rush of heavy hoofs, as if a herd of wild animals was stampeding.

  At last I saw a way to put my burden down without setting him free. The answer was a magnificent overhanging cliff.

  I spiralled down with care. My control was none too sure, and a little blundering would hurl Flanger against the naked basalt wall.