The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Yolanda brought forth a bright green stone. “You mean—this?”

  “Yes! Where did you get it?”

  “On the stairs when I was tumbling down. Jefferson Cotton must have dropped it. But where did you get it?”

  “In the strangest place. Out of a water pipe, near the hut of an abandoned farm, out in the region where we’re building the highway. I had gone in search of a water supply for our concrete. But a suction pump proved that these pipes had been dry for years.”

  “I know,” said Yolanda. “Mr. Seemo told me about the Chiams’ improvements that were never finished. In fact, I wandered past one of the towers.”

  “A tall structure between the highway and the river?”

  “That’s it. With a big silvery tank up on top—”

  “And thousands of white pigeons flying around the sides.”

  “White pigeons?” Yolanda echoed. “Yes, I believe there were.”

  “The peasants feast on those pigeons,” said Carter. “But no one tears down their nests, so the tower never runs out of pigeons. It’s a shame, though, that they don’t go ahead and make use of their water-supply facilities . . . What are you day-dreaming about, Yolanda?”

  She came out of her thoughts with a jolt. “I must have put myself under another hypnotic spell. But I was just thinking—I wonder—”

  “Yes?”

  “Up in the lobby on the floor near my string of paper dolls there’s a wand—a metal rod with a silver knob shaped like a little water tower. The white pigeons have all been exploded away by men who can’t be trusted. But the knob—well, I’ve just now figured out that it might contain a precious stone.”

  “I’ll go up and get it for you,” said Carter.

  “Would you dare?”

  “Of course. By this time the officers will have things under control. They’re all set to dig to the bottom of these Jap Imperialist connections tonight. They’re going to put the squeeze on Tolozell. Mr. Seemo is all set to build a slow fire under him—”

  “A fire?”

  “Figuratively speaking, of course. With the dope we’ve gathered on that treacherous old hypnotist they’ll burn him to a cinder. Whether they’ll imprison him or do something less merciful remains to be seen. At any rate, his power will go up in smoke. I can promise you that.”

  Yolanda waited, locked in the room, while Carter climbed down through the secret door behind the boxes and hurried on out of hearing.

  “A fire under him!” Yolanda murmured. “His power will go up in smoke! But that’s what did happen. I was hypnotized, but I remember it perfectly. The paper doll image of Tolozell went up in smoke!”

  The old superstition was on her, stronger than ever. Her dolls and their human counterparts met with the same fates!

  The full flood of superstitions surged back with all their shocking, horrifying implications. Katherine! Katherine!

  When Carter came back he found her sobbing bitterly, and she wouldn’t be comforted. She had lost interest in the Wand. All she would say was, “Katherine, Katherine! What have I done to you?”

  She did not cease her crying until Carter led her out through the long underground passage, supporting her in his strong arms, guiding her hesitant steps.

  They came up through another house a quarter of a mile beyond the Temple Hotel, exchanged words with the police officials in charge of the entrance, and emerged into the fresh morning air.

  “Did you hear what that official said,” Carter asked her gently, “about Tolozell? They’re making him answer for everything, even for mutilating one of your paper dolls—and he admitted having done it for some malicious purpose while you were hypnotized.”

  “He did it?” Yolanda gasped. “Oh—I’m so thankful.”

  “I don’t understand you, Yolanda.”

  “I knew I didn’t feel so toward her. I’ve searched my heart. There’s no hate in it. But still I thought the signs said that I would murder her.”

  “Who? Katherine?” Carter O’Connor was so amazed at the suggestion that he almost laughed, in spite of the girl’s mental tortures over something he didn’t understand.

  “Katherine’s all right,” he said. “She had a narrow escape before the police recovered her. But Slack Clampitt didn’t harm her. They were right on his trail from the moment the swift kidnapping took place. After they recovered her they spent the rest of the day chasing him into hiding. And that chase ended with the raid on the Temple Hotel—and here we are. safe and sound.”

  They were driving along in O’Connor’s roadster now. Yolanda saw nothing of the passing scenery.

  “Just where is Katherine?”

  “That’s what we’ll find out here at headquarters. Maybe she’ll be there waiting to see you. Who knows?” Yolanda was weeping softly.

  “I’m sorry to be such a baby,” she said. “If I told you my fears you’d think them only silly trifles.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “Somehow, I just know that Katherine isn’t alive. She’s been killed—or terribly hurt. I’ve seen the signs.”

  “Nonsense. She’s—she’s too strong, too sure of herself. Besides I’m keeping an eye on her,” Carter said proudly. “The worst that could happen to her would be a bawling out from her theater boss. Here, let’s go up and find her.”

  “If I thought she was there,” said Yolanda, “I’d come with you. But all I can think of now is the way I last saw her doll—with its head—”

  She didn’t finish, for Carter O’Connor gave her a careless laugh and an equally careless kiss, and hurried off.

  He came back from the city offices carrying a package and two letters, one of which he was reading.

  “She left me her forwarding address and all her love,” said Carter smiling. “She’s gone to Burma. Here’s a note for you, too, and a package.”

  “She’s all right?”

  “Of course . . . Oh, it says this package for you isn’t to be opened until Chiam Day.”

  Yolanda broke into her note, read it, reread it; she began to laugh. With a third reading she was laughing with a full heart, as unburdened as a song.

  “Listen to what she says, Carter: ‘My boss tried to fire me because I missed my rehearsals. He supposed it was on account of Tolozell. I tried to explain that I had some apologizing to do to you, Yolie. That made the prune mad. He didn’t think it was any excuse. I told him it was the best reason in the world. Then he really got mad and swore at me in Chinese. Then I told him off: “You don’t need to bite my head off, you old bear,” I said. And he came back at me: “You haven’t got a head. Tolozell has already chopped it off and tramped on it. And you’ll never get it back till you quit giving him the credit for making a dancer out of you. Who put in all those hours of practice,” he says. “Tolozell or you? You did, kid. All right, get wise to yourself. It was no more Tolozell than it was magic.” Get it, Yolie—magic. I came pretty near telling him that I had a friend who KNEW that magic could do things, but I decided to shut up and win my head back.’ . . . Isn’t that funny, Carter?”

  “She’s a swell girl,” Carter sighed. “I wonder whom she’ll meet in Burma.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Chiam Day

  In the silver knob that adorned what remained of the White Paper Wand they found a tightly packed collection of tiny jewels. And then Yolanda was almost sure.

  “Even if I should be wrong,” she said, “it would be worth a try.”

  Carter and Seemo and various representatives of the old Chiam society listened eagerly. They had gathered at the old stone lantern tower for a conference to plan for Chiam Day.

  “I have visited the peasants in their homes,” said Yolanda. “No finer celebration of the day could be planned than a reopening of the water systems, so these peasants would not have to carry their water from the river. If the water tower can be cleansed of whatever debris it has accumulated, if pumps can be installed to start the water running, this will make a happier Chiam Day than all the speeches we c
ould muster.”

  “It can be done,” said Carter O’Connor, “with my workmen and equipment.”

  “Then let that be our decision,” said Yolanda, “for I believe that is what John How would wish.”

  At first the officials were not entirely satisfied. They had come expecting this young American girl to tell them precisely where the treasure lay. “No Chiam Day is complete without at least a promise of the treasure,” they said.

  “But our one promise,” said Yolanda, “lies in interpreting John How’s symbols correctly. Let me tell you what happened a few days ago when I came back to this stone lantern tower for my hidden suitcase.

  “As I lifted the case, I felt that it was magically drawn in a certain direction. You see, it contained the White Paper Wand which John How said would lead me to the treasure.

  “When I had cut a paper doll from the Wand’s covering on a previous day, it had led me way out here and then had gone swirling away from me in a rivulet.

  “Now, as I once more tried to follow a paper doll, it led me toward that old unused water tower. I followed it until one of the white pigeons picked it up in his bill and flew to the point of the tower.

  “The white pigeons should have reminded me at once of what John How had told me of the Wand. He compared its white paper covering to the wings of white pigeons who knew their way. Therefore, the Wand itself was symbolical of the water tower, surrounded by the white birds.

  “And finally, as you have seen, the shiny dome of the Wand contained jewels. The metal tank, then, at the top of the shaft, must contain the treasure.”

  “Bravo,” said Carter O’Connor, smiling. “And if you need further evidence that Miss Lavelle is on the right track, one gem from the Chiam treasure was drawn out, along with the settlings of the dry pipe, when I applied a suction pump to the hydrant.”

  “Let us go to the tower at once,” said Seemo. “This Chiam Day will be the one we have awaited for many years.” The day was all that the people of that country could hope for, and more. The wealth that represented their own past earnings and savings flowed back into their hands. And into newer and brighter promises of better homes and a happier land.

  The day was a happy one for Yolanda. She could sing the praises of John How as heartily as anyone. But when the questions arose concerning the secrets of Chiam science and magic, she could only share their curiosity over the unanswered mysteries.

  The package left by Katherine had not been opened.

  That night when Yolanda and Carter O’Connor retreated from the din of celebration in Bangkok’s streets to the quiet of her hotel suite, she clipped the strings, and lifted the lid of the wide flat cardboard box.

  There was no note. Only the paper doll. It lay smiling up at her as it had smiled eleven years before. It was a crude and comical work of art, a seven- year-old girl’s impression of a thirteen- year-old boy hero.

  Yolanda smiled in her heart. She glanced over her shoulder.

  Carter hadn’t seen. He was gazing out the window.

  “We’re finishing our road job next week,” he mentioned casually. “I’ll have a couple weeks off then.”

  “Planning something?” Yolanda asked.

  “Thinking a little of flying over to Burma. Sorta like to see Katherine again before she gets too far away.”

  “You think a lot of Katherine, don’t you?”

  “Darned swell girl,” said Carter. “How about it. Would you like to go with me, Yolanda?”

  “Thanks so much, but I’ll be on my way back to America.”

  “That’s tough,” Carter said awkwardly. “I hoped you’d be around awhile, so I could have someone to pal around with. Nice American women don’t grow on trees when you’re out on a road job in these foreign lands. I’ve been thinking—if I’d had a chance to get to know you, like—well, like I know Katherine—well, who knows—”

  Yolanda, re-wrapping the package, pretended she wasn’t listening.

  “Oh, by the way, Carter. When you see Katherine, will you take this package back to her? She made a mistake. It’s hers, not mine.”

  But even as he took the package—his hands lingering upon hers, his eyes searching her face for a fuller understanding—she wondered. In spite of herself something was happening that no will to sacrifice could prevent. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was already starting to fashion a new paper doll. It was Carter O’Connor, the man. She was giving away only the boy.

  [1] Successful hypnotism is said to be dependent upon a previously established attitude of cooperation on the part of the subject. Persons are not often hypnotized against their will. To the observer, the strangeness of the phenomenon lies in the extremes to which the person under hypnosis is willing to go to satisfy the suggestions of the performer. His behavior may appear highly absurd and irrational. But it is not unrelated to the normal behavior of daily life. For example, if a person is exerting all his conscious effort to hear every word of a newscast, and at the same time a friend asks him to sign a letter and places a pen in his hand, he is likely to accept the suggestion and perform the act automatically, remaining intent upon the newscast. In hypnotism, the friendship and willingness to cooperate must first be established. Next, the hypnotist will probably put his subject in a state of semi-sleepiness; for it has been found that a person is most suggestible when experiencing the “hypnogogic hallucinations”—that is, when the pictures are passing more or less vividly through his mind, just previous to his entering the real sleep. If, at such a time, the hypnotist commands, “Try to sleep,” the subject’s conscious energies go into the trying; so energetically does he try that he thwarts his natural passage into sleep. But while the subject’s conscious efforts are centered on this deadlock, the hypnotist proceeds with his suggestions, which are responded to more or less automatically.

  [2] This is the post-hypnotic suggestion, which lingers in the subject’s mind to influence him to say or do something after he has come out from under the hypnotic spell.

  MAGNETIC MISS METEOR

  First published in Amazing Stories, March 1944

  This beautiful, heartless woman held a planet in slavery. How could a revolt prevail against her magic?

  CHAPTER I

  If you’ve ever been up to your ears in a rebellion you know that the toughest part of the job is to keep the secret. There’s a right time for a plot to spring. Up to that split second you’ve got to be as dumb and innocent as a clam.

  I was clammy for months before the day, on the planet of Venus, that I thought we’d surely touch off the fireworks. I’d lived the double life—a mild and obedient assistant to a mild and faithful young executive. I, Adam Alonzo Briff, drew my pay coupons each week, earth time, by tending strictly to business, and my immediate superior, Jay Lathrop, likewise received his steady income for obedient service. To whom? To the lady who was the boss of this one and only Venus outpost

  Together Jay Lathrop and I, along with scores of other rebels, wore our well polished mask of allegiance whenever we paraded in front of the leader we hoped to push into a fiery furnace.

  Take my word for it, Violet Speer, in spite of her name, was no shy little violet. She was a dyed-in-the-wool villainess.

  Consider, for instance, what happened that momentous night, Friday the 13th, earth time. I was standing on a stone step of this somewhat ancient market building on this oppressive Friday afternoon, receiving instructions from Jay Lathrop. It was a normally hot day. If there’s an easy way to escape the oppressive heat of Venus without wallowing in the swamps with the poisonous rajlouts, I don’t know what it is.

  I was listening to Lathrop’s instructions for one of the wrecking crews, and he was pacing the old stone sidewalk with an energetic click of his polished black boots, when up the sidewalk came a uniformed guard bearing an order from Violet Speer.

  “Lend a hand,” he said. “We’ve lost Mr. Grailford. He’s wanted for a special purpose.”

  “What purpose?” asked Jay Lathrop, squint
ing skeptically and passing his fingers through his bristling sandy hair.

  Guards are known to be peculiarly expressionless. They take for granted that their red and silver uniforms carry an overpowering prestige, and woe unto anyone who gives them any defiance. This guard repeated, as cold as ice, “Lend a hand, men. Grailford is wanted.”

  We went obediently, and I think Lathrop was glad enough to postpone his day’s work. This particular market building, in line for his wrecking crew, was much too beautiful to destroy. Lathrop was bitter over such duties. He had a soft heart tor their fine works of architecture.

  This building was dated 2004, which meant that it was one of the first of the American colony buildings of the twenty-first century Venus expedition. Now, four and a quarter centuries later, these fine structures were being crushed and rolled down into the dust and swamps of the Earth’s sister planet.

  We marched off with the guard, and our wrecking crew also came to lend a hand. Whether we liked it or not we found the lost Mr. Grailford presently, hiding in the building beyond the old market.

  He was a pitiful sight, ill and half starved and scared. The guards slapped him down, then commanded him to come to his feet and march. I happened to know that Grailford had grown too sick to work and consequently had hidden out. For Miss Violet Speer and her red and silver guards were slave drivers in the worst sense of the term.

  “A change of climate for Mr. Grailford,” was the order.

  A change of climate was frequently ordered for workers who were run down—workers who needed the cooler and more healthful air on the other side of the first mountain range. The strange fact was, however, that no one who went over for this change ever came back.

  “This bear is going over the mountain,” Jay Lathrop whispered to me, “to see what he can see.”

  And three of us followed, on this Friday night.