The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  But nothing could be said of such experiences that in any way satisfied. In our secret minds we knew that here was something we might never understand—something very special, out of this world, that was meant for us.

  I did not encourage Faye to talk with me. I kept a barrier of space between us. Less often did she go to the sealed tunnel entrance to listen for the calls of the rescue party she was sure would come.

  What impressed her more than anything else, during our passing hours of imprisonment, was the striking friendship for me that the two monkeys demonstrated.

  It was not as if I were a stranger to them, trying to make friends. But rather as if they knew me, and had always known me, and expected me to call them by name.

  “You give them orders just like Val used to do,” she said. “But Val had his own unique rhythms that he would tap out on the musical drums.”

  “Something like this, I believe,” and I picked up some small rocks and began beating them on a plate of stone. With a squeak of delight Squinty recognized the rhythm and began dancing. Very seriously, Sober turned a series of handsprings. He passed his hat to Faye.

  “I must give him something,” she said. “I know—”

  She had picked a few berries earlier. So now she called Sober to come with her to the little patch of shrubbery.

  “Here you are, Sober. You must take these to Ben Addis,” she said.

  The little fellow ate his share, and pocketed the rest.

  “No,” she said. “Take them to Ben Addis.”

  “Bring them to Val Roman,” I said.

  At this, Sober turned and came running to deliver the goods.

  But poor Faye recoiled with sorrow and anger. Bitterly she spoke. “Don’t say that. Don’t you realize they are burying Val Roman this afternoon?”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Farewell to Ben Addis

  But the new day brought new hopes and contemplations; it banished old hatreds and hurts and suspicions. As we ate our meager lunch of roots and berries and the last of the dried meats I had brought along, I was gratified to see that Faye wanted to talk with me again.

  “Val was very fond of these pet monkeys,” she said. “I wonder that they don’t miss him more.”

  “No one should ever be missed too much,” I said. “But if you have wistful memories of Val, I’m not surprised. He loved you very much.”

  “How do you know so much?”

  “He wanted very much to marry you, and he would have—if—”

  “Life is so terribly complicated by ifs” Faye mused. It was unusual, I thought, for a vivacious girl like Faye to bring herself face to face with these contemplations. Always to dodge the serious side of life in favor of blighte, gay moods, had been her pattern of existence. And now, again, she was dodging the weight of her own thoughts. “How soon are you going to let me go?”

  “As soon as I know a little better what is in your heart,” I said.

  “You are talking like Val again. Every since you brought me here you have reminded me—in one way and another—”

  “You did love Val, didn’t you?”

  For a moment she did not answer. “Or have you never been in love?” I added.

  “Somehow I’ve never thought very seriously about it. I have always been so gay, going my own way, enjoying lots of friends. And yet—”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s true that I loved Val—deeply—as I never loved anyone else.”

  Sober nestled up to her, and she brushed her eyes against his furry shoulder.

  I walked around slowly, breathing the sweet air of the afternoon, looking up at the patch of sky. If that blue could have reflected my face, I would have seen the tragic proof that I was no longer Val Roman. It would never do to try to tell her . . .

  “What you have said contents me,” I said, returning to Faye’s side. Tomorrow you may go . . . No, this afternoon. After you have returned to your father and your friends all this echo of sadness will fade away.”

  “Yes, I suppose it will.”

  “In time you will marry Bill Oleander. A nice fellow, Bill.”

  She nodded slowly. “Time heals all heartaches. I will learn to love him.” I unsealed the door. Yes, there were the sounds of searchers again. It would be safe for her to go alone. She would find her way to their voices.

  “You are to take the monkeys with you,” I said. “They are my gift to you and Bill Oleander.”

  She started into the tunnel. The monkeys hesitated, waiting for me to come, but I ordered them to stay with her. Then she came back to me slowly as I stood there watching her.

  “You haven’t been so unkind to me, Ben Addis,” she said. “I can’t understand. I was so sure you meant those awful commands you gave to Alashee on that fateful day. But now I know you didn’t. . . . I want to tell you goodbye.”

  She offered her hand. I slipped my arm around her shoulder and drew her into a swift, sweet embrace.

  I had not meant to kiss her. And yet, as I did so, she was not frightened. Rather, she was strangely drawn to me.

  At once I realized that the quick footsteps of the searching party were beating a path to our rocky court. Faye suddenly thrust me away from her.

  “Run, Ben Addis!” she cried. “They’ll kill you. Run!”

  She whirled to face them. Her arms extended in a tense command to make them stop.

  “Don’t, Bill. Don’t shoot him!”

  Bill Oleander pushed past her. He had seen me, no doubt, holding her in my arms, and had seen her thrust me away. He leveled a rifle barrel in my direction. I leaped toward the nearest rocks for cover. He came on toward me. Impulsively, I reached for my pistol.

  But I couldn’t do it—not to save my own life. It was Bill who must live.

  He followed me. He shot me down. My twisted, withered legs were struck from under me, bullets crumpling them. Then the death bullet plunged through my brain . . .

  “That will finish the Scarlet Swordsmen,” someone of the rescue party was saying, as the swift flow of consciousness came back to me.

  My trembling arm was being soothed by Faye. She was weeping softly.

  “I’m not blaming you, Bill,” she said to me. “I know you had to do it.”

  She was calling me Bill.

  I glanced at my strong athletic arms, I passed my fingers over the rather prominent jaw of my smooth-shaven, harmless face.

  They were laying a blanket over the body of Ben Addis. The party moved back along the channels of the Red Rock maze to the place where pack animals were waiting.

  “We’ll follow soon,” Faye said. “I’m all right . . . But I hated to see him killed. . . He was kind to me.”

  “I understand perfectly . . . perfectly.” I’m afraid I had to suppress a curious chuckle from her efforts to make me understand.

  “What’s the matter, Bill? What are you smiling about?”

  “Just wondering about various things. I never shot a man before.”

  “You’re changed somehow, Bill. You were such a boy when I last saw you.”

  “Changed, am I? You said it. Do you think my friends will know the difference when I take you back to England—or are we going to stay right here and tour India with a little monkey circus? That would be kinda pleasant, wouldn’t it?”

  “Bill—no! I couldn’t. It would remind me too much of someone—”

  “Val Roman? . . . Sweetheart, don’t you ever worry about my being jealous of Val.”

  “Are you sure?” She looked at me wistfully. “Bill, if you and I are going to get along, you’d just as well know from the start. I loved Val Roman. Don’t ask me ever to deny that love.”

  “You loved him very much?”

  She nodded. “I’ll try to forget, in time, perhaps.”

  “You needn’t, dear,” I said. “You’ll find that there’s something of Val Roman in me, yes a lot of Val Roman. I suppose there’s some of Alashee’s fierceness and courage, too. And some of Ben Addis’ keenness and cunning. And maybe
a dash of their cruelty, too. Not to mention my own natural hotheadedness.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “But look out for that gay, carefree, adventurous spirit of Val Roman. It’s likely to crop out on me at any hour of the day, I warn you.”

  “Bill, you have changed. I never really knew you before. I—I think I’m going to like you a lot. Are you the sort of person who—”

  “Who would help an old Hindu rescue a cow from the mud? Sweetheart, that’s practically the story of my life.”

  THE VOICE FROM VENUS

  First published in Amazing Stories, September 1945

  Say, for Instance that Venus DID send us an ambassador? How would our State Department accept him? Or would they? It’s an intriguing situation . . .

  CHAPTER I

  So long, Earth folks. I’m rocketing for home. Back to my own planet, as fast as I can go. My mouth is watering for a real dinner from a yellow stone feasting table heaped high with a pyramid of Venus vegetables. And those juicy osserfeli steaks—unrationed; I can hardly wait.

  I am now sailing through the blue, which is rapidly turning black. I’m sitting at the radio microphone. Lots of you Americans are listening, I’m sure.

  Okay, hang on and I’ll give you an earful.

  Hang on, and you’ll hear my voice more dearly right away, I promise you. Just now the accelerators are making a heavy hum. You probably thought it was static. Not so. It will fade out as soon as I hit my cruising speed.

  Some of you listeners are pretty sore at me, I know. You are calling me names, no doubt. Telling your friends I’m a damned kidnapper.

  Kidnapper—that’s an ugly word. I wish I had never heard it. I wish I could have committed this act in complete innocence, without ever knowing that you Americans have federal and state laws—

  All right I’m guilty—in your eyes. But please remember, I committed this act to keep my promise to the Streets of Venus. Try to remember that this kidnap victim is to be your representative to the planet of Venus.

  Believe me, it was not easy to choose.

  The full-lighted Earth is receding from me now—a globe of silver and white hung against the fathomless black velvet of space. It seems a long time since that breathless day when I first approached your Earth.

  I well remember how your massive continents unfolded, showing dimly through the great swelling sphere of milky blue atmosphere. I kept saying to myself, “What kind of demons will I find down there? Ferocious beasts, no doubt.”

  I well remember that sea of luminous white clouds that widened beneath me in the last few minutes before I landed. Three or four purple mountaintops peeked through, and I wondered, were they dead stones—or were they the armored backs of mighty animals—or the menacing heads—or the periscope tails containing spying eyes? What strange terrors bore down upon my imagination in those final minutes of flight!

  Then, through a break in the sea of clouds, I spied below the vast brown and gray mountain landscape. Solid land, heavy with stones and soil, alive with immense patches of blue and green forests.

  The deep purple shadows invited me. They offered a hiding place for my ship. There, high in the crags, I first touched your Earth.

  One hour later, after taking all possible precautions against all possibilities of death, I ventured to breathe my first breath of Earth air. You would never guess how it caused my head to whirl with its sweet aroma. I had to take it gradually. The smell of pines and mountain rocks, warm under the sunshine, was so tempting, so sickeningly delicious, that I wanted to breathe more and more.

  You may think it strange, but I spent most of a week convincing myself that the air would not poison me.

  On the sixth day I began to move about on the naked stones. At first I stayed within twenty or thirty feet of the door of my ship, with airlocks left open. You see, visions of monsters continually haunted me. I had not yet seen what manner of animal life dwelt here.

  Soon I ventured farther, and when I saw rabbits and squirrels and deers, I wondered—were these the animal masters of this planet? But no, a new discovery set them aside. I came to the top of a ridge and saw, miles and miles below me, a highway!

  The heart-thump of that moment comes back to me now. What a tiny little speck of movement—that first little black vehicle coasting along the narrow white trail around the mountain. Yet it told me volumes.

  The speck disappeared. I stood trembling, terribly thrilled yet half afraid. There were creatures of intelligence on this planet. The deers hadn’t built that roadway. The rabbits and squirrels hadn’t propelled that black vehicle. Then who?

  I made haste to hide my space ship on a shelf of rock. The shelf would be inaccessible, I was sure, to any but flying animals. However, for a further safeguard, I built screens of boughs to form a green blanket over the ship’s surface.

  I strung a ladder of flexible black fiber down the perpendicular wall of rock so that I could come and go. I memorized several landmarks in the valley below me and the outline of peaks around me until I was confident I would always be able to find my way back to this hiding place. Even if I ventured all the day down to that narrow curving ribbon of highway.

  On the tenth day I came face to face with an Earth man.

  The date of that meeting may someday go down in the school books. It was a historic hour, when you stop to consider. For at no previous time, so far as the records of Venus historians go, had modern Earth men and modern Venus men ever met.

  I knew this; consequently it was a thrill to me—a much more wonderful and awful thrill than even the great Earth man, Columbus, must have felt when he first came face to face with the red man.

  I knew. But the Earth man who faced me didn’t know—and I couldn’t tell him. He gazed at my strange dress. He saw in me a curiously helpless creature, breathing heavily, employing my arms as well as my legs in moving along the steep slope. For I was not yet accustomed to the rarified atmosphere, and my weight seemed to have increased somewhat.

  “Luuuuu,” I greeted in my native tongue. Then I stood with one arm around the trunk of a tree, the other arm extended to show that I had no weapons. He came a few steps closer—long steps they were, for he was a very tall, rangy creature, not built on the sturdy, thick-set lines of Venusians.

  He uttered a variety of interesting sounds from his lips, accompanied by a wobble of the bump in his pebblebrained throat. I could only understand that he was curious about me, as I was about him.

  It was immeasurably satisfying to find him a creature of one head on one body, with two legs and two arms, fingers somewhat similar to my own except that he had only five on each hand. He stared with his two steady blue eyes; and when I showed no signs of advancing or retreating he relaxed the lines of his face and revealed a line of little square teeth. I too spread my lips to show my teeth, widely spaced and sharp-pointed like bird’s beaks. His smile vanished. Had I scared him?

  I might have relieved the awkwardness of this meeting if I had led him to my hidden ship and shown him the chart of planets marked with my course. But I was not ready to do this, and so our exchange of unintelligible words and gestures ended and we each went our separate ways. He looked back, saw me running away. It wasn’t my fear that made me run, but his fear of me.

  On other days we both returned, and sometimes other men accompanied him, and each had his fill of gazing, whether with simple curiosity or fear or an attitude of hatred and suspicion. But this first man claimed me as his own discovery, and as time went on he came more often alone to the rocktop camp where

  I was living, out of sight of ray ship.

  I would offer him some of the food which I had brought from Venus. And by his gestures I knew he was asking me where in these mountains I could have found such wonderful delicacies. But I was keeping my pledge to the Streets of Venus; my hidden ship must be my own secret. Confidence might come later, but my first task was to learn the language so I could understand the character of these people.

  Soon the b
right, new words were coming to life with meanings. It was a game that my new friend enjoyed, for as I later learned he was a schoolteacher.

  “Orange,” he said one day, and took from his pocket a bright-colored fruit. He held it up to my cheek. “Your face is orange.”

  My cheeks and broad forehead were indeed a fair match for the fruit, though my throat and pointed ears and six-fingered hands were a deeper bronze.

  “Clothes,” he said, touching my simple garments of gray fiber. Then he pointed to the spun metal parts of green and purple. “Collar . . . belt . . . cuffs I repeated his words, and my effort to imitate his inflections delighted him. Sizes and shapes and colors came thick and fast. I was short, my shoulders were very broad, my head was extremely large, my voice was deep and full, my teeth were pointed: these facts were made clear to me.

  In turn I tried to explain that my purple hair must all be combed from the right side straight over to the left because of pluuvonng—religion. But as yet we had no common basis for dealing with such abstractions.

  “Where did you come from?” he would ask over and over. The glint in his eye denoted his growing amazement. That I should be so eager to learn and yet so innocent of any knowledge made me a tantalizing mystery.

  His name was Frank Prentice. He took me back to his cabin one day and we sat on the porch overlooking the little mining settlement down the slope. Many miles below there stretched a blue valley like a level floor extending endlessly away from the mountains. When night came on, clusters of tiny lights could be seen.

  Frank Prentice taught school a few hours each day. In the late afternoons he would tend his garden of vegetables and give feed to his chickens.

  This, I thought, was what life was like on the Earth. It was a land where slender men lived in log houses and divided their time between teaching children and raising food. Perhaps. I would take Frank Prentice back home to show Venus what the Earth was like.

  I was given a place in Frank Prentice’s log cabin. I ate by his low fire, I slept on one of the big furry skins on the floor, I helped him with the chickens and the garden. Whenever he took up a tool for work I would place my hand on it, and he would let me try the stroke to get it right. Hoeing and raking and spading were new to me and so very interesting.