The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “Will we ever get away?” Mary wailed.

  “Keep running,” said Bruce. “The more they fight, the farther we’ll get.”

  CHAPTER XII

  Gift of the Gods

  Out of battle a wounded beetle came zigzagging along crazily, threatening to capsize with every sixth step.

  “All aboard,” Red Mouth shouted. All three caught the creature on the fly and hooked a short, perilous ride.

  “Off!” Red Mouth yelled, and they all bounded off the safe side as the beast went death-diving down the steep mountainside.

  “Every little bit helps,” Bruce shouted. “Come on, honey. The goal isn’t far off.”

  “The Major?” Mary asked breathlessly.

  “He’s back in the fray somewhere,” said Red Mouth.

  “We’ll never wait,” said Bruce.

  As they ran they could hear the big stones go clattering down the south mountain side to impede the advance of more scaled creatures.

  “They’re stopping to fight it out,” Mary called, with a backward glance. Those rolling stones had dealt the mass of snail-eaters a real setback.

  “Let them do the fighting,” Red Mouth called, “we’ll claim the prize. That must be the glorified kwazz straight ahead in that grove.”

  “It’s all ours,” said Bruce. For now, from every backward glance it became more evident that the giants were not only winning their fray; they were forcing the snail-eaters to retreat down the mountainside. And the temptation to keep them running was too great. The giants were forgetful of their goal at the summit. Their rules of war had been discarded. They were determined above all to exterminate some of the enemy.

  High on a shoulder to the south, a few snail-eaters had broken away from the main fight to claim their own private success. They were about to isolate a creature of their own size—one with a more perfect human form than theirs.

  “The Major!” Mary thought. Somehow before her pity could get a grip on her, she turned her back on the scene.

  “At last we walk toward the victory kwazz” Bruce said, looking almost reverently toward the grove.

  “They’ve spoken of it as a recent gift of the gods,” said Mary, “though I suppose it was actually built by some of these natives.”

  “If it turns out to be a musty tower of logs,” said Red Mouth, “we’ll know it was built by the potato giants.”

  Red Mouth believed he had never seen this summit. His capricious memory that had been so bright at the beginning of the trail seemed to have reached its limits.

  They walked into the mountain grove. Their own plan was fixed. They would decorate the door of the kwazz with boughs to show that it was taken in the name of the potato giants.

  Then there would be the honey-mooners’ chance, not to wait to share the victory, but to race on, and on, and on into the unknown regions beyond, in the hope that somewhere they would find their way to a space port.

  “Luck has favored you,” said Red Mouth, “in giving you this many paces ahead of your captors. This time you must not wait for the Major. To do so would throw away your chance. Every foot of distance you place between yourselves and this grove of trees on the summit will be a lasting barrier between yourselves and the fate you have escaped.”

  “Are you going to come with us?” Bruce asked.

  “I haven’t decided,” said Red Mouth. They saw him look from one to the other of them, as if unsure of their wishes. He seemed to be asking, had he or had he not won their trust? “Are you inviting me to on with you?”

  “That is for Bruce to say,” said Mary.

  “Red Mouth, I wonder if you are not in love with my wife.”

  “I think I am,” Red Mouth said. “She is so much like—like someone I’ve forgotten. Please forgive me.”

  “I admire you,” said Bruce, placing a hand on Red Mouth’s shoulder. “You have seen us through dangers. I hope you will go on with us, not only as we search for the space port, but all the way back to the Earth to be our friend.” Mary could have kissed Bruce with all her heart for those words. She could see the light of appreciation in Red Mouth’s eyes. And in his own way he expressed that appreciation. He jumped up, kicked his heels together, and turned cartwheels.

  Then he stood on his head. And as he was looking backward, his expression changed to surprise.

  “The Major! There he goes!” Mary turned, looked back across to the shoulder a half mile distant. Four snail-eaters were up on the Major. They tightened ropes on his hands and feet and rushed him down over the slope. They were beating their arms in a rhythm that meant food.

  “On to the kwazz,” Red Mouth yelled.

  “On to the kwazz,” Bruce echoed. They could see its dark form now. Mary’s first impression was that it was dark and smooth and sphere-shaped. But from a different angle they saw it was long and cigar-shaped like a space ship. Its sides were glistening with a metallic lustre.

  It was a space ship!

  That opening in the grove of trees had been broken through by its landing on this summit. Three or four seasons’ growth had sprung up since the break-through. And so it was apparent the ship had been simply sitting here all this time.

  This was the summit. Beyond, the mountain broke off abruptly above a two-mile-deep valley. On the edge the ship stood poised.

  “Whoopee!” Bruce cried out. “Whoopee!” He caught Mary and Red Mouth by the hands and together they ran forward. “Whoopee!”

  “What?” said Red Mouth. “Are you calling me by my real name?”

  “Whoopee?” Mary echoed. That word had struck a fire a few times before. Now it seemed to set Red Mouth aflame with forgotten memories. He answered excitedly.

  “Not Whoopie—Hoopie! That’s me! Of course it’s me. I’m Hoopie Joe, the circus clown. I could flipflop through more hoops of fire than any clown in the business. That was it. They were bringing us up to Mercury to the space ports to put on an exhibition of Earth skill. Lena and I were—”

  Red Mouth broke off very much startled by what was suddenly flooding back into his memory. Mary and Bruce stopped and stared at him.

  “Lena,” he said quietly. “Lena . . . She was lovely—like you, Mary.” They looked across into the grove to where he was looking. There were several mounds of stone.

  “It was an awful accident,” Red Mouth said. “A sudden stop that was like a crash. We were in the middle of a forced landing. Through the clouds we saw this abrupt drop too late. The pilot barely touched the warning bell . . . then. . . it’s too terrifying. My memory—”

  “Don’t think of it,” said Mary.

  “Somehow I was able to throw myself away from the wall just in time to escape death. The others weren’t so lucky. I must have walked around for days and days with the fires of pain in my skull. I hardly knew what I was doing, as I buried the others. But that is all past. Listen . . .”

  “They’re coming,” said Mary. “It’s some of the giants . . . marching . . . victorious.”

  “Don’t wait for them,” said Red Mouth. “Here. This is the master key that makes the ship yours . . . I remember!”

  He took the brass and steel ornament from his belt and placed it in Bruce’s hand.

  “Don’t stand there dreaming,” Red Mouth said sharply. “There’s nothing wrong with the ship. It was left in perfect condition. Don’t you understand? It’s yours.”

  Bruce turned the key in the outer door of the airlocks. The door opened. Mary stepped in. Bruce followed, then turned around.

  “Come on, Hoopy Joe, you’re going back with us.”

  The circus clown shook his head. “Thank you, no. Not without Lena . . . Goodbye.”

  Bruce shook his hand. Mary kissed him on the painted red mouth. “We’ll never forget you, Red Mouth,” she said.

  They hurried to the control room and touched the levers. They plunged off into the sky.

  Bruce throttled down to an air-cruising speed and circled to come up over the same long ridge trail.

  They caug
ht a glimpse of one small isolated group of snail-eaters, no longer trying to win the race to the summit, but settling down around a private feast, at a safe distance from their giant enemies.

  “We’ll have to tell your father,” said Bruce, “that the Major stayed to keep another appointment.”

  A little farther on they floated over the summit. Potato giants looked very tiny, staring up at them in bewilderment. Vammerick rode at the head of the procession now, waving with triumphant little gestures. For the moment the victory march came to a stop as the beetles responded to some deep instinct of curiosity. They twisted their dark heads. Did they realize that the prize of their long journey had suddenly leaped off into the skies?

  All this amazement must have delighted Red Mouth’s clownish heart. The last that Mary and Bruce saw of him, he was performing a series of merry flipflops right over the giants’ heads.

  THE RED DOOR

  First published in Fantastic Adventures, November 1946

  It was easy to open the door, and just as easy to walk through it. But nobody had ever come back—alive!

  CHAPTER I

  Levaggo Worries

  King Levaggo, the cruel monarch of Askandia, had grown fat from worrying. He had worried about seizing the throne in the first place, and for the past ten years he had worried over keeping it. Today he was worrying more than ever.

  He secluded himself in his private study where he could pace the floor unobserved. This room fitted his mood perfectly. The wall paper design was a dense forest with black trees, some growing to the left, some to the right, none straight up. When he paced to the left, the trees seemed to push him back. When he paced to the right, more black trunks resisted him. His only relief was to pause in front of the big arched window that looked down on the winding ribbons of mountain highway.

  “The devils! Why don’t they come? Why don’t they at least report? They’re loafing. I ought to have them shot!” All through this month his eager eyes had been watching for the return of six armed men. He had dispatched them on the first day of November to watch all the roads. There would be a reward for the one who committed the secret assassination.

  “I ought to have them shot!”

  “Save your bullets,” said Whiteblock, sauntering into the study. “Relax.”

  . The king glared at Whiteblock and said nothing. This little man was his confidential adviser, and smart. He was a man of many talents, and the king didn’t belittle his words. At least not often.

  Whiteblock paused at the window and looked at his soiled fingers in the light. He had just finished building an ingenious instrument of death, a job to which he had devoted many months.

  “As I told you before,” Whiteblock said, “it’s very risky to send men out on the road with the order to assassinate your nephew.”

  “In secret.”

  “Secret assassinations aren’t easy. They require the skill of an artist. Any of those clumsy louts you sent would leave clues that the common people would pick up. Then the Old Lady would find out, and where would you be?”

  The king stared gloomily at the will paper. He knew where he would be. In the deep forest. Hiding out.

  For in spite of his power as King of Askandia, the real power belonged to the people. And their champion was that eccentric old character, his own great aunt. She was cross-eyed and homely and old, and had the wildest head of white hair in all Asia Minor, and laughed with a laugh as deep as a barrel. Her name was so long no one ever bothered to remember more than Maria Kagofanzi Dodoplume. Everyone called her the Old Lady.

  “I know you’d prefer to have your murders committed away from the palace,” Whiteblock said. “No blood on the floor. No suspicions.”

  “That’s right,” said the king. “If they could catch him on the way home from the wars, and murder him quietly—by accident—no one would need to know that he was Prince Randall—”

  “The rightful heir.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Sorry,” said Whiteblock. But he wasn’t. He knew where the king’s sensitive nerves could be struck. A deft stroke here and there. The more the king worried, the more important Whiteblock became. It was a job with rich rewards, being the most intimate adviser to the monarch of Askandia. “As you were saying—”

  “No one would need to know it was Randall.”

  “My theory is, as you know, precisely opposite,” said Whiteblock. “Let him come back to the palace, if he will. Let him roam through the halls, through the gardens, through the power plant, into the Arena. Let him know that death awaits anyone who tries to trespass through the Red Door into the vault—”

  “You’ve said all that before.”

  “I repeat it. Let the Council know that he has been warned. But make him want to trespass.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “He will. That’s his nature. He’s bold. He’ll take the risk. When he does—zinngo!—he’s gone!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I tell you, the deadly gadget is complete, Levaggo. Relax! Relax!” Whiteblock took his own advice and slipped into the huge green chair in front of the monarch’s desk. His diminutive form was dwarfed by the massive furniture. But he was not completely at ease. When his nerves were thus on edge, his high-pitched voice was capable of a savage bark. “Relax, I say. This can’t fail. I’ll demonstrate it to you.”

  The king growled something inarticulate. Three times in the past three years his best laid plans to do away with his second cousin, Prince Randall, had gone awry.

  Whiteblock waited for a response. His thin dexterous fingers toyed with a cloth kit of small steel tools which he always carried. The king stood silent, angry, staring out at the afternoon sunlight. His bulging shadow across the desk betrayed the nervous twitches of his puffy jowls and his sharp doublepointed beard.

  “Are you still worrying about that servant girl’s dream?” Whiteblock snapped.

  “I didn’t like it,” the king said, turning to look down into the narrowed eyes of his cocky little adviser. “I didn’t like it a bit.”

  “Just because a servant girl happens, to dream of trouble here in the palace—”

  He broke off short. A girl’s heel-clicks sounded through the adjoining hall. It was the beautiful Sondra, bringing water for the window plants.

  “Sondra!” the king barked. “Come here.”

  Whiteblock raised an eyebrow. “I’ll wait by the Red Door. It’s ready to deal quick death whenever you want a demonstration. First I though I would try it out on a criminal, or one of the palace musicians,” he gave the king a cynical wink, “but I softened and decided to use a goat instead. See you later.”

  CHAPTER II

  Sondra’s Dream

  Whiteblock looked up at Sondra as she passed him in the doorway. She chose not to see him. As a servant, she squandered no smiles. He shrugged his thin shoulders and walked away.

  Sondra moved around the desk to the sunlit windows. Her soft waves of light brown hair caught a glint of copper from the sun.

  “Rather late in the day to be watering the plants, don’t you think?” the king said hatefully.

  “I did not wish to disturb your majesty this morning,” Sondra said softly. “You were standing at the window, lost in thought. So I decided to wait.”

  He turned to block her path. “Sondra, you’re a sorceress.”

  She stopped short. She was afraid of King Levaggo and she rued the night by the great fireplace that she had first spoken of her strange dreams. The less he knew her, the safer she would be. With forced poise she placed the water pitcher on the window shelf and folded her arms.

  “I want you to repeat that last dream to me,” he said.

  “Again?” Her low, calm voice was almost mocking in its contrast to his rasping words. He seemed to be consuming her with his lustful red eyes. “Again?”

  “The whole dream. Don’t lie to me, now, or I’ll hang you.”

  “I would never lie to you, your majesty,” she said. “I
simply dreamed that you were about to tear the month of November from the calendar when a fanfare of trumpets sounded outside the palace. Someone had arrived. It was the son of Randello, the rightful heir—”

  “Rightful! Why, you damned traitor!” He struck her across the cheek with his open hand. He stood glaring at her, breathing hard. “Go on! Go on!”

  She shrank back, her fingers touching her face, her lips trembling.

  “I’m sorry, your majesty. You see, that was just the dream. I forgot—”

  “Go on. You dreamed that my cousin Randall came here to the palace. Then what?”

  “He was on his way back from the war with Japan. Now that it was over, he was coming back for a visit. And so—I can’t tell you any more.”

  “What happened? Give me everything. Don’t you dare slight a single detail!”

  Sondra pressed her hand over her eyes. She regained her voice and went on, slowly, evenly.

  “You and Whiteblock whispered together. The two of you agreed that Randall must be killed before the tenth anniversary of his father’s death. Otherwise—”

  “What do you know about the tenth anniversary?”

  “But doesn’t everyone know? Doesn’t the whole kingdom expect the Old Lady to enter the Vaults and read Randello’s letter—his message for all people who still love his memory ten years after his death? Doesn’t everyone know?”

  “All right, all right,” the king growled. It annoyed him that all the court gossip could become so commonplace that even the servant girls could dream about it. But there was something about Sondra. Her keenness. Her sure knowledge of matters that he thought were closely guarded secrets. How did she know what he and Whiteblock had been whispering about? “So you’ve dreamed up some fantasy about Randall being killed. Very funny. I think we can laugh that off and dismiss the whole matter.”

  “Thank you, your majesty.” Sondra picked up the water pitcher and started away.