The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  He backed into the window, tumbling. For an instant he hung on a balance like a teeter-totter, face up, arms up, knees kicking. The water hornets were all over his ankles, spiking him like mad. It was his kick that did it. He flung his legs upward and he toppled out.

  When we came away from the window, several minutes later, our eyes were still echoing the last sight of David Pemberton, far below us in the crimson waters. A hundred and twenty feet below us, he had been only a dark shadow, kicking helplessly at the waves. And then another shadow had closed in on him. Not an ocean lizard, as I had supposed, but—as Loonza’s practiced eyes knew—a swarm of water hornets.

  “He certainly was attractive to them,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What will happen to him?” I asked.

  “They’ll force him out toward the sea . . . Then there’ll be other, larger water animals waiting . . . but he’ll never know about them.”

  The three of us—Loonza, Zober and I—now looked about to see what damage remained to be done, and we soon realized that enough had already been accomplished to restore peace and quiet to this tower-top palace. David, a Paint-Face, and Propsander had lost their lives. Uncle Willard was missing.

  What had happened to Uncle Willard? The last I had seen of him, he had been in the act of falling, and his gun had gone into the tile-walled pool.

  Bud’s eyes were large as he told us later, in deathly whispers, “You won’t be seeing your Uncle Willard any more, George. Not unless you wait around for eighty years.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Paint-Face stunned him, I guess. Anyway he had an awful sick look and his eyes were half closed when they dragged him down to a room where there’s a big funnel in the floor and a circular wall of glass.”

  “Was the Mong there?”

  “Gee, yes. He’s the one that pulled a lever and made all the ghagstic rain down. That sort of straightened your Uncle Willard up for a minute, and then—well, from then on he was all coated. It turned him into a regular statue, and they carted him off and fixed him up on a pedestal . . .”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The little old man knew that he was about to die. His officials were gathered around him as he explained the strange relationship with Zober—his own stepbrother of many years ago.

  “You may be sure that Zober will govern you well, and that he will never sell your own world—this Crimson Sea—to any invaders. Believe in him—even as I have learned to believe in him . . .”

  And then his eyes gave a last curious flicker of interest and it was almost as if he were enjoying his own bit of mischief in his final moment.

  “Some of my statues . . . they may come to life . . . If so, they will still have life before them . . . When you tell them that, ask them if they are very angry . . . for what I have done . . .” And then he ceased to breathe, and he was like an image of himself carved in old wood . . .

  We swam swiftly across the crimson water, trying to overtake Loonza. She was leading us a merry chase; but just as I thought I was going to fade out and stop from sheer exhaustion, she whirled about and led us into a little cove where the soft amber lights of the rocks glowed down upon the three of us. Her golden flesh shone with unearthly beauty, and her smile was tantalizing. Together we sat on the low rocks with out feet dangling in the warm waters. Zober sat on one side of her, I on the other.

  At first there were only the low sounds of our feet dipping in the waves, and the light click of the shells woven into her bathing suit as she nestled back against the wall of rock—and then—“What a musical sound the waves make,” Zober observed.

  “I told you about it once long ago,” Loonza said. “Do you remember? George, you remember, I’m sure.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “Listen. It’s a little song. Loonza . . . lenza . . . linza . . . lee . . . And that’s what my mother heard when she named me.”

  “It’s a pretty name,” I said. “People on the earth would like your name . . . Loonza, do you think you would like the earth?”

  When she didn’t answer, Zober said, “Loonza, I’m going to need your good help here in our little ocean world.” She looked up. “Aren’t you going back to the earth, Zober?”

  “No. No, Loonza, my place is here now. I hope you’ll stay with me.” When Loonza decided to be silent, I spoke again. “Do you remember the moon that I’ve told you about. If you would be my wife—go back with me—go back and see the wonders of the earth—”

  Loonza trembled as if she were cold. She pressed my hand. “It’s a little too terrifying. The moon—yes, I would like that. But all those other things—industries, courts, laws, lobbying, taxes, people that shout at you and make you buy things, and all your radios and automobiles and trains and ships that you have told me about—”

  “They’re really not so bad. We like them, on the earth. If you were there—”

  “No, I’d never be like that. I’m a person who likes to have my light the same day after day. It never changes here. Never . . . But I’ve liked you, George. You’ve been very kind. And you were the only one who could understand my heartbreak.”

  I laughed softly. “Maybe that’s because I’m distantly related to the man who caused it.” I drew a deep breath. “Two of the crewmen, Blanchard and Casey are ready to take me back soon.”

  “A few more days of visit first, George,” Zober said. “This is the first time I’ve had a chance to catch up on earth news for the past eighty years or so. I’d like a little fuller story of my descendants before you go back.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “May I listen too,” Loonza asked. “By all means,” said Zober. “After all, if you’re going to marry me, you’ll become the step-grandmother to a pretty big family. I hope you won’t mind.”

  “Whoo. Will I be a grandmother as soon as I’m married?”

  I laughed. “Dreadful, isn’t it? You’ll be my great grandmother.”

  “George!” she wailed, “will you promise not to tell anyone I’m your great grandmother.”

  “I promise.”

  “If it’s a real promise, you know, we should seal it with a kiss—like this.” She bent over to me and kissed me—as sweet a kiss as one could ever ask from a prospective relative three generations removed. She said, “That’s what your great-grandfather taught me.”

  SECRET OF THE SERPENT

  First published in Fantastic Adventures, January 1948

  Bob Garrison had forgotten everything about his former life—but in his new life as a serpent he had a great deal to learn . . .

  CHAPTER I

  I strained to keep my head out of the water as I floundered around in the blackness, trying to find a way out. The warm air smelled of blossoms and I think I should have been lulled back to sleep if it hadn’t been for the water that kept rising around me. Sleep?—how long had I been sleeping? How long had this complete blackness engulfed me? How did I happen to be here? Where did I come from? Who was I? What was my name?

  A sickening feeling ran through the length of my long, coiled body. I didn’t even know my own name. I had forgotten everything—everything that I was supposed to know in order to carry out my desperate purpose. What purpose?

  WHAT PURPOSE?

  I screamed within my mind like a woman falling to her death. There had been a purpose. An urgent purpose—something far more important than the life or death of any one man.

  But how could I have a purpose relating to the life or death of any man when I was only a coiling, writhing mass of flesh, lost in some underground blackness, with an awful sleepiness engulfing me, and black water rising around me, and blossom-scented air lulling me into sickening illusions of nothingness.

  I tried to fight the water back with my arms—I had no arms—I had no legs—and my efforts resulted in the random thrashing of my long, snakelike body.

  I was a serpent!

  I had been a man, and I had fallen through the dense purple clouds as a man�
�I was beginning to remember now. I had come to this ghastly space island, where the outcasts of the many planets were sent—to live or to die—and at the very minute that I had been sure I would land safely, I had suddenly fallen.

  To die? No, to sink into a mire of blindness, deep in a crevice, where no sun-like eye of the heavens could penetrate. And there, in the slimy waters of a greenish black river, I had fought to keep my grip on those last few precious minutes of life. Broken bones, crushed skull, life’s blood ebbing away, pain, pain, such burning pain, such child-like terror of the unknown that is death—and then—merciful sleep . . .

  But now my consciousness was returning, sharp and sensitive, and my new snake-like body was finding ways to swim.

  I swam cautiously, holding my serpent head about a foot and a half above the surface of the water. Presently a light broke through the deadly blackness—a streak of green which skipped along the surface of the inky waters.

  The ripples of green expanded. The cavern walls gradually changed from coal-black to rock-brown, and I lifted my head to look up through hundreds of feet of vertical surfaces. The planet’s outer surface would be up there somewhere, perhaps two or three miles above the waters of this deep-cut stream. I was a prisoner—yes, twice a prisoner. A prisoner of the deep crevasse and a prisoner of some ghastly trick of nature that had given me this serpent’s body.

  I looked back, now, and studied the forty-foot length of purple and green body that was now my dwelling place. It was frightening and revolting and sickening, and I hated the sight of myself, and immediately I wished—

  Oh, what a wish! What an awful thing to wish, at the very moment I was hating myself so intensely.

  I wished that I could frighten someone else! I wished to see someone else revolted and sickened by the flash of my green and purple tail through these black waters.

  I would find someone!

  It was a hideous purpose, but I was a serpent, and it was my purpose. I was no longer an honored emissary from the earth who had come to this far-off space island with the purpose of finding—

  WHAT WAS MY PURPOSE?

  For a moment it had almost flashed back to me; but now it was gone again, and only the snake in which I dwelt could dominate my actions. I wanted to frighten someone, and so I swam through the twisting, sharp-edged passage.

  Here the walls were only five feet apart, and as I tried my luck at climbing I discovered the strength of my coils. In the dim light I saw, for the first time, that hundreds of folds that gave form and design to my yellowish-green belly. The wall’s sharp edges prodded me with only trifling jabs of discomfort. It wasn’t bad, this business of crawling. It came easy. I was beginning to like it.

  “If you’re a snake,” I said to myself, “you don’t actually mind being a snake—”

  I was speaking half aloud, and my breathy hiss fascinated me. I tried it again.

  “If you’re a snake—snake—s-s-s-snake—s-s-s-s-sss!”

  My hiss echoed up through the walls and there came an answer!

  “Look out, down there!”

  It was a human voice and it rang down through the walls like a fire alarm.

  “Look out!” it cried. “There’s a monster!”

  Up through the hundreds of feet of jagged brown walls I caught sight of seven or eight tiny figures of human beings who were working at the upper end of a long rope. Then I saw, as my eye followed downward to the near end of the line, the object of their warning cries. Two little men, clad in loin cloths, had been lowered to a shelf of rock not fifty feet away from my present position.

  I say two little men, for they looked to me to be not more than two and a half or three feet tall.

  “Pygmies!” I said aloud. Then, with another satisfying hiss, “Pygmiessssss!”

  The two little fellows were wild with fear at the sight of me. They clambered along the perilous ledge, trying to get back to the rope by which they had been lowered. I could see that they had been working with ropes and nets of their own, evidently trying to fish something out of the river.

  Things happened fast, then, for my serpent instincts worked more powerfully than my human intelligence.

  One of the pygmies slipped and fell.

  He struck the surface of the water with a splash. I could see him there in the deep green shadows, a black form bobbing up at the edge of the rock wall.

  I slithered down to him. He screamed and struggled, but I caught him in the coils of my body and crushed him. Then my jaws opened wide and I took him in.

  One quick, painful swallow, and I got him down.

  The men above were firing at me now, so I swam hard back into the darkness where their rays couldn’t touch me. My belly was full, and I was comfortable and secure in my warm black waters. Except for the dull torture of my human conscience, I was happy to be a serpent.

  CHAPTER II

  The first animal I met, other than the little human animals I had encountered in the river walls, was another monster, who like myself, was not quite at home in his hideous form. The very sight of him gave me a great deal of mental trouble.

  If I had had no more mind than an ordinary serpent I might not have suffered any agony whatever. I might have attacked him, and either he would have killed me or I, him.

  But that bothersome streak of human intelligence which I still possessed—the remnant of my previous existence, which was still haunting me—made me know something very important about this new monster.

  It made me know that he, too, was a person who had been transformed.

  I met him on the very rim of the crevasse on the morning that I found my way to the top. I had climbed through the long, long night, by the light of six different moons—or neighboring planets, I couldn’t be sure which. These heavenly bodies had crossed over the deep gash that had imprisoned me for so many hours, and each time I caught sight of one, sailing slowly across my thin line of sky, I felt compelled to climb, faster and faster.

  Each time one passed on, out of sight, I felt weak and exhausted from my effort and wished that I were again at the surface of the water. I belonged in the water. I was safe there. No, there was another moon sliding into sight—I must climb up toward it—faster, faster!

  When the star-eye which this far-off planet called its sun at last began to gray the sky with morning I was sure that the night had lasted for scores and scores of earth hours, and I knew that there would also be a very long day ahead. It wouldn’t be wise for me to start back through the deep descent until I had at least found some nourishment. Somewhere there must be more pygmies. I kept my eyes sharpened for the sight of any movement along the surface of the rocky ledge. And there, in the pink light of dawn I saw it.

  It was large, for a cat—large enough to be a draft horse or a small elephant—but that wasn’t what made it such a weird and formidable sight to my eyes. It had two heads, and its four eyes, always turned in the same direction were casting their baleful greenish-yellow glare glow at me as I ascended.

  The cat-like body hardly moved. I might have expected it to bound away in fear, but it stood its ground. My coils carried me up through the last twenty feet of ascent and I worked my way, as limber as any earthworm, along the edge.

  The double-headed cat-monster watched me with its four steady eyes. When my flipping tail struck a loose stone and sent it clattering down through the crevasse, the cat-monster didn’t wink an eye, but simply went on staring at me. The hair began to rise on its back. Its claws emerged, thin white lines that spoke a warning.

  I stopped, holding my head about four feet above the surface of the boulder upon which my chest—if it could be called a chest—had crawled to a stop. I drew my head back a few inches and slowly opened my jaws.

  The cat-monster’s shoulders hunched dangerously, and the beast showed his sabre teeth.

  Just then the slight rustle of feet sounded from a heap of rocks to my left, and I turned in time to see the first shot fired. The tongues of red flame darted out from the muzzles of
three guns.

  Pygmies again!

  They were shooting at the cat-monster! One blast—two—three! Deadly rays of zeego fire. I had seen enough of it on the earth, I should know. Whoever the pygmies were, they possessed zeego ray guns that had certainly come from the earth.

  My human impulse was to leap over the rocks and pounce upon the little men with my fists swinging. But human impulses were only a handicap to my new body. It worked on principles of its own, and instantly I was crawling at high speed.

  With fangs bared, I pounced upon the surprised trio. Three zeego guns dropped. Two of the pygmies were running down a cliff path as hard as they could go. Their feet thudded with a fancy little rhythm that reminded me of a military drum I had heard somewhere. The other sound was the scream of the third pygmy, whose voice might have been compared to a screech of a clarinet in high register. It ended with a gurgling, choking sound as my coiling body closed around him.

  One’s serpent habits take hold quickly, I found. Without debating the matter, I simply gulped him down.

  I would have given the other two a hard chase, then, if it hadn’t been for another cry that chilled my cold blood. The monster-cat—in pain—dying? I wondered. It had certainly been struck by the rays of zeego fire. I slithered back over the rocks to the cliff’s edge.

  The creature had been struck across both of its foreheads, just above the four eyes—four greenish-yellow eyes that were wide with pain and terror.

  The lids all began to close simultaneously, for a moment I thought the cat-monster was dying. Its shoulders sank and it went down, and it was shrinking—

  Shrinking, smaller and smaller—crying with pain—crying with the voice of a girl—

  It was transforming into something—something more nearly human. Its two heads were growing smaller. Its body was losing the fur covering, growing whiter. Pink shoulders caught the pink sunlight. Human arms were forming, clasping the breasts of its human body and then it was running from me, from one projecting rock to another, until it had hidden somewhere in the crags.