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The Almost Complete Short Fiction

Page 309

by Don Wilcox


  “That was it,” said Flora. “It was your manner—your friendliness and your courage. You remember you rushed after those little gunmen the minute they started shooting. Pete Hogan wouldn’t have done that.”

  “But Ernest Marsch might have. After all, he’s the one who employed you to come up here and tame some of his obstreperous workers. He wouldn’t want to see you shot down after investing in you.”

  She smiled at the corners of her eyes. “You’re right. If they’d killed me, he’d have shaken the gold out of my teeth to line his pocketbook.”

  “But you knew that I was Bob, not Ernest Marsch? Are you sure I’m not Marsch?”

  “You were quite considerate of me while I was cornered in that cavern pool,” she said. “For a snake, you used remarkably nice manners. Marsch wouldn’t have been that decent even at his human best, you know.”

  I must admit that her words pleased me, and I felt that I was better acquainted with her than I had been at any time during the trip. Marsch had tried to drive a wedge between the two of us from the start. He had warned me that she was a dangerous person—that she had once come very nearly being a gangster’s moll—that she had been mixed up in a gang war that had resulted in five killings one dark night on the west side. But I knew that whatever her past had been, she had later gained an enviable reputation in her social service work with the tough, homeless men on the west side. It was said that she could walk into a mob of quarreling, angry men and have them singing hymns within twenty minutes!

  That was why Ernest Marsch had hired her for this job, as I had learned from their conversations on the ship. He was lining this planet up for some high-powered commercial venture, and he wanted the inhabitants—the human inhabitants—to be at least docile enough that they wouldn’t obstruct the march of progress.

  Her task wasn’t going to be any snap, judging from what I had seen of those devilish pygmies. Moreover, if there were many freaks like me, half animal and half human, little Miss Hessel was going to have a big handful of trouble.

  “Do they consider you a prisoner here?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she looked wistfully at the window and the ridge of green mountains beyond. “They seem to think they’re going to find Ernest Marsch somewhere, though it beats me how they can find any trace of lost persons in such a big empty world.”

  “And if they find Marsch—?”

  “Well, I’ve told them I’m bound to work for him. I signed the contract and took out life insurance before I boarded.”

  “I wonder what he turned into.”

  “It’s all theory,” she said, “but one of the men was saying they believe a person’s mood or humor at the time he struck the planet’s explosive atmosphere is the thing that determines his change.” Then she laughed. “No, it can’t be that. You couldn’t have been in the mood of a serpent.”

  “Are you sure?” I thought the matter over privately. I had certainly been spying on Ernest Marsch right up toward the moment of coming in on a landing, and I had been watching him as suspiciously as any snake. “But you couldn’t have been a two-headed feline.”

  She was amused. “I don’t know. When I try to remember that last moment before we exploded, all I can recall is that I was very curious—as curious as any cat, I’ll bet—and I was trying to watch you and Ernest Marsch at the same time—trying not to displease either of you, though I felt sure that you were almost at swords’ points—”

  “Ye gods,” I said. “This theory is getting stickier every minute. Maybe you were being a two-headed feline.” Then, “If there’s anything to it, they’ll never find Marsch. It isn’t easy to locate a worm, you know.”

  “It shouldn’t be so hard to pick up a wolf,” she said, giving me a quick look. “And I don’t mean a harmless wolf either. If it hadn’t been for your help on the trip, I think I might have forgot my good manners and shot Ernest Marsch through the heart.”

  “Really?”

  “I didn’t sign up to be his girl friend, you know. That little pistol of mine has been a friend in need more than once.”

  Then her edged voice softened and she looked at me sympathetically. “We’ll have to get you out of this awful shape. They’ve made a good start, anyway, getting your brain back in order. But it’s just a start. Are they going to find a way? Is that the confidence you wanted to give me?”

  “The confidence is this,” I said. “I’ve just learned that this laboratory is the property of Dr. Hunt.”

  “Emerson Hunt? The one who was kidnapped from the earth?”

  “I think so. I’m almost sure. It all points that way—these advanced experiments and all. You know what a reputation he had.”

  “And he’s here—alive?”

  “Yes. I’m on his trail.”

  “You mean—?”

  “That that’s my secret mission. I’ve some here to find him. Confidentially, an association of scientists has backed me in my plan to try to rescue him. You can realize how much it will mean to the earth—to the whole solar system—if he can be found and taken back.”

  “Oh!” Flora was gasping. “Oh, what a miracle that would be! It would! It would be a miracle for the whole world!”

  “If not a miracle, at least a blessing.”

  “Of course!” She was rather too excited over the idea to know what she was saying, and I quieted her gently to make sure our conversation wouldn’t be overheard by any of the guards. She was at once so enthusiastic that she was ready to break her contract with Marsch simply to help me. “No wonder you were always talking about some big purpose. How did you know he would be here?”

  There was much that I couldn’t tell her as yet. But the one fearful fact had to be told at once.

  “Flora, listen to me carefully. I’m going to need all the help I can get, but we’re going to be working against this whole weird world. I can tell that already—and you can too. Don’t you see that they’re thriving here in this strange scientific fortress on the genius of Dr. Hunt? Nobody here is going to let him get away if they can help it. Worst of all, I’m already doubting whether he’ll want to get away.”

  “But why? If he has a sure chance to get back to the earth, why—”

  “Because people change when they come to this land. Dr. Hunt has probably changed too.”

  “But if you talk to him—if you explain—”

  I laughed rather mockingly at her extreme innocence. “Maybe you can talk to him, but not I.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you forget that I’m still a serpent? Not an ordinary serpent, but a serpent with four legs and a human mind. To a scientist with the advanced ideas of Dr. Hunt, I’ll be something to be analyzed and observed, not listened to.”

  “Oh!”

  “Eventually, they’ll dissect me and see how I’m put together. I’ve already heard some of the consulting scientists mention that Dr. Hunt will be eager to get my skeleton for his permanent collection.”

  Six guards marched in, then, and our visit came to an end abruptly when they announced that Dr. Hunt was waiting to see me. Flora stood back of her chair, watching speechless as they wheeled me away in my cage.

  CHAPTER VIII

  I have had the common sensation of chills running down my spine many times in normal life, but I must say that I never knew any feeling like this before. When one’s spine is fully forty feet long, and a series of chills chases through from head to tail, I’m telling you it’s wild. Zing—zing—zing—before one chill gets well started, another’s on the way.

  There was far more to this mountain laboratory than I had guessed, at first sight. I hadn’t realized that Z Lab could mean just that—the last unit in a series named after the entire alphabet. But after we had moved past six or eight units, each bearing a different letter, I began to get a new appreciation of the extent of this place.

  I was on my way to H laboratory. This had possibly become Dr. Hunt’s favorite because it bore his initial.

  H Laboratory opened t
o me automatically. The grilled metal doorway slid back into the wall, and a second door—a checkerboard of silver and gold—parted in the middle and folded backward in two wings.

  “No talking, now,” the guards warned me. I had almost forgotten that they were with me, I was so intent upon the details of all this laboratory grandeur.

  “No talking,” I repeated, rather insolently.

  “And no undue crawling or twitching,” one of the guards added.

  “As if I had room to crawl in this cage,” I replied.

  “Quiet!” he snapped.

  “I can’t even twitch,” I added. The serpent instinct was working on me. I was looking for ways to be annoying. “Can I breathe?”

  “All right, breathe, but stop talking.”

  “Hisssss-hisssss!”

  “Quiet.”

  “I’m just breathing,” I said. “Can I help it if I’ve got a cold?”

  The six guards stopped me in the middle of the doorway and put their heads together. Then I knew I had gone too far. The first thing I knew they’d start exploding more yellow powders over my head and I’d lose what little freedom I’d gained.

  One of them stalked into a small supply room which we had just passed and returned, a moment later, bearing something that resembled a long-nosed oil can, but must have been some sort of high-powered hypodermic needle.

  I was tempted to pull some fancy whip act and lash the fellow with my tail before he could give me the works. Something told me to take it easy—there might be worse things in store if I didn’t at least pretend to cooperate. They gave me the shot.

  The needle caught me about twelve feet from the tapered end of my body. One sharp ice-cold jab! All of those chills that had run down my long spine a few minutes before came chasing up again.

  Chills and dizziness and then—ah! what a sensation of peace. I began to feel tame. Agreeable. Downright happy. All at once I wanted to be the nicest, kindliest serpent that ever went visiting in a laboratory.

  “That ought to do it,” one of the guards said.

  I turned, touched the brow of my scaled face with my fingers and tried to smile.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, I feel much better. What can I do to return the favor?”

  “He’s okay,” the guards agreed, and proceeded to wheel me into Laboratory H.

  I was pleasantly treated to the beauties and mysteries of the most impressive laboratory equipment I had ever seen. The huge glass tubes, standing in clusters above the tables, some of them twenty-five or thirty feet tall, were illuminated by a battery of colored lights, lavender, light green, purple, deep violet. Their gleaming stems were like frozen music. In one corner of the six-cornered room, a bright orange blur of motion indicated that a governor was spinning silently over a pyramid of shining machinery. One couldn’t hear the churning of liquids in the scores of transparent containers which were built into the different levels of the mysterious pyramid; but the orange blur cast its light over the whole series with each revolution. Again, a riot of colors hinted of a master-mind’s secrets in blending the molecules of many elements. Who could know what new and rare combinations might come into existence through these experiments?

  But of the dazzle I detected one detail which struck me as something not to be forgotten. That yellowish-white powder. At one side of the mixing pyramid I discovered it, sifting down slowly, like sand through an hour glass. Was this not the same sulphurlike substance that had been exploded over my head? And earlier, dumped over the pool where Flora Hessel was hiding?

  If so, I thought, here was the source of these scientists’ seeming magic.

  The nice, kindly, agreeable feeling within me shuddered for just an instant. The serpent slyness was still there, under the surface. If I could steal some of that powder, what might I do for myself? Was this my way back to my human state?

  “The doctor will be in right away,” one of the white-uniformed men said. “Is our patient ready to be examined?”

  “With pleasure,” I said.

  The white-uniformed man shot a quick, suspicious look at me.

  “It’s all right, Dr. Winston,” a guard said. “We just gave him a shot of sixty-eight-J-sixty-nine.”

  Dr. Winston nodded. “Enough to put him to sleep?”

  This wasn’t so easily answered. Dr. Winston checked the slip which the guard showed him, and calculated mentally the quantity of the drug as compared with my probable blood content. They weren’t too sure of their answers, for they hadn’t had any specimen like me before.

  “We’ll see,” Dr. Winston said, nodding again. Then he dismissed them, and I was left alone with him and this marvelous laboratory.

  So they thought I would go to sleep, did they? Not if I could help it. Still, it was an idea.

  I spoke drowsily, “Nice place you have here, friend.” I opened my jaws slowly and yawned and let my eyes go half closed. “Nice place—ho-humm. Quiet . . . Restful.”

  He was watching me out of one corner of his eye. I seemed to be dropping off into a peaceful slumber.

  He went to the telephone.

  “Dr. Hunt? . . . The four-legged serpent is ready . . . Obstreperous? Far from it. The attendants gave him a shot of sixty-eight-J-sixty-nine. He’s sleeping.”

  I allowed my arms to fold on the floor of my cage, so that my head and neck sank to the level of my belly. It wasn’t a very proud posture—and I must admit it wasn’t easy to allow myself to slump into such a dejected-looking heap of flesh—especially in the presence of a fine, kingly looking person like Dr. Winston. He would have looked well in any convention of athletes—broad-shouldered, well-shaped hands, keen grey eyes, and a vigorous head of fine brown hair. He stood with excellent posture, with just enough swagger and toss to his head that it made you think his brain must weigh considerably more than the average man’s.

  I wondered whether Dr. Hunt could present as perfect an appearance. About all I had remembered of Hunt’s picture was the striking black mustache and the sharp-pointed short black beard.

  “Hisssssss-hisssssss-hissssss . . .”

  My hissing breaths were barely audible. I was sure that I had convinced Dr. Winston. Now if Dr. Hunt would just fall for my gag, I would have a chance to know what these men of knowledge meant to do with me.

  Dr. Winston turned at the sound of a slight squeak-squeak-squeak from what might be considered the rear door of Laboratory H. It was the boss himself, rolling in in his luxurious chair.

  Anyone would have known at a glance that here was the top man. Now that I saw him again, his pictures came back to me—that extremely potent magnetic quality that strikes out at you from some faces—he had it more than any person I had ever seen.

  There was something about him that I couldn’t quite clarify in my reptilian brain. I ignored the troubling thought and tried hard to watch him.

  He rolled to a position within ten feet of my cage front, and I drank him in, mentally, through the half-slits of my sleeping eyes.

  He hadn’t looked up at me yet, I thought. The squeak of his chair annoyed me. He reached for the telephone that was a part of his rolling equipment, and barked an order to be relayed to some service department.

  His physical peculiarity had struck me rather incidentally at first, but now I saw what it was. He had jour arms.

  He put down the phone at the same time he mopped the perspiration off his wide brow—at the same time he touched a chair control that moved him a little closer—at the same time his fourth and final hand was reaching into a pocket for another pair of eye-glasses.

  The rolling chair had been so well designed to accommodate his four-armed body that one wasn’t disturbed by the slightly spidery effect—as long as he was sitting.

  When he arose and began to walk around me I was more sensitive to his freakish profusion of appendages.

  It was all I could do to keep from opening my eyes wide. I was blinking, in spite of myself, but he and Dr. Winston were busy sizing up my length.

  “We’
ll have to get some measurements, first thing, said Dr. Hunt. “I’d like to start dissecting as soon as possible.”

  “You mean within a few hours?” Winston asked. “It will take a few hours to sharpen the knives.”

  “You understand, of course, why I’m relying upon an early dissection.”

  Dr. Winston understood, and the two of them discussed it in just enough detail that I caught the drift. It was Dr. Hunt’s hope that they might be able to produce more specimens like me. He believed that an early examination of the tissues of my body would show traces of the transformation from old to new. These would serve as guides for repeating the experiment.

  They talked quietly.

  That drugging they’d given me was making me sleepy, all right. But I held on. I wanted to know how soon they intended to start making pork chops of me or should I say dragon chops?

  The repair man came in just then, and they dropped their talk of me in favor of Dr. Hunt’s rolling chair.

  “Just an oiling job?” the repair man asked. “I’ll have it back in five minutes.”

  Dr. Hunt pointed to the brown and blue checkered upholstery, demonstrating its worn places with his four hands. He said there should be a new upholstery job some time soon.

  The repair man rolled the chair out the front entrance, and the two doctors returned to me.

  “His eyes flickered,” said Dr. Winston. “I believe he’s awake.”

  “They tell me he talks,” said Dr. Hunt. “Let’s have a few words out of him.”

  Winston turned to me. “Say something.”

  “Hissssss!” I said.

  “Come, come. You can do better than that.”

  “Hisss. Hiss s. Why should I talk if you’re going to pick my bones clean and turn me into a laboratory skeleton?”

  All four of Dr. Hunt’s elbows bumped backward and his sharp little beard jumped to an impertinent angle.

 

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