The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “This,” said Kipper, “spirals down to the museum of skeletons. If you’re not in a hurry—”

  “Just a minute,” I said. I didn’t want this to lead to anything embarrassing, and I wasn’t too sure of my grounds. It was a fact that I had originally wanted to find my way to this very spiral descent. That’s where I had set out for, in taking my exercise tour over the roofs. Lab X had been my goal, with its spiral passage beyond, and eventually the museum. However—“I hope you’ll pardon me if I meet a friend down here.”

  “That’s my expectation,” said Kipper. “I mean, I’m intending to meet a friend.”

  “Huh?” I was growing more uneasy. My errand of jealousy wouldn’t thrive on too much congestion. “I’d better explain myself. I have a friend—Flora Hessel—and an enemy, Ernest Marsch. The less they see of each other, the better it suits me. But she told me very bluntly that she had had a date with him here recently. Do you follow?”

  “Go on,” said Kipper.

  “I like the gal,” I said. “Even though I’m now living a snakely existence, I hate to see her get mixed up with a hard-boiled wolf like Marsch. He isn’t good for her, believe me. Do you follow?”

  “You’re jealous,” said Kipper.

  “I’m a green-eyed serpent. That’s why I’ve come. If I find that he’s lurking down in this lost region, I’m going to have the pleasure of snapping his head off before I report back to headquarters.”

  Kipper had stopped, looking at me with a curious expression. He cupped his ear, and I thought I heard, too. Footsteps. That could be Flora Hessel, coming down our way. I wondered if I had said too much. He was beginning to smile at me strangely.

  “I hope I’m not in danger,” he said. “Why should you be?”

  “Didn’t you say she had a date with a wolf?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “All right, I have a date with Flora Hessel,” said Kipper. “I must be the wolf she referred to.”

  I blinked. Had I misjudged this keen-eyed, straight-shooting little fellow? “You—a wolf?”

  “Didn’t you hear them call me a Lone Wolf? They were going to brand me L.W.”

  “Oh—Lone Wolf—that’s different.

  Did she mean you?”

  By that time the footsteps had materialized into Flora herself. She gave a surprised gasp to see the two of us together.

  “Oh, you know each other!” Flora exclaimed with a lift of delight in her voice. “Fine. I’m so glad. Isn’t he charming, Bob? I told you he was a charming wolf in sheep’s clothing, didn’t I?”

  Kipper cleared his throat. “Lone Wolf, if you please. You mixed your terms, Madam, and I think you’d better apologize before your misshapen friend gets the wrong impression.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Lone Wolf, of course. Anyway, Bob, he’s perfectly delightful, and he’s given me more information about the goings-on of this place than I’d get from the attendants in a hundred years. All these skeletons down here—”

  She talked on, as glibly as a chattering magpie, while she and Kipper led me into the opening chamber of the museum of white bones. All of my jealous emotions were suddenly as dead as the specimen we were examining. If I failed to catch all the interesting facts they were giving me as they guided me through the place, it was because I was saying to myself, “What a silly serpent you were, Bob Garrison, to get all green-eyed about nothing at all. It was all your foolish imagination.”

  And yet I couldn’t be too severe with myself, considering how things had turned out. If I hadn’t started out to get the lowdown, I wouldn’t have saved Kipper from an ugly ordeal.

  As it was, I had two staunch friends, both of them wise and understanding. They were ready to help me through with my purpose of recovering Dr. Hunt from their weird world if it was humanly possible.

  Or if it wasn’t humanly possible, perhaps some inhuman talents from a serpent would be effective. At any rate I thought I was on the trail.

  “But Flora,” I protested, “I’m still in the dark about Ernest Marsch. Hasn’t he popped up anywhere along the line to claim your services?”

  She shook her pretty head. “I haven’t seen him since we came into the planet’s explosion zone,” she said.

  Kipper had stopped to listen at one of the museum phones.

  “A bit of trouble back in the laboratories,” he said. “They’re all stirred up over their missing serpent.”

  “Do you think we should go back and report?” I asked.

  “That would be safest,” said Kipper. “Otherwise they may punish the driver and the attendant severely for losing you. Furthermore, they may send out a general announcement to shoot you on sight.”

  “We’ll go back,” I said. I took a quick look at the weird conglomeration of skeletal forms all around me, gleaming white and chalky in the blue light. There was one pedestal that had been placed recently, with no skeleton on it. Flora gave me a suspicious look, and we both guessed that it was being prepared for me. We hurried away without speaking of it. But I was filling up with unanswered questions, and one of these times I’d have to get Kipper in a corner and pump him.

  “Worried?” Kipper asked blithely as we made our exit.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a slight ache through my vertebrae.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  With Kipper’s help, Flora returned to the elevation of general living quarters unnoticed. He assisted me in slipping into a corridor that would lead to Lab H—Dr. Hunt’s own stamping ground—from which I would be able to face my own situation with all possible advantages.

  “You don’t jump through walls, and they know it,” Kipper advised me before he left, “so you’d better get some answers ready for them. But don’t tell them too much. Remember, you’re a snake.”

  “Hissss!” I said agreeably.

  Kipper gave me a satisfied wink and went on his way.

  I knew how to put a stop to all of the quandary over my disappearance the easiest way, I thought. I would go to the phone from which Dr. Hunt had made his general announcements and I would simply say, “Hissss! When do I get my ssssupper?”

  I was crossing through the six-cornered room, moving carefully, for it was almost completely dark, and I didn’t want to welcome myself back with a crash of any expensive glass tubes. I had got as far as Dr. Hunt’s rolling chair in the middle of the room when I heard the sounds of low voices from somewhere in the vicinity of the nearest laboratory table. As a serpent, whose flesh and bones were of great interest to these scientists, I had every reason to be interested in low, whispery voices.

  One of the voices was that of Dr. Winston.

  “How much do you think the serpent knows?” Winston said quietly.

  I could see Winston’s tall, courtly figure silhouetted against the faint circle of light emanating from one of the instruments.

  The voice which answered Winston was not familiar, but I knew at once that it was not Dr. Hunt’s. It had a deep-cistern quality—a hollow echo, like a voice coming through a long, dark tunnel. And yet it was distinct, with sharp, crackling edges to the consonant sounds, like little crackles of thunder very close to your ear.

  “He knows,” said the deep-cistern voice, “that Dr. Hunt was forced to come here.”

  “Then he must know,” said Dr. Winston, “that there is a power which holds Dr. Hunt in control.”

  “He has not seen me,” said the deep-cistern.

  “I thought,” Winston said, “that you had succeeded in influencing Hunt to have him killed at once—for his skeleton.”

  “That was my intention,” the voice rumbled. “But Dr. Hunt’s own plan rose up in his mind just when I thought I had succeeded. Dr. Hunt has never yet been completely subordinated . . .”

  I was getting an earful, all right. I tried to catch sight of the form that gave out with the deep-cistern tones, but I couldn’t see anyone except Dr. Winston. I was taking an awful risk, being here this way, and I was getting nervous. My tail kept twitching.

 
; What if they should turn on a light?

  What a dilemma! Somewhere they were stewing about losing me. The driver and the attendant were probably getting a verbal roasting for their carelessness. I should go to Dr. Hunt at once to prove that I had come back unharmed.

  But I couldn’t—I just couldn’t walk out on an eaves-dropping set-up like this. Here, in one quick earful, I’d learned more about Dr. Hunt and Dr. Winston than in all of my talks with the scientists back on earth. They had believed that if I could once find Dr. Hunt and provide a way for him to return, that he’d jump at the chance.

  Now I saw, as plain as day, that someone held such a club over him that he couldn’t be sure which of his thoughts were his own. It was that power—the deep-cistern voice—which had made Hunt plan to strip me into a skeleton. It was Hunt’s own mercy that had schemed to postpone my dissection.

  And what of Winston? Winston—my fine, handsome hero with the suave manner and the kingly appearance!

  Was Winston also in league with this superior agent? Were the two of them keeping Dr. Hunt in subjection?

  “Making a turnip out of him!” I muttered to myself. “Squeezing the blood of genius out of him for their own stew.”

  Yes, Dr. Hunt had delayed my dissection out of his own inspiration to send me on a mission—to let me confront those skulking outcasts of space who called themselves the Mashas, to see whether I could learn, from the inside, what dangerous powers they possessed.

  But hadn’t Dr. Winston also had the same idea?

  As I looked back upon their moment of inspiration, it seemed to me that both doctors had caught the idea simultaneously. It had happened under the purple light, when I had stood frozen with three pygmies beneath my open jaws. I wondered—

  Swish-swish-swish—that was Dr. Winston, now sauntering toward another table. In another moment he would switch on a light.

  I didn’t dare creep any farther across the room. I might bump into the deepvoiced power.

  Should I hide? Or should I face them?

  After what I had just heard, they might kill me!

  The wheeled-chair. It was right at hand. I crawled silently around it, into it, around its back and into the underside of it.

  No squeaks, thank goodness. The repair man had oiled it recently. I wondered if he had put new upholstery on it too. My scales had gathered dust and rust from the roof. Would I leave marks?

  I did a tall job of coiling myself, and quite a length of tail was left over. This, however, I automatically coiled into a disc of flesh, wound like a clock-spring, and allowed that end of me to fold over into the seat.

  The lights went on along one wall.

  I thought I caught a glimpse of the deep-cistern voice for just an instant, at the edge of the green glow. But I was uncertain. From the corner of my eye it seemed that I was seeing a huge model of a human skull, almost as large as a barrel. It was moving back out of my range of vision, and I didn’t dare look. It must have been a piece of apparatus, I thought. Or was it a mask?

  The deep-cistern voice came from that direction, and now I thought of it as a voice resounding through a large empty skull.

  “I should go,” the voice said. “Dr. Hunt shouldn’t find us here together.”

  “He’ll be in soon,” said Winston. “He’s holding court for the two men who let the serpent get away. As soon as he calls, I’ll roll his chair in for him.” The deep voice chuckled. “Very fond of that throne, isn’t he! Why don’t you take that honor away from him?”

  I shuddered, and the chills tried to slide through the crooked route from my neck to my tail.

  “You’re tempting me,” said Dr. Winston. I could see him standing a few feet in front of the chair, stroking his square jaws with his white, sensitive fingers.

  “You might allow yourself four arms, too, you know,” said the deep-voiced power. “Then you’d fit into the rolling throne quite as gracefully as he does.”

  “I can fill it,” Winston said, not sure but what he was being taunted. He was looking at me without seeing me. But the color effect of my green and purple scales made an impression. “Well, look at this!”

  “What?”

  “New upholstery job. Hunt’s been asking for it. But I hadn’t noticed—” The phone on the chair gave two sharp rings.

  “That’s Hunt, calling for me,” Winston said. “I’d just as well ride in. He’ll never know.”

  He crawled into the seat and leaned back against the flattened coils of my flesh.

  I could imagine that the deep-voiced power must have seen me by then. But I was wrong. He spoke, “Well, how does it feel? Quite important, eh? You’d like it, Winston. Think it over.”

  The phone rang again—two angry rings.

  Dr. Winston touched the controls. The rolling chair gave a little lurch, then stopped short. I must have been weighing down on the brakes. I tried to shift just a trifle.

  Two more rings.

  “Why don’t you go?” the voice called from the far side of the room. “He’ll be suspicious.”

  “I’m trying—”

  “Well, anyway, I’m going. Think over what I told you.”

  The swish-swish-swish gave me the picture of large soft-surfaced feet beneath that barrel-sized skull—though I must say it wasn’t a very complete picture in my mind. All I knew was that the mysterious man—or creature—who directed the goings-on of these laboratories with a sinister hand, was making a quiet exit. I leaned, trying to catch one more glimpse. My effort was too much for the balance of the chair. I saw the disappearing shadow of a huge skull, with light from an outer room gleaming through a translucent eye. Then the rear door closed.

  The chair was tipping backwards. I touched my hand to the floor just in time to avoid a spill.

  “Oooof!”

  Dr. Winston jerked forward. Then he sat back, testing the seat. He bounced a little, and was about to get out to see what was wrong; but the coils of my tail (which he had taken for new green-and-purple upholstery) moved just a trifle—just enough to catch a light grip on his waist.

  He pushed the “upholstery” back and brushed his hands, muttering, “Sticky!”

  Then Dr. Hunt came striding in, looking tough enough to eat glass.

  “What’s the matter? Why didn’t you come?” Dr. Hunt stopped short, giving Winston the cold eye. “What’s this? Have you traded places with me?”

  “Something’s wrong,” said Winston weakly. “I couldn’t get it to go.”

  “Get out of there. I’ll show you how.”

  “I’m stuck in the new upholstery,” said Winston.

  “New upholstery? What new—Ugh!”

  The doctor’s eyes jumped in a way that caused Winston to turn pale. Or perhaps it was the fact that I had considered it time to uncurl myself, having no desire to usurp Dr. Hunt’s pet throne.

  Once I started, I uncurled rapidly; but the curve of my tail slid into a loop around Dr. Winston’s waist, and I drew him right over the back of the chair. When my action began he gave a gulping sound and started to mutter some sort of prayer under his breath; but a moment later he was saying nothing, for he saw me and fainted dead away.

  I dropped him on the floor and turned to drink in Dr. Hunt’s frozen stare. I glanced upward, for a moment thinking that the paralysis ray must be on. No, it was simply Dr. Hunt trying hard to believe his own eyes.

  CHAPTER XV

  I gave a bow and a hiss and tried to ease a very tense situation by laughing lightly.

  “Well, what next!” Dr. Hunt gasped. “Did they tell you I was missing?” I said. “I came back. I came into Laboratory H to report, but there was some kind of conference going on.”

  “Yes?”

  “So I thought I’d wait by your chair and tell you when you came in. You should know what they were saying.” Dr. Hunt mopped his forehead and checked up on his sharp mustaches and beard as if he thought they might be missing. Then he gathered his faculties together and began to talk, heedless of what I was about to t
ell him.

  “I’ve been getting you ready for a job,” he said. The glint in his eye told me that he considered it important for me to prepare quickly and indulge in no foolishness. He gave me a motion to stand to one side. I waited by the wall while he gave Winston a few slaps with all four of his hands to bring the man to life. Winston came up nodding and blinking, and sat while Dr. Hunt gave me his orders.

  “You’ve come back to this lab after you were away and free—am I right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Then you’ll come back again,” he said, “and I’m going to depend on it. I have faith that you’re a straight serpent. See?”

  I didn’t deter him with any hints that I might or I might not be, depending upon his plans for turning me into a museum-piece. I knew now that, if left to his own devises, Dr. Hunt would postpone that unpleasantness for me as long as possible.

  “I’m going to send you on your assignment at once,” Dr. Hunt said. “Come this way and I’ll show you the map of the territory once more.”

  I looked at Dr. Hunt and saw that he meant business. So he wasn’t going to make me account for my runaway act. Instead, he was going to press me into service before I embarked on any more monkeyshines.

  I might have complied without any hesitation, and considered it an honor—if I hadn’t caught a sidelong glance from Winston, sitting there, watching me with a cold eye. The fellow was still badly chilled, I knew. He kept rubbing his sides where my scales had clutched him. But the real part of his scare was because I knew too much.

  “This way,” Dr. Hunt repeated, motioning to me with three or four arms.

  I stamped about, folded my lower legs under me, and rose high on my forelegs, craning my neck and head upward as if I meant to be heard. I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in some of the glass utensils, and my very pose helped to inspire me for what I needed to say.

  “It is high time, Dr. Hunt, that you and I cleared some atmosphere between us,” I said.

  The doctor’s beard gave an impatient twitch, but he stopped cold and took me in.