The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  When the sun rose the following morning, the giant yawned, and drew himself up to a sitting position. As observers afterward reported, he looked hopefully to the chute, then cast his eyes about as if trying to spot the dump trucks that had brought him his meals the day before.

  His memory for matters connected with food must have been fairly sharp, as the people were soon to observe. From his elevation he must have remembered that the dump trucks got their loads of wheat from the freight cars on the railway siding that ran past the grain elevators.

  He reached across to the railroad tracks and picked up a string of three freight cars. (Wheat was spilled, the news reporters said afterward, from the tracks to midtown, across the industries north of the business district, over the tops of the new apartment buildings on Old Liberty Row, and into Cliff Park.)

  He dumped the spillings into another hand, and tossed them into his mouth—though such a shower of wheat fell that many flocks of birds (also edible) were to be attracted for many weeks to come. He broke open the cars that were sealed, and when he had finished his meal, with characteristic regard for the sanitation of his surroundings, he threw the broken box-cars into the river, slightly damaging a bridge downstream.

  He scooped up a drink, spluttered noisily, brushed his lips with the back of his hand, and then settled down in the morning sunshine and went back to sleep. From all reports, the guest from Mogo was making himself right at home.

  CHAPTER XXII

  President Waterfield and Anna Hurley were expecting the bombshell that burst upon the Solar Conclave that morning after the Mercury Ambassador’s social engagement with Madam Zukor.

  “Don’t let them think we’re worried.” the President advised Anna. “Even if they put the measure over, we’re not worried.”

  “I can’t be that deceitful, Mr. Waterfield—”

  “But we’re not worried. We have a big brother from Mogo to help us. Tell me, Anna—”

  “Yes, Mr. Waterfield?” She was trying to keep her mind on so many things at once—her speech, and the uproar that was sure to fill the Conclave Hall, and the headlines—already she could hear the shout of the newsboys on the streets.

  “Tell me. Anna, as you remember Gret-O-Gret, don’t you believe that if the New Earth were in a crisis, he would come to our rescue—I mean if he were on the Earth, visiting us?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then, if he sent a guest in his place, wouldn’t the guest do the same?”

  “I—I suppose so—I mean, if he could.”

  “If the time comes, then, that the New Earth needs new buildings—fast—and new highways and new factories—fast—we’ve got a big brother, right there, today, on the job, ready to help us—”

  “You’re so right, Mr. Waterfield.”’

  “Thanks to Paul Keller’s foresight, they can’t put anything over on us. If the Solar Conclave demands that we show two years of progress for every year we’ve been going, we can do it. Whatever standards they set, we can come through. We can! We can do it, because we have a Mogo guest right on the job, ready and eager to help us.”

  “Then we’ve not a thing to worry about, have we?” Anna said with a gulp. “Now that you’ve reasoned it all out for me, Mr. Waterfield, tell me just one thing. Why am I still worried?”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The whole Solar world stopped and caught its breath over the headlines.

  “WHO OWNS THE EARTH?”

  “CONCLAVE MAY DECLARE OWNERSHIP MUST BE APPROVED BY INTERPLANETARY DECREE”.

  That was the bombshell.

  And the explanation for such a breath-taking proposal? Not Anna Hurley’s explanation, certainly. Not that Madam Zukor and her coterie of power-hungry friends were setting up an air-tight trap. Not that the Ambassador of Mercury, along with a few other interplanetary loud-talkers, had been drawn into secret parties with the glamorous and persuasive Zukor! No. nothing like that!

  The explanation was—and any fact-seeking citizen could hear it on the air or read it under the headlines—that civilization was about to turn a corner.

  For centuries (the explanations explained) nations had owned their share of this planet or that planet simply by virtue of having taken possession—grabbing the land, sitting on it, and making laws to govern it.

  Take the Wingmen. At the moment a section of the Venus continent belonged to them. Why? Because they had always lived there, and no one in his right mind would question their right to keep on living there, not unless he wanted to upset the peace of the planet.

  There was a widespread Earth population on Venus, too. Lands had been purchased or procured (the explanations never used the word stolen) by Earth men from time to time as the migration came on.

  And so it was with Mars, and with the satellites; so it was with Mercury, and with the lightly populated caverns of the planet Saturn.

  But now (the explanations declared) it was time for interplanetary customs to turn a sharp corner.

  The Earth, whose former life had been destroyed, was wide open!

  It was waiting for new populations to come in with the will and the energy to build a new civilizations.

  And who—who, if not the Interplanetary Conclave—who had a right to say what populations?

  True, a little handful of Earth people had already leaped in, calling themselves the New Earth. They had fastened their claim upon the entire empty globe. They assumed that, by virtue of being there, they owned the Earth.

  They didn’t, the Ambassador from Mercury declared. The age of squatter sovereignty was past!

  From now on, this Mercury official had indicated, every nation of every planet must realize that it lived not unto itself; rather, that it was a part of an interplanetary community.

  If this little patch of sky meant to thrive down through the ages, it must govern itself with interplanetary agreements.

  Several high officials from Mars and a few from Venus had already indorsed the Mercury Ambassador’s proposal. And how (the explanations asked) could anyone oppose such a reasonable principle?

  From the first headline and the first broadcast, the idea made a big splash. Here was history in the making! The Ambassador from Mercury had uttered the most memorable utterance in all Solar history!

  And what would this mean for the New Earth?

  It would mean that its present government might be swept aside by interplanetary decree. An interplanetary committee should investigate its claims and measure its progress. The committee might well ask what is the New Earth government achieving? Is it building new homes? Is it producing enough food? Is it expanding economically?

  If the New Earth is not moving forward efficiently, it should lose its right to exist.

  This was the theme song of the Ambassador from Mercury.

  And what did the representatives of the New Earth have to say about all this?

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the Solar System, I give you President Waterfield, spokesman for the people of the New Earth,” the Conclave chairman announced, and Waterfield marched to the speaker’s platform and faced his audience.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  “The very fact that I am speaking here,” President Waterfield began, “proves that the New Earth has been accepted by the other planets.”

  Leading up to a discussion of the plan, he pointed to the chart upon which it was outlined.

  “Frankly, this is not for us. The time may come when we will be willing to accept something along this line. But not this. This plan is full of tricks. It conceals the hidden purposes of certain nameless parties who have personal motives. This plan could be the means of criminal actions undreamed of by the members of this Conclave. To approve it would be to insult your integrity and mine.”

  These were strong words. The listeners were divided in their response. There were boos, there was applause.

  “Now you know my stand,” President Waterfield said. “But I’m anxious for you to hear from another citizen of the New Earth—the only pers
on who lived through the great bombing—Mrs. Anna Hurley.”

  The next thing Anna knew, she was addressing the ladies and gentlemen of the Conclave as if they were next-door neighbors who had stopped in for tea.

  She wished they could meet George, her husband. He was a great guy, all two hundred and forty pounds of him—and he’d finally gotten used to her calling him “Big Boy,”

  And she wished they could all have a glimpse of their little two year old, Georgie, Junior. Back on the New Earth, where he happened to be the first child born after the bombing, everybody thought he was a grand little kid—like all the other little kids being born on the New Earth these days.

  “But speaking of this plan,” Anna went on, “personally, I’d feel terrible if you voted for it and put an end to our New Earth organization. You see this New Earth organization is our baby!”

  The people in the audience were with her. Anna thought. Their smiles gave her courage.

  “Now I ask you, if you had a new baby in your home, how would you like for the whole community to get together and take a vote to see whether you get to keep it?”

  She made a forlorn face for them, and they answered her with laughter and applause. Then her voice grew more intense.

  “Can’t you imagine how you’d feel? The committee knocks and says, ‘Sorry, friends, it isn’t your baby any more—we’ve voted to give it to Mr. and Mrs. Jones.’ You wouldn’t like that! You know darn well it’s your baby, and nobody’s got a right to take it away, in spite of air the fine print they fix up in the laws. That’s our situation—and I say if anybody tries to take our New Earth away from us, it’s a dastardly crime.”

  Cold silence filled the room as Anna’s words drove home. Was her audience still with her? She wasn’t sure, but she meant to plunge desperately.

  “Now I’m going to tell you something. If you’re still in favor of this plan, it might be because you’re not doing your own thinking. You might be letting some ambassador do your thinking for you. Did you ever stop to think, who does the thinking for the ambassador?”

  The Ambassador from Mercury, who had been sitting smugly in the third row, suddenly leaped to his feet. He cursed and shouted a protest. The curse was in his own native tongue; the protest was in the Conclave language. “Mr. Chairman, stop that woman! She has no right to speak disrespectfully!”

  Anna didn’t like his shouting. She made that plain by shouting right back. “I’m going to tell you—all of you—whether the Ambassador from Venus likes it or not. I want to say—”

  “Stop her! Sergeant-at-arms, I demand that you stop her! I will not have such talk—”

  “I want to say that this plan did not come from the mind of the Ambassador—”

  “No, you have no right to say that! You cannot challenge the motives of an ambassador—”

  “I’m trying to tell you,” Anna fairly screamed, as the chairman and the ambassador strode toward her gesturing her to stop. “I’m trying to tell you it’s not the Ambassador’s motive, it’s someone else’s. I overheard—”

  “Sergeant-at-arms, remove her!” the Ambassador roared.

  The sergeant-at-arms had beckoned three attendants, who were already bouncing up the steps onto the speaker’s platform. President Waterfield tried to push them back, and his gesture gave her the quick moment to shout her charge full in the face of the Mercury Ambassador.

  “Believe me, I overheard Madam Zukor! Zukor is the one who plotted this business against the New Earth! Madam Zukor, who almost got away with the Earth before!”

  “Lock her up!” the Mercury Ambassador ordered the sergeant-at-arms.

  “Lock her up!” the sergeant-at-arms echoed to the attendants. They pushed President Waterfield aside roughly and stormed toward her.

  At the same moment a fluttering of wings sounded from the balcony, and a brilliant flash of purple suddenly shot down through the room, under the lights of the big chandelier, across to the speaker’s platform.

  “Purple Wings!” Anna cried. Impulsively she went into the winged girl’s arms.

  “Come! I need you!” Purple Wings’ low-spoken words were the only sound in the deathly silent room in that instant. Anna was in her arms, then, and Purple Wings leaped into the air. beating her wings. She flew past the chandelier, up toward the corner of the gallery.

  Attendants rushed toward the stairs, and the chairman, rapping his gavel, ordered Anna to come back. But Anna was with Purple Wings. The window was open, and a moment later they were up in the sunlit air, flying over the tops of buildings.

  CHAPTER XXV

  Purple Wings landed on a rooftop to catch her breath. There was an inviting shadow down one of the sloping sides. Together they hovered in silence, listening for the sounds of pursuers. Apparently they were safe.

  “You can’t take me any farther,” Anna said. “I’m too much for your wings. What’s it all about, anyway? Did you think I was in danger?”

  “Not you, but George, your mate,” Purple Wings panted. “So I come for you.”

  “Oh, it’s George! I thought he would be coming back.”

  “I hope he will be.” Purple Wings’ low voice was full of fear. “I have so much to tell you, Anna. But first, can you learn whether your mate has returned to his space ship?”

  Purple Wings, with daring born of desperation, carried Anna down to a nearby shop, and there Anna called the space port. It took only a moment to learn that George Hurley’s space flivver was there, untouched. “Mr. Hurley has not reported back since his arrival,” the attendant said.

  “Then he didn’t escape the fight,” Purple Wings said to Anna. “He couldn’t have. And there was no chance that he could win against six such men.”

  “Where will we find him?”

  “The one chance—the Wingman Hospital.”

  They hired a jet taxi and flew northward over the roofs and over the fields, toward the wingmen’s mountains.

  Anna, bewildered by everything her winged companion had said and done, was gratified, at last, to learn what had happened. Purple Wings, in her quiet and beautiful way, talked as they rode to the hospital.

  “My spy, Limpy Lady, has always kept track of Madam Zukor for me,” Purple Wings said. Limpy Lady, she explained, was a loyal friend who had been crippled by gunfire when a child; whose prettiness together with her injured wing won her the sympathy of people who otherwise might have suspected her. She had been highly successful, thus far, at keeping tab on Madam Zukor. It was through Limpy Lady that Green Flash had quickly learned of George Hurley’s accident at the Silver Garden, and had come to his rescue with first aid, and helped him hide in the mountains.

  “The night we rescued you from the hospital roof,” Purple Wings said, “Limpy Lady stayed to keep an eye on the night watchman who had threatened you. Very soon, the night man had company. A young Doctor Millrock. Do you know him?”

  “I’ve seen him,” Anna said. “He’s not a doctor.”

  “Then he was pretending. That was what Limpy Lady thought as she overheard the bargain.”

  “Bargain?”

  “‘Doctor Millrock offered to purchase all of the most troublesome inmates for a low sum. He said he would take them to the Earth immediately, to be used in his scientific experiments.”

  “He wanted them for colonists, for Madam Zukor,” Anna said. “Did he succeed?”

  “They called the manager before daybreak, and there was lots of calling to other officials. It was being arranged. Meanwhile, Limpy Lady spied on the doctor as he talked to the inmates through the bars. They were in favor, naturally, for it meant a trip to the Earth, and freedom—exactly what Green Flash and I have been trying to accomplish for them. They began telling the young doctor about Green Flash, and said that he must be allowed to go along as their leader. Doctor Millrock was quick to ask them where he would find Green Flash.”

  “To get him out of the way, I suppose.”

  “Yes. And when he learned that Green Flash was at the cave of your mate
, dressing his wound, the young doctor hurried out to his companions. Now that they knew where the cave was, they flew to it in their jet-copter. There were six of them. Limpy Lady knew there would be danger for your mate, and for mine, so she came to me.”

  “And you came to me?” Anna asked.

  “I first flew to the mountain cave. I did not find anyone there. The jet-copter had already come and gone.”

  “So they got Big Boy and Green Flash! Where would they be now?”

  “They would come back to the hospital, where wingmen were to be loaded into a ship for the Earth.”

  “You think they would take Green Flash and Big Boy along with their load of inmates?”

  “I think they would soon kill both your mate and mine. But Limpy Lady was sure Madam Zukor had commanded that they both be brought back to the hospital alive. If so, we may find them there, being loaded into the ship.”

  They neared the Wingman Hospital in time to see a space ship blasting off into the sky.

  Near the place where the shop had stood for loading, they found the body of Limpy Lady. She would not be able to tell them whether their mates were Earth-bound on the departing ship, or whether they had been disposed of somewhere in the mountains—for Limpy Lady had been shot through the heart.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The radiogram from Venus was waiting for Captain Keller when he returned home at midnight from a meeting with his “Mogo committee.”

  He picked up the yellow envelope. It had been opened. His good wife Katherine would have called him during the committee meeting if she had thought it advisable. Better that he should get that difficult session over before seeing this communication from President Waterfield.

  He dropped wearily into his favorite chair, after first removing a child’s toy. These days Katherine was having such a wonderful time keeping little two-year-old Georgie Hurley that children’s toys might be found anywhere.

  Tall and graceful and neat in her blue robe, Katherine brought in a tray of hot coffee, and as always after a wearying day, he commented to himself on her good looks.