The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “Tomboldo,” he said, pointing to himself.

  Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud, “Tomboldo.”

  We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.

  Gravgak’s piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people’s expressions well enough to be sure.

  Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.

  By motions and words we didn’t understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell, “It’s our chance to be guests of Tomboldo.” Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river’s substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the Inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGG WE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.

  Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.

  Gravgak was our guard, but he didn’t work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:

  “Wollo-yeeta-vo-vandartch-vandartch! Grr-see-o-see-o-see-o!”

  “See-o-see-o-see-o,” one of the others echoed.

  It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the “see-o-see-o” we were all safe.

  Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.

  “See-o-see-o-see-o!” Others of Tomboldo’s party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge trees again moving toward our path. “See-o-see-o!”

  Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.

  Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.

  I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge tree, and blew the thing to bits.

  The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.

  Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo’s party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a warning! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.

  I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn’t wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.

  They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.

  But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.

  His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.

  Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.

  I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.

  4.

  Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.

  I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.

  “Campbell!” I would call out of a nightmare. “Campbell, we’re about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell.”

  “S-s-sh!” The low hush of Split Campbell’s voice would somehow penetrate my dream.

  The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.

  “Campbell, are you there? . . . Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?”

  “Quiet, Captain.”

  “Who is it that’s swabbing my face? I can’t see.”

  “It’s Vauna. She’s smiling at you, Captain. Can’t you see her?”

  “Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?”

  “One of them.”

  “And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—”

  “Omosla is here too. She’s Vauna’s attendant. We’re all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain.” The words of Campbell came through insistently.

  After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said, “Campbell, you haven’t forgot the EGGWE Code?”

  “Of course not, Captain.”

  “Section Four?”

  “Section Four,” he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. “Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—”

  I interrupted, “Clause D?”

  He picked it up. “D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native . . . H-m-m. You’re not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning yourself?”

  At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell’s question. “Myself.”

  In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.

  Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in
this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid-blacking out.

  I wanted to see her.

  So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ship shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna’s fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.

  I gained my health gradually.

  “Are you quite awake?” Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. “You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak.”

  It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.

  And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.

  The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern, old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played. “Trail of Stars.”

  “I have learned to talk,” I said.

  “You have had a long sleep.”

  “I am well again. See, I can almost walk.” But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. “I will walk soon.”

  “We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe.” Tomboldo’s eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. “We will have much to tell each other.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “Campbell and I came to learn about the serpent river.” I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent. I made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn’t understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.

  “You get well?” Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.

  “I get well,” I said.

  “The blow on the head,” he said, “was not meant.”

  I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna’s eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. “Get well!”

  The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. “Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone.”

  She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. “I will talk with you later, Gravgak.”

  “Now!” he shouted. “Alone”

  He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.

  From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.

  But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door. “Vauna! . . . Gravgak! . . . Come back.”

  (I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn’t called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)

  Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.

  Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.

  “While we are together,” old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, “I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world.”

  There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.

  “We will wait a few days,” Tomboldo went on, “until our new friend—” he pointed to me—“is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the Kao-Wagwattl, the ever moving rope of life, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl they shall ride with us across the land.”

  5.

  From that moment on, there was more buzzing around the caverns than a hive of bees. It was like a spaceport before the blastoff of a big interplanetary liner. The excitement was enough to cause a sick man to have a relapse—or get well in a hurry to join in on the commotion. I did my best to get well quick!

  “Where is Campbell? Bring me my friend Campbell, please.”

  Omosla, the pretty attendant and companion of Vauna, was always glad, I noticed, to be sent on an errand to Split Campbell, wherever he was.

  From all reports he was reinforcing the defenses at one point or another where these caverns led up to the surface. They told me he was a busy man. The attacks of the savage ones had grown more vicious. They had evidently learned that the Benzendellas intended to move back to other lands; so they had grown bold in their raids, attempting to steal not only the Benzendellas’ treasurers but also their women. They had not been successful. My good lieutenant, navigator and scientist, equipped with capsule explosives, had blown one group of them into a fountain of dismembered arms and legs. I could just picture him hurling those miniature bombs at the split-second when they would create the most panic.

  The Benzendellas had been quick to recognize a good thing. They only wished he were quadruplets or better, to stand guard continuously at many entrances. They brought him their rare foods, and furnished him with a comfortable couch; they offered him gifts. In short, they loved him for his efficiency, and for himself. Especially (according to the rumors that reached my. ears) Omosla.

  Pretty little Omosla, I fear, loved him with a love that might have overwhelmed a lesser man. But I knew that Split Campbell would not be swerved. He was devoted to duty, dignity, and the Code. The Code forbade intermarriage with the natives.

  Why did I keep thinking of the Code? It shouldn’t have crossed my thoughts so often. I hardly, dared stop to ask myself what continually brought it to mind. But I knew. The flare of jealously I had felt when Gravgak had tried to call Vauna away from the crowd . . .

  “You are feeling better, Captain?” Vauna said to me as she watched me pace the floor. “You find that you can walk, so you keep walking?”

  “I need to walk so I can think.”

  “If you wish to think, you should sit out on the hillside at the time of sunset. You understand my words?”

  “I understand,” I smiled. Then, rashly, I added, “I understand your words. I don’t always understand you.”

  “And you wish to understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I could think of more answers than my vocabulary could handle. I said simply, “When I go back to my own world I should be able to say that I understand the people of this world.”

  “But you do understand us. You see how we live. You hear how we talk. There.” She pressed my
hand. “That is all you need to understand, isn’t it? I am the one who does not understand you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I do not see how you live. I do not hear how you talk.” She gave a little laugh. “Only see how you walk when you think, but I do not know what you think.”

  “I think about you,” I said.

  “That is very nice. I think about you, too, Jim. Since the night you saved us from the savage ones, I have thought about you.”

  I stopped walking in circles and looked at her. The soft light from the luminous rock walls gave an ivory tint to her bare shoulders. She wore a dress of soft woven material, designed with a diagonal line of little hand-painted sponge trees. From the curve of her breasts to the lithe gracefulness of her thighs, the close-fitting garment accentuated her beauty.

  She was backing away from me, smiling as if wondering if I would follow her. Her arms were bare except for the ornaments of fur around her elbows. These were evidently an insignia of Benzendella womanhood, for no woman of this realm was to be seen without them.

  “Come,” Vauna said, beckoning me. “Put your ear against the wall. What do you hear?”

  She pressed her head against the wall and I did the same. Finally I made out the faint vibrations of some distant rumbling. I asked, “What is it?”

  “Kao-Wagwattl.”

  “The round river that moves like a serpent?”

  “It is an endless rope,” she said. “It is life.”

  “Life?”

  “It gathers water and food within itself. It gives life to those who seek life. It gives life—”

  She stopped, and her pretty poetic expression vanished. My hands touched her hands, my fingers moved gently along her wrists, her forearms—then as my touch neared her fur-covered elbows, a look of shock came into her eyes. “Jim!”

  “Yes, Vauna?”

  “I was trying to tell you—”