by Henry Slesar
“I am Mondello, the fisherman. Come with me, please! Come now, quickly! A great aircraft fell into the sea—a terrible tragedy—and the two men, they need you now!”
The Doctore stared blankly at him, and Marisa came in.
“What is it, grandfather?”
“I do not know yet. Slowly, my friend. Do I understand that there has been an air crash in your village, and men have been hurt?” He was trying hard to comprehend.
“Si, si! And Doctore Bonini, the only one we have, he is with the Signora Martinelli, who is about to have twins, triplets—perhaps more! Who can know?”
The Doctor shook his white head. “I fear I would be of no help. I am a doctor of zoology, not medicine. But my granddaughter, it is possible—” He turned to her. “Marisa?”
She looked surprised, and Mondello turned his face eagerly towards her.
“ Signorina! You are the doctore of people with hurts ?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Not for another year.”
The sick look of disappointment was plain on Mondello’s face. Marisa hesitated, and then said:
“All right. I’ll do the best I can.”
There were visions in Pepe’s head, and there were sounds, too. Sounds of horses’ hooves and six-shooters and the cry of the cowmen as they hooted at the scampering cattle on the plains of the great country of Taixas. A rustler, with a villainous black moustache, was aiming his gun at the hero, a white-suited cowboy on an equally white horse. The hero’s features were surprisingly like Pepe’s own. Just as the villain raised his gun, the hero’s right hand darted to his gunbelt swifter than lightning. Crack! The rustler clutched his midriff and fell to the ground.
Pepe came within sight of the truck and trailer, nestled snugly inside a pleasant grove, with its array of bird and animal cages hanging outside. He barely noticed the pretty young signorina hurrying out, carrying a small black bag, accompanying Mondello down the road. He had too much on his mind, and it all had to do with the strange slimy thing wrapped in the flying jacket.
“Good afternoon!”
He looked up to see Dr. Leonardo, his good friend and finest customer.
“Well, my young merchant friend. And what is it you wish to sell me today; at an exorbitant rate, I am certain. An inedible clam, perhaps?”
“Ah, Dr. Leonardo, you make one big mistake. Here I have not a clam. I have a treasure!”
The Doctor hid the amusement on his face.
“With which, no doubt, you are willing to part for very,
Marisa screamed in terror as the claws gripped her wrist.
* * *
very little money?” He gestured towards the trailer door. “Come inside, my little Sicilian bandit—and we’ll bargain.”
Within the room, the Doctor beckoned the boy to one of the camp chairs. But Pepe stood still, clutching his treasure tightly.
“Dr. Leonardo, you are a kind man, a just man, a man of much learning. And a man of great wealth.”
“A man of wealth! A professor of—” He smiled ruefully,-remembering the kind of world a boy lives in. “Of course, Pepe. All things are relative. Continue.”
“You have two hundred lira?”
“There is a possibility,” the Doctor said solemnly, “that I have such a fortune.” He put his hand out towards the flying jacket. “Now may I see this new treasure of so great value.”
Pepe drew back. “You have two hundred lira with you, in your purse?”
“It is a true fact, Pepe. But why is your need so great, so urgent?”
“Because. With two hundred lira I can purchase the hat from Taixas. Please— may I have the money now?”
“The hat from Taixas?” Pepe drew a circle around his head. “It is the hat the cowboy wears when he shoots the bandit, bang! Bang! And the man he is dead.” He whipped out two imaginary guns and fired them.
The Doctor nodded. “Ah, those American films. With so great a need, Pepe, you may have the two hundred lira. But I warn you—I’d better get my money’s worth.” His gentle face mimicked a movie villain. “Or ‘I’m a-com-in’ after you!’ ”
Dr. Leonardo took out his purse and peeled off two hundred lira. Pepe looked at them joyfully.
“And now what is it I have purchased—this treasure of great splendor?”
Pepe was hardly interested in that side of the transaction any longer. Carelessly, he unrolled the jacket, and put the gelatinous mass on the Doctor’s work bench.
Dr. Leonardo looked at it with only mild curiosity; the sea produces many odd things.
Then he examined it closer, with increasing interest. He prodded it, turned it over. He became so absorbed in the thing that he didn’t notice Pepe’s hasty departure through the trailer doors.
“Strange,” he said to himself. “There seems, to be something inside. Something with form. But what class does it belong to? Pepe, tell me where you—”
He looked up and saw the empty room.
Hurriedly, he went to the door, shouting for the boy. Down the road, Pepe turned, his hand holding tight to the pocket where the money was.
“Si, Dr. Leonardo?”
“Please tell me! Where did you find this thing?”
“In the water, Doctor! In the sea!”
Dr. Leonardo watched him run, and he shook his white-haired head with a wry smile on his lips.
Behind him, on the work bench, the blob from the USAF cylinder quivered once, and again.
Then it was silent.
The Commune di Gerra was a building of many moods and purposes, and its hoary stones told the story of the ancient village of Gerra on the island of Sicily. It was a poor building, as its village was poor. It was old, as its village was old. Yet it was strong and sturdy, lacking in grace, but stubborn in its construction. It had weathered war and famine and the slow decay of the years, but still it stood—a home for the Mayor of Gerra, the office of the Commissario of Police, and a hospital for the sick.
On the hospital floor, in one large barren room, there were three cots. One was empty. The other two held the unconscious bodies of the men taken from the stricken aircraft.
The younger of the pair, his wounds swathed in professional bandages around his head and arm, lay breathing normally.
The other man was less fortunate. An oxygen tank had been placed near his head, and a small face mask covered his mouth.
Marisa Leonardo picked up his limp wrist and tried his pulse again. She listened implacably to the sound of his heavy, erratic breathing, and put the wrist back on the bed. It dropped like a weight.
Then she looked into the man’s contorted face, and her expression was puzzled. Not even her worst dreams had featured such a mangled, tortured face as this. What had happened to the man? What nightmare was upon him?
A grunting sound came from the other cot. She got up and went to the younger man. His eyes were shut, but his head was beginning to move on the pillow. She tried his pulse, and at her touch, his eyes struggled open.
She said: “I know. You want to know where you are. Well, you’re in Sicily, in a village called Gerra.”
“Gerra?”
“Southern Sicily. A fishing village.” She dropped his wrist and smiled professionally.
“About where we figured,” he said vaguely. Then his expression changed, and he strained to sitting position. “The others? How are they?”
She answered gently.
“I’m told that your aircraft is at the bottom of the sea. Whoever else was on it . . .” She watched him fall back wearily. “Except, of course, this gentleman here. And his condition is critical—very critical.”
The man looked at the other cot. When he saw its occupant, he forced his feet over the side of the cot.
“I’m sorry,” Marisa said, restraining him. “You’re in no condition to—”
“Let me alone!” He pushed her away rudely, clutching the side of the cot for support. He got up weakly and tottered towards the other bed.
“Please, you mustn�
��t—”
But there was determination on the young man’s lean, intense face. He bent over the unconscious man and put his mouth to his unheeding ear.
“Doctor!” he shouted. “Dr. Sharman!”
Vainly, Marisa tried to pull him away, but he was strong and stubborn.
“I must ask you to leave this man alone. He’s extremely ill—”
“Please! Dr. Sharman, can you hear me?”
“If you don’t stop, I’ll call for help—”
The man whirled on her, his face infuriated. There was a depth of anger in his eyes that she wasn’t used to seeing, a grim preoccupation that transcended everything else.
“Listen, nurse, leave me alone! I’m in no mood to—”
“I’m not a nurse!” she said loudly. “I’m a doctor—or almost a doctor—and this man may be dying!”
The young man took a deep breath, as if fighting for patience. “All right, almost-a-doctor. Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
“No—not exactly.”
“Well, I do! I know what’s wrong with him, and I know it’s fatal. Eight of my crew have already died of the same thing. Now if you must stay here, stand still and be quiet. Understand?”
Marisa’s eyes widened, and she gasped. Just slightly, her arm raised as if it involuntarily desired to strike the insulting young stranger across his face. She glared back at him, but he wasn’t interested in her reaction. He was bending over the dying man, calling: “Sharman! Dr. Sharman! Can you hear me?”
Then the man moved.
His movement was slight, but his young friend became excited, and shouted louder.
“Doctor!”
The words that came from the distorted lips were hardly audible.
“Are we . . . are we going to make . . . make it back?”
“We are back! We’re on Earth!”
“The specimen! Is it all right?”
“I—I don’t know. We crashed into the Mediterranean. I suppose everything went down with the wreck.” He paused. “The others are dead.”
The man he called Sharman shut his eyes tightly. He tried to speak once more, but there wasn’t enough breath in his lungs. His hand inched upwards, making its way into his coat. It emerged with a notebook.
“Make them . . . make them find it . . . my notes ...”
He began to gasp for breath. Marisa, watching with hypnotized eyes, came closer.
“How long can it live?” the young man was saying. “How long can it live in the cylinder, Dr. Sharman? I’ve got to know. It’s our only hope.”
There was no answer. Swiftly, the man grabbed for the oxygen face mask and slapped it over his friend’s mouth. The breath came easier, but still faintly.
“Please,” Marisa said, almost in a whisper.
He looked up, all the anger dissipated. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”
“You’re suffering from shock and exhaustion. You better lie down.”
“Sure,” the man said casually, and then almost collapsed on the cot.
Briskly, Marisa opened the bag on the table and removed a hypodermic needle.
“What were you talking about? What specimen? What fatal disease? I don’t understand any of this.”
“You don’t. And you won’t.”
She made an exasperated noise. “You make a wonderful patient. Courteous. Cooperative. Informative. Altogether a joy and a pleasure to have around.”
She lifted the needle. “This’ll give you pleasant dreams. If you’re capable of them.”
She was drawing it away when the sudden silence in the room caught their attention. For a moment, she looked baffled, and then realized that the sound of Sharman’s erratic breathing had ended.
She turned her head and looked at the younger man. There was no surprise on his face. She got up hastily and went to Sharman’s side, reaching for his wrist.
“He—he’s dead.”
“I know.”
She was shocked by the answer. Her voice was hard when she spoke to him again.
“Do you mind explain all or some of this?”
“I’m sorry . . .” His voice was thick with the effects of the drug. “But I can’t. . .”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
He yawned widely. “Both
His head rolled over on the pillow.
Marisa walked over to him, her features moving in anger and frustration. She began to put her instruments back in the bag, but stopped again to look at her patient. He was deep in a drugged sleep, his breathing regular, his face relaxed. His features were altered now, no longer contorted by wrath. Marisa’s eyes softened. He was actually handsome, and somehow, vulnerable in sleep. She moved to a table piled high with blankets and shook one out. She covered him tenderly, tucking it in around his shoulders. Then she brushed back the tumbled brown hair from his forehead.
It was the same moon outside.
It had shone softly over Sicily when Marisa was a child. It had followed her to America, silvery-white and perfect over the campus of the medical school. But tonight, hanging low over the trees of Gerra, the moon seemed brighter and more romantic than Marisa Leonardo had ever known it. She followed its path down the road that led back to her grandfather’s trailer, and there was a small smile on her pretty face.
But the moon wasn’t shining for her alone. Its beams slanted through the window of the mobile home and picked out the shiny form of the
gelatinous blob on the Doctor’s work bench.
The strange shape inside the mass had more definition now. It began to move, to shift, to struggle.
Slowly, a crack formed in the slick surface. It grew longer, wider.
Then, something burst through the shell. A tiny fist, with three talon-like fingers.
Strangely, Marisa wasn’t tired. Her mind was active, thinking rapidly, puzzling over the strange words she had heard spoken inside the Commune di Gerra. She knew that the two rescued men in the hospital ward were members of the United States Air Force, and their mission had been one of danger and importance. But what had caused so many deaths among the crew? And what unknown plague had tormented the dead man’s features?
With a sigh, she put down her surgical bag and began to shrug off her jacket.
The peculiar sibilant noise startled her.
She whirled, and the sight of the thing on the work bench drained the blood from her face. She stifled a scream in her throat, and stared.
It was some fifteen inches high, and the moonlight delineated its grotesque reptillian shape. It’s incredibly long, lizard-like tail swished behind it; its head was nightmarish, like that of a medieval dragon’s. It waved its three-taloned hands helplessly in the air, and hissed at her as if in fright.
Marisa stood rooted to the spot, watching the creature’s frightened eyes. It began to back away, as if fearful of an attack. Her hand went out automatically and flicked the light switch.
The creature jumped at the sudden burst of light in the room.
“Grandfather,” Marisa whispered. “Grandfather!”
There was no sound behind the curtained aperture.
“Grandfather!”
This time, Dr. Leonardo responded to the urgency in her voice. He came out from behind the curtain, clutching his dressing gown.
“What is it, Marisa?”
He looked in the direction of her round-eyed gaze, and saw the creature on the bench. It hissed towards him, and backed up even further. For a long time he did nothing but stare, and then his zoological training and instinct replaced any panic in his actions.
“My gloves,” he said. “Where are my gloves?”
“Under the bench—” The thing hissed again, a sound of warning, as the Doctor groped for his protective gloves. He picked them up hastily, slipped them on, and then placed his fingers carefully on the edge of the bench, only inches from the creature. Slowly, his hands raised towards it, and perspiration gleamed on the Doctor’s forehead.
“Be careful,” Maris
a said.
The creature hunched its shoulders, its razor-sharp claws uplifted. But it didn’t resist the old man’s touch as the Doctor’s fingers closed around its scaly body.
He lifted it up, and Marisa
“What is it? Where did it come from?”
“Pepe,” the Doctor said. “The little fisher-boy.” He put it down again. “I have never seen anything like this. There is no scientific record of such a creature.”
Now he was all man of science, his voice calm and professorial. He picked up a pencil from the bench and pointed to the creature’s anatomy. He spoke to his granddaughter as if to a zoological college class.
“See? The torso resembles that of a human being. The head—I cannot classify the head. The tail is reptilian, and observe the articulation of the legs.” He straightened up. “But where it came from—”
He stopped when he saw the remnants of the gelatinous mass still on the work bench. He prodded it with his finger, and realized at last its true significance.
It was an egg.
“Pepe said it came from the sea. But still I do not know—” He reached for the creature again. “Marisa, open the empty cage in the truck. Make haste!”
The girl went to the door of the trailer, and her grandfather followed with the creature in his grip.
They made their way to the truck parked beside the mobile home, and Marisa threw back the tarpaulin that covered its end. There were cages of varying sizes inside, and in all but one, small animals and birds scurried frantically.
The empty cage stood about five feet tall. She swung open the wire door.
“A soft cloth,” Dr. Leonardo said. “We must cover the floor of the cage. It is too hard, too rough.”
Marisa provided the cloth for the bottom of the creature’s new home, and Dr. Leonardo placed him gently inside. He closed the cage door, latched it securely, and they stood off to stare wonderingly at the odd beast. It began moving about uneasily, hissing and emitting sharp, eerie cries. The sound was grating, but filled with a strange, fearful longing. Undefinable, yet erudent.
Dr. Leonardo shivered in spite of himself.
“So ugly,” Marisa said quietly. “And so very frightened.” Her voice was pitying. “Poor little thing ...”
