“Then I’ll have to think of some other way to be useful,” Mr. Green said. “I’ve given my word, you know.”
“Have another piece of bread and butter, Mr. Green,” Annie said, “since you won’t eat anything else.”
“No, thank you very much, Mrs. Coniker. I know how little you have, because of that miserable Mr. Lacy, and I won’t deprive you further than politeness necessitates. I appreciate your kindness and unselfishness. In my place, we do the same and it makes me feel at home.”
“You’ll forgive me being personal, Mr. Green, but where is. your place? You’ve never said, you know, and it sounds like it must be far off.”
“No forgiveness needed, Mrs. Coniker. It is far off. Very far. On the other side of the moon, you might say.”
“You mean in Europe,” she said. “I’ve heard of Europe. It is very far.”
“Farther even than Europe, I’m afraid. I would tell you exactly, but you would think I was making it up.”
“Oh, no.”
“Then I will tell you. And you must believe me if you possibly can.” Mr. Green scratched next to his nose and looked out the window. “You can see part of the way from right here. That star. See it? My place is close to it. About as close to it as your place is to Sol—the Sun. Can you believe that?”
He looked from one to the other, and then to the crib next to the fireplace.
“It’s hard to say,” Annie said. “Awful hard.”
“I don’t know,” said Thad. “I’ve heard stories.”
“This is a true story,” said Mr. Green, smiling. The smile was a sad one. He looked out at the star again. “I wish it weren’t, in a way. It’s pleasant here and maybe in other circumstances I’d like to stay. But if you’ve got a place of your own another place, is never the same. You see, I’m homesick.”
“Poor Mr. Green,” Annie said. She felt like patting his arm. Instead she said: “Have another piece of bread and butter. Do.”
Mr. Green looked at her very kindly.
“Thank you,” he said. “I will.”
* * * *
When he had gone away they talked about it. Thad moved their bed so they could see the star from where they lay.
“I believe him now,” Thad said.
“The way he is, so kind and gentle, you’ve just got to believe everything he says.”
“Not many people would believe him, though.”
“Maybe that’s why he came to us. Poor man, so far away from his own kind.”
“But why?” Thad asked, as if it had just occurred to him. “He never told us why.”
“That’s true. He never did.”
“Maybe he’s run away. Maybe he done something.”
“And how? He never told us how he got here, either, from his place.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“People don’t fly.”
“They fly in airplanes.”
“There’s no air up there, between us and his star. I know that much.”
“He’ll tell us if we ask him,” she said. “I’m sure.”
“If he comes again. He didn’t say he would.”
“Oh, he will. I know he will.”
“I guess you’re right. He’s sort of adopted us,” Thad said. “Or the other way round, depending on how you look at it.”
She was quiet for a time. Then she raised herself up on an elbow to look over toward the cradle.
“The boy’s all right, isn’t he?”
“He’s fine.”
“He ought to have a name,” she said. “We can’t keep on calling him Boy.”
“He wants a proper name, given to him in a christening. We’ll see he gets it as soon as he can.”
“I know. But I can’t help thinking. I was wondering.”
“What?”
“Would you mind very much if we made Green part of his name?”
“No. Not especially. Not at all. He is his godfather, sort of.”
“Maybe we could call him—I’m just wondering about it—maybe Thaddeus Green Coniker.”
Thad raised himself up, too, and looked across at the cradle. Then he looked out the window at the star.
“I wouldn’t mind,” he said.
* * * *
Lacy looked nervous the next time he appeared to collect his blackmail ration. His eyes flickered to Thad’s and away again as he stuffed his corn, turnips, tomatoes and the gallon jug of milk into his sack.
Thad said, “Conscience bothering you, Lacy?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Thaddie, ‘cause I can make trouble for you. Keep that in mind all the time.”
“You got your things. Now get off my land.”
“Not till I get what else I came for.”
“Whatever it is, you ain’t going to get it.”
“I think I will. I want the cow.”
Thad seemed unable to believe he’d heard right.
“The cow?”
“That’s what I said. I know where I can get a good price for her.”
“You’re crazy. You’re just about the craziest man in the world if you think we’ll give up our cow. You’re just crowding your luck too far, Lacy.”
“Either I walk off this place with the cow, or I don’t. If I don’t, I walk straight to the district agent and tell him you got an illegal baby. And you know what’ll happen then. Remember what the Blue Eagle law did to the little pigs. Slaughtered ‘em, Thaddie. That’s what they did.”
“You better go, Lacy.” Thad’s voice was ominous. “Better go while you’re still walking, or I don’t know what’ll happen to you.”
Lacy backed away, slowly. “I’ll go to the agent. I’ll tell him. Don’t think I won’t. Remember the little pigs . . .”
Thad aimed a kick. His heavy shoe caught Lacy on the side of the hip, as he was turning. Lacy cried out in pain and started to run.
“You shouldn’t o’ done that, Thaddie!” Thad walked slowly after him. “That was your mistake. Now I will go to the agent. You’ll see!”
Lacy ran, limping, shouting, his sack jouncing on his back, into the woods.
Thad stopped and watched the spot where Lacy had disappeared. He wondered why he hadn’t killed him. He would have, if Lacy had made any direct threat to the baby. He’d have killed him in an instant, and with pleasure. But to kill an old man, on a warm sunny day, on his own land and in sight of the cabin, in cold blood because he might tell the district agent who might come out to get the baby, was not something he could have done. Time enough for killing when it was necessary, if it ever was.
Thad turned back toward the house. Mr. Green was coming across the clearing from the other direction. His dungarees looked just as new and his work shirt just as fresh as when Thad had first seen him, and his green hat as much out of keeping with the rest of his clothes.
Only one thing was different. Mr. Green wasn’t wearing his nose.
Thad mentioned this to him, as politely as he could, when they met at the door. Mr. Green appeared to be a trifle embarrassed.
“I lost it,” he said. “I can’t imagine where. It’s a false nose, of course, and I only wore it so I wouldn’t look so— foreign.” He had two tiny nostrils in the middle of his flat face.
Mr. Green explained again to Annie when they went inside. Annie said she didn’t mind. It was how a person was inside that counted, she said.
“I’m different in other ways, too,” Mr. Green said. “For instance, how old do you think I am?”
“Thirty-forty, around there,” Thad said.
“Thirty hundred would be closer. We live a long time, in my place. Once we thought we’d live forever and when it seemed that way we stopped having children. We didn’t want to stop—it just happened, and no one could figure it out except maybe that it was nature balancing things out.”
“But now you’re dying out,” Annie said intuitively, “and you’re looking for children to carry on your line.”
Thad looked at her in surprise, then at Mr. Green.
<
br /> “That’s exactly right, Mrs. Coniker,” he said. “We’ve gone out all over the universe, each on his own personal mission. A child I found, if he wanted to go back with me, would be my own child, brought up in my own family. There’s a Mrs. Green, too, you know. She’s back home, waiting for me.”
“Remember us to her,” said Annie, “when you see her.”
“I surely will.”
“Do you mean you’ve been coming around here to see if our boy was the one you wanted?” Thad said. “That you were thinking you’d take him away from us?”
“Only if you wanted me to,” Mr. Green said. “Only if you were going to lose him another way and I couldn’t help you keep him. Only then, Mr. Coniker.”
“I believe you,” Thad said. “I’m not angry. I just like to know the facts.”
“Naturally.”
“How would you take him back with you—if we wanted you to?” asked Annie. To Thad she said: “I saw you and Lacy having that row; heard some of it, too.”
“In my ship,” Mr. Green said. “It’s back in the mountains. I’ve kept it out of sight so as not to alarm anyone.”
“Would he have a good life?”
“The best we could give him, in our noseless way,” Mr. Green said. “He’d also have friends his own age, among children adopted by neighbors of ours. It’s a good world,
Mrs. Coniker.”
“Better than this one, at the moment, sounds like,” she said.
There was a hollering in the clearing and all of them looked out the window. The baby began to cry in his cradle.
Lacy and two other men were coming. The two men had rifles in their hands.
Thad pulled open the door.
“Get off my land!” he shouted. “Get off or I’ll throw you off!”
“You ain’t throwin’ nobody anyplace,” Lacy shouted back. “These here is federal officers and they’re here to see I get my bounty.”
The three men crowded into the cabin.
“There he is!” Lacy said. “Annie’s trying to hide him in the cupboard.”
Lacy rushed at her as the other men held their rifles ready to fire. Lacy grabbed the child and, cackling crazily, ran out of the door. It happened so fast that Thad tripped as he tried to stop Lacy and fell sprawling across the doorstep.
He was scrambling to his feet to chase Lacy when Mr. Green restrained him with an iron grip on his shoulder.
“Wait,” Mr. Green said.
Thad tried to break free, but could not. By now the two men with the rifles had got back the bearings they’d lost when they came into the dimness of the cabin from the bright sunshine. They had their rifles raised and were covering Thad.
“Let go of me, damn it!” Thad shouted at Mr. Green. “What are you helping them for?”
Lacy had stopped some distance away from the house, short of the woods, and was holding the baby by an arm and a leg, as if it were the body of a heavy animal he’d taken from a trap. The baby’s blanket had fallen to the ground and it was crying. Lacy seemed undecided what to do next.
He called to the men with the rifles, “You comin’?”
“I’ll kill him,” said Thad, ignoring the rifles pointed at him and struggling to break out of Mr Green’s hold. “Please let me go kill him.”
“Hold on, mister,” one of the officers said. “We don’t want to have to hurt you or your missus. It’s just the baby we want. Now don’t make trouble and you’ll get none from us.”
He and his companion started to edge away toward Lacy, still keeping Thad covered.
With a final desperate effort, Thad broke loose. He sprawled headlong on the ground, then pulled his feet under him and sprinted for Lacy.
One of the federal men swung his rifle, around. He got Thad’s back squarely in the sights. He fired.
Mr. Green whipped off his hat and made a gesture.
Annie’s voice was cut off in mid-scream. At once, everything was silent and motionless.
Annie was standing there, her mouth open, her hands half-raised as if to pull Thad back. Thad was frozen like a stop-action photograph of an athlete streaking for the tape in the hundred-yard dash. Beyond him, Lacy was clutching the baby to him against Thad’s attempt to take it from him. One officer was posed like a statue in a wax museum, leaning into his rifle. The other man was stopped in the action of bringing his rifle to his shoulder.
In the center of the macabre tableau Annie thought she could see the sun glinting off a rifle bullet hanging in the air, but destined to bury itself in Thad’s back.
The breeze had stopped, the birds were silent, the trees were picture-still. Only Mr. Green was moving.
He walked over to Thad and gently nudged him so he fell over on his face. Then Mr. Green went leisurely to Lacy and took the baby from him. He strolled back toward Annie. The top of his head, no longer covered by his green hat, was glowing strangely. The baby’s arms and legs were stiff as a doll’s and it wore on its frozen features an expression of terror.
Mr. Green cradled the baby in one arm, close to Annie’s half-raised hands. Then he looked around, as if to satisfy himself that everything was in order, and put his hat back on.
Instantly everything came alive. There seemed to be a roar of sound, rushing into the vacuum of silence, which gradually restored itself to its separate parts—the crack of the rifle, the song of the birds, the whisper of the winds and the rustling of the leaves.
Annie’s arms took the terrified child. Mr. Green pushed her into the cabin ahead of him.
Thad clawed at the ground, his arms and legs flailing.
Lacy screamed as the rifle bullet tore into his chest.
The investigators didn’t know what to make of it.
Lacy, who had brought the complaint originally, was dead, killed accidentally by an officer’s wild shot. The infant, if there had ever been one, was nowhere. The alleged parents, Mr. and Mrs. Coniker, maintained that there never had been a child—only an old doll the woman had kept from her childhood and which she pretended was a baby. The officers thought they had seen a live baby, but Lacy had run off so fast with it they couldn’t be sure.
The man without a nose? He was a funny one. They’d seen him, too, or thought they had, but he’d also disappeared.
They held an inquest and absolved the officer who’d shot Lacy. They buried the old trapper. They apologized to the Conikers. And they went away.
* * * *
Thad finished trimming the wick and lit the kerosene lamp. He hung it on its hook in the low ceiling and sat down at the table. Annie was looking at the empty crib.
“He didn’t say he’d be back?” Thad asked.
“No. He said it was time to go and I gave him some extra diapers and a bottle of oil. There wasn’t much time. All those crazy things were happening outside.”
“And then what did he do?”
“He sat down with the boy in his lap and clucked at him—and the boy laughed, the way he does—and then they both faded away.”
“Just faded away?”
“Fainter and fainter,” Annie said. “After a while I could see through them. Both of them smiling and looking pleased with everything. And then they weren’t there any more.”
“And you think it’s all right?”
“I’m sure it is,” she said.
“I wish I was sure.”
There was a whooshing sort of sigh from outside. Thad and Annie looked out the window but it was too dark to see anything. Then there was a knock at the door.
Mr. Green stood there. He wasn’t wearing his dungarees or his work shirt or his high shoes any more. Or his nose. He had on a shimmering green cloak that reached from his shoulders to his feet. And the green hat, glowing a bit in the semidarkness, went with it perfectly.
“I had to leave in rather a hurry,” Mr. Green said.
“Where’s the baby?” asked Annie.
“Out in the ship. He’s fine. We’re ready to go now.”
“The ship,” Thad said.
/>
“Yes. I’m afraid it made a mess of your cornfield when I set it down. Careless of me.”
“Can we see the baby before you go?” Annie asked.
“Of course,” Mr. Green said. “He’s asleep, though.”
“Oh.”
Annie looked down at the floor and Mr. Green was silent for a moment.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said then. “There’s no reason why you can’t all come along, if you want to.”
“Come along?” Thad said.
“With the boy and me. There’s plenty of room, both in the ship and at home. I know Mrs. Green would love to have you.”
“What would we do there?”
“Be parents to your child—and any other children you might like to have. Mrs. Green and I don’t necessarily have to adopt the boy. We’d be just as pleased to be his grandparents. We could adopt you two instead.”
Thad looked at his wife.
“What do you think, Annie?”
“What about the cow?” she asked. “We couldn’t leave her.”
“That’s right,” said Thad. “I almost forgot.”
“Bring her, too,” Mr. Green said. “Of course.”
“All right,” said Thad, as if that decided everything.
“I’ll have to pack,” said Annie.
Their friend beamed. “Everything you’ll need is in the ship. Except—you might bring some of your home-baked bread. And I know Mrs. Green would be pleased if you could give her the recipe.”
Annie put the last two loaves in an old flour sack. Tomorrow would have been baking day. Thad turned down the wick of the kerosene lamp and blew out the flame.
They went out to the ship.
<
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Star Science Fiction 2 - [Anthology] Page 21
