From down the slope came a clear little voice, “Wash ’at noice?”
Sue and Halvorsen smiled at one another and then O’Banion said earnestly, “That’s what Bitty and Sam gave us—a synaptic reflex like the equilibrium mechanisms, but bigger—much bigger. A human being is an element in a whole culture, and the culture itself is alive … I suppose the species could be called, as a whole, a living thing. And when we found ourselves in a stress situation which was going to affect us signally—dangerously, or just importantly—we reacted to it in the way I did just now when you pushed me—only on a cultural level. It’s as if Sam and Bitty had found a way to install or develop that ‘balancing’ mechanism in us. It resolved some deep personal conflict of Halvorsen’s; it snapped Mary out of a dangerous delusion and Miss Schmidt out of a dangerous retreat. And, well, you know about me.”
“I can’t believe people don’t think that way in emergencies!” she said, dazed.
“Maybe some do,” said Halvorsen. “Come to think of it, people do some remarkable things under sudden stress; they make not-obvious but very right choices under pressure, like the man who cracks a joke and averts a panic or the boy who throws himself on a grenade to save his squad. They’ve surveyed themselves in terms of all they are and measured that against their surroundings and all it is—all in a split fraction of a second. I guess everyone has it. Some of it.”
“Whatever this synapse is, the Bittelmans gave it to us … yes, and maybe set the house on fire too … why? Testing? Testing what—just us, or human beings? What are they?” demanded the lawyer.
“Gone, that’s what,” said Halvorsen.
For a very brief time, he was wrong to say that.
EXCERPT FROM FIELD EXPEDITION [NOTEBOOK]: [Our] last [hour] here, so [we] [induced] three of the test specimens to [locus B] for final informal observation. [Smith] pretends to a certain [chagrin]. After all, [he] [says] all [we] did was to come [sizable abstract number] of [terrestrially immeasurable distance unit]s, forgoing absolutely the company of [our] [ ] and the pleasures of the [ ]; strain [our] ingenuity and our [technical equipment] to the [break]ing point, even getting trapped into using that [miserable impractical] power supply and [charge]ing it up every [month]—all to detect and analyze the incidence of Synapse Beta sub Sixteen. And here these specimens sit, locating and defining the Synapse during a brief and idle conversation! Actually, [I] [think] [Smith] is [pleased] with them for it. We shall now [dismantle] the [widget] and the [wadget] and [take off].
Robin was watching a trout.
“Tsst! Tsst!”
He was watching more than the trout, really; he was watching its shadow. It had occurred to him that perhaps the shadow wasn’t a shadow, but another and fuzzier kind of fish which wouldn’t let the more clear-cut one get away from over it, so maybe that was why the trout kept hanging into the current, hanging and zoom! darting forward. But he never was fast enough for the fuzzy one, which stayed directly under him no matter what.
“Tsst! Robin!”
He looked up, and the trout was forgotten. He filled his powerful young lungs with air and his face with joy, and then made a heroic effort and stifled his noisy delight in obedience to that familiar finger-on-lips and its explosive “Shh!”
Barely able to contain himself, he splashed straight across the brook, shoes and all, and threw himself into Bitty’s arms. “Ah Robin!” said the woman, “wicked little boy. Are you a wicked little boy!”
“Yis. Bitty-bitty-BITTY!”
“Shh. Look who’s with me.” She put him down, and there stood old Sam. “Hey-y-y-y, boy?”
“Ah Sam!” Robin clasped his hands together and got them between his knees, bending almost double in delight. “Ware you been, Sam?”
“Around,” said Sam. “Listen, Robin, we came to say goodbye. We’re going away now.”
“Don’t go ’way.”
“We have to,” said Bitty. She knelt and hugged him. “Goodbye, darling.”
“Shake,” said Sam gravely.
“Shake, rattle an’ roll,” said Robin with equal sobriety.
“Ready, Sam?”
“All set.”
Swiftly they took off their bodies, folded them neatly and put them in two small green plastic cases. On one was lettered [WIDGET] and on the other [WADGET], but of course Robin was too young to read. Besides, he had something else to astonish him. “Boff!” he cried. “Googie!”
Boff and Googie [waved] at him and he waved back. They picked up the plastic cases and threw them into a sort of bubble that was somehow there, and [walked] in after them. Then they [went].
Robin turned away and without once looking back, climbed the slope and ran to Sue. He flung himself into her lap and uttered the long, whistle-like wail that preceded his rare bouts with bitter tears.
“Why darling, whatever happened? What is it? Did you bump your—”
He raised a flushed and contorted face to her. “Boff gone,” he said wetly. “Oh, oh-h-h, Boff an’ Googie gone.”
He cried most of the way home, and never mentioned Boff again.
INCIDENTAL [NOTES] ON FIELD REPORT: The discovery of total incidence and random use of Synapse Beta sub Sixteen in a species is unique in the known [cosmos]; yet introduction of the mass of data taken on the Field Expedition into the [master] [computer] alters its original [dictum] not at all: the presence of this Synapse in a species ensures its survival.
In the particular case at hand, the species undoubtedly bears, and will always bear, the [curse] of interpersonal and intercultural frictions, due to the amount of paradox possible. Where so many actions, decisions, and organizational activities can occur uncontrolled by the Synapse and its [universal-interrelational] modifying effect, paradox must result. On the other [hand], any species with such a concentration of the Synapse, even in partial use, will not destroy itself and very probably cannot be destroyed by anything.
Prognosis positive.
Their young are delightful. [I] [feel good]. [Smith], [I] [forgive] [you].
IT
IT WALKED IN THE woods.
It was never born. It existed. Under the pine needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and in darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth. It grew, but it was not alive. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and thought and saw and was hideous and strong, and it was not born and it did not live. It grew and moved about without living.
It crawled out of the darkness and hot damp mold into the cool of a morning. It was huge. It was lumped and crusted with its own hateful substances, and pieces of it dropped off as it went its way, dropped off and lay writhing, and stilled, and sank putrescent into the forest loam.
It had no mercy, no laughter, no beauty. It had strength and great intelligence. And—perhaps it could not be destroyed. It crawled out of its mound in the wood and lay pulsing in the sunlight for a long moment. Patches of it shone wetly in the golden glow, parts of it were nubbled and flaked. And whose dead bones had given it the form of a man?
It scrabbled painfully with its half-formed hands, beating the ground and the bole of a tree. It rolled and lifted itself up on its crumbling elbows, and it tore up a great handful of herbs and shredded them against its chest, and it paused and gazed at the gray-green juices with intelligent calm. It wavered to its feet, and seized a young sapling and destroyed it, folding the slender trunk back on itself again and again, watching attentively the useless, fibered splinters. And it snatched up a fear-frozen field creature, crushing it slowly, letting blood and pulpy flesh and fur ooze from between its fingers, run down and rot on the forearms. It began searching.
Kimbo drifted through the tall grasses like a puff of dust, his bushy tail curled tightly over his back and his long jaws agape. He ran with an easy lope, loving his freedom and the power of his flanks and furry shoulders. His tongue lolled listlessly over his lips. His lips were black and serrated, and each tiny pointed liplet swayed with his doggy gallop. Kimbo was all
dog, all healthy animal.
He leaped high over a boulder and landed with a startled yelp as a longeared cony shot from its hiding place under the rock. Kimbo hurtled after it, grunting with each great thrust of his legs. The rabbit bounced just ahead of him, keeping its distance, its ears flattened on its curving back and its little legs nibbling away at distance hungrily. It stopped, and Kimbo pounced, and the rabbit shot away at a tangent and popped into a hollow log. Kimbo yelped again and rushed snuffling at the log, and knowing his failure, curvetted but once around the stump and ran on into the forest. The thing that watched from the wood raised its crusted arms and waited for Kimbo.
Kimbo sensed it there, standing dead-still by the path. To him it was a bulk which smelled of carrion not fit to roll in, and he snuffled distastefully and ran to pass it.
The thing let him come abreast and dropped a heavy twisted fist on him. Kimbo saw it coming and curled up tight as he ran, and the hand clipped stunningly on his rump, sending him rolling and yipping down the slope. Kimbo straddled to his feet, shook his head, shook his body with a deep growl, came back to the silent thing with green murder in his eyes. He walked stiffly, straight-legged, his tail as low as his lowered head and a ruff of fury round his neck. The thing raised its arms again, waited.
Kimbo slowed, then flipped himself through the air at the monster’s throat. His jaws closed on it; his teeth clicked together through a mass of filth, and he fell choking and snarling at its feet. The thing leaned down and struck twice, and after the dog’s back was broken, it sat beside him and began to tear him apart.
“Be back in an hour or so,” said Alton Drew, picking up his rifle from the corner behind the wood box. His brother laughed.
“Old Kimbo ’bout runs your life, Alton,” he said.
“Ah, I know the ol’ devil,” said Alton. “When I whistle for him for half an hour and he don’t show up, he’s in a jam or he’s treed something wuth shootin’ at. The ol’ son of a gun calls me by not answerin’.”
Cory Drew shoved a full glass of milk over to his nine-year-old daughter and smiled. “You think as much o’ that houn’-dog o’ yours as I do of Babe here.”
Babe slid off her chair and ran to her uncle. “Gonna catch me the bad fella, Uncle Alton?” she shrilled. The “bad fella” was Cory’s invention—the one who lurked in corners ready to pounce on little girls who chased the chickens and played around mowing machines and hurled green apples with a powerful young arm at the sides of the hogs, to hear the synchronized thud and grunt; little girls who swore with an Austrian accent like an ex-hired man they had had; who dug caves in haystacks till they tipped over, and kept pet crawfish in tomorrow’s milk cans, and rode work horses to a lather in the night pasture.
“Get back here and keep away from Uncle Alton’s gun!” said Cory. “If you see the bad fella, Alton, chase him back here. He has a date with Babe here for that stunt of hers last night.” The preceding evening, Babe had kindheartedly poured pepper on the cows’ salt block.
“Don’t worry, kiddo,” grinned her uncle, “I’ll bring you the bad fella’s hide if he don’t get me first.”
Alton Drew walked up the path toward the wood, thinking about Babe. She was a phenomenon—a pampered farm child. Ah well—she had to be. They’d both loved Clissa Drew, and she’d married Cory, and they had to love Clissa’s child. Funny thing, love. Alton was a man’s man, and thought things out that way; and his reaction to love was a strong and frightened one. He knew what love was because he felt it still for his brother’s wife and would feel it as long as he lived for Babe. It led him through his life, and yet he embarrassed himself by thinking of it. Loving a dog was an easy thing, because you and the old devil could love one another completely without talking about it. The smell of gun smoke and wet fur in the rain were perfume enough for Alton Drew, a grunt of satisfaction and the scream of something hunted and hit were poetry enough. They weren’t like love for a human, that choked his throat so he could not say words he could not have thought of anyway. So Alton loved his dog Kimbo and his Winchester for all to see, and let his love for his brother’s women, Clissa and Babe, eat at him quietly and unmentioned.
His quick eyes saw the fresh indentations in the soft earth behind the boulder, which showed where Kimbo had turned and leaped with a single surge, chasing the rabbit. Ignoring the tracks, he looked for the nearest place where a rabbit might hide, and strolled over to the stump. Kimbo had been there, he saw, and had been there too late. “You’re an ol’ fool,” muttered Alton. “Y’ can’t catch a cony by chasin’ it. You want to cross him up some way.” He gave a peculiar trilling whistle, sure that Kimbo was digging frantically under some nearby stump for a rabbit that was three counties away by now. No answer. A little puzzled, Alton went back to the path. “He never done this before,” he said softly.
He cocked his .32-40 and cradled it. At the county fair someone had once said of Alton Drew that he could shoot at a handful of corn and peas thrown in the air and hit only the corn. Once he split a bullet on the blade of a knife and put two candles out. He had no need to fear anything that could be shot at. That’s what he believed.
The thing in the woods looked curiously down at what it had done to Kimbo, and tried to moan the way Kimbo had before he died. It stood a minute storing away facts in its foul, unemotional mind. Blood was warm. The sunlight was warm. Things that moved and bore fur had a muscle to force the thick liquid through tiny tubes in their bodies. The liquid coagulated after a time. The liquid on rooted green things was thinner and the loss of a limb did not mean loss of life. It was very interesting, but the thing, the mold with a mind, was not pleased. Neither was it displeased. Its accidental urge was a thirst for knowledge, and it was only—interested.
It was growing late, and the sun reddened and rested awhile on the hilly horizon, teaching the clouds to be inverted flames. The thing threw up its head suddenly, noticing the dusk. Night was ever a strange thing, even for those of us who have known it in life. It would have been frightening for the monster had it been capable of fright, but it could only be curious; it could only reason from what it had observed.
What was happening? It was getting harder to see. Why? It threw its shapeless head from side to side. It was true—things were dim, and growing dimmer. Things were changing shape, taking on a new and darker color. What did the creatures it had crushed and torn apart see? How did they see? The larger one, the one that had attacked, had used two organs in its head. That must have been it, because after the thing had torn off two of the dog’s legs it had struck at the hairy muzzle; and the dog, seeing the blow coming, had dropped folds of skin over the organs—closed its eyes. Ergo, the dog saw with its eyes. But then after the dog was dead, and its body still, repeated blows had had no effect on the eyes. They remained open and staring. The logical conclusion was, then, that a being that had ceased to live and breathe and move about lost the use of its eyes. It must be that to lose sight was, conversely, to die. Dead things did not walk about. They lay down and did not move. Therefore the thing in the wood concluded that it must be dead, and so it lay down by the path, not far away from Kimbo’s scattered body, lay down and believed itself dead.
Alton Drew came up through the dusk to the wood. He was frankly worried. He whistled again, and then called, and there was still no response, and he said again, “The ol’ fleabus never done this before,” and shook his heavy head. It was past milking time, and Cory would need him. “Kimbo!” he roared. The cry echoed through the shadows, and Alton flipped on the safety catch of his rifle and put the butt on the ground beside the path. Leaning on it, he took off his cap and scratched the back of his head, wondering. The rifle butt sank into what he thought was soft earth; he staggered and stepped into the chest of the thing that lay beside the path. His foot went up to the ankle in its yielding rottenness, and he swore and jumped back.
“Whew! Somp’n sure dead as hell there! Ugh!” He swabbed at his boot with a handful of leaves while the monster lay in the
growing blackness with the edges of the deep footprint in its chest sliding into it, filling it up. It lay there regarding him dimly out of its muddy eyes, thinking it was dead because of the darkness, watching the articulation of Alton Drew’s joints, wondering at this new uncautious creature.
Alton cleaned the butt of his gun with more leaves and went on up the path, whistling anxiously for Kimbo.
Clissa Drew stood in the door of the milk shed, very lovely in red-checked gingham and a blue apron. Her hair was clean yellow, parted in the middle and stretched tautly back to a heavy braided knot. “Cory! Alton!” she called a little sharply.
“Well?” Cory responded gruffly from the barn, where he was stripping off the Ayrshire. The dwindling streams of milk plopped pleasantly into the froth of a full pail.
“I’ve called and called,” said Clissa. “Supper’s cold, and Babe won’t eat until you come. Why—where’s Alton?”
Cory grunted, heaved the stool out of the way, threw over the stanchion lock, and slapped the Ayrshire on the rump. The cow backed and filled like a towboat, clattered down the line and out into the barnyard. “Ain’t back yet.”
“Not back?” Clissa came in and stood beside him as he sat by the next cow, put his forehead against the warm flank. “But, Cory, he said he’d—”
“Yeh, yeh, I know. He said he’d be back fer the milkin’. I heard him. Well, he ain’t.”
“And you have to—Oh, Cory, I’ll help you finish up. Alton would be back if he could. Maybe he’s—”
“Maybe he’s treed a blue jay,” snapped her husband. “Him an’ that damn dog.” He gestured hugely with one hand while the other went on milking. “I got twenty-six head o’ cows to milk. I got pigs to feed an’ chickens to put to bed. I got to toss hay for the mare and turn the team out. I got harness to mend and a wire down in the night pasture. I got wood to split an’ carry.” He milked for a moment in silence, chewing on his lip. Clissa stood twisting her hands together, trying to think of something to stem the tide. It wasn’t the first time Alton’s hunting had interfered with the chores. “So I got to go ahead with it. I can’t interfere with Alton’s spoorin’. Every damn time that hound o’ his smells out a squirrel I go without my supper. I’m gettin’ sick and—”
Selected Stories Page 41
