I realized suddenly that the storm had actually abated its fury while this strange thing was going on. As if the very elements themselves watched the outcome of the ball’s flight. And now the storm raged in again with renewed vigor, as if triumphant.
The area was definitely being forced back. Soon not more than twenty yards separated us from the front, and we could hear the dull, endless rumbling of the thunder. The stink was back again and all around us. Tiny trickles of cold, wet air broke through now and then but were still being lost in the smell.
Then came the last moment. A sort of terrible crescendo in the storm, and the stink finally broke for good. I saw it, and what I saw is inexplicable save for a very fantastic hypothesis which I believe only because I must.
And after that revealing moment the last shreds of the stellar air raveled away. For only a brief instant more the storm raged, an instant in which for the first and last time Ed and I got soaked and hurled around by the wind and rain, and the horses almost broke their tethers. Then it was over.
The dark clouds lifted rapidly. In a few minutes they had incredibly thinned out, there was a slight rain, and by the time ten more minutes had passed, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and things were almost dry. On the northern horizon faint shreds of cloud lingered, but that was all.
Of the meteor globes only a few shards and splinters remained.
I’ve talked the matter over, as I said, and there is no really acceptable answer to the whole curious business. We know that we don’t really know very much about things. As a meteorologist I can tell you that. Why, we’ve been discussing the weather from cave-man days, and yet it was not more than twenty years ago that the theory of weather fronts was formulated which first allowed really decent predictions. And the theory of fronts, which is what we modern weather people use, has lots of imperfections in it. For instance, we still don’t know anything about the why of things. Why does a storm form at all? We know how it grows, sure, but why did it start, and how?
We don’t know. We don’t know very much at all. We breathe this air, and it was only in the last century that we first began to find out how many different elements and gases made it up, and we don’t know for sure yet.
I think it’s possible that living things may exist that are made of gas only. We’re protoplasm, you know, but do you know that we’re not solid matter—we’re liquid? Protoplasm is liquid. Flesh is liquid arranged in suspension in cells of dead substances. And most of us is water, and water is the origin of all life. And water is composed of two common gases, hydrogen and oxygen. And those gases are found everywhere in the universe, astronomers say.
So I say that if the elements of our life can be boiled down to gases, then why can’t gases combine as gases and still have the elements of life? Water is always present in the atmosphere as vapor; then why not a life as a sort of water-vapor variant?
I think it makes sense. I think it might smell odd if we accidentally inhaled such a vapor life. Because we could inhale it as we do water vapor. It might smell, say, for example, like burning rubber and zinc ointment.
Because in that last moment when the storm was at its height and the area of unearthly air was compressed to its smallest, I noticed that at one point a definite outline could be seen against the black clouds and the blue-white glare of the lightning. A section of the smelly air had been sort of trapped and pinned off from the main section. And it had a definite shape under that terrible storm pressure.
I can’t say what it was like, because it wasn’t exactly like anything save maybe a great amoeba being pushed down against the ground. There were lots of arms and stubby, wiggly things sticking out, and the main mass was squashy and thick. And it flowed along the ground sort of like a snail. It seemed to be writhing and trying to slither away and spread out.
It couldn’t, because the storm was hammering at it. And I definitely saw a big black mass, round like a fist, hammer at one section of the thing’s base as it tried to spread out.
Then the storm smashed down hard on the odd outline, and it squashed out flat and was gone.
I imagine there were others, and I think that when they aren’t being compressed they could have spread out naturally about a hundred yards along the ground and upwards. And I think we have things like that, only of earthly origin, right in the atmosphere now. And I don’t think that our breathing and walking and living right through them means a thing to them at all. But they objected to the invaders from space. They smelled differently, they were different, they must have come from a different sort of planet, a planet cooler than ours, with deserts and vegetation different from our own. And they would have tried to remake our atmosphere into one of their own. And our native air dwellers stopped them.
That’s what I think.
<
~ * ~
Margaret St. Clair
CHILD OF VOID
It has been remarked in the Introduction to this book that no Earth invasions through dimensions, parallel worlds, or time were going to be included, with one partial exception. This is it. The reason for the word “partial” is that it is literally impossible to decide, after reading the story, where the horrid little aliens actually came from—far places or far times, extrasolar planets or space-time continuum loops. In any event, whether the characters in the blue egg are legally members of the present book’s society or strictly extraterrestrial visitants is not really important. They make the reader shake in his shoes, and that, for the moment, is all we want.
~ * ~
ISCHEENAR is his name, and he lives in the big toe of my left foot. He’s fairly quiet during the day, except that now and then he makes my foot twitch. But at night he comes out and sits on my knee and says all sorts of hateful things. Once he suggested—
But I didn’t mean to tell about Ischeenar yet. I suppose I got off on him thinking about the fire and all that. It was after the fire that he got into my foot. But I want to tell this in order, the way it happened, and I ought to begin at the beginning. I suppose that means telling about how we happened to go to Hidden Valley to live.
Uncle Albert killed himself and left Hidden Valley to Mom in his will. I didn’t want to go there. We had visited Hidden Valley once or twice when I was little, and I hated it. It gave me the creeps. It was the kind of place you see articles about in the Sunday supplement—a place where water flows uphill and half the time the laws of gravity don’t work, a place where sometimes a rubber ball will weigh three or four pounds and you can look out the upstairs window and see a big blue lake where the vegetable garden ought to be. You never could depend on things being normal and right.
But Mom wanted to go. She said there was a nice little house we could live in, an artesian well with the best water in the world, and good rich soil for growing our own vegetables. There were even a cow and some chickens. Mom said we could be a lot more comfortable there than in the city, and live better. She said we’d get used to the funny things and they wouldn’t bother us. And though she didn’t say so, I knew she thought I’d be happier away from people, on a farm.
Mom’s been awfully good to me. She kept on with the massage and exercises for my back for years after the doctors said it was no use. I wish I could do more for her. Her ideas are usually pretty good, and when I’ve gone against them I’ve been sorry. When you think about it, Mom is generally right.
So we went to Hidden Valley, Mom and Donnie (that’s my younger brother) and I. It was worse than I had thought it was going to be. The place was still queer enough to scare you purple, but besides that there was something new, a kind of heavy depression in the air.
It was terrible. At first it made you feel like you’d like to put your head up and howl the way a dog does; then you felt too worn out and miserable and unhappy to have energy left for howling.
It got worse with every hour we stayed there. By the time we’d been in Hidden Valley for two days, Mom and I were looking at each other and wondering which of us would be the f
irst to suggest going back to the city. I kept thinking about how sensible Uncle Albert had been to blow himself up with the dynamite. Even Donnie and his kitten felt the depression; they sat huddled up together in a corner and looked miserable.
Finally Mom said, in a kind of desperate way, “Eddie, why don’t you see what you can get on your radio set? It might cheer you up.” Mom doesn’t give up easily.
I thought it was a silly idea. I’ve been a ham operator ever since I was fifteen, and it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy it more than anything. But when you’re feeling as bad as I was then, you don’t want to talk to anyone. You just want to sit and wonder about dying and things like that.
My stuff had been dumped down all in a corner of the little beaver-boarded living room. I hadn’t felt chipper enough to do anything about getting it set up, though Uncle Albert had put in a private power system and there was electricity in the house. After Mom asked me for the second time, though, I got up and hobbled over to my equipment. And here a funny thing happened. I’d hardly started hunting around for a table to put my stuff on when my depression began to lift.
It was wonderful. It was like being lost in the middle of a dark, choking fog and then having the fog blow away and the bright sun shine out.
The others were affected the same way. Donnie got a piece of string and began playing with the kitten, and the kitten sat back and batted at the string with its paws the way cats do when they’re playful. Mom stood watching me for a while, smiling, and then she went out in the kitchen and began to get supper. I could smell the bacon frying and hear her whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Mom whistles that way when she’s feeling good.
We didn’t go back to feeling depressed again, either. The funny things about Hidden Valley stopped bothering us, and we all enjoyed ourselves. We had fresh eggs, and milk so rich you could hardly drink it, and lettuce and peas and tomatoes and everything. It was a dry year, but we had plenty of water for irrigation. We lived off the fat of the land; you’d have to have a hundred dollars a week to live like that in the city.
Donnie liked school (he walked about a mile to the school bus) better than he had in the city because the kids were more friendly, and Mom got a big bang out of taking care of the cow and the chickens. I was outside all day long, working in the garden, and I got a fine tan and put on some weight. Mom said I never looked so well. She went into town in the jalopy twice a month to get me books from the county library, and I had all kinds of interesting things to read.
The only thing that bothered me—and it didn’t really bother me, at that—was that I couldn’t contact any other hams with my station. I never got a single signal from anyone. I don’t know what the trouble was, really—what it looked like was that radio waves couldn’t get into or out of the valley. I did everything I could to soup up my equipment. I had Mom get me a dozen books from the county library, and I stayed up half the night studying them. I tore my equipment down and built it up again eight or ten times and put in all sorts of fancy stuff. Nothing helped. I might as well have held a rock to my ear and listened to it.
But outside of that, as I say, I thought Hidden Valley was wonderful. I was glad Mom had made me and Donnie go there. Everything was doing fine, until Donnie fell in the cave.
It happened when he went out after lunch to hunt his kitten—it was Saturday—and he didn’t come back and he didn’t come back. At last Mom, getting worried, sent me out to look for him.
I went to all the usual places first, and then, not finding him, went farther away. At last, high up on a hillside, I found a big, fresh-looking hole. It was about five feet across, and from the look of the grass on the edges, the earth had just recently caved in. It seemed to be six or seven feet deep. Could Donnie be down in there? If there’s a hole to fall in, a kid will fall in it.
I put my ear over the edge and listened. I couldn’t see anything when I looked. After a moment I heard a sound like sobbing, pretty much muffled.
“Donnie!” I yelled. “Oh, Donnie!” There wasn’t any answer, but the sobbing seemed to get louder. I figured if he was down there, he was either hurt or too scared to answer my call.
I hobbled back to the house as quick as I could and got a stepladder. I didn’t tell Mom—no use in worrying her any more. I managed to get the ladder to the hole and down inside. Then I went down myself. I’ve got lots of strength in my arms.
Donnie wasn’t at the bottom. Some light was coming in at the top, and I could see that the cave went on sloping down. I listened carefully and heard the crying again.
The slope was pretty steep, about twenty degrees. I went forward carefully, feeling my way along the side and listening. Everything was as dark as the inside of a cow. Now and then I’d yell Donnie’s name.
The crying got louder. It did sound like Donnie’s voice. Pretty soon I heard a faint “Eddie!” from ahead. And almost at the same moment I saw a faint gleam.
When I got up to it, Donnie was there. I could just make him out silhouetted against the dim yellowish glow. When I said his name this time, he gulped and swallowed. He crawled up to me as quick as he could and threw his arms around my legs.
“Ooooh, Eddie,” he said, “I’m so glad you came! I fell in and hurt myself. I didn’t know how to get out. I crawled away down here. I’ve been awful scared.”
I put my arms around him and patted him. I certainly was glad to see him. But my attention wasn’t all on him. Part of it was fixed on the egg.
It wasn’t really an egg, of course. Even at the time I knew that. But it looked like a reptile’s egg, somehow, a huge, big egg. It was about the size of a cardboard packing box, oval-shaped, and it seemed to be covered over with a tough and yet gelatinous skin. It glowed faintly with a pale orange light, as if it were translucent and the light were coming through it from behind. Shadows moved slowly inside.
Donnie was holding onto my legs so tightly I was afraid he’d stop the circulation. I could feel his heart pounding against me, and when I patted him his face was wet with tears. “I’m awful glad you came, Eddie,” he said again. “You know that ol’ egg there? It’s been making me see all sorts of things. I was awful scared.”
Donnie never lies. “It’s all right now, kid,” I said, looking at the egg. “We won’t let it show you any more bad things.”
“Oh, they weren’t bad!” Donnie drew away from me. “The egg’s bad, but the things weren’t! They were awful nice.”
I knew I ought to get him out, but I was curious. I was so curious I couldn’t stand it. I said, “What kind of things, Quack-quack?” (That’s his pet name, because his name is Donald.)
“Oh . . .” Donnie’s voice was dreamy. His heartbeat was calming down. “Books and toys and candy. A great big Erector set. A toy farm and fire truck and a cowboy suit. And ice cream—I wish you could have some of the ice cream, Eddie. I had sodas and malteds and Eskimo bars and Cokes. Oh, and I won first prize in the spelling contest. Mom was awful glad.”
“You mean—the egg let you have all these things?” I asked, feeling dazed.
“Naw.” Donnie’s tone held disgust. “But I could have ‘em, all that and a lot more, if I’d do what the egg wanted.” “Oh.”
“But I wouldn’t do it.” Donnie’s voice was virtuous. “I said no to ‘em. That egg’s bad.”
“What did the egg want you to do?”
“Aw, they wouldn’t tell me.” Donnie’s tone was full of antagonism. “They never did say. C’m on, let’s get out of here. You help me, I don’t like it here.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The egg . . . was showing me things.
What sort of things? The things I wanted most, just as it had with Donnie. Things I wanted so much I wouldn’t even admit to wanting them. I saw myself healthy and normal and strong, with a straight back and powerful limbs. I was going to college, I was captain of the football team. I made the touchdown that won the big game. I was graduated with honors while Mom and my girl friend—such a pretty, jolly girl—
looked on, their faces bright with pride. I got an important research job in radio. And so on—foolish ambitions, impossible hopes. Crazy dreams.
But they weren’t dreams when the egg was showing them to me. They were real, they weren’t something I had to hide or laugh at any longer. And all the time a voice inside my brain was saying, “You can have this. You can have all this.
“Won’t you help us, won’t you please help us? We’re harmless, we’re trapped and hurt. We came here from our own place to colonize, and we can’t get out and we can’t get back.
“It would be easy for you to help us. And we’ll be grateful. We’ll give you all you saw. And more. All you have to do . . .”
I took a step forward. Of course I wanted what they had shown me. I wanted them very much. And besides, I felt sorry for the things, the harmless things imprisoned in the egg. I’ve known what it is to feel helpless and trapped.
Donnie was beating on my thigh with his fists and screaming. I tried to shake him off so I could go on listening to the other voice. He hung on, pummeling me, and finally, in desperation, grabbed at my hand and bit it hard with his sharp little teeth. “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie! Come out of it, please come out of it!”
Invaders of Earth Page 12
