Duel

by Richard Matheson

  She looked up at him, suddenly expressionless. “What?”

  “Honey, don’t stand there for God’s sake!” he cried. “Run!”

  She caught the breath that shook in her and dug her teeth again into the jagged break on her lip. Her hands stopped shaking and, almost numbed, she tried the next key, the next, while Les stood watching her with terrified eyes, looking over her shoulder toward the desert.

  “Honey, don’t—”

  The lock sprang open. With a breathless grunt, Les shoved open the door and grabbed Marian’s hand as the lathing sibilance shook in the twilight air.

  “Run!” he gasped. “Don’t look back!”

  They ran on wildly pumping legs away from the cages, away from the six-foot high mass of quivering life that flopped into the clearing like gelatine dumped from a gargantuan bowl. They tried not to listen, they kept their eyes straight ahead, they ran without breaking their long, panic-driven strides.

  The car was back in front of the house again, its front bashed in. They jerked open the doors and slid in frantically. His shaking hand felt the key still in the ignition. He turned it and jabbed in the starter button.

  “Les, it’s coming this way!”

  The gears ground together with a loud rasp and the car jerked forward. He didn’t look behind, he just changed gears and kept pushing down on the accelerator until the car lurched into the lane again.

  Les turned the car right and headed for the town he remembered passing through—it seemed like years before. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the car picked up speed. He couldn’t see the road clearly without the headlights but he couldn’t keep his foot up, it seemed to jam itself down on the accelerator. The car roared down the darkening road and Les drew in his first easy breath in four days as …

  the being foamed and rocked across the ground, fury boiling in its tissues. The animal had failed, there was no food waiting, the food had gone. The being slithered in angry circles, searching, its visual cells picking at the ground, its sheathed and luminous formlessness scouring away the flaky dirt. Nothing. The being gurgled like a viscid tide for the house, for the clicking sound in …

  Merv Ketter’s arm jerked spasmodically and he sat up, eyes wide and staring. Pain drove jagged lines of consciousness into his brain—pain in his head, pain in his arm. The cone was like a burrowing spider there, clawing with razor legs, trying to cut its way out of his flesh. Merv struggled up to his knees, teeth gritted together, eyes clouding with the pain.

  He had barely gained his feet when the crashing, splintering sound shook the house. He twitched violently, his lower jaw dropping. The digging, gouging fire in his arm increased and, suddenly he knew. With a whining gasp, he leaped into the hall and looked down the dark stairway pit as

  the being undulated up the stairs, its seventy ingot eyes glowering, its shimmering deformity lurching up toward the animal. Maddened fury hissed and bubbled through its amorphous shape, it flopped and flung itself up the angular steps. The animal turned and fled toward

  the back steps!—it was his only chance. He couldn’t breathe, air seemed liquid in his lungs. His boot heels hammered down the hall and through the darkness of his bedroom. Behind, he heard the railings buckle and snap as the being reached the second floor, bent itself around into a U-shaped bladder, then threw its sodden form forward again.

  Merv flung himself down the steep stairway, his palsied hand gripping at the railing, his heartbeat pounding at his chest like mallet blows. He cried out hoarsely as the pain in his arm flared again, almost making him lose consciousness.

  As he reached the bottom step, he heard the doorway of his bedroom shattered violently and heard the gushing fury of the being as it

  heaved and bucked into the backstair doorway and smashed it out to its own size. Below, it heard the pounding of the fleeing animal. Then adhesiveness lost hold and the being went grinding and rolling down the stairway, its seven hundred feelers Pricking the casing and scraping at the splintering wood.

  It hit the bottom step, crushed its huge misshapen bulk through the doorway and boiled across the kitchen floor while

  in the living room Merv dashed for the mantel. Reaching up, he jerked down the Mauser rifle and whirled as the distended being cascaded its luminescent body through the doorway.

  The room echoed and rang with sharp explosions as Merv emptied the rifle into the onrushing hulk. The bullets sprayed off its casing impotently and Merv jumped back with a scream of terror, the gun flung from his hands. His outflung arm knocked off the picture of his wife and he heard it shatter on the floor and, in his twisted mind, had the fleeting vision of it lying on the floor, Elsie’s face smiling behind jagged glass.

  Then his hand closed over something hard. And, suddenly, he knew exactly what to do.

  As the glittering mass reared up and threw its liquidity toward him, Merv jumped to the side. The mantel splintered, the wall cracked open.

  Then, as the being pulled itself up again and heaved over him, Merv jerked out the pin of the grenade and held it tightly to his chest.

  Stupid beast! I’ll kill you now for—

  PAIN!!

  Tissues exploded, the casing split, the being ran across the floor like slag, a molten torrent of protoplasms.

  Then silence in the room. The being’s minds snuffed out one by one as tenuous atmosphere starved each tissue of its life. The remains trembled slightly, agony flooded through the being’s cells and glutinous joints. Thoughts trickled.

  Vital fluids trickling. Lamp beams giving warmth and life to pulsing matter. Organisms joining, cells dividing, the undulant contents of the food vat swelling, swelling, overpowering. Where are they! Where are the masters who gave me life that I might feed them and never lose my bulk or energy?

  And then the being, which was born of tumorous hydroponics, died, having forgotten that it, itself, had eaten the masters as they slept, ingesting, with their bodies, all the knowledge of their minds.

  On Saturday of the week of August 22nd, that year, there was a violent explosion in the desert and people twenty miles away picked up strange metals in their yards.

  “A meteor,” they said, but that was because they had to say something.

  THE TEST

  THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TEST, LES HELPED HIS father study in the dining room. Jim and Tommy were asleep upstairs and, in the living room, Terry was sewing, her face expressionless as the needle moved with a swiftly rhythmic piercing and drawing.

  Tom Parker sat very straight, his lean, vein-ribbed hands clasped together on the table top, his pale blue eyes looking intently at his son’s lips as though it might help him to understand better.

  He was 80 and this was his fourth test.

  “All right,” Les said, reading from the sample test Doctor Trask had gotten them. “Repeat the following sequences of numbers.”

  “Sequence of numbers,” Tom murmured, trying to assimilate the words as they came. But words were not quickly assimilated any more; they seemed to lie upon the tissues of his brain like insects on a sluggish carnivore. He said the words in his mind again—sequence of … sequence of numbers—there he had it. He looked at his son and waited.

  “Well?” he said, impatiently, after a moment’s silence.

  “Dad, I’ve already given you the first one,” Les told him.

  “Well …” His father grasped for the proper words. “Kindly give me the—the … do me the kindness of …”

  Les exhaled wearily. “Eight-five-eleven-six,” he said.

  The old lips stirred, the old machinery of Tom’s mind began turning slowly.

  “Eight … f—ive …” The pale eyes blinked slowly. “Elevensix,” Tom finished in a breath, then straightened himself proudly.

  Yes, good, he thought—very good. They wouldn’t fool him tomorrow; he’d beat their murderous law. His lips pressed together and his hands clasped tightly on the white table cloth.

  “What?” he said then, refocusing his eyes as Les said something
. “Speak up,” he said, irritably. “Speak up.”

  “I gave you another sequence,” Les said quietly. “Here, I’ll read it again.”

  Tom leaned forward a little, ears straining.

  “Nine-two-sixteen-seven-three,” Les said.

  Tom cleared his throat with effort. “Speak slower,” he told his son. He hadn’t quite gotten that. How did they expect anyone to retain such a ridiculously long string of numbers?

  “What, what?” he asked angrily as Les read the numbers again.

  “Dad, the examiner will be reading the questions faster than I’m reading them. You—”

  “I’m quite aware of that,” Tom interrupted stiffly. “Quite aware. Let me remind you … however, this is … not a test. It’s study, it’s for study. Foolish to go rushing through everything. Foolish. I have to learn this—this … this test,” he finished, angry at his son and angry at the way desired words hid themselves from his mind.

  Les shrugged and looked down at the test again. “Nine-two-sixteen-seven-three,” he read slowly.

  “Nine-two-six-seven—”

  “Sixteen-seven, Dad.”

  “I said that.”

  “You said six, Dad.”

  “Don’t you suppose I know what I said!”

  Les closed his eyes a moment. “All right, Dad,” he said.

  “Well, are you going to read it again or not?” Tom asked him sharply.

  Les read the numbers off again and, as he listened to his father stumble through the sequence, he glanced into the living room at Terry.

  She was sitting there, features motionless, sewing. She’d turned off the radio and he knew she could hear the old man faltering with the numbers.

  All right, Les heard himself saying in his mind as if he spoke to her. All right, I know he’s old and useless. Do you want me to tell him that to his face and drive a knife into his back? You know and I know that he won’t pass the test. Allow me, at least, this brief hypocrisy. Tomorrow the sentence will be passed. Don’t make me pass it tonight and break the old man’s heart.

  “That’s correct, I believe,” Les heard the dignified voice of his father say and he refocused his eyes on the gaunt, seamed face.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he said, hastily.

  He felt like a traitor when a slight smile trembled at the corners of his father’s mouth. I’m cheating him, he thought.

  “Let’s go on to something else,” he heard his father say and he looked down quickly at the sheet. What would be easy for him? he thought, despising himself for thinking it.

  “Well, come on, Leslie,” his father said in a restrained voice. “We have no time to waste.”

  Tom looked at his son thumbing through the pages and his hands closed into fists. Tomorrow, his life was in the balance and his son just browsed through the test paper as if nothing important were going to happen tomorrow.

  “Come on, come on,” he said peevishly.

  Les picked up a pencil that had string attached to it and drew a half-inch circle on a piece of blank paper. He held out the pencil to his father.

  “Suspend the pencil point over the circle for three minutes,” he said, suddenly afraid he’d picked the wrong question. He’d seen his father’s hands trembling at meal times or fumbling with the buttons and zippers of his clothes.

  Swallowing nervously, Les picked up the stop watch, started it, and nodded to his father.

  Tom took a quivering breath as he leaned over the paper and tried to hold the slightly swaying pencil above the circle. Les saw him lean on his elbow, something he wouldn’t be allowed to do on the test; but he said nothing.

  He sat there looking at his father. Whatever color there had been was leaving the old man’s face and Les could see clearly the tiny red lines of broken vessels under the skin of his cheeks. He looked at the dry skin, creased and brownish, dappled with liver spots. Eighty years old, he thought—how does a man feel when he’s eighty years old?

  He looked in at Terry again. For a moment, her gaze shifted and they were looking at each other, neither of them smiling or making any sign. Then Terry looked back to her sewing.

  “I believe that’s three minutes,” Tom said in a taut voice.

  Les looked down at the stop watch. “A minute and a half, Dad,” he said, wondering if he should have lied again.

  “Well, keep your eyes on the watch then,” his father said, perturbedly, the pencil penduluming completely out of the circle. “This is supposed to be a test, not a—a—a party.”

  Les kept his eyes on the wavering pencil point, feeling a sense of utter futility at the realization that this was only pretense, that nothing they did could save his father’s life.

  At least, he thought, the examinations weren’t given by the sons and daughters who had voted the law into being. At least he wouldn’t have to stamp the black INADEQUATE on his father’s test and thus pronounce the sentence.

  The pencil wavered over the circle edge again and was returned as Tom moved his arm slightly on the table, a motion that would automatically disqualify him on that question.

  “That watch is slow!” Tom said in a sudden fury.

  Les caught his breath and looked down at the watch. Two and a half minutes. “Three minutes,” he said, pushing in the plunger.

  Tom slapped down the pencil irritably. “There,” he said. “Fool test anyway.” His voice grew morose. “Doesn’t prove a thing. Not a thing.”

  “You want to do some money questions, Dad?”

  “Are they the next questions in the test?” Tom asked, looking over suspiciously to check for himself.

  “Yes,” Les lied, knowing that his father’s eyes were too weak to see even though Tom always refused to admit he needed glasses. “Oh, wait a second, there’s one before that,” he added, thinking it would be easier for his father. “They ask you to tell time.”

  “That’s a foolish question,” Tom muttered. “What do they—”

  He reached across the table irritably and picked up the watch and glanced down at its face. “Ten-fifteen,” he said, scornfully.

  Before Les could think to stop himself, he said, “But it’s eleven-fifteen, Dad.”

  His father looked, for a moment, as though his face had been slapped. Then he picked up the watch again and stared down at it, lips twitching, and Les had the horrible premonition that Tom was going to insist it really was 10:15.

  “Well, that’s what I meant,” Tom said abruptly. “Slipped out wrong. Course it’s eleven-fifteen, any fool can see that. Eleven-fifteen. Watch is no good. Numbers too close. Ought to throw it away. Now—”

  Tom reached into his vest pocket and pulled out his own gold watch. “Here’s a watch,” he said, proudly. “Been telling perfect time for … sixty years! That’s a watch. Not like this.”

  He tossed Les’s watch down contemptuously and it flipped over on its face and the crystal broke.

  “Look at that,” Tom said quickly, to cover the jolting of embarrassment. “Watch can’t take anything.”

  He avoided Les’s eyes by looking down at his own watch. His mouth tightened as he opened the back and looked at Mary’s picture; Mary when she was in her thirties, golden-haired and lovely.

  Thank God, she didn’t have to take these tests, he thought—at least she was spared that. Tom had never thought he could believe that Mary’s accidental death at fifty-seven was fortunate, but that was before the tests.

  He closed the watch and put it away.

  “You just leave that watch with me, tonight,” he said grumpily. “I’ll see you get a decent … uh, crystal tomorrow.”

  “That’s all right, Dad. It’s just an old watch.”

  “That’s all right,” Tom said. “That’s all right. You just leave it with me. I’ll get you a decent … crystal. Get you one that won’t break, one that won’t break. You just leave it with me.”

  Tom did the money questions then, questions like How many quarters in a five dollar bill? and If I took 36 cents from your dollar,
how much change would you have left?

  They were written questions and Les sat there timing his father. It was quiet in the house, warm. Everything seemed very normal and ordinary with the two of them sitting there and Terry sewing in the living room.

  That was the horror.

  Life went on as usual. No one spoke of dying. The government sent out letters and the tests were given and those who failed were requested to appear at the government center for their injections. The law operated, the death rate was steady, the population problem was contained—all officially, impersonally, without a cry or a sensation.

  But it was still loved people who were being killed.

  “Never mind hanging over that watch,” his father said. “I can do these questions without you … hanging over that watch.”

  “Dad, the examiners will be looking at their watches.”

  “The examiners are the examiners,” Tom snapped. “You’re not an examiner.”

  “Dad, I’m trying to help y—”

  “Well, help me then, help me. Don’t sit there hanging over that watch.”

  “This is your test, Dad, not mine,” Les started, a flush of anger creeping up his cheeks. “If—”

  “My test, yes, my test!” his father suddenly raged. “You all saw to that, didn’t you? All saw to it that—that—”

  Words failed again, angry thoughts piling up in his brain.

  “You don’t have to yell, Dad.”

  “I’m not yelling!”

  “Dad, the boys are sleeping!” Terry suddenly broke in.

  “I don’t care if—!” Tom broke off suddenly and leaned back in the chair, the pencil falling unnoticed from his fingers and rolling across the table cloth. He sat shivering, his thin chest rising and falling in jerks, his hands twitching uncontrollably on his lap.

  “Do you want to go on, Dad?” Les asked, restraining his nervous anger.

  “I don’t ask much,” Tom mumbled to himself. “Don’t ask much in life.”