A for Anything

by Damon Knight

  “Hello, Johnny,” said Lindley, rising. “That’s all right, Pierce; go back to your post. Sit down, Johnny—you like coffee?”

  The Indian grunted and sat down. “This is Johnny Partridge,” said Lindley. “He’s a Klamath; his people were chased out of Oregon by the Arapaho about fifty years ago. Not many of them left; Johnny does odd jobs for us now and then, don’t you, Johnny?”

  “Do good job,” said the Indian, taking a steaming mug of coffee from one of the soldiers. He sipped it noisily and handed it back. “More sugar.”

  “That’s right, four spoons for Johnny,” said Lindley. His pink face was keen and cruel in the firelight. “And plenty sugar, plenty tobacco for Johnny, if he gives us good information.”

  “Two rifle,” said Johnny, raising his hand. “Hundred box cartridge.”

  “One rifle and ten boxes of cartridges,” said Lindley, “if the information is good enough, Johnny.”

  “Plenty good. White man big medicine cross. Plenty trouble.” With his hand he sketched a Gismo-shape in the air, so accurately that Dick was half convinced. How could anybody out here in the wilderness have got hold of a Gismo?

  “Heaven only knows,” Lindley had said the day before, “but it’s just possible, and of course we have to be sure.”

  Now Lindley was saying, “You see big medicine cross yourself, Johnny?”

  A vigorous nod. “Plenty big medicine. You come now, I show you.”

  “Think there’s anything to it?” Dick asked Lindley as they were mounting.

  “Oh, probably not. Johnny’s never seen a real Gismo, only pictures. He’s an incorrigible liar, anyhow; all Indians are.” The column was forming; Lindley chirruped to his horse and trotted off to the head, leaving Dick to bring up the rear as before.

  The roar of the stream fell behind them; the darkness closed in. Dick could barely see past his horse’s head, except when they were mounting a rise and the rest of the column was silhouetted against the stars. There was no sound in the world except for the plodding of the horses’ hooves and the faint jingle and creak of harness.

  When the moon rose, low in the south, they were picking their way around the shore of a quiet lake, one sheet of dull silver beyond the jagged shapes of the pines. They rode, with brief rests, most of the night; the moon had set again when they came to a halt at last near the crest of a ridge.

  “We rest here until dawn,” said Lindley in low tones, gathering them around him. “No fires, no smoking, no loud talking. Sergeant, post two guards; the rest of you sleep if you can.”

  There was frost on the ground, and the air had turned bitter chill. Dick dozed fitfully in his sleeping bag, and woke to feel Lindley shaking him.

  The sun was a faint greenish glow on the horizon; he could see the shapes of men and horses only as flat cardboard cutouts in the gray half-light. “Come with me,” said Lindley.

  They climbed to the top of the ridge, and lay down on the needle-carpeted ground, facing across the canyon. Beyond Lindley, Dick could make out the flat-hatted shape of Johnny Partridge. The other side of the canyon was a gray blank between the trunks of the pines. “Johnny claims he can see them already,” Lindley remarked in an undertone, “but I think he is lying. Keep your eye on the skyline over there.”

  The sky insensibly brightened; there were silvery streaks, pale and cold, over the eastern horizon. Shadows could be distinguished, and a little color crept back into the world. Somewhere behind them a coyote was barking, a sleepy, lonesome sound. Dick could see now that the opposite crest was heavily wooded in small evergreens, with a few towering lodgepole pines. He blinked. At one moment the scene was absolutely deserted; the next, the shadows under the branches of the trees opposite were full of oval shapes—dozens of them, all at the same height above the ground. As the watched, he actually saw a doorway appear in one of them and a tiny man-shape clamber down an invisible hanging ladder.

  “Ah!” said Lindley beside him. There was a click and a rustle as he brought his rifle up to firing position. Dick saw him squinting through the scope; then he lowered the rifle again with a sigh. “Nice target, but we must have patience. Did you see him, Jones?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re something new in this district—weren’t here when I came through two years ago. According to Johnny, the’re a mixed crowd, half-breed Arapaho and Sarsi, escaped prisoners and that kind of thing, all interbred with degenerate whites. A cut above our friends of yesterday, though; they’ve got up to the monkey level.”

  The bottom of the cayon was a dry watercourse, choked with deadwood; the opposite slope was steeply eroded. “What I want you to do,” Lindley said, “is to get across there as quietly as you can, but don’t take all day about it. I’ll give you three boys and Johnny for an interpreter; the rest of us will stay here and snipe.”

  The shadows were just beginning to darken when Dick and his squad reached the top of the trail. Somewhere a cur began to bark, and then another. One of the tree houses shook abruptly, and a head popped out of the doorway.

  Behind them there was the short, sharp bark of a rifle. Splinters flew beside the primitive’s head, and he ducked back inside with a shrill cry. Other tree houses began to shake; there was a confusion of emerging bodies, dogs barking, voices calling urgently back and forth in the morning air. Back on the other ridge, the rifles spoke again and again: a body fell thrashing into the brush at the foot of a tree.

  At Dick’s gesture, the soldiers had spread out along the edge of the village. He looked around for Johnny Partridge; there he was, to the right. “Tell them to bring it out,” said Dick.

  The Indian nodded. He threw back his head and uttered a short burst of guttural syllables, high-pitched, that made his throat pulse like an animal’s.

  After a moment, a hidden voice answered. Johnny Partridge listened, then turned. “They say no white man medicine cross here. Big liars.”

  Dick shrugged. “All right, we’ll do it the hard way. Tell them—”

  He was interrupted by a shout of warning from across the canyon. He caught a glimpse of a dark figure in the doorway of one of the huts, one arm raising a stick; then the hut erupted in a shower of splinters. The guns across the canyon were firing almost continuously; every shot was going into the same hut. The primitive’s body leaned out, and Dick had time to see the long bow in one hand before it toppled and crashed below. Something dark began to drip from the woven bottom of the hut.

  Dick turned distastefully away.

  “Tell them,” he said, “the same thing will happen to any of them that try that again. Tell them to stay in their huts till we say to come down.”

  Johnny Partridge translated, in another high-pitched gush of syllables. There was silence.

  Dick pointed to the nearest hut. “This one first.”

  The Indian moved nearer, shouted again. After a moment the curtain moved and a timid, hating face peeped out. The primitive tossed down a rope-and-stick ladder, climbed down it and stood empty-handed, looking from face to face with a feral alertness. Dick gestured to the soldier on his left. “Up you go.”

  The soldier saluted and scrambled up the ladder. There was an instant howl when he disappeared inside; the hut shook violently, and after a moment the soldier reappeared, struggling with another primitive. They toppled out, but both saved themselves by clutching at the doorway. The soldier, uppermost, gave the primitive a boot down, and she—it was a female—sullenly descended beside the male. Like him, she was black-haired and yellowish-skinned; she had broad shoulders and pendulous breasts. Neither wore anything but a strip of bark, fore and aft.

  “Anything up there?” Dick demanded.

  The soldier hesitated. “I didn’t have time to look good, misser.”

  “Up you go, then.” The soldier climbed, disappeared, put his head out. “Nothing here, misser.” He came down.

  “All right. They can go up again. Tell them we don’t want their women.”

  When the Indian translated, the
two primitives looked in credulous. They glanced at each other, then slowly climbed the ladder.

  There was a struggle at the next hut, and the next; then it grew easier. Every hut in the village was emptied and examined.

  The Gismo was not there.

  Johnny Partridge barked a question at the last hutful of primitives, a male, female and a half-grown boy. The male answered briefly. Johnny Partridge asked another question. The male said something short and pithy, and then spat.

  The Indian’s eyes were glittering as he turned to Dick. “I ask him, where white man big medicine cross. He say he don’t know. Then I ask him where old holy man. He say old man dead. Big liar. Find old man, find big medicine cross!”

  Dick peered into the forest beyond the village. There was nothing to be seen; they might waste days beating around these woods.

  “Big cowards,” said Johnny Partridge. “Little bit hurt, they talk, okay?”

  Dick hesitated. “Go ahead.”

  Johnny Partridge stepped forward, seized the boy and jerked him away from his parents. The boy stumbled and fell to his knees. Holding him by the hair, Johnny Partridge put a knife against his throat.

  The parents came forward a step, with cries of alarm, then stopped, looking at the soldiers’ leveled rifles. Johnny Partridge asked his question; the boy said something in a high, strangled voice. The Indian asked again. The knifepoint nicked the skin; the boy felt blood running down his chest. He spoke again in a terrified gabble.

  Johnny Partridge looked pleased. The parents uttered sounds of horror; guttural questions came from every side of the clearing, and the parents shouted in reply. In a moment the village was in an uproar.

  “Come on,” said Johnny Partridge, jerking the boy to his feet. “We go quick, he show place.”

  Dick saw angry faces glaring down from the hut doorways in every direction. A gun barked from across the canyon, and a warning shot splintered through one of the huts. The gabble of voices grew louder.

  As Johnny Partridge pushed the boy forward, the parents fell on him. They swayed together in a tangle of limbs. At Dick’s motion, one of the soldiers stepped up and clubbed them with his rifle butt, one after the other. Johnny Partridge was streaming with blood from a torn ear and a scratch over one eye, but he had kept his grip on the boy’s arm. They moved on.

  The boy was sobbing, almost doubled over with his hand held by the Indian in the small of his back. He led the way past a muddy spring into the forest. After a few yards they came to another clearing, rudely planted with stunted corn. Beyond that, an almost imperceptible trail led deeper into the trees.

  The clamor behind them swelled again. They heard a fusillade of shots, then a crashing in the forest on either side. Running footsteps came up behind them. Turning, Dick saw the soldier beside him swing up his rifle, heard the crash of the shot, loud among the trees, and saw the running primitive pitch forward.

  Voices were calling on either side. “Better hurry it up,” said Dick to Johnny Partridge. The Indian nodded, and they swung off at a trot. The firing had stopped.

  The trail bent and ended suddenly in front of a sandstone cliff. In the cliff was a cave opening, closed by a hide curtain. The curtain twitched aside and a primitive leaned out, bow in hand. One of the soldiers went down with a feathered arrow in his shoulder. The other two fired together and the primitive fell, bringing the curtain down with him. Dick heard a long wail of despair from the woods.

  Inside, the cave was dark and smoky; it smelled of excrement, rotten meat, garbage and other things. On one side, the floor was heaped with skins, ugly, earth-colored pots and jars, a clutter of smaller articles. From a pole jammed across the roof of the cave hung a green side of meat, swarming with flies.

  At the rear, the cave narrowed and there was another hide curtain. In front of this stood an old male.

  He was emaciated, dirty and unkempt: his wild eyes stared out of a tangle of grayish hair. He was dressed in a garment made of cloth, that might once have been magnificent by the primitives’ standards, but it was frayed and tattered now, gray and greasy and stiff with dirt; his bony chest showed through it and it hung in festoons to his knees. He waved his clawed hands at them, mouthing something toothlessly. His mad eyes rolled; he did a little shuffling dance, back and forth in front of the hide curtain.

  “Crazy man,” said Johnny Partridge, respectfully. “Very old, very holy.”

  “Get him out of the way,” Dick said.

  The nearest soldier made a pass with his rifle butt; the old male leaped nimbly back and disappeared through the curtain. At Dick’s gesture, another soldier ripped the curtain down.

  In the dancing light that came from a wick in a little pot of oil, the old male was grimacing and gibbering with fear, flinging out his arms and then drawing them back. There was not much else in the cave: just a kind of rude altar scooped out of the sandstone, and on the altar, standing upright, a cross of wood.

  Just that. Not a Gismo.

  Two pitiful crossed sticks, bound together by sinew, with a snakeskin dangling from either side.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As it turned out, the primitives’ arrowheads had been poisoned. They had extracted the arrow from the soldier who was hit, without any trouble, but an hour later the fellow died in tetanic convulsions. That offered an opportunity.

  They made camp when night fell, on an elevated slope which would be hard to attack without warning. The sky was clear. Dick felt the earth swinging ponderously under him; the air was still fresh with the powdery smell of sage. In the darkness and silence, Dick felt himself paradoxically close to Buckhill. Remembered scenes came vividly into his mind: the green lawns; the early-morning shadows under the stable eaves; the sparkle of sun on the lake. He thought he understood now for the first time how much Buckhill was worth—how much his father had willingly paid, and his father before him.

  Eagles, by contrast, had a curiously transient quality in his recollections: it was like a tournament field, full of turbulent action, all-important while it lasted. You had to surive, to keep your feet, not as an end in itself, but because that was the price you paid—the test of your fitness.

  The coal of Lindley’s cigarette glowed fiercely, then arced into the night and went out.

  “Good night, Jones,” he said. “This time tomorrow we’ll be home, with feathers in our little caps.”

  But the poison was already in his body. Dick had switched canteens when they were filled at midday. “This one,” Clay had explained, holding up the tiny bottle, “is slow but quiet. You have to allow about four hours, but it’s tasteless, colorless, you can put it in anything.”

  In the morning, Lindley was blue in his sleeping bag. In examining the body, Dick contrived to scratch the side of the neck lightly with his ring, and let the soldiers draw their own conclusions from the tiny wound.

  They buried him in the hard ground and heaped a cairn over him; and Dick went home to Eagles with lines in his face that had not been there before.

  “This is the crucial point,” said Melker, with sweat standing on his forehead. The air was stagnant; blue smoke hung wavering over the light. “We have to expand rapidly from a small group to a force capable of taking and holding Eagles: now I say ‘rapidly,’ because the longer a thing like that goes on, the more the chances add up that somebody will betray us. The safest way to do it is to do it as fast as possible: build the force, strike, and get it over. But when I say ‘safest,’ now that’s relative: we’re taking a risk, and a big one.”

  “Are you suggesting we pull out?” asked Colonel Rosen quietly.

  “No!” Melker’s forked beard quivered. “No—that would be sure suicide, because a lapsed conspiracy is no good, has no value to anybody except as material for betrayal, coercion and so on. I want that clearly understood: we’re in, we’re committed, all of us—we’re going through, whatever happens.”

  The others looked at him watchfully: Commander Holt, Lady Maxwell, Miss Flavin with her hands pri
mly in her lap, Dr. Belasco, Collundra, Kishor, and two big men, Cruikshank and Palmer, whom Dick had not met before. It was a select group, the inner circle of the conspiracy, and Dick felt out of place in it: why was he here?

  “I also,” said Melker, leaning back with a sigh, “wanted to see how many of you I could scare. Fortunately, the answer was none.”

  Two or three faces showed grim amusement. “We’re too old at the game for that, Melker,” said the Colonel.

  “May be, may be, but I’m a suspicious man. Now it happens that I have some reassuring words to balance the scales. As you’re aware, Dick Jones here was sent to eliminate young Lindley: now that was an experiment in more ways than one.”

  Rosen’s interest sharpened. “Yes?”

  “Lindley was in line for a key job: we are pulling the necessary strings and it appears that we’ll have our man there by tomorrow. Now my feeling was that if there had been any abnormal alertness, anything even so vague as a hunch, then a man like Lindley would be bound to be on his guard. Now then, Dick, tell them how you disposed of Lindley.”

  Dick said, “I put the poison in my canteen, and made sure I got his when the soldier brought them back.”

  Melker raised his eyebrows expressively. “You see? The oldest trick in the book.”

  Commander Holt was shaking his head. “You took a long chance, young man.”

  “Not at all,” said Melker. “Lindley was not abnormally alert, which was what we wanted to know, and we gained some valuable information—about Jones as well as Lindley.” He glanced knowingly at Dick. “Jones, I may say that we would have warned you in advance about that aspect of the matter, if it would have warned you in advance about that aspect of the matter, if it would have helped you at all.”