The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection
Page 37
Elphi drew in the pure icy air, and turned once around completely to view the whole great circle of which he was the center, noting without concern as he turned that a wall of mist had begun to drift toward him off the sea. Then he dropped down, and was again a quadruped with a big problem.
They might expose Woof Howe, he thought suddenly—scatter the pieces in that way. It would be risky, but possible if the right place could be found, and if the body could be hidden during the day. Elphi set off northwestward, moving very rapidly now that the kinks were out of his muscles, instinctively finding a way of least resistance between stiff scratchy twigs of heather. He meant to check out a place or three for suitability before getting on back to the den to see if anybody else was awake.
* * *
Jenny Shepherd, as she tramped along, watched the roke roll toward her with almost as little concern. Years ago on her very first walking tour of Yorkshire, Jenny, underequipped and uncertain of her route, had lost her way in a thick dripping fog long and late enough to realize exactly how much danger she might have been in. But the footpath across Great and Little Hograh Moors was plain, though wetter than it might have been, a virtual gully cut through the slight snow and marked with cairns, and having crossed it more than once before Jenny knew exactly where she was. Getting to the hostel would not be too difficult even in the dark, and anyway she was equipped today to deal with any sort of weather.
In order to cross a small stone bridge the path led steeply down into a stream bed. Impulsively Jenny decided to take a break there, sheltered somewhat from the wind’s incessant keening, before the roke should swallow her up. She shrugged off her backpack, leaned it upright against the bridge, and pulled out one insulating pad of blue foam to sit on and another to use as a backrest, a thermos, a small packet of trail gorp, half a sandwich in a baggie, a space blanket, and a voluminous green nylon poncho. She was dressed already in coated nylon rain pants over pile pants over soft woolen longjohns, plus several thick sweaters and a parka, but the poncho would help keep out the wet and wind and add a layer of insulation.
Jenny shook out the space blanket and wrapped herself up in it, shiny side inward. Then she sat, awkward in so much bulkiness, and adjusted the foam rectangles behind and beneath her until they felt right. The thermos was still half full of tea; she unscrewed the lid and drank from it directly, replacing the lid after each swig to keep the cold out. There were ham and cheese in the sandwich and unsalted peanuts, raisins, and chunks of plain chocolate in the gorp.
Swathed in her space blanket, propped against the stone buttress of the bridge, Jenny munched and guzzled, one glove off and one glove on, in a glow of the well-being that ensues upon vigorous exercise in the cold, pleasurable fatigue, solitude, simple creature comforts, and the smug relish of being on top of a situation that would be too tough for plenty of other people (her own younger self, for one). The little beck poured noisily beneath the bridge’s span and down toward the dale and the trees below; the wind blew, but not on Jenny. She sat there tucked into the landscape, in a daze of pure contentment.
The appearance overhead of the first wispy tendrils of mist merely deepened her sense of comfort, and she sat on, knowing it would very soon be time to pack up and go but reluctant to bring the charm of the moment to a close.
A sheep began to come down the stream bed above where Jenny sat, a blackface ewe, one of the mountain breeds—Swaledale, would it be? Or Herdwick? No, Herdwicks were a Lake District breed. With idle interest she watched it scramble down jerkily, at home here, not hurrying and doubtless as cozy in its poncho of dirty fleece as Jenny was herself in her Patagonia pile. She watched it lurch toward her, knocking the stones in its descent—and abruptly found herself thinking of the albino deer in the park at home in Pennsylvania: how when glimpsed it had seemed half-deer, half-goat, with a deer’s tail that lifted and waved as it walked or leapt away, and a prick-eared full-face profile exactly like the other deer’s; yet it had moved awkwardly on stubby legs and was the wrong color, grayish-white with mottling on the back.
This sheep reminded her somehow of the albino deer, an almost-but-not-quite right sort of sheep. Jenny had seen a lot of sheep, walking the English uplands. Something about this one was definitely funny. Were its legs too thick? Did it move oddly? With the fog swirling more densely every second it was hard to say just what the thing looked like. She strained forward, trying to see.
For an instant the mist thinned between them, and she perceived with a shock that the sheep was carrying something in its mouth.
At Jenny’s startled movement the ewe swung its dead flat eyes upon her—froze—whirled and plunged back up the way it had come. As it wheeled it emitted a choked high wheeze, perhaps sheeplike, and dropped its bundle.
Jenny pushed herself to her feet, dis-cocooned herself from the space blanket, and clambered up the steep streambed. The object the sheep had dropped had rolled into the freezing water; she thrust in her ungloved right hand—gritting her teeth—and pulled it out. The thing was a dead grouse with a broken neck.
Now Jenny Shepherd, despite her name, was extremely ignorant of the personal habits of sheep. But they were grazing animals, not carnivores—even a baby knew that. Maybe the sheep had found the dead grouse and picked it up. Sheep might very well do that sort of thing, pick up carrion and walk around with it, for all Jenny knew. But she shivered, heaved the grouse back into the water and stuck her numb wet hand inside her coat. Maybe sheep did do that sort of thing; but she had the distinct impression that something creepy had happened, and her mood was spoiled.
Nervously now she looked at her watch. Better get a move on. She slipped and slid down to the bridge and repacked her pack in haste. There were four or five miles of open moor yet to be crossed before she would strike a road, and the fog was going to slow her down some. Before heaving the pack back on Jenny unzipped one of its outside pockets and took out a flashlight.
* * *
Elphi crashed across the open moor, beside himself. How could he have been so careless? Failing to spot the walker was bad enough, yet if he had kept his head all would have been well; nobody can swear to what they see in a fog with twilight coming on. But dropping the grouse, that was unpardonable. For a hundred and fifty years the success of the concealment had depended on unfaltering vigilance and presence of mind, and he had demonstrated neither. That he had just woken up from the winter’s sleep, that his mind was burdened with trouble and grief, that walkers on the moors were scarcer than sunshine at this month and hour—none of it excused his incredible clumsiness. Now he had not one big problem to deal with, but two.
The old fellow groaned and swung his head from side to side, but there was no help for what he had to do. He circled back along the way he’d come so as to intersect the footpath half a mile or so east of the bridge. The absence of boot tracks in the snow there had to mean that the walker was heading in this direction, toward Westerdale, and would presently pass by.
He settled himself in the heather to wait; and minutes later, when the dark shape bulked out of the roke, he stepped upright into the path and blocked it. Feeling desperately strange, for he had not spoken openly to a human being in nearly two centuries, Elphi said hoarsely: “Stop reet theear, lad, an’ don’t tha treea ti run,” and when a loud, startled Oh! burst from the walker, “Ah’ll deea thee nae ho’t, but thoo mun cum wiv me noo.” His Yorkshire dialect was as thick as clotted cream.
The walker in its flapping garment stood rigid in the path before him. “What—I don’t—I can’t understand what you’re saying!”
A woman! And an American! Elphi knew an American accent when he heard one, from the wireless, but he had never spoken with an American in all his life—nor with any sort of woman, come to that. What would an American woman be doing up here at this time of year, all on her own? But he pulled his wits together and replied carefully, “Ah said, ye’ll have to cum wiv me. Don’t be frighted, an’ don’t try to run off. No harm will cum ti ye.”
Elphi imagined the small, naked, elderly, hair-covered figure he presented, with his large hands and feet and bulging, knobby features, the whole wrapped up in a dirty sheepskin, and said hastily, “Ah’ll tell ye that, aye, but nut noo. We’s got a fair piece of ground ti kivver.”
Abruptly the walker unfroze. She made some frantic movements beneath her huge garment and a bulky pack dropped out onto the ground, so that she instantly appeared both much smaller and much more maneuverable. Elphi made himself ready to give chase, but instead of fleeing she asked, “Have you got a gun?”
“A gun sadist ’ee?” It was Elphi’s turn to be startled. “Neea, but iv thoos’s na—if ye won’t gang on yer own feet Ah’ll bring thee along masen. Myself, that’s to say. But Ah’d rather not, t’would be hard on us both. Will ye cum then?”
“This is crazy! No, dammit!” The woman eyed Elphi blocking the trail, then glanced down at her pack, visibly figuring the relative odds of getting past him with or without it. Suddenly, dragging the pack by one shoulder strap, she was advancing upon him. “Get out of the way!”
At this Elphi groaned and swung his head. “Mistress, tha mun cum, and theear’s an end,” he exclaimed desperately, and darting forward he gripped her wrist in his large knobbly sheepskin-padded hand. “Noo treea if tha can break loose.”
But the woman refused to struggle, and in the end Elphi had no choice but to yank her off her feet and along the sloppy footpath for a hundred yards or so, ignoring the noises she made. He left her sitting in the path rubbing her wrist, and went back for the pack, which he shouldered himself. Then, without any more talk, they set off together into the fog.
* * *
By the time they arrived at the abandoned jet mine which served the hobs for a winter den, Jenny’s tidy mind had long since shut itself down. Fairly soon she had stopped being afraid of Elphi, but the effort of grappling with the disorienting strangeness of events was more than her brain could manage. She was hurt and exhausted, and more than exhausted. Already, when Elphi in his damp fleece had reared up before her in the fog and blocked her way, she had had a long day. These additional hours of bushwhacking blindly through the tough mist-soaked heather in the dark had drained her of all purpose and thought beyond that of surviving the march.
Toward the end, as it grew harder and harder for her to lift her peat-clogged boots clear of the heather, she’d kept tripping and falling down. Whenever that happened her odd, dangerous little captor would help her up quite gently, evidently with just a tiny fraction of his superhuman strength.
Earlier, she had remembered seeing circus posters in the Middlesbrough station while changing from her London train; maybe, she’d thought, the little man was a clown or “circus freak” who had run off into the hills. But that hadn’t seemed very probable; and later, when another grouse exploded under their feet like a feathered grenade, and the dwarf had pounced in a flash upon it and broken its neck—a predator that efficient—she’d given the circus idea up for a more terrifying one: maybe he was an escaped inmate of a mental hospital. Yet Elphi himself, in spite of everything, was somehow unterrifying.
But Jenny had stopped consciously noticing and deciding things about him quite a long while before they got where they were going; and when she finally heard him say “We’s heear, lass,” and saw him bend to ease back the stone at the entrance to the den, her knees gave way, and she flopped down sideways into the vegetation.
She awoke to the muted sound of a radio.
She lay on a hard surface, wrapped snugly in a sheepskin robe, smelly and heavy but marvelously warm. For some moments she basked in the comforting warmth, soothed by the normalness of the radio’s voice; but quite soon she came fully awake and knew—with a sharp jolt of adrenalin—what had happened and where she must be now.
Jenny lay in what appeared to be a small cave, feebly lit by a stubby white “emergency” candle—one of her own, in fact. The enclosure was stuffy but not terribly so, and the candle burned steadily where it stood on a rough bench or table, set in what looked to be (and was) an aluminum pie-plate of the sort snack pies are sold in. The radio was nowhere in sight.
Someone had undressed her; she was wearing her sheet sleeping bag for a nightie and nothing else.
Tensely Jenny turned her head and struggled to take mental possession of the situation. The cave was lined with bunks like the one in which she lay, and in each of these she could just make out … forms. Seven of them, all evidently deep in sleep (or cold storage?) and, so far as she could tell, all creatures like the one that had kidnapped her. As she stared Jenny began to breathe in gasps again, and the fear which had faded during the march returned in full strength. What was this place? What was going to happen to her? What the hell was it all about?
The first explanation that occurred to her was also the most menacing: that she had lost her own mind, that her unfinished therapeutic business had finally caught up with her. If the little man had not escaped from an institution, then maybe she was on her own way to one. In fact Jenny’s record of mental stability, while not without an average number of weak points, contained no hint of anything like hallucinations or drug-related episodes. But in the absence of a more obvious explanation her confidence on this score was just shaky enough to give weight and substance to such thoughts.
To escape them (and the panic they engendered) Jenny applied herself desperately to solving some problems both practical and pressing. It was cold in the cave; she could see her breath. Her bladder was bursting. A ladder against one wall disappeared into a hole in the ceiling, and as the cave appeared to have no other entryway she supposed the ladder must lead to the outside world, where now for several reasons she urgently wished to be. She threw off the robe and wriggled out of the sleeping-bag—catching her breath at the pain from dozens of sore muscles and bruises—and crippled across the stone floor barefoot; but the hole was black as night and airless, not open, at the top. Jenny was a prisoner, naked and in need.
Well, then, find something—a bucket, a pan, anything! Poking about, in the nick of time she spotted her backpack in the shadows of the far wall. In it was a pail of soft plastic meant for carrying water, which Jenny frantically grubbed out and relieved herself into. Half-full, the pail held its shape and could be stood, faintly steaming, against the wall. Shuddering violently, she then snatched bundles of clothes and food out of the pack and rushed back into bed. In point of fact there wasn’t all that much in the way of extra clothing: one pair of woolen boot socks, clean underwear, slippers, a cotton turtleneck, and a spare sweater. No pants, no shoes, no outerwear; she wouldn’t get far over the open moor without any of those. Still, she gratefully pulled on what she found and felt immensely better; nothing restores a sense of confidence in one’s mental health, and some sense of control over one’s situation, like dealing effectively with a few basic needs. Thank God her kidnapper had brought the pack along!
Next Jenny got up again and climbed to the top of the ladder; but the entrance was closed by a stone far too heavy to move.
The radio sat in a sort of doorless cupboard, a tiny transistor in a dimpled red plastic case. BOOTS THE CHEMIST was stamped on the front in gold, and a wire ran from the extended tip of its antenna along one side of the ladder, up the hole. Jenny brought it back into bed with her, taking care not to disconnect the wire.
She was undoing the twisty on her plastic bag of food when there came a scraping, thumping noise from above and a shaft of daylight shot down the hole. Then it was dark again, and legs—whitish hair-covered legs—and the back of a gray fleece came into view. Frozen where she sat, Jenny waited, heart thumping.
The figure that turned to face her at the bottom of the ladder looked by candlelight exactly like a very old, very small gnome of a man, covered with hair—crown, beard, body and all—save for his large hands and feet in pads of fleece. But this was a super
ficial impression. The arms were longer and the legs shorter than they should have been; and Jenny remembered how this dwarf had ranged before her on four limbs in the fog, looking as much like a sheep as he now looked like a man. She thought again of the albino deer.
They contemplated one another. Gradually, outlandish as he looked, Jenny’s fear drained away again and her pulse rate dropped back to normal. Then the dwarf seemed to smile. “It’s a bright morning, the roke’s burned off completely,” he said, in what was almost BBC English with only the faintest trace of Yorkshire left in the vowels.
Jenny said, calmly enough, “Look: I don’t understand any of this. First of all I want to know if you’re going to let me go.”
She got an impression of beaming and nodding. “Oh yes indeed!”
“When?”
“This afternoon. Your clothes should be dry in time, I’ve put them out in the sun. It’s a rare bit of luck, our getting a sunny morning.” He unfastened the sheepskin as he spoke and hung it from a peg next to a clump of others, then slipped off his moccasins and mitts and put them on the shelf where the radio had stood. Except for his hair he wore nothing.
Abruptly Jenny’s mind skittered away, resisting this strangeness. She shut her eyes, unafraid of the hairy creature but overwhelmed by the situation in which he was the central figure. “Won’t you please explain to me what’s going on? Who are you? Who are they? What is this place? Why did you make me come here? Just—what’s going on?” Her voice went up steeply, near to breaking.
“Yes, I’ll tell you all about it now, and when you’ve heard me out I hope you’ll understand what happened yesterday—why it was necessary.” He dragged a stool from under the table and perched on it, then quickly hopped up again. “Now, have you enough to eat? I’m afraid we’ve nothing at all to offer a guest at this time of year, apart from the grouse—but we can’t make any sort of fire in this clear weather and I very much doubt you’d enjoy eating her raw. I brought her back last night in case anyone else was awake and hungry, which they’re unfortunately not … but let me see: I’ve been through your pack quite thoroughly, I’m afraid, and I noticed some packets of dehydrated soup and tea and so forth; now suppose we were to light several more of these excellent candles and bunch them together, couldn’t we boil a little pot of water over the flames? I expect you’re feeling the cold.” As he spoke the old fellow bustled about—rummaged in the pack for pot and candles, filled the pot half full of water from Jenny’s own canteen, lit the candles from the burning one, and arranged supports for the pot to rest on while the water heated. He moved with a speed and economy that were so remarkable as to be almost funny, a cartoon figure whisking about the cave. “There now! You munch a few biscuits while we wait, and I’ll do my best to begin to clear up the mystery.”