The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  Truth and nightmare had come together like the indrawn flanks of the mountains and he was caught between them. Awake, aware of the biting cold and the personal sensation of his flesh, still the nameless terror of the dream beset him.

  He could almost see the remembered shadow of his father weeping by the sheathed rocks that hid the end of the cleft, almost hear that cry of loss—I can never go back to the Lake of the Gone Forever!

  He knew that now he was going to see the end of the dream. He would not wake this time before he passed the barrier rocks. The agonizing fear that had no basis in his own life stood naked in his heart and would not go.

  He had known, somehow, all his life that this time must come. Now that it was here he found that he could not face it. The formless baseless terror took his strength away and not all his reasoning could help him. He could not go on.

  And yet he went, as always, slowly forward through the drifting snow.

  He had forgotten Ciel. He was surprised when she caught at him, urging him to run. He had forgotten Krah.

  He remembered only the despairing words whispered back and forth by the cold lips of the ice. Gone Forever… Gone Forever…! He looked up and the golden stars wheeled above him in the dark blue sky. The beauty of them was evil and the shimmering currents of the ice were full of lurking laughter.

  Nightmare—and he walked in it broad awake.

  It was not far. The girl dragged him on, drove him, and he obeyed automatically, quickening his slow pace. He did not fight. He knew that it was no use. He went on as a man walks patiently to the gallows.

  He passed the barrier rocks. He was not conscious now of movement. In a sort of stasis, cold as the ice, he entered the cave that opened beyond them and looked at last upon the Lake of the Gone Forever.

  CHAPTER VII Black Lake

  It was black, that Lake. Utterly black and very still, lying in its ragged cradle of rock under the arching roof where, finally, the mountains met.

  A strange quality of blackness, Conway thought, and shuddered deeply with the hand of nightmare still upon him. He stared into it, and suddenly, as though he had always known, he realized that the lake was like the pupil of a living eye, having no light of its own but receiving into itself all light, all impression.

  He saw himself reflected in that great unstirring eye and Ciel beside him. Where the images fell there were faint lines of frosty radiance, as though the substance of the Lake were graving upon itself in glowing acid the memory of what it saw.

  Soft-footed from behind him came six other shadows—Krah and his five sons—and Conway could see that a great anger was upon them. But they had left their spears outside.

  “We may not kill in this place,” said Krah slowly, “but we can keep you from the thing you would do.”

  “How do you know what I mean to do?” asked Conway and his face was strange as though he listened to distant voices speaking in an unknown tongue.

  Krah answered, “As your father came before you, so you have come—to steal from us the secret of the Lake.”

  “Yes,” said Conway absently. “Yes, that is so.”

  The old man and his tall sons closed in around. Conway and Ciel came and stood between them.

  “Wait!” she said.

  For the first time they acknowledged the presence of the girl.

  “For your part in this,” said Krah grimly, “you will answer later.”

  “No!” she cried defiantly. “I answer no! Listen. Once you love Conna. You learn from him good things. His mate happy, not slave. He bring wisdom to Iskar—but now you hate Conna, you forget.

  “I go to Earth with Conna’s son. But first he must come here. It is right he come. But you kill, you full of hate for Rand—so I come to save him.”

  She stood up to Krah, the little grey mouse transfigured into a bright creature of anger, blazing with it, alive with it.

  “All my life—hate! Because of Rand you try to kill memory of Conna, you teach people hate and fear. But my mother learn from Conna. I learn from her—and I no forget! Rand happy, free. My mother know—and I no forget.”

  It came to Conway with a queer shock that she was not speaking of him but of another Rand. He listened to the girl and there was a stillness in him as deep and lightless as the stillness of the Lake.

  “You not kill, old man,” Ciel whispered. “Not yet. Let him see, let him know. Then kill if he is evil.”

  She swung around.

  “Son of Conna! Look into the Lake. All the dead of Iskar buried here. They gone forever but memory lives. All come here in life, so that the Lake remember. Look, son of Conna, and think of your father!”

  Still with that strange quiet heavy on his heart Rand Conway looked into the Lake and did as Ciel told him to do. Krah and his sons looked also and did not move.

  At first there was nothing but the black infinite depth of the Lake. It is semi-liquid, said his father’s notes, the notes he had kept secret from everyone—and in this heavy medium are suspended particles of some transuranic element—perhaps an isotope of uranium itself that is unknown to us. Incalculable wealth—incalculable pain! My soul is there, lost in the Lake of the Gone Forever.

  Rand Conway stood waiting and the thought of his father was very strong in him. His father, who had died mourning that he could never come back.

  Slowly, slowly, the image of his father took shape in the substance of the lake, a ghostly picture painted with a brush of cold firs against the utter dark.

  It was no projection of Rand Conway’s own memory mirrored there, for this was not the man he had known, old before his time and broken with longing. This man was young, and his face was happy.

  He turned and beckoned to someone behind him, and the shadowy figure of a girl came into the circle of his outstretched arm. They stood together, and a harsh sob broke from old Krah’s throat. Conway knew that his father and the pale-haired lovely girl had stood where he stood now on the brink of the Lake and looked down as he was looking, that their images might be forever graven into the heart of the strange darkness below.

  They kissed. And Ciel whispered, “See her face, how it shines with joy.”

  The figures moved away and were gone. Conway watched, beyond emotion, beyond fear. Some odd portion of his brain even found time to theorize on the electrical impulses of thought and how they could shape the free energy in the unknown substance of the Lake, so that it became almost a second subconscious mind for everyone on Iskar, a storehouse from which the memories of a race could be called at will.

  The eye of the Lake had seen and now, at the urging of those intense minds, it produced the pictures it had recorded like the relentless unreeling of some cosmic film.

  Rand Conway watched, step by step, the disintegration of a man’s soul. And it was easy for him to understand, since his own life had been ruled by that same consuming greed.

  Conna came again and again to the Lake, alone. It seemed to hold a terrible fascination for him. After all he was a prospector, with no goal before him for many years but the making of a big strike. Finally he brought instruments and made tests and after that the fascination turned to greed and the greed in time to a sort of madness.

  It was a madness that Conna fought against and he had reason. The girl came again. With her this time were Krah and his sons, all younger and less bitter than now, and others whom Conway did not know. It was obviously a ritual visit and it had to do with the newborn child the girl held in her arms.

  Rand Conway’s heart tightened until it was hardly beating. And through the frozen numbness that held him the old fear began to creep back, the nightmare fear of the dream, where something was hidden from him that he could not endure to see.

  Conna, the girl, and a new-born child.

  I cannot escape. I cannot wake from this.

  Conna’s inward struggle went on. He must have suffered the tortures of hell, for it was plain that what he meant to do would cut him off from all he loved. But he was no longer quite sane.
The Lake mocked him, taunted him with its unbelievable wealth, and he could not forget it.

  The last time that Conna came to the Lake of the Gone Forever, he had laid aside the furs and the spear of Iskar, and put on again his spaceman’s leather and the bolstered gun. He brought with him a leaden container, to take back proof of the Lake and what it held.

  But while he worked to take his sample—the sample that would, in the end, mean the destruction of the Lake and all it meant to Iskar—the pale-haired girl came, her eyes full of pain and pleading, and the child was with her, a well-grown boy now, nearly two years old.

  And Conna’s son cried out suddenly and swayed so that Ciel put out her hand to him, and he clung to it, with the universe dark and reeling about him.

  I know now! I know the fear behind the dream!

  Within the Lake the shadowy child watched with uncomprehending horror how his mother snatched the little heavy box from his father’s hands—his father who had grown so strange and violent and was dressed so queerly in black.

  He watched how his mother wept and cried out to his father, pleading with him, begging him to stop and think and not destroy them all.

  But Conna would not stop. He had fought his fight and lost and he would not stop.

  He tried to take the box again. There was a brief moment when he and the girl swayed together on the brink of the Lake. And then—quickly, so very quickly that she had only time for one look at Conna as she fell—the girl fell over the edge. The disturbed cold fires of the Lake boiled up and overwhelmed her and there was no sight of her ever again.

  The child screamed and ran to the edge of the rock. He too would have fallen if his father had not held him back.

  For a long while Conna stood there, holding the whimpering child in his arms. The girl had taken the leaden box with her but Conna had forgotten that. He had forgotten everything except that his mate was dead, that he had killed her. And it was as though Conna too had died.

  Then he turned and fled, taking the boy with him.

  The surface of the Lake was as it had been, dark and still.

  Rand Conway went slowly to his knees. He felt dully as though he had been ill for a long time. All the strength was gone out of him. He stayed there on the icy rock, motionless and silent, beyond feeling, beyond thought. He was only dimly aware that Ciel knelt beside him, that he was still clinging to her hand.

  Presently he looked up at Krah.

  “That was why you gave me my chance to leave Iskar. I was Conna’s son—but I was the son of your daughter, too.”

  “For her sake,” said Krah slowly, “I would have let you go”

  Conway nodded. He was very tired. So many things were clear to him now. Everything had changed, even the meaning of the name he bore. Rand. It was all very strange, very strange indeed.

  Ciel’s hand was warm and comforting in his.

  Slowly he took from his girdle the little gun and the leaden vial, and let them drop and slide away.

  “Father of my mother,” he said to Krah, “let me live.” He bowed his head and waited.

  But Krah did not answer. He only said, “Does Conna live?” “No. He paid for her life, Krah, with his own.” “That is well,” whispered the old man.

  And his sons echoed, “That is well.”

  Conway stood up. His mood of weary submission had left him.

  “Krah,” he said. “I had no part in Conna’s crime and for my own—you know. I am of your blood, old man. I will not beg again. Take your spears and give me mine and we will see who dies!”

  A ghost of a grim smile touched Krah’s lips. He looked deeply into his grandson’s eyes and presently he nodded.

  “You are of my blood. And I think you will not forget. There will be no taking of spears.”

  He stepped back and Conway said, “Let the others go. They know nothing of the Lake and will not know. I will stay on Iskar.”

  He caught Ciel to him. “One thing, Krah. Ciel must not be punished.”

  Again the grim smile. Some of the frosty cold had gone from Krah’s eyes. In time, Conway thought, the old bitterness might vanish altogether.

  “You have stood together by the Lake,” said Krah. “It is our record of marriage. So if Ciel is beaten that is up to you.”

  He turned abruptly and left the cavern and his sons went with him. Slowly, having yet no words to say, Rand Conway and Ciel followed them—into the narrow valley that held no further terrors for the man who had at last found his own world.

  Behind them, the Lake of the Gone Forever lay still and black, as though it pondered over its memories, the loves and hatreds and sorrows of a world gathered from the beginning of time, safe there now until the end of it.

  THE TRUANTS

  CHAPTER I Prelude to Nightmare

  The farmhouse was tall and white. For eighty-three years it had stood in the green countryside where the shaggy Pennsylvania hills slope down to the meadows of Ohio. It was a wise house and a kindly one. It knew all there was to know of the wheeling seasons, birth and death, human passion, human sorrow.

  But now something had come into the night that it did not know. From the starry sky it came, a sound and presence not of the Earth. The house listened and was afraid:..

  Prelude to nightmare. Hugh Sherwin was to remember very clearly, in the days that followed, every second of those last calm precious minutes before his familiar world began to fall about him.

  He sat in the old farmhouse living room, smoking and drowsily considering the pages of a dairy equipment catalogue. From outside in the warm May night came a chorus of squeals, yelps and amiable growlings where Janie played some complicated game with the dogs.

  He remembered that the air was soft, sweet with the smell of the rain that had fallen that afternoon. He remembered the chirping of the crickets. He remembered thinking that summer was on its way at last.

  Lucy Sherwin looked up from her sewing. “I swear,” she said, “that child grows an inch every day. I can’t keep her dresses down to save me.”

  Sherwin grinned. “Wait another five years. Then you can really start worrying about her clothes.”

  His pipe had gone out. He lit it again. Janie whooped with laughter out on the lawn. The dogs barked. Lucy went on with her sewing.

  Sherwin turned the pages of the catalogue. After a time he realized, without really thinking of it, that the sounds from outside had stopped.

  The child, the dogs, the shrilling crickets, all were silent. And it seemed to Sherwin, in the stillness, that he heard a vast strange whisper hissing down the sky.

  A gust of wind blew sharp and sudden, tearing at the trees. The frame of the old house quivered. Then it was gone and Lucy said, “It must be going to storm.”

  Janie’s voice lifted up in a sudden cry. “Daddy! Daddy! Come quick!”

  Sherwin groaned. “Oh, Lord,” he said. “What now?” He leaned over and called through the open window. “What do you want?”

  “Come here, Daddy!”

  Lucy smiled. “Better go, dear. Maybe she’s found a snake.”

  “Well, if she has she can let it go again.” But he rose, grumbling, and went out the door, snapping on the yard light.

  “Where are you, Janie? What is it?”

  He heard her voice from the far side of the yard, where the light did not reach. He started toward her. The dogs came running to him, a brace of lolloping spaniels and a big golden retriever. They panted happily. Sherwin called again.

  “Jane!”

  She did not answer. He had passed out of the light now but there was part of a moon and presently he saw her, a thin intense child with dark hair and very blue eyes, standing perfectly still and staring toward the west.

  She said breathlessly, “It’s gone now, down in the woods.”

  Sherwin followed her intent gaze, across the little creek that ran behind the house and the great white dairy barn, across the wide meadow beyond it, and farther still to the woods.

  The thick stand of oak
and maple and sycamore covered acres of marshy bottomland too low for pasture. Sherwin had never cleared it. The massed darkness of the trees lay silent and untroubled in the dim moonlight. The crickets had begun to sing again.

  “What’s gone?” demanded Sherwin. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It came down out of the sky,” Janie said. “A big dark thing, like an airplane without any wings. It went down into the woods.”

  “Nonsense. There haven’t been any planes around and if one had crashed in the woods we’d all know it.”

  “It didn’t crash. It just came down. It made a whistling noise.” She all but shook him in her excitement. “Come on! Let’s go see what it is!”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jane! That’s ridiculous. You saw a cloud or a big bird. Now forget it.”

  He started back to the house. Janie danced in the long grass, almost weeping.

  “But I saw it! I saw it!”

  Sherwin said carelessly, “Well, it’ll keep till tomorrow. Go down and make sure the gate’s locked where the new calf is. The cow has been thinking about getting back to the pasture.”

  He had locked the gate himself but he wanted to get Janie’s mind off her vision. She could be very insistent at times.

  “All right,” she answered sulkily. “But you wait. You’ll see!”

  She went off toward the pen. Sherwin returned to his catalogue and his comfortable chair.

  An hour later he called her to go to bed and she was gone.

  He hunted for her around the barn and outbuildings, thinking she might have fallen and been hurt, but she was not there. The dogs too were missing.

  He stood irresolute and then a thought occurred to him and he looked toward the woods. He saw a tiny gleam of light— a flashlight beam shining through the black fringes of the trees.

  Sherwin went down across the creek into the meadow. The dogs met him. They were subdued and restless and when he spoke to them they whined and rubbed against him.

  Janie came out from the pitch darkness under the trees. She was walking slowly and by the torchbeam Sherwin saw that her face was rapt and her eyes wide and full of wonder. There was such a queer breathless hush about her, somehow, that he checked his first angry words.