The Best of Margaret St. Clair

by Margaret St. Clair

  She looked a good deal smaller than she actually was. The integument that covered her streamlined contours was pearly, pinkish, lustrous. And her tall vermillion crest could hardly be considered a deformity. It was something else that caused the reaction, something in the look of her eyes.

  Her impersonal gaze moved slowly over the little group. It slowed and came to rest on Henry. The skies of her mind fixed on him.

  “You’re Henry,” said the glassy, disembodied voice within his brain. “The one—” (not quite one—what Hathor was thinking was more like semipermeable membrane or assemblage of points) “the one with the laboratory. Yes.

  “I’m going to train you—” (a dissolving kaleidoscope of images as thick as snowflakes. From the glittering throng of whirling, evanescent pictures, Henry caught up two which lasted longer than the rest—one of a hawk leaving the falconer’s wrist, the other of a slender key turning in a lock.) “Come along.” Hathor motioned with her two-thumbed hand.

  It was the first time she had ever come after him. Henry felt a premonitory shudder run through his limbs. Nonetheless he got obediently to his feet.

  It was nearly supper time when he got back. The smoke of Mrs. Pettit’s cooking fire drifted out into the still air and mingled pleasantly with the smell of frying meat.

  Henry sank down limply on the grass beside the blaze, shielding his eyes with his hand from the light. It was not until supper had been eaten and the necessary refuse from the meal burned that he could bring himself to speak.

  “Vela— Denis,” he said, trying to keep his voice from quivering, “Do you still want to get away from here? If you do I’ll do all I can to help you. I want to get away myself.”

  There was a cautious silence. Vela opened her lips and then closed them again. At last Denis spoke.

  “Why, yes, we still do. We thought you—Yes, we still want to get away.” For a moment the ruddy flicker of the fire lit up the tight lips of his handsome small-featured face.

  Whatever had made him decide to be tactful about Henry’s abrupt volte-face, whether his silence was caused by policy or contempt, Henry was thankful for it. He could not possibly have put into words how hateful Hathor’s recent compulsory extension of his senses had made the world where he now was to him.

  He had learned too much ever to consider that world beautiful again. And trying to express it verbally would have been almost as bad as the original experience.

  “What was Hathor doing with you today?” Vela asked curiously.

  “Training me,” Henry answered briefly. “Training you? How?”

  “It’s something she does with her hands,” Henry replied unwillingly. “They disappear. And then I hear what’s going on inside the stones.”

  “Oh.” Vela looked rather sick. “Well, are you just going to ask her to send us back to our Earth, or what?”

  “Asking her wouldn’t be any use. She let me see that today. Anyhow, she knows we want to go home. But I’ve been thinking.” Henry Perth’s voice was getting back its customary tones. “Why do people get rid of their pets? They get rid of them—”

  “I don’t like ‘get rid of’,” Denis cut in sharply. “God knows we aren’t here of our own choice and we want to get back to our own time and place. But we’re alive here and that’s something. We don’t want to get killed trying to get back.”

  “We won’t be killed. When people get rid of their pets they don’t murder them. They send them to a friend in the country who has more room or turn them over to an animal shelter or something. They don’t kill them.

  “But as I was saying, why do they get rid of them? Basically for one of two reasons. You get rid of a pet when it’s not a good pet—when it sulks, is sullen, uncooperative, disagreeable—or you get rid of it because it makes a nuisance of itself. Like chewing up rugs or howling at the moon. Now if we could only make nuisances of ourselves—”

  “How?” Denis asked, frowning. “Hathor isn’t around here much, so being noisy won’t do any good.”

  “What about doing something with whatever you’re working on in the laboratory, son?” Mrs. Pettit suggested. “Perhaps we could be nuisances with that.”

  “We can’t have anything to do with the laboratory,” Denis announced sternly. “Forbidden research is wrong, here or on Earth.”

  “Oh, be quiet, Denis,” Vela said peevishly. Her husband looked as if he could hardly believe his ears. “This is lots too serious for us to be honorable,” she went on as if in explanation. “Henry, if you can do anything with your research, do it.”

  “Well— I might try a matter canker. That’s just about the most forbidden research there is. I’d have to be careful not to get a radioactive form of canker, of course.”

  “Would that annoy Hathor?”

  “A matter canker? Yes. A matter canker would annoy anybody quite a lot.”

  “And if she gets mad enough at us, she’ll send us back to our own time and space,” Vela said. She yawned. “Let’s go to bed early and get lots of sleep. And tomorrow we’ll help Henry all we can.”

  His lab assistants were willing if not very bright. Clad in lead-impregnated coveralls they weighed, stirred, measured, filtered and proved to be so incompetent that on the second day Henry got rid of all of them except Vela.

  Her measurements were more accurate than those of the others, and she didn’t talk so mu ch. Once or twice before he had suspected that she could be intelligent when it suited her to be.

  “Listen, Henry, aren’t you afraid Hathor will find out what we’re doing before it’s ready?” she asked late on the second afternoon. “Then she’d make us stop before we got annoying.”

  “I doubt it,” Henry replied absently. They were engaged with a difficult bit of titration. “There, that’s enough—She used to visit the lab a good deal at first but not any more. I don’t think she’ll be around until it’s time for me—for me to have another lesson. I hope we’ll be gone before then.”

  “Well, what about the canker itself? Won’t it be dangerous? I should think it would give out a lot of heat.”

  “No,” Henry replied, “there isn’t any heat with a canker. Nobody knows why. And they can’t find out because it’s been ruled forbidden research. About the only direct danger to us would be if the canker got out of control. Nobody knows why but they do that sometimes.”

  He poured the solution into a crucible. “You see that switch down there by the betatron? All right, when I move my hand, depress it. Thanks.”

  A matter canker takes time to establish. There were failures in the early stages of Henry’s. It was more than a week after his conversation with Vela that he got the canker into its ultimate form.

  He carried it out of the laboratory, Vela following, and showed it to the others, who were sitting listlessly on the grass.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” Denis said after a pause. He was turning the big flask critically in his hands. “Except for the color, that is, how could this annoy anyone?”

  “It hasn’t been activated yet,” Henry explained. He took the flask back from Denis and set it on the ground. “I want you both to get into your coveralls. The canker isn’t very radioactive but there’s bound to be some radiation. So keep well back from it.”

  He adjusted the timing device on the neck of the flask. While Mrs. Pettit and Denis were getting into their long white cover alls he dropped in the gray-sheathed thorium pellets which were the activating charge. Once more he adjusted the timing device. “Get back,” he said. The first—second—third pellets dropped.

  The flask dissolved. The gluey viscous stuff it held ran out sluggishly over the grass. Writhing, twisting, boiling, the grass was eaten away from it. The liquid disappeared. The canker was eating in.

  “It’s getting started nicely,” Henry said.

  A column of steam shot up. It enlarged, grew hollow. Now there was a hole, a growing one, in the ground. The edges curled and bubbled and smoked. The hole widened, grew deeper.

  A wind
blew over the surface of the grass. It freshened. In a moment the leaves of the trees were in motion. The boughs began to rock. The column of steam broke off, reappeared soaringly, broke off again. The wind was growing to a gale.

  “What is this, son?” Mrs. Pettit demanded. She had to put her mouth against Henry’s head to make herself heard. “Where’s the wind coming from?”

  “Canker’s creating a vacuum,” Henry yelled back. “Air rushes in to fill it faster as the canker grows. Get back! Get back!”

  The party hurried across the slick green surface of the grass toward safety, breaking at the last into a run. The giant wind kept trying to push them back.

  “Further! Further!” Henry yelled. “Get back!”

  * * *

  Abruptly the canker was lapping at the laboratory walls. The stones boiled evilly for a moment and no longer existed. The upper part of the structure fell in, disappeared.

  Henry’s face was greenish white. “It’s getting out of control. Run. Run!” he said.

  They ran. Shrieking, stumbling, trying to breathe, they ran. The canker was faster than they. With the flowing ease of a creature in a dream it gained on them. It was no more than a yard from them when they reached the site of the cooking fire. Two seconds more and it was lapping at their heels.

  Vela collapsed and fell. Denis put his hands under her armpits and wildly tried to drag her along. Mrs. Pettit, her face a mask of terror inside the glazed hood of her coveralls, was screaming inaudibly. The wind was horrible.

  Hathor appeared. She was standing in the air eight or ten feet above their heads. Though her eyes still had their uncanny look of remoteness and impassivity, something about her suggested exasperation consciously controlled. Standing securely on nothingness she began to make quick, plucking motions with her hands. Slipping, sliding, twisting, they moved in space and out of it.

  There was a terrific lightning flash. The world dissolved in curtains of white light. Henry, staggering back from the impact of the prodigy, was amazed that his retinae had not been burned out. It did not seem possible that the eyes could be flooded with such light and still see.

  There was another even vaster flash. Slowly, reluctantly, it died away. Henry looked up at Hathor with his scalded eyeballs. Her hands still moved in their twisting pattern, sliding in and out of visibility, but more deliberately than they had. Tiny veins stood out on her temples. Her lips were compressed. Plainly she was imposing some great exertion on herself. The howling wind had died away.

  The earth, the horizon, the air, twanged like a plucked bowstring. In the most horrible moment of the afternoon, Henry perceived that everywhere about him were slowly opening doors. Convulsively he shut his eyes.

  When he opened them again Hathor had put down her hands. The air was calm and untroubled. All around the party the grass lay as fresh, as green, as unbroken as it had been before the matter canker was set up. The only sign of its existence that the canker had left was an exceptionally heavy coating of dew. But the laboratory was gone.

  Hathor fixed her impassive eyes on Henry. Her face had resumed its ordinary inexpressiveness, but he felt the fright that always came over him at mental contact with her. A huge voice began to print itself awesomely in his brain—“DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN.”

  It hadn’t worked. Hathor had neither punished them nor got rid of them. And now what were they to do? The laboratory was gone. They had no way of annoying Hathor with another matter canker even if they had been minded to try it. All that was left them was to try to be unsatisfactory pets.

  They discussed it night after night as they sat around the coals of their fire. They could decide on nothing. It was not until Hathor, coming to get Henry for the third installment of his training, took Den is along too, that a definite program emerged.

  Denis was shaken by his experience. It amused Henry, who was becoming accustomed to the horror that Hathor’s training involved, to see how shaken he was. Denis’ tight little mouth was as firm as ever when he remembered to keep it firm, But in moments of inattention his jaw hung slackly and his lips had a tendency to shake.

  “This can’t go on,” he said, pacing up and down on the grass. “Vela’s not well—haven’t you noticed? She needs medical attention but I wouldn’t trust Hathor to prescribe for her. It’s not myself I’m thinking of, it’s her. We’ve got to get home.”

  “It would be nice if we could,” Henry replied warily. “But—”

  “But what?”

  “Nothing. Do you have a plan?”

  “Yes. We’ll run away.”

  “Run away? Hathor can bring us back in ten seconds as soon as she notices we’re gone.”

  “Yes, of course she can,” Denis replied. “But if we keep on running away and she has to keep on bringing us back—you see what I mean. She only comes to visit us every four or five days, but if every time she comes we’ve run away, she’ll soon get tired of it. Bringing us back will be so annoying she’ll send us home to get rid of us.”

  Henry was silent.

  “What’s the matter?” Denis asked challengingly. “Don’t you think it would work? We could save up our supplies and take food with us. Besides, there’s a lot of wild fruit.”

  “Oh, I think it would work. That’s what’s bothering me.”

  Denis’ back stiffened. For a moment he was again the martinet. “Explain yourself,” he rapped out.

  “I’m afraid.” Henry swallowed. “Afraid to annoy her. Afraid of what she’d do.”

  Denis looked relieved. “Nonsense,” he said heartily. “If she didn’t do anything to us for setting up the matter canker she won’t do anything to us no matter what we do. That’s obvious. Besides, what could be worse than what she does when she’s training us? That—that almost makes me sick.”

  Henry let his hands dangle down between his knees. His eyes had taken on an odd bright look. “That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” he said. He managed a smile. “Pretty bad. But maybe something could be worse.”

  “Rot! I’m going to talk to Vela and her mother about it. If they agree will you come along with us? After all, you’re in this too.”

  There was a pause. “All right,” Henry replied at last. “As you say, I’m in this with you. If you go I’ll go with you.”

  Hathor had made one of her visits only the day before. She made them at irregular intervals but it was probable that three or four days would elapse before she would visit Henry and the others again. On the third day, carrying what supplies they had been able to accumulate, the party escaped.

  The escape was unspectacular. They walked for a mile or two through the rolling parkland where Hathor had established them, turned to the right and were on a road that was no more than a grassy track. Once in the distance they saw a pair of Hathor’s people walking slowly along. Sometimes the big mammals walked, instead of simply materializing where they wished to be.

  Denis made the party hide beside the road until the big people were safely out of sight. Later the party passed a lonely building whose walls were shimmering gray webs. Henry identified it to himself as a place where a dimension-spanning vortex, like the one which had brought them thither, was being made. By noon the party was in a rather open wood. They decided to stay there for the night.

  Hathor came for them on the second day. She did not seem angry, only more than usually remote. She set them down on the sward beside the open stoa in the park where they slept, and gazed at them. Then she disappeared.

  Denis was jubilant. “It’s working!” he said, very pleased with himself. “The next time we run away or maybe the time after that she’ll send us home to get rid of us. You’ll see, old chap.”

  “Will she?” Henry answered with a sigh. “Well, I hope you’re right.”

  * * *

  The second attempt at escape was not very successful. Hathor came for them when they had been gone no more than a couple of hours. The third time…

  Denis was in the lead when they reached the boundary of the park. He was
talking cheerily to Vela, his head turned, as they walked along. When he faced about once more, Hathor was standing there. Her crimson-tipped crest waved gently in the breeze as she bent over and picked up Denis.

  The action itself was ordinary enough but Henry felt a sickening pang of apprehension. He plucked at Vela’s arm. “Run,” he said hoarsely, “you and mother run and hide.”

  “But— what’s the matter? What’s she doing with her hands?” Vela’s eyes were round. “Why is she holding him so tight?” Her voice went up. “Is she—he said she wouldn’t hurt us. Oh! Oh!”

  Hathor’s hands were slipping smoothly in and out of the web of invisibility. Now she put one of them up to Denis’ head. Eerily, unbelievably, her fingers slid inside the skull.

  Denis began to scream. It was a horrible high squeal like a frightened rabbit’s. At the sound Vela pressed her fists to her ears and started to run. Mrs. Pettit hesitated, looking after her. Then, moaning and slobbering, she bobbed after the girl. Henry stayed behind, until he was sure what was going on. Then he too turned and ran.

  There was little cover in the rolling park. The women were cowering behind a big granite boulder and there Henry joined them. Denis gave scream after shattering scream.

  The screams stopped. Henry looked over the top of the rock.

  Tears were still flowing down Denis’ cheeks but the convulsed terror had gone out of his face. It had been replaced with a vegetable imbecile calm.

  Hathor put him down very gently on the grass. He walked eight or ten paces uncertainly and then sat down on the sward. He pulled up a handful of grass and examined its roots.

  Vela tugged desperately at the hem of Henry’s sleeve. “What’s she done to him?” she demanded in an agonized whisper. “Oh what it it? Henry, Henry, Henry—what’s she done?”

  Henry turned to face her. “We geld domestic animals to make them better pets, don’t we?” he answered. His mouth twisted shockingly to one side. “Hathor’s done something to his brain to make a better pet out of him. So he’ll stay here always without wanting to get away, so he won’t be a nuisance any more. That’s what she’s doing. She’s making us better pets. Better pets! Better pets!”