She hunted about the room until she found a box of note paper. Using the lid of the box as a desk, she printed carefully across the top of one of the narrow gray sheets: THE MAN.
She hesitated. Then she wrote: “1. Where did he come from?”
She licked her pencil. The idea was hard to put into words. But she wanted to see it written out on the paper. She began, erased, began again. Finally she wrote, “I think he came to Moss Island from the mainland. I think he came over one night last month when the tide was so low. I think he came here by acci—” She erased. “By mistake.”
Brenda was ready for the second question “Why does he stay on the island?” she scribbled. She was writing faster now. “I think because he cannot swim. The water would—” she paused, conscious that the exact word she wanted was not in her vocabulary. At last she wrote, “would wash him away.”
She got out another sheet of note paper. At the top she printed, “THE MAN—Page 2.” She bit into the pencil shank judiciously. Then she wrote, “What kind of a man is he? I think he is not like other people. Not like us. He is a different kind of a man.”
She had written the last words slowly. Now inspiration came. She scribbled, “He is not like us because he likes dead things to eat. Things that have been dead for much—” She erased. “For a long time. I think that is why he came to M.I. in the first place. Hunting. He is old. Has been the way he is for a long time.”
She put the pencil down. She seemed to have finished. Her mother must have gone out; the noise of her parents’ voices had ceased, and the house was perfectly quiet. Outside, she could hear the faint slap of her father’s trowel as he worked on the concrete.
There was a long pause. Brenda sat motionless. Then she picked up the pencil again and wrote at the bottom of the page, very quickly, “I think he wan ts to be born.”
She picked up what she had written and looked at it. Then she took the two pages and went with them into the bathroom. She tore them into small pieces and flushed them down the drain.
Supper that night was quiet. Once Brenda’s mother started to say something about Elizabeth Emsden, and was stopped by her father’s warning frown. Brenda helped with the dishes. Just before she went upstairs to bed, she slipped into her parents’ bedroom, which was on the ground floor, and unlatched the window screens.
She had trouble getting to sleep, but slept soundly. She was aroused, when the night was well along, by the sound of voices. She stole out on the stair landing and listened, her heart beginning to thud.
The rotten smell was coming up in burning, bitter waves. The cottage seemed to rock under it. Brenda clung to the banister. He had come then, the man—her man—from the quarry. She was glad.
Brenda’s father was speaking. “That smell is really incredible,” he said in an abstracted voice. And then, to Brenda’s mother, “Flora, call Elizabeth and tell her to have Jim come over. Hurry. I don’t know how much longer I can keep him back with this thing. Have Jim bring his gun.”
“Yes.” Flora Alden giggled. “You said Elizabeth was hysterical, didn’t you? For God’s sake keep your voice down, Rick. I don’t want Brenda to waken and see this. She’d be—I don’t think she’d ever get over it.” She moved toward the telephone.
Brenda’s eyes widened. Were her parents really solicitous for her? Were they afraid she’d be afraid? She moved down two or three steps, very softly, and sat down on one of the treads. If they noticed her now, she could say their voices had awakened her. She peered out between the banisters.
Her father was standing in the hall, holding the man from the quarry impaled in the stabbing beam of an electric torch. He—oh, he was brave—he kept moving about and trying to rub the light out of his eyes. He made little rushes. But her father shifted the torch mercilessly, playing him in it, even though his hand shook.
Brenda’s mother came back from the phone. “He’s coming,” she reported. “He didn’t think the gun would do much good. He had another plan.”
It took Jim Emsden long enough to get to the cottage for Brenda to have time enough to shiver and wish she had put on her bathrobe. She yawned nervously and curled herself up more tightly against the banister. But she never took her eyes from the tableau in the hall below.
Emsden came in by the side door. He was wearing an overcoat over his pajamas. He took a deep breath when he saw the gray, blobby shape in the light of the torch.
“Yes, it’s the same man,” he said in his rumbling voice. “Of course. Nobody could mistake that smell. I brought the gun, Rick, but I have a hunch it won’t help. Not against a thing like that. Elizabeth got a glimpse of him, you know. I’ll show you what I mean. Keep him in the torch.”
He raised the.22 to his shoulder, clicked the bolt, and fired. Brenda’s little scream went unheeded in the whoosh of the shot. But the man from the quarry made no sign of having received the impact. He did not even rock. The bullet might as well have spent its force in mud.
“You see?” Emsden demanded. “It wasn’t any good.”
Flora Alden was giggling gently. The beam of the torch moved in bobbing circles against the darkness. “What’ll we do, Jim?” Rick asked. “I didn’t know things like this could happen. What are we going to do?—I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.”
“Steady, Rick. Why, there’s one thing he’ll be afraid of Whatever he is. Fire.”
He produced rags and a bottle of kerosene. With the improvised torch they drove him out of the cottage and into the night outside. Whenever he slowed and tried to face them, his head lowered, his teeth gleaming, they thrust the bundle of burning rags in his face.
He had to give ground. Brenda was chewing her wrist in her excitement. She heard her father’s higher voice saying, “But what will we do with him, Jim? We can’t just leave him outside the house,” and Emsden’s deeper, less distinct answering rumble, “…kill him. But we can shut him up.” And then a confused roll of voices ending in the word “quarry.” She could hear nothing more.
Next day an atmosphere of exhaustion and cold defeat hung over the house. Brenda’s mother moved about her household tasks mechanically, hardly speaking to her daughter, her face white. Her father had not come back to the cottage until daybreak, and had left again after a few hours. It was not until nearly dusk that Brenda was able to slip out and try to find what had become of the man.
She made straight for the quarry. When she reached it, she looked about, bewildered. The sides were still sharp and square, but a great mound of rock had been piled up in the center. The men of Moss Island must have worked hard all day to pile up so much rock.
She slid down the sides and clambered up the heap in the center. What had become of him? Was he under the mound? She listened. She could hear nothing. After a moment she sat down and pressed her ear to the rock. It felt still warm from the heat of the sun.
She listened. She could hear only the beating of her heart. And then, far down, a long way off, a rustle within the heap like that made by a mole’s soft paws.
After that, things changed. Brenda’s father had to go back to the office, since his vacation was over. He could visit Moss Island only on weekends. Brenda’s mother began to complain that Brenda was getting hard to handle, no longer obeyed.
The children who had rejected the girl now sought her out. They came to the cottage as soon as breakfast was over, asking for Brenda, and she went off with them at once, deaf to all that her mother could say. She would return only at dusk, pale with exhaustion, but still blazing with frantic energy.
Her new energy seemed inexhaustible. The physical feats that had once repelled her drew her irresistibly. She tumbled, climbed, dove, chinned herself, did splits and cartwheels. The other children watched her admiringly and applauded. For the first time in her life she tasted the pleasure of leadership.
If that had been all, only Brenda’s parents would have complained. But she drew her new followers after her into piece upon piece of mischief. They were destructive, wanton, irrepressible. By
the end of the summer everyone on Moss Island was saying that Brenda Alden needed disciplining. Her parents complained bitterly that she was impossible to control. They sent her off ahead of time to school.
There the events of the late summer were repeated. Brenda’s schoolmates accepted her blindly. The teachers punished and threatened. Her grades, for the first time in her life, were bad. She was within an inch of being expelled.
The year passed. Spring came, and summer. The Aldens, fearing more trouble, left Brenda at school after the school year was over. She did not get back to Moss Island until late July.
The last few months had changed Brenda physically. Her narrow body had rounded and grown more womanly. Under her shirt—she still wore slacks and shirt—her breasts had begun to swell and lift. She seemed to have outgrown her tomboy ways. Her parents began to congratulate themselves.
She did not go at once to the cairn in the quarry. She often thought of it. But she felt a sweet reluctance, an almost tender disinclination toward going. It could wait. August was well advanced before she visited the mound.
The day was warm. She was winded after the walk through the woods. She let herself down the side of the quarry delicately, paused for breath, and went up the mound with long, slipping steps. When she got to the top she sat down.
Was there, in the hot air, the faint hint of rottenness? She inhaled doubtfully. Then, as she had done last year, she pressed her ear to the mound.
There was silence. Was he—but of course, he couldn’t be dead. “Hi,” she called softly, her lips against the rock. “Hi. I’ve come back. It’s me.”
The scrabble began far down and seemed to come nearer. But there was too much rock in the way. Brenda sighed. “Poor old thing,” she said. Her tone was rueful. “You want to be born, don’t you? And you can’t get out. It’s too bad.”
The scrabbling continued. Brenda, after a moment, stretched herself out against the rock. The sun was warm, the heat from the stones beat uplullingly against her body. She lay in drowsy contentment for a long time, listening to the noises within the mound.
The sun began to wester. The cool of evening roused her. She sat up.
The air was utterly silent. There were no bird calls anywhere. The only sounds came from within the mound.
Brenda leaned forward quickly, so that her long hair fell over her face. “I love you,” she said softly to the rock. “I’ll always love you. You’re the only one I could ever love.”
She halted. The scrabbling within had risen to a crescendo. She laughed. Then she drew a long wavering sigh. “Be patient,” she said. “Someday I’ll let you out. I promise. We’ll be born together, you and I.”
1954. Weird Tales
SHORT IN THE CHEST
The girl in the marine-green uniform turned up her hearing aid a trifle—they were all a little deaf, from the cold-war bombing—and with an earnest frown regarded the huxley that was seated across the desk from her.
“You’re the queerest huxley I ever heard of,” she said flatly. “The others aren’t at all like you.”
The huxley did not seem displeased at this remark. It took off its windowpane glasses, blew on them, polished them on a handkerchief, and retu rned them to its nose. Sonya’s turning up the hearing aid had activated the short in its chest again; it folded its hands protectively over the top buttons of its dove-gray brocaded waistcoat.
“And in what way, my dear young lady, am I different from other huxleys?” it asked.
“Well— you tell me to speak to you frankly, to tell you exactly what is in my mind. I’ve only been to a huxley once before, but it kept talking about giving me the big, overall picture, and about using dighting[1] to transcend myself. It spoke about in-group love, and intergroup harmony, and it said our basic loyalty must be given to Defense, which in the cold-war emergency is the country itself.
“You’re not like that at all, not at all philosophic. I suppose that’s why they’re called huxleys—because they’re philosophic rob—I beg your pardon.”
“Go ahead and say it,” the huxley encouraged. “I’m not shy. I don’t mind being called a robot.”
“I might have known. I guess that’s why you’re so popular. I never saw a huxley with so many people in its waiting room.”
“I am a rather unusual robot,” the huxley said, with a touch of smugness. “I’m a new model, just past the experimental stage, with unusually complicated relays. But that’s beside the point. You haven’t told me yet what’s troubling you.”
The girl fiddled nervously with the control of her hearing aid. After a moment she turned it down; the almost audible sputtering in the huxley’s chest died away.
“It’s about the pigs,” she said.
“The pigs!” The huxley was jarred out of its mechanical calm. “You know, I thought it would be something about dighting,” it said after a second. It smiled winningly. “It usually is.”
“Well… it’s about that too. But the pigs were what started me worrying. I don’t know whether you’re clear about my rank. I’m Major Sonya Briggs, in charge of the Zone 13 piggery.”
“Oh,” said the huxley.
“Yes… Like the other armed services, we Marines produce all our own food. My piggery is a pretty important unit in the job of keeping up the supply of pork chops. Naturally, I was disturbed when the newborn pigs refused to nurse.
“If you’re a new robot, you won’t have much on your memory coils about pigs. As soon as the pigs are born, we take them away from the sow—we use an aseptic scoop—and put them in an enclosure of their own with a big nursing tank. We have a recording of a sow grunting, and when they hear that they’re supposed to nurse. The sow gets an oestric, and after a few days she’s ready to breed again. The system is supposed to produce a lot more pork than letting the baby pigs stay with the sow in the old-fashioned way. But as I say, lately they’ve been refusing to nurse.
“No matter how much we step up the grunting record, they won’t take the bottle. We’ve had to slaughter several litters rather than let them starve to death. And at that the flesh hasn’t been much good—too mushy and soft. As you can easily see, the situation is getting serious.”
“Um,” the huxley said.
“Naturally, I made full reports. Nobody has known what to do. But when I got my dighting slip a couple of times ago, in the space marked ‘Purpose,’ besides the usual rubber-stamped ‘To reduce interservice tension’ somebody had written in: ‘To find out from Air their solution of the neonatal pig nutrition problem.’
“So I knew my dighting opposite number in Air was not only supposed to reduce intergroup tension, but also I was supposed to find out from him how Air got its newborn pigs to eat.” She looked down, fidgeting with the clasp of her musette bag.
“Go on,” said the huxley with a touch of severity. “I can’t help you unless you give me your full confidence.”
“Is it true that the dighting system was set up by a group of psychologists after they’d made a survey of interservice tension? After they’d found that Marine was feuding with Air, and Air with Infantry, and Infantry with Navy, to such an extent that it was cutting down overall Defense efficiency? They thought that sex relations would be the best of all ways of cutting down hostility and replacing it with friendly feelings, so they started the dighting plan?”
“You know the answers to those questions as well as I do,” the huxley replied frostily. “The tone of your voice when you asked them shows that they are to be answered with ‘Yes.’ You’re stalling, Major Briggs.”
“It’s so unpleasant… What do you want me to tell you?”
“Go on in detail with what happened after you got your blue dighting slip.”
She shot a glance at him, flushed, looked away again, and began talking rapidly. “The slip was for next Tuesday. I hate Air for dighting, but I thought it would be all right. You know how it is—there’s a particular sort of kick in feeling oneself change from a cold sort of loathing into being eager and exci
ted and in love with it. After one’s had one’s Watson, I mean.
“I went to the neutral area Tuesday afternoon. He was in the room when I got there, sitting in a chair with his big feet spread out in front of him, wearing one of those loathsome leather jackets. He stood up politely when he saw me, but I knew he’d just about as soon cut my throat as look at me, since I was Marine. We were both armed, naturally.”
“What did he look like?” the huxley broke in.
“I really didn’t notice. Just that he was Air. Well, anyway, we had a drink together. I’ve heard they put cannabis in the drinks they serve you in the neutral areas, and it might be true. I didn’t feel nearly so hostile to him after I’d finished my drink. I even managed to smile, and he managed to smile back. He said, We might as well get started, don’t you think?’ So I went in the head.
“I took off my things and left my gun on the bench beside the wash basin. I gave myself my Watson in the thigh.”
“The usual Watson?” the huxley asked as she halted. “Oestric and anticoncipient injected subcutaneously from a sterile ampule?”
“Yes. He’d had his Watson too, the priapic, because when I got back…” She began to cry.
“What happened after you got back?” the huxley queried after she had cried for a while.
“I just wasn’t any good. No good at all. The Watson might have been so much water for all the effect it had. Finally he got sore. He said, ‘What’s the matter with you? I might have known anything Marine was in would get loused up.’ “
“That made me angry, but I was too upset to defend myself. ‘Tension reduction!’ he said. ‘This is a fine way to promote interservice harmony. I’m not only not going to sign the checking-out sheet, I’m going to file a complaint against you to your group.’”
“Oh, my,” said the huxley.
“Yes, wasn’t it terrible? I said, ‘If you file a complaint, I’ll file a countercharge. You didn’t reduce my tension, either.’
“We argued about it for a while. He said that if I filed countercharges there’d be a trial and I’d have to take Pentothal and then the truth would come out. He said it wasn’t his fault! He’d been ready.
The Best of Margaret St. Clair Page 19
