Finally, and with a sense of suffocation, he entered the store. Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he did not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed.… Somewhere that wasn't the house.… The passage was short and had two doors, one at the end rather like a cage door (Harley did not recognize a lift when he saw one), one in the side, narrow and with a window.
This window was transparent. Harley looked through it and then fell back choking. Dizziness swept in and shook him by the throat.
Stars shone outside.
With an effort, he mastered himself and made his way back upstairs, lurching against the banisters. They had all been living under a ghastly misapprehension.…
He barged into Calvin's room and the light lit. A faint sweet smell was in the air, and Calvin lay on his broad back, fast asleep.
"Calvin! Wake up!" Harley shouted.
The sleeper never moved. Harley was suddenly aware of his own loneliness and the eerie feel of the great house about him. Bending over the bed, he shook Calvin violently by the shoulders and slapped his face.
Calvin groaned and opened one eye.
"Wake up, man," Harley said. "Something terrible's going on here."
The other propped himself on one elbow, communicated fear rousing him thoroughly.
"Jagger's left the house," Harley told him. "There's a way outside. We're—we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment—or we're all monsters!"
And as he spoke, before his staring eyes, beneath his clutching hands, Calvin began to wrinkle up and fold and blur, his eyes running together and his great torso contracting. Something else—something lively and alive—was forming in his place.
Harley only stopped yelling when, having plunged downstairs, the sight of the stars through the small window steadied him. He had to get out, wherever "out" was.
He pulled the small door open and stood in the fresh night air.
Harley's eye was not accustomed to judging distances. It took him some while to realize the nature of his surroundings, to realize that mountains stood distantly against the starlit sky, and that he himself stood on a platform twelve feet above the ground. Some distance away, lights gleamed, throwing bright rectangles on to an expanse of tarmac.
There was a steel ladder at the edge of the platform. Biting his lip, Harley approached it and climbed clumsily down. He was shaking violently with cold and fear. When his feet touched solid ground, he began to run. Once he looked back: the house perched on its platform like a frog hunched on top of a rat trap.
He stopped abruptly then, in almost dark. Abhorrence jerked up inside him like retching. The high crackling stars and the pale serration of the mountains began to spin, and he clenched his fists to hold on to consciousness. That house, whatever it was, was the embodiment of all the coldness in his mind. Harley said to himself: "Whatever has been done to me, I've been cheated. Someone has robbed me of something so thoroughly I don't even know what it is. It's been a cheat, a cheat.…" And he choked on the idea of those years that had been pilfered from him. No thought: thought scorched the synapses and ran like acid through the brain. Action only! His leg muscles jerked into movement again.
Buildings loomed about him. He simply ran for the nearest light and burst into the nearest door. Then he pulled up sharp, panting and blinking the harsh illumination out of his pupils.
The walls of the room were covered with graphs and charts. In the center of the room was a wide desk with vision-screen and loudspeaker on it. It was a business-like room with overloaded ashtrays and a state of ordered untidiness. A thin man sat alertly at the desk; he had a thin mouth.
Four other men stood in the room, all were armed, none seemed surprised to see him. The man at the desk wore a neat suit; the others were in uniform.
Harley leaned on the door-jam and sobbed. He could find no words to say.
"It has taken you four years to get out of there," the thin man said. He had a thin voice.
"Come and look at this," he said, indicating the screen before him. With an effort, Harley complied; his legs worked like rickety crutches.
On the screen, clear and real, was Calvin's bedroom. The outer wall gaped, and through it two uniformed men were dragging a strange creature, a wiry, mechanical-looking being that had once been called Calvin.
"Calvin was a Nititian," Harley observed dully. He was conscious of a sort of stupid surprise at his own observation.
The thin man nodded approvingly.
"Enemy infiltration was a nightmare and threat," he said. "Nowhere on Earth was safe from them: they can kill a man, dispose of him and turn into exact replicas of him. Makes things difficult.… State security was often being broken. But Nititian ships have to land here to disembark the Non-Men and to pick them up again after their work is done. That is the weak link in their chain.
"We intercepted one such ship-load and bagged them singly after they had assumed humanoid form. We subjected them to artificial amnesia and put small groups of them into different environments for study. This is the Army Institute of Investigation of Non-Men, by the way. We've learnt a lot … quite enough to combat the menace.… Your group, of course, was one such."
Harley asked in a gritty voice: "Why did you put me in with them?"
The thin man rattled a ruler between his teeth before answering.
"Each group has to have a human observer in their very midst, despite all the scanning devices that watch from outside. You see, a Nititian uses a deal of energy maintaining a human form; once in that shape, he is kept in it by self-hypnosis which only breaks down in times of stress, the amount of stress bearable varying from one individual to another. A human on the spot can sense such stresses.… It's a tiring job for him; we get doubles always to work day on, day off—"
"But I've always been there—"
"Of your group," the thin man cut in, "the human was Jagger, or two men alternating as Jagger. You caught one of them going off duty."
"That doesn't make sense," Harley shouted. "You're trying to say that I—"
He choked on the words. They were no longer pronounceable. He felt his outer form flowing away like sand as from the other side of the desk revolver barrels were levelled at him.
"Your stress level is remarkably high," continued the thin man, turning his gaze away from the spectacle. "But where you fail is where you all fail. Like Earth's insects which imitate vegetables, your cleverness cripples you. You can only be carbon copies. Because Jagger did nothing in the house, all the rest of you instinctively followed suit. You didn't get bored—you didn't even try to make passes at Dapple—as personable a Non-Man as I ever saw. Even the model spaceship jerked no appreciable reaction out of you."
Brushing his suit down, he rose before the skeletal being which now cowered in a corner.
"The inhumanity inside will always give you away," he said evenly. "However human you are outside."
The End
Reprinted by permission of Brian Aldiss © 1955 by New Worlds.
One of Those Days
William F. Nolan
I knew it was going to be one of those days when I heard a blue-and-yellow butterfly humming "Si, mi chiamano Mimi," my favorite aria from La Bohème. I was weeding the garden when the papery insect fluttered by, humming beautifully.
I got up, put aside my garden tools and went into the house to dress. I would see my psychoanalyst at once.
Neglecting my cane and spats, I snapped an old homburg on my head and aimed for Dr. Mellowthin's office in downtown Los Angeles.
Several disturbing things happened to me on the way …
First of all, a large stippled tomcat darted out of an alley directly after I'd stepped from the bus. The cat was on its hind legs and carried a bundle of frothy pink blanketing in its front paws. It looked desperate.
"Gangway!" shouted the cat. "Baby! Liv
e baby here! Clear back. BACK for the baby!"
Then it was gone, having dipped cat-quick across the street, losing itself in heavy traffic. Upon drawing in a deep lungful of air, smog-laden but steadying, I resumed my brisk pace toward Dr. Mellowthin's office.
As I passed a familiar apartment house, a third-story window opened and Wally Jenks popped his head over the sill and called down to me. "Hi," yelled Wally. "C'mon up for a little drinkie."
I shaded my eyes to get a clearer look at him. "Hi, Jenks!" I yelled back, and we both grinned foolishly at the old play on words. "On my way to Mellowthin's."
"Appointment?" he queried.
"Spur of the moment," I replied.
"Then time's no problem. Up you come, old dads, or I shan't forgive you."
I sighed and entered the building. Jenks was in 3G, and I decided to use the stairs. Elevators trap you. As I reached the second-floor landing I obeyed an irresistible urge to bend down and place my ear close to the base of the wall near the floor.
"Are you mice still in there?" I shouted.
To which a thousand tiny musical Disney-voices shot back: "Damned right we are!"
I shrugged, adjusted my homburg, and continued my upward climb. Jenks met me at the door with a dry martini.
"Thanks," I said, sipping. As usual, it was superb. Old Wally knew his martinis.
"Well," he said, all cheer, "how goes?"
"Badsville," I answered. "Care to hear?"
"By all means. Unburden."
We sat down, facing one another across the tastefully furnished room. I sipped the martini and told Wally about things. "This morning, 'bout forty minutes ago, I heard a butterfly humming Puccini. Then I saw a cat carrying what I can only assume was a live baby."
"Human?"
"Don't know. Could have been a cat baby."
"Cat say anything?"
"He shouted 'Gangway!'"
"Proceed."
"Then—on the way upstairs—I had a brief conversational exchange with at least a thousand mice."
"In the walls?"
"Where else?"
"Finish your drinkie," said Jenks, finishing his.
I did so.
"Nother?" he asked.
"Nope. Gotta be trotting. I'm in for a mental purge."
"Well, I wouldn't worry too much," he assured me. "Humming insects, talking felines and odd-ball answering mice are admittedly unsettling. But … there are stranger things in this man's world."
I looked over at him. And knew he was correct—for old Wally Jenks had turned into a loose-pelted brown camel with twin humps, all stained and worn-looking at the tops. I swallowed.
"See you," I said.
Wally grinned, or rather the camel did, and it was awful. Long, cracked yellow teeth like old carnival dishes inside his black gums. I gave a nervous little half-wave, and moved for the door. One final glance over my shoulder at old Jenks verified the fact that he was still grinning at me with those big wet desert-red eyes of his.
Back on the street I quickened my stride, anxious now to reach Mellowthin and render a full account of the day's events. Only a half-block to go.
Then a policeman stopped me. He was all sweaty inside his tight uniform, and his face was dark with hatred.
"Thought you was the wise one, eh, Mugger?" he rasped in a venom-filled voice. "Thought you could give John Law the finger?"
"But, officer, I don't—"
"Come right along, Mugger. We got special cages for the likes 'a you." He was about to snap a pair of silver cuffs to my wrists when I put a quick knee to his vitals and rabbit-punched him on the way down. Then I grabbed his revolver.
"Here!" I shouted to several passers-by. "This man is a fraud. Killed a cop to get this rig. He's a swine of the worst sort. Record as long as your arm. Blackmail, rape, arson, auto theft, kidnapping, grand larceny, wife-beating, and petty pilfering. You name it, he's done it!"
I thrust the revolver at a wide-eyed, trembling woman.
"Take this weapon, lady. If he makes a funny move, shoot to kill!"
She aimed the gun at the stunned policeman, who was only now getting his breath. He attempted to rise.
"OOPS!" I yelled, "he's going for a knife. Let him have it—NOW!"
The trembling woman shut both eyes and pulled the trigger. The cop pitched forward on his face, stone dead.
"May heaven forgive you," I moaned, backing away. "You've murdered an officer of the law, a defender of public morals … May heaven be merciful!"
The woman flapped off. She had turned into a heavy-billed pelican. The policeman had become a fat-bellied seal with flippers, but he was still dead.
Hurrying, and somewhat depressed, I entered Dr. Mellowthin's office and told the girl at the desk it was an emergency.
"You may go right in," she told me. "The doctor will see you immediately."
In another moment I was pumping Mellowthin's hand.
"Sit down, boy," he told me. "So … we've got our little complications again today, have we?"
"Sure have," I said, pocketing one of his cigars. I noted that it was stale.
"Care to essay the couch?"
I slid onto the rich dark leather and closed my eyes.
"Now—tell me all about it."
"First a butterfly sang La Bohème, or hummed it rather. Then a tomcat shot out of an alley with a baby in its paws. Then some mice in an apartment house yelled back at me. Then one of my oldest and dearest friends turned into a camel."
"One hump or two?" asked Mellowthin.
"Two," I said. "Large and scruffy and all worn at the tops."
"Anything else?"
"Then a big, pseudo-English cop stopped me. His dialogue was fantastic. Called me Mugger. Said I was fit for a cage. Started to put cuffs on me. I kneed him in the kishkas and gave his gun to a nice trembly lady who shot him. Then she turned into a pelican and flapped off, and he turned into a seal with flippers. Then I came here."
I opened my eyes and sat up.
I stared at Dr. Mellowthin.
"What's the matter?" he asked, somewhat uneasily.
"Well …" I said, "to begin with you have large brown, sad-looking, liquidy eyes."
"And?"
"And I bet your nose is cold!" I grinned.
"Anything else?"
"Not really."
"What about my overall appearance?"
"Well, of course you're covered with long black shaggy hair, even down to the tips of your big floppy ears."
A moment of strained silence.
"Can you do tricks?" I asked.
"A few," Mellowthin replied uncomfortably.
"Roll over!" I commanded.
He did.
"Play dead!"
His liquidy eyes rolled up white and his long pink tongue lolled loosely from his jaws.
"Good doggie," I said. "Nice doggie."
"Woof," barked Dr. Mellowthin softly, wagging his tail.
Putting on my hat I tossed him a bone I'd saved from the garden and left his office.
There was absolutely no getting around it.
This was simply one of those days.
The End
© 1962 by Mercury Press. Copyright renewed by William F. Nolan. Used by permission of the author.
Sundance
Robert Silverberg
Today you liquidated about 50,000 Eaters in Sector A, and now you are spending an uneasy night. You and Herndon flew east at dawn, with the green-gold sunrise at your backs, and sprayed the neural pellets over a thousand hectares along the Forked River. You flew on into the prairie beyond the river, where the Eaters have already been wiped out, and had lunch sprawled on that thick, soft carpet of grass where the first settlement is expected to rise. Herndon picked some juiceflowers, and you enjoyed half an hour of mild hallucinations. Then, as you headed toward the copter to begin an afternoon of further pellet spraying, he said suddenly, "Tom, how would you feel about this if it turned out that the Eaters weren't just animal pests? That they
were people, say, with a language and rites and a history and all?"
You thought of how it had been for your own people.
"They aren't," you said.
"Suppose they were. Suppose the Eaters—"
"They aren't. Drop it."
Herndon has this streak of cruelty in him that leads him to ask such questions. He goes for the vulnerabilities; it amuses him. All night now his casual remark has echoed in your mind. Suppose the Eaters … suppose the Eaters … suppose … suppose …
You sleep for a while, and dream, and in your dreams you swim through rivers of blood.
Foolishness. A feverish fantasy. You know how important it is to exterminate the Eaters fast, before the settlers get here. They're just animals, and not even harmless animals at that; ecology-wreckers is what they are, devourers of oxygen-liberating plants, and they have to go. A few have been saved for zoological study. The rest must be destroyed. Ritual extirpation of undesirable beings, the old, old story. But let's not complicate our job with moral qualms, you tell yourself. Let's not dream of rivers of blood.
The Eaters don't even have blood, none that could flow in rivers, anyway. What they have is, well, a kind of lymph that permeates every tissue and transmits nourishment along the interfaces. Waste products go out the same way, osmotically. In terms of process, it's structurally analogous to your own kind of circulatory system, except there's no network of blood vessels hooked to a master pump. The life-stuff just oozes through their bodies as though they were amoebas or sponges or some other low-phylum form. Yet they're definitely high-phylum in nervous system, digestive setup, limb-and-organ template, etc. Odd, you think. The thing about aliens is that they're alien, you tell yourself, not for the first time.
The beauty of their biology for you and your companions is that it lets you exterminate them so neatly.
You fly over the grazing grounds and drop the neural pellets. The Eaters find and ingest them. Within an hour the poison has reached all sectors of the body. Life ceases; a rapid breakdown of cellular matter follows, the Eater literally falling apart molecule by molecule the instant that nutrition is cut off; the lymph-like stuff works like acid; a universal lysis occurs; flesh and even the bones, which are cartilaginous, dissolve. In two hours, a puddle on the ground. In four, nothing at all left. Considering how many millions of Eaters you've scheduled for extermination here, it's sweet of the bodies to be self-disposing. Otherwise what a charnel house this world would become!
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 2 Page 15
