Bryce looked at Wayne with a torturing surmise. "That kid slipped away from us for a couple of hours, got to his father's workshop. Sheer carelessness on our part. When I saw him with the machine, I rushed out of the house and tried to reason with him. We got into an argument, and I started tugging at him.
"Luckily I'd strapped a Seral blaster to my hip, just in case. But it was the blaster that got in my way. It weighed me down—in the wrong direction. When I tripped, I didn't have a chance of regaining my balance."
Bryce shrugged grimly. "I've been holding the archers at bay ever since. Funny thing about that machine. It's light—weighs about eight pounds. Orban can carry it, but if you stand directly in front of it, your goose is cooked. After I came through, I didn't see the machine. It must be invisible from this side!"
Wayne nodded. "We didn't see it either!"
"It's still around, I imagine. When I came through, an archer saw me. I caught an arrow in my shoulder. I ripped it out and hurled it from me, and it vanished in a flash of light. You say you saw an arrow come out. Probably it was the same arrow."
Wayne started to speak, but Bryce stopped him. "Listen!" he warned.
From the purple-hollowed middle of the mound there arose a strange, mournful, dirgelike sound. Then up from the mound came a dozen "blackbirds," their lizardlike bodies quivering as they went spiraling into the sky.
No arrows pursued them. There was utter silence on the plain.
"Looks as though we've thrown a scare into the archers for the time being," Wayne muttered, but there was no exaltation in his voice.
Bryce shook his head. "They'll attack again," he said with grim conviction. "Those birds were simply lucky this time. I wonder if they realize how lucky—or care!"
Ruth whispered: "Six and twenty blackbirds, baked into a pie! When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing! My, what a dainty dish to set before a king!"
Her voice rose sharply. "Ken, who do you suppose the king was? We haven't seen him! Is there a king?"
"A symbolic embellishment," Bryce snapped. "I'll say it again: Mother Goose is simply this world seen through the distorted mirror of a child's imagination. The author of Mother Goose transformed what he saw here into a medieval fairy tale. We'll never see the king because we have nothing in common with him."
The sky seemed to darken as Bryce spoke. Wayne looked up in chill apprehension, a shudder coursing up his spine.
"Oh, no!" Ruth choked.
But there was something high in the sky, swinging slowly down toward the mound. Something globular that wore what looked like a shining crown and shook like a mound of jelly.
Nearer it came and nearer, swinging lower with each vibration of its circular bulk.
It blazed suddenly into sharp visibility. It wasn't a king, and it wore no crown. It was a floating spheroid, veined and translucent, filled with an intricate assortment of moving parts that gave off a continuous whirring sound.
A madness seemed to possess Wayne as he stared up at it. He cupped his hands and shouted: "Who are you?"
"Who are you?" came back in a staccato echo.
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?"
"If it says: 'Who am I?' I'll die!" Ruth screamed hysterically.
"Who am I?" the spheroid flung out. "I'll die!"
"Wait!" Bryce gripped Ruth's arm, his lips shaking. "It's a tropism—nothing more. A kind of echo response. You soft-pedaled the 'If it says'—then screamed the rest. It only picked up the last part. It didn't change the question. It simply repeats what it picks up!"
"No—it doesn't," Ruth groaned. "Now it's going to say: 'You'll die!'"
"Not unless you scream it first," Bryce said with a brittle laugh. "Look, I'll show you."
He cupped his hands. "You're going to win through," he shouted.
"You're going to win through!" came back.
"It's a promise," Bryce shouted.
"It's a promise!"
"You see?" Bryce turned with a relieved grimace. "You seldom get a better answer than that. It's a regular politician's answer. What you want to hear comes back in vibrant echo that means absolutely nothing."
The gear-and-wheel-filled spheroid was swinging back now, straight up into the sky. It dwindled rapidly, vibrating as it swept from view.
"Well, that was your 'king,'" Bryce said. "I've a hunch it's simply a weird regulatory mechanism that sweeps down at long intervals. A kind of cog in the clockwork setup—a stabilizing flying pendulum that's needed here to keep things moving on an even keel."
Ruth sprang back with a gasp of horror. Three tiny metallic shapes had scurried swiftly over the edge of the hollow and were descending into the blackbird pit with the blindly groping movements of terrified moles.
Moles? Why not mice? Blind mice?
Wayne was the first to say it. "Three blind mice, see how they run—" He stopped, appalled.
"Finish it," Bryce muttered. "They all ran up to the farmer's wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife."
He gestured eloquently. "I told you cruelty was of the essence here. It's a savage, senseless, last-turn-of-the-screw kind of cruelty. Why mutilate blind mice? Isn't that utterly ghastly? And yet it's in Mother Goose.
"There's hardly a Mother Goose rhyme that doesn't shadow forth this world. The hunters and—the hunted. Creatures pursued by blind cruelty, shot down in flight. Who killed Cock Robin?"
A grim puzzlement seemed to grip Bryce. "Cock Robin! That's the cruelest one of all. It's so devilish in its wicked, eerie malice that some editors of Mother Goose omit it entirely, as not for children!"
He frowned. "Just who was Cock Robin anyway? Why was everyone so horrified? Cock Robin with his bleeding breast, the taut and quivering arrow. Why was Cock Robin so different, almost a stranger to this world? Why did the cruelty pause to wonder? Why did everyone answer: 'Not I! Not I!'
"Why did everyone single out Cock Robin as the one creature in this world who shouldn't have been killed at all?"
Bryce strode back and forth, glancing over the mound as if in chill apprehension.
"A curious thing! Not only the Mother Goose rhymes shadow forth this world. An ancient Chinese vase bears the inscription: 'See how the harsh blackbirds fly into the bronze sun, pursued by the arrows of darkness!'
"And Lewis Carroll! There are things in Alice in Wonderland that seem to shadow forth this world. Why was Alice so real to generations of children?"
He shrugged. "A few men remembered their childhood visions well, apparently. Too well for comfort. The looking glass was simply a symbol. You step through. The Orban boy got at the scientific reality behind the symbol. He actually constructed a dimension-dissolving looking glass!"
Ruth stared at him. "Are you claiming that all children are dangerous little monsters?"
Bryce shook his head. "No. Only very special children. Children who were cut off from all normal activity, as Orban was. Their visions spur them on. But I think we've always known, subconsciously, that a child with too much knowledge would be dangerous. Why do people like to make up rhymes about the wickedness of children? Remember the Little Willie rhymes:
Little Willie hung his sister
She was dead before we missed her!
Willie's always up to tricks!
Ain't he cute? He's only six."
From somewhere on the plain came an answering whisper, as though the cruel words had goaded the blue world to activity again. A low rustling swept across the plain, ominous, mind-chilling.
"Here they come!" Bryce whispered, reaching for the blaster.
Wayne moved quickly to forestall him. He had the weapon and was leveling it before the psychologist could glower in protest.
A shadow fell on the plain, grew larger. The blue archers were stepping out from the wall with a deadly deliberation, their Zeus-taut bodies wrapped in a translucent glimmering.
Wayne held his fire until a dozen archers released their bows simultaneously. There was a pulsing at his temples as the tr
igger clicked. A swirl of whiteness followed the click, a silent whiteness for an instant as brief as a dropped heartbeat. Then a thunderous concussion shook the mound, hurling him backward.…
An hour later, Wayne sat with his back to the tumbled earth rampart, his face haggard with strain. A thin smoke was swirling over the mound, an acrid haze which obscured the slope directly below him and blotted out the crouching bulk of Bryce. But he could feel the despair which emanated from Bryce—a palpable force. Bryce spoke suddenly. "I'm glad we saved one blast!" he muttered. "We've got to decide how to use it!"
The words fell on a chill, deadly silence.
Then Ruth uttered a sobbing moan. Wayne knew with grim certainty that Bryce would not attempt to spare her. If he thought the blaster should be turned upon the hollow and held in steady hands, he would say so.
They sat silently together for an instant, not daring to voice what was in their minds.
Then Bryce spoke directly to Ruth. "By heaven, you're a pretty woman!"
A sudden, hot anger swept over Wayne like a flood of molten lava.
"If we had any chance at all," Bryce added, heavily, "Ken would have a rival!"
Wayne suddenly realized that Bryce had more delicacy than he had given him credit for. He had chosen an odd way to announce that there was no hope, but Wayne was glad that he had not phrased it brutally. His anger evaporated.
Twang!
The arrow sped in close, barely missing Wayne. The archers were in motion again. As they drew in toward the mound, their bows thrumming, the air grew thick with deadly arrows in flight.
There was a continuous deadly twanging, a drumming in the air, a drumming in Wayne's skull—a reeling giddiness. Wayne did not hesitate or swing about to voice an agonized doubt. The suddenness of the attack had settled the issue for him.
The last blast would not be guided by another man's caution. His decision was made, and nothing could alter it.
Wayne blasted with a quick intake of his breath.
The spurting radiation struck the plain with a mighty roar. Wayne felt again the shattering recoil, the shoulder-bruising impact of a heavy weapon leaping in his clasp.
For an instant fire and smoke danced on the plain, swirling over the base of the mound and blotting the archers from view.
Then the smoke thinned and rolled back over a seared expanse of desolation the more awful because it wasn't quite empty. One archer was still advancing, swaying a little as it climbed the slope through the dissolving smoke, its bow upraised.
The archer was almost at the crest of the mound when Wayne sprung straight at it. With a sickening twang, the arrow left the bow and thudded into the earth rampart at Wayne's back. Then Wayne was beating with the blaster against the archer's angular body, swinging with it again and again, pounding with all his strength.
The plain rang with the harsh, strident clang of metal against metal, as though knights in a tourney were colliding head on in a suicidal contest of strength.
With a savageness that amazed him, Wayne fought the archer back down the slope. Eyes wild, lips quivering, he brought the sharp edge of his weapon against the horror's gleaming chest and slashed downward at the low-slung metal quiver at its waist.
Strange how much courage a man had when his life was forfeit, strange the shining strength, like a shield around the heart, blazing out for all to see!
Arrows were spilling from the archer's quiver and its body was twisting strangely when something seemed to lift it up and hurl it backward toward the wall. Wayne cried out hoarsely as the writhing horror receded from him, twisting and turning like a gale-lashed leaf. It vanished abruptly, in a blinding flash of light.
And as it vanished, a running figure came into view on the plain.
"Orban!"
It was Ruth who shouted it, coming to her feet in wild disbelief. The Orban boy was running straight toward Wayne and waving his arms in urgent appeal.
Wayne couldn't catch what the Orban boy was shouting. But he could see that the running lad was gesturing him back toward the mound.
In a daze of fevered uncertainty, Wayne swung about and started climbing. He heard himself sobbing. His legs threatened to give out, but he managed to gain the crest and fling himself down in the hollow. He lay on his stomach, staring over the rampart, his lungs choked with dust.
Slowly he became aware that Ruth had thrown herself down beside him and was clinging to him in sobbing relief.
The Orban boy came over the crest with his breath coming in choking gasps. He flung himself down directly opposite Wayne and raised himself on one elbow.
"Had to wait—until I was sure I could get you out," he breathed. "That man—" He gestured toward Bryce. "He's not so important, but you're my friend! Had to save you, Ken!"
Wayne stared, his mouth strangely dry.
"My idea was to hide the machine until I was equipped to come into this world, Ken." Orban went on feverishly. "I worked something out, but it wasn't good enough to protect me in here. That's why I asked you to help me hide the machine!"
"Just what did you work out?" Bryce asked. His face was ashen, but his voice was firm enough.
"Just met Ken last night," the Orban boy wheezed, his eyes shining. "But he's the only friend I ever had. He was going to hide me. That's more than you'd do, I bet."
"You're right about that," Bryce said with a harsh laugh. "I asked you, What did you work out?"
For reply, the Orban boy opened his hand. The object which rested on his palm was small, no larger than a jackknife. It was shaped like a compass. Six tiny glowing knobs projected from it, but otherwise it was unbelievably makeshift in aspect, as though the Orban boy had walked into a toyshop, picked up a compass, and twisted two wires intricately around the floating needle. And now he was displaying his prize with a fierce pride, as though he'd done something remarkable.
"Worked hard at it, in Ken's kitchen," the Orban boy explained. "Took me six hours to get it right."
"You're sure it works now?"
"You bet I'm sure," Orban said pridefully. "The segments which feed that loop have been moved around, see? They pass right under the contact points. All I have to do is draw the second loop into position by the attraction of the needle."
As he spoke, the Orban boy pressed one of the little knobs on the rim of the "compass." The "compass" lighted up.
"Now it's ready!" Orban said.
Bryce stared. "Ready for what?"
The Orban boy cupped his palm over the "compass."
"You'll see. Watch!"
Light from the "compass" streamed out between the Orban boy's fingers and haloed his entire hand. Slowly he raised his hand and turned to Wayne with a triumphant cry.
"Look at what is happening!"
It was impossible not to look. The blue world was in sudden, furious activity. Down from the sky the "King" wobbled, to hang directly over the mound. The blind mice ran backward out of the blackbird pit, and six and twenty blackbirds rose into the sky. And out on the plain stepped a dozen blue archers, their bows upraised.
But the most terrifying thing was the gulf which yawned suddenly on the plain. Out of it stumbled something that looked like a jigsaw giant, bent nearly double. The figure went reeling and stumbling over the plain as if in unendurable agony.
The figure was metallic, very similar to the archers, but it moved in a dizzying crooked way that brought a tortured reeling to Wayne's mind.
"'There was a crooked man, and he ran a crooked mile,'" Ruth heard herself screaming.
Twang!
An arrow pierced the blueness, thudding into the shoulders of the crazily weaving figure. The giant stumbled and fell forward, its loose-jointed arms flailing the air. It dragged itself crookedly backward toward the trapdoor in the plain, its movements still geometrically insane.
Suddenly the archers froze. They stood rigid, unmoving, their bows held at grotesque angles. The "King" stopped vibrating. It hung motionless above the mound, congealed into the blueness like an ice
-frozen jellyfish.
Every other object within view took on an aspect of rigidity. All movement ceased. There was a stillness so absolute, even the stirring of a blind mouse would have set up a din. But the mice were stiff, rigid, impaled in a web of stillness.
"By heaven, he's stopped the clock!"
Bryce's stunned cry shattered the human stillness on the mound. But the "King" did not echo back the sound, and nothing on the plain moved.
Orban grinned then, for the first time. "I knew it would work," he exulted. "It had to work. It'll all start up again, in just about three minutes. Can't stop it for long. You've got to get out fast."
"You mean," Bryce wet his shaking lips. "That little thing"—he waved one arm—"stopped all that?"
"Size hasn't a thing to do with power," the Orban boy said, as though he were addressing a child. "Shucks, I could blow up every city on earth—big cities like New York and Chicago—with something half the size of this!"
Ruth swayed.
"I fixed the machine so you can see it from this side," Orban said. "When you go out, I'll break it up from this side. Come on, Ken. You got to get around that wall before it all starts up again."
All four of them started off in the direction Orban indicated, running at top speed.
Nerve-torturing thoughts that fitted no pattern of sanity or logic were churning about at the back of Wayne's mind as he dashed after the youth. They rounded the wall in a run, the Orban boy in the lead, Bryce bringing up the rear.
The wall hadn't changed, but the toppled Humpty Dumpties resembled eggs that had dropped from a cold-storage crate. Their tadpole arms had ceased to jerk, and their spilled yolks were frozen solid.
The Orban boy paused an instant to nudge an egg with his toe. "The poor little thing!" he murmured, shaking his head. Then he was in motion again.
When the machine swept into view, the Orban boy was breathing heavily, his face tight with strain. But he kept on running until he was directly in front of it. Then he turned and waited for the others to come up.
"I can't go with you, Ken," he said when Wayne reached his side. "I belong here. Always have—always will!"
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 2 Page 59
