He shuffled his feet as he spoke, and suddenly he was thrusting out his hand.
Wayne stared at him in stunned horror. "But you can't remain!" he protested. "When those devilish archers start up again—"
Orban shook his head, squinting back at the wall. "I don't dare leave, Ken! Know what would happen if I did? I'd get careless, and there'd be more accidents. People would get killed—everybody on earth, maybe. I know so much in some ways—I'm not safe to be trusted!"
The Orban boy was behind the machine, and he was rushing straight toward Ken with the machine held out before him.
It was a little like passing into a warm shower. The light was all around Wayne, lashing against him, before he realized that he was no longer on the plain.
"Good-bye, Ken!" came in a dwindling echo of sound. "Sure was great to have a friend!"
Wayne picked himself up from the floor and looked around him. He wasn't alone in the room. Ruth was sitting beside him. Bryce lay on the floor, and the croquet wicket was dwindling to a shapeless lump of metal in a dwindling blaze of light.
Bryce was getting slowly to his feet and staring about him with fiercely contracted brows as though he despised Wayne's taste in furnishings and was about to say so.
Bryce went to a chair and sat down. "Nice place you have here, Ken," he said.
Suddenly his composure broke. Sweat came out on his face, the back of his hands. He shuddered.
"He'll never come back," he whispered. "We've seen the last of him."
Wayne got up and staggered back against the wall and stared at Bryce.
Bryce made a despairing gesture. "I wish now I'd said a few kind words to him. It was the least I could have done."
"Why?" Wayne was hardly aware that he had spoken.
"Oh, it's a paradox, all right," Bryce murmured. "Just like—the paradox of time travel. Say a man lives now and goes into the past. Doesn't that mean he's always existed in the past? But how can he go back to where he's always been?"
Ruth had gotten up and was staring at Bryce with startled eyes. "What has that to do with the Orban boy?" she asked.
"Say you went into another dimension today," Bryce said slowly. "Say it was a kind of timeless dimension—from our point of view. Wouldn't you in a sense exist in that other world from the very creation of that world? Wouldn't you freeze into that world and become a part of it from the start?
"If someone from our world saw that other world centuries ago, wouldn't he find you there? I think he would."
Bryce paused an instant to stare out the window of Wayne's living room. The murk of an October morning stretched beyond the pane. He stared at Wayne, then at Ruth, as though challenging them to deny that they had just returned from a quite different world.
"You saw that King-clock horror swinging down from the sky!" he went on. "A mechanical tropism enabled it to echo back sound. Suppose a boy, who never should have gone into that world, was trapped in it. Suppose he shouted his defiance to the sky as the arrows sped toward him.
"Suppose he shouted his name, in anger and fierce pride, recklessly, as a defiant boy might well be tempted to do. His name, now and forever, long before he was born into our world, our time, because he'd made himself a timeless part of that timeless world."
"Well?" Wayne's voice was a puzzled whisper.
"A good many boys have nicknames. Young Orban's given name was Phillip, but his father didn't call him that."
Ruth gave a cry. "No! Oh, no!"
"Suppose the King-clock merely repeated the name," Bryce said gently. "Suppose the boy lay slain on the plain, and the King repeated his name, over and over. And the little lad who was to write Mother Goose saw that world in a dream of childhood and heard the name. The author of Mother Goose must have been an imaginative child.
"Remember—he saw the horror only dimly. It bore the name of a familiar bird. Why not a bird lying slain on the plain and everyone in that world asking: 'Who killed Cock Robin? Not I? Not I?' Everyone horrified, appalled, because Cock Robin was a stranger in that world."
"You mean—"
"It was an intangible thing, the uniqueness of Cock Robin, but it must have communicated itself to the author of Mother Goose. He imagined the rest, the protesting voices, the shared horror and remorse. He made a fantastic little nursery rhyme about it."
Bryce looked at Ruth. "Do you know who Cock Robin was now?" he asked.
Ruth drew closer to Wayne before she spoke, as though she dared not remain alone with such a burden of horror and pity resting its cold weight on her heart.
"His father called him Robin!" she whispered. "Robin! Robin! The Orban boy—he was Cock Robin!"
The End
© 1948 by Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission by The Pimlico Agency. "Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall" was originally published in Startling Stories in November 1948.
Narrow Valley
R. A. Lafferty
In the year 1893, land allotments in severalty were made to the remaining eight hundred and twenty-one Pawnee Indians. Each would receive one hundred and sixty acres of land and no more, and thereafter the Pawnees would be expected to pay taxes on their land, the same as the White-Eyes did.
"Kitkehahke!" Clarence Big-Saddle cussed. "You can't kick a dog around proper on a hundred and sixty acres. And I sure am not hear before about this pay taxes on land."
Clarence Big-Saddle selected a nice green valley for his allotment. It was one of the half-dozen plots he had always regarded as his own. He sodded around the summer lodge that he had there and made it an all-season home. But he sure didn't intend to pay taxes on it.
So he burned leaves and bark and made a speech:
"That my valley be always wide and flourish and green and such stuff as that!" he orated in Pawnee chant style. "But that it be narrow if an intruder come."
He didn't have any balsam bark to burn. He threw on a little cedar bark instead. He didn't have any elder leaves. He used a handful of jack-oak leaves. And he forgot the word. How you going to work it if you forget the word?
"Petahauerat!" he howled out with the confidence he hoped would fool the fates.
"That's the same long of a word," he said in a low aside to himself. But he was doubtful. "What am I, a White Man, a burr-tailed jack, a new kind of nut to think it will work?" he asked. "I have to laugh at me. Oh well, we see."
He threw the rest of the bark and the leaves on the fire, and he hollered the wrong word out again.
And he was answered by a dazzling sheet of summer lightning.
"Skidi!" Clarence Big-Saddle swore. "It worked. I didn't think it would."
Clarence Big-Saddle lived on his land for many years, and he paid no taxes. Intruders were unable to come down to his place. The land was sold for taxes three times, but nobody ever came down to claim it. Finally, it was carried as open land on the books. Homesteaders filed on it several times, but none of them fulfilled the qualification of living on the land.
Half a century went by. Clarence Big-Saddle called his son.
"I've had it, boy," he said. "I think I'll just go in the house and die."
"Okay, Dad," the son, Clarence Little-Saddle, said. "I'm going in to town to shoot a few games of pool with the boys. I'll bury you when I get back this evening."
So the son, Clarence Little-Saddle, inherited. He also lived on the land for many years without paying taxes.
There was a disturbance in the courthouse one day. The place seemed to be invaded in force, but actually there were but one man, one woman, and five children. "I'm Robert Rampart," said the man, "and we want the Land Office."
"I'm Robert Rampart Junior," said a nine-year-old gangler, "and we want it pretty blamed quick."
"I don't think we have anything like that," the girl at the desk said. "Isn't that something they had a long time ago?"
"Ignorance is no excuse for inefficiency, my dear," said Mary Mabel Rampart, an eight-year-old who could easily pass for eight and a half. "After I make my report, I
wonder who will be sitting at your desk tomorrow?"
"You people are either in the wrong state or the wrong century," the girl said.
"The Homestead Act still obtains," Robert Rampart insisted. "There is one tract of land carried as open in this county. I want to file on it."
Cecilia Rampart answered the knowing wink of a beefy man at the distant desk. "Hi," she breathed as she slinked over. "I'm Cecilia Rampart, but my stage name is Cecilia San Juan. Do you think that seven is too young to play ingenue roles?"
"Not for you," the man said. "Tell your folks to come over here."
"Do you know where the Land Office is?" Cecilia asked.
"Sure. It's the fourth left-hand drawer of my desk. The smallest office we got in the whole courthouse. We don't use it much any more."
The Ramparts gathered around. The beefy man started to make out the papers.
"This is the land description," Robert Rampart began. "Why, you've got it down already. How did you know?"
"I've been around here a long time," the man answered.
They did the paper work, and Robert Rampart filed on the land.
"You won't be able to come onto the land itself, though," the man said.
"Why won't I?" Rampart demanded. "Isn't the land description accurate?"
"Oh, I suppose so. But nobody's ever been able to get to the land. It's become a sort of joke."
"Well, I intend to get to the bottom of that joke," Rampart insisted. "I will occupy the land, or I will find out why not."
"I'm not sure about that," the beefy man said. "The last man to file on the land, about a dozen years ago, wasn't able to occupy the land. And he wasn't able to say why he couldn't. It's kind of interesting, the look on their faces after they try it for a day or two, and then give it up."
The Ramparts left the courthouse, loaded into their camper, and drove out to find their land. They stopped at the house of a cattle and wheat farmer named Charley Dublin. Dublin met them with a grin which indicated he had been tipped off.
"Come along if you want to, folks," Dublin said. "The easiest way is on foot across my short pasture here. Your land's directly west of mine."
They walked the short distance to the border.
"My name is Tom Rampart, Mr. Dublin." Six-year-old Tom made conversation as they walked. "But my name is really Ramires, and not Tom. I am the issue of an indiscretion of my mother in Mexico several years ago."
"The boy is a kidder, Mr. Dublin," said the mother, Nina Rampart, defending herself. "I have never been in Mexico, but sometimes I have the urge to disappear there forever."
"Ah yes, Mrs. Rampart. And what is the name of the youngest boy here?" Charley Dublin asked.
"Fatty," said Fatty Rampart.
"But surely that is not your given name?"
"Audifax," said the five-year-old Fatty.
"Ah well, Audifax, Fatty, are you a kidder too?"
"He's getting better at it, Mr. Dublin," Mary Mabel said. "He was a twin till last week. His twin was named Skinny. Mama left Skinny unguarded while she was out tippling, and there were wild dogs in the neighborhood. When Mama got back, do you know what was left of Skinny? Two neck bones and an ankle bone. That was all."
"Poor Skinny," Dublin said. "Well, Rampart, this is the fence and the end of my land. Yours is just beyond."
"Is that ditch on my land?" Rampart asked.
"That ditch is your land."
"I'll have it filled in. It's a dangerous deep cut even if it is narrow. And the other fence looks like a good one, and I sure have a pretty plot of land beyond it."
"No, Rampart, the land beyond the second fence belongs to Holister Hyde," Charley Dublin said. "That second fence is the end of your land."
"Now, just wait a minute, Dublin! There's something wrong here. My land is one hundred and sixty acres, which would be a half mile on a side. Where's my half-mile width?"
"Between the two fences."
"That's not eight feet."
"Doesn't look like it, does it, Rampart? Tell you what—there's plenty of throwing-sized rocks around. Try to throw one across it."
"I'm not interested in any such boys' games," Rampart exploded. "I want my land."
But the Rampart children were interested in such games. They got with it with those throwing rocks. They winged them out over the little gully. The stones acted funny. They hung in the air, as it were, and diminished in size. And they were small as pebbles when they dropped down, down into the gully. None of them could throw a stone across that ditch, and they were throwing kids.
"You and your neighbor have conspired to fence open land for your own use," Rampart charged.
"No such thing, Rampart," Dublin said cheerfully. "My land checks perfectly. So does Hyde's. So does yours, if we knew how to check it. It's like one of those trick topological drawings. It really is half a mile from here to there, but the eye gets lost somewhere. It's your land. Crawl through the fence and figure it out."
Rampart crawled through the fence, and drew himself up to jump the gully. Then he hesitated. He got a glimpse of just how deep that gully was. Still, it wasn't five feet across.
There was a heavy fence post on the ground, designed for use as a corner post. Rampart up-ended it with some effort. Then he shoved it to fall and bridge the gully. But it fell short, and it shouldn't have. An eight-foot post should bridge a five-foot gully.
The post fell into the gully, and rolled and rolled and rolled. It spun as though it were rolling outward, but it made no progress except vertically. The post came to rest on a ledge of the gully, so close that Rampart could almost reach out and touch it, but it now appeared no bigger than a match stick.
"There is something wrong with that fence post, or with the world, or with my eyes," Robert Rampart said. "I wish I felt dizzy so I could blame it on that."
"There's a little game that I sometimes play with my neighbor Hyde when we're both out," Dublin said. "I've a heavy rifle, and I train it on the middle of his forehead as he stands on the other side of the ditch apparently eight feet away. I fire it off then (I'm a good shot), and I hear it whine across. It'd kill him dead if things were as they seem. But Hyde's in no danger. The shot always bangs into that little scuff of rocks and boulders about thirty feet below him. I can see it kick up the rock dust there, and the sound of it rattling into those little boulders comes back to me in about two and a half seconds."
A bull-bat (poor people call it the night-hawk) raveled around in the air and zoomed out over the narrow ditch, but it did not reach the other side. The bird dropped below ground level and could be seen against the background of the other side of the ditch. It grew smaller and hazier as though at a distance of three or four hundred yards. The white bars on its wings could no longer be discerned; then the bird itself could hardly be discerned; but it was far short of the other side of the five-foot ditch.
A man identified by Charley Dublin as the neighbor Hollister Hyde had appeared on the other side of the little ditch. Hyde grinned and waved. He shouted something, but could not be heard.
"Hyde and I both read mouths," Dublin said, "so we can talk across the ditch easy enough. Which kid wants to play chicken? Hyde will barrel a good-sized rock right at your head, and if you duck or flinch you're chicken."
"Me! Me!" Audifax Rampart challenged. And Hyde, a big man with big hands, did barrel a fearsome jagged rock right at the head of the boy. It would have killed him if things had been as they appeared. But the rock diminished to nothing and disappeared into the ditch. Here was a phenomenon: things seemed real-sized on either side of the ditch, but they diminished coming out over the ditch either way.
"Everybody game for it?" Robert Rampart Junior asked.
"We won't get down there by standing here," Mary Mabel said.
"Nothing wenchered, nothing gained," said Cecilia. "I got that from an ad for a sex comedy."
Then the five Rampart kids ran down into the gully. Ran down is right. It was almost as if they ran down the vertical fa
ce of a cliff. They couldn't do that. The gully was no wider than the stride of the biggest kids. But the gully diminished those children; it ate them alive. They were doll-sized. They were acorn-sized. They were running for minute after minute across a ditch that was only five feet across. They were going, deeper in it, and getting smaller. Robert Rampart was roaring his alarm, and his wife Nina was screaming. Then she stopped. "What am I carrying on so loud about?" she asked herself. "It looks like fun. I'll do it too."
She plunged into the gully, diminished in size as the children had done, and ran at a pace to carry her a hundred yards away across a gully only five feet wide.
That Robert Rampart stirred things up for a while then. He got the sheriff there, and the highway patrolmen. A ditch had stolen his wife and five children, he said, and maybe had killed them. And if anybody laughs, there may be another killing. He got the colonel of the State National Guard there, and a command post set up. He got a couple of airplane pilots. Robert Rampart had one quality: when he hollered, people came.
He got the newsmen out from T-Town, and the eminent scientists, Dr. Velikof Vonk, Arpad Arkabaranan, and Willy McGilly. That bunch turns up every time you get on a good one. They just happen to be in that part of the country where something interesting is going on.
They attacked the thing from all four sides and the top, and by inner and outer theory. If a thing measures half a mile on each side, and the sides are straight, there just has to be something in the middle of it. They took pictures from the air, and they turned out perfect. They proved that Robert Rampart had the prettiest hundred and sixty acres in the country, the larger part of it being a lush green valley, and all of it being half a mile on a side, and situated just where it should be. They took ground-level photos then, and it showed a beautiful half-mile stretch of land between the boundaries of Charley Dublin and Hollister Hyde. But a man isn't a camera. None of them could see that beautiful spread with the eyes in their heads. Where was it?
Down in the valley itself, everything was normal. It really was half a mile wide and no more than eighty feet deep with a very gentle slope. It was warm and sweet, and beautiful with grass and grain.
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 2 Page 60
