The Shadow People

by Margaret St. Clair

  The small man who had triggered the disturbance (or had I triggered it, by merely being there in my health-department uniform?) screamed. A red blotch appeared on his upper arm. "I'm shot! I'm shot!" he yelled. "Kill the pigs!"

  How he thought this could be done wasn't clear. The 'copter rose a few feet, and the voice from it grew louder. I don't suppose any of the shots from the window had connected with it. The small man had obviously been hit by a ricochet. The next moment we were treated to a new weapon of the insurgents, soon to be used by all sides: the superstrobe.

  A dazzlingly bright, dazingly bright light seemed to explode in midair, just a few feet from the cab of the 'copter. My eyes began to water violently; it was worse than tear gas, and the men in the 'copter must have been blinded and thoroughly confused.

  The aircraft rose sharply and then began to settle. It looked as if it were going to come straight down on the mob, and people, their eyes streaming, began to run.

  I grabbed Carol by the arm. "Run!" I yelled. "Run for the campus! We'll be safe there!"

  She didn't move for an instant, I suppose because she was even more affected by the superstrobe than I was. I heard a soft "whoosh" from the police craft. I knew what it meant: they were beginning to dust, and in a minute the air would be full of fine, soft, black powdery dust as the tank under the 'copter opened like a geaster discharging its spores.

  I didn't stay to see what happened next. I think the sniper in the window lobbed a firebomb at the police from a mortar. I pulled Carol with all my strength in what I hoped was the right direction. The air was already dim with the dust, but the wind was blowing away from us, and not enough was landing on our skins for the mycelium to bother us seriously.

  We ran. "Really—be—safe?" Carol asked pantingly after we had gone about a block.

  "Sure," I answered. "Campus—refuge." I didn't think it was necessary to add "for a while."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "How did the riot get started?" Carol asked suddenly. We were sitting on the ground on the U.C. campus near the main library. We had run and run, past boarded-up store windows on Telly, over the cracked paving of Sproul Plaza, through Sather Gate, and come to rest, breathless and exhausted, almost in the center of the now-shrunken campus. There, where the beautiful bronze head of Athena still looked down over the worn steps, it had seemed we would be safest, in the very shadow of the goddess.

  I didn't understand Carol's question at once. "Eh? Well, I suppose I started it," I answered. "Or rather, the sight of my uniform did."

  "Did it? You know, Dick, I have the impression that the little man with the wrinkled forehead was waiting for you—that he'd have attacked you no matter how you'd been dressed."

  "What do you mean? There's no reason why he should have had it in for me. I don't think I ever saw him before."

  "No. Oh, I didn't mean it was personal. But he might have been working for one of the people Howie was working for. They might have been trying to get rid of us."

  "Of us? Why, Carol? If one of Howie's employers—I suppose you mean internal security or espionage—"

  "Yes. Probably the CIA."

  "If one of Howie's employers had our names, they'd be trying to get information from us, not eliminate us. What good would we be to them dead?"

  "I don't know. Howie was killed in a riot."

  "It's awfully unreasonable," I said. "If they wanted to get rid of us, all they'd have to do would be to stage a street attack. Why start a riot to eliminate two people? And at that, it didn't work. We got away."

  She shrugged. "The CIA is famous for using elaborate means to reach simple ends. And we may not keep on getting away."

  I couldn't really tell her she was being ridiculous. That the CIA would have started a riot to get rid of two unimportant people wasn't reasonable. But there remained the possibility—the disconcerting possibility—that that was what had happened. I glanced at Carol. Her head was lowered and her gaze was turned away from me.

  Abruptly I realized that her composure was purely superficial. "Are you frightened?" I asked.

  "Yes," she replied tonelessly.

  "Of Howie's employers?"

  "A little. More than a little, really. But also, the world seems so dreadfully thin. Do you suppose they've washed the coating off the people the 'copter dusted?"

  "I hope so. I mean, probably. There's no reason why the authorities should let people twitch and jerk and suffer when the antidote to dust is easy to apply."

  "They say the dust puffs up like a crust from the moisture in the skin. Let's not talk about it, Dick. I'm sorry I mentioned it."

  "O.K."

  The noise off-campus was increasing. There was more and more gunfire, amplified voices, dogs barking, sirens screaming. The basic note in the noise, the deep, angry roar of a mob, intensified. If the CIA had really started a riot to get rid of Carol and me, they were getting more than they had bargained for. Most city-dwellers, at that time, were full of fear, frustration, and rage. The riot was tapping that reservoir of negative emotion. And a lot of Berkeley would burn that night.

  I looked up at the head of Athena. How many years was it since Carol and I had gone in and out of the library, books in our arms, while the Goddess of Wisdom looked down on us benevolently? A world of turmoil lay between.

  I put my arm around Carol. She was perfectly pliant, but I felt that any position I put her in she would conform to, like a jointed doll. There was something unnatural about it, like a dead body that the byproducts of decay have rendered inordinately flexible.

  I took my arm away. After a moment, I got to my feet and looked in the direction of Telegraph. It was beginning to get dark, and the smokey, reddish glare in the lower sky stood out like the glow of a volcano at night.

  "What is it?" Carol asked. She had risen, too, and was standing beside me.

  "The computer center, I think. Apparently the rioters have fired it, though I don't see how they managed it. There were those guns on the roof."

  "A lot of people hated the computer center," Carol said. "When people feel like that about something, it's bound to go."

  We looked at the fire a little longer. Nobody could regret the computer center. It was a piece of arson of which I rather approved.

  We watched the glow spread and increase. After a while, we sat down again. There was nothing much else we could do.

  I began to wonder whether, if Carol were right about the origin of the riot, there was anything we could do to defend ourselves against further attention from the CIA. Flight would be the only real answer, but I knew we couldn't get out of the U.S. Anything else?

  How would it be if I approached them directly and offered what information I had in an attempt to buy immunity? Would it get us off the hook? Probably not—in an organization as highly compartmented as the CIA, what I told to A would never get through to D. And D, of course, would be the man in charge of getting rid of us. Also, if the CIA hadn't triggered the riot to try to eliminate us, approaching them with an offer of information would be like approaching a potential blackmailer with money in one's hand.

  I picked up a pine cone from the ground and began to crumble it idly. It looked solid, but it broke easily under the pressure of my thumb. It must have been lying on the ground for at least a year.

  The ease with which it broke depressed me. I felt there was an uncomfortable resemblance between me and the pine cone. We were brittle and unsubstantial both.

  There was a rustling in the bushes at the right.

  It is an indication of how completely I was concentrating on the problem of the CIA that my first thought was that the noise must indicate one of their cloak-and-dagger men lurking in the shrubbery.

  Carol was wiser. She listened for a moment, her face grave and attentive, and then said, "It's an elf."

  "An elf?" I was really surprised. If Carol was right, it would be the first sign of elf activity since Fay had joined her people below.

  The rustling continued. "Are you sure
it's not a rat?" I asked, but Carol shook her head vigorously.

  I got out my pocket knife, opened it, and stabbed out forcefully with it. There was a great thrashing in the leaves, as if a family of ferrets were chasing some large animal. Rather gingerly, I reached into what seemed to be the center of the disturbance and groped.

  After a moment, I brought out one of the Silent People, as Carol had foreseen. It was small and boneless, as they always are, and it winced uncomfortably from the dim light. But it made no attempt to attack me or to escape. I held it at arm's length, mewling and grimacing and arching its eyebrows foolishly.

  "What's it doing here?" I asked as I tried to control its wriggles.

  "Fay sent it, I suppose," Carol replied. "Why?"

  "I don't know. But I think it has something for you. Make the elf give it to you."

  It sounded like a good idea. I gave the squirming creature a vigorous shake, and said, "I want what you brought. Come on out with it."

  The elf didn't answer, but a malicious grin writhed across it's face.

  "It'll take more than that," Carol said. "Try twisting its arm."

  Once more, I thought it was a good idea. Rather gingerly, I bent the elf's boneless arm behind its back and began applying pressure on it.

  The elf panted, but made no other sound. I was beginning to sweat. Torturing Fay's messenger—if that was what the elf was—didn't appeal to me, and besides, the torture process was harder on me than it was on it. They are used to physical violence.

  I twisted a little more and then gave up. "It doesn't work," I said. "I suppose I could threaten it with metal, but—there must be a better way of doing this."

  Carol said, "Didn't Fay say something once about a way of compelling elves to an exchange of gifts?"

  "I think so," I said. "It was when she was having dinner with us once, and she said—umh—yes, I remember."

  I took an even firmer grip on the elf and bent down so my face was only a few inches from its own. "As I to thee, thou to me," I said as impressively as I could.

  The elf blinked three or four times and then looked away from me. But it had blinked; I found the pine cone I had been chipping at, and held it out to the creature. Reluctantly and slowly, it took the cone and stowed it away somewhere in its clothing.

  "Give me what you brought," I told it.

  The elf didn't move. Well, I hadn't thought this was going to be so easy as Fay had made it sound. "Give me what Fay sent us," I said. And, when it still didn't show any sign of obeying, I added, "I command you by the hilt and the power of Merlin's sword."

  That did it. Slowly the elf reached inside the fabric that covered its chest and came out with its hand closed. Even more slowly, every line of its body expressing reluctance, it held its hand out to me. I extended my own hand, and it dropped something small in it.

  I let the elf go. For a moment, it glared at me furiously, jaws grinding, head flopping, its whole body churning with rage. Then it fled into the shrubbery and was gone.

  "What did it give you?" Carol asked.

  "I don't know. It's too dark to be able to see. I'll strike a match."

  I did so, and we both bent over what I was holding in my other hand.

  It was a dull, translucent pebble, like unpolished moonstone, about an inch and three-quarters in length. One side was perfectly plain, the other bore a series of three concentric bosses. There was no other marking. The pebble had an air of great antiquity, of something that had been formed when tools were few and rude.

  "You think Fay sent it?" I asked.

  "I'm sure of it," Carol replied.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know." She took the pebble from me. "I have a hunch about it, but I might be wrong."

  The match had burned down to my fingers. I dropped it on the ground. Except for the glow in the sky, we were in complete darkness again. I thought Carol was rolling the pebble around in the palm of her hand, but it was too dark for me to be sure.

  "If the inner boss is Underearth," she said, "then I suppose the middle one is the Bright World, and the outside one is Macrocosmos, Upperworld."

  "What of it?" I asked, mystified.

  "Oh, nothing, except that—no, that doesn't work, either. But suppose I rub them sunwise, and in sequence? Stand close to me, Dick."

  I did as she asked. She was still doing something to the pebble in her hand. Suddenly—she said later that she had been rubbing and pressing the bosses in sequence, always coming back to Middle Earth—there sprang up a great soft light around us.

  There was no sense of limit or confinement in it; we stood within a deliciously glowing sphere, radiant as moonlight. It was no color, all colors, the moon melted up and diffused into a glorious rainbow of lunar colors. They are different from the colors of the sun.

  Carol let out her breath in a tremulous sigh. "How lovely," she said, "what a lovely place."

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "A protection, I think." She was obviously absorbed in pleasure, outside of herself, as she had been that day at Point Reyes. The great soft light was something she was bathing in.

  "Is it penetrable from outside?"

  She looked at me, smiling. "Try it, Dick, and find out."

  Rather hesitantly I stepped toward what I perceived as the edge of the radiance. I went through easily, there was no feeling of crossing anything. But the light had died entirely away.

  Carol didn't seem to be standing within anything. There was no light around her, nothing. She was just standing quietly in the thickening darkness. But when I put out my hand toward her, I failed to touch her. My hand didn't connect with her. It was like an error of refraction. She wasn't at the spot where she seemed to be.

  I groped after her. She didn't move. But no matter where I tried to find her, she wasn't there. My hand always seemed to pass her by.

  At last, I said, "Can you put the protection down so I can touch you?"

  She nodded yes and did something or other to the pebble. An instant afterward, I laid my hand unerringly on her wrist.

  She laughed. "It was so strange to see you reaching for me time after time," she said, "and always missing me. I was perfectly safe all the time, you know, within the light. I don't see how Fay could bear to part with it."

  "Could bear to part with what?" I asked.

  "With this." She indicated the pebble. "Don't you know what it is?"

  And, of course, I did know. I'd known all the time. I felt a burst of intoxicating happiness. Now I was sure of being able to take care of my girl no matter what might happen. For Fay—does this mean that kindness can be found anywhere, even in Hell?—Fay had sent us Merlin's other artifact. She had sent us the talisman of talismans, an impenetrable fortress, a place of security and delight. Fay had sent us the Glain.

  The End

  * * * * * *

  Book information

  PRISONERS OF

  THE OTHERWORLD

  They called it Underearth. It was a kind of Hell in reverse—a world of cold, darkness and dread existing unsuspected beneath Earth's surface, people by weird half-human creatures who had once been men and women.

  Aldridge found the fantastic entrance to it in his desperate search for Carol, the beautiful mysterious girl he loved. All he knew was that she had vanished into the Otherworld and that he had to find her.

  He did find her—but she was strangely changed into an almost mindless automaton. Then he learned one more thing; either he or she could escape to the normal world they had known, but not both. And only he could make the choice ...

  THE

  SHADOW PEOPLE

  ________________

  MARGARET ST. CLAIR

  A DELL BOOK

  Published by

  DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.

  750 Third Avenue

  New York, New York 10017

  Copyright © 1969 by Margaret St. Clair

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the pri
or written permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper.

  Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

  Manufactured in The United States of America

  First printing—August 1969

  * * * * * *

  Back cover

  THE INVASION

  OF THE

  HALLUCINOGENIC

  PEOPLE FROM

  UNDEREARTH!

  They had existed from time immemorial, hidden in a space warp far beneath the surface of the earth. Until now, their only form of nourishment had been a strange hallucinogenic grain. Now, they hungered for human flesh. The earth was to be their stockyards and mankind their meat ...

  cover: jones printed in usa