Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  Away from the dead center the ravines were body-deep in chaparral, and the hillsides stood gray-green with old cactus. The stunted trees were lower than the giant bushes and yucca.

  Manuel went with Mula, a round easy man and a sparse gaunt mule. Mula was a mule, but there were other inhabitants of the Santa Magdalena of a genus less certain.

  Yet even about Mula there was an oddity in her ancestry. Her paternal grandfather had been a goat. Manuel once told Mr. Marshal about this, but Mr. Marshal had not accepted it.

  "She is a mule. Therefore, her father was a jack. Therefore his father was also a jack, a donkey. It could not be any other way."

  Manuel often wondered about that, for he had raised the whole strain of animals, and he remembered who had been with whom.

  "A donkey! A jack! Two feet tall and with a beard and horns. I always thought that he was a goat."

  Manuel and Mula stopped at noon on Lost Soul Creek. There would be no travel in the hot afternoon. But Manuel had a job to do, and he did it. He took the forms from one of the packs that he had unslung from Mula, and counted out nine of them. He wrote down all the data on nine people. He knew all there was to know about them, their nativities and their antecedents. He knew that there were only nine regular people in the nine hundred square miles of the Santa Magdalena.

  But he was systematic, so he checked the list over again and again. There seemed to be somebody missing. Oh, yes, himself. He got another form and filled out all the data on himself.

  Now, in one way of looking at it, his part in the census was finished. If only he had looked at it that way, he would have saved worry and trouble for everyone, and also ten thousand lives. But the instructions they had given him were ambiguous, for all that they had tried to make them clear.

  So very early the next morning he rose and cooked beans, and said, "Might as well take them all."

  He called Mula from the thorn patch where she was grazing, gave her salt and loaded her again. Then they went to take the rest of the census, but in fear. There was a clear duty to get the job done, but there was also a dread of it that his superiors did not understand. There was reason also why Mula was loaded so she could hardly walk with packs of census forms.

  Manuel prayed out loud as they climbed the purgatorial scarp above Lost Souls Creek, "ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora—" the very gulches stood angry and stark in the early morning—"y en la hora de neustra muerte."

  THREE days later an incredible dwarf staggered into the outskirts of High Plains, Texas, followed by a dying wolf-sized animal that did not look like a wolf.

  A lady called the police to save the pair from rock-throwing kids who might have killed them, and the two as yet unclassified things were taken to the station house.

  The dwarf was three foot high, a skeleton stretched over with brown-burnt leather. The other was an un-canine looking dog-sized beast, so full of burrs and thorns that it might have been a porcupine. It was a nightmare replica of a shrunken mule.

  The midget was mad. The animal had more presence of mind: she lay down quietly and died, which was the best she could do, considering the state that she was in.

  "Who is census chief now?" asked the mad midget. "Is Mr. Marshal's boy the census chief?"

  "Mr. Marshal is, yes. Who are you? How do you know Marshal? And what is that which you are pulling out of your pants, if they are pants?"

  "Census list. Names of everybody in the Santa Magdalena. I had to steal it."

  "It looks like microfilm, the writing is so small. And the roll goes on and on. There must be a million names here."

  "Little bit more, little bit more. I get two bits a name."

  They got Marshal there. He was very busy, but he came. He had been given a deadline by the mayor and the citizen's group. He had to produce a population of ten thousand people for High Plains, Texas; and this was difficult, for there weren't that many people in the town. He had been working hard on it, though; but he came when the police called him.

  "You Marshal's little boy? You look just like your father," said the midget.

  "That voice, I should know that voice even if it's cracked to pieces. That has to be Manuel's voice."

  "Sure, I'm Manuel. Just like I left, thirty-five years ago."

  "You can't be Manuel, shrunk three feet and two hundred pounds and aged a million."

  "You look here at my census slip. It says I'm Manuel. And here are nine more of the regular people, and one million of the little people. I couldn't get them on the right forms, though. I had to steal their list."

  "You can't be Manuel," said Marshal.

  "He can't be Manuel," said the big policemen and the little policeman.

  "Maybe not, then," the dwarf conceded. "I thought I was, but I wasn't sure. Who am I then? Let's look at the other papers and see which one I am."

  "No, you can't be any of them either, Manuel. And you surely can't be Manuel."

  "Give him a name anyhow and get him counted. We got to get to that ten thousand mark."

  "Tell us what happened, Manuel—if you are. Which you aren't. But tell us."

  "After I counted the regular people I went to count the little people. I took a spade and spaded off the top of their town to get in. But they put an encanto on me, and made me and Mula run a treadmill for thirty-five years."

  "Where was this?"

  "At the little people town. Nuevo Danae. But after thirty-five years the encanto wore off and Mula and I stole the list of names and ran away."

  "But where did you really get this list of so many names written so small?"

  "Suffering saddle sores, Marshal, don't ask the little bug so many questions. You got a million names in your hand. Certify them! Send them in! There's enough of us here right now. We declare that place annexed forthwith. This will make High Plains the biggest town in the whole state of Texas."

  SO Marshal certified them and sent them into Washington. This gave High Plains the largest percentage increase of any city in the nation, but it was challenged. There were some soreheads in Houston who said that it wasn't possible. They said High Plains had nowhere near that many people and there must have been a miscount.

  And in the days that the argument was going on, they cleaned up and fed Manuel, if it were he, and tried to get from him a cogent story.

  "How do you know it was thirty-five years you were on the treadmill, Manuel?"

  "Well, it seemed like thirty-five years."

  "It could have only been about three days."

  "Then how come I'm so old?"

  "We don't know that, Manuel, we sure don't know that. How big were these people?"

  "Who knows? A finger long, maybe two?"

  "And what is their town?"

  "It is an old prairie-dog town that they fixed up. You have to dig down with a spade to get to the streets."

  "Maybe they were really all prairie dogs, Manuel. Maybe the heat got you and you only dreamed that they were little people."

  "Prairie dogs can't write as good as on that list. Prairie dogs can't write hardly at all."

  "That's true. The list is hard to explain. And such odd names on it too."

  "Where is Mula? I don't see Mula since I came back."

  "Mula just lay down and died, Manuel."

  "Gave me the slip. Why didn't I think of that? Well, I'll do it too. I'm too worn out for anything else."

  "Before you do, Manuel, just a couple of last questions."

  "Make them real fast then. I'm on my way."

  "Did you know these little people were there before?"

  "Oh, sure. There a long time."

  "Did anybody else ever see them?"

  "Oh, sure. Everybody in the Santa Magdalena see them. Eight, nine people see them."

  "And Manuel, how do we get to the place? Can you show us on a map?"

  Manuel made a grimace, and died quietly as Mula had done. He didn't understand those maps at all, and took the easy way out.

  They buried him, not knowing for sur
e whether he was Manuel come back, or what he was.

  There wasn't much of him to bury.

  IT was the same night, very late and after he had been asleep, that Marshal was awakened by the ring of an authoritative voice. He was being harangued by a four-inch tall man on his bedside table, a man of dominating presence and acid voice.

  "Come out of that cot, you clown! Give me your name and station!"

  "I'm Marshal, and I suspect that you are a late pig sandwich, or caused by one. I shouldn't eat so late."

  "Say 'sir' when you reply to me. I am no pig sandwich and I do not commonly call on fools. Get on your feet, you clod."

  And wonderingly Marshal did.

  "I want the list that was stolen. Don't gape! Get it!"

  "What list?"

  "Don't stall, don't stutter. Get me our tax list that was stolen. It isn't words that I want from you."

  "Listen, you cicada, I'll take you and—"

  "You will not. You will notice that you are paralyzed from the neck down. I suspect that you were always so from there up. Where is the list?"

  "S-sent it to Washington."

  "You bug-eyed behemoth! Do you realize what a trip that will be? You grandfather of inanities, it will be a pleasure to destroy you!"

  "I don't know what you are, or if you are really. I don't believe that you even belong on the world."

  "Not belong on the world! We own the world. We can show written title to the world. Can you?"

  "I doubt it. Where did you get the title?"

  "None of your business. I'd rather not say. Oh, well, we got it from a promoter of sorts. A con man, really. I'll have to admit that we were taken, but we were in a spot and needed a world. He said that the larger bifurcates were too stupid to be a nuisance. We should have known that the stupider a creature, the more of a nuisance it is."

  "I had about decided the same thing about the smaller a creature. We may have to fumigate that old mountain mess."

  "Oh, you can't harm us. We're too powerful. But we can obliterate you in an instant."

  "Hah!"

  "Say 'Hah, sir' when you address me. Do you know the place in the mountain that is called Sodom?"

  "I know the place. It was caused by a large meteor."

  "It was caused by one of these."

  What he held up was the size of a grain of sand. Marshal could not see it in detail.

  "There was another city of you bug-eyed beasts there," said the small martinet. "You wouldn't know about it. It's been a few hundred years. We decided it was too close. Now I have decided that you are too close."

  "A thing that size couldn't crack a walnut."

  "You floundering fop, it will blast this town flat!"

  "What will happen to you?"

  "Nothing. I don't even blink for things like that."

  "How do you trigger it off."

  "You gaping goof, I don't have time to explain that to you. I have to get to Washington."

  It may be that Marshal did not believe himself quite awake. He certainly did not take the threat seriously enough. For the little man did trigger it off.

  WHEN the final count was in, High Plains did not have the highest percentage gain in population in the nation. Actually it showed the sharpest decline, from 7313 to nothing.

  They were going to make a forest preserve out of the place, except that it has no trees worthy of the name. Now it is proposed to make it the Sodom and Gomorrah State Park from the two mysterious scenes of desolation there, just seven miles apart.

  It is an interesting place, as wild a region as you will ever find, and is recommended for the man who has seen everything.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE SIX FINGERS OF TIME

  By R. A. Lafferty

  He began by breaking things that morning. He broke the glass of water on his night stand. He knocked it crazily against the opposite wall and shattered it. Yet it shattered slowly. This would have surprised him if he had been fully awake, for he had only reached out sleepily for it.

  Nor had he wakened regularly to his alarm; he had wakened to a weird, slow, low booming, yet the clock said six, time for the alarm. And the low boom, when it came again, seemed to come from the clock.

  He reached out and touched it gently, but it floated off the stand at his touch and bounced around slowly on the floor. And when he picked it up again it had stopped, nor would shaking start it.

  He checked the electric clock in the kitchen. This also said six o'clock, but the sweep hand did not move. In his living room the radio clock said six, but the second hand seemed stationary.

  "But the lights in both rooms work," said Vincent. "How are the clocks stopped? Are they on a separate circuit?"

  He went back to his bedroom and got his wristwatch. It also said six; and its sweep hand did not sweep.

  "Now this could get silly. What is it that would stop both mechanical and electrical clocks?"

  He went to the window and looked out at the clock on the Mutual Insurance Building. It said six o'clock, and the second hand did not move.

  "Well, it is possible that the confusion is not limited to myself. I once heard the fanciful theory that a cold shower will clear the mind. For me it never has, but I will try it. I can always use cleanliness for an excuse."

  The shower didn't work. Yes, it did: the water came now, but not like water; like very slow syrup that hung in the air. He reached up to touch it there hanging down and stretching. And it shattered like glass when he touched it and drifted in fantastic slow globs across the room. But it had the feel of water, wet and pleasantly cool. And in a quarter of a minute or so it was down over his shoulders and back, and he luxuriated in it. He let it soak his head and it cleared his wits at once.

  "There is not a thing wrong with me. I am fine. It is not my fault that the water is slow this morning and other things awry."

  He reached for the towel and it tore to pieces in his hands like porous wet paper.

  Now he became very careful in the way he handled things. Slowly, tenderly, and deftly he took them so that they would not break. He shaved himself without mishap in spite of the slow water in the lavatory also.

  Then he dressed himself with the greatest caution and cunning, breaking nothing except his shoe laces, a thing that is likely to happen at any time.

  "If there is nothing the matter with me, then I will check and see if there is anything seriously wrong with the world. The dawn was fairly along when I looked out, as it should have been. Approximately twenty minutes have passed; it is a clear morning; the sun should now have hit the top several stories of the Insurance Building."

  But it had not. It was a clear morning, but the dawn had not brightened at all in the twenty minutes. And that big clock still said six. It had not changed.

  Yet it had changed, and he knew it with a queer feeling. He pictured it as it had been before. The hour and the minute hand had not moved noticeably. But the second hand had moved. It had moved a third of the dial.

  So he pulled up a chair to the window and watched it. He realized that, though he could not see it move, yet it did make progress. He watched it for perhaps five minutes. It moved through a space of perhaps five seconds.

  "Well, that is not my problem. It is that of the clock maker, either a terrestrial or a celestial one."

  But he left his rooms without a good breakfast, and he left them very early. How did he know that it was early since there was something wrong with the time? Well, it was early at least according to the sun and according to the clocks, neither of which institutions seemed to be working properly.

  He left without a good breakfast because the coffee would not make and the bacon would not fry. And in plain point of fact the fire would not heat. The gas flame came from the pilot light like a slowly spreading stream or an unfolding flower. Then it burned far too steadily. The skillet remained cold when placed over it; nor would water even heat. It had taken at least five minutes to get the water out of the faucet in the firs
t place.

  He ate a few pieces of leftover bread and some scraps of meat.

  In the street there was no motion, no real motion. A truck, first seeming at rest, moved very slowly. There was no gear in which it could move so slowly. And there was a taxi which crept along, but Charles Vincent had to look at it carefully for some time to be sure that it was in motion. Then he received a shock. He realized by the early morning light that the driver of it was dead. Dead with his eyes wide open!

  Slowly as it was going, and by whatever means it was moving, it should really be stopped. He walked over to it, opened the door, and pulled on the brake. Then he looked into the eyes of the dead man. Was he really dead? It was hard to be sure. He felt warm. But, even as Vincent looked, the eyes of the dead man had begun to close. And close they did and open again in a matter of about twenty seconds.

  This was weird. The slowly closing and opening eyes sent a chill through Vincent. And the dead man had begun to lean forward in his seat. Vincent put a hand in the middle of the man's chest to hold him upright, but he found the forward pressure as relentless as it was slow. He was unable to keep the dead man up.

  So he let him go, watching curiously; and in a few seconds the driver's face was against the wheel. But it was almost as if it had no intention of stopping there. It pressed into the wheel with dogged force. He would surely break his face. Vincent took several holds on the dead man and counteracted the pressure somewhat. Yet the face was being damaged, and if things were normal, blood would have flowed.

  The man had been dead so long however, that (though he was still warm) his blood must have congealed, for it was fully two minutes before it began to ooze.

  "Whatever I have done, I have done enough damage," said Vincent. "And, in whatever nightmare I am in, I am likely to do further harm if I meddle more. I had better leave it alone."

  He walked on down the morning street. Yet whatever vehicles he saw were moving with an incredible slowness, as though driven by some fantastic gear reduction. And there were people here and there frozen solid. It was a chilly morning, but it was not that cold. They were immobile in positions of motion, as though they were playing the children's game of Statues.