The Human Zero- The Science Fiction Stories Of Erle Stanley Gardner

by Matin Greenberg

  The man made a sharp noise, seemingly by pursing his puckered lips. It was a shrill, penetrating sound, a single keen squeak.

  As though by magic, the entire line halted.

  In silence the watchers and the watched appraised each other.

  The old man was stooped by great age. His dark skin had thickened and wrinkled until it resembled the skin of an old potato. The eyes were glittering, yet expressionless. The wasted neck seemed hardly able to support the withered head. The bony shoulders protruded upward in two knobs from beneath the gray robe. The feet were bare, dust-covered.

  The natives behind were swarthy, powerful men. On their faces appeared a certain uniformity of expression. They were lean, yet powerfully built. Their features showed a grim asceticism, and in their eyes was a certain something, a burning flame of devouring fanaticism.

  The old man’s puckered lips parted. Harsh speech husked from his withered throat. At the first words Nickers knew that he could not understand. But a swift glance told him that his companion was following the conversation.

  The old man ceased talking.

  Nickers glanced at Forbes. Forbes broke into speech, the same speech that the man had used. He seemed to be explaining something. His hands made an inclusive, sweeping gesture toward the airplane. Then he bowed courteously, spread out his palms in a circling, courteous motion.

  As he ceased his talk the old man nodded his withered head slowly, solemnly, impressively.

  “Believe I’ve made a sale,” muttered Forbes in an undertone.

  But again there came grave, husky speech.

  Again Forbes made answer, and this time Nickers was able to detect an undertone of anxiety in his answer. Again the hands gestured.

  And then the old man took a tottering step toward the plane, glanced back at those behind him, unfolded his arms, and started a clumsy dance. It was as though a spavined truck horse had tried to cavort as a colt. There was a hideous suggestion of a game in what the man was doing. But it was

  a game of youth played with the decadence of withered age.

  First on one foot, then on the other, he hopped until he was at the plane itself. Then he extended a wrinkled claw, attached to a forearm that was unbelievably skinny. The brown talons ripped a small bit of fabric from the wings.

  Nickers uttered an exclamation, made a move as though to stop him. But Forbes held his hand in a viselike grip upon Nicker’s arm.

  “Hold everything. Steady, old chap, steady!”

  With the sound of ripping fabric the old man hopped to the other side of the plane, waving the bit of cloth as though it had been a trophy of skill won at some friendly game.

  Behind him the natives unfolded their arms, skipped toward the plane, tore bits of cloth, and waved them with high glee. Their eyes remained deadly serious, tinged with the reddish glow of dangerous fanaticism. But their lips were drawn back from white teeth in the semblance of a happy grin.

  There remained the line of monkeys, moist round eyes watching intently the antics of the humans. Then face turned to face. The monkeys chattered some shrill command and came trooping forward.

  “Monkey see, monkey do,” muttered Forbes, the first to catch the significance of the action.

  Like brown projectiles cannonballed from a gun, the monkeys trooped across the dust-covered bare ground, leaped to the plane, and began ripping the fabric.

  Phil Nickers groaned.

  From out of the mists came monkeys, droves of monkeys, troops of monkeys. Shrilling their chatterings to the high heavens, they leaped upon the plane, grabbed a bit of cloth, a fragment of wood, and scampered away.

  And other monkeys came from the trees about where they had been watching, concealed by the heavy foliage.

  “Millions of monkeys,” groaned Phil. “The plane’s gone.”

  Forbes nodded.

  “The game is to take things easy and prolong the end as long as possible. There may be a chance yet, but it’s a slim one.”

  The monkeys scuttled up and over the plane, and beneath their vandal touch it melted like a lump of ice over which boiling water is poured. In a startlingly short space of time there remained nothing of the graceful plane except the heavier things which were anchored with nuts and bolts, were welded to the frame, or were too heavy to move.

  The old man shrilled some command. The monkeys took to the trees or fell in behind the natives. Each monkey carried some bit of the wrecked plane.

  The puckered lips husked out a dry command.

  “He says ‘walk,’ ” muttered Forbes.

  And so they walked in a strange procession. The old man led the way, stalking like some grim corpse, partially mummified. Back of him came the two white men. Behind them the file of natives, and, behind the natives, the file of serious monkeys, aping the solemnity of their leaders, marching with a gravity as outwardly profound as that of a supreme court marching to affirm a sentence of death.

  The buildings loomed larger through the mist as the men approached. There was the glitter of gold, the solid gray of old masonry.

  Forbes, keeping his eyes ahead, his face upturned, muttered comments from the side of his lips.

  “Notice the old pile. And that’s real gold you see on the stone. Sanskrit letters, made of pure gold. They carved the rock and then pounded the gold into the stones, just like a dentist would make a filling. Good God! Look at that ruby over the door. In the form of an eye. See it? Evidently this is the headquarters of priests of Hanuman. But it’s some isolated sect that no white man knows anything about. They’re fanatics. Be careful, and, whatever you do, don’t offend the monkeys. Treat them as though they were sacred.

  “There are other people in the house. Get the flicker of motion from that window on the second floor? Seems to be real glass in the windows. Bet these places could tell a story if the stones had the power of speech.

  “Hangar over there on the left. Seems to be empty. But there must be a place around here somewhere where Murasingh keeps his planes. Remember he switched planes last night. That is where he picked up the monkey—forgot it was in the plane, or else didn’t search. The monkey probably climbed in for a joy-ride. I say, looks as if they were going to throw us in a dungeon. See the bars on the windows?”

  Nickers marched stolidly on, seeing everything, yet keeping silent. He realized now the desperate situation they were in. Their captors were fanatics, and they would stop at nothing.

  A door opened before them. As the sunlight was breaking up the rolling clouds of light mist, the men were thrust into a dungeon. A door clanged, and they were left to themselves.

  Nickers chuckled.

  “Takes an airplane to get a change of environment.”

  Forbes grinned.

  “Righto. But this is India.”

  “What’s the next move?”

  “Lord knows. These natives claim to be within their rights in killing white men who get into this section of the country. That’s only half the story. They’ll try their damnedest to keep any news of this place from leaking out to the outside world. This gold didn’t come over a million miles to get here. There must be a regular ledge of it around here somewhere. Then there’s the religious end. These priests of Hanuman take their stuff pretty seriously. Hello, somebody’s coming.”

  Outside of the door sounded a strange shuffle, slip, slap, shuffle, slop, slop, shuffle. The noise sounded along the mud floor. A bolt shot back from the massive door, and it swung noiselessly back.

  Two natives flanked the doorway, and they were armed with glittering knives whose blades fairly radiated a razor keenness.

  Between the natives was a woman. And if ever woman observed the name of witch this woman did. In age she approximated the age of the withered native who had led the procession to the plane. But there was about her a look of malevolent hardness, a glittering-eyed cunning, a hard-jawed selfishness. Her nose hooked down to her chin. Her round chin protruded outward, seemed almost to touch the beak of that huge nose. As she opened her
mouth, pink, toothless gums showed back of the wrinkled lips. Her head shook and wagged in perpetual palsy.

  Upon her shoulder sat a gorgeous green parrot, tail feathers sweeping in a blaze of brilliance. The beady, twinkling eyes of the parrot, hard as twin diamonds, glittered about the dungeon.

  “Time to be tried! Time to be tried!” crooned the old hag.

  The parrot on her shoulder took up the refrain, speaking in the toneless falsetto which comes from the roof of a hard mouth.

  “Time to be tried!”

  Nickers could not repress a start of surprise.

  “But she’s English!” he exclaimed. There could be no mistaking the modulations of tone. And her skin was white, a leathery whiteness to be sure, but white, nevertheless.

  “This is India,” whispered Forbes.

  The woman nodded her shaking head. “This is India, and it’s time to be tried.”

  “Time to be tried,” came the echoing squawk.

  “I’ve come to prepare you for the ordeal, come to tell you what you must do, how you must act.”

  “Goofy as a bedbug!” muttered Nickers, but Forbes kicked him wamingly.

  “This is a monkey world,” went on the hag, speaking her well-modulated English, the words seeming to come from the tip of her sharp tongue, each as hissing as the swish of a knife.

  “The monkeys rule. We guide the monkeys, but they do the ruling. It’s well that you should know something of the priests of Hanuman. Most people will tell you we worship the monkeys. They’re wrong. We serve the monkeys^ They’re men the same as you two, and they’ve slipped in the wheel of incarnation, down, down, down.”

  She paused and the parrot took up the refrain.

  “Down, down, ark! ark! awarrruk!

  “And we’re raising ’em up,” chanted the woman. “Up, up, up! And our work can’t be interfered with. You two: what are you? Just two insignificant lives in the Wheel of Life. But what are we? What’s our work? We’re dealing with millions of souls, restoring them to free will and understanding.

  “It will take time. Oh, yes. It’ll take time, all right! We’ve been at it a couple of thousand years, and we’ll be at it a couple of thousand years more. But we’ve got two souls! Hear that! Two of our monkeys have developed above the group soul of animals into the individual souls of men. You don’t know, you two. You’ll say they’re just well-trained monkeys. But we know. We can see the soul gleaming through their eyes. Before the work of saving those two souls, bringing up the whole band into light of understanding, your lives aren’t worth that!”

  She tried to snap her fingers, but the claws gave only a rasping sound of skin rubbing against skin.

  “The Grandharaus are servants of Agni, the god of light; bodyguard of Soma, right-hand assistants to Varuna the divine judge. There are twenty-seven in all. Three groups of nine, and each of the nines is split into three groups. Three of the Grandharaus are from the subjects of Hanuman. And we’ve brought to light two of those suppressed Grandharaus of the monkey men! They’ve been weighted down by thousands of lives of sin. Their destinies, their karma has slipped until they’ve almost been blotted out in a single group soul. But we’ve got their souls back. One of the two is the judge. You’ll be taken to his court. The other one you can’t see. He’s preparing for his wedding. Yes, a wedding. We’ve got to have an Apsaras for the Grandharaus. And we’ve found her, a woman with monkey eyes!”

  The parrot chanted.

  “Monkey eyes, arawk! The woman with monkey eyes.” Forbes shot a meaning gaze at Nickers. Phil felt a cold sweat bursting from the pores of his skin. The crone went on: “Who can tell, maybe a million years ago, maybe two million years there came the dividing line. One branch of the souls went down. The other branch was held chained to the Wheel of Life, through hundreds of thousands of incarnations. Life after life, death after death. And one soul slipped down, and one went up. But the things that are to be will be. And always there remains the carry-over of karma. And the humans that left the monkey karma have a look in their eyes. One can always tell. And we’re bringing them back together. The two paths are coming together again. That’s our work. That’s the work of the priests of Hanuman. I’ve told you so you’ll know what the trial is about. And you’ll know why we can’t allow a pair of human lives to interfere with that work now it’s so near completion. You’d be willing to die rather than to plunge the whole monkey tribe back a million years in the cosmic scheme of things, wouldn’t you?”

  And the parrot, teetering back and forth on the palsied shoulder, joined in a toneless chorus.

  “Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? Arawwwwk!”

  “Good God, they’re not kidnaping a white girl to mate with a monkey?” hissed Nickers, and then was sorry he spoke, for the skin upon Arthur Forbes’s face was as white as parchment. The veins stood knotted upon his forehead, and the taut skin gleamed with slimy perspiration.

  “Come and be tried. Come and be tried!” chanted the old witch.

  “Come and be tried,” squawked the parrot.

  And the two natives, whirling deftly, presented the points of their keen knives just below their left shoulder blades. Under the prick of those knives they followed the woman as she turned and slippety-slopped, shufflety-slapped her lethargic feet along the clay-bricked floor.

  “Come and be tried, come and be tried!” chanted the woman, her feet shuffling through the dust, sending little clouds of powdery white eddying up around her legs.

  Nickers gave a longing look at the open ground, at the cool shadows of the forest. For a moment he felt the urge to jump wildly forward and sprint for the cover of those trees. But what he saw in the shadows stopped him.

  Monkeys were gathered upon the limbs, watching in silent conclave. They were so still, so motionless that he had some difficulty in seeing them at all. But, after he once saw them, he realized something of the numbers of the monkey colony. They were by the thousands, the ten thousands, and they seemed to have some peculiar psychic alignment with those priests of Hanuman, those red-eyed fanatics who had started with a theory of a division in the life-stream, back in the dim antiquity of a million or more years ago.

  “Come and be tried! Come and be tried!”

  A door, studded with gold letters, swung noiselessly open and the two prisoners were ushered into something that served as an assembly room and a court of justice.

  Instead of chairs running in a circle around the floor, against the walls, there was a long rail, and back of this rail were elevated perches, strung in tiers up to the ceiling. Upon these perches, sitting noiselessly, necks craned forward, moist eyes swimming with interest and curiosity, were the monkey people.

  A raised platform, made of dark, polished wood, was in the center of the railed-off space. Upon this platform were several chairs. Back of one of the chairs was a dark curtain of black tapestry, embroidered with gold.

  The chairs were occupied by the native fanatics. In one of the center chairs sat the withered old man who had led the procession to the plane.

  The prisoners were placed before the platform. The old witch circled thrice around the dais.

  “Come and be tried! Come and be tried!” she chanted.

  And then there was silence, a tense silence, a waiting, quivering silence of suspense. All were waiting for something to happen. All eyes were turned upon the vacant chair back of which was the black curtain.

  The curtain bellied, shook, parted. A robed body came through the parted cloth. And, in the brief glimpse that Nickers had of the robed figure, before it came into the light, he could have sworn that a pair of human hands pushed the body out through the curtains.

  But when the curtains fell back into place, leaving the robed judge well within the room, there was no further hesitation. The figure walked awkwardly around the chair and took a seat. A dark hand plucked off the hood that had shielded the features.

  Nickers gave an audible gasp.

  He had expected a monkey, some larger ape than the ave
rage of his species. He had even been prepared for some evidences of trained intelligence. But he was totally unprepared for that which his eyes actually encountered.

  The face had simian features, but those features had, somehow, taken on the caricature of a human face. The long upper lip, the short nose, the glittering eyes, round and swimming with a moist film, were startlingly human. And the face was almost white, nearly hairless. Perhaps it was a dye, perhaps it was some freak of breeding, but the fact remained that the beast was a gross caricature of a man.

  “Steady, old chap,” muttered Forbes, but his voice showed that he, too, despite his assumption of ease, was shocked and surprised.

  The ape, almost as large as a man, seemed to have some of the intelligence of humankind, coupled with the cunning of a beast. He surveyed the gathering with round, moist eyes. Then his paw banged upon the arm of the chair, and every one in the room stood up. Again the arm banged. The audience resumed their seats.

  The old man arose, pointed to Forbes, then to Nickers.

  The old man sat down.

  The ape turned his head aimlessly from side to side as though wondering what was expected of him next. The old hag again circled the platform.

  “He that was a man and now is a man is about to judge,” she intoned.

  “Awwwwwk!” squawked the parrot.

  The roving eyes of the ape caught those of Phil Nickers. Instantly their gaze locked.

  In the depths of those swimming brown eyes Phil saw something that interested him. For one wild moment he seemed to get the viewpoint of these people about him. Back of the surface, into the very depths of the monkey soul he looked. And what he saw was an individuality struggling for expression.

  Phil wondered if there could be any real basis for the statements these of the monkey-clan made. Had this been a man who had drifted back to beast in the scheme of evolution, who would again return to man’s estate?