Norton, Andre - Anthology (21 page)

           
The guide
was already climbing down with his rifle in his tail. He called: "Did you
get hit? I thought you were a goner sure when the rock fall commenced. Got a
twig caught in my breech while I was reloading."

           
Nawputta
tried to call back reassurance, but found he couldn't make a sound.

           
When Chujee
pulled his dripping mount up the bank, he got out his binoculars and looked at
the south shoulder of the notch. He said: "Come on! They've already
climbed down toward us; they haven't given up yet. But I think we can lose them
if we can find that trail we cut through the alders. They don't know about it
yet, and they'll probably scatter trying to find which way we've gone."

           
Nawputta
yawned, stretched, and sat up. Chujee was sitting by the fire at Nguchoy's
camp, his rifle in his lap. Both still looked a trifle haggard after their
sleepless flight down the river. They had strung the four agoutis in a column,
and taken turns riding backward on the last one of the string to keep watch
against another attack. But though the pounding had continued, the Men had not
shown themselves again. When they arrived at Nguchoy's camp, the timber scout
was not to be seen, evidently not having returned.

           
Chujee
said: "I've been thinking, while you were catching up on sleep, about this
Nguchoy and his yarns. I don't reckon he intended us to return, though we
couldn't prove anything against him.

           
"And I
wonder how it happened that his partner died at such a convenient time
...
for him. He needed this Jawga person to
help him paddle up the rivers. But once they got to the head of navigation,
Nguchoy could get back downstream easy enough without help. And when they'd
found that great pine forest, it would be mighty convenient if an accident
happened to Jawga. When Nguchoy went back to the Colony, he wouldn't have to
share the credit for the find, and the bonus, with anybody."

           
Nawputta
raised his eyebrows, and without a word began hunting in their duffel for a
spade.

           
In half an
hour they had dug up all that was mortal of Jawga tsu Shrr. Nawputta examined
the remains, which were in a most unpleasant state of decay.

           
"See!"
he said. "Two holes in the skull, which weren't made by any rattlesnake.
The one on the left side is just about right for a No. 14 rifle bullet going
in."

           
They were
silent. Over the swish of the wind in the trees came a faint rhythmical
pounding.

           
"Do we
want to pinch him?" asked Chujee. "It's a long way back to the
Colony."

           
Nawputta
thought. "I have a better idea. We'll rebury the corpse for the
present."

           
"Nothing
illegal," said Chujee firmly.

           
"N-no, not exactly.
It's this way. Have you ever seen a
Colony lumberjack gang in action?"

           
Nawputta
shoved the corpse into the grave. The pounding was louder. Both capuchins
looked to see that their rifles were within easy reach.

           
A tuneless
whistling came through the trees.

           
"Quick!"
whispered Nawputta. "Sprinkle some leaves on the grave. When he arrives,
you get his attention. Talk about anything."

           
The
whistling stopped, and presently the timber scout appeared. If he was surprised
to see the explorers, he did not show it.

           
"Hello,"
he said. "Have a good trip?"

           
He paused
and sniffed the air. The explorers realized that there had been one thing they
couldn't put back in the grave. Nguchoy looked at the grave, but made no
remark.

           
"Sure,
we did," said Chujee in his best good-fellow manner, and went on to talk
about the splendor of the gorge and the magnificence of the pines.

           
The
pounding was becoming louder, but nobody seemed to notice.

           
"Nguchoy,"
said Nawputta suddenly, "did you and Jawga see any traces of live Men in
the forest?"

           
The timber
scout snorted. "Don't be a sap. Men have been—what's that word?—extinct
for millions of years. How could we see them?"

           
"Well,"
the scientist went on, "we did." He paused. The only sound was the
pounding. Or were there faint yelping cries? "Moreover, we've just had a
look at the remains of your late-lamented partner."

           
There was
silence again, except for the ominous sounds of the approach of Men.

           
"Are
you going to talk to us?" asked Nawputta.

           
Nguchoy
grinned. "Sure, I'll talk to you." He sprang back to the tree against
which he had left his rifle standing.
"With this!"
He snatched up the weapon and pulled the trigger.

           
The rifle
gave out a metallic click.

           
Nawputta
opened his fist, showing a handful of cartridges. Then he calmly picked up his
own rifle and covered the timber scout.

           
"Chujee,"
he said, "you take his knife and hatchet and the rest of his
ammunition."

           
The guide,
dumfounded by the decisive way of his usually impractical companion, obeyed.

           
"Now,"
said Nawputta, "tie the four agoutis together, and hitch the leading one
to the end of Nguchoy's canoe. We're pulling out."

           
"But
what?" asked Chujee
uncertainly.

           
Nawputta
snapped: "I'll explain later.
Hurry."

           
As the
explorers piled into the boat, the timber scout woke to life.

           
"Hey!"
he shouted. "Aren't you taking me along? The Men'll be here any minute,
and they'll eat me! They even eat their own kind when one's been killed!"

           
"No,"
said Nawputta, "we aren't taking you."

           
The canoe
pulled out into the river, the agoutis following unwillingly till only their
heads and loads showed above water.

           
"Hey!"
screamed Nguchoy. "Come back! I'll confess!"

           
The canoe
kept on, the agoutis swimming in its wake.

           
As the site
of the camp receded, there was a sudden commotion among the trees. The
now-familiar yells of the Men were mingled with despairing shrieks from the
timber scout. The shrieks ceased, and the voices of the Men were raised in a
rhythmical but tuneless chant, which the explorers could hear long after the
camp was hidden from view.

           
Chujee,
paddling low, stared straight before him for a while in silence. Finally he
turned around in his seat and said deliberately: "That's the lowest damned
trick I ever saw in my life.
To leave him there defenseless
like that to be eaten by those hairless things.
I don't care if he
was
a liar and a murderer."

           
Nawputta's
expression of smugness vanished, and he looked slightly crestfallen. "You
don't approve, do you? I was afraid you wouldn't. But I had to do it that
way."

           
"Well,
why?"

           
Nawputta
took a long breath and rested his paddle. "I started to explain before,
but I didn't have time. Nguchoy had killed his partner, and was going to return
to the Colony with the news of the forest. He tried to have us killed by the
Men, and when that didn't work, he'd have killed us himself if I hadn't emptied
his gun behind his back.

           
"When
he got back to the Colony, a timber gang would have been sent out. They'd have
wiped out that forest in a few years, and you'll admit that it's probably the
finest in the whole
Eastern
Mountain
area. Moreover, they'd have killed off the wild life, including the Men, partly
for food, partly for self-protection, and partly because they like to shoot.

           
"We
thought Man had been extinct for millions of years, after having spread all
over the world and reached a state of civilization as high as or higher than
ours. The Men that we saw may well be the last of their species. You're a
practical fellow, and I don't know whether I can make you understand a biologist's
feeling toward a living fossil like that. To us it's simply priceless, and
there's nothing we won't do to preserve it.

           
"If we
can get back to South America before the news of the pine stand reaches the
Colony, I can pull the necessary wires to have the area set aside as a park or
preserve. The Colony can just as well go else where for its lumber. But if the
Colony hears about it first, I shan't have a chance.

           
"If
we'd taken Nguchoy back with us, even if we'd brought him to justice, he'd
still have been able to give the news away, especially since he could probably
have purchased leniency by it. And that would be the end of my park idea.

           
"If
we'd taken the law into our own hands, even if I'd been able to overcome your
objections to doing so, we'd have been in a fix when, as will inevitably
happen, the Colony sends an officer up to investigate the disappearance of
their scout. If we said he died of a snake bite, for instance, and the officer
found a body with a bullet hole through the head, or alternatively if he'd
found no body at all, he'd have been suspicious. As it is, we can truthfully
say, when they ask us, that Nguchoy was alive and sound of wind and limb the
last time we saw him. The officer will then find the remains, having obviously
been eaten by the Men. Of course, we needn't volunteer any information until
the park proposal is in the bag.

           
"The
reason I took his canoe is that I remembered that Men probably can't swim. At
least, the chimpanzee, which is the nearest living relative of Man, can't,
whereas we can swim instinctively as soon as we're able to walk.

           
"But
there's a bigger issue than Nguchoy and the Men. You probably think I'm a bit
cracked, with my concern for conservation.

           
"We
know that Man, during the period of his civilization, was prodigally wasteful
of his resources. The exhaustion of the mineral oils is an example. And the
world-wide extinction of the larger mammals at the close of the last ice age
was probably his doing, at least in part. We're sure that he was responsible for
wiping out all the larger species of whales, and we suspect that he also killed
off all but two of the twenty or more species of elephant that abounded at that
time. Most of the large mammals of today have evolved in the last few million
years from forms that were small enough to sit in your hand in Man's time.

           
"We
don't know just why he became extinct, or almost extinct. Perhaps a combination
of war and disease did it. Perhaps the exhaustion of his resources had a share.
You know what a hardboiled materialist I am in most things; but it always has
seemed to me that it was a case of outraged nature taking its revenge. That's
not rational, but it's the way I feel. And I've dedicated my life to seeing
that we don't make the same mistake.

           
"Now
do you see why I had to do what I did?"

           
Chujee was
silent for a moment,
then
said: "Perhaps I do. I
won't say I approve . . . yet. But I'll think it over for a few days. Say,
we'll have to land soon; the agoutis are getting all tired out from
swimming."

           
The canoe
slid on down the river in the Indian-summer sunshine. The white men who had
applied the name "Indian summer" to that part of the year were gone,
as were the Indians after whom it had been named. Of mighty Man, the only
remnant was a little savage tribe in the Alleghenies. A representative of a
much more ancient order, a dragonfly, hovered over the bow, its four glassy
wings glittering in the sunlight. Then with a faint whir it wheeled and fled.

             
E.S.P. is not of the
future at all. It is already here and now, though in spite of official
recognition, we do not understand it. Perhaps we would rather not deal with
such a wild talent if it led to the fate of the hero in this story.

        
    
Although the sun was warm and shining
brightly, I experienced a sense of dismal foreboding when I drew near to Richard
Ashley's little South Carolinian retreat. Live oaks and palmettos screened the
small laboratory building and the high yellow fence beyond. Huge, brown
mushrooms, which looked like the conical dwellings of gnomes and other demons
of fable with a lineage rooted deep in earth, studded the grass about me.

 
          
 
As I advanced over the narrow pathway, which
led to the laboratory door, I told myself with some bitterness that no other
bacteriologist of Ashley's standing would have conducted his researches so far
from the citadels of organized science. Ashley had once labored in a great
white laboratory by the sea, and this little inland retreat seemed peculiarly
noisome by contrast.

 
          
 
I don't like profuse and suggestive
vegetation. I don't like little buildings nestling in the midst of clustering
shadows, with dank earth odors all about them. But Ashley was a strange chap.

 
          
 
There is a sect of Eastern fanatics, which
insists that human beings are but thinly disguised counterparts of certain
animals. Some men exhibit characteristics which link them with the birds of the
air, others with tigers, pigs, and hyenas, and still others with the invertebrate
phyla. I have often thought that the imaginative gentlemen who adhere to this
cult would have classified Ashley as a mole or an earthworm. I am not being
facetious when I say that Ashley was a deep one.

 
          
 
He resented and fled from all warm, human,
personal contacts. I don't believe there was ever a woman in his life. Even
friendship was impossible to him. But occasionally he'd get into an
intellectual jam or run head-on into a stone wall; and then he'd send for me. I
was his good man Friday. As a human being I didn't admire Ashley at all. But as
a scientist—and I think scientists are the salt of the earth—I respected and
revered him.

 
          
 
I was halfway down the path when the
laboratory door opened suddenly and Ashley came out. He came out blinking into
the warm, bright sunlight, and stood for an instant with his hand on the
doorknob, peering intently through thick-lensed spectacles at the hatless and
perspiring young man who was approaching him over the lawn.

           
 
He resembled a corpse. His features,
especially the skin on his cheekbones, had the sickly pallor which usually
accompanies a stoppage of circulation. There were black half moons under both
his eyes, and the veins on his forehead stood out horribly. His expression was
a peculiar one, difficult to describe. Though torment and apprehension looked
out of his eyes, he seemed somehow still master of himself and even a little
defiant.

 
          
 
"You took your time getting here, didn't
you?" he said, petulantly, as though he were addressing a child.

 
          
 
I had come three hundred miles by bus, in
response to his urgent telegram, but it was no good being angry with him. He
was tormented and in trouble. A wave of compassion swept over me when I saw how
his hands were shaking. When he tried to hold the door open for me, he sagged
against the jamb. For an instant I thought he was going to fall.

 
          
 
As we passed from the palmetto-shadowed lawn
into the interior of the laboratory, I watched him out of the corner of my eye,
striving to repress his hysteria. I continued to shoot sidewise glances at him
until we reached the large, sunlighted room where he worked over his slides and
cultures.

 
          
 
His composure seemed to return a little when
he shut the door of that room. He seized my hand and pressed it gratefully.

 
          
 
"Glad you came, John," he said.
"Really glad.
It was decent of you."

 
          
 
I looked at him. A trace of color had crept
back into his cheeks. He was standing with his back to the window, gazing in a
kind of trance at the long row of microscopes which had claimed his attention
for five absorbing months, and the pale-blue jars full of polluted water which
contained an astonishing assortment of microscopic organisms—diatoms and wheel
animalcules and prototropic bacteria, all tremendously important to him in his
patient labors.

 
          
 
The laboratory was bathed in limpid shafts of
warm and slowly reddening sunlight, and I remember how the optical tubes of the
microscopes glittered as I stared at them. Their brilliant sheen seemed to
exert an almost hypnotic influence on my companion. But suddenly he tore his
gaze away, and his lean fingers fastened on my arm in a grip that made me
wince.

 
          
 
"It's under the third microscope from the
end of the table," he said, with twitching lips. "It put itself on
the slide deliberately. I thought, of course, that it was a microorganism at
first. But when he stared steadily up at me, I found myself thinking its
thoughts and obscurely sharing its incredible emotions. You see, it would have
been invisible to the naked eye. With devilish cunning it put itself where I
would be sure to see it."

 
          
 
He nodded grimly toward the long, zinc-topped
table, which ran the length of the laboratory. "You may look at it if you
wish.
The third microscope."

 
          
 
I turned and stared at him intently for an
instant. His eyes seemed abnormally bright, but the pupils were not dilated. I
am rather proficient at detecting the stigmata of drugs, hysteria,
incipient
insanity. Without a word I moved to the end of the
table, bent over, and glued my eye to the instrument of science.

 
          
 
For a moment I stared down at tiny, moving
blobs of matter on an immersion liquid, which was tinted a beautiful rose-pink.
Shapes grotesque and aberrant, grotesque and
revolting,
weaved in and out and devoured one another on a mucid area no larger than my
thumb. Hundreds of shapes with enormous, greedy "mouths" and
repulsively writhing bodies darted in and out between slothful tiger
animalcules, and flat, segmented horrors which bore a nauseating resemblance to
the proglottids of fish tapeworms and other intestinal Cestoda.

 
          
 
Suddenly, as I stared, an organism shaped like
an inverted bell swam toward the center of the slide and remained there with
curious oscillatory movements of its tapering body. It was utterly unlike the
hundreds of other loathsome, squirming little animals about it.

 
          
 
It was quite large, for one thing, and
extremely complex in structure, consisting of an outer translucent shell or
chrysalis, and a cone-shaped inner shell, also transparent and curiously
irridescent in texture. As I peered more intently, I perceived that the inner
shell enveloped a little form serving as a sort of matrix for the.
actual
inhabitant of the bell.

 
          
 
The little form was shockingly anthropomorphic
in contour. There is something horribly disturbing about the human form when it
is simulated by creatures of nonsimian origin. Vaguely man-shaped fishes,
reptiles and insects— and there are a few such in nature—invariably repel me.
The debased but distinctly manlike face of a skate or ray fills me with
detestation. I shiver when I see a frog with its legs extended. Perhaps this
fear reaction is caused by man's primitive, instinct dread of being supplanted.

 
          
 
Ordinarily the revulsion is fleeting and
quickly forgotten. But as I gazed down at the little shape within the bell, the
horror which I experienced was pervasive, unsettling. It wasn't just a shivery
premonition. I had a feeling I was gazing on something alien to normal
experience, something that transcended all the grotesque parallelisms in
Nature's book.

 
          
 
The shape was in all respects a perfectly
formed little man, dark-skinned, with pointed ears and pointed chin. Purely by
accident, it resembled a whimsical creation of man's fancy. Purely by accident,
it was goblinlike, gnomelike. But it was not whimsical. It was horrible.

           
 
A human shape, starkly nude and so small it
was invisible to the naked eye tenuously suspended within a bell-shaped
receptacle. It rested on its back, with its little arms tightly folded across
its chest. Its abdomen, arms and legs were covered with fine, reddish hair.
Suddenly, as I studied it, sick with revulsion and horror, it opened its
slitted eyes and stared steadily up at me.

 
          
 
Something seemed to speak to me then. Words
rippled across my mind in slow, sluggish waves.

 
          
 
"You are his friend. I will not harm you.
Do not fear me."

 
          
 
I spun the microscope, gasping out in unbelief
and horror. Ashley laid his hand on my arm and drew me swiftly away from the
table.

 
          
 
"You saw it?" he asked. "It
spoke to you?"

 
          
 
I nodded. I stared at him in furious unbelief.
I clenched my hands in blind terror. I said: "What is it, Richard?"

 
          
 
I was trembling like a leaf. My face was
twitching; I could feel the blood tingling in my cheeks as it drained away.

 
          
 
"It has traveled for hundreds of light
years through interstellar space," he said. "Its home is on a tiny
planet encircling a sun of inconceivable density in a star cluster more remote
than Earth's nearest stellar neighbors, but an immeasurable distance from the
rim of the galaxy. It came in a little space vessel, which is hidden somewhere
in the laboratory. It refuses to tell me where the vessel is concealed. Through
some undreamed-of development of the power of telepathy, it can transmit a
whole sequence of thought images in a flash."

 
          
 
I nodded grimly. "I know," I said.
"It spoke to me. At least, words formed in my mind."

 
          
 
Ashley grasped at that admission as though it
were a life line which I had flung him suddenly in sheer compassion and at
grave risk to myself.

 
          
 
"Then you do believe, John. I'm glad.
Skepticism would be dangerous now. It can sense all opposition to me."

 
          
 
He fell silent an instant. He was staring with
fixed intent-ness at the tube of the microscope which contained the little
horror.

 
          
 
"I know that it is difficult to accept a
reality in startling opposition to the whole trend of modern scientific
thought," he said. "Since the age of Kepler the thinking portion of
mankind has inordinately glorified bigness, vastness, extension in space and
time. Scientifically minded men have thrown their thoughts occasionally outward
toward remote constellations and mysteriously receding nebulae and dreamed vain
dreams in which mere size has figured as a stepping stone to the eternal.

 
          
 
"But why should size be of any particular
importance to the mysterious architect of the mysterious universe?"

 
          
 
"One associates size with force,
power," I replied, my eyes on his white face.

 
          
 
"But size and power are not coincidental
throughout the universe," exclaimed Ashley. "The radiant force fields
at the core of many midget suns would shatter the stellar giants into glowing
fragments. Van Maanen's star is no larger than our Earth, but its density
exceeds that of the solar disk. If this little star came within a few million
miles of Pluto's orbit, it would disrupt the Sun and turn it into a nova. A
tiny fragment of its inconceivably concentrated substance no larger than a
bolide would pull mighty Jupiter from its orbit. A few spoonfuls of radiant
matter from its core colliding with the Earth's crust would cause a more
cataclysmic upheaval than the eruption of a major volcano.