The Beyonders (14 page)

"It's still hard for the Beyonders to live and move here," said Doc. "What will they do their conquering with? What about their weapons?"

"I don't know about their weapons; those will come later when they're established. Just now they have vassals among human beings to help persuade . . . to help give them a base. And I don't know how they communicate, I've never done that. I've hardly even seen one."

"I have," Gander Eye told him.

"But they'll take over Sky Notch, base themselves here, convince the scientists—"

"You keep a-talking about scientists, big scientists," said Gander Eye. "Edison and folks like him, wouldn't they see what's what?"

"Science is impersonal," said Crispin. "All the scientific mind will grasp is that there are visitors from beyond space, creatures to study and welcome and enthuse over. Several scientists have been secretly contacted—yes, Gander Eye, big scientists—they'll go along with the plan of arrival."

"Right here in Sky Notch!" said Gander Eye. "All them big boys."

"Yes. And here's where the Beyonders will set up their base and operate from, with help from people like Mayor Ballinger and—" He shook his head at them for emphasis. "A base where they can have their own temperature, their own living conditions, and venture out to build other bases, take other positions, flow all over the world, encroach—once they have that base and set up their machines and weapons."

He broke off again.

"This is what Ballinger meant when he talked about a big, rich organization coming to expand and develop Sky Notch for us," said Doc, who still had not shown a tremulous excitement. "I suppose you and he thought I might be of some scientific help. But if these Beyonders are so limited here in our environment, how can they get to where they overthrow and conquer?"

"By their human auxiliaries, I told you," said Crispin. "And I was one. Struve is another. There must be many. I explained how it began with the Kimbers, how some of them spread to other towns and states, to help make things ready. The Kimbers think it's an act of some kind of god, a judgment day when only the righteous will be spared. So they'll help the Beyonders establish the sort of planet the Beyonders want here, with no human beings left in it but those who are useful as slaves."

Again his voice rose, almost screamed. "Slaves, I said! Whether you're in a soft, luxurious job or just hewing wood and drawing water or whatever it happens to be, you'll live only as a slave!"

Doc went to a shelf and picked up a bottle. "Rum." He read the label aloud. "Here, Jim, take a little nip of this."

He poured some into a glass. Crispin took it in both his hands, steadied it and peered into it, then drained it to the bottom.

"Thanks," he said to Doc. He stood steady on his feet for the first time since they had entered. "All right," he said, "I've told you what's getting ready to happen. And I've also told you I won't live to see it. Now, I suggest that you two go away and leave me here, for whatever happens to me."

"Just a goddam second," said Gander Eye. "What I want to know is how come Struve to be here when Slowly came to pose."

Crispin drew up his bearded face. "I said I didn't know he was here. He came in through the back door without my hearing him; he waited in that room. I was talking to Slowly, something the way I talked to you two. I said that the Beyonders were practically upon us, that the Kimbers would help them come to Sky Notch and then there'd be a new race of rulers here on our earth. I told her that I'd look after her, keep her safe—and she wouldn't have it."

"Wouldn't have it?" repeated Gander Eye.

"She turned it down," declared Crispin. "She said she'd raise up some kind of resistance to it. Then Struve came out and called me a traitor, told me to enjoy every minute of life because I didn't have more than a few. I told Slowly to bring you two. They both left—Slowly to fetch you, Struve I don't know where."

Gander Eye set his teeth. "Struve hadn't never better come back here no more."

"He'll come back, he must be on the way here now," said Crispin, in a voice of dead calm at last. "Go on, leave me alone here. I order you to leave, if I can still give an order in my own house."

"I'll be back here looking for Struve with something other than a pair of field glasses," said Gander Eye.

He fairly ripped the door open and went out. Doc came out in his wake.

"That was quite a tale he told," said Doc, catching up. "What have you got in mind that we'd better do?"

"Maybe talk with one or two of the fellows," Gander Eye made answer. "You come along with me to talk, maybe they'll know you mean what you say. We can get Bo—he's got a gun or two— and Duffy. Maybe Bill Longcohr. Then we'll head back and help Jim wait for that Struve fellow. We just might could make Struve plumb out disgusted with what he's putting himself up to."

They crossed the bridge and came opposite Doc's front yard.

"Who's that coming into town?" said Doc suddenly, looking up Main Street toward the church.

A sedan, dull black and dented, was rolling toward them.

"I don't know that car from round here," said Gander Eye.

They watched it move past them. Four men rode inside. It turned into the old gravelled way beside the schoolhouse that led to the Kimber road. Stopping there, it backed out again, then returned toward where Doc and Gander Eye waited.

"By God, that's Struve up beside the driver," said Gander Eye.

The sedan braked to a squealing halt beside them, and the door opened and Struve got out. He wore his well-cut leisure suit of jeans and carried a squat submachine gun, of the same dull black as the sedan.

"Mr. Gentry," said Struve cheerfully, "Dr. Hannum. It's convenient finding the two of you together. I'll do you a favor by asking you to do me a favor."

"What in the hell you talking about?" blazed Gander Eye.

The submachine gun pointed at Gander Eye's belly. The other men were getting out, too. They wore dungarees and work shirts. All of them had submachine guns.

"If I didn't think I could make good use of both of you later on, I'd not even talk," said Struve. "I'd just cut you down where you stand. But be sensible, if you know what that means. Go to your houses and relax. Because, as of now, this pleasant little town of yours is operating under new auspices."

XIV

No doubt but that Struve was enjoying the situation. His broad, grained jowls bunched and creased with a mocking grin. His teeth shone, long and sharp and narrow, clamped between his hard lips.

"You got the difference there to do the talking for you," said Gander Eye, keeping his voice steady. "I mean, that there Tommy gun."

"You're behind the times as usual, Mr. Gander Eye Gentry," Struve chuckled at him. "This is no Tommy gun, Tommy guns are pretty much collector's items these days. For your information, this is called an Uzi. The Israeli have used them efficiently, over there in the Middle East."

Gander Eye fixedly studied the weapon that Struve held ready against his hip. It was mostly a rectangular block of dark metal, from the end of which jutted the stub of a staring gun muzzle. The block was furnished with sights both forward and at the rear. It was set with a simple L-shaped rod that could serve for a stock. Beneath it were a pistol grip with a trigger and the downward jut of a magazine.

"It's an Uzi," said Struve again, "but it comes to the same thing as a Tommy gun. I could rip your guts out with it while we stand here talking. Do you remember our little conversation about the dogs and the wolves?"

"I remember," said Gander Eye, still looking at the weapon. "And as long as I got a tooth left in my head, I'm still a wolf."

"Only just now you don't happen to have any teeth," declared Struve, still broadly grinning. "I don't see any lump in those old clothes where you might be carrying a gun."

Struve's three companions were listening. They, too, grinned. One of them had a round face with a curly mustache, the others were lean-cheeked and looked enough alike to be brothers. All of them had hard eyes and hard mouths.

"Dr. Hannum," said Struve, "I have to ask you to go back into your house if you want to stay out of danger. If you have a telephone there, I'm afraid it won't work. We cut the wires to Sky Notch on the way over."

Dr. Hannum shrugged and turned to obey. He looked old and frail at that moment.

"And you, Mr. Gentry," went on Struve, "you'd better go to your house, too. Go on inside and close your door tight. If you have a bed there, you might be well advised to crawl under it and stay. When we finish the first item on our agenda here, with the man you call James Crispin, maybe I'll come down and call you outside again. We'll have one more little talk, you and I. By then you'll have probably picked up some sense, fairly late in the game."

The other three men listened. One watched Doc going into his house. The other two held their Uzi guns waist high, pointing them toward Gander Eye.

"Go on home, I told you." Struve motioned with the muzzle of his own weapon. "Go there fast. And don't look back. It might make one or other of us nervous. "

Gander Eye glared. "I'm going," he said.

"Good. I thought you might."

Doc had opened his own door and was half dragging his feet in. Gander Eye pointed his own steps down Main Street, walking briskly. He thought of putting his hands in his trousers pockets, but Struve might think that was an appeal to a weapon and fire a burst into Gander Eye's back.

Behind him, Struve laughed.

Passing the schoolyard, Gander Eye wondered what had happened to Slowly, what had become of Captain Kimber. He made haste along the street, passing the blank windows of the empty house, and on into his own yard. As he pushed his door open, he snatched a look up the street. There they stood by their dark sedan, Struve and his companions, watching Gander Eye go into his house as he had been ordered to go.

Fury blazed in his blood. Straight to his rack of guns he strode and snatched the mauser out of its place. He dragged open a drawer. A box of cartridges was open there and he grabbed a big handful and jammed it into the right-hand pocket of his pants. He took his pistol and pocketed that as well. He hurried on through the house, darted out at the back door, and squatted behind a scrub of weeds at a point from which he could look up Main Street again.

The sedan was in sight from there, but only one man stood beside it now, cradling his ugly gun. Gander Eye raised his head to where he could see the others sauntering across the bridge toward Crispin's cabin. He himself headed for Bull Creek at a crouching run. He saw the two ingots of gold, still lying there. Into the water he splashed and across, half floundering in the mud. On the far side he shoved in among the laurels from which the Beyonders had watched him the day before.

He moved under concealing branches, stooping so as not to make them stir, and wading in the water at the creek's edge. The current ran fairly fast. The mud underfoot felt slippery; he stepped in one deep place and went in up to his knee. A fish whisked away from in front of him, a good-sized trout. From that concealed approachway he could not see Crispin's cabin or the three men headed for it. He stepped out of the stream and shoved among trees, twitching away from the prickly grasp of thorns. His shoes made marshy, squelchy sounds. He came to a place where he could see clearly but still be hidden.

The three men had carried their Uzi guns into Crispin's yard. Struve gave the door a violent kick and it swung inward and Struve went in. The others followed. Gander Eye studied the ground just ahead of him and moved out to the very edge of the trees. A weedy expanse lay there, once somebody's vegetable garden. The view was completely open in front of him. He was about a hundred yards from Crispin's door.

Even as he estimated this situation, a flat stutter of gunfire sounded. A moment of silence, then another, briefer, burst of noise.

Chill crept into Gander Eye, without driving out the hot anger. So they'd done for Crispin. That first stream of bullets had mowed him down; the second had finished him as he lay. Just like that, Struve was doing what he felt like doing in Sky Notch.

Gander Eye dropped to a knee behind a half-rotten log and sat down on his heel. Swiftly he fitted the loose sling of the Mauser in a hitch around his upper left arm, then he lowered his left elbow, planted it on the log, and tucked the rifle stock solidly against his shoulder. His thumb flicked off the safety catch. He did not have to wait for more than two seconds.

They were coming out of the cabin again. He saw a man out in the yard, pausing there to look this way and that, Uzi gun at the ready. Gander Eye set his right eye to the telescopic sight, shifted a trifle to put the crosshairs on the image of that first man to emerge, put them right on his magnified face. He held his breath and touched his trigger.

The Mauser rang sharply, like the crack of a whip; the stock drove against Gander Eye's tensed shoulder with the recoil. Even as Struve and the other man ran out of the cabin, the first man tumbled limply down upon his face and lay without a quiver.

Gander Eye worked the bolt of the Mauser, set his elbow, and took aim again. But before he could fire, Struve and the other man had gone scuttling back into the cabin, shutting the door behind them.

Gander Eye waited, watching. A black patch popped into view at a window, and the glass fell out, broken from inside. A rat-a-tat of fire, and bullets tore into the earth to Gander Eye's front like plowshares. He grinned against his rifle stock. Those mean-looking Uzi guns might be sure and sudden death close up, but they didn't have any real range. No more than a pistol, maybe. He gazed with complete satisfaction at the motionless body of the man he had shot down in the yard. But that one wasn't enough. He wanted the others, all of them.

A steamy sigh in the woods, behind him and to his right, and he knew that sound.

He whirled on his knee, almost losing balance. Three of them stood among the trees, a sheen on their sooty blackness like the sheen on the Uzi guns. They gave off threads of vapor. The bright panes at the fronts of their headpieces stared at him.

"No, by God, you don't!'' he shouted aloud at them, and fired.

He heard the impact of his steel-jacketed bullet, and saw a gush of steam from the one he had struck. It waddled and reeled quickly around and then fell, as the man by Crispin's cabin had fallen. One of its companions seemed to crumple itself into a bend as though to examine the fallen one. The other raised a cablelike arm and threw something at Gander Eye. No ingot of gold this time.

He flung himself flat and rolled over and over, rising behind a pine tree. The missile struck the big log where he had rested his elbow to fire his first shot. A gust of blaze sprang up, like the sudden red rise from the coals when the bellows is turned on a forge; then it sank down. Gander Eye steadied his rifle barrel against the pine trunk and fired again.

He almost whooped as he knew that shot, too, had gone home. A second shape was lying, prone among the trees, in a veil of steam. The third shape drew swiftly back. It was on the run—it would be on the run if it had feet, but anyway it was going. Gander Eye exulted harshly. If you were in a war, you'd better shoot and hit what you shot at. Wars were won by shooting and hitting.

From Crispin's cabin sounded another prolonged burst. They were firing at him, and they weren't doing any good. Those ugly-looking guns they called Uzis didn't have any accuracy. Gander Eye looked that way, bringing up his rifle, but then his gaze shifted to where the sedan stood on Main Street.

Bo and Duffy had come there, and the man left on guard was threatening them with his Uzi. They stood with their hands up and the guard was telling them something, jerking his head for emphasis. His back was toward Doc's house, and as he talked and threatened, Doc leaned out at a side window.

Doc had a rifle. Gander Eye knew that rifle well, an old Winchester with which Doc had gone hunting up to a few years back. Doc took careful, solid aim and fired. The guard by the sedan drew himself up convulsively. Then, over on his face he went. His gun rattled once, pouring bullets into the ground beside the pavement.

Bo and Duffy shouted, or perhaps screamed, with one voice. Bo ran nimbly around the front of the sedan and knelt beside the fallen figure. Doc had vanished again, inside his window. Gander Eye hoped Doc had the sense to throw himself flat on the floor, because the door of Crispin's cabin was flying open and out came Struve and his companion. Both raised their guns and fired at Doc's house, prolonged bursts.

Gander Eye drew and held half a breath, centered the crosshairs of his sights on Struve's body at about shoulder height, and fired, his fourth shot so far.

His heart leaped up with murderous joy as he saw Struve go down in a heap. Struve kicked a couple of times, and then he straightened his legs out slackly, as though going to sleep. The remaining man again darted back into the cabin.

Gander Eye restrained himself from rushing into the open and howling a war cry. Yonder lay Struve, the man who'd sworn to scare him, who'd said he was taking over Sky Notch for those Beyonders from not even God knew where, who'd talked so well and so loftily, who'd ordered Gander Eye to go home and crawl under the bed. Yonder he lay, dead or as good as dead. Gander Eye's four shots had taken down two men and two Beyonders. That was first-class shooting, even for him. But he kept himself among the trees, peering for a hint of that survivor in the cabin.

Beside the sedan, Duffy had picked up the fallen Uzi gun. Gander Eye earnestly hoped Duffy had sense enough not to let it off, maybe pour a stream of lead into Bo, who leaned above him to look. Doc was cautiously opening his door, peering out toward where Struve lay. Doc still had his Winchester, his old hands ready to use it. He'd better be careful, too, one of Struve's trouble gang was still in the cabin, a going concern with a loaded gun of his own.

Gander Eye fired at the closed door. He had no particular hope of hitting that sole survivor, but the bullet would rip through and give him something else to think about than shooting at Doc. The fifth bullet from the Mauser hadn't found flesh, but Gander Eye had hopes of the sixth. He slid well to the right among the foliage, waiting for an effort to blast at that place from which his shot had come.

But there was no return fire. That man was alive in there, and he wanted to stay alive. He wasn't eager to show himself after he had seen two of his friends all dead in Crispin's front yard and a third do likewise up on the edge of Main Street. Main Street, thought Gander Eye. Bo and Duffy had pulled away out of sight somewhere, maybe to get guns themselves. Nobody else appeared in view except those three dead bodies, but the whole town must be watching by now, from places of more or less safety.

Meanwhile, pretty soon that last living gunman might try to make some sort of a sneak to get away. That mustn't happen. Gander Eye tightened his lips and ran through the woods to where he could see how to take cover along to the far side of the cabin and behind.

Almost at once he saw, there at his feet, the two shapes he had shot down. They lay motionless, their cable-arms limp. Wisps of foggy vapor still hung around them, like a loose tuck of fabric.

He gazed at them, trying to comprehend them. Metal, that was what they were, but it looked like no metal he knew. It had the look of flexibility rather than hardness. And it was eroding, too, a metal that decayed like the rind of stale, fallen fruit, right before his eyes. Gander Eye stepped close to the nearest fallen form. He caught a whiff of odor, half sweet, half stinging. Maybe the five senses worked in that other universe, that other space, Crispin had described. The helmetlike top dome had a curved window in it, glass or something like glass. That window had been shattered by Gander Eye's bullet. Inside it, he saw something that was not a face.

It was a shiny, shaggy expanse, as gray as half-melted lard, there inside. The shagginess wasn't hair; it might be like the legs of a whole lot of flies. It seemed to stir, and Gander Eye brought up his rifle. But that was no motion of life. Some sort of action worked there, an action as of swift, rotting liquefaction. Gander Eye writhed with disgust. A Beyonder couldn't endure the air of this world.

But he couldn't waste time, standing there to study. He had something more to do. On he fared among the trees and, bearing at a slant as he went, he sped through to the woods beyond Crispin's cabin.