CHAPTER 3
Mrs. Full sat on the straw, twisting her hands together. She did not know she was doing it until she had to disentangle them to pull her skirt lower on her folded legs, and then she deliberately put one hand flat on the floor so that she would not appear to be nervous. She wanted Calvin to be as proud of her in this terrible crisis as she was of him.
But Calvin was calm, at any rate; so she was impatiently proud of him.
“We’ve got to slam something into that opening next time the wall slides back,” said Watkins. She nodded at him approvingly. There was a man who might be of some help.
“What do you think these creatures are, Mr. Watkins?” she asked quietly, though she felt like screeching the question.
“I haven’t the least idea, ma’am.”
“Freak gorillas,” said Calvin.
“No, sir,” said Adam. “I’ve been thinking. Wasn’t the Java Ape Man about nine feet tall?”
“Five and a half’s more like it,” said Watkins. “At least that’s how I remember it.”
“Well, some fossil man was nine feet tall,” said Adam dogmatically. “Couldn’t that thing be one of them? There’s plenty of places in the world where a race of people or animals could have developed without Homo sapiens being any the wiser. Now suppose they got hold of us?”
“How?” asked Calvin.
“Through people working for ‘em. We might all have been doped and put on a plane and we might be on an island somewhere now, or in the middle of a jungle, with these whatcha-may-call-’ems.”
“How were we doped?” persisted Calvin.
“Gosh, I don’t know that!”
“And what the devil do they want with us?” asked Watkins.
* * * *
Mrs. Full did not hear what Adam said. She was wondering, with a cold horror, if the creatures were near enough human to desire white girls as—as mates. “Calvin, we’ve got to get home!” she cried.
“We will, dear.” He patted her shoulder. “Don’t you worry.”
“Someone has to worry.”
“We all are, ma’am,” said the pleasant Watkins. “Except you, I guess, Summersby,” he added accusingly.
Summersby stared at him, seemed about to speak, then looked away. She was afraid of this great man. He might be a lunatic, with that lined, tormented face.
“We might be in the East Indies somewhere,” said Adam thoughtfully. “A plane could get us there from New York in a lot less than two days.”
“Where are these East Indies?” asked Villa. Mrs. Full wished he would stop rubbing his stomach that way. It reminded her that she was very hungry.
“Someplace near Siam,” said Adam vaguely. “Question is, if we’re there, or anyplace else for that matter, why are we?”
A number of reasons shot through Mrs. Full’s mind, all of them too fantastic to suggest aloud. They might be potential mates for these incredible animals, or slaves, or food, or.... She was surprised at herself for thinking of such things; one would suppose she had been reared on a diet of sensational thrillers.
She rose and walked aside, ostensibly studying the green fountain (which augmented her suffering with its tinkling splash). “Oh, Calvin,” she said.
He came over to her. “Yes, dear?”
“Calvin, I—” she halted unable to phrase her question. But he did it for her.
“I’ve been thinking: if there are—certain basic needs—I mean, if you find it necessary to—”
“I do, Calvin,” she said gratefully.
“Oh. Well, there is the, hmm, sand box. I believe it’s meant for such, ah, purposes.”
“Calvin! In front of you, in front of these strangers?” She was shocked, and put up one hand to push nervously at her hair, which felt untidy.
“We’ll ask them to turn their backs. After all, such things must be attended to.”
“I’d rather die,” she said, but not at all certainly.
“There are sacrifices to be made in this predicament, and modesty is one,” he clipped out. “Er, gentlemen.”
Watkins said, “I know, it just hit me too.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to go to the john.”
“Yes,” said Calvin stiffly. “I suggest we retire to the farther end from the sand box, while one by one—”
“We could rig a screen or something, but there isn’t anything to do it with,” said Watkins. He walked away; despite his outspoken manner, he seemed to have the proper instincts.
Adam followed him. Summersby turned his back. Calvin looked at the Mexican. “Come along.”
“Why?” asked Villa, raising his black brows. “What is there in a simple relieving of—”
Calvin strode to him, catching him by the nape, lifted him bodily from the floor, and sent him reeling after the others. He half-turned, then walked on, muttering, “Crazy gringos!” Calvin went and stood a little behind the others, his back to her.
The minutes following were interminable, horribly embarrassing. At last she touched his shoulder. “All right, Calvin,” she whispered.
One by one the others used the sand box. By the time they were through with the unspeakably primitive ritual, she had become almost inured to it, and considered herself to be admirably calm. There were unsuspected resources in her nature, she thought.
“When do you suppose they feed us?” asked Watkins. He was holding his tan briefcase under his left arm; he hadn’t once laid it down. “I’m so empty I rattle.”
“Soon,” said Calvin firmly, and she felt reassured.
Summersby was standing by the door-wall, his great hands working along the seams of his trouser legs. A violent temper, held in check, thought Mrs. Full. He was the worst of the problems facing them, except for the unknown animals.
Even as she looked at him, the wall opened again. This time no one jumped or shrieked, though she felt her breath hiss back over her tongue. Watkins said, “Well, Viva, here’s your pal again.”
The Mexican glared. Evidently the joke was a stale one to him. “My name is Villa, not Viva. I hope you get a good taste of that green stick, you little man!”
“Viva Villa,” said Watkins. “Lead on. You know the way.”
The awful arm came in like a hairy python, groping blindly with the rod.
Summersby, standing near the opening, was the first to be touched. It tapped him lightly, and he walked out of the room, really very bravely, she thought. The rod discovered Adam. The boy backed up, too frightened to put on a show of boldness. The rod slapped him impatiently, and he yelled and darted forward into the other room. He and Summersby stood together, staring up at something that could not be seen from inside the prison box.
“It’s electrical,” said Calvin. “Like a bull prod.”
“Yes, dear,” she said automatically.
“We may as well go out. I don’t want you shocked.”
“All right, Calvin.” She took his arm. Watkins had been caught and herded out. As they stepped forward after him, she glanced sideways at her husband. She would have liked to tell him she loved him, but it would have been too melodramatic. She pressed his arm tightly, affectionately. They walked out into the great hall.
* * * *
Villa’s cursory description had not prepared Calvin Full for the reality of the huge beings.
There were three of them. They stood absolutely motionless, grotesquely humanoid figures with smallish, sunken eyes fixed rigidly on the people some yards away. Then, as Calvin watched, two of them thrust out their hands holding the ball-tipped rods. The gestures were almost too swift to follow.
He stared at the central figure, and it gazed back with its withdrawn, pupilless, rust-red eyes. Its head was, as Villa had told them, the shape of a watermelon, with the eyes wide-set on either side of a gently agitating orifice that was probably a nostril. The mouth, very human in shape, with full lips the color of the eyeballs, was quite low in the face. There was a rough growth of gray-black hair on the crown of the big h
ead and a fuzz of it, less dark, on the face itself. There seemed to be no ears.
Its body, long and thick, was dwarfed by the tremendous arms. Its feet were large, toeless, and flat; its legs joined smoothly to the trunk about halfway up. It wore clothing of a sort, which surprised Calvin Full, perhaps more than anything else about the being. There was a kind of short sleeveless jacket of amber color caught at the front by a long silver bar, and a white skirt worn under the legs, reaching from just below the hip joints to the bottom of the torso.
Its companions were almost identical with it, except for clothing of different hues and varying cut.
The thing in the middle now opened its mouth and made a noise that reminded Full of an off-key clarinet.
“Gpwk?” it said, with a rising inflection. “Hummr gpwk?”
Abruptly it came forward, its motions flowing and yet a bit jerky, its long legs carrying it rhythmically, but with a hint of gawkiness; Calvin thought of a galloping giraffe he and his wife had seen in a travelogue some nights before. It towered over them, bending at the hip joints.
“Steady, dear,” he said.
“I’m all right,” his wife said shakily, seeming just on the verge of screaming.
“Wish I could say the same,” said Adam Pierce, the Negro boy. “What a specimen!”
“Look like anything to you?” asked Watkins.
“Hell, no. Unless it’s something from Mars.”
“Maybe we’re on Mars,” said Watkins conversationally, but no one responded.
* * * *
It’s as sensible a suggestion as the East Indian one, thought Calvin. He had not the slightest idea where they were, and he saw no sense in worrying over it until they had more information to build theories on.
The beast making no further move, his wife at last leaned toward him and said in his ear, “Calvin, can you tell what—I mean whether it’s male or female?”
He studied it carefully. He couldn’t even make a guess. He shook his head.
Then it reached forward its stick and thrust it directly at Calvin’s face. He backed off, startled and somewhat frightened. At once the thing touched Mrs. Full with the ivory ball, as if to separate her from the knot of men.
She cried out in pain, and Calvin leaped forward; he had a flash of the great paw coming at him with the prod aimed for his face again. It touched his forehead, he felt an intense shock, and then he was powerless to move.
His mind screamed, he could feel tiny muscles try sluggishly to crawl deep under his skin, but he was paralyzed where he stood in an attitude of charging; he knew his face must be twisted in horror and rage, but he could feel nothing. Only his mind and eyesight seemed wholly clear.
He saw his wife taken off, stumbling unwillingly and looking back at him over her shoulder. Watkins said, (Calvin could hear plainly, he found), “Watch it, he’s falling!” Then the paralysis left him and he slumped as though all his bones had been extracted. Someone caught him under the arms, holding him up. He tried to move, but aside from rolling his eyes and lolling his tongue out, he was helpless.
Summersby, behind him, said, “Are his eyes open?”
“Yeah.” Watkin’s face appeared before him. “Poor guy looks half dead.”
Calvin blinked and made a try at speech, but nothing came out but a flop-tongued drooling sound.
The two creatures remaining near them squatted down and observed them, making fragmentary noises to each other. Watkins started to walk after the third, which had escorted Mrs. Full across the wide room and was on the point of making her get onto a low platform on which were a number of structures of purple tubing and crimson boxes and varicolored small contrivances. One of the pair flicked its goad across his path.
Villa said, “Come back, you foolish, do you think you can take that stick?” He sounded furious, probably because he was afraid of the beasts becoming enraged.
Calvin made a wracking effort to say, “Let him go,” for surely they couldn’t stand callously by and see his wife undergo the Lord knew what tortures; but the sound he made was unintelligible.
Watkins said, “Blast it, Viva, we don’t know what the thing might do to her.”
“Come on back,” said Summersby. “Do you want to get this?” He hefted the limp Full.
Calvin writhed and managed to move his hands up and down.
“He’s gaining,” said Watkins, coming back.
“Those rods pack a wallop,” said Adam. “What sort of power can they have in ‘em? Seems to me they’re away beyond our science.”
“They’re not hitched to batteries,” said Watkins. “Say, look at all this machinery. If these animals built it, they’re a pretty advanced race.”
* * * *
Mrs. Full was seated now on a large thing like a chrome-and-rubber chair, one of those modern abominations which she and Calvin so cordially detested. He could not see her face. The twelve-foot brute was moving its fingers before her, evidently telling her to do something. Calvin heard her say plaintively, “But what is it?”
Summersby hoisted him up and about then feeling began to come back to him with a sharp, unpleasant tingling of the skin. He said, “Help her!” quite distinctly.
“Nothing’s happening to her,” said Watkins. “Take it easy.”
Mrs. Full was apparently pulling levers and moving blocks of vividly colored material back and forth on rods; like an abacus, thought her husband.
Suddenly one of the other pair of creatures gave a cry, “Brrm hmmr!” and pointed to the left. From a muddle of gear rose a small airship, orange, with a nose like a spaceship and streamlined fins, and a square box on its tail. It made no noise, but rose straight toward the ceiling, moving slowly, jerkily.
His wife had her back to it. He heard her give an exasperated, bewildered cry. “What on earth ... what are you doing?” She spoke to the creature as if it understood. “I don’t see why you—”
Calvin pushed free of Summersby. He could stand now, shakily. The beast indicated a blue block on a vertical bar; Mrs. Full moved it down, the airship halted and began to sail toward them. “Do you see the toy ship?” called Calvin. “You’re flying the ship!”
“Oh, my,” she said helplessly. “What shall I do now?”
“This is crazy,” said Watkins. “Absolutely crazy.”
“Go on moving things,” Calvin called to his wife. “Experiment. It wants you to fly it.” It occurred to him that this was too obvious to bother stating. He must be distracted by weakness. He rubbed his tingling arms and hands, hoping she wouldn’t crash the ship. Villa and Adam Pierce were calling encouragement to her as the orange thing drifted up and down and sideways.
Now the twelve-foot being gestured briefly at a portion of the apparatus, Mrs. Full caught his meaning and moved something, and the ship tilted and flew along the wall without touching it. All three of the creatures uttered sounds that might be taken for words of pleasure.
“Good girl!” yelled Watkins. “Keep it up!”
She turned to them and Calvin saw she was smiling. “There’s really nothing to it,” she said. The airship bumped into the wall and fell. The animal above her squawked and pressed down a lever, which evidently sent out a beam or impulse that caught the ship in midair and held it suspended. Then it grasped Mrs. Full and carried her, flailing her limbs, over to the corner.
Calvin started forward, apprehensive.
“Hold it, Cal, you don’t want another shock.” Watkins took his arm.
The creature kicked aside a mound of small gadgets, sending them helter-skelter, picked up what looked like a big five-legged stool and set it on its feet. It was perhaps ten feet high. Then he deposited Mrs. Full on its smooth round top and turned her bodily so that she faced the wall.
“Help her!” snapped Calvin.
“We can’t do a damn thing.”
“Just wait a minute, sir,” said Adam. “He’s leaving her alone. I don’t think he’ll hurt her.”
She twisted her head around, looking frightened
. Her legs hung over the edge. The being strode back with its curious gawky-graceful walk, and firmly turned her face to the wall again, using one big rubbery finger. “Oh!” she said, in a small voice, and remained staring at the wall, like a naughty child on a dunce’s stool. The beast came over to the group.
* * * *
The three talked among themselves, glancing at the men. The airship hung on its invisible beam of energy, ignored. Mrs. Full patted up her hair. She must be terrified, thought Calvin.
The three came to them, their skirts swishing like taffeta. They knelt—it was an odd movement, their high-hipped legs angling to the sides, their bodies slanting forward as their heads dropped toward the humans—and stared at one and then another. The one who was evidently the leader put out his green goad, but slowly, as if showing no harm was intended, and pushed at Calvin’s jacket. The ivory ball touched his chest but no shock followed. The thing made noises, perhaps comparing his clothing with its own.
“Take it off, Cal,” said Watkins.
“Why?”
“He’d like to see it. Be friendly.”
“That’s it,” agreed Adam, “be friendly.”
He removed his jacket and handed it to the brute, who received it dubiously, fingered it, exhibited it to the other two, and dropped it. Calvin bent to pick it up; the goad barred his way. Two large fingers plucked at his trousers. He felt himself flush with outrage.
“No!”
Watkins chuckled. “I’ll bet you will.”
“Don’t make it mad,” said Adam.
“I won’t take my trousers off.”
“If we took them off, it might soothe this monster,” suggested Villa. “Let us throw him down and take off his pants.”
“Try it,” said Calvin. The Mexican started toward him. Then the creature had lifted him high in the air, peering closely at the trousers. It tugged at them. “Ouch!” said Calvin. The beast would tear them off; the humiliation of that would be worse than removing them himself. It might rip them to shreds. He loosened his belt and unbuttoned and unzipped just in time; they came off over his shoes and were held up in front of the sunken red eyes. Calvin was set down, carefully enough, and the garment was handed to the other monstrosities. Calvin cast a look at the stool. He was glad his wife was not witnessing his shame.
The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard Page 30