Dopey lasted a week. He played slowly and doggedly as if in fear of punishment for making a mistake. Often he was irritated by the video cabinet, which emitted ticking noises at brief but regular intervals. These sounds indicated the short times they were on the air.
For reasons best known to himself, Dopey detested having his face broadcast all over the planet and, near the end of the seventh day, he’d had enough. Without warning he left his seat, faced the cabinet and made a number of swift and peculiar gestures at the lenses. The signs meant nothing to the onlooking Taylor. But Potbelly almost fell off his chair. The guards sprang forward, grabbed Dopey and frogmarched him through the door.
He was replaced by a huge-jowled, truculent character who dumped himself into the chair, glared at Taylor and wiggled his hairy ears. Taylor, who regarded this feat as one of his own accomplishments, promptly wiggled his own ears back. The other then looked fit to burst a blood vessel.
“This Terran sneak,” he roared at Potbelly, “is throwing dirt at me. Do I have to put up with that?”
“You will cease to throw dirt,” ordered Potbelly.
“I only wiggled my ears,” said Taylor.
“That is the same thing as throwing dirt,” Potbelly said mysteriously. “You will refrain from doing it and you will concentrate upon the game.”
And so it went on, with disks being moved from peg to peg hour after hour, day after day, while a steady parade of opponents arrived and departed. Around the two hundredth day, Potbelly himself started to pull his chair apart with the apparent intention of building a campfire in the middle of the floor. The guards led him out. A new referee appeared. He had an even bigger paunch, and Taylor promptly named him Potbelly Two.
How Taylor himself stood the soul-deadening pace he never knew. But he kept going while the others cracked. He was playing for a big stake while they were not. All the same, there were times when he awoke from horrid dreams in which he was sinking through the black depths of an alien sea with a monster disk like a millstone around his neck. He lost count of the days, and once in a while his hands developed the shakes. The strain was not made any easier by several nighttime uproars that took place during this time. He asked the warder about one of them.
“Yasko refused to go. They had to beat him into submission.”
“His game had ended?”
“Yes. The stupid fool matched a five of anchors with a five of stars. Immediately he realized what he’d done, he tried to kill his opponent.” He wagged his head in sorrowful reproof. “Such behavior never does them any good. They go to the post cut and bruised. And if the guards are angry with them, they ask the executioner to twist slowly.”
“Ugh!” Taylor didn’t like to think of it. “Surprises me that none have chosen my game. Everybody must know of it by now.”
“They are not permitted to,” said the warder. “There is now a law that only a recognized Gombarian game may be selected.”
He ambled away. Taylor lay full length on his bench and hoped for a silent, undisturbed night. What was the Earth-date? How long had he been here? How much longer would he remain? How soon would he lose control of himself and go nuts? What would they do with him if and when he became too crazy to play?
Often in the thought-period preceding sleep, he concocted wild plans of escape. None of them were of any use whatever. Conceivably he could break out of this prison despite its grilles, armored doors, locks, bolts, bars and armed guards. It was a matter of waiting for a rare opportunity and seizing it with both hands. But suppose he got out, what then? Any place on the planet he would be as conspicuous as a kangaroo on the sidewalks of New York. If it were possible to look remotely like a Gambarian, he’d have a slight chance. It was not possible. He could do nothing save play for time.
This he continued to do. On and on and on without cease, except for meals and sleep. By the three hundredth day he had to admit to himself that he was feeling somewhat moth-eaten. By the four hundredth he was under the delusion that he had been playing for at least five years and was doomed to play forever, come what may. The four-twentieth day was no different from the rest except in one respect of which he was completely unaware—it was the last.
At dawn of day four twenty-one, no call came for him to play. Perforce he waited a couple of hours and still no summons. Maybe they’d decided to break him with a cat-and-mouse technique, calling him when he didn’t expect it and not calling him when he did. A sort of psychological water torture. When the warder passed along the corridor, Taylor went to the bars and questioned him. The fellow knew nothing and was as puzzled as himself.
The midday meal arrived. Taylor had just finished it when the squad of guards arrived accompanied by an officer. They entered the cell and removed his irons. Ye gods, this was something! He stretched his limbs luxuriously, fired questions at the officer and his plug-uglies. They took no notice, behaved as if he had stolen the green eye of the little yellow god. Then they marched him out of the cell, along the corridors and past the games room.
Finally they passed through a large doorway and into an open yard. In the middle of this area stood six short steel posts each with a hole near its top and a coarse kneeling-mat at its base. Stolidly the squad tramped straight toward the posts. Taylor’s stomach turned over. The squad pounded on past the posts and toward a pair of gates. Taylor’s stomach turned thankfully back and settled itself.
Outside the gates they climbed aboard a troop-carrier which at once drove off. It took him around the outskirts of the city to a spaceport. They all piled out, marched past the control tower and onto the concrete. There they halted.
Across the spaceport, about half a mile away, Taylor could see a Terran vessel sitting on its fins. It was far too small for a warship, too short and fat for a scoutship. After staring at it with incredulous delight he decided that it was a battleship’s lifeboat. He wanted to do a wild dance and yell silly things. He wanted to run like mad toward it, but the guards stood close around and would not let him move.
They waited there for four long tedious hours, at the end of which another lifeboat screamed down from the sky and landed alongside its fellow. A bunch of figures came out of it, mostly Gombarians. The guards urged him forward.
He was dimly conscious of some sort of exchange ceremony at the halfway mark. A line of surly Gombarians passed him, going the opposite way. Many of them were ornamented with plenty of brass and had the angry faces of colonels come fresh from a general demotion. He recognized one civilian, Borkor, and wiggled his ears at him as he went by.
Then willing hands helped him through an airlock and he found himself sitting in the cabin of a ship going up. A young and eager lieutenant was talking to him but he heard only half of it.
“. . . Landed, snatched twenty and beat it into space. We cross-examined them by signs . . . bit surprised to learn you were still alive . . . released one with an offer to exchange prisoners. Nineteen Gombarian bums for one Terran is a fair swap, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Taylor, looking around and absorbing every mark upon the walls.
“We’ll have you aboard the Thunderer pretty soon . . . Macklin couldn’t make it with that trouble near Cygni . . . got here as soon as we could.” The lieutenant eyed him sympathetically. “You’ll be heading for home within a few hours. Hungry?”
“No, not a all. The one thing they didn’t do was starve me.”
“Like a drink?”
“Thanks, I don’t drink.”
Fidgeting around embarrassedly, the lieutenant asked, “Well, how about a nice, quiet game of draughts?” Taylor ran a finger around the inside of his collar and said, “Sorry, I don’t know how to play and don’t want to learn. I am allergic to games.”
“You’ll change.”
“I’ll be hanged if I do,” said Taylor.
THE BACK OF OUR HEADS
Stephen Barr
I find it impossible to do anything about introducing this extraordinary story other than to tell you to read it w
ith a strong hold on your sense of reality. It is a thoroughly unsettling tale, and one that might unhinge any overly susceptible mind.
IN READING THIS REPORT, IT MUST BE BORNE IN mind that, when the word “they” is used, it does not refer necessarily to separate entities as individuals.
It is possible that a closer analogy would be the cells of an organism—which, in a sense, we ourselves become when we are in a pack or forming a mob.
On the other hand, that particular cell or entity which this report deals with exhibited at all times marked individuality—even eccentricity—and will hereinafter be referred to as “she.” This is because “she” invariably assumed a female form when visiting us, and because she furthermore gave every indication of that type of mind and point of view which is generally met with in the more noticeable, effective or contentious members of that sex.
As she put it herself during the hearing, she was always in hot water.’
The four teen-agers—one girl, three boys—weren’t allowed in the bar, so they went down the street to a joint where there were a soda fountain, booths and a jukebox. They sat in a booth and a waitress came to take the orders: three hot dogs and three cokes.
“What about you, dear?”
“Just a glass of water.” The waitress started to leave. “No, wait—gimme a white on rye, too.”
The waitress left, then came back again. “What was that you wanted, dear? Some kind of rye-bread sandwich?”
“Changed my mind. Make it a buttered pecan, but tell ’em to go easy on the butter. And I don’t want no French dressing. Make it on whole wheat.”
The waitress look uncertain. “You mean a nut sandwich?”
“Yeah, only malted. With lettuce and chocolate sprinkles.”
“Who you kiddin?” the waitress said, and turned to go. “No, hold it Tell Joe to please scramble them on both sides.”
“What yew talkin’ about?” the waitress said. “We ain’t got no one here called Joe.”
“So okay, Joseph, then. Tell him just a boiled egg sunny side up.”
The waitress left frowning.
“Our Miss Framis,” one of the boys said, meaning the girl, and the others smiled. They looked as though they were sneering at the same time and hoped they would be taken for juvenile delinquents.
There were two very odd-looking men in the booth opposite and they were listening to the conversation. Their oddness lay in an atmosphere rather than in any physical abnormality. The girl noticed them and nudged one of the boys.
The three boys looked at the men resentfully and one of them said something under his breath, but the girl said, “Button it.” Then she asked the men opposite, “Lookin’ for someone, mister?”
The two men looked away, and this made the boys feel brave. One of them said, “Let’s give ’em the works.”
“No, leave it to me.” The girl got up and went across to the two men. “Me and my friends was wondering. Maybe you gentlemen would like to come to a trake in the gort later?”
The three boys snickered and the men looked up at the girl and waited with blank faces.
“Or maybe you’d rather we put on a hanse for you?” she said.
“No, sit down,” one of the men—the bigger one—said, and moved back to make room for her. She glanced at him with surprise for a moment and sat down next to him.
One of the boys started to get up when he saw this, but the others pulled him down again.
“What did you say to us just now?” the big man asked. “It was too small in here.”
She shook her head and frowned.
“Why, that was just . . . I said did you want for us to put on a hanse, is all.” She had a rather feeble grin. “Yes,” the big man said. “We do.”
She glanced back at her friends nervously, and then at the man again. “I don’t get you,” she said.
“Neither do we,” the smaller man said.
The boys across the room were listening quietly and then one of them said, “Go on, tell ’em, Miss Framis.”
“We just want you to quint,” the big man said, “and don’t thursday on it.”
She stared at him without expression and got up slowly. She went over to her friends. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
She was shivering.
Q. You say you object to this line of questioning?
A. (She) No, I just don’t like being spied on. And it made the kids . . . mad. They wrecked the car and that meant starting all over again.
Q. The car?
A. Yes, their hot-rod. When we got outside, they acted the way teen-agers do and went too fast. They were sore at those spies—they took it out on the car, so it went off the road. It turned over three times and we were all killed.
Q. They were not spies. They were acting on their own.
A. I didn’t know that. I just knew something was funny. Anyway, how can you say that? They’re a waste. And I would have been part of you, just as I am. It would have been more of a waste if I hadn’t been split. The other part was only about eleven years old and I had to wait another six years to—
Q. It is your own fault if you were split. You cannot blame us. This has happened before—you have aimed badly and arrived wrong. Don’t forget about the kelp.
A. Well, in this case it’s a lucky thing I did; otherwise the whole thing would have been wasted. And the kelp—that was dreadfully dull. I wanted to try a really primitive form, but not that primitive. Then I got washed up and it led to the cat. After they got the iodine out of the kelp, I was suddenly a cat.
Q. This has not been reported.
A. I’m reporting it now. It wasn’t dull in the least, but they were very superstitious about cats in those days, and they decided I was possessed.
Q. They saw through you?
A. Oh, yes. People usually do.
Q. You couldn’t have been very successful if they saw through you.
A. It doesn’t make any difference if they see through you. The important thing is to see through them.
Q. But you were a cat.
A. Cats are in a very good position to see through people. I think they sensed that. Anyway, I was . . . done away with.
Q. Burned again?
A. Yes.
Q. Seems to be a habit of yours. What happens? How does it feel?
A. I cannot explain it to you, but I know what to do. It’s not my habit—it’s one of theirs, but it’s dying out in most places now. And there was a time when it would never have occurred to them. They were too frightened of it.
Q. Frightened of what?
A. Of fire. It was very new then . . .
The hunters came back to the cave at dusk, and one of them went to the fire that was kept going constantly in front of the opening. He took a dry branch and held it in the fire until the end caught. Then he held it up. “If we take this, we can hunt in the dark,” he said “And when it is nearly eaten by the fire, we can take another branch and start it again. That way we do not need the moon.”
“That way we can hunt until we are tired,” said the other.
“That way we can kill twice as much game,” said the first.
“There is so much game in the cave now,” a young woman said, “that it is beginning to smell.”
The older hunter glanced at her apprehensively; she made him feel foolish, always finding fault with his plans. “Perhaps so,” he said. “But at other times we starve.”
“Besides,” she said, “if you take the fire with you to see where you are going and to see the game, the game will see you.”
The hunters looked at one another and shrugged. The woman went into the cave and returned with an earthenware pot. There were pieces of raw meat and some water in it, and she put it on the fire, propping it in position with three stones. The second hunter looked at the pot curiously. He was a younger brother from the other side of the valley, where he lived with his mates. He pointed at the pot and looked inquiringly at the older brother.
“She made i
t out of mud,” the older brother said. “Why doesn’t it fall apart with the water in it?”
“I put it into the fire first, for a long time,” the young woman said. “A very big fire. The mud gets red—and then it gets hard so it won’t melt when the water is in it.”
The younger man looked surprised. “Magic?”
“Yes,” said the other man.
“Nonsense,” said the woman. She went back into the cave and the young man put the end of his spear into the fire and tried to scrape the side of the pot with the flint head, but the flint was cold and it cracked. He pulled it back and was looking angrily at it when she came out again and sat on the ground. She had an armful of roots which she began to scrape with a sharp stone. “The spearhead is made of the wrong sort of stone,” she said, without looking up. “That is why it broke in the fire.”
“It’s made of the right kind!” the young man shouted. “All spearheads are made of that kind! They always have been and they always will be! How did you know it broke in the fire? You weren’t looking.”
“I heard it make the sound it makes when the fire breaks it.”
The young man glowered and pushed his under Up out. “This kind of stone was put in the cave for us to make knives and spears. And it makes a very sharp edge when you know how to form it.”
“No sharper than this knife,” she said, holding up the stone in her hand. “This doesn’t break so easily.”
The young man took it and examined it carefully. “How do you strike it to make it this shape?” he said, and then, grudgingly, “It is very smooth—a very good shape.”
“You don’t strike it,” she said, taking it back and going on scraping the roots. “You rub it on another stone—first on the kind that has the bright sparkles in it, and then under water on the flat gray kind. It’s much better that your knives and the fire doesn’t break it so easily.”
13 Above the Night Page 15