“Small boy about six steps behind us,” Wintan reported. “He’s scowling ferociously—but mama’s leading him off-now! Wonder what he made of it consciously?”
“He’ll probably grow up with a vague but firmly held notion that Hub humans don’t smell good!” Pilch estimated. They were coming up to a long, low wall from which the ramp-ways led into the sunken take-off section. The crowds were thinning out. “Have you noticed anyone acting as if he might conceivably be our psychologist?”
Wintan said he hadn’t. “If he’s in the area, as he said he would be, he’s still got about ten minutes to make up his mind to go space-faring. Let’s stop here and give him a last chance to show up before we go out on the ramp!”
They leaned back against the wall surveying passing natives hopefully. “He was excited about the idea at first,” Wintan said, “but I imagine it seemed like too big a change when he’d had time to think about it. After all, he would have lost contact with all his kind before the ship was out of the system.”
Pilch shivered. “Like a man living in a solitary dream for years, listening to the voices of strange entities. Isn’t it odd—two intelligent races, physically side by side, but each blocked from any real contact with the other by the fears of its own mind!”
“It needn’t have stayed that way!” Wintan said regretfully. “Lord, the things we could have learned! We working down towards his awareness band, and he working up towards ours. Wish we had time to experiment here for a year or so! But the Great God Schedule has got us. It’s likely to, be a half century before the Service can spare another look at Palayata!”
Pilch glanced at her timepiece.
“The same Schedule also says we start moving towards Ramp Thirteen right now, Wintan!”
They moved, reluctantly. As they came up the stairs to the locked platform gate, a lanky figure that had been sitting beside it, stood up without unseemly haste.
Pilch darted a wild glance at Wintan. “Great Suns!” she said as they both came to a stop. Wintan was clearing his throat. “Ah, Albemarl—” His voice sounded shaky. “I greet you!”
“And I greet you, Wintan!” the elderly Palayatan said benignly. “I must ask your forgiveness for not having met you here as I promised, but I have had a very strange experience.”
“Ah, yes?” Wintan said.
“Yes, indeed! For forty long years, I have wandered over the face of the world, welcome everywhere because of my great wisdom and the free flow of my advice. When you asked me some time ago whether I would like to enter your ship and go out of the world in it, into that strange emptiness overhead from which you people come, I laughed at you. Because—forgive me again, Wintan—we all think here that it is very foolish to leave a fair and familiar world and the comfort of many, many friends, in order, at best and after a long time, to reach another world that cannot be so very different, where friends must be made again. Also, you spoke of risks.”
“Yes,” Wintan said, “there are always risks, of course.”
Albemarl nodded. “But on the night after you left,” he said, “I had a dream. A strong voice spoke to me, which I know as the voice of my True Self”—Pilch gulped—“and it told me of a thing I had overlooked. I knew then it was true, but it disturbed me greatly. So for these days and nights I have been wandering about the hills, thinking of what it said. But in the end I have come here with a calm heart to ask whether I may now enter the ship and go wandering with you and your friends through all the years and the strangeness that is beyond the world.”
“You may, indeed, Albemarl!” Wintan said.
“And we leave now? I am ready.”
“We leave now!” Wintan gave Pilch a look, still incredulous but shining; then he stepped up to the gate and put the ball of his thumb against the lock that would open only to a human pattern.
“Albemarl,” Pilch said gently, as the gate hissed open, “would you mind very much telling me what the thing was that you had overlooked?”
Albemarl blinked at her benevolently with his somewhat muddy Palayatan eyes. “Why, not at all! It is a simple thing but a great one—that wisdom accepts no limits. So when a wise man hears of a new thing that may be learned, beyond anything he knew before, it may not seem as comforting as the familiar things he knows, but he must learn it or he will never be content.”
Wintan had moved back from the gate to let Pilch through. She put her hand on Albemarl’s elbow and stepped up to the gate with him. Then she stopped.
“After you, brother!” Pilch said.
THE END
1957
THE BIG TERRARIUM
They called it “The Little because it was just like Fred’s farm back on Earth—only where his fence ended it became strictly out of this world!” And in spite of the incredible weather and the floating Eyes, it could have been able if it weren’t for the Things Fred had to share it with!
THE THIRD morning Fred Nieheim woke up in the Little Place, he no longer had to prove to himself that he wasn’t dreaming. He knew where he was, all right, along with the rest of them—Wilma and Ruby and Howard Cooney and the Cobrisol. But knowing it didn’t make him any happier!
He remained lying on his back, gazing moodily out through the bedroom window, while he wondered how one went about getting back to Earth from here—specifically, to the Nieheim farm twenty-two miles south of Richardsville, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. It wasn’t apparently just a matter of finding a way out through the very odd sort of barriers that fenced in the area. According to the Cobrisol, a local creature which appeared to be well-informed, they would then simply be in something known as “Outside,” which was nowhere near Earth. At least, the Cobrisol had never heard of Earth, and still wasn’t entirely convinced that it existed.
“Sometimes, Fred,” it had hinted gently only last evening while they sat together on the front porch, watching a rather good production of an Earth-type sunset above the apple orchard, “sometimes the memory and other mental functions are deranged by transfer from one Place to another. Don’t let it worry you, though! Such effects almost always wear off in time . . .”
Fred felt Wilma stir quietly in bed beside him, and he raised himself cautiously on an elbow to look at her. The bed creaked.
Ruby went, “Chuck-chuck!” sharply from the corner of the bedroom, where she slept in a basket. She was a middle-aged hen pheasant of belligerent nature, who regarded herself as the watchdog of the Nieheim farm. Basket and all, she’d been transferred along with them ‘n the Little Place.
Fred remained quiet until Ruby stuck her head back under her wing. Wilma was still asleep, and only a rounded, smooth shoulder and a mop of yellow hair were visible at the moment above the blankets. They had been married less than two years, and if he and Wilma and Ruby had been set down here alone, he mightn’t have minded it so much. The Cobrisol had assured him that one ordinarily received the best of care and attention in the Little Places; and the Cobrisol itself, though disconcerting in appearance until you got used to it, seemed to be as agreeable a neighbor as anyone could want.
Unfortunately, there was also Howard Cooney . . .
OUT IN the kitchen, precisely as Fred’s reflections reached that point, a metallic clatter announced that Howard Cooney was manipulating Wilma’s big iron skillet on the stove again.
Fred scowled thoughtfully. For a recent acquaintance, Howard certainly was making himself at home with them! He was a tramp who had happened to select the night of their transfer to sleep in the shed back of the Nieheim farmhouse; and so he’d been picked up and brought along, too. Unfortunately, whoever or whatever had constructed a reasonably accurate duplicate of a section of the Nieheim farm in the Little Place, hadn’t bothered to include the shed. The first night, at Wilma’s suggestion, Howard had moved into the living room. After that, he’d stayed there.
Fred felt he couldn’t reasonably object to the arrangement under the circumstances, but he suspected that Howard was an untrustworthy character. He’d already begun to ogle W
ilma when he thought nobody was noticing—and there was the disturbing fact that he was considerably bigger and huskier than Fred . . .
He’d better, Fred decided uneasily, work out a method of getting them all back to Earth before Howard got the wrong kind of ideas!
“MORNING,” Howard Cooney said hospitably, as Fred came into the kitchen. “Sit down and have some hoot. Where’s Wilma?”
Fred said Wilma was still sleeping.
“Me,” said Howard, “I’m up with the sun! Or what goes for the sun around here. Know what? I’m going to build a still!” He explained that he’d discovered a maze of piping under the front porch which wasn’t connected to anything and which he could use for the purpose.
Fred doubted Howard would have any success with his dubious project, but he didn’t comment on it. The piping wouldn’t be missed. The duplicated house functioned just as well as the house back on Earth had; but it was operated on different and—so far—incomprehensible principles. Hot and cold water ran out of the proper faucets and vanished down the drains, but neither faucets nor drains appeared to be connected to anything but the solid walls! Similarly, the replicas of the electric stove and refrigerator performed their normal duties—but Fred had discovered by accident that they worked just as well when they weren’t plugged into the electric outlets. It was all a little uncanny, and he preferred not to think about it too much.
He tried a slice of the hoot Howard had been frying. Hoots came in various flavors, and this one wasn’t at all bad—quite as good as ham, in fact. He said so.
“Could have been a famous chef back on Earth if I’d wanted to!” Howard admitted carelessly. “This is last night’s hoot, by the way. There weren’t any fresh ones floating around this morning.”
“Howard,” said Fred, “I’m trying to think of a way to get us back to Earth—”
“You are?” Howard looked startled and then frowned. “Look, Buster,” he said in a confidential tone, leaning across the table, “let’s face it. We got it soft here! Once I get the liquor situation straightened out, we’ll have everything we need!”
Fred’s mouth opened in surprise. “You don’t mean you want to stay here all your life, do you?”
Howard eyed him speculatively. “You ought to wise up! You never been in stir, have you? Well, that’s where you are now!”
“It’s more like a zoo!” said Fred. “And—”
“Call it a zoo,” the tramp interrupted. “Same principle.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Trying to break out is a good way to get killed, see? And it’s likely to make it rough on everyone else. You wouldn’t want something worse than being shut up here to happen to Wilma, would you?” He grinned amiably at Fred, but the little gray eyes were shrewd and, at the moment, a trifle menacing.
There was just enough sense in what he’d said to make Fred uncertain; Howard seemed to have had some experiences which could be of value now. “What do you think we ought to do?” he inquired.
However, at that point, Howard became rather vague. In stir, he said, one had to take things easy until one had figured out the system. And then one made use of the system.
The danger was in getting whoever was in charge of the Little Place riled up by thoughtless action . . .
GOING IN search of the Cobrisol after breakfast, Fred admitted to himself that he couldn’t quite make out what Howard Cooney was after. The tramp seemed to have something definite in mind, but apparently he wasn’t willing to reveal it at this time.
At any rate, he’d made it clear that he didn’t intend to be helpful about getting them back to Earth.
He found the Cobrisol coiled up at the head of a sloping section of ground which apparently was intended to represent, the upper half of the south meadow of the Nieheim farm on Earth. As such, it was a few hundred yards out of place, and the grass that grew there wasn’t exactly grass either; but Fred didn’t pay much attention to such arbitrary rearrangements of his property any more.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” he remarked, coming up.
“If you’re speaking of the weather, yes!” said the Cobrisol. “Otherwise, I’ll reserve my opinion.”
Fred sat down beside it.
“Something wrong?”
The Cobrisol nodded. “Possibly . . .!” It was a quite oddlooking creature, with a snaky, ten-foot body, brick-red in color and with a rubbery feel to it, and a head that was a little like that of a pig and a little more like that of an alligator. No arms or legs, but it didn’t seem to miss them. When it moved slowly, it extended and contracted itself like an earthworm; when it was in a hurry, it slithered about in sideways loops like a snake. “Take a look around!” it invited significantly.
Fred gazed about. There was the usual, vague sort of sun-disk shining through the overhead haze, and the morning was pleasantly warm. At the end of the meadow was a huge, vertical something with indefinite borders called a “mirror-barrier,” inside which he could see the Cobrisol and himself sitting in the grass, apparently a long distance away, and the duplicated farm-house behind them. To the left was a rather accurate reproduction of the Nieheim apple orchard—though the trees were constructed more like firs—complete with a copy of the orchard section of the Nieheim trout stream. Unfortunately, no trout appeared to have been transferred.
Beyond the orchard was a thick, motionless mist which blended into the haze of the sky. The mist was another barrier; the Cobrisol called it a “barrier of confusion.” The first day, Fred had made a determined attempt to walk out of the Little Place at that point; it had been a confusing experience, all right!
THERE WASN’T much more to the Little Place. Behind the house, the ground sloped uphill into another wall of mist. He could hear Wilma and Howard Cooney talking in the back garden; and a number of small, circular objects that looked as if they might be made of some shiny metal floated about here and there in the air. The Cobrisol had explained that these were Eyes, through which the goings-on in the Little Place were being observed. Their motion seemed aimless, but Fred hadn’t been able to get close enough to one to catch it.
“Everything looks about the same to me!” he admitted at last.
“Everything?” repeated the Cobrisol.
Its long toothy jaws and rubbery throat moved slightly as it spoke, though it wasn’t actually pronouncing human words. Neither had Fred been talking in the Cobrisol’s language, whatever that was. It was a little hard to understand. They hadn’t been suddenly gifted with telepathy; it was just that when you were set down in a Little Place, you knew what the other intelligent creatures there wanted to say. And it sounded as if they were using your kind of speech.
Fred had given up trying to figure it out . . .
“Well, there aren’t any hoots in sight this morning,” he acknowledged. “Or robols either!” he added, after a brief search of the meadow grass. “Howard Cooney mentioned the hoots were gone at breakfast.”
“Very observant of the Cooney person!” the Cobrisol stated drily. It and Howard had disliked each other on sight. “Fred, there are a few matters I feel I should discuss with you.”
“Now’s a good time for a chat!” Fred said agreeably.
The Cobrisol darted its head about in a series of rapid, snaky motions, surveying the area.
“The Eyes,” it remarked then, “have assumed an unusual observational pattern this morning! You will note that two are stationed directly above us. Another cluster has positioned itself above the roof of the house. Early in the morning, an exceptionally large number were gathered, among the trees of the orchard. These have now largely transferred themselves to the opposite side of the Little Place, near the maze-barrier.”
“I see,” said Fred, wondering what it was driving at.
“The One who maintains this Place is showing a remarkable degree of interest in us today!” the Cobrisol concluded.
Fred nodded.
“VERY WELL,” the creature resumed. “Life in a Little Place is usually very satisfactory. The Ones who mai
ntain them can be regarded as hobbyists who take a benevolent interest in the life-forms they select to inhabit their creations. Whereas Big Places, of course, are designed for major scientific projects . . .” The creature shuddered slightly throughout its length. “I’ve never been in one of those, but—well, I’ve heard stories! Until this morning, Fred, I was inclined to regard us here as exceptionally fortunate life-forms!”
“Well,” Fred said, frowning, “I don’t quite agree with . . . what do you mean, ‘until this morning’ ?”
“There are indications that this Place is being maintained, shall we say, carelessly? Nothing conclusive, as yet, you understand. But indications!” The Cobrisol jerked its head in the direction of the mirror-barrier. “That barrier, for instance, Fred, and one or two others have been permitted to go soft overnight!”
“Go soft?” Fred repeated. “They’re no longer operating as barriers. If we chose to, we could go right through them now—and be Outside! An almost unheard-of example of slip-shod maintenance—”
Fred brightened. “Well, say!” He got hurriedly to his feet. “Let’s try it then!” He hesitated. “I’ll go get Wilma and Ruby first though. I don’t like to leave Wilma alone with that Cooney character!”
The Cobrisol hadn’t moved. “I’m afraid you don’t have the picture,” it remarked. “You assume that once you’re Outside you’ll be able to find your way back to the place you call Earth?”
“Not exactly,” Fred said cautiously. He didn’t like to be evasive with the Cobrisol, but he wasn’t sure it would want, them to leave—and it might be in a position to make their departure more difficult. “We could just step through and look around a little . . .”
“Even if we weren’t under observation at the moment,” the Cobrisol pointed out, “you wouldn’t live very long if you did. No life form—as we know life-forms—can exist Outside! The barriers are set up to keep us where it’s safe. That’s why it’s so irresponsible of the One—”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 62