Fred abandoned the idea of taking Wilma with him. He’d have to make a careful check first. “About how long,” he inquired, “could I stand it out there, safely?”
“Forget it, Fred!” the creature advised him earnestly. “Unless you knew exactly what to do to get back into the Little Place, you’d be worse than dead as soon as you stepped out there! And you don’t.”
“Do you?” Fred challenged it.
“Yes,” said the Cobrisol, “I do. But I won’t tell you. Sit down again, Fred.”
Fred sat down thoughtfully. At least, he’d learned a few new facts, and the knowledge might come in handy.
“A few moments ago,” the Cobrisol said, “you made an interesting statement! It appears that you don’t wish to leave Wilma alone with the other human?”
Fred glanced at it in surprise. “No,” he said shortly, “I don’t.”
THE COBRISOL hesitated.
“I don’t wish to be tactless,” it remarked. “I understand many species have extremely rigid taboos on the subject—but might this have something to do with the process of procreation?”
Fred flushed. He hadn’t got quite that far in his thoughts about Wilma and Howard. “In a general sort of way,” he admitted.
The Cobrisol regarded him judiciously. “Wilma is a charming life-form,” it stated then, somewhat to Fred’s surprise, “whereas the Cooney is as offensive as he is ignorant. I approve of your attitude, Fred! How do you intend to kill him?”
Shocked, Fred protested that he didn’t intend to kill Howard Cooney. Human beings didn’t act like that—or, at least, they weren’t supposed to.
“Ah,” said the Cobrisol. “That is unusual!” It reflected a moment. “To get back, then, to our previous subject—”
“What previous subject?” By now, Fred was getting a little confused by the sudden shifts in the conversation.
“Hoots and robols,” the Cobrisol said tersely. “They don’t just fade away—and there were enough around last evening to have kept us all supplied for another week. What may we deduce from their sudden disappearance, Fred?”
Fred considered. “They got sick and died?”
“Try again!” the Cobrisol told him encouragingly. “We could still see a dead hoot, couldn’t we?”
“Something ate them!” Fred said, a trifle annoyed.
“Correct! Something,” added the Cobrisol, “with a very large appetite—or else a number of perhaps less voracious somethings. Something, further, that was transferred here during the night, since there was no shortage in the food supplies previous to this morning. And, finally—since it’s given no other indications of its presence—something with secretive habits!”
Fred looked around uneasily. “What do you think it is?”
“Who knows?” The Cobrisol had no shoulders to shrug with, but it employed an odd, jerky motion now which gave the same impression. “A Gramoose? An Icien? Perhaps even a pack of Bokans . . .” It indicated the observing Eyes above the house with a flick of its snout. “The point is, Fred, that the One appears curious to see what we shall do in the situation! Taken together with the softening of the barriers, this suggests a deplorable—and, for us, perhaps very unfortunate—degree of immaturity in our particular hobbyist!”
FEELING his face go pale, Fred got to his feet. “I’m going to go tell Wilma to stay in the house with Ruby!” he announced shakily.
“A wise precaution!” The Cobrisol uncoiled and came slithering along beside him as he strode rapidly towards the house. “The situation, incidentally, does have one slight advantage for you personally.”
“What’s that?” Fred inquired.
“I have noticed that the Cooney individual is considerably larger and more powerful than you. But you can emphasize to him now that, since we are in a state of common danger, this is no time to indulge in procreational dispikes . . .”
Before Fred could answer, there was a sudden furious squawking from Ruby in the back garden. An instant later, he heard a breathless shriek from Wilma and a sort of horrified bellowing from Howard Cooney. He came pounding up to the front porch just as the house door flew open. Howard dashed out, wild-eyed, leaped down the porch stairs, almost knocking Fred over, and charged on.
Fred’s impression was that the big man hadn’t even seen him. As he scrambled up on the porch, there was a thud and a startled “Oof!” behind him, as if Howard had just gone flat on his face, but he didn’t look back. Wilma came darting through the door in Howard’s tracks, Ruby tucked firmly under her left arm and a big iron skillet grasped in her right hand. Her face looked white as paper under its tan.
“Run, Fred!” she gasped. “There’s something at the back door!”
“You’re mistaken, Wilma,” the Cobrisol’s voice informed them from the foot of the stairs. “It’s now coming around the house. Up on the front porch, everyone! You, too, Cooney! No place to run to, you know!”
“What’s coming?” Fred demanded hoarsely. He added to Wilma, “Here, I’ll hold Ruby!”
Nobody answered immediately. Howard thumped up the steps, closely followed by the Cobrisol. It struck Fred then that it probably had been a flip of the Cobrisol’s tail that halted Howard; but Howard wasn’t complaining. He took up a stand just behind Wilma, breathing noisily.
The Cobrisol coiled up on Fred’s left.
“It’s an Icien . . . Well, things could be worse—listen!”
Ruby clasped under his left arm, Fred listened. A number of Eyes were bobbing about excitedly in front of the porch. Suddenly, he heard footsteps.
They were heavy, slow, slapping steps, as if something were walking through mud along the side of the house. Fred turned to the edge of the porch where Howard had been pulling up plankings to find material for his still. A four-foot piece of heavy pipe lay beside the loose boards, and he picked that up just as Wilma and Howard uttered a gasp of renewed shock . . .
Something—the Icien—was standing behind the south end of the porch!
“Ah!” it said in a deep voice, peering in at the group through the railings. “Here we all are!”
FRED STARED at it speechlessly. It stood on two thick legs, and it had a round head where a head ought to be. It was at least seven feet tall, and seemed to be made of moist black leather—even the round, bulging eyes and the horny slit of a mouth were black. But the oddest thing about it was that, in addition, it appeared to have wrapped a long black cloak tightly around itself.
It marched on to the end of the porch and advanced towards the stairs, where it stopped.
“Are all the intelligent inhabitants of the Place assembled here?” the inhuman voice inquired.
Fred discovered that his knees were shaking uncontrollably. But nobody else seemed willing to answer.
“We’re all here!” he stated, in as steady a voice as he could manage. “What do you want?” The Icien stared directly at him for a long moment. Then it addressed the group in general.
“Let this be understood first! Wherever an Icien goes, an Icien rules!”
It paused. Fred decided not to dispute the statement just now. Neither did anyone else.
“Splendid!” The Icien sounded somewhat mollified. “Now, as all intelligent beings know,” it went on, in a more conversational tone, “the Law of the Little Places states that a ruling Icien must never go hungry while another life-form is available to nourish it . . .” The black cloak around it seemed to stir with a slow, writhing motion of its own. “I am hungry!” the Icien added, simply but pointedly.
UNCONSCIOUSLY, the humans on the porch had drawn a little closer together.
The Cobrisol stayed where it was, motionless and watchful, while the monster’s black eyes swiveled from one to the other of the petrified little group.
“The largest one, back there!” it decided shortly.
And with that, what had looked like a cloak unfolded and snapped out to either side of it. For a blurred, horrified second, Fred thought of giant sting-rays on an ocean bottom, of oc
topi—of demonish vampires! The broad, black flipper-arms the creature had held wrapped about it were lined with row on row of wet-toothed sucker-mouths! From tip to tip, they must have stretched almost fifteen feet!
Howard Cooney made a faint screeching noise and fainted dead away, collapsing limply to the porch.
“Ah!” rumbled the Icien, with apparent satisfaction. “The rest of you may now stand back—” It took a step forward, the arms sweeping around to reach out ahead of it. Then it stopped.
“I said,” it repeated, on a note of angry surprise, “that you may now stand back!”
Ruby clacked her beak sharply; there was no other sound. Fred discovered he had half-raised the piece of pipe, twisting it back from his wrist like a one-handed batter. Wilma held the big skillet in front of her, grasping it determinedly in both hands. Her face wasn’t white any more; it was flushed, and her lips were set. And the Cobrisol’s neck was drawn back like that of a rattlesnake, its jaws suddenly gaping wide.
“What is this?” The Icien glanced at some of the Eyes floating nearby, as if seeking support. “Are you defying the Law?” it demanded.
No one answered; but Fred realized, in a rush of relief which left him almost weak enough to follow Howard’s example, that the monster was licked! It withdrew its horrid flippers slowly, letting them trail on the ground, while it shifted its weight uncertainly from one thick leg to the other.
And then Ruby burst into a series of raucous, derisive sounds that made everyone start nervously, including the Icien. The Cobrisol closed its long jaws with a snap. The Icien snorted, wrapped its flipper-arms back about itself, turned and stalked off toward the apple orchard. Its feet were huge and flat like the flippers of a seal, Fred noticed, which seemed to account for the odd, sloppy sounds it made with each step.
At the edge of the trees, it turned again.
“This matter is not settled!” it rumbled menacingly. “But for the time being, the stream back here and the trees are my personal area. You will enter it at your own risk!”
Its voice and appearance still made Fred’s skin crawl. “We’ll agree to that,” he answered hoarsely. “But you’ll leave that area again at your own risk!”
The Icien gave him a final, silent stare before it moved on into the orchard.
They began to revive Howard Cooney . . .
ODDLY enough, Howard seemed more sullen than grateful when he woke up finally and realized the Icien was gone.
“If it hadn’t been for my weak heart,” he growled, “I’d have clobbered the devilish creature!”
“An excellent suggestion,” the Cobrisol remarked approvingly. “You’ll find it sitting in the trout stream, Cooney . . .”
Howard grunted and changed the subject. Within an hour after their encounter with the new neighbor, all the Eyes had disappeared from the area, indicating that whoever was using them didn’t expect anything of interest to happen now. But the hoots and robols were back in normal numbers.
Apparently, a crisis had been passed! The only thing remarkable about the next day was that the weather turned hot and dry. The night wasn’t much of an improvement, and by noon of the day that followed, it looked as if they were in for a regular Earth-style heat wave.
Wondering whether this meant that summer was now on the Little Place’s calendar, Fred rigged up a makeshift hammock on the front porch, which seemed to be the coolest spot around the house. While Wilma gratefully napped in the hammock and Ruby drooped in a corner with a pan of water near her half-open beak, he sat on the front steps putting an edge to their two largest kitchen knives. He’d fastened the knife-handles into longish pieces of piping the afternoon after the Icien showed up; they made quite formidable looking weapons.
But he wished they were all safely back home again.
Glancing up presently, he discovered the Cobrisol in the meadow, moving slowly toward the house. Howard Cooney hadn’t been in sight for the past two hours, which was one of the reasons Fred was maintaining informal guard duty until Wilma woke up. There’d been some trouble with Howard the evening before, and he suspected the tramp was still in a sulky mood, which wouldn’t be improved any by the heat.
Twice, on its way to the house, the Cobrisol reached up languidly to snap a low-fluttering hoot out of the air; and each time, Fred winced. He’d convinced Wilma—and nearly convinced himself—that the olive-brown hoots and the pinkish, hopping robols were merely mobile vegetables; but he still didn’t like the way they wriggled about hopefully inside the Cobrisol’s elastic gullet, as if they were trying to poke their way out again.
“WILMA’S sleeping,” he cautioned the creature, as it came sliding up to the foot of the stairs.
“Fine,” said the Cobrisol in a low, pensive voice. “I don’t imagine you’ve made any progress in your plans to return to Earth?”
“Well, no . . . Why?”
“It’s unlikely that there is any way of doing it,” the Cobrisol admitted. “Very unlikely. However, if you think of something, I’d appreciate it if you invited me to go along!”
Surprised, Fred said he’d be happy to do that. “I think you’d like it on a real farm,” he added, a little doubtfully.
“Cobrisols are adaptable creatures,” it assured him. “But there are limits!” It glanced indignantly up at their simmering source of heat and light overhead. “Do you realize, Fred, that there’ve been no Eyes around for nearly two full days? The One has simply gone away, leaving the temperature on high! It’s inexcusable.”
Fred hadn’t considered the possibility that the heat-wave might be due to an oversight on the part of the supervisor. “In that case,” he said hopefully, “he might be back any minute to turn it down, mightn’t he?”
“He might,” said the Cobrisol. “Even so, I feel wasted here! But one thing at a time.
There’s fresh trouble coming up, Fred!”
“If it’s from the Icien,” Fred remarked, a trifle complacently, “I wouldn’t worry!” He held up one of his weapons. “There are Icien spears!”
The Cobrisol inspected the spears. “Very ingenious!” it acknowledged. “However, am I right in assuming, Fred, that the procreational problem involving the Cooney individual has come into the open?”
Fred reddened again and glanced at the hammock. “Howard did make a pass at Wilma after dinner last night,” he said then, lowering his voice a trifle more. “I told him off!” He had, as a matter of fact, picked up one of the spears he was working on and threatened to run Howard out into the Icien-haunted night. Howard had gone white and backed down hurriedly.
“Ah?” said the Cobrisol. “A pass?”
Fred explained about passes.
“The Cooney is certainly easily frightened by the threat of physical destruction,” the Cobrisol remarked. “But a frightened being is dangerously unpredictable!”
It paused, significantly.
“What are you driving at?” Fred inquired.
“An hour or so ago,” said the Cobrisol, “I saw Cooney stealing into that section of the apple orchard that extends behind the house! I found him presently engaged in conversation with the Icien—”
“What?” Fred was stunned. “Why, Howard’s scared to death of that thing!” he protested.
“I believe that fear of it was one of his motivations,” the Cobrisol agreed. “His attitude was a propitiating one. Nevertheless, they have formed an alliance! The Cooney is to rule over all humans that are now in this Place or that may be transferred to it eventually, while he acknowledges the Icien as the supreme ruler of all beings here, and as his own superior . . . It was decided that, as the first step in this program, Cooney is to devise a means whereby the Icien can come upon you unawares, Fred, and eat you!”
FRED DIDN’T tell Wilma of Howard’s gruesome plotting with the Icien. She wouldn’t be able to conceal her feelings well enough; and the conclusion he’d come to with the Cobrisol was that Howard must not suspect that they knew what he had done. Now and then, looking at the man—who, sin
ce his meeting with the Icien, had assumed a conciliatory and even mildly jovial attitude with the Nieheims—he had to suppress twinges of a feeling akin to horror. It was like living under the same roof with a ghoul!
But one had to admit, he thought, that Howard Cooney was being consistent. He had figured out the system here, and he intended to make use of it, just as he had announced he would do. If it hadn’t been for the Cobrisol’s alertness, he probably would have gotten away with it! In spite of the heat, Fred shivered.
After another two days, the meadow and orchard looked as if they had passed through an extreme summer’s drought on Earth. It didn’t get much hotter; it simply wouldn’t cool down again at all, and the Little Place seemed to have forgotten how to produce rain. In the middle of the third night, Fred was lying awake when the Cobrisol slid its rubbery snout up on the pillow, next to his ear, and murmured, “Awake, Fred?”
“Yes,” he whispered. It must have come sliding in by the window, though he hadn’t heard a sound.
“The kitchen,” it muttered. Then it was gone again. Moving cautiously, Fred managed to get out of the bedroom without rousing either Wilma or Ruby and locked the door quietly behind him. He stood a moment in the almost pitch-black little hallway, grasping the larger of the two Icien spears. In the living room, Howard snored loudly and normally, as if he hadn’t a thing on his conscience.
The Cobrisol was waiting beside the door that opened from the kitchen into the garden. That was the weak spot in the house. The windows were all too high and narrow for a creature of the Icien’s build to enter by; the front door was bolted and locked, and at night Fred kept the key under his pillow. But the back door was secured only by a bolt which Howard, if he wanted to, could simply slide back to let the monster come inside . . .
“The Icien left its pool in the stream a short while ago,” the Cobrisol whispered. “It’s prowling about the house now. Ho you hear it?”
Fred did. There wasn’t a breath of breeze in the hot, black night outside; and no matter how carefully the Icien might be placing its great, awkward feet, the back garden was full of rustlings and creakings as it tramped about slowly in the drying vegetation. Presently, it came up to one of the kitchen windows and remained still for a while, apparently trying to peer inside. Fred couldn’t even make out its silhouette against the darkness; but after a few seconds, an oily, alien smell reached his nostrils, and his hair went stiff at the roots . . .
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 63