Then it moved off slowly along the side of the house.
“GOING to wake up Cooney now!” The Cobrisol’s voice was hardly more than a breath of sound in the dark.
This was how they had expected it would happen; but now that the moment was here, Fred couldn’t believe that Howard was going to go through with the plan. Aside from everything else, it would be as stupid as forming a partnership with a man-eating tiger!
There came two faint thumps—presumably the Icien’s flipper slapping cautiously against the frame of the living room window. Howard’s snoring was cut off by a startled exclamation. Then there was dead silence. After what seemed a long time, Fred heard the Icien return along the outside of the house. It stopped in front of the back door and stayed there.
It wasn’t until then that he realized Howard already had entered the kitchen. There was a sound of shallow, rapid breathing hardly six feet away from him.
For a time, the tramp simply seemed to stand there, as motionless as the Icien outside the door. Finally, he took a deep, sighing breath, and moved forward again. As Cooney’s hand touched the door, groping for the bolt, Fred dropped his spear and flung both arms around him, pinning his arms to his sides and dragging him backwards.
Howard gasped and went heavily to the floor. Fred guessed that the Cobrisol had tripped him up and flung itself across his legs. He wasn’t trying to struggle.
“Be quiet or we’ll kill you!” he breathed hastily. Then they waited. Howard kept quiet.
What the Icien made of the brief commotion inside the kitchen and the following silence was anybody’s guess. It remained where it was for perhaps another ten seconds. Then they heard it move unhurriedly off through the garden and back to the orchard again.
In the bedroom, Ruby started clucking concernedly . . .
“NOW THAT his criminal purpose has been amply demonstrated,” the Cobrisol argued, “the neat and reasonable solution would be for me to swallow Cooney.” It eyed Howard appraisingly. “I’m quite distensible enough for the purpose, I think! If we stun him first, the whole affair will be over in less than ten minutes—”
Howard, lying on the floor, tied hand and foot, burst into horrified sobs.
“We’re not going to hurt you!” Fred assured him quickly. He wasn’t feeling too sorry for Howard at the moment, but Wilma’s face had gone white at the Cobrisol’s unpleasant suggestion. “But we’re not giving you a chance to try any more tricks on us either. You’re really in stir now, Howard!”
He explained to Wilma that they were going to use the bedroom as a temporary jail for Howard, since it was the only room in the house with a separate key.
“I know you were only joking,” she told the Cobrisol. “But I wish you wouldn’t talk about swallowing anybody again!”
“The jest was in bad taste!” the Cobrisol admitted penitently. It winked a green, unrepentant eye at Fred. “Almost a pun, eh, Fred?”
In the end, they tied Howard up a little more comfortably and took turns watching him till morning. Then Fred cleared out the bedroom, nailed heavy boards across the window, leaving slits for air and light, and locked the prisoner inside.
He’d just finished with that when the Cobrisol called him into the back garden.
“The other half of our criminal population is behaving in an odd fashion,” the creature announced. “I wish you’d come along and help me decide why it’s digging holes in the stream-bed . . .”
“Digging holes?” Fred hesitated. “It doesn’t sound dangerous,” he pointed out.
“Anything you don’t understand can be dangerous!” the Cobrisol remarked sententiously. “Better come along, Fred.”
Fred sighed and told Wilma to call him back if Howard showed any inclination to try to break out of the bedroom. From the edge of the orchard, they heard the Icien splashing around vigorously in one of the pools of the shrunken stream; and presently they were lying on top of the bank, peering cautiously down at it. Using its feet and flipper-tips, it was making clumsy but persistent efforts to scoop out a deep hole in the submerged mud.
“Iciens,” whispered the Cobrisol, “are so rarely brought into contact with more civilized species that not much is known of their habits. Can you suggest a purpose for this activity, Fred?”
“Think it could be trying to dig its way out of the Little Place?” Fred whispered back.
“No. It’s not that stupid!”
“Well,” Fred whispered, “I read about fish once, or it could have been frogs—those are Earth animals—that dig themselves into the mud of a creek that’s drying out, and sleep there until it fills up with water again.”
The Cobrisol agreed that it was a possibility. “Though it’s already dug a number of holes and covered them again . . .”
“Might still be looking for a soft spot,” Fred suggested.
At that moment, they heard Wilma call Fred’s name once, in a high, frightened voice.
HOWARD COONEY was waiting for them outside the kitchen door. Wilma stood in front of him, one arm twisted up behind her back, while Howard held the point of a small steak knife against the side of her neck. The two Icien spears leaned against the wall beside him.
“Slow to a walk!” he shouted in a hoarse, ragged voice, as they came in sight.
They slowed. The Cobrisol gliding beside him, Fred walked stiffly as far as the center of the garden, where Howard ordered him to stop again. Wilma’s chin was trembling.
“I’m sorry, Fred!” she gasped suddenly. “I let him trick me!”
Howard jerked at her wrist. “Keep your mouth shut!” His eyes looked hot and crazy, and the side of his face kept twitching as he grinned at Fred.
“I’m in charge now, Buster!” he announced. “See how you like it!”
“What do you want me to do?” Fred kept his voice carefully even and didn’t look at Wilma.
“The snake,” said Howard, “doesn’t come any closer, or this knife goes right in! Understand?”
“Certainly, I understand,” said the Cobrisol. It began to curl up slowly into its usual resting position. “And, of course, I shall come no closer, Cooney! As you say, you’re in charge now . . .”
Howard ignored it. He jerked his head at the door. “You, Buster—you go right through the kitchen and into the bedroom! Go to the other side of the bedroom and look at the wall. We’ll come along behind you, and I’ll lock you in. Get it?”
Crazy or not, he had it figured out. Walking slowly toward the door, Fred couldn’t think of a thing he could do fast enough to keep that knife from going through Wilma’s throat. And once he was locked in—
Wilma’s eyes shifted suddenly past him. “Ruby!” she screamed. “Sic him!”
Fred was almost as shocked as Howard, as the pheasant, her feathers on end, came halfrunning, half-flying past him, went up like a rocket and whirred straight at Howard’s face.
Howard screeched like a woman, dodged and slashed wildly and futilely at Ruby. Wilma twisted free of his grasp and threw herself to the ground as Fred flung himself forwards.
He went headlong over the Cobrisol, which was darting in from the side with the same purpose in mind, and rolled almost to Howard’s feet. For a moment, the tramp’s white, unshaven face seemed to hang in the air directly above him, glaring down at him; and light flashed from the edge of the knife. It was another wild swipe, and it missed Fred by inches. Then Howard had jumped back into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him.
BY THE time they got around to the front of the house, Cooney was racing down the meadow like a rabbit, heading for the orchard. He dodged in among the trees and turned toward the trout stream.
Fred stopped. “We’re not going to follow him there just now!” he panted. He glanced down at the spear he’d grabbed up before charging off in pursuit, and wondered briefly what he would have done with it if they’d caught up with Howard! The Little Place seemed to bring out the more violent side in everybody’s nature.
“Come on!” he said, a little s
haken by the thought. “Let’s get back to Wilma—”
“A moment, Fred!” The Cobrisol had lifted its head off the ground, peering after Howard. “Ah!”
A harsh, furious roar reached them suddenly from the orchard, mingled with a human yell of fright and dismay. Howard Cooney came scampering out into the meadow again, glancing back over his shoulder. Close behind him lumbered the black, clumsy form of the Icien, its flipper-arms outstretched . . .
“The confederates,” murmured the Cobrisol, “are no longer in complete accord. As I suspected! Come on, Fred!”
It darted down into the meadow in its swift, weaving snake-gait. Fred ran after it, a little surprised by its sudden solicitude for Howard.
Everything happened very quickly then.
The Icien, to Fred’s relief, stopped near the edge of the orchard when it saw them coming. The Cobrisol, well ahead of Fred, called suddenly, “Cooney! Wait!”
Howard looked round and saw two other deadly enemies hurrying toward him, apparently cutting off his escape from the Icien. He gave a scream of wild terror, turned and plunged toward the mirror-barrier.
A warning yell was gathering in Fred’s throat, but he didn’t have time to utter it. Howard reached the barrier and simply went on into it. Except that there wasn’t the slightest ripple, he might have vanished in the same way beneath the surface of a quietly gleaming lake of quicksilver.
The Cobrisol turned and came gliding back to Fred.
“The barrier is still soft!” it remarked. “Well, that’s the end of Cooney!”
Fred stared down at it, a little dazed. He was almost certain now that it had deliberately chased Howard into the barrier! “Is there anything we can do?”
The Cobrisol curled up comfortably in the rustling dead grass. The green eyes stared blandly up at him for a moment.
“No,” it said. “There is nothing we can do. But in a while there may be something to see, and I think you should see it, Fred! Why don’t you go back to Wilma? I’ll call you when it happens.”
Fred glanced at the tall, shining thing that had silently swallowed up a man. It was a very hot morning, but for a moment he felt chilled.
He turned round and went back to Wilma.
WHAT HAD occurred, according to Wilma, was that, shortly after Fred left the house, Howard Cooney began to groan loudly behind the bedroom door. When Wilma asked him what was wrong, he gasped something about his heart and groaned some more. Then there was a heavy thump inside the room, as if he’d fallen down: and, after that, silence.
Remembering he’d said he had a bad heart, Wilma hurriedly unlocked the door, without stopping to think. And Howard, of course, was waiting behind the door and simply grabbed her.
Wilma looked too remorseful for Fred to make any obvious comments. After all, he thought, he hadn’t married her because of anything very remarkable about her brains, and Howard was—or had been—a pretty good actor! He decided not to tell her just yet what had happened to Howard; and when he heard the Cobrisol call him. He went out alone.
“He’s trying to get on now,” the Cobrisol told him. “Take a good look, Fred! If you ever go outside, you’ll know why you don’t want to get lost there, like he did!”
FRED STARED apprehensively at the barrier which was changing as he looked at it. Now it no longer reflected the meadow and the house; its strange surface had become like a sheet of milky glass, stretching up into the artificial sky, and glowing as if from a pale light behind it. There was also a pattern of shifting and sliding colors inside it, which now coalesced suddenly into the vague outlines of Howard Cooney’s shape. Only the shape looked about forty feet tall! It stood half turned away from them, in an attitude as if Howard were listening or watching.
“He’s got everything aroused out there,” said the Cobrisol, “and he’s begun to realize it . . .”
Fred’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “Listen,” he began, “couldn’t we—that is, couldn’t I—”
“No,” said the Cobrisol. “You couldn’t! If you went Outside, you still couldn’t find Cooney. And,” it added cryptically, “even if I told you how to get back, they’re alert now and they’d get you before you could escape—”
Fred swallowed. “Who are they?”
“Nobody knows,” said the Cobrisol. “There are a number of theories—rank superstition, for the most part—Watch it, Fred! I think they’ve found him . . .”
The shape inside the barrier had begun to move jerkily as if it were running in short sprints, first in one direction, then in another. Its size and proportions also changed constantly, and for a few seconds Howard Cooney’s fear-crazed face filled the whole barrier, his eyes staring out into the Little Place.
Then the face vanished, and there were many tiny figures of Cooney scampering about in the barrier.
Then he was no longer scampering, but crawling on hands and knees.
“They have him now!” the Cobrisol whispered.
There was only a single large figure left, lying face down inside the barrier, and to Fred it seemed to be slowing melting away. As it dwindled, the odd inner light of the barrier also dimmed, until it suddenly went out. A few seconds later, the milkiness vanished from it, and it had become a mirror-barrier again.
That appeared to be the end of it.
What actually had happened to Howard Cooney was something the Cobrisol was either unwilling or unable to explain to Fred. He didn’t question it too persistently. He had an uneasy feeling that he wouldn’t really like to know . . .
THE MORNING the kitchen faucets stopped delivering water from their unknown source of supply wasn’t noticeably hotter than the preceding few mornings had been. But when Wilma called from the kitchen to complain of the trouble, Fred was appalled. He didn’t dare finish the thought that leaped into his mind; he shut it away, and went hurriedly into the bathroom without replying to Wilma.
A thin, warm trickle ran from the tub faucet there, and that was all.
He shut it off at once, afraid of wasting a single drop, and started for the kitchen. Wilma met him in the hall.
“Fred,” she repeated, “the water—”
“I know,” he said briskly. “We’ll take all the pots and pans we have and fill them with water from the bathtub. It’s still running there, but not very strong. They might turn it on again any moment, of course, but we want to be sure . . .”
He’d felt he was being quite casual about it, but as he stopped talking, something flickered in Wilma’s eyes; and he knew they were both thinking the same thought.
She reached out suddenly and squeezed his hand. “It’s too hot to kiss you, but I love you, Freddy! Yes, let’s fill the pots and pans—”
“Or you do that, while I go talk to the Cobrisol,” Fred said. He added reassuringly, “The Cobrisol’s had a lot of experience with these Places, you know! It’ll know just what to do.”
What he had in mind, however, when he left Wilma in charge of the pots and pans in the bathroom, picked up a spear and went quietly outdoors, wasn’t conversation with the Cobrisol. There had been no reason to dispute the Icien’s appropriation of the entire trout stream; but now a more equitable distribution of the water rights in the Little Place seemed to be in order.
IF IT hadn’t been so breathlessly still, the scene around the house might have been an artistic reproduction of the worst section of the Dust Bowl—or it could have been one of the upper and milder levels of hell, Fred thought. He looked around automatically to see it the Eyes had returned—they hadn’t—and instead caught sight of the Cobrisol and the Icien down near the mirror-barrier, at the orchard’s edge.
He stopped short in surprise. So far as he could see at that distance, the two creatures were engaged in a serious but not unfriendly discussion. There was about twenty-five feet of space between them, which was probably as close as the Cobrisol, fast as it was, cared to get to the Icien. But it was coiled up in apparent unconcern.
He walked slowly down the dried-out meadow toward them. A
s he approached, both turned to look at him.
“Fred,” said the Cobrisol, “the Icien reports there isn’t even a drop of moist mud left in the trout stream this morning!”
The Icien stared balefully at Fred and said nothing; but he realized a truce had been declared to cope with the emergency. Somewhat self-consciously, he grounded the spear—it was useless now—and told them about the kitchen faucets. “What can we do about it? In this heat—”
“In this heat, and without water,” the Cobrisol agreed soberly, “none of us will be alive very many hours from now! Unless—”
“Fred!” Wilma’s call reached them faintly from the porch.
He turned, with a sinking feeling in his chest. “Yes?”
“The—bathtub—just—quit!” Her distant, small face looked white and strained.
Suddenly, Fred was extraordinarily thirsty. “It’s all right, honey!” he shouted back. “We’re going to fix it!” She hesitated a moment, and then went back into the house. He turned to the other two. “We can fix it, can’t we?” he pleaded.
“There is a way, of course,” the Icien rumbled. “But—” It shrugged its black leather shoulders discouragedly.
“We’ve been discussing it,” said the Cobrisol. “The fact is, Fred, that the only one who can remedy this situation is yourself! And, undoubtedly, the attempt would involve extreme risk for you personally . . .”
Fred guessed it then. “One of us has to go Outside to fix it; and neither of you can do it. Is that it?”
The two creatures stared at him.
“That’s it!” the Cobrisol agreed reluctantly. “I can’t explain, just now, why it would be impossible for either of us to go Outside—but between us we can tell you exactly what to do there! The risk, of course, is that what happened to Cooney will also happen to you. But if you make no mistakes—”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 64