Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  “He’ll panic!” the Icien growled darkly. “They all do!”

  “No,” said the Cobrisol. “It’s been done before, Fred. But not very often.”

  Fred sighed and wiped a film of dirty sweat off his forehead with a hand that shook a little, but not too much. It seemed to him they were making a great deal of conversation about something that couldn’t be helped!

  “Dying of thirst,” he pointed out reasonably, “gets to be pretty dangerous, too! What am I supposed to do?”

  AS SOON as he’d stepped Outside, he realized that, though the Cobrisol and the Icien had warned him of this particular problem, his real difficulty would be to remember exactly what he was supposed to do.

  Basically, it was very simple—but he didn’t want to do it!

  Irrelevant thought-pictures were streaming through his mind. Wilma’s white, tear-stained face as he’d seen it last, just a moment ago—but that moment was darting off into the past behind him as if a week passed with every heartbeat here! Clusters of bright, flickering memory-scenes of their farm back home on Earth, swirled next through his head . . . The reason for this kind of disturbance, the two creatures had told him, was that he didn’t want to know what was going on Outside!

  It was too different. Different enough, if he hadn’t been warned, to hold him here shocked and stunned, trying to blind himself mentally to the strangeness around him, until it was too late—

  That thought frightened Fred enough to drive the little escape-pictures out of his head as if a sudden gust of wind had swept them up and away together. He’d just recalled that he had very little time here!

  He looked around.

  It wasn’t, he thought, really as bad as he’d expected! He got the instant impression—partly, at least, because of what he’d been told—that he was standing in the middle of the audible thought-currents of a huge mechanical mind. Not audible, exactly; the currents seemed to be tugging at him or pulsing rhythmically through and about him, in all directions. Most of them, as the Cobrisol had explained, appeared to be connected in some way or another with the up-keep of the Little Place. But there were others, darkly drifting things or very deep sounds—it was hard to distinguish really just what they were most like—that were completely and terrifyingly incomprehensible to Fred . . .

  Some of those were the dangerous ones! He wasn’t to give them any attention. He waited.

  THE MOMENT none of those dark, monstrous waves seemed to be passing anywhere near him, he quickly verbalized the first of the three things they had told him to think here:

  “The Little Place has become too dry for the life-forms in it! There should be water and rain again in the Little Place!”

  He held the thought, picturing rain coming down in sheets all over the Little Place, the trout stream running full again, and water pouring freely from all the faucets in the house. Then he let the pictures and the thoughts go away from him. For an instant, there seemed to be a tiny shifting, a brief eddy of disturbance passing through all the mental flows about him.

  Hurriedly, he formed the second thought:

  “The temperature has become too high for the life-forms in the Little Place! The temperature must be adjusted to their normal living requirements!”

  This time, he’d barely finished the thought before it seemed to be plucked out of his mind by a sudden agitated swirling in the living currents about him. Then he had a sense of darkening, and something huge and deadly and invisible went flowing closely past, trailing behind it a fluttering apparition that brought a soundless scream of terror into Fred’s throat. It was a shape that looked exactly as Howard Cooney bad looked in life, except that it was no thicker than a sheet of paper! For an instant, as Howard’s eyes glared sightlessly. in his direction, he had the impression that somewhere far overhead Howard had called his name. Then the thing that brought darkness with it and the fluttering shape were gone.

  The other disturbances continued. In some way, the Outside was growing aware of his presence and beginning to look for him!

  The next order he hadn’t discussed with the others, since he was certain they would have tried to talk him out of giving.

  “The life-forms in the Little Place that were taken away from Earth must be returned unharmed to Earth!”

  Hastily, thinking of the Cobrisol, he added:

  “Including any other life-forms that would like to come along—except Iciens!”

  Something like a long crash of thunder went shaking all through him—apparently, that last set of instructions had upset the entire Outside!

  Fred didn’t bother to think out the final thought. He shouted with all his strength: “And I should n be standing on the other side of the mirror-barrier inside the Little Place!” Instantly, he was there. Rain was slamming down in sheets all about him, like an Earthly cloud-burst, as Wilma, laughing and crying, grabbed him by an arm. Hand in hand, they ran through the soaking meadow toward the house, the Cobrisol streaking ahead of them. The Icien was nowhere in sight.

  “I DIDN’T say exactly how much rain and water!” Fred admitted. They had discovered they couldn’t turn the faucets off now! It didn’t matter much, since the surplus water vanished down through the drains as usual. But, two hours after Fred’s return to the Little Place, the cloud-burst outdoors was continuing in full strength.

  The Cobrisol lay in a corner of the kitchen, its teeth chattering, as if it were chilled. Wilma had shoved blankets under it and piled more blankets on top, and they had lit the stove. Actually the temperature had dropped only to the equivalent of a rather warm, rainy spring day on Earth.

  “I should have cautioned you,” the creature remarked, between fits of chattering, “to limit your order for water! You had no way of knowing that Cobrisols react unfavorably to excessive atmospheric moisture . . .”

  “This capsulating you mentioned,” Wilma inquired concernedly, “does it hurt?”

  “Not at all, Wilma!” the Cobrisol assured her. “I shall simply shrivel up rather suddenly—it’s a completely automatic process, you see, and not under my control—and form a hard shell around myself. As soon as things dry out sufficiently, the shell splits, and there I am again!”

  Fred had offered to go back Outside and rephrase the order concerning the water, but he was rather relieved when everyone told him not to be foolish. At worst, the Cobrisol would simply go dormant for a while, and the disturbance caused by his visit obviously hadn’t settled out yet.

  From time to time, strange lights went gliding about erratically inside the mirror-barrier, as if the Little Place’s mechanical wardens were persisting in their search for the intruder. Occasional faint tremors passed through the foundations of the house, and there were intermittent rumblings in the air, which might have been simulated Earth-thunder, to accompany the rain.

  “There’s a good chance,” the Cobrisol explained, “that all this commotion may return the One’s attention to the Little Place, in which case we can expect normal weather conditions to be re-established promptly. Otherwise—well, I’m sure you agree with me now, Fred, that only an absolute emergency would justify going Outside again!”

  And, of course, Fred did agree. He hadn’t gone into specific details concerning his experience there, since he knew it would be disturbing to Wilma. And neither had he mentioned his order to get them transferred back to Earth—almost anything seemed justified to get away from a place where your future depended entirely on somebody else’s whims—but he was guiltily certain that that was the cause of most of the uproar!

  Now and then they looked out from a window to see if the Eyes had reappeared; but none had. Towards evening, Fred observed the Icien wandering about the lower end of the meadow, trailing its flipper-arms through rivulets of water and stopping now and then to stare up into the streaming sky, as if it enjoyed getting thoroughly soaked. Unlike the Cobrisol, it was, of course, an aquatic sort of creature to begin with.

  Just as he went to sleep that night, Fred almost managed to convince
himself that when he next woke up, he would discover they were all safely back on Earth. However, when he did awaken, he knew instantly the Outside hadn’t acted upon that order. They were still in the Little Place—and it was raining harder than ever!

  THE COBRISOL had elected to sleep in the kitchen, but it wasn’t lying on the chair before the stove where they had left it. Fred was wondering where it had crawled to, when another thought struck him. Expectantly, he separated the blankets on the chair.

  The shell was lying there, a brown, smooth, egg-shaped shell—but hardly bigger than a healthy goose-egg! It was difficult to imagine the Cobrisol shrinking itself down to that size; but it couldn’t be anything else. Feeling as if he were handling an urn containing the remains of a friend, Fred carried the shell carefully into the bedroom and laid it down on the bed.

  “He said it was practically impossible to damage these shells,” he reminded Wilma. “But it might be better not to let Ruby peck at it.”

  “I’ll watch her,” Wilma promised, big-eyed. From the way she kept staring at the shell, Fred gathered that Wilma, too, felt as if the Cobrisol somehow had passed away, even if it was only a temporary arrangement.

  “He’ll probably be hatching again pretty soon,” he said briskly. “I’ll go check on the weather now . . .”

  He opened the front porch door and stopped there, appalled. A sheet of water covered the entire meadow and lapped up to within forty feet of the house! In the orchard, half the trees were submerged. Considering the slope of the ground, the water would be at least ten yards deep where it stood against the mirror-barrier. And the rain still drummed down furiously upon it!

  He checked his first impulse to call Wilma. News as bad as that could wait a little! The barrier stood there, placidly mirroring the scene of the flood. Except for eerie rumbling sounds that still echoed in the upper air, the Outside seemed to be back to normal.

  So, if he swam across now, Fred thought, before it rose any higher—

  The order would be a quite simple one: “Reduce rainfall and water-level to meet the normal requirements of the life-forms within the Little Place.”

  And if he did it immediately, Wilma wouldn’t have a chance to get all upset about it.

  Of course, if he got caught Outside this time—

  She and Ruby would be just as badly off one way as the other, he decided. He wasn’t going to get caught! It would only take him a few minutes . . .

  HE CLOSED the porch door quietly behind him, stripped hurriedly to his shorts and started down towards the water, mentally rehearsing the order he would give, to fix it firmly in his mind. Intent on that, he almost overlooked the slow, heavy swirling of the water-surface to his left as he began to wade out. A big fish, a section of his mind reported absently, had come up out of deep water into the shallows, turned sharply and gone out again—

  He stopped short, feeling a sudden burst of icy pricklings all over him. A fish? There weren’t any fish here!

  He turned, slipping and almost stumbling on the submerged grass, and plunged back toward the higher ground. There was a sudden tremendous splash just behind him and a surge of water round his knees. Then he was on solid ground; he ran on a few yards and slowed, looking back.

  The Icien hadn’t tried to follow him out of the water. It stood upright, black and dripping, in the rain-whipped shallows, probably furious at having missed its chance at him.

  They stared silently at each other. He might have guessed it, Fred thought, looking at the great flat flipper-arms. The first time he’d seen it, it had reminded him of a huge stingray. It was an aquatic creature by choice, and this flood suited it perfectly!

  And it was intelligent enough to know why he would want to swim back to the mirror-barrier!

  He thought of the speed with which it had come driving after him, and knew that even with his spears he didn’t have a chance against that kind of creature in deep water.

  The Icien knew it, too! But it might expect him to make a final desperate attempt before the water came lapping into the house . . .

  Fred walked back to the porch and pulled his clothes on again. When he looked round before going inside, the Icien had vanished.

  LESS THAN three minutes later, Fred stepped quietly out the back door, carrying his spear. He heard Wilma lock and bolt the door behind him as he splashed carefully through the big puddles in the garden. Then he was trotting up the rain-drenched rising ground behind the house towards a wall of misty nothingness a few hundred yards away.

  He wished the Cobrisol hadn’t been obliged to capsulate itself so quickly; he could have used that knowledgeable creature’s advice just now! But it had mentioned that there were a number of soft spots in the barriers around the Little Place. All he had to do was to find one that the rising flood hadn’t made inaccessible, step through it, and give one quick order to the huge mechanical mind that was the Outside.

  That was the way he had explained it to Wilma. He had a notion the Icien wouldn’t attempt to stop him outside the water, even if it knew what he was up to. Spear in hand and in his own element, he didn’t intend to be stopped by it, anyway!

  He had covered half the distance between the house and the nearest barrier when a new inhabitant of the Little Place stood up unhurriedly behind a rock twenty yards ahead of him, blocking his advance.

  Fred stopped, startled. For a moment, he had thought it was the Icien. But then he saw it was much closer than he had thought and quite small, hardly four feet high; though in every other respect it was very similar to the black monster. It spread its flipper-arms wide, opened a black gash of a mouth and snarled at him, fearless and threatening.

  He thought: It’s a young one!

  The Icien had started to breed . . .

  Holding the spear in both hands, Fred walked rapidly towards it. Iciens at any age appeared to be irreconcilably hostile, and he didn’t care to wait until the big one came along to join the dispute! If it didn’t get out of his way—

  At the last moment, with a hiss of fury, the Icien cub waddled aside. Fred stepped cautiously past it—and stopped again.

  AN ARMY of the little horrors seemed to be rising up in front of him! They sprouted into view behind boulders and bushes, and came hurrying in from right and left. There was a burst of ugly, hoarse Icien voices, which sounded very much like a summons to their awesome parent.

  For a second or two, Fred was chiefly bewildered. Where had that horde arrived from so suddenly? Then a memory of the big Icien, scooping out holes in the mud of the half-dried trout stream, flashed up; it must have been sowing its brood then, in some strange, unearthly fashion. Obviously their growth rate simply wasn’t that of Earth creatures.

  He half turned and speared the first one as its flipper-tip gripped his leg. The blade sank into its body, and it snarled hideously, striking at him while it died. He pulled out the spear and slashed at another which had rushed in but stopped now, just out of reach.

  Three had moved in behind him, apparently with the intention of cutting off his retreat to the house. But he was still headed for the barrier. He dodged to the left and turned uphill again; another line of them confronted him there!

  As Fred hesitated, he heard Wilma cry out to him. He glanced back and saw she had come out of the kitchen, carrying the other spear—and that the big Icien was striding ponderously along the side of the house, on its way up from the flooded meadow . . .

  He turned back.

  He had to spear two more of the ugly young before he got down to the garden; and the second of the two clung howling and dying to the spear-shaft. He dropped the spear, bundled Wilma into the kitchen and slammed and bolted the door almost in the big Icien’s face. Seconds later, the black pack was roaring and banging against the outside wall. A flipper slapped and tore at the window-screen, and he jabbed at it with the tip of Wilma’s spear until it vanished.

  WILMA WAS shouting in his ear. “What?” he yelled dazedly.

  “The Eyes!” she shouted. “They’re
back!”

  “The Eyes?” Then he saw she was pointing up out the window into the rain.

  More than a dozen of the odd shiny gadgets drifted there in the air. As Fred stared, a huge one—almost ten feet across—sailed slowly and majestically past the window. The roaring outside the house stopped suddenly, and there were splashing sounds everywhere from the garden, as it the Icien and its brood were departing in great haste.

  But the thundering racket in the upper air was growing louder by the second—and changing now in a manner Fred couldn’t immediately define. He stood listening, and suddenly a wild notion came to him. He turned to Wilma.

  “Quick! Get into the bedroom!”

  “The bedroom?” She looked startled. “Why?”

  “Don’t ask!” He hustled her down the hall ahead of him. Ruby was screeching her head off behind the closed door. “Grab Ruby—make her shut up! I’ll be right back.”

  Recklessly, he tore open the front door and looked out. Young Iciens were still streaming past on either side of the house, hurrying awkwardly to the water’s edge and plunging in. The big Eye—or another one like it—was stationed in front of the porch now, turning slowly as if anxious to take in everything. For a moment, it seemed to Fred that it was focusing itself directly on him . . .

  He closed the door and hurried back into the bedroom. Wilma was sitting on the bed with Ruby in her lap and the shell of the Cobrisol under one hand. He sat down beside her.

  “What do we do now, Fred?”

  “We just wait!” He was trembling with exhaustion and excitement.

  “Those noises—” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “It sounds to me,” Wilma told him wonderingly, “exactly like two people were having themselves a big fight next door!”

  “Or up in the attic,” Fred nodded. “And it sounds even more like one person is being told off good by another one, doesn’t it?”