by Earl
ANOTHER red head moved, outside the open window, peeping forth from ivy-vines along the cabin wall. Aldic scrambled to the ground, Boro after him. The other men had left long before. Aldic and Boro had stayed out of curiosity. It pleased them to hear the Big Ones talk of the little beings who moved so mysteriously and kept out of the knowledge of man.
“They will have to leave,” Aldic murmured a little sadly, as the two headed back for the village. “I would like to help them.”
“It is best they leave,” Boro grunted. “They know too much of us. But tell me, Aldic, why are the Big Ones cruel to each other like that?”
“They have not learned to be civilized,” Aldic returned simply. “They worship a god, called money, to the exclusion of all the more fundamental things of life. It is money my redheaded friend needs—” His voice trailed away in thought.
At the village, Aldic approached Zutho, telling the story, “I am going to New York City, for money,” he concluded.
“Tamper not too much with the doings of the Big Ones,” Zutho demurred.
“Especially their good money. I forbid it, Aldic.”
Aldic spoke gently. “You forget, Father, that I am not of this tribe. This I do on my own accord, not as a tenet of the Third Law.”
“Still I forbid it,” Zutho proclaimed. “You are from Ireland, but this region is in my jurisdiction. I cannot risk the safety of these my people for a foolhardy venture. If you were caught, our existence would be known to the Big Ones. You must not go, Aldic.”
Aldic seemed about to speak, drawing himself up, but instead nodded obediently. Yet that night, while a merry dance went on in the glade, Aldic stole into the thickets and crept away. A hand suddenly caught his arm. Aldic whirled to face Boro, who had evidently kept an eye on him.
“Call the others,” Aldic dared. “Before they come, I will toss you into the brambles.” His hard young body tensed for battle.
Boro strangely shook his head. “I will go with you, Aldic.”
Aldic gaped in surprise. “Why Boro?”
Boro scuffed at the ground with his foot. “You saved my life once. Perhaps I can save yours, in the dangers ahead.”
Aldic grinned. “Good. I was wishing for you to come along.” Then, his face sobering gravely, he opened a small pouch in his belt and took therefrom one of two small pellets. “Keep this with you, Boro. It is deadly poison, from the nightshade. So concentrated is it that it will cause the flesh to wither away in hours. If caught by the Big Ones, with no escape—”
He paused, and Boro nodded grimly, putting the pellet gingerly in his own pouch.
Another form suddenly slipped up before them.
“Teena!” they said as one.
“I heard,” the girl whispered. “My heart goes with you—both. When you come back—”
The two stalwarts looked at each other, wondering which the girl had already chosen. She had simply not told, lest one, or both, fail to return. With a last murmur of farewell, the two adventurers slipped away.
Teena wiped away her tears before reappearing in the glade. When it suddenly came to general notice that Aldic and Boro were gone, she calmly told Zutho of their departure.
“After them, men—stop them!” But Old Zutho waved his command aside in the next moment. “No use to hope to catch them, the two fleetest.” His eyes blazed. “Rash fools! When they return—if they do—they shall merit the full penalties of the broken First Law!”
CHAPTER VII
On to New York!
AT a steady trot, the two adventurers forged their way through the night forests, up hill and through glen.
“We have only a week to reach New York, find money, and return,” Aldic informed. “We must not lose a moment.”
“New York!” Boro murmured, shivering in excitement. None of the present generation had ever dared invade that stronghold of the Big Ones.
Their eyes, as well adapted to night-vision as day, watched carefully on all sides for the night hunters. Once a ferret crossed their path, and lay there with its skull split open by their hand-axes. A fox treed them till Aldic’s needle-arrow in its snout sent it yelping away. A browsing deer, startled, nearly trampled them with its hard hooves, in its panic to get away from what might be a bear. They swam a small river with steady strokes, and on the other shore impaled a hissing snake with their spears, chopping its head off.
“Eyooo!” exulted Boro. “We are a mighty pair. Who dares stand against us?”
“The skunk,” Aldic said dryly, pointing ahead. The swaggering creature blocked their path. Without a word, Boro slunk to the side, through brambles that scratched, following Aldic.
At dawn they reached the concrete highway which Boro had seen before and which he knew led to New York, along the great Hudson river. Boro shrank a little from the great roaring machines that thundered by, like ocean-liners on wheels. Tired from the nightlong pace, they curled up in a convenient hollow log and slept through the day. They could only travel by night.
At dusk, they hunted a field-mouse and ate of its tender flesh. With renewed strength, they ran along the highway course, in the bordering fields.
“It would take us a week to reach the city, running,” Aldic said. “We must catch a ride on one of those machines.”
Boro sucked in his breath, at the daring thought. “But how can we? They roar by faster than the wind.”
“There is a crossroad ahead,” Aldic pointed. “Machines stop there. I know of these things. Keep close to me.”
At the cross highway, brakes squealed constantly. Aldic’s sharp little eyes watched, from a bush just beside the road. “There! That one has a New York City license. Come, Boro. Do as I do.”
The two little forms scuttled out of hiding like swift animals. Any Big One seeing would idly take them for rats or chipmunks, in the dark. Aldic leaped on the running board and jabbed his spear down into the rubber-matting that covered it. Boro did the same. The car started up again, bearing two hitch-hikers unsuspected by the driver.
AS gears ground, and the engine roared into high speed, Boro gaspingly watched the countryside blur by. A fierce wind tore at them, threatening to whip them loose from their spear anchorages. At times, bumps in the roadway tossed them up and down till their teeth jarred.
They clung for dear life. Once Aldic’s ready arm pulled Boro back as he almost lost his grip. Boro’s face was white. The wheels of a car behind would have flattened him to pulp, if the fall first hadn’t broken his every bone.
“Eyoo!” Boro said weakly then, at Aldic’s somewhat scornful smile. “This is great sport!”
But Aldic himself felt the strain. At the next crossroad, the car stopping, he whispered: “There is only the driver inside. The back is empty. Follow me!”
As the car halted, Aldic jerked his spear from the rubber mat and took a running leap to the top of the smooth back fender. From there he jumped lightly to the edge of the open window, and down into the back of the car. Boro followed, in as many seconds. They crouched in the dark space of the rear floor.
Hearts beating wildly, they remained tense till the car started up again. The driver hadn’t heard or noticed. They were safe. The ride was much smoother here. Enjoyable, in fact. Aldic and Boro looked triumphantly at each other, their little souls pleased at their daring, stealing a ride right under the nose of a Big One.
The machine thundered on. The driver seemed in a vast hurry. He wheeled past car after car, on the road, sometimes by a slim margin as oncoming cars brushed by.
“This driver is reckless,” Aldic said worriedly. “Sometimes these cars smash against one another in terrible accidents.”
The next moment, to Boro’s astonishment, Aldic leaped to the back cushion, thence to the door handle and finally to the backrest of the front seat. Crouching just behind the Big One’s ear, he began whispering, in their language.
“You are driving too fast! You are driving too fast!”
Over and over. His thin low whisper reached the Big On
e’s ear only as a faint faraway murmur. The man squirmed uneasily, but kept up his prodigious pace. Again he began to roar past a car, on a hill.
“You are driving too fast! You are taking chances!” Aldic droned on.
With an exclamation, the driver eased his throttle and remained behind the car ahead. He gasped sharply as headlights suddenly loomed over the rise and a huge truck whistled by. He would not have made it, trying to pass.
“Thank Heaven!” the man grunted aloud to himself. Thereafter he drove at a much saner pace, unknowing that his conscience had been in the guise of a tiny man.
LATE in the night, as suburban sections whirled by, Boro became nervous.
“Where exactly are we going, Aldic?”
“Into the heart of the city—if this car takes us there,” Aldic returned in a guarded whisper. He went on gravely. “From now on, Boro, we must be utterly alert. The Big Ones surround us on every hand.”
Boro did not say it, but he had already given themselves up for lost, cursing silently his rash participation in this mad venture. He fingered the pouch which held the pellet of death.
Aldic saw the gesture and squeezed Boro’s arm. “Take heart! I have been in cities before. With reasonable luck, and constant caution, we can surmount any danger. You are not afraid?”
“No!” Boro snapped, stung.
They crossed two bridges, and now the fantastic ramparts of Manhattan reared about them. Boro hardly believed his eyes. Higher than any mountain he had seen towered the sheer dwellings of the Big Ones. Everything was on such a gargantuan scale that he felt like a tiny insect.
Aldic stirred, finally, peering toward the east, where a faint pearl glow limmed the buildings. “It is close to dawn. We must leave this car and find a hiding place in the city, through the day.”
When the car next stopped for a red light, Aldic led the way, leaping to the window onto the fender, and then to the pavement. Hearing a slight sound, the driver turned half-way, then shrugged and started up, with a green light.
Scuttling to the overhang of a curb, Aldic and Boro flattened in its shadow, watching the car roll away down the street.
“Thanks,” Aldic breathed after it, half derisively. “He would not believe, if some one told him, that all night he had two of the Little Folk as passengers.”
Then they peered around. The night streets were almost deserted. Only an occasional car, and a still rarer pedestrian moved within sight.
“There are no trees, no grass!” marveled Boro. “The Big Ones lead a strange life.”
Aldic’s eye turned to a street sign which read, on two cross-bars: “Fifth Avenue—34th Street.”
Boro was now craning his neck, his eyes popping, trying to see how far up the incredible structure nearest them pierced. It was the Empire State Building, two miles high in the eyes of six-inch beings.
“This must be the pillar that holds up the sky!” Boro said excitedly. “As Zutho once conjectured.”
“And what held up the sky before this was built?” Aldic snorted. “Old Zutho may not know everything. Some of our superstitions about the Big Ones, Boro, are as childish as theirs about us.”
A pedestrian passed close to the curb, so close that the squeak of leather shoes rang like gongs in their ears. And now the first shaft of dawn speared redly over the scene.
“We must hide quickly!” Aldic stated. “The city will soon wake to life. Come, Boro.”
After long study, Aldic had picked their hiding. With no one in sight for the moment, they ran before a metal box, eight times as high as they were. On the outside was painted: “Waste Paper. Help Keep Our City clean.” It rested next to a metal pole surmounted by a shining lamp. There were foot and hand holds, because of its roughened design, and they clambered up, leaped across to the top of the tin-box, and darted down in after pushing aside a swinging door.
They landed in a pile of papers. The air inside was stale. But it was dark, and completely cut off the outside world. Through the walls, they could hear the rising tempo of city life, as the new day began. The crescendo of traffic arose, and the babble of voices. And Boro began to feel again like a little insect caught in a beehive of angry, buzzing wasps.
“Relax and go to sleep,” Aldic bade laughingly. “What use to die a hundred deaths ahead of time?”
CHAPTER VIII
Two Elves in a City!
JIM HARVEY ran his hands through his red hair, at the breakfast table, in his cabin in the Catskills. His face was haggard from a sleepless night.
“Five hundred dollars!” he muttered again. “Some dealer in Albany might loan it to me, if I contracted to make it up in pictures. Might!”
Mary said nothing. What was there to say when air-castles lay in ruins?
Harvey fingered the paper signed “Aldic.” His voice was low, desperate. “If I found and caught one or two of the Little People—and sold them—”
Mary spoke now, sharply. “I wouldn’t let you do that, even if they did exist. Why, it would be—horrible! But they don’t exist. And we have to do something for ourselves. No little creatures in our imaginations are going to do it for us.”
NIGHT fell in New York City, and the pangs of hunger came to Aldic and Boro, awakening from slumber among the papers of the tin box at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.
Boro stoically said nothing, but Aldic said it.
“Food? Well—”
They huddled down as for the hundredth time the swing-cover above creaked, letting in light, and more papers that struck them with not too gentle force. Something else hurtled in—a half-eaten apple that bounced off Boro’s head, half stunning him. “And there it is!” Aldic laughed. They ate to repletion of the fruit. It filled the stomach, if nothing else. “And now,” Boro growled, “let us get out of this stuffy prison. I would rather face the Big Ones than breathe much more of this close air.”
The confinement lay heavily on them, for they were used to the openness of nature. But not until hours later, in the dead of night, did Aldic give the signal, when the city-noises had again faded.
Getting out was not as easy as getting in. They piled papers one on another, but were still out of reach. Boro was alarmed till Aldic unwound a thin cord wrapped around his waist—a five-foot lariat of strong, woven caterpillar-silk.
“This rope will be of more use in the city than our weapons,” Aldic commented, tossing again and again for the slight projection of a bolt-end up high. The loop finally caught and Aldic went up hand-over-hand nimbly, catching hold of the swing-opening. After Boro came up, Aldric retrieved the rope and peeped out. When no pedestrian was in sight, they scrambled down the lamp-post and scuttled to the shadow of a curb.
Boro expanded his chest thankfully, but made a wry face.
“This city air smells bad, too. How can the Big Ones stand it all their lives? Well, Aldic, now what? Is there any of this money we have come for within reach?”
Aldic was thoughtful. “It is all around us. But I must see a telephone book. Come, Boro.”
Boro followed, mystified, and they ran beside the curb—toward Sixth Avenue down 33rd Street, a New Yorker might have told them. Toward the end of the block, Aldic stopped and surveyed a small open-all-night lunch room. It was empty, in this late hour, and the proprietor was deep in a newspaper. The door was open. There was a telephone booth in the corner, beside it a stand of telephone books.
In the twinkle of an eye, they were within. Boro waited in trepidation below while Aldic clambered up silently.
Fortunately the Manhattan book was open. Aldic turned pages with a minimum of flutter, scanned quickly on the right one, and went down again. The proprietor had looked up just once, at the door, as though hoping to conjure a customer through it. He had not looked in the corner by the phone booth.
at the curb again, Boro wiped the sweat from his brow. “I would rather battle the fox, than strain my nerves waiting for something to happen. Do you know where to go now, Aldic?”
“Yes, except that I do not
know this city well. The next thing we must do is ask directions.”
“Ask!” cried Boro. “Ask a Big One? Are you mad?”
“A certain kind of Big One,” Aldic said mysteriously. “That one in a blue uniform. He is called a policeman. And he is Irish!”
Boro following with a resigned air of fatalism, Aldic led the way along the curb and then over the sidewalk to where the lone policeman leaned against the building, staring off into space, whistling. He was large, middle-aged, florid-faced, with Irish blue eyes that held the kindly twinkle peculiar to their kind.
Aldic took a deep breath, and then boldly tugged at the man’s trouser-leg. The florid face turned down. The blue eyes widened as they made out the twin mannikins. The mouth fell open.
“Saints preserve us!” rumbled the Big One’s voice. “It was only a little drink!”
“Hallo, there!” Aldic called up. “Pick me up, ye son of Erin!”
Aldic gripped Boro’s arm. “If the worst happens to me, run and leave the city. But I’m sure of my man.”
Eyes bulging, the policeman stooped, as if the little being’s command must be obeyed. With surprising tenderness for so great a creature, he picked Aldic up. He placed him on the palm of one hand level with his eyes—and stared as though he would continue doing that forever.
“Saints!” he mumbled again, pushing back his cap with his free hand and displaying sandy-red hair. “It has red hair, begorry. What can the little scalpeen be?” Suddenly the blue eyes flashed. “Be you one of the—the Little People?” Almost automatically he added: “Sor!”
“That I am!” Aldic yelled back, his piping voice shrill to the Big One’s ears. “If ye are a true son of Ireland, ye’ll help me. If not—if ye so much as raise a finger against me—I will lay upon ye the curse of the fairies!”
The policeman started. Behind his eyes that had seen the harsh realities of his world of crime prevention tugged a superstition born in his blood centuries upon centuries before. The Fairies were a pleasant myth, sure. But what was this in his hand?