The Collected Stories

by Earl

  And the next moment, with a patter of bare feet, the boy was there. His pudgy hand picked up Aldic as though he were a doll.

  “Run!” Aldic said weakly to Boro, but Boro did not run. He had his spear half out, but the child’s other quick hand picked him up. The boy seemed about to shout delightedly, at finding the two little animated dolls. He would awaken the household. There was no escape, for he held them tightly, with their arms pinned at their sides. Too tightly, in his childish eagerness. Their senses almost swam, with their breath squeezed out.

  Boro looked across at Aldic and saw the grim look in his eyes. They were caught. They would have to pay the penalty. Aldic was already striving mightily to reach a hand to his pouch, for the pellet of quick death. . . .

  It was ironic, to be caught by a cat and child, after outwitting so many grown Big Ones!

  It was the time for decisive action. But instead of struggling to reach his pouch, like the panic-stricken Aldic, Boro worked one arm free and upraised it. The boy saw, holding them in a moonbeam, and checked the eager shout on his trembling lips.

  “Listen to me, little boy!” Boro half-shouted. His piping voice, he knew, was less likely to be heard than the boy’s deeper, fuller tones. The boy listened, delighted to hear the dolls speak.

  “We are brownies,” Boro gasped out. “Don’t make a sound. You must let us go.”

  “But I want to play with you,” whispered the boy, respecting the request for quiet. “I won’t hurt you.” At the same time, suiting action to word, the imprisoning fingers eased somewhat.

  Boro gulped in air thankfully. “We will come back tomorrow and play with you. Now set us down. Take Tabby in the room with you, close the door quietly, and go to sleep. Or else we won’t come back at all!”

  Obediently, the child set them down, dragged the cat into his bedroom, and closed the door. It opened again a crack, but already the brownies had vanished.

  SAFE under the studio-couch, Boro wiped sweat from his brow. “That was a narrow escape!”

  Aldic grabbed his shoulder. “That was magnificent, Boro! Only your quick-thinking saved us. I had lost my head completely. You saved our lives, our mission, and perhaps future trouble for our people.”

  Aldic went on, making a confession. “I took you along on this mission to make you feel small, insignificant. To show you up, to yourself. I am sorry now if I ever intimated that you were dull of—”

  “Ouch! Ohhhh!” Boro pretended to have a sharp pain in his ribs, from the child’s eager grip, for Aldic was embarrassed. “Let us not talk, Aldic. We need rest.”

  Late in the night, a key grated, and Bainbridge tiptoed in with exaggerated caution. A breath of alcoholic vapors came in with him. Ready and waiting, Aldic and Boro scuttled past his legs, out into the hall, but not entirely unobserved this time. They heard the man’s mutter as he closed the door: “Rotten stuff! Spots in my eyes.”

  Skilled now in their timing and traversing through the Big People’s domain, they easily left the building. Outside, Aldic turned for the George Washington Bridge.

  “I studied the view when we looked out today from that high balcony,” he told Boro. “The bridge leads quickest to the north. We will run across the bridge. On the other side we will find cars going north. We will be back home tomorrow night, in time to give this money to our red-headed friend. We have done well, Boro!”

  At the middle of the bridge, Aldic threw back his mane of red hair and laughed.

  “Eyooo!” he cried at the city behind them. “Sleep well, Big Ones!”

  SOON after dawn, two days later, Jim Harvey hardly ate at the breakfast table.

  “Our last day of grace, Mary,” he murmured heavily. “There’s still a chance of getting a loan—”

  “No there isn’t.” Mary’s eyes weren’t red. She had cried herself out in the past week. “We may as well face the facts. We can sell some of our furniture and get a month’s rent ahead. We’ll find a cheap place, in Albany. Start over.”

  But Jim wasn’t listening. He was staring through the door into the living room. Slowly, like a robot, he arose and stalked in, Mary following in alarm. He reached over the fireplace, where seven pieces of green paper were pinned to the wall with thorns, under the rifle.

  “Seven hundred-dollar bills!” Mary gasped. “Where—who—”

  She read the answer that Harvey had come to, in his eyes.

  “Hallo!”

  They went out to see who had called. It was the scientist named Wilson, haggard-faced from lack of sleep, shivering, but wildly excited.

  “I saw them!” he babbled. “The Little People! Last night, in the moonlight, dancing. Just a few miles off from here. Have you got a drink? I’m chilled to the bone!”

  He was almost incoherent. Harvey took him in and poured him a stiff drink from a quart-bottle of whiskey, handy against colds with doctors so far away. Wilson explained more rationally.

  “I got the idea of looking around at night, you see, when they have their dances. That is, assuming they were the basis for our fairy legends. Petrie and Zeller balked at the night business, about ready to give it up as a wild goose-chase, but agreed to stay three more days.”

  He took another drink, warming his hands before the fire Harvey had built. The nights were cold in the hills.

  “I went around near where I saw that bear. The third night—last night that is—I found them! Heard them first—little tinkling sounds. The woods are quiet at night. As silently as I could, I followed the sounds. I didn’t go any closer than a hundred yards. But I saw them clearly. Little halffoot beings, dancing and singing.”

  For a moment his eyes shone, as though he had witnessed a sight beautiful beyond telling. Then his voice became flat, practical.

  “Fairies, pixies, sprites, kobolds, elves, brownies—they’ve been called in legend, and accredited with supernatural powers. Actually, of course, they’re simply a race of flesh-and-blood beings of miniature size, as Dr. Bolton claimed. Homo minutiae! Undoubtedly they spring from the same ancestral stock as man, apes, and all sub-men, during evolution. This is the discovery of the century, in science!”

  Harvey had listened without interruption. “Another drink?” he offered. “You’re still shivering. You don’t want to catch pneumonia.”

  Wilson gulped it down eagerly. “I lay there for three hours, watching. Forgot how cold and damp it was. It was a wonderful sight, in a way, the Dance of the Fairies—”

  Harvey’s eyes were glowing. “I’d like to see it myself!”

  “You will,” Wilson promised, warmed by the liquor. “We’ll capture as many as we can. Everybody will see them. Great scientific discovery, you know.”

  “Certainly is,” Harvey agreed. He turned to his wife, who was regarding him queerly. “See, Mary? I told you they existed. Great scientific discovery. I’ll drink to that, Wilson. Bottoms up!” Harvey’s red head went back as he tossed down the drink.

  . . . Outside the window, another red head went back, in shock. Aldic and Boro, listening, stared bleakly at each other. Not only were their people in danger, but their friend had betrayed them . . .

  Mary had been staring at her husband, her eyes questioning. Suddenly she spun about and retired to the bedroom, slamming the door.

  “Don’t mind her,” Harvey grinned. “Tell me more about those little scamps. Here—another drink. This doesn’t happen every day!”

  AN hour later, Wilson rose unsteadily to his feet. “Gotta go now. Tell th’ others.” His speech was thick.

  “I’ll drive you,” volunteered Harvey. He was staggering too. But once in the car, he gripped the steering-wheel firmly.

  He returned an hour later.

  Mary met him in a cold fury. “Jim, how could you? Drinking to that, when only a moment before the Little People had—oh, you beast!”

  Harvey took her in his arms, laughing. “I flipped most of my drinks into the fire.” His face became grave. “There aren’t any Little People, Mary.”

  She star
ed at him, ready to scream.

  “Listen,” he told her. “Wilson was dead drunk when we arrived at their camp. He babbled over and over about the Little People. I told Petrie and Zeller to leave with him immediately—before he lost his mind. Told them Wilson barged in on us last night, shivering from hours of useless search. We had drinks. Wilson soon got to seeing elves, I said, dancing out in our yard. Petrie looked disgustedly at the babbling Wilson. When I left, they were packing to leave. You see, Mary? There are no Little People. Wilson will never be believed!”

  “You darling!” Mary nearly squeezed his breath out. “But Wilson can’t be fooled. He’ll come back eventually—”

  “He won’t find them. I’ve gained enough time. Wilson told me exactly where to find the Little People. I’m going to warn them to move—tonight.”

  “It’s the least we can do,” Mary agreed, holding out the money. “For this. But Jim, is it right? Where did this money come from?”

  “There’s no way in the world we could ever find out, unless the Little Folk tell,” Harvey said slowly. “They’ll never know what this means to us—and we, for our part, can be certain that no injustice has been practiced on anyone through this, no matter how queer it may seem to us.”

  There was a happy grin under another thatch of red hair, just outside the window, as Aldic and Boro slid down the vines and scampered off toward the village. But wearied of their travels, they first curled to sleep in a squirrel-hollow, and approached the village at dusk.

  CHAPTER XI

  Migration

  “ZUTHO will be angry with us,” Aldic. warned. “And as for Teena—” He smiled faintly and glanced at the suddenly embarrassed Boro. “But look! There she comes—”

  They had reached the dancing glade, and Teena was already flying from among the young people. “Eyoo! Aldic and Boro! You are back safely!”

  She stopped before them, and her expression changed from gladness to sudden shyness. She was lovely, with her spun-silver hair and long-lashed eyes turned to the ground.

  “Yes, we are back,” Boro cried boastfully. “We have had a great adventure. We took money from right under the Big Ones’ noses. We—” He abruptly broke off, and went on in changed, sincere tones. “Not we—Aldic. It is all to his credit, for conceiving and leading a venture that will live long in our people’s memory.”

  “Where is Boro the Braggart?” laughed Aldic. “Take him, Teena. I know you choose him. You have loved him all the time, save that he was such a braggart. Now I have brought back a new Boro.”

  Aldic reached under his shirt and plucked forth a gleaming golden wedding ring, taken from the Big One who had taken her vows so lightly she didn’t wear it. Aldic slipped it on Teena’s arm, where it shone in beautiful contrast to her silvery hair.

  With a little cry of happiness, Teena ran to Boro’s arms.

  Aldic turned away with a smile, and saw old Zutho hobbling up as fast as he could. He waved his gnarled cane before the two young stalwarts.

  “You have broken the First Law! Perhaps you have been seen, and we will have to migrate—”

  Aldic nodded. “You must move to a new home immediately, deeper in the wildwood.”

  “I knew it!” raged Zutho, pounding his cane on the ground. “You must be punished. I sentence you, Aldic and Boro—”

  “Wait, Father, before you say it.” Aldic went on, telling the full story, and all realized that except for the efforts of the Big One with red hair, they might this day be caught.

  “Well,” old Zutho muttered, “you must still be punished, in some way. I forbid you to eat in our company for a moon. I forbid you—”

  Aldic smiled peculiarly. “You forbid your—king?”

  “King?” Zutho gasped. He stared for a long moment, at the tall, impressive young man, in dawning understanding. “Then your name is generic. You are the direct descendant of Aldic, ancient king of all the Little Folk!”

  Zutho bowed his white head, and all the tribe likewise, in the tiny moonlit glade.

  “Raise your heads, my people,” Aldic commanded softly. “I am king, but only an uncrowned king. I have wandered from tribe to tribe, over Earth, seeing that all my people are well. So did my father, and his father before him. The Big Ones have become too numerous, and too scientific, to allow better contact. And so it must be—perhaps forever.”

  There was silence in the glade, between this monarch and his scattered driven people.

  “I will leave you now,” Aldic said, at their mute query. “There is a tribe in the Ozarks, whom I must visit.”

  Then his voice rose in a merry shout. “Look! The red-headed Big One comes, and his mate. Let us have one more dance, in this glade, for them to see!”

  Just before the cold dawn, the moon peered down into an empty glade through which the wind sighed as though in memory of the Little Ones who would no longer dance here, but had gone on . . .

  MEMOS ON MERCURY

  Ace Newsman Wyrick Unearths Injustice on the Hottest Planet—nd Nearly Gets Himself Frozen Off His Paper!

  HISTORY is generally the process of adding one trivial event to another trivial event, until something big breaks. And often it starts with a small matter like the following radiogram:

  Kranto, Twilight Territory, Mercury

  Interworld Radiograph Service

  May 22, 2061. Noon.

  Charles H. Brown

  Managing Editor

  Multiplaneteer News

  New York City, Earth

  Bonskosk, Chief:

  Which, in the local patois means Good morning, Hello, Howdy, Cheerio, Have-a-Drink, How’s-your-liver . . . Take your pick, Chief. The natives have only two hundred basic terms—grunts would be more descriptive—to take care of all their lingual needs.

  Well, Chief, this is your Extraterra Correspondent reporting from Kranto’s ritziest hotel, supposedly air-conditioned.

  “Just like on Earth,” says the manager. I don’t think he’s ever been on Earth.

  Kranto lies in the middle of the narrow ten-mile strip running around the planet, in which conditions are halfway between. When the wind blows from the night-side, the temperature dips thirty degrees in ten minutes—enough to make false teeth on the table chatter, like the old guy’s in the next room. When the Hot Winds have their turn, man, it feels like you’re stoking coal in the Sahara.

  So here I am, sitting at my typewriter, my fingers purple-cold one minute, my chin dripping like a spigot the next.

  “Just like on Earth!” Ransmurl!

  Which is a Mercurian cuss-word that covers all the cuss-words in the Milky Way galaxy and ten others. But what the devil, never let it be said Aston Wyrick balked at personal discomfort.

  “Get the news!” That’s the good old slogan our ilk has followed since the first scoop-hound, back in the early twentieth century, chased a fire-truck.

  IT took me three days to get acclimated. Don’t squawk, Chief. I wrote some stuff you can use in the Poet’s Corner. I took the regular sight-seeing tour the fourth day with the others in our party, to the famous mines. They put you in a fairly decent asbestos sealed-suit, whisk you there by monorail, and put you under a liquid-air spray every hour.

  Did I say something about heat before? The mines are about five miles from Twilight Territory, right at the edge of Hades itself. Surface temperature 267 degrees Centigrade. Sun’s so bright you can’t look up, even through the smoke-glass visor. And don’t step in puddles, they warn you. It’s not water or mercury—it’s molten lead, oozing out of the rocks from below!

  The mines are cool, only 95 degrees (203 Fahrenheit, of course). To the leather-skinned natives, it is cool. I hear they shave by rolling a red-hot iron across their chins. I gave one of them a drink of brandy—medicinal brandy, Chief—and darned if he didn’t shiver. He gave me a taste of some native stuff. If I’d taken a real swallow, my brother on Earth would have got drunk.

  Anyhow, it’s a grand thing, this great network of mines, which is the industry Mercury
is most noted for. As the guide explained, eighty-seven per cent of the System’s metal supplies come from the Mercurian mines. Most of it is found in virgin form on this unweathered world. Since its cooling, no extensive seas or atmosphere dissolved or jumbled it all up as on the other planets.

  There’s a deposit of tin that they haven’t found the end of yet, though they’ve bored ten miles. Further details in my official report, coming to you later by radio-cable. You have no idea how tremendous the industry is, Chief. Wait till you see my radioed pix.

  Here’s another item I just got from Orby. In the last forty years, Mercury has shipped ten times more gold to Earth than Earth ever had.

  By the way, guess who’s here on Mercury? Doctor Ronson Halbert, late of Earth! The same guy who was exiled for the atomic explosion that blew up half of the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. He has some official capacity here. I’ll check him further.

  Will click off now before you have a stroke over the cost of this by radiograph. Rick.

  THEN, of course, we find the second trivial event added to the first:

  Aston Wyrick

  Kranto, T.T., Mercury

  May 22. Midnight

  Dear Rick:

  You crazy fool, stop sending me drivel. I want something printable. I want a story. I want human interest. Who cares how much manganese ore was shipped where and when, or how many new shafts the Mercury Development Commission opened in the past ten or a million years?

  I know what you did. You just copied off some company propaganda about the mines. And the rest of the time you loafed around, writing poetry.

  You’re on a planetary tour, revealing to our millions of readers the life on other worlds. Life, understand? Get going. It’s only because you used to be the ace newsman on our staff that I’m not firing you this second. But auld lang syne can’t last forever. Get me?