_children_...."
This was new to her.
"... Children...?"
"Yes! And they're horrible things, really. Must be raised on pablumand formulas and things like that. _Formulas._ Sounds mechanical. No,Sally, my pet. I'll think of something else. Something which will notrequire so much work...."
It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the instant he said it.
"_Work!_" she yelped. "So that's what's troubling you. Too much workyou say. And what is occupying your time now? Have you even so much asgone to the forest of Evil Contractions to capture a giant in the pastsix months? Not you! You're satisfied with the way things are. Youwouldn't give a hang if I died of boredom. And when I ask forsomething like a torture party, all you can say is, it's too muchwork."
She started to cry. And after all she had seven pairs of eyes to shedtears from. It was the biggest crying jag since the invasion fromspace a millenium before when the invaders used tear gas....
Hiah-Leugh threw up all the arms he could spare and shouted:
"Okay. _OKAY!_ I'll call a meeting of the Council and we'll plansomething."
* * * * *
"The situation is this," Hiah-Leugh said in opening the meeting, "wemust (get the) right to work and bring some humans up here."
The assembled B. E. M's. stopped looking bored at the words. They hadwondered why their chieftan had called the meeting. Now they knew. Oneafter the other they repeated the words as if they couldn't believetheir senses. Humans! Here on Planet XYZ268PDQ.
"But mighty chief," one of them said in objection. "Do you realizewhat you're asking of us?"
Another said:
"How, when...?"
And a third asked:
"Who?"
"Our scientists, that's who," Hiah-Leugh answered. "What the heck wegot them for anyway? Seems all they do is sleep. Let them wake up andto work."
But the oldest and wisest of them said:
"Why can't we be normal monsters and not act like we're expected to?Isn't peace enough for us? Must we look for trouble?"
But their chieftan knew there was no turning back. Not if he wantedpeace. And knowing Sally Patica, he also knew there would be no peacefor him until he brought some humans up for torture.
"Let them construct space ships, terrible weapons of war, plagues andall the necessary adjuncts to planetary invasion. Let them prepare forthe holocaust," Hiah-Leugh shouted, drowning out the others.
But it was the youngest, a mere youth of ten thousand years, uponwhose head but a single eye showed, who pointed out the path. He wasalready bored with this meeting; besides, he had but fallen in lovethe day before and wanted to get back to his amorata.
"Why all this fuss?" he asked. "What's more, we don't have scientists,or mathematicians, or warriors. If the giants weren't so stupid we'dnever capture them. So let's stop this foolishness, this dreaming...."
That was the clue. After all, Hiah-Leugh hadn't been made chief of allthe Gomans for nothing. He proved his right to the leadership then.
"That's it!" he said. "The artists and writers of the human world havemade monsters of us, even though we can't do any of the things theypretend we can. There is but a single attribute we possess which theyhave said we do. We can project ourselves through space and time. Solet us to the Earth, and pluck one or two of these humans, and if Imay offer a suggestion, let us take a writer and artist from amongthem and bring them back with us...."
* * * * *
Harry Zmilch, writer-extraordinary of science-fiction, passed wearyfingers across a furrowed brow. A few feet to the rear of the desk atwhich Zmilch labored stood the drawing board of Jack Gangreneyellow,the artist. He too paused in his labors. At one and the same instantthey turned and regarded each other with solemn, staring eyes.
"No use, Joe," Harry said. "I can't do it. I've beaten my brain untilit refuses to function. I keep typing the same word over and overagain ... nuts ... nuts!... Bug-eyed monsters! There aren't suchthings. My imagination just can't bring them to paper."
"Nor can mine to the board," Jack said.
"Still it's easier for you," Harry said. "All you've got to do is drawa spider or huge bug of sorts, put a man and woman somewhere in thedrawing, make the woman appear as if she'd lost half her clothes in astruggle, and you've got your piece. With me it's different."
Gangreneyellow snorted. This character, he thought, knew as little ofart and the difficulties of composition as the next guy.
"That's what you think," he retorted. "All you guys have to do is_imagine_ a monster, have a man and woman placed in peril by themonster's presence and you've got a story. With us it's different...."
Zmilch was half-turned, facing his friend across the width of oneshoulder. At the other's words, Zmilch turned all the way, got up fromhis chair and strolled to the board on which a drawing in full colorwas in its last stages. The drawing depicted a jungle scene. In theforeground a man and woman stood in petrified stance, the man's armaround the woman's shoulders. He was dressed for safari, pith helmet,breeches, boots, open shirt and all. The woman looked like she'd spentall her life in the jungle. She wore a leopard skin draped becominglyto show the greater part of her charms. They were in semiprofile sothat the artist could depict the terror on their faces. And full inthe center of the drawing was an immense web stretched between theboles of two jungle giants. Descending the web was a gigantic bug, orspider, the artist had not detailed it too well.
"I thought you said you were finding it hard to do?" Zmilch asked."Why you've just about finished it."
Gangreneyellow, not to be outdone by his friend, walked over to theother's desk and read aloud from the author's manuscript:
"'... Tom Brighteyes knew he hadn't the smallest chance of escaping.The hordes of Micro Ambrosia were but a short way off. Ahead the GreatSwamp blocked any chances of escape for him and the Leopard Girl.Their doom was sealed. He turned to her and said:
"Leopard Girl, I love you. I know. I'm from another world, a worldwhere men and women are not the same as this. Oh, I don't mean theoutward man and woman, but the inward. This is a savage world, a worldwhere both men and women have to struggle to exist against terrifyingodds. Horrible beasts, terrible insects, and natural phenomena makethis place a nightmare of existence. But here I found love and perhapsdeath. I am not sorry I came."
"Tom Brighteyes," the girl turned to him and drew close. "I love youtoo. I think I felt love from the first instant I saw you, backedagainst a tree, with your puny weapons facing Hogo the Mogo, king ofall the swampland. Hogo the Mogo used to eat guys like you forbreakfast. Yet you drew a cigarette from a silver, enamel case uponwhose shining face a small chaste crest revealed your excellent tastein such things, and while Hogo the Mogo slavered his hate in yourface, you drew a king's size, Exhilirato from the case and lit it witha nonchalance that took my breath away...."
"What the heck are you complaining about?" Gangreneyellow asked."You're not doing so badly yourself."
"Yeah," said a strange voice. "Neither of you are doing badly.Everything is just horrible, isn't it? The B. E. M's. march acrossyour pages and drawing boards with assembly-line facility. But haveeither of you two had any feelings for us?"
The two men turned startled and terrified faces in the direction ofthe mysterious voice. They could see nothing. Yet they could feel theimpalpable presence of some strange being in this very room with them.Suddenly they became aware of a strange fog emanating from one wall.It swept closer drawing them into its greasy folds. The voice seemedto come from the very heart of this fog:
"... Well, perhaps things will be different soon...?"
Then the fog enveloped them completely, and their senses fled fromthem....
* * * * *
It was an odd sort of voice, mellow, fluid, yet holding accents ofanger in its even flow:
"Both of you complained you couldn't imagine this. So we brought youhere to prove its existence."
> The writer and artist opened their eyes and the fog in which they'dbeen bound was no longer there. They were in an immense chamber whosevaulted ceiling extended for a full hundred feet in the air and seemedsuspended by slender strings, so tenuous were the web-like supports,so fragile were the arches. They were standing before a tremendoustable whose semi-circular length might have been fifty feet from oneend to the other. And seated at the table were the most horrifyingmonsters they had ever seen.
There was one, a huge beetle-like thing with two heads and a scalybody and four pairs of pincers extending
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