Once I saw wave after wave of planes, so many that they darkened the sky, far out in the direction of the ocean moving toward the city; and a host of planes arising from here, going out to meet them; and a brief, but lurid and devastating battle in which planes fell like leaves in the wind; and some planes triumphantly returning, I know not which ones . . .
But all that was very long ago, and it matters not to me. My daily parcels of food continue to come down the pendulum stem; I suspect that it has become a sort of ritual, and the inhabitants of the city, whoever they are now, have long since forgotten the legend of why I was encased here. My little world continues to swing in its arc, and I continue to observe the puny little creatures out there who blunder through their brief span of life.
Already I have outlived generations! Now I want to outlive the very last one of them! I shall!
. . . another thing, too, I have noticed. The attendants who daily drop the parcels of food for me, and vacuum out the cell, are robots! Square, clumsy, ponderous and four-limbed things—unmistakably metal robots, only vaguely human in shape.
... I begin to see more and more of these clumsy robots about the city. Oh, yes, humans too—but they only come on sightseeing tours and pleasure jaunts now; they live, for the most part, in luxury high among the towering buildings. Only the robots occupy the lower level now, doing all the menial and mechanical tasks necessary to the operation of the city. This, I suppose, is progress as these self-centered beings have willed it.
. . . robots are becoming more complicated, last words. Years ... I know not how many more human in shape and movements . . . and more numerous . . . uncanny ... I have a premonition . . .
(Later): It has come! I knew it! Vast, surging activity out there . . . the humans, soft from an aeon of luxury and idleness could not even escape . . . those who tried in their rocket planes were brought down by the pale, rosy electronic beams of the robots . . . others of the humans, more daring or desperate, tried to sweep low over the central robot base and drop thermite bombs—but the robots had erected an electronic barrier which hurled the bombs back among the planes, causing inestimable havoc . . .
The revolt was brief, but inevitably successful. I suspect that all human life except mine has been swept from the earth. I begin to see, now, how cunningly the robots devised it.
The humans had gone forward recklessly and blindly to achieve their Utopia; they had designed their robots with more and more intricacy, more and more finesse, until the great day when they were able to leave the entire operation of the city to the robots—under the guidance perhaps of one or two humans. But somewhere, somehow, one of those robots was imbued with a spark of intelligence; it began to think, slowly but precisely; it began to add unto itself, perhaps secretly; until finally it had evolved itself into a terribly efficient unit of inspired intelligence, a central mechanical Brain which planned this revolt.
At least, so I pictured it. Only the robots are left now—but very intelligent robots. A group of them came yesterday and stood before my swinging pendulum and seemed to confer among themselves. They surely must recognize me as one of the humans, the last one left. Do they plan to destroy me too?
No. I must have become a legend, even among the robots. My pendulum still swings. They have now encased the operating mechanism beneath a protective glassite dome. They have erected a device whereby my daily parcel of food is dropped to me mechanically. They no longer come near me; they seem to have forgotten me.
This infuriates me! Well, I shall outlast them too! After all, they are but products of the human brain ... I shall outlast everything even remotely human! I swear it! To that end, I shall exert all my knowledge!
(Much later): Is this really the end? / have seen the end of the reign of the robots! Yesterday, just as the sun was crimsoning in the west. I perceived the hordes of things that came swarming out of space, expanding in the heavens . . . alien creatures fluttering down, great gelatinous masses of black that clustered thickly over everything . . .
I saw the robot rocket planes crisscrossing the sky on pillars of scarlet flame, blasting into the black masses with their electronic beams—but the alien things were unperturbed and unaffected! Closer and closer they pressed to earth, until the robot rockets began to dart helplessly for shelter.
To no avail. The silvery robot ships began crashing to earth in ghastly devastation.
And the black gelatinous masses came ever closer, to spread over the earth, to crumble the city and corrode all exposed metal.
Except my pendulum. They came dripping darkly down over it, over the glassite dome which protects the whirring wheels and roaring bowels of the mechanism. The city has crumbled, the robots are destroyed, but my pendulum still moves, the only thing in this world now . . . and I know that fact puzzles these alien things and they will not be content until they have stopped it . . .
This all happened yesterday. I am lying very still now, watching them. Most of them are gathering out there over the ruins of the city, preparing to leave—except a few of the black quivering things that are still hanging to my pendulum, almost blotting out the sunlight; and a few more above, near the operating machinery, concentrating those same emanations by which they corroded the robots. They are determined to do a complete job here. I know that in a few minutes they will begin to take effect even through the glassite shield. I shall continue to write until my pendulum stops swinging ... it is happening now. I can feel a peculiar grinding and grating in the coggery above. Soon my tiny glassite world will ease its relentless arc.
I feel now only a fierce elation flaming within me, for after all, this is my victory! I have conquered over the men who planned this punishment for me, and over countless other generations and over the final robots themselves! There is nothing more I desire except annihilation, and I am sure that will come automatically when my pendulum ceases, bringing me to a state of unendurable motionlessness . . .
It is coming now. Those black, gelatinous shapes above are drifting away to join their companions. The mechanism is grinding raucously. My arc is narrowing . . . smaller ... I feel ... so strange . . .
* * *
THE DEVIL OF THE PICURIS by Edwin L. Sabin
* * *
Edwin Legrand Sabin was a historian and novelist, whose excellent knowledge of the West was acknowledged by his contemporaries. Though author of many adult works, he was considered one of America’s superior writers of adventure books for boys, most of which had a basis of historical factuality.
For the first forty years of this century, he was a contributor to the leading adventure pulp magazines and it is from the pages of The Blue Book Magazine, November, 1921 that “The Devil of the Picuris” was obtained. It is set in the old Southwest and Mexico and is a gem of a short story, executed at a very high level of literary quality and infusing the customs and attitudes of the Pueblo Indians into a horror tale made distinctive by the authenticity of its locale.
It was not the first story of fantasy or horror that Edwin L. Sabin had done and it would not be the last. He had not turned to serious writing until he was almost thirty. He was born in Rockford, Illinois, December 23, 1870, but his boyhood was spent in Clinton, Iowa, where his father was superintendent of schools. Clinton was a river town, and there were great similarities between the youthful impressions of Edwin Sabin and Mark Twain.
His writing experience was gained as a newspaperman in Iowa and Illinois, but he shifted to magazine and book work in 1900 and remained a professional writer the rest of his life. His first book was history, The Making of Iowa in 1900, but drawing on his residence and travels in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, and Southern California, the West was to become his metier in later years.
Though short fantasies of his appeared in magazines from time to time, the first hardcover appearance of work in that vein was a collection of extravaganzas and fantasies involving the divot diggers, titled The Magic Mashie and Other Golfish Stories, published in 1902. By far his most popular book of sci
ence-fantasy proved to be The City of the Sun, which appeared in 1924, not long after “The Devil of the Picuris,” and which also has a Mexican setting. In The City of the Sun a legendary lost city of the Aztecs is found, there is the expected sacrifice of the young virgin, and a great serpent which guards the Aztec temple is overcome. The formulae plot and setting is elevated by the quality of Sabin’s writing and his ability to make his setting seem real.
Sabin, when asked what he liked, said: “Fresh air and big spaces.” But he was not naive enough, as “The Devil of the Picuris” underscores, to suppose that the Great Outdoors was synonymous with good and that evil had passed it by.
THE DEVIL OF
THE PICURIS
* * *
by
EDWIN L. SABIN
A year or two ago there customarily sat in a bare little yard of an old-time outskirts adobe of older Santa Fe, New Mexico, an aged, wrinkled señor. All the fairweather days he sat here, huddled in a chair, with a plaid shawl in lieu of a striped serape over his shoulders; and upon many days Indian visitors from the pueblos north or south bore him respectful company.
Frequently marking him, swart, leathery, gray-locked and silent and noting his strange guests, I said to myself: “Here is a venerable with history behind his lips.” So I vented cautious queries in the neighborhood.
“His name?”
“Miguel Garcia, señor.”
“He is very old?”
“Quien sabe? Very old, señor."
“He is an Indian?”
“No, no, señor. He is Spanish.”
“Then why do the Indians visit him so often?”
“Sabe Dios, señor. But he is an old Indian fighter.”
“He must have been a good one,” thought I. “The Indians do him homage even at this late date.” Whereby my curiosity was further piqued, and out of my occasional polite "Buenos dias, sefior,” and felicitation upon the weather, there arrived a day when I might enter the yard and stand uncovered beside his chair. Just in right time, too; for another of his constant visitors shuffled in, looking only straight ahead (as is Indian trait), bringing a quarter of venison wrapped in the hide.
"Como ’sta?” my old man grunted.
“Como ’sta?” The Indian gave me one sharp glance and with that dismissed me. I could see that he was a Pueblo, by virtue of his blanket and white leggins, but was darker, more wiry, more savage in lineaments than the average Pueblo; a very Indian of romance.
He shifted the quarter of deer.
“For the Captain,” he announced.
My old man called with voice of authority:
“Maria! Here!”
An ancient dame scuttled from the house, took the venison superciliously delivered to her, and scuttled back.
“ ’sta bueno," my old man shortly acknowledged.
“Bueno,” the Indian responded. “Adios.”
He went as swiftly as he had come.
“A Pueblo, señor?” I asked.
“Si.”
“Of Taos? Of Tesuque?”
“No, no. Of Picuris.” His tone held testy rebuke, but how was I to know? “Of Picuris where they yet have scalps strung on their roofs. What think you of that?”
“You are an old Indian fighter, I hear, señor.”
“Si si! I have fought them, in my day; the Apache, the Navajo, the Comanche—all.”
“You are an old Indian fighter,” I pursued. “Now the Indians visit you, they bring you gifts, you are called Captain by them. The Picuris Pueblos have not been friendly to the white people. There must be a story.”
“Dios! There is a story.” He meditated, rubbing his grizzled chin. “Asi es. You are an American, but you are civil. Well, some day; maybe some day.”
He was a chronicler not to be hurried; but by dint of salutation and expectancy I at last swung him to an appointment.
At the hour he was not alone. A Pueblo sat upon the ground beside him. The former venison bringer, I opined. And when to my "Muy buenos dias, Señor Capitan,” he fastened his somber hawk eyes upon me, I saw indeed that it was the same stately Pueblo of Picuris.
“You have come to hear the story of the thunder-devil bird?” my old man addressed me, when I had been seated.
“Of the—what, señor?” said I, puzzled. And this put him to cackling; a rare event which apprised me that he was in good humor.
“Oh-ho! What is that, you ask? Not knowing, maybe you will not believe, like all Americans who will not believe that which they do not see.”
“Try me, señor,” I pleaded. “I wish to hear of the thunder-devil bird. You have many years; you were there, and you know.”
“Many years? Santo Dios! I think one hundred. On a cold day I think one thousand,” he grumbled. “Yes, I was there. And that you may believe, I have invited another captain (and he indicated the Indian) whose Christian name is Antonio, to hear also. For I am his godfather and he has received the story from his father who was there when I was there. He is the war captain of the Picuris.”
The Indian looked upon me and I looked upon him; but he was red and I was white, and we had no words to exchange.
“And because you speak my language and have treated me as if I were somebody and not an old simple, I will tell you,” my host proceeded. “Now I must get on with it or I shall have no breath.”
Whereat he huddled more warmly, swathed his withered hands in his shawl, and launched his narrative upon the full strong tide of measured, sonorous Spanish.
It was the second year before the conquest, (he said), and I was then young and active and a buffalo-hunter out of Abiquiu. We traveled far east, twice a year, to hunt the buffalo in the country of the Comanches and to trade the robes and meat with the caravans of the North Americans. All this is nothing, except that it shows I learned to fight the savages.
Well, one night I had a little trouble over a girl at a ball—here in Santa Fe, and the family and friends of the young man made me take to the road. His father was a rico; there were masses for his soul; God no doubt forgave me, but I knew enough to go.
I went to Picuris, and asked the cacique for sanctuary. He ordered me a room of my own. It was with the grandfather of this very Antonio. These tame Indians, as we Spanish call the Pueblos, live comfortably in great houses. They can shut themselves up from their enemies. So here I shut myself up, too, from my enemies; and I became as a son to my new father.
A people very proud and fierce, the Picuris Pueblos; but not many. They numbered only about three hundred. And today—quien sabe? But they were strong in hearts, fine warriors and hunters; their men preferred the bow to the hoe. They have Apache blood. They were different from the other Pueblos, so that between them and even the Taos Pueblo, only two hours by horse, there was scarcely any visiting.
The Pueblos do not like to have their children marry outsiders. But I was told I ought to take a wife, and I married one of my adopted sisters, which was all right. Her Spanish name was Felicia. Her home name was something that means cornsilk. And she had a sacred name given by the Picuris priests, which nobody else knew except her and her mother.
We set up housekeeping. Dios, how proud we were when a baby arrived! Now I was a man in earnest. That did not make me a Picuris, though. True, I might dance with the others in the fiestas, but I was not admitted to the councils. What was said and done in the estufas, the underground chambers of the clans, I had too much sense to ask. When, twice, almost the whole town went away toward the mountains, I was left behind. All I heard, was, that they had gone to pay a visit to the thunder-devil bird. But being Spanish and a Christian I did not care; I laughed to myself at the foolishness of the Picuris.
“What is that thunder-devil bird they go to see?” said I to my little wife.
“Oh, you must not mention it,” said she, looking frightened. “But what is he? Tell me?”
“He is a great bad god. He makes the thunder that can strike us dead.”
“Where does he live?”
�
��On the Sacred Mountain.”
“Did anyone ever see him?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
“Did you ever see him?”
“You must not ask.”
“Did you see him this time when you went away from me, and came back?”
“You must not ask, you must not ask.”
“I have a right to know where my wife goes,” said I.
“No. The priests forbid. It is against the laws. Only the priests may speak of the thunder-devil bird. Please do not force me; and please, please ask nothing of anybody, for it will bring you danger.”
That had been the first time when she had gone, with the others—everybody except the children and a few very old men and women. The second time she did not go, because she was about to be delivered of our baby. And I was glad. That thunder-devil business seemed to make unhappiness among the women. There always were some of them who cried. Under the blessings of God, I thought, my little wife shall never cry.
Then, one day when our baby had about six months, and from the talk that I had pretended not to hear, I knew that the thunder-devil bird time was arrived again; when I came home from the field I found my little wife crying indeed.
“What is the matter with you?” I asked.
“Do not ask me.”
“But I will ask you,” I said. “Are you sick?”
“No, no.”
“Has somebody harmed you?”
“No, no.”
“You are not happy with me?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then don’t sit there crying. Is it the thunder-devil time again?”
“Yes, it is the thunder-devil time again, and I am afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Do not ask me. Your food is ready.”
That was all I could get out of her, except the tears. After I had eaten and had petted our niho, I went out and found my brother Antonio, who was this Antonio’s father.
“Let us walk by the river,” I said. “I have something to say.”
Horrors Unknown Page 22