The Best of Leigh Brackett

by Leigh Brackett

  “Now wait a minute,” said Matt. He pushed Barbie back. “Wait just a minute. Fred, are you sure about this thing? Is he safe? I don’t want the kids bitten, or catching anything.”

  “Beside him,” said Fred, “a rabbit is dangerous. The tweeners have had no enemies for so long they’ve forgotten how to fight, and they haven’t yet acquired any fear of man. I’ve pulled ‘em out of their burrows with my bare hands.”

  He reached into the box and lifted the creature gently, clucking to it. “Anyway, this one has been a pet all his life. I picked him especially because of that. He’s acclimated to warmer temperatures and approximately Earth-normal atmosphere, from living in a Base hut, and I thought he’d stand the shock of transplanting better.” He held the tweener out. “Here, you take him, Matt. You and Lucille. Set your minds at rest.”

  Matt hesitated, and then received the tweener into his hands. It felt like—well, like an animal. Like any small animal you might pick up. Warm, very thick-furred, perhaps more slight in the bone and light in the muscle than he had expected. It had no tail. Its hind legs were not at all rabbit-like, and its forelegs were longer than he had thought. It placed a paw on his arm, a curious paw with three strong fingers and a thumb, and lifted its head, sniffing. The sunlight was brighter here, falling in a shaft between the branches, and the tweener’s eyes were almost shut, giving it a look of sleepy imbecility. Matt stroked it awkwardly, once or twice, and it rubbed its head against his arm. Matt shivered. “That soft fur,” he said. “It tickles, sort of. Want him, Lucille?”

  She looked sternly at Fred. “No germs?”

  “No germs.”

  “All right.” She took the tweener the way she would have taken a cat, holding him up under the forelegs and looking him over while he dangled, limp and patient. Finally she smiled. “He’s cute. I think I’m going to like him.” She set him carefully on his feet in the green grass. “All right, you kids. And be careful you don’t hurt him.”

  Once more Josh and Barbie were speechless, if not silent. They lay on the ground and touched and patted and peered and took turns holding, and the ragged fringe of small bodies on the fence dripped and flowed inward until the yard was full of children and the stranger from Mars was hidden out of sight.

  “Kids,” said Fred, and laughed. “It’s nice to see them again. And normal people.”

  “What do you mean, normal?”

  Fred said wryly, “I had to be doctor and psychiatrist. I’ve had xenophobes crawling all over me for ten long months.”

  “Xeno—what?” asked Lucille.

  “A two-dollar word for men who fear the unknown. When chaps got to worrying too much about what was over the horizon, they were dumped on me. But the heck with that. Take me somewhere cool and drown me in beer.”

  It was a long hot afternoon, and a long hot evening, and they belonged mostly to Fred. To the children he seemed ten feet high and shining with the hero-light. To the neighbors who dropped in to say hello, he was a man who had actually visited a place they still did not quite believe in.

  The children, the whole gaggle of them, hunkered in a circle around the chairs that had been dragged to the coolest spot in the yard.

  “Is it like in the books, Uncle Fred? Is it?”

  Fred groaned, and pointed to the tweener in Barbie’s arms. “Get him to tell you. He knows better than I do.”

  “Of course he does,” said Barbie; “John Carter knows everything. But—”

  “Who?” asked Fred.

  “John Carter. John Carter of Mars.”

  Fred laughed. “Good. That’s a good name. You get it, don’t you, Matt? Remember all those wonderful Edgar Rice Burroughs stories about the Warlord of Mars, and the Swordsman of Mars, and the Gods of Mars?”

  “Sure,” said Matt, rather sourly. “The kids read ‘em all the time. John Carter is the hero, the kind with a capital H.” He turned to the children. “But John Carter was an Earthman, who went to Mars.”

  “Well,” said Josh, scornfully impatient of adult illogic, “he’s a Martian who came to Earth. It’s the same thing. Isn’t it, Uncle Fred?”

  “You might say that, like the other John Carter, he’s a citizen of two worlds.”

  “Yes,” said Barbie. “But anyway, we can’t understand his language yet, so you’ll have to tell us about Mars.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Fred, and he told them about Mars, about the dark canals and the ruined cities, about the ancient towers standing white and lonely under the twin moons, about beautiful princesses and wicked kings and mighty swordsmen. And after they had gone away again to play with John Carter, Matt shook his head and said, “You ought to be ashamed, filling their heads up with that stuff.”

  Fred grinned. “Time enough for reality when they grow up.”

  It got later, and the night closed in. Neighbors came and went. The extra children disappeared. It grew quiet, and finally there was no one left but the Winslows and Fred. Matt went inside to the kitchen for more beer.

  From somewhere in the remote darkness beyond the open windows, Barbie screamed.

  The can he was opening fell out of Matt’s hand, making a geyser of foam where it hit the floor. “If that little—” he said, and did not stop to finish the sentence. He ran out the kitchen door.

  Fred and Lucille had jumped up. Barbie’s shrieks were coming from the foot of the lot, where the garage was, and now Matt could hear Josh yelling. He ran across the lawn and onto the drive. Lucille was behind him, calling, “Barbie! Josh! What is it?”

  In the dim reflection of light from the house, Matt could make out the small figure of Josh bent over and tugging frantically at the handle of the overhead door, which was closed tight. “Help!” he panted. “It’s stuck, or something.”

  Matt brushed him aside. Beyond the door, in the dark garage, Barbie was still screaming. Matt took hold of the handle and heaved.

  It was jammed, but not so badly that his greater strength could not force it up. It slid, clicking and grumbling, into place, and Matt rushed into the opening.

  Barbie was standing just inside, her mouth stretched over another scream, her cheeks running streams of tears. John Carter was beside her. He was standing on his hind legs, almost erect, and the fingers of one forepaw were gripped tightly around Barbie’s thumb. His eyes were wide open. In the kindly night there was no hot glare to bother them, and they looked out, green-gold and very, very bright. Something rose up into Matt’s throat and closed it. He reached out, and Barbie shook off John Carter’s grip and flung herself into Matt’s arms.

  “Oh, Daddy, it was so dark and Josh couldn’t get the door open—”

  Josh came in and picked up John Carter. “Aw, girls,” he said, quite scornful now that the emergency was over. “Just because she gets stuck in the garage for a few minutes, she has to have hysterics.”

  “What in the world were you doing?” Lucille demanded weakly, feeling Barbie all over.

  “Just playing,” said Josh, sulking. “How should I know the old door wouldn’t work?”

  “She’s okay,” Fred said. “Just scared.”

  Lucille groaned deeply. “And they wonder why mothers turn gray at an early age. All right, you two, off to bed. Scoot!”

  Josh started toward the house with Barbie, still clutching John Carter.

  “Oh, no,” said Matt. “You’re not taking that thing to bed with you.” He caught John Carter by the loose skin of his shoulders and pulled him out of the boy’s arms. Josh spun around, all ready to make trouble about it, and Fred said smoothly, “I’ll take him.”

  He did, holding him more gently than Matt. “Your father’s right, Josh. No pets in the bedroom. And anyway, John Carter wouldn’t be comfortable there. He likes a nice cool place where he can dig his own house and make the rooms just to suit him.”

  “Like a catacomb?” asked Barbie, in a voice still damp and tremulous.

  “Or a cave?” asked Josh.

  “Exactly. Now you run along, and your father and
I will fix him up.”

  “Well,” said Josh. “Okay.” He held out a finger and John Carter wrapped a paw around it. Josh shook hands solemnly. “Good night.” Then he looked up. “Uncle Fred, if he digs like a wood-chuck, how come his front feet are like a monkey’s?”

  “Because,” said Fred, “he didn’t start out to be a digger. And he is much more like an ape than a woodchuck. But there haven’t been any trees in his country for a long time, and he had to take to the ground anyway to keep warm. That’s what we call adaptation.” He turned to Matt. “How about the old root cellar? It’d be ideal for him, if you’re still not using it for anything.”

  “No,” said Matt slowly. “I’m not using it.” He looked at John Carter in the dim light from the house, and John Carter looked back at him with those bright unearthly eyes.

  Matt put a hand up to his head, aware that it had begun to ache. “My sinus is kicking up—probably going to rain tomorrow. I think I’ll turn in myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “Go ahead, honey,” Lucille said. I’ll help Fred with the tweener.”

  Matt took two aspirin on top of his beer, which made him feel no better, and retired into a heavy sleep, through which stalked dark and unfamiliar dreams that would not show their faces.

  The next day was Sunday. It did not rain, but Matt’s head went on aching.

  “Are you sure it’s your sinus?” Lucille asked.

  “Oh, yes. All in the right side, frontal and maxillary. Even my teeth hurt.”

  “Hm,” said Fred. “Don’t ever go to Mars. Sinusitis is an occupational hazard there, in spite of oxygen masks. Something about the difference in pressure that raises hob with terrestrial insides. Why, do you know—”

  “No,” said Matt sourly, “and I don’t want to know. Save your gruesome stories for your medical conference.”

  Fred winced. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned that. I hate the thought of New York in this kind of weather. Damn it, it’s cruelty to animals. And speaking of which—” he turned to Josh and Barbie—“keep John Carter in the cellar until this heat wave breaks. At least it’s fairly cool down there. Remember he wasn’t built for this climate, nor for this world. Give him a break.”

  “Oh, we will,” said Barbie earnestly. “Besides, he’s busy, building his castle. You ought to see the wall he’s making around it.”

  Working slowly, resting often, John Carter had begun the construction of an elaborate burrow in the soft floor of the old root cellar. They went down and watched him from time to time, bringing up earth and then patting and shaping it with his clever paws into a neat rampart to protect his front door. “To deflect wind and sand,” Fred said, and Barbie, watching with fascinated eyes, murmured, “I’ll bet he could build anything he wanted to, if he was big enough.”

  “Maybe. Matter of fact, he probably was a good bit bigger once, a long time ago when things weren’t so tough. But—”

  “As big as me?” asked Josh.

  “Possibly. But if he built anything then we haven’t been able to find it. Or anything at all that anybody built. Except, of course,” he added hastily, “those cities I was telling you about.”

  The heat wave broke that night in a burst of savage line-squalls. “That’s what my head was complaining about,” thought Matt, rousing up to blink at the lightning. And then he slept again, and dreamed, dim sad dreams of loss and yearning. In the morning his head still ached.

  Fred went down to New York for his conference. Matt went to the office and stewed, finding it hard to keep his mind on his work with the nagging pain in the side of his skull. He began to worry. He had never had a bout go on this long. He fidgeted more and more as the day wore on, and then hurried home oppressed by a vague unease that he could find no foundation for.

  “All right?” Lucille echoed. “Of course everything’s all right. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. The kids—?”

  “They’ve been playing Martian all day. Matt, I’ve never seen them so tickled with anything in their lives as they are with that little beastie. And he’s so cute and patient with them. Come here a minute.”

  She led him to the door of the children’s room, and pointed in. Josh and Barbie arrayed in striped beach towels and some of Lucille’s junkier costume jewelry, were engaged in a complicated ritual that involved much posturing and waving of wooden swords. In the center of the room enthroned on a chair, John Carter sat. He had a length of bright cloth wrapped around him and a gold bracelet on his neck. He sat perfectly still, watching the children with his usual half-lidded stare, and Matt said harshly, “It isn’t right.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Any ordinary animal wouldn’t stand for it. Look at him, just squatting there like a—” He hunted for a word and couldn’t find it.

  “The gravity,” Lucille reminded him. “He hardly moves at all, poor little thing. And it seems quite hard for him to breathe.”

  Josh and Barbie knelt side by side in front of the throne, holding their swords high in the air. “Kaor!” they cried to John Carter, and then Josh stood up again and began to talk in gibberish, but respectfully, as though addressing a king.

  “That’s Martian,” said Lucille, and winked at Matt. “Sometimes you’d swear they were actually speaking a language. Come on and stretch out on the couch a while, honey, why don’t you? You look tired.”

  “I am tired,” he said. “And I—” He stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” No, nothing at all. He lay down on the couch. Lucille went into the kitchen. He could hear her moving about, making the usual noises. Faintly, far off, he heard the children’s voices. Sometimes you’d swear they were actually speaking a language. Sometimes you’d swear—No. No you wouldn’t. You know what is, and what isn’t. Even the kids know.

  He dozed, and the children’s voices crept into his dream. They spoke in the thin and icy wind and murmured in the dust that blew beneath it, and there was no doubt at all now that they were speaking a tongue they knew and understood. He called to them, but they did not answer, and he knew that they did not want to answer, that they were hiding from him somewhere among the ridges of red sand that flowed and shifted so that there was never a trail or a landmark. He ran among the dunes, shouting their names, and then there was a tumble of ancient rock where a mountain had died, and a hollow place below it with a tinge of green around a meager pool. He knew that they were there in that hollow place. He raced toward it, racing the night that deepened out of a sky already dark and flecked with stars, and in the dusk a shape rose up and blocked his way. It bore in its right hand a blade of grass—no, a sword. A sword, and its face was shadowed, but its eyes looked out at him, green-gold and bright and not of the Earth—

  “For heaven’s sake, Matt—wake up!” Lucille was shaking him. He sprang up, still in the grip of his dream, and saw Josh and Barbie standing on the other side of the room. They had their ordinary clothes on, and they were grinning, and Barbie said, “How can you have a nightmare when it’s still daytime?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucille, “but it must have been a dandy. Come on Matt, and get your dinner, before the neighbors decide I’m beating you.”

  “Other people’s nightmares,” Matt snarled, “are always so funny. Where’s John Carter?”

  “Oh, we put him back down cellar,” Josh said, quite unconcerned. “Mom, will you get him some more lettuce tomorrow? He sure goes for it.”

  Feeling shamefaced and a little sick, Matt sat down and ate his dinner. He did not enjoy it. Nor did he sleep well that night, starting up more than once from the verge of an ugly dream. Next day Gulf Tropical had come in again worse than before, and his head had not stopped aching.

  He went to his doctor, who could find no sign of infection but gave him a shot on general principles. He went to his office, but it was only a gesture. He returned home at noon on a two-day sick leave. The temperature had crept up to ninety and the humidity dripped out of the air in sharp crashing showers.


  “I’ll bet Fred’s suffering in New York,” Lucille said. “And poor John Carter! I haven’t let the kids take him out of the cellar at all.”

  “Do you know what he did, Daddy?” Barbie said. “Josh found it this morning after you left.”

  “What?” asked Matt, with an edge in his voice.

  “A hole,” said Josh. “He must’ve tunneled right under the foundation. It was in the lawn, just outside where the root cellar is. I guess he’s used to having a back door to his castle, but I filled it in. I filled it real good and put a great big stone on top.”

  Matt relaxed. “He’ll only dig another.”

  Barbie shook her head. “He better not. I told him what would happen if he did, how a big dog might kill him, or he might get lost and never find his way home again.”

  “Poor little tyke,” Lucille said. “He’ll never find his home again.”

  “Oh, the hell with him,” Matt said angrily. “Couldn’t you waste a little sympathy on me? I feel lousy.”

  He went upstairs away from them and tried to lie down, but the room was a sweat-box. He tossed and groaned and came down again, and Lucille fixed him iced lemonade. He sat in the shade on the back porch and drank it. It hit his stomach cold and sour-sweet and it tied him in knots, and he got up to pace the lawn. The heat weighed and dragged at him. His head throbbed and his knees felt weak. He passed the place where Josh had filled in the new tunnel, and from the cellar window he heard the children’s voices. He turned around and stamped back into the house.

  “What are you doing down there?” he shouted, through the open cellar door.

  Barbie’s answer came muffled and hollow from the gloom below. “We brought John Carter some ice to lick on, but he won’t come out.” She began to talk in a different tone, softly, crooning, calling. Matt said, “Come up out of there before you catch cold!”