“Watch this,” said Rennie.
The lamprey lay motionless on the grass for an instant; then it began to move, its snout questing blindly this way and that, while fine tendrils waved like the cilia of a sea anemone. It humped itself and urged forward over the short grass, while the policeman kept the line slack. Meanwhile, another lamprey was being harnessed.
“Their home planet has been declared unfit for colonization because of these brutes,” Rennie informed me. “They have the most keenly developed sense of smell of any known creature, and they seem to have an affinity to human flesh in particular. We have to take the most rigid safeguards when we handle them. They wiped out the first survey party on Altair IV to a man.”
I backed off as the cilia fingered in my direction sniffingly. Then the brute suddenly stiffened, plunged its snout among a tussock of longer grass, and began to tremble with orgiastic intensity. The policeman swung it away and another man dug into the grass, finally withdrawing an old ball-point pen, the object of the lamprey’s interest. It had probably lain half-buried for months, by the look of it. Impressed, I told Rennie that I would be available for any further help he might need, and made my way back to the car.
A scream halted me. I wheeled around. A policeman was beating at his arm, to which was attached a whipping black devil, coiling and twisting, while all the time making the most dreadful low buzzing noise. The man fell, another policeman flung himself down, hacking with a knife at the feeding lamprey. Eighteen inches of severed body came twisting and leaping over the ground toward me and I jumped aside with a yell of horror. The buzzing continued as the police fought to free their stricken comrade, burning with hand lasers at the remains of the lamprey. Smoke rose and stank as I stood watching, blaming myself for not being able to help.
At last the buzzing faltered and ceased. The police drew back, leaving Rennie kneeling beside the unconscious man on the grass. He was working at the wound with a knife, cutting away the sleeve; he threw something over his shoulder. It landed near me and I knelt down, staring at the bloody remains of the lamprey’s mouth where dozens of intermeshing triangular teeth still twitched in their bed of cartilage. Surrounding them in a circular lip, the cilia still waved feebly.
After a while I walked back to the car; as I drove away the ambulopter came chattering in from the south. I was badly shaken. It seemed there were creatures around us which were even more diabolical than the so-called pets that Miranda Marjoribanks sold. I wondered about the half-lamprey which had wriggled off info the bush. I hoped it was not capable of reproducing like an earthworm.
The following morning I was awakened from a fitful night’s sleep during which strange homunculi stalked through my dreams, to find the Newspocket beside my bed buzzing its warning that an important announcement was about to be made.
There had been a serious monorail accident on the mainland, with heavy casualties.
I tried to feel bad about all those people, but I couldn’t help seeing in my mind’s eye the inmates of the various regional Ambulatory Organ Pools, called on once more to donate. … Coincidentally, the next news item included coverage of a public demonstration against the Pool at the other end of the country. The local chapter of the Foes of Bondage were in evidence, yelling and waving banners; but what caught my eye was the large number of ordinary people, men and women, listening to the speakers and nodding grave agreement.
Treacherously, my brain asked me if those people would have concurred with the Foes’ sentiments so readily, had they been involved in the monorail accident and in need of a new limb. …
In many ways that was a bad day. I went out into the yard to find Dave gloomily regarding yet another pen from which all the slithes had mysteriously disappeared.
He stared at me belligerently. “And if you say I left the goddamned gate open this time, so help me I’ll smash your face in!” he snarled.
It was not the best way for a bonded man to address his boss first thing in the morning, but I tried to overlook it on the grounds that Dave had recently been under much strain. I changed the subject. “How are things in the factory?” I asked.
“Nobody’s there,” he said shortly.
“What the hell do you mean, nobody’s there? Where the hell are the girls?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” I stormed away to the visiphone, shouting over my shoulder, “Start searching the bush. I want every goddamned slithe back in its pen inside the hour—and this time make sure you shut the goddamned gate!”
A few seconds later the face of Heathcote Lambert peered warily at me from the visiphone screen. I asked him what had happened to my work force. He sighed.
“I thought. I’d made it clear yesterday that I’d allow no more girls at your farm,” he said.
“Yes, but I was under the impression we’d squared things up. I need those girls, Heath. The factory’s at a standstill.”
“I’m sorry, Joe, but I’m responsible for these girls and there have been too many complaints recently. I’m under a lot of pressure, and questions are being asked about employers who exploit prison labor. There’s a big political issue building up back East.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that, Heath, but what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“You’ll just have to find some regular workers,” he said shortly, and hung up.
I returned to the yard, but Dave was nowhere in sight. I looked around the deserted factory and shouted his name, but without success.
Then, in the distance, I heard him screaming.
14
The sound of screaming by its very nature arouses conflict in the mind of the hearer. His immediate impulse is to hurry to the scene, to find out what is happening—possibly, even, to see if he can help. This is the curiosity factor, accentuated by the demanding, supplicating aspect of the screaming.
There is, however, a secondary impulse—to ignore the scream, even to remove yourself from the sound. The scream is born of terror, and what terrifies the screamer might well terrify you. This secondary impulse occurred to me as I was running through the low scrub in the direction of a small grove of stunted trees, from which the sounds came. I slowed down and proceeded with caution, glancing around the waist-high vegetation for signs of quasi-terrestrial life. There was a rustling away to my right, but the screams came from ahead.
“In there!” An S. P. man stood nearby, indicating the taller maples. His companion lounged on his shovel; they looked like highway workers.
I paused. “What’s in there?”
“Get on in, you bastard,” snapped the S. P. man. “Your man Froehlich is in trouble. What the hell are you waiting for?”
“What the hell are you waiting for?” I asked.
He smiled stupidly. “Oh, I’m just a poor Spare Parts man and I have to obey orders. My orders are to cut down the brush at the roadside. You wouldn’t want me to disobey orders, would you?”
“Follow me, you two,” I said harshly, plunging in among the trees.
The sounds had ceased. It was dark here, and gloomy out of the bright morning sunshine. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I stared around, while the small copse seemed to be waiting, holding its breath. I jumped as something tapped me on the shoulder.
“Lead the way, boss man,” said the S. P. man unpleasantly.
I moved slowly through the dappled greenery, peering under the bushes. I took the shovel from one of the S. P. men and began to hack about more vigorously, hoping that the violence of my movements would cause any strange nearby predators to retreat. Leaves rained about me, twigs and branches cracked. I stopped suddenly, fancying I heard a different sound. All was still. One of the S. P. men made a nervous sucking noise through his teeth.
I slashed at the bushes again, moving forward among the treetrunks, impelled by a kind of energetic terror. The shovel clanged into a trunk and jarred my arm and I dropped it, cursing, while the S. P. men chuckled idiotically. As I bent to pick it
up a black shape slithered away. It was probably a snake, or even a land moray, but I jerked back with a grunt of horror, thinking of the appalling police-lampreys.
“Scared, boss man?” inquired the voice from behind.
I retrieved the shovel and beat my way on. The brush was thick hereabouts, and several times I heard the unmistakably noisy retreat of a land fish. The grove was beginning to come alive; the enemy was showing itself. After a particularly violent thrashing in the bushes—I even caught a glimpse of silvery scales—I stopped, heart thudding and hands slippery with fear, to recover my breath and courage.
The S. P. men were gone. During my last slashing they must have crept away, leaving me to face the bush alone. I was not sorry. Several times I’d felt that they—following my unprotected back—represented a greater danger than the unknown brutes in the bush. As a result of the recent public agitation, the attitude of state prisoners had undergone a change for the worse.
As I stood there among a scattering of broken branches and torn leaves, something caught my eye; something white under a nearby bush. I picked it up.
It was the skeleton of a slithe, very much damaged but still unmistakable. Particles of skin still adhered to the bones. Although the rib cage was badly crushed and the skull fractured it was impossible to ascertain the cause of death, since this damage could have occurred after death, while the body lay on the forest floor.
There was a tap on my shoulder and I swung around in some relief, glad to have company again.
There was nobody there.
The tap came again, and I swung around in a full circle as terror inserted itself between my thoughts and sanity, and I tightened my grip on the shovel, shuddered, and began to slash wildly. I heard myself groan with fear as the suggestive prod came again, near my armpit—and whipping around again I caught sight of something. I looked up among the branches of the nearest maple.
A thick tentacle hung toward me, feeling through the leaves blindly, as an elephant feels through bars.
I yelled something and swung at the obscene thing as it fingered toward me again. The shovel struck flesh with a meaty thump and the tentacle retracted into the branches above like a stabbed earthworm. Simultaneously I caught a glimpse of clothing through the leaves; the thing had Dave up there. I shouted to the S. P. men but there was no response. Either they had gone, or they chose to ignore me. The grove was quiet again.
I didn’t know what the hell to do. I stood there for what seemed like hours, trying to work the thing out. I had no laser, either with me or at the farm; and if I ran to the house and phoned Rennie the thing would have eaten Dave by the time the police arrived with guns. And even if Dave were still alive, the police would quite likely burn him, as well as the creature, in their enthusiasm.
As I stood irresolute I heard the whine of a turbine from the direction of the road. A hovercar was coming. I left the trees and sprinted through the scrub, tripping over brambles, stumbling into gullies, and finally emerging sobbing for breath at the roadside. The hovercar was coming into view around a bend. I waved, too breathless to shout, and it sank to the ground beside me.
“Joe! What on earth … ?” It was Carioca Jones.
“Do you have a laser pistol?”
“Well really, Joe. Do you take me for a gangster’s moll?”
“Or any weapon at all? There’s no time to get to the house.” Since she seemed bent on expressing lengthy amazement, I explained the situation briefly and breathlessly. She opened the glove locker, fumbling helplessly among combs and maps and cigarette packs.
“Honestly, Joe, I can’t help you. I thought I might have a little gas gun; you know, I sometimes carry one for protection. I mean, a woman, traveling alone—” She twittered on about imaginary dangers while she rummaged amid the junk, making her short drive sound like an open-legged invitation to every rampant male on the Peninsula.
“What’s that?” I asked. It was a small box.
“Oh, that’s poor dear Wilberforce’s denticure set. I must return it to that awful Marjoribanks woman for a refund.”
I remembered something. “Give it to me.” She seemed strangely reluctant, so I simply leaned into the car and dragged it from her grasp. Dave Froehlich might be dying, slowly. I opened it. There was a bottle of pills and a pack of one-shot hypodarts. I took these, threw the box at her, and ran.
As I reentered the grove there was a stirring from above and the tentacle swung low, feeling about. I could see Dave clearly through the leaves, lying unconscious across a branch while his captor, presumably, wondered how to deal with him. He represented a sizable meal, even for a giant squid.
I waited my chance, bunching the hypodarts in a closed fist. Then, as the tentacle groped toward me again I seized it in my left hand and stabbed the six glass needles into the tough flesh. The sinuous limb writhed as I twisted the darts so that the points fractured and the anesthetic, under pressure, hissed from the vials. A certain amount escaped, bubbling over the surface skin, but most of the liquid seemed to have gone home. I stepped behind a tree while the tentacle thrashed about the grove, scattering leaves and breaking branches around me. Other limbs appeared, waving and snatching at whatever they encountered, snatching up bushes and brandishing them in a shower of loose dirt. Quantities of evil-smelling black liquid began to drip from above.
Then the tentacles began to falter, moving tiredly as though in slow motion, and the various uprooted plants and saplings began to drop from their slackening grasp. At last they hung almost motionless, dark-mottled and swinging slightly with the movement of the wind through the trees. I began to climb the trunk.
When seen from close quarters, the squid was frighteningly large. A huge eye watched me dully from amid a mountain of flesh distributed over the thick upper branches of the tree like a spreading cancer, the leathery skin colored so that it was almost indistinguishable from the bark. Ink still dripped, running in rivulets past my fingers, while the horny beak nodded quiescent near Dave’s chest. To my relief he appeared unharmed, lying along a thick bough among a mass of bones and empty slithe skins.
“Joe? Where are you?” It was Carioca’s voice.
“I saw a rope in the back of your car. Go and get it; there’s a good girl.”
No doubt overcome at being called a girl she didn’t argue, and I heard her pushing her way back through the bushes to the hovercar. Soon she returned with the rope and we lowered Dave to the ground, moving well out of range of the squid, which was showing signs of returning animation. So far as we could tell Dave was not hurt, although his skin was covered with blistering circles where the squid’s suckers had gripped. After a while he moaned and stirred, and his eyes opened. Sudden terror showed.
“Take it easy. It’s all right,” I reassured him while Carioca patted his hands ineffectually.
He struggled into a sitting position. “The bastard took me around the shoulders and lifted me into the tree like I was a kid,” he muttered, rubbing his head. An ugly bruise showed at the temple. He looked at me, then looked away. “I guess I have to thank you for rescuing me.”
“Well, don’t bother,” I said irritably.
“There’s a whole mess of slithes up there,” he said, more strongly now. “That bastard’s been at the pens. He wouldn’t need to climb in; he’d just reach over the top. Huh?” He met my eyes and this time I looked away.
“I’m sorry, Dave. I should have known you wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave the gates open.”
After which painful apology we got him back to the house and, presently, the ambulopter arrived and took him away for a checkup. I called the police, spoke to Rennie, and told him to bring men and guns.
“I’m going to sue Miranda Marjoribanks for everything she has,” I told Carioca forcibly. “She’s no right to let brutes like that escape about the place. Who the hell would want a land squid, anyway? I mean, how could anyone look after a bastard like that?”
“Well,” replied Carioca tentatively, “when poor Wilberf
orce began to get so snappy, maybe I did give Miranda just the tiniest hint that it would be fun to have a really unusual pet, something nobody else had. But that’s no excuse for her letting Medusa escape.”
“Medusa? See here, Carioca, is that bastard yours?”
“Oh, no. Nothing was signed. And then when there was that awful frenzy, and everything escaped, then the sale was void, of course. And I’m afraid it’s no use suing Miranda, Joe, because she has no money. She’s penniless.” Recalling that Miranda Marjoribanks was no friend of hers—and Carioca’s affections switched so rapidly that it was not always easy for her to remember whom she liked and whom she didn’t—she allowed her face to assume an expression of hatred like weathered granite.
I poured drinks and we strolled around the pens. The factory was silent and there was hardly a slithe left on the farm. It would take me months to build up my stock again; and the loss of goodwill through unfulfilled orders would be incalculable. I felt as though I wanted to hit someone, anyone, and to keep hitting them until I was tired. I had been wiped out, and so I wanted to wipe out everyone else.
And so it was not with the best of motives that I became a member of the Foes of Bondage a week or two later—although it was a logical step. I canceled Dave’s bondage contract and returned him to the pen; there was nothing for him to do at the farm, which I now closed down completely. In any case, I didn’t want him around, reproaching me with his eyes for disbelieving him over the slithes—and no doubt he hated me for saving his life. So I got rid of him, giving him excellent references to ensure that he still received his bondage remission.
There were other reasons for my joining the Foes. On many occasions during my visits to Joanne, she had mentioned the organization.
The Girl With a Symphony in Her Fingers Page 14