I looked into her grey eyes and saw a screen come over them.
“He’s a little savage,” she said, turning away.
Outside, night breeze moved through lush apple crop and nibbled at the golden peach orbs. Rich soil lay black in furrows ready for more planting and folding, more growth. I watched my daughter move around the room. She wore a white nightdress over her own growing young body, midnight hair sweeping her shoulders. Her lips were pale and faintly smiling. Her cheeks were flushed with health, eyes clear and gently happy.
“Why?” I said softly.
Trisha’s warm back was turned to me.
“Why is Pete a savage?” I said.
“He just is, I guess. He was just born that way.”
“No one called him a savage when we lived outside the valley, Trisha.”
“Outside the valley?” Her voice was low and blurred with wonder. “That was forever ago.”
“Pete was good at his lessons then.”
“Yes.” Trisha’s head nodded gravely.
“But not now?”
“The lessons are different now. Pete won’t try. He doesn’t belong here.” Trisha turned and her eyes rested on mine.
“Am I a savage too, Trisha?”
Eve was watching us intently. Trisha nodded slowly. “Yes, Mr. Andersen says you might be.”
“He’s your teacher, isn’t he, Trisha?”
“Yes.”
“He teaches all of you. All you children. All except a few like Pete. And in a few months there’ll be more children for him to teach. What will he teach them, Trisha?”
“The new children won’t need teaching.”
“Did Mr. Andersen tell you that?”
“Yes. He said we’re to be kind and gentle to the new children when they come.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to be too kind, too gentle?”
“I don’t understand.”
“The turtles we saw at Pennekamp Reef last year. Do you remember them, Trisha?”
She nodded slowly.
“They’re protected there, Trisha. But in other places the turtles are hunted for their shells, or their flesh. A giant turtle might weigh hundreds of pounds and be able to carry a man on its back. But do you know what the hunters do ? They turn the turtles on their backs. And the turtle is helpless then. But it’s still protected by its shell. It can draw in its head and tail and legs. The hunters crack its shell open, Trisha. Under that hard casing the turtle is soft and vulnerable. Its beak is toothless and its body soft. There’s no way it can save itself, once its shell is split open------”
Trisha shook her head. “We’re not turtles.”
“Aren’t we, Trisha? Isn’t it possible that all of us, here in the valley, are being turned on our backs and having our shells cracked open?”
“Adam, are you serious?” Eve was looking at me with incredulous eyes.
“Something strange is going on here,” I said. “More than strange. The crops grow and come to fruit and our children are growing and becoming as golden and tender and helpless as those peaches on our trees, Eve! Suddenly every woman in the valley is having a child! Suddenly Yellow Bird beats out his brains on the wall. Suddenly our son, an absolutely normal and intelligent boy back home, is branded as a savage------”
“What are you afraid of, Daddy?” Trish said abruptly.
“Afraid?”
“Do you think that Mr. Andersen and Judge Whymore and the others have some sinister purpose in making this valley a paradise?” Her voice was gentle and mocking.
“Who are they, Trisha?” I said. “What do we really know about them?”
“They owned the valley. They gave it to us.”
“There are other people living in the valley, Trisha. Or there were. A girl called Ruth Kitel. And her brother. They lived here too. Now they’re hiding in the woods.”
“Hiding? From us?” She laughed softly.
“Hiding from something.”
“Adam,” Eve said sharply. “When did you find out about these people?”
“Tonight.”
“You mean Pete is up there with these------”
“Savages,” Trisha said.
Judge Whymore’s home stood in a cluster of trees on a knoll overlooking the Rich River. The night wind soughed gently through the top leaves and scratched branches against the star-specked shield of sky. The river was a fat black artery coiling below.
I drew the car to a halt and switched off the lights. I sat a moment, watching the house. It was in darkness. I glanced at my watch and the radium hands showed two in the morning. I snicked down the catch and opened the door and slid out and closed it again.
The front door of Judge Whymore’s house was open.
The patch of lighter shadow became the turn of a cheek. One eye was a distant pool of darkness. The triangle of whiteness was Judge Whymore’s dress shirt.
“Adam ?” His voice carried to me softly.
I walked closer and Judge Whymore came to meet me. His eyes twinkled and shone, his smile glinted.
“I couldn’t go to bed yet,” he said. “Such a beautiful night. I was taking a breath of this wine we call air.”
His dark and mellow suit smelled of cigar smoke and pleasurable evenings with friends. He put one hand on my arm and guided me towards the house.
“Mr. Andersen and the others, we old valley people, still like to get together now and then. But everyone has gone now. How about a nightcap?”
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said.
“I know,” Judge Whymore said. “And I to you, for a long time now, Adam.”
We sat in the big study of the fine old house, Judge Whymore’s eyes sparkling and flashing, brandy pooled in his glass like laughter.
“Oh, my, that boy of yours is a problem.”
“He never was a problem outside the valley.”
“Of course, of course, but our little community is rather special, Adam. You know that. You know it better than most. Adam and Eve. That influenced me, you know. Call me foolish, romantic, but it did.” Judge Whymore leaned forward, eyes glistening with humour. “Oh, that boy of yours. What a problem.”
“They often are. Have you had children of your own, Judge?”
“Children?” The glistening eyes held mine. “Children? Oh, no, Adam. Never.”
“What about Andersen, the teacher. Does he have------”
“Not Andersen either.”
“The others?”
“None of us has children,” Judge Whymore said. “None of us has a wife.”
I raised my glass and sipped from it, watching him over its rim. “Five wealthy bachelors. It was generous to share your valley with us. This project must have cost a great deal of money.”
“Well, yes, but it will have been worth it, Adam.”
“Worth it? Do you really think so, Judge?”
“Of course.” Judge Whymore rose to his feet and went to the window. He moved one hand and the curtains drew back, letting in the darkness. “Why not?”
“You’ve made people happy, Judge. But how long can it last? I mean, how long can the valley support the people you’ve brought here, and their children, and------”
“The valley will support them. Believe me, Adam, this will be a paradise.”
“For us?” -
The twinkle had gone from the eyes. “What do you mean, Adam?”
“The people you brought here are like rich soil, Judge. When the crop comes, the soil has no choice but to bear it.”
“The crop?”
“Who are the farmers, Judge? You or us?”
There was a glitter of metal in Judge Whymore’s fist. “How intelligent and how stupid you people can be.”
“So I was right.”
“Yes, you were right.”
“You’re not human.”
“We are human. These are not our shapes. But we are human.” The small gun in Judge Whymore’s fist caught the light and gleamed. “We came so far, Adam, to your earth. We ch
ose this valley------”
“But people fought you. Ruth Kitel and Josh.”
“Dumb Brother. He is a telepath, able to communicate with animals. He instils hate in them, hate for us. But he will not stop us. We brought our soil here. Your people are the soil. Our seed was planted so simply—do you remember the medical examination you all submitted to? Precious seed, Adam, brought through sterile miles of space, from the world where our own people were dying. And soon it will crop. Your people will live peacefully with ours, until------”
“Until we die, and you take over.”
“We are not murderers, Adam. Not fiends. We had the power to take your planet. All we took was one valley------”
“This valley, how can you preserve it? What’s to stop outsiders from coming in and------”
“No one can come in. Or go out. Ever again.”
I sprang. The alien weapon spat a searing cold flame past my face. The heel of my hand hit Judge Whymore’s chin and hurled him violently backward. The weapon spun from his hand and tinkled into one corner of the room. I whirled and ran from the room, ran from the house, into the cool press of starlight.
The car started at the first twist of the ignition key. I accelerated in reverse as Judge Whymore appeared in the doorway of the house. The gun in his hand hurled freezing flame again. I spun the wheel and skidded down the dusty road winding from the knoll.
The river swept past as I turned left and picked up speed, making for home. Words spun in huge and silent fragments through my mind.
No one can come in. Or go out. Ever again.
Eve was standing in the starlight, in the wash of my headlights as I swung into the yard. But I could see the small windows of darkness, the same darkness that belonged to Whymore and the others, in her eyes. And the house behind her was too still, too watchful.
I stopped and we looked at each other through the pale windscreen.
“Adam.” Her lips made the words. “Come to us.”
Trisha stepped from the house. She walked with gentle eyes and womanly grace towards us. And, quite suddenly, I saw the ripeness of her belly under the soft white nightdress. Swelling pregnant ripeness.
Eve and Trisha.
Lost to me,
I gunned the car and spun the wheel and in the oblong of my mirror I saw their figures receding from me. Before I dipped over the final hill and out of sight I saw others join them. My neighbours.
My headlights cut tunnels in the night. I followed the road south through the valley, between the high mountains. Soon I came to the place where the road ended.
It did not end in any way I can describe. There was no wall, no gulf cleaved in the valley floor. It did not peter out or run abruptly into dense forest. I’m not sure if the road ended at all. Or whether, in my mind, there had come an ending instead.
There just was no place to go outside of the valley.
So I reversed the car and drove down into thick brush at the side of the road and carefully killed my lights and switched off the engine.
I stepped out and for a moment held the ignition key between my fingers. Then I hurled it away. I heard it tinkle to silence in the starlit brush.
A low growl carried to me.
Rustling and chittering began in the brush around me. Yellow eyes watched. Birds hopped from branch to branch, intently curious.
The black wolf emerged a few strides away from me. Ruth Kitel was at its side.
“You came,” she said.
“We can fight them. You, me, Pete and Dumb Brother.”
Her head shook. Her hand fell to fondle the black wolf’s neck. “General will lead the army.”
“General------?”
“This cain’t be man’s fight any more.”
<
* * * *
SHOCK TREATMENT
Lee Harding
Australian author Lee Harding has a penchant for writing stories about “lonely” things, of cities and individuals and even alien things. Here, delicately portrayed, is the loneliness of the twilight of Man— brought there unexpectedly by his own inventiveness.
* * * *
Pietro stirred and opened his eyes. The face of the Keeper loomed over him. It was wise and considerate and was crowned by a magnificent mantle of long silver hair, and it was the most aged face he had ever seen. Now it smiled, and the pale bleached eyes looking down into his bore the weight of centuries.
“Now do you remember who you are, and why you are here?”
Pietro sat up upon his pallet. A residual confusion left him and was replaced by an eagerness to talk. The great walls of the Manse caught and reverberated his words. “Yes—now I can—remember.”
“Then speak.” The Keeper stepped aside so that he remained visible only on the periphery of Pietro’s vision. “The Manse wishes to hear your story from your own lips.”
Obediently Pietro’s mind slid backwards and remembered the many details of the day.
Shortly before dawn a light rain had fallen to prepare the world for the burgeoning sunlight, and hardly had the first warm rays of the sun begun to finger the landscape than the delicate wisps of cloud had dissipated, their purpose served, so that only a clear sky canopied the waking earth. A soft breeze stirred somewhere and began nudging the temperate climate about its business and with this movement began the small beginnings of the day.
He had been awake for some time, lying with his hands clasped together behind his head. He had watched the morning sky change from a searing vermilion to a gentle blue and had pondered upon the many sunrises of the world, and how each seemed different to the day before (and here it was the distance he had travelled since yesterday and the subtle but definite change in the landscape that provided the important factor of difference, and not the inhibited sky).
He sensed the quickening pulse of the land beneath him as the new day roused itself and contemplated the impending doom of mankind. Man might indeed be shuffling unwittingly towards oblivion but the very land he trod and had so carelessly sown would outlast his passing. The earth renewed itself with the dawn of each new day, patient with the restrictions which man, in his haste, had imposed upon it, content to endure until the end of time, when all things must cease. Yet, he mused, it seemed a pity that we—who dreamed so much—were not made more durable.
He had slept well and now his identity sought to reassert itself from among the dark folds of sleep. Slowly the tattered puzzle that was himself came together again and could be assessed. A sense of urgency accelerated the otherwise lethargic process of coming to full awareness—but was such haste necessary? The air was so mild this morning and hardly inducive to strenuous thinking, more amenable to casual reflection than to concentrated...
He sat up quickly. Momentarily his personality asserted itself over the malignant something that gobbled his thoughts and the desire for inertia was circumvented. His head cleared and the world around him snapped into sharper focus.
This was what Dominus had warned them about. This was why...
He raised one hand and touched with his fingertips the small grey cube fastened behind his left ear. He stroked it gently, drawing confidence from its smooth surface. Now the day no longer seemed comforting and the prospect of extended indolence unlikely now that the anxious little machine was busily tapping out its urgent message.
“The mornings will be the most dangerous time,” Dominus had warned. “Your personality will have to struggle to reassert itself as a whole. In sleep it disintegrates and must be pulled back together again and if the mind is sluggish then the stimulator may have difficulty getting through. Once you are fully awake the danger lessens. I can help you against the burden of the days, but the nights ... the nights are unpredictable.”
Filled again with the urgency of his mission, Pietro stood up and proffered an open palm to the invisible canopy which had protected him from the cold night air. The field weakened enough and he walked through. His bare feet trod moist, crisp grass and his skin tingled ag
reeably against the fresh mountain air. He wore only a pair of pale, fitted shorts, leaving behind the sleek sandals he usually wore. It had been many eons since man had had to cosset his body against the elements of the world.
He saw that he had slept in a slight hollow cradled by some unfamiliar trees and to refresh his mind he ascended the rise ahead and found himself facing east. The ground sloped gently down towards a shallow creek and beyond that the foothills faded away into the smudgy anonymity of the plains. Behind him and to the northwest the grass thinned rapidly and the first gaunt peaks of the escarpment thrust arrogantly skywards.
New Writings in SF 8 - [Anthology] Page 11