American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56

by Gary K. Wolfe

  He almost left the floor when the pump began.

  With a hoarse cry, he slammed back against the wall of the cavern, hands clutching up at his ears. The noise seemed to come in physically tangible waves, pinning him there. He thought his eardrums would burst. Even through his pressing palms the thunderous, shrieking clatter penetrated, hammering jagged spikes into his head. He couldn’t think. Like a mindless beast, he cringed against the wall, drowning in noise, his face twisted, his eyes stark with pain.

  When the pump finally shut off, he slumped down bonelessly into a heap, his eyes slitted, his mouth hanging open. His brain felt numb and swollen. His limbs still shook.

  Oh, yes, his mind mocked faintly. Yes, so long as you can think, you’re unique.

  “Fool,” he muttered weakly. “Fool, fool, fool.”

  After a while he stood up and looked for a pebble again. Finding one at last, he pushed it back beside the thimble, then climbed up on it. There were three feet left. He crouched down a little, braced himself, then jumped.

  His fingers clawed at the edge of the thimble and caught. His feet kicked out and slipped on the smooth edge as he pulled himself up. Water, he thought, almost tasting it in his mouth. Water. He didn’t notice at first that the thimble was tipping.

  Panic speared through him as the thimble started to topple. Seeking lost balance, he tightened his grip spasmodically instead of loosening it. Let go! his mind cried shrilly. He released his hold and dropped heavily, landing on the edge of the pebble, losing balance a second time and falling backward, arms flailing. He flopped back on the cement, the breath knocked from him. The thimble kept falling. With a cry he flung an arm across his face and went rigid, waiting for the thimble to crash on him.

  Only cold water poured across him, blinding and gagging him. Sucking air into his lungs, he struggled to his knees. Another wave of water dashed over him, almost knocking him on his back again. Coughing and spluttering, he stood up, rubbing at his eyes.

  The thimble was rocking back and forth, water flooding across its lip and splattering on the cement. Scott stood there shivering, catching his breath, his tongue licking the cold drops from his mouth.

  Finally, when the thimble was rocking less violently, he moved up to it warily and caught the spilling water in his palms. It was so cold it numbed his hands.

  When he had finished drinking, he backed away and sneezed. Oh, God, now comes the pneumonia, he thought. His teeth were beginning to chatter. The cotton robe was cold and clammy on his flesh.

  With jerky, impulsive movements he dragged the robe over his head. Cold air flooded over him. He had to get out of there. Throwing down the dripping robe, he ran to the thread and started climbing as rapidly as he could.

  After he’d gone up ten feet he felt exhausted. Every upward movement became more difficult than the last. Pain seesawed in his muscles, a taut, drawing sharpness as he dragged himself up, a dull, throbbing ache as he hung resting.

  He couldn’t rest for more than a few seconds. With every pause he grew more chilled. His white body covered with goose flesh, he kept climbing, gasping at the air between clenched teeth. Half a dozen times he thought he was going to fall as exhaustion welled up in his arms and legs, every muscle seeming to go slack. His hands clutched desperately at the ropelike thread, his legs curled around it. He pressed against the cement face, panting.

  Then, in a moment, he began climbing again, not looking up because he knew that if he looked up, even once, he would never reach the top.

  He stumbled across the floor, waves of heat and coldness breaking over him. He pressed a shaking hand against his forehead. It was hot and dry. I’m sick, he thought.

  He found his old robe lying behind the cement block, crusted with dirt, but dry. He brushed it off and put it on. It helped a little. Shaking with weariness and anger, and still shivering with cold, he circled around the floor collecting the few damp pieces of cracker left and throwing them on top of the sponge.

  It took all the strength he had remaining to drag the box top over the sponge. Then he lay in the darkness, his breath a thin, rasping sound that faltered in his throat like steam. The cellar was without sound.

  After a few minutes he tried to eat. But swallowing hurt too much. Already he was thirsty again. He rolled over on his stomach and pressed his burning face into the soft sponge, his hands opening and closing in weary, ceaseless movements. After a moment he felt moisture on his face, and he started squeezing hard, remembering that the sponge had been soaking wet the morning before. But the little water he got was so brackish it almost made him lose the food he’d managed to eat.

  He rolled onto his back again. What do I do now? he thought despairingly. There was no food left but the pitiful scraps under the box top with him; no water except at the bottom of a cliff he’d never have the strength to climb again; no way of getting out of the cellar. And now, added to everything else, fever.

  He rubbed fiercely at his hot forehead. The air felt close and heavy. Heat pressed down on him like a hand. I’m suffocating, he thought. He sat up abruptly, looking around with hot eyes, head lolling on his neck. Unaware, his right hand picked a cracker crumb to bits and flung the shreds aside.

  “I’m sick,” he groaned. His thin voice ballooned around him. He sobbed, digging teeth into the knuckles of his left hand until the skin broke. “I’m sick. I’m sick!”

  He fell back with a groan and lay there limply, staring up through fever-slitted eyes.

  Half-conscious, he thought he heard the spider walking on the box again. One, two, three, his twisting mind began to chant. Four, five, six. Seven legs my true love has.

  Distortedly, he remembered the day when he had been twenty-eight inches tall, the height of a one-year-old child—a china doll that shaved real whiskers and bathed in a dishpan and used a baby’s potty chair and wore made-over baby clothes.

  He had stood in the kitchen yelling at Lou because he’d suggested that she put him in a sideshow to make some money and she hadn’t insisted that he shouldn’t say such things; she’d only shrugged.

  He’d yelled and ranted, his little face red, stamped his cunning high-topped shoes, glared up at her, until suddenly she’d turned from the sink and shouted back, “Oh, stop squeaking at me!”

  In a fury so complete it blinded him, he spun and lurched for the doorway, only to trip over the cat and get badly clawed.

  Lou had run to him and tried to make it up. She’d cleaned the jagged scratch on his arm and apologized. But he’d known it wasn’t a woman apologizing to a man, but a woman apologizing to a midget she felt sorry for.

  And when she’d finished bandaging him, he’d gone down to the cellar again; the last refuge to which he always fled in those days. And he’d stood there by the steps staring through anger and hurt at the cellar.

  He’d squatted down and picked up a rock that was lying on the floor and he’d rocked there on his heels, thinking of all the things that had happened to him in the past few weeks. He’d thought of the money almost gone, of Lou unable to find a job, of Beth’s increasing disrespect, of the Medical Center never calling, of the endless shrinking of his body. And while he thought of them, his mind had grown angrier, his lips whitening on each other, his hand closed like a steel trap over the rock.

  When he saw the spider walking on the wall across from him, he reared up suddenly and fired the rock at it with all his might. Fantastically the rock had pinned one of the spider’s black legs to the wall and it had fled, leaving the leg behind. Scott had stood in front of the wall watching the leg twitch like a living hair. And, blank-faced, he’d thought, Someday my leg will be that small.

  It had been impossible to believe.

  But now his leg was that small, and the insane descent of his existence was bearing down toward inevitable conclusion.

  He wondered what would happen if he died now. Would his body keep shrinking? Or would the process cease? Surely it could not go on if he were dead.

  Far across the floor, t
he oil burner began its hurricane roar again, shaking the air with deafening vibrations. With a moan he pressed his hands over his ears and lay there shivering without control, feeling as if he were in a buried coffin while an earthquake shook the cemetery.

  “Leave me alone,” he muttered feebly. “Leave me alone.” He drew in a whining breath. His eyes closed.

  He twitched, woke.

  The oil burner still roared. Was it the same roaring on which he had closed his eyes? Had seconds passed, or hours?

  He sat up slowly, lightheaded and shaking. He lifted a trembling hand and touched his forehead. It was still hot. He rubbed the hand across his face, groaning deeply. Oh, God, I’m sick.

  Weakly he pushed himself to the rim of the sponge and slid over the edge. His grip was so weak that it broke instantly and he thudded down on his feet, sitting down heavily with a startled grunt.

  He sat on the cold cement a long moment, blinking, his torso weaving. His stomach rumbled with hunger. He tried to stand up. He had to lean against the sponge. Breath came from his nostrils in short, hot bursts. He swallowed. I need water. Tears ran down his cheeks. There was no water he could get. He hit the sponge with an impotent fist.

  After a few minutes he stopped crying and, turning slowly, stumbled through the darkness until he collided with the boxtop wall. It knocked him down. Muttering, he crawled to the box-top side again and, lifting it first with his hands and then with his back, he squeezed out from under.

  It was like crawling into a refrigerator. A shudder rippled down his back. He stood up and leaned back against the box top.

  It was afternoon; he had slept. Rays of sunlight were visible through the window over the log pile, the window that faced south. Two, three o’clock, he estimated. Another day was half gone; more than half.

  He spun around and drove a strengthless punch into the cardboard wall. Pain stung his knuckles. He hit again. Damn you! He leaned his head against the side and rained in enervated blows, feeling the impact of each one leap up his arms, across his shoulders, down his back.

  “Pointless, pointless, pointless, pointless, point—” In a wild, croaking voice he chanted the word on one breath until no sound came from him. Then his arms flopped to his sides like lengths of wood and he fell against the cardboard, eyes closed, twitching with jerking breaths.

  When he finally turned, it was with a mind blanked to everything except water. He started across the floor slowly. I can’t go down to the tank, but I need water, he thought. But there isn’t any water anywhere else. There’s water that drips in the cracker box, but I can’t climb that high. But I need water. He walked, eyes down, hardly seeing. I need water.

  He almost fell in the hole.

  For a frightening instant, he wavered on the very edge of it. Then he caught himself and stepped back.

  He got down on his knees and peered into the dark cavity drilled through the cement floor. It was like looking down a well, except that the well broke off about fifteen feet down and there was nothing but lightless void.

  He poised his tilted head over the hole, listening. At first there was only the sound of his own labored breathing. Then, holding his breath, he began to hear another sound. The sound of softly dripping water.

  It was a nightmare to lie there on his stomach, racked with thirst, and listen to the drip of unreachable water. His tongue kept stirring in his mouth, seeking to escape the imprisonment of his lips. He kept swallowing endlessly, hardly noticing the jabs of pain it caused.

  For one moment he almost dived headfirst into the hole. I don’t care! he thought in a fury. I don’t care if I die!

  What kept him from it he didn’t know. Whatever it was, it was below consciousness, for on the surface he was angrily determined to plunge into the well-like hole and find that water.

  But he drew back from the hole and got on his knees again. He hesitated. Then he fell forward again and listened to the sound, almost inhaling it like air. He moaned. He pushed to his knees once more, stood dizzily, and then began walking away from the drainage hole. He turned and walked back to the brink of it. He swung a foot over it, staring down into its unseeable depths.

  “Oh, God, why don’t you . . .”

  He turned and walked away from the hole on rigid legs, hands clenched into fists at his sides. There’s no point! he wanted to scream. Why shouldn’t he go down the hole? Why not, like some grotesque, latter-day Alice, plunge into yet another world?

  He thought it was a red wall at first. He stopped in front of it, staring at it. He prodded it. Not stone or wood. It was the hose.

  He walked around its serpentine bulk until he came to one end of it. There he stared into the long, shadowy tunnel curving away from him. He stepped up onto the metal ring and stood in a groove, thinking. Sometimes when you picked up a hose water dripped from the end of it.

  With a gasp, he started running clumsily down the smoothfloored tunnel, banging into hard walls where the hose twisted abruptly, racing as fast as he could along the winding labyrinth of it. Until, curving to the right for what seemed to be the hundredth time, he found himself ankle-deep in cold liquid. With a grateful sob, he squatted down and lifted trembling palmfuls of the water to his lips. It tasted stale and it hurt his throat to swallow, but he had never gulped the finest wine so eagerly.

  Thank God! he kept thinking. Thank God! All the water I need now. All I need! He grunted, almost in amusement, thinking of the many times he’d climbed down that fool thread to the water tank. What an ass he’d been! Well, it didn’t matter now. He was all right now.

  It wasn’t until he began walking back along the tunnel that he realized it had been, at best, a reactive triumph. How different did it make the situation, how better off? His minuscule existence was preserved a little longer, yes. He would see the end of it intact; but the end would come. Was that a triumph?

  Or would he see the end of it?

  As he emerged into the cellar again, he realized how weak with sickness he was; worse, how weak with hunger. The sickness he might alleviate with rest and sleep, but to hunger there was only one answer.

  His gaze moved to the towering cliff.

  He stood there in the shadow of the hose, looking up at the place where the spider lived. One piece of food remained in the cellar; he knew that much for sure. One slice of dried-up bread; more than enough to keep him for the last two days. And it was up there.

  It came upon him with annihilating simplicity. He hadn’t the strength to climb up there. Even if he could, by some incredible extension of will power, make it up the cliff, there was the spider. And he hadn’t the courage to face the spider again. Not a black, scuttling horror three times the size of him.

  His head fell forward. Then that was it; that was the decision he must accept. He stepped away from the hose and started across the floor toward the sponge. What decision was there but that? Was there, after all, a choice? Wasn’t it out of his hands, inexorable? He was three-sevenths of an inch tall. What could he hope to do?

  Something made him look again at the cliff face.

  The giant spider was running down the wall.

  With a body-jarring gasp, Scott fled across the floor. Before the spider had reached the bottom of the cliff, he had squeezed beneath the edge of the box top and climbed onto the sponge. When the spider clambered, black and bulbous, onto the box top, he was waiting for the sound of it, his teeth jammed so hard together that his jaws ached.

  There could be no hope of food, then; not with that quivering black cannibal guarding it. He closed his eyes, sobs dragging at his throat, hearing overhead the scratching, scrabbling movements of the spider.

  Chapter Eleven

  As in a dream, delirium-driven, he was back again at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, being tested.

  Voice a crispness, voice a hollow waver, Dr. Silver told him that no, he did not have acromicria, as had first been suspected. Yes, there was the bodily shrinkage, but no, his pituitary gland was not diseased. There was no loss
of hair, no cyanosis of extremities, no bluish discoloration of skin, no suppressed sexual function.

  There were urinary-excretion tests to establish the amounts of creatin and creatinine in his system; important tests, because they would tell much about the functioning of his testes, his adrenals, about the balance of nitrogen in his body.

  Discovery: You have a negative nitrogen balance, Mr. Carey. Your body is throwing off more nitrogen than it is retaining. Since nitrogen is one of the major building blocks of the body, consequently, we have shrinkage.

  An imbalance of creatinine was causing further involution. Phosphorus and calcium were being thrown off, too, in the precise proportion in which those elements were found in his bones.

  ACTH was administered, possibly to check the catabolic breakdown of tissue.

  ACTH was ineffective.

  There was much discussion about a possible dosage of pituitary extract. “It might enable his body to retain nitrogen and cause the disposition of new protein,” they murmured.

  It seemed there was danger, though. The response of the human body to administered growth hormone is not ascertainable; even the best extracts are poorly tolerated and often give aberrant results.

  “I don’t care. I want it. Can I be worse off?” he said.

  Dosage administered.

  Negative.

  Something was combatting the extract.

  At last the paper chromatography; the capillary trailing of body elements across paper, the specific gravity of each one causing it to stain a different part of the paper.

  And a new element was found in his system. A new toxin.

  Tell us something, they said. Were you ever exposed to any kind of germ spray? No, not bacterial warfare. Have you, for instance, ever been accidentally sprayed with a great deal of insecticide?

  No remembrance at first; just a fluttering amorphous terror. Then sudden recollection. Los Angeles, a Saturday afternoon in July. He had come out of the house, heading for the store. He had walked through a tree-lined alley, between rows of houses. A city truck had turned in suddenly, spraying the trees. The spray misted over him, burning on his skin, stinging his eyes, blinding him momentarily. He yelled at the driver. Could that possibly be the cause of all this?