American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56

by Gary K. Wolfe

  One day she might be on the couch reading a magazine, and there would be no satisfaction. But the next day she might be ironing, and, for some reason, when she ironed she always took off part of her clothes. Another time she might take a shower and, afterward, stand naked at the back window. And once she had lain naked in the bedroom under the skin-purpling glare of Lou’s portable sun lamp. That had been one cloudy afternoon and she hadn’t drawn the shades all the way down. He’d stood outside for thirty minutes and never budged.

  Days kept passing. Reading was almost forgotten. Life had become one unending morbid adventure. Almost every afternoon at two o’clock, after having sat in shaking excitement for an hour or more, he would crawl out into the yard and walk secretively around the house, climbing up and peering over the sills of every window, looking for Catherine.

  If she were partly or completely nude, he counted the day a success. If she was, as was most often the case, dressed and engaged in some dull occupation, he would return angrily to the cellar to sulk out the afternoon and snap at Louise all evening.

  Whatever happened, though, he would lie awake at night, waiting for the morning to come, hating and despising himself for being so impatient, but still impatient. Sleep grew turgid with dreams of Catherine; dreams in which she grew progressively more alluring. Finally he even gave up scoffing at the dreams.

  In the mornings he would eat hastily and go down to the cellar for the long wait until two o’clock, when, heart pounding, he would crawl out through the window again to spy.

  The end of it came with shocking suddenness.

  He was on the porch. In the kitchen, Catherine was standing naked under Lou’s open bathrobe, ironing some clothes.

  He shifted his feet, slipped, and thumped down on the boards. Inside, he heard Catherine call out, “Who’s there?”

  Gasping, he jumped down the steps and started running around the house, looking over his shoulder in fright, to see a frozen-faced Catherine standing at the kitchen window, gaping at his fleeing childlike form.

  All that afternoon he stood shivering behind the water tank, unable to come out because, even though she hadn’t seen him go into the cellar, he was sure she was looking in through the window. And he cursed himself and felt sickly wretched thinking about what Lou would say to him and how she would look at him when she knew.

  He lay still under the box top, listening to the scratching clamber of the spider over the cardboard.

  He moistened his lips with a sluggish tongue and thought of the pool of cold water in the hose. He felt around with his hand until it closed over a fragment of damp cracker; then he decided he was too thirsty to eat and his hand drew back again.

  For some reason the sound of the spider’s crawling didn’t bother him too much. He sensed that he was beyond stark disruption, lying in the shallows of emotion, spent and quiescent. Even memory failed to hurt. Yes, even the memory of the month they’d discovered the antitoxin and injected him three times with it—to no avail. All past laments were undone by the drag of present illness and exhaustion.

  I’ll wait, he told himself, until the spider is gone, and then I’ll go through the cool darkness and walk over the cliff and that will be the end of it. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll wait until the spider’s gone and then I’ll go over the cliff and that will be the end of it.

  He slept, heavily, motionlessly. And, in his dream, he and Lou were walking in September rain, talking as they went. And he said, “Lou, I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed I was as small as a pin.”

  And she smiled and kissed his cheek and said, “Now, wasn’t that a foolish dream?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Thunder woke him. His fingers shriveled in abruptly, his eyes jerked open. There was an instant of blank suspension, consciousness hanging submerged beneath the shock of sudden awakening. His eyes stared mindlessly; his face was a pale, unmarked tautness, mouth a dash embedded in beard.

  Then he remembered; and the scars of worry and defeat gouged across his brow and around his eyes and mouth again. Staring became sightlessness behind fallen lids, his hands uncurled. Only the faint murmur in his throat acknowledged the pain it was to lie in thunder.

  In five minutes the oil burner clicked off, and the cellar became a vast, heavy silence.

  With a grunt he sat up slowly on the sponge. The headache was almost gone. Only when he grimaced did it flare minutely. His throat still hurt, his body felt encrusted with aches and twinges, but at least the headache was gone and—he felt his forehead—the fever had abated somewhat. The able ministrations of sleep, he thought.

  He sat weaving a little, licking his dry lips. Why did I sleep? he wondered. What had drugged him when he’d decided to end it all?

  He worried his way across the sponge and, holding on to the edge, dropped to the floor. Pain shot up his legs, faded. If only he could believe there had been purpose in his helpless sleep; that it might have been the act of a watching benevolence. He could not. More than likely it had been cowardice that had sent him off to sleep instead of to the cliff ’s edge. Even wanting to, he could not honor it with the title “will to live.” He had no will to live. It was simply that he had no will to die.

  At first he couldn’t lift the box top, it had become so heavy. That told him what he’d meant to verify at the ruler; that overnight he had shrunk another fraction and was now only two-sevenths of an inch tall.

  The cardboard edge scraped across his side as he dragged himself out from beneath it. It pinned his ankle so that he had to bend over and work at it with his hands. Free at last, he sat on the cold cement, letting the waves of dizziness settle. His stomach was a flagon of air.

  He didn’t measure himself; there was no point in it. He walked slowly across the floor looking to neither one side nor the other. On unsteady legs he headed for the hose. Why had he slept?

  “No reason.” He framed the words with his cracked lips.

  It was cold. Gray, cheerless light filtered through the windows. March fourteenth. It was another day.

  After the half-mile walk, he clambered over the metal lip of the hose and trudged along the black tunnel, listening to the echo of his scuffing sandals. His feet kept coming loose from the strings, and the robe dragged heavily along the rubber floor.

  Ten minutes of walking through the twisting, lightless maze brought him to the water. He crouched in its shallow coldness and drank. It still hurt to swallow, but he was too grateful there was water to care.

  As he drank, there crossed his mind a brief vision of himself holding a hose much like this one, carrying it outside, connecting it to the faucet, playing a glittering stream of water across his lawn. Now, in a similar hose, he crouched, less than one fifth of its width, a mote man sipping driblets of water from a hand no bigger than a grain of salt.

  The vision passed. His size was too common now, too much a reality. It was no longer a phenomenon.

  When he had finished drinking, he walked back out of the hose, shaking his feet to get the water off his sandals. March forth, he thought, march forth to nothingness. March fourteenth, he thought. In a week the first day of spring would come upon the island.

  He would never see it.

  Out on the floor again, he walked back to the box top and stood beside it, one palm braced against it. His gaze moved slowly over the cellar. Well? he thought. What happened now? Did he crawl under the box top, lie down again and sleep once more, a surrendering sleep? His teeth raked slowly across his lower lip as he looked at the cliff that went up to the spider’s land.

  Avoid it.

  He started walking around the cement block, searching for cracker crumbs. He found a dirty one, scraped off its surface, and kept walking, chewing ruminatively. Well, what was he going to do? Go back to his bed, or—

  He stopped and stood motionless on the floor. Something in his eyes caught minor fire. His lips drew back from his teeth as he grimaced.

  All right. He had a brain. He’d use it. After all, wasn�
�t this his universe? Couldn’t he determine its values and its meanings? Didn’t the logic of a cellar life belong to him, who lived alone in that cellar?

  Very well, then. He had planned suicide, but something had kept him from it. Call it what you will, he thought—fear, subconscious desire to survive, action of outside intelligence maintaining him. Whatever it was, it had happened. He lived still, his existence unbroken. Positive function was still possible; decision was still his.

  “All right,” he muttered. He may as well act alive.

  It was like the clearing of a mist in his brain, like a rush of cool wind across a parched desert of intentions. It made— absurdly, perhaps—his shoulders draw back, made him move with more certainty, ignoring the pain of his body. And, as if in instant reward, he found a large chunk of cracker behind the cement block. He cleaned it off and ate it. It tasted horrible. He didn’t care. It was nourishment.

  He walked back across the floor. What did his decision mean? He knew, really, but he was afraid to dwell on it. Rather, he let himself drift surely toward the giant carton under the fuel tank, knowing what had to be done; knowing that he would do it or perish.

  He stopped before the looming mass of the carton. Once, he thought, he had kicked open its side himself. At the time, it had been an act of rage, of frustration turned to acid fury. How odd that an ancient fury was making it easier for him now; that it had, indeed, saved his life more than once.

  For hadn’t he got two thimbles from that carton, one that he’d put under the water tank, and another that he’d put under the dripping water heater? Hadn’t he got the material for his robe from the carton? Hadn’t he got there the thread that enabled him to reach the top of the wicker table and get the crackers? Finally, hadn’t he actually fought off the spider in there, discovering in a flash of astonishment that he did have some efficacy against its horrible seven-legged blackness?

  Yes, all these. And all because, one day long ago, he had burned with a terrible, angry desire and kicked open the side of the carton.

  He hesitated for a moment, thinking he should search for the needle he’d taken from the carton before and lost. Then he decided he might not find it and the fruitless search would waste not only time, but valuable, needed energy.

  He jumped up the carton side and dragged himself through the opening. It was difficult to get in. The difficulty pointed up, disconcertingly, how hard it was going to be to get up to the cliff, much less fight the—

  No. He wasn’t going to let himself think about that. If anything could stop him, it was thoughts about the spider. He blanked his mind to them. Only far behind the conscious barrier did they move.

  He slid down the hill of clothes until he went over the edge and fell down into the sewing box. For a moment panic jarred him as he thought that he might not be able to get out of the box. Then he remembered the rubber cork into which the pins and needles were inserted. He could push that to the edge of the box and then be able to climb out.

  He found a cool needle lying on the bottom of the box and picked it up.

  “God,” he muttered. It was like a harpoon made of lead. He let it fall and it clanked loudly. He stood there a moment, lines of distress around his eyes. Was he to be defeated already? He couldn’t possibly carry that needle up the face of the cliff.

  Simple, said his mind. Take a pin.

  He closed his eyes and smiled at himself. Yes, yes, he thought. He searched around in the shadows for a pin, but there were none loose. He’d have to get one from the rubber cork.

  First he had to knock the cork over. It was four times as high as he was. Gritting his teeth, he shoved at the rubber cork until it toppled. Then he moved around it and jerked out a pin, hefted it in his hands. That was better. Still heavy, but manageable.

  How could he carry it, though? Sticking it into his robe was no good; it would dangle, bang against surfaces, impede his climb, maybe cut him. He’d fasten a thread sling on the pin and carry it across his back. He looked around for thread. No point in going after the thread he’d flung into the cat’s mouth; it was probably lost.

  He cut himself a short length of rope-heavy thread by dragging the sharp pin point across it until the fibers were weakened enough to be torn apart. Panting in the dark, shadowy cavern, he tied one end of the thread around the pinhead, then tied the other end near the point. The second loop slid a little, but it would hold well enough. With a grunt he slung the pin across his back, then flexed on his toes to test the weight. Good enough.

  Now. Was that all he needed? He stood indecisively, brow lined, but not with worry. He didn’t actually acknowledge it, but it gave him a good feeling to be calculating positively. Maybe there was something to the theory that true satisfaction was based on struggle. This moment was certainly the antithesis of the hopeless, listless hours of the night before. Now he was working toward a goal. True, it might be self-induced emotion, but it gave him the first definite pleasure he could remember experiencing for a long time.

  All right, then, what was needed? The climb was too difficult to be attempted unaided. He was simply too small; he needed apparatus. Very well, then. Since it was a cliff, that made him a mountaineer. What did mountaineers use? Cleated shoes. He couldn’t manage that. Alpenstocks. Nor that. Grappling hooks. Nor—

  Yes, he could! What if he got another pin and managed somehow to bend it into a semicircle? Then if he attached it to a long thread, he could fling it at openings in the lawn chairs, hook it in, and climb the thread. It would be perfect equipment.

  Excited he pulled another pin from the rubber cork, then unrolled about twenty feet—to him—of thread. He threw the pins and thread out of the box, climbed out by using the cork, and dragged his prizes up the hill, throwing them out onto the floor.

  He slid out of the carton and dropped down. He started toward the cement block, dragging the pins and thread behind. Now, he thought, if only I could take a little food and water with me . .

  He stopped, squinting at the box top. Suddenly he remembered, there were still pieces of cracker on the sponge! He could put them inside his robe somehow and take them with him.

  And water? On his face there was a look of concentration bordering on exultation. The sponge itself! Why couldn’t he tear off a small piece of it, soak it with water from the hose, and carry it with him? Certainly it would drip, it would run, but some of the water would stay in it, enough to see him through.

  He didn’t let himself think about the spider. He didn’t let himself think about the fact that there were only two days left to him, no matter what he did. He was too absorbed in the small triumphs of conquered detail and in the large triumph of conquered despair to let himself be dragged down again by crushing ultimates.

  That was it, then. The pin spear slung across his back, the cracker crumbs and water-soaked sponge in his robe, the pin hook for climbing.

  In half an hour he was ready. Although he already felt tired from the tremendous effort required to bend the pin (which he had done by shoving the point under the cement block and lifting at the head), hacking and tearing off a fragment of sponge, getting the water and the crackers and carrying everything to the foot of the cliff, he was too pleased to care. He was alive, he was trying. Suicide was a distant impossibility. He wondered how he could ever have considered it.

  Excitement faded, almost died when he tilted back his head and looked up toward the soaring top of the lawn chairs as they leaned against the Everest heights of the wall. Could he possibly climb that high?

  He lowered his eyes angrily. Don’t look, he ordered himself. To look at the entire journey all at once was stupidity. You thought of it in segments; that was the only way. First segment, the shelf. Second, the seat of the first chair. Third, the arm of the second chair. Fourth—

  He stood at the very bottom of the cliff. Never mind anything else, he told himself. He had the resolve to get up there; that was what mattered.

  He remembered another time in the past when resolution had come.
Thoughts of it ran through his mind as he flung up the hook and began to climb.

  18"

  It was a giant’s toy; a glowing, moving, incredible toy. The Ferris wheel, like a vast white-and-orange gear, turned slowly against the black October sky. Scarlet-lit Loop-the-Loop cages blurred across the night like shooting stars. The merry-goround was a bright, cacophonous music box that turned and turned, the grimacing, wild-eyed horses rising and falling, endlessly rising and falling, frozen in their galloping postures. Tiny cars and trains and trolleys, like merry bugs, raced around in their imprisoning circles, overflowing red-faced children who waved and screamed. Aisles were sluggish currents of doll people who clustered like filings around the magnetism of barker stands, food concessions, and booths where balloons could be exploded with broken-feathered darts, wooden milk bottles toppled with scratched and grimy baseballs, and pennies tossed upon mosaics of colored squares. The air pulsed with a many-tongued clamor and spotlights cast livid ribbons across the sky.

  As they drove up, another car pulled away from the curb and Lou eased the Ford into the opening, pulling out the hand brake, and turned off the engine.

  “Mamma, can I go to the merry-go-round, can I?” Beth asked excitedly.

  “Yes, dear.” Lou spoke distractedly, her gaze moving to where Scott was sitting, dwarfed in a shadowy corner of the back seat, the carnival glare splashed across his pale cheek, his eye like a tiny, dark berry, his mouth a pencil gash.

  “You will stay in the car,” she said worriedly.

  “What else can I do?”

  “It’s for your own good,” she said.

  It was a phrase she used all the time now; spoken with a hopeless patience, as if she could think of nothing better to say.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Mother, let’s go,” Beth said with determined anxiety. “We’ll miss it.”

  “All right.” Lou pushed open the door. “Push down your button,” she said, and Beth punched down the knob-topped rod that locked the door on her side, then scrambled across the seat.