by Andre Norton
They were talking without sounds—like just in their heads —and I could hear them, too. I can't remember what they were saying, except that it was happy talk. And I felt light and free, a way I couldn't remember ever feeling before—as if, in this place, you didn't have to be afraid of Littles or their traps. Joboy turned to look back at me, with a big smile on his face.
“Teddi knows. Teddi always knows,” he said.
I hurt. I hurt all over. I hurt so bad I yelled; at least, somebody was yelling. I opened my eyes, and everything was all red, like fire, and that hurt, too—and so I woke up on a new world.
When we could walk (we were so stiff, it hurt to move at all), the littles, four of them with blasters, herded us into another room, where the walls were logs of wood and the floor was dirt, tramped down hard. They made us take a bunch of pills, and we moved around, but there were no windows to see out of.
After a while, they came for us again and marched us out into the open. We knew then that we were on another world, all right.
The sky was green, not blue, and there were queer-looking trees and bushes. Right around the log-walled places, the ground had been burned off or dug up until it was typically ugly Little country. They had a couple of very small, light diggers and blasters, and they ran these around, trying to make the ugly part bigger.
We marched across to a place where there was just grass growing. There the Little chief lined us up and said this grass had to be dug out and cleared away so seeds could be planted, to test whether they could grow things from our world. He had tools (they must have been made for tweeners, at least, because they were all right for us): shovels, picks, hoes. He told us to get to work.
It was tough going. The grass roots ran deep, and we couldn't get much of the ground scraped as bare as he wanted it. They had to give us breaks for rest and food. I guess they didn't want to wear us out too fast.
While we weren't working, I took every chance to look around. Once you got used to the different colors of things, it wasn't so strange. There was one thing, I think, that the Littles should have remembered better. We Nats had lived in the woods and wild places for a long time. We were used to trees and bushes. The Littles never liked to go very far into the wild places; they needed walls about them to feel safe and happy— if Littles could be happy.
So the wide bigness of this wild country must have scared the Littles. It bothered me, just because it was unfamiliar, but not as much as it bothered the Littles. I had a feeling that, if what lay beyond that big stand of trees was no worse than what was right here, there was no reason why we Nats couldn't take to the woods the first chance we got. Then let the Littles just try to find us! I chewed on that in my mind but didn't say it out loud—yet.
It was on the fifth day of working that Raul, Joboy, and I were sent, along with a small clearing machine, in the other direction—into the woods on the opposite side of that bare place. I noticed that Joboy kept turning his head in one direction. When our guard dropped back, he whispered to me.
“Tam, Teddi's here!”
I missed a step. Teddi! Teddi was a dirty rag! Was Joboy hurt in the head now? I was so scared that I could have yelled, but Joboy shook his head at me.
“Teddi says no. He'll come when it's time. He don't like the Littles. They make everything bad.”
They set us to piling up logs and tree branches. We could lift and carry bigger loads than any Little. I kept Joboy with me as much as I could, and away from Raul. I didn't want Raul to know about Joboy and Teddi. As far as I was concerned, Raul still had some of the tweener look, and I never trusted him.
There was sticky sap oozing out of the wood, and it got all over us. At first I tried to wipe it off Joboy and myself, using leaves, but Joboy twisted away from me.
“Don't, Tam. Leave it on. It makes the bugs stay away.”
I had noticed that the Littles kept slapping at themselves and grunting. There were a lot of flies, and from the way the Littles acted, they could really bite. But the buzzers weren't bothering us, so I was willing to stay sticky, if that's what helped. The Littles acted as if the bites were getting worse. They moved away from us. Finally two of them went back to the log buildings, to get bug spray, I suppose, leaving only the one who drove the machine. He got into the small cab and closed the windows. I suppose he thought there was no chance of our running off into that strange wilderness.
Raul sat down to rest, but Joboy wandered close to the edge of the cut, and I followed to keep an eye on him. He squatted down near a bush, facing it The leaves were big and flat and had yellow veins. Joboy stared, as if they were windows he could see through.
I knelt beside him. “What is it, Joboy?”
“Teddi's there.” He pointed with his chin, not moving his scratched, dirty hands from his knees.
“Joboy—” I began, then stopped suddenly. In my head was something, not words but a feeling, like saying hello, except— Oh, I can never tell just how it was!
“Teddi,” Joboy said. His voice was like Da's, when I was no older than Joboy and there was a bad storm and Da was telling me not to be afraid.
What made that come into my mind? I stared at the bush. As I studied it now, I saw an opening between two of the leaves that was a window, enough for me to see—
Teddi! Well, perhaps not Teddi as Da had first brought him (and before Joboy wore him dirty and thin from much loving) but enough like him to make Joboy know. Only this was no stuffed toy; this was a live creature! And it was fully as large as Joboy himself, which was about as big as one of the Littles. Its bright eyes stared straight into mine.
Again I had that feeling of greeting, of meeting someone who meant no harm, who was glad to see me. I had no doubt that this was a friend. But—what was it’ The Littles hated wild things, especially big wild things. They would kill it! I glanced back at the one in the cab, almost sure I would see him aiming a blaster at the bush.
“Joboy,” I said as quietly as I could, “the Little will—”
Joboy smiled and shook his head. “The Little won't hurt Teddi, Tam. Teddi will help us; he likes us. He thinks to me how he likes us.”
“What you looking at, kid?” Raul called.
Joboy pointed to a leaf. “'The buzzer. See how big that one is?”
Sure enough, there was an extra-big one of the red buzzing flies sitting on the leaf, scraping its front legs together and looking as if it wanted a bite of someone. At that moment, I felt Teddi leave, which made me happier, as I didn't have Joboy's confidence in Teddi's ability to defend himself against the Littles.
That was the beginning. Whenever we went near the woods, sooner or later Teddi would turn up in hiding. I seldom saw any part of him, but I always felt him come and go. Joboy seemed to be able to think with him and exchange information—until the day Teddi was caught.
The creature had always been so cautious that I had begun to believe that the Littles would never know about him. But suddenly he walked, on his hind legs, right into the open. Raul yelled and pointed, and the Little on guard used his stunner. Teddi dropped. At least, he hadn't been blasted, not that that would necessarily save him.
I expected Joboy to go wild, but he didn't. He went over with the rest of us to see Teddi, lying limp and yellow on mashed, sticky leaves where we had been taking off tree limbs. Joboy acted as if he didn't know a thing about him. That I could not understand.
Teddi was a little taller than Joboy. His round, furry head would just top my shoulder, and his body was plump and fur-covered all over. He had large, round ears, set near the top of his head, a muzzle that came to a point, and a dark brown button of a nose. Yes, he looked like an animal, but I was sure he was something far different.
Now he was just a stunned prisoner, and the Littles made us carry him over to the machine. Then they took us all back to camp. They dumped us in the lockup and took Teddi into another hut. I know what Littles do to animals. They might— I only hoped Joboy couldn't imagine what the Littles might do to Teddi. I sti
ll didn't understand why he wasn't upset.
But when we were shut in, he took my hand. “Tam?"
I thought I knew what he was going to ask—that I help Teddi—and there was nothing I could do.
’Tam, listen—Teddi, he wanted to be caught. He did! He has a plan for us. It will work only if he gets real close to the Littles, so he had to be caught.”
"What does he mean?” El-Su demanded.
"The kid's mind-broke!” Raul burst out. “They knocked over some kind of an animal out there and—"
"Shut up!” I snapped at Raul. I had to know what Joboy meant, because it was plain that he believed what he was saying, and he knew far more about Teddi than I did.
"Teddi can do things with his head.” Joboy paid no attention to either El-Su or Raul, looking straight at me as if he must make me believe what he was saying.
Remembering for myself, I could agree in part. “I know—"
"He can make them—the Littles—feel bad inside. But we have to help.”
"How? We can't get out of here—"
"Not yet,” Joboy agreed. “But we have to help Teddi think—"
"Mind-broke!” Raul exploded and slouched away. But El-Su and the other two girls squatted down to listen.
"How do we help think?” She asked the question already on my tongue.
“You feel afraid. Remember all the bad things you are afraid of. And we hold hands in a circle to remember them—like bad dreams.” Joboy was plainly struggling to find words to make us understand.
“That's easy enough—to remember bad things,” El-Su agreed. “All right, we think. Come on, girls.” She took Amay's hand and Mara's. I took Mara's other hand, and Joboy took Amay's, so we were linked in a circle.
“Now"—Joboy spoke as sharply as any Little setting us to work—"think!”
We had plenty of bad things to remember: cold, hunger, fear. Once you started thinking and remembering, it all heaped up into a big black pile of bad things. I thought about every one of them—how Mom died, how Da was lost, and how—and how—and how....
I got so I didn't even see where we were or whose hands I held. I forgot all about the present; I just sat and remembered and remembered. It came true again in my mind, as if it were happening all over again, until I could hardly stand it. Yet once I had begun, I had to keep on.
Far off, there was a noise. Something inside me tried to push that noise away. I had to keep remembering, feeding a big black pile. Then suddenly the need for remembering was gone. I awakened from the nightmare.
I could hear someone crying. El-Su was facing me with tear streaks on her grimy face; the two little girls were bawling out loud. But Joboy wasn't crying. He stood up, looking at the door, though he still held on to our hands.
Then I looked in that direction. Raul crouched beside the door, hands to his head, moaning as if something hurt him bad. The door was opening—probably a Little, to find out why we were making all that noise.
Teddi stood there, with another Teddi behind him, looking over his shoulder. All the blackness was gone out of my head, as if I had rid myself of all the bad that had ever happened to me in my whole life. I felt so light and free and happy—as if I could flap my arms like wings and go flying off!
Outside, near where the Teddis stood, there was a Little crawling along the ground, holding on to his head the way Raul did. He didn't even see us as we walked past him. We saw two other Littles, one lying quiet, as if he were dead. Nobody tried to stop us or the Teddis. We just walked out of the bad old life together.
I don't know how long we walked before we came to an open place, and I thought, This I remember, because it was in my dream. Here were Joboy and Teddi, hand in paw. There was a Teddi with me, too, his furry paw in my hand, and from him the feeling was all good.
We understand now what happened and why. When the Littles first came to this world, spoiling and wrecking, as they always have done and still do, the Teddis tried to stop them. But the minds of the Littles were closed tight; the Teddis could not reach them—not until they found Joboy. He had no fear of them, because he knew a Teddi who had been a part of his life.
So Joboy was the key to unlock the Littles’ minds, with us to add more strength, just as it takes more than one to lift a really big stone. With Joboy and us opening the closed doors of the Littles’ minds, the Teddis could feed back to them all the fear they had spread through the years, the fear we had lived with and known in our nightmares. Such fear was a poison worse than any of the Littles’ own weapons.
We still go and think at them now and then, with a Teddi to aim our thoughts from where we hide. From all the signs, it won't be long before they will have had enough and will raise their starship and leave us alone. Maybe they will try to come back, but by then, perhaps, the Teddis and we can make it even harder for them.
Now we are free, and no one is ever going to put us back in a Nat pen. We are not “Nats” anymore. That is a Little name, and we take nothing from the Littles—ever again! We have a new name from old, old times. Once it was a name to make little people afraid, so it is our choice. We are free, and we are Giants, growing larger every day.
So shall we stay!
DESIRABLE LAKESIDE RESIDENCE
* * *
* * *
I went to the river
to droivn all my sorrow
But the river was more
to be pitied than I. . .
—Scots ballad
Her face felt queer and light without her respirator on—almost like being out here without any clothes. Jill thumbed the worn cords of her breather, crinkling them, smoothing them out again, without paying attention to what her hands were doing, her eyes were so busy surveying this new, strange and sometimes terrifying outer world,
Back home had been the apartment, sealed, of course, and the school, with the sealed bus in between. Sometimes there had been a visit to the shopping center. But she could hardly really remember now. Even the trip to this place was rather like a dream.
Movement in the long ragged grass beyond the end of the concrete block on which Jill sat. She tensed—
A black head, a small furred head with two startling blue eyes—
Jill hardly dared to breathe even though there was no smog at all. Those eyes were watching her measuringly. Then a sinuous black body flowed into full view. One minute it had not been there, the next—it just was!
This was—she remembered the old books—a cat!
Dogs and cats, people had had them once, living in their houses. Before the air quotient got so low no one was allowed to keep a pet in housing centers. But there was no air quotient here yet—a cat could live—
Jill studied the cat, sitting up on its haunches, its tail laid straight out on the ground behind it, just the very tip of that twitching a little now and then. Except for that one small movement it might have been a pretend cat, like the old pretend bear she had when she was little. Very suddenly it yawned wide, showing sharp white teeth, a curling pink tongue, bright in color, against the black which was all the rest of it.
“Hello, cat—” Jill said in that quiet voice which the bigness of Outside caused her to use.
Black ears twitched as if her words had tickled them a little. The cat blinked.
“Do you live here—Outside?” she asked. Because here things did dare to live Outside. She had seen a bird that very morning, and in the grass were all kinds of hoppers and crawlers. “It's nice"—Jill was gaining confidence—"to live Outside— but sometimes,” she ended truthfully, “scary, too. Like at night.”
“Ulysses, where are you, cat?”
Jill jumped. The cat blinked again, turned its head to look back over one shoulder. Then it uttered a small sound.
“I heard you, Ulysses. Now where are you?”
There was a swishing in grass and bush. Jill gathered her feet under her for a quick takeoff. Yet she had no intention of retreat until that was entirely necessary.
The bushes parted and Jill
saw another girl no bigger than she was. She settled back on her chosen seat. The cat arose and went to rub back and forth against the newcomer's scratched and sandy legs.
“Hello,” Jill ventured.
“You're Colonel Baylor's niece.” The other made that sound almost like an accusation. She stood with her hands bunched into fists resting on her hips. As Jill, she wore a one-piece shorts-tunic, but hers was a rusty green which seemed to melt into the coloring of the bushes. Jill had an odd feeling that if the other chose she could be unseen while still standing right there. Her skin was brown and her hair fluffed out around her face in an upstanding black puff.
“He's my uncle Shaw,” Jill offered. “Do—do you live Outside, too?”
“Outside,” the other repeated as if the word were strange. “Sure, I live here. Me—I'm Marcy Scholar. I live over there.” She pivoted to point to her left. “The other way's the lake—or what used to be the lake. My dad—when I was just a little old baby—he used to go fishing there. You believe me?”
She eyed Jill challengingly as if expecting a denial.
Jill nodded. She could believe anything of Outside. It had already shown her so many wonders which before had existed only in books, or on the screen of the school TV they used when Double Smog was so bad you couldn't even use the sealed buses.
“You come from up North, the bad country—” Marcy took a step forward. “The colonel, he has a big pull with the government or you couldn't get here at all. We don't allow people coming into a Clear. It might make it bad, too, if too many came. Bad enough with the lakes all dead, and the rest of it.”
Jill's eyes suddenly smarted as badly as they did once when she was caught in a room where the breather failed. She did not want to remember why she was here.
“Uncle Shaw walked on the moon! The President of the whole United States gave him a medal for it. He's in the history books—” she countered. “I guess what Uncle Shaw wants, he gets.”