The Day the Earth Stood Still: Selected Stories of Harry Bates

by Harry Bates

  He was rudely awakened by the shock of his plunge into the postman's bag, and knew, then, it must be morning.

  There was no sleep after that. He rode; was jolted, rested, was jolted, rode, and rested some more, and then was off in a carrier's bag on the way to his own house. He could hear nothing, but could tell when he was being carried up the steps and given to the maid. She would now be carrying him up to his old friend Heiler.

  A pause, and he came to rest.

  Another pause, but Allison couldn't wait. He pushed aside the string and paper at the top end of the box and looked out. He was on the desk in his own laboratory. Fearfully he continued out and looked around.

  His high-backed swivel chair pivoted; a colossus was seated there. And the high-looming features of the colossus were those of the man called Jones.

  CHAPTER VIII

  For a moment Allison crouched there, petrified.

  Then the great features above spread up in a smile, and that released him, and in instant wild panic he was scrambling back over the surface of the desk looking for a way to get down. Jones' hand came swooping through the air, but before it could close over him he had made one wild jump out beyond the edge of the table to the cord leading up to the reading lamp, had closed his arms about it and was sliding down its rough, wavy length.

  He was skinned and bleeding when he reached the floor, but at once he was away and looking for a place–any place–to escape into. Nothing nearby offered. The desk was placed forty yards out from the wall, and far to one side, in the corner, stood a high, heavy specimen cabinet. If he could make that!

  The colossal feet under the desk were moving; Jones' head and arm appeared into view above them. Allison seized his chance and ran with all his might over the hundred-yard open space to the cabinet. After him charged Jones; but he reached it safely and retired far under its base. Its height was such that he just had room to stand erect.

  He got out his hypodermic. He was cornered; but let Jones' fingers come near enough and he was as good as dead!

  Heart beating like a frightened mouse, Allison waited. What would his enemy do? Get the broom and sweep him out? Then bat him to death as one would a cockroach?

  He watched the man's feet. They lifted out of sight, lowered, slowly, one at a time, receded: he was returning to the desk. A pause, then the feet returned. Knees appeared, and hands; the man's head showed. He was wearing over his head and mouth an apparatus not unlike that of a telephone operator. Then Allison heard words, the first since he had left the other's civilization, weeks–it seemed years–before. The word-sounds were extremely attenuated; he could not recognize them as belonging to Jones.

  "Come out, Allison," they said. "I won't hurt you."

  "Come and get me!" the ethnologist challenged, hoping fervently that he would reach in and try.

  "All right; but throw out the hypodermic first," came the long drawn-out reply.

  "Like hell I will!" exclaimed Allison passionately. Jones knew! He was prepared! Despair seized him, He was lost.

  He waited to see what would happen next. Jones wasted no more words, but returned to the desk and occupied himself there in a manner Allison could not see. Then he returned, and knelt down again.

  "All right, 372, if you will," he said.

  What did these cryptic words mean?

  Allison waited, tense, far back under the cabinet. Jones' cupped hands lowered near the front edge; one was removed; and off the other stepped a tiny man, his own size. He wore a soft-green robe and sandals; was clean and freshly shaven; and in figure, face, and bearing he was another himself!

  He stepped under the front edge of the cabinet and looked around. Allison, amazed and frightened, cowered farther back. Jones' face appeared at the floor, watching.

  "I say, Allison, how are you?" exclaimed the double, seeing the other and starting heartily over to him.

  "Who are you?" Allison asked fearfully, backing still more. The fellow had his own voice!

  "372." The other laughed. "You're 793–though I know you aren't aware of it. But heavens, man–how you look!"

  Allison looked the wreck he was. His dress-like costume was torn and filthy; his arm was burned; his bands were skinned, swollen, raw, and bleeding, and on his face was a tangled, matted three-inch yellow beard.

  "Who are you?" Allison repeated, crouching, devouring him with bloodshot eyes, ready at a flash to run or strike, like a man cornered by his own ghost.

  "Come on out, old fellow, and I'll explain," said the double kindly. He made as if to grasp Allison's upper arm.

  "If you touch me, you die!" growled the ethnologist intensely, avoiding his hand.

  Jones' voice floated in. "Watch out! He has a hypodermic!"

  "Oh!" said the double and held himself with more caution. "Allison," he said seriously to the other, "you've been a damn fool. We're not here to hurt you. Come on out and–"

  "Go away!" Allison interrupted, crouching lower, a wild light in his eyes. "Go away! Go away!" he replied shrilly, utter desperation in his voice.

  The double took a step back. "I think he is a little mad," he said to Jones.

  The two men faced each other tensely. They were the same person, except that one stood erect, fresh, confident, and in full health and strength, and the other was bruised, battered, bloody, spent, and crouched like a cornered rat about to spring.

  "Give me that needle," the double said.

  Allison's head went a little lower. His lips drew back over his teeth like an animal's. Without warning he jumped and struck out.

  Like a mongoose dodging a cobra the double leaped back, and his own right arm flashed forth, caught the other's by the wrist and held it. It was his fresh strength against the last reserves of the ethnologist's, and the balance was all for him. He twisted the wrist; the arm gave backward; and both fell to the floor, he on top. Carefully, still holding the wrist at the breaking point, he removed the sack and threw it out to Jones. Then he dragged his wildly threshing prisoner out in the open.

  Jones was waiting to relieve him. Gently, so as to give no hurt, he enfolded Allison in one hand, took the double up in the other, and carried both over to the desk. There he placed the two on the blotter, ringed them with his hands, and sat down.

  Allison at once shied away from the double.

  "I admire you, 793," Jones said. "But you've put me to an extraordinary amount of trouble."

  The ethnologist turned and looked up at him. "And look what you've done to me!" he yelled back, panting. "I accepted your offer in all good faith. I was to come to no harm. And the first thing I discovered was that I was just another victim whose mind you intended to pervert. Jones, you're the system's lowest, most treacherous skunk!"

  The out-worlder smiled a little; but Allison found it impossible to read his face when it was so big. The double at his side startled him, speaking up in defense.

  "No, no–you're all wrong! Let him explain."

  "Explain how he kept his agreement by reducing me to this size?" Allison retorted bitterly. "Who are you, anyway?"

  "Tell him," the double said to Jones.

  "Will you listen to what I have to say?" the out-worlder asked in his slow-creeping voice.

  "I don't see that I have any choice," Allison spat back.

  There was a pause.

  "I'll have to start far in the past," the colossus began at last.

  "Forty-five thousand years ago the human race was one, and lived only on Earth. One segment of that race, living on a great warm island in the South Pacific, developed a mighty civilization. You Earthmen of today who live in what you call the scientific age are but in the early groping stages of the civilization that was your forbears' at that time.

  "Among other things, the human race had perfected space ships and ventured out into the, void. It set up colonies on other planets suitable. And when the day predicted for centuries by its geologists came, and the great island that was its home began to sink under the surface of the sea, it was ready, a
nd in thousands of space ships set forth, some for out-world portions of the solar system, and the rest to other and more stable parts of Earth.

  "There was but one blood. The Mutrantian Titans, who in your work under preparation will be held up as a cousin strain to that of Earthmen, are so in fact. They are the descendants of one colony of the Earthmen of forty-five thousand years ago. Their size resulted from local conditions which I need not go into.

  "I am of a race you would call pygmies; but we, for good reasons, deliberately reduced ourselves to that size. We have for a long time known how to do it. I, to attain my present size, for purposes of mixing among you Earthmen, simply underwent the reverse of the process. But I and my kind are of the human race. We are the descendants of another colony.

  "We have always been a small colony, for our environment did not encourage a great population. In time we were exposed to the dangers of inbreeding. We did the logical thing. Every so often we obtained from our brother colonies new stock, with varied and vigorous hereditary factors different from those in us. This new stock we scientifically infiltrated through our own; and so we kept the fecundity and the vigor of our strain–"

  "Jones," interrupted Allison hotly, "you're lower than a dog to have taken me, and others like me, for use as studs in the series of matings which would be necessary for that result!"

  The out-worlder showed no anger. "There are no 'series of matings,' and won't be," he answered. "And you–Allison–were the only Earthman we took."

  "I have positive knowledge that you mated off other Earthmen while I was there," contradicted the ethnologist.

  "I know what you know," the other said. "Miss CB-301 voluntarily came and told me. But in spite of what you saw through the search-beam, you were the only Earthman concerned."

  "You're a liar!" Allison flung back.

  Still the out-worlder showed no sign of anger. Patiently he went on, "You learned a little, but not enough. When you escaped it became necessary to follow and bring you back, for we could not have you disseminating false information, or indeed any. It was thought most expedient to take you upon your arrival here. To that end I arranged for the private grounding of my space ship, which you had appropriated, and one of my men was there waiting.

  "You know what happened. You got away from him, and went I don't know where. But it was certain that you would try to return to your home, so I came here and waited for you. And, naturally, your friend, Doctor Heiler, was watched, and your suspicious package brought in to me.

  "Now," he concluded, "I am going to take you back."

  "I prefer to be destroyed."

  "You won't, later."

  "That's the damnable part of it! What, then, will you do with me?"

  "I will hold you to your part of our agreement."

  "Meaning, you'll force me to marry a never-ending series of your disgusting females with the prognathous foreheads–and like it."

  "You will mate only with one."

  "One is too many. I shall never arrive back there alive."

  "You will be watched," the colossus said significantly. He smiled a little.

  "It happens, though," he went on, "that I have promised you to Miss CB-301–Would that be so painful? She loves you. If," he added, "you could find it in your heart to love her, I think we might make an exception in your case and not force you by the means we have."

  Allison was in the man's power, why should he grant favors? He was skeptical.

  "Jones," he said, "I don't trust you and don't believe you. My mating with that girl–or any one of your women, no matter how prolific she might be–would have no effect whatever on the racial stock of a city like yours."

  Jones smiled. "Doctor Allison has already mated with 1722 of our women," he said.

  For a moment the ethnologist could not believe his cars. Then he dismissed the remark with an expression of irritation. "You talk crazy!" he said.

  "Do you not know," the out-worlder asked calmly, "that theoretically it is possible to divide in half the various molecules which make up an object and reassemble them to make two of that object, exactly like it, only smaller? Some day you Earthmen will learn to do it; but we can do it already. We can split objects into fifties, hundreds; we can do it with the living human body!

  "Shortly after Doctor Allison had come to us, he, the original 178-pound Doctor Allison, was split up into 1728 little ones, each identical with the original except in the matter of size. You are one of those little ones. Mr. 372, here, is another. You each weigh approximately one and a half ounces."

  A great light burst over Allison's mind. He saw again that fearful recurring image of the doll faces. Interminable rows of them. Each face his face, and every one somehow himself.

  They had been those doll faces! Sometime during the process he in the large size had become aware of the scene before him and had subconsciously remembered.

  He gaped foolishly at the out-worlder. The new vista of possibilities which his words had opened up was overpowering. Jones smiled.

  "Yes," he said, "1728 little ones, and 1722 are already mated with our women.

  "I'm sorry," he added, "but five died, for various reasons out of our control. When you all are eventually recombined, Doctor Allison will weigh several ounces less. I don't think he will mind, though, for he can more than make that up in one good meal."

  Allison still stood as if turned to stone. The man really did seem to be telling the truth. He must have been sincere all along.

  "You will recall," Jones went on, "that I promised Doctor Allison he would be returned here unharmed after four months. He will be. All your–well, brothers, now so happily married, will just before that time undergo the reverse of the process whereby we made them fall in love; and then all will be assembled. You will be one of them. I am in conscience bound to see that every one of his living partitions are present."

  The colossal face smiled. "Of course, for all that desire it, there will be a suitable ceremony of divorce."

  The smile faded. There was a pause. "Has it occurred to you," Jones asked, "that I am reasoning with you, not just snatching you? On the face of it, I might be telling the truth."

  Allison no longer doubted, but his thoughts were elsewhere. 1723 matings! That many homes, angles, environments! All parts of himself, later to be recombined into himself!

  "Think of the new knowledge!" Jones said.

  Was the man smiling?

  "Why hasn't anyone ever brought his knowledge back to Earth with him?" Allison asked with sudden sharp suspicion.

  "Before leaving, we removed it from their minds," came the frank, easy answer. "We'll of course do that with Doctor Allison too."

  So! Well, if he ever had that knowledge in one person, he'd come back with it! Somehow! Somehow.

  He hesitated, still shaken, thinking, a doll beside another doll on the great table over which leaned the colossus who had been his enemy. He felt a touch on his arm. It was 372–

  "Don't be deterred by thoughts of that ugly young atavism," the fellow said encouragingly. "They'll get you some one more beautiful than she." His face lighted up. "Personally, I've had the greatest of luck. I understand about the machine; but deep down I know right well there's something more than that between KS-971 and myself. It's beyond words. Even to see her! Her mouth! Her scalp–not a hair! Her high, wide, wrinkled forehead!"

  He'd been in the machine, all right.

  Allison still hesitated. So all his struggles had come to this!

  "Service."

  "Applied, and very, very practical ethnology." Yes, and one very, very widely applied ethnologist.

  There was that lovely girl of the numbers. She loved him. Even Jones had said she loved him. He was bruised and weary; he needed very much to have some one lovely and kind and warm

  "After all, you don't have any choice," the out-worlder reminded him.

  793 shrugged. "All right," he said with a sigh. "If you will agree to enlarge Miss CB-301 to earth-size and permit her to re
turn with me."

  Jones smiled. "As you wish," he said. He rose and picked up the two tiny men. He put them in a little box in his pocket and walked out of the door.

  THE END

  SF/F/H IN PAGETURNER EDITIONS

  AWARD WINNING & NOMINEE STORIES AND AUTHORS

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  This Island Earth–Raymond F. Jones (Hugo nominee author)

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  Rat in the Skull & Other Off-Trail Science Fiction–Rog Phillips (Hugo nominee author)

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