He turned east on 50th Street and spent a long time trying to decipher the tattered posters advertising the last performance at Radio City Music Hall. Then he turned south again. He was jolted to a halt by the sudden clash of steel. It sounded like giant sword blades in a titanic duel. A small herd of stunted horses burst out of a side street, terrified by the clangor. Their shoeless hooves thudded bluntly on the pavement. The sound of steel stopped.
"That's where that bluejay got it from," Mayo muttered. "But what the hell is it?"
He drifted eastward to investigate, but forgot the mystery when he came to the diamond center. He was dazzled by the blue-white stones glittering in the showcases. The door of one jewel mart had sagged open, and Mayo tipped in. When he emerged, it was with a strand of genuine matched pearls which had cost him an I.O.U. worth a year's rent on the Body Slam.
His tour took him to Madison Avenue, where he found himself before Abercrombie & Fitch. He went in to explore and came at last to the gun racks. There he lost all sense of time, and when he recovered his senses, he was walking up Fifth Avenue toward the boat pond. An Italian Cosmi automatic rifle was cradled in his arms, guilt was in his heart, and a sales slip in the store read:I.O.U. 1 Cosmi Rifle, $750.00. 6 Boxes Ammo. $18.00. James Mayo.
It was past three o'clock when he got back to the boathouse. He eased in, trying to appear casual, hoping the extra gun he was carrying would go unnoticed. Linda was sitting on the piano bench with her back to him.
"Hi," Mayo said nervously. "Sorry I'm late. I … I brought you a present. They're real." He pulled the pearls from his pocket and held them out. Then he saw she was crying.
"Hey, what's the matter?"
She didn't answer.
"You wasn't scared I'd run out on you? I mean, well, all my gear is here. The car, too. You only had to look."
She turned. "I hate you!" she cried.
He dropped the pearls and recoiled, startled by her vehemence. "What's the matter?'
"You're a lousy, rotten liar!"
"Who? Me?"
"I drove up to New Haven this morning." Her voice trembled with passion. "There's no house standing on Grant Street. It's all wiped out. There's no Station WNHA. The whole building's gone."
"No."
"Yes. And I went to your restaurant. There's no pile of TV sets out in the street. There's only one set, over the bar. It's rusted to pieces. The rest of the restaurant is a pigsty. You were living there all the time. Alone. There was only one bed in back. It was lies! All lies!"
"Why would I lie about a thing like that?"
"You never shot any Gil Watkins."
"I sure did. Both barrels. He had it coming."
"And you haven't got any TV set to repair."
"Yes, I do.
"And even if it is repaired, there's no station to broadcast."
"Talk sense," he said angrily. "Why would I shoot Gil if there wasn't any broadcast?"
"If he's dead, how can he broadcast?"
"See? And you just now said I didn't shoot him."
"Oh, you're mad! You're insane!" she sobbed. "You just described that barometer because you happened to be looking at my clock. And I believed your crazy lies. I had my heart set on a barometer to match my clock. I've been looking for years." She ran to the wall arrangement and hammered her fist alongside the clock. "It belongs right here. Here. But you lied, you lunatic. There never was a barometer."
"If there's a lunatic around here, it's you," he shouted. "You're so crazy to get this house decorated that nothing's real for you anymore."
She ran across the room, snatched up his old shotgun, and pointed it at him. "You get out of here. Right this minute. Get out or I'll kill you. I never want to see you again."
The shotgun kicked off in her hands, knocking her backward and spraying shot over Mayo's head into a corner bracket. China shattered and clattered down. Linda's face went white.
"Jim! My God, are you all right? I didn't mean to … it just went off …"
He stepped forward, too furious to speak. Then, as he raised his hand to cuff her, the sound of distant reports come, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM. Mayo froze.
"Did you hear that?" he whispered.
Linda nodded.
"That wasn't any accident. It was a signal."
Mayo grabbed the shotgun, ran outside, and fired the second barrel into the air. There was a pause. Then again came the distant explosions in a stately triplet, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM. They had an odd, sucking sound, as though they were implosions rather than explosions. Far up the park, a canopy of frightened birds mounted into the sky.
"There's somebody," Mayo exulted. "By God, I told you I'd find somebody. Come on."
They ran north, Mayo digging into his pockets for more shells to reload and signal again.
"I got to thank you for taking that shot at me, Linda."
"I didn't shoot at you," she protested. "It was an accident."
"The luckiest accident in the world. They could be passing through and never know about us. But what the hell kind of guns are they using? I never heard no shots like that before, and I heard 'em all. Wait a minute."
On the little piazza before the Wonderland monument, Mayo halted and raised the shotgun to fire. Then he slowly lowered it. He took a deep breath. In a harsh voice he said, "Turn around. We're going back to the house." He pulled her around and faced her south.
Linda stared at him. In an instant he had become transformed from a gentle teddy bear into a panther.
"Jim, what's wrong?"
"I'm scared," he growled. "I'm goddamn scared, and I don't want you to be, too." The triple salvo sounded again. "Don't pay any attention," he ordered. "We're going back to the house. Come on!"
She refused to move. "But why? Why?"
"We don't want any part of them. Take my word for it."
"How do you know? You've got to tell me."
"Christ! You won't let it alone until you find out, huh? All right. You want the explanation for that bee smell, and them buildings falling down, and all the rest?" He turned Linda around with a hand on her neck and directed her gaze at the Wonderland monument. "Go ahead. Look."
A consummate craftsman had removed the heads of Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare, and replaced them with towering mantis heads, all saber mandibles, antennae, and faceted eyes. They were of a burnished steel and gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. Linda let out a sick whimper and sagged against Mayo. The triple report signaled once more.
Mayo caught Linda, heaved her over his shoulder, and loped back toward the pond. She recovered consciousness in a moment and began to moan. "Shut up," he growled. "Whining won't help." He set her on her feet before the boathouse. She was shaking but trying to control herself. "Did this place have shutters when you moved in? Where are they?"
"Stacked." She had to squeeze the words out. "Behind the trellis."
"I'll put 'em up. You fill buckets with water and stash 'em in the kitchen. Go!"
"Is it going to be a siege?"
"We'll talk later. Go!"
She filled buckets and then helped Mayo jam the last of the shutters into the window embrasures. "All right, inside," he ordered. They went into the house and shut and barred the door. Faint shafts of the late afternoon sun filtered through the louvers of the shutters. Mayo began unpacking the cartridges for the Cosmi rifle. "You got any kind of gun?"
"A .22 revolver somewhere."
"Ammo?"
"I think so."
"Get it ready."
"Is it going to be a siege?" she repeated.
"I don't know. I don't know who they are, or what they are, or where they come from. All I know is, we got to be prepared for the worst."
The distant implosions sounded. Mayo looked up alertly, listening. Linda could make him out in the dimness now. His face looked carved. His chest gleamed with sweat. He exuded the musky odor of caged lions. Linda had an overpowering impulse to touch him. Mayo loaded the rifle, stood it alongside the shotgun, and began padding from shu
tter to shutter, peering out vigilantly, waiting with massive patience.
"Will they find us?" Linda asked.
"Maybe."
"Could they be friendly?"
"Maybe."
"Those heads looked so horrible."
"Yeah."
"Jim, I'm scared. I've never been so scared in my life."
"I don't blame you."
"How long before we know?"
"An hour, if they're friendly; two or three, if they're not."
"W-why longer?"
"If they're looking for trouble, they'll be more cautious."
"Jim, what do you really think?"
"About what?"
"Our chances."
"You really want to know?"
"Please."
"We're dead."
She began to sob. He shook her savagely. "Stop that. Go get your gun ready."
She lurched across the living room, noticed the pearls Mayo had dropped, and picked them up. She was so dazed that she put them on automatically. Then she went into her darkened bedroom and pulled Mayo's model yacht away from the closet door. She located the .22 in a hatbox on the closet floor and removed it along with a small carton of cartridges.
She realized that a dress was unsuited to this emergency. She got a turtleneck sweater, jodhpurs, and boots from the closet. Then she stripped naked to change. Just as she raised her arms to unclasp the pearls, Mayo entered, paced to the shuttered south window, and peered out. When he turned back from the window, he saw her.
He stopped short. She couldn't move. Their eyes locked, and she began to tremble, trying to conceal herself with her arms. He stepped forward, stumbled on the model yacht, and kicked it out of the way. The next instant he had taken possession of her body, and the pearls went flying, too. As she pulled him down on the bed, fiercely tearing the shirt from his back, her pet dolls also went into the discard heap along with the yacht, the pearls, and the rest of the world.
HENRY HASSE
Henry Louis Hasse (1913 USA - 1977) was an American science fiction author and fan. He is probably known best for being the co-author of Ray Bradbury's first published story, "Pendulum" (November 1941 in Super Science Stories).
Hasse's novelette "He Who Shrank" is anthologized in both the classic 1946 collection Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, and in Isaac Asimov's memoir of 1930s science fiction Before the Golden Age.
Walls of Acid, by Henry Hasse
Five millenniums have passed since the loathsome Termans were eliminated from the world of Diskra.... But what of the other planets?
Braanol stirred, throbbed sluggishly once, then lay quiescent as his mental self surged up from the deeps of non-entity. And gradually he came to know that someone had entered the room. His room, far beneath the city.
Now he could feel the vibra-currents through the liquids of the huge tanks where he had lain somnolent for untold aeons. It was pleasant, caressing. For a moment he floated there, enjoying to the utmost this strange sensation as the renewed thought-life-force set his every convolution to pulsing.
"To be once more aware! O gloriously aware!" the thought came fierce and vibrant. "Once more they have wakened me--but how long has it been?" Then curiously: "And what can they want this time?"
The huge brain was alert now, with a supernal sense of keening. Tentatively he sent out a thought-potential that encompassed the room.
"They are afraid!" he sensed. "Two have entered here, and they are afraid of me. I shall remedy that!"
Braanol lowered his thought-potential to one-eighth of one magnitude, and felt his mind contact theirs. "Approach, my children," he said kindly. "You have nothing to fear from me! I take it you are the imperial messengers sent by her Supreme Magnificence, the Empress Alaazar?"
He felt the fright slip from their minds. But they were startled.
"The Empress Uldulla reigns now, fourth in the Royal line," came the thought. "Empress Alaazar died long ago!"
"I am truly grieved!" Braanol flashed to them. "Alaazar--may she rest in peace--did not neglect me! How well I remember her interest in the stories I could tell, stories of the Diskra of old when we sent men out to glorious adventures on the other planets! Aye! Five millenniums ago it was that we achieved space travel. In those days--"
Braanol ceased in his reminiscences, aware that these two were trying to get their thoughts through to him.
"That is why we have come! The Empress Uldulla, too, wishes a story. The story of the first space-flight from Diskra, and the events that brought it about. And of how you--"
"Aye! Of how I came to be as you see me now! I shall be delighted, my children, to tell it again. But first, prepare the trans-telector so that it may be recorded faithfully."
Braanol directed them to a machine on the far side of the room, and instructed them as to its operation. Soon the hundreds of tiny coils were humming, and a maze of tubes fed out of the machine, on which would be recorded Braanol's every thought. For a moment he paused, gently swaying, pulsing, a huge independent brain suspended in the pale green liquid. Then he began his story.
* * * * *
Your Supreme Beneficence! When the imperial messengers came to me, bringing the communication with which you deigned to address my decrepit solitude, it was like a glorious ray of light come to illumine the deepening darkness of my declining years!
It is with trepidation that I set about to fulfill your Exalted Command. Five millenniums, aye, even more, have passed, since those who were part of that segment of history into which you inquire, have become but drifting dust. Only within the feeble memory of your humblest servant is there any record of it.
Five millenniums! Aye! That was truly the golden period of our beloved Diskra--not that our period under Your Serene Effulgence is not golden indeed! But in that day all Diskra was under the glorious rule of Palladin. His city on the scarlet shores of our central sea was the wonder of us all. Aye! We had a sea then, where there is now but desert.
The intelligent planets were three: our own Diskra, of course, fourth from the sun. And nearest the sun, Mirla, that fiery globe, where life apes the quality of our own salamander, existing by necessity near the flames. And second from the sun Venia, the cloud-capped world, where life exalts the virtues of the fish. Of the third planet, Terra, we then knew little.
Our cities faced the sun in those days, towering in polychromatic splendor. Height was no obstacle then, for we had wings--wings! Think of it, O Beneficence! No need had we of clumsy, metal vessels. But all that has changed. Now no whirr of wings disturbs the air, and our formi-tectural splendors rise within. The history of this change is what Your Supreme Exaltation would know. This, then, is the record.
With the rule of Palladin was born the age of science, not so much due to the intellects of that day, as through the driving urge of ultimate necessity. For Palladin had a brother, Thid. He was unfortunately a mutant. Whereas our features were delicate and quite regular, Thid's were gross and stamped with power. His royal head was too large and cumbersome, and instead of our slender waists, he was almost asymmetrical in shape. In short--no member of our fairer, royal sex could look upon him with aught but horror. And it was because of this that he was dietetically conditioned for the realm of science.
It was a mistake. As the years passed, the loneliness of his virtual exile tended to derange Thid's prodigious mind! Aye, prodigious--and dangerous in his manic-depressive state. Then one day Palladin called an emergency meeting of the Inner Council. I, Braanol, was a member of that Council.
"It has come to my attention," Palladin said, "that Thid has been carrying on certain dangerous experiments! Experiments of a sort that could well be inimical to us--to our very existence!"
We well knew to what Palladin referred. But Thid was his brother, one of the Imperial ones. No one dared speak.
"Why was I not made aware of it sooner?" Palladin demanded sternly. "You, Braanol! You knew of it?"
"Yes, your
majesty." I was frightened. "I beg to explain--I have tried to dissuade him--"
Palladin's visage became less stern, as though he understood our reluctance in this matter. "True," he said. "Thid is my brother. He must be mad! And I tell you now: if he has gone as far in this experiment as I suspect, I shall not hesitate to apply the only remedy dictated by efficiency--death! Have him brought to me at once."
But Thid was nowhere to be found. He had learned of Palladin's anger, and had fled into the Diskran desert where the abhorred Termans dwelt in myriads despite all our effort to eradicate them. These Termans were soft-bodied, subterranean creatures with an obstinate life-force, and we had long realized that they might one day be a menace to us.
So into the desert our Thid fled, spurred by the knowledge that his life was forfeit. For a time, he was naturally thought dead. Who could survive unprotected the extremes of heat and cold? And if by a miracle he triumphed over the elements, how survive the appalling enmity of the Termans, whose rudimentary brains conceived no mercy?
Nevertheless, startling bits of rumor began to drift in to our city; rumors that Thid had been seen, leading hordes of gigantic Termans across the desert wastes!
We laughed, of course, for caravaneers are ever the prey of sun mirages, and legends are dear to their souls. A legend was begun concerning Thid. Arriving caravans vied with each other in fantastic reports. Some had seen him with immense hordes of the repulsive Termans. Still others had discovered subterranean labyrinths being built by the Termans under his command, and had barely escaped with their lives. And still we laughed, blessed by the constant climate on the shores of our sea, and the beneficent rule of our Exalted Palladin.
And then we ceased to laugh. Palladin called together his Council of Scientists.
"Can it be?" Palladin asked. "Two whole caravans have vanished on the way to Estka beyond the mountains." And he told us more, reports that had arrived from other cities. Survivors had arrived, with the light of madness in their eyes, babbling some nameless fear. Others had died from ghastly wounds--great burns that refused to heal, but spread a kind of disease through the tissues. I, Braanol, examined some of these wounds and reported to Palladin.
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