Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J. Francis McComas

  “It won’t hurt, Dave,” soothed Vanni. His voice lacked conviction.

  “Please, please—Vanni—we was pals on the ship—”

  Hrdlicka stepped forward from his line.

  “Brandt! Can’t you do something?”

  McCann and Vanni were now wrestling with the screaming Tasker. Despite his bound arms, the condemned was battling furiously, hunching his shoulders and lunging bull-like in every direction. Tossing appearances to the winds, Vanni climbed on Tasker’s back and tried to put on a half-nelson. But Tasker still screamed.

  Cardozo bowed to Hrdlicka.

  “Prisoners sometimes become violently hysterical when death gets this close to them, Your Honor,” he said politely.

  “It’s more than that!” snapped Malory. “The dakarine has worn off, Brandt!”

  “You’ve got to do something!” Hrdlicka cried, his heavy rumble gone. “This—this is dreadful!”

  “I don’t wanna die!” With a mighty frenzy, Tasker threw off Vanni, wrenched free from McCann, flung himself on the ground before Cardozo. “Please,” he began to crawl, “you got no right—I shouldn’t have to die—I been a sick man—please!”

  “Do something, for Christ’s sake!” McCann screamed suddenly.

  “I’ve been afraid of this,” Malory said, his quiet voice strangely sedate, “I have a narcotic, if the penologist permits . . .”

  Cardozo stared down at the groveling Tasker. Now—it was really quite true—the poor wretch was no more than a symbol, a postulate in an argument.

  He nodded his head.

  The guards hauled Tasker to his feet and managed to hold him quiet while Dr. Malory administered a hypodermic. Tasker sighed, then went limp. His head hobbled, then his whole body leaned forward a little as the two guards held him upright.

  Cardozo felt, rather than heard a gusty sigh of relief from the witnesses.

  At that moment Blair trotted in, Grover a pace behind him, his rifle aimed at Blair’s back.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” cried the little man. He pranced up to Brandt Cardozo. “I shall report this outrage! This man broke into my room—menaced me with a gun—”

  “Mr. Blair! Lower your voice, please. You are in the presence of a man about to die.”

  “Uh—yes. Sorry. But—”

  “Mr. Blair, you were required by law to attend this execution. Your tardiness has distressed everyone. Now, please take your proper place among the witnesses so that we can get this business over with.”

  “I was indisposed!” Blair bridled. “And further, sir, I will not be driven about at gunpoint.” He saw the slumping Tasker. “What’s he doing? More dramatics?”

  Cardozo waited the barest fraction of a pause. Malory sensed the urgency, turned to Blair and said, with completely professional detachment, “Oh—my doing, Mr. Citizens’ Counselor. The dakarine wore off, as I prognosed, you’ll remember, and the condemned man was frightened into hysterics. With Mr. Cardozo’s permission, I gave him a shot. He’s unconscious, doesn’t know what’s about to happen . . . That doesn’t matter, of course.”

  “But it does!” Blair shrilled. “The condemned man must—”

  A loud, disjointed cry from the witnesses cut him off. He gaped a little, looked uncertainly about him, was checked when Brandt Cardozo raised his hand. The crowd quieted.

  Hrdlicka very ostentatiously stepped back into line.

  There was quiet.

  “Grover,” said Brandt Cardozo.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “If Counselor Blair does not take his proper place among the witnesses—immediately—you will put him there.”

  Blair, very pale now, glanced at Tasker, then shot a look at Brandt Cardozo. From Cardozo his gaze flickered to the stark post. His pallor became a little greenish. Then he hurried over to the group of spectators. Two jurors gave him room.

  “Take your place with the firing squad, Grover,” Cardozo ordered. “All right, Vanni—McCann—tie him up there.”

  They walked Tasker over to the post and strapped him to it. He leaned stiffly forward, straps restraining him at his knees, waist and shoulders.

  Cardozo stepped in front of him and lifted the death warrant. It had been scribed on a sheet of the Tonia’s notepaper by the one battered salvaged portable.

  He read it slowly, then, moving deliberately, stepped back and a few paces to one side.

  “The sentence of death will now be carried out,” he said loudly. “Ready!”

  The squad lifted their rifles.

  “Aim.”

  “Fire.”

  There was a hiss of blue flame.

  Tasker’s dirty shirt smoked suddenly, his body jerked and he slumped even more.

  Cardozo beckoned to Malory and the two of them strode over to the post. The doctor put fingers to Tasker’s wrist. After an endless moment he took them away. His voice wasn’t quite steady as he said, “I pronounce this man dead.”

  There was a thud behind them. Malory and Cardozo jerked their heads around and saw Hugo Blair lying on the ground, face downward. Malory moved uncertainly.

  “Leave him be,” a juror called out. “He’s just passed out.”

  Cardozo stared a moment at the fidgeting witnesses, then said, “The execution of David Tasker has been carried out as prescribed by the law of the New World. You will please leave the place of execution immediately, in a quiet and orderly manner.”

  They all started toward the yard-gate, walking fast. One or two looked down at Blair as they passed him. One man suddenly put his hand to his mouth, gazed frantically about him, then ran for the gate.

  No one laughed at him.

  Brandt Cardozo saw that none of the silent crowd stepped any nearer to the unconscious Blair than they had to.

  Brave New World

  A decade and more ago, McComas used to mite science fiction under the pseudonym of Webb Marlowe; but since then his miting has been confined to editorial comments here and elsewhere, a noteworthy essay on capital punishment, and critiques of science-fantasy for the New York Times Book Review. Now in 1954 he’s blossoming out as a fiction-writer again, starting off with an intelligent analytical study of future penology in Raymond J. Healy’s 9 TALES OF SPACE AND TIME; and I’m as happy as I’m sure you will be that F&SF has the privilege of being the first magazine to present a story by The New McComas. When science fiction turns to the past rather than the future, the theme of beginnings—of how things came to pass for the first time—is an especially fascinating one. We’ve brought you stories of the first man who consciously uttered a word (by John P. McKnight) and of the first man who learned to season food (by me); now McComas takes up another “first” which has been surprisingly neglected to date and introduces us to the delightful company of Sleepy Hawk, a tribal leader who knew how to fight and how to laugh and how to coin words . . . and how fighting could be replaced by something new and vital and demanding fresh word-making. —A.B.

  THE TRAVELERS to the hot country arrived today, carrying many things, so tonight there will be dancing and all the hearts of The People will be good. As ever, when the travelers return, I remember how the thing began with Sleepy Hawk, that great doer of deeds, that laughter, that maker of words.

  Most of The People think the matter had its beginning later; but I, whose oldest father had the story from the mouth of Sleepy Hawk himself, think otherwise. The true beginning was when Long Ax, that angry man, had his new ax handle break in his hand the very first time he swung the weapon. Long Ax had chosen the wood with care and knowledge, made it straight with his knife, and then, in the chosen way, fixed it to the great stone ax his oldest father had given him.

  Then, at the very first trial swing at one of the big trees that grew by the river where The People were camped, the handle had splintered, the great stone head had bounced from the tree to the river water and Long Ax, a splinter driven into his thumb, danced about, shouting with pain and anger.

  Since all this was a very bad sign, the rest of
the young men looked very solemn. All, that is, except Sleepy Hawk, who fell on his back and laughed. He laughed so loud and so long that the other four thought he might never stop, but choke himself to death there by the river.

  “Why do you laugh?” cried Long Ax. “Now I must make another handle! We can’t start until I do!”

  “Yes,” asked Hungry Dog, who was fat and liked to sit in Long Ax’s shadow, “why do you laugh?”

  Sleepy Hawk stopped choking himself and said, “I’m sorry. But you looked so—so—” he looked in his head for a word, could not find one and said, “so—laugh-making! One moment you were swinging your great ax, the next moment you were dancing about, a little boy with a splinter in your hand! And the fine new handle for your ax was nothing but wood for the fire!”

  At Sleepy Hawk’s words, even Mountain Bear, the quiet man, laughed softly deep in his throat.

  The face of Long Ax colored the angry red and he said, “How would you like to stay here and laugh while the others follow me on our hunt?”

  Sleepy Hawk sat up then and looked at the other. His face did look something like that of a hawk that sleeps, with his sharp curved nose and his half-closed eyes. But it was the face of a hawk just waiting to wake and pounce.

  “How would you like to try to make me?” he said very softly.

  Long Ax was still red with anger but he looked away from Sleepy Hawk, toward the river.

  “You have a knife and I have nothing,” he growled.

  With a move so fast it could barely be seen Sleepy Hawk jumped to his feet, took the knife from his belt and tossed it away.

  “Now, I have no knife.”

  “Enough!” cried Mountain Bear, who was a quiet man but strong like his name animal. “Save your blows for our enemies! Long Ax, I have a stick for a spear, dry and tough. You may have it for your ax. Sleepy Hawk, take up your knife. You know we would not go on a fight or a hunt without you to lead us.”

  So there was peace but later, while waiting for Long Ax to bind together haft and head of his weapon, Mountain Bear said to Sleepy Hawk, “I cannot understand you. Always you laugh. And there is nothing to smile about in life.”

  “Yes, there is! Each thing of life, even the worst thing, has a part of it that will make you laugh, if only you will see it.”

  “Ha! I suppose you laugh even when you are with a woman!”

  “Sometimes. If it is the proper woman and her heart is like mine.”

  But, as I said, most of The People think the matter had its beginning later, there on the ledge in the mountain of the Mud Dwellers, halfway down the great cliff, when the five young men came face to face with six of the little Mud Dwellers and there-was no going back for any man.

  For, after much thought, the band had decided to go toward the sun and into the mountain of the Mud Dwellers, rather than to the cold mountains and the Dwellers-In-Caves. The young men of The People wanted women. Those Dwellers-In-Caves, who made such queer markings on the walls of their homes, were strong and not easy to surprise. Too, their women were fierce, not kind and pleasing like those of the Mud Dwellers.

  So they made a long journey, over a strange country. First, the river had dried into a hot land. After that, they seemed to be in the time of the long sun, come before they had thought, and the skins of animals they wore were hot on their backs. Sleepy Hawk wound into a tight roll his skin of a big cat and wrapped it around his waist. After a while, the others did the same.

  Sleepy Hawk looked at them, running slowly along, the water pouring off their bodies, and said, “It is cooler by the side of our river.”

  Even Long Ax grinned at this although his tongue was swollen in his mouth.

  The heat of the long sun fell on them and what little water they found made their hearts sick and their minds weak. So the young men went a day and a night without drinking.

  Then, when they felt they could run no longer, they saw before them that great mountain rising straight up from the ground to the sky which held in its heart the little caves of the little men that The People called the Mud Dwellers. They stopped and looked up at the mountain.

  “Oo-ee!” cried Hungry Dog, “that will be a hard run!”

  But Sleepy Hawk found a trickle of water and they drank it without having their bellies cry out against them.

  So the five young men of The People climbed the mountain that day and found its top was broad and flat. They moved carefully across the ground, ducking from tree to tree. Once, they found a pile of rocks that had, in the long ago, been a Mud Dwellers’ home, before the wars of The People had driven them down inside the mountain, where the little men thought they might live more safely.

  “These do not look like rocks,” said Mountain Bear, stopping to look at them.

  “They are not rocks,” said Sleepy Hawk. “I have heard that the Mud Dwellers mix dried grass with mud, shape this into blocks and let the heat of the sun make the blocks hard. They build their caves with these hard blocks.”

  “That is a foolish waste of time,” said Mountain Bear.

  “And we waste time,” said Sleepy Hawk. “We must reach the edge of their home place before dark.”

  So, just before the hiding of the sun, the young hunters came to where the top of the mountain suddenly ended. They crouched down and looked over the edge. There was a great cut, going deep to the heart of the mountain; and down, far down at the bottom of the cut, they could see, moving like bugs on a raw hide, a few of the Mud Dwellers.

  “We’ll rest here until the first morning light,” Sleepy Hawk told them.

  “Then climb down as far as we can?” asked Mountain Bear.

  Sleepy Hawk nodded.

  “Then we should watch another day, I think,” said Long Ax.

  Sleepy Hawk nodded again.

  “We’ll have to be quick,” said Short Spear.

  “Take women only,” grunted Long Ax. “Weapons too, if there are any.”

  “And food!” added Hungry Dog.

  “No food!” cried all the others.

  “They do not eat,” Cat-In-The-Mud told Hungry Dog. “Their food is taken from the ground and it is dirty.”

  Sleepy Hawk smiled a little at this, but said nothing.

  Yet it did not work out as they planned. The five young men waked at the first light and slowly, quietly, they climbed down the steep side of the cut in the mountain. But as they crawled around a high rock to a narrow ledge, six men of the Mud Dwellers came up onto the ledge from the down trail. All stopped suddenly and stared at each other.

  Then each side took a step forward, raised their weapons, then stopped again, weapons half-lifted in their hands.

  “Well,” Long Ax growled deep in his throat, “why do we wait?”

  “For the same reason they do!” Sleepy Hawk’s voice was sharp.

  He waved his hand and they all looked quickly about them. There was the long, narrow ledge, with the mountain going straight up from one side and, from the other, straight down in a heart-choking drop. And at each end of the ledge stood a little group of men, angry, uncertain, the length of three steps of a tall man between them.

  “Who can win a fight in such a place?” asked Sleepy Hawk.

  “We can!” growled Long Ax. “They are but little men!”

  “But they are six and we are five, so all is equal.”

  “Throw spears and after them!” cried Long Ax.

  Cat-In-The-Mud and Hungry Dog raised their weapons. As they did so, three of the Mud Dwellers lifted their arms.

  “Stop!” cried Sleepy Hawk. Over his shoulder he said to Long Ax, “I am chief here. Now look, all of you. They throw, we throw. None can miss. If any men are left after the throwing, they fight. Perhaps one of all here lives. Then what? If that one is of The People, can he, wounded, alone, ever hope to return to our river? No!”

  “You are right,” said Mountain Bear.

  “They will call for help,” warned Cat-In-The-Mud.

  “Soon enough to fight then,” said Sleep
y Hawk. “There is little room for more on this ground.”

  “True enough,” said Mountain Bear.

  “Now, quiet all of you,” ordered Sleepy Hawk, “and let me think.”

  He watched the Mud Dwellers. They were strange little men. Around their waists they wore belts of dried skin, but in these belts were set little pieces of colored stone. They wore smaller belts around their heads, to keep their long hair from falling over their eyes, and these belts, too, had the pieces of stone in them.

  Sleepy Hawk liked these colored stones very much. But he did not think he would get any from the Mud Dwellers, who, though small, stood their ground as bravely as did The People, frowning, with knives and spears ready for the fight.

  “Look at their spears,” Sleepy Hawk said.

  “They have two handles!” There was wonder in Cat-In-The-Mud’s voice.

  “Yes. One goes back from the hand, then joins the other, which goes forward to the head of the spear.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mountain Bear said softly.

  “Neither do I.” Sleepy Hawk frowned. “Two handles . . . I would like a closer look at those strange spears.”

  “Enough of this women’s chatter!” screamed Long Ax. “Let us fight like men!”

  Sleepy Hawk shrugged.

  “If the rest of you feel that we should get ourselves killed,” he said quietly, “and leave our bones here for Mud Dwellers to hang in their caves, why—let Long Ax begin the fight.”

  None moved.

  Long Ax called out again but still no man of the other four moved and Long Ax closed his mouth tightly.

  For a time there was silence on the ledge. Sleepy Hawk watched the Mud Dwellers; he had a wish to talk with them, to learn what they might be thinking. Now, like many of The People, Sleepy Hawk had a woman from the Mud Dwellers in his family, and from her had learned a few of their love words, the words that a mother says to a child that pleases her. But that was all. When The People caught a Mud Dweller woman it was her duty to learn their talk, not theirs to learn her noises.

  So there was nothing he could say to them. He watched. They, too, stood as did The People, their leader a little in front of them, staring at his enemies, his men behind him, looking about nervously, their knivey and strange two-handled spears ready for blood.