The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Margaret Brugh spied her husband coming through the door and began her usual worried harangue about his health and overwork. He muttered something about a lost key, and Tanya changed the subject for him. Brugh threw her a grateful smile and went in to wash up. He decided to postpone the lecture on Thomas until after supper; then she was in too much of a hurry to be bothered, and he put it off until morning.

  The old Morris chair was soothing after a full meal—so soothing that the paper fell from his lap and scattered itself over the floor unnoticed, until the jangling of the telephone brought him back with a jerk. “It’s for you,” his wife announced.

  The voice was that of Hodges, his nasal Vermont twang unmistakable. “Brugh? Your latest brainstorm backfired on you! I’ve got evidence against you this time, so you’d better bring it back.” The pitch of the voice indicated fury that was only partly controlled.

  The back hairs on Brugh’s neck bristled up hotly, and his voice snapped back harshly. “You’re drunk or crazy, like all biochemists! I haven’t done anything to you. Anyway, what is it you want back?”

  “You wouldn’t know? How touching, such innocence! I want Anthropos, my synthetic man. I suppose you weren’t in the laboratory this evening?”

  Brugh gulped, remembering the faint noises he had heard. So it had all been a trap! “I never—”

  “Of course. But we had trouble before—someone trying to force his way in—and we set up a photoelectric eye and camera with film for u.v. light. Didn’t expect to catch you, but there’s a nice picture of your face on it, and your key is in the lock—the number shows it’s yours. I didn’t think even you would stoop to stealing!”

  Brugh made strangling sounds. “I didn’t steal your phony man; wouldn’t touch the thing! Furthermore, I didn’t leave a key. Go sleep your insanity off!”

  “Are you going to return Anthropos?”

  “I don’t have him.” Brugh slammed the receiver down in disgust, snorting. If Hodges thought that he could put such a trick over, he’d find out better. With all the trumped-up evidence in the world, they’d still have to prove a few things. He’d see the president in the morning before Hodges could get to him.

  But he wasn’t prepared for the doorbell a half hour later, nor for the blue-coated figures that stood outside. They wasted no time.

  “Dr. Arlington Brugh? We have a warrant for your arrest, charge being larceny. If you’ll just come along quietly—”

  They were purposeful individuals, and words did no good. Brugh went along—but not quietly.

  VI

  Hermes spied the public highway below him, and began puzzling about which direction to take back to town. Brugh had never been out this way, and he had failed to absorb the necessary information from the garbage man, so he had no idea of the location of Gorton. But there was a man leaning against a signpost, and he might know.

  The little god approached him confidently, now that he could both move and talk. He wanted to try his new power instead of telepathy, and did not trouble with the man’s thoughts, though a faint impression indicated they were highly disordered.

  “Good evening, sir,” he said pleasantly, with only a faint blur to the words. “Can you direct me to Gorton University?”

  The man clutched the signpost and gazed down solemnly, blinking his eyes. “Got ’em again,” he said dispassionately. “And after cutting down on the stuff, too. ’Sfunny, they never talked before. Wonder if the snakes’ll talk, too, when I begin seeing them?”

  It made no sense to Hermes, but he nodded wisely and repeated his question. From the vibrations, the man was not unacquainted with the virtues of alcohol.

  The drunk pursed his lips and examined the little figure calmly. “Never had one like you before. What are you?”

  “I suppose I’m a god,” Hermes answered. “Can you direct me to Gorton, please?”

  “So it’s gods this time, eh? That’s what I get for changing brands. Go away and let me drink in peace.” He thought it over slowly as he drew out the bottle. “Want a drink?”

  “Thank you, yes.” The little god stretched up and succeeded in reaching the bottle. This time he filled himself to capacity before handing it back. It was worse than the hair tonic, but there was no question of its tar-softening properties. “Could you—?”

  “I know. Gorton. To your right and follow the road.” The man paused and made gurgling noises. “Whyn’t you stick around? I like you; snakes never would drink with me.”

  Hermes made it quite clear he couldn’t stay, and the drunk nodded gravely. “Always women. I know about that; it’s a woman that drove me to this—seeing you. ’Stoo bad. Well, so long!”

  Filled with the last drink, the god stepped his speed up to almost five miles an hour. There was no danger of fatigue, since the radioactive energy within him poured out as rapidly as he could use it, and there were no waste products to poison his system. His tiny legs flickered along the road, and the little feet made faint tapping sounds on the smooth asphalt surface.

  He came over a hill and spied the yellow lights of Gorton, still an hour’s trot away. It might have been worse. The swishing of the water inside him bothered him, and he decided that he’d stick to straight alcohol hereafter; whiskey contained too many useless impurities. Hermes flopped over beside the road, and let the water and some of the oil from the hair tonic trickle out; the alcohol was already well inside his gummy interior where there was no danger of losing it. For some reason, it seemed to be drying out more slowly than the first had, and that was all to the good.

  The few cars on the road aroused a faint desire for some easier means of locomotion, but otherwise they caused him no trouble. He clipped off the miles at a steady gait, keeping on the edge of the paving, until the outskirts of the town had been reached. Then he took to the sidewalk.

  A blue-coated figure, ornamented with brass buttons, was pacing down the street toward him, and Hermes welcomed the presence of the policeman. One of the duties of an officer was directing people, he had gathered, and a little direction would be handy. The smallest god stopped and waited for the other to reach him.

  “Could you direct me to the home of Dr. Arlington Brugh, please?”

  The cop looked about carefully for the speaker. Hermes raised his voice again. “I’m here, sir.”

  Officer O’Callahan dropped his eyes slowly, expecting a drunk, and spied the god. He let out a startled bellow. “So it’s tricks, is it now? Confound that Bergen fellow, after drivin’ the brats wild about ventriloquence. Come out o’ there, you spalpeen. Tryin’ your tricks on an honest police, like as if I didn’t have worries o’ me own.”

  Hermes watched the officer hunting around in the doorways for what he believed must be the source of the voice, and decided that there was no use lingering. He put one foot in front of the other and left the cop.

  “Pssst!” The sound came from an alley a couple of houses below, and Hermes paused. In the shadows, he made out a dirty old woman, her frowsy hair blowing about her face, her finger crooked enticingly. Evidently she wanted something, and he turned in hesitantly.

  “That dumb Irish mick,” she grunted, and from her breath Hermes recognized another kindred spirit; apparently humans were much easier to get along with when thoroughly steeped in alcohol, as he was himself. “Sure, now, a body might think it’s never a word he’d heard o’ the Little Folks, and you speaking politely, too. Ventriloquence, indeed! Was you wanting to know what I might be telling you?”

  Hermes stretched his rubber face into a passable smile. “Do you know where Dr. Arlington Brugh lives? He’s a research director at Gorton University.”

  She shook her head, blinking bleary eyes. “That I don’t, but maybe you’d take the university? It’s well I know where that may be.”

  Dr. Brugh lived but a short distance from the campus, he knew, and once on the university grounds, Hermes would have no trouble in finding the house. He nodded eagerly. She reached down a filthy hand and caught him up, wrapping a fo
ld of her tattered dress about him.

  “Come along, then. I’ll be taking you there myself.” She paused to let the few last drops trickle from a bottle into her wide mouth, and stuck her head out cautiously; the policeman had gone. With a grunt of satisfaction, she struck across the street to a streetcar stop.

  “’Tis the last dime I have, but a sorry day it’ll be when Molly McCann can’t do a favor for a Little Folk.”

  She propped herself against the carstop post and waited patiently, while Hermes pondered the mellowing effects of alcohol again. When the noisy car stopped, she climbed on, clutching him firmly, and he heard only the bumping of a flat wheel and her heavy breathing. But she managed to keep half awake, and carried him off the car at the proper place.

  She set him down as gently as unsteady fingers would permit and pointed vaguely at the buildings on the campus. “There you be, and it’s the best of luck I’m wishing you. Maybe, now that I’ve helped a Little Man, good luck’ll be coming to me. A very good night to you.”

  Hermes bowed gravely as he guessed she expected. “My thanks, Molly McCann, for your kindness, and a very good night to you.” He watched her totter away, and turned toward the laboratory building, where he could secure a few more drops of straight alcohol. After that, he could attend to his other business.

  VII

  Tanya Brugh was completely unaware of the smallest god’s presence as he stood on a chair looking across at her. A stray beam of moonlight struck her face caressingly, and made her seem a creature of velvet and silver, withdrawn in sleep from all that was mundane. Hermes probed her mind gently, a little fearfully.

  Across her mind, a flickering pageant of tall men, strong men, lithe and athletic men, ran in disordered array, and none of them was less than six feet tall. Hermes gazed at his own small body, barely six inches high; it would never do. Now the face of John Thomas fitted itself on one of the men, and Tanya held the image for a few seconds. The god growled muttered oaths; he had no love for the Thomas image. Then it flickered into the face of Will Young, Brugh’s assistant.

  Hermes had probed her thoughts to confirm his own ideas of the wonderful delight that Tanya must be, and he was faintly disappointed. In her mind were innocence and emptiness—except for men of tall stature. He sighed softly, and reverted to purely human rationalization until he had convinced himself of the rightness of her thoughts.

  But the question of height bothered him. Children, he knew, grew up, but he was no child, though his age was measured in hours. Someway, he must gain a new body, or grow taller, and that meant that Dr. Brugh would be needed for advice on the riddle of height increase.

  He dropped quietly from the chair and trotted toward the master’s bedroom, pushing against the door in the hope that it might be open. It wasn’t, but he made a leap for the doorknob and caught it, throwing his slight weight into the job of twisting it. Finally, the knob turned, and he kicked out against the doorjamb with one foot until the door began to swing. Then he dropped down and pushed until he could slide through the opening. For his size, he carried a goodly portion of strength in his gum-and-rubber body.

  But the master was not in the bed, and the mistress was making slow strangling sounds that indicated emotional upset. From Brugh’s mind, Hermes had picked up a hatred of the sound of a woman crying, and he swung hastily out, wondering what the fuss was about There was only one person left, and he headed toward the little Missie Katherine’s room.

  She was asleep when he entered, but he called softly: “Miss Kitty.” Her head popped up suddenly from the pillow and she groped for the light. For an eight-year-old child, she was lovely with the sleep still in her eyes. She gazed at the little white figure in faint astonishment.

  Hermes shinnied up the leg of a chair and made a leap over onto the bed where he could watch her. “What happened to your father?” he asked.

  She blinked at him with round eyes. “It talks—a little doll that talks! How cute!”

  “I’m not a doll, Kitty. I’m Hermes.”

  “Not a doll? Oh, goody, you’re an elf then?”

  “Maybe.” It was no time to bicker about a question that had no satisfactory answer. But his heart warmed toward the girl. She wasn’t drunk, yet she could still believe in his existence. “I don’t know just what I am, but I think I’m the smallest of the gods. Where’s your father?”

  Memory overwhelmed Kitty in a rush, and her brown eyes brimmed with tears. “He’s in jail!” she answered through a puckered mouth. “A nasty man came and took him away, and Mamma feels awful. Just ’cause Mr. Hodges hates him.”

  “Where’s jail? Never mind, I’ll find out.” It would save time by taking the information directly from her head, since she knew where it was. “Now go back to sleep and I’ll go find your father.”

  “And bring him home to Mamma?”

  “And bring him home to Mamma.” Hermes knew practically nothing of jails, but the feeling of power was surging hotly through him. So far, everything he had attempted had been accomplished. Kitty smiled uncertainly at him and dropped her head back on the pillow. Then the little god’s sense of vibration perception led him toward the cellar in search of certain vital bottles.

  A child’s toy truck, overburdened with a large bottle and a small god, drew up in front of the dirty white building that served as jail. Hermes had discovered the toy in the yard and used it as a boy does a wagon to facilitate travel. Now he stepped off, lifted the bottle, and parked the truck in a small shrub where he could find it again. Then he began the laborious job of hitching himself up the steps and into the building.

  It was in the early morning hours, and there were few men about, but he stayed carefully in the shadow and moved only when their backs were turned. From his observation, men saw only what they expected, and the unusual attracted attention only when accompanied by some sudden sound or movement. Hermes searched one of the men’s minds for the location of Brugh, then headed toward the cell, dragging the pint bottle behind him as noiselessly as he could.

  Dr. Brugh sat on the hard iron cot with his head in his hands, somewhat after the fashion of Rodin’s Thinker; but his face bore rather less of calm reflection. An occasional muttered invective reached the little god, who grinned. Arlington Brugh was a man of wide attainments, and he had not neglected the development of his vocabulary.

  Hermes waited patiently until the guard was out of sight and slipped rapidly toward the cell, mounting over the bottom brace and through the bars. The scientist did not see him as he trotted under the bunk and found a convenient hiding place near the man’s legs. At the moment, Brugh was considering the pleasant prospect of attaching all police to Bertha and bombarding them with neutrons until their flesh turned to anything but protoplasm.

  Hermes tapped a relatively huge leg and spoke softly. “Dr. Brugh, if you’ll look down here, please—” He held up the bottle, the cap already unscrewed.

  Brugh lowered his eyes and blinked; from the angle of his sight, only a pint bottle of whiskey, raising itself from the floor, could be seen. But he was in a mood to accept miracles without question, and he reached instinctively. Ordinarily he wasn’t a drinking man, but the person who won’t drink on occasion has a special place reserved for him in heaven—well removed from all other saints.

  As the bottle was lowered again, Hermes reached for it and drained a few drops, while Brugh stared at him. “Well?” the god asked finally.

  The alcohol was leaving the scientist’s stomach rapidly, as it does when no food interferes, and making for his head; the mellowing effect Hermes had hoped for was beginning. “That’s my voice you’re using,” Brugh observed mildly.

  “It should be; I learned the language from you. You made me, you know.” He waited for a second. “Well, do you believe in me now?”

  Brugh grunted. “Hermes, eh? So I wasn’t imagining things back in the lab. What happened to you?” A suspicious look crossed his face. “Has Hodges been tinkering again?”

  As briefly as he co
uld, the little god summarized events and explained himself, climbing up on the cot as he did so, and squatting down against the physicist’s side, out of sight from the door. The other chuckled sourly as he finished.

  “So while Hodges was fooling around with amoebas and flesh, I made super-life, only I didn’t know it, eh?” There was no longer doubt in his mind, but that might have been due to the whiskey. The reason for more than one conversion to a new religious belief lies hidden in the mysterious soothing effect of ethanol in the form of whiskey and rum. “Well, glad to know you. What happens now?”

  “I promised your daughter I’d take you home to the mistress.” But now that he was here, he wasn’t so sure. There were more men around than he liked. “We’ll have to make plans.”

  Brugh reflected thoughtfully. “That might not be so good. They’d come after me again, and I’d have less chance to prove my innocence.”

  Hermes was surprised. “You’re innocent? I thought you’d murdered Hodges.” After all, it was a reasonable supposition, based on the state of the physicist’s mind the day before. “What happened?”

  “No, I haven’t murdered him—yet.” Brugh’s smile promised unpleasant things at the first chance. “It’s still a nice idea, after this trick, though. It all started with the key.”

  “Maybe I’d better take it from your head,” Hermes decided. “That way I’ll be less apt to miss things, and more sure to get things straight.”

  Brugh nodded and relaxed, thinking back over the last few hours. He lifted the bottle and extracted another drink, while Hermes followed the mental pictures and memory until the story was complete in his head.