by David Boop
He sagged as he wondered how to report the stalwart’s death when he returned to Washington. Perhaps naming a region on a whole cranium for his assistant would be fitting tribute. There had to be new organs to find in such a strangely alien creature.
Gray monsters, Red Horse called them.
“You are sad because you mourn your friend?”
“What? Oh, why, yes, I was thinking about him. Dunlap was a good and loyal man. If only he had been able to get me out of that pit.” He rolled over and looked at the Indian. “What dug that pit? The one you rescued me from?”
“The metal skins the gray monsters fly inside spit out sparks and fire and bad smoke when they come to ground. The tower of fire coming from below burned into the ground one night. I hid because it caused the ground to shake and bring down raindrops of hot rock.”
“How long ago was that? The bottom was wet. That much hot gas should have fused it, not turned dirt to mud.” McConnell had not dug down more than a few inches, and the storms could easily have blown in dirt and water.
Red Horse fell silent, then said, “It was after I conducted an Enemy Way sing. The chief’s two sons were killed in a raid.” He made marks in the dirt. “Twenty days ago, before the rains.”
McConnell started to ask more, but his attention diverted as a glowing verdant ball settled down on the top of the mountain. Then it disappeared. Words jumbled in his throat. He was so close to finding an intact skull. The gray men!
“They return to the Fourth World.” Red Horse looked solemn.
“Like hell. They bored another hole into the ground and are hiding that round green thing in it. Let’s go.” All tiredness vanished with such a mystery to be solved. He doubted there were monsters such as Red Horse claimed, but whatever flew in the green-glowing thing might be the source of the skulls.
The darkness almost defeated his desire to see what went on atop the mountain. McConnell lost his footing frequently, but he persevered. After an hour of ascent, he stopped to rest. He coughed at the rancid odor coming down from above him.
“What’s that smell? It’s worse than a corpse flower.”
“What is corpse flower?”
“It’s a flower on a plant that a friend grows in the National Arboretum. The bloom smells like a decaying corpse. Are there dead bodies up there?” Visions of the skulls to be had danced in front of him.
“The monsters’ flesh does not smell. It melts away quickly, leaving only the skeleton.”
“An intact skull,” McConnell reminded himself. That opened the door to real knowledge. He held his nose for a few feet, then breathed through his mouth to keep from gagging.
Another hour brought them to the lip of a crater. McConnell stared at the activity at the bottom of the pit. From the way the rock had been melted, this might have been a volcano. The only fact that stuck in his mind was how fresh the walls looked. Intense heat had burned through the mountain, creating a hole a hundred yards across and half that deep. The vessel he had seen airborne earlier glowed in the center of the crater. It was almost spherical, being slightly elongated. He saw no windows or doors through the emerald shimmer surrounding it, but when he forced himself to look beyond the craft, he saw small creatures bustling about on the far side of the crater.
“Monsters from the Fourth World,” Red Horse said solemnly.
“How do we get down to the crater floor?” McConnell looked around frantically. The sheer walls defeated any descent other than stepping off into space and falling. No human would survive such a fall.
“Where is the road leading to the Fourth World?” Red Horse shouldered past McConnell and put his hand over his eyes to shield the glare. “I would descend.”
“These aren’t monsters. They’re…pygmies.” McConnell fixed on a rock fall a quarter of the way around the crater. “There. We can use that to join them.”
“You will go with me into the Yellow World?”
“If you stand with me to get an intact skull.” The question startled McConnell, and he hoped his reply was adequate. Somehow, it felt lacking, as if more should be done. He hesitated, then spit on his palm and held out his hand. Red Horse frowned, then spat on his own and shook hands. “That makes it binding.”
The Navajo wiped his hand on his buckskins, but McConnell paid no attention. The pact had been sealed. He made his way through the rocks on the rim to reach what he hoped would give a ladder. The crumbled rock afforded a way down, but the climb back would be too steep using the dislodged rocks. Not waiting to see if the Navajo followed, he twisted around, grabbed at prominent rocks and found they were not secure. He began sliding down, faster and faster. He grasped for other rocks and successfully slowed his descent. He still hit the crater floor with enough force to cause his legs to buckle. He flopped backward, staring up into the night sky.
McConnell’s arrival had not gone unnoticed.
The little people circled him and stared, unblinking. Their skin was a dull, pebbly gray, their heads shaped exactly as Red Horse had sketched. Teardrop shaped eyes of pure coal black dominated their faces. Small slits took the place of nostrils. He wondered how they kept from drowning in a rainstorm. Whatever would Darwin say about that? No ears and only a tiny mouth completed the simple face.
High-pitched squeaks that might be communication sent tiny daggers into his ears. He rolled to his side, then came to his knees so he was almost face to face with them. Hesitantly, he thrust out a hand. The gray people did not respond.
“I come in the name of science.”
No response. They continued to squeak, but he failed to catch any syntax, rhythm or sounds that might be individual words.
“Do you understand them, Red Horse?”
The Indian stood tall, proud, shoulders back and eyes uplifted. He chanted in his own language. The gray people ignored him, too.
McConnell reached out slowly, not wanting to frighten them with a sudden move. When they held their ground, he put his hand on the nearest one’s head, intending to examine the bumps and depressions to gain insight into the creature’s character. Pain blasted through his body, tightening his muscles and freezing him to the spot. His hand curled around the dome of the gray skull—and he heard.
He heard. Voices rushed in from all directions, confusing and frightening him.
“Can you help?”
McConnell tried to speak, but his throat convulsed so powerfully he knew what it was like to be hanged. Words formed in his head but not on his lips. And he said, “How?”
“Two of the supplicants are ill.”
“Supplicants?”
“We are on a holy pilgrimage to—”
McConnell almost screamed. The destination drilled fiery holes in his head. He yanked his hand away and sat heavily, staring at the gray man who had spoken to him mind to mind. Hand shaking, he stared at it, then looked back to the gray. Phrenology had just been taken to an entirely new realm. By touch of hand to head, he had communicated.
“Red Horse, they are religious people on their way to…somewhere. Put your hand on this one’s head. You are a holy man. What they say might make more sense to you.”
McConnell hated himself for such cowardice. The communication had been potent, searing. He should exchange as much scientific information as possible, especially now that a new field of phrenology was opening before him. He should, but the slippery, impure feeling of another’s thoughts slipping through his brain left him weak and frightened.
Red Horse showed no hesitation as he placed his hand on the head of the nearest creature. He stiffened, closed his eyes and resumed chanting. When he began weaving about, as if he would fall over, McConnell went to steady him. To his surprise as he touched the Navajo, he found himself included in the silent exchange. It was as if a vista opened and clouds blew away. He meshed mentally not only with Red Horse, but with all the gray creatures.
He yanked back, shaken at such communication. Sweat beaded his forehead and his legs turned to water. Turning away, he sought so
mething else to fix on. The vessel the gray creatures rode in hovered fifty feet away. The glowing emerald fog surrounding it brushed the ground. How it balanced on nothing but mist confused him, but everything he had heard added to it. The pilgrims had been to Earth before. When their ship had been damaged, they came here to repair it.
“The others who have been here,” he said in a choked voice. “They think we are nothing but animals.”
“They are from World of Spirits of Living Things,” Red Horse said. Awe touched his voice. “They are not monsters. They are gods.”
“Not gods, no, not that.” McConnell forced himself to calm. “They’ve repaired their ship. Let them go.”
“Two are sick. I can heal them. One is their healer. The other is a…” Words failed the Indian.
“Pilot. One is their doctor, the other is their pilot.” McConnell knew the words that Red Horse didn’t. “We should leave.”
“I can sing a Blessing Way. This will heal them.” Red Horse thrust out his hand to lay on the nearest creature’s head. From the immediate flurry among the other gray people, they became excited. The keening he had heard before now threatened to deafen him. McConnell clamped his hands over his ears.
McConnell staggered away from the tight knot of creatures, now circling Red Horse. Together they herded Red Horse to the hovering vessel. Somehow, a doorway opened in an otherwise solid side, and they went inside. Red Horse had begun chanting.
McConnell hunted for a way out of the crater, to no avail. The rock slide they had followed down gave nothing in the way of footholds to regain the rim. After three circuits of the crater, he sank to the ground and stared at the vessel. A faint warmth radiated from it. He still shivered. The odor of garlic made his nose twitch and reminded him how hungry he was. He fumbled about in his pouch and found what remained of the food.
A dull whirring made him look up. A gray creature came from within the ship, looked around, then came to him. He touched its head. The sudden connection caused him to spin and whir at dizzying speed before he fought back to keep his own personality intact rather than merge with the creature.
“Our pilot is healthy again. Red Horse is a miracle worker.”
“So quickly? A Blessing Way sing takes a week or longer. Or so he told me.”
“Two weeks have passed.”
McConnell almost lost his slight meal as explanations flooded him. Mathematics and visions of space and holes in empty space lashed his mind. Through it came a dim acceptance that time within the spaceship flowed at a different rate. Somehow this allowed the gray men to travel impossible distances between stars.
He broke down and cried tears of joy as it hammered into his head. He could not understand the concepts, but what few facts he clung to were good.
“I am glad your pilot is well. I sense that your healer…died.”
“We must tend his remains.” Confusion swirled and then the gray creature asked, “Will you see to the ceremony?”
McConnell stared into the black teardrop-shaped eyes and saw no hint of emotion, but through his contact of hand with head, he almost drowned in the flood of sorrow.
“I will, but don’t you have rituals of your own?”
“We cannot take the body with us. It decays rapidly on this world.”
McConnell ran his hand over the alien skull, feeling the bumps and trying to discover what he could of the physiognomy. His exploration ended when Red Horse came from the spaceship carrying a lifeless body in his arms.
“You could not save him?” McConnell’s throat tightened as he spoke the words aloud. He removed his hand from the gray creature’s smooth head to keep from becoming addled due to so much emotion crashing against his mind.
“He was their medicine man. Now, I am.”
McConnell accepted the body. He sagged as he took it in his arms. The corpse was heavier than he expected. Did life persist? A quick touch on the skull gave no hint of life or thought. Truly, this one was dead.
“You are also a holy man. Should we burn the body as your people do?”
“We must leave now.” Red Horse straightened. “I have told them you will take this one’s skull and display it in a place of honor.”
“They want that?”
Red Horse turned toward the ship and stood straighter. “I travel with them to the Place of Melting Into One. It is the Sixth World.”
“You aren’t trying to return to the Yellow World?”
“I am First Man to the Sixth World.” He turned back and put his hand on McConnell’s shoulder. For a moment they shared a promise, a future, hopes realized as the gray people must every time they talked mind to mind. Then the Navajo singer strode off, head high, bowler set squarely on his head, the gray man who had come to McConnell trailing like an afterthought.
McConnell held the body, then realized he was trapped at the bottom of the crater. He called to Red Horse, but the Indian had disappeared into the ship. The vessel began glowing with a verdant light and rose slightly. McConnell was almost blinded as a beam lashed out to bathe the rock fall behind him. He shied away, then saw that a ramp had been melted in the rock that lead upward to the top of the mountain. Carrying his burden, he climbed, barely getting free when the ship exploded straight upward on a turbulent column of noisome gases that washed over him, burning him. He dropped to his knees and faced away. When he looked back, the ship carrying Red Horse to his Sixth World was only one of a constellation of stars overhead.
Gently he laid out the gray healer, then shrank back as the flesh evaporated, slowly at first, then with increasing speed until only the mother of pearl skeleton remained. The skull sparkled with reflected starlight as McConnell pried it loose from the neck and held it aloft.
The body meant nothing to him, but the secrets of the gray aliens lay in this intact skull. He ran his fingers over the bumps and depressions, already mapping the organs and unearthing the secrets of the soul to share.
EASY MONEY
PHIL FOGLIO
Big Zack was tired. Bone tired. You could tell. Man was like a locomotive, huge and dark and when he was running, you’d believe he could lift a plow horse up over his head. Sledgehammer said he’d seen him do it, to win a bet over in Leadville.
But he weren’t lifting anything now. He looked like the weight of his leather apron alone was gonna drag him down. Fair enough, the damn thing was made outta buffalo hide and easily weighed forty pounds, and that was when it was clean and dry, which it weren’t. He shambled over to the fire, and slowly sat down on one of the logs.
Crackerbox, the cook, poured out a tin mug of trail coffee and set it down onto a rock in front of him. Zack stared at it blankly for almost half a minute before he realized what it was. He stripped off the great blood-soaked leather gauntlets and lifted the mug in both hands, which were so deeply sheathed in hornlike calluses that he held the burning hot mug without any sign of discomfort. Or maybe, the cook considered, maybe it burned like hell, and the man was just too tired to care.
Zack took a sip, and a gleam of life came to his weather-lined face. His sigh was the one given by a simple man enjoying a simple pleasure. “Much obliged, Crackerbox.”
But the cook was already pouring out more coffee. The rest of the boys wouldn’t’ve dared to knock off until Zack had, even though none of ’em was as tough as he was. But now that he had, they’d be dragging themselves to the fire just as soon as they’d finished stowing their tools.
First up was Joe Silverfoot. Crackerbox didn’t know a lot of Injuns who took a cotton to coffee, but Joe gave a genuine groan of pleasure as that first hot mouthful went down.
Joe was the one who’d known ’bout the valley in the first place. Apparently it had been some sort of holy place to his tribe, but since they’d all been wiped out by the railroad company thirty years ago, he’d figgered its supposed holiness weren’t doin’ anybody any good a’tall, and he’d tried to sell it to Zack back when the big man’d been thinking about homesteading.
But Zack
’d been discouraged by the near impossibility of gettin’ in or outta the place. The only way they’d done it was with a mess of dynamite. But he’d remembered it, all right.
Next to arrive was Gunther and Helmut, the Boom brothers. They didn’t talk much, least not that most people could understand, but they worked steady, and were some of the best damn drovers Crackerbox’d ever seen. It was claimed that each of ’em could drive a team of eight straight up a canyon wall, and when they were ready to leave the valley, they’d get a chance to prove it. Dynamite could only do so much.
The other half-dozen men staggered up at their own speed. Crackerbox had actually been ladling the last one his second helping of stew when Doc finally made his appearance.
It was obvious that the little man was unused to this kind of work, but he never complained, which earned him a heap of respect that smoothed over any irritation at the amount of it he actually got done.
It also helped that he had taken charge of the bone boiling, which had quickly been acknowledged as a worse job than even the butchering.
But it had to be done, certainly. Crackerbox had been dealing with dead animals all his life, he reckoned, and he’d never seen anything like the way these critters rotted away.
When they’d first arrived, there’d been the idea of tanning their hides. Zack’d brought in an old Québécois trapper, Two Knives Eugene, who swore he could tan skeeters. Watchin’ the man’s face the first time he’d seen what they was dealin’ with had proved itself a treat, but he’d then roared out something about acceptin’ the challenge and had set to, singin’.
But it hadn’t worked out. Oh, he knew his business, and no mistake. He’d set up racks and pans and mixed up slurries of powders and dog shit that had people’s eye’s waterin’. He’d wielded a skinnin’ knife like a stage magician, and even Crackerbox had learned a thing or two about removing hides, but instead of drying and curing, the skins had turned into sheets of stinkin’ slime, even when they was buried in salt or smeared with whatever concoction Two Knives slathered ’em with.