GERRY struck angrily at the televisor, shutting it off. She barked into an audiophone:
“Peters Peters! Is my Protean still there?”
“Sure,” came an unseen voice. “Why shouldn’t he be? He’s rolling around in his tank of cyanogen, happy as a lark.”
“Don’t worry,” Strike said, putting a capable arm around Gerry. “He’s real enough.”
The girl emitted a small groan.
“But is he? There’s only one way of telling. If he vanishes, he’s a fake.”
“Well,” said Tommy Strike, after thoroughly kissing his fiancée, “at least there’s no danger of my vanishing. After all, what’s a Protean or two?”
The words were unfortunate. Gerry seemed to regain her usual spirits. Her voice crackled like an electronic bombardment.
“Yes, indeed,” she remarked coldly. “Also, what’s a blonde or two between friends? Just who were you dreaming about on that comet?”
Strike released the girl and headed for the door.
“See you later, honey,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m off to Mars. I hear the mariloca are running . . .”
For some reason, “Catch-’em-Alive” Gerry Carlyle scampered frantically after him.
PEGASUS
Jim Harry knew how to tame a horse, but he didn’t know being able to ride the winged steed was a perilous sort of joy
I WANT to tell you about Jim Harry Worth and the nag with wings. Now a lot of people think myths are just lying stories, sort of fairy tales that have grown big in the telling by old folks to young ones. And every country has its legends; in China I’ve heard about dragon ladies—But that’s beside the point and I was going to tell you about Jim Harry and the magic horse he got for himself.
He was a tall, lanky, thin-faced youngster, brown as a nut, adolescently awkward when he stood still, but graceful as a colt when he moved. The Worths had a farm in Imperial, and Jim Harry was raised there, taught to do the chores and sent to school when he was old enough. He loved horse-flesh. The boy could ride, and he did, a lot.
It’s open country here, and it’s big. A kid can lie on his back out in the yellow slopes and look up at a sky that’s bigger than all the world. He can lie there and watch the clouds drift till he feels that the earth is moving under him, till he feels the rush of a planet through the universe, and he has time to think. Jim Harry did, I know. The boy had a dream in his brown eyes, and his feet were touched with wanderlust. At first he didn’t know what it was. He used to ride helter-skelter all over the place, and hike when he couldn’t ride. Then at school he learned to read, and the Valley became a prison that was worse because it had no boundaries.
A dream in the eyes and restless feet—ah, but they are hell for a man, and heaven, too. That I know. You go wandering, and worse, for you go seeking as well, and what you seek you don’t know and can never find.
You’re trying to answer a question; you don’t know what the question is; and in the end it’s not answered. When you’re tired at last you’re ready to sit in the sun and think, but not when you’re young. So young Jim Harry thought a lot, and read a great deal, and in a bad day he asked a question about Breadloaf Mountain that towered up to the south, barren and waterless and old.
“Nobody goes up there,” said Andy Worth, Jim Harry’s dad.
“But hasn’t anybody ever gone?”
Andy didn’t think so, but he had to go to town to buy some new saddles, so there wasn’t much more conversation. Jim Harry’s mother, Sarah, didn’t know any more, and she told the boy not to bother about it. So Jim Harry went out with his older brother Tom, who was setting traps, and only got laughed at for his pains.
But he got the truth of it from Tante Rush. Some said she was a pais a no and others said she was once a great woman and had been in Europe. Now she lived in a ramshackle frame building by a spring and kept pigs and chickens, a hag with a withered walnut of a face and eyes bright as garnets. People said she ate loco weed, and maybe she did. Anyway, she was a lonely old woman and because she liked company, she’d learned to listen and agree. The kids would come and talk to her by the hour, and she’d try to bribe them with her poor food to stay longer. Jim Harry went to see Tante Rush often, because she let him talk and didn’t laugh at him, except in a kindly way.
Tante Rush said there might be anything on top of Breadloaf Mountain.
“Nobody’s ever been there. I guess, the crone said. “Pooty hard to climb, ain’t it, Jim Harry? You never been and climbed it?”
“Probably nothing up there. Except it’s the highest spot for miles. You can see way over the Valley. The boy thrust away a hen that came pecking at his worn shoe. “Maybe you can see out to the Pacific.”
“They’re mountains in the way, youngster. Ain’t you never see the ocean?”
“I went to Frisco once with Pop. I got whacked, too. Ran away and went over to Sausalito—climbed up Tamalpais.”
“You like to climb, heh?”
“Yeah, he said. “I like high places. Say, you ever heard of Pegasus?” He pronounced the word wrongly, staring up at Breadloaf.
“Nope. What is it?”
“Just a story. About a horse with wings. It was supposed to live on a mountain, or come down there once in a while, anyway.”
“I heard of unicorns,” Tante Rush said doubtfully, wriggling a loose incisor back and forth. “Horses might grow horns, but hardly wings. I guess. What good would they do?”
“I dunno.” Jim Harry rolled over on his back and lay in the weeds, watching the clouds move toward Breadloaf. He was silent for a time; then, half asleep, he mused, “Wonder if maybe Pegasus is up on Breadloaf.”
“Shouldn’t wonder, Tante Rush mumbled agreeably. “Ain’t nobody to say no.”
“I think—maybe—” Jim Harry sat up. “I got nothing to do today except fix the barn, and that’ll wait a bit. I guess I’ll go climb Breadloaf.”
“It’s too hot,” the old woman objected, sighing. “I’ll fix some corn bread if you wait a bit.”
“Nope.” He stood up, started off, and then came back. “Got any sugar?”
Tante Rush found a few bits, which Jim Harry dropped in the pocket of his overalls. Then he went up the trail. When he was hidden from sight, the crone suddenly laughed the high, whinnying laughter of age. “Kids, she said. “Kids!” A bit of sugar remained in her hand, and she popped it into her mouth, munching slowly. “A horse with wings! Kids!”
BUT Jim Harry went up Breadloaf, and after a while he met a funny, gnarled, humpbacked dwarf of a man hobbling along on a crooked stick. The manling looked at Jim Harry steadily and said, “I hear that you’re going after the winged horse, boy.”
Jim Harry got a queer uneasy feeling, and wanted to run away. But the dwarf reached out his crooked staff and barred the path.
“Don’t be afraid of me, youngster,” he said. “Why you’re almost twice as big as I am. And you haven’t got your full growth yet.”
Jim Harry tried to broaden his chest, though he knew he was skinny for his age. “I don’t know you,” he said.
“I’ve seen you in town, though. So you’re after Pegasus.”
“Is that the way to say it?” Jim Harry blushed, for he thought the dwarf was making fun of him. “Nope. I’m just hiking.”
The other’s deep-set eyes were a little sad “You’re learning fast, boy Already you fear laughter. Ah, go on up Breadloaf; you’ll find Pegasus. But how the devil do you expect to ride him? He won’t take a saddle, but you’ll need a bridle.”
Jim Harry looked sullen and traced designs in the dust with his toe-cap.
“Well, you go on up, and I shouldn’t be surprised if you found a bridle on a rock somewhere. But don’t forget that Pegasus belongs to the sky. He’ll be your feet and take you away and away; he’ll be your eyes and see wonderful things. But don’t let him stay on the ground long.”
The last words sighed out like the rustle of the wind. When Jim Harry looked up the little man was gone, tho
ugh the tap-tap of the staff drifted up from below.
The boy was tempted to go down and retrace his steps, for he was sensitive to mockery. But then he looked up and saw the top of Breadloaf, and he couldn’t help himself after that. And it was a funny thing, but about half a mile further Jim Harry saw a grand bridle lying on a rock just beside the trail. He was a little frightened at first. Then he went on up, carrying the bridle and wondering about the dwarf.
It was hard to reach the summit. Jim Harry was bleeding in several places, and his overalls were sadly torn, when at last he scrambled over the lip of the rock and rolled down a grassy slope. He got up and looked around. The summit wasn’t very large; it was saucer-shaped, covered with fine pasturage, and there was a little pool of rain-water in the depressed center. There were a few bushes, but no sign of any horse, winged or otherwise.
So Jim Harry went up to the rim and looked way out at all the world spread underneath him. The Imperial Valley lay little and unreal to the blue western mountains. In back of him the white-capped Sierras towered. And the winds that blew upon him had never been breathed by earthly being.
Jim Harry’s feet started to itch, and he wanted to walk right out into the air and away off to the west beyond those shadowy-dim ranges, and he wanted to go in the other direction over the Sierras. And north were the snow-lands, and south was Mexico and Panama, and it was a wonder Jim Harry didn’t just fall over the edge in his excitement and kill himself. But something made him look up, and there was a speck in the sky, getting larger.
Maybe it was the dream in the boy’s eyes that made him recognize Pegasus. Anyway, he ran down to the pool and dropped a few bits of sugar there, and then made a trail of it to the nearest bush. He hid himself in that bush and waited. And Pegasus came.
Ah, but that horse was God’s own wonder stallion, with high-arched neck, and fine withers, and a white coat that glistened like the stars themselves, and a mane that flew like the borealis, and eyes that could be red as mad flame, and soft and melting as a baby’s. Lord, but a man could die after having seen Pegasus, and reckon himself very lucky. And the wrings on the stallion! White as an egret’s feathers, the powerful pinions spread from the shoulders and glistened in the sun.
Wheeling he came. White against the blue he circled and dropped, and started up in affright, and landed gently as any sparrow beside the pool, and the great wings were furled, and the hoofs of Pegasus spurned the earth. He drank, daintily, and cropped the grass, and fell to playing, kicking up his heels like a colt, and laughing as horses do, and turning back his lovely head to nip at the feathered wings, and all the while Jim Harry watched in a dream.
Pegasus fell to cropping again, and discovered the sugar. Perhaps he mistook it for ambrosia. At any rate, he savored the sweet and followed the trail up to the bush where Jim Harry crouched hidden. There he started back, but too late. The boy clapped on the bridle, and as Pegasus spread his wings for flight Jim Harry leaped on his back and was off!
And like a rocket the great stallion fled up, his muscles shuddering against the boy’s thighs. The wings beat the air with a noise of thunder. Pegasus threw back his head and screamed; he trumpeted his amazement and wrath; and the mane struck Jim Harry’s face and made his nose bleed. But he reins were coiled tight around brown fists. The strong thighs were tensed. And only Gabriel with his flaming sword could have knocked Jim Harry from his seat then.
The winds were a gale. Pegasus somersaulted in the air. Jim Harry threw his arms around the neck and clung. Somehow he stuck on. Looking down he could see Breadloaf incredibly far below; he could see beyond the Sierras and out to the Pacific.
Now a funny thing happened. Pegasus, being a horse, loved sugar, and being something more than a horse, he was more than ordinarily smart. So what did he do but reach his head around, sailing along at an even keel with the wings spread horizontally, and nudge Jim Harry’s pocket where he smelled the sugar.
At first the boy didn’t understand. Then he took out the sweet and fed his mount. He stroked the velvet muzzle, felt the lip of the horse against his palm, and loved the steed. And when the sugar was gone, Pegasus seemed tame enough. He let Jim Harry guide him as though he’d been broken to harness all his life. And I have no words nor heart to tell of that flight through the blue, and of what Jim Harry thought and felt I should not like to say.
But at last the sun was westering and Jim Harry decided to go home. He was late anyway, and he wanted to show Pegasus to his father and mother and his brother. So down they went past Breadloaf till the farm lay spread beneath them.
But nobody was home. The family had gone to town because it was Saturday night, and the hired man was with them. Jim Harry didn’t quite know what to do with Pegasus, and he wouldn’t put him in the stable; Pegasus couldn’t have stood the smell. Finally he put the winged horse in the pasture, tying him with a long rope. Then he went into the house.
THAT night he took a short ride on Pegasus, getting home about ten o’clock and going to bed right away, for he was tired and fagged. He didn’t hear the family come in, and they didn’t notice Pegasus in the darkness.
So, anyway, Jim Harry woke up in the lawn to find his father shaking him, looking pretty white and sick. Old Andy Worth knew horse-flesh, and he knew Pegasus couldn’t exist. Yet a stallion with wings was in the north pasture, and every time Andy tried to get close the beast would tail up like a bird.
“He’s mine, Jim Harry said. “I caught him up on Breadloaf yesterday.”
“Gosh A’mighty,” said Andy. “A freak like that must belong to somebody. Pull on your pants and come on.”
So they went down to the pasture, and Pegasus, who had broken his rope in the night, shot up, trailing it like a tail. Jim Harry felt awful. It was like losing his right arm.
“Yell at him,” Andy said. “Maybe he’ll come to you.”
Jim Harry did. Pegasus came down and skitted around nervously, with a wary eye on Andy.
“Grab the reins,” said the older man. “That’s it. Now—hey, hold on!” For Pegasus lunged away, dragging Jim Harry after him. “Won’t let me get near him, hey? Well, he’ll learn.” Andy scrutinized the horse closely. “They’re real, all right. I never heard the like. Now just what happened yesterday, Jim Harry, and don’t give me no lies.”
So Jim Harry told his dad all about it. Andy believed what he wanted to. “They’s no brand on the beast. Get him in the stable. I’ll go get some sugar.”
“I don’t want to put him in the stable,” Jim Harry started to say. but only got a box on the ear for his trouble.
Anyhow, they put Pegasus in the stable, and had a hard time quieting him. He kept bruising his wings against the stalls, fluttering around for a while like a caged chicken. Andy made Jim Harry tie him up pretty carefully, with leather and raw-hide, and the boy got quite a few swats for objecting. Then they went back to the house to get Sarah, Tom, and Buck, the hired man.
Jim Harry should have been excited at the prospect of showing off Pegasus, but he wasn’t. The horse looked different in the stable. He kept jerking up his head, his nostrils twitching in disgust at the foul odors. The other horses were afraid of him, too.
“I’m going to get Doc West,” Andy said, rubbing his stubbled lean chin. “He can tell if it’s fake or not. Though I don’t see how it can be, rightly.”
Doc West, the vet, said Pegasus was a sport. He’d never heard the like, either, but he’d seen two-headed calves, and there’d been a baby with a goat’s head born to a woman in the next county, once. Doc West leered at Andy and talked in an undertone, casting quick glances at Sarah, who stood self-consciously aside, watching Pegasus. Jim Harry listened, but some of the things he heard made him feel sick. Tom, his brother, stood with open mouth, breathing hard. And the smell of the stable was everywhere. This wasn’t like riding the skies with Pegasus. It was pretty awful.
Nobody seemed to realize that Pegasus belonged to Jim Harry, or that Jim Harry belonged to Pegasus. His ears still smarted from hi
s father’s calloused palm. There was no help from his mother, either; she’d nearly fainted when she learned that Jim Harry had been riding through the air on the winged horse. It wasn’t natural, she said.
“But a thing like that has to belong to somebody,” Andy said.
“If it does, you’ll hear about it. You got a mint of money in that nag,” said Doc West, casting a greedy glance at Pegasus. “You wouldn’t think of selling him, now, would you?”
“Gosh, no. I’m going to—I dunno. Maybe rent him out to a zoo, or something. He’s worth plenty, I bet.”
Jim Harry ran over to Pegasus and stood in front of the stall. “He’s mine. You can’t have him—”
“Don’t use that tone of voice to me,” Andy grunted. “What would you do with him? Break your fool neck, and it’s a wonder you didn’t do it already. Leaving the horse out in the pasture all night with a broke rope. Miracle he didn’t go off for good.
“Can he honest to gosh fly?” Tom wanted to know. Doc West, too, looked an inquiry.
“Sure can. I saw him. Andy went toward the stall, but changed his mind when Pegasus flung back and reared, snorting. “Doc, I want you should send some telegrams for me when you get back to town.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to sell him—”
But Andy wouldn’t sell, and wires were sent to various people. There weren’t many answers. Nobody believed in a winged horse. It looked like just another fake—another Barnum mermaid. One man came from Los Angeles to check up, but even he wouldn’t buy or rent Pegasus for his circus.
“Yeah, I know it’s real,” he said, looking puzzled. “But, ye gods, who’d believe it? Evervbody’d yell fake. If we advertised a winged horse and showed ’em a colt with bumps on his shoulders, they’d be satisfied. But this—it’s too real. People’d never believe it. They’d think we glued the wings on. It’s too good to be true.”
“You could let him fly around,” Andy suggested. “That’d show he was real.”
Collected Fiction Page 150