LITTLE PEOPLE!

by Gardner Dozois

  Noah just stared. He had hot flashes.

  “Sit down, Mr. Raymond.”

  He sat down. On the floor. He didn’t want to, he just suddenly did it; sat down . . . on the floor.

  “Now,” said Alf, “your first question is: what are we? Well. We might ask the same of you. What are you?”

  Charlie started hooting. “Cut out th’ malarkey, Alf. Send ’im out an’ tell ’im t’leave off annoyin’ us!”

  Alf glared at the little man. “Y’know, Charlie, you’re a right king mixer, you are. You better close up your cake ’ole before I come down there an’ pop you a good’un in the ’ooter!”

  Charlie made a nasty bratting sound like a Bronx cheer, the time-honored raspberry, and sat down on the shelf, dangling his tiny legs and whistling unconcernedly.

  Alf turned back to Noah. “You’re a human, Mr. Raymond. The inheritors of the Earth. We know all about you, all there is to know. We should, after all; we’ve been around a lot longer than you. We’re gremlins.”

  Noah Raymond recognized them at once. Living and breathing and arguing personifications of the mythical “little people” who had become a household word during World War II, the sort of/kind of elf-folk deemed responsible for mechanical failures and chance mishaps to Allied aircraft, particularly those of the British. They had been as famous as Kilroy. The Royal Air Force had taken them on as mascots, laughing with them but never at them, and in the end the gremlins were supposed to have turned against the Nazis and to have helped win the war.

  “I . . . I once wrote a bunch of stories about gremlins,” Noah said, the words choked and as mushy as boiled squash.

  “That’s why we’ve been watching you, Mr. Raymond.”

  “Wuh-wuh-watching muh-muh—”

  “Yes, watching you.”

  Charlie made the bratting sound again. It reminded Noah of unhealthy bowel movements, a kind of aural Toltec Two-Step, vocalizing Montezuma’s Revenge.

  “We’ve been on to you for ten years; ever since you wrote ‘An Agile Little Mind.’ For a human, it wasn’t a half-bad attempt at understanding us.”

  “There isn’t much historical data available on guh-guh-gremlins,” Noah said, off-the-wall, having trouble even speaking the magic name.

  “Very good lineage. Direct lineal descendants of the afrit. The French call us gamelin, brats.”

  “But I thought you were just something the pilots dreamed up during the Battle of Britain to account for things going wrong with their planes.”

  “Nonsense,” said the little man. Charlie hooted. “The first modern mention of us was in 1936, out of the Middle East, where the RAF was stationed in Syria. We used the wind mostly. Did some lovely things to their formations when they were on maneuvers. Good deal of tricky Coriolis force business there.”

  “You really are real, aren’t you?” Noah asked.

  Charlie started to say something. Alf turned on him and snapped, “Shut’cher gawb, Charlie!” Then he went back to Mayfair accents as he said to Raymond, “We’re a bit pressed tonight, Mr. Raymond. We can discuss reality and mythology another time. In fact, if you’ll just sit there quietly for a while I’ll knock off after a bit and let the boys carry on without me. I’ll take a break and explain as much to you as you can hold tonight.”

  “Uh, sure . . . sure . . . go ahead. But, uh, what are you writing over there?”

  “Why, I thought you understood, Mr. Raymond. We’re writing that story for the BBC. We’re here from now on to write all your stories. Since you can’t do it, I shouldn’t think you’ll mind if we maintain your world-famous reputation for you.”

  And he put two minuscule fingers in his mouth and gave a blast of a whistle, and before Noah Raymond could say that he was so ashamed of himself he could cry, they were once again bounding up and down on the typewriter.

  My God, how they worked!

  ###

  It was simply the Nietzschean theory all over again. Nietzsche suggested that when a god lost all its worshippers, the god itself died. Belief was the sustaining force. When a god’s supplicants went over to newer, stronger gods, belief in the weaker deity faded and so did the deity. So it had been with the gremlins. They were ancient, of course, and they were worshipped in their various forms under various names. Pixies, nixies, goblins, elves, sprites, fairies, will-o’-the-wisps, gamelins . . . gremlins. But when the times were hard and the technocrats rode high, the belief in magic faded, and so did they. Day by day they vanished, one after another. Whole families were wiped out in a morning just by a group of humans switching to Protestantism.

  And so, from time to time, they came back in strength with a new method of drawing believers to them. During World War II they had changed and taken on the very raiments of the science worshippers. They became elves of the mechanical universe: gremlins.

  But the war was over, and people no longer believed.

  So they had looked around for a promotional gimmick, and they had “found seventeen-year-old Noah Raymond. He was quick, and he was imaginative, and he believed. So they waited. A few stories weren’t good enough. They wanted a body of work, a world-acclaimed body of work that could sustain them through this difficult period of future shock and automation. Tolkien had done his share, but he was an old man and they knew he couldn’t do it alone.

  And so, on the night Noah Raymond went dry, they were waiting, a commando force of typewriter assaultists specially training for throwing themselves into their work in the most literal sense. Tough, unsentimental gremlins with steely eyes and a fierce determination to save their race. Assault Force G-l. Each gremlin a hand-picked veteran of extra-dangerous service. Each gremlin a volunteer. Each gremlin a specialist:

  Alf, who had led the assault on the Krupp munitions factory’s toilets in 1943.

  Charlie, who had shipped aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage, April 10th, 1912, as sabotaging supercargo.

  Billy, who had been head gremlin in charge of London underground subway disruption since 1952.

  Ted, who worked for the telephone company.

  Joe, who worked for Western Union.

  Bertie, who worked for the post office.

  Chris, who was in charge of making coffee bitter in the brewing throughout the Western Hemisphere.

  St. John (pronounced Sin-jin), who supervised a large staff of gremlins assigned to complicating the syntax in the public speeches of minor politicians.

  And the others, and their standbys, and their reserve troops, and their replacements, and their backup support . . .

  Ready to move in the moment Noah Raymond went dry.

  And so they began.

  ###

  For the next nineteen years they came to Noah Raymond’s typewriter every night, and they worked with unceasing energy. Noah would stand watching them for hours sometimes, marveling at the amount of kinetic energy flagrantly expended in the pursuit of survival-as-art.

  And the stories spun out of Noah Raymond’s typewriter, and he grew more famous, and he grew wealthy, and he grew more complacent as the total of their works with his byline grew from one hundred or two hundred, from two hundred to three hundred, from three hundred to four hundred . . .

  Until tonight, when Alf stood shamefacedly on the Olympia’s carriage housing, his cap in his tiny hands, and said to Noah Raymond, “That’s the long and short of it, Noah. We’ve run dry.”

  “Now wait a minute, Alf,” Noah said, “That’s impossible. You’ve got the entire race of gremlins to choose from, to find talent to keep the stuff coming. I simply cannot believe an entire race has run out of ideas!”

  “Uh, well, it’s not quite like that, Noah.” He was obviously embarrassed, and had something of special knowledge he was reluctant to say.

  “Listen, Alf,” Noah said, laying his hand palm up on the carriage housing so the tiny man could step onto it. “We’ve been mates now for almost twenty years, right?”

  The little man nodded and stepped into Noah’s palm.

  No
ah lifted him to eye level so they could talk more intimately.

  “And in twenty-years-almost I think we’ve come to understand each other’s people pretty fair, wouldn’t you say?”

  Alf nodded.

  “I mean, I even get along pretty well with Charlie these days, when his sciatica isn’t bothering him too much.”

  Alf nodded again.

  “And God knows your stories have made things a lot better for the reality of the gremlins, haven’t they? And I’ve done my share with the lectures and the public appearances and all the chat shows on telly, now haven’t I?”

  Alf nodded once more.

  “So then what the hell is this load’a rubbish you’re handing me, chum? How can all of you have run out of story ideas?”

  Alf went harrumph and looked at his feet in their solid workman’s shoes, and he said with considerable embarrassment, “Well, uh, those weren’t stories.”

  “They weren’t stories? Then what were they?”

  “The history of the gremlins. They were all true.”

  “But they sound like fantasies.”

  “Life is interesting for us.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “I never mentioned it because it never came up, but the truth of it is that gremlins don’t have any sense of what you call imagination. We can’t dream things up. We just tell what happened. And we’ve written everything that’s ever happened to our race, right up to date, and we, uh, er, haven’t got any more stories.”

  Noah stared at him with open-mouthed amazement.

  “This is awful,” Noah said.

  “Don’t I know it.” He hesitated, as if not wanting to say any more; then a look of determination came over his face and he went on. “I wouldn’t tell this to just any human, Noah, but you’re a good sort, and we’ve shared ajar or two, so I’ll tell you the rest of it.”

  “The rest of it?”

  “I’m afraid so. The program’s been working both ways, I’m sorry to say. The more humans came to believe in us, the more we gremlins have come to believe in you. Now it’s pretty well fifty-fifty. But without the stories to keep things going, I’m afraid the gremlins are going to start thinking of you again as semi-real, and . . .”

  “Are you trying to tell me that now the gremlins are responsible for the reality of humans?”

  Alf nodded nervously.

  “Oh, shit,” Noah suggested.

  “Been having a bit of trouble in that area, as well,” Alf lamented.

  And they sat there, the tiny man in the human’s hand, and the human in the hands of the gremlins, and they thought about getting drunk. But they knew that wouldn’t help. At least not for very long. It had been a good ride for nineteen years, but the gravy train had been shunted onto a weed-overgrown siding.

  And they stayed that way, sunk in silent despair, for most of the night.

  Until about three fifteen this morning, when Noah Raymond suddenly looked at Alf and said, “Wait a minute, mate. Let me see if I have this figured out right: if the gremlins stop believing in humans, then the humans start disappearing . . . check?”

  Alf said, “Check.”

  “And if the humans start disappearing, then there won’t be sufficient of us to keep up the reality of the gremlins and the gremlins start vanishing . . . check?”

  “Check.”

  “So that means if we can find a way of writing stories for the gremlins that will reinforce their belief in us, it solves the problem . . . check?”

  “Check. But where do we get that many stories?”

  “I’ve got them.”

  “You’ve got them? Noah, I like you, but let’s not lose sight of reality, old chum. You ran out of ideas nineteen years ago.”

  “But I’ve got a source.”

  “A source for stories?”

  “A unified mythology just like your gremlin history. Full of stories. We can pass them off as the truth.”

  And Noah went into one of the other rooms and came back with a book, and opened it to the first page and rolled a fresh piece of typing paper into the Olympia, and checked out the ribbon to make sure it was still fresh, and he said to Alf, “This ought to keep us for at least a few years. And in the meantime we can start looking around for another writer to work with us.”

  And he began to type the opening of the first fantasy he had attempted in nineteen years: a story that would be printed on very small pages in infinitesimal type, to be read by very little people.

  And he typed: “In the beginning Kilroy created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and you couldn’t get a decent mug of lager anywhere . . .”

  “I like that part,” said Alf, dropping his Mayfair accent. “ ’At’s bloody charmin’, is what’t is.”

  Charlie went blatttt!

  United Imp

  By L. Sprague de Camp

  L. Sprague de Camp is a seminal figure, one whose career spans almost the entire development of modern fantasy and SF. In the late 1930s, for the fantasy magazine Unknown, he helped create a whole new modern style of fantasy writing—funny, whimsical, and irreverent—of which he is still the most prominent practitioner. His most famous books include Lest Darkness Fall, The Incomplete Enchanter (with Fletcher Pratt) and Rogue Queen. His most recent book is The Honorable Barbarian.

  Here he shows us that some modern institutions are so widespread that they’re damn well here to stay . . .

  * * *

  There is nothing like a brush with the unknown to knock the self-conceit out of one.

  I had just been promoted to vice-president of the Harrison Trust Company and was feeling pretty pleased with myself. Looking back, I suspect that my promotion owed less to my financial expertise than to the fact that, in my late thirties, my hair had turned prematurely gray. This gave me the sober, reliable look that people approve in their bankers. So, when the then vice-president retired, Esau Drexel moved me into that slot.

  At first, Denise fussed about my hair, saying she did not want to seem married to an old man just yet. I tried some dye but found it more trouble than it was worth; you have to repeat the treatment every week or two. So I put on my stubborn face and refused to dye any more. Denise complained of my hair for years; but, when I got promoted, the salary reconciled her. She takes the realistic French view of money.

  I had not been long at this job when Drexel called me into the president’s office.

  “Willy,” he said, “here’s a puzzle. Fellow in Atlanta wants to borrow five hundred grand. Claims he has enough commercial orders to support the loan; but I can’t find him in Dun and Bradstreet, or anywhere. Besides, what does he want to come to us for? There are plenty of banks in Georgia.”

  “Maybe they’ve all turned him down,” I said. “What’s his line?”

  Drexel tossed a letter across his desk. The letterhead said UNITED IMP, with a Post Office box number in Atlanta. A sheaf of photostats of orders for the company’s products was stapled to the letter.

  The letter explained that the company manufactured wrought-iron grillwork. They had been swamped with orders; hence they needed the loan to expand. The letter went on:

  You are doubtless aware of the current vogue for nostalgic restoration. All over the South, decrepit mansions are being refurbished as tourist attractions. In many of these houses, the original grillwork has rusted away and must be replaced. Since we command the services of a labor force, on one hand highly skilled and on the other not unionized, we hope to capture a substantial part of the market for our products.

  “Of course,” said Drexel, “we don’t want to get involved in a fight with the goddamn unions. If that man in the White House—but never mind; what’s done is done. What do you think, Willy?”

  I frowned at the letter. “I see some funny things here. What does ‘United Imp’ mean? What’s the ‘Imp’?”

  “Imperial? Imports? Or maybe impostors?”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t stand for anything. There’s no period af
ter the p.”

  “You mean ‘imp’ as in gnomes or elves?”

  “Or kobolds or knockers. Then, look how the man signs his name: ‘Colin Owens, Magiarch.’”

  “Some kind of cult leader, I suppose.” Drexel buzzed his secretary. “Miss Carnero, please get your dictionary.”

  The dictionary did not list “magiarch,” but the meaning was plain. Drexel said, “If he’s one of these fakers, telling his suckers they’re reincarnations of George Washington, or promising to make supermen of them in one easy lesson, no wonder the Georgia banks turned him down. I think we’d better give him the brush off.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “A man can be a nut in one way and a shrewd businessman in another. We ought at least to look into his proposition. Besides, business has been slow around here, and we’ve got too much cash lying idle. We could charge him the prime plus one-half.”

  “Prime plus two, more like. But at such a high-risk rate, we’d have to send someone to Atlanta to watch him.”

  “Well, let’s say prime plus one or one and a half.”

  “It won’t be any rate at all unless we know more about the fellow. Tell you what, Willy: You fly down to Atlanta and look over his plant. How soon can you go?”

  “Early next week, I guess.”

  “Fine. I’ll write this Colin Owens, telling him you’re coming. Think you can handle the job?”

  “Oh, sure. Don’t worry about me, boss.” Famous last words.

  ###

  At the Hartsfield Airport, two men met me. Colin Owens turned out to be small, slight, and elderly, with silver hair and an English accent. His blue eyes beamed benignly through steel-rimmed spectacles as he introduced his assistant, Forrest Bellamy. This was a tall, lean, dark man in his thirties, with Southern Mountain twang. While Bellamy was polite enough, there was something uncomfortably tense about him.

  “I am delighted you’ve come, Mr. Newbury,” said Owens. “Have you been in Atlanta before?”

  “No; this is my first visit.”