The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  “And let the sand-cat out of his cage to walk through the blood.” My voice was coming out all by itself. It hurt. The words felt as though they had fishhooks on them, but I couldn’t stop saying them.

  “You almost got by with it, Laura. Just like you got by with Sindi. She got in your way, didn’t she? She was jealous, and she was a dancer. She knew that no true human could dance like you dance. She said so. She said you were a freak.”

  That word hit her like my fist. She showed me her teeth, white, even teeth that I knew now were as phony as her eyes. I didn’t want to see her change, but I couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t stop.

  I said, “Sindi gave you away before she died, only I was too dumb to know what she meant. She said, ‘The stage.’”

  I think we both looked, down at the stark boards under the stark lights, looked at the scratches on them where Laura had danced barefoot that first time and left the marks of her claws on the wood.

  She nodded, a slow, feral weaving of the head.

  “Sindi was too curious. She searched my tent. She found nothing, but she left her scent, just as the young man did today. I followed her back here in the dark and saw her looking at the stage by the light of matches. I can move in the dark, Jade, very quickly and quietly. The cook tent is only a few yards back of this one, and Laska’s quarters close beyond that. I smelt the cook’s coffee. It was easy for me to steal it and slip it through the tent flap by Laska’s cot, and wake him with the touch of my claws on his face. I knew he couldn’t help drinking it. I was back here before Sindi came out of the tent to go and tell you what she’d found.”

  She made a soft purring sound under the wicked music.

  “Laska smelt the blood and walked in it, as I meant him to do. I thought he’d die before he found us—or me—because I knew he’d find my scent in the air of his quarters and know who it was, and what it was. My perfume had worn too thin by then to hide it from his nose.”

  I felt the sullen pain of the claw marks on my face and leg. Laska, crazy with caffeine and dying with it, knowing he was dying and wanting with all the strength of his drugged brain to get at the creature who had killed him. He’d wanted Laura that night, not me. I was just something to claw out of the way.

  I wished I hadn’t stopped him.

  I said, “Why? All you wanted was Laska. Why didn’t you kill him?”

  The shining claws flexed out of her fingertips, under the phony plastic nails—very sharp, very hungry.

  She said huskily, “My tribe sent me to avenge its honor. I have been trained carefully. There are others like me, tracking down the renegades, the dope-ridden creatures like Laska who sell our race for human money. He was not to die quickly. He was not to die without knowing. He was not to die without being given the chance to redeem himself by dying bravely.

  “But I was not to be caught. I cost my people time and effort, and I am not easily replaced. I have killed seven renegades, Jade. I was to escape. So I wanted to wait until we were out in space.”

  She stopped. The music hammered in my temples, and inside I was dead and dried up and crumbled away.

  I said, “What would you have done in space?”

  I knew the answer. She gave it to me, very simply, very quietly.

  “I would have destroyed your whole filthy carnival by means of a little bomb in the jet timers, and gone away in one of the lifeboats.”

  I nodded. My head felt as heavy as Mount Whitney, and as lifeless. “But Sindi didn’t give you time. Your life came first. And if it hadn’t been for the punk…”

  No, not just a punk—an Immigration man. Somewhere Laura had slipped, or else her luck was just out. A white-faced youngster, doing his job quietly in the shadows, and dying without a cry. I started to climb down off the stage.

  She backed off. The music screamed and stopped, leaving a silence like the feel of a suddenly stopped heart.

  Laura whispered, “Jade, will you believe something if I tell you?

  “I love you, Jade.” She was still backing off down the aisle, not making any sound. “I deserve to die for that. I’m going to die. I think you’re going to kill me, Jade. But when you do, remember that those tears I shed—were real.”

  She turned and ran, out onto the midway. I was close. I caught her hair. It came free, leaving me standing alone just inside the tent, staring stupidly.

  I had men out there, waiting. I thought she couldn’t get through. But she did. She went like a wisp of cloud on a gale, using the rubes as a shield. We didn’t want a panic. We let her go, and we lost her.

  I say we let her go. We couldn’t help it. She wasn’t bothering about being human then. She was all cat, just a noiseless blur of speed. We couldn’t shoot without hurting people, and our human muscles were too slow to follow her.

  I knew Tiny had men at the gates and all around the pitch, anywhere that she could possibly get out. I wasn’t worried. She was caught, and pretty soon die police would come. We’d have to be careful, careful as all hell not to start one of those hideous, trampling panics that can wreck a pitch in a matter of minutes.

  All we had to do was watch until the show was over and the rubes were gone. Guard the gates and keep her in, and then round her up. She was caught. She couldn’t get away. Laura Darrow…

  I wondered what her name was, back on Callisto. I wondered what she looked like when she let the cross-shaped mane grow thick along her back and shoulders. I wondered what color her fur was. I wondered why I had ever been born.

  I went back to my place and got my gun and then went out into the crowd again. The show was in full swing; lots of people having fun, lots of kids crazy with excitement; lights and laughter and music—and a guy out in front of the brute top splitting his throat telling the crowd that something was wrong with the lighting system and it would be a while before they could see the animals.

  A while before the cops would have got what they wanted and cleaned up the mess under the sand-cat’s cage.

  The squad cars would be coming in a few minutes. There wasn’t anything to do but wait. She was caught. She couldn’t escape.

  The one thing we didn’t think about was that she wouldn’t try to.

  A Mercurian cave-tiger screamed. The Ionian quags took it up in their deep, rusty voices, and then the others chimed in, whistling, roaring, squealing, shrieking, and doing things there aren’t any names for. I stopped, and gradually everybody on the pitch stopped and listened.

  For a long moment you could hear the silence along the midway and in the tents. People not breathing, people with a sudden glassy shine of fear in their eyes and a cold tightening of the skin that comes from way back beyond humanity. Then the muttering started, low and uneasy, the prelude to panic.

  I fought my way to the nearest bally stand and climbed on it. There were shots, sounding small and futile under the brute howl.

  I yelled, “Hey, everybody! Listen! There’s nothing wrong. One of the cats is sick, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong. Enjoy yourselves.”

  I wanted to tell them to get the hell out, but I knew they’d kill themselves if they started. Somebody started music going again, loud and silly. It cracked the icy lid that was tightening down. People began to relax and laugh nervously and talk too loudly. I got down and ran for the brute top.

  Tiny met me at the tent flap. His face was just a white blur. I grabbed him and said, “For God’s sake, can’t you keep them quiet?”

  “She’s in there, Boss—like shadow. No hear, no see. One man dead. She let my kids out. She—”

  More shots from inside, and a brute scream of pain. Tiny groaned.

  “My kids! No lights, Boss. She wreck ’em.”

  I said, “Keep ’em inside. Get lights from somewhere. There’s a blizzard brewing on the pitch. If that mob gets started.”

  I went inside. There were torchbeams spearing the dark, men sweating and cursing, a smell of hot, wild bodies and the sweetness of fresh blood.

  Somebody poked his head inside
the flap and yelled, “The cops are here!”

  I yelled back, “Tell ’em to clear the grounds if they can, without starting trouble. Tell—”

  Somebody screamed. There was a sudden spangle of lights in the high darkness, balls of crimson and green and vicious yellow tumbling toward us, spots of death no bigger than your fist—the stinging fireflies of Ganymede. Laura had opened their case.

  We scattered, fighting the fireflies. Somewhere a cage went over with a crash. Bodies thrashed, and feet padded on the packed earth—and somewhere above the noise was a voice that was sweet and silky and wild, crying out to the beasts and being answered.

  I knew then why the brute top went crazy when Laska was around. It was kinship, not fear. She talked to them, and they understood.

  I called her name.

  Her voice came down to me out of the hot dark, human and painful with tears. “Jade! Jade, get out; go somewhere safe!”

  “Laura, don’t do this! For God’s sake—”

  “Your God, or mine? Our God forbids us to know humans except to kill. How, if we kept men as you kept Laska?”

  “Laura!”

  “Get out! I’m going to kill as many as I can before I’m taken. I’m turning the animals loose on the pitch. Go somewhere safe!”

  I fired at the sound of her voice.

  She said softly, “Not yet, Jade. Maybe not at all.”

  I beat off a bunch of fireflies hunting for me with their poisoned stings. Cage doors banged open. Wild throats coughed and roared, and suddenly the whole side wall of the tent fell down, cut free at the top, and there wasn’t any way to keep the beasts inside anymore.

  A long mob scream went up from outside, and the panic was on.

  I could hear Tiny bellowing, sending his men out with ropes and nets and guns. Some huge, squealing thing blundered around in the dark, went past me close enough to touch, and charged through the front opening, bringing part of the top down. I was close enough behind it so that I got free.

  I climbed up on the remains of the bally stand. There was plenty of light outside—blue-white, glaring light, to show me the packed mass of people screaming and swaying between the tents, trampling toward the exits, to show me a horde of creatures sweeping down on them, caged beasts free to kill, and led by a lithe and leaping figure in shining green.

  I couldn’t see her clearly. Perhaps I didn’t want to. Even then she moved in beauty, like wild music—and she had a tail.

  I never saw a worse panic, not even the time a bunch of Nahali swamp-edgers clemmed our pitch when I was a pony punk with Triangle.

  The morgues were going to be full that night.

  Tiny’s men were between the bulk of the mob and the animals. The beasts had had to come around from the far side of the tent, giving them barely time to get set. They gave the critters all they had, but it wasn’t enough.

  Laura was leading them. I heard her voice crying out above all that din. The animals scattered off sideways between the tents. One Martian sand-cat was dead, one quag kicking its life out, and that was all. They hadn’t touched Laura, and she was gone.

  I fought back, away from the mob, back into a temporarily empty space behind a tent. I got out my whistle and blew it, the rallying call. A snake-headed kibi from Titan sneaked up and tried to rip me open with its double-pointed tail. I fed it three soft-nosed slugs, and then there were half a dozen little moth-people bouncing in the air over my head, squeaking with fear and shining their great eyes at me.

  I told them what I wanted. While I was yelling the Europans swooped in on their wide wings and listened.

  I said finally, “Did any of you see which way she went?”

  “That way.” One of the mothlings pointed back across the midway. I called two of the Europans. The mothlings went tumbling away to spread my orders, and the bird-men picked me up and carried me across, over the crowd.

  The animals were nagging at their flanks, pulling them down in a kind of mad ecstasy. There was a thin salt fog, and blood on the night wind, and the cage doors were open at last.

  They set me down and went to do what I told them. I went alone among the swaying tents.

  All this hadn’t taken five minutes. Things like that move fast. By the time the Europans were out of sight the mothlings were back, spotting prowling beasts and rolling above them in the air to guide men to them—men and geeks.

  Geeks with armor-plated backs and six arms, carrying teargas guns and nets; lizard-men, fast and powerful, armed with their own teeth and claws and whatever they could pick up; spider-people, spinning sticky lassos out of their own bodies; the Europans, dive-bombing the quags with tear gas.

  The geeks saved the day for us. They saved lives, and the reputation of their kind, and the carnival. Without them, God only knows how many would have died on the pitch. I saw the mothlings dive into the thick of the mob and pick up fallen children and carry them to safety. Three of them died, doing that.

  I went on, alone.

  I was beyond the mob, beyond the fringe of animals. I was remembering Laura’s voice saying, “Not yet, Jade. Maybe not at all.” I was thinking of the walls being down and all California free outside. I was hearing the mob yell and the crash of broken tents, and the screams of people dying—my people, human people, with the claws bred out of them.

  I was thinking—

  Guns slamming and brute throats shrieking, wings beating fast against the hot hard glare, feet pounding on packed earth. I walked in silence, a private silence built around me like a shell…

  Four big cats slunk out of the shadows by the tent. There was enough light left to show me their eyes and their teeth, and the hungry licking of their tongues.

  Laura’s voice came through the canvas, tremulous but no softer nor more yielding than the blue barrel of my gun.

  “I’m going away, Jade. At first I didn’t think there was any way, but there is. Don’t try to stop me. Please don’t try.”

  I could have gone and tried to find a cop. I could have called men or half-men from their jobs to help me. I didn’t. I don’t know that I could have made anybody hear me, and anyway they had enough to do. This was my job.

  My job, my carnival, my heart.

  I walked toward the tent flap, watching the cats.

  They slunk a little aside, belly down, making hoarse, whimpering noises. One was a six-legged Martian sand-cat, about the size of an Earthly leopard. Two were from Venus, the fierce white beauties of the high plateaus. The fourth was a Mercurian cave-cat, carrying its twenty-foot body on eight powerful legs and switching a tail that had bone barbs on it.

  Laura called to them. I don’t know whether she said words in their language, or whether her voice was just a bridge for thought transference, one cat brain to another. Anyway, they understood.

  “Jade, they won’t touch you if you go.”

  I fired.

  One of the white Venusians took the slug between the eyes and dropped without a whimper. Its mate let go a sobbing shriek and came for me, with the other two beside it.

  I snapped a shot at the Martian. It went over kicking, and I dived aside, rolling. The white Venusian shot over me, so close its hind claws tore my shirt. I put a slug in its belly. It just yowled and dug its toes in and came for me again. Out of the tail of my eye I saw the dying Martian tangle with the Mercurian, just because it happened to be the nearest moving object.

  I kicked the Venusian in the face. The pain must have blinded it just enough to make its aim bad. On the second jump its forepaws came down on the outer edges of my deltoids, gashing them but not tearing them out. The cat’s mouth was open clear to its stomach.

  I should have died right then. I don’t know why I didn’t except that I didn’t care much if I did. It’s the guys that want to live that get it, seems like. The ones that don’t care go on forever.

  I got a lot of hot bad breath in my face and five parallel gashes in back, where its hind feet hit me when I rolled up. I kicked it in the belly. Its teeth snapped
a half inch short of my nose, and then I got my gun up under its jaw and that was that. I had four shots left.

  I rolled the body off and turned. The Martian cat was dead. The Mercurian stood over it, watching me with its four pale, hot eyes, twitching its barbed tail.

  Laura stood watching us.

  She looked just like she had the first time I saw her. Soft gold-brown hair and purple eyes with a little tilt to them, and a soft pink mouth. She was wearing the bronze metal-cloth dress and the bronze slippers, and there was still nothing wrong with the way she was put together. She glinted dully in the dim light, warm bronze glints.

  She was crying, but there was no softness in her tears.

  The cat flicked its eyes at her and made a nervous, eager whine. She spoke to it, and it sank to its belly, not wanting to.

  Laura said, “I’m going, Jade.”

  “No.”

  I raised my gun hand. The big cat rose with it. She was beyond the cat. I could shoot the cat, but a Mercurian lives a long time after it’s shot.

  “Throw down your gun, Jade, and let me go.”

  I didn’t care if the cat killed me. I didn’t care if Death took me off piggy-back right then. I suppose I was crazy. Maybe I

  was just numb. I don’t know. I was looking at Laura, and choking on my own heart.

  I said, “No.”

  Just a whisper of sound in her throat, and the cat sprang. It reared up on its four hind feet and clawed at me with its four front ones. Only I wasn’t where it thought I was. I knew it was going to jump and I faded—not far, I’m no superman— just far enough so its claws raked me without gutting me. It snapped its head down to bite.

  I slammed it hard across the nose with my gun. It hurt, enough to make it wince, enough to fuddle it just for a split second. I jammed the muzzle into its nearest eye and fired.

  Laura was going off between the tents, fast, with her head down, just a pretty girl, mingling with the mob streaming off the pitch. Who’d notice her, except maybe to whistle?