The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  The woods rolled by, clotted underneath with deep shadow, full of rustlings and rank, dusty smells. Sometimes they passed a kind of food-raising station that had not been seen in the Federation for centuries, where part of the land was in several kinds of crops and part of it in pasture and the whole thing was operated by one man and his family. Sometimes they passed through little towns or villages with very strange names, where the people stared at them and the children pointed and yelled, Green niggers, lookit the green niggers!

  Flin studied the houses. They were different from each other, and quite different from the ones he had grown used to in the cities, but they were all built on the same hut-based principle. He tried to imagine what life would be like in one of these towns, in one of these wooden or stone or brick houses with the queer decorations and the pointed roofs. Probably Sherbondy was right. Probably all the Federation people should try to get closer to the everyday life of the planet, familiarize themselves with what the people thought and felt, how they coped with their environment. The next few decades would see changes so radical and complete that this present life would soon begin to be forgotten….

  The change had already begun. This planet—the native name for it was Earth, a rather pretty one, Flin thought—had been making its first wobbling steps into space on its own when the Survey ships arrived. With Federation technicians and techniques that process had been enormously accelerated. The first manned ships built on Earth and operated by Federation-trained but native-born personnel had been licensed for limited service within the last seven or eight years. Planning surveys were under way, guided by groups like his own, not only in weathercontrol but in global unification, production, education, and above all pacification—the countless things that would have to be accomplished to make Earth a suitable member of the Federation.

  But these things had not yet made themselves felt on the population as a whole. Most of Earth was going along just as it always had, and Flin knew from experience that many of the natives even on the administrative level were extremely touchy and proud, not inclined to accept any sudden alterations in their thinking; probably the more provincial masses were even more so. It would be necessary to win them over, to make them feel that they were equals in the task and not merely the recipients of gifts from an older and wider culture.

  It would be a long, interesting business. An energetic young man who stuck with it could make a career out of it, a satisfying and very profitable one.

  The only trouble was—

  Ruvi’s thoughts seemed to have paralleled his own, because she said, “Are we going to stay on here?”

  “We have to stay until we’ve finished our immediate job.”

  “But after that? I know some of the men have already decided to.”

  “The offers these people make are very good,” Flin said slowly. “They’ll need technicians and educators for a long time yet, and Center is in favor of it because it’ll speed up integration.” He reached out and patted her. “We could be rich and famous.”

  She smiled, very fleetingly. “All right,” she said in a quiet voice, “I’ll start making myself like it.”

  She began to stare grimly at the queerly shaped and colored trees, the peculiar houses that looked so dreadfully functional, the crowds of chattering natives in the towns. Finally she shook her head and gave up, lying back with her eyes closed.

  “I’ll try it again sometime when it isn’t so hot.”

  “Weather-control will fix that.”

  “But not for years.”

  They drove in silence. Flin felt vaguely ill at ease and unhappy, but he kept thinking of Sherbondy’s offer and the things it might lead to for them, and he did not say anything. He did not want to commit himself with Ruvi yet, one way or the other.

  About mid-afternoon there was a violent downpour of rain accompanied by thunder and lightning. As a weather expert Flin knew perfectly well what caused the disturbance, but the knowledge did nothing to decrease the effect of it on himself. Ruvi simply hid her head in the corner and shook. Flin kept on driving. If you let the natives know that you were afraid of their weather, they would never believe that you would be able to control it. He made it a practice in Washington to walk out in storms that had even the natives cowering. He could barely see the road well enough to stay on it and he was nervous about floods, but he trundled resolutely ahead.

  Eventually he ran out of the storm, or it passed over. The sun came out again, boiling and steaming the saturated air. It was difficult to breathe. Great black clouds still bulked in the sky, presaging more trouble later. In the strange light the countryside took on a look completely alien and somehow ominous, the little scattered houses crouching among their weird trees like suspicious gnomes with hostile eyes, the empty fields and dripping woods suggestive of infinite loneliness.

  “I’m tired and hungry,” Ruvi said. “Let’s stop.”

  “The next town that has accommodations.” Flin was tired himself. He found driving a strain and yearned for the fleet little air-cars that darted so easily and safely through the peaceful skies of the Federation worlds. They would not be practical here until global weather-control was an actuality.

  The next town was a long way off. The road lifted and wound through low rough mountains and over brawling stream beds. The villages they passed through were very tiny, sometimes with only two or three dwellings.

  The shadows grew heavy in the valleys. Ruvi began to fret a bit. Flin knew that it was only because the shadows and the wild country made her nervous, but it irritated him. He was having trouble enough of his own. An animal of some sort scuttered across the road and he nearly went into the ditch avoiding it. The light was bad. He was worried about the fuel gauge, which was low. And the road seemed to go on forever through a steadily darkening tunnel of trees.

  They passed a tiny wooden temple next to one of the absolutely barbaric native burying grounds that always horrified them, the ritual stones gleaming pallid among uncut grass and briar roses. It all flashed by so quickly that Flin realized he had pushed the speed of the big car beyond the limit of safety. So he was already slowing down when he swung around a curve and came right onto a farm vehicle moving very slowly in the road. He managed to go around it without hitting anything but it gave him a sharp fright. The man driving the thing shouted after them. Flin could not hear exactly what he said but there was no doubt he was angry. After that Flin went carefully.

  There began to be painted signs along the edge of the road.

  Ruvi read them off. “Restaurant. Hotel. Garage. There is a town ahead. Grand Falls, I think.”

  The road passed suddenly over a crest and there was a wide irregular valley below them, full of light from the low sun which shone through a gap in the west. Perhaps Flin was in an exceptionally receptive mood but it struck him as one of the loveliest places he had seen. There was a river flashing with curious dull glints from the setting sun, rolling smoothly over a pretty little falls that burst into bright foam at the bottom. The white houses of the town were bowered in trees and blooming vines, slumbrous and peaceful in the hot evening, with one tall white spire standing over them.

  “Look, I see the hotel,” said Ruvi, pointing. “Oh glorious, how I will love a cool bath before dinner!”

  She ran her fingers through her silvery curls and sat up straight beside him, smiling as he drove down the hill into Grand Falls.

  It had rained here recently. The pavements still glistened and the air steamed with it. There was a fragrance of nameless flowers, very sweet and heavy. On the shadowy porches of the houses along the way there was a sound of voices and hidden laughter, and the small scurrying shapes of children moved under the dripping trees.

  The road became the main street splashed with the crude colors of neon signs, the lighted windows showing yellow in the dusk. On both sides now there were curious low buildings, apparently quite old, built tight together so that each row looked like one building except its front was broken up into na
rrow vertical sections with different cornices and different patterns of wood or brickwork around the windows. They were mostly of red brick, which seemed to be a common building material, and not above two stories high.

  The shops and offices were closed. The eating and drinking places were open and busy, and somewhere inside there was music playing, a strong simple beat with a high-pitched male voice wailing over it. The smell of flowers was drowned out by the pungence of hot wet brick and hotter, wetter asphalt. A few couples walked toward the gaudily lighted entrance of the theater farther along the street, the women wearing bright-colored dresses, their long hair done in elaborate coiffures, their thick sturdy legs and arms bare. Knots of young men lounged against the walls near the drinking places. They were smoking the universal cigarettes and talking, looking after the women.

  Seen close up now the town was less beautiful than it had looked from the crest. The white paint was dirty and peeling, the old buildings poorly kept up.

  “Well,” Flin muttered, “Sherbondy said to get off the beaten track and see the real native life undiluted.”

  “The hotel looks charming,” Ruvi said determinedly. “I am not going to quarrel with anything.”

  Even in the dusk they were beginning to draw attention. First the little knots of idlers were attracted by the long gleaming car with the Government plates, and then by Flin and Ruvi themselves. There were other cars in the street, both moving and parked along the curb, but the one Flin was driving seemed to be newer and fancier than most. He could see people pointing and looking at them. He swore silently and wondered if they could have dinner sent up to their room.

  The hotel was on the corner of the main intersection. It was three stories high, built of the red brick, with a crudely ornate cornice and long narrow windows. A balcony ran around its two exposed sides at the second floor level, extending over the street and supported on slender metal pillars which had once been painted white. A second tier of pillars on the balcony itself supported a roof. There were five or six oldish men sitting in chairs on the balcony, and several more below on the covered portion of the street.

  Flin looked at it doubtfully. “I wonder if it has a bath.”

  Her own enthusiasm somewhat cooled, Ruvi said, “It’ll do for one night. It might be a long way to the next one and I don’t suppose it would be any better.”

  Flin grunted and pulled the car in to the curb and stopped.

  There was a scraping of chair legs as the men sat forward or rose to come closer. Flin got out and walked around the car. He smiled at the men but they only stared, blowing strong smoke and squinting through it at him and the car and the license plates and then at Ruvi.

  Flin turned and opened the door for her. He noticed over the low roof of the car that men were beginning to come from across the street, and already a number of boys had sprung from nowhere and were clustering like insects, their eyes bright and excited.

  He helped Ruvi out, slim in her yellow tunic, her silver curls picking up the light from the tall front door of the hotel.

  One of the men said in a high shrill voice. “Green as grass, by God!” There was laughter and somebody whistled.

  Flin’s face tightened but he did not say anything nor look at the men. He took Ruvi’s arm and they went into the hotel.

  They walked on a faded carpet, between islands of heavy furniture in worn leather and dusty plush. Fans turned slowly against the ceiling, barely disturbing either the hot air or the moths that had come in to flutter around the lights. There was a smell that Flin could not fully identify. Dust, the stale stink of dead tobacco, and something else—age, perhaps, and decay. Behind the large wooden desk a grey-haired man had risen from a chair and stood with his hands spread out on the desk top, watching them come.

  The men from the street followed, crowding quickly through the doors. One particular man seemed to lead them, a red-faced fellow wearing an amulet on a gold chain across his broad paunch.

  Flin and Ruvi stood in front of the desk. Once more Flin smiled. He said, “Good evening.”

  The grey-haired man glanced past them at the men who had come in, bringing with them a many-faceted odor of sweat to add to what was already inside. They had stopped talking, as though they were waiting to hear what the grey-haired man would say. The fans in the ceiling creaked gently as they turned.

  The grey-haired man cleared his throat. He, too, smiled, but there was no friendliness in it.

  “If you’re wanting a room,” he said, with unnecessary loudness as though he were speaking not to Flin but to the others in the lobby, “I’m sorry, but we’re filled up.”

  “Filled up?” Flin repeated.

  “Filled up.” The grey-haired man took hold of a large book which lay open in front of him and closed it in a kind of ceremonial gesture. “You understand now. I’m not refusing you accommodations. I just don’t have any available.”

  He glanced again at the men by the door and there was a little undertone of laughter.

  “But—” said Ruvi, on a note of protest.

  Flin pressed her arm and she stopped. His own face was suddenly hot. He knew the man was lying, and that his lie had been expected and was approved by the others, and that he and Ruvi were the only two people there who did not understand why. He also knew that it would do them no good to get into an argument. So he spoke, as pleasantly as he could.

  “I see. Perhaps then you could tell us of another place in town—”

  “Don’t know of any,” said the grey-haired man, shaking his head. “Don’t know of a single place.”

  “Thank you,” said Flin and turned around and walked back across the lobby, still holding Ruvi’s arm.

  The crowd had grown. Half the people in Grand Falls, Flin thought, must be gathered now on that one corner. The original group of men, reinforced to twice its size, blocked the doorway. They parted to let Flin and Ruvi through but they did it with a certain veiled insolence, staring hard at Ruvi who bent her head and did not look at them.

  Flin walked slowly, refusing to notice them or be hurried. But their nearness, the heat and smell of them, the sense of something menacing about them that he did not understand, twisted his nerves to a painful tightness.

  He passed through the door, almost brushing against a young girl who squealed and jumped back out of his way with a great show of being afraid of him. There was a bunch of young people with her, both boys and girls, and they began a great cackling and shoving. The crowd had become more vocal as it grew. There were a lot of women in it now. Flin waited politely for them to separate, moving a step at a time toward the car, and the voices flew back and forth over his head, at him, around him.

  —ain’t even human!

  Hey, greenie, can’t you afford to feed your women where you come from? Lookit how skinny—

  Are they kidding with that crazy hair?

  —just like I seen on the teevee, and I says to Jack then. Jack Spivey I says, if you ever see anything like them coming down the road—

  Hey, greenie, is it true your women lay eggs?

  Laughter. Derision. And something deeper. Something evil. Something he did not understand.

  He reached the car and got Ruvi into it. As he bent close to her he whispered in her ear, in their own language, “Just take it easy. We’re getting out.”

  Mama, how come them funny niggers got a bigger car’n we got?

  Because the Government’s payin’ them big money to come and kindly teach us what we didn’t know before.

  “Please hurry,” whispered Ruvi.

  He started around the car to get in and found his way blocked by the red-faced man with the gold chain, and beyond him a solid mass in the street in front of the car. He sensed that they were not going to let him through, so he stopped as though he had intended to do so and spoke to the man with the chain.

  “I beg your pardon—could you tell me how far it is to the next city?”

  The girls were giggling loudly over Ruvi’s tunic and the wa
y she looked generally. They were all the fat-hipped, heavybreasted local type, with thick legs and thick faces. Flin thought they had very little to criticize. Just beyond the man with the gold chain were four or five younger men standing together. They had very obviously come out of one of the taverns. They were lean rangy young men with their hair slicked down and their hips thrust forward in a curiously insolent slouch. They had eyes, Flin thought, like animals. They had been by the door when he came out. They were still looking at Ruvi.

  “The next city?” said the man with the gold chain. He accented the word city as Flin had. He had a deep, ringing voice, apparently well used to addressing crowds. “A hundred and twenty-four miles.”

  A long way at night through strange country. A great anger boiled up in Flin but he kept it carefully inside.

  “Thank you. I wonder where we might get something to eat before we start?”

  “Well now, it’s pretty late,” the man said. “Our restaurants have just about now stopped serving. Am I right, Mr. Nellis?”

  “You are, Judge Shaw,” said a man in the crowd.

  This too was a lie, but Flin accepted it. He nodded and said, “I must have fuel. Where—”

  “Garage is closed,” Shaw said. “If you got enough to get you down the road apiece there’s a pump at Patch’s roadhouse. He’s open late enough.”

  “Thank you,” said Flin. “We will go now.”

  He started again, but Shaw did not move out of Flin’s way. Instead he put up his hand and said, “Now just a minute there, before you go. We’ve been reading about you people in the papers and seeing you on the teevee but we don’t get much chance to talk to celebrities here. There’s some questions we’d like to ask.”

  The rangy young men with the animal eyes began to sidle past Shaw and behind Flin toward the car, leaving a heavy breath of liquor where they moved.

  “A damn lot of questions,” somebody shouted from the back, “like why the hell don’t you stay home?”

  “Now, now,” said Shaw, waving his hand, “let’s keep this friendly. Reverend, did you have something to say?”