Hour of the Gremlins

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Mr. Sheperton growled and got to all four legs. Baneen leaped backwards a half step and then started to rise right off the ground. But they were both frozen in their places by a sudden roaring voice:

  "BANEEN! AND WHAT ARE YOU UP TO NOW, ME SLIPPERY LITTLE MAN?" Another gremlin stepped from behind a bush. "What's going on here?" he demanded "And who are you, dog?"

  "Sheperton. Mr. Sheperton," replied Shep, coldly.

  Baneen glided back to the ground and touched down lightly. "Ah there, Lugh, darling," Baneen said, keeping one eye on Shep. "Sure and all, the grim beast would have killed me five times over if it'd not been for your mighty self coming to my rescue. . . ."

  "Rescue is it? That depends on what it is that you've been up to," snapped the second gremlin. "Now answer me quick, or I'll be putting you under a spell in a damp cellar for five thousand years—and well, you know I can do it! That or anything else I've a mind to!"

  Lying there watching them, Rolf believed the newcomer wholeheartedly. There was something about this gremlin named Lugh that was extremely convincing, although at the same time it was puzzling. Because in an odd way, Lugh seemed to be many times larger and more threatening than he actually was. Rolf squinted at him, wondering if the fall from his bike hadn't done something to his head, after all.

  Plainly to view, Lugh was another gremlin like Baneen. Well, not exactly like Baneen. Lugh was half again as tall, wide-shouldered and burly. But it wasn't this alone that made him so impressive—and he was impressive indeed.

  Somehow, although Rolf's eyes insisted that Lugh was no more than a foot and a half tall, some inner sense saw it differently. Lugh somehow gave the impression of being the size of a professional football player, massive, heavy-jawed, hard-fisted and more than a match for anything on two legs or four.

  "Did you hear me, little man?" roared Lugh now, waving a fist under Baneen's nose. "Speak up, or it's down with you to the toads and mushrooms for five thousand years!"

  "Whush now," said Baneen, with a slight quaver in his voice. "It's a terrible temper you have, indeed it is. And me only trying to do a bit of good for man, gremlin and beast alike. Ah, the hard misunderstandings that have been the lot of my life! The misunderstandings of those for whom I wished to do the poor best that I could . . ."

  "Talk!" said Lugh fiercely.

  "And aren't I, after doing that very thing, this moment?" Baneen said quickly. "As my tongue was just now saying, here was I in talk with Mr. Sheperton. . . ."

  "Mr. Sheperton?" Lugh blinked, then turned to look at the dog. "Oh yes—Sheperton."

  "Mr. Sheperton, if you don't mind!" Shep growled dangerously.

  "Now, now, let's not be having a misunderstanding," said Baneen hastily, stepping between the sheepdog and Lugh. "Mr. Sheperton it is, indeed—so named by the family of the lad when they brought him home as a wee pup, nearly six long years ago."

  Rolf blinked. Slowly, out of far back in his mind, swam up a memory of the day when his father had brought the dog into their house. It was true—the first name they had given to the fuzzy, wobbly-legged puppy stumbling over the kitchen floor had been "Mr. Sheperton." The name had been given because there was something pompous about the plump waddling puppy, even then. Of course, the original name was soon forgotten and shortened to "Shep."

  "—and may I present now," Baneen was going on, "himself, Lugh of the Long Hand, Prince of all Gremlins on this chill and watery planet of yours, second to none but His Royal Majesty the King of Gremla Itself—long may its bright clouds of dust blow against the sunset."

  Baneen wound up this short speech by blowing his nose sentimentally.

  Mr. Sheperton and Lugh grunted ungraciously at each other in acknowledgement of the introduction.

  "Prince I am, and don't you forget it," said Lugh, shaking his fist once more at Baneen. "If there's to be any dealings with human beings, I'll be the one to do them. That's understood?"

  "To be sure, to be sure," Baneen soothed. "How could you think I'd go and forget such a thing? I was only preparing the matter for your royal attention—it was nothing more than that I had in mind. Why, says I to myself, here's a boy with troubles that a small touch of gremlin magic can mend, a noble dog to be assisted in his wardship of his—"

  "Assisted? Who said I needed assistance?" gruffed Mr. Sheperton.

  "No one. No one at all, at all. It was only a figure of speech I was making," Baneen went on. "And here we are, exiles from the planet of our birth, the beautiful and dry Gremla, longing for a way to get back to its lovely, dusty caves. Why not put it all together, thought I, and with the noble Lugh of the Long Hand—the darling of all Gremla that was—to oversee, sure the end can be nothing but happiness for all concerned."

  "Get to the point, Baneen-og," rumbled Lugh. "You're reaching an end to the tether of my patience."

  "There's no more than a word to be said," Baneen answered quickly. "Here we are marooned these thousands of years on this watery planet where the best of gremlin magic can lift us no more than a dozen feet into the air. And over there—" Baneen pointed in the direction of LC-39, "—is a fine big rocket about to go all the way to Mars, next door to Gremla so it is, and here is a boy whose father's work is all with that very rocket—"

  A bellow from Lugh stopped him. The large gremlin had glanced at Rolf when he was mentioned by Baneen, and—too late—Rolf had realized that he was lying there propped up on his elbows, his eyes wide open.

  "BY THE GREAT CAIRNGORM OF GREMLA ITSELF!" Lugh roared, striding wrathfully toward Rolf and seeming to grow more gigantic with each step. "You've sprinkled the lad over with Gremla-dust, Baneen—and that with no permission from anyone, least of all myself! He's been lying here with his eyes open all this time, seeing and hearing and understanding every word ourselves and the dog have spoken!"

  3

  "Lugh!" yelped Baneen. "You overgrown, great—"

  Lugh spun around to face the smaller gremlin, and Baneen's tone changed abruptly, sweetly, "—man of wisdom that you are, now. Surely yourself has figured out that the lad must be able to talk with us and see us, if he's to be the means of aiding our poor friend O'Rigami in his and our time of need."

  Lugh, who looked as if he had just been about to leap at Baneen, settled back, frowning, and stroked his chin whiskers.

  "Oh?" he said thoughtfully. "O'Rigami, is it now?"

  "Who else, and what else would it be? Ah, I see it's yourself has it all figured out already. Here we are, out of the goodness of our green gremlin hearts—"

  Mr. Sheperton snorted.

  "—the goodness of our hearts, I was saying," Baneen went on blandly, "about to help this lad in his troubles. What more likely, I can see you're thinking, than he'd wish to do us a small favor in return? Sure, and it'd be no more than a second's effort for a bright lad such as himself who's not bothered by cold iron and all the hard things men put about to bar out the likes of us."

  "Ah. Hmm . . ." Lugh turned back to scowl thoughtfully at Rolf.

  "Come, Lugh!" cried Baneen. "Surely you've got a smile for the young man, after your fearsome looks of a moment ago."

  "A . . . smile . . ." muttered Lugh. He made an effort to smile at Rolf. It was about as effective as if a bulldog had tried to simper.

  Mr. Sheperton either cleared his throat or growled. It was hard to tell which. " 'Ware the gremlin bearing promises," he muttered. "If the Trojans had listened to that advice, they'd have never let that horse inside their gates. . . ."

  "Just a minute," Rolf said. He sat up and crossed his legs. He was feeling braver now than he had a few minutes before. Not because of Lugh's smile—a tiger would not have felt much braver after having been smiled at by Lugh—but because something Baneen had said was ringing in his ears. Baneen had hinted that there was something that he, Rolf, could do that not all the gremlins with their obviously magical powers, could do. Rolf wanted to learn just what it was.

  "Go on, Baneen," he said. "The least I can do is listen."

  "Sa
id the fly to the spider," growled Mr. Sheperton.

  "Now, now, it's no spider I am at all!" Baneen snapped. "A wee wisp of a gremlin, that's all, far from the golden sands and stinging winds of my native home, helpless on a stranger shore. And so are we all, young Rolf. Indeed, all the gremlins in exile on watery Earth now cast themselves on your mercy. Only you, Rolf Gunnarson, whose name shall ring down the halls of human and gremlin history (if you so choose) can change the course of fate for men and gremlins and bring us safely back to Gremla."

  Rolf's ears grew uncomfortably warm. The little man's grandiloquent words were a bit hard to take. He did not appear to be deliberately making fun of Rolf, but Rolf had become sensitive these last couple of years to what people said to him.

  "That's a lot for some stranger to be doing for you, isn't it?" Rolf asked. "After all, I never even heard of your Gremla. In fact, dressed the way you are and everything you two look to me more like—what's the word for them?—leprechauns."

  "Well, well, no doubt we do. But what's the matter to that?" said Baneen. "What's in a name? Sure, and if some people want to call us leprechauns, there's no harm done."

  "You mean you really are gremlins, but you were just being called leprechauns?" demanded Rolf. "But how come then you speak with an Irish accent?"

  "Irish accent, indeed!" cried Baneen. "Why, it's a pure and natural gremlin accent you're hearing from hundreds of thousands of years before Ireland rose from the sea. Is it our fault now that the Irish, folk with the fine, musical ear that they have, happened to pick it up from us? In truth, there's no such thing as an Irish accent—it's a gremlin accent you're hearing from them and us alike."

  "Likely story!" grumphed Mr. Sheperton. "Rolf—"

  "Well, it doesn't matter," said Rolf, quickly before the dog could get started again. "Baneen, you were saying you need help? What is it? What could I do for you?"

  "Ah, it's free us from this prison world, you can," Baneen answered. "Set us on our way to home. Oh, to see fair Gremla just once again before . . . before . . ."

  He broke down and apparently was unable to go on.

  "Why, the dissembling jackanapes!" sputtered Mr. Sheperton. "Rolf, don't be misled and befooled. Like all gremlins, he's immortal. He could spend the next million years here and still go back to his Gremla, fresh as a daisy."

  "That's right, now!" said Baneen, weeping openly now and wiping his eyes with his bushy eyebrows. "Reproach me with it, that I'm not mortal. Does that mean that I've no feelings?"

  "You hear that, Shep?" said Rolf, embarrassed.

  "As long as we're speaking to each other," the dog replied, with great dignity, "I'd prefer that you addressed me by my proper name: Mr. Sheperton."

  But Rolf was already saying, "Go on, Baneen. Pay no attention to him. What can I do for you? Anything reasonable I'll be glad to do. Do you need something special so you can get back to Gremla?"

  "Well now," said Baneen, suddenly dry-eyed again. "It's a mere handful of something or other we're after needing. Indeed, I don't even know the names of the little things, myself. But I can take you to one who does. The Grand Engineer he is, for our return to Gremla. His name's O'Rigami."

  "O'Rigami?" echoed RoIf. The sound of the name was oddly familiar.

  "Indeed, that's his very self," Baneen said. "He's that busy a man he can't be coming here to meet you. But if you'll permit me to weave a wee bit of a spell so's you can enter our Gremlin Hollow . . ."

  Baneen's fingers were already making strange fluttering passes in the air. Mr. Sheperton began something that might have been the growl of a warning, but it was cut off almost immediately.

  Rolf found himself wrapped in a pale yellow glow, like a faintly luminous fog, and gently lifted to his feet by unseen hands. He walked—without consciously directing his feet—further down the path where he had fallen. The ground seemed to go down and down; the wind from the nearby ocean was absolutely still and silent. But all around him, just beyond the fringes of his fog-shrouded vision, Rolf could hear tiny buzzings and murmurings, and an occasionally high-pitched squeaky laugh.

  Then the fog seemed to lift a bit, and he saw at his feet another gremlin. He was sitting cross-legged on the sand, head bent over his work. His hands were moving rapidly.

  Rolf got down on his knees to see what the gremlin was doing. His tiny fingers were moving with furious speed. But as far as Rolf could see there was nothing in the gremlin's hands. Nothing at all.

  The gremlin looked up and saw Rolf watching him. He bowed his head deeply. "Ah, sssooo!" he hissed.

  Rolf blinked. This gremlin was as small as Baneen, and even slimmer. He wore a white smock over his green suit and his fingers were extraordinarily long, delicate and supple. They kept moving incredibly fast.

  The fog was lifting even more, and beyond the busy gremlin Rolf could see dozens of others swarming about an object that looked—no, it couldn't be. But it was. A kite. A huge paper kite.

  Something was happening to Rolf's sense of vision, as far as its real size went. Rolf's eyes and his mind were battling over how large the kite really was. To his eyes, it looked like a regular kite, the kind Rolf himself flew at the beach, but Rolf's mind kept insisting that the kite was as big as a jet airliner. And indeed, there seemed to be room enough on it for hundreds of gremlins. Maybe thousands. Or even more.

  He shook his head, as if to clear it.

  "Wercome to my modest assembry center," said the white-smocked gremlin.

  "Eh . . . hello," Rolf stammered. "You're a gremlin too?"

  "Of course! Born and bred on Gremra five-point-three thousands of centuries ago. That is, Earth centuries, of course. The year of Gremra is much different from your own."

  "Oh . . . yeah." Rolf felt a bit dazed. "But . . . it's just that—uh—you don't seem to talk with the right accent. . . ."

  "Hai!" The little gremlin jumped to his feet. "My humbre accent is that of true gremrin attempting to speak your ranguage."

  "It sounds Japanese."

  "Not so! Honorable Japanese race have acquired accent from gremrins riving amongst them."

  "But . . ." Rolf was getting totally confused. "I thought gremlins all talked with an Irish accent, and the Irish . . ."

  "Beg to differ . . ."

  There was a sudden pop—about as loud as the pop of a cork from a toy gun—and Baneen suddenly appeared beside them.

  "Now, now, Rolf me bucko! This is no time to be bothering with trifles of tongue and tone. There's too much to be done!"

  Rolf blinked at him.

  "Rolf Gunnarson," Baneen went on, without even taking a breath, "may I introduce you to the Great Grand Engineer of All Gremla in Exile—O'Rigami."

  O'Rigami hissed and bowed.

  Rolf found himself bowing too, even though he was still sitting on his heels on the sand floor of the Gremlin Hollow.

  "A small token of my esteem," O'Rigami said gently. His right hand flickered out. For one astonished moment, Rolf could have sworn that the hand and the arm to which it was attached stretched several feet across the sand to where the other gremlins were working on the kite. Within an eyeblink, O'Rigami's hand and arm had returned to normal, but now there was a small square of paper in front of him.

  The square of paper seemed to disappear as O'Rigami's amazing fingers quickly folded it into the shape of a beautiful, tiny swan with outstretched wings. The gremlin held it out in his palm, and the miniature paper swan suddenly fluttered its wings and took off. It flew in a circle around Rolf's head before coming down to land with the lightest of touches on his shoulder.

  "A memento in honor of our meeting," O'Rigami said, bowing again.

  "That's the neatest thing I ever saw!" Rolf said. He picked the swan from his shoulder and held it in his palm. But it wouldn't fly again; it simply sat there, lovely but unmoving. "How'd you do it?"

  "Now that's a question would take too long to answer," said Baneen, at his elbow. "But it's a great and wonderful art, so it is."

  O'Rigami
lifted a hand modestly. "Merely the apprication of sound techniques of construction," he said, "together with the proper magic formuras."

  "It's O'Rigami," said Baneen to Rolf, "who is in charge of constructing the craft which will carry us all safely back to Gremla—with the help of your rocket, of course."

  Rolf turned to stare at the gremlin workmen again. "It looks like a kite. . . ."

  "And what else would it be, indeed!" said Baneen. "One of the wondrous, great space-going kites of mighty Gremla, such as have explored the very depths of the universe, sailing before the proud winds of Gremlin magic in free space unhampered by any nasty dampness. In such a kite, that very one there, will we return to Gremla—that is, if all goes well—attached to your rocket."

  He coughed self-consciously.

  "But it's pretty big—I mean," Rolf tried to think of some way of putting it that wouldn't hurt their feelings. "I don't think something that size can be attached to the Mars rocket without making it fly crooked—I mean, even if the launch crew didn't see it attached to the rocket."

  "Of course, now, they won't be seeing it," said Baneen severely. "It'll be invisible. And as for size, that's no problem either. Haven't we O'Rigami himself here to fold it so cleverly it'll seem to be no larger than your hand?"

  "Fold?" Rolf stared from Baneen to O'Rigami, who once again politely hissed and bowed. Suddenly Rolf's mind made the connection it had been trying to make ever since he had heard Baneen first pronounce the other gremlin's name. "O'Rigami? Of course! Origami—I knew I'd heard about it in school! It's the Japanese art of folding paper. You mean he's learned this Japanese way of folding things so well that he . . ."

  O'Rigami shut his eyes and turned his head away.

  "Now, now, now!" cried Baneen, each word a note higher than the one before it. "Watch your tongue, lad, before you stumble upon an insult and break everything! Is it likely that a gremlin would be needing to learn anything from humans like yourself, who've merely been around for fifty thousand years or so? And O'Rigami himself a respectable half-million in age and more? It was the humans learned a wee bit of the noble art from O'Rigami, himself, to be sure—not the other way around. Indeed, isn't it named after him?"