Hour of the Gremlins

by Gordon R. Dickson

  He was earnestly explaining about O'Rigami and the space kite when Rita began laughing. He stared at her, and she laughed so hard he had to put out a hand to keep her from falling off the branch. Her shoulders were pumping up and down, and she put a hand over her mouth to keep from making so much noise that her parents would catch them. "Mmpff, mmppfff," came the sound from behind her hand.

  "Hey, it's not funny," Rolf said.

  "Oh, Rolf," she gasped. "When you want to put somebody on, you sure can do it. . . ." She started giggling again.

  "'Tis no joke, me lovely maid." It was Baneen's voice, coming from right behind Rolf's ear.

  Rolf turned his head slightly and saw that the gremlin was perched on his shoulder. Strangely, he felt no weight on the shoulder at all. Then, looking back at Rita, he could see that her eyes had gone white and round. Her laughter was stopped. Her mouth was open, and her eyes were enormous.

  "Allow me the grand pleasure of being introduced to this charming young lady," Baneen said.

  Still holding Rita by one arm, Rolf said, "This is Baneen—one of the gremlins. Baneen, this is Rita Amaro."

  "Charmed, I'm certain," said Baneen, and he took his little green cap off, making a low sweeping bow to the girl.

  Rita recovered her voice. "You . . . you're real!"

  "As real as your beautiful brown eyes, Rita me girl. And as happy as your darling laughter. But all the gremlins on this vast dreary world would be sadder than a mud toad's croak if it weren't for this fine, brave lad here."

  "Aw, come on, Baneen," Rolf said.

  "You . . . you really want Rolf to attach this . . . kite thing . . . to the Mars rocket?"

  "Exactly!" Baneen smiled at her. "What a clever lass she is! Sure, and you've caught on right away, my dear."

  "I'll be in charge of the final countdown," Rolf said. "I'll have to delay the launch six minutes from its scheduled liftoff time. Right, Baneen?"

  "That's what O'Rigami figures—although frankly I've no head for numbers and I can't be sure if six minutes is the right amount. But what difference, six minutes or sixty? The rocket won't go until you give the word, Rolf, me bucko."

  Rita seemed aghast. "Rolf, you could foul up the whole launching!"

  "Ah, no," Baneen assured her. "Just a wee delay and a slight detour. No problem at all."

  She shook her head. "This could be really serious."

  "I'm going to do it," Rolf said quietly. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the Great Wish the gremlins had promised him. Then he remembered that she had always admired his father—who obviously had no concern for ecology.

  "There's nothing to it, I tell you," Baneen repeated. "Why, with gremlin magic at work, we could put everyone in the launch center to sleep for a fortnight—ah, but we don't want to do that, desperate though we are."

  "They've got to get off our planet and back to Gremla," said Rolf. "And I'm going to help them."

  "I don't understand why. . . ."

  "Well, lass, you see now, it's Lugh—big, blustering oaf that he is. A terrible-tempered gremlin. Terrible temper." Baneen shuddered. "He's a gremlin prince, you know. But our king, Hamrod the Heartless, was always playing tricks on Lugh. Loved to see the great burly Lugh of the Long Hand turn red with frustration and anger. So it was that Lugh stole the Great Corkscrew of Gremla, took himself and his entire household—all of us—and in one great magic huff-and-puff brought us all to Earth, these thousands of years ago."

  Rolf and Rita listened, fascinated.

  "Well, once safely here on this awful watery planet, Lugh found out two things. One, there were plenty of oafish humans about, to serve as the butt of his jokes. No longer was Lugh at the mercy of Hamrod; now he had humans at his mercy. The tables were turned, so to speak.

  "But the second thing he found out that here on this watery place, gremlin magic is pitifully weak—water ruins magic, don't you know—so our tricks amount to mere pranks. Watered down, they are."

  "Like wiping out a bulldozer?" Rolf asked.

  "Aye, the Great Curse. Pitiful, wasn't it? Why, on safe, dusty Gremla when the Great Curse is invoked, forty comets explode and the stars dance for a month. But here . . ." Baneen's voice dropped to a melancholy whisper, "well, about all we can do is play little pranks. Stopping clocks and making machines behave poorly, suchlike. Not even Lugh's great magic can get all of us at once more than ten feet off the ground. That's why we need your mighty rocket to help us get back to Gremla."

  Rita asked, "But why does Lugh want to return to Gremla if your king is so nasty to him?"

  "Ah, there's the nub of it all," Baneen said, dabbing at the corner of one eye with his eyebrow. "A clever girl you are, Miss Rita. You see, underneath all of Lugh's bad temper and bluster, beats a heart of fairy gold. He knows how miserable all we gremlins have been here on dripping old Earth, and he's willing to sacrifice himself to save all of us. I doubt that we could last another few hundred years here on Earth, with all this water about. Doubt it strongly, that I do."

  "I don't know . . ." Rita said uncertainly.

  "Ah, but I do know what Lugh will do if he can't get human help for our return to Gremla," Baneen said, with a shudder in his voice. "It'll be terrible. He'll use every grain of gremlin magic to make life as miserable as possible for you humans. Many's the time I've heard him mutter," and Baneen's voice took on some of the deep roughness of Lugh's, "If we can't use that rocket to get us back to Gremla, the humans will never get to use it to take themselves to Mars."

  It was Rolf's turn to be shocked. "You never told me that! You mean if we don't help you . . ."

  "Lugh will keep the rocket from flying off," Baneen finished for him. "And it's himself has got the power to do it. That great rocket will just sit there and grow moss on it before Lugh lets it go."

  8

  "I wish you'd stay close to home today," Mrs. Gunnarson said to Rolf as he ate breakfast. His father hadn't come home at all. He was staying at the Space Center for the final thirty-six hours of countdown.

  "Aw, Mom," Rolf said, between spoonfuls of cereal, "There's nothing to do around here. All the other guys'll bug me about Dad being on TV and being Launch Director. . . ."

  His mother looked at him penetratingly.

  "Is that what they do?" she asked. " 'Bug' you?"

  Rolf stared down at the cereal.

  "You don't know what it's like, when your father's . . ." he muttered, letting the sentence trail off.

  "You really should learn to get along with the other boys," she said. "For that matter, you should learn to get along better with your father."

  "He doesn't need me," mumbled Rolf under his breath to the cereal.

  "What?"

  "Nothing." Rolf pushed away from the kitchen table and then got up. "I'm going down to the Wildlife Preserve. Can you fix me a couple of sandwiches?"

  "Just a moment," said his mother. He stood still, unwillingly. "Your father is worn out right now with his work—just as I'm worn out with the baby. But you're big enough to take a little of the family responsibility on your own shoulders, for a short while anyway. The launch will be over soon and your father did say he might have a pleasant surprise for us all then. Surely you can take care of a few things, including yourself, until that time comes."

  "Well, sure," growled Rolf.

  "All right, then. You can begin by making your own sandwiches and clean up the breakfast table." With that, Mrs. Gunnarson walked out of the kitchen.

  Rolf cleared the table and put the dishes in the washer. Then he made up four sandwiches, took a plastic bottle of orange juice, and stuffed them all into the little knapsack on the back of his bike's seat. He whistled for Mr. Sheperton and pedaled down the street to Rita's house. She was already sitting on the shady porch in front of the old house.

  "Want to meet Lugh?" Rolf asked her, straddling his bike at the base of the front steps.

  Rita's eyes widened. "Could I?"

  "Sure."

  She leaped off her cha
ir and ran into the house. In two minutes flat she was out again, holding a little lunchkit in one hand.

  Together they biked down toward Playalinda Beach, with Mr. Sheperton gallumphing alongside them and the sea breeze pushing fluffy white clouds across the bright blue sky. It was like old times, before the launch and the gremlins made Rolf's life so complicated.

  Except that Mr. Sheperton didn't say a word to Rolf all the way down toward the beach. He didn't even bark. And he stayed alongside Rita's bike, on the side away from Rolf.

  He's sore at me, Rolf realized.

  "That time you hurt your leg diving off the high board," Rita called to him, raising her voice enough to be heard over the whistling wind, "why did you try that dive? You'd never been off the high board before."

  Rolf shrugged. "I had to show people. The other guys were calling me chicken . . ."

  "No they weren't," Rita said. "I was there and I heard them. There was a lot of horsing around going on, but nobody called you chicken."

  He could feel his face getting red. "Well—I guess I was getting sore at them for showing off in front of you girls. I didn't want to be left out. They were always calling me the runt and bugging me. And you were watching them, and I didn't want you to think I was chicken. . . ."

  "Oh, Rolf," she said, shaking her head. "Boys are so silly. Why would I think you're chicken? I've known you all my life; I know you're not chicken. A little silly sometimes, maybe . . ."

  She laughed, and Rolf found that he was laughing with her.

  "I guess I just wanted you to think that I was as big as any of the guys. As important as any of them."

  Her face grew serious again. "Is that why you're helping the gremlins? So that they'll help you feel important?"

  "Yeah . . . no . . ." Rolf felt confused. "Aw, I don't know. I'm not even sure how I got into this."

  Baneen did not meet them before they got to the Hollow, as usual. In fact they came into the very Hollow itself before any sort of attention was paid them by the gremlins. When they reached the lip of the hollow they saw why. All work seemed to be at a standstill, with all the gremlins watching one corner of the Hollow that seemed to be obscured by a cloud of green smoke. Curious, Rolf went toward the smoke, with Rita and Mr. Sheperton behind him, and as he got close, he heard voices coming from it. Specifically, he heard Baneen's voice, on a high sarcastic note.

  " . . . Ah, round is it, indeed? A round universe?" Baneen was saying. "And what happens to magic when you're on the underside of it, may I ask now? It's all upside-down is it? And all the spells backward?"

  "Not so!" hissed the voice of O'Rigami—and Rolf with Rita and Mr. Sheperton pushed through the green smoke to find a clear space within which O'Rigami and Baneen were confronting each other, with perhaps six feet of distance between them. "Being round, all praces on universe identicar. Sperrs arways the same!"

  "Ah, dear me, and do you really believe such nonsense?" demanded Baneen, still sarcastically. "It's a fever you must be having, for certain. I've noticed you're not looking yourself, nowadays—"

  As he spoke, he passed his hands one over the other and O'Rigami turned from his normal gremlin green color to a bright reddish brown plaid in color.

  "Am in perfect shape and coror!" snapped O'Rigami, turning sharply back to green. His fingers twinkled and a piece of paper which had appeared from nowhere suddenly took on the shape of a miniature garden fountain. "Also happen to understand more of universe than others who might stirr be too ignorant—"

  The fountain suddenly spouted a fine stream of water which arched up through the air forward and curved down again abruptly to splatter Baneen generously behind his pointed gremlin ears.

  Baneen yelped and dodged. Suddenly he turned into a crocodile which charged at O'Rigami, jaws agape, drinking up the water from the fountain as it came.

  O'Rigami's flying fingers abruptly fashioned a Spanish bullfighter's cape with which he executed perfectly that pass with the cape known as a veronica. Completely fooled by the cape, the crocodile thundered past, discovered itself facing nothing, and whirled about. But O'Rigami had already folded a complete stony medieval castle about himself and was hidden in it.

  The crocodile turned abruptly into a gopher, which leaped forward and began to tunnel into the earth out of sight and toward the castle. The castle arose on two thin green legs and scurried aside. It unfolded and disappeared suddenly, revealing O'Rigami, whose flying fingers wove a fisherman's net in the air where the castle had originally been.

  The gopher popped up through the earth where the castle had been. The net fell about it in folds, entangling it. And abruptly the gopher turned back into Baneen, trapped in the netting.

  "Help!" cried the little gremlin. "Help. O'Rigami, help now! Turn me loose!"

  "Onry," said O'Rigami, sternly, "on condition you wirr not insist any more on this nonsense about the universe being frat!"

  "I promise. Indeed, I promise!" cried Baneen. "Word of Baneen!"

  "No, you don't!" said O'Rigami. "This is fourteen thousand, five hundred and ereventh time you've brought up same argument. I don't want to argue it with you ever again. Give me your gremrinish word—or you stay in that net for the next million years!"

  "Ah, no!" begged Baneen. "Not that! O'Rigami, friend of me youth—"

  "Your gremrinish word, or there you stay!" said O'Rigami implacably, folding his arms.

  Baneen sighed and drooped inside the net.

  "All right," he said, sulkily. "My gremlinish word—I'll agree the universe is round from now on!"

  O'Rigami waved his hands and the net vanished. Baneen climbed to his feet and brushed himself off. But his face was sulky.

  "Ah," he said, "but it's a terrible thing, it is, for one true gremlin to require the Unbreakable Promise from another. Bad dreams to your cruel mind, O'Rigami, and may your conscience prick you that did such to an old friend—"

  Just then he became aware of Rolf and the others watching, and his sulky look was transformed into a smile.

  "But here's the lad and the lass as well, to say nothing of Mr. Sheperton!" Baneen exclaimed. "Welcome to our humble abode, fairest of lasses. It's pleased we are that you've come to visit with us."

  Rita's eyes sparkled like a child's on Christmas morning. "How did you know I was coming here? I mean, you weren't surprised to see me at all, were you?"

  "Of course not. Gremlins can foresee the future, you know—er, only on special occasions, such as this one, that is. And only up to a limited point, don't you know."

  "Foresee the future?" Rita asked. "Can you . . ."

  "Ah, but it's not my chatter you've come for, is it?" Baneen said. "You've come to meet our masterful and baleful leader, Lugh of the Long Hand, Prince of the Royal House of Gremla."

  Rita laughed, delighted. "He knows everything!"

  But Rolf, somehow, was feeling much less than happy. Baneen led Rita into the misty-aired Hollow and Rolf fell into step behind them.

  Mr. Sheperton, walking beside Rolf, muttered, "Trust a gremlin to flatter a human straight out of his—or her—senses." But he seemed to be saying it more to himself than to Rolf.

  Baneen was saying, as they went through the Hollow, "Lugh's not here at the present moment. He's out watching those scalawag poachers in their great oily boat."

  "They're back again?" Rolf asked.

  "Sure enough. That squeaky-voiced captain and his two ugly sailors have brought a few businessmen with them this time. He's showing them what a grand view they're going to have of the launch. And promising them roast wild duck for their dinners! Lugh's there at the beach, protecting them from being spotted by the rangers. And boiling in his own juices if I know Lugh the Terrible-Tempered."

  "Hmph," said Mr. Sheperton.

  "So I'd be advising you," Baneen continued, "to be careful of not being seen by the poachers. And be even more careful of not triggering the wrath of Lugh. He'll be in a foul mood, no doubt. Making magic on a continuous basis for several hours is a terrible s
train, especially next to all that water, you know."

  Lugh did look terribly strained when they saw him. And angrier than ever. He was standing atop a high dune that overlooked the beach, his cheeks puffed out, his face red, his fists clenched at his sides. From time to time, as a breeze puffed in from the sea, he would actually float off the sand a few inches, like a balloon, and then settle down again slowly.

  Baneen called to him when they got near enough. "Lugh, me magic-making marvel, I've brought you some visitors to help pass away the morning."

  Turning, Lugh gruffed, "Visitors, is it? I'll thank you, tricky one, to watch those smelly, water-crawling spalpeens for a while."

  "Nothing could please me more, Lugh darling," Baneen said happily, "than to give you a bit of rest from your mighty labors. I'll take care of the scalawags for you."

  And Baneen planted himself on the dune's crest, puffed out his cheeks, squeezed his fists until the knuckles went chartreuse, and put on a glowering scowl just like Lugh's.

  "Ahhh . . ." said Lugh. "I feel better already. You'll be the lass Baneen told me of. You've come to help this lad here?"

  "Well," Rita said, sitting on the sand, "I suppose so. . . ."

  "Hah. And a good thing it is that you have. It's almost time for us to leave this foulsome planet, and we'll be needing all the help we can muster."

  "It's not a foulsome planet!" Rita snapped. "It's a beautiful planet."

  Lugh glared at her. "Is it now? Well, maybe once it was, when we first came here, but not today. Not when you've got ugly ones like those down in the boat dirtying up the very air we breathe with their smelly engines and oily garbage."

  "Well, you're helping them!" Rita said. "You're protecting them. Why don't you use some of your gremlin magic to chase them away?"

  Rolf watched her, goggle-eyed. Any minute now, he knew, Lugh was going to explode and turn her into a tree stump. He reached out for Rita's arm.

  But Lugh's answer was strangely soft, quiet, even sad. "Ah, lass, but it's not our world. It belongs to you humans—it's the world you made for yourselves, in a manner of speaking. Once we thought that we might help you, if you had the will to handle matters right—but it turned out to be of no use, no use at all."