Short Stories - Metrognome and other Stories

by Alan Dean Foster

  "It wouldn't be a wolf, Dad, would it?" David theo­rized nearby. "Isn't it too light out for them to come in this close?"

  "Could be a sick one, David," his father told him curtly. "Funny, the dogs have shut up. Quiet now."

  The faintest whisper of a breeze stirred the cold air. From the henhousecame only a soft clucking, nervous and uncertain. That was to be expected from the way Cotton and Gin had been carrying on. But the cluckings weren't panicky, as they would have been if the scent of wolf were m the wind. The guineas, at least, would have sensed that, and they were quiet.

  "Must be out back of the tank somewhere, J.W.," his wife said. The rancher nodded slowly, and they started off past the coop.

  Behind it the dogs were wandering back and forth, looking puzzled and anxious but not straining at their tethers, either. Cotton, the big Irish setter, whined as the family came up to him. The big weimaraner, Gin, abruptly turned, barked at the distance, and then turned whining to David.

  "Never seen dogs act like this before," Shattuck mused. "Something out there's got 'em stirred, all right, but they don't seem anxious to be out after it."

  He looked out toward the distant tank, the deep arti­ficial pond that held the ranch's water supply. Overhead the sky was almost white with stars. The moon spread pale fingers across the still water. A light snow had sug­ared the ground, final testament of the retreating storm.

  "See anything, Mother?"

  His wife shook her head slowly, one finger resting eas­ily on the trigger of the .30‑30. "Not a thing, J.W. If there is something out there, we're going to have to let the dogs find it."

  "Yep." He bent over Cotton, his hands working gently at the setter's collar. David was performing the same ac­tions with Gin.

  "All right, girl," he whispered into one russet ear, "go git it. Let him go, David."

  Both dogs were set free at the same time. They started off toward the tank on the run. Twenty meters from the near shore they unexpectedly slowed, turned, and came trotting back toward the henhouse. Something appeared to pull at them. They whirled, ran at the tank once more. And once more came to a halt, reversed their direction, and headed back toward the astonished family.

  "I swear, Mother," Shattuck muttered, "strangest be­havior I ever saw:" He gestured with the end of the shot­gun. "Still, there's for sure something out back there: It may scare the dogs, but it doesn't scare me. It's on our property; better go find out whatever it is."

  Nothing rose to confront them when they reached the rim of the tank or when they started around it. The tank backed up against a slight rise that had once housed a den of rattlers. They started up the slight slope.

  Alternately barking and whining as though they couldn't make up their minds whether to be angry or afraid, the two dogs trotted alongside. They showed no inclination to charge ahead, as was the normal manner of dogs.

  As they approached the rim of the rise, a brightness separate from that falling from the lambent moon seemed to come from just ahead.

  "Something burning over there, J.W.," Beth Shattuck said huskily. The rancher considered, shook his head positively.

  "We would smell smoke sure in this air, Mother. Could be a plane crash, maybe, but I think we would have heard it hit. Car or bike's a possibility, but I don't know any kid in town fool enough to be out playing at motorcross on a night like this."

  "It might be something that's fallen from a plane, Dad," suggested his son helpfully. "You read lots of times about a piece of cargo or part of an engine that breaks loose."

  His father didn't nod or smile, but quiet approval was in his words. "Could be."

  They topped the little hill and looked down the other side at a wide plain. Wild wheat full of dead stalks clus­tered as if for warmth around the trunks of bushy mes­quite trees, the letter's branches gnarled and grooved like the arms of old men.

  But the thing that had fallen here wasn't burning. It had struck a section of dry broken slate, and there were no burn marks around it.

  Shattuck, his wife, and his son stood staring at it. "Whatever it is, it don't look dangerous," he finally de­cided, setting the safety on his shotgun. He started down the slope.

  "Sure is bright," David observed.

  The thing lying amid dry rock and gravel was about the size of Mrs. Shattuck's washing machine. It was roughly spherical but with many smooth, flat surfaces. Many of those surfaces appeared to be inlaid with tiny squares and other geometric shapes that glowed like in­laid lights.

  Several long, twisted projections not unlike antennae rose from the top surfaces, and two stuck out from one side. They were the only interruptions in the otherwise uniform shape.

  Closer inspection revealed that the tiny, multicolored lights were flush with the various flat surfaces. Crimson and deep purple predominated, though every color of the rainbow was present. Some remained steady and un­winking, white others pulsed light to dark to light again at seemingly random intervals.

  Still regarding the object warily, Shattuck circled it once, staring admiringly at the display of brilliant lights. Exclusive of the inlaid many‑shaded patterns, the rest of the thing shone brightly with a deep yellow the hue of old butter.

  "What do you reckon it's made out of?" he asked his wife.

  "It looks like metal, J.W., but it has no shiny sur­faces."

  It was true. The material itself, rather than something from within, seemed to emit the light. The slick sides did show a luster and sheen like metal, but the object was at least partly translucent, unlike any metal they had ever seen. Where the two largest projections vanished into the surface they could actually see them continue inside.

  It was the intense mosaic of colored shapes‑rhom­bohedrons, triangles, circles, and such‑that prevented them from peering deeper into the thing. Cautiously, Mrs. Shattuck moved right up next to the device. Feeling no heat, she reached out a hand and touched it.

  "It's not hot," she announced. "Looks like metal, but it feels like plastic." Her gaze went upward momen­tarily. "I don't think this fell out of some airliner, Da­vid." She ran her palm over it. "It's downright cold, in fact."

  Quite unexpectedly, the object emitted a sound. All three took several hurried steps backward. Three muz­zles rose in unison.

  The drama didn't intensify, however, and they relaxed. Other than the new noises, the object remained sitting immobile, glowing as beautifully as ever. Only now it was softly saying hmm‑hmm‑hmm, buzz‑hmm‑buzz . . . tick! Hmm‑hmm‑, buzz‑hmm‑buzz . . . tick! . . .

  Over and over again.

  "It must still be working," David mused. "But what is it, and what's it do?"

  His father shrugged again. "Beats me. " He moved down to the device again and commenced a nose‑to­-surface inspection.

  "What are you looking for, Dad?"

  "Something to identify it. Whoever lost this is going to want it back."

  "I know!" the boy said, suddenly aglow with a sense of imminent importance. "It's a satellite! Maybe a Rus­sian spacecraft that landed in the wrong place."

  "No Old Glory," his father said. "No hammer and sickle, either, 'less they're underneath."

  "I don't know," his wife murmured, her eyes never leaving J.W. "It doesn't look like a satellite, at least not any kind I ever read about, David‑ours or theirs. And even spacecraft that are designed to come down in one piece usually have burn marks or signs of reentry beat into them.

  "Look. There's not a streak anywhere on it or on the ground. It sure landed softly." She pointed to the base of the object. The gravel there was hardly disturbed, and bent grasses were raising their tousled heads through the snow once again. "Even the snow around it isn't melted. I don't think it so much as bounced."

  "Nothing," came Shattuck's voice. They both ruined to see him rising, brushing at his pants. "I can't find anything saying anything, let alone where it's from.; Whoever built this is kind of closemouthed." He appeared to come to a decision, looked at his son.

  "Yes, Dad?"


  "Run back to the house and get the pickup, boy. Check out the winch and make sure it isn't froze up."

  "Okay." The youth took two long strides toward house, skidded to a halt, and looked back. "What we gonna do with it?" .,

  "Well, now," his father said appraisingly as he studied the fascinating whatever‑it‑was, "I'm not sure." Almost painfully rich colors flashed and blinked at him. "I don't know that it's good for anything, but it sure is pretty."

  "It sure is that, J.W.," his wife commented, staring at it. She put an arm around his waist. His went over her shoulder. They stood regarding the glowing thing in the night as David puffed and panted his way toward the ranch garage.

  Eventually she looked up at her husband and smiled. "You know, J.W., I think I've got an interestin' idea . . ."

  "Actually, Miss Goldberg," Joe Chester was saying as the late‑model station wagon bounced along the sunny back road, "I'm convinced that if it did come down in­tact, it did so in such a place and fashion that we're never going to find it. We've been looking for a month now, and we haven't got a hint as to its whereabouts. Myself, I'm pretty sure it burned up at the last minute on entry."

  "Science," the older woman told him in a voice but­tressed by dedication, "requires patience even above brains, Major. I'm sorry we're inconveniencing you. Please feel free to go home any time."

  "Oh, that's all right," Chester replied, a polite if false smile plastered across his face to conceal his irritation. "No trouble at all."

  Turning away from the backseat, he stared out the front window again at the snow‑covered wheat and corn fields they were passing through. He couldn't leave any more than they could, though his reasons were different, if no less compelling. His orders had directed him to accom­pany and watch over the little expedition for as long as the three scientists found it worthwhile to continue.

  He wondered what Charlene was doing today.

  A chance glance at his watch told him the date as well as the time. If the three musketeers in the backseat kept this up many more weeks, he would miss spending the holidays with his family. Somehow he had to convince them that further search was absurd.

  Before this had started, he'd been more than half-­convinced that the suspected UFO was more fictional than real. Failing that, it had certainly burned up, blown up, or otherwise scattered itself undetectably across a wide section of west Texas. Even if it had existed and had come down in one section, this part of the state was crisscrossed with uncountable deep creeks overgrown with cottonwood, live oak, and other thick vegetation. Or it could have fallen into a deep dirty lake.

  A thousand people, he was positive, could scour the same territory and have no better luck than the five of them had had. A month of this was more than enough.

  He was sick of the whole business‑sick of small‑town motels, sick of lonely beds, and sick of the scientists' subtle but certain air of condescension toward him. He was even getting sick of real country cooking, a sure sign it was time to quit and go home.

  They still had some time left before the holidays. He resigned himself to continuing the hunt a while longer.

  The day wore on, and they followed the by now mo­notonous procedure of interviewing farmer after farmer. If even one had seen something strange, anything out of the ordinary, he would have understood the scientists' insistence on going on.

  But none of the puzzled men and women they talked with had noticed anything out of the ordinary. That was hardly surprising, considering the terrible storm that had raged that night. Everyone had sensibly been inside in bed or stretched out in front of a roaring fire.

  Some of the looks they got suggested that many thought the peculiar group of five people had spent too many such nights wandering around exposed to the elements, with the result that their brains were slightly frozen in spots.

  "It's getting dark," Sarah Goldberg noted. "We'd bet­ter be getting back to Albany." She was first back into the station wagon, oblivious to the curious stares of the two cattleman they'd just interviewed.

  "We've about covered all the farms and residences in this area," she said when the wagon was rolling again. "Tomorrow we'll move our base of operation to Breck­enridge and commence a fresh spiral outward from there."

  As the temperature outside dropped, Chester turned one the car's heater. To add to his discomfort, it had begun putting out a disagreeable odor lately, in addition to a steady grinding as‑if a bearing or something had broken loose and was rattling about inside it.

  He couldn't find fault with it. It had been in constant use all day and night the past month. It was only sound­ing the frustration and irritation Chester felt himself.

  In the rapidly growing darkness the driver, known to them all only as Pat, had switched the brights on. The extra illumination was welcome on the narrow back farm roads. Pat rarely had to dim them, as oncoming cars were infrequent.

  This part of the county was especially thinly popu­lated. Pat slowed, afraid of missing the Albany turnoff, and Goldberg began screaming like a high‑schooler whose date had unexpectedly turned out to be the town wolf.

  "Stop the car! Stop the car!"

  The usually phlegmatic, imperturbable Pat slammed a size‑thirteen shoe on the brake, and they were all thrown sharply forward. Chester pushed hair from his eyes and turned to look angrily into the backseat.

  "What is it now, Miss Goldberg?" he asked, fighting to remain civil. The old woman's eyes ignored him as she stared out the window on her left.

  "Look‑look at that," she murmured.

  Something in her tone made Chester turn quickly to gaze in the indicated direction; he had to peer around the considerable bulk of the driver to do so.

  Disappointment was instant. Just off the road and ahead was yet another of the many isolated ranches they'd passed and stopped at during the past month. This one was a bit more modern, a little larger than the average, but otherwise unspectacular.

  Befitting the season, it was lined around roof edge and windows with Christmas lights. Two plastic, meter‑high candy canes flanked the entrance to the yard in front of the main house.

  Chester felt a pang of homesickness at the sight, as he had at every such group of decorations they'd passed. He'd never get home in time to string his own lights. Charlene and Mary‑Ellen would be heartbroken, and the things would sit up in the attic, unused, for another year.

  "Not the house. Not the house," Goldberg stam­mered, noticing the direction of his gaze. "Off to the left of it, in the back."

  Off to one side of the house and set farther back from the road was a large barn. The front edge of the barn's roof was also lined with lights. The cause of the staid scientist's sudden hysteria was located there.

  As was common in such structures, a large square gap was set above the ground over the barn's entrance, open­ing into the hayloft. The opening was currently filled by an object of indeterminate size and dimensions.

  It lit the whole front of the barn with an incandescent yellow glow as soft and intense as an Arizona sunset. Within the yellow dwelt a horde of colored pinpoints ar­ranged in intricate and strange patterns to form a pho­tonic mosaic. The lights shifted position as they watched.

  "It's so bright, the smaller lights so deep and rich," Tut observed quietly. '"LEDs, maybe?"

  "No," objected Goldberg with assurance. "The color is too intense even for that. Pull in here, Pat; there's no gate. "

  Until now the stoic sergeant had responded with equa­nimity to requests from all his passengers. This time he glanced for confirmation from his real superior.

  "By all means, Pat, let's see what it is," Chester de­clared, unable to take his fascinated gaze from the enig­matic object. So bright was its glow that it overwhelmed the sign that had been strung on wire just beneath it. The sign was cut from silver foil and consisted of four large letters: N‑O‑E‑L, Chester read to himself.

  Little bounces jostled the occupants of the station wagon as it turned left into the dirt drivewa
y running toward the barn. As they stopped next to the house and the sergeant turned off the motor, the barking of two or more large dogs could be heard. Nothing rushed to meet them, however.

  "I guess they're chained or in the house," Tut com­mented nervously. Chester wasn't surprised at the slight tremor in Tut's voice. Numerous stops had already shown that the huge engineer had a genuine fear of dogs.

  Goldberg left the car and headed straight for the barn. The youngest of the three scientists put out a hand to restrain her before Chester could do so verbally.

  "Better hold off a minute, Sarah."

  She whirled, glared at him. "Why wait?"

  Jean Calumet kept a hand on her even as he continued to regard the object set so temptingly near, up in the loft. The yellow glow was bright on olive, smooth skin. "I'm as curious to be into it as you are, Sarah, but remember where we are."

  "So where are we?" she snapped, irritated at the de­lay.

  "On another man's property," the diminutive Cajun told her. "This isn't Los Angeles or even Houston. Peo­ple out here have archaic notions about things like prop­erty rights. We'd better wait till we have a chance to explain ourselves."

  So while Goldberg and Tut groaned at the wait and Chester nodded gratefully to Calumet, they stood and fidgeted until several lights came on inside the house.

  Two lean hairy shapes raced out of the front door, barking furiously. The cluster of visitors stood their ground, even Perham Tut, who would have returned to the safety of the car if it hadn't been for the disgusted look he received from Sarah Goldberg.

  The dogs sniffed each of them in turn, then trotted quietly back toward the house, satisfied in the notable way of dogs that the newcomers presented no immediate threat to their masters.

  A tall, clean‑shaven man in his middle or late forties sallied forth to greet them. He was wearing a pair of threadbare blue jeans, a tired flannel shirt, and boots, all obviously donned in haste. He was even taller than Tut, though not nearly as massive. The thin adolescent who trailed slightly behind him was a couple of inches taller still.

  "Evening," he said pleasantly. "I don't believe I know you all."