by Tom Reamy
Roon ran in a great circle to avoid Glur’s touch. She was at present concentrating on contact with Jird who was an easier target. This time he would win the game. Roon crouched behind a dune, hoping to be forgotten until after Jird had been touched.
He huddled against the low dune, breathing rapidly from exertion. He was tired and happy and content. The excitement of his first trek was very satisfying. (Although it was actually his second; he had been too young to have more than the vaguest memories of the first in the spring. )
Unease slowly rippled through Roon’s contentment. He frowned behind his breather but could find no cause for his apprehension. He craned his neck slightly to peer over the dune. All was as it should be. None of the others seemed disturbed. He felt faint prickles on the back of his neck and decided to return even if it did mean losing the game. As he rose from the ground he turned and looked behind him.
At first he thought it was a round blue stone slightly larger than his head, but then he saw the eyes. They were two black smudges in homy sockets, just barely above the level of the ground. And they watched him.
Roon gasped and took a step backward. He had never seen a bluebaby, but he was sure it was one. But the bluebabies were supposed to be asleep. The southward trek didn’t begin until they were asleep, and the northward trek was completed before they awoke.
The blue head sank into the gravel without a trace.
Roon turned and ran. He had taken two slithering steps up the dune when the chitinous blue claws closed around his foot.
Roon screamed but the breather muffled the sound. It was doubtful that the others would have heard anyway above the noise of the rising wind.
But Glur saw him rise above the dune and drop down again. She smiled behind her breather. So that was where he was hiding. With exaggerated stealth she crept around the dune and pounced.
No one was there. Only the edge of Roon’s breather protruded from the gravel sea.
The bluebaby pulled the surface creature down with some difficulty. It squirmed and thrashed with great determination. The bluebaby also had some difficulty moving it through the loose gravel. If the creature would swim… but it had stopped moving altogether.
The bluebaby stopped and examined it. Something seemed to be wrong with it. Besides its cessation of activity, its outer covering was leaking fluid. It felt the creature and was surprised at its softness. The outer covering seemed filled with pulp. The bluebaby suddenly became concerned and dragged the creature quickly to the surface. It pushed it completely out and watched it for signs of activity, but there was none. It continued to leak fluid.
The bluebaby felt a great sadness and sank slowly into the gravel. It swam downward, willing the sleep to come, but it would not. A hollowness grew in the bluebaby. It swam toward the dreamer without a dream with many confused questions.
The dreamer thought comfort at the bluebaby; comfort and regret and understanding. The surface creatures are harmless, fragile things. They should not be bothered.
I meant it no harm, the bluebaby thought with remorse.
I know. The young are curious and unwise. The surface creatures are able to live only on the surface. To bring them under means their death. You must never do it again.
What is death?
The dreamer thought amusement at the solemnity of the young. You are not mature enough to grasp such a concept. Wait until you have become a dreamer. You will have time to think of such things. Now is the time for youth. Everything will come due in its time and place. But the bluebaby insisted and the dreamer thought it was like being hatched, only the opposite, and would think no more.
The bluebaby swam away unsatisfied, and wrapped itself in fluff near a dreamer with other bluebabies. The sleep came quickly, but the dreamer’s dream seemed to involve surface creatures with leaking fluids.
The bluebaby was the first to awaken in the spring. The others still slept in balls of fluff. It swam quickly to the surface, leaving its steely fluff scattered through the gravel sea, shortly to decompose. It poked its head into bright day and looked at the black bubble floating there. No surface creatures were in sight. It swam around the bubble, touching it, feeling its faint vibrations. Had the creatures returned already? It swam to the dreamer without a dream.
The surface creatures had not returned. It was not time, but it would be soon. Why had the young one awakened so early?
I must see them again, the bluebaby thought. My sadness is still with me.
It went to the surface many times every day, but still the creatures did not return. It watched the clutches hatch and the new bluebabies swim away. Would they too destroy surface creatures? It wanted to tell them, to warn them, but their thoughts were only for frivolity. Perhaps they would never know without doing it themselves.
It watched the breeders, free of their clutches, shed their husks and emerge as new dreamers. They quickly encased themselves for eternity. It listened to their tentative inexperienced dreams and swam away restlessly.
The time for the return of the creatures had long passed, but they had not returned. Midsummer arrived before the bluebaby abandoned its vigil. It swam to the dreamer without a dream.
It was only the second time within the dreamer’s memory—the dreamer was young—that the surface creatures had failed to pass over. Before that they moved through the air. The dreamer pushed aside the bluebaby’s queries about moving through the air and thought on the surface creatures’ failure to return. After a few days of deliberation, it decided. Yes, it was a perfect subject for a dream. It began the dream immediately.
It was a great dream and lasted nearly a thousand years.
The Sweetwater Factor
Montgomery Sweetwater felt the cast-iron bench on which he sat tremble slightly. He sighed, lowered his magazine and, putting his arm along the back of the bench, looked over his shoulder.
The nose was about twenty feet away, poking from the dry earth, twitching slightly as it tested the air. The nose was a bit larger than Montgomery’s head, nakedly pink, with nostril hairs protruding like black fence wire, though, other than that, it was quite an ordinary nose. “Good grief,” Montgomery muttered and turned on the bench, resting his chin on his folded arms.
The nose snuffled a few times and raised a small cloud of dust. The nostril hairs quivered. Then it turned toward Montgomery and poised, like a well-trained pointer. Montgomery watched it, his eyes half-closed and his mouth turned downward in a resigned pout.
The nose moved toward him, turning back the surface crust of the baked earth like the prow of an ice-breaker, like a plow opening a furrow, sending cracks radiating in all directions, popping concrete-hard clods into the air like tiddlywinks.
Montgomery Sweetwater watched it a moment, until it was about ten feet away. Then he turned down the corner of the magazine page he’d been reading and left it lying on the vibrating bench. He walked a short distance away, ninety degrees from the approaching nose, and turned to watch it.
The nose stopped. It paused in motionless uncertainty for a moment and began twitching again as it cast about for the scent. “I hope you don’t really think you’re sneaking up on me,” Montgomery said with a total lack of interest.
The nose snuffled again, raising another dust cloud, and made a ninety degree turn. It approached Montgomery, moving a little faster, straining its fleshy tip forward, spraying dry chunks of hard-packed earth as it ripped the ground.
Montgomery waited until the nose was almost to him, then drew back his foot. “You’re ridiculous!” he said tiredly and kicked the nose as hard as he could. The nose froze in startled immobility for a second, its tip reddening rapidly. Then it honked. Montgomery stepped back to escape the flying dust. The nose sank from sight, honking pathetically.
The earth rumbled and folded inward at the seam torn by the nose. Montgomery yelped and grabbed for his magazine as the cast-iron bench toppled into the crevasse. Montgomery leaned over tentatively and looked in. A smooth burrow rose almost v
ertically where the nose, and whatever had been attached to it, came to the surface. It leveled out for twenty feet or so, made a ninety degree turn, dropped almost vertically again where the nose, and whatever had been attached to it, had made its retreat. Montgomery could hear the pained honking fading into the depths.
The bench teetered on the lip of the descending shaft, then slipped over in a cascade of dry, crumbled earth. Montgomery smiled slightly at the metallic twangs as the bench ricocheted from one side of the abyss to the other. He waited for the sudden, shrill hoot as the bench caught up with the nose, and whatever had been attached to it. Montgomery’s smile broadened as he turned back toward his house.
“Monty!”
Dorothybelle’s screech came from the terrace. “What was that noise, Monty?” She joggled down the steps, clutching at the railing, heaving along like a brightly colored sack of suet. “Monty!” she screeched again, but her shortness of breath turned it into a croak. Montgomery began thumbing through his magazine looking for his place. The folded corner had unfolded.
“Oh, crap!” Dorothybelle grunted. “Look at that great hole in my garden, Monty!” She breathed heavily, grasping at her lumpy bosom. “It’s so hot out here! I wish you’d make it rain, Monty. It hasn’t rained in forty-seven years, Monty!” She lurched around and pointed down the hill. “Look down there, Monty! Down at the bottom of the hill it’s practically a swamp! It rains down there all the time, Monty! If you really loved me, Monty, you’d make it rain in my garden!”
Montgomery didn’t bother to answer. They went through this practically every day—not specifically rain in the garden, but something much like it. He started toward the house with Dorothybelle Sweetwater pitching and swaying behind him on 24 carat gold and lavender satin mules. She never stopped talking all the way, though her enunciation had pretty well degenerated into wheezes and grunts. Montgomery wasn’t listening anyway.
He slid open the terrace door and almost shivered at the blast of arctic air-conditioning that hit him. Dorothybelle collapsed on a molecule for molecule reproduction of a Louis XVI chaise. Dorothybelle had never heard of Louis XVI in this year of 1242 NC (New Calendar), but her friend Eloise Baumgardner had Louis XVI reproductions so, naturally, Dorothybelle had to have them also. Montgomery thought it was ridiculous.
Dorothybelle frowned at her ruined shoes and tossed them into the disposal. The VG chimed softly. She waved Montgomery from the room and thumbed a control beside the chaise. The other half of the room flickered and was replaced by a similar room half. The only major difference was the woman who sat there, on a Louis XVI chaise, frowning at Montgomery.
“Oh, Eloise!” Dorothybelle wailed. “I’m so glad you called. You won’t believe what happened! There’s a great hole in my garden!”
Montgomery sighed and left the room, but not soon enough to avoid hearing Eloise say, “What’s he done this time?”
Consider for a moment that Mother Nature and History are concrete entities, personifications if you would, rather than abstractions. History would be a grandfatherly type, no doubt, with a long beard and kind, tolerant eyes. Mother Nature would be matronly, a little plump, a little gray in the hair, and a stem set to her lips—like a third grade teacher is supposed to look. They would live on some astral plane with a lot of other personified abstractions, a plane not too unlike Mount Olympus. There History would observe the world with an occasional bemused sigh and Mother Nature… well… let’s face it. Mother Nature is something of a busybody. She leaned on a marble balustrade and grunted. Which, you see is why they must be personified. Abstractions don’t grunt.
History sat beside her and looked downward. “Sweetwater?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “The Sweetwater line has been a thorn in my side for longer than I care to remember. I’ve traced it all the way back to the Chaldeans. It’s gone from the probable to the possible to the improbable to the impossible to the absurd!”
“He certainly makes it interesting for me,” History said and smiled tolerantly.
“Piffle!” Mother Nature said—or words to that effect. “Interesting? It’s chaos!”
“I think you sometimes get carried away with your… ah… obsession for order and balance and rhythm,” he said.
“Nonsense! It’s the only way. The only possible way!” She turned her head and looked up at him with a smug smile. “I have, I think, eliminated the Sweetwater fly in my ointment.”
He raised his craggy eyebrows. “Oh?”
“For the last twenty generations of Sweetwaters I’ve been…”
“You always did do things slowly and methodically,” he interrupted.
“Of course. It’s the only way. Montgomery Sweetwater is the last of his unnatural line. Montgomery Sweetwater is sterile and there will not be another.”
“That seems an unnecessary maneuver,” History chuckled. “Have you taken a look at Dorothybelle lately?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “That was an unexpected bit of good luck. Of course, I couldn’t have known about Dorothybelle twenty generations ago.”
“What?” he said in mock surprise. “Do my ears hear approval for the unexpected?”
“Humph!” she said and turned her gaze downward.
Montgomery entered his private sanctorum—which was not done in Louis XVI. It was done in California ranch oak, though he had never heard of a ranch nor, for that matter, California. He had seen it on a VG tape and liked the looks of the leather couch with the embossed longhorned steer on the back and the blond oak half wagon wheels for arms. He sat on the couch and propped his feet on the blond oak coffee table and got back to his magazine which, he suddenly discovered, was filled with ninety-eight page twelves. He was not unduly concerned and page twelve was the one he had been reading.
Dorothybelle came in a bit later, though she wasn’t supposed to be in his sanctorum at all. “Just for a sec, Monty,” she always said or, “One quickie question, Monty,” or “It’s absolutely vital, Monty!”
She looked around with her sanctorum frown. “This is such a tacky room, Monty. Why don’t you let me…?”
“What do you want, Dorothybelle? You’re not supposed to be in here, you know.”
“Just for a sec, Monty. I want to go to the mainland for a while and visit Eloise.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“I want to be near people, Monty! I never see anyone!” He sighed. She went through this at least once a week. She never had gone to the mainland; she always talked herself out of it by putting the words into his mouth. “The VG is all right, Monty, but it’s no substitute for really being in the same room with your friends. I’ll call Transportation on the VG and have them send over a shuttle in the morning. It’s too bad you have to stay on the island, Monty, but I guess they know what they’re doing. Strange things do happen when you’re around, Monty. Just look at that great hole in my garden.”
Montgomery was spared the rest of the routine by the rain. There was no warning, no distant thunder or lightning, no darkening of the room; the rain just began falling from the ceiling. Dorothybelle shrieked and ran out. Montgomery looked up and squinted his eyes against the falling droplets. The rain was pale pink and smelled of violets. Montgomery looked back at his magazine as he felt it disintegrate in his hands. Then he slipped slowly to the floor as the couch, the coffee table, and everything else in the room dissolved into blond oak sludge.
Montgomery sat in the middle of the floor in the spreading gook holding nothing in his hands and looking martyred.
“It’s not just the bizarre things that happen to Sweetwater himself,” Mother Nature grumbled a decade later, “but his influence spreads over the whole world. Putting his ancestors on that island two hundred years ago didn’t help—except to get the more blatant idiocies out of sight. The more civilized they get, the more impossible the Sweetwater influence becomes. I’ve checked the line thoroughly and, as near as I can pinpoint it, the influence changed from the possible to the improbable ri
ght about the Industrial Revolution. It became the impossible about five hundred years later, and the absurd another five hundred years after that.”
History ran his fingers through his beard. “Such neat little categories: probable, possible, improbable, impossible, absurd. How do you distinguish between them?”
She ticked them off her fingers. “It was probable that Cyrus would conquer Babylon. It was possible that Rome would eclipse Greece. It was improbable that Hitler would ever amount to anything. It was impossible that a six-year-old child would assassinate the Russian Premier with a rubber band and a paper clip. And it was absurd when the capital city of Africa suddenly turned into salt water taffy!”
History chuckled. “That really kept things hopping for a while.”
“Chaos! Sheer and utter chaos!” Mother Nature trembled with emotion.
“But humanity thrives on adversity,” History pointed out.
“Order,” she said under her breath. “It’s the only way.”
Montgomery Sweetwater, the last of the Sweetwater line, lay on his deathbed. He felt only a vast relief. Dorothybelle was in the VG room sitting cross-legged on a Turkish pillow weeping softly. The Louis XVI reproductions had gone decades ago. Now the room was filled with filigreed brass and swooping draperies. Dorothybelle was extremely uncomfortable, but Eloise sat on an identical pillow in the VG tsk-tsking and saying perhaps it was for the best.
Montgomery looked out the window at the bananas and smiled fondly. Dorothybelle had been a bit hysterical when the first one popped up like a mushroom two weeks ago. But, when they didn’t do anything but just sit there, she accepted them much as she had the chocolate icing on the roof of the house. The bananas didn’t grow on trees as bananas should, but were twenty-foot giants growing endwise from the ground. And quite delicious, too, Montgomery thought.