It is quite remarkable that we were able, in the midst of the pain and near panic of the occasion, and in the face of the increasing interest in the make-up of our crew, to get our craft and the Chilekings back to the dock. A cold damp night was now upon us. The Chilekings, who had been sick repeatedly during the rescue operations, were now shivering with cold and weakness. I ordered them all to the mess hall where there were flickering lights—the electric system was beginning to go out—and where I thought, in spite of the day’s events, we might find some food. At the word “food” the Chilekings began to run—like the children they were—in spite of the day’s work behind them—run and whimper, and in their fatigue, both physical and emotional, waver and stumble. I let them run. “Let” is ironical. What else could I do? We “men”—to use another word ironically, could neither restrain nor keep up with the Chilekings. I realize that in the last few pages I have slipped into a constant use of the word “Chilekings.” Chronologically this is inexact, for they were not, these overblown children, so called at the time. “Chilekings” came later and was their own name for themselves when they began to assume the characteristics of child kings.
Mayberry, who in Oren’s absence from the Post was commanding officer, toddled out to meet us.
“All back safely?” he asked.
I told him yes and asked about food.
“Plenty for all, such as it is,” he said. “The work had to be done by the kids—and they weren’t interested in anything very complicated. Do you know,” he asked, “I can’t even take the top off a can of beer?”
I tried to cheer him up by reminding him that he had never, even before reduction, been a muscle man.
“I could open a can of beer,” he said obstinately. Then he asked, “You know this thing’s busted wide open? Calls are coming in from everywhere. We haven’t been able to handle them.”
I told him that Oren was with Hemworth and the other newspaper men—giving them a full report, so far as he knew it—of what had happened at the Post.
He already knew that—Oren had talked with him on the phone. “You understand what’s happening?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “I don’t understand a thing, except that we are the victims of a tragedy—or a farce—I don’t know which. Or madness, universal delusion and madness.”
“It’s universal all right,” Mayberry said. “It’s not just us. It’s not just the military. Hasn’t the news from England had any meaning for you? From Spain? The lack of news from France? The adjournment of Congress? I’ve been talking to Hermes at March Field. It’s happened there—it’s happening everywhere!”
“We’ve got to organize,” I said, “we’ve got to get control. We’ve got to map out our strategy.”
“Against Russia?” he asked.
For the moment I had forgotten about them—that it was their ship, their crew, their delegates our children had sent to the bottom of the bay. What I had meant was: organize against the children, map out a strategy to control them.
“I had forgotten the Russians,” I said.
“It isn’t likely they’ve forgotten us,” he said.
“But look,” I told him, “they’re being reduced too. Hasn’t any one told you that we picked up reduced Russians in the water?”
“No,” he said, “I hadn’t heard that.”
“You didn’t think some one whole nation was escaping did you?”
“No—but if any did, it might be Russia.”
“Why Russia?”
“They’re more kidlike in some ways than other nations— believe in fairy tales—black and white—absolute goodness— absolute badness-”
“Nonsense,” I said. “You’re the child if you swallow that; they don’t believe that—not the policy makers—they’re a hard-headed lot—they’ll be reduced as fast as any one.”
“How does that help us any? We’re reduced—they’re reduced—things are still equal—we’re just where we started.”
“They can’t man any of their equipment in case they want to attack.”
“They can man it the same way we manned the launch, if they want to-”
We had reached the mess hall, and labored up the steps— occasionally even having to help ourselves with our hands. The Chilekings, with no one to make them wash and sit at the table, had, for the most part, grabbed plates of food with their still bloodstained hands and gathered around the fireplace. There they sat, huddled about the hearth, not knowing how to manage their big bodies, awkward, some still sick after their experience with the survivors, others wolfing down their food. I didn’t want anything to eat and told Mayberry so.
“You’d better eat,” he said. “Things are going to get worse. You’re not likely to get any sleep tonight.”
I climbed up onto a chair to get a cup of coffee—but the spigot on the coffee urn first stuck—then, as I put all my strength into my effort to budge it, swung wide open letting a scalding stream of coffee pour down—not on me—I was able to draw back in time, but onto the table and floor. David, who was one of the children clustered around the fireplace, saw what happened and ran over and turned off the spigot for me.
“Did you hurt yourself?” he asked, not unkindly.
I told him I hadn’t.
“It was just luck,” he said. “Don’t try it again.”
“I’m hungry,” I complained. “I haven’t had anything to eat.” I wasn’t hungry—I was simply trying to justify myself— to my own eight-year-old son.
“Here,” David said, drawing me a cup. “Next time ask someone bigger to help you.” He walked back to the waiting Chilekings, leaving me standing on the chair, holding the cup of coffee which curved in my two hands bowl-large, wondering how to get down. I was damned if I’d ask David to come lift me. Carefully stooping I got the coffee cup to the table. Then I got down from the chair—and though I was in momentary danger of scalding myself, managed alone to get the cup from the table. I could not bring myself to call to David, scald or no, “Come help Daddy with his coffee.” The Chilekings about the fireplace had all the chairs—they no longer suited us anyway—so I squatted on the floor, my cold fingers enjoying the warmth of the cup I had to hold as does a child.
Oren’s son Wilbur, who had been the sickest of the lot on our rescue trip—he was, or had been, a lank blond boy of fourteen or fifteen—turned to me and said truculently, “You can’t blame me for what happened. Russia is our enemy. I’ve read father’s book.”
So had I and most Americans—an amazing runaway (considering its subject matter) best seller called Strike The First Blow.
“Wilbur,” I said patiently (the reversal in our sizes no doubt had something to do with my patience), “your father’s policy has always been highly controversial.”
“Nerts,” said Wilbur.
“And even if we all believed in the efficacy of such a policy, there would still be the question of ‘when.’ ‘When’ is not decided singlehanded by a child. There has to be concerted action, unanimity of mind-”
“. . . unanimity of mind,” Wilbur repeated, using a word he would never have thought of using the day before. “There were the guns and there was the enemy. We did the right thing. What are guns for?”
“They’re for our defense.”
“. . . defense,” Wilbur said, with shocking vulgarity.
“If you wait until the enemy strikes the first blow you are morally in a sound position.”
“Morally sound,” Wilbur said, “with both legs missing.”
Then he suddenly changed his tune. He snatched off his horn-rimmed spectacles, which he had secured around his suddenly enlarged head by means of a rubber band. His head had become larger without his eyes becoming better. Then, with his glasses out of the way, he put his big, pale, myopic face down close to mine and shouted in a voice powerful but not masculine, “Lies, lies, lies. We were little so you told us whatever you wanted to. Whatever made things easy for you. ‘Strike the first blow!’ father wrote. And now you say,
‘Not really. It’s just a theory. It’s controversial, we didn’t really mean it.’ ‘Death is easy,’ you told us. ‘People just go to sleep, dear. They just rest forever, dear.’ Why didn’t you tell us they bled so much? And screamed so much? Why didn’t you tell us their guts come out? You think it’s all right to shoot the guts out of people. You’ve spent your whole life learning how to do that. And just because you didn’t give orders you start saying it’s wrong.”
I felt sorry for the boy—the first sight of blood is always upsetting, but to have him call me a liar—and get away with it simply because he was larger, was a little too much.
“Get out and stay out until you can talk sense,” I told him. I raised or tried to raise my voice—but there is no degree of will power which will lend authority to the sounds which issue from a mouth the size of a buttonhole.
I was surprised by what happened—on two counts. I was cuffed on the ears, not once, but a half-dozen times. This in itself—being something I had not experienced since the age of seven or so—was an enormous surprise. But what surprised me even more was that the slapping came, not from Wilbur, but from some boy unknown to me who punctuated his blows by “You can’t talk that way to Wilbur.”
This was the first inkling I received that there was, for the Chilekings anyway, something special about Wilbur, and my wonder at this, together with my anger at the unfairness of being struck by someone so much larger than I, immobilized me beneath the combined punishments of hand and tongue.
But what could I have done, amazed or unamazed? Angered or unangered? There were no more threats I could make. Spank? Turn off the television? Cut down on the allowance? Nonsense. The children were in the saddle and they knew it. What else could I do? Whimper? Run? Plead for mercy?
Such scenes are now far less common than at the beginning of the Chileking Era. Then, in their new-found freedom they, as the newly freed so often do, misused their power.
* * * * * * * *
There were beatings and manhandlings, some very brutal; though the Chilekings always referred to them as “spankings,” and professed to find no pleasure in what they did. Pleasure or not, it was not until the first batch of Chilekings experienced reduction themselves that there was any letup of the roughness.
It was Mayberry who handled the situation for me—his urbanity, whatever his physical size, still undiminished. “We don’t do that in the army, buddy,” he said, and the boy, who had been ready to let fly at me with another round of cuffing, sat down confused and apologetic. The Chilekings also had habits and inclinations which were unchanged by their alteration in size. They were accustomed to an early bedtime. Big heads began to nod, childish eyelids to fall. They fought their sleepiness. It no longer matched their own ideas of themselves. And they could no longer plead, “Let me stay up,” relying on their parents not to take them at their word. They were their own masters now—and more and more, as they quickly discovered, ours too. Having decided to go to bed it was pitiful to see some of these young six-footers, my own David among them, reluctant to go out into the dark alone. They were of a size, certainly, to defend themselves from any night attackers. But their minds, their imaginations were still of an eight- or ten-year size.
Mayberry and a dozen others beside myself lingered on in the mess hall after these man-sized infants left. First of all we prepared as accurate and objective a statement as we could manage of the day’s happenings. Then we all signed it. This seemed to us of first importance. There was simply no telling what might happen next. We had not the least assurance that diminution had stopped; that the Subtraction we had already experienced might not be a first step only in a process which might finally diminish us right out of existence. We had no assurance that the Chilekings might not throw us into the bay; or that we might not, in despair, all leap in ourselves. And chiefly we had no way then of knowing whether or not there would be retaliatory blows struck by those countries whose nationals had died in the blowing up of the Stalingrad. H-bombs and A-bombs might be falling on San Francisco within the next twenty-four hours. From the mechanical side alone the recording of this statement was an enormous undertaking —almost beyond us. A thousand difficulties confronted us at every turn. Our fingers could no longer manage the typewriter keys; our short stubby legs could no longer get us up to within striking distance of the keys in the first place, without a lot of climbing, rearranging of furniture, and so forth. Nowadays Smalfri have furniture designed for them; then, except for high chairs, toilet-training seats, velocipedes, and the like, nothing fitted, and, as you can see, what did fit we had little desire for. I don’t want to harp on the discomforts and frustration of those first days—but to find a world which we had equipped for our own pleasure and convenience suddenly useless was like living in a misfit nightmare. That is the exact word for it. Have you ever dreamed of being in a room in which everything was unaccountably heavy or oversized? Intractable, immovable, so that all of your efforts are either hampered or balked? That was our situation, exactly.
* * * * * * * *
At last we had done everything—I started to write “humanly possible”; what I should say is “midgetly possible,” I suppose. We were scarcely human that night. Messages had been prepared for the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chiefs of Staff.
It was long after midnight by this time—and we were all tired, as we had never been tired before in our lives. To say nothing of what we had suffered emotionally, we had physically accomplished what was about equal to an assault on Everest, that day. It was Mayberry who first said, “Let’s turn in. My feet are killing me.” He looked down ruefully at his shoes. “Mary Jane” pumps, they were called—something intended for little girls. God knows where he had picked them up. “I think my arches are broken,” he said, rubbing his insteps. ‘
He had just kicked off his shoes when Oren and Hemworth came in. Hemworth, still unsubtracted, was pushing the semi-collapsed Oren before him in a perambulator—or perhaps it was called a stroller—a vehicle for transporting the very young, anyway. It was either do that, or abandon him. Or carry him. Oren, ordinarily one of the stiffest, most dignified men in the army—which is saying a good deal more than, “in the world”—was too worn out to protest. If Hemworth had stuffed him into a shopper’s handbag and had carried him over his shoulder like a squaw’s papoose I don’t think he would have objected. Oren was little and he was tired; how he got home was of no importance to him at the moment.
Hemworth was big and he was excited. He gave, out of sheer exuberance, Oren’s baby carriage a fast shoot into the room. He miscalculated and except that a Smalfri risked his life (actually) stopping it, it would have banged into the wall with possibly serious results.
“God in heaven!” Hemworth cried, staring at us all once again as if he’d never seen us before—”this is unbelievable!” Then he rapped his head with his knuckles. “Lord! Lord! Why haven’t I been more temperate with my words? Here I am a man of words and no word for this. It’s the colossal in reverse and all of my training’s been in describing the merely colossal.”
Hemworth’s verbal centers were irritated; he could not cease talking and as he talked, he walked about looking at us, shaking his head, unable to doubt that what he saw existed, yet unable to convince himself that it was possible for such objects to exist. Nor could he rid himself, it was obvious, of the feeling that he was a grownup dealing with children.
Finally, his visual curiosity momentarily satisfied, he gave us the big, the terrible news. “Boys,” he said, “here it is. The President, while taking a nap at two-thirty this afternoon, was reduced, decimated, shrunken, concentrated, condensed, what you will—made small.”
The message, after the first shock, was variously received. But to all of us, Subtracted men as we were, there was something ghastly in the thought that the head of our nation was now just such another little, wizened monstrosity as ourselves. Misery, they say, loves company. Well, we didn’t love it that much—not to the extent of wan
tinghim to become one of us.
Mayberry, as usual, was less concerned with the particular event than with its meaning. “Hemworth,” he asked, “has anyone been reduced except when asleep?”
“There aren’t any statistics on it yet—no questionnaires have been sent out.” Hemworth saw that we didn’t think this was funny and gave Mayberry a straight answer. “So far as I know, there’s been no waking shrinkage. And I’ve been thinking about that too, Mayberry. I figure on staying up tonight. I’d like my clothes to fit me when I wake up in the morning.”
Well, Hemworth could joke about it then. It hadn’t happened to him yet. But at some time that night he must have dozed off. Next morning his clothes didn’t fit. But that night he still inhabited a world tailored to his size and felt the confidence that fit gave him. “We’ll know soon enough if they do,” he went on. “Let a few drivers, pilots, radio announcers, and the like, get reduced on their jobs and we’ll soon hear about it.”
Star SHort Novels - [Anthology] Page 5