There were some humans left. The rats got most of them, after increasing in fantastic numbers; and there were three plagues.
After that there were half-stooping, naked things whose twisted heredity could have been traced to humankind; but these could be frightened, as individuals and as a race, so therefore they could not progress. They were certainly not human.
The Pit, in AD 5000, had changed little over the centuries. Still it was an angry memorial to the misuse of great power; and because of it, organized warfare was a forgotten thing. Because of it, the world was free of the wasteful smoke and dirt of industry. The scream and crash of bombs and the soporific beat of marching feet were never heard, and at long last the earth was at peace.
To go near The Pit was slow, certain death, and it was respected and feared, and would be for centuries more. It winked and blinked redly at night, and was surrounded by a bald and broken tract stretching out and away over the horizon; and around it flickered a ghostly blue glow. Nothing lived there. Nothing could.
With such a war memorial, there could only be peace. The earth could never forget the horror that could be loosed by war.
That was Grenfell’s dream.
Mewhu’s Jet
“WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM TO ANNOUNCE—”
“Jack, don’t jump like that! And you’ve dropped ashes all over your—”
“Aw, Iris, honey, let me listen to—”
“—at first identified as a comet, the object is pursuing an erratic course through the stratosphere, occasionally dipping as low as—”
“You make me nervous, Jack. You’re an absolute slave to the radio. I wish you paid that much attention to me.”
“Darling, I’ll argue the point, or pay attention to you, anything in the wide world you like when I’ve heard this announcement; but please, please let me listen!”
“—dents of the East Coast are warned to watch for the approach of this ob—”
“Iris, don’t—”
Click!
“Well, of all the selfish, inconsiderate, discourteous—”
“That will do, Jack Garry. It’s my radio as much as yours, and I have a right to turn it off when I want to.”
“Might I ask why you find it necessary to turn it off at this moment?”
“Because I know the announcement will be repeated any number of times if it’s important, and you’ll shush me every time. Because I’m not interested in that kind of thing and don’t see why I should have it rammed down my throat. Because the only thing you ever want to listen to is something which couldn’t possibly affect us. But mostly because you yelled at me!”
“I did not yell at you!”
“You did! And you’re yelling now!”
“Mom! Daddy!”
“Oh. Molly, darling, we woke you up!”
“Poor bratlet. Hey, what about your slippers?”
“It isn’t cold tonight, Daddy. What was that on the radio?”
“Something buzzing around in the sky, darling. I didn’t hear it all.”
“A space ship, I betcha.”
“You see? You and your so-called science fiction!”
At which point, something like a giant’s fist clouted off the two-room top story of the seaside cottage and scattered it down the beach. The lights winked out, and outside the whole waterfront lit up with a brief, shattering blue glare.
“Jacky darling, are you hurt?”
“Mom, he’s bleedin’!”
“Jack, honey, say something. Please say something.”
“Urrrrgh,” said Jack Garry obediently, sitting up with a soft clatter of pieces of falling lath and plaster. He put his hands gently on the sides of his head and whistled. “Something hit the house.”
His red-headed wife laughed half-hysterically. “Not really darling.” She put her arms around him, whisked some dust out of his hair, and began stroking his neck. “I’m … frightened, Jack.”
“You’re frightened!” He looked around shakily in the dim moonlight that filtered in. Radiance from an unfamiliar place caught his bleary gaze, and he clutched Iris’ arm. “Upstairs … it’s gone!” he said hoarsely, struggling to his feet. “Molly’s room … Molly—”
“I’m here, Daddy. Hey, you’re squeezin’!”
“Happy little family,” said Iris, her voice trembling. “Vacationing in a quiet little cottage by the sea, so Daddy can write technical articles while Mummy regains her good disposition—without a phone, without movies within miles, and living in a place where the roof flies away. Jack—what hit us?”
“One of those things you were talking about,” said Jack sardonically. “One of the things you refuse to be interested in that couldn’t possibly affect us. Remember?”
“The thing the radio was talking about?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. We’d better get out of here. This place may fall in on us, or burn, or something.”
“An’ we’ll all be kilt,” crooned Molly.
“Shut up, Molly. Iris, I’m going to poke around. Better go on out and pick us a place to pitch the tent—if I can find the tent.”
“Tent?” Iris gasped.
“Boy oh boy,” said Molly.
“Jack Garry, I’m not going to go to bed in a tent. Do you realize that this place will be swarming with people in no time flat?”
“O.K., O.K. Only get out from under what’s left of the house. Go for a swim. Take a walk. Or g’wan to bed in Molly’s room.”
“I’m not going out there by myself.”
Jack sighed. “I should’ve asked you to stay in here,” he muttered. “If you’re not the contrariest woman ever to—Be quiet, Molly.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Meeew-w-w!
“Aren’t you doing that caterwauling?”
“No, Daddy, truly.”
Iris said, “I’d say a cat was caught in the wreckage except that cats are smart and no cat would ever come near this place.”
Wuh-wuh-wuh-meeee-ew-w-w!
“What a dismal sound!”
“Jack, that isn’t a cat.”
Mmmmmew. Mmm—m-m-m.
“Whatever it is,” Jack said, “it can’t be big enough to be afraid of and make a funny little noise like that.” He squeezed Iris’ arm and, stepping carefully over the rubble, began peering in and around it. Molly scrambled beside him. He was about to caution her against making so much noise, and then thought better of it. What difference would a little racket make?
The noise was not repeated, and five minutes’ searching elicited nothing. Garry went back to his wife, who was fumbling around the shambles of a living room, pointlessly setting chairs and coffee tables back on their legs.
“I didn’t find anyth—”
“Yipe!”
“Molly! What is it?”
Molly was just outside, in the shrubbery. “Daddy, you better come quick!”
Spurred by the urgency of her tone, he went crashing outside. He found Molly standing rigid, trying to cram both her fists in her mouth at the same time. And at her feet was a man with silver-gray skin and a broken arm, who mewed at him.
“—Guard and Navy Department have withdrawn their warnings. The pilot of a Pan-American transport has reported that the object disappeared into the zenith. It was last seen eighteen miles east of Normandy Beach, New Jersey. Reports from the vicinity describe it as traveling very slowly, with a hissing noise. Although it reached within a few feet of the ground several times, no damage has been reported. Inves—”
“Think of that,” said Iris, switching off the little three-way portable. “No damage.”
“Yeah. And if no one saw the thing hit, no one will be out here to investigate. So you can retire to your downy couch in the tent without fear of being interviewed.”
“Go to sleep? Are you mad? Sleep in that flimsy tent with that mewing monster lying there?”
“Oh, heck, Mom, he’s sick! He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
They sat around a cheerful fire,
fed by roof shingles. Jack had set up the tent without much trouble. The silver-gray man was stretched out in the shadows, sleeping lightly and emitting an occasional moan.
Jack smiled at Iris. “Y’know, I love your silly chatter, darling. The way you turned to and set his arm was a pleasure to watch. You didn’t think of him as a monster while you were tending to him.”
“Didn’t I, though? Maybe monster was the wrong word to use. Jack, he has only one bone in his forearm!”
“He has what? Oh, nonsense, honey! ‘Tain’t scientific. He’d have to have a ball-and-socket joint in his wrist.”
“He has a ball-and-socket joint in his wrist.”
“This I have to see,” Jack muttered. He picked up a flash lantern and went over to the long prone figure.
Silver eyes blinked up at the light. There was something queer about them. He turned the beam closer. The pupils were not black in that light, but dark green. They all but closed—from the sides, like a cat’s. Jack’s breath wheezed out. He ran the light over the man’s body. It was clad in a bright-blue roomy bathrobe effect, with a yellow sash. The sash had a buckle which apparently consisted of two pieces of yellow metal; there seemed to be nothing to keep them together. They just stayed. When the man had fainted, just as they found him, it had taken almost all Jack’s strength to pull them apart.
“Iris.”
She got up and came over to him. “Let the poor devil sleep.”
“Iris, what color was his robe?”
“Red, with a … but it’s blue!”
“Is now. Iris, what on earth have we got here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Some poor thing that escaped from an institution for—for—”
“For what?”
“How should I know?” she snapped. “There must be some place where they send creatures that get born like that.”
“Creatures don’t get born like that, he isn’t deformed. He’s just different.”
“I see what you mean. I don’t know why I see what you mean, but I’ll tell you something.” She stopped, and was quiet for so long that he turned to her, surprised. She said slowly, “I ought to be afraid of him, because he’s strange, and ugly, but—I’m not.”
“Me too.”
“Molly, go back to bed.”
“He’s a leprechaun.”
“Maybe you’re right. Go on to bed, chicken, and in the morning you can ask him where he keeps his crock of gold.”
“Gee.” She went off a little way and stood on one foot, drawing a small circle in the sand with the other. “Daddy?”
“Yes, Molly m’love.”
“Can I sleep in the tent tomorrow, too?”
“If you’re good.”
“Daddy obviously means,” said Iris acidly, “that if you’re not good he’ll have a roof on the house by tomorrow night.”
“I’ll be good.” She disappeared into the tent.
The gray man mewed.
“Well, old guy, what is it?”
The man reached over and fumbled at his splinted arm.
“It hurts him,” said Iris. She knelt beside him and, taking the wrist of his good arm, lifted it away from the splint, where he was clawing. The man did not resist, but lay and looked at her with pain-filled, slitted eyes.
“He has six fingers,” Jack said. “See?” He knelt beside his wife and gently took the man’s wrist. He whistled. “It is a ball-and-socket.”
“Give him some aspirin.”
“That’s a good … wait.” Jack stood pulling his lip in puzzlement. “Do you think we should?”
“Why not?”
“We don’t know where he comes from. We know nothing of his body chemistry, or what any of our medicines might do to him.”
“He … what do you mean, where he comes from?”
“Iris, will you open up your mind just a little? In the face of evidence like this, are you going to even attempt to cling to the idea that this man comes from anywhere on this earth?” Jack said with annoyance. “You know your anatomy. Don’t tell me you ever saw a human freak with skin and bones like that! That belt buckle, that material in his clothes … come on, now. Drop your prejudices and give your brains a chance.”
“You’re suggesting things that simply don’t happen!”
“That’s what the man in the street said—in Hiroshima. That’s what the old-time aeronaut said from the basket of his balloon when they told him about heavier-than-air craft. That’s what—”
“All right, all right, Jack. I know the rest of the speech. If you want dialectics instead of what’s left of a night’s sleep, I might point out that the things you have mentioned have all concerned human endeavors. Show me any new plastic, a new metal, a new kind of engine, and though I may not begin to understand it, I can accept it because it is of human origin. But this, this man, or whatever he is—”
“I know,” said Jack, more gently. “It’s frightening because it’s strange, and away down underneath we feel that anything strange is necessarily dangerous. That’s why we wear our best manners for strangers and not for our friends. But I still don’t think we should give this character any aspirin.”
“He seems to breathe the same air we do. He perspires, he talks … I think he talks.”
“You have a point. Well, if it’ll ease his pain at all, it may be worth trying. Give him just one.”
Iris went to the pump with a collapsible cup from her first-aid kit, and filled it. Kneeling by the silver-skinned man, she propped up his head, gently put the aspirin between his lips, and brought the cup to his mouth. He sucked the water in greedily, and then went completely limp.
“Oh-oh. I was afraid of that.”
Iris put her hand over the man’s heart. “Jack!”
“Is he … what is it, Iris?”
“Not dead, if that’s what you mean. Will you feel this?”
Jack put his hand beside Iris’. The heart was beating with massive, slow blows, about eight to the minute. Under it, out of phase completely with the main beat, was another, an extremely fast, sharp beat, which felt as if it were going about three hundred.
“He’s having some sort of palpitation,” Jack said.
“And in two hearts at once!”
Suddenly the man raised his head and uttered a series of ululating shrieks and howls. His eyes opened wide, and across them fluttered a translucent nictitating membrane. He lay perfectly still with his mouth open, shrieking and gargling. Then with a lightning movement he snatched Jack’s hand to his mouth. A pointed tongue, light orange and four inches longer than it had any right to be, flicked out and licked Jack’s hand. Then the strange eyes closed, the shrieks died to a whimper and faded out, and the man relaxed.
“Sleeping now,” said Iris. “Oh, I hope we haven’t done anything to him!”
“We’ve done something. I just hope it isn’t serious. Anyhow, his arm isn’t bothering him any. That’s all we were worried about in the first place.”
Iris put a cushion under the man’s oddly planed head and touched the beach mattress he was lying on. “He has a beautiful mustache,” she said. “Like silver. He looks very old and wise.”
“So does an owl. Let’s go to bed.”
Jack woke early, from a dream in which he had bailed out of a flying motorcycle with an umbrella that turned into a candy cane as he fell. He landed in the middle of some sharp-toothed crags which gave like sponge rubber. He was immediately surrounded by mermaids who looked like Iris and who had hands shaped like spur gears. But nothing frightened him. He awoke smiling, inordinately happy.
Iris was still asleep. Outside somewhere he heard the tinkle of Molly’s laugh. He sat up and looked at Molly’s camp cot. It was empty. Moving quietly, so as not to disturb his wife, he slid his feet into moccasins and went out.
Molly was on her knees beside their strange visitor, who was squatting on his haunches and—
They were playing patty-cake.
“Molly!”
“Yes, Daddy.
”
“What are you trying to do? Don’t you realize that that man has a broken arm?”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Do you s’pose I hurt him?”
“I don’t know. It’s very possible,” said Jack Garry testily. He went to the alien, took his good hand.
The man looked up at him and smiled. His smile was peculiarly engaging. All of his teeth were pointed, and they were very widely spaced. “Eeee-yu mow madibu Mewhu,” he said.
“That’s his name,” Molly said excitedly. She leaned forward and tugged at the man’s sleeve. “Mewhu. Hey, Mewhu!” And she pointed at her chest.
“Mooly,” said Mewhu. “Mooly—Geery.”
“See, Daddy?” Molly said ecstatically. “See?” She pointed at her father. “Daddy. Dah—dee.”
“Deedy,” said Mewhu.
“No, silly. Daddy.”
“Dewdy.”
“Dah-dy!”
Jack, quite entranced, pointed at himself and said, “Jack.”
“Jeek.”
“Good enough. Molly, the man can’t say ‘ah.’ He can say ‘oo’ or ‘ee’ but not ‘ah.’ That’s good enough.”
Jack examined the splints. Iris had done a very competent job. When she realized that instead of the radius-ulna development of a true human, Mewhu had only one bone in his forearm, she had set the arm and laid on two splints instead of one. Jack grinned. Intellectually, Iris would not accept Mewhu’s existence even as a possibility; but as a nurse, she not only accepted his body structure but skillfully compensated for its differences.
“I guess he wants to be polite,” said Jack to his repentant daughter, “and if you want to play patty-cake he’ll go along with you, even if it hurts. Don’t take advantage of him, chicken.”
“I won’t, Daddy.”
Jack started up the fire and had a stick crane built and hot water bubbling by the time Iris emerged. “Takes a cataclysm to get you to start breakfast,” she grumbled through a pleased smile. “When were you a Boy Scout?”
“Matter of fact,” said Garry, “I was once. Will modom now take over?”
“Modom will. How’s the patient?”
“Thriving. He and Molly had a patty-cake tournament this morning. His clothes, by the way, are red again.”
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