Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “You become fond of them,” said Mrs. Leota Harris. “They’re better than lap dogs, any day.”

  The Quiggie perked up its ears, almost as if it understood.

  “See. They’re intelligent.”

  “Well,” her husband said, “I’ve got to admit they’re smart. But I don’t think they’re affectionate. And that’s what counts.”

  “You just don’t like them,” she said accusingly.

  “So I don’t like ’em,” he said. “All right. I don’t like ’em. I think they’re selfish. I think they’re lazy. I don’t think they give a damn about people.”

  “You like bird dogs, I know.”

  “So,” he said, “I like bird dogs.”

  “My God!” said Mrs. Leota Harris. “Imagine having a bird dog in this little, dinky apartment.”

  “I didn’t say . . .”

  “I know,” she said, sighing in martyrdom.

  He walked to the window and looked out at the little lights sparkling below him. He slapped his hands together behind his back. There were a lot of buildings out there.

  “Look,” he said. “All I said was, ‘I don’t think a Quiggie is affectionate.’ ”

  “I heard you.”

  The Quiggie looked at Mr. Harris and began to lick its soft, green fur. It wiggled its pronged tail disgustedly.

  “I think they’re cute,” said the woman. “Come here,” she told the Quiggie.

  It looked up at her with its bright, brown eyes. Almost indifferently it began to get up. It gave the impression of being clumsily double-jointed. It started to amble across the room. In the process, it stumbled against a chair, shook its head sadly, and veered to the left, almost tripping over its tail.

  “It looks like a drunken lout,” Mr. Harris said.

  The Quiggie glared at him.

  “You’ll hurt its feelings,” his wife said.

  The Quiggie got its legs twisted up and stopped to look persecuted.

  “See,” she said. “How cute!”

  The Quiggie backed up a step and upset a floor lamp.

  Finally, however, it was in front of her. It climbed into her lap, using its opposed thumbs on her leg as if it were a tree trunk.

  She patted its head. “My cute little Awkward,” she said. It waved its tail, slapping her in the face. She held the tail down.

  “See,” she said. “It comes to me.”

  “Of course. But it doesn’t really like you. It just tolerates you, that’s all.”

  She sighed again.

  “I can’t see one lying on your grave, mourning when you’re dead,” her husband said. “I can’t see one licking your hand.”

  “I don’t want my hand licked,” she said.

  “That,” he said, “is a lie.”

  “I meant by an animal.”

  “Skip it,” he said. “Sorry I said it.”

  The Quiggie got down from her lap, falling all over itself, and started, more or less upright, on its hind legs, for its corner. Once there, it tried unsuccessfully to scratch its back on a table leg, and then it finally lay down in disgust. It looked at the people out of the corner of its eye for a moment, and then it went to sleep.

  “It’s lonely,” she said. “It wants a mate.”

  “All right, get it a mate,” he said. “I don’t care. But I say a dog doesn’t moon like that damn’ thing. A dog likes to be around people. It’s not forever laying in a corner. It’s setting at your feet. I think all a Quiggie is interested in is sex.”

  “How do you know a dog isn’t?” Mrs. Leota Harris said.

  “I give up,” her husband said. “I just flat give up. That’s all.”

  “I wonder who does these things?” Mr. Saunders asked.

  “What things, honey?”

  “These things,” he said. He hit the page with the back of his hand.

  “Oh. The editorials. A man by the name of Porter, I think.”

  “Well, who ever he is, he’s right. I mean, he’s got a lot of good ideas; Take this one, now . . .” He peered down at the print. “ ‘It is time (it says) for the Empire to wake up to the Dobun menace. Last year fifty lives were lost.’ (He means the Starflight, my dear.) ‘And as yet no satisfactory reparation has been made. Further, THEY WELCOMED THE QUARANTINE! And this is significant. They welcomed the quarantine. What does that seem to mean? It means just this: they’re glad to keep us out of their system. THEY ARE HIDING SOMETHING. And what are they hiding? THERE IS ONLY ONE ANSWER FROM THE FACTS. THEY ARE BUILDING UP A WAR POTENTIAL!’ ”

  Mr. Saunders said, “I mean, he’s got something there. Why did they take to the quarantine so easy? It’s not natural. And there just can’t be any other answer.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Well, if I were in the Council, I’d soon see about that. Why, we’d just take a fleet and go down there and not put up with any of their nonsense.”

  “You’re perfectly right,” she said.

  Mr. Saunders smiled. “Yes, sir. There’s no reason to let those things get out of hand, I tell you. The time to stop them is now, not tomorrow or the next day, but now. Before they get a chance to do—whatever they’re going to do.”

  “Pop?” asked Willie.

  “. . . Yes?”

  “Speaking of doin’ things now, what about the Quiggie? I mean, you never did get one.”

  “Oh, yes. That . . . I’ll tell you, son. If you want to run down to the pet shop with me Saturday—” He gestured. He let his voice trail off. “Gee: that’d be swell.”

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Saunders. “Really I don’t, Ed. You know how this is such a small apartment. And we don’t have room for a pet.”

  She looked around her, and automatically she numbered the gadgets with her eyes. It made her feel good, but, at the same time, it oppressed her slightly, as if she lacked, somehow, enough breathing room.

  “Now,” Mr. Saunders said, in reprimand. “We’ve already been over that before.”

  “They don’t take up much room. And they aren’t a bit of bother. It says here—” Willie picked up a magazine and began to thumb the pages—“right here: ‘As pets, the Quiggies are excellent. They are quiet, friendly and amusing. They require very little space. A box in the corner of the room will do. They will eat almost anything, require no special temperature, and are one of the healthiest, hardiest life forms in the universe.

  “ ‘And any home with a Quiggie will be a jolly home! You can count on a Quiggie to keep you laughing.’ ” Willie looked up. “That’s right, mom. They’re funny; really funny. Why, I was over at Joe’s, and do you know what one of their Quiggies did? He backed up and caught his tail in the ’lectric fan. Course the rubber blades didn’t hurt it none, but the things it done afterwards. Joe and me could hardly get over laughing, it was so funny.” He looked down at the magazine again. “And it says, ‘These clean, sanitary Pets To Laugh At will be the center of every household. It’s like having your very own private comedian right in your own living room.’ ”

  “That’s right, Marte.”

  “Oh, I suppose so.”

  “Mom? . . . Jerry’s folks got two of them just last month. And he says they’re swell, too. They’ve got eighteen, now. They’re gonna sell them. We could get a pair and raise Quiggies and make all kinds of money, I’ll bet. Everybody’s buyin’ ’em.”

  Mr. Saunders laughed. “I’m afraid we’ll get in on that a little late . . . But there were fortunes made, raising Quiggies six, eight months ago. At first. But now too many people’s got the same idea, and everybody’s got them for sale.”

  “Except us.”

  “Yes. Well . . . You say Jerry’s folks want to sell some?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you the money, and you can run over tonight and buy a pair.” Mr. Saunders fished out his bill fold. “Ten credits, I guess?”

  “Uh-huh. I think so.”

  Mr. Saunders handed over the two bills.

  Willie
hurried out the front door.

  But he was not moving as fast as he was when he returned a few minutes later.

  “He bit me!” Willie announced, waving his hand about, showing the imprint of sharp teeth.

  “What bit you, Willie?”

  “A Quiggie! It hurts.”

  “Here . . . Let’s see,” Mrs. Saunders said. “Hum. Pretty deep. Get the iodine, Ed.”

  “Oh, not the iodine!”

  “Yes, the iodine.”

  “But it’ll hurt.”

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Saunders said. “Now. How did you happen to get bit?”

  “Well,” Willie said, “when I went out, I seen one playing in the yard. It had got all tangled up with the hose. And then it got so mad it tried to chew its way out. I stood there just laughing fit to kill, it looked so funny. Then after a minute when it got loose, it turned and jumped on the hose like it wanted to stomp it, and then it got all tangled up again, and its tail was waving away like nothing I ever seen.

  “Well, I run up to it, and it got loose again and sidled away a couple of steps—like it was wild. Well, I just figured it had escaped from somewhere, and all I had to do was catch it, and we could save the ten credits. And then it jumped up and it bit me!”

  “Humph,” said Mr. Saunders.

  “Hand it here, Ed.” She took the iodine and applied it.

  “Ow—oh—ow!”

  Willie waved his hand back and forth.

  “I thought you said they were friendly,” Mrs. Saunders said to her husband.

  “It says they are, right here in the book,” he answered. “I guess that one must have escaped or something, and maybe they get wild, that way. I don’t know.”

  “Well,” she said, “I know one thing. We’re not going to have any Quiggies in this house.”

  Jackson N. Snow was a general; he had a long career of active service on the fringes of Empire. He was, in the fullest sense, a military man. Consequently, it pained him to use his troops against civilians.

  He looked out the window, into the street. A milling mob below appeared as a variegated splotch of color.

  “Damned shame,” he said. He turned. “Colonel! It’s that damn’ newspaper.”

  The Colonel picked up the paper from the desk and scanned the lead story. “I agree,” he said. “Listen to this: ‘Certainly the members of the Department of State who sanctioned the trading deal should stand before the bar of justice. WITH THEM SHOULD STAND MR. JASON. This newspaper has always championed the constitutional processes, slow and uncertain as they sometimes seem to be.

  “ ‘TRUE THAT THESE ARE DESPERATE DAYS! TRUE THAT THIS SYSTEM IS IN A LIFE AND DEATH STRUGGLE—

  “ ‘But we must still remember our traditional sense of—’ ”

  “Enough!” snapped the general. He turned to the window again. “I hope there won’t be any bloodshed. Jason did get away, you know? We flew him out to Central. But try and tell the mob down there that.”

  He walked to his desk and slumped wearily to his seat. “I know how they feel. Feel the same way myself; know what I’d like to do?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Yeah. Take a fleet and go into the Dobun defenses. I could open them up like a can opener opens a can. I don’t care how strong they are.”

  “Sure: but what good would it do?”

  “None. That’s the hell of it.”

  “Well, I wish we had something to fight besides those damn’ Quiggies.” The Colonel fingered the flash pistol at his side. “I remember the fighting on Meizque. Now that was something!”

  The general agreed.

  “What do you think we’re going to do now?” the Colonel asked.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Council has about decided to abandon the planet. But where can we go? The whole system’s infected. God knows, maybe the whole universe!”

  The Colonel nodded. “Damned right. And wait’ll the people hear about tighter rations;—and—”

  The phone rang.

  “Hello? This is Snow . . . What? . . . Good God!” He sat back. “Yes. Yes. I’ll get them ready.”

  The Colonel raised his eyebrows as the general slammed down the phone.

  “You know our warehouse stock?”

  “Yes,” the Colonel said.

  “They got it. Last night.”

  The Colonel shrugged. “They can eat anything. No one’s fault, of course, about the warehouse. Not yours, not mine. Not when the Quiggies are everywhere.”

  The general became profane.

  “Well, well,” the Colonel said dryly. “Looky here.” Very slowly his hand inched toward his flash pistol; he slipped it out of the holster.

  Sitting on the window sill was a Quiggie, its big, brown eyes glaring at the Colonel. It hunched its muscles, bared its teeth, teeter-tottered on the ledge, and then leaped at his throat.

  The Colonel’s flash shot caught it in mid air, and it fell dead and broken.

  “At least there’s still one thing they’re not immune to,” said the Colonel.

  “It probably won’t be long, though,” the general said. “I wonder how that one got up here?”

  The Colonel shrugged. He walked to the window and looked down. “The crowd’s broke up. I guess there’s an army of them coming.”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “We’ll have to stay?” the Colonel asked.

  “No. Not you. Not unless you want to. I’ll stay, of course.”

  “I’ll stay,” the Colonel said. He closed his eyes and pictured an army of Quiggies, awkward, stumbling, clownish, and thoroughly vicious.

  He could see them fording rivers and rolling in living tidal waves across open plains. He could hear the sharp click, click, chomp of their jaws. He could imagine them creeping wet and shivering out of the North Pacific and then sliding and slipping across an iceburg after a walrus. He could see them dropping from jungle vines, and then looking hurt to find the ground so hard. He could see them daintily scratching blood out of their whiskers, and then continuing on, in their mad, deadly reelings, after everything that walked.

  The first time he had ever seen a Quiggie, the man who owned it had set it on a plank extended between two chairs. The plank was a foot wide, and it was all the Quiggie could do to keep its balance as it walked. He could imagine them veering and careening and bumping together as they crowded upon and stormed across the great bridge networks on earth, even there having trouble with their balance, and occasionally plunging off ludicrously into the water, only to land swimming awkwardly for shore. He could . . .

  The Colonel walked over and sat down. He inspected his gun. “For every one you kill, there’s always two more.”

  “Yeah.”

  The Colonel counted his clips. “Six left. Six times fifty is three hundred. Minus one. Two hundred and ninety-nine. I’ll get two hundred and ninety-nine of them.”

  “Damn the Dobuns,” the general said. “I can see ’em right now. Waiting to take the whole universe over, when there’s nothing left but them and the Quiggies.”

  Mr. Smith, the ex-plenipotentiary, ate his evening meal: two bites of fried kwiggi. He twisted uncomfortably in his long, woolen underwear. But he put up with the scratchiness of the rough wool, for, after all, it was cold on Dobu.

  He fiad a very rude and simple house. There were only necessities, and, by Empire standards, it left something to be desired.

  He was waiting for Znathao to send his son over; Mr. Smith was supposed to give the son a lecture on social living and tradition. Mr. Smith was acknowledged to be the wisest man in the whole village, and, as such, performed these little services.

  The son arrived shortly.

  “Please sit down,” said Mr. Smith.

  The boy sat down, uncomfortably.

  “Ah,” Mr. Smith said. “Ah. Your father tells me you put the male kwiggi in with the female again today.”

  “Yes,” the boy said defiantly, “I did.”

  “Well,” Mr. Smith said, “you’ll j
ust have to drown the little ones when they’re born.”

  “I won’t.”

  The refusal went deep into the bed rock of Mr. Smith’s society. “Why,” he said, “if you let kwiggis breed, pretty soon we’d have all we wanted to eat, and how would you like that, then, to be a glutton?”

  “I’d like it.”

  Mr. Smith sighed. He peered at the lad myopically. But his shock was not as severe as that a traditionalist would have felt, for he had brought back some books on Cultures from his trading trip, and he realized that some people can never adjust to their own society. It was in the natural order of things.

  “You’ve got the wrong attitude,” he said.

  He wished the Empire would hurry up and lift the quarantine. When they did, the Dobuns could send their misfits, like this boy, to them.

  “Look, son,” he said. “Promise me something.”

  “I don’t promise nothing.”

  “Look. You’d like to go to a place where you could eat all you want, wouldn’t you? Where you’d have plenty of everything?”

  “. . . Gee . . . Yes.”

  “Well,” Mr. Smith said. “There is such a place. They don’t think it’s immoral to eat and eat.”

  He wished he had known that when their first ship, the Starflight, had landed. If the Dobuns had been able to understand the crew, the Dobuns would have given them food. But, Mr. Smith asked himself, who’d have thought they’d starve to death so soon? He shuddered. Even dead, they’d looked disgustingly fat.

  “I’ve been there,” he said. “And you could go, too. No. You can go. Very soon, now.”

  Surely, he thought, they’d lift the quarantine very shortly now. There hadn’t been an Empire ship at Valten 6 for almost six months, and that was a good sign. They were about to relent.

  “If,” he said, “you’ll be good.”

  “. . . Well.”

  “We traded them some kwiggis,” Mr. Smith added as a clincher. “I’ll bet they’ve got lots, now. You could have a whole kwiggi to eat, if you wanted one.”