Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  Night was endless. And then false dawn, gray and angry with snow clouds. And then the faint pink of real dawn, making her mouth feel dry and her head feel heavy.

  Don roused, and after a while he consulted a map. “Turn right. The next road.”

  Slowly the world around them—flowing past them—awakened. They skirted a town.

  “. . . there’s an odd red,” Don said. “On that boy’s cap, Robin.”

  Bettyann stared eagerly through the window. The boy, pumping his bicycle, his breath steam, sailed a newspaper away in an arching curve to a porch, and Bettyann remembered how it was to hear the thump of a morning paper against the side of the house, when you were still half asleep, and it was winter outside.

  Suddenly fully awake, Don said, “They don’t see much, do they? Were you able to show them anything?”

  “. . . a little,” Bettyann said.

  “Their eyes are different from ours, I think. It must have been difficult,” Don said.

  Still looking out the window, she wanted to explain something of how she felt. “Old man Starke sold his hardware store and put all his affairs in order because the doctor told him he had cancer and was going to die before summer.”

  Don smiled distantly. “You can tell us very much about the natives. Believe me, I’m sure we shall all enjoy listening to your experiences.”

  There was not indifference in his voice; indifference was too easy a word for it. It was as if he were agreeing politely to something he did not quite understand; or as if he thought a great fuss were being made over a trifle. But he did not know old man Starke, did not know that old man Starke kept candy suckers behind the counter to give to children when their parents made purchases. (To be sure, it was good business: but there was more than good business in his smile, and the candy was something more than good business, too: it was more complex than good business.) And she could remember the smile and the voice (where was the cancer? in the throat?) saying, “My, how she’s grown, Mr. Seldon, and I think I have just the thing for her sweet tooth today.” (Always as if this generosity were not his usual practice, but something highly special just for you.) And on that occasion, he waved the not-yet-wrapped paintbrush (Daddy Dave bought it to paint the sink drainboard with, and then reconsidering called in Mr. Olson to do the job instead), and the hardware store smell of oil and new iron, or how new iron should smell. But that was something Don could not know. And never having experienced, might not feel as she felt . . .

  “Turn here,” Don said. “We go straight ahead.”

  The houses began to fall away to be replaced by fields. The rocky ground seemed to protest cultivation. Everything was dead, and rich dirt showed through rifts in the snow. The air was crisp, and the sun was hard and bright.

  The car purred on. A railway line circled in to parallel the road, and a train puffed at the grade. The train fell behind the car, and after a bit, Bettyann heard it whistle sadly for a crossing.

  “Tell me about the planets,” Bettyann said. “Tell me what I’m going to see.”

  “There’s so much . . .”

  “I’d like to paint. What can I paint?”

  “Paint? Well, there’s Oliki. It’s a really beautiful blue lake.”

  “I’d like to paint something like that field there, I think,” Bettyann said.

  “But isn’t it a bit colorless, don’t you think?” Don said, and there was honest surprise in his voice, as if it had never occurred to him to paint a field.

  “I guess you’ve seen so many things . . . Yes, I guess it is. But don’t you see how, in spite of all the rocks and the snow, how everything is all huddled up, waiting to come alive?” Robin said helpfully, “Yes, that’s a fact, all right.”

  And Don said, “Left, here.”

  They drove for several miles in silence. They came to a rabbling, hieh-sided bridge over an icebound creek (the ice above the center current was no thicker than scum). The boards of the bridge rattled under the weight of the car.

  Once across it, Robin swung the car onto a fisherman’s path. The path was closely pressed by dead tree branches which clawed at the metal roof with brittle fingers.

  “We won’t need the car any more,” Don said. “We can leave it here.”

  Robin jolted the car to a halt, and the three of them got out, and Robin said, “You were right, Don. No one’s come by. It was a safe place.”

  The ship rested thirty or forty yards into the forest. There was a dead, charred area around it.

  “Well, can you change now, all right, Bettyann?” Robin said.

  “I think I can,” Bettyann said. She let her form waver and chance, and now it was easier, and suddenly compelled to exact their approval, she felt of the power in the compartment and began to work with it.

  “A little tree!” Don cried happily. “A little tree, Robin! Look how pretty the leaves are! She’s a very good tree!”

  (The air was chill. The sun, bright through hazy clouds.)

  “She learns quickly,” Robin said.

  She changed again, this time not into anything that she knew, but as her feelings guided her.

  Don stared deep into the grayness that had been, a moment before, a tiny tree in bright, full foliage, and then he turned away shuddering. “That isn’t very pretty, whatever it is,” he said.

  She let her body relax into her real form, the form into which she belonged, and for a single instant, she seemed too tightly held and oddly uncomfortable, and Earth words came difficulty from her new mouth, and she could not yet think to them, for she knew no language, and she realized that, on the long drive, they had been thinking in conversation beyond her. She said, “It was . . . sadness, I guess you’d say. How I feel about leaving.”

  “We’d better get in the ship now,” Robin said.

  And Don helped her up.

  When they were in the air, looking down at the trees falling away and backward, Don said, “You must be very excited. You have a great deal to look forward to.”

  But her emotions, in the moment of severance, were too great to permit an answer. She stood quiet and the window fogged with low clouds. Already the forest was lost in swirling grayness. And the ship increased speed. She was caught and held by the cold metal walls, and she wanted to pound them futilely with her fists. Home was far away below, far away, and farther even as she thought, and farther still, and dwindling, dwindling, beyond her grasp.

  “The Big Ship .is not far off the coast of Mexico,” Robin said. “We will he there soon.”

  Bettyann wanted to hold on to something, for she was sick with movement. It will pass, she told herself, it will pass. She thought of the stars, and of the body, her body, and the alien lips moved, and she thought: These are my people.

  The ship rose. It turned slowly toward the West. And time passed, little or great, and the clouds lay behind them, the Great Lakes below, like fingers curled up from behind the horizon.

  Then, after a while, new fields and new forests, new streams and wide plains (and a huge river gashing the red earth). And after that, shooting high, the young mountains with toothy sharp crags biting at storm clouds that were teasing their summits. And snow sparkled on the peaks.

  The ship quivered with flight and sang good-by to the land far below. (And now the West Coast below, which she saw for the first time, would never see again, and dawn was upon it.)

  “Tell me about the planets,” she pleaded. “Tell me quickly.”

  “You’ll be able to see for yourself shortly,” Don said.

  “But tell me a little. Right now. Please.”

  “Well, there are the orange mountains of Kenu.”

  “What are they like?” she asked intently, trying to hold all of her attention together on his words.

  “You’d just have to see them. We usually spend a whole day there.”

  “A. . . day?”

  “That’s not too long for the orange mountains,” Don said. “No,” Bettyann said. “I meant how could you really see everything in
a day?”

  “I don’t quite understand,” Don said.

  “I should like to know the orange mountains. Are there any streams there?”

  “. . . I can’t say about that. Are there, Robin?”

  Robin, at the controls, cleared his throat. “I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed.”

  “But the colors, don’t you see, Bettyann,” Don said. “The texture of the colors.”

  “That’s right,” Robin said. “The colors. .That’s the important thing . . .”

  Below lay the ocean, a tortured wash of deep green and gray: and white foam bounced like mad-dog slaver. The water changed to crystal sparkles and blue, deep blue, lighter blue, and then blue that was flat and waiting. A tiny steamer threw morning smoke. And night lay just ahead, for the ship outpaced the sun.

  “There’s always a great deal to see,” Don said suddenly. “There are many sights,” and Bettyann walked toward the rear of the ship.

  Don thought to Robin, “She is a strange one.”

  Robin peered down, and moonlight was upon the water. “There’s the Big Ship,” he said. He dipped the scout toward it. Ocean roared up. He steadied the scout under his hands. “The landing port’s open, I see,” Don remarked.

  Bettyann looked down at the silver ship below. It lay upon the waves and rolled gently with them, and the landing port gaped like a hungry mouth, and the ship was a sleek, waiting prison.

  If she were home now, she could tell Dave and Jane she had gotten sick at Smith and that she’d borrowed the money from June and hurried home because she was afraid to be sick among strangers. And then, after the letter came, after she had destroyed it, she could say she was well again and so back to Smith. She’d miss a week or so, but they’d let her back in after saying what a silly goose she’d been for not reporting to the dispensary instead of carrying a stomach-ache, that might have been appendicitis, halfway across the continent. It would be easy to pretend to be sick because she knew of her body now and she could counterfeit any symptom.

  And then she realized the wonderful thing she bore within herself. So far, in the few hours of knowledge, she had only scratched the-surface. What secrets were there? How much did she know that doctors never suspected? That artists never imagined? That . . . ? She thought of old man Starke, and what was the strange, rampant growth inside his body?

  Did she know?

  She became vastly excited at the thought of what it might mean to uncover the secret of herself. And now, for the first time, dimly but with overpowering certainty, she looked forward toward tomorrow knowing what her job would be and what her role was, and she was trembling.

  But it was too late.

  Below lay ocean in all directions, cutting her off from escape, and she looked at Don and Robin and felt a great sadness for them and for herself, and in all directions, bridgeless, the ocean rolled away to far horizons.

  And Robin settled the scout inside the mother ship and berthed it.

  Don walked back to her. “Do not cry,” he said. “We are here.” He smiled. “Let’s get out. We’re in the Big Ship. You’re really home. Ready to travel at last.”

  “We are?” she said.

  They climbed out into the huge hangar.

  “I’ll check the chart room before I close the port,” Robin said. “There may be another scout out.”

  Don bent to inspect a pitted place in the hull of the scout.

  After a moment, Robin came back. “No. They’re all in. I’ll close the port.”

  “I’ll tell Bettyann. She’ll want to watch the take-off from the chart room.”

  Robin’s feet pounded away. The port clanged shut. The feet came back. “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s funny. She was here a moment ago. Bettyann! Oh, Bettyann! . . . I can’t seem to find her . . . Bettyann!”

  “I know she’ll want to watch the take-off,” Robin said.

  “Bettyann!” Don called, his voice echoing away unanswered.

  Puzzled, they looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “Bettyann!” Don called, and, “Where the devil is she?” Robin said.

  And outside the mother ship the moon was low and the sea rolled lazily like an exhausted lover and the stars were far away in jet. Above the gentle sea, a lone, great bird flapped its powerful wings against the night.

  1952

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  Parr came to Earth as the advance guard for an invasion. His mission: to see that every person received a package that was being mailed—

  CHAPTER I

  A CANNONADE of shell fire met the silver listening post as it zipped across the moonlit desert. It twisted erratically, trying to dodge. Then a radar controlled gun chuckled to itself, and the listening post faltered in flight, slipped air, plunged sand ward.

  In the Advanceship, far above and to the west, one of the Knougs pressed a button and the listening post exploded in a white flare.

  Afterwards, no fragments could be found. The newspapers said the usual thing. The government issued the usual profession of disbelief—and finally wen the gunner became convinced of the usual explanation: he had tried to pot Venus.

  While on the Advanceship the Knougs continued to prepare for D-Day.

  CHAPTER II

  THREE days later, on D-Day minus thirty, the Advanceship began to move eastward, seeding down advancemen toward strategic centers in North America; Towns with big post offices.

  And then on over the Atlantic toward other continents.

  Parr was the first advanceman to land. The coat tails of his conservative double breasted suit fluttered gently as he fell; air, streaming by, fretted his hair. Except for the anti-grav pack strapped to his back, he could easily have been mistaken in a more probable setting for an Earthman.

  Minutes later his feet touched the ground with scarcely a jolt. He peeled out of the anti-grav pack, pushed the button on its disintegrator time fuse and dropped the pack. He lit a cigar and blew smoke toward the cold bright stars.

  He walked from the weedy lot to the nearest bus stop. No one else was waiting. Darkness had concealed his descent. He sat down, stared stolidly at the darkened filling station on the opposite corner.

  When he was halfway through the cigar the Los Angeles Red Bus came by and he stood up, boarded it, fumbled in his pocket for change.

  “Thirty cents, buddy,” the driver said.

  Still holding the cigar, Parr counted out two dimes and two nickles. He tried to hand the driver the coins, which were excellent imitations, as was his suit, his cigar, and all the rest of the Earth articles.

  “Put it in the box, buddy.”

  Parr obeyed.

  “Hey,” the driver said as Parr turned. “Your check.” The driver held out a strip of red paper.

  Parr took it.

  “No smokin’ on the bus, buddy.”

  Parr dropped the cigar and mashed it out. He shuffled down the aisle, sank into a seat and half closed his eyes.

  Furtively, then, he began to study the occupants—his first near-at-hand contact with the natives. At the same time he tried to form a mental liaison with some of the other advancemen.

  For a moment he thought he had one to the east, but there was a hazy swirl of interdiction that erased all contact.

  ABANDONING further attempts he tried to search out the frequencies of the minds about him. Once he managed to touch a series of thoughts innocently concerned with household details and with an overtone of mild and nameless anxiety. Aside from that he received nothing except the din of electronic impressions at the extreme lower end of his range.

  He half-turned to stare out of the window. The passing landscape was peaceful in starshine and the buildings stood proudly defenseless. In imagination he saw the illuminated, “You’ll-take-a-shine-to-this-fine-wine” sign hanging askew over a backdrop of smoking rubble. And it was delicious to know that this would be fit and proper.

  Although the preliminary intelligence report (based on nearly four years of pre
paratory scouting) contained no instance of Oholo activity on the planet, he listened, high up, on their frequencies, (particularly here, vulnerably near their own system it would be no fun fighting them.) He let his shoulders slump with relief, let the smile of satisfaction come. As reported, the frequencies were clear: Earth was, indeed, their blind flank.

  He closed his eyes, relaxed completely, took quite a joy in the knowledge that shortly Earth would be the lethal dagger pointed at the heart of the Oholo system.

  At the Beverly Hills transfer-for-Hollywood-the-film-capital-of-the-world Station, two drunks boarded the bus and settled in the rear, singing mournfully.

  Parr grew increasingly irritated by the delay. When the bus finally started, making the sharp turn from the lot and throwing his body to the right against the steel ledge of the window, he cursed under his breath.

  The dismal singing went on. It picked up telepathic overtones, and Parr gritted his teeth trying to block out the bubbling confusion that scattered from the drunken brain. He opened and closed his fists. Anger flared at him: the anger of impotence. For a moment, he dared to imagine the planet contaminated, the population quietly dead, the Knougs working from sheath hangers. Only for a second; but the brief thought was satisfying, even as he forced himself to agree with the strategy of the War Committee: which was to leave the planet as nearly unpoisoned as possible by even a minor land war.

  Finally the song bubbled to silence. Half an hour later the bus turned on Olive Street and tie gloomy Los Angeles buildings hovered at the sidewalks. It pulled n at the Olive Street entrance of the Hill Street Terminal and Parr got out.

  He walked out of the lot and started downhill toward the Biltmore Hotel.

  WHEN Parr awoke he knew that something had been added to Los Angeles during the night. He shivered involuntarily and tightened his thoughts down to the place where no fuzzy, side harmonics were possible.