Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  A moment later, opening the door, she said, “Get in. I’m Julia.”

  “I’m Walt Johnson,” he said, flexing his hands. “Let’s go someplace where we can be alone.”

  “Well,” she said. “It’s good to see you, Walt.” She extended her hand.

  He had sealed off his thoughts. His hand was moist in hers; it responded uncertainly to her warm pressure. She drew him inside. She caught a wisp of thought that he was not quite able to conceal. “Back to the hotel,” she told the driver.

  Now I’m sure, she thought, that he really tried to teleport me out of my hotel room. I wonder why he wanted to? Why should he want to kill me?

  I’ll have to keep an eye on him. But he’s such a baby. He can’t even control his emotions.

  “Your clothing,” she said, studying him with professional concern, “is all wrong. We’ll just have to get some more. Some to fit your personality better. I’ll do that tomorrow.”

  Anger crossed his face. He rubbed his hand over his knee and looked down at his trousers. “I like them,” he said in a surly voice.

  She was not afraid of him. She had no need to be. He was such an innocent!

  Why, she thought, he doesn’t seem to have any information to draw on hardly at all; he’ll be harmless as long as I wish him so.

  “I’m a Lyrian traitor, too,” he said.

  “You are?”

  His accent. She could not remember any accent on Earth like that. He had not learned his English from an earthman. A Lyrian had taught him?

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  Boy! she thought. Is his conversation naive! Keep him talking, girl!

  She studied his face. She thought: Get ’em young and raise ’em to suit yourself, Julia.

  SHE added up the facts she had already discovered. He was, like herself, a human mutant. (I must check, she thought, to see if there were any human babies missing during the last flying saucer scare twenty-four years ago, the year I was born.) The mutants had been collected at birth, but the collectors had overlooked her. Walt had traveled here from (where? Mars? Luna?) in order to rectify this oversight by putting her out of the way. Why? Obviously he owed allegiance to the collectors (Lyrians?) from whom he had probably learned—among other things—his atrocious accent. He was—

  She had ignored his question, so he asked another one. “Where is the war?”

  “War?” Julia repeated. She frowned delicately. “There’s no war. Not right now. The international situation is getting better, I think.” War? she asked herself. He’s got a lot of misinformation about us.

  She kept trying to see into the physical structure of his brain. Ah, she thought, yes. Right there—

  A bridge there, all right.

  It’s probably an easy mutation, she thought. Probably latent in everyone’s genes. The next development of man? (But how many centuries will it take for it to come out again?) How did the collectors produce the mutation in the first place—assuming they did produce (as well as harvest) it?

  Could, she thought, a surgeon—operate, as it were—on an adult brain to produce the bridge?. . . I’ll have to take up surgery. A few months to learn technique. I think I could. It’s easy to heal, because of the subconscious pattern (the cellular pattern?) but to—operate—to change—to build into a different structure, so that would require experiments and study, perhaps actual knife work . . .

  “There has to be a war,” Walt said. “Forential told us there was.”

  “There isn’t. Not now.” Forential? A non-human? An alien?

  “He told us,” Walt said.

  “He lied,” Julia said.

  “He doesn’t lie.”

  Julia shrugged. Walt is a loyal follower, she thought. “There’s no war. Maybe he meant there would be one shortly; maybe it was a premature announcement.” Lord! do these aliens have some way of prodding the Russian bear? she thought. Or how the devil are they—Forentials, wherever they are—thinking of starting a war?

  Walt refused to consider her denial. He did not look her in the face. “I like you,” he said. He was desperate to change the subject. “Your smile. You’re so . . . so . . .” nice. He thought the last word; he took the risk that she might peep his other thoughts. He was almost certain she could not; he hoped to peep hers if she thought a reply. Forential couldn’t be a liar!

  Julia knew they were both incorrect: his statement and his conviction. But she liked to hear him say he liked her. I guess, she thought, he’s trying to lull my suspicions. Maybe I better lull his, too . . .

  She smiled sweetly.

  “You see, I’ve never seen a Lyrian female before,” Walt said. “. . . except one on the ship just the other day; but just one, before.”

  Is Lyria supposed to be a planet? she thought to herself. “You’ve never been to Lyria, then, have you?”

  “. . . we were very young when we left.”

  He doesn’t even know he’s a native of Earth! Julia thought. “You know,” she said, “I’ll bet I know more about you than you think I do.”

  That brought a fear reaction from Walt.

  You don’t need to be afraid of me, Julia thought soothingly.

  (She had scarcely half an hour left before the aliens shut off the big transmitter.)

  “How soon . . . When will we get to the hotel?”

  “Soon, now,” Julia said.

  “We’ll be alone?” Walt said.

  “We’ll have a chance to talk; there are a lot of things for us to talk about.”

  “Yes,” he said. He began to rub his hands over one another. His growing excitement and his hatred bubbled just below the surface of his mind; Julia could feel the emotions without him being aware that she could.

  My, she thought. He’s going to take a lot of re-educating before he makes a very good husband.

  WHEN they entered the hotel room, Walt found his throat expanding with excitement.

  Forential, he thought, will be pleased that I have killed her in secret. No one on Earth will ever know who she was killed by. When she is dead, I can slip out of the hotel and . . . and invisible, I can steal food and drink and stay in empty rooms until the invasion comes; and when it does, then I can start teleporting earthlings and slaying them with my hands, and . . . She doesn’t suspect, he thought, that I am going to kill her in just a moment.

  He complimented himself on how cleverly he had concealed his intentions.

  Covertly he surveyed the room. The pitcher on the table? The chair? What with? A sudden numbing blow—like the blow Calvin delivered to John. Then, afterwards, hands, knees, fingers—and she will be dead.

  He saw himself rising triumphant from her still body. Saw Forential (when, later, he heard of it) smiling approval, saw his mates listening awe struck . . . His breath trembled in his throat; his arms ached to be moving.

  “Won’t you sit down?” she said.

  I will wait until she is off guard, he thought. Smiling in anticipation, he sat down.

  . . . she doesn’t, he thought, seem like a traitor. Such bright, clear eyes. She seems, so nice, so trusting, so innocent. It was foolish to have been afraid of meeting her. She’s small and harmless. I wish she weren’t a traitor; maybe—

  But Forential knows.

  (How about the war? Why did Forential say there was a war?)

  Forential knows. He said to kill her.

  Julia, studying him with faint amusement, said “Have you looked at your brain? I have a picture of a human brain here. I want to show you how alike they are.”

  “Lyrians have a superficial resemblance to earthlings.”

  “Look at this. Very similar. The same, almost.”

  Walt shifted uneasily. Her eyes did not move from his face. What was she getting at?

  “I wonder,” she said, “why we . . . Lyrians . . . have had certain powers given to us just recently? Why, before, we were no different than earthlings?”

  Walt frowned. He didn’t want to think about it. He had a job to do.<
br />
  “There’s a—call it—a bridge in our minds. It’s just recently been closed.”

  (It was ten minutes before the larger transmitter was to be turned off for twelve hours.)

  Walt decided on the pitcher. The answer to her question was suddenly obvious. “That means we’re ready to invade.”

  She watched him very closely. Her fingers tapped her knee. “. . . you said you were on a ship?”

  It’s almost time to kill her, he thought. I’m sorry, he wanted to say: but I really must. “Yes. A space station.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Twenty-seven; twenty-eight, counting me.”

  “That’s not many. Not enough.” She bent forward. “You said you saw a Lyrian female on the ship. I think there’s another group of Lyrians on the ship. I think they’re going to invade first. That’s the war your group is supposed to come in on the end of. You’re going to be used as a clean-up group.”

  “Forential would have told us,” Walt said.

  “The question is: Why didn’t he tell you?”

  Walt realized how terribly sly and dangerous she was. She was too smart to be harmless. Suppose she should warn—but who could she warn? Earthlings? Could they get their atom bombs ready?

  He felt his skin prickle. Look behind you! he thought to her. It had worked with the officer; it worked with her.

  She turned.

  Savagely, he grasped the pitcher with the mental fingers of teleportation. He hurled it as hard as he could at the back of her head.

  JULIA was ready for the blow. She had the molecules of the pitcher displaced before it was half way to her. It passed through her body easily and smashed against the far wall.

  She turned quickly enough to avoid Walt’s rush.

  On her feet now, she wavered into partial displacement.

  Snarling harshly, he advanced on her.

  (There was less than five minutes remaining. One of the aliens hovered at the larger transmitter.)

  He tried to grab her. His hand passed through her body.

  She smiled.

  He tried to adjust to her level of displacement. He choked. Quickly he realized what was wrong; he rectified the air so he could breathe. She changed to normal just as he sprang. He hurtled through her as through the air itself.

  She turned to face him. He was panting. “When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to throw rocks when I got mad.”

  Damn you! His fists clenched. He towered over her.

  She did not have any more time to waste with him. ‘That means,’ he had said, ‘we’re ready to invade.’

  How much time did she have? The full extent of the menace was gradually taking form in her mind. With an army of indoctrinated mutants . . . Invasion! Murder! Destruction! For an instant she wanted to collapse and cry like a frightened little girl.

  What am I going to do? what am I going to do? what am I going to do? she thought frantically.

  I’ve got to see someone! I’ve got to convince someone—I’ve got to show people my mutant powers: they’ll have to believe me! The President, the Army . . .

  How much time?

  She made a distortion field. Invisible, she rushed to the door. She paused, returned for her handbag. Holding it, she passed through the door.

  I haven’t got time to beat reason into his head, she thought. I’ll tend to him later.

  Half way down the stairs, she suddenly became visible.

  CHAPTER VII

  OH, damn! she thought. This happened once before. How long will it last this time?

  A great chill exploded in her body.

  . . . suppose—?

  Now she ran in earnest. Her legs moved like pistons. The few patrons in the lobby glanced up in disapproval. At the door she almost bowled over a young man with a brown sack full of quarts of beer.

  Once in the street, she stopped and darted frightened glances about her. It was growing dark. Neon winked. The street was unnatural and brittle under the artificial lights. Well dressed women, serious and unsmiling (serenely confident that they were being mistaken for movie stars) walked beside athletic escorts; sales girls and office clerks window shopped intently.

  At the curb Julia almost danced with nervousness.

  He can come upon me invisible! she thought. He can throw things! He can—! I can’t even tell when he’s near me!

  She waved desperately for a cab.

  “Cab! Cab! Taxi!”

  It receded toward Vine Street.

  Even now he’s coming out of the hotel! she thought. Or he sees me from the Window!. . . I can’t wait here; I’ll have to run; I’ll . . .

  A chartreuse convertible with its top up drew to a stop in front of her. The driver opened the door by pressing a button on the dash. The upholstery was made of tiger skin. He smiled nervously. “Going down this way?”

  She hesitated only an instant. “My God, yes!” she said.

  “Get in.”

  She got in and slammed the door. “Let’s go! mister.”

  “When you’re in a hurry, these cabs . . . you never can find one.”

  He wore a sports jacket, most of which was canary yellow. He had thin, delicate hands; his face was lean and sunless; his eyes were sad and misunderstood. The hands threaded the convertible into traffic.

  Julia fidgeted. She kept glancing behind her.

  “Somebody following you?”

  Julia shuddered. “I hope not.”

  The driver waited. Julia did not amplify; she was half turned now, so she could see out the rear window.

  “I had to talk to someone,” the driver said apologetically. “I was driving along, and suddenly I had to talk to someone. You know how it is?. . . Then there you were; you seemed in such a hurry.”

  “I’m sure glad you stopped, mister!”

  “I mean,” the driver said intently, “I get wanting to talk. My name’s Green. You may have heard of me. I produce pictures—motion pictures. I’m a producer.”

  How can I ever get away from Walt! Julia thought. He can run me down whenever he wants to!

  “Nobody hears of producers,” the driver said. “That’s all right with me. Let other people take the credit. I don’t like to call attention to myself.” He brought out a monogrammed cigarette case and flicked it open. “Cigarette?”

  “No, no, thank you.” Julia twisted at the strap of her handbag.

  “Who can you talk to, I mean really? All they’re after is your money . . . I’ll tell you what I really want. I want a farm—no, don’t laugh: it’s the truth—a little piece of land. I want to settle down, you know. Most people don’t understand how it is.” He gazed sadly down Hollywood Boulevard. “To be famous, I mean.”

  JULIA was scarcely listening. She bit her lip.

  “My wife, now, she’s an actress. In her next picture, she opens a beer can with her teeth. Not a bottle; anyone can open a bottle. She doesn’t understand me. She’s an actress.” One of his delicate hands moved over the tiger skin toward Julia. “I’d like—sometimes to get away. Go away for a weekend. Some place where they’d never heard of A. P. Green, the big producer. You know. I wish—I honestly wish I weren’t—some times.”

  The hand touched Julia’s dress. She was too preoccupied to notice.

  “. . . you have an interesting face. It’s very, very expressive. I want to give you my card. I want you to come in for a test.”

  Julia moved away from him. All she could think about was Walt. Could he be in that car just behind? “. . . please . . .” she said vaguely in protest.

  He blinked his eyes; the hand retreated a few inches. “I’ve never talked to anyone like this before,” he said. “But your face, your eyes . . . When I saw you standing there—saw you were running from something—I knew you’d understand.”

  Julia swallowed stiffly. She pivoted to face him. “Listen mister. I need help. Would you drive me into L. A.? Fast, mister?”

  He was hurt. He drew back. “I thought we could go . . . I know a
little place . . . They know me there; we could eat, and—” He moved one hand pathetically.

  Julia felt a flutter of thought. (There was still a tiny bit of residual power remaining; it was fading fast.) Walt was starting after her!

  “Mister, for God’s sake, can you drive me into L. A.? I’ve got to get some money out of the all-night bank!”

  “. . . yes, of course, yes.” He moved his lips without words. “I thought you’d understand. Your face . . . Nobody does, really. How it is, I mean.”

  “Please hurry,” she said. If I can just get a car before Walt catches me, she thought. That’s the only way I can keep away from him. I’ve got to keep moving until I get my powers back; or until . . . until . . . what? Her lower lip trembled. She was cold and numb. Hurry! she wanted to shriek.

  FOR a full minute Walt did not realize she was gone. When he did, he was relieved. He found himself trembling. Where did that demon go? Thank God she’s gone; I—!

  The thought of her, diminutive and infinitely superior, made him cringe. He was afraid of her. He wanted to cry.

  Forential understands, Walt thought. If he were here now, he’d understand. He’d . . . he’d tell me what to do.

  Walt stared at the back of his hand.

  Steady, he thought, steady. Try to relax. The shock . . . it’s not fair . . . she knows so much . . .

  Study the room; think of something else. The ship; I’d like to see Calvin’s face again . . . There’s my face—in the mirror. It looks all right.

  Forential will be angry. I shouldn’t have let her get away. I should have—what should I have done? Could I have?

  I could have . . .

  He shook his head. No: that wouldn’t have fooled her either.

  Forential, what am I going to do now?

  Walt sat down. He tried to think things out. I’m no good, he thought. The only thing I’m good for is to kill earthlings. I ought to be ashamed of myself.

  . . . I’m alone, he thought. Things are going all wrong.

  I’ve . . . I’ve got to learn to depend on myself.

  I’ve always depended too much on Forential.

  I’ve always been told what to do, he thought. It’s time for me to begin telling myself what to do.