Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  A bullet whizzed past him, cutting the air spitefully; and then he heard the report of the gun. It shook him with terror. The grass was fortunately high enough to provide some cover, and it made Dinsmore’s shooting difficult.

  Two more shots screamed past him, and then Percy was in the rocky foothills where the were boulders to hide; he had to get away. And that meant going up the rocky face of the hill and exposing himself to Dinsmore’s fire.

  He scrambled up the scaly sides of the hill, zig-zagging desperately; and Dinsmore’s bullets slammed into the rock causing splintered fragments to carom wildly through the air.

  Percy reached the crest of the hill, panting and tired. He plunged the last ten feet in a wild dash, and then he was safe for a moment as the top of the hill was between him and Dinsmore. But it was only a momentary safety. He could hear the horses coming up the side of the mountain, and he heard Dinsmore and Cynthia shouting to them for even greater efforts.

  He gathered together what was left of his strength and dashed on across the plateau on top of the hill. Ahead he saw a narrow wooden bridge that had been built across a deep chasm. He headed for it with all his speed.

  Crossing it a few seconds later, Percy saw something that brought a surge of hope to his tired heart. The wooden beams on the far side of the bridge were splintered and sagging; the bridge trembled precariously from his comparatively light weight. It wouldn’t hold two horses with their riders, he thought exultantly.

  Cynthia and Dinsmore would wind up on the rocks two hundred feet below the bridge.

  And that was just fine, Percy thought grimly, as he raced across the bridge and headed for a clump of bushes a few hundred feet from the chasm. They were out to kill him without mercy. Why should he be different? Not only were they prepared to kill him as a wolf, they were ready to destroy him as a human being. Cynthia with her cynical idea of marriage; Dinsmore, equally cynical, moving in on her without qualms. They were a precious pair, destructive, amoral, vicious; and they wouldn’t be missed.

  Reaching the bushes, he turned to watch the bridge. Dinsmore and Cynthia came into sight then, spurring their horses on shouts and yells.

  Even at that distance, Percy could see the cruelty in their expressions, the wanton inhumanity in every line of their bodies.

  And he knew then, somewhat sorrowfully, that he couldn’t go through with his plan. He couldn’t let them die. They might be selfish, inhuman, and vicious; but that didn’t give him the right to act that way also. An honest man did what was right, because of his convictions; not what was wrong because others behaved wrongly.

  Percy knew he had to stop them from crossing the bridge. He trotted out from the bushes and ran forward, barking wildly.

  DINSMORE pumped a shot at him; Cynthia squealed with excitement and anticipation.

  Percy flattened himself on his belly with the slim hope of providing a less easy target, and continued to bark a warning at the onrushing horses.

  But his efforts were unavailing. Seeing that they weren’t stopping, Percy dashed onto the creaking bridge, hurling himself at the horses’ churning hooves. He hoped to frighten them into turning back, but they were caught with the passion and anger of their riders by now and nothing but a solid stone wall could stop them.

  They thundered onto the weakened bridge, and the supports shuddered once and then snapped with an ominous roar.

  Percy wheeled with desperate speed and dashed up the collapsing bridge. He heard a hoarse bellow from Dinsmore and a scream from Cynthia, and they merged with the bleating cries from the horses and the rendering noise from the bridge timbers,

  Percy’s hind legs found a firm support, and he put all his strength into one giant leap that carried him off the bridge and up to the edge of the chasm. His front paws caught the ground, and his rear paws clawed at the side of the canyon frantically, and then he got up and over and onto level earth. He turned and looked over the edge of the precipice; two horses and two riders lay motionless on the rocky ground far below, their bodies intertangled with the wreckage of the bridge.

  He turned away sorrowfully, tiredly, and then his ears pricked up as he heard a light, mocking laugh. Wheeling toward the sound he saw a lean, dark-haired young man sauntering toward him from the edge of the woods. The young man wore a corduroy jacket with tweed trousers, and carried a haversack on his back. He swung a gnarled stick jauntily as he approached Percy. There was the look of the open fields about him, but his eyes were odd; they were the eyes of a devil or saint. Percy recognized him then; he was the Mr.

  Black he had met in the taproom such a seemingly long, long time ago.

  “Well, let us see what you did with your freedom,” Mr. Black said in a bantering tone. “Have you used it wisely? Are you free and happy now? No, I didn’t think so.” Mr. Black stared down at Percy and a small disappointed smile lurked about the corners of his mouth. “You might have been free if you hadn’t tried to stop them from dying. But your conscience got the better of you. You are still helplessly bound by the stifling coils of decency. I see no hope for you at all. Still, I had to try you out. Sometimes my little experiments work very well. Other times they are shockingly disappointing.” He sighed and waved his stick at Percy, and Percy suddenly found himself on his hands and knees, back to his normal self again. Rather wearily he got to his feet and dusted off his trousers.

  “Why did you choose me?” he asked.

  Mr. Black shrugged. “Experience has taught me that no one is quite so evil, as a once-good man. I thought you might be developed into something quite spectacular. Even a werewolf, with luck.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh, come now. Let’s don’t be silly. You know well enough who I am. You won’t admit it, and neither will your scientists or philosophers. Even your churches are beginning to deny my existence. That only makes my work easier.”

  Percy stared into deep mocking eyes—those eyes of a saint or a devil—and knew with whom he was dealing.

  “That’s better,” Mr. Black said. “Goodby my friend. You have some happiness ahead of you, I think. It won’t come easy, but it may come if you work at it.”

  He waved genially to Percy and strolled back to the woods, and his thin lithe figure was soon lost among the trees.

  Percy stood alone in the suddenly chill air, shaken and frightened. Then he thought of Elma and squared his shoulders resolutely and started out on the long trip to her.

  THE SECRET OF JOHN MARSH

  First published in the September 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  Sometimes a wife can get on your nerves. But John Marsh knew how he could get away. What he didn’t know was how to get back . . .

  TROUBLE, John Marsh thought, as he came down the stairs that morning and saw his wife in the dining room. Irene didn’t join him for breakfast unless she had a reason—and such reasons usually meant—trouble.

  For an instant he thought of his secret, as he usually did when life got unpleasant, and then, feeling slightly, better, he walked into the room.

  “Good morning,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Good morning, John,” she said. She didn’t withdraw from him, but he always got the impression that she might at any moment. It was something about the way she held her shoulders, he had decided a long time ago.

  He sat down facing her and spread his napkin. “Looks like a nice day,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The early Spring sunlight that streamed through the windows was very flattering to his wife’s blonde loveliness. She was a slim, petite woman with deep violet eyes and features as delicately wrought as a fine work of art. Her blue silk house coat was knotted snugly about her slender waist, and her make-up and hair were in perfect order. John Marsh had never seen her mussed up or disarranged in the nine years of their marriage.

  She was always cool, immaculate, and self-controlled and, while she’d never said so, he knew that she was faintly contemptuous of people who let themselves be dominated b
y passionate emotions.

  They had no children.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Yes, dear.”

  He watched her as she poured, noting with objective interest the turn of her wrist and the way she sat in her chair, erect and yet graceful.

  A small resentment tugged at him. She did very little but take care of her own body, so it wasn’t surprising that-she was always such a picture of charm. The money she spent every week on beauty care and massages would have fed a normal family for the same length of time.

  “John, there’s something I wish to talk to you about,” she said, as he took the cup of coffee from her hand.

  “Yes, dear?” Here it came.

  “The Prescotts have a gardener this year,” she said.

  THE PRESCOTTS lived across the street from them in the same sort of smart suburban home. They seemed to be pleasant people. Jim Prescott was in banking.

  “Yes?” he said, glancing inquiringly at his wife.

  “Well, don’t you see? You simply can’t take care of the lawn yourself this summer.”

  “But, dear, I enjoy taking care of the lawn. It’s the only exercise I get.”

  “That’s because you have that odd idea about golf.”

  John was accustomed to his wife’s truly spectacular conversational agility, and the gazelle-like speed with which she could dodge the point of an argument. He sighed and put down his fork. “I don’t play golf, dear, because I can’t afford greens-fees and locker room expenses every week.”

  “You never think of me. How can I live here at all if everyone knows you have to, slave over your own yard just to save a few pennies?”

  John Marsh began his breakfast and let his wife continue talking. He knew there was no point in the argument. Irene would win, as she always did, because John didn’t care enough to put up a fight. Something kept him going, through the motions of being a dutiful husband, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Perhaps it was because of his secret, which, even his wife, for all her sharp-eyed acumen, hadn’t guessed. The secret was downstairs in his workshop, securely protected by a locked door at all times? John turned his mind to it at times like this when his wife was goading him on toward some pointless extravagance, or when life was sterile and unrewarding.

  The secret was his sanctuary.

  “I have to be running along,” he said.

  “And you’ll see about the gardener?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  His day was exacting and tiring. He worked for an advertising firm, as an account executive, and that morning there were copy conferences, then lunch with a petulant client, and finally a number of niggling details to take care of in the afternoon. By the time he caught his train that evening, he was too tired to read the paper. He sat looking out the window and wondering why all human beings seemed to get caught in this eternal rat race. It was run, run, run all the time, and in the end you wound up pretty much where you’d started.

  The maid let him in and told him that Mrs. Marsh had phoned to say she was staying at the club for dinner. There was a bridge tournament with play scheduled for later in the evening.

  AFTER HIS own solitary dinner, John smoked a cigar and glanced through the paper. He was feeling better now. The house was quiet, and soon he’d change into his work clothes, light his pipe and go downstairs.

  But he was wearier than he thought. He closed his eyes for a second and promptly fell asleep. The sound of a key in the front door waked him, and when he looked up, he saw Irene letting herself in. She came into the living-room and put her mink jacket neatly across the arm. of a chair. Smiling impersonally at him she sat down.

  “Busy day?”

  “So-so.”

  “Did you see about the gardener?”

  That had slipped his mind. “No, but I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

  “I hope you’re not thinking I’ll forget about it,” she said.

  He knew from the faintly blurred quality of her voice that she’d been drinking. That had been happening regularly of late. He could tell from the bar bills from the club.

  “No, I’m sure you wouldn’t,” he said. He glanced at his watch, saw that it was ten-thirty and felt cheated. The time he might have spent in the workshop was wasted. But perhaps he could salvage an hour or so.

  “I think I’ll putter around the workshop a bit before I turn in,” he said.

  “Don’t be late,” she said absently. She had picked up the paper and was reading it, but suddenly she paused and looked at him with an odd expression. “What are you working on down there? It must be fascinating.”

  He smiled; but his heart was hammering loudly. She must never learn of his secret. The thought of sharing that with her was somehow obscene. “Just tinkering,” he said.

  “But you must tinker with something.”

  “It’s nothing you’d be interested in.”

  “I suppose,” she said, seeming to lose interest. “Things mechanical leave me rather cold.”

  He watched her as she skimmed the news, her selfish but exquisite little face blandly contented. Yes, he thought, mechanical things aren’t the only ones that leave you cold. Anything warm or human or beautiful also leaves you cold. Nothing excites you but the pleasure of pampering and feeding your smooth greedy body.

  John wondered at his sudden resentment and decided that her attempt to pry into his workshop had caused this reaction. Now that she had subtly threatened his secret, he could feel all his subconscious anger at her foaming to the surface of his mind.

  “I thought you were going downstairs,” she said, turning a page.

  “I am,” he stood up. “See you in the morning.”

  “Night.”

  HE WENT into the dark kitchen, opened the door to the basement and went downstairs. His workshop door was constructed of heavy timber, with special locks on both sides. He opened it now, snapped on the powerful overhead light and closed the door behind him. But didn’t lock it because he didn’t intend to work very long.

  Almost immediately, he began to feel better.

  The room was small, clean, comfortable, without windows, but with a tiny blower fan connected with an

  air-duct to keep the atmosphere fresh. There was a long work-bench, equipped with vises, lathes, and drills, a shelf of books against one wall, and chests of fine, well-oiled tools against another.

  John sat on a stool before the work bench and gazed in contentment upon the slender shining object which was mounted there on a special stand. This was his secret, his symbol of peace and harmony.

  He had worked on it for several years now, shaping it with his heart and mind, as well as with his hands. And yet, despite the honesty and intensity of his effort, he knew he could hardly hope to succeed, and that if people knew what he was doing, they would probably call him a fool.

  For John Marsh was building a space ship . . .

  A model, of course, it was about two feet long and six inches wide, with a graceful, bullet-shaped body, and fins that flared out excitingly beyond the jet nacelles that bulged from the tail.

  John Marsh was literally in love with space. The books on his shelves; the well-worn works of Einstein and Whitehead, had taught him something of its nature; but his love was pure and ideal, independent of knowledge of its object.

  He loved the idea-of space. Sometimes when he retreated from Irene, he could almost feel that he was in space, that he had joined its vastness, was part of its peace and harmony.

  The theories of the great scientists weren’t completely clear to him, but he read and reread their books, taking from their vaulting imaginations the same pleasure a music-lover might find in Beethoven or Bach.

  And this was the secret of John Marsh. He loved the thought of the vast-singing silences of space, and the harmony of planets and stars wheeling in their classic, inevitable patterns, locked together forever by the invisible bonds of gravity.

  His first love had been astronomy, then had come physics, and event
ually the daring theories of the greatest scientists. Finally, in an attempt to get closer to the thing he loved, he began to build a model space ship. He had dug into the subject of metals, the stresses likely to be produced by light-like speeds, and then, forced on inevitably by the demands of his dream, he had studied meteor and asteroid patterns, the natures of absolute zero and the Heaviside layer until he felt he was ready to build his ship. He didn’t care about the time, of course.

  NOW, THE time to test his ship was almost at hand. It could navigate space, John felt in his heart. And its radio signal would tell him what it encountered out in the great reaches where his own heart longed to live.

  He had spent a great deal of time choosing the destination. Finally, he had selected a tiny area of Venus, which his investigation led him to think was salubrious and pleasant. Because, if this model worked, John Marsh was going to build a great ship, one that would carry him—

  Suddenly, he felt a draft on his neck. Turning, he saw Irene standing in the open doorway behind him, a highball glass in her hand. He tried to hide the space ship with his body, but she had already seen it. “Goodness, what’s that?” she said. He tried to hold back his anger.

  “Something I’m building,” he said.

  “Well, I can see that. It looks like one of those ships you see in science-fiction magazines.” She laughed. “Is it a space ship, John?”

  “Yes, it’s the model of a space ship,” he said slowly.

  “Oh, John,” she laughed. She wandered to the bookshelf and began reading the titles aloud in gently mocking accents. “My, how smart you are,” she said. “I had no idea you were interested in such things.”