“But it explains what’s happened,” Larry said.
“Hell, I can think of a dozen explanations,” Macklin said. “It’s just a question of guessing.”
“Okay, you give me one, not a dozen, but one explanation,” Larry said.
Macklin gnawed his lips and was silent.
“What can we do?” Valerie asked uneasily.
“Well, that’s something else again,” Larry said. “But we can’t think about it until we get my theory out of the pipe-dream class.”
“Pipe-dream?”
“Sure. You all miss the obvious point. The facts only fit five of us. Five of us have something in common. Macklin doesn’t support the theory. If he tested out we could assume I was right, and try to do something about it.”
“You mean there’s something to be done about it?”
“Yes, I think so,” Larry said.
“Well, get at it, for God’s sake,” Valerie cried shrilly.
But Larry shook his head. “Only if my theories fit all of us, only if we can know that what happened to five, also happened to six. Then the guess-work is cut way down. If we were all infected by strangers—then they almost must have been Martians.” He paused, then said quietly, “What about it, Macklin?”
Macklin stared at them, wetting his lips. “This is preposterous,” he said. “It’s full of guesses and maybes and perhaps. How do we know he’s right?”
The answer to that was so obvious that he gave no one the chance to supply it. “Sure, you think if I—if I just agree with all of you . . .”
“Not agree with us,” Larry said, shaking his head slowly. “We just want the truth.”
Macklin massaged his forehead with the tips of his fingers, and then squared his big shoulders. “I’ve told the truth,” he said loudly.
Everyone was silent, watching him.
“Why should I lie?” he yelled.
He got no answer.
The seconds passed slowly, squeezing themselves into history with painful deliberation. Macklin began to breathe very rapidly, his mouth hanging open like a man fighting for air in a smoke-filled room. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his fingers were trembling.
A minute went by and then Macklin wet his lips. “I—I met a man five years ago,” he said, in a low, shamed voice. “He helped me out of a bad spot. Okay, you’ve got the truth now. I stole money. I stole a helluva lot of it, because I’d made some bad investments and the bankers were going to wipe me out.” He rubbed his forehead, glaring at them defiantly. “This man made up my losses. I shouldn’t have let him, I know. It was all crazy. But J couldn’t stand to fail. Everyone would laugh . . .” He turned away from them, tears starting in his eyes. “They always laughed at me . . . my father, kids in school. I wasn’t a success—and I had to be, you see, because it hurt to be laughed at. Now you can laugh, you can—”
Valerie cut him off by impulsively kissing him on the cheek, and mussing up his hair. “You’re not really a bad guy,” she said, laughing. “You just take yourself too damn seriously.”
“I—I started to stutter a few months after this man left me,” Macklin said, dabbing at his eyes.
Everyone was grinning at him, even little Dickie and old Maria. He looked at them, sniffing, and then a sheepish smile appeared on his face. “Well, what’s so funny?” he said.
Everyone was grinning at him,
“I’ll be damned if I know,” Larry said. “My point is proven, but we’re still in a ghastly spot. But we’re all together now—maybe that’s what we’re smiling about.”
“You said you might do something,” Patience said.
Larry frowned slightly. “Yes, I’ve got an idea. Now listen.” . . .
That night as dinner-time approached Larry stationed himself at the revolving column which brought them their food. The others were in their rooms.
Larry stood quietly, trying not to think of what might happen if he had guessed wrong. There was no more time for speculation; this was a moment for action.
The column began to turn slowly, and he smelled the aroma of their dinner. When the column had completed a half-turn, Larry stepped forward, and spoke clearly into the slowly narrowing aperture.
He said: “Mars is in danger. I can help you. You have been tricked.” . . .
Nothing happened. The column completed its revolution, stopped. The six trays of food were in their customary niches.
Larry walked to the center of the chamber, and said, “Okay, let’s eat.”
The others came out of the rooms, their eyes going to him hopefully, expectantly.
He shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he said . . .
That night he went into his room at the usual time and stretched out on the bed. He closed his eyes, and tried to go to sleep. But that was impossible. His mind was churning with fears and anxiety. The minutes were going by, and with each of them went a part of his hope. If anything were going to happen, it must happen soon . . .
Silence settled over the central chamber, the sleeping room. Everyone else was in bed, and Larry had warned them not to sir, regardless of what developed . . .
Time passed.
The first indication that something was happening came casually, without warning; a draft of air touched his face. That hadn’t occurred before in this sealed, windowless prison.
He closed his eyes, breathed deeply and regularly. Only the strong, excited beat of his heart sounded in his ears. He thought irrelevantly, I’m not afraid. Something is about to happen, but I’m not afraid. I must be crazy.
He knew, a few seconds later, that he wasn’t alone, that something had entered his room. There was a change in the atmosphere, a sensation of subtle motion in the air about him, in the darkness of the room.
He did not know what to expect; but he should have known, he realized an instant later.
Something sharp dug into his arm.
This was the way it had happened the first time. There was no reason for them to change their procedure.
As hands touched him, he knew that he was losing consciousness . . .
Larry awoke in a brightly lighted room. He was half-sitting, half-reclining, in a low chair, and facing a blank white screen. There was a desk before the screen, and on the desk a telephone, a weirdly incongruous note in this fantasy of improbabilities. The telephone scared him as nothing had so far; its sturdy, functional look high-lighted and emphasized the terror in this situation.
A voice spoke in flat, metallic accents. “What can you tell us?” The sound seemed to come from behind the screen.
Larry wet his dry lips. I was right, I was right, he thought, and the shock of knowing that brought a cold, nauseous cramp to his stomach and dampness to his brow.
He sat up straighter in the low chair, trying to keep the excitement and fear from his face.
“You were tricked,” he said. “Our government knew that you landed here, knew that you contacted and infected us. We were under surveillance during the past five years. They watched us night and day, knowing that eventually you would return.”
There was a pause that lasted for several minutes. Larry found his breathing coming faster.
Then the voice spoke again. “Why do you do this?”
“I don’t like my own people,” Larry said. “I am glad to help you.”
The voice didn’t answer. Larry waited motionlessly, trying to control his nerves, as time passed. Once he thought he heard something—a faint booming noise above him—but it was impossible to isolate and classify.
Finally he got to his feet. “I’ll do anything I can to help you,” he said.
Again, silence answered him. He stood, staring at the screen for what he estimated to be at least half an hour, and then he sat down slowly.
What had happened?
After another period of waiting, he got to his feet again and glanced around. There was an open door behind him; the room was unfurnished except for the desk, and the bright, white screen.
He turned around, clenching and unclenching his fists, and then walked toward the desk, and looked behind the screen.
No one, nothing, was there. The screen concealed a closed door. Larry tried the knob, but the door was locked.
He hesitated a few minutes, feeling the thudding hammer of his heart, knowing that he couldn’t stand much more of this; he was suddenly terribly exhausted, and he had a powerful impulse to laugh. He knew intuitively what his laughter would sound like, and he knew that he would run forever to escape the sound of it.
He hurried to the desk and scooped up the phone.
A buzzing sounded in his ears.
He dialed Long Distance, and seconds later a cool, blessedly familiar voice, said, “Your number, please.”
“Get me Washington, any government office in Washington,” Larry said. The girl didn’t understand this, and he had to keep talking to her, explaining it over and over again, and then, suddenly, he was talking to a man, to a man whose voice was calm but brisk . . .
The glass partition extended from floor to ceiling, from wall to wall. It separated a large, brightly-lighted, high-ceilinged room.
On one side of the glass wall were Larry, Patience, Valerie, Macklin, Dickie, and old Maria.
On the other were three men. Two were in military uniform, while the third, a kindly-looking man with gray hair, wore a black suit which needed pressing. He was smoking a cigarette and occasionally a dribble of ash fell onto his vest, but he paid no attention to this. He was talking, and had been talking for several hours, and his soft, good-humored voice was slightly hoarse.
“. . . You would have been returned at about this exact moment, I think,” he was saying. “We know what that would have meant. Well, now. I’ve been chattering long enough. You have something to discuss, I realize, so I’ll leave you to it. Come along, generals.”
The old man’s name was Carruthers, and he was the chairman of an international committee so powerful that it superseded every other agency on earth, and so secret that the newspapers did not even suspect its existence.
When he had gone, trailed by the two highest-ranking officers in the United States Army, Larry looked at Patience, and, because she was beginning to cry, he patted her shoulder gently.
“I’m sorry as hell,” he said.
“It’s just not possible,” she said, brokenly, through her tears.
“Damned meddling bureaucracy,” Macklin roared. He paced the floor, glaring at the glass partition.
“And I’ve got a run-of-the-play contract,” Valerie said. “Well, let ’em sue,” she said, and grinned. But it was gallow’s humor, and a gallow’s smile, and it fooled no one.
Carruthers had confirmed Larry’s hypothesis. The six of them had been infected by Martians, and then kidnapped. They had been held in a practically inaccessible area of New Mexico, in dungeons constructed by the Martians during the past five years. When they had been led to believe that their plans were known all along, and that counter-measures had been taken, the Martians had blasted off, behaving as Carruthers had said, “with the precipitate and guilty unreason which characterize their mental processes.”
Carruthers did not know the Martians’ ultimate goal. To ravage Earth with their peculiar disease, and then conquer it? A possibility, but unprovable. The Martians were not numerous. They had intelligence, but it was vastly different from that of an earth-man’s. In what exact way, he was not sure. They were like mischievous, but not necessarily evil children into whose hands an arsenal of enormously destructive weapons had fallen. Very curious . . .
“What the hell are we paying their salaries for?” Macklin said stridently. “They don’t know a damn thing. We saved them, didn’t we? And look what happens?”
Only Dickie and Old Maria seemed in fairly cheerful moods. She was telling him some story in Italian, and he was listening eagerly.
“It’s sheer, bloody murder, kiddies,” Valerie said, and now her eyes were damp. “I hate to go feminine on you, but I’m going to have a good cry.”
Carruthers had explained to them that there was no antidote for the disease they had contracted. Earth scientists were working on it, but . . .
Meanwhile they would have to remain in isolation. Their families and friends would not know what had happened to them; they would have to accept their disappearance as the results of mysterious abductions. Everything would be done to make them comfortable. Books, newspapers, television—all of this they might have. Until such a time . . .
Carruthers hadn’t finished that sentence. There was no need to.
“Well,” Larry said, after a few minutes silence, “let’s make the best of it.”
“Bah!” Macklin snorted. “I might have expected some such Pollyannish optimism from you. You’re going to take it lying down, I know. But not me. I’ll fight, damn it. I’ll get lawyers—” He stopped, frowning. “Well, I’ll get some thing,” he said weakly.
They were all silent. Then Patience said, “I think Larry’s suggestion is sensible. After all, what else can we do?”
Valerie sighed. “I wonder how well your excruciatingly good sense is going to wear, dear.”
“I’ll try not to impose it on you,” Patience said, coloring.
Valerie grinned and patted her arm. “Just tell me to go to hell when I sound off that way.”
Dickie drifted away from the group then, and Maria followed him, smiling.
“I think we should draw up a list of the things we’ll need,” Patience said.
Larry was standing beside her and, without thinking about it, he put his arm about her trim shoulder. “That seems sensible,” he said.
She looked at his hand, and then up into his eyes, and there was a bold little smile on her lips. “Yes, that’s very sensible, Larry.”
“Well, I didn’t mean—” He stopped then and rubbed his jaw. “Maybe we could add a minister to our list,” he said.
Macklin looked puzzled for an instant; but then he began to beam mightily. He turned to Valerie, who put a hand to her forehead and said, “Oh, God, no!”
“Well, damn it all,” Macklin said in an injured voice. “I’m human, too.”
“You’re married,” Valerie cried in a straw-clutching voice.
Macklin’s jaw fell. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said, after a pause. Then he brightened. “But I’ll be legally dead in seven years, you know.”
“Well, we’ll talk about it then,” Valerie said, and strolled toward her room with the languid grace which had stirred audiences in half the theatres in the world.
Macklin stared after her unhappily.
Patience, from a pleasurable place in Larry’s arms, looked at him and was touched by the misery in his face. “Mr. Macklin,” she said, winking solemnly, “she’s human, too.”
“Why, that’s true,” Macklin said in a wondering voice, and hope began to dawn in his face.
After a bit he began to chuckle.
AMPHYTRION 40
First published in the September-October 1953 issue of Fantastic.
A tale of two characters who were naked right down to the spirit. But first, they had to get bodies. Then—
THEY FLOATED in a shining sphere above the Northeastern section of the United States, examining and classifying its customs and inhabitants.
They studied these bipeds and learned where and from what they had evolved; they apprehended their drives, goals, and motivations; they guessed, with fine accuracy, how they were likely to develop in the future.
This took them several minutes. Then they became bored.
“Terribly primitive,” she said.
“Yes, depressingly so. You noted their source of energy?” he asked.
“They assimilate each other, it would seem. They think of it as ‘eating’.”
“Not each other. They ‘eat’ animals.”
“Well, what’s the difference?”
“Very little, obviously. The animals seem happier, I’d say.”
“Are they pleased at b
eing eaten? Is it a source of pleasure to them?”
He was very bored now. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said.
They floated for a while on the wing of a jet plane, slightly dismayed by the clumsiness of its construction, and the inefficiency of its power source.
“It’s probably the first refinement of the wheel,” he said.
Then, rising a few thousand miles, they drifted beside saucershaped objects which, in design and function, were a slight improvement over the jet plane.
“These are from another planet,” he said, slightly interested. He read the thoughts that emanated from the thinking matter within the saucer-shaped objects, and learned all about Martians.
“Terribly primitive,” he said.
“Their machines indicate a dim intelligence, however,” she said.
“Yes, they are another stride away from the wheel,” he agreed.
They returned to the atmosphere of Earth, hovering again above the Northeastern United States.
“Well, shall we look any further?” he asked.
“I don’t see much point to it,” she said.
“First hand investigation wouldn’t interest you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They have a few tensions and attractions—between themselves, of course—which are curious.”
“I wish you wouldn’t hedge so. Shall we go down or not?”
“Oh, very well.”
“Very well, what?”
“Let’s go down.”
THEIR names, which they never had reason to use, were Tarina and Illar. They came from a star whose light would never reach Earth; the Solar System would have ceased to exist by that time. In the immense wheel of time, through the stately march of ages, they had refined themselves to perfection, subjected matter to the bonds of intellect. They were invulnerable and immortal; they had need of nothing outside themselves. They did not eat, drink, sleep or mate; their bodies, which had atrophied to vestigial tendrils, had no functions to perform and they kept them invisible.
“What will we need?” she asked.
“Oh, a few things. Bodies, shelter. The camouflage is important but simple. I can take care of it on the way. Are you ready?”
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 299