He Who Shrank: A Collection of Short Fiction

by Henry Hasse

  Vahn looked down at the fantastic thing in amazement. “That’s Pete’s bark!” he exclaimed. “I’d know it anywhere! Hello, Pete, is it really you? You recognize me, do you, after five hundred years? But I don’t recognize you, Pete!”

  Again the thing barked, joyously this time at the friendliness in his master’s voice.

  “This is Tahor’s work!” Vahn said venomously. His face was dark as he bent down and touched the robot’s head. From the increased motion of Pete’s tail it seemed that he liked this, though it was doubtful if he felt the touch; probably only the gesture was familiar.

  “He was a beautiful animal,” Vahn told Chyana, “and the best friend I had. When Tahor told me my fate, I hated the thought of leaving Pete behind, and I begged Tahor to send him along with me. He said he would, but he smiled peculiarly when he promised it; now I know the meaning of that. He’s done this deliberately. He’s encased the dog’s brain in this metal body—for his brain is surely here, if nothing else of him. Tahor always had a diabolic sense of humor.”

  Vahn bent again and touched the robot-dog. “I can’t say I like you this way. Well, Chyana changed my name, so I guess I’ll have to change yours. Somehow ‘Pete’ doesn’t fit you now. Guess I’ll call you ‘Mech’—short for Mechano. Understand?”

  Mech dropped the rusty rivet he was chewing upon, and barked.

  CHYANA had watched this tableau in wonderment, but there was something like understanding in her eyes. Now she said:

  “Is the other one yours too?”

  “The other one? What other one?”

  “Watch,” Chyana said. She walked out to where the tilelayer was waiting, a short distance away. She walked unconcernedly past it, but it turned and followed, quickly laying a tile on the fifth step.

  “See?” Chyana said amusedly, coming back.

  “No,” Vahn exclaimed in amazement, and with the utmost finality, “the thing is certainly not mine! But it seems to like you!”

  Chyana explained how she’d dislodged it in the ruin and then couldn’t get rid of it. Vahn examined it but there was no clue except the serial number and the HEX—R.

  “I don’t remember having seen anything like this,” he said, “so the thing probably dates after my time.”

  “But why does it follow me around? You don’t think it has a—a brain, like your Mech?”

  “I doubt that very much. If it does, it’s a very crude one.” Vahn walked around it, walked beyond it, trying to get it to follow him as it had Chyana, but the absurd thing wouldn’t budge. Chyana laughed delightedly.

  They examined the inside of the building. The walls seemed in fairly good condition, and most of the roof was still there, so Vahn said:

  “Suppose we make this our—say our headquarters. Seems safe and fairly comfortable here. I’ve been wandering about what you said—no one else around. We’ve got to explore! And what about food? Are you hungry?” Vahn’s practical mind had leaped into action.

  “I think I will be before long,” Chyana said. “I’ve been too excited to think about it.”

  Vahn nodded. “Probably no food stuffs left, not even canned goods. Looks like we’ll have to get out of here and back to nature. We can find growing things there, enough for the present. Most of all I want to find out what caused all this premature ruin. It’s got me worried.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Blue Torment

  AS THEY talked they had scarcely noticed the sun, now almost below the western horizon. Only a few red streaks were left across the sky, then even they were gone and it was suddenly dusk. Then, close upon the vanishing of the last streak of light in the west, there dawned a startling phenomenon.

  At first it was barely discernible, a faint bluish tinge that sprang up seemingly a few miles away toward the edge of the city. It grew and the hue deepened, spreading all along the horizon. It came nearer and nearer to them as they stood watching in amazed silence. They became aware of a slight intoxication which increased as the electrical pulsations became stronger. It was quite dark now and the air was crisp and crackly. The blueness flashed in intermittent jerky waves, like continuous lightning. Their intoxication increased until they staggered under it. But it was more than that, for mingled with it now was a malignancy almost frightening; a searing, mental torture from within!

  In Ral Vahn’s ears was a vast singing, and the earth seemed to sway beneath his feet. Through the darkness everywhere the livid blue hell pulsed incessantly. He clutched at his head. His brain was a writhing thing of fire. He reached out blindly for Chyana beside him, but no one was there. He thought he opened his mouth and screamed something, but he heard no words. An anguished white face flashed momentarily before him, and then the figure was fleeing blindly away with golden hair streaming. He staggered after it, stumbled and fell, arose and ran wildly and fell again. Innumerable tiny hot fingers were trying to tear his brain apart fiber by fiber.

  Afterwards he did not know how long he had run or where. He had lost all sense of direction. He dimly remembered crashing many times through tangled creepers and ruins, to lie exhausted, then to stagger blindly on, anywhere, anywhere to escape the pulsing, all-pervading torture in his brain from which there was no escape.

  He only knew that when he awoke the sun was shining painfully into his eyes and something was tugging insistently at his sleeve. He turned his head and saw Mech, who cried woefully. He stood up and saw that the sun was in the east. It was morning. His clothes were torn, he was scratched and bruised and his head ached fiercely. Chyana was gone, nowhere to be seen.

  CHYANA awoke somewhere, battered and bruised. It seemed like a horrible nightmare, the headlong flight to escape the blue horror that had attacked their brains so suddenly. One moment she and Ral had been laughing together, and the next moment the horror had come. It was gone now, and the sun was bright in the east.

  She stood up, and saw HEX—R a short distance away, who took a step toward her and laid a tile. Only a few hundred yards away she could see what seemed to be the edge of the city, and it seemed to end abruptly, strangely.

  She walked toward it and found herself standing at the edge of a precipice a few hundred feet high. She shuddered to think how close she had come to it in her insane flight. Below, stretching to the horizon in all directions, was a vast black plain. It was convoluted and ugly, seemingly nothing but black dust. She could see little swirls of it as a slight breeze blew.

  She looked timidly down the perpendicular cliff at her feet, and saw that it was covered with a smooth, crystalline substance. But it was criss-crossed with millions of tiny cracks, and in a few places patches of it had fallen off, leaving the bare earth exposed beneath. She reached over the cliff-edge at her feet and touched a small patch of what seemed the barren earth. It crumbled beneath her fingers into a fine, black dust! Apprehensively she looked far out upon the black desert again, then at this cliff with its glassy protective substance. But that substance was beginning to crumble!

  Chyana was unaccountably disturbed. For some reason, a reason she could not quite grasp, all this phenomena seemed foreboding and frightening to her. And it seemed somehow familiar! Where, and when, had she seen or dreamed of this scene? Had she indeed dreamed it, or had she—

  Chyana gasped. With a sudden flash of realization she remembered. She had not dreamed of this scene at all. She had read about it! In a book! It was a book which the Council had called a preposterous fable, and which she herself had called a historical romance. There had been much more in that book, but now she could not quite remember. She was confused and apprehensive and a little frightened. With a pang of foreboding she remembered Ral Vahn. She must return quickly to that ruined building which they had called their headquarters.

  About an hour later she found it, and saw Ral Vahn and Mech coming from far away in the opposite direction. She called, and he hurried toward her. Impulsively she went onto his arms and he held her closely for a moment. No word was spoken or needed. He releas
ed her and his face was stem.

  “Thank God you’re safe!” he said. “We’ve got to act quickly, for there may be another of those things tonight, and every night following—and we can’t stand many more of them. I know what it is. I should have guessed before! We’ve got to find the source of it and destroy it before it destroys us!”

  Chyana’s panic-fear had ended with the strange new experience she had found in Ral Vahn’s arms. Quickly she told him of her discovery. They went back to that line of cliffs overlooking the black desert waste.

  Vahn surveyed the scene grimly, and looked along the line of crystalline-covered cliffs extending several miles in each direction.

  “Yes, it all fits in,” he said bitterly. “More of Tahor’s work. But it wasn’t deliberate this time—simply a creation that got out of control and has-been running rampant ever since. Just before Tailor sent me here, there were rumors about a vast army rising out of the shambles of the other hemisphere. This army was supposed to be preparing for a mass attack upon the Americas.

  “Tahor’s councilors were panic-stricken, for they knew he had no army of any size. But Tahor merely smiled, and a little later made it known that he had a new weapon of war that would destroy any possible invasion. There was wild speculation as to what this weapon might be. It was rumored that it received its potent power from stored solar energy, but this was no more than rumor.

  “Now I know it must have been true, for we’ve had a manifestation of it! This thing we felt must be Tahor’s weapon! It gathers its solar energy by day and releases it at night in those brain-destroying waves!”

  GONE now were all thoughts of food. Uppermost in both their minds was a horror of that brain-destroying blue force, and a doubt that they could withstand another such assault. And they knew it must come again at dusk.

  But they searched that line of cliffs in vain. They knew the ray had sprung up from somewhere at this edge of the city, for they’d seen it the night before. But wherever the source, it must have been well hidden.

  HEX—R plodded steadily behind Chyana, laying its tiles regularly, and Mech wandered at random. They searched the edge of the cliff in both directions until it petered down into little rocky ravines leading onto that black desert waste. They worked back toward the city, searching through the endless streets of ruins. Several times they brought tottering walls crumbling down dangerously about them. They stumbled with exhaustion, but they plodded on, scarcely daring to rest for more than a few minutes at a time. Meanwhile the sun was climbing relentlessly toward the zenith; after that it would make its steady descent to the west, and Ral knew too well what would come again once the sun was gone . . . Their despair grew at the fruitlessness of their search.

  Chyana stumbled along uncomplainingly, searching the ruins when Ral searched, resting when he rested—but somehow she did not reach his point of despair. She was perturbed, but more than that she was—puzzled. This all seemed so familiar to her, but in a vague, distant, disassociated way. She felt all this had something to do with that book she had read. That book had been romance; this was romance too, but somehow—distorted. She needed but one little clue, one little remembrance, to connect this present with that far-away book in a very vital way. But in vain she racked her brain for that clue, and the book she had read remained only an historical romance, dimly remembered.

  At last, hesitantly, she mentioned it to Ral. But in his despair he only half listened, and pronounced the book a fable in the same manner the Council of Scientists had. Chyana’s brows knit into a puzzled frown . . .

  THE sun was now well past the zenith, and Ral Vahn sank down exhausted. Chyana sat beside him, and Ral turned despairingly to her. He placed his hands on Chyana’s shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. His voice was tense as he spoke:

  “Chyana . . . do you really know what this means? It’s not merely your life, or mine. Everything—the entire future—hangs upon a thread at this moment; and you and I are that thread! The last remaining—But I wonder if you do quite realize . . .

  “Yes, Ral Vahn,” she said, and her tone was so vibrant it startled him. “Yes, I realized, even before you. We’re the last ones. And I know it will not be easy.”

  “Not be easy,” he repeated bitterly. “It may not even matter.” He looked to the west. “Very shortly now we’ll know.”

  “Do you really think it will come again?”

  “It must and it will. I know what it is now, and it will do its work to the very end. Even after we’re gone it will do its work. I think that force must encompass the entire globe!”

  They continued their search for that destroying force, but it was a hopeless search now. Already they were far from that line of cliffs. Ral knew the weapon must be located in such a way as to receive the sun’s rays, but somehow in their search they had passed it by.

  The sun’s rim was touching the horizon when Ral Vahn turned to Chyana and said:

  “This may be the end—I mean the very end. I don’t see how our brain tissue can survive another such assault. But before it comes, I want to tell you—I want you to know—”

  Chyana thought she knew what Ral Vahn was trying to say, and she wanted to hear him say it; but it was too late. Mech had been watching the sun in the west, and now he howled once, woefully. He must have known what was coming, for he had felt it the night before. Now it was upon them more abruptly than they had expected . . . the sudden dark, and the pulsing blue force leaping to them swiftly . . .

  Chyana screamed something that Ral did not hear, for his brain was afire. He thought he yelled, “Chyana, we must stay together!” But already it was too late, for he saw her fleeing away blindly. He felt something else catapulting past him and knew it was Mech, who must also be enduring the torture.

  That was the last logical thought Ral had. He ran wildly in what he thought was the direction of the blue force, with some vague notion of reaching its source; but now even that notion was gone, plucked out by the millions of tiny fires that were searing his brain. His flight now was only to escape that livid blue hell, but there was no escape. It was worse this time than it had been before. He stumbled and fell heavily and retained barely enough sanity to know it was useless to rise and flee again. He lay there quite still as the tiny fingers of fire tore at his brain, for he knew this was the end and he knew it would be quick....

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sacrifice

  AGAIN Ral Vahn was conscious of an insistent tugging at his sleeve, but this time he didn’t care and didn’t even open his eyes. His head ached almost unbearably, and he only wanted to get back to blessed oblivion so it would stop.

  But the tugging continued, and a sharp bark close to his ear caused his head to split down the middle—or so he thought. He groaned and climbed wearily to his feet, wincing at the excruciating pain in every muscle. He looked down at the metal Mech, and was suddenly envious because Mech had no muscles that could ache. But Mech whined piteously, and Ral knew the dog’s brain must feel the same as his own at that moment. He reached down to touch him, and Mech’s metal tail wagged half-heartedly.

  Systematic thought was flowing back to Ral’s brain slowly, but he wished it would hurry. Vaguely he knew there was an important thing—no, two things—that he must determine . . .

  Then one of them flashed upon him. Chyana! With a sudden tightness in his throat he looked around, and Chyana was nowhere to be seen. Ral groaned at the thought of anything happening to her, which would leave him all alone on this world; but even more than that he suddenly realized what she had come to mean to him. He must find Chyana!

  Then he knew what the other thing was. The sun! Where was the sun? He looked up, saw it nearly overhead, and realized it was almost noon or a little past noon; at any rate it didn’t leave him many hours until another attack of that blue torture, and he knew a third attack would be the final one . . .

  But it was the thought of Chyana that spurred him into activity. He hurried back to that place they ha
d designated as their headquarters. Chyana was not there, and Ral’s heart fell. He shouted her name many times, and the sound went echoing into the vast silence of this barren world. There was no answer. Ral knew she must have heard, if she were—alive. At this thought, he thought suddenly of the cliffs. He hurried there and traversed the entire length of them, peering anxiously below. Chyana’s body was nowhere to be seen. Vahn was at once relieved and dismayed.

  As he walked away in his weariness he stumbled over something. Looking down, he saw it was a red, hexagonal piece of tile! He had entirely forgotten HEX—R. Now he shouted in joy. He saw how he could find Chyana, by trailing her through HEX—R’s faithful markings! But these might be yesterday’s old markings. If so, it would take him hours to trail her and it would be too late.

  But it was his only solution. He followed the tile-trail easily, through the streets and ruins. At one point another line of tiles crossed the one he was following. Ral hesitated, then decided to continue the way he was going. A short time later, however, the trail led into a pile of debris. Ral recognized the scene as one of the places where a wall had collapsed behind them yesterday during their search. He groaned, for he knew he was on one of HEX—R’s old trails. Quickly he traced his way back to where the other path of tiles had intersected.

  He followed this new lead, and his heart leaped as he saw how erratic and wandering the tiles were. It might mean that he was now following the path Chyana had taken in her insane flight the night before. Always the tiles were five long strides apart, and the line doubled and redoubled on itself aimlessly. Ral stayed doggedly with it, sometimes losing sight of the next red marker in piles of debris, but always finding it again after a little search.

  After more than an hour of this, the trail led back toward the cliffs, then turned abruptly to the left. Ral followed through a scattered heap of masonry, then up to the entrance of one of the ruined buildings. The tiles continued through this entrance. Ral followed into the half-gloom beyond, and took a few cautious steps before he noticed that the floor ended almost abruptly at his feet, falling away into a dark chasm.