The Human Zero- The Science Fiction Stories Of Erle Stanley Gardner

by Matin Greenberg

  “You’d have stolen the collar?”

  “Sure!”

  “Might I ask why you’re so confoundedly interested?”

  Arthur Forbes turned a face, suddenly gray with pain, upon his questioner.

  “I was engaged to Audrey Kent,” he said.

  Nickers started. “Why, in that event—I was instructed to get in touch with you. You were the one who wrote to—”

  Forbes nodded.

  “Precisely. But I didn’t want to disclose my identity until after I was sure. That was why I gave another name in the letter. Then when you showed up last night, and I had Murasingh at the table at the same time—it was too good an opportunity to overlook. I just kept gabbing, leading the conversation around to where I wanted it. I wanted to see if Murasingh was suspicious. He was.”

  Nickers drummed on the table. “Look here, Forbes. I don’t want to go off half cocked on this thing, but I wonder if you couldn’t scare up a plane, a fast two-seater. It might come in handy.”

  Forbes nodded.

  “Now you’re talking. There’s a big cabin job I might be able to get. It’s got a Pratt & Whitney Wasp, and will fly circles around anything hereabouts.”

  Nickers nodded slowly.

  “I can’t help thinking that that monkey—well, that the monkey will go back to where he came from. If you think the monkey’s connected with the case in any way, it might be worth while to tag along.”

  Forbes interrupted.

  “Look here, old chap. I’m not making any foolish statements. That monkey may not have a blamed thing to do with what we’re working on. But I’ve been watching Murasingh ever since—ever since Audrey disappeared. And I’ll swear Murasingh has a finger in the pie somewhere.”

  “All right,” Nickers nodded. “Anything that connects up with Murasingh is our meat. Right now the monkey seems to be a big factor in the situation as far as he’s concerned. Therefore, I’m willing to do anything we can to get the straight of it. But I still don’t see why a man can’t have a pet monkey.”

  Forbes sat down, extended a long, bony forefinger. His features twitched with enthusiasm and anxiety. His eyes glowed with a fire of inner emotion.

  “Look here, Nickers, this is India. Don’t ever forget that fact. Now let me tell you something: One of the sacred legends of this country is the Ramayana> a long, rambling account of the early doings of the Gods and Goddesses. And Hanuman is one of the main figures in the Ramayana. He’s supposed to be the child of a nymph, by the God of the Wind—and he’s a monkey god. The god Rama, who is an incarnation of Vishnu, had his wife kidnaped by a demon. The woman was taken to the demon’s cave in Ceylon. Rama would have been powerless had it not been for his ally, the monkey god, Hanuman. Hanuman started a horde of monkeys bringing bowlders clean from the slopes of the Himalayas. They fetched the bowlders by the millions, over a vast expanse of country, and they threw them into the sea, bridging over to Ceylon.

  “Now, all that sounds to your Western ears like any ordinary bit of folklore, an old myth that’s something a bit more personal than a fairy tale. But this is India. Don’t forget it. Right now there exists a powerful caste that considers itself bound to the god Hanuman as priests. And they worship the monkeys as being symbolic of their god. It’s all rather a complicated mess, but it simmers down to the fact that the priests of Hanuman either worship the monkeys or else consider that they owe a service to the monkeys to get them started on a higher spiral of evolution.

  “It’s mixed up with reincarnation theories, and no end of secret stuff, and no white man knows the whole inside of the thing. But you can take it from me that there are temples devoted to monkey worship in the midst of the jungles. And that gold collar with the Sanskrit words on it, studded with rubies, carved cunningly by hand—well, that collar isn’t found on any ordinary pet monkey, and it isn’t found on any ordinary jungle monkey.”

  Forbes got up, flung himself into a regular stride of rhythmic pacing. Nickers shook himself after the mariner of one shaking off the effects of a deep sleep, troubled with dreams. He stared at the pacing figure intently, studiously.

  Certainly there was nothing about Arthur Forbes to suggest mental unbalance. He had talked too much at dinner, to be sure, but he had explained that. In the light of his explanation, his conduct seemed highly rational.

  He was tall, spare, big-boned. His joints were large, made his hands and wrists awkward. His cheek bones were high and prominent; his eyes gray, framed in a network of wrinkles. A small mustache set off the square chin, the prominent nose. Tropical living had left him untouched by that flabby softness which so frequently comes to the white man.

  Phil Nickers reached a sudden decision.

  “Let’s start after that plane.”

  Forbes shook his head.

  “Not now. Get all the sleep you can today. The monkey will go back tonight, after the moon gets up.”

  And so it was settled.

  CHAPTER 3

  Into the Himalayas

  The late moon slipped over the eastern hills. Like a piece of pitted orange peel it glowed redly, giving a certain hazy, indefinite light.

  Arthur Forbes stood concealed in the long shadow of a hedge. Night glasses were glued to his eyes.

  “There he goes,” he said.

  Through the still air sounded the throb of an engine, swelling in volume until it became a muffled roar. A silvery shadow glided smoothly along the field, quivered, hung poised, then zoomed upward.

  Forbes snapped the glasses back into a case, looked at Nickers. Nickers was already stepping toward the pilot’s seat of the powerful plane.

  “Not much of a place for a field, but we got in, and we can get out,” he said.

  The motor throbbed to life. With blocks under the wheels,

  Nickers opened and closed the throttle, warming up the engine. He tested his gauges, manipulated the controls, glanced at Forbes, and nodded.

  The motor slowed as Forbes jerked out the blocks, climbed into the inclosed cabin, adjusted safety belt, and once more adjusted the night glasses. His finger pointed northeast. Nickers nodded, opened the throttle. The plane glided swiftly. Jolts ran up from the landing wheels, jolts that became momentarily shorter, sharper. A hedge loomed ahead as an indistinct blotch of regular shadow. Phil pulled back the stick, gave her all she had.

  Like a startled teal, the plane shot up into the air, banked, circled, and stretched out to the northeast. Phil throttled her down to moderate flying speed. The inclosed cabin shut out enough of the motor noise to make loud conversation audible.

  Below them the ground, broken and hilly, slipped swiftly by. Roads showed in the moonlight, winding and twisting, following the contours of hills that were almost invisible from the plane. Houses on hilltops, native settlements, fields, the glint of water. The moon rose higher. The shadows shortened. The sky seemed a dreamy, silver haze.

  Forbes kept his glasses at his eyes, gave Phil flying directions. But the plane ahead winged steadily to the northeast as a homing pigeon in flight. Once or twice when they seemed to be getting too close, Phil swung his plane in a circle rather than take elevation. They wanted to keep their quarry above them, so he would be outlined against the glow of the sky.

  And then, after nearly an hour, Arthur Forbes tapped Phil on the knee.

  “He’s changing his course. Perhaps he’s arrived,” he said.

  But Phil frowned and banked. There had been no need for the observer’s remark. The plane ahead was plainly visible, and there was something in the way that course had been changed which suggested a return rather than one banking for a spiral to the landing field.

  Phil dropped, seeking to make himself invisible against the ground below. They were now flying over an elevated plateau, cut with shadowed canons, timbered with a thick growth of trees. Ahead loomed a massive mountain wall.

  Too late Phil realized the real significance of the maneuver of the other plane. By dropping close to the ground he had hoped to make himself
invisible. But the moon was high enough to throw a shadow, and he came close enough to send a black shadow from his plane scudding over the tree tops. The air above him screamed into life. A twisting, diving apparition roared from the heavens; and, above the roar, punctuating it at intervals with steady regularity, sounded a rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

  “A machine gun!” yelled Forbes. “He installed a machine gun on the job and trapped us.”

  And so it seemed. They were flying low over a wilderness, far from the treaty lines. Below was only a forest, canons, tumbling streams. There was no place where a plane could land without crashing. And Murasingh was above them, mercilessly holding to their tail, raining machine gun bullets.

  But Phil had superior speed. He jerked the throttle open, zoomed, banked, twisted, seemed to be sideslipping into the jagged tops of moonlit trees, swung, scudded along over the tree tops like a frightened fowl, then zoomed again.

  Murasingh was outmaneuvered, left behind by the superior power and speed of the faster plane. The machine gun spat a spiteful farewell, and then Phil found himself holding his course without pursuit.

  Forbes pointed to several holes in the fabric of the plane, a spattered series of zigzag cracks in the shatterproof glass of the cabin.

  Nickers grinned, nodded, and held the course of the plane, climbing steadily, gaining altitude. Forbes swept the ground below with his night glasses, finally picked out the other plane, saw that it was turning back. Had they, then, been led on a wild-goose chase? Or was Murasingh seeking to cut off their escape, getting ready to swoop down upon them for a final burst of gunfire. It was a miracle they had not been shot down. But the giant plane continued ^to purr through the night.

  Higher and higher they went. The moon slid up into the heavens, and a faint tinge of brassy light glittered over the eastern rim of the universe. But the ground below remained unchanged, a high plateau, covered with trees, interspersed with canons, rimmed by steep, rocky mountains that finally swept up into a sky-piercing tumble of jagged pinnacles.

  It grew lighter rapidly. Phil knew that his only salvation lay in guarding against a surprise attack, and he chose to gain such an altitude the other could not hope to sit in the sky above him, waiting to make up for the deficient speed in a power dive.

  It grew colder and lighter as they climbed. At eighteen thousand feet the ground below was but a blur of tumbled terrain. The tree tops blended together to give the impression of a level meadow.

  Phil glanced at the gasoline gauge of the starboard tank, saw that the black half circle had swung so that it almost covered the top of the gauge. He pointed to it, shouted to Forbes.

  “About half the gasoline supply is gone!”

  Forbes nodded, sweeping the country below with his glasses. The sun came up, gilding them with cold radiance, but not, as yet, touching the country below, which still slumbered in the gray light of early dawn.

  Phil sighed, swung the plane back. With half of their gasoline supply exhausted, prudence demanded that they swing back. To be caught in this country without gas would be fatal. He swung the cock to the port gasoline tank and settled back for a long period of steady flying. To his surprise, the motor coughed, missed, sputtered.

  His frantic eyes swept the gauge on the port side, and then his fingers leaped to the cock, switching back to the depleted tank on the starboard side.

  Neither man spoke. They had no need. Their eyes met in a single swift glance, then abruptly looked away. The port tank, carefully filled before their departure, showed an ominous black circle in the gauge. One of the bullets from the machine gun had punctured it.

  Now, at an altitude of nearly nineteen thousand feet, the plane had enough gasoline left for only a few minutes of flight. Behind them the ground was known. It offered no opportunity for a forced landing. Ahead lay their only chance. The motor would work more efficiently at a lower elevation, but their height gave them a greater gliding radius.

  The plane roared ahead. The sun swept a long finger of golden light across the ground below. Both men scanned the country ahead eagerly. Within a few minutes they would be either safe upon that ground or else mangled in death.

  In the meantime the plane roared with as steady a throb of reassuring power as though its flight was not bounded by minutes.

  A ridge lay ahead. Beyond it there seemed to be a little bare ground bordering a stream. Beyond that another stretch of plateau was lost in the morning mists.

  The motor coughed, sputtered, throbbed into life again, and then abruptly died. The sudden silence, broken only by the whine of air through the struts, made the high spaces seem an aching void.

  Phil nosed the plane into as flat a glide as was safe. He wanted to inspect the ground along that stream from as high an elevation as was possible. Then, if it should prove impossible to land, he would have a chance to keep going. Otherwise he could spiral down.

  As they glided Arthur Forbes studied the ground below through his glasses. Untroubled by the vibration of the motor, he was now able to make things out clearly.

  The ridge drifted closer. The ground beyond it opened out, showed where the forest came to a stop, the level land bordering the creek caught the glint of sunlight. "

  Forbes puckered his brow, snapped out a handkerchief, and wiped the lenses of the powerful glasses, then resumed a survey of the ground. At length he slowly shook his head. Steady gray eyes met eyes of steel. Neither faltered.

  “Rocks and brush. A side stream runs through, and there’s a bog or marsh below that. We can’t make it.”

  “Better than the trees? We might pancake in.”

  “Just about a toss-up. Better keep going and see what’s below those mists. We can see through ’em when we get directly overhead.”

  The two men could hear each other plainly now, get the little tone variations which bespoke emotion. Both were under a strain, flipping dice with death, and death had the odds. But both voices were steady, cool.

  The ridge with the open ground by the stream slipped astern. The ground below showed in a dim circle through the mists, walled on all sides by a blanket of chalky white where the mists thickened. Only from directly above could the ground be distinguished.

  And it was trees, nothing but forest, a vast unbroken procession of nodding tree tops that appeared as a smooth meadow until the glasses were trained upon them.

  On and on went the plane, gliding at its greatest gliding angle. Down below, the trees marched in endless succession through the little circle of clear vision. Lower and lower dropped the plane, gliding like a sailing hawk.

  The tree tops became plainly visible to the naked eye. They stretched their waving branches closer and closer, reaching for the plane with a grasp that must inevitably clutch the landing wheels. Then the vast machine would pitch forward, nose-dive into a crash against heavy branches. Too late now to turn and try the open ground about the creek. They had gone past, and their only hope lay in keeping on. The trees reached up. One tall fellow almost touched the wheels, sending high branches reaching up out of the mist. To the men in the plane it seemed the tree had almost jumped at them.

  It was the end.

  Forbes sighed—a long-drawn sigh. And then Nickers uttered a swift exclamation. He slammed the stick forward. The plane shot down, gathered speed. Then Phil pulled back on the joy stick, sent the tail skidding down. Level, cleared ground was directly below.

  The landing wheels reached cautiously down. The plane touched ground, bounced once or twice, then rolled heavily. A rock caught under the left wheel. The plane, without power to drag it evenly, started to swing, wobbled slightly, and skidded to a stop.

  Phil flung open the cabin door, heaved a great sigh of relief, and stepped to the ground. His steel eyes caught the gray eyes of Arthur Forbes, and the two men smiled silently. The mists were thicker here, but to the rear could be seen the towering forest, coming to such an abrupt termination that it seemed the work of man must be responsible for the clearing.

  To the left appear
ed regular blotches of bulk, indistinct in the mist. Ahead the ground swept on until it vanished in the thin steam from the forest. Overhead the sky shone a pale blue, globules of moisture drifting slowly across the field of vision. '

  “We’re here,” said Nickers.

  “And getting here may not be so good. Those are buildings over there—and we’re ’way on the wrong side of the treaty line. The whites are trying to educate ’em to regard that line as obsolete. But the natives regard their rights as sacred.”

  He broke off, glanced at the forest.

  “Perhaps we’d better slip into the trees. Not that it’s much good, but it’s prolonging things a bit.”

  Phil’s hand touched his shoulder.

  “Too late,” he said.

  Forbes followed the direction of the pointing finger.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Time to Be Tried!”

  Gray shapes were striding solemnly out of the mists. In the lead appeared a wizened old man, garbed in gray, his hands folded upon his chest. Behind him strode natives, marching solemnly, their hands folded upon their chests.

  And then Phil’s eyes seemed to jerk themselves to the extreme limit of their sockets. He could hardly believe that which he saw. For, behind the natives, marching every bit as solemnly, although awkward in their strides, appeared the black outlines of monkeys, formed in file, marching gravely, tails curled and encircling the necks of the following monkeys. And each of the monkeys had his hands folded upon his chest in solemn mimicry of the men who strode ahead.

  Phil heard Arthur Forbes’s low voice in his ear.

  “And, unless I’m mistaken, this is the place we were due to make an inspection of. I think you’ll find this is where Murasingh keeps his plane!”

  The procession marched with grim silence.

  The leader came abreast of the plane, swung slightly to the left, circled it. The trail of monkeys marching with folded arms, encircling tails, stretched so far into the mist that by the time the wizened old man had completed a circle of the plane the end of the monkeys’ line had not yet entirely appeared.