“Uh-uh. That was no slip. They wiped out the Carkers twice because, you see, once didn’t do any good. They wiped ’em out and still travelers vanished and still there were gnawed bones. So they wiped ’em out again. After that they gave up, and people detoured the oasis. It made a longer, harder trip, but after all—”
Tallant laughed. “You mean to say these Carkers were immortal?”
“I don’t know about immortal. They somehow just didn’t die very easy. Maybe, if they were the Benders—and I sort of like to think they were—they learned a little more about what they were doing out here on the desert. Maybe they put together what the Indians knew and what they knew, and it worked. Maybe Whatever they made their sacrifices to understood them better out here than in Kansas.”
“And what’s become of them—aside from seeing them out of the corner of the eye?”
“There’s forty years between the last of the Carker history and this new settlement at the oasis. And people won’t talk much about what they learned here in the first year or so. Only that they stay away from that old Carker adobe. They tell some stories— The priest says he was sitting in the confessional one hot Saturday afternoon and thought he heard a penitent come in. He waited a long time and finally lifted the gauze to see was anybody there. Something was there, and it bit. He’s got three fingers on his right hand now, which looks funny as hell when he gives a benediction.”
Tallant pushed their two bottles toward the bartender. “That yarn, my young friend, has earned another beer. How about it, bartender? Is he always cheerful like this, or is this just something he’s improvised for my benefit?”
The bartender set out the fresh bottles with great solemnity. “Me, I wouldn’t’ve told you all that myself, but then, he’s a stranger too and maybe don’t feel the same way we do here. For him it’s just a story.”
“It’s more comfortable that way,” said the young man with the beard, and he took a firm hold on his beer bottle.
“But as long as you’ve heard that much,” said the bartender, “you might as well— It was last winter, when we had that cold spell. You heard funny stories that winter. Wolves coming into prospectors’ cabins just to warm up. Well, business wasn’t so good. We don’t have a license for hard liquor, and the boys don’t drink much beer when it’s that cold. But they used to come in anyway because we’ve got that big oil burner.
“So one night there’s a bunch of ’em in here—old Jake was here, that you was talking to, and his dog Jigger—and I think I hear somebody else come in. The door creaks a little. But I don’t see nobody, and the poker game’s going, and we’re talking just like we’re talking now, and all of a sudden I hear a kind of a noise like crack! over there in that corner behind the juke box near the burner.
“I go over to see what goes and it gets away before I can see it very good. But it was little and thin and it didn’t have no clothes on. It must’ve been damned cold that winter.”
“And what was the cracking noise?” Tallant asked dutifully.
“That? That was a bone. It must’ve strangled Jigger without any noise. He was a little dog. It ate most of the flesh, and if it hadn’t cracked the bone for the marrow it could’ve finished. You can still see the spots over there. The blood never did come out.”
There had been silence all through the story. Now suddenly all hell broke loose. The flight sergeant let out a splendid yell and began pointing excitedly at the pinball machine and yelling for his payoff. The construction worker dramatically deserted the poker game, knocking his chair over in the process, and announced lugubriously that these guys here had their own rules, see?
Any atmosphere of Carker-inspired horror was dissipated. Tallant whistled as he walked over to put a nickel in the jukebox. He glanced casually at the floor. Yes, there was a stain, for what that was worth.
He smiled cheerfully and felt rather grateful to the Carkers. They were going to solve his blackmail problem very neatly.
Tallant dreamed of power that night. It was a common dream with him. He was a ruler of the new American Corporate State that would follow the war; and he said to this man, “Come!” and he came, and to that man, “Go!” and he went, and to his servants, “Do this!” and they did it.
Then the young man with the beard was standing before him, and the dirty trench coat was like the robes of an ancient prophet. And the young man said, “You see yourself riding high, don’t you? Riding the crest of the wave—the Wave of the Future, you call it. But there’s a deep, dark undertow that you don’t see, and that’s a part of the Past. And the Present and even your Future. There is evil in mankind that is blacker even than your evil, and infinitely more ancient.”
And there was something in the shadows behind the young man, something little and lean and brown.
Tallant’s dream did not disturb him the following morning. Nor did the thought of the approaching interview with Morgan. He fried his bacon and eggs and devoured them cheerfully. The wind had died down for a change, and the sun was warm enough so that he could strip to the waist while he cleared land for his shack. His machete glinted brilliantly as it swung through the air and struck at the roots of the brush.
When Morgan arrived his full face was red and sweating.
“It’s cool over there in the shade of the adobe,” Tallant suggested. “We’ll be more comfortable.” And in the comfortable shade of the adobe he swung the machete once and clove Morgan’s full, red, sweating face in two.
It was so simple. It took less effort than uprooting a clump of sage. And it was so safe. Morgan lived in a cabin way to hell-and-gone and was often away on prospecting trips. No one would notice his absence for months, if then. No one had any reason to connect him with Tallant. And no one in Oasis would hunt for him in the Carker-haunted adobe.
The body was heavy, and the blood dripped warm on Tallant’s bare skin. With relief he dumped what had been Morgan on the floor of the adobe. There were no boards, no flooring. Just the earth. Hard, but not too hard to dig a grave in. And no one was likely to come poking around in this taboo territory to notice the grave. Let a year or so go by, and the grave and the bones it contained would be attributed to the Carkers.
The corner of Tallant’s eye bothered him again. Deliberately he looked about the interior of the adobe.
The little furniture was crude and heavy, with no attempt to smooth down the strokes of the ax. It was held together with wooden pegs or half-rotted thongs. There were age-old cinders in the fireplace, and the dusty shards of a cooking jar among them.
And there was a deeply hollowed stone, covered with stains that might have been rust, if stone rusted. Behind it was a tiny figure, clumsily fashioned of clay and sticks. It was something like a man and something like a lizard, and something like the things that flit across the corner of the eye.
Curious now, Tallant peered about further. He penetrated to the corner that the one unglassed window lighted but dimly. And there he let out a little choking gasp. For a moment he was rigid with horror. Then he smiled and all but laughed aloud.
This explained everything. Some curious individual had seen this, and from his accounts had burgeoned the whole legend. The Carkers had indeed learned something from the Indians, but that secret was the art of embalming.
It was a perfect mummy. Either the Indian art had shrunk bodies, or this was that of a ten-year-old boy. There was no flesh. Only skin and bone and taut, dry stretches of tendon between. The eyelids were closed; the sockets looked hollow under them. The nose was sunken and almost lost. The scant lips were tightly curled back from the long and very white teeth, which stood forth all the more brilliantly against the deep-brown skin.
It was a curious little trove, this mummy. Tallant was already calculating the chances for raising a decent sum of money from an interested anthropologist— murder can produce such delightfully profitable chance by-products—when he noticed the infinitesimal rise and fall of the chest.
The Carker was not dead. It was sleeping.
&n
bsp; Tallant did not dare stop to think beyond the instant. This was no time to pause to consider if such things were possible in a well-ordered world. It was no time to reflect on the disposal of the body of Morgan. It was a time to snatch up your machete and get out of there.
But in the doorway he halted. There, coming across the desert, heading for the adobe, clearly seen this time, was another—a female.
He made an involuntary gesture of indecision. The blade of the machete clanged ringingly against the adobe wall. He heard the dry shuffling of a roused sleeper behind him.
He turned fully now, the machete raised. Dispose of this nearer one first, then face the female. There was no room even for terror in his thoughts, only for action.
The lean brown shape darted at him avidly. He moved lightly away and stood poised for its second charge. It shot forward again. He took one step back, machete arm raised, and fell headlong over the corpse of Morgan. Before he could rise, the thin thing was upon him. Its sharp teeth had met through the palm of his left hand.
The machete moved swiftly. The thin dry body fell headless to the floor. There was no blood.
The grip of the teeth did not relax. Pain coursed up Tallant’s left arm—a sharper, more bitter pain than you would expect from the bite. Almost as though venom—
He dropped the machete, and his strong white hand plucked and twisted at the dry brown lips. The teeth stayed clenched, unrelaxing. He sat bracing his back against the wall and gripped the head between his knees. He pulled. His flesh ripped, and blood formed dusty clots on the dirt floor. But the bite was firm.
His world had become reduced now to that hand and that head. Nothing outside mattered. He must free himself. He raised his aching arm to his face, and with his own teeth he tore at that unrelenting grip. The dry flesh crumbled away in desert dust, but the teeth were locked fast. He tore his lip against their white keenness, and tasted in his mouth the sweetness of blood and something else.
He staggered to his feet again. He knew what he must do. Later he could use cautery, a tourniquet, see a doctor with a story about a Gila monster—their heads grip too, don’t they?—but he knew what he must do now.
He raised the machete and struck again.
His white hand lay on the brown floor, gripped by the white teeth in the brown face. He propped himself against the adobe wall, momentarily unable to move. His open wrist hung over the deeply hollowed stone. His blood and his strength and his life poured out before the little figure of sticks and clay.
The female stood in the doorway now, the sun bright on her thin brownness. She did not move. He knew that she was waiting for the hollow stone to fill.
The Model of a Science Fiction Editor
I am the very model of a modern s f editor.
My publisher is happy, as is each and every creditor.
I know the market trends and how to please the newsstand purchaser;
With agents and name authors my relations can’t be courteouser.
I’ve a clever knack of finding out what newsmen want to write about
And seeing that their stories spread my name in black and white about.
I’ve a colleague to be blamed for the unpleasant sides of bossery,
And I know the masses never quite get tired of flying saucery.
In short, in matters monetary, social, and promotional,
I am the very model of a pro s f devotional.
I’ve a pretty taste in literature and know the trends historical
From Plato down to Bradbury in order categorical.
I can tell a warp in space from one that’s purely in chronology,
And every BEM I publish has his own strange teratology.
I make my writers stress the small scale human problems solely
Because the sales are better and you might be picked by Foley.
I can stump the highbrow critics with allusions to Caractacus,
A ploy that I’ve perfected by a plentitude of practicus.
In short, in matters cultural, esthetical and liter’y
I run the very model of a true s f outfittery.
Now if I had a smattering of knowledge scientifical,
If I were certain “terrene” didn’t simply mean “terrifical,”
If I could tell a proton from a neutron or a neuron,
How your weight on Mars will vary from the planet that now you’re on,
If I knew enough to know why Velikovsky is nonsensic
And why too close a Shaver can make even hardened fen sick,
If I’d read what men have learned from other planets’ spectranalysis,
In short, if I could tell the future Wonderland from Alice’s,
I might in logic, insight and inspired extrapolation
Produce the very model of ideal s f creation.
We Print the Truth
“All right, then, tell me this: If God can do anything—’’Jake Willis cleared his throat and paused, preparatory to delivering the real clincher.
The old man with the scraggly beard snorted and took another shot of applejack. “—can He make a weight so heavy He can’t lift it? We know that one, Jake, and it’s nonsense. It’s like who wakes the bugler, or who shaves the barber, or how many angels can dance how many sarabands on the point of a pin. It’s just playing games. It takes a village atheist to beat a scholastic disputant at pure verbal hogwash. Have a drink.”
Jake Willis glared. “I’d sooner be the village atheist,” he said flatly, “than the town drunkard. You know I don’t drink.” He cast a further sidewise glare at the little glass in Father Byrne’s hand, as though the priest were only a step from the post of town drunkard himself.
“You’re an ascetic without mysticism, Jake, and there’s no excuse for it. Better be like me: a mystic without any a trace of asceticism. More fun.”
“Stop heckling him, Luke,” Father Byrne put in quietly. “Let’s hear what if God can do anything.”
Lucretius Sellers grunted and became silent. MacVeagh said, “Go ahead, Jake,” and Chief Hanby nodded.
They don’t have a cracker barrel in Grover, but they still have a hot-stove league. It meets pretty regularly in the back room of the Sentinel. Oh, once in a while someplace else. On a dull night in the police station they may begin to flock around Chief Hanby, or maybe even sometimes they get together with Father Byrne at the parish house. But mostly it’s at the Sentinel.
There’s lots of spare time around a weekly paper, even with the increase in job printing that’s come from all the forms and stuff they use out at the Hitchcock plant. And Editor John MacVeagh likes to talk, so it’s natural for him to gather around him all the others that like to talk too. It started when Luke Sellers was a printer, before he resigned to take up drinking as a career.
The talk’s apt to be about anything. Father Byrne talks music mostly; it’s safer than his own job. With John MacVeagh and Chief Hanby it’s shop talk: news and crime—not that there’s much of either in Grover, or wasn’t up to this evening you’re reading about.
But sometime in the evening it’s sure to get around to Is there a God? And if so why doesn’t He— Especially when Jake Willis is there. Jake’s the undertaker and the coroner. He says, or used to say then, that when he’s through with them, he knows they’re going to stay dead, and that’s enough for him.
So here Jake had built up to his usual poser again. Only this time it wasn’t the weight that Omnipotence couldn’t lift. Everybody was pretty tired of that. It was, “If God can do anything, why doesn’t he stop the war?”
“For once, Jake, you’ve got something,” said John MacVeagh. “I know the problem of Evil is the great old insoluble problem; but Evil on a scale like this begins to get you. From an Old Testament God, maybe yes; but it’s hard to believe in the Christian God of love and kindness permitting all this mass slaughter and devastation and cruelty.”
“We just don’t know,” Chief Hanby said slowly. “We don’t understand. ‘For my thoughts are not you
r thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ Isaiah, fifty-five, eight and nine. We just don’t understand.”
“Uh-uh, Chief,” MacVeagh shook his head. “That won’t wash. That’s the easy way out. The one thing we’ve got to know and understand about God is that He loves good and despises evil, which I’ll bet there’s a text for, only I wouldn’t know.”
“He loves truth,” said Chief Hanby. “We don’t know if His truth is our ‘good.’”
Lucretius Sellers refilled his glass. “If the Romans thought there was truth in wine, they should’ve known about applejack. But what do you say, Father?”
Father Byrne sipped and smiled. “It’s presumptuous to try to unravel the divine motives. Isaiah and the Chief are right: His thoughts are not our thoughts. But still I think we can understand the answer to Jake’s question. If you were God—”
They never heard the end to this daring assumption; not that night, anyway. For just then was when Philip Rogers burst in. He was always a little on the pale side— thin, too, only the word the girls used for it was “slim,” and they liked the pallor, too. Thought it made him look “interesting,” with those clean, sharp features and those long dark eyelashes. Even Laura Hitchcock liked the features and the lashes and the pallor. Ever since she read about Byron in high school.
But the girls never saw him looking as pale as this, and they wouldn’t have liked it. Laura, now, might have screamed at the sight of him. It isn’t right, it isn’t natural for the human skin to get that pale—as though a patriotic vampire had lifted your whole stock of blood for the plasma drive.
He fumbled around with noises for almost a minute before he found words. The men were silent. Abstract problems of evil didn’t seem so important when you had concrete evidence of some kind of evil right here before you. Only evil could drain blood like that.
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