A Century of Science Fiction

by Damon Knight

  And then what kind of mantises were they, that they could conceive and use those machines that we saw on the first day, the day it all began? (Or should I say the day when it all ended?)

  I can’t take my eyes away from the terrible sight. A faintness of horror makes me go on staring at that monstrous copulation, the clinging of those greenish abdomens, the vibrating wing cases, and, above all, that kind of parrot’s beak grinding the corselet of the still living male, who trembles gently in all his limbs, as if in a horrible ecstasy.

  Now there is another sound, thin as a cricket’s chirp, then swelling to a piercing whistle, like the sound of those defective mikes at the meetings and the neighborhood dances not so long ago. I can’t help moving back a step. It’s the female who is shrilling. That’s where their name comes from: the Shrills. Nobody had time or inclination to think of anything else, and, all things considered, it’s the best name for them.

  Their true, their only power lies not in being so frightful and cruel as to make us forget our worst nightmares. Nor in being so many that no one has ever been able to estimate their numbers exactly. Their true, their only superiority is in their ability to shrill. When that modulated whistling goes into the supersonic, becomes inaudible to any terrestrial ear, you can see men and beasts fall like flies, not to rise again as long as the sound lasts.

  But there’s worse to come, for they have succeeded in analyzing that physiological peculiarity, defining it and then applying it to instruments of war, multiplying its effectiveness. The Shrills needed no cannon to gut our apartment buildings: the ultrasonics were enough.

  Below, in the street, the female Shrill goes on modulating her love whistle. A wave of fear and hatred washes over me. Stop that hideous noise, that disgusting nibbling, the whole obscene business! I’ve snatched up my revolver out of the open valise on the table. The shutters fly back against the wall. Suddenly the sun cleanses this miserable hotel room where I’ve lived four days alone, glued in my fear, after everyone else has run off.

  Shots crash out, echoing, almost joyful in the sinister silence of the empty suburb. One, two, three shots . . . The head with its monstrous eyes is burst open. The female Shrill is dead between one spasm and the next, but I can’t stop firing, four, five, six, before the hammer falls on an empty cartridge.

  After all these hours of isolation, of shadow and muffled silence, let there be light, noise, action! I’m not afraid any longer. The smell of the powder is still floating in the air. The fact that the half-devoured Shrill is still trembling doesn’t frighten me; on the contrary, it sends me into a mad rage.

  I’ve sprung out of my room, hurled myself down the stairs, torn apart the barricade of furniture and mattresses I had piled up in front of the entrance. There’s a fuel can tied onto the abandoned car; I’ve cut the string with one or two strokes of my knife and pulled it down. I’ve soaked the two Shrills. Ten, twenty liters of gasoline . . .

  I’m watching their bodies bum, crackle, snap, split open, burst, suppurate in the red bonfire, which, at the very beginning, carried off their wings and wing cases in a quick, high blaze. I’m so close to the flames that I’m sweating, gasping—so close that charred scraps thrown out by the crackling fire lodge in my hair. And I’m laughing.

  Hours of walking through the silent streets choked with wreckage and rubble. The smell that comes from the demolished buildings is terrible.

  I couldn’t stay in my hotel room any longer. Maybe the Shrills patrol past there? If they’d found the two burned monsters, they would have been quick to pluck me out of my hole in turn.

  It’s true that there’s no lack of Shrill corpses. Crossing an amusement park, I’ve seen more than fifty of them rotting on the paths, on the edge of the pond and even in the middle of the little red cars and the miniature bicycles of a ride. They had been ripped apart by bullets.

  I’ve also seen those who brought off this fine butchery: the crew of two heavy machine guns set up at the exits of the park. They were twisted on the ground, fists over their ears, in the poignant stillness of violent death. A big helmet had rolled to the base of a plane tree. Some machine-gun belts were strewn about.

  There must have been some of them nearly everywhere in the city, these elements of the rear guard who’d been left there to permit the evacuation of the civil population. Sacrifices, ordered to slow up the invasion by a few minutes, a few seconds, before the buildings started to come apart around them and repellent silhouettes appeared at the street corners, carrying in their faceted eyes the hundredfold reflection of the same horrified human face.

  Isn’t what I’ve been doing pure idiocy? There isn’t a single person still living in the city, that’s clear. Why should Maria have stayed? Even if she’d wanted to, they would have made her go with the rest. The first day, I remember, radio cars went through every district: “Your attention, please! It is necessary to evacuate the city temporarily—the invader has succeeded in overrunning our troops! Get out to the country!

  Don’t stay in the city! Get out to the country! Any person who ignores this order will be in mortal danger!”

  From the window of my hotel I saw that infernal stampede, the brutality, fear and disorder, that frothing exodus to which all the halfhearted official appeals couldn’t bring even a semblance of dignity.

  I couldn’t leave. Not without Maria . And perhaps also because I was more frightened than the rest, frightened enough to stay cooped up four days in a dark room. Like a coward, after all. But what is a coward, what a hero, when it comes to the Shrills?

  I’m frozen to the spot when I hear the noise. In the deathly silence of the abandoned city, it echoes like an explosion. Nevertheless, as soon as my heartbeat slows down a little, I identify the sound. Memories of coffee with cream, smells of anisette, Martinis, cognac, hubbub of voices and laughter . . . It’s the authoritative bell of a cash register.

  I push open the glass door of the cafe. Moleskin cushions. Marble tables. Is it possible that this familiar decor has anything to do with all that ridiculous horror outside?

  The man hasn’t seen me. Leaning over the showcase, he’s carefully counting some bills, pausing every so often to lick his finger.

  I barely touch his shoulder. With remarkable agility, he turns and in the same movement draws a big blue-barreled Colt. In his thin, whiskery face, his eyes are cruel and nervous at the same time; and he shows his teeth like a dog. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He’s a noncom; there’s a stripe on his dirty, torn khaki sleeve.

  “I haven’t seen anyone for four days,” I say. “I’m looking for my wife.” And after a pause, “What’s the news?”

  He spins the pistol gracefully around his forefinger before holstering it again. “Don’t waste your breath!” And, tapping himself on the ear: “Stone deaf! See what they’ve done with their vibrations, those lousy bugs!”

  Suspicious again, he examines me from head to foot. “Say, don’t you know all civilians were supposed to evacuate the city?” *

  Then he shrugs, goes around the counter, takes down a bottle and two glasses. “Civilians, military, what the hell difference does all that stuff make now? Two days ago I was in position near the plastic works—you know, on the other side of the river. Had to watch the people filing past, trucks, buses, cars, bikes, carts, people on foot. Couldn’t have been one out of two that knew what was happening to them. The radio hardly had time to explain what was going on and bang! No more radio! ‘It’s the Russians!’ they said, or else, ‘It’s the Americans!’ Nobody wanted to believe the official statement, that story about invaders that they called—how*d it go again—‘extraterrestrial.’ ”

  He lifts his glass to clink it with mine. “Never mind telling me bottoms up, I won’t hear you! ... It was the same with us, anyhow, we didn’t put much stock in that story. It was hard to swallow, am I right? Well, they explained it to us, anyhow, that these characters came from another planet But which one? They told us they had them already in the
U.S., Canada, England too, maybe even in Russia. But how could we tell? They said we’d have to fight, this time, not for territory or for ideals, but for our own skin. Okay, but what with?”

  Aiming his two forefingers one behind the other, he whistles between his teeth. “Oh, the flame throwers, they didn’t go so bad at the beginning. We went at it hot and heavy, I can tell you! Have you seen those bugs up close? Don’t know why, you get a crazy urge to kill them, crush them, destroy ’em. Maybe because they’re scary and disgusting? We went after them, with our torches! We burned piles and piles of them! But that didn’t last. They started in shrilling. Nearly the whole company went down. We fell back to this side of the river, and, if you’ll believe it, the Genius blew up the bridge!”

  He bursts into laughter which suggests anything but gaiety.

  “As if that would keep them from jumping, those bugs! A Shrill can hop a good twenty meters, and with those damned wings they can keep going a little longer. I understand they could do a lot better, even, if Earth gravity didn’t bother them! No, no, don’t bother to open your mouth, I tell you! I can’t hear a thing! You know what we’re going to do, you and me? We’re going to try to find a car, or an army jeep, and we’re going to get out of this damned town. The people must be somewhere, right?”

  I shake my head.

  “What? You don’t want to stay here the rest of your life, do you?”

  I open my mouth, then change my mind, tear a sheet out of my notebook and write: “I’ve got to find my wife.”

  Leaning his elbows on the counter, in the familiar attitude of a saloonkeeper, he scratches his ear, at once ironic and compassionate. “Oh well, anyhow, that’s love for you!”

  What a strange feeling to go through this series of motions: take a key out of my pocket, slide it into a lock. I’ve entered my apartment this way hundreds of times. Maria would be waiting for me. That seemed natural. There’ll never be enough time to regret the indifference with which I took that simple happiness.

  The apartment is full of darkness; all the shutters are closed. I don’t recognize the familiar smell that means home. In its place, there’s an intrusive odor, persistent and heavy: the scent of a cigar.

  I open a door. A man is sitting crosswise in an upholstered chair, his legs hanging over the armrest. He has on a grayish undershirt; he’s smoking an enormous cigar and reading one of my books, while he scratches a three-day beard.

  To top it all, it’s he who looks at me and exclaims, “Well! Don’t stand on ceremony!”

  The only light on him comes from three candles stuck to the top shelf of the bookcase. He has hollow cheeks, anxious eyes. Do I too have that hunted look?

  I take a step. “Maybe you don’t know it, but you’re in my chair!”

  He puffs. “The persistence of bourgeois concepts after the disappearance of the society which created them is one of the most hilarious aspects of the event.”

  A phrasemaker. Good. He can’t be very dangerous. See him encompass space with a gesture. “Nothing left! All consumed! Everything is broken down in the most frenetic, most repugnant, most definitive of routs! And what do we behold now? A survivor—who knows? the last, perhaps. And what does he do? Does he repent? Does he swear to rebuild a better world? No. He demands his chair.”

  I let myself fall on the sofa; fatigue cuts my hamstrings. In the wavering light of the candles, I watch the man suck on his cigar. He takes it out of his mouth and says quietly, “ ‘And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle . . .’ ” His voice rises slowly. “ . . and their faces were as the faces of men’ ” Eyes on the ceiling, he seems to be deciphering the prophetic text up there.

  “ ‘And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions! ”

  The Apocalypse!

  “I recognize you! You live on the sixth floor. You’re the one who writes books.”

  “I lived on the sixth floor, correct! But this is bigger, more comfortable. And then there’s the bar, and the library as well. My word, you were a man of taste!”

  “I’m looking for my wife.”

  “That way too, you were a man of taste! But I must tell you she’s not here. When I picked your lock, it was because I knew there was nobody left in here.”

  “She’s gone?”

  He makes a vague gesture which flattens the candle flames for ar moment. “Gone with all the rest, when they passed with their loudspeakers. Idiots! Leave, to go where?”

  She is gone. She didn’t wait for me. She was afraid. But didn’t I myself stay shut up four days in a hotel, too terrified even to open the shutters?

  “What about you? You decided to stay.”

  He puts on a profoundly disgusted expression. “It’s because I can’t stand crowds. During the exodus, in ’forty, when I was a kid, too many people stepped on my feet Morning and evening, for weeks, the crowds of people that mashed my feet! Anyhow, do you want me to tell you where they ended up, the ones who listened to the loudspeakers? In camps.”

  “Camps?”

  “Camps, yes. Prison camps. That’s what I don’t understand. After that slaughter, the Shrills cared for the survivors. As soon as we stopped resisting, they stopped destroying. Curious, isn’t it?”

  He relights his dead cigar. “You think I’ve been here all this time without budging? You’re mistaken. I’ve gone out, I’ve walked, I’ve pinched bicycles and even a car. Not to escape—to look. I’ve seen some things, some things— What a spectacle! Have you gone down in the subway passages? There are thousands of burned Shrills. You walk in pulp up to the knees. They installed their first colonies down there. The Army poured in tons of incendiary fluids through all the entrances and the air holes. You can bet, after that there was a shrilling!

  “I also argued with dozens of people, soldiers, civil-defense guys, chemists, biologists, scientists. They were looking for something, a method. Some of them talked about making contact, negotiating a settlement. Pitiful! The Shrills have never tried to communicate. They arrive, they shrill and that’s all! Some say they’re organized, therefore intelligent. Oh, certainly! After all, so are the ants and the bees! But you’ve got to attack the problem from the other end. Imagine for a moment that in their eyes we're the ants. Would it bother you much to break up an anthill with a few kicks? And did you ever think about negotiating in any way with the ants?”

  He gets up, opens my bar with great ease of manner and takes out two glasses, into which he pours stingily. “I’m saving the whiskey. There isn’t much left. You know, actually these Shrills interest me. What do they want? We don’t even know where they come from. From one of the moons of Jupiter, a scientist claimed the other night on the radio— before the radio stopped like everything else. But what did he know about it, hm? I ask you. In any case, one thing is certain: they have absolutely no interest in us as thinking beings. They don’t even seem to be aware of that peculiarity of which we’re so proud. They’re intelligent and highly developed, too, undoubtedly, but in a way so different from ours that it doesn’t pay to look for points of comparison.”

  He points his cigar butt at me. “Have you seen a Shrill visit just one house? Examine a machine? Try to start a car? Show any trace of curiosity in a heavy machine gun or a telephone booth? No. Except for the machines that brought them here, you’d think they lack even the idea of technology. Of course, I haven’t forgotten the shrilling machines, the ones that knock buildings down, but who can say he’s seen one? I heard a biologist remark that they could get the same results just as well by simply shrilling in chorus. So?”

  He goes on talking as if to himself, getting rid of thoughts he’s repeated over and over, in his hours and days of solitude. “They haven’t tried to rebuild, or even occupy, damaged cities. Even the colonies in the subway were provisional. Later they were satisfied to set up their gelatinous towns out in the open fields, like heaps of yellowish cocoons, piles of insect nests. A collectivist activity, a purely functional civi
lization, whose standards are entirely alien to human intelligence.”

  He slaps his knee. “But just the same, by heaven, if they’ve come all this way there’s a reason for it!”

  I drain my glass and get up suddenly. “I have no intention of looking for the reason here while I jabber into a glass of whiskey. I Avant to find my wife.”

  He salutes me with a nonchalant hand at his brow. “Good luck, noble spouse! Close the door carefully as you leave.” “Those camps you were talking about—where are they?” “At the city exits. They’re not camps, properly speaking. They look more like gypsy tents, or vacationers’ campsites. No fences, no barbed wire. They’re surrounded by Shrills, that’s all. I’ve watched one—at a distance, naturally, with a pair of field glasses, from the top of an HLM building. The people seemed to be in good condition. There were kitchen details. Things were organized. I saw women doing their laundry in tubs, some guys playing ball. I saw kids, too.” He falls silent. In his burning eyes I see again the anguished flame they had at the beginning. “Don’t ask me to go with you. I won’t go. That camp with the wooden barracks, the tents, the washing on the lines, kids_ playing, and then all around, here and there, those goddam big grasshoppers . . .” His shoulders shake with disgust. “Those people guarded by—by that ... it was more horrible than anything else, than houses destroyed, corpses in the streets, the crazy soldiers with their hands over their ears, the stink of the subway. I don’t want to see that camp again.”

  “If I recognize my wife there, can I get to her?”

  “Oh, certainly! The Shrills are understanding, just think of it! While I was watching, up on that roof, I saw a lot of people go in, poor starved characters, attracted by the smell of cooking. But as for getting out again . . . No, I won’t go with you, even if I have to croak here of hunger and thirst.”

  I put my glass down, move slowly toward the door and turn. I can’t help smiling. “Have you looked in the kitchen, on the top shelf of the .cabinet? There must be still a full bottle there.”