Inside Man and Other Science Fiction Stories Part 15

"I can't tell you that," I said. "But I want you to listen to something so you'll know that what I've done is justified." And I played back the love scene I had recorded the day before.

"So that's why she married me," he said brokenly. "I always wondered." He bent down to the little figures. "You didn't have to leave me stranded," he cried out to Mrs. Todd, who clapped her hands over her ears. "I love you enough to give you a divorce."

Taking off his surgical mask, he turned to me. "You know that what you've done is impossible, don't you? Nothing can shrink five- or six-foot people to five or six inches!"

I backed away from him. "But that's not what's important!" I said in alarm. "Not only were they planning to leave you stranded, they were going to leave the tribeunpaid!"

Todd lost his mad glare. "No question of it, they're a matched set of stinkers," he said. "But what have you done? How does it work? You've got to tell me all about it!"

"I can't. It's so potent a taboo that n.o.body but the chiefs and witch doctors know about it. I myself learned about it only by accident."

The tiny people had been making shrill noises. Now Lundeen pushed Mrs. Todd aside and piped, "Todd, listen to me!"

"What is it?" Todd asked, bending down to hear the squeaky voice.

"The secret is in the Scotch she gave us yesterday. I can't tell you what suffering we went through last night, shrinking down to this size. Get to that bottle before she does! It's in my hut!"

I was out of the lab door and running for Lundeen's hut as fast as I could go.

Halfway there, Todd pa.s.sed me. It was the only time in my life that I ever wished I were not so small, for my strides were five to his one. And I cursed myself for stupidly not throwing the bottle into a fire.

When he reached the hut, I stopped and went back to the lab. The tiny couple in tiny voices pleaded for an antidote as I climbed onto a stool and waited for Todd to come back, which he did a few minutes later, the bottle in his hand and a hard look on his face.

There was silence as he measured out the Scotch in droppers and fed different amounts of it to the four white rats. I turned away. Until last night, I had never seen anyone or anything shrink. It was a hideous thing. I had hoped never to see it again.

"All right, Princess, you can look now," the Professor said in a sick voice.

I turned. The rats were four different sizes, the littlest being very little indeed. Prof.

Todd was cleaning up the last evidence of the shrinking process as I cleaned up after Lundeen and Mrs. Todd, in such a fright over leaving traces that I had overlooked the Scotch.

"Is this how Pigmies get small?" he asked me.

"No," I said shakily. "We breed true and are immune to what I put in the bottle."

"Then what is it for?"

"Babies of mixed parentage, Pigmy and outsider. And that is all I know about it!"

"Not even the dosages?" he demanded.

"Not even that," I said.He filled the eyedroppers again and fed the mixture to the rats, while I looked away.

When the feeding and shrinking had stopped, he said, "It stabilizes at one-tenth normal size. And you Pigmies are immune to it. Which means" He stared unbelievingly. "That's not possible!"

"Why not?" I said, falling back until he grabbed my shoulders. "I forget which Man it was Peking Man or Java Man or something."

"But he was only nine feet tall!"

"What if he wasn't Peking Man at all, but Peking Baby?" I said.

He dropped his hands and sat down heavily. "Incredible," he said. "Absolutely incredible." He looked at me. "Princess, I've got to have a decent amount of whatever it is to work on."

"No!" I said. "No!"

"If you don't get it for me," he said, "I'll invite your husband and father in to see what you've done to these two!"

"Don't please!" I begged. "I'll get you some. But you've got to help me with an alibi, so they don't get suspicious."

"It's a deal," he said.

"What about us?" shrilled Lundeen. "You can't leave us like this!"

Todd grinned a wicked grin. "Would you care to bet on that?"

"I'll do anything you say!" Mrs. Todd piped. "I'll give you all my money anything"

"Don't bother," Todd said. "I intend to have incontestable proof of your deaths. So I get your money anyhow, without you to spoil it."

He put them, kicking and trying to bite, into a cage and covered it. As an afterthought, he filled the feeder of the cage with a slice of bread and some cold cuts and water.

"Have fun, kiddies," he said merrily, and we went out and he carefully locked the door.

While the Professor stood guard, I pulled out a very old, very st.u.r.dy trunk from under my husband's bunk, opened it and sc.r.a.ped off as much moss as I dared from the five boulders in it, into a test tube Prof. Todd had given me. I closed the trunk and pushed it back under the bunk.

"Good, good," he said as I handed him the stoppered tube. "Now to furnish us with an alibi. Do you know any good places to lose a Land Rover?""There is a dandy quicksand pit not far away," I said, catching some of his excitement.

We got into the Land Rover, and I guided him to the spot. Pus.h.i.+ng from the rear, we shoved the vehicle into the pit. When it vanished, we brushed away our footprints and went back to the lab.

I told him along the way what little I knew of the moss that it was native only to this part of the world, that it had been totally destroyed by our ancestors, except on the five stones, after the Pigmy elephant problem, that there was no antidote, and that not the moss but selective breeding accounted for the size I was so proud of being.

That evening, we asked people if they had seen Lundeen and Mrs. Todd, who had never been this late before. As the hours pa.s.sed, everyone got a little edgy, watching the gate of the compound.

At last the Professor looked at his watch and said, "No sense staying up. They must have driven further than they realized and made camp."

So we went to bed.

Around noon the next day, Todd let himself be worked up over their disappearance and consented to lead one of their search parties. My husband, the Head Witch Doctor, and my father, the Super Chief, led the other two. Naturally, I went with my husband, partly because that's a No. 1 wife's place, but mostly because I wanted him to make the discovery himself which he did with only five or six little nudges from me. The drummer sent out the message and soon the other two parties joined ours.

"A great, great pity," said my father with real feeling, looking down sadly at the quicksand pit. "Now how will we get another White Hunter to bring safaris to us?"

"Always the practical man," my husband said admiringly. "Yes, this could be the end of tribal civilization as we know it, anyway."

Todd asked me what the unseemingly grief was about, and I told him. Doing his best to look bereaved, he held up his hands for silence.

"My friends and in the short time I have known you, you have become friends in need and in deed I came here in search of a new wonder drug and I think perhaps I have found it," he said, with me translating as he went. "In return for the testimony of your leaders so I can inherit my late wife's moneys I shall finance the construction of a vast compound and enough huts to house all your tribes at one time!"

There was a great cheer, led by the Head Witch Doctor and the Super Chief.

"Not only that," the Professor continued, "there must be room in the compound for one hundred in guest huts, a tremendous meeting hut and a large cooking-and-eating hut, plus cla.s.sroom, huts and an airfield. All this must be accomplished within less than one month. d.a.m.n the expense full speed ahead!"The crowd cheered again and headed homewards talking and gesticulating animatedly among themselves.

"It is very nice to become prosperous," my father said in Pigmy. "But what does he want to spend all this money for?"

"You are with him all day, every day," my husband said to me. "It would be discourteous to ask outright, but has he given you no idea?"

"None at all," I confessed.

It was true. Whatever Prof. Todd had dreamed up, he hadn't discussed or even hinted at it till now, nor could I understand it any more than they did. I promised to do everything possible, short of asking, to find out what he had in mind.

Early the next morning, we drove to Mbuti in the mobile laboratory: the Professor, the Head Witch Doctor and the Super Chief in the front seat and me in the lab, which was kept locked at all times. Mrs. Todd and Lundeen hung onto the bars of their cage as the lab bounced and lurched in and out of the ruts of the jungle road.

They alternately tried to bribe and threaten me. I looked at them without listening, doing my best to figure out what Todd meant to do.

I hadn't succeeded when we reached town, nor when we each deposed as to the fates of the unlucky pair, nor when the Professor withdrew a very large amount of money and gave part of it to my father and husband to buy whatever supplies were needed, as well as a used truck and jeep that he presented to the tribe.

While the men were shopping, he and I went to the cable office, where he sent off a number of telegrams to Dr. this and Prof. that in various countries, on both sides of the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. I had no trouble getting to see what he had composed as he went through a little black book for the addresses. He couldn't have been less secretive about his invitation to "Spend Your Vacation in Glamorous, Unspoiled Mbuti! Live for Two Madcap Weeks Amid the Unchanging Pigmies of Still-Dark Africa!" And so forth.

He smiled down at me as I frowned over the inscrutable telegram.

"Puzzle you?" he asked. "It shouldn't. This is why I want all the tribes together and the huge compound and huts to house them, because we are going to have company from all over the world. Not a great many by resort standards, but enough to make room for in the jungle."

I couldn't ask, of course, but I could and did look worried.

"Are you thinking that I'll betray your secret, Princess?" I nodded. "I give you my word," he said, "that I shall not be the one to do so."

I brightened visibly, and when the other two men joined us, I told them about the cablegrams."To study us, no doubt," said the Super Chief.

"A symposium, perhaps," said the Head Witch Doctor.

"Whatever it is," I said, "it'll be in practically the only place on Earth that isn't preparing for war. Anyhow, we will know very soon. The cables gave March 22nd as the opening date."

"When is that?" asked my husband.

"I asked at the cable office. Three weeks from now."

"Then we must really hurry," said my father.

And hurry we did as each tribe reported in and went to work on its portion of the new compound and the various huts. I, meanwhile, a.s.sisted Todd in the lab, but without understanding what he was calling this meeting for.

Could it be the strange moss? Then why had he carelessly emptied the test tube of it into an enameled tray kind of thing and shoved it under the lab's night light, and seem to have forgotten it? Instead, he was taking blood samples from many of us and even with great difficulty, a tiny amount from Lundeen and Mrs. Todd. These he made plates of, and to my unskilled eyes they looked like any other blood specimens. Which goes to show how much Bio I had absorbed at Bennington!

IV.

With March 22nd came bush planes to the landing field that had been completed only the night before. They discharged their pa.s.sengers and took off to make room for more incoming bush planes. Prof. Todd shook hands with each pa.s.senger; they waved h.e.l.lo to each other and then were taken, along with their luggage, to the guest huts. Every hut had a sign listing the nationality of its occupants or, for the large ones, its function.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Todd had had a generator truck come in and string electrical cables to all the huts and to light the streets. The guests accepted it as normal, but our tribes were amazed and delighted.

"I say, Princess," said Lundeen in one of his rare polite moments, "the joint seems to be jumping. Is it because of us?"

"Not at all," I gloated. "The Professor gave me his word that he wouldn't betray my awful revenge."

"Awful is the word," said Mrs. Todd. "How could you do such a thing?"

"I didn't know," I said guiltily. "I knew it would shrink you somewhat, but I never suspected"

"Never mind what you never suspected," said Lundeen, rattling the door of theircage. "Get us out of here. It's not decent to lock up two human beings like a couple of canaries!"

"It's better than you deserve!" I snapped back, pulling the cover down over the cage to shut out their accusing voices.

Prof. Todd unlocked the door and came into the lab, locking the door again before sitting on a stool in the flow of the air conditioner. "This is the only tolerable place in the compound," he said, fanning himself. "Wish I'd had time to air-condition the huts."

"Please, Professor!" said Lundeen's m.u.f.fled voice. "Take the cover off. We'll behave."

Todd ignored him, saying, "Every last person I sent a cablegram to is here! Not a single absentee!"

"That's wonderful," I said. "And you all seem to know one another."

He gave me a wicked grin. "You'd love to know what's going on, wouldn't you. But you can't ask because that would be rude. Right?"

I admitted it.

"Well," he said, "you and the other leaders of your tribes are invited to the meeting hut tonight, and you'll learn about what you and I have been doing for the past few weeks."

"But what about us?" shrilled Mrs. Todd under the cover.

"What about you?" mocked Prof. Todd. "Seems to me that your bodies just about fit your souls!"

However, it was an indication of his own great soul that he uncovered their cage and left the light on before locking the laboratory. Can you imagine what those two would have done if the situation were reversed? So could I. I said so.

"Princess," he said thoughtfully, "if a person, a family, a tribe or a nation imitates an enemy's cruelty or oppression, there would be nothing to distinguish one from the other. The more morality you give up, the more animal you become, the less you deserve to win an argument or a war."

"Even temporarily?" I asked. "Just long enough to win?"

"No! Before, during and after the duration however long it takes however necessary it seems!" He unclenched his fists and smiled crookedly. "Sorry. It's the one subject I get violent on. See you in the meeting hut."

Shaken by his vehemence, I watched him stride off to his own hut, a young man aged before his time by clinging to ideals all but gone in a world heading for a finalsmashup.

I found my husband and the Super Chief in our hut, listening to the news on my portable radio while waiting supper for me. I sat down, and the No. 2 and No. 3 wives served us a really good warthog stew. I complimented them, and they giggled a thank you. To me, then, it was just an average cozy family scene, with no hint of the incredible turmoil so short a time away. I hope they all know how much I miss them, wherever they are.

Depressed as we always were by the world's headlong rush toward destruction, the Head Witch Doctor turned off the radio and asked whether I knew anything more than I had the day before.

"Afraid not," I said. "But the Professor a.s.sured me we would learn all about it tonight."

"Just more blood samples?" he said. I nodded. "I asked the Chest and Belly Witch Doctors what it could mean. They told me they didn't know, but judging from the attendance here, with scientists from everywhere on Earth, it must be as important a discovery as antibiotics."

"I hope you can translate it into Pigmy that I can understand," said the Super Chief.

"I'll do my best," I promised, "but science was never my best subject."