The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum Part 32

She found another sort of queerly unprepossessing fruit composed of five finger-like protuberances from a fibrous disk, so that the whole bore the appearance of a large, mal-formed hand. This she sniffed as carefully as she had the other, then smiled sidewise up at him.

"Bo!" she said, extending it.

Carver hesitated. After all, it was not much more than an hour ago that the girl had been trying to kill him. Was it notentirely possible that she was now pursuing the same end, of-fering him a poisonous fruit?

She shook the unpleasantly bulbous object. "Bo!" she re-peated, and then, exactly as if she understood his hesitancy, she broke off one of the fingers and thrust it into her own mouth. She smiled at him.

"Good enough, Lilith." He grinned, taking the remainder.

It was much pleasanter to the tongue than to the eye. The pulp had a tart sweetness that was vaguely familiar to him, but he could not quite identify the taste. Nevertheless, en-couraged by Lilith's example, he ate until his hunger was ap-peased.

The encounter with Lilith and her wild pack had wiped out thoughts of his mission. Striding back toward the beach he frowned, remembering that he was here as Alan Carver, zool-ogist, and in no other role. Yet-where could he begin? He was here to cla.s.sify and to take specimens, but what was he to do on a mad island where every creature was of an unknown variety? There was no possibility of cla.s.sification here, be-cause there were no cla.s.ses. There was only one of every-thing-or so it appeared.

Rather than set about a task futile on the very face of it, Carver turned his thoughts another way.

Somewhere on Aus-tin was the secret of this riotous disorder, and it seemed better to seek the ultimate key than to fritter away his time at the endless task of cla.s.sifying. He would explore the island. Some strange volcanic gas, he mused vaguely, or some queer radio-active deposit-a.n.a.logous to Morgan's experiments with X-rays on germ plasm. Or-or something else. There must be some answer.

"Come on, Lilith," he ordered, and set off toward the west, where the hill seemed to be higher than the opposing eminence at the island's eastern extremity.

The girl followed with her accustomed obedience, with her honey-hued eyes fastened on Carver in that curious mixture of fear, wonder, and-perhaps-a dawning light of wors.h.i.+p.

The zoologist was not too preoccupied with the acc.u.mula-tion of mysteries to glance occasionally at the wild beauty of her face, and once he caught himself trying to picture her in civilized attire-her mahogany hair confined under one of the current tiny hats, her lithe body sheathed in finer textile than the dried and cracking skin she wore, her feet in dainty leather, and her ankles in chiffon. He scowled and thrust the visualization away, but whether because it seemed too anom-alous or too attractive he did not trouble to a.n.a.lyze.

He turned up the slope. Austin was heavily wooded, like the Aucklands, but progress was easy, for itwas through a forest, not a jungle. A mad forest, true enough, but still compara-tively clear of underbrush.

A shadow flickered, then another. But the first was only a queen's pigeon, erecting its glorious feather crest, and the second only an owl parrot. The birds on Austin were normal; they were simply the ordinary feathered life of the southern seas. Why? Because they were mobile; they traveled, or were blown by storms, from island to island.

It was mid-afternoon before Carver reached the peak, where a solemn outcropping of black basalt rose treeless, like a forester's watchtower. He clambered up its eroded sides and stood with Lilith beside him, gazing out across the central val-ley of Austin Island to the hill at the eastern point, rising until its peak nearly matched their own.

Between sprawled the wild forest, in whose depths blue-green shadows s.h.i.+fted in the breeze like squalls visible here and there on the surface of a calm lake. Some sort of soaring bird circled below, and far away, in the very center of the val-ley, was the sparkle of water. That, he knew, must be the rivulet he had already visited. But nowhere-nowhere at all -was there any sign of human occupation to account for the presence of Lilith-no smoke, no clearing, nothing.

The girl touched his arm timidly, and gestured toward the opposite hill.

"Pah bo!" she said tremulously. It must have been quite ob-vious to her that he failed to understand, for she amplified the phrase. "R-r-r-rl" she growled, drawing her perfect lips into an imitation of a snarl.

"Pah bo, lay shot." She pointed again toward the east.

Was she trying to tell him that some fierce beasts dwelt in that region? Carver could not interpret her symbolism in any other way, and the phrase she had used was the same she had applied to the poisonous fruit.

He narrowed his eyes as he gazed intently toward the east-ern eminence, then started. There was something, not on the opposing hill, but down near the flash of water midway be-tween.

At his side hung the prism binoculars he used for identify-ing birds. He swung the instrument to his eyes. What he saw, still not clearly enough for certainty, was a mound or struc-ture, vine-grown and irregular. But it might be the roofless walls of a ruined cottage.

The sun was sliding westward. Too late in the day now for exploration, but tomorrow would do. He marked the place of the mound in his memory, then scrambled down.

As darkness approached, Lilith began to evince a curious reluctance to move eastward, hanging back, sometimes drag-ging timidly at his arm. Twice she said "No, no!" and Carver wondered whether the word was part of her vocabulary or whether she had acquired it from him. Heaven knew, he re-flected amusedly, that he had used the word often enough, as one might use it to a child.

He was hungry again, despite the occasional fruits Lilith had plucked for him. On the beach he shot a magnificent Cyg-nus Atratus, a black Australian swan, and carried it with its head dragging, while Lilith, awed by the shot, followed him now without objection.

He strode along the beach to his box; not that that stretch was any more desirable than the next, but if Kolu and Malloa were to return, or were to guide a rescue expedition from the Fortune, that was the spot they'd seek first.

He gathered driftwood, and, just as darkness fell, lighted a fire.

He grinned at Lilith's start of panic and her low "O-o-oh!" of sheer terror as the blaze of the match caught and spread. She remembered her scorched fingers, doubtless, and she cir-cled warily around the flames, to crouch behind him where he sat plucking and cleaning the great bird.

She was obviously quite uncomprehending as he pierced the fowl with a spit and set about roasting it, but he smiled at the manner in which her sensitive nostrils twitched at the com-bined odor of burning wood and cooking meat.

When it was done, he cut her a portion of the flesh, rich and fat like roast goose, and he smiled again at her bewilderment. She ate it, but very gingerly, puzzled alike by the heat and the altered taste; beyond question she would have preferred it raw and bleeding. When she had finished, she scrubbed the grease very daintily from her fingers with wet sand at a tidal pool.

Carver was puzzling again over what to do with her. He didn't want to lose her, yet he could hardlystay awake all night to guard her. There were the ropes that had lashed his case of supplies; he could, he supposed, tie her wrists and an-kles; but somehow the idea appealed to him not at all. She was too naive, too trusting, too awe-struck and wors.h.i.+pful. And besides, savage or not, she was a white girl over whom he had no conceivable rightful authority.

At last he shrugged and grinned across the dying fire at Lilith, who had lost some of her fear of the leaping flames. "It's up to you," he remarked amiably. "I'd like you to stick around, but I won't insist on it."

She answered his smile with her own quick, flas.h.i.+ng one, and the gleam of eyes exactly the color of the flames they mirrored, but she said nothing. Carver sprawled in the sand; it was cool enough to dull the activities of the troublesome sand fleas, and after a while he slept.

His rest was decidedly intermittent. The wild chorus of night sounds disturbed him again with its strangeness, and he woke to see Lilith staring fixedly into the fire's dying embers. Some time later he awakened again; now the fire was quite extinct, but Lilith was standing. While he watched her silently, she turned toward the forest. His heart sank; she was leaving.

But she paused. She bent over something dark-the body of one of the creatures he had shot. The big one, it was; he saw her struggle to lift it, and, finding the weight too great, drag it laboriously to the coral spit and roll it into the sea.

Slowly she returned; she gathered the smaller body into her arms and repeated the act, standing motionless for long min-utes over the black water. When she returned once more she faced the rising moon for a moment, and he saw her eyes glis-tening with tears. He knew he had witnessed a burial.

He watched her in silence. She dropped to the sand near the black smear of ashes; but she seemed in no need of sleep. She stared so fixedly and so apprehensively toward the east that Carver felt a sense of foreboding. He was about to raise himself to sitting position when Lilith, as if arriving at a deci-sion after long pondering, suddenly sprang to her feet and darted across the sand to the trees.

Startled, he stared into the shadows, and out of them drifted that same odd call he had heard before.

He strained his ears, and was certain he heard a faint yelping among thetrees. She had summoned her pack. Carver drew his revolver quietly from its holster and half rose on his arm.

Lilith reappeared. Behind her, darker shadows against the shadowy growths, lurked wild forms, and Carver's hand tight-ened on the grip of his revolver.

But there was no attack. The girl uttered a low command of some sort, the slinking shadows vanished, and she returned alone to her place on the sand.

The zoologist could see her face, silver-pale in the moon-light, as she glanced at him, but he lay still in apparent slum-ber, and Lilith, after a moment, seemed ready to imitate him. The apprehension had vanished from her features; she was calmer, more confident. Carver realized why, suddenly; she had set her pack to guard against whatever danger threatened from the east.

Dawn roused him. Lilith was still sleeping, curled like a child on the sand, and for some time he stood gazing down at her. She was very beautiful, and now, with her tawny eyes closed, she seemed much less mysterious; she seemed no is-land nymph or dryad, but simply a lovely, savage, primitive girl. Yet he knew-or he was beginning to suspect-the mad truth about Austin Island. If the truth were what he feared, then he might as well fall in love with a sphinx, or a mermaid, or a female centaur, as with Lilith.

He steeled himself. "Lilith!" he called gruffly.

She awoke with a start of terror. For a moment she faced him with sheer panic in her eyes; then she remembered, gasped, and smiled tremulously. Her smile made it very hard for him to remember what it was that he feared in her, for she looked beautifully and appealingly human save for her wild, flame-colored eyes, and even what he fancied he saw in those might be but his own imagining.

She followed him toward the trees. There was no sign of her b.e.s.t.i.a.l bodyguards, though Carver suspected their near-ness. He breakfasted again on fruits chosen by Lilith, selected unerringly, from the almost infinite variety, by her delicate nostrils. Carver mused interestedly that smell seemed to be the one means of identifying genera on this insane island.

Smell is chemical in nature. Chemical differences meant glandular ones, and glandular differences, in the last a.n.a.lysis, probably accounted for racial ones. Very likely the differences between a cat, say, and adog was, in the ultimate sense, a glandular difference. He scowled at the thought and stared narrowly at Lilith; but, peer as he might, she seemed neither more nor less than an unusually lovely little savage-except for her eyes.

He was moving toward the eastern part of the island, in-tending to follow the brook to the site of the ruined cabin, if it was a ruined cabin. Again he noted the girl's nervousness as they approached the stream that nearly bisected this part of the valley. Certainly, unless her fears were sheer superst.i.tion, there was something dangerous there. He examined his gun again, then strode on.

At the bank of the brook Lilith began to present difficulties. She s.n.a.t.c.hed his arm and tugged him back, wailing, "No, no, no!" in frightened repet.i.tion.

When he glanced at her in impatient questioning, she could only repeat her phrase of yesterday. "Lay shot," she said, anxiously and fearfully. "Lay shot!"

"Humph!" he growled. "A cannon's the only bird I ever heard of that could-" He turned to follow the watercourse into the forest.

Lilith hung back. She could not bring herself to follow him there. For an instant he paused, looking back at her slim love-liness, then turned and strode on. Better that she remained where she was. Better if he never saw her again, for she was too beautiful for close proximity. Yet Heaven knew, he mused, that she looked human enough.

But Lilith rebelled. Once she was certain that he was de-termined to go on, she gave a frightened cry.

"Alan!" she called. "Al-an!

He turned, astonished that she remembered his name, and found her darting to his side. She was pallid, horribly fright-ened, but she would not let him go alone.

Yet there was nothing to indicate that this region of the is-land was more dangerous than the rest.

There was the same mad profusion of varieties of vegetation, the same uncla.s.sifi-able leaves, fruits, and flowers. Only-or he imagined this-there were fewer birds.

One thing slowed their progress. At times the eastern bank of the rivulet seemed more open than their side, but Lilith steadfastly refused to permit him to cross. When he tried it, she clung so desperately and so violently to his arms that he at last yielded, and plowed his way through the underbrush onhis own bank. It was as if the watercourse were a dividing line, a frontier or-he frowned-a border.

By noon they had reached a point which Carver knew must be close indeed to the spot he sought. He peered through the tunnel that arched over the course of the brook, and there ahead, so overgrown that it blended perfectly with the forest wall, he saw it.

It was a cabin, or the remains of one. The log walls still stood, but the roof, doubtless of thatch, had long ago disinte-grated. But what struck Carver first was the certainty, evident in design, in window openings, in doorway, that this was no native hut. It had been a white man's cabin of perhaps three rooms.

It stood on the eastern bank; but by now the brook had nar-rowed to a mere rill, gurgling from pool to tiny rapids. He sprang across, disregarding Lilith's anguished cry. But at a glimpse of her face he did pause. Her magnificent honey-hued eyes were wide with fear, while her lips were set in a tense little line of grimmest determination. She looked as an ancient martyr must have looked marching out to face the lions, as she stepped deliberately across to his side. It was al-most as if she said, "If you are bound to die, then I will die be-side you."

Yet within the crumbling walls there was nothing to inspire fear. There was no animal life at all, except a tiny, ratlike be-ing that skittered out between the logs at their approach. Car-ver stared around him at the gra.s.sy and fern-grown interior, at the remnants of decaying furniture and the fallen debris. It had been years since this place had known human occupants, a decade at the very least.

His foot struck something. He glanced down to see a hu-man skull and a human femur in the gra.s.s.

And then other bones, though none of them were in a natural position. Their former owner must have died there where the ruined cot sagged, and been dragged here by-well, by whatever it was that had feasted on human carrion.

He glanced sidewise at Lilith, but she was simply staring af-frightedly toward the east. She had not noticed the bones, or if she had, they had meant nothing to her. Carver poked gin-gerly among them forsome clue to the ident.i.ty of the re-mains, but there was nothing save a corroded belt buckle.

That, of course, was a little; it had been a man, and most probably a white man.

Most of the debris was inches deep in the acc.u.mulation of loam. He kicked among the fragments of what must once have been a cupboard, and again his foot struck something hard and round-no skull this time, but an ordinary jar.

He picked it up. It was sealed, and there was something in it. The cap was hopelessly stuck by the corrosion of years; Carver smashed the gla.s.s against a log. What he picked from the fragments was a notebook, yellow-edged and brittle with time. He swore softly as a dozen leaves disintegrated in his hands, but what remained seemed stronger. He hunched down on the log and scanned the all-but-obliterated ink.

There was a date and a name. The name was Ambrose Callan, and the date was October 25th, 1921. He frowned. In 1921 he had been-let's see, he mused; fifteen years ago-he had been in grade school. Yet the name Ambrose Callan had a familiar ring to it.

He read more of the faded, written lines, then stared thoughtfully into s.p.a.ce. That was the man, then.

He remem-bered the Callan expedition because as a youngster he had been interested in far places, exploration, and adventure, as what youngster isn't? Professor Ambrose Callan of Northern; he began to remember that Morgan had based some of his work with artificial species-synthetic evolution-on Callan's observations.

But Morgan had only succeeded in creating a few new species of fruit fly, of Drosophila, by exposing germ plasm to hard X-rays. Nothing like this-this madhouse of Austin Is-land. He stole a look at the tense and fearful Lilith, and shud-dered, for she seemed so lovely-and so human. He turned his eyes to the crumbling pages and read on, for here at last he was close to the secret.

He was startled by Lilith's sudden wail of terror. "Lay shot!" she cried. "Alan, lay shot!"

He followed her gesture, but saw nothing. Her eyes were doubtless sharper than his, yet-There! In the deep afternoon shadows of the forest something moved. For an instant he saw it clearly-a malevolent pygmy like the cat-eyed horror he had glimpsed drinking from the stream. Like it? No, the same; it must be the same, for here on Austin no creature re-sembled another, nor ever could, save by the wildest of chances.

The creature vanished before he could draw his weapon, but in the shadows lurked other figures, other eyes that seemed alight with nonhuman intelligence. He fired, and a cu-rious squawling cry came back, and it seemed to him that the forms receded for a time. But they came again, and he saw without surprise the nightmare horde of creatures.

He stuffed the notebook in his pocket and seized Lilith's wrist, for she stood as if paralyzed by horror.

He backed away out of the doorless entrance, over the narrow brook. The girl seemed dazed, half-hypnotized by the glimpses of the things that followed them. Her eyes were wide with fear, and she stumbled after him unseeing. He sent another shot into the shadows.

That seemed to rouse Lilith. "Lay shot!" she whimpered, then gathered her self-control. She uttered her curious call, and somewhere it was answered, and yet further off, answered again.

Her pack was gathering for her defense, and Carver felt a surge of apprehension for his own position.

Might he not be caught between two enemies?

He never forgot that retreat down the course of the little stream. Only delirium itself could duplicate the wild battles he witnessed, the unearthly screaming, the death grips of crea-tures not quite natural, things that fought with the mad frenzy of freaks and outcasts. He and Lilith must have been slain im-mediately save for the intervention of her pack; they slunk out of the shadows with low, b.e.s.t.i.a.l noises, circling Carver cau-tiously, but betraying no sc.r.a.p of caution against-the other things.

He saw or sensed something that had almost escaped him before. Despite their forms, whatever their appearance hap-pened to be, Lilith's pack was doglike. Not in looks, certainly; it was far deeper than that. In nature, in character; that was it.

And their enemies, wild creatures of nightmare though they were, had something feline about them.

Not in appearance, no more than the others, but in character and actions. Their method of fighting, for instance-all but silent, with deadly claw and needle teeth, none of the fencing of canine nature, but withthe leap and talons of feline. But their aspect, their -their catness was more submerged by their outward ap pearance, for they ranged from the semi-human form of the little demon of the brook to ophidian-headed things as heavy and lithe as a panther. And they fought with a ferocity and in- telligence that was itself abnormal.

Carver's gun helped. He fired when he had any visible tar-get, which was none too often; but his occasional hits seemed to instill respect into his adversaries.

Lilith, weaponless save for stones and her wooden knife, simply huddled at his side as they backed slowly toward the beach. Their progress was maddeningly slow, and Carver be-gan to note apprehensively that the shadows were stretching toward the east, as if to welcome the night that was sliding around from that half of the world. Night meant-destruc-tion.

If they could attain the beach, and if Lilith's pack could hold the others at bay until Carver could build a fire, they might survive. But the creatures that were allied with Lilith were being overcome. They were hopelessly outnumbered. They were being slain more rapidly with each one that fell, as ice melts more swiftly as its size decreases.

Carver stumbled backward into orange-tinted sunlight. The beach! The sun was already touching the coral spit, and dark-ness was a matter of minutes-brief minutes.

Out of the brush came the remnants of Lilith's pack, a half-dozen nondescripts, snarling, b.l.o.o.d.y, panting, and exhausted. For the moment they were free of their attackers, since the catlike fiends chose to lurk among the shadows. Carver backed farther away, feeling a sense of doom as his own shadow lengthened in the brief instant of twilight that divided day from night in these lat.i.tudes. And then swift darkness came just as he dragged Lilith to the ridge of the coral spit.

He saw the charge impending. Weird shadows detached themselves from the deeper shadows of the trees. Below, one of the nondescripts whined softly. Across the sand, clear for an instant against the white ground coral of the beach, the fig-ure of the small devil with the half-human posture showed, and a malevolent sputtering snarl sounded. It was exactly as if the creature had leaped forward like a leader to exhort his troops to charge.

Carver chose that figure as his target. His gun flashed; the snarl became a squawl of agony, and the charge came. Lilith's pack crouched; but Carver knew that this was theend. He fired. The flickering shadows came on. The magazine emptied; there was no time now to reload. So he reversed the weapon, clubbed it. He felt Lilith grow tense beside him.

And then the charge halted. In unison, as if at command, the shadows were motionless, silent save for the low snarling of the dying creature on the sand. When they moved again, it was away-toward the trees!

Carver gulped. A faint s.h.i.+mmering light on the wall of the forest caught his eye, and he spun. It was true! Down the beach, down there where he had left his box of supplies, a fire burned, and rigid against the light, facing toward them in the darkness, were human figures. The unknown peril of fire had frightened off the attack.

He stared. There in the sea, dark against the faint glow of the west, was a familiar outline. The Fortune! The men there were his a.s.sociates; they had heard his shots and lighted the fire as a guide.

"Lilith!" he choked. "Look there. Come on!"

But the girl held back. The remnant of her pack slunk be-hind the shelter of the ridge of coral, away from the dread fire. It was no longer the fire that frightened Lilith, but the black figures around it, and Alan Carver found himself sud-denly face to face with the hardest decision of his life.

He could leave her here. He knew she would not follow, knew it from the tragic light in her honey-hued eyes. And be-yond all doubt that was the best thing to do; for he could not marry her.

n.o.body could ever marry her, and she was too lovely to take among men who might love her-as Carver did. But he shuddered a little as a picture flashed in his mind. Children! What sort of children would Lilith bear? No man could dare chance the possibility that Lilith, too, was touched by the curse of Austin Island.

He turned sadly away-a step, two steps, toward the fire. Then he turned."Come, Lilith," he said gently, and added mournfully, "other people have married, lived, and died without children. I suppose we can, too."