The Second Ardath Mayhar Page 11

  I never bother anybody, and I expect nobody to bother me. That worked for decades, though I have to discount those charitable-minded ladies who used to visit me and ask me to chair the Red Cross drive or some such activity, beginning the pitch with, “We know you don’t work, so we thought you could do this….”

  I write. I paint. I make my living that way, but normal people just can’t get their heads around the concept that sitting at a typewriter, easel, or computer and staring at the wall can possibly be called work.

  Those finally stopped coming around, and I have spent the past ten years relatively untroubled. And now the acreage north of me has been clear-cut and the Bradlows have built a house there. The clear-cutting was bad enough, destroying a beautiful hardwood and pine forest and leaving much of the wood to rot. Then those philistines came in and built a monstrosity out of tin and plywood and junk, and moved eight adults and any number of totally untaught children into it.

  For all my fifty-odd years I have lived down here near the river bottoms, and it has been quiet, except for natural sounds of the woods, and the rattling of pickups along the road to the river. To those familiar and untroubling sounds were added shrieks worthy of banshees, yells that would shame a barbarian horde, and a general hubbub that made anyone within a half mile cringe. Even shut into my study with the air conditioner running, I found myself distracted to the point of being unable to concentrate.

  I suspected that civil protest would do no good, but I began with a neighborly gesture. I baked a cake and carried it through the tangle of brush-tops and gouges made by the loggers’ trucks to the already ramshackle porch of the house. My knocking finally brought footsteps toward the door, and a frowzy blonde peered out through the screen.

  “D’ya want?” she muttered.

  “I thought I would...”—I almost choked on the words—“…welcome you to your new home and bring you this sponge cake.”

  She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and stared at me, then at the cake, which I had put in a disposable plastic container with a cover. She slapped absently at a child who came pushing past her jeans-clad legs. Three more came shooting past her (and me), sounding like steam calliopes. “Get outta here, you little bastids!” she shrilled, but she reached for the cake with a small attempt at a smile.

  I gave my best imitation smile and said, “I am Lynn Masters, and I live just down the road in the strange metal house. I am sorry you had to build in such an ugly spot, but they cut down the forest a few months ago.”

  She did her best, I could tell, though polite behavior was obviously not her forte. “I’m Kelly Bradlow,” she said, opening the door and gesturing for me to enter the house.

  “With all these kids, the house stays a mess, but you kin sit down in the kitchen.”

  “Are all those children yours?” I asked.

  She shook her tousled head. “Just the first one. I got more, but they’re too little to let run loose. There’s snakes and stuff out in that mess. Most of the ones you’ll see belong to Meg and Joan and Lissa. Our men are loggers. They done the work clearin’ out this woods so’s we could build. This belonged to Doug’s fam’ly. Wasn’t till his Daddy died that Duggie and the boys got hold of it legal and could cut off the timber and sell it.”

  “You’re all one family then,” I said, feeling a bit sad and helpless. “Is Doug your husband?”

  “Guess you could say so. We been together four years and had three young’uns.”

  I girded my loins and ventured to say, “Well, it’s about the children I came over. I’m a writer, and it takes a lot of quiet for me to do my work. The children are rather—loud? If there’s any way you could calm them down a bit, I would surely appreciate it.”

  She stared at me as if I had suddenly grown another head. “You mean you write books and such? And get paid for it?” She sounded both shocked and horrified.

  “Yes. Paid rather well, in fact. I paint pictures as well, and sell them through the art gallery in Templeton. “

  She backed away as if I might have something contagious. “Duggie says it’s sinful for a woman to get paid for workin’. It’s all right to work her in the woods or on a farm, but payin’ her makes her uppity and self-willed.”

  I couldn’t help breaking into laughter that shook me from head to feet. “What century is he living in?” I asked her. “Didn’t he ever hear of women’s rights?”

  “Women is the spawn of Satan, the root of evil ways. The preacher says we should work hard, keep our mouths shut, and mind our men, no matter what they want us to do.” Her voice held the ritual tonalities I had heard from any number of backwoods preachers and fundamentalists. I knew there was no hope for her, poor child. Nevertheless, I persisted.

  “Well whatever Duggie thinks, I need quiet to get my work done, and those children make so much noise I can’t think. I would appreciate anything you could do to tone them down a bit.” I turned and stepped out of the screen door onto the step.

  Kelly followed me, rather hesitantly I thought. “Miz Masters, I don’t like to be on the outs with neighbors. I’ll see if the girls can rein in the kids somehow. I take it you earn your own livin’, have no man to do for you?”

  “Exactly. I grew up on that land south of you, used to farm it when I was a bit younger, doing my writing in my spare time. Then I grew old and achy and the writing began earning me enough so I didn’t need to farm any more. Now, except for what I make selling a cow from time to time, my writing income supports me.”

  She sighed, and I could see her better instincts warring with her religious teachings. As I walked away, I turned and she gave a tiny wave before going back into the house. What a pity. There was the making of a nice person there, if she hadn’t fallen into the hands of a redneck bigot. My impression of the Bradlow brothers was not, I am afraid, a favorable one, if they shared old Duggie’s convictions. Still, I pride myself on being open-minded, and I knew I had to give things a chance to work out.

  For about three days things were somewhat more quiet. Then there was a knock on my front door that threatened to smash in the screen. I was absorbed in a scene and it took a moment to come back to myself and go to the door. Filling the entire door frame was the biggest man I had ever seen. He was taller than the door—some three inches, in fact—and wider, too.

  “You that Masters woman?” he asked, his voice deep enough to vibrate the floor under my feet. “Been fussin’ at my woman ’bout the kids?”

  Thank God I am tall. If I’d been much shorter I would have had to crack my neck to see his face. I stepped outside and he backed away a bit so I could stand on the porch. That face was no treat. Its expression was worse.

  He bent to stare into my eyes. His were washed-out gray, contrasting with the saddle-leather tan of his weather-wrinkled skin. I stared back with all the authority of my fifty-odd years.

  “I simply asked Kelly to see if the children could be a bit quieter. Their shrieks break into my concentration, and I earn my living by thinking and writing.”

  He drew a deep breath. “You got no man to keep you straight. Nobody to make you do right and keep to Christian ways. If you go puttin’ sinful notions into Kelly’s mind, I’ll come over here and make a Christian out of you.”

  I felt a hot surge of rage rush through me. I stepped closer to him and glared into his eyes. “You come over here with any idea about that sort of thing and I’ll blow your damn head off. I’ve lived down here all my life, and my parents and grandparents before me. We don’t have trouble with anybody, because everyone around here knows we have guns and know how to use them. I shot a burglar a few years back, but he was not from anywhere close.

  “If you think you can set up a nineteenth-century farm, with bullied women and children, here in the beginning of the twenty-first, you’d better think again. Children go to school. Women have to go to town for groceries and such, and one day they’ll wake
up and realize that the fact that you men are bigger than they are doesn’t mean you have the sense God gave a goat. Now get out of here before I lose my temper.”

  I backed into the house and lifted the shotgun I keep just inside. I thought his face would burst it got so red. “My family’s kids’re goin’ to make your life miserable,” he growled. “I’ll see to it.”

  He started toward the road.

  I called after him, “Two can play at that game!” I already had some ideas about that.

  Music had been my passion all my life. I had equipment that could equal having a symphony orchestra or an opera company in my own home. I did a bit of shopping on the Internet, and once the CDs came, I simply waited to see what might happen next.

  The children had become louder and louder, though from the lack of enthusiasm in their voices I suspected that shouting and screaming to order wasn’t nearly as much fun as doing it spontaneously. I let it go on for two days. At just about bedtime on the second, I set up the speakers from my old stereo system, aiming them at the house up the road. Now there were no trees to buffer the sound, and I knew the family would get the full effect.

  At midnight I turned on the Ride of the Valkyries at full volume. Then I went inside, plugged my ears with the kind of plugs artillerymen use, and went to sleep.

  That CD would play all night, with whale calls, train whistles, wolf howls, every wild noise I could think of. Nobody in that house would get any sleep, for I knew what that system could do. It would vibrate the house itself.

  It took two weeks. Then they moved out, and I had my lawyer make an offer for that land. They accepted it. I tore down the house, and I am having the former forest replanted with a mix of hardwood and pine. It’s quiet again, and in time there will be deep woods there, for my nephew, if not for me...and I didn’t have to shoot anybody at all!

  WELCOME TO SHIARA

  This may be my earliest sf story, which I may not have marketed at all—I cannot remember, actually.

  The thing uncoiled slowly, deliberately, the metallic gold of its sinuous body stretching to incredible length. Emerald eyes glistened in the flat head, not the eyes of a mindless predator but those of one aware and alert.

  Berthold felt them on him as he froze in place. There was no malignance there that he could detect, but he knew he might be in trouble. He had never intended to disobey orders and venture alone into the intricate ruins of the buried city. Others had disappeared down here, on other expeditions, and he understood that because of the thick layers of metal-impregnated stone above him, he couldn’t call for help. If this creature was dangerous (and it looked as if it might decide to be at any moment), he must make an orderly withdrawal from its territory. What he would do if it pursued him he didn’t like to consider.

  Berthold had lost his sense of direction, and his Locator seemed to have suffered some malfunction—possibly because of the odd metal of the surrounding structures. When the turf underfoot had collapsed, dropping him into the depths, he hadn’t been fully aware of the direction in which he’d been going, except that the Locator told him camp was ahead. Tumbling down through layered debris hadn’t helped any. When he finished rolling downward, he had found himself in this stone tunnel, which must be far below the levels of the city that had been explored. It was impossible to climb back the way he had come—he had felt stuff crumbling, even as he fell. The weak spot was probably completely unstable.

  As he began to back warily away from the shining serpent caught in the beam of his emergency lamp, he drew a deep breath... and wondered how the air in this deep complex could seem so fresh and breathable. Could it be that the serpent-like creature kept air shafts open to the surface? It must breathe, too, he felt certain. The fauna of this world seemed to use oxygen, as those of Earth did.

  As he moved, a dim light began to grow around him, and soon he could shut off his lamp. The glow grew stronger, and he found it came from crystalline insets along the upper curve of the tunnel. What sort of power could have lasted this long? The system seemed to be motion-sensitive, for as he moved farther along, the tunnel behind him dimmed to darkness again. Turning to stare back, he saw the liquid shimmer of gold and knew the creature was following him. Even as he watched, the golden shape slithered closer, the head swaying above the rippling curves of the long body.

  An opening appeared as a shadow in the now bright corridor, and he ducked into it, causing the light behind him to die away. Frantically, he thumbed the switch of his lamp and found himself in another corridor. Behind him, he could hear the sibilant hiss of scales on stone, and when he turned the beam in that direction it reflected golden sparks.

  He turned to run, examining the corridor as he went. At any other time he would have admired the fineness of the stone-work, but now he searched only for some way to escape. That thing behind him knew these tunnels, while he was fleeing like a mouse in a maze, blind and panicky. He glimpsed a cross-passage ahead and switched off the light, hoping to lose his pursuer. He crept forward now, as softly as possible, and at the point where he estimated the other corridor to be he risked one flash of light. Then he nipped into the tunnel and stopped to listen.

  Behind there was the leisurely swish of scales. He didn’t move, taking time to control his heartbeat and calm himself with the techniques that he had acquired in his long training. Then he clicked on his torch and hurried up the new passage. If this serpent was like those on his world, it might well home in on his body heat. Darkness would be no help to him. Only his quicker mammalian wits might work against what he hoped were slow, reptilian ones.

  The passage ended at a cross-tunnel. He’d turned right twice, so far. Now he turned left, for he didn’t care to go back to the beginning again. This was a long passage with arched doorways along the sides. Some still were closed with heavy panels, and he hoped there were no more golden serpents behind them. Others had disintegrated, and he dared to peep into one of those rooms. Nothing was there except dust and dimness.

  His faster pace had now left the slithering sound far behind. He reached the end of the corridor and turned right again. Doors, doors, doors, mostly intact and immovable, marked the way. He had to find some way to shut himself away from the thing behind him. Otherwise he might find himself in the position of rats, back in his school lab days, caught in the coils of snakes.

  He tried the doors, now, though they had no handles and were made to slide upward into the wall. Hand in slot, shoulder against the wood, he would give a hard push and go on, almost without slowing. When another corridor opened to his left, he took that route. There the doors were made of metal, each solidly shut. He tried a few, but these took more time and soon he heard the distant slither behind. At last he stopped to examine the largest door yet, probing its arch with his bright beam. Indentations marked either side of the arch, a long reach even for him, and he was tall. The coils were closer now, and he stretched to set his thumbs into the notches. He pressed hard and a groan sounded inside the wall as metal screeched and the door moved upward.

  Berthold found he had been holding his breath. Now he let it out and stepped back. A room closed so tightly for so long might contain deadly vapors, and he fumbled for the gas-wick the explorers carried for building fires. It lit as he touched the igniter, and he held it toward the opening. To his relief it burned brightly, and he stepped into the doorway. The panel hissed downward behind him, and he searched for some way to secure it. Then he relaxed. The serpent had no hands. It could not conceivably open that door requiring two thumbs and a long reach. He was safe...at least until hunger or thirst forced him out into the corridors again.

  The room had begun to glow with the motion-sensor controlled light, now, and he saw that it was huge. Above him in the domed ceiling something began to hum, and a barrier dropped between him and the metal door. A grid of steel...Berthold gripped it before he could stop himself. The mechanism lowering the grid stopped and a soothing voice s
aid, “Welcome to Shiara. Your brain scan shows you to be moderately advanced, and our linguistic program has accessed your vocabulary. An analysis of your biochemistry is being made at this moment, and you may rest assured that your every need will be met, insuring you a long and healthy life in the Shiaran Zoo of Sapient Creatures.

  “Even should some disaster overtake our world, you will be cared for without interruption, for our zoo is solar powered, and the cells are made to last forever. Synthesizers will supply your every want or need. You will not be troubled by watchers, for our techniques allow us to observe you without direct vision.

  “You may think it cruel to imprison sentient beings, but that is the only way in which to observe them in safety. We hope you were not unnecessarily alarmed by the appearance and actions of our Collectors, which are of a species almost every sapient race finds frightening. They are able to herd specimens into the domicile without being physically coercive.

  “If possible, we will find another specimen of your kind with which you may reproduce, and any offspring, we assure you, will be trained in a manner fitting for your kind and released on a planet suited for its survival. You will not be sentencing it to a lifetime of captivity. We find such scruples to be a part of your psychological profile, and we do not want you to be concerned.

  “Again, welcome to Shiara. We regret that your introduction to our world must be of this nature, but scientific investigation demands sacrifice. A long life to you, Rale Berthold!” The voice went silent.

  Berthold stared blindly at the dome above. He was seeing Elizabeth Gramming, biochemist for the expedition. She had clashed with his views all through their training. When he was chosen leader of their group, she had been furious. She did not control her dislike, as he did. She was the only female in this particular crew. To be trapped with her for a long healthy life in the bowels of this dead world—the thought was unutterably horrible.