6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction Read online

  “That’s mother’s little man! Now listen. This guard. Lefty, in addition to being kind o’ unbright, is sensitive about his looks. When they turn out the lights, you—”

  ~ * ~

  “Let me out of here! Let me out of here!” MacKinnon beat on the bars and screamed. No answer came. He renewed the racket, his voice a hysterical falsetto. Lefty arrived to investigate, grumbling.

  “What the hell’s eating on you?” he demanded, peering through the bars.

  MacKinnon changed to tearful petition. “Oh, Lefty, please let me out of here. Please! I can’t stand the dark. It’s dark in here—please don’t leave me alone.” He flung himself, sobbing, on the bars.

  The guard cursed to himself. “Another slug-nutty. Listen, you—shut up and go to sleep or I’ll come in there and give you something to yelp for!” He started to leave.

  MacKinnon changed instantly to the vindictive, unpredictable anger of the irresponsible. “You big, ugly baboon! You rat-faced idiot! Where’d ja get that nose?”

  Lefty turned back, fury in his face. He started to speak. MacKinnon cut him short. “Yah! Yah! Yah!” he gloated. “Lefty’s mother was scared by a warthog—”

  The guard swung at the spot where MacKinnon’s face was pressed between the bars of the door. MacKinnon ducked and grabbed simultaneously. Off balance at meeting no resistance, the guard rocked forward, thrusting his forearm between the bars. MacKinnon’s fingers slid along his arm and got a firm purchase on Lefty’s wrist.

  He threw himself backward, dragging the guard with him, until Lefty was jammed up against the outside of the barred door, with one arm inside, to the wrist of which MacKinnon clung as if welded.

  The yell which formed in Lefty’s throat miscarried; Magee had already acted. Out of the darkness, silent as death, his slim hands had snaked between the bars and embedded themselves in the guard’s fleshy neck. Lefty heaved and almost broke free, but MacKinnon threw his weight to the right and twisted the arm he gripped in an agonizing, bone-breaking leverage.

  It seemed to MacKinnon that they remained thus, like some grotesque game of statues, for an endless period. His pulse pounded in his ears until he feared that it must be heard by others and bring rescue to Lefty.

  Magee spoke at last: “That’s enough,” he whispered. “Go through his pockets.”

  He made an awkward job of it, for his hands were numb and trembling from the strain, and it was anything but convenient to work between the bars. But the keys were there, in the last pocket he tried. He passed them to Magee, who loosed the guard and accepted them.

  Magee made a quick job of it. The door swung open with a distressing creak. Dave stepped over Lefty’s body, but Magee kneeled down, unhooked a truncheon from the guard’s belt and cracked him behind the ear with it.

  MacKinnon paused. “Did you kill him?” he asked.

  “Cripes, no,” Magee answered softly. “Lefty is a friend of mine. Let’s go.”

  They hurried down the dimly lighted passageway between the cells toward the door leading to the administrative offices—their only outlet. Lefty had carelessly left it ajar, and light shone through the crack, but as they silently approached it they heard ponderous footsteps from the far side. Dave looked hurriedly for cover, but the best he could manage was to slink back into the corner formed by the cell block and the wall. He glanced around for Magee, but he had disappeared completely.

  The door swung open; a man stepped through, paused, and looked around. MacKinnon saw that he was carrying a black light and wearing its complement—rectifying spectacles. He realized then that the darkness gave him no cover. The black light swung his way; he tensed to spring-

  He heard a dull clunk! The guard sighed, swayed gently, then collapsed into a loose pile. Magee stood over him, poised on the balls of his feet, and surveyed his work while caressing the business end of the truncheon with the cupped fingers of his left hand.

  “That will do,” he decided. “Shall we go, Dave?”

  Magee eased through the door without waiting for an answer. MacKinnon was close behind him. The lighted corridor led away to the right and ended in a large double door to the street. On the left wall, near the street door, a smaller office door stood open.

  Magee drew MacKinnon to him. “It’s a cinch,” he whispered. “There’ll be nobody in there now but the desk sergeant. We get past him, then out that door and into the ozone—” He motioned Dave to keep behind him and crept silently up to the office door. After drawing a small mirror from a pocket in his belt, he lay down on the floor, placed his head near the door frame and cautiously extended the tiny mirror an inch or two past the edge.

  Apparently he was satisfied with the reconnaissance the improvised periscope afforded him, for he drew himself back onto his knees and turned his head so that MacKinnon could see the words shaped by his silent lips. “It’s all right,” he breathed, “there is only—”

  Two hundred pounds of uniformed Nemesis landed on his shoulders. A clanging alarm sounded through the corridor. Magee went down fighting, but he was outclassed and caught off guard. He jerked his head free and shouted, “Run for it, kid!”

  MacKinnon could hear running feet from somewhere, but could see nothing but the struggling figures before him. He shook his head and shoulders like a dazed animal, then kicked the larger of the two contestants in a fashion forbidden by sportsmanship. The man screamed and let go his hold. MacKinnon grasped his small companion by the scruff of the neck and hauled him roughly to his feet.

  Magee’s eyes were still merry. “Well played, my lad,” he commended in clipped syllables, as they burst out the street door, “if hardly cricket! Where did you learn La Savate?”

  MacKinnon had not time to answer, being fully occupied in keeping up with Magee’s weaving, deceptively-rapid progress. They ducked across the street, down an alley and between two buildings.

  The succeeding minutes, or hours, were confusion to MacKinnon. He remembered afterward crawling along a rooftop and letting himself down to crouch in the blackness of an interior court, but he could not remember how they had gotten on the roof. He also recalled spending an interminable period alone, compressed inside a most unsavory refuse bin, and his terror when footsteps approached the bin and a light flashed through a crack.

  A crash and the sound of footsteps in flight immediately thereafter led him to guess that Fader had drawn the pursuit away from him. But when Fader did return and opened the top of the bin, MacKinnon almost throttled him before identification was established.

  When the active pursuit had been shaken off, Magee guided him across town, showing a sophisticated knowledge of back ways and short cuts, and a genius for taking full advantage of cover. They reached the outskirts of the town in a dilapidated quarter, far from the civic center. Magee stopped. “I guess this is the end of the line, kid,” he told Dave. “If you follow this street you’ll come to the open country shortly. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” MacKinnon replied uneasily, and peered down the street. Then he turned back to speak again to Magee.

  But Magee was gone. He had faded away into the shadows. There was neither sight nor sound of him. MacKinnon started in the suggested direction with a heavy heart. There was no possible reason to expect Magee to stay with him; the service Dave had done him with a lucky kick had been repaid with interest—yet he had lost the only friendly companionship he had found in a strange place. He felt lonely and depressed.

  He continued along, keeping to the shadows and watching carefully for shapes that might be patrolmen. He had gone a few hundred yards and was beginning to worry about how far it might be to open countryside when he was startled into gooseflesh by a hiss from a dark doorway.

  He did his best to repress the unreasoning panic that beset him, and was telling himself that policemen never hiss, when a shadow detached itself from the blackness and touched him on the arm.

  “Dave.” it said softly.

  MacKinnon felt a child
like sense of relief and well-being. “Fader!”

  “I changed my mind, Dave. The gendarmes would have you in tow before morning. You don’t know the ropes— so I came back.”

  Dave was both pleased and crestfallen. “You shouldn’t worry about me,” he protested. “I’ll get along.”

  Magee shook him roughly by the arm. “Don’t be a chump. Green as you are, you’d start to holler about your civil rights or something, and get clipped in the mouth again.

  “Now see here.” he went on, “I’m going to take you to some friends of mine who will hide you until you’re smartened up to the tricks around here. But they’re on the wrong side of the law, see? You’ll have to be all three of the three sacred monkeys—see no evil, hear no evil, tell no evil. Think you can do it?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “No ‘buts’ about it. Come along!”

  ~ * ~

  The entrance was in the rear of an old warehouse. Steps led down into a little sunken court. From this open areaway—foul with accumulated refuse—a door let into the back, wall of the building. Magee tapped lightly but systematically, waited and listened. Presently he whispered, “Ps-s-st! It’s the Fader.”

  The door opened quickly and Magee was encircled by two great, fat arms. He was lifted off his feet while the owner of those arms planted a resounding buss on his cheek. “Fader!” she exclaimed. “Are you all right, lad? We’ve missed you.”

  “Now that’s a proper welcome, Mother,” he answered when he was back on his own feet, “but I want you to meet a friend of mine. Mother Johnston, this is David MacKinnon.”

  “May I do you a service?” David acknowledged with automatic formality, but Mother Johnston’s eyes tightened with instant suspicion.

  “Is he stooled?” she snapped.

  “No, Mother, he’s a new immigrant—but I vouch for him. He’s on the dodge. I’ve brought him to cool.”

  She softened a little under his persuasive tones. “Well—”

  Magee pinched her cheek. “That’s a good girl! When are you going to marry me?”

  She slapped his hand away. “Even if I were forty years younger I’d not marry such a scamp as you! Come along, then,” she continued to MacKinnon, “as long as you’re a friend of the Fader—though it’s no credit to you!” She waddled quickly ahead of them down a flight of stairs while calling out for someone to open the door at its foot.

  The room was poorly lighted with a few obsolete glow tubes and was furnished principally with a long table and some chairs, at which an odd dozen people were seated, drinking and talking. It reminded MacKinnon of prints of old English pubs in the days before the Collapse.

  Magee was greeted with a babble of boisterous welcome. “Fader!” “It’s the kid himself!” “How’d ja do it this time, Fader? Crawl down the drains?” “Set ‘em up, Mother— the Fader’s back!”

  He accepted the ovation with a wave of his hand and a shout of inclusive greeting, then turned to MacKinnon. “Folks,” he said, his voice cutting through the confusion, “I want you to know Dave—the best pal that ever kicked a jailer at the right moment. If it hadn’t been for Dave I wouldn’t be here.”

  MacKinnon found himself seated between two others at the table and a stein of beer thrust into his hand by a not uncomely young woman. He started to thank her, but she had hurried off to help Mother Johnston take care of the sudden influx of orders. Seated opposite him was a rather surly young man who had taken little part in the greeting to Magee. He looked MacKinnon over with a face expressionless except for a recurrent tic which caused his right eye to wink spasmodically every few seconds.

  “What’s your line?” he demanded.

  “Leave him alone, Alec,” Magee cut in swiftly but in a friendly tone; “He’s just arrived inside; I told you that. But he’s all right,” he continued, raising his voice to include the others present. “He’s been here less than twenty-four hours, but he’s broken jail, beat up two customs busies, and sassed old Judge Fleishacker right to his face. How’s that for a busy day?”

  Dave was the center of approving interest, but the party with the tic persisted. “That’s all very well, but I asked him a fair question: What’s his line? If it’s the same as mine, I won’t stand for it—it’s too crowded now.”

  “That cheap racket you’re in is always crowded, but he’s not in it. Forget about his line.”

  “Why don’t he answer for himself?” Alec countered suspiciously. He half stood up.

  It appeared that Magee was cleaning his nails with the point of a slender knife. “Put your nose back in your glass, Alec,” he remarked in a conversational tone, without looking up, “or must I cut it off and put it there?”

  The other fingered something nervously in his hand. Magee seemed not to notice it, but nevertheless told him, “If you think you can use a vibrator on me faster than I can use steel, go ahead—it will be an interesting experiment.”

  The man facing him stood uncertainly for a moment longer, his tic working incessantly. Mother Johnston came up behind him and pushed him down by the shoulders, saying, “Boys! Boys! Is that any way to behave—and in front of a guest, too! Fader, put that toad sticker away. I’m ashamed of you.”

  The knife was gone from his hands. “You’re right, as always, Mother,” he grinned. “Ask Molly to fill up my glass again.”

  An old chap sitting on MacKinnon’s right had followed these events with alcoholic uncertainty, but he seemed to have gathered something of the gist of it, for now he fixed Dave with a serum-filled eye and inquired, “Boy, are you stooled to the rogue?” His sweetly sour breath reached MacKinnon as the old man leaned toward him and emphasized his question with a trembling finger.

  Dave looked to Magee for advice and enlightenment. Magee answered for him. “No, he’s not—Mother Johnston knew that when she let him in. He’s here for sanctuary—as our customs provide!”

  An uneasy stir ran around the room. Molly paused in her serving and listened openly. But the old man seemed satisfied. “True—true enough,” he agreed, and took another pull at his drink. “Sanctuary may be given when needed, if—” His words were lost in a mumble.

  The nervous tension slackened. Most of those present were subconsciously glad to follow the lead of the old man and excuse the intrusion on the score of necessity. Magee turned back to Dave. “I thought that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you—or us—but the matter has been opened.”

  “But what did he mean?”

  “Gramps asked you if you had been stooled to the rogue—whether or not you were a member of the ancient and honorable fraternity of thieves and pickpockets!”

  Magee stared into Dave’s face with a look of saturnine amusement. Dave looked uncertainly from Magee to the others, saw them exchange glances, and wondered what answer was expected of him.

  Alec broke the pause. “Well,” he sneered, “what are you waiting for? Go ahead and put the question to him—or are the great Fader’s friends free to use this club without so much as a by your leave?”

  “I thought I told you to quiet down, Alec,” the Fader replied evenly. “Besides, you’re skipping a requirement. All the comrades present must first decide whether or not to put the question at all.”

  A quiet little man with a chronic worried look in his eyes answered him. “I don’t think that quite applies, Fader. If he had come himself, or fallen into our hands— In that case; yes. But you brought him here. I think I speak for all when I say he should answer the question. Unless someone objects, I will ask him myself.” He allowed an interval to pass. No one spoke up. “Very well, then. Dave, you have seen too much and heard too much. Will you leave us now—or will you stay and take the oath of our guild? I must warn you that once stooled you are stooled for life—and there is but one punishment for betraying the rogue.”

  He drew his thumb across his throat in an age-old deadly gesture. Gramps made an appropriate sound effect by sucking air wetly through his teeth and chuckled.

  Dave looked arou
nd, Magee’s face gave him no help. “What is it that I have to swear to?” he temporized.

  The parley was brought to an abrupt ending by the sound of pounding outside. There was a shout, muffled by two closed doors and a stairway, of “Open up down there!” Magee got to his feet and beckoned to Dave.

  “That’s for us, kid,” he said. “Come along.”

  He stepped over to a ponderous old-fashioned radio-phonograph which stood against the wall, reached under it, fiddled for a moment, then swung out one side panel of it. Dave saw that the mechanism had been cunningly rearranged in such a fashion that a man could squeeze inside it. Magee urged him into it, slammed the panel closed and left him.

  MacKinnon’s face was pressed up close to the slotted grille which was intended to cover the sound box. Molly had cleared off the two extra glasses from the table and was dumping one drink so that it spread along the table top and erased the rings their glasses had made.