6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction Read online

  Vixen fastened her teeth onto the leg of one of the young men, but another got hold of my left arm before I could get to my feet. The Indians seemed to have decided not to hurt me and to have had a mistaken idea that I would not strike the girls if they attacked me, because the second girl now knelt on my chest. Her hair had fallen down and was hanging in my face. I was able to raise the barrel of my rifle and clip her on the jaw with it as I lay on my back, at the same time striking the other girl on the top of the head with a downward stroke from the butt. The young men now became more active, and disarmed me and tied me. I called Vixen off and gave up the battle. To tell the truth, I was curious about these Indians. I was even more curious about the two girls, who definitely were white and who spoke a kind of English—in the struggle they both swore like cavalry officers. I only hoped they did not know the meaning of the words they used. (It subsequently appeared that they did not, but had learned them from an old prospector who, having joined the Indians and finding these two orphan girls among them—their parents had died of the Red Death—had decided to pay his debt to society by teaching them his version of their own language.) The Indians were Comanches and Kiowas and had set out from Oklahoma four years ago on a kind of scouting exploration mission. They had brought the girls with them as interpreters, in case they should find any white men left alive. Their medicine men had foretold the finding of one and had said the white man would give them news.

  I was at first tongue-tied in the presence of the girls, who seemed, once I had got used to the idea, incredibly beautiful and desirable. I have to some extent got over this phase, which I consider one of the few signs of senility I have shown. I had next to learn the language they called English. Apart from its Rabelaisian flavor, it had many Comanche words which the girls used to fill in the gaps, where they had forgotten what their prospector friend had taught them. As he died when they were about ten years old, they had developed a kind of special language, as children do. However, by degrees I got their story. They were the daughters of an Indian agent and his wife who had been killed on the reservation when the blast hit us. The girls had been infants then, and so knew very little about the blast. An Indian squaw had adopted them. Some time later, a prospector by the name of Adam K. Bell had joined forces with the tribe (he had been in the mountains for two years) and had instructed the girls in their mother tongue and in his version of history, geography and mathematics. They knew the multiplication tables and could add, subtract, divide and multiply—arts which made them invaluable to the Indians, who called them in when such obscure calculations were necessary. He had also taught them some excellent geology, though they could never figure out his interest in gold, which they said was quite common in some of the mountains they had explored; and they thought it had caused the old prospector’s death through frustration, though of course they did not use that word. They said he went mad when he saw it—and to express his madness they clapped their hands, jumped up and down, and pulled at their hair.

  The war party that captured me had had its camp on the site of the blast. The tepees stood about where the Players Club had been. They had chosen this site because, since everything was flattened around them, they need fear no ambush. When we reached the camp, a number of warriors were seated on the grass, grazing their horses, which they held by long riatas. These were the reserve braves, as it were, who had their arms with them—bows and arrows—and could be in action in a few minutes. Farther away, other horses were being grazed under an armed, mounted guard. These men had rifles that looked like Springfields. It appeared later that they had picked them up here and there as they crossed the country—deer rifles and the like, war souvenirs and other relatively light guns. In the United States, very heavy game rifles of the sort used in Africa have always been rare; and even if the Indians had found one, they would only have fired it once because of the kick. But even though they could have found enough ordinary rifles and enough ammunition, a great number of the braves were apparently against using them. The white man’s magic had, as it were, gone out of fashion with all but the boldest. As I took in the scene, I was struck by the oddness of the combination of primitive and modern weapons in the hands of the red men. Noble savages—but I wished they had been less rough with me.

  More men were sitting about the cooking fires in front of the tepees. My girls—I called them that already in my mind—seemed to be the only women with the party.

  I was taken before the leader, a subsidiary chief or headman called Tall Eagle. He was a powerful man of about forty, and some kind of communication with him was established with the help of the girls. I did not get to know the full story of these Indians until later, when I had mastered something of their tongue, which I speak well now though I continue to mix in words of Zulu, which disconcerts them. The war party’s mission was to proceed east till they came to the Great Water and then follow it south till they came to the land of the Seminoles, with whom they wished to establish contact and discuss the formation of a union of the Indian tribes that had survived, a repetition of the Six Nations alliance—if six nations were found still to exist.

  They were, however, much perturbed by the great mutations that they had found in the East, and even to encounter such animals as Bengal tigers and polar bears worried them. Fortunately, the great mutations were not common. In my first week with the Indians I had the good fortune to kill a giant mink that had attacked a party of their braves, after it had killed three members of the party and sucked the blood from two of their horses. With the help of the Indians, I skinned the animal. It took ten men to drag it out so that we could peg it.

  Perhaps I should describe this hunt in greater detail because it had certain interesting qualities. I was riding with one of the girls in the vicinity of my old home in 45th Street, perhaps unconsciously bidding it farewell, when from the direction of the Hudson River I heard shouts and yells which I knew must come from my new friends. I could also distinguish the scream of a giant mink. I was luckily carrying my 450. I had, in fact, fired a few shots from it just to get my horse used to the sound of a gun, something that he had not taken kindly to at first but seemed to be getting used to, as almost any horse will if he is swung sideways to the target so that a shot is not fired too close to his ears or face. At any rate, when I heard the noise I turned Prince’s head toward the river and galloped down the soft grass of the street, which at this point runs downhill till it crosses Ninth Avenue, where it rises in a short hill. I could feel Prince change his stride as the street rose; his great quarters came under him as he drove his hind hoofs into the turf. The girl stayed close behind me.

  Breasting the hill, I checked the horse, pulling him up almost into a rear because, as I stopped him, I heard a terrible cry of agony from quite near by. Swinging Prince around, I pushed him up onto a ridge and saw, on the corner of what had been Tenth Avenue, the strangest sight I have ever seen.

  A giant mink stood at bay with a dead Indian in his mouth. Two other Indians lay on the ground, and there was a dead horse near by. Some mounted Indians and one loose horse were circling round the mink, who bristled with so many arrows that he looked almost like a porcupine. There were probably enough arrows to kill him in the end, but he would take days to die. The Indians with rifles were not with this party. Even if they had been, their bullets would have been too light to have much effect. The most intelligent thing the Indians could have done would have been to leave the mink alone now, because he would have settled down to suck the blood of the men and horses he had killed; but they were in no mood to give in and, uttering wild yells, they closed in on him, circling around him and shooting more arrows into him. This made it impossible for me to get a shot at him till suddenly, dropping the man he held, he did what I hoped he would do—stood up on his hind legs. He had seen me on the ridge, outlined against the sky, and wondered what I was. The mink’s eyesight, fortunately, is not good. As he stood looking and sniffing, his pointed face dripping with blood, I charged down straight at h
im—a distance of a hundred yards or so—and, pulling up about twenty paces short of him, swung Prince broadside on and put a soft-nosed bullet into the mink’s chest, midway between his short, waving forelegs. The bullet must have smashed into his backbone because he threw up his paws, almost as a man might throw up his hands, and fell backward with the Indians closing in on him, forcing their reluctant ponies up to him so that they could drive their spears into him. Once satisfied that he was dead, they expressed their pleasure.

  Nothing could have suited my purpose better than this happy event, for by it I proved my value to them as a warrior. For I had realized for some time that even if they had decided to leave me behind when they left New York (they had freed me almost as soon as they caught me), I would have followed because I needed company.

  ~ * ~

  The bowl of my personal existence was shattered. Here were men again. I’d forgotten how I needed men. It was interesting how my nostrils, trained by years of hunting, now dilated at the scent of men. There were also the girls, who affected me profoundly, and the horses. Women might be a necessity in youth, but horses were a pleasure that I had never forgotten. No man was ever betrayed by a horse; no horse ever deserted him or bore false witness against him.

  It took me some time to explain my ideas to the Indians, and to accustom my youngest dogs to their company. The older and more savage dogs I shot after having steeled myself by drinking half a bottle of French brandy. Actually, apart from the dogs that I could not take, I regretted most leaving my wine cellar. But I had some beautiful dogs left; I had the bay stallion Tall Eagle had given me; and I had the company of a hundred and fifty magnificent young Indians and two young white girls who were burned as brown as the Indians and distinguishable from them only by their corn-colored hair and blue eyes. All this made up for what I had lost.

  I was, however, faced with an ethical problem. The Indians, who had discovered heavy rifles similar to mine in some of the stores they had entered, wished me to instruct them in their use. I could see nothing to be gained by such instruction, so I tried to explain to them that this was white man’s magic and so strong that it had destroyed all the white men in the world except me, turning its forces against them in retribution for their own misuse of its power. I also pointed out that all they need do to have this great power at their disposal was to keep me alive and treat me well. I let one man fire a shot lying down, and the recoil broke his collarbone. This seemed to confirm all that I had said.

  Until I was with people again, it had not occurred to me to consider my own appearance, because when a man is alone he has no appearance. I found a mirror and examined myself with some attention and amazement. I was as straight as I had always been, but I was much wider than I had thought possible. My arms were as big as my thighs; my chest was immense. My hair was long, reaching halfway down my back, and my beard reached my belt. Both hair and beard were snow white. My body hair, with which I was covered, was white in front of my body and shaded through silver into black along my spine. For ornament, I wore a diamond necklace around my neck; my only clothing was a khaki kilt that I wore for warmth, a leather belt in which was stuck my kukri, and a pair of leather shoes. On my upper arms I had some gold armlets made from expanding wrist-watch chains and other jeweled bracelets that I had joined together and mounted on wide leather straps—a pastime I had indulged in as a hobby. I could not think what I looked like until I suddenly remembered the steel engravings of an old Bible I had had as a child. I looked like Moses when he received the tablets. But the astonishing thing was how well I felt and how immensely strong I was—now that I had others against whom to measure myself.

  My appearance does not seem to bother the Indians and it is evident that the two girls—their names are Helen and Christine—want to marry me and are even prepared to share me if necessary, much to the amusement of the braves, who, now that we know each other well, nudge me in the ribs and give me monosyllabic advice amplified by gestures. This situation is still unresolved and becomes daily more precarious.

  My personal affairs have, however, no historic interest; and, having completed my story of the end of the white man’s world, I can only say that I ride forward with optimism and can now laugh at the change of circumstance which hoisted my race with the petard of its own ingenuity and returned this great land to its original possessors. “America for the Americans,” I say to Tall Eagle, and laugh. He says nothing. He thinks I am mad. But the girls laugh, because young girls laugh at anything, and it is spring again.

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  COVENTRY ..... By Robert Heinlein

  “HAVE YOU anything to say before sentence is pronounced on you?” The mild eyes of the senior judge studied the face of the accused. His sympathetic regard was answered by a sullen silence.

  “Very well—the jury has determined the fact that you have violated a basic custom agreed to under the Covenant, and that through that act you did damage another free citizen. It is the opinion of the jury and of the court that you did so knowingly, and aware of the probability of damage to a free citizen. Therefore you are sentenced to choose between the Two Alternatives.”

  A trained observer might have detected a momentary trace of dismay breaking through the mask of stoical indifference with which the young man had faced his trial. Dismay at the sentence was unreasonable; in view of his offense, the sentence was inevitable—but reasonable men do not receive the sentence.

  After waiting a decent interval, the judge turned to the bailiff. “Take him away.”

  Before that official could reach him he stood up, knocking over his chair with the violence of his movement. He glared wildly around at the little company assembled about the long table and burst into speech.

  “Hold on!” he cried. “I’ve got something to say first!” In spite of his rough manner there was about him, somehow, the noble dignity of a strong and untamed beast at bay. He stared at those around him, breathing heavily, as if they were, in fact, a circle of hunting dogs waiting to drag him down.

  “Well?” he demanded. “Well? Do I get to talk or don’t I? It’d be the best joke of this whole damned comedy if a condemned man couldn’t speak his mind at the last!”

  “You may speak,” the senior judge told him in the same even, unhurried tones with which he had pronounced sentence, “David MacKinnon, as long as you like, and in any manner that you like. There is no limit to that freedom, even for those who have broken the Covenant. Please speak into the recorder.”

  MacKinnon glanced with distaste at the tiny microphone hanging near his face. The knowledge that any word spoke in its range would be broken down into typed phonetic symbols by a recording voder somewhere in the Hall of Archives inhibited his speech. “I don’t ask for records,” he snapped.

  “But we must have them,” the judge replied patiently, “in order that others may determine whether or not we have dealt with you fairly and according to the Covenant. Oblige us, please.”

  “Oh, very well!” He ungraciously conceded the requirement and directed his voice toward the instrument. “There’s no damn sense in me talking at all—but, just the same, I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. You talk about your precious ‘Covenant’ as if it were something holy. I don’t agree to it, and I don’t accept it. You act as if it had been sent down from Heaven in a bunt of light. My grandfathers fought in the Second Revolution —but they fought to abolish superstition—not to let sheep-minded fools set up new ones.

  “There were men in those days!” He looked with aversion around the ring of faces. “What is there left today? Cautious compromising, ‘safe’ weaklings with water in their veins. You’ve planned your whole world so carefully that you’ve planned the fun and zest right out of it. Nobody is ever hungry, nobody ever gets hurt. Your ships can’t crack up and your crops can’t fail. You even have the weather tamed so it rains politely—after midnight. Why you wait till midnight, I don’t know—you all go to bed at nine o’clock!


  “If one of you safe little people should have an unpleasant emotion—perish the thought!—you’d trot right over to the nearest psychodynamics clinic and get your soft little minds readjusted. Thank God I never succumbed to that dope habit. I’ll keep my own feelings, thanks, no matter how bad they taste.

  “You won’t even make love without consulting a psychotechnician! Is her mind as flat and insipid as mine? Is there any emotional instability in her family? It’s enough to make a man gag. As for fighting over a woman —if anyone had the guts to do that he’d find a proctor at his elbow in two minutes, looking for the most convenient place to paralyze him, and inquiring with sickening humility, ‘May I do you a service, sir?’ “

  The Bailiff edged closer to MacKinnon. He turned on the official. “Stand back, you. I’m not through yet.” Then, resuming, “You’ve told me to choose between the Two Alternatives. Well, it’s no hard choice for me. Before I’d submit to treatment, before I’d enter one of your neat little, safe little, pleasant little reorientation homes and let my mind be pried into by a lot of soft-fingered doctors —before I did anything like that I’d choose a nice, clean death. Oh, no—there is just one choice for me, not two. I take the choice of going to Coventry—and damned glad to. I hope I never hear of the United States again!