Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (117 page)

Another was similarly snatched from the vacant lot two hundred yards farther along the road. Passing a skeletal rooming house, Graham saw hunter and hunted crossing the open area. Lit by the former’s ghostly glow, the latter’s fantastically elongated shadow fled ahead of him.

The prey had all the frantic motion of one fleeing from a product of fundamental hell. His feet hit earth in great, clumping strides, while queer, distorted words jerked from his fear-smitten larynx.

Iridescent blue closed upon him and formed a satanic nimbus behind his head. The blue swelled, engulfed both the runner and his final, despairing scream. The Viton spewed two rings before it took the body skyward.

A third and a fourth were picked from Drexler Avenue. They saw the downward swoop of blue. One ran. The other fell on his knees, bent in dreadful obeisance, covered the nape of his neck with his hands. The runner bellowed hoarsely as he ran, his belly heaving, his bladder out of control, his terror-filled tones a veritable paean of the damned. The kneeler remained kneeling, as if before his personal joss. The joss was as impartial as any other god. They were taken simultaneously, sobbed together, soared together, true believer and heretic alike, both the sinner and the saved. The Vitons displayed no preferences, showed no favors. They dished out death as impartially as munitions-makers or meningococci.

Moisture was lavish on Graham’s forehead as he stole up the driveway, passed through the doors of the Samaritan Hospital. He wiped it off before seeing Harmony, decided he would say nothing of these tragedies.

She was as cool and collected as ever, and her richly black eyes surveyed him with what he felt to be a sort of soothing serenity. Nevertheless, they saw into him deeply.

“What has happened?” she asked.

“Happened? What d’you mean?”

“You look bothered. And you’ve just wiped your forehead.”

Pulling out a handkerchief, he mopped it again, said, “How did you know that?”

“It was smeary.” The eyes showed alarm. “Were they after you again?”

“No, not me.”

“Someone else?”

“What’s this?” he demanded. “A quiz?”

“Well, you looked off-balance for once,” she defended.

“I’m always off-balance when talking to you.” He drove other, deadlier matters out of his thoughts and gave her the springtime look. “I’ll be normal when I’ve got used to you, when I’ve seen more of you.”

“Meaning what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I assure you I’ve not the remotest notion of what you’re trying to suggest,” she said, coldly.

“A date,” he told her.

“A date!” Her eyes supplicated the ceiling. “In the midst of all this, he comes seeking dates.” She sat down behind her desk, picked up her pen. “You must be stark, staring mad. Good day, Mr. Graham.”

“It’s night time, not day,” he reminded. He emitted an exaggerated sigh. “A night for romance.”

She sniffed loudly as she commenced writing.

“All right,” he gave in. “I know when I’m given the brush-off. I get used to it these days. Let’s change the subject. What d’you know?”

She put down the pen. “I was waiting for you to return to your senses. I’ve been wanting to see you the last few hours.”

“Have you, begad!” He stood up delightedly.

“Don’t be conceited!” She waved him down. “This is about something serious."

“Oh, lordie, aren’t I something serious?” he asked the room.

“I had Professor Farmiloe around to tea.”

“What’s he got that I haven’t?”

“Manners!” she snapped.

He winced, subsided.

“He’s an old dear. Do you know him?”

“A bit—though I don’t want to now.” He put on an exaggerated expression of jealousy and contempt. “Aged party with a white goatee, isn’t he? I believe he’s Fordham’s expert on something or other. Probably takes care of their tropical butterflies.”

“He was my godfather.” She mentioned this fact as if it explained everything. “He’s some kind of a physicist.”

“Bill,” he prompted.

She took no notice.

“I think he’s—”

“Bill,” he insisted.

“Oh, all right,” she said, impatiently. “Bill, if it pleases you.” She tried to keep her face straight, but he caught the underlying hint of a smile and gained considerable satisfaction therefrom. “Bill, I think he’s got an idea of some sort. It bothers me. Every time somebody gets an idea, he dies.”

“Not necessarily. We don’t know how many are still living who’ve been nursing ideas for months. Besides, I’m alive.”

“You’re alive because you appear to have only one idea,” she observed, tartly. Her legs went under her chair.

“How could you say that?” He registered shock.

“For heavens sake, will you let me keep to the subject on which I wish to talk to you?”

“Okay.” He gave her an annoying grin. “What makes you think old Farmiloe is afflicted with a notion?”

“I was talking to him about the luminosities. I wanted him to explain why it’s so difficult to find a weapon against them.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said that we hadn’t yet leaned how to handle forces as familiarly as substances, that we’d advanced sufficiently to discover the Vitons but not enough to develop a means of removing them.” Her fine eyes appraised him as she went on. “He said that we could throw energy in all sorts of forms at a Viton, and if nothing happened we just had no way of discovering why nothing had happened. We can’t even capture and hold a Viton to find out whether it repels energy or absorbs it and re-radiates it. We can’t grab one to discover what it’s made of.”

“We know they absorb
some
energy,” Graham pointed out. “They absorb nervous currents, drinking them like thirsty horses. They absorb radar pulses—radar can’t get a blip out of a Viton. As for the mystery of their composition, well, old Farmiloe’s right. We’ve no idea and no way of getting an idea. That’s the hell of it.”

“Professor Farmiloe says it’s his personal opinion that these luminosities have some sort of electro-dynamic field, that they can modify it at will, that they can bend most forms of energy around them, absorbing only those that are their natural food.” Revulsion suffused her features. “Such as those nervous currents you mentioned.”

“And we cant reproduce those with any known apparatus,” Graham commented. “If we could, we might be able to stuff them until they burst.”

Her smile crept back. “I happened to remark that I’d like to have a magic spoon and stir them up like so many blue puddings.” Her slender fingers curled around an imaginary spoon, stirred in vigorous ellipses. “For some weird reason, he seemed fascinated when I made this demonstration. He copied me, waving his finger round and round as if it was some new sort of game. It was only my foolishness—but why should he be equally foolish? He knows a lot more about energy problems than I can hope to learn.”

“Doesn’t make sense to me. D’you think he’s in his second childhood?”

“Most decidedly not.”

“Then I don’t get it.” Graham made a defeated motion.

“Not giving any indication of what was on his mind, he looked slightly dazed, said he’d better be going,” she continued. “Then he wandered out in that preoccupied manner of his. As he went, he remarked that he’d try to find me that spoon. I know that he really meant something by that: he was not reassuring me with idle words
—he meant something!”
Her smoothly curved brows rose in query. “He meant—what?”

“Nutty!” decided Graham. He made a stirring motion with an invisible spoon. “It’s nutty—like everything else has been since this crazy affair began. Probably Farmiloe is stupefied by learning. He’ll go home and try to develop a haywire eggbeater, and finish up playing with it while in Fawcett’s care. Fawcett’s got dozens like that.”

“You wouldn’t make such remarks if you knew the professor as well as I do,” she retorted sharply. “He’s the last person who’d become unbalanced. I’d like you to go and see him. He may have something worth getting.” She leaned forward. “Or would you rather arrive too late, as usual?”

He winced, said, “Okay, okay, don’t hit me when I’m down. I’ll go see him right away.”

“That’s being sensible,” she approved. Her eyes changed expression as she watched him stand up and reach for his hat. “Before you go, aren’t you going to tell me what has got you worried?”

“Worried?” He turned around slowly. “That’s a laugh! Ha-ha! Fancy, me worried!”

“You don’t deceive me. All that date-making small-talk of yours didn’t fool me, either. I could see you were bothered the moment you came in. You looked ripe for murder.” Her hands came together. “Bill, what is it?—something new?-—something worse?”

“Oh, darn!” He thought a moment, then said, “You might as well be told, I guess. You’ll learn it sooner or later, anyway.”

“What is it?”

“They don’t seem to be killing them any more. They’re snatching them bodily now, and taking them God knows where.” He spun his hat round in his hand. “We don’t know why they’re snatching them, or what for. But we can have our dreams . . . bad dreams!”

She paled.

“It’s the latest version of the oldest gag,” he added, brutally, “a fate worse than death!” He put the hat on his head. “So for pity’s sake, look after yourself and keep out of their way to what extent you can. No ducking out of your dates, even by going skyward, see?”

“I’ve not made a date.”

“Not yet. But someday you will. When all this mess is cleaned up, you’re going to be pestered plenty.” He grinned. “I’ll have nothing else to do, then—and I’m going to spend all my time doing it!”

He closed the door on her faint wisp of a smile. Sneaking through the gates and into the murky road that crawled beneath a sky of jet, he knew that that smile still lingered with the memory of his words. But he couldn’t think for long about her smile.

In the distance the hidden clouds dripped great blobs of shining blue; rain from the overhead hell. There was a mutual soaring of ghastly globules a little later. They were too far off for him to see clearly, but he sensed that the phenomena were ascending burdened.

With his mind’s eyes, he saw stiff, unmoving human figures rising in the tentacled grasp of repulsive captors, while below their helpless bodies ten thousand guns gaped at the lowering sky, a thousand listening trumpets awaited the advent of another enemy which, at least, was flesh. The pond was being scoured for frogs even while the frogs were battling each other, cannibalistically.

“We shall measure our existence by its frogs.”

He wondered how this epidemic of kidnappings would appeal to an observer not yet treated with Bjornsen’s sight-widening formula. Undoubtedly, this awful demonstration of superior powers justified the fearful superstitions of the past. Such things had happened before. History and the oldest legends were full of sudden frenzies, levitations, vanishings, and ascensions into the blue mystery of the everlasting sky.

His thoughts jerked away from the subject, switched to the old scientist who had hurried home with a strange idea, and he said to himself, “Bill Graham, I’ll lay you a dollar to a cent that Farmiloe either is demented, departed or dead.”

Satisfied with this sportingly morbid offer, he turned down Drexler, sneaked cautiously through the deepest shadows, his rubber-soled shoes padding along with minimum of sound, his agate-like, glistening eyes wary of ambush in the night-time clouds. Down, down below his slinking feet the beryllium-steel jaws gnawed and gnawed and gnawed at the hidden ores and secret rocks.

Professor Farmiloe was dead beyond all possible doubt, and Graham knew it the moment he opened the door. Swiftly, he crossed the gloom-filled room, ran his pencil torch over its windows, made certain that its light-bottling drapes permitted no vagrant gleam to pass outside. Satisfied, he found the wall-switch, flicked current through the center bulb.

A two-hundred watts blaze beat down on the still figure of the scientist, making mocking sparkles in his white hair which was framed by arms bent limply on the desk. Sitting in his chair, Farmiloe looked as if he had fallen asleep, couching his weary head within his arms. But his was not the sleep that is broken by the dawn—it was slumber of another kind, dreamless and never-ending.

Gently, Graham lifted the bowed shoulders, shoved a hand through the shirt-front, felt the cold chest. He studied the aged and kindly face, noted that it was quite devoid of that terrorized expression which had distorted the features of other dead.

He had reached a pretty good age, Farmiloe. Maybe his end was natural. Maybe his clock inevitably had reached its fateful time and tick—and the luminosities had not been involved in the tragedy. At first glance, it didn’t look as if they’d been involved; that peaceful expression, plus the fact that he’d died and not been snatched. The hell of it was that if an autopsy showed death to be caused by heart failure it would mean nothing, absolutely nothing.

Weirdly vibrant filaments could absorb quasi-electrical nervous currents with sufficient swiftness and greed to paralyze the heart’s muscles. People—old people especially—could die of similar trouble having no connection with supernormal manifestations. Had Farmiloe suffered no more than the natural ending of his allotted span? Or had he died because his wise old brain had harbored a thought capable of being developed into a threat?

Looking lugubriously at the body, Graham cursed himself. “ ‘Or would you rather arrive too late, as usual?’ She was damn prophetic there! Johnny-come-too-late, that’s me, every time! Why the heck didn’t I take after the old geezer the moment she mentioned him?” Ruefully, he rubbed his head. “Sometimes I think I’ll never learn to get a move on.” He looked around the room. “All right, Fathead, let’s see you make a start!”

In mad haste, he searched the room. It wasn’t a laboratory, but rather a combined office and personal library. He treated the place with scant respect, well-nigh tearing it apart in his determination to discover whatever it might hold worth finding. He found nothing, not one solitary item to which he could tie a potent line. The mass of books, documents and papers seemed as devoid of meaning as a politician’s speech. There was a touch of despair in his lean features when finally he gave up the search, made to go.