LITTLE PEOPLE! Read online

  “I shall have to take a look myself,” he said. “Please remain where you are, Mr. Newbury. You must not attempt to follow me without instructions. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Owens disappeared into the same passage that had swallowed Bellamy. The vocal noises died down briefly and then rose again.

  I waited another quarter-hour. The temptation to sneak a look into the cave was strong, but I withstood it. I have the normal quota of curiosity and perhaps a bit more; but with a wife and three children at home, I did not care to let curiosity kill this particular cat.

  Then the noises rose sharply. I thought I recognized the sound of an angry mob.

  Colin Owens popped out of the passageway. His hair was awry, he had lost his glasses, he bled from a scratch on his face, and his coat lacked one sleeve.

  “Run for your life!” he cried as he scampered past me.

  I leaped from the chair and caught up with him in a few strides. Being much bigger than he, twenty years his junior, and in good physical trim for a man of my middling years, I could have left him far behind. Instead, I grabbed his arm and boosted him along. Even so, he had to stop now and then to catch his breath.

  Behind us, the sound of voices mingled with the slap and tramp of many feet, running through the tunnel.

  “Keep on!” gasped Owens. “They’ll pound us—sledge hammers—”

  I doubled my efforts to manhandle the little man along. The next time he stopped for breath, he gasped: “That idiot—should have gone in sooner myself—serves him bloody right . . .”

  Then the lights went out. Owens uttered a shrill cry: “Oh, my God!”

  “Put your hand out and feel the wall,” I said. “Pick up your feet!”

  The footsteps and the rumbling cries intensified. I could see nothing. When we came to the place where the passage sloped up, I stumbled and almost fell. I thought: this is it. With a desperate effort, I got my feet under me again and ran on.

  Brushing the wall, we jogged up the slope, while the sounds of pursuit came ever louder. Something whirled through the air behind us, to strike the stony wall and rebound to the floor with a clatter. While I could not see the missile, a thrown sledge hammer would have made such a sound.

  “I’m—I’m done,” wheezed Owens. “Go on, Mr. Newbury. Save yourself.”

  “Nonsense!” I said. I scooped up Owens and carried him like a child. Luckily, he did not weigh much over a hundred.

  In my imagination, I could almost feel the breath of our pursuers. Any minute, I expected a hammer to come down on my skull.

  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, a little dot of gray appeared ahead. I recognized it as a bend in the tunnel, near the exit. The short leg between the door and this bend was lit by the sunlight outside.

  The gray spot grew larger and took rectangular shape. Then we were around the bend and through the door, blinking in the sunshine. I put Owens down and collapsed on the bricks. Owens shut the door, locked it, and stood over me.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “They are allergic to sunlight and hate to expose themselves to it. You saved my life.”

  When I got my breath back and my racing heart slowed down, I asked: “What happened?”

  “Forrest came in on a union organization meeting. He got into an argument with the would-be leader, and he has—had—a violent temper. He was foolish enough to strike the—the organizer. My workers, also, are rather short-tempered, and the next I knew, they were all over him with hammers and other implements. When I saw his brains spattered, I jolly well ran for it.”

  “What now? Whom do you notify?”

  “I shall take care of that, never fear. Your business is finished here, Mr. Newbury. Obviously, my great dream will have to await a more propitious occasion. Let me drive you back to the motel.”

  Although usually loquacious, Owens was silent on the return trip. While I was curious about his plans, he answered my questions evasively until I stopped asking.

  ###

  That evening, I reported to Drexel. Next day, I heard nothing from the Oecus. Their telephone did not answer. I finally made an airplane reservation and called a taxi. On a whim, I told the driver to detour to the Oecus on the way to the airport.

  The house had overnight become a deserted ruin. Of Colin Owens and his followers there was no sign. The place looked as if a gang of vandals had gone through it with crowbars and hammers.

  Every window was broken. Furniture was thrown about and smashed. Wall fittings had been ripped out and floor boards pried up. Some of the plaster had been battered from the walls. Rugs had been ripped or fouled. Such a wreck was the building that it was dangerous even to walk about it, for fear of falling through the floor or having something collapse on one.

  I went out back and looked into the pit. The iron door had been broken open and torn from its hinges. It lay on the bricks, crumpled like a piece of tinfoil.

  I remembered Owens’s saying that his workers avoided sunlight, but that would not have stopped them from coming out at night to raid the Oecus. Whether they had caught any members of the Anthropophili, I could not tell. I saw no bloodstains in the ruin, but there was nobody about to answer questions. Could the cult members have inflicted this destruction themselves, before abandoning their headquarters?

  I even wondered if the whole thing had been a hallucination or a dream. But there had been nothing imaginary about the application for his loan, with supporting documents, which Owens had sent in, or about my visit to Atlanta. The only way to straighten things out would have been to invade the tunnel again, but I was neither brave nor determined enough to embark upon such an adventure. Besides, I had a plane to catch.

  I suppose I ought to have reported to the state police. But I could not imagine explaining to a trooper that I had been chased through a tunnel under Stone Mountain by a mob of infuriated gnomes.

  Besides, there was the bank’s reputation to consider. Nobody wants to leave his money with an institution run by hallucinés. Although my inaction has nipped my conscience since, it is one of the things one must learn to live with, along with the memory of the other follies and blunders of a normally active life.

  When I reported back to Esau Drexel. he said: “Well, Willy, you know I’m no goddamn pink liberal. But I’ve got to admit that labor unions are here to stay. Even the elves, gnomes, and other hobgoblins have ’em!”

  A Cabin on the Coast

  By Gene Wolfe

  The Little People are known to have the power to grant wishes of all sorts, but it is always dangerous for mortals to try to bargain with them. Often they will give you what you ask for, but always for a price . . . and sometimes the price will turn out to be a higher one than you were willing to pay . . .

  Gene Wolfe is perceived by many critics to be one of the best—perhaps the best—SF and fantasy writers working today. His most acclaimed work is the tetralogy The Book of the New Sun, individual volumes of which have won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His other books include the novels Peace, Soldier of the Mist, and Free Live Free, and the collections The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, Gene Wolfe’s Book of Days, and Endangered Species. His most recent books are The Urth of the New Sun, Soldier of Arete, and There Are Doors.

  * * *

  It might have been a child’s drawing of a ship. He blinked, and blinked again. There were masts and sails, surely. One stack, perhaps another. If the ship were really there at all. He went back to his father’s beach cottage, climbed the five wooden steps, wiped his feet on the coco mat.

  Lissy was still in bed, but awake, sitting up now. It must have been the squeaking of the steps, he thought. Aloud he said, “Sleep good?”

  He crossed the room and kissed her. She caressed him and said, “You shouldn’t go swimming without a suit, dear wonderful swimmer. How was the Pacific?”

  “Peaceful. Cold. It’s too early for people to be up, and there’s nobody with
in a mile of here anyway.”

  “Get into bed then. How about the fish?”

  “Salt water makes the sheets sticky. The fish have seen them before.” He went to the corner, where a showerhead poked from the wall. The beach cottage—Lissy called it a cabin—had running water of the sometimes and rusty variety.

  “They might bite ’em off. Sharks, you know. Little ones.”

  “Castrating woman.” The shower coughed, doused him with icy spray, coughed again.

  “You look worried.”

  “No.”

  “Is it your dad?”

  He shook his head, then thrust it under the spray, fingers combing his dark, curly hair.

  “You think he’ll come out here? Today?”

  He withdrew, considering. “If he’s back from Washington, and he knows we’re here.”

  “But he couldn’t know, could he?”

  He turned off the shower and grabbed a towel, already damp and a trifle sandy. “I don’t see how.”

  “Only he might guess.” Lissy was no longer smiling. “Where else could we go? Hey, what did we do with my underwear?”

  “Your place. Your folks’. Any motel.”

  She swung long, golden legs out of bed, still holding the sheet across her lap. Her breasts were nearly perfect hemispheres, except for the tender protrusions of their pink nipples. He decided he had never seen breasts like that. He sat down on the bed beside her. “I love you very much,” he said. “You know that?”

  It made her smile again. “Does that mean you’re coming back to bed?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “I want a swimming lesson. What will people say if I tell them I came here and didn’t go swimming.”

  He grinned at her. “That it’s that time of the month.”

  “You know what you are? You’re filthy!” She pushed him. “Absolutely filthy! I’m going to bite your ears off.” Tangled in the sheet, they fell off the bed together. “There they are!”

  “There what are?”

  “My bra and stuff. We must have kicked them under the bed. Where are our bags?”

  “Still in the trunk. I never carried them in.”

  “Would you get mine? My swim suit’s in it.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “And put on some pants!”

  “My suit’s in my bag, too.” He found his trousers and got the keys to the Triumph. Outside the sun was higher, the chill of the fall morning nearly gone. He looked for the ship and saw it. Then it winked out like a star.

  ###

  That evening they made a fire of driftwood and roasted the big, greasy Italian sausages he had brought from town, making giant hot dogs by clamping them in French bread. He had brought red supermarket wine too; they chilled it in the Pacific. “I never ate this much in my life,” Lissy said.

  “You haven’t eaten anything yet.”

  “I know, but just looking at this sandwich would make me full if I wasn’t so hungry.” She bit off the end. “Cuff tough woof.”

  “What?”

  “Castrating woman. That’s what you called me this morning, Tim. Now this is a castrating woman.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “You sound like my mother. Give me some wine. You’re hogging it.”

  He handed the bottle over. “It isn’t bad, if you don’t object to a complete lack of character.”

  “I sleep with you, don’t I?”

  “I have character, it’s just all rotten.”

  “You said you wanted to get married.”

  “Let’s go. You can finish that thing in the car.”

  “You drank half the bottle. You’re too high to drive.”

  “Bullshoot.”

  Lissy giggled. “You just said bullshoot. Now that’s character!”

  He stood up. “Come on, let’s go. It’s only five hundred miles to Reno. We can get married there in the morning.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “If you are.”

  “Sit down.”

  “You were testing me,” he said. “That’s not fair, now is it?”

  “You’ve been so worried all day. I wanted to see if it was about me—if you thought you’d made a terrible mistake.”

  “We’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I was trying to fix it just now.”

  “You think your dad is going to make it rough for you—”

  “Us.”

  “—for us because it might hurt him in the next election.”

  He shook his head. “Not that. All right, maybe partly that. But he means it, too. You don’t understand him.”

  “I’ve got a father myself.”

  “Not like mine. Ryan was almost grown up before he left Ireland. Taught by nuns and all that. Besides, I’ve got six older brothers and two sisters. You’re the oldest kid. Ryan’s probably at least fifteen years older than your folks.”

  “Is that really his name? Ryan Neal?”

  “His full name is Timothy Ryan Neal, the same as mine. I’m Timothy, Junior. He used Ryan when he went into politics because there was another Tim Neal around then, and we’ve always called me Tim to get away from the Junior.”

  “I’m going to call him Tim again, like the nuns must have when he was young. Big Tim. You’re Little Tim.”

  “Okay with me. I don’t know if Big Tim is going to like it.”

  Something was moving, it seemed, out where the sun had set. Something darker against the dark horizon.

  “What made you Junior anyway? Usually it’s the oldest boy.”

  “He didn’t want it, and would never let Mother do it. But she wanted to, and I was born during the Democratic convention that year.”

  “He had to go, of course.”

  “Yeah, he had to go, Lissy. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand politics at all. They hoped I’d hold off for a few days, and what the hell, Mother’d had eight with no problems. Anyway he was used to it—he was the youngest of seven boys himself. So she got to call me what she wanted.”

  “But then she died.” The words sounded thin and lonely against the pounding of the surf.

  “Not because of that.”

  Lissy upended the wine bottle; he saw her throat pulse three times. “Will I die because of that, Little Tim?”

  “I don’t think so.” He tried to think of something gracious and comforting. “If we decide we want children, that’s the risk I have to take.”

  “You have to take? Bullshoot.”

  “That both of us have to take. Do you think it was easy for Ryan, raising nine kids by himself?”

  “You love him, don’t you?”

  “Sure I love him. He’s my father.”

  “And now you think you might be ruining things for him. For my sake.”

  “That’s not why I want us to be married, Lissy.”

  She was staring into the flames; he was not certain she had even heard him. “Well, now I know why his pictures look so grim. So gaunt.”

  He stood up again. “If you’re through eating . . .”

  “You want to go back to the cabin? You can screw me right here on the beach—there’s nobody here but us.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Then why go in there and look at the walls? Out here we’ve got the fire and the ocean. The moon ought to be up pretty soon.”

  “It would be warmer.”

  “With just that dinky little kerosene stove? I’d rather sit here by the fire. In a minute I’m going to send you off to get me some more wood. You can run up to the cabin and get a shirt too if you want to.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Traditional roles. Big Tim must have told you all about them. The woman has the babies and keeps the home fires burning. You’re not going to end up looking like him though, are you, Little Tim?”

  “I suppose so. He used to look just like me.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “He had his picture taken just after he go
t into politics. He was running for ward committeeman, and he had a poster made. We’ve still got the picture, and it looks like me with a high collar and a funny hat.”

  “She knew, didn’t she?” Lissy said. For a moment he did not understand what she meant. “Now go and get some more wood. Only don’t wear yourself out, because when you come back we’re going to take care of that little thing that’s bothering you, and we’re going to spend the night on the beach.”

  When he came back she was asleep, but he woke her carrying her up to the beach cottage.

  ###

  Next morning he woke up alone. He got up and showered and shaved, supposing that she had taken the car into town to get something for breakfast. He had filled the coffee pot and put it on before he looked out the shoreside window and saw the Triumph still waiting near the road.

  There was nothing to be alarmed about, of course. She had awakened before he had and gone out for an early dip. He had done the same thing himself the morning before. The little patches of green cloth that were her bathing suit were hanging over the back of a rickety chair, but then they were still damp from last night. Who would want to put on a damp, clammy suit? She had gone in naked, just as he had.

  He looked out the other window, wanting to see her splashing in the surf, waiting for him. The ship was there, closer now, rolling like a derelict. No smoke came from its clumsy funnel and no sails were set, but dark banners hung from its rigging. Then there was no ship, only wheeling gulls and the empty ocean. He called her name, but no one answered.

  He put on his trunks and a jacket and went outside. A wind had smoothed the sand. The tide had come, obliterating their fire, reclaiming the driftwood he had gathered.

  For two hours he walked up and down the beach, calling, telling himself there was nothing wrong. When he forced himself not to think of Lissy dead, he could only think of the headlines, the ninety seconds of ten o’clock news, how Ryan would look, how Pat—all his brothers—would look at him. And when he turned his mind from that, Lissy was dead again, her pale hair snarled with kelp as she rolled in the surf, green crabs feeding from her arms.

  He got into the Triumph and drove to town. In the little brick station he sat beside the desk of a fat cop and told his story.