Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, page 34
“On the fourth day I came up out of the cellar and found her sitting in a chair looking at a copy of See magazine. She seemed very much interested in the pictures of the women. She looked up at me and smiled. That was the day I went into town and came back with a mess of clothes for her. I had to show her how a zipper worked and how to button a button.”
He looked as if that might have been fun.
“After she got all dressed up, she smiled some more, and that evening she ate well. I kept pointing to things and saying the right name for them.
“I tell you, once she heard the name for something, she didn’t forget it. It stayed right with her. Nouns were easy. The other words were tough. About ten that night I finally caught her name. It was Rejapachalandakeena. She seemed to like to have me call her Keena. The first sentence she said was, ‘Where is Keena?’
“That is one tough question. Where is here and now ? Where is this world, anyway? On what side of what dimension? In which end of space? On what twisted convolution of the time stream? What good is it to say, ‘This is the world’? It just happens to be our world. Now I know that there are plenty of others.
“Writing came tougher for her than the sounds of the words. She showed me her writing. She took a piece of paper, held the pencil pointing straight up, and put the paper on top of the rug. Then she worked that pencil like a pneumatic hammer, starting at the top right corner and going down the page. I couldn’t figure it until she read it over and made a correction by sticking in one extra hole in the paper. I saw then that the pattern of holes was very precise—like notes on a sheet of music.
“She went through the grade school readers like a flash. I was buying her some arithmetic books one day, and when I got back she said, ‘Man here while Billy gone.’ She was calling me Billy. ‘Keena hide,’ she said.
“Well, the only thing missing was the gawk, and with it Keena’s chance to make a return to her own people. I thought immediately of Jim Finch. I ran over and pounded on his door. He undid the chain so he could talk to me through a five-inch crack, but I couldn’t get in. I asked him if he had stolen the little item. He told me that I’d better run to the police and tell them exactly what it was that I had lost, and then I could tell the police exactly how I got it. I could tell by the look of naked triumph in his eyes that he had it. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
“Keena’s English improved by leaps and bounds, and pretty soon she was dipping into my texts on chemistry and physics. She seemed puzzled. She told me that we were like her people a few thousand years back. Primitives. She told me a lot about her world. No cities. The houses are far apart. No work. Everyone is assigned to a certain cultural pursuit, depending on basic ability. She was a designer. In order to train herself, she had had to learn the composition of all fabricated materials used in her world.
“I took notes while she talked. When I get out of this jam I’m going to revolutionize the plastics industry. She seemed bright enough to be able to take in the story of how she suddenly appeared in my cellar. I gave it to her slow and easy.
“When I was through, she sat very still for a long time. Then she told me that some of the most brilliant men of her world had long ago found methods of seeing into other worlds beyond their own. They had borrowed things from worlds more advanced than their own and had thus been able to avoid mistakes in the administration of their own world. She told me that it was impossible that her departure should go unnoticed. She said that probably at the moment of her disappearance, all the resources of a great people were being concentrated on that spot where she had been standing talking to some friends. She told me that some trace of the method would be found and that they would then scan this world, locate her, and take her back.
“I asked her if it would be easier if we had the gawk, and she said that it wasn’t necessary, and that if it was, she would merely go next door and see Jim Finch face to face. She said she had a way, once she looked into his eyes, of taking over the control of his involuntary muscles and stopping his heartbeat.
“I gasped, and she smiled sweetly and said that she had very nearly done it to me when I had kept her from climbing back through the gawk. She said that everybody in her world knew how to do that. She also said that most adults knew how to create, out of imagination, images that would respond to physical tests. To prove it she stared at the table. In a few seconds a little black box slowly appeared out of misty nothingness. She told me to look at it. I picked it up. It was latched. I opened it. Her picture smiled out at me. She was standing before the entrance of a white castle that seemed to reach to the clouds.
“Suddenly it was gone. She explained that when she stopped thinking of it, it naturally disappeared, because that was what had caused it. Her thinking. I asked her why she didn’t think up a doorway to her own world and then step through it while she was still thinking about it. She said that she could only think up things by starting with their basic physical properties and working up from there, like a potter starts with clay.
“So I stopped heckling Jim Finch about that time. I was sorry, because I wanted the gawk back. Best toy I’d ever had. Once I got a look in Jim’s garage window. He’d forgot to pull the shade down all the way. He had the gawk rigged up on a stand and had a big arm, like the bucket on a steam shovel, rigged up, only just big enough to fit through the hoop. He wasn’t working it when I saw him. He was digging up the concrete in the corner of his cellar. He was using a pick and he had a shovel handy. He was pale as death. I saw then that he had a human arm in there on the floor and blood all over. The bucket was rigged with jagged teeth. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what Jim had done.
“Some poor innocent character in one of those other worlds had had a massive contraption come out of nowhere and chaw his arm off. I thought of going to the police, and then I thought of how easy it would be for Jim Finch to get me stuck away in a padded cell while he stayed on the outside, all set to pull more arms off more people.”
Heater glanced uneasily at the jury. They were drinking it in.
“I told Keena about it and she smiled. She told me that Jim was digging into many worlds and that some of them were pretty advanced. I gradually got the idea that old Jim was engaging in as healthy an occupation as a small boy climbing between the bars and tickling the tigers. I began to worry about old Jim a little. You all know about that couple of bushels of precious stones that were found in his house. That’s what made him tickle the tigers. But the cops didn’t find that arm. I guess that after he got the hole dug, Jim got over his panic and realized that all he had to do was switch the gawk around and toss the arm through. Best place for old razor blades I ever heard of.
“Well, as May turned into June and June went by, Keena got more and more confident of her eventual rescue. As I learned more about her world, I got confident of it too. In a few thousand years we may be as bright as those people. I hope we are. No wars, no disease.
“And the longer she stayed with me, the more upset I got about her leaving me. But it was what she wanted. I guess it’s what I’d want if somebody shoved me back a thousand years b.c. I’d want to get home, but quick.
“On the tenth of July I got a phone call from Jim Finch. His voice was all quavery like a little old lady. He said, ‘Maloney, I want to give that thing back to you. Right away.’ Anything Jim Finch gave anybody was a spavined gift horse. I guessed that the gobblies were after him like Keena had hinted.
“So I just laughed at him. Maybe I laughed to cover up the fact that I was a little scared, too. What if some world he messed with dropped a future-type atomic bomb back through the gawk into his lap? I told him to burn it up if he was tired of it.
“I didn’t know Jim could cuss like that. He said that it wouldn’t burn and he couldn’t break it or destroy it any way. He said that he was coming out and throw it across the hedge into my yard right away.
“As I got to my front door, he came running out of his house. He carried the thing like it was going to blow up.
“Just as he got to the hedge, I saw a misty circle in the air over his head. Only it was about ten feet across. A pair of dark blue shiny pliers with jaws as big as the judge’s desk there swooped down and caught him by the head. The jaws snapped shut so hard that I could hear sort of a thick, wet, popping sound as all the bones in old Jim’s head gave way all at once.
“He dropped the gawk and hung limp in those closed jaws for a moment, then he was yanked up through that misty circle into nothingness. Gone. Right before my eyes. The misty circle drifted down to grass level and then faded away. The gawk faded right away with it. You know what it made me think of? Of a picnic where you’re trying to eat, and a bug gets on your arm and bothers you. You pinch it between your thumb and forefinger, roll it once, and throw it away. Old Jim was just about as important to those blue steel jaws as a hungry red ant is to you or me. You could call those gems he got crumbs, I guess.
“I was just getting over being sick in my own front yard when Timmy came running over, took one look at the blood, and ran back. The police came next. That’s all there is to tell. Keena is still around and Justy will bring her in to testify tomorrow.”
Bill Maloney yawned and smiled at the jury.
Amery Heater got up, stuck his thumbs inside his belt, and walked slowly and heavily over to Bill.
He stared into Bill’s smiling face for ten long seconds. Bill shuffled his feet and began to look uncomfortable.
In a low, bitter tone Amery Heater said, “Gawks! Golden scorpions! Tangential worlds! Blue jaws!” He sighed heavily, pointed to the jury, and said, “Those are intelligent people, Maloney. No questions!”
The judge had to pound with his gavel to quiet the court. As soon as the room was quiet, he called an adjournment until ten the following morning.
When Bill Maloney was brought out of his cell into court the next morning, the jurors gave each other wise looks. It was obvious that the young man had spent a bad night. There were puffy areas under his eyes. He scuffed his heels as he walked, sat down heavily, and buried his face in his hands. They wondered why his shoulders seemed to shake.
Justin Marks looked just as bad. Or worse.
Bill was sunk in a dull lethargy, in an apathy so deep that he didn’t know where he was and cared less.
Justin Marks stood up and said, “Your Honor, we request an adjournment of the case for twenty-four hours.”
“For what reason?”
“Your honor, I intended to call the woman known as Keena to the stand this morning. She was in a room at the Hotel Hollyfield. Last night she went up to her room at eleven after I talked with her in the lounge. She hasn’t been seen since. Her room is empty. All her possessions are there, but she is gone. I would like time to locate her, your Honor.”
The judge looked extremely disappointed.
He pursed his lips and said in a sweet tone, “You are sure that such a woman actually exists, Counselor?”
Justin Marks turned pale, and Amery Heater chuckled.
“Of course, your Honor! Why, only last night . . .”
“Her people came and got her,” Bill Maloney said heavily. He didn’t look up. The jury shifted restlessly. They had expected to be entertained by a gorgeous redhead. Without her testimony, the story related by Maloney seemed even more absurd than it had seemed when they had heard it. Of course, it would be a shame to electrocute a nice clean young man like that, but really you can’t have people going about killing their neighbors and then concocting such a fantasy about it. . . .
“What’s that?” the judge asked suddenly.
It began as a hum, so low as to be more of a vibration than a sound. A throb that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. Slowly it increased in pitch and in violence, and if the judge had any more to say on the subject, no one heard him. He appeared to be trying to beat the top of his desk in with the gavel. But the noise couldn’t be heard.
Slowly climbing up the audible range, it filled the court. As it passed the index of vibration of the windows, they shattered, but the falling glass couldn’t be heard. A man who had been wearing glasses stared through empty frames.
The sound passed beyond the upper limits of the human ear, became hypersonic, and every person in the courtroom was suddenly afflicted with a blinding headache.
It stopped as abruptly as a scream in the night.
For a moment there was a misty arch in the solid wall. Beyond it was the startling vagueness of a line of blue hills. Hills that didn’t belong there.
She came quickly through the arch. It faded. She was not tall, but gave the impression of tallness. Her hair was the startling red of port wine, her skin so translucent as to seem faintly bluish. Her eyes were halfway between sherry and honey. Tiny crimson beads were on the tip of each eyelash. Her warm full lips were parted, and they could all see the little green enameled triangles on her white teeth. Her single garment was like the silver metallic garment they had touched. But it was golden. Without any apparent means of support, it clung to her lovely body, following each line and curve.
She looked around the court. Maloney’s eyes were warm blue fire. “Keena!” he gasped. She ran to him, threw herself on him, her arms around his neck, her face hidden in the line of jaw, throat, and shoulder. He murmured things to her that the jury strained to hear.
Amery Heater, feeling his case fade away, was the first to recover.
“Hypnotism!” he roared.
It took the judge a full minute of steady pounding to silence the spectators. “One more disturbance like this, and I’ll clear the court,” he said.
Maloney had come to life. She sat on his lap and they could hear her say, “What are they trying to do to you?”
He smiled peacefully. “They want to kill me, honey. They say I killed Jim Finch.”
She turned and her eyes shriveled the jury and the judge.
“Stupid!” she hissed.
There was a little difficulty swearing her in. Justin Marks, his confidence regained, thoroughly astonished at finding that Bill Maloney had been telling the truth all along, questioned Keena masterfully. She backed up Maloney’s story in every particular. Maloney couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Her accent was odd, and her voice had a peculiar husky and yet liquid quality.
Justin Marks knuckled his mustache proudly, bowed to Amery Heater, and said, “Do you wish to cross-examine?”
Heater nodded, stood up, and walked over slowly. He gave Keena a long and careful look. “Young woman, I congratulate you on your acting ability. Where did you get your training? Surely you’ve been on the stage.”
“Stage?”
“Oh, come now! All this has been very interesting, but now we must discard this dream world and get down to facts. What is your real name?”
“Rejapachalandakeena.”
Heater sighed heavily. “I see that you are determined to maintain your silly little fiction. That entrance of yours was somehow engineered by the defendant, I am sure.” He turned and smiled at the jury—the smile of a fellow conspirator.
“Miss So-and-so, the defense has all been based on the idea that you come from some other world, or some hidden corner of time, or out of the woodwork. I think that what you had better do is just prove to us that you do come from some other world.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Just do one or two things for us that we common mortals can’t do, please.”
Keena frowned, propped her chin on her fist. After a few moments she said, “I do not know completely what you are able to do. Many primitive peoples have learned through a sort of intuition. Am I right in thinking that those people behind that little fence are the ones who decide whether my Billy is to be killed?”
“Correct.”
She turned and stared at the jury for a long time. Her eyes passed from face to face, slowly. The jurors were oddly uncomfortable.
She said, “It is very odd. That woman in the second row. The second one from the left. It is odd that she should be there. Not very long ago she gave a poison, some sort of vegetable-base poison, to her husband. He was sick for a long time and he died. Is that not against your silly laws?”
The woman in question turned pale green, put her hands to her throat, rolled her eyes up, and slid quietly off the chair. No one made a move to help her. All eyes were on Keena.
Some woman back in the courtroom said shrilly, “I knew there was something funny about the way Dave died! I knew it! Arrest Mrs. Watson immediately!”
Keena’s eyes turned toward the woman who had spoken. The woman sat down suddenly.
Keena said, “This man you call Dave. His wife killed him because of you. I can read that in your eyes.”
Amery Heater chuckled. “A very good trick, but pure imagination. I rather guess you have been prepared for this situation, and my opponent has briefed you on what to do should I call on you in this way.”
