Second Variety and Other Stories

  The woman was beautiful. Harl gazed down at her in stunned admiration. She sat almost motionless, resting against a tree, holding each bowl securely as she painted it. Her black hair hung down to her waist, falling across her shoulders and back. Her features were finely cut, each line clear and vivid, her dark eyes immense. She studied each bowl intently, her lips moving a little and Harl noticed that her hands were small and delicately fashioned.

  He walked over toward her, moving carefully. The woman did not hear him or look up. In growing wonder he realized that her coppery body was small and beautifully formed, her limbs slender and supple. She did not seem to be aware of him.

  Suddenly the man spoke again. The woman glanced up, lowering the bowl to the ground. She rested a minute, cleaning her brush with a leaf. She wore rough leg garments, reaching down to her knees, and tied at her waist with a twisted flaxen rope. She wore no other garment. Her feet and shoulders were bare, and in the afternoon sun her bosom rose and fell quickly as she breathed.

  The man said something else. After a moment the woman picked up another bowl and began to paint again. The two of them worked rapidly, silently, both intent on their work.

  Harl studied the bowls. They were all of similar design. The man made them rapidly, building them up from coils of clay, and then snaking the coils around and around, higher and higher. He slapped water against the clay, rubbing the surface smooth and firm. Finally he laid them out in rows, to dry in the sun.

  The woman selected the bowls that were dry and then painted them.

  Harl watched her. He studied her a long time - the way she moved her coppery body, the intense expression on her face, the faint movement of her lips and chin. Her fingers were slender and exquisitely tapered. Her nails were long, coming finally to a point. She held each bowl carefully, turning it with expert care, painting her design with rapid strokes.

  He watched her closely. She was painting the same design on each bowl, painting it again and again. A bird, and then a tree. A line that appeared to represent the ground. A cloud suspended directly above it.

  What was the precise significance of that recurrent motif? Harl bent closer, peering intently. Was it really the same? He watched the skillful motion of her hands as she took bowl after bowl, starting the design again and again. The design was basically the same - but each time she made it a little different. No two bowls came out exactly the same.

  He was both puzzled, and fascinated. It was the same design, but altered slightly each time. The color of the bird would be altered - or the length of its plume. Less frequently the position of the tree, or the cloud. Once she painted two tiny clouds hovering above the ground. Sometimes she put grass and the outline of hills in the background.

  Suddenly the man got to his feet, wiping his hands on his cloth. He spoke to the girl and then hurried off, threading his way through the bushes until he was lost to view,

  Harl glanced around excitedly. The girl went right on painting rapidly, calmly. The man had disappeared and the girl remained alone, painting quietly by herself.

  Harl was caught in the grip of conflicting and almost overpowering emotions. He wanted to speak to the girl, to ask her about her painting, her design. He wanted to ask her why she changed it each time.

  He wanted to sit down and talk to her. To speak to her and hear her talk to him. It was strange. He didn't understand it himself. His vision swam, twisting and blurring, and sweat dripped from his neck and stooping shoulders. The girl continued to paint. She did not look up, or suspect that he was standing directly in front of her. Harl's hand flew to his belt. He took a deep breath, hesitating. Dared he? Should he? The man would be back -

  Harl pressed the stud on his belt. Around him the screen hissed, and sparked.

  The girl glanced up, startled. Her eyes widened in swift horror.

  She screamed.

  Harl stepped quickly back, gripping his gun, appalled by what he had done.

  The girl scrambled to her feet, sending bowls and paints flying. She gazed at him, her eyes still wide, her mouth open. Slowly she backed away toward the bushes. Then abruptly she turned and fled, crashing through the shrubbery, screaming and shrieking.

  Harl straightened in sudden fear. Quickly, he restored his screen. The village was alive with growing sound. He could hear voices raised in excited panic, and the sound of people running, crashing through the bushes - the entire village erupting in a torrent of excited activity.

  Harl made his way quickly down the stream, past the bushes and out into the open.

  Suddenly he stopped, his heart pounding furiously. A crowd of saps was hurrying toward the stream - men with spears, old women, and shrieking children. At the edge of the bushes they stopped, staring and listening, their faces frozen in a strange, intent expression. Then they were advancing into the bushes, furiously pushing the branches out of the way - searching for him.

  Abruptly his earphones clicked.

  "Harl!" Ed Boynton's voice came clear and sharp. "Harl, lad!"

  Harl jumped, then cried out in desperate gratefulness. "Dad, I'm here."

  Ed Boynton gripped his arm, yanking him off balance. "What's the matter with you? Where did you go? What did you do?"

  "You got him?" Turner's voice broke in. "Come on then - both of you! We have to get out of here, fast. They're scattering white powder everywhere."

  Saps were rushing around, throwing the powder into the air in great clouds. It drifted through the air, settling down over everything. It appeared to be a kind of pulverized chalk. Other saps were sprinkling oil from big jars and shouting in high-pitched excitement.

  "We better get out," Boynton agreed grimly. "We don't want to tangle with them when they're aroused."

  Harl hesitated. "But -"

  "Come on!" his father urged, tugging at his arm. "Let's go. We haven't a moment to lose."

  Harl gazed back. He could not see the woman, but saps were running everywhere, throwing their sheets of chalk and sprinkling the oil. Saps with iron-tipped spears advanced ominously, kicking at the weeds and bushes as they circled about.

  Harl allowed himself to be led by his father. His mind whirled. The woman was gone, and he was sure that he would never see her again. When he had made himself visible she had screamed, and run off.

  Why? It didn't make sense. Why had she recoiled from him in blind terror? What had he done?

  And what did it matter to him whether he saw her again or not? Why was she important? He did not understand. He did not understand himself. There was no rational explanation for what had happened. It was totally incomprehensible.

  Harl followed his father and Turner back to the egg, still bewildered and wretched, still trying to understand, to grasp the meaning of what had happened between him and the woman. It did not make sense. He had gone out of his mind and then she had gone out of her mind. There had to be some meaning to it - if he could only grasp it.

  At the egg Ed Boynton halted, glancing back. "We were lucky to get away," he said to Harl, shaking his head. "When they're aroused they're like beasts. They're animals, Harl. That's what they are. Savage animals."

  "Come on," Turner said impatiently. "Let's get out of here - while we still can walk."

  Julie continued to shudder even after she had been carefully bathed and purified in the stream and rubbed down with oil by one of the older women.

  She sat in a heap, her arms wrapped around her knees, shaking and trembling uncontrollably. Ken, her brother, stood beside her, grim-faced, his hand on her bare, coppery shoulder.

  "What was it?" Julie murmured. "What was it?" She shuddered. "It was - horrible. It revolted me, made me ill, just to look at it."

  "What did it look like?" Ken demanded.

  "It was - it was like a man. But it couldn't have been a man. It was metallic all over, from head to foot, and it had huge hands and feet. Its face was all pasty white like - like meal. It was - sickly. Hideously sickly. White and metallic, and sickly. Like some kind of root dug up out of
the soil."

  Ken turned to the old man sitting behind him, who was listening intently. "What was it?" he demanded. "What was it, Mr Stebbins? You know about such things. What did she see?"

  Mr Stebbins got slowly to his feet. "You say it had white skin? Pasty? Like dough? And huge hands and feet?"

  Julie nodded. "And - something else."

  "What?"

  "It was blind. It had something instead of eyes. Two black spaces. Darkness." She shuddered and stared toward the stream.

  Suddenly Mr Stebbins tensed, his jaw hardening. He nodded. "I know," he said. "I know what it was."

  "What was it?"

  Mr Stebbins muttered to himself, frowning. "It's not possible. But your description -" He stared off in the distance, his brow wrinkled. "They live underground," he said finally, "under the surface. They emerge from the mountains. They live in the earth, in great tunnels and chambers they have hewn out for themselves. They are not men. They look like men, but they are not. They live under the ground and dig the metal from the earth. They dig and horde the metal. They seldom come up to the surface. They cannot look at the sun."

  "What are they called?" Julie asked.

  Mr Stebbins searched his mind, thinking back through the years. Back to the old books and legends he had heard. Things that lived under the ground... Like men but not men... Things that dug tunnels, that mined metals... Things that were blind and had great hands and feet and pasty white skin.

  "Goblins," Mr Stebbins stated. "What you saw was a goblin."

  Julie nodded, gazing down wide-eyed at the ground, her arms clasped around her knees. "Yes," she said. "That sounds like what it was. It frightened me. I was so afraid. I turned and ran. It seemed so horrible." She looked up at her brother, smiling a little. "But I'm better now..."

  Ken rubbed his big dark hands together, nodding with relief. "Fine," he said. "Now we can get back to work. There's a lot to do. A lot of things to get done."

  Project: Earth

  The sound echoed hollowly through the big frame house. It vibrated among the dishes in the kitchen, the gutters along the roof, thumping slowly and evenly like distant thunder. From time to time it ceased, but then it began again, booming through the quiet night, a relentless sound, brutal in its regularity. From the top floor of the big house.

  In the bathroom the three children huddled around the chair, nervous and hushed, pushing against each other with curiosity.

  "You sure he can't see us?" Tommy rasped.

  "How could he see us? Just don't make any noise." Dave Grant shifted on the chair, his face to the wall. "Don't talk so loud." He went on looking, ignoring them both.

  "Let me see," Joan whispered, nudging her brother with a sharp elbow. "Get out of the way."

  "Shut up." Dave pushed her back. "I can see better now." He turned up the light.

  "I want to see," Tommy said. He pushed Dave off the chair onto the bathroom floor. "Come on."

  Dave withdrew sullenly. "It's our house."

  Tommy stepped cautiously up onto the chair. He put his eye to the crack, his face against the wall. For a time he saw nothing. The crack was narrow and the light on the other side was bad. Then, gradually, he began to make out shapes, forms beyond the wall.

  Edward Billings was sitting at an immense old-fashioned desk. He had stopped typing and was resting his eyes. From his vest pocket he had taken a round pocket watch. Slowly, carefully, he wound the great watch. Without his glasses his lean, withered face seemed naked and bleak, the features of some elderly bird. Then he put his glasses on again and drew his chair closer to the desk.

  He began to type, working with expert fingers the towering mass of metal and parts that reared up before him. Again the ominous booming echoed through the house, resuming its insistent beat.

  Mr Billings's room was dark and littered. Books and papers lay everywhere, in piles and stacks, on the desk, on the table, in heaps on the floor. The walls were covered with charts, anatomy charts, maps, astronomy charts, signs of the zodiac. By the windows rows of dust-covered chemical bottles and packages lay stacked. A stuffed bird stood on the top of the bookcase, gray and drooping. On the desk was a huge magnifying glass, Greek and Hebrew dictionaries, a postage stamp box, a bone letter opener. Against the door a curling strip of flypaper moved with the air currents rising from the gas heater.

  The remains of a magic lantern lay against one wall. A black satchel with clothes piled on it. Shirts and socks and a long frock coat, faded and threadbare. Heaps of newspapers and magazines, tied with brown cord. A great black umbrella against the table, a pool of sticky water around its metal point. A glass frame of dried butterflies, pressed into yellowing cotton.

  And at the desk the huge old man hunched over his ancient typewriter and heaps of notes and papers.

  "Gosh," Tommy said.

  Edward Billings was working on his report. The report was open on the desk beside him, an immense book, leather-bound, bulging at its cracked seams. He was transferring material into it from his heaps of notes.

  The steady thumping of the great typewriter made the things in the bathroom rattle and shake, the light fixture, the bottles and tubes in the medicine cabinet. Even the floor under the children's feet.

  "He's some kind of Communist agent," Joan said. "He's drawing maps of the city so he can set off bombs when Moscow gives the word."

  The heck he is," Dave said angrily.

  "Don't you see all the maps and pencils and papers? Why else would -"

  "Be quiet," Dave snapped. "He will hear us. He is not a spy. He's too old to be a spy."

  "What is he, then?"

  "I don't know. But he isn't a spy. You're sure dumb. Anyhow, spies have beards."

  "Maybe he's a criminal," Joan said.

  "I talked to him once," Dave said. "He was coming downstairs. He spoke to me and gave me some candy out of a bag."

  "What kind of candy was it?"

  "I don't know. Hard candy. It wasn't any good."

  "What's he do?" Tommy asked, turning from the crack.

  "Sits in his room all day. Typing."

  "Doesn't he work?"

  Dave sneered. "That's what he does. He writes on his report. He's an official with a company."

  "What company?"

  "I forget."

  "Doesn't he ever go out?"

  "He goes out on the roof."

  "On the roof?"

  "He has a porch he goes out on. We fixed it. It's part of the apartment. He's got a garden. He comes downstairs and gets dirt from the back yard."

  "Shhh!" Tommy warned. "He turned around."

  Edward Billings had got to his feet. He was covering the typewriter with a black cloth, pushing it back and gathering up the pencils and erasers. He opened the desk drawer and dropped the pencils into it.

  "He's through," Tommy said. "He's finished working."

  The old man removed his glasses and put them away in a case. He dabbed at his forehead wearily, loosening his collar and necktie. His neck was long and the cords stood out from yellow, wrinkled skin. His adam's apple bobbed up and down as he sipped some water from a glass.

  His eyes were blue and faded, almost without color. For a moment he gazed directly at Tommy, his hawk-like face blank. Then abruptly he left the room, going through a door.

  "He's going to bed," Tommy said.

  Mr Billings returned, a towel over his arm. At the desk he stopped and laid the towel over the back of the chair. He lifted the massive report book and carried it from the desk over to the bookcase, holding it tightly with both hands. It was heavy. He laid it down and left the room again.

  The report was very close. Tommy could make out the gold letters stamped into the cracked leather binding. He gazed at the letters a long time - until Joan finally pushed him away from the crack, shoving him impatiently off the chair.

  Tommy stepped down and moved away, awed and fascinated by what he had seen. The great report book, the huge volume of material on which the old man worked, day a
fter day. In the flickering light from the lamp on the desk he had easily been able to make out the gold-stamped words on the ragged leather binding.

  PROJECT B: EARTH.

  "Let's go," Dave said. "He'll come in here in a couple minutes. He might catch us watching."

  "You're afraid of him," Joan taunted.

  "So are you. So is Mom. So is everybody." He glanced at Tommy. "You afraid of him?"

  Tommy shook his head. "I'd sure like to know what's in that book," he murmured. "I'd sure like to know what that old man is doing."

  The late afternoon sunlight shone down bright and cold. Edward Billings came slowly down the back steps, an empty pail in one hand, rolled-up newspapers under his arm. He paused a moment, shielding his eyes and gazing around him. Then he disappeared into the back yard, pushing through the thick wet grass.

  Tommy stepped out from behind the garage. He raced silently up the steps two at a time. He entered the building, hurrying down the dark corridor.

  A moment later he stood before the door of Edward Billings's apartment, his chest rising and falling, listening intently.

  There was no sound.

  Tommy tried the knob. It turned easily. He pushed. The door swung open and a musty cloud of warm air drifted past him out into the corridor.

  He had little time. The old man would be coming back with his pail of dirt from the yard.

  Tommy entered the room and crossed to the bookcase, his heart pounding excitedly. The huge report book lay among heaps of notes and bundles of clippings. He pushed the papers away, sliding them from the book. He opened it quickly, at random, the thick pages crackling and bending.

  Denmark.

  Figures and facts. Endless facts, pages and columns, row after row. The lines of type danced before his eyes. He could make little out of them. He turned to another section.

  New York.

  Facts about New York. He struggled to understand the column heads. The number of people. What they did. How they lived. What they earned. How they spent their time. Their beliefs. Politics. Philosophy. Morals. Their age. Health. Intelligence. Graphs and statistics, averages and evaluations.