Quozl (20 page)

Chad burst into the cabin, ignoring the delicious aroma of fresh meat loaf browning in the woodstove. His sister spared him an indifferent glance before turning back to her magazine and boosting the volume on her Walkman another notch. The earphones rode her head like pink limpets.

“Hey, Mom, hey, Dad, guess what?”

His mother didn't turn from her work. “Your father's out back.”

He hesitated long enough to hear the familiar sounds of logs being split by the heavy, double-bladed axe. His mother stood by the sink stirring a large pitcher of cold tea. Maybe they didn't have ice, but the stream water they piped to the cabin was plenty cold.

When she saw he wasn't about to leave she finally turned to him, a tolerant, maternal smile on her face that he planned to quickly erase. “Did you have a nice hike, dear?”

“Did I ever! Boy, wow! Mom, you'll never guess what I saw.”

“What did you see, Chadee?” She began filling glasses from the pitcher.

“I saw a …!” He hesitated. His excitement had rapidly outpaced his eight-year-old's powers of description. “I don't know
what
it was. But it was neat. It had long ears and big feet and …!”

“A rabbit.” His mother set glasses on the table, one facing each side.

“No, Mom, no!” Why couldn't adults ever
see
? “It wasn't a rabbit. Its face was different and it was a lot bigger.”

She remained unperturbed. “A jackrabbit. Your father says you don't usually see them up this high, but sometimes …”

“NO!” That did it. She stopped what she was doing to stare at him. He spoke as earnestly as a saint. “Mom, it—wasn't—a—rabbit. It had a tail, yeah, but it was kind of pointy, not fluffy like a rabbit's. It was as big as you are, and it had real big eyes, and its teeth were like mine.” He opened his mouth and pointed to the incisors in question. “And it walked real straight, and it wore clothes, kind of like a girl's bathing suit only with pockets and stuff ana belt, and it ran like he …”

His mother fixed him with a penetrating gaze. “Chad, you've been listening to your sister's stories too much.”

“
It's not a story, Mom
. I really saw it.” Suddenly one of those grandiose realizations that occasionally occur to children struck him with the force of the school bully's fist. It was the immediate, sure, and certain knowledge that even if he were to bring into the cabin the entire advisory staff of the American Academy of Science together with the ghosts of Einstein, Franklin, and Curie, their combined arguments on behalf of what he'd seen would not be sufficient to convince Mrs. Alice April Collins of 15445 Chandler Boulevard, Burbank, California, of the truth.

So what he did instead was look across at the table and mumble softly, “Maybe it was a rabbit. Is lunch ready?”

“Soon,” said his mother, completely dismissing the incident from conversation, though he could hear her muttering under her breath. “We've got to get Mindy to stop telling him these scary bedtime stories.”

Chad's older sister was a terrific pain in the ass, but she did have a talent for spinning the most wonderful tales. Particularly at night when it was dark and rainy and thundering outside and she could do her utmost to terrify her little brother. Chad yelled and complained when in reality he actually enjoyed his sister's yarns, the more frightening the better. He could repeat them to his friends at school, wishing that he could be as good with words as she was. Sadly he was much more straightforward and a lot less imaginative. Math was much more to his liking. As his father put it, he was a steadying influence compared to his wildly imaginative sister.

So he knew he wasn't suffering an unpredictable outburst of artistic inventiveness. He'd seen the creature and had even talked with it, if you could call that funny humming-whistling speech. It had bolted and run, faster than even Jimmy Stevens in the sixth grade could run. It had big feet and long legs, too long for its body. He knew what it was.

An alien. Or maybe some weird medical experiment that had escaped from a hospital or a zoo or a military installation somewhere. It wasn't an animal. Funny talk was still talk, and it had been dressed, in strange oversized flip-flop type shoes and a bright shiny suit. The latter didn't offer much protection in the mountains, but he supposed that if you were covered with fur you wouldn't need many clothes.

Then there were those ears. Like rabbit ears, only thinner and with the edges curled toward each other, like a wet piece of cardboard. They tapered to points and when they bent it was almost as though they were jointed instead of wholly flexible. And the big eyes, staring back at him. Fortunately little teeth. He remembered neither fang nor claw. But he did remember one other thing.

“Hey, Mom?”

“What is it, Chad?” She was hovering around the sink again.

“Do you know of anything that has seven fingers?”

She hesitated and frowned at the sink, for the first time curious instead of simply dismissive. “Seven fingers? No, I don't think so. You could ask your father, but I don't think there's any animal with seven fingers.”

“No big deal. Just asking.” He slid into his seat, selected a piece of bread from the stack in the middle of the table, and reached for the raspberry preserves.

“We're running low. Leave some for everyone else.”

“Hey, Mom, I'm hungry. I've been exploring, remember?”

“I remember. Just save enough room to explore your vegetables.”

He nodded as he ladled seeded red gel onto a whole-wheat platform. Seven fingers. Seven plus seven was fourteen. Having fourteen fingers would be almost like having a whole extra hand.

Or maybe his mother was right and his sister's stories
were
having an effect on him. He shrugged inwardly. His teachers said he could stand a little imagination.

He was almost finished with the bread when his mother spoke to him again. “Go and find your sister.”

“Aw, Mom. You know where Mindy is.”

“And so do you. Go and get her.”

“Okay, but she won't listen to me. She'll just make a face and say I'm interrupting her and that she wants to finish whatever junk she's listening to.”

“I'll finish
her
if she makes me wait supper. Tell her I sent you.”

“Right,” he said, having been officially deputized. He put down the half crust of bread, having sucked the preserves off the edge, and headed for the den.

His mother found strange thoughts shouldering aside concerns about overcooked beans and an inadequate supply of jam. Why
seven
fingers? Why not nine or ten or eleven? Had Mindy been telling the story, they would've been tentacles, with big toothy suction cups. She shrugged. Why not seven? As good a number as any.

She found herself staring at her own spread left hand. Dishwater wrinkles. In two years I'll be forty. The big four oh. If she kept on that way she'd end up brooding all through supper. So she put it, together with all philosophic consideration of additional digits, out of her mind. By the time supper was over she'd forgotten the entire incident.

Chad couldn't wait to get back to the reed marsh at the southwest end of the lake. But though he looked everywhere and spent the whole day, even risking his father's disapproval by returning after sunset, he saw no sign of the creature. Nor the following day or the day after that.

Maybe he
had
imagined it. His sister would have understood, but he didn't tell her because she'd only laugh and make fun of him. He never mentioned it to his mother again and not at all to his father.

He visited the marsh every day for the next several weeks until he'd half convinced himself that what he'd seen was a figment of his imagination, a bear cub or something that shock and surprise had embroidered. He'd imagined it talking, imagined trying to shake hands with it, imagined the look of intelligence in its eyes. Nothing could run that fast anyway. It could even have been some other kid playing a practical joke on him, a prankish hiker. Like that guy who'd gone stomping around Washington in his fake Bigfoot suit, getting his picture in the papers and on tv until somebody spotted him changing in a gas station rest room. But if it had been a practical joker he was fast enough to make the Olympics.

By the time they left the valley to return to Los Angeles and the new school term he'd completely forgotten it.

Well, almost.

Runs-red-Talking unerringly found his way back to the Burrow. The camouflaged entrance to the underground world of the Quozl was exactly where he remembered it. Finding it was a great relief since he'd reached the end of his endurance, supplies, and the excuses he'd concocted to explain his absence.

Every pebble was as he remembered it, every bit of forest detritus firmly in place. No one had passed this way since he'd employed it during his flight to freedom.

He adjusted the twigs that comprised the concealed switch and stepped aside as the section of surface unhinged itself, rising to reveal the smooth-sided tunnel beyond. He paused for a last long look at the surface of Shiraz, inhaled a final lungful of unrecycled, unprocessed air, and then darted inside.

As the door shut he savored last glimpses of the shrinking outside world. Then he reached for the contact that would secure the barrier. His fingers never touched it.

“Stay your hand, youth. There is no need to lock the door since we were just going out.”

His heart plummeted as he whirled. There were four adults, all laden with journey packs and full equipment belts. Two males, two females, one of the latter carrying, judging from her slightly protruding pouch.

You can't be, he thought wildly. It's almost sunrise outside and diurnal expeditions are dangerous. Dangerous and infrequent—but not unknown. How lucky he was, how fortunate, to have encountered one of those rare daytime study groups.

He wanted to strike out in anger, to slay them all here in this place to preserve his terrible secret, to cover his foolishness with their blood. Being Quozl, what he did was apologize.

Profoundly, abjectly, in the most affecting and honest inadequate language he could muster, his ears lower than low, his eyes locked on the tunnel floor. Because they realized the seriousness of what he'd done they politely allowed him to go on, until hoarseness invaded his throat and stole his words.

If they had only arrived a few moments later, after he'd left the tunnel. Or a few moments earlier, before he'd come inside. But they'd seen him enter. They knew he'd been outside, on the surface. If not his actions, then the soil and grass adhering to his sandals would have been proof enough of that. He'd cleaned them as best he could, but final cleansing would have had to wait until he'd reached his living quarters. Now it didn't matter. Nothing much mattered anymore.

“Given my lowly station and insignificant age I realize that this serious breach of the law must be reported,” he managed to wheeze. “I expect to pay for what I have done with all I have to give. I can ask only humbly that you take my immaturity into account and realize that this childish action was taken on a dare from my fellows, and that no real harm has been done.”

The leader of the expeditionary group made a double gesture of resignation with his ears. This breach of Burrow security was more important than their plans. Their work must now be delayed while this unbelievable incident was reported. All his careful ceremonial shaving would be for naught.

There were only three of them on the mount of inquiry, but they were intimidating enough. One was of his sire's generation, the second an Elder, and the third one of his contemporaries. The usual assemblage for debating a juvenile offense.

Landing Command said nothing about the inquiry while of course following it with the utmost interest. One of the conditions of Runs's punishment was that he say nothing of his excursion to his friends or parents or anyone else. Landing Command and the Council were concerned now about damage control, not revenge.

Runs could see that it required a considerable exercise of will on the part of the Elder to maintain his seat, when what he really wanted to do was charge down the imitation rock slope and batter the youthful offender to a harmless pulp. He spent much of the inquiry reciting passages from the Samizene to calm himself. It was the first time in his life Runs had actually felt physically threatened by an Elder, and for a while the whole bloodthirsty history of ancient Quozlene passed through his mind.

It got so bad that the Elder eventually had to disqualify himself lest he embarrass his generation. The one who replaced him stared directly at Runs for the remainder of the session. It made Runs acutely uncomfortable, to the point where he feared his falsehood might be discovered.

Because while he admitted to having broken the law by visiting the surface, and to having spent a number of days outside, and to having traveled a considerable distance, he neglected to specify exactly where he'd been, admitting quite truthfully that he didn't know. Which was to say he didn't know in terms of actual measurements. No one was able to ask if he'd visited a certain lake because he'd been the first Quozl to do so. His inquirers did not possess referents sufficient to assess the extent of his iniquity. They fumbled around the fringes and believed them extreme enough. It did not occur to any of them, nor to Landing Command, that a single ill-equipped juvenile might have traveled farther in a particular direction than any of their highly trained explorers. Of course he hadn't wasted time on study. His interest had been solely in covering distance.

Of his encounter with the native juvenile he said nothing. He did not lie, he merely did not volunteer. No one asked him if he'd encountered a native, of course. The odds weighed massively against it. No one considered that odds existed to be beaten.

They questioned him calmly and steadily. Had he left anything behind? No. What had he hoped to gain from such a foolhardy and dangerous excursion? Enlightenment. Did he realize he had jeopardized the security of all the Burrows? He did not deny it.