The Best of (11 page)

"If that is not the plaint of an unhappy creature," he said, stepping closer to the cage, "then I have never—"

"Look out!" shouted Dixon, jumping forward.

One of the creature's hands made a darting snatch through the bars. Simultaneously Dixon caught him by the shoulders, and pulled him back. There was a rending of cloth, and three buttons pattered on to the linoleum.

"Phew!" said Dixon.

For the first time, Alfred looked a little alarmed.

"What—?" he began.

A deep, threatening sound from the cage obliterated the rest of it.

"Give him to me! I want him!" rumbled the voice, angrily.

All four arms caught hold of the bars. Two of them rattled the gate violently. The two visible eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Alfred. He began to show signs of reorientating his outlook. His own eyes opened a little more widely behind his glasses.

"Er—it—it doesn't mean—?" he started, incredulously.

"Gimme!" bellowed Una, stamping from one foot to another, and shaking the building as she did so.

Dixon was regarding his achievement with some concern.

"I wonder—I wonder, could I have overdone the hormones a bit?" he speculated, thoughtfully.

Alfred had begun to get to grips with the idea now. He backed a little farther away from the cage. The move did not have a good effect on Una.

"Gimme!" she cried, like a kind of sepulchral publicaddress system. "Gimme! Gimme!"

It was an intimidating sound.

"Mightn't it be better if we—?" I suggested.

"Perhaps, in the circumstances—" Dixon agreed.

"Yes!" said Alfred, quite decisively.

The pitch on which Una operated made it difficult to be certain of the finer shades of feelings; the windowrattling sound that occurred behind us as we moved off might have expressed anger, or anguish, or both. We increased our pace a little.

"Alfred!" called a voice like a disconsolate foghorn. "I want Alfred!"

Alfred cast a backward glance, and stepped out a trifle more smartly.

There was a thump which rattled the bars and shook the building.

I looked round to see Una in the act of retiring to the back of her cage with the obvious intention of making another onslaught. We beat it for the door. Alfred was first through.

A thunderous crash sounded at the other end of the room. As Dixon was closing the door behind us I had a glimpse of Una carrying bars and furnishings before her like a runaway bus.

"I think we shall need some help with her," Dixon said.

Small sparkles of perspiration were standing on Alfred's brow.

"You—you don't think it might be better if we were to—?" he began.

"No," said Dixon. "She'd see you through the windows."

"Oh," said Alfred, unhappily.

Dixon led the way into a large sittingroom, and made for the telephone. He gave urgent messages to the firebrigade and the police.

"I don't think there's anything we can do till they get here," he said, as he put the receiver down. "The lab wing will probably hold her all right if she isn't tantalized any more."

"Tantalized! I like that—!" Alfred started to protest, but Dixon went on:

"Luckily, being where she is, she couldn't see the door; so the odds are that she can have no idea of the purpose or nature of doors. What's worrying me most is the damage she's doing in there. Just listen!"

We did listen for some moments to the muffled sounds of smashing, splintering and rending. Among it there was occasionally a mournful disyllabic boom which might, or might not, have been the word "Alfred".

Dixon's expression became more anguished as the noise continued unabated.

"All my records! All the work of years is in there," he said, bitterly. "Your Society's going to have to pay plenty for this, I warn you—but that won't give me back my records. She was always perfectly docile until your friend excited her—never a moment's trouble with her."

Alfred began to protest again, but was interrupted by the sound of something massive being overturned with a thunderous crash, followed by a noise like a waterfall of broken glass.

"Gimme Alfred! I want Alfred!" demanded the stentorian voice.

Alfred half rose, and then sat down agitatedly on the edge of his chair. His eyes flicked nervously hither and thither. He displayed a tendency to bite his fingernails.

"Ah!" said Dixon, with a suddenness which started both of us. "Ah, that must have been it! I must have calculated the hormone requirement on the overall weight —including the carapace. Of course! What a ridiculous slip to make! Tchtch! I should've done much better to keep to the original parthenogen — Good heavens!"

The crash which caused his exclamation brought us all to our feet, and across to the door.

Una had discovered the way out of the wing, all right, and come through it like a bulldozer. Door, frame and part of the brickwork had come with her. At the moment she was stumbling about amid the resulting mess. Dixon didn't hesitate.

"Quick! Upstairs—that'll beat her," he said.

At the same instant Una spotted us, and let out a boom.. We sprinted across the hall for the staircase.

Initial mobility was our advantage; a freight like Una's takes appreciable time to get under way. I fled up the flight with Dixon just ahead of me and, I imagined, Alfred just behind. However, I was not quite right there. I don't know whether Alfred had been momentarily transfixed, or had fumbled his takeoff, but when I was at the top I looked back to see him still only a few steps up, with Una thundering in pursuit like a rocketassisted car of Juggernaut.

Alfred kept on coming, though. But so did Una. She may not have been familiar with stairs, nor designed to use them. But she tackled them, for all that. She even got about five or six steps up before they collapsed under her. Alfred, by then more than halfway up, felt them fall away beneath his feet. He gave a shout as he lost his balance. Then, clawing wildly at the air, he fell backwards.

Una put in as neat a fourarmed catch as you could hope to see.

"What coordination!" Dixon, behind me, murmured admiringly.

"Help!" bleated Alfred. "Help! Help!"

"Aah!" boomed Una, in a kind of deep diapason of satisfaction.

She backed off a little, with a crunching of timbers.

"Keep calm!" Dixon advised Alfred. "Don't do anything that might startle her."

Alfred, embraced by three arms, and patted affectionately by the fourth, made no immediate reply.

There was a pause for assessment of the situation.

"Well," I said, "we ought to do something. Can't we entice her somehow?"

"It's difficult to know what will distract the triumphant female in her moment of success," observed Dixon.

Una set up a sort of—of—well, if you can imagine an elephant contentedly crooning...

"Help!" Alfred bleated again. "She's —ow !"

"Calm, calm!" repeated Dixon. "There's probably no real danger. After all, she's a mammal—mostly, that is. Now if she were a quite different kind like, say, a female spider—"

"I don't think I'd let her overhear about female spiders just now," I suggested. "Isn't there a favourite food, or something, we could tempt her with?"

Una was swaying Alfred back and forth in three arms, and prodding him inquisitively with the forefinger of the fourth. Alfred struggled.

"Damn it. Can't youdo something?" he demanded.

"Oh, Alfred! Alfred!" she reproved him, in a kind of besotted rumble.

"Well," Dixon said, doubtfully, "perhaps if we had some ice cream..."

There was a sound of brakes, and vehicles pullingup outside. Dixon ran swiftly along the landing, and I heard him trying to explain the situation through the window to the men outside. Presently he came back, accompanied by a fireman and his officer. When they looked down into the hall their eyes bulged.

"What we have to do is surround her without scaring her," Dixon was explaining.

"Surroundthat !" said the officer dubiously. "What in hell is it, anyway?"

"Never mind about that now," Dixon told him, impatiently. "If we can just get a few ropes on to her from different directions—"

"Help!" shouted Alfred again. He flailed about violently. Una clasped him more closely to her carapace, and chuckled dotingly. A peculiarly ghastly sound, I thought: it shook the firemen, too.

"For crysake—!" one of them began.

"Hurry up," Dixon told him. "We can drop the first rope over her from here."

They both went back. The officer started shouting instructions to those below: he seemed to be having some difficulty in making himself clear. However, they both returned shortly with a coil of rope. And that fireman was good. He spun his noose gently, and dropped it as neatly as you like. When he pulled in, it was round the carapace, below the arms so that it could not slip up. He belayed to the newelpost at the top of the flight.

Una was still taken up with Alfred to the exclusion of everything else around her. If a hippopotamus could purr, with kind of maudlin slant to it, I guess that's just about the sort of noise she'd make.

The front door opened quietly, and the faces of a number of assorted firemen and police appeared, all with their eyes popping and their jaws dropping. A moment later there was another bunch gaping into the hall from the sittingroom door, too. One fireman stepped forward nervously, and began to spin his rope.

Unfortunately his cast touched a hanging light, and it fell short.

In that moment Una suddenly became aware of what went on.

"No!" she thundered. "He's mine! I want him!"

The terrified ropeman hurled himself back through the door on top of his companions, and it shut behind him. Without turning, Una started off in the same direction. Our rope tightened, and we jumped aside. The newelpost was snapped away like a stick, and the rest of the rope went trailing after it. There was a forlorn cry from Alfred, still firmly clasped, but, luckily for him, on the side away from the line of progress. Una took the front door like a cruisertank. There was an almighty crash, a shower of wood and plaster and then a screen of dust through which came sounds of consternation, topped by a voice rumbling:

"He's mine! You shan't have him! He's mine!"

By the time we were able to reach the front windows Una was already clear of obstructions. We had an excellent view of her galloping down the drive at some ten miles an hour, towing, without apparent inconvenience, half a dozen or more firemen and police who clung grimly to the trailing rope.

Down at the lodge, the guardian had had the presence of mind to close the gates. He dived for personal cover into the bushes while she was still some yards away. Gates, however, meant nothing to Una; she kept on going. True, she staggered slightly at the impact, but they crumbled and went down before her.

Alfred was waving his arms, and kicking out wildly; a faint wail for help floated back to us. The collection of police and firemen was towed into the jumbled ironwork, and tangled there. When Una passed out of sight round the comer there were only two dark figures left clinging heroically to the rope behind her.

There was a sound of engines startingup below. Dixon called to them to wait. We pelted down the backstairs, and were able to fling ourselves upon the fireengine just as it moved off.

There was a pause to shift the obstructing ironwork in the gateway, then we were away down the lane in pursuit.

After a quartermile the trail led off down a steep, still narrower lane to one side. We had to abandon the fireengine, and follow on foot.

At the bottom, there is—was—an old packhorse bridge across the river. It sufficed, I believe, for several centuries of packhorses, but nothing like Una at full gallop had entered into its builders' calculations. By the time we reached it, the central span was missing, and a fireman was helping a dripping policeman carry the limp form of Alfred up the bank.

"Where is she?" Dixon inquired, anxiously.

The fireman looked at him, and then pointed silently to the middle of the river.

"A crane. Send for a crane, at once!" Dixon demanded. But everyone was more interested in emptying the water out of Alfred, and getting to work on him.

The experience has, I'm afraid, permanently altered that air of bonhomie which used to exist between Alfred and all dumb friends. In the forthcoming welter of claims, counterclaims, crossclaims and civil and criminal charges in great variety, I shall be figuring only as a witness. But Alfred, who will, of course, appear in several capacities, says that when his charges of assault, abduction attempted—well, there are several more On the list; when they have been met, he intends to change his profession as he now finds it difficult to look a cow, or indeed, any female animal, in the eye without a bias that tends to impair his judgement.

#4 The Best Of John Wyndham

John Wyndham

The Irresistable Force
The Strange Affair of the 'Wakamatsu'
The Beam Projector
Wings of Death
Fire From Heaven
Book Information

Theofficer dropped his hand. His crew could not see his face, for he stood on the observation platform with his head in a steel turret. But the hand was enough. The twin engines roared, the great tank lurched like a huge monster just awakened and began to trundle forward.

The officer, looking left and right, had the curious vision of thickets slowly moving across the country. It was strange, he thought, that with war developed as a science so many of the old tricks remained in use.

How many times in the long tale of history had an army advanced under cover of bushes and branches? It was no more than a moment's speculation before he turned his attention to keeping his machine to its place in the formation.

The weather was filthy. Sleet made it difficult to see anything much smaller than a house at 200 yards, and the wind which cut in through the observation louvres felt like a knife sawing at his face. No doubt excellent conditions for an advance, in the tactical consideration of the authorities, but not so good for the men who had to do the work. However, there was some consolation in being a tank man and not one of the infantry who would be following.