The Stolen Future Box Set Page 3

  Thus concealed, I watched them walk past me, muttering unintelligibly in their own tongue. I had of necessity learned a smattering of both French and German, but this was nothing like any language I had heard. In thin, webbed belts they carried the small weapon that had been directed at me twice before, but in addition two of them carried longer tubes that reminded me of nothing so much as rifles. I did not doubt that I was correct, any more than I doubted their intentions toward me. I resumed my journey some minutes after they had disappeared, staying off the path and moving as quietly as haste would allow.

  It was due entirely to these precautions that when I reached civilization I did not fall immediately into the hands of the Nuum.

  Chapter 3

  I Become a Monster

  They say that first impressions are the most lasting; they could not have been speaking more truly than of my first sight of a member of the race known and reviled across this world, the Nuum. Although I did not know, of course, what I was seeing at that time, there was something about them from the very start that set them apart from other men—but only made them seem different to me, not greater. Perhaps this first impression had as much to do with the path my life was to take as any other factor since my passage through the silver door.

  Passing through a cleft between two ridges, I looked over an entire vast valley overlaid with a great haze, grey in color, and from where I stood, curiously flattened on top. But beneath the haze was an object of far more interest: a city. Long and narrow like the valley itself, it stretched for miles to a line of barren, half-seen mountains forming the horizon.

  The streets were straight and geometrically aligned as though the entirety had been laid out beforehand by a mathematician. I saw massive structures rising in isolated groupings, which I took to be commercial centers, surrounded by vast tracts of variegated buildings of all sizes—all in all not unlike the cities I was used to, save on a grander scale. Although I could not, at that distance, make out vehicles on the roads—or any living souls at all—I rejoiced that I had at last found civilization, where the answers to my questions could be found.

  The slopes leading down the city were steep, but not unmanageable, and covered with sufficient shrubbery and plant life that a handhold was never far, thorny though it might be. An occasional nearby rustling as I scrambled down told me that these hills were not untenanted by other creatures, but evidently my hasty passage frightened them and none showed itself.

  My path had ended abruptly in a garden. So familiar was the pattern of neat rows with small green sprouts rising from the soil, that it gave me a momentary thrill of homecoming. There was no one tending the garden at present. I stepped carefully across its short width and up to the small building to which it belonged.

  The structure was a single dun-colored story, with a peaked roof only slightly less dreary. The masonry was smooth, so even that it almost felt wet to the touch, and I had to admit for all its ugliness it appeared as though it would hold out against the harshest weather conditions.

  In my own world, the wall of this home (as I assumed it to be) would have been comprised largely of glass, the better to gaze out onto the garden and the wilderness beyond. This house, however, boasted only the most miserly and cloudy windows. I quickly discovered one that was open, allowing me to witness one of the most astonishing conversations of my life.

  There were four people inside the room. The room itself was unremarkable, furnished with several chairs and a long sofa that looked more like a bench with a very low back. There were pictures on the wall, but the light was so dim compared to outside that I could not pick out the subjects.

  The people themselves were likewise not so unusual as to stand out in a crowd, save that both of the women and one of the men seemed extremely thin. Their features were regular and not unpleasant. The women sported short coiffures that curled in well above the collars of their single-piece coveralls, but the man’s head was almost shaven.

  They were apparently in argument with the fourth person, a man whose stature and build seemed much like my own, so that while he was not imposing to me, he overwhelmed the others. He had a full head of red hair and a red beard. He might have been called handsome, in a slick, snooty fashion that I did not take to, his nose being too pointed for my taste. His coverall was shiny dark green, with red stripes down the pants; had the situation not been so odd, I might have laughed to call him a walking Christmas tree.

  To describe what they were having as a “conversation” would strain what I know of the term, and in this lay the astonishment to which I have alluded: While they waved their hands in the air like Italians, they spoke only three or four syllables in an entire minute! By their expressions and movements, I know that they were engaging in protracted discourse, but hardly any spoken words could be heard. Those sounds I did hear, I could of course not understand, but all through the time I watched, I could almost sense a buzzing, tingling sensation in my brain, as though some meaning went whizzing by at speeds too fast for me to comprehend, tickling my mind in passing.

  Later I was to learn that this was very close to the truth, but for now I only watched. Wherever I was, it was like no place else in my experience, but plainly I would have to learn to communicate with the natives sometime—unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life living in a cave.

  The argument stopped without warning and the red-bearded fellow took his leave. Those he left behind fell to muttering (I supposed) amongst themselves, and I noticed that the verbal proportion of their speech seemed to increase, but for what reason I could not guess. In all the time I remained, they never once looked out the window and saw me. I was to learn that these people placed far more reliance upon their intellect than their senses.

  Finally the three departed the room, and I backed carefully away from the window. There was no telling but that one of them might come out into the garden, so I slipped into the brush, and thence back to my cave in the hills. On my way I saw none of the men in silver. I was glad of that, for the strange buzzing sensation persisted even after I left the city behind, growing into a headache that persisted until I fell late into a fitful sleep.

  I had never thought of myself before as a monster.

  Like most young boys, I had read Frankenstein, but I had always sided with the creator, and not the creation. Now I found myself crouched each evening outside the home with the garden trying to decipher the inhabitants’ speech, even as the monster had done in the novel as he tried to learn how to be human.

  In the past week I had gone on various scouting trips—from the hills above the city I could see a great deal of the coming and going of its inhabitants—but I had been careful to avoid meeting anyone. This was especially true after I saw a Silver Man again, on a hill some distance away, waving his small box about and wandering apparently at random. I hid until he had gone, and I did not see his fellows. Still, they seemed much less concerned with stealth than I and were easy to elude. In time they were simply one more danger to beware, like the gigantic foxes and the occasional bear. Nor did any hazard keep me from my nightly appointment.

  Each night, the headaches and the buzzing were less and less onerous. The buzzing changed character, too, becoming softer and after a while changing pitch on occasion. It wasn’t long before I began to be able to understand the gist of conversation, and within a few days I could discern individual words.

  The chamber I had first spied upon appeared to be some sort of dining room or parlor. The family gathered there most evenings, and as the weather remained mild, usually the window was open. Now that I had an idea of upon whom I was eavesdropping, I spent my time sitting with my back against the wall and listening, instead of watching. Their words came just as clearly, and I did not fear discovery. I was fortunate that they never thought to bring their palaver into the garden.

  The family was composed of three: Bantos Han, the man of the house; Hori Han, his wife; and Hana Wen, Hori’s sister. I have to admit that at times I had difficulty sep
arating Hori and Hana in my mind, for to me all the women of this land appeared largely similar, particularly in the matter of hair, which was worn uniformly shorter than I was used to. But Hana’s hair was of a reddish tinge, where her sister was blond, and her voice had a younger, softer tone. It wasn’t long before hers was the voice I most longed to hear.

  When I arrived, on the seventh night of my new life, in the garden, I could hear an argument in progress.

  “—no right!” That was Hori.

  “He carries all the rights he needs with his name,” Bantos Han replied bitterly. “Farren is a Nuum; he doesn’t need any more right than that.”

  “Tell that to Hana! My sister is in her room right now crying her eyes out because she doesn’t want to go with that—that alien! What’s happened to the law? How can he make her marry him?”

  “Marriage,” her husband answered dryly, “is not what Farren has in mind.”

  His words chilled me to the bone. Who Farren was, I could only guess, but Hana plainly wanted nothing to do with him. Farren, on the other hand, just as plainly would not take “no” for an answer. I was at a loss what to do, or even if I should do anything at all. It wasn’t my house; I didn’t even know these people.

  At times my hands and feet will carry me into action before my brain has had a chance to vote. Before I quite knew it, I was sneaking around the house looking for the window into Hana’s room.

  Her sister was correct. Although the window was shut tight, I could see Hana was, or had been, crying on her bed. This was the first time I had spied on another room—let alone a bedroom—but my eyes were not so glued to the girl that I could not take in her surroundings.

  Her bedroom was suffused in a soft light, too even for gas or electric lamps, of which I could see none in any event. The bed and dressing table were familiar in a way dictated by their function, but the walls were covered by the most esoteric artworks I had ever seen. What appeared at first to be merely swaths of color actually seemed to move on lengthier examination, so that a painting was more like a kaleidoscope in its effect. The whole effect was at once attracting and repelling; I wasn’t at all sure I liked it.

  I turned my attention back to Hana. Unlike the painting, she had not moved. Behind the glass, she was like the tragic heroine of a motion picture, silent but communicating all by the language of her pose. To me she fairly cried out in despair. Again my limbs moved in direct opposition to all reason—I tapped on the window.

  She jumped up, her tear-streaked face drawn with anxiety. “Who’s there?”

  Now it was my turn to jump, for she had been facing me when she spoke, projecting her words directly past the window glass like it wasn’t there—and her lips hadn’t moved. So startled I was that I stood paralyzed while she approached the window and finally her lips moved—she screamed like an Irish banshee.

  By the time Bantos Han had rushed out of his door into the garden and around the house, I was already hidden in the bushes. But I fled no further. As chance would have it, this was the first opportunity I had had to observe people up close, outside. From a distance, the town crowds had always seemed to me the slightest bit odd, as though they moved too slowly. I wanted to see if that held true up close, for I had realized over the last few days that wherever this strange world was, it was not the one on which I had been born. What Jules Verne or H.G. Wells would have made of it, I do not know. I only knew that if I wanted to survive, I had to know who might be hunting me.

  My earlier surmises had been correct. As I watched Bantos Han poke through the brush several yards to my left, I could see how thin were his limbs; in fact, in the America I had left behind, he would have been considered sickly. But there was no tremor in his movements, no uncertainty, and he seemed perfectly in tenor with his wife and sister-in-law. If I was right, then I had nothing to fear from these people physically.

  Not from these people, no, I corrected myself quickly, but there were the Nuum, and the men in the silver suits. In my experience, neither shared the physical shortcomings of the Hans and their neighbors—and in fact, were the only persons from whom I had seen any hostility, whether directed at me or another. If I had anything to fear, it was from them. Time was to prove me right…

  But if I counted the Nuum among my enemies, did these then become my friends? I couldn’t live the rest of my life in the hills. Bantos Han was slowly making his way toward me. I would never have a better chance to speak to him without fear of interference. I readied myself and stepped out of the bushes.

  He was startled, but he didn’t run. He stopped short, staring at me curiously—but no more curiously, I suppose, than I had been staring at him for the past several days. He said something short and unintelligible, and at the same time the buzzing increased in my head to an almost intolerable degree. For a moment I was helpless, bent over and blinded by something that was less than pain, but just as debilitating. Had he wanted to, Bantos Han could have ended my life there and then without difficulty.

  When the discomfort had passed once more into the background, I slowly straightened to find him still in front of me, his curiosity mixed with concern. He searched my face minutely, reached out to touch me gently on the temple, and gasped at what he felt there. Then he took my arm and led me into his house.

  I followed docilely to find the women awaiting us. I expected the same sort of reaction Bantos Han had shown, if not worse, but they seemed to know I was coming. Moreover, they didn’t try to speak to me; Hori motioned me to a stool. When I sat down, so did they.

  Their glances were silent, but the buzzing rose and fell in my head in no apparent pattern, something it had never done before. At length Hana slipped off of her stool and stood beside me, her liquid blue eyes staring steadily at me with most unladylike directness. Under normal circumstances I would have found it uncomfortable, but I had been through so much that I actually began to relax under her gaze. Before I realized it, I was slipping off my perch, and would have fallen if Hana hadn’t steadied me. At the same time, the buzzing in my head vanished as though it had never been.

  “Who are you?” Hana asked. “Why were you at my window?”

  Her English was flawless.

  Chapter 4

  I Am an Alien

  The sound of someone speaking my mother tongue was so wonderful to me that at first I was not as surprised as I should have been, but was momentarily overcome by the idea that perhaps I was not be so far from home as I had thought.

  “My name is Charles Clee,” I said excitedly. “I’m a lieutenant in—” Suddenly my brain kicked into gear and put a brake on my mouth. Unconsciously I stiffened. “I am Lieutenant Charles C. Clee of the Allied Forces.” My rank I had already blurted out, and the fact that she spoke English meant she knew my allegiance, but further information could wait until I knew more. Insane as it might sound, this could still be an elaborate German trap.

  She frowned, her eyes darting back and forth across my face.

  “I understand what you’re saying, but the words don’t make any sense. Is all that just your name?”

  It was my turn to frown, as an intuitive sense of dismay began to form deep in my mind. Her manner was unreal, almost bizarre. It looked more and more a trick of the enemy—but I felt almost as if I could read her mind and literally see the sincerity behind her words. I made up my mind to trust her; whatever I was experiencing, it was not a German trap. A small part of me wished it could be.

  “My name is Charles Carol Clee,” I said slowly, then waited.

  “Charles?” she repeated. “That is an unusual name.”

  I blinked. “Not where I come from.”

  “Carol is much nicer,” she said, as if we were simply meeting for the first time at a concert in the park. With her flattened accent it sounded like “Keryl.”

  The incongruity of the conversation left me no option but to follow her lead.

  “My mother called me Carol—because I was born on Christmas Day.”

  She stared at me,
and shook her head. She said she had no idea what Christmas was, and I believed her.

  I knew then I was very far from home, indeed.

  After introducing me to her sister and brother-in-law, Hana led us into another room, where we sat and tried to make sense of my intrusion into their lives. As best I could, I described how I had come to be there. None of my experiences, nor my description of the silver door, rang any bells for them. When I told of my fight with the man on the hill, however, Bantos Han leaned forward anxiously, interrupting me for the first time.

  “Are you sure of what you saw? He had machines?”

  “I was entirely too close for my own comfort. If he had done to me what he did to that bush, I’d not be sitting here right now.”

  Bantos Han slumped back on the couch, shaking his head. “This is bad. Only the Nuum are allowed to have machines that you can carry with you.”

  His wife grasped his arm. “Bantos, Lord Farren could come here at any time. If he sees Keryl…”

  “No,” Bantos Han said firmly. “If Keryl had killed a Nuum, they would be out hunting him by now—and we would have heard about it. No, whoever he fought with, it wasn’t one of the Nuum.” He glanced at me. “But we will have to hide him when Lord Farren comes. He doesn’t look like he belongs here.”

  “Is Lord Farren the gentleman I saw here the other night, in—?” I stopped, but the damage was done. I had caught their full attention.

  “So you’ve been spying on us for a while, then?” Bantos Han asked.

  I nodded, the heat was full in my face—and then I saw an matching blush on Hana and I realized the full horror of what she was thinking, of what they were all thinking.