Fantastic Stories Presents the Fantastic Universe Super Pack #3. Fredric Brown
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Sidney. “What do you mean, real?”
“Real in a way. I mean, Sidney, these—I sound crazy to myself saying it—but I think these are—well, Sid, maybe they’re actual prehistoric Indians.”
“Huh?”
“Well, let’s put it this way: We asked for them and we got them.”
Sidney stared, shocked at George’s statement. “You’re crazy, all right,” he said. “Hohokams in the middle of the Twentieth Century?”
“I didn’t say they’re Hohokams, though they probably are, of the village here.”
“You said they’re prehistoric,” Sidney accused. He quavered, “Just how could they be?”
“Sid, you remember in our Indian studies, again and again, we meet the medicine man who has visions. Even modern ones have done things that are pretty impossible to explain. I believe they have spiritual powers beyond the capability of the white man. The prehistoric medicine men may have developed this power even more. I think the old man there is their medicine man.”
“So?” Sidney invited.
“I’m just supposing now, mind you,” George went on. He rubbed his bald pate again as though afraid of what thoughts were taking place under it. “Maybe way back—a good many hundreds of years ago—this medicine man decided to have a vision of the future. And it worked. And here he is now with some of his people.”
“Wait a minute,” Sidney objected. “So he had this vision and transported these people to this moment in time. But if it was hundreds of years ago they’re already dead, been dead for a long time, so how could they—”
“Don’t you see, Sid? They can be dead, but their appearance in the future—for them—couldn’t occur until now because it’s happened with us and we weren’t living and didn’t come along here at the right time until this minute.”
Sidney swallowed. “Maybe,” he muttered, “maybe.”
“Another thing,” George said. “If we can talk with them we can learn everything we’ve tried to know in all our work and solve in a minute what we’re ready to spend the whole summer, even years, digging for.”
Sidney brightened. “That’s what we wanted to do.”
George studied the Indians again. “I think they’re just as surprised as we are. When they discovered themselves here and saw us—and you must remember we’re the first white men they’ve ever seen—their immediate instinct was to attack. Now that we don’t fight back they’re waiting for us to make a move.”
“What do we do?”
“Take it easy,” advised George. “Don’t look scared and don’t look belligerent. Look friendly and hope some of the modern Indian dialects we know can make connection with them.”
*
The two scientists began, at a gradual pace, to make their way toward the old man, the young man, and the girl. As they approached, the girl drew back slightly. The young man reached over his shoulder and from the furred quiver slung on his back drew an atlatl lance and fitted it to his throwing stick, holding it ready. The other warriors, all about, followed suit.
The medicine man alone stepped forward. He held up a short colored stick to which bright feathers were attached and shook it at the two white men. They stopped.
“That’s his aspergill,” observed Sidney. “I’d like to have that one.”
The medicine man spoke. At first the scientists were puzzled, then George told Sidney, “That’s Pima, or pretty close to it, just pronounced differently. It probably shows we were right in thinking the Pimas descended from these people. He wants to know who we are.”
George gave their names. The medicine man replied, “The man who has white skin instead of red speaks our language in a strange way. I am Huk.” He turned to the young man at his side and said, “This is Good Fox, our young chief.” He indicated the girl. “That is Moon Water, his wife.”
George explained what he and the other white man with him were doing here. Huk, along with all the other Indians, including Good Fox and Moon Water, listened intently; they seemed greatly excited and disturbed.
When George was finished Good Fox turned to Huk and said, “You have succeeded, wise one, in bringing us forward, far in the future to the time of these men with white skins.”
“This is the truth,” said the wrinkled Huk; he did not boast but rather seemed awed.
Moon Water spoke in a frightened tone. She looked about at the partially excavated ruins and asked, “But what has happened to our village?” She faltered, “Is this the way it will look in the future?”
“It is the way,” Good Fox informed her sorrowfully.
“I weep for our people,” she said. “I do not want to see it.” She hung her pretty face over her bare body, then, in a moment, raised it resolutely.
Good Fox shook the long scraggly black hair away from his eyes and told the white men, “We did not mean to harm you. We did not know what else to do upon finding you here and our village buried.”
Ignoring that in his excited interest, Sidney asked, “What year are you?”
“Year?” asked Good Fox. “What is this word?”
Both Sidney and George tried to get over to him what year meant in regard to a date in history, but Good Fox, Huk, and Moon Water, and none of the others could understand.
“We do not know what you mean,” Huk said. “We know only that we live here in this village—not as you see it now—but one well built and alive with our people. As the medicine man I am known to have extra power and magic in visions. Often I have wondered what life would be like in the far future. With this group I conjured up a vision of it, carrying them and myself to what is now here before us.”
George and Sidney glanced at each other. George’s lips twitched and those of Sidney trembled. George said softly to the Indians, “Let us be friends.” He explained to them what they were doing here. “We are trying to find out what you were—are—like. Especially what made you desert people leave your villages.”
They looked blank. Huk said, “But we have not left—except in this vision.”
In an aside to George, Sidney said, “That means we’ve caught them before they went south or wherever they went.” He turned back to Huk. “Have the cliff people yet deserted their dwellings?”
Huk nodded solemnly. “They have gone. Some of them have joined us here, and more have gone to other villages.”
“We have read that into the remains of your people, especially at Casa Grande,” Sidney told him. With rising excitement in his voice he asked, “Can you tell us why they left?”
Huk nodded. “This I can do.”
Now the glance of Sidney and George at each other was quick, their eyes lighting.
“I’ll take it down on the typewriter,” Sidney said. “Think of it! Now we’ll know.”
He led Huk to the table set in front of the tent, where he brought out a portable typewriter and opened and set it up. He sat on one chair, and Huk, gingerly holding his aspergill before him as though to protect himself, sat on the other.
Good Fox, Moon Water and the other Indians crowded about, curious to see the machine that came alive under Sidney’s fingers as Huk began to relate his story. Soon their interest wandered in favor of other things about the two men with white skin. They wanted to know about the machine with four legs.
George opened up the hood of the station wagon and showed them the engine. He sat in the car and started the motor. At the noise the Indians jumped back, alarmed, and reaching for their atlatls. Moon Water approached the rear end