Fantastic Stories Presents the Imagination (Stories of Science and Fantasy) Super Pack. Edmond Hamilton
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“You’re a, you’re an angel,” he said. Awe made his voice hollow. “I’ll be God damned if you’re not an honest to Jesus, real live angel.”
“I’m human.”
“ . . . you couldn’t be.”
“Well, I am.”
He frowned, “ . . . lady, after what I just seen you do, I’ll believe it if you say so. You just tell me, I’ll believe it.”
“I’ve got to get into San Francisco. I’ll have to leave you. You can catch a ride or something.”
He scrambled out of the car.
Impulsively Julia reached in her handbag for a bill. She found one. “Here,” she said, thrusting it on him, “this is for your milk.”
The farmer took it automatically. He put it in his wallet and put the wallet back in his overalls without bothering to watch what he was doing. He was watching her.
If they’re all as easy to convert as he is . . . she thought.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“What?” she said.
“If you’re human, what am I?”
“We’re not quite the same,” Julia said. “Maybe some day we will be . . . .”
She wheeled onto the super-highway and headed toward San Francisco.
She switched on the automatic-drive and turned her attention to Walt.
She was unable to awaken him. After such a severe shock as he had experienced, his nervous system demanded rest; he no longer had the recuperative powers of a mutant.
Even if I alert Earth, she thought what can we do? How can we prepare? I could . . . but I’m only one. They’d gang up on me and kill me in a minute . . . . Earth will fight; at least we won’t give up. I’ll have to get us as ready as I can, and we’ll fight.
I need Walt. What kind of weapons will we be up against? Where will the invasion strike first? When? He’ll have scraps of information that I can put together to tell me more than he thinks he knows.
How can I convince him to help me?
. . . if I’ve figured it out right, there’s got to be records somewhere. Birth certificates, things like that. If I’m right about babies being missing the year of the last big saucer scare, there’s got to be birth certificates. I’ll check newspaper files in San Francisco.
If I can just find Walt’s birth certificate! That will convince him!
She thought about the space station floating somewhere in the sky; she tried to picture the aliens who manned it.
God knows how, she thought, but we’ll fight!
*
In the space station, the aliens were in conference.
**There can’t be any doubt but that she’s dead,** Forential projected.
**Your Walt is a good one,** Lycan thought. **Best mutant on the ship.**
Jubilation flowed back and forth. The other aliens congratulated Forential.
**It was nothing,** Forential told them.
**I feel infinitely better, now that she’s out of the way,** the Elder commented.
**We’ll strike with the main force a day before we planned to,** Lycan told them. **That’s best all around. We expect most trouble from the American Air Force. It will be least alert on a Sunday morning.**
*
In San Francisco Julia drew up in front of an unpretentious hotel on Polk Street. Walt, was still unconscious in the back seat.
After she arranged for a room, she returned to the car. She seized Walt at his arm pits and hauled him to the sidewalk. She held a tight distortion field around his body. He was dead weight against her. She draped one of his arms about her neck. When she began to walk, his feet shuffled awkwardly.
She felt as conspicuous as if she were smoking a pipe.
She wedged her body against the door of the hotel and dragged Walt inside. Although he was invisible, the effect of his body pulling down on hers was readily apparent. She half stumbled toward the elevator.
The clerk, a counterpart of the one she had had in Hollywood looked up in annoyance. He snorted through his nose. He eyed her narrowly. He seemed about to leave his position behind the desk.
Julia propped Walt against the wall and rang for the elevator. She smiled wanly in the direction of the clerk. Shaking his head and grunting his disapproval, he settled back in his chair.
Walt’s heavy breathing was thunderous in her ear. She braced him with her hip when he started to slip to the floor.
The elevator came.
“Step up, please.”
Straining against his weight, she hauled Walt’s feet up over the edge of the cage. The feet scraped loudly on the floor.
The elevator operator raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. He cocked his head to one side. “Something wrong?”
“Oh, no,” Julia said brightly. “Everything’s fine.”
The operator started the car. “A young lady ought to be careful in this town,” he said. “A young lady oughtn’t to drink so much.” He shook his head sadly. “There’s a case of rape in the papers nearly every day.”
“ . . . I’ll be careful.”
“They pick up young ladies in bars all the time. You never can tell about the men you’re liable to meet, if you go in bars. You have to watch yourself in this town.”
“Seven, please.”
“Yes, ma’m.”
The elevator stopped. Julia dragged Walt out.
“You mind what I say!” the operator called after her. “You be careful, now, and stay out of bars. You never can tell . . . .”
Once she got Walt inside her room, she breathed a sigh of relief. She released the distortion field. He was visible again.
She removed the top sheet from the bed. She wrestled his body onto the bed.
She ripped the sheet into strips. She worked rapidly. She was still able to hold off fatigue; she felt no need of sleep. She was ravenously hungry.
With the strips of sheet, she tied Walt securely. She used a knot that would require cutting to be undone. She pulled the strips tight. They did not interfere with free circulation, but there was no possibility of them being slipped. She had no intention of not finding Walt there when she came back.
She surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction.
*
Whistling softly she left the room and walked down the corridor. She stopped whistling abruptly and glanced around in embarrassment. She had remembered the old adage: ‘A whistling girl and a crowing hen are sure to come to some bad end’.
There seemed to be something indecent about whistling in public.
The fact that she had, colored her emotions with uneasiness.
She realized that there might be a million such superstitions—many of them not recognized as superstitions at all—buried in her personality. Her brain might be highly efficient, but was it efficient enough to overcome all the emotional biases implanted by twenty-four years of environment? Was even her knowledge of the real nature of the world—was mankind’s—sufficient to overcome such biases?
Perhaps, she thought, I’m not as smart as I thought I was.