“No,” he said imploringly. “Really, so help me God. She had me pinned down. I was getting loose, though. If you hadn’t come in I would have gotten away by myself.”
“I’ll kill you,” Mary Morley said; she spun, paced about in a great circle which swept out most of the room. Looking for something to pick up and hit with; Susie knew the motion, the searching, the glazed, ferocious, incredulous expression on her face. Mary Morley found a vase, snatched it up, stood by the dresser, her chest heaving as she confronted Seth Morley. She raised the vase in a spasmodic, abrupt, backward swing of her right arm .
On the dresser the miniaturized building slid a minute panel aside. A tiny cannon projected. Mary did not see it, but Susie and Seth Morley did.
“Look out!” Seth gasped, groping at his wife to get hold of her hand. He yanked her toward him. The vase crashed to the floor. The barrel of the cannon rotated, taking new aim. All at once a beam projected from it, in Mary Morley’s direction. Susie, laughing, backed away, putting distance between herself and the beam.
The beam missed Mary Morley. On the far wall of the room a hole appeared and through it black night air billowed, cold and harsh, entering the room. Mary wobbled, retreated a step.
Rushing into the bathroom, Seth Morley disappeared, then came dashing out again, the waterglass in his hand. He sprinted to the dresser, poured water onto the building replica. The snout of the cannon ceased to rotate.
“I think I got it,” Seth Morley said, wheezing asthmatically.
From the diminutive structure a curl of gray smoke drifted up. The structure hummed briefly and then a pool of sticky, grease-like stain dribbled out from it, mixing with the pool of water which had now formed around it. The structure bucked, spun, and then all at once decayed into inanimation. He was right; it was dead.
“You killed it,” Susie said, accusingly.
Seth Morley said, “That’s what killed Tallchief.”
“Did it try to kill me?” Mary Morley asked faintly. She looked about unsteadily, the fanaticism of fury gone from her face now. Cautiously, she seated herself and stared at the structure, blank and pale, then said to her husband, “Let’s get out of here.”
To Susie, Seth Morley said, “I’m going to have to tell Glen Belsnor.” He gingerly, and with great caution, picked up the dead little block; holding it in the palm of his hand he stared at it a long, long time.
“It took me three weeks to tame that one,” Susie said. “Now I have to find another, and bring it back here without getting killed, and tame it like I did this one.” She felt massive waves of accusation slapping higher and higher within her. “Look what you did,” she said, and went swiftly to gather up her clothing.
Seth and Mary Morley started toward the door, Seth’s hand on his wife’s back. Guiding her out.
“Goddam you both!” she shouted in accusation. Halfdressed, she followed after them. “What about tomorrow?” she said to Seth. “Are we still going on a walk? I want to show you some of the–”
“No,” he said harshly, and then he turned to gaze at her long and somberly. “You really don’t understand what happened,” he said.
Susie said, “I know what _almost_ happened.”
“Does someone have to die before you can wake up?” he said.
“No,” she said, feeling uneasy; she did not like the expression in his hard, boring eyes. “All right,” she said, “if it’s so important to you, that little toy–”
“‘Toy,’ “he said mockingly.
“Toy,” she repeated. “Then you ought to be really interested in what’s out there. Don’t you understand? This is just a model of the real Building. Don’t you want to see it? I’ve seen it very closely. I even know what the sign reads over the main entrance. Not the entrance where the trucks come and go but the entrance–”
“What does it say?” he said.
Susie said, “Will you go with me?” To Mary Morley she said, with all the graciousness she could command, “You, too. Both of you ought to come.”
“I’ll come alone,” Seth said. To his wife he said, “It’s too dangerous; I don’t want you along.”
“You don’t want me along,” Mary said, “for obvious other reasons.” But she sounded dim and scared, as if the close call with the structure’s energy beam had banished every emotion in her except raw, clinging fear.
Seth Morley said, “What does it say over the entrance?”
After a pause Susie said, “It says ‘Whippery.’
“What does that mean?” he said.
“I’m not positive. But it sounds fascinating. Maybe we can somehow get inside, this time. I’ve gone real close, almost up to the wall. But I couldn’t find a side door, and I was afraid–I don’t know why–to go in the main entrance.”
Wordlessly, Seth Morley, steering his dazed wife, strode out into the night. She found herself standing there in the middle of her room, alone and only half-dressed.
“Bitch!” she called loudly after them. Meaning Mary.
They continued on. And were gone from sight.
7
“Don’t kid yourself,” Glen Belsnor said. “If it shot at your wife it’s because that loopy dame, that Susie Dumb or Smart, whichever it is, wanted it to. She taught it. They can be trained, you see.” He sat holding the tiny structure, staring down at it, a brooding expression settling by degrees into his long, lean face.
“If I hadn’t grabbed her,” Seth said, “we would have had a second death tonight.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Considering the meager output of these things it probably would only have knocked her out.”
“The beam bored through the wall.”
Belsnor said, “The walls are cheap plastic. One layer. You could punch a hole through with your fist.”
“So you’re not upset by this.”
Belsnor plucked at his lower lip, thoughtfully. “I’m upset by the whole thing. What the hell were you doing with Susie in her room?” He raised his hand. “Don’t tell me, I know. She’s deranged sexually. No, don’t give me any details.” He played aimlessly with the replica of the Building. “Too bad it didn’t shoot Susie,” he murmured, half to himself.
“There’s something the matter with all of you,” Seth said.
Belsnor raised his shaggy head and studied Seth Morley. “In what way?”
“I’m not sure. A kind of idiocy. Each of you seems to be living in his own private world. Without regard for anyone else. It’s as if–” He pondered. “As if all you want, each of you, is to be left alone.”
“No,” Belsnor said. “We want to get away from here. We may have nothing else in common, but we do share that.” He handed the destroyed structure back to Seth. “Keep it. As a souvenir.”
Seth tossed it onto the floor.
“You’re going out exploring with Susie tomorrow?” Belsnor said.
“Yes.” He nodded.
“She’ll probably attack you again.”
“I’m not interested in that. I’m not worried by that. I think that we have an active enemy on the planet, working from outside the settlement area. I think it–or they–killed Tallchief. Despite what Babble found.”
Belsnor said, “You’re new here. Tallchief was new here. Tallchief is dead. I think there’s a connection; I think his death was connected to his unfamiliarity with the conditions on the planet. Therefore you’re equally in danger. But the rest of us–”
“You don’t think I should go.”
“Go, yes. But be very careful. Don’t touch anything, don’t pick up anything, keep your eyes open. Try to go only where she’s been; don’t tackle new areas.”
“Why don’t you come too?”
Regarding him intently, Belsnor said, “You want me to?”
“You’re the settlement’s leader, now. Yes, I think you should come. And armed.”
“I–” Belsnor pondered. “It could be argued that I ought to stay here and work on the transmitter. It could be argued that you ought to be at work composing a prayer, instead of tramping around in the wilderness. I have to think of every aspect of this situation. It could be argued–”
“It could be argued that your ‘could be argueds’ may kill us all,” Seth Morley said.
“Your ‘could be argued’ may be correct.” Belsnor smiled as if at a private, secret reality. The smile, with no amusement in it, lingered on his face; it remained and became sardonic.
Seth Morley said, “Tell me what you know about the ecology out there.”
“There is an organism which we call the tench. There are, we’ve gathered, five or six of them. Very old.”
“What do they do? Are they artifact makers?”
“Some, the feeble ones, do nothing. They just sit there here and there in the middle of the landscape. The less feeble ones, however, print.”
“‘Print’?”
“They duplicate things brought to them. Small things, such as a wristwatch, a cup, an electric razor.”