Moon Mirror (6 page)

We understand now what happened and why. When the Littles first came to this world, spoiling and wrecking, as they always have done and still do, the Teddis tried to stop them. But the minds of the Littles were closed tight; the Teddis could not reach them—not until they found Joboy. He had no fear of them, because he knew a Teddi who had been a part of his life.

So Joboy was the key to unlock the Littles’ minds, with us to add more strength, just as it takes more than one to lift a really
big stone. With Joboy and us opening the closed doors of the Littles’ minds, the Teddis could feed back to them all the fear they had spread through the years, the fear we had lived with and known in our nightmares. Such fear was a poison worse than any of the Littles’ own weapons.

We still go and
think
at them now and then, with a Teddi to aim our thoughts from where we hide. From all the signs, it won't be long before they will have had enough and will raise their starship and leave us alone. Maybe they will try to come back, but by then, perhaps, the Teddis and we can make it even harder for them.

Now we are free, and no one is ever going to put us back in a Nat pen. We are not “Nats” anymore. That is a Little name, and we take nothing from the Littles—ever again! We have a new name from old, old times. Once it was a name to make little people afraid, so it is our choice. We are free, and we are
Giants,
growing larger every day.

So shall we stay!

DESIRABLE LAKESIDE RESIDENCE

I went to the river

to droivn all my sorrow

But the river was more

to be pitied than I. . .

—Scots ballad

H
er face felt queer and light without her respirator on—almost like being out here without any clothes. Jill thumbed the worn cords of her breather, crinkling them, smoothing them out again, without paying attention to what her hands were doing, her eyes were so busy surveying this new, strange and sometimes terrifying outer world,

Back home had been the apartment, sealed, of course, and the school, with the sealed bus in between. Sometimes there had been a visit to the shopping center. But she could hardly really remember now. Even the trip to this place was rather like a dream.

Movement in the long ragged grass beyond the end of the concrete block on which Jill sat. She tensed—

A black head, a small furred head with two startling blue eyes—

Jill hardly dared to breathe even though there was no smog at all. Those eyes were watching her measuringly. Then a sinuous black body flowed into full view. One minute it had not been there, the next—it just was!

This was—she remembered the old books—a cat!

Dogs and cats, people had had them once, living in their houses. Before the air quotient got so low no one was allowed to keep a pet in housing centers. But there was no air quotient here yet—a cat could live—

Jill studied the cat, sitting up on its haunches, its tail laid straight out on the ground behind it, just the very tip of that twitching a little now and then. Except for that one small movement it might have been a pretend cat, like the old pretend bear she had when she was little. Very suddenly it yawned wide, showing sharp white teeth, a curling pink tongue, bright in color, against the black which was all the rest of it.

“Hello, cat—” Jill said in that quiet voice which the bigness
of Outside caused her to use.

Black ears twitched as if her words had tickled them a little. The cat blinked.

“Do you live here—Outside?” she asked. Because here things did dare to live Outside. She had seen a bird that very morning, and in the grass were all kinds of hoppers and crawlers. “It's nice"—Jill was gaining confidence—"to live Outside— but sometimes,” she ended truthfully, “scary, too. Like at night.”

“Ulysses, where are you, cat?”

Jill jumped. The cat blinked again, turned its head to look back over one shoulder. Then it uttered a small sound.

“I heard you, Ulysses. Now where are you?”

There was a swishing in grass and bush. Jill gathered her feet under her for a quick takeoff. Yet she had no intention of retreat until that was entirely necessary.

The bushes parted and Jill saw another girl no bigger than she was. She settled back on her chosen seat. The cat arose and went to rub back and forth against the newcomer's scratched and sandy legs.

“Hello,” Jill ventured.

“You're Colonel Baylor's niece.” The other made that sound almost like an accusation. She stood with her hands bunched into fists resting on her hips. As Jill, she wore a one-piece shorts-tunic, but hers was a rusty green which seemed to melt into the coloring of the bushes. Jill had an odd feeling that if the other chose she could be unseen while still standing right there.
Her skin was brown and her hair fluffed out around her face in an upstanding black puff.

“He's my uncle Shaw,” Jill offered. “Do—do you live Outside, too?”

“Outside,” the other repeated as if the word were strange. “Sure, I live here. Me—I'm Marcy Scholar. I live over there.” She pivoted to point to her left. “The other way's the lake—or what used to be the lake. My dad—when I was just a little old baby—he used to go fishing there. You believe me?”

She eyed Jill challengingly as if expecting a denial.

Jill nodded. She could believe anything of Outside. It had already shown her so many wonders which before had existed only in books, or on the screen of the school TV they used when Double Smog was so bad you couldn't even use the sealed buses.

“You come from up North, the bad country—” Marcy took a step forward. “The colonel, he has a big pull with the government or you couldn't get here at all. We don't allow people coming into a Clear. It might make it bad, too, if too many came. Bad enough with the lakes all dead, and the rest of it.”

Jill's eyes suddenly smarted as badly as they did once when she was caught in a room where the breather failed. She did not want to remember why she was here.

“Uncle Shaw walked on the moon! The President of the whole United States gave him a medal for it. He's in the history books—” she countered. “I guess what Uncle Shaw wants, he gets.”

Marcy did not protest as Jill half expected. Instead she nodded. “That's right. My father—he worked on the Project, too, that's how come we live here. When they closed down the big base and said no more space flights, well, we moved here with the colonel, and Dr. Wilson, and the Pierces. Look here—”

She pushed past Jill and swept away some of the foliage. Behind those trailing, yellowish leaves, was a board planted on a firm stake in the ground; on it, very faint lettering.

“You read that?” Marcy stabbed a finger at the words.

“Sure I can read!” Jill studied the almost lost lines. “It says, ‘Desirable Lakeside Residence.”’

“And that's what all this was!” Marcy answered. “Once— years and years ago—people paid lots of money for this land—land beside a lake. Of course, that was before all the fish, and turtles and alligators and things died off, and the water was all full of weeds. You can hardly tell where the lake was any more—come on—I'll show you!”

Jill eyed the mass of rusty green doubtfully. But Marcy hooked back an armful to show an opening beyond. And, at that moment, Ulysses came to life in flowing movement and disappeared through it. Fastening her respirator to her belt, Jill followed.

It was like going through a tunnel, but the walls of this tunnel were alive, not concrete. She put out a hand timidly now and then to touch fingertips to leaves, springy branches, all the parts of Outside. Then they were out of the tunnel, before them what seemed to be a smooth green surface some distance
below where they now stood. However, as she studied it, Jill could see there were brown patches which the green did not cover and which looked liquid.

This was very different from any lake in a picture, but then everything was different now from pictures. Old people kept talking about how it was when they were young, saying, yes, the pictures were right. But sometimes Jill wondered if they were not just trying to remember it and getting the pictures mixed up with what they wanted to believe. Perhaps the pictures were stories which were never true, even long ago.

Marcy shaded her eyes with her hand, stared out across the green-brown surface.

“That's funny—”

“What's funny?”

“Seems like there is more water showing today—like the weeds are gone. Maybe it's so poisoned now even the old weeds can't live in it.” She picked up a stick from the ground by her feet, and then lay full length to reach over and plunge the end of it into the thick mass below, dragging it back and forth.

Ulysses appeared again. Not up with them, but below. Jill could see him crouched on a slime-edged stone. His head was forward as he stared into the weeds, as if he could see something the girls could not.

“Hey!” Marcy braced herself up on her elbows. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“When I poked this old stick in right here"—she leaned forward to demonstrate—"something moved away—along
there!” She used the stick as a pointer. “Watch Ulysses, he must have seen it too!”

The cat's tail swept back and forth; he was clearly gazing in the direction Marcy indicated.

“You said all the fish, the turtles and things are dead.” Jill edged back. Once there had been snakes, too. Were the snakes dead?

“Sure are. My dad says nothing could live in this old lake! But something did move away. Let's see—” She wormed her way along, striking at the leaves below, cutting swaths through them, leaving the growth tattered. But, though they both watched intently, there were no more signs of anything which might or might not be fleeing the lashing branch.

“Bug—a big bug?” suggested Jill as Marcy rolled back, dropping the stick.

“Sure would be a
big
one.” Marcy sounded unconvinced. “You going to live here—all the time?”

Jill began to twist at her respirator again. “I guess so.”

“What's it like up North, in the bad country?”

Jill looked about her a little desperately. Outside was so different, how could she tell Marcy about Inside? She did not even want to remember those last black days.

“They—they cut down on our block quota,” she said in a rush. “Two of the big breathers burned out. People were all jammed together in the part where the conditioners still worked. But there were too many. They—they took old Mr. Evans away and Mrs. Evans, too. Daddy—somehow he got a message to Uncle Shaw, and he sent for me. But Daddy
couldn't come. He is one of the maintainers, and they aren't allowed even to leave their own sections for fear something will happen and the breathers break down.”

Marcy was watching her narrowly.

“I bet you're glad to be here.”

“I don't know—it's all so different, it's Outside.” Now Jill looked around her wildly. That stone where she had sat, from it she could turn around and see the house. From here—now all she could see were bushes. Where was the house—?

She got to her feet, shaking with the cold inside her.

“Please"—somehow she got out that plea—"where's the house? Which way did we come to get here?” Inside was safe—

“You frightened? Nothing to be frightened of. Just trees and things. And Ulysses, but he's a friend. He's a smart cat, understands a lot you say. If he could only talk now—” Marcy leaned over and called:

“Ulysses, you come on up. Nothing to catch down there, no use your pretending there is.”

Jill was still shaking a little. But Marcy's relaxation was soothing. And she wanted to see the cat close again. Perhaps he would let her pet him.

Again that black head pushed through the brush and Ulysses, stopping once to lick at his shoulder, came to join them.

“He's half Siamese,” Marcy announced as if that made him even more special. “His mother is Min-Hoy. My mother had her since a little kitten. She's old now and doesn't go out much. Listen, you got a cat'”

Jill shook her head. “They don't allow them—nothing that uses up air, people have to have it all. I never saw one before, except in pictures.”

“Well, suppose I let you have half of Ulysses—”

“Half?”

“Sure, like you take him some days, and me some. Ulysses” —she looked to the cat. “This is Jill Baylor, she never had a cat.
You
can be with her sometimes, can't you?”

Ulysses had been inspecting one paw intently. Now he looked first at Marcy as if he understood every word, and then turned his head to apply the same searching stare to Jill. She knelt and held out her hand.

“Ulysses—”

He came to her with the grave dignity of his species, sniffed at her fingers, then rubbed his head back and forth against her flesh, his silky soft fur like a caress.

“He likes you.” Marcy nodded briskly. “He'll give you half his time, just wait and see!”

"Jill!”
a voice called from nearby.

Marcy stood up. “That's your aunt, you'd better go. Miss Abby's a great one for people being prompt.”

“I know. How—how do I go?”

Marcy guided her back through the green tunnel. Ulysses disappeared again. But Marcy stayed to where Aunt Abby stood under the roof overhang. Jill was already sure that her aunt liked that house a great deal better before Jill came to stay in it.

“Where have you been—? Oh, hello, Marcy. You can tell your mother the colonel got the jeep fixed and I'm going in to town later this afternoon, if she wants a shopping lift.”

“Yes, Mrs. Baylor.” Marcy was polite but she did not linger. There was no sign of Ulysses.

Nobody asked Jill concerning her adventures of the morning and she did not volunteer. She was uneasy with Aunt Abby; as for Uncle Shaw, she thought most of the time he did not even know she was there. Sometimes he seemed to come back from some far distance and talk to her as if she were a baby. But most of the time he was shut up at the other end of the house in a room Aunt Abby had warned her not to enter. What it contained she had no idea.

There were only four families now living by the lake, she was to discover. Marcy's, the Haddams, who were older and seemed to spend most of their time working in a garden trying to raise things. Though Marcy reported most of the stuff died off before it ever got big or ripe enough to eat, but they kept on trying. Then there were the Williamses and they—Marcy warned her to stay away from them, even though Jill had no desire to explore Outside alone. The Williamses, Marcy reported, were dirt-mean, dirt-dirty, and wrong in the head. Which was enough to frighten Jill away from any contact.

But it was the Williamses who caused all the rumpus the night of the full moon.

Jill awakened out of sleep and sat up in her bed, her heart thumping, her body beginning to shake as she heard that awful screaming. It came from Outside, awakening all the suspicions
her days with Marcy had lulled. Then she heard sounds in the house, Uncle Shaw's heavy tread, Aunt Abby's voice.

The generator was off again and they had had only lamps for a week. But she saw through the window the broad beam of a flashlight cut the night. Then she heard Marcy's father call from the road and saw a second flashlight.

There was another shriek and Jill cried out, too, in echo. The door opened on Aunt Abby, who went swiftly to the window, pulling it closed in spite of the heat.

“It's all right.” She sat down on the bed and took Jill's hands in hers. “Just some animal—”

But Jill knew better. There weren't many animals—Ulysses, Min-Hoy, the old mule the Haddams kept. Marcy had told her all the wild animals were gone.