The Collection (27 page)

The rest wasn't hard. The calculations of the Prxlians
showed that the starting point of the rocket was five Earth miles north-west of
what showed on their telescopomaps as a city, and which from the Professor's
conversation Mitkey knew would be Hartford.

He got there.

"Hello, Brofessor.
^"

The Herr Professor Oberburger looked up, startled. There was
no one in sight. "Vot?" he asked, of the air. "Who iss?"

"It iss I, Brofessor. Mitkey, der mouse whom you sent
to der moon. But I vas not there. Insteadt, I-"

"Vot?? It iss imbossible. Somebody blays der choke.
Budt-budt nobody knows about that rocket. Vhen it vailed, I didn't told nobody.
Nobody budt me knows-
^"

"And me, Brofessor.
^"

The Herr Professor sighed heavily. "Offervork. I am
going vhat they call battly in der bel-
^"

"No, Brofessor. This is really me, Mitkey. I can talk
now. Chust like you.
^"

^"
You say you can- I do not belief it. Vhy
can I not see you, then. Vhere are you? Vhy don't you-
^"

"I am hiding, Brofessor, in der vall chust behind der
big hole. I vanted to be sure efferything vas ogay before I showed myself.

Then you would not get eggcited und throw something at me
maybe."

"Vot? Vhy, Mitkey, if it iss really you und I am nodt
asleep or going- Vhy, Mitkey, you know better than to think I might do
something like that!
^"

^"
Ogay, Brofessor.
^"

Mitkey stepped out of the hole in the wall, and the Professor
looked at him and rubbed his eyes and looked again and rubbed his eyes and

^"
I am grazy,' he said finally. "Red
bants he years yet, und yellow- It gannot be. I am grazy."

"No, Brofessor. Listen, I'll tell you all aboudt.
^"

And Mitkey told him.

Gray dawn, and a small gray mouse still talking earnestly.

"Yess, Brofessor. I see your boint, that you think an
intelligent race of mices und an intelligent race of men couldt nodt get along
side by sides. But it vould not be side by sides; as I said, there are only a
ferry few beople in the smallest continent of Australia. Und it vould cost
little to bring them back und turn offer that continent to us mices. Ve vould
call it Moustralia instead Australia, und ve vould instead of Sydney call der
capital Dissney, in honor of-"

"But, Mitkey-"

"But, Brofessor, look vot we offer for that continent.
All mices vould go there. Ve civilize a few und the few help us catch others
und bring them in to put them under red ray machine, und the others help catch
more und build more machines und it grows like a snowball rolling down hill Und
ve sign a nonaggression pact mitt humans und stay on Moustralia und raise our
own food und-
^"

"But, Mitkey-"

"Und look vot ve offer you in eggschange, Her
Brofessor! Ve vill eggsterminate your vorst enemy-der rats. Ve do not like them
either. Und vun battalion of vun thousand mices, armed mitt gas masks und small
gas bombs, could go right in effery hole after der rats und could eggsterminate
effery rat in a city in vun day or two. In der whole vorld ve could
eggsterminate effery last rat in a year, und at the same time catch und
civilize effery mouse und ship him to Moustralia, und-
^"

"But, Mitkey-"

"Vot, Brofessor?
^"

"It vould vork, but it vould not work. You could
eggsterminate der rats, yess. But how long vould it be before conflicts of
interests vould lead to der mices trying to eggsterminate de people or der
people trying to eggsterminate der-"

"They vould not dare, Brofessor! Ve could make weapons
that vould-
^"

"You see, Mitkey?
^"

"But it vould not habben. If men vill honor our rights,
ve vill honor-
^"

The Herr Professor sighed.

"I-I vill act as your intermediary, Mitkey, und offer
your broposition, und- Veil, it iss true that getting rid of rats vould be a
greadt boon to der human race. Budt-
^"

"Thank you, Brofessor.
^"

"By der vay, Mitkey. I haff Minnie. Your vife, I guess
it iss, unless there vas other mices around. She iss in der other room; I put
her there chust before you ariffed, so she vould be in der dark und could
sleep. You vant to see her?"

"Vife?" said Mitkey. It had been so long that he
had really forgotten the family he had perforce abandoned. The memory returned
slowly.

"Veil," he said "-ummm, yess. Ve vill get her
und I shall construct quvick a small X-19 prochector und-Yess, it vill help
you in your negotiations mitt der governments if there are sefferal of us
already so they can see I am not chust a freak like they might otherwise
suspegt.
^"

***

It wasn't deliberate. It couldn
^'
t have been,
because the Professor didn't know about Klarloth's warning to Mitkey about
carelessness with electricity-"Der new molecular rearranchement of your
brain center-it iss unstable, und-
^"

And the Professor was still back in the lighted room when
Mitkey ran into the room where Minnie was in her barless cage. She was asleep,
and the sight of her- Memory of his earlier days came back like a flash and
suddenly Mitkey knew how lonesome he had been.

"Minnie!" he called, forgetting that she could not
understand.

And stepped up on the board where she lay. "Squeak!
^"
The mild electrical current between the two strips of tinfoil got him.

There was silence for a while.

Then: "Mitkey," called the Herr Professor.
"Come on back und ve vill discuss this-
^"

He stepped through the doorway and saw them, there in the
gray light of dawn, two small gray mice cuddled happily together. He couldn't
tell which was which, because Mitkey
^'
s teeth had torn off the red
and yellow garments which had suddenly been strange, confining and obnoxious
things.

"Vot on earth?" asked Professor Oberburger. Then
he remembered the current, and guessed.

"Mitkey! Can you no longer talk? Iss der-"

Silence.

Then the Professor smiled. "Mitkey," he said,
"my little star-mouse. I think you are more happier now.
^"

He watched them a moment, fondly, then reached down and
flipped the switch that broke the electrical barrier. Of course they didn't
know they were free, but when the Professor picked them up and placed them carefully
on the floor, one ran immediately for the hole in the wall. The other followed,
but turned around and looked back-still a trace of puzzlement in the little
black eyes, a puzzlement that faded.

"Gootbye, Mitkey. You vill be happier this vay. Und
there vill always be cheese."

"Squeak,
^"
said the little gray mouse,
and it popped into the hole.

"Gootbye-
^"
it might, or might not, have
meant.

Sir Chauncey Atherton waved a farewell to the Sherpa guides
who were to set up camp here and let him proceed alone. This was the point
beyond which they would not accompany him. This was Abominable Snowman country,
a few hundred miles north of Mt. Everest, in the Himalayas. Abominable Snowmen
were seen occasionally on Everest, on other Tibetan or Nepalese mountains, but
Mt. Oblimov, at the foot of which he
was now leaving his native guides,
was so thick with them that not even the Sherpas would climb it, but would here
await his return, if any. It took a brave man to pass this point. Sir Chauncey
was a brave man.

Also, he was a connoisseur of women, which was why he was
here and about to attempt, alone, not only a dangerous ascent but an even more
dangerous rescue. If Lola Gabraldi was still alive, an Abominable Snowman had
her.

Sir Chauncey had never seen Lola Gabraldi, in the flesh. He
had, in fact, learned of her existence less than a month ago, when he bad seen
the one motion picture in which she had starred-and through which she had
become suddenly fabulous, the most beautiful woman on Earth, the most
pulchritudinous movie star Italy had ever produced, and Sir Chauncey could not
understand how even Italy had produced her. In one picture she had replaced
Bardot, Lollobrigida and Ekberg as the image of feminine perfection in the
minds of connoisseurs anywhere. The moment he had seen her on the screen he had
known that he must know her in the flesh, or die trying.

But by that time Lola Gabraldi had vanished. As a vacation
after her first picture she bad taken a trip to India and had joined a group of
climbers about to make an assault on Mt. Oblimov. The others of the party had
returned; she had not. One of them had testified that he had seen her, at a
distance too great for him to reach her in time, abducted, carried off
screaming by a nine-foot-high hairy more-or-less-manlike creature. An
Abominable Snowman. The party had searched for her for days before giving up
and returning to civilization. Everyone agreed that there was no possible
chance, now, of finding her alive.

Everyone except Sir Chauncey, who had immediately flown from
England to India.

He struggled on, now high into the eternal snows. And in
addition to mountain climbing equipment he carried the heavy rifle with which he
had, only last year, shot tigers in Bengal. If it could kill tigers, he
reasoned, it could kill Snowmen.

Snow swirled about him as he neared the cloud line. Suddenly,
a dozen yards ahead of him, which was as far as he could see, he caught a
glimpse of a monstrous not-quite-human figure. He raised his rifle and fired.
The figure fell, and kept on falling; it had been on a ledge over thousands of
feet of nothingness.

And at the moment of the shot, arms closed around Sir
Chauncey from behind him. Thick, hairy arms. And then, as one hand held him
easily, the other took the rifle and bent it into an L-shape as effortlessly as
though it had been a toothpick and then tossed it away.

A voice spoke from a point about two feet above his head.
"Be quiet; you will not be harmed." Sir Chauncey was a brave man, but
a sort of squeak was all the answer he could make, despite the seeming
assurance of the words.

He was held so tightly against the creature behind him that
he could not look upward and backward to see what its face was like.

"Let me explain," said the voice above and behind
him. "We, whom you call Abominable Snowmen, are human, but transmuted. A
great many centuries ago we were a tribe like the Sherpas. We chanced to
discover a drug that let us change physically, let us adapt by increased size,
hairiness and other physiological changes to extreme cold and altitude, let us
move up into the mountains, into country in which others cannot survive,
except for the duration of brief climbing expeditions. Do you understand?"

"Y-y-yes," Sir Chauncey managed to say. He was
beginning to feel a faint return of hope. Why would this creature be
explaining these things to him if it intended to kill him?

"Then I shall explain further. Our number is small and
is diminishing. For that reason we occasionally capture, as I have captured
you, a mountain climber. We give him the transmuting drug; he undergoes the
physiological changes and becomes one of us. By that means we keep our number,
such as it is, relatively constant."

"B-but," Sir Chauncey stammered, "is that
what happened to the woman I'm looking for, Lola Gabraldi? She is now-eight
feet tall and hairy and-"

"She
was.
You just killed her. One of our tribe
had taken her as its mate. We will take no revenge for your having killed her,
but you must now, as it were, take her place."

"Take her place? But-I'm
a man."

"Thank God for that," said the voice above and
behind him. He found himself turned around, held against a huge hairy body, his
face at the right level to be buried between mountainous hairy breasts.
"Thank God for that-because I am an Abominable Snowwoman."

Sir Chauncey fainted and was picked up and, as lightly as
though he were a toy dog, carried away by his mate.

There is much to tell you, so much that it is difficult to
know where to begin. Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have
happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering.
It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty
thousand years-the details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since
the first great atomic war.

Not that I have forgotten the really great moments. I
remember being on the first expedition to land on Mars and the third to land on
Venus. I remember-I believe it was in the third great war-the blasting of Skora
from the sky by a force that compares to nuclear fission as a nova compares to
our slowly dying sun. I was second in command on a Hyper-A Class spacer in the
war against the second extragalactic invaders, the ones who established bases
on Jupe's moons before we knew they were there and almost drove us out of the
Solar System before we found the one weapon they couldn't stand up against. So
they fled where we couldn't follow them, then, outside of the Galaxy. When we
did follow them, about fifteen thousand years later, they were gone. They were
dead three thousand years.

And this is what I want to tell you about-that mighty race
and the others-but first, so that you will know how I know what I know, I will
tell you about myself.

I am not immortal. There is only one immortal being in the
universe; of it, more anon. Compared to it, I am of no importance, but you will
not understand or believe what I say to you unless you understand what I am.