The Collection (55 page)

A chicken thrust its head through the hole in the screen,
clucked, and pulled its head out again.

"Please let Three in," said the Doberman. "I
fear that you will not be able to communicate directly with Three. He has found
that subjectively to modify the throat structure of the creature he inhabits
in order to enable it to talk would be a quite involved process. It does not
matter. He can communicate telepathically with one of us, and we can relay his
comments to you. At the moment he sends you his greetings and asks that you
open the door."

The clucking of the chicken (it was a big black hen, Elmo
saw) sounded angry and Elmo said, "Better open the door, Toots."

Dorothy Scott got off his lap and opened the door. She
turned a dismayed face to Elmo and then to the Doberman.

"There's a cow coming down the road," she said.
"Do you mean to tell me that she—"

"He," the Doberman corrected her. "Yes, that
will be Two. And since your language is completely inadequate in that it has
only two genders, you may as well call all of us `he'; it will save trouble. Of
course, we are five different sexes as I explained."

"You didn't explain," said Elmo, looking
interested. Dorothy glowered at Elmo. "He'd better not. Five dif-ferent
sexes! All living together in one spaceship. I suppose it takes all five of
you to—uh—“

"Exactly," said the Doberman. "And now if you
will please open the door for Two, I'm sure that—"

"I will not! Have a cow in here? Do you think I'm
crazy?", "We could make you so," said the dog. Elmo looked from
the dog to his wife.

"You'd better open the door, Dorothy," he advised.

"Excellent advice," said the Doberman. "We
are not, incidentally, going to impose on your hospitality, nor will we ask you
to do anything unreasonable."

Dorothy opened the screen door and the cow clumped in.

He looked at Elmo and said, "Hi, Mac. What's
cookin'?"

Elmo closed his eyes.

The Doberman asked the cow, "Where's Five? Have you
been in touch with him?"

"Yeah," said the cow. "He's comin'. The guy I
looked over was a bindlestiff, One. What are these mugs?"

"The one with the pants is a writer," said the
dog. "The one with the skirt is his wife."

"What's a wife?" asked the cow. He looked at
Dorothy and leered. "I like skirts better," he said. "Hiya,
Babe."

Elmo got up out of his chair, glaring at the cow.
"Listen, you—" That was as far as he got. He dissolved into laughter,
almost hysterical laughter, and sank down into the chair again.

Dorothy looked at him indignantly. "Elmo! Are you going
to let a cow—"

She almost strangled on the word as she caught Elmo's eye,
and she, too, started laughing. She fell into Elmo's lap so hard that he
grunted.

The Doberman was laughing, too, his long pink tongue lolling
out. "I'm glad you people have a sense of humor," he said with
approval. "In fact, that is one reason we chose you. But let us be serious
a moment."

There wasn't any laughter in his voice now. He said, "Neither
of you will be harmed, but you will be watched. Do not go near the phone or
leave the house while we are here. Is that understood?"

"How long are you going to be here?" Elmo said.
"We have food for only a few days."

"That will be long enough. We will be able to make a
new spaceship within a matter of hours. I see that that amazes you; I shall
explain that we can work in a slower dimension."

"I see," said Elmo.

"What is he talking about, Elmo?" Dorothy
demanded.

"A slower dimension," said Elmo. "I used it
in a story once myself. You go into another dimension where the time rate is
different; spend a month there and come back and you get back only a few
minutes or hours after you left, by time in your own dimension."

"And you invented it? Elmo, how wonderful!"

Elmo grinned at the Doberman. He said, "That's all you
want—to let you stay here until you get your new ship built? And to let you
alone and not notify anybody that you're here?"

"Exactly." The dog appeared to beam with delight.
"And we will not inconvenience you unnecessarily. But you will be guarded.
Five or I will do that."

"Five? Where is he?"

"Don't be alarmed, he is under your chair at the moment,
but he will not harm you. You didn't see him come in a moment ago through the
hole in the screen. Five, meet Elmo and Dorothy Scott. Don't call her
Toots."

There was a rattle under the chair. Dorothy screamed and
pulled her feet up into Elmo's lap. Elmo tried to put his there too, with
confusing results.

There was hissing laughter from under the chair. A sibilant
voice said, "Don't worry, folks. I didn't know until I read in your minds
just now that shaking my tail like that was a warning that I was about to—
Think of the word for me—thank you. To strike." A five-foot rattlesnake
crawled out from under the chair and curled up beside the Doberman.

"Five won't harm you," said the Doberman.
"None of us will."

"We sho won't," said the squirrel.

The cow leaned against the wall, crossed its front legs and
said, "That's right, Mac." He, or she, or it, leered at Dorothy. It
said, "An' Babe, you don't need to worry about what you're worryin' about.
I'm housebroke." It started to chew placidly and then stopped. "I
won't give you no udder trouble, either," it concluded.

Elmo Scott shuddered slightly.

"You've done worse than that yourself," said the
Doberman. "And it's quite a trick to pun in a language you've just
learned. I can see one question in your mind. You're wondering that creatures
of high intelligence should have a sense of humor. The answer is obvious if you
think about it; isn't your sense of humor more highly developed than that of
creatures who have even less intelligence than you?"

"Yes," Elmo admitted; "Say, I just thought of
something else. Andromeda is a constellation, not a star. Yet you said your
planet is Andromeda II. How come?"

"Actually we come from a planet of a star in Andromeda
for which you have no name; it's too distant to show up in your telescopes. I
merely called it by a name that would be familiar to you. For your convenience
I named the star after the constellation."

Whatever slight suspicion (of what, he didn't know) Elmo
Scott may have had, evaporated.

The cow uncrossed its legs. "What t'ell we waitin'
for?" it inquired.

"Nothing, I suppose," said the Doberman.
"Five and I will take turns standing guard."

"Go ahead and get started," said the rattlesnake.
"I'll take the first trick. Half an hour; that'll give you a month
there."

The Doberman nodded. He got up and trotted to the screen
door, pushing it open with his muzzle after lifting the latch with his tail.
The squirrel, the chicken and the cow followed.

"Be seein' ya, Babe," said the cow.

"We sho will," the squirrel said.

It was almost two hours later that the Doberman, who was
then on duty as guard, lifted his head suddenly. "There they went,"
he said.

"I beg your pardon," said Elmo Scott.

"Their new spaceship just took off. It has warped out
of this space and is heading back toward Andromeda." "You say their.
Didn't you go along?"

"Me? Of course not. I'm Rex, your dog. Remember? Only
One, who was using my body, left me with an understanding of what happened and
a low level of intelligence."

"A low level?"

"About equal to yours, Elmo. He says it will pass away,
but not until after I've explained everything to you. But how about some dog
food? I'm hungry. Will you get me some, Toots?"

Elmo said, "Don't call my wife— Say, are you really
Rex?"

"Of course I'm Rex."

"Get him some dog food, Toots," Elmo said. "I've
got an idea. Let's all go out in the kitchen so we can keep talking."

"Can I have two cans of it?" asked the Doberman.

Dorothy was getting them out of the closet. "Sure,
Rex," she said.

The Doberman lay down in the doorway. "How about
rustling 'some grub for us, too, Toots?" Elmo suggested. "I'm hungry.
Look, Rex, you mean they just went off like that without saying good-by to us,
or anything?"

"They left me to say good-by. And they did you a favor,
Elmo, to repay you for your hospitality. One took a look inside that skull of
yours and found the psychological block that's been keeping you from thinking
of plots for your stories. He removed it. You'll be able to write again. No
better than before, maybe, but at least you won't be snow-blind staring at blank
paper."

"The devil with that," said Elmo. "How about
the spaceship they didn't repair? Did they leave it?"

"Sure. But they took their bodies out of it and fixed
them up. They were really Bems, by the way. Two heads apiece, five limbs—and
they could use all five as either arms or legs—six eyes apiece, three to a
head, on long stems. You should have seen them."

Dorothy was putting cold food on the table. "You won't
mind a cold lunch, will you, Elmo?" she asked.

Elmo looked at her without seeing her and said,
"Huh?" and then turned back to the Doberman. The Doberman got up from
the doorway and went over to the big dish of dog food that Dorothy had just put
down on the floor. He said, "Thanks, Toots," and started eating in
noisy gulps.

Elmo made himself a sandwich, and started munching it. The
Doberman finished his meal, lapped up some water and went back to the throw rug
in the doorway.

Elmo stared at him. "Rex, if I can find that spaceship
they abandoned, I won't have to write stories," he said. "I can find
enough things in it to— Say, I'll make you a proposition."

"Sure," said the Doberman, "if I tell you
where it is, you'll get another Doberman pinscher to keep me company, and
you'll raise Doberman pups. Well, you don't know it yet, but you're going to do
that anyway. The Bem named One planted the idea in your mind; he said I ought
to get something out of this, too."

"Okay, but will you tell me where it is?"

"Sure, now that you've finished that sandwich. It was
something that would have looked like a dust mote, if you'd seen it, on the top
slice of boiled ham. It was almost submicroscopic. You just ate it."

Elmo Scott put his hands to his head. The Doberman's mouth
was open; its tongue lolled out for all the world as though it were laughing at
him. Elmo pointed a finger at him. He said, "You mean I've got to write
for a living all the rest of my life?"

"Why not?" asked the Doberman. "They figured
out you'd be really happier that way. And with the psychological block
removed, it won't be so hard. You won't have to start out. 'Now is the time for
all good men—' And, incidentally, it wasn't any coincidence that you
substituted Bems for men; that was One's idea. He was already here inside me,
watching you. And getting quite a kick out of it."

Elmo got up and started to pace back and forth. "Looks
like they outsmarted me at every turn but one, Rex," he murmured.
"I've got 'em there, if you'll co-operate.

"How?"

"We can make a fortune with you. The world's only
talking dog. Rex, we'll get you diamond-studded collars and feed you aged
steaks and—and get you everything you want. Will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Speak."

"Woof," said the Doberman.

Dorothy Scott looked at Elmo Scott. "Why do that,
Elmo?" she asked. "You told me I should never ask him to speak unless
we had something to give him, and he's just eaten."

"I dunno," said Elmo. "I forgot. Well, guess
I'd better get back to getting a story started." He stepped over the dog
and walked to his typewriter in the other room.

He sat down in front of it and then called out. "Hey,
Toots," and Dorothy came in and stood beside him. He said, "I think I
got an idea. That 'Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of Elmo
Scott' has the germ of an idea in it. I can even pick the title out of it. 'All
Good Bems.' About a guy trying to write a science-fiction story, and suddenly
his—uh—dog—I can make him a Doberman like Rex and—Well, wait till you read
it."

He jerked fresh paper into the typewriter and wrote the
heading:

ALL GOOD BEMS

It started out like a simple
case of murder. That was bad enough in itself, because it was the first murder
during the five years Rod Caquer had been Lieutenant of Police in Sector Three
of Callisto.

Sector Three was proud of that
record, or had been until the record became a dead duck.

But before the thing was over,
nobody would have been happier than Rod Caquer if it had stayed a simple case
of murder-without cosmic repercussions.

Events began to happen when Rod
Caquer
^'
s buzzer made him look up at the visiscreen.

There he saw the image of Barr
Maxon, Regent of Sector Three.

"Morning, Regent,
^"
Caquer said pleasantly. "Nice speech you made last night on the-"

Maxon cut him short.
"Thanks, Caquer," he said. "You know Willem Deem?
^"

^"
The
book-and-reel shop proprietor? Yes, slightly.
^"
"
He
^'
s
dead,
^"
announced Maxon. "It seems to be murder. You
better go there."

His image clicked off the screen
before Caquer could ask any questions. But the questions could wait anyway. He
was already on his feet and buckling on his short-sword.

Murder on Callisto? It did not
seem possible, but if it had really happened he should get there quickly. Very
quickly, if he was to have time for a look at the body before they took it to
the incinerator.

On Callisto, bodies are never
held for more than an hour after death because of the hylra spores which, in
minute quantity, are always present in the thinnish atmosphere. They are
harmless, of course, to live tissue, but they tremendously accelerate the rate
of putrefaction in dead animal matter of any sort.