The Baen Big Book of Monsters, page 18
When we came to her continuum, Payeph punched MEDIUM REDUCTION. Everything became gray shading into black or white.
“Of course,” said Payeph, “I can’t simply turn you loose on my pride and joy.”
“Of course, Teacher.” My hearts sank.
“But I am going to allot you control of a quasi-world.”
I cocked a spine at her. “A quasi-world, Teacher?”
“A sort of alternate reality which the life-forms in this sector have erected and preserved on light-sensitive film. The absence of color disconcerts you, Ellease? You’ll soon become accustomed to it. The process by which images are preserved is rather primitive at this point in my life-forms’ development as a technological race. But they learn quickly. They’re imaginative, after a fashion. Now I want you to review everything here, and then I’ll let you practice handling the random factors.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
I reviewed the material. Payeph’s creations’ creations were two-dimensional in addition to being monochromatic, but I nevertheless found them fascinating. My teacher’s five-pointed life-forms had grasped the rudiments of continuum-building and, while keeping within the limitations of their technology, had constructed neat, succinct worlds wherein everything contrived to move itself from this point to that. It was rather like a primer in construction.
“I think I have it now,” I finally told Payeph.
“You may begin. Just remember to be subtle when selecting your variables.”
And I began.
Time was running in circles now, doubling back and catching up with itself, enfolding Ann Darrow in a scramble of images. A skull-shaped mountain rising through the fog. Black hands lashing her between the weathered stone pillars. Monsters crashing through the jungle, blundering into one another in their eagerness to get at her.
It had been a harrowing night for Ann, a night of bad dreams come true, of fearful childhood imaginings spilling over into reality. She had no way of telling how long or how far she had been carried in her monstrous abductor’s paw. She could no longer scream. Her throat was raw. She had lost and regained consciousness more times than she could number, and, always, the awakening had been the same.
In the limbo separating nightmare-filled consciousness and total awakening, she tramped the sidewalks of New York City, moving mindlessly, mechanically, like a zombie. She was tired and hungry, but she had no money, no job, no place to go, and it was cold, so very cold.
But the fetid stench in the air was that of decaying vegetation, not automobile-exhaust fumes and ripening garbage. Her clothes were pasted to her skin with perspiration. And a far greater horror than exhaustion or hunger bore her in its hand as though she were a doll.
In the limbo between unconsciousness and awakening, Ann prayed for deliverance.
Make the bad dream go away!
Don’t let me—
Please, somebody, save me! Save me!
But the awakening was always the same.
“Ah,” said Teacher Payeph. “I’m impressed, Ellease. You reveal a distinct talent for subjectivity.”
I retracted my mandibles, a sign of profound thanks, and then, carefully, nervously, started restructuring events in the quasi-world.
Tyrannosaurus sniffed the hot, damp air and began to move through the jungle. The sky was just beginning to lighten, but a thick mist was rising, keeping visibility to a minimum. The dinosaur ploughed through the gloom unconcernedly, letting his acute sense of smell guide him.
Prey-scent was abundant. He crossed the cooling spoor of a nocturnal stegosaurus at one point and, further on, followed the trail of a swamp-dwelling giant until the ground fell off sharply into a bog. Unable to proceed into the swamp, Tyrannosaurus roared out his frustration and swung his twenty-meter length about to seek food elsewhere.
He was aptly named, this Tyrant Lizard; a striding maw of a creature, with teeth like carving knives and jaw muscles like steel cable. He walked on his splayed, talon-tipped toes and held his small forearms close to his scaly chest. He hardly needed the forearms. He did his killing with his jaws and the weight behind those jaws.
He was aptly named, this Tyrannosaurus, and the other denizens of his world feared and respected him accordingly. In their marshes, the thunder lizards headed for deeper water when he approached on the shore. The pterodactyls climbed into the sky. The stegosaurs crouched under their rows of dorsal plates and flicked their spiked tails in alarm.
Tyrannosaurus paused abruptly and listened. He heard a muffled roar in the distance, followed by a series of thin shrieks and a dull crash. There was a sound of large branches snapping. Then the slowly moving air of the jungle brought a faint scent which evoked a fleeting impression, a dim flash of recognition, in the dinosaur’s mind: ape.
The Tyrant Lizard began to move again, uprooting saplings and tearing up great clumps of sodden earth as he walked. A lesser scent, intermingled with that of the ape, impinged upon his nostrils. It was a completely unfamiliar odor. Vaguely perplexed, the carnivore slowed his advance. He came to the edge of a clearing and tensed for the attack, for the ape-scent was thick there.
But there was no ape in sight.
A high, plaintive screech brought Tyrannosaurus’ head around. His glistening eye fastened upon a strange white thing wedged into the fork of a lightning-blasted tree at the far side of the clearing.
It seemed hardly more than a mouthful, hardly worth the trouble, but its noise was annoying. He hissed and strode forward, and he was almost upon the wailing thing when an enormous ape burst into the clearing like a black mountain on legs.
Tyrannosaurus immediately forgot about the irritating white creature as he wheeled to meet the ape’s attack. The simian was as tall as the dinosaur and, though considerably less heavy, very powerfully built. Jaws distended, the reptile lunged. His opponent ducked under his head and clamped its shaggy arms around his neck. He raked his teeth across the beast’s broad back, shredding flesh.
Back and forth across the clearing they raged, biting, tearing, kicking, clawing. Locked together, they crashed against the dead tree, felling it. The ape lost its hold on the dinosaur and went down on top of the tree.
Before the mammal could rise, Tyrannosaurus planted an enormous foot upon its stomach, bent down and bit out its throat.
Payeph fluttered her wattles approvingly. “Very good,” she said, “but don’t forget that the alterations you’ve made will have a direct bearing on everything which follows.”
“Of course. Teacher.”
She awoke with a splitting headache. She was pinned beneath the fallen bole, with only a short, thick nub of branch holding it away from her. For several seconds, she could not remember where she was. Through a rift in the jungle canopy, she could see that the stars had faded from the sky, but the effort required to keep her eyes open and focused served only to worsen the agony behind them. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into the warm mud.
Then a basso profundo grunt shook her out of her daze. She twisted around as best she could and gave a short, sharp scream.
Her erstwhile captor’s inert mass was sprawled across the trunk.
The giant ape was dead. Looming over it was the monster to end all monsters.
Blood dripping from his jaws and dewlap, Tyrannosaurus looked up from his meal when he heard the scream. He peered down at the strange white creature. A growl started to rumble up from his long, deep chest.
It had been a bad night for Ann Darrow. A worse day was dawning.
“Not at all bad, Ellease. See how simple it is?”
“Yes, Teacher.”
“All you have to do is exercise the same meticulous care on a cosmic scale. Take your time. Pay attention to details.” She clacked her mandibles. “And watch out for your own elbows.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
“Do you think you’ve got the hang of it now? Or would you like to practice with another alternate reality?”
I turned to have another look at the gray quasi-world and quite accidentally ground Tyrannosaurus to mush underfoot just as he was about to nip off Ann Darrow’s head and shoulders. Payeph moaned.
I pulled my head down into my carapace. “Er, should I fix it all back the way it was at first?”
“No! I mean, no, Ellease. Let’s, uh, leave well enough alone.”
“Yes, Teacher.” I backed out of the quasi-world as she punched MEDIUM REDUCTION on her console slate. Several of my feet became entangled in something. I gave a tug and pulled free. “Teacher, won’t the life-forms who constructed that quasi-world notice the changes I made?”
Payeph made a hooting sound and inflated her wattles in dismay. “I think they have more serious matters to consider now.”
I looked into her continuum and groaned. Pulling my feet free, I had broken something else.
“Ellease,” Payeph said, “perhaps you should try another line of work.”
I stared disconsolately at the mess I had created. Stars were blossoming like variegated flowers. For a brief moment, an entire galaxy flared up into a bouquet.
“Yes, Teacher,” I said.
The Eggs from Lake Tanganyika
INTRODUCTION
The first magazine to publish only science fiction was Amazing Stories, commencing with the April 1926 issue, founded by Hugo Gernsback, after whom the coveted Hugo Award is nicknamed. At the time, the phrase “science fiction” was not in use, and Gernsback described the magazine’s contents as “scientifiction,” an amalgamation of “scientific” and “fiction.” The third issue had an eye-catching cover of men in naval uniforms on the deck of a (presumably German) ship, frantically firing rifles and aiming a deck gun at an enormous fly zooming toward them. While the author of that cover story didn’t get his name on the cover alongside such luminaries as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Garrett P. Serviss (the magazine relied heavily on reprints at first), Curt Siodmak would later gain fame in a different venue. Though editor Gernsback praised the story as “the best scientifiction story so far of 1926,” I’m not sure that Siodmak intended it as a serious story, giving the characters names like Meyer-Maier, Schmidt-Schmitt, and my favorite, Pritzel-Wilzell. Joseph Heller’s Major Major Major wouldn’t be out of place here.
Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) was born in Dresden, Germany. He wrote many novels and screenplays, including the 1932 SF novel F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht (F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer, where “F.P.” stands for “floating platform,” a mid-ocean refueling station for trans-oceanic aircraft), which became a popular movie. After moving to the U.S. in 1937, he wrote the screenplay for The Wolf Man, and the rest was history. Some of his other notable horror movies were Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The Beast with Five Fingers, and I Walked with a Zombie. His 1942 novel Donovan’s Brain was an international bestseller, and has been adapted for radio and at least three movie versions, of which the best is the second version from 1952, also notable for starring an actress named Nancy Davis (no relation), who later became First Lady Nancy Reagan.
The Eggs from Lake Tanganyika
by Curt Siodmak
Professor Meyer-Maier drew a sharp needle out of the cushion, carfully picked up with the pincers the fly lying in front of him, and stuck it carefully upon a piece of white paper. He looked over the rim of his glasses, dipped his pen in the ink and wrote under the specimen:
Glossina Palpalis, specimen from Tsetsefly River. In the aboriginal language termed nsi-nsi. Usually found on river course and lakes in West Africa. Bearer of the malady Negana (Tse-tse sickness—“sleeping sickness.”)
He laid down the pen and took up a powerful magnifying glass for a closer examination. “A horrible creature,” he murmured and shivered involuntarily. On each side of the head of the flying horror, there was a monstrous eye surrounded by many sharp lashes and divided up into a hundred thousand flashing facets. An ugly proboscis thickly studded with curved barbs or hooks grew out of the lower side of the head. The wings were small and pointed, the legs armed with thorns, spines and claws. The thorax was muscular like that of a prize fighter. The abdomen was thin and looked like India rubber. It could take in a great quantity of blood and expand like a balloon. On the whole, the flying horror, resembling a pre-historic flying dragon, was not very pleasant looking—Prof. Meyer-Maier took a pin and transfixed the body of the fly. It seemed to him that a vicious sheen of light emanated from the eyes and that the proboscis rolled up. Quicly he picked up the magnifying glass, but it was an optical illusion—the thing was dead with all its poison still within its body.
Memories of the Expedition to Africa
With a deep sigh he laid aside pincers and magnifying glass and sank into a deep reverie. The clock struck 12. 1-2-3-4-5, counted Professor Meyer-Maier.
In Udjidi, a village on lake Tanganyika, the natives had told him of gigantic flies inhabiting the interior further north. These monsters were three times as big as the giants composing the giant bodyguard of the Prince of Ssuggi, who all had to be of at least standard height. Meyer-Maier laughed over this Negro fable, but the Negroes were obstinate. They refused to follow him to the northern part of Lake Tanganyika. Even Msu-uru, his black servant, who otherwise made an intelligent impression, trembled with excitement and begged to be left out of the expedition—because there enormous flies and bees were to be found—that let no man approach. They drank the river dry and guarded the valley of the elephants. “The Valley of the Elephants” where the old pachyderms withdrew to die. “It is inexplicable,” soliloquized Meyer-Maier, “that no one ever found a dead elephant.”
The clock struck 6-7-8.
The natives had come along on the expedition much against their will. Meyer-Maier had trouble to keep the caravan moving up to the day when he found four great, strange looking eggs, larger than ostrich eggs. The Negroes were seized with a panic, half of them deserting in the night, in spite of the great distance from the coast. The other half could only be kept there by tremendous efforts. He had to make up his mind finally, to go back, but he secretly put the eggs he had found into his camping chest to solve their riddle.
Now they were here in his Berlin home in his workroom. He had not found time as yet to examine them, for he had brought much material home to be worked over.
The clock struck 9-10.
Meyer-Maier kept thinking of the ugly head of the tse-tse fly that he had seen through the magnifying glass. A strange thought occurred to him and made him smile. Suppose the stories of the Negroes were true and the giant flies—butterflies and beetles as big as elephants did exist! And suppose that they propagated as flies do!—each one laying eighty million eggs a year! He laughed aloud and pictured to himself how such a creature would stalk through the streets.
A Strange Sound and the Hatching of an Egg
He broke off suddenly, in the midst of his laughter. A sound reached his ear, an earsplitting buzzing like that of a thousand flies, a deafening hum, as if a swarm of bees were entering the room; it burst out like a blast of wind through the room and then stopped. Meyer-Maier jerked the door open. Nothing. All was quiet.
“I must relax for a while,” said he, and opened the window. He turned on the light and threw back the lid of the big chest, which contained the giant eggs. Suddenly he grew pale as death and staggered back. A creature was crawling out, a creature as big as a police dog—a frightful creature, with wings—a muscular body, and six hairy legs with claws. It crept slowly, raised its incandescent head to the light and polished its wings with its hind legs. Faint with fright, Meyer-Maier pressed against the wall with outspread arms. A loud buzzing—the creature swept across the room, climbed up on the windowsill and was gone.
Meyer-Maier came slowly to himself. “My nerves are deceiving me. Did I dream?” He whispered and dragged himself to the camp-chest. But he became frozen with horror. One egg was broken open. “It breaks out of its shell like a chicken, it does not change into a chrysalis,” he thought mechanically. At last his mind cleared and he awoke to the emergency. He sprang to the desk, snatched up his revolver, ran downstairs and out into the street. He saw no trace of the escaped giant insect. Meyer-Maier looked up at the lighted windows of his home. Suddenly the light became dim. “The other eggs”—like a blow came the thought—“the other eggs too have broken.” He raced back up the stairs. A deafening buzzing filled the room. He jerked his door open and fired—once, twice, until the magazine was empty—the room was silent. Through the window he saw three silhouettes sweeping high across the night sky and disappearing in the direction of the great woods in the West. In the chest there lay the four broken giant eggs.
A Call for His Colleague
Meyer-Maier sank upon a chair. “It’s against all logic,” he thought and glanced at the empty revolver in his hand. “My delirium has taken wings and crawled out of the egg. What should I do? Shall I call the police? They will send me to an alienist! Keep quiet about it? Look for the creatures? I’ll call up my colleague, Schmidt-Schmitt!” He dragged himself to the telephone and got a connection. Schmidt-Schmitt was at home! “This is Meyer-Maier,” sounded a tired voice. “Come over at once!”
“What’s the trouble?” asked Schmidt-Schmitt.
“My African giant eggs have burst,” lisped Meyer-Maier with a failing voice. “You must come at once!”
“Your nerves are out of order,” answered Schmidt-Schmitt. “Have you still got the creatures?”
“They’ve gone,” whispered Meyer-Maier—he thought he would collapse—“flew out of the window.”
“There, there,” laughed Schmidt-Schmitt. “Now, we are getting to the truth—of course they’re aren’t there. Anyhow, I’ll come over. Meanwhile, take a cognac and put on a cold pack.”
