The Cosmic Puppets (3 page)

“Insurance.”

“This is your room. Facing the hills. You'll get a nice view. Aren't the hills lovely?” She pulled aside the plain white curtains, washed many times. “Ever seen such lovely hills in your life?”

“Yes,” Barton said. “They're nice.” He moved aimlessly around the room, touching the shabby iron bed, the tall white dresser, the picture on the wall. “This'll be all right. How much?”

Mrs Trilling's eyes darted craftily. “You're going to eat with us, of course. Two meals a day, lunch and dinner.” She licked her lips. “Forty dollars.”

Barton fumbled in his pocket for his wallet. He didn't seem to care. He peeled some bills from his wallet and handed them to her without a word.

“Thank you,” Mrs Trilling breathed. She backed quickly out of the room. “Dinner's at seven. You missed lunch, but if you want I can—”

“No.” Barton shook his head. “That's all. I don't want any lunch.” He turned his back on her and gazed moodily out the window.

Her footsteps died down the hall. Barton lit a cigarette. He felt vaguely sick at his stomach and his head ached from the driving. After leaving Peg at the hotel in Martinsville, he had sped back here. He had to come back. He had to stay here, even if it took years. He had to find out who he was, and this was the only place there was any chance of learning.

Barton smiled ironically. Even here, there didn't seem to be much of a chance. A boy had died of scarlet fever eighteen years ago. Nobody remembered. A minor incident; hundreds of kids died, people came and went. One death, one name out of many

The door of the room opened.

Barton turned quickly. A boy stood there, small and thin, with immense brown eyes. With a start, Barton recognized him as the landlady's son. “What do you want?” he demanded. “What's the idea of coming in here?”

The boy closed the door after him. For a moment he hesitated, then abruptly asked, “Who are you?”

Barton stiffened. “Barton. Ted Barton.”

The boy seemed satisfied. He walked all around Barton, examining him from every side. “How did you get through?” he demanded. “Most people don't get through. There must be a reason.”

“Through?” Barton was puzzled. “Through what?”

“Through the barrier.” Suddenly the boy withdrew; his eyes filmed over. Barton realized the boy had let something slip, something he hadn't meant to tell.

“What barrier? Where?”

The boy shrugged. “The mountains. It's a long way. The road's bad. Why did you come here? What are you doing?”

It might have been just childish curiosity. Or was it more? The boy was odd-looking, thin and bony, with huge eyes, a shock of brown hair over his unusually wide forehead. An intelligent face. Sensitive for a boy living in an out-of-the-way town in southeastern Virginia.

“Maybe,” Barton said slowly, “I have ways to get past the barrier.”

The reaction came quickly. The boy's body tensed; his eyes lost their dull film and began to glint nervously. He moved back, away from Barton, uneasy and suddenly shaken. “Oh yeah?” he muttered. But his voice lacked conviction. “What sort of ways? You must have crawled through a weak place.”

“I drove down the road. The main highway.”

The huge brown eyes flickered. “Sometimes the barrier isn't there. You must have come through when it wasn't there.”

Now Barton was beginning to feel uneasy. He was bluffing, and his bluff had been called. The boy knew what the barrier was, but Barton didn't. A tinge of fear licked at him. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen any other cars either coming or going from Millgate; the road was run-down and almost unusable. Weeds covered it; the surface was dry and cracked. No traffic at all. Hills and fields, sagging fences. Maybe he could learn something from this boy.

“How long,” he asked cautiously, “have you known about the barrier?”

The boy shrugged. “What do you mean? I've always known about it.”

“Does everybody else here know about it?”

The boy laughed. “Of course not. If they knew—” He broke off, the veil again slipping over his huge brown eyes. Barton had lost his momentary advantage; the boy was on safe ground again, answering questions instead of asking. He knew more than Barton, and they both realized it.

“You're a pretty smart kid,” Barton said. “How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“What's your name?”

“Peter.”

“You've always lived here? In Millgate?”

“Sure.” His small chest swelled. “Where else?”

Barton hesitated. “Have you ever been outside of town? On the other side of the barrier?”

The boy frowned. His face struggled; Barton sensed he had hit on something. Peter began to pace restlessly around the room, hands in the pockets of his faded blue jeans. “Sure. Lots of times.”

“How do you get across?”

“I have ways.”

“Let's compare ways,” Barton said promptly. But there was no bite; his gambit was warily declined.

“Let's see your watch,” the boy asked. “How many jewels does it have?”

Barton removed his wristwatch cautiously and passed it over. “Twenty-one jewels.”

“It's nice.” Peter turned it over and around. He ran his delicate fingers over the surface, then passed it back. “Does everybody in New York have a watch like that?”

“Everybody who is anybody.”

After a moment Peter said, “I can stop time. Not very long—maybe four hours. Someday it'll be a whole day. What do you think of that?”

Bartin didn't know what to think. “What else can you do?” he said warily. “That's not much.”

“I have power over its creatures.”

“Whose?”

Peter shrugged. “It. You know. The one on this side. With the hands stuck out. Not the one with the bright hair, like metal. The other one. Didn't you see it?”

Barton hazarded, “No, I didn't.”

Peter was puzzled. “You must have seen it. You must have seen both of them. They're there all the time. Sometimes I go up the road and sit on a ledge I have. Where I can see them good.”

After a pause, Barton managed to find words. “Maybe you'll take me along some time.”

“It's nice.” The boy's cheeks flushed; in his enthusiasm he lost his suspicion. “On a clear day you can see both of them easily. Especially him—at the far end.” He began to giggle. “It's a funny thing. At first it gave me the willies. But I got used to it.”

“Do you know their names?” Barton asked tautly, trying to find some thread of reason, some sanity in the boy's words. “Who are they?”

“I don't know.” Peter's flush deepened. “But some time I'm going to find out. There must be a way. I've asked some of the first-level things, but they don't know. I even made up a special golem with an extra-large brain, but it couldn't tell me anything. Maybe you can help me with that. How are you on the clay? Are you experienced?” He came close to Barton and lowered his voice. “Nobody around here knows anything. There's actual opposition. I have to work completely alone. If I had some help

”

“Yeah,” Barton managed. Good Lord, what had he got himself into?

“I'd like to trace one of the Wanderers,” Peter continued, with a rush of excitement. “See where they come from and how they do it. If I had help maybe I could learn to do it, too.”

Barton was paralyzed. What were Wanderers and what did they do? “Yeah, when the two of us work together,” he began weakly, but Peter cut him off.

“Let's see your hand.” Peter took hold of Barton's wrist and examined his palm carefully. Abruptly he backed away. The color died from his cheeks. “You were lying! You don't know anything!” Panic flashed across his face. “You don't know anything at all!”

“Sure, I do,” Barton asserted. But there was no conviction. And on the boy's face the surprise and fear had turned to dull disgust and hostility. Peter turned and pulled open the hall door.

“You don't know anything,” he repeated, half in anger, half with contempt. He paused briefly. “But I know something.”

“What sort of thing?” Barton demanded. He was going the whole way; it was too late to pull back now.

“Something you don't know.” A veiled, secretive smile flitted across the smooth young face. An evasive, cunning expression.

“What is it?” Barton demanded hoarsely. “What do you know that I don't know?”

He didn't expect the answer he got. And before he could react, the door had shut with a bang, and the boy was racing off down the corridor. Barton stood unmoving, hearing the echoing clatter of heels against the worn steps.

The boy ran outside, onto the porch. Under Barton's window, he cupped his hands and shouted at the top of his lungs. Dimly, a faint, penetrating yell that broke against Barton's ears, a shattering repetition of the same words, spoken in exactly the same way.

“I know who you are,” the words came again, lapping harshly against him. “I know who you really are!”

Certain that the man wasn't following him, and mildly satisfied with the effect of his words, Peter Trilling made his way through the rubble and debris behind the house. He passed the pig pens, opened the gate to the back field, closed it carefully after him, and headed toward the barn.

The barn smelled of hay and manure. It was hot; the air was stale and dead, a vast blanket of buzzing afternoon heat. He climbed the ladder cautiously, one eye on the blazing doorway; there was still a chance the man had followed him.

On the loft, he perched expertly and waited a time, getting his breath and going over what had happened.

He had made a mistake. A bad mistake. The man had learned plenty and he hadn't learned anything. At least, he hadn't learned much. The man was an enigma in many ways. He'd have to be careful, watch his step and go slow. But the man might turn out to be valuable.

Peter got to his feet and found the flashlight hanging from its rusty nail above his head, where two huge beams crossed. Its yellow light cut a patch into the depths of the loft.

They were still there, exactly as he had left them. Nobody ever came here; it was his work chamber. He sat down on the moldy hay and laid the light beside him. Then he reached out and carefully lifted the first cage.

The rat's eyes glittered, red and tiny in its thick pelt of matted gray fur. It shifted and pulled away, as he slid aside the door of the cage and reached in for it.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Don't be afraid.”

He drew the rat out and held its quivering body in his hands while he stroked its fur. The long whiskers twitched; the never-ceasing movements of its nose grew, as it sniffed his fingers and sleeve.

“Nothing to eat right now,” he said to it. “I just want to see how big you're getting.” He pushed the rat back into its cage and closed the wire door. Then he turned the light from one cage to the next, on each of the quivering gray forms that huddled against the wire, eyes red, noses moving constantly. They were all there. All in good shape. Fat and healthy. Back into the depths, row after row. Heaped and stacked and piled on each other.

He got up and examined the spider jars arranged in even, precise rows on the overhead shelves. The insides of the jars were thick with webs, tangled heaps like the hair of old women. He could see the spiders moving sluggishly, dulled by the heat. Fat globes that reflected the beam of the flashlight. He dipped into the moth-box and got out a handful of little dead bodies. Expertly, he fed each jar, careful that none escaped.

Everything was fine. He clicked off the flashlight, hung it back up, paused for a moment to study the blazing doorway, and then crept back down the ladder.

At the workbench he picked up a pair of pliers and continued on the glass-windowed snake box. It was coming along pretty well, considering it was his first. Later on, when he had more experience, he wouldn't take so long.

He measured the frame and computed the size glass he would need. Where could he find a window no one would miss? Maybe the smoke house; it had been abandoned since the roof began to leak early last spring. He put down his pencil, grabbed up the yardstick, and hurried out of the barn, into the bright sunlight.

As he raced across the field, his heart thumped with excitement. Things were coming along fine. Slowly, surely, he was gaining an edge. Of course, this man might upset everything. He'd have to make sure his weight wasn't thrown on the wrong side of the Scale. How much that weight would count for, there was no way to tell yet. Offhand, he'd guess very little.

But what was he doing in Millgate? Vague tendrils of doubt plucked at the boy's mind. He had come for a reason. Ted Barton. He'd have to make inquiries. If necessary, the man could be neutralized. But it might be possible to get him on the—

Something buzzed. Peter shrieked and threw himself to one side. A blinding pain stabbed through his neck, another seared across his arm. He rolled over and over on the hot grass, screaming and flailing his arms. Waves of terror beat at him; he tried desperately to bury himself in the hard soil.

The buzz faded. It ceased. There was only the sound of the wind. He was alone.

Trembling with terror, Peter raised his head and opened his eyes. His whole body shuddered; shock waves rolled up and down him. His arm and neck burned horribly; they'd got him in two places.

But thank God they were on their own. Unorganized.

He got unsteadily to his feet. No others. He cursed wildly; what a fool he was to come blundering out in the open this way. Suppose a whole pack had found him, not just two!

He forgot about the window and headed back toward the barn. A close call. Maybe next time he wouldn't get off so easy. And the two had got away; he hadn't managed to crush them. They'd carry word back; she'd know. She'd have something to gloat about. An easy victory. She'd get pleasure out of it.

He was gaining the edge, but it wasn't safe, not yet. He still had to be careful. He could overplay his hand, lose everything he'd built up in a single second. Pull the whole thing down around him.

And worse—send the Scales tipping back, a clatter of falling dominos all along the line. It was so interwoven

He began searching for some mud to put on the bee stings.

“What's the matter, Mr Barton?” a genial voice asked, close to his ear. “Sinus trouble? Most people who hold onto their noses like that have sinus trouble.”