The Complete Stories (Page 30)

"Fill ‘er up," he said urgently. "Fill ‘er up."

The elf sipped gaily. He said, "Once the larva arrives, you can go."

"Go?"

"Only to the library. You’ll have to get volumes on electronics. I’ll need the details on how to build television, telephones, all that. I’ll need to have rules on wiring, instructions for constructing vacuum tubes. Details, Pren-tiss, details! We have tremendous tasks ahead of us. Oil drilling, gasoline refining, motors, scientific agriculture. We’ll build a new Avalon, you and I. A technical one. A scientific fairyland. We will create a new world."

"Great!" said Prentiss. "Here, don’t neglect your drink."

"You see. You are catching fire with the idea," said the elf. "And you will be rewarded. You will have a dozen female man-things to yourself."

Prentiss looked at Blanche automatically. No signs of hearing, but who could tell? He said, "I’d have no use for female man-th-for women, I mean."

"Come now," said the elf censoriously, "be truthful. You men-things are well known to our folk as lecherous, bestial creatures. Mothers frightened their young for generations by threatening them with men-things. . . . Young, ah!" He lifted the glass of eggnog in the air and said, "To my own young," and drained it.

"Fill ‘er up," said Prentiss at once. "Fill ‘er up."

The elf did so. He said, "I’ll have lots of children. I’ll pick out the best of the coleoptresses and breed my line. I’ll continue the mutation. Right now I’m the only one, but when we have a dozen or fifty, I’ll interbreed them and develop the race of the super-elf. A race of electro-ulp-electronic marvels and infinite future. … If I could only drink more. Nectar! The original nectar!"

There was the sudden noise of a door being flung open and a young voice calling, "Mom! Hey, Mom!"

The elf, his glossy eyes a little dimmed, said, "Then we’ll begin to take over the men-things. A few believe already; the rest we will-urp-teach. It will be the old days, but better; a more efficient elfhood, a tighter union."

Jan, Junior’s, voice was closer and tinged with impatience. "Hey, Mom! Ain’t you home?"

Prentiss felt his eyes popping with tension. Blanche sat rigid. The elf’s speech was slightly thick, his balance a little unsteady. If Prentiss were going to risk it, now, now was the time.

"Sit back," said the elf peremptorily. "You’re being foolish. I knew there was alcohol in the eggnog from the moment you thought your ridiculous scheme. You men-things are very shifty. We elves have many proverbs about you. Fortunately, alcohol has little effect upon us. Now if you had tried catnip with just a touch of honey in it … Ah, here is the larva. How are you, little man-thing?"

The elf sat there, the goblet of eggnog halfway to his mandibles, while

Jan, Junior, stood in the doorway. Jan, Junior’s, ten-year-old face was moderately smeared with dirt, his hair was immoderately matted and there was a look of the utmost surprise in his gray eyes. His battered schoolbooks swayed from the end of the strap he held in his hand.

He said, "Pop! What’s the matter with Mom? And-and what’s that?"

The elf said to Prentiss, "Hurry to the library. No time must be lost. You know the books I need." All trace of incipient drunkenness had left the creature and Prentiss’ morale broke. The creature had been playing with him.

Prentiss got up to go.

The elf said, "And nothing human; nothing sneaky; no tricks. Your wife is still a hostage. I can use the larva’s mind to kill her; it’s good enough for that. I wouldn’t want to do it. I’m a member of the Elfitarian Ethical Society and we advocate considerate treatment of mammals so you may rely on my noble principles // you do as I say."

Prentiss felt a strong compulsion to leave flooding him. He stumbled toward the door.

Jan, Junior, cried, "Pop, it can talk! He says he’ll kill Mom! Hey, don’t go away!"

Prentiss was already out of the room, when he heard the elf say, "Don’t stare at me, larva. I will not harm your mother if you do exactly as I say. I am an elf, a fairy. You know what a fairy is, of course."

And Prentiss was at the front door when he heard Jan, Junior’s, treble raised in wild shouting, followed by scream after scream in Blanche’s shuddering soprano.

The strong, though invisible, elastic that was drawing Prentiss out the house snapped and vanished. He fell backward, righted himself and darted back up the stairs.

Blanche, fairly saturated with quivering life, was backed into a corner, her arms about a weeping Jan, Junior.

On the desk was a collapsed black carapace, covering a nasty smear of pulpiness from which colorless liquid dripped.

Jan, Junior, was sobbing hysterically, "I hit it. I hit it with my school-books. It was hurting Mom."

An hour passed and Prentiss felt the world of normality pouring back into the interstices left behind by the creature from Avalon. The elf itself was already ash in the incinerator behind the house and the only remnant of its existence was the damp stain at the foot of his desk.

Blanche was still sickly pale. They talked in whispers.

Prentiss said, "How’s Jan, Junior?"

"He’s watching television."

"Is he all right?"

"Oh, he’s all right, but /’// be having nightmares for weeks."

"I know. So will I unless we can get it out of our minds. I don’t think there’ll ever be another of those-things here."

Blanche said, "I can’t explain how awful it was. I kept hearing every word he said, even when I was down in the living room."

"It was telepathy, you see."

"1 just couldn’t move. Then, after you left, I could begin to stir a bit. I tried to scream but all I could do was moan and whimper. Then Jan, Junior, smashed him and all at once I was free. I don’t understand how it happened."