The Perfect Creature Page 4
“Calm, calm!” repeated Dixon. “There's probably no real danger. After all, she's a mammal — mostly, that is. Now if she were a quite different kind like, say, a female spider—”
“I don't think I'd let her overhear about female spiders just now,” I suggested. “Isn't there a favourite food, or something, we could tempt her with?”
Una was swaying Alfred back and forth in three arms, and prodding him inquisitively with the forefinger of the fourth. Alfred struggled.
“Damn it. Can't you do something?” he demanded.
“Oh, Alfred! Alfred!” she reproved him, in a kind of besotted rumble.
“Well,” Dixon said, doubtfully, “perhaps if we had some ice cream...”
There was a sound of brakes, and vehicles pulling-up outside. Dixon ran swiftly along the landing, and I heard him trying to explain the situation through the window to the men outside. Presently he came back, accompanied by a fireman and his officer. When they looked down into the hall their eyes bulged.
“What we have to do is surround her without scaring her,” Dixon was explaining.
“Surround that!” said the officer dubiously. “What in hell is it, anyway?”
“Never mind about that now,” Dixon told him, impatiently. “If we can just get a few ropes on to her from different directions—”
“Help!” shouted Alfred again. He flailed about violently. Una clasped him more closely to her carapace, and chuckled dotingly. A peculiarly ghastly sound, I thought: it shook the firemen, too.
“For crysake—!” one of them began.
“Hurry up,” Dixon told him. “We can drop the first rope over her from here.”
They both went back. The officer started shouting instructions to those below: he seemed to be having some difficulty in making himself clear. However, they both returned shortly with a coil of rope. And that fireman was good. He spun his noose gently, and dropped it as neatly as you like. When he pulled in, it was round the carapace, below the arms so that it could not slip up. He belayed to the newel-post at the top of the flight.
Una was still taken up with Alfred to the exclusion of everything else around her. If a hippopotamus could purr, with kind of maudlin slant to it, I guess that's just about the sort of noise she'd make.
The front door opened quietly, and the faces of a number of assorted firemen and police appeared, all with their eyes popping and their jaws dropping. A moment later there was another bunch gaping into the hall from the sitting-room door, too. One fireman stepped forward nervously, and began to spin his rope. Unfortunately his cast touched a hanging light, and it fell short.
In that moment Una suddenly became aware of what went on.
“No!” she thundered. “He's mine! I want him!”
The terrified ropeman hurled himself back through the door on top of his companions, and it shut behind him. Without turning, Una started off in the same direction. Our rope tightened, and we jumped aside. The newel-post was snapped away like a stick, and the rest of the rope went trailing after it. There was a forlorn cry from Alfred, still firmly clasped, but, luckily for him, on the side away from the line of progress. Una took the front door like a cruiser-tank. There was an almighty crash, a shower of wood and plaster and then a screen of dust through which came sounds of consternation, topped by a voice rumbling:
“He's mine! You shan't have him! He's mine!”
By the time we were able to reach the front windows Una was already clear of obstructions. We had an excellent view of her galloping down the drive at some ten miles an hour, towing, without apparent inconvenience, half a dozen or more firemen and police who clung grimly to the trailing rope.
Down at the lodge, the guardian had had the presence of mind to close the gates. He dived for personal cover into the bushes while she was still some yards away. Gates, however, meant nothing to Una; she kept on going. True, she staggered slightly at the impact, but they crumbled and went down before her. Alfred was waving his arms, and kicking out wildly; a faint wail for help floated back to us. The collection of police and firemen was towed into the jumbled ironwork, and tangled there. When Una passed out of sight round the comer there were only two dark figures left clinging heroically to the rope behind her.
There was a sound of engines starting-up below. Dixon called to them to wait. We pelted down the back-stairs, and were able to fling ourselves upon the fire-engine just as it moved off.
There was a pause to shift the obstructing ironwork in the gateway, then we were away down the lane in pursuit.
After a quarter-mile the trail led off down a steep, still narrower lane to one side. We had to abandon the fire-engine, and follow on foot.
At the bottom, there is — was — an old pack-horse bridge across the river. It sufficed, I believe, for several centuries of pack-horses, but nothing like Una at full gallop had entered into its builders' calculations. By the time we reached it, the central span was missing, and a fireman was helping a dripping policeman carry the limp form of Alfred up the bank.
“Where is she?” Dixon inquired, anxiously.
The fireman looked at him, and then pointed silently to the middle of the river.
“A crane. Send for a crane, at once!” Dixon demanded. But everyone was more interested in emptying the water out of Alfred, and getting to work on him.
The experience has, I'm afraid, permanently altered that air of bonhomie which used to exist between Alfred and all dumb friends. In the forthcoming welter of claims, counterclaims, cross-claims and civil and criminal charges in great variety, I shall be figuring only as a witness. But Alfred, who will, of course, appear in several capacities, says that when his charges of assault, abduction attempted — well, there are several more On the list; when they have been met, he intends to change his profession as he now finds it difficult to look a cow, or indeed, any female animal, in the eye without a bias that tends to impair his judgement.
* * *
BOOK INFORMATION
THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM
SPHERE BOOKS LIMITED
30/32 Gray's Inn Road, London WCIX 8JL
First published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd 1973
Copyright © The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973
Anthology copyright © Sphere Books Ltd 1973
Introduction copyright © Leslie Flood 1973
Bibliography copyright © Gerald Bishop 1973
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Lost Machine: Amazing Stories, 1932
The Man from Beyond: Wonder Stories, 1934
Perfect Creature: Tales of Wonder, 1937
The Trojan Beam: Fantasy, 1939
Vengeance by Proxy: Strange Stories, 1940
Adaptation: Astounding Science Fiction, 1949
Pawley's Peepholes: Science Fantasy, 1951
The Red Stuff: Marvel Science Stories, 1951
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Startling Stories, 1951
Dumb Martian: Galaxy Science Fiction, 1952
Close Behind Him: Fantastic, 1953
The Emptiness of Space: New Worlds, 1960
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Set in Linotype Times
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk.
ISBN 0 7221 9369 6
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