Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. 06: Baby Is Three [S.S. Col.] by Sturgeon Theodore

Author:Sturgeon, Theodore [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Modern Classics, Sci-fi, Short Stories
ISBN: 978-1-58394-750-0
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 1999-01-16T02:00:00+00:00

The Incubi of Parallel X

IT’S SMALLER, GARTH thought as he lay on his belly on top of the hill and looked down, through carefully parted branches, at Gesell Hall. The Hall had towered over him when he was a child, last year, last week, last night, in his dreams. And now, at the moment he had schooled himself for, waited for since the day his world had ended, he could feel no thrill, no triumph—only it’s smaller.

The great building, with its rambling wings, its twisted, broken power receptor antennae, its yellow weed-grown courts, lay as if in the hollow of some mighty neck, with a cliff and a mountain shoulder shrugging it into its crowded, cluttered, sheltered state.

I should have known, he thought. I was only a kid when I left—when the Ffanx—

He lost himself in the restimulated dream, the clear mental picture of his toy spaceship, hovering in midair on a pillar of koolflame fire, and his child’s dream of worlds, and then the shrill thunder of jets—real jets, Ffanx jets—which had brought an end to his dream and his childhood and his world.

Garth Gesell slipped a long-fingered hand under his abdomen and hauled out a knobby root which rowelled him. It was there, he thought, right there by the main building. The Ffanx came, and I ran around to the front and through the double doors, and right in to Dad and Mooley. And the roof came down, and Mooley, the cat, ran through fire and was naked and agonized, and then there was Dad’s head with a splinter through the bridge of his nose and the end of it in a ruined eye, talking to me … talking out of a mountain of rubble, out of torture, out of gentleness and greatness, asking me to save a race and a world and a system …

Well, he was back. Not back home, for this was enemy territory now. All the backslid, savage world was enemy territory for anyone who ventured out of his settlement, and Garth’s adopted village was many a long day’s march behind him. Behind him, too, were years of growth and training and of living with the nagging, driving force of his childhood promise to his father: I shall open the Gateway.

“I shall open the Gateway.” He said it aloud, intensely, in a deep re-dedication to his father’s wish. And then he threw himself violently to one side.

His watchful subconscious, his trained hearing, were a shade too slow to avoid the blow completely. The short, stubby spear whacked him painfully between the shoulder-blades instead of burying itself in his back. He rolled back over it, snatching it up as he rolled, and bounced to his feet in a single fluid motion, striking upward with the spear. He got a quick impression of a tall, wide, golden figure which, without moving its feet, bent gracefully aside to avoid the spear’s hungry point. Then there was a sharp blow on Garth’s wrist and the spear went flying end over end into the undergrowth.

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