The Nice Little People (Stories) by Kurt Vonnegut

Author:Kurt Vonnegut [Vonnegut, Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-440-33946-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

On the telephone table in the front hall, Madelaine had taped a list of telephone numbers: the numbers of her office, Bud Stafford—her boss, her lawyer, her broker, her doctor, her dentist, her hairdresser, the police, the fire department, and the department store at which Lowell worked.

Lowell was running his finger down the list for the tenth time, looking for the number of the proper person to tell about the arrival on earth of six little people a quarter of an inch high.

He wished Madelaine would come home.

Tentatively, he dialed the number of the police.

“Seventh precin’t. Sergeant Cahoon speakin’.”

The voice was coarse, and Lowell was appalled by the image of Cahoon that appeared in his mind: gross and clumsy, slab-footed, with room for fifty little people in each yawning chamber of his service revolver.

Lowell returned the telephone to its cradle without saying a word to Cahoon. Cahoon was not the man.

Everything about the world suddenly seemed preposterously huge and brutal to Lowell. He lugged out the massive telephone book, and opened it to “United States Government.” “Agriculture Department … Justice Department … Treasury Department”—everything had the sound of crashing giants. Lowell closed the book helplessly.

He wondered when Madelaine was coming home.

He glanced nervously at the couch, and saw that the little people, who had been motionless for half an hour, were beginning to stir, to explore the slick, plum-colored terrain and flora of tufts in the cushion. They were soon brought up short by the walls of a glass bell jar Lowell had taken from Madelaine’s antique clock on the mantelpiece and lowered over them.

“Brave, brave little devils,” said Lowell to himself, wonderingly. He congratulated himself on his calm, his reasonableness with respect to the little people. He hadn’t panicked, hadn’t killed them or called for help. He doubted that many people would have had the imagination to admit that the little people really were explorers from another world, and that the seeming knife was really a spaceship.

“Guess you picked the right man to come and see,” he murmured to them from a distance, “but darned if I know what to do with you. If word got out about you, it’d be murder.” He could imagine the panic and the mobs outside the apartment.

As Lowell approached the little people for another look, crossing the carpet silently, there came a ticking from the bell jar, as one of the men circled inside it again and again, tapping with some sort of tool, seeking an opening. The others were engrossed with a bit of tobacco one had pulled out from under a tuft.

Lowell lifted the jar. “Hello, there,” he said gently.

The little people shrieked, making sounds like the high notes of a music box, and scrambled toward the cleft where the cushion met the back of the couch.

“No, no, no, no,” said Lowell. “Don’t be afraid, little people.” He held out a fingertip to stop one of the women. To his horror, a spark snapped from his finger, striking her down in a little heap the size of a morning-glory seed.

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