Gordon Dickson: Hour of the Horde

“Word has been received from reliable sources here at the UN,” the announcer was saying, “that the message was not sent by any mechanical means from the ship now in orbit about our world but was delivered in person by two of the passengers or crew from the ship. The same source also provides the information that the two beings in question appear to be two men with somewhat swarthy features, in every respect, including the suits they wear, as human as we are. Further word is expected shortly.

“Now some details about the ship, as the details have been gleaned by telescope from the surface of our world. The ship itself appears to be at least as large as was originally estimated. There seems to be no evidence of windows or entrances in its outer surface. Moreover, no sign has been seen of a small ship leaving it or of any means by which the two from the ship could have made the trip down to the UN buildings here in New York. No landing of any type of alien craft has been reported and no unusual visitors have been escorted to the building…”

His voice droned on. Miles went to the opposite end of the room and sat down on a heavy green sofa pushed back against the wall. It was only a few minutes before Marie appeared in the entrance to the lounge. He got up swiftly and went to meet her.

“Miles—” she said as he came up to her.

“Can we get out of here?” he said. “Somewhere away from television sets and radios?”

“I’m on duty here at the dorm starting at one o’clock,” she answered. “But we could go someplace and have an early lunch until then.”

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go to someplace downtown that isn’t overrun by people from the U.”

They took the bus toward downtown Minneapolis. As the bus rolled across the freeway bridge, Miles gestured toward the window beside which Marie was sitting.

“Look,” he said, indicating the rock wall below which he had stood painting the afternoon before. “You see the bluff there? Do you think you could climb it?”

Marie stared at the steep rise of rock.

“I guess so—if I had to,” she said. She turned, frowning in puzzlement at him. “I don’t think I’d like to. Why?”

“I’ll tell you later, while we’re having lunch,” said Miles. “But look at it now—will you?—and just imagine yourself climbing it.”

Marie looked back out of the window and kept her eyes on the bluff until the bus passed the point where that side of the river could be seen. Then she looked questioningly at Miles.

When he said nothing, however, she looked away, and neither of them said anything more until they left the bus downtown.

Miles, in fact, waited until they were actually inside the restaurant they had picked—a small, medium-priced eating place with no television set.

“About last night—” he began, after the waitress had given them menus and left.

Marie laid down her menu. She reached out across the table to put her hand on his.

“Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does matter,” he answered. He withdrew his hand, took the manila envelope out from the inside pocket of his jacket, and handed it to her. “There’s something I want you to understand. That’s why I had you look at that bluff on the way here. I should have told you about it a long time ago; but when I first met you, well, I just wasn’t used to telling anyone about it, and later I liked to think you understood without being told. Then, when I found you didn’t last night—that’s why I blew up. Take a look in that envelope.”

Looking strangely at him, Marie opened the envelope and poured out the sheaf of yellowing newspaper clippings on the white place mat. She looked through them while he waited. Then she looked back up at him, frowning.

“I guess I don’t understand,” she said.

“They’re all instances of hysterical strength,” Miles said. “Have you ever heard of that?”

“I think so,” she said, still frowning. “But what’s it all got to do with you?”

“It ties in with what I believe,” he said. “A theory of mine about painting. About anything creative, actually…” And he told her about it. But when he was done, she still shook her head.

“I didn’t know,” she said. She shuffled the clippings with her fingers. “But, Miles, isn’t it a pretty big guess on your part? These”—she shuffled the clippings, again looking down at them—“are hard enough to believe—”

“Will you believe me if I tell you something?” he interrupted.

“Of course!” Her head came up.

“All right then. Listen,” he said, “before I met you, when I first had polio, I took up painting mainly to give myself an excuse to hide from people.” He took a deep breath. “I couldn’t get over the fact I was crippled, you see. I had a knack for art, but the painting and drawing were just an excuse that first year, after I’d been sick.”

“Miles,” she said gently, reaching out to put her hand on his again.

“But then, one day, something happened,” he said. “I was outside painting—at the foot of the bluff I pointed out to you. And something clicked. Suddenly I was in it— inside the painting. I can’t describe it. And I forgot everything around me.”

He stopped and drew a deep breath.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “Because it just happened I was attracting a gallery. Some kids had come up to watch me painting. Kids not much younger than I was—and I guess after a while they must have started asking me questions. But I didn’t even hear them. I was all wrapped up in what I was painting, for the first time—and it was like a miracle, like coming alive for the first time since I’d been sick.”

In spite of himself, remembering, his hand curled into a fist under her fingers. She held tightly to the fist.

“When I didn’t answer,” he went on after a second, “they evidently began to think that I was embarrassed by being caught painting, and they began to jostle me and move my brushes. But I was still just barely conscious of them, and I was scared stiff at the thought of quitting work on that painting, even for a second. I had a feeling that if I quit, even for that long, I’d lose it—this in -ness I’d discovered. But finally, one of them grabbed up my paint box and ran off with it, and I had to come out of it.”

“Oh, Miles!” said Marie, softly. Her fingertips soothed his hard-clenched fist.

“So I chased him—the one who’d taken it. And when I was just about to grab him, he dropped it. So I brought it back—and then I found out something. My canvas was gone.”

“They took it?” said Marie. “Miles, they didn’t!”

“I looked around,” he went on, seeing not her across the table as much as the much-remembered scene in his mind’s eye, “and finally, I spotted the one who’d taken it. He’d run off the other way from the one who took my paints and up around the road leading to the top of the bluff, and now he was running along the bluff overhead.”

Miles stopped speaking. With an effort he pulled his inner gaze from the four-year-old memory and looked again at Marie.

“Marie,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking of anything but that painting. It seemed like life itself to me, just then, life I’d found again after thinking I’d lost it for good with polio. It seemed to me that I had to have that painting, no matter what happened. And I went and got it.”

He hesitated.

“Marie,” he said, “I climbed up that bluff and got in front of the kid who’d taken it. When he saw me coming, he threw it facedown on the grass and ran. When I picked it up, it was nothing but smears and streaks of paint with grass sticking all over it.”