Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

“Garlic was said to drive away devils,” observed Professor Warren with satisfaction, “because it actually drove away Gizmos. We have an item of evidence that ghosts and devils and Gizmos are alike. Do you realize, Dick, how conclusive our research becomes almost minute by minute? Now we have a complete defense against Gizmos! There’s wild garlic everywhere! If people simply smear it on themselves it will be a perfect protection! Asafetida should do as well or better! Dick, this is a great moment!”

“The revival of the use of the asafetida bag should be a great scientific triumph,” agreed Lane mildly.

The Monster screamed horror of the new noises the imprisoned, garlic-wounded Gizmo made. Carol carefully knotted the neck of the pillowcase and passed it to Burke over her shoulder. She bent down to try to comfort the dog, but he would not be comforted. The thing in the bag made noises like shrieks of rage which scared the Monster terribly.

Burke whimpered. The car rolled on. The bald-headed man moaned feebly, “Get me to a doctor. I had a heart attack…”

Then Lane looked attentively in the rear-view mirror and said: “Docs the way behind look a little bit blurry, Carol?”

Carol turned about to stare. She nodded gravely. “Yes. A swarm of them is following,” she said composedly. “They were called by our little friend, no doubt. But we can outrun them.”

Burke jerked the cigar from his mouth. Frantically, he pressed its burning end upon the pillowcase prison of the Gizmo. The cloth scorched and gave way. There was a flame and a small shriek and a vile smell.

“I—I killed it!” panted Burke. “You can’t call Gizmos into my car!”

Lane said nothing. The thing was done. There was nothing to say. He drove on. The professor compressed her lips and looked volumes at the terror-stricken Burke. Carol cranked down a window until the air inside the car was clean again. Then Lane said coldly:

“Still following?”

“Not now,” said Carol. “I can see the blurring, but it’s stopped. It isn’t coming after us any more.”

“Then that’s that,” said Lane levelly. A little later he said: “I think this will be the doctor’s house.”

It was very near to sunset, now. Following the bald-headed man’s directions, he turned into the driveway of a doctor’s neat home set well back from the road, just where the outskirts of a small village began. The world was filled with an odd, beautiful carmine light which sometimes shows at sundown.

The professor got out of the car. Scowling, she beckoned to the bald-headed man, who was so invigorated by the nearness of medical attention that by error he got out unassisted, and then was astonished that he did not drop dead.

“Come along!” growled the professor. “Dick, you keep an eye on Burke. I’m going to see if anything at all can be done. We know how people can protect themselves, now. They’ve only to use what their great-grandfathers believed in!”

Lane nodded. The professor seized the bald-headed man’s arm and marched him toward what was obviously the office part of the building. Her manner and grip suggested marching a malefactor to jail than one taking a patient to a doctor. She vanished through the doorway, thrusting the bald-headed man before her.

Lane lighted a cigarette. Carol looked at him unhappily. Burke squirmed in the back seat. To the west, the crimson of the sky grew deeper above shadowed mountainsides.

Impulsively, Carol touched Lane’s hand.

“I know,” said Lane. “Thanks for sympathizing, but we’ll make out. Don’t worry. One Gizmo doesn’t make a dust storm, but the trouble is that we needed that one. Our difficulty isn’t a new one. Plenty of people think they’re what the Gizmos consider them—lower animals. They don’t want to think about anything but their own skins and their own stomachs and their own vanity. That’s about all a lower animal does think about. Except dogs. If humans were as intelligent and as loyal as dogs …”

He brooded. Carol watched his face. But there was nothing to be gained by upbraiding Burke. He was the way he was. Presently Carol sighed, and Lane patted her hand. He didn’t take his hand away. In the back seat, Burke was desperately anxious not to call further attention to himself. When his cigar burned short he took out another and lighted it.

The sun set. There were small twilight noises. A dog barked, a long distance away. A bird called in the lonely half-light. The car, cooling off, made small snapping sounds. A vagrant night wind, blowing over newly cut grass, brought fresh, fragrant, cool air to the car. Night fell, while Professor Warren and the bald-headed man remained in the doctor’s office.

Sunset moved across the nation. Everywhere the situation was confused; there were numerous places where no one at all had seen anything out of the ordinary. There were other places where dogs and cats and canaries lay dead, and people were perplexed and grieved. These things happened where humans lived—even in their homes.

There was still no search for an explanation; veterinary surgeons puzzled helplessly over dead farm animals which had simply stopped breathing, fought crazily, and died of suffocation. Animal husbandry departments of agricultural colleges were kept busy on telephones, explaining harassedly that the described symptoms were familiar but so far unexplained. They’d been reported in isolated cases for two or three weeks. During the past few days they’d increased markedly. Yesterday and today the animal plague—and it could be nothing but a plague—had flared up with explosive violence until it began to seem a threat to the meat and dairy industry of the nation. As a matter of precaution it was advised that the drinking of fresh milk be stopped. Many calves had died.

But nobody thought of Gizmos, because people thought rationally. And it was not rational to think of Gizmos as the cause of traffic accidents and the depopulation of Serenity, Colorado, and the plague which first drove animals out of forests in Minnesota and Maine and Georgia and Oregon, and then caused them to die in fighting convulsions.

Professor Warren had taken on a large assignment in essaying to save at least some few lives by convincing a country doctor that there were Gizmos, and explaining their actions. But there was a bald-headed man whose life Lane had saved once, and she was averse to having him go back and risk his life again when he could so easily be protected. And there were other lives which might be saved, too.

So she did not come out of the doctor’s office immediately. Lane and Carol waited for her, while the sunset colors reached their greatest intensity, and faded, and there was night. Somehow, they were acutely aware of the presence of Burke in the back of the car; his cigar was not fragrant, and from time to time he stirred unhappily.

But for him, the young night might have seemed enchanted. The only light was from the stars and the bright rectangles of windows in the doctor’s home. Glimmers from other houses of the village were widely separated and indistinct.

Somehow they were not impatient to go on. They talked very quietly. Neither of them could have told how it happened, but they were closer together than they’d been on the move. And of course they said nothing that Burke could not hear. He heard everything. Yet once, without any reference to Burke or his doings preceding it, Lane said angrily under his breath: “Damn Burke!”

In the obscurity of the unlighted car Carol smiled at him. Her fingers, now intertwined with his, tightened just a little.

Eventually the doctor’s office door opened wide, pouring lamplight out into the darkness, and Professor Warren emerged, seeming very weary. She came to the car and got in.