Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“There are, Ralph, there are,” Wilburton smiled. “I’ve just been catching the morning radio news with my west ear. Flying jackrabbits have been seen all over the country. A few were seen back in the year 1945, you know, but they were considered a hoax. A herd of unicorns had been sighted in Nebraska, and they were supposed to be extinct. More than a hundred saucers have landed this morning. The small creatures from them say that they are people too: and they do look like small people. They say that they have been living in the Little Sky, not in the Big Sky, and that now the Little Sky is falling down. Besides, they were tired of living in one place and were ready for a change. They had been nervous about things for some years, they say; they’d have come down before but they feared that the earth was not really solid and they’d sink into it. But anyone who wants a change can go into the Little Sky as soon as it’s stabilized again, they say.

“And the covers have been taken off of diverse lands, Scandinavia and Arabia among others; and many millions of people are pouring out of them. These are two of the secret Wells of the World that have always populated the world. A thousand valleys of Scandinavia have had the delusional cover pulled off of them, and the sleeping millions in these valleys have awakened. And the old Arabian kingdoms have awakened today. What had appeared to be sand was only a false cover pulled over them. ‘We thought the sky had been hanging a little low these last several thousand years,’ one of the millennia-old Arabian kings is reported to have said.”

“All that on the morning news?” George Ruil asked from somewhere under his arched brows, “How rum. And how confirming. And what has the news to say at this moment?”

“The announcers are complaining of troubles in their own studios, George. They’re having trouble getting their buildings to burn. But high explosives are being brought in, and many of the persons will evacuate the buildings as they are fused off. They’re having a lot of fun at it too. Ah, that station has just gone off the air. That’s the third one to go off in five minutes.”

“Your goldfish, George, they’re climbing right out of the bowls,” Ralph Amerce gasped out in some wonder. “And they’re making a pretty purposive way across the floor.”

“I’ll open the front door for them,” George Ruil said as he rose to do it. “They want to be out and traveling too. Come along, goldies, come along, flop right over the threshold. That’s it. Hey there, watch it, don’t step on the goldfish!”

“We’re sorry, we’re sorry,” said strangers at the door, “but you can’t renew a world without breaking a few goldfish. It’s all right, we just stepped on one, the rest will be able to make it to the curb, and everything’s flowing gutter-full there; someone’s turned on all the fire hydrants. Are you gentlemen ready to leave?”

“Oh, I suppose we could get ready pretty quickly, strangers. Where are you from?”

“From the west, I believe, or some such direction. We’ve been driving all night. We got here and we said: This is just the sort of place we want, as soon as it’s burned down.”

“We’ll make it as quick as we can, men,” George Ruil said. “Come along, Ralph and Wilburton. Let’s gather such irrational things as we might want to take with us. A fine day for it, friends.”

“A fine day for it, friends,” said the strangers at the door.

“Not like a thief in the night,” Ralph Amerce murmured mystically. “Like a bright-faced boy in the bright morning.”

Various things were happening in the world. Great numbers of American Indians came out of nine separate holes in the ground. They had just gone down for a little nap, they said, and somebody had put them under a trick and caused them to sleep for a thousand years. It would not greatly matter, they said: likely they hadn’t missed anything important.

A happy woman was leading her brood of children along a smoking road. “What happened to the twins?” she asked. “The big dogs got them, mama,” one of the brood answered, “the big dogs are acting funny.” “Oh darn,” the woman said, “I wanted them to see all the nice things that are happening today.”

Dazed and smiling multitudes were moving out of Greater Armenia and Turkestan. Chinamen were setting out in thousands of junks to discover the South Sea islands. Housecats gathered in moving mobs everywhere, and the rumor ran through their mobs that the King of the Cats himself would appear in his majesty. Snakes gathered by the ten thousands at Portpatrick in Scotland and vowed they would swim the Channel to Ireland or die in the attempt. But the land rose before them and they passed over dryshod. (What? Are snakes shod with shoon? On Jubilee day, perhaps.)

And still nothing had happened.

Then it began to happen a little. The gentle quaking. The beautiful fire in the air and in the ground. Euphoria pouring out of every crevice. The rumbling like old forgotten music. The continents were winding up their anchor chains.

And at, well, pretty much the same time, three other men were met with about a dozen disciples. These three men were, in the current view, the three most powerful men in the world. Their names were—if you are any kind of revolutionary at all you will know them—: Saul Trumait the red lion of England, Pedro Cachiporro the red tiger of Mexico, Arpad Koster the red wolf of Moravia, and they were met in reddish New York. These men controlled the complexes inside the complexes.

“Nothing has happened,” said Trumait. “We have not planned anything to happen just now, so it will not be possible for anything to happen. How could anything happen if it were not of our instigation?”

“But there is rumor of things happening,” one of the disciples said, “and there are fires and bombings everywhere. And people are wandering about.”

“There should not be any fires or bombings unless we have ordered them,” Cachiporro muttered. “Fires and bombings are an art and we are the directing artists. There cannot be too many of them, that is true, but they must always be done for proper effect. We alone understand the proper effects. And the people have no right to wander about unless we have incited them to it.”

“There are the beginnings of earthquakes,” another of the disciples said.

“Then we will put an end to the earthquakes,” Koster rasped. “There will be earthquakes only when we command them. It is time that the earth learned that it has masters.”

“The dogs have all gone wild and developed the running sickness,” a third of the disciples said. “The birds have all gathered in huge flocks and started to migrate, and not at all in their usual directions. Some of the fruit trees are blooming again and it isn’t the season for it. Some of them have begun to fruit a second time this year, and that isn’t the strangest part of it. I myself have seen, this very morning, walnuts growing on an apple tree, and there weren’t any signs of them there yesterday.”

“Well, we will immediately put a stop to all that,” Trumait declared. “We have the powers, we are the powers, we have all the power of the red-devil earth and we will use that power. We aren’t given rule over the elementals for nothing.”

“There are rumors of tidal waves,” said another disciple.

“This we will not tolerate for a moment!” Cachiporro swore, “neither the waves nor the rumors. There is sky-business involved in this somewhere and we will not permit it. If the waves are running, let them stand still!”

Would you believe it? The waves everywhere in the world stood still. They were taken by surprise, perhaps, but they had always obeyed the voice of Authority wherever given.