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Read Ebook: Lorelei by De Vet Charles V
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Ebook has 107 lines and 6016 words, and 3 pages
He stopped at the door of the tent and took off his rusty hat. The breeze blew his long linen duster about his legs.
"Have you looked much into electrical phenomena?" he asked, putting up his trumpet.
Palmerston moved a step back, and said: "No; not at all." Then he raised his hand to possess himself of the ear-piece, and colored as he remembered that it was not a telephone. His companion seemed equally oblivious of his confusion and of his reply.
Palmerston nodded with a guilty feeling of having approved statements of which he intended merely to acknowledge the receipt, and motioned his guest into the white twilight of the tent.
"Make yourself comfortable, professor," he called. "I want to find Dysart and get my mail."
As he neared the kitchen door Mrs. Dysart's voice came to him enveloped in the sizzle of frying meat.
"Well, I don't know, Jawn; he mayn't be just the old-fashioned water-witch, but it ain't right; it's tamperin' with the secrets of the Most High, that's what I think."
"Well, now, Emeline, you hadn't ought to be hasty. He don't lay claim to anything more'n natural; he says it's all based on scientific principles. He says he can tell me just where to tunnel--Now, here's Mr. Palmerston; he's educated. I'm going to rely on him."
"Well, I'm goin' to rely on my heavenly Fawther," said Mrs. Dysart solemnly, from the quaking pantry.
Palmerston stood in the doorway, smiling. John jumped up and clapped his hand vigorously on his breast pockets.
"Well, now, there! I left your mail in the wagon in my other coat," he said, hooking his arm through the young man's and drawing him toward the barn. "Did you get him turned on?" he asked eagerly, when they were out of his wife's hearing. "How does he strike you, anyway? Doesn't he talk like a book? He wants me to help him find a claim--show him the corners, you know. He's got a daughter down at Los Angeles; she'll come up and keep house for him. He says he'll locate water on shares if I'll help him find a claim and do the tunneling. Emeline she's afraid I'll get left, but I think she'll come round. Isn't it a caution the way he talks science?"
Palmerston acknowledged that it was.
"The chances are that he is a fraud, Dysart," he said kindly; "most of those people are. I'd be very cautious about committing myself."
"Oh, I'm cautious," protested John; "that's one of my peculiarities. Emeline thinks because I look into things I'm not to be trusted. She's so quick herself she can't understand anybody that's slow and careful. Here's your letters--quite a batch of 'em. Would you mind our putting up a cot in your tent for the professor?"
"Not at all," said the young fellow good-naturedly. "It's excellent discipline to have a deaf man about; you realize how little you have to say that's worth saying."
"That's a fact, that's a fact," said Dysart, rather too cheerfully acquiescent. "A man thatf that superior intellect. I did not try to disabuse her of the belief. It fitted well with my semi-formed plan.
"He is like the Masters," the anamorph interrupted my thoughts.
I quickly took up the diversion she offered: I did not want her to see what lay in my thoughts. Also she had aroused my curiosity. "Who are the Masters?" I asked.
"I'm not certain. I think...." Her voice trailed off. "I'm never too sure that what I'm thinking are my own thoughts, or what I'm reading in your mind, or have read in others," she said. "Perhaps if I looked away from you....
"Many years ago the Masters landed on this small world to make repairs on the meteor shield of their space ship," she began again in a low voice. "They were passing through this part of the Galaxy on their way home from a distant planet. I belonged to one of them. For some reason they left me behind when they went away." She stopped talking, saddened by the recollection of her desertion.
I saw her in a new light then. She had been a pet, a plaything, who perhaps had strayed just before ship leaving time.
She nodded, smiling brightly. "A pet," she exclaimed, clapping her hands. "That is right." I realized then, with mild astonishment, that she was not very intelligent. Her apparent wit and sharpness before had been only reflections of what she read in our minds.
"Are you all Kohnke's pets?" she caught me unprepared.
I coughed uncomfortably, and shook my head.
Her mood changed. "I've been so lonesome, Bill. When I do not belong to someone I am so unhappy. But I won't be unhappy anymore." For the first time I felt sorry for her.
"Bill?" Her voice was timid. "Do you believe I will be punished for leaving the Masters? I did not mean to."
"Who would punish you now?" I asked.
"The Masters' God. They always told me he would punish me if I were bad. And he is such a terrible God." Her expression became bright with hope. "Is your God terrible, Bill?"
I tried to reassure her, to pacify this naive creature with her own private terrors, but she must have read in my mind how our Christian God could also be terrible in his wrath and justice, for she gave a small cry and pulled herself close to me.
Several minutes went by while she trembled in my arms and wept disconsolately. Finally she quieted and in a young girl's voice asked, "May I use your hanky, daddy?"
In surprise I held her out from me and saw that now she was my daughter, Joanie, with her newly bobbed hair, and her sweet face still wet with tears.
Of course. While I held her I had been thinking of her as a child. As my child, Joanie.
I wiped away her tears and blew her nose.
I thought swiftly. Perhaps this was my opportunity. Speaking as I would have to Joanie I asked gently, "Won't you help us get the fuel we need, honey?"
"I can't." Her childish wistfulness was replaced by the stubbornness I had encountered before.
I was careful to restrain my impatience. "You could come with us to Earth," I argued, without raising my voice. "You wouldn't be lonesome there."
"I couldn't live that long out of the sun," she answered.
"How did you live on the Master's ship?" I asked.
"They could bring the sunlight inside. You can't."
"Isn't there any way we could keep you alive?" I asked.
She shook her head.
Which left nothing except my desperate plan.
Burgess made the preparations I requested, without question, and I returned to Kohnke. It took me some time to get him in the frame I wanted. When he began to blubber, "I want to go home, I want to go home," I led him from the ship.
The anamorph was outside, as I knew she would be. The men were all in the ship.
I bowed deeply to Kohnke and turned to the anamorph. "He would speak with you," I said impressively.
Her eyes widened with apprehension. I was not concerned about her reading my thoughts now. What she read in Kohnke's mind would be more believable to her.
"We must have fuel!" I shouted at Kohnke. "She can give it to us!" I pointed at the anamorph. "Command her!"
Kohnke concentrated his wild gaze on the girl and mouthed something inaudible.
The anamorph drew back. Her features seemed to lose their character, to be melting together.
This was the critical moment. "Tell her about your Father," I commanded.
His lips writhed damply and he began again his inarticulate muttering.
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