The Incredible Shrinking Man

Chapter Thirteen

He was sitting on one of the broad slats that formed the seat of the lower lawn chair, leaning against a tree-thick arm support, and chewing on a piece of cracker. He hadn't touched the sponge except to squeeze a few drops from it halfway up the first stage of the climb. By his side lay the coils of thread, the pin hook attached to them, and the long, shiny pin spear.
Weariness eased slowly from his relaxing muscles. Slowly he reached down and rubbed at his knee. It was a little swollen again. While he was climbing the thread, he'd banged the knee against the chair leg. A wince drew back his lips as he rubbed. He hoped it wouldn't get worse.
It was quiet in the cellar. The oil burner hadn't roared on once in the past hour. It must be warm out, he thought. He glanced far across at the window over the fuel tank. It was a shimmering square of light. He closed his eyes. He wondered why Beth wasn't out in the yard playing. The water pump hadn't started lately, either. Lou and Beth probably weren't home. He wondered where they might be. Warned by the stirring of uneasiness in his chest, he blanked his mind to thoughts of sunlight and outdoors, of his wife and child. They were not a part of his life now, and it was a senseless man who dwelt on things that were not a part of his life.
Yes, he was still a man. Two-sevenths of an inch tall and still a man. He remembered the night he'd been with Clarice, and how, then too, it had come to him that he was still a man.
"You aren't pitiful," she whispered to him. "You're a man." She'd dragged tense fingers across his chest.
It had been a moment of decisive alteration.
Almost all night, lying beside her, feeling the warm flutter of her breath against his shoulder, he had lain awake, thinking of what she'd said.
It was true; he was still a man. Living beneath the degrading weight of his affliction, he had forgotten it. Looking at his marriage and his inadequacy in it, he had forgotten it. Looking at his life and the barrenness of that life's achievements, he had forgotten it. The diminishing effect that the size of his body had had on the size of his thoughts had made him forget it. It had not been just introspection. All he'd had to do was look into a mirror to know that it was so.
And yet it was not so. A man's self-estimation was, in the end, a matter of relativity. Here he lay in a bed in which he was full size and there was a woman held in his arms. It made all the difference. He could see again.
And he saw that size had changed nothing essential; he still had his mind, he was still unique. In the morning, lying in the warm bed with her, bars of butter coloured sunlight across their legs, he'd told her of his thoughts and the change in his thoughts.
"I'm not going to fight it anymore," he said. "No, I don't mean I'm giving up," he'd added hastily, seeing the look on her face. "I mean I'm going to stop struggling against the part of it I can't beat. I know I'm incurable now. I can say it; even that's an accomplishment. I've never really admitted it before. I was so afraid I'd find out I was incurable that I even left the doctors once. I said it was because of money, but it wasn't; I know that now. It was because I was terrified of finding out." He'd lain there, staring at the ceiling, feeling Clarice's small hand on his chest, her eyes watching him.
"Well, I accept it," he'd finally said. "I accept it and I'm not going to scream at fate any more. I'm not going to go down hating." He'd turned to her suddenly. "You know what I'm going to do?" he asked, almost excitedly.
"What, dear?"
His smile had been quick, almost boyish. "I'm going to write about it," he said. "I'm going to follow myself as far as I can. I'm going to tell about everything that happened to me, and everything that's going to happen to me. This is a rare thing; I'm going to look at it as rare, as a thing of potential value, not just as a curse. I'm going to study it," he said. "I'm going to tear it apart, see what there is to see. I'm going to live with it and beat it. And I'm not going to be afraid. I'm not going to be afraid."
* * *
He finished the bit of cracker and opened his eyes. Reaching into his robe, he drew out the piece of sponge and squeezed a few drops of water into his mouth. They were warm and brackish, but they felt good in his dry throat. He put the sponge back. There was still a long climb ahead. He looked at the pin hook. It had been spread apart a little by the dragging weight of his body. He ran a hand over its smoothness. Well, he could probably rebend it somehow if it became necessary. He thought he heard a noise overhead and his head jerked back.
There was nothing. But that didn't make his heartbeat any slower. It was a grim reminder of what was waiting up there for him.
He shuddered and a mirthless smile moved his lips. I' m not going to be afraid. The words mocked him. If I'd known, he thought. If he'd known the moments of rank terror he was still to experience, he'd never have made it. Only the blessing of an unknown future enabled him to keep the promise he had made to himself.
For he had kept it. Without telling Lou, he had gone to the cellar every day, armed with stubby pencil and thick school notebook. He'd sat there in the damp coolness, writing until his wrist ached so much that he couldn't hold the pencil.
Desperate, he would knead at his wrist and hand, trying to press strength back into them so he could go on. Because, more and more, his mind was becoming an uncontrollable powerhouse of memories and thoughts, generating them endlessly. If they were not written down, they would flow from his brain and be lost. He wrote so persistently that in a matter of weeks he had brought himself up to date on his life as the shrinking man. Then he'd begun to type it up, picking slowly and laboriously at the keys as the days fled by. When it had reached the typing stage, he hadn't been able to keep it a secret from Lou any longer. The typewriter had to be rented. At first he'd planned to tell her he just wanted the typewriter to pass the time. But the rental fee was high and he knew there wasn't enough money to pay for it if it were just a whim. So he'd told her what he'd done. She had been unexcited, but she had got the typewriter and paper.
When he wrote the letters to the magazines and book publishers, she said nothing, but he sensed a rising interest in her.
And, when, almost immediately, he'd received a flood of interested offers, she suddenly had to realize that, despite everything, he was giving her the security she'd already given up hoping for. One glorious afternoon he'd received the first check for his manuscript along with a congratulatory letter, and Lou had sat with him in the living room and told him how sorry she was for having fallen into a state of withdrawal. It was protective, she said, but she regretted even that. She'd told him how proud she was of him. She'd held his tiny hand and said, "You're still the man I married, Scott." He stood up. Enough of the past. He had to get on; there was still a long way to go. Picking up the pin spear, he slung it across his back again. The added weight stirred up hot pressures in his knee, and he grimaced. Never mind, he told himself. Teeth gritted he bent over and picked up the pin hook. He looked around.
Now if he stayed where he was, he would have approximately fifty feet to climb to the level of the chair arm. The only trouble was that there were no places to catch the hook there. He'd have to do as he'd done before; go up the back of the chair.
The shelf below ran in a downward slope parallel to the seat. This shelf almost touched the floor. He'd had to throw up the hook only a short way to make it catch onto one of the shelf's bottom slats. Ascending the shelf itself had been no more difficult than walking up a moderately steep incline, using the hook and thread to bridge the gaps between the slats. The only hard part had been the vertical climb to the seat where he was now.
No help for it, then; in order to get up higher, he had to descend again a short distance. He started walking down the slope toward the back of the chair. The openings between slats were somewhat wider here than they had been on the shelf. All in all though, it looked simple enough. He reached the first opening. Pulling in the rope like thread, he coiled it and tossed it across the gap. It landed heavily and he heard the metallic ring as the hook struck the wood. The thundering of the oil burner caught him by surprise. He staggered with shock, his lips jerking back from his teeth. He jammed rigid hands over his ears and stood there trembling, eyes almost closed, feeling the thunderous shudder running through his frame.
When it finally stopped, he stood limply for a long while, staring ahead. Then, shaking his head, he took a running start and leaped across the opening between the slats.
It wasn't as easy as he'd imagined. He barely made the other side, and the pain of landing sharply on the leg with the swollen knee made him gasp. He sat down quickly, face contorted.
"Good God," he muttered. He'd better not do that again.
After a minute, he pushed up and limped down across the next wide slat, dragging the thread behind him.
At the next gap he tossed the rope thread across. Carefully he unslung the spear. He'd toss that across too, then follow without its dragging weight on him. He'd try to land on his good leg, too. He threw the spear across the opening. Its point dug into the orange wood, then the pin flew over, the weight of it tearing the point loose. Scott was backing up to get his running start when he saw the pin start rolling down the slope.
It would fall through the next opening!
Thoughtlessly he ran to the edge of the slat and jumped into space. He landed on the bad leg again, lines of pain gashing across his face. He couldn't stop; the pin was gaining momentum, heading for the gap. He lunged after it, loose sandals flapping on the wood. One of the sandals came off and the bottom of his lurching foot dragged up a splinter from the wood. He still kept running, trying to gain on the pin. Frantic, he dived forward to catch it as it started over the edge of the slat. Pain exploded in his knee. He almost went over the edge himself. He missed the pin.
But the pin was not going over parallel to the opening, and its spinning movement was suddenly checked as its point stuck into the slat on the far side and the head held it up on the side where Scott sprawled.
Gasping, he pulled the pin back and dug its point into the wood, standing it like a spear in sand. Then he twisted his foot around and, teeth clenched, picked at the brown leathery-skinned sole until he'd drawn out the long wood sliver. Drops of blood followed it. He pressed them out angrily. Not going to be afraid, not going to be afraid, he thought. Oh, sure.
He started to rub his knee, then jerked back his hand with a gasp. In falling, he'd scraped his hand. He blew out a short heavy breath as he looked at it. He felt water trickling down his chest and across the creases of his stomach. In falling he'd also pressed water from the sponge. He closed his eyes again. Never mind, he thought, it's all right.
He tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his robe and tied it around his hand. Better. He rubbed determinedly at the knee, biting down hard to fight the pain. There. That was better; much better. Limping cautiously, he retrieved his sandal and tied extra knots in the strings to keep the sandal from slipping off again. Then he turned to the thread coil and carried it to the edge of the slat. This time he'd fasten the end of the thread to the spear. Then when he threw the spear over it would not only carry over the thread, but it would be prevented from rolling again.
It worked that way. He jumped over after the spear, landing on his good leg, then pulled in the thread and hook. Yes, that was much better. A little thought is all it takes, he told himself. In this fashion he maneuvered across the sloping seat of the orange chair until he reached its back. There he rested, looking up the almost sheer back of the chair. Far up, he saw the croquet wicket sticking out in space. He could use that wicket now.
After he'd caught his breath and squeezed a couple more water drops into his mouth, he stood up and prepared to complete the next stage of the climb, to the arm of the top lawn chair. It would not be too difficult. Spaced across the three boards that made up the back of the chair were bracing slats. He had only to throw up the hook, catch it over the first of these slats, climb up to it, throw the hook over the second slat, climb up to it, and so on.
He began throwing up the hook. On the fourth try it caught and, slinging the spear over his back, he climbed up to the first slat.
An hour later, when he reached the top slat, the pin hook was almost unbent. He tossed it up on the arm of the upside-down chair, climbed up beside it, and lay down, breathing heavily. God, I'm tired, he thought, rolling over. He looked down the vast face he had just climbed, and he couldn't help remembering that once his back could have covered that area completely. Once he could have carried this chair. He rolled on his back again. At least being exhausted cut down on thoughts. Ordinarily, he might have been thinking about the spider, about the past, about a good many purposeless things. Instead, he lay there almost stupefied, and that was good...
He stood up on shaky legs and looked around. He must have fallen asleep for a while; a black, peaceful sleep, un-marred by dreams.
He put the spear across his back, picked up the hook, and hiked across the long orange plain of the chair arm, the thread trailing behind him like a lazy serpent.
For some reason he found himself able to think about the spider. It disturbed him vaguely that he hadn't seen any sign of it since he'd got up that morning. It was usually somewhere around when he was moving about. Night and day, it was never absent for long.
Was it possible it was dead?
For a second, an exultant feeling flooded through him. Maybe it had been killed somehow!
The excitement faded almost instantly. He just couldn't believe it was dead. That spider was immortal. It was more than a spider. It was every unknown terror in the world fused into wriggling, poison-jawed horror. It was every anxiety, insecurity, and fear in his life given a hideous, night-black form. Before he started up on the next stage of the climb, he'd have to bend that pin again. He didn't like the way it was opening under his weight. What if it did that while he was hanging in space?
It won't, he told himself, jamming the point of it under the joining place of chair arm and leg and bending it around again. There.
He flung the hook up and it caught over the croquet wicket. He tested it, then began the swaying climb up to the wicket. In two minutes he was clinging to the smooth metal surface. It took a long time for him to climb its cool, curving length. The weight of thread, hook, and spear made it difficult; it was too far to throw those things without risking their loss. Time and again he lost balance and spun around to the underside of the sapling-thick wicket and hung there desperately, heart pounding. Each time it took him longer to get back. Finally, toward the end of the climb, he stayed under, pulling himself up with legs and arms, the thread hanging down from his body and swinging wildly beneath him.
By the time he'd reached the shelf of the upper chair, his muscles were starting to cramp. He crawled onto the shelf and lay there gasping, his forehead pressed against the wood. It hurt to have the scraped skin of his forehead against the rough wood, but he was too tired to move. His feet stuck out over the seven-hundred-foot drop.
It was twenty minutes later when he pulled himself around and looked across the edge. The cellar world lay beneath him. Far below, the red hose was a serpent once again, still asleep, still open-mouthed and motionless. The cushion was a flower-strewn plain again. He saw the well-like hole in the floor, the one he'd almost fallen into, then almost dived into when he'd heard the sound of water running deep in it. The hole was only a black dot now. The box top he slept under was only a small gray square, like a faded stamp.
He crawled over the wide leg of the chair and leaned against it, discarding the hook, thread, and spear. Pulling the sponge and the last piece of cracker from his robe, he sat there eating and drinking, legs stretched out limply before him. He emptied about half the sponge. It didn't matter. He'd be at the top soon. And if he got the bread without any trouble, he could climb down very quickly. If he was barred from reaching the bread, he would no longer be in any position to eat it, anyway. His sandal bottoms touched the clifftop. He shook the hook loose from the lawn chair, dodged its cart wheeling fall, picked it up hastily, and dashed behind the glass base of a giant, bell-shaped fuse. There he stood, panting, peering around its edge at the wide, shadowy desert.
In the pale shaft of light that transfixed the dust-filmed window he could see nearby details: the vast pipes and ropy wires fastened under the overhead supports, the great scraps of wood, stone, and cardboard strewn across the sands; to his left, the towering hulks of paint cans and jars; in front of him, the rolling desert wastes, as far as his eye could see.
Two hundred yards off stood the slice of bread.
He licked his lips. He almost started out immediately across the sand. Then he twitched back sharply, head jerking from side to side as he looked in all directions, even behind. Where was it? He was beginning to get nervous wondering where it was.
Stillness, only stillness. The light shaft angled down like a shimmering bar leaning on the window, a bar alive with moving dust. The huge wood scraps, the stones, the concrete pillar, the hanging wires and pipes, the cans and jars and sand hills, all were motionless and still, as if they waited. He shuddered and unslung his spear. He felt a little better holding it in his hand, its head resting on the cement, its razor tip wavering high overhead.
"Well..." he muttered, and, swallowing dread, he started across the sand. The hook dragged in the sand. He dropped it. I won't need it, he thought; I'll leave it here. He walked a few paces, stopped. He didn't like the idea of leaving it. Nothing could happen to it, and yet, what if something did? He'd be trapped, helpless.
Carefully he backed toward the hook, casting nervous glances over his shoulder to make sure nothing was behind him. He reached the hook and, hastily crouching, picked it up. If it came at him, he could drop the hook fast and grab the spear with both hands. Take it easy, he told himself. Nothing's happened yet.
He started across the sand again, walking slowly and warily, eyes always moving and searching. There was no help for it, of course, but it didn't help things much that the thread knots dragging in the sand behind him made a swishing, uneven sound that reminded him of He stopped and looked behind him in fright. There was nothing. Stop worrying, he ordered himself. He looked around slowly, heartbeat still punching slowly at the walls of his chest. No, nothing. Just shadows and silence and waiting objects.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it was because none of the objects were straight up and down or straight across. Everything tilted, angled, leaned, sagged, beetled. Every line was restless and fluid. Something was going to happen. He knew it. The very silence seemed to whisper it.
Something was going to happen.
He drove the spear point into the sand and began drawing in the thread, looping it so he could carry it over his shoulder and do away with that dragging, whispering sound behind him. As he pulled in the dark, sand-dripping thread he kept looking around, searching.
At a breath of sound the coil thumped down and he snatched the spear from its place again, throwing it out before him. His arm and shoulder muscles shook, his legs stood tensely arched, his eyes were wide and staring.
Breath shook from his lips. He stood listening carefully. Maybe it was the settling of the house he heard. Maybe...
A cracking sound, a thud, a roaring wave of sound.
With a flat cry, he jerked around, terror-stricken eyes searching; but, in the very same instant, he realized that it was the oil burner. Dropping the spear, he covered his ears with shaking hands. Two minutes later the burner clicked off and silence fell across the shadow pooled desert again. Scott finished coiling the thread, picked up the heavy loops and the spear and started walking again, eyes still searching. Where was it. Where was it?
When he came to the first piece of wood he stopped. He dropped the coil and thread and extended the spear. It might be hiding behind that piece of wood. He licked dry lips, moving in a half crouch for the wood. It was becoming darker the farther he went into the dunes. It might be behind there; what if it's behind there?
He jerked back his head suddenly as it occurred to him that it might be overhead, floating down on a gossamer cable.
He ground together his chattering teeth and looked down again. The fear was a cold, drawing knot in his stomach now. All right, God damn it! he thought. I'm not going to just stand here like a paralytic. On shaking but resolute legs, he walked to the edge of the wood scrap and looked around it. There was nothing.
Sighing, he went back to the thread and picked it up. It's so heavy, he thought. He really ought to leave it behind. What could happen to it, anyway? He stood indecisively. Then it occurred to him that he'd need the hook to drag the slice of bread back to the cliff edge. That settled, he picked up the heavy coil and slung it over his shoulder again. He was glad he'd thought of a use for the thread. Now he had a definite reason to take it. Heavy as it was, he didn't feel right about leaving it behind. Every time he came to a scrap of wood, a boulder-high stone, a piece of cardboard, a brick, a high mound of sand, he had to do the same nerve clutching thing, put down the thread, approach the obstacle carefully, pin spear extended rigidly, until he'd found out that the spider was not hiding there. Then, each time, a great swell of relief that was not quite relief made his body sag, made the spear point drop, and he would return to his thread and hook and go on to the next obstacle; never really relieved because he knew that each reprieve was at best, only temporary.
By the time he reached the bread he wasn't even hungry.
He stood before the tall white square like a child standing beside a building. It hadn't occurred to him before, but how could he possibly drag that slice by himself?
Well, it didn't matter, he thought bluntly. He wouldn't need that much bread, anyway. It had to last only one day more.
He looked around carefully but saw nothing. Maybe the spider was dead. He couldn't believe it, but he should have seen it by now. On all other occasions it had seemed to sense his presence. Certainly it remembered him, and probably it hated him. He knew he hated it.
He drove the spear into the sand and broke off a hard piece of bread, bit off a chunk, and started to chew. It tasted good. A few moments of chewing seemed to restore appetite, and a few minutes of eating brought it to a point of voraciousness. Although he couldn't relax his tense caution, he found himself breaking off piece after piece of the bread and crunching rapidly on its crisp whiteness. He hadn't realized it before, but he'd missed that bread. The crackers hadn't been the same. When he was filled as he hadn't been filled for days, he finished off the water. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he flung away the piece of sponge. It had served its purpose. He picked up the spear and hacked out a piece of bread about twice his size. More than enough, stated his mind. He ignored it. He plunged the hook into the piece of bread and dragged it slowly back to the cliff, scraping out a road behind him in the sand. At the edge of the cliff he drew out the hook and, propping up the huge chunk, pushed it over the brink.
It fluttered through the air, tiny crumbs flaking off as it fell. Settling after it like snow. It hit the floor, breaking into three parts, which bounced once, rolled a little way, then flopped onto their respective sides. There. That was that. He'd made the hard climb, got the bread he was after, and it was done. He turned to face the desert again.
Why then the tension continuing in his body? Why didn't that knot of cold distress leave his stomach?
He was safe. The spider was nowhere around; not behind the pieces of wood or the stones or the cardboard scraps, not behind the paint cans or the jars. He was safe.
Then why wasn't he starting down?
He stood there motionless, staring out across the dim-lit desert wastes, his heart beating faster and faster, as if it were grinding out a truth for him, sending it up and up the neural pathways to his brain, pounding at the doors and the walls of it, telling him that he hadn't only gone up for the bread, he'd also gone to kill the spider.
The spear fell from his hand and clattered on the cement. He stood there shivering, knowing now what that tension in him was, knowing exactly what it was that was going to happen, that he was going to make happen.
Numbly he picked up the spear and walked into the desert. A few yards out his legs gave way and he slumped down heavily, cross-legged, on the sand. The spear fell down across his lap and he sat there holding it, looking out across the silent sands, an unbelieving look on his face. He waited.