Moore, C L - Shamblue

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Shambleau
MAN has conquered space before. You may be sure of that. Somewhere beyond the Egyptians, in that
dimness out of which come echoes of half-mythical names-Atlantis, Mu -somewhere back of history's
first beginnings there must have been an age when mankind, like us today, built cities of steel to
house its star-roving ships and knew the names of the planets in their own native tongues-heard
Venus' people call their wet world "Sha-ardol" in that soft, sweet, slurring speech and mimicked
Mars' guttural "Lakkdiz." from the harsh tongues of Mars' dry-land dwellers. You may be sure of
it. Man has conquered Space before, and out of that conquest faint, faint echoes run still
through a world that has forgotten the very fact of a civilization which must have been as mighty
as our own. There have been too many myths and legends for us to doubt it. The myth of the
Medusa, for instance, can never have had its roots in the soil of Earth. That tale of the snake-
haired Gorgon whose gaze turned the gazer to stone never originated about any creature that Earth
nourished. And those ancient Greeks who told the story must have remembered, dimly and half
believing, a tale of antiquity about some strange being from one of the outlying planets their
remotest ancestors once trod.
S H A M B L E A U
"Shambleau! Ha ... Shambleau!" The wild hysteria of the mob rocketed from wall to wall of
Lakkdarol's narrow streets and the storming of heavy boots over the slag-red pavement made an
ominous undernote to that swelling bay, "Shambleau! Shambleau!"
Northwest Smith heard it coming and stepped into the nearest doorway, laying a wary hand on his
heat-gun's grip, and his colorless eyes narrowed. Strange sounds were com-mon enough in the
streets of Earth's latest colony on Mars -a raw, red little town where anything might happen, and
very often did. But Northwest Smith, whose name is known and respected in every dive and wild
outpost on a dozen wild planets, was a cautious man, despite his reputation. He set his back
against the wall and gripped his pistol, and heard the rising shout come nearer and nearer.
Then into his range of vision flashed a red running figure, dodging like a hunted hare from
shelter to shelter in the narrow street. It was a girl-a berry-brown girl in a single tattered
garment whose scarlet burnt the eyes with its bril-liance. She ran wearily, and he could hear her
gasping breath from where he stood. As she came into view he saw her hesi-tate and lean one hand
against the wall for support, and glance wildly around for shelter. She must not have seen him in
the depths of the doorway, for as the bay of the mob grew louder and the pounding of feet sounded
almost at the corner she gave a despairing little moan and dodged into the recess at his very
side.
When she saw him standing there, tall and leather-brown, hand on his heat-gun, she sobbed once,
inarticulately, and collapsed at his feet, a huddle of burning scarlet and bare, brown limbs.
Smith had not seen her face, but she was a girl, and sweetly made and in danger; and though he had
not the re-putation of a chivalrous man, something in her hopeless huddle at his feet touched that
chord of sympathy for the underdog that stirs in every Earthman, and he pushed her gently- into
the corner behind him and jerked out his gun, just as the first of the running mob rounded the
corner.
It was a motley crowd, Earthmen and Martians and a sprinkling of Venusian swamp men and strange,
nameless denizens of unnamed planets-a typical Lakkdarol mob. When the first of them turned the
corner and saw the empty street before them there was a faltering in the rush and the foremost
spread out and began to search the doorways on both sides of the street.
"Looking for something?" Smith's sardonic call sounded clear above the clamor of the mob.
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They turned. The shouting died for a moment as they took in the scene before them-tall Earthman
in the space-ex-plorer's leathern garb, all one color from the burning of savage suns save for the
sinister pallor of his no-colored eyes in a scarred and resolute face, gun in his steady hand and
the scarlet girl crouched behind him, panting.
The foremost of the crowd-a burls y Earthman in tattered leather from which the Patrol insignia
had been ripped away-stared for a moment with a strange expression of incredulity on his face
overspreading the savage exultation of the chase. Then he let loose a deep-throated bellow,
"Shambleau!" and lunged forward. Behind him the mob took up the cry again, "Shambleau!
Shambleau! Sham-bleau!" and surged after.
Smith, lounging negligently against the wall, arms folded and gun-hand draped over his left
forearm, looked incapable of swift motion, but at the leader's first forward step the pistol swept
in a practiced half-circle and the dazzle of blue white heat leaping from its muzzle seared an arc
in the slag pavement at his feet. It was an old gesture, and not a man in the crowd but
understood it. The foremost recoiled swift-ly against the surge of those in the rear, and for a
moment there was confusion as the two tides met and struggled. Smith's mouth curled into a grim
curve as he watched. The man in the mutilated Patrol uniform lifted a threatening fist and
stepped to the very edge of the deadline, while the crowd rocked to and fro behind him.
"Are you crossing that line?" queried Smith in an omin-ously gentle voice.
"We want that girl!"
"Come and get her!" Recklessly Smith grinned into his face. He saw danger there, but his defiance
was not the fool-hardy gesture it seemed. An expert psychologist of mobs from long experience, he
sensed no murder here. Not a gun had appeared in any hand in the crowd. They desired the girl
with an inexplicable bloodthirstiness he was at a loss to understand, but toward himself he sensed
no such fury. A mauling -he might expect, but his life was in no danger. Guns would have
appeared before now if they were coming out at all. So he grinned in the man's angry face and
leaned lazily against the wall.
Behind their self-appointed leader the crowd milled im-patiently, and threatening voices began to
rise again. Smith heard the girl moan at his feet.
"What do you want with her?" he demanded.
"She's Shambleau! Shambleau, you fool! Kick her out of there-we'll take care of her!"
"I'm taking care of her," drawled Smith.
"She's Shambleau, I tell you! Damn your hide, man, we never let those things live! Kick her out
here !"
The repeated name had no meaning to him, but Smith's innate stubbornness rose defiantly as the
crowd surged for-ward to the very edge of the are, their clamor growing loud-er. "Shambleau! Kick
her out here 1 Give us Shambleau I Shambleau!"
Smith dropped his indolent pose like a cloak and planted both feet wide, swinging up his gun
threateningly. "Keep back!" he yelled. "She's mine! Keep back!"
He had no intention of using that heat-beam. He knew by now that they would not kill him unless
he started the gun-play himself, and he did not mean to give up his life for any girl alive. But
a severe mauling he expected, and he braced himself instinctively as the mob heaved within itself.
.. To his astonishment a thing happened then that he had never known to happen before. At his
shouted defiance the foremost of the mob-those who had heard him clearly -drew back a little, not
in alarm but evidently surprised. The ex-Patrolman said, "Yours! She's yours?" in a voice from
which puzzlement crowded out the anger.
Smith spread his booted legs wide before the crouching figure and flourished his gun.
"Yes," he said. "And I'm keeping her! Stand back there!"
The man stared at him wordlessly, and horror and disgust and incredulity mingled on his weather-
beaten face, The incredulity triumphed for a moment and he said again,
"Yours!"
Smith nodded defiance.
The man stepped back suddenly, unutterable contempt in his very pose. He waved an arm to the
crowd and said loudly, ' 'It's-his!" and the press melted away, gone silent, too, and the look of
contempt spread from face to face.
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The ex-Patrolman spat on the slag-paved street and turn-ed his back indifferently. "Keep her,
then," he advised brief-ly over one shoulder. "But don't let her out again in this town!"
Smith stared in perplexity almost open-mouthed as the suddenly scornful mob began to break up.
His mind was in a whirl. That such bloodthirsty animosity should vanish in a breath he could not
believe. And the curious mingling of con-tempt and disgust on the faces he saw baffled him even
more. Lakkdarol was anything but a puritan town-it did not enter his head f or a moment that his
claiming the brown girl as his own had caused that strangely shocked revulsion to spread through
the crowd. No, it was something deeper rooted than that. Instinctive, instant disgust had been
in the faces he saw- they would have looked less so if he had ad-mitted cannibalism or Pharol-
worship.
And they were leaving his vicinity as swiftly as if what-ever unknowing sin he had committed were
contagious. The street was emptying as rapidly as it had filled. He saw a sleek Venusian glance
back over his shoulder as he turned the corner and sneer, "Shambleau!" and the word awoke a new
line of speculation in Smith's mind. Shambleau! Vague-ly of French origin, it must be. And
strange enough to hear it from the lips of Venusians and Martian drylanders, but it was their use
of it that puzzled him more. "We never let those things live," the ex-Patrolman had said. It
reminded him dimly of something. . . an ancient line from some writ-ing in his own tongue . . .
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." He smiled to himself at the similarity, and simulta-
neously was aware of the girl at, his elbow.
She has risen soundlessly. He turned to face her, sheath-ing his gun and stared at first with
curiosity and then in the entirely frank openness with which men regard that which is not wholly
human. For she was not. He knew it at a glance, though the brown, sweet body was shaped like a
woman's and she wore the garment of scarlet-he saw it was leather-with an ease that few unhuman
beings achieve toward clothing. He knew it from the moment he looked into her eyes, and a shiver
of unrest went over him as he met them. They were frankly green as young grass, with ,slit-like,
feline pupils that pulsed unceasingly, and there was a look of dark, animal wisdom in their depths-
that look of the beast which sees more than man.
There was no hair upon her face-neither brows nor lashes, and he would have sworn, that the tight
scarlet tur-ban bound around her head covered baldness. She had three fingers and a thumb and her
feet had four digits apiece too, and all sixteen of them were tipped with round claws that
sheathed back into the flesh like a cat's. She ran her tongue over her lips-a thin, pink, flat
tongue as feline as her eyes -and spoke with difficulty. He felt that that throat and tongue had
never been shaped for human speech.
"Not-afraid now," she said softly, and her little teeth were white and pointed as a kitten's.
"What did they want you for?" he asked her curiously. "What had you done? Shambleau is that your
name?"
"I-not talk, your-speech," she demurred hesitantly.
"Well, try to-- I want to know. Why were they chasing you? Will you be safe on the street now, or
hadn't you better get indoors somewhere? They looked dangerous."
"I-go with you." She brought it out with difficulty.
Say you!" Smith grinned. "What are you, anyhow? You look like a kitten to me."
"Shambleau." She said it somberly.
"Where d'you live? Are you a Martian?"
"I come from-from far-from long ago-far country-" "Wait!" laughed Smith. "You're getting your
wires cross-ed. You're not a Martian?"
She drew herself up very straight beside him, lifting the turbaned head, and there was something
queenly in the poise of her.
"Martian?" she said scornfully. "My people-are-are -you have no word. Your speech-hard for me."
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"What's yours? I might know it-try me."
She lifted her head and met his eyes squarely, and there was in hers a subtle amusement-he could
have sworn it.
"Som e day I-speak to you in-my own language," she promised, and the pink tongue flicked out over
her lips,
swiftly, hungrily.
Approaching footsteps on the red pavement interrupted Smith's reply. A dryland Martian came past,
reeling a little and exuding an aroma of segir-whisky, the Venusian brand. When he caught the red
flash of the girl's tatters he turned his head sharply, and as his segir-steeped brain took in the
fact of. her presence he lurched toward the recess unsteadily, bawling, "Shambleau, by Pharoll
Shambleau!" and reached out a clutching hand.
Smith struck it aside contemptuously.
"On your way, drylander," he advised.
The man drew back and stared, blear-eyed.
Oh! Yours, eh?" he croaked. ."Zut! -You're welcome to it!"
And like the ex-Patrolman before him he spat on the pavement and turned away, muttering harshly in
the blasphem-ous tongue of the drylands.
Smith watched him shuffle off, and there was a crease be-tween his colorless eyes, a nameless
unease rising within him.
"Come on," he said abruptly to the girl. "If this sort of thing is going to happen we'd better
get indoors. Where shall I take you?"
"With you," she murmured.
He stared down into the flat green eyes. Those ceaselessly pulsing pupils disturbed him, but it
seemed to him, vaguely, that behind the animal shallows of her gaze was a shutter-- -a closed
barrier that might at any moment open to reveal the very deeps of that dark knowledge he sensed
there.
Roughly he said again, "Come on, then," and stepped down into the street. -
She pattered along a pace or two behind him, making no effort to keep up with his long strides,
and though Smith -as men know from Venus to Jupiter's moons-walks as soft-ly as a cat, even in
spacemen's boots, the girl at his heels slid like a shadow over the rough pavement, making so
little sound that even the lightness of his footsteps was loud in the empty street.
Smith chose the less frequented ways of Lakkdarol, and somewhat shamefacedly thanked his nameless
gods that his lodgings were not far away, for the few pedestrians he met turned and stared after
the two with that by now familiar mingling of horror and contempt which he was as far as ever from
understanding.
The room he had engaged was a single cubicle in a lodg-inghouse on the edge of the city.
Lakkdarol, raw camp-town that it was in those day, could have furnished little better anywhere
within its limits, and Smith's errand there was not one he wished to advertise. He had slept in
worse places than this before, and knew that he would do so again.
There was no one in sight when he entered, and the girl slipped up the stairs at his heels and
vanished through the door, shadowy, unseen by anyone in the house. Smith closed the door and
leaned his broad shoulders against the panels, regarding her speculatively.
She took in what little the room had to offer in a glance -frowsy bed, rickety table, mirror
hanging unevenly and cracked against the wall, unpainted chairs-a typical camp-town room in an
Earth settlement abroad. She accepted its poverty in that single glance, dismissed it, then
crossed to the window and leaned out for a moment, gazing across the low roof-tops toward the
barren countryside beyond, red slag under the late afternoon sun.
"You can stay here," said Smith abruptly, "until I leave town. I'm waiting here for a friend to
come in from Venus. Have you eaten?"
"Yes," said the girl quickly. "I shill-need no-food for -a while."
"Well-" Smith glanced around the room. "I'll be in some-time tonight. You can go or stay just as
you please. Eetter lock the door behind me."
With no more formality than that he left her. The door closed and he heard the key turn. and
smiled to himself. He did not expect, then, ever to see her again. ,
He went down the steps and out into the late-slanting sunlight with a mind so full of other
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matters that the brown girl receded very quickly into the background. Smith's errand in
Lakkdarol, like most of his errands, is better not spoken of. Man lives as he must, and Smitli's
living was a
perilous affair outside the law and ruled by the ray-gun only. It is enough to say that the
shipping-port and its cargoes outbound interested him deeply just now, and that the friend he
awaited was Yarol the Venusian, in that swift little Edsel ship the Maid that can flash from world
to world with a derisive speed that laughs at Patrol boats and leaves pursuers floundering in the
ether far behind. Smith and Yarol and the Maid were a trinity that had caused the Patrol leaders
much worry and many gray hairs in the past, and the future looked very bright to Smith himself
that evening as he left his lodging-house.
Lakkdarol roars by night, as Earthmen's camp-towns have a way of doing on every planet where
Earth's outposts .are, and it was beginning lustily as Smith went down among the awakening lights
toward the center of town. His busi-ness there does not concern us. He mingled with the crowds
where the lights were brightest, and there was the click of ivory counters and the jingle of
silver, and red segir gurgled invitingly from black Venusian bottles, and much later Smith
strolled homeward under the moving moons of Mars, and if the street wavered a little under his
feet now and then-why, that is only understandable. Not even Smith could drink red segir at every
bar from the Martian Lamb to the New Chicago and remain entirely steady on his feet. But he found
his way back with very little difficulty-con-sidering-and spent a good five minutes hunting for
his key before he remembered he had left it in the inner lock for the girl.
He knocked then, and there was no sound of footsteps from within, but in a few moments the latch
clicked and the door swung open. She retreated soundlessly before him as he entered, and took up
her favorite place against the window, leaning back on the ' sill and outlined against the starry
sky beyond. The room was in darkness.
Smith flipped the switch by the door and then leaned back against the
panels, steadying himself. The cool night air had sobered him a little, and his head was clear
enough-liquor went to Smith's feet, not his head, or he would never have come this far along the
lawless way he had chosen.He lounged against the door now and regarded the girl in the sudden
glare of the bulbs, blinking a little as much at the scarlet of her clothing as at, the light.
"So you stayed," he said.
"I-waited," she answered softly, leaning farther back against the sill and clasping the rough wood
with slim, three-fingered hands, pale brown against the darkness.
'Why ?91
She did not answer that, but her mouth curved into a slow smile. On a woman it would have been
reply enough-pro-vocative, daring. On Shambleau there was something pitiful and horrible in it-so
human on the face of one half-animal. And yet ... that sweet brown body curving so softly from
the tatters of scarlet leather-the velvety texture of that brownness-the white-flashi-ng smile....
Smith was aware of a stirring excitement within him. After all-time would be hanging heavy now
until Yarol came. . . . Speculatively he allowed the steel-pale eyes to wander over her, with a
slow regard that missed nothing. And when he spoke he was aware that his voice had deepened a
little.
"Come here," he said.
She came forward slowly, on bare clawed feet that made -no slightest sound on the floor, and stood
before him with downcast eyes and mouth trembling in that pitifully human smile. He took her by
the shoulders-velvety soft shoulders, of a creamy smoothness that was not the texture of human
flesh. A little tremor went over her, perceptibly, at the con-tact of his hands. Northwest Smith
caught his breath sud-denly and dragged her to him . . . sweet yielding brownness in the circle of
his arms . . . heard her own breath catch and quicken as her velvety arms closed about his neck.
And then he was looking down into her face, very near, and the green animal eyes met his with the
pulsing pupils and the flicker of-something-deep behind their shallows-and through the rising
clamor of his blood, even as he stooped his lips to hers, Smith felt something deep within him
shudder away-inexplicable, instinctive, revolted. What it might be he had no words to tell, but
the very touch of her was suddenly loathsome-so soft and velvet and unhuman-and it might have been
an animal's,face that lifted itself to his mouth-the dark knowledge looked hungrily from the
darkness of those slit pupils-and for a mad instant he knew that same wild, feverish revulsion he
had seen in the faces of the mob.
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"God!" he gasped, a far more ancient invocation against evil than he realized, then or ever. and
he ripped her arms from his neck, swung her away with such a force that she reeled half across the
room. Smith fell back against the door, breathing heavily,. and stared at lwr while the wild re-
volt died slowly within him.
She had fallen to the floor beneath the window, and as she lay there against the wall with bent
head he saw, curiously, that her turban bad slipped-the turban that he had been so sure covered
baldness-and -a lock of scarlet hair fell below the binding leather, hair as scarlet as her
garment, as un-humanly red as her eyes were unhumanly green. He stared, and shook his head
dizzily and stared again, for it seemed to him that the -thick lock of crimson had moved,
squirmed of itself against her cheek.
At the contact of it her hands flew up and she tucked it away with a very human gesture and
then dropped her head again into
her hands. And from the deep shadow of her fingers he thought she wa s staring up at him covertly
.
Smith drew a deep breath and passed a hand across his forehead. The inexplicable -moment
had gone as quickly as it came-too swiftly for him to understand or analyze it. "-Got to lay Off
the egir," he told himself unsteadily. Had he imagined that scarlet hair? After all, she was no
more than a pretty brown girl-creature from one of the many half-human races peopling the planets.
No more than that, after all. A pretty little thing, but animal 'He laughed a little shakily.
"No more of that," he said. "God knows I'm no angel, but there's got to be a limit somewhere.
Here." He crossed to the bed and sorted out a pair of blankets from the untidy heap, tossing them
to the far corner of the room. "You can sleep there." Wordlessly she rose from the floor and
began to rearrange the blankets, the uncomprehending resignation of the ani-mal eloquent in every
line of her.
Smith had a strange dream that night. He thought he had awakened to a room full of darkness
and moonlight and moving shadows, for the nearer moon of Mars was 'racing through the sky and
everything on the planet below her was endued with a restless life in the dark. And something . .
. some 'nameless, unthinkable thing ... was coiled about his throat ... something'like a soft
snake, wet and warni. It lay loose and light about his neck ... and it was moving gently, very
gently, with a soft, caressive pressure that sent little thrills of delight through every nerve
and fiber of him, a per-ilous delight-beyond physical pleasure, deeper than joy of the mind. That
warm softness was caressing the very roots of his soul with a terrible intimacy. The ectasy of it
left him weak, and yet he knew-in a flash of knowledge born of this impossible dream-that the
soulshould not be handled. . . . And with that knowledge a horror broke upon him, turning the
pleasure into a rapture of revulsion, hateful, horrible-but still most foully sweet. He tried to
lift his hands and tear the dream-monstrosity from his throat-tried but half-heartedly , for
though his soul was revolted to its very deeps, yet the delight of his body was so great that his
hands all but refused the attempt. But when at last he tried to lift his arms a cold shock went
over him and he found that he could not stir . . . his body lay stony as marble beneath the blan-
kets, a living marble that shuddered with a dreadful delight through every rigid vein.
The revulsion grew strong upon him as he struggled against the paralyzing dream-a struggle of
soul against sluggish body-titanically, until the moving dark was streaked with blankness that
clouded and closed about him at last and he sank back into the oblivion from which be bad
awakened.
.Next morning, when the bright sunlight shining through Mars' clear thin air awakened him,
Smith lay for a while trying to remember. The dream had,been more vivid than reality, but he
could not quite recall . . . only that it had been more sweet and horrible than anything else in
life. He lay puzzling for a while, until a soft sound from the corner aroused him from hi's
thoughts and he sat up to see the girl lying in a cat-like coil on her blankets, watching him with
round, grave eyes. He regarded her somewhat ruefully.
.
"Morning," he said "I've just had the devil of a dream. . Well, hungry?"She shook her head
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silently, and he could have sworn there was a covert gleam of strange amusement in her eyes.
He stretched and yawned, dismissing the nightmare tem-porarily from his mind.
"What am I going to do with you?" he inquired, turning to more immediate matters. "I'm leaving
here in a day or two and I can't take you along, you know. Where'd you come from in the first
place?"
Again she shook her head.
"Not telling? Well, it's your own business. You can stay here until I give up the room. From
then on you'll have to do your own worrying."
He swung his feet to the floor and reached for his clothes.
Ten minutes later, slipping the heat-gun into its holster at his thigh,. Smith turned to the
girl. "There's food-concen-trate in that box on the table. It ought to hold you until I get
back. And you'd better lock the door again after I've gone."
Her wide, unwavering stare was his only answer, and he was not sure she had understood, but at any
rate the lock clicked after him as before, and he went down the steps with a faint grin on his
lips.
The memory of last night's extraordinary dream was slipping from him, as such memories do, andby
the time he had reached the street the girl and the dream and all of yesterday's happenings were
blotted out by the sharp neces-sities of the present.
Again the intricate business that had brought him here claimed his attention. He went about it to
the exclusion of all else, and there was a good reason behind everything he did from the moment he
stepped out into the street until the time when he turned back again at evening; though had one
chosen to follow him during the day his apparently aimless rambling through Lakkdarol would have
seemed very point-less.
He must have spent two hours at the least idling by the space-port, watching with sleepy,
colorless eyes the ships that came and went, the passengers, the vessels lying at wait, the
cargoes-particularly the cargoes. He made the rounds of the town's saloons once more, consuming
many glasses of varied liquors in the' course of the day and engag-ing in idle conversation with
men of all races and worlds, usually in their own languages, for Smith was a linguist of repute
among his contemporaries, He heard the gossip of the spaceways, neas from a dozen planets of a
thousand dif-ferent events. He heard the latest joke about the Venusian Emperor and the latest
report on the Chino-Aryan war and the latest song hot from the lips of Rose Robertson, whom every
man on the civilized planets adored as,"the Georgia Rose." He passed the day quite profitably, for
his own pur-poses, which do not concern us now, and it was not until late evening, when he turned
homeward again, that the thought of the brown girl in his room took definite shape in his mind,
though it had been lurking there, formless and sub-merged, all day.
He had no idea what comprised her usual diet, but be bought a can of New York roast beef and one
of Venusian frog-broth and a dozen fresh canal-apples and two pounds of that Earth lettuce that
grows so vigorously in the fertile canal-soil of Mars. He felt that she must surely find some-
thing to her liking in this broad variety of edibles, and-for his day bad been very satisfactory-
he hummed The Green Hills of Earth to himself in a surprisingly good bari. tone as he climbed the
stairs
.
The door was locked, as before, and he was reduced to kicking the lower panels gently with his
boot, for his arms were full. She opened the door with that softness that was characteristic of
her and stood regarding him in the semi-darkness as he stumbled to the table with his load. The
room was unlit again.
"Why don't you turn on the lights?" he demanded irrita-bly after he had barked his shin on the
chair by the table in an effort to deposit his burden there.
"Light and-da'rk-they are alike-to me," she mtir. mured.
"Cat eyes, eh? Well, you look the part. Here, I've brought you some dinner. Take your choice.
Fond of roast beef ? Or how about a little frog-broth?"
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She shook he head and backed away a step.
"No," she said. "I can not-eat your food."
Smith's brows wrinkled. "Didn't you have any of the food-tablets ?"
Again the red turban shook negatively.
"Then you haven't had anything for-why, more than twenty-four hours! You must be starved."
"Not hungry," she denied.
"What can I find for you to eat, then? There's time yet if I hurry. You've got to eat, child."
"I shall-eat," she said softly. "Before long-I shall- feed. I-lave no worry."
She turned away then and stood at the window, looking out over the moonlit landscape as if to end
the conversation. Smith cast her a puzzled glance as he opened the can of roast beef. There had
been an odd undernote in that assurance that, undefinably, he did not like. And the girl had
teeth and tongue and presumably a fairly human digestive system, to judge from her form. It was
nonsense for her to pre-tend that he could find nothing that she could eat. She must have had
some of the food concentrate after all,'he decided, prying up the thermos lid of the inner
container to release the long-sealed savor of the hot meat inside.
"Well, if you won't eat you won't," he observed pbilo-sophically as he poured hot broth and diced
beef into the dish-like lid of the thermos can and extracted the spoon from its hiding-place
between the inner and outer recep-tacles. She turned a little to watch him as he pulled up a
rickety chair and sat down to the food, and after a while the realization that her green gaze was
fixed so unwinkingly upon him made the man nervous, and he said between bites of creamy canal-
apple, "Why don't you try a little of this? It's good."
"The food-I eat is-better," her soft voice told him in its hesitant murmur, and again he felt
rather than heard a faint undernote of unpleasantness in the words. A sudden suspicion struck him
as he pondered on that last remark-some vague memory of horror-tales told about campfires in the
past-and he swung round in the chair to look at her, a tiny, creeping fear unaccountably arising.
There had been that in her words-in her unspoken words, that menaced.
She stood up beneath his gaze demurely, wide green eyes with their pulsing pupils meeting his
without a falter. But her mouth was scarlet and her teeth were sharp. . . .
"What food do you eat?" he demanded. And then, after a pause, very softly, "Blood?"
.She stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending; then something like amusement curled her lips
and she said scornfully, "You think me-vampire, eh? No-I am Sham-bleau!"
Unmistakably there were scorn and amusement in her voice at the suggestion, but as unmistakably
she knew what he meant-accepted it as a logical suspicion-vampires! Fairy-tales-but fairy-tales
this unhuman, outland creature was most familiar with. Smith was not a credulous man, nor a
superstitious one, but he had seen too many strange things himself to doubt that the wildest
legend might have a basis of fact And there was something namelessly strange about her. . .
He puzzled over it for a while between deep bites of the canal-apple. And though he wanted to
question her about a great many things, he did not, for he knew how futile it would be.
He said nothing more until the meat was finished and an-other canal-apple had followed the first,
and he had cleared away the meal by the simple expedient of tossing the empty can out of the
window. Then he lay back in the chair and surveyed her from half-closed eyes, colorless in a face
tanned like saddle-leather. And again he was conscious of the brown, soft curves of her, velvety-
subtle arcs and planes of smooth flesh under the tatters of scarlet leather. Vampire she might
be, unhuman she certainly was, but desirable be-yond words as she sat submissive beneath his low
regard, her red-turbaned head bent, her clawed fingers lying in her lap. They sat very still for
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a while, and the silence throbbed between them.
She was so like a woman-an Earth woman-sweet and submissive and demure, and softer than soft fur,
if he could forget the three-fingered claws and the pulsing eyes-and that deeper strangeness
beyond words. ... (Had he dreamed that red lock of hair that moved? Had it been segir that woke
the wild revulsion he knew when he held her in his arms?. Why had the mob so thirsted for her?)
He sat and stared, and despite the mystery of her and the half-suspicions that thronged his mind-
for she was so beautifully soft and cur-ved under those revealing tatters-he slowly realized that
his pulses were mounting,, became aware of a kindling with-in ... brown girl-creature with
downcast eyes ... and then the lids lifted and the green flatness of a cat's gaze met his and last
night's revulsion woke swiftly again, like a warning bell that clanged as their eyes met-animal,
after all, too sleek and soft for humanity, and that inner strangeness. . .
Smith shrugged and sat up. His failings were legion, but the weakness of the flesh was not among
the major ones. He motioned the girl to her pallet of blankets in the corner and turned to his
own bed.
'From deeps of sound sleep be awoke much later. He awoke suddenly and completely, and with that
inner excite-ment that presages something momentous. He awoke to bril-liant moonlight, turning
the room so bright that he could see the scarlet of the girl's rags as she sat up on her pallet.
She was awake, she was sitting with her shoulder half turned to him and her head bent, and some
warning instinct crawled coldly up his spine as he watched what she was doing. And yet it was a
very ordinary thing for a girl to do-any girl, anywhere. She was unbinding her turban....
He watched, not breathing, a presentiment of.. something horrible stirring in his brain,
inexplicably. . . . The red folds loosened, and-he knew then that he had not dreamed -again a
scarlet lock swung down against her cheek. . . a hair, was it? a lock of hair?.'. .thick"as a worm
it fell, plumply, against that smooth cheek more scarlet than blood and thick as a crawling worm
... and like a worm it crawled.
Smith rose on an elbow, not realizing the motion, and fixed an Linwinking stare, with a sort of
sick, fascinated incredu-lity, on that-that lock of -hair. He had not dreamed. Until now he had
taken it for granted that it was the segir which had made it seem to move on that evening before.
But now . . . it was lengthening, stretching, moving of itself. It must be hair, but it crawled;
with a sickening life of its own it squirmed down against her cheek, caressingly, revoltingly,
impossibly.... Wet, it was, and round and thick and shin-ing. . ..
She unfastened the last fold and whipped the turban off. From what he saw then Smith would have
turned his eyes away-and he had looked on dreadful things before, without flinching-but he could
not stir, He could only lie there on his elbow staring at the mass of scarlet, squirming-worms,
hairs, what?-that writhed over her head in a dreadful mockery of ringlets. And it was
lengthening, falling, some-how growing before his eyes, down over her shoulders in a spilling
cascade, a mass that even at the beginning could never have been hidden under the skull-tight
turban she had worn. He was beyond wondering, but he realized that. And still it squirmed and
lengthened and fell. and she shook it out in a horrible travesty of a woman shaking out her un-
bound hair-until the unspeakable tangle of it-twisting, writhing, obscenely scarlet-hung to her
waist and beyond, and still lengthened, an endless mass of crawling horror that until now,
somehow, impossibly, had been hidden un-der the tight-bound turban. It was like a nest of blind,
rest-less red worms . . . it was-it was like naked entrails en-dowed with an unnatural aliveness,
terrible beyond words.
Smith lay in the shadows, frozen without and within in a ,sick numbness that came of utter
shock and revulsion.
She shook out the obscene, unspeakable tangle over her shoulders, and somehow he knew that she was
going to turn in a moment and that he must meet her eyes. The thought of that meeting stopped his
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heart with dread, more awfully than anything else in this nightmare horror; for nightmare it must
be, surely. But he knew without trying that he could not wrench his eyes away-the sickened
fascination of that sight held him motionless, and somehow there was a certain beauty....
Her head was turning. The crawling awfulnesses rippled and squirmed at the motion, writhing thick
and wet and shining over the soft brown shoulders about which they fell now in obscene cascades
that all but hid her body, Her head was turning. Smith lay numb, And very slowly he saw the round
of her cheek foreshorten and her profile come into view, all the scarlet horrors twisting
ominously, and the pro-file shortened in turn and her full face came slowly round toward the bed-
moonlight shining brilliantly as dayon the, pretty girl-face, demure and sweet, framed in. tangled
ob-seenity that crawled. ....
The green eyes met his. He felt a perceptible shock, and a shudder rippled down his paralyzed
spine, leaving an icy numbness in its wake. He felt the goose-flesh rising. But that numbness
and cold horror he scarcely realized, for the green eyes were locked with his in a long, long look
that somehow presaged nameless things-not altogether unplea-sant things- the voiceless voice of
her mind assailing him with little murmurous promises. , . .
For a moment he went down into a blind abyss of sub-mission; and then somehow the very sight of
that obscenity, in eyes that did not then realize they saw it, was dreadful enough to Jraw him out
of the seductive darkness . . . the sight of her crawling and alive with unnamable horror.
She rose, and down about her in a cascade fell the squirm-ing scarlet of-of what grew upon her
head. It fell in a long, alive cloak to her bare feet on the floor, hiding her in a wave of
dreadful, wet, writhing life. She put up her hands and like a swimmer she parted the waterfall of
it, tossing the masses back over her shoulders to reveal her own brown body, sweetly curved. She
smiled exquisitely, and in starting waves back from her forehead and down about her in a hideous
background writhed the snaky wetness of her living tresses. And Smith knew that he looked upon
Medusa.
The knowledge of that-the realization of vast back-grounds reaching into misted history-shook him
out of his frozen horror for a moment, and in that moment he met her eyes again, smiling, green as
glass in the moonlight, half hooded under drooping lids. Through the twisting scarlet she held
out her arms. And there was something soul-shakingly desirable about her, so that all the blood
surged to his head suddenly and he stumbled to his feet like a sleeper in a dream as she swayed
toward him, infinitely graceful, in-finitely sweet in her cloak of living horror.
And somehow there was beauty in it the wet scarlet writhings with moonlight sliding and shining
a'long the thick, wormround tresses and losing itself in the masses only to glint again and move
silvery along writhing tendrils -an awful, shuddering beauty more dreadful than any ugliness could
be.
But all this, again, he but half realized, for the insidious murmur was coiling again through his
brain, promising, caressing, alluring, sweeter than honey; and the green eyes that held his were
clear and burning like the depths of a jewel, and behind the pulsing slits of darkness he was star-
ing into a greater dark that held all things. . . . He had known-dimly he had known when he first
gazed into those flat animal shallows that behind them lay this-al.1 beauty and terror, all horror
and delight '. in the infinite darkness upon which her eyes opened like windows, paned with emer-
ald glass.
Her lips moved, and in a murmur that blended indistin-guishably with the silence and the sway of
her body and the dreadful sway of her-her hair-she whispered-very soft-ly, very passionately, "I
shall-speak to you now-in my own tongue-oh, beloved!"
And in her living cloak she swayed to him, the murmur swelling seductive and caressing in his
innermost brain-promising, compelling, sweeter than sweet. His flesh crawl-ed to the horror of
her, but it was a perverted revulsion that clasped what it loathed. His arms slid round her
tinder the sliding cloak, wet, wet and warm and hideously alive-and the sweet velvet body was
clinging to his, her arms locked about his neck-and with a whisper and a rush the unspeak-able
horror closed about them both.
In nightmare until he died he remembered that moment when the living tresses of Shambleau first
folded him in their embrace. A nauseous, smothering odor as the wetness-shut around him-thick,
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/C.%20L.%20Moore/Moore,%20C.%20L%20-%20Shambleau.txtShambleauMANhasconqueredspacebefore.Youmaybesureofthat.Somewherebeyo\ndtheEgyptians,inthatdimnessoutofwhichcomeechoesofhalf-mythicalnames-Atlantis,Mu-so\mewherebackofhistory'sfirstbeginningstheremusthavebeenanagewhenmankind,likeustoda...

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