Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas | Page 3

soreheads in Houston who said that it wasn't possible. They said High Plains had nowhere near that many people and there must have been a miscount.
And in the days that the argument was going on, they cleaned up and fed Manuel, if it were he, and tried to get from him a cogent story.
"How do you know it was thirty-five years you were on the treadmill, Manuel?"
"Well, it seemed like thirty-five years."
"It could have only been about three days."
"Then how come I'm so old?"
"We don't know that, Manuel, we sure don't know that. How big were these people?"
"Who knows? A finger long, maybe two?"
"And what is their town?"
"It is an old prairie-dog town that they fixed up. You have to dig down with a spade to get to the streets."
"Maybe they were really all prairie dogs, Manuel. Maybe the heat got you and you only dreamed that they were little people."
"Prairie dogs can't write as good as on that list. Prairie dogs can't write hardly at all."
"That's true. The list is hard to explain. And such odd names on it too."
"Where is Mula? I don't see Mula since I came back."
"Mula just lay down and died, Manuel."
"Gave me the slip. Why didn't I think of that? Well, I'll do it too. I'm too worn out for anything else."
"Before you do, Manuel, just a couple of last questions."
"Make them real fast then. I'm on my way."
"Did you know these little people were there before?"
"Oh, sure. There a long time."
"Did anybody else ever see them?"
"Oh, sure. Everybody in the Santa Magdalena see them. Eight, nine people see them."
"And Manuel, how do we get to the place? Can you show us on a map?"
Manuel made a grimace, and died quietly as Mula had done. He didn't understand those maps at all, and took the easy way out.
They buried him, not knowing for sure whether he was Manuel come back, or what he was.
There wasn't much of him to bury.
It was the same night, very late and after he had been asleep, that Marshal was awakened by the ring of an authoritative voice. He was being harangued by a four-inch tall man on his bedside table, a man of dominating presence and acid voice.
"Come out of that cot, you clown! Give me your name and station!"
"I'm Marshal, and I suspect that you are a late pig sandwich, or caused by one. I shouldn't eat so late."
"Say 'sir' when you reply to me. I am no pig sandwich and I do not commonly call on fools. Get on your feet, you clod."
And wonderingly Marshal did.
"I want the list that was stolen. Don't gape! Get it!"
"What list?"
"Don't stall, don't stutter. Get me our tax list that was stolen. It isn't words that I want from you."
"Listen, you cicada, I'll take you and--"
"You will not. You will notice that you are paralyzed from the neck down. I suspect that you were always so from there up. Where is the list?"
"S-sent it to Washington."
"You bug-eyed behemoth! Do you realize what a trip that will be? You grandfather of inanities, it will be a pleasure to destroy you!"
"I don't know what you are, or if you are really. I don't believe that you even belong on the world."
"Not belong on the world! We own the world. We can show written title to the world. Can you?"
"I doubt it. Where did you get the title?"
"None of your business. I'd rather not say. Oh, well, we got it from a promoter of sorts. A con man, really. I'll have to admit that we were taken, but we were in a spot and needed a world. He said that the larger bifurcates were too stupid to be a nuisance. We should have known that the stupider a creature, the more of a nuisance it is."
"I had about decided the same thing about the smaller a creature. We may have to fumigate that old mountain mess."
"Oh, you can't harm us. We're too powerful. But we can obliterate you in an instant."
"Hah!"
"Say 'Hah, sir' when you address me. Do you know the place in the mountain that is called Sodom?"
"I know the place. It was caused by a large meteor."
"It was caused by one of these."
What he held up was the size of a grain of sand. Marshal could not see it in detail.
"There was another city of you bug-eyed beasts there," said the small martinet. "You wouldn't know about it. It's been a few hundred years. We decided it was too close. Now I have decided that you are too close."
"A thing that size couldn't crack a walnut."
"You floundering fop, it will blast this town flat!"
"What will happen to you?"
"Nothing. I don't even blink for things like that."
"How do you trigger it off."
"You gaping goof, I don't have time to explain that to