Read Ebook: An Eel by the Tail by Lang Allen Kim Fuqua Robert Illustrator

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Ebook has 89 lines and 7135 words, and 2 pages

"What is the nature of this 'unique something' that our Mr. Coar mentioned, Mr. Tedder?" Old Preserved-In-Formaldehyde spoke as one who seeks to calm troubled waters.

"I frankly believe it to be an unearthly life-form," Mr. Tedder said. "Telepathic and hallucinative, by my guess, and definitely not from this earth."

Mr. Coar stared toward the empty demonstration bench, wrinkled his forehead in concentration, and was again rewarded by the pot-of-geraniums-made-manifest. "See?" he asked rhetorically. "It becomes anything you want it to."

"You mean, this beast on the table top mimics what we're thinking about in hopes of drawing us close enough to seize us and eat us?" asked Miss MacIntire.

Miss MacIntire, who had seated herself back at a third-row desk, remarked, "I do wish that the beast were a rational creature."

There was a flurry in the air above the demonstration bench as a togaed Greek gentleman came into being. He raised a portentious index finger, exclaimed an involved Greek observation and disappeared.

"It can talk!" Mr. Coar marveled.

"It said, 'You've got an eel by the tail'." Miss MacIntire translated. "Greek."

"Like having a bull by the horns, or an armful of greased pig," Stetzel commented.

"If you'll excuse me," Guenther said, "it seems to me that the thing has some will of its own. For one thing, whatever form it takes, that form is not ambiguous or wavering, as an image in the mind's eye must be."

"What's more," Stetzel continued his friend's argument, "it can say things that are presumably not in the mind which called it into being. For example, using Greek to explain itself--I hope that I'm being clear--shows that the creature has imaginative power, as well as the ability to read our minds."

Percy N. Formeller hadn't been listening. Psychological investigations could wait until there was a good, solid foundation of physical fact on which to build. "I wonder if it's carnivorous?" he murmured.

Mr. Tedder nodded. He approved of Mr. Formeller's method. Strictly scientific. "I have some meat in my lunch," Mr. Tedder said. He walked carefully around the demonstration bench, staying a good five meters away from the potential carnivore. If the creature were a meat-eater, Mr. Tedder had no desire to have its feeding-habits demonstrated upon the person of a young physics instructor. Back in the stockroom Mr. Tedder opened his brown paper lunch bag, unfolded the wax paper from the top sandwich, and shook out a slice of pimento-loaf. He wished that he'd brought a less plebian lunch. Pork chops, perhaps. Oh, well. Mr. Tedder walked out into the classroom holding the slice of meat by one ketchup-moist corner.

Mr. Formeller impaled the slice of pimento-loaf on a length of No. 8 galvanized wire the physics teacher provided. Like a keeper shoving a flank of horse meat into a cageful of lions, the biology teacher thrust the baited wire into the empty air above the demonstration bench.

The pimento-loaf slice disappeared.

"Carnivorous," Mr. Formeller noted with satisfaction.

"Do you suppose that the creature could get off the table and ... walk around?" Miss MacIntire hoped that her maidenly caution wouldn't be thought an old maid's foible.

"If it were readily mobile, it wouldn't have developed so complex a mechanism to lure its prey," Mr. Formeller said. "Its various ... what's the classical word, Miss MacIntire?"

"Protean."

"Yes. Its protean manifestations are a clue to its habits. It is rooted to the spot, like a plant."

"Like Venus' flytrap?" Guenther suggested.

"No, we want a name which suggests its origin as well as its habits."

"It's not of this world, nor of the known solar system," Mr. Tedder commented.

"That's it. It's an extra-solar; no, an extra-galactic being-of-many-forms."

Mr. Coar stared at the empty space between the telegraph key and the bank of lithium-reaction cells. His pot of geraniums appeared again, then the scarlet flowers wavered, faded, and became gold-and-purple pansies. "Polymorph it is," the principal said. His air was that of a bishop conferring imprimatur upon a lay brother's interpretation of a Gospel passage.

The pot of pansies disappeared, giving way to Honey LaRue. The snare-drums swished and chattered, and Honey, who'd rid herself of a good deal more than her gloves, winked knowingly at Miss MacIntire. Spotting Stetzel, Honey propelled her pelvis several centimeters in a horizontal direction, a movement known to the trade as the "bump." The Latin teacher uttered an unclassical yelp of outraged modesty and averted her head. Stetzel grew pink to his ear-tips. This extra-galactic polymorph had no tact at all! Honey disappeared with a regretful shrug, and the lascivious drum-rolls ceased.

"This sort of thing could become dangerous," Mr. Tedder commented.

"What can we do with it?" Mr. Coar asked. "It wouldn't do to put a cage around it. It can't move any more than a ... geranium plant can. And what will we feed it?"

"Pimento-loaf," the physics instructor suggested.

"Think of the value this thing can have!" Stetzel enthused. "Psychiatrists can see the morbid mind-images of their disturbed patients, the paranoics and the like, and devise techniques of cure."

"We might even ask it questions about the world it came from!" Guenther said. "Maybe it would show its real form to us, and talk or think to us. It's already shown a lot of initiative, you know."

Miss MacIntire, who'd recovered from the shock of Honey LaRue, spoke up. "We've got an eel by the tail, as it said. We can't handle it, and we can't let it go. We'll have to call in experts in zoology and physics...." Mr. Formeller exchanged outraged glances with Mr. Tedder "... and have them study the polymorph with the best instruments available."

"All this is very well," Mr. Formeller said, "but what I'd like to know is how this Polymorph got into your classroom, Tedder."

Mr. Tedder cautiously stepped up to the demonstration bench and took the knob of the telegraph key in his fingers. "This was the switch in a Ziegler's effect apparatus I'd set up for demonstration. I just tapped it, like this...." Mr. Tedder slapped the key down.

There was a glare of sudden greenness, and the air popped like a broken vacuum tube as it rushed in to occupy space suddenly vacated.

The Extra-Galactic Polymorph was gone. Mr. Coar wrinkled his brow and thought furiously of geranium-plants-in-pots, to no avail. Miss MacIntire thought wistfully of the handsome Greek gentleman who'd addressed her with an obscure quotation. Mr. Tedder, Stetzel, and Guenther bent their combined brains to steady consideration of Miss Honey LaRue, and for a moment they thought they heard the lustful bellow of a supernal saxophone. But Honey stayed away.

"If we'd only taken photographs!" Mr. Formeller wailed. "Maybe the things we saw, we saw only in our minds. The polymorph's real form would have registered on film."

"Maybe if Mr. Tedder would duplicate that apparatus of his, and...." Miss MacIntire paused uncertainly. The arcana of physics were as unknown to her as was the Greek ablative to Mr. Tedder. "Well, do the same thing that you did before. Maybe he'll come back."

"No." Mr. Tedder was glum. "It won't be back. When you think that all objects are constantly changing in space and time, you see how wonderful it is that anything ever gets anywhere. The Extra-Galactic Polymorph won't be back. Its appearance was an accident; a huge, incredible, once-in-all-history coincidence."

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