The Anything Box

In such silence, even a pulse was noise.
There was a sound like a straw in the bottom of a soda glass.
A stillness was broken by the shrilling of a siren on the main highway fourblocks away.
A choonk and a slither and the metallic bump of runners down the threefront steps.
And a quiet, quiet house on a quiet side street.
Hush.
Food to All Flesh
O give thanks unto the LORD . . . who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercyendureth for ever. Psalm 136
Padre Manuel sighed with pleasure as he stepped into the heavy shade of thesalt cedars. It was a welcome relief from the downpouring sun that drenchedthe whole valley and seemed today to press down especially hard on the littleadobe church and its cluster of smaller buildings. Padre Manuel sighed againwith regret that they could manage so little greenery around the church, butit was above the irrigation canal, huddled against the foot of the bleakEstrellas.
But it was pleasant here in the shade at the foot of the alfalfa field, andacross the pasture was the old fig tree with the mourning dove nest that PadreManuel had been watching.
Well! Padre Manuel let the leaves conceal the nest again. Two eggs now! Andsoon the little birds—little live things. How long did it take? He sat down inthe grass at the foot of the hill, grateful for this leisure time. He openedhis breviary, his lips moving silently as the pages turned.
And so it was that Padre Manuel was in the south pasture when the thingcame down. It sagged and rippled as if it were made of something soft insteadof metal as you'd expect a spaceship to be. Because that's what Padre Manuel,after his first blank amazement, figured it must be.
It didn't act like a spaceship, though. At least not like the ones thatwere in the comics that Sor Concepciуn brought, clucking disapprovingly, tohim when she confiscated them from the big boys who found them so much moreinteresting than the catechism class on drowsy summer afternoons. There was noburned grass, no big noise, none of the signs of radiation that made the comicpages so vivid that, most regrettably, Padre Manuel usually managed a quickread-through before restoring them at the day's end. The thing just flutteredon the grass and scooted ahead of a gust of wind until it came up against atree.
Padre Manuel waited to see what would happen. That was his way. If anythingnew came along, he'd sit for a while, figuring it all out—but slowly,carefully— and usually he came out right. This time, when he had finishedthinking it over, he got a thrill up and down his back, knowing that God hadseen fit to let him be the first man on earth to see a spaceship land. Atleast the first to land in this quiet oasis of cottonwood and salt cedar heldin a fold of the desert.
Well, after nothing happened for a long time, he decided he'd go over andget a closer look at the ship. Apparently it wasn't going to do anything moreat the moment.
There weren't any doors or windows or peepholes. The thing was bigger thanyou'd think, standing back from it. Padre Manuel figured it might be thirty
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feet through, and it looked rather like a wine-colored balloon except that itflattened where it touched the ground, like a low tire. He leaned a handagainst it and it had a give to it and a feeling that was like nothing he everfelt before. It even had a smell—a pretty good smell—and Padre Manuel wasabout to lick it to see if it tasted as good as it smelled, when it opened ahole. One minute no hole. Next minute a little tiny hole, opening bigger andbigger like a round mouth without lips. Nothing swung back or folded up. Theball just opened a hole, about a yard across.
Padre Manuel's heart jumped and he crossed himself swiftly, but whennothing else happened, he edged over to the hole, wondering if he dared stickhis head in and take a look. But then he had a sort of vision of the hole shutting again with his head in there and all at once his Adam's apple felttoo tight and he swallowed hard.
Then a head stuck out through the hole and Padre Manuel got almost dizzy,thinking about being the first man on earth to see something alive fromanother world. Then he blinked and squared his shoulders and took stock ofwhat it was that he was seeing for the first time.
It was a head all right, about as big as his, only with the hair tight andfuzzy. It looked as if it had been shaved into patterns though it could havegrown that way. And there were two eyes that looked like nice round gray eyesuntil they blinked, and then—Madre de Dios! —the lids slid over from theoutside edges toward the nose and flipped back again like a sliding door. Andthe nose was a nose, only with stuff growing in the nostrils that was tightand fuzzy like the hair. It was hard to see how the thing could breathethrough it.
Then the mouth. Padre Manuel felt creepy when he looked at the mouth. Therewas no particular reason why, though. It was just a mouth with the eyeteethlapped sharply over the bottom lip. He'd seen people like that in his time,though maybe not quite so long in the tooth.
Padre Manuel smiled at the creature and almost dodged when it smiled back,because those teeth looked as if they jumped right out at him, white andshiny.
"Buenos dias," said Padre Manuel.
"Buenos dias," said the creature, like an echo.
"Hello," said Padre Manuel, almost exhausting his English.
"Hello," said the creature, like an echo.
Then the conversation lagged. After a while Padre Manuel said, "Won't youget out and stay for a while?" He waved his hand and stepped back.
Well, the space man slid his eyelids a couple of times, then the hole gotbigger downwards and he got out and got out and got out.
Padre Manuel backed away pretty fast when all that long longness crawledout of the hole, but he came back wide-eyed when the space creature began topush himself together, shorter and shorter and ended up about a head tallerthan Padre Manuel and about twice as big around. He was almost man-lookingexcept that his hands were round pad things with a row of fingers clear aroundthem that he could put out or pull in when he wanted to. His hide was stretchylooking and beautifully striped, silver and black. All tight together the wayhe was now, it was mostly black with silver flashing when he moved and he hadfunny looking knobs hanging along his ribs, but all in all he wasn't anythingto put fear into anyone.
Padre Manuel wished he could talk with the creature, to make him welcome tothis world, but words seemed to make only echoes. He fingered his breviary,then on impulse, handed it to the creature. The creature turned it over in hissilvery tipped hands. It flared open at one of the well-worn pages and thecreature ran a finger over the print. Then he flipped the book shut. He ranhis finger over the cross on the cover and then he reached over and lifted theheavy crucifix that swung from Padre Manuel's waist. He traced its shape withhis fingertip and then the cross on the book. He smiled at Padre Manuel andgave the book back to him.
Padre Manuel was as pleased as if he'd spoken to him. The creature was a
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noticing thing anyway. He ran his own hand over the book, feeling with a warmglow (which he hoped was not too much of pride) that he had the only breviaryin the whole world that had been handled by someone from another world.
The space creature had reached inside the ship and now he handed PadreManuel a stack of metallic disks, fastened together near the top. Each diskwas covered with raised marks that tried to speak to Padre Manuel's fingertipslike writing for the blind. And some of the disks had raised pictures ofstrange wheels and machinery-looking things.