Crockett had been looking forward to exhausted slumber, but this chance was too good to miss. He had no wish to continue his unpleasant job digging anthracite. His body ached fearfully. Besides, if he could induce the gnomes to strike, he might be able to put the squeeze on Podrang II. Cru Magru had said the Emperor was a magician. Couldn’t he, then, transform Crockett back into a man?
“He’s never done that,” Broclde Buhn said, and Crockett realized he had spoken his thought aloud.
“Couldn’t he, though-if he wanted?”
Brockle Buhn merely shuddered, but Crockett had a little gleam of hope. To be human again!
Dig… dig… dig… dig… with monotonous, deadening regularity. Crockett sank into a stupor.
Unless he got the gnomes to strike, he was faced with an eternity of arduous toil. He was scarcely conscious of knocking off, of feeling Brockle Buhn’s gnarled hand under his arm, of being led through passages to a tiny cubicle, which was his new home. The gnome left him there, and he crawled into a stony bunk and went to sleep.
Presently a casual kick aroused him. Blinking, Crockett sat up, instinctively dodging the blow Gru Magru was aiming at his head. He had four guests-Gm, Brockle Buhn, Drook and the red-haired Mugza.
“Sorry I woke up too soon,” Crockett said bitterly. “If I hadn’t, you could have got in another kick.”
“There’s lots of time,” Gru said. “Now, what’s this all about? I wanted to sleep, but Brockle Buhn here said there was going to be a fight. A big one, huh?”
“Eat first,” Brockle Buhn said firmly. “I’ll fix mud soup for everybody.” She bustled away, and presently was busy in a corner, preparing refreshments. The other gnomes squatted on their haunches, and Crockett sat on the edge of his bunk, still dazed with sleep.
But he managed to explain his idea of the union. It was received with interest-chiefly, he felt, because it involved the possibility of a tremendous scrap.
“You mean every Domsef gnome jumps the Emperor?” Cm asked.
“No, no! Peaceful arbitration. We just refuse to work. All of us.”
“I can’t,” Drook said. “Podrang’s got to have his mud baths, the bloated old slug. He’d send me to the fumaroles till I was roasted.”
“Who’d take you there?” Crockett asked.
“Oh-the guards, I suppose.”
“But they’d be on strike, too. Nobody’ ci obey Podrang, till he gave in.”
“Then he’d enchant me,” Drook said.
“He can’t enchant us all,” Crockett countered.
“But he could enchant me,” Drook said with great firmness. “Besides, he could put a spell on every gnome in Dornsef. Turn us into stalactites or something.”
“Then what? He wouldn’t have any gnomes at all. Half a loaf is better than none. We’ll just use logic on him. Wouldn’t he rather have a little less work done than none at all?”
“Not him,” Gru put in. “He’d rather enchant us. Oh, he’s a bad one, he is,” the gnome finished approvingly.
But Crockett couldn’t quite believe this. It was too alien to his understanding of psychology-human psychology, of course. He turned to Mugza, who was glowering furiously.
“What do you think about it?”
“I want to fight,” the other said rancorously. “I want to kick somebody.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have mud baths three times a day?”
Mugza grunted. “Sure. But the Emperor won’t let me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want ’em.”
“You can’t be contented,” Crockett said desperately. “There’s more to life than-than digging.”
“Sure. There’s fighting. Podrang lets us fight whenever we want.”
Crockett had a sudden inspiration. “But that’s just it. He’s going to stop all fighting! He’s going to pass a new law forbidding fighting except to himself.”
It was an effective shot in the dark. Every gnome jumped. “Stop-fighting!” That was Gm, angry and disbelieving. “Why, we’ve always fought.”
“Well, you’ll have to stop,” Crockett insisted.
“Won’t!”
“Exactly! Why should you? Every gnome’s entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of-of pugilism.”
“Let’s go and beat up Podrang,” Mugza offered, accepting a steaming bowl of mud soup from Brockle Buhn.
“No, that’s not the way-no, thanks, Brockle Buhn-not the way at all. A strike’s the thing. We’ll peaceably force Podrang to give us what we want.”
He turned to Drook. “Just what can Podrang do about it if we all sit down and refuse to work?”
The little gnome considered. “He’d swear. And kick me.”
“Yeah-and then what?”
“Then he’d go off and enchant everybody, tunnel by tunnel.”
“Uh-huh.” Crockett nodded. “A good point. Solidarity is what we need. If Podrang finds a few gnomes together, he can scare the hell out of them. But if we’re all together-that’s it! When the strike’s called, we’ll all meet in the biggest cave in the joint.”
“That’s the Council Chamber,” Gm said. “Next to Pocirang’s throne room.”
“O.K. We’ll meet there. How many gnomes will join us?”
“All of ’em,” Mugza grunted, throwing his soup bowl at Drook’s head. “The Emperor can’t stop us fighting.”
“And what weapons can Podrang use, Drook?”
“He might use the Cockatrice Eggs,” the other said doubtfully.
“What are those?”
“They’re not really eggs,” Gru broke in. “They’re magic jewels for wholesale enchantments.
Different spells in each one. The green ones, I think, are for turning people into earthworms. Podrang just breaks one, and the spell spreads out for twenty feet or so. The red ones are-let’s see. Transforming gnomes into human beings-though that’s a bit too tough. No… yes. The blue ones—”
“Into human beings!” Crockett’s eyes widened. “Where are the eggs kept?”
“Let’s fight,” Mugza offered, and hurled himself bodily on Drook, who squeaked frantically and beat his attacker over the head with his soup bowl, which broke. Brockle Buhn added to the excitement by kicking both battlers impartially, till felled by Gm Magru. Within a few moments the room resounded with the excited screams of guomic battle. Inevitably Crockett was sucked in.
Of all the perverted, incredible forms of life that had ever existed, gnomes were about the oddest. It was impossible to understand their philosophy. Their minds worked along different paths from human intelligences. Self-preservation and survival of the race-these two vital human instincts were lacking in gnomes. They neither died nor propagated. They just worked and fought. Bad-tempered little monsters, Crockett thought irritably. Yet they had existed for-ages. Since the beginning, maybe. Their social organism was the result of evolution far older than man’s. It might be well suited to gnomes. Crockett might be throwing the unnecessary monkey wrench in the machinery.
So what? He wasn’t going to spend eternity digging anthracite, even though, in retrospect, he remembered feeling a curious thrill of obscure pleasure as he worked. Digging might be fun for gnomes. Certainly it was their raison d’être. In time Crockett himself might lose his human affiliations, and be metamorphosed completely into a gnome. What bad happened to other humans who had undergone such an-alteration as he had done? All gnomes look alike. But maybe Cm Magru had once been human-or Drook-or Brockle Buhn.
They were gnomes now, at any rate, thinking and existing completely as gnomes. And in time he himself would be exactly like them. Already he had acquired the strange tropism that attracted him to metals and repelled him from daylight. But he didn’t like to dig!
He tried to recall the little he knew about gnomes-miners, metal-smiths, living underground. There was something about the Picts— dwarfish men who hid underground when invaders came to England, centuries ago. That seemed to tie in vaguely with the gnomes’ dread of human beings. But the gnomes themselves were certainly not descended from Picts. Very likely the two separate races and species had become identified through occupying the same habitat.