The Anything Box

words icy and clipped. 'I trusted you with my child. If anything has happened
to him—'
'Don't go in—oh, don't go in!' June grabbed at her coat hysterically.
'Please, please wait! Let's get—'
'Let go!' Mrs. Warren's voice grated between her tightly clenched teeth.
'Let me go, you—you—' Her hand flashed out and the crack of her palm against
June's cheek was echoed by a choonk inside the house. June was staggered by
the blow, but she clung to the coat until Mrs. Warren pushed her sprawling
down the front steps and fumbled at the knob, crying, 'Dubby! Dubby!'
June, scrambling up the steps on hands and knees, caught a glimpse of a
hovering something that lifted and swayed like a waiting cobra. It was slapped
aside by the violent opening of the door as Mrs. Warren stumbled into the
house, her cries suddenly stilling on her slack lips as she saw her crumpled
son by the couch.
She gasped and whispered, 'Dubby!' She lifted him into her arms. His head
rolled loosely against her shoulder. Her protesting, 'No, no, no!' merged into
half-articulate screams as she hugged him to her.
And from behind the front door there was a choonk and a slither.
June lunged forward and grabbed the reaching thing that was homing in on
Mrs. Warren's hysterical grief. Her hands closed around it convulsively, her
whole weight dragging backward, but it had a strength she couldn't match.
Desperately then, her fists clenched, her eyes tight shut, she screamed and
screamed and screamed.
The snout looped almost lazily around her straining throat, but she fought
her way almost to the front door before the thing held her, feet on the floor,
body at an impossible angle and stilled her frantic screams, quieted her
straining lungs and sipped the last of her heartbeats, and let her drop.
Mrs. Warren stared incredulously at June's crumpled body and the horrible
creature that blinked its lights and shifted its antennae questingly. With a
muffled gasp, she sagged, knees and waist and neck, and fell soundlessly to
the floor.
The refrigerator in the kitchen cleared its throat and the Eater turned
from June with a choonk and slid away, crossing to the kitchen.
The Eater retracted its snout and slid back from the refrigerator. It lay
quietly, its ears shifting from quarter to quarter.
The thermostat in the dining room clicked and the hot air furnace began to
hum. The Eater slid to the wall under the register that was set just below the
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ceiling. Its snout extended and lifted and narrowed until the end of itslipped through one of the register openings. The furnace hum choked offabruptly and the snout end flipped back into sight.
Then there was quiet, deep and unbroken until the Eater tilted its ears andslid up to Mrs. Warren.
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