Page 32 - Unlikely Stories 2

Earl King and his Puppet Thing

From Fantastic Transactions, volume 1 (1990)

On certain afternoons two heavily-armed grotto men made their way
up through a dimly-lit tunnel to its terminus at the edge of a deep
chasm separating their world from the bleached and blasted surface of
planet Earth. The yawning gap could not be traversed by Surfs finding
temporary shelter in the shallow cave mouth facing it; nevertheless,
entrance to the tunnel and grotto had been effectively barred by a
massive steel door on the sheer face of the limestone wall. Before
opening it, the people on the inside could examine the situation outside
through a peephole.
Surfs wishing to do business with the Techies, as the grotto-dwellers
were known above-ground, waited patiently for the peephole to open,
whereupon they followed strict protocol in presenting their wares. If
anything on display interested the suspicious watchers behind the wall
of stone and steel, they would open the door and extend a telescoping
bridge across the fifteen-meter-wide crevice. This was a laborious
process; the device required manual operation, but provided total
security for the Techies: it could not support an invading army and any
unwanted person or object could easily be expelled from it into the
depths of the abyss.
Transactions usually involved a straight exchange of Surf goods for a
quantity of edible fungus and grubs determined by the Techies. No
disputes over value were permitted: the inevitable result of Surf
unpleasantness was an unpredictable number of days between openings
of the peephole. When the subterranean foodstuffs arrived on their
side of the bridge, the Surfs might fight among themselves for
possession of the meager provisions; such displays of desperation did
not concern the grotto traders. Theirs was a grim self-sufficiency
randomly relieved by the arrival of a mineral salt or some weathered
relic of surface civilization. For the Surfs themselves the Techies had
little use; the former, scourged by UV burns, violent dust storms,
drought and insect plagues, could serve the latter only as barely living
cautionary exemplars of the necessity to remain underground for yet
another generation.

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