Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Indeed, I would like some,” said Gaynor, interrupting Jocelyn. They exchanged murderous glances. Davy cackled and produced a jug and glasses from his vest pocket. “Try this,” he offered, pouring three and one with the authentic backwoods overhand spill.

  “Thanks,” said Gaynor gulping. “Awk!” he shrilled a second later. “Water!”

  Davy was undisturbed. He waved his hand in a vague sweep and there was a firehose in it, whose tube snaked far back into the tumbled horizon. He played the terrific blast upon Gaynor, drenching him thoroughly. “Thet enough?” he asked, vanishing the hose.

  Gaynor looked at him without words, wringing out his tie.

  “Thanks,” said Jocelyn, grinning. She set down her glass untasted, and promptly it vanished. “But now we really must be going.”

  “Well—seein’ ez ye must, ye must,” said the hermit. “But it wuz sort of nice fer ye ter drop in on a lonely old man.”

  “Davy!” shrilled a voice. The voyagers looked through the door. A sweet, round young thing in brightly checked gingham was coming through the forest. “There yew air!” she snapped angrily, shaking her impossibly blonde hair. “Consortin’ with disreputable people, yew varmint!”

  “Aw, Daisy Belle,” said Davy wearily. He passed his hand at her and she disappeared. “Funny thing,” he said, looking redly side-wise at the voyagers. “Thet there phantasm jest won’t stay a-vanished.”

  “Lonely old man,” sneered Jocelyn. “HVh!” She flung the ship into high, slamming the door after the hermit of Razorback Crag.

  CHAPTER III

  “YOUR CLOTHES dried yet, honey?” called Ionic Intersection.

  “Lay off the honey,” warned Jocelyn, her eyes on the port. “You got yourself a man, even if you did lose him. How about it, Paul?”

  “All dry,” announced Gaynor, emerging in a suit that needed pressing. “Where are we?”

  “By Clair’s scale, about halfway from Earth to infinity. And the tracer’s making noises like a dowager who’s been eating radishes. Listen to the unmannerly creation.”

  Gaynor put his ear to the sounding-plate of the little plastic box. “Right,” he stated grimly, “we’re in the neighborhood.”

  “How about landing?” asked Jocelyn. Gaynor flipped a coin. “We land. This two-header never fails me; pulls us out of Nowhere into the Wherever.”

  His wife juggled briefly with the controls. Stars flashed again from the port. The counter’s ticking swelled to a roar that filled the cabin. “Emplatic device!” yelled Gaynor through the din. He turned a screw on the case and shut off the counter action. “This is it, I expect.”

  “It?” Jocelyn dazedly inspected the planet they were nearing. “Give me a look at that thing.”

  “What’s the matter with it? Or maybe you mean that city?”

  “Exactly,” she assured him, raising her hand to blot out the sight. “It’s—awfully—big, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Few thousand feet high,” commented Gaynor airily. “What’s the odds?” He took over the controls and landed the ship.

  “Ahg!” muttered Jocelyn to Io. “That extrovert—landing us in the principal square with cars zipping past. Not that I’d mind if the cars were a little smaller than Zeppelins. But does he care for my peace of mind? Not that worm. Did I tell you what he did one night last week? There I was . . .”

  “Look!” yelled Gaynor hastily, turning a little red. “See those ginks? Fifty feet high if they’re an inch. What do you suppose they want?”

  “I wouldn’t even care to guess. Try the counter.”

  Gaynor turned on the little thing. For the briefest moment it thundered, then went dead. “Blown out,” muttered Gaynor. “Either that, or—” He tinkered with it. “Nope,” he announced finally, a bead of sweat coming out on his brow. “It’s in commission.”

  “Then why,” asked Ionic Intersection plaintively, “doesn’t it sound?”

  “I know, teacher,” said Jocelyn. “It’s fulfilled its whole function. It has counted faithfully and well as long as the object on which it was focused—that is to say, your husband’s ship, more particularly, the protolens of that ship, obtained. It is now no longer functioning for the direct reason that the lens is no longer in existence. It was completely destroyed a few seconds ago—when the counter stopped sounding.”

  “But the ship won’t run without the lens! And the lens is mounted in solid quartz. How could they destroy the lens without destroying the ship?”

  “They couldn’t,” stated Gaynor succinctly. “Keep calm, kid. If I know your husband, he’s not in that ship. With his ship-rat instinct, he deserted it long ago. The pertinacious Pavlik won’t fail you just yet. Meanwhile, dry your eyes—we have company. Give a look—out there.” Gaynor stared through the port, glassy-eyed. “Giants,” he continued strainedly. “Lots of them. Let’s get out of here!” He kicked over the booster-pedal and very nearly started the drive-engines—but not before one of the giants had laid a two-ton finger on the ship and grasped it firmly between thumb and forefinger.

  “No use busting gears against that thing.” Gaynor cut off the motor and relaxed. “Any suggestions, babes?”

  “NOT one,” said Jocelyn. “They seem to be talking—at least, the sky is clear; can’t be thunder.”

  “Whu—what’s that?” quavered Io, pointing. The port was completely filled by a colossal jelly-like mass that heaved convulsively. The blackish center seemed to be a hole of some kind through which they could look and see a dim cavern shot through with a strata of metallic matter, and honeycombed in its far rear with, a curiously regular pattern of hexacombs. “Is it alive?”

  “That,” said Gaynor gently, “is an eye. And not at all an unusual one—just a big one. It’s what yours would look like under a microscope. For gossake, keep calm.”

  The eye withdrew and the Prototype clanged hideously with the din of a thousand bells as some colossal sledge crashed against their shell. “That,” said Jocelyn as she picked herself from the floor, “could be the inevitable attempt to establish communication with the little creatures so unexpectedly arriving. She lifted a wrench.

  “They answer, thus.” She rained blows on the shell of the ship until their ears rang.

  “That’s enough,” said her husband removing the wrench from her hands. “Now that you’ve succeeded in denting the hull all out of its streamlines. But maybe it did some good.” They could hear the conversation thundering resumed; colossal feet stamped about the ship as it seemed to be surveyed from all angles.

  “Awk!” shrilled Io as the Prototype lurched violently. Like peas in a bladder, they were shaken into the stern.

  “Io,” said Jocelyn sharply. “Would you mind—” she gestured the rest.

  “Sorry,” replied the brunette arranging her clothes. “Anyway, your poor dear husband seems to be out.” Jocelyn gave her a hard look. “I can take care of him,” she retorted, climbing the steeply sloping floor, toward the water tank.

  “JOCELYN,” complained Gaynor reproachfully, “that wasn’t fair—hitting me when I wasn’t looking.”

  “I didn’t,” said his wife, busily changing the cold compress. “Your fifty foot friends seem to be taking us for a ride in one of their Fallen Arch Sixes. You’ve just come to after an interval of about three hours. They keep looking in, and I think they’re making dirty jokes.” A titanic bellow of laughter rang through the ship. “See what I mean?”

  “I don’t see the joke,” said Gaynor absently, holding his head. “What’s Io doing?”

  “Admiring the giants. She thinks the one in the middle has the cutest beard.” Just then the vague drone of a colossal motor somewhere near them stopped.

  “Journey’s end, I take it? Or perhaps just a traffic light?”

  “First stop thus far,” said Jocelyn. The ship lurched again. “Up we go!” she cried gaily. “Better than a roller-coaster.”

  There was a brief, bumpy transition with admonishing grunts from the giants. “Easy there,” warned
Jocelyn. “Don’t drop it more than two hundred feet—these animals might be delicate. Blunderbore, you dope—keep your end up—waddye doing, hanging on? There we are!” The ship settled and the seasick Gaynor groaned with relief. “Now what?” he asked tremulously.

  “Now we get picked out and put on fish hooks, I guess. Think you’ll wiggle?”

  “Horrid woman!” he snapped, holding his head. And then something suspiciously like a can-opener poked through the shell of the Prototype with a screech of tearing metal. Jerkily it worked its way along the top of the ship, then twisted side-wise and opened a great gap in the frames. “Now we strangle?” worried Jocelyn. The air rushed out for just a moment, then the pressure seemed to equalize.

  “Pfui!” sniffed Ionic Intersection. “Sulfur somewhere. But breathable, this air. How do you feel, honey?” She caught a glance from Jocelyn. “Paul, I mean,” she amended.

  “Okay, I guess—hey!” squawked Gaynor as a pair of forceps reached down into the ship and picked him up by his coat collar, through the colossal rent in the Prototype’s hide.

  “Write me a post card when you get there, dearest,” called Jocelyn. “Oh well,” she asided to Io, “easy come; easy go. But still I’d have—hey!” she squawked as the forceps made a return trip.

  CHAPTER IV

  “NO PRIVACY,” complained Gaynor bitterly. “No privacy at all—that’s the part I don’t like about it. And that damned blue ray they use—insult on injury; Pelion on Ossa! The great lubberly swine implied that they needed a short-wavelength to see us at all. Oh the curs, the skulldruggerers!”

  “Shut up,” advised Jocelyn. “We seem to be here for some little time under inspection. What comes next I can’t possibly imagine. The thing I don’t like is that while you can talk yourself out of any given scrape, this presents peculiar difficulties, such as that they can’t hear you for small green caterpillars, and even if they could, they couldn’t because your voice is too high-pitched. You!” She turned accusingly on Ionic Intersection.

  “Your husband has to go running out on us and get himself involved with these stinkers—”

  “Now, Jos,” said Gaynor placatingly, “the poor child—”

  “Child, huh? I’ve a notion that you weren’t as unconscious as you pretended when she landed in your lap. And if she’s a child, I’m the gibbering foetus of a monkey’s uncle!”

  “Look!” said Gaynor hastily. “There comes another one.” A colossal eye stared blankly at them, its jelly-like corona quivering horribly, the iris contracting like a paramecium’s vacuole under a microscope.

  “Nyaa!” taunted Jocelyn, thumbing her nose at the monstrous thing. I “Bet you wish you were my size for an hour or two—I’d teach you manners, you colossal slob! Come on in here and fight like a man!” There was an elephantine grunt from the creature’s mouth somewhere.

  “No,” said Jocelyn scornfully. “Not like him—” jerking a thumb at her husband—“I said a man.”

  “Now, Jos, really,” began Gaynor.

  Ionic Intersection looked. up from her corner. “I’m hungry,” she wailed.

  “Hungry, hah?” asked Mrs. Gaynor. “Room Service!” she bawled. The eye reappeared. “Ah, they’re learning. Now for the customary pantomime of starvation.” She patted her stomach, pointed to her mouth, slumped to the floor, gestured as if milking a cow and chewed vigorously on nothing. “Think Joe up there will get it?”

  “I hope so,” worried Gaynor. “I could go for an outside amoebe myself. Which reminds me—do you think these ginks’ cellular structure is scaled up like their bodies, or do you suppose their cells are normal size like ours—but much more plentiful?”

  “Bah!” spat his wife, “Scientist! Why didn’t I marry an international spy? I knew the nicest little anarchist once—full of consonants. I called him Grischa and he called me Alice. Always meant to ask him why, but they shot him before I had the chance. I wish they’d shot you instead. And your half-baked partner! And his blubbering wife!”

  A TINY—about twenty feet—section of the netting above their heads lifted off and an assortment of stuff fell at their feet. “Reaction?” suggested Gaynor.

  “Food!” said his wife hungrily. She looked closer. “But what food! Note this object d’excrete—I’ll swear its the leg of a ten-foot cockroach.” As she spoke, the thing flopped convulsively. “Pavlik,” she said coaxingly, averting her eyes, “put the thing away somewhere where I won’t be able to see it, huh?”

  Gaynor lugged the sticky horror to the netting that enfenced them and poked it through one of the holes. “All gone,” he announced. “And the rest of the stuff looks almost appetizing. That is, if you’ve eaten as many things as I have in my academic career. Snails at the Sorbonne, blutwurst at Heidelberg, Evzones—I think it was Evzones—at the University of Athens—”

  “Well, let’s try it. What first? The—er—pickled—er things or the fried—they look fried—stuff?”

  “Let’s try it out first,” suggested Gaynor, covertly indicating Ionic Intersection, whose eyes were buried in her handkerchief.

  “Of course,” murmured Jocelyn, sweetly. With a shudder she picked up something green and lumpy and brought it to the brunette. “Now, dear,” she urged, “do try some of this delicious ragout de pferd-fleisch avec oeufs des formis.”

  “Is it nice?” asked Io trustingly.

  “Of course,” said Jocelyn, watching like an eagle as Io bit into the thing. “How do you feel? I mean, how do you like it, sweet?”

  “Delicious,” said Io, tightening her clutch on the thing.

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” snapped Jocelyn. “Give it back!” She wrenched it from the brunette, who broke out into a new freshet of tears, and sunk her teeth into the most promising of the green lumps.

  “Tsk, tsk, such manners,” chided Gaynor, “when there’s ample for all. Here, Io,” he said gently, bringing the little brunette an assortment of the green stuff.

  “Quite full, you goat?” asked Jocelyn of her husband.

  “Nearly.” He reached for a brownish object; his arm fell half-way. “Can’t make it,” he observed. “Must be full. What happens now, wife of my heart?”

  “Can’t imagine,” she assured him, studying her lips in the mirror of a compact.

  “To hazard a guess,” he said, looking up, “that forceps is intimately connected with our immediate futures. Here we go,” be called down gaily as it lifted him high into the air.

  A MOMENT later, Jocelyn and Io joined him, via forceps. “Where are we?” wailed the brunette, looking around wildly.

  “Keep off those coils,” warned Gaynor. “Better just stand still. It looks like a twenty foot bowl lined with all kinds of electric junk in it.”

  He turned on the women suddenly. “What’s that you called me?” he mouthed furiously, working his hands.

  “I didn’t say anything,” protested his wife.

  “I didn’t either,” chimed in Io. “Has he gone crazy?” she asked Jocelyn.

  “Hah!” she laughed loudly and vulgarly. “I won’t even take that lead.” She turned and surveyed her brooding husband. “What!” she squawked suddenly, turning on Io. “If you want my opinion that goes for you, too—double!” The brunette looked bewildered.

  “Hold it, girls,” said Gaynor. “Io didn’t say a thing—I was watching her by—er—coincidence.”

  “Yeah,” said Jocelyn. “You look out for those coincidences. Reno’s still doing a roaring trade, I hear. But if Io didn’t say it, who did?”

  Gaynor pointed upward solemnly.

  “Oh Paul, don’t be a bore!” his wife exploded. “I didn’t know I was married to a religious fanatic!”

  “No,” said Gaynor hastily, “don’t get me wrong. I mean Joe or his friends. This thing, now that I consider it, looks like the well-known thought transference-helmet we meet so often. Not being able to make one small enough for us, they put us into one of theirs. Now try opening your minds so maybe something more than subconscious insu
lts from our captors may get through. Ready? Concentrate!”

  They wrinkled their brows for a moment; Io giggled and cast a sidewise glance at Gaynor, who uneasily eyed Jocelyn, who gave Io a murderous look. “Heaven help you if I intercept another one like that, husband mine,” Mrs. Gaynor warned.

  “Must have been wholly subconscious,” he replied. “Even I don’t know what it was.”

  “I’d rather not tell you,” said Jocelyn, “but your subconscious has a mighty lively imagination.”

  “Hush,” said Gaynor abruptly. “Here it comes!” He squatted on the base of the helmet and shut his eyes tightly, his jaws clenched in an attempt to get over and receive.

  “Paul!” said Jocelyn, alarmed.

  “Quiet!” he snapped; “this isn’t easy.”

  Thus, to outward appearances, practically in a trance, he remained.

  “It must be wonderful to think like that,” breathed Io.

  “Yeah,” agreed Jocelyn. “But all he’s going is getting us out of a jam, your husband’s a real thinker—by just hopping off with suicide in his mind, he can get us into the jam. You ought,” she continued witheringly, “to be mighty proud of your Art Claire. I just hope he turns up scattered from here to Procyon!”

  The brunette did not, as Jocelyn expected, burst into tears again. There was a sort of quiet contempt in her voice when she spoke. “If you had any honesty or decency in your makeup you would remember that Arthur took this trip to force your husband out of his blind stupidity. Arthur’s invention was a perfect success—it’s you and your husband’s fault we’re stuck now, not his.”

  Jocelyn stared at her for a moment. “Blah!” she said. Then, with concern in her eyes, she watched the motionless form of Gaynor.

  “GOD THAT was awful!” groaned Gaynor. He relaxed and stretched his limbs. “I wish Art had been here—he was the psychologist of the team, ideally suited for a heavy load like I’ve been taking on for the last hour or so.”