The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  While to the slow mind's eye she was still standing at the far end of the room, she was already at Maltzer's side, her long, flexible fingers gentle but very firm upon his arms. She waited—

  The room shimmered. There was sudden violent heat beating upon Harris' face. Then the air steadied again and Deirdre was saying softly, in a mournful whisper,

  "I'm sorry—I had to do it. I'm sorry—I didn't mean you to know—"

  -

  Time caught up with Harris. He saw it overtake Maltzer too, saw the man jerk convulsively away from the grasping hands, in a ludicrously futile effort to forestall what had already happened. Even thought was slow, compared with Deirdre's swiftness.

  The sharp outward jerk was strong. It was strong enough to break the grasp of human hands and catapult Maltzer out and down into the swimming gulfs of New York. The mind leaped ahead to a logical conclusion and saw him twisting and turning and diminishing with dreadful rapidity to a tiny point of darkness that dropped away through sunlight toward the shadows near the earth. The mind even conjured up a shrill, thin cry that plummeted away with the falling body and hung behind it in the shaken air.

  But the mind was reckoning on human factors.

  Very gently and smoothly Deirdre lifted Maltzer from the window sill and with effortless ease carried him well back into the safety of the room. She set him down before a sofa and her golden fingers unwrapped themselves from his arms slowly, so that he could regain control of his own body before she released him.

  He sank to the sofa without a word. Nobody spoke for an unmeasurable length of time. Harris could not. Deirdre waited patiently. It was Maltzer who regained speech first, and it came back on the old track, as if his mind had not yet relinquished the rut it had worn so deep.

  "All right," he said breathlessly. "All right, you can stop me this time. But I know, you see. I know! You can't hide your feeling from me, Deirdre. I know the trouble you feel. And next time—next time I won't wait to talk!"

  Deirdre made the sound of a sigh. She had no lungs to expel the breath she was imitating, but it was hard to realize that. It was hard to understand why she was not panting heavily from the terrible exertion of the past minutes; the mind knew why, but could not accept the reason. She was still too human.

  "You still don't see," she said. "Think, Maltzer, think!"

  There was a hassock beside the sofa. She sank upon it gracefully, clasping her robed knees. Her head tilted back to watch Maltzer's face. She saw only stunned stupidity on it now; he had passed through too much emotional storm to think at all.

  "All right," she told him. "Listen—I'll admit it. You're right. I am unhappy. I do know what you said was true—but not for the reason you think. Humanity and I are far apart, and drawing farther. The gap will be hard to bridge. Do you hear me, Maltzer?"

  Harris saw the tremendous effort that went into Maltzer's wakening. He saw the man pull his mind back into focus and sit up on the sofa with weary stiffness.

  "You ... you do admit it, then?" he asked in a bewildered voice.

  Deirdre shook her head sharply.

  "Do you still think of me as delicate?" she demanded. "Do you know I carried you here at arm's length halfway across the room? Do you realize you weigh nothing to me? I could"—she glanced around the room and gestured with sudden, rather appalling violence—"tear this building down," she said quietly. "I could tear my way through these walls, I think. I've found no limit yet to the strength I can put forth if I try." She held up her golden hands and looked at them. "The metal would break, perhaps," she said reflectively, "but then, I have no feeling—"

  Maltzer gasped, "Deirdre—"

  She looked up with what must have been a smile. It sounded clearly in her voice. "Oh, I won't. I wouldn't have to do it with my hands, if I wanted. Look—listen!"

  She put her head back and a deep, vibrating hum gathered and grew in what one still thought of as her throat. It deepened swiftly and the ears began to ring. It went deeper, and the furniture vibrated. The walls began almost imperceptibly to shake. The room was full and bursting with a sound that shook every atom upon its neighbor with a terrible, disrupting force.

  The sound ceased. The humming died. Then Deirdre laughed and made another and quite differently pitched sound. It seemed to reach out like an arm in one straight direction—toward the window. The opened panel shook. Deirdre intensified her hum, and slowly, with imperceptible jolts that merged into smoothness, the window jarred itself shut.

  "You see?" Deirdre said. "You see?"

  But still Maltzer could only stare. Harris was staring too, his mind beginning slowly to accept what she implied. Both were too stunned to leap ahead to any conclusions yet.

  -

  Deirdre rose impatiently and began to pace again, in a ringing of metal robe and a twinkling of reflected lights. She was pantherlike in her suppleness. They could see the power behind that lithe motion now; they no longer thought of her as helpless, but they were far still from grasping the truth.

  "You were wrong about me, Maltzer," she said with an effort at patience in her voice. "But you were right too, in a way you didn't guess. I'm not afraid of humanity. I haven't anything to fear from them. Why"—her voice took on a tinge of contempt—"already I've set a fashion in women's clothing. By next week you won't see a woman on the street without a mask like mine, and every dress that isn't cut like a chlamys will be out of style. I'm not afraid of humanity! I won't lose touch with them unless I want to. I've learned a lot—I've learned too much already."

  Her voice faded for a moment, and Harris had a quick and appalling vision of her experimenting in the solitude of her farm, testing the range of her voice, testing her eyesight—could she see microscopically and telescopically?—and was her hearing as abnormally flexible as her voice?

  "You were afraid I had lost feeling and scent and taste," she went on, still pacing with that powerful, tigerish tread. "Hearing and sight would not be enough, you think? But why do you think sight is the last of the senses? It may be the latest, Maltzer—Harris—but why do you think it's the last?"

  She may not have whispered that. Perhaps it was only their hearing that made it seem thin and distant, as the brain contracted and would not let the thought come through in its stunning entirety.

  "No," Deirdre said, "I haven't lost contact with the human race. I never will, unless I want to. It's too easy ... too easy."

  She was watching her shining feet as she paced, and her masked face was averted. Sorrow sounded in her soft voice now.

  "I didn't mean to let you know," she said. "I never would have, if this hadn't happened. But I couldn't let you go believing you'd failed. You made a perfect machine, Maltzer. More perfect than you knew."

  "But Deirdre—" breathed Maltzer, his eyes fascinated and still incredulous upon her, "but Deirdre, if we did succeed—what's wrong? I can feel it now—I've felt it all along. You're so unhappy—you still are. Why, Deirdre?"

  She lifted her head and looked at him, eyelessly, but with a piercing stare.

  "Why are you so sure of that?" she asked gently.

  "You think I could be mistaken, knowing you as I do? But I'm not Frankenstein ... you say my creation's flawless. Then what—"

  "Could you ever duplicate this body?" she asked.

  Maltzer glanced down at his shaking hands. "I don't know. I doubt it. I—"

  "Could anyone else?"

  He was silent. Deirdre answered for him. "I don't believe anyone could. I think I was an accident. A sort of mutation halfway between flesh and metal. Something accidental and ... and unnatural, turning off on a wrong course of evolution that never reaches a dead end. Another brain in a body like this might die or go mad, as you thought I would. The synapses are too delicate. You were—call it lucky—with me. From what I know now, I don't think a ... a baroque like me could happen again." She paused a moment. "What you did was kindle the fire for the Phoenix, in a way. And the Phoenix rises perfect and renewed from its own ashes. Do you
remember why it had to reproduce itself that way?"

  Maltzer shook his head.

  "I'll tell you," she said. "It was because there was only one Phoenix. Only one in the whole world."

  They looked at each other in silence. Then Deirdre shrugged a little.

  "He always came out of the fire perfect, of course. I'm not weak, Maltzer. You needn't let that thought bother you any more. I'm not vulnerable and helpless. I'm not sub-human." She laughed dryly. "I suppose," she said, "that I'm—superhuman."

  "But—not happy."

  "I'm afraid. It isn't unhappiness, Maltzer—it's fear. I don't want to draw so far away from the human race. I wish I needn't. That's why I'm going back on the stage—to keep in touch with them while I can. But I wish there could be others like me. I'm ... I'm lonely, Maltzer."

  Silence again. Then Maltzer said, in a voice as distant as when he had spoken to them through glass, over gulfs as deep as oblivion:

  "Then I am Frankenstein, after all."

  "Perhaps you are," Deirdre said very softly. "I don't know. Perhaps you are."

  She turned away and moved smoothly, powerfully, down the room to the window. Now that Harris knew, he could almost hear the sheer power purring along her limbs as she walked. She leaned the golden forehead against the glass—it clinked faintly, with a musical sound—and looked down into the depths Maltzer had hung above. Her voice was reflective as she looked into those dizzy spaces which had offered oblivion to her creator.

  "There's one limit I can think of," she said, almost inaudibly. "Only one. My brain will wear out in another forty years or so. Between now and then I'll learn ... I'll change ... I'll know more than I can guess today. I'll change—That's frightening. I don't like to think about that." She laid a curved golden hand on the latch and pushed the window open a little, very easily. Wind whined around its edge. "I could put a stop to it now, if I wanted," she said. "If I wanted. But I can't, really. There's so much still untried. My brain's human, and no human brain could leave such possibilities untested. I wonder, though ... I do wonder—"

  Her voice was soft and familiar in Harris' ears, the voice Deirdre had spoken and sung with, sweetly enough to enchant a world. But as preoccupation came over her a certain flatness crept into the sound. When she was not listening to her own voice, it did not keep quite to the pitch of trueness. It sounded as if she spoke in a room of brass, and echoes from the walls resounded in the tones that spoke there.

  "I wonder," she repeated, the distant taint of metal already in her voice.

  The End

  BABY FACE

  Thrilling Wonder Stories – Spring, 1945

  with Henry Kuttner

  (as by Henry Kuttner)

  When a tough sergeant reverts to infancy he just won't be weaned from fighting mankind's foes!

  -

  Chapter I

  Jolt For Jerry

  ANY wise mutt calling me Baby Face is going to get a sock in the puss that'll land him in 4F.

  The name's Jerry Cassidy, sergeant, U. S. Marines. I tip the scale at two hundred even, and I look a lot more like Wallace Beery than Baby Sandy. I do now, anyway. There was a time, though, when this didn't hold true.

  But if any lug feels like bringing that up, he'd better have knuckle-dusters handy. If Doc McKenney wasn't such a nice old man, I'd break his neck for landing me in that jam. Transference of egos, bah!

  The way it happened sounds mighty strange.

  I am a big, good-natured looking feller, so I suppose the Captain's wife figured it'd be safe to leave "Stinky" Dawson with me. I ran into Mrs. Dawson on Park, as I was coming out of Grand Central. She's a cute little trick, blonde and sort of muzzy around the eyes—the look that starts your floating. Anyhow, she was wheeling this baby carriage along when she saw me and said hello.

  "Hi, Mrs. Dawson. Hope you're well."

  "Well enough to go dancing with the Captain tonight," she told me, laughing under her breath. "It's wonderful to have him home again. You're on leave too, aren't you, Jerry?"

  "I can prove it," I said. "I got my pass. And I'm sort of going dancing tonight too, down at the Rainbow. My—uh—girl friend says I'll learn how if I keep at it long enough."

  Mrs. Dawson looked at my feet in a kind of dubious fashion.

  "Uh-huh," she said. "How do you like New York?"

  "I dunno. It isn't much like New Guinea. Billie's working till five, so I'm sort of killing time till then."

  "There's not much to do on Park Avenue."

  "Right," I said. "Only I know a sawbones who lives around here. Doc McKenney. He used to live in Keokuk where I come from, and I thought maybe I'd look him up."

  Mrs. Dawson was biting her lip. "Jerry," she said, "I wonder if you'd do me an awfully big favor."

  I said sure I would, and what was it.

  "Mind Stinky for half an hour. Would you do that? I hate to ask you, but it's the maid's day out and I had nobody to leave him with, and I simply must get another dress for tonight. I—I haven't seen the Captain for so long, and—well, you know."

  "You bet I'll mind the little—uh—the little fella," I told her. "You run along and take your time, Mrs. Dawson."

  "Thanks so much! I won't be long. And—look! I know! I'll bring you something to take to Billie. There's some lovely lingerie I saw last week at the store."

  -

  I GOT kind of red around the collar. "L-lingerie?"

  "Don't be silly, Jerry! She'll love it. Now you wait here, and if you get tired, go in that drug-store and have a coke or something. Okay?"

  "Yes'm," I said, and she went off. My hands felt too big. I looked at them, and they were blushing too. Lingerie! I didn't think Billie would like it. Still, I could have been wrong. Women go for funny things.

  I took a gander at the little squirt in the carriage. He was a fat, stupid-looking infant, slightly cock-eyed, and with great big cheeks that blobbed down on his shoulders. He had hands like starfish—stubby fingers sticking out in all directions—and he was trying to put his shoe in his mouth, doing a pretty good job of it. If he took after his old man, I figured he'd have a devil of a temper. So I didn't argue with him about the foot. I smoked a cigarette and looked at things.

  Pretty soon Stinky started to bellow. He was lying flat on his back, waving his arms and legs around, with his eyes all squinched up. His face had turned red. His voice reminded me of the Captain's at certain times, like once when I'd got a little tight in Sydney and had a mild argument with some sailors.

  Figuring he wanted his foot back, I shoved it into position, but he'd had enough of that. He turned purple and kept hollering. People were beginning to look at me. I got scared and had a mind to beat it. But I couldn't leave the kid alone.

  I went into the drug store and asked the prescription clerk what to do. He didn't know. All babies yelled, according to him, and it was good for them.

  Not this baby! All of a sudden I noticed that one of his shoes was missing.

  "Oh, gosh," I said, feeling sick. "The blamed little ostrich must have ate it!"

  I picked him up by the feet and shook him tentative, without much result, except he roared louder than ever. A crowd was gathering, but not a WAAC, WAVE, or SPAR among them. I dithered. I kept wondering what would happen when Mrs. Dawson came back and found Stinky had strangled to death on his shoe. Court martial, anyhow. I could stand that, but—I was worried about the little tyke.

  Then I remembered Doc McKenney. His office was only a block away, so I sent the carriage scooting like a fast jeep up Park, leaving a trail of sweat from my forehead. All the while Stinky yelled, squalled, bawled, and tooted. He was sounding off, all right.

  A sailor grinned at me.

  "A walkie-talkie, eh?" he said, but I had no time to sock him. I yanked Stinky out of his carriage, ran up a flight of steps, and bounced through a door labeled Doc McKenney. A nurse looked up at me, startled.

  "Quick!" I said. "Get the Doc. The small fry just ate his shoe!"

  "But—but�
��"

  A door across the room opened, and I saw the Doc's familiar, wrinkled old face, with his gray hair sticking up like a cock's comb. He was ushering somebody out, but fast.

  "No!" Doc was yelling. "I'm not interested. I'm not satisfied with your credentials, and I'm getting in touch with the F.B.I. immediately. Get out!"

  The man, a big husky with sleepy eyes and a bristling mustache, opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it like a trap snapping shut. He was mad, I could see that. But he didn't do anything about it. He whirled and went out, with a furious glance in my direction.

  "Doc!" I said.

  "What? Who—well, for Pete's sake! Jerry Cassidy. Who made you a sergeant?"

  I passed the baby to him. "This is life and death. The kid ate a shoe or something. He's strangling!"

  "Eh? A shoe?"

  I explained. Doc nodded at the nurse and took me into his office, a fairly big room with lots of equipment. He went to work on the baby, while I watched, scared stiff.

  After a while Doc shrugged. "I can't find anything wrong."

  "But he's yelling. He ate a shoe, I tell you."

  -

  THE nurse came in, with the missing shoe.

  "I found this in the carriage downstairs," she said. "Need help, Doctor?"

  "No, thanks," the Doc said. He put the shoe back on Stinky's foot, but that didn't solve the problem. The nurse went out. The kid kept on crying.

  "He doesn't look like you," the Doc murmured absently. "Well, he'll cry himself out pretty soon. What have you been doing?"

  " 'Course, he doesn't look like me. He's my Captain's wife—I mean his baby's Captain—oh, gosh, Doc! Do something!"

  "What?"

  "What's he crying for?"

  "That," Doc McKenney said thoughtfully, "is one of the greatest mysteries of the ages. No one knows why babies cry. At least, why they cry when they haven't got colic, aren't being stuck by pins, or don't require changing."

  "Is it—those?" I gulped.

  "Well, it might be colic," he said. "Not the others. I checked up."