by C. L. Moore
"There," Higgins said, settling back at last. "She's automatic now."
"Our destination's a secret?" Carmody asked, nodding toward the opaqued windows.
"What? Oh, maybe, maybe. Anyway, there's nothing much to look at in this weather, and the rain's not very cheerful. Now, Mr. Carmody, to business!"
Carmody decided that the plane was beginning to travel fast. Already he could feel violent acceleration, though, in the padded seat, it wasn't uncomfortable.
"I didn't expect a personal interview," he said.
"I interview all applicants for positions," Higgins smiled. "However, before we get on to that—there's another matter. This man Dale. It's O.K. We've checked. We'll accept your retainer to kill him. You understand that if he matches your percentage, your money will be refunded, and—no hard feelings?"
"I understand."
"Good. All right, the job. What did you have in mind?"
"I don't know what's available. Not office work, though. I want something that'll keep me interested."
"Uh-huh," Higgins said. He touched a stud. "Too cold here. Take your coat off if you want." He awkwardly struggled out of his own overcoat, pulled the scarf from around his fat neck, and removed his gloves. In a few minutes the copter's cabin was comfortably warm.
"Well," Higgins said, "we've got several branches. There's plenty of paper work. Then we've got our investigatory corps, and our operative group. But the latter is rather specialized."
"I can see how it would be. And I wouldn't expect to get in on that right away—or without thorough investigation. For all you know, I might be in the pay of an insurance company."
"Those insurance companies," Higgins sighed, clicking his tongue. "We have trouble with them. But WE KILL PEOPLE is safe as houses, Mr. Carmody. We protect our staff. You might qualify for investigation, but never for operation."
The acceleration increased. It was slightly incredible, Carmody decided.
"No?"
"I'm afraid not," Higgins said. "In the very nature of things—well, if you want to work for us, I suppose there's no harm in telling you a little. But you understand you mustn't ever repeat this to a living soul."
Carmody turned his head to stare, but apparently the president was quite serious.
-
"Oh, we take precautions," Higgins said. "Our secret hasn't leaked out yet, has it? I don't know what would happen if it did, because our method can't be duplicated artificially. It's ... well, it's natural. All our victims die of natural causes."
"Oh?" Carmody said, beginning to frown again.
"Now this isn't to be repeated," Higgins said chattily, "but I suppose you know that everybody's got bugs in him—germs, viruses, and so on? Even the healthiest man contains the seeds of death. Strep, typhoid, tuberculosis, cancer—all sorts of bugs. But usually in such small quantity that the phagocytes can handle 'em. It's only when the bugs multiply that you run into trouble, and have a prognosis of active polio—or whatever. Well, we just multiply the bugs."
"If you're telling me the truth—" Carmody said.
"It's in confidence. We've got a method of multiplying the bugs, that's all. Ever heard of symbiosis? Give-and-take relationship of two organisms? That's the answer. A virus, let's call it x-virus, that sets up a symbiotic housekeeping business—selectivity. Introduced into the human blood stream, it picks out the strongest bug and proposes. It's a smart little virus. If the polio bug is strongest in your system at the time, it goes into symbiosis with polio. It's stimulative. And very adaptable. Result: the polio bug multiplies fast, plenty fast—though not so fast it seems abnormal. Atypical, maybe, but not abnormal. If the polio's cured, the x-virus is still present in the blood stream, and it looks around for the next-strongest bug. Meningitis, or t.b. Anything available, so long as it's malignant. The human organism can't stand one attack after another—polio, meningitis, t.b., cancer—right down the list. Death is certain. I'm not much good at explaining all this, I'm afraid. I'm an organizer, not a technician. But perhaps you see the angles?"
"I see 'em," Carmody said. "It's death from natural causes, all right."
Higgins nodded and chuckled. "Sure. The only trouble is how to administer the x-virus to a victim. That's where our operatives come in. They're pretty specialized. In fact, you have to be born to the job."
"They sound like radio-controlled anopheles," Carmody said.
"No, they're men—but they're mutants. We had to put 'em on the Board of Directors, for one reason or another. They're the ones who started WE KILL PEOPLE. They're a true mutation. Not many of them, so far, but there'll be more. Unfortunately they can't intermarry with humans, only among themselves. So—" He spread his pudgy hands.
"Mutants," Carmody murmured. His throat felt tight.
"The x-virus is natural to them," Higgins explained. "Perfectly normal in their blood stream, part of the check-and-balance system of their rather screwy metabolic set-up. Introduced into a merely human circulatory pipe line, it's fatal. Nothing too startling about that. Some types of blood are plenty dangerous in combination with other types; they don't mix. Natural selection is behind it, but we can't read Mother Nature's mind. The first true humans were mutants, and were given intelligence so they could dominate. They already had agility. Our x-virus boys already had inherited intellect, and maybe this new virus is their method of domination. It isn't too foresighted on Mother Nature's part, though. Humans would kill the mutants if they knew. They're typhoid Marys."
"I don't see how they survived infancy," Carmody said.
"Maturation takes time. A baby's blood will mix with any other type, you know. Later on it acquires its own distinctive typing. It was like that. Our mutants were perfectly normal till they matured. It was only after that that the x-virus developed. But you can see the dangers! They couldn't live in contact with humans without arousing suspicion and eventual real trouble. And they're not super-minds. Some of 'em are excellent technicians, but no better than human technicians. Perhaps intellect may become as vestigial as agility, a convenient secondary trait. In the future, in a mutant world, a few may specialize in intellect, just as we have athletes today. I don't know what the main line will be; the x-virus isn't enough. Instinct, possibly. However, if the mutants are to survive at all, they've got to stay under cover. And because they're not super-minds, they had to make a living."
"Oh," Carmody said, uneasiness crawling down between his shoulder blades. Higgins was talking too much and too plainly.
"Which they did. They've got a private world of their own, adjusted to their mutant needs. A small Utopia. It's underground, in a wilderness country, and I don't think humans can locate it. It's a lovely place. And it also costs a lot to maintain. Thus—WE KILL PEOPLE. The mutants had to find a profitable enterprise which would suit their specialized talents, and that was it.
That was it. It explained the basic amorality of WE KILL PEOPLE's theory and practice, too. The Board of Directors didn't kill fellow humans; they killed members of a lower species. Mankind was playing into the hands of the mutants; no such murderous organization could have flourished among beasts. Beasts did their own killing.
They—
-
Carmody felt a sudden, unexpected sting of pain that instantly dulled and was gone. A roaring grew in his ears. He heard it stutter and die, and he was looking at the copter from fifty feet away, across an expanse of blindingly brilliant white sand. Behind him was a monotonous boom and thunder.
He was sitting up, his back against something—a rough-boled tree.
Higgins was visible through the open door of the copter, his chair swiveled so he faced Carmody.
"You've been unconscious for a few hours," Higgins said, his voice raised slightly. "I used an instantaneous anaesthetic."
Carmody drew his legs under him. There were no after-effects. He felt fine.
"Don't do it," Higgins said. "I can take off in a second, and I want to talk to you first. We thought you were a spy, you know, but
we weren't sure. Not many people ask us for jobs. We tested you."
Carmody reached into a pocket. His gun was gone.
Higgins blinked against the glare. "Your psychology checked. You were the sort of man who'd want to kill Dale because he fired you. But you're also strongly acquisitive. Not miserly, but you want value received. The scene on the Empire Roofport was a frame-up. We maneuvered you—and Dale—into a position where you were both alone up there, and there were no spectators to bring evidence if you'd killed Dale personally. You had the chance. You could have thrown him over the railing, taken the elevator down—it's automatic, you know—and you'd have accomplished your purpose quite safely. And you wouldn't have had to pay us ten thousand dollars. But the idea never occurred to you. We were sure after that."
"What are you going to do to me?" Carmody asked. A muscle was twitching at the corner of his mouth.
"Nothing," Higgins said. "This island is off the air-trade routes. Once in six months a plane visits it, to re-establish boundary lines in the oceanic area. You have slightly more than four months to wait."
"Then I'll be picked up?"
Higgins shook his head. "You'll be buried, that's all. I'm a mutant, too. You have the x-virus in your bloodstream now. We discourage spies, Mr. Carmody." He shrugged and sighed. "I've left you plenty of supplies, so you won't be hungry. We've used this island before, you see. Well, good-by."
"Wait a minute," Carmody said, getting ready. "One more thing. How did you infect me?"
Higgins merely smiled, glanced at his hands—he had donned his gloves again—and swung the seat around. Carmody got a sprinter's start. He plunged for the copter as the engine roared.
He would have made it except for one thing—the downblast. That vertical cyclone knocked him flat. By the time he had scrambled upright, the copter was far out of reach, and heading east. Carmody stood looking after it till it diminished into a speck.
Then he looked at nearer objects. White surf flung its combers over a barrier reef; beyond that, blue sea stretched to meet a cloudless blue sky. Behind him, palmettos and sparse jungle made cool shadows. A stream ran softly out of the forest to meet the sea.
At the foot of the tree where he had wakened was a waterproofed box. Carmody opened it. There was food, plenty of it, and a good variety. He wouldn't starve.
He rolled up his sleeve and examined his arm for the prick of a hypodermic needle, but he found nothing. He remembered the slight sting he had felt in the copter, but that had been merely the anaesthetic. He remembered Higgins' gloves, and grimaced.
The x-virus—symbiotic? It would combine with the strongest bug in his bloodstream, and—
But what bug?
Carmody stood above the box, scowling and staring down. He was checking back, remembering what had killed his parents, his grandparents, his great-grandparents. Had he any hereditary predilection for any particular germ of virus disease?
WE KILL PEOPLE had checked his history; they might know. But Higgins hadn't said. Something at the bottom of the waterproofed box caught his attention, a small metal case. He weighed it in his hand, hesitated, and opened it.
It held sterilizing equipment, a hypodermic syringe with a dozen fine needles, and a supply of morphine. Carmody's lips moved silently. He stood there motionless, the pounding of the surf rising to a crescendo of thunder, the prison of sea and sky clamping down rather horribly.
Morphine. To kill pain.
The End
THE DARK ANGEL
Startling Stories - March 1946
with Henry Kuttner
(as by Henry Kuttner)
Tim Hathaway sensed that his wife was growing different—but it took him a long time to learn just why!
-
JUKE-BOX music roared through the smoky gin-mill. The old man I was looking for sat in a booth far back, staring at nothing, his shaking, veined hands gripping a tiny glass. I recognized him.
He was the one. He could tell me what I wanted to know. After what I had seen tonight, at the Metropolitan—
He was already drunk. His eyes were dull and glazed. As I slid into the booth beside him, I heard him mumbling something, over and over.
"The doll—Joanna, you shouldn't—Joanna—"
He was lost in the dream-world of alcoholism. He saw me, and he didn't see me. I was one of the phantoms of memory that thronged about him.
"Tell me about it," I said.
And even that, from a stranger, couldn't penetrate the mists that fogged his brain. The soul was gone from him. He reacted like a puppet to my words. Once or twice I had to put a few questions to him, but he answered them—and went on—coming back always to Joanna, and the doll.
I was sorry for him. He was already damned. But it was my business to find out the truth about what had happened at the Metropolitan an hour ago.
"A long time ago," he said thickly. "That's when it started. The night we had that big snowfall, when—or even before that? I don't know."
-
He didn't know. Later, after the change had begun to be noticeable, he tried to remember, to dredge from his memory tiny incidents that might have been significant. Yet how was he to tell with any certainty?
Gestures, words, actions that might once have seemed perfectly normal were now, in retrospect, freighted with a subtle flavor of horrible uncertainty. But on the night of the snowstorm he had first begun to wonder.
He was forty then, Joanna thirty-five. They had begun to consider settling down to a comfortable middle age, and there was no reason why they shouldn't. Tim Hathaway had risen, in twenty years, from a junior clerk in an advertising firm to general manager, with a good salary and no worries worth mentioning.
They had an apartment in Manhattan, and a bad-tempered little Pekingese named Tzu-Ling. There were no children. Both Tim and Joanna would have welcomed a couple of kids, but it just hadn't turned out that way.
A nice-looking pair, the Hathaways—Joanna with her hair still jet-black, her skin smooth and unlined, and a fresh, sparkling vigor about her—Tim a solid, quiet man with a gentle face and streaks of gray at his temples.
They were beginning to be invited to dinners with the conservative set, but every so often they'd have a quiet binge to keep the grass green.
"But not too green," Joanna said, as the big sedan tooled down the Henry Hudson Parkway with flurries of snow racing toward the windshield. "That gin wasn't so hot."
"Cigarette, please, dear," Tim said. "Thanks. Well, I don't know where Sanderson gets his liquor, but I think he must dredge it up out of the East River. My stomach's rumbling."
"Watch that—" She spoke too late. Out of the blurry storm twin headlights rushed at them.
Tim swung the wheel desperately and felt the sick twisting of gravity that meant a bad skid. In a moment the sedan jolted and stopped. Tim cursed quietly and got out.
"Our rear wheels are in the ditch," he told Joanna through the open window. "You'd better get out. Even with our lights on, a car wouldn't be able to see us till it was too late."
He contemplated the prospect of having the sedan smashed into a heap of junk, and it seemed the likeliest possibility. As Joanna's fur-coated figure joined him, he bent, gripped the rear bumper and heaved mightily. But he couldn't budge the car's enormous weight.
Grunting, he let go.
"I'll see if I can gun her out," he said. "Wait out here a minute, Jo, and yell if a car comes."
"Okay."
-
HE PLAYED the clutch and gunned the motor. Then, with catastrophic suddenness, he saw the reflected gleam of headlights approaching.
It was too late to avoid a crash. He jammed his foot on the accelerator, felt the rear wheels skid around without traction—and suddenly, incredibly, the car jumped. There was no other word for it. Someone or something had lifted the sedan and thrust it forward on to the road.
Instinctive reflex made him jockey accelerator and steering-wheel. The other car sped by, missing him by a fraction. White-faced,
Tim eased the sedan to the side of the road and got out.
A dark figure loomed through the snowy gusts.
"Joanna?"
There was a pause.
"Yes, Tim?"
"What happened?"
"I—don't know."
"You didn't try to lift the car!" But he knew that was impossible.
Yet Joanna hesitated.
"No," she said suddenly. "There must have been solid ground under the snow back there."
"Sure," Tim said. He got a flashlight, went back to the ditch, and made a brief examination.
"Yeah," he said, unconvinced.
They were both silent on the way home. Tim had caught a glimpse of Joanna's grease-smeared gloves.
A small thing—yet it was the beginning. For Tim knew quite well that the car had been lifted out of the ditch, and a frail woman of Joanna's build couldn't possibly have managed it.
But their doctor, Farleigh, an endocrinologist, talked to Tim a few weeks later.
"Tell Joanna to come in and see me," he said. "She hasn't been around for quite a while."
"She's healthy enough," Tim said.
Farleigh put his finger-tips together.
"Is she?"
"She's never sick."
"She may be. One of these days."
"There's nothing—"
"I want to keep an eye on her," Farleigh said. "I want to give her another complete check-up—x-rays and everything."
Tim took out a cigarette and lighted it very carefully.
"Okay. Let's have it. What's wrong?"
"I didn't say."
Tim looked at him. Farleigh scowled and took some x-ray plates from his drawer.
"Changes take place," he said. "The glands have a lot to do with it. I'm wondering if I haven't made a mistake."
"How?"
"If I called in a specialist. Joanna is—ah—it may be a form of hyperthyroidism. Her skin, the exoderm, is thickening."
"I hadn't noticed."