Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Jirel had been watching with mingling emotions as the stars began to swirl into flames about her tall enemy. Triumph was foremost among them, as resentment and fury were foremost among her thoughts just then. But somehow, she who had looked hardily on torture many times before now felt a queer, hot weakness rising in her as the stars became brushing flames and she saw the sweat beading Smith’s forehead and his fists clench against the rock.

  Then Franga’s hateful voice demanded that he rob her by violence of her jewel, and she had tensed herself involuntarily to the struggle before she heard Smith’s tortured but resolute “No.” She stared at him then half in amazement, her mind whirling with wonder at his motives. And a small, reluctant admiration was coloring her resentment of him as she watched. Jirel was a connoisseur of torture, and she could not remember a man who had endured it more resolutely than Smith. Nor was there a sound from Yarol, half hidden in the starry mist above them, though the small flames streaked the dimness even there.

  Then she saw the tenseness melting from Smith’s racked body as his long legs buckled at the knees, saw him collapse against the mountainside, swinging by his wrists from the shackles. And a sudden fury of sympathy and hot emotion rushed over her, a sudden gust of pain in his pain. Without realizing how it had happened she found herself beating with clenched fists against the barrier that parted her from Franga, heard her own voice crying,

  “Stop it! Stop! Let him go free—I give you the Starstone!”

  In the deeps of his pain-flaming oblivion Smith heard that high, passionate cry. The significance of it jolted him back into the memory that a world existed outside the burning circle of his agony, and with infinite effort he lifted his sagging head, found a footing on the rocky slope once more, struggled back into consciousness and flaming anguish. He called in a voice as hoarse as if it had screamed itself raw.

  “Jirel! Jirel, you fool, don’t do it! He’ll kill us all! Jirel!”

  If she heard him she did not heed. She was wrenching with both hands at the doeskin tunic buckled at her throat, and Franga, the barrier dissolving, leaned eagerly forward with clawed hands outstretched.

  “Don’t—Jirel, don’t!” yelled Smith despairingly through the dazzle of the flames as the leather parted and suddenly, blindingly, the Starstone flamed in her hands.

  Even his own hot pain was blotted for a moment from Smith’s mind as he stared. Franga bent forward, breath sucked in, eyes riveted upon the great pale glory of the jewel. There was utter silence in that strange, dim place as the Starstone blazed through the dusk, its cold, still pallor burning in Jirel’s fingers like a block of frozen flame. Looking down, she saw again her own fingers distorted through its translucency, saw again that queer, moving flicker as if a shadow stirred in the deeps of the stone.

  For a moment it seemed to her as if these smooth, cool surfaces against her hands enclosed a space as vast as the heavens. In a moment of sudden vertigo she might have been staring deep into an infinity through whose silences moved a something that filled it from edge to edge. Was it a world she held here, as vast in its own dimensions as space itself, even though her narrow hands cradled it between them? And was there not a Dweller in that vast, glowing place—a moving shadow that——

  “Jirel!” Smith’s pain-hoarse voice startled her out of her dreaming daze. She lifted her head and moved toward him, half visible in the swirl of his torture, holding the jewel like a lamp in her hands. “Don’t—don’t do it!” begged Smith, gripping hard at his ebbing consciousness as the flames stabbed through him.

  “Free him!” she commanded Franga, feeling her own throat constrict inexplicably as she saw the pain etched upon Smith’s scarred face.

  “You surrender the stone willingly?”

  The warlock’s eyes were ravenous upon her hands.

  “Yes—yes, only free him!”

  SMITH choked on his own desperation as he saw her holding out the jewel. At any cost he knew he must keep it from Franga’s clutches, and to his pain-dazed brain there seemed only one way for that. How it would help he did not stop to think, but he put all his weight on his prisoned wrists, swinging his long body through the burning stars in an arc as he kicked the jewel from Jirel’s outstretched hands.

  She gasped; Franga screamed in a thin, high note that quivered with terror as the Starstone was dashed from her hands against the jagged rock of the mountainside. There was a cracking sound that tinkled like broken glass, and then——

  And then a pale, bright glory rolled up in their faces as if the light that dwelt in the jewel were pouring out of its shattered prison. The winking stars were swallowed up in its splendor, the dim air glowed and brightened, the whole mountainside was bathed in the calm, still glory that a moment before had blazed in the Starstone’s deeps.

  Franga was muttering frantically, twisting his hands in spells that accomplished nothing, gabbling in a cracked voice incantations that evoked no magic. It was as if all his power had melted with the melting stars, the vanished dimness, and he stood unprotected in the full glow of this alien light.

  Smith was scarcely heeding it. For as the great pale glory billowed up about him the flashing torment of the stars vanished as their flames vanished, and the utter bliss of peace after pain left him so weak with relief that as the shackles dissolved about his wrists he could only reel back against the rock while waves of near-oblivion washed over him.

  A rattling and scuffling sounded above him, and Yarol’s small form slid to the ground at his feet in the complete relaxation of unconsciousness. There was a silence while Smith breathed deeply and slowly, gathering strength again, while Yarol stirred in the beginnings of awakening and Franga and Jirel stared about them in the broadening light from the Starstone.

  Then down about them swept a thing that can be called only a shadow of light—a deeper brilliance in the glory of the pale day about them. Smith found himself staring directly into its blazing heart, unblinded, although he could make out no more than the shadowy outlines of a being that hung above them, inhuman, utterly alien—but not terrible, not menacing. A presence as tangible as flame—and as intangible.

  And somehow he sensed a cool and impersonal regard, an aloof, probing gaze that seemed to search the depths of his mind and soul. He strained his eyes, staring into the heart of the white blaze, trying to make out the nature of the being that regarded him. It was like the graceful whorl of a nautilus—and yet he sensed that his eyes could not fully comprehend the unearthly curves and spirals that followed a fantastic, non-Euclidean system of some alien geometry. But the beauty of the thing he could recognize, and there was a deep awe within him, and a feeling of fathomless delight in the wonder and beauty of the being he gazed on.

  Franga was screaming thinly and hoarsely, falling to his knees to hide his eyes from the deep splendor. The air quivered, the shadow of brilliance quivered, and a thought without words quivered too through the minds of the three at the mountain’s foot.

  “For this release We are grateful,” said a voiceless voice as deep and still and somehow flaming as the light that made it manifest. “We Whom strong magic prisoned in the Starstone ages ago would grant one last favor before We return to Our own place again. Ask it of Us.”

  “Oh, return us home again!” gasped Jirel before Smith could speak. “Take us out of this terrible place and send us home!”

  Abruptly, almost instantaneously, the shadow of light enveloped them, swept blindingly about them all. The mountain dropped away underfoot, the glory-bright air swept sidewise into nothingness. It was as if the walls of space and time opened up all around them.

  Smith heard Franga’s shriek of utter despair—saw Jirel’s face whirled by him with a sudden, desperate message blazing in her yellow eyes, the red hair streaming like a banner in the wind—and then that dazzle all about him was the dulled gleam of steel walls, and a cold steel surface was smooth against his cheek.

  He lifted his head heavily and stared in silence into Yard’s eyes across the tab
le in the little Martian drinking-booth he had left an eon ago. In silence the Venusian returned that long stare.

  Then Yard leaned back in his chair and called, “Marnak! Liquor—quick!” and swung round and began to laugh softly, crazily.

  Smith groped for the glass of segir- whisky he had pushed away when he rose from this table, ages past. He threw back his head and tossed the liquid down his throat with a quick, stiff-wristed gesture, closing his eyes as the familiar warmth burned through him. Behind the closed lids flashed the remembrance of a keen, pale face whose eyes blazed with some sudden violence of emotion, some message he would never know—whose red streaming hair was a banner on the wind. The face of a girl dead two thousand years in time, light-years of space away, whose very dust was long lost upon the bright winds of earth.

  Smith shrugged and drained his glass.

  THE CASE OF HERBERT THORP

  A brief tale about an editor who was altogether too skeptical

  MR. HERBERT THORP, editor of Fantastic Stories, leaned over his desk and rapped sharply upon the manuscript before him. “I’d like to take it,” he said, “I’m damn sorry I can’t take it. But, good Lord, Beckett, see for yourself! It’s unconvincing!”

  Neil Beckett was a fat, dark little man with piercing black eyes and a somewhat cryptic smile. He met the editor’s gaze squarely.

  “Why should it seem unconvincing? Granted the premise that the supernatural exists, anything which transcends ordinary life is plausible.”

  Thorp shook his head, grinning. He took off his spectacles and polished them. “No,” he said, “I’ve bought some of your yarns, but I won’t buy this one. Talk as much as you want, you’ll never convince me of the story’s plausibility.”

  “Just what do you object to in it?” Thorp ruffled the pages of the script. “The whole thing. It’s just too farfetched. You’ve got an ordinary business man incurring the enmity of some occultist, or magician—you’re not even clear on that point—and getting cursed. Then what happens? A magic door opens in the guy’s office, some ghouls drag him through, and initiate him into their club, since apparently the magician’s curse turned him into one of ’em.”

  Beckett looked like a fat little Buddha as he nodded. Before he could speak Thorp went on.

  “Then what? The ghouls want something to eat, so they send their new recruit back into his office to get a victim. He finds his brother there, stuns him with a paperweight, and drags him through the magic door to the ghouls. That door sticks in my craw, Beckett. You can have ’em in Zothique and Joiry, but not in Chicago. It just doesn’t ring true.”

  Neil Beckett’s face was changing. Curiously, it was assuming lines of grim resolution, incongruous in the plump, round countenance of the man. Fleetingly Thorp wondered what Beckett’s nationality was. He had wondered before, but knew next to nothing about the writer. One day Beckett had submitted a story, which Thorp had bought—and then, after a few months, they had met. But Beckett never talked about himself.

  Now he said, “So it doesn’t ring true, eh? You’ve rejected my stories before because they were—unconvincing.”

  “Yeah,” Thorp assented. Absently his hand went out to the little stack of printed rejection slips on his desk, and, taking up one of the paper squares, he folded it and slid it under the paper clip on Beckett’s manuscript. “What does your protagonist do after he gets his brother in this ghoul-chamber? He watches while his playmates tear the poor fellow apart, and then joins them in their meal. Do you suppose for a moment.

  “That’s implausible, too, eh?” Beckett’s face still wore that odd, unpleasant smile.

  “Surely. And what follows is almost bathos. Your hero is served with an arm and hand, and what does he do but slip a ring from his brother’s finger and put it on his own. Why? Why? Obviously so when he woke up in his office he’d find the ring in his finger, and die of heart-failure. Bah!” said Thorp genially. “Implausible as the very devil.”

  “It couldn’t happen, eh?” Beckett inquired, opening his eyes very wide.

  Thorp, about to reply, suddenly realized that he had said nothing. He was looking at Beckett’s black, shining eyes, like little bits of jet . . . shallow, and yet hypnotically brilliant . . . and they seemed to be growing larger and larger . . .

  WITH a start Mr. Thorp came to himself. He leaped to his feet, staring across the desk. Beckett was no longer there.

  “Odd,” said Thorp to himself. “I must have dozed. Rude of me. I’ll apologize to Beckett next time I see him. I wonder if—oh, yes. He took his yarn with him.”

  Thorp sat down again, chuckling to himself at the implausibility of Beckett’s tale. He reached for a manuscript from the pile before him, skimmed through it briefly, and fumbled for a rejection slip. Then:

  He realized abruptly that he was very tired, strangely sleepy. It was almost impossible for him to keep awake. After twice catching himself nodding, he pressed the buzzer for his secretary. Presently a blond, bespectacled girl entered.

  “Miss Doyle,” Thorp said, “I don’t want to be interrupted for an hour. I’ll be very busy.”

  Miss Doyle nodded and retreated. Thorp put his feet on the desk, clasped his hands on his stomach, and dozed. His slumber merged into a deeper sleep . . . He dreamed.

  Very slowly the chair on which he sat was revolving. His feet, instead of falling to the floor, drifted downward gently, hitting the carpet with a slight thump. He faced the wall which had previously been behind him.

  But the wall was no longer there. What an odd dream, Thorp thought. Gray fog surged within a rectangular space where the wall had once existed . . . and through the grayness a figure came striding.

  Thorp’s analytical mind was busy, even in a dream. “If I weren’t asleep,” he told himself, “I’d probably run like hell at sight of that horror. As it is, I’m not even frightened.”

  No—the grinning skull-face, hideously veiled by rags and tatters of granulated skin, swimming into view from fog-shrouded emptiness—that did not arouse any emotion of fear in Thorp’s bosom. The thing came forward with great strides, its skeleton-thin limbs grotesquely incongruous with the bloated, blue-veined, hanging belly, and its talon-like hand gripped Thorp’s. It was very cold, very hard, bruising Thorp’s flesh.

  The creature tugged him to his feet. Thorp seemed to float rather than walk across the room. Odd, inconsequential thoughts flickered across his mind: “Strange how unimportant gravitation is in a dream . . . too many eggs for breakfast. Or could it have been the bacon?”

  They were engulfed briefly in the grayness; Thorp felt cold stone beneath his feet, and they emerged into a low-vaulted, eery chamber. Its granite walls were covered with niter, and moss grew thickly on the floor. There was a long table of stone running the length of the room, and around it sat, on low stone benches, creatures which were in every way replicas of Thorp’s guide. Bulbous, whitish eyes glared at Thorp; skeleton-thin hands were raised in grim salute. There must have been nearly a dozen of the monsters.

  In a harsh, creaking voice, like the groaning tocsin of a Cyclopean bell, one of the things spoke. Although the words were so distorted as to be almost unrecognizable, Thorp managed to make out their portent. He was being welcomed. The creatures nodded and grinned at him with their bald, scabrous heads. He was one of them, the spokesman declared. One test only awaited. Food must be supplied—an entrance fee to the brotherhood . . .

  Things got a little hazy just then, for a familiar voice kept piercing through the harsh gutturals of the skull-faced monster, and dimly Thorp was conscious of being seized and pushed back through the foggy grayness . . . and he stood in his own office, looking dully at a man’s back.

  The man turned, and Thorp saw that it was his brother, Peter. Peter’s boyish face looked startled for a moment, and then he smiled.

  “Hello, Herb,” he said. “Where were you hiding? I didn’t see you come in.” Thorp walked to his desk. There was a sharp, throbbing pain in his skull. His thoughts kept getting confuse
d. He grunted, “No. What d’you want?”

  “I want to extend an invitation to lunch with me,” Peter said grandiosely. “Your secretary said you were busy, and didn’t want to let me in——”

  Thorp wasn’t listening. One word Peter had said brought the gray mists swirling up into his mind, smothering his consciousness. Lunch. Food. One test only awaited. Food must be supplied . . .

  It was quite easy—in fact, a cliche. Thorp said, “Look!” and pointed to the window. As Peter turned to stare, Thorp snatched up a heavy metal paperweight from the desk and struck. Without a sound Peter crumpled to the floor.

  Thorp seized him under the armpits and began to drag him toward the wall.

  He cast no glance behind him, but presently the gray mists shrouded his body and Peter’s—and then other hands were helping him. Cackling, obscene laughter rang in his ears, and grinning skull-masks were thrust into his own.

  Peter’s limp body was lifted to the stone table. The monsters bent above him in a huddle, so that Thorp could not see what they were doing. An outburst of charnel laughter culminated in a ghastly shriek. Then silence, save for an indescribable soft sound.

  Again things got hazy. Thorp was conscious of being seated at the stone table—of something warm and wet and frightful being thrust at him. He gripped it involuntarily. It was a human hand and arm. On the index finger he saw a ring that he recognized—a diamond set in a square of black jet. Peter’s wife had given her husband that ring last Christmas.

  On what impulse he acted Thorp did not understand, but suddenly he slipped the ring from the still-warm finger and tried to put it on his own. It stuck; it was too small. He finally had to slide it on the little finger, where it fitted perfectly.