Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  A chill shook Mason. The oldster was mad!

  Li Keng sobered. He ran skeletal fingers through his thin hair. “I am alone,” he murmured. “Have the Sleepers forgiven? Did they send you?”

  “We are from another time,” Mason said, striving to pierce the mists about the dulled brain.

  “The Sleepers? Have they forgiven?”

  But Li Keng had lost interest. His low, insane laughter rang out again.

  Apparently the man knew nothing of Nirvor or Greddar Klon, though Mason could not be sure. He touched the Chinese’s shoulder.

  “Is there food here? We are hungry.”

  “Eh? There is fruit in the forest, and good water.”

  “Ask him of the weapon!” Murdach whispered. “Ask him!”

  Mason obeyed. Li Keng peered through rheumy eyes.

  “Ah, yes. The Invincible Power. But it is forbidden . . . forbidden.”

  He turned to go. Mason stepped forward, gripped the oldster’s arm gently. The other tried feebly to disengage it.

  “We mean no harm,” Mason explained. “But we need your help. This Invincible Power—”

  “You are from the Sleepers? They have forgiven?”

  Mason hesitated. Then he said slowly, emphatically, “The Sleepers sent us to you. They have forgiven.”

  Would the ruse work? Would the crazed brain respond?

  Li Keng stared, his lips working nervously. A thin hand plucked at his scant hair.

  “This is true? They will let me enter a globe of refuge?”

  “Yes. But you betrayed them before. They demand that you prove your faith.”

  The Chinese shook his head. “They—they—”

  “You must give them the Invincible Weapon as proof that you will not betray them again.”

  Li Keng did not answer for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Yes. You shall have it. Come.”

  He lifted a hand as Mason beckoned to the others. “They may not come.”

  “Why not?” The other’s voice was suspicious.

  “There are only two suits of protective armor. The radium rays would kill you unless these are worn. We must go down into the radioactive caverns beneath Corinoor . . .” Li Keng paused, and a dull glaze crept over his eyes. Swiftly Mason translated.

  “I don’t dare cross him now. Might set him off his head entirely. You three stay with the ship—guard it till I get back with the weapon.”

  “But Kent!” Alasa’s face was worried. “There may be danger—”

  “Not from Li Keng, at least,” Mason smiled. “I can look out for myself. Even if I were sure there’s danger, I’d have to go. Until we get the weapon, we’re unarmed.”

  “Let him go,” Murdach said quietly. Erech said nothing, but his brown hand tightened on his scimitar-hilt.

  “LET us start, Li Keng,” Mason told the old Chinese, and followed the other along the deserted marble street. Presently Li Keng turned into a half-ruined building, passing between sagging gates of bronze, curiously carved. He halted in the portal.

  “You must wait,” he said. “Only worshippers of Selene and the condemned may enter here. I must tell the goddess my plans.”

  Before Mason could reply he slipped through an inner door and was gone. Whispering an oath, Mason took a stride forward—and halted. He peered through the narrow crack left by the half-closed panel.

  He saw a huge, dim chamber, cryptic with gloom, and towering at the further end a monstrous female statue. Li Keng was moving across the floor, and as Mason watched he dropped to hands and knees, supplicating himself before the idol.

  Well, there was nothing to fear from a goddess of stone or metal. Grinning crookedly, Mason drew back, and caught his breath as he heard a tumult from outside. An angry shout—

  With a leap Mason reached the bronze doors. He peered out. His stomach moved sickeningly at the sight before him.

  Dozens of malformed, half-human figures filled the marble street. They milled uncertainly about the time-ship, and in their midst were two bound, prostrate figures—Alasa and Murdach. Coming toward Mason was—Greddar Klon!

  The Master, moving forward with quick, hurried steps, pointed jaw set, eyes cold and deadly. Behind him came more of the strange creatures, beings more bestial than human, Mason sensed. He remembered the weird science that had changed animals to men, and guessed that the malformed, hairy, brute-faced monsters were products of that eerie experiment. Simultaneously Mason knew what he must do.

  He saw Erech, scimitar red and lifted, running forward. The Sumerian roared a battle-cry. He sprang at the Master, set himself for a stroke that, for all its force, could not penetrate the shielding atomic mesh.

  Mason charged out through the bronze gates. He caught a glimpse of Greddar Klon whirling, involuntarily shrinking under the Sumerian’s blow, lifting a metal tube in a tiny hand.

  Mason’s shoulder hit Erech, sent the giant driving aside. He flung himself on the Sumerian, striving to wrench the scimitar free, reading stark amazement in the other’s pale eyes. Amazement—and anger, red rage that surged through Erech’s veins and gave him strength enough to throw Mason down with ease. But the beast-men by now had surrounded the two.

  Mason felt rough hands seize him. He made no resistance. Quietly he stood up, let the beast-men drag him toward Greddar Klon. Erech was still battling furiously, but without his scimitar he was handicapped. He went down at last, still struggling. His captors trussed him up with thongs.

  The Master’s cold eyes were probing. The shrill voice said, “Is Erech, then, your enemy, Mason?”

  “Yes.” The archeologist was playing for time. He had acted on impulse, knowing instinctively the best plan. But now he needed a chance to scrutinize his cards, to see which ones to play. He said, “Can we talk alone, Greddar Klon?” He nodded toward Erech.

  For a long moment the other did not reply. Then he called a command, and two of the beast-men pulled Mason toward a nearby doorway. The Master followed.

  Inside the building, in a fungus-grown, ill-smelling little room, Greddar Klon sat cross-legged on the floor. He signalled for the beast-men to release their captive.

  “Thanks,” Mason grunted. “There’s a lot to explain. I didn’t know if I’d ever find you.”

  “And now that you have—what?”

  “Well—I still want to hold you to your bargain.”

  The other shrugged narrow shoulders. “Return you to your own time-sector?”

  “Something more, now,” Mason said quietly. “After you left Al Bekr, Erech asked me to help him release Alasa and Murdach. I did. Murdach explained your plans, that you intended to conquer a civilization and rule. My own civilization—isn’t that so?”

  “I, too, shall be frank,” Greddar Klon conceded. “That is true.”

  “THEY wanted to find and kill you. Murdach built another time-ship. I helped him. I pretended to feel as they did. It wasn’t difficult—for I wanted to find you, for reasons of my own. Back in Al Bekr I’d have been satisfied if you had returned me to my own time. But now, knowing what you intend, I want something more. I want a part in your kingdom, Greddar Klon!”

  “I had thought of offering you that,” the Master murmured. “But I did not need your aid.”

  “Are you sure? My world is unfamiliar to you. You will not know where to strike—what countries and cities to attack, what shipping and trade routes to block. I know my own world, and with my help, the information I can give you, you’ll be able to subdue your enemies more swiftly and more easily.”

  “And you want?”

  “Rule. Rule of a nation, under you, of course. I want power—”

  The Master stood up. “I see. You are very clever, Kent Mason—but whether you are speaking the truth I do not know, as yet. You may be in earnest, and you may be trying to trick me. Until I have reached a decision, therefore, you will remain a prisoner—but safe.”

  He gestured. The beast-men seized Mason, pulled him out into the street. He made no resistance. He had planted a
seed in Greddar Klon’s mind, and now there was nothing to do but play a waiting game. He had not dared to bargain for the lives of Alasa and the others—that would have made the Master instantly suspicious.

  His captors led him into another rose-marble building, and down to vaults far below. In a bare stone room he was locked. A torch set in the wall gave light, but how long it would last Mason did not know.

  The shaggy, hulking forms of the beast-men lumbered out of sight. Mason was left alone, captive, his mind haunted with fears for his friends.

  CHAPTER XIII

  COURT OF THE BEASTS

  AFTER a time Mason rose and examined his prison. The walls, though cracked and lichened, were sturdy enough. The barred door was of metal, and too strong to force. Nor were ceiling or floor any more promising. Mason shivered in the chill air, wishing he had something warmer than a loincloth.

  But the torch gave heat as well as light, until it expired. In the darkness it was somehow harder to judge time, though Mason guessed it was nightfall when at last one of the beast-men came with food. He poked it through the bars, a mess of fruits, specked and half-rotten, which Mason found it difficult to swallow. The beast-man brought a new torch, however.

  It could not have been more than half an hour later that Mason saw a glimmer of light approaching. He went to the door, peering between the bars at a stooped, withered figure approaching. He made out a shriveled, Oriental face—Li Keng!

  The Chinese slowly unbarred the door. He beckoned Mason out.

  “We must be silent,” he mumbled in his cracked voice. “Nirvor has returned, and has brought an evil one with her. They seek the Invincible Power, but they do not know its hiding-place. Nor do they know I hold the secret. Come!”

  He shuffled along the corridor, his skinny hand gripping a torch. Mason kept pace with him.

  “The others?” he asked softly. “My friends? Where are they?”

  Li Keng did not hear. His wheezing voice went on, “Nirvor has brought the beast-men from the forest into Corinoor. But she shall not have the weapon. You shall take it to the Sleepers as proof of my faith.”

  Mason felt a pang of pity for the old man. They turned into another underground passage, and another, a veritable labyrinth, until Mason was hopelessly lost. Once he saw a white shadow slipping away in the distance, and remembered Valesta, Nirvor’s leopard. But the beast did not reappear, if it had been Valesta.

  They stopped before a metal door. Li Keng fumbled in a recess in the wall, brought out two clumsy lead-sheathed suits. “We must wear these. The radium rays—”

  Mason donned the garment. It had a transparent hood which covered his head completely. The Chinese, ungainly in the armor, pushed open the door.

  They stood on the brink of a cliff that sloped down into a gray fog of distance. A narrow path ran perilously slanting down, and along this Li Keng started, keeping his balance without difficulty. Mason followed, with an inward tremor as he glanced aside into the dim gulf.

  For perhaps a hundred yards they skirted the cliff, and then rounded a shoulder. Mason paused, blinked blinded eyes. A flame of roaring brilliance blazed up from the gulf before him, and all through his body a curious tingling raced. The deadly radium radiations, he knew.

  The path ran out on a spur of rock, narrow and dangerous, that hung over the abyss. Below it was a cauldron of fire, like the pit of a volcano. But more potent than liquid lava was the fire that burned here, having within the frightful power of radium!

  A sound came from behind them. Mason turned. He cried out, his voice drowned in the roar of the inferno. Stalking along the path toward him was Valesta, the white leopard.

  Behind her—Nirvor, and at her heels the black leopard, Bokya. And dozens of the beast-men, fangs gleaming redly in the flame-light, eyes glowing.

  From Li Keng came a cry so piercing that Mason heard it even above the thunder of the radium pit. The Chinese flung out an arm, gesturing Nirvor back.

  The priestess laughed. Her silver hair floated unbound about her shoulders, half bared by her diaphanous black robe. She took a step forward.

  Li Keng turned. He raced out on the spur. On its end he went on hands and knees, and then sprang erect, gripping a metal box in his gloved hands. Before the watchers could move Li Keng, gripping the box, had leaped out into the abyss!

  A shriek came from Nirvor. Mason had a glimpse of her face, twisted into a despairing Gorgon mask—and then the white leopard was upon him. He went down under the onslaught. Only the width of the path here, at the base of the spur, saved him from toppling over. As it was, he hung for a moment on the brink, the leopard’s weight bearing him down, the snarling beast-mask above his face.

  Rough hands gripped him. The leopard leaped lightly away. Beast-men drew Mason back onto the ledge, lifted him to his feet. He was held motionless, facing the priestess.

  She made a quick gesture, and Mason was forced back along the path. No use to resist, he knew. It would mean destruction, and even though he killed a few of his captors, he would inevitably be thrust into the gulf. So Mason let the beast-men prod him back to the metal door, where they stripped the armor from him.

  Nirvor’s face was white. “I have dared much,” she whispered. “Men do not live long above the radium pit. A little more, and I would have died . . . horribly!” She shuddered, ran white hands along her slender body.

  THE white leopard muzzled her leg, was thrust aside by the black one. The priestess said, “I thought Li Keng had the secret, and so I watched him. But he has destroyed the Invincible Power, and himself with it. He is beyond my reach. But you—you are not, Kent Mason!” A red blaze was in her jet eyes.

  “We hold court tonight,” she murmured. “Your three friends will die then. And you will die with them.”

  She gestured. The beast-man thrust Mason forward. Silently he let himself be taken back along the interminable corridors, back to his cell. But Nirvor did not pause there. Up and up they went, till at last they emerged in the streets of Corinoor.

  “In here,” the priestess commanded.

  Mason recognized the building—the same one into which Li Keng had led him earlier that day. In the moonlight its ruin was not evident; it seemed a veritable palace of enchantment, a symphony in marble.

  Through the bronze gates they went, through the inner door. The huge chamber was no longer dim. It was ablaze with torches, swarming with the beastmen. At the further end was a gigantic statue of a nude female form, moon-crowned.

  Nirvor made a gesture toward the image. “It is Selene,” she said. “Goddess of Corinoor—Corinoor that is soon to rise again in its former splendor!”

  The priestess paused before a panel in the wall. It opened at her touch, and she pointed within.

  “Go there, Kent Mason. Quickly!”

  He obeyed, finding himself in a dusky, luxuriously furnished little room, ornate with tapestries and cushions. A small image of Selene stood in an alcove in the wall. The air was curiously dark, heavily scented with perfumes that rose headily to Mason’s brain. He turned.

  Nirvor stood alone before the closed door. Her black eyes dwelt on him cryptically.

  “I have told you you must die,” she said.

  “I heard you,” Mason grunted. “So what?”

  “I—I have hated you. I have reason to do so. My kingdom, my goddess, my city of Corinoor—these I worship. For them I would destroy you utterly. Yet—” The jet eyes were strange, strange! “Yet you remember something I told you long ago in Al Bekr. I am woman . . .”

  She made a hopeless gesture. “Now my heart is sick within me. For I know you should die, I know you hate me—”

  The priestess dropped to the floor, her silver hair unbound veiling her face. “Ohé, ohé!” she sobbed. “In all my life I have known no man like you. There were the scientists, like Li Keng—and the barbarians of Al Bekr—and Greddar Klon. And the beast-men. I am woman, Kent Mason! I long for something I have never known . . . and that is love.”

  Mason
did not reply. The honey-musk perfume was very strong. He felt oddly detached from his body, slightly drunk. He did not move when Nirvor arose and came toward him. She drew him down into the cushions.

  Cool hands were against his cheeks; a flame-hot mouth avid on his own. And the strange eyes were close . . .

  Once more Mason read a message in them—a—message of alienage! He drew back.

  “You fear my eyes,” Nirvor whispered. “But you do not fear my body . . .”

  She stood up, her gaze hidden by long lashes. She fumbled at the fastenings of her black robe, let it fall in a lacy heap about her ankles. Mason caught his breath at sight of the priestess’ voluptuous body. His throat was suddenly dry and parched.

  Nirvor sank down again, her eyes closed. Her hands touched Mason’s face, guided his lips to her own.

  Something clicked in Mason’s mind, like a blind springing up abruptly, letting light into a foul and darkened room. Immediately the dulling soporific spell of the perfumed incense was gone. For now Mason knew—

  His stomach seemed to move sickeningly. He thrust the girl away. Her eyes glared into his.

  Hoarsely Mason whispered, “I should have guessed the truth! What you and Li Keng and Murdach told me—”

  Nirvor’s lips were a scarlet wound in the pallor of her face. She shrilled, “You dare look at me like that! You dare—!”

  “No. You don’t like me to look at you now that I know. The scientists and their experiments—changing beasts into human beings—God!” Mason was shuddering as he remembered the passion the girl’s body had aroused in him. He went on softly, unsteadily, “You are the outcome of such an experiment, Nirvor! You’re not human. You were a beast!”

  The priestess sprang up, bosom heaving, fingers clawed. “Aye! And what of that? They made me into a woman—”

  Mason’s face betrayed his horror. He whispered scarcely audibly, “What were you?”

  Nirvor was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Bokya and Valesta—”

  “The leopards?”

  “They are my sisters!”