Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “It’s a . . . halo,” he said at last, and turned to stare at Jill.

  THE Scotty, Filthy McNasty, noticed the luminous adornment for the first time. He was greatly interested. He did not, of course, know what it was, but there was always a chance that it might be edible. He was not a very bright dog.

  Filthy sat up and whined. He was ignored. Barking loudly, he sprang forward and attempted to climb up his master’s body in a mad attempt to reach and rend the halo. Since it had made no hostile move, it was evidently fair prey.

  Young defended himself, clutched the Scotty by the nape of its neck, and carried the yelping dog into another room, where he left it. Then he returned and once more looked at Jill.

  At length she observed, “Angels wear halos.”

  “Do I look like an angel?” Young asked. “It’s a . . . a scientific manifestation. Like . . . like that girl whose bed kept bouncing around. You read about that.”

  Till had. “She did it with her muscles.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Young said definitely. “How could I? It’s scientific. Lots of things shine by themselves.”

  “Oh, yes. Toadstools.”

  The man winced and rubbed his head. “Thank you, my dear. I suppose you know you’re being no help at all.”

  “Angels have halos,” Jill said with a sort of dreadful insistence.

  Young was at the mirror again. “Darling, would you mind keeping your trap shut for a while? I’m scared as hell, and you’re far from encouraging.”

  Jill burst into tears, left the room, and was presently heard talking in a low voice to Filthy.

  Young finished his coffee, but it was tasteless. He was not as frightened as he had indicated. The manifestation was strange, weird, but in no way terrible. Horns, perhaps, would have caused horror and consternation. But a halo—Mr. Young read the Sunday newspaper supplements, and had learned that everything odd could be attributed to the bizarre workings of science. Somewhere he had heard that all mythology had a basis in scientific fact. This comforted him, until he was ready to leave for the office.

  He donned a derby. Unfortunately the halo was too large. The hat seemed to have two brims, the upper one whitely luminous.

  “Damn!” said Young in a heartfelt manner. He searched the closet and tried on one hat after another. None would hide the halo. Certainly he could not enter a crowded bus in such a state.

  A large furry object in a corner caught his gaze. He dragged it out and eyed the thing with loathing. It was a deformed, gigantic woolly head-piece, resembling a shako, which had once formed part of a masquerade costume. The suit itself had long since vanished, but the hat remained, to the comfort of Filthy, who sometimes slept on it.

  Yet it would hide the halo. Gingerly Young drew the monstrosity on his head and crept toward the mirror. One glance was enough. Mouthing a brief prayer, he opened the door and fled.

  CHOOSING between two evils is often difficult. More than once during that nightmare ride downtown Young decided he had made the wrong choice. Yet, somehow, he could not bring himself to tear off the hat and stamp it underfoot, though he was longing to do so. Huddled in a corner of the bus, he steadily contemplated his fingernails and wished he was dead. He heard titters and muffled laughter, and was conscious of probing glances riveted on his shrinking head.

  A small child tore open the scar tissue on Young’s heart and scrabbled about in the open wound with rosy, ruthless fingers.

  “Mamma,” said the small child piercingly, “look at the funny man.”

  “Yes, honey,” came a woman’s voice. “Be quiet.”

  “What’s that on big head?” the brat demanded.

  There was a significant pause. Finally the woman said, “Well, I don’t really know.” in a baffled manner.

  “What’s he got it on for?”

  No answer.

  “Mamma!”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Is he crazy?”

  “Be quiet,” said the woman, dodging the issue.

  “But what is it?”

  Young could stand it no longer. He arose and made his way with dignity through the bus, his glazed eyes seeing nothing. Standing on the outer platform, he kept his face averted from the fascinated gaze of the conductor.

  As the vehicle slowed down Young felt a hand laid on his arm. He turned. The small child’s mother was standing there, frowning:

  “Well?” Young inquired snappishly.

  “It’s Billy,” the woman said. “I try to keep nothing from him. Would you mind telling me just what that is on your head?”

  “It’s Rasputin’s beard,” Young grated. “He willed it to me.” The man leaped from the bus and, ignoring a half-heard question from the still-puzzled woman, tried to lose himself in the crowd.

  This was difficult. Many were intrigued by the remarkable hat. But, luckily, Young was only a few blocks from his office, and at last, breathing hoarsely, he stepped into the elevator, glared murderously at the operator, and said, “Ninth floor.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Young,” the boy said mildly. “There’s something on your head.”

  “I know,” Young replied. “I put it there.”

  This seemed to settle the question. But after the passenger had left the elevator, the boy. grinned widely. When he saw the janitor a few minutes later he said:

  “You know Mr. Young? The guy—”

  “I know him. So what?”

  “Drunk as a lord.”

  “Him? You’re screwy.”

  “Tighter’n a drum,” declared the youth, “swelp me Gawd.”

  MEANWHILE, the sainted Mr. Young made his way to the office of Dr. French, a physician whom he knew slightly, and who was conveniently located in the same building. He had not long to wait. The nurse, after one startled glance at the remarkable bat, vanished, and almost immediately reappeared to usher the patient into the inner sanctum.

  Dr. French, a large, bland man with a waxed, yellow mustache, greeted Young almost effusively.

  “Come in, come in. How are you today? Nothing wrong, I hope. Let me take your hat.”

  “Wait,” Young said, fending off the physician. “First let me explain. There’s something on my head.”

  “Cut, bruise or fracture?” the literalminded doctor inquired. “I’ll fix you up in a jiffy.”

  “I’m not sick,” said Young. “At least, I hope not. I’ve got a . . . urn . . . a halo.”

  “Ha, ha,” Dr. French applauded. “A halo, eh? Surely you’re not that good.”

  “Oh, the hell with it!” Young snapped, and snatched off his hat. The doctor retreated a step. Then, interested, he approached and tried to finger the halo. He failed.

  “I’ll be—This is odd,” he said at last. “Does look rather like one, doesn’t it?”

  “What is it? That’s what I want to know.”

  French hesitated. He plucked at his mustache. “Well, it’s rather out of my line. A physicist might—No. Perhaps Mayo’s. Does it come off?”

  “Of course not. You can’t even touch the thing.”

  “Ah. I see. Well, I should like some specialists’ opinions. In the meantime. let me see—There was orderly tumult. Young’s heart, temperature, blood, saliva and epidermis were tested and approved!

  At length French said: “You’re fit as a fiddle. Come in tomorrow, at ten. I’ll have some other specialists here then.”

  “You . . . uh . . . you can’t get rid of this?”

  “I’d rather not try just yet. It’s obviously some form of radioactivity. A radium treatment may be necessary—”

  Young left the man mumbling about alpha and gamma rays. Discouraged, he donned his strange hat and went down the hall to his own office.

  The Atlas Advertising Agency was the most conservative of all advertising agencies. Two brothers with white whiskers had started the firm in 1820, and the company still seemed to wear dignified mental whiskers. Changes were frowned upon by the board of directors, who, in 1938, were finally convinced that radi
o had come to stay, and had accepted contracts for advertising broadcasts.

  Once a junior vice president had been discharged for wearing a red necktie.

  Young slunk into his office. It was vacant. He slid into his chair behind the desk, removed his hat. and gazed at it with loathing. The headpiece seemed to have grown even more horrid than it had appeared at first. It was shedding, and, moreover, gave off a faint but unmistakable aroma of unbathed Scotties.

  After investigating the halo, and realizing that it was still firmly fixed in its place. Young turned to his work. But the Norns were casting baleful glances in his direction, for presently the door opened, and Edwin G. Kipp, president of Atlas, entered. Young barely had time to duck his head beneath the desk and hide the halo.

  KIPP was a small, dapper, and dignified man who wore pince-nez and Vandyke with, the air. of a reserved fish. His blood had long since been metamorphosed into ammonia. He moved, if not in beauty, at least in an almost visible auda of grim conservatism.

  “Good morning, Mr. Young,” he said. “Er . . . is that you?”

  “Yes,” said the. invisible Young. “Good morning. I’m tying my shoelace.”

  To this Kipp made no reply save for an almost inaudible cough. Time passed. The desk was silent.

  “Er . . . Mr. Young?”

  “I’m . . . still here,” said the wretched Young. “It’s knotted. The shoelace, I mean. Did you want me?”

  “Yes.”

  Kipp waited with gradually increasing impatience. There were no signs of a forthcoming emergence. The president considered the advisability of his advancing to the desk and peering under it. But the mental picture of a conversation conducted in so grotesque a manner was harrowing. He simply gave up and told Young what he wanted.

  “Mr. Devlin has just telephoned,” Kipp observed. “He will arrive shortly. He wishes to . . . er . . . to be shown the town, as he put it.”

  The invisible Young nodded. Devlin was one of their best clients. Or rather, he had been until last year, when he suddenly began to do business with another firm, to the discomfiture of Kipp and the board of directors.

  The president went on. “He told me he is hesitating about his new contract. He had planned to give it to World, but I had some correspondence with him on the matter, and suggested that a personal discussion might be of value.

  So he is visiting our city, and wishes to go . . . er . . . sightseeing.”

  Kipp grew confidential. “I may say that Mr. Devlin told me rather definitely that he prefers a less conservative firm. ‘Stodgy’ his term was. He will dine with me tonight, and I shall endeavor to convince him that our service will be of value. Yet”—Kipp coughed again—“yet diplomacy is, of course, important. I should appreciate your entertaining Mr. Devlin today.”

  The desk had remained silent during this oration. Now it said convulsively: “I’m sick. I can’t—”

  “You are ill? Shall I summon a physician?”

  Young hastily refused the offer, but remained in hiding. “No, I . . . but I mean—”

  “You are behaving most strangely,” Kipp said with commendable restraint. “There is something you should know, Mr. Young. I had not intended to tell you as yet, but . . . at any rate, the board has taken notice of you. There was a discussion at the last meeting. We have planned to offer you a vice presidency in the firm.”

  The desk was stricken dumb.

  “You have upheld our standards for fifteen years.” said Kipp. “There has been no hint of scandal attached to your name. I congratulate you, Mr. Young.” The president stepped forward, extending his hand. An arm emerged from beneath the desk, shook Kipp’s, and quickly vanished.

  Nothing further happened. Young tenaciously remained in his sanctuary. Kipp realized that, short of dragging the man out bodily, he could not hope to view an entire Kenneth Young for the present. With an admonitory cough he withdrew.

  The miserable Young emerged, wincing as his cramped muscles relaxed. A pretty kettle of fish. How could he entertain Devlin while he wore a halo? And it was vitally necessary that Devlin be entertained, else the elusive vice presidency would be immediately withdrawn. Young knew only too well that employees of Atlas Advertising Agency trod a perilous pathway.

  His reverie was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an angel atop the bookcase.

  It was not a high bookcase, and the supernatural visitor sat there calmly enough, heels dangling and wings furled. A scanty robe of white samite made up the angel’s wardrobe—that and a shining halo, at sight of which Young felt a wave of nausea sweep him.

  “This,” he said with rigid restraint, “is the end. A halo may be due to mass hypnotism. But when I start seeing angels—”

  “Don’t be afraid,” said the other. “I’m real enough.”

  Young’s eyes were wild. “How do I know? I’m obviously talking to empty air: It’s schizo-something. Go away.”

  The angel wriggled his toes and looked embarrassed. “I can’t, just yet. The fact is, I made a bad mistake. You may have noticed that you’ve a slight halo—”

  Young gave a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, yes. I’ve noticed it.”

  Before the angel could reply the door opened. Kipp looked in, saw that Young was engaged, and murmured, “Excuse.me,” as he withdrew.

  The angel scratched his golden curls. “Well, your halo was intended for somebody else—a Tibetan lama, in fact. But through a certain chain of circumstances I was led to believe that you were the candidate for sainthood. So—” The visitor made a comprehensive gesture.

  Young was baffled. “I don’t quite—”

  “The lama . . . well, sinned. No sinner may wear a halo. And, as I say, I gave it to you through error.”

  “Then you can take it away again?” Amazed delight suffused Young’s face. But the angel raised a benevolent hand.

  “Fear not. . . I have checked with the recording angel. You have led a blameless life. As a reward, you will be permitted to keep the halo of sainthood.” The horrified man sprang to his feet, making feeble swimming motions with his arms. “But . . . but . . . but—”

  “Peace and blessings be upon you,” said the angel, and vanished.

  YOUNG fell back into his chair and massaged his aching brow. Simultaneously the door opened and Kipp stood on the threshold. Luckily Young’s hands temporarily hid the halo.

  “Mr. Devlin is here,” the president said. “Er . . . who was that on the bookcase?”

  Young was too crushed to lie plausibly. He muttered, “An angel.”

  Kipp nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, of course . . . What? You say an angel . . . an angel? Oh, my gosh!” The man turned quite white and hastily took his departure.

  Young contemplated his hat. The thing still lay on the desk, wincing slightly under the baleful stare directed at it. To go through life wearing a halo was only less endurable than the thought of continually wearing the loathsome hat. Young brought his fist down viciously on the desk.

  “I won’t stand it! I . . . I don’t have to—” He stopped abruptly. A dazed look grew in his eyes.

  “I’ll be . . . that’s right! I don’t have to stand it. If that lama got out of it . . . of course. ‘No sinner may wear a halo.’ ” Young’s round face twisted into a mask of sheer evil. “I’ll be a sinner, then! I’ll break all the Commandments—”

  He pondered. At the moment he couldn’t remember what they were. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” That was one.

  Young thought of his neighbor’s wife—a certain Mrs. Clay, a behemothic damsel of some fifty summers, with a face like a desiccated pudding. That was one Commandment he had no intention of breaking.

  But probably one good, healthy sin would bring back the angel in a hurry to remove the halo. What crimes would result in the least inconvenience? Young furrowed his brow.

  Nothing occurred to him. He decided to go for a walk. No doubt some sinful opportunity would present itself.

  He forced himself to don the shako and ha
d reached the elevator when a hoarse voice vcas heard hallooing after him. Racing along the hall was a fat man.

  Young knew instinctively that this was Mr. Devlin.

  The adjective “fat,” as applied to Devlin, was a considerable understatement. The man bulged. His feet, strangled in biliously yellow shoes, burst out at the ankles like blossoming flowers. They merged into calves that seemed to gather momentum as they spread and mounted, flung themselves up with mad abandon, and revealed themselves in their complete, unrestrained glory at Devlin’s middle. The man resembled, in silhouette, a pineapple with elephantiasis. A great mass of flesh poured out of his collar, forming a pale, sagging lump in which Young discerned some vague resemblance to a face.

  Such was Devlin, and he charged along the hall, as mammoths thunder by, with earth-shaking tramplings of his crashing hoofs.

  “You’re Young!” he wheezed. “Almost missed me, eh? I was waiting in the office—” Devlin paused, his fascinated gaze upon the hat. Then, with an effort at politeness, he laughed falsely and glanced away. “Well, I’m all ready and raring to go.”

  Young felt himself impaled painfully on the horns of a dilemma. Failure to entertain Devlin would mean the loss of that vice presidency. But the halo weighed like a flatiron on Young’s throbbing head. One thought was foremost in his mind: he had to get rid of the blessed thing.

  Once he had done that, he would trust to luck and diplomacy. Obviously, to take out his guest now would be fatal, insanity. The hat alone would be fatal.

  “Sorry.” Young grunted. “Got an important engagement. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”

  Wheezing laughter, Devlin attached himself firmly to the other’s arm. “No, you don’t. You’re showing me the town! Right now!” An unmistakable alcoholic odor was wafted to Young’s nostrils. He thought quickly.

  “All right,” he said at last. “Come along. There’s a bar downstairs. We’ll have a drink, eh?”

  “Now you’re talking,” said the jovial Devlin, almost incapacitating Young with a comradely slap on the back. “Here’s the elevator.”