Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Mayhem thrust a wad of greenbacks into Pete’s hand and led the slightly hypnotized man to a seat that resembled an electric chair, what with wires and gadgets strewn all over it. “Sit down,” the professor said silkily. “That’s it. Now—” He turned to make adjustments on a switchboard.

  “But I ain’t sure—” Pete was counting the money.

  “Time has no objective reality,” said Mayhem, flipping a control lever. “We may consider it as a closed circle revolving about a Central Time Consciousness. We live on the rim of the wheel. All we need do is send the ego toward the hub of that circle, and then back out to the other side. There it emerges in a different time-sector, inhabiting the body of some contemporary organism. I send your consciousness back into time—”

  “Now wait,” said Pete, pocketing the dough. “I got an idea I’m being high-pressured into—urlp!”

  Woosh!

  Manx, after a momentary stiffness, relaxed in the chair. He was not breathing. He looked very much like a corpse.

  “Good,” said Mayhem, rubbing his hands. “I’ll bring him back in a few hours, and then he’ll tell you that Bacon wrote the plays, not Shakespeare. You’ll see.”

  Aker was lighting a cigar.

  “A few hours? I hate to mention this, Mayhem, but you’ve just burned out that condenser. I told you weeks ago to get it replaced. It’ll take days, or longer to have a duplicate made.”

  “What?” Mayhem rushed over to examine the apparatus. “You’re right! Good Lord, I’d forgotten. Why didn’t you say something before?”

  Aker smiled unpleasantly.

  “As our friend Mr. Manx would remark, I hesitate to stick my neck out.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. How do you expect Pete to find out anything in a few hours? It’ll take days—and now there’s no chance of your getting soft-hearted and bringing him back before he has a chance to learn the truth.”

  “But—but—” Mayhem sputtered. “He may get in trouble!”

  “He always does,” the professor admitted. “But he always gets out of it!”

  THE world stopped whirling about Pete Manx. He drew a deep breath, opened his eyes, and looked around. He was staring at a corpse.

  It was very old, and very dead. It hung in a sloppy-looking fashion from a gallows, against which a ladder had been placed, and a starved cur was crouching nearby, licking its chops. Pete said “Ulp” in a shocked voice and turned hastily away.

  He was only a few feet from a stone bridge, 60 covered with houses that it resembled a continued-street. On this was built a tower, on the top of which, several human heads were stuck on sprites. The general effect was neat but not gaudy.

  Several people were standing beside Pete, examining the corpse on the gallows. They were dressed, apparently, for a masquerade. The women wore voluminous, garments and hoods, and the men were clad in ruffs, knee-breeches and leather jerkins. Pete, examining his own figure, found that he was clad similarly, though in somewhat finer apparel.

  “Cultured period, huh?” Manx inquired bitterly of thin air. “It looks like it. First thing happens I run into a stiff!”

  “By’r lakin, he does look stiff,” said a swarthy ragamuffin who was contemplatively picking his teeth. “Poor Enas. Well, he’ll cut-no more pursestrings.”

  “Oh,” Pete responded blankly. “Petty larceny. And they hang you for that?”

  “He got off easy,” said the other. “He might have been drawn and quartered.”

  Pete considered. This was a murderously active time-sector, it appeared, but at least he wouldn’t have to stay long. What had Doctor Mayhem promised? A few hours well, that didn’t leave much time to do his job. He’d have to get busy.

  “I’m looking for a ham named Shakespeare,” he said to the dark man. “Know anything about him?”

  “Mayhap. Who are you?”

  Pete felt in his pockets. No card case. He didn’t even know what he looked like, whose body he was inhabiting in Elizabethan England. Well—

  “Manx,” he said. “Pete Manx.”

  “You’re dressed like a noble, but—you mean Master Will no harm?”

  “Nope. I just want some inside dope.”

  The other pondered, and finally gave Pete instructions.

  “The Globe Theatre is the place. Or he may be at the Mermaid Tavern. Follow this street—”

  It wasn’t difficult to find the Globe Theatre, even though it resembled an inn more than anything else. But Master Will wasn’t there. Pete was told to try the Mermaid Tavern.

  “He’ll be shilling ale with Ben and Kit,” said the informant, a tall man with haggard eyes. “God knows I can’t do anything, with him. We need a third act and he keeps yelling that he’s in a slump. Preserve me from writers and temperament!” He threw up his hands and left.

  Pete found the Tavern, without further adventure. It looked like a beer-joint on Hallowe’en. Men in bizarre costumes were sitting at the oaken tables, banging their drinking cups and shouting a song in loud chorus.

  “Sleep, I say, fond fancy,

  And leave my thoughts molesting—

  PETE grunted and stood staring around until a fat man in a white apron came bustling up.

  “How may I serve you, my lord?”

  “I’m looking for a guy named Shakespeare.”

  “Master Will? He’ll be along presently. He ran out when one of his creditors came in. Why do you wish to see him?”

  Pete made a placating gesture.

  “It’s okay. Everything’s on the up and up. I’m just one of the boys.”

  The inn-keeper still looked suspicious, but gestured toward a table.

  “There sit Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, two of his closest friends. Oh, Ben! Here’s a man to see Will.”

  A burly gentleman in stained garments pushed a blonde off his knee and turned to stare at Pete. He hiccuped slightly, drank ale, and nodded.

  “Sit with us, stranger. Who are you?”

  Pete told them.

  “Manx? Then you’re no gentleman.”

  “Oh, yeah? Listen, wise guy, my old man used to be a Tammany aider-man and—”

  “Nay, nay,” said Ben Jonson. “I meant not to offend you. We strolling players and playwrights aren’t lords, you know.”

  Pete was pacified. He made a broad gesture.

  “I get it. I’m in the same racket myself. Ran a bingo joint in Ocean Park till the D.A. clamped down.”

  The other man, Kit Marlowe, frowned, his lean face twisting surprisingly.

  “Yet you’re dressed as a noble. How—”

  Manx searched his capacious memory and brought up a gem to help explain himself.

  “A rose by any other monicker smells the same,” he misquoted.

  Marlowe and Jonson exchanged surprised glances.

  “You know our Will’s plays! Come, we must drink to that. He’ll be glad to see you when he returns.” Ale was supplied—heady, strong stuff, which Pete gulped thirstily.

  “Okay,” he said. “Have one on me. Make it a boilermaker, Doc,” he instructed the inn-keeper, who merely gaped.

  Pete had to explain what a boilermaker was. Jonson and Marlowe were delighted with the new concoction.

  “ ‘Tis a wondrous combination, Pete,” Ben chuckled. “I like it!” Manx, luckily, found gold in a purse at his belt, and paid the bill. For not the first time he wondered whose body he was inhabiting. There was, of course, no clue.

  Time passed and liquor flowed. Occasionally a group would burst into song. Each time Pete writhed.

  “That’s corny,” Manx finally said in disgust. “Wish there was an electric phonograph here.”

  A minstrel in green tights wandered by the table. He exhibited a lute and plucked at its strings, bursting into a dreary song about a lady who looked like a dove.

  “Corny,” said Pete. “Come on. Give. Shake it, hep-cat.”

  The minstrel turned purple.

  “I suppose you could do better!”

  “Sure,” Manx agreed, with slig
htly intoxicated assurance. “Gimme that zither;”

  “I used to handle a banjo in a medicine show,” he told his companions. “Let’s see, now . . .”

  He launched into song. He was, it appeared, heading for the last roundup. The room grew still.

  “Odd,” said Ben, when the solo was finished. “Methinks ’tis odd enough. But—”

  “Okay.” Pete grunted. “I’ll give you some jive.”

  Manx’s rendition of the “Yodelin’ Jive” was greeted with a storm of applause. Men banged cups on their tables and yelled for more. A sad looking chap with a high, bald forehead wandered in and looked around vaguely.

  “Here’s Will!” Ben yelped. “Will! Over here!”

  MASTER SHAKESPEARE dragged himself to the table.

  “I am going mad,” he announced, peering around in a dazed fashion. “Commercialism will ruin art yet. How in God’s name can I write my novel when they keep yelling for those awful plays?”

  “You and your novel,” Ben boomed with affectionate contempt. “Money’s the thing, my lad. Forget about art and stick to your plays. They’re making pounds and guineas—”

  “If the Queen would only condescend to view a performance, my fortune would be made. But I’m stuck for a third act on that thrice-accursed Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bah.” Pete looked hazily at Will. “It’s been done,” he remarked. “Warner Brothers made it a couple of years ago. Boy, did it smell. Mickey Rooney was good, though.”

  Shakespeare downed a stoup of. ale in one swallow.

  “What d’you mean, it’s been done! I haven’t finished writing it.”

  “All I know is what I saw. Guy with a donkey’s head. Bottom, his name was—that was Jimmy Cagney.”

  “A donkey’s head for Bottom!” Shakespeare leaned forward, his eyes glittering. “What an idea! It’s ridiculous—”

  “It’s great!” Ben Jonson boomed. “The audience would go wild. They love that stuff.”

  “It’s—eh? Perchance you’re right.” Will looked at Pete again. “Tell me more of this, friend.”

  Manx obliged. His memory was rather hazy, but it improved as he drank on. He detailed the plot of the Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  “Wonderful!” Shakespeare was beaming. “Those added scenes will make my play! I’ll write it up just like that.”

  Marlowe shook his head.

  “It’s plagiarism, Will. They’re still talking about your Othello.”

  Will considered.

  “Where was this play produced? America, you say? Well! Some little kingdom, in Europe—it doesn’t matter. Nobody’ll know the difference.”

  “I got a million of ’em,” Pete said generously. “But what makes a good play is blood. Lots of it. Say, I remember a Karloff picture—or was it Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?—where a guy kept changing from a hero to a heel. He—”

  Manx rambled on, while Shakespeare listened. Presently the great playwright began to murmur something about Ariel and Caliban.

  “Say, you guys should have seen Bette Davis in Elizabeth and Essex,” Manx went on.

  There was a dead silence. Pete looked around.

  “What’s the matter? Did I say something?”

  “Quiet,” Marlowe hissed. “There may be spies here. ’Tis dangerous to hint at such matters—even treasonable.”

  “Oh,” said Pete, remembering. “I get it. Then Bette and Errol really are that way about each other.”

  The silence grew strained. Manx broke it by reaching for the lute.

  “You birds never heard Cab Calloway,” he announced, “Brothers, prepare for something. I’m going to dish out some boogie-woogie.”

  “It was daooon in Chinatown . . .” Pete caroled. His fingers flashed over the strings. This, he decided, was fun. “Come on, Pete,” he whispered to himself. “Give! Get hot!—and there was Minnie—join in, boys!”

  “Minnie the Moocher!”

  “Kicking the gong around!”

  OTHER lutes appeared and followed the tune Pete set. One by one voices were raised, with Ben Jonson’s bull-like bass leading all the rest.

  “Some were high—”

  “And some were mighty low!”

  The inn-keeper stood against the wall with his mouth wide open, staring at this madhouse. Dignity was lost. The contagion of swing swept the Mermaid Tavern.

  Pete tossed the lute away and sprang up, indulging in some fancy rug-cutting. Ben Jonson joined him, and then Shakespeare. Several girls appeared, and, with feminine instinct of rhythm, quickly joined the jive.

  “Madmen!” gasped the inn-keeper. “They are possessed.”

  “Hi-de-hi—” shrilled Will Shakespeare.

  “Ho-de-ho—” boomed Ben Jonson. “And there was Minnie!” That was Kit Marlowe, the renowned Elizabethan dramatist and poet.

  “Kicking the gong around!”

  That was the Mermaid Tavern! “Hold!”

  An icy voice cut in on the merriment. Slowly silence descended. Pete felt Jonson’s huge hand grip his shoulder.

  “Friends of yours?” Ben asked. Two men—nobles by their apparel—were pushing forward. One was fairly young, with a weak, foppish face. The other was about fifty or more and resembled a rather vicious gopher.

  “Hah!” said the gopher. “There you are!”

  “Zooks!” the other gasped. “You gave us a merry chase. Why you spend your time in these low haunts I don’t know. The Queen wants to see you. It’s important.”

  “The Queen!” Ben Jonson stared at Pete. “You are a noble, then.”

  “I ain’t,” Manx snapped, annoyed at the interruption. “Go ’way. I’m busy.”

  “But, cousin—”

  “Nuts.”

  Will Shakespeare came forward unsteadily and examined the two new arrivals.

  “To be or not to be,” he announced. “That is the question. Who are you—uh—”

  “Mugs,” Pete supplied.

  “Thanks,” Will beamed. “Who are you mugs?”

  “I am Robert Cecil,” said the young man. “And this is Lord Burghley.”

  “I’m your uncle, in case you’re too befuddled to remember,” Burghley snapped, glaring at Pete, who blandly picked up a lute from a nearby table.

  “Scram, pickle-puss,” he murmured. “I’m busy.” And he began to sing about Minnie the Moocher. With a booming snort of disgust Lord Burghley fled.

  ROBERT CECIL lingered.

  “You must see the Queen,” he urged. “Edward Coke is trying to ruin you, and not even Essex can help you unless—”

  His voice was drowned in a thundering chorus.

  “Hi-de-hi! Ho-de-ho! And there was Minnie—”

  “Kicking the gong around,” caroled Pete Manx and Will Shakespeare, their arms about each other’s necks, while the inn-keeper of the Mermaid Tavern stared in shocked horror at the unprecedented sight of Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson indulging in a display of rugcutting that had never been seen in Elizabethan England.

  Well, he had really achieved his aim, Manx told himself. Shakespeare had written his own plays; that was obvious. But, somehow, the expected return to 1940 and the Doc’s laboratory did not come. For some reason this delay did not worry the happy-go-lucky Manx, He was having a swell time.

  He visited the Globe Theatre and suggested certain changes—seats, for example, in the balcony and the pit. His purse still bulged with gold, and he roomed in the Mermaid Tavern, spending his nights carousing with Will, Ben, and Kit. The inn shook with shag. It shuddered with swing and jerked with jive. The word spread.

  Gentlemen flocked to the Tavern. First came the gay blades, and then the older men. They lost their dignity and joined in the chorus of Minnie the Moocher. Pete bent his energies to constructing an orchestra, and finally succeeded. The boys gave for all they were worth.

  The Globe Theatre was altered in several respects. Boys wandered about between acts selling sweets and certain small boxes which, they contended, contained valuable prizes. Midsummer Night’s Dream was produced and we
nt over with a bang.

  Meanwhile, Shakespeare persisted in pumping Pete for anecdotes he was quite willing to supply.

  “So this guy’s moll waits till he’s asleep and pours hot lead in his ear, see?”

  “Hamlet! The very thing!” Shakespeare enthused.

  “But the old gag’s still the best,” Manx told the playwright. “Boy meets girl—boy loses girl—boy gets girl.”

  “Ah,” said Will Shakespeare, “that’s an idea. My Verona plot needs further development. I’m stuck for a twist.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Oh, I don’t really know, yet. A man named Montague is at odds with one named Capulet.”

  “That reminds me of something,” Manx pondered. “I got it. A picture I saw a while ago . . . Look, why not give Capulet a daughter and Montague a son, and let the sprouts fall in love? Call the boy Romeo and the girl Juliet.”

  “ ‘Tis an idea,” Will Shakespeare nodded. “Tell me more. Though I wish I had time to write my novel . . .”

  He fell silent as Pete recounted the plot of Romeo and Juliet.

  The idea struck fire. Master Will fell to work, scribbling busily with his quill. And, presently, the new play was put into rehearsal.

  “That balcony scene’s swell,” Manx applauded, but Will shook his head gloomily.

  “I think I’d better cut that out. It lacks fire.”

  THE play opened and was a tremendous success. On the fourth night of the run trouble started. A handsome, well-dressed noble in a short beard cornered Pete.

  “Good heavens, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

  “Oh, hello,” Manx said vaguely. “I’ve been staying here at the Mermaid.”

  “They told me I’d find you here. Elizabeth’s foaming at the mouth. Coke’s trying to get that job of Attorney-General away from you—”

  “Coke?” Pete remembered that Lord Burghley or Robert Cecil had mentioned the name some time before, during his first night at the Mermaid.

  “Yes, yes, yes, Coke. Edward Coke, the lawyer. Your deadliest enemy. Listen to me. I may be able to calm Elizabeth, but I’m not sure. Coke’s told her where you’ve been hiding—with a gang of strolling players. I did my best for you. Said Will Shakespeare was the greatest dramatist in England. But she’s—well, you know how Elizabeth is.”