Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  The Scotsman answered, nodding toward Alan. When he had finished, “Brekkir wonders at your recuperative powers,” he translated. “He says he gave you mortal wounds.”

  “I’d have died, all right,” Alan said grimly. “It was the fountain that saved me.”

  Sir Colin gave Brekkir the words in his own tongue. The Terasi’s shaggy brows lifted. He pushed aside Alan’s shirt and ran calloused fingers along the healed scars that banded his torso. Excitement shook his voice when he spoke again.

  The Scotsman answered, and he too was excited.

  Karen broke in to ask, “A power-source? What does he mean?”

  “I’m not sure. But this is something I hadn’t expected, though I should have guessed from what Alan’s been saying. If Brekkir’s right, we may have the answer to all our problems. Though it seems incredible!”

  Alan stared. “What is it?”

  “I’d best show you on the scanners. There’s so much to explain. Look—Karen’s brought your breakfast. Eat it while Brekkir and I talk.”

  Alan let himself be pushed down to a seat before a makeshift table of plastic blocks, and Karen set more of the mushroom-bread before him, and a cup of water. She was watching Brekkir’s scarred face, bright with a sort of triumph, as he argued vehemently against Sir Colin’s cool questions. Mike watched too, though obviously the flurry of quick discussion was a little beyond him. Strange, thought Alan, how little they had changed in these weeks apart.

  But it was not wise to think, somehow. For so long he had been half-asleep, his mind dulled, living in the incarnate dream that was Carcasilla. His thoughts felt strange now. It was difficult to believe in the reality of anything that had happened. The act of independent thinking was like resuming the use of a paralyzed limb. His brain did not feel entirely-the brain of Alan Drake.

  He had the curious illusion of seeing through the wrong end of a telescope. Brekkir was a tiny figure gesticulating to a microscopic Sir Colin. He saw them with objective coldness, as if they were beings of a different species.

  DEEP in his mind a furtive, cold horror stirred. But far down, smothered under clouds of lassitude, Alan’s awareness of himself faded. His own body seemed alien, no part of his consciousness. And a slow desire was rising in him that had no kinship with human passions. It was in his mind, tiny and far away, and. then leaping forward with great striding bounds, as the Light-Wearer had come from the Way of the Gods.

  It was hunger he felt, that deep and terrible desire—ravenous hunger for—what? Hunger, and beyond it a desperate solitude. He was alone. He was wandering in some formless place, searching amid great ruins that breathed out desolation. And the hunger grew and grew.

  Small beings of ambiguous outlines flashed into view. He clutched at them, and they vanished. He could not see clearly. A shimmering glow veiled all that distorted world-around him. Sometimes he glimpsed it more clearly, and a sick pain shook him. He must not see clearly! The veil of light shielded him from a world so monstrously alien that he could not, for sanity’s sake, look at it openly.

  Look? He sensed; he did not see. Every cell was an eye, gathering all sensation from every direction. Through him a pulsing beat rocked in intermittent rhythm. Shockingly, he realized the completeness of his change. It had come imperceptibly, but now he knew that the thing that was alien to him was—Alan Drake. The body of Alan Drake, and all his basic humanity. He was no longer human. The word human meant alien.

  He heard Sir Colin’s voice faintly; the sound was unpleasant. It grated on his senses. He struggled against the grip of strong hands whose touch was hateful.

  “Alan! For God’s sake, laddie, wake up!”

  But he was awake—for the first time. This creature was trying to stop him from returning to Carcasilla. That was it! He must go back! Only there could he find appeasement for this dreadful hunger that burned him. He must go back to the Light-Wearer, open his mind—but no, he was the Light-Wearer; Alan Drake was the willing sacrifice.

  “Karen! Help me! Mike—” It was Sir Colin’s voice, calling from far away. Alan, saw as if through a diminishing-lens—as a god might look at a distant world—Sir Colin struggling with Brekkir, desperately holding back the bull-muscled chief, saw the horror and loathing and fury on the Terasi’s face as he lunged toward Alan. And he saw murder there.

  “Karen!” the burring, alien voice called again, tiny and distant. “Mike, help me hold him! He’ll kill—”

  And Mike Smith’s strained voice, “Let him! Let him go! The Alien’s here—I can feel it! Those gongs were right. It’s come, it’s here in this room!”

  Then Karen’s swift steps racing across the floor and her hard, small fist cracking savagely against Alan’s jaw. Blaze of pain; flashing lights. Then a timeless eternity of groping, a frantic striving for orientation . . . The world steadied. Sick and weak from reaction, Alan saw an altered world—a normal-sized Sir Colin flung aside by a towering Brekkir who charged forward with shoulders hunched, eyes hot and deadly.

  It was instinct that showed Alan the gun at Karen’s belt. He was not yet wholly-back in his own mind, perhaps, but his body thought for him. The metal was cold against his palm. He swung the pistol up unwaveringly at Brekkir while the room lurched around him, knowing only that if he revealed weakness now he was gone.

  “Hold it!” he snapped, hearing his own cold voice still a little alien to his ears. But he was himself now. The possessor was gone. And it must have shown on his face and in his impassive eyes under the full lids, for Brekkir paused, reading danger in the voice he could not understand. A second of indecision, and then

  Brekkir shook himself and stepped back, his breath coming in heavy, uneven gusts.

  “All right, Karen?” Alan asked without looking at her. “Will he—”

  “I don’t know. Sir Colin’s the only one who can handle him. Whatever happened, it was bad.”

  Mike Smith licked dry lips. “It was the Alien. He was here. He was you.”

  Sir Colin got painfully to his feet, came forward to put an arm about Brekkir’s great, shoulders. The Terasi muttered, shaken. Sir Colin answered briefly.

  “Gie me yer gun, Alan. He doesna trust you. It’s all right now, but gie me the gun.”

  Alan laid it in his outstretched hand, hesitating a little. Brekkir seemed relieved, but his smouldering eyes still brooded upon the other. Sir Colin said, “All right now, laddie? Ah-h. But—God, mon! What happened? Ye were—were—”

  Alan sat down heavily. “I’m all right now. But I could stand a drink.”

  “Hold hard.” Sir. Colin’s grip steadied his shoulder. “Let me see your eyes. Yet . . . But for awhile they were all pupil. Black as the mouth of Hell! I’ll admit, ye’ve shaken me. But I think I know the. answer.”

  “You do?” Alan moistened his lips. “Then tell me.”

  “It was the Alien, laddie. Ye are verra, verra sensitive to that creature. Like a bit of iron sensitized by a magnet. It may pass. I trust it will.”

  Alan pressed his palms against aching eyes. “It’s like being possessed of a devil.”

  “It is that! Ye maun fight it, then. If it can control ye from a distance—yet ye fought the thing in Carcasilla.”

  “I hope to God it never happens again,” Alan said in a shaken voice. “The worst part was that I—I liked it. I lost all sense of personal identity.” His teeth showed in a furious grin. “I—let’s not talk about it just now.”

  Sir Colin glanced at him sharply for a moment, then seemed satisfied. “Aye, but Brekkir—”

  At the sound of his name the Terasi glowered and muttered something. Sir Colin nibbled his lower lip. “Brekkir fears ye, laddie. Or rather fears your falling under the Alien’s control. It’s like having a spy from the enemy in your camp. Ye’d better stick close to me. I’ve promised Brekkir I’ll keep my eye on ye.”

  Alan was too heartsick to reply. He could still feel the dreadful flood of alienage that had possessed him, and he was thinking of Evaya experiencing that dark
power over mind and soul.

  A voice shouted from outside. Brekkir listened, then grunted to Sir Colin and hurried out. The Scotsman grunted in turn. “Come along, all of ye. Trouble, as usual. And a good thing for you, Alan ; it’ll give Brekkir something else to think about!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Battle of the Gongs

  THEY hurried through the Terasi village, where ragged savages shrank away from Alan with loathing in their eyes. Evidently rumor had run fast through the town. But the gongs were not booming now, which was one small comfort. The Alien had withdrawn—for a time, and for its own purposes. They were to know in a moment what those purposes were.

  Sir Colin led them, at Brekkir’s heels, around the base of a vast leaning tower of deep-green plastic and in through a sloping door in its base. Spiral stairs rose steeply. They were all dizzy with the rapid turns before they came out into a domed room high above the cavern floor. A sort of frieze ran about the circular wall, head-high, divided into foot-long rectangles of cloudy glass. Beneath each were several wheels like safe-dials. Most of the screens bore decorative designs, but the one before which Brekkir stopped showed a picture.

  A picture of Evaya!

  Alan pushed closer, staring. He seemed to be looking down upon the scene, and from one side. The screen was full of motion now—full of the men and women of Carcasilla, streaming along the Way of the Gods, their faces glowing with fanatical exultation. And Evaya walked before them, her lovely pale hair drifting upon the air-currents, her face blank with the blankness of her possession.

  “A television plate in the passage,” Sir Colin’s precise explanation came. “This is the scanner room, Alan. It connects with thousands of viewers scattered through the caverns, many of them not working any more, of course. Watch.”

  Brekkir spun a dial; a new scene showed—the Way of the Gods, bare and empty. Far away along it motion stirred. The swirl of gossamer robes, pale faces crowding. And then—striding with great swooping bounds, robed in darkness and in light, in fire and cloud—came the shape that no eyes could clearly see. Leading the Carcasillians strode their god, the Light-Wearer.

  A shock of dismay shook Alan. He felt Brekkir’s shoulder beside his heave convulsively. Mike Smith made a hoarse, wordless sound deep in his throat.

  “Logical,” Sir Colin said quietly, as though he were lecturing at Edinburgh. “I should have foreseen this. They have no weapons yet, but I don’t doubt It knows where to find weapons.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mike snapped. “Is it coming here?”

  “Certainly. Where else? It wants food, and we are its food, not the Carcasillians. It can’t pass our sonic protection alone, so it calls in the Carcasillians as an attacking force, to silence our gongs if they can. After that . . .”

  Brekkir barked an order over his shoulder. One of the Terasi in the room went out swiftly. Brekkir pulled at his beard and eyed Sir Colin. The Scotsman grunted.

  “Less than a hundred Terasi, but the women can fight too. The Carcasillians—how many, Alan?”

  “Several hundred, I’d guess.”

  “They’ll be no match for us, alone. But depend on it, they’ll have some sort of weapons when they get here.”

  Alan turned his mind from the sickening picture of the delicate doll-army from Carcasilla falling beneath the bludgeons of the Terasi. But he knew he could not protest. The Terasi were right. Even Evaya’s blown-glass loveliness was a vessel for the Alien now—a vessel to be shattered.

  He would not think of it.

  “Aye, they’ll have weapons from somewhere,” Sir Colin was muttering thoughtfully. “Well, our gongs are strong, but I wish—if we only had a power-source! We wouldn’t depend on hand-gongs then.”

  “Why not?” asked Alan. “Are there other weapons here you know about?”

  “Are ye forgetting the men who built this cavern died fighting the Light-Wearers? D’ye think they wouldn’t have left weapons behind? Maybe more than we know of. But there’s one great gong alone, in one of the machines, that would do the work of a thousand hand-gongs, if we had the power.”

  Brekkir grunted something behind him, and Sir Colin nodded.

  “Forget that now. Tell me about the fountain, laddie. All you remember. It’s important.”

  “There isn’t much to tell.” Alan frowned, remembering.

  “It’s still alive? Still powerful?”

  “Well, it healed me. And it gives the Carcasillians immortality.”

  Sir Colin spoke to Brekkir, who fumbled with the dials.

  “Here’s the story, laddie. Listen now, it’s important. Forget the Carcasillians while ye can. It may be we’ve got the solution right here in our hands—if we live through the next few hour’s. This rebel race that lived here in the cavern was a sort of maintenance crew for the Way of the Gods. It kept the worlds alive along it. So we have these scanners and other things. It’s a library, too. There are visual historical records. I’ll show you, presently. Mind you, this is important. Because the Aliens told their slave-race how to maintain the underground worlds. Gave them too much knowledge, perhaps, for they never expected revolt. And when the revolt came, the slaves died, as I told ye. But the records remain. Look.”

  UNDER Brekkir’s blunt fingers a picture flashed upon the screen. Alan watched with less than half his mind. He could see only the Carcasillians, blind and helpless and deadly dangerous, marching on the Terasi.

  But as the pictures changed on the screen he found himself watching involuntarily. The world’s surface, smooth and lifeless, slid past in panorama. He saw gigantic ruins, like nothing man’s world had ever known. He saw death and desolation everywhere.

  Once he caught a glimpse of the great, abnormal asymmetries of the citadel lifting against a misty sky, and curiosity suddenly burned in his mind about what lay inside it, but he knew, he would never learn that now.

  And once he saw the flash of a deep gorge, bottomless, vertiginous, its far side hidden in fog. And far away along it a moving white wall that drew nearer. Alan thought of a flood burstings down a. dry arroyo. But this chasm was immeasurably vast, and the flood was deluge. Prismatic rainbows veiled it. Boiling, crashing, seething like a hundred Niagaras, the mighty tide swept toward them, brimming the chasm.

  Alan felt a faint tremble shake the floor. Sir Colin nodded.

  “The sea-bed—what’s left of it. The moon’s verra close now, and its drag is tremendous. In a million years, it’s cut a gorge across the planet. This is all that remains of the ocean. It follows the moon around the earth.”

  “That thunder we heard when we first left the ship,” Alan remembered. “That was it?”

  “Aye. Watch.”

  Vision after vision shifted across the screen. Desolation, ruin. And yet there was life. Gigantic worm-shapes slid through the mists, and once one of the flying half-human things drifted down the slopes of air above the tidal chasm.

  “No intelligence,” Sir Colin murmured, pointing. “They follow the water and eat weeds and fish. They are no longer human.”

  More scenes changing on the screen. Gray dust, gray death . . . And then, unexpectedly, a forests—green, lovely, veiled in silvery fog. A shallow pool where a fish rose in a ring of widening ripples. A small brown animal raced out of the underbrush and fled beyond the scanner’s range.

  Alan leaned forward, suddenly sick with a passion of longing for the past he would never see again. Green earth, lost springtime of the world! He could not speak for a moment.

  “it is the past,” Sir Colin said gravely. “A part of history, but a history we never saw. Perhaps a thousand years ago, perhaps more. It is the planet Venus.”

  “The Aliens went there?”

  “Aye. But they didna stay. No human life to feed them. They came back to earth and died here. But do ye na see it, Alan—Venus is habitable! Humans could live there!”

  “A thousand years ago—”

  “Or more—nothing in the life of a planet. We have records of the a
tmosphere on Venus, the elements, the water and food. Humans can live there, I tell ye, laddie! And now, perhaps will!” He lifted bony shoulders. “If what we hope is true. And if we live to prove it.”

  “What?”

  It was Karen who answered.

  “The Aliens destroyed their spaceships, toward the end. Used up the metal for some other purpose, maybe, or maybe for the energy in them. For a long time the Terasi have known they could live on Venus if they had a ship and a power-source. Now there’s a ship. The one that brought us here.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, the ship’s big enough to carry us all—Terasi too, I think. We could go to Venus and rebuild the race on a new world. If we had any power.”

  “It is a second chance for mankind,” Sir Colin said gravely. “But—no power. No power in all the world. The Terasi checked that long ago. Only little scraps like those that keep these scanners going. Till I saw you, Alan, I had no idea that there might be a power-source left on earth.”

  “The fountain!” Alan said.

  “Aye. The Terasi knew no Carcasillians until you came. They never guessed about the fountain. But there it is, and there must be a source to keep it burning. Enough to take a ship to Venus! That I know.” Sir Colin struck a gnarled fist into his palm. “I have searched and studied here, and I’d stake my soul on that. If we could only take it out—power the ship with it!”

  “What is the source?”

  “I dinna quite know. Radioactivity, perhaps, yet something more. The Aliens brought it with them from the stars, and it’s a strange stuff. I know a. little from charts the robot-humans left here. A glowing little nucleus that consumes itself slowly and sends out radiations. Will ye bet there isn’t one of them under that fountain in Carcasilla?” His voice shook as he spoke.

  “That fountain—the Carcasillians live by it,” Alan reminded him slowly.

  “Aye, a sterile life. They’ll never rebuild civilization. But the Terasi now—they’re strong enough to face hardships of the new world. And they have fine minds. If we could get back to Carcasilla—we canna be sentimental about this; Alan, laddie. That may be the last power-source on earth, and we maun use it to save mankind.”