Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “As for the report we’re going to hand in to the chief,” he said, fingering a fresh bundle of papers and spools before him, “it’s integrated and ready, I think. We’ve taken out the dangerous stuff.

  Quite a job.”

  “About Ridgeley, Seth—”

  “One thing at a time. I believe Ridgeley ties in with this equation business. He’s been trying to give dangerous information directly to the chief. Well, we’ll guard against that from now on. This latest message from the Secretary of War—seven more technicians have gone insane. Not Pastor; he’s still working away up in his hideaway in the Rockies. But the danger is clearer now.

  The equation must be solved before the enemy solves it.”

  “Every technician in the country may go crazy,” DuBrose said.

  “Only top-flight men can work on a thing like this. The others aren’t qualified. But those men are the ones who keep the war from being lost. They’re the ones who think up offensives and defensives fast. If our best technicians are insane—and the list is growing—we’re caught flat footed if the enemy launches an assault. There’s one thing in our favor. Those insane technicians can be cured.”

  DuBrose thought it over. “Uh . . . yeah, I get that angle. They took refuge in insanity because they couldn’t solve the equation, and the responsibility was too much for them. Show them the solution to the equation, and they’ll snap out of it. Right?”

  “Near enough. None of these case histories”—he tapped the pile on the desk—“indicate noncurable pathological states. Once we—” He stopped, looking past DuBrose.

  “Hello, Ridgeley,” he said.

  DuBrose found himself on his feet, swinging to face the courier. Ridgeley was standing against the closed door, his eyes blazing, his face impassive as ever. In a lifted hand he held something so bright and glittering that DuBrose could not see it clearly.

  “It’s too easy,” Ridgeley said.

  “And you prefer it the hard way, is that it? I don’t think you’ll find it so easy.”

  “No?”

  “How did you check up on us? Some sort of scanning ray?”

  “Something of the sort,” Ridgeley admitted. The thing in his hand trembled slightly; dazzling rays momentarily blinded DuBrose.

  Pell said, “So we’re right. You’re from the future.”

  “Yes.”

  DuBrose snarled, “Why don’t you go back there?”

  For the first time he saw expression on those blunt features—something very much like fear. But Ridgeley only said, “No, I like it here, I’d rather no one knew as much about me as you two know. So—”

  DuBrose glanced toward Pell, waiting for a signal. But the aide hadn’t even risen from his seat.

  He smiled at the courier and said, “You turned off your scanner too soon. I’ve put in a routine check query on the visor. Querying you, Ridgeley. If we’re found dead, or disappear, somebody will start wondering why the last time I used the visor, I asked about you.”

  “You wouldn’t be found,” Ridgeley said, but his voice wasn’t quite as certain. He hesitated.

  Tension grew in the room. Suddenly that burning, joyous excitement leaped again behind the courier’s eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll do it the hard way.” He fumbled behind him, opened the door, and slipped out. DuBrose sprang forward, but Pell’s quiet voice halted him.

  “Hold it, Ben. No heroics. You haven’t even got a gun.”

  DuBrose made an impatient noise. “Well, let’s do something! Can’t we have that . . . that guy picked up? Or—”

  “I’ll think about it,” Pell chuckled. “Take it easy. You’re flying off the handle. Here.” He tossed a blue plastic key on the desk. “Why not knock off for a few hours?”

  “I . . . what is it?” DuBrose picked up the key and examined It.

  Pell said, “Not many people have those, Ben. They open the door to supercharged hedonism.

  Show that key at Blue Heaven in Low Manhattan, and you’ll get the most thorough dose of extroversion you can imagine. Useful when hypertension creeps up. Try their Creepies—it’s a catharsis. Go on, get out of here. That’s an order. You need something like—a blue key.”

  DuBrose said, “What about you? If Ridgeley comes back—”

  “He won’t. Go away. I’ll expect you back in the morning, bright-eyed and ready for anything.

  Outside!”

  DuBrose went away.

  VI.

  Across the curve of the world dawn came, rose and gray, the laggard sun behind. The cool light brightened on a quiet land. Tiny hamlets speckled the continent, and only a few flaming streaks that might have been meteors gave any hint that the peace was deceptive. Even across the gray scars of the cities, New York and Detroit and San Francisco, the reclaiming green crept out from the wildernesses that had been the city parks.

  Helicopters with their glider-trains troubled still air. The rising sun glittered here and there on a few silvery, tattered shells, the monuments of genus X. Warmen began to drift toward the pneumocar terminals.

  Before dawn—

  Three more technicians had gone insane, two of them irreplaceable key men in electronics.

  Mid-morning. Pell came into DuBrose’s office, smiling and cheerful.

  “Use that key?”

  “Uh . . . no,” DuBrose said. “I was dead beat. I took Deep Sleep. Feel better now.”

  “Suit yourself,” Pell said, shrugging. “I got that report on Ridgeley. He’s a highly confidential and trustworthy Secret Service man. Not just a courier. He’s been responsible for several fast deals but benefited our side. He’s been on the job for seven years. Every once in a while he disappears.

  No reason given. Unorthodox, but—he’s valuable.”

  “To whom?” DuBrose asked. “The enemy?”

  Pell looked puzzled. “He’s been valuable to us, Ben. That’s what throws me. He dug up plans for some gadgets we found mighty useful. There’s never been any question as to his loyalty.”

  “Do anything about it?”

  “Not . . . yet,” Pell said slowly. “Except to put a few papers in my safe, just in case. The chief has the combination. Remember that.”

  DuBrose turned the subject. “How is the chief?”

  “Jumpy. Nervous. I don’t know why. I handed him the stuff on the equation a couple of hours ago—along with allied problems I dug up, to keep him from smelling a rat. I’ve handled it as semitheoretical material. I couldn’t tell him how urgent it was—if he knew that, he’d realize its significance. But I loaded the other items with key words he’ll subconsciously shy away from—the wrong emotional indexes for his personality. He’ll study the equation dope first.”

  “Won’t he wonder about Ridgeley?”

  “I blamed that on the brass hats. I said Ridgeley was just trying to do his duty;—deliver his message to the Director of Psychometrics. Dunno if the chief swallowed it, but I gave him something else to think about—a few hints he’ll chew on. Just in case he starts wondering too much why I wanted to isolate him and act as filter. I fixed it. Pretty soon he’ll decide the enemy are trying to kill him. Simple assassination attempt. Toxin probably. Let him figure it out. A personal menace like that won’t worry him in the least.”

  “Oh. Well—I’ve got nothing new. Billy Van Ness is completely passive now. Force-feeding, as usual. And I took a call from Dr. Pastor, up in the Rockies. He says he’ll have the equation solved before the day’s over.”

  “Good. How did he look?”

  “Not too well. I notified Wyoming Emergency to stand ready. Though there wasn’t any definite symptom. He talked a little too fast—but nothing psychopathic. The responsibility didn’t seem to bother him.”

  “Fair enough,” Pell said. “Now come along. The chief wants to see me about the equation—”

  “Already?”

  “He’s a fast worker.”

  Cameron sat behind his desk and watched it rain. He thought that if he could g
et through the door, the rain might stop; but he wasn’t having any. He’d tried it already. Wading through knee-deep invisible water wasn’t a pleasant experience.

  The slanting veils of rain made the walls gray and shadowy. He felt the drops tap softly on his bare head and against his face and on his hands. With tremendous effort he remained motionless.

  Within his skin he was twisting and writhing.

  There was, he thought, a gauge in his head, and a needle that had risen dangerously close to the red mark. He couldn’t stand much more of this. What was keeping Pell?

  As the door opened the rain stopped. Cameron looked at the backs of his hands; they were quite dry. So was the surface of his desk, and the carpet.

  His head pounded.

  He was rather sorry Pell and DuBrose had come in. That meant he had to do something. As long as he remained perfectly motionless, trying not to think, he could not easily be betrayed. Rain might fall, but the objects he reached for wouldn’t slide away or collapse into blobs as long as he refrained from reaching.

  Cameron drew in a long breath.

  His voice came out more steadily than he had expected.

  “Ben?”

  “I wanted him to hear this,” Pell said. “Got an answer for me?”

  Cameron said carefully, “I think so. You didn’t give me all the necessary factors, but there may be a way. What’s this for?”

  “I’d rather not say just yet. It’s semitheoretical anyhow.” Pell sat down; DuBrose followed his example.

  “I’d say it’s completely theoretical. Look here. You’ve got an equation based on constants gone variable. You want to know its probable effect on various types of trained personalities—scientifically trained. And you stipulate that the solution of the equation is a high-powered survival factor—the individuals must solve it. Is that correct, Seth?”

  Pell nodded and crossed his legs, his eyes half-closed. “Correct,” he said casually. “What do you think?”

  “You left out one point. If the technicians fail to solve the problem, they’ll go insane, under the circumstances.”

  “Mm-m. That’s obvious, chief.”

  Cameron looked at something on his desk, hesitated, and seemed to lose the thread. “So . . . uh, well, the sort of equation you presuppose implies the use of truth itself as a variable. Or rather several sets of truths—all logical and accurate. Under certain conditions, let’s say, an apple falls to the ground; under other conditions, it flies upward. In the first case the familiar law of gravitation holds good. In the second, it doesn’t; an arbitrary basic is substituted, but a true one.”

  “Can mutually contradictory truths coexist?” Pell asked.

  “It isn’t likely,” Cameron said. “I’d say no. However, let’s take it for granted that such an equation does exist—for the sake of the theory. The ordinary technician, trained to intricate work, has had a sound groundwork in basic physics; he takes some things for granted. Like the law of gravitation. Or—conduction of heat. If he dips both hands in boiling water and his right hand is burned while his left freezes, he won’t be able to understand it. If enough things like that happen—” Cameron paused.

  Pell said, “Yeah?”

  “Oh . . . he’ll find refuge in insanity. His imagination, his mind, won’t be sufficiently elastic to embrace a whole new set of variable truths. It would be like going through the looking glass.

  Alice did it without trouble, but she was a child. An adult would have gone insane.”

  “Every type of adult mind?”

  Cameron said thoughtfully, “Lewis Carroll could have solved this hypothetical equation of yours, Seth. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

  Pell nodded. “A thoroughly elastic mind, one that isn’t bound too much by familiar values, the sort of guy who invents woolly dog stories. Is that it?”

  “A man who makes up rules of his own. That’s it, all right.”

  “I want to find some men like that and chart their psychology,” Pell said. “Got any suggestions?”

  “Offhand, no. The average scientifically trained mind is inelastic by definition; it’s fan-shaped.

  It’s imaginative at the wide part of the fan, but it’s rigidly censored by the narrow part—the accepted basics. I’ll see if I can think of a screening process for you, Seth.”

  “All right,” Pell said, rising.

  Back in DuBrose’s office, the two looked at each other blankly. Pell chuckled.

  “So far, so good, at least. Find a man like Lewis Carroll. Can you think of a candidate?”

  “Not without a screening process. Are there any mathematicians today who write fairy tales?”

  “Not a one. And there aren’t any fairy tale writers who make math their avocation. Not that Alice is a fairy tale, Ben.”

  “What is it? Allegory?”

  “Symbolic logic, beautifully worked out from arbitrarily assigned basics. Pure fantasy—the purest kind. Well, we’ll have to try screenings. Maybe the chief will think of something.

  Meanwhile, screen technicians by avocation; use the big files downstairs. I’ll try for psychological patterns that might fit.”

  “O.K.,” DuBrose said.

  Twenty minutes later he was at the dictagraph when the visor hummed. The wrinkled, gnomish face of Dr. Emil Pastor checkered in.

  DuBrose pushed a button that would summon Pell as he jumped up. “Dr. Pastor. Glad you called.

  Anything new?”

  The tousled head nodded. Something flickered in the blue background; it looked like a bird. Blue background? What—

  “I have finished with it,” Pastor said. “Understanding it showed me the unreality of all things.”

  “You’ve solved it, then?”

  “Solved the . . . equation? Not all of it, no. But enough. Enough to show me the way. I can solve the rest now, if I wish. Ah, Mr. Pell.”

  “Hello, doctor,” Pell said, stepping into the scanner’s range. “I asked Mr. DuBrose to call me when you vised. Thanks, Ben. Now have I missed anything?”

  “Dr. Pastor says he can solve the equation,” DuBrose said.

  “But I won’t,” Pastor said, blinking.

  Pell didn’t show surprise. “Mind telling us why not?”

  “Because nothing matters any more,” Pastor explained. “I’ve found that out. It settled my problem. Everything is hollow, like a soap bubble. Maintained in existence simply by a certain coherence of will, the acceptance of the expected.”

  Insane.

  DuBrose saw Pell’s shoulders slump a little.

  “I’d like to discuss that with you personally,” he said. “May I fly in to your hideout? If you’ll shut off the force-field when I—”

  “Oh, it’s gone,” Pastor said mildly. “I stopped believing in it and it disappeared. My house is gone, too—most of it. I let the televisor stand and part of the wall, because I’d promised to call you. But now . . . I don’t know. What would we have to talk about?”

  “The equation?” Pell suggested. A shadow crossed Pastor’s face.

  “No, I don’t want to discuss that.”

  DuBrose saw Pell’s hand move. He said, “Excuse me,” and slipped quickly out of the office. It took him three minutes to vise Wyoming Emergency and have an ambulance copter dispatched to the peak where Pastor was now.

  DuBrose went back into his office, and moved up behind Pell. Pastor was still talking.

  “. . . couldn’t explain the theory to you very well. It deals with certain variables I’m sure you wouldn’t accept. But they’re surprisingly effective in practice. I simply used will power on my house and it was gone.”

  “And that’s an integral part of the equation?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “Like this,” Pastor said. His wrinkled face twisted into an agony of concentration. He lifted his hand and pointed. DuBrose felt a sudden tension knot along his spine.

  “You don’t exist,” Pastor said to Pell.

  Seth Pel
l vanished.

  In his office Cameron was about to eat lunch. The laden tray was on the desk before him. He dipped the soup spoon into onion broth and lifted it toward his mouth.

  The edges of the spoon thickened, curled, spread into cold metallic lips.

  And kissed him.

  TO BE CONCLUDED.

  THE FAIRY CHESSMAN

  Concluding Padgett’s novel of a strange but very terrible sort of weapon—the concept that truth, like all other thingsy might be a variable, and our most basic laws but one of many possible aspects.

  SYNOPSIS

  The doorknob opened a blue eye and looked at him. That was the first of a series of manifestations aimed at driving Robert Cameron insane. His face made ripples in the mirror; an altitude gauge smiled at him; the stairway had a nonexistent top step—and Daniel Ridgeley, courier from GHQ, was apparently persecuting him.

  The Falangists, a European nation, were at war with America. America had dug into the great, shielded cavern-cities like Low Chicago, where Cameron was Civilian Director of Psychometrics. For decades the war, planned by technicians and fought by robots, had been at a stalemate. But now the Falangists had a new weapon. They could do the impossible.

  It was impossible for bombs to penetrate force-shields, but Falangist bombs penetrated American force-shields. Not many exploded. The ones that exploded were the Duds. The rest were analysed and studied by technicians whose minds had been trained along lines of orthodox science. And the design used in the Falangist bombs was unworkable.