Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  But none of them ever came back, from either the future or the past.”

  The mathematician blinked. “Why not?”

  “We don’t know, yet. Don’t forget, our mutant contact is technically insane. He’s temporarily disoriented, which is enough to drive anybody batty, I’d say. Those creatures that lived in the Duds might have been able to use ETP and stay sane—but they weren’t even remotely human, so normal standards of sanity can’t be applied to them. When Billy matured and acquired ETP, he went crazy.”

  Cameron said, “Can anybody use the equation?”

  “Under guidance, yes.” Wood told him, “And it’ll be easier as soon as my gadgets are finished.”

  Cameron closed his eyes. “Deadlock now. We’ve solved the equation but so have the Falangists.

  If we get the counterequation, Ridgeley might give it to the Falangists—and it’d be deadlock again. Ben, we’d better mobilize. Get ready for an all-out attack on the Falangists. See Kalender.

  Is Ridgeley still scanned?”

  “Yes.”

  On the desk Cameron’s hands tightened into fists. “Use the equation on him. Hammer him. Give him the same treatment the Falangists are giving me. But worse. An assault that will tie his nerves into bowknots. Don’t let up for a second.”

  Something crawled down DuBrose’s spine and exploded into elation. “Force him to use the counter equation?”

  “In self-protection. It won’t be easy. He’s resourceful. But there’s only one shield against the equation, and if we can drive Ridgeley into using it—”

  “O.K., chief. Can do, Wood?”

  “Can do,” the mathematician said laconically. “But—”

  “But what?”

  “God help Ridgeley.”

  XIII.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  The copter was over a mile away. But he could reach it. That was the first step. The second would be to reach the Falangists. With the equation, it should be simple to pass the coastal force-shields.

  Gray mists of dawn hung over the wheat fields. A few stars faded before the encroaching, pearly light. Under his feet the ground winced and screamed like living flesh.

  He blocked his mind.

  Concentrate on the single purpose; that was it. Ten minutes to the copter, moving fast. That wouldn’t end it. Under his hands the controls might squirm and twist; the variable truths, controlled now by his enemies, could hammer relentlessly at him.

  But not effectively.

  In his own time-era he had been trained to meet such assaults. Usually they were easy to neutralize with the counterequation—which was so simple. He couldn’t use it now. There were scanners on him, and avid eyes watching, ready to study and analyze.

  Reach the Falangists and give them the counterequation. They wouldn’t be too grateful, probably, but he could protect himself. And he would be one of the conquerors.

  Drops of oily, thick liquid crept clown his face and crawled toward his mouth and nostrils. He exhaled more strongly. He kept his mind blocked. Expecting the unexpected was the way to fight such an assault as this. And years of indoctrination and training had showed him the way.

  He adjusted his pace as the ground changed its texture, now rough as broken rock, now slick as smooth ice.

  The wheat fields sank. He stood on a pinnacle at the edge of an abyss.

  He began to descend, iron face impassive, the exultant glow of excitement burning behind the black eyes. He was trained for battle. This was war. Only in the face of dangerous odds could he feel this blazing delight.

  His mind had been trained to react unusually to adrenalin. He could feel caution, but fear was usually alien to him.

  The ground billowed like an ocean.

  It slid away from under him. He had been walking for more than ten minutes. The copter was nowhere in sight, nor the grove of trees that sheltered it.

  He paused to consider, still keeping that tight rein on his mind. The block held. The invasion glanced off harmlessly.

  The landscape had shifted. The copter was over toward the left. He walked in that direction, a sturdy, neckless man trudging through wheat fields—

  His eyes shot out on stalks.

  “No luck yet?”

  “Let me try!”

  The eyes retracted. Before him stretched a Gargantuan chessboard. He felt a compulsion to move toward one square, but he did not turn from his course. The copter—

  Here came the chessmen, bizarre, fantastic shapes, leaping in crazy patterns skyward and down again. But he had seen stranger creatures in the bio-labs of his own time-era. He walked on.

  “Three hours, Wood! But at least we’ve kept him away from his copter.”

  “He can cope with the imaginations of normal minds, apparently. He’s been conditioned—”

  “How about psychotic patients? Could you guide their thoughts—project them?”

  “It might work. You’ll have to help me. Hypnosis, and suggestion. You handle the patients, I’ll handle the equation. We’ll try it, DuBrose. Can’t we get Cameron to help?”

  “He’s asleep. Drugged. I had to.”

  Hiding around nonexistent corners the shapes of terror gibbered at him. The slow nightmare flight of white birds painfully labored past. A melting face repeated meaningless rhymed phrases.

  Red and yellow and spotted imps told him he was guilty and had sinned.

  Hallucinations of insane minds, given objective reality by the variability of truth. The properties of energy and matter were altered, on the fairy chessboard, so that these arbitrary chessmen assumed form and substance.

  The fairy chessmen screamed at him, laughed at him, sobbed and whistled and clicked and gasped—

  Lurking, hating shadows. The phantoms of irrational fear and hatred and elation. The world of the insane.

  He went on toward the copter. His eyes flamed with their terrible, burning delight.

  Seven hours.

  “I’ve got one answer,” Wood said.

  DuBrose turned a white, strained face and mopped sweat from his forehead. “To what?”

  “Time travel, I think. Had you realized that Ridgeley could have escaped very easily simply by moving a few days away in time? But he hasn’t done that. I’ve been tying it in with other factors; the fact that in Ridgeley’s period nobody ever returned from a temporal trip. And the Duds, too.

  Our tentative theory about them is that they came back through time searching for something—we’ll probably never know what. And they gave up and died right here.”

  DuBrose kindled a cigarette, noticing that his hand shook uncontrollably. “What does that add up to?”

  “One-way time travel,” Wood said. He screwed up his face and studied the air. “I’ve only worked it out in my head, but it adds up. You can move in only one direction temporally. Into the future or the past. But you can’t come back.”

  “Why not?”

  Wood gestured. “Why wasn’t Ridgeley pursued by his enemies? He’s a war criminal in his own period. But he was allowed to escape through time, and he’s extremely dangerous. Suppose he’d gone onto the future, far in advance of his own time, picked up some super-weapons, and returned to his period with them? You don’t let a criminal run loose if he has access to a vibropistol.”

  “Unless he can’t get back,” DuBrose said, frowning. “You mean Ridgeley’s exiled?”

  “Voluntarily. The creatures in the Duds couldn’t retrace their steps either. You can move—and continue to move—in only one temporal direction, either future or past. But you can’t return.

  You’d meet yourself coming back.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a one-way track,” Wood said. “Two objects can’t exist in the same space-time.”

  “You mean two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time.”

  “Well? An extension of Ridgeley exists from now to his own period, along the time-line. He can’t go home. He’d bump into himself. He’d exp
lode or something.”

  DuBrose scowled. “Uh. It’s a bit hard to swallow. The Duds—”

  “They gave up, I suppose. They knew it was no use searching further. So they—died.”

  “Wait a minute. Why hasn’t Ridgeley tried to escape our attack by going into the past? He could do that, couldn’t he?”

  “He could, but would he? You’re the psychologist.”

  “Yeah . . . he wouldn’t. He can’t give up a fight until he knows he’s licked. Suppose he decides he is licked and escapes into the past again? Without using the counter-equation?”

  “Would he? Even if he has to let that information fall into our hands, he’s not lost his private war.

  He may have other aces up his sleeve.”

  “We’ve got to break him down. He’s resisted all our assaults so far. He’s conditioned to the unexpected or something. Even those projections of objective insanity haven’t cracked him. What would?”

  The mathematician grimaced. “I don’t know. If we keep pounding at him—”

  A vagrant thought moved through DuBrose’s mind. He caught at it.

  “The mutant . . . yeah! Billy Van Ness! Wood, could we use him against Ridgeley?”

  “Why—how? We’re using psychotic projections now.”

  “Ordinary insanity,” DuBrose said quickly, stubbing out his cigarette. “Van Ness has got something special. ETP. He’s a mutation of a nonhuman race, a totally alien one. They gave him a legacy that drove him insane as soon as he could use it. The extratemporal perception was latent in him till he matured. Then—retreat to insanity. I don’t think even Ridgeley’s mind could stand ETP.

  “We don’t want to drive him insane.”

  “Don’t forget his trigger responses. He’ll know what we’re trying to do. He’ll use the counterequation—he’ll have to. There won’t be time for him to work out other possible solutions. If the ETP is as dangerous as I think it is, Ridgeley will get one whiff of it, panic, and give us the information we want. But—can we transmit Van Ness’ ETP?”

  “Not according to orthodox logic,” Wood said. “Only we’ll use a truth-variant in which psychic transmission of the faculty is possible. We can try it.”

  “If it works, we’ll have to be ready.” DuBrose spoke into a visor. “Instant mobilization. At the word, smash down on the Falangists with the equation applications we’ve already charted. Get me Kalender . . . Mr. Secretary? Hold ready. The word may come at any time now. An all-out robot assault on the Falangists.”

  “We’re mobilized for that,” Kalender said tautly. “What about defense?”

  “When we get the counterequation, we can handle it from here. Wood and his staff will tackle it instantly. O.K.?” DuBrose turned from the visor, a tight, cold feeling in his stomach.

  He was afraid of what he was going to do.

  They kept up the unrelenting attack on Ridgeley as they prepared. But the courier, by sheer, dogged nerve—or lack of it—had nearly reached his copter. As Wood re-checked and diagramed the factors of the equation that they would have to use, DuBrose put the mutant under hypnosis and made sure that the warped, half-alien mind. was sufficiently under his control.

  The scanner showed Ridgeley trudging on, his eyes blazing with the joy of conflict that was his reason for being, while around him the materialized madness of variable truths raged unceasingly.

  To render Ridgeley en rapport with Billy Van Ness—that was the plan. If it could be done—

  Finally:

  “Ready, DuBrose?”

  “Ready.”

  This was the lance that could pierce his armor. He saw it coming. In that single moment while Ridgeley saw and understood what weapon they were using against him, he analyzed the chances, made his decision, and acted.

  He used the counterequation.

  Around him the turmoil died. The wheat fields lay placid under the afternoon sun. A hundred feet away was the grove of trees that shielded the copter.

  He was armored now. The equation could not harm him. But his enemies had forced him to reveal the nature of the counterequation. Very well. He could still fly to the Falangists—

  Luckily he had protected himself before there had been full rapport with that mutant. Even the brief glimpse he had had was disturbing, a small, latent seed buried deep in his brain.

  A seed?

  Latent?

  But what was this thing that grew, that uncoiled, that spiraled out and out through his consciousness as though a spark had ignited the whole heap of gunpowder? One cell in his brain, one thought—but from that thought the contagion leaped faster than light, giving Ridgeley the extra-temporal preception that had come from an alien race of the ultimate future.

  Delayed reaction, Time-bomb. The brain-colloid had to adjust itself to ETP—

  The grove of trees was in violent movement. No, that was illusionary. There were hundreds, thousands of trees, superimposed in space but conjoining in time, and the line of their duration stretched like a network, with offshoots of germination that ended in other trees—

  Masonry loomed before Ridgeley.

  Tepees stood there.

  Future and past—

  Limited spatially to this area, but without temporal limits. Everything that had been or was to be, Ridgeley perceived in a shifting, monstrous kaleidoscope that became clearer as his perception sharpened. It was not merely sight. ETP is something else, a consciousness of the objective that goes beyond vision and sound and hearing.

  Spatially the manifestation was limited to a small area immediately surrounding Ridgeley, but he was oddly certain that he could expand the range at will. He made no effort to do that. He stood motionless, his head sunk between his heavy shoulders, veins throbbing on his forehead.

  Suddenly he closed his eyes.

  The disorientation grew worse. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand material objects occupied the same space in which he existed. An illusion. But he knew that two objects cannot concomitantly occupy the same space-time.

  In the past and future, at this spot, there had been catastrophes. The land-surface of the earth is not large. And, in all time, there had been opportunity for lightning to strike near here, for quakes to rock the ground and for trees to crash down on the spot where Ridgeley stood.

  The veins throbbed faster on his forehead. Teeth clenched, he bowed his head as though fighting a storm of sleet, while the ETP natural to a nonhuman race channeled through his brain, opening unimaginable doors.

  Van Ness and the other mutants had learned to perceive duration—and they had gone mad.

  Disorientation was terribly inevitable. Only by retreating into insanity had they been able to survive at all, in a world of complete flux, of utter incoherence to any mind that instinctively expected a logical pattern. This was not even variable truth. It was fairy chess with a board extended to the end and the beginning of time, and on that incalculably vast chessboard the innumerable pieces were moving . . .

  A player can see the board and the pieces and comprehend the pattern. But if a pawn—or, in fairy chess, a nightrider—could see the board from the viewpoint of a player—what would be his reaction?

  Ridgeley drew in upon himself, tighter and tighter. The impingement was becoming unendurable.

  His legs bent. He sank down.

  Keeping his eyes squeezed shut, he drew up his knees, crossed his clenched fists, and bent his head forward. He remained motionless in the fetal position.

  He was not dead. He breathed.

  But that was all.

  A month later Cameron sat at his desk and stared defeat in the face. Not national defeat. Victory was three weeks old already, but how ephemeral a victory only Cameron knew.

  The long, routine years had been merely preparation; the attack, invasion and conquest of the Falangists had been blitz. The counterequation was a sword that nothing could turn. Or rather, a shield the enemy did not possess. Under Eli Wood’s direction the disorganization of the Falangists had progressed with unbelievabl
e speed.

  And here was peace.

  Everywhere but in this room, this head, this foreboding mind. The counterequation was simple to apply, and Cameron still kept its effect in use around him. He had a reason. He was still shaky from his long ordeal, but no variable-truths could penetrate the armor of the counterequation even if any fugitive Falangists were still able to operate from hiding. Cameron was safe from that.

  From himself he was not safe. He sat quite still, his back to the door, and a conversation from a few days past drifted through his mind. He did not want to remember it, but the sentences beat inexorably in his ears.

  DuBrose: “Here’s some indoctrination stuff for the Falangists. Needs your O.K., chief.”

  Cameron: “I’ll tend to it. How do you feel, Ben? Want a furlough?”

  DuBrose: “Lord, no. The work’s too fascinating. Even Ridgeley—though, of course, he’s incurable. And a good thing.”

  Cameron: “Good? Well, necessary. But not just, Ben.”

  DuBrose: “Not just? For my money, it was a beautiful case of applied justice. He started this mess through time-traveling, and ETP smashed him.”

  Cameron: “You think Ridgeley started it? He didn’t. His psychological pattern was set long before his birth, before his conception. He acted in the only way he possibly could have acted.

  You can’t hold a man responsible for the things that happened before he was born. The real culprits were the ones who made Ridgeley’s indoctrination along those lines necessary—and possible. Do you know who those culprits were, Ben?”

  DuBrose had looked bewildered. “Who?”

  Cameron tapped the papers on his desk. “What’s this stuff? Indoctrination plans. We’ve got to use them. We’ve got to train our own men along supervised military lines or the Falangists may start another war. Preparedness is necessary. A vital survival-factor. But in the end—Ben, the end of it will be Ridgeley. Ridgeley’s civilization. The seeds of that culture are right here, in these papers, in us, and what led to us out of our own past. We’re the culprits, Ben.”