Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “Oh?” Carmody said, beginning to frown again.

  “Now this isn’t to be repeated,” Higgins said chattily, but I suppose you know that everybody’s got bugs in him—germs, viruses, and so on? Even the healthiest man contains the seeds of death. Strep, typhoid, tuberculosis, cancer—all sorts of bugs. But usually in such small quantity that the phagocytes can handle ’em. It’s only when the bugs multiply that you run into trouble, and have a prognosis of active polio—or whatever. Well, we just multiply the bugs.”

  “If you’re telling me the truth—” Carmody said.

  “It’s in confidence. We’ve got a method of multiplying the bugs, that’s all. Ever heard of symbiosis? Give-and-take relationship of two organisms? That’s the answer. A virus, let’s call it x-virus, that sets up a symbiotic housekeeping business—selectivity. Introduced into the human blood stream, it picks out the strongest bug and proposes. It’s a smart little virus. If the polio bug is strongest in your system at the time, it goes into symbiosis with polio. It’s stimulative. And very adaptable. Result: the polio bug multiplies fast, plenty fast—though not so fast it seems abnormal. Atypical, maybe, but not abnormal. If the polio’s cured, the x-virus is still present in the blood stream, and it looks around for the next-strongest bug. Meningitis, or t. b. Anything available, so long as it’s malignant. The human organism can’t stand one attack after another—polio, meningitis, t. b., cancer—right down the list. Death is certain. I’m not much good at explaining all this, I’m afraid. I’m an organizer, not a technician. But perhaps you see the angles?”

  “I see ’em,” Carmody said. “It’s death from natural causes, all right.”

  Higgins nodded and chuckled. “Sure. The only trouble is how to administer the x-virus to a victim. That’s where our operatives come in. They’re pretty specialized. In fact, you have to be born to the job.”

  “They sound like radio-controlled anopheles,” Carmody said.

  “No, they’re men—but they’re mutants. We had to put ’em on the Board of Directors, for one reason or another. They’re the ones who started WE KILL PEOPLE. They’re a true mutation. Not many of them, so far, but there’ll be more. Unfortunately they can’t intermarry with humans, only among themselves. So—” He spread his pudgy hands.

  “Mutants,” Carmody murmured. His throat felt tight.

  “The x-virus is natural to them,” Higgins explained. “Perfectly normal in their blood stream, part of the check-and-balance system of their rather screwy metabolic set-up. Introduced into a merely human circulatory pipe line, it’s fatal. Nothing too startling about that. Some types of blood are plenty dangerous in combination with other types; they don’t mix. Natural selection is behind it, but we can’t read Mother Nature’s mind. The first true humans were mutants, and were given intelligence so they could dominate. They already had agility. Our x-virus boys already had inherited intellect, and maybe this new-virus is their method of domination. It isn’t too foresighted on Mother Nature’s part, though. Humans would kill the mutants if they knew. They’re typhoid Marys.”

  “I don’t see how they survived infancy,” Carmody said.

  Maturation takes time. A baby’s blood will mix with any other type, you know. Later on it acquires its own distinctive typing.

  It was like that. Our mutants were perfectly normal till they matured. It was only after that that the x-virus developed. But you can see the dangers! They couldn’t live in contact with humans without arousing suspicion and eventual real trouble. And they’re not super-minds. Some of ’em are excellent technicians, but no better than human technicians. Perhaps intellect may become as vestigial as agility, a convenient secondary trait. In the future, in a mutant world, a few may specialize in intellect, just as we have athletes today. I don’t know what the main line will be; the x-virus isn’t enough. Instinct, possibly. However, if the mutants are to survive at all, they’ve got to stay under cover. And because they’re not super-minds, they had to make a living.”

  “Oh,” Carmody said, uneasiness crawling down between his shoulder blades. Higgins was talking too much and too plainly.

  “Which they did. They’ve got a private world of their own, adjusted to their mutant needs. A small Utopia. It’s underground, in a wilderness country, and I don’t think humans can locate it. It’s a lovely place. And it also costs a lot to maintain. Tints—WE KILL PEOPLE. The mutants had to find a profitable enterprise which would suit their specialized talents, and that was it.”

  That was it. It explained the basic amorality of WE KILL PEOPLE’S theory and practice, too. The Board of Directors didn’t kill fellow-humans ; they killed members of a lower species. Mankind was playing into the hands of the mutants; no such murderous organization could have flourished among beasts. Beasts did their own killing.

  They—

  Carmody felt a sudden, unexpected sting of pain that instantly dulled and was gone. A roaring grew in his ears. He heard it stutter and die, and he was looking at the copter from fifty feet away, across an expanse of blindingly brilliant white sand. Behind him was a monotonous boom and thunder.

  He was sitting up, his back against something—a rough-boled tree.

  Higgins was visible through the open door of the copter, his chair swiveled so he faced Carmody.

  “You’ve been unconscious for a few hours,” Higgins said, his voice raised slightly. “I used an instantaneous anaesthetic.”

  Carmody drew his legs under him. There were no after-effects. He felt fine.

  “Don’t do it,” Higgins said. “I can take off in a second, and I want to talk to you first. We thought you were a spy, you know, but we weren’t sure. Not many people ask us for jobs. We tested you.”

  Carmody reached into a pocket. His gun was gone.

  Higgins blinked against the glare. “Your psychology checked. You were the sort of man who’d want to kill Dale because he fired you. But you’re also strongly acquisitive. Not miserly, but you want value received. The scene on the Empire Roofport was a frame-up. We maneuvered you—and Dale—into a position where you were both alone up there, and there were no spectators to bring evidence if you’d killed Dale personally. You had the chance. You could have thrown him over the railing, taken the elevator down—it’s automatic, you know—and you’d have accomplished your purpose quite safely. And you wouldn’t have had to pay us ten thousand dollars. But the idea never occurred to you. We were sure after that.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Carmody asked. A muscle was twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  “Nothing,” Higgins said. “This island is off the air-trade routes. Once in six months a plane visits it, to re-establish boundary lines in the oceanic area. You have slightly more than four months to wait.”

  “Then I’ll be picked up?” Higgins shook his head. “You’ll be buried, that’s all. I’m a mutant, too. You have the x-virus in your bloodstream now. We discourage spies, Mr. Carmody.” He shrugged and sighed. “I’ve left you plenty of supplies, so you won’t be hungry. We’ve used this island before, you see. Well, good-by.”

  “Wait a minute,” Carmody said, getting ready. “One more thing. How did you infect me?”

  Higgins merely smiled, glanced at his hands—he had donned his gloves again—and swung the seat around. Carmody got a sprinter’s start. He plunged for the copter as the engine roared.

  He would have made it except for one thing—the downblast. That vertical cyclone knocked him flat. By the time he had scrambled upright, the copter was far out of reach, and heading east. Carmody stood looking after it till it diminished into a speck.

  Then he looked at nearer objects. White surf flung its combers over a barrier reef; beyond that, blue sea stretched to meet a cloudless blue sky. Behind him, palmettos and sparse jungle made cool shadows. A stream ran softly out of the forest to meet the sea.

  At the foot of the tree where he had wakened was a waterproofed box. Carmody opened it. There was food, plenty of it, and a good variety. He wouldn�
��t starve.

  He rolled up his sleeve and examined his arm for the prick of a hypodermic needle, but he found nothing. He remembered the slight sting he had felt in the copter, but that had been merely the anaesthetic. He remembered Higgins’ gloves, and grimaced.

  The x-virus—symbiotic? It would combine with the strongest bug in his bloodstream, and—

  But what bug?

  Carmody stood above the box, scowling and staring down. He was checking back, remembering what had killed his parents, his grandparents, his great-grandparents. Had he any hereditary predilection for any particular germ or virus disease?

  WE KILL PEOPLE had checked his history; they might know. But Higgins hadn’t said. Something at the bottom of the waterproofed box caught his attention, a small metal case. He weighed it in his hand, hesitated, and opened it.

  It held sterilizing equipment, a hypodermic syringe with a dozen fine needles, and a supply of morphine. Carmody’s lips moved silently. He stood there motionless, the pounding of the surf rising to a crescendo of thunder, the prison of sea and sky clamping down rather horribly.

  Morphine. To kill pain.

  THE END.

  THE CURE

  The simplest way to drive a sane man mad is to face him with an absolutely insoluble dilemma. There are more complex ways, of course—but the cure gets complicated, too, and sometimes fails—

  When Dawson got back from his vacation in Florida, he was feeling no better. He hadn’t expected a miraculous cure. In fact, he hadn’t expected anything. Now he sat morosely at his desk, staring out at the tower of the Empire State and vaguely hoping it would topple.

  Carruthers, his partner in the law firm, came in and bummed a cigarette. “You look lousy, Fred,” he remarked. “Why not go out and have a drink?”

  “I don’t want a drink,” Dawson said. “Besides, it’s too early, I had enough liquor in Florida.”

  “Maybe too much.”

  “No, What griped me was . . . I dunno.”

  “Great psychoses from little acorns grow,” Carruthers said, his plump, pale face almost too casual.

  “So now I’m nuts?”

  “You could be. You could be. Give yourself time. Why this abnormal fear of psychiatrists, anyway? I got psychoanalyzed once.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m going to marry a tall, dark woman,” Carruthers said. “Just the same, psychiatry isn’t in the same class with astrology. Maybe you bit your grandmother when you were a child. Drag it out in the open. As long as you keep thinking, “What big teeth you have you’ll dwell in a morass of mental misery.”

  “I’m not in a morass,” Dawson said. “It’s just—”

  “Yeah. Just—Listen, didn’t you go to college with a guy named Hendricks?”

  “I did.”

  “I met him in the elevator last week. He’s moved here from Chicago. Got offices upstairs, on the twenty-fifth floor. He’s supposed to be one of the best psychiatrists in this country. Why not go see him?”

  “What could I say?” Dawson asked. “I’m not followed by little green men.”

  “Lucky man,” Carruthers said. “I am. Day and night. They drink my liquor, too. Just tell Hendricks you smell dead flies. You probably pulled the wings off an anopheles when you were a tot. It’s as simple as that, see?” He rose from his chair, put his hand on Dawson’s shoulder, and added quietly, “Do it, Fred. As a favor to me.”

  “Uni. Well—O.K.”

  “Good,” Carruthers said, brightening. He looked at his wrist-watch. “You’re due at his office in five minutes. I made the appointment yesterday.” He fled, ignoring the curse Dawson flung at his head. “Room twenty-five-forty,” he called, and slammed the door.

  Scowling, Dawson located his hat, left word with the receptionist as to his whereabouts, and rode the elevator up. He met a short, fat, cherubic man in tweeds emerging from twenty-five-forty. Mild blue eyes considered him through glistening contact lenses. “Hello, Fred,” the man said. “Don’t know me now, eh?”

  “Raoul?” Dawson’s voice was doubtful.

  “Right. Raoul Hendricks, somewhat fatter after twenty-five years, I’m afraid. You look the same, though. Look, I was just going down to your office. I didn’t have a chance to eat breakfast this morning. What about a bite downstairs?”

  “Didn’t Carruthers tell you—”

  “We can kick that around better over food.” Hendricks steered Dawson back to the elevator. “There’s a lot I want to ask you about. The college chaps. I didn’t keep in touch. I was in Europe most of the time.”

  “I kept in touch,” Dawson said. “Remember Willard? He’s just been indicted in an oil mix-up—”

  They talked over onion soup and through the entree. Hendricks listened, mostly. Sometimes he watched Dawson, though not pointedly. They were in an isolated booth, and, after coffee had been served, Hendricks lighted a cigarette and blew a smoke ring.

  “You want a snap diagnosis?” he asked.

  “O.K.”

  “You’re worried about something? Do you know what it is?”

  “Certainly I know,” Dawson said. “It’s a sort of daydream. But Carruthers told you that.”

  “He said you smelled dead flies.”

  Dawson laughed. “On a window-pane. A dusty windowpane. Probably it isn’t that at all. I just got the impression, no more than that. I never see anything. It’s a sort of extension of sensory consciousness.”

  “It never occurs in your sleeping dreams?”

  “If it does, I don’t remember. It’s always a flash. The worst part is that I know at the time that it’s the windowpane that’s real. Usually it happens when I’m doing some routine stuff. Suddenly I get this flash. It’s instantaneous. I feel, very certainly, that whatever I happen to be doing at the time is a dream. And that really I’m somewhere smelling dead flies on a dusty windowpane.”

  “Like the Red King? You think somebody’s dreaming you?”

  “No. I’m dreaming—this.” Dawson looked around the restaurant.

  “Well,” Hendricks said, “possibly you are.” Pie stubbed out his cigarette. “We get into metaphysics at that point, and I’m lost. It doesn’t matter which is the dream. The main thing is to believe in the dream while you’re having it. Unless it’s a nightmare.”

  “It isn’t,” Dawson said. “I’ve had a pretty good life so far.”

  “Then where are we? You don’t know what’s worrying you, The dream’s merely a symbol. Once you realize what the symbol represents, the whole structure collapses, and any neuroses you may have are gone. As a general rule, anyway.”

  “Ghosts can’t stand light, is that it?”

  “That’s it, exactly. Don’t misunderstand me. Neuroses can build up eventually to true psychoses. You’ve got something like an olfactory hallucination. But there’s no accompanying delusion. You know the windowpane isn’t there.”

  “Yeah,” Dawson said, “but there’s something under my hand.”

  “Tactile hallucination? What does it feel like?”

  “Cold and hard. I don’t know what it is. If I move it, something will happen.”

  “Do you move it?”

  After a long moment Dawson said “No,” very softly.

  “Then move it,” Hendricks advised. He took out pencil and paper and adjusted his watch. “Let’s have a jury-rigged word-association test. O.K.?”

  “Well—why?”

  “To find out the causation of your windowpane. If there’s a mental block, if the censor’s working. it’ll show up. Spring cleaning. If you clean a house regularly, you save a lot of work later. No chance for cobwebs to accumulate. Whereas if you let the stuff pile up, you’re apt to get a real psychosis, with all the trimmings. As I just said, it’s a question of finding the cause. Once you locate that, you know it’s a straw dummy, and it doesn’t bother you any more.”

  “What if it isn’t a straw dummy?”

  “Then, at least, you’ve recognized it, and can take steps to get
rid of the incubus.”

  “I see,” Dawson said slowly. “If I’d been responsible for a man’s death years ago, I could buy peace of mind by taking care of his orphaned children.”

  “Read Dickens,” Hendricks said. “Scrooge is a beautiful case history. Hallucinations, persecution complex, guilt complex—and atonement.” He glanced at his watch. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  When they had finished, Hendricks blinked at the results. “Normal,” he said. “Too normal. A few odd quirks—but it takes more than one test to get any definite result. We don’t want to be empirical—though it’s sometimes necessary. Next time you have that daydream, move the gadget under your hand.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Dawson said.

  Hut Hendricks only laughed. “Neural paralysis of the astral,” he suggested. “I’m relieved, Fred. I’d rather gathered you were slightly off your rocker. But the layman always overestimates mental quirks. Your friend Carruthers has probably got you a bit worried.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So you’ve got a hallucinatory daydream. That isn’t uncommon. Once we find the cause, you’ll have nothing left to worry about. Come in tomorrow, any time—give me a call first—and we’ll give you a physical checkup. More coffee?”

  “No,” Dawson said, and presently left Hendricks at the elevator. He was feeling irrationally relieved. Though he discounted a good deal of the psychiatrist’s professional optimism, he felt that the man’s argument held water. There was logic in it. And certainly it was illogical to let a daydream influence his moods so strongly.

  Back in his office, Dawson stood at the window, staring out over the serrated skyline. The low, hushed roar of traffic mounted from the canyons below. In forty-two years he bad come a long way, partner in a law firm, member of a dozen clubs, taking an active interest in a variety of matters—a long way, for a boy who had begun his career in an orphan asylum. He had married once, but there had been a divorce, amicable on both sides. Now it was more convenient to maintain a bachelor apartment near Central Park. He had money, prestige, power—none of which would help him if the hallucination developed.