Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  I laughed exultantly, and twisted in three perfectly timed motions that blocked and overbalanced the man who was myself. Three motions only—and then I had him across my knee, taut-stretched, his spine pressing hard against my thigh.

  I grinned down at him. My blood dripped into his face. I saw it strike there, and I met his eyes, and then strangely, for one flashing instant, I knew a fierce yearning for defeat. In that instant. I prayed voicelessly to a nameless god that Edward Bond might yet save himself, and Ganelon might die . . .

  I called forth all the strength that was in me, and limbo swam redly before my eyes and the pain of my broken rib was a lance of white light as I drew the deep breath that was Edward Bond’s last.

  I broke his back across my knee.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Freedom at Last!

  Hurriedly two cold, smooth hands pressed hard upon my forehead. I looked up. They slid lower, covering my eyes. And weakness was like a blanket over me. I knelt there, unresisting, feeling the body of the man who had been myself slide limply from my knee.

  Freydis pressed me down. We lay side by side, the living and the dead.

  The silver rods of the sorceress touched my head, and made a bridge between Edward Bond and Ganelon. I remembered Medea’s wand that could draw the life-force from the mind. A dull, numbing paralysis had me. Little tingling shocks rippled through my nerves, and I could not move.

  Sudden agonizing pain shot through me. My back! I tried to scream with the white fury of that wrenching agony, but my throat was frozen. I felt Edward Bond’s wounds!

  In that nightmare moment while my brain spun down the limitless corridors of a science beyond that of mankind, I knew what Freydis had done—what she was doing.

  I felt the mind of Edward Bond come back from the gulfs. Side by side we lay in flesh, and side by side in spirit as well.

  There was blackness, and two flames, burning with a cold, clear fire . . .

  One was the mind—the life—of Edward Bond. One was my life!

  The flames bent toward each other!

  They mingled and were one!

  Life and soul and mind of Edward Bond merged with life of Ganelon!

  Where two flames had burned, there was one now. One only.

  And the identity of Ganelon ebbed, sank . . . faded into a graying shadow as the fires of Edward Bond’s life leaped ever higher!

  We were one. We were—

  Edward Bond! No longer Ganelon! No longer Lord of the Dark World, Master of the Caers!

  Magic of Freydis drowned the soul of Ganelon and gave his body to the life of Edward Bond!

  I saw Ganelon—die! . . .

  * * * *

  When I opened my eyes again, I knelt upon the altar that had been Llyr’s. The empty vaults towered hollowly above us. Limbo was gone. The body across my knee was gone. Freydis smiled down at me with her ageless, timeless smile.

  “Welcome back to the Dark World, Edward Bond.”

  Yes, it was true. I knew that I knew my own identity, housed though it was in another man’s body. Dizzily I blinked, shook my head, and rose slowly. Pain struck savagely at my side, and I gasped and let Freydis spring forward to support me on one great white arm, while the hollow building reeled about me. But Ganelon was gone. He had vanished with limbo, vanished like a scatter of smoke, vanished as if the prayer he breathed in his extremity had been answered by the nameless god he prayed to.

  I was Edward Bond again.

  “Do you know why Ganelon could break you, Edward Bond?” Freydis said softly. “Do you know why you could not vanquish him? It was not what he thought. I know he believed he read your mind because he had dwelt there, but that was not the reason. When a man fights himself, my son, the same man does not fight to win. Only the suicide hates himself. Deep within Ganelon lay the knowledge of his own evil, and the hatred of it. So he could strike his own image and exult in the blow, because he hated himself in the depths of his own mind.

  “But you had earned your own respect. You could not strike as hard as he because you are not evil. And Ganelon won—and lost. In the end, he did not fight me. He had slain himself, and the man who does that has no combat left in him.”

  Her voice sank to a murmur. Then she laughed.

  “Go out now, Edward Bond. There is much to be done in the Dark World!”

  So, leaning upon her arm, I went down the long steps that Ganelon had climbed. I saw the green glimmer of the day outside, the shimmer of leaves, the motion of waiting people. I remembered all that Ganelon had remembered, but upon the mind of Ganelon the mind of Edward Bond was forever superimposed, and I knew that only thus could the Dark World be ruled.

  The two together, twinned forever in one body, and the control forever mine—Edward Bond’s.

  We came out under the emptied arch of the opening, and daylight was blinding for a moment after that haunted darkness. Then I saw the foresters anxiously clustering in their battered ranks around the Caer, and I saw a pale girl in green, haloed by her floating hair, turn a face of incredulous radiance to mine.

  I forgot the pain in my side.

  Arles’ hair swam like mist about us both as my arms closed around her. The roar of exultation that went up from the forest people swept the clearing and made the great Caer behind us echo through all its hollow vaults.

  The Dark World was free, and ours.

  But, Medea, Medea, red witch of Colchis, how we might have reigned together!

  RAIN CHECK

  It wasn’t human, or even remotely human. The race that created it had given it great powers. But one power it desperately wanted was denied it—

  The thing that seemed to be in the transparent block came from the past, not the future, and its alienage was due more to environment than to heredity. It had no heredity, except by proxy. The iGlann—which is not a typographical error but a pre-paleolithic race—created it when the glaciers began to grind down on the Valley. However, the iGlann died anyway, and, partly because they weren’t human, none of their artifacts was ever found by later cultures of homo sapiens.

  The iGlann were sapiens but they weren’t homo. So the thing they made during their last desperately experimental days was a super-iGlann. It wasn’t a superman, or probably Sam Fessier couldn’t even have communicated with it when he found the transparent cube.

  This happened a little before World War II.

  Fessier came back to his apartment in a dither. He was a thin, red-haired man of twenty-eight, with blue eyes, a harassed expression, and at the moment a great longing for a drink. After he had had one, he discovered that company was even more desirable, so he went out, bought a fifth, and went to see Sue Daley.

  Sue was a pretty little blonde who wanted to be a career woman. She worked for an advertising firm, a position which Fessier loudly scorned. He himself was a gag cartoonist, one of that band who habitually see the world through slightly cockeyed glasses. The passing of years had changed his allegiance from Winsor McCay to such mad modern Titians as Partch and Addams. (Titian is not a typographical error either, but the second may be omitted without altering the sense.)

  ‘Tm going to change my name,” Fessier said after the third cocktail. “You can call me Aladdin from now on. Gad!”

  Sue tried to scowl. “Don’t use that ridiculous word.”

  Fessier said sadly, “Can I help it if most of my publishers are hypersensitive about blasphemy? I’ve got to be so careful about what I put in my captions that I’ve started talking that way. Anyhow, you missed the point. I said I’m going to change my name to Aladdin.” Sue picked up the cocktail shaker and made it tinkle. “Two more,” she said. “One apiece. Drink up and then tell me the gag.”

  Fessier pushed her away as she tried to pour. “I suppose I’ll meet this skepticism everywhere from now on. No, really, Sue. Something’s happened.”

  She sobered. “Really, Sam? If this is one of your—”

  “It isn’t,” he said desperately. “The hell of it is, it’ll sound li
ke a gag. But I can prove it. Remember that. Sue, I went into an auction sale today and bought something. A, glass block, about as big as your bead.”

  “Indeed,” Sue said.

  Fessier, oblivious to feminine nuances, plunged on. “There was a little mannikin or something in the block. The reason I bought it—” He slowed and stopped.

  “It looked at me,” Fessier said lamely. “It opened its beady little eyes and looked at me.”

  “Of course it did,” Sue encouraged, pouring the man a drink. “Out of its beady little eyes, did it? This had better be good.”

  Fessier got up and went out into the ball. He came back with a paper-w rapped parcel, about as large as Sue’s head. He sat down again, the bundle on his knees, and began to unwrap it.

  “I was curious, that’s all,” he said. “Or . . . well, I was curious.”

  “Maybe its beady little eyes hypnotized you into buying it,” Sue suggested, looking at him innocently over the rim of her glass.

  Fessier’s hands stilled on the knots. “Yeah,” he said, and presently continued his task. There emerged a transparent cube, about nine inches to a side, with a mandrake embedded in the substance. At any rate, it looked like a mandrake, or what the Chinese call a ginseng root. It was roughly manshaped, with well-defined limbs and head, but so brown and wrinkled that it might easily have been merely an oddly-shaped root. Its beady little eyes, however, were not open.

  Sue said. “How much did you pay for that thing?”

  “Oh, ten bucks.”

  “Then you were hypnotized. Still, it’s unusual. Is it for me?”

  Fessier said “No” very abruptly. The girl looked at him.

  “Got another wench on your string? I know. She lives in a mausoleum. Instead of giving her flowers, you bring her nasty little—”

  “Wail a minute,” Fessier said. “I think it’s going to open its eyes.”

  Sue stared first at the block and then at Fessier. When nothing happened, she put out an exploratory hand, but Fessier shook his head warningly.

  “Wait a minute, Sue. When I first saw the thing in that auctioneer’s, it was all dusty. I rubbed at. That’s when it opened its eyes. Then when I got it home, I rubbed it again.”

  “Just like Aladdin, huh?” Sue said.

  “It was talking to me.” Fessier murmured.

  Night had begun to darken the city. Outside the windows grayness had turned into shadow. Electric signs were glowing in the distance, but they did not impinge: like the sounds that came up softly from the street below, they were impersonal. It is as easy to be alone in New York as it is in Montana, and that aloneness is somewhat less friendly. Perhaps that is because a great city is an extremely intricate, complicated social mechanism, and the moment one gets out of step with the machine, the immensity of the city makes itself sensed. It is overwhelming.

  For the mandrake had opened its eyes. As Fessier had said, they were both small and beady.

  When Sue became conscious of herself again, she thought that the creature had been talking for quite a while. It was purely telepathic, of course. Sound waves could not penetrate that nearly impermeable block. She was surprised to find that she wasn’t surprised.

  “. . . but surprise and incredulity are the common human reactions,” it said. “Even a thousand years ago that was true. People of your race at that time said they believed in witches and werewolves, but that’s a different matter from actually encountering a concrete example of the supernormal. I charted the neural reactions—the chain progressing from incredulity to credulity by the logical process of demonstrative empirical proof, and worked out a convenient short cut. It’s been a long time since I wasted energy unnecessarily. Take it for granted that you’re convinced.

  I did it with something you might call psychic radiation. I can influence emotion that way, but unfortunately mnemonic control is impossible for me. Your race is insatiably curious. Next will come the questions.”

  “Next will come a drink,” Fessier said. “Sue, where did you put that bottle I brought up?”

  “In the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll get it.” But they went out together. Leaning against the sink, they looked at each other wide-eyed.

  “The strange part is that I’m not a bit skeptical,” Fessier said. “That thing might as well be the law of gravitation for all the reaction I get.”

  “But what is it?”

  “I dunno. I just know it’s . . . real. I’m convinced.”

  “Psychic radiation.”

  Fessier said quietly, “Are you afraid?”

  The girl stared out the window. “Look, Sam. We believe in gravitation, too, but we don’t lean out that window too far.”

  “Uh. There are two things we can do. One is to go out the back door and never come back. The other—”

  “If it can juggle psychic radiation like ping-pong balls, it could kill us or . . . or turn us into brass monkeys,” Sue remarked.

  “Yeah. We could go out the back door, but I hate to think of our being chased down Lexington by a glass cube with a root in it. What am I standing here thinking for? Give me that.” Fessier took possession of the bottle and used it efficiently. After a few snorts, it seemed logical that they should return to their prize.

  Fessier said, “W-what are you, anyhow?”

  It said, “I told you the questions would come next. I know your race. Perpetually curious. Perhaps, some day—”

  “Are you dangerous?”

  “Many have blessed me. I am old. I am a legend. You spoke of the tale of Aladdin. I am the prototype of the jinni in the bottle. And the lamp, and the prophetic mandrake, and the homunculus, and the Sybil, and a hundred other talismans that have survived in your legends. But I am none of these. I am the super-iGlann.” They stood before it, unconsciously holding hands. Sue said, “The what?”

  “There was a race,” it said, “not a human race. In the early days, there were many mutations. The iGlann were intelligent, but their minds were constructed along different patterns from yours. They might have survived, but the Ice Age destroyed them. Now. Your science has its blind spots, because you are human, and have human restrictions. You have only binocular vision, for example, and only six senses.”

  “Five,” Fessier said.

  “Six. The iGlann had their own limitations. In some respects they were more advanced than your race, in others less. They tried to find a method of survival, and worked at creating a life form that would be perfectly adaptable, perfectly invulnerable—and then changing their physical structure along such lines, so the Ice Age and other perils would not destroy them. Man can create a superman, usually by genetic accident. The iGlann created a super-iGlann. Then they died.”

  “You’re a superman?” Sue asked. She was slightly lost.

  “No. I am the super-iGlann. It is a different line. A superman would theoretically have no human limitations. But a . . . let us say . . . a superdog would. I am a super-iGlann, with none of the iGlann’s limitations; but there are things you can do that I cannot. Conversely, I am the legendary talisman, and I can grant your wishes.”

  “I wish I could be skeptical,” Fessier said. “In fact, I am.”

  “You are not skeptical about my existence. Only about my powers. If you expect me to conjure up a palace overnight, you will be disappointed. But if you want a palace, I can tell you the easiest way of getting one.”

  Fessier said, “This is beginning to sound like “Acres of Diamonds.” If you start telling me that pluck, luck and sweat will make me president, I’ll start hoping I’m dreaming. Even in a dream, I don’t like moralizing.”

  “You have binocular vision and only six senses,” it said, “so you cannot visualize clearly the steps that lead up to a certain end. I can get, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of your world and what goes on in it. I can see what streams lead to what rivers. Do you want a palace?” They both said no.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m not sure we want anything,” Sue said. �
�Do we, dear? Fairy gold, remember.”

  It said, “Human moralizing, founded on jealousy and the sour grapes philosophy. Look at it realistically. Is evil always punished? And I am not evil, in any human sense. I am too old even to consider the validity of such terms. I can give you what you want, but I have my limitations. My vitality is low. At times I must rest and recuperate.”

  “Hibernation, you mean?” Fessier asked.

  “It is not sleep,” the mandrake said. “Sleep is something I do not know—”

  Fessier said, “Everybody wants success in his field, I suppose. If—”

  “Study Picasso and the Cretan artifacts.” It named a few more art-forms and mentioned a book Fessier had never heard of.”

  “Oh. I thought so. Pluck, luck, and sweat.”

  It said, “You have certain forces in you, and certain distinctive characteristics and talent. A spring can be analyzed qualitatively, but not by itself. I know what potentialities you have. Dam the spring at certain points, dig a new outlet, or let the spring erode it by itself. I told you I can’t build a palace overnight.”

  Fessier was silent, but Sue leaned forward, her lips parted.

  “Will . . . anybody be hurt by Sam’s actions?”

  “Undoubtedly some will.”

  She said, “I mean . . . somebody won’t die so Sam can step into his shoes?”

  “Of course not. Probably fewer will be hurt by the altered course than if you had never met me. I believe one probability-likelihood is that eventually this man will contract a fatal disease and spread the contagion to dozens of others.”

  “Ouch,” Fessier said. “Suppose I take your advice?”

  “Then that won’t happen.”

  “But something worse will?”

  “I do not think so . . . no. From your viewpoint, the indications are that the results will be better for everyone concerned. And there was the whisper of a thought that said, “Even I.”