Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Their eyes met in a questioning surmise that perhaps could never be answered by homo sapiens.

  “Maybe he’s the wrong kind of superman,” Mary said. “Maybe, he’s one of the failures.”

  Ashworth broke his long silence. “It’s possible, Mary. But what’s the odds? The real point now—” His shaking voice steadied as he found a thought to build on, some immediate need for action to anchor his reeling mind. “Senator, what comes next? What are you going to do?”

  Mitchell turned a blank stare on him. “Do? Why, I—” He faltered and stopped.

  Now Ashworth’s silence had ended, he spoke with mounting confidence as his mind took firmer hold on the impossible. “The first thing we want is time to think. Mary’s right. But she was wrong when she said we’d already lost the fight. It’s just beginning. So we mustn’t spread this news broadcast. This homo superior isn’t like the others—he can’t be lynched! Not by a mob or a nation or a world. Well—so far only we three know the truth.”

  “And we’re still alive,” Mitchell said doubtfully. “Which means what? Are you asking me to keep this a secret?”

  “Not quite. I’m asking you to be judicious. If the truth were told, there’d be panic. Think what would happen, senator. The superman can’t be mobbed—he’s now. vulnerable. But Mar Vista is. The people’s fear and hate would turn against us. You know what that would mean?”

  Mitchell fingered his mouth. “Anarchy . . . I suppose you’re right.”

  “Mar Vista’s been the real governing unit for so long that you can’t junk it overnight and not expect everything to go smash.”

  Mary broke in urgently. “Even without the superman, we’ve still got a specially trained staff left here, valuable to keep control. If we’re going to fight—him—if mankind has the slightest chance at all. it’s in unity. Because this homo superior may be one of the failures.”

  Mitchell’s eyes moved from one face to the other. For a moment any watcher might have been justified in expecting the senator to burst forth in a diatribe of rebellion against the conclusion that was being forced upon him. Anger suffused his face and he started to shake his head violently.

  But the anger passed. The rebellion smoothed over and was gone. He said in a mechanical voice quite unlike his own, “Our only hope is unity.” It was an echo of Mary’s words. Then, more strongly, he phrased it anew in his own. “Man must stand together as never before!” he cried, this time the voice was tinged with oratory, and the idea had fixed itself and become Mitchell’s idea.

  Mary said, “We’ve learned a lot at Mar Vista. New methods, new weapons conceived by a superintellect—we can turn them against the same intellect that made them!”

  When the Senator left Mar Vista, he was walking springily, his brain fired with the concept of a new crusade.

  Ashworth and Mary Gregson stood perfectly still, watching him go. His withdrawal seemed to close a break in some intangible wall that folded them into silence together. Through the silence a breath of motion stirred, and a soundless voice spoke to them again.

  “Mary Gregson. How old are you?”

  After a moment, in a startled tone, she answered, “Twenty-six.”

  “How old are you, Samuel Ashworth?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  There was a voiceless breath of amusement in the air. “And neither of you has suspected, until now. Take your memories back, my children—”

  Silence followed that. Then Mary Gregson said slowly, like someone perceiving little by little some unfolding truth, “I . . . came to the Council five years ago. I was . . . someone else. The woman who had been Mary Gregson was . . . destroyed . . . to make room for me. Her face and memory was superimposed upon mine.”

  Samuel Ashworth echoed her. “I came . . . it was six years ago . . . and Samuel Ashworth was destroyed for me. I have his face and memories.”

  “And your own memories too. now,” the soundless voice told them. “I saw to all that. There are others on the Council like you. There are others all over the world. Not many yet. But a change is coming. With the Power Stations activated. I shall have fewer limitations. My experiments will go on. You arc experiments, Mary, Samuel—biogenetic experiments begun less than thirty years ago. In thirty years from now—” The voice faded into introspection for a moment. Then it went on with fresh emphasis.

  “You both wished to destroy Senator Mitchell. That was wrong for my purpose. I channeled your thoughts elsewhere, as I had just channeled his. Mitchell is a harmless homo sapien, but he can be useful to me. You see, perpetuation of the species is a stronger force even than self-preservation. Even when the founder of the species is a failure—as I am.”

  There was resignation, but no humility, in the voice. It said thoughtfully, “You two sensed that. I wonder, now, how you knew it? You are still very young.”

  Mary Gregson for a moment ceased to listen. She felt her mind reel beneath its own weight. New—new—too new and incredible to encompass—She felt naked and alone and helpless, and the very fabric of her beliefs shivered about her. She reached out blindly and gripped Ashworth’s hand, knowing as her fingers touched his that she was no longer quite so blind as she had been.

  Neither man nor woman spoke. Only the voice went on.

  “The second” phase of my plan is in operation now. There were Mutant Riots once, because the homo superior children were too immature to use their great powers effectively. Basically they were uncivilized, being immature. Some of them would have been successful types, had they lived. They did not live. Only I lived—and I am one of the failures.”

  Silence swam for a moment in the minds of the man and woman. Then aloof amusement pulsed into them from the mind of the superbeing.

  “Why should I feel shame or humility because of that? I had no control over the forces that shaped me. But I do have control now, over all I choose.” This time a definite beat of laughter sounded in the silent voice. “Mankind will fight me desperately out of the fear lest I conquer his earth. I have conquered it. It is mine. But the real conquest is still to come. No capable race to inherit it yet exists. My children, freed of my flaws, will be the new mankind.

  “I knew that long ago. The weapon was put in my hands, and I used it. Since then I have experimented, discarded, tried again—brought forth you two and your few brothers and sisters to inherit the earth.”

  Under her feet the shaking instability grew. Ashworth’s hand began to slip from hers and she clutched at it in panic.

  “You are homo superior,” the voice said—and now the abyss opened beneath the two of them and for a terrifying instant chaos yawned at their feet, a chaos of future too frightening to face. It opened wide—

  And closed again. Something infinitely supporting, infinitely protective, curved about them with the gentleness of the voice as it spoke on.

  “You will be homo superior—but you are children still. It is time you knew the truth. Adolescence will be a long, long period for you, but you are without the stigmata that branded the others as freaks and caused their destruction. This is part of your armor. Every man’s hand is against homo superior unless the camouflage is perfect. But no human will suspect you two. Or the others of my children who walk this world today. Not until too late.”

  There was a pause. Then—“The second phase is beginning. You are the first to know the truth of your breed, but the rest must learn soon. There will be tasks. Remember—you are still children. There is danger, tremendous danger. Man has atomic power, which is no weapon for an uncivilized, species—a species that never can become fully civilized. And your powers—you are uncivilized, too. And will be, until you mature. Till that hour, you will obey me.”

  The voice was stern. The man and woman knew they would obey.

  “Until now my work has been secret. But the changes will be too great from now on. More and more homo superior children will be born, and that must betray us unless a distraction can be provided. It has been provided.

  “The wor
d will go out. Of danger. Of a terrible menace to the whole world—myself. Mankind will band together against me. Any man who is greater than his fellows will be hailed as a new champion in the fight. Men will call you a champion, Samuel. And you, Mary. And my other children, too.

  “Knowing my power—man will not look for homo superior in his own ranks. His egotism is too great for that.

  “Slowly I will be conquered.

  “It will take a long, long time. And the mutation is dominant. Man will believe it is due to the war against me that more and more geniuses are born into his race. And then, one day, the balance will swing. Instead of a high minority of geniuses, there will be a high minority of—morons.

  “On that day, when homo sapiens become the minority, the battle will be truly won.

  “Your children’s children will see the clay. They will be the dominant majority. I shall be conquered not by homo sapiens, but by homo superiors.

  “One day the last human on earth will die—but he will not know he is the last man.

  “Meanwhile,” the voice said, “the war begins. The overt war against me, and the real war of my children against homo sapiens. You know the truth now. You will learn your powers. And I will guide you. A guide you can trust, because I am a failure.”

  Man and woman—though children!—stood hand in hand before that voice only they could perceive, and the abyss had receded, not forever, not very far away, but held in check by a deep wisdom and a purpose untainted by human weaknesses.

  “You are the first of my new race,” the silence told them. “And this is Eden all over again, but told in a different language now. Perhaps the source of mankind’s failure is in that old story—in mankind shaping his god in his own image. You are not in my image. I am not a jealous god. I shall not tempt you beyond your strength. Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat—yet. But some day I shall put the fruit of that tree into my children’s hands.”

  THE END.

  WAY OF THE GODS

  Spawn of atomic fission, this strange company of mutants exiled by humanity battles against enslavement in a foreign world dominated by the evil Spirit of the Crystal Mountain!

  CHAPTER I

  New Worlds

  HE LOOKED at the October morning all about him as if he had never seen October before. That was not true, of course. But he knew that he would never see it again. Unless they had mornings, and Octobers—where he was going. It did not seem likely, though the old man had talked a great deal about key-patterns and the selectivity of the machine, and the multiple universes spinning like motes in a snowstorm through infinity.

  “But I’m human!” he said aloud, sitting cross-legged on the warm brown earth and feeling the breeze which gave the lie instantly to his thought. He felt the gentle pull at his shoulder-blades which meant that his wings were fluttered a little by the breeze, and instinctively he flexed the heavy bands of muscle across his chest to control the wing-surfaces.

  He was not human. That was the trouble. And this world, this bright October world that stretched to the horizon around him was made to shelter the race that had become dominant, and was jealous of its dominion. Humanity, that had no place for strangers among its ranks.

  The others did not seem to care very much. They had been reared in the creche almost from birth, under a special regime that isolated them from the humans. The old man had been responsible for that He had built the huge house on the hillside, swooping curves of warmly-colored plastic that blended into the brown and green of the land—an asylum that had finally failed. The walls were breached.

  “Kern,” someone behind him said.

  The winged man turned his head, glancing up past the dark curve of his wings. A girl came toward him down the slope from the house. Her name was Kua. Her parents had been Polynesian, and she had the height and the lithe grace of her Oceanic race, and the shining dark hair, the warm, honey-colored skin. But she wore opaque dark glasses, and across her forehead a band of dark plastic that looked opaque too, and was not. Beneath, her face was lovely, the red mouth generously curved, the features softly rounded like the features of all her race.

  She was not human either.

  “It’s no use worrying, Kern,” she said, smiling down at him. “It’ll work out all right. You’ll see.”

  “All right!” Kern snorted scornfully. “You think so, do you?”

  Kua glanced instinctively around the hillside, making sure they were alone. Then she put both hands to her face and slipped off the glasses and the dark band from her forehead. Kern, meeting the gaze of her bright blue eye, was conscious again of the little shock he always felt when he looked into her uncovered face.

  For Kua was a cyclops. She had one eye centered in her forehead. And she was—when the mind could accept her as she was, not as she should be—a beautiful woman in spite of it That blue brilliance in the dusky face had a depth and luster beyond the eyes of humans. Heavy lashes ringed it, and the gaze could sink fathom upon fathom in her eye and never plumb its depths.

  KUA’S eye was a perfect lens. Whatever lens can do, her eye could do. No one could be sure just what miraculous mechanisms existed beyond the blue surface, but she could see to a distance almost beyond the range of the ordinary telescope and she could focus down upon the microscopic. And there may have been other things the single eye could do. One did not question one’s companions too closely in this house of the mutations.

  “You’ve been with us two years, Kern,” she was saying now. “Only two years. You don’t know yet how strong we are, or how much we can accomplish among us. Bruce Hallam knows what he’s doing, Kern. He never works on theories. Or if he does, the theories become truth. He has a mind like that. You don’t know us, Kern!”

  “You can’t fight a whole world.”

  “No. But we can leave it.” She smiled, and he knew she saw nothing of the golden morning all around them. She knew nothing, really, of the cities that dotted the world of 1980, or the lives that were so irrevocably alien to her. They should have been alien to Kern too, but not until he was eighteen had the wings begun to grow upon his shoulders.

  “I don’t know, Kua,” he said. “I’m not sure I want to. I had a father and a mother—brothers—friends.”

  “Your parents are your greatest enemies,” she told him flatly. “They gave you life.” He looked away from the penetrating stare of that great blue single eye and past her at the big plastic house. That had been asylum, after the massacre of 1967—asylum against the hordes bent on extirpating the freakish monsters created by atomic radiation. He could not remember, of course, but he had read about it, never guessing then that such a thing would ever apply to him. The old man had told him the story.

  First had come the atomic war, brief, terrible, letting loose nameless radiations upon the world. And then had followed the wave upon wave of freak births among those exposed to it. Genes and chromosomes altered beyond comprehension. Monstrous things were born of human parents.

  One in ten, perhaps, had been a successful mutation. And even those were dangerous to homo sapiens.

  Evolution is like a roulette wheel. The conditions of the earth favor certain types of mutation capable of survival. But atomic energies had upset the balance, and mutations spawned in sheer madness began to spread. Not many, of course. Not many were viable. But two-headed things were born—and lived—along with geniuses and madmen. World Council had studied the biological and social problem for a long time before it recommended euthanasia. Man’s evolution had been planned and charted. It must not be allowed to swerve from the track, or chaos would be let loose.

  Geniuses, mutant humans with abnormally high I.Q.’s, were allowed to survive. Of the others, none lived after they had been detected. Sometimes they were difficult to detect. By 1968 only the true-line mutations, faithful to the human biological norm, were alive—with certain exceptions.

  SUCH as the old man’s son, Sam Brewster.

  He was a freak, with a certain—
talent. A superhuman talent. The old man had disobeyed the Government law, for he had not sent the infant to the labs for checking and testing—and annihilation. Instead, he had built this great house, and the boy had never gone far beyond its grounds.

  Gradually then, partly to provide the youth with companionship, partly out of compassion, the father had begun to gather others together. Secretly, a mutant infant here, a mutant child there, he brought them in, until he had a family of freaks in the big plastic house. He had not taken them haphazardly. Some would not have been safe to live with. Some were better dead from the start But those with something to offer beyond their freakishness, he found and sheltered.

  It was the bringing in of Kern that gave the secret away. The boy had gone too long among ordinary humans, while his wings grew. He was eighteen, and his pinions had a six-foot spread, when old Mr. Brewster found him. His family had tried to keep him hidden, but the news was leaking out already when he left for the Brewster asylum, and in the years since it had spread until the authorities at last issued their ultimatum.

  “It was my fault,” Kern said bitterly. “If it hadn’t been for me, you’d never have been molested.”

  “No.” Kua’s deep, luminous eye fixed his. “Sooner or later you know they’d have found us. Better let it happen now, while we’re all still young and adaptable. We can go and enjoy going, now.” Her voice shook a little with deep excitement “Think of it, Kern! New worlds! Places beyond the earth, where there could be people like us!”

  “But Kua, I’m human! I feel human. I don’t want to leave. This is where I belong!”

  “You say that because you grew up among normal people. Kern, you’ve got to face it. The only place for any of us is—somewhere away.”

  “I know.” He grinned wryly. “But I don’t have to like it. Well—we’d better go back. They’ll have the ultimatum by now, I suppose. May as well hear it. I know what the answer is. Don’t you?”