Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Rosathe was sitting on a low hassock at his feet, her harp on her arm, singing very sweetly to him, when the moment finally came.

  Her violet-blue skirts lay about her in a circle on the floor, her cloudy head was bent above the high horns of the lyre and her voice was very soft.

  “Oh, slowly, slowly got she up, and slowly she came nigh . . . him . . .” How delightfully the sweet voice soared on the last word! That dip and rise in the old ballads tried every voice but an instrument as true as the lovely instrument in Rosathe’s throat. “But all she said”—Rosathe reported in that liquid voice—and was stopped by the musical buzzing of the televisor.

  Sam knew it must be important, or it would never have been put through to him at this hour. Reluctantly he swung his feet to the floor and got up.

  Rosathe did not lift her head. She sat quite motionless for an instant, curiously as if she had been frozen by the sound of the buzzer. Then without glancing up she swept the strings with polished fingertips and sang her final line. “Young man, I think you’re dyin’ . . .”

  The cloudiness of the visor screen cleared as Sam flipped the switch and a face swam out of it that rocked him back a bit on his heels. It was Kedre Walton’s face, and she was very angry. The black ringlets whipped like Medusa-locks as she whirled her head toward the screen. She must have been talking to someone in the background as she waited .for Sam to acknowledge the call, for her anger was not wholly for Sam. He could see that. Her words belied it.

  “Sam Reed, you’re a fool!” she told him flatly and without preamble. The Egyptian calm was gone from her delicate, disdainful face. Even the disdain was gone now. “Did you really think you could get away with all this?”

  “I’ve got away with it,” Sam assured her. He was very confident at that point in the progress of his scheme.

  “You poor fool, you’ve never fought an Immortal before. Our plans work slowly. We can afford to be slow! But surely you didn’t imagine Zachariah Harker would let you do what you did and live! He—”

  A voice from behind her said, “Let me speak for myself, Kedre, my dear,” and the smooth, ageless young face of Zachariah looked out at Sam from the screen. The eyes were quietly speculative as they regarded him. “In a way I owe you thanks, Reed,” the Immortal’s voice said. “You were clever. You had more resources than I expected. You put me on my mettle, and that’s an unexpected pleasure. Also, you’ve made it possible for me to overthrow Hale’s whole ambitious project. So I want to thank you for that, too. I like to be fair when I can afford to be.”

  His eyes were the eyes of a man looking at something so impersonally that Sam felt a sudden chill. Such remoteness in time and space and experience—as if Sam were not there at all. Or as if Harker were looking already on death. Something as impersonal and remote from living as a corpse. As Sam Reed.

  And Sam knew a moment’s profound shaking of his own convictions—he had a flash of insight in which he thought that perhaps Harker had planned it this way from the start, knowing that Sam would doublecross him with Hale, and knowing, that Sam would double-cross Hale, too. Sam was the weak link in Hale’s crusade, the one thing that might bring the whole thing crashing if anyone suspected. Until now, Sam had been sure no one did suspect.

  But Zachariah Harker knew.

  “Good-by, Reed,” the smooth voice said. “Kedre, my dear—”

  Kedre’s face came back into the screen. She was still angry, but the anger had been swallowed up in another emotion as her eyes met Sam’s. The long lashes half veiled them, and there were tears on the lashes.

  “Good-by, Sam,” she said. “Good-by.” And the blue glance flickered across his shoulder.

  Sam had one moment to turn and see what was coming, but not time enough to stop it. For Rosathe stood at his shoulder, watching the screen, too. And as he turned her pointed fingers which had evoked music from the harp for him this evening pinched together suddenly and evoked oblivion.

  He felt the sweet, terrifying odor of dust stinging in his nostrils. He stumbled forward futilely, reaching for her, meaning to break her neck. But she floated away before him, and the whole room floated, and then Rosathe was looking down on him from far above, and there were tears in her eyes, too.

  The fragrance of dream-dust blurred everything else. Dream-dust, the narcotic euthanasia dust which was the way of the suicide.

  His last vision was the sight of the tear-wet eyes looking down, two women who must have loved him to evoke those tears, and who together had worked out his ruin.

  He woke. The smell of scented dust died from his nostrils. It was dark here. He felt a wall at his shoulder, and got up stiffly, bracing himself against it. Light showed blurrily a little way off. The end of an alley, he thought. People were passing now and then through the dimness out there.

  The alley hurt his feet. His shoes felt queer and loose. Investigating, Sam found that he was in rags, his bare feet pressing the pavement through broken soles. And the fragrance of dream-dust was still a miasma in the air around him.

  Dream-dust—that could put a man to sleep for a long, long while. How long!

  He stumbled toward the mouth of the alley. A passer-by glanced at him with curiosity and distaste. He reached out and collared the man.

  “The Colony,” he said urgently. “Has it—have they opened it yet?” The man struck his arm away. “What colony?” he asked impatiently.

  “The Colony! The Land Colony!”

  “Oh, that.” The man laughed. “You’re a little late.” Clearly he thought Sam was drunk. “It’s been open a long time now—what’s left of it.”

  “How long “Forty years.”

  Sam hung on the bar of a vending machine in the wall at the alley mouth. He had to hold the bar to keep himself upright, for his knees were strengthless beneath him. He was looking into the dusty mirror and into his own eyes. “Forty years. Forty years!” And the ageless, unchanged face of Sam Harker looked back at him, ruddy-browed, unlined as ever.

  “Forty years!” Sam Harker murmured to himself.

  TO BE CONTINUED.

  JESTING PILOT

  Under normal circumstances, a man must face reality to be a sane, well-balanced citizen. But not in that city! Any man who faced and understood the reality of the place was insane!

  The city screamed. It had been screaming for six hundred years. And as long as that unendurable scream continued—the city was an efficient unit.

  “You’re getting special treatment,” Nehral said, looking across the big, bare, silent room to where young Fleming sat on the cushioned seat. “Normally you wouldn’t have graduated to Control for another six months, but something’s come up. The others think a fresh viewpoint might help. And you’re elected, since you’re the oldest acolyte.”

  “Britton’s older than I am,” Fleming said. He was a short, heavy, red-haired boy with an unusual sensitivity conditioned into his blunt features. Utterly relaxed, he sat waiting.

  “Physiological age doesn’t mean anything. The civilization-index is more important. And the empathy level. You’re seventeen, but you’re emotionally mature. On the other hand, you’re not—set. You haven’t been a Controller for years. We think you may have some fresh angles that can help us.”

  “Aren’t fresh angles undesirable?” Nehral’s thin, tired face twisted into a faint smile. “There’s been debate about that. A culture is a living osganism and it can’t exist in its own waste products. Not indefinitely. But we don’t intend to remain isolated indefinitely.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Fleming said.

  Nehral studied his fingertips. “Don’t get the idea that we’re the masters. We’re servants, far more so than the citizens. We’ve got to follow the plan. And we don’t know all the details of the plan. That was arranged purposely. Some day the Barrier will lift. Then the city won’t be isolated any longer.”

  “But—outside!” Fleming said, a little nervously. “Suppose—”

  Nehral said, “Six hundred years a
go the city was built and the Barrier created. The Barrier’s quite impassable. There’s a switch—I’ll show it to you sometime—that’s useless at present. Its purpose is to bring the Barrier into existence. But no one knows how to destroy the Barrier. One theory is that it can’t be destroyed until its half-life is run, and the energy’s reached a sufficiently low level. Then it blinks out automatically.”

  “When?”

  Nehral shrugged. “Nobody knows that either. Tomorrow, or a thousand years from now. Here’s the idea. The city was isolated for protection. That meant—complete isolation. Nothing—nothing at all—can pass the Barrier. So we’re safe. When the Barrier goes, we can see what’s happened to the rest of the world. If the danger’s gone, we can colonize. If it hasn’t, we pull the switch again, and we’re safe behind the Barrier for another indefinite period.”

  Danger. The earth had been too big, and too full of people. Archaic mores had prevailed. The new science had plunged on, but civilisation had lagged fatally. In those days many plans had been proposed. Only one had proved practicable. Rigid control—thorough utilisation of the new power—and unbreakable armor. So the city was built and isolated by the Barrier, at a time when all other cities were falling . . .

  Nehral said, “We know the danger of status quo. New theories, new experiments aren’t forbidden. Far from it. Some of them can’t be studied now, a great many of them. But records are kept. That reference library will be available when the Barrier’s lifted. Meanwhile, the city’s a lifeboat. This part of the human race has to survive. That’s the main concern. You don’t study physics in a lifeboat. You try to survive. After you’ve reached land, you can go to work again. But now—”

  The other cities fell, and the terror roared across the earth, six hundred years ago. It was an age of genius and of viciousness. The weapons of the gods were at last available. The foundations of matter ripped screaming apart as the weapons were used. The lifeboat rode a typhoon. The Ark breasted a deluge.

  In other words, one thing led to another—until the planet shook.

  “First the builders thought the Barrier alone would be enough. The city, of course, had to be a self-contained unit. That was difficult. A human being isn’t. He has to get food, fuel—from the air, from plants and animals. The solution lay in creating all the necessities within the city. But then matters got worse. There was germ warfare and germ mutations. There were the chain reactions. The atmosphere itself, under the constant bombardment—”

  More and more complicated grew the Ark.

  “So they built the city as it had to be built, and then they found that it would be—uninhabitable.”

  Fleming tilted back his head. Nehral said, “Oh, we’re shielded. We’re specialized. For we’re the Controllers.”

  “Yes, I know. But I’ve wondered. Why can’t the citizens—”

  “Be shielded as we are? Because they’re to be the survivors. We’re important only till the Barrier lifts. After that, we’ll be useless, away from the lifeboat. In a normal world, we have no place. But now and here, as Controllers of the city, we are important. We serve.” Fleming stirred uneasily.

  Nehral said, “It will be difficult for you to conceive this. You have been specially conditioned since before your birth. You never knew—none of us ever knew—normal existence. You are deaf, dumb, and blind.”

  The boy caught a little of the meaning. “That means—?”

  “Certain senses the citizens have, because they’ll be needed when the Barrier lifts. We can’t afford to have them, under the circumstances The telepathic sense is substituted. I’ll tell you more about that later.

  Right now I want you to concentrate on the problem of Bill Norman. He’s a citizen.”

  Nehral paused. He could feel the immense weight of the city above him, and it seemed to him that the foundations were beginning to crumble . . .

  “He’s getting out of control.” Nehral said flatly.

  “But I’m not important,” Bill Norman said.

  They were dancing. Flickering, quiet lights beat out from the Seventh Monument, towering even above the roof garden where they were. Far overhead was the gray emptiness of the Barrier. The music was exciting. Mia’s hand crept up and ruffled the back of his neck.

  “You are to me,” she said. “Still, I’m prejudiced.”

  She was a tall, slim, dark girl, sharp contrast to Norman’s blond hugeness. His faintly puzzled blue eyes studied her.

  “I’m lucky. I’m not so sure you are, Mia.”

  The orchestra reached a rhythmic climax; brass hit a low, nostalgic note, throbbingly sustained. Norman moved his big shoulders uneasily and turned toward the parapet, towing Mia beside him. They walked in silence through the crowd, to a walled embrasure where they were alone, in a tiny vantage-point overlooking the city.

  Mia stole occasional glances at the man’s troubled face. He was looking at the Seventh Monument, crowned with light, and beyond it to the Sixth, and. smaller in the distance, the Fifth—each a memorial to one of tire Great Eras of man’s history.

  But the city—

  There had never been a city like it in all the world. For no city before had ever been built for man. Memphis was a towered colossus for the memory of kings; Baghdad was a sultan’s jewel; they were stately pleasure-domes by decree. New York and London, Paris and Moscow—they were less functional, less efficient for their citizens than the caves of the troglodytes. In cities man had always tried to sow on arid ground.

  But this was a city for men.

  It was not merely a matter of parks and roads, of rolling ramps and paragravity currents for levitation, not simply a question of design and architecture. The city was planned according to rules of human psychology. The people fitted into it as into a foam mattress. It was quiet. It was beautiful and functional. It was perfect for its purpose.

  “I saw that psychologist again today,” Norman said.

  Mia folded her arms and leaned on the parapet. She didn’t look at her companion.

  “And?”

  “Generalizations.”

  “But they always know the answers,” Mia said. “They always know the right answers.”

  “This one didn’t.”

  “It may take time. Really, Bill, you know . . . no one’s . . . frustrated—”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Norman said. “Heredity, perhaps. All I know is I get these . . . these flashes. Which the psychologists can’t explain.”

  “But there has to be an explanation.”

  “That’s what the psychologist said. Still, he couldn’t tell me what it was.”

  “Can’t you analyze it at all?” she asked, sliding her hand into his. His fingers tightened. He looked at the Seventh Monument and beyond it.

  “No,” he said. “It’s just that I feel there isn’t any answer.”

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know. I . . . I wish I could get out of the city.”

  Her hand relaxed suddenly. “Bill. You know—”

  He laughed softly. “I know. There’s no way out. Not through the Barrier. Maybe that isn’t what I want, after all. But this . . . this—” He stared at the Monument. “It seems all wrong sometimes. I just can’t explain it. It’s the whole city. It makes me feel haywire. Then I get these flashes—”

  She felt his hand stiffen. It was jerked away abruptly. Bill Norman covered his eyes and screamed.

  “Flashes of realization,” Nehral said to Fleming. “They don’t last long. If they did, he’d go insane or die. Of course the citizen psychologists can’t help him; it’s outside their scope by definition.”

  Fleming, sensitive to telepathic emotion, said, “You’re worried.” He did not speak aloud.

  “Naturally. We Controllers have our own conditioning. An ordinary citizen couldn’t hold our power; it wouldn’t be safe. The builders worked out a good many plans before they decided to create us. They’d thought of making androids and robots to control, but the human factor was needed. Emotion�
�s needed, to react to the conditioning. From birth, by hypnosis, we’re conditioned to protect and serve the citizens. We couldn’t do anything else if we tried. It’s ingrained.”

  “Every citizen?” Fleming asked, and Nehral sighed.

  “That’s the trouble. Every citizen. The whole is equal to the sum total of the parts. One citizen, to us, represents the entire group. I’m not certain that this wasn’t a mistake of the builders. For when one citizen threatens the group—as Norman does—”

  “But we’ve got to solve Norman’s problem.”

  “Yes. It’s our problem. Every citizen must have physical and mental balance—must. I was wondering—”

  “Well?”

  “For the good of the whole, it would be better if Norman could be eliminated. On purely logical grounds, he should be allowed to go mad or die. I can’t countenance that, though. I’m too firmly conditioned against it.”

  “So am I,” Fleming said, and Nehral nodded.

  “Exactly. We must cure him. We’ve got to get him back to a sane psychological balance. Or we may crack up ourselves—because we’re not conditioned to react to failure. Now. You’re the youngest of us available; you have more in common with the citizens than any of us. So, you may find an answer where we can’t.”

  “Norman should have been a Controller,” Fleming said.

  “Yes. But it’s too late for that now. He’s mature. His heredity—bad, from our viewpoint. Mathematicians and theologians. The problems of every citizen in the city can be solved, with the Monuments. We can give them answers that are right for them. But Norman’s hunting an abstraction. That’s the trouble. We can’t give him a satisfactory answer!”

  “Haven’t there ever been parallel psychoses—”

  “It’s not a psychosis, that’s the difficulty. Except by the arbitrary standards of the city. Oh, there’ve been plenty of human problems—a woman who wants children, for example, and can’t have them. If medicine fails to help her, the Monuments will. By creating diversion—arousing her maternal instinct for something else, or channeling it elsewhere. By substitution. Making her believe she has a mission of some sort. Or creating an emotional attachment of another kind, not maternal. The idea is to trace the problems back to their psychological roots, and then get rid of the frustration somehow. It’s the frustration that’s fatal.”