Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Neither man needed to explain the dangers of compressibility. As long as air flows smoothly over the polished hide of a jet-propelled plane, there is no danger. But when you begin to hit 650 m.p.h., the demon of the air uses a microscope to find flaws. Bullets and gas blasts can interrupt the smooth air flow, and even a squash bug on the edge of a wing can wreck a plane, once the sound waves start hammering.

  So they found a new alloy that had all the qualities they needed, and planes were redesigned. Even then it was safer to hit the stratosophere before climbing into sonic speeds. Above the wall it was easy riding, comparatively speaking. But first you had to get over the wall.

  That meant smart piloting. A smooth, straight course, because the least wavering might be catastrophic. Robot controls were safer than human pilots, and Havers saw that the robot pilot had taken over now. They were nearing the wall.

  Every man abroad let out his breath the moment the green light flashed from the ceiling. This time they were safe.

  It was Mart Havers’ real introduction to the Weather Patrol. No implanted memories, no lab-tech training could hope to indicate the scope of Weather Control. No wonder this was the most glamorous job on Earth or above it, Mart thought, as he watched the blazing glory of an alien world unfold, upon the vision screens. The only real adventure left in mankind.

  The sky was black, dead black, beyond the clustered brilliance of the stars and planets. The sun’s corona made a jagged ring of white fire against that ultimate night. And from the distant Earth came rocket after rocket, exploding into showers of blood-red and silver-white meteors, while the jet-plane swung in tremendous circles, shaken with its own thunder, the blast of its jets streaming like the blade of a sword of fire behind it.

  So, amid the chaos of man-made creation, Mart Havers had his initiation . . .

  The weeks and months slipped past. Gradually, imperceptibly, Mart’s psych became adjusted and reoriented. There were periods spent in the tech-labs, but he preferred flight duty. He learned to apply the knowledge implanted in his brain. Over the Alps he battled the Fohn, and on the other side of the planet he met the same dry air mass where it was called the Chinook.

  He flew Weather Patrol from the Horse Latitudes through the Southeast Trades, and beyond, and back again. He learned to play the clouds like a complicated instrument, to bring the results ordered by his superiors. He jetted beyond the stratosophere and drove through the burning Borealis, in the ionosphere itself, and he helped battle a Beaufort 10 wind, which is not quite a typhoon.

  The Cromwellian psychologists had been wise to provide Purged men with an engrossing objective. His work kept Mart Havers reasonably happy, except for the occasional moments of queer restlessness and emptiness that came apparently without cause. He found himself thinking more and more of Daniele Vaughan.

  HE had wanted to forget her it would not have been possible, for she was still his official mentor and checked twice a week with him, either by televisor or in person, if he were not out on patrol duty. Since she could have asked to have him transferred to another mentor, he concluded that she too found their meetings too interesting to drop. Impersonal as she remained, he knew she remembered. She allowed him to be sure of that.

  And their acquaintance grew. They found similar tastes, they compared dislikes and reactions, they built up the usual code of private jokes and references that grow between two people working regularly on a congenial job together.

  Though nothing ever happened that Andre Kelvin could have found fault with, though every word and gesture between them had complete impersonality, yet there was a growing undercurrent of intimacy which flowed stronger, and stronger with every meeting. Each was willing to wait—but a climax built slowly up as time went on, toward some explosion still in the future, which neither could yet be sure about.

  Under other circumstances, Havers would probably have liked Andre Kelvin without reservation. They worked together pleasantly enough. Kelvin was a casual man who could tighten into an efficient machine when need arose, as it did arise one day, bringing still another set of subterranean conflicts in Mart Havers’ mind to a sudden crisis.

  CHAPTER XI

  A Serious Problem

  KELVIN had called the crew into his office for briefing.

  “New orders,” he told them when they had settled down. “No definite time yet, but zero may come any time from now on. It depends on whether that cold over Maine breaks up, and the Shetland-Faroes High, and a lot of other things. We’ve got to strike at exactly the right moment.”

  “Stratosphere job?” someone asked.

  “I don’t think so. The tech-lab has several plans worked out, but nobody’s sure which one we’ll use. By the look of the sky, though, I’d say Plan Two.”

  Kelvin nodded toward the wall, where four huge charts had been set up. They looked complicated, with the intricate details of isobars, isotherms, an occluded depression moving southward, and the curving shadows of the rain belts, but Mart read the maps’ meanings as easily now as Kelvin himself did. He looked again at Plan Two, and his mouth tightened slightly.

  The captain was still talking. Havers brought back his thoughts from the formless places where they were straying and tried to listen. He could not concentrate. The best he could do was keep silent and pretend to be attentive until Kelvin had finished and asked:

  “Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “Okay. You’re alerted. Don’t leave the field.”

  The crew went out, but Havers didn’t follow. Kelvin had turned back to the work on his desk, but he looked up and caught Mart’s eye.

  It came out unexpectedly, before Havers knew what he was saying.

  “Count me out.”

  Kelvin looked across the desk for a puzzled second. Then he got up and went across the room to a window. He stood looking out, his back to Havers.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  Oddly enough, neither did Mart He was trying to search into those darkened comers of his brain, those blocked-off passages, trying to understand why he felt this inexplicable, importunate pressure.

  “I—I don’t want this job,” he said, his voice a little unsteady. “That’s all. You’ve got other crewmen.”

  Kelvin turned. “Look,” he said, “Everybody gets cold feet, even old hands, in Weather Patrol. The worst thing you can do is give in to it. The stratosphere jet jobs are a lot more dangerous than this. It’s routine. I’ll shift you to another post in the ship.”

  “I said count me out.”

  The captain rubbed his jaw. He studied Havers.

  “I can’t do that,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve had the same feelings myself. It’s nothing to get excited about. Only there’s discipline.”

  Havers was still trying to open the locked doors in his mind. They would not stir, no matter how desperately he tried. He drew a long shuddering breath.

  “The devil with discipline,” he said, and turned around and went out . . .

  Daniele Vaughan called him on the visor in his quarters. Mart didn’t get up from the edge of the bed where he was sitting, smoking a cigarette that had.no taste. He flipped on the switch and said “yeah.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  Mart scowled into the visor screen. “So Captain Andre Kelvin told you all about it, eh?”

  “Certainly he did,” Daniele said calmly. “He doesn’t want to get you in a mess. If he’d reported you through channels, you might be in real trouble.”

  “You weren’t due to call me till tomorrow.”

  “I know. I’ll call you tomorrow. Then I can make out my routine report on your progress. But I’m calling you now so we can thrash this out and have a good report tomorrow.”

  Havers grimaced. Daniele looked at him in the visorscreen, with a faintly worried air.

  “I don’t understand this, Mart,”, she said. “Don’t you like Patrol work? Is that it?”

  “No. I like the work.”

 
“Then why refuse to go out on patrol?” Havers crushed his cigarette between finger and thumb and threw it across the room.

  “I don’t know!” he snapped. “I don’t know why! Let it go at that.”

  “For some reason I don’t understand,” Daniele said, “the top men are interested in following your progress. They don’t tell me their secrets, but I can guess it would be a lot better for you to steer a straight course than go off beam at this point. As a matter of fact, I ought to report your conduct immediately. I should have done it before I vised you. But Mart—go on back to Andre and—”

  “Apologize?”

  “You should know him better than that. He doesn’t want an apology. I’ll vise him myself. Shall I? It’s a routine flight, Mart, after all.”

  Havers put his hand to his forehead, as though to still the sudden ache that had begun to pound there. Locked doors, locked doors . . . And somewhere, somehow, a pressure he could not understand and could not resist.

  “I can’t do it,” he said hoarsely. “I—can’t make that flight. I can’t do it!”

  HIS orders came through two hours later.

  Havers didn’t see Kelvin before he left. He simply gave his uniform a few careless touches and went out to the field where a jet-plane waited—for him. He was no longer trying to open locked doors or even to. think. Temporarily, he had given up. The problem was too difficult, especially since he couldn’t even understand its nature.

  It was as though a trans-sonic wall had risen in his brain, and he could not pass it without cracking up. But it was more tangible than the airy hammer of that wall of speed. It was a solid barrier that had risen within his mind.

  He could not pass that barrier. He knew that he could not make the flight Kelvin planned. But whenever he asked himself why, there was only darkness and turmoil and an unanswerable question.

  So he gave up. Let the higher-ups do what they wanted to him. It was better than trying to resolve his own problems.

  Automatically he checked the cloud masses and found himself trying to predict tomorrow’s weather as the plane roared southwest.

  Reno was the destination. This wasn’t too surprising, since the Nevada city had become one of the key spots for the leading Cromwellians. As the plane decelarated Havers noticed the sprawling squalor of the Slag, a spilled ink-blot beside the jeweled brightness of Reno.

  Sight of the Slag stirred nothing at all in his memory.

  The trip through Mnemonic Center did arouse a slight feeling of familiarity, though. He couldn’t localize it, but once or twice he thought that something like this had happened before. When he asked questions, one of the psychologists brushed him off with a reference to the deja vu phenomenon, and he learned nothing.

  Nor did he understand the purpose of the tests he underwent. They would not tell him, and after a time he didn’t bother to ask. He went with sullen submissiveness from one gadget to another, apparently a responsive patient, but not quite as obedient as he seemed. A small seed of rebellion began to grow within him.

  Before it had time to sprout, the doors of Mnemonic Center closed behind him. He was conducted to a great building towering in the center of Reno, and taken up in an elevator to the roof.

  The apartment there was slightly palatial. So was the great room Havers entered, alone, at one end of his journey. The farther wall was a huge transparent curve of glass, through which could be seen the lights of Reno, beginning to appear as the sun dropped behind Tahoe.

  The man standing looking out turned as Havers came in, and at his gesture luminous incandescents glowed into being high up on the walls. He was tall, thin, and dark—hair, eyes, and swarthy complexion. Only the smoothness of his movement saved him from seeming awkward. What Havers noticed first was that he seemed very, very tired.

  His voice was tired too.

  “Hello, Havers,” he said. “Please sit down. My name’s Llewelyn.”

  Alexis Llewelyn, the mnemonics expert, the Leader. Mart had heard of him, since he was one of the highest of the top Cromweilians. He sat down warily, keeping his eyes steady on Llewelyn.

  “Relax,” the Leader said. “Smoke? Drink? I won’t say this is off the record, because it isn’t, but I wanted to have a talk with you for a number of reasons. Those machines at the Center are competent, of course, but there are intangibles a machine can never catch.” He paused, frowning at some obscure thought, and then came back to Havers with a start. “You can stop worrying. I know more about your case than you do. Perhaps more than anybody else. And don’t ask me to explain that I may, some time, but not now. The main thing is—why did you refuse to take on that routine Weather Patrol flight.” Mart lay back in his chair, feeling as tired as Llewelyn looked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s all. I don’t know.”

  The Leader nodded. “Fine, if it’s true. Or perhaps not. A good deal depends . . . Unfortunately we can’t tell you all the circumstances, for rather important reasons, but I will tell you this. You’ll be watched and checked for the next few days. I want you to react normally. That’s your best out. Nothing unpleasant will happen to you under any circumstances; but we’ve got to know your normal reactions, so go ahead and do what you feel like doing. It’ll be all right.” The tired voice sounded reassuring.

  “I wish I could be sure it’d be all right,” Havers said. “I—I don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I think I know something of what’s going on in your mind. Well, it isn’t important. You can trust Cromwellianism to take care of you. Feel free to shift any responsibility. I suspect you have a serious problem, but you don’t know what it is. Is that right?”

  Mart nodded, surprised. “Something like that. I wasn’t afraid of that assignment. It was only—”

  “Plan Two was the one that bothered you, I gather,” Llewelyn said. “I’m not familiar with the mechanics of Weather Control myself, but I’m told that plan would have affected the weather in the Aleutians, suddenly and violently. Right?”

  “.The Aleutians? Why—yes. That’s right. The cold front—”

  Mart went into detail, feeling a curious sense of relief as he talked, explaining just how Plan Two would adjust the pressure areas and bring a phenomenal warm spell, as a by-product, to the Aleutian group.

  Llewelyn didn’t seem to be watching him, but every time Mart hesitated, the Leader put in a casual word that kept the monologue going.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Maze of no Memory

  REALIZING how long he had been talking, Havers paused after a while. The stiffness of embarrassment chilled him. Llewelyn got up and wandered to the immense window.

  “Sir,” Mart said suddenly, “may I ask you a question?”

  “Why not? What is it?”

  “Is there something wrong with me? My—mind, I mean?”

  “Do you think there is?” Llewelyn said, without turning.

  Havers tried to marshal the few facts he had.

  “I don’t know. But there’s—something—I don’t know. Why was I brought to Mnemonic Center, and given all those tests after I’d refused that assignment?”

  “Weather Patrolmen don’t refuse assignments, as a rule. That might be one reason, eh?”

  “There’s more to it than that, I think,” Havers said. “I don’t even know why I refused to take this particular order. Any other job, but not that one. And I don’t know why. I should know. Only—”

  Llewelyn came back from the window. “Only what?”

  “I think the trouble’s with me. Things seem strange sometimes, no—not solid. As though they were shadows of the real things, whatever they might be. And—” Havers’ laugh was strained—“I don’t feel any too real myself.”

  “Down at the Center they’d call it dereistic thinking,” the Leader said. “Feelings of unreality often occur. The environment doesn’t appear natural nor as it appeared formerly.” Llewelyn paused briefly, his “glance flicking Havers’ face, then sliding away again. “And in depersonal
ization there’s a sense of change in yourself. Your body feels altered, unreal. But emotional stresses can cause those feelings.”

  “I’m not under emotional stress.”

  “How do you know? It may be submerged.

  That’s why I’m saying, give your impulses free rein for the next few days. Your buried stresses may come out in the open, and then they won’t be so hard to remedy. As for feelings of unreality, I have ’em sometimes myself. I’m older than you—old enough to have seen a world change overnight. I can say things aren’t the way they used to be, and I’d be right. Things have changed.”

  “But they’re not changing now,” Havers said, and the other man nodded.

  “Is that the trouble, then?” Llewelyn asked.

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t seen it in just that light before. But I wonder. The whole world did change overnight, didn’t it? But now it’s stopped.”

  “Stopped?”

  “There are a few government-controlled Moon rockets on the regular run. But why not the planets?”

  “The Moon’s a mining base. It’s near enough to be controlled. The planets aren’t. There might be trouble. We’ll have to be sure of the Earth before we try for Mars or Venus.”

  “That’s an explanation,” Havers said, “but I’m wondering something. Who gives the orders?”

  Llewelyn blinked.

  “I’ve never questioned this before, either,” Mart went on, “though it’s pretty obvious. You’re at the top, sir. Do you give the orders?”

  “Some of them,” the Leader said. “Mnemonic Center is under my jurisdiction:”

  “That isn’t quite what I mean. Who gives you your orders, or does anybody?”

  “Well, there’s the Leader Council,” Llewelyn said, and Havers suddenly got the impression that the man did not want to talk about this matter at all “They follow the tenets of Cromwellianism, and they’re the high administrative group. They inherited certain methods and principles of science and logic from the pre-Cromwell world.”