Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Llewelyn looked at him, the weariness in his lined dark face more nearly exhaustion than Mart had ever seen it. But there was no anger there. They were alone—Mart, Llewelyn, Daniele. Mart was locked into a restraining chair, comfortable but inflexible. The Guards waited outside. This was a conversation in complete privacy. Llewelyn proved that in the next instant by saying something that astounded Mart.

  “You may be right,” he said. “I think a lot of us have a feeling very like relief now that something’s finally blasted the Cromwellian culture out of its stasis.”

  “You mean—” Mart stared at him. “You mean you’re on our side?”

  “Of course not. What do you offer, except anarchy? I mean I’m going to do everything I can from now on to reestablish the old regime, but with differences. More flexibility. More scope. And you’re going to help me, Mart.”

  Mart shook his head. Daniele’s eyes were still unswerving on him, and he thought the look in them brightened a little now.

  “I can’t, help you,” he told Llewelyn. “Even if I wanted to, I’d never be accepted again. And I don’t want to. You’re wrong. The old abuses would be right back inside six months. Cromwellianism can’t be flexible. It’s got to stay rigid or break up entirely. That’s the way it’s organized.”

  “You left us while you were still under treatment,” Llewelyn reminded him, ignoring his other arguments. “No one’s going to blame you for doing wild things when your mind was in the state it was. I want you to undergo treatment again, Mart. Since you forced that reversal treatment on yourself and got your memories back I’ve been studying the method carefully. It had never been used before on a mind like yours. The records were taken automatically in the machine, of course. Having that data took me forward an important step toward solving your problem. I’ve been working on it here in my spare time.”

  He pushed open a sliding door at his elbow and they all looked into the shining laboratory beyond. A familiar chair stood there, like and yet unlike the one in which Mart had set off the bomb of conflicting memories inside his own skull. Llewelyn came forward leisurely and laid his hand on the arm of Mart’s restraining chair. It rolled to his touch.

  “Come with me into the lab,” he said. “You too, Daniele.”

  It was a high, bright room glowing with flourescents. Here, too, the storm raged against tall windows so heavily that nothing but streaming water could be seen, though now and then lightning shot violent flashes through the waterfall, and thunder rocked the whole great building.

  “Mart, I want you to let me finish the work, on your mind,” Llewelyn said persuasively. “You aren’t in any condition now to refuse me. You aren’t really responsible. Once I’ve brought you back to normal you’ll see how right I’ve—”

  It was a little thing that interrupted him. For an instant all three of them were aware of it without quite realizing what had happened. But the sound of thunder was much louder in the room, and a chilled blast of rain-wet air blew by them. Then knowledge seemed to strike all three at once, and they turned their heads almost automatically toward the windows.

  La Boucherie stood there, grinning his mirthless skull-grin, rain streaming heavily down his gross body and the smash-gun steady in his hand. They could see the balcony behind him, and the storm which he himself had brought into being. Still grinning, he stepped carefully to the floor, closing the window.

  “No, Mart,” he said. “Don’t be a fool. He can’t force you to accept treatment if your mind rebels. You know what he wants to do, don’t you? Put you under hypnosis again, so you’ll be an automaton Leader. Don’t trust him.”

  “That’s not true,” Llewelyn said dispassionately. It was curious how academically the two men seemed to be debating, arguing a point of free will as lucidly as if one did not hold the other at gun-point, and with all the instability of madness hovering on the face behind the gun. “It isn’t true at all. I won’t try to influence your decisions again, Havers. But you know your mind isn’t working well yet. In your own mind you know you need treatment.”

  “Mart, don’t!” La Boucherie’s voice sharpened. “I need you! Wait!” He gestured with his gun and stepped forward toward the big metal chair upon which Llewelyn was leaning. “If you’re telling the truth, Llewelyn,” he said, “suppose you just sit down in that chair yourself. I don’t suppose the treatment would affect you at all, if you think your own mind’s all right now. You heard me, Llewelyn! Sit down, if you’re not lying.”

  LLEWELYN looked at him for a long moment, eyes locked with the small, furious eyes of La Boucherie. His hand stole behind him, toward a stud in the wall.

  “I think you need treatment worse than either of us,” he said, his finger reaching the bell at last.

  He touched it, but for an instant did not ring. La Boucherie could not see what he was doing. Mart could, and to save his life he could not have spoken. For much more was happening here than the mere conflict of the two men. The bell was no answer. He had to see the outcome. And one more thing was in process that he knew he must not halt.

  Daniele was watching the bell, too. And she was leaning forward slowly.

  “Sit down, Llewelyn,” La Boucherie said.

  He put out a fat hand and pushed the Leader backward toward the chair. In the other hand the gun trembled a little with violent emotion violently controlled. Mart knew what storms of bitter feeling must be moving in La Boucherie’s brain now, memories of his own frustrated career of Leadership, hatred of this man who had all La Boucherie had been denied.

  “Sit down!” he said, and pushed hard.

  Llewelyn’s finger twitched and stiffened upon the bell. And Daniele moved with startling swiftness, her hand shooting out, striking the pressing finger aside. She spread her palm above the bell and shook her head slowly at Llewelyn’s amazed stare, her lips colorless and pressed firmly together.

  “I’m sorry, Leader,” she said. “I’ve made up my mind. I think they’re right. Cromwellianism’s had it’s day. From now on I’m with Mart Havers.”

  La Boucherie gave a howl of triumph and his blow knocked Llewelyn back so hard into the chair that for a moment the Leader was breathless. Daniele came swiftly to Mart, her eyes warm as they met his gaze. She touched three locks and the restraining arms of the chair sprang apart He got up stiffly.

  La Boucherie, working one-handed, with an uncanny, deftness, already had the metal hood on Llewelyn’s head. The strap locked beneath his chin with a final click. La Boucherie laughed senselessly and snapped the master switch above the chair. Mart would have stopped him. But it happened too fast. And now the sight of what was happening held him fascinated.

  Llewelyn’s eyes were blank. He stared straight before him, seeing nothing. La Boucherie laughed again and reached for the dial above the metal hood. He moved its pointer two notches up—and Llewelyn spoke.

  His words were gibberish.

  “La Boucherie!” Mart came forward fast, his arm out. “Stop it! You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I do know.” La Boucherie swung his gun around and leveled it at Mart. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I’ve worked machinery like this before. It may kill the man, but before it does I’ll find out what I want to know. Stand back!”

  He turned the dial up two notches more. Llewelyn’s gibberish went high and shrill, but a word was recognizable in it now and then. La Boucherie swung the pointer back eight notches. Blank-faced, unseeing, Llewelyn responded to it with unintelligible sounds. It was like listening to the tuning of a radio, swinging to and fro among the crackling static until finally the words came out in clear form on the narrow band of true focus. As Llewelyn’s came, at last.

  “I can hear you now,” he said in a voice quite unlike his own. “You have the right calibration. Stop.”

  “Llewelyn!” La Boucherie’s voice was thick with triumph. “Have I got the level of your mind I want? The sub-censor area? Tell me the code word that identifies you with the Council. Quick—what is it?” With
out hesitation Llewelyn told him. It was the top secret, code entrusted to every Leader, different for each, to. be guarded more closely than the Leader’s life itself. Llewelyn babbled it out like a child. La Boucherie laughed with delight that was almost childlike, too.

  “Tell me—where is the Council chamber?” he demanded, his voice shaking with eagerness. “How can I get to it without danger?”

  “Take the elevator behind that door in the comer,” Llewelyn told him promptly. “The Chamber is on the top floor. No one will stop you.”

  “What is the Council?”

  “I don’t know.” Llewelyn’s voice did not falter on this either.

  La Boucherie bent forward, his face flushing dark.

  “You’ve got to tell me. I’m talking to your mind below the censor area. You must answer with the truth. What is the Council?”

  “There are many members. I have sat on the Council myself. But I can’t tell you what it is. You must see that for yourself. No one could tell who had not seen it.”

  La Boucherie straightened. Sweat mingled with the rain on his broad forehead. He turned to Mart and Daniele, his gun steady. He backed toward the door Llewelyn had indicated.

  “I’m going up,” he said. “Mart, you’re coming with me. I don’t trust you down here. You—woman—whatever your name is, sit down in that chair. Yes, I know you say you’re with us. I won’t hurt you. But I’ve got a job to do. Sit down—that’s right. Now kick that lever. There!”

  The automatic locks snapped and Daniele lay back quietly enough in the confining bands.

  “I’ll be all right,” she told Mart “I think you will too. Go on. See whatever it is you have to see. I believe you’ll come back safe to let me go.”

  The last Mart saw of her was her warm, calm smile . . .

  THE small lift sighed to a stop, the door slid back. La Boucherie pushed Mart out ahead of him. They stood in an empty hall. Far down it were tall double doors with a symbol glowing upon them that meant “top secret—no admittance.” And that was all they saw.

  This area which should have been a hive of busy activity was utterly silent except for the faintest possible humming noise, almost subsonic, a sound that made Mart shiver a little without quite realizing it.

  “I don’t understand this,” La Boucherie said behind him, almost in a whisper, and Mart knew that he, too, felt that tiny unreasoning shiver. “He couldn’t have lied to me. He said it was nothing but a meeting of Leaders. I don’t like it!”

  Neither did Mart. But he went down the hall in answer to La Boucherie’s nudge, both of them walking softly. Secretaries should be scurrying to and fro, reporting Leaders coming and going. There was nothing. No one. Only the empty hall filled with that distant humming, and the big doors which warned all comers away.

  They came to the doors. They pushed them open, cautiously. And so, in silence and without opposition, they found the Council at last.

  There was a long, low table with a score of chairs around it, but only six had men in them. Six men, sitting motionless. They were Leaders, all of them, and each wore a round, dull cap of some pitted metal. Other caps lay on the table top, one before each chair. The men did not stir or turn as La Boucherie followed Mart into the room.

  It was a perfectly plain room, windowless, with one door in the far wall. And that soft humming filled the air like a bodiless solid.

  The six Leaders looked straight ahead, blank-faced, every gaze fixed on nothing. They seemed to be listening.

  Mart touched the shoulder of the nearest man. He shook it. No response. He tried the next. Still nothing. La Boucherie spoke softly.

  “Catalepsy?” he asked. And then, with sudden viciousness, “We’ll see!”

  The slam of a high-charge electronic beam made Mart jump. He whirled and saw the last man at the table slowly collapsing forward, his chest disintegrated by La Boucherie’s blast. But even then no expression showed on his face.

  Mart set his teeth grimly and said nothing. He knew he would have to find some way to disarm the man, and soon. Now he went forward without comment, skirting the fallen body, and followed La Boucherie toward the door in the wall.

  “La Boucherie,” he thought. “No man was ever named more accurately!”

  The fat hand holding the gun still pointed at Mart, but with the other hand La Boucherie opened the door. Then the gunhand fell slowly. It was Mart’s chance, but he did not even know it. Gripped in the same stunned amazement as the other man, he stood and stared across La Boucherie’s shoulder.

  A bright red light beat out in heavy waves, like heartbeats, from the room beyond. It was a small room. No—not a room at all. More accurately, it was a machine.

  Walls, floor, ceiling were metal like the dull, pitted caps the Leaders wore. Infinitely complicated wiring filled the space between like a steely web. Smoothly, on oiled surfaces, metallic things slid with a measured motion to and fro among the webbing. Like shuttles, a little. Shuttles weaving their own strong webs. Or a Lachesis of some race more imperishable than flesh, weaving a more imperishable web of destiny.

  Mart swung back to the table, knowing the answer to his question before he asked it aloud, but not daring to accept his own answer.

  “What is that thing?” he demanded, shaking a capped man by the shoulder. “Answer me! That thing in the next room. Is it a machine? Is it alive? Is it intelligent? What is it?”

  “I am a machine,” the Leader’s lips said. But it was not a man’s voice that spoke. “I am not alive. I am not intelligent.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  Thinking Machine

  EXCEPT for that deep, continuing purr from the place beyond, La Boucherie’s heavy breathing was the only sound in the room. After a long time La Boucherie put his own question, very softly:

  “Who are you? To whom are we talking?”

  “You are talking to a machine. An electronic calculating machine.”

  The Leader’s lips framed the words but neither man had any illusion about who spoke. And Mart realized, without any further questions, how truly he had accused this culture of inflexibility. He knew now why it had operated along such rigid, unyielding patterns, so obediently to the will that guided it, so like a. machine in itself.

  “These men here,” La Boucherie said. “What’s happened to them?”

  “They are getting answers from the electronic calculator. Those are mental-hookup helmets, to eliminate semantic difficulties.”

  “This has got to be stopped!” Mart was thinking desperately. “Somehow—but how? Where can I find an Atropos to cut the thread it’s weaving?”

  La Boucherie was speaking again, excitement in his voice.

  “Will you answer our questions?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do the Leaders use you?”

  “The electronic calculating machine was built in nineteen-forty eight,” the unhuman voice said., “It was improved from time to time. It was the first truly successful calculating machine. Electron tubes and electrical circuits were substituted for clumsy cogs and gears. Originally three thousand and seven tubes were used in the electronic calculating machine. Today there are twelve thousand, six hundred and eleven.

  “The electronic calculating machine was invented to solve complex mechanical problems faster than human colloid brains could solve them. Gradually other problems were introduced. It was necessary to improve the electronic calculating machine so that it could break down problems into pure mathematics, solve them, and rephrase them into their original applications.

  “All knowledge can be found mathematically. When the Cromwellians first established their rule, they found certain problems insoluble, except by the empirical method, which might have taken hundreds of years. They decided to use the electronic calculating machine to answer those problems: This was kept secret. All important decisions were submitted to the Council of Leaders, who apparently made the final judgment, but actually submitted those decisions to the electronic calculating machine, for judgment. Thus
the legend of the infallibility of the Council was built up. This is a brief reply to your questions.”

  “A machine!” La Boucherie whispered. “The world has been ruled by a machine!”

  “Then the Cromwell Leaders aren’t any smarter than anybody else,” Mart said. “At least, they’re not supermen. Anybody can use this machine and get the right answers.”

  “Anybody can, but only the Leaders have access to it,” La Boucherie said. He swung toward the silent Leader. “I was a Leader myself once. But I was disqualified when I was nineteen. They told me my case was referred to the Council for decision. That means—” His mouth drew down at the corners. “It was this accursed machine that disqualified me!”

  “That doesn’t matter now,” Mart said.

  “The main thing is what we’d better do. As long as the Leaders hold the secret, of this gadget, they can get the right answers, and continue to rule. If we could spread the word—”

  LA BOUCHERIE was walking toward the open door of the adjoining room. The lurid red light beat out upon his face. Suddenly he jerked out his smash-gun and-fired through the doorway.

  There was a hissing crackle. Havers saw La Boucherie step back a pace, frowning, mouth twisted. He fired again.

  “La Boucherie!” Mart said.

  He started forward, but the man had turned and was moving back toward the long table. There was no longer red light playing upon his face, but his eyes were red.

  He paused opposite the Leader who had answered their questions. “How can you be destroyed?” he said softly.

  “High-voltage currents will short-circuit the electronic calculating machine,” the unhuman voice answered instantly.

  “How can I do that?”

  “By introducing a current from outside this building. The electronic calculating machine is automatically protected against such attacks within these walls.”