Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Archer smiled. It was borne in upon Ferguson’s mind that he looked like a different man now. Somehow in the last six months he had shed his reserve, his wariness, and seemed completely relaxed and confident. But a slight shadow darkened his look of jovial content when he answered.

  “I can get there right away,” he said. “Hold on.” He turned away from the screen. Ferguson saw the back of his head as he crossed the room and opened a door in the far wall. He heard the door open. Beyond the opening door he had a brief glimpse of a tiny, distant room in which a tiny, distant man stood with his back to the door, looking into a televisor screen. Very small and clear on that miniature screen he saw a miniature duplicate of a man opening a door upon a room in which a man stood facing a televisor screen—

  It was the sound of the opening door that rescued him from the plunge through abyss after diminishing abyss of infinite duplication. He heard the door opening twice, once in the screen and once in the wall behind him. When he turned, Archer was crossing the threshold.

  This time it was a long while before the room stopped turning. “I’m sorry,” Archer said. “I should have warned you. I guess I just didn’t think. Things have been happening pretty fast around here.”

  “What things? What happened? What are you doing here?”

  “I. work here,” Archer said. “You—work here?”

  “I’ve changed my patron. No law against that, is there? I worked for Reeve as long as I thought he was the best man. But now I’m working for Ben Lawson. He’s the best—man.”

  Ferguson made an inarticulate sound. “You traitor,” he said wildly.

  “To what?”

  “Your own species!”

  “Oh, very likely,” Archer said blandly. “Still, I know where I’m most useful. And I like to be useful. It’s none of our business to sit in judgment, is it?”

  “Of course _ it’s our business! Who will if we don’t? I—” Archer interrupted. “It doesn’t matter whether we do or don’t. You saw what happened when you tried to shoot Lawson.”

  Ferguson had entirely forgotten the pistol. Now he crossed the room unsteadily, picked it up, and broke it open. The cartridges blanks.

  “All hunters are required to return their weapons after they’ve come back from expeditions,” Archer said pedantically. “ILC’s policy is to avoid irritation, so nobody tried to take that pistol away from you at Uganda Station. However, blank cartridges were substituted. Lawson knew what would happen. It took him seven hours of fast calculation and logic to work out the inevitable probability, including the psychological factor that involved your personal reactions—but you see the result. You can’t kill him. He can always work out what’s going to happen.”

  “Man, you can’t—” Ferguson found himself becoming incoherent. He stopped, drew a painfully long breath, and began again, with an attempt at control. “You can’t be such a fool! Maybe I’ve failed to kill Lawson—alone. But that doesn’t mean that both of us, together . . . the resources of ILC . . . the whole human race would band together to destroy Lawson if they knew—”

  “Why should they destroy him?”

  “Self-preservation!”

  “That instinct failed the race,” Archer said softly, “when it made the first atomic bomb. Status quo is only a stop-gap. The single answer now is not a new control for atomics, but a new kind of man. A mature man.”

  “The mature gorilla—

  Archer interrupted. “Yes, I know. You’ve had that phobia in mind for a long time. But you’re thinking like an immature gorilla yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am. The whole race is at that stage. That’s what frightens me. Our entire culture is based on progress rising out of competition and co-operation. If a really mature mind should take over, all progress would stop.”

  “You really don’t see the answer to that?” Archer said.

  Ferguson opened his mouth for what he realized would be only repetition. He wasn’t getting anywhere with Archer ; he was making no impression. All he could do was repeat what he had already said. “Like a child,” he thought wildly. “Repetition, not logical argument. Only—”

  They could no longer communicate with one another. It was as though Archer had changed over to a new and incomprehensible standard of thinking. The barrier between them was as tangible as the surface of a televisor screen. They could see one another through it, but they could no longer touch.

  Ferguson’s shoulders sagged a trifle as he gave up the attempt at communication. He turned toward the door, hesitating. He glanced back with a new wariness at this man who was suddenly an enemy.

  What, he wondered, were Archer’s orders from Lawson? Surely they couldn’t afford to let him go. He groped in vain for an understandable parallel. In this situation a normal human would have shot him as he went out the door, or locked him safely away where he could do them no harm. But Lawson had never operated with normal human weapons like these. Lawson’s weapons—

  Archer said suddenly, “You’re free to go whenever you like. One thing, though. Listen, Ferguson. Lawson tried to take out another policy with your company today, and was turned down. It looked like a poor risk. I thought you ought to know.”

  Ferguson could read nothing in Archer’s face. The barrier still stood between them. He thought there was more than met the ear behind that statement, but he knew that he could only wait. He went out through the door and down the walk, in the bright yellow sunshine of his familiar world. It was a world that depended on him for its salvation. And a world he could not save because it would not heed his warning.

  Flickers of hope rose irrationally in his mind. Had Archer, after all, been trying to tell him that Lawson was fallible? If ILC had refused a policy, it might mean that their suspicions were roused at last. It might mean that he had not lost the battle after all. Perhaps they would listen now. Rapidly he began to calculate how long it would take him to get back to headquarters—

  But between him and his calculations kept swimming the recollection of the liner Nestor and the derelict warhead, moving closer and closer in uncharted space toward the rendezvous that only Lawson had foreseen.

  Two hours later Ferguson closed the door of his office behind his secretary’s somewhat indignant back, and glanced with a sigh of relief around the small, empty room. He knew he hadn’t done his cause any good by his unswerving course through the building, brushing aside the surprised greetings of what friends he had left after the last two years. The most important thing in the world just now was solitude. He locked the door and turned to his private visor screen.

  “Get me the current file on Benjamin Lawson,” he said. “Recently he applied for a policy that was refused. I want to know why.” He waited impatiently, drumming on the resilient plastic frame with unsteady fingers.

  “Hello, Mr. Ferguson,” the screen said pleasantly. “Glad you’re back. There’s been nothing new on Lawson since, you left, but I’ll send the file up right away.”

  “Don’t bother, then. I want to know about this new policy. Hurry it up, can’t you?” He heard his voice rise shrilly, and with an effort forced it to more normal tones.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then the face said, with a shade of embarrassment, “Sorry, Mr. Ferguson; that seems to be under TS.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked irritably, and before she could speak—“Never mind, never mind. Thanks.” He snapped the switch.

  They had never pulled TS on him before. Top Secret stuff was technically limited to the three highest-ranking officers of the company, though actually staff members of Ferguson’s rank honored such rules more by their breach than by their observance.

  I mustn’t let it throw me, he said silently. I can’t let it throw me. And after a moment he knew what he could do. There were three men whose televisor screens would automatically reply to a TS query. He made two calls before he found an empty office. It was lunch time, fortunately for him.

  He unlocked his door, went down the corridor
to the emergency stairs, and climbed three floors. On the way he formulated a plausible enough tale, but he didn’t need to use it. By a stroke of better luck than had attended him so far, the first vice president’s office was empty. He closed and locked the door behind him, and switched on the screen for one-way visual.

  “Give me the latest TS on Benjamin Lawson.”

  “Well, that’s that,” Archer said.

  Lawson lay back in his chair, lifted the trumpet to his lips, and blew a long clear note at the ceiling. It might have been a note of derision at the human race, but Archer did not choose to read that into it. He knew Lawson too well—or he thought he did.

  “It’s a pity,” Archer went on. “I was sorry we had to do it, but he wouldn’t leave us any other out.”

  “Does it bother you?” Lawson asked, squinting at him over the rim of the trumpet’s horn. Reflected in the brass Archer saw his own distorted face and the shadow of worry on it.

  “I suppose it does, a little,” he said. “But it couldn’t be helped.”

  “It’s not as if we’d planted a booby-trap on him,” Lawson pointed out. “We only arranged for him to know the truth.”

  Archer laughed shortly. “Misused semantics. Truth sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? And yet it’s the deadliest thing you could ask any human to face. Or any superhuman, either, I should think.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me superhuman,” Lawson said. “You sound like Ferguson. I hope you don’t think I want to conquer the world.”

  “I tried to tell him you didn’t, but by then he was seeing a superman behind every tree, and there was nothing I could say that would make sense to him.”

  Lawson slid further down into the chair and ran through a brief series of riffs. The room was full of clear resonance for a moment. Before it died away Lawson put aside the trumpet and said, “I don’t suppose it would make sense to anybody brought up on anthropomorphic thinking.”

  “I know. It took me a long time to come around. And I suppose it was only by identifying my interests with yours that I was able to see it.”

  “Ferguson Went to extremes, but the two things he was so afraid of are the conclusions any anthropomorphic thinker would arrive at if he knew the truth about me and the other eighty in the crêches. He was perfectly right, as far as he went, about the parallel between gorilla and human maturation, of course. The immature gorilla is naturally a gregarious, competitive critter. That’s part of its growing up. That’s progress, if you like. In the crêches, we kids used to think our football and baseball and skatch scores were the most important things in the world—the goal was to win. But the real idea was to develop us physically and teach us mental and social co-ordination, things we’d need when we grew up. You don’t see grown men taking things like that so seriously.”

  Archer said, “Yes—but try making Ferguson see the parallel! Or any other anthropomorphic thinker.”

  “Progress as men see it,” Lawson said pedantically, “is not an end in itself; it is as much a means to an end as any schoolboy’s game.”

  Archer grinned. “Paragraph 1, Chapter 1, Primer for the New Race,” he suggested. “There’s no use trying to explain that to Ferguson. He has a big blind spot on that side of his mind. His whole culture’s based on the idea of competition and progress. It’s his god. He’d fight to the last ditch before he’d admit his . . . his football score isn’t the last great hope of the race of men.”

  “He has fought to the last ditch,” Lawson said. “He’s in it now. We can dismiss Ferguson.” He regarded his trumpet thoughtfully and said, “Paragraph 1, Sentence 2. When the end has been achieved, the means is no longer of any value. We know this is so, but never try to tell it to a human.” He paused and winked at Archer. “Your case is the exception, of course,” he observed politely. “Paragraph 1. Sentence 3. Never blame the human for that. We can’t expect him to admit that his whole culture is no more than a childish game to which there must be an end if the game is to serve any purpose. Never look down on humans—they laid the foundations for us to build on, and we know no more than they what shape that building will take.”

  Archer was silent, a hint of deference in his manner. This was the only subject which he had ever seen Lawson approach seriously. “Paragraph 2,” Lawson went on. scowling at the trumpet. “Never attack a human except in self-defense and then destroy him quickly and completely. Humans think autistically; they will always be convinced you want to rule their world. Their egotism will never let them admit the truth. We have no need of their toys: we must put away childish things.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Archer said, “We ought to get that primer on paper before very long: we’ll be needing it.”

  “Maybe we ought to dedicate it to Ferguson,” Lawson suggested sardonically, as he picked up the trumpet and delicately fingered the keys.

  The clear note of the horn vibrated through the room again.

  “You make me think of Joshua,” Archer told him.

  Lawson grinned. “Gabriel,” he said succinctly.

  Ferguson leaned tensely toward the screen. It flickered, and a voice said, “Report on policy refused November 4th to applicant Benjamin Lawson—” The voice went on, and Ferguson listened for a stunned moment and then refused to listen.

  This is the chain reaction, he told himself, in the deliberate, controlled silence of his mind, while the voice spoke on unheeded from the screen. This is the personal devil that every man has feared since the first Bomb fell. But we’ve watched for the wrong reaction. This is fission no one expected, fission between the old race and the new. No one knows but me—and Archer—and I’ll never be able to give the warning—”

  This was defeat. There was no use fighting any longer. He saw failure and disaster before him, the control of all Earth wrested from human hands and Lawson lording it like Nero over a populace of slaves. For Ferguson was an autistic thinker to the last. He saw Progress at full stop, and that was the last abyss of all, for beyond it his narrowing mind could see nothing but the dark. The last barriers of his defense went down, and he let himself listen to the words that the screen was repeating.

  The screen said:

  “Lawson desired to insure against the possibility of ILC officer Gregory Ferguson becoming insane. Since investigation shows that Ferguson has already exceeded the margin for error allowable for developing paranoid psychoses—”

  Moving through uncharted space, the liner Nestor and the derelict warhead crashed once more in the infinite darkness of Gregory Ferguson’s mind. After that, there was white incandescence.

  All thinking stopped.

  THE END.

  THE POWER AND THE GLORY

  The earthly magic Miller sought in the strange fairyland atop an Alaskan peak turned to nothingness in his hands, but his journey brought him a treasure beyond imagining!

  CHAPTER I

  Transmutation

  CARRYING the coffee-pot, the Belgian shuffled out of the room. The door thumped behind him. Miller met Slade? inquiring stare and shrugged.

  “So he’s crazy,” Miller said.

  Slade drew down the corners of his thin mouth. “Maybe he is. But I’ve got other sources of information, remember. I’m sure there’s—something—up on Peak Seven Hundred. Something plenty valuable. You’re going to find it for me.” His teeth clicked on the last word.

  “Am I?” Miller said sourly.

  “Suit yourself. Anytime you feel like it you can go back to the States. There was a threat in the way he said it.

  Miller said. “Sure. And then you send a few telegrams . . . It was a sweet little frame you fixed up on me. A murder rap—”

  “Well,” Slade interrupted, “but happened to be a frame. I’ve got to protect myself, though in case you ever want to turn State’s evidence.”

  “I’ve done your dirty work for ten years,” Miller growled. “It’s too late now to try crossing you up. But we’re both guilty of one particular murder, Slade. A guy named Miller who w
as an honest lawyer, ten years ago. I feel sorry for the poor sucker.”

  Slade’s strong, implacable face turned away from him.

  “The man with the gun has the advantage. Up on Peak Seven Hundred there’s the biggest gun in the world—I think. Something’s sending out terrific power-radiations. I’m no scientist, but I’ve got men working for me who are. If I can get that—weapon—from the Peak, I can write my own ticket.”

  Miller looked at him curiously. He had to admit Slide’s strength, his powerful will. Head of a slightly criminal and completely unscrupulous political empire for a decade now, Slade was growing restive, reaching out fur new worlds to conquer.

  Word of this power-source on the peak in Alaska had sounded fantastic even back in the States but it seemed to fascinate Slade, who could afford to indulge his whims. And he could afford to trust Miller—to a certain extent. Miller was in Slade’s hands and knew it.

  They both looked up as the Belgian came back into the room, carrying a fresh bottle of whiskey. Van Hornung was drunk and well aware of his own drunkenness. He peered at them from under the huge fur cap lie wore even indoors.

  “Could man be drunk, forever with liquor, love and fight—” he murmured, hooking out a chair with his foot. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter now. Have another drink, gentlemen.”