Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  It seemed too good to be true for a moment. Then common sense took over and I realized that if everyone who entered came first to the locker room it was no miracle that I had found Falvi.

  I edged down the room toward him. He was sitting on a padded stool, one ankle crossed over his knee, working on the lacings of a calf-high boot, and he was talking earnestly to the man on the next stool. The man wore nothing but an orange towel knotted around his waist.

  But he was clothed permanently in a head-to-foot garment of freckles that patterned every inch of his skin as if he had been tattooed with them. He had characteristic stiff reddish hair, cut in a sort of brush on top of his head, and the orange towel looked hideous on him.

  The freckled man laughed, a thin giggle that struck a responsive chord in my mind. Coriole! But I couldn’t get near enough to eavesdrop without some better disguise than a priest’s robe and headdress. Falvi would know me.

  What better disguise, I realized suddenly, than nothing at all? Clothes make the Malescan but nakedness in a public bath ought to break down all barriers of fashion. Without my clothing I would be as good a Malescan as anybody so long as I kept my mouth shut.

  I watched what the others were doing, found out and walked along till I located an empty locker. There was a three-inch square of white on the front of it, a blank square. I pushed my thumb against it and the locker slid open. When I took my thumb away, there was a black indentation of whorls and lines left on the white square.

  I stripped in a hurry, having a little difficulty because I wanted to keep my robe on till last. If anyone noticed my garments weren’t Malescan, I suppose my entirely fallacious air of self-assurance got me over that hump. Stripped, I stopped feeling conspicuous.

  There was a large sheet of toweling hanging in the locker and, following the precedent I saw around me, I draped myself in the thing before I pushed the locker door shut and heard it click briskly into place. I realized that only my thumb, pressed into the indented print, would unlock it again. My towel was blue, a more fortunate color than Coriole had drawn.

  WHEN I looked again for Falvi I saw him just putting his headdress into the locker. There was a purple towel around his thin shoulders and his thin shanks were meager beneath its lower edge. He was alone.

  In momentary panic I looked around the room, finally spotting an orange towel and a freckled back receding down the hall toward an archway at the end through which steam drifted fragrantly now and then. My job, I realized, was to get to Coriole now and introduce myself before Falvi could intervene.

  Falvi was perfectly capable of doing something disastrous to us both out of sheer nervous inefficiency if he recognized me. For all I knew he had some deadly weapon hidden in his locker or carried in a fold of the purple towel. Why he was so anxious to kill me I wasn’t quite sure but the fact that he was seemed evident. It was not mine just then to question why.

  I was about to follow Coriole and trust to luck when from the corner of my eye I caught a flash of striped and flapping headdress near the entrance by which I had come, Dio stood there, boldly surveying the hall. I turned my back hastily, thanking heaven for my protective coloration in this hall of nakedness and colored towels.

  Dio would not, I thought, know me unless I were careless but I was fairly sure he would know Falvi. And then a flash of brilliant wisdom shot through my head and I conceived the perfect scheme for getting rid of both Dio and Falvi.

  Barefooted, I pattered down the warm tiled floor after Falvi, who was now making for the far archway. I caught up with him about where I’d intended, beyond that misty threshold. The room beyond might have been any size, for it was filled with a dry tingling kind of steam or smoke, hot and perhaps electrically charged. My hair stirred a little and a vibration ran along my skin.

  Shapes moved dimly in that curtained dimness. Falvi had blurred to a skinny shadow and I walked faster, timing myself carefully. I had to say something to him but I didn’t want to give him time enough to recognize my face.

  Just behind him, I hissed in his ear, “Listen! It’s important! Your life may depend on it!”

  He kept right on walking. As I’d hoped he was thoroughly conditioned to Malescan commercials.

  I spotted a group of shadows near me and just before I drifted toward them I whispered, “Dice’s following you, Falvi!”

  He did a double-take. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting to hear. Probably his mind assumed for a second or two that he was being ordered to drink Elixir. Then he snapped to a halt and turned round wildly.

  But by then I was safely concealed among that shadowy group of Malescans. I could see Falvi, though not clearly, but he couldn’t see me because he didn’t know where to look. In that dim room one figure was exactly like another.

  I saw the vague shape that was Falvi hesitate, take a few steps in one direction, pause again. Then the priest made an indistinct gesture with his arms and plunged away, back toward the locker room. I drifted in that direction but I didn’t leave the concealment of the dry steam. There was no sign of Dio but Falvi was getting dressed again with furious haste.

  I retreated into the mist. I started looking for Coriole. There are few red-haired freckled men in any single social group. At least, I found only one in the series of interlocking steam-rooms here—and that one, of course, was Coriole.

  I located him after a rather nightmarish sequence in which I floated in ghostly fashion through what gradually became an Elysian Fields, peopled with apparitions. I was considering following Ulysses’ example and opening a vein in my arm to attract the ghosts when I unexpectedly saw a pair of freckled legs, covered with red hair, floating in the fog, the soles of two feet staring up at me with an odd air of blank expectancy.

  Luckily the air was thicker than ever here. All I could see was Coriole’s legs but the rest of him was presumably reclining on a couch. I clutched the towel around me and dithered slightly, for a bit. Now that I’d found the man, I didn’t know what came next.

  I was going on a very tenuous assumption after all. Maybe it would be better to feel him out a little before I gave myself away. I saw the dim outlines of an empty couch beside Coriole’s and I sat down on it tentatively. It had a firmly yielding surface, slick and warm. I sat staring at Coriole’s dim outlines, revolving opening lines in my mind and discarding them. There was a long pause. Then Coriole stirred.

  “Falvi?” he asked. “Is that you?”

  It was all the cue I needed. I tried to remember what little I heard of Falvi’s intonation. I pitched my voice to the front of my mouth, spoke thinly and a little through my nose like Falvi and ventured one brief word.

  “Yes.”

  Then I held my breath. Apparently it worked for Coriole rolled over to face me and said, “Lie down then. Relax and tell me what happened.”

  Willingly I lay down because it hid my face better. However, my scheme was not to do the talking but to get Coriole started. I said experimentally, “Well—”

  SOMEBODY blundered past us in the steam. Coriole laughed the already familiar thin chuckle and said loudly, “Did you hear the story about Blandus? He was complimented on his stable and he said it was because his horses ate such fine pargani. Even the Hierarch didn’t get anything better. The joke was, of course, that it’s exactly what did happen on Tuesdays!”

  I forced a polite laugh. The blunderer stubbed his toe, swore and receded, Coriole, an orange-shrouded ghost in the steam, got up and nudged me.

  “There’s an empty clear-room at the end of the row,” he said. “This is too public. Come on.”

  I made a great effort to put myself in Falvi’s mental shoes and said in Falvi’s voice as we stumbled through the dimness,

  “Coriole, what am I going to do?” I put some of Falvi’s panic into the query.

  “Do what Dom Corbi did,” Coriole said with dreadful joviality. “Call it a nolli seeundo and the second race won’t be run today.”

  I was silent, wondering just how well I really understood
Malescan.

  “The first thing I want you to do,” my guide said in a lower voice, “is to find that man from New York. The second thing is to stop playing with fire. You had no business fiddling with the Earth-Gates and you ought to know it by now. For a man as timid as you, Falvi, you do run the most terrible risks.”

  “I meant to kill him,” I said, remembering Falvi’s defense on the communicating waffle I had watched him use.

  “I know you did. I’m inclined to have you killed if you do. Fortunately for me he did get away. The next thing’s to find him.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “He needs me and I need him,” Coriole said illuminatingly, taking me by the arm. He paused for a moment. Then he said, “Here’s the passage. Look out!” He stumbled heavily and fell against me, gasping an apology as we both reeled.

  “Sorry,” I said mechanically as I regained my balance.

  Coriole stood perfectly still in the mist. He did not speak and he did not move. I couldn’t even hear him breathing. There was something terrifying about that sudden immobility. I didn’t understand it for a long moment. Then it came to me. I heard the echo of my own apology still hanging in the air, and it was not in Malescan I had spoken.

  I had spoken English.

  Coriole laughed very softly. My mind went blank with dismay. Why had I done it? The answer was slow in coming but when I realized what it was I felt my jaw drop and I gaped stupidly at the dim outlines of my companion. I’d had a good reason for speaking in English, after all. Coriole had spoken in English too. When he said “Look out!” he’d said exactly that, not “Se-garde,” which is the Malescan equivalent.

  Coriole was still laughing, still almost silently. Now he said, “Name of Burton, by any chance?” and this time he spoke Malescan again.

  There wasn’t any use in trying to keep up the game any longer. I said, “That’s good. How did you know?”

  “Falvi’s talked to Clia. And not all the priests idolize Hierarch.”

  “Do I know Clia?”

  “You knew her as Lorna Maxwell.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Did—who taught you English? Falvi?”

  “No, my father taught me that. I don’t know much of it—he went away when I was only ten. Here, come on in where we can look at each other.”

  He groped forward, guiding me by the arm.

  “My Falvi wasn’t so good, eh?” I inquired, rather hurt, as I followed him.

  “On the contrary, my friend. You took me in until I touched your arm.” He slapped me gently on the shoulder. “If you’d ever taken Falvi by the arm you’d know the difference. Falvi worries too much. Your arm would make two of his.

  I didn’t know you weren’t a spy from the Hierarch, of course, but I had a strong conviction and it’s proved itself. Here we are. Come along.”

  The room was small, Coriole shut the door behind us and locked it while I glanced at the furnishings of the place. There was no fog here though the air tingled as it had done outside. There were two low couches with the same slick warmish padding on them.

  There was a table between them and above.it on the wall a large blank screen with dials set in a row across the bottom, each stamped in gilt with Roman numerals. I think I realized then for the first time that I hadn’t seen Arabic numbers anywhere in Malesco, only the angular and to me confusing Roman numerals.

  Then I turned around and saw Coriole’s face. For a second or so the bottom dropped out of my stomach and I could only stare. After awhile I heard myself murmuring tentatively, “Uncle Jim? Uncle Jim?”

  Coriole grinned blankly at me. He didn’t understand. And of course he wasn’t really Uncle Jim. But the likeness was so strong it couldn’t be coincidence. Most red-headed men with freckles look alike—it’s a familiar mold of countenance that seldom varies much. But this was a closer likeness than you could explain that way.

  Coriole had the same long-jawed, raw-boned face, the same heavy freckling, the same pale blue eyes, the same bristle of red hair growing to the same line on the forehead. He was younger than I by a few years, I thought. I counted back rapidly and the idea that struck me then has probably been obvious for some time now in this narrative. But at the moment it rocked me back on my heels.

  “What was your father’s name?” I demanded.

  “Jimmerton,” he said promptly. “He came from Paradise.”

  I sat down heavily on the nearer couch. “His name,” I said, “was Jim Burton and he came from New York.”

  “I said he came from Paradise,” Coriole nodded agreeably. “Jim Burton? Burton? But you—”

  “That’s right,” I said numbly. “He was my uncle.”

  CORIOLE sat down heavily too and we stared at each other in silence. After awhile he shook his head dubiously. He had more reason than I for doubts. After all, I had the likeness to go on and Uncle Jim’s tales. Coriole had nothing but my word. I offered what facts I could.

  “Jim Burton looked just like you. He disappeared about thirty years ago and was gone for ten years. When he came back he lived with us for awhile, quite a few years, in fact. He taught me Malescan, when I was a kid. How else could I be speaking it?

  “He never had much to say about where he’d been, but he was ill for a long time and I think he’d had a lot of trouble during the time he’d been away. He died three years ago. He left me his apartment. That was how—”

  “Of course!” Coriole said suddenly. “Jimmerton came through the Earth-Gates from his own library in New York. I remember that much. It was how you came too and Clia. What a fool I am! I never connected her with Jimmerton at all. She didn’t know the name and I supposed the entry between the worlds—the nexus—had shifted since my father’s day. But it didn’t! And you—we’re cousins, aren’t we?”

  “I guess so,” I agreed, looking at him in a dazed way. Malesco was real, of course. I couldn’t doubt that anymore. But somehow this finding of relatives in the place brought it a lot closer than I’d been able to realize before. It was like finding cousins in Graustark or through the looking-glass. Coriole was staring at me with the same dazed wonder.

  “Think of that!” he murmured, scanning my face. “Think of it! A cousin from Paradise!”

  “Look,” I said firmly, “let’s get this straight right now. What makes you people think New York is Paradise? Believe me, I know better!”

  Coriole grinned crookedly. He glanced at the locked door.

  “Yes, I know better too. But if anybody else hears you saying so you’ll find your head off your shoulders before you finish speaking. The Hierarch doesn’t encourage heresy, you know.”

  I leaned back on the couch, settled the blue towel comfortably around me, and crossed my legs. “I don’t know anything,” I said. “You’ve got a long session of explaining before you. But first—I’m hungry. Have I got enough money here to buy myself a meal?”

  I held out the handful of coins Dio had given me. Coriole smiled and punched a button in the wall without rising.

  “Refreshments go with the admission fee,” he said. “I want to know a few things, too, such as where you got that grain and how you found your way here to start with. I ought to warn you—” He gave me a pale blue stare, quite coldly.

  “I’m not taking you entirely at your word. I think you’re telling me the truth but if you are you can’t prove it. You fooled me back there in the steam-hall into saying enough to hang me if you’re a spy, so I’ve got to go on the assumption you aren’t. We’ll pretend we believe each other, shall we?”

  “Play it from there,” I said. “Maybe something will come out that will convince you. I can’t blame you for suspecting the worst, I suppose. My speaking the language ought to be the best convincer I can offer.”

  “It is. I’ll admit that had me puzzled for a moment. But—”

  A tap at the door interrupted him. He gave me a wary glance.

  “You answer it,” he said.

  “I can’t work the lock.”

  He reached out t
o slip the handle of the door sidewise, then sank back. I opened the door. Fog drifted in. There was a man in pink shorts outside, pushing a three-tiered cart that jingled.

  “Refreshments, sir,” he said. “You rang?”

  “Oh yes,” I said and accepted the tray he handed me. Coriole silently shut and locked the door as I set down the tray.

  There was a basket of rolls that looked very much like the bread I was accustomed to. There was a dish of boiled eggs differing from Earthly eggs only in the bluish pattern on the shells. There was a pot of cheese and a pot of something steaming that smelled like tea and a big bowl of some chopped-up stuff that smelled pungent.

  There was a tray of apples, peaches, some bunches of bright red grapes and two other fruits I didn’t recognize. It was not what I’d have ordered but it looked good and I was hungry. We helped ourselves, munching away from opposite couches, glancing warily at each other from time to time, talking as we ate.

  And I found out at last-under what circumstances New York could be Paradise.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Alchemic Version

  BEFORE the wall opened to pitch me through into another world Malesco had in my mind been one with Graustark, Ruritania, Oz, Islandia, Gormenghast, Erewhon, the Utopias of Plato, Aristotle and Sir Thomas More, all the other imaginary worlds I had assumed existed only in human minds. Now—I wonder.

  It may be that every one of them is as real as Malesco or only a little less real, in the plane of what Coriole called the mundi mutabili. He also referred to the same theory under the name of orbis inconstans and probabilitas-universitas-rerum. But with Malescans it was no theory—it was fact.

  I’d read enough about the alternative futures theory to understand him without much trouble, though he took it for granted that I knew somewhat more than I did. I had to pull him up now and then and get a fuller explanation. But briefly, this is what happened at the point of split-off between Earth and Malesco, away back in the Claudian times of first-century Rome.