Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Blind panic made the foremost deaf to him. It was the foremost who had first responded to Dagon, and the too-quick response showed their hysteria. There was only one kind of order they would hear or respect now.

  Ran hurled himself against the nearest, knocking him sidewise, cuffing a second across the face, shouldering a third hand. His thought was a roar in their minds, harsh with authority. “Head for the tower! Listen! Head for the tower!”

  The disorganized flight paused, wavered, piled up into a milling cloud around the arrested forward plunge of the foremost. In a moment or two, Ran and Dagon were hanging in the center of a half-hysterical glove of clansmen, a globe that shifted and wavered furiously around the outer edges, while every eye watched what went on in the heart of the crowd, where Ran had brought himself up just short of Dagon.

  Dagon swung himself heavily around in the water, letting his pelt loosen a little to increase his bulk. Anger suffused his face wherever human flesh showed through the fur, and his lip lifted over serviceable fangs.

  IT WAS no time for fighting; Dagon should have known that. The least taint of blood in the water would certainly draw the killer sharks, and almost as certainly the Destroyers themselves. But it was no time for argument, either.

  Ran drew his upper lip tight and let his own sharp canines flash. He did not speak directly to Dagon. “You know our refuge,” he told his tribe, casting out the thought in his old, encircling way to enfold the whole group. “Follow me.”

  His thought was a command that moved before him, opening up a path through the hovering globe of clansmen. There was an instant when Dagon’s snarl was a challenge to combat that could not be ignored.

  But the combat never came.

  A tremendous shadow moved across the sea-floor. When its edge touched the intent cloud of sea-people as they hung watching, thoughts interlocked with patternless violence, every silvery body started simultaneously, shivered, and looked up.

  Far overhead, distorted by ripples between and hanging just under the surface of the sea, a questing Destroyer sailed slowly, trailing its egg-shaped shadow across the sand.

  Squarely above the edge of the cliff where the clan hovered it paused. No one stirred or spoke; no one even thought.

  Then slowly, slowly the Destroyer began to sink. It was not sure of them, down there. The metal in the sunken city confused it. But built into its complex body were senses which told it that something flickering below might be its prey . . .

  Ran sent out a tiny, tentative whisper of thought, touching each mind simultaneously. “Steady,” he said. “It may pass over. Wait for the signal. When I give tire word—scatter.” He said “scatter” very, very gently, knowing that even tire sound of it in panicky ears might start a rout among his followers.

  The clan quivered once in a mind-linked, instantaneous response from every individual agreeing as one. Even Dagon joined. And the Destroyer sank and sank, its shadow growing enormous on the sandy street, among the waver of weeds and the knotting and unknotting of ripple-patterns which sunlight cast from the distant surface.

  Thoughts wavered and knotted with the same motion in Ran’s mind as he waited tensely, gauging the angles of possible flight, postponing to the last instant the explosion of speed that would scatter most of the tribe and would almost certainly sacrifice a few to the Destroyer while the rest found hiding places.

  His thoughts were cold and bitter, like the water. In. a part of his mind he was counting over to himself the slowest and the weakest who must be abandoned first if he hoped to save the others. The choice was hard, but he had to make it.

  Another part of his thought was tuned to the finest and keenest pitch of listening for some hint of other clans, near or far in the cold, green, glassy world around him. He found nothing. No whisper, of human thoughts or human life anywhere in all the vast silences of ocean. Only the faint clang, far off, of his own thought striking harshly against some ranging Destroyer. Far and near—terribly, fatally near—he could sense the encircling enemy. But by every evidence of human senses, this clan alone remained alive of all the clans of ocean.

  This is stilt sanctuary, he reassured himself, watching the gigantic shadow grow upon the street, rippling across the angles of buildings, spreading like a vast thundercloud above them. We can hide here, and they’ve never yet caught us when we could hide. But if this last refuge should jail—what then? What then?

  Majestically through the water, from deep, deep down in the abysses which no man knew, a long “Thought” of the sea moved like a slow heartbeat, once, twice, three times, and was gone.

  The vast dark bulk of the Destroyer hung like Leviathan above them now. Ran drew in his breath to utter the command for flight, but he held it, waiting, watching. The water between the terror-frozen humans and the hovering machine wavered until the machine itself seemed insubstantial, a shadow the waves could dispel. But it was no shadow; and there was no defense but flight.

  3

  BY THEIR very existence the Aliens who made those machines and sent them into the depths of ocean to hunt down mankind, broke one of Earth’s oldest laws—the law of balance. On Earth every creature has its opponent. But nothing under the sea or above it had ever stood against the iron Destroyers. It seemed to offer proof, if proof were needed, that the Aliens came from outside Earth, usurping man’s heritage.

  It seemed a faint hope now that the Earth-Born might still inherit. The clear light of intellect had already dimmed too much, guttering down in such instinctive urges as drove Dagon.

  But stubbornly, still Ran clung to the ancient legend. The Earth-Born shall inherit the Earth. He had to cling to it. If he gave it up before he could pass it on to the next in line after him, what was the use of struggling at all?

  The Destroyer was close over the tower-tops now. It paused there, probing the weed-clogged streets for the throb of warm-blood hearts down here among the cold-blood hearts. Warm and cold alike cowered in the shelter of the weeds and the ruined buildings, instinct and reason together counciling the silence of death itself.

  “When it passes that dome,” Ran told himself, “we must scatter. But not until it passes. There’s still a chance—it may not find us—”

  The tension was growing unbearable, but there was still a chance—

  Among the brown weeds a silvery human shape convulsed into an explosion of sudden terror. The weakest mind here snapped at the breaking point between instinct and reason.

  “Run! Runt Scatter and run!” Dagon shrieked in one wild red burst of blind frenzy.

  It was too much for the tribe. The Destroyer might have passed over but for this; now it knew. Ran’s people exploded from their hiding-places like the fragments of some exploding bomb in the streets of the long dead city. The water rang with the shrilling of their incoherent terror.

  The Destroyer heaved itself up a little in the water, sending down strong ripples as it moved.

  There was one totally unreasoning moment when Ran hung in the water motionless, fighting back his rage at Dagon and remembering his dreams in which he turned to face the Destroyers. Dagon, the animal, had called it down upon them. Ran, the man, lingered perilously, in brief, impotent defiance of the enemy. Why? He did not know; perhaps there was in his mind some foolish longing to prove to the machines that not all men were beasts yet, or creatures who worked by instinct only. But he could prove nothing. The Destroyers did not operate by thought, either; they were like machines, obeying an impulse to exterminate, one built into their fire-fountaining bodies. Only man thought—and not all men.

  Then the suicidal moment passed and Ran remembered his tribe. “The tower!” he roared above the wild shrieks of despair, whirling in the water as he called. “Hide! Rim! But meet me at the tower when you can. Run! Run!”

  He did not know if they heard. He was already diving deep into the shadows, a strong, compact silver streak flashing deeper into the thick stems of the seaweed, burrowing among their smooth, hollow trunks and the shelter of the rocks
. He sought out metal instinctively, hugging the exposed antique ribs of a ruined building and sliding along its cold rail with half-intuitive, half-reasoned confidence that this would most confuse the enemy if it followed.

  Behind him, with other senses than sight, he was aware that the fountains had begun to burst among his people—as they had burst among Dagon’s, such a short while ago, and for a reason so like this—Dagon’s hysteria, Dagon’s animal witlessness in the face of danger. A good leader would have sent a few out, and then a few more; and the Destroyer would have followed them, far off, beyond the buildings, before the bulk of the tribe scattered for safety. But then a good leader would have remembered Dagon’s weakness, too; the fault was Ran’s.

  COLORED stars soared and rained down over the city, flowering in blue and amber, crimson and gold. He heard the death-cries of his clan, counted the names to himself as ha lost them one by one, and then by twos and threes and groups. He heard, and closed his hearing, shutting his mind to their last importunate appeals because he could not answer the cries from that last threshold of human experience.

  It was the living to whom he must dedicate his strength, to keep them alive while he could. For the dying he could do nothing; Ran closed his ears and hugged the metal rail, swimming hard.

  With a very small part of his mind he realized that Dagon still survived. Many were dying all around them, but Dagon, with the strength no leader should retain whose clan has so lately died under his control, still radiated strong, mindless cries of panic and swam for shelter like the rest.

  There was no way to measure how long the fountains of colored stars arched and burst into bright splashes among the weed-shadowed streets. During all that while the sea-people screamed silently and died wherever a star-pointed light flowered.

  At last the fountain began to fade; one by one the slow and the unlucky were picked out and pinned by the crimson and silver and cold blue stars.

  But Dagon survived; and Ran, hugging the shining rail, survived. The luckier, the wiser, the more agile among the clan survived, too. They were safe now among the inner streets where the Destroyers had never yet been able to follow, and in the hidden places underground where the metal rails ran thickest.

  They thought they were safe.

  They were beginning to murmur to one another with soft, uncertain touchings of the wind, beginning to converge tentatively toward their place of meeting . . .

  l

  It was then, with the first long, terrible, rending shriek of metal upon stone, that the last chapter of man’s history undersea began.

  The tribe paused stark still, hanging stunned upon the water, questioning their own minds vainly for a clue to this terrifying sound they had never heard before.

  Another deafening scream of metal and stone, grinding together was all the answer that came. But it was answer enough. Ran, rising to an opening among the brown stems, saw the beginning of the end take place before him. It was so close the dim underwater vision of the unaided eyes could see it clearly, and so loud that the underwater hearing was stunned by it. The undersea is a noisy place at best, and sound carries a long way; this sound stunned the mind as well as the senses.

  For man’s last refuge was going down; the Destroyer was moving deliberately now against the city itself.

  As Ran watched it set its blunt prow against a tower’s base and the fearful shriek of steel and metal sounded again, a long, rending noise magnified by the water, as the tower shivered and leaned outward farther and farther, all its weed-banners streaming away from it. A cloud of fish darted from the shaking windows.

  When the tower disintegrated, it gave way all at once, the crown still intact, though the base dissolved and the whole of it crashed down in slow fragments over the humped shoulders of the Destroyer, burying it, hiding it.

  For one irrational moment Ran hoped—but it was impossible, and he knew it. Nothing could destroy the Destroyers. When the clouded water cleared he saw the dark bulk rise, shaking off the mantle of stone which the tower had laid upon its shoulders without so much as denting the impervious armor.

  Before it was quite clear of the debris, another, remoter scream of protesting masonry struck their ears in the receptive medium of the water. A rumble as of earthquake rolled down the canyon streets and some unseen tower crashed terribly to ruins upon the shoulders of some unseen Destroyer.

  The machine before them swung ponderously around and laid its blunt nose against the next building. The high walls groaned, cracked across, began to lean outward with slow and frightening dignity.

  So the last city which had given shelter to man upon man’s own planet gave way to the enemy, surrendering up street by street the harvest of man’s last clan.

  IT WAS A small, stunned gathering that clustered around Ran in the shelter of the rock-cleft through which they had come to this futile refuge. No one spoke as they hung there in the water between the irrideseent walls, above the fused green glass of the floor. Exhaustion and despair silenced all thoughts in their minds. They could only cluster around Ran and wait numbly for death.

  Methodically, far away, the Destroyers were working over the city, ruin by ruin, searching out the last of the race of man. The city, three times destroyed, went down finally, tower by tower. No one could even imagine, now, what name it had once borne. IIlium, Constantinople, Chicago, London, Perle—who remembered now? Once it had known destruction by fire, as the discolored walls still showed. (The shadows of those who fled that destruction in vain were still printed darkly upon the stones here and there by the strongest fire of all, but there was nothing left in the sea who knew what those shadows were, or who had cast them.) Once the city knew destruction by water. And now . . .

  Calmly, untroubled by any shadow of these conflicts of the upper world, the “Thoughts of the Deep” moved now and then through the water’. The machines paid no heed to them. Perhaps the machines had no senses to catch those deep surges of power. Slow and inexorable as the tides themselves, the vast “Thoughts” unfurled and moved past the falling towers, the huddling people, and then obliviously furled themselves again and-vanished.

  The last men of Earth were too stunned to pay them any heed at all.

  Even Ran, who knew what they would have to do next—what final, desperate danger he must lead them into—scarcely recognized the majestic tide of the “Thought” that passed them.

  The clan was nearly a clan of sea-beasts now. Ran hung exhausted and mindless as the rest, sending out no messages. Dagon cowered under an overhang of rock, too awed and terrified even to radiate his fear. This was the last defeat. Intelligence had failed them; cunning had failed them. The mindless things of ocean, surviving through the inflexible dictates of instinct, were safer than mankind, and toward their level man was sinking fast.

  To think was so difficult, so terribly difficult. It was easier to stop thinking, to swim in shoals, to follow whatever leader screamed loudest the urgencies they all felt. Running was easier. The old, old mechanisms of the body could save them the trouble of reasoning. There need be no tomorrow for the reason to forecast, only an endless today—if they survived at all. If the Destroyers did not find them and burst through the solid rock to exterminate them.

  Something deep in Ran’s mind quivered and came reluctantly to life again. The old knowledge of responsibility still drove him, not only duty to the tribe, but to something beyond the tribe in that intangible future of which he knew only the legend and the promise. To save their lives was not enough. He must save their future, too. And most urgent of all, he must keep them men. Dagon’s way was easy—back to the mindlessness of the beast . . .

  RAN PUT out delicate, tentative touches of the mind, testing his huddled people. The whole clan shivered at that scarcely perceptible call to life, a summons to take up the burden again which they had so nearly laid down forever.

  Some of them shrank away from the touch, rejecting it, closing their minds determinedly; thinking was too painful. Awareness of self was
too painful. There were among the clan those who in that moment ceased to acknowledge ego at all. They renounced it for the easier way, and in the choice became sea-beasts.

  But there were others who turned trustfully to Ran, opening their minds for orders.

  He had no orders to give—only one, and that too dangerous unless it were the last thing mankind could do. He stretched his thoughts a little toward the elders of the clan, asking for suggestions, hoping fervently that the burden of choice need not be wholly his alone. One by one he questioned them urgently.

  Out of the sea a slow, unfurling surge of “Thought” moved by them like the beat of powerful music. Ran shivered when he felt it pass, knowing the choice he must make. For the elders could give him nothing.

  “We do not know,” their minds said passively. “You are our leader. Guide us. Save us if you can.”

  From Dagon nothing came at all. The sea-weeds that trembled around them in the water were no more silent than he.

  Ran listened for a moment to that slow beat of the Thought, his mind drawing after its tidal motion. Reluctantly he spoke. “There is,” he told them, “one last refuge. It may mean death, but anything else means certain death. Not even the upper seas are safe for us now. Only one way remains.” He hesitated, and said, “There are the Deeps.”

  Dagon’s explosion of fear led all the rest. “The Deeps! Not the Deeps! We must run, but not into the Deeps!”

  A chorus of terrified negations burst all around Ran. “No, not the Deeps! No man knows what lies down there. The ‘thoughts’ rise out of the Deep. What thinks the ‘Thoughts’ ? No man knows.

  “No man dares know. Not the Deeps!”

  Feebly from Dagon came a tentative suggestion. He seemed to think it to himself, but he radiated it involuntarily to them all. Dagon was losing the ability to think his own private thoughts, which is another mark of the sea-beast.