Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “Tell him—got to lead us—to the Temple, now!”

  “Whose side are you on, Alper?” Sawyer asked wearily. “Was all that planning back there a trick? Or were you lying when you said the Goddess made a bargain?”

  “I’m on Alper’s side, you young fool,” Alper assured him, still half-drunk with his sudden victory. “No, it wasn’t a trick. Or a lie. She did bargain—my life for the Firebird. But I don’t believe her. I told you, we’re lower than dogs to the Isier. She might spare my life but she wouldn’t send me home and she certainly wouldn’t give me the Firebird. I want that or nothing. That’s why my plan about Nethe still stands—if the old man will lead us. Will he?” He moved his hand in his pocket significantly. “You’d better talk him into it, my boy!”

  The words could have meant nothing to Zatri, but the motion did, and Zatri had his own ideas about the immediate future. In the wavering firelight he seemed to flicker with swift action as his hand shot out, casting a loop of silvery cord . . .

  The coil of it flashed downward about Alper’s neck and drew tight, tight, cut into the jowled throat stranglingly. Alper stood perfectly motionless. But he spoke.

  “Tell him to drop it,” he said. “Sawyer! It’s your life!”

  “Say no,” Zatri told Sawyer quietly. “I can guess what he said. I’m sorry, young man, but I must think of Klai now. Tell him not to move until I order it. I can kill him with one pull. I am old, but I’m strong.”

  “Sawyer, do you want to die?” Alper demanded desperately. “Tell him—”

  “He says of course you can kill me,” Sawyer said, almost with indifference. “But you’ll be first. He’s thinking of Klai, Alper. I don’t—”

  Zatri said, “Tell him he must take his hand from his pocket. Tell him I’ll pull the noose if he doesn’t. He fears death—he’ll do as I say. I think he knows that no life, not yours or my own, can stand between me and what I must do now.” Sawyer translated. Slowly, sullenly, Alper lifted his hand from his pocket. Sawyer had a sudden spark of hope and said, “Zatri, make him release me from the transceiver!”

  Alper burst out violently, “No! I won’t do that! As long as I have that I’ve got—even if you kill me—no!—”

  “He would not,” Zatri said. “I know. We’re both old men, Alper and I, and we understand each other.” He chuckled softly. “I’ll lead you to the Temple now. Do you know why I changed my mind, why I’ll give Alper his chance at the Firebird and immortality?”

  “Why?” Sawyer asked.

  “It takes more than the Firebird to make a man a god,” Zatri said. “I’m too old—my mind wasn’t clear about this until just now. Alper could achieve immortality, yes—but never invulnerability!” He smiled. “Tell him that,” he said.

  ZATRI said softly through the mask, “Beyond this point, we talk in whispers.”

  Sawyer looked back along the low tunnel twisting out of sight. They had come a long and devious way underground since they left the noisy streets. Zatri, still carefully holding the cord that noosed Alper’s neck, was fumbling at the wall. Rectangular stone blocks hewn perhaps a thousand years ago had been put together with a luminous mortar that glowed with a clear, soft light, so that they stood in what looked like an endless trellis of shining squares.

  Zatri gave a little sigh of satisfaction and a door-sized square of the wall before him went dead, the glowing mortar fading as if a switch had cut off a flow of electrons through it. He pushed gently and the whole square receded, letting a soft golden light shine into the trellised passage.

  “If we’re lucky,” Zatri said, turning his masked face to Sawyer, “there won’t be any guards outside. The ceremony’s under way, and all the Isier who aren’t out fighting should be in the Hall of the Worlds. We’re directly under it now, and the cells of the sacrifices are just outside. There’s no danger of their escaping.” He chuckled with a curious, sardonic note Sawyer did not understand. “The only way they could escape,” he said, “is a way the Isier needn’t worry about. Come along, and be careful!”

  Sawyer followed the two old men through the wall.

  It seemed to him that he had stepped out at the foot of Niagara. He stood half-stunned for a moment, his head craned back, staring up at the golden waterfall which rose up, up, up into misty infinities overhead. They stood at the foot of a long ramp that wound upward across the face of the waterfall in gentle zig-zags like a streak of frozen lightning patterning the golden sway above.

  The sway was the motion of curtains that looked as if they were woven of bright gold light, hanging straight out of a golden sky. Tier after tier of them rippled slowly in deep, changing folds to no tangible breeze, brushing the ramp with level after ascending level of golden hems.

  “We go up,” Zatri said in a whisper. “Keep still, both of you. If anyone comes, get behind the curtains—and pray!”

  They went fast, stilling the noise of their feet on the ramps. At the third level Zatri began to twitch the curtains aside and peer quickly behind them without pausing in his climb. At the fifth level they found her . . .

  A tiny room like a bee’s cell opened behind its curtain, hexagonal, walled with a continual crawl of colors that flowed, merged, faded and renewed themselves continually in a motion so compelling the eye followed them in fascinated wonder.

  “Don’t look,” Zatri warned them. “That’s hypnosis. Tell Alper. We need him.”

  Sawyer murmured his warning without turning his head, for he was staring through the blurred wall at the dreaming figure of Klai, kneeling upon the small hexagon of the cell’s floor, her hands loose in her lap, her head thrown back, staring up in a daze at the changing spectra as they crept across the walls.

  Through the blur of colors, Sawyer caught a glimpse of a chamber beyond so vast, so overpoweringly strange that he jerked his gaze away instinctively, afraid to look, afraid to believe his eyes.

  Zatri rapped softly on the glassy wall of the hexagon before him. Klai stirred a little, a very little, and subsided again, her head lolling back, her eyes upon the patterns. He rapped again. Very slowly she turned.

  “Good,” Zatri said in a whisper. “It’s not too late. We can still save her. Young man—” He turned, fixing Sawyer with a strangely intent gaze. “I have something to ask you,” he said softly. “Listen carefully. I have my own plan all laid. It involves risk to everyone. I want you to understand that can’t be helped. There’s no alternative for any of us except a life of endless slavery under the Isier rule.”

  He paused, gave Sawyer a look of curious appeal, and said, “So I must ask you this. Do you have the Firebird now Sawyer hesitated, trying to read the meaning behind the old man’s intent blue gaze. He could not. But after a long moment of uncertainty, he said:

  “Yes. I do.”

  Zatri let out a deep sigh. “I’m glad,” he said. “It may mean we all live in spite of everything.”

  Alper had been watching this exchange with a restless gaze full of suspicion. “What’s he saying?” he demanded of Sawyer. “Translate!”

  “Be still!” Zatri twitched the cord slightly, then made a quick gesture urging patience. “One more thing before we act,” he told Sawyer. “You see Klai in there, helpless, hypnotized. There’s one way of releasing her, and one way only.” He laughed softly. “The Isier know us very well. They can leave the cells unguarded, because no one can release a prisoner—without taking the prisoner’s place.”

  As he spoke, he moved. And he moved with that startling speed he could call upon when he had to, old as he was. Sawyer went staggering against the cell-wall at the unexpected hard push the old man gave him. He struck it with one shoulder, staggered and felt the wall give beneath his weight—

  XII

  THERE was a moment of total disorientation. The cell walls seemed to fold inward upon themselves in a complex, precise motion like a well-organized machine. As he struck the floor inside the cell he saw Klai swept helplessly outward by the same action that had carried him in. The cell was a
relentless trap.

  As he struggled to his feet on the hexagonal flooring, thrusting hard against the wall in a vain attempt to turn it again, he saw Zatri’s masked face pressed, close to the crawl of the spectrum in the glass, heard the old man’s voice speaking softly and clearly.

  “I’m sorry, young man,” Zatri said. “I came here to take that place myself. But I think this is a better way than if I were there, because with you inside, it need not be a way that ends in death. For you, there’s a chance. For anyone else—” He made a gesture of finality.

  Klai had fallen to her knees on the ramp beside Zatri. Gently he bent to lift her. Sawyer watched them through a crawl of colors so hypnotic he could not focus on them without feeling sleep cloud his brain. He rapped on the glass.

  “Quick!” he said. “I—I’m dizzy. If you have anything to say, say it! Or is this outright murder?”

  “Shut your eyes!” Zatri said. “Don’t look at the colons while I talk. No, it isn’t murder—or if it is, we all die anyhow, and you’ll have had your chance to save yourself and the rest of us with you. Maybe the whole race. I’m not forcing you into anything I wouldn’t do myself, if I could. But only you wear the—the amulet, the transceiver. So that only you can resist the hypnosis, when the crisis of the ceremony comes. Only you.” He glanced at Alper, watching all this with impatient eves. He twitched the cord ever so slightly.

  “As he holds your life. I hold his,” he said. “And I value no life, not even my own. above the goal I’m seeking. If Alper would release you and put the device on me. I’d change places with you. But he wouldn’t. So you must go into the ceremony as a sacrifice—but not unarmed. You have the transceiver. You carry the Firebird. You have a chance no other man could hope for.

  “This is my goal. To break the Isier rule and free my people. I know it isn’t yours, but I can’t spare myself or you. I must do what I can to achieve that purpose. Now listen, because there isn’t much time. At any moment you may be swept into the ceremony.”

  Sawyer, listening tensely, his eyes closed, heard Klai begin to murmur something in a voice of drowsy alarm and opened his eyes long enough to see, through the crawl of colors, the girl lifting her head and staring around dazedly. Zatri hushed her with a gentle shake of the shoulder.

  “You’ll go into the ceremony,” he went on. “But not helpless. Not hypnotized into blind obedience. Because when you feel yourself slipping, you must call on Alper to touch the control of the transceiver, gently, very gently. I’ll make sure of that. He explained enough of it so that I feel sure the lightest shaking of sound in your head will be enough to break the hypnosis.

  “What happens in the ceremony no one knows exactly. But it is known that the victims must be hypnotized before the Firebirds can feed. Before your time comes, my Khom may be able to save you. I told you we have explosives. I hope to destroy enough of the Temple to let the Sselli in. That’s our plan. If it works in time, you’ll be safe.

  “The Temple towers will be a blaze of light before tonight’s ceremony ends, and the Sselli will be flocking around the walls, battering to get in. If we’re lucky we’ll breach the walls of the Hall of the Worlds itself, and turn the Sselli in upon the Isier.

  “Then there’ll be fighting!” The old man’s eyes glowed behind the mask. “Then the Isier will have to unleash their last weapons. It’s our hope the Sselli will succeed in turning them against the Isier. Put if the Sselli fail, there’s one chance left. It all depends on you.” He hesitated.

  “Do you hear me?” he asked. “Open your eyes for a moment. I want to be sure. Yes, yes. Then listen—if you see the Isier winning, judge your time. When it seems right to you—somehow you must reach the Well. Somehow you must drop the Firebird down—and drop it open.”

  SAWYER for the first time was moved to speech.

  “But—Alper said—”

  “Alper was right. It means danger. But the immortality of the Isier depends on the Well. We can’t kill them. But—I think we can kill the Well itself. True, that may also wipe out the whole city. It may send the Upper Shell crashing through to the Under-Shell. But—” Zatri chuckled grimly. “If the Isier win, you die! Would you rather die a victim, or a conqueror? Alone, or with a race of gods to go with you? And knowing that what men remain alive afterward will owe their freedom and their future to what you did?”

  Zatri was silent after that, breathing rather hard through his mask. Presently he said, “There isn’t much time. You’d better tell Alper as much as you think suitable. It might be better not to mention the final plan, if everything else fails—about the Firebird, I mean. If he realizes it’s lost to him, he may not cooperate.” He coughed gently.

  “Look at me, young man,” he said. “Just for a second. I don’t ask your forgiveness, but I want to say again I’m doing this because I must. If you die, we all die. If you win, we win with you.

  I wish I could do the job myself. Do you believe me?”

  Sawyer met his eyes through the coiling spectra in the glass.

  “I believe you. I don’t mention forgiveness. If I come out of this alive, you’ll answer for what you’ve done. But I believe you.” He turned his head. “Alper, I—” He stared. “Alper! Zatri, wake him up!”

  The big old man was lolling half helpless against the glass at Zatri’s side, peering through the cell walls with their irresistible hypnosis of motion and color. Zatri jumped to shake him awake. Klai watched them with drowsy wonder. Sawyer kept calling, over and over, as loudly as he dared, “Alper! Alper, do you hear me! Alper, wake up!”

  “I’m awake,” the big man snarled abruptly fighting Zatri off. “I’m all right. But—Sawyer! Have you looked! Do you realize what they’ve got in there?” Sawyer had not looked. After his first glimpse of infinite, whirling space beyond the wall of cells, and the lashing, twining coils of fire that spun in it, he had had no attention to spare.

  “You’ve got to listen,” he said. “If you want the Firebird, you’ve got to. Alper, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes,” Alper said, his attention only half fixed. “What’s the matter?” Sawyer told him, speaking fast and glossing over the question of the Firebird as well as he could. But Alper was muttering to himself.

  “The heart of the atom,” he was saying. “The atomic dance! Electrons in—yes, seven shells! And the—the fire circles inside the chamber they’re weaving. Sawyer, do you realize what they’ve got in there? I half guessed it before, but it took this to make me realize—” Sawyer blinked and looked at Alper through an incomprehensible blurring haze he could not understand. What was wrong? His own eyes? The cell walls had begun to shimmer a little. Alper’s voice came through it shaken too, as if both sound and light waves vibrated in tune with the shaking walls.

  “It’s a cyclotron!” Alper said. “A cosmotron, a synchrotron, whatever you like. Something inside there is serving as an oscillator to drive forces around and around the chamber the electrons make. A planetary cyclotron! Somewhere there must be a focusing aperture to release the pencil of high-energy rays, because—you see the green beams? Sawyer, do you see?”

  The voice blurred, the face with it, Zatri’s anxious eyes peering through the smiling Isier mask, Klai’s slowly wakening figure behind them. Pure vibration made every molecule of his body shiver in unison with the shivering walls. The colors were moving inward from the walls toward the center of his brain, and with the last despairing flicker of awareness he called to Alper for help . . .

  THE smallest of sounds whispered A delicately through the chambers of Sawyer’s brain. The whisper grew louder. The blood-beat began to roar like a far-away lion . . .

  Sawyer struggled up to the surface of consciousness and called into the golden blur that hemmed him in, “That’s enough. Alper, that’s enough!” Miraculously, at that, the roar began swiftly to fade until it was only a whisper again of breath rustling through chambers of bone and blood beating deep and full in the arteries that keep the mind alive.

  The cell wa
lls no longer surrounded him. He was closed inside a shell of light and he knew the shell was the turning walls of the hexagon, though he himself felt no sensation of turning. He was the hub. The walls pivoted upon him. And the blur of their turning was a thousand times more hypnotic than the blur of colors had been. His mind tugged eagerly to spin with them, into the blurring of oblivion. Only that quiver of constant sound kept him in control.

  He remembered what Alper had been saying when the cell walls shut out the sight of him. Atoms. The atomic dance, and the whirl of the cyclotron. The cell walls were an electronic shell closing him in, he thought, and he was the nucleus they turned around. He was growing light-headed with motion . . .

  Far away, hanging head downward in a golden sky, a crescent of Isier were sitting on thrones of gold, upside down in the firmament. But Isier reduced to the size of dolls. Vertigo seized Sawyer violently as sight came slowly back to him. The crescent that floated in space expanded and whirled before him until its ends joined in a circle, but a circle so vast his mind could not accept it. This was what he had glimpsed through the cell-wall in the great, whirling void beyond. He tried in vain to coerce his mind back to reason. He could only stare.

  The ranks of solemn angels were ranged in one tremendous circle, facing inward, supported upon nothing at all. They floated free in swimming golden space, and—no, was that a reflection glimmering here and there around their feet? Was it a flat platform under the thrones, invisible, made of clear glass?

  Not all the thrones had angels in them. There were broad gaps, one Isier surrounded by vacant seats, then a group of three or four with emptiness on both sides. Where were the rest? Fighting in the streets? Not all. Not even a majority. Perhaps a third of the circle of thrones were occupied. Then the remainder must be those who had gone into vapor when their energy lapsed, and dispersed them upon that strange cycle which they had to take at a word of command none could understand or deny.