Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  I felt better. That much was out of my system. I waited until she stopped crying. She looked at me over the handkerchief.

  “No Niobe Gai?” she said.

  “To hell with Niobe Gai.”

  “And you aren’t going to ask me about Freddi Lester?”

  “Why should I? He’s nothing but an image, like Niobe Gai. Even in Paradise Homes, I suppose.”

  She gave me a curious look over the handkerchief. Then she blew her nose, blinked and smiled at me. It took me a little while to realize why she was waiting.

  “The last time,” I reminded her, “I said some pretty romantic things. This time——”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you marry me, Irene?”

  “Yes, Bill,” she said.

  So at one minute after midnight of Year Day we were married. She wanted to wait until the new year really began. Year Day, she said, was too artificial. It wasn’t really there. It wasn’t real. I was glad to hear her say it. In the old days that was something she wouldn’t have known.

  Right after the ceremony we put up the Complete Barrier, because of the direct advertising that would be aimed right at us the minute spot-checkers reported a marriage had taken place. Even so, the ceremony was interrupted twice by jamming Newlywed commercials.

  So there we were, shut away safe and quiet in an apartment in New York. Outside, the unrealities blazed and shouted, outdoing each other in promises of fame and fortune for everybody. Everybody could be richer than everybody else. Everybody could be handsomer, smell sweeter, live longer than anyone else in the world. Nobody but us could be us, safe and silent and real in our oasis.

  We made plans that night. They were pretty vague. With the little war going on all around the globe there wasn’t any safe place to travel. The moon is a penal colony. Mars and Venus are kept iron-curtained by the government. Russia is painfully changing from a political-economic dictatorship to a semi-Buddhist religious society. Only in Africa, where the great weather control experiments are going on, is there any sort of peace, though slavery is still a boiling pot of trouble.

  There is no arable land left, of course. We talked about buying the necessary equipment and creating good land, a self-sustaining part-hydroponic unit, just to get away from the urban centers and the commercials. I expect it was all pretty unrealistic.

  The next morning, when I woke up, sunlight was slanting in long parallel bars across the bed and Irene wasn’t there any more.

  There was no message on the wiretape. I waited till afternoon. I kept switching off the Barrier, thinking she might be trying to reach me, and then switching it on again to stop the deluge of Newlywed commercials. I almost went crazy that morning. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. I lost count of the times people came to the door wheedling me through the turned-off mike, but the one-way glass never showed me Irene’s face and I walked up and down all morning, drank coffee that began to taste like glue after the tenth cup, and smoked myself into a state of nausea.

  Finally I put an Investigatory Bureau on the job. I didn’t like to do it. After our little oasis of silence and warmth and peace last night I hated to set the hounds on her, especially when I thought of her out there in the swirls and torrents of commercials and the clangor that is Manhattan.

  An hour later the Investigatory Bureau told me where she was. I couldn’t believe it. Again, for a second, it seemed to me that everything went blind and soundless around me and I stood there in a little individual Complete Barrier of my own, with life too noisy to endure on the other side.

  I came out of it to hear the tail end of a sentence coming out of the screen.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  The man repeated. I said I didn’t believe it. Then I begged his pardon, cut the switch, and dialed the number of my bank. The report had been perfectly true. My balance was now zero. Sometime during the morning while I paced in a frenzy my bride had drawn eighty-four thousand dollars out of my account. The dollar isn’t worth much now, of course, but it was the savings of a long period and it was all I had.

  “We checked on it, of course,” the bank official told me. “But it was perfectly legal. She was your wife, since the marriage took place one minute after Year Day. The Year Day amnesty on contractual matters didn’t apply.”

  “Why didn’t you check with me?”

  “It was perfectly legal,” he repeated firmly. “Since the regular bounty for complete withdrawal was paid to us from the total amount, we had no choice.”

  Of course. The bounty. I’d forgotten that. Naturally the bank hadn’t wanted to check with me. And there wasn’t a thing I could do.

  “O.K.,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “If we can serve you in any way——” That slid into the bank’s color commercial signature, so I clicked off. There was no use wasting a commercial on me.

  I put in my earplugs and took the dropper to the third street level. There, the fast slideway shot me across town to the Paradise Homes offices. The homes themselves are mostly underground, but the offices are like a cathedral and the hush was so deep I took the earplugs out again. The lights were remote and blue, and the stained glass made me think of a mortuary.

  I got to see one of the top agents before I had to explain my real intentions. I think he almost called the bouncer, but then he got a speculative look in his eye and decided to give me a salesman pitch first.

  “Certainly,” he said. “Glad to oblige you. Come this way. I’ll have our Mr. Field assist you.”

  He left me at the dropper door. I sank a few hundred feet and was decanted into a warm, luminous corridor, where a large, kindly, rosy-faced man in a dark suit was waiting for me. He had a very friendly voice.

  “Paradise Homes is always happy to help,” he purred at me. “We all know how difficult adjustment is in these troubled times. We create an optimum adaptation for happiness. Now you must let me try to help you, and you’ll be surprised to find your problems can be solved more easily than you think.”

  “I know they can,” I said. “Where’s my wife?”

  “Come this way,” he said, and led me along the corridor. There were doors on each side, some of them with little metal seals too small to read from a distance. Finally we came to an open door. It was dark inside.

  “In here,” Mr. Field said, and his large, warm hand gently urged me across the threshold. A soft light came on and I saw a sparsely furnished apartment, rather shoddy, with a minimum of production-line furniture. It was colorless and without character, like a clean but second-rate hotel. I was surprised.

  “The bathroom,” Mr. Field said, opening a door.

  “That’s fine,” I said, not looking. “Now about my wife——”

  “You will notice,” Mr. Field went on calmly, “that there is a wall bed. This button——” He demonstrated. “And this button retracts it. The plastic sheets last forever. Once daily a cleansing fluid circulates through the valves in which all Paradise beds nest, and by nightfall you have, in effect, a freshly made, clean bed. You will find this an attraction.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  “You will not be disturbed by maid service,” Mr. Field went on. “Magnetic lines of force make the bed. The electromagnets——”

  “Never mind,” I said, as he reached for the button. “You’re wasting your time. Are you going to take me to my wife?”

  “We protect our clients,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “First I must explain to you exactly how Paradise Homes operates. If you’ll be patient I feel quite certain you’ll understand why this is advisable.”

  I thought that over. The little room depressed me. I felt dazed and still incredulous. It was hard to believe that this dreary cubicle was Paradise Homes, but then nothing seemed very real to me that day. I had probably dreamed the whole thing, I thought tritely, from the first moment Irene’s voice came to me, clear and small, out of the car’s grid, asking to be let in.

  She had seemed so—well, so changed, so contrite, so
mature, so different from the irresponsible Irene I’d parted from six years earlier. I’d thought this time things would be different, that Year Day would work a kind of magic and give us a second chance, that lost day out of the calendar when the impossible might happen. I still couldn’t quite believe——

  “And here,” Mr. Field said, pulling a mouthpiece on a tube out of the wall, “are the facilities for smoking. You may have any brand you wish. We are even prepared to supply you with—ah—imported inhalants, if you care for them. These smokers are set in each wall at five-foot intervals, including the bathroom. While everything in this room is fireproof,” he smiled kindly, “the occupant may not be. No one can possibly be injured in a Paradise Home.”

  “What if he fell out of bed?”

  “The floor is resilient.”

  “Like a padded cell,” I said. Mr. Field smiled again, shaking his head.

  “That kind of thought won’t occur to you once you’ve joined our happy group of tenants,” he assured me. “Paradise Homes ensure happiness. Now.” He waved a plump hand at the wall. “This slot is the food tube. Whatever meals you order arrive here by pneumotube. Or liquid food may be preferred.” He indicated a row of nipples on tubes.

  “Very fine,” I said. “Is that all?”

  “Not quite.” He ran his hand along the wall. A faint flicker trembled in the air. I heard a faraway, musical humming. “If you will sit here for a moment, now——” He pushed me gently into a chair. I let him do it. The ugly little room shimmered before me. I was curious. I waited.

  Couldn’t anyone tell the difference, I wondered, gazing at the drab carpet and the drab wall unsteady through the shimmer. Because Paradise Homes put out such publicity did people really think this ugliness was luxury? It wouldn’t surprise me.

  “Now just sit back and relax,” Mr. Field urged kindly. “Remember, Paradise Homes sponsors Niobe Gai as well as Freddi Lester. We serve both men and women. And we have the answer to all the complex personality problems of this complex age. Consider how difficult it is for a man to adjust to society. Or a man to adjust to a woman. It’s really quite impossible, you know, any more. But in Paradise Homes we have the answer. We provide happiness. All human drives and appetites are satisfied. Here is happiness, my dear friend, here is happiness.”

  His voice was fading a little. Something was happening to the air. It grew thicker, and the musical humming was more rhythmic, with a hint of articulation in it. Mr. Field kept on talking, softer and softer.

  “We are a large organization. One fee covers every possible requirement for the client. Write us a check for as long or as short a period as you like, and you may stay here in this room for that period. It is leased to you. If you wish, the door can be sealed to open only from within until the lease expires. The rental is . . .”

  I hardly heard it. His voice was a dying whisper.

  The air was curdling like milk, running like the running colors in the balcony Safety.

  I could almost hear a new voice speaking.

  “Consider,” Mr. Field whispered. “You grow up conditioned to expect impossibilities. But here we can give you the impossible. Here is happiness. Our fee is very small indeed compared to the great goal within your reach. Here, my friend, you can live perfectly. This is Paradise.”

  Niobe Gai stood there in the curdled air, smiling at me.

  She is the most beautiful woman in the world. She is equated with all desirable things. She is wealth, fame, happiness, health, fortune. For many years I have been conditioned to desire all these impossible goals, and to know that Niobe Gai is the epitome of them all. But I never saw her before like this, standing here in the same room, firm and real, breathing and warm, holding out her arms. . . .

  It was a projection, of course. But complete. All tactile and sensory elements perfect. I could smell her perfume. I could feel her arms clasping me and the light brushing of her hair over my hand, and the shape of her lips. I could feel all this exactly as thousands of other men in the underground apartments would feel her lips as they kissed her.

  It was that thought, and not any sense of lost realities, that made me push her away and step back. It didn’t make any difference to Niobe Gai. She went right on making love to the air.

  Then I knew that the last test of sanity had failed me, for it was no longer possible to tell the unreal from the real. The last test fails when the illusion moves into life itself and you can touch and feel and handle the commercial vision as if she were the real woman. There was no defense any more.

  I looked at Niobe Gai clasping the empty air. The vision of all beauty and all desirable things in life, making love to nothingness as if it were a real human creature.

  Then I opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. Mr. Field was waiting, studying a little note pad in his hand. He looked up at me, and probably he’d had plenty of experience, for he simply shrugged and nodded.

  “Well, if you ever should be interested, here’s my card,” he said. “Lots of them do come back, you know. After they’ve thought it over awhile.”

  “Not all,” I said.

  “Well, no.” His face was serious. “Some people seem to have a natural resistance. Maybe you’re one of them. If you are I’m sorry for you. Things are a mess outside. Nobody’s fault, really. We’ve got to keep alive the only ways we know. You think it over. Maybe later on——”

  I said, “Where’s my wife?”

  “In there,” he said. “Excuse me for not waiting. I’m rather busy. You can find the lift.”

  I heard his footsteps going away. I moved forward and knocked at the door. I waited. There wasn’t any answer.

  I knocked again, harder and louder. But it had a flat, muffled sound, as if it didn’t penetrate the panels at all. The client is protected in Paradise.

  I could see now that there was one of the round metal seals attached to the panel, and I was close enough to read the printing. It said, “Sealed until June 30, 1998. Cash received.”

  I did a little sum in my head. Yes, she’d used it all, every one of the eighty-four thousand dollars. Her lease wouldn’t run out again for quite a few years.

  I wondered what she’d do next time.

  I didn’t knock again. I followed Mr. Field, found the lift, rose to street level. I got on a fast slideway and let it carry me around Manhattan. The advertising blazed and screamed. I found my earplugs in my pocket and stopped my ears. But that only shut out the sound. Visual commercials whirled and glared and glided across the buildings, slipping around corners, embracing the solid walls. And everywhere I looked was Freddi Lester’s face.

  Even when I shut my eyes, his after-image burned against my closed lids.

  OR ELSE

  The reformers’ main trouble is a blind spot when it comes to simple pragmatism. They know how to save the world, to save mankind from destruction, to save ten dollars a week against a rainy day. What they lack is actual experience. No man can expect to know how hard it is to save money when he’s never had to fight like the devil to get his hands on a dime.

  That’s why Miguel wasn’t impressed by all the fine talk this big-shot gringo was handing out. Anybody can swear off water when he’s not dry as an old bone. Sort of “He laughs at scars who never felt a wound.” But Miguel was no idiot. He knew you can’t argue with a man who intends to kill you, if necessary, to save your life!

  MIGUEL and Fernandez were shooting inaccurately at each other across the valley when the flying saucer landed. They wasted a few bullets on the strange airship. The pilot appeared and began to walk across the valley and up the slope toward Miguel, who lay in the uncertain shade of a cholla swearing and working the bolt of his rifle as rapidly as he could. His aim, never good, grew worse as the stranger approached. Finally, at the last minute, Miguel dropped his rifle, seized the machete beside him, and sprang to his feet.

  “Die, then,” he said, and swung the blade. The steel blazed in the hot Mexican sun. The machete rebounded elastically from the
stranger’s neck and flew high in the air, while Miguel’s arm tingled as though from an electric shock. A bullet came from across the valley, making the kind of sound a wasp’s sting might make if you were hearing it instead of feeling it. Miguel dropped and rolled into the shelter of a large rock. Another bullet shrieked thinly, and a brief blue flash sparkled on the stranger’s left shoulder.

  “Estoy perdido,” Miguel said, giving himself up for lost. Flat on his stomach, he lifted his head and snarled at his enemy.

  The stranger, however, made no inimical moves. Moreover, he seemed to be unarmed. Miguel’s sharp eyes searched him. The man was unusually dressed. He wore a cap made of short, shiny blue feathers. Under it his face was hard, ascetic and intolerant. He was very thin and nearly seven feet tall. But he did seem to be unarmed. That gave Miguel courage. He wondered where his machete had fallen. He did not see it, but his rifle was only a few feet away.

  The stranger came up and stood above Miguel.

  “Stand up,” he said. “Let us talk.”

  He spoke excellent Spanish, except that his voice seemed to be coming from inside Miguel’s head.

  “I will not stand up,” Miguel said. “If I stand up, Fernandez will shoot me. He is a very bad shot, but I would be a fool to take such a chance. Besides, this is very unfair. How much is Fernandez paying you?”

  The stranger looked austerely at Miguel. “Do you know where I came from?” he asked.

  “I don’t care a centavo where you came from,” Miguel said, wiping sweat from his forehead. He glanced toward a nearby rock where he had cached a goatskin of wine. “From los estados unidos, no doubt, you and your machine of flight. The Mexican government will hear of this.”

  “Does the Mexican government approve of murder?”

  “This is a private matter,” Miguel said. “A matter of water rights, which are very important. Besides, it is self-defense. That cabron across the valley is trying to kill me. And you are his hired assassin. God will punish you both.” A new thought came to him. “How much will you take to kill Fernandez?” he inquired. “I will give you three pesos and a fine kid.”