Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Gaynor looked blankly at Clair, wondering how best to broach the subject of getting back, but, before he could inaugurate a campaign to return the mental marvel to the world of cold realities, the door of the Prototype swung open wide, and Jocelyn Earle stepped out.

  “THE trip didn’t do you any good,” said Gaynor, inspecting her face. “Whose idea was it?”

  “Are you being stern, Pavlik?” she asked, flinging herself into his arms. When they had disentangled she explained, indicating Ionic Intersection who stood smiling in the doorway, “Her idea, really—she couldn’t stomach the idea of turning into a lizard to avoid the nova. She even preferred floating around in space—have you heard about the creeping quivers that space travel gives these sissified Gaylens?—well, she was even willing to face that instead.”

  “I felt,” explained Ionic Intersection, “that I have something to live for now, since—well, something to live for. And I find that space travel isn’t fractionally as bad as I’d expected—I almost like it now, in a way.”

  As if to punctuate her sentence, Jocelyn emitted a yelp. “Ye gods and little fishes!” she screamed. “Look at the sun!”

  The others looked—it was worth looking at. Probably no human had ever seen a sun like that before at closer range than half a thousand parsecs—and lived. Great gouts of flame, and relatively miniature new suns composed of pure, raw, naked energy were spouting from it; rapidly and violently the heat and light from it were increasing, becoming uncomfortable even on this distant planet. It was becoming a nova by cosmic leaps and vast bounds.

  “This is no place for us, friends—not while we’ve got what it takes to get away. So let’s go—fast. I wouldn’t put it past our Gaylen pals—with all due respect to you, Ionic Intersection—to have forgotten a decimal point or neglected a surd in their calculations. This planet may be as safe as they claimed—or it may not. I don’t choose to take chances.”

  Shooing the ladies along ahead of him, Gaynor gently took Clair’s elbow and walked him into the Prototype. “He’s got a theory,” he explained to the girls, neither of whom had ever seen him that way before. “It gets him at times like these, always. You’ll have to bear with him; it’s just another reason why he shouldn’t marry.”

  Once they were all arranged in the Prototype and sufficient stores had been transferred from the Archetype, left to rust or melt on the planet of the Proteans, they took off and hovered in space far away from the wild sun.

  “Now,” said Gaynor, “we’ll go home.” So speaking, he took Clair by the arm once more, shaking him gently. “Theory-Protean-idea-home-theory-HOME!” he whispered in the entranced one’s ear, in a sharp crescendo.

  Clair came out of it with a start. “Do you know,” he said quickly, “I’ve found the governing principle of our little mishaps and adventures?”

  “Yes,” said Gaynor, “I know. The Protean told me. He also told me that you knew how to apply that principle so as to get us home.”

  “Oh, yes. Home. Well, in order to get us home, I’ll need your cooperation—all of your cooperation. I’ll have to explain.

  “I said a while ago that nothing was liable to hurt us in this universe. Well, nothing is. And the reason is that every stick, stone, proton, and mesotron in this universe is so placed and constructed that we can’t get hurt. Don’t interrupt—it’s true. Listen.

  “Let me ask a rhetorical question: How many possible universes are there? Echo answers: Plenty. An infinity of them, in fact. And the funny thing about it is that they all exist. You aren’t going to argue that, are you, Paul? Because everybody knows that, in eternity, everything that is possible happens at least once, and the cosmos is eternal . . . I thought you’d see that.

  “There being so many universes, and there being no directive influence in the Prototype, there is absolutely no way of knowing, mathematically a provable point, just which universe we’ll land in. But there has to be some determining factor, unless the law of cause-and-effect is meaningless, and all of organized science is phoney from the ground up.

  “Well, there is a determining factor. It’s—thought.

  “Thought isn’t very powerful, except when applied through such an instrument as the human mind, or rather through such a series of step-up transformers as the mind, the brain, the body, and the machines of humanity. But there are so many possible continua that even the tiny, tiny pressure of our thought-waves is plenty to decide which.

  “What did we want before we hit the universe of the Gaylens? I don’t know exactly what was in your minds, but I’ll bet it was:’ food, human companionship, supplies, and SAFETY. And we got all of them.

  “So—the rest becomes obvious. To get home: Think of home, all of us, each preferably picking a different and somewhat unusual object to concentrate upon, so as to limit the number of possible universes that fit the description—you, Ionic, will try not to think of anything, because you come from a different universe; then throw in the switch to the protolens—you’re home.”

  THEY had made five false starts, and had spent a full week in one deceptive home-like universe before they’d got the correct combination of factors to insure a happy landing, but this one indubitably was it.

  Clair was at the controls—had been for days of searching, and now that they had identified their solar system was driving every fragment of power from the artificial-gravity units.

  Jocelyn and Gaynor approached him with long, sad faces. “Well, kiddies?”

  “I love Jocelyn,” said Gaynor unhappily.

  “So,” he said, not taking his eyes from the plate which mirrored stars and sun.

  “And that’s not the worst of it,” said the girl directly. “I love Pavlik, too. Do you mind?”

  “Bless you, my children,” said Clair agreeably. “But don’t you mind?” cried Jocelyn indignantly. “We want to get married.”

  “A splendid idea. I’m all for marriage, personally.”

  “Good!” said Jocelyn heartily, though a bit puzzled and annoyed. “What you ought to do is to find some nice girl who can cook and sew and marry her.”

  “Impossible,” said Clair.

  “Why?”

  “My wife wouldn’t let me. Ionic Intersection. We were married three days ago.”

  “What!” shrieked Jocelyn, and Gaynor cried, “You can’t have been. We’ve been in space!”

  “Sure. That’s what made it so easy. You know the old law—the captain of a ship at sea can perform marriages.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I’m the captain, and I performed the marriage—to me.”

  Gaynor reeled and clutched at a railing. “But—but since when are you captain—who appointed you?”

  “Ha!” crowed Clair. “Shows how little you know about sea law. It’s just like the case of a derelict—when the regular offficers and crew of a ship are unable to bring her to port—and you were definitely unable so to do anyone who can takes command. That’s the law, and I’m sticking to it. And you’d better not question it—because if you do, I’ll dissolve your marriage.”

  “Our marriage! What marriage?” cried Jocelyn, incredulity and delight mingling in her voice.

  “The one I performed over you two not five minutes ago. Probably you thought I was whistling through my teeth,” Clair very patiently explained. “Now are there any objections?”

  No, there were no objections . . .

  THE END

  Trouble in Time

  The scientist’s crack-pot time machine didn’t exactly work, but it did transport Mable Evans to the sleeping world of the future!

  TO BEGIN at the beginning everybody knows that scientists are crazy. I may be either mistaken or prejudiced, but this seems especially true of mathematico-physicists. In a small town like Colchester gossip spreads fast and furiously, and one evening the word was passed around that an outstanding example of the species Doctissimus Dementiae had finally lodged himself in the old frame house beyond the dog-pound on Court Street, mysteriou
s crates and things having been unloaded there for weeks previously.

  Abigail O’Liffey, a typical specimen of the low type that a fine girl like me is forced to consort with in a small town, said she had seen the Scientist. “He had broad shoulders,” she said dreamily, “and red hair, and a scraggly little moustache that wiggled up and down when he chewed gum.”

  “What would you expect it to do?”

  She looked at me dumbly. “He was wearing a kind of garden coat,” she said. “It was like a painter’s, only it was all burned in places instead of having paint on it. I’ll bet he discovers things like Paul Pasteur.”

  “Louis Pasteur,” I said. “Do you know his name, by any chance?”

  “Whose—the Scientist’s? Clarissa said one of the express-men told her husband it was Cramer or something.”

  “Never heard of him,” I said. “Good night.” And I slammed the screen door. Cramer, I thought—it was the echo of a name I knew, and a big name at that. I was angry with Clarissa for not getting the name more accurately, and with Abigail for bothering me about it, and most of all with the Scientist for stirring me out of my drowsy existence with remembrances of livelier and brighter things not long past.

  So I slung on a coat and sneaked out the back door to get a look at the mystery man, or at least his house. I slunk past the dog-pound, and the house sprang into sight like a Christmas tree—every socket in the place must have been in use, to judge from the flood of light that poured from all windows. There was a dark figure on the unkempt lawn; when I was about ten yards from it and on the verge of turning back it shouted at me: “Hey, you! Can you give me a hand?”

  I approached warily; the figure was wrestling with a crate four feet high and square. “Sure,” I said.

  The figure straightened. “Oh, so he’s a she,” it said. “Sorry, lady. I’ll get a hand truck from inside.”

  “Don’t bother,” I assured it. “I’m glad to help.” And I took one of the canvas slings as it took the other, and we carried the crate in, swaying perilously. “Set it here, please,” he said, dropping his side of the crate. It was a he, I saw in the numerous electric bulbs’ light, and from all appearances the Scientist Cramer, or whatever his name was.

  I looked about the big front parlor, bare of furniture but jammed with boxes and piles of machinery. “That was the last piece,” he said amiably, noting my gaze. “Thank you. Can I offer you a scientist’s drink?”

  “Not—ethyl?” I cried rapturously.

  “The same,” he assured me, vigorously attacking a crate that tinkled internally. “How do you know?”

  “Past experience. My Alma Mater was the Housatonic University, School of Chemical Engineering.”

  He had torn away the front of the crate, laying bare a neat array of bottles. “What’s a C.E. doing in this stale little place?” he asked, selecting flasks and measures.

  “Sometimes she wonders,” I said bitterly. “Mix me an Ethyl Martini, will you?”

  “Sure, if you like them. I don’t go much for the fancy swigs myself. Correct me if I’m wrong.” He took the bottle labeled CH2OH. “Three cubic centimeters?”

  “No—you don’t start with the ethyl!” I cried. “Put four minims of fusel oil in a beaker.” He complied. “Right—now a tenth of a grain of saccharine saturated in theine barbiturate ten per cent solution.” His hands flew through the pharmaceutical ritual. “And now pour in the ethyl slowly, and stir, don’t shake.”

  He held the beaker to the light. “Want some color in that?” he asked, immersing it momentarily in liquid air from a double thermos.

  “No,” I said. “What are you having?”

  “A simple fusel highball,” he said, expertly pouring and chilling a beakerful, and brightening it with a drop of a purple dye that transformed the colorless drink into a sparkling beverage. We touched beakers and drank deep.

  “That,” I said gratefully when I had finished coughing, “is the first real drink I’ve had since graduating three years ago. The stuff has a nostalgic appeal for me.”

  He looked blank. “It occurs to me,” he said, ‘that I ought to introduce myself. I am Stephen Trainer, late of Mellon, late of Northwestern, late of Cambridge, sometime fellow of the Sidney School of Technology. Now you tell me who you are and we’ll be almost even.”

  I collected my senses and announced, “Miss Mabel Evans, late in practically every respect.”

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Evans,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thank you,” I murmured. I was about to settle on one of the big wooden boxes when he cried out at me.

  “For God’s sake—not there!”

  “And why not?” I asked, moving to another. “Is that your reserve stock of organic bases?”

  “No,” he said. “That’s part of my time machine.”

  I looked at him. “Just a nut, huh?” I said pityingly. “Just another sometimes capable fellow gone wrong. He thinks he knows what he’s doing, and he even had me fooled for a time, but the idee fixe has come out at last, and we see the man for what he is—mad as a hatter. Nothing but a time-traveller at the bottom of that mass of flesh and bone.” I felt sorry for him, in a way.

  His face grew as purple as the drink in his hand. As though he too had formed the association, he drained it and set it down. “Listen,” he said. “I only know one style of reasoning that parallels yours in its scope and utter disregard of logic. Were you ever so unfortunate as to be associated with that miserable charlatan, Dr. George B. Hopper?”

  “My physics professor at Housatonic,” I said, “and whaddya make of that?”

  “I am glad of the chance of talking to you,” he said in a voice suddenly hoarse. “It’s no exaggeration to say that for the greater part of my life I’ve wanted to come across a pupil of Professor Hopper. I’ve sat under him and over him on various faculties; we even went to Cambridge together—it disgusted both of us. And now at last I have the chance, and now you are going to learn the truth about physics.”

  “GO ON with your lecture,” I muttered skeptically.

  He looked at me glassily. “I am going on with my lecture,” he said. “Listen closely. Take a circle. What is a circle?”

  “You tell me,” I said.

  “A circle is a closed arc. A circle is composed of an infinite number of straight lines, each with a length of zero, each at an angle infinitesmally small to its adjacent straight lines.”

  “I should be the last to dispute the point,” I said judiciously. He reached for the decanter and missed. He reached again grimly, his fist opening and closing, and finally snapping shut on its neck. Will you join me once more?” he asked graciously.

  “Granted,” I said absently, wondering what was going around in my head.

  “Now— one point which we must get quite clear in the beginning is that all circles are composed of an in—”

  “You said that already,” I interrupted.

  “Did I?” he asked with a delighted smile. “I’m brighter than I thought.” He waggled his head fuzzily. “Then do you further admit that, by a crude Euclidean axiom which I forget at the moment, all circles are equal?”

  “Could be—but so help me, if—” I broke off abruptly as I realized that I was lying full length on the floor. I shuddered at the very thought of what my aunt would say to that. “The point I was about to make,” he continued without a quaver, “was that if all circles are equal, all circles can be traversed at the same expenditure of effort, money, or what have you.” He stopped and gasped at me, collecting his thoughts. “All circles can be traversed, also, with the same amount of time! No matter whether the circle be the equator or the head of a pin! Now do you see?”

  “With the clarity appalling. And the time travelling . . .?”

  “Ah—er—yes. The time travelling. Let me think for a moment.” He indicated thought by a Homeric configuration of his eyebrows, forehead, cheeks and chin. “Do you know,” he finally said with a weak laugh, “I’
m afraid I’ve forgotten the connection. But my premise is right, isn’t it? If it takes the same time to traverse any two circles, and one of them is the universe, and the other is my time wheel—” His voice died under my baleful stare.

  “I question your premise vaguely,” I said. “There’s nothing I can exactly put my finger on, but I believe it’s not quite dry behind the ears.”

  “Look,” he said. “You can question it as much as you like, but it works. I’ll show you the gimmicks.”

  We clambered to our feet. “There,” he pointed to the box I had nearly sat upon, “there lies the key to the ages.” And he took up a crowbar and jimmied the top off the crate.

  I lifted out carefully the most miscellaneous collection of junk ever seen outside a museum of modern art. “What, for example,” I asked, gingerly dangling a canvas affair at arms’ length, “does this thing do?”

  “One wears it as a belt,” he said. I put the thing on and found that it resolved itself into a normal Sam Browne belt with all sorts of oddments of things dangling from it. “Now,” he said, “I have but to plug this into a wall socket, and then, providing you get on the time wheel, out you go like a light—pouf!”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’m practically out now in the first place, in the second place I don’t care whether I go out pouf or splash – though the latter is more customary—and in the third place I don’t believe your silly old machine works anyway. I dare you to make me go pouf—I just dare you!”

  “All right,” he said mildly. “Over there is the time wheel. Get on it.”

  The time wheel reminded me of a small hand-turned merry-go-round. I got on it with a good will, and he made it turn. Then he plugged in the lead to a wall socket, and I went out like a light—pouf!

  THERE are few things more sobering than time-travel. On going pouf I closed my eyes, as was natural. Possibly I screamed a little, too. All I know is when I opened my eyes they were bleary and aching, and certainly nowhere very near the old house past the dog-pound on Court Street. The locale appeared to be something like Rockefeller Center, only without fountains.