Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Again?”

  “I don’t know. She fainted. Take her home, then look at Sunny. Anna’s on her way over to help you.”

  Jim left with his burden in his arms, and Tony returned to the sick girl’s bedroom. There was no trace, no clue, nothing he could find. He saw the wall canteen, upended, and went toward it with excitement. A puddle of water on the floor. Incredible carelessness for Sun Lake, but it meant something. Joan hadn’t been carried away; she had gone herself. She had stopped for water and left the canteen this way.

  A heartbroken shout from across the street sent him running out of the house, over to the Kandros’.

  The living room was empty.

  In the bedroom, Polly lay alone, still unconscious. He found Kandro in the new nursery, squatting on the floor beside the baby’s empty crib, rocking in misery.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “THEY ought to get the test finished in a few minutes, but if you’re ready, you might as well start now. It’s a hundred to one chance against its being anything but cave dirt.” Joe Gracey crumbled between skinny, sensitive fingers a bit of soil taken from the nursery floor.

  “As soon as we get the transceiver,” Mimi said. “Harve’s bringing it over now.”

  Anna appeared in the doorway. “She’s conscious now.”

  Tony went back into the bedroom. “Polly?”

  Her eyelids fluttered open and closed. Her pulse was stronger, but she wasn’t really ready to talk. He had to try. Without a stimulant, if possible.

  “What happened, Polly?” he asked.

  “What’s the use?” she said feebly. “What’s the use? We tried and tried on Earth, and I just got sick, and we had Sunny here, and now they’ve taken him. It isn’t any good.”

  “Who’s taken him, Polly?”

  “I went out to clean the windows. I cleaned the front window and then I went around to clean the back window. When I looked in Sunny was gone. That’s all. They took him. They just took him.”

  “Who took him, Polly?”

  “I don’t know. Brownies. We tried and tried on Earth—”

  THE doctor took Anna to one side. “She’s too lucid,” he whispered. “Do you ‘hear’ anything?”

  “Hardly anything.” Anna shook her head. “She’s numb. She’s more conscious than she looks. Just numb. Doesn’t care.”

  “Shock,” Tony muttered. “There will be a reaction. She shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “I’ll stay,” Anna offered.

  “No, not you. We’ll need you along with us.”

  “I’d rather not,” she said. “Ansie,” he pleaded, biting back his angry disappointment.

  “I shouldn’t have told you,” she said dully. “I should never have told anybody. All right, I’ll go.”

  He smiled and gripped her arm. “Of course you will. You would have anyway.”

  “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Then maybe it’s a good thing you told me.” His voice was stern, but his hand pulled her closer to him.

  Polly twisted on the bed and sobbed. Anna pulled away. “Maybe.” She bit her lip, looked up at him. “Only please don’t be angry at me. I can’t stand it if you keep getting angry at me.” She turned and fled.

  Tony went back to the bed, erasing Anna and her problems from his mind with practiced determination. Polly was trembling uncontrollably. There was no more information to be had from her. He gave her a sedative and went out to join the others.

  Harve had arrived with the transceiver in his hand. On Anna’s suggestion, a rush call was sent out for Hank Radcliff to stay with Polly. He didn’t know about Joan; they decided not to tell him about it.

  “We need a man here with her,” the doctor explained briefly. “The baby’s disappeared, and we’re going out now and try to track it. Polly might want to get up and follow. You keep her in bed”

  “Sure, Doc.”

  “Nick Cantrella will be over with some equipment. Tell him to test Polly.”

  THEY left the house, Mimi and Anna and the doctor, Jim Kandro, Harve Stillman, and Joe Gracey.

  “Look at that.” Gracey was bending over in the road, pointing to the barely discernible mark of a bare toe. Here in the bottom of the old “canal” bed, where the settlement was built, the land retained a trace of moisture, enough to hold an impression for a while.

  Only part of a toe, but it pointed a direction.

  They headed up the street, past the huts toward the landing field.

  “Hey, Joe!” Someone was pounding up the hill after them, shouting.

  It was one of the men from the Agro Lab.

  “That test—it’s from the hills, all right, most likely from inside a cave, but hill dirt. That all you wanted?”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  “They told me you wanted the word fast,” the man said curiously. “Glad I caught you.”

  “Glad you did,” Gracey agreed mildly. “Thanks again.” He turned his back on the man. “Let’s go.” They topped the slight rise that marked the farthest extent of the old river bed’s former inundations, and faced a featureless expanse of level desert land, broken only by Lazy Girl, chocked on the landing field at their left, and the hills in the distance. No other human being was in sight. It was hopeless to look for footprints here, in the constantly shifting dust.

  “The hills?” Mimi said.

  Tony looked at Anna; she shrugged almost imperceptibly.

  “Might as well,” he agreed.

  They moved forward, Kandro striding ahead with his great hands knotted into bony fists, his eyes set on the hills, unaware of the ground under his feet or of the people with him. It was Harve who found the print they had known was impossible—not really a footprint, but a spot of moisture, fast evaporating, still retaining a semblance of the shape of a human foot.

  A little farther on there was another; they were going the right way. Tony stopped for a minute at one of the damp spots, poked a finger curiously into the ground. Grit and salt, as he had expected.

  She couldn’t have lived through it. He didn’t know how she got as far as she did, but even if her heart held out, she must have sweated her life away to have left those damp indicators in the thirsty soil.

  Only a little farther and the ground began to be littered with the refuse of the Rimrock Hills—here and there a sliver of stone, a drift of mineral salts. Gradually, the dust gave way to sharp rock and hard-packed saltpans. And the footprints of sweat gave way to footprints of blood.

  Mimi drew in her breath between her teeth at the thought of the sick girl stumbling barefoot over the slicing, razor-edged stones.

  “I see her,” Kandro whispered, still striding ahead.

  They raced a kilometer over the jagged rock and planed-off salt crust to the girl’s body. She lay prone, with her right arm flung up and pointing to the Rimrock Hills.

  Tony peeled back her eyelid and reached for the pulse. He turned to his bag, and Anna—blessed Anna—was already getting out the hypodermic syringe.

  “Adrenalin?”

  He nodded. Swiftly and efficiently, she prepared the hypo and handed it to him. He bent over the girl busily, then sat back to wait.

  He glanced at Anna and straightened up quickly. “What is it?” Her face was withdrawn and intense, her head held back like an animal scenting the wind. She scanned the broken waste, and pointed a hesitant finger. “Out there—it’s that way—moving a little.”

  Kandro was on his way before she stopped speaking.

  Stillman shaded his eyes and peered. “A rock in the heat haze,” he pronounced finally. “Nothing alive.”

  Tony saw Anna shake her head in a small involuntary disagreement.

  THEY stood and waited in a tense small circle until Jim reached the spot. He looked down and they saw him hesitate, then move on with the same determined stride. Gracey lit out after him. Mimi murmured approval. There was no telling what Kandro might do in his present mood.

  A barely audible noise from the ground,
and Tony was on his knees beside Joan. Her eyes went wide open, shining with an inner glory that was unholy in the dirt-streaked, bloodstained dead white of her face. She smiled as a child might smile, with perfect inner composure; she was pleased with herself.

  “Joan,” the doctor said, “can you talk?”

  “Yes, of course.” But she couldn’t. She only mouthed the words.

  “Does it hurt any place?”

  She shook her head, or started to, but when she had turned it to one side she lacked the strength to bring it back. “No.” This time she forced a little air through to sound the word.

  She was dying and he knew it. If it were only the heart, he might have been able to save her. But her body had been punished too much; it had given up. The water and the air that kept it alive were spent. Her body was a dead husk in which, for a moment, abetted by the little quantity of adrenalin, her heart and brain refused to die.

  He had to decide. They needed what information she might have. She needed every bit of energy she had, to live out what minutes were left. The minutes didn’t matter, he told himself.

  He knew, even as he made up his mind, that this, like the ghost baby, would haunt him all his life. If he were wrong, if she had any chance to live, he was committing murder. But another life hung in the balance too.

  “Listen to me, Joan.” He put his mouth close to her face. “Just say yes or no. Did you see somebody take the Kandros’ baby?”

  “Yes.” She smiled up at him beatifically.

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Yes—no—I saw—”

  “Don’t try to talk. You saw the kidnaper clearly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it was someone you don’t know?”

  “No—yes—”

  “I’ll ask it differently. Was it a stranger?”

  “Yes.” She looked doubtful. “Anyone from the Colony?”

  “No.”

  “A man?”

  “No—maybe.”

  “A woman?”

  “No.”

  “Someone from Pittco?”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes were staring at her arm. The doctor had rolled her over, and the arm was at her side, stretched out. She let out a weird cry of fury and frustration. Tony watched and listened, puzzled, till Anna bent over.

  “It’s all right, Joan,” she said softly. “You showed us. We saw the way it pointed. Jim is going that way now.”

  The girl’s eyes relaxed, and once again the dreadful light of joy shone from them.

  “Love me,” she said distinctly. “I helped finally. Tony—”

  He bent over. She was trailing off again, less breath with each word. She might have minutes left, or seconds.

  “Nobody—believed—me or—them—it was—”

  She stopped, gasping, and the quiet smile of content gave way to a twisted grin of amusement. “Brownie,” she said, and said no more.

  ii

  TONY closed her eyes and looked up to Anna’s serene face. He saw that they were alone with the body of the dead girl.

  “Where—?” He got to his feet, carefully dulling sensation, refusing to feel anything.

  “Over there.” She pointed to where two figures stooped over something on the ground. Farther off, Kandro’s tall figure, still resolutely facing toward the hills, was being restrained by a smaller man—Joe Gracey? That meant it was Mimi and Harve close by.

  “They found something?”

  “Somebody,” she corrected, and couldn’t control a small shudder.

  Tony started forward. “You better stay with Joan,” he said with difficulty, hating to admit any weakness in her. “I’ll call you if—if we need you for anything.”

  “Thank you.” She was more honest about it than he could be.

  They saw him coming twenty meters off.

  “It’s Graham,” Mimi called.

  “The lying bastard steals babies too!” Harve spat out in disgust.

  “He looks bad,” Mimi said quietly. “We didn’t touch him. We were waiting for you.”

  “Good.” The doctor bent down and felt along the torso for broken bones. Carefully, he rolled the writer over.

  Graham’s puffed eyes opened. Through broken lips with dried blood crusted on them he rasped jeeringly: “Come back to finish the job? God damned cowards. Sneak up on a man. God damned cowards!”

  “None of our people did this to you,” Tony said steadily. His hands ran over the writer’s battered head and neck. The left clavicle was fractured, his nose was broken, his left eardrum had been ruptured by blows.

  “Let’s get him back to the hospital,” he said. “Harve, tell the radio shack to raise Marsport. Get Bell. Tell him we need that Bloodhound. Tell him I will not take no for an answer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  AN AWKWARD silence the little procession walked along the Colony street, Kandro and Stillman together, carrying the writer, and Tony bearing the dead girl in his arms. The news had gotten around. Lab work seemed once again to have stopped completely.

  They escaped the heartsick stares of the colonists only when they entered Tony’s hut-and-hospital. He deposited Joan there, on his own bed. It was still rumpled from Graham’s brief occupancy the night before. They settled the writer on the hospital table. With Anna’s help, he removed the torn and bloody clothing from Graham’s body.

  “If you don’t need us for anything, Tony, I think we better get going,” Mimi said. “We ought to stop in and see Polly.”

  “Sure. Go ahead—oh, wait a minute.” Jim Kandro turned from his fixed spot in the doorway to listen.

  Tony beckoned to the blackhaired Lab administrator to the other side of the room.

  “Mimi,” he said in an undertone, “you ought to know that Polly has a gun. I’m not sure whether Jim knows it or not. You might want it if you’re going out again. Anyhow, somebody ought to get it out of there.”

  She nodded. “Where is it?”

  “’Used to be in the baby’s crib, but I think I talked her out of that. Don’t know now.”

  “Okay, I’ll find it. I think we better take it along. Oh—I’ll send Hank back here.”

  He was thoughtful. “Anna.” She looked up. Her face was set and miserable. “Are you going out with the search party?” he asked, an innocent question to the others who listened, with a world of agonizing significance for Anna.

  “I—isn’t Nick picking the people to go?”

  “I thought you might want to go. If you’re sticking around, you can handle Hank, can’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said eagerly. “I’d be much more useful that way, wouldn’t I?”

  He shrugged and tried to figure it out: she was perfectly willing to stay here in the hospital, to expose herself to Graham’s physical pain and Hank’s inevitable agony. But she was afraid to go out after the baby. Why?

  Later, he decided, he could talk to her. He went briskly back to the table and began his examination of Graham. The writer was a mass of bruises from his chest up; he cursed feebly when the doctor felt for fractures. Tony set the collar bone and shot him full of sedation. “Your left eardrum is ruptured,” he said coldly. “An operation can correct that on Earth.”

  “You bust ’em, somebody else fixes ’em,” Graham muttered. “Think what you want.” He pushed the wheeled table over to the high bed Polly had occupied just a few days earlier.

  Graham groaned involuntarily as Tony shifted his shoulder. The doctor eased up. What for? he stormed at himself. Why should I be gentle with the dirty sneak? He glanced hastily at Anna and caught the half-smile on her face as she pulled the covers over the writer.

  “I’m going in the other room, Graham,” Tony said. “’You can call me if you need me.”

  “Sure,” Graham told him. “I’ll call you soon as I feel ready for another beating. I love it.”

  TONY didn’t answer. In the other room, he sat down and faced Anna intently. “Do you know whether any of our people could have done tha
t to him?”

  “They aren’t” haters,” she said slowly. “If they were, they wouldn’t be here. Someone might fly into a rage and break his jaw, but methodical punishment like that—no.”

  “I’ll tell you what it reminds me of. Big Ginny.”

  “She was killed.”

  “She was beaten up, though that wasn’t what killed her.”

  “Does it have anything to do with Pittco?” Anna asked. “Why should they beat Graham? Why should they have beaten that woman?”

  “I don’t know.” He managed a feeble grin. “You know that.”

  He lowered his voice. “Can you ‘hear’ him?”

  “He’s in a lot of pain. Shock’s worn off. And he hates us. God, he hates us. I’m glad he hasn’t got a gun.”

  “He’s got a by-line. That’s just as good.”

  “Evidently that just occurred to him. Can he hear us in there? He’s gloating now. It must be a fantasy about what he’s going to do to us.”

  “Hell, we’re through anyway. What difference does it make? All I want now is to find Sunny and get off this damned planet and give up trying. I’m sick of it.”

  “You’re not even kidding yourself,” she said gently. “How do you think you can fool me?”

  “All right,” he said. “So you think any heart is breaking because Sun Lake’s washed up. What good is it going to do me? Anna, will I be seeing you back on Earth? I want us to stay teamed up. When I go into practice—”

  The woman winced and stood up. She closed the door to the hospital. “He was listening,” she said. “He let out a blast of derision that rattled my skull when he heard you talk about going into practice on Earth.”

  Tony pulled her down beside him, and held her quietly against his chest. “Ansie,” he said once, softly, “my poor sweet Ansie.” He kissed her hair, and they sat very still until Hank knocked on the door.

  ii

  HANK stared at his wife’s body, refusing to believe what he saw.

  “She didn’t feel much,” Tony tried to explain. “Just a bad moment, maybe, when her heart gave out. She couldn’t have felt anything, or she’d never have gotten so far.”