Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  But he searched in vain.

  The Pyramids were destroyed, gone. There was not one left. The Earth lay open and free under its tiny sun for the first time in centuries.

  It had been a strange war, but a short one.

  And it was over.

  XV

  TROPILE swam up out of hammering blackness into daylight and pain.

  It hurt. He was being born again—coming back to life—and it had all the agonies of parturition, except that they were visited upon the creature being born, himself. There were crushing blows at his temples that pounded and pained like no other ache he had ever felt. He moaned raspingly.

  Someone moved blurrily over his shut eyes. He felt something sting sharply at the base of his brain. Then it tingled, warming his scalp, comforting it, numbing it. Pain went slowly away.

  He opened his eyes.

  Four masked torturers were leaning over him. He stared, not understanding; but the eyes were not torturers’ eyes, and in a moment the masks came off. Surgical masks—and the faces beneath the masks were human faces.

  Surgeons and nurses.

  He blinked at them and said groggily: “Where am we?” And then he remembered.

  He was back on Earth; he was merely human again.

  Someone came bustling into the room and he knew without looking that it was Haendl.

  “We beat them, Tropile!” Haendl cried. “No, cancel that. You beat them. WeVe destroyed every Pyramid there was, and a nice hot fire they’re making up there on the sun, eh? Beautiful work, Tropile. Beautiful! You’re a credit to the name of Wolf!”

  The surgeons stirred uneasily, but apparently, Tropile thought, there had been changes, for they did no more than that.

  Tropile touched his temples fretfully and his fingers rested on gauze bandages. It was true: he was out of circuit. The long reach of his awareness was cut short at his skull; there was no more of the infinite sweep and grasp he had known as part of the snowflake in the nutrient fluid.

  “Too bad,” he whispered hopelessly.

  “What?” Haendl frowned. The nurse next to him whispered something and he nodded. “Oh, I see. You’re still a little groggy, right? Well, that’s not hard to understand—they tell me it was a tricky job of surgery, separating you from that gunk the Pyramids had wired into your head.”

  “Yes,” said Tropile, and closed his ears, though Haendl went on talking. After a while, Tropile pushed himself up and swung his legs over the side of the operating table. He was naked. Once that would have bothered him enormously, but now it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Find me some clothes, will you?” he asked. “I’m back. I might as well start getting used to it.”

  GLENN Tropile found that he was a returning hero, attracting a curious sort of hero-worship wherever he went. It was not, he thought after careful analysis, exactly what he might have expected. For instance, a man who went out and killed a dragon in the old days was received with great gratitude and rejoicing, and if there was a prince’s daughter around, he married her. Fair enough, after all. And Tropile had slain a foe more potent than any number of dragons.

  But he tested the attention he received and found no gratitude in it. It was odd.

  What it was like most of all, he thought, was the sort of attention a reigning baseball champion might get—in a country where cricket was the national game. He had done something which, everybody agreed, was an astonishing feat, but about which nobody Seemed to care. Indeed, there was an area of accusation in some of the attention he got.

  Item: nearly ninety thousand erstwhile Components had now been brought back to ambient life, most of them with their families long dead, all of them a certain drain on the limited resources of the planet. And what was Glenn Tropile going to do about it?

  Item: the old distinctions between Citizen and Wolf no longer made much sense now that so many Componentized Citizens had fought shoulder to shoulder with Componentized Sons of the Wolf. But didn’t Glenn Tropile think he had gone a little too far there?

  And item—looking pretty far ahead, of course, but still—well, just what was Glenn Tropile going to do about providing a new sun for Earth, when the old one wore out and there would be no Pyramids to tend the fire?

  He sought refuge with someone who would understand him. That, he was pleased to realize, was easy. He had come to know several persons extremely well. Loneliness, the tortured loneliness of his youth, was permanently behind him, definitely.

  For example, he could seek out Haendl, who would understand everything very well.

  Haendl said: “It is a bit of a letdown, I suppose. Well, hell with it; that’s life.” He laughed grimly. “Now that we’ve got rid of the Pyramids, there’s plenty of other work to be done. Man, we can breathe now! We can plan ahead! This planet has maundered along in its stupid, rutted, bogged-down course too many years already, eh? It’s time we took over! And we’ll be doing it, I promise you. You know, Tropile—” he sniggered—“I only regret one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Tropile asked cautiously.

  “All those weapons, out of reach! Oh, I’m not blaming you. But you can see what a lot of trouble it’s going to be now, stocking up all over again—and there isn’t much we can do about bringing order to this tired old world, is there, until we’ve got the guns to do it with again?”

  Tropile left him much sooner than he had planned.

  CITIZEN Germyn, then? The man had fought well, if nothing else. Tropile went to find him and, for a moment at least, it was very good. Germyn said: “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Tropile. I’m glad you’re here.” He sent his wife for refreshments, and decorously she brought them in, waited for exactly one minute, and then absented herself.

  Tropile burst into speech as soon as she left. “I’m beginning to realize what has happened to the human race, Germyn. I don’t mean just now, when we licked the Pyramids and so on. No, I mean hundreds of years ago, what happened when the Pyramids arrived, and what has been happening since. Did you ever hear of Indians, Germyn?”

  Germyn frowned minutely and shrugged.

  “They were, oh, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. They were a different color and not very civilized—of course, nobody was then. But the Indians were nomads, herdsmen, hunters—like that. And the white people came from Europe and wanted this country for themselves. So they took it. And do you know something? I don’t think the Indians ever knew what hit them.”

  “They didn’t know about land grants and claiming territory for the crown and church missions and expanding populations. They didn’t have those things. It’s true that they learned pretty well, by and by—at least they learned things like guns and horses and firewater; they didn’t have those things, either, but they could see some sense to them, you know. But I really don’t think the Indians ever knew exactly what the Europeans were up to, until it was too late to matter.

  “And it was the same with us and the Pyramids, only more so. What the devil did they want? I mean, yes, we found out what they did with the Translated people. But what were they up to? What did they think? Did they think? You know, I’ve got a kind of a crazy idea—maybe it’s not crazy, maybe it’s the truth. Anyway, I’ve been thinking. Suppose even the Pyramids weren’t the Pyramids? We never talked to one of them. We never gave it a Rorschach or tested its knee jerks. We licked them, but we don’t know anything about them. We don’t even know if they were the guys that started the whole bloody thing, or if they were just sort of super-sized Components themselves. Do we?

  “And meanwhile, here’s the human race, up against something that it not only can’t understand, same as the Indians couldn’t the whites, but that it can’t begin to make a guess about. At least the Indians had a clue now and then, you know—I mean they’d see the sailors off the great white devil ship making a beeline for the Indian women and so on, and they’d begin to understand there was something in common. But we didn’t have that much.

  “So what did we do? Why, we did lik
e the reservation Indians. We turned inward. We got loaded on firewater—Meditation—and we closed our minds to the possibility of ever expanding again. And there we were, all tied up in our own knots. Most of the race rebelled against action, because it had proven useless—Citizens. A few of the race rebelled against that, because it was not only useless but deliberately useless—Wolves. But they’re the same kind of people. You’ve seen that for yourself, right? And—”

  Tropile stopped, suddenly aware that Citizen Germyn was looking tepidly pained.

  “What’s the matter?” Tropile demanded harshly.

  Citizen Germyn gave him the faint deprecatory Quirked Smile. “I know you thought you were a Wolf, but—I told you I’ve been thinking a lot, and that’s what I was thinking about. Truly, Citizen, you do yourself no good by pretending that you really thought you were Wolf. Clearly you were not; the rest of us might have been fooled, but certainly you couldn’t fool yourself.

  “Now here’s what I think you ought to do. When I found you were coming, I asked several rather well-known Citizens to come here later this evening. There won’t be any embarrassment. I only want you to talk to them and set the record straight, so that this terrible blemish will no longer be held against you. Times change and perhaps a certain latitude is advisable now, but certainly you don’t want—”

  Tropile also left Citizen Germyn sooner than he had expected to.

  THERE remained Alla Narova, but, queerly, she was not to be found.

  Instantly it became clear to Tropile that it was she above all whom he needed to talk to. He remembered the shared beauty of their plunging drive through the neurone-guides of the Pyramids, the linked and inextricable flow of their thoughts and of their most hidden feelings.

  She could not be very far, he thought numbly, cursing the blindness of his human eyes, the narrowness of his human senses. Time was when two worlds could not have hidden her from him; but that time was gone. He walked from place to place with the angry resentful tread of one used to riding—no, to flying, or faster than flying. He asked after her. He searched.

  And at last he found—not her. A note. At one of the stations where the re-awakened Components were funneled back into human affairs, there was a letter waiting for him:

  I’m sure you will look for me. Please don’t. You thought that there were no secrets between us, but there was one.

  When I was Translated, I was sixty-one years old. Two years before that, I was caught in a collapsing building; my legs are useless, and I had grown quite tat.

  I do not want you to see me fat and old.

  Alla Narova.

  And that was that, and at last Glenn Tropile turned to the last person of all those on his list who had known him well. Her name was Gala Tropile.

  THE had got thinner, he observed. They sat together quietly and there was considerable awkwardness, but then he noticed that she was weeping. Comforting her ended the awkwardness and he found that he was talking:

  “It was like being a god, Gala! I swear, there’s no feeling like it. I mean it’s like—well, maybe if you’d just had a baby, and invented fire, and moved a mountain, and transmuted lead into gold—maybe if you’d done all of those things, then you might have some idea. But I was everywhere at once, Gala, and I could do anything! I fought a whole world of Pyramids, do you realize that? Me! And now I come back to—”

  He stopped her in time; it seemed she was about to weep again.

  He went on: “No, Gala, don’t misunderstand, I don’t hold anything against you. You were right to leave me in the field. What did I have to offer you? Or myself, for that matter? And I don’t know that I have anything now, but—”

  He slammed his fist against the table. “They talk about putting the Earth back in its orbit! Why? And how? My God, Gala, we don’t know where we are. Maybe we could tinker up the gadgets the Pyramids used and turn our course backward—but do you know what Old Sol looks like? I don’t. I never saw it.

  “And neither did you or anyone else alive.

  “It was like being a god—

  “And they talk about going back to things as they were—

  “I’m sick of that kind of thinking! Wolves or Citizens, they’re dead on their feet and don’t know it. I suppose they’ll snap out of it in time, but I can’t wait. I won’t live that long. Unless—”

  He paused and looked at her, confused.

  Gala Tropile met her husband’s eyes.

  “Unless what, Glenn?”

  He shrugged and turned away.

  “Unless you go back, you mean.” He stared at her; she nodded. “You want to go back,” she said, without stress. “You don’t want to stay here with me, do you? You want to go back into that tub of soup again and float like a baby. You don’t want to have babies—you want to be one.”

  “Gala, you don’t understand. We can own the Universe. I mean mankind can. And I can do it.

  Why not? There’s nothing for me—”

  “That’s right, Glenn. There’s nothing for you here. Not any more.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, looked at her, spread his hands helplessly. He didn’t look back as he walked out the door, but he knew that his back was turned not only on the woman who happened to be his wife, but on mankind and all of the flesh.

  IT was night outside, and warm.

  Tropile stood in the old street surrounded by the low, battered houses—and he could make them new and grand! He looked up at the stars that swung in constellations too new and changeable to have names. There was the Universe.

  Words were no good; there was no explaining things in words. Naturally he couldn’t make Gala or anyone else understand, for flesh couldn’t grasp the realities of mind and spirit that were liberated from flesh. Babies! A home!

  And the whole grubby animal business of eating and drinking and sleeping! How could anyone ask to stay in the mire when the stars challenged overhead?

  He walked slowly down the street, alone in the night, an apprentice godling renouncing mortality. There was nothing here for him, so why this sense of loss?

  Duty said (or was it Pride?): “Someone must give up the flesh to control Earth’s orbit and weather—why not you?”

  Flesh said (or was it his soul—whatever that was?): “But you will be alone.”

  He stopped, and for a moment he was poised between destiny and the dust . . .

  Until he became aware of footsteps behind him, running, and Gala’s voice: “Wait! Wait, Glenn! I want to go with you!”

  And he turned and waited, but only until she caught up, and then he went on.

  But not—forever and always again—not alone.

  1958

  The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy

  One advantage of the writer’s life is that any experience, no matter how vexatious it seems at the time, may eventually serve as story material. A few winters back, Cyril Kornbluth was Assistant Curator of the Tioga Point Historical Society Museum. . . .

  DOCUMENT ONE

  Being the First Draft of a Paper to be Read before the Tuscarora Township Historical Society by Mr. Hardeign Spoynte, B.A.

  Madame President, members, guests:

  It is with unabashed pride that I stand before you this evening. You will recall from your perusal of our Society’s Bulletin (Vol. XLII, No. 3, Fall, 1955, pp. 7-8) [pp. correct? check before making fair copy. HS] that I had undertaken a research into the origins of that event so fraught with consequences to the development of our township, the Wat-ling-Fraskell duel. I virtually promised that the cause of the fatal strife would be revealed by, so to speak, the spotlight of science [metaphor here suff. graceful? perh. “magic” better? HS]. I am here to carry out that promise.

  Major Wading did [tell a lie] prevaricate. Colonel Fraskell rightly reproached him with mendacity. Perhaps from this day the breach between Watlingist and Fraskellite may begin to heal, the former honestly acknowledging themselves in error and the latter magnanimous in victory.

  My report reflec
ts great credit on a certain modest resident of historic old Northumberland County who, to my regret, is evidently away on a well-earned vacation from his arduous labors [perh. cliche? No. Fine phrase. Stett HS]. Who he is you will learn in good time.

  I shall begin with a survey of known facts relating to the Watling-Fraskell duel, and as we are all aware, there is for such a quest no starting point better than the monumental work of our late learned county historian, Dr. Donge. Donge states (Old Times on the Oquanantic, 2nd ed., 1873, pp. 771-2): “No less to be deplored than the routing of the West Brance Canal to bypass Eleusis was the duel in which perished miserably Major Elisha Watling and Colonel Hiram Fraskell, those two venerable pioneers of the Oquanantic Valley. Though in no way to be compared with the barbarous blood feuds of the benighted Southern States of our Union, there has persisted to our own day a certain division of loyalty among residents of Tuscarora Township and particularly the borough of Eleusis. Do we not see elm-shaded Northumberland Street adorned by two gracefully pillared bank buildings, one the stronghold of the Fraskellite and the other of the Watlingist? Is not the debating society of Eleusis Academy sundered annually by the proposition, “Resolved: that Major Elisha Watling (on alternate years, Colonel Hiram Fraskell) was no gentleman’ ? And did not the Watlingist propensities of the Eleusis Colonial Dames and the Fraskellite inclination of the Eleusis Daughters of the American Revolution ‘clash’ in September, 1869, at the storied Last Joint Lawn Fete during which eclairs and (some say) tea cups were hurled?” [Dear old Donge! Prose equal Dr. Johnson!]

  If I may venture to follow those stately periods with my own faltering style, it is of course known to us all that the controversy has scarcely diminished to the present time. Eleu-m Academy, famed alma mater (i.e., “foster mother”) of the immortal Hovington[1] is, alas, no more. It expired in flames on the tragic night of August 17, 1901, while the Watlingist members of that Eleusis Hose Company Number One which was stabled in Northumberland Street battled for possession of the fire hydrant which might have saved the venerable pile against the members of the predominantly Fraskellite Eleusis Hose Company Number One which was then stabled in Oquanantic Street. (The confusion of the nomenclature is only a part of the duel’s bitter heritage.) Nevertheless, though the Academy and its Debating Society be gone, the youth of Eleusis still carries on the fray in a more modern fashion which rises each November to a truly disastrous climax during “Football Pep Week” when the “Colonels” of Central High School meet in sometimes gory combat with the “Majors” of North Side High. I am privately informed by our borough’s Supervising Principal, George Croud, Ph.B., that last November’s bill for replacement of broken window panes in both school buildings amounted to $231.47, exclusive of state sales tax; and that the two school nurses are already “stockpiling” gauze, liniment, disinfectants and splints in anticipation of the seemingly inevitable autumnal crop of abrasions, lacerations and fractures, [mem. Must ask Croud whether willing be publ. quoted or “informed source.” HS] And the adults of Eleusis no less assiduously prosecute the controversy by choice of merchants, the granting of credit, and social exclusiveness.