The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  With a violent effort Martin straightened up. Walking upright seemed unnatural, somehow, but it helped submerge Mammoth-Slayer's worst instincts. Besides, with St. Cyr gone, stresses were slowly subsiding, so that Mammoth-Slayer's dominant trait was receding from the active foreground.

  Martin tested his tongue cautiously, relieved to find he was still capable of human speech.

  "Uh," he said. "Arrgh ... ah. Watt."

  Watt blinked at him anxiously through the lamp-shade.

  "Urgh ... Ur—release," Martin said, with a violent effort. "Contract release. Gimme."

  Watt had courage. He crawled to his feet, removing the lamp-shade.

  "Contract release!" he snapped. "You madman! Don't you realize what you've done? DeeDee's walking out on me. DeeDee, don't go. We will bring Raoul back—"

  "Raoul told me to quit if he quit," DeeDee said stubbornly.

  "You don't have to do what St. Cyr tells you," Erika said, hanging onto the struggling star.

  "Don't I?" DeeDee asked, astonished. "Yes, I do. I always have."

  "DeeDee," Watt said frantically, "I'll give you the finest contract on earth—a ten-year contract—look, here it is." He tore out a well-creased document. "All you have to do is sign, and you can have anything you want. Wouldn't you like that?"

  "Oh, yes," DeeDee said. "But Raoul wouldn't like it." She broke free from Erika.

  "Martin!" Watt told the playwright frantically, "Get St. Cyr back. Apologize to him. I don't care how, but get him back! If you don't, I—I'll never give you your release."

  Martin was observed to slump slightly—perhaps with hopelessness. Then, again, perhaps not.

  "I'm sorry," DeeDee said. "I liked working for you, Tolliver. But I have to do what Raoul says, of course." And she moved toward the window.

  Martin had slumped further down, till his knuckles quite brushed the rug. His angry little eyes, glowing with baffled rage, were fixed on DeeDee. Slowly his lips peeled back, exposing every tooth in his head.

  "You," he said, in an ominous growl.

  DeeDee paused, but only briefly.

  -

  THEN the enraged roar of a wild beast reverberated through the room. "You come back!" bellowed the infuriated Mammoth-Slayer, and with one agile bound sprang to the window, seized DeeDee and slung her under one arm. Wheeling, he glared jealously at the shrinking Watt and reached for Erika. In a trice he had the struggling forms of both girls captive, one under each arm. His wicked little eyes glanced from one to another. Then, playing no favorites, he bit each quickly on the ear.

  "Nick!" Erika cried. "How dare you!"

  "Mine," Mammoth-Slayer informed her hoarsely.

  "You bet I am," Erika said, "but that works both ways. Put down that hussy you've got under your other arm."

  Mammoth-Slayer was observed to eye DeeDee doubtfully.

  "Well," Erika said tartly, "make up your mind."

  "Both," said the uncivilized playwright. "Yes."

  "No!" Erika said.

  "Yes," DeeDee breathed in an entirely new tone. Limp as a dishrag, the lovely creature hung from Martin's arm and gazed up at her captor with idolatrous admiration.

  "Oh, you hussy," Erika said. "What about St. Cyr?"

  "Him," DeeDee said scornfully. "He hasn't got a thing, the sissy. I'll never look at him again." She turned her adoring gaze back to Martin.

  "Pah," the latter grunted, tossing DeeDee into Watt's lap. "Yours. Keep her." He grinned approvingly at Erika. "Strong she. Better."

  Both Watt and DeeDee remained motionless, staring at Martin.

  "You," he said, thrusting a finger at DeeDee. "You stay with him. Ha?" He indicated Watt.

  DeeDee nodded in slavish adoration.

  "You sign contract?"

  Nod.

  Martin looked significantly into Watt's eyes. He extended his hand.

  "The contract release," Erika explained, upside-down. "Give it to him before he pulls your head off."

  Slowly Watt pulled the contract release from his pocket and held it out. But Martin was already shambling toward the window. Erika reached back hastily and snatched the document.

  "That was a wonderful act," she told Nick, as they reached the street. "Put me down now. We can find a cab some—"

  "No act," Martin growled. "Real. Till tomorrow. After that—" He shrugged. "But tonight, Mammoth-Slayer." He attempted to climb a palm tree, changed his mind, and shambled on, carrying the now pensive Erika. But it was not until a police car drove past that Erika screamed ...

  -

  "I'LL bail you out tomorrow," Erika told Mammoth-Slayer, struggling between two large patrolmen.

  Her words were drowned in an infuriated bellow.

  Thereafter events blurred, to solidify again for the irate Mammoth-Slayer only when he was thrown in a cell, where he picked himself up with a threatening roar. "I kill!" he announced, seizing the bars.

  "Arrrgh!"

  "Two in one night," said a bored voice, moving away outside. "Both in Bel-Air, too. Think they're hopped up? We couldn't get a coherent story out of either one."

  The bars shook. An annoyed voice from one of the bunks said to shut up, and added that there had been already enough trouble from nincompoops without—here it paused, hesitated, and uttered a shrill, sharp, piercing cry.

  Silence prevailed, momentarily, in the cell-block as Mammoth-Slayer, son of the Great Hairy One, turned slowly to face Raoul St. Cyr.

  The End

  A WILD SURMISE

  with Henry Kuttner

  "Do you feel that you are dreaming now, Mr. Hooten?" Dr. Scott asked gently.

  Timothy Hooten evaded the psychiatrist's eyes.

  He fingered the smooth leather of the chair arms, found the sensation unsatisfactory, and turned his head to gaze out the window at the Empire State's tower.

  "It's like a dream, isn't it?" he said evasively.

  "What is?"

  "That." Hooten nodded at the needle-like mooring mast on the top of the tower. "Imagine mooring a dirigible to that thing. They never did, did they? It's just the sort of thing that would happen in a dream. You know. Big plans, and then somehow everybody forgets about it and starts something new. Oh, I don't know. Things get unreal."

  Solipsism, Dr. Scott thought, but suspended judgment.

  "What things?" he murmured.

  "You, for example," Hooten said. "You've got the wrong shape." ;

  "Can you amplify that, Mr. Hooten?"

  "Well, I don't know that I can," Hooten said, looking with fault alarm at his own hands. "I've got the wrong shape too, you see."

  "Do you know what the right shape is?"

  Hooten closed his eyes and thought hard. A look of astonishment passed fleetingly across his face. He scowled. Dr. Scott, studying him closely, made a note on a desk pad.

  "No," Hooten said, opening his eyes very wide and assuming a negativistic attitude. "I haven't the least idea."

  "Don't you want to tell me?"

  "I—ah—I don't know. I simply don't know."

  "Why did you come to see me, Mr. Hooten?"

  "My doctor said I should. So did my wife."

  "Do you feel they were right?"

  "Personally," Hooten said, with an air of quiet triumph, "I don't feel that it makes the least difference what I do in a dream. Imagine walking on two legs!" He paused, startled. "Maybe I shouldn't have said that," he added.

  Dr. Scott smiled slightly.

  "Suppose you tell me a little more about the dream—"

  "About now, you mean? It's just that everything's wrong. Even talking. Wiggling the tongue this way." Hooten fingered his jaw exploringly, and Dr. Scott made another note. "I'm dreaming, that's all."

  "Are you ever awake?"

  "Only when I'm asleep," Hooten said. "How strange that sounds. I wonder what I mean."

  "This is the dream world?" Dr. Scott asked.

  "Of course."

  "Can you tell me what your problem is, Mr. Hooten?"

  "I h
aven't any problems," Hooten said, surprised. "If I had, they'd just be dream problems, wouldn't they?"

  "Do you have problems when you're—awake?"

  "I'm sure I must have," the patient said. He looked thoughtful. "It seems to me I've got a psychiatrist in the real world, too. That's where my conscious mind is. This, of course, is my unconscious."

  "Can you tell me a little more about that?"

  Hooten closed his eyes again.

  "I'll try," he said. "When I'm asleep, you see, when I'm dreaming, the conscious mind is unconscious. That's here and now. Well, in the real, waking world—the other world—I think my psychiatrist is trying to probe into my unconscious. What seems to you like my waking mind."

  "Very interesting," Dr. Scott said. "This other psychiatrist, now, could you describe him? What kind of a man is he?"

  "Man?" Hooten said, opening his eyes again. He hesitated. Then he shook his head. "I don't know, exactly. I can't remember what things are like in the real world. Different. That I know. Quite, quite different." He spread out his hand and regarded it thoughtfully. He turned it over and looked at the lines of his palm. "My, my," he murmured. "What won't they think of next."

  "Try to remember," Dr. Scott urged.

  "I have tried. You dream-people keep telling me to try. But it's no use. I must have a block in my mind," he finished triumphantly.

  "We must try to find out what this block is, then. I'd like to try a little test, Mr. Hooten, if you don't mind. I'm going to show you a picture, and I want you to tell me a story about it."

  "Make up a story, you mean?"

  "Exactly," Dr. Scott said, and handed Hooten a large card, on which were inartistically depicted two ambiguous and semi-shapeless figures.

  "How strange," Hooten said. "Their bones are inside them."

  "Go on."

  "They're two psychiatrists," Hooten murmured. "Anyone could see that. One's awake and one's asleep. One's real and one isn't. They're both treating me. One is named Scott and the other—the other—"

  "Go on," Scott said.

  "—is named—"

  "What is his name?"

  "Rasp," Hooten said faintly. "Dr. Rasp. I have an appointment with him at two o'clock in the morning, when I'm awake."

  -

  "Do you feel that you are dreaming now?" Dr. Rasp telepathized gently.

  Timothy Hooten evaded the psychiatrist's faceted gaze. He swung his oval body around to stare out the sky-slit at the distant polyhedron of the Quatt Wunkery. Then he waved his antennae gently and clicked his mandibles.

  "It's like a dream, isn't it?" he said evasively, though naturally not audibly. "Imagine building a Wunkery simply to pleat Quatts. Of course they never showed up. That sort of thing could happen only in a dream. Oh, you can't convince me; this is a dream. Imagine walking around on all sixes."

  Dr. Rasp scratched a memorandum on his left wing-case.

  "How do you think you should walk?" he asked.

  "I wonder," Hooten said. "I do it all the time when I'm awake, but this is one of those recurrent dreams where I seem to get amnesia. I've tried and tried to remember what it's like, but it's no use. It's like trying to pleat Quatts in a Wunkery. Oh, how idiotic."

  "Just what is your problem, Mr. Hooten?"

  "Well, this absurd body I'm wearing, for one thing. My bones are in the wrong place." Hooten's faceted eyes glittered in a startled fashion. "Did I just say that? A minute ago, I mean? It reminds me of something."

  "No," Dr. Rasp said. "What does it remind you of?"

  Hooten irritably scratched his belly with a hind foot. There was a sharp, scraping sound.

  "I've forgotten," he said.

  "I would like to try a little test," Dr. Rasp said. "I'm going to project a thought, and I would like you to tell me what it makes you think of. Are you ready?"

  "I suppose so," Hooten said.

  Dr. Rasp projected a curly nebular thought. Hooten studied it.

  "That's my conscious mind," he pointed out presently. "It might be an Angry Curler—the kind that live in the Antipodes, I mean—but what it reminds me of is my conscious mind, because of the psychiatrist swimming around in the middle of it."

  "Psychiatrist?" Dr. Rasp inquired, surprised.

  "He's treating my conscious mind—I think," Hooten explained uncertainly. "He lives in the waking world with my conscious. You and I, Dr. Rasp, inhabit my unconscious, here and now. This other doctor—he's treating both of us."

  "This other doctor does not exist," Dr. Rasp telepathized rather sourly. Then he caught himself and went on in a more professional tone, "Tell me about him, Mr. Hooten. What does this psychiatrist look like?"

  "Tartuffe," said Hooten, to the surprise of Dr. Rasp, who had never heard the name. "No, Tartan. No, Scott. That's it. A psychiatrist named Dr. Scott who lives in my conscious mind. I have an appointment with him at two p.m. tomorrow, when I'm awake."

  -

  Timothy Hooten looked out the window at the Empire State Building. He was taking a word association test.

  "Home," Dr. Scott said.

  "Estivate," Hooten replied.

  "Sex."

  "Eggs."

  "Mother."

  "Larva."

  "Psychiatrist."

  "Bugs," Hooten said.

  Dr. Scott paused. "Larva," he said.

  "Clouds of glory," Hooten said briskly. "Trailing."

  "Bugs," Dr. Scott said.

  "Awake."

  "Glory."

  "Nuptial flight," Hooten said rather dreamily.

  Dr. Scott made a note.

  "Bugs," he said.

  "Appointment. Two A.M. Dr. Rasp."

  -

  "This word man," Dr. Rasp said. "It keeps cropping up in your mind. Exactly what does it mean?"

  "I haven't the least idea," Hooten told him, looking through the sky-slit at the Quatt Wunkery.

  "What does it make you think of?"

  "Being awake," Hooten said.

  Dr. Rasp rubbed his right mandible.

  "I'd like to try a little experiment," he said. "You've been coming here for nearly twelve glitters, and we still haven't got past that block in your mind. You're resisting me, you know."

  "I can't help it if I'm dreaming, can I?" Hooten demanded.

  "That's the exact point. Are you trying to evade responsibility?"

  "Certainly not," Hooten said with dignity. "Not when I'm awake. But I'm not awake now. You're not real. I'm not real—at least, this ridiculous body of mine isn't. And as for the Quatt Wunkery—!"

  "This experiment I'd like to try," Dr. Rasp said, "is a matter of quasi-estivation. Do you know what this is?"

  "Certainly," Hooten said glibly. "Hypnosis."

  "I don't think I know the word," Dr. Rasp said. "What does it mean?"

  "Quasi-estivation. My conscious mind blanks out and my unconscious mind cuts in."

  Dr. Rasp suppressed whatever reaction he might have had to this lucid explanation. "Very well," he said, extending his antennae. "Shall we try it? Just relax. Let your wing-cases hang. Open your mandibles just a little. That's right." He crossed antennae with Hooten and looked fixedly into the patient's faceted eyes with his own. "Now you are estivating. You are in a burrow. It is warm and delightfully musty. You are curled up and estivating. Are you estivating?"

  "Yes," Hooten telepathized dully.

  "There is a block in your mind. Something in your mind is fighting me. Something keeps insisting that you are dreaming. In a short time I shall order you to wake up. Will you obey me?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you be awake then?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because you're a dream," the estivated Hooten said languidly.

  "Who says so?"

  "Dr. Scott."

  "There is no Dr. Scott," Dr. Rasp said with great firmness. "Dr. Scott is imaginary. You unconscious mind has created Dr. Scott, to protect itself. You do not want to find out what is really troubling you, and so you have
created another psychiatrist to fight me. But he does not really exist. There are no such creatures as men. Their world is imaginary. Dr. Scott is just a censor in your mind. He is not real. Do you understand that?"

  Hooten's antennae twiddled.

  "Y-yes," he said reluctantly.

  "Is Dr. Scott real?"

  "Certainly," Hooten said. "I've got an appointment with him at two P.M. He's going to give me narcosynthesis." He added kindly, "That is a form of estivation."

  There was a pause.

  Then Dr. Rasp said, "You will return to this office at two P.M. You will not keep your appointment with Dr. Scott. You will undergo quasi-estivation again. Do you understand?"

  "But I ... yes."

  "When I count to minus one you will wake up. Minus ten, minus nine ..."

  At minus one Hooten woke up. He looked uneasily at Dr. Rasp.

  "What happened?" he inquired.

  "We are making progress," the psychiatrist said. "I think it wise that we continue the treatment as soon as possible. Suppose you meet me here at two P.M."

  "Two P.M.?" Hooten said. "What an unearthly hour."

  "I have a reason," Dr. Rasp said.

  -

  "I'm sorry to be late," Hooten said, coming into Dr. Scott's office. "I guess I was daydreaming or something."

  "That's all right," Dr. Scott said. "Are you ready for the narcosynthesis?"

  "Oh, I suppose so," Hooten said. "But I've got a funny feeling."

  "What kind of a feeling?"

  "That I'm beginning to wake up."

  Dr. Scott looked pleased.

  "Well, suppose you take off your coat and roll up your left sleeve. Lie on the couch there, that's right. Now I'm going to give you an injection, and you'll begin to feel sleepy. Simply relax. That's all you have to do."

  "Ouch," Hooten said.

  "That's all there is to it," Dr. Scott said, withdrawing the hypodermic. "Suppose you look at something and tell me when it begins to look blurry."

  "All right," Hooten said obediently, staring out the window. "The Empire State—you know, it doesn't look right even now. It's got the wrong shape. Not like a Wunkery at all."

  "Like a what?" Dr. Scott asked.

  "A Wunkery. Dr. Rasp's sky-slit has a fine view of a—"

  "You know there is no such thing as a Wunkery, don't you?" Dr. Scott broke in with a slight touch of undoctorly impatience. "Dr. Rasp is a creation of your unconscious mind. When you go to sleep you simply dream like anyone else. There is no world full of Wunkeries and Rasps. All that is just a defense against me, isn't it?"