Ahead of Time

by Henry Kuttner

  The Visitors are horrible to look at.

  Their language is telepathy, though often I hear it as sound. It's so different in thought-concept from ours that sometimes it seems like Mother Goose and sometimes like higher mathematics.

  The words shift and change and I cannot set down what happened in coherent order I think that rat fat hat sat running funning dunning

  NO

  I have a compulsion to rhyme. Is that echolalia? I suppose I feel that if I fill my mind with meaningless rhymes it will stop The Visitors from coming through, and the others——

  All the others. The unreal voices I've heard ever since I can remember. All my life something has been vaguely wrong. There were things I wanted to do, and I couldn't have told why. Like the time I collected handkerchiefs. Meaningless. And the voices in my room.

  "William Rogers is going to the window," they would whisper. "He is going to fall out of the window. No, he isn't, but when he goes downstairs he will stumble and break his neck. He knows too much to live. We will see that he doesn't live."

  That was an auditory hallucination.

  I MUST . . . STOP. . . .

  All right. That was a fairly bad time. I knew they weren't real, but they seemed real, all those bright-colored bugs crawling up my pajamas—— I had to scream once. The orderly came. I was afraid I'd go into a wet pack again, but I shut my eyes and let them crawl, and in a minute it stopped. The orderly asked me what was wrong. I said it was all right now.

  But he had orders to give me a sedative if I needed one. I am still under observation here. The doctors haven't quite decided on the nature of my psychosis. There are complicating factors. I know what they are. In the beginning I had an ordinary psychosis, but then The Visitors came and upset the applecart. The gyroscope of my mind is oscillating wildly.

  Some people are born with a dangerous hereditary factor, others are warped by environment. I had both troubles. I can't remember much and I don't like to try. It isn't pleasant. Besides, the important things happened after I was completely insane. The Visitors are clever. They masquerade as hallucinations, and they appear only to a man who has had hallucinations already.

  But there was no . . . terror . . . until The Visitors came.

  Until then, I had at least a certain elation to sustain me, alternating with black despair, and the voices. . . . Sometimes they said they would protect me. At other times they threatened. Often they told me I had sinned and must be punished.

  I have sinned. I must have. I don't know why. I must make amends somehow. The voices——

  Then there were the tactile hallucinations. It was monstrous to touch glass and feel fur. It was monstrous to know my skin was coated with icy jelly. And after they brought me here, for a while, they put foul things in my food. I would not eat.

  There was a blackness far back in my mind. I always knew when it was coming nearer. It was shapeless and strange. It grew from nothing, in a direction I could not understand, and swelled and swelled toward me. But it never touched me. It only watched. I called it the Cloud. I could never feel or taste or smell it, like the other things. Nor could I see it, exactly. It hasn't appeared for a long time now, though the other things never leave me. But the voices are subdued when The Visitors come. . . .

  This is the way it was.

  It happened soon after I came to this place. First the doctors had put me through a long period of baths and wet packs and a few times the restraining jacket, which was terrible because it was hard to breathe and the bright bugs crawled over my face. I learned, after a while, to accept these things. The people here watched me with that familiar look of wary, half-friendly alertness. The voices spoke in my mind, and a few times the Cloud loomed up out of the mistiness and grew and sat watchful for a while, and then dwindled and vanished. This went on for a long time.

  Then The Visitors came.

  I felt Them probing. There was trouble in the sanitarium that night. A homicidal patient broke loose, in the violent ward. The sedative orders were doubled. It seemed like the peak of a cycle. Really, it was The Visitors searching for a contact.

  Insanity doesn't necessarily mean dull perceptions. Often I was able to regard this life from a detached, critical viewpoint, because I am not part of it. I could see, in a way, a sort of pattern to the chaos of world events. Humanity striving toward some unknown goal, but not perhaps a wholly unguided striving. I could see that something was to come. Something new and different. Perhaps something better.

  I had not thought that it might be something wholly alien.

  I was alone in my room that night. The door was closed and locked. I had been watching the glass panel, with its chicken wire let into the glass, waiting for the doctor to make his rounds. Then I felt a funneling something slip into my head, move away, and come back. It swirled and dug and grew larger. For a moment I thought it might be the Cloud, but the Cloud is shapeless, quiet, watchful. It never troubles me. This troubled me. I felt a high, singing tension of excitement.

  They came out of the warped distances and hung in the air before me. A clear darkness surrounded them; it wasn't exactly darkness, for I could see the walls of the room through it. There were three of them. They were like men, but deformed, small, with huge heads covered with knotted blue veins that throbbed. They never walked; they couldn't, on those legs.

  They floated there in the darkness, shifting around a little, looking at me. Their minds spoke.

  "He is suitable. His intelligence is above average. His psychosis is acceptable."

  I knew at once that they weren't hallucinations. I got up to call the orderly. They made me lie down on the bed again. I opened my mouth to scream, but they froze my throat.

  "We will not harm you."

  I said, in my mind, "But you're real. You're real. You're real."

  "We are real. We will not harm you. We want to use you to——"

  Then all the voices gathered in my mind and shouted.

  YOU HAVE SINNED YOU HAVE SINNED YOU HAVE SINNED——

  I screamed and screamed.

  The Visitors came back later on. But it took time before I could talk to them coherently. Once the doctor came in while they were there, but they only held still, hanging in their clear darkness, and he didn't notice. After he had gone—

  "Are you invisible?"

  "We aren't entirely in your space-time plane."

  "What do you want with me?"

  "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig——"

  "What?"

  But they couldn't make it clear. It sounded like nonsense. I asked them where they came from.

  "Over the hills and far away. Time. The future. We are studying your world."

  "But I hardly ever leave this room."

  "You needn't. That doesn't matter." The blue veins pulsed on their heads. "Your mind gives us the. . . ." A word that had no meaning. ". . . to enable us to reach out anywhere in your time-sector. You are the catalyst."

  Fingers touched me. A Thing, red and terrible, was climbing up out of the floor. It hated me. The voices all laughed. I closed my eyes and shrieked. I went spinning, whirling, spinning. . . .

  The bad time passed. Later, The Visitors came back.

  "Why me? Why choose me?"

  "We needed a contact. You were unusually suitable. We had searched a long while before we found you."

  "But why——"

  "Your era stands at a crossroads. Great powers have been uncovered. The planes of probability are shifting. This is a period of immense importance. There are many levels of reality. We must search the past to find what is the true reality and if necessary change this past."

  I couldn't understand.

  "You will not be harmed. Your world will not be harmed. Any changes we make will seem perfectly natural."

  "I can't stand it. Take someone else."

  "No."

  "But you're horrible——"

  It was because they were so alien. So utterly different from us, even more than their mons
trous appearance suggested. Their thoughts went in different channels. Their bodies were different, through and through. Their neural structure was different. I could feel the energy pouring out of them. The tension was unbearable. Always, after they had stayed for a while, I began screaming.

  The doctors were puzzled. They often questioned me. I told them about The Visitors, but they just looked at each other.

  "You've never seen these Visitors until lately?"

  "No. No, I haven't."

  "Are they like that Cloud you mentioned?"

  "No. The Cloud has been with me for years off and on. It never bothers me."

  "Are they like the voices? Do they sound like the same voices?"

  "No. The voices are disembodied. The Visitors talk without words, really. They told me you wouldn't believe in them."

  "Oh, I don't know about that. Suppose you tell me a little bit more about——"

  YOU DAMNED LIAR YOU DON'T BELIEVE A WORD I'M SAYING FOR GOD'S SAKE

  But they had tried to help. They were discouraged. Until The Visitors came they had been optimistic. They had planned shock treatment, I think, and they were hopeful about its success. But The Visitors brought in a new factor, and threw the psychosis into a new and undiagnosed pattern.

  Then for a while The Visitors stopped coming. I think they tried to explain why, but I couldn't understand. After they had gone there were only the voices and a few other nasty things. And the doctors did start the shock treatment. It was violent, but it helped.

  My mind began to clear. I don't remember how long it lasted. The doctors were less restrained when they talked to me, and I could feel new hope in the air.

  They moved me to an open ward. It was much pleasanter there. I had three good days. And then The Visitors came back. . . .

  "Further investigations."

  "No. Go away. Please. I can't stand it."'

  "We won't harm you."

  "But you are. I can feel the . . . tension . . . pouring out of you. It tightens me up inside. It makes my mind hurt. It——"

  "Curious. He is ordinary homo sapiens, of course, but unusually receptive. Probably due to the psychosis. The pineal and the thalamus . . . absorbing our——up the hill to get a pail of water Jack fell down——"

  The words. I couldn't understand the words. The only means of communication, and they are a deadly barrier.

  "Get out. Go away. Leave me alone. I can't stand this."

  "This particular contact is necessary. We must maintain our energy quotient to keep in touch with your time-sector. You happen to be unusually receptive."

  "How long will you be here?"

  "Many cycles. We are embarking on a thorough reorganization of your space-time area——"

  "What's the matter, Rogers?"

  The orderly's voice.

  "Nothing. They're back."

  "Who's back?"

  "The Visitors. They won't go away. GET THEM OUT OF HERE!"

  "Nurse, better take a look at Rogers here——"

  "We won't harm you. We are at present extending along a mental dimension to study the sub-basic patterns of nonsense nonsense nonsense——"

  "DAMN YOU GET AWAY FROM ME FOR GOD'S SAKE——"

  I was back in solitary.

  There was no hope.

  I was insane. The wall had been rebuilt that shut me out from humanity. The doctors stopped looking hopeful. Catatonia, schizophrenia, can yield to shock treatment. But apply a jolting variable factor to the gyroscope and it's quite impossible to get it back in balance and keep it running smoothly and steadily. The voices came back. Bright bugs crawled and my food tasted poisonous and my bed was an open mouth with horrible white lips gaping to devour me. . . .

  One day I realized The Visitors were doing this on purpose. They didn't want me cured. Their very presence was enough to keep me in a psychotic state, and as long as I was insane they could come to me at any time and it wouldn't matter if I talked.

  They were so alien. I was nothing to them. I was a sub-species. They were something that might evolve on Earth or something like Earth sometime in a possible future. I used to sit down and think of this tiny speck of light—this time and space and planet—and all the gigantic unknown surrounding it, peopled with Lord knows what.

  And I was just one man alone, and flawed from the start.

  The doctors had given up hope.

  That night I lay on my bed crying a little. There was no way out. I felt the singing tension begin inside my head and I knew The Visitors were coming. I was helpless and alone, utterly and completely alone. No one knows loneliness except the insane.

  They came.

  I begged them to leave me. They looked at me out of their cold eyes. The veins on their heads throbbed bluely.

  "How long will he live?"

  "Long enough."

  "I don't want to live," I said. "You bring back everything. I'm afraid to move. I can feel it right now, that something that pours out of you. Maybe it's what keeps you alive. But I'm not built to stand it. Let me die."

  "You are unimportant. You are a useful tool——"

  I stopped listening. Something was beginning to happen.

  Very small and dim, far back in my mind, the Cloud started to grow. I was glad. It helped the loneliness a little. At least the Cloud was familiar, and it never bothered me. I hadn't felt it for months now. Not since The Visitors came. The well-remembered, swirling, smooth motion expanded inside my head, and suddenly there was the Cloud, watchful as ever. It was like an old friend.

  There was a sudden movement among The Visitors. They seemed to jolt a little as they hung there in their clear darkness.

  "What is this? Answer! What is this?"

  "The Cloud. I'm glad. . . ."

  It was growing and growing. It was all inside my head. Everything was vague and confused.

  "The Cloud? What does he mean? What is it? I feel——"

  "FOOLS! THIS MAN IS MINE!"

  The Cloud's voice. But the Cloud couldn't speak, could it?

  The Visitors were screaming as they jostled each other in their floating darkness. How their great heads pulsed! The Cloud swept over them and they were going insane. Insane, like me. Now the Cloud was all around them and even their screaming sounded thin. . . .

  I was shouting. The orderly was unlocking the door. Nurses were coming in. They didn't see the Cloud. They didn't see The Visitors. But I saw. I SAW!

  The Cloud had been using me too. Just as The Visitors had. Maybe I really was a useful tool. Maybe our era is a vital turning point. Both of these envoys from an alien place had sought me. But the Cloud was much wiser than The Visitors. It didn't need to harm me to use me as a contact.

  And it was far more alien than The Visitors. Alien even to them. It touched them, with its strange energies out of an unthinkably distant time and space and probability, and The Visitors shriveled and went insane as I watched, screamed and were lost in a direction I could not follow or understand.

  They could not harm me any more. I belonged to the Cloud. It guarded its property.

  Then I felt ice crawl up my body. I heard the old familiar voices shrieking from the walls. I smelled strange perfumes, and there was a new taste on my tongue and the Cloud filled the room and the hospital and the world and infinity beyond it and downswirling into white darkness beyond and far and not returning ever and ever——

  Last week I was discharged, cured, from the sanitarium. The treatment took many months. But finally the Board pronounced me sane. I couldn't understand that.

  They said they had cured me. Fair enough. The Visitors never returned, at least. How could they?

  As for the Cloud——

  Like The Visitors, it had come out of space and time and probability to investigate this world. But it was more alien than The Visitors, and more powerful. Powerful enough. . . .

  The Cloud, for its own obscure purposes, is an observer.

  I have been pronounced sane. I walk in this world, and watch men build the
future. But I know I am not sane. I gave the right answers to the psychiatrists. My reactions are those of a normal man. But they aren't my reactions. It isn't I who gave the answers. It is someone else. Something else. It is because

  BECAUSE

  BECAUSE

  BECAUSE

  hard to write the truth hard to get past this barrier in my mind

  And to make myself understood because my real self is still submerged under the

  the shadow, the ether, the ombre the vapor the cumulus the

  No. Pretending to be me pretending to be cured while the real me is helpless and still

  UNDER THE

  CLOUD

  CLOUD

  CLOUD

  Camouflage

  TALMAN WAS SWEATING by the time he reached 16 Knobhill Road. He had to force himself to touch the annunciator plate. There was a low whirring as photoelectrics checked and O.K.'d his fingerprints; then the door opened and Talman walked into the dim hallway. He glanced behind him to where, beyond the hills, the spaceport's lights made a pulsating, wan nimbus.

  Then he went on, down a ramp, into a comfortably furnished room where a fat, gray-haired man was sitting in an easy chair, fingering a highball glass. Tension was in Talman's voice as he said, "Hello, Brown. Everything all right?"

  A grin stretched Brown's sagging cheeks. "Sure," he said. "Why not? The police weren't after you, were they?"

  Talman sat down and began mixing himself a drink from the server near by. His thin, sensitive face was shadowed.

  "You can't argue with your glands. Space does that to me anyway. All the way from Venus I kept expecting somebody to walk up to me and say, 'You're wanted for questioning.' "