Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “This—er—fellow speaks Latin?” Aker said dubiously.

  “And why not?” came back Pete belligerently. “My old lady was a teacher in high school. Listen. Omni Gallia divisa est—”

  “Not now,” Mayhem interposed hastily. “But soon, perhaps. Now, the arrangement is clear, I trust. Professor Aker and Pete Manx will go back to Rome in my time machine, and will be given a certain period in which to achieve success. And if my man wins, Professor Aker will give me my equipment.”

  “Look here, Mayhem,” Aker said uneasily. “This is poppycock. I’m getting out of here right now!”

  “You are indeed,” said the doctor. “Oh, my, yes! I took the precaution of wiring your chair so that it is a miniature time machine.” He pressed a button. “Er—good luck, Professor.”

  He was, however, addressing what seemed to be a peculiarly repulsive-looking corpse. For Professor Aker’s ample body had suddenly slumped in the chair, an expression of utter vacuity frozen on the beefy features.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” the doctor called, his hands raised to quiet the audience. “He isn’t harmed. It’s merely a trance. His mind has been projected back in time.”

  “Hey, wait!” Pete Manx gulped. “That looks like the hot seat to me!”

  “Pete, my boy, it’s quite all right.” Dr. Mayhem smiled. “Just sit here, if you please.”

  Pete squirmed.

  Bang!

  The inner consciousness of Pete Manx left his body, derby, checkered vest, and orange tie, to appear with startling abruptness in another time-sector. Pete went, however, in an erratic sort of-way, much like a pendulum gathering momentum and swinging back and forth between ancient Rome and modern America.

  The laboratory suddenly had vanished. Sunlight glared down on him instead. Yelling tradesmen stormed and chaffered. Tides of laden slaves surged among the booths of vegetable sellers and money changers. Then—

  He was back in the laboratory—paralyzed! Unable to stir a muscle, wink an eyelash, or bridge a synapse, Pete stared blankly and listened to Dr. Mayhem speaking.

  “Time, like space, is curved, revolving around a central time-consciousness. There the temporal sense of all men from the beginning to the end of things has its origin. We, gentlemen, are on the rim of the wheel, so to speak. If we could project ourselves to the hub and out again along another spoke, we would find ourselves in a different time . . .”

  Swish!

  Rome!

  A horseman pacing slowly along a narrow street, precede by a gilded litter borne by slaves. Cries of “Cave! Cave!” Rough, fluent oaths of a bearded Gaul looming up near by.

  Back again to the laboratory. Dr. Mayhem was still lecturing.

  “They have both been mentally transported, while their bodies lie here in a state of trance, into the minds of two persons in the days of Rome’s glory. Their consciousnesses were projected into the Time-center, and thence out again to a period known to us only as history . . .”

  PETE MANX went back to Rome and, this time, stayed there. Once more the hot Italian sunlight blazed down upon him. Odors of wine and olives and spices were strong in his nostrils. For a moment the world swung dizzily about him; then suddenly something came violently in contact with his nose and he was precipitated full-length upon the Appian Way.

  “Earthquake!” he gasped. “I ain’t in Rome; I’m in California!”

  A harsh voice spoke swift Latin words, and Pete recognized them. He sat up, feeling an odd awkwardness about his new body, and stared at a furry-bearded soldier who was shaking both fists and cursing.

  “Purse-snatcher,” the soldier roared, among other things, and expressed an intention of tearing Pete apart and scattering his revolting body from Viminal Hill to the Colosseum. “An honest soldier cannot be in Rome a day before some thief lifts his purse. What is thy name, dog?”

  “Petus Manxus,” replied Pete.

  “Then arise, Manxus the thief, that I may smite you again.”

  This struck Pete as unsound advice, but he stood up nevertheless. A quick glance downward told him that he was dressed in a billowing white tunic like a night-gown; his feet, sandal-shod, were invisible to him. Apparently Pete’s mind was inhabiting the body of some Roman who had just got himself into a peck of trouble.

  Pete desperately fended for himself with ju-jutsu. His triumph was instantaneous. A twist of the wrist sent the Gaul spinning, whereupon Petus Manxus’ two hundred and fifty pounds lit upon him in a running broad jump. The unfortunate soldier did not get up again, remaining flat on his back twitching and wheezing. Pete fled down the Via Appia until he was protected by a surging multitude of Gauls, Scythians, Britons—a potpourri of the world under Rome. Then, feeling himself unobserved, he withdrew into a vacant space behind a wine-seller’s booth and sat down to rest and pant.

  “So this is Rome,” he muttered disparagingly. “Pew! Science is sure a funny thing.”

  But he had a job to do, and a rough-and-ready philosophy that softened life’s knocks. So he carefully took stock of his possessions. They were not many. Under his tunic he wore a woolen under-garment that itched, and a leather pouch. In the pouch was a purse containing three lonely pieces of silver and a knife. Pete grunted. If he had been a thief up to now, he’d certainly been an unsuccessful one. He would have to start from scratch, and the only thing in his favor in this friendless world was the fact that there seemed to be hordes of suckers just begging to be plucked.

  Wandering back into the busy square, Pete came at last to a vacant booth. In it was a sloping wooden table which had a two-inch curb all around. An idea glimmered into his brain.

  He had no tools save for the knife in his pouch. But with this he set to work, humming under his breath, “Ho-old that Ti-ber! Hold that Tiber!” Carefully he marked off the slanting surface of the table with a pattern of ten dots. At each dot he painfully gouged a shallow depression in the soft wood. Then he whittled a number of tiny pegs and, below each depression, bored small holes into which he fitted the pegs. Above some of them he also distributed an occasional peg. On the right side of the board, paralleling the curb, he fitted another narrow wooden strip so that a channel extending almost to the top was formed.

  AT the top, curving from side to side, he pegged in a semi-circular strip of stiff reed. Finally, at the base of the right-hand channel, he arranged a painfully-carved wooden plunger. He stepped back to survey his work.

  “Crude,” he sighed, “but good enough for a beginning.” A gnawing in his middle was making itself felt; he was hungry. Hastily he went forth, surveying the Via Appia till he found three urchins playing marbles in a dusty corner. He traded his knife for the marbles.

  Then he was ready. Petus Manxus returned to his booth, a cold feeling of excitement making him shiver a bit. He made an involuntary gesture to shove his derby further back on his head. He winced as plump fingers encountered a bald, pink dome.

  Two soldiers were passing; Pete called to them. “Hey, you two! Want to see something new? C’mere.”

  The men approached.

  “Well?”

  The Emperor’s latest amusement—” Was there an emperor? Apparently so, for the soldiers bent to examine the board with interest. “You, there! With the purple nightshirt! Come and see!”

  Three men in purple togas frowningly approached. Attracted by the senators, others followed.

  This was familiar stuff to Pete; he launched glibly forth into his spiel.

  “Friends, Romans, countrymen!” he yelled. “Lend me your ears! I come here not to sell you something, but to fascinate and amuse you! Come see the Emperor’s favorite game!”

  “What is it called?” a paunchy senator took the bait.

  “Clavus pila! Pinball! Rich prizes to the skilful! This is not a game of chance, my friends, but a test of skill and skill alone. Step right up, folks, and keep your eye on the ball!”

  The crowd surged up. Pete casually dropped one marble in the channel along the right side of the board, drew back the p
lunger, slammed it forward again. The ball shot up, followed the curving strip of stout reed, caromed off a nail, and began dribbling slowly down the board bounding off pegs, zigzagging, and eventually dropping into one of the holes.

  “A Vestal Virgin!” Pete bellowed, and the onlookers noticed that each hole was labeled with a name. Six were Vestal Virgins; three were Senators; the one at the top was dubbed Caesar. “It’s easy, folks! A Caesar, two Senators, and five Virgins wins you two sesterces. A Caesar, three Senators, and five Virgins wins you three sesterces. If you hit Caesar, three Senators, and all the Vestal Virgins you can take the board home with you . . . Come one, come all!”

  With uncanny accuracy, Manxus poured four more marbles into guide slot and fired, registering Caesar, two Senators, and one Out at the bottom of the board. In a trice the crowd was begging him to take their money, eager for a chance to play.

  Pete took them one at a time, charging one sesterce per game, picking the marbles out of their resting places by hand after each game was finished. By a stroke of good fortune, the first two players each won a little; from then on there was ho stopping the mob. By nightfall Manxus’ pouch and both hands were stuffed with coins.

  Smelly, inefficient oil lamps were brought out, but Pete vetoed further play that day. Somewhere in Rome there was a place that his body called home, but he naturally didn’t know where it was. Instead, he took a room at an inn—the Caupona Bacchius, B. Bibulus, Proprietor—which reminded him in appearance and odor of any other beer joint back home with dollar-a-day rooms upstairs. But Pete didn’t mind; he was already well on the road to becoming the slot-machine czar of Rome!

  NEXT day he set up his outfit in the square at dawn. By making it a bit easier to win, he had customers lined up all the way around the square waiting to play clavus pila. By eleven o’clock he had broke a carpenter, who was so afraid to return home to his wife that Pete returned his money. The grateful carpenter gladly promised to build a dozen clavus pila boards of finest materials and deliver them to Pete’s place at the inn.

  By two o’clock a tax collector had gone down swinging, losing in addition to his own money, two hundred denarius’ belonging to the government.

  Eventually inn-keeper Bibulus was seduced by the insidious sight of a praetorian guardsman raking in his winnings. He came, played, and was conquered. Petus Manxus went home that evening with a partnership in the Caupona Bacchius.

  Thenceforward the clavus pila rage rushed ahead on its own momentum. Pete set up the new tables in the inn, a dozen of them, and had Bibulus and his three fat daughters help regulate the play, take in the coins, watch the chiselers who tried to start their game over again while no one was looking, and put down a stern foot when anyone was caught titling the board.

  Within a week Pete was riding the streets in a sumptuous litter, wearing fur togas, and with a retinue of twenty slaves. All over Rome his clavus pila parlors were springing up like mushrooms.

  Pete was smart. The more parlors he opened, the more his income. The more money he made, the more he could afford to lower the odds so everyone could win occasionally, working on a smaller percentage. And the more people won, the more they poured sesterces into the Manxus coffers.

  “It’s a vicious coicle,” Pete grinned to Bibulus. “They actually beg me to take their dough!”

  It was inevitable that Petus Manxus should look around for more worlds to conquer. He considered the idea of inventing roulette or tango, but vetoed it. That would require opening a new set of joints, and since he had all the gambling element playing pin-ball, the new games would just take some of the players from one racket to the other with no increase in intake. He looked into the theater situation briefly, but gave that up when he learned Rome had but two or three theaters, and they were the Emperor’s own graft.

  “Such a pity,” Pete moaned cheerfully to the bewildered Bibulus. “What a push-over they woulda been for Bingo and Bank Nite!”

  But politics—there was something in which Pete’s experience would serve him well!

  Pete scurried around among the influential Romans who were somewhat under obligation to him, because of clavus pila losses, and put on gentle pressure. He talked earnestly to the head of the flute-blowers’ guild, to his friend the carpenter, to many others. And one week before election day, the moon rose on a Rom® gone politically insane.

  Rome was having her first political parade, under the auspices of Petus Manxus.

  Leading the way, blowing and plucking away with all their might, was a weird orchestra; the instruments were flutes, lyres, and horns. Next came a group of Pete’s intimates. Each carried a square poster, upthrust on a pole, which bobbed and twirled in the smoky light of torches and lamps.

  “Manxus for Magistrate!” they proclaimed in large letters. “A New Deal for Romans!”

  “Vote for Manxus, Old-line Republican! Bring Back Prosperity!”

  “Seventy Sesterces Every Saturday for Each Citizen Over Sixty!”

  THIS was followed by a gorgeously decorated litter carried by eight handsome slaves. Standing up inside, bowing and smiling to the crowd, was Pete. Behind came about a hundred paid retainers, all cheering mightily at the rate of one denarius per hour.

  So, after a whirlwind campaign in which he advocated the Townsendum old-age retirement plan, conservatism, liberalism, and other incomprehensibles, Petus Manxus was returned magistrate, with the assistance of some sleight-of-hand at the polls. With Bibulus as chief adviser, Pete devoted himself to administering his office.

  Things ran smoothly—too smoothly, according to Bibulus.

  “The Emperor hasn’t even asked you to make a will in his favor!” he worried. “Strange.”

  “So that’s how he gets his rake-off eh?” Pete asked. “Just an old Roman custom. Y’know, I haven’t even seen Claudius yet.”

  “Few do,” Bibulus observed meaningly, “and most of them regret it. The Emperor’s favor is dangerous to lose. Just the same, there’s something strange about it. Are you sure you haven’t a powerful friend at court?”

  “Except for my uncle who is a Tammany alderman, no.”

  “Yet a woman has appeared often among the spectators when you are on the bench. A beautiful woman, veiled to the eyes—”

  “Women,” pronounced Pete, “is poison. Ixnay, Bibby. Have you got any news about the guy I’m lookin’ for?” Ever since Pete’s election he had been searching for the trail of his inadvertent companion into time, Professor Aker, who should have been somewhere in Rome. Until today, Bibulus had brought no news.

  Now, however, the former caupo twisted his face into a crumpled arrangement of wrinkles, intended to be a smile.

  “I have learned of a wizard whose magic failed—a madman. He rushed down the Via Appia some moons ago shouting dire prophecies. Trying perhaps to start a new cult. To those who would follow him he promised chariots that would move without horses, lamps that would burn without flame, and”—Bibulus bent double with laughter—“and galleys that would fly through the air like birds! Verily!”

  Pete’s eyes widened.

  “Zeus! Go on!”

  “He tried to make magic. He filled a pot with a liquid that burned like fire. He wound strands of wire around metal cylinders, and plunged a bit of copper into the pot. Then he began to shout and call for some metal whereof no one had heard—what was it? I forget. They brought him zingiber—ginger. He flung it down and trod upon it. He yelled loudly for—I have it!—zinc!”

  Pete whistled.

  “I see it all now,” he muttered. Aker planned to build a series of simple galvanic batteries, and with them power his primitive electric motors made of coils and armature. But he had forgotten one vital thing; zinc, necessary for his battery, wasn’t known until the sixteenth century! “So what happened to ’im?”

  “No one knows. But I shall search further. And now you must hold court, Petus Manxus. Here—your toga.

  Many await.”

  UNCOMFORTABLY, Pete donned the garment, aros
e from his cushioned bench, and went into the next room. Once a dignified example of Roman architecture, it had been altered somewhat under Pete’s orders. A railing kept the spectators at a distance, and to the left of the desk of the magister a railed-in enclosure held the prisoners.

  There was a spattering of applause as Pete mounted the bench. He waved a negligent hand.

  “First case,” Bibulus called. Two guards marched forward, impelling between them a large, handsome young man with jet-black curls and a harassed expression.

  “A poisoner,” whispered Bibulus, as the defendant was hustled into the dock. “He tried to slay Gaius Hostilius, the consul.”

  “What’s his racket?” inquired Pete in his abominable Latin.

  “A street magician, of strange powers. He attracted the consul’s attention with his tricks, and performed the miracle of turning water to wine. That was all right, but Hostilius demanded that the cup be brought to him. When he drank of it, he fell down and rolled about in agony.”

  Just then the prisoner, who had stared incredulously at Pete when the latter’s ungrammatical Latin had soiled the judicial atmosphere, began to shout in a language incomprehensible to the others.

  “Manx! Manx! Is that you, for heaven’s sake?”

  “He casts a spell on us!” cried Bibulus, and a guard promptly suppressed the unfortunate prisoner in no uncertain manner.

  “Petus Manxus—by the gods! What ails you?”

  “Zeus,” gasped Pete, glaring at the defendant, “has stricken me with a thunderbolt!” Then, in English, “Hey, Prof! Is that you?”

  “Manx!” squalled the young man. “Of course it’s I! Get me out of this, quick! I didn’t poison the fellow. My—er—plans went wrong and I was supporting myself with simple chemical magic, when he—”

  “Sure. Sure.” Pete soothed him. “I’ll give it the fix.” He turned to Bibulus. “We’ll just dismiss the charge. It’s his first offense.”

  “Poisoners,” Bibulus frowned, “are always thrown to the lions.”