Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “Mr. Quade,” Gerry interrupted sternly, “first of all, I should like you to understand that I am not a fake. The name Gerry Carlyle means the real thing. I have never let down my public, and I do not intend to begin now. And, once and for all, I will not make a fool of myself by appearing in one of your corny pictures!”

  Quade stared, his mouth open.

  Did you say—corny?” he asked unbelieveingly.

  “My pictures?”

  “Yes,” Gerry said, pouring acid on the wound. “They smell.”

  “That ends it,” Quade snapped. “Nine Planets will keep its agreement with you. Take your Promethean. Though I doubt if it will survive your company for long.” With that he turned and marched out of the Ark, leaving Gerry chuckling happily to herself.

  However, if she had seen the object Quade took out of his pocket with such care a few moments later, she might not have been so pleased.

  TWENTY-FOUR hours later Gerry Carlyle and Tommy Strike strolled along Broadway. Strike had just treated to hot-dogs, and with the corner of his handkerchief wiped mustard from Gerry’s nose. “Thanks,” she said. “But don’t interrupt. Tommy, do you know what this means to us?”

  “What?”

  “A fortune! Customers will come like flies—that Promethean will draw millions of ’em to the Zoo. And they’ll pay, too.”

  “Well,” Strike said slowly, “I suppose so. Only I’m not sure you were right in turning down that guy Quade’s offer. You’d be a knockout in pictures.” Gerry snapped, “I don’t wish to hear any more about that. You know very well that when I make up my mind to something, it’s settled.” She paused. “Tommy! You’re not listening.”

  Strike was staring, eyes and mouth wide open, at a blazing neon-and-mercury marquee above the entrance to a Broadway theatre.

  “Gerry—look at that!” he gasped. “What?” Gerry demanded. “I don’t—oh!”

  Strike read the sign aloud. “ ‘Scoop! Lunar disaster! See Gerry Carlyle capture the Energy-Eaters!’ ”

  “Get tickets,” the girl said weakly. Inside the theater they had not long to wait. Presently the feature ended and the special newsreel came on. And it was all there—Gerry’s arrival in the Ark, the exciting scenes at the Plaza filmed in eerie ultra-violet, even the final destruction of the Prometheans inside the space ship.

  “Just look at me!” Gerry whispered fiercely to Strike. “My hair’s a mess!”

  “You look all right to me,” Strike chuckled. “Wonder how he got those shots without your seeing the camera?”

  “He had one inside his shirt—one of the tiny automatic cameras, with sensitized wire film! He was double-crossing me all along. The worst of it is I can’t sue Nine Planets. Newsreel stuff is common property. Come on—let’s get out of here.”

  They had to fight their way through the crowded lobby. As they emerged Gerry paused to eye two long queues that stretched far along Broadway, The rush was beginning. Already radios and advertising gyroplanes were blaring: “See Gerry Carlyle capture the Energy-Eaters! A Nine Planets Film!”

  Strike couldn’t resist rubbing it in.

  “So when you make up your mind to something, it’s settled, eh?” he said.

  Gerry looked at him a long moment. Then a half-smile hovered on her lips as she looked around at the increasing crowd. “Well,” she said, “anyhow—I’m packing them in!”

  [*] A giant carnivorous reptile, somewhat resembling Tyrannosaurus rex.

  TOWERS OF DEATH

  The old man dallied with evil magic, and sought to double his span of life at his nephew’s expense, but the world ended for him at the Towers of Silence in a Persian cemetery

  SIMEON GERARD leaned forward in the great leather chair. His white, withered face showed no trace of expression as he said, “I am to die in a month, then?”

  Doctor Stone hesitated. He felt ill at ease in this great, high-ceilinged room, dimly lit by the red glow of a dying fire. The pungent smoke that curled up from swinging censers tickled his throat. And this strange, shrunken man before him only added to the physician’s discomfort. Though Stone had attended Gerard for years, he had always felt a vague, indefinable dislike for the old eccentric. He could not have told exactly why.

  Simeon Gerard held up a claw of a hand and looked at the fire through its translucent parchment. “A month, you say?” he repeated.

  “Roughly, I should say so,” Doctor Stone said, more loudly than he had intended. His round, well-shaved face glistened in the reddish glow. “You may live much longer—you may die tonight. Frankly, Gerard, I warned you this was coming.”

  For a moment the old man’s pale blue eyes turned to the doctor. A mocking smile seemed to dance in their depths. “You should have attended Des Esseentes,” he said.

  Stone missed the allusion to Huysman’s character. He went on stolidly, “This hobby of yours—from a moral standpoint, I have nothing to say. It’s none of my business. But it has undermined your health. If you wanted to play with occultism——”

  “What?” Gerard’s tufted eyebrows lifted.

  “Well—devil-worship, then! Praying to Satan and holding Black Masses, or whatever it is—that was your affair. But I know quite well that you’ve been taking some poisonous drug or other, against my orders, and doing God knows what else.”

  “I have made—experiments,” Gerard admitted.

  The physician shrugged. “There’s nothing more to be said. I advise you to get your affairs in order. I’ll come whenever you need me. Perhaps I had better leave these——” He laid a small bottle upon a nearby table, and hesitated slightly before resuming. “There will be pain, I’m afraid. Great pain.”

  Gerard stood up. A spasm crossed his wrinkled face, but he repressed it immediately. Standing straight and still by the fire, he murmured, “I shall not need you again, Stone. Take your opiate with you. I shall not require it, or you. Send your bill to me, or to my heir. Good evening.”

  Fie made no offer to shake hands, and, after an awkward pause, Doctor Stone went to the door and let himself out of the house.

  GERARD remained unmoving, thinking. His thin lips twisted into an ironic grimace. Stone—how little the stupid fool guessed of his patient’s “experiments.” No doubt the doctor considered him an eccentric, senile idiot, mumbling the Lord’s Prayer backward to an inverted crucifix. There were older deities than Lucifer . . .

  There was Ahriman.

  Years before, some quirk in Gerard’s neurotic mind had started him on the little-trodden pathway. At first, blindly studying and experimenting with the familiar superficialities of occultism, he had searched for a thrill, something to spur his jaded senses. Then, later, he had visited the Orient, had visited certain forbidden sects and temples, and had learned much. A renegade priest of Ormuzd helped him secure a number of secret and very old manuscripts hidden in Teheran, and had introduced him into a cult which the authorities did not know existed. For the first time Gerard learned of the Dark Wisdom, and realized that his haphazard delvings had been superficial indeed.

  He had come back to America changed. At first he plunged into a riotous life of sensuality, but that did not last long. The next phase was a period of intensive study, of long letters exchanged with men whose addresses were always mysterious postoffice boxes, and of innumerable additions to his already large library. Stone built a home in the country, employing dark, foreign-looking workmen, and retired there with a few Oriental servants. He still lived here, though a small city had grown up around him during the course of years.

  So Doctor Stone suspected some poisonous drug! If that smug worthy actually had any idea of the nature of his patient’s “experiments,” he would undoubtedly have summoned the police and a priest as well, Gerard thought. For fifty years Simeon Gerard had gratified his every wish—and some of them had been monstrous indeed. A bargain of that nature is not paid for lightly. Yet—and Gerard smiled a little—the demands had not been hard to fulfil. As a millionaire, silent partner in a dozen flouris
hing businesses, he had acquired money; and through his own efforts he had made various desirable underworld connections—desirable, because it was necessary at times to procure quite illegal commodities . . . but Gerard was careful, and only one man besides himself knew of a strangely-shaped altar in a subterranean room under the house—an altar stained blackly with dried blood.

  That man was Dagh Ziaret, a Persian. He owned a tiny, dark art shop in a slum district of the city, though most of his business was transacted downstairs in a cellar that resembled an alchemist’s retreat.

  Gerard thought of Dagh Ziaret now. Undoubtedly the Persian could give him the aid he needed. But first—

  HE REACHED for a telephone and called his attorney.

  “Morton? I’ve just had bad news. My doctor tells me I’m dying . . . Don’t be a hypocritical fool. I’ve no time to listen to your lies. You are not sorry . . . I want to transfer all my possessions to my nephew, Steven. What? No, I want this done while I’m alive. Prepare the document and bring it to my home in—well—an hour . . . Good.”

  Gerard next telephoned Steven and made an appointment for later in the evening. Finally he sent a message, through an intermediary, to a man whose illegal activities included the supplying of drugged victims to a crimp, who in turn found them berths on various ships. Since none of Gerard’s underworld helpers had ever seen his face, he felt quite safe in making his arrangements.

  All was ready, now. Gerard called a taxi and had himself driven to within a few blocks of Dagh Ziaret’s shop. He walked the rest of the distance, not without considerable pain. Yes, his experiments had taken their toll.

  The Persian shuffled into view from behind a counter. He was a bent, skinny man whose kinky white beard was in startling contrast to his swarthy skin. Blinking black eyes scrutinized the visitor closely.

  Then, without a word, Dagh Ziaret turned and moved to the back of the shop. Opening a heavy door, he descended steep stairs, Gerard at his heels, and unlocked a panel of massive metal. The two men crossed the threshold. Dagh Ziaret barred the door behind them.

  The air was musty and stagnant, filled with a choking and strangely sweet musk-perfume. Oil lamps threw out wan circles of yellow light. Gerard’s footsteps rang with a hollow sound on the wooden floor, as though another chamber existed below. He suspected this to be the case, but had no means of knowing.

  The walls were entirely covered with shelves, on which stood an assortment of great bottles, alembics, retorts, and a myriad books, bound variously in parchment, vellum, leather, and less easily recognizable substances. A few littered tables were here and there; on one of these was a large object covered by a black doth.

  Dagh Ziaret coughed rackingly. “I do not think you will come here much longer, effendi,” he said.

  Gerard nodded. “Perhaps you are right.”

  The Persian leaned forward, his face twisted into a wrinkled mask. “I see death in your eyes.”

  The other laughed. “And you see it without your globe! Yet you may be mistaken, Dagh Ziaret.”

  “No. The globe—wait. There may be——

  Muttering, he shuffled toward a table. He lifted the black cloth, revealing a crystal sphere, larger than a man’s head, transparent and glittering in the lamplight.

  “Sit down, effendi. There is a message, I think. Look. Already the globe clouds . . .”

  Smiling tolerantly, Gerard took his seat on one side of the table. The Persian sat across from him. The man’s features were distorted through the crystal sphere . . .

  And the crystal clouded. It grew milkily translucent. Slowly the face of Dagh Ziaret faded from view.

  The Persian whispered, “The mists whirl and whirl. I see nothing clearly. Shadows . . .”

  “I do not even see those.”

  Dagh Ziaret lifted his head sharply. “You see nothing? Truly?”

  “Nothing but clouds within the crystal.”

  The Persian drew in his breath with a hissing sound. “There is a reason why this is hidden from you. Simeon Gerard, I see birds circling . . .” The thin voice grew shrill, chanting. “Great birds that swoop against the sky, their cruel beaks open to rend and tear . . . there are vultures in the crystal, effendi! Birds of evil omen . . .”

  Despite himself, Gerard could not repress a slight chill. Impatiently he thrust his chair back and rose, wincing at a new twinge of pain. “Enough of that,” he said harshly. “I have business to transact with you, Dagh Ziaret.”

  The Persian replaced the black cloth. He, too, seemed uneasy. Rubbing his hands together, he glanced around and muttered, “In what way can I serve you?”

  Carefully, measuring his words, Gerard spoke. “You have given me many drugs in the past. One of them sent my soul into a strange paradise——”

  “A paradise? Nay!” And Dagh Ziaret cackled mirthlessly. “Those who serve Ahriman may not enter any paradise!”

  “You sent out my soul, nevertheless. This is truth?”

  “It is indeed truth.”

  “And my soul returned to my body. So. Now, Dagh Ziaret, what if it had instead entered another body?”

  The Persian smiled, made a deprecating gesture. “This is madness. You cannot——”

  Gerard held the other with his cold stare. “I too have learned much. And I know that it is not madness.”

  “I tell you that it is impossible.”

  “Impossible? With the blood of the black goat and the passion of the crucified serpent, and with——” Gerard leaned forward and whispered in the other’s ear.

  The Persian’s dark face twisted. He ran shaking fingers through his beard. “Eh—you know of that? Yet the danger, effendi—we would walk on the brink of hell itself.”

  Gerard said, “I am rich.”

  “Aye. And I am poor. Now supposing that this thing can be done—that your mind and your soul can be made to enter into another body—what then?”

  “Then I should not die,” Gerard smiled. “And you would be wealthy indeed.”

  “There was death in your eyes,” Dagh Ziaret whispered, “and vultures in the crystal.”

  “That is my affair. Give me your answer.”

  The Persian nodded slowly. “I will aid you. But I think Hell-Gate opens before us, effendi!”

  2

  SIMEON GERARD’S interview with his attorney was short and conclusive. The man had at first been inclined to argue, but presently gave up the unequal struggle and took his leave, the vital signed documents in his brief-case. Ten minutes after he left, the doorbell rang, and Gerard answered it himself. He had dismissed the servants for the night.

  It was his nephew, Steven, a tall, husky blond, who made a precarious living selling insurance and looked on his uncle with somewhat puzzled distaste. Beside him was a girl, slim and pretty, something curiously elfin in her small, heart-shaped face, about which auburn ringlets clustered.

  Gerard said, “Come in, both of you.” There was a little frown between his eyebrows, however, and Steven was quick to notice this.

  “I—well, this is my fiancée, Jean Sloane,” he said, rather ill at ease. “We were going out tonight, and I thought—we have tickets for a play, you see——”

  Gerard acknowledged the introduction and led his guests into the great room where the fire, replenished, blazed up hotly. “Some sherry?” he suggested. “Solera—excellent stuff.”

  The boy and the girl sipped their drinks in silence. Gerard sat quietly, his eyes dwelling with a curiously gloating satisfaction on the strong young body of his nephew. Steven was young—good! He was healthy—even better!

  “I have had bad news,” Gerard said suddenly. “My physician tells me I will die in a month.” He waved down the shocked expression of sympathy. “That does not trouble me. I have already engaged passage to the Orient. I wish to die there, and, since I shall not return from that voyage, I am taking steps to dispose of my property. I have turned it over to you, Steven—all of it.”

  Before the dumfounded young man could answer, Gerard
turned to Jean Sloane. “I must apologize to you, for I am afraid I must spoil your evening. Naturally there is much I must discuss with Steven, and I have so little time——”

  “Of course,” the girl said hesitantly. “I am sorry, Mr. Gerard.”

  “Death comes to all,” Gerard said sententiously, and thought to himself, “I’m playing the dying patriarch rather well.”

  He went on, “I’ll call a cab——”

  Five minutes later the two men were alone. Gerard, eyeing his nephew sharply, stood up. “Come with me, Steven. There is something I must show you.”

  The boy followed his uncle along the hall, and into a luxuriously furnished bedroom. Gerard touched the wall, and a panel slid aside. “A private elevator, Steven. Come.”

  Staring, the other took his place beside the old man. He gave Gerard an inquiring glance as the elevator began to drop slowly.

  “Er—what’s downstairs?”

  “My private workroom. See?”

  Gerard opened the door. Steven took a step forward—and halted, aghast.

  He looked upon the temple of the dark god Ahriman.

  Dim and strange and very terrible it lay before him, a great room of black marble, cloudy with incense, dimly lit by flickering gleams of eery radiance. Priceless tapestries hung upon the walls; rugs of incredible beauty were underfoot, woven in Bokhara and Turkistan and the far places of the world. A low ramp led up to a dais on which an altar lay like a crouching beast.

  It was utterly silent.

  Steven’s voice was shocked as he said softly, “Good Lord—what is this?”

  “I have told you. My workroom.”

  “What is this place?” the boy repeated. Gerard looked at him sharply. Steven was standing rigid, swaying a little. The old man lifted his hand and moved it slowly toward the other’s face. Steven did not stir or even blink.

  “Do you hear me?” Gerard said loudly. There was no answer. The boy stared before him, his eyes blank and expressionless.