Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Maybe the world didn’t exist, and I was just dreaming it . . .

  I got to the Manhattan Vista building and went up to the law offices of Handrel and Son. Simon Handrel, a bulky old scoundrel with tonsured white hair, greeted me with pink, well-massaged cordiality.

  “Morning, Ed. Those Hanscomb bonds are on your desk. Will you attend to them immediately?”

  “All right,” I said, and went into my office. My desk was smothered with stuff. I remembered it was my birthday, and that the office staff politely deluged me with presents on that auspicious occasion. Papers and files were on the desk, too. I scrambled through them, searching vainly for the Hanscomb bonds. No soap. It seemed opportune, under the circumstances, to curse the day I was born.

  I found an aspirin and washed it down. But I couldn’t find those confounded bonds.

  My mind was utterly chaotic. The bonds, I thought; and then: what bonds? Hanscomb’s bonds. Who’s Hanscomb? That old so-and-so in Brooklyn. What about him? The bonds. What bonds? It was all a plot to drive me nuts.

  Personally, I doubted whether the bonds had ever existed.

  I cleared my desk, found nothing, returned to Handrel’s office, and explained the situation. He blinked at me.

  “Hanscomb’s bonds? But Hanscomb hasn’t got any bonds, Ed. I thought you knew that. You must have him mixed up with someone else.”

  I must have looked strange, for Handrel clucked worriedly. “Hangover? Why not take the day off?”

  “I need liquor,” I said. “Lots of it.” So Handrel, who’s a soak anyway, pushed back the papers on his desk, and offered to take a quick one with me. He never misses a chance. We rode down in the elevator and popped into the bar.

  WE hoisted several quick ones.

  I looked at Handrel. He was sympathetic, and not so dumb. Maybe he could help me. If I hadn’t been rather high, I’d never have thought so.

  “Look,” I said, “did you ever wonder whether we’re real?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I mean it. I read a story once where a guy actually dreamed the world and everybody on it. Just a dream, everything was. And when he woke up—poof.”

  Handrel seemed to find that very funny. He repeated it several times, giggling. “Poof. Heh.”

  I glared at him, seeing a fat, complacent stupid person, satisfied with his sleek law office in the Manhattan Vista, that towering skyscraper . . . unreal and far away. Did it exist? I felt drunkenly dubious . . .

  Then we were walking down the street beside an empty lot. A great many people were emerging from the lot and mingling quietly with the throng on the sidewalk. I recognized some of them. My co-workers in the Manhattan Vista building.

  Only that remarkable skyscraper didn’t exist. It never had existed. Do you remember it?

  Well, I do.

  “It’s great being a man of leisure,” said Handrel, puffing on his cigar. “What line did you say you were in, Ed?”

  “Law,” I told him. “I work for you.”

  “Heh. That’s a good one. But you can’t entice me back into the game. When I retired, it was for good and all.”

  I started to wonder about all the people who had worked in the Manhattan Vista building. Had they suddenly retired, too? Or . . . I don’t know. The unemployment statistics for this year are much higher. Maybe I threw a lot of people out of work. Only, of course, they never knew it. Their life-pattern had changed completely, and their memories too.

  Retroactive obliteration . . .

  I would have to be careful. But I started to wonder about Susan, somehow. I decided to go home, and invited Handrel to go with me. It would cheer me to look at Susan’s pretty, familiar face.

  When we walked into the apartment, a dark man with chestnut hair was making love to my wife. The whole thing seemed pretty familiar to both of them. I recognized Ben, Handrel’s son, and Handrel said something in a shocked, choking voice.

  Susan tore away and shrank back in a corner, looking terrified and trapped. Ben moistened his lips and stood up, facing me, his arms hanging loose at his sides. I don’t know what he expected—homicide, perhaps.

  “Listen, Ed,” he got out. “You don’t—”

  He stopped, because I was just standing there, swaying a little, watching the two of them. Beside me Handrel was making gasping noises; it had hit him pretty hard. He worshipped Ben. But I was seeing something else.

  Susan. Walks in the Park. Moonlight on the Hudson. Blind romance, and the night I proposed to her. The silly, dear little things that had made the apartment a home. The way she nibbled at her toast in the morning. The way she wrinkled her nose when she smiled. And now those things were suddenly seen with a different perspective. Susan. Ben. Standing there, guilty, shamefaced, afraid . . .

  I couldn’t have been so idiotic. I couldn’t have loved her or trusted him. They weren’t real. They . . .

  They weren’t there. Susan and Ben were gone!

  “SUSAN!” I shouted.

  Beside me Handrel said, “Susan? What’s the idea, Ed? I didn’t know you had company.”

  He stared at me when I laughed. “I had company—uh-huh! Handrel, you—oh, Lord!” I sank down on the couch and chewed my lips.

  He lifted gray eyebrows at me. “Women are dangerous, Ed—to your reputation, at least. You ought to think of getting married.”

  I said, “Do you have a son named Ben?”

  There was a long silence. Then Handrel asked, very quietly, “Don’t you feel all right? I mean—it’s not just the liquor. I can see that. You’re acting very strangely.”

  “I’m imagining things,” I said. “I imagined I had a wife named Susan and you had a son named Ben. Only that isn’t true, is it? I thought not.”

  I got up, went to the sideboard, and poured drinks. Susan kept her favorite handbag in the sideboard, for some reason, I remembered. Only, of course, it wasn’t there.

  I poured the raw whiskey down my throat. Handrel passed out after a while. I took him home in a taxi, with two quarts in.my pockets. I got blind, stinking, horribly drunk. And that night . . .

  I started to feel doubtful.

  Nothing was stable; alcohol misted the outlines of everything. Remember the great Metropolitan Bridge across the Hudson, at 72nd Street, built in 1934? Of course you don’t remember it. But it existed, till I started to feel doubtful about it.

  Remember the Titania, which docked in New York a few days before the Queen Mary—biggest British steamboat in the world? A huge liner, a monster, a Behemoth. But the Titania never was—except in my own memory.

  Remember—hell, what’s the use? You don’t remember; you can’t. But the only thing that saved the Earth was good Scotch whiskey.

  For I commenced to feel doubtful about the Earth, and passed out in Central Park just before I got too doubtful.

  THAT’S all. I woke up, went home, and wrote this. I have the most frightful hangover anyone can imagine. And my ghastly power is still latent within me. What it is I cannot say.

  I sit here at my desk, exhausted, my nerves jolting, my system temporarily poisoned by alcohol. I don’t know what is going to happen. For nothing seems real to me. That clock on the desk before me—What clock?

  Yes. It keeps on happening. Why should I doubt the reality of solid, three-dimensional things which are obviously existing? I could reasonably have doubted intangibles, like Susan’s love for me, and Ben’s friendship. Susan—no one will believe she ever existed. And Ben. His father doesn’t remember him. The Manhattan Vista building. The Titania. The Metropolitan Bridge. But is this phenomenon subjective or objective? Perhaps I am the one at fault, and the Titania and the bridge existed only in my mind. A physician would call me insane, and he might be right.

  I don’t know. It’s all utterly crazy. This can’t be happening to me. I can’t really make buildings vanish by doubting their existence. But I—

  In the Lord’s name, who or what am I? Edwin Cobalt. Who is Edwin Cobalt? Does anyone else see his fingers move rapidly
over the typewriter keys? See his gray, striped shirt covering his arms and chest? I look down at blue trousers, an unbuttoned vest, and a gray necktie. How much do the senses prove? Seeing, hearing, touching? . . .

  I am beginning to doubt whether Edwin Cobalt exi—

  Author’s Note—This story is pure fiction. Edwin Cobalt is a product of my imagination—for, as will be self-evident, the actual existence of the manuscript disproves the theorem on which it is based. The “obliteration power” is retroactive. When Susan vanished, so did her clothes, her belongings, and everything closely connected with her. Naturally, if there never was a Susan Cobalt, there would be no place in the world for her hand-bag or her garments.

  Similarly, if Edwin Cobalt vanished, there would be no place in the world for a script written by him—a man who never existed.

  It is merely a coincidence that I have just moved to an apartment near Central Park, which, the superintendent assures me, has been vacant for some time. It is quite impossible to suppose that Cobalt actually lived here, and that the superintendent simply forgot him. It is also ridiculous to suppose that my memory of writing this story is a convenient illusion.

  I, Noel Gardner—and not the nonexistent Edwin Cobalt—must have written this script.

  I hope.

  THE ELIXIR OF INVISIBILITY

  Trouble is no word for what happened to Richard Raleigh when he set out to demonstrate Dr. Meek’s strange elixir

  RICHARD RALEIGH sensed trouble the moment he entered “the laboratory. His employer, Dr. Gaspar Meek, looked far too pleased with himself. Either somebody was dead or else Meek had been pulling the wings off flies again. That was the way he was. A nice guy who would have got along swell with Torquemada or maybe Nero.

  Besides, Raleigh was worrying about his frogs. They had vanished without trace. His bronzed, good-looking face wore an expression of bitterness as he sat down in a protesting chair and tried to marshal the innumerable things he wanted to say to Meek. After a while, he asked,

  “Well?”

  “Ah,” said the scientist, whirling like a Buddha on his desk chair. His bland, fat face shone in the sunlight. His bald spot glowed with an unholy light.

  “Ah,” he repeated, with more emphasis. “There you are, Rick. I—uh—I have finally decided that the job you hold is unworthy of your talents.”

  “What do you mean, job?” Raleigh asked. “I’m assistant, cook, errand boy, bottle washer and general stooge. Five jobs at least.”

  Meek ignored the note of irony.

  “I have at last decided to allow you to aid me in my experiments. You are promoted. We are colleagues. Your salary is still the same,” he hastened to add, “but what is money compared to the glory of serving science?”

  Raleigh choked back the impulse to remark that money would mean he could marry Binnie, Meek’s lovely but slightly bird-brained daughter. How a heel like the Doc could have fathered such an angel as Binnie was an insoluble problem. It created its own problems too. For Binnie was an old-fashioned girl and wouldn’t marry without her father’s permission.

  “Get Daddy to say ‘yes’ ” she had murmured into her lover’s ear, “and everything will be swell . . .”

  “Did you speak?” Meek inquired, breaking into his thoughts.

  “ ‘Frogs’ was all I said,” Raleigh grunted. “Two months I’ve been raising giant frogs to make some extra money, and now I find the frog pond empty.” His gaze searched the room.

  For some reason Meek chuckled.

  “Never mind that. Look here.”

  He indicated several small glass vials that stood on his desk, some with red and some with green labels.

  “Let’s get to business. I expect some visitors shortly, and I want you to stay here till they go. Don’t say anything. Just listen.”

  Raleigh stared at the vials.

  “Oh. Your invisibility elixir. Who are the visitors?”

  “Reporters.”

  “Uh?” The young man goggled. “After what happened? After the gags the papers have been running—”

  A singularly nasty gleam came into Meek’s blue eyes.

  “Yes. They called me a faker, I believe—a publicity-hunter. Well, I think they’ve changed their minds. “Ah—there’s the bell.”

  RALEIGH sighed, got up, went into the outer office, opened the door, and was brushed on a wave of excited reporters. A dozen of them at least, yelping for Doctor Meek and with blood in their eyes. Vaguely hoping that they’d tear the scientist limb from limb, Raleigh let them enter.

  Meek greeted them happily.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. Have chairs.”

  There were only two chairs, but it was a minor point, unnoticed in the babble. A burly legman leaned over the desk and extended his hands. Either he was reaching for Meek’s throat, or else he was tightly gripping something invisible.

  “Frogs!” the reporter said hoarsely. “Invisible frogs! And me with a hangover. My God!”

  He shuddered slightly and opened his hands. There was a slight plop! on the desk blotter, a scrambling sound, and a splash from the goldfish bowl in the corner. One of the reporters, a round-faced individual, emitted a faint, faraway sound and drank hurriedly from a brown bottle.

  “I can stand a lot,” said the first speaker. “Maybe you had justification. But in the name of God, couldn’t you have proved your point in some other way? Look. A parcel comes addressed to me. I open it and it’s empty. Then an invisible frog comes up and hits me in the face.”

  “A dirty trick,” said the short, squat man with jet-black hair and a drooping eyelid.

  A cry came from the corner. Richard Raleigh was touched to the quick.

  “My frogs—” he began in a heartfelt voice. “Be careful where you step, you men.”

  Meek coughed warningly. “Gentlemen,” he said loudly; “I apologize, of course. I had to insure your coming here to watch my little demonstration. As I wrote you before, I have invented a fluid that causes invisibility by creating complete transparency in material objects.

  “I don’t know exactly how it works myself. I think some radiation is induced in the cellular or atomic structure—at least, it makes clothing invisible as well as flesh and blood.

  “This”—he picked up one of the red-labeled vials—“is the invisibility elixir. The green-labeled ones are the antidote.”

  “Invisible frogs,” said the first reporter dully. “I’m not going to write this if I vanish myself. It’s the d. t.’s.”

  “I had expected skepticism,” Meek continued, “and so I shall give you complete proof. I want you gentlemen to station yourselves at various points around this block. You”—he pointed at one—“will find your handkerchief stolen. You—will lose your hat. You—”

  “Not my wallet,” said that one, hastily buttoning his hip pocket. “Yesterday was payday.”

  “I shall visit you invisibly and give you complete proof. I’ll leave my card with you all.” Meek extended his leather cardcase. “Will that convince you?”

  “Yeah,” a sad voice said. “It’ll do more than that, I’m afraid. Frogs . . .” There was a confused, hopeless mumbling.

  “Good,” Meek said briskly, rubbing his hands. He shooed the reporters out like chickens. There was a momentary confusion; then the room was empty save for the scientist and Raleigh.

  THE latter stood in a corner, eyeing the desk. He had a brief impression that some of the vials had vanished. Perhaps—

  “Now!” Meek whirled on his assistant. “Take this cardcase, quick.”

  “Me?” Raleigh stammered, trying to back through the wall. “Bub-bub—”

  The doctor snatched up a red-labeled vial and advanced, blood in his eye.

  “Drink this!”

  Raleigh ducked. “I will,” he said, “like hell! I have stood for a lot, but when it comes to being a guinea pig—”

  Meek rubbed one of his chins thoughtfully.

  “Now listen,” he said in a placating tone. “You heard me tell
the reporters my plan. They’re stationed around the block now, waiting for an invisible man.”

  “They’re waiting for you,” the other pointed out.

  “Well, if you’re invisible, they won’t know the difference,” Meek said with perfect logic.

  “It’s the last straw! You steal my frogs and then—” Raleigh choked. Only the image of Binnie restrained him from picking up Meek and battering him around the room.

  “Yes,” the doctor said unctuously. “Binnie. I have been thinking I’d take a trip to Mexico with her. I’ve also been thinking of firing you.”

  Raleigh writhed. But Meek held all the cards. Reluctantly he let the vial be thrust into his hand . . .

  The door opened, admitting Binnie and an extroverted dog. The girl was not noteworthy, despite her prettiness, and Raleigh was deceiving himself when he saw wings sprouting from her back. The dog, however, was worthy of notice.

  For one thing, Angel was an exhibitionist. He was large and nondescript, with a tinge of bloodhound in his sinister ancestry. Angel was also an arrant coward, but showed his adequate teeth at every opportunity. A dog of good taste, he heartily disliked Meek.

  The sight of Binnie caused a violent reaction within Raleigh. Some might call it love. At any event, knowing that his future depended on Dr. Meek’s good will, Raleigh swallowed the elixir and immediately discovered that the missing frogs had taken up residence in his stomach.

  They did it gradually and by stealth. Down his gullet they went slipping and scrambling, to land with a succession of dull thuds in the stomach itself. Then they joined hands and danced a bolero. Desperately Raleigh seized his head and held it in place just as it began to float off.

  “Gwlg—nwhnk!” he observed.

  Binnie turned, startled. “Wh—what was that? Did I hear something, Dad?”