Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Babcock let me have the gun. “He’s gone,” he said, shrugging. “No use chasing him tonight.”

  I stepped back. Kearney was looking completely baffled. Westerly’s insane laughter rang out through the still night of the valley.

  I got water and brandy, and forced them down the guide’s throat. He quieted, looking at me blankly. Then he subsided into silence, his lips moving. As I said, psychology is my field.

  It didn’t take long for me to see that Westerly was insane. Without the soporific of opium, his neurotic mind terrified by this business, he had taken refuge in the dream-world of the schizophrenic. He was mad. Harmless. But—God!

  Half an hour later he was tucked into his blanket, mumbling softly, and we sat around the fire and looked at each other. Babcock said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Kearney groaned. “This is—impossible.”

  “You’re a biologist. Is it?”

  “No . . . no. It fits in. The Tree has an impregnable defensive armor. That’s to protect some incredibly delicate nervous organism inside—like our skulls, protecting our brains. Bullets won’t harm the thing. I suppose it could have a—a brain.”

  “It wasn’t Gunther talking, at the end,”

  Babcock said. “It was the Tree. Remember? It said it would have us all soon—and we’d take it to the outer world. It’s a vampiric intelligence. It sucks our minds—”

  “It can be killed.” Kearney stood up. “I’ve some acid that should affect it.”

  “Nothing can harm it. It—it’s perfect, in its fashion. Nothing can get through the armor. Its defences kept pace with its intelligence. The mind inside the Tree is an incredibly delicate organism.”

  “We must try. You’ve convinced me, Babcock.” Kearney took some canisters from his knapsack. “Come along. Bring rifles. Vail, you stay here and take care of Westerly, in case Gunther comes back.”

  I said, “Okay,” and squeezed my automatic. Babcock, his face contorted, found two rifles and followed Kearney into the moonlit depths of the forest.

  Presently Westerly went crazy. I had to revise my former opinion. He was more manic-depressive than schizoid. He became a raving maniac, screaming and clawing at me till, in self-defense, I was forced to knock him out.

  Inwardly I felt sick. That Tree . . . intelligent, vampiric. Symbiosis . . . plant-life evolved to the nth degree! It fed on—minds.

  We had not known Gunther was—possessed—until Babcock had translated the inscription left by that long dead race. I shivered. Gunther might have lured us, one by one, to the Tree, till we were all victims. Then we would have obeyed every command of that alien intelligence, taking it with us to the outer world, loosing upon Earth a terror against which there was no defence. For the thing was impregnable.

  Was it?

  SUDDENLY I felt cold. Babcock had said that any of us might be victims. I wasn’t, I knew. Unless—unless I had forgotten—

  Why—Kearney himself might be. . . . He had gone off with Gunther to look at the Tree. Perhaps he had fallen a victim to it then. Perhaps it wasn’t—Kearney—who had been talking to us a few moments before.

  In that case, Kearney, even now, would be luring the unsuspecting Babcock into the trap!

  I jumped up, shaking with a fear beyond fear. I had started into the forest when, struck by a sudden thought, I came back and lifted Westerly’s limp body to my back. Carrying him, I struck out for the clearing where the Tree was. I ran, stumbling, gasping. . . .

  Babcock was standing, his rifle ready, not too close to the Tree. Kearney was behind him, hands lifted, about to push the little ethnologist toward those scarlet tentacles that were reaching out hungrily. I had been right. Kearney was—was no longer human. He was possessed.

  I shouted, Babcock whirled, and dropped to his knees. Kearney lunged over him, rolling into that nest of tentacles. They squirmed away from him like snakes. That confirmed my guess. The Tree had taken from Kearney what it wanted already. It was seeking fresh prey.

  Astonishment was in Babcock’s face. He sprang up, backed away, as I ran forward, bending under Westerly’s weight. The guide came to life, tried to struggle free. We went down together. I kept trying to push Westerly toward those squirming tentacles.

  Babcock yelled, “Vail! You—it caught you too!”

  I knew what he was thinking. That I was acting under the Tree’s command. I couldn’t help that; I was busy fighting Westerly.

  We grappled, went down together, and rolled into the red snakes.

  They closed around us. The forest spun dizzily as I was lifted. Gentle pressure was on me everywhere. Then darkness as I was lowered into the hollow trunk of the Red Tree.

  Westerly and I. Neither of us struggled now. Something was leaving our brains, and something pouring into it. An ecstasy beyond life. Something unknown to flesh. Known only to that blasphemous Tree that had grown here when the valley was Eden. . . .

  A dark current swept into my mind. Then it was troubled. I was floating, bodiless. . . . caught in a sudden whirlpool.

  Abruptly I felt agony, wrenching, terrible. There was a soundless explosion of light. I felt myself flung into the air, and came down with a jolting thud on the ground.

  I lost consciousness.

  Not for long. When I awoke, Babcock was forcing brandy down my throat. I choked, spluttered, and after a while sat up.

  THE clearing had—changed. The Red Tree was still there. But it was no longer alive.

  The sentient malignancy had gone from it.

  The tentacles dropped, lifeless and dull. The red was fading to ochre.

  I looked around. Babcock, Kearney, Westerly . . . Gunther. He was kneeling beside me, watching me anxiously.

  Babcock said, “What happened? It—it worked, whatever it was. Gunther’s all right now. So is Kearney. But—”

  Kearney was shivering. “The Tree’s dead. You killed it, somehow. When you were flung out, I felt a. . . . a weight lifting from my mind. A pressure I hadn’t known was there.” There was still an edge of worry in his voice. As if I still might be—controlled.

  Again Babcock said, “The Tree’s dead; it’s starting to rot already. How the devil did you do it, Vail?”

  I gulped more brandy and glanced at Westerly, who was still unconscious. “Just a hunch. Poor devil . . . he’s insane. Might be better if—”

  “What killed the Tree?” Gunther demanded. “It was impregnable. Completely so.”

  “Not quite,” I said. “You gave me the clue, Kearney. You said it was a delicate nervous organism, highly evolved. And it fed on intelligence—sucked the contents out of brains. I gambled on that. I gave the thing the damnedest psychic shock it had ever had. It was used to animal mentality. It absorbed yours and Gunther’s without trouble, but—Westerly was insane.”

  There was silence. I went on. “Plants never go mad. Naturally. The Tree had developed its brain to incredible delicacy. Any violent pyschic jolt would wreck it. That’s simple psychology. I gambled that if it sucked the contents of Westerly’s insane mind, its nervous organism would be disrupted completely. Like throwing a monkey-wrench in machinery made of glass. Or pouring emery dust into moving gears.”

  “It was a risk,” Babcock said.

  “Yeah. But there just wasn’t any other way. And it worked.” Nobody had an answer to that.

  I drank more brandy and shuddered. “It’s dead now, anyway. But we can preserve it, now that the thing’s harmless. Imagine the Tree of Knowledge behind a glass case in a New York museum! Direct from—Eden!”

  THE END

  A GNOME THERE WAS

  A slightly cockeyed piece concerning a gnome who did not want to be a gnome—and didn’t like the way gnomes acted anyway. So—he didn’t stay a gnome, but—

  TIM CROCKETT should never have sneaked into the mine on Dornsef Mountain. What is winked at in California may have disastrous results in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Especially when gnomes are involved.

  Not that Tim Crockett kn
ew about the gnomes. He was just investigating conditions among the lower classes, to use his own rather ill-chosen words. He was one of a group of southern Californians who had decided that labor needed them. They were wrong. They needed labor—at least eight hours of it a day.

  Crockett, like his colleagues, considered the laborer a combination of a gorilla and The Man with the Hoe, probably numbering the Kallikaks among his ancestors. He spoke fierily of downtrodden minorities, wrote incendiary articles for the group’s organ—Earth—and deftly maneuvered himself out of entering his, father’s law office as a clerk. He had, he said, a mission. Unfortunately, he got little sympathy from either the workers or their oppressors.

  A psychologist could have analyzed Crockett easily enough. He was a tall, thin, intense-looking young man, with rather beady little eyes, and a nice taste in neckties. All he needed was a vigorous kick in the pants.

  But—definitely!—not administered by a gnome!

  He was junketing through the country, on his father’s money, investigating labor conditions, to the profound annoyance of such laborers as he encountered. It was with this idea in mind that he surreptitiously got into the Ajax Coal Mine—or, at least, one shaft of it, after disguising himself as a miner and rubbing his face well with black dust. Going down in the lift, he looked singularly untidy in the midst of a group of well-scrubbed faces. Miners look dirty only after a day’s work.

  Dornsef Mountain is honeycombed, but not with the shafts of the Ajax Co. The gnomes have ways of blocking their tunnels when humans dig too close. The whole place was a complete confusion to Crockett. He let himself drift along with the others, till they began to work. A filled car rumbled past on its tracks. Crockett hesitated, and then sidled over to a husky specimen who seemed to have the marks of a great sorrow stamped on his face.

  “Look,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

  “Inglis?” asked the other inquiringly. “Viskey. Chin. Vine. Hell.”

  Having thus demonstrated his somewhat incomplete command of English, he bellowed hoarsely with laughter and returned to work, ignoring the baffled Crockett, who turned away to find another victim. But this section of the mine seemed deserted. Another loaded car rumbled past, and Crockett decided to see where it came from. He found out, after banging his head painfully and falling flat at least five times.

  It came from a hole in the wall. Crockett entered it, and simultaneously heard a hoarse cry from behind him. The unknown requested Crockett to come back.

  “So I can break your slab-sided neck,” he promised, adding a stream of sizzling profanity. “Come outa there!”

  Crockett cast one glance back, saw a gorillalike shadow lurching after him, and instantly decided that his stratagem had been discovered. The owners of the Ajax mine had sent a strong-arm man to murder him—or, at least, to beat him to a senseless pulp. Terror lent wings to Crockett’s flying feet. He rushed on, frantically searching for a side tunnel in which he might lose himself. The bellowing from behind re-echoed against the walls. Abruptly Crockett caught a significant sentence clearly.

  “—before that dynamite goes off!”

  It was at that exact moment that the dynamite went off.

  CROCKETT, however, did not know it. He discovered, quite briefly, that he was flying. Then he was halted, with painful suddenness, by the roof. After that he knew nothing at all, till he recovered to find a head regarding him steadfastly.

  It was not a comforting sort of head—not one at which you would instinctively clutch for companionship. It was, in fact, a singularly odd, if not actually revolting, head. Crockett was too much engrossed with staring at it to realize that he was actually seeing in the dark.

  How long had he been unconscious? For some obscure reason Crockett felt that it had been quite a while. The explosion had—what?

  Buried him here behind a fallen roof of rock? Crockett would have felt little better had he known that he was in a used-up shaft, valueless now, which had been abandoned long since. The miners, blasting to open a new shaft, had realized that the old one would be collapsed, but that didn’t matter.

  Except to Tim Crockett.

  He blinked, and when he reopened his eyes, the head had vanished. This was a relief. Crockett immediately decided the unpleasant thing had been a delusion. Indeed, it was difficult to remember what it had looked like. There was only a vague impression of a turnipshaped outline, large luminous eyes, and an, incredibly broad slit of a mouth.

  Crockett sat up, groaning. Where was this curious silvery radiance coming from? It was like daylight on a foggy afternoon, coming from nowhere in particular, and throwing no shadows. “Radium,” thought Crockett, who knew very little of mineralogy.

  He was in a shaft that stretched ahead into dimness till it made a sharp turn perhaps fifty feet away. Behind him—behind him the roof had fallen. Instantly Crockett began to experience difficulty in breathing. He flung himself upon the rubbly mound, tossing rocks frantically here and there, gasping and making hoarse, inarticulate noises.

  He became aware, presently, of his hands. His movements slowed till he remained perfectly motionless, in a half-crouching posture, glaring at the large, knobbly, and surprising objects that grew from his wrists. Could he, during his period of unconsciousness, have acquired mittens? Even as the thought came to him, Crockett realized that no mittens ever knitted resembled in the slightest degree what he had a right to believe to be his hands. They twitched slightly.

  Possibly they were caked with mud—no. It wasn’t that. His hands had—altered. They were huge, gnarled, brown objects, like knotted oak roots. Sparse black hairs sprouted on their backs. The nails were definitely in need of a manicure—preferably with a chisel.

  Crockett looked down at himself. He made soft cheeping noises, indicative of disbelief. He had squat bow legs, thick and strong, and no more than two feet long—less, if anything. Uncertain with disbelief, Crockett explored his body. It had changed—certainly not for the better.

  He was slightly more than four feet high, and about three feet wide, with a barrel chest, enormous splay feet, stubby thick legs, and no neck whatsoever. He was wearing red sandals, blue shorts, and a red tunic which left his lean but sinewy arms bare. His head—

  Turnip-shaped. The mouth—Yipe! Crockett had inadvertently put his fist clear into it. He withdrew the offending hand instantly, stared around in a dazed, fashion, and collapsed on the ground. It couldn’t be happening. It was quite impossible. Hallucinations. He was dying of asphyxiation, and delusions were preceding his death.

  CROCKETT SHUT his eyes, again convinced that his lungs were laboring for breath. “I’m dying,” he said. “I c-can’t breathe.”

  A contemptuous voice said, “I hope you don’t think you’re breathing air!”

  “I’m n-not—” Crockett didn’t finish the sentence. His eyes popped open. He was hearing things—

  He heard it again. “You’re a singularly lousy specimen of gnome,” the voice said, rather hoarsely, as though it had a cold. “But under Nid’s law we can’t pick and choose. Still, you won’t be put to digging hard metals, I can see that. Anthracite’s about your speed. What’re you staring at? You’re very much uglier than I am.”

  Crockett, endeavoring to lick his dry lips, was horrified to discover the end of his moist tongue dragging limply over his eyes. He whipped it back, with a loud smacking noise, and managed to sit up. Then he remained perfectly motionless, staring.

  The head had reappeared. This time there was a body under it.

  “I’m Gru Magru,” said the head chattily. “You’ll be given a gnomic name, of course, unless your own is guttural enough. What is it?”

  “Crockett,” the man responded, in a stunned, automatic manner.

  “Hey?”

  “Crockett.”

  “Stop making noises like a frog and—oh, I see, Crockett. Fair enough? Now get up and follow me or I’ll kick the pants off you.”

  But Crockett did not immediately rise. He was watching
Gru Magru—obviously a gnome. Short, squat, and stunted, the being’s figure resembled a bulging little barrel, topped by an inverted turnip. The hair grew up thickly to a peak—the root, as it were. In the turnip face was a loose, immense slit of a mouth, a button of a nose, and two very large eyes.

  “Get up!” Gru Magru said.

  This time Crockett obeyed, but the effort exhausted him completely. If he moved again, he thought, he would go mad. It would be just as well. Gnomes—Gru Magru planted a large splay foot where it would do the most good, and Crockett described an arc which ended at a jagged boulder fallen from the roof. “Get up,” the gnome said, with gratuitous bad temper, “or I’ll kick you again. It’s bad enough to have an outlying prospect patrol, where I might run into a man any time, without—Up! Or—”

  Crockett got up. Gru Magru took his arm and impelled him into the depths of the tunnel.

  “Well, you’re a gnome now,” he said. “It’s the Nid law. Sometimes I wonder if. it’s worth the trouble. But I suppose it is—since gnomes can’t propagate, and the average population has to be kept up somehow.”

  “I want to die,” Crockett said wildly.

  Gru Magru laughed. “Gnomes can’t die. They’re immortal, till the Day. Judgment Day, I mean.”

  “You’re not logical;” Crockett pointed out, as though by disproving one factor he could automatically disprove the whole fantastic business. “You’re either flesh and blood and have to die eventually, or you’re not, and then you’re not real.”

  “Oh, we’re flesh and blood, right enough,” Gru Magru said. “But we’re not mortal. There’s a distinction. Not that I’ve anything against some mortals,” he hastened to explain. “Bats, now—and owls—they’re fine. But men!” He shuddered. “No gnome can stand the sight of a man.”

  Crockett clutched-at a straw. “I’m a man.”

  “You were, you mean,” Gru said. “Not a very good. specimen, either, for my ore. But you’re a gnome now. It’s the Nid law.”

  “You keep talking about the Nid law,” Crockett complained.