Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “You’re right,” Johnny said. “On second thought, I’d better keep the store. But it won’t be open for business. It’ll be my private office. You see, darling, I’ve got a new job. Good pay, easy hours, and a future.”

  “No! What is it?”

  “I’m a gossip columnist.”

  “B—but—can you do it?”

  “Why not?” Johnny grinned wickedly. “It’s just a matter of finding out the news before it happens. What’s so hard about that?”

  “Oh, honey,” Dinah said, snuggling closer. “You’re wonderful!”

  SILENT EDEN

  A Superhuman Being Shackles Two Mortals in a Private World Where Only Thought-Power Can Triumph!

  Eleanor and I sat together on the ancient sofa and waited for our host to return.

  “This place gives me the creeps, Barney,” she said.

  “It’s just one of the old mansions on Riverside Drive,” I told her. “We’ll push off soon.”

  Our host, John Deering, came back with a decanter and glasses. He was handsome, in a colorless, soft sort of way, and almost pitifully eager to be hospitable.

  “We can’t stay long—” I began.

  “Please,” he said, in a cultured, gentle voice. “You’ve been of great service to me. At least let me offer you a drink.”

  There was nothing to do but accept.

  It was good brandy, and I leaned back beside Eleanor as I drank it, watching the light from an old-fashioned prism chandelier glint on her hair.

  Deering’s gratitude had been profuse enough to be embarrassing. Far too great for the service involved. Eleanor and I had been parked by the Hudson—for it was a moonlit night, and we were engaged—and I’d stepped out of the car to investigate a man who was bent over the railing, apparently ill. He’d managed to give me his card, explaining that he was suffering a heart attack, and we’d driven him to his home. That was all there had been to it.

  Now Deering twirled his glass and watched us.

  “I don’t look sick, do I?” he asked, smiling. Well, my work is pretty hard. I’m a scientist.”

  Eleanor’s brown eyes glowed.

  “A scientist?”

  “Or inventor. I’ll show you, later, if you wish.” He hesitated. “I hope you won’t think I’m intrusive, but—” His gaze fastened on Eleanor’s ring. “May I congratulate you, Mr. Corbett?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He stared at us. “You’re in love. Well—” He drank brandy and then said a curious thing. “Emotional values are so unpredictable in humans.”

  The way he said it sent a sudden, cold shiver down my spine. Humans—as though he referred to some race vastly different from his own. An odd thought, which I dismissed immediately.

  Deering got up. “Let me show you my invention. It may amuse you.”

  He seemed pathetically eager to show his gratitude. I felt vaguely uncomfortable.

  But, without offending Deering, we could not leave just yet.

  Eleanor squeezed my arm. “Come along, Barney. I’m curious.”

  SO we followed Deering down a flight of steps into the basement. He opened a door in the wall, and we found ourselves entering a cement-walled room that held nothing at all but a—what?

  I stared.

  It hung unsupported in the air, four feet above the floor, a glowing sphere that somehow hurt my eyes. It was no larger than my head, and shone with a pale, white phosphorescence. Yet over its surface motion crawled. It seemed alive.

  Its movement was that of the sea, interminable, unpredictable—and strange!

  “What on earth—” Eleanor said. Deering leaned against the wall, smiling.

  “Go ahead. Touch it.”

  I extended my hand. It was stopped a few inches from the ball’s surface, as though by an invisible wall.

  I swept my hand under the thing, and over it. No wires, no glass supports.

  “What holds it up?” I asked Deering. “Magnets?”

  He shook his head. “It’s rather complicated. You can’t touch it, because it exists in another space-time continuum. Another plane of existence, that is.”

  “What is the thing?” Eleanor asked. She was admiring the way her ring sparkled in the gleams from the shining sphere.

  “Call it a thought materializer.” Deering still smiled, but I thought that his eyes were watchful. “It works on the principle of any amplifier. If you had sufficient will power, Mr. Corbett, you could create material objects by merely thinking.”

  Eleanor glanced at me. Was our host—slightly batty?

  “Name a flower,” Deering said.

  I said, “A rose,” just as Eleanor said, “A lily.”

  Our host nodded. He went to a wall and opened a door I had not seen. Behind it was nothing but a tall, deep alcove lined with a substance like black glass. The floor was of the same material, and on it lay what looked like a helmet, covered with wires so tiny and closely woven that they resembled cloth.

  Deering placed the helmet on his head.

  A wire, ending in a metal plug, dangled from it. He closed the door, inserted the plug into a socket in the wall, then flicked open a transparent panel in the door.

  “Watch.”

  Eleanor and I peered into the alcove. Abruptly we heard a moaning whirr from behind us. I glanced back. That incredible ball of light was spinning like a tiny world.

  Deering’s eyes were closed. Trickles of opalescent brightness ran across the surface of his helmet. And light played over the walls of the alcove.

  Suddenly, through the panel, I saw a thin mist forming. It coalesced, assuming outlines that were vaguely familiar. Inchoate, tenuous, the ghost of a flower was there beyond the glass—a lily.

  It was three-dimensional and real! Incredibly it lay there. And, beside it, another fog thickened into the form of a rose.

  The light drifting over the walls faded and was gone. I met Eleanor’s eyes and read stark incredulity in them.

  A trick?

  DEERING opened the door. He picked up the flowers and handed them to Eleanor.

  They looked perfectly normal, and were quite fresh.

  “How the devil did you do that?” I said weakly.

  Deering grinned. “The machine concentrated my thoughts—amplified them,” he said.

  For the life of me I couldn’t figure out where the flowers had come from. “You mean—you created them?” Deering nodded. “Yes, I created them, Mr. Corbett. Indian fakirs can do the same—sometimes.”

  “Hypnotism?” I hazarded.

  “I’m not hypnotizing you. Anyway, just what is hypnotism? Making you see something that isn’t there?”

  “Yes—”

  “Not quite. You can be hypnotized into smelling, tasting, feeling, hearing, as well as seeing. If you’re made to believe you’re being burned with a hot iron, you’ll develop a blister. If the iron were real, what more could it do?” He had me there, of course. Still I was unconvinced. Deering smiled and went on:

  “Some people do have strong mental power. Hypnotism is a form of it. It’s a way of creating matter. Usually that can be done only briefly, but—well, those flowers are permanent. My machine made them real by focusing my thoughts. I visualized them—there they are.”

  Eleanor smell the rose. “It’s here, all right.”

  “You’re difficult to convince,” Deering said. “Look here.” He closed his eyes.

  I heard Eleanor gasp. My gaze turned from our host. A shock of sheer amazement paralyzed me.

  Deering had closed the alcove’s door. Through the panel I saw the familiar play of light on the walls, and a glowing fog that thickened even as I watched.

  It became—Eleanor!

  Deering opened the door. Eleanor, with a quick intake of breath, gripped my arm.

  “Barney!” she said. “Oh!”

  “Please don’t be alarmed,” our host said. “Your double is mindless—a robot. She hasn’t any initiative, any intelligence. Watch. He turned to the thing. “Come fo
rward,” he ordered.

  The—creature—walked forward, and stopped at Deering’s command. It was identical with Eleanor in every detail.

  And, somehow, I felt a hot tide of anger. For this was subtly repugnant, as though my fiancee had been insulted.

  “Wait a minute, Deering,” I said.

  He looked at me. “Oh—I’m sorry. I forgot your natural reaction. But this is no more human than a wax dummy.”

  “It’s alive.”

  “Without intelligence. Without emotions. It’s a flesh-and-blood robot. You see, Mr. Corbett, all bodies are composed of electrons, setting up an individual atomic pattern in each case. If free electrons are arranged in the particular pattern of you, an exact double is created. The building blocks of matter are all around us. My machine simply focuses and concentrates my mental picture of a flower, or a human being. You’ve a familiar example in the pantagraph. It makes exact copies, just as my device makes copies three-dimensionally.”

  INTEREST was beginning to submerge my anger.

  “You can coin a fortune with this thing! You can make gold—jewels—anything! If they’re real—Why, you could make an army of robots!”

  Deering shook his head. “No one can command them but I. Try it.”

  I didn’t like the idea, somehow. Eleanor finally told the creature that was her double to close its eyes, but there was no response.

  Deering nodded toward the alcove. “I don’t even need that focusing apparatus. It makes my task easier, but the real heart of the machine is that sphere. Look!”

  In the empty air before me, a thin fog sprang into being. It swirled and thickened like a nebula. It looked like the ghostly shadow of a man.

  Suddenly I seemed to be looking into a mirror. Facing me was a perfect replica of myself. Complete, down to the last detail of clothing!

  Deering’s pale, handsome face was expressionless. Only his eyes glowed into mine.

  I felt a cold shock. Icy fingers seemed to be reaching into my brain. My body was suddenly paralyzed.

  Unconsciousness? No—for I heard Deering’s voice. Yet I couldn’t move, couldn’t lift a finger.

  “You will obey,” he said.

  My mind felt like a caged bird fluttering against bars. I couldn’t think.

  “You will obey,” the voice out of blackness went on. “You cannot betray me. When you attempt to tell anyone who or what I am, when you attempt to get help against me, you will be unable to do so. Remember! Now—sleep.”

  After that—darkness indeed . . .

  I woke up in Eden.

  That isn’t figurative, by any means. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on cloverlike grass under a tree, and Eleanor was beside me, asleep. What first impressed me, I think, was the sky. It wasn’t blue. It was a soft golden hue, cloudless and without depth. I wondered if I had not been transported to another world.

  Certainly the scene around me justified such a surmise. The grass on which I lay held a bluish tint, and was mosslike. The tree—

  Its leaves, too, were bluish, and the fruit hung in blushing clusters of rose-and-yellow spheres, larger than peaches.

  I stood up. I was on a hill-top. A clear brook of crystalline water near me ran downhill to vanish in the grass. All around grew the trees, innumerable varieties of which I had never heard.

  The hill was—walled! What I had taken for the sky was, in reality, something like a great golden bowl that prisoned us. The golden wall was unbroken, rising to a dome overhead.

  Eleanor was awakening. I remembered Deering. He had done this to us, somehow. Hypnotized us, transported us here. But where was “here” ?

  ELEANOR’S eyes opened. She saw the strange sky, and with a little gasp reached for me. My arms went around her, and we sat for a while silent, taking comfort in each other’s nearness.

  “Barney,” she said at last, “what’s happened?”

  “The last I remember was Deering hypnotizing me,” I said.

  Her brown eyes widened as she saw our strange little world. “But—I don’t understand.”

  The last Eleanor remembered, it seemed, was Deering’s voice telling her to sleep. But what had happened in the interim neither she nor I could imagine.

  “We can’t be still in his house,” I said. “That’s obvious.”

  Idly I reached up and plucked one of the rosy fruits. Its flesh was sweetly succulent.

  “We’re the only people here,” Eleanor said. “We can see all over our private world.”

  I nodded toward the wall.

  “Shall we explore?”

  Purposely I showed no excitement, realizing that Eleanor might be near hysteria, and with good cause! Together we went down the hill, through the grove beside the streamlet. It was clear, sweet water, we found.

  Clusters of fruit hung like moons above us. Beyond, the golden sky was changeless and eternal. It was Eden, indeed.

  But it was silent. No birds piped in the branches. There was not even a trace of insect life. Eleanor and I might have been the only living beings on Earth.

  Not even Adam and Eve had been so—alone!

  We reached the golden wall. I stared at it in wonder. It was made of some substance that was smooth as plastic. I reached out to touch it—and my hand sank into the wall as though it had been fog!

  It was an illusion—not real. I felt suddenly exultant. With a cry I leaped forward, right through the wall, and stood blinded momentarily by the glare of sunlight. A cool, fresh wind blew on my face.

  The ground sloped down through aisles of green trees—familiar, Earthly trees—to a metal fence. Beyond was a highway, on which automobiles were passing.

  “We’re all right now, Eleanor,” I said, glancing aside. But she wasn’t there.

  Fear struck through me. I turned, and the golden wall was gone. I looked at a flat, bare plain stretching for perhaps a mile before the trees began again. There was nothing on the plain—nothing!

  “Eleanor!” I cried, and my shout came out a whisper.

  I stumbled forward, and suddenly under my feet was soft grass. The sky was once more a golden bowl. The hill of strange trees loomed, and Eleanor, her cheeks wet with frightened tears, was in my arms.

  “Barney! Barney!”

  The wall was behind me once more, golden and cryptic, shutting out the familiar terrestrial landscape.

  “You can walk right through it,” I said. “There’s a highway down the slope a bit. Come along.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t! I saw you vanish into the wall and tried to follow—but I couldn’t!”

  I shook my head. “But if I can—”

  AGAIN I tested the wall with my hand. Eleanor put her hand beside mine. She couldn’t seem to penetrate the barrier.

  I gripped her wrist and tried to force it forward. But now the wall was real and solid.

  “You’re hurting me,” she said. “It’s no use, Barney. I tried—”

  But we didn’t give up until it became quite evident that I could pass through the wall, and she couldn’t. After circumnavigating the entire inner side of the wall, we realized that it was an impassable barrier—to Eleanor only.

  What next?

  “You’ve got to leave me, Barney. Get help. The police, or—or somebody.”

  “Leave you here?” I looked around.

  “I’ll be safe enough. There’s nothing here to hurt me.”

  That was true. We could see all over our private world. It was empty. Food and drink were there in plenty. But there was no other life than ourselves.

  I didn’t want to leave Eleanor, but it was the only way. So at last I went out through the golden wall, with a sick, horrible feeling, and the memory of her white, frightened face tearing at my heart.

  Then behind me was no hill and no Eleanor, just the bare, arid plain. I hurried down the slope and reached the highway in five minutes.

  My own car was there, parked beside the road.

  That gave me a decided shock. The door was locked, but on investigatio
n I found the key in my pocket. The Hudson River—I guessed it was the Hudson—was across the road, so I turned south. I had to get help in a hurry.

  At a small town I drew up beside a policeman who was directing traffic. His ruddy face turned questioningly to me.

  “Yeah? What can I do for you?”

  I opened my mouth, but didn’t say anything. I wanted to tell him what had happened. I wanted to ask him to get help, to come back with me to where Eleanor waited—and I couldn’t say a word!

  Instead, I suddenly remembered Deering’s hypnotic command: “You cannot betray me. When you attempt to get help, you will be unable to do so . . .”

  The whole thing was impossible. Deering couldn’t fetter my tongue. I need only say a few words, and the authorities would do the rest. A few words—and I couldn’t say them.

  The officer was staring.

  “Well?”

  He leaned forward and sniffed suspiciously.

  “Is—is this the New York road?” I asked at last, and had no difficulty in forming those words.

  “Sure. Straight ahead, through Yonkers.”

  I drove on, my thoughts a chaos. How could I get help, if I couldn’t talk? Well, I could write! I parked and drew out notebook and pencil.

  I made meaningless scrawls. Deering’s hypnotic command was far too strong for me. Every time I tried to betray him, I found myself up against an impassable mental barrier, as strong as the golden wall that prisoned Eleanor.

  IT took several trials before I was convinced. But, at last, I was in upper Manhattan, heading for Deering’s home. That, at least, was possible to me.

  I reached the mansion and got out. The old-fashioned knocker banged under my hand. The door opened, and Deering pallidly handsome, smiling a little, stepped back, holding a gun aimed at my heart.

  “Come in,” he invited. “I expected you.”

  Deering gestured me into the drawing room where we had sat the night before.

  “Sit down and relax. First of all, Corbett, understand this. Your fiancée is in no danger. She won’t be harmed. Neither will you.”

  “But you may be,” I said.

  He laughed and gestured negligently with the gun.

  “Oh, sit down. Don’t be melodramatic. I’ve an explanation to make, and it may as well be made in comfort.”