Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  I remembered Irish legends of the Great Ones who slept in the hills . . . the Tuatha Dé.

  AEDIS went on. “These men had in them certain powers. But these powers were latent, like a sword in its sheath. Now in Lleu-Atlan was a sacred cavern where a god dwelt, so the legend went. In truth there was no god. There was only a force of nature for which I have no name. Lar spoke of the storm in the Cleft. You will see that storm, stand in it, and it is the same power that once burst forth in Lleu-Atlan. Power that unlocked the gate and drew the sword of life from its sheath!”

  What truth lay behind the tale of Excalibur, the sheathed sword that, drawn from the anvil, gave light to the world?

  “These men, these sleeping giants, found the power. They stood in the storm. And they came forth gods indeed. Like Lar, like me, like all our race. Time passed. The Dojin, the weak ones, died out, to be replaced by us. In time all the world was peopled by us, and Lleu-Atlan was the greatest empire that had ever existed. Until—well, the dream ended. Something happened without precedent. A Dojin was born to one of our race.

  “A Dojin. As though a woman should give birth to an ape. That was the beginning. Others were born. . . .

  “Our wise men sought the reason, but it is forgotten now. There is a story that the Earth passed through a cloud in space, a barrier that blocked certain necessary rays. And darkness and cold came to the world that Lleu-Atlan had once ruled.” The ice age? Cosmic rays? But—“And so we fled. A gateway was opened to Dyan, and in Dyan our race could live in peace. Here exist those rays which allow us to remain as we are. Here in Dyan our children are as their sires and dams, not deformed Dojin. Yet even here it is necessary that we stand in the Cleft’s storm as often as the storm breaks forth. It does that regularly, but not often—no! It is due soon now.”

  “Much of that I do not understand,” I said. “But tell me this—where is Dylan?”

  “We have never known,” Aedis said quietly. “There is no way. The wise men, long ago, opened a gateway and searched for a land where we could be safe. They found Dylan. But they did not know whether Dylan is in a different space or a different time—or in an unknowable place.”

  “What lies beyond there?” I pointed to the horizon.

  “The mists thicken eventually—we do not know. Far as we may travel, there is always land and mist beyond. But it does not matter. The wise men said this: On Earth our race would die out. The Dojin would rule again, until the planet had passed through the cloud in space. After that, evolution would begin once more. Not at once, no; the road is long and steep. But eventually the cycle would repeat itself, and one of our race would be born to a Dojin, as had happened in the past. That would be the beginning. Until at last, Earth would once more be peopled with men and women like us. . . .

  “So, when we had passed through the gateway to Dyan, we left a sign. Our wise men made the gateway half alive. It sent out a message—a summons. A message that no Dojin could hear. But if one of our race heard, he would come, and pass through the gateway to Dyan. That was necessary, for our people were scattered all over the Earth. We could not find them all. The gateway was made, and sent out its call, and soon our race came trickling in, two by two, family by family, tribe by tribe. It took long, but finally no more came. Earth held only the Dojin. And we—we were here, in Dyan!”

  “The gateway—a globe? A dull metal globe that shone with lightnings?”

  “Yes. It exists in two worlds, Earth and Dyan. Those who enter the temple are taken across space to the other world.”

  “Then we can get back?”

  She nodded. “Yes. You will go back with us.”

  I stared at her.

  “This is not our world,” Aedis said. “We are Earth-born, and belong there. Always there have been two guardians placed here, ready to welcome those who might hear the summons and come to Dyan. We knew that, some day, our race would live again on Earth. So Lar and I dwell here, for that purpose and another.”

  “What?”

  Her face darkened. “We had thought that perhaps, eventually, enemies might come through the gateway. Powerful enemies. Now we are strong indeed, but there are stronger beings—perhaps. If ever such an enemy should come to Dyan, the bridge would be destroyed.”

  “Couldn’t it be built again?” I asked. “No. From that gorge comes a breath that destroys. It blasts solid matter into nothingness. A rock, flung across the abyss, will melt in midair.”

  “What about the bridge?”

  “It was here when we came. A civilized race already held Dyan. They had built the bridge—how, no one knows now.”

  I FELT my throat go dry. “What happened to that race, Aedis?”

  She laughed at me mockingly. “Are we demons, then? Do you think we ate them alive? We are not cruel, Sean O’Mara. We dwelt here peaceably with that race—we allotted them reservations where they could do as they chose—and, after a while, they died.”

  “Their children?”

  “There were none. We saw to that. We are not killers—but continuance of that race was unnecessary.”

  “And you—plan on invading Earth?”

  “Invasion? We plan to return. We are not ruthless. You are the first mutation of the old blood to appear. Well, we will hasten that process. Those who bear in them the seeds of us, will survive. The others, who would give birth to nothing but Dojin—will not give birth. That is all.”

  “The Dojin have weapons,” I said grimly.

  “You do not yet know our power, Sean O’Mara. You will learn. You will be one of us.”

  “This storm in the Cleft—you need that periodically?”

  “Yes. Else we lose our power.”

  “You won’t find it on Earth,” I said. “That cavern in Lleu-Atlan—it’s been under the ocean for thousands of years. Lleu-Atlan is forgotten.”

  “We can find it again,” she said serenely. “Or, if not, we can pass through the gateway to stand in the storm. You do not know what we are capable of doing. You saw Lar crush the stone?”

  “Mere physical strength.”

  “More than that. We are strong, yes, and we move fast as racing water when we choose. But our minds—Sean O’Mara, if that Dojin companion of yours saw Lleu-Dyan, he would be struck blind! Our science is based on more than the five senses of the Dojin. We are—gods!” And I believed her. Some hint of the truth came to me then. I questioned Aedis.

  I was right. Endocrinology was the root of the secret. I made a note to ask Glenn later. He was, I remembered, studying medicine.

  “You must stand in the storm before your powers will be unleashed,” Aedis said. “They are latent as yet. The sword rests in its sheath. But when you have become like us—you will be changed! Changed indeed!”

  She looked at me thoughtfully. “I think I shall show you a little. Thus—” Aedis gestured. A Ghar—I could not tell them apart—came to stand before us on its stumpy feet, the four arms dangling, the blank eyes glazed.

  “Will it to die,” Aedis said.

  “Eh? I’m no murderer, even if—”

  “But these things are scarcely alive. They have no consciousness of self. We make them as we need them, to obey. But since you will not—”

  Aedis lifted her hand. The Ghar seemed to shiver and shrink into itself. It grew smaller, losing all semblance of humanity. Within a few seconds, only a pulpy, shapeless lump of flesh lay there at our feet.

  “It can be used again,” Aedis told me. “Shaped into new forms. Now it must be cast into the reservoir. I will show you our crucible, beneath the castle.”

  As she turned, a strand of her dark hair blew against my cheek. I caught my breath, my throat suddenly tight and dry. Aedis stood motionless.

  She swung back to face me, slowly. Her eyes met mine. They were aflame with little points of light, as if the power that had destroyed the Ghar still lingered within her.

  “After you have faced the storm in the Cleft—” she said. “I have guarded the gateway for a long time, Sean O’Mara.
Even Lar grows stale to me. In Dyan men have not the—”

  “What?”

  “I do not know. Something about you, Sean O’Mara, makes you unlike the men of Dyan. When you have become one of us, you will be very great. And I think you have searched for me, man of the old blood.”

  “I searched for you,” I said hoarsely. “Without knowing it.”

  “Your heritage burned within you. Never among the Dojin could you find that which you sought. But now you are among your people. I am of your blood.”

  Her lips were bitter-sweet and aflame with madness. Her body, slim as a sword, yielded to my embrace. I had known women before—yes. But never a goddess!

  Aedis! Aedis of Dyan! I would we had died together then, when our lips first met!

  And—

  “Sorry, Sean,” Glenn’s voice said quietly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  HE WAS standing at the head of the staircase that led down into the tower, his face white, a curious look of abhorrence stamped on it.

  Aedis tore herself from my arms, whirled toward Glenn. She cried, “Dojin! I shall slay you now—”

  Glenn’s glance didn’t waver. “I don’t know what she’s saying, but she’s bad medicine, Sean, in case you don’t know it. She isn’t at all human. I think she’s a devil—but it’s your own business.”

  “Right,” I said. But I gripped Aedis’s wrist and turned her away from Glenn.

  “Let me go. Your power is still latent, remember. I can slay you if I choose.”

  “Can you?”

  Her eyes dropped. “Well, I shall not try. But that Dojin—I cannot endure the creatures. They are less than human.”

  “Glenn is my friend.”

  “You say that now. After you have faced the storm. . . . I had promised to show you the crucible. Come.”

  She started down the staircase. I gripped Glenn’s elbow and urged him along. Aedis sent up an angry, flashing glance.

  “Not the Dojin.”

  “He goes where I go,” I said.

  She did not answer that, but continued her descent. We followed. I gave Glenn a sidelong glance.

  “Well?”

  “None of my business,” he mumbled. “Only—can’t you see that she’s—different? Like Lar? They both give me the shivers.”

  “I don’t feel it.”

  “No. You’re like them, somehow, but not—horrible.”

  What did Glenn see about Aedis and Lar that I could not? Did he feel toward them as an animal felt toward man? A Dojin—

  Hell! Endocrines couldn’t make all that difference. Glenn was jittery, that was all. Yet I sensed that Aedis looked on Glenn as she might have looked on a snake, and she resented my protecting him against her anger.

  We went down and down, beneath the castle. Aedis showed us the crucible, as she had promised. Glenn could not bear it, and I felt sick qualms, though I managed to stick it out. The reservoir was the worst—a great basin filled with fleshy, palpitating, grayish stuff like protoplasm. Out of this the Ghar were molded—in any shape desired. Molded by the power of thought alone.

  It was horrible.

  I stood motionless, staring at that hideous reservoir. The gray stuff pulsed faintly beneath my gaze.

  It was like clay. Living clay. To be molded—

  From my mind a—something—reached out questingly. I felt Aedis’s eyes on me. She had not spoken, but she was urging me to do—

  To do what?

  In the center of the reservoir a lump of protoplasm heaved itself up. It took shape—the shape of a man, crude, unformed but unmistakable. I stepped forward, my hand instinctively lifting in a gesture of command as the thing shaped itself in obedience to my thought.

  “Yes! Yes!” Aedis whispered. “That is it! Force the flesh to bind itself to form!”

  The grotesque caricature of a man heaved itself up, mouth open in a soundless shriek.

  Like a damned soul in hell!

  Hard hands gripped my shoulders, swung me around. Glenn’s horrified face was before me. He recoiled.

  To me he looked no more human than the thing in the reservoir. But his voice pierced through the mists that fogged my brain.

  “Sean! For God’s sake, what are you doing?”

  And the cry of Aedis—triumphant as a trumpet blast.

  “You have the power! You are one of us—you have the power!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Destiny to Shatter

  NOW I must be brief. There were three of us in the castle, aside from the inhuman Ghar, and I judge that by Earthly standards about a fortnight passed before the affair reached its tragic climax. During those two weeks, unmarked by sun or calendar, much happened. But no superficial eye could have guessed that.

  Two weeks with Aedis—

  Aedis, goddess of Dyan. I tasted a rapture such as no man had ever known. Nor can I forget it until my body is dust, and even then, I think, the dust will remember.

  I had come into my heritage—

  Glenn hated her and feared her. Him she treated with casual contempt. He was an annoyance to her, but, because of me, she tolerated him—and that was all.

  I told Glenn what I had learned. He was surprisingly credulous.

  “Endocrinology’s pretty mysterious, Sean. Medical science is just beginning to find out what makes the glands tick. The thyroid, the thalamus, the pineal—they’re the gadgets that make us human. And when they go out of kilter our minds and bodies don’t work right.”

  “Yeah? Then—”

  “You know what a hypo of thiamin chloride will do—tone you up and get rid of toxins. And that’s just Bi. Normally the ductless glands do the job of keeping the human organism functioning perfectly. It’s entirely possible that they’re capable of a lot more than we know. Aedis may be right—when the Earth entered that cloud in space, lack of radiation may have inhibited the secretions of certain vital glands. Those particular secretions may mean the difference between man and superman. Hell, nobody knows the function of the pineal. Apparently it hasn’t got any, but maybe its function—” he hesitated—“means the difference between Aedis and me.”

  “I wish you’d try and get over these screwy feelings of yours,” I said abruptly. “She’s no monster. How would you like it if I felt that way about Paula?”

  He turned away his head, his body suddenly tense. “She’s human; I know where I’m at with Paula. Some day we’ll get married and buy a house and raise kids. I’ll be an M.D. She’ll cook the things I like, and I’ll get her the things she wants. We’ll have fun together. Going to shows, hiking in the snow, swimming—normal, ordinary things. I wish to God I was back in—”

  “Illinois?”

  He grinned tightly. “Well, not yet. There’s a little matter of a war to be finished first. Remember?”

  “If Aedis’s people come to Earth, they’ll end the war.”

  “Sure. But how?”

  “They’re not killers.”

  “They kill the future,” he said somberly. “Paula and I both want kids. That’s part of marriage—our sort of marriage. Weeding out the—the Dojin and subjecting them to sterilization radiations—the devil with that!”

  “The Earth was theirs once,” I said. “And they left it; took a powder. Our race has won the Earth now, Sean, and fought damned hard to do it. If Aedis’s people had stayed, stuck it out, they’d eventually have regained what they lost. Evolution means struggle. Sure, there are plenty of set-backs—but you can’t simply step outside when there’s trouble, and try to get back in stride after the trouble’s passed. That’s what these super-endocrines are trying to do. But the Earth is ours—for our race and our children.”

  I looked at him, feeling Aedis’s kisses still hot on my lips. “Your race, Glenn.”

  “Yours, too.”

  “No—I’m finding that out.”

  Glenn grimaced. “You’ll change your mind.”

  “The Dojin,” I said deliberately, “are done. Washed up. They’ve had their chance and
made a mess of it. They’ll be allowed to die out. They deserve to. The people of Dyan are not evil and they have grown intellectually and morally as well as physically. Crime, war, slums, hatred, misery—that’s what the Dojin have accomplished. None of that exists among what you call the super-endocrines.”

  “Just the same, Aedis gives me the creeps,” Glenn said. “And you’re beginning to affect me the same way.”

  I turned angrily toward the door. A hand fell on my shoulder.

  “Hold on,” Glenn said contritely. “I didn’t mean that, you dope. You’re still Sean O’Mara, in spite of that she-tiger. But, look, don’t change. Please don’t. You’re coming back to Illinois with me, remember? After the scrap’s over? Remember that turkey dressing?”

  I laughed, pushing my fist against Glenn’s jaw. “Okay, kid. I’ll go back to your hick town with you—and cut you out with Paula.”

  He looked happier than I’d seen him look for days. But as I went out, I caught sight of a Ghar shuffling along the corridor, and suddenly my heart was very heavy. It was like being caught in a net—fighting the inevitable, and knowing that struggle only prolonged the ultimate, changeless end.

  For there was Aedis—and there was the blood within me, the blood that had come down from Lleu-Atlan, stirring and quickening now into lusty life. Already I had changed. The Earth, the Dojin! Not of my breed! Here in Dyan was my heritage, here were my people.

  And here—Aedis!

  I FOUND her on the tower. A taut, breathless excitement was in her manner.

  “I would have sought you soon, Sean, had you not come. Look there!” She pointed into the distant haze.

  “What? I see nothing.”

  “You are blind, but soon your eyes will be opened. No, you cannot see as far as I, yet, but I tell you this: Lar returns! And the people of Lleu-Dyan are behind him. They bear weapons and other things. For they march to the gateway. To the Earth their ancestors left long ago!”