Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “What will happen? Man won’t conquer the stars. That’s one dream he’ll never fulfill. But the robots will. They’ll have no trouble in building spaceships. Maybe they can do that now, only they’re not ready. And we thought the super-race would be a mutation of man!”

  Betty didn’t answer. When Jerrold turned to her, she lifted her face as though expecting his mouth to seek hers. There was no passion in the kiss; there was something deeper, a blind, desperate search for reassurance, a hunger that could never be sated. It was a man’s hunger for the unattainable. And it was bitter.

  He drew back suddenly. Betty’s eyes glowed with a faint reflection of the lights beyond them. She was warm, human, attainable—and it did not matter.

  “I’m . . . awfully credulous,” Jerrold said unsteadily.

  “You saw them. They make you believe. It’s because they’re what they are.”

  “I suppose so. That’s why I feel it’s hopeless to try to do anything.”

  “Quite hopeless.”

  “Just the same—”

  There was silence. After a time Jerrold said, “Aren’t there places in the world where their power doesn’t reach?”

  “The unimportant places. The ones that don’t matter. They control only the key spots; that’s all that’s necessary.” She moved into his arms, her gaze holding his. “I’m very lonely, Mr. Mike Jerrold. I like you to hold me. Do you know what may happen to us?”

  “What?” he asked softly.

  “Marriage,” she said, shrugging a little. “Or not. It doesn’t matter. You’ll be processed. That’s inevitable. You won’t be able to tell anyone about the robots. It would be nice to be with you as long as this lasts. I can afford to tell the truth, because I know there’s no time to waste.”

  “I’m going to fight,” Jerrold said. “The robots can’t be invulnerable. Somehow, somewhere, there must be a way—”

  “There is no way.” She shivered. “Take me home, please. I’m not afraid. I can’t be afraid; I was processed against it. It’s just that—Take me home.”

  Jerrold did, and her face stayed with him during the long ride back to Manhattan. She had become a symbol, perhaps a symbol of humanity, resigned, going down to an unknown but predestined doom. In the background the inhuman silhouettes of the robots loomed. They were alien. There was not even a standard matrix for them. Their shape did not matter, as long as they were functionally designed to fulfill their tasks.

  Jerrold did not sleep that night. It rained, the hot, sticky rain of the New York summer, and he walked the streets, his steps inevitably returning to the building where Betty worked. On the fifteenth floor, without lights—they needed none—the robots worked untiringly, directing the destinies of mankind. Through—something—in all the telephones of the five boroughs they listened to thoughts and molded those thoughts. And men believed that their decisions were their own!

  In most cases they were. But not the important ones, not the judgments that helped to work out the robot plan. Sacrifice and gallantry were words. The net lifted and closed, and there was no possible escape. For man himself had woven that net.

  The hot rain pelted against Jerrold’s gaunt cheeks. His footsteps rang hollow, echoing softly through the canyonlike streets.

  He went back to his apartment and yanked the telephone from its cord, dropping the instrument into a closet. Then he found his automatic, loaded it, and picked up a light traveling bag. The chance was worth taking.

  He knew where to buy the strong corrosive acid he wanted, and, to make certain, he got several quarts. Then he waited till morning.

  At eight he was entering the foyer of the building, just in time to catch a glimpse of Betty Andrews disappearing into the elevator. Suddenly Jerrold felt cold. He sprinted forward, shouting the girl’s name, but he was too late; the panel slid shut.

  The starter touched his arm. “Next car, please.”

  “Yeah . . . yeah.”

  Jerrold’s eyes lifted to the indicator. The lights slid swiftly around the dial. Two. Three. Four—Fifteen. It stopped there, and then descended again.

  Jerrold went into the next car. “Fifteen,” he said.

  He got off at fifteen. Betty was sitting behind the window, and there was no surprise in her eyes when she saw him.

  “Hello, Mike,” she said.

  “Hello. I’m going in there.” He looked toward the door.

  “They won’t hurt you.”

  “Do you think—” Jerrold’s lips clamped together. “Listen,” he said. “I’d like to take you and go off somewhere, in the backwoods, maybe, where those devils can’t reach us. Would you go with me?”

  “It’s no use.” Her voice was calm with acceptance of an inevitable reality.

  “Don’t be a fool. They’ve got you hypnotized.”

  “They don’t need to use hypnotism. No, Mike. They’re not hard masters. They’d let us do anything we wanted, because we couldn’t want anything that would harm them. If you want me, I’ll be here. And if you want me, you’ll come back. Only you won’t feel the same way then. About the robots, I mean. You’ll have been processed.”

  Jerrold made a hoarse, inarticulate sound and swung away, thrusting the door open. The robot was still there, gliding noiselessly around the relief map on the table, its fingers busy.

  Jerrold took out his gun and emptied it at the robot. He aimed carefully. The wire grid that served for a face looked most vulnerable.

  He’d expected bullets to fail, so he wasn’t too disappointed. He set down the bag, opened it, and took out the acid.

  It was strong acid. But it harmed neither the robot nor the relief map.

  Jerrold went out, carefully closing the door behind him. He didn’t look at Betty, though he could feel her eyes on him as he rang for the elevator, stepped into the car, and turned. He saw her then, a brief glimpse when the panel closed.

  “Twenty-first,” he said to the operator.

  Vaneman wasn’t in his office.

  “If you’ll wait, Mr. Jerrold—”

  “Yeah. O.K.” He didn’t want to wait in the anteroom, with the girl stealing glances at his mussed hair, his untidy clothes. He walked into Vaneman’s private office, and the receptionist, after a startled jerk, made no move to stop him.

  Jerrold was halfway across the room when the telephone rang. He was not really conscious of lifting the receiver to his ear. He heard the receptionist’s voice saying, “Dr. Vaneman is on the wire, Mr. Jerrold.”

  Jerrold said, “Yeah?”

  “ ‘Lo, Mike,” Vaneman’s deep rumble came. “I’ll be delayed about half an hour. The girl said you’d just come in. Wait for me, eh?”

  “O.K.”

  Jerrold cradled the receiver. His face was gray, and an empty sickness was in his stomach. He stepped back, staring at the telephone.

  The gadget—

  The robots controlled telephones. A moment ago, they had been en rapport with his mind, listening, ready to issue their commands. It had been a mistake to pick up the receiver. Jerrold had done that automatically.

  And he had not been processed.

  His sense of relative values remained unaltered. His plans were the same. He still intended to convince Vaneman of the truth, to show the physician what was in the suite on the fifteenth floor, to induce Vaneman to use his influence with the authorities. He still planned to fight the robots by publicizing their activities.

  He had not been processed. Which meant, obviously, that Betty had lied on one point. The rest had been truth. Only one vital factor was a lie.

  The instrument the robots used was not a telephone.

  Perhaps Betty thought it was. She had been processed. The robots controlled her mind. Naturally they would not let her reveal the secret of their power—the nature of their weapon.

  It was not a telephone.

  “It’s something everybody uses, and uses often. Built into it is a device that seems to serve a perfectly natural mechanical purpose. It does serve that purpose.
But it also keeps open a connection with the robots. It keeps them in mental touch with anyone who uses that particular device.”

  Betty had said that.

  Something everybody uses—

  Jerrold backed up against the desk and let his gaze swing slowly, probingly, around the room. He looked carefully at every object. In the end, he was no wiser.

  Not a telephone. But what—

  Jerrold’s nails dug into his sweaty palms. He stared around again, feeling the net closing about him. Not a telephone. What, then—

  He’d find out, of course. But he’d never know it.

  THE END.

  CORPUS DELICTI

  Gentlemen of the jury, I am not guilty. It was suicide. I took every reasonable precaution. Can I be held responsible for a death that can’t even be proved? Naturally there’s no corpus delicti—

  I’d like to explain just what happened.

  He came into my laboratory a week ago, in response to my newspaper advertisement, and said he wanted the job. I told him it was dangerous. But, after all, I had already tried the process on myself, and I’d suffered no injury. It was a simple matter of extradimensional consciousness. He didn’t understand, I’m sure; but he was a fat, husky specimen with a strong heart and satisfactory blood pressure, and I was more concerned with his body than with his brain. His name was Joe Coney.

  “Look,” I said to him, “I want you to take a trip with me. That’s all. I want to make sure conditions in that . . . uh . . . place look the same to you as they do to me.”

  “O.K.,” Coney said, reaching for a pretzel in the bowl on the bench. “Where to?”

  “The fourth dimension,” I told him.

  He ate another pretzel. “Magic, huh?”

  I hadn’t intended to explain my theory, but that annoyed me. “There’s no magic about it,” I said, pretty sharply, I suppose. “We’re conscious of only three dimensions, because our minds are conditioned to those dimensions. There are others. In fact, Mr. Coney, our physical bodies extend into at least a fourth dimension and possibly more.”

  He finished some pretzels and started on a box of chocolates. “Sounds like magic to me. I know where I am and where I ain’t.”

  I tried to point out his fallacy. A three-dimensional consciousness can’t realize its fourth-dimensional extension. Naturally! But that extension exists. Perhaps it’s the basic truth behind legends about astrals. The fact is, there’s a great deal more to us physically than we know. The only way to feel our fourth-dimensional bodies is to switch our con-, sciousness into them—which my patented device can do.

  Mr. Coney found a package of cheese crackers and finished them before I had completed my preparations. He submitted to the injections, which I duplicated on my own person, and, after turning on the power, we instantly found ourselves on a fourth-dimensional plane. Let me make this clear. Our minds, our intelligences, were now inhabiting the fourth-dimensional extensions of our bodies—leaving, obviously, the bodies we had possessed on Earth.

  Everything looks entirely different on the plane of the fourth. My laboratory and the things in it were unrecognizable. Cubes had changed to rods; retorts were corkscrews—yes, there is a decided difference. Mr. Coney was finishing the last of his crackers and staring around with a wild look in his eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Just tell me what you see. Does that look like trapezehedron to you?”

  But he started to chatter like one of the lower primates. It took awhile to calm him down. By that time the dimensional drift had carried us away from the laboratory. Beneath us was an immense plain filled with cubes, spheres, and less identifiable objects, variously tinted, and most of them moving here and there.

  “I think that’s Fifth Avenue,” I said. “Those are people, as they look to our four-dimensional consciousness. That eellike thing may be a bus. Quite tiny, isn’t it?”

  After a time, by dint of calm reasoning, I soothed Mr. Coney into some semblance of normality. He was even able to give me a certain amount of assistance in collating my data. We spent—let me see—perhaps two hours in the four-dimensional plane. Mr. Coney began to complain, so I finally shrugged and guided him back to the laboratory. He said he was hungry.

  I am scarcely to blame for Mr. Coney’s indiscriminate greed. I beg your pardon. To return—the tragic event occurred after we had returned to the laboratory. I was searching for the automatic ray control that would return us to three-dimensional existence, and not noticing what Mr. Coney was doing. As I have said, the room and all that was in it looked entirely unfamiliar to our vision. There was a gigantic pyramid in one curve of the wall, various indeterminate objects of all shapes and sizes—and it was one of those objects that Mr. Coney picked up. He was a greedy man, and I confess the rosy, pear-shaped thing looked rather appetizing. Anyway, Mr. Coney ate it in two bites.

  Of course it wasn’t a pear. I discovered that soon enough. It was Mr. Coney’s own three-dimensional body, as it had appeared to our four-dimensional consciousness. Farfetched as it may sound, Mr. Coney had succeeded in the remarkable feat of devouring himself.

  Naturally there is no corpus delicti. Your eyes, conditioned to a three-dimensional world, can’t perceive it. And I am certainly not responsible for Mr. Coney’s anthropophagous appetite!

  NO GREATER LOVE

  HE was a thief, but worse, he was basically plain, completely selfish. But he stole the Love Charm, the charm that protected him against any who came near him. Save that he forgot one small fact of entomology—

  Mr. Denworth was troubled with pixies, a circumstance scarcely mitigated by the fact that it was his own fault. Certainly he was unwise to indulge in shoplifting in this particular store. The shingle over the door should have warned him, for it said, “By Royal Appointment—H.R.H. Oberon.” An unusual name, Oberon—and the customers of the Pixy Shop were quite as odd. Denworth discovered that somewhat later.

  He was a thin, dark, saturnine man in his forties, handsome in the manner of a Toledo blade, and with a depth of reserve that covered a vile temper which could not brook opposition. Some years before, he had married a plump, helplessly pretty widow who had proved surprisingly shrewd—so much so that Denworth found himself disappointed in his plan to retire on Agatha Denworth’s ample fortune. In this case, love accepted turned to hate; but both parties deftly hid their real feelings in a so-called civilized fashion. Denworth, his hopes baffled, raised a cryptic eyebrow and took sadistic pleasure in making his wife uncomfortable, while Agatha grimly held on to her money and wept only in private. Her tears were not for Denworth, but for the fragile bubble she had mistaken for a reality. The man thought of her as a spider, avid to devour her mate, but the truth was somewhat different. Humiliation and pride stiffened Agatha’s backbone for the first time in her life; she was willing to be hated, but not despised. After a few months of marriage, it became uncomfortably evident that Denworth had looked on the lady with emotionless contempt, seeing in her only a suitable tool-readymade for his skilled hand. But Denworth, of course, was an intellectual snob—

  Agatha, to save her own face, had advanced him a sufficient sum to buy a partnership in the Columbus Insurance Co., but Denworth held little stock—not enough to give him a controlling vote, of course. He didn’t like half loaves, but he realized the wisdom of the truism. So at forty-four Edgar Denworth was married to a wife he hated, worked disinterestedly at a nominal job with Columbus, and was passionately in love with Myra Valentine, the socialite actress who rivaled the Hollywood brilliant stars in glamorous publicity brilliant stars in glamorous publicity.

  Myra just laughed.

  For months the fires had been building up within Denworth’s soul. His face, with its high Indian cheekbones and the pallid blue eyes, was completely expressionless as he walked along Sycamore Avenue that afternoon, dressed with careful casualness in well-fitting tweeds. Fourth Street, his usual route from the office to the Blue Boar Bar, was being torn up, so, on this eventful day, Denworth detoured
into shady, tree-lined Sycamore Avenue, with its rows of small shops and its tall apartment buildings. He was feeling none too good.

  There was reason. At the office, his conservative partners had outvoted him on a point of business development. Myra Valentine had been in to alter the beneficiary of her policy, and had treated Denworth with humiliating coldness. Finally, his account at the bank was overdrawn, and he had had to ask Agatha for money. True, she had written a check without a word, but—damn her!

  There was no escape. Agatha’s death would alter nothing, except for the worse, since Denworth would inherit little of value. He knew the contents of his Wife’s will. And a divorce—no! That would mean separating from the safeguard of Agatha’s money. In a pinch, she always wrote a check; and there had been many pinches for Edgar Denworth lately. His investments were too reckless to be profitable.

  It was unpleasant to feel balked at every step. Denworth took it as a personal insult when the cloudy sky suddenly fulfilled its promise and let loose with a driving shower. Thin lips clamped, he dived for the nearest shelter—an awning above the entrance of a small shop where, he saw at a glance, objets d’arte were sold. At least that was Denworth’s impression, after a hurried glance at the many-paned window.

  He lit a cigarette and looked for a cab. No luck. The street was almost deserted, and Denworth, fuming, looked around, his attention caught by the dripping, wind-rocked green shingle above the shop’s door. It was shield-shaped, bearing a crown of odd design, painted in gilt, and under the crown was the legend: “By Royal Appointment—H.R.H. Oberon.”

  Curious!

  Denworth glanced into the window, which at first glance, seemed to contain an assortment of costume jewelry, of exceptionally exotic design. A small cardboard sign bore the following cryptic legend: