Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “What the devil, lad—” Sir Colin rasped.

  Alan got up. “I almost walked over the edge,” he said.

  Sir Colin said gently, “His hypnotic powers are very strong. We thought you were walking straight toward him.”

  “—And that the platform was bigger than it really is,” Alan finished, his mouth grim. He swung toward the tower. “Okay. I get the idea. You’re going to kill us?”

  Flande smiled gravely. “I do not yet know.”

  The great visage looked down at them and beyond them, fathomless weariness in its eyes. And Alan, returning that distant stare, wondered at his own daring in provoking the caprice of this incredible being of the world’s end. That enormous face looked human . . . A three-dimensional projection upon some giant screen, or only illusion, like the other things that had happened? Or was Flande really human at all? Perhaps the face was a mask, hiding something unimaginable . . .

  “Look here,” he said, making his voice confident, “If you can read minds, why question us? I think—”

  Flande’s eyes, brooding on something far beyond them, suddenly narrowed with a look of very human satisfaction. “You will think no more!” said the voiceless speech in their minds. It swelled with a sort of scornful triumph. “Did you think I cared where you came from, little man? I know where you are going . . .”

  From somewhere behind them, and below, a hoarse shout rang out upon the violet silence of Carcasilla. Close after it, Evaya’s scream lifted, pure silver, like a struck chord. Flande’s voice halted the confusion among the four beneath him as Alan took a long stride toward the stair, and Sir Colin whirled, and Mike reached smoothly for his gun.

  “Wait,” said Flande. “There is no escape for you now. I do not want you in Carcasilla. You are barbarians. We have no room for you here. So I have summoned other barbarians, from the wild ways outside our city, to save me the trouble of killing you. Did you wonder why I practiced those tricks of illusion a little while ago? It was to give the barbarians time to come here, through the gate I opened for them . . . Look behind you!”

  A shuddering vibration began to shake the stair; the hoarse cries from below came nearer, and the thud of mounting feet. Then Evaya came flying up into view, looking back in terror over her shoulder through the cloud of her floating hair.

  “Terasi!” she cried. “The Terasi!” Flande met her wild appeal with a chilly glance, his eyes half-closed in passionless triumph. The godlike head shook twice. Then the slitted door began to close. Mike Smith yelled something in German and lifted his gun. But before he could take aim the valve had closed and vanished; curtains of rain gushed unbroken down the wall. Flande was gone.

  Thumping steps mounted the last spiral. A group of ragged savages came rushing up toward them, their faces—curiously clouded with fear—taking on grimness and purpose as they saw their quarry. The leader yelled again, brandishing the clubbed branch of some underground tree.

  CLEARLY these were raiders from some other source than Carcasilla. They looked incredibly out of place in this city of jeweled bubbles, with their heavy, muscular bodies scarred and hairy under the tatters of brown leather garments. All were fair and yellow haired. And on each face, beneath the wolfish triumph, was a certain look of fear and iron-hard desperation.

  No—not all. One man was taller than the others, magnificently built, with the great muscles of an auroch, and a gargoyle face. His tangled fair hair was bound with a metal circlet; beneath it black eyes looked out without fear, but warily and grimly purposeful. A new wound slashed red across his tremendous chest, and the muscles rolled appallingly as he brandished his club. He had all of a gorilla’s superhuman strength and ferocity, but controlled in a human body and far more dangerous because of it. Now he rushed on up the steps at the head of the raiders, yelling in a great bell-like voice from the depths of his chest.

  This was no place for fighting hand to hand. The steps were too narrow over that dizzy blue gulf, and the water sliding down their spiral looked slippery if it was not.

  But it was too late now to do anything but fight. Alan was nearest to the charging savages. And he had no time to think. The leader’s deep bellow of triumph made the glass walls ring faintly about them as he came thundering up the steps, club lifted.

  He came on straight for Alan, a towering, massive figure.

  Blind instinct hurled Alan forward, his gun leaping to his hand. But something checked his finger on the trigger. He could not overcome a strong feeling that he must not fire in Carcasilla—that the walls would come shattering down around them from the concussion in this hushed city. He reversed the gun in his hand and swung it club-like under the lifted blow of the barbarian.

  And that was a mistake. It was one of the few times that Alan Drake had ever underestimated an opponent. For the heavy-limbed gargoyle was not as clumsy as he looked. The club whistled down past Alan’s shoulder, missing him as he dodged.

  But the giant dodged Alan’s gun in turn, and his other hand moved with lightning speed. A flash of silver sang through the air.

  White-hot pain darted through Alan’s wrist. His hand went lax and the gun clattered to the water-gushing steps. Alan looked down at the drops of blood spattering from his arm, where a shining metal dart with metal vanes to guide it transfixed his wrist. These were not quite the barbarians they looked, then, armed with things like that . . .

  Plucking the metal dart from the wound, Alan tensed to meet the charging barbarian.

  Hot fury blazed up in him. He hurled himself sidewise toward his fallen gun, catching it on the very verge of the steps. Behind him Mike Smith roared with a savage exultation that echoed the gargoyle’s shout, and cleared Alan’s stooping body with one long, cat-like leap. The gunman’s lips were flattened back from his teeth and his eyes glowed oddly yellow. Mike Smith was in his element. Elsewhere he might be ill at ease; here he functioned with smooth precision.

  But not quite smooth enough. For before his feet struck the steps beyond Alan, the scarred man had sprung to meet him, one sandaled foot lashing out in an unexpected kick at Mike’s gun. Mike twisted sidewise instinctively—and then the gargoyle had him. Those mightily muscled arms closed crushingly about his ribs.

  All this Alan saw as his fingers came down on the cool butt of his gun. Behind him, he had a glimpse of Karen and Sir Colin circling desperately, trying to get clear aim over Alan’s head. But before they could do it the man had lifted Mike Smith by neck and crotch with one easy motion, the muscles crawling under his tattered leather, and hurled his captive straight in their faces. Almost in the same motion he sprang forward in a high leap and smashed down full upon Alan, whose finger was tightening on the trigger.

  Alan had a momentary surge of sheer wonder at the lightning tactics of this savage even as he tried futilely to roll away beneath those crushing feet. Then the man’s great weight crashed down and in a screaming blaze of pain oblivion blanked him out of the fight.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Fountain of Sleep

  HE WAS aware of shouts and trampling feet that receded into distance or into oblivion—he did not care . . .

  After awhile he knew vaguely that the torrents of rain had parted again to let Flande’s young-old face look down at him. Evaya’s voice from somewhere near was demanding—demanding something . . . He felt Flande’s cold, pale stare, felt the enmity in it. He thought dimly that Evaya was asking something on his behalf and Flande denying it.

  He heard Evaya’s voice ring with sudden defiance. But before its echoes ceased to sound, he fell into a cloudy sleep that was almost as deep as death, drowning all other thoughts.

  Uneven lightning-jabs of pain roused him presently, and he knew he was being carried with difficulty on the shoulders of—of whom?—Evaya’s people? It didn’t matter. Between sleeping and waking he saw the bubble domes of Carcasilla sliding by. And now they were moving down a far-flung curve of crystal stairs toward a vast basin of onyx and rose marble which stretched across the widest space he h
ad yet seen in Carcasilla. Its edges were curved and carved into breakers of marble foam. Light brimmed the basin like water, violet, dimly translucent, rippling with constant motion.

  They carried him out into the basin, toward a vast towering, wavering column out of which seemed to pulse all the violet light that illuminated Carcasilla. It was a column of flame, a fountain of uprushing light . . . Now he could feel the brimming pool lap up about him, cool, infinitely refreshing.

  He could see the smooth floor underfoot, dimly beneath the blue-violet surface. He could see a pedestal of white marble, distorted by refraction, out of which the great flame sprang. It must, he thought vaguely, rush up from some source underground, straight through the marble as if it were not there . . .

  They carried him into that light—laid him on the marble pedestal—and he could breathe more easily here in the blue-violet flame than he had in the air outside—breathe against the white-hot pain of his ribs . . .

  The soft, rushing coolness all around him was washing the pain away. He was weightless, his body scarcely touching the marble. Even his hair strained at the roots, and currents swung him this way and that, gently, easily. The flame washed up through his very flesh, streaming coolly, sending bubbles of sensation through his body. Then violet sleep soothed all the pain out of his consciousness. He gave himself up to it, swaying with the uprush of light that possessed every atom of his body.

  WHEN he again became conscious of his surroundings, he lay upon cushions in a globe-shaped room through whose aquamarine walls seeped a light that was the very color of sleep itself.

  Time passed vaguely as in a dream. The silvery-haired people of Carcasilla tiptoed in to whisper over him, and though he could not remember having seen them before they were familiar to his unquestioning mind. Evaya sat beside him on the cushions oftenest of all. And later, she walked beside him on tours of Carcasilla when his steps were slow but no longer unsteady, and no memory of pain attended any motion.

  He had no memories at all. The roaring, ruinous world he had left milleniums ago, the dead world where he had wakened, were alike forgotten in this strange dream-like state. He did not miss the companions who had vanished on the steps to Flande’s house; he did not wonder where the barbarians had gone or whence they had come. Whatever was, was good.

  Alan came to understand many of the words in the Carcasillians’ liquid speech, that through sheer repetition grew familiar. And into his drugged mind knowledge crept slowly, as the soft voices of the fragile folk grew more understandable.

  THEY told him of the fountain’s magic.

  It gave immortality. All who bathed in its pulsing light were immortal, as long as they renewed the bathing at intervals. Even Flande came to the fountain at intervals—the voices said.

  Beware of Flande, they dinned into his dulled mind. His spells strike without warning. You must be strong—and awake!—to battle him, if battle must come.

  And other things the soft voices of Carcasilla whispered to Alan. He felt neither hunger nor thirst; the fountain breathed out all he needed to live. When the Carcasillians bathed in it, all ills were soothed, all wants healed. And when they wearied of life, the fountain gave them—sleep.

  For they grew weary, here in their perfect, sterile world. When they had explored all of Carcasilla, and knew every bridge and building, and every face, and boredom began to trouble them—then they went down below the fountain and took the Sleep. Memories were washed away—when they woke again, Carcasilla was new, and everyone in it, and life began afresh.

  Thus it had been since the beginning. Lost in the Lethe of a thousand Great Sleeps were the origins of Carcasilla. Yet there were legends. The Light-Wearers had made it, and peopled it. The Light-Wearers had gone long since, but Carcasilla remained, a monument to their unearthly dreams. And the dwellers in Carcasilla were part of the dream that had reared the city.

  Only Flande had never taken the Sleep. Only Flande—and the gods, perhaps—remembered all that had happened since the first days. He was afraid of forgetting something—his power, or a secret he held.

  Awaken, A-lank!

  Strong the summons shrilled in his brain. For minutes or hours or days, he thought dimly, he had been hearing it. And now—suddenly enough—the curtain slipped away and was gone from his half-sleeping mind.

  It came without warning. He was sitting with Evaya in the mouth of the aquamarine globe, with a great sweep of the city spread out below them. One moment the fantastic vista beneath was a familiar, scarcely noticed thing—the next, a cloud seemed to withdraw, and colors and shapes and distances sprang into focus so sharp that for an instant it almost blinded him.

  Alan leaped to his feet, and Evaya rose lightly beside him, the silver-golden hair lifting upon the air at her motion.

  “You are awake now,” she said. “It is more than time to awaken—A-lanh!” He stared around, familiar things suddenly vividly strange, even Evaya’s face. He had known it so well a second ago, in his unquestioning trance, yet now it seemed scarcely human in its incredible delicacy, with flesh like rose petals moulded over a skull of exquisite carved ivory.

  “Awake?” he repeated stupidly. “Evaya, I—I’ve been dreaming. Or—”

  She smiled at him anxiously. And Alan, without an instant’s hesitation or thought, leaned forward and took her into his arms. In a moment the spinning world and his spinning brain slowed and steadied, and nothing had any significance at all except the vibrant, responding aliveness of the girl in his embrace. Carcasilla did not exist nor the dead world above.

  Alan thought he had never known what it was to kiss a girl before. This strong, lithe body was not afraid of the full pressure his arms could bring to bear. She was not, after all, so fragile as she looked. It was like embracing a figure of tempered steel that answered the pressure with a singing resilience, quivering and alive with more than human aliveness.

  Evaya stepped back, her delicate face illuminated as if a lamp shone behind the ivory features.

  “Now you are awake!” she said breathlessly, with a little dazzled smile. “But we have no time to talk of anything but Flande now. I called you so long, day after day. But you were not yet healed. The fountain still kept you in its sleep.” Alan caught his breath, remembrance coming back with an overwhelming rush. “That was all real? Not delirium?”

  “Real enough. Your sleep was deep—and Flande still stays his hand. I think—I am afraid—perhaps he waits only until you awake . . .” And she looked around fearfully through the swimming violet gulfs of Carcasilla spread out before them, as if Flande might strike from the empty air.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Alien Calls

  FLANDE! Flande and the tower of rain, and the battle on the waterfalling steps. It all came back to Alan in an avalanche of vivid memories. Questions crowded upon questions until his tongue tripped. He stammered over them for a moment, then said simply, “What happened?” and waited almost dizzily for the answer. Evaya smiled again, her face breaking into enchanting curves. But she sobered quickly.

  “They took away your friends,” she told him. “The Terasi, I mean. There was a great fight there on the steps. The evil young man fought terribly, but they took him at last. They struck the red girl on the head and carried her off senseless.” Evaya looked a little pleased in spite of herself. She had made no secret of her aversion toward Karen. “The old man went quite peacefully when he saw there was no hope. He seemed almost interested. I saw him trying to talk to the Terasi leader as they went down the steps.” Alan grinned. In the sudden strangeness of this alien city it was good to hear one familiar thing about someone he knew. That would be Sir Colin—coolly examining the headsman’s axe as it fell toward his own neck. He said quickly,

  “Where did they go?”

  Evaya shook her head, the silvery hair clouding out around her. “Nobody knows. The Terasi live somewhere outside Carcasilla, in the wilderness underground. Flande put a magic on them and brought them here. And afterward, when you wer
e crushed by the barbarian’s blow, he refused to let me bathe you in the fountain to heal your hurts.”

  Alan nodded, remembering dimly. “You—you changed his mind, didn’t you?” Evaya’s face lighted. “I defied him. But—but shivering inside, for fear he might destroy me. I don’t know how I found the courage to do it, unless—sometimes I have thought I was once the priestess, who opened the doors of Carcasilla to the gods when the gods still lived. Long ago. But I am immortal, of course. Like you.”

  Alan looked at her silently. After awhile he said, “I was wondering if I’d dreamed that.”

  She shook her head.

  “No. It is quite true. All who bathe in the fountain live forever, so long as they renew the baths. You did not dream it. The gods made us so.”

  “The gods?”

  She pointed. Far off through the city Alan could see a disc of blackness set against the cavern wall, tiny in the distance. Before it stood something so bright that its outlines blurred before his eyes.

  “The statue of the Light-Wearer,” Evaya said, reverence in her voice. “They made Carcasilla and us, for their pleasure. They lighted the fountain, that we might live eternally. Very long ago, I think I was their priestess, as I say—I opened the doors when they called. For there were good Light-Wearers and some—not good. Some who might have destroyed us. So the two doors into Carcasilla can be opened only from within, at the summons of the gods. But the gods, of course, are dead . . .

  Alan had a sudden memory of the terrible black citadel beneath which they had met, and the more terrible formless thing that had coursed like a questing hound upon their track. He did not want to ask the question on his lips, but he knew he must. “What were you doing up there, on the surface,” he said. “When we met?”

  Evaya lifted a troubled gaze to his. “Has one of the gods come back?” she asked him.