Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  The lair of the Rigellian. Krana could not have harmed him in the beast body, but now he was vulnerable, horribly so.

  There was silence, and deep gloom. Nothing moved. But Tharg felt an intent, impersonal gaze directed upon him.

  He began to see, though dimly. The brain under the glass shell. The innumerable tool-devices—Krana’s arms and weapons and senses.

  The brain pulsed and pulsed again. But still the tentacles held motionless, as though waiting. Tharg took a lurching step forward. Then another.

  For the first time in a hundred years a warm-blooded being was within the Rigellian’s reach. The Earthmen’s previous visits did not count. They had always come in groups of at least six, and Krana had not dared to touch them. He was gambling for higher stakes. For the Earth itself!

  But now one Earthman—one only—was here. His body could be destroyed. There would be no trace, no clue to point to Krana as the killer. And not for a hundred years had Krana tasted blood.

  Yet he waited, perhaps still a little suspicious, wondering why the Earthman had come alone.

  Tharg took another step. His new body failed him, and he crashed down, striking his head on the metal floor. When he rose, a trickle of blood was crawling down his cheek.

  Blind, ravening hunger drove sanity from the Rigellian’s mind. The great tentacles lashed out, coiling about Tharg, lifting him inexorably. He groped for the ray-gun, but his human fingers were too subtle for him, and the weapon failed to fire. Long tubes shot from their places of concealment at the base of the structure that housed the brain. Krana’s mouths opened hungrily.

  THARG fought, hopelessly. But the tentacles only tightened. The leechlike mouths fastened on him, stinging painfully. A ropy coil gagged him, so that he could not cry out for aid.

  “Now, Zarran!” he thought, as though she could hear. “Now—now!”

  She flashed in through the narrow opening of the door, panting, her six legs flashing. She had not failed. Instantly Zarran saw what had happened, and without pausing she flung herself at the brain. Her terrible jaws gaped wide, a roar of unleashed savagery bursting from her throat.

  A tentacle caught her before she could reach the crystal hemisphere. She fought it unavailingly.

  The doors were swung wide. Sunlight poured in with blinding intensity. Silhouetted on the threshold were the figures of more than a dozen Earthmen, led here by Zarran. And their guns were out.

  Captain Easter was in the lead. He stopped short, staring.

  “Dale!” he said. His voice was quite toneless. Abruptly it rose to a shout.

  “The thing’s killing Dale!” he yelled. “Blast it to smithereens, boys—blast it to cinders!”

  Quicker than thought the Rigellian’s tentacles uncoiled, finding the Earthmen, prisoning them, dragging them close. But Krana was not dealing with decadent, peace-loving Martians now. Earthmen were a race of fighters, trained to meet danger with bellowing guns. Rays flashed out from the brain’s base, searing and deadly. To be met by other rays—equally deadly!

  The thunderous concussion of ray-guns boomed through the chamber. And blast after blast centered on the crystal dome that protected the brain. Earthmen died there, but as they died their fingers contracted on the triggers and sent a last flaming bolt at the brain. Easter was shouting harshly, roaring curses, firing again and again at the Rigellian.

  Under that terrific barrage the crystal cracked, melted and burst apart. Krana, the Rigellian, died with the searing blasts of Earthmen’s guns avenging all the people and worlds he had slain.

  The tentacles dropped, lifeless.

  Only after Easter had counted his dead—four—did he remember Dale and the six-legged beast. But when they looked, their quarry had gone. . . .

  Far away on a cliff-top, among scarlet bushes, Zarran crouched watching the Earthman body of Tharg, motionless where it had fallen after the stumbling, dodging run up the slope Tharg’s face was turned up toward the purple sky, and he was breathing in great gasps. With a gasp he opened his eyes and looked at her.

  “Krana is—slain?” asked Tharg.

  “The Rigellian is dead,” Zarran said. “The Earthmen return to their ship. We have been here for many hours, Tharg. You have been sleeping. I was—I was afraid to move you.”

  After a moment Tharg moaned. “You have guessed, then, Zarran?”

  “That you are dying? Yes. Yes, I know.”

  “The—the shock of transplanting the brain—the bodies were too different—and there was no time to grow accustomed to the new form. . . . The Earthman died during the operation, but I was stronger.”

  “You knew, even then, Tharg, that this would mean death.”

  “Yes,” Tharg said. “I knew. But what could I do, Zarran? Could I have turned back?”

  Sadly the beast’s head swung away.

  “No,” she said. “I knew also, Tharg, but I would not stop you. We were obeying the will of the gods. And—and lovers will find happiness on Earth because of what we have done today.”

  “Civilization will go on. Human beings will not die. They are a good race, these people of Earth.”

  The last survivors of Mars were silent for a while, as the sun, tiny and crimson, dropped behind the mountains. Quick darkness shrouded Mars. A million points of light hung in the black sky. After a long time Tharg spoke again. “I am—sorry, Zarran. There was so much I wished to give you. All the glories of old Mars. And in the end—I have given you nothing, and I must leave you here alone.”

  “You are my mate,” Zarran said steadily. “I ask for no more.”

  She crouched beside Tharg, the terrible head dropping on the other’s breast. So Zarran kept watch over her lover, till she knew, suddenly, that she was the last Martian.

  Beside the campfire of the Earthmen, Captain Easter packed energy-cartridges into his ray-gun. He shivered in the sudden chill. Red dust, he saw, had bloodied the two moons.

  Anderson was mending the mechanism of a welder, but the big Swede looked up abruptly as a cry came wailing down through the still night. The sadness of a race lost and doomed in the forgotten past was in that mournful sound, throbbing out over the Cursed Valley in the thin air of Mars.

  Captain Easter looked up too, staring toward the cliff. Anderson spoke to him in an undertone.

  “Wonder what that is, Captain?” he said.

  The captain shrugged.

  “Some animal, I suppose,” he said. “Just some animal.”

  A GOD NAMED KROO

  When Dr. Horace Danton Is Transported to Burma and Made the High Priest of a Tibetan Deity, He Becomes the Startling Storm-Center of a Series of Fantastic Events!

  CHAPTER I

  Gods Can Die

  There were no temples, but sacred enclosures surrounding fetiches and images. All creatures living in these sacred precincts, or even straying into them by accident, were taboo and became the property of the god . . .

  —Reinach: Orpheus

  KROO brooded over his yak.

  After ten years, he had become attached to the creature, concentrating upon it all the paternal affection a greater god might have given his worshippers. But Kroo had no worshippers any more. The last of these had died half a century before, and his son had turned Buddhist. Thus Kroo was become a god without devotees—always a saddening thing.

  It always happened, of course. Marduk, Allatu of Babylon, Ormazd, and Osiris died gracefully, and so did most of the forsaken gods who preferred limbo to forgetfulness. Yes, they had been wiser than Kroo, who was a minor tribal deity in the Himalayas, naive and un traveled.

  Born of ignorant peasant minds, he took after his parents. Once blood sacrifices had been offered to him—now the villagers shunned the weedy temple yard on the outskirts of the town. They still held a slight fear of Kroo and the malignant powers he could use, so they did not molest his house. They ignored it, which was much worse. No one ever entered, no one had for years. That is, except the yak.

  The yak knew no better. Wandering in
search of forage one night, he had snapped his rope and burst into the court through the tumbledown fence. In the morning the natives found him there. Kroo still remembered the sly, cunning faces that had peered in at the yak.

  “Call him, quick,” one had said. “Dho-ni will never know.”

  Kroo shook with rage at that perfidy. The blasphemous little squirt! He’d steal the property of the gods, would he? Well—”

  About to do something drastic, Kroo paused as Dho-ni, the ancient lama, came on the scene, withered as a mummy in his coarse blue robe. He understood the situation at a glance.

  “Back!” he croaked. “The yak belongs to Kroo now.” He entered the temple yard.

  “But he is mine,” a sad-faced, gaunt native protested. “I need his strong back. How can I—”

  “Be silent. It is your own fault for letting the beast wander. Now he is Kroo’s, and sacred.”

  AT THIS Kroo allowed himself to smile faintly as he remembered. Dho-ni was a bigot, of course, but he respected tradition. So the yak had remained, and just now it was lumbering about the yard like a shaggy bundle of brown straw looking for a good spot to lie down. Finally it stopped, lowered its fore-quarters with the utmost caution, let its colossal bulk drop slowly to the ground, and sighed. The yak ruminated. Kroo sneered.

  Other gods might die—weak, milk-and-watery deities—but not Kroo. He came of good, sturdy peasant stock, with tenacity as one of his cardinal virtues.

  But it was not pleasant to think of the pomp and grandeur of the courts of Babylon and Nippur, the mighty temple of Karnak, the thousands of altars where other gods had been worshipped. Real altars—not a chunk of weathered stone from which even the last trace of bloodstains had faded. Kroo felt weak from emotional reaction. He knew what that sign meant.

  He was growing old. He was dying. For fifty years he had been slowly starving to death, lacking the necessary nutriment of prayers, sacrifices and belief. The villagers did not really believe in him any more. They were merely not quite sure, a little afraid, and unwilling to take a chance.

  Unless Kroo got worshippers—and soon—he would die.

  He was too young to die. He had never lived. For a second he was blind with jealous envy of the greater gods than he, whose miracles had filled thousands—millions—with terror. Kroo could work miracles too, but his audience was strictly limited. What he needed was an acolyte. A high priest. If only one of the natives would wander into the temple yard . . . but there was not the slightest chance of that.

  Kroo lifted his shaggy, uncouth head and listened. There was argument outside the fence. A group of villagers were expostulating with a—a white man! The god’s vision swept out. He saw a lean, hard, tight-mouthed face and cold blue eyes that were alight now with anger. Kroo listened.

  “I need a yak,” the white man snapped. “We lost two in an avalanche, and the other beasts are nearly exhausted.”

  “Why not leave behind some of your booty?” came the naive suggestion.

  “My equipment? Mmpmph. It took me six months to collect, at the cost of chilblains and frostbite, and I’m taking it back with me—all of it. Why the devil won’t you sell me that yak? Or rent the beast. I’ll send him back once I reach the river.”

  “Dho-ni is away on a trip.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Who knows? Many moons, perhaps.”

  Money clinked. There was a stir of movement among the villagers. Apprehensive glances were cast around as each man looked at his neighbor. After all, Dho-ni was away and gold was gold.

  But tradition triumphed. “Nay Peling. We cannot sell.”

  The white man threw a handful of coins on the ground. “I’m buying. I need that yak. And I intend to have it.” He turned and went toward the temple yard. The natives made no move.

  And Kroo, leaning.forward tensely on his hams, sucked in his breath and smiled as Dr. Horace Danton entered the fenced enclosure.

  So the next day the white man and his party moved east and then south, toward India. Though Danton had never covered this territory before, he trusted implicitly in his native guide, who had come with high recommendations.

  JIENG looked rather like an untrustworthy monkey, but he had been to Lhassa, the Forbidden City, and had guided parties into the interior and back for years. He wore little beside a leathery smock and a sharp-bladed kukri in a wooden scabbard, and his legs were hairy, though his face was not.

  The towering ranges of the Himalayas guarded the travelers as they went on, crossing gorges, descending perilous paths, cursing the yak when it became recalcitrant, and not noticing that they were followed by a small, black thundercloud.

  Danton’s thoughts were occupied elsewhere. His expedition had kept him in exile for nearly two years,-but now he could return to America, having fulfilled the commission the museum had given him. It would be interesting to see New York again. And to pause, for a week or so enroute, at Hawaii.

  The uninformed Dr. Danton wondered how the European War was getting on. Well, he’d soon find out, at the nearest outpost that boasted a radio. The rumors that filtered into the interior of Tibet were few and distorted. Danton wondered vaguely whether Japan had given up hope of conquering China yet. He trusted so. As a logical man, he objected to long-winded futility. Well, the matter scarcely affected him, unless he passed through a war zone. He’d take good care not to do that, for his specimens were too valuable to be lost.

  Under the circumstances, it came as a considerable shock to Danton when the yak inadvertently became the subject of a miracle.

  The common yak—or as pedants call it, poephagus grunniens—is a gigantic, shaggy muscular creature which resembles a moving mountain. To see such a beast wallowing or walking is unsettling to one’s equilibrium. And to see a yak levitated—!

  The affair happened on a trail that wound dangerously down the side of a sheer, dangerous precipice. The party was proceeding in single file, feeling their way delicately, when a small white animal, probably a rabbit bounced up directly under the foremost yak’s blunt nose. The yak emitted a hoarse, anguished cry, made clattering noises with its hoofs, and fell into the abyss, taking with it a good deal of shale, and the yak Danton had purchased at the Tibetan village. The dead silence of great altitude was broken by the roar of a minor avalanche.

  Danton saw the whole thing as he instinctively flattened himself against the rock beside him. The first yak kept falling. So did the shale. But the other yak dropped only about a hundred feet and then paused. It hung in midair, a misshapen dark mass, and then slowly began to rise. Danton’s eyes altered in size.

  The yak rose until it was level with the path and slightly above it. The beast was upside-down, and looking at Danton with a glazed and singularly pathetic stare. It suddenly revolved in the air until its feet were underneath, slid side-wise, and dropped an inch or two so that it was once more safely upon the trail.

  A faint splash heralded the doom of the yak that was not under Kroo’s protection.

  From the natives came an outburst of chattering. Jieng quieted them by waving his kukri and making it glitter in the sunlight. He peered at Danton out of bright little eyes and waited.

  Danton gave the signal to continue. There wasn’t anything to say, really. The impossible had happened. One can’t readily comment on such things.

  BUT Danton was more than usually alert after that. When they made camp at nightfall, he called Jieng to his small fire of dung-chips. The native squatted on his haunches and spoke in his own dialect, in which Danton was proficient.

  “You saw what happened to the yak, Jieng?”

  “Pranam,” was the slightly irrelevant reply. “It was magic, of course.”

  “We of the west do not believe in magic.”

  “Many do not,” said Jieng philosophically. “Even holy men who know a great many mantras are secretly skeptical. I had thought that the yak was a magician in disguise, or even a god, master. But when I put questions to him, he did not answer. Still . . .” D
anton pointed up to where a cloud obscured a few stars. “Have you—uh—noticed that?”

  “Of course. A thundercloud, though not a large one. It has been following you ever since we left the village. Jieng shrugged. “I am an ignorant man, Peling. I know little of such things. Perhaps you have become a Living Buddha, or a Gompo Lama.”

  Danton made impolite and. skeptical noises. “Rot.”

  “As you say, rot. But when a Living Buddha dies, his soul enters immediately into the body of a new-born babe.”

  “Well, I’m not a new-born babe. Incidentally, why have you set men on guard tonight, Jieng?”

  “Hostile natives—they have been signaling about us since noon. I heard them.”

  Danton knew the keenness of Jieng’s ears. “Think there’s danger?”

  “Perhaps. I have armed the men.

  But they are cowards, master, and afraid to fight hill-people.”

  “Well? Shall we break camp tonight and go on?”

  “May the spirits forbid! The hillmen are waiting for that, so that they can pick us off one by one.” Jieng’s monkey face was impassive. He did not seem to care what happened. Dr. Danton mentioned this.

  “Well, I worship Kali. Should I die, Kali would comfort me. She is a mighty goddess. A-i! What is that?”

  Danton looked at the sky, cloudless save for a small black blot. “Thunder, Odd.”

  Jieng hunched himself together over the fire, looking like a leathern, ragged bundle. “I shall not mention—her—again. There is another god present, I think, and may my ancestors bear witness I am a tolerant man.”

  “All right. Let’s get back to the—to what happened today. What do the men think about it?”

  “Who knows? Only they bow to the yak whenever they pass him. Ow! Get your gun, quick! The dogs are attacking!”

  This seemed all too true. There were shouts from the darkness beyond the camp. The moonlight was too dim to be of much aid, but nevertheless Danton sprang up, whipping out his revolver. It was handier than a rifle in such a scrap as seemed to be forthcoming.