Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “We’re fighting a losing battle.”

  “Are we?”

  “I can’t talk yet,” McNey said, with subdued violence. “I can’t even let myself think about the problem. I . . . it works out this way. There’s crux, a single equation, that must be solved. But not yet. Because the moment I solve it, my mind can be read. I’ve got to work out all the minor details first. Then—”

  “Yes?”

  McNey’s smile was bitter. “I don’t know. I’ll find an answer. I haven’t been idle.”

  “If we could crack the Power,” Barton said. “If we could only tap the paranoid’s code—”

  “Or,” McNey said, “if we had a code of our own—”

  “Unbreakable.”

  “Which is impossible, by any mechanical means. No scrambler could work, because we’d have to know the key, and our minds could be read by paranoids. I don’t want to think about it any more for a while, Dave. The details, yes. But not the problem itself. I . . . might solve it before I’m ready.”

  “The paranoids are plenty busy,” Barton said. “Their propaganda’s spreading. That talk about Galileo’s secret weapon is still going around.”

  “Haven’t the Galileans made any denials?”

  “It isn’t that tangible. You can’t buck a whispering campaign. That, Darryl, is what’s apt to cause a bust-up. You can fight a person or a thing, but you can’t fight a wind. A wind that whispers.”

  “But the atomic bombs! After all—”

  “I know. Just the same, some hothead is going to get scared enough to take action one of these days. He’ll say, ‘Galileo’s got a secret weapon. We’re not safe. They’re going to attack us.’ So he’ll jump the gun. After that, there’ll be other incidents.”

  “With Us in the middle. We can’t stay neutral. I think there’ll be a pogrom, Dave, sooner or later.”

  “We’ll survive it.”

  “You think so? With every non-Baldy’s hand ready to strike down telepaths—man, woman or child? There’ll be no quarter given. We need another world, a new world—”

  “That’ll have to wait till we get interstellar ships.”

  “And meanwhile we live on borrowed time. It might be best if we let the human race reassimilate us.”

  “Retrogression?”

  “Suppose it is? We’re in the position of a unicorn in a herd of horses. We daren’t use our horn to defend ourselves. We’ve got to pretend to be horses.”

  “The lion and the unicorn,” Barton said, “were fighting for the crown. Well, Callahan and his paranoids are the lion, all right. But the crown?”

  “Inevitably,” McNey said, “it must be rule. Two dominant species can’t exist on the same planet or even in the same system. Humans and telepaths can’t evenly divide rule. We’re knuckling under now. Eventually, we’ll arrive, by a different path, at Callahan’s goal. But not by degrading or enslaving humans! Natural selection is our weapon. Biology’s on our side. If we can only live in peace with humans, until—”

  “—and drummed them out of town,” Barton said.

  “So the humans mustn’t suspect the lion and the unicorn are fighting. Or what they’re fighting for. Because if they do, we won’t survive the pogrom. There will be no refuge. Our race is soft, through environment and adaptation.”

  “I’m worried about Callahan,” Barton said suddenly. “I don’t know what he’s planning. By the time I find out, it may be too late. If he sets something in operation that can’t be stopped—”

  “I’ll keep working,” McNey promised. “I may be able to give you something soon.”

  “I hope so. Well, I’m flying to St. Nick tonight. Ostensibly to check the zoo there. Actually, I’ve other motives. Maybe I can pick up Callahan’s trail.”

  “I’ll walk you down to the village.” McNey went with Barton into the dropper. They stepped outside into the warm, spring air, glancing through the transparent wall at the televisor where Alexa sat with Linc. Barton said, “They don’t seem worried, anyhow.” McNey laughed. “She’s sending in her column to the Recorder. Alexa’s a specialist on heart problems. I hope she never has any of her own to solve!”

  “—if you love him,” Alexa said into the mike, “marry him. And if he loves you, he’ll have no objection to running psych-rating tests and comparing id balance sheets. You’re considering a lifetime partnership, and both of you should read the contracts before signing them.” She managed to look like a cat with cream on its whiskers. “But always remember that love is the most important thing in the world. If you find that, it will always be springtime in your hearts. Good luck, Wondering!”

  She pressed a switch. “Thirty, Linc. My job’s done for the day. That’s one sort of job a Baldy can find—heart problem editor on a telepaper. Think you’d like it?”

  “No,” Linc said. “It ain’t . . . it’s not up my alley.”

  He was wearing a silken blue shirt and darker blue shorts, and a cropped brown wig covered his skull. He wasn’t used to it yet, and kept touching it uneasily. “Ain’t as good as isn’t,” Alexa said. “I know what you mean, and that’s more important than grammatical construction. More lessons?”

  “Not for a while yet. I get tired easy. Talking’s still more natural, somehow.”

  “Eventually you’ll be finding it cumbersome. Personal endings—you speak, he speaks, parlons, paries, parlent—telepathically you don’t use those vestiges.”

  “Vestiges?”

  “Sure,” Alexa said. “From the Latin. The Romans didn’t use pronouns. Just amo, amas, amant,” she clarified mentally, “and the endings gave you the right pronoun. Nous, vous, and Us are used now instead, we, you plural, and they. So the endings are unnecessary. If you’re communicating with an Swiss telepath, though you might find yourself wondering why he kept thinking of a girl as it. But you’d know what it meant to him, and you couldn’t if you were being oral only.”

  “It’s plenty hard,” Linc said. “I’m getting the angles, though. That round-robin business we had last night was—” He groped for a word, but Alexa caught the meaning from his mind.

  “I know. There’s an intimacy that’s pretty wonderful. You know, I’ve never felt badly about being adopted. I knew just where I fitted into Marian’s life and Darryl’s, and how they felt about me. I knew I belonged.”

  “It must be a nice feeling,” Linc said. “I’m sort of getting it, though.”

  “Of course. You’re one of Us. After you’ve mastered the telepathic function, you won’t have any doubts at all.”

  Linc watched the play of sunlight on Alexa’s bronze curls. “I guess I do belong with your kind of folks.”

  “Glad you came with Dave?”

  He looked at his hands. “I can’t tell you, Alexa. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is. I’d been shut out in the dark all my life, thinking I was a freak, never feeling right sure about myself. Then all this—” He indicated the televisor. “Magical miracles, that’s what. And all the rest.”

  Alexa understood what was in his mind. Through him she felt the heady excitement of an exile returning to his own kind. Even the visor, familiar symbol of her job, assumed a new glamour, though it was the standard double-screen model, the upper for news flashes, the lower for the twenty-four-hour newspaper that was received, recorded on wire-film, and thereafter available for reference. Push-buttons selected the publication, and the dials made it possible to focus down on the pages, on either the action pictures or the printed matter. Format, of course, was quite as important as news value. The big concealed wall-screen at one end of the room was used for plays, concerts, movies, and Dlsneys. But for the added sensual attractions of smell, taste, and touch, one had to go to the theaters; such special equipment was still too expensive for the average home.

  “Yes.” Alexa said, “you’re one of Us. And you’ve got to remember that the future of the race is important. If you stay, you must never do anything to hurt it.”

  “I remember what you’ve been telling me
about the p-paranoids,” Linc nodded. “Guess they’re sort of like the cannibal tribes ’mong the Hedgehounds. They’re fair quarry for anybody.” He felt his wig, stepped to a mirror-unit, and adjusted the headpiece.

  Alexa said, “There’s Marian outside. I want to see her. Wait for me, Linc; I’ll be back.”

  She went out, Lincoln, awkwardly testing his newly-realized powers, felt her thought fingering subtly toward the plump, pretty woman who was moving among the flowers, armed with gloves and spray.

  He wandered to the clavilux, and, one-fingered, picked out a tune. He hummed:

  “All in the merry month of May,

  When the green buds they were swellin’,

  Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay

  For love of Barb’ry Allen.”

  Memories of Cassie rose up. He forced them back into the shadows, along with the Hedgehounds and the nomad life he had known. That wasn’t his life any more. Cassie—she’d get along all right. He’d go after her, one of these days, and bring her to live with him among the Baldies. Only—only she wasn’t a Baldy. She wasn’t like Alexa, for instance. She was quite as pretty, sure; yet there was all this talk about the future of the race.

  If, now, he married a Baldy and had Baldy sons and daughters—

  But, he was already married. What was the good of thinking so? A Hedgehound marriage might not amount to a hill of beans among the townsfolk, of course, and, anyway, all this mental round-robin stuff was sort of polygamy.

  Well, he’d climb that hill when he came to it. First he had to get the trick of this telepathy business. It was coming, but slowly, for he’d not been conditioned since infancy, as other Baldies were. The latent power had to be wakened and directed—not as a child could be taught, but allowing for Linc’s maturity, and his ability to grasp and understand the goal.

  Marian came in with Alexa. The older woman stripped off her cloth gloves and brushed beads of perspiration from her ruddy cheeks. “ ’Lo, Linc,” she said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fairish, Marian. You should of asked me to help out there.”

  “I need the exercise. I gained three pounds this morning arguing with that turnip-bleeder Gatson, down at the store. Know what he wants for fresh breadfruit?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Catch this.” Marian formed mental concepts involving sight, touch and taste. Alexa chimed in with the smell of breadfruit. Linc had his own arbitrary standards for comparisons, and within a second had assimilated the absolute meaning; he would recognize a breadfruit from now on. Marian threw a quick mental question. Linc answered.

  To town (Darryl McNey) by window (ten minutes past)

  “A bit confused,” Marian said, “but I get the idea. He ought to be back soon. I’m in the mood for a swim. Suppose I fix some sandwiches?”

  “Swell,” Alexa said. “I’ll help. Linc knows more about catching trout than anybody I’ve ever seen, except he doesn’t know what a dry fly is.”

  “I just aim to catch fish,” Linc said. “Enough to eat. Many a time I had to fish through holes in the ice to keep from being hungry.”

  Later, stretching his brown, hard body on the sandy bank of the pool upstream, he luxuriated in the warm sunlight and watched Alexa. Slim and attractive in white shorts and bathing cap, she inexpertly practiced casting, while McNey, pipe in his mouth, worked a likely-looking spot under an overhang of branches that brushed the water. Marian placidly ate sandwiches and watched the activities of a community of ants with considerable interest. The deep, unspoken comradeship of the family and the race was intangibly in the air, a bond that reached out, touched Linc, and drew him into its friendly center. This is it, he thought. I belong here. And Alexa’s mind answered him with quiet confidence: You are one of Us.

  The months passed very quickly for Linc, broken by occasional visits from Dave Barton, whose manner grew increasingly more troubled, and by the green that covered tree and brush, ground and vine, as spring gave place to summer, and summer drew toward a not-distant autumn. He seldom thought of the Hedgehounds now. There was a sort of tacit acceptance of the situation among the little group; he felt, without actually bringing the realization consciously to mind, that Alexa knew a great deal about his past, and that she would not bring up the matter of Cassie unless he did. That she was beginning to love him he did not doubt. Nor did he doubt much that he loved her. After all, Alexa was his kind, as Cassie never had been.

  But he dreamed of Cassie, nevertheless. Sometimes he felt loneliness, even among his own people. At such times he was anxious to finish his telepathic training and join Barton’s fight against the paranoids. Barton was eager to enlist Linc, but he warned against the danger of moving too soon. “The paranoids aren’t fools, Linc,” he said. “We mustn’t underestimate them. I’ve lived this long simply because I’m a trained big-game hunter. My reactions are just a bit faster than theirs, and I always try to maneuver them in a position where telepathy can’t help them. If a paranoid’s at the bottom of a well, he may read your intention of dropping a load of bricks on his head—but he can’t do a lot about it.”

  “Any news about Callahan?” McNey asked.

  “No word for months. There’s some plan—maybe a big push in the propaganda field, maybe assassinations of key technologists. I don’t know what. I’ve read no minds that knew the right answers. But I think something’s going to break soon; I’ve found out that much. We’ve got to be ready for it. We’ve got to break their code—or get one of our own. The same tune, Darryl.”

  “I know,” McNey said. He stared out at the empty blue sky. “There isn’t much I can say now, or even think. The same tune, all right.”

  “But you haven’t failed? In a few weeks you’re due back at Niagara.”

  Linc said, “Look, about this code. I was thinking, the Hedgehounds have got a sort of code. Like this.” He imitated a few bird and animal calls. “We know what they mean but nobody else knows.”

  “Hedgehounds aren’t telepaths. If they were, your code wouldn’t stay a secret long.”

  “Guess you’re right. I’d like to take a crack at the paranoids, though.”

  “You’ll have your chance,” Barton said. “But, meanwhile, it’s Darryl’s job to find us a new weapon.”

  McNey said wearily, “I know all about that. No more pep talks. Dave, please.”

  Barton stood up, scowling. “I’ve a job to do down south. I’ll see you when I get back, Darryl. Meanwhile, take care of yourself. If this business—whatever it is—should break soon, don’t run any risks. You’re vital to Us, much more so than I am.”

  With a nod to Linc he went out. McNey stared at nothing. Linc hesitated, sent out a querying thought, and met abstracted rebuff. He went downstairs.

  He couldn’t find Alexa. Finally he went out into the gardens, working his way toward the brook. A Hash of color caught his eye, and he headed for it.

  Alexa was sitting on a rock, her flimsy playsuit unzipped to let the slight breeze cool her. The heat was so intense that she had removed her wig, and her bald was shiny and incongruous, incompatible with her artificial lashes and eyebrows. It was the first time Linc had ever seen her wigless.

  Instantly, at his thought, she swung about and began to replace the wig. But her arm stopped in arrested motion. She looked at him, half questionably, and then with pain and growing understanding in her eyes.

  “Put it on, Alexa,” Linc said.

  She watched him steadily. “What for—now?”

  “I . . . it doesn’t—”

  Alexa shrugged and slipped the. headpiece into place. “That was . . . strange,” she said, deliberately speaking aloud as if she did not want to let her mind slip back into the channels of telepathic intimacy where hurt can strike so unerringly. “I’m so used myself to Baldies being—bald. I never thought before the sight could be—” She did not finish aloud. After a moment she said, “You must have been very unhappy among the Hedgehounds, Linc. Even more unhappy than you realize, if you’ve
been conditioned against the sight of baldness to . . . to that extent—”

  “It wasn’t,” Linc denied futilely. “I didn’t . . . you shouldn’t think—”

  “It’s all right. You can’t help reactions as deeply rooted as that. Some day standards of beauty will change. Hairlessness will be lovely. Today it isn’t, certainly not to a man with your psychological background. You must have been made to feel very keenly that you were inferior because of your baldness—”

  Linc stood there awkwardly, unable to deny the thought that had sprung so vividly into his mind, burning with shame and dismay at the knowledge that she had seen as clearly as himself the ugly picture of her baldness in his thought. As if he had held up a distorting mirror to her face and said aloud, “This is the way you look to me.” As if he had slapped her gratuitously across the cheek with the taunt of her—abnormality.

  “Never mind,” Alexa said, a little shakily, smiling. “You can’t help it if baldness disg . . . distresses you. Forget it. It isn’t as if we were m-married or . . . anything.”

  They looked at each other in silence. Their minds touched and sprang apart and then touched again, tentatively, with light thoughts that leaped from point to point as gingerly as if the ideas were ice-floes that might sink beneath the full weight of conscious focus.

  I thought I loved you . . . perhaps I did . . . yes, I too . . . but now there can’t be . . . (sudden, rebellious denial) . . . no, it’s true, there can’t ever be rightness between us . . . not as if we were ordinary people . . . we’d always remember that picture, how I looked (abrupt sheering off from the memory) . . . (agonized repudiation of it) . . . no, couldn’t help that . . . always between us . . . rooted too deeply . . . and anyhow, Cos—(sudden closing off of both minds at once, before even the thought-image had time to form.)

  Alexa stood up. “I’m going into town,” she said. “Marian’s at the hairdresser’s. I . . . I’ll get a wave or something.”