Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “What are you afraid of?” Burkhalter asked quietly.

  Heath stopped short, he examined his fingernails.

  “It’s not fear,” he said at last. “It’s occupational anxiety. Oh, the devil with that. Four-bit words. It’s simpler, really; you can put it in the form of an axiom. You can’t touch pitch without getting soiled.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you, Harry? It’s only this, really. My work consists of visiting abnormal minds. Not the way an ordinary psychiatrist does it. I get into those minds. I see and feel their viewpoints. I know all their terrors. The invisible horror that waits in the dark for them isn’t just a word to me. I’m sane, and I see through the eyes of a hundred insane men. Keep out of my mind for a minute, Harry.” He turned away. Burkhalter hesitated.

  “O.K.,” Heath said, looking around. “I’m glad you mentioned this, though. Every so often I find myself getting entirely too empathic. Then I either take my copter up, or get in a round robin.” For every Baldy, there was a deep, relaxing calm in the upper air, where the continual subsensory bombardment of thoughts was lessened almost to the vanishing point. “I’ll see if I can promote a hook-up tonight. Are you in!”

  “Sure,” Burkhalter said. Heath nodded casually and went out. His thought came back.

  I’d better not be here when the Hedgehounds come. Unless you—

  No. Burkhalter thought. I’ll be all right.

  O.K. Here’s a delivery for you.

  Burkhalter opened the door in time to admit the grocer’s boy, who had parked his trail car outside. He helped put the supplies away, saw that the beer would be sufficiently refrigerated, and pressed a few buttons that would insure a supply of pressure-cooked refreshments. The Hedgehounds were hearty eaters.

  After that, he left the door open and relaxed behind his desk, waiting. It was hot in the office; he opened his collar and made the walls transparent. Air conditioning began to cool the room, but sight of the broad valley below was equally refreshing. Tall pines rippled their branches in the wind.

  It was not like New Yale. That had been one of the larger towns. Only the technological villages covered larger areas, and that was a matter of necessity; chemists and physicists need plenty of room to provide a margin of safety. But New Yale was intensely specialized in education. Sequoia, with its great hospital and its cellulose industry, was more of a complete, rounded unit. Isolated from the rest of the world except by air and television, it lay clean and attractive, sprawling in white and green and pastel plastics around the swift waters of the river that raced down seaward.

  Burkhalter locked his hands behind his neck and yawned. He felt inexplicably fatigued, as he had felt from time to time for several weeks. Not that this work was hard; on the contrary. But reorientation to his new job wouldn’t be quite as easy as he had expected. In the beginning he hadn’t anticipated these wheels within wheels.

  Barbara Pell, for example. She was dangerous. She, more than any of the others, perhaps, was the guiding spirit of the Sequoia paranoids. Not in the sense of planned action, no. But she ignited, like a flame. She is a born leader. And there were uncomfortably many paranoids here now: They had infiltrated—superficially with good reason, on jobs or errands or vacations; but the town was crammed with them, comparatively speaking.

  The nontelepaths still outnumbered both Baldies and paranoids as they did on a larger scale all over the world—

  He remembered his grandfather, Ed Burkhalter. If any Baldy had ever hated the paranoids, Ed Burkhalter had. And presumably with good reason, since one of the first paranoid plots—a purely individual attempt then—had indirectly tried to indoctrinate the mind of Ed’s son, Harry Burkhalter’s father. Oddly, Burkhalter remembered his grandfather’s thin, harsh face more vividly than his father’s gentler one.

  He yawned again, trying to immerse himself in the calm of the vista beyond the windows. Another world? Perhaps only in deep space could a Baldy ever be completely free from those troubling halffragments of vagrant thoughts that he sensed even now. And without that continual distraction, with one’s mind utterly unhampered—he stretched luxuriously, trying to imagine the feeling of his body without gravity, and extending that parallel to his mind. But it was impossible.

  The Baldies had been born before their time, of course—an artificially hastened mutation caused by radioactivity acting on human genes and chromosomes. Thus their present environment was wrong. Burkhalter toyed idly with the concept of a deep-space race, each individual mind so delicately attuned that even the nearness of any alien personality would interfere with the smooth processes of perfect thought.

  Pleasant, but impractical. It would be a dead end. The telepaths weren’t supermen, as the paranoids contended; at best they had only one fatally miraculous sense—fatal, because it had been mingled with common clay. With a genuine superman, telepathy would be merely one sense among a dozen other inconceivable ones.

  Whereas Barbara Pell—the name and the face slid into his thoughts again, and the beautiful body, as dangerous and as fascinating as fire—whereas Barbara Pell, for instance, undoubtedly considered herself strictly super, like all the warped telepaths of her kind.

  He thought of her bright, narrow gaze, and the red mouth with its sneering smile. He thought of the red curls moving like snakes upon her shoulders, and the red thoughts moving like snakes through her mind. He stopped thinking of her.

  He was very tired. The sense of fatigue, all out of proportion to the energy he had expended, swelled and enulfed him. If the Hedgehound chiefs weren’t coming, it would be pleasant to take a copter up. The inclosing walls of the mountains would fall away as the plane lifted into the empty blue, higher and higher, till it hung in space above a blurred, featureless landscape, half-erased by drifting clouds. Burkhalter thought of how the ground would look, a misty, dreamy Sime illustration, and, in his daydream, he reached out slowly to touch the controls. The copter slanted down, more and more steeply, till it was flashing suicidally toward a world that spread hypnotically, like a magically expanding carpet.

  Someone was coming. Burkhalter blurred his mind instantly and stood up. Beyond the open door was only the empty forest, but now he could hear the faint, rising overtones of a song. The Hedgehounds. being a nation of nomads, sang as they marched, old tunes and ballads of memorable simplicity that had come down unchanged from before the Blowup, though the original meanings had been forgotten.

  Green grow the lilacs, all sparkling with dew;

  I’m lonely, my darling, since parting from you—

  Ancestors of the Hedgehounds had hummed that song along the borders of Old Mexico, long before war had been anything but distantly romantic. The grandfather of one of the current singers had been a Mexican, drifting up the California coast, dodging the villages and following a lazy wanderlust that led him into the Canadian forests at last. His name had been Ramon Alvarez but his grandson’s name was Kit Carson Alvers, and his black beard rippled as he sang.

  But by our next meeting I’ll hope

  to prove true,

  And change the green lilacs for

  the red, white and blue.

  There were no minstrels among the Hedgehounds—they were all minstrels, which is how folk songs are kept alive. Singing, they came down the path, and fell silent at sight of the consul’s house.

  Burkhalter watched. It was a chapter of the past come alive before his eyes. He had read of the Hedgehounds, but not until six weeks ago had he encountered any of the new pioneers. Their bizarre costumes still had power to intrigue him.

  Those costumes combined functionalism with decoration. The buckskin shirts, that could blend into a pattern of forest light and shade, were fringed with knotted tassels; Alvers had a coonskin cap, and all three men wore sandals, made of soft, tough kidskin. Sheathed knives were at their belts, hunting knives, plainer and shorter than the misericordias of the townsfolk. And their faces showed a rakehell vigor, a lean, brown independence of spirit that made them brothers
. For generations now the Hedgehounds had been wresting their living from the wilderness with such rude weapons as the bow one of them had slung across his shoulder, and the ethics of duelling had never developed among them. They didn’t duel. They killed, when killing seemed necessary—for survival.

  Burkhalter came to the threshold. “Come in,” he said. “I’m the consul—Harry Burkhalter.”

  “You got our message?” asked a tall, Scottish-looking chief with a bushy red beard. “That thing you got rigged up in the woods looked tetchy.”

  “The message conveyor? It works, all right.”

  “Fair enough. I’m Cobb Mattoon. This here’s Kit Carson Alvers, and this un’s Umpire Vine.” Vine was clean-shaven, a barrel of a man who looked like a bear, his sharp brown eyes slanting wary glances all around. He gave a taciturn grunt and shook hands with Burkhalter. So did the others. As the Baldy gripped Alvers’ palm, he knew that this was the man who intended to kill him.

  He made no sign. “Glad you’re here. Sit down and have a drink. What’ll you have?”

  “Whiskey,” Vine grunted. His enormous hand smothered the glass. He grinned at the siphon shook his head, and gulped a quantity of whiskey that made Burkhalter’s throat smart in sympathy.

  Alvers, too, took whiskey; Mattoon drank gin, with lemon. “You got a smart lot of drinks here,” he said, staring at the bar Burkhalter had swung out. “I can make out to spell some of the labels, but—what’s that?”

  “Drambuie. Try it?”

  “Sure,” Mattoon said, and his red-haired throat worked. “Nice stuff. Better than the corn we cook up in the woods.”

  “If you walked far, you’ll be hungry,” Burkhalter said. He pulled out the oval table, selected covered dishes from the conveyor belt, and let his guests help themselves. They fell to without ceremony.

  Alvers looked across the table. “You one of them Baldies?” he asked suddenly.

  Burkhalter nodded. “Yes, I am. Why?”

  Mattoon said, “So you’re one of ’em.” He was frankly staring. “I never seen a Baldy right close up. Maybe I have at that, but with the wigs you can’t tell, of course.”

  Burkhalter grinned as he repressed a familiar feeling of sick distaste. He had been stared at before, and for the same reason.

  “Do I look like a freak, Mr. Mattoon?”

  “How long you been consul?” Mattoon asked.

  “Six weeks.”

  “O.K.,” the big man said, and his voice was friendly enough, though the tone was harsh. “You oughta remember there ain’t no Mistering with the Hedgehounds. I’m Cobb Mattoon. Cobb to my friends, Mattoon to the rest. Nope, you don’t look like no freak. Do people figger you Baldies are all sports?”

  “A good many of them,” Burkhalter said.

  “One thing,” Mattoon said, picking up a chop bone, “in the woods, we pay no heed to such things. If a guy’s born funny, we don’t mock him for that. Not so long as he sticks to the tribe and plays square. We got no Baldies among us, but if we did, I kind of think they might get a better deal than they do now.”

  Vine grunted and poured more whiskey. Alvers’ black eyes were fixed steadily on Burkhalter.

  “You readin’ my mind?” Mattoon demanded. Alvers drew in his breath sharply.

  Without looking at him, Burkhalter said, “No. Baldies don’t. It isn’t healthy.”

  “True enough. Minding your own business is a plenty good rule. I can see how you’d have to play it. Look. This is the first time we come down here Alvers and Vine and me. You ain’t seen us before. We heard rumors about this consulate—” He stumbled over the unfamiliar word. “Up to now, we traded with Selfridge sometimes, but we didn’t have contact with townsfolk. You know why.” Burkhalter knew. The Hedgehounds had been outcastes, shunning the villages, and sometimes raiding them. They were outlaws.

  “But now a new time’s coming. We can’t live in the towns; we don’t want to. But there’s room enough for everybody. We still don’t see why they set up these con-consulates; still, we’ll string along. We got a word.”

  Burkhalter knew about that, too. It was the Cody’s word, whispered through the Hedgehound tribes—a word they would not disobey.

  He said, “Some of the Hedgehound tribes ought to be wiped out. Not many. You kill them yourselves, whenever you find them—”

  “Th’ cannibals,” Mattoon said. “Yeah. We kill them.”

  “But they’re a minority. The main group of Hedgehounds have no quarrel with the townsfolk. And vice versa. We want to stop the raids.”

  “How do you figger on doin’ that?”

  “If a tribe has a bad winter, it needn’t starve. We’ve methods of making foods. It’s a cheap method. We can afford to let you have grub when you’re hungry.”

  Vine slammed his whiskey glass down on the table and snarled something. Mattoon patted the air with a large palm.

  “Easy, Umpire. He don’t know . . . listen, Burkhalter, The Hedgehounds raid sometimes, sure. They hunt, and they fight for what they get. But they don’t beg.”

  “I’m talking about barter,” Burkhalter said. “Fair exchange. We can’t set up force shields around every village. And we can’t use Eggs on nomads. A lot of raids would be a nuisance, that’s all. There haven’t been many raids so far; they’ve been lessening every year. But why should there be any at all? Get rid of the motivation, and the effect’s gone too.”

  Unconsciously he probed at Alvers’ mind. There was a thought there, a sly crooked hungry thought, the avid alertness of a carnivore—and the concept of a hidden weapon. Burkhalter jerked back. He didn’t want to know. He had to wait for the Cody to move though the temptation to provoke an open battle with Alvers was dangerously strong.

  Yet that would only antagonize the other Hedgehounds; they couldn’t read Vine’s mind as Burkhalter could.

  “Barter what?” Vine grunted.

  Burkhalter had the answer ready. “Pelts. There’s a demand for them. They’re fashionable.” He didn’t mention that it was an artificially created fad. “Furs, for one thing. And—”

  “We ain’t Red Indians,” Mattoon said. “Look what happened to them! There ain’t nothing we need from townsfolk, except when we’re starving. Then—well, maybe we can barter.”

  “If the Hedgehounds unified—”

  Alvers grinned. “In the old days,” he said in a high, thin voice, “the tribes that unified got dusted off with the Eggs. We ain’t unifying, brother!”

  “He speaks fair, though,” Mattoon said. “It makes sense. It was our granddaddies who had a feud with the villages. We’ve shaken down pretty well. My tribe ain’t gone hungry for seven winters now. We migrate, we go where the pickin’s are good and we get along.”

  “My tribe don’t raid,” Vine growled. He poured more whiskey.

  Mattoon and Alvers had taken only two drinks; Vine kept pouring it down, but his capacity seemed unlimited. Now Alvers said, “It seems on the level. One thing I don’t like. This guy’s a Baldy.”

  Vine turned his enormous barrel of a torso and regarded Alvers steadily. “What you got against Baldies?” he demanded.

  “We don’t nothing about ’em. I heard stories—”

  Vine said something rude. Mattoon laughed.

  “You ain’t polite, Kit Carson. Burkhalter’s playin’ host. Don’t go throwing words around.”

  Alvers shrugged, glanced away, and stretched. He reached into his shirt to scratch himself—and suddenly the thought of murder hit Burkhalter like a stone from a slingshot. It took every ounce of his will power to remain motionless as Alvers’ hand slid back into view, a pistol coming into sight with it.

  There was time for the other Hedgehounds to see the weapon, but no time for them to interfere. The death-thought anticipated the bullet. A flare of blinding, crimson light blazed through the room. Something, moving like an invisible whirlwind, flashed among them; then, as their eyes adjusted, they stood where they had leaped from their chairs, staring at the figure who confronted t
hem.

  He wore a tight-fitting suit of scarlet, with a wide black belt, and an expressionless mask of silver covered his face. A blue-black beard emerged from under it and rippled down his chest. Enormous muscular development showed beneath the skin-tight garments.

  He tossed Alvers’ pistol into the air and caught it. Then, with a deep, chuckling laugh, he gripped the weapon in both hands and broke the gun into a twisted jumble of warped metal.

  “Break a truce, will you?” he said. “You little pipsqueak. What you need is the livin’ daylights whaled outa you, Alvers.”

  He stepped forward and smashed the flat of his palm against Alvers’ side. The sound of the blow rang through the room. Alvers was lifted into the air and slammed against the further wall. He screamed once, dropped into a huddle, and lay there motionless.

  “Git up,” the Cody said. “You ain’t hurt. Mebbe a rib cracked, that’s all. If’n I’d smacked your head, I’d have broke your neck clean. Git up!”

  Alvers dragged himself upright, his face dead white and sweating. The other two Hedgehounds watched, impassive and alert.

  “Deal with you later on. Mattoon, Vine. What you got to do with this?”

  “Nuthin’.” Mattoon said. “Nuthin’, Cody. You know that.”

  The silver mask was impassive. “Lucky fer you I do. Now listen. What I say goes. Tell Alvers’ tribe they’ll have to find a new boss. That’s all.”