Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Kleph laughed on a note more sorrowful than amused. But it occurred to Oliver suddenly that there was no longer condescension in her voice. Imperceptibly that air of delicate amusement had vanished from her manner toward him. The cool detachment that still marked Omerie’s attitude, and Klia’s, was not in Kleph’s any more. It was a subtlety he did not think she could assume. It had to come spontaneously or not at all. And for no reason he was willing to examine, it became suddenly very important to Oliver that Kleph should not condescend to him, that she should feel toward him as he felt toward her. He would not think of it.

  He looked down at his cup, rose-quartz, exhaling a thin plume of steam from its crescent-slit opening. This time, he thought, maybe he could make the tea work for him. For he remembered how it loosened the tongue, and there was a great deal he needed to know. The idea that had come to him on the porch in the instant of silent rivalry between Kleph and Sue seemed now too fantastic to entertain. But some answer there must be.

  Kleph herself gave him the opening.

  “I must not take too much euphoriac this afternoon,” she said, smiling at him over her pink cup. “It will make me drowsy, and we are going out this evening with friends.”

  “More friends?” Oliver asked. “From your country?”

  Kleph nodded. “Very dear friends we have expected all this week.”

  “I wish you’d tell me,” Oliver said bluntly, “where it is you come from. It isn’t from here. Your culture is too different from ours—even your names—” He broke off as Kleph shook her head.

  “I wish I could tell you. But that is against all the rules. It is even against the rules for me to be here talking to you now.”

  “What rules?”

  She made a helpless gesture. “You must not ask me, Oliver.” She leaned back on the chaise longue that adjusted itself luxuriously to the motion, and smiled very sweetly at him. “We must not talk about things like that. Forget it, listen to the music, enjoy yourself if you can—” She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the cushions. Oliver saw the round tanned throat swell as she began to hum a tune. Eyes still closed, she sang again the words she had sung upon the stairs. “Come hider, love, to me—”

  A memory clicked over suddenly in Oliver’s mind. He had never heard the queer, lagging tune before, but he thought he knew the words. He remembered what Hollia’s husband had said when he heard that line of song, and he leaned forward. She would not answer a direct question, but perhaps—

  “Was the weather this warm in Canterbury?” he asked, and held his breath. Kleph hummed another line of the song and shook her head, eyes still closed.

  “It was autumn there,” she said. “But bright, wonderfully bright. Even their clothing, you know . . . everyone was singing that new song, and I can’t get it out of my head.” She sang another line, and the words were almost unintelligible—English, yet not an English Oliver could understand.

  He stood up. “Wait,” he said. “I want to find something. Back in a minute.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled mistily at him, still humming. He went downstairs as fast as he could—the stairway swayed a little, though his head was nearly clear now—and into the library. The book he wanted was old and battered, interlined with the penciled notes of his college days. He did not remember very clearly where the passage he wanted was, but he thumbed fast through the columns and by sheer luck found it within a few minutes. Then he went bade upstairs, feeling a strange emptiness in his stomach because of what he almost believed now.

  “Kleph,” he said firmly, “I know that song. I know the year it was new.”

  Her lids rose slowly; she looked at him through a mist of euphoriac.

  He was not sure she had understood. For a long moment she held him with her gaze. Then she put put one downy-sleeved arm and spread her tanned fingers toward him. She laughed deep in her throat.

  “Come hider, love, to me,” she said.

  He crossed the room slowly, took her hand. The fingers closed warmly about his. She pulled him down so that he had to kneel beside her. Her other arm lifted. Again she laughed, very softly, and dosed her eyes, lifting her face to his.

  The kiss was warm and long. He caught something of her own euphoria from the fragrance of the tea breathed into his face. And he was startled at the end of the kiss, when the clasp of her arms loosened about his neck, to feel the sudden rush of her breath against his cheek. There were tears on her face, and the sound she made was a sob.

  He held her off and looked down in amazement. She sobbed once more, caught a deep breath, and said, “Oh, Oliver, Oliver—” Then she shook her head and pulled free, turning away to hide her face. “I . . . I am sorry,” she said unevenly. “Please forgive me. It does not matter . . . I know it does not matter . . . but—”

  “What’s wrong? What doesn’t matter?”

  “Nothing. Nothing . . . please forget it. Nothing at all.” She got a handkerchief from the table and blew her nose, smiling at him with an effect of radiance through the tears.

  Suddenly he was very angry. He had heard enough evasions and mystifying half-truths. He said roughly, “Do you think I’m crazy? I know enough now to—”

  “Oliver, please!” She held up her own cup, steaming fragrantly. “Please, no more questions. Here, euphoria is what you need, Oliver. Euphoria, not answers.”

  “What year was it when you heard that song in Canterbury?” he demanded, pushing the cup aside.

  She blinked at him, tears bright on her lashes. “Why . . . what year do you think?”

  “I know,” Oliver told her grimly. “I know the year that song was popular. I know you just came from Canterbury—Hollia’s husband said so. It’s May now, but it was autumn in Canterbury, and you just came from there, so lately the song you heard is still running through your head. Chaucer’s Pardoner sang that song sometime around the end of the fourteenth century. Did you see Chaucer, Kleph? What was it like in England that long ago?”

  Kleph’s eyes fixed his for a silent moment. Then her shoulders drooped and her whole body went limp with resignation beneath the soft blue robe. “I am a fool,” she said gently. “It must have been easy to trap me. You really believe—what you say?”

  Oliver nodded.

  She said in a low voice, “Few people do believe it. That is one of our maxims, when we travel. We are safe from much suspicion because people before The Travel began will not believe.”

  The emptiness in Oliver’s stomach suddenly doubled in volume. For an instant the bottom dropped out of time itself and the universe was unsteady about him. He felt sick. He felt naked and helpless. There was a buzzing in his ears and the room dimmed before him.

  He had not really believed—not until this instant. He had expected some rational explanation from her that would tidy all his wild half-thoughts and suspicions into something a man could accept as believable. Not this.

  Kleph dabbed at her eyes with the pale-blue handkerchief and smiled tremulously.

  “I know,” she said. “It must be a terrible thing to accept. To have all your concepts turned upside down—We know it from childhood, of course, but for you . . . here, Oliver. The euphoriac will make it easier.”

  He took the cup, the faint stain of her lip rouge still on the crescent opening. He drank, feeling the dizzy sweetness spiral through his head, and his brain turned a little in his skull as the volatile fragrance took effect. With that turning, focus shifted and all his values with it.

  He began to feel better. The flesh settled on his bones again, and the warm clothing of temporal assurance settled upon his flesh, and he was no longer naked and reeling in the vortex of unstable time.

  “The story is very simple, really,” Kleph said. “We—travel. Our own time is not terribly far ahead of yours. No, I must not say how far. But we still remember your songs and poets and some of your great actors. We are a people of much leisure, and we cultivate the art of enjoying ourselves.

  “This is a tour we are maki
ng—a tour of a year’s seasons. Vintage seasons. That autumn in Canterbury was the most magnificent autumn our researchers could discover anywhere. We rode in a pilgrimage to the shrine—it was a wonderful experience, though the clothing was a little hard to manage.

  “Now this month of May is almost over—the loveliest May in recorded times. A perfect May in a wonderful period. You have no way of knowing what a good, gay period you live in, Oliver. The very feeling in the air of the cities—that wonderful national confidence and happiness—everything going as smoothly as a dream. There were other Mays with fine weather, but each of them had a war or a famine, or something else wrong.” She hesitated, grimaced and went on rapidly. “In a few days we are to meet at a coronation in Rome,” she said. “I think the year will be 800—Christmastime. We—”

  “But why,” Oliver interrupted, “did you insist on this house? Why do the others want to get it away from you?”

  Kleph stared at him. He saw the tears rising again in small bright crescents that gathered above her lower lids. He saw the look of obstinacy that came upon her soft, tanned face. She shook her head.

  “You must not ask me that.” She held out the steaming cup. “Here, drink and forget what I have said. I can tell you no more. No more at all.”

  When he woke, for a little while he had no idea where he was. He did not remember leaving Kleph or coming to his own room. He didn’t care, just then. For he woke to a sense of overwhelming terror.

  The dark was full of it. His brain rocked on waves of fear and paid. He lay motionless, too frightened to stir, some atavistic memory warning him to lie quiet until he knew from which direction the danger threatened. Reasonless panic broke over him in a tidal flow; his head ached with its violence and the dark throbbed to the same rhythms.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  Omerie’s deep voice said, “Wilson! Wilson, are you awake?”

  Oliver tried twice before he had breath to answer. “Y-yes—what is it?”

  The knob rattled. Omerie’s dim figure groped for the light switch and the room sprang into visibility. Omerie’s face was drawn with strain, and he held one hand to his head as if it ached in rhythm with Oliver’s.

  It was in that moment, before Omerie spoke again, that Oliver remembered Hollia’s warning. “Move out, young man—move out before tonight.” Wildly he wondered what threatened them all in this dark house that throbbed with the rhythms of pure terror.

  Omerie in an angry voice answered the unspoken question.

  “Someone has planted a subsonic in the house, Wilson. Kleph thinks you may know where it is.”

  “S-subsonic?”

  “Call it a gadget,” Omerie interpreted impatiently. “Probably a small metal box that—”

  Oliver said, “Oh,” in a tone that must have told Omerie everything.

  “Where is it?” he demanded. “Quick. Let’s get this over.”

  “I d-don’t know.” With an effort Oliver controlled the chattering of his teeth. “Y-you mean all this—all this is just from the little box?”

  “Of course. Now tell me, how to find it before we all go crazy.”

  Oliver got shakily out of bed. groping for his robe with nerveless hands. “I s-suppose she hid it somewhere downstairs,” he said. “S-she wasn’t gone long.”

  Omerie got the story out of him in a few brief questions. He clicked his teeth in exasperation when Oliver had finished it.

  “That stupid Hollia—”

  “Omerie!” Kleph’s plaintive voice wailed from the hall. “Please hurry, Omerie! This is too much to stand! Oh, Omerie, please!”

  Oliver stood up abruptly. Then a redoubled wave of the inexplicable pain seemed to explode in his skull at the motion, and he clutched the bedpost and reeled.

  “Go find the thing yourself,” he heard himself saying dizzily. “I can’t even walk—”

  Omerie’s own temper was drawn wire-tight by the pressure in the room. He seized Oliver’s shoulder and shook him, saying in a tight voice, “You let it in—now help us get it out, or—”

  “It’s a gadget out of your world, not mine!” Oliver said furiously.

  And then it seemed to him there was a sudden coldness and silence in the room. Even the pain and the senseless terror paused for a moment. Omerie’s pale, cold eyes fixed upon Oliver a stare so chill he could almost feel the ice in it.

  “What do you know about our-r-world?” Omerie demanded.

  Oliver did not speak a word. He did not need to; his face must have betrayed what he knew. He was beyond concealment in the stress of this nighttime terror he still could not understand.

  Omerie bared his white teeth and said three perfectly unintelligible words. Then he stepped to the door and snapped, “Kleph!”

  Oliver could see the two women huddled together in the hall, shaking violently with involuntary waves of that strange, synthetic terror. Klia, in a luminous green gown, was rigid with control, but Kleph made no effort whatever at repression. Her downy robe had turned soft gold tonight; she shivered in it and the tears ran down her face unchecked.

  “Kleph,” Omerie said in a dangerous voice, “you were euphoric again yesterday?”

  Kleph darted a scared glance at Oliver and nodded guiltily.

  “You talked too much.” It was a complete indictment in one sentence. “You know the rules, Kleph. You will not be allowed to travel again if anyone reports this to the authorities.”

  Kleph’s lovely creamy face creased suddenly into impenitent dimples.

  “I know it was wrong. I am very sorry—but you will not stop me if Cenbe says no.”

  Klia flung out her arms in a gesture of helpless anger. Omerie shrugged. “In this case, as it happens, no great harm is done,” he said, giving Oliver an unfathomable glance. “But it might have been serious. Next time perhaps it will be. I must have a talk with Cenbe.”

  “We must find the subsonic first of all,” Klia reminded them, shivering. “If Kleph is afraid to help, she can go out for awhile. I confess I am very sick of Kleph’s company just now.”

  “We could give up the house!” Kleph cried wildly. “Let Hollia have it! How can you stand this long enough to hunt—”

  “Give up the house?” Klia echoed “You must be mad! With all our invitations out?”

  “There will be no need for that,” Omerie said. “We can find it if we all hunt. You feel able to help?” He looked at Oliver.

  With an effort Oliver controlled his own senseless panic as the waves of it swept through the room. “Yes,” he said. “But what about me? What are you going to do?”

  “That should be obvious,” Omerie said, his pale eyes in the dark face regarding Oliver impassively. “Keep you in the house until we go. We can certainly do no less. You understand that. And there is no reason for us to do more, as it happens. Silence is all we need to impose. It is all we promised when we signed our travel papers.”

  “But—” Oliver groped for the fallacy in that reasoning. It was no use. He could not think clearly. Panic surged insanely through his mind from the very air around him. “All right,” he said. “Let’s hunt.”

  It was dawn before they found the box, tucked inside the ripped seam of a sofa cushion. Omerie took it upstairs without a word. Five minutes later the pressure in the air abruptly dropped and peace fell blissfully upon the house.

  “They will try again,” Omerie said to Oliver at the door of the back bedroom. “We must watch for that. As for you, I must see that you remain in the house until Friday. For your own comfort, I advise you to let me know if Hollia offers any further tricks. I confess I am not quite sure how to enforce your staying indoors. I could use methods that would make you very uncomfortable. I would prefer to accept your word on it.”

  Oliver hesitated. The relaxing of pressure upon his brain had left him exhausted and stupid, and he was not at all sure what to say.

  Omerie went on after a moment. “It was partly our fault for not insuring that we have the house to ourselves,” he sa
id. “Living here with us, you. could scarcely help suspecting. Shall we say that in return for your promise, I reimburse you in part for losing the sale price on this house?”

  Oliver thought that over. It would pacify Sue a little. And it meant only two days indoors. Besides, what good would escaping do? What could he say to outsiders that would not lead him straight to a padded cell?

  “All right,” he said wearily. “I promise.”

  By Friday morning there was still no sign from Hollia. Sue telephoned at noon. Oliver knew the crackle of her voice over the wire when Kleph took the call.

  Even the crackle sounded hysterical; Sue saw her bargain slipping hopelessly through her grasping little fingers.

  Kleph’s voice was soothing. “I am sorry,” she said many times, in the intervals when the voice paused. “I am truly sorry. Believe me, you will find it does not matter. I know . . . I am sorry—”

  She turned from the phone at last. “The girl says Hollia has given up,” she told the others.

  “Not Hollia,” Klia said firmly.

  Omerie shrugged. “We have very little time left. If she intends anything more, it will be tonight. We must watch for it.”

  “Ob, not tonight!” Kleph’s voice was horrified. “Not even Hollia would do that!”

  “Hollia, my dear, in her own way is quite as unscrupulous as you are,” Omerie told her with a smile.

  “But—would she spoil things for us just because she can’t be here?”

  “What do you think?” Klia demanded.

  Oliver ceased to listen. There was no making sense out of their talk, but he knew that by tonight whatever the secret was must surely come into the open at last. He was willing to wait and see.

  For two days excitement had been building up in the house and the three who shared it with him. Even the servants felt it and were nervous and unsure of themselves. Oliver had given up asking questions—it only embarrassed his tenants—and watched.

  All the chairs in the house were collected in the three front bedrooms. The furniture was rearranged to make room for them, and dozens of covered cups had been set out on trays. Oliver recognized Kleph’s rose-quartz set among the rest. No steam rose from the thin crescent-openings, but the cups were full. Oliver lifted one and felt a heavy liquid move within it, like something half-solid, sluggishly.