Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  It seemed terrible to Oliver now. Even Kleph—all of them had been touched with a pettiness, the faculty that had enabled Hollia to concentrate on her malicious, small schemes to acquire a ringside seat while the meteor thundered in toward Earth’s atmosphere. They were all dilettantes, Kleph and Omerie and the others. They toured time, but only as onlookers. Were they bored—sated—with their normal existence?

  Not sated enough to wish change, basically. Their own time-world was a fulfilled womb, a perfection made manifest for their needs. They dared not change the past—they could not risk flawing their own present.

  Revulsion shook him. Remembering the touch of Kleph’s lips, he felt a sour sickness on his tongue. Alluring she had been; he knew that too well. But the aftermath—

  There was something wrong about this race from the future. He had felt it dimly at first, before Kleph’s nearness had drowned caution and buffered his sensibilities. Time traveling purely as an escape mechanism seemed almost blasphemous. A race with such power—

  Kleph—leaving him for the barbaric, splendid coronation at Rome a thousand years ago—how had she seen him? Not as a living, breathing man. He knew that, very certainly. Kleph’s race were spectators.

  But he read more than casual interest in Cenbe’s eyes now. There was an avidity there, a bright, fascinated probing. The man had replaced his earphones—he was different from the others. He was a connoisseur. After the vintage season came the aftermath—and Cenbe.

  Cenbe watched and waited, light flickering softly in the translucent block before him, his fingers poised over the note pad. The ultimate connoisseur waited to savor the rarities that no non-gourmet could appreciate.

  Those thin, distant rhythms of sound that was almost music began to be audible again above the noises of the distant fire. Listening, remembering, Oliver could very nearly catch the pattern of the symphonia as he had heard it, all intermingled with the flash of changing faces and the rank upon rank of the dying—

  He lay back on the bed letting the room swirl away into the darkness behind his closed and aching lids. The ache was implicit in every cell of his body, almost a second ego taking possession and driving him out of himself, a strong, sure ego taking over as he himself let go.

  Why, he wondered dully, should Kleph have lied? She had said there was no aftermath to the drink she had given him. No aftermath—and yet this painful possession was strong enough to edge him out of his own body.

  Kleph had not lied. It was no aftermath to drink. He knew that—but the knowledge no longer touched his brain or his body. He lay still, giving them up to the power of the illness which was aftermath to something far stronger than the strongest drink. The illness that had no name—yet.

  Cenbe’s new symphonia was a crowning triumph. It had its premiere from Antares Hall, and the applause was an ovation. History itself, of course, was the artist—opening with the meteor that forecast the great plagues of the fourteenth century and closing with the climax Cenbe had caught on the threshold of modern times. But only Cenbe could have interpreted it with such subtle power.

  Critics spoke of the masterly way in which he had chosen the face of the Stuart king as a recurrent motif against the montage of emotion and sound and movement. But there were other faces, fading through the great sweep of the composition, which helped to build up to the tremendous climax. One face in particular, one moment that the audience absorbed greedily. A moment in which one man’s face loomed huge in the screen, every feature clear. Cenbe had never caught an emotional crisis so effectively, the critics agreed. You could almost read the man’s eyes.

  After Cenbe had left, he lay motionless for a long while. He was thinking feverishly—

  I’ve got to find some way to tell people. If I’d known in advance, maybe something could have been done. We’d have forced them to tell us how to change the probabilities. We could have evacuated the city.

  If I could leave a message—

  Maybe not for today’s people. But later. They visit all through time. If they could be recognized and caught somewhere, sometime, and made to change destiny—

  It wasn’t easy to stand up. The room kept tilting. But he managed it. He found pencil and paper and through the swaying of the shadows he wrote down what he could. Enough. Enough to warn, enough to save.

  He put the sheets on the table, in plain sight, and weighted them down before he stumbled back to bed through closing darkness.

  The house was dynamited six days later, part of the futile attempt to halt the relentless spread of the Blue Death.

  THE END.

  ABSALOM

  The prodigy son of a future father presents a difficult problem when he wants his own way about studying logic!

  AT DUSK Joel Locke came home from the university where he held the chair of psychonamics. He came quietly into the house, by a side door, and Stood listening, a tall, tight-lipped man of forty with a faintly sardonic mouth and cool gray eyes. He could hear the precipitron humming. That meant that Abigail Schuler, the housekeeper was busy with her duties. Locke smiled slightly and turned toward a panel in the wall that opened at his approach.

  The small elevator took him noiselessly upstairs.

  There, he moved with curious stealth. He went directly to a door at the end of the hall and paused before it, his head bent, his eyes unfocused. He heard nothing. Presently he opened the door and stepped into the room.

  Instantly the feeling of unsureness jolted back, freezing him where he stood. He made no sign, though his mouth tightened. He forced himself to remain quiet as he glanced around.

  It could have been the room of a normal twenty-year-old, not a boy of eight. Tennis racquets were heaped in a disorderly fashion against a pile of book records. The thiaminizer was turned on, and Locke automatically clicked the switch over. Abruptly he turned. The televisor screen was blank, yet he could have sworn that eyes had been watching him from it.

  This wasn’t the first time it had happened.

  After a while Locke turned again and squatted to examine the book reels. He picked out one labeled “BRIAFF ON ENTROPIC LOGIC” and turned the cylinder over in his hands, scowling. Then he replaced it and went out of the room, with a last, considering look at the televisor.

  Downstairs Abigail Schuler was fingering the Mastermaid switchboard. Her prim mouth was as tight as the severe bun of gray-shot hair at the back of her neck.

  “Good evening,” Locke said. “Where’s Absalom?”

  “Out playing, Brother Locke,” the housekeeper said formally. “You’re home early. I haven’t finished the living room yet.”

  “Well, turn on the ions and let ’em play,” Locke said. “It won’t take long. I’ve got some papers to correct, anyway.”

  He started out, but Abigail coughed significantly.

  “Well?”

  “He’s looking peaked.”

  “Then outdoor exercise is what he needs,” Locke said shortly. “I’m going to send him to a summer camp.”

  “Brother Locke,” Abigail said, “I don’t see why you don’t let him go to Baja California. He’s set his heart on it. You let him study all the hard subjects he wanted before. Now you put your foot down. It’s none of my affair, but I can tell he’s pining.”

  “He’d pine worse if I said yes. I’ve my reasons for not wanting him to study entropic logic. Do you know what it involves?”

  “I don’t—you know I don’t. I’m not an educated woman, Brother Locke. But Absalom is bright as a button.”

  LOCKE made an impatient gesture.

  “You have a genius for understatement,” he said. “Bright as a button!”

  Then he shrugged and moved to the window, looking down at the play-court below where his eight-year-old son played handball. Absalom did not look up. He seemed engrossed in his game. But Locke, watching, felt a cool, stealthy terror steal through his mind, and behind his back his hands clenched together.

  A boy who looked ten, whose maturity level was twenty, and yet who w
as still a child of eight. Not easy to handle. There were many parents just now with the same problem—something was happening to the graph curve that charts the percentage of child geniuses born in recent times. Something had begun to stir lazily far back in the brains of the coming generations and a new species, of a sort, was coming slowly into being. Locke knew that well. In his own time he, too, had been a child genius.

  Other parents might meet the problem in other ways, he thought stubornly. Not himself. He knew what was best for Absalom. Other parents might send their genius children to one of the creches where they could develop among their own land. Not Locke.

  “Absalom’s place is here,” he said aloud. “With me, where I can—” He caught the housekeeper’s eye and shrugged again, irritably, going back to the conversation that had broken off. “Of course he’s bright. But not bright enough yet to go to Baja California and study entropic logic. Entropic logic! It’s too advanced for the boy. Even you ought to realize that. It isn’t like a lollypop you can hand the kid—first making sure there’s castor oil in the bathroom closet. Absalom’s immature. It would actually be dangerous to send him to the Baja California University now to study with men three times his age. It would involve mental strain he isn’t fit for yet. I don’t want him turned into a psycopath.”

  Abigail’s prim mouth pursed up sourly. “You let him take calculus.”

  “Oh, leave me alone.” Locke glanced down again at the small boy on the play-court. “I think,” he said slowly, “that it’s time for another rapport with Absalom.”

  The housekeeper looked at him sharply,” opened her thin lips to speak, and then closed them with an almost audible snap of disapproval. She didn’t understand entirely, of course, how a rapport worked or what it accomplished. She only knew that in these days there were ways in which it was possible to enforce hypnosis, to pry open a mind wily-nilly and search it for contraband thoughts. She shook her head, lips pressed tight.

  “Don’t try to interfere in things you don’t understand,” Locke said. “I tell you, I know what’s best for Absalom. He’s in the same place I was thirty-odd years ago. Who could know better? Call him in, will you? I’ll be in my study.”

  Abigail watched his retreating back, a pucker between her brows. It was hard to know what was best. The mores of the day demanded rigid good conduct, but sometimes a person had trouble deciding in her own mind what was the right thing to do. In the old days, now, after the atomic wars, when license ran riot and anybody could do anything he pleased, life must have been easier. Nowadays, in the violent backswing to a Puritan culture, you were expected to think twice and search your soul before you did a doubtful thing.

  Well, Abigail had no choice this time. She clicked over the wall-microphone and spoke into it?

  “Absalom?”

  “Yes, Sister Schuler?”

  “Come in. Your father wants you.”

  In his study Locke stood quiet for a moment, considering. Then he reached for the house-microphone.

  “Sister Schuler, I’m using the televisor. Ask Absalom to wait.”

  He sat down before his private visor. His hands moved deftly.

  “Get me Dr. Ryan, the Wyoming Quizkid Creche. Joel Locke calling.”

  Idly as he waited he reached out to take an old-fashioned cloth-bound book from a shelf of antique curiosa. He read:

  But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, As soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say, Absalom reigneth in Hebron . . .

  “Brother Locke?” the televisor asked.

  The face of a white-haired, pleasant-featured man showed on the screen. Locke replaced the book and raised his hand in greeting.

  “Dr. Ryan. I’m sorry to keep bothering you.”

  “That’s all right,” Ryan said. “I’ve plenty of time. I’m supposed to be supervisor at the Creche, but the kids are running it to suit themselves. He chuckled. “How’s Absalom?”

  “There’s a limit,” Locke said sourly. “I’ve given the kid his head, outlined a broad curriculum, and now he wants to study entropic logic. There are only two universities that handle the subject, and the nearest’s in Baja California.”

  “He could commute by copter, couldn’t he?” Ryan asked, but Locke grunted disapproval.

  “Take too long. Besides, one of the requirements is in-boarding, under a strict regime. The discipline, mental and physical, is supposed to be necessary in order to master entropic logic. Which is spinach. I got the rudiments at home, though I had to use the tri-disney to visualize it.”

  RYAN laughed.

  “The kids here are taking it up. Uh—are you sure you understood it?”

  “Enough, yeah. Enough to realize it’s nothing for a kid to study until his horizons have expanded.”

  “We’re having no trouble with it,” the doctor said. “Don’t forget that Absalom’s a genius, not an ordinary youngster.”

  “I know. I know my responsibility, too. A normal home environment has to be maintained to give Absalom some sense of security—which is one reason I don’t want the boy to live in Baja California just now. I want to be able to protect him.”

  “We’ve disagreed on that point before. All the quizkids are pretty self-sufficient, Locke.”

  “Absalom’s a genius, and a child. Therefor he’s lacking in a sense of proportion. There are more dangers for him to avoid. I think it’s a grave mistake to give the quizkids their heads and let them do what they like. I refused to send Absalom to a Creche for an excellent reason. Putting all the boy geniuses in a batch and letting them fight it out. Completely artificial environment.”

  “I’m not arguing,” Ryan said. “It’s your business. Apparently you’ll never admit that there’s a sine curve of geniuses these days. A steady increase. In another generation—”

  “I was a child genius myself, but I got over it,” Locke said irritably. “I had enough trouble with my father. He was a tyrant, and if I hadn’t been lucky, he’d have managed to warp me psychologically way out of line. I adjusted, but I had trouble. I don’t want Absalom to have that trouble. That’s why I’m using psychonamics.”

  “Narcosynthesis? Enforced hypnotism?”

  “It’s not enforced,” Locke snapped. “It’s a valuable mental catharsis. Under hypnosis, he tells me everything that’s on his mind, and I can help him.”

  “I didn’t know you were doing that,” Ryan said slowly. “I’m not at all sure it’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t tell you how to run your Creche.”

  “No. But the kids do. A lot of them are smarter than I am.”

  “Immature intelligence is dangerous. A kid will skate on thin ice without making a test first. Don’t think I’m holding Absalom back. I’m just running tests for him first. I make sure the ice will hold him. Entropic logic I can understand, but he can’t, yet. So he’ll have to wait on that.”

  “Well?”

  Locke hesitated. “Uh—do you know if your boys have been communicating with Absalom?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I don’t interfere with their lives.”

  “All right, I don’t want them interfering with mine, or with Absalom’s. I wish you’d find cut if they’re getting in touch with him.”

  There was a long pause. Then Ryan said slowly:

  “I’ll try. But if I were you, Brother Locke, I’d let Absalom go to Baja California if he wants to.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Locke said, and broke the beam. His gaze went toward the Bible again.

  Entropic logic!

  Once the boy reached maturity, his somatic and physiological symptoms would settle toward the norm, but meanwhile the pendulum still swung wildly. Absalom needed strict control, for his own good.

  And, for some reason, the boy had been trying to evade the hypnotic rapports lately. There was something going on.

  Thoughts moved chaotically through Locke’s mind. He forgot that Absalom was waiting for him, and remembered only when
Abigail’s voice, on the wall-transmitter, announced the evening meal.

  AT DINNER Abigail Schuler sat like Atropos between father and son, ready to clip the conversation whenever it did not suit her. Locke felt the beginnings of a longstanding irritation at Abigail’s attitude that she had to protect Absalom against his father.

  Perhaps conscious of that, Locke himself finally brought up the subject of Baja California.

  “You’ve apparently been studying the entropic logic thesis.” Absalom did not seem startled. “Are you convinced yet that it’s too advanced for you?”

  “No, Dad,” Absalom said. “I’m not convinced of that.”

  “The rudiments of calculus might seem easy to a youngster. But when he got far enough into it . . . I went over that entropic logic, son, through the entire book, and it was difficult enough for me. And I’ve a mature mind.”

  “I know you have. And I know I haven’t, yet. But I still don’t think it would be beyond me.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Locke said. “You might develop psychotic symptoms if you studied that thing, and you might not be able to recognize them in time. If we could have a rapport every night, or every other night, while you we re studying—”

  “But it’s in Baja California!”

  “That’s the trouble. If you want to wait for my Sabbatical, I can go there with you. Or one of the nearer universities may start the course. I don’t want to be unreasonable. Logic should show you my motive.”

  “It does,” Absalom said. “That part’s all right. The only difficulty’s an intangible, isn’t it? I mean, you think my mind couldn’t assimilate entropic logic safely, and I’m convinced that it could.”

  “Exactly,” Locke said. “You’ve the advantage of knowing yourself better than I could know you. You’re handicapped by immaturity, lack of a sense of proportion. And I’ve had the advantage of more experience.”

  “Your own, though, Dad. How much would such values apply to me?”