Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  When you consider how much of human knowledge is due to pyramiding, that’s easier to understand. Penicillin was discovered because somebody invented a microscope because somebody learned how to grind lenses because somebody found out how to make glass because somebody could make fire. There were gaps in the chain. An atomic war would have blown up the planet or ravaged it, but the catastrophe would have been quick—or complete—and if the planet survived, there would have been artifacts and records and the memories of mankind. But the Blowup lasted for a long time—time itself was used as a variable once during that homicidal, suicidal, fratricidal struggle—and there were no records.

  Not many, at least. And they weren’t selective. Eventually cities rose again, but there were odd gaps in the science of the new civilization. Some of those holes filled themselves in automatically, and a few useful records were dug up from time to time, but not many, and the only real due men had to the scientific culture of pre-Blowup days was something that had remained stable through the variable-truth-atomic cataclysm.

  The colloid of the human brain.

  Eyewitnesses.

  The Old ’Uns in the secret, segregated Homes, who had lived for five centuries and longer.

  Will Mackenzie, the interpreter, was a thin, rangy, freckled man of forty, with the slow, easy motions one automatically associated with a sturdier, plumper physique. His blue eyes were lazy, his voice was soothing, and when Dyson fumbled at the unaccustomed uniform, his helpful motions were lazily efficient.

  “A necktie?” Dyson said. “A which?”

  ‘“Necktie,” Mackenzie explained. “That’s right. Don’t ask me why. Some of the Old ’Uns don’t bother with it, but they’re inclined to be fussy. They get conservative after the first hundred years, you know.”

  Dyson had submerged that mild uneasiness and was determined to play this role at its face value. Administration might suspect his sub rosa research, but, at worst, there would be no punishment. Merely terribly convincing argument. And probably they did not suspect. Anyway, Dyson realized suddenly, there were two sides to an argument, and it was possible that he might convince the logicians—though that had never been done before. His current job was to dig out the information he needed from the Old ’Uns and—that ended it. He stared into the enormous closet with its rows of unlikely costumes.

  “You mean they go around in those clothes all the time?” he asked Mackenzie.

  “Yeah.” Mackenzie said. He peeled off his functionally aesthetic garments and donned a duplicate of Dyson’s apparel. “You get used to these things. Well, there are a few things I’ve got to tell you. We’ve plenty of time. The Old ’Uns go to bed early, so you can’t do anything till tomorrow, and probably not much then. They’re suspicious at first.”

  “Then why do I have to wear this now?”

  “So you can get used to it. Sit down. Hike up your pants at the knee, like this—see? Now sit.”

  He pawed at the rough, unfamiliar cloth, settled himself, and picked up a smoke from the table. Mackenzie said with an accomplished ease Dyson envied, and pressed buttons that resulted in drinks sliding slowly out from an aperture in the wall.

  “We’re not in Cozy Nook yet,” the interpreter said. “This is the conditioning and control station. None of the Old ’Uns know what goes on outside. They think there’s still a war.”

  “But—”

  Mackenzie said, “You’ve never been in a Home before. Well, remember that the Old ’Uns are abnormal. A little—” He shrugged. “You’ll see. I’ve got to give you a lecture. O.K. At the time of the Blowup, the radio activity caused a cycle of mutations. One type was a group of immortals. They won’t live forever—”

  Dyson had already done his own research on that point. Radium eventually turns to lead. After a long, long time the energy-quotients of the immortals would sink below the level necessary to sustain life. A short time as the life of a solar system goes—a long time measured against the normal human span. A hundred thousand years, perhaps. There was no certain way to ascertain, except the empirical one.

  Mackenzie said, “A lot of the Old ’Uns were killed during the Blowup. They’re vulnerable to accidents, though they’ve a tremendously high resistance to disease. It wasn’t till after the Blowup, after reconstruction had started, that anybody knew the Old ’Uns were—what they were. There’d been tribal legends—the local shaman had lived forever, you know the typical stuff. We correlated those legends, found a grain of truth in them, and investigated. The Old ’Uns were tested in the labs. I don’t know the technical part. But I do know they were exposed to certain radiations, and their body-structures were altered.”

  Dyson said, “How old do they average?”

  “Roughly, five hundred years. During the radioactive days. It isn’t hereditary, immortality, and there haven’t been any such radioactives since, except in a few delayed-reaction areas.” Mackenzie had been thrown off his routine speech by the interruption. He took a drink.

  He said, “You’ll have to see the Old ’Uns before you’ll understand the entire picture. We have to keep them segregated here. They have information we need. It’s like an unclassified, huge library. The only link we have with pre-Blowup times. And, of course, we have to keep the Old ’Uns happy. That isn’t easy. Supersenility—” He took another drink and pushed a button.

  Dyson said, “They’re human, aren’t they?”

  “Physically, sure. Ugly as sin, though. Mentally, they’ve gone off at some queer tangents.”

  “One of my ancestors is here.”

  Mackenzie looked at him queerly. “Don’t meet her. There’s a guy named Fell who was a technician during the Blowup, and a woman named Hobson who was a witness of some of the incidents you’re investigating. Maybe you can get enough out of those two. Don’t let curiosity get the better of you.”

  “Why not?” Dyson asked. “I’m interested.”

  Mackenzie’s glass had suddenly emptied.

  “It takes special training to be an interpreter here. As for being a caretaker . . . one of the group that keeps the Old ‘Uns happy . . . they’re hand-picked.”

  He told Dyson more.

  The next morning Mackenzie showed his guest a compact gadget that fitted into the ear. It was a sonar, arranged so that the two men could talk, unheard by others, simply by forming words in audibly. The natural body-noises provided the volume, and it was efficient, once Dyson had got used to the rhythmic rise and fall of his heartbeat.

  “They hate people to use ‘Speranto in front of them,” Mackenzie said. “Stick to English, If you’ve got something private to say, use the sonor, or they’ll think you’re talking about them. Ready?”

  “Sure.” Dyson readjusted his necktie uncomfortably. He followed the interpreter through a valve, down a ramp, and through another barrier. Filtered, warm sunlight hit him. He was standing at the top of an escalator that flowed smoothly down to the village below—Cozy Nook.

  A high wail rimmed the Home. Camouflage nets were spread above, irregularly colored brown and green. Dyson remembered that the Old ’Uns had been told this was still war time. A pattern of winding streets, parks, and houses was below.

  Dyson said, “That many? There must be a hundred houses here, Mackenzie.”

  “Some of ’em are for interpreters. psychologists, nurses and guests. Only forty or fifty Old ’Uns, but they’re a handful.”

  “They seem pretty active,” Dyson said, watching figures move about the streets. “I don’t see any surface cars.”

  “Or air-floaters, either,” Mackenzie said. “We depend on sliding ways and pneumotubes for transportation here. There’s not much territory to cover. The idea is to keep the Old ’Uns happy, and a lot of them would want to drive cars if there were any around. Their reactions are too slow. Even with safeties, there’d be accidents. Let’s go down. Do you want to see Fell first, or Hobson?”

  “Well . . . Fell’s the technician? Let’s try him.”

  “Over,” Mackenzi
e nodded, and they went down the escalator. As they descended, Dyson noticed that among the modern houses were some that seemed anachronistic; a wooden cottage, a red-brick monstrosity, an ugly glass-and-concrete structure with distorted planes and bulges. But he was more interested in the inhabitants of the Home.

  Trees rose up, blocking their vision, as they descended. They were ejected gently on a paved square, lined with padded benches. A man was standing there, staring at them, and Dyson looked at him curiously.

  In his ear a voice said, “He’s one of the Old ’Uns.” Mackenzie was using the inaudible sonor.

  The man was old. Five hundred years old, Dyson thought, and suddenly was staggered by the concept. Five centuries had passed since this man was born, and he would go on without change while time flowed in flux without touching him.

  What effect had immortality had upon this man?

  For one thing, he had not been granted eternal youth. The halftime basic precluded that. Each year he grew older, but not quite as old as he had grown the preceding year. He was stooped—Dyson was to learn to recognize that particular stigmata of the Old ’Uns—and his body seemed to hang loosely from the rigid crossbars of his clavicle. His head, totally bald, thrust forward, and small eyes squinted inquisitively at Dyson. Nose and ears were grotesquely enlarged. Yet the man was merely old—not monstrous.

  He said something Dyson could not understand. The sound held inquiry, and, at random, he said, “How do you do. My name is Dyson—”

  “Shut up!” the sonor said urgently in his ear, and Mackenzie moved forward to intercept the old man, who was edging toward the escalator. Gibberish spewed from the interpreter’s lips, and answering gibberish came from the Old ’Uns. Occasionally Dyson could trace a familiar word, but the conversation made no sense to him.

  The old man suddenly turned and scuttled off. Mackenzie shrugged.

  “Hope he didn’t catch your name. He probably didn’t. There’s a woman here with the same name—you said you had an ancestor in Cozy Nook, didn’t you? We don’t like the Old ’Uns to get any real concept of time. It unsettles then. If Mander should tell her.” He shook his head. “I guess he won’t. Their memories aren’t good at all. Let’s find Fell.”

  He guided Dyson along one of the shaded walks. From porches bright eyes stared inquisitively at the pair. They passed workers, easily distinguishable from the Old ’Uns, and once or twice they passed one of the immortals. There could be no difficulty in recognizing them.

  “What did Mander want?” Dyson asked.

  “He wanted out,” Mackenzie said briefly. “He’s only a couple of hundred years old. Result of one of the freak radiation areas blowing off two centuries ago.”

  “Was he speaking English?”

  “His form ox it. You see—they lack empathy. They forget to notice how their words sound to the listener. They slur and mispronounce and in the end it takes a trained interpreter to understand them. Here’s Fell’s place.” They mounted a porch, touched a sensitive plate, and the door opened. A young man appeared on the threshold.

  “Oh, hello,” he said, nodding to Mackenzie. “What’s up?”

  “Research business. How’s Fell?”

  The male nurse grimaced expressively, “Come in and find out. He’s had breakfast, but—”

  They went in. Fell was sitting by a fire, a hunched, huddled figure so bent over that only the top of his bald, white head was visible. The nurse retired, and Mackenzie, motioning Dyson to a chair, approached the Old ’Uns.

  “Professor Fell,” he said softly. “Professor hell. Professor Fell—”

  It went on like that for a long time. Dyson’s nerves tightened. He stared around the room, noticing the musty, choking atmosphere that not even a precipitron could eliminate. Here was none of the dignity of age. This foul-smelling, crouching old man huddled in his chair—

  Fell lifted his head wearily and let it fall again. He spoke. The words were unintelligible.

  “Professor Fell,” Mackenzie said. “We’ve come for a talk. Professor—”

  The figure roused again. It spoke.

  Mackenzie used the sonor. “They understand English—some of ’em, anyway. Fell isn’t like Mander. I’ll have him talking soon.”

  But it took a long time, and Dyson had a throbbing headache before a grain of information was elicited from Fell. The Old ’Uns had entirely lost the sense of selectivity. Or, rather, he had acquired his own arbitrary one. It was impossible to keep him from straying from the subject. Mackenzie did his best to act as a filter, but it was difficult.

  And yet this old man had been alive five hundred years ago.

  Dyson thought of a mate tube, pierced with a number of tiny holes at the end to admit the liquid. Fell was such a tube, stretching back into the unrecorded past—and he, too, was pierced with a thousand such holes through which the irrelevant came in painful, spasmic gushes. Someone had cooked an egg too long once—the price of wool was monstrous—some unknown politician was crooked—it must be arthritis, or else—that boy, what was his name? Tim, Tom, something like that—he’d been a genius-type, yes, but the poor boy—it isn’t as warm now as it used to be—

  Who? Don’t bother me. X don’t remember. I mean I don’t want to be bothered. I’ll tell you something, that reagent I made once—

  It was all very dull; every schoolboy today knew about that reagent. But Mackenzie had to sit and listen to the interminable tale, though he mercifully spared Dyson most of it. Then, gradually, he edged Fell back to the subject.

  Oh, the genius boy—he developed migraine. The specific didn’t work long. Medicine’s got a lot to learn. I remember once—

  Dyson made a few notes.

  What he most wanted were factors in the physiomental off-norm variations of the genius-types that had been produced at random by the Blowup. Fell had been a technician at that time, and an excellent research man. But all his notes, naturally, had vanished in the aftermath, when painfully rebuilt units of civilization kept tumbling down again, and the man’s memory was leaky. Once Dyson made careful notes before he realized that Fell was giving him the formula for a Martini in chemical terminology.

  Then Fell got irritable. He hammered weakly on the arm of his chair and demanded an eggnog, and Mackenzie, with a shrug, got up and let the male nurse take over. The interpreter went out into the filtered sunlight with Dyson.

  “Any luck?”

  “Some,” Dyson said, referring to his notes. “It’s a very spotty picture, though.”

  “You’ve got to allow for exaggerations. It’s necessary to double check their memories before you can believe ’em. Luckily, Fell isn’t a pathological liar like some of the Old ’Uns. Want to look up the Hobson woman?” Dyson nodded, and they strolled through the village. Dyson saw eyes watching him suspiciously, but most of the Old ’Uns were engrossed in their own affairs.

  “Just what’s the angle on your research?” Mackenzie asked. “Or is it confidential?”

  “We’re trying to increase mental capacity,” Dyson explained. “You remember the I.Q. boys born after the Blowup. Or, rather, you’ve heard stories about them.”

  “Geniuses. Uh-huh. Some were crazy as bedbugs, weren’t they?”

  “Specialized. You’ve heard of Ahmed. He had a genius for military organization, but after he’d conquered, he didn’t know how to reconstruct. He ended up very happy, in a private room playing with tin soldiers. Trouble is, Mackenzie, there’s a natural check-and-balance. You can’t increase intelligence artificially without loading the seesaw, at the wrong end. There are all kinds of angles. We want to build up mental capacity without weakening the brain-colloid in other directions. The brainier you are, the less stable you are, usually. You’re too apt to get off on one particular hobby and ride it exclusively. I’ve heard stories about a man named Ferguson, born about three hundred years ago, who was pretty nearly a superman. But he got interested in chess, and pretty soon that was all he cared about.”

  “The Old ’Uns wo
n’t play games, especially competitive ones. But they’re certainly not geniuses.”

  “None of them?”

  Mackenzie said, “At the climacteric, their minds freeze into complete inelasticity. You can date them by that. Their coiffures, their clothes, their vocabularies—that’s the label. I suppose senility is just the stopping point.”

  Dyson thought of half-time, and then stopped short as a musical note thrummed through the village. Almost instantly there was a crowd in the street. The Old ’Uns gathered, thronging closely and moving toward the sound. Mackenzie said, “It’s a fire.”

  “You’re not fireproofed?”

  “Not against arson. Some fool probably decided he was being persecuted or ignored and started a fire to get even. Let’s—” He was thrust away from Dyson by the mob. The musty odor became actively unpleasant. Dyson, pressed in on all sides by the grotesque, deformed Old ’Uns, told himself desperately that physical aspects were unimportant. But if only he were more used to deformity—

  He pushed his way free and felt a hand on his arm. He looked down into the face of Mander, the Old ’Un he had met at the foot of the escalator that had brought him down to Cozy Nook. Mander was grimacing and beckoning furiously. Gibberish, urgent and unintelligible, poured from his lips. He tugged at Dyson’s arm.

  Dyson looked around for Mackenzie, but the interpreter was gone. He tried vainly to interrupt the Old ’Un; it was impossible. So he let himself be pulled a few yards away, and then stopped.

  “Mackenzie,” he said slowly. “Where is Mackenzie?”

  Mander’s face twisted as he strained to understand. Then his bald head bobbed in assent. He pointed, gripped Dyson’s arm again, and started off. With some misgivings, Dyson let himself accompany the Old ’Un. Did the man really understand?

  It wasn’t far to their destination. Dyson didn’t really expect Mackenzie to be in the antique wooden house he entered, but by this time he was curious. There was a darkened room, a sickening sweet odor that was patchouli, though Dyson did not identify it, and he was looking at a shapeless huddle in an armchair, a thing that stirred and lifted a face that had all run to fat, white, violet-veined, with sacks of fat hanging loosely and bobbing when the tiny mouth opened and it spoke.