Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  It was very dim in the room. The furniture, replicas of old things made to the Old ’Uns’ description, loomed disturbingly. Through the patchouli came other odors, indescribable and entirely out of place in this clean, aseptic, modern age.

  “Im’n-s’n,” the fat woman said thinly.

  Dyson said, “I beg your pardon. I’m looking for Mackenzie—”

  Mander clutching painfully at his biceps, a bickering argument broke out between the two Old ‘Uns. The woman shrilled Mander down. She beckoned to Dyson, and he came closer. Her mouth moved painfully. She said, with slow effort:

  “I’m Jane Hyson. Mander said you were here.”

  His own ancestor. Dyson stared. It was impossible to trace any resemblance, and certainly there was no feeling of kinship, but it was as though the past had stooped and touched him tangibly. This woman had been alive five hundred years ago, and her flesh was his own. From her had come the seed that became, in time, Sam Dyson.

  He couldn’t speak, for there was no precedent to guide him. Mander chattered again, and Jane Dyson heaved her huge body forward and wheezed, “They’re not fooling me . . . no war . . . I know there’s no war! Keeping me locked up here—You get me out of here!”

  “But—wait a minute! I’d better get Mackenzie—”

  Again Mander squealed. Jane Dyson made feeble motions. She seemed to smile.

  “No hurry. I’m your aunt—anyway? We’ll have a cup of tea—”

  Mander rolled a table forward. The tea service was already laid out, the tea poured in thermocups that kept it at a stable temperature.

  “Cup of tea. Talk about it. Sit—down!”

  All he wanted to do was escape, he had never realized the sheer, sweating embarrassment of meeting an ancestor, especially such a one as this. But he sat down, took a cup, and said, “I’m very busy. I can’t stay long. If I could come back later—”

  “You can get us out of here. Special exits—we know where, but we can’t open them. Funny metal plates on them—”

  Emergency exits were no novelty, but why couldn’t the locks be activated by the Old ’Uns? Perhaps the locks had been keyed so that they would not respond to the altered physiochemistry of the immortals. Wondering how to escape, Dyson took a gulp of scalding, bitter tea—

  Atrophied taste buds made delicacy of taste impossible. Among the Old ’Uns there were no gourmets. Strong curries, chiles—

  Then the drug hit him, and his mind drowned in slow, oily surges of lethargic tides.

  Some sort of a hypnotic, of course. Under the surface he could still think, a little, but he was fettered. He was a robot. He was an automaton. He remembered being put in a dark place and hidden until nightfall. Then he remembered being led furtively through the avenues to an exit. His trained hands automatically opened the lock. Those escape doors were only for emergency use, but his will was passive. He went out into the moonlight with Jane Dyson and Mander.

  It was unreclaimed country around the Home. The Old ’Uns didn’t know that highways were no longer used. They wanted to hit a highway and follow it to a city. They bickered endlessly and led Dyson deeper and deeper into the wilderness.

  They had a motive. Jane Dyson, the stronger character, overrode Mander’s weak objections. She was going home, to her husband and family. But often her mind failed to grasp that concept, and she asked Dyson questions he could not answer.

  It wasn’t shadowy to him; it was not dreamlike. It had a pellucid, merciless clarity, the old man and the old woman hobbling and gasping along beside him, guiding him, talking sometimes in their strange, incomprehensible tongue, while he could not warn them, could not speak except in answer to direct orders. The drug, he learned, was a variant of pentothal.

  “I seen them use it,” Jane Dyson wheezed. “I got in and took a bottle of it. Lucky I did, too. But I knew what I was doing. They think I’m a fool—”

  Mander he could not understand at all. But Jane Dyson could communicate with him, though she found it painful to articulate the words with sufficient clarity.

  “Can’t fool us . . . keeping us locked up! We’ll fix ‘em. Get to my folks . . . uh! Got to rest—”

  She was inordinately fat, and Mander was cramped and crippled and bent into a bow. Under the clear moonlight it was utterly grotesque. It could not happen. They went on and on, dragging themselves painfully down gullies, up slopes, heading northward for some mysterious reason, and more and more the hands that had originally been merely guiding became a drag. The Old ‘Uns clung to Dyson as their strength failed. They ordered him to keep on. They hung their weight on his aching arms and forced their brittle legs to keep moving.

  There was a cleared field, and a house, with lights in the windows. Jane Dyson knocked impatiently on the door. When it opened, a taffy-haired girl who might have been seven stood looking up inquiringly. Dyson, paralyzed with the drug, saw shocked fear come into the dear blue eyes.

  But it passed as Jane Dyson, thrusting forward, mumbled, “Is your mother home? Run get your mother, little girl. That’s it.”

  The girl said, “Nobody’s home but me. They won’t be back till eleven.”

  The old woman had pushed her way in, and Mander urged Dyson across the threshold. The girl had retreated, still staring. Jane plopped herself into a relaxer and panted.

  “Got to rest . . . where’s your mother? Run get her. That’s it. I want a nice cup of tea.”

  The girl was watching Dyson, fascinated by his paralysis. She sensed something amiss, but her standards of comparison were few. She fell back on polite habit.

  “I can get you some mate, ma’am.”

  “Tea? Yes, yes. Hurry, Betty.”

  The girl went out. Mander crouched by a heating plate, mumbling, Dyson stood stiffly, his insides crawling coldly.

  Jane Dyson muttered, “Glad to be home. Betty’s my fourth, you know. They said the radiations would cause trouble . . . that fool scientist said I was susceptible, but the children were all normal. Somebody’s been changing the house around. Where’s Tom?” She eyed Dyson. “You’re not Tom. I’m . . . what’s this?” The girl came back with three mate gourds. Jane seized hers greedily.

  “You mustn’t boil the water too long, Betty,” she said.

  “I know. It takes out the air—”

  “Now you be still. Sit down and be quiet.”

  Jane drank her mate noisily, but without comment. Dyson had a queer thought, but she and the child were at a contact point, passing each other, in a temporal dimension. They had much in common. The child had little experience, and the old woman had had much, but could no longer use hers. Yet real contact was impossible, for the only superiority the Old ’Un had over the child was the factor of age, and she could not let herself respect the child’s mentality or even communicate, save with condescension.

  Jane Dyson dozed. The child sat silent, watching and waiting, with occasional puzzled glances at Mander and Dyson. Once Jane ordered the girl to move to another chair so she wouldn’t catch cold by the window—which wasn’t open. Dyson thought of immortality and knew himself to be a fool.

  For man has natural three-dimensional limits, and he also has four-dimensional ones, considering time as an extension. When he reaches those limits, he ceases to grow and mature, and forms rigidly within the mold of those limiting walls. It is stasis, which is retrogression unless all else stands still as well. A man who reaches his limits is tending toward sub-humanity. Only when he becomes superhuman in time and space can immortality become practical.

  Standing there, with only his mind free, Dyson had other ideas. The real answer might be entirely subjective. Immortality might be achieved without extending the superficial life span at all. If you could reason sufficiently fast, you could squeeze a year’s reasoning into a day or a minute—

  For example, each minute now lasted a hundred years.

  Jane Dyson woke up with a start. She staggered to her feet. “We can’t stay,” she said. “I’ve got to get on home for dinner. Tel
l your mother—” She mumbled and hobbled toward the door. Mander, apathetically silent, followed. Only jane remembered Dyson, and she called to him from the threshold. The little girl, standing wide-eyed, watched Dyson stiffly follow the others out.

  They went on, but they found no more houses. At last weariness stopped the Old ’Uns. They sheltered in a gully. Mander crawled under a bush and tried to sleep. It was too cold. He got up, hobbled back, and pulled off the old woman’s cloak. She fought him feebly. He got the cloak, went back and slept, snoring. Dyson could do nothing but stand motionless.

  Jane Dyson dozed and woke and talked and dozed again. She brought up scattered, irrelevant memories of the past and spread them out for Dyson’s approval. The situation was almost ideal. She had a listener who couldn’t interrupt or get away.

  “Thought they could fool an old woman like me . . . I’m not old. Making me chew bones, Was that it? There was a bad time for a while. Where’s Tom? Just leave me alone—”

  And—“Telling me I was going to live forever! Scientists! He was right, though. I found that out. I was susceptible. It scared me. Everything going to pot, and Tom dying and me going on . . .

  I got some pills. I’d got hold of them. More’n once I nearly swallowed them, too. You don’t live forever if you take poison, that’s certain. But I was smart. I waited a while, Time enough, I said. It’s cold.”

  Her mottled, suety cheeks quivered. Dyson waited. He was beginning to feel sensation again. The hypnotic was wearing off.

  Rattling, painful snores came from I he invisible Mander, hidden in the gloom. A cold wind sighed down the gully. Jane Dyson’s fat white face was pale in the faint light of distant, uninterested stars. She stirred and laughed a high, nickering laugh.

  “I just had the funniest, dream,” she said. “I dreamed Tom was dead and I was old.”

  A copter picked up Dyson and the Oki ‘Uns half an hour later. But no explanations were made until he was back in the city, and even then they waited till Dyson had time to visit his secret laboratory and return. Then his uncle, Roger Peaslee, came into Dyson’s apartment and sat down without invitation, looking sympathetic.

  Dyson was white and sweating. He put down his glass, heavily loaded with whiskey, and stared at Peaslee.

  “It was a frame, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  Peaslee nodded. He said, “Logic will convince a man he’s wrong, provided the right argument is used. Sometimes it’s impossible to find the right argument.”

  “When Administration sent me to the Home, I thought they’d found out I was doing immortality research.”

  “Yes. As soon as they found out, they sent you to Cozy Nook. That was the argument.”

  “Well, it was convincing. A whole night in the company of those—” Dyson drank. He didn’t seem to feel it. He was still very pale.

  Peaslee said, “We framed that escape, too, as you’ve guessed. But we kept an eye on you all along, to make sure you and the Old ’Uns would be safe.”

  “It was hard on them.”

  “No. They’ll forget. They’ll think it was another dream. Most of the time they don’t know they’re old, you see. A simple defense mechanism of senility. As for that little girl. I’ll admit that wasn’t planned. But no harm was done. The Old ’Uns didn’t shock or horrify her. And nobody will believe her—which is fine, because the Archive myth has to stand for a while.”

  Dyson didn’t answer. Peaslee looked at him more intently.

  “Don’t take it so hard, Sam. You lost an argument, that’s all. You know now that age without increasing maturity doesn’t mean anything. You’ve got to keep going ahead. Stasis is fatal. When we can find out how to overcome that, it’ll be safe to make people immortal. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “We want to study that laboratory of yours, before we dismantle it. Where’s it hidden?”

  Dyson told him. Then he poured himself another drink, downed it, and stood up. He picked up a sheet of paper from the table and tossed it at his uncle.

  “Maybe you can use that, too,” he said. “I was just down at the lab making some tests. I got scared.”

  “Eh?”

  “Jane Dyson was especially susceptible to the particular radiations that cause immortality. Like cancer, you know. You can’t inherit it, but you can inherit the susceptibility. Well I remembered that I’d been working a lot with those radiations, in secret. So I tested myself just now.”

  Peaslee opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything.

  Dyson said, “It wouldn’t have bothered most people—those radiations. Rut Jane Dyson passed on her susceptibility to me. It was accidental. But—I was exposed. Why didn’t Administration get on to me sooner!”

  Peaslee said slowly: “You don’t mean—”

  Dyson turned away from the look beginning to dawn in his uncle’s eyes.

  An hour later he stood in his bathroom alone, a sharp blade in his hand. The mirror watched him questioningly. He was drunk, but not very; it wouldn’t be so easy to get drunk from now on. From now on—

  He laid the cold edge of the knife against one wrist. A stroke would let out the blood from his immortal body, stop his immortal heart in mid-beat, turn him from an immortal into a very mortal corpse. His face felt stiff. The whiskey taste in his mouth couldn’t rinse out the musty smell of senility.

  The thought: Of course there’s Marta. Fourscore and ten is the normal span. If I cut it off now, I’ll be losing a good many years. When I’m ninety, it would be time enough. Suppose I went on for a little while longer, married Marta—

  He looked at the knife and then into the glass. He said aloud:

  “When I’m ninety I’ll commit suicide.”

  Young, firm-fleshed, ruddy with health, his face looked enigmatically back at him from the mirror. Age would come of course. As for death—

  There would be time enough, sixty years from now, when he faced a mirror and knew that he had gone beyond maturity and into the darkening, twilight years. He would know, when the time came—of course he would know!

  And in Cozy Nook, Jane Dyson stirred and moaned in her sleep, dreaming that she was old.

  THE END.

  1947

  TOMORROW AND TOMORROW

  With the best of good intentions, someone was trying—and trying hard!—to start an atomic war that would blow their civilization off the map!

  I.

  He knew it was a dream when he shot Carolyn through the head. But not until then. The imperceptible shifting from reality to the familiar nightmare had come, as always, so stealthily that the shock of surprise almost woke him. Then there came the thought: I must tell the Controllers.

  And after that: But in three weeks there’ll be the quarterly psych check, and they’ll find out anyhow.

  Standing, he looked down at the motionless gray head aureoled in spreading red, and listened, and made a bargain with himself. If I can’t get rid of this recurrent dream, this warp, this compulsion before the psych check, I’ll be fired automatically. There can’t be any danger from a dream. It’s merely a fear-dream; it can’t be wish-fulfillment.

  The thought chilled him horribly.

  He dreaded the next moment, when the pattern of weeks would repeat itself, and he would straighten up above the narrow table, with its intricate controls and warning signal lights, and turn toward the door that led to the unthinkable.

  But he turned.

  Tomorrow I’ll report to the psych board.

  It won’t mean being fired, redly. Not washed up. I’ll simply be reconditioned and tested. But I can never hold this post again!

  The ancient, powerful conditioning of his early environment stirred in savage rebellion. I can’t give it up! The highest honor in the world—

  He walked down the passage. He made the secret signals that permitted his safe ingress. But he knew it was impossible; there were protective devices that even he did not know how to deactivate. In real life, he could never have penetrated this far toward—tow
ard it.

  The dream blurred. There was a confusion of nightmare.

  That coalesced suddenly. He found himself in the brain and the heart. He stood before it.

  And as always he felt that what he had to do was impossible. He had been chosen and trained for his post simply because his psychological background was entirely trustworthy, a more important factor than his technical training. Yet the perverse devil hung on his shoulder, laughing.

  Of course, if I were awake, I would never do it. But in a dream—

  Do it. It’s the release I need, said the devil at his shoulder. The release you need. That we need. You’re under terrific tension, and you’re neurotic and worried for fear this very thing will happen. So get your release. A dream is harmless.

  Somehow in the dream it was ridiculously easy to do. You merely had to detach the boron dampers and pull them out. But what had happened to their locks?

  He watched the gauges on the walls. Geiger counters began to chatter insanely. Needles rose in jumpy, warning spasms as the dampers were withdrawn. The critical mass had nearly been reached.

  But it’s only a dream, of course, he thought, as he woke amid the inconceivable fractional-second beginning of the atomic blast.

  II.

  Joseph Breden made himself sit motionless. He opened his eyes slowly, saw the tri-di chessboards in front of him, red and black, and let his lids drop against the light. But the light was not dazzling. A chain of reactions leaped through his mind; he drew a long breath of relief. He could not have been asleep longer than a few seconds, or his pupils would have contracted against light that would have seemed blinding to him.

  There was no reason to feel surprise. It always happened this way. But there was always the sense that he had been asleep for a long, long time, and that Carolyn Kohl would have noticed. She would have had to report him then. Though that would scarcely have been necessary, with the built-in visio-recorders always focused on the guardians who sat in this room, and in two others elsewhere in the enormous sunken ziggurat.