Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “This bad place,” the Zonal said. “Better go.”

  “He talked,” Kathleen murmured unbelievingly. “He’s intelligent, Tony!”

  “Intelligent,” Speedy repeated. “Yes. Your language hard. But Earth man Udell taught us some words. Speak.”

  Quade swallowed.

  “Yeah. You speak, all right. But how? Have you been playing dumb all along?” Speedy looked puzzled.

  “Earthman Udell stick us with needle.”

  “That’s it,” Quade said abruptly. “So that was Udell’s trick!” He glanced around. “We can’t get out. Our ship’s wrecked. Understand?”

  Speedy nodded.

  “Understand. I get help.”

  “You know where the camp is?”

  “I know. I go there now. Tell men—bring them here. Yes.”

  He rocketed up and was, gone. His sleek figure was visible swooping toward the ice barrier. Then he had crossed it and vanished.

  “Let’s go inside,” Quade said. “I’d hate it if the Zonals ate us before Wolfe got here,” Inside the castle Quade divided the javelins and passed them around.

  “One mystery’s solved,” he said. “There won’t be any trouble in filming Sons of Titan now. The Zonals are intelligent—but it takes a shot of neo-curare to make ’em that way.”

  “A poison?” Kathleen asked. “Spill it, Tony.”

  “A poison to us, not to the Zonals. They’ve a different sort of physiology. The neocurare doesn’t hurt ’em. It just liberates their subconscious.”

  “Huh?” Sherman said.

  “Here’s the angle. Scientists got on the track a long time ago—’way back before nineteen-forty. They experimented with a dog—trained him to do certain things at the sound of a bell, a conditioned reflex, you know. Then they doped him with curare and developed other habit-patterns in his brain, also set in action by the bell.

  “They proved the two had two independent behavior-systems in his mind—that both could be trained to react to the same stimulus and do it independently of each other. It works like that with the Zonals.”

  KATHLEEN blinked. Quade went on. “It’s logical enough. The virus that wrecked the Zonal culture ruined only their conscious mind—made ’em idiots. Their subconscious minds weren’t harmed. They still retain their potential power. But they’re subconscious, of course—blanketed.

  “The neo-curare simply inhibits the higher centers of the brain, the part that was wrecked by the virus, and releases the subconscious. And while that’s in control the Zonals are intelligent! This will mean rehabilitation for the whole race, someday. Udell taught and trained ’em while they were doped with neo-curare.

  “So all we have to do is follow Udell’s lead. When we get back to camp we’ll first of all immunize the men with the antivirus and then break out the neo-curare. We can finish Sons of Titan in a few weeks!”

  “You forgot something,” Sherman said. “One of the degenerate Zonals got inoculated with neo-curare too, just now.”

  “Well, the javelin also went through his heart,” Quade said. “You can’t be smart when you’re dead. I dunno about that but I’ve got a suspicion the neo-curare won’t have the same effect on these Zonals of yours. They’re so decadent that even their subconscious may be bestialized.

  “They’re almost a different race, as far beneath the regular Zonals as a hyena is beneath a human being. We can try it out and now’s our chance, because they’re attacking again. So we can’t wait till Wolfe arrives. Kathleen, our ship’s wrecked, isn’t it?”

  “I think so,” the girl said dubiously. “The plates are smashed.”

  “Um. I may be able to do some repair work. It’s worth trying. Your helmet’s okay, isn’t it?”

  Kathleen nodded.

  “But you’re not going outside, are you?”

  Quade was donning his spacesuit. He pulled the transparent helmet into place.

  “I am,” he said through the diaphragm, “Our javelins won’t keep the Zonals off long unless the neo-curare will do the trick—and I’m going to find out. At worst, even if our ship’s wrecked, there’s a gun or two im the cabin.” He turned to Sherman. “Take it easy. Luck.”

  “I’m going with you,” Kathleen decided.

  “There’s only one helmet,” Quade informed her. “I’ll be safe enough in this spacesuit. You stay here till I get back, understand?”

  “All right,” the girl said obediently and Quade departed.

  “First time in her life she ever did what I told her,” he thought, plodding toward the lake. This job was going to be dangerous, regardless of what he had told Kathleen. If the Zonals attacked—

  He went on. A number of the Zonals trailed him. One ran forward, and Quade spun quickly and threw his javelin. He didn’t want to kill. He was making an experiment. The sharp-ground point ripped into the amphibian’s leg and the Zonal fell instantly.

  Quade waited. After a minute or more the creature hoisted itself laboriously upright. It had fallen behind its fellows, who were still following Quade.

  It ran after them, limping. Its low snarling mingled with the menacing noises of the others. One glimpse of the amphibian’s brutal face told Quade that his guess had been right. These Zonals were so decadent that not even neo-curare could make them intelligent.

  SHRUGGING, he turned to the lake. A gleam of metal told him the location of the sunken spaceship. Quade waded in. The luminous water seethed about his knees, his waist—closed over his helmet. That didn’t matter. The chemicals in the suit supplied plenty of air.

  He saw the ship, a black shadow, looking like a great resting shark on the bottom. Thanks to the luminosity of the water it was surprisingly clear; he could make out details easily. And now he could hear noises that must mean pursuit. The Zonals, he thought, were amphibians.

  They swam down, keeping a safe distance for the time as Quade manipulated the spacelock. As the Zonals saw him disappearing they came in fast. Quade got another javelin from his belt and used it efficiently.

  But after that he was reduced to using his fists, which was not too effective under water. The Zonals began dragging him out of the lock. Quade reached out, caught a lever, and tried to anchor himself. He couldn’t.

  But inside the ship there were weapons. He struck out frantically at another lever. The inside port opened. The sealed ship became unsealed in an instant, and the lake poured in, carrying with it Quade and a dozen Zonals. By the time the water had settled, a steady stream of amphibians were swimming down through the open lock, and the water had changed color to streaky yellow and pink that gradually merged into an ambiguous darker hue.

  Briefly puzzled, Quade noticed that two carboys of the concentrated aqueous dye had been smashed. Also, Kathleen had left the ship’s lights on, so the Zonals, temporarily distracted, were able to see Quade and to converge on him.

  They got him down, clawing at his suit with their talons. That didn’t worry him. The armor was tough. But one of the Zonals, after breaking a tooth on Quade’s helmet, got a bright idea. He found a metal bar somewhere and began smashing it down on Quade’s head. He used it like a piston, so that water pressure was minimized, and the helmet began to show a webwork of fine cracks.

  Quade twisted, got hold of the bar and tussled it free. He levered oxygen into his suit hurriedly. Buoyancy took over, and he shot up out of the heap of Zonals and bounced off the ceiling. But the amphibians instantly swam up after him.

  It was then that Quade noticed the row of carboys in their wall-cradles beneath him . . .

  He broke them. Using the metal bar, he floundered and fought and smashed his way through the Zonals down the line, while blue and green and translucent orange flowed out from the carboys, staining the water brilliantly. It was tremendously concentrated, this aqueous dye.

  And, while each dye had been made to blend transparently with water, there is a simple principle of the color-wheel that added up to complete opacity. If you mix a lot of colors, you get black. This wasn’t dea
d black, but it was darker and thicker than a Venusian fog on Darkside.

  Within moments the Zonals were fighting by touch alone. Luckily for Quade, they had no scent-organs worth mentioning, or could not use them under water. And they did not know the spaceship, while Quade could have found his way from bow to stern blindfolded.

  He was blindfolded. But the Zonals were in a worse predicament as Quade found when he opened the arsenal, abstracted a few weapons and dodged his way out of the dun-colored lake to shore. Some of the amphibians were emerging on land, but they were wandering around vaguely, with helpless, groping motions.

  They had hollow eyeballs and used water for lenses. Thus, since they’d sucked in the dark-dyed lake-water by now, they were blinded until they could find clear liquid of some sort!

  HORDES of them were emerging from the lake. They were grouping together now, stumbling up the valley toward the pool at the upper end. There they could regain their vision. But it would take time, and Quade, his arms loaded with blasters and thermo-pistols, grinned tightly and started back toward the castle.

  No Zonals were visible when he reached it. Kathleen and Sherman ran forward to meet him. Quade let the guns fall.

  “Wait’ll I take off this suit,” he said, and unzipped himself. Sherman was lovingly loading the weapons as Kathleen helpfully tried to pull off Quade’s helmet without loosening the bolts.

  “Okay,” Quade said, beating her off. “I’ll do it. There! Now. Let me tell you what happened.” He explained. Sherman whistled.

  “Blind man’s buff! That should hold the Zonals for a while. They’ll be all right after they get to the upper pool and rinse their eyeballs out, but it’ll take a while. And with these guns—” He touched a thermo-pistol with expert fingers. Then, suddenly, he looked at Quade.

  “I just thought—I hadn’t realized it before! I’ll be getting out of here! After seven years—”

  The big shoulders shook.

  “I’ll take this gear inside,” Sherman said.

  He didn’t finish. Carrying the guns, he went into the castle and the portal shrank behind him.

  “Give him time,” Quade said slowly. “Let’s wait here for the ship.”

  So they did. And when it loomed over the glaciers Kathleen sighed, relaxed against Quade’s shoulder.

  “Now we’re all set, huh?”

  “Right,” Quade told her. “Because you’re going back Sunward with Sherman. He’s got to report to Patrol headquarters and I’m going to have him take you with him.”

  “Tony!” Kathleen said reproachfully. “You don’t love me any more!”

  “I adore you madly,” Quade said, ignoring the sputtering girl as he signaled the approaching ship. “You hate me. Our engagement’s broken again. You’ll get Von Zorn to blacklist me. You’ll elope with a crooner. I know exactly what you’re trying to say. Just the same, you’re going Sunward with Sherman. I’ve got a picture to shoot! You hear me?”

  “Of course, Tony,” murmured Kathleen, who was already laying new plans. “But I just happened to remember. What about the Planetary Quarantine laws? We’ve all been infected with this Titan virus and, even though we’ve got the antitoxin, we’ve got to stay on Titan for thirty days—or is it sixty? Don’t look at me like that! I can’t help it, Tony—honest I can’t—it’s the law—!”

  JUKE-BOX

  Nobody Loves Me, wails Jerry Foster—until a mechanical music-maker decides everything’s just Moonlight and Roses

  JERRY FOSTER told the bartender that nobody loved him, The bartender, with the experience of his trade, said that Jerry was mistaken, and how about another drink.

  “Why not?” said the unhappy Mr. Foster, examining the scanty contents of his wallet. “ ‘I’ll take the daughter of the vine to spouse. Nor heed the music of a distant drum.’ That’s Omar.”

  “Sure,” the bartender said surprisingly. “But you want to look out you don’t go out by the same door that in you went. No brawls allowed here. This isn’t East Fifth, chum.”

  “You may call me chum,” Foster said, reverting to the main topic, “but you don’t mean it. I’m nobody’s pal. Nobody loves me.”

  “What about that babe you brought in last night?”

  Foster tested his drink. He was a good-looking, youngish man with slick blond hair and a rather hazy expression in his blue eyes.

  “Betty?” he murmured. “Well, the fact is, a while ago I was down at the Tom-Tom with Betty and this redhead came along. So I ditched Betty. Then the redhead iced me. Now I’m lonely, and everyone hates me.”

  “You shouldn’t of ditched Betty, maybe,” the bartender suggested.

  “I’m fickle,” Foster said, tears springing to his eyes. “I can’t help it. Women are my downfall. Gimme another drink and tell me your name.”

  “Austin.”

  “Austin. Well, Austin, I’m nearly in trouble. Did you notice who won the fifth at Santa Anita yesterday?”

  “Pig’s Trotters, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Foster said, “but I laid my dough right on the nose of White Flash. That’s why I’m here. Sammy comes around to this joint now, doesn’t he?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m lucky, Foster said. “I got the money to pay him. Sammy is a hard man when you don’t pay off.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” the bartender said. “Excuse me.”

  He moved off to take care of a couple of vodka collinses.

  “So you hate me too,” Foster said, and, picking up his drink, wandered away from the bar.

  He was surprised to see Betty sitting alone in a booth, watching him. But he was not at all surprised to see that her blond hair, her limpid eyes, her pink-and-white skin had lost all attraction for him. She bored him. Also, she was going to make a nuisance of herself.

  Foster ignored the girl and went further back, to where a bulky oblong object was glowing in polychromatic colors against the far wall. It was what the manufacturers insist on terming an automatic phonograph, in spite of the more aptly descriptive word juke-box.

  This was a lovely juke-box. It had lots of lights and colors. Moreover, it wasn’t watching Foster, and it kept its mouth shut.

  FOSTER draped himself over the jukebox and patted its sleek sides.

  “You’re my girl,” he announced. “You’re beautiful. I love you madly, do you hear? Madly.”

  He could feel Betty’s gaze on his back. He swigged his drink and smoothed the jukebox’s flanks, glibly protesting his sudden affection for the object. Once he glanced around. Betty was starting to get up.

  Foster hastily found a nickel in his pocket and slipped it into the coin-lever, but before he could push it in, a stocky, dark man wearing horn-rimmed glasses entered the bar, nodded at Foster, and moved quickly to a booth where a fat person in tweeds was sitting. There was a short consultation, during which money changed hands, and the stocky man made a note in a small book he brought from his pocket.

  Foster took out his wallet. He had had trouble with Sammy before, and wanted no more. The bookie was insistent on his pound of flesh. Foster counted his money, blinked, and counted it again, while his stomach fell several feet. Either he had been shortchanged, or he had lost some dough. He was short.

  Sammy wouldn’t like that.

  Forcing his fogged brain to think, Foster wondered how he could gain time. Sammy had already seen him. If he could duck out the back.

  It had become altogether too silent in the bar. He needed noise to cover his movements. He saw the nickel in the juke-box’s coin-lever and hastily pushed it in.

  Money began to spew out of the coin return slot.

  Foster got his hat under the slot almost instantly. Quarters, dimes, and nickels popped out in a never-ending stream. The jukebox broke into song. A needle scratched over the black disc. The torchy mourning of “My Man” came out sadly. It covered the tinkling of the coins as they filled Foster’s hat.

  After a while the money stopped coming out of the juke-box. Foster stood ther
e, thanking his personal gods, as he saw Sammy moving toward him. The bookie glanced at Foster’s hat and blinked.

  “Hi, Jerry. What gives?”

  “I hit a jackpot,” Foster said.

  “Not on the juke-box!”

  “No, down at the Onyx,” Foster said, naming a private club several blocks away.

  “Haven’t had a chance to get these changed into bills yet. Want to help me out?”

  “I’m no cash register,” Sammy said. “Ill take mine in green.”

  The juke-box stopped playing “My Man” and broke into “Always.” Foster put his jingling hat on top of the phonograph and counted out bills. He didn’t have enough, but he made the balance up out of quarters he fished from the hat.

  “Thanks,” Sammy said. “Too bad your nag didn’t make it.”

  “ ‘With a love that’s true, always—’ ” the juke-box sang fervently.

  “Can’t be helped,” Foster said. “Maybe next time I’ll hit ’em.”

  “Want anything on Oaklawn?”

  “ ‘When the things you’ve planned, need a helping hand—’ ”

  Foster had been leaning on the juke-box. On the last two words, a tingling little shock raced through him. Those particular two words jumped out of nothing, impinged on the surface of his brain, and sank in indelibly, like the stamp of a die. He couldn’t hear anything else. They echoed and reechoed.

  “Uh—helping hand,” he said hazily. “Helping—”

  “A sleeper?” Sammy said. “Okay, Helping Hand in the third, at Oaklawn. The usual?” The room started to turn around. Foster managed to nod. After a time he discovered that Sammy was gone. He saw his drink on the juke-box, next to his hat, and swallowed the cool liquid in three quick gulps. Then he bent and stared into the cryptic innards of the automatic phonograph.

  “It can’t be,” he whispered. “I’m drunk. But not drunk enough. I need another shot.” A quarter rolled out of the coin-return slot, and Foster automatically caught it.