Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Foster thought back. There was a memory somewhere.

  The juke-box had begun to play “Chloe,” and the amplification had gone haywire, so the song had bellowed out thunderously for a short time.

  “I’m paralyzed,” the blond man said. “I’m dying, too. I might as well. I think I’ll be safer. She’s vindictive and plenty smart.”

  “She?”

  “A spy. Maybe there’s all sorts of gadgets masquerading as—as things we take for granted. I don’t know. They substituted that juke-box for the original one. It’s alive. No, not it! She! It’s a she, all right!”

  And—“Who put her there?” The blond man said, in answer to Foster’s question. “Who are—they? People from another world or another time? Martians? They want information about us, I’ll bet, but they don’t dare appear personally. They plant gadgets that we’ll take for granted, like that jukebox, to act as spies. Only this one got out of control a little. She’s smarter than the others.”

  He pushed himself up on the pillow, his eyes glaring at the little radio beside him.

  “Even that!” he whispered. “Is that an ordinary, regular radio? Or is it one of their masquerading gadgets, spying on us?”

  He fell back.

  “I began to understand quite a while ago,” the man continued weakly. “She put the ideas in my head. More than once she pulled me out of a jam. Not now, though. She won’t forgive me. Oh, she’s feminine, all right. When I got on her bad side, I was sunk. She’s smart, for a juke-box, A mechanical brain? Or—I don’t know.

  “I’ll never know, now. I’ll be dead pretty soon. And that’ll be all right with me.”

  The nurse came in then . . .

  JERRY FOSTER was coldly frightened.

  And he was drunk. Main Street was bright and roaring as he walked back, but by the time he had made up his mind, it was after closing hour and a chill silence went hand in hand with the darkness. The street lights didn’t help much.

  “If I were sober I wouldn’t believe this,” he mused, listening to his hollow footfalls on the pavement. “But I do believe it. I’ve got to fix things up with that—juke-box!” Part of his mind guided him into an alley.

  Part of his mind told him to break a window, muffling the clash with his coat, and the same urgent, sober part of his mind guided him through a dark kitchen and a swinging door.

  Then he was in the bar. The booths were vacant. A faint, filtered light crept through the Venetian blinds shielding the street windows. Against a wall stood the black, silent bulk of the juke-box.

  Silent and unresponsive. Even when Foster inserted a nickel, nothing happened. The electric cord was plugged in the socket, and he threw the activating switch, but that made no difference.

  “Look,” he said. “I was drunk. Oh, this is crazy. It can’t be happening. You’re not alive—Are you alive? Did you put the finger on that guy I just saw in the hospital? Listen!”

  It was dark and cold. Bottles glimmered against the mirror behind the bar. Foster went over and opened one. He poured the whisky down his throat.

  After a while, it didn’t seem so fantastic for him to be standing there arguing with a juke-box.

  “So you’re feminine,” he said. “I’ll bring you flowers tomorrow. I’m really beginning to believe! Of course I believe! I can’t write songs. Not by myself. You’ve got to help me. I’ll never look at a—another girl.”

  He tilted the bottle again.

  “You’re just in the sulks,” he said. “You’ll come out of it. You love me. You know you do. This is crazy!”

  The bottle had mysteriously vanished. He went behind the bar to find another. Then, with a conviction that made him freeze motionless, he knew that there was someone else in the room.

  He was hidden in the shadows where he stood. Only his eyes moved as he looked toward the newcomers. There were two of them, and they were not human.

  They—moved—toward the juke-box, in a rather indescribable fashion. One of them pulled out a small, shining cylinder from the juke-box’s interior.

  Foster, sweat drying on his cheeks, could hear them thinking.

  “Current report for the last twenty-four hours, Earth time. Put in a fresh recording cylinder. Change the records, too.”

  Foster watched them change the records. Austin had said that the disks were replaced daily. And the blond man, dying in the hospital, had said other things. It couldn’t be real. The creatures he stared at could not exist. They blurred before his eyes.

  “A human is here,” one of them thought. “He has seen us. We had better eliminate him.”

  The blurry, inhuman figures came toward him. Foster, trying to scream, dodged around the end of the bar and ran toward the jukebox. He threw his arms around its unresponsive sides and gasped:

  “Stop them! Don’t let them kill me!”

  He couldn’t see the creatures now but he knew that they were immediately behind him. The clarity of panic sharpened his vision. One title on the juke-box’s list of records stood out vividly. He thrust his forefinger against the black button beside the title “Love Me Forever.”

  Something touched his shoulder and tightened, drawing him back.

  Lights flickered within the juke-box. A record swung out. The needle lowered into its black groove.

  The juke-box started to play “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You.”

  TOMORROW AND TOMORROW

  Second of two parts. Setting off a minor atomic war would normally be considered more than mildly antisocial. But in the world of the GPC, an atomic war ’was better than peace!

  Joseph Breden knew it was a dream when he shot his co-guardian, Carolyn Kohl, through the head. It was a recurrent dream. And it wasn’t a safe dream to have, when you were one of the nuclear physicists chosen to he a guardian at Uranium Pile Number One, the key-spot of a civilization that existed a hundred years after Hiroshima.

  There was more to the dream—the nightmare sensation of going down into the very heart of the great sunken ziggurat under the Pacific island, and removing the boron dampers so that the atomic pile approached—and reached!—critical mass.

  Breden was off beam, and knew it, and knew that the next psych check would betray him to the medical board. Then he’d lose his job, because the guardians at the island had to be perfectly balanced psychologically. His job was vital to him, partly because of Margaret, his wife; partly because of his brother Louis. Louis was one of the mutants born after atomic blasts—there were a number of these. They weren’t supermen. They were merely humans extended.

  Still, GPC—Global Peace Commission—ruled the world. After World War II, World War III started—abortively. While it lasted, blind, insane fury raved across the earth. The nations suddenly felt panic. Only in GPC was there any chance of safety—so GPC was able to take over and to rule for a hundred years.

  It ruled and kept atomic power under control by maintaining the status quo. Research had to be licensed—as Louis Breden, a bacteriologist, had learned, rather to his regret. He liked research. But GPC said no.

  Troubled, Joseph Breden went to New York to see Louis. He had managed to evade the psychological traps of Dr. Hoag, chief medic at Uranium Pile Number One; but he had not evaded his own worry. Louis couldn’t help. He talked about new social movements like the Neoculturalists, who wanted interplanetary travel—banned by GPC—and that was all. Breden looked up Sam Springfield, his old G. P. doctor.

  He told Springfield about his recurrent dream. The doctor made exhaustive tests, and advised Breden to go to his own medics at the uranium base. And—

  Something happened.

  Suddenly Springfield was dead. The nurse suggested angitta. Breden faced a stone wall again.

  (In an underground hideout were a man. and a monster. The man’s name was Ortega; the monster was his son, a mutant—called the Freak. Most of the time the Freak was sane. But not all the time.)

  Breden saw his friend Mike De Anza, physicist, and asked questions about unco
nscious mutation. What he thought was: “Am I a mutant without knowing it? Was that what Dr. Springfield was trying; to tell me? Did I kill Springfield? The nurse—Springfield’s, nurse—there was something funny there. What was it?”

  He remembered. While he was in Springfield’s office, there had been a substitution of nurses. It was the first clue he had found.

  (Ortega said on the televisor, “I know you had to kill Springfield. But now Breden’s conscious mind is suspicious. You’ve got to tell him the truth. Satisfy him. Then erase that part of his memory—using his Control.)

  So the nurse, who wasn’t really a nurse, saw Breden in her apartment and told him the truth.

  “I’m I Isa Carter,” she said. “I’m a member of an underground organization dedicated to overthrowing GPC. We’ve been using you because you’re the only man who can help us at this time. You’re in the right position and you’re psychologically amenable to our treatment. The world’s in cataleptic stupor now. Stasis. Status quo. World War III was merely a gesture; it was too abortive. What we want is to make World War III come—now.”

  He wasn’t conditioned to this.

  Her words sounded obscene. All he could think of was his wife, Margaret, and their unborn child. Until now he had felt that their child would be born into a safe world. But—

  Ilsa talked about the Freak, and his peculiar power—perhaps prescience. The freak could see into another world, perhaps a future world. A world Ilsa called Omega. In that world. World War III had run its destined course—and had become Utopian.

  “We’ve been conditioning your unconscious,” Ilsa said, “through those recurrent dreams. Now we must convince your conscious mind that we’re right. You must detonate the uranium pile. But first—well, you’ve got to go back to your job and avoid rousing suspicion. I’ve told you enough to answer your questions. Now your Control will erase this memory for a while.”

  Breden saw his wife’s face appear on the televisor screen.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m your Control. I’m a member of the organization. Because research is forbidden in this world, and I don’t want our child to have cancer—I have.”

  He felt the shock of that knowledge before the hypnosis blanked him out.

  (Ortega was building a mechanism, under the Freak’s directions. This was a completely new development. A voice suddenly spoke in English through the machine. “—trying to reach you . . . we have atomic power . . . we can help you—”

  The Freak said, “I can’t see . . . yes, I can see Omega now . . . or no, it isn’t—”

  The voice from Omega roared: “—atomic power—”

  The Freak screamed: “Where the earth should be—white, white, blazing—like a sun—it was the chain reaction, it must have been—”

  “—help you release atomic power—”

  “IT WAS THE EARTH ONCE! IT WAS THE EARTH!”

  PART II

  The face on the televisor screen was fat and placid. It was also semi-Oriental. Philip Jeng’s father had been a Tibetan, and he had probably inherited a touch of Himalayan serenity along with a mind as tortuous as the Cretan labyrinth. He was a big, globular man, whose particular field was logic, though he did not specialize much these days. As a member of the organization, he devoted himself to odd jobs, and to working out the complicated probabilities of the various plans that were suggested. He had a smattering of knowledge in many fields, and now he was talking psychiatry to Ilsa Carter.

  “I got there as fast as I could,” he said. “When Ortega didn’t answer any visor calls, we figured GPC had detected the hideout. I went there with an expendable member and sent him in. But it wasn’t GPC. Things have got completely out of control, Ilsa.”

  The woman turned from the screen to glance at the two motionless figures sitting across the room. She said, “Integrate this, Jeng. You got my report on Michael De Anza and Louis Breden?”

  “I got it.”

  “They came to my apartment five hours ago. They weren’t too suspicious, but they figured something was wrong with Joseph Breden. They’d found out he visited Dr. Springfield, and that Springfield was dead. They want to know all about it. I didn’t dare tell them. I fed them the new anaesthetic—you know?—and they’re cataleptic. I’ve been waiting till I could get through to you or Ortega.”

  Jeng’s small eyes blinked. “All right, Ilsa. I’ve cointegrated that? factor. Bring the two men to Ortega’s hideout.”

  “But they’ll—”

  “It’s the nearest. Travel’s going to be restricted for a bit. Those Neoculturalists have been talking too loudly. GPC’s just banned them. The lid goes on automatically—checking of visas, no interstate commerce without passes—the regular routine. It’s been three years since the last embargo of that sort. And it’s too bad it had to happen right now. The Neoculturalists are perfectly harmless to GPC, but I suppose the membership was getting too large. If GPC only knew it, those useless groups make fine safety valves for the malcontents.”

  “If there’s an embargo, I can’t transport them under anaesthesia, even to Ortega’s.”

  “I’ve just sent you faked identification. Use Plan Sub-Fourteen-Five. Remember?”

  “Oh, the . . . all right. But what’s happened to Ortega?”

  Jeng said, “I don’t know, exactly. I’m trying to smuggle in one of our technicians to find out. But it’s going to be difficult. There aren’t any near enough. And we can’t run risks at this point. Ilsa, when I reached the hideout, I found Ortega hysterical, the Freak in stupor, and some sort of gadget rigged up and talking. It’s one-way communication. The man, whoever he is, can talk to us, but we can’t talk to him.

  I think he’s talking from Omega.”

  “But . . . Jeng, what’s happened?”

  “As nearly as I could figure out.” Jeng said carefully, “Ortega built the machine, though I don’t know how, since he’s no technician. Probably the Freak dictated it. Then something happened. Ortega had a mental explosion and attacked the Freak.”

  “His son?”

  “It’s a familiar pattern,” Jeng said. “I won’t go into subconscious motives. Ortega had a temporary aberration, brought on by strain and shock. I’ve given him sedatives, but I’m worried about him. He isn’t insane, though. It’s temporary. Only . . . well, the Freak had a shock too, I suppose when his father attacked him. He’s gone into some sort of protective stupor. He won’t talk or listen or open his eyes. And that mechanism keeps yelling at us—”

  “What does it say?”

  “It wants us to finish the machine. But it can’t tell us how. Apparently it’s had only fragmentary glimpses of our world, and there aren’t enough common denominators. There are words we don’t understand—scientific terminology. I gather it’s been communicating through the Freak, and now it can’t.”

  Ilsa said, “It’s a new factor. You’re in charge now, Jeng, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” he said. “I’m not a man of action. I just work out things. On paper. But now—well, I’ll do the best I can.”

  “What about Joseph Breden . . . tomorrow?”

  “Oh . . . I’ll have him picked up. That’ll be difficult.”

  “Do it through his Control.”

  “Good idea. As soon as you get the stuff, bring De Anza and Louis Breden here. The plan’s risky, but—”

  “There’ll be the guards.”

  The fat cheeks quivered as Jeng shook his head.

  “I hope you make it, Ilsa,” he said. “We can’t afford to lose you, too.”

  When the plastic disks came, she went to the window and looked out. The two killers were across the street, waiting. They would follow her all the way now, their weapons ready. If trouble developed, they would kill. Ilsa, and De Anza and Louis, and then themselves. No one could be left alive to talk. There would be suspicion on the part of GPC, but no certainty, and a subsidiary plan, involving misdirection, would instantly go into operation. But that would all be very, risky, the way things wer
e going now, the slightest error could, conceivably, spoil everything.

  She examined the two figures sitting rigidly upright in their chairs. Then she moved about the room, straightening, checking. She studied her memory of the apartment as it had looked at the moment the men had been anaesthetized. There must be no false notes. They would waken with no knowledge that time had passed.

  Their watches—that would be awkward. Presently she lifted De Anza’s wrist and moved his watch’s hands ahead to the correct time, leaving Louis Breden’s as it was. Then she went back to her chair, placing the plastic disks in a drawer beside her, and touched a concealed stud. It was a light switch. She flickered it on and off, with regular pauses, several times. This time it was unnecessary to hold her breath. The neutralizing gas, odorless and tasteless, flooded the room.

  The men stirred. Louis, finishing a sentence, said, “—must have made some notes.”

  Irrationally she felt panic. She had forgotten what Louis had been talking about five hours ago. She studied her hands, telling herself : It’s easy to get out of this one—quite easy. A dozen ways—

  De Anza was looking past her shoulder. Did he see something amiss? Had something changed during the five-hour period? Distract his attention!

  She reached toward the table beside her, changed her mind, looked at Louis, and drew her arm back. It knocked over a flower vase on the table. Water spouted on her darks.

  The material was waterproof, but chivalry was an old habit. By the time the two men had finished making repairs, De Anza’s attention had been successfully distracted, and Louis had begun talking with a clearer antecedent.

  The televisor sounded. On the screen a face began to appear. It was a man everyone in the world had heard of; one of the higher members of GPC. His eyes studied the room.

  “We’ve received word, Ilsa,” he said—and his voice, too, was familiar. “Bring these men. But it must be top secret.”

  The screen blanked.

  No one would have spotted the image as a fake, because it wasn’t a fake. It was a series of photographed images of the man, taken from televisor shots, arranged in such order that the lip-movement corresponded with the voice. It was the right voice, too, but the sonic vibrations had been rearranged to create these particular words. In the organization’s files were dozens of similar rigged visor-messages, ready for various emergencies; this particular one fitted Plan Sub-Fourteen-Five.