Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Much lay between them. The Leaders had known that mankind cannot be repressed too far without emotional release. And so this had been the release provided—this personal gorgeousness of cloak and plume and light-sword. This intricate social tradition involving “face,” the jockeying to gain it, and to degrade a rival by its loss. The constant dueling with blades of shining force. The tradition among the men of gallant brawling.

  And among the women? La Boucherie was quite sure that the Leaders had cold-bloodedly forced the women back into subservience for a purpose. If men under the rigid laws of the Leaders felt the pinch sometimes, why not give them a lesser race upon whom they in turn could impose rigid laws? So women had gone back, by subtle degrees, imperceptibly but swiftly, into the old social and legal shackles from which they once had been emancipated.

  So deftly had the Leaders managed it that the women themselves would have been the first now to protest against a change. For what they lost in freedom, did they not more than make up in leisure, in pampered home life while the men worked, in comfortable days of gossip and idleness, and nights of gaiety among the colorful cities of earth?

  And who could say, thought La Boucherie, a little bitterly, that this coquette in pink, tapping her gallant with a folded fan, was not happier tonight than her grandmother who spent her life at an office desk, man’s equal, who had never seen in any face the indulgent tenderness beaming back upon this pink coquette in the club autocar.

  Within the hour, La Boucherie reminded himself, he must manage to guide the party to the Jolly Roger. Unobtrusively he flexed his fingers, still the strong talons of a bird of prey, and more ruthless now. At the Jolly Roger Georgina would be waiting, and the elaborate little comedy they had worked out together would get under way.

  Georgina was a fine actress. In another culture she might have made a great name for herself as a mimic, for she could portray with the utmost conviction any role she once had a chance to study. And Georgina for three years had worked as ladies’ maid in the great mansions of the wealthy. She could play a spoiled young coquette now with more authority than many a girl born to the role. She would have her chance tonight.

  He glanced down the car at the thin, pinched, leathery face of the Leader called Avish, and sank his own fat chin upon his chest to smother his smile.

  Petty comedy! La Boucherie ground, his teeth in sudden, silent rage at the part he himself had to play. These surges of impotent resentment came over him sometimes, and he had to fight them down with all the vast store of self-discipline he had built up over the past twenty-five years of growing disappointment, continuous failure.

  “Mart Havers,” he thought. “Mart Havers.” And the thick fingers curled on his knee.

  If he could have looked forward this far on the night Haversham had died, he would have closed those fingers about the neck of the newborn child and spared himself and the world much misery. No, he must not think of Mart Havers tonight. There was something more important than Mart on his mind now, something with a chance of success behind it. Not Mart Havers, who was flat failure . . .

  THE Slag celebrated Saturday night, as usual, with intoxicated revelry. A decade before, a sudden boom had built this suburb on empty grazing land, but it had deteriorated. The unexpected advance in space-flight to and from the Moon was mostly responsible. It wasn’t pleasant to live within sight and sound of the roaring blasts of rocket-craft on their way to the strictly private Government mines on the satellite. Nerves jolted under the erratic impact of booming, tearing thunder that ripped out day and night. The scarlet flashes made sleep difficult; the fumes were atrocious.

  So the suburb, with its plasticoid buildings and spreading parks slipped down the social scale till it took a place with Limehouse, the Bowery, and the Kasbah. It was the Slag—the home of the poor, the petty criminal, the social misfit, and the occasional haunt of such slumming parties as this.

  Mart Havers was lounging along Stink Street—once Pinewood Lane—with a cigarette pasted to his lip and scented smoke trickling from his nostrils. He was a big man, with rough, rather heavy blunt features, and his dark eyes looked out somberly at a world in which he had no place.

  Snow fell slowly in dying gusts as the clouds were swept away by an icy wind. To the east was a reddening flare that pulsed and faded as a spaceship jockeyed for its landing. Heavy thunder muttered.

  Havers coughed and inhaled soothing smoke to offset the foul odor of rocket exhausts. His big body, clothed in form-fitting, warm garments of dull blue, moved more swiftly along the street. Living a masquerade was not easy, and never had been. But it was, of course, the only way since the Cromwellian Leaders had clamped down. Political organizations were taboo, with a capital penalty. Other crimes had punishments, but not as severe. The State recognized treason as the only sin requiring surgical treatment.

  So Mart Havers was not, apparently, a Freemen. There weren’t any Freemen any more—the Leaders thought. Havers was a gambler, thief, and con man, and, as such, he had occasional brushes with the law, but he was not hunted down ruthlessly. He survived.

  His sullen mouth twisted. He walked on, heavy shoulders swinging, past a block of deserted apartment buildings, grimy and desolate, but still in good repair of glass and plasticoid. The builders a decade ago had been efficient. It was more expensive to raze a house than to let it stand, and the Slag was full of such structures, the homes of a few drunken bums and human strays. Guardsmen seldom troubled to search the ruins. Rehabilitation was free to all who wanted it, and the others—well, they were allowed to lie in the beds they had made.

  From the east that deep mutter grew louder. The ground shook under Havers’ feet as a freighter took off in a blast of searing fire. He increased his pace, for the wind was toward him and it would, be wise to reach the Jolly Roger before the fumes blew down into the Slag.

  The Earth-Moon run was a long-established route now, but only, as a Government project. Too dangerous out of Leader hands, of course. There were priceless sources, of ore on the Moon, and a regular circuit of shipping to and from the mines kept the space-field roaring just outside the Slag.

  But it was all very hush-hush. Mart suspected that experiments had probably been made in the direction of the nearer planets, but if they had succeeded, the rank and file on Earth knew nothing of it. Not yet—not ever, probably. The status quo was too comfortable here. The Cromwellians wouldn’t want any land rushes that might depopulate cities and upset the economic structure. The machine must be kept running. Still—

  To be out there, free on a new world!

  Havers grinned crookedly. Not much chance of that. A virulent whiff of rocket-gas caught him and he blinked and coughed, eyes smarting. That was about all the taste of space that he would ever get.

  Light from a doorway in his path made him pause. The Goodwill Mission, Government subsidized. Havers disliked Salvationers, the weak-willed who gave up and signed the pledge. Still, he pushed through the glass door, opened a second, hermetic one, and entered the Mission. There was no choking gas in here, at any rate. Warmth and ruddy light greeted him. An immense stone fireplace filled one wall of the room, and there were relaxers here and there, occupied by ragged figures. A big audio screen stood against one wall.

  Havers sat down, bulking large among the others, to wait till the fumes had cleared from the street outside. Automatic panels and spigots in a comer provided food and drink, but Havers ignored these.

  He had never been in one of these Missions before, and now he examined it curiously. The people of the Slag spoke of these places with contempt and certain vague fear. That Teleaudio screen had, in the-past, worked apparent miracles. Gunnar Arnheim, an unsavory racketeer, uncrowned king of the Slag, had himself fallen victim to the Mission’s spell. It had touched some inherent strain of sentiment in his character, and he had signed the pledge—and vanished.

  As others had vanished.

  HAVERS leaned back. On the screen, a face was swimming into visibility.

&nb
sp; It was the gentle, friendly face of an elderly woman. Her calm eyes studied the grimy, unshaven faces beneath the view-panel, and her voice sounded, low and soothing:

  “We’re not going to ask you to do anything. The door to the street isn’t locked. You can go out whenever you want, remember. The stories you hear about the Mission aren’t true. We don’t hypnotize anyone. All we do is point out what we can do for you and that’s magic, but scientific magic. Giving a man will-power, strengthening his body and his mind, curing him of various weaknesses, so he can accomplish anything he wants—well, that’s been done in the past, and it’ll be done again.”

  “Not with me, lady,” a red-bearded gnome said, half-tipsy on sakar-smoke.

  Somebody near him said, “Shut up,” and he subsided, mumbling incoherently. Havers chuckled.

  “You’ve been hearing stories about the Purge,” the woman went on. “I know they sound pretty bad. I’d like to explain, if you’ll listen. You see, it was developed originally to replace capital punishment. But it does much more than that now. The Leaders have worked out a system of mental therapy that washes a man’s mind clean. He loses all his memories. He’s given a new chance, the second start in life that lots of men need.

  “After that, he’s cured of any physical ailment he may have, conditioned until he’s a healthy specimen, and then he’s allowed to learn anything he wants, whatever he shows special aptitude for. But he’s the same man. We don’t steal his soul. We gave Gunnar Arnheim the Purge, cured him of sakar poisoning, and now he’s a space-ship research engineer.”

  “In three months?” the red-bearded man yelled. “That’s what you say!”

  It was a two-way circuit. The woman smiled and nodded.

  “In three months, mister. The adult brain can learn much faster than the child’s, and Arnheim was given high-pressure mental education, both awake and asleep. He’s just finished his trial period on the job. He can talk to you now if you want to see him. How about it?”

  “Yeah!”

  “All right.”

  The screen dimmed and brightened, showing a burly hump-shouldered man in a white gown, working at a draughtsman’s blue-glass table.

  “We’re tuned in to the Mission at the Slag, Arnheim,” the woman’s voice said from off the screen. “Somebody’s skeptical. Mind telling the boys they’re crazy?”

  The man turned, grinning. He waved an arm.

  “All right, boys. You’re crazy. Now what?”

  “Hey, Arnie—can you hear me?” said redbeard. “What’d they do to you?”

  “Fixed me up,” Arnheim said, “just like Janie says. I feel swell, too. Better play along with her.”

  The screen blanked out, and “Janie’s voice interrupted.

  “It’s hard to convince you, so I’ll show you some test cases. Ask me questions if you want.”

  New pictures grew, some taken in the Slag, showing men and women in lives of hopeless degradation, victims of drugs, sickness, poverty, psychoses—anything and everything that would stab the lesson home to the men in the Mission.

  “You’re thinking the Purge might work on Arnheim, but not on you,” Janie said. “Well, are you worse specimens than these? See where they are now.”

  They were, according to the screen, reclaimed and happy, working in good positions and contented with their lot. Many spoke to to the watchers at the Slag. Finally the screen showed a huge arrow pointing down to a door at its left.

  “Anybody who wants to go out there,” Janie said, “will find twenty erg-credits and a can of thermo-tablets—with no strings attached. You can buy liquor with the credits, and the thermos will keep-you warm. The Slag gets pretty cold in winter. Weather report says snow, by the way. Wait a minute, now. Here’s the other door.” A new arrow showed. “Anybody who wants to try the Purge, go in there. Give your names to the desk-screen, and you’re all set. Now let’s have a comedy reel, for a change.”

  A cartoon lit up the wall, and fully a dozen, men rose and went through the door at the right of the screen. Red-beard started to follow, cursed thickly, and swung to the other door. He was the only one. The rest of the Salvationers remained in their relaxers.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Jolly Roger

  HAVERS got up, his glance instinctively going to the door that marked the Purge. Under different circumstances he might have considered that solution himself. But he had a definite aim in life, and propaganda could not stir him so easily.

  Yet it was excellent propaganda, he realized, well fitted to the psychology patterns of the derelicts. “Waste not, want not,” said the Government. They could always use good men. And the Purge, taking the place of other punishments, had swayed popular feeling still further toward the Cromwellians.

  Justice, even to the outcasts of Earth—justice, Havers thought, but not liberty or equality. The social pattern was frozen, and humanity had to follow that pattern, or else be outcast. They were not even allowed to remain outcasts! This blasted Mission!

  The rocket fumes were gone when Havers stepped out into the street, though a low muttering still came from the east. He walked briskly toward his destination, feeling warm and langourous after his brief rest, but a chill wind sharpened his senses.

  Again he passed a Guard, and his dark features grew sullen. The Guards were not the power of the Cromwellians. The Leaders, the technicians, were that. But the Guards typified the mailed fist. They would strike mercilessly to preserve the Government that ruled the Earth, and they had standing orders to investigate ruthlessly any slightest hint of treasonable activity.

  But they paid little heed to Havers, who was—supposedly—merely a swindler, thief, and con man.

  A man sat against a grimy doorpost, head bent, an empty sakar tube beside him. Havers stepped over his legs. Ten paces beyond, he turned into an uninviting doorway and mounted ramshackle steps that led up into the gloom of a building. Spider webs clung to the walls. Havers grinned. This was pure atmosphere, all faked, all created by the owner of the Jolly Roger, who knew what slumming parties wanted.

  At the top of the flight, he pushed open a creaking door and entered a huge, dimly lit room. It occupied the entire second floor of the building. The partitions had been knocked out, but a few remained standing for the sake of Bohemianism.

  The big room looked like a shambles. There was disorder everywhere. Tables and chairs were scattered about at random; cushions were piled up against the walls; on a couch near the door a nearly naked woman was sleeping what was presumably a drugged slumber. She was paid by the hour, Havers knew, and tourists were properly shocked and edified.

  Sporadic dancing and music came from one corner, and the air was stuffy with perfumed smoke that neutralized the omnipresent rocket-jet fumes. This was the Jolly Roger, one of many clip joints that battened in the Slag.

  Havers pushed through the crowd toward the bar across one end of the big disorderly room. He had no plans, beyond the immediate intention of getting drunk. He ought to be up in the Aleutian secret base now, studying under the guidance of the dusty little man who had been his tutor during the sporadic doses of education to which La Boucherie had subjected him since childhood.

  None of them had been any good. None of them ever would, while the present set-up continued, though La Boucherie didn’t know that and Havers was only dimly aware of it, being too close to his own problem for perspective.

  They were trying to interest him in nuclear physics now. It wasn’t difficult, but it was so deadly, hopelessly dull to him. He had failed La Boucherie in this as in everything, and he was a renegade just now from the tutor and the lab and the Aleutians.

  Havers knew La Boucherie was in Reno. He knew they might meet. Perhaps that was why he had come here, not realizing himself how ready he was for an explosion. Let them meet, his sub-threshold mind seemed to urge’, and get the explosion over once and for all.

  He leaned on the bar and ordered a second drink before he began on his first.

  He was half-way thr
ough his third, and beginning to feel mildly mellow and more at peace with the world, when a waiter jogged his elbow and nodded across the room. In one of the half-screened booths along the wall a girl was beckoning to him.

  HAVERS didn’t know her, but he picked up his glass and threaded his way through the tables. The girl wore a black lace veil drawn across her face like a rather ineffectual mask. Her ruffled. skirts filled up half the booth and her smooth bare shoulders and lace-mitted arms leaned forward from the folds of a deeply furred cloak thrown back across her chair. Her hair was like black watered silk under the black veil, and an expensive fragrance rose from the booth as Havers shouldered his way into it through the crowd. Then he paused, looking down.

  “Oh—Georgina,” he said, not without disappointment.

  “Mart, you idiot,” she began, then gave a smooth-shouldered shrug and said, “Oh well, never mind. Let it go. I suppose you know La Boucherie’s on his way here?”

  “Blast La Boucherie.”

  “Yes, I know! But . . . Oh, why does everything happen to me?” She spoke to the man in the booth with her. “Pusher—Mart Havers. Mart, this is Pusher Dingle. A man with an idea. Come on, sit down. He wants to talk.”

  Havers hooked a chair forward with his foot and sat down with his back to the screen and his face toward the distant door. From the corner of his eye he considered “Pusher” Dingle, who was revolving a small blue glass of rye and watching him with equal oblique.

  Pusher was fat, but with a bouncing, sparrowlike fatness that, had no resemblance to La Boucherie’s bulk. When he smiled, white-gold artificial teeth gleamed beneath his yellow-gray mustache. He had sleek yellow hair, streaked with gray, combed back from a sloping forehead. His right hand was a mechanical gadget of plastic and steel.

  “You want to talk?” Havers inquired ungraciously.

  Pusher Dingle tapped the table with his plastic substitute for a hand.

  “I’ve heard you’re smart,” he said.