Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  He solved that easily enough by renting a narcohypnotic supplementary course in common trade dialects. This involved studying while awake and getting the information repeated in his ear during slumber. As a necessary preparation for the course, he was instructed to set up a recorder and chart the depth of his sleep, so the narcohypnosis could be keyed to his individual rhythms. He did this several times, rechecked once a month thereafter, and was satisfied. There was no need to gag himself at night.

  He was glad to sleep provided he didn’t dream. He had to take sedatives after a while. At night, there was relief from the knowledge that an Eye watched him always, an Eye that could bring him to justice, an Eye whose omnipotence he could not challenge in the open. But he dreamed about the Eye.

  Vanderman had given him a job in. the organization, which was enormous. Clay was merely a cog, which suited him well enough, for the moment. He didn’t want any more favors yet. Not till he had found out the extent of Miss Wells’ duties—Josephine, her Christian name was. That took several months, but by that time friendship was ripening into affection. So Clay asked Vanderman for another job. He specified. It wasn’t obvious, but he was asking for work that would, presently, fit him for Miss Wells’ duties.

  Vanderman probably still felt guilty about Bea; he’d married her and she was in Antartica now, at the Casino. Vanderman was due to join her, so he scribbled a memorandum, wished Clay good luck, and went to Antartica, bothered by no stray pangs of conscience. Clay improved the hour by courting Josephine ardently.

  From what he had heard about the new Mrs. Vanderman, he felt secretly relieved. Not long ago, when he had been content to remain passive, the increasing dominance of Bea would have satisfied Him, but no more. He was learning self-reliance, and liked it. These days, Bea was behaving rather badly. Given all the money and freedom she could use, she had too much time on her hands. Once in a while Clay heard rumors that made him smile secretly. Vanderman wasn’t having an easy time of it. A dominant character, Bea—but Vanderman was no weakling himself.

  After a while Clay told his employer he wanted to marry Josephine Wells. “I guess that makes us square,” he said. “You took Bea away from me and I’m taking Josie away from you.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Vanderman said. “I hope you don’t—”

  “My fiancée, your secretary. That’s all. The thing is, Josie and I are in love.” He poured it on, but carefully. It was easier to deceive Vanderman than the Eye, with its trained technicians and forensic sociologists looking through it. He thought, sometimes, of those medieval pictures of an immense eye, and that reminded him of something vague and distressing, though he couldn’t isolate the memory.

  After all, what could Vanderman do? He arranged to have Clay given a raise. Josephine, always conscientious, offered to keep on working for a while, till office routine was straightened out, but it never did get straightened out, somehow. Clay deftly saw to that by keeping Josephine busy. She didn’t have to bring work home to her apartment, but she brought it, and Clay gradually began to help her when he dropped by. His job, plus the narcohypnotic courses, had already trained him for this sort of tricky organizational work. Vanderman’s business was highly specialized—planet-wide exports and imports, and what with keeping track of specific groups, seasonal trends, sectarian holidays, and so forth, Josephine, as a sort of animated memorandum book for Vanderman, had a more than full-time job.

  She and Clay postponed marriage for a time. Clay—naturally enough—began to appear mildly jealous of Josephine’s work, and she said she’d quit soon. But one night she stayed on at the office, and he went out in a pet and got drunk. It just happened to be raining that night, Clay got tight enough to walk unprotected through the drizzle, and to fall asleep at home in his wet clothes. He came down with influenza. As he was recovering, Josephine got it.

  Under the circumstances. Clay stepped in—purely a temporary job—and took over his fiancée’s duties. Office routine was extremely complicated that week, and only Clay knew the ins and outs of it. The arrangement saved Vanderman a certain amount of inconvenience, and, when the situation resolved itself, Josephine had a subsidiary job and Clay was Vanderman’s private secretary.

  “I’d better know more about him,” Clay said to Josephine, “After all, there must be a lot of habits and foibles he’s got that need to be catered to. If he wants lunch ordered up, I don’t want to get smoked tongue and find out he’s allergic to it. What about his hobbies?”

  But he was careful not to pump Josephine too hard, because of the Eye. He still needed sedatives to sleep.

  The sociologist rubbed his forehead.

  “Let’s take a break,” he suggested. “Why does a guy want to commit murder anyway?”

  “For profit, one sort or another.”

  “Only partly. I’d say. The other part is an unconscious desire to be punished—usually for something else. That’s why you get accident prones. Ever think about what happens to murderers who feel guilty and yet who aren’t punished by the law? They must live a rotten sort of life—always accidentally stepping in front of speedsters, cutting themselves with an ax—accidentally; accidentally touching wires full of juice—”

  “Conscience, eh?”

  “A long time ago, people thought God sat in the sky with a telescope and watched everything they did. They really lived pretty carefully, in the Middle Ages—the first Middle Ages, I mean. Then there was the era of disbelief, where people had nothing to believe in very strongly—and finally we get this.” He nodded toward the screen. “A universal memory. By extension, it’s a universal social conscience, an externalized one. It’s exactly the same as the medieval concept of God—omniscience.”

  “But not omnipotence.”

  “Mm.”

  All in all, Clay kept the Eye in mind for a year and a half. Before he said or did anything whatsoever, he reminded himself of the Eye, and made certain that he wasn’t revealing his motive to the judging future.

  Of course, there was—would fie—an Ear, too, but that was a little too absurd. One couldn’t visualize a large, disembodied Ear decorating the wall like a plate in a plate holder. All the same, whatever he said would be as important evidence—some time—as what he did. So Sam Clay was very careful indeed, and behaved like Caesar’s wife. He wasn’t exactly defying authority, but he was certainly circumventing it.

  Superficially Vanderman was more like Caesar, and his wife was not above reproach, these days. She had too much money to play with. And she was finding her husband too strong-willed a person to be completely satisfactory. There was enough of the matriarch in Bea to make her feel rebellion against Andrew Vanderman, and there was a certain lack of romance. Vanderman had little time for her. He was busy these days, involved with a whole string of deals which demanded much of his time. Clay, of course, had something to do with that. His interest in his new work was most laudable. He stayed up nights plotting and planning as though expecting Vanderman to make him a full partner. In fact, he even suggested this possibility to Josephine. He wanted it on the record. The marriage date had been set, and Clay wanted to move before then; he had no intention of being drawn into a marriage of convenience after the necessity had been removed.

  One thing he did, which had to be handled carefully, was to get the whip. Now Vanderman was a fingerer. He liked to have something in his hands while he talked. Usually it was a crystalline paper weight, with a miniature thunderstorm in it, complete with lightning, when it was shaken. Clay put this where Vanderman would be sure to knock it off and break it. Meanwhile, he had plugged one deal with Callisto Ranches for the sole purpose of getting a whip for. Vanderman’s desk. The natives were proud of their leatherwork and their silver-smithing, and a nominal makeweight always went with every deal they closed. Thus, presently, a handsome miniature whip, with Vanderman’s initials on it, lay on the desk, coiled into a loop, acting as a paper weight except when he picked it up and played with it while he talked.

  The other w
eapon Clay wanted was already there—an antique paper knife, once called a surgical scalpel. He never let his gaze rest on it too long, because of the Eye.

  The other whip came. He absent-mindedly put it in his desk and pretended to forget it. It was a sample of the whips made by the Alaskan Flagellantes for use in their ceremonies, and was wanted because of some research being made into the pain-neutralizing drugs the Flagellantes used. Clay, of course, had engineered this deal, too. There was nothing suspicious about that; the firm stood to make a sound ; profit. In fact, Vanderman had ; promised him a percentage bonus at the end of the year on every deal he triggered. It would be quite a lot. It was December, a year and a half had passed since Clay first recognized that the Eye would seek him out.

  He felt fine. He was careful about the sedatives, and his nerves, though jangled, were nowhere near the snapping point. It had been a strain, but he had trained himself so that he would make no slips. He visualized the Eye in the walls, in the ceiling, in the sky, everywhere he went. It was the only way to play completely safe. And very soon now it would pay off. But he would have to do it soon; such a nervous strain could not be continued indefinitely.

  A few details remained. He carefully arranged matters—under the Eye’s very nose, so to speak—so that he was offered a well-paying position with another firm. He turned it down.

  And, one night, an emergency happened to arise so that Clay, very logically, had to go to Vanderman’s apartment.

  Vanderman wasn’t there. Bea was. She had quarreled violently with her husband. Moreover, she had been drinking. (This, too, he had expected.) If the situation had not worked out exactly as he wanted, he would have tried again—and again—but there was no need.

  Clay was a little politer than necessary. Perhaps too polite, certainly Bea, that incipient matriarch, was led down the garden path, a direction she was not unwilling to take. After all, she had married Vanderman for his money, found him as dominant as herself, and now saw Clay as an exaggerated symbol of both romance and masculine submissiveness.

  The camera eye hidden in the wall, in a decorative bas-relief, was grinding away busily, spooling up its wire-tape, in a way that indicated Vanderman was a suspicious as well as a jealous husband. But Clay knew about this gadget, too. At the suitable moment he stumbled against the wall in such a fashion that the device broke. Then, with only that other eye spying on him, he suddenly became so virtuous that it was a pity Vanderman couldn’t witness his volte face.

  “Listen, Bea,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t understand. It’s no good. I’m not in love with you any more. I was once, sure, but that was quite a while ago. There’s somebody else, and you ought to know it by now.”

  “You still love me,” Bea said with intoxicated firmness. “We belong together.”

  “Bea. Please. I hate to have to say this, but I’m grateful to Andrew Vanderman for marrying you. I . . . well, you got what you wanted, and I’m getting what I want. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “I’m used to getting what I want, Sam. Opposition is something I don’t like. Especially when I know you really—”

  She said a good deal more, and so did Clay—he was perhaps unnecessarily harsh. But he had to make the point, for the Eye, that he was no longer jealous of Vanderman.

  He made the point.

  The next morning he got to the office before Vanderman, cleaned up his desk, and discovered the stingaree whip still in its box. “Oops,” he said, snapping his fingers—the Eye watched, and this was the crucial period. Perhaps it would all be over within the hour. Every move from now on would have to be specially calculated in advance, and there could be no slightest deviation. The Eye was everywhere—literally everywhere.

  He opened the box, took out the whip, and went into the inner sanctum. He tossed the whip on Vanderman’s desk, so carelessly that a stylus rack toppled. Clay rearranged everything, leaving the stingaree whip near the edge of the desk, and placing the Callistan silver-leather whip at the back, half concealed behind the interoffice visor-box. He didn’t allow himself more than a casual sweeping glance to make sure the paper knife was still there.

  Then he went out for coffee.

  Half an hour later he got back, picked up a few letters for signature from the rack, and walked into Vanderman’s office. Vanderman looked up from behind his desk. He had changed a little in a year and a half; he was looking older, less noble, more like an aging bulldog. Once, Clay thought coldly, this man stole my fiancée and beat me up.

  Careful. Remember the Eye.

  There was no need to do anything but follow the plan and let events take their course. Vanderman had seen the spy films, all right, up to the point where they had gone blank, when Clay fell against the wall. Obviously he hadn’t really expected Clay to show up this morning. But to see the louse grinning hello, walking across the room, putting some letters down on his desk—!

  Clay was counting on Vanderman’s short temper, which had not improved over the months. Obviously the man had been simply sitting there, thinking unpleasant thoughts, and just as Clay had known would happen, he’d picked up the whip and begun to finger it. But it was the stingaree whip this time.

  “Morning,” Clay said cheerfully to his stunned employer. His smile became one-sided. “I’ve been waiting for you to check this letter to the Kirghiz kovar-breeders. Can we find a market for two thousand of those ornamental horns?”

  It was at this point that Vanderman, bellowing, jumped to his feet, swung the whip, and sloshed Clay across the face. There is probably nothing more painful than the bite of a stingaree whip.

  Clay staggered back. He had not known it would hurt so much. For an instant the shock of the blow knocked every other consideration out of his head, and blind anger was all that remained.

  Remember the Eye!

  He remembered it. There were dozens of trained men watching everything he did just now. Literally he stood on an open stage surrounded by intent observers who made notes on every expression of his face, every muscular flection, every breath he drew.

  In a moment Vanderman would be dead—but Sam Clay would not be alone. An invisible audience from the future was fixing him with cold, calculating eyes. He had one more thing to do and the job would be over. Do it—carefully, carefully—while they watched.

  Time stopped for him. The job would be over.

  It was very curious. He had rehearsed this series of actions so often in the privacy of his mind that his body was going through with it now, without further instructions. His body staggered back from the blow, recovered balance, glared at Vanderman in shocked fury, poised for a dive at that paper knife in plain sight on the desk.

  That was what the outward and visible Sam Clay was doing. But the inward and spiritual Sam Clay went through quite a different series of actions.

  The job would be over.

  And what was he going to do after that?

  The inward and spiritual murderer stood fixed with dismay and surprise, staring at a perfectly empty future. He had never looked beyond this moment. He had made no plans for his life beyond the death of Vanderman. But now—he had no enemy but Vanderman. When Vanderman was dead, what would he fix upon to orient his life? What would he work at then? His job would be gone, too. And he liked his job.

  Suddenly he knew, how much he liked it. He was good at it. For the first time in his life, he had found a job he could do really well.

  You can’t live a year and a half in a new environment without acquiring new goals. The change had come imperceptively. He was a good operator; he’d discovered that he could be successful. He didn’t have to kill Vanderman to prove that to himself. He’d proved it already without committing murder.

  In that time-stasis which had brought everything to a full stop he looked at Vanderman’s red face and he thought of Bea, and of Vanderman as he had come to know him—and he didn’t want to be a murderer.

  He didn’t want Vanderman dead. He didn’t want Bea. The thought of her made him fee
l a little sick. Perhaps that was because he himself had changed from passive to active. He no longer wanted or needed a dominant woman. He could make his own decisions. If he were choosing now, it would be someone more like Josephine—

  Josephine. That image before his mind’s stilled eye was suddenly very pleasant. Josephine with her mild, calm prettiness, her admiration for Sam Clay the successful business man, the rising young importer in Vanderman, Inc. Josephine whom he was going to marry—Of course he was going to marry her. He loved Josephine. He loved his job. All he wanted was the status quo, exactly as he had achieved it. Everything was perfect right now—as of maybe thirty seconds ago.

  But that was a long time ago—thirty seconds. A lot can happen in half a minute. A lot had happened. Vanderman was coming at him again, the whip raised. Clay’s nerves crawled at the anticipation of its burning impact across his face a second time. If he could get hold of Vanderman’s wrist before he struck again—if he could talk fast enough—

  The crooked smile was still on his face. It was part of the pattern, in some dim way he did not quite understand. He was acting in response to conditioned reflexes set up over a period of many months of rigid self-training. His body was already in action. All that had taken place in his mind had happened so fast there was no physical hiatus at all. His body knew its job and it was doing the job. It was lunging forward toward the desk and the knife, and he could not stop it.

  All this had happened before. It had happened in his mind, the only place where Sam Clay had known real freedom in the past year and a half. In all that time he had forced himself to realize that the Eye was watching every outward move he made. He had planned each action in advance and schooled himself to carry it through. Scarcely once had he let himself act purely on impulse. Only in following the plan exactly was there safety. He had indoctrinated himself too successfully.