Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  She was bending over me, the tips of her scented ringlets brushing my shoulder. Her voice was inhumanly sweet, and so soft with warmth and reassurance that all my bewilderment melted away. It didn’t matter where I was or what had happened, so long as that lovely voice and that lovely face were near—which was exactly the effect she had meant to make and exactly the reason why she was there.

  I knew her face.

  At that moment I was not even trying to reason things out. My tongue felt thick and my mind was lightly furred all over with the effects of—what? Sleep? Some drug they might have given me while I lay there helpless? I didn’t know. I accepted all that was happening with a mindless acquiescence. Later I would wonder. Now I only stared up at the lovely, familiar face and listened to the lovely, remotely familiar voice.

  “You’re all right now,” she was murmuring, her changing eyes on mine. “Quite all right. Don’t be worried. Do you feel strong enough yet to sit up? I have something I want you to see.”

  I got an elbow under me and levered myself slowly up, the girl helping. I looked around.

  I was dressed in unfamiliar dark garments and I was sitting on a low couch apparently composed of a solid block of some hard yet resilient substance. We were alone together in a smallish room whose walls looked like the couch, hard yet faintly translucent, just a little yielding to the touch. Everything had the same color, a soft graylike mist or—I thought dimly—sleep itself, the color of sleep.

  The girl was the color of—sunlight, perhaps. Her smooth skin had an apricot glow and her gown was of thin, thin silky stuff, pale yellow, like layers of veiling that floated when she moved. There were still a few fading sparkles in her curls. Her eyes just now were a clear bright blue that darkened as I met them to something close to violet.

  “Look,” she said. “Over there, behind you, on the wall.”

  I TURNED on the couch and looked.

  The far wall had a circular opening in it. Beyond the opening I could see rough rock walls, a grayish glow of light, four figures lying motionless on the dusty floor. For a moment it meant nothing to me. My mind was still dim with sleep. Then—

  “The cave!” I said suddenly. And of course, it was. That little glittering tree which was the last thing I had seen before sleep overtook me stood there, motionless now. Beside it lay De Kalb.

  Dr. Essen slumbered beyond him, the flat metal sheet with the bars of wire still leaning against her knee. She lay on her side, the tired, gentle face half hidden by her bent arm, the gray curls on the dusty floor. There was a rather unexpected gracefulness to her angular body as she lay there, utterly relaxed in a sleep that was already—how many thousands of years long?

  My eyes lingered for an instant on her face, moved on to Murray’s motionless body, moved back again to search the woman’s half-hidden features for a disturbing something I could not quite identify. It was—it was—

  The figure beyond Murray’s caught my attention suddenly and for an instant my mind went blank with amazement. The puzzle of Dr. Essen’s face vanished in this larger surprise, the incredible identity of that fourth person asleep in the dusty cove. I gaped, speechless and without thought.

  Up to that instant I suppose I had been assuming simply that all of us were being awakened, slowly and with difficulty, and that I had awakened first. But the fourth person asleep on the cavern floor was Jeremy Cortland. Jerry Cortland—me.

  I got to my feet unsteadily, finding after a moment or two that I was in fairly good control of all my faculties. The girl twittered in concern.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “But I’m still there!”

  Then I paused. “That means the others may have wakened too. De Kalb—Dr. Essen—have they—?”

  She hesitated. “Only you are awake,” she said at last.

  I walked on slightly uncertain feet across the floor and peered into the cave. There was no cave.

  I knew it when I was close to the wall. I could see the light reflected slightly on the texture of the surface. The cave was only another reflection, television perhaps, or something more obscure, but with startlingly convincing depth and clarity.

  And if that scene was separated from me in space it might be distant in time as well—I might be seeing a picture of something hours or weeks old. It was an unpleasant moment, that. So long as I thought myself near to that last familiar link with my own world I had maintained a certain confidence that broke abruptly now. I looked around a little wildly at the girl.

  “I’m not in that cave now—they’re not there now either, are they? This was just a picture that was taken before any of us woke. Did you wake first, then?” It was no good. I knew that. I rubbed my hand across my face and said, “Sorry. What did happen?”

  CHAPTER X

  Museum

  SHE smiled dazzlingly. And for one flash of an instant I knew who she was. I knew why my eyes had been drawn back in puzzled surprise to Letta Essen lying with curious unexpected grace on the cavern floor. I met this girl’s shining gaze and for that one instant knew I was looking straight into the keen gray eyes of Letta Essen.

  The moment of certainty passed in a flash. The girl’s eyes shifted from gray to luminous blue, the long lashes fell and the unmistakable identity of a woman I knew vanished. But the likeness remained. The familiarity remained. This girl was Letta Essen.

  My mind, groping for similes, seized at first on the theory that in some fantastic way Dr. Essen herself stood here before me masked by some science of beauty beyond the sciences I knew, in a shell of youth and loveliness through which only her keen gaze showed.

  It was all a trick, I thought—this is Letta Essen who did wake before me, somehow leaving her simulacrum there in the cave, as I had. This is Letta Essen in some amazingly lovely disguise for purposes of her own and she’ll speak in a moment and confess—

  But it couldn’t have been a disguise. This soft young loveliness was no mask. It was the girl herself. And her features were the features Letta Essen might have had twenty years ago if she had lived a wholly different life, a life as dedicated to beauty as Dr. Essen’s had been to science.

  Then I caught a bewildering gray flash again and I knew it was Letta Essen—no disguise, no variation on the features such as kinship or remote descent might account for. The mind is individual and unique. There are no duplications of the personality I knew I was looking into the eyes of Letta Essen herself, no matter how impossible it seemed.

  “Dr. Essen?” I said softly. “Dr. Essen?”

  She laughed. “You’re still dreaming,” she said. “Do you feel better now? Lord Paynter—the old fool—is waiting for us. We should hurry.”

  I only gaped at her. What could I say?

  If she wasn’t ready to explain how could I force her to speak? And yet I knew.

  “I’m here to welcome you, of course,” she said lightly, speaking exactly as if I were some stranger to whom she must be polite, but who was of no real interest to her. “I was trained for work like this—to make people feel at ease. All this is a great mystery but—well, Lord Paynter will have to explain. I’m only an entertainer. But a very good one. Oh, very good.

  “Lord Paynter sent for me when he knew you would awaken. He thought his own ugly face might put you into such a mood you’d never answer any questions.” She giggled. “At least, I hope he thought so.” She paused, regarding me with exactly the cool keen speculative stare I had so often met when the woman before me was Letta Essen. Then she shrugged.

  “He’ll tell you as much as you ought to know, I suppose. It’s all much too mystifying for me.” Her glance shifted to the cavern where the sleepers lay motionless and I thought there was bewilderment in her eyes as she looked uneasily from face to sleeping face. Again she shrugged.

  “Well, we should go. If we’re late Lord Paynter will have me beaten.” She seemed very unconcerned about the prospect. “And please don’t ask questions,” she added, “for I’m not allowed to answer. Even if I knew the answers. Even if I ca
red.”

  I was watching her with such urgent attention that my eyes ached with the effort of trying to be more than eyes, trying to pierce through her unconcern and see into the depths of the mind which I was certain was Letta Essen’s. She smiled carelessly at me and turned away.

  “Come along,” she said.

  There was nothing for me to do but obey. Clearly I was expected to play the same game her actions indicated. With some irony I said, “You can tell me your name, can’t you?”

  “I am Topaz—this week,” she said. “Next week, perhaps—something else. But you may think of me until then as Topaz.”

  “Thanks,” I said dryly. “And what year are you Topaz in? What country? Where am I, anyhow?”

  “The Lord Paynter will tell you that. I don’t care to be beaten.”

  “But you speak English. I can’t be very far from home.”

  “Oh, everyone who matters knows English. It’s the court language of the Mother Planet, you see. The whole galaxy operates on an English basic. There has to be some common language. I—oh dear, I will be beaten! Come along.”

  She turned away, tugging me by the arm. There was a button on the opposite wall and the way she walked beside me toward it, the way she reached to touch the button, followed so definite a pattern of graceful motion that it seemed like dancing.

  In the wall a shutter widened. Topaz turned. “This is the City,” she told me.

  I HAD seen the beginnings of such places in my own time. In the second level under Chicago, by the canal—at Hoover Dam—in the great bridges and the subways of Manhattan. Those had been the rudiments, ugly, crude, harsh. This was a city of machines, a city of metal with blood of invisible energy.

  Ugly? No. But frightening—yes.

  Topaz led me across a strip of pavement to a cushioned car like a big cup and we sat down in it and the car started, whether or not on wheels I can’t say. It moved in three dimensions, rising sharply in the air sometimes to avoid collisions, to thread its intricate pattern through that singing city.

  The sound was, perhaps, the strangest part. I kept watching and listening with the automatic attention of the reporter, senselessly making mental notes for articles I would never write. A single note hummed through the city, clear and loud as a trumpet, sliding up and down the scale. Not music, for there was no pattern, but much like a clarinet, varied every changing second.

  I asked Topaz about it. She gave me a glance from Letta Essen’s eyes and said, “Oh, that’s to make the noise bearable. You can’t get rid of the noise, you know, without sacrificing the effect but you can transform it into harmonious sound that does convey the proper things. There’s—what do you call it—frequency modulation. I think that’s it.

  “All the noises of the City every second add up to one key vibration, a non-harmonic, and that’s simply augmented by a machine so the audible result isn’t so unpleasant. The only alternative would be to blanket it completely and that would mean sacrificing a good part of the total effect, you know.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What do you mean, effect?”

  She turned in the car to look at me. Suddenly she dimpled.

  “No, I see you don’t understand. Well, I won’t explain. I’ll save it for a surprise.” I didn’t argue with her. I was too busy staring around me at the City. I can’t describe it. I won’t try and I don’t need to. You’ve read about such places, maybe pictured them for yourself. Precision, perfect functionalism, all one mighty machine made up of machines.

  There were no humans, no life, except for us under the dome of steel sky. The light was gray, dear, oddly compact, and; through that steel-colored air the city trumpeted its wailing cry of a world that was not my world, a time that was yet to come.

  Where was the red twilight of the world’s end? Where was the Face of Ea, from which the call for help had come?

  Or did that world lie somewhere just outside the city? Something had gone strangely wrong in the time-axis—that much was certain. If I let myself think about it I’d probably start gibbering. Things had been taken out of my control and all I could do was ride along.

  We drew up before a towering steel and plastic building. Topaz jumped briskly out of the car, took my hand confidently and led me into the low door before us. We had stepped straight into an elevator apparently, for a panel sighed shut behind us and I felt the familiar pressure underfoot and the displaced air that means a rapid rising up a shaft.

  The panel opened. We stepped out into a small room similar to the one in which I had awakened.

  “Now,” Topaz said with relief. “We’re here. You were very good and didn’t ask too many questions, so before we go I’ll show you something.”

  She touched another button in the wall, and a plate of metal slid downward out of sight. There was thick glass behind it. Topaz fingered the button again and the glass slid down in turn. A gust of sweetsmelling air blew in upon us. I caught my breath and leaned forward to stare.

  We were very high up in the city but we were looking out over a blossoming countryside, bright in the season of late spring. I saw meadows deep in grass and yellow flowers, far below. Streams winked in the bright, clear sunlight, here and there fruit-trees were in blossom. Bird-song rose and fell in the sunshine.

  “This, of course,” Topaz said, “is the world we live in. There’s only one museum.”

  “Museum?” I echoed almost absently, “What museum?”

  “The City. There’s only one. All machines and robots. Isn’t it horrible? They built like that, you know, back in barbarous times. We keep it in operation to show what it was like. That’s why they can’t blanket the noises altogether—it would spoil the effect. But no one lives here. Only students come sometimes. Our world is out there.”

  “But where do people live?” I asked. “Not in—well, villages, communities?”

  “Oh no. Not any more. Not since the dark ages. We have transmission now, you see, so we don’t need to live huddled up together.”

  “Transmission?”

  “This is a transmitter.” She waved at the room behind us. “That other place, where you woke, was a receiver.”

  “Receiver of what? Transmitter of what?” I felt like Alice talking to the Caterpillar.

  “Of matter, naturally. Much easier than walking.” She pressed the stud again and the glass and metal slid up to shut out that glowing springtime world. “Now,” she said, “We’ll go—wherever it is we’re going. I don’t know. Lord Paynter—”

  “I know—the old fool.”

  Topaz giggled. “Lord Paynter’s orders are already on record. In a moment we’ll see.” She did something with the buttons on the wall. “Here we go,” she said.

  Vertigo spun through my mind. The wailing of that ancient, wonderful, monstrous City died away.

  CHAPTER XI

  Thirty Second Interlude

  IT WAS a little like going down fast in an elevator. I didn’t lose consciousness but the physical sensations of transmission were so bewildering and so disorienting that I might as well have been unconscious for all the details I could give—then or later—about what happens between transmitter and receiver. All I know is that for a while the walls shimmered around me and gravity seemed to let go abruptly inside my body, so that I was briefly very dizzy.

  Then, without any perceptible spatial change at all, the walls suddenly steadied and were not translucent pale gray any more, but hard dull steel, with the rivets showing where plates overlapped and here and there a streak of rust. I was in a somewhat smaller room than before. And I was alone.

  “Topaz?” I said tentatively, looking around for her. “Topaz?” And then, more loudly, “Dr. Essen—where are you?”

  No answer, except for the echo of my voice from those dull rusty walls.

  This time it was harder to take. I don’t know why. Maybe things like that are cumulative. It was the second time I’d taken a jump into the unknown, piloted by somebody who was supposed to know the angles, and come
out at the far end alone and in the wrong place.

  I looked at the walls and fought down sheer panic at the possibility that this time I had really gone astray in the time-dimension and wakened here in the same room from which I’d set out in the City museum, a room now so aged that the wall surfaces had worn away and the exposed steel corroded and only I remained alive and imprisoned in a dead world.

  It was a bad moment.

  I had to do something to disprove the idea. Obviously the one possible action was to get out of there. I took a long step toward the nearest wall—

  And found myself staggering. Gravity had gone wrong again. I weighed too much. My knees were trying to buckle, as if the one step had put nearly double my weight upon them. I braced my legs and made it to the wall in wide, plodding steps, compensating in every muscle for that extraordinary downward pull.

  The moment my hand touched the wall there was a noise of badly oiled hinges and a door slid back in the steel.

  Now let me get this straight.

  Everything that happened extremely fast. It was only later that I realized it, because I had no sense of being hurried. But in the next thirty seconds the most important thing that was to occur in that world, so far as I was concerned, took place with great speed and precision.

  Through the opening came a cool dusty light and the sound of buzzing, soft and insistent. I guessed at anything and everything.

  I stood on the threshold of an enormous room. It was braced, tremendously braced, with rusted and pitted girders so heavy they made me think of Karnak and the tremendous architecture of the Egyptians, In an intricate series of webs and meshes metal girders ran through the great room, cat-walks, but perhaps not for human beings, since some were level while others tilted dizzily and on a few one would have had to walk upside-down. I noticed, though, that while most of the catwalks were rusted those mi which a man could walk without slipping off were scuffed shiny.