Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  I done it!

  Then I was back in the kitchen. Grandpaw was laughing fit to kill in the attic. The old gentleman’s got a funny kind of sense of humor, I guess. I didn’t have no time for him then, though, for Yancey jumped past me and into the gadget. And he disappeared into thin air, the way I had. Split up, like I’d been, into as many people as there was in the world, and standing right in front of ’em.

  Maw and Paw and Uncle Les was looking at me real hard. I sort of shuffled.

  “I fixed it,” I said. “Seems like a man who’s mean enough to hit little babies over the haid deserves what he’s”—I stopped and looked at the gadget—“what he’s been and got,” I finished, on account of Yancey had tumbled out of thin air, and a more whupped-up old rattlesnake I never seen. My!

  Well, I guess purty near everybody in the whole world had took a whang at Mr. Yancey. He never even had a chance to swing that monkey wrench. The whole world had got in the fust lick.

  Yes, siree. Mr. Yancey looked plumb ruined.

  But he could still yell. You could of heard him a mile off. He kept screaming that he’d been cheated. He wanted another chance, and this time he was taking his shooting iron and a bowie knife. Finally Maw got disgusted, took him by the collar, and shook him up till his teeth rattled.

  “Quoting Scripture!” she said, madlike. “You little dried-up scraggle of downright pizen! The Good Book says an eye for an eye, don’t it? We kept our word, and there ain’t nobody kin say different.”

  “That’s the truth, certes,” Grandpaw chimed in from the attic.

  “You better go home and git some arnicy,” Maw said, shaking Yancey some more. “And don’t you come round here no more, never again, or we’ll set the baby on you.”

  “But I didn’t git even!” Yancey squalled.

  “I guess you ain’t a-gonna, ever,” I said. “You just cain’t live long enough to git even with everybody in the whole world, Mr. Yancey.”

  BY AND BY, that seemed to strike Yancey all in a heap. He turned a rich color like beet soup, made a quacking noise, and started cussing. Uncle Les reached for the poker, but there wasn’t no need.

  “The whole dang world done me wrong!” Yancey squealed, and clapped his hands to his haid. “I been flummoxed! Why in tarnation did they hit me fust? “There’s something funny about—”

  “Hush up,” I said, all of a sudden realizing the trouble wasn’t over, like I’d thought. “Listen, anybody hear anything from the village?”

  Even Yancey shet up whilst we listened. “Don’t hear a thing,” Maw said.

  “Saunk’s right,” Grandpaw put in. “That’s what’s wrong.”

  Then everybody got it—that is, everybody except Yancey. Because about now there ought to of been quite a rumpus down at Piperville. Don’t fergit me and Yancey went visiting the whole world, which includes Piperville, and people don’t take a thing like that quiet. There ought to of been some yelling going on, at least.

  “What are you all standing round dumb as mutes for?” Yancey busted out. “You got to help me git even!”

  I didn’t pay him no mind. I sat down and studied the gadget. After a minute I seen what it was I’d done wrong. I guess Grandpaw seen it about as quick as I did. You oughta heard him laugh. I hope it done the old gentleman good. He has a right peculiar sense of humor sometimes.

  “I sort of made a mistake in this gadget, Maw,” I said. “That’s why it’s so quiet down in Piperville.”

  “Aye, by my troth,” Grandpaw said, still laughing. “Saunk had best seek cover. Twenty-three skiddoo, kid.”

  “You done something you shouldn’t, Saunk?” Maw said.

  “Blabber, blabber, blabber!” Yancey yelled. “I want my rights! I want to know what it was Saunk done that made everybody in the world hit me over the haid! He must of done something. I never had no time to—”

  “Now you leave the boy alone, Mr. Yancey,” Maw said. “We done what we promised, and that’s enough. You git outa here and simmer down afore you say something you regret.”

  Paw winked at Uncle Les, and before Yancey could yell back at Maw the table sort of bent its legs down like they had knees in ’em and snuck up behind Yancey real quiet. Then Paw said to Uncle Les, “All together now, let ’er go,” and the table straightened up its legs and give Yancey a terrible bunt that sent him flying out the door.

  The last we heard of Yancey was the whoops he kept letting out whenever he hit the ground all the way down the hill. He rolled half the way to Piperville, I found out later. And when he got there he started hitting people over the haid with his monkey wrench.

  I guess he figgered he might as well make a start the hard way.

  They put him in jail for a spell to cool off, and I guess he did, ’cause afterward he went back to that little shack of his’n. I hear he don’t do nothing but set around with his lips moving, trying to figger a way to git even with the hull world. I don’t calc’late he’ll ever hit on it, though.

  At that time, I wasn’t paying him much mind. I had my own troubles. As soon as Paw and Uncle Les got the table back in place, Maw lit into me again.

  “Tell me what happened, Saunk,” she said. “I’m a-feared you done something wrong when you was in that gadget. Remember you’re a Hogben, son. You got to behave right when the whole world’s looking at you. You didn’t go and disgrace us in front of the entire human race, did you, Saunk?”

  Grandpaw laughed agin. “Not yet, he hasn’t,” he said.

  Then down in the basement I heard the baby give a kind of gurgle and I knowed he could see it too. That’s surprising, kinda, We never know for sure about the baby. I guess he really kin see a little bit into the future too.

  “I just made a little mistake, Maw,” I said. “Could happen to anybody. It seems the way I fixed that gadget up, it split me into a lot of Saunks, all right, but it sent me ahead into next week too. That’s why there ain’t no ruckus yet down in Piperville.”

  “My land!” Maw said. “Child, you do things so careless!”

  “I’m sorry, Maw,” I said. “Trouble is, too many people in Piperville know me. I’d better light out for the woods and pick me a nice holler tree. I’ll be needing it, come next week.”

  “Saunk,” Maw said, “you been up to something. Sooner or later I’ll find out, so you might as well tell me now.”

  Well, shucks, I knowed she was right. So I told her, and I might as well tell you, too. You’ll find out anyhow, come next week. It just shows you can’t be too careful. This day next week, everybody in the whole world is a-gonna be mighty surprised when I show up out of thin air, hand ’em all a stick of firewood, and then r’ar back and spit right smack in their eye.

  I s’pose that there two billion, two hunnerd and fifty million, nine hunnerd and fifty-nine thousand, nine hunnerd and nineteen includes everybody on earth.

  Everybody!

  Sometime next week, I figger.

  See you later.

  THE PORTAL IN THE PICTURE

  Eddie Burton walks with death when he enters the gateway to an alien world!

  PROLOGUE

  SHE called herself Malesca. Her agent called her the “Loveliest Girl in the World” and I suppose he wasn’t far wrong, at that. If I’d known she was playing the Windsor Roof that night I’d have gone somewhere else.

  But by the time I was at the table, having a sandwich and a highball, it was too late. The lights dimmed, the spot went on and there stood Malesca, bowing to the storm of applause. I wasn’t going to let her spoil my drink. I could always look somewhere else while she was on. I ate white meat of chicken, drank my highball and thought about other things—until the famous velvet voice began to sing.

  I listened to her sing. A chair creaked. In the dimness someone sat down beside me. I peered through the gloom, recognizing the man, a top figure in show business.

  “Hello, Burton,” he said.

  “Hello.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  I waved my hand and
he gave his order to the waiter who slid up noiselessly. Malesca was still singing.

  The man beside me watched her, as rapt and intent as everybody else in the club except me.

  Two encores later, when the lights went up, I realized that he was staring at me curiously. My disinterest in the singer must have been pretty obvious.

  “No like?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

  Even before Korzybski that particular question would have been meaningless. I couldn’t answer him and I knew it. So I didn’t bother. I just didn’t say anything. I could see Malesca from the corner of my eye, hear the rustle of her stiff skirts as she came through the tables toward me. I sighed.

  SHE was wearing some light flowery scent I knew she hadn’t picked out for herself. She put her hand on the table edge and leaned toward me. “Eddie,” she said.

  “Well?”

  “Eddie, I haven’t seen you for ages.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Listen, why don’t you wait around? Take me somewhere after my last show. We could have a drink or something. How about it, Eddie?”

  Her voice was pure magic. It had been magic on radio and records and video. It would soon be magic in the movies. I didn’t say a word.

  “Eddie—please.”

  I picked up my glass, emptied it, brushed crumbs off my coat, laid the napkin beside the plate.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Wish I could.”

  She stared at me, the familiar, searching stare full of incomprehension. I could hear the applause still echoing. “Eddie—”

  “You heard me,” I said. “Take a walk. Take an encore. Go on, beat it.”

  Without a word she turned away and went back to the floor, her skirts frothing and hissing as she squeezed between the tables. The man beside me said: “Eddie, are you crazy?”

  “Probably,” I said. I wasn’t going to explain to him.

  “All right, Eddie. You know the answers, I suppose. But something must be wrong. The most beautiful woman in the world throwing herself at your feet—and you won’t even look at her. That just isn’t sensible.”

  “I’m not a very sensible guy,” I told him. It was a lie, of course. I’m the most sensible guy in the world—in any world.

  “Don’t give me clichés,” he said “That’s no answer.”

  “Clichés!” I said and choked in my glass. “Okay, okay, never mind. Nothing wrong with clichés, you know. They’re just truths that happen so often they’re trite. It doesn’t make them any less true, does it?” I looked at Malesca squaring off at the mike, getting ready to sing again.

  “I knew a man once who tried to discredit clichés,” I went on thoughtfully, knowing I was probably saying too much. “He failed. He had quite a time, that guy.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, he found a fabulous land and rescued a beautiful goddess and overthrew a wicked high priest and—forget it. Maybe it was a book I read.”

  “What fabulous land was that?” my friend inquired idly.

  “Malesco.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at me and glanced across the room at the Most Beautiful Girl in the World.

  “Malesco? Where’s that?”

  “Right behind you,” I said.

  Then I picked up my fresh highball and buried my nose in it. I had nothing more to say—to him. But a chord in the music just then woke a thin shivering wire of sound at the back of my brain and for an instant the barrier between this world and the worlds outside was as thin as air.

  Malesco, I thought. I shut my eyes and tried to make the domes and towers of that rose-red city take shape in the darkness while the chord still sounded in my ears. But I couldn’t do it. Malesco had gone back into the fable again and the gates were shut forever.

  And yet, when I think about it now even the sense of wonder and disbelief is suspended and I have no feeling at all that it was in some dream I walked those streets. They were real. I’ve got the most convincing kind of proof that they were real.

  It all happened quite awhile ago . . .

  CHAPTER I

  A “Lady” Vanishes

  REMEMBER the story of the blind men and the elephant? Not one of them ever found out it was an elephant. That’s the way it was with me. A new world was opening right in front of me and I put it down to eyestrain.

  I sat there in my apartment with a bottle and watched the air flicker.

  I told myself to get up and switch off the lights because Lorna had got in the habit of dropping by if I didn’t show up at the ginmill where she worked, and I didn’t want to talk to her. Lorna Maxwell was a leech. She had attached herself to me with all the simple relentlessness of her one-track mind and short of killing her I knew no way to pry her loose.

  It all seemed so easy to Lorna. Here I was, rising young actor Eddie Burton with a record of three straight Broadway hits and a good part in something new that all the critics liked. Fine.

  Here she was, that third-rate young ginmill singer Lorna Maxwell with no record at all that she admitted to. Don’t ask me how we met or how she got her hooks into me. I’m a born easy mark. Children, animals and people like Lorna can spot people like me a mile away.

  She’d got it into her addled little head somehow that all I had to do was say the word and she’d be right up there beside me, a success, the darling of the columnists. Only selfishness kept me from saying the magic word to somebody in authority and turning her into Cinderella. Arguments wouldn’t move her. It seemed simpler to turn off the lights when I was at home alone and not answer the door.

  The air flickered again. I squinted and shook my head. This was getting a little alarming. It couldn’t be the Scotch. It never happened outside the apartment. It never happened unless I was looking at that particular wall.

  There was a Rousseau picture on it, Sleeping Gypsy, something Uncle Jim had left me along with the apartment. I made a great effort to focus on the blue-green sky, the lion’s blowing mane, the striped robe of the black man on the sand.

  But all I got was a blur. And then I knew I must be drunk because a sound seemed to go with the blur, a roaring that might have been the lion except that the lion had entirely vanished and I seemed to be seeing a dome of shining rosy-red light that moved like water.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. This was crazy.

  Uncle Jim had left me the apartment in his will. It was one of those deals where you pay a fabulous sum down and a high rental for life and call the apartment yours. I wouldn’t have got into it myself but Uncle Jim did and it was nice to have a place the landlord couldn’t throw me out of when somebody offered him a higher bribe.

  This is probably the place for a word about Uncle Jim Burton. He was a Character. He had red hair, freckles and a way of losing himself in foreign parts for months at a stretch. Sometimes for years.

  He used to visit us between trips when I was a kid and of all the people I knew in those days he was my favorite because he took me in on a secret.

  It started out as bedtime stories. All about a marvelous land called Malesco that followed the pattern for all marvelous lands. There was a beautiful princess and a wicked high priest and a dashing young hero whose adventures kept me awake for all of fifteen minutes sometimes after the lights were put out.

  Those were the pre-Superman days, so I didn’t picture myself soaring through Malesco in a red union suit but sometimes I wore a lion skin like Tarzan and sometimes the harness of an intrepid Martian warrior who looked like John Carter.

  I even learned to speak Malescan. Uncle Jim made it up, of course. He had a restless mind, and he was recovering from some sort of illness during those months he stayed with us when the Malesco stories began. He made up a vocabulary of the language and we worked out a sort of primer together and jabbered away to each other in Malescan with a good deal of fluency before the episode came to an end and he went away again.

  I sat there, watching the wall flicker, looking at the blurred rose-red globe on the wall and something like roofs beyond it,
lit with a brilliant sunset. I knew I was imagining most of it. What I saw was the red blur you get when you rub your eyes hard and my imagination was making it into something very much like the tales of Malesco Uncle Jim used to tell.

  THE whole thing had sunk far back into my mind in the many years since, but when I groped I seemed to dredge up a memory of a city lit with crimson sunsets and a great dome in the middle that reflected the light from a surface of—had it been water? Had it been—

  The doorbell rang.

  “Eddie!” Lorna’s voice called loudly. “Eddie, let me in a minute.”

  I knew if I didn’t she’d rouse the neighbors with her knocking and shouting, so I heaved myself out of the chair and sidled cautiously around that blur which was pure imagination between me and the wall where the Rousseau hung. It was odd, I thought, that the hall wasn’t blurred or the front door or even Lorna’s pretty, cheap little face when I let her in.

  “I waited for you, Eddie,” she said reproachfully, slipping in fast before I could change my mind. “What kept you? Eddie, I had to see you. I’ve got a new idea. Look, how would it be if I could dance a little too? Would that help? I’ve worked out a sort of routine I wish you’d—”

  “Have a drink,” I said wearily. “Let’s not talk about it now, Lorna. My head aches. I think I’ve got eye trouble. Things keep blurring.”

  “—look at while I just run through it,” she went right on as soon as I finished speaking. It was one of her less endearing tricks.

  I shut my ears and followed her back into the living room, hoping she’d go away soon. The Rousseau Gypsy had come back anyhow. That was a comfort The red. blur which my imagination made into a vision of Malesco was entirely gone. I sat down in the same chair, sipped my Scotch and looked morosely at Lorna.

  It doesn’t matter what she was saying.

  I heard about every tenth word. She fixed herself a drink and perched girlishly on the arm of a chair, making graceful gestures with her glass, telling me all about how I was going to help her become a great dancer if I’d only say the right word to the right man.