Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “The Terasi seem to be the only semblance of an independent human race left here. They’re living in the great cave of the machines, where the robot-humans fought their last battles millenniums ago. And they’re trying in their clumsy way to learn. Out of sheer thirst for knowledge, because there isn’t any hope for the future and they know it well. The Earth’s dying and the race of man will have to die, too.”

  HE SIGHED again, heavily, and for a while they drifted in silence along the slow stream. The tunnel walls went past in the dimness, opening enigmatic arches upon caverns where the creatures of the Allens must have lived out their misshapen lives so long ago.

  “About the Light-Wearer—” Alan prompted presently.

  “Oh. Well, he knows he’s alone now, and he knows he’ll have to die, too, if he can’t get at us. We were domned lucky back there in the ship, laddie, that he didn’t suspect then what had happened. He must ha’ wakened and gone in search of the race he led here, and by the time he knew they’d come and ruled and died, we’d escaped. I imagine him going back to the citadel and sending out calls all over the world—and only Evaya answered. He followed us to Carcasilla—remember? He was still unsure then, I think, stunned by the shock of what he’d found here. And afterward, when he knew, he couldn’t reach us. You were safe in Carcasilla, and we—well, the Terasi ha’ found a way to keep the thing at bay.

  “It isna flesh, ye ken. Its metabolism isna human at all. It may have no body as we know bodies. So the bullets I fired didn’t hurt the creature. No, I think it was the psychic shock of the concussion. It’s a highly specialized being in which body had been sacrificed to mind. Perhaps a vortex of pure force. How can we conceive of such a being!” Sir Colin rubbed his forehead wearily, the slight motion rocking him upon the current of air. “Ye recall what happened back there when the devil attacked ye?”

  Alan shivered. “It was in my brain—sucking—”

  “So I think it’s a mental vampire. It lives on life-force—mental energy—and only the energy of intelligent human beings. The Aliens may ha’ bred human slaves for that purpose only. And now this last of them’s ravenous—starving. And only we and the Terasi are available now. Ye saw how it cast aside the Carcasillians. They’re protected, somehow.

  “Well, the Light-Wearer came out of his citadel and went hunting. And he found the Terasi. And he came ravening among them as we saw him come into Carcasilla. But the Terasi have a weapon. They have great gongs that make the whole cavern shiver with noise. And noise those Aliens canna stand. Ye remember Carcasilla is a silent city? So they fight him with noise. He’s been besieging them a long while now. We dare not leave the city without portable gongs, and even they aren’t really powerful enough. The food-caverns—mushrooms and such-like things—are a little way off from the city, and we can’t get enough now. He won’t let us. We’re starving each other out, really.” Sir Colin grinned. “But I think the Alien may win.”

  “So you came after me alone?”

  Sir Colin shrugged. “I had my gun. Besides, you saved my life a few billion years ago, in Tunisia, and I wanted to pay the debt. As for why I delayed—I did come once, and couldn’t pass the barrier into Carcasilla. This second time I followed the Alien’s track.”

  This was high courage of a sort Alan had seldom encountered, but he said nothing. After a while the Scotsman went on, “I may ha’ done ye no favor in bringing ye out of Carcasilla, after all. It looks as if ye’re doomed to starve with the Terasi, or die at last as ye so nearly died in Carcasilla to feed the Alien. I dunno, laddie. I think our fortunes lie with the Terasi, but even if we found a way to beat the Alien—what?”

  Now the Way of the Gods grew wider, and chasms opened in the floor and cracks ran down the ruined walls. Sir Colin touched Alan’s arm, drawing him out of the weightless current toward one of the broad splits running from roof to floor.

  “Here’s our way. There was a gateway into this cavern, once, but a shrinking old planet like ours has its quakes. That road’s closed. Most of these cracks are blind, but some open in. Here.”

  Alan glanced on along the Way of the Gods still stretching ahead. “Where does it go?”

  “Probably to Hell. I’ve checked it with what charts I could find—not many—and I think it begins under the citadel we saw back on the plain.”

  The scientist had produced a taper of some fibrous plant, and lit it. “We’ve got a hard path to follow.”

  It wound and twisted upward a long, rough way before light showed ahead, a cold, pale radiance outlining the mouth of a crack like lightning against a night sky. Sir Colin put out the torch. Before them, the depthless expanse of a cavern loomed.

  Alan thought irresistibly of his first glimpse of Carcasilla. Here was a cavern again, and incredible shapes filled it. By this time those shapes were mighty cylinders and bizarre silhouettes rising like water-carved rocks from the sea. It was a city of—machines?

  If these were machines, indeed, then the Alien concept of machinery was as strange as their concept of human houses in Carcasilla. What lay before Alan was too vast, too breath-takingly immense, to be captured in familiar terms. These towers were machines perhaps, but of a size inconceivable! Only Alien-made metal—or was it plastic—could create such masses that would not topple under their own weight. And they were colored gorgeously and senselessly. Deep colors for the most part. Gargantuan shapes of purple and dark wine-red, and leaning towers of obsidian green.

  “Aye,” breathed Sir Colin at his elbow. “They were technicians!” There was respect in his voice. And Alan remembered that this cavern had seen perhaps the last rebels of earth, robots turned stubbornly human, fighting and falling before their Alien masters in a saga of courage and futility that was lost like the race that had failed. Only their handiwork remained, enigmatic, impossible.

  “What are they for?” he asked Sir Colin futilely. “What could they be for?”

  “What does it matter now?” the Scotsman said bitterly. “There isn’t any power left in the whole domned planet. Come on down. It’s not so safe up here.”

  They mounted a lip of rock, and the rest of the cavern floor was visible below them, a twisting rift of stone leading downward toward it. Against the farther wall Alan could see a huddle of rough huts—more like partitions than like shelters, for what shelter from the elements could men need here? Figures were moving among them, and Alan bristled a little involuntarily. The savage shapes looked dangerous; he could not forget his last meeting with these people.

  BEFORE them, shadows stirred, and for one breath-taking instant Alan was back on the shore of the Mediterranean, where Mike and Karen had come out of the Tunisian night with their guns upon him—as they came now.

  No one spoke for a moment. There were lines of strain on Karen’s keen, pale face, and the blue eyes held an habitual alertness he had seen there before only for brief moments of violent action. Her bronze curls were tousled now, and her clothing tattered, with inexpert mends.

  Mike’s had not been mended at all. He stood there straddle-legged, a menacing figure of strong bronze, his blunt features restrained to an impassivity more revealing than any scowl. There was an air of iron firmness and strain about him. The sleek black head was roughened now, and he had the beginnings of a black beard. He looked taut as wire—and as dangerous if he should break, Alan thought.

  Karen was watching Alan. “So, Drake, you’re still alive.”

  “We all are,” Alan said with a glance at Mike.

  “You look damn good,” the gunman remarked coldly. “Somebody been feeding you well, eh?”

  Alan’s mouth quirked. “I haven’t eaten anything since I left you.”

  “Where’s Brekkir?” Sir Colin asked.

  “In the storage house, checking supplies,” Karen told him. “Food’s pretty low. If we don’t send out another party soon to the food caves, it’s going to be too late.” Sir Colin shook his head, lips tight. “I want to talk to Brekkir. Come along, laddie. Ye’ll remember Brekki
r—the man who stove your ribs in.” And the Scotsman smiled grimly.

  “I remember.” Alan nodded, ignoring Mike’s sudden bark of vicious amusement.

  There was still, he recalled, a score to be settled with Mike Smith. But not yet.

  Under the great toppling heights of the machines they went, mountains of purple and rich deep blues and greens. Dead machines. But whatever air-conditioners had been installed unknown years ago were built for the ages, because the air was fresh here. Windless, but cool and clean. And the dimming lights shone down unchanging.

  “What about you?” Karen was asking now. “The Alien—”

  “I’ve met it,” Alan said briefly.

  Mike showed his teeth. “What is this Alien, Drake? Scotty’s been talking about energy and vibration, but it doesn’t make sense. The filthy thing can be killed, can’t it?”

  “God knows.” Alan shrugged. “Not by bullets. It’s afraid of sound, apparently, for whatever that’s worth.”

  “But it can be killed!” The sentence was not a question. White dints showed in Mike’s nostrils. The Nazi had courage, Alan knew for a certainty, but never before had that courage been tested against the unknown.

  Mike’s years of training with the German war machine had given him certain abilities, but it had destroyed certain others. Nazi soldiers fought to the death because they believed they were the master race, the herrenvolken. It all seemed trivial now, and incredibly long ago, but in this one application it was not trivial. For Mike had the weakness and the strength of his kind. When the German supreme confidence is undermined—that fanatical, unswerving belief in one’s self—the psychological reaction is Violent. And Mike Smith, brave as he undoubtedly was, had for weeks been facing a power against which he was completely helpless.

  Over his shoulder Sir Colin said brusquely, “The Alien’s not a devil. It’s alive, and it has adaptability—to some extent. Without perfect adaptability it’s vulnerable.”

  “To what?” Karen murmured.

  “Metabolism, for one thing. Without food it willna live.”

  “Comforting!” Karen said. “When you think that we’re the food it wants!”

  Alan saw Mike Smith shudder . . .

  “Hungry?” Sir Colin asked as they came into the huddle of Terasi village under the out-curve of the cavern wall.

  “Why, yes. I am. Thirsty, too.” Alan felt surprise as he realized it. In Carcasilla the fountain had been both food and drink, but here he was mortal, it seemed. And he was not only hungry, he was famishing. And very tired. That fight with the Alien had been more draining than he had realized, until now that comparative safety was reached. He was scarcely aware of the rude streets they were walking, or of the ragged Terasi who passed with curious stares, or of the great gongs hanging at intervals along the way, manned by grim-faced watchers.

  Weariness and hunger made the whole cavern swim before him as reaction set in. He knew that Sir Colin was helping him into some rough-walled house, its roof only a network of pale-branched trellis. He heard Mike and Karen from far away. Someone put a spongy bread-like object in his hands and he tore at it ravenously, remembering the Alien’s hunger with a wry sympathy now as he ate the mush-roomy thing in his hand.

  It helped a little. Sir Colin poured water into a metal cup and handed it to him, smiling. “There’s no whuskey,” he said gravely, “which probably accounts for the downfall of mankind.”

  The water was sweet and good, but food and drink were not all his wants now. He felt drained dry of energy by that terrible bout with the Alien. And he knew—he sensed unerringly that the Alien was not yet finished with him. He could feel it in the back of his mind as he ate and drank. Somewhere it was waiting, watching . . .

  “Sleep now,” Sir Colin urged from somewhere outside the closed circle of his weariness. “We’ll wake you if anything happens.”

  He did not even know when gentle hands led him to the bed.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE PORTALS OF LIGHT

  A DEEP, resonant vibration, shivering through the room, wakened Alan. He lay there staring, uncertain where he was. The sound came again as he lay blinking, and this time he recognized it and sat up abruptly, lifting one hand to his stubby cheek. The beard was beginning to grow again, as it had never grown in Carcasilla. But he had no time to wonder over that, for the gong was ringing desperately now and the whole cavern seemed to resound with that ominous sound.

  Alan was halfway to the door when Sir Colin came in, grinning.

  “False alarm—we hope,” he said, and cocked his head to listen. The gonging vibrations died slowly outside. “How d’ye feel this morning, laddie?”

  “Better—all right. But that gong—”

  “A sentry thought he saw the Light-Wearer shimmering in one of the crevices. That was all. He started an alarm, and the others are watching. Ye’ll know soon enough if the thing’s really there. D’ye feel like meeting Brekkir this morning?”

  “Brekkir?” Alan echoed. “The leader, eh? Sure, bring him in. Is it really morning?” Sir Colin laughed again. “How can I tell? They measure time differently here. Brekkir’s waiting outside. I’ll call him.”

  He stepped to the door and lifted his voice. A moment later Karen and Mike came in, nodding briefly to Alan’s greeting. Behind them a great ragged figure entered. The same tattered savage, magnificent as an auroch in his breadth of shoulder and tremendous depth of chest, who had come charging up Flande’s spiral waterfall with terror and determination on his hideously scarred face. The same shouting barbarian whom Alan had last seen above him, driving his heels down crushingly into Alan’s ribs.

  A glint of sardonic humor gleamed in the man’s deeply recessed eyes. Alan braced himself warily as the Terasi came forward and put his great hands on the other’s shoulders, stood back at arm’s length to scrutinize Alan with a look of wonder growing on his harsh face. He said something to Sir Colin in a deep-chested guttural.

  The Scotsman answered, nodding toward Alan. When he had finished, “Brekkir wonders at your recuperative powers,” he translated. “He says he gave you mortal wounds.”

  “I’d have died, all right,” Alan said grimly. “It was the fountain that saved me.” Sir Colin gave Brekkir the words in his own tongue. The Terasi’s shaggy brows lifted. He pushed aside Alan’s shirt and ran calloused fingers along the healed scars that banded his torso. Excitement shook his voice when he spoke again.

  The Scotsman answered, and he, too, was excited.

  Karen broke in to ask, “A power source? What does he mean?”

  “I’m not sure. But this is something I hadn’t expected, though I should have guessed from what Alan’s been saying. If Brekkir’s right, we may have the answer to all our problems. Though it seems incredible!”

  Alan stared. “What is It?”

  “I’d best show you on the scanners. There’s so much to explain. Look—Karen’s brought your breakfast. Eat it while Brekkir and I talk.”

  Alan let himself be pushed down to a seat before a makeshift table of plastic blocks, and Karen set more of the mushroom-bread before him, and a cup of water. She was watching Brekkir’s scarred face, bright with a sort of triumph, as he argued vehemently against Sir Colin’s cool questions. Mike watched, too, though obviously the flurry of quick discussion was a little beyond him. Strange, thought Alan, how little they had changed in these weeks apart.

  But it was not wise to think, somehow. For so long he had been half-asleep, his mind dulled, living in the incarnate dream that was Carcasilla. His thoughts felt strange now. It was difficult to believe in the reality of anything that had happened. The act of independent thinking was like resuming the use of a paralyzed limb. His brain did not feel entirely the brain of Alan Drake.

  He had the curious illusion of seeing through the wrong end of a telescope. Brekkir was a tiny figure gesticulating to a microscopic Sir Colin. He saw them with objective coldness, as if they were beings of a different species.

  Deep in his mi
nd a furtive, cold horror stirred. But far down, smothered under clouds of lassitude, Alan’s awareness of himself faded. His own body seemed alien, no part of his consciousness. And a slow desire was rising in him that had no kinship with human passions. It was in his mind, tiny and far away, and then leaping forward with great striding bounds, as the Light-Wearer had come from the Way of the Gods.

  It was hunger he felt, that deep and terrible desire—ravenous hunger for—what? Hunger, and beyond it a desperate solitude. He was alone. He was wandering in some formless place, searching amid great ruins that breathed out desolation. And the hunger grew and grew.

  He heard Sir Colin’s voice faintly; the sound was unpleasant. It grated on his senses. He struggled against the grip of strong hands whose touch was hateful.

  “Alan! For God’s sake, wake up!”

  But he was awake—for the first time. This creature was trying to stop him from returning to Carcasilla. That was it! He must go back! Only there could he find appeasement for this dreadful hunger that burned him. He must go back to the Light-Wearer, open his mind—but no, he was the Light-Wearer; Alan Drake was the willing sacrifice.

  “Karen!” the burring, alien voice called again, tiny and distant. “Mike, help me hold him! He’ll kill—”

  And Mike Smith’s strained voice. “Let him! Let him go! The Alien’s here—I can feel it! Those gongs were right. It’s come, it’s here in this room!”

  Then Karen’s swift steps racing across the floor and her hard, small fist cracking savagely against Alan’s jaw. Blaze of pain; flashing lights. Then a timeless eternity of groping, a frantic striving for orientation. The world steadied. Sick and weak, now, from reaction, Alan saw an altered world—a normal-sized Sir Colin flung aside by a towering Brekkir who charged forward with shoulders hunched, eyes hot and deadly.

  It was instinct that showed Alan the gun at Karen’s belt. He was not yet wholly back in his own mind, perhaps, but his body thought for him. The metal was cold against his palm. He swung the pistol up unwaveringly at Brekkir while the room lurched around him, knowing only that if he revealed weakness now he was gone.