Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Again mind after mind tried to touch Lucy’s. Again Cody sensed, as he had sensed in the minds of the other subjects too, that strange walled aspect that reminded him of Jasper Home. But Lucy wasn’t paranoid!

  Yet her mind did not open. So it was failure—not a mechanical failure, for Pomerance’s hypothesis had been verified by everything except the ultimate verification of experimental proof. And yet, without that proof, the pogrom would rage on unchecked, spreading and destroying.

  She’s not paranoid! Cody thought. The baby stirred in his arms. He reached into that warm, shapeless mind and sensed nothing there that reminded him at all of Jasper Horne.

  The baby, Allenby thought suddenly. Try the baby.

  Questions thrust toward the psychologist. But they were not answered. He did not know the answers. He had a hunch, that was all.

  Try the baby.

  Allenby turned off the power and removed the electrodes from Lucy’s head. The baby was laid gently, in his blankets, on the seat Lucy vacated. The electrodes were attached carefully. The baby slept.

  Power on, Allenby ordered.

  His thoughts reached out toward the child.

  The child slept on.

  Defeat, the last defeat of all, Cody knew. Telepaths and nontelepaths were ultimately different, after all. That wall could never go down. No armistice could ever be made. The pogrom could not be stopped.

  The paranoids had been right. Telepaths could not exist side by side with nontelepaths.

  And suddenly in Cody’s mind blazed the flash and roar of the exploding bomb, the blinding thunderclap that was to engulf the whole world now—

  On the chair, the baby squirmed, opened its eyes and mouth, and screamed.

  In the soft, floating mistiness of its mind was the formless shape of fear—the sudden flash and roar and Cody’s own memory of falling helplessly through space—the oldest fear of all, the only fears which are inborn.

  For the first time in history, telepathy had been induced.

  Cody sat alone at the control panel of the electronic calculator. For there was no time at all now. In a moment the emergency telecast would begin, the last appeal to the group of nontelepaths. They would be offered the Inductor—conditionally. For they could not use it. Only their children could.

  If they were willing to accept the Inductor and halt the pogrom, the Baldies would know very quickly. The most secret thoughts of men cannot be hidden from telepaths.

  But if they would not accept—the Baldies would know that, too, and then Cody would touch a certain button on the panel before him. Operation Apocalypse would begin. In six hours the virus would be ready. In a week or two, ninety per cent of the world’s population would be dead or dying. The pogrom might go on until the last, but telepaths could hide efficiently, and they would not have to remain hidden long. The decision was man’s.

  Cody felt Allenby come in behind him.

  “What’s your guess?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It depends on egotism-paranoia, in a way. Maybe man has learned to be a social animal; maybe he hasn’t. We’ll soon find out.”

  “Yes. Soon. It’s the end now, the end of what started with the Blowup.”

  “No,” Allenby said, “it started a long time before that. It started when men first began to live in groups and the groups kept expanding. But before there was any final unification, the Blowup came along. So we had decentralization, and that was the wrong answer. It was ultimate disunity and control by fear. It built up the walls between man and man higher than ever. Aggression is punished very severely now—and in a suspicious, worried, decentralized world there’s a tremendous lot of aggression trying to explode. But the conscience represses it—the criminal conscience of a fear-ruled society, built up in every person from childhood. That’s why no nontelepathic adult today can let himself receive thoughts—why Lucy and the others couldn’t.”

  “She’ll . . . never be able to?”

  “Never,” Allenby said quietly. “It’s functional hysteric deafness—telepathic deafness. Nontelepaths don’t know what other people are thinking—but they believe they know. And they’re afraid of it. They project their own repressed aggressions on to others; unconsciously, they feel that every other being is a potential enemy—and so they don’t dare become telepaths. They may want to consciously, but unconsciously there’s too much fear.”

  “Yet the children—”

  “If they’re young enough, they can become telepaths, like your baby, Jeff. His superego hasn’t formed yet. He can learn, and learn realistically, with all minds open to him, with no walls locking him in as he grows and learns.”

  Cody remembered something an old poet had written. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. Too many walls-had been built, for too long, walls that kept each man apart from his neighbor. In infancy, perhaps in early childhood, anyone was capable of receiving telepathic thoughts, given the Inductor. In infancy the mind of the child was whole and healthy and complete, able to learn telepathic as well as verbal communication. But soon, fatally soon, as the child grew and learned, the walls were built.

  Then man climbed his wall and sat on it like Humpty Dumpty—and somehow, somewhere, in the long process of maturing and learning, the mind was forever spoiled. It was the fall, not only of Humpty Dumpty, but the immemorial fall of man himself. And then—

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.

  For Lucy, it was forever too late.

  After a little while, Cody said, “What about the paranoids? They were telepathic as children. What happened to them?”

  Allenby shook his head.

  “I don’t know the answer to that one, Jeff. It may be a hereditary malfunction. But they don’t matter now; they’re a minority among telepaths—a very small minority. They’ve been dangerous only because we were a minority among nontelepaths, and vulnerable to scapegoating. We won’t be, if—”

  “What about the secret wavebands?”

  “The Inductor can be built to adapt to any wave length the human brain can transmit. There won’t be any more walls at all.”

  “If our offer is accepted. If it isn’t . . . if the pogrom goes on—then I still have the responsibility for Operation Apocalypse.”

  “Is it your responsibility?” Allenby asked. “Is it ours, even? The nontelepaths will be making their own choice.”

  “The telecast’s starting,” Cody said. “I wonder how many will listen to it.”

  The mob that swept through the town of Easterday, secretly led by a paranoid, swirled toward a big house with a wide verandah. The mob sent up a yell at sight of the row of men standing on the verandah waiting. But the paranoid hesitated.

  The man beside him did not. He shouted and sprinted forward. There was a sharp crack and dust spurted at his feet.

  “They’ve got guns!” somebody yelled.

  “Get ’em!”

  “Lynch ‘em!”

  The mob surged forward. Again a rifle snapped.

  The mob leader—not the paranoid, but the apparent leader—swore and dropped to the ground, clutching at his leg.

  On the verandah a man stepped forward.

  “Get out of here,” he said crisply. “Get going—fast.”

  The leader stared in amazement.

  “Doc!” he said. “But you’re not a Baldy. What are you doing?”

  The doctor swung his rifle slowly back and forth.

  “A lot of us up here aren’t Baldies,” he said, glancing along the row of silent men. Several races were represented, but the mob was not concerned with race just now. The lynchers searched out the men on the porch whom they knew to be Baldies—and found each one flanked by coldly determined nontelepaths, armed and waiting.

  There weren’t many of them, though—the defenders.

  That occurred to the leader. He stood up, testing the flesh wound in his calf. He glanced over his shoulder.

  “We can take ’em,” he sh
outed. “It’s ten to one. Let’s go get all of ’em!”

  He led the wave.

  He died first. On the verandah a runty man with spectacles and a scrubby mustache shivered and lowered his gun for a moment. But he did not move from where he stood in the determined line.

  The mob drew back.

  There was a long pause.

  “How long do you think you can hold us off, Doc?” someone called.

  The dead man lay on the open ground between the two groups.

  The air quivered with heat. The sun moved imperceptibly westward. The mob coalesced tighter, a compact, murderous mass waiting in the sunlight.

  Then a telecast screen within the house lit up, and Allenby’s voice began to speak to the world.

  The telecast was over.

  Baldy minds were busy searching, questioning, seeking their answer in minds that could not conceal their true desires. This was a poll that could not be inaccurate. And within minutes the poll would be finished. The answer would be given. On that answer would depend the lives of all who were not telepaths.

  Jeff Cody sat alone before the electronic calculator, waiting for the answer.

  There could be only one answer a sane man, a sane people, could give. For the Inductor meant, for the first time in human history, a unity based on reality. It opened the gates to the true and greatest adventures, the odyssey into the mysteries of science and art and philosophy. It sounded the trumpet for the last and greatest war against the Ilium of nature itself.

  No adult living today could live to see more than the beginning of that vast adventure. But the children would see it.

  There could be only one answer a sane people could give. A sane people.

  Cody looked at the keyboard before him.

  The earth is filled with violence through them.

  Yes, there could be another answer. And if that answer were given—the end of all flesh is come before me.

  I will destroy them with the earth!

  Cody’s mind leaped ahead. He saw his finger pressing the button on the keyboard, saw Operation Apocalypse flooding like a new deluge across the planet, saw the race of man go down and die beneath that destroying tide, till only telepaths were left alive in all the world, perhaps in all the universe.

  He remembered the terrible, lonely pang Baldies feel when a Baldy dies.

  And he knew that no telepath would be able to close his mind against that apocalyptic murder of all mankind.

  There would be the wound which could not heal, which could never heal among a telepathic race whose memories would go on and on, unweakened by transmission down through the generations. A hundred million years might pass, and even then the ancient wound would burn as on the day it had been made.

  Operation Apocalypse would destroy the Baldies, too. For they would feel that enormous death, feel it with the fatal sensitivity of the telepath, and though physically they might live on, the pain and the guilt would be passed on from generation to crippled generation.

  Suddenly Cody moved.

  His finger pushed a button. Instantly the guarding monitor began to operate. There was a soft humming that lasted less than a second. Then a light burned bright on the control panel, and under it was a number.

  Cody pressed another button. The unerring selectors searched the calculator for the bit of crystal that held the code of Operation Apocalypse. The crystal, with its cipher of frozen dots of energy, was ready.

  A thousand minds, sensing Cody’s thought, reached toward him, touched him, spoke to him.

  He paused for an instant while he learned that man had not yet made his decision.

  The voices in his mind became a tumultuous clamor. But the ultimate decision was neither man’s nor theirs; the responsibility Was his own, and he waited no longer.

  He moved his hand quickly forward and felt the cool, smooth plastic of a lever sink with absolute finality beneath his fingers.

  On the bit of ferroelectric crystal waiting in the calculator, the cipher-pattern of energy shivered, faded, and vanished completely.

  Operation Apocalypse was gone.

  Still Cody’s fingers moved. Memory after memory died within the great machine. Its vast pools of data drained their energy back into the boundless sea of the universe and were lost. Then at last the brain of the calculator was empty. There was no way to re-create the Apocalypse—no way and no time.

  Only waiting was left.

  He opened his mind. All around him, stretching across the earth, the linked thoughts of the Baldies made a vast, intricate webwork, perhaps the last and mightiest structure man would ever build. They drew him into their midst and made him one with them. There were no barriers at all. They did not judge. They understood, all of them, and he was part of them all in a warm, ultimate unity that was source of enough strength and courage to face whatever decision mankind might make. This might be the last time man would ever bind itself together in this way. The pogrom might go on until the last Baldy died. But until then, no Baldy would live or die alone.

  So they waited, together, for the answer that man must give.

  THE END

  1954

  WHERE THE WORLD IS QUIET

  Fra Rafael saw strange things, impossible things. Then there was the mystery of the seven young virginal girls of Huascan.

  The life of an anthropologist is no doubt filled much of the time with the monotonous routine of carefully assembling powdery relics of ancient races and civilizations. But White*s lone Peruvian odessy was most unusual. A story pseudonymously penned by one of the greats in the genre.

  FRA RAFAEL drew the llama-wool blanket closer about his narrow shoulders, shivering in the cold wind that screamed down from Huascan. His face held great pain. I rose, walked to the door of the hut and peered through tog at the shadowy haunted lands that lifted toward the sky—the Cordilleras that make a rampart along Peru’s eastern border.

  “There’s nothing,” I said. “Only the fog, Fra Rafael.”

  He made the sign of the cross on his breast. “It is the fog that brings the—the terror,” he said. “I tell you, Señor White, I have seen strange things these last few months—impossible things. You are a scientist. Though we are not of the same religion, you also know that there are powers not of this earth.”

  I didn’t answer, so he went on: “Three months ago it began, after the earthquake. A native girl disappeared. She was seen going into the mountains, toward Huascan along the Pass, and she did not come back. I sent men out to find her. They went up the Pass, found the fog grew thicker and thicker until they were blind and could see nothing. Fear came to them and they fled back down the mountain. A week later another girl vanished. We found her footprints.”

  “The same canyon?”

  “Si, and the same result. Now seven girls have gone, one after the other, all in the same way. And I, Señor White—” Fra Rafael’s pale, tired face was sad as he glanced down at the stumps of his legs—“I could not follow, as you see. Four years ago an avalanche crippled me. My bishop told me to return to Lima, but I prevailed on him to let me remain here for these natives are my people, Señor. They know and trust me. The loss of my legs has not altered that.”

  I nodded. “I can see the difficulty now, though.”

  “Exactly. I cannot go to Huascan and find out what has happened to the girls. The natives—well, I chose four of the strongest and bravest and asked them to take me up the Pass. I thought that I could overcome their superstitions. But I was not successful.”

  “How far did you go?” I asked.

  “A few miles, not more than that. The fog grew thicker, until we were blinded by it, and the way was dangerous. I could not make the men go on.” Fra Rafael closed his eyes wearily. “They talked of old Inca gods and devils—Manco Capac and Oello Huaco, the Children of the Sun. They are very much afraid, Señor White.

  They huddle together like sheep and believe that an ancient god has returned and is taking them away one by one. And—one by one they ar
e taken.”

  “Only young girls,” I mused. “And no coercion is used, apparently. What’s up toward Huascan?”

  “Nothing but wild llamas and the condors. And snow, cold, desolation. These are the Andes, my friend.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It sounds interesting. As an anthropologist I owe it to the Foundation to investigate. Besides, I’m curious. Superficially, there is nothing very strange about the affair. Seven girls have disappeared in the unusually heavy fogs we’ve had ever since the earthquake. Nothing more.”

  I smiled at him. “However, I think I’ll take a look around and see what’s so attractive about Huascan.”

  “I shall pray for you.” he said. “Perhaps—well, Señor, for all the loss of my legs, I am not a weak man. I can stand much hardship. I can ride a burro.”

  “I don’t doubt your willingness, Fra Rafael,” I said. “But it’s necessary to be practical. It’s dangerous and it’s cold up there. Your presence would only handicap me. Alone, I can go faster—remember, I don’t know how far I’ll have to travel.”

  The priest sighed. “I suppose you are right. When—”

  “Now. My burro’s packed.”

  “Your porters?”

  “They won’t go,” I said wryly. “They’ve been talking to your villagers. It doesn’t matter. I’ll go it alone.” I put out my hand, and Fra Rafael gripped it strongly.

  “Vaya con Dios,” he said.

  I went out into the bright Peruvian sunlight. The Indios were standing in straggling knots, pretending not to watch me. My porters were nowhere in evidence. I grinned, yelled a sardonic goodbye, and started to lead the burro toward the Pass.

  The fog vanished as the sun rose, but it still lay in the mountain canyons toward the west. A condor circled against the sky. In the thin, sharp air the sound of a distant rock-fall was distinctly audible.