Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  "Hold them open," the robot suggested. "With your fingers."

  "My fingers have reflexes too," Martin argued, moving toward a sideboard. "There's only one answer. I've got to get drunk. If I'm half stupefied with liquor, my reflexes will be so slow I won't be able to shut my eyes. And don't try to use force, either. If I dropped dead with fear, how could you get my eyeprint then?"

  "Very easily," the robot said. "I'd pry open your lids--"

  Martin hastily reached for a bottle on the sideboard, and a glass. But his hand swerved aside and gripped, instead, a siphon of soda water.

  "--only," ENIAC went on, "the forgery might be detected."

  Martin fizzled the glass full of soda and took a long drink.

  "I won't be long getting drunk," he said, his voice thickening. "In fact, it's beginning to work already. See? I'm coöperating."

  The robot hesitated.

  "Well, hurry up about it," he said, and sat down.

  Martin, about to take another drink, suddenly paused, staring at ENIAC. Then, with a sharply indrawn breath, he lowered the glass.

  "What's the matter now?" the robot asked. "Drink your--what is it?"

  "It's whiskey," Martin told the inexperienced automaton, "but now I see it all. You've put poison in it. So that's your plan, is it? Well, I won't touch another drop, and now you'll never get my eyeprint. I'm no fool."

  "Cog Almighty," the robot said, rising. "You poured that drink yourself. How could I have poisoned it? Drink!"

  "I won't," Martin said, with a coward's stubbornness, fighting back the growing suspicion that the drink might really be toxic.

  "You swallow that drink," ENIAC commanded, his voice beginning to quiver slightly. "It's perfectly harmless."

  "Then prove it!" Martin said cunningly. "Would you be willing to switch glasses? Would you drink this poisoned brew yourself?"

  "How do you expect me to drink?" the robot demanded. "I--" He paused. "All right, hand me the glass," he said. "I'll take a sip. Then you've got to drink the rest of it."

  "Aha!" Martin said. "You betrayed yourself that time. You're a robot. You can't drink, remember? Not the same way that I can, anyhow. Now I've got you trapped, you assassin. There's your brew." He pointed to a floor-lamp. "Do you dare to drink with me now, in your electrical fashion, or do you admit you are trying to poison me? Wait a minute, what am I saying? That wouldn't prove a--"

  "Of course it would," the robot said hastily. "You're perfectly right, and it's very cunning of you. We'll drink together, and that will prove your whiskey's harmless--so you'll keep on drinking till your reflexes slow down, see?"

  "Well," Martin began uncertainly, but the unscrupulous robot unscrewed a bulb from the floor lamp, pulled the switch, and inserted his finger into the empty socket, which caused a crackling flash. "There," the robot said. "It isn't poisoned, see?"

  "You're not swallowing it," Martin said suspiciously. "You're holding it in your mouth--I mean your finger."

  ENIAC again probed the socket.

  "Well, all right, perhaps," Martin said, in a doubtful fashion. "But I'm not going to risk your slipping a powder in my liquor, you traitor. You're going to keep up with me, drink for drink, until I can eyeprint that gimmick of yours--or else I stop drinking. But does sticking your finger in that lamp really prove my liquor isn't poisoned? I can't quite--"

  "Of course it does," the robot said quickly. "I'll prove it. I'll do it again ... f(t). Powerful DC, isn't it? Certainly it proves it. Keep drinking, now."

  * * * * *

  His gaze watchfully on the robot, Martin lifted his glass of club soda.

  "F ff ff f(t)!" cried the robot, some time later, sketching a singularly loose smile on its metallic face.

  "Best fermented mammoth's milk I ever tasted," Martin agreed, lifting his tenth glass of soda-water. He felt slightly queasy and wondered if he might be drowning.

  "Mammoth's milk?" asked ENIAC thickly. "What year is this?"

  Martin drew a long breath. Ivan's capacious memory had served him very well so far. Voltage, he recalled, increased the frequency of the robot's thought-patterns and disorganized ENIAC's memory--which was being proved before his eyes. But the crux of his plan was yet to come....

  "The year of the great Hairy One, of course," Martin said briskly. "Don't you remember?"

  "Then you--" ENIAC strove to focus upon his drinking-companion. "You must be Mammoth-Slayer."

  "That's it!" Martin cried. "Have another jolt. What about giving me the treatment now?"

  "What treatment?"

  Martin looked impatient. "You said you were going to impose the character-matrix of Mammoth-Slayer on my mind. You said that would insure my optimum ecological adjustment in this temporal phase, and nothing else would."

  "Did I? But you're not Mammoth-Slayer," ENIAC said confusedly. "Mammoth-Slayer was the son of the Great Hairy One. What's your mother's name?"

  "The Great Hairy One," Martin replied, at which the robot grated its hand across its gleaming forehead.

  "Have one more jolt," Martin suggested. "Now take out the ecologizer and put it on my head."

  "Like this?" ENIAC asked, obeying. "I keep feeling I've forgotten something important. F (t)."

  Martin adjusted the crystal helmet on his skull. "Now," he commanded. "Give me the character-matrix of Mammoth-Slayer, son of the Great Hairy One."

  "Well--all right," ENIAC said dizzily. The red ribbons swirled. There was a flash from the helmet. "There," the robot said. "It's done. It may take a few minutes to begin functioning, but then for twelve hours you'll--wait! Where are you going?"

  But Martin had already departed.

  The robot stuffed the helmet and the quarter-mile of red ribbon back for the last time. He lurched to the floor-lamp, muttering something about one for the road. Afterward, the room lay empty. A fading murmur said, "F(t)."

  * * * * *

  "Nick!" Erika gasped, staring at the figure in the doorway. "Don't stand like that! You frighten me!"

  Everyone in the room looked up abruptly at her cry, and so were just in time to see a horrifying change take place in Martin's shape. It was an illusion, of course, but an alarming one. His knees slowly bent until he was half-crouching, his shoulders slumped as though bowed by the weight of enormous back and shoulder muscles, and his arms swung forward until their knuckles hung perilously near the floor.

  Nicholas Martin had at last achieved a personality whose ecological norm would put him on a level with Raoul St. Cyr.

  "Nick!" Erika quavered.

  Slowly Martin's jaw protruded till his lower teeth were hideously visible. Gradually his eyelids dropped until he was peering up out of tiny, wicked sockets. Then, slowly, a perfectly shocking grin broadened Mr. Martin's mouth.

  "Erika," he said throatily. "Mine!"

  And with that, he shambled forward, seized the horrified girl in his arms, and bit her on the ear.

  "Oh, Nick," Erika murmured, closing her eyes. "Why didn't you ever--no, no, no! Nick! Stop it! The contract release. We've got to--Nick, what are you doing?" She snatched at Martin's departing form, but too late.

  For all his ungainly and unpleasant gait, Martin covered ground fast. Almost instantly he was clambering over Watt's desk as the most direct route to that startled tycoon. DeeDee looked on, a little surprised. St. Cyr lunged forward.

  "In Mixo-Lydia--" he began. "Ha! So!" He picked up Martin and threw him across the room.

  "Oh, you beast," Erika cried, and flung herself upon the director, beating at his brawny chest. On second thought, she used her shoes on his shins with more effect. St. Cyr, no gentleman, turned her around, pinioned her arms behind her, and glanced up at Watt's alarmed cry.

  "Martin! What are you doing?"

  There was reason for his inquiry. Apparently unhurt by St. Cyr's toss, Martin had hit the floor, rolled over and over like a ball, knocked down a floor-lamp with a crash, and uncurled, with an unpleasant expression on his face. He rose crouching, bandy-legged, his arms swinging
low, a snarl curling his lips.

  "You take my mate?" the pithecanthropic Mr. Martin inquired throatily, rapidly losing all touch with the twentieth century. It was a rhetorical question. He picked up the lamp-standard--he did not have to bend to do it--tore off the silk shade as he would have peeled foliage from a tree-limb, and balanced the weapon in his hand. Then he moved forward, carrying the lamp-standard like a spear.

  "I," said Martin, "kill."

  He then endeavored, with the most admirable single-heartedness, to carry out his expressed intention. The first thrust of the blunt, improvised spear rammed into St. Cyr's solar plexus and drove him back against the wall with a booming thud. This seemed to be what Martin wanted. Keeping one end of his spear pressed into the director's belly, he crouched lower, dug his toes into the rug, and did his very best to drill a hole in St. Cyr.

  "Stop it!" cried Watt, flinging himself into the conflict. Ancient reflexes took over. Martin's arm shot out. Watt shot off in the opposite direction.

  The lamp broke.

  Martin looked pensively at the pieces, tentatively began to bite one, changed his mind, and looked at St. Cyr instead. The gasping director, mouthing threats, curses and objections, drew himself up, and shook a huge fist at Martin.

  "I," he announced, "shall kill you with my bare hands. Then I go over to MGM with DeeDee. In Mixo-Lydia--"

  Martin lifted his own fists toward his face. He regarded them. He unclenched them slowly, while a terrible grin spread across his face. And then, with every tooth showing, and with the hungry gleam of a mad tiger in his tiny little eyes, he lifted his gaze to St. Cyr's throat.

  Mammoth-Slayer was not the son of the Great Hairy One for nothing.

  * * * * *

  Martin sprang.

  So did St. Cyr--in another direction, screaming with sudden terror. For, after all, he was only a medievalist. The feudal man is far more civilized than the so-called man of Mammoth-Slayer's primordially direct era, and as a man recoils from a small but murderous wildcat, so St. Cyr fled in sudden civilized horror from an attacker who was, literally, afraid of nothing.

  He sprang through the window and, shrieking, vanished into the night.

  Martin was taken by surprise. When Mammoth-Slayer leaped at an enemy, the enemy leaped at him too, and so Martin's head slammed against the wall with disconcerting force. Dimly he heard diminishing, terrified cries. Laboriously he crawled to his feet and set back against the wall, snarling, quite ready....

  "Nick!" Erika's voice called. "Nick, it's me! Stop it! Stop it! DeeDee--"

  "Ugh?" Martin said thickly, shaking his head. "Kill." He growled softly, blinking through red-rimmed little eyes at the scene around him. It swam back slowly into focus. Erika was struggling with DeeDee near the window.

  "You let me go," DeeDee cried. "Where Raoul goes, I go."

  "DeeDee!" pleaded a new voice. Martin glanced aside to see Tolliver Watt crumpled in a corner, a crushed lamp-shade half obscuring his face.

  With a violent effort Martin straightened up. Walking upright seemed unnatural, somehow, but it helped submerge Mammoth-Slayer's worst instincts. Besides, with St. Cyr gone, stresses were slowly subsiding, so that Mammoth-Slayer's dominant trait was receding from the active foreground.

  Martin tested his tongue cautiously, relieved to find he was still capable of human speech.

  "Uh," he said. "Arrgh ... ah. Watt."

  Watt blinked at him anxiously through the lamp-shade.

  "Urgh ... Ur--release," Martin said, with a violent effort. "Contract release. Gimme."

  Watt had courage. He crawled to his feet, removing the lamp-shade.

  "Contract release!" he snapped. "You madman! Don't you realize what you've done? DeeDee's walking out on me. DeeDee, don't go. We will bring Raoul back--"

  "Raoul told me to quit if he quit," DeeDee said stubbornly.

  "You don't have to do what St. Cyr tells you," Erika said, hanging onto the struggling star.

  "Don't I?" DeeDee asked, astonished. "Yes, I do. I always have."

  "DeeDee," Watt said frantically, "I'll give you the finest contract on earth--a ten-year contract--look, here it is." He tore out a well-creased document. "All you have to do is sign, and you can have anything you want. Wouldn't you like that?"

  "Oh, yes," DeeDee said. "But Raoul wouldn't like it." She broke free from Erika.

  "Martin!" Watt told the playwright frantically, "Get St. Cyr back. Apologize to him. I don't care how, but get him back! If you don't, I--I'll never give you your release."

  Martin was observed to slump slightly--perhaps with hopelessness. Then, again, perhaps not.

  "I'm sorry," DeeDee said. "I liked working for you, Tolliver. But I have to do what Raoul says, of course." And she moved toward the window.

  Martin had slumped further down, till his knuckles quite brushed the rug. His angry little eyes, glowing with baffled rage, were fixed on DeeDee. Slowly his lips peeled back, exposing every tooth in his head.

  "You," he said, in an ominous growl.

  DeeDee paused, but only briefly.

  * * * * *

  Then the enraged roar of a wild beast reverberated through the room. "You come back!" bellowed the infuriated Mammoth-Slayer, and with one agile bound sprang to the window, seized DeeDee and slung her under one arm. Wheeling, he glared jealously at the shrinking Watt and reached for Erika. In a trice he had the struggling forms of both girls captive, one under each arm. His wicked little eyes glanced from one to another. Then, playing no favorites, he bit each quickly on the ear.

  "Nick!" Erika cried. "How dare you!"

  "Mine," Mammoth-Slayer informed her hoarsely.

  "You bet I am," Erika said, "but that works both ways. Put down that hussy you've got under your other arm."

  Mammoth-Slayer was observed to eye DeeDee doubtfully.

  "Well," Erika said tartly, "make up your mind."

  "Both," said the uncivilized playwright. "Yes."

  "No!" Erika said.

  "Yes," DeeDee breathed in an entirely new tone. Limp as a dishrag, the lovely creature hung from Martin's arm and gazed up at her captor with idolatrous admiration.

  "Oh, you hussy," Erika said. "What about St. Cyr?"

  "Him," DeeDee said scornfully. "He hasn't got a thing, the sissy. I'll never look at him again." She turned her adoring gaze back to Martin.

  "Pah," the latter grunted, tossing DeeDee into Watt's lap. "Yours. Keep her." He grinned approvingly at Erika. "Strong she. Better."

  Both Watt and DeeDee remained motionless, staring at Martin.

  "You," he said, thrusting a finger at DeeDee. "You stay with him. Ha?" He indicated Watt.

  DeeDee nodded in slavish adoration.

  "You sign contract?"

  Nod.

  Martin looked significantly into Watt's eyes. He extended his hand.

  "The contract release," Erika explained, upside-down. "Give it to him before he pulls your head off."

  Slowly Watt pulled the contract release from his pocket and held it out. But Martin was already shambling toward the window. Erika reached back hastily and snatched the document.

  "That was a wonderful act," she told Nick, as they reached the street. "Put me down now. We can find a cab some--"

  "No act," Martin growled. "Real. Till tomorrow. After that--" He shrugged. "But tonight, Mammoth-Slayer." He attempted to climb a palm tree, changed his mind, and shambled on, carrying the now pensive Erika. But it was not until a police car drove past that Erika screamed....

  * * * * *

  "I'll bail you out tomorrow," Erika told Mammoth-Slayer, struggling between two large patrolmen.

  Her words were drowned in an infuriated bellow.

  Thereafter events blurred, to solidify again for the irate Mammoth-Slayer only when he was thrown in a cell, where he picked himself up with a threatening roar. "I kill!" he announced, seizing the bars.

  "Arrrgh!"

  "Two in one night," said a bored voice, moving away outside. "Both in Bel-Air,
too. Think they're hopped up? We couldn't get a coherent story out of either one."

  The bars shook. An annoyed voice from one of the bunks said to shut up, and added that there had been already enough trouble from nincompoops without--here it paused, hesitated, and uttered a shrill, sharp, piercing cry.

  Silence prevailed, momentarily, in the cell-block as Mammoth-Slayer, son of the Great Hairy One, turned slowly to face Raoul St. Cyr.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE SECRET OF KRALITZ

  By Henry Kuttner

  I awoke from profound sleep to find two black-swathed forms standing silently beside me, their faces pale blurs in the gloom. As I blinked to clear my sleep-dimmed eyes, one of them beckoned impatiently, and suddenly I realized the purpose of this midnight summons. For years I had been expecting it, ever since my father, the Baron Kralitz, had revealed to me the secret and the curse that hung over our ancient house. And so, without a word, I rose and followed my guides as they led me along the gloomy corridors of the castle that had been my home since birth.

  As I proceeded there rose up in my mind the stern face of my father, and in my ears rang his solemn words as he told me of the legendary curse of the House of Kralitz, the unknown secret that was imparted to the eldest son of each generation--at a certain time.

  "When?" I had asked my father as he lay on his death-bed, fighting back the approach of dissolution.

  "When you are able to understand," he had told me, watching my face intently from beneath his tufted white brows. "Some are told the secret sooner than others. Since the first Baron Kralitz the secret has been handed down----"

  He clutched at his breast and paused. It was fully five minutes before he had gathered his strength to speak again in his rolling, powerful voice. No gasping, death-bed confessions for the Baron Kralitz!

  He said at last, "You have seen the ruins of the old monastery near the village, Franz. The first Baron burnt it and put the monks to the sword. The Abbot interfered too often with the Baron's whims. A girl sought shelter and the Abbot refused to give her up at the Baron's demand. His patience was at an end--you know the tales they still tell about him.