Wolfbane

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Where—where am I?” he gasped.

  Two voices, perhaps three or four, were all talking at once. He could make no sense of it. Citizen Germyn looked about him. He was in a sort of a chamber that formed a part of a machine that existed for the unknown purposes of the Pyramids on the binary planet. And he was alive—and not even alone.

  He had crossed more than a million miles of space without feeling a thing. But when what the naked men were saying began to penetrate, the walls lurched around him. For a time the words were a meaningless noise. It wasn’t the fall that hurt, it was the landing.

  It was true; he had been Translated.

  He looked dazedly down at his own bare body, and around at the room, and then he realized they were still talking: “—when you get your bearings. Feel all right now? Come on, Citizen, snap out of it!” Germyn blinked.

  Another voice said peevishly: “There should be some other place to bring them in. That foundry isn’t meant for human beings. Look at the shape this one is in! Some time somebody’s going to come in, and we won’t spot him in time, and—pfut!”

  The first voice said: “Can’t be helped. Hey! Are you all right?”

  Citizen Germyn took a deep breath of the hot sour air and looked at the naked man before him. “Of course I’m all right,” he said.

  The naked man was Haendl.

  There were several hundred of them. He learned that they were divided into eight natural groups. One group, Citizen Germyn’s, was composed of people who had known Tropile. Another, given the clue of common-knowledge by Haendl, had conferred and decided that their link was acquaintance with one Citizeness Alla Narova, widow, of Nice. African origin and knowledge of one Django Tembo accounted for a third, and so on. They were spread through an acre of huge corridors primarily occupied by automatic machine tools which averaged eighty feet in height. Many were on legs, as though an ancient history of directly-operated machines irrationally dictated the shape of their fully-automatic descendants. Bars of metal sometimes abruptly popped into position as chuck jaws opened and then closed; then the metal bars began to spin, then tools advanced, sliced at them and retreated in order, and then the finished incomprehensible pieces would float away on just-visible annular magnetic fields. Every three hours a hexagonal forged plate floated in through the precisely-opened “door” of the foundry, clamped itself magnetically to one machine after another, and was drilled, bored, reamed, broached, milled, ground and polished into a greater mystery than it had been before. The toolbit, as tall as a man, of one slotting machine seemed to require regular replacement from a magazine after it worked on one of the hexagons, but the other tools did not noticeably lose their edges. Chips were carried away by a flood, every eleven hours or so, of glycerine. It came in jets from the walls, rose ankle-high, and gurgled down drainholes.

  Once a Pyramid came by, gliding a hands-breadth off the floor and smelling of ozone. They hid like mice; they did not know whether the thing “saw” them or not.

  They were fed from one set of taps in the wall and watered from another. Their water was a disgrace and an affront to the several Water Tasters among them, utterly lacking in the tang of carbonates and halogen salts. Their food was glucose syrup which must have been freighted with the necessary minerals and amino acids, for they did not fall sick of any deficiency disease. Their air was adequate—perhaps spillover from the adjoining foundry where an atmosphere was required for some of the processes.

  Mostly, they waited and talked.

  Citizen Germyn, for one, had a maggot in his brain about Translation. “Perhaps,” he would say, “this really is Translation, really is bliss, and we lack only the wits to appreciate it. We have food, freedom from drastic temperature changes—” He slashed the sweat from his brow and went to the row of ever-running water faucets for a long drink before returning to his argument. “And there seems to be a sort of dispensation from ordinary manners and routine.” He looked forlornly about him. No Husband’s Chairs, no Wifely Chairs (decently armless). He squatted on the metal floor.

  Haendl was more forthright. “Bliss, my foot! We’re a bunch of damned Red Indians. I guess the Indians never knew what hit them. They didn’t know about land grants and claiming territory for the crown, and about church missions and expanding populations. They didn’t have those things. They learned by and by—at least about things like guns and firewater; they didn’t have those things but they could see the sense to them. But I really don’t think the Indians ever knew what the white men were up to until it was too late to matter. We’re even deeper in the dark. At least the Indians had a clue now and then—they’d see the sailors come off the big white devil-ship and make a bee-line for their women; there was something in common. But we don’t have that much. We’re in the hands of the Pyramids—see? Our language! I have to say ‘hands.’ We don’t even have a language to use about them!”

  After about the fiftieth time he had taken nourishment from the taps, Citizen Germyn ran tentatively amok. Luckily for all, it happened soon after one of the regular cleansings by glycerine; there were no sharp chips a foot long for him to use as daggers, and the floor was so slippery he couldn’t keep his feet when he tried to strangle one of the Africans. People held his arms until he came to himself, bitterly chagrined.

  “I am ready,” he told them at last, with what dignity he could muster. “I realize that there is no proper catheter for a Donation, but withholding of air is an alternative method sanctified by tradition.”

  Innison told him not to be stupid, and added: “If you make a habit of amok we’ll have to do something about you, but not until I figure a way to get you down an eight-inch drain.”

  It was a dreadful insult, delivered without so much as a Quirked Smile. Citizen Germyn could not bring himself to speak to Innison for three more feedings. Citizen Germyn’s rage was such that he nerved himself up to turning his back on Innison in a marked manner; Innison was not only not crushed but did not even notice. He went right on talking to Haendl.

  Citizen Germyn thereupon took Innison by the hair with one hand and slapped him ringingly across the face with his other.

  “Amok!” some of those nearby began to shout.

  Haendl yelled back at them: “He is not! Shut up!” And to Germyn: “You aren’t, are you?”

  “No,” Germyn snapped. “I’m just angry. Your disgusting friend here took it on himself to deny me the decent equivalent of a Donation which I deserve!”

  Innison, rubbing his cheek, said thoughtfully: “You really want a Donation, boy? Where they stick the needle in and twist it around to find the canal? Then you go paralyzed, right then, and the fluid runs out. Then some simpering idiot takes the knife and saws it across your windpipe until it goes through—”

  Germyn said: “Whether I want it or not is beside the point. There are certain decencies to be observed—”

  “Then you don’t want it?”

  Germyn thought for a long while. “No,” he finally said. “But that has nothing to do with...” He thought some more.

  Haendl said gently: “Look at yourself, Germyn. Pinch yourself. Feel your arms and legs. You’ve changed. You grabbed Innison and you hit him, not in a nervous crisis but because you were angry. You wouldn’t have done that not so long ago. Look at yourself.”

  Germyn looked. His stomach was flat; there was no trace at all of bloat. His thighs were now thicker than his knees—it had all happened so insidiously! He felt his face; under the beard it was fleshed, most Uncitizen-like, telling hardly at all of the skull beneath! His ribs—he couldn’t see his ribs!

  He faced them, burning with shame for his grotesqueness and saw they were the same, they were all the same.

  “And don’t you feel different?” Haendl insisted quietly. “Inside, all through you? Didn’t you used to have an all-through-you feeling that would have kept you from hitting Innison? Don’t you now have an all-through-you feeling that tells you hitting Innison, within reason, would be a joy?”

 
; “I do,” said Germyn in terror. “I do! What do you call it? What shall I do about it?”

  “It’s orthodox Wolf opinion,” Innison said, “that you shouldn’t do anything about that feeling. And the accepted name for it is, not being hungry. Have you been meditating on connectivity lately?”

  “No,” said Germyn. “The—the distractions—”

  “The absence of hunger, Germyn. Starvation and meditation go together, though not inseparably. When your vitality’s low, your self-awareness flickers; it’s always ready to be blown out.”

  Germyn wandered off through a forest of machine-tool legs, trying to get acquainted with his new self.

  Haendl said to Innison: “Maybe that’s why we’re here, to get nice and plump.”

  “You think they eat people?”

  “No; not any more than a fusion pile does. It’s got to be something electrical...”

  “If Germyn’s ready and able to fight, all of ‘em ought to be. Suppose we get a little close-order drilling organized.”

  “We’d better get something organized. There haven’t been any more amoks, but there’s been a lot of pushing-around. Next you get counter-pushing, and then people start swinging.”

  The two Wolves grinned at each other. “It lasted just fine, didn’t it?” Haendl said. “Culchah and aesthetics petered out the first week on unlimited calories, and then went manners—usually with a crash, like ex-Citizen Germyn. Yes, we’ve got to give them something to do before they get fat and begin killing one another.”

  New people stopped arriving in the foundry about then; when twelve feeding-times passed with no recruits turning up the Princeton Wolves took a census: six hundred and eighty-four, roughly half male and half female. This was a great convenience, for one could not talk forever.

  The military organization got under way with some difficulty. The ex-Citizens were glorying in new-found truculence. “Who’s gonna make me?” rang joyously through the corridors; a research-minded Princetonian recalled that some Biblical person had “waxed fat and wicked.” A combination of force and reason carried the day, however, and at last the most obstreperous ex-Citizen, his black eye fading slowly, marched in ranks with the rest. Haendl yearned for the weapons that had been Translated; where were they?

  And then several women were in early pregnancy. The pregnancies all occurred following an incident as inexplicable as it was horrifying. A Pyramid came again, and again they hid. This time luck had it that one of the Africans was caught in the open, some distance from a wall and a hopeless long dash to the tangle of I-beams which supported the giant tools. He did the prudent thing and flattened himself against the floor, probably feeling reasonably safe in his last seconds of life. The giant figure sailed slowly down the corridor with plenty of clearance on either side, crackling faintly, smelling of ozone. Approaching the huddled man, it swerved calmly so that its nearest corner brushed over him, and then moved on and out of the corridor through one of the un-doorlike doors of Pyramid engineering.

  They had no difficulty at all putting the African down an eight-inch drain, and the sleeping-time that followed was marked by an orgy. The men did not practice the Loving Withdrawal, nor would the women have let them. Doom was on them, and instinct in command.

  Wolves and Sheep, or ex-Sheep, endlessly debated the crushing of the African.

  “We’re here because they brought us here. They must want us for something. Why did they destroy something they carefully imported and kept alive and more or less comfortable?”

  “Maybe the sight of us annoys them. Maybe we’re stockpiled but they just don’t want us pestering them until they’re ready for us.”

  “Maybe it did it for fun.”

  “I don’t believe it. Your white man didn’t do it to those Indians of yours.”

  “Some of them did. Some of them shot Indians for fun. Maybe there are some Pyramids that are different from other Pyramids. Maybe that one was a cruel child!”

  They threw up their hands and left it at that.

  What else was there to do? None among them knew any more than any other what the Pyramids wanted, thought or were likely to do.

  What else there was to do was to stand ever ready to dash for shelter; to post guards with relay-runners at both of the “doors” and the entrance to the foundry. They did this, for what it might be worth.

  But no Pyramids came after that.

  And one day in the second month of the pregnancies the woman Gala Tropile was talking to suddenly screamed. She pointed to the wall in terror. Gala turned, and then she screamed, too.

  Something was gnawing a hole in the wall.

  The crowd that gathered jittered to each other in fear, but whatever was chewing a hole in the wall did not seem to be a Pyramid. It didn’t seem to be anything that made sense at all.

  The crowd watched as a circular area of metal, something over a meter across, was outlined by a flying dot that bulged the ductile stuff up into a ridge. The flying dot holed through. It was a toolbit. The cut-out disk clanged on the floor.

  The nearest in the crowd screamed and jumped back.

  Then the toolbit and its spinning holder withdrew. There was a long pause. One of the sweaty, scared men—it was a Russian from Kiev—dared to try to peer into the hole, but there was nothing to see, only blackness and the distant, retreating drill.

  Minutes later a black cone stuck its point out of the hole and spoke to them:

  “Pay close attention. To speak to you in this way is very difficult. You have been brought here for a purpose. Henceforth you will receive orders from this communications system. Follow the orders at once, completely. Are the food and water sufficient?”

  The voice made Gala Tropile shiver, for it was nothing like human. (But what was that curiously familiar hint of tone?) However, since it asked questions, presumably it wanted answers. She ventured one: “There is enough, but it’s terribly monotonous. Couldn’t we have different flavors now and then?”

  “No. You do not understand. Feeding you is very difficult. Also it is an advantage that you are bored. Is your chief person listening?”

  Haendl and Innison began to speak at once; there was a fierce, brief duel of eyes which Innison lost. “I’m listening,” Haendl said.

  “These are the rules of communication with us. You notice a humming from this loudspeaker. We now cause the humming to stop.” The faint hum stopped and started again. “When the loudspeaker is humming you may consider it ‘on’ and speak into it. When the loudspeaker is not humming you will consider it ‘off’ Since this is merely a psychological trick and the loudspeaker is never really off, you will see to it by posting guards that we are not addressed except when we want to be addressed.”

  “I understand,” said Haendl, wishing he dared to add some ironical honorific. He was frightened. The voice was non-human; it had never come from a warm, moist pair of lungs, swept over vibrating cartilage, resonated in the sculptured caverns of the head and emerged shaped by muscular lips and tongue. The voice was a modulated electronic output, a skillful blend of a dozen vibrating crystals. It was as cold as crystal. This he had dared to dream of attacking! With small arms and a tank and a helicopter!

  The loudspeaker still buzzed faintly. Fear and all, it was an opportunity to talk with a Pyramid, to ask it what was in store for them, for all of humanity. As far as he knew, nobody had ever done so. He drew his breath ready to make some history, but a woman, the widow of the slain African, pushed him aside and yelled into the black cone: “Why did you kill my husband? What did he do to you that you crushed him flat?”

  “We did not kill your husband,” said the black cone. “That was done by a Pyramid.”

  “Who are you then, damn you?” Haendl shouted.

  “We are best known to you as Glenn Tropile,” said the loudspeaker, and then the hum stopped; no amount of pleading or cursing would get it started again.

  13

  No Sicilian or Pole on Ellis Island, no American tourist caught in the
bureaucracy of a French hotel had ever been as much of a stranger in town as Glenn Tropile. He knew nothing. To put it more precisely, he knew everything several decades of life had taught him, as Citizen and as Wolf.

  But no part of that knowledge was in any way relevant to his present existence as one-eighth of the Snowflake.

  Tropile, however, was Wolf. He was nearly Pyramid, in that he pushed until something gave, and dissected until he found bits that could be managed.

  For example, there was a more or less manageable bit close at hand. The communications systems that joined one petal of the Snowflake to the others were relatively easy to penetrate, and that was quickly done.

  Tropile and Alla Narova had awakened the woman between them, apprehensive of further hysterics. There were none. She was Mercedes van Dellen of Istanbul, 28 clock-years old at the time of her Translation, and a mother of two girls who had been small when she left them. She sighed and supposed they were happily married by now. She was interested and amused by the input-display and her busily-clicking hands; she confided that she liked to keep busy and (mild blasphemy) she would have had a dozen babies if it had been permitted. They felt into her mind; it was calm, always calm. So there really were people like that! She felt into theirs. They were fierce and impassioned; my goodness, don’t they get all worked up about nothing! And then the three of them flowed together; this time it was more limpid and even.

  They awakened a brown-skinned woman who also appeared to be in her late twenties, but her body was a lie. The soul of Kim Seong was the soul of a bitter hag who had seen all come and seen all go, who washed corpses for her rice and mumbled: “It’s foolishness, it’s all foolishness, but what’s the good of talking? Nobody listens to you.”

  She added to the pool of mind a bitterness and their first hint of comprehending the infinite reaches of space and the two eternities before and behind, too vast for meaning.

  They awakened Corso Navarone of Milan, a thin young man who knew just what it was all about. He was in Love with Alla Narova as he had never Loved before. All space and time had conspired to bring them together; he was her soul, she was his flame; never had there been such a Love as theirs. What matter that an accident of surgery prevented the consummation of desire? They were together; it was enough. Hold off, ye gods, further bliss, lest Corso Navarone perish of delight.