The Best of Henry Kuttner
by Henry Kuttner
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1975 by Catherine Moore Kuttner
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email [email protected]
First Diversion Books edition August 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-321-2
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There’s no use trying to describe either Unthahorsten or his surroundings, because, for one thing, a good many million years had passed and, for another, Unthahorsten wasn’t on Earth, technically speaking. He was doing the equivalent of standing in the equivalent of a laboratory. He was preparing to test his time machine.
Having turned on the power, Unthahorsten suddenly realized that the Box was empty. Which wouldn’t do at all. The device needed a control, a three-dimensional solid which would react to the conditions of another age. Otherwise Unthahorsten couldn’t tell, on the machine’s return, where and when it had been. Whereas a solid in the Box would automatically be subject to the entropy and cosmic-ray bombardment of the other era, and Unthahorsten could measure the changes, both qualitative and quantitative, when the machine returned. The Calculators could then get to work and, presently, tell Unthahorsten that the Box had briefly visited A.D. 1,000,000, A.D. 1000 or A.D. 1, as the case might be.
Not that it mattered, except to Unthahorsten. But he was childish in many respects.
There was little time to waste. The Box was beginning to glow and shiver. Unthahorsten stared around wildly, fled into the next glossatch and groped in a storage bin there. He came up with an armful of peculiar-looking stuff. Uh-huh. Some of the discarded toys of his son Snowen, which the boy had brought with him when he had passed over from Earth, after mastering the necessary technique. Well, Snowen needed this junk no longer. He was conditioned, and had put away childish things. Besides, though Unthahorsten’s wife kept the toys for sentimental reasons, the experiment was more important.
Unthahorsten left the glossatch and dumped the assortment into the Box, slamming the cover shut before the warning signal flashed. The Box went away. The manner of its departure hurt Unthahorsten’s eyes.
He waited.
And he waited.
Eventually he gave up and built another time machine, with identical results. Snowen hadn’t been annoyed by the loss of his old toys, nor had Snowen’s mother, so Unthahorsten cleaned out the bin and dumped the remainder of his son’s childhood relics in the second time machine’s Box.
According to his calculations, this one should have appeared on Earth in the latter part of the nineteenth century, A.D. If that actually occurred, the device remained there.
Disgusted, Unthahorsten decided to make no more time machines. But the mischief had been done. There were two of them, and the first …
Scott Paradine found it while he was playing hooky from the Glendale Grammar School. There was a geography test that day, and Scott saw no sense in memorizing place names—which, in the nineteen-forties, was a fairly sensible theory. Besides, it was the sort of warm spring day, with a touch of coolness in the breeze, which invited a boy to lie down in a field and stare at the occasional clouds till he fell asleep. Nuts to geography! Scott dozed.
About noon he got hungry, so his stocky legs carried him to a nearby store. There he invested his small hoard with penurious care and a sublime disregard for his gastric juices. He went down by the creek to feed.
Having finished his supply of cheese, chocolate and cookies, and having drained the soda-pop bottle to its dregs, Scott caught tadpoles and studied them with a certain amount of scientific curiosity. He did not persevere. Something tumbled down the bank and thudded into the muddy ground near the water, so Scott, with a wary glance around, hurried to investigate.
It was a box. It was, in fact, the Box. The gadgetry hitched to it meant little to Scott, though he wondered why it was so fused and burned. He pondered. With his jack-knife he pried and probed, his tongue sticking out from a corner of his mouth—Hm-m-m. Nobody was around. Where had the box come from? Somebody must have left it here, and sliding soil had dislodged it from its precarious perch.
“That’s a helix,” Scott decided, quite erroneously. It was helical, but it wasn’t a helix, because of the dimensional warp involved. Had the thing been a model airplane, no matter how complicated, it would have held few mysteries to Scott. As it was, a problem was posed. Something told Scott that the device was a lot more complicated than the spring motor he had deftly dismantled last Friday.
But no boy has ever left a box unopened, unless forcibly dragged away. Scott probed deeper. The angles on this thing were funny. Short circuit, probably. That was why—uh! The knife slipped. Scott sucked his thumb and gave vent to experienced blasphemy.
Maybe it was a music box.
Scott shouldn’t have felt depressed. The gadgetry would have given Einstein a headache and driven Steinmetz raving mad. The trouble was, of course, that the box had not yet completely entered the space-time continuum where Scott existed, and therefore it could not be opened—at any rate, not till Scott used a convenient rock to hammer the helical non-helix into a more convenient position.
He hammered it, in fact, from its contact point with the fourth dimension, releasing the space-time torsion it had been maintaining. There was a brittle snap. The box jarred slightly, and lay motionless, no longer only partially in existence. Scott opened it easily now.
The soft, woven helmet was the first thing that caught his eye, but he discarded that without much interest. It was just a cap. Next, he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm—much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people, for example.
They moved. Like clockwork automatons, though much more smoothly. It was rather like watching a play. Scott was interested in their costumes, but fascinated by their actions. The tiny people were deftly building a house. Scott wished it would catch fire, so he could see the people put it out.
Flames licked up from the half-completed structure. The automatons, with a great deal of odd apparatus, extinguished the blaze.
It didn’t take Scott long to catch on. But he was a little worried. The manikins would obey his thoughts. By the time he discovered that, he was frightened and threw the cube from him.
Halfway up the bank, he reconsidered and returned. The crystal lay partly in the water, shining in the sun. It was a toy; Scott sensed that, with the unerring instinct of a child. But he didn’t pick it
up immediately. Instead, he returned to the box and investigated its remaining contents.
He found some really remarkable gadgets. The afternoon passed all too quickly. Scott finally put the toys back in the box and lugged it home, grunting and puffing. He was quite red-faced by the time he arrived at the kitchen door.
His find he hid at the back of a closet in his room upstairs. The crystal cube he slipped into his pocket, which already bulged with string, a coil of wire, two pennies, a wad of tinfoil, a grimy defense stamp and a chunk of feldspar. Emma, Scott’s two-year-old sister, waddled unsteadily in from the hall and said hello.
“Hello, Slug,” Scott nodded, from his altitude of seven years and some months. He patronized Emma shockingly, but she didn’t know the difference. Small, plump and wide-eyed, she flopped down on the carpet and stared dolefully at her shoes.
“Tie ’em, Scotty, please?”
“Sap,” Scott told her kindly, but knotted the laces. “Dinner ready yet?”
Emma nodded.
“Let’s see your hands.” For a wonder they were reasonably clean, though probably not aseptic. Scott regarded his own paws thoughtfully and, grimacing, went to the bathroom, where he made a sketchy toilet. The tadpoles had left traces.
Dennis Paradine and his wife Jane were having a cocktail before dinner, downstairs in the living room. He was a youngish, middle-aged man with soft gray hair and a thin, prim-mouthed face; he taught philosophy at the University. Jane was small, neat, dark and very pretty. She sipped her Martini and said:
“New shoes. Like ’em?”
“Here’s to crime,” Paradine muttered absently. “Huh? Shoes? Not now. Wait till I’ve finished this. I had a bad day.”
“Exams?”
“Yeah. Flaming youth aspiring towards manhood. I hope they die. In considerable agony. Insh’ Allah!”
“I want the olive,” Jane requested.
“I know,” Paradine said despondently. “It’s been years since I’ve tasted one myself. In a Martini, I mean. Even if I put six of ’em in your glass, you’re still not satisfied.”
“I want yours. Blood brotherhood. Symbolism. That’s why.”
Paradine regarded his wife balefully and crossed his long legs. “You sound like one of my students.”
“Like that hussy Betty Dawson, perhaps?” Jane unsheathed her nails. “Does she still leer at you in that offensive way?”
“She does. The child is a neat psychological problem. Luckily she isn’t mine. If she were—” Paradine nodded significantly. “Sex consciousness and too many movies. I suppose she still thinks she can get a passing grade by showing me her knees. Which are, by the way, rather bony.”
Jane adjusted her skirt with an air of complacent pride. Paradine uncoiled himself and poured fresh Martinis. “Candidly, I don’t see the point of teaching those apes philosophy. They’re all at the wrong age. Their habit patterns, their methods of thinking, are already laid down. They’re horribly conservative, not that they’d admit it. The only people who can understand philosophy are mature adults or kids like Emma and Scotty.”
“Well, don’t enroll Scotty in your course,” Jane requested. “He isn’t ready to be a Philosophiae Doctor. I hold no brief for a child genius, especially when it’s my son.”
“Scotty would probably be better at it than Betty Dawson,” Paradine grunted.
“‘He died an enfeebled old dotard at five,’” Jane quoted dreamily. “I want your olive.”
“Here. By the way, I like the shoes.”
“Thank you. Here’s Rosalie. Dinner?”
“It’s all ready, Miz Pa’dine,” said Rosalie, hovering. “I’ll call Miss Emma ’n’ Mista’ Scotty.”
“I’ll get ’em.” Paradine put his head into the next room and roared, “Kids! Come and get it!”
Small feet scuttered down the stairs. Scott dashed into view, scrubbed and shining, a rebellious cowlick aimed at the zenith. Emma pursued, levering herself carefully down the steps. Halfway, she gave up the attempt to descend upright and reversed, finishing the task monkey-fashion, her small behind giving an impression of marvellous diligence upon the work in hand. Paradine watched, fascinated by the spectacle, till he was hurled back by the impact of his son’s body.
“Hi, Dad!” Scott shrieked.
Paradine recovered himself and regarded Scott with dignity. “Hi, yourself. Help me in to dinner. You’ve dislocated at least one of my hip joints.”
But Scott was already tearing into the next room, where he stepped on Jane’s new shoes in an ecstasy of affection, burbled an apology and rushed off to find his place at the dinner table. Paradine cocked up an eyebrow as he followed, Emma’s pudgy hand desperately gripping his forefinger.
“Wonder what the young devil’s been up to.”
“No good, probably,” Jane sighed. “Hello, darling. Let’s see your ears.”
“They’re clean. Mickey licked ’em.”
“Well, that Airedale’s tongue is far cleaner than your ears,” Jane pondered, making a brief examination. “Still, as long as you can hear, the dirt’s only superficial.”
“Fisshul?”
“Just a little, that means.” Jane dragged her daughter to the table and inserted her legs into a high chair. Only lately had Emma graduated to the dignity of dining with the rest of the family, and she was, as Paradine remarked, all eaten up with pride by the prospect. Only babies spilled food, Emma had been told. As a result, she took such painstaking care in conveying her spoon to her mouth that Paradine got the jitters whenever he watched.
“A conveyor belt would be the thing for Emma,” he suggested, pulling out a chair for Jane. “Small buckets of spinach arriving at her face at stated intervals.”
Dinner proceeded uneventfully until Paradine happened to glance at Scott’s plate. “Hello, there. Sick? Been stuffing yourself at lunch?”
Scott thoughtfully examined the food still left before him. “I’ve had all I need, Dad,” he explained.
“You usually eat all you can hold, and a great deal more,” Paradine said. “I know growing boys need several tons of foodstuff a day, but you’re below par tonight. Feel O.K.?”
“Uh-huh. Honest, I’ve had all I need.”
“All you want?”
“Sure. I eat different.”
“Something they taught you at school?” Jane inquired.
Scott shook his head solemnly.
“Nobody taught me. I found it out myself. I use spit.”
“Try again,” Paradine suggested. “It’s the wrong word.”
“Uh—s-saliva. Hm-m-m?”
“Uh-huh. More pepsin? Is there pepsin in the salivary juices, Jane? I forget.”
“There’s poison in mine,” Jane remarked. “Rosalie’s left lumps in the mashed potatoes again.”
But Paradine was interested. “You mean you’re getting everything possible out of your food—no wastage—and eating less?”
Scott thought that over. “I guess so. It’s not just the sp—saliva. I sort of measure how much to put in my mouth at once, and what stuff to mix up. I dunno. I just do it.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Paradine, making a note to check up later. “Rather a revolutionary idea.” Kids often get screwy notions, but this one might not be so far off the beam. He pursed his lips. “Eventually I suppose people will eat quite differently—I mean the way they eat, as well as what. What they eat, I mean. Jane, our son shows signs of becoming a genius.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a rather good point in dietetics he just made. Did you figure it out yourself, Scott?”
“Sure,” the boy said, and really believed it.
“Where’d you get the idea?”
“Oh, I—” Scott wriggled. “I dunno. It doesn’t mean much, I guess.”
Paradine was unreasonably disappointed. “But surely—”
“S-s-s-spit!” Emma shrieked, overcome by a sudden fit of badness. “Spit!” She attempted to de
monstrate, but succeeded only in dribbling into her bib.
With a resigned air Jane rescued and reproved her daughter, while Paradine eyed Scott with rather puzzled interest. But it was not till after dinner, in the living room, that anything further happened.
“Any homework?”
“N-no,” Scott said, flushing guiltily. To cover his embarrassment he took from his pocket a gadget he had found in the box, and began to unfold it. The result resembled a tesseract, strung with beads. Paradine didn’t see it at first, but Emma did. She wanted to play with it.
“No. Lay off, Slug,” Scott ordered. “You can watch me.” He fumbled with the beads, making soft, interested noises. Emma extended a fat forefinger and yelped.
“Scotty,” Paradine said warningly.
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“Bit me. It did,” Emma mourned.
Paradine looked up. He frowned, staring. What in—
“Is that an abacus?” he asked. “Let’s see it, please.”
Somewhat unwillingly, Scott brought the gadget across to his father’s chair. Paradine blinked. The “abacus,” unfolded, was more than a foot square, composed of thin, rigid wires that interlocked here and there. On the wires the colored beads were strung. They could be slid back and forth, and from one support to another, even at the points of jointure. But—a pierced bead couldn’t cross interlocking wires.
So, apparently, they weren’t pierced. Paradine looked closer. Each small sphere had a deep groove running around it, so that it could be revolved and slid along the wire at the same time. Paradine tried to pull one free. It clung as though magnetically. Iron? It looked more like plastic.
The framework itself—Paradine wasn’t a mathematician. But the angles formed by the wires were vaguely shocking, in their ridiculous lack of Euclidean logic. They were a maze. Perhaps that’s what the gadget was—a puzzle.
“Where’d you get this?”
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