The Best of Henry Kuttner

by Henry Kuttner

“Weel, then what? He’ll be so rich he won’t even mind paying reparations for the privilege of committing mayhem on my person. I bruise very easily.”

  “But he wullna kill ye,” Ramsay said comfortingly. “And it wull be a fine lesson to ye, Macduff.”

  “Then at least I intend to get in one good blow,” said Macduff, seizing a stout Malacca cane from a nearby avian and giving Ess Pu a resounding smack across the carapace. The Algolian let out a steam whistle shriek of fury and lunged forward while Macduff, brandishing the cane like a rapier, danced pudgily backward, threatening even as he retreated.

  “Come on, you overgrown shore dinner,” cried Macduff valiantly. “We’ll have it out now, humanoid to lobster!”

  “Lay on, Macduff!” shouted an erudite and enthusiastic Ganymedan. “Lay off!” bellowed Captain Ramsay, waving his officers to the rescue. But the Xerians were before them. They formed a quick barrier between the combatants and one of them twisted the cane from Macduff’s reluctant grasp.

  “If he has harmed you, Ess Pu, he will make reparations,” the leader of the Xerians said. “Law is law. Are you injured?”

  Despite Ess Pu’s inarticulate gobbles, it was obvious that he was not. And the Xerian jurisprudence takes no notice of injured pride. Termites are humble by nature.

  “Let’s get this settled,” Captain Ramsay said, annoyed at having his grand lounge turned into a shambles. “There are only three passengers disembarking here. Ao, Ess Pu and Macduff.”

  Macduff looked around for Ao, found her and, scuttling over, tried to hide behind her oblivious back.

  “Ah, yes,” the leading Xerian said. “Ess Pu has already explained the matter of the ship’s pool. We will permit the lottery. However, certain conditions must be observed. No non-Xerian will be allowed to approach this table, and I will do the seed counting myself.”

  “That wull be satisfactory,” Ramsay said, picking up the sealed ballot box and retreating. “If ye’ll cut open the ripest of the fruit and count the seeds I’ll then open this box and announce the winner.”

  “Wait!” Macduff cried out but his voice was ignored. The leading Xerian had picked up a silver knife from the table, plucked the largest, ripest sphyghi fruit and cut it neatly in two. The halves rolled apart on the table—to reveal a perfectly empty hollow within the fruit.

  The Xerian’s shout of dismay echoed through the lounge. The silver knife flashed, chopping the fruit to fragments. But not a single seed glittered in the creamy pulp. “What’s happened?” Macduff demanded. “No seeds? Obviously a swindle. I never trusted Ess Pu. He’s been gloating—”

  “Silence,” the Xerian said coldly. In a subdued quiet he used the silver knife again and again in an atmosphere of mounting tension.

  “No seeds?” Captain Ramsay asked blankly as the last fruit fell open emptily. The Xerian made no reply. He was toying with the silver knife and regarding Ess Pu.

  The Algolian seemed as astounded as anyone else but as Macduff audibly remarked, it was hard to tell, with an Algolian. Captain Ramsay courageously broke the ominous silence by stepping forward to remind the Xerians that he was a representative of the GBI.

  “Have no fear,” the Xerian said coldly. “We have no jurisdiction in your ship, Captain.”

  Macduff’s voice rose in triumph.

  “I never trusted that lobster from the start,” he announced, strutting forward. “He merely took your money and made a deal for seedless sphyghi. He is obviously a criminal. His hasty exit from Aldebaran Tau, plus his known addiction to Lethean dust—”

  At that point Ess Pu charged down upon Macduff, raging uncontrollably. At the last moment Macduff’s rotund figure shot toward the open port and the thin Xerian sunlight outside. Ess Pu clattered after him, shrieking with fury, mouth membranes flaring crimson in his rage.

  At the Xerian leader’s quick command, the other Xerians hurried after Macduff. There were distant, cryptic noises from outside. Presently Macduff reappeared, panting and alone.

  “Awkward creatures, Algolians,” he said, nodding familiarly to the Xerian leader. “I see your men have—ah—detained Ess Pu.”

  “Yes,” the Xerian said. “Outside, he is of course under our jurisdiction.”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” Macduff murmured, drifting toward Ao.

  “Noo wait a minute,” Captain Ramsay said to the Xerians. “Ye have na—”

  “We are not barbarians,” the Xerian said with dignity. “We gave Ess Pu fifteen million Universal Credits to do a job for us and he has failed. Unless he can return the fifteen million, plus costs, he must work it out. The man-hour”—here Macduff was seen to wince—“the man-hour on Xeria is the equivalent of one sixty-fifth of a credit.”

  “This is highly irregular,” the Captain said. “However, it’s out of my jurisdiction now. You, Macduff—stop looking so smug. You get off at Xeria too, remember. I advise ye to stay out of Ess Pu’s way.”

  “I expect he’ll be busy most of the time,” Macduff said cheerfully. “I hate to remind a supposedly competent officer of his duties, but haven’t you forgotten the slight matter of the ship’s pool?”

  “What?” Ramsay glanced blankly at the pulped fruit. “The pool’s called off, of course.”

  “Nonsense,” Macduff interrupted. “Let’s have no evasions. One might suspect you of trying to avoid a payoff.”

  “Mon, ye’re daft. How can there be a payoff? The lottery was based on guessing the seed count in a sphyghi fruit and it’s perfectly obvious the sphyghi has no seeds. Vurra weel. If no one has any objections—”

  “I object!” Macduff cried. “On behalf of my ward, I demand that every single guess be counted and tabulated.”

  “Be reasonable,” Ramsay urged. “If ye’re merely delaying the evil moment when I kick ye off the Sutter—”

  “You’ve got to wind up the pool legally,” Macduff insisted.

  “Pah, shut yer clatterin’ trap,” Ramsay snapped sourly, picking up the sealed box and attaching a small gadget to it. “Just as ye like. But I am on to ye, Macduff. Noo, quiet please, everybody.”

  He closed his eyes and his lips moved in a soundless mumble. The box flew open, disgorging a clutter of folded papers. At Ramsay’s gesture a passenger stepped forward and began to open the slips, reading off names and guesses.

  “So ye gain pairhaps five minutes’ reprieve,” Ramsay said under his breath to Macduff. “Then oot ye go after Ess Pu and let me say it is pairfectly obvious ye lured the Algolian out of the Sutter on purpose.”

  “Nonsense,” Macduff said briskly. “Am I to blame if Ess Pu focused his ridiculous anti-social emotions on me?”

  “Aye,” Ramsay said. “Ye ken dom well ye are.”

  “Male Kor-ze-Kabloom, seven hundred fifty,” called the passenger unfolding another slip. “Lorma Secundus, two thousand ninety-nine. Ao, per—”

  There was a pause.

  “Well?” Captain Ramsay prompted, collaring Macduff. “Well, mon?”

  “Terence Lao-T’se Macduff—” the passenger continued and again halted.

  “What is it? What number did he guess?” Ramsay demanded, pausing at the open port with one foot lifted ready to boot the surprisingly philosophical Macduff down the gangplank “I asked, ye a question! What number’s on the slip?”

  “Zero,” the passenger said faintly.

  “Exactly!” Macduff declared, wriggling free. “And now, Captain Ramsay, I’ll thank you to hand over half the ship’s pool to me, as Ao’s guardian—less, of course, the price of our passage to Lesser Vega. As for Ess Pu’s half of the take, send it to him with my compliments.

  “Perhaps it will knock a few months off his sentence, which, if my figures are correct, come to nine hundred and forty-six Xerian years. A Macduff forgives even his enemies. Come, Ao, my dear. I must choose a suitable cabin.”

  So saying, Macduff lit a fresh cigar and sauntered slowly away, leaving Captain Ramsay staring straight ahead and movi
ng his lips as though in slow prayer. The prayer became audible.

  “Macduff,” Ramsay called. “Macduff! How did ye do it?”

  “I,” said Macduff over his shoulder, “am a scientist.”

  The Lesser Vegan cabaret hummed with festivity. A pair of comedians exchanged quips and banter among the tables. At one table Ao sat between Macduff and Captain Ramsay.

  “I am still waiting to hear how ye did it, Macduff,” Ramsay said. “A bargain’s a bargain, ye know. I put my name on yon application, didn’t I?”

  “I cannot but admit,” Macduff said, “that your signature facilitated my getting Ao’s guardianship, bless her heart. Some champagne, Ao?” But Ao made no response. She was exchanging glances, less blank than usual, with a young Lesser Vegan male at a nearby table.

  “Come, noo,” Ramsay insisted. “Remember I wull have to turn over my log at the end of the voyage. I must know what happened concerning yon sphyghi. Otherwise, d’ye think I’d hae gone oot on a limb and guaranteed yer tortuous character, even though I carefully added, ‘to the best of my knowledge’? No. Ye wrote thot zero when I saw ye do it, long before the fruit ripened.”

  “Right,” Macduff said blandly, sipping champagne. “It was a simple problem in misdirection. I suppose there’s no harm in telling you how I did it. Consider the circumstances. You were going to maroon me on Xeria, side by side with that lobster.

  “Obviously I had to cut him down to my size by discrediting him with the Xerians. Winning the pool was an unexpected secondary development. Merely a stroke of well-deserved good luck, aided by applied scientific technique.”

  “Ye mean that stuff ye wrote down on the paper Ess Pu found—the gibble-gabble aboot interferometers and ion-analyzers? So ye did find some way to count the seeds—och, I’m wrong there, am I?”

  “Naturally.” Macduff twirled his glass and preened himself slightly. “I wrote that paper for Ess Pu’s eyes. I had to keep him so busy protecting his sphyghi and chasing me that he never had a spare moment to think.”

  “I still dinna ken,” Ramsay confessed. “Even if ye’d known the richt answer in advance, how could ye foresee the pool would be based on sphyghi?”

  “Oh, that was the simplest thing of all. Consider the odds! What else could it be, with the Aldebaran Lottery fresh in every mind and the whole ship reeking of contraband sphyghi? If no one else had suggested it I was prepared to bring it up myself and—what’s this? Go away! Get out!”

  He was addressing himself to the two comedians, who had worked their way around to Macduff’s table. Captain Ramsay glanced up in time to see them commence a new act.

  The laugh-getting technique of insult has never basically changed all through the ages, and Galactic expansion has merely broadened and deepened its variety. Derision has naturally expanded to include species as well as races.

  The comedians, chattering insanely, began a fairly deft imitation of two apes searching each other for fleas. There was an outburst of laughter, not joined by those customers who had sprung from simian stock.

  “Tush!” Ramsay said irately, pushing back his chair. “Ye dom impudent—”

  Macduff lifted a placating palm. “Tut, tut, Captain. Strive for the objective viewpoint. Merely a matter of semantics, after all.” He chuckled tolerantly. “Rise above such insularity, as I do, and enjoy the skill of these mummers in the abstract art of impersonation. I was about to explain why I had to keep Ess Pu distracted. I feared he might notice how fast the sphyghi were ripening.”

  “Pah,” Ramsay said, but relapsed into his chair as the comedians moved on and began a new skit. “Weel, continue.”

  “Misdirection,” Macduff said cheerfully. “Have you ever had a more incompetent crew member than I?”

  “No,” Ramsay said, considering. “Never in my—”

  “Quite so. I was tossed like spindrift from task to task until I finally reached Atmospheric Controls, which was exactly where I wanted to be. Crawling down ventilating pipes has certain advantages. For example, it was the work of a moment to empty a phial of two-four-five-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid”—he rolled the syllables lushly—“trichlorophenoxyacetic acid into Ess Pu’s ventilator. The stuff must have got into everything, including the sphyghi.”

  “Trichloro—what? Ye mean ye gimmicked the sphyghi before the pool?”

  “Certainly. I told you the pool was a later by-product. My goal at first was simply to get Ess Pu in trouble on Xeria to save my own valuable person. Luckily I had a fair supply of various hormones with me. This particular one, as the merest child should know, bypasses the need for cross-pollination. Through a law of biology the results will always be seedless fruit. Ask any horticulturist. It’s done all the time.”

  “Seedless fruit—” Ramsay said blankly. “Cross-pollin—och, aye! Weel, I’ll be dommed.”

  A modest disclaimer was no doubt on Macduff’s lips, but his eye was caught by the two comedians and he paused, cigar lifted, regarding them. The shorter of the two was now strutting in a wide circle, gesturing like one who smokes a cigar with great self-importance. His companion whooped wildly and beat him over the head.

  “Tell me this, brother!” he cried in a shrill falsetto. “Who was that penguin I seen you with last night?”

  “That wasn’t no penguin,” the strutter giggled happily. “That was a Venusian!” Simultaneously he gestured, and a spotlight sprang like a tent over Macduff’s shrinking head.

  “What! What? How dare you!” screamed the outraged Macduff, recovering his voice at last amid ripples of laughter. “Libellous defamation of—of—I’ve never been so insulted in my life!” A repressed snort came from the Captain. The ruffled Macduff glared around furiously, rose to his full height and seized Ao’s hand.

  “Ignore them,” Ramsay suggested in an unsteady voice. “After all, ye canna deny ye’re Venusian by species, Macduff, even though ye insist ye were hatched in Glasga’—Borrn, I mean. Aye, ye’re Scots by birth and humanoid by classification, are ye na? And no more a penguin than I’m a monkey.”

  But Macduff was already marching toward the door. Ao trailed obediently after, casting back angelic looks at the Lesser Vegan male.

  “Outrageous!” said Macduff.

  “Come back, mon,” Ramsay called, suppressing a wild whoop. “Remember the abstract art of impairsonation. ’Tis a mere matter of semantics—”

  His voice went unheard. Macduff’s back was an indignant ramrod. Towing Ao, his bottle-shaped figure stiff with dignity, Terence Lao-T’se Macduff vanished irrevocably into the Lesser Vegan night, muttering low.

  For Macduff, as should be evident by now to the meanest intellect,5 was not all he claimed to be…

  “Tush,” said Captain Ramsay, his face split by a grin, “that I should ha’ seen the day! Waiter! A whusky-and-soda—no more of this nosty champagne. I am celebrating a red-letter occasion, a phenomenon of nature. D’ye ken this is probably the first time in Macduff’s life that the unprincipled scoundrel has taken his departure withoot leaving some puir swindled sucker behind?

  “D’ye—eh? What’s that? What bill, ye daft loon? Pah, it was Macduff who insisted I be his guest tonight. Och, I—ah—eh—

  “Dom!”

  * * *

  1 An approximation. The actual name is unspellable.

  2 As a result of having sold them the Earth.

  3 With suction cups, of course.

  4 The inhabitants of Ceres were long supposed to be invisible. Lately it has been discovered that Ceres has no inhabitants.

  5 By which we mean the reader who skipped all the science, elementary as it was, in this chronicle.

  Exit the Professor

  We Hogbens are right exclusive. That Perfesser feller from the city might have known that, but he come busting in without an invite, and I don’t figger he had call to complain afterward. In Kaintuck the polite thing is to stick to your own hill of beans and not come nosing around where you’re not wanted.
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br />   Time we ran off the Haley boys with that shotgun gadget we rigged up—only we never could make out how it worked, somehow—that time, it all started because Rafe Haley come peeking and prying at the shed winder, trying to get a look at Little Sam. Then Rafe went round saying Little Sam had three haids or something.

  Can’t believe a word them Haley boys say. Three haids! It ain’t natcheral, is it? Anyhow, Little Sam’s only got two haids, and never had no more since the day he was born.

  So Maw and I rigged up that shotgun thing and peppered the Haley boys good. Like I said, we couldn’t figger out afterward how it worked. We’d tacked on some dry cells and a lot of coils and wires and stuff and it punched holes in Rafe as neat as anything.

  Coroner’s verdict was that the Haley boys died real sudden, and Sheriff Abernathy come up and had a drink of corn with us and said for two cents he’d whale the tar outa me. I didn’t pay no mind. Only some damyankee reporter musta got wind of it, because a while later a big, fat, serious-looking man come around and begun to ask questions.

  Uncle Les was sitting on the porch, with his hat over his face. “You better get the heck back to your circus, mister,” he just said. “We had offers from old Barnum hisself and turned ’em down. Ain’t that right, Saunk?”

  “Sure is,” I said. “I never trusted Phineas. Called Little Sam a freak, he did.”

  The big solemn-looking man, whose name was Perfesser Thomas Galbraith, looked at me. “How old are you, son?” he said.

  “I ain’t your son,” I said. “And I don’t know, nohow.”

  “You don’t look over eighteen,” he said, “big as you are. You couldn’t have known Barnum.”

  “Sure I did. Don’t go giving me the lie. I’ll wham you.”

  “I’m not connected with any circus,” Galbraith said. “I’m a biogeneticist.”

  We sure laughed at that. He got kinda mad and wanted to know what the joke was.

  “There ain’t no such word,” Maw said. And at that point Little Sam started yelling, and Galbraith turned white as a goose wing and shivered all over. He sort of fell down. When we picked him up, he wanted to know what had happened.