The Best of Henry Kuttner

by Henry Kuttner

  Water trickled down inside Holt’s collar. He cursed quietly. He was earning his thousand bucks, all right. But Smith was going through the same discomfort and not complaining about it.

  “Isn’t it—”

  “Sh-h!” Smith warned. “The—others—may be here.”

  Obediently, Holt lowered his voice. “Then they’ll be drowned, too. Are they after the notebook? Why don’t they go in and get it?”

  Smith bit his nails. “They want it destroyed.”

  “That’s what the guy in the alley said, come to think of it.” Holt nodded, startled. “Who are they, anyhow?”

  “Never mind. They don’t belong here. Do you remember what I told you, Denny?”

  “About getting the notebook? What’ll I do if the safe isn’t open?”

  “It will be,” Smith said confidently. “Soon, now. Keaton is in his cellar laboratory, finishing his experiment.”

  Through the lighted window a shadow flickered. Holt leaned forward; he felt Smith go tense as wire beside him. A tiny gasp ripped from the old man’s throat.

  A man had entered the library. He went to the wall, swung aside a curtain, and stood there, his back to Holt. Presently he stepped back, opening the door of a safe.

  “Ready!” Smith said. “This is it! He’s writing down the final step of the formula. The explosion will come in a minute now. When it does, Denny, give me a minute to get away and cause a disturbance, if the others are here.”

  “I don’t think they are.”

  Smith shook his head. “Do as I say. Run for the house and get the notebook.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then get out of here as fast as you can. Don’t let them catch you, whatever you do.”

  “What about you?”

  Smith’s eyes blazed with intense, violent command, shining out of the windy dark. “Forget me, Denny! I’ll be safe.”

  “You hired me as a bodyguard.”

  “I’m discharging you, then. This is vitally important, more important than my life. That notebook must be in your hands—”

  “For the War Department?”

  “For…oh yes. You’ll do that, now, Denny?”

  Holt hesitated. “If it’s that important—”

  “It is. It is!”

  “O.K., then.”

  The man in the house was at a desk, writing. Suddenly the window blew out. The sound of the blast was muffled, as though its source was underground, but Holt felt the ground shake beneath him. He saw Keaton spring up, take a half step away and return, snatching up the notebook. The physicist ran to the wall safe, threw the book into it, swung the door shut and paused there briefly, his back to Holt. Then he darted out of Holt’s range of vision and was gone.

  Smith said, his voice coming out in excited spurts, “He didn’t have time to lock it. Wait till you hear me, Denny, and then get that notebook!”

  Holt said, “O.K.,” but Smith was already gone, running through the bushes. A yell from the house heralded red flames sweeping out a distant, ground-floor window. Something fell crashingly—masonry, Holt thought.

  He heard Smith’s voice. He could not see the man in the rain, but there was the noise of a scuffle. Briefly Holt hesitated. Blue pencils of light streaked through the rain, wan and vague in the distance.

  He ought to help Smith—

  He’d promised, though, and there was the notebook. The pursuers had wanted it destroyed. And now, quite obviously, the house was going up in flames. Of Keaton there was no trace.

  He ran for the lighted window. There was plenty of time to get the notebook before the fire became dangerous.

  From the corner of his eye he saw a dark figure cutting in toward him. Holt slipped on his brass knuckles. If the guy had a gun it would be unfortunate; otherwise, fair enough.

  The man—the same one Holt had encountered in the Forty-second Street alley—raised a cane and aimed it. A wan blue pencil of light streaked out. Holt felt his legs go dead and crashed down heavily.

  The other man kept running. Holt, struggling to his feet, threw himself desperately forward. No use.

  The flames were brightening the night now. The tall, dark figure loomed for an instant against the library window; then the man had clambered over the sill. Holt, his legs stiff, managed to keep his balance and lurch forward. It was agony: like pins and needles a thousand times intensified.

  He made it to the window, and, clinging to the sill, stared into the room. His opponent was busy at the safe. Holt swung himself through the window and hobbled toward the man.

  His brass-knuckled fist was ready.

  The unknown sprang lightly away, swinging his cane. Dried blood stained his chin.

  “I’ve locked the safe,” he said. “Better get out of here before the fire catches you, Denny.”

  Holt mouthed a curse. He tried to reach the man but could not. Before he had covered more than two halting steps, the tall figure was gone, springing lightly out through the window and racing away into the rain.

  Holt turned to the safe. He could hear the crackling of flames. Smoke was pouring through a doorway on his left.

  He tested the safe; it was locked. He didn’t know the combination—so he couldn’t open it.

  But Holt tried. He searched the desk, hoping Keaton might have scribbled the key on a paper somewhere. He fought his way to the laboratory steps and stood looking down into the inferno of the cellar, where Keaton’s burning, motionless body lay. Yes, Holt tried. And he failed.

  Finally the heat drove him from the house. Fire trucks were screaming closer. There was no sign of Smith or anyone else.

  Holt stayed, amid the crowds, to search, but Smith and his trackers had disappeared as though they had vanished into thin air.

  “We caught him, Administrator,” said the tall man with the dried blood on his chin. “I came here directly on our return to inform you.” The administrator blew out his breath in a sigh of deep relief.

  “Any trouble, Jorus?”

  “Not to speak of.”

  “Well, bring him in,” the administrator said. “I suppose we’d better get this over with.”

  Smith entered the office. His heavy overcoat looked incongruous against the celoflex garments of the others.

  He kept his eyes cast down.

  The administrator picked up a memo roll and read: “Sol 21, in the year of our Lord 2016. Subject: interference with probability factors. The accused has been detected in the act of attempting to tamper with the current probability-present by altering the past, thus creating a variable alternative present. Use of time machines is forbidden except by authorized officials. Accused will answer.”

  Smith mumbled, “I wasn’t trying to change things, Administrator—”

  Jorus looked up and said, “Objection. Certain key time-place periods are forbidden. Brooklyn, especially the area about Keaton’s house, in the time near 11 P.M., January 10, 1943, is absolutely forbidden to time travellers. The prisoner knows why.”

  “I knew nothing about it, Ser Jorus. You must believe me.”

  Jorus went on relentlessly, “Administrator, here are the facts. The accused, having stolen a time traveller, set the controls manually for a forbidden space-time sector. Such sectors are restricted, as you know, because they are keys to the future; interference with such key spots will automatically alter the future and create a different line of probability. Keaton, in 1943, in his cellar laboratory, succeeded in working out the formula for what we know now as M-Power. He hurried upstairs, opened his safe, and noted down the formula in his book, in such a form that it could very easily have been deciphered and applied even by a layman. At that time there was an explosion in Keaton’s laboratory and he replaced the notebook in the safe and went downstairs, neglecting, however, to relock the safe. Keaton was killed; he had not known the necessity of keeping M-Power away from radium, and the atomic synthesis caused the explosion. The subsequent fire destroyed Keaton’s note
book, even though it had been within the safe. It was charred into illegibility, nor was its value suspected. Not until the first year of the twenty-first century was M-Power rediscovered.”

  Smith said, “I didn’t know all that, Ser Jorus.”

  “You are lying. Our organization does not make mistakes. You found a key spot in the past and decided to change it, thus altering our present. Had you succeeded, Dennis Holt of 1943 would have taken Keaton’s notebook out of the burning house and read it. His curiosity would have made him open the notebook. He would have found the key to M-Power. And, because of the very nature of M-Power, Dennis Holt would have become the most powerful man in his world time. According to the variant probability line you were aiming at, Dennis Holt, had he got that notebook, would have been dictator of the world now. This world, as we know it, would not exist, though its equivalent would—a brutal, ruthless civilization ruled by an autocratic Dennis Holt, the sole possessor of M-Power. In striving for that end, the prisoner has committed a serious crime.”

  Smith lifted his head. “I demand euthanasia,” he said. “If you want to blame me for trying to get out of this damned routine life of mine, very well. I never had a chance, that’s all.”

  The administrator raised his eyebrows. “Tour record shows you have had many chances. You are incapable of succeeding through your own abilities; you are in the only job you can do well. But your crime is, as Jorus says, serious. You have tried to create a new probability-present, destroying this one by tampering with a key spot in the past. And, had you succeeded, Dennis Holt would now be dictator of a race of slaves. Euthanasia is no longer your privilege; your crime is too serious. You must continue to live, at your appointed task, until the day of your natural death.”

  Smith choked. “It was his fault—if he’d got that notebook in time—”

  Jorus looked quizzical. “His? Dennis Holt, at the age of twenty, in 1943…his fault? No, it is yours, I think—for trying to change your past and your present.”

  The administrator said, “Sentence has been passed. It is ended.”

  And Dennis Holt, at the age of ninety-three, in the year of our Lord 2016, turned obediently and went slowly back to his job, the same one he would fill now until he died.

  And Dennis Holt, at the age of twenty, in the year of our Lord 1943, drove his taxi home from Brooklyn, wondering what it had all been about. The veils of rain swept slanting across the windshield. Denny took another drink out of the bottle and felt the rye steal comfortingly through his body.

  What had it all been about?

  Banknotes rustled crisply in his pocket. Denny grinned. A thousand smackeroos! His stake. His capital. With that, now, he could do plenty—and he would, too. All a guy needed was a little ready money, and he could go places.

  “You bet!” Dennis Holt said emphatically. “I’m not going to hold down the same dull job all my life. Not with a thousand bucks—not me!”

  Housing Problem

  Jacqueline said it was a canary, but I contended that there were a couple of lovebirds in the covered cage. One canary could never make that much fuss. Besides, I liked to think of crusty old Mr. Henchard keeping lovebirds; it was so completely inappropriate. But whatever our roomer kept in that cage by his window, he shielded it—or them—jealously from prying eyes. All we had to go by were the noises.

  And they weren’t too simple to figure out. From under the cretonne cloth came shufflings, rustlings, occasional faint and inexplicable pops, and once or twice a tiny thump that made the whole hidden cage shake on its redwood pedestal-stand. Mr. Henchard must have known that we were curious. But all he said when Jackie remarked that birds were nice to have around, was “Claptrap! Leave that cage alone, d’ya hear?”

  That made us a little mad. We’re not snoopers, and after that brush-off, we coldly refused to even look at the shrouded cretonne shape. We didn’t want to lose Mr. Henchard, either. Roomers were surprisingly hard to get. Our little house was on the coast highway; the town was a couple of dozen homes, a grocery, a liquor store, the post office and Terry’s restaurant. That was about all. Every morning Jackie and I hopped the bus and rode in to the factory, an hour away. By the time we got home, we were pretty tired. We couldn’t get any household help—war jobs paid a lot better—so we both pitched in and cleaned. As for cooking, we were Terry’s best customers.

  The wages were good, but before the war we’d run up too many debts, so we needed extra dough. And that’s why we rented a room to Mr. Henchard. Off the beaten track with transportation difficult, and with the coast dimout every night, it wasn’t too easy to get a roomer. Mr. Henchard looked like a natural. He was, we figured, too old to get into mischief.

  One day he wandered in, paid a deposit; presently he showed up with a huge Gladstone and a square canvas grip with leather handles. He was a creaking little old man with a bristling tonsure of stiff hair and a face like Popeye’s father, only more human. He wasn’t sour; he was just crusty. I had a feeling he’d spent most of his life in furnished rooms, minding his own business and puffing innumerable cigarettes through a long black holder. But he wasn’t one of those lonely old men you could safely feel sorry for—far from it! He wasn’t poor and he was completely self-sufficient. We loved him. I called him grandpa once, in an outburst of affection, and my skin blistered at the resultant remarks.

  Some people are born under lucky stars. Mr. Henchard was like that. He was always finding money in the street. The few times we shot craps or played poker, he made passes and held straights without even trying. No question of sharp dealing—he was just lucky.

  I remember the time we were all going down the long wooden stairway that leads from the cliff-top to the beach. Mr. Henchard kicked at a pretty big rock that was on one of the steps. The stone bounced down a little way, and then went right through one of the treads. The wood was completely rotten. We felt fairly certain that if Mr. Henchard, who was leading, had stepped on that rotten section, the whole thing would have collapsed.

  And then there was the time I was riding up with him in the bus. The motor stopped a few minutes after we’d boarded the bus; the driver pulled over. A car was coming toward us along the highway and, as we stopped, one of its front tires blew out. It skidded into the ditch. If we hadn’t stopped when we did, there would have been a head-on collision. Not a soul was hurt.

  Mr. Henchard wasn’t lonely; he went out by day, I think, and at night he sat in his room near the window most of the time. We knocked, of course, before coming in to clean, and sometimes he’d say, “Wait a minute.” There’d be a hasty rustling and the sound of that cretonne cover going on his bird cage. We wondered what sort of bird he had, and theorized on the possibility of a phoenix. The creature never sang. It made noises. Soft, odd, not-always-birdlike noises. By the time we got home from work, Mr. Henchard was always in his room. He stayed there while we cleaned. On weekends, he never went out

  As for the cage…

  One night Mr. Henchard came out, stuffing a cigarette into his holder, and looked us over.

  “Mph,” said Mr. Henchard. “Listen, I’ve got some property to ’tend to up north, and I’ll be away for a week or so. I’ll still pay the rent.”

  “Oh, well,” Jackie said. “We can—”

  “Claptrap,” he growled. “It’s my room. I’ll keep it if I like. How about that, hey?”

  We agreed, and he smoked half his cigarette in one gasp. “Mm-m. Well, look here, now. Always before I’ve had my own car. So I’ve taken my bird cage with me. This time I’ve got to travel on the bus, so I can’t take it. You’ve been pretty nice—not peepers or pryers. You got sense. I’m going to leave my bird cage here, but don’t you touch that cover!”

  “The canary—” Jackie gulped. “It’ll starve.”

  “Canary, hmm?” Mr. Henchard said, fixing her with a beady, wicked eye. “Never you mind. I left plenty o’ food and water. You just keep your hands off. Clean my room when it needs it, if you want,
but don’t you dare touch the bird cage. What do you say?”

  “Okay with us,” I said.

  “Well, you mind what I say,” he snapped.

  That next night, when we got home, Mr. Henchard was gone. We went into his room and there was a note pinned to the cretonne cover. It said, “Mind, now!” Inside the cage something went rustle-whirr. And then there was a faint pop.

  “Hell with it,” I said. “Want the shower first?”

  “Yes,” Jackie said.

  Whirr-r went the cage. But it wasn’t wings. Thump!

  The next night I said, “Maybe he left enough food, but I bet the water’s getting low.”

  “Eddie!” Jackie remarked.

  “All right, I’m curious. But I don’t like the idea of birds dying of thirst, either.”

  “Mr. Henchard said—”

  “All right, again. Let’s go down to Terry’s and see what the lamb chop situation is.”

  The next night—Oh, well. We lifted the cretonne. I still think we were less curious than worried. Jackie said she once knew somebody who used to beat his canary.

  “We’ll find the poor beast cowering in chains,” she remarked flicking her dust-cloth at the windowsill, behind the cage. I turned off the vacuum. Whish—trot-trot-trot went something under the cretonne.

  “Yeah—” I said. “Listen, Jackie. Mr. Henchard’s all right, but he’s a crackpot. That bird or birds may be thirsty now. I’m going to take a look.”

  “No. Uh—yes. We both will, Eddie. We’ll split the responsibility.”

  I reached for the cover, and Jackie ducked under my arm and put her hand over mine.

  Then we lifted a corner of the cloth. Something had been rustling around inside, but the instant we touched the cretonne, the sound stopped. I meant to take only one swift glance. My hand continued to lift the cover, though. I could see my arm moving and I couldn’t stop it. I was too busy looking.