Carry Me Home E-Book

Henry Kuttner

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 76

Beschreibung

Carry Me Home

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

CARRY ME HOME, by Henry Kuttner

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2022 by Wildside Press LLC.

First published in Planet Stories, November 1950 under the pseudonym C. H. Liddell.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION

Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915. As a young man, he worked in his spare time for the literary agency of his uncle, Laurence D’Orsay (in fact his first cousin by marriage), in Los Angeles before selling his first story, “The Graveyard Rats,” to Weird Tales in early 1936. It was while working for the d’Orsay Agency that Kuttner picked Leigh Brackett’s early manuscripts off the slush pile. It was under his tutelage that she sold her first story (to John W. Campbell at Astounding Stories).

Kuttner was known for his literary prose and worked in close collaboration with his wife, C.L. Moore. They met through their association with the “Lovecraft Circle,” a group of writers and fans who corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft. Their work together spanned the 1940s and 1950s and most of the work was credited to pseudonyms, mainly Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell.

L. Sprague de Camp, who knew Kuttner and Moore well, has stated that their collaboration was so seamless that, after a story was completed, it was often impossible for either Kuttner or Moore to recall who had written what. According to de Camp, it was typical for either partner to break off from a story in mid-paragraph or even mid-sentence, with the latest page of the manuscript still in the typewriter. The other spouse would routinely continue the story where the first had left off. They alternated in this manner as many times as necessary until the story was finished.

Among Kuttner’s most popular work were the Gallegher stories, published under the Padgett name, about a man who invented high-tech solutions to client problems (assisted by his insufferably egomaniacal robot) when he was stinking drunk, only to be completely unable to remember exactly what he had built or why after sobering up. These stories were later collected in Robots Have No Tails. In her introduction to the 1973 edition, Moore stated that Kuttner wrote all the Gallegher stories himself.

Marion Zimmer Bradley is among many authors who have cited Kuttner as an influence. Her novel The Bloody Sun is dedicated to him. Roger Zelazny has talked about the influence of The Dark World on his Amber series.

Kuttner’s friend Richard Matheson dedicated his 1954 novel I Am Legend to Kuttner, with thanks for his help and encouragement. Ray Bradbury has said that Kuttner actually wrote the last 300 words of Bradbury’s first horror story, “The Candle” (Weird Tales, November 1942). Bradbury has referred to Kuttner as a neglected master and a “pomegranate writer: popping with seeds—full of ideas.”

William S. Burroughs’s novel The Ticket That Exploded contains direct quotes from Kuttner regarding the “Happy Cloak” parasitic pleasure monster from the Venusian seas.

Mary Elizabeth Counselman believed that Kuttner's habit of writing under widely varied pseudonyms deprived him of the fame that should have been his. “I have often wondered why Kuttner chose to hide his talents behind so many false faces for no editorial reason... Admittedly, the fun is in pretending to be someone else. But Kuttner cheated himself of much fame that he richly deserved by hiding his light under a bushel of pen names that many fans did not know were his. Seabury Quinn and I both chided him about this.”

Among his pseudonyms were:

Edward J. Bellin

Paul Edmonds

Noel Gardner

Will Garth

James Hall

Keith Hammond

Hudson Hastings

Peter Horn

Kelvin Kent (used for work with Arthur K. Barnes)

Robert O. Kenyon

C. H. Liddell

Hugh Maepenn

Scott Morgan

Lawrence O'Donnell

Lewis Padgett

Woodrow Wilson Smith

Charles Stoddard

According to J. Vernon Shea, August Derleth “kept promising to publish Hank's and Catherine’s books under the Arkham House imprint, but kept postponing them.”

Henry Kuttner spent the middle 1950s getting his master's degree before dying of a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1958.

—Karl Wurf

Rockville, Maryland

CARRY ME HOME,by Henry Kuttner

You could see the Mountain sometimes, on the clearer days, from as far away as the town called Foggy Morning. The unearthly lands between swam in jungle, stirring endlessly with the pale, restless foliage of Venus, garrulous jungle full of a continual murmur that had all the notes of human speech imperfectly heard.

The Quai told fabulous tales about the Mountain, drawing up the third eyelid dreamily over their yellow gaze and humming gently through their noses between words, in the disconcerting way of Quai. They said there was a pool up there, and something in the pool. They said the pool was blue—under a sky of unbroken, eternal cloud, the pool was blue.

They said there was a monster in it. Possibly a god. No Terrestrial understands Quai speech very clearly yet, so they may have said both monster and god. It sounded intriguing, but too remote to interest anyone in the frontier towns along the Terrestrial Highway. Terrestrial holdings on Venus are precarious yet, strung along a chain as narrow and perilous as Bifrost, and infringments against Venus and Quai have proved too dangerous for any man to commit more than once.

Three men slipped out of Foggy Morning just ahead of the vigilantes one day, getting the jungle equipment they needed by direct and deadly means. Frontier justice being what it always is, the vigilantes pursued them only far enough to make sure they would not return. The men were robbers. If the vigilantes had caught them they would have hanged them. But when they had chased them past the turn-off that leads southwest toward Flattery and north toward Adam and Eve, and on along a little winding, diminishing path due west, they paused and looked at each other and began to laugh. The path went straight into forbidden Quai lands, and its far end was the Mountain. The vigilantes shrugged and went back to Foggy Morning.

There were d’vahnyan in the jungle. D’vahnyan is a complex term, but its basic import is death-dealer. The Quai were quite competent to look after their own lands. Hanging might have been preferable.

* * * *

The cavern was reasonably dry, considering. It was reasonably safe, or as safe as any refuge could be in Quai territory. A small, soft fire burned in a hollow of sand near one wall, pale lavender flames licking up and whimpering in the annoying way all fire does on Venus. Something in the wet air damps its color and the flames never feel really hot even when they burn you.

A man named Rohan lay drowsily with his back to the cavern wall and his eyes shut, singing to himself.

“Swing low,” he sang, “sweet chari-ot, comin’ for to carry me home.”

Condensing fog gathered in big drops along the outer brow of the cave and dripped continually as an obbligato to the song and the whimper of the fire. One of the other men was sitting on his heels just inside the fringe of dripping water, gun across his knee, peering into the misty jungle. The third man threw down an emptied ration-tin with violence and said, “Red!”

Rohan did not open his eyes.

“Yes, my little friend?” he said.

“Red, I’m sick of it. I’m going back! You hear? There’s no use waiting any longer. Barber isn’t coming. Why should we sit here waiting for the police to come and get us? I tell you there’s been a d’vahnyan on our trail since yesterday morning, and I don’t like it. I’m going back. I’ll take my chances—”

Rohan grinned sleepily.

“If you get there before I do,” he sang, “tell all my friends I’m comin’ too—”

“It’s crazy,” the other man said. “It isn’t safe to wait around here any longer. I’m afraid of the d’vahnyan, if you’re not. I’m going.”

He made no further move. Rohan listened to the quiet complaint of the flames and thought of the d’vahnyan of Venus.

The d’vahnyan’s place in Quai society is not comparable to any Terrestrial equivalent. He approximates police, judge, jury and executioner all in one, though his powers are not limited to the enforcing of justice; he also—for no reason Terrestrials have yet grasped—destroys trees or whole forests, burns occasional villages, dams or diverts rivers, and at times sterilizes the soil of agricultural areas. His decree is never questioned. He is debarred from the fields of science, using the weapons the blue-clad ll’ghirae give him, without understanding the principles of the devices he wields. The ll’ghirae correspond to scientists or priests of science, and are forbidden knowledge of the Realities. Exactly what the Quai mean by Realities is not yet known.

But a few of the more concrete realities of life on Venus the Terrestrials have learned fast, often the hard way. Foremost among them is the absolute power of the d’vahnyan