Henry Kuttner - The Well of the Worlds (Henry Kuttner) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

Sawyer regarded her with a steady gaze.

“This woman in the mine,” he said, “leads me right into a personal question I’ve got to ask you, Miss Ford. A strange woman appearing from nowhere, right down there in the mine. Is that what you say is happening?”

All Klai Ford said was, “Oh, dear!” in a voice of misery.

“I’ve been trying to place your accent,” Sawyer went on with calm relentlessness. “Would you mind telling me, Miss Ford, what country you come from?”

She jumped up abruptly, leaving the little nest of furs which was her thrown-back coat and hood. She paced up and down the room twice, then whirled.

“You know perfectly well!” she said accusingly. “Don’t make it harder!”

Sawyer smiled and shook his head.

“I know, but I never really believed it,” he said. “Naturally the Commission ordered a full investigation when you—ah—turned up here, but—”

“I don’t know who I am!” the girl said angrily. “I don’t know where I came from. Can I help it if I have a funny accent? I don’t do it on purpose. How would you like to wake up with amnesia some morning and find yourself down in a uranium mine you’d never even heard of before, with no idea how you got there or who you were?” She hugged herself with both arms and shivered. “I hate it,” she said. “But what can I do about it?”

“If you hadn’t picked out a uranium mine to appear in—” Sawyer began.

“I didn’t! It picked me!”

“—we wouldn’t feel so baffled,” Sawyer went on imperturbably. “I wish we hadn’t tried so hard to find some explanation about you. Then at least we could say, ‘Maybe there’s some answer.’ But we still know nothing whatever. I was wondering if any sort of answer has ever occurred to you.”

She shook her head. “All I remember is waking up on the wet floor in the mine. I knew my name. Just one name—Klai. Old Sam Ford found me and took care of me, and finally adopted me when nobody could figure out where I came from.” Her voice softened. “Sam was so good, Mr. Sawyer. And so lonely. It was he who made the strike up here, you know, back in ’53. Alper financed it, but he almost never came to Fortuna, until after Sam died.”

“Surely, Miss Ford,” Sawyer suggested, “you’ve connected your own appearance in the mine with the appearance of this strange new woman? From the same place as yourself, do you think? Another woman, like you, who—”

“Oh, not a bit like me!” the girl said instantly. “She’s one of the Isier, and they are gods!”

Then, as Sawyer stared at her, she clapped both hands over her mouth, gasped, and demanded, “Why did I say that? How did I know? Just for a second, I—I seemed to remember. That word I used—Isier. Does it mean anything? Is it English?”

“I never heard it. Try to remember.”

“I can’t.” Klai shook her head wildly. “It’s gone. I learned English after I came here, you know. I learned it in my sleep, mostly, from those hypnosis-tapes they have. But surely the word couldn’t have—no, I know it isn’t English. It’s part of my dreams. I—oh, this is nonsense! Let’s get down to facts. I’ve got proof of a few things, anyhow.”

She pushed up the sleeve of her blouse, uncovered a flat case taped to forearm, and grimaced as she tore the adhesive patch free. In her palm she held out a miniature case of ultra-small tape film.

“You have no idea what a lot of trouble I had getting this,” she said. “I’ve got cameras hidden in Level Eight with all sorts of special shielding against radioactivity. Even that doesn’t help when the—the ghosts come. They seem to be pure radiation. Anyhow the film goes black every time. But—well, just wait!”

She went efficiently across the room to unlock a cabinet and swing out a small film-projector. “Will you turn that picture over?” she said, nodding toward the opposite wall. “It’s got a beaded screen on its back. I had everything ready, you see. This film’s never been out of my hands since I took it from the camera. I did everything myself. Now I think you’ll have real evidence to take back. Alper doesn’t know a thing about this, thank goodness. I don’t even want him to know I’ve talked to you, until I can prove enough to protect myself.”

She clicked the switch. A square of pale light sprang across the room and flickered on the small screen. Dark, shadowy walls took shape upon the square, and a low throbbing came from the sound-projector, blending with the steady thumping of the great pumps themselves, under Fortuna.

As the pictured walls of the mineshaft flickered on the screen, Klai said suddenly, with a note of hysteria in her voice, “Mr. Sawyer, you haven’t asked me a word about the ghosts.”

“That’s right,” Sawyer said. “I haven’t.”

“Because you don’t believe that part? It’s true! They come out of the rock. I think that’s why they’re seen so seldom.” She hurried on, frantic now. “Don’t you see? How many shafts are there, compared to the roads—of pitchblende underneath? It’s just accident when they blunder into a shaft, but the men do see them, like—like pale flames—”

Something like a pale flame flickered gently across the screen.

The girl laughed unsteadily.

“Not a ghost,” she said. “A flashlight. Watch. Now it begins.”

The flash-beam moved over rock, over jagged surfaces wet and shining and marked by the teeth of drills. Above the throbbing of the pumps a new sound came, the crunch of a cane among rubble and the noise of a man’s heavy feet. Into the camera’s range came a stooped, bulky figure, dimly seen. Sawyer breathed in with a sharp sound of recognition. The tiny square that flickered on the wall suddenly ceased to be a miniature reflection and seemed reality itself. He heard Alper’s familiar, thick voice calling urgently.

“Nethe!” he said. “Nethe!” and the walls gave back the echoes until the whole tunnel was calling with him.

“Watch!” the girl whispered. “There to the left—see?”

It looked like a reflection upon the rock itself, except that the flash-beam did not touch it and there was nothing here to cast reflections. It looked like a tall woman, incredibly tall, incredibly slender, bending toward the half-seen Alper with an inhuman grace and flexibility. Now water dripped and tinkled, or—no, this was the laughter of a woman, pure silver, cold, inhuman as her motion.

A voice spoke, not Alper’s. It was a voice like strong music. English was the language it used, but an English accented strangely—in the same way as Klai’s, Sawyer realized suddenly. He slanted a glance at her, but she was watching the screen intently, her lips parted and her pretty teeth showing.

The voice was indistinct throughout the brief exchange of talk in the film. Echoes blurred it, laughter blurred it, and the woman seemed a shadow indeed, for she appeared to flicker now and then and her voice flickered with her.

Alper spoke. He sounded out of breath, and a desperate urgency was in his heavy voice.

“Nethe,” he said. “Are you there?”

Laughter, like music, clear and rippling.

“Nethe, you’re late! You’re three days late. I’m running low. How long do you think I can last, without energy?”

The sweet, strong voice with music running through it said carelessly, “Who cares how long you last, old man? Have you killed the girl for me?”

“I can’t kill the girl,” Alper’s voice said angrily. The flash-beam danced across the rocks as he moved. “You don’t understand. If I do it, I’ll get into trouble, and who’ll get the ore for you then? I might even lose the mine if she died. I’ve got a better way. I’m working on it. Any day now—”

“Who cares if a Khom dies?” the musical voice asked. “She’s only a Khom. Worthless. Like you, old man. Why do I waste my time on you?”