Time Travel Omnibus, page 167
“Christ!” I heard my voice with a stifled shriek, his curious light laughter still audible across it. It was that same happy, careless laughter, no pain, not even anxiety, possible with such a sound, a laughter of relief rather. And the voice came with it as a bell ringing across great distances: “Ah, that above all else, the way of light,” reached my ears faintly, brokenly, a profound wavering sigh accompanying it. “I will tell you, tell all I can—show you the escaping way—the why—” the syllables dying into incoherence then, so that I bent over to catch the scarcely audible whisper that almost stopped my heart. Though confused, words running into each other, their meaning penetrated: “a moment—a moment only—I must first pay back the stolen years—now and here. After that I will tell!”
The whisper died out because the lips through which it came were gone already. I remember an odd sound behind me, an increase of light as well, but it was impossible to turn my head. The horror of what Vronski’s cryptic words had suggested was nothing to the horror of what I saw. I stared. The whole dreadful sight came, it seemed, in a single second. Twenty-five years rushed on him in a single moment. He did not stare back because the eyes, following the lips, were no longer there to stare with. The features all ran away together. In the space of a few seconds, fifteen perhaps at most, Sydney Mantravers aged twenty-five years, became a quarter of a century older. The accumulation of this period’s decay was upon him, all over him, with an abrupt, appalling rush. The skin grew loose and wrinkled, changing, even hiding the eyes so that it seemed they disappeared; the muscles slackened, sprayed, sagged away, chin and neck showing it most clearly. There was a ghastly crumpling together of the entire physical frame. The shrivelling seemed intensified by its swiftness. I remember that no comprehensible feeling was in me, horror having passed into something else, and similarly, no thought took the brain. Tire “bends” rose as a picture, because probably my mind contained it as the only comparable human experience, the hideous “bends” that divers know on rising too rapidly from deep waters before the decompression can be applied, or, when caught unawares in too great depths, the frame is jellied, the entire body crammed up into the helmet. There rose another picture too—of a mummy exposed suddenly to air and damp becoming a little heap of dust soon after. These awful pictures rose, then vanished, as though the mind automatically searched for a parallel.
Though it was not quite so, the body none the less collapsed in a dreadful, stupid heap before my eyes, the last detail to suffer change being the small red bruise that glowed in the right temple before it too was gone. One feeble breath rose from the huddled shape upon the sheets, one last fluttering breath escaped the dried and shrunken flesh that had been lips, bearing with extreme faintness a ghost of happy laughter, and just reaching my ears as I bent closer above the dissolving face: “a moment . . . only a moment . . . and I will tell you . . . escaping way . . . elsewhere and otherwise . . .”
Loud and quite clear behind my back, as the light came closer suddenly, was the piteous, convulsive sound of Vronski’s sobbing, beyond which again, the faint clear note as of a ringing bell that died away into the silence.
ALAS, ALL THINKING!
Harry Bates
A new theory of the end of the world in which we contact a human baroque!
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. (This is dynamite! Be careful who sees it!)
From: Charles Wayland.
To: Harold C. Pendleton, Chairman of the Human Salvage Section of the National Lunacy Commission.
Subject: Report on the conversations and actions of Harlan T. Frick on the night of June 7, 1963.
Method: I used the silent pocket dictograph you gave me; and my report is a literal transcription of the record obtained, with only such additions of my own as are needed to make it fully intelligible.
Special Notes: (a) The report, backed by the dictograph record, may be considered as one third of the proof that your “amateur neurosis detective” Wayland is not himself a subject for psychopathic observation, since this fantastic report can be corroborated in all its details by Miles Matson, who was with us that night, and would be, I think, by Frick himself.
(b) Pending any action by you, I have cautioned both Matson and Frick to maintain absolute silence with regard to the conversation and events covered. They may be trusted to comply.
(c) So that you may follow the report more intelligently, I feel that it is necessary to say here, in advance, that F-ick will be proved to be wholly sane, I that never again may his tremendous. Ants be utilized for the advancement science. As his friend, I have to recommend that you give up all hope of salvaging him, and leave him to go his prodigal, pleasure-seeking way alone. You might think of him as a great scientist who has died. He is reasonable, but human, and I see his waste of his life as humanly reasonable. You will see, too.
Report: The amazing events of the evening started in a manner commonplace enough at the Lotus Gardens, where I had made a dinner engagement with Frick and our old mutual friend, Miles Matson, chemist and recent author of an amusing mathematical theory of inverse variables as applied to feminine curves, which Frick had expressed a desire to hear. I should have preferred to observe Frick alone, but was not sure that alone I would be able to hold the interest of his restless, vigorous mind for a third time within two weeks. Ten minutes of boredom and my psychological observations would come to a sudden end, and you would have to find and impress some one else to do your psychological sleuthing.
I got to our reserved table fifteen minutes early, to get settled, set up the dictograph in my pocket, and review for the last time my plans. I had three valuable leads. I had discovered (see my reports of May 26th and May 30th) peculiar, invariable, marked emotional reactions in him when the words “brains,” “human progress,” and “love” were mentioned. I was sure that this was symptomatic. And I hoped to get nearer the roots of his altered behavior pattern by the common method of using a prepared and memorized list of words, remarks, and questions, which I would spring on him from time to time.
I could only trust that Frick was not too familiar with psychoanalysis, and so would not notice what I was doing.
I confess that for a moment while waiting I was swept with the feeling that it was hopeless, but I soon roused from that. One can do no. more than try, and I was going to try my hardest. With another I might have been tempted to renege, but never with Frick. For he was my old friend of college days, and so eminently worth saving! He was still so young; had so much to give to mankind!
I guessed once more at the things that might have altered his pattern so. A physicist, perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most promising in the world, enters his laboratory after his graduation from college and for eleven years hardly so much as sticks his nose outside its door. All the while he sends from it a stream of discoveries, new theories, and integrations of old laws the like of which has never before been equaled; and then this same physicist walks out of his laboratory, locks the door, shuns the place, and for two years devotes himself with casual abandon to such trivialisms of the modern idler as golfing, clothes, travel, fishing, night clubs, and so on. Astounding is a weak word for this spectacle. I could think of nothing that would remotely suit.
MILES MATSON arrived a minute early—which was, for him, a phenomenon. and showed how the anticipation of dining with Frick had affected him. Miles is forty-five, short, solid, bald—but then I needn’t describe him.
“He’ll come?” were his first words, before seating himself on the other side of the table.
“I think so.” I assured him, smiling a little at his apparent anxiety. He looked a little relieved, and fished from the jacket of his dinner clothes that abominable pipe he smokes whenever and wherever he pleases, and be damned to frowning head waiters. He lighted it, took a few quick puffs, then leaned back, smiled, and volunteered frankly: “Charles, I feel like a little boy about to have dinner with the principal of his school.”
I could understand that, for most scientists would feel that way where Frick was concerned. I smiled, too, and chaffed him.
“What—you and that pipe intimidated by a mere playboy?”
“No—by the mystery behind the playboy,” was his serious rejoinder. “What’s your guess at the solution? Quick, before he comes,” he asked earnestly.
I shrugged my shoulders. Miles, of course, was not in my confidence.
“Could it be a woman?” he went on. “I haven’t heard of any one woman. A disappointment in his work? Some spoiled-child reaction? Is he crazy? What’s made the change?”
If I only knew!
“Frick, further than any man alive, has touched out to the infinite unknowable,” he continued almost grumbling; “and I want to know how such a man can trade his tremendous future for a suit of evening clothes!”
“Perhaps he is just relaxing a little,” I suggested with a smile.
“Ah, of course—relaxing,” he answered sarcastically. “For two years!” I knew at once Frick had heard what we had been saying, for at that moment I looked up and around just in time to see him, lean and graceful in his dinner clothes, his mouth twisted with amusement, stepping past the head waiter to his place at the table. Miles and I rose; and we must have shown our confusion, for one simply did not mention that topic in Frick’s hearing. But he showed no offense—indeed, he seemed in unusually good spirits—for he lightly acknowledged our greeting, waved us back in our places, and, seating himself, added to our dialogue:
“Yes, for two years. And will for forty-two more!”
This opening of the conversation threw me unexpectedly off stride, but I remembered to switch on the dictograph, and then seized the opportunity to ask what otherwise I would never have dared.
“Why?”
Still he showed no offense, but instead, surprisingly, indulged in a long low chuckle that seemed to swell up as from a spring of inexhaustible deliciousness. He answered cryptically, bubblingly, enjoying our puzzlement with every word.
“Because Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Because thought is withering, and sensation sweet. Because I’ve recovered my sense of humor. Because ‘why’ is a dangerous word, and makes people unhappy. Because I have had a glimpse of the most horrible cerebral future. Yes!” He laughed, paused for a moment, then said in a lower voice with dramatic impressiveness, “Would you believe it? I have terminated the genus Homo Sapiens.”
II.
HE WAS not drunk, and, as you will see, not crazy—though I would not have bet any money on it just then. His mood was only one of extraordinary good humor. Vastly amused at our reaction to his wild words, he allowed himself to shock us, and did it again and again. I might say here that it is my opinion that all the revelations of the night were, in the main, the result of Frick’s sudden notion to shock us, and that no credit whatever is due me and my intended plan of psychological attack.
Miles’ face showed blank dismay. Frick ceased chuckling, and, his gray eyes gleaming, enjoyed our discomfiture in quiet for a moment. Then he added:
“No. Strictly speaking, there is one piece of unfinished business. A matter of one murder. I was sort of dallying with the idea of committing it tonight, and finishing off the whole affair. Would you two like to be in on it?”
Miles looked as if he would like to excuse himself. He coughed, smiled unhappily, glanced doubtfully at me. I at once decided that if Frick was going to attempt murder, I was going to be on hand to prevent it. I suppose that the desperate resolution showed in my face, for Frick, looking at me, laughed outright. Miles then revived enough to smile wanly at Frick and suggest he was joking. He added:
“I’m surprised that any one with the brains you have should make so feeble a joke!”
At the word “brains” Frick almost exploded.
“Brains!” he exclaimed. “Not me! I’m dumb! Dumb as the greasy-haired saxophone player over there! I understand that I used to have brains, but that’s all over; it’s horrible; let’s not think about it. I tell you I’m dumb, now—normally, contentedly dumb!”
Miles did not know how to understand Frick any more than did I. He reminded him:
“You used to have an I.Q. of 248——”
“I’ve changed!” Frick interrupted. He was still vehement, but I could see that he was full of internal amusement.
“But no healthy person’s intelligence can drop much in the course of a few years,” Miles objected strongly.
“Yes—I’m dumb!” Frick reiterated.
My opportunities lay in keeping him on the subject. I asked him:
“Why have you come to consider the possession of brains such an awful thing?”
“Ah, to have seen what I have seen, know what I know!” he quoted.
Miles showed irritation. “Well, then, let’s call him dumb!” he said, looking at me. “To insist on such a stupid jest!”
I took another turn at arousing Frick. “You are, of course, speaking ironically out of some cryptic notion that exists only in your own head; but whatever this notion, it is absurd. Brains in quantity are the exclusive possession of the human race. They have inspired all human progress; they have made us what we are to-day, masters of the whole animal kingdom, lords of creation. Two other things have helped—the human hand and human love; but even above these ranks the human brain. You are only ridiculous when you scoff at its value.”
“Oh, love and human progress!” Frick exclaimed, laughing. “Charles, I tell you brains will be the ruination of the human race,” he answered with great delight.
“Brains will be the salvation of the human race!” Miles contradicted with heat.
“You make a mistake, a very common mistake, Miles,” Frick declared, more seriously. “Charles is of course right in placing man at the top of creation, but you’re very wrong in assuming he will always remain there. Consider. Nature made the cell, and after a time the cell became a fish; and that fish was the lord of creation. The very top. For a while. For just a few million years. Because one day a fish crawled out of the sea and set about becoming a reptile. He became a magnificent one. Tyrannosaurus Rex was fifty feet long, twenty high; he had teeth half a foot long, and feet armed with claws that were terrible. No other creature could stand against him; he had speed, size, power and ferocity; he became the lord of creation.
“What happened to the fish? He had been the lord of creation, but, well, he never got anywhere. What of Tyrannosaurus Rex? He, too, was the lord of creation, but he, alas, is quite, quite extinct.
“Nature tried speed with the fish, then size with the saurians. Neither worked; the fish got stuck, the saurian died off. But did she quit experimenting at that? Not at all—she tried mobility, and we got the monkey. The first monkey swung from limb to limb screeching, ‘I am the lord of creation!’ and, by Jove, he was! But he could not know that one day, after a few millions of years, one of his poor relations would go down on the ground, find fire, invent writing, assume clothing, devise modern inconveniences, discover he had lost his tail, and crow, ‘Behold, I am the lord of creation!’
“Why did this tailless monkey have his turn? Because his make-up featured brains? You will bellow yes—but I hear Mother Nature laughing at you. For you are only her latest experiment! The lord of creation! That you are—but only for a little while! Only for a few million years!”
Frick paused, his eyes flashed, his nostrils distended contemptuously. “How dare man be so impertinent as to assume nature has stopped experimenting!” he exclaimed at length.
IN THE quiet which followed this surprising outburst I could see Miles putting two and two together. But he took his time before speaking. He relighted his pipe and gave it a good, fiery start before removing it from his mouth and saying, almost in a drawl:
“It amounts to this, then. Anticipating that nature is about to scrap brains and try again along new lines, you choose to attempt immortality by denying your own undoubted brains and trying to be the first to jump in the new direction.”
Frick only laughed. “Wrong again, Miles,” he said. “I’m just standing pat.”
“To go back a little,” I said to Frick; “it seems to me you’re assuming far too much when you tell us that the human race is not the last, but only the most recent of nature’s experiments.”
The man acted almost shocked. “But have you forgotten what I told you just a little while ago? I said I have terminated the genus Homo Sapiens!” Miles snorted with disgust. I was alarmed. Miles tried sarcasm.
“Have you and Mother Nature already decided, then, what the next lord of creation is to be?”
“I myself have nothing to say about it,” Frick replied with assumed naiveté, “nor do I know what it will be. I could find out, but I doubt if I ever shall. It’s much more fun not to know—don’t you think? Though, if I had to guess,” he added, “I should say she will feature instinct.”
This was too much for Miles. He started to rise, saying, as he pushed his chair back, “This is enough. You’re either crazy or else you’re a conceited fool! Personally, I think it’s both!”
But Frick held him with a gesture, and in a voice wholly sincere said:
“Sit down, Miles; keep your shirt on. You know very well I neither lie nor boast. I promise to prove everything I have said.”
Miles resumed his seat and looked at Frick almost sneeringly as he went on:
“You’re quite right about my being a fool, though. I was one; oh, a most gorgeous fool! But I am not conceited. I am so little conceited that I offer to show you myself in what must surely be the most ridiculous situation that a jackass or a monkey without a tail has never been in. I’ll exchange my dignity for your good opinion; you’ll see that I’m not crazy; and then we’ll have the most intelligent good laugh possible. Yes? Shall we?”
Miles gave me a look which clearly expressed his doubt of Frick’s sanity.
Frick, seeing, chuckled and offered another inducement.
“And I’ll throw in, incidentally, a most interesting murder!”
