Collected Short Fiction, page 24
Arthur helped himself to a wafer of gum. Much too self-possessedly he said, “I thought the record sounded cracked.”
“All right, quit acting, we both heard what you heard,” said Seth. “Now we’d like you to explain it.”
“I deny everything,” said Arthur, calmly chewing.
“Arthur has had a strictly scientific training,” remarked Hez. “So it’s natural that he dodges effects to which present knowledge of science assigns no causes. They’re not in his book of rules. So he ignores them to keep his dignity and his faith in science.”
“May I ask, sir, who you are, and why you should consider yourself qualified to pass judgment on me?” Arthur was icy.
“T am Hezekiah Beamish of Harvard. Doctor of Physics, among other things. I have come here to explain a number of matters. I hope you are not offended because I also explain yourself to yourself?”
“One cannot be offended. One can only choose to feel offended,” said Arthur snootily and added with venom, “And I choose to feel offended.”
“Too bad,” beamed Hez. “Have a drink.”
Arthur turned his nose up at the presented beer-can. “Thank you, no. I value my brain too highly to pickle it in alcohol.”
Seth began, “Well, you can employ that unsullied gray matter by working out an explanation for miracles. Now, this—”
He was interrupted by a violent tapping on the window glass. The window framed an agitated portrait of Samuel Angell. Angell was Deputy-Chairman of the Watch Committee. Judge Aldley was Chairman. Seth opened up.
“What’s the matter, Sam?”
“Have you got any old sack cloth or dust sheets or old curtains or something like that you could lend us? In a hurry?”
“Why?”
Samuel pointed up the road. His finger was unsteady.
“Something’s happened to Eugenia.”
EUGENIA was the young lady of white marble and Grecian aspect who balanced on the toes of one foot on the pedestal in the little market square, with her arms perpetually upflung in expression of incontinent health. Stone draperies flowed carelessly (but not too carelessly) from her well-developed figure, blown by an invisible but doubtless bracing breeze.
She was the gift to the town of rich old Mark Plunkett, who had, in his seventies, become an apostle and propagandist of health, fitness, eugenics, and the body beautiful. Judge Aldley had opposed the gift but not too strongly, for old Mark was also considering building a new court house.
If he craned out of the window, Seth could just see a corner of the market square and most of Eugenia. He craned out and exclaimed “What the—!” and fell back, laughing.
Hez was grinning widely, as if he already knew the joke.
Samuel protested, but Seth waved him away weakly: “I haven’t got any sacking and I wouldn’t give it to you if I had.”
“What’s it all about?” asked Arthur, looking through a heap of records.
Seth grabbed his arm. “Come along to the market place, quick. See with your own eves.”
Arthur left his Debussy reluctantly. Hez came too. The three of them made the square just in time to see Eugenia plainly before the mayor’s wife and her sister managed to get a Fourth of July Old Glory and some assorted bunting to stay put around the healthy nymph. The improvised drapery fulfilled the function of the original raiment.
Seth made some inquiries in the gathering interested crowd. He came back, chuckling and scratching his head. “Well, there you are, Arthur. Just tell me what sort of wind blows stone robes clean off.”
Arthur snorted. “You have the credulity of a politician thinking he’s fooling the public. Obviously it’s a gag. Someone’s been preparing the bathing beauty under cover and switched statues during the night.”
Seth said, “I saw Eugenia an hour ago. She was decent then. It’s afternoon now. So the switch must have been done in broad daylight. But no one saw it happen. I’ve asked. Secondly, who in this petrified boneyard for dopes has the energy, imagination or humor to pull a gag of that sort?”
“Picking on the poor people of Peterville again!” exploded Arthur and the dust received with gratitude the resultant drops of perspiration. “Just because they won’t buy your crummy newspaper! They’re all right underneath.”
“They’re all right underneath the ground,” said Seth, morbidly bitter. “They’re halfway there already. A case of dust to dust. Anyway, you should preach. You want to get away from ’em fast enough. Sitting up studying for a degree half the night, aiming for Harvard. I bet once you get away the poor people of Peterville won’t see you again.”
“I can’t help it if I’m a genius and the world has need of me,” snapped Arthur. “It’s my duty to fulfill myself.”
“You mean you don’t want to be a mute inglorious gem blushing unseen?”
Arthur snorted again and started back with ostrich strides to the house and Debussy. Seth and Hezekiah trailed along slowly behind. Seth nodded ahead at the lanky figure being swallowed up in its own dust train.
“What do you think of him, Hez?”
“You say you don’t believe in me? Well, I say I don’t believe in him.”
Seth chuckled. “Never mind, Hez. He does.”
They caught up with Arthur at the Elite. He was staring at a notice on the Forthcoming Attractions board. Seth looked too.
HERE TONIGHT
at 10:30
HEZEKIAH BEAMISH, PH. D.
will deliver a lecture on
ATOMIC PHYSTCS
Come and learn why Eugenia
strip-teased.
“How’s that for hot news?” said Arthur in Seth’s ear. “Better sign on your pal as your chief reporter.”
“When did you have this printed?” asked Seth, turning on Hez.
“Oh, ’bout two minutes ago,” smiled Hez, tossing his nickel again.
“So you knew about this Eugenia gag beforehand,” said Arthur, ignoring the last remark. “How?”
“Mr. Barnard here tells me that you can explain everything and anything, so I don’t need to tell you,” said Hez agreeably.
ARTHUR chose to feel offended again.
“Very well,” he said coldly. “I was only trying to take a short cut. I haven’t the slightest doubt that I can find by myself all the explanation needed. I certainly shan’t trouble you for any further explanations about anything.”
He stalked on.
Sullivan’s dog ambled across his path and settled comfortably against an ashcan. It was smoking, placidly, a large briar pipe.
Seth heard Arthur gulp but he went on.
Mrs. Aldley came down the road. She stopped Arthur.
“What’s this I hear about someone tampering with the statue in the market square?”
Arthur could not seem to find words. Seth could see his fingers weaving and interweaving in agony behind his back. She lost patience with his mute misery and pushed past him. She saw Seth. Worse, Seth saw her—and was stricken dumb in his turn.
For the bespectacled and shrewish Mrs. Aldley had a beautiful black mustache like Groucho Marx. But this one was not painted on. It looked very real.
Mrs. Aldley repeated her question with acerbity to Seth. He felt lost. He gestured weakly towards Hez. Mrs. Aldley transferred the gimlet gaze so reminiscent of her husband.
“Do you know what happened?”
Hez answered mildly, “It’s a long story. Come to my lecture tonight at the movie house. By the way, has your husband been home lately?”
Mrs. Aldley was taken aback momentarily. How did this hobo know of her husband?
“No, he went—”
“Madam, you are wasting precious time going in this direction. Your husband is marooned in Carter’s store. He can’t find any pants to fit him. You’d better take his Sunday best along.
Hez took Seth’s arm and steered him past the astonished woman. Seth got a grip on himself.
“Spoil-sport,” he accused.
Arthur was walking just ahead with an uncharacteristic slow and hesitant gait. He looked like a man who hears an enemy bomber overhead and can’t decide whether to carry on and keep his dignity or duck and run. He was tensed up.
So, when the next telegraph pole he approached very suddenly covered itself with bark, sprouted arms thick with needle-leaves and cones and became a beautiful pine, he leapt back a good yard.
He looked back at the pair undecidedly. Then he got stiff-necked again and went on. But he walked well out around the new-born tree.
“He’s shaken,” said Seth delightedly.
Old man Smith came down the road in his buggy. He waved to Arthur. Arthur raised his hand to return the salute. And old man Smith, his buggy and the dappled mare all shrank together to something the size of a man’s hand.
This time Seth jumped back as well. It was a shock to see someone you’d known since you were a kid shrink to a mannikin the size of a lead soldier, sitting in a buggy comparable to a matchbox and driving a horse no bigger than a mouse.
Then, abruptly, man, horse and vehicle shot again like elastic—back to normal size.
Smith pulled up. He seemed to be choking. He had nearly swallowed his dentures. He got them straight. He addressed the pedestrians.
“A darn fool trick to spring up like that! You might have frightened Nellie. Giddap.”
Nellie bore him away.
“A matter of relativity,” remarked Hez. “He thought we all grew upwards instead of him growing downwards.”
“What does he think I am—a jack-in-the-box or Alice in Wonderland?” asked Seth. “The natives here are so wrong-headed they’d blame Columbus for bringing his danged furriners here.”
Arthur came wandering back and joined them. “By the way,” he remarked absently to Hez as if he really had something else more important on his mind, “I’ll come to your lecture tonight.”
He didn’t put a toe in front of them after that.
CHAPTER III
Atoms at Play
BY EVENING Peterville had changed.
Green lawns, shady trees, bright flowers were appearing everywhere out of the hot dust. Every hut, shack and house acquired a coat of new paint. A swimming pool, full of blue water, flashed into being in the center of a plot of wasteland.
All the natives were out and about seeing the new sights and waiting expectantly for more. Dollar bills fluttered here and there about the main street. But anyone trying to grab one would find that a providential gust of wind would always blow it away from his reaching fingers.
Seth, Arthur and Hez squatted on the porch, watching the street scene. Samuel Angell went by, chasing a hundred dollar bill. fluttered through the air, dodging his hands like a butterfly. On the back of his shirt, apparently unknown to him, was pinned a notice—WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
The bill came to rest in the dust. Sam stopped, judged his distance and dived headlong for it. Something went wrong with the dive. It continued on and up, like a plane taking off. And deposited him, shouting, on the roof of the Elite. A streamer banner broke from his neck and advised—COME AND HEAR THE DOC. HERE TONIGHT.
“Your advertising campaign’s pretty good, Hez,” said Seth. “Any use asking you how it’s done?”
“You’ll have to guess for the present,” said Hez, smilingly watching an impromptu rescue party struggling with a long ladder to reach Sam. Seth watched too. There was plenty of laughter and ribaldry at Sam’s expense.
“The yokels are taking it all surprisingly well,” he admitted. “I thought they’d all be belly-aching about the end of the world or sump’n. But they seem to be enjoying it.”
“Even a yokel likes to get out of the rut sometimes,” said Arthur. “And heaven knows things are bouncing out of their ruts good and plenty. See Sam there. Levitation. I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. And yet there was always good evidence for it. Particularly in the case of the medium, Daniel Home.”
“Tush, what’s this?” quizzed Seth. “Ultra-conservative scientist goes all psychic?”
“Well, I don’t know. There’s a pretty solid body of evidence for the phenomena of poltergeists, apports and—”
“Poltergeists? Apports? Most unscientific!” jibed Seth.
Arthur went red. “Darn it—so’s all this unscientific!” he exploded, waving a hand to embrace all Peterville and its events. An empty half-pint milk bottle immediately materialized in the hand. He stopped, stared at it, set it down.
“Clever,” applauded Seth. “Quickness of the hand, eh?”
“I usually do it with a quart bottle, full,” said Arthur, gruffly. But he put both hands in his pockets.
“Poltergeists, apports,” resumed Seth. “That’s only calling ’em names. It doesn’t explain anything.”
Arthur became conveniently deaf and absorbed in watching Pete Hawkins zig-zagging happily down the road and requesting loudly not to be fenced in. He was flourishing an inexhaustible beer-can, like Hez’s.
“You boys better go in and see the movie if you want to hear my lecture,” remarked Hez. “There’s going to be a packed house. You won’t get in if you go late.”
“What about you?” asked Seth.
“Oh, I’ll get in all right.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Seth. “But those clothes are hardly the wear—”
“I’m having Judge Aldley’s dress suit,” beamed Hez. “It’s all arranged. Only Aldley doesn’t know about it.”
“That’ll please him,” said Seth, rising. “Come on, Arthur, let’s take a look at the movie.”
THEY only just got in. The place was jammed with a come-early-and-avoid-the-rush crowd. The movie was an ancient musical, not even colored—not at first. It became colored after the second reel, three-dimensional after the fourth and, in the last reel, the two dancing stars stepped out of the screen and, in person, did a rumba on the small cramped stage.
The natives regarded all this contentedly. They thought it all part of the movie. Hollywood was still the real miracle town to them.
The show ended. It was 10:30. Crowds were hammering at the doors outside, trying to get in. But the audience inside stayed put. Joe Budd, the owner-manager, came on the stage hesitantly, looking worried. Everyone cheered.
“Look here, folks,” he said, earnestly. “I don’t know anything about this here Physical man. I ain’t seen him at all. He never—”
He was interrupted by more cheers. Hez came waddling on the stage, looking like a circus clown. He had jammed his bulk into a dress suit designed for Aldley’s tall spare frame. Seams were splitting, buttons were gone and the pants hung in folds around his ankles. He wore his usual broad smile.
Seth nudged Arthur. “Look at Sourpuss watching him,” he whispered.
Aldley was sitting in the third row, staring with a disdainful sneer at the comic figure on the stage.
“He’d look even happier if he knew that that was his dress suit,” said Seth. Arthur gave a snorting laugh.
Joe Budd gave a rough imitation of a man introducing the speaker to the audience—which wasn’t bad considering he’d never seen Hez before. He procured a little table with a water carafe on it and scuttled off. The audience quieted, waited expectantly.
“My friends,” said Hez, grasping his lapels. “You want to know what in creation is happening to Peterville these days. Well, the little things called atoms are at the root of it. Let’s talk about atoms for a while.”
He had a gift for making simple pictures clear to simple minds. He went from Democritus, through Newton, Dalton, Maxwell to Rutherford. Moreover, he held his audience. Then he got on to Bohr and indeterminacy. That was more difficult.
“Science can’t really get a grip on these electrons at all. It’s like a blindfold man with oily hands and something on his mind, trying to seize a sliver of wet soap in a bathtub of dirty water. It can find no reason for any electron to be at any one point in its orbit, nor for it to be in any particular orbit, nor for that orbit to be in any one plane.
“In fact, electrons give all the evidence of acting just as they darn well please. Let us accept that evidence. They do go where they please. Why? Because they have the free will to do so. Just as all you people have. And for the same reason that you have. They are conscious, self-governing individuals.”
ARTHUR looked at Seth and rolled his eyes up in disgust.
“And I thought he was getting somewhere,” he muttered. “He is nuts after all.”
Hez beamed at him as if he had heard him.
He went on, “Mathematicians find that to do any advanced calculations on electrons they have to use at least four-dimensional mathematics. Because the electron, in entirety, exists in a complex world of many dimensions. We only perceive a minute part of it in this world of three dimensions. And every electron is part of a living and thinking creature moving with free will.”
“Nonsense,” muttered Arthur. At least, he meant to mutter. But one of those things happened. It was as though an invisible megaphone were placed at his lips. His voice boomed through the hall. Everyone turned to look at him.
“Our friend here doesn’t agree,” said Hez, absent-mindedly sipping a glass of water. He set it down hastily with distaste, took out his beer-can and had a swig.
“Very well, sir,” he went on. “You agree that the atoms of all substances are in constant motion, darting about in all directions? Good. Then you agree that it is within the laws of chance that at any moment all the atoms of some substance may happen to dart in the same direction at the same time? And that the effect will be that the object moves of itself in that direction?”
“Very unlikely,” grunted Arthur.
“But it is possible?”
Arthur nodded reluctantly.
“Well, what is happening in Peterville is that some bunches of atoms composing things around us are taking it into their heads to do things together. They draw closer together—the object shrinks in size. And vice versa. They cause liquids, solids, gases to transmute themselves into other combinations of elements.
