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THE SHORT LIFE
_The Alien had to choose--and fast--a living entity to act through.He chose ... but he made one error...._
BY FRANCIS DONOVAN
Illustrated by Rogers
I
An embryo stirred very slightly in the warm, dark womb that held it.Chemical stimuli and minute pulses of energy that were forming thecomplex proteins faltered. A catalyst failed briefly in its task, thenresumed, but the damage had been done. A vital circuit remainedincomplete, a neural path blocked. Time passed....
* * * * *
An embryo gathered in a metal womb, controlled potential building totitanic birth. A thread of wire melted under a breath of energy anda tiny, glowing light winked out. A rodentlike maintenance robot,scurrying to an unimportant repair task, saw no warning signal andcrossed a control panel from behind at the moment that a relay closedautomatically. Obliterated, the robot only briefly interfered with theproper functioning of the machine, but the damage had been done. Fora split second at a critical moment, a mighty engine reacted out ofcontrol. Time passed....
* * * * *
An embryo jerked convulsively under a frightful onslaught, strained forlife in a crowded womb while the mother's convulsions threatened it withdeath. The convulsions passed, the mother lived, the womb emptied, butthe damage had been done, a record had been cut. Time passed....
II
There are logical limits for any pretense--limits beyond which thepretense becomes demonstrably absurd. Mother-love enabled the womanHelen Douglas to evade logic up to and beyond the point of absurdity,but even mother-love is not proof against the turmoil of thesubconscious. A survival factor pried up a safety valve, and HelenDouglas found herself suddenly face to face with the admission thatshe had so desperately suppressed. She reacted with a terrible stormof weeping that shook the bed and was watched with complete disinterestby the dry-eyed imbecile beside her. Two-year-old Timothy WainwrightDouglas, congenital idiot, couldn't care less. It was nothing to himthat his mother had at last faced the ugly knowledge that her only childshould have been born dead. It was less than nothing to him that shecould almost find it in her heart to wish him dead.
* * * * *
Release from the crowded womb brought no immediate awakening from thelong sleep of gestation, for a sense of identity comes only slowly tothe very young, the new-born. He did not realize that his intellectualawakening, gradual as it seemed to him, was really extraordinarilyrapid, a matter of only two or three weeks after birth. To him, with noframe of reference, it was a time of mystery that was not recognized asmystery. At first there was only Warmth and Hunger, for which he had nonames but which he recognized by their presence or absence. There wasthe satisfying of Hunger, Sleep, and the return of Hunger. Had he beeninclined to philosophy at that tender age, he would have considered thecycle a complete and satisfying one. In a few days, however, there werelonger periods between the satisfying of Hunger and the coming ofSleep--a sort of comfortable, full-stomached reverie that was thebeginning of the end.
With astounding precocity of which he was completely unaware, he beganrapidly sorting and cataloguing noises that had previously conveyed nomeaning. He now learned to associate certain sounds with certain sourcesand place others under tentative listings while awaiting further data.Smells received the same treatment as noises and often the two could berelated. A certain smell and a certain gobbling sort of noise were oftenfollowed by a frightening swoop as he was lifted, but his eyes were notyet focused and could give him little information as to the manner orpurpose of lifting.
In his fourth week of life he began to be troubled. His little handfulof memories centered around a growing and not entirely subjectiveawareness of himself as an individual. Clearly, life could be dividedinto "me" and "not me." To have arrived at that conclusion twenty-odddays after birth was an incredible achievement. His mind was quick,but it could not reason further without a basis for logic, a systemof reference, learned data from which further data could be inferred.There was uneasiness in him, but no warning of danger; only a stirringof memory that tried to rise to the conscious level. Wonderingly heprodded the memory a little, as an inquisitive child pokes at aslow-burning firecracker or a wary pup approaches its first cat. Likethe sharp crack of a squib, the quick spit of a cat, the memory eruptedand flung him back on his mental heels.
He felt a sensation that he knew was death though he had no name forit, and his immature defenses sprang into action, tried in vain to blockthe memory, to thrust Death back into its Pandora's Box. He impeded theflood by an infinitesimal fraction of a second, and then full awarenesscame and with it an understanding of the terrible thing that hadhappened, the thing that he?--yes, _he_ had done.
The fledgling identity of "me" and "not me" sank forever intosubmergence, never to rise again.
The Short Life Page 1