A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  I tried again, a certain uncanny feeling still possessing me. Oh, for the inventive powers of a Frenchman, in order to begin the conversation naturally!

  “That was a fine speech by Mr. Chamberlain yesterday evening.”

  “Yes,” the delicate feminine voice again replied; “I didn’t read it all, but the beginning and the end were very good, weren’t they?”

  Again the same eerie feeling came over me, followed as before by the conviction that some trickery must be at the bottom of this most unparalleled experience.

  I tried yet a third time, determined to watch Moore’s face during the whole operation.

  “It looks as if there’ll be war between China and Japan,” I said rather inanely.

  “Yes, and I fancy Japan will win,” replied the voice, precisely at the same moment as Moore was saying:

  “Two to one on the little ’un.”

  I was convinced by that. No human being ever spoke two sentences precisely at the same instant. Either there was somebody else in the room, or Moore had succeeded, marvellously succeeded. He had made an instrument that could not only imitate the tones of the human voice, but could keep up a conversation as constantly, if not as wittily, as Miss Notable and Mr. Neverout in Swift’s “Polite Conversation.”

  “Satisfied, old fellow?” said Moore, rising from his chair and coming toward me.

  “My dear fellow,” I said, “I know you are incapable of deception. But this is extraordinary. I never heard anything like it.”

  “No, more did I,” he replied with pardonable vanity, “until a week or so ago. I had tried all kinds of devices to make the thing answer sensibly; she would answer, of course, long ago, but I wanted her to behave like a lady, not like a lunatic.”

  “So you mean your automaton to be a lady, do you? “

  “Yes,” he replied, drawing closer. “And I want her to be a lady that would deceive anyone. Not a thing that can only act when lifted into a chair, or stuck up on a platform; but a creature that will guide herself, answer questions, talk and eat like a rational being—in fact, perform the part of a society lady as well as the best bred of them all.”

  “Moore,” I said, “you must be mad.”

  “Mad or not, I mean to try it. See here. Here is another automaton that can walk, eat, turn its head, shut its eyes. That is common enough. Here is the brain power, the ‘antiphonograph’ that can speak and hear—indeed, do anything but think. What is wanted but that the two should be combined?”

  “My dear fellow,” I answered, “it is easy to talk like that. I am a materialist, and would grant you more than most; but even in my view the brain is more than a mere machine. A man guides himself; you have to guide this automaton. How are you to get inside her and make her do all these things together at the proper time?

  “Take a very simple example; your thing has to be sure to open its mouth when it speaks. How are you to insure that the process which causes it to open its mouth, and the process which causes certain words to be uttered, shall take place simultaneously? Suppose the thing to say, ‘I will sit down,’ how are you to insure that, at the proper moment, she shall go through the proper motions involved in sitting down? Remember, an error of half a second in your mysterious clockwork may make all the difference between your lady occupying a dignified position in a chair and sprawling ingloriously on the floor.

  “Why, think of the actions of but five minutes. She rises from a chair, she avoids the toes of the ladies and gentlemen in the room, she bows to a gentleman, she smiles—more or less hypocritically—at a lady, she makes a bon-mot, she laughs at somebody else’s bon-mots; she even blows her nose. What countless simultaneous processes, not one of which must go wrong!”

  Moore heard me through.

  “Plausible enough,” he said, when I had finished; “we shall soon see who is right.”

  “Who was it,” he went on, “who lectured so vigorously on the folly of certain women of our time, and talked so largely about their utter inanity? ‘The Society woman of our time,’ you proclaimed, ‘what is she but a doll? Her second-hand opinions, so daintily expressed, would not a parrot speak them as well?’ You meant that for metaphor and eloquence, old fellow, and yet you object to my proving that it is all literal truth.”

  “Prove it first,” I said.

  “Only give me time,” he answered. “But before you go,” he said, with a sudden impulse, as he saw me nearing the door, “for Heaven’s sake not a word of this until I give you leave.”

  “Make your mind easy,” I replied, “a doctor knows how to keep a secret. When your lady goes out of order, send for a bottle of my emulsion, and I’ll engage she’ll trouble you no more.”

  During the next few months, I often thought of Moore and his hallucination; the picture of the poor fellow engaged on a hopelessly mad task often rose before my mind. I pitied him greatly. “Another fine brain wasted,” I used to say. “A man that more than rivalled Edison spending the best years of his life over a mad chimera!”

  I urged rest, a sea voyage, anything to cure him of his brain-sick folly. But he met me always with one reply: “Rest then; not before.” Rest in the grave, poor fellow, I thought, as I noted his hectic cheek and staring bones. His fiery soul was fretting his body to decay.

  At last, more than a year after our last conversation, amid the heap of letters lying on my table at breakfast, I came upon one that startled me. It was from Arthur Moore, short, but to the point.

  “Success at last; come when you can.”

  As soon as my round of visits was finished, I drove to his rooms. Mounting the stairs, I was ushered into the room by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen; a creature with fair hair, bright eyes, and a doll-like childishness of expression.

  “Can he have married?” I thought, as I looked at her. “How is Mr. Moore?” I said aloud.

  “Poorly to-day,” she replied. “He will be here in a minute.”

  Where and when had I heard that voice before? I seemed to know it, and yet I could not associate it with anybody. But I had no time to be perplexed, for in two or three seconds Moore appeared, looking ghastly and deathlike in his pallor.

  “You are ill,” I said, when the first greeting was over. “You have been overstraining yourself. You must really rest, or you will kill yourself.”

  “Yes, I must,” he replied; “and I think I shall. It has been toilsome work. But I think it was worth it, don’t you?”

  “How should I know?” I answered. “I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Yes, you have,” he said, smiling in spite of the pain that he must have been feeling.

  I looked around, bewildered. J could see nothing but the same old room, and the strange girl sitting in an easy chair in the corner.

  “You are mysterious,” I said.

  “Wait a moment,” said Moore. Then, turning to the girl, he spoke a little louder.

  “It looks as if there has been war between China and Japan,” he said.

  Again those clear, distinct, delicate tones, as the answer came.

  “Yes, and I fancy Japan has won.”

  I saw it all now. That beautiful, lady-like girl that had ushered me into the room, whom I had taken for his wife, was an automaton! That doll-like expression was due to the fact that she was a doll. I was utterly astounded. Moore sat by, enjoying my bewilderment; for a moment his weakness left him.

  “Come here,” he said to the automaton.

  The lady arose, after one second of apparent indecision, and approached him.

  “Let me introduce to you Dr. Phillips,” he said.

  The lady smiled approval. (To this day I have never understood how Moore had managed to produce that smile—that fatal monotonous, fascinating smile.)

  “Dr. Phillips, Miss Amelia Brooke.”

  The lady bowed, and extended her hand.

  “I am most happy to meet one of whom I have so often heard,” she said.

  Could it be a reality? I felt more and more staggered. The lady
stood perfectly still, her hands clasped before her. This fair creature not of flesh and blood? Impossible!

  “You may go,” said Moore.

  The thing moved back to her place, and sat down.

  “What do you think of her?” he said aloud.

  Before answering, I looked round to see where she was.

  “Don’t mind,” he said laughing; “she can’t hear. I often have that feeling myself. You may discuss her as you please, and she won’t be offended. She has one merit other women haven’t; she is not touchy; but she has a failing the best of them have not; she can’t blush. On the whole, however, I prefer her.”

  “I am still almost incredulous,” I replied; “indeed, until I have dissected her, and found pulleys instead of a liver, and eccentrics instead of a spleen, I shall hardly believe she isn’t a woman in reality.”

  “You can easily do so,” he said. “Come here, Amelia.”

  The creature rose, and came forward.

  “Let Dr. Phillips see your arm,” he said.

  The lady showed me her arm, and turned up her sleeve. It did not need a moment’s inspection to show me that this was not an arm of flesh and blood. What it actually was made of Moore would not tell me.

  “Better than a waxwork figure, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Much better,” I replied. “Might deceive anyone but a doctor.”

  Passing my hand down to her wrist, I noted an exactly-moving pulse. So wonderfully was the human pulse imitated, that I believe anybody but one, like myself, trained to accurate discrimination would have been deluded. I could not refrain from expressing my admiration.

  “Yes,” said Moore, “she will often have her arms bare, and there may be a good deal of hand-pressing and that sort of thing; so that I thought I ought to have everything right.”

  “Does her heart beat, too?” I asked.

  “No,” he said; “I wanted the space for other mechanism, so she has to do without a heart altogether. Besides,” he added, smilingly, “I wanted her to be a Society lady.”

  “The thing will be worth thousands to you,” I said, when I had finished the examination of the. creature’s cutaneous covering. “It is uncanny enough, and I can’t say I like it, but it will draw. What a pity Barnum has gone! He would have given you a million pounds for it.”

  Moore rose angrily.

  “Do you think I will sell my own life-power for money?” he cried. “That thing has cost me at least ten years of my life, and she shall never be exhibited like a two-headed nightingale, or a creature with its legs growing out of its pockets! She shall walk drawing-rooms like a lady, or I will break her to pieces myself!”

  “My dear fellow,” I said, “you are overexcited and ill. Surely you cannot know what you are saying?”

  “I know well enough,” he answered doggedly. “I have made a lady, you can’t deny it; and a lady she shall be.

  “Phillips,” he went on, all the force of his character coming out in his face, “I am determined that she shall be the beauty of the season. She shall eclipse them all, I tell you. What are they but dolls? and she is more than a doll; she is me. I have breathed into her myself, and she all but lives; she understands and knows! Come, promise me you will not betray me.”

  “Of course I will not,” I said; “but you must give up this mad scheme. Consider, as an automaton she will make you for life; as a lady she will be found out in five minutes, and you will be laughed at. For your own sake pause.’

  “Listen,” he said fiercely. “You call her an automaton. I tell you she is alive. See!” He called the thing to him.

  “Amelia,” he said, “I have made you, and you are mine. Are you grateful?”

  The creature smiled—the one smile she possessed, which she had, as I knew afterwards, for prince or peasant, man or maid.

  “I can never forget what I owe you,” she replied.

  “Kiss me, then,” he said.

  The thing bent down and kissed him obediently.

  “You see,” he cried,

  “is that an automaton?

  Now, will you introduce her to Society as a lady?

  “For the present she is perfect. I have taught her French—drawing-room French, I mean—and three songs.

  She can enter a room, bow, smile, and dance.

  If, with these accomplishments, she can’t oust the other dolls and turn them green with jealousy for one season,

  I am much surprised.

  Now, will you help me?”

  I tried to enter a feeble protest, but he overbore me.

  You ask how; I cannot tell. Call it magic—anything you like; but it overbore me, I yielded; I promised my assistance.

  We sat like two mischief-making children far into the small hours of the night, plotting how we could carry out the plan best. Moore had enslaved me, body and mind; I was carried away in a kind of drunken enthusiasm, and almost as feverishly excited as Moore himself. Nothing would now have stopped me. Would Frankenstein have paused the very hour before his creature took life? As for Moore, I believe he would have gone on with his designs in the very midst of the thunders of the Judgment Day itself.

  Why should I linger over the early triumphs of our Phantasm? I was a fashionable doctor; I brought Miss Amelia Brooke out as a niece of mine. The Countess of Lorimer, one of my patients, undertook to pilot her through the first shoals of real life.

  Never shall I forget that first evening. Scarcely had she entered the room—it was at Mrs. Vandeleur’s—when the eyes of all seemed, as if by magic, to be turned towards her. Exquisitely dressed, with a proud demeanour, with the step of a queen, she swept into the ball-room. She w-as my niece; I ought to have been proud of her, but I hated her with an intense loathing. Moore could do much with me, but he could not make me like this creature. Yet I was bound in nature to do all I could for her.

  “Who is she?” said young Harry Burton to me. “By Jove, she looks like a born queen.”

  “You flatter me,” I replied. “She is my niece. Good Heavens,” I went on to myself, “would that she were a born anything, instead of a made doll!”

  “Oh,” rejoined Burton, “lucky man that you are! Introduce me, will you?”

  “With pleasure,” I answered.

  I took him up and introduced him. During the ceremony I watched the creature carefully. No, there was no doubt about it. Such acting would deceive the Master of the Ceremonies in the Court of Louis XIV. himself. Every motion, every word, was exactly as it should be. How on earth had Moore managed it? I was almost deceived myself. Could this be after all a real creature of flesh and blood, substituted for the Phantasm? No; that detestable, beautiful smile was there—a smile which no woman ever wore, yet which none the less would be the bane of more than one man’s existence.

  Harry Burton danced many dances with her that night. When it closed, he was head over ears in love.

  “Phillips,” he said in a brief interval, “she is divine.”

  “Fiendish, rather,” I thought. “Yes,” I said aloud, “I think she is good looking.

  “Good looking!” he cried. “What are all these painted dolls to her? They have nothing to say for themselves, they are mere bundles of conventionality; but she—she is all soul.”

  “My boy,” I said warningly, “you are evidently all heart. Be careful. Don’t do anything rash. Dance with her, talk to her—do anything but fall in love with her.”

  “Who talked of falling in love?” he said, astonished at my earnestness. “I said nothing but that she was the finest girl in the room, and so she is, by Jove!”

  At this moment a new dance began, and Burton ran off to claim his partner. I remained, absorbed in not very pleasant reflections. Things were getting involved already. Moore had only told me he was making a woman; I had never calculated that he would make a coquette. What would come of it? I sat and watched her as she danced, dancing beautifully but a little mechanically, I thought, saying always the right things, answering questions always in the same way, and wear
ing at pretty regular intervals the same detestable smile.

  If I hated her before, I hated her tenfold now. I would speak to Moore, and put an end to it. A sudden cold—ordered to the South of France—and never let her come back. Good Heavens, this creature never had a cold, never had a headache, never felt out of sorts; yet Moore said he had made a woman.

  Slowly the evening dragged to its close—the most wearisome evening I had ever spent. The creature did not seem to tire; one dance or twenty was the same to her. The monotony of it all became at length intolerable to me. At the earliest decent opportunity I took my leave.

  Moore had never been a Society man. Even to witness his own triumph he had refused to be drawn out of his retirement, and it was with a feverish eagerness that he waited for the story of her successes from my lips.

  “How did it go off?” he said anxiously, as I made my promised call to tell him.

  “As an experiment, very well,” I answered. “There was no hitch, no failure. The success was only too monotonous. Human beings sometimes put their foot in it; she never. Would to Heaven she might show now and then a little proneness to error!”

  “You are queer,” Moore answered. “Why should you grudge her her victories?”

  “Arthur,” I said, “the joke has gone quite far enough. Put a stop to it. Why go further? Think of the chances of detection—no, think of the far worse chances of success! Can’t you see that the more skilful the deception the more dangerous will its consequences be? Already, more than one young fellow has fallen head over ears in love with her. It is horrible to think of!”

  “The fools!” he said, with a rather cynical smile. “That is just the way with young fellows—never looking below the surface, looking only at the face. Why, Phillips, if they are taken in in that way they deserve to be taken in. I shall do nothing.”

  So the thing went on, new developments constantly arising. I hasten to the fatal ending.

  Among the many deserters from the shrines of other goddesses who thronged to pay their court to this new and strange divinity, two seemed to hold the divided first place in her favour. One was my young friend Harry Burton; the other was handsome, impulsive,