A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  The reason was that the loud speaker in Remington Solander’s tomb would not carry that far; it was not strong enough. So we went to the executors of his estate and ran up against another snag—nothing in the radio outfit in the tomb could be altered in any way whatever. That was in the will. The same loud speaker had to be maintained, the same wave-length had to be kept, the same makes of batteries had to be used, the same style of tubes had to be used. Remington Solander had thought of all that. So we decided to let well enough alone—it was all we could do anyway. We bought the farms that were reached by the loud speaker and had them surveyed and laid out in lots—and then the thing happened!

  Yes, sir, I’ll sell my cemetery stock for two cents on the dollar, if anybody will bid that much for it. For what do you think happened? Along came the Government of the United States, regulating this radio thing, and assigned new wave-lengths to all the broadcasting stations. It gave Remington Solander’s endowed broadcasting station WZZZ an 855-meter wave-length, and it gave that station at Dodwood—station PKX—the 327-meter wave-length, and the next day poor old Remington Solander’s tomb poured fourth “Yes, We Ain’t Got No Bananas” and the “Hot Dog” jazz and “If You Don’t See Mama Every Night, You Can’t See Mama At All,” and Hink Tubbs in his funny stories, like “Well, one day an Irishman and a Swede were walking down Broadway and they see a flapper coming towards them. And she had on one of them short skirts they was wearing, see? So Mike he says ‘Gee be jabbers, Ole, I see a peach.’ So the Swede he says lookin’ at the silk stockings, ‘Mebby you ban see a peach, Mike, but I ban see one mighty nice pair.’ Well, the other day I went to see my mother-in-law—”

  You know the sort of program. I don’t say that the people who like them are not entitled to them, but I do say they are not the sort of programs to loud-speak from a tomb in a cemetery. I expect old Remington Solander turned clear over in his tomb when those programs began to come through. I know our board of trustees went right up in the air, but there was not a thing we could do about it. The newspapers gave us double pages the next Sunday—“Remington Solander’s Jazz Tomb” and “Westcote’s Two-Step Cemetery.” And within a week the inmates of our cemetery began to move out. Friends of people who had been buried over a hundred years came and moved them to other cemeteries and took the headstones and monuments with them, and in a month our cemetery looked like one of those Great War battlefields—like a lot of shell-holes. Not a man, woman or child was left in the place—except Remington Solander in his granite tomb on top of the high knoll. What we’ve got on our hands is a deserted cemetery.

  They all blame me, but I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is groan—every morning I grab the paper and look for the PKX program and then I groan. Remington Solander is the lucky man—he’s dead.

  1926

  THE TALKING BRAIN

  M.H. Hasta

  THE possibility of maintaining life in an organ separated from the body to which it belongs is claimed to have been approached by Dr. Flexner, a celebrated scientist. The insertion of tissue from one live animal into another, even the transfusion of blood, which of course, is comparatively simple, suggests endless possibilities to the creative surgeon. And in this story, our author depicts such a surgeon—a wonderful genius, wrapt up in his science, self-contained, aloof from the rest of humanity—and tells of his work upon living subjects and leads to a denouement that is only reached at the very end of the story, which compares favorably with Edgar A. Poe’s tales. It is an interesting successor to the wonderful story, “ ‘The Case of M. Valdemar.”

  The Beginning of a Strange Story—A Friendless Scientist

  THE death of the student Vinton, and Professor Murtha’s suicide following, brought the University a good deal of unwelcome prominence. In fact, the newspapers demanded investigation; and President Archer asked me to prepare a statement of the facts for general publication, because I know them better than anyone now living.

  Circumstances forced me into the very heart of the affair. I am glad of the opportunity to explain it, for my own name was rather unpleasantly mentioned on recent front pages. I worked with Murtha for months; perhaps I helped him somewhat in developing the remarkable instruments which tempted him to crime; I introduced him to Vinton; I was with him the night of his death, and heard his confession; and for the validity of his notes I am his sole witness to science. It is said that I was his only friend.

  This last is not quite true. Murtha had no friends—he was not a man who could or would undertake the ordinary human relations. Up to his last days he was self-sufficient—impersonal—official—unbendingly scientific. The first evening I met him an incident occurred which illustrates very well why he was rather outside the general fellowship of the faculty.

  We were introduced at the club by Jedney, Murtha’s department head. “Here’s a new chap we’re extra proud to have in the psychology department,” he said, and then with a twinkle, “Look out for him, Harvey, for he’s dabbling with your specialty and he’ll show up all of us old boys if we don’t hustle.” He went on to say the usual amiable things about my electrical work and the more recent X-ray research with crystals. Then he moved away leaving us together.

  I made conversation, since Professor Murtha seemed inclined to leave me the duty and I studied him. He was ill-at-ease.

  There was clearly no humor there, for he made no attempt to respond to Jedney’s joviality. He was of medium height, with rather an academic face beneath red hair, and his speech was clipped and formal. He dressed with almost conspicuous quietness. A typical assistant professor, you might judge from the description—and yet somehow the man was set off from the rest of us as an arrow is distinguished in a rack of walking sticks. It was not poise or strength, it was rather a kind of fierce concentration on some hidden purpose. It was the most noticeable thing about him.

  Testing the Psychological Reactions Unknown to the Subject of the Experiment

  WE talked of trivialities, and then I rose to go. Uninvited, he was beside me at once, with a light flowing step, and we passed out onto the dimming campus beneath the sturdy elms. Opposite Carson Hall he said in a hesitant way, which he seemed to try to make cordial, “Could you come up to my rooms for a few minutes, Professor Harvey?. I’d like very much to have your help with this new electro-neural work I’m undertaking. Professor Jedney says you know more about the action of weak electric currents than anyone else on this side of the Atlantic. I want to ask a few questions.”

  I was idle that evening, and I went. He installed me by an open fire—it was September, but chilly—and left me, after pushing a box of cigarettes to my elbow. I had time to receive an impression of austere richness—handsome books, the glint of mahogany, etchings—before he returned with a small box that trailed wires. He set it on the table beside me, took the chair opposite, and lighted a cigarette.

  The box contained a galvanometer with a recording dial, and two wrist straps were in the circuit. He explained that he wanted to get some records of the body’s resistance to electric currents, and asked if I would mind his taking one while we talked. All that was required was that I should wear the straps. I consented.

  We discussed currents and resistances. He spoke intelligently, and betrayed a good knowledge of the physical side of the subject, although he was weak in mathematics. It was interesting to see how he came to life in the talk. Shyness and self-consciousness vanished as soon as he spoke of technicalities. He was vital, interested, assured. But suddenly he seemed to remember something. He checked himself, rose, and picked a book from the table near at hand. It fell open to a familiar passage.

  The Shakespearean Test

  “THERE’S something I’d like to read you,” he said AJL abruptly. We had been talking about hysteresis and Steinmetz’s formulae, and I blinked a bit with surprise when he began to read from Shakespeare—the scene in “King John” where little Prince Arthur pleads with Hubert for his eyesight. The King, you remember, has ordered Hubert to blind the chi
ld. Some of the passages are so poignant they hurt.

  “Arthur: Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?

  Hubert: Young boy, I must.

  Arthur: And will you?

  Hubert: And I will.

  Arthur: Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,

  I knit my handkercher about your brows,

  (The best I had, a princess wrought it me)

  And I did never ask it you again.

  And with my hand at midnight held your head,

  And like the watchful minutes to the hour,

  Still and anon cheered up the heavy time.”

  They were two suffering people together, man and boy—the one with his terror of the flaming iron, and the other with his memory of the child’s gentleness and helplessness, and his dread of seeing forever the blackened, empty sockets under the smooth boyish forehead—and going to his grave with the smell of searing flesh in his nostrils. It is no wonder Hubert’s voice shook as he answered the Prince’s question,

  “Is there no remedy?

  Hubert: None, but to lose your eyes.

  Arthur: O, heaven! that there were but a mote in yours,

  A grain of dust, a gnat, a wandering hair,

  Any annoyance in that precious sense!

  Then feeling what small things are boisterous there,

  Your vile intent must needs seem horrible!”

  It is easy to be brutal at a distance—but to hurt something small and helpless is enough to make a man detest himself.

  “Let me not hold my tongue! Let me not, Hubert,

  Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,

  So I may keep mine eyes. O spare mine eyes!”

  I have never seen the play on the stage, but I can imagine the sigh of relief that flutters over an audience when Hubert breaks down and exclaims, “I will not touch thine eyes!” And the boy’s reply comes like a benediction, “Ah, now you look like Hubert! All this while you were disguised!”

  I had forgotten Murtha and everything in fact but Prince Arthur—when suddenly the reading stopped. Lifting the galvanometer lid Murtha removed the disc of paper, on which was scratched a wavering line.

  A Discussion of the Result of the Test

  “SEE,” he said as he took several similar discs from a table drawer. “Here are some pictures of sympathy. You know, I suppose, that the body’s resistance to electricity varies with its emotional state? I couldn’t let you know I was planning a test or you’d have been on your guard—but the light current I sent through you while I was reading made a chart which tells how responsive you are to appeals of this sort.”

  I stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or be irritated at his casual trespass on the emotional privacy of a stranger, his guest. This was science with a vengeance! But he laid the last record beside the others, carefully noting my name and the date, and went on placidly, “Here is President Archer’s reaction to that same passage—” evidently I was not alone!—“and this is Cardy’s—and this is De Grasse’s. Notice the excitable Latin temperament in that sharp down-swing. This one I got from the boy who cleans up my laboratory. By the way, come and let me show you the place I’ve fixed up to work in.”

  What could I say? He was so simple, so naive about it all! I tried a question as I rose to follow him, “Have you ever tested yourself, Murtha? What does that passage mean to you? Nothing more than material for an experiment?”

  “No one could test himself that way—an emotion alters when you try to watch it. I like the scene well enough. It’s a fine piece of writing. Perhaps I do seem pretty cold-blooded about it, but that is because I’ve been over it so often and I know it all so well. Now here is my work table, with water and gas and electrical connections, and this is a small lathe—” and he was off on the subject of his workroom.

  It was an admirable place—light, clean, well-equipped. There were sinks and tables, glass cabinets full of glittering instruments, a hood with a fan for exhausting gases. In one corner, on a pedestal, was a life-sized head and bust in wax-work—which I took to be one of those cheerful models anatomists and psychologists have to indicate the structure of the head, brain, and the muscular and nervous systems. Beside it an electrical transformer gave him a wide range of voltages; dark shades and a battery of powerful lights with reflectors and color screens put the lighting in his control. There was even an operating table rolled against the wall. I was impressed, and said so; and he was very evidently pleased.

  But as I left, I wondered about a man who could traffic thus in his associates’ personal feelings with such scant apology, and who could think that that terrible scene was merely fine writing. I agreed with Page in the Department of History, who said to me next day, “The man’s too damned scientific for my tastes. He told me life was simply another form of energy. I’ve met men who said they were mechanists, but I never met one who acted the part as thoroughly as Murtha!” I related my experience of the night before, and Page grinned. “That is just what Archer said—and Cardy—and several more. He’s impartial, anyway.”

  He was. He treated us all alike, and all rather as if we were laboratory animals. He sought me out and set himself to cultivate me with earnest thoroughness; but he had no idea of how to go about it. I could not help realizing that he wanted me near him mainly for what I knew of the electrical science he required. He had none of the tact or intuition which might have concealed his selfishness; he hardly knew how to make his contacts agreeable. As a human being, I never touched him.

  More About Professor Murtha, the Strange Scientist

  I TRIED to. Having seats for a symphony concert, I invited him to go with Mrs. Harvey and myself, but he excused himself—and when we came home we saw the lights burning late in his laboratory. I took him around to one of the Wednesday evening bridge gatherings of the men of the faculty, at the club; but he pleaded ignorance of the game, escaped early, and never came again. He even avoided the baseball games. Perhaps it was partly from shyness, and a fear of human contacts; partly from pride, and an arrogant exclusiveness; but chiefly, I think, from a genuine enthusiasm for his research.

  I learned a little of his history while we worked together. He had been sent to medical school by a wealthy uncle—had gained the love of scientific investigation, and had accomplished enough in his ordinary classes to gain his degree—had spent several miserable years as a general practitioner in the country, paying as little attention as possible to his patients, and heartily disliked by most of them—and had suddenly come into wealth on the death of the uncle. Freedom and leisure he turned to account, and he was already a man of note when Jedney introduced us that first evening. He was two-sided—daring and aggressive in his work, thorough and patient and precise, but shy, awkward, inept in everyday matters.

  Only once did I detect evidence of real emotion, when a speaker at the commencement exercises paid a tribute to science. It was commonplace enough—Huxley said it all better years before; but I happened to glance at Murtha, and was amazed to see how his eyes were shining. In the crowd moving out at the end, we came together, and he spoke to me almost breathlessly, “Wasn’t that great? There’s a man who sees truly, Harvey—he knows! Science is food and drink, it is rest and work, it is life itself to me! You people who can work and stop——” he broke off, flushed and moved away in silence. I had not the heart to follow him and point out that the speaker was a politician, a professional orator who knew neither science nor scientists—inexpensive and sentimental.

  But Murtha was sincere. There are people who can love an abstraction that way—who can fling their own egotisms into a cause, and forget themselves for it, and I believed he was one of them. He had his limitations. Even the memory of his tragic end has not wiped out the general enjoyment of his reply when someone asked him something about the Lion of Lucerne.[*] “I know absolutely nothing about zoology,” he said.

  In his laboratory, however, he was inspired as a great actor is before an audience. My own work was in one
of those stages of routine checking important in all research, but leaving the mind free; and Murtha’s daring hypotheses attracted me. I disliked him—but the problems he offered were fascinating.

  Experiments in Vivisection—a Selenium Retina

  DURING the autumn we restored something very like sight to a blind rabbit. A student named Vinton had volunteered for experiment; but we were uncertain how the voltages we used would affect the nervous system, and it seemed best to try first with the rabbit. I didn’t enjoy the blinding of the poor little beast—it reminded me most unpleasantly of little Prince Arthur, in its patient helplessness—but Murtha was briskly efficient, and had no qualms. With selenium as the basis of an artificial retina, we were able to make the creature turn toward the light, and even follow an electric torch about a darkened room. Later we planned to conduct tests with Vinton, who would be able to describe his sensations.

  Sight investigations were therefore postponed, and we took up hearing. By means of a series of Helmholz resonators we built artificial ears tuned to cover two octaves, and had just finished them when fortune favored us. A trepanning case at Fairchild hospital gave Murtha the chance to set his electrodes directly on an exposed human brain, transmitting sound over his wires and past nature’s ordained channels direct to the center of consciousness. To me it was uncanny—although it was nothing to what followed later.

  Perhaps his triumph in this case gave him his dreadful idea. At any rate, he flung himself into the work more savagely than ever, and hardly took time away for meals and sleep. He had but one advanced class that year, and no elementary work, so that almost the whole day (and night) belonged to the work he loved. Also, such had been our progress that he could go on with only occasional assistance from me.