A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “Beneath the temporal lobe we sever the spinal cord at the pars cervicalis.” And suiting his actions to his words, he lifted out the brain.

  Great God! The clammy thing lay on his hands now! And the demoniacal thoughts continued with even greater ferocity. The severance of the spinal cord had cut off all connections with the body—but the brain of Ali Kahn still vibrated with intense life.

  “That copper tray, Dr. Arlington,” Selkirk croaked.

  The interne eyed him wonderingly as he secured the receptacle, but said nothing. He held it while the neurologist placed the brain upon it; then he lowered it to the marble slab.

  “As you know, Dr. Arlington, the brain is covered by an external, membranous tissue called the dura mater, as well as two inner layers of tissue, the arachnoid, and the pia mater. You will note the cellular exudate or pus that fills some of the crevices between the convolutions. The disease seems to have affected the three layers of the meninges.

  “We now cut down through the lateral cerebral fissure, to separate the temporal lobe from the frontal and parietal lobes—and—and destroy its life!” With murderous vehemence, Selkirk completed the sentence.

  “What!” Dr. Arlington exclaimed. “What did you say?”

  l But Dr. Selkirk did not hear. Every faculty, every thought was concentrated on the brain of Ali Kahn. He held a double-edged knife in his hand—and the maddening thing lay before him.

  Thoughts were still flowing from it into his mind, venomous thoughts, vile blasphemies—but he would ignore them now—and kill, kill the thing! But something stayed his hand. Then, slowly, in spite of himself, the cursing of the brain arrested his thoughts.

  “You would commit murder, eh, Sahib? Ha! As I die, so shall you die! By Siva I promise it! Brahma is all—and all is Brahma!”

  Viciously the knife descended—and the thoughts ceased. The brain lay divided on the copper tray.

  “We remove some of the blood exuding from the severed edge,” Dr. Selkirk heard this robot that was his voice continue. “You can observe, Doctor, that the cranial nerves are involved, and the ventricles are distended with turbid fluid. The only other change is in the meninges.

  “Though there is little need of it, well cut through the Fissure of Rolando, and separate the frontal and parietal lobes. So far as I can see, there is no other pathology. Unquestionably cerebrospinal meningitis.”

  Mechanically Dr. Carl Selkirk removed his rubber apron and gloves. He pressed his hands against his throbbing temples. He closed his eyes and frowned heavily. Like the solemn tolling of a dirge, the words ran through his mind: “You shall die as I die! You shall die as I die!”

  “Doctor,” he said slowly, “I have a terrific headache. I’ve been working under a strain for several days and it’s beginning to take effect. I believe I’ll go home, take something to quiet my nerves, and go to bed.”

  “An excellent idea, Dr. Selkirk; you don’t quite seem to be yourself today.”

  Turning quickly away, the neurologist hurried from the room. Dr. Arlington watched him move down the corridor in a shambling run. Slowly he shook his head, a puzzled frown on his face. Queer, queer actions.

  l Dr. Carl Selkirk opened his eyes and stared fearfully into the darkness while alternating flashes of heat and cold passed over him. That ebony, claw-like hand clutching a scalpel—where was it? . . . Abruptly he relaxed, laughed shakily. Horrible dream! The Hindu, Ali Kahn, had been performing an autopsy on his living body—and he had awakened just before the dripping blade had descended into his brain! An involuntary shudder shook him.

  Long moments he lay motionless, reviewing the nerve-wracking events of the past day. Paramount in his thoughts was the autopsy of Ali Kahn; and dominating that, the phrase: “You shall die as I die. You shall die as I die.” Selkirk shook his head impatiently. It was childish of him to think of the Hindu’s curse—utterly childish—yet after a time the words began to hammer at his brain with a steady, maddening rhythm—a monotonous dirge.

  With trembling hand, Dr. Selkirk wiped the cold moisture from his forehead. Even as he did so, dreadful weakness seized him. What was wrong? He—he must be ill! Icy sweat bathed his entire shivering body—yet a flaming inferno had suddenly been loosed in his brain. Above it throbbed the curse of Ali Kahn: ‘Won shall die as I die.”

  What—what if it were so! An icicle of dread pierced the doctor’s consciousness. Perhaps—perhaps he had cerebrospinal meningitis now—his sudden weakness and chill the first symptoms. An infectious disease, he might have contracted it during his contacts with the Hindu! . . . No—it couldn’t be! Stark fear crisped his clammy skin. He—he couldn’t be on the verge of experiencing the excruciating agony that always accompanied the malady. God no!

  Feverishly he tossed and rolled, his fears growing upon him. What—what if he died! Then he’d lie on that cold slab! And they’d—they’d saw his skull—cut his brain! With the thought, his teeth bared like those of a cornered beast and a choking moan escaped him.

  Wait! With an effort that was almost physical, Dr. Carl Selkirk checked his reeling thoughts. He must not give way to these insane imaginings. He, a nerve specialist, permitting himself to draw so close to madness! Why—he had been tottering on the brink of wild and unhinged delirium.

  Delirium! His mind seized the word. Delirium—it always accompanied fever in the action of cerebrospinal meningitis! And suddenly, as though the thought were a signal, a horde of fiery imps seemed to materialize in his brain—imps who bore white-hot hammers with which they pounded against the walls of his skull—imps that were tiny replicas of Ali Kahn! And as their weapons rose and fell, they howled in unison that damnable phrase:

  “You shall die as I die!”

  Interminably the ordeal continued, while Dr. Carl Selkirk writhed in inexpressible mental torment. His limbs twisted jerkily, and his face became a mask of madness—on and on—till at length the delirium abated to some degree, leaving the physician weak and inert, his heart beating furiously, his breath coming in gasps.

  For long he lay motionless, his mind filled with a vague jumble of disjointed thoughts, while a modicum of strength returned to his fever-ridden body. At last he stirred, and with a violent effort that increased the throbbing in his head, raised himself on one elbow.

  Ideas began to stumble through his numbed brain. He was ill—seriously ill—as a physician he was certain of that. But—but he couldn’t have cerebrospinal meningitis—that wasn’t possible! Valiantly he tried to convince himself of the truth of this thought. He had fever, yes; and he seemed to be somewhat delirious—but those symptoms could be indications of numerous maladies. Besides—he clinched the argument triumphantly—he had not experienced the pain, the distortion of body that accompanied the other characteristics of the disease!

  Pain! Again the thought seemed to be a signal. For at that instant, insupportable agony seized the neurologist, twisting him into a writhing heap of tortured flesh and bone. The fever was bad, the delirium worse, but the pain—!

  l In an ecstasy of torment, Dr. Selkirk howled vile maledictions against all creation. He cursed, and prayed, and shrieked, and wept, while red hot claws encircled his brain—while cruel needles of fire burned into every cringing nerve—while some malignant force seemed to be rending skin from flesh and flesh from bone in fiendish glee. And incessantly, remorselessly, the imps that were Ali Kahn chorused the phrase: “You shall die as I die.”

  Time ceased for the neurologist. Eternal torment had fallen upon him, torment and madness and a burning fever that threatened to consume him. Yet after an endless period in Hell, a rational idea filtered into his consciousness. A doctor—he must have medical attention—at once. The thought repeated itself, doggedly. He—he must have attention.

  And suddenly, inexplicably, he was on his feet, struggling toward the light switch beside the door. He took a step—a Hell of pain—another—nauseating vertigo—a third—and the room was flooded with light.

  Ah! The telephone! Through
a red haze of delirium and torture, his eyes fixed themselves on the instrument. He must reach it—call the hospital. And while the drumming inferno of pain continued unabated, he staggered on distorted limbs across the reeling room. Awkwardly his stiffening fingers dialed a number, conjured out of the black wells of memory—jerkily, with thickened tongue, he croaked a despairing plea.

  “Carl Selkirk . . . Ambulance—at once . . . ’spinal men’gitis! . . . God’s sake, hurry!”

  With every faculty, he strove to say more, but his strength was failing rapidly. Struggling erect, he took a single faltering step toward the swaying, unnatural object he knew must be his bed—and abruptly his knees buckled under him.

  Numbness. The awful agony fading. Even the imps of delirium in his brain muting their wail. And a cloud of utter blackness eclipsed his consciousness, a cloud through which echoed in a lingering whisper, the curse of Ali Kahn:

  You shall die as I die.”

  Then even that was gone, and Dr. Carl Selkirk, neurologist, lay in a flaccid heap on the unyielding floor of his bedroom. He had entered a coma from which there would be no awakening.

  l Through the deserted streets, an ambulance sped, its bell clanging dolefully at every intersection. Within the vehicle sat Dr. Arlington and a nurse, the former anxiously surveying the drawn face of Carl Selkirk. Queer—this case. A few short hours earlier he had been working with the doctor, yet now he seemed to be in the final stages of a disease which ordinarily required days to run its course. True, some of Selkirk’s actions that afternoon had been rather strange, and he had made some cryptic and senseless remarks—but nothing to indicate that this would happen.

  Reaching the hospital, Dr. Selkirk was rushed to a private room, where the chief resident physician awaited his arrival. After the latter hastily examined the neurologist, stimulants were administered, and though the doctors felt there was little chance for Selkirk’s recovery, they withdrew a small portion of his spinal fluid and injected a serum used in treatment of the suspected disease. But the patient showed no noticeable reaction, remaining motionless and unconscious.

  Observing this, the resident physician shook his head and frowned.

  “I’m afraid it’s hopeless,” he said. “There’s nothing more we can do. He diagnosed his own case—and correctly it seems. Yet—it’s certainly queer!”

  Dr. Arlington nodded agreement.

  Two hours after his admission to the hospital, Selkirk’s respiration became stertorous, then spasmodic, weakening with every breath. And finally he died.

  Back in the morgue, on the same marble slab where Ali Kahn had lain, they performed an autopsy on the body of Dr. Carl Selkirk. When his skull was opened and his brain removed, a gasp escaped the watching physicians. For the most careful examination of the organ failed to reveal any cellular exudate or inflammation.

  Of cerebrospinal meningitis there was not the slightest trace! Yet Selkirk ha4 died—as Ali Kahn had died!

  Mighty is the power of suggestion.

  THE END

  [*] Cerebrospinal meningitis, sometimes called spotted fever, is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Meningococcus or Diplococcus intracellularis. It is .characterized by inflammation of the cerebral and spinal meninges, the membranes encasing the brain and spinal cord. In most cases, these membranes are deeply congested and opaque. Different types of exudation are found both at the base and on the convexity of the brain, especially in the fissures and along the blood vessels. The spinal meninges present similar changes, the back of the cord being particularly involved.

  The disease is always accompanied by excruciating . pain, distortion of the body, fever, and delirium.

  1935

  THE TALE OF THE ATOM

  Philip Dennis Chamberlain

  ATWAR spun his motor-chair deftly about and rolled over to the blue enameled all-metal cabinet. Pulling out a drawer he withdrew a small instrument and sped back to his slate-topped workbench. Once there he made a few adjustments in the weird machine that stood upon it.

  A weird machine it was, a jumbled mass of wires that led to a small, porcelain-like chamber within which the wires seemed to be fused into a solid mass. Above the chamber was a compound microscope of peculiar shape, with a double eyepiece and a sort of keyboard mounted on its side. There were other peculiar things about the microscope; for instance had one been able to examine it, he would have noticed that all the illumination was provided through a microscopic aperture underneath the chamber, and that the light was artificial, provided by a mercury lamp of some type and filtered through two lenses before it reached the hole. Had Atwar been in a talkative mood, which he never was, he would have explained, that the purpose of those lenses was to increase the magnifying power in a peculiar system of his own.

  Atwar was quite proud of the affair for from bottom to top it was his own invention and the thing he proposed to do with it, of course with the help of his assistants, would undoubtedly astound scientific circles if he succeeded, and he knew he would succeed.

  While he made a minor adjustment with two right hands, he prepared a pad and pencil with a left hand and reached for a bottle of small transparent crystals with the other left hand. An assistant rolled briskly into the room, one of Atwar’s four huge compound eyes turned from the instrument to him; in silence the assistant received the thought-order and sped out of the room. A second later he was back bringing with him a group of thought-readers who were to read Atwar’s mind during the experiment and to accurately record his impressions at first hand; this made it equivalent to having four separate people perform the experiment.

  Silently Atwar bent over the microscope, two huge eyes focussed upon the stage, a third was on the paper pad on which he would write the results of the experiment, while the fourth eye gazed straight at the group of thought-readers, in order to facilitate their task, for it is through the eyes that the mind is most easily read. With deft six jointed fingers he picked up a pair of tweezers and placed a minute crystal of the substance, which was in the bottle, upon the stage. He fingered a button on the keyboard and the stage became illuminated. Under the enormous magnification the myriad of wires no longer seemed fused together, rather they were seen to be skillfully woven into a fine screen of some sort and on that screen lay the crystal; he adjusted the focus.

  CAREFULLY he twisted the knobs that controlled the microscope’s adjustments, the crystal faded into vast nothingness. But was it nothingness? The blackness seemed to be filled with small, blowing points. He gave the knob another twist. Slowly materializing out of the blackness, a dull reddish ball about the diameter of a cent appeared, and about it spinning at great speed were minute specks, like grains of dust in the sunlight, or was it only his eyes? His fingers adjusted the knobs and the red ball grew to the size of a small orange, covering the whole stage. He slid the stage slightly to one side and three of the specks came into view, now as large as pinheads. By careful manipulation he counted eight, it was as he had thought; now he must finish; the committee met at seven and he wished to have a report ready. He made a rapid calculation as to what wire the atom must be over and pressed a button. There was a flash that half blinded him, but that was all; he had miscalculated. Speedily he worked out the correction on the pad by his side and pressed another button.

  * * *

  The earth was terror stricken. Men no longer rode daily to their work in the great synthetic food plants; the huge, pleasure parks were deserted, for in the year G73000 the end of the world had come at last. Panic had descended upon the earth and science was helpless. Prophets of a god who had been forgotten over seventy-eight thousand years before, (and reckoning in old time it was now the year 86,300 A.D.), were arising and proving by a forgotten volume called “The Holy Bible” that all this had been prophesied years ago and that now was the time for repentance. There arose also another and more generally followed cult which held the direct opposite of the first, namely that the end was here and now was the time for pleasure; the streets of th
e cities were the scenes of wild debaucheries, and robbery and murder were rampant. Also there was a small group which, strange to say, kept their heads. They were chiefly the great scientists of the planet, those who knew it was up to them to save the world. All day long and far into the night they worked, trying to devise schemes that stood a chance of being successful; they had all the laboratories of the world at their disposal and they worked with feverish haste, most of them even taking to a vice which had died out centuries before—dope—to keep them going; and they had to go on; if they failed the world was doomed.

  DR. ALICE NOAH was undoubtedly the head of the group, she had been head of the government laboratories for a bare two years, when the catastrophe came, but already she had a world-wide reputation and she was unanimously chosen to head the body. A part of her speech of acceptance of leadership is quoted, in order that the reader may understand the situation.

  “My colleagues,” she said, “we all realize that it is on us that the fate of the world depends; we have been called together in the eleventh hour to undertake a task it would be difficult to complete in a lifetime, and we must do it! . . . We should have taken warning three hundred years ago, when Sirius was wiped out by a strange flash, but our ancestors took no heed and now we find ourselves attacked without adequate or even partial protection. . . . We all know what is threatened, something is rapidly exploding in the sun! Unless it is stopped we have only six months left, before we shall be without a solar system, and we shall go flying out into space, a dead, cold meteorite. Ladies and gentlemen, it is up to us to see that it is stopped!!! Already the sun is showing signs of vast electrical disturbances and from Mount Wilson comes the report that a blue flame of some sort is rapidly approaching Sol, our sun. My friends, we know that flame is the same thing that destroyed Sirius and unless something is done it will do the same thing to our sun. I await your suggestions.”