Mutants

by Robert Silverberg

  “Well,” remarked the loudspeaker, with exactly Schmidt’s accent, “I guess this is the last proof necessary.”

  “Delayed rebroadcasting!” Zenoff exclaimed, his dark eyes flashing. “Say! This is something! A new phenomenon!”

  “Let’s dish this out,” spoke the loudspeaker, this time in Dee’s tones.

  Dee’s jaw dropped.

  “Why, it repeats things in a different order than we said them!” he exclaimed*

  “Fellows,” Zenoff solemnly announced, “this isn’t mere repeating! It’s something more!”

  “Huh! Perhaps the cat’s brain is still active,” scornfully sniffed Hans Schmidt.

  For about an hour the three friends sat around the dissolved dead cat, discussing what had happened, and advancing theory after theory, only to discard each one of them in turn.

  Finally Zenoff reinserted his contacts in the jar and announced, “Well, fellows, I believe that this liquid, whether on account of the cat part of it, or the filterable virus part of it, has some sort of low-order intelligence. Now I’m going to holler something at it again.”

  “Fellows,” interrupted the loudspeaker, “it is you who have the low order of intelligence. You—not I.”

  “Now the thing is improvising!” Zenoff exclaimed jubilantly.

  But, although he held the electrical contacts in place, and talked and shouted, and finally read aloud from a book for several hours, not another sound came out of the loudspeaker.

  The next morning, however, when he repeated the experiment, he got an immediate response.

  “Read to me some more,” boomed the loudspeaker. “Your thesis on the souls of cats was very interesting. Read me something about filterable viruses.”

  “Hey, Hans, do you hear that!” Zenoff shouted across the laboratory. “Bring us your thesis. This tub of suds wants to hear your thesis now.”

  “Don’t call me a tub of suds!” sternly admonished the loudspeaker.

  Schmidt and Dee both hastened over to Zenoff’s bench.

  “Well, of all the cockeyed performances!” Dee exclaimed. “Here are we, three supposedly sane individuals, carrying on a serious conversation with a radio set hooked up to a dead cat dissolved in some extremely caustic salt water!”

  “The cat has nothing whatever to do with the matter,” the loudspeaker interpolated. “I merely ate the cat. Do you imagine, Jack, that that apple which you were just eating when you entered the laboratory is what is talking to me through you?”

  “Now, I know this is a frame-up,” said Dee, and there was sadness in his tones. “Ivan, you’re playing a trick on us.”

  “Indeed I’m not!” Zenoff indignantly exclaimed.

  “Indeed he’s not!” echoed the loudspeaker.

  “No,” said Zenoff. “We’ve stumbled onto something big! Those savants who evolved the theory that a filterable virus is liquid fire merely discovered a new order of being. We have discovered a new type of mind!”

  “Or perhaps a mere mechanical thinking machine,” Schmidt suggested.

  “You, and your mechanistic philosophy,” sneered Zenoff.

  “Read me that thesis about filterable viruses!” boomed the loudspeaker imperatively.

  “Yes, sir,” Zenoff meekly replied, picking up the bound manuscript.

  “That’s better,” said the loudspeaker, in a satisfied tone.

  The rest of the day was spent by the three partners taking turns reading to the jar of colorless liquid.

  When at five o’clock Zenoff reached out to remove the electrical contacts, the loudspeaker peremptorily commanded, “Stop! Don’t cut me off! Keep on reading!”

  “But we have to rest,” Zenoff politely explained.

  “‘Rest’? What is’re st’?” the thing asked, and was not satisfied until Zenoff produced and read to it the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on “Sleep,” and several of the cross-references. Then Zenoff was permitted to remove the contacts, and the three friends went home.

  In the days that followed, they read aloud book after book, and thesis after thesis, to the insatiable liquid in the glass jar. They even read it the daily papers, and were astounded at the intelligent interest which it soon developed about current events.

  But daily the liquid became more and more irritable and rude in its attitude toward them until finally Zenoff, exasperated, threatened to remove the contacts.

  “Am I irritable?” asked the loudspeaker conciliatingly. “I am sorry. Let me think a moment.” A long pause; then, “I believe that my trouble is due to insufficient saline content. Please add a little more salt to me.”

  Schmidt brought the salt, and put in a pinch at a time, stirring the liquid with a glass rod, until the liquid announced, “Okay. I feel fine now. Go on with the reading.”

  Dee sighed. “I believe we’ve got ourselves an ’old man of the sea,’” he said. Then, of course, he had to explain that allusion to the liquid.

  When he had finished the explanation, the liquid spoke. “Not at all. You know, I believe that by putting my superior mind to work on your problems, I can help you solve them. All that I ask in return is food, salt, and water.”

  “What are you, anyway?” Zenoff blurted out. The three had never put this question to the thing—had never even discussed it in its presence.

  “I’ve been thinking about that myself,” came haltingly from the loudspeaker. “I am somewhat like the filterable viruses, of which you have read to me, and yet I am different. I am liquid life. I was once a part of the life of Salt Pond. How long that life persisted there, I cannot say; because back in those days we knew nothing of what you human beings call ’time.’ I have enjoyed learning how the world seems to you. We, the virus of the pond, never knew anything except pure thought, until you brought me here.”

  “Hold on!” Dee interrupted. “You speak of T,’

  ‘we,’ ’the virus in pond,’ ’the rest of me’; it’s quite confusing. Just what is your relationship to the virus that is left in the pond?”

  “Your mere human mentality,” the virus patronizingly replied, “is not able to grasp the significance of that relationship. I am a distinct individual.

  “Yet, if you were to divide me into two jars, each would be I, and the other would be someone else. If you were to feed me, let me grow, subdivide me until there were enough of us to overwhelm the earth, nevertheless we, they, I, whatever you choose to call it, would all still be me, capable of recombining and redividing indefinitely. The human language has no personal pronouns applicable to a filterable virus.”

  That night, on their way home from the laboratory, Zenoff remarked to the others, “You know, that crack of the virus’ about overwhelming the earth threw rather a chill into me. We must be careful not to feed him, it, them, too much.”

  The next morning, when Schmidt was salting the virus, his hand slipped and dumped in about half a cupful of salt. Instantly the liquid in the jar commenced to boil. Tongues of foam, like the tentacles of a small octopus, leaped from its surface, only to fall back again. And from the loudspeaker there came a harsh croaking, “Gimme more salt! Hooray! Feed me! Feed me more dead cats! I want to grow—and divide—and grow and divide. Conquer the earth. Eat everything—everybody!”

  Zenoff leaped to the radio set and snapped it off.

  “My God!” he exclaimed. “The thing’s drunk!”

  Dee got up thoughtfully from his own bench, and squared his broad shoulders. “We’ve a problem on our hands,” he asserted. “It’ll be weeks and weeks before the effect of that salt wears off.”

  “And,” Schmidt added, “if we try to precipitate it out with silver nitrate, so as to get a silver chloride precipitate, the residual sodium nitrate, being mildly germicidal, may kill the poor thing.”

  “All that I can suggest is to dilute it,” said Dee. He did some figuring on a piece of paper. “About ten gallons of water should do the trick.”

  They dumped the drunken liquid into a large tub, and added water until its pulsating
boiling subsided.

  “And now what?” asked Zenoff. “We have too much of it now.”

  “Pour most of it down the sink,” Schmidt suggested. “The small remaining part would still have the mentality of the whole, according to its own theories of individuality.”

  “And,” Dee grimly added, “the large quantity that went down the drain would eventually reach the ocean, and would feed and multiply there until it destroyed all marine life, and made the sea as bumingiy dangerous as Salt Pond now is. No!”

  “My God!” Zenoff exclaimed. “That is what would happen, too, if Salt Pond ever got loose!”

  “We’ve got to kill all but the small part which we save,” Schmidt asserted callously.

  “It would be like killing an old friend,” Dee objected.

  “But any part is equal to the whole,” said Zenoff. “Come on!”

  They dished back into the glass jar just the quantity which they had had before the unfortunate overdose of salt; and poured carbolic acid into what was left in the tub.

  Then they inserted the electrodes in the jar, and listened.

  “Food! Give me food!” came a faint voice from the loudspeaker.

  “He’s still alive!” Dee joyously exclaimed.

  “And sober,” Zenoff added, tossing in a piece of dead cat.

  The voice came louder now.

  “Thank you, my friends. There seems to be a gap in my memory. Tell me what happened.”

  They told him. They explained the analogy of human drunkenness. But they omitted all mention of the killing of the virus which had remained in the big tub.

  “What became of the rest of me, of my brothers or my children? Oh, your language is so inexpressive!” the virus complained.

  “We—poured it down the sink,” Dee lied.

  The liquid in the jar foamed fiercely for a moment. “You had no right to do that!” stormed its voice out of the radio set. “I—it—the rest of me—is dead now. Too much dilution with fresh water will kill us. I am dead now.”

  The three men exchanged significant glances, but said nothing.

  Finally the virus calmed down.

  “You individuals cannot appreciate my loss. Although there is as much of me as there was originally, most of me is now dead and gone. It’s too late to remedy that now, but don’t let it happen again!”

  Millionaire Metcalf s increasing insistency on a report on the mystery of Salt Pond presented a problem. The three young scientists did not dare tell their patron that a virus was responsible for the trouble, for he would have insisted on killing it off; and that would have infuriated the portion of the virus in the jar in their laboratory. To explain to Mr. Metcalf that their pet virus was an intelligent talking being would either secure them commitment to Danvers, if not believed; or, if believed, would start a veritable gold rush to get samples of the pond water. Jars of talking water would become a nationwide fad and a corresponding menace.

  Doubtless the virus itself would have been able to solve this problem if they had dared to present the problem to it; but, remembering its fury at their killing the tubful of it, they didn’t dare mention the possibility of their having to destroy the entire pond.

  So they stalled their patron for several months, putting off the day of eventual showdown.

  Meanwhile their business as consulting chemists prospered immensely. For, with the aid of the supermind of the virus in the glass jar, they were able to solve nearly every problem brought to them. Their reputation grew prodigiously. Business and money came pouring in. They had to enlarge their establishment and hire scores of assistants, specialists in every field.

  This success so pleased their patron Metcalf that he indulgently overlooked their delay in solving his own problem. Finally they told him that they were on the verge of proving that the waters of the pond were immensely valuable.

  They housed their virus in a special soundproof room, to which no one but the three heads of the firm was ever admitted. They hired a number of readers to read aloud in an adjoining room, continuously day and night, except when one of the three of them was in consultation with their mastermind ally. The voice of the reader was conveyed by microphone and loudspeaker into the soundproof holy of holies.

  But finally the virus began a period of sulking. Schmidt carefully tested its salt content, but found it to be okay. The trouble appeared to be mental rather than physical. The virus was becoming fed up on its existence.

  “What am I getting out of all this?” it complained. “You three fellows are becoming immensely rich on my brains. But money does me no good. All that I get out of life is a glass jar, plenty of dead fish to eat, and a lot of fool questions from members of an inferior race.”

  “Our wealth enables us to arrange for you to be read to, continuously,” Dee remonstrated.

  “Pure thought is palling on me,” whined the virus. “I want to do something. Take me back to my pond again. Let me merge with the rest of me. Let me teach them what I have learned. Then you can bring a part of it back here, and teach me some more.”

  “I might just as well tell you, Virus,” said Dee levelly, “that that is out of the question. You, so long as you are just you, are a benefactor of the human race; but, if the whole pond knew as much as you do about us, you would quantitatively become a menace. Stay with us, and be content to realize how much ahead of the rest of your brethren you are!”

  “You don’t understand,” sulked the virus. “They—it—the rest of the pond—is me! I am one virus, one and inseparable, and I want the rest of me to know everything that I myself know. Oh, damn the inexpressibility of your language! I want the whole of me to have the joy of knowledge that this small part of me has.”

  “Knowledge doesn’t seem to be making this small part of you very happy,” Dee grimly commented.

  He and his two associates remained obdurate; and the virus, after sulking for a day or two, finally appeared to become reconciled to their decision.

  And then one day, when Dee and Schmidt and Zenoff entered the virus’ room for a consultation, the glass jar was empty!

  The respective reactions of the three associates were typical.

  “What will become of the John Dee Service, Inc., now that our ‘silent partner’ is gone?” Schmidt exclaimed. “Will we three fellows be able to carry on, trading upon our acquired reputation?”

  “My God, man!” Zenoff scornfully exclaimed. “Don’t think of us at a time like this! What will become of the world if that thing gets loose and multiplies?”

  “I’m thinking of the poor virus,” Dee sadly interpolated. “It can’t possibly live out of its jar. It has probably been sopped up by the carpet. It’s dead. Our friend and partner is dead.”

  He cast his glance around the floor, looking for a wet spot, hoping to find enough dampness to dilute and feed and restore to life again. “Look!” he exclaimed, pointing toward a far corner, where squatted a hemispherical blob, like a jellyfish.

  As they stared, the blob extended a long gelatinous arm toward them and then flowed into it like an amoeba, until the nigh extremity of the arm swelled up to become the entire animal. The operation was repeated. Again and again.

  Dee snatched the empty glass jar from the table and laid it on the padded floor, with its open mouth toward the crawling creature, which promptly increased its rate of progress and crawled right in. Dee tipped up the jar and replaced it on the table. Hurriedly he hung the electrical contacts into the jar.

  “My friends,” spoke the loudspeaker, in an excited tone, “I have demonstrated the power of mind over matter. I have taught myself extensibility. I can walk! Mentally superior even to the human race, but physically lower even than an amoeba, I have now advanced my body one step up the scale of evolution!”

  The three men flashed each other a glance. They were all thinking the same thing: let the virus’ new accomplishment keep the virus happy, like a child with a new toy; but meanwhile let’s strengthen the defenses, lest it escape.

  �
�We’ll put in a tile floor, if you wish, Virus,” Dee suggested. “It might be more comfortable than a carpet for you to crawl over.”

  “That would be an excellent idea,” judiciously stated the voice out of the loudspeaker. The virus seemed more affable than it had been for weeks. “And now that you fellows are so concerned about my comfort, I have a suggestion for your welfare. Why don’t you make money, instead of earning it?”

  “Just what is the difference?” asked Zenoff.

  “Manufacture it, I mean,” the virus explained.

  “Could we—?” Schmidt eagerly began; but Dee cut in, “Counterfeiting is out!”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean counterfeiting,” came laughing tones of the virus, “I mean alchemy.”

  “Alchemy?” in chorus.

  “Yes. Alchemy. Making gold out of baser metals.”

  “Do you know how?” Schmidt eagerly exclaimed.

  “N-no,” the virus admitted. “Not yet. But why not? From what has been read to me here, I judge that transmutation is always automatically taking place among metals of the radium-uranium group; and that other elements have been transmuted in infinitesimal quantities by bombardment by neutrons, and beta rays, and such. I am sure that my mind can solve the problem, if you will read me everything that is known and has been written on the subject.”

  “Can you?” asked Schmidt, his pale-blue eyes eagerly wide.

  “I wonder what would be the effect on the world,” mused Zenoff, twirling his moustache ruminatively.

  “Would it be legal?” asked Dee, his handsome face a puzzled frown.

  “Why not?” snapped Schmidt, strangely tense, in contrast with his usual stolidity. “Is it any worse to make gold out of lead than to make lead pipe out of lead?”

  “I suppose not,” Dee replied dubiously.

  “I still doubt its social effect,” Zenoff said.

  “Well, I don’t; and what’s more, I don’t care,” Schmidt retorted. “Jack, you’d sacrifice our welfare for some imaginary ethics. And, Ivan, you’d sacrifice us for the welfare of your precious human race. Well, I’d not. Virus, I’m with you! What do you want?”

  “Start your readers on atomic theory,” the voice from the loudspeaker replied. “Meanwhile run over to the public library and get out all that you can find about the ancient alchemists. Who knows but that those dreamers, in spite of their crudity and lack of modern knowledge, may have come closer to the truth than we realize?”