“My God, what are you doing back again?”
“Testing,” she said. “That’s all, just testing.”
Stu called him to observe the latest challenge to Adam’s group, to take place in forty minutes. Darin had forgotten that he was to be present. During the night a tree had been felled in each compound, its trunk crossing the small stream, damming it. At eleven the water fountains were to be turned off for the rest of the day. The tree had been felled at the far end of the compound, close to the wall where the stream entered, so that the trickle of water that flowed past the hut was cut off. Already the group not taking sRNA was showing signs of thirst. Adam’s group was unaware of the interrupted flow.
Darin met Stu and they walked together to the far side where they would have a good view of the entire compound. The women had left by then. “It was too quiet for them this morning,” Stu said. “Adam was making his rounds; he squatted on the felled tree for nearly an hour before he left it and went back to the others.”
They could see the spreading pool of water. It was muddy, uninviting looking. At eleven-ten it was generally known within the compound that the water supply had failed. Some of the old chimps tried the fountain; Adam tried it several times. He hit it with a stick and tried it again. Then he sat on his haunches and stared at it. One of the young chimps whimpered pitiably. He wasn’t thirsty yet, merely puzzled and perhaps frightened. Adam scowled at him. The chimp cowered behind Hortense, who bared her fangs at Adam. He waved menacingly at her, and she began picking fleas from her offspring. When he whimpered again, she cuffed him. The young chimp looked from her to Adam, stuck his forefinger in his mouth and ambled away. Adam continued to stare at the useless fountain. An hour passed. At last Adam rose and wandered nonchalantly toward the drying stream. Here and there a shrinking pool of muddy water steamed in the sun. The other chimps followed Adam. He followed the stream through the compound toward the wall that was its source. When he came to the pool he squatted again. One of the young chimps circled the pool cautiously, reached down and touched the dirty water, drew back, reached for it again, and then drank. Several of the others drank also. Adam continued to squat. At twelve-forty Adam moved again. Grunting and gesturing to several younger males, he approached the tree-trunk. With much noise and meaningless gestures, they shifted the trunk. They strained, shifted it again. The water was released and poured over the heaving chimps. Two of them dropped the trunk and ran. Adam and the other two held. The two returned.
They were still working when Darin had to leave, to keep his appointment with Mrs. Driscoll and Sonny. They arrived at one-ten. Kelly had left the syringe with the new formula in Darin’s small refrigerator. He injected Sonny, took his sample, and started the tests. Sometimes Sonny cooperated to the extent of lifting one of the articles from the table and throwing it. Today he cleaned the table within ten minutes. Darin put a piece of candy in his hand; Sonny threw it from him. Patiently Darin put another piece in the boy’s hand. He managed to keep the eighth piece in the clenched hand long enough to guide the hand to Sonny’s mouth. When it was gone, Sonny opened his mouth for more. His hands lay idly on the table. He didn’t seem to relate the hands to the candy with the pleasant taste. Darin tried to guide a second to his mouth, but Sonny refused to hold a piece a second time.
When the hour was over and Sonny was showing definite signs of fatigue, Mrs. Driscoll clutched Darin’s hands in hers. Tears stood in her eyes. “You actually got him to feed himself a little bit,” she said brokenly. “God bless you, Dr. Darin. God bless you!” She kissed his hand and turned away as the tears started to spill down her cheeks.
Kelly was waiting for him when the group left. She collected the new sample of blood to be processed. “Did you hear about the excitement down at the compound? Adam’s building a dam of his own.”
Darin stared at her for a moment. The breakthrough? He ran back to the compound. The near side this time was where the windows were being used. It seemed that the entire staff was there, watching silently. He saw Stu and edged in by him. The stream twisted and curved through the compound, less than ten inches deep, not over two feet anywhere. At one spot stones lay under it; elsewhere the bottom was of hard-packed sand. Adam and his crew were piling up stones at the one suitable place for their dam, very near their hut. The dam they were building was two feet thick. It was less than five feet from the wall, fifteen feet from where Darin and Stu shared the window. When the dam was completed, Adam looked along the wall. Darin thought the chimp’s eyes paused momentarily on his own. Later he heard that nearly every other person watching felt the same momentary pause as those black, intelligent eyes sought out and held other intelligence.
“... next thunderstorm. Adam and the flood . .
“... eventually seeds instead of food . .
“. . . his brain. Convolutions as complex as any man’s.”
Darin walked away from them, snatches of future plans in his ears. There was a memo on his desk. Jacobsen was turning over the SPCA investigatory committee to him. He was to meet with the university representatives, the local SPCA group, and the legal representatives of all concerned on Monday next at 10 a.m. He wrote out his daily report op Sonny Driscoll. Sonny had been on too-good behavior for too long. Would this last injection give him just the spark of determination he needed to go on a rampage? Darin had alerted Johnny, the bodyguard, whoops, male nurse, for just such a possibility, but he knew Johnny didn’t think there was any danger from the kid. He hoped Sonny wouldn’t kill Johnny, then turn on his mother and father. He’d probably rape his mother, if that much goal-directedness ever flowed through him. And the three men who had volunteered for the injections from Sonny’s blood? He didn’t want to think of them at all, therefore couldn’t get them out of his mind as he sat at his desk staring at nothing. Three convicts. That’s all, just convicts hoping to get a parole for helping science along. He laughed abruptly. They weren’t planning anything now. Not that trio. Not planning for a thing. Sitting, waiting for something to happen, not thinking about what it might be, or when, or how they would be affected. Not thinking. Period.
“But you can always console yourself that your motives were pure, that it was all for Science, can’t you, Dr. Darin?” Rae asked mockingly.
He looked at her. “Go to hell,” he said.
It was late when he turned off his light. Kelly met him in the corridor that led to the main entrance. “Hard day, Dr. Darin?”
He nodded. Her hand lingered momentarily on his arm. “Good night,” she said, turning in to her own office. He stared at the door for a long time before he let himself out and started toward his car. Lea would be furious with him for not calling. Probably she wouldn’t speak at all until nearly bedtime, when she would explode into tears and accusations. He could see the time when her tears and accusations would strike home, when Kelly’s body would still be a tangible memory, her words lingering in his ears. And he would lie to Lea, not because he would care actually if she knew, but because it would be expected. She wouldn’t know how to cope with the truth. It would entangle her to the point where she would have to try an abortive suicide, a screaming-for-attention attempt that would ultimately tie him in tear-soaked knots that would never be loosened. No, he would lie, and she would know he was lying, and they would get by. He started the car, aimed down the long sixteen miles that lay before him. He wondered where Kelly lived. What it would do to Stu when he realized. What it would do to his job if Kelly should get nasty, eventually. He shrugged. Barbie dolls never got nasty. It wasn’t built in.
Lea met him at the door, dressed only in a sheer gown, her hair loose and unsprayed. Her body flowed into his, so that he didn’t need Kelly at all. And he was best man when Stu and Kelly were married. He called to Rae, “Would that satisfy you?” but she didn’t answer. Maybe she was gone for good this time. He parked the car outside his darkened house and leaned his head on the steering wheel for a moment before getting out. If not gone for good, at least for a long time. He
hoped she would stay away for a long time.
<
* * * *
The author says this story is a “polytropic paramyth” —a sort of literary Rorschach test, in which different people may see different things. It was inspired by a line in Henry Miller’s Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, which Farmer quotes from memory as follows: “There are diamonds born during the night in violent storms.” See what it means to you; then try it on your friends.
* * * *
Don’t Wash The Carats
by Philip José Farmer
The knife slices the skin. The saw rips into bone. Gray dust flies. The plumber’s helper (the surgeon is economical) clamps its vacuum onto the plug of bone. Ploop! Out comes the section of skull. The masked doctor, Van Mesgeluk, directs a beam of light into the cavern of cranium.
He swears a large oath by Hippocrates, Aesculapius and the Mayo Brothers. The patient doesn’t have a brain tumor. He’s got a diamond.
The assistant surgeon, Beinschneider, peers into the well and, after him, the nurses.
“Amazing!” Van Mesgeluk says. “The diamond’s not in the rough. It’s cut!”
“Looks like a 58-facet brilliant, 127.1 carats,” says Beinschneider, who has a brother-in-law in the jewelry trade. He sways the light at the end of the drop cord back and forth. Stars shine; shadows run.
“Of course, it’s half-buried. Maybe the lower part isn’t diamond. Even so...”
“Is he married?” a nurse says.
Van Mesgeluk rolls his eyes. “Miss Lustig, don’t you ever think of anything but marriage?”
“Everything reminds me of wedding bells,” she replies, thrusting out her hips.
“Shall we remove the growth?” Beinschneider says.
“It’s malignant,” Van Mesgeluk says. “Of course, we remove it.”
He thrusts and parries with a fire and skill that bring cries of admiration and a clapping of hands from the nurses and even cause Beinschneider to groan a bravo, not unmingled with jealousy. Van Mesgeluk then starts to insert the tongs but pulls them back when the first lightning bolt flashes beneath and across the opening in the skull. There is a small but sharp crack and, very faint, the roll of thunder.
“Looks like rain,” Beinschneider says. “One of my brothers-in-law is a meteorologist.”
“No. It’s heat lightning,” Van Mesgeluk says.
“With thunder?” says Beinschneider. He eyes the diamond with a lust his wife would give diamonds for. His mouth waters; his scalp turns cold. Who owns the jewel? The patient? He has no rights under this roof. Finders keepers? Eminent domain? Internal Revenue Service?
“It’s mathematically improbable, this phenomenon,” he says. “What’s California law say about mineral rights in a case like this?”
“You can’t stake out a claim!” Van Mesgeluk roars. “My God, this is a human being, not a piece of land!”
More lightning cranks whitely across the opening, and there is a rumble as of a bowling ball on its way to a strike.
“I said it wasn’t heat lightning,” Van Mesgeluk growls.
Beinschneider is speechless.
“No wonder the e.e.g. machine burned up when we were diagnosing him,” Van Mesgeluk says. “There must be several thousand volts, maybe a hundred thousand, playing around down there. But I don’t detect much warmth. Is the brain a heat sink?”
“You shouldn’t have fired that technician because the machine burned up,” Beinschneider says. “It wasn’t her fault, after all.”
“She jumped out of her apartment window the next day,” Nurse Lustig says reproachfully. “I wept like a broken faucet at her funeral. And almost got engaged to the undertaker.” Lustig rolls her hips.
“Broke every bone in her body, yet there wasn’t a single break in her skin,” Van Mesgeluk says. “Remarkable phenomenon.”
“She was a human being, not a phenomenon!” Beinschneider says.
“But psychotic,” Van Mesgeluk replies. “Besides, that’s my line. She was 33 years old but hadn’t had a period in ten years.”
“It was that plastic intra-uterine device,” Beinschneider says. “It was clogged with dust. Which was bad enough, but the dust was radioactive. All those tests...”
“Yes,” the chief surgeon says. “Proof enough of her psychosis. I did the autopsy, you know. It broke my heart to cut into that skin. Beautiful. Like Carrara marble. In fact, I snapped the knife at the first pass. Had to call in an expert from Italy. He had a diamond-tipped chisel. The hospital raised hell about the expense, and Blue Cross refused to pay.”
“Maybe she was making a diamond,” says Nurse Lustig. “All that tension and nervous energy had to go somewhere.”
“I always wondered where the radioactivity came from,” Van Mesgeluk says. “Please confine your remarks to the business at hand, Miss Lustig. Leave the medical opinions to your superiors.”
He peers into the hole. Somewhere between heaven of skull and earth of brain, on the horizon, lightning flickers.
“Maybe we ought to call in a geologist. Beinschneider, you know anything about electronics?”
“I got a brother-in-law who runs a radio and TV store.”
“Good. Hook up a step-down transformer to the probe, please. Wouldn’t want to burn up another machine.”
“An e.e.g. now?” Beinschneider says. “It’d take too long to get a transformer. My brother-in-law lives clear across town. Besides, he’d charge double if he had to reopen the store at this time of the evening.”
“Discharge him, anyway,” the chief surgeon says. “Ground the voltage. Very well. We’ll get that growth out before it kills him and worry about scientific research later.”
He puts on two extra pairs of gloves.
“Do you think he’ll grow another?” Nurse Lustig says. “He’s not a bad-looking guy. I can tell he’d be simpatico.”
“How the hell would I know?” says Van Mesgeluk. “I may be a doctor, but I’m not quite God.”
“God who?” says Beinschneider, the orthodox atheist. He drops the ground wire into the hole; blue sparks spurt out. Van Mesgeluk lifts out the diamond with the tongs. Nurse Lustig takes it from him and begins to wash it off with tap water.
“Let’s call in your brother-in-law,” Van Mesgeluk says. “The jewel merchant, I mean.”
“He’s in Amsterdam. But I could phone him. However, he’d insist on splitting the fee, you know.”
“He doesn’t even have a degree!” Van Mesgeluk cries. “But call him. How is he on legal aspects of mineralogy?”
“Not bad. But I don’t think he’ll come. Actually, the jewel business is just a front. He gets his big bread by smuggling in chocolate-covered LSD drops.”
“Is that ethical?”
“It’s top-quality Dutch chocolate,” Beinschneider says stiffly.
“Sorry. I think I’ll put in a plastic window over the hole. We can observe any regrowth.”
“Do you think it’s psychosomatic in origin?”
“Everything is, even the sex urge. Ask Miss Lustig.”
The patient opens his eyes. “I had a dream,” he says. “This dirty old man with a long white beard . . .”
“A typical archetype,” Van Mesgeluk says. “Symbol of the wisdom of the unconscious. A warning . . .”
“. . . his name was Plato,” the patient says. “He was the illegitimate son of Socrates. Plato, the old man, staggers out of a dark cave at one end of which is a bright klieg light. He’s holding a huge diamond in his hand; his fingernails are broken and dirty. The old man cries, ‘The Ideal is Physical! The Universal is the Specific Concrete! Carbon, actually. Eureka! I’m rich! I’ll buy all of Athens, invest in apartment buildings, Great Basin, COMSAT!
“ ‘Screw the mind!’ the old man screams. ‘It’s all mine!’ “
“Would you care to dream about King Midas?” Van Mesgeluk says.
Nurse Lustig shrieks. A lump of sloppy grayish matter is in her hands.
“The water changed it
back into a tumor!”
“Beinschneider, cancel that call to Amsterdam!”
“Maybe he’ll have a relapse,” Beinschneider says.
Nurse Lustig turns savagely upon the patient. “The engagement’s off!”
“I don’t think you loved the real me,” the patient says, “whoever you are. Anyway, I’m glad you changed your mind. My last wife left me, but we haven’t been divorced yet. I got enough trouble without a bigamy charge.
“She took off with my surgeon for parts unknown just after my hemorrhoid operation. I never found out why.”
<
* * * *
Except for the references to other planets and the fact that it is clearly set in the future, this story is not what is usually called science fiction. The author says he adopted the s.f. framework “as an intensifier of the poet’s smallness against the huge, clanking ‘out there’ and as a symbolic reflection of his private strangeness (‘in here, deep in’)—to make it even deeper.” He believes this is one of the legitimate ways in which science fiction can be used. I think he’s right, and that much more will be heard of James Sallis.
Orbit 3 - [Anthology] Page 15