The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D.

by David H. Keller

  “Why, bless me!” exclaimed the old man. “I read of that in a book three hundred years old just the other day. Lots of children used to do that.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Why, it used to be called ‘turning somersaults’.”

  “But what does it mean? Why does she do it?”

  Heisler wiped the sweat off his face.

  “It will all make us ridiculous if it becomes known.”

  “Oh, well, with your power you can keep it quiet—but have you studied your family history? Do you know what blood strains are in her?”

  “No. I never was interested. Of course, I belong to the Sons of the American Revolution, and all that sort of thing. They brought me the papers and I signed on the dotted line. I never read them though I paid well to have a book published about it all.”

  “So you had a Revolutionary ancestor? Where’s the book?”

  Heisler rang for his private secretary, who autoed in, received his curt orders and soon returned with the Heisler family history which the old man opened eagerly. Save for the noise made by the child, who was playing with a small stuffed bear, the room was deadly still. Suddenly the old man laughed.

  “It is all as plain as can be. Your Revolutionary ancestor was a Miller; Abraham Miller of Hamilton Township. His mother was captured and killed by Indians. They were pedestrians of the most pronounced strain; of course, everyone was a pedestrian in those days. The Millers and the Heislers intermarried. That was some hundred years ago. Your Great Grandfather Heisler, had a sister who married a Miller. She is spoken of here on page 330. Let me read it to you.

  “‘Margaretta Heisler was the only sister of William Heisler. Independent and odd in many ways, she committed the folly of marrying a farmer by the name of Abraham Miller, who was one of the most noted leaders in the pedestrian riots in Pennsylvania. Following his death, his widow and only child, a boy eight years old, disappeared and no doubt were destroyed in the general process of pedestrian extermination. An old letter written by her to her brother, prior to her marriage, contained the boast that she never had ridden in an automobile and never would; that God had given her legs and she intended to use them and that she was fortunate in finally finding a man who also had legs and the desire to live on them, as God had planned men and women to do.

  “There is the secret of this child of yours. She is a reversal to the sister of your great grandfather. That lady died a hundred years ago rather than follow the fashion. You say yourself that this little one nearly died from convulsions when the attempt was made to put her in an automobile. It is a clear case of heredity. If you try to break the child of the habit, you will probably kill her. The only thing to do is to leave her alone. Let her develop as she wishes. She is your daughter. Her will is your will. The probability is that neither can change the other. Let her use her legs. She probably will climb trees, run, swim, wander where she will.”

  “So that is the way of it,” sighed Heisler. “That means the end of our family. No one would want to marry a monkey no matter how intelligent she is. So you think she will someday climb a tree? If there is a Hell, this is mine, as you suggest.”

  “But she is happy!”

  “Yes, if laughter is an index. But will she be as she grows older? She will be different. How can she have associates? Of course they won’t apply that extermination law in her case; my position will prevent that. I could even have it repealed. But she will be lonely—so lonely!”

  “Perhaps she will learn to read—then she won’t be lonely.”

  They both looked at the child.

  “What is she doing now?” demanded Heisler. “You seem to know more than anyone I ever met about such things.”

  “Why, she is hopping. Is not that remarkable? She never saw anyone hop and yet she is doing it. I never saw a child do it and yet I can identify it and give it a name. In Kate Greenaway’s illustrations, I have seen pictures of children hopping.”

  “Confound the Millers anyway!” growled Heisler. After that conversation, Heisler engaged the old man, whose sole duty was to investigate the subject of pedestrian children and find how they played and used their legs. Having investigated this, he was to instruct the little girl.

  The entire matter of her exercise was left to him. Thus from that day on a curious spectator from an aeroplane might have seen an old man sitting on the lawn showing a golden-haired child pictures from very old books and talking together about the same pictures. Then the child would do things that no child had done for a hundred years—bounce a ball, skip rope, dance folk dances and jump over a bamboo stick supported by two upright bars. Long hours were spent in reading and always the old man would begin by saying:

  “Now this is the way they used to do.” Occasionally a party would be given for her and other little girls from the neighboring rich would come and spend the day. They were polite—so was Margaretta Heisler—but the parties were not a success. The company could not move except in their autocars, and they looked on their hostess with curiosity and scorn. They had nothing in common with the curious walking child, and these parties always left Margaretta in tears.

  “Why can’t I be like other girls?” she demanded of her father. “Is it always going to be this way? Do you know that girls laugh at me because I walk?” Heisler was a good father. He held to his vow to devote one hour a day to his daughter, and during that time gave of his intelligence as eagerly and earnestly as he did to his business in the other hours. Often he talked to Margaretta as though she were his equal, an adult with full mental development.

  “You have your own personality,” he would say to her. “The mere fact that you are different from other people does not of necessity mean that they are right and you are wrong. Perhaps you are both right—at least you are both following out your natural proclivities. You are different in desires and physique from the rest of us, but perhaps you are more normal than we are. The professor shows us pictures of ancient peoples and they all had legs developed like yours. How can I tell whether man has degenerated or improved. At times when I see you run and jump, I envy you. I and all of us are tied down to earth—dependent on a machine for every part of our daily life. You can go where you please. You can do this and all you need is food and sleep. In some ways this is an advantage. On the other hand, the professor tells me that you can only go about four miles an hour while I can go over one hundred.”

  “But why should I want to go so fast when I do not want to go anywhere?”

  “That is just the astonishing thing. Why don’t you want to go? It seems that not only your body but also your mind, your personality, your desires are old-fashioned, hundreds of years old-fashioned. I try to be here in the house or garden every day—at least an hour—with you, but during the other waking hours I want to go. You do the strangest things. The professor tells me about it all. There is your bow and arrow, for instance. I bought you the finest firearms and you never use them, but you get a bow and arrow from some museum and finally succeed in killing a duck, and the professor said you built a fire out of wood and roasted it and ate it. You even made him eat some.”

  “But it was good, father—much better than the synthetic food. Even the professor said the juice made him feel younger.”

  Heisler laughed, “You are a savage—nothing more than a savage.”

  “But I can read and write!”

  “I admit that. Well, go ahead and enjoy yourself. I only wish I could find another savage for you to play with, but there are no more.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As much so as I can be. In fact, for the last five years my agents have been scouring the civilized world for a pedestrian colony. There are a few in Siberia and the Tartar Plateau, but they are impossible. I would rather have you associate with apes.”

  “I dream of one, father,” whispered the girl shyly. “He is a nice boy and he can do everything I can. Do dreams ever come true?”

  Heisler smiled. “I trust this one will, and now I mus
t hurry back to New York. Can I do anything for you?”

  “Yes—find someone who can teach me how to make candles.”

  “Candles? Why, what are they?”

  She ran and brought an old book and read it to him. It was called, “The Gentle Pirate,” and the hero always read in bed by candle light.

  “I understand,” he finally said as he closed the book. “I remember now that I once read of their having something like that in the Catholic Churches. So you want to make some? See the professor and order what you need. Hum—candles—why, they would be handy at night if the electricity failed, but then it never does.”

  “But I don’t want electricity. I want candles and matches to light them with.”

  “Matches?”

  “Oh, father! In some ways you are ignorant. I know lots of words you don’t, even though you are so rich.”

  “I admit it. I will admit anything and we will find how to make your candles. Shall I send you some ducks?”

  “Oh, no. It is so much more fun to shoot them.”

  “You are a real barbarian!”

  “And you are a dear ignoramus.”

  So it came to pass that Margaretta Heisler reached her seventeenth birthday, tall, strong, agile, brown from constant exposure to wind and sun, able to run, jump, shoot accurately with bow and arrow, an eater of meat, a reader of books by candle light, a weaver of carpets and a lover of nature. Her associates had been mainly elderly men: only occasionally would she see the ladies of the neighborhood. She tolerated the servants, the maids and housekeeper. The love she gave her father she also gave to the old professor, but he had taught her all she knew and the years had made him senile and sleepy.

  There came to her finally the urge to travel. She wanted to see New York with its twenty million automobilists; its hundred story office buildings; its smokeless factories; its standardized houses. There were difficulties in the way of such a trip, and no one knew these better than her father. The roads were impossible and all of New York was now either streets or houses. There being no pedestrians, there was no need of sidewalks. Besides, even Heisler’s wealth would not be able to prevent the riot sure to result from the presence in a large city of such a curiosity as a pedestrian. Heisler was powerful, but he dreaded the result of allowing his daughter the freedom of New York. Furthermore, up to this time, her deformity was known only to a few. Once she was in New York, the city papers would publish his disgrace to the world.

  Several of the office buildings in New York City were one hundred stories high. There were no stairways but as a safety precaution circular spiral ramps had been built in each structure for the tires of autocars in case the elevators failed to work. This, however, never happened, and few of the tenants ever knew of their existence. They were used at night by the scrub women busily autocarring from one floor to another cleaning up. The higher the floor the purer was the air and the more costly was the yearly rental. Below, in the canyon and the street, an ozone machine was necessary every few feet to purify the air and make unnecessary the use of gas masks. On the upper floors, however, there were pure breezes from off the Atlantic. Noticeable was the absence of flies and mosquitoes; pigeons built their nests in the crevices, and on the highest roof a pair of American eagles nested year after year in haughty defiance of the mechanical auto, a thousand feet below.

  It was in the newest building in New York and on the very highest floor that a new office was opened. On the door was the customary gilded sign, “New York Electrical Co.” Boxes had been left there, decorators had embellished the largest room, the final result being that it was simply a standardized office. A stenographer had been installed and sat at a noiseless machine, answering, if need be, the automatic telephone.

  To this roomy suite one day in June came, by invitation, a dozen of the leaders of industry. They came, each thinking he was the only one invited to the conference. Surprise as well as suspicion was the marked feature of the meeting. There were three men there who were secretly and independently trying to undermine Heisler and tear him from his financial throne. Heisler himself was there, apparently quiet, but inwardly a seething flame of repressed electricity. The stenographer seated them as they arrived, in order around a long table. They remained in their autocars. No one used chairs. One or two of the men joked with each other. All nodded to Heisler, but none spoke to him.

  The furniture, surroundings, stenographer were all part of the standard office in the business section. Only one small portion of the room aroused their curiosity. At the head of the table was an arm chair. None of the men around the table had ever used a chair; none had seen one save in the Metropolitan Museum. The autocar had replaced the chair even as the automobile had replaced the human leg.

  The chimes in the tower nearly rang out the two o’clock message. All of the twelve looked at their watches. One man frowned. His watch was some minutes late. In another minute all were frowning. They had a two-o’clock appointment with this stranger and he had not kept it. To them, time was valuable.

  Then a door opened and the man walked in. That was the first astonishing thing—and then they marveled at the size and shape of him. There was something uncanny about it—peculiar, weird.

  Then the man sat down—in the chair. He did not seem much larger now than the other men, though he was younger than any of them, and had a brown complexion which contrasted peculiarly with the dead gray-white pallor of the others. Then, gravely, almost mechanically, with clear distinct enunciation, he began to speak.

  “I see, gentlemen, that you have all honored me by accepting my invitation to be present this afternoon. You will pardon my not informing any of you that the others were also invited. Had I done so, several of you would have refused to come and without any one of you the meeting would not be as successful as I intended it to be.

  “The name of this company is the ‘New York Electrical Co.’ That is just a name assumed as a mask. In reality, there is no company. I am the representative of the nation of Pedestrians. In fact, I am their president and my name is Abraham Miller. Four generations ago, as, no doubt, you know, Congress passed the Pedestrian Extermination Act. Following that, those who continued to walk were hunted like wild animals, slaughtered without mercy. My great-grandfather, Abraham Miller, was killed in Pennsylvania; his wife was run down on the public highway in Ohio as she was attempting to join the other pedestrians in the Ozarks. There were no battles, there was no conflict. At that time there were only ten thousand pedestrians in all the United States. Within a few years there were none—at least so your ancestors thought. The race of Pedestrians, however, survived. We lived on. The trials of those early years are written in our histories and taught to our children. We formed a colony and continued our existence although we disappeared from the world as you know it.

  “Year by year we lived on until now we number over two hundred persons in our Republic. We are not, in fact never have been ignorant. Always we worked for one purpose and that was the right to return to the world. Our motto for one hundred years has been: ‘We will go back.’

  “So I have come to New York and called you into conference. While you were selected for your influence, wealth and ability, there was present in every instance another important reason. Each of you is a lineal descendant of a United States Senator who voted for the Pedestrian Extermination Act. You can readily see the significance of that. You have the power to undo a great injustice done to a branch of American citizens. Will you let us come back? We want to come back as pedestrians, to come and go as we please, safely. Some of us can drive automobiles and airplanes, but we don’t want to. We want to walk, and if a mood strikes us to walk in the highway, we want to do it without constant danger of death. We do not hate you, we pity you. There is no desire to antagonize you; rather we want to cooperate with you.

  “We believe in work—muscle work. No matter what our young people are trained for, they are taught to work—to do manual work. We understand machinery, but do not like to use it.
The only help we accept is from domestic animals, horses, and oxen. In several places we use water power to run our grist mills and saw our timbers. For pleasure we hunt, fish, play tennis, swim in our mountain lake. We keep our bodies clean and try to do the same with our minds. Our boys marry at 21—our girls at 18. Occasionally a child grows up to be abnormal—degenerate. I frankly say that such children disappear. We eat meat and vegetables, fish, and grain raised in our valley. The time has come when we cannot care for a continued increase in population. The time has come when we must come back into the world. What we desire is a guarantee of safety. I will now leave you in conference for fifteen minutes, and at the end of such time I will return for an answer. If you have any questions, I will answer them then.”

  He left the room. One of the men rolled over to the telephone, found the wire cut; another went over to the door and found it locked. The stenographer had disappeared. There followed sharp discussion marked by temper and lack of logic. One man only kept silent. Heisler sat motionless: so much so that the cigar, clenched between his teeth, went out.

  Then Miller came back. A dozen questions were hurled at him. One man swore at him. Finally there was silence.

  “Well!” questioned Miller.

  “Give us time—a week in which to discuss it—to ascertain public opinion,” urged one of them.

  “No,” said Heisler, “let us give our answer now.”

  “Oh, of course,” sneered one of his bitter opponents. “Your reason for giving a decision is plain, though it has never been in the newspapers.”

  “For that,” said Heisler, “I am going to get you. You are a cur and you know it or you would not drag my family into this.”

  “Oh, Hell! Heisler—you can’t bluff me anymore!”

  Miller hit the table with his fist—

  “What’s your answer?”

  One of the men held up his hand for an audience. “We all know the history of Pedestrianism: the two groups represented here cannot live together. There are two hundred million of us and two hundred of them. Let them stay in their valley. That is what I think. If this man is their leader, we can judge what the colony is like. They are ignorant anarchists. There is no telling what they would demand if we listened to them. I think we should have this man arrested. He is a menace to society.”