The 27th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  “Never faint!” murmured the girl, and pitched backward to the couch, with one clad and one bare leg hanging in curious limpness over the edge.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Not Humanly Possible”

  Pat opened weary eyes and gazed at a blank, uninformative ceiling. It was some moments before she realized that she was lying on the couch in the room of Nicholas Devine. Somebody had placed her there, presumably, since she was quite unaware of the circumstances of her awakening. Then recollection began to form—Dr. Carl, the other, the roar of a shot. After that, nothing save a turmoil ending in blankness.

  A sound of movement beside her drew her attention. She turned her head and perceived Dr. Horker kneeling over a form on the floor, fingering a white bandage about the head of the figure. Her recollections took instant form; she remembered the catastrophes of the evening—last night, rather, since dawn glowed dully in the window. She had shot Nick! She gave a little moan and pushed herself to a sitting position.

  The Doctor glanced at her with a sick, shaky smile. “Hello,” he said. “Come to, have you? Sorry I couldn’t give you any attention.” He gave the bandage a final touch. “Here’s a job I had no heart for,” he muttered. “Better for everyone to let things happen without interference.”

  The girl, returning to full awareness, noticed now that the bandage consisted of strips of the Doctor’s shirt. She glanced fearfully at the still features of Nicholas Devine; she saw pale cheeks and closed eyes, but indubitably not the grim mien of the demon.

  “Dr. Carl!” she whispered. “He isn’t—he isn’t—”

  “Not yet.”

  “But will he—?”

  “I don’t know. That’s a bad spot, a wound in the base of the brain. You’d best know it now, Pat, but also realize that nothing can happen to you. I’ll see to that!”

  “To me!” she said dully. “What difference does that make? It’s Nick I want saved.”

  “I’ll do my best for you, Honey,” said Horker with almost a hint of reluctance. “I’ve phoned Briggs General for an ambulance. Your faint lasted a full quarter hour,” he added.

  “What can we tell them?” asked the girl. “What can we say?”

  “Don’t you say anything, Pat. I’m not on the board for nothing.” He rose from his knees, glancing out of the window into the cool dawn. “Queer neighborhood!” he said. “All that yelling and a shot, and still no sign of interest from the neighbors. That’s Chicago, though,” he mused. “Lucky for us, Pat; we can handle the thing quietly now.”

  But the girl was staring dully at the still figure on the floor. “Oh God!” she said huskily. “Help him, Dr. Carl!”

  “I’ll do my best,” responded Horker gloomily. “I was a good surgeon before I specialized in psychiatry. Brain surgery, too; it led right into my present field.”

  Pat said nothing, but dropped her head on her hands and stared vacantly before her.

  “Better for you, and for him too, if I fail,” muttered the Doctor.

  His words brought a reply. “You won’t fail,” she said tensely. “You won’t!”

  “Not voluntarily, I’m afraid,” he growled morosely. “I’ve still a little respect for medical ethics, but if ever a case—” His voice trailed into silence as from somewhere in the dawn sounded the wail of a siren. “There’s the ambulance,” he finished.

  Pat sat unmoving as the sounds from outdoors detailed the stopping of the vehicle before the house. She heard the Doctor descending the steps, and the creak of the door. Though it took place before her eyes, she scarcely saw the white-coated youths as they lifted the form of Nicholas Devine and bore it from the room on a stretcher, treading with carefully broken steps to prevent the swaying of the support. Dr. Horker’s order to follow made no impression on her; she sat dully on the couch as the chamber emptied.

  Why, she wondered, had the thought of Nick’s death disturbed her so? Wasn’t it but a short time since they had both contemplated it? What had occurred to alter that determination? Nick was dying, she thought mournfully; all that remained was for her to follow. There on the floor lay the revolver, and on the table, glistening in the wan light, reposed the untouched lethal draft. That was the preferable way, she mused, staring fixedly at its glowing contour.

  But suppose Nick weren’t to die—she’d have abandoned him to his terrible doom, left him to face a situation far more ominous than any unknown terrors beyond death. She shook her head distractedly, and looked up to meet the eyes of Dr. Horker, who was watching her gravely in the doorway.

  “Come on, Pat,” he said gently.

  She rose, followed him down the stairs and out into the morning light. The driver of the ambulance stared curiously at her dishevelled, bedraggled figure, but she was so weary and forlorn that even the effort of brushing away the black strands of hair that clouded her smoke-dark eyes was beyond her. She slumped into the seat of the Doctor’s car and sighed in utter exhaustion.

  “Rush it!” Horker called to the driver ahead. “I’ll follow you.”

  The car swept into motion, and the swift cool morning air beating against her face from the open window restored some clarity to her mind. She fixed her eyes on the rear of the speeding vehicle they followed.

  “Is there any hope at all?” she queried despondently.

  “I don’t know, Pat. I can’t tell yet. When you closed your eyes, he half turned, dodged; the bullet entered his skull near the base, near the cerebellum. If it had pierced the cerebellum, his heart and breathing must have stopped instantly. They didn’t, however, and that’s a mildly hopeful sign. Very mildly hopeful, though.”

  “Do you know now what that devil—what the attack was?”

  “No, Pat,” Horker admitted. “I don’t. Call it a devil if you like; I can’t name it any better.” His voice changed to a tone of wonder. “Pat, I can’t understand that paralyzing fascination the thing exerted. I—any medical man—would say that mental dominance of that sort doesn’t exist.”

  “Hypnotism,” the girl suggested.

  “Bah! Every psychiatrist uses hypnotism in his business; it’s part of some treatments. There’s nothing of fascination about it; no dominance of one will over another, despite the popular view. That’s natural and understandable; this was like—well, like the exploded claims of Mesmerism. I tell you, it’s not humanly possible—and yet I felt it!”

  “Not humanly possible,” murmured Pat. “That’s the answer, then, Dr. Carl. Maybe now you’ll believe in my devil.”

  “I’m tempted to.”

  “You’ll have to! Can’t you see it, Dr. Carl? Even his name, Nick—that’s a colloquialism for the devil, isn’t it?”

  “And Devine, I suppose,” said Horker, “refers to his angelic ancestry. Devils are only fallen angels, aren’t they?”

  “All right,” said Pat wearily. “Make fun of it. You’ll see!”

  “I’m not making fun of your theory, Honey. I can’t offer a better one myself. I never saw nor heard of anything similar, and I’m not in position to ridicule any theory.”

  “But you don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I don’t, Pat. You’re weaving an intricate fairy tale about a pathological condition and a fortuitous suggestiveness in names. Whatever the condition is—and I confess I don’t understand it—it’s something rational, and those things can be treated.”

  “Treated by exorcism,” said the girl. “That’s the only way anyone ever succeeded in casting out a devil.”

  The Doctor made no answer. The wailing vehicle ahead of them swung rapidly out of sight into an alley, and Horker halted his car before the gray facade of Briggs General.

  “Come in here,” he said, helping Pat to alight. “You’ll want to wait, won’t you?”

  “How long,” she queried listlessly, “before—before you’ll know?”

  “Perhaps immediately. The o
nly chance is to get that bullet out at once—if there’s still time for it.”

  She followed him into the building, past a desk where a white-clad girl regarded her curiously, and up an elevator. He led her into a small office.

  “Sit here,” he said gently, and disappeared.

  She sat dully in the chair he had indicated, and minutes passed. She made no attempt to think; the long, cataclysmic night had exhausted her powers. She simply sat and suffered; the deep scratches of fingernails burned in the flesh of her back, her cheek pained from the violent slap, and her head and jaw ached from that first blow, the one that had knocked her unconscious last evening. But these twinges were minor; they were merely physical, and the hurts of the demon had struck far deeper than any physical injury. The damage to her spirit was by all odds the more painful; it numbed her mind and dulled her thoughts, and she simply sat idle and stared at the blank wall.

  She had no conception of the interval before Dr. Horker returned. He entered quietly, and began rinsing his hands at a basin in the corner.

  “Is it over?” she asked listlessly.

  “Not even begun,” he responded. “However, it isn’t too late. He’ll be ready in a moment or so.”

  “I wish it were over,” she murmured. “One way or the other.”

  “I too!” said the Doctor. “With all my heart, I wish it were over! If there were anyone within call who could handle it, I’d turn it to him gladly. But there isn’t!”

  He moved again toward the door, leaning out and glancing down the hall.

  “You stay here,” he admonished her. “Don’t try to find us; I want no interruptions, no matter what enters that mind of yours!”

  “You needn’t worry,” she said soberly. “I’m not fool enough for that.” She leaned wearily back in the chair, closing her eyes. A long interval passed; she was vaguely surprised to see the Doctor still standing in the doorway when she opened her eyes. She had fancied him already in the midst of his labor.

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “I mean what sort of operation will it need? Probing or what?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I’ll have to trephine him. Must get that bullet.”

  “What’s that—trephine?”

  He glanced down the hall. “They’re ready,” he said, and turned to go. At the door he paused. “Trephining is to open a little door in the skull. If your devil is in his head, we’ll have it out along with the bullet.”

  His footsteps receded down the hall.

  CHAPTER 32

  Revelation

  “Is it over now?” queried Pat tremulously as the Doctor finally reappeared. The interminable waiting had left her even more worn, and her pallid features bore the marks of strain.

  “Twenty minutes ago,” said Horker. His face too bore evidence of tension; moreover, there was a puzzled, dubious expression in his eyes that frightened Pat. She was too apprehensive to risk a question as to the outcome, and simply stared at him with wide, fearful, questioning eyes.

  “I called up your home,” he said irrelevantly. “I told them you left with me early this morning. Your mother’s still in bed, although it’s after ten.” He paused. “Slip in without anyone seeing you, will you, Honey? And rumple up your bed.”

  “If I haven’t lost my key,” she said, still with the question in her eyes.

  “It’s in the mail-box. Magda found it on the porch this morning. I talked to her.”

  She could bear the uncertainty no longer. “Tell me!” she demanded.

  “It’s all right, I think.”

  “You mean—he’ll live?”

  The Doctor nodded. “I think so.” He turned his puzzled eyes on her.

  “Oh!” breathed Pat. “Thank God!”

  “You wanted him back, Honey, didn’t you?” Horker’s tone was gentle.

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Devil and all?”

  “Yes—devil and all!” she echoed. Suddenly she sensed something strange in the other’s manner. She perceived the uncertainty in his visage, and felt a rising trepidation. “What’s the matter?” she queried anxiously. “You’re not telling me everything! Tell me, Dr. Carl!”

  “There’s something else,” he said. “I’m not sure, Pat, but I think—I hope—you’ve got him back without the devil!”

  “He’s cured?” Her voice was incredulous; she did not dare accept the Doctor’s meaning.

  “I hope so. At least I located the cause.”

  “What was it?” she demanded, an unexpected vigor livening her tired body. “What was that devil? Tell me! I want to know, Dr. Carl!”

  “I think the best name for it is a tumor,” he said slowly. “I told them in there it was a tumor. I wish I knew myself.”

  “A tumor! I don’t understand!”

  “I don’t either, Pat—not fully. It’s something on or beyond the border of medical knowledge. I don’t think any living authority could classify it definitely.”

  “But tell me!” she cried fiercely. “Tell me!”

  “Well, Honey—I’ll try.” He paused thoughtfully. “Cancers and tumors—sarcomas—are curious things, Dear. Doctors aren’t at all sure just what they are. And one of their peculiarities is that they sometimes seem to be trying to develop into separate entities, trying to become human by feeding like parasites on their hosts. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said the girl. “I’m sorry, Dr. Carl, but I don’t.”

  “I mean,” he continued, “that sometimes these growths seem to be trying to develop into—into organisms. I’ve seen them, for instance—every surgeon has—with bones developing. I’ve seen one with a rather perfect jaw-bone, and little teeth, and hair. As if,” he added, “it were making a sort of attempt to become human, in a primitive, disorganized fashion. Now do you see what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said the girl, with a violent shudder. “Dr. Carl, that’s horrible!”

  “Life sometimes is,” he agreed. “Well,” he continued slowly, “I opened up our patient’s skull at the point where the fluoroscope indicated the bullet. I trephined it, and there, pierced by the shot, was this—” He hesitated, “—this tumor.”

  “Did you—remove it?”

  “Of course. But it wasn’t a natural sort of brain tumor, Honey. It was a little cerebrum, apparently joined to a Y-shaped branch of the spinal cord. A little brain, Pat—no larger than your small fist, but deeply convoluted, and with the pre-Rolandic area highly developed.”

  “What’s pre-Rolandic, Dr. Carl?” asked Pat, shivering.

  “The seat of the motor nerves. The home, you might say, of the will. This brain was practically all will—and I wonder,” he said musingly, “if that explains the ungodly, evil fascination the creature could command. A brain that was nothing but pure will-power, relieved by its parasitic nature of all the distractions of a directing body! I wonder—” He fell silent.

  “Tell me the rest!” she said frantically.

  “That’s all, Honey. I removed it, and I guess I’m the only surgeon in the world who ever removed a brain from a human skull without killing the patient! Luckily, he had two of them!”

  “Oh God!” murmured the girl faintly. She turned to Horker. “But he will live?”

  “I think so. Your shot killed the devil, it seems.” He frowned. “I said it was a tumor; I told them it was a tumor, but I’m not sure. Perhaps, just as some people are born with six fingers or toes on each member, he was born with two brains. It’s possible; one developed normally, humanly, and the other—into that creature we faced last night. I don’t know!”

  “It’s what I said,” asserted Pat. “It’s a devil, and what you’ve just told me about tumors proves it. They’re devils, that’s all, and some day some student is going to cut one loose and raise it to maturity outside a human body, and you’ll
see what a devil is really like! And go ahead and laugh!”

  “I’m not laughing, Pat. I’d be the last one to laugh at your theory, after facing that thing last night. It had satanic powers, all right—that paralyzing fascination! You felt it too; it wasn’t just a mental lapse on my part, was it?”

  “I felt it, Dr. Carl! I’d felt it before that; I was always helpless in the presence of it.”

  “Could it,” he asked, “have imposed its will actively on yours? I mean, could it have made you actually do what it asked there at the end, just before I recovered enough sense to let out that bellow?”

  “To take off—my dress?” She shivered. “I don’t know, Dr. Carl.—I’m afraid so.” She looked at him appealingly. “Why did I yield to it so?” she cried. “What made me find such a fierce pleasure in its kisses—in its blows and scratches, and the pain it inflicted on me? Why was that, Dr. Carl?”

  “Why,” he countered, “do gangsters’ girls and apache women enjoy the cruelties perpetrated on them by their men? There’s a little masochism in most women, and that—creature was sadistic, perverted, abnormal, and somehow dominating. It took an unfair advantage of you, Pat; don’t blame yourself.”

  “It was—utterly evil!” she muttered. “It was the ultimate in everything unholy.”

  “It was an aberrant brain,” said Horker. “You can’t judge it by human standards, since it wasn’t actually human. It was, I suppose, just what you said—a devil. I didn’t even keep it,” he added grimly. “I destroyed it.”

  “Do you know what it meant by saying it was a question of synapses?” she asked.

  “That was queer!” The Doctor’s voice was puzzled. “That remark implies that the thing itself knew what it was. How? It must have possessed knowledge that the normal brain lacked.”

  “Was it a question of synapses?”

  “In a sense it was. The nerves from the two rival brains must have met in a synaptic juncture. The oftener the aberrant brain gained control, the easier it became for it to repeat the process, as the synapse, so to speak, wore thin. That’s why the attacks intensified so horribly toward the end; the habit was being formed.”