Myrion Flowers chose to ignore the latter part of what his patient had said. “I don’t expect it to electrocute me, and I don’t expect this will affect your heart, Wilmot. In any event, I don’t propose to be wondering about this thing for any length of time, I don’t want to try it when I’m alone and there’s no one else here.” He plopped the steel bowl on his head. It fit badly and was very heavy. An extension cord hung from it, and without pausing Flowers plugged it into a wall socket by his chair.
The helmet whined faintly and Flowers leaped to his feet. He screamed.
The Corporation Counsel moved rapidly enough to make himself gasp. He snatched the helmet from
Flowers’s head, caught him by the shoulders and lowered him into his chair again. “You all right?” he growled.
Flowers shuddered epileptically and then controlled himself. “Thank you, Wilmot. I hope you haven’t damaged Dr. Brubacker’s device.” And then suddenly, “It hit me all at once. It hurt!”
He breathed sharply and sat up.
From one of his desk drawers he took a physicians’ sample bottle of pills and swallowed one without water. “Everyone was screaming at once,” he said. He started to replace the pills, then saw the Corporation Counsel holding his chest and mutely offered him one^
Then he seemed startled.
He looked into his visitor’s eyes. “I can still hear you.”
“What?”
“It’s a false angina, I think. But take the pill. But-“ he passed a hand over his eyes-“You thought I was electrocuted, and you wondered how to straighten out my last bill. It’s a fair bill, Wilmot. I didn’t overcharge you.” Flowers opened his eyes very wide and said, “The newsboy on the corner cheated me out of my change. He-“ He swallowed and said, “The cops in the squad car just turning off Fulton Street don’t like my having white patients. One of them is thinking about running in a girl that came here.” He sobbed, “It didn’t stop, Wilmot.”
“For Christ’s sake, Myrion, lie down.”
“It didn’t stop. It’s not like a radio. You can’t turn it off. Now I can hear-everybody! Every mind for miles around is pouring into my head WHAT IT THINKS ABOUT ME-ABOUT ME-ABOUT US!”
Ensal Brubacker, who had been a clinical psychologist and not a radio engineer, had not intended his helmet to endure the strain of continuous operation nor had he thought to provide circuit-breakers. It had been meant to operate for a few moments at most, enough to reroute a few neurons, open a blocked path or two. One of its parts overheated. Another took too much load as a result, and in a moment the thing was afire. It blew the fuses and the room was in darkness. The elderly ex-Corporation Counsel managed to get the fire out, and then picked up the phone. Shouting to be heard over the screaming of Myrion Flowers, he summoned a Kings County ambulance. They knew Flowers’s name. The ambulance was there in nine minutes.
Flowers died some weeks later in the hospital-not Kings County, but he did not know the difference. He had been under massive sedation for almost a month until it became a physiological necessity to taper him off; and as soon as he was alert enough to do so he contrived to hang himself in his room.
His funeral was a state occasion. The crowds were enormous and there was much weeping. The Corporation Counsel was one of those permitted to cast a clod of earth upon the bronze casket, but he did not weep.
No one had ever figured out what the destroyed instrument was supposed to have been, and Wilmot did not tell. There are inventions and inventions, he thought, and reading minds is a job for white men. If even for white men. In the world of Myrion Flowers many seeds might sturdily grow, but some ripe fruits would mature into poison.
No doubt the machine might have broken any mind, listening in on every thought that concerned one. It was maddening and dizzying, and the man who wore the helmet would be harmed in any world; but only in the world of Myrion Flowers would he be hated to death.
Trouble In Time
To begin at the beginning everybody knows that scientists are crazy. I may be either mistaken or prejudiced, but this seems especially true of mathematico-physicists. In a small town like Colchester gossip spreads fast and furiously, and one evening the word was passed around that an outstanding example of the species Doctissimus Dementiae had finally lodged himself in the old frame house beyond the dog-pound on Court Street, mysterious crates and things having been unloaded there for weeks previously.
Abigail O'Liffey, a typical specimen of the low type that a fine girl like me is forced to consort with in a small town, said she had seen the Scientist. "He had broad shoulders," she said dreamily, "and red hair, and a scraggly little moustache that wiggled up and down when he chewed gum."
"What would you expect it to do?"
She looked at me dumbly. "He was wearing a kind of garden coat," she said. "It was like a painter's, only it was all burned in places instead of having paint on it. I'll bet he discovers things like Paul Pasteur."
"Louis Pasteur," I said. "Do you know his name, by any chance?"
"Whose – the Scientist's? Clarissa said one of the express-men told her husband it was Cramer or something."
"Never heard of him," I said. "Good night." And I slammed the screen door. Cramer, I thought – it was the echo of a name I knew, and a big name at that. I was angry with Clarissa for not getting the name more accurately, and with Abigail for bothering me about it, and most of all with the Scientist for stirring me out of my drowsy existence with remembrances of livelier and brighter things not long past.
So I slung on a coat and sneaked out the back door to get a look at the mystery man, or at least his house. I slunk past the dog-pound, and the house sprang into sight like a Christmas tree – every socket in the place must have been in use, to judge from the flood of light that poured from all windows. There was a dark figure on the unkempt lawn; when I was about ten yards from it and on the verge of turning back it shouted at me : "Hey, you! Can you give me a hand?"
I approached warily; the figure was wrestling with a crate four feet high and square. "Sure," I said.
The figure straightened. "Oh, so he's a she," it said. "Sorry, lady. I'll get a hand truck from inside."
"Don't bother," I assured it. "I'm glad to help" And I took one of the canvas slings as it took the other, and we carried the crate in, swaying perilously. "Set it here, please," he said, dropping his side of the crate. It was a he, I saw in the numerous electric bulbs' light, and from all appearances the Scientist Cramer, or whatever his name was.
I looked about the big front parlor, bare of furniture but jammed with boxes and piles of machinery. "That was the last piece," he said amiably, noting my gaze. "Thank you. Can I offer you a scientist's drink?"
"Not – ethyl?" I cried rapturously.
"The same," he assured me, vigorously attacking a crate that tinkled internally. "How do you know?"
"Past experience. My Alma Mater was the Housatonic University, School of Chemical Engineering."
He had torn away the front of the crate, laying bare a neat array of bottles. "What's a C.E. doing in this stale little place?" he asked, selecting flasks and measures.
"Sometimes she wonders," I said bitterly. "Mix me an Ethyl Martini, will you?"
"Sure, if you like them. I don't go much for the fancy swigs myself. Correct me if I'm wrong." He took the bottle labeled CH2OH. "Three cubic centimeters?"
"No – you don't start with the ethyl!" I cried. "Put four minims of fusel oil in a beaker." He complied. "Right – now a tenth of a grain of saccharine saturated in theine barbiturate ten per cent solution." His hands flew through the pharmaceutical ritual. "And now pour in the ethyl slowly, and stir, don't shake."
He held the beaker to the light. "Want some color in that?" he asked, immersing it momentarily in liquid air from a double thermos.
"No," I said. "What are you having?"
"A simple fusel highball," he said, expertly pouring and chilling a beakerful, and brightening it with a drop of a purple dye that transformed the
colorless drink into a sparkling beverage. We touched beakers and drank deep.
"That," I said gratefully when I had finished coughing, "is the first real drink I've had since graduating three years ago. The stuff has a nostalgic appeal for me."
He looked blank. "It occurs to me," he said, 'that I ought to introduce myself. I am Stephen Trainer, late of Mellon, late of Northwestern, late of Cambridge, sometime fellow of the Sidney School of Technology. Now you tell me who you are and we'll be almost even."
I collected my senses and announced, "Miss Mabel Evans, late in practically every respect."
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Evans," he said. "Won't you sit down?"
"Thank you," I murmured. I was about to settle on one of the big wooden boxes when he cried out at me.
"For God's sake – not there!"
"And why not?" I asked, moving to another. "Is that your reserve stock of organic bases?"
"No," he said. "That's part of my time machine."
I looked at him. "Just a nut, huh?" I said pityingly. "Just another sometimes capable fellow gone wrong. He thinks he knows what he's doing, and he even had me fooled for a time, but the idee fixe has come out at last, and we see the man for what he is – mad as a hatter. Nothing but a time-traveller at the bottom of that mass of flesh and bone." I felt sorry for him, in a way.
His face grew as purple as the drink in his hand. As though he too had formed the association, he drained it and set it down. "Listen," he said. "I only know one style of reasoning that parallels yours in its scope and utter disregard of logic. Were you ever so unfortunate as to be associated with that miserable charlatan, Dr. George B. Hopper?"
"My physics professor at Housatonic," I said, "and whaddya make of that?"
"I am glad of the chance of talking to you," he said in a voice suddenly hoarse. "It's no exaggeration to say that for the greater part of my life I've wanted to come across a pupil of Professor Hopper. I've sat under him and over him on various faculties; we even went to Cambridge together — it disgusted both of us. And now at last I have the chance, and now you are going to learn the truth about physics."
"Go on with your lecture," I muttered skeptically.
He looked at me glassily. "I am going on with my lecture," he said. "Listen closely. Take a circle. What is a circle?"
"You tell me," I said.
"A circle is a closed arc. A circle is composed of an infinite number of straight lines, each with a length of zero, each at an angle infinitesmally small to its adjacent straight lines."
"I should be the last to dispute the point," I said judiciously. He reached for the decanter and missed. He reached again grimly, his fist opening and closing, and finally snapping shut on its neck. Will you join me once more?" he asked graciously.
"Granted," I said absently, wondering what was going around in my head.
"Now — one point which we must get quite clear in the beginning is that all circles are composed of an in—"
"You said that already," I interrupted.
"Did I?" he asked with a delighted smile. "I'm brighter than I thought." He waggled his head fuzzily. "Then do you further admit that, by a crude Euclidean axiom which I forget at the moment, all circles are equal?"
"Could be — but so help me, if —" I broke off abruptly as I realized that I was lying full length on the floor. I shuddered at the very thought of what my aunt would say to that. "The point I was about to make," he continued without a quaver, "was that if all circles are equal, all circles can be traversed at the same expenditure of effort, money, or what have you." He stopped and gasped at me, collecting his thoughts. "All circles can be traversed, also, with the same amount of time! No matter whether the circle be the equator or the head of a pin! Now do you see?"
"With the clarity appalling. And the time travelling .. .?"
"Ah — er — yes. The time travelling. Let me think for a moment." He indicated thought by a Homeric configuration of his eyebrows, forehead, cheeks and chin. "Do you know," he finally said with a weak laugh, "I'm afraid I've forgotten the connection. But my premise is right, isn't it? If it takes the same time to traverse any two circles, and one of them is the universe, and the other is my time wheel —" His voice died under my baleful stare.
"I question your premise vaguely," I said. "There's nothing I can exactly put my finger on, but I believe it's not quite dry behind the ears."
"Look," he said. "You can question it as much as you like, but it works. I'll show you the gimmicks."
We clambered to our feet. "There," he pointed to the box I had nearly sat upon, "there lies the key to the ages." And he took up a crowbar and jimmied the top off the crate.
I lifted out carefully the most miscellaneous collection of junk ever seen outside a museum of modern art. "What, for example," I asked, gingerly dangling a canvas affair at arms' length, "does this thing do?"
"One wears it as a belt," he said. I put the thing on and found that it resolved itself into a normal Sam Browne belt with all sorts of oddments of things dangling from it. "Now," he said, "I have but to plug this into a wall socket, and then, providing you get on the time wheel, out you go like a light — pouf!"
"Don't be silly," I said. "I'm practically out now in the first place, in the second place I don't care whether I go out pouf or splash – though the latter is more customary – and in the third place I don't believe your silly old machine works anyway. I dare you to make me go pouf – I just dare you!"
"All right," he said mildly. "Over there is the time wheel. Get on it."
The time wheel reminded me of a small hand-turned merry-go-round. I got on it with a good will, and he made it turn. Then he plugged in the lead to a wall socket, and I went out like a light – pouf !
There are few things more sobering than time-travel. On going pouf I closed my eyes, as was natural. Possibly I screamed a little, too. All I know is when I opened my eyes they were bleary and aching, and certainly nowhere very near the old house past the dog-pound on Court Street. The locale appeared to be something like Rockefeller Center, only without fountains.
I was standing on polished stones – beautifully polished stones which seemed to set the keynote of the surroundings. Everything was beautiful and everything was polished. Before me was a tall, tall building. It was a dark night, and there seemed to be a great lack of illumination in this World of Tomorrow.
I followed my nose into the building. The revolving door revolved without much complaint, and did me the favor of turning on the lights of the lobby.
There were no people there; there were no people anywhere in sight. I tried to shout, and the ghastly echo from the still darkened sections made me tremble to my boots. I didn't try again, but very mousily looked about for an elevator or something. The something turned out to be a button in a vast column, labeled in plain English, "Slavies' ring."
I rang, assuring myself that doing so was no confession of inferiority, but merely the seizing of an offered opportunity.
All the lobby lights went out, then, but the column was glowing like mother-of-pearl before a candle. A sort of door opened, and I walked through. "Why not?" I asked myself grimly.
I seemed to be standing on a revolving staircase – but one that actually revolved! It carried me up like a gigantic corkscrew at a speed that was difficult to determine. It stopped after a few minutes, and another door opened. I stepped through and said "Thank you" nicely to the goblins of the staircase, and shuddered again as the door slammed murderously fast and hard.
Lights go again at my landing place – I was getting a bit more familiar with this ridiculous civilization. Was everybody away at Bermuda for the summer? I wondered. Then I chattered my teeth.
Corpses! Hundreds of them! I had had the bad taste, I decided, to land in the necropolis of the World of Tomorrow.
On slabs of stone they lay in double rows, great lines of them stretching into the distance of the huge chamber into which I had blundered. Morbid curiosity moved me closer
to the nearest stiff. I had taken a course in embalming to get my C.E., and I pondered on the advances of that art.
Something hideously like a bed-lamp clicked on as I bent over the mummified creature. Go above! With a rustling like the pages of an ancient book it moved – flung its arm over its eyes!
I'm afraid I may have screamed. But almost immediately I realized that the terror had been of my own postulation. Corpses do not move. This thing had moved – therefore it was not a corpse, and I had better get hold of myself unless I was determined to go batty.
It was revolting but necessary that I examine the thing. From its fingers thin, fine silver wires led into holes in the slab. I rolled it over, not heeding its terrible groans, and saw that a larger strand penetrated the neck, apparently in contact with its medulla oblongata. Presumably it was sick – this was a hospital. I rambled about cheerfully, scanning cryptic dials on the walls, wondering what would happen next, if anything.
There was a chair facing the wall; I turned it around and sat down.
"Greetings, unknown friend," said an effeminate voice.
"Greetings right back at you," said I.
"You have seated yourself in a chair; please be advised that you have set into motion a sound track that may be of interest to you."
The voice came from a panel in the wall that had lit up with opalescent effects.
"My name," said the panel, "is unimportant. You will probably wish to know first, assuming that this record is ever played, that there are duplicates artfully scattered throughout this city, so that whoever visits us will hear our story."
"Clever, aren't you?" I said sourly. "Suppose you stop fussing around and tell me what's going on around here."
"I am speaking," said the panel, "from the Fifth Century of Bickerstaff."
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