Microcosmic God

by Theodore Sturgeon

  We live in a resilient universe; the momentary upset is negligible, since the slack is taken up to infinity. Such a control had the brain from space. Any and every form of energy—and matter is energy—was his to control, to any degree. The resultant from one tiny upset balance could be used to upset another; and a chain like this could be extended ad infinitum. Fortunately, the brain knew how not to make mistakes!

  He made his apparatus quickly and efficiently. A long table; tanks and small bins of pure elements; a highly complex machine with projectors and reflectors capable of handling any radiation that can be indicated on a circular spectrum, for compounding and conditioning the basic materials. The machine had no switches, no indicators, no dials. It was built to do a certain job, and as soon as it was completed it began working. When the job was done it quit. It was the kind of machine whose perfection ruined the brain’s civilization, and has undoubtedly ruined others, and will most certainly ruin more.

  On the surface of the table appeared a shadow. Cell by cell appeared as the carbon-magnesium-calcium mixtures were coordinated and projected by the machine. A human skeleton was almost suddenly complete—that is, an almost human skeleton. The brain was impatient with unnecessary detail, and if there were fewer vertebrae and more but finer ribs, and later, a lack of appendix, tonsils, sinal cavities, and abductors minimi digiti, then it was only in the interest of logic. The flesh formed over the skeleton, fiber by perfect fiber. Blood vessels were flat, their insides sealed to each other until the body was complete enough to start distributing blood. The thing was “born” with a full stomach; it began its functions long before it was complete enough for the brain’s entry.

  While it was forming, the brain lay in a corner of the room reasoning it out. He knew its construction and had carried it out. Now he asked the reasons for its being this way, and calculated its functions. Hearing, sight with light, communication by vibrating tissues, degree of telepathy, organs of balance, possible and probable mental and physical reflexes, all such elementary things were carefully reasoned out and recorded on that fathomless brain. It was not necessary to examine the body itself or to look at it. He had planned it, and it would be as he had planned. If he wished to study any part of it before it formed, he had his memory.

  The body lay complete eventually. It was a young and strong and noble creature. It lay there breathing deeply and slowly, and under its broad, intellectual forehead its eyes glowed with the pale light of idiocy. The heart beat firmly, and a tiny switch in the left thigh developed and disappeared as the cells adjusted themselves to each other. The hair was glossy and black and was in a pronounced widow’s peak. The hairline was the line separating the two parts of the head, for the top part was a hinged lid which now gaped open. The white matter of the brain was formed completely and relaid to make room for the metal-encased creator.

  He drifted up to the head of the table and settled into the open skull. A moment, and then it snapped shut. The young man—for such he was now—lay quiet for a long while, as the brain checked the various senses—temperature, pressure, balance, and sight. Slowly the right arm raised and lowered, and then the left, and then the legs rose together and swung over the edge of the table and the young man sat up. He shook his head and gazed about with his rapidly clearing eyes, turned his head stiffly, and got to his feet. His knees buckled slightly; he grasped the table spasmodically, not bending his fingers because he hadn’t thought of it yet. His mouth opened and closed, and he ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth and lips and teeth.

  “What an awkward way to get around,” he thought, trying his weight on one leg and then the other. He flexed his arms and hands and hopped up and down cautiously.

  “Agh!” he said waveringly. “A-a-a-gh-ha-agh!” He listened to himself, enchanted by this new way of expressing himself. “Ka. Pa. Ta. Sa. Ha. Ga. La. Ra,” he said, testing the possibilities of linguals, gutturals, sibilants, palatals, labials, singly and in combination. “Ho-o-o-o-owe-e-e-e!” he howled, trying sustained tones from low to high pitch.

  He tottered to the wall, and with one hand on it began padding up and down the room. Soon the support was no longer necessary, and he walked alone; and then he went faster and faster and ran round and round, hooting strangely. He was a little disgusted to find that violent activity made his heart beat fast and his breathing harder. Flimsy things, these bipeds. He sat panting on the table and began testing his senses of taste and touch, his muscular and oral and aural and visual memories.

  Chauncey Thomas was an aristocrat. No one had ever seen him in patchy pants or broken shoes. They would, though, he reflected bitterly, if he didn’t get a chance to steal some soon. “What de hell,” he muttered. “All I ast is t’ree meals a day and good clo’es, an’ a house an’ stuff, an’ no work to do. Heh! An’ dey tell me I can get t’ings by workin’. It ain’t worth it. It just ain’t worth it!”

  He had every right to be bitter, he thought. Not only do they throw him down three flights of stairs in the town’s most exclusive apartment house just because he was sleeping on the landing, but they stick him in jail for it. Did he get a chance to rest in jail? He did not. They made him work. They made him whitewash cells. That was hardly right. Then they gave him the bum’s rush out of town. It was unfair. What if it was the ninth time they had booked him? “I got to find me another town,” he decided. He was thinking of the sheriff’s remark that next time he was run in the sheriff would pin a murder on him if he had to kill one of his deputies to do it.

  Chauncey turned his slow, unwilling feet onto the Springfield Turnpike and headed away from town. The night was two hours old and very warm. Chauncey slouched along with his hands in his pockets, feeling misunderstood. A slight movement in the shadows beside the road escaped his attention, and he never realized that anyone was there until he found himself picked up by the slack of his trousers and dangling uncomfortably from a mighty fist.

  “I ain’t done nothin’!” he squalled immediately, resorting to a conversational reflex of his. “Le’s talk this over, now bud. Aw, come on, now; you got nothin’ on me. You—awk!”

  Chauncey’s mouthings became wordless when he had managed, by twisting around in his oversize clothes, to see his captor. The vision of a muscular giant, at least six feet five, regarding him out of fathomless, shadowy eyes as he held him at arm’s length was too much for Chauncey Thomas. He broke down and wailed.

  The naked Apollo spun the bum about in midair and caught him by the belt. He plucked curiously at the worn jacket, reached down and tore a piece of leather out of the side of an outsize sport shoe as if it had been made of blotting paper, studied it carefully, tossed it aside.

  “Lemme go!” shrieked Chauncey. “Gee, boss, I wasn’t doin’ nothin’, honest I wasn’t. I’m goin’ to Springfield, I’ll get a job or somethin’, boss!” The words burned his mouth as he said them, but this was an emergency and he had to say something.

  “Gha!” grunted the giant, and dropped him on his ear in the middle of the road.

  Chauncey scrambled to his feet and scuttled off down the road. The giant stood watching him as he slowed, made a U-turn, and came running back under the influence of a powerful hypnotic suggestion emanating from that great clean body. He stood awed and trembling before the newborn one, wishing he were dead, wishing he were away from there—even in jail.

  “Who-who are you?” he faltered.

  The other caught Chauncey’s shifty eyes in his own deep gaze. The hobo’s shaken mind was soothed; he blinked twice and sat down on his knees beside the road, staring upward into the inscrutable face of this frightening, fascinating man. Something seemed to be crawling into Chauncey’s mind, creeping about there. He felt himself being drawn out; his memories examined; his knowledge of human society and human customs and traditions and history. Things he thought he had forgotten and wanted to forget popped up, and he felt them being mulled over. Within a few minutes the giant had as complete a knowledge of human conduct and speech as Chauncey T
homas had ever had.

  He stepped back, and Chauncey slumped gasping to the ground. He felt depleted.

  “Get up, bum,” said the big man in Chauncey’s own idiom.

  Chauncey got up; there was no mistaking the command in that resonant voice. He cringed before him and whined: “Whatcha gonna do wit’ me, boss? I ain’t—”

  “Shut up!” said the other. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  Chauncey looked at the immobile face. “Well … I … I guess I’ll be on my way.”

  “Aw, stick around. Whatcha scared of?”

  “Well … nothin’ … but, who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Elron,” said the giant, using the first euphonious syllables that came to mind.

  “Oh. Where’s yer clo’es? You been rolled?”

  “Naw. Well, yeah. Wait here for me; I think I can—”

  Elron bounded over the hedge, not wanting to astound the little tramp too much. From Chauncey’s mind he had stolen a mental photograph of what Chauncey considered a beautiful outfit. It was a plaid suit with a diamond-checked vest and yellow shoes; a wing collar and a ten-gallon hat. Slipping into his underground laboratory, Elron threw back the casing of the complex projector that had built him his body, and made a few swift adjustments. A moment later he joined Chauncey, fully clad in Chauncey’s own spectacular idea of tailoring to taste.

  “Hully gee!” breathed Chauncey.

  They walked along the road together, Chauncey quite speechless, Elron pensive. A few cars passed them; Chauncey automatically and without hope flung a practiced thumb toward each. They were both surprised when a lavish roadster ground to a stop ahead of them. The door was flung open; Chauncey slid in front of Elron and would have climbed in but for Elron’s grasping him by the scruff of the neck and hauling him back.

  “In the rumble, lug,” he ground out.

  “Nuttin’ good ever happens t’ me,” muttered Chauncey as he followed orders. He had seen the driver. She was lovely.

  “Where are you bound?” she asked as Elron closed the door.

  “Springfield,” he said, remembering from something Chauncey had said that the town was on this road. He looked at this newest acquaintance. She was as tiny and perfect as he was big and perfect, and she handled the car with real artistry. Her eyes were deep auburn to match her hair. Judging by human standards, Elron thought her very pleasing to look upon.

  “I’ll take you there,” she said.

  “T’anks, lady.”

  She looked at him quickly.

  “What’s up, babe?” he asked.

  “Oh—nothing. Don’t call me ‘babe.’ ”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Again she flashed him a look. “Are you—kidding me?” she asked.

  “What about?”

  “You look—oh, I don’t know.”

  “Spill it, sister.”

  “Oh, sort of—well, not like the kind who calls girls ‘babe.’ ”

  “Oh,” he said. “You mean—you’d say it different, like.” He was having trouble with Chauncey’s limited vocabulary.

  “Something like that. What are you going to do in Springfield?”

  “Just look around a little, I guess. I want to see a city.”

  “Don’t tell me you never saw a city!”

  “Listen,” he snapped, covering up his error by falling back on one of Chauncey’s devices, “it ain’t worryin’ you any, is it? What do you care?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said acidly. He sensed something strained about the silence that followed.

  “Mad, huh?”

  She looked at him scornfully and sniffed.

  The trivial impasse intrigued him. “Stop here,” he ordered her.

  “What?” she asked furiously.

  He leaned forward and caught her eye. “Stop here!”

  She cut the ignition and the big car slid to a stop. Elron took her shoulder and turned her to him. She almost struggled but hadn’t time.

  Tendrils of thought stole into her brain, explored her memories, her tastes, her opinions and philosophies and vocabulary. He learned why it was déclassé to address a woman as “babe,” and that among civilized people ten-gallon hats were not worn with wing collars. He liked the language she used a little better than Chauncey’s harsh inadequacies. He learned what music was, and a great deal about money, which, strangely enough, was something that almost never crossed Chauncey’s mind. He had learned something of the girl herself; her name was Ariadne Drew, she had a great deal of wealth she had not earned, and she was so used to being treated according to her station in life that she was careless about such things as picking up hitchhikers on the road.

  He let her go, snatching the memory of the incident from its place in her mind, so that she started the car and drove off.

  “Now what on earth did I stop for?”

  “So I could check up on that rear tire,” he ad-libbed. He thought back about things he had discovered that might interest her. Clothes were a big item.

  “I must apologize,” he said to her, word for word in her own vernacular, “for this hat. It’s just too, too revolting. I saw a cute little number the other day in a shoppe on the avenue, and I mean to get it. My dear, I mean!”

  She glanced aghast at his noble profile and bulging shoulders. He chatted on.

  “I saw Suzy Greenfield the other day. You know Suzy. Oh, she didn’t see me! I took care of that! And do you know who she was with? That horrible Jenkins person!”

  “Who are you?” she asked him.

  “I hear that Suzy is—What? Who am I? Oh, yes; about Suzy. You’ve probably heard this awful gossip before”—she had!—“so stop me if you have. But she told her husband—”

  “This is as far as I go,” snapped the girl, wheeling the car over to the curb.

  “Well, I—” Elron sensed that the right thing to do would be to get out of the car. He opened the door and turned to her.

  “Thank you for the lift, darling. Let me know if I can do the same for you sometime.” He stepped up onto the walk, and she slammed the door and rolled the window open.

  “You’ve forgotten to polish your fingernails,” she said nastily, and slammed the car into gear.

  “Now what the hell did you do?” asked a voice at the side. Chauncey was looking longingly after the roadster.

  “Don’t swear,” said Elron. “It’s vulgar. You are very crude, Chauncey. I don’t want to have you around. Good-by, darling.” Could Elron help it if Ariadne Drew called everybody “darling”?

  The little bum stood open-mouthed, staring after the Greek god in his noisy plaid suit, and then followed slowly. “Dat mug’ll bear watchin’!” he muttered. “Hully gee!”

  Elron, with his new-found knowledge of human affairs, had little trouble securing a few dollars from a man he passed on the street—all he had to do was to demand it—and getting a hotel room for his body. From Ariadne’s mind he had found out what handwriting was, and he signed the register and paid for a room without a hitch. Once his body was parked conventionally in bed, he popped the head open and slipped out. He felt that the body would relax a little better without him.

  He drifted out of the window and hung for a while high above the town, searching for a familiar vibration—the impulses of Ariadne’s mind. Freed from the cumbersome human body, Elron was far more sensitive to such things. He wanted to observe Ariadne now because he wanted to check up on his performance.

  He caught it soon. It was to him as a gentle perfume is to us. He whisked over to the outskirts of the city and settled down toward a massive red brick pile surrounded by lovely landscaping. He circled it twice, finding her exact place in the house, and then dropped down the chimney. He hovered just above the artificial logs in the fireplace and began his eavesdropping.

  Ariadne was sitting in her extravagant living room, chatting with—of all people—the redoubtable Suzy Greenfield. Suzy was a small-souled, graceless girl with the ability to draw a remark out of any given acquaintanc
e, and by ardent agreement she could cull enough back-biting comment to keep her busy for weeks. She looked like a buck-toothed sparrow, dressed like a sweepstakes winner from Dubuque, and had a personality as soothing as the seven-year itch.

  “Well, what have you heard today?” she asked expectantly.

  Ariadne was gazing into far distances, and she only smiled. “Oh, Ari,” said Suzy, “come on! I know something must have happened today from the way you’re acting. Please; you never tell me anything!”

  Ariadne, being a woman, ignored this untruth and would have changed the subject had not Elron, in the chimney, gently stroked certain of her brain convolutions with his intangible tentacles. She stared up suddenly, turned to Suzy. Elron could have had her reaction directly, but he was interested in the way she would express it to another and in the way the other would receive it.

  “If you must know,” said Ariadne, “I met someone today. A man.” She sighed. Suzy leaned forward happily. When she was not all mouth she was all ears.

  “Where?”

  “Picked him up on the road. Sue, you never saw such a pair as those two. They looked like a couple of comedians. One was a tramp—at first I thought they both were. The little one got into the rumble and the nice handsome one rode in front.”

  “Handsome?”

  “Darling, you don’t know! I’ve never seen—”

  “But you said they were comic!”

  “Looked comic, dear.” In the fireplace the golden-armored brain gave the equivalent of a nod and sent a thought current out to Ariadne. As if answering a question, she said, “He would have looked so nice in a soft gray suit and a Homburg. And—I don’t know what he is, but I think he should be an adventurer. A sort of poet-writer-adventurer.”

  “But what was he?”

  Ariadne suddenly felt it possible to speak of other things. She got Suzy started on the peccadilloes of her long-suffering spouse and soon had completely eclipsed all thought of her volatile mystery man. Elron was gone.