Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  "Mister Hampstead!" she chortled. "My, but ain't you a sight!"

  "Where's Greco?" I demanded, and pushed her out of my way.

  In pajamas and bathrobe, I stalked down the stairs and into the room that had once been a kitchen and now was Greco's laboratory.

  "Look!" I yelled. "What about this?"

  He turned to look at me.

  After a long moment, he shook his head.

  "I was afraid of that," he mumbled. "You were a towhead as a kid, weren't you? And now you're a towhead again."

  "But my hair, Greek! It's turned white."

  "Not white," he corrected despondently. "Yellow. It's reverted to youth--overnight, the way it happens sometimes. I warned you, Virgie. I told you there were dangers. Now you know. Because--"

  He hesitated, looked at me, then looked away.

  "Because," he said, "you're getting younger, just like me. If we don't get this thing straightened out, you're going to die of young age yourself."

  I stared at him. "You said that before, about yourself. I thought you'd just tongue-twisted. But you really mean--"

  "Sit down," he ordered. "Virgie, I told you that you were looking younger. It wasn't just looks. It's the demons--and not just you and me, but a lot of people. First Grand Rapids. Then when the hotel burned. Plenty have been exposed--you more than most, I guess, ever since the day you walked into my lab and I was trying to recapture some that had got away. Well, I don't guess I recaptured them all."

  "You mean I--"

  He nodded. "Some of the demons make people younger. And you've got a colony of them in you."

  * * * * *

  I swallowed and sat down. "You mean I'm going to get younger and younger, until finally I become a baby? And then--what then, Greek?"

  He shrugged. "How do I know? Ask me in another ten years. Look at me, Virgie!" he cried, suddenly loud. "How old do I look to you? Eighteen? Twenty?"

  It was the plain truth. He looked no more than that. Seeing him day by day, I wasn't conscious of change; remembering him from when we had gone to school, I thought of him as younger anyway. But he was forty, at the very least, and he didn't look old enough to vote.

  He said, "I've had demons inside of me for six years. It seems they're a bit choosy about where they'll live. They don't inhabit the whole body, just parts of it--heart, lungs, liver. Maybe bones. Maybe some of the glands--perhaps that' s why I feel so chipper physically. But not my brain, or not yet. Fortunately."

  "Fortunately? But that's wrong, Greek! If your brain grew younger too--"

  "Fool! If I had a young brain, I'd forget everything I learned, like unrolling a tape backwards! That's the danger, Virgie, the immediate danger that's pressing me--that's why I needed help! Because if I ever forget, that's the end. Not just for me--for everybody; because there's no one else in the world who knows how to control these things at all. Except me--and you, if I can train you."

  "They're loose?" I felt my hair wonderingly. Still, it was not exactly a surprise. "How many?"

  He shrugged. "I have no idea. When they let the first batch of rabbits loose in Australia, did they have any idea how many there would be a couple of dozen generations later?"

  I whistled. Minnie popped her head in the door and giggled. I waved her away.

  "She could use some of your demons," I remarked. "Sometimes I think she has awfully young ideas, for a woman who's sixty if she's a day."

  Greco laughed crazily. "Minnie? She's been working for me for a year. And she was eighty-five when I hired her!"

  "I can't believe you!"

  "Then you'll have to start practicing right now," he said.

  It was tough, and no fooling; but I became convinced. It wasn't the million dollars a year any more.

  It was the thought of ending my days as a drooling, mewling infant--or worse! To avert that, I was willing to work my brain to a shred.

  * * * * *

  First it was a matter of learning--learning about the "strange particles." Ever hear of them? That's not my term--that's what the physicists call them. Positrons. The neutrino. Pions and muons, plus and minus; the lambda and the antilambda. K particles, positive and negative, and anti-protons and anti-neutrons and sigmas, positive, negative and neutral, and--

  Well, that's enough; but physics had come a long way since the classes I cut at Old Ugly, and there was a lot to catch up on.

  The thing was, some of the "strange particles" were stranger than even most physicists knew. Some--in combination--were in fact Greco's demons.

  We bought animals--mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, even dogs. We infected the young with some of our own demons--that was simple enough, frighteningly simple; all we had to do was handle them a bit. And we watched what happened.

  They died--of young age.

  Some vital organ or another regressed to embryonic condition, and they died--as Greco and I would die, if we didn't find the answer. As the whole world might die. Was it better than reverting past the embryo to the simple lifeless zygote? I couldn't decide. It was dying, all the same. When an embryonic heart or liver is called on to do a job for a mature organism, there is only one way out. Death.

  And after death--the demons went on; the dog we fed on the remains of the guinea pigs followed them to extinction in a matter of weeks.

  Minnie was an interesting case.

  She was going about her work with more energy every day, and I'll be blasted if I didn't catch her casting a lingering Marilyn Monroe sort of look at me when Greco's back was turned.

  "Shall we fire her?" I asked El Greco when I told him about it.

  "What for?"

  "She's disrupting the work!"

  "The work isn't worth a damn anyhow," he said moodily. "We're not getting anywhere, Virgie. If it was only a matter of smooth, predictable rates--But look at her. She's picking up speed! She's dropped five years in the past couple weeks."

  "She can stand to drop a lot more," I said, annoyed.

  * * * * *

  He shrugged. "It depends on where. Her nose? It's shortened to about a fifteen-year-old level now. Facial hair? That's mostly gone. Skin texture? Well, I suppose there's no such thing as a too-immature skin, I mean short of the embryonic capsule, but--Wait a minute."

  He was staring at the doorway.

  Minnie was standing there, simpering.

  "Come here!" he ordered in a voice like thunder. "Come here, you! Virgie, look at her nose!"

  I looked. "Ugh," I said, but more or less under my breath.

  "No, no!" cried Greco. "Virgie, don't you see her nose?" Foolish; of course I did. It was long, beaked--

  Then I saw.

  "It's growing longer," I whispered.

  "Right, my boy! Right! One curve at least has reversed itself. Do you see, Virgie?"

  I nodded. "She's--she's beginning to age again."

  "Better than that!" he crowed. "It's faster than normal aging, Virgie! There are aging demons loose too!"

  A breath of hope!

  But hope died. Sure, he was right--as far as it went.

  There were aging demons. We isolated them in some of our experimental animals. First we had to lure Minnie into standing still while Greco, swearing horribly, took a tissue sample; she didn't like that, but a hundred-dollar bonus converted her. Solid CO{2} froze the skin; snip, and a tiny flake of flesh came out of her nose at the point of Greco's scalpel; he put the sample of flesh through a few tricks and, at the end of the day, we tried it on some of our mice.

  They died.

  Well, it was gratifying, in a way--they died of old age. But die they did. It took three days to show an effect, but when it came, it was dramatic. These were young adult mice, in the full flush of their mousehood, but when these new demons got to work on them, they suddenly developed a frowsy, decrepit appearance that made them look like Bowery bums over whom Cinderella's good fairy had waved her wand in reverse. And two days later they were dead.

  "I think we've got something," said Greco thoughtfully; but I di
dn't think so, and I was right. Dead was dead. We could kill the animals by making them too young. We could kill the animals by making them too old. But keep them alive, once the demons were in them, we could not.

  Greco evolved a plan: Mix the two breeds of demons! Take an animal with the young-age demons already in it, then add a batch that worked in the other direction!

  * * * * *

  For a while, it seemed to work--but only for a while. After a couple of weeks, one breed or the other would gain the upper hand. And the animals died.

  It was fast in mice, slow in humans. Minnie stayed alive. But the nose grew longer and facial hair reappeared; simultaneously her complexion cleared, her posture straightened.

  And then, for the first time, we began to read the papers.

  STRANGE PLAGUE STRIKES ELGIN

  bawled the Chicago Tribune, and went on to tell how the suburbs around Elgin, Illinois, were heavily infested with a curious new malady, the symptoms of which were--youth.

  OAKLAND "BABY-SKIN" TOLL PASSES 10,000

  blared the San Francisco Examiner. The New York News found thousands of cases in Brooklyn. A whole hospital in Dallas was evacuated to make room for victims of the new plague.

  And more.

  We looked at each other.

  "They're out in force," said Theobald Greco soberly. "And we don't have the cure."

  IV

  The world was topsy-turvy, and in the middle of it Minnie disappeared, talking hysterically about reporting us to the authorities. I don't mind admitting that I was worried.

  And the experiments were not progressing. The trouble seemed to be that the two varieties of demons--the aging and the youthing--were not compatible; if one took up residence in a given section of an organism, the other moved out. The more numerous destroyed the weaker; there was no balance. We tested it again and again in the mice and there was no doubt of it.

  So far, only the youthing demons were free. But when Minnie left us, it was only a matter of time. Our carriers--from Grand Rapids and from the hotel--had spread to California and the East Coast, to the North and to the South, throughout the country, perhaps by now through the world. It would be slower with the aging demons--there was only one of Minnie--but it would be equally sure.

  Greco began drinking heavily.

  "It's the end," he brooded. "We're licked."

  "No, Greek! We can't give up!"

  "We have to give up. The demons are loose in the Earth, Virgie! Those people in the headlines--they'll die of young age. So will others--even plants and animals, and bacteria, as the demons adapt to them. And then--why not? The air. The rocks, the ocean, even the Earth itself. Remember, the entropy of the Universe is supposed to tend to a maximum not only as a whole, but in each of its parts taken in isolation. The Earth's evolution--reversed. Spottily, and maybe that's worse, because some parts will evolve forward and others reverse, as is happening in my own body. Heaven help the world, Old Virgie! And not just the Earth, because what can stop them from spreading? To the Moon, the other planets--out of the Solar System, for that matter; to the other galaxies, even. Why not? And then--"

  "GRECO."

  An enormous tinny voice, more than human, filled the air. It came from outside.

  I jumped a foot. It sounded like the voice of a demon; then I got a grip on myself and understood. It was a loudspeaker, and it came from outside.

  "GRECO. WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE. COME ON OUT!"

  I had a stabbing sensation of familiarity. "The police!" I cried. "Greco, it's the police!"

  He looked at me wearily and shook his head.

  "No. More likely the F.B.I."

  * * * * *

  Well, that was it. I got out--I didn't wait for permission from the Greek.

  I stopped at the door, and three searchlight beams hit me right in the eye. There were cars all around the laboratory, but I couldn't see them, not after those lights went on.

  I froze, stiff; wanting to make sure they understood (a) that I wasn't Greco and (b) that I didn't have a gun.

  They understood, all right.

  But they let me out.

  They put me in one of the cars, with a slim gray-eyed young man in a snap-brimmed hat sitting politely and alertly beside me, and they let me watch; and what happened after that wasn't funny at all.

  Greco didn't come out They shouted at him over the loudspeaker and eventually he answered--his voice little and calm, coming out of nowhere, and all he said was, "Go away. I won't come out. I warn you, don't try to force your way in."

  But he knew they wouldn't listen, of course.

  They didn't.

  They tried force.

  And he met it in novel ways with force of his own. The door had locked itself behind me; they got a fence post for a battering ram, and the post burst into flame. They found an L-beam from an old bed frame and tried that, and they were sorry they had done it; the thing melted in the middle, splattering them with hot drops of steel.

  The polite, alert young man beside me said, not so polite any more, "What's he doing, you? What sort of fancy tricks has he got in there?"

  "Demons," I said crazily, and that was a mistake, but what else was I to do? Try to explain Maxwell's equations to a Fed?

  They were trying again--there were fifteen or twenty of them, at least. They went for the windows, and the windows dissolved and rained cherry-red wet glass on them. They tried again through the open frames when the glass was gone, and the frames burst into fire around them, the blue smoke bleached white in the yellow of the flame and the white of the searchlights. They tried singly, by stealth; and they tried in clusters of a dozen, yelling.

  * * * * *

  It was hopeless--hopeless for everybody, because they couldn't get in and the Greek could never, never get out; for go away they wouldn't. Not even when, with poof and a yellow flare, the gas tank of one of the cars exploded. All that happened was that the man in the snap-brimmed hat and I leaped out, real quick; and then all the cars went up. But the men didn't leave. And then the guns began to go off without waiting for anyone to pull the trigger; and the barrels softened and slumped and spattered to the ground. But the men still had bare hands, and they stayed.

  The Greek got wild--or lost control, it was hard to tell which. There was a sudden catastrophic whooshing roar and, wham, a tree took flame for roots. A giant old oak, fifty feet tall, I guess it had been there a couple of centuries, but Greco's demons changed all that; it took flame and shot whistling into the air, spouting flame and spark like a Roman candle. Maybe he thought it would scare them. Maybe it did. But it also made them mad. And they ran, all at once, every one of them but my personal friend, for the biggest, openest of the windows--

  And leaped back, cursing and yelling, beating out flames on their clothes.

  Jets of flame leaped out of every window and door. The old building seemed to bulge outward and go voom. In half a second, it was a single leaping tulip of fire.

  The firemen got there then, but it was a little late. Oh, they got Greco out--alive, even. But they didn't save a bit of the laboratory. It was the third fire in Greco's career, and the most dangerous--for where previously only a few of the youthing demons had escaped, now there were vast quantities of both sorts.

  It was the end of the world.

  I knew it.

  * * * * *

  You know, I wish I had been right. I spent yesterday with Greco. He's married now and has a fine young son. They made an attractive family picture, the two healthy-looking adults, strong-featured, in the prime of life, and the wee toddler between them.

  The only thing is--Greco's the toddler.

  He doesn't call himself Greco any more. Would you, the way the world is now? He has plenty of money stashed away--I do too, of course--not that money means very much these days. His brain hasn't been affected, just his body. He was lucky, I guess. Some of the demons hit the brain in some of their victims and--

  Well, it's pretty bad.

  Greco got th
e answer after a while. Both types of demons were loose in the world, and both, by and by, were in every individual.

  But they didn't kill each other off.

  One simply grew more rapidly, took over control, until it ran out of the kind of molecules it needed. Then the other took over.

  Then the first.

  Then the other again....

  Mice are short-lived. It's like balancing a needle on the end of your nose; there isn't enough space in a mouse's short span for balance, any more than there is in a needle's.

  But in a human life--

  Things are going to have to be worked out, though.

  It's bad enough that a family gets all mixed up the way Greco's is--he's on a descending curve, his kid is on an aging curve, and Minnie--did I tell you that it was Minnie he married?--has completed her second rejuvenation and is on the way back up again.

  But there are worse problems that that.

  For one thing, it isn't going to be too long before we run out of space. I don't mean time, I mean space. Living space.

  Because it's all very well that the human animal should now mature to grow alternately younger and older, over and over--

  But, damn it, how I wish that somebody once in a while would die_!

  * * *

  Contents

  BEDSIDE MANNER

  By William Morrison

  Broken, helpless, she had to trust an alien doctor to give her back her body and mind--a doctor who had never seen a human before!

  She awoke, and didn't even wonder where she was.

  First there were feelings--a feeling of existence, a sense of still being alive when she should be dead, an awareness of pain that made her body its playground.

  After that, there came a thought. It was a simple thought, and her mind blurted it out before she could stop it: Oh, God, now I won't even be plain any more. I'll be ugly.

  The thought sent a wave of panic coursing through her, but she was too tired to experience any emotion for long, and she soon drowsed off.

  Later, the second time she awoke, she wondered where she was.

  There was no way of telling. Around her all was black and quiet. The blackness was solid, the quiet absolute. She was aware of pain again--not sharp pain this time, but dull, spread throughout her body. Her legs ached; so did her arms. She tried to lift them, and found to her surprise that they did not respond. She tried to flex her fingers, and failed.