“If it had not been for Dr. Jackson, Grinnell would probably have stayed working away in the lab for the rest of his life, moving steadily up the animal kingdom. Jackson was a very remarkable man—I’m sure you must have seen some of his films. In many circles he was regarded as a publicity-hunter rather than a real scientist, and academic circles were suspicious of him because he had far too many interests. He’d led expeditions into the Gobi Desert, up the Amazon, and had even made one raid on the Antarctic. From each of these trips he had returned with a best-selling book and a few miles of Kodachrome. And despite reports to the contrary, I believe he had obtained some valuable scientific results, even if they were slightly incidental.
“I don’t know how Jackson got to hear of Grinnell’s work, or how he talked the other man into co-operating. He could be very persuasive, and probably dangled vast appropriations before Grinnell’s eyes—for he was the sort of man who could get the ear of the trustees. Whatever happened, from that moment Grinnell became mysteriously secretive. All we knew was that he was building a much larger version of his apparatus, incorporating all the latest refinements. When challenged, he would squirm nervously and say, ‘We’re going big game hunting.’
“The preparations took another year, and I expect that Jackson—who was always a hustler—must have been mighty impatient by the end of that time. But at last everything was ready. Grinnell and all his mysterious boxes vanished in the general direction of Africa.
“That was Jackson’s work. I suppose he didn’t want any premature publicity, which was understandable enough when you consider the somewhat fantastic nature of the expedition. According to the hints with which he had—as we later discovered—carefully mislead us all, he hoped to get some really remarkable pictures of animals in their wild state, using Grinnell’s apparatus. I found this rather hard to swallow, unless Grinnell had somehow succeeded in linking his device to a radio transmitter. It didn’t seem likely that he’d be able to attach his wires and electrodes to a charging elephant.…
“They’d thought of that, of course, and the answer seems obvious now. Sea water is a good conductor. They weren’t going to Africa at all, but were heading out into the Atlantic. But they hadn’t lied to us. They were after big game, all right. The biggest game there is.…
“We’d never have known what happened if their radio operator hadn’t been chattering to an amateur friend over in the States. From his commentary it’s possible to guess the sequence of events. Jackson’s ship—it was only a small yacht, bought up cheaply and converted for the expedition—was lying-to not far from the Equator off the west coast of Africa, and over the deepest part of the Atlantic. Grinnell was angling: his electrodes had been lowered into the abyss, while Jackson waited impatiently with his camera.
“They waited a week before they had a catch. By that time, tempers must have been rather frayed. Then, one afternoon on a perfectly calm day, Grinnell’s meters started to jump. Something was caught in the sphere of influence of the electrodes.
“Slowly, they drew up the cable. Until now, the rest of the crew must have thought them mad, but everyone must have shared their excitement as the catch rose up through all those thousands of feet of darkness until it broke surface. Who can blame the radio operator if, despite Jackson’s orders, he felt an urgent need to talk things over with a friend back on the safety of dry land?
“I won’t attempt to describe what they saw, because a master has done it before me. Soon after the report came in, I turned up my copy of ‘Moby Dick’ and re-read the passage; I can still quote it from memory and don’t suppose I’ll ever forget it. This is how it goes, more or less:
“‘A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any hapless object within reach.’
“Yes: Grinnell and Jackson had been after the largest and most mysterious of all living creatures—the giant squid. Largest? Almost certainly: Bathyteuthis may grow up to a hundred feet long. He’s not as heavy as the sperm whales who dine upon him, but he’s a match for them in length.
“So here they were, with this monstrous beast that no human being had ever before seen under such ideal conditions. It seems that Grinnell was calmly putting it through its paces while Jackson ecstatically shot off yards of film. There was no danger, though it was twice the size of their boat. To Grinnell, it was just another mollusc that he could control like a puppet by means of his knobs and dials. When he had finished, he would let it return to its normal depths and it could swim away again, though it would probably have a bit of a hangover.
“What one wouldn’t give to get hold of that film! Altogether apart from its scientific interest, it would be worth a fortune in Hollywood. You must admit that Jackson knew what he was doing: he’d seen the limitations of Grinnell’s apparatus and put it to its most effective use. What happened next was not his fault.”
Professor Hinckelberg sighed and took a deep draught of beer, as if to gather strength for the finale of his tale.
“No, if anyone is to blame it’s Grinnell. Or, I should say, it was Grinnell, poor chap. Perhaps he was so excited that he overlooked a precaution he would undoubtedly have taken in the lab. How otherwise can you account for the fact that he didn’t have a spare fuse handy when the one in the power supply blew out?
“And you can’t really blame Bathyteuthis, either. Wouldn’t you have been a little annoyed to be pushed about like this? And when the orders suddenly ceased and you were your own master again, you’d take steps to see it remained that way. I sometimes wonder, though, if Jackson stayed filming to the very end.…”
Patent Pending
There are no subjects that have not been discussed, at some time or other, in the saloon bar of the “White Hart”—and whether or not there are ladies present makes no difference whatsoever. After all, they came in at their own risk. Three of them, now I come to think of it, have eventually gone out again with husbands. So perhaps the risk isn’t on their side at all.…
I mention this because I would not like you to think that all our conversations are highly erudite and scientific, and our activities purely cerebral. Though chess is rampant, darts and shove-ha’penny also flourish. The Times Literary Supplement, the Saturday Review, the New Statesman and the Atlantic Monthly may be brought in by some of the customers, but the same people are quite likely to leave with the latest issue of Staggering Stories of Pseudoscience.
A great deal of business also goes on in the obscurer corners of the pub. Copies of antique books and magazines frequently change hands at astronomical prices, and on almost any Wednesday at least three well-known dealers may be seen smoking large cigars as they lean over the bar, swapping stories with Drew. From time to time a vast guffaw announces the denouement of some anecdote and provokes a flood of anxious enquiries from patrons who are afraid they may have missed something. But, alas, delicacy forbids that I should repeat any of these interesting tales here. Unlike most things in this island, they are not for export.…
Luckily, no such restrictions apply to the tales of Mr. Harry Purvis, B.Sc. (at least), Ph.D. (probably) F.R.S. (personally I don’t think so, though it has been rumoured). None of them would bring a blush to the cheeks of the most delicately nurtured maiden aunts, should any still survive in these days.
I must apologise. This is too sweeping a statement. There was one story which might, in some circles, be regarded as a little daring. Yet I do not hesitate to repeat it, for I know that you, dear reader, will be sufficiently broadminded to take no offence.
It started in this fashion. A celebrated Fleet Street reviewer had been pinned into a corner by a persuasive publisher, who was about to bring out a book of which he had high hopes. It was one of the riper productions of the deep and decadent South—a prime example of the “and-then-the-house-gave-another-lurch-as-the-termites-finished-the-east-wing” school of fiction
. Eire had already banned it, but that is an honour which few books escape nowadays, and certainly could not be considered a distinction. However, if a leading British newspaper could be induced to make a stern call for its suppression, it would become a best-seller overnight.…
Such was the logic of its publisher, and he was using all his wiles to induce co-operation. I heard him remark, apparently to allay any scruples his reviewer friend might have, “Of course not! If they can understand it, they can’t be corrupted any further!” And then Harry Purvis, who has an uncanny knack of following half a dozen conversations simultaneously, so that he can insert himself in the right one at the right time, said in his peculiarly penetrating and non-interruptable voice: “Censorship does raise some very difficult problems doesn’t it? I’ve always argued that there’s an inverse correlation between a country’s degree of civilisation and the restraints it puts on its press.”
A New England voice from the back of the room cut in: “On that argument, Paris is a more civilised place then Boston.”
“Precisely,” answered Purvis. For once, he waited for a reply.
“O.K.” said the New England voice mildly. “I’m not arguing. I just wanted to check.”
“To continue,” said Purvis, wasting no more time in doing so, “I’m reminded of a matter which has not yet concerned the censor, but which will certainly do so before long. It began in France, and so far has remained there. When it does come out into the open, it may have a greater impact on our civilisation than the atom bomb.
“Like the atom bomb, it arose out of equally academic research. Never, gentlemen, underestimate science. I doubt if there is a single field of study so theoretical, so remote from what is laughingly called everyday life, that it may not one day produce something that will shake the world.
“You will appreciate that the story I am telling you is, for once in a while, second-hand. I got it from a colleague at the Sorbonne last year while I was over there at a scientific conference. So the names are all fictitious: I was told them at the time, but I can’t remember them now.
“Professor—ah—Julian was an experimental physiologist at one of the smaller, but less impecunious, French universities. Some of you may remember that rather unlikely tale we heard here the other week from that fellow Hinckelberg, about his colleague who’d learned how to control the behaviour of animals through feeding the correct currents into their nervous systems. Well, if there was any truth in that story—and frankly I doubt it—the whole project was probably inspired by Julian’s papers in Comptes Rendus.
“Professor Julian, however, never published his most remarkable results. When you stumble on something which is really terrific, you don’t rush into print. You wait until you have overwhelming evidence—unless you’re afraid that someone else is hot on the track. Then you may issue an ambiguous report that will establish your priority at a later date, without giving too much away at the moment—like the famous cryptogram that Huygens put out when he detected the rings of Saturn.
“You may well wonder what Julian’s discovery was, so I won’t keep you in suspense. It was simply the natural extension of what man has been doing for the last hundred years. First the camera gave us the power to capture scenes. Then Edison invented the phonograph, and sound was mastered. Today, in the talking film, we have a kind of mechanical memory which would be inconceivable to our forefathers. But surely the matter cannot rest there. Eventually science must be able to catch and store thoughts and sensations themselves, and feed them back into the mind so that, whenever it wishes, it can repeat any experience in life, down to its minutest detail.”
“That’s an old idea!” snorted someone. “See the ‘feelies’ in ‘Brave New World.’”
“All good ideas have been thought of by somebody before they are realised,” said Purvis severely. “The point is that what Huxley and others had talked about, Julian actually did. My goodness, there’s a pun there! Aldous—Julian—oh, let it pass!
“It was done electronically, of course. You all know how the encephalograph can record the minute electrical impulses in the living brain—the so-called ‘brain waves,’ as the popular press calls them. Julian’s device was a much subtler elaboration of this well-known instrument. And, having recorded cerebral impulses, he could play them back again. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? So was the phonograph, but it took the genius of Edison to think of it.
“And now, enter the villain. Well, perhaps that’s too strong a word, for Professor Julian’s assistant Georges—Georges Dupin—is really quite a sympathetic character. It was just that, being a Frenchman of a more practical turn of mind than the Professor, he saw at once that there were some milliards of francs involved in this laboratory toy.
“The first thing was to get it out of the laboratory. The French have an undoubted flair for elegant engineering, and after some weeks of work—with the full co-operation of the Professor—Georges had managed to pack the “play-back” side of the apparatus into a cabinet no larger than a television set, and containing not very many more parts.
“Then Georges was ready to make his first experiment. It would involve considerable expense, but as someone so rightly remarked you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. And the analogy is, if I may say so, an exceedingly apt one.
“For Georges went to see the most famous gourmet in France, and made an interesting proposition. It was one that the great man could not refuse, because it was so unique a tribute to his eminence. Georges explained patiently that he had invented a device for registering (he said nothing about storing) sensations. In the cause of science, and for the honour of the French cuisine, could he be privileged to analyse the emotions, the subtle nuances of gustatory discrimination, that took place in Monsieur le Baron’s mind when he employed his unsurpassed talents? Monsieur could name the restaurant, the chef and the menu—everything would be arranged for his convenience. Of course, if he was too busy, no doubt that well-known epicure, Le Compte de—
“The Baron, who was in some respects a surprisingly coarse man, uttered a word not to be found in most French dictionaries. ‘That cretin!’ he exploded. ‘He would be happy on English cooking! No, I shall do it.’ And forthwith he sat down to compose the menu, while Georges anxiously estimated the cost of the items and wondered if his bank balance would stand the strain.…
“It would be interesting to know what the chef and the waiters thought about the whole business. There was the Baron, seated at his favourite table and doing full justice to his favourite dishes, not in the least inconvenienced by the tangle of wires that trailed from his head to that diabolical-looking machine in the corner. The restaurant was empty of all other occupants, for the last thing Georges wanted was premature publicity. This had added very considerably to the already distressing cost of the experiment. He could only hope that the results would be worth it.
“They were. The only way of proving that, of course, would be to play back Georges’ ‘recording.’ We have to take his word for it, since the utter inadequacy of words in such matters is all too well-known. The Baron was a genuine connoisseur, not one of those who merely pretend to powers of discrimination they do not possess. You know Thurber’s ‘Only a naive domestic Burgundy, but I think you’ll admire its presumption.’ The Baron would have known at the first sniff whether it was domestic or not—and if it had been presumptious he’d have smacked it down.
“I gather that Georges had his money’s worth out of that recording, even though he had not intended it merely for personal use. It opened up new worlds to him, and clarified the ideas that had been forming in his ingenious brain. There was no doubt about it: all the exquisite sensations that had passed through the Baron’s mind during the consumption of that Lucullan repast had been captured, so that anyone else, however untrained they might be in such matters, could savour them to the full. For, you see, the recording dealt purely with emotions: intelligence did not come into the picture at all. The Baron needed a lifetime of knowledge and
training before he could experience these sensations. But once they were down on tape, anyone, even if in real life they had no sense of taste at all, could take over from there.
“Think of the glowing vistas that opened up before Georges’ eyes! There were other meals, other gourmets. There were the collected impressions of all the vintages of Europe—what would connoisseurs not pay for them? When the last bottle of a rare wine had been broached, its incorporeal essence could be preserved, as the voice of Melba can travel down the centuries. For, after all, it was not the wine itself that mattered, but the sensations it evoked.…
“So mused Georges. But this, he knew, was only a beginning. The French claim to logic I have often disputed, but in Georges’ case it cannot be denied. He thought the matter over for a few days: then he went to see his petite dame.
“‘Yvonne, ma cheri,’ he said, ‘I have a somewhat unusual request to make of you.…’”
Harry Purvis knew when to break off in a story. He turned to the bar and called, “Another Scotch, Drew.” No-one said a word while it was provided.
“To continue,” said Purvis at length, “the experiment, unusual though it was, even in France, was successfully carried out. As both discretion and custom demanded, all was arranged in the lonely hours of the night. You will have gathered already that Georges was a persuasive person, though I doubt if Mam’selle needed much persuading.
“Stifling her curiosity with a sincere but hasty kiss, Georges saw Yvonne out of the lab and rushed back to his apparatus. Breathlessly, he ran through the playback. It worked—not that he had ever had any real doubts. Moreover—do please remember I have only my informant’s word for this—it was indistinguishable from the real thing. At that moment something approaching religious awe overcame Georges. This was, without a doubt, the greatest invention in history. He would be immortal as well as wealthy, for he had achieved something of which all men had dreamed, and had robbed old age of one of its terrors.…
Tales from the White Hart (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: Short Stories) Page 3