Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy, and Horror

by David Henry Keller

  "In what way?"

  "You see, women always have been sort of clean creatures, but since they are free from disease, and family duties, and various cares, they had a lot of time on their hands; and it seemed that the healthier they became, the cleaner they wanted their homes and surroundings to be. So, every woman spends a few hours a day on the streets of New York making the town tidy. It would be real comical if it were not so serious. I bet that for every whittler there is on the sidewalks of New York there is a woman, and sometimes two, waiting with a dusting pan and brush, to sweep up the shavings when the man gets through. Sometimes they even hold a little bag so the shavings can drop right into the bag instead of on the street. Makes the man nervous, and he goes somewhere else; but wherever he goes, a woman is after him tidying up. I hear there is an exclusive club in the Nineties just for whittlers, and they brag that never a woman will enter to disturb them or their shavings."

  "Well, so long as everybody is happy."

  "Sure! What difference does it make? Let the chips fall where they may, I said in an editorial. What difference does it make so long as they are clean chips? But the women are certainly keeping after us men. I don't recall when they have ever kept us cleaner."

  "How do the men feel about it?"

  "Oh! Just about the way they always have. You see, the sexes are rather nice to each other; not like the old days when there was so much bickering. I suppose there is really very little to quarrel about, the way things are."

  "Unpack your things," suggested Biddle, "and then we will take a walk. We will go down as far as the Madonna. You will be interested in that as a work of art."

  Two hours later, they stood in the cold chill of the afternoon in the shadow of the giant Mother. Smith looked at the scientist.

  "By the way," he suddenly asked. "How is your boy?"

  "I think that he is fine."

  "Did he get better? You know what I mean. You said you were working on the serum for his sake."

  "Yes. I remember I said that."

  "And is he well and happy?"

  "Yes. I think so. I haven't seen him for some time. You see, he is with his mother."

  Smith bent over, picked up a rock, and threw it over the cliff into the river, a thousand feet below. He looked at the inventor.

  "You are white, man!" he exclaimed. "That's odd! You must have been staying in the house too much. But all the rest of us are brown, a golden brown, a healthy, beautiful, hazel, brown. The doctors said it was the effect of the serum. You are not that way; you are white."

  Biddle smiled as he replied:

  "You see, I never took the serum myself. With the wife and the boy away from me, somehow I thought I would be happier if I went without it."

  "But some day you will get sick, like we used to, and die!"

  "That is why I never took it. It is cold. We should go back."

  THE ROBOT BABIES

  MARY GREGORY had nothing to do. Her School for Unusual Children was closed.

  There were no more unusual children.

  In fact, there were few children of any kind, and no babies.

  Her restless mind, her ability as a philanthropist, and her millions, were all idle for lack of opportunity. She felt there should be something for her to do, some way in which she could benefit her nation. Deliberately seeking an opportunity for welfare, she went to New York City. There she called on Hiram Smith. Since her father's death, he had cared for the Gregory estate, and had made a good job of it. He had just come back from his trip to Canada doing a lot of hard and difficult thinking.

  "I am glad to see you, Mary," he said. "I have a lot to do with the investing of your money, but it is not often you spend the time to come and see me. You look well!"

  "I am well. I guess we are all well since we took the serum. I came to New York a week ago to see you, found you were out of town, and decided to visit some of my old friends till your return."

  "How are they all? Happy, I suppose."

  "Certainly. Everybody is happy; but I will say this: So many of them have developed the most peculiar way of spending their time. Of course, that seems to be the hardest thing to do nowadays— finding things to fill in the leisure."

  "What are they doing, Mary?"

  "Playing with toys, playhouses, and little sets of china, and taking care of pets. I never saw so many different kinds of animals and birds in my life, outside of a zoo. One of the girls even had a denatured skunk.

  "And dolls! China, and rag, and bisque, black, white and yellow, big and little, pretty and ugly, fat dolls, dolls with spider legs, dolls with hair and without hair. Every woman is collecting dolls.

  "Spending her time making dollie clothes, and giving tea parties for them. And that is not all. Some of them pretend that they are just little girls instead of big women. Found one of my friends playing on a toy piano. Waits till her husband goes to work, and then starts with one or two fingers playing:

  Pony, Pony, Stepping high, I will ride you bye and bye.

  "And that woman can play by the hour from Mozart and Beethoven. It does not seem to affect the men the same way. One of my old college chums, however, took me down into the cellar of their home. They live in a house that actually has a cellar. She said that her husband developed the habit of spending a good deal of time down there, and at last she became so curious that she just had to go down and see what he was doing. The man had been whittling dolls out of wood, put black shoe buttons in for eyes, and made the mouth red with red ink, or it might have been his blood, she thought. He had bought pieces of silk downtown, had tried to make dresses for the dolls, and had made little beds for them to sleep in. She said that in the old days she just knows she would have cried, but, of course, nobody cries now because they are too happy. She never told him she knew what he was doing; only after that, when he went to work, she went down the cellar and played with his whittled dolls. She said that, in some way, it made her feel that she was closer to him. They were thinking of a divorce, but now, though they do not talk about the dolls in the cellar, they feel that they had better live on together for a few more months."

  "So that is the way they are spending their time?"

  "That is the way. I thought and thought about it, and finally I decided what to do. All this fuss over dolls, and pets, and childish pleasures, is just a substitution. They are not honest with themselves, for what they really want is something alive— real babies."

  "It seems that they cannot have them," answered Smith.

  "It seems that way, but perhaps they will have them sometime, and if they wait too long, they won't know how to care for them. If this condition of childless society keeps up, there will be millions of women who have never held a little baby in their arms and would not know what to do if they found one there. You see, a lot of the knowledge of infant care is transmitted by word of mouth and actual practice from the older generation of women to the younger. If we wait fifty years before a new lot of babies are born, they will suffer from lack of actual knowledge on the part of their mothers to care for them. Even the nurses won't know how. There won't be any nurses anyway, and not many doctors.

  "So, I have an idea. I want you to take some of my millions and start a school for mothers. Get the best physicians and nurses you can hire to prepare lectures. Buy a broadcasting station that will reach every part of the country. Give regular lectures on the care of the child at different ages from birth to the age of six. I am sure that every woman will be glad to listen to the broadcasting of these talks, and practice the various lessons on her baby."

  "But the woman will not have a baby, Mary!! That is what the whole trouble is. There aren't any babies."

  "I want you to have some made!" Hiram Smith threw up his hands in despair: "How? Where? When? What do you mean?"

  "Silly! I mean robot babies. Start your inventors to work. Fabricate babies out of rubber. Put machinery inside of them so they will take milk, and cry, and move their arms and legs. I just have the general idea,
but any clever inventor will supply the details. Make babies that can be washed, and fed, and dressed, and put to sleep. Make different-sized babies so they can be exchanged when the time comes for them to grow older. Put tonsils in them to be taken out, and adenoids to make them snuffle, and intestines to give them colic. Start in and make twenty million of them as fast as you can. Sell them to the women who can pay, and give them away to the woman who cannot pay, and send the bill to my estate. Do you see my idea? Get the fathers interested in it. Have lectures for them. Have such talks as this: 'What to Do When Your Wife Is Sick and the Three Year Old Daughter Complains of the Ear-ache.' I wish Biddle was available. There is a man who would understand what I mean."

  "Biddle is up in Canada. I have just been visiting him."

  "You have? Did you talk about the vanished birth rate?"

  "I did."

  "What did he say?"

  "Not much. Something about having to pay a price for everything in life. That nothing was ever given away. I suppose he thought that the absence of death was paid for by the absence of birth, or something like that. He did not want to talk about children. Do you know about his having a boy? Told me the boy was doing well, and was with his mother."

  "He said that?"

  "Something like that. Do you understand it?"

  "I do. That was just his way of saying they both were dead."

  Hiram Smith started Mary Gregory's millions to work. He gave the new idea considerable space in the Rosy Dawn. The novelty spread like wildfire. Women discarded their pets and their fantastic dolls, and put in their application for a robot baby. Factories were opened, thousands of men put to work. That was an odd thing. Every invention making the robot babies possible, every minute of work done on them in the factories, was masculine. Men almost fought for the right to work in these factories.

  Women were turned away in disdain. This work, said the men of the nation, was a purely masculine one.

  Meantime, the series of lectures were being prepared. Here only the greatest experts were employed. Experiences were exchanged, old books read, elderly women consulted, and at last two hundred lectures were written covering every possible situation up to the age of six years. Then men and women were carefully tested for their ability to broadcast these lectures. At the end of a year, everything was ready for the start of a six-hour daily programme. By that time six million women had infant robots, and more were being fabricated at the rate of a hundred thousand a week.

  And from station MAMA, the lectures went to the waiting women in America. The seven o'clock bedtime lecture was instantly popular. Listen to it:

  "Good Evening, Mothers of America. This is Station MAMA broadcasting:

  "Your speaker is Doctor Wilkins, the celebrated bedtime lecturer, brought to you through the courtesy of the Mary Gregory Maternity Radio College.

  "Last evening, we spoke of the material necessary to give our little ones their evening bath. No doubt all students have this material assembled in the proper place. Have you tested the water with a thermometer? Never use your hands or elbows to do this. It is too dangerous. Now take the little one in your lap, and take off the dress. In doing this, be sure to support the neck with the left hand. Now the slip comes off. The band and the diaper next. I know that you have the clean night clothes in front of the fire getting warm. Never put on cold clothes after a bath. It is apt to chill the infant. Have the little one sit in the tub while you wash it with pure soap and a soft cloth. Now dry by patting. Remember that rubbing may irritate the sensitive skin. Now dress the baby for the night. Be sure to use a powder; and, if there is any nasal congestion, a bit of vaseline in each nostril, and a few drops of camphorated oil well rubbed on the chest. Now, are all the babies ready for sleep? Let's all be old-fashioned mothers for a while, and forget the newer teachings. Tonight we are going to rock the little one, and sing it a lullaby. It will not be a baby long. Some day it will be too big to rock. Let us give it a little love. That is what makes babies and plants grow. Now, all join with me in 'Sweet and Low, Sweet and Low, Wind of the Western Sea.' Soon the baby will be fast asleep. Place it carefully in its crib. See that the room is properly ventilated. And that is all till 9 :oo P.M. tonight, when Mrs. Rollins will broadcast from this station on the care of the infant during the night.

  "This is Station MAMA, Doctor Wilkins speaking. This programme will he continued tomorrow evening. It is brought to you through the courtesy of the Mary Gregory Maternity Radio College."

  Thus it was that women once again learned how to care for babies. But cleverly built as they were, they were, at their best, simply well-designed machines. They could be cared for, but they could not love. More than ever, the women of America realized that their lives were empty, and would remain empty till once again they were able to hold little children, real little children, pitiable, lovable, needful, helpless babies, in their arms.

  Mary Gregory, she who had never known what it was to be a mother, recognized this more and more clearly. She told Smith so.

  "You have to find out whether Biddle can and will do something to help us," she demanded. "He knows more about the serum than any other living man. He ought to know what it can do, and what it cannot do. If he will only tell us that in twenty-five, fifty, years from now, the American women can have children, we will be satisfied. It seems that we are all going to live a long time, and we can wait if there is hope during the waiting, and babies at the other end of the long years. You have to see him, and tell him how we feel. See if he cannot help us in some way. More women in America now know how to take intelligent care of babies than ever before in the history of the world. What good is that knowledge, if there are no babies? What good is living without babies? See him. If you cannot convince him of the need, let me take a number of representative women up to Canada, and state our case to him."

  "I'll go," agreed Smith. "But I am afraid that he will not see this the way you see it."

  "He will have to see it our way," exclaimed Mary Gregory.

  THE WOMEN DECIDE

  MARY GREGORY lead a company of women into Canada. At the last moment, Hiram Smith refused to undertake the negotiations with Biddle, the inventor. He felt, somehow, that it was none of his business. He was not sure that he wanted to tell where the scientist had his house of refuge from the world. But after talking it over with his wife, he determined that he would throw the dice, and let Fate determine what was in store for the future of the human race. So, he told Mary Gregory where Biddle lived, and how to get there.

  Biddle was accustomed to have the unexpected happen in his life, but he was genuinely surprised when twenty-one women suddenly came up to his stone home and knocked at the door. He did his best to be polite, and tried to find seats for all of his visitors. He made tea for them, and served it with some little cakes; but they had to take turns drinking the tea, because no lonely hermit ever had twenty-one teacups unless he had a mania for collecting them, and not many isolates had even twenty-one little cakes at one time.

  At last, everyone had a little tea, and then the women asked Biddle to sit down and listen to the reason for their visit. Mary Gregory acted as the spokesman for the delegation.

  "We represent the Federated Women's Clubs of North America," the rich woman explained. "These women stand for the best of womanhood in every walk of life. We feel that we know what the American woman thinks, how she feels, what she wants. Our requests to you come from fifty million mature women; any action we take will be satisfactory to all of our sisterhood. Now that you know who we are, may we ask you some questions?"

  "You may ask them. I am not sure I can answer them."

  "We understand that," said Miss Gregory. "We know that some questions may be hard, even impossible, for you to answer, but at least we know that you will tell the truth. First, how long will the serum last? Will it have to be renewed? Will future doses be as powerful? Will the individual reach maturity, and remain there indefinitely?"

  "I am not sure. My opinion is tha
t the first dose of serum will last a very long time. All that it did was to liberate power, which power is evidently capable of splitting the hydrogen atom to make more power. Consequently, it may act something like perpetual motion.

  "If it acts the way I think, no one will ever have to take the second dose. But if they should take a second dose, it probably will act like the first dose. Of course, it may not. It seems that when a person once has the serum he will live for a long time, a full-grown, healthy, vigorous, adult. He could die by drowning, or by being cut in two by an accident; but unless something terrible happened to him, he would live a very long time."

  "Why have the women of America become childless?"

  "I am not sure. All I know is that all the animals I experimented on became sterile. Perhaps it is a provision of nature to increase the power of the serum. Perhaps there is something in the serum that acts. But I knew it to be true in the animals I experimented with, like mice. I hoped that it would not be true in the human race; that was one of the things we had to gamble on."

  "Do you believe that some time, twenty-five years from now, or fifty years, that the conditions will change, and children will once again be born into the world?"

  "Probably not. I have twelve mice who have had the serum for nearly five years. That is a long time for a mouse to live. They have never had any little ones."

  "What is your thought in regard to the problem?"

  "It looks as though it was a kind arrangement, the only way things could happen. Suppose, with the help of the serum, the average man and woman lives to be a thousand years old. Suppose that every three years each woman gave birth to a child. Gloriously healthy herself, fully realizing what the serum did for her, she would insist that her children receive the serum as soon after birth as possible. In no time at all, the world, large as it is, would be overcrowded with humanity. Now we have a population that can be cared for. It will never grow any larger, and only very slowly grow smaller."