Before their very eyes the giant was growing.
When he had first emerged, he had been around eleven feet tall, and now, within three minutes, he had risen close to sixteen feet.
His great body maintained its perfect proportions. It was that of an elderly man clad simply in a gray business suit. The face was kind, its clear-chiselled features indicating fine spiritual strength; on the white forehead beneath the sparse gray hair were deep-sunken lines which spoke of years of concentrated work.
No thought of malevolence could come from that head with its gentle blue eyes that showed the peace within, but fear struck ever stronger into those who watched him, and in one place a woman fainted; for the great body continued to grow, and grow ever faster, until it was twenty feet high, then swiftly twenty-five, and the feet, still separated, were as long as the body of a normal boy. Clothes and body grew effortlessly, the latter apparently without pain, as if the terrifying process were wholly natural.
The cars coming into Washington Square had stopped as their drivers sighted what was rising there, and by now the bordering streets were tangled with traffic. A distant crowd of milling people heightened the turmoil. The northern edge was deserted, but in a large semicircle was spread a fear-struck, panicky mob. A single policeman, his face white and his eyes wide, tried to straighten out the tangle of vehicles, but it was infinitely beyond him and he sent in a riot call; and as the giant with the kind, dignified face loomed silently higher than the trees in the Square, and ever higher, a dozen blue-coated figures appeared, and saw, and knew fear too, and hung back awe-stricken, at a loss what to do. For by now the rapidly mounting body had risen to the height of forty feet.
AN excited voice raised itself above the general hubbub.
“Why, I know him! I know him! It’s Edgar Wesley! Doctor Edgar Wesley!”
A police sergeant turned to the man who had spoken.
“And it—he knows you? Then go closer to him, and—and—ask him what it means.”
But the man looked fearfully at the giant and hung back. Even as they talked, his gigantic body had grown as high as the four-storied buildings lining the Square, and his feet were becoming too large for the place where they had first been put. And now a faint smile could be seen on the giant’s face, an enigmatic smile, with something ironic and bitter in it.
“Then shout to him from here,” pressed the sergeant nervously. “We’ve got to find out something! This is crazy—impossible! My God! Higher yet—and faster!”
Summoning his courage, the other man cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted:
“Dr. Wesley! Can you speak and tell us? Can we help you stop it?”
The ring of people looked up breathless at the towering figure, and a wave of fear passed over them and several hysterical shrieks rose up as, very slowly, the huge head shook from side to side. But the smile on its lips became stronger, and kinder, and the bitterness seemed to leave it.
There was fear at that motion of the enormous head, but a roar of panic sounded from the watchers when, with marked caution, the growing giant moved one foot from the grass into the street behind and the other into the nearby base of Fifth Avenue, just above the Arch. Fearing harm, they were gripped by terror, and they fought back while the trembling policemen tried vainly to control them; but the panic soon ended when they saw that the leviathan’s arms remained crossed and his smile kinder yet. By now he dwarfed the houses, his body looming a hundred and fifty feet into the sky. At this moment a woman back of the semicircle slumped to her knees and prayed hysterically.
“Someone’s coming out of his house!” shouted one of the closest onlookers.
THE door of the house from which the giant had first appeared had opened, and the figure of a middle-aged, normal-sized man emerged. For a second he crouched on the steps, gaping up at the monstrous shape in the sky, and then he scurried down and made at a desperate run for the nearest group of policemen.
He gripped the sergeant and cried frantically:
“That’s Dr. Wesley! Why don’t you do something? Why don’t—”
“Who are you?” the officer asked, with some return of an authoritative manner.
“I work for him. I’m his janitor. But—can’t you do anything? Look at him! Look!”
The crowd pressed closer. “What do you know about this?” went on the sergeant.
The man gulped and stared around wildly. “He’s been working on something—many years—I don’t know what, for he kept it a close secret. All I knew is that an hour ago I was in my room upstairs, when I heard some disturbance in his laboratory, on the ground floor. I came down and knocked on the door, and he answered from inside and said that everything was all right—”
“You didn’t go in?”
“No. I went back up, and everything was quiet for a long time. Then I heard a lot of noise down below—a smashing—as if things were being broken. But I thought he was just destroying something he didn’t need, and I didn’t investigate: he hated to be disturbed. And then, a little later, I heard them shouting out here in the Square, and I looked out and saw. I saw him—just as I knew him—but a giant! Look at his face! Why, he has the face of—of a god! He’s—as if he were looking down on us—and—pitying us… .”
For a moment all were silent as they gazed, transfixed, at the vast form that towered two hundred feet above them. Almost as awe-inspiring as the astounding growth was the fine, dignified calmness of the face. The sergeant broke in:
“The explanation of this must be in his laboratory. We’ve got to have a look. You lead us there.”
THE other man nodded; but just then the giant moved again, and they waited and watched.
With the utmost caution the titanic shape changed position. Gradually, one great foot, over thirty feet in length, soared up from the street and lowered farther away, and then the other distant foot changed its position; and the leviathan came gently to rest against the tallest building bordering the Square, and once more folded his arms and stood quiet. The enormous body appeared to waver slightly as a breath of wind washed against it: obviously it was not gaining weight as it grew. Almost, now, it appeared to float in the air. Swiftly it grew another twenty-five feet, and the gray expanse of its clothes shimmered strangely as a ripple ran over its colossal bulk.
A change of feeling came gradually over the watching multitude. The face of the giant was indeed that of a god in the noble, irony-tinged serenity of his calm features. It was if a further world had opened, and one of divinity had stepped down; a further world of kindness and fellow-love, where were none of the discords that bring conflicts and slaughterings to the weary people of Earth. Spiritual peace radiated from the enormous face under the silvery hair, peace with an undertone of sadness, as if the giant knew of the sorrows of the swarm of dwarfs beneath him, and pitied them.
From all the roofs and the towers of the city, for miles and miles around, men saw the mammoth shape and the kindly smile grow more and more tenuous against the clear blue sky. The figure remained quietly in the same position, his feet filling two empty streets, and under the spell of his smile all fear seemed to leave the nearer watchers, and they became more quiet and controlled.
THE group of policemen and the janitor made a dash for the house from which the giant had come. They ascended the steps, went in, and found the door of the laboratory locked. They broke the door down. The sergeant looked in.
“Anyone in here?” he cried. Nothing disturbed the silence, and he entered, the others following.
A long, wide, dimly-lit room met their eyes, and in its middle the remains of a great mass of apparatus that had dominated it.
The apparatus was now completely destroyed. Its dozen rows of tubes were shattered, its intricate coils of wire and machinery hopelessly smashed. Fragments lay scattered all over the floor. No longer was there the least shape of meaning to anything in the room; there remained merely a litter of glass and stone and scrap metal.
Conspicuous on the floor was a
large hammer. The sergeant walked over to pick it up, but, instead, paused and stared at what lay beyond it.
“A body!” he said.
A sprawled out dead man lay on the floor, his dark face twisted up, his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, his temple crushed as with a hammer. Clutched tight in one stiff hand was an automatic. On his chest was a sheet of paper.
The captain reached down and grasped the paper. He read what was written on it, and then he read it to the others:
THERE was a fool who dreamed the high dream of the pure scientist, and who lived only to ferret out the secrets of nature, and harness them for his fellow men. He studied and worked and thought, and in time came to concentrate on the manipulation of the atom, especially the possibility of contracting and expanding it—a thing of greatest potential value. For nine years he worked along this line, hoping to succeed and give new power, new happiness, a new horizon to mankind. Hermetically sealed in his laboratory, self-exiled from human contacts, he labored hard.
There came a day when the device into which the fool had poured his life stood completed and a success. And on that very day an agent for a certain government entered his laboratory to steal the device. And in that moment the fool realized what he had done: that, from the apparatus he had invented, not happiness and new freedom would come to his fellow men, but instead slaughter and carnage and drunken power increased a hundredfold. He realized, suddenly, that men had not yet learned to use fruitfully the precious, powerful things given to them, but as yet could only play with them like greedy children—and kill as they played. Already his invention had brought death. And he realized—even on this day of his triumph—that it and its secret must be destroyed, and with them he who had fashioned so blindly.
For the scientist was old, his whole life was the invention, and with its going there would be nothing more.
And so he used the device’s great powers on his own body; and then, with those powers working on him, he destroyed the device and all the papers that held its secrets.
Was the fool also mad? Perhaps. But I do not think so. Into his lonely laboratory, with this marauder, had come the wisdom that men must wait, that the time is not yet for such power as he was about to offer. A gesture, his strange death, which you who read this have seen? Yes, but a useful one, for with it he and his invention and its hurtful secrets go from you; and a fitting one, for he dies through his achievement, through his very life.
But, in a better sense, he will not die, for the power of his achievement will dissolve his very body among you infinitely; you will breathe him in your air; and in you he will live incarnate until that later time when another will give you the knowledge he now destroys, and he will see it used as he wished it used.—E. W.
THE sergeant’s voice ceased, and wordlessly the men in the laboratory looked at each other. No comment was needed. They went out.
They watched from the steps of Edgar Wesley’s house. At first sight of the figure in the sky, a new awe struck them, for now the shape of the giant towered a full five hundred feet into the sun, and it seemed almost a mirage, for definite outline was gone from it. It shimmered and wavered against the bright blue like a mist, and the blue shone through it, for it was quite transparent. And yet still they imagined they could discern the slight ironic smile on the face, and the peaceful, understanding light in the serene eyes; and their hearts swelled at the knowledge of the spirit, of the courage, of the fine, far-seeing mind of that outflung titanic martyr to the happiness of men.
The end came quickly. The great misty body rose; it floated over the city like a wraith, and then it swiftly dispersed, even as steam dissolves in the air. They felt a silence over the thousands of watching people in the Square, a hush broken at last by a deep, low murmur of awe and wonderment as the final misty fragments of the vast sky-held figure wavered and melted imperceptibly—melted and were gone from sight in the air that was breathed by the men whom Edgar Wesley loved.
THE WORLD BEYOND
Ray Cummings (1942)
THE OLD WOMAN was dying. There could be no doubt of it now. Surely she would not last through the night. In the dim quiet bedroom he sat watching her, his young face grim and awed. Pathetic business, this ending of earthly life, this passing on. In the silence, from the living room downstairs the gay laughter of the young people at the birthday party came floating up. His birthday—Lee Anthony, twenty-one years old today. He had thought he would feel very different, becoming—legally—a man. But the only difference now, was that old Anna Green who had been always so good to him, who had taken care of him almost all his life, now was dying.
Terrible business. But old age is queer. Anna knew what was happening. The doctor, who had given Lee the medicines and said he would be back in the morning, hadn’t fooled her. And she had only smiled.
Lee tensed as he saw that she was smiling now; and she opened her eyes. His hand went to hers where it lay, so white, blue-veined on the white bedspread.
“I’m here, Anna. Feel better?”
“Oh, yes. I’m all right.” Her faint voice, gently tired, mingled with the sounds from the party downstairs. She heard the laughter. “You should be down there, Lee. I’m all right.”
“I should have postponed it,” he said. “And what you did, preparing for it—”
She interrupted him, raising her thin arm, which must have seemed so heavy that at once she let it fall again. “Lee—I guess I am glad you’re here—want to talk to you—and I guess it better be now.”
“Tomorrow—you’re too tired now—”
“For me,” she said with her gentle smile, “there may not be any tomorrow—not here. Your grandfather, Lee—you really don’t remember him?”
“I was only four or five.”
“Yes. That was when your father and mother died in the aero accident and your grandfather brought you to me.”
Very vaguely he could remember it. He had always understood that Anna Green had loved his grandfather, who had died that same year.
“What I want to tell you, Lee—” She seemed summoning all her last remaining strength. “Your grandfather didn’t die. He just went away. What you’ve never known—he was a scientist. But he was a lot more than that. He had—dreams. Dreams of what we mortals might be—what we ought to be—but are not. And so he—went away.”
This dying old woman; her mind was wandering? …
“Oh—yes,” Lee said. “But you’re much too tired now, Anna dear—”
“Please let me tell you. He had—some scientific apparatus. I didn’t see it—I don’t know where he went. I think he didn’t know either, where he was going. But he was a very good man, Lee. I think he had an intuition—an inspiration. Yes, it must have been that. A man—inspired. And so he went. I’ve never seen or heard from him since. Yet—what he promised me—if he could accomplish it—tonight—almost now, Lee, would be the time—”
Just a desperately sick old woman whose blurred mind was seeing visions. The thin wrinkled face, like crumpled white parchment, was transfigured as though by a vision. Her sunken eyes were bright with it. A wonderment stirred within Lee Anthony. Why was his heart pounding? It seemed suddenly as though he must be sharing this unknown thing of science—and mysticism. As though something within him—his grandfather’s blood perhaps—was responding… . He felt suddenly wildly excited.
“Tonight?” he murmured.
“Your grandfather was a very good man, Lee—”
“And you, Anna—all my life I have known how good you are. Not like most women—you’re just all gentleness—just kindness—”
“That was maybe—just an inspiration from him.” Her face was bright with it. “I’ve tried to bring you up—the way he told me. And what I must tell you now—about tonight, I mean—because I may not live to see it—”
Her breath gave out so that her faint tired voice trailed away.
“What?” he urged. “What is it, Anna? About tonight—”
What a tumult of weir
d excitement was within him! Surely this was something momentous. His twenty-first birthday. Different, surely, for Lee Anthony than any similar event had ever been for anyone else.
“He promised me—when you were twenty-one—just then—at this time, if he could manage it—that he would come back—”
“Come back, Anna? Here?”
“Yes. To you and me. Because you would be a man—brought up, the best I could do to make you be—like him—because you would be a man who would know the value of love—and kindness—those things that ought to rule this world—but really do not.”
This wild, unreasoning excitement within him … ! “You think he will come—tonight, Anna?”
“I really do. I want to live to see him. But now—I don’t know—”
He could only sit in silence, gripping her hand. And again the gay voices of his guests downstairs came up like a roar of intrusion. They didn’t know that she was more than indisposed. She had made him promise not to tell them.
Her eyes had closed, and now she opened them again. “They’re having a good time, aren’t they, Lee? That’s what I wanted—for you and them both. You see, I’ve had to be careful—not to isolate you from life—life as it is. Because your grandfather wanted you to be normal—a healthy, happy—regular young man. Not queer—even though I’ve tried to show you—”
“If he—he’s coming tonight, Anna—we shouldn’t have guests here.”
“When they have had their fun—”
“They have. We’re about finished down there. I’ll get rid of them—tell them you’re not very well—”
She nodded. “Perhaps that’s best—now—”
He was hardly aware of how he broke up the party and sent them away. Then in the sudden heavy silence of the little cottage, here in the grove of trees near the edge of the town, he went quietly back upstairs.
Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories Page 69