American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  Finally, it was Nemur’s turn to speak—to sum it all up as the head of the project—to take the spotlight as the author of a brilliant experiment. This was the day he had been waiting for.

  He was impressive as he stood up there on the platform, and, as he spoke, I found myself nodding with him, agreeing with things I knew to be true. The testing, the experiment, the surgery, and my subsequent mental development were described at length, and his talk was enlivened by quotations from my progress reports. More than once I found myself hearing something personal or foolish read to this audience. Thank God I had been careful to keep most of the details about Alice and myself in my private file.

  Then, at one point in his summary, he said it: “We who have worked on this project at Beekman University have the satisfaction of knowing we have taken one of nature’s mistakes and by our new techniques created a superior human being. When Charlie came to us he was outside of society, alone in a great city without friends or relatives to care about him, without the mental equipment to live a normal life. No past, no contact with the present, no hope for the future. It might be said that Charlie Gordon did not really exist before this experiment. . . .”

  I don’t know why I resented it so intensely to have them think of me as something newly minted in their private treasury, but it was—I am certain—echoes of that idea that had been sounding in the chambers of my mind from the time we had arrived in Chicago. I wanted to get up and show everyone what a fool he was, to shout at him: I’m a human being, a person—with parents and memories and a history—and I was before you ever wheeled me into that operating room!

  At the same time deep in the heat of my anger there was forged an overwhelming insight into the thing that had disturbed me when Strauss spoke and again when Nemur amplified his data. They had made a mistake—of course! The statistical evaluation of the waiting period necessary to prove the permanence of the change had been based on earlier experiments in the field of mental development and learning, on waiting periods with normally dull or normally intelligent animals. But it was obvious that the waiting period would have to be extended in those cases where an animal’s intelligence had been increased two or three times.

  Nemur’s conclusions had been premature. For both Algernon and myself, it would take more time to see if this change would stick. The professors had made a mistake, and no one else had caught it. I wanted to jump up and tell them, but I couldn’t move. Like Algernon, I found myself behind the mesh of the cage they had built around me.

  Now there would be a question period, and before I would be allowed to have my dinner, I would be required to perform before this distinguished gathering. No. I had to get out of there.

  “. . . In one sense, he is the result of modern psychological experimentation. In place of a feeble-minded shell, a burden on the society that must fear his irresponsible behavior, we have a man of dignity and sensitivity, ready to take his place as a contributing member of society. I should like you all to hear a few words from Charlie Gordon. . . .”

  God damn him. He didn’t know what he was talking about. At that point, the compulsion overwhelmed me. I watched in fascination as my hand moved, independent of my will, to pull down the latch on Algernon’s cage. As I opened it he looked up at me and paused. Then he turned, darted out of his cage, and scampered across the long table.

  At first, he was lost against the damask tablecloth, a blur of white on white, until a woman at the table screamed, knocking her chair backwards as she leaped to her feet. Beyond her, pitchers of water overturned, and then Burt shouted. “Algernon’s loose!” Algernon jumped down from the table, onto the platform and then to the floor.

  “Get him! Get him!” Nemur screeched as the audience, divided in its aims, became a tangle of arms and legs. Some of the women (non-experimentalists?) tried to stand on the unstable folding chairs while others, trying to help corner Algernon, knocked them over.

  “Close those back doors!” shouted Burt, who realized Algernon was smart enough to head in that direction.

  “Run,” I heard myself shout. “The side door!”

  “He’s gone out the side door,” someone echoed.

  “Get him! Get him!” begged Nemur.

  The crowd surged out of the Grand Ballroom into the corridor, as Algernon, scampering along the maroon carpeted hallway, led them a merry chase. Under Louis XIV tables, around potted palms, up stairways, around corners, down stairways, into the main lobby, picking up other people as we went. Seeing them all running back and forth in the lobby, chasing a white mouse smarter than many of them, was the funniest thing that had happened in a long time.

  “Go ahead, laugh!” snorted Nemur, who nearly bumped into me, “but if we don’t find him, the whole experiment is in danger.”

  I pretended to be looking for Algernon under a waste basket. “Do you know something?” I said. “You’ve made a mistake. And after today, maybe it just won’t matter at all.”

  Seconds later, half a dozen women came screaming out of the powder room, skirts clutched frantically around their legs.

  “He’s in there,” someone yelled. But for a moment, the searching crowd was stayed by the handwriting on the wall—Ladies. I was the first to cross the invisible barrier and enter the sacred gates.

  Algernon was perched on top of one of the washbasins, glaring at his reflection in the mirror.

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ll get out of here together.”

  He let me pick him up and put him into my jacket pocket. “Stay in there quietly until I tell you.”

  The others came bursting through the swinging doors—looking guiltily as if they expected to see screaming nude females. I walked out as they searched the washroom, and I heard Burt’s voice. “There’s a hole in that ventilator. Maybe he went up there.”

  “Find out where it leads to,” said Strauss.

  “You go up to the second floor,” said Nemur, waving to Strauss. “I’ll go down to the basement.”

  At this point they burst out of the ladies’ room and the forces split. I followed behind the Strauss contingent up to the second floor as they tried to discover where the ventilator led to. When Strauss and White and their half-dozen followers turned right down Corridor B, I turned left up Corridor C and took the elevator to my room.

  I closed the door behind me, and patted my pocket. A pink snout and white fuzz poked out and looked around. “I’ll just get my things packed,” I said, “and we’ll take off—just you and me—a couple of man-made geniuses on the run.”

  I had the bellhop put the bags and the tape-recorder into a waiting taxi, paid my hotel bill, and walked out the revolving door with the object of the search nestling in my jacket pocket. I used my return-flight ticket to New York.

  Instead of going back to my place, I plan to stay at a hotel here in the city for one or two nights. We’ll use that as a base of operations while I look for a furnished apartment, somewhere midtown. I want to be near Times Square.

  Talking all this out makes me feel a lot better—even a little silly. I don’t really know why I got so upset, or what I’m doing on a jet heading back to New York with Algernon in a shoebox under the seat. I mustn’t panic. The mistake doesn’t necessarily mean anything serious. It’s just that things are not as definite as Nemur believed. But where do I go from here?

  First, I’ve got to see my parents. As soon as I can.

  I may not have all the time I thought I had. . . .

  PROGRESS REPORT 14

  June 15—Our escape hit the papers yesterday, and the tabloids had a field day. On the second page of the Daily Press there was an old picture of me and a sketch of a white mouse. The headline read: Moron-Genius and Mouse Go Berserk. Nemur and Strauss are reported as saying I had been under tremendous strain and that I would undoubtedly return soon. They offered a five-hundred-dollar reward for Algernon, not realizing we were together.

&n
bsp; When I turned to the later story on the fifth page, I was stunned to find a picture of my mother and sister. Some reporter had obviously done his legwork.

  SISTER UNAWARE OF MORON-GENIUS’ WHEREABOUTS

  (Special to the Daily Press)

  Brooklyn, N.Y., June 14—Miss Norma Gordon, who lives with her mother, Rose Gordon, at 4136 Marks Street, Brooklyn, N.Y., denied any knowledge of her brother’s whereabouts. Miss Gordon said, “We haven’t seen him or heard from him in more than seventeen years.”

  Miss Gordon says she believed her brother dead until last March, when the head of the psychology department at Beekman University approached her for permission to use Charlie in an experiment.

  “My mother told me he had been sent to the Warren place,” (Warren State Home and Training School, in Warren, Long Island) said Miss Gordon, “and that he died there a few years later. I had no idea then that he was still alive.”

  Miss Gordon requests that anyone who has any news about her brother’s whereabouts communicate with the family at their home address.

  The father, Matthew Gordon, who is not living with his wife and daughter, now operates a barbershop in the Bronx.

  I stared at the news story for a while, and then I turned back and looked at the picture again. How can I describe them?

  I can’t say I remember Rose’s face. Although the recent photograph is a clear one, I still see it through the gauze of childhood. I knew her, and I didn’t know her. Had we passed on the street, I would not have recognized her, but now, knowing she is my mother, I can make out the faint details—yes!

  Thin, drawn into exaggerated lines. Sharp nose and chin. And I can almost hear her chatter and bird-screech. Hair done up in a bun, severely. Piercing me with her dark eyes. I want her to take me into her arms and tell me I am a good boy, and at the same time I want to turn away to avoid a slap. Her picture makes me tremble.

  And Norma—thin-faced too. Features not so sharp, pretty, but very much like my mother. Her hair worn down to her shoulders softens her. The two of them are sitting on the living room couch.

  It was Rose’s face that brought back the frightening memories. She was two people to me, and I never had any way of knowing which she would be. Perhaps she would reveal it to others by a gesture of hand, a raised eyebrow, a frown—my sister knew the storm warnings, and she would always be out of range whenever my mother’s temper flared—but it always caught me unawares. I would come to her for comforting, and her anger would break over me.

  And other times there would be tenderness and holding-close like a warm bath, and hands stroking my hair and brow, and the words carved above the cathedral of my childhood:

  He’s like all the other children.

  He’s a good boy.

  I see back through the dissolving photograph, myself and father leaning over a bassinet. He’s holding me by the hand and saying, “There she is. You mustn’t touch her because she’s very little, but when she gets bigger you’ll have a sister to play with.”

  I see my mother in the huge bed nearby, bleached and pasty, arms limp on the orchid-figured comforter, raising her head anxiously. “Watch him, Matt—”

  That was before she had changed towards me, and now I realize it was because she had no way of knowing yet if Norma would be like me or not. It was later on, when she was sure her prayers had been answered, and Norma showed all signs of normal intelligence, that my mother’s voice began to sound different. Not only her voice, but her touch, her look, her very presence—all changed. It was as if her magnetic poles had reversed and where they had once attracted now repelled. I see now that when Norma flowered in our garden I became a weed, allowed to exist only where I would not be seen, in corners and dark places.

  Seeing her face in the newspaper, I suddenly hated her. It would have been better if she had ignored the doctors and teachers and others who were so in a hurry to convince her that I was a moron, turning her away from me so that she gave me less love when I needed more.

  What good would it do to see her now? What could she tell me about myself? And yet, I’m curious. How would she react?

  To see her and trace back to learn what I was? Or to forget her? Is the past worth knowing? Why is it so important for me to say to her: “Mom, look at me. I’m not retarded any more. I’m normal. Better than normal. I’m a genius”?

  Even as I try to get her out of my mind, the memories seep back from the past to contaminate the here and now. Another memory—when I was much older.

  A quarrel.

  Charlie lying in bed, with the covers pulled up around him. The room dark, except for the thin line of yellow light from the door ajar that penetrates the darkness to join both worlds. And he hears things, not understanding but feeling, because the rasp of their voices is linked to their talk of him. More and more, each day, he comes to associate that tone with a frown when they speak of him.

  He had been almost asleep when through the bar of light the soft voices were raised to the pitch of argument—his mother’s voice sharp with the threat of one used to having her way through hysteria. “He’s got to be sent away. I don’t want him in the house any more with her. Call Dr. Portman and tell him we want to send Charlie to the Warren State Home.”

  My father’s voice is firm, steadying. “But you know Charlie wouldn’t harm her. It can’t make any difference to her at this age.”

  “How do we know? Maybe it has a bad effect on a child to grow up with . . . someone like him in the house.”

  “Dr. Portman said—”

  “Portman said! Portman said! I don’t care what he said! Think of what it will be like for her to have a brother like that. I was wrong all these years, trying to believe he would grow up like other children. I admit it now. Better for him to be put away.”

  “Now that you’ve got her, you’ve decided you don’t want him any more. . . .”

  “Do you think this is easy? Why are you making it harder for me? All these years everyone telling me he should be put away. Well, they were right. Put him away. Maybe at the Home with his own kind he’ll have something. I don’t know what’s right or wrong any more. All I know is I’m not going to sacrifice my daughter for him now.”

  And though Charlie has not understood what passed between them, he is afraid and sinks beneath the covers, eyes open, trying to pierce the darkness that surrounds him.

  As I see him now, he is not really afraid, just withdrawing, as a bird or squirrel backs off from the brusque movements of the feeder—involuntary, instinctive. The light through that door ajar comes to me again in luminous vision. Seeing Charlie huddled beneath the covers I wish I could give him comfort, explain to him that he has done nothing wrong, that it is beyond him to change his mother’s attitude back to what it was before his sister came. There on the bed, Charlie did not understand what they were saying, but now it hurts. If I could reach out into the past of my memories, I would make her see how much she was hurting me.

  This is no time to go to her. Not until I’ve had time to work it out for myself.

  Fortunately, as a precaution, I withdrew my savings from the bank as soon as I arrived in New York. Eight hundred and eighty-six dollars won’t last long, but it will give me time to get my bearings.

  I’ve checked into the Camden Hotel on 41st Street, a block from Times Square. New York! All the things I’ve read about it! Gotham . . . the melting pot . . . Baghdad-on-the-Hudson. City of light and color. Incredible that I’ve lived and worked all my life just a few stops away on the subway and been to Times Square only once—with Alice.

  It’s hard to keep from calling her. I’ve started and stopped myself several times. I’ve got to keep away from her.

  So many confusing thoughts to get down. I tell myself that as long as I keep taping my progress reports, nothing will be lost; the record will be complete. Let them be in the dark
for a while; I was in the dark for more than thirty years. But I’m tired now. Didn’t get to sleep on the plane yesterday, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I’ll pick up at this point tomorrow.

  June 16—Called Alice, but hung up before she answered. Today I found a furnished apartment. Ninety-five dollars a month is more than I planned to spend, but it’s on Forty-third and Tenth Avenue and I can get to the library in ten minutes to keep up with my reading and study. The apartment is on the fourth floor, four rooms, and there’s a rented piano in it. The landlady says that one of these days the rental service will pull it out, but maybe by that time I can learn to play it.

  Algernon is a pleasant companion. At mealtimes he takes his place at the small gateleg table. He likes pretzels, and today he took a sip of beer while we watched the ball game on TV. I think he rooted for the Yankees.

  I’m going to move most of the furniture out of the second bedroom and use the room for Algernon. I plan to build him a three-dimensional maze out of scrap plastic that I can pick up cheaply downtown. There are some complex maze variations I’d like him to learn to be sure he keeps in shape. But I’m going to see if I can find some motivation other than food. There must be other rewards that will induce him to solve problems.

  Solitude gives me a chance to read and think, and now that the memories are coming through again—to rediscover my past, to find out who and what I really am. If anything should go wrong, I’ll have at least that.

  June 19—Met Fay Lillman, my neighbor across the hall. When I came back with an armful of groceries, I discovered I had locked myself out, and I remembered that the front fire escape connected my living room window and the apartment directly across the hall.

  The radio was on loud and brassy, so I knocked—softly at first, and then louder.

  “Come on in! Door’s open!”