A Filbert Is a Nut

by Rick Raphael

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction November 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  A FILBERT IS A NUT

  BY RICK RAPHAEL

  _That the gentleman in question was a nut was beyond question. He was aninstitutionalized psychotic. He was nutty enough to think he could makean atom bomb out of modeling clay!_

  Illustrated by Freas

  Miss Abercrombie, the manual therapist patted the old man on theshoulder. "You're doing just fine, Mr. Lieberman. Show it to me when youhave finished."

  The oldster in the stained convalescent suit gave her a quick, shy smileand went back to his aimless smearing in the finger paints.

  Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed theother patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts andcrafts shop. Two muscular and bored attendants in spotless whites,lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers'prospects for the pennant.

  Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills wereseen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mentalinstitution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the mainbuildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austerecomplex of buildings that housed the main wards.

  The therapist strolled down the line of tables, pausing to give a wordof advice here, and a suggestion there.

  She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs ofclay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, hecarefully placed it into a hollow shell hemisphere of clay.

  "And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?" Miss Abercrombie asked.

  The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as thepatient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if todraw away from the woman.

  "We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston," Miss Abercrombie said lightly,but firmly. "You've been coming along famously and you must remember toanswer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks verycomplicated." She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts.

  Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place.

  Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply.

  "Atom bomb."

  A puzzled look crossed the therapist's face. "Pardon me, Mr. Funston. Ithought you said an 'atom bomb.'"

  "Did," Funston murmured.

  Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever soslightly. "Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creativethought. I'm very pleased."

  She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients.

  A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stoodup and stretched.

  "All right, fellows," he called out, "time to go back. Put up yourthings."

  There was a rustle of paint boxes and papers being shuffled and chairsbeing moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put onemore dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaninglesssmears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette.

  At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bitof clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, heclapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere andthen stood up. The patients lined up at the door, waiting for the walkback across the green hills to the main hospital. The attendants made aquick count and then unlocked the door. The group shuffled out into thewarm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them.

  Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chartbook of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, shemade short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by eachpatient.

  At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay balland stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced throughthe lower hemisphere. She placed the lid back in place and jottedlengthily in her chart book.

  When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tuckedthe chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day.

  The late afternoon sun felt warm and comfortable as she walked the mileto the main administration building where her car was parked.

  As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at thebarred window of his locked ward and stared vacantly over the hillstowards the craft shop. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendantcame and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients'mess hall.

  * * * * *

  The sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and theward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single lightburning in each ward office. A quiet wind sighed over the still-warmhills.

  At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He satup in bed and looked around the dark ward. The quiet breathing andoccasional snores of thirty other sleeping patients filled the room.Funston turned to the window and stared out across the black hills thatsheltered the deserted crafts building.

  He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face.

  The brilliance of a hundred suns glared in the night and threw starkshadows on the walls of the suddenly-illuminated ward.

  An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struckthe hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of athousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wildscreams of the frightened and demented patients.

  It was over in an instant, and a stunned moment later, recessed ceilinglights began flashing on throughout the big institution.

  Beyond the again-silent hills, a great pillar of smoke, topped by asmall mushroom-shaped cloud, rose above the gaping hole that had beenthe arts and crafts building.

  Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bedwith a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurriedthrough the hospital, seeing how many had been injured in theexplosion.

  None had. The hills had absorbed most of the shock and apart from awelter of broken glass, the damage had been surprisingly slight.

  The roar and flash of the explosion had lighted and rocked thesurrounding countryside. Soon firemen and civil defense disaster unitsfrom a half-dozen neighboring communities had gathered at thestill-smoking hole that marked the site of the vanished crafts building.

  Within fifteen minutes, the disaster-trained crews had detected heavyradiation emanating from the crater and there was a scurry of men andequipment back to a safe distance, a few hundred yards away.

  At 5:30 a.m., a plane landed at a nearby airfield and a platoon ofAtomic Energy Commission experts, military intelligence men, four FBIagents and an Army full colonel disembarked.

  At 5:45 a.m. a cordon was thrown around both the hospital and the blastcrater.

  In Ward 4-C, Thaddeus Funston slept peacefully and happily.

  "It's impossible and unbelievable," Colonel Thomas Thurgood said for thefifteenth time, later that morning, as he looked around the group ofexperts gathered in the tent erected on the hill overlooking the crater."How can an atom bomb go off in a nut house?"

  "It apparently was a very small bomb, colonel," one of the haggard AECmen offered timidly. "Not over three kilotons."

  "I don't care if it was the size of a peanut," Thurgood screamed. "Howdid it get here?"

  A military intelligence agent spoke up. "If we knew, sir, we wouldn't bestanding around here. We don't know, but the fact remains that it WAS anatomic explosion."


  Thurgood turned wearily to the small, white-haired man at his side.

  "Let's go over it once more, Dr. Crane. Are you sure you knew everythingthat was in that building?" Thurgood swept his hand in the generaldirection of the blast crater.

  "Colonel, I've told you a dozen times," the hospital administrator saidwith exasperation, "this was our manual therapy room. We gave ourpatients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems,through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problemsthat led them to this hospital. They worked with oil and water paintsand clay. If you can make an atomic bomb from vermillion pigments, thenMadame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman."

  "All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,"Thurgood sighed. "I also know that an atomic explosion at 3:02 thismorning blew it to hell and gone.

  "And I've got to find out how it happened."

  Thurgood