by Earl
Moore would never forget the woman dashing from the ruins of a house with a dead baby in her arms, screeching that America was being bombed from the air by an enemy.
He skirted the town, tight-lipped, hollow inside.
Within fifty miles, all trees and even low desert shrubbery had been blown flat. It was like the area around the famous Siberian meteorite of 1908, which had razed flat millions of acres of forest. Great dunes of sand had been shoved outward, forming a series of rings. And Moore knew what he would see when he neared the great wound in the Earth.
He rode his car on the wheel rims for the last ten miles, tires slashed to ribbons, across country. There were no roads or telephone poles visible. No sign of manmade things, except here and there a splintered board or pitted brick.
Finally he stood at the edge of the vast, smoking pit. This had been the town a few hours before. All was gone. Every building, every street, every person. A heavy mist, very likely the atoms of the things destroyed, slowly settled. All gas gone, and only this raw rash marked the former town of Dry Gulch.
Bruce Moore found himself on his knees in the scarred Earth, shoulders heaving.
“I did it!” he kept moaning aloud. “I wiped out five hundred lives!”
The terrible self-denunciation slashed again and again through his sensitive mind.
He was hardly aware, an hour later, that hands pulled him erect. Nor that he kept yelling those words at them—and then laughing horribly. For it was a joke, after all. A grand, diabolical joke that he who had devised the mighty destruction should be alive.
II
THEY took him to Carson City, for trial.
The charge was manslaughter. In any other state of the union, he would have been sentenced for life, or executed. But the Nevada courts—known to wink at gambling, speeding, divorce—let him free for lack of evidence, since his assistant and laboratory had been blown up. It was an amazing decision, but the presiding judge had relegated the case to the status of a railroad accident, or a defective dam. An act of God.
Moore hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry, in the awful days that followed. A nation-wide and worldwide reaction set in against him. The explosion had hardly been greater than the eruption of public opinion now.
Must cold-blooded scientists be allowed to wantonly destroy human life for the good of research? Must people tremble in fear lest any moment this same madman—freed by the Nevada courts—would send them to oblivion? Moore had laughed when they found him. Nero fiddling while Rome burned. He would go shrieking down in history as the greatest wholesale murderer known. A scientific Bluebeard. And so on. . . .
He was denounced from one end of Earth to the other.
All the states except Nevada rushed through special warrants. They warned him that if he set foot outside the boundaries of Nevada, he would be arrested on charges preferred by the relatives of the dead. He would be summarily executed. And all over the world, governments posted notice that no country would harbor such a dangerous maniac.
The reaction in scientific circles was equally as great. More or less unknown, Moore was looked upon as a charlatan who had given their class a black eye. Scientist groups formally declared him an outlaw of the laboratory. The university that had granted him a degree withdrew it, striking his name off the lists.
Moore felt as if a net were slowly closing about him, strangling him. He was confined to the state of Nevada. In any other spot on Earth, he was a criminal meriting death. And even in tolerant Nevada, its seventy thousand people shunned him. When he went to Las Vegas and Reno, for a little companionship, hardened gamblers and not-too-puritanical people shrank from him as from a monster.
In a month, Moore saw his position starkly. He retired to his former laboratory-home, isolated in the hills, where he had developed his experiments to the point where he needed the bigger supplies of electrical power available in Dry Gulch.
Bitterly, he contemplated the dreary future.
He was a world-wide pariah. A friendless, shunned man. He was thirty, unmarried, an orphan. All the universe had conspired, it seemed, to cut him loose from human society. He walked alone, little more than a ghost. No leper had ever been quite so abandoned by his fellow men.
He grew thin, grey-haired, surly even with himself. Suicide sang its siren song. It would be the only escape. Every time he tuned the radio, references were made to the disaster. “Moore’s butchery” became a standard cliche, to which were compared tornadoes, typhoons, famines, riots, gang murders, and all violent death.
Cyanide. That was the quickest. Looking out over the world that had disowned him, he raised the bitter draught to his lips. But the beaker was knocked from his hand.
“Not that, Bruce,” said a calm voice. “Don’t give them the satisfaction!”
Moore whirled, startled. He hadn’t heard the car come up, nor the footsteps approaching from behind.
“Jed Wheeler!” Moore exclaimed.
He couldn’t say any more. He could only stand, woodenly, waiting for the other to show his repulsion at facing the man who had scientifically assassinated five hundred innocent humans.
But Wheeler smiled instead—a friendly warm smile that seemed to spread blinding sunshine over the world. And his handclasp was firm.
“Good to see you, Bruce old boy!” Wheeler said casually.
Moore stared.
“Do you mean it?” he stammered. “Don’t you know that I’m a murderer, a beast, a—”
“Shut up,” Wheeler returned easily. “We were roommates in college. Remember those days? We’d talk far into the night. You on dynamic electron-flow. I on lab-made protoplasm. I say it’s good to see you, and I mean it!”
And then Moore was babbling against his friend’s shoulder.
“Good to see you? Jed, you don’t know how good! You’re the first person who’s touched me, without shuddering, in months. Eternities!”
Pity shone behind Wheeler’s scoffing smile. “Don’t take it so hard, Bruce. Chin up. I know what you must have gone through.”
“But when every soul on Earth shuns you—” Moore half moaned.
“Carroll Dean,” Wheeler said. “I thought she’d come back to you. Hasn’t she—”
Moore’s face hardened. “No,” he said harshly. “One little word from her might have made it easier. One little visit. One smile. Damn her! Damn all the world—”
“That’s it!” Wheeler slapped his back. “Get mad. Good and mad. You’re down but not out!”
Moore stepped back, more composed. He gripped his friend’s hand again.
“Saved me from a bad moment, Jed. Just one friend is all I need. Just one man to come and talk to me a little.”
Wheeler kicked at the broken beaker on the ground, shaking his head.
“Ready to take your own life! The greatest gift in the universe—”
His voice trailed. Something in his tone caught Moore. And when his friend looked up, he saw the bleakness of his eyes. The lines in the face, the pale skin, the droop of the shoulders.
Wheeler answered the unvoiced question.
“Cancer,” he said briefly. “Docs give me three months.”
They looked at each other. One man who sought to escape the bitter burden of life. The other who clung fast to measured hours.
“God, I wish I could do something for you,” Moore murmured.
“Maybe you can!” Wheeler drew a breath and went on. “I’ve come to you because I think you’re the only man on Earth who might help me. In my car I have a large box. It contains a form made of artificial protoplasm. I’ve worked on that for six years, since college. Succeeded, too. Help me with the box.”
They strode to the car. One at each end, they lifted down the oblong box. It was the size of a coffin, and of that weight—filled. Wheeler lifted the lid.
Moore gasped.
He looked down on a perfect male form. Its broad chest seemed poised for a breath, its nostrils ready to flare, its eyelids at the verge of blinking o
pen. It might be the body of a man who had just drawn his last breath—or was ready to draw his first.
“Artificial?” Moore whispered.
Wheeler nodded.
“But perfect in every detail—lungs, heart, veins, blood, brain, muscles. Six years ago I started. Six years ago I had an operation for a cancer tumor. The cancer spread. No hope for me, unless—”
Again he drew a breath and went on.
“Unless I succeed in transferring my psyche—my mental self—into this brain! Oh, don’t stare at me as if I’m mad. I don’t know if it will work—
hypnotic projection and all that. But I can try. If I fail—well, I’d be dead in three months anyway.”
His tones were practical, determined.
“No doctor or biologist would agree to help me, of course. Criminal research, playing with a human life. But you, Bruce—I figured perhaps you. . . .”
He paused.
Moore finished for him.
“You figured I wouldn’t care. That being a pariah already, in the eyes of the world, I have nothing to lose. A murderer of five hundred can add one more to his list without stigma. I can’t damage a reputation already smashed. And you’re right, Jed. I’ll do it!”
A MONTH of feverish preparation.
Moore almost forgot his own problem. Wheeler had a truck bring in his biological apparatus. Glucose injections in the veins, warming pads at the feet to induce circulation, adrenalin in the heart, a chest pump to suck in air—and the artificial corpse came to life.
“That was easy enough,” Wheeler said. “I had it ‘alive’ before. The hard part—the unknown factor—is to transfer my mind to the new brain-medium. If it works, I have a new vigorous body, free of cancer. And the world will benefit immeasureably. If it doesn’t work—”
He shrugged.
Stripped, he lay beside the bio-man. Moore began the carefully rehearsed program of hypnosis—whirling mirrors, softly winking lights, massage of the forehead. Wheeler’s eyes closed. Beside his ear a phonograph record drummed a command:
“Attention, mind of Jed Wheeler! Enter the new body!”
Over and over, Wheeler’s own recorded voice prodded his mind to that grave, unknown step. Moore watched, trembling and fascinated. If it worked, another frontier would be reached in the science of mind—and life.
An hour later, Wheeler had sunk into the third stage of deep lethargy, hardly breathing. Moore started. The bio-man was twitching. Its head swung from side to side. Broken mutters came from its lips. Its eyes opened, staring.
Was it working? Was the mind of Wheeler already in its new home? Moore trembled. It was weird, uncanny. And yet, it was rigidly scientific. No man had proved that it could not be done.
Suddenly Wheeler’s wasted, cancer-ridden body heaved convulsively. Moore could sense the spirit departing. Then it lay still, unmoving.
Wheeler was dead!
At the same time, the bio-man sat up. Its eyes looked around in awareness, centering on Moore. The strong lips moved. The artificial larynx drew breath across its vocal chords in speech.
“Bruce! I see you. I’m in the new body. But it won’t work! I’m in this brain, but slipping fast. No way to anchor my mind here. Thanks anyway, Bruce. Goodbye. . . .”
The bio-man tumbled back on its bed. Two corpses lay side by side.
Moore’s nerves gave way. He held his head in his hands, groaning. Again, indirectly, he had been a murderer. Another life had sped away under his hands, as though the gods had cursed him with the power of death-dealing.
Perhaps hours passed. Moore wasn’t sure. But a sound gradually wormed its way into his consciousness. A sound that brought the roots of his hair up stiffly.
Breathing!
The bio-man wasn’t dead. It was still breathing, warn, carrying on the reflexes of life. It lay there like a young, virile man in restful sleep!
“Alive!” Moore thought. “Why doesn’t it die?”
He jumped as the bio-man’s lips opened and repeated the thought aloud: “Alive! Why doesn’t it die?”
Breathing!
The bio-man wasn’t dead. It was still breathing, warm, carrying on the reflexes of life. It lay there like a young virile man in restful sleep!
“Alive!” Moore thought. “Why doesn’t it die?”
He jumped as the bio-man’s lips opened and repeated the thought aloud: “Alive! Why doesn’t it die?”
“You talk!” Moore gasped. “Are you really alive? Tell me!”
“You talk!” the bio-man again reiterated. “Are you really alive? Tell me!”
Moore moaned, half in terror, and ran out. He drew in deep lungfulls of fresh air, trying to keep from screaming. When he went back, in, he was calm. More than that, his eyes shone. Something had struck him like lightning.
He had talked over the project with Wheeler enough to know something of the mechanism involved. Briefly, the brain of the bio-mart was responsive to thought. It lay ready, like a wax disk, to take the impress of anything engraved into it. Telepathy, mental rapport, psychic radio—science had no exact term for it as yet.
But of one thing Moore was certain. The bio-man could be kept alive, if he were fed. And he could be directed around like a robot, perhaps—
Moore tried it.
“Arise!” he commanded. “Come to your feet!”
The bio-man stiffened and slowly raised on its elbow, as though absorbing the thought and interpreting it in mental images. Then, obediently, it came Iithely to its feet and stood erect. Its face was blank. Its eyes looked at Moore without recognition save that he was part of the general background.
“Step toward me,” Moore ordered. “Three steps.”
The bio-man took three steps, with the assurance and poise of a strong, athletic body.
“Nod your head—Lift your right arm.—Turn half-way around—point to your nose—smile!”
Moore was satisfied, finally. Without fail, the bio-man had obeyed every command—those given mentally as well as orally. And gradually, breathlessly, Moore had let an astounding thought creep into his mind.
The bio-man could be Moore’s proxy! Through this human-like robot, Moore could live and move in the world of men, unchallenged!
“Your name!” Moore cried. “Something common—Smith! Dennis Smith, a young man like millions of other young men! Now repeat it to me, as I give the mental command—”
The bio-man opened his lips.
“I—am—Dennis Smith,” it said.
Moore flung his hands up in triumph.
His bitter, soul-searing exile was over!
III
BACK in the patio of a Beverly Hills home, Dennis Smith and Carroll Dean still danced. The girl had drawn closer into his arms, saying little, watching his features. Features that reflected the expressions of Bruce Moore with the fidelity of television. At times she frowned, as though still vaguely wondering if she had met him before.
“Hi, there, Smith!”
Dr. Earl Dean was calling from the side, and beckoning for them to approach. Beside him stood a tall, thinhaired man with critical eyes that seemed to bore through each and every guest, searching endlessly for something.
“Pat Vayder,” Dean introduced him. “Star director for King Studios. Pat’s interested in you, Smith.”
“In what way?” Smith asked, surprised.
Vayder’s uncomfortable eyes were riveted on his face.
“Have you ever acted, Smith?” he queried. He went on in a booming, authoritative voice that for years had directed the highest-paid stars of screendom.
“You’re screen material, Smith, Definitely. Build of an Adonis. Facial character. Photogenic.”
Smith gasped. “But I’ve never had the slightest experience in, acting!”
“Not necessary,” Vayder declared. “Male appeal. You have that. Girls watch you. They all have here. I’ve watched them. And ask Miss Dean.” The girl blushed. “Really, that isn’t fair! But, Dennis”—she turned her glowing eyes on him—�
�this is a wonderful opportunity. You must accept!” Earl Dean smiled expansively at the group.
“When I met you this afternoon, I knew you had something on the ball. By God, Smith, you’re made! When Pat picks ’em, they’re stars.”
Three pairs of eyes were on Dennis Smith. He flushed. A flush born in the mind of Bruce Moore six hundred miles away, transmitted faithfully by the sensitivity of thought.
In the next second, Moore’s hand flashed to his telepathy-control, disconnecting the power-wave for a moment. It left the sounding board of Dennis Smith’s proxy face pleasantly blank. Otherwise that face would have astounded the others by spreading over with an ironic, bitter grin.
What would they say if they knew? The infallible Vayder, picking a proxy for a star discovery! Singling out a lab-made lump of Artificial protoplasm, not even human! And how he would choke and splutter if he knew he was offering stardom—even if by proxy—to the most hated, despised, scorned man on Earth!
Moore laughed, in the privacy of his far-distant home.
A warm, happy feeling spread through him, melting some of the chill of his crushing exile. Through Dennis Smith, he once again lived and moved among people. He was no longer on an island universe of human antipathy. Vayder’s professional eyes on him approvingly. Earl Dean’s gaze fatherly and benign. Carroll’s warm, glowing eyes telling him she thought, too, he had appeal few other men had. All this was part payment for the tidal wave of denunciation that had beached him on the shores of lonely isolation.
Moore drank it in.
Why not accept? Why not carry the hysterical comedy through, take their money, and let them flash his image on all the movie screens? The image of a biological robot! Only he would know the truth. He would laugh secretly at the whole world, as the whole world had unfeelingly scarred his soul.
But first he would play with them. He would extract every last ounce of grim pleasure out of it.
