The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers (Dover Thrift Editions)

by Mike Ashley

  “Never mind,” said my wife; “I’ve a pot of coffee on the kerosene stove.”

  Bless her! She was worth a thousand Beneficent Geniuses, and so I told her.

  I did not return until late, but I was in good spirits, and I greeted my wife gayly:

  “Well, how do they work?”

  “Like fiends!” my usually placid helpmeet replied, so vehemently that I was alarmed. “They flagged at first,” she proceeded, excitedly, “and I oiled them, which I am not going to do, ever again. According to the directions, I poured the oil down their throats. It was horrible! They seemed to me to drink it greedily.”

  “Nonsense! That’s your imagination.”

  “Very well,” said Anna Maria. “You can do the oiling in future. They took a good deal this morning; it wasn’t easy to stop pouring it down. And they worked—obstreperously. That Fiend in the kitchen has cooked all the provisions I am going to supply this day, but still she goes on, and it’s no use to say a word.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” I remonstrated. “The thing is only a machine.”

  “I’m not so sure about that!” she retorted. “As for the other one—I set it sweeping, and it is sweeping still!”

  We ate the dinner prepared by the kitchen Fiend, and really, I was tempted to compliment the cook in a set speech, but recollected myself in time to spare Anna Maria the triumph of saying, “I told you so!”

  Now, that John of mine, still in pursuit of knowledge, had spent the day studying Harrison Ely’s pamphlet, and he learned that the machines could be set, like an alarm-clock, for any given hour. Therefore, as soon as the Juliana had collapsed over a pile of dust in the middle of the hall, John, unknown to us, set her indicator to the broom-handle for seven o’clock the following morning. When the Fiend in the kitchen ran down, leaving everything in confusion, my much-tried wife persuaded me to give my exclusive attention to that machine, and the Juliana was put safely in a corner. Thus it happened that John’s interference escaped detection. I set Bridget’s indicator for kitchen-cleaning at seven-thirty the next morning.

  “When we understand them better,” I said to my wife, “we will set their morning tasks for an earlier hour, but we won’t put it too early now, since we must first learn their ways.”

  “That’s the trouble with all new servants,” said Anna Maria. The next morning at seven-thirty, precisely, we were awakened by a commotion in the kitchen.

  “By George Washington!” I exclaimed. “The Thing’s on time!” I needed no urging to make me forsake my pillow, but Anna Maria was ahead of me.

  “Now, my dear, don’t get excited,” I exhorted, but in vain. “Don’t you hear?” she whispered, in terror. “The other one— swe—eep—ing!” And she darted from the room.

  I paused to listen, and heard the patter of three pairs of little bare feet across the hall up-stairs. The children were following their mother. The next sound I heard was like the dragging of a rug along the floor. I recognized this peculiar sound as the footsteps of the B. G. Then came a dull thud, mingled with a shout from Johnnie, a scream from my wife, and the terrified cries of the two younger children. I rushed out just in time to see John, in his night-clothes, with his hair on end, tear down-stairs like a streak of lightning. My little Kitty and the three-year-old baby stood clasped in each other’s arms at the head of the stairs, sobbing in terror, and, half-way down, was my wife, leaning over the railing, with ashen face and rigid body, her fascinated gaze fixed upon a dark and struggling mass in the hall below.

  John, when he reached the bottom of the stairs, began capering like a goat gone mad, digging the floor with his bare heels, clapping his hands with an awful glee, and shouting:

  “Bet your bottom dollar on the one that whips!”

  The Juliana and the Bridget were fighting for the broom!

  I comprehended the situation intuitively. The kitchen-cleaning, for which the Fiend had been “set,” had reached a point that demanded the broom, and that subtle, attractive affinity, which my friend’s genius had known how to produce, but had not learned to regulate, impelled the unerring automaton towards the only broom in the house, which was now in the hands of its fellow-automaton, and a struggle was inevitable. What I could not understand—Johnnie having kept his own counsel—was this uncontrollable sweeping impulse that possessed the Juliana.

  However, this was no time for investigating the exact cause of the terrific row now going on in our front hall. The Beneficent Geniuses had each a firm grip of the broom-handle, and they might have performed the sweeping very amicably together, could they but have agreed as to the field of labor, but their conflicting tendencies on this point brought about a rotary motion that sent them spinning around the hall, and kept them alternately cracking each other’s head with a violence that ought to have drawn blood. Considering their life-likeness, we should hardly have thought it strange if blood had flowed, and it would have been a relief had the combatants but called each other names, so much did their dumbness intensify the horror of a struggle, in the midst of which the waterproof hoods fell off, revealing their startlingly human countenances, not distorted by angry passions, but resolute, inexorable, calm, as though each was sustained in the contest by a lofty sense of duty.

  “They’re alive! Kill ’em! Kill ’em quick!” shrieked my wife, as the gyrating couple moved towards the stair-case.

  “Let ’em alone,” said Johnnie—his sporting blood, which he inherits from his father, thoroughly roused—dancing about the automatic pugilists in delight, and alternately encouraging the one or the other to increased efforts.

  Thus the fight went on with appalling energy and reckless courage on both sides, my wife wringing her hands upon the staircase, our infants wailing in terror upon the landing above, and I wavering between an honest desire to see fair play and an apprehensive dread of consequences which was not unjustified.

  In one of their frantic gyrations the figures struck the hat-rack and promptly converted it into a mass of splinters. In a minute more they became involved with a rubber plant—the pride of my wife’s heart—and distributed it impartially all over the premises. From this they caromed against the front door, wrecking both its stained-glass panes, and then down the length of the hall they sped again, fighting fiercely and dealing one another’s imperturbable countenances ringing blows with the disputed broom.

  We became aware through Johnnie’s excited comments, that Juliana had lost an ear in the fray, and presently it was discernible that a fractured nose had somewhat modified the set geniality of expression that had distinguished Bridget’s face in its prime.

  How this fierce and equal combat would have culminated if further prolonged no one but Harrison Ely can conjecture, but it came to an abrupt termination as the parlor clock chimed eight, the hour when the two automatons should have completed their appointed tasks.

  Though quite late at my office that morning, I wired Ely before attending to business. Long-haired, gaunt and haggard, but cheerful as ever, he arrived next day, on fire with enthusiasm. He could hardly be persuaded to refresh himself with a cup of coffee before he took his two recalcitrant Geniuses in hand. It was curious to see him examine each machine, much as a physician would examine a patient. Finally his brow cleared, he gave a little puff of satisfaction, and exclaimed:

  “Why, man alive, there’s nothing the matter—not a thing! What you consider a defect is really a merit—merely a surplus of mental energy. They’ve had too big a dose of oil. Few housekeepers have any idea about proper lubrication,” and he emitted another little snort, at which my wife colored guiltily.

  “I see just what’s wanted,” he resumed. “The will-power generated and not immediately expended becomes cumulative and gets beyond control. I’ll introduce a little compensator, to take up the excess and regulate the flow. Then a child can operate them.”

  It was now Johnnie’s turn to blush.

  “Ship ’em right back to the factory, and we’ll have ’em all right in a few days. I see
where the mechanism can be greatly improved, and when you get ’em again I know you’ll never consent to part with ’em!”

  That was four months ago. The “Domestic Fairies” have not yet been returned from Harrison’s laboratory, but I am confidently looking for the familiar oblong packing case, and expect any day to see in the papers the prospectus of the syndicate which Ely informs me is being “promoted” to manufacture his automatic housemaid.

  THE RAY OF DISPLACEMENT

  Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835–1921)

  Unlike the previous writers in this volume, Harriet Elizabeth Prescott, who became Harriet Spofford after her marriage in 1865, delighted in the weird and unusual. She made her mark with her first novel, the gothic Sir Rohan’s Ghost (1860) and several macabre stories which were collected as The Amber Gods (1863). Though born in Maine, she lived all her teenage and adult life in Massachusetts. However, she was unlike many of the other New England regional writers, being a true romantic rather than a realist. Her stories have a dark uncertainty, her characters haunted by a spiritual or psychological threat that is never fully understood. As a result, a few of her stories qualify as borderline science fiction, such as “The Moonstone Mass” (1868), about the discovery of something unusual in the Arctic wastes of northern Canada or her last ghost story, “The Mad Lady” (1916), which includes a motor-car which may have a mind of its own.

  “The Ray of Displacement” is her most overt science fiction story and dates from late in her career. It takes on board some of the thinking about atomic theory and looks at how matter may be dissipated so that an individual can pass through walls. It’s a theme uncommon in early science fiction, and this story is certainly amongst the first of its kind.

  “We should have to reach the

  Infinite to arrive at the Impossible.”

  IT WOULD INTEREST none but students should I recite the circumstances of the discovery. Prosecuting my usual researches, I seemed rather to have stumbled on this tremendous thing than to have evolved it from formulæ.

  Of course, you already know that all molecules, all atoms, are separated from each other by spaces perhaps as great, when compared relatively, as those which separate the members of the stellar universe. And when by my Y-ray I could so far increase these spaces that I could pass one solid body through another, owing to the differing situation of their atoms, I felt no disembodied spirit had wider, freer range than I. Until my discovery was made public my power over the material universe was practically unlimited.

  Le Sage’s theory concerning ultra-mundane corpuscles was rejected because corpuscles could not pass through solids. But here were corpuscles passing through solids. As I proceeded, I found that at the displacement of one one-billionth of a centimeter the object capable of passing through another was still visible, owing to the refraction of the air, and had the power of communicating its polarization; and that at two one-billionths the object became invisible, but that at either displacement the subject, if a person, could see into the present plane; and all movement and direction were voluntary. I further found my Y-ray could so polarize a substance that its touch in turn temporarily polarized anything with which it came in contact, a negative current moving atoms to the left, and a positive to the right of the present plane.

  My first experience with this new principle would have made a less determined man drop the affair. Brant had been by way of dropping into my office and laboratory when in town. As I afterwards recalled, he showed a signal interest in certain toxicological experiments. “Man alive!” I had said to him once, “let those crystals alone! A single one of them will send you where you never see the sun!” I was uncertain if he brushed one off the slab. He did not return for some months. His wife, as I heard afterwards, had a long and baffling illness in the meantime, divorcing him on her recovery; and he had remained out of sight, at last leaving his native place for the great city. He had come in now, plausibly to ask my opinion of a stone—a diamond of unusual size and water.

  I put the stone on a glass shelf in the next room while looking for the slide. You can imagine my sensation when that diamond, with something like a flash of shadow, so intense and swift it was, burst into a hundred rays of blackness and subsided—a pile of carbon! I had forgotten that the shelf happened to be negatively polarized, consequently everything it touched sharing its polarization, and that in pursuing my experiment I had polarized myself also, but with the opposite current; thus the atoms of my fingers passing through the spaces of the atoms of the stone already polarized, separated them negatively so far that they suffered disintegration and returned to the normal. “Good heavens! What has happened!” I cried before I thought. In a moment he was in the rear room and bending with me over the carbon. “Well,” he said, straightening himself directly, “you gave me a pretty fright. I thought for a moment that was my diamond.”

  “But it is!” I whispered.

  “Pshaw!” he exclaimed roughly. “What do you take me for? Come, come, I’m not here for tricks. That’s enough damned legerdemain. Where’s my diamond?”

  With less dismay and more presence of mind I should have edged along to my batteries, depolarized myself, placed in vacuum the tiny shelf of glass and applied my Y-ray; and with, I knew not what, of convulsion and flame the atoms might have slipped into place. But, instead, I stood gasping. He turned and surveyed me; the low order of his intelligence could receive but one impression.

  “Look here,” he said, “you will give me back my stone! Now! Or I will have an officer here!”

  My mind was flying like the current through my coils. How could I restore the carbon to its original, as I must, if at all, without touching it, and how could I gain time without betraying my secret? “You are very short,” I said. “What would you do with your officer?”

  “Give you up! Give you up, appear against you, and let you have a sentence of twenty years behind bars.”

  “Hard words, Mr. Brant. You could say I had your property. I could deny it. Would your word outweigh mine? But return to the office in five minutes—if it is a possible thing you shall ——”

  “And leave you to make off with my jewel! Not by a long shot! I’m a bad man to deal with, and I’ll have my stone or ——”

  “Go for your officer,” said I.

  His eye, sharp as a dagger’s point, fell an instant. How could he trust me? I might escape with my booty. Throwing open the window to call, I might pinion him from behind, powerful as he was. But before he could gainsay, I had taken half a dozen steps backward, reaching my batteries.

  “Give your alarm,” I said. I put out my hand, lifting my lever, turned the current into my coils, and blazed up my Y-ray for half a heart-beat, succeeding in that brief time in reversing and in receiving the current that so far changed matters that the thing I touched would remain normal, although I was left still so far subjected to the ray of the less displacement that I ought, when the thrill had subsided, to be able to step through the wall as easily as if no wall were there. “Do you see what I have here?” I most unwisely exclaimed. “In one second I could annihilate you ——” I had no time for more, or even to make sure I was correct, before, keeping one eye on me, he had called the officer.

  “Look here,” he said again, turning on me. “I know enough to see you have something new there, some of your damned inventions. Come, give me my diamond, and if it is worth while I’ll find the capital, go halves, and drop this matter.”

  “Not to save your life!” I cried.

  “You know me, officer,” he said, as the blue coat came running in. “I give this man into custody for theft.”

  “It is a mistake, officer,” I said. “But you will do your duty.” “Take him to the central station,” said Mr. Brant, “and have him searched. He has a jewel of mine on his person.”

  “Yer annar’s sure it’s not on the primmises?” asked the officer. “He has had no time ——”

  “Sure, if it’s quick he do be he’s as like to toss it in a corner —�
�”

  I stretched out my hand to a knob that silenced the humming among my wires, and at the same time sent up a thread of white fire whose instant rush and subsidence hinted of terrible power behind. The last divisible particle of radium—their eyeballs throbbed for a week.

  “Search,” I said. “But be careful about shocks. I don’t want murder here, too.”

  Apparently they also were of that mind. For, recovering their sight, they threw my coat over my shoulders and marched me between them to the station, where I was searched, and, as it was already late, locked into a cell for the night.

  I could not waste strength on the matter. I was waiting for the dead middle of the night. Then I should put things to proof.

  I confess it was a time of intense breathlessness while waiting for silence and slumber to seal the world. Then I called upon my soul, and I stepped boldly forward and walked through that stone wall as if it had been air.

  Of course, at my present displacement I was perfectly visible, and I slipped behind this and that projection, and into that alley, till sure of safety. There I made haste to my quarters, took the shelf holding the carbon, and at once subjected it to the necessary treatment. I was unprepared for the result. One instant the room seemed full of a blinding white flame, an intolerable heat, which shut my eyes and singed my hair and blistered my face.

  “It is the atmosphere of a fire-dissolving planet,” I thought. And then there was darkness and a strange odor.

  I fumbled and stumbled about till I could let in the fresh air; and presently I saw the dim light of the street lamp. Then I turned on my own lights—and there was the quartz slab with a curious fusing of its edges, and in the center, flashing, palpitating, lay the diamond, all fire and whiteness. I wondered if it were not considerably larger; but it was hot as if just fallen from Syra Vega; it contracted slightly after subjection to dephlogistic gases.