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

by Mike Ashley

  I rushed, as quickly as I could, to seize and throw him off, “Through him! Pass through him! Come out! Come to me!” I cried. And people to-day remember that voice out of the air, in the Kings County Club.

  It seemed to me that I heard a sound, a sob, a whisper, as if one cried with a struggling sigh, “Impossible!” And with that a strange trembling convulsed Judge Brant’s great frame, he lifted his hands, he thrust out his feet, his head fell forward, he groaned gurglingly, shudder after shudder shook him as if every muscle quivered with agony or effort, the big veins started out as if every pulse were a red-hot iron. He was wrestling with something, he knew not what, something as antipathetic to him as white is to black; every nerve was concentrated in rebellion, every fiber struggled to break the spell.

  The whole affair was that of a dozen heart-beats—the attempt of the opposing molecules each to draw the other into its own orbit. The stronger physical force, the greater aggregation of atoms was prevailing. Thrust upward for an instant, Brant fell back into his chair exhausted, the purple color fading till his face shone fair as a girl’s, sweet and smiling as a child’s, white as the face of a risen spirit—Brant’s!

  Astounded, I seized his shoulder and whirled him about. There was no one else in the chair. I looked in every direction. There was no St. Angel to be seen. There was but one conclusion to draw—the molecules of Brant’s stronger material frame had drawn into their own plane the molecules of St. Angel’s.

  I rushed from the place, careless if seen or unseen, howling in rage and misery. I sought my laboratory, and in a fiend’s fury depolarized myself, and I demolished every instrument, every formula, every vestige of my work. I was singed and scorched and burned, but I welcomed any pain. And I went back to prison, admitted by the officials who hardly knew what else to do. I would stay there, I thought, all my days. God grant they should be few! It would be seen that a life of imprisonment and torture were too little punishment for the ruin I had wrought.

  It was after a sleepless night, of which every moment seemed madness, that, the door of my cell opening, I saw St. Angel. St. Angel? God have mercy on me, no, it was Judge Brant I saw!

  He came forward, with both hands extended, a grave, imploring look on his face. “I have come,” he said, a singular sweet overtone in his voice that I had never heard before, yet which echoed like music in my memory, “to make you all the reparation in my power. I will go with you at once before the Governor, and acknowledge that I have found the diamond. I can never hope to atone for what you have suffered. But as long as I live, all that I have, all that I am, is yours!”

  There was a look of absolute sweetness on his face that for a dizzy moment made me half distraught. “We will go together,” he said. “I have to stop on the way and tell a woman whose mortgage comes due to-day that I have made a different disposition; and, do you know,” he added brightly, after an instant’s hesitation, “I think I shall help her pay it!” and he laughed gayly at the jest involved.

  “Will you say that you have known my innocence all these years?” I said sternly.

  “Is not that,” he replied, with a touching and persuasive quality of tone, “a trifle too much? Do you think this determination has been reached without a struggle? If you are set right before the world, is not something due to—Brant?”

  “If I did not know who and what you are,” I said, “I should think the soul of St. Angel had possession of you!”

  The man looked at me dreamily. “Strange!” he murmured. “I seem to have heard something like that before. However,” as if he shook off a perplexing train of thought, “all that is of no consequence. It is not who you are, but what you do. Come, my friend, don’t deny me, don’t let the good minute slip. Surely the undoing of the evil of a lifetime, the turning of that force to righteousness, is work outweighing all a prison chaplain’s ——”

  My God, what had the intrusion of my incapable hands upon forbidden mysteries done!

  “Come,” he said. “We will go together. We will carry light into dark places—there are many waiting ——”

  “St. Angel!” I cried, with a loud voice, “are you here?”

  And again the smile of infinite sweetness illuminated the face even as the sun shines up from the depths of a stagnant pool.

  THOSE FATAL FILAMENTS

  Mabel Ernestine Abbott

  I can find very little about Mabel Ernestine Abbott. She was a fairly regular contributor to the popular magazines and pulps from at least 1902 to 1940. Her output included detective stories and mysteries and the following unusual story dating from 1903. Supposing we could build a device that could read thoughts. Would it be beneficial or not?

  I AM AN electrician.

  I suppose I may say that I am an electrician of note; at least, my name is on most of the electrical appliances which make life worth living nowadays, and the income from these, together with my published lectures, etc., supports my rather expensive family in sufficient comfort.

  Two or three months ago an idea which had long lain in embryo in my brain suddenly developed form, and I hastened to put it in practical shape.

  An instrument which should respond to unspoken thought had long seemed to me not an impossibility, but to make it of practical value, I deemed it necessary that it should transmit the thought in words. The solution flashed upon me, as these things usually do, when I had given over the effort to solve the problem.

  It was so simple as to seem almost trivial, but the more I pondered over its possibilities, the more enthusiastic I became.

  I said nothing to anyone of my discovery, but occupied myself for several days in constructing the little apparatus which I hoped was to make my name a household word for all time. I wonder what I would have said had anyone told me that in two months the thing would have become so hateful to me that neither gold nor glory could tempt me to touch it.

  I experimented with it myself until I was convinced that it was successful.

  It transmitted spoken words much more clearly than the telephone, reproducing the exact quality and volume of tone of the speaker.

  Unexpressed thoughts were given in a thin, sibilant whisper which was very impressive. It made my own flesh fairly creep the first time I heard my inmost thoughts hissed into my ear while my lips remained closed.

  The operator needed only to place his bare hand in contact, no matter how slightly, with an infinitely fine filament of a substance which I may be pardoned for not specifying here, as no patent has been issued.

  This filament connected with ordinary telephone wires by means of a device in which was embodied the new principle I had discovered, and these wires led to a very delicately adjusted telephone, with a phonograph attachment, which transmitted to the listener both the words and thoughts of the operator.

  There was always a whispering, rustling undercurrent of thought speech running through the spoken words, sometimes coinciding exactly with them, sometimes differing.

  This was not ordinarily distinct enough to be confusing, but if the operator’s wandering thoughts gained sufficient clearness to be distinctly audible over the thinkophone, the natural consequence was that his words either ceased or became of subordinate importance.

  The final test as to the perfection of the instrument, of course, must be to cause it to transmit to my ears the thoughts of others; otherwise, there was always the possibility of self deception; and, to make the result absolutely convincing, I thought best that the subject of the first experiment should be ignorant of what was being done.

  The thing had been in working order for a week, and yet I had had no opportunity to test it.

  I had located it upstairs in my dressing room, instead of in the workshop, but I feared that Little, my assistant, suspected something.

  I thought a great deal of Little, who had been with me for over a year and gave promise of becoming in time a real coadjutor. I even had dreams of sometimes handing my work on to him, as I would have done to my son, had I had one.


  I had said nothing to him of my discovery, and pleased myself with the notion of his surprise and delight; but the surprise was in danger of being forestalled unless I made the test soon.

  I resolved to connect a chair in the library and experiment with the first person who chanced to occupy it.

  With this idea, I conducted a slender bundle of the filaments down the stairs and across the hall. While I was at work, Julie passed through the hall.

  “What are you doing, papa?” she inquired, patting my incipient bald spot as I crouched.

  I mumbled something in my beard, but she was already answering herself:

  “Oh, yes, fixing the bells.”

  She did not move on, however, as promptly as I could have wished.

  “There is something in my overcoat pocket, in the back hall,” I suggested, “that a certain young lady might make use of.”

  “What is it?” she demanded, instead of going to see.

  “Well, tomorrow is that young lady’s birthday, and it is conceivable that she might like to give a party, and my overcoat pocket is pretty big, and it might be—”

  “Not a box at the theater?” she shrieked, flying at me.

  I had already braced myself in expectation of the onslaught. In a minute she let me go, but instead of taking herself away, what should the incomprehensible child do but actually bury her face in her hands.

  “Oh, you are too good to me, papa—far too good!” she cried. A man with two daughters learns not to be much surprised at anything, as I accepted this new phenomenon philosophically.

  “Well, I’ll try to balance matters some other time,” I observed. “Just now I’m busy. And by the way, pet, you’d better get the order out of my pocket right away. I might forget it, you know. In the back hall.”

  Even then she had to stop for another hug and a kiss before she went.

  I looked after her. She was tall and there were rounded lines about her slim figure which half pleased, half pained me. Julie was growing up, and I should miss my baby.

  I ran the filaments into the library, behind a bookcase and along the floor to a big Morris chair, and distributed them liberally over the arms, where anyone occupying the chair could hardly fail to touch one or more.

  As I turned to go, my wife entered the room.

  “Aha!” thought I. “Excellent! Couldn’t be better!”

  She traced her pretty morning gown slowly across the floor, hesitated before a bookcase, turned to the desk, rustled over the daily paper, and finally took up a magazine and sank softly into the Morris chair.

  I fairly rubbed my hands with satisfaction.

  My beautiful young wife is only two years older than my eldest daughter, and very dear to me.

  I suppose people think me an elderly idiot, for I often find my eyes following her when they should be decorously employed elsewhere; but the wonder of it is as fresh to me now as when I married her five years ago—how she should have chosen me— me—from among the many younger and more attractive men who sought her.

  Through the quiet happiness of marriage, the old, first thrill still makes itself felt at the turn of her head, the tone of her voice, the glance of her eye.

  She smiled up at me from her magazine now, as I still stood in the doorway, looking at her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing, my dear,” I answered; “nothing but the old, old story.”

  She still smiled at me, without replying; I thought she seemed a little pale.

  “Aren’t you well?” I asked.

  “My head aches a little; it is the heat, I think. Are you going to work now?”

  “Yes,” I answered. I had actually forgotten the experiment for a moment. I paused again to say, “Oh, Margaret, I shall keep Herman Little to lunch today. We shall be working at some matters which I don’t want to drop longer than necessary.”

  “Very well, dear,” she replied. The arrangement was not an unusual one.

  “You are as flushed now as you were pale a moment ago,” I went on. “You must take something for your headache.”

  “I will if it does not leave me soon,” she assented, and then I went upstairs two steps at a time in my eagerness to see if the machine was working.

  Little was safe in the workshop in the backyard. With fingers that trembled with excitement, I pushed over the switch.

  Blank silence! A second passed—a minute—a minute and a half. I was sick with disappointment.

  Suddenly a soft, sighing sound was audible, then inarticulate whispers, tantalizingly like speech, but wholly unintelligible.

  I waited, straining ears and nerves to make out something definite. Slowly the lisping and whispering crystallized into disconnected words, into phrases, but the more distinctly I heard, the more incomprehensible did the stuff become.

  He has never suspected—never dreamed for an instant. And he is so kind—so good—how can I—how can I tell him that there is another dearer—how will he take it? What will he say?

  I stood bewildered. If the machine was going to mistranslate, it was worse than useless.

  I fumbled impatiently with the adjustments, but the thought-speech rolled on as incoherently as before.

  Thoroughly disgusted, I reached for the switch to disconnect it. I did not care to invent a machine to grind out cheap melodrama; we have plenty of two-legged ones already.

  Just then a familiar name in the midst of the rubbish arrested my hand.

  Herman, Herman—my darling—my darling! What does it matter— what does anything matter—if you love me—as I love you—forever and ever! But he does not know—he does not realize—how can I hurt him— he is so kind, so good—how can I tell him—

  On it went, over and over, always coming back to the same thing, but—God help me—incomprehensible no longer.

  I jerked the switch violently, cutting a word in the middle. I was trembling and felt cold and numb, and the chair seemed a long way off.

  In a moment I was able to think again. It seemed as if I had always known it. Even the ache in my heart seemed old.

  I bent my head on my hands, nerving myself to action.

  This could not go on. How far it had already gone, God only knew, but now I would put a stop to it, one way or the other.

  But which way? That was the question and whirled around in my aching head.

  One point was clear; for the sake of the love I had borne her— ah me, that I still bore her—she should be happy if possible.

  I followed this determination to its logical outcome. Clearly, pitilessly, the conclusion confronted me.

  I must set her free. Youth was for youth, and I felt very old and feeble just then.

  I rose weakly to go to her. A step sounded outside on the cement. Through the window, I saw Little coming from the workshop. He entered the side door; he, too, was going to her!

  Perhaps she was waiting for him; she had paled and flushed when I spoke his name! Perhaps they would speak to me— angrily?—pityingly?

  Things flew around me in a black and red whirl. I sprang to the door, upsetting as I did so the table on which sat the devilish little machine, but before the crash came, I was already at the head of the stair.

  Little was just passing the foot of the staircase, and without a word I hurled myself down and at him like a thunderbolt. His horrified face gleamed before me for the fraction of a second as he sprang backward, and then, as I struck the polished floor, Julie’s scream came from the library and my wife’s great cry from the opposite side of the hall.

  Even in that instant, I half grasped the significance of the location of the two cries, and as my wife reached me, I gasped: “Margaret—for God’s sake, where are you?”

  “My darling! Are you—”

  “Where were you?”

  “In the dining room, getting some headache drops. Quick, darling, tell me, where are you hurt?”

  “Then who was in the library? Answer me.”

  “Julie, I think. What is the matter? Help
, Julie! Herman! He is badly hurt.”

  “Thank God! Thank God!” I breathed, and tried to draw her agonized face down to mine, but my right arm was broken.

  I told them that I had missed my footing at the head of the stairs and had taken them in two or three leaps in order to save myself.

  I don’t think they tried to account for my irrelevant inquiries. Herman did say something about my face having frightened him as I came down, but I suppose they thought that natural under the circumstances.

  The wrecked thinkophone is in the ash barrel. My arm is still in its sling, and even if it were not, I should not feel inclined to reproduce the infernal little machine that so nearly caused a tragedy. Someday I will explain the principle to my son-in-law, Herman Little, and he may have the pleasure of introducing it to the public; it would be none to me.

  THE THIRD DRUG

  Edith Nesbit (1858–1924)

  Edith Nesbit will always be remembered as the author of that timeless children’s book The Railway Children (1904). She wrote so many books for children, such as The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and Five Children and It (1902) that it’s easy to overlook that she also wrote for adults, and often very dark tales. The titles of her first two story collections suggest as much, Grim Tales (1893) and Something Wrong (1893). It’s also easy to forget that she was a strong and resilient woman, an early socialist, being one of the founders of the Fabian Society, and someone sufficiently prepared to put up with the philandering of her husband, Hubert Bland, and to adopt his illegitimate child as her own.

  Amongst her stories are several classifiable as science fiction. ‘The Five Senses’ (1909) considers what might happen if all of your senses are enhanced at once. ‘The Haunted House’ (1913) is about immortality through blood transfusion. The following, dating from 1908, explores the possibility of using drugs to become super-human.