by Jerry Sohl
THE TRANSCENDENT MAN
by
JERRY SOHL
Published by ReAnimus Press
Other books by Jerry Sohl:
Night Slaves
The Time Dissolver
I, Aleppo
The Anomaly
Death Sleep
The Odious Ones
Point Ultimate
The Haploids
© 2012, 1953 by Jerry Sohl. All rights reserved.
http://ReAnimus.com/authors/jerrysohl
Licence Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Longmans, Green & Company, Inc., for permission to reprint an excerpt from their pragmatism, copyright 1907 by William James, copyright renewed 1934.
~~~
FOR MY MOTHER
~~~
I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of things.
William James
Chapter 1
Martin Enders saw a strange thing. He felt it first—even before he heard the laughter.
It happened after he had given his credentials to the soldier at the gate. The corporal puzzled over them for a moment, then conducted him inside the gatehouse where he presented him to the officer in charge, an ascetic-looking youngster who carried an air of not trusting even his own senses.
The lieutenant compared the picture on the card with the man standing before him. He continued to stare at Martin as if he would like to memorize the position of every pore every hair in the eyebrows.
“Do I look like someone you know?” Martin asked, irked by the intense examination.
“No, why?”
“I thought you were trying to place me.”
“You will find it the rule here at Park Hill. Everyone and everything is double-checked and cross-checked. I make a point of never forgetting a face. Where did you get this card?”
“From the attorney general’s office.”
“Whom did you expect to see?”
Martin gave him the letter he had ready in his hand. “Dr. Eric Penn, Lieutenant. I’m from National Scene.”
The officer scowled, took the letter. “Nobody can see Dr. Penn,” he said as he unfolded it. His eyebrows jumped upward as he saw the letterhead. He glanced at Martin, then went back to the letter. A lip mover, the lieutenant formed each word as he read. When he finished, he handed it back, opened the counter gate and ushered Martin to a chair beside his desk.
“You understand the precautions,” the lieutenant said.
“Security, I suppose.”
The officer nodded. His manner had changed, but there was still an edge of suspicion in his glance, the way he held his lips, the things he did with his hands.
“I have to ask a lot of questions,” he said. “There are several forms. You will have to be fingerprinted.”
“Is that all necessary?”
“I’m afraid so—even with that letter from the commanding general.”
Martin grumblingly submitted. He was measured, weighed, his signature compared, his fingerprints matched with those on the card. His voice was recorded on a small tape. It was only after Martin stepped through a steel-rimmed doorway that the lieutenant’s tension lessened. No bells had rung; no lights had flashed. The lieutenant actually managed a faint smile as he returned Martin’s wrist watch, metal belt buckle and coins. He was even helpful, pointing out the administration building at the end of a long walk several blocks distant.
It was while Martin was on the long sidewalk from the guard station at the gate to the administration building that the incident occurred.
The avenue was bush-lined and as straight as a ruler. As Martin walked down it, he had a feeling the lieutenant at the gate was watching him. He wondered if anyone in the building up ahead was aware of his approach. Forrest Killian must have moved down the same sidewalk three months before; there was no way of telling if Forrest had felt the same way.
At a point on the walk halfway between the gatehouse and the administration building Martin experienced the first odd sensation—a feeling that a cold wind was blowing through him, varying in strength, chilling his blood, clouding his mind, then lifting capriciously.
Then he heard laughter. It came from not more than twenty feet to his right. He turned his head to see who it was and stopped so that he could look through a narrow space between the bushes.
A child was playing there in the October sun, a chubby, dark-haired boy Martin guessed to be about seven years of age. The blue-eyed lad stood on the neat grass watching a transparent, red-hued sphere floating in the air. He was talking to it. The globe hung motionless, then dipped and rose as if at command and each time it did, the child giggled. Suddenly the globe came to a quick stop; then it whirled about crazily and—vanished. Peals of childish laughter followed.
Martin was about to turn away from this wonder and collect himself when new cold waves of faintly tingling feeling swept over him, making his flesh crawl. The boy had stiffened, his eyes were closed and he concentrated; his little lips were pressed thin and his forehead was furrowed with effort.
In an area just in front of the boy and a little higher than his head there was a disturbance. Then a black thing materialized and plopped to the ground, only to skitter away. It was a cat. The lad’s laughter followed it into the bushes near Martin.
The youngster saw Martin and instantly the laughter died and the bright, piercing eyes glazed. For an instant the child stood there. Then he ran away across the grass, his little legs pumping furiously.
Chapter 2
“I agreed to a life story only because I thought it might do biology some good and that it might encourage some youngster,” Dr. Penn said. “Now you tell me you’re going to literally live with me, Mr. Enders.”
Martin smiled. “I’ll wager you didn’t learn all you know about biology just through a casual interview, Dr. Penn. You’ve had to live with it.”
Dr. Penn laughed. “I trust you won’t have to live with me as long as I’ve had to live with biology. I’m sure you’ll find me much simpler than biology. But frankly”—he looked at Martin with quickening severity—”I don’t see how I can spare the time.”
“I’m sure you won’t even notice me when you’re busy, Dr. Penn. I’ll just accumulate my questions for a period when you’re not working.”
“Those periods, you’ll find, are few and far between.”
“I’ll chance it,” Martin said. “I take it you read National Scene?”
“I’m a subscriber. I’ve taken it for years. You people do a very thorough job.” The doctor ran a hand over a rack of corncob pipes, selected one and filled it from a humidor. “This is one of my ‘Missouri meerschaum’ pipes,” he said. “I get all kinds for Christmas, but there’s something about a corncob that I like. That’s the sort of thing you use in your character sketches, isn’t it?”
Martin nodded. “Personal habits are a relatively minor point, Doctor. You see, National Scene e
ndeavors to get inside a man. We try to tell how he thinks, why he thinks that way, how he came to be where he is, why he is considered important.”
“Who says I’m important?” Dr. Penn looked over the top of the flame of the kitchen match he was using to light his pipe. He was an enormous man with a hawklike nose; the match was held in long, thin fingers. His black eyebrows were bushy and gave his eyes a hypnotic quality.
“The Nobel Prize, Doctor. The long list of accomplishments you have after your name in American Men of Science.”
There was something odd about this man. For as long as he could remember, Martin had been able to feel things about people. It was something more than intuition, this ability to sense another’s emotions; when he had first discovered that the talent was not widespread, he ceased advertising the fact that he possessed it, but, silently thankful of its presence, had used it constantly.
When a person’s fear, pride, ambition or anger fairly shouted its existence to him, he had often been amazed to find that others in the same room were unaware of it. He considered it a natural attribute, much as some people are gifted with perfect pitch.
What puzzled him about Dr. Penn was that the man exuded none of the usual things. There was a latent force there, Martin felt certain. But just what it was he could only guess. His only conclusion could be that the usual things were not going to work at all with this man.
Dr. Penn blew out the match. “You see this office?” A sweep of his arm covered the entire room. “What do you see here? Does it look as if I work here? A desk. Chairs. Lamps. A typewriter. A telephone. Do you see a test tube or a microscope? I only came here because this is where I come when I have an appointment. I can’t see anyone from the outside in my other office. What does that do to your story, Mr. Enders?”
“It means we move to your other office,” he said.
The doctor sucked on his pipe and shook his head. Smoke eddied about his short-cut grey hair and the faded blue eyes beneath the heavy eyebrows were almost obscured by it. The man still conveyed nothing to Martin.
“It means I will be able to see you only a short time each day,” the doctor said. “No one except ‘authorized personnel,’ as the army puts it, can go into the laboratory. Is it worth it to you and your magazine to confine your interview to the few minutes a day I will be able to see you here?”
“I’ve been assigned to the story,” Martin said doggedly. Then he smiled. “You will find National Scene very thorough, Doctor.” He reached into his inner coat pocket, produced an envelope and drew out two letters. “These will verify that I have passed my loyalty test and that I have been approved for classified material.” He passed them over. The doctor drew glasses from his breast pocket and read the letters of authority.
“You and your magazine are more than merely very thorough,” he said. “You people are damned thorough. With this”—he strummed the letters with the open fingers of his right hand—”there is no way for me to stand in your way, Mr. Enders. How long do you intend to stay? And where? Have you thought of that? Of course you haven’t.”
Dr. Penn picked up a telephone directory. “There is probably a vacancy at the permanent barracks. Avon Ridge is too far away for commuting. Besides, Colonel Sherrington would not allow you to do that.” He riffled through the pages, found a number, called it and made the arrangements.
“You will be in Building P-4,” he said to Martin, making a note of it on a pad. “I’ll point it out to you when we leave.”
“Thanks. I hope I’m not causing you too much trouble.”
“You are. But what’s on your mind?”
“There are a few preliminary questions I’d like to ask you now, if you don’t mind. The answers may help me ask questions of a more specific nature later on.”
The doctor looked at his wrist watch. “It’s ten past three. Suppose I give you half an hour. I told them at the laboratory I’d be gone only a short time. Frankly, I thought I’d be able to discourage you.” He smiled. “Go ahead, Mr. Enders, let’s play twenty questions.”
Martin took out a notebook. “I hope this note-taking doesn’t frighten you, Dr. Penn. If I want to quote you directly, I’ll let you know. I can’t possibly remember everything.”
“Why not?” The doctor chuckled.
“What sort of a project are you working on?”
The doctor slowly withdrew the pipe from his mouth and stared at him in amusement.
“Come now, you don’t expect me to tell you that, do you?” He grinned and showed yellowed teeth. “Why do they have such a high fence around this reservation? A mouse can’t go in or out without being electrocuted or setting off an alarm.”
“Suppose I tell you you’re working on regeneration, Dr. Penn? Don’t you remember I have access to classified material?”
The doctor nodded. “I had forgotten. Where did you learn that?”
“Just picked it up on my way here. I had to go all the way to Washington for my security permit.”
“Of course.” The doctor leaned back in his swivel chair, put his hands behind his head and rocked gently. The chair squeaked. “I’ve never had time to oil this thing,” he said, getting up. “It’s not conducive to thought that way.” He walked to the lone window in the office with an easy, effortless stride for such a big man.
“If you were to look at this research reservation from the air,” Dr. Penn said, “you’d see that it is in the form of a hexagon. This administration building stands about halfway between the center and the east gate, the one you came through. In each segment of the hexagon, with the exception of the east one, there is a different research project.
“There are five segment heads, each in charge of his own section. Mine happens to be the one just north of the east gate. I like to think of Penn Project as one that will help and not hinder humanity; it is different from the others here, you see. We in our segment are not trying to blow mankind apart. We’re trying to put him back together again. To the military, this is probably a relatively unimportant project. It’s a wonder to me it was started at all.
“All of us live in the segment in which we work. The bachelors are housed in a permanent barracks, such as the kind you are to stay in. Each segment has its own cafeteria, exchange, commissary, tavern, movie—that is so that personnel of the various segments will not intermingle. I’m probably boring you.”
“You’re not boring me, Doctor. Go on.”
The doctor moved to the desk, opened the humidor to refill his pipe. “One thing worries me. You’ve been classified for top secret material, but do you have sense enough not to use it in what you write?”
Martin reddened. “How else can I study you and what you’re doing unless I know what you’re doing? Of course nothing of a secret nature will be revealed.”
The doctor lit his pipe again, leaned back reflectively. “If you were a worm I could cut you in two and both parts would grow. But you’re not. If I cut you in two, both parts die. Why?
“Our bodies are subject to wear and tear. What if our skin rubbed off, our nails ground down and our hair fell out? So we have some faculty of restoration, you see, but not much. It is confined to healing a cut finger wherein the damaged cells are replaced by new ones. Oh, if a nail is torn off it will grow back. That’s a case of accidental regeneration in man. This exceeds mere wound healing. But the loss of a whole limb is irreparable.”
“I’ve heard that some animals grow new tails.”
“You’ve heard correctly, Mr. Enders. The newt does; it can grow a leg or a tail. It’s a lower form of life. The higher you go on the scale of animal types, the more curtailed are the regenerative capacities.
“The protozoa, the simplest form, single cells of protoplasm, restore themselves when cut into small pieces, the only condition being there must be a bit of the nucleus in each piece.
“The hydras are able to develop new individuals from cuttings. They belong to the multicellular type. Squids, eye-bearing tentacles of snails, legs of spiders, a
ll the appendages of crustacea and insects and limbs of fish and amphibians—they all grow again after injury.”
The doctor shook his head sadly. “Evolution has hurt our power of restoring an arm or leg. Instead, we have a method of continuous repair that works while we live. The nearly total loss of regenerative power has been the price of our evolution.”
“But you’re working on it.”
The doctor smiled. “Yes, we’re working on it.”
The phone rang.
“Dr. Penn speaking,” he said. He tamped tobacco into his pipe with his free hand while he listened. His movements slowed as he became interested in what was said on the phone. Soon they stopped altogether. “You know I gave the order,” he said quietly, but his eyes hardened. “You were informed along with the rest; I don’t see why it should be such a surprise to you.”
Dr. Penn forgot his pipe on the desk, turned his chair around to face away from Martin.
“I realize there are avenues other than the one we are going down, Doctor,” Dr. Penn said. “But this one happens to be the one we’re on right now.” He nodded his head. “As I’ve told you time and time again, there has to be a leader, Dr. Merrill. Otherwise a project like this would get nowhere. I am that leader. I will take your suggestion and think about it, but until we complete the current tests I don’t see how—Oh, now. Look, Doctor... Now wait a minute. All right. I’ll be right down.” He turned and put the phone back in the cradle.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Enders. I’ve got to go to the lab, but I want you to stay right here until I get back. I shouldn’t be gone very long. I have a jeep out front. I don’t think I’d better take you with me on this trip.” He hurried out of the room.
With Dr. Penn gone, the office lost its life. The doctor’s forceful personality had eddied about the room like something alive and now that his deep voice was no longer echoing from the walls, the place seemed deserted.
