After that, he had fed the fish on whatever part of the surface might be clear, lest the other four should be starved entirely.
Four days, later, he had found three of them dead in the water, each with a wound behind the neck, the inoculated fish having evidently decided that one companion would be sufficient for its requirements, and would allow it to eat its fill.
This experiment had shown that he had been right in his judgment as to the nature of the substance which he had isolated, and, learning this, he had destroyed the too-intelligent minnow, and burnt its body, these precautions being taken because he was not sure whether the acquired characteristic, being physical in its basis, might not be transmitted to a succeeding generation, nor even whether there might not be a possibility that it might be transmissible to another fish which might swallow one which had benefited from the inoculation. He had no wish to create a race of pike with approximately human cunning.
Since that time he had made some fresh discoveries as to the nature and effects of the secretion, and modifications in its preparation, which, he believed, would render it suitable for injection into the blood of the mammalia, and, specifically, into the human blood which was to be its ultimate destination.
But he had still much to learn as to its effects, and as to the dose which could be safely given, as to whether such effects were permanent, and concerning that most important question of whether it would be transmitted to the children of those who might benefit from it.
He had also perfected another injection, which could be relied upon to produce in those who received it a docility so great that all other passions or proclivities would be subdued by the desire to act at the call of duty, or to fulfill the wishes of those about them. On this latter preparation he relied with a reasonable confidence to control any unruly symptoms which might result from the major experiment.
Now he sat, in the artificial unchanging night of the studio, considering the conditions of his next experiment, and on whom or what it should be made.
It was a matter on which he had no confidant. It was a power too great to share. The time might come for its announcement, even for doling it out to others, in some lesser degree than his own benefit from it. It would make his dominance absolute. It would bring, no doubt, the worship which must be paid, sooner or later, to the Lord of Science who will control the world. But that time was not yet.
… At last, he rose, and passed out of the studio. His course was clearly determined. He summoned Wilkins, who superintended the scientific diet which had maintained his health so well, until he was now on the threshold of his eighty-second year.
III
“Wilkins,” said the Premier, “I want you to speak to the farmer who supplies the eggs and milk for my own table. I want him to procure me a young sow-pig. The breed doesn’t matter, and I will pay his price. But it must be healthy, intelligent, and good-tempered.”
“Good-tempered, sir?”
“Yes, that’s very important. It’s not for the laboratory.”
“No, sir?”
“No, I shall want two other pigs sent there. Two with good foreheads. I may want a look at their brains. But I want this one sent to Berkhampsted. I shall be going down on Tuesday. I know there are some good sites there; though we haven’t used them. You can give instructions about the details.”
He turned his attention to more immediate things.
IV
The young sow came out eagerly at the splashing sound of the pig-wash. The abnormal activity of her brain had not resulted in any emaciation of her interior organs, nor of the adipose tissues which have been so successfully cultivated by a thousand ancestral generations. She was still growing, and the excitements of motherhood were yet before her. She was well-fed, sleek, and supple in movement; her rapid growth, and a restless activity somewhat infrequent in her kind, having delayed the more extreme corpulence for which her race is so justly famed.
She would have been outside her sleeping-compartment before the opening of the sty-door, and the tilt of the bucket, but that she did not wish to show any interest in the condition of the fastenings of that door, which she felt sure would be carefully examined. It was true that they were quite in order, but it would have been a needless ordeal to have met the suspicious glances of Billy Tedman, who regarded her with a mixture of fear and admiration, which would have been insufficient to condone the delinquency of the early morning.
But what proof was there?
A brood of seven tiny goslings running through the dewy grass, toward the sanctuary of the coop three yards away, from which their mother stretched an anxious neck. Strong jaws that snapped five times—that snapped and swallowed—and two goslings only that tumbled clumsily over the wooden edge of the coop into the safety of the familiar straw.
No one had seen it. And Billy Tedman knew that the young sow could open the wooden latch of the sty-door, and that she was always to be found wandering loose should he omit to slide the lower bolt which had been added a few weeks ago—knew with equal certainty that she could not open that lower bolt, and that she was never found loose now, unless he should forget to slide it.
The five goslings had been only ten days old, and their fluffy bodies had done little to reduce the healthy appetite with which she plunged her snout into the creamy mess which had descended from Billy’s bucket. Sharps are good, and skim-milk can be sucked up very pleasantly. But why, oh why, had she been such a fool as to tell Professor Brisket that she liked barley-meal best?
Now she knew that, after she had enjoyed an hour of happy dozing in the straw of her sleeping-quarters, a panel would slide back in the furthest wall, and she would have to rise and go out into a covered yard, where the Professor and she would commune together for an uncertain period, during which she would have to reply to his questions with exasperating slowness—a slowness which was, however, often less exasperating than the fatuous questions themselves—by indicating successive letters from an alphabet which was neatly painted upon the ground between them.
She knew already that he was a slow-brained old fossil, whose mind or eye would fail to follow her spelling if she quickened the motions of foot or snout, but she did not know why he had been foolish enough to discourage a simple suggestion that they should substitute a series of symbols for the more frequent words.
Here she erred, supposing him to be more stupid than he really was; the fact being that he only held the conversations at all to test the degree of intelligence with which he had endowed her, and that he intended her to go to the butcher immediately she had supplied him with a litter of young pigs which would enable him to judge the effects of his experiment upon the next generation.
Also, he destined her bacon for his own exclusive consumption, which would test the possibility of the transmission of this new brain-stimulus by the medium of eaten flesh. There must be tests also of the consumption of blood, of uncooked meat, particularly of uncooked brains. Professor Brisket would not have attained his present eminence had he not been careful and unhurried in his experiments.
His brain might be less agile, his perceptions slower, than those of the stimulated ganglia of his protagonist, but, from the advantage of his greater knowledge, his longer experience, and his somewhat different personality (though this last difference should not be too generously assessed), he was able, not merely to conceal his ultimate purpose, but the impulses also that prompted the questions which seemed so foolish to his pachydermatous protégé, and the opinions which he formed upon them.
He had already made one observation, of the first importance. The improvement in the faculties and functioning of the brain which he had been able to induce did not result in any change in the nature of the individual who received advantage from them.
The sow did not forget the swill-trough to observe the stars.
It was the nature of her kind to be cunning, cowardly, and greedful, and these characteristics continued. She had improved, beyond his utmost
anticipation, in memory, in power of deductive reasoning, in alertness of mental anticipation, but he had no reason to doubt that, if one of her children should be still-born, she would proceed to eat it, as her mother had done before her; he knew that she would answer his questions with diligence solely because she would get no barley-meal in the afternoon should she show any indisposition to do so.
On the day which we are now considering, the Professor brought to its intended climax a line of inquiry which he had been pursuing for a previous week, during which he had explained very frankly to this intelligent animal the nature of the relations which had existed between her race and his own for so long a period. He had done this with some curiosity, if not trepidation, as to the reactions which it would arouse in the mind of his auditor, and had not been without the protection of a lethal weapon of recent invention, very swift and deadly in its action, which had lain ready to his hand on the little table which divided her from him, on which he was accustomed to make notes of the morning’s conversations, beyond which was the alphabet set in the ground, by which the young sow was enabled to reply to his questions, despite the deficiency in the construction of her vocal chords, which reduced the possibilities of oral intercourse.
But the animal had taken his explanation in a very sensible way.
She saw at once that it was natural that all creatures should eat each other as opportunity offered, and safety permitted. It was the only law of life which she would ever be likely to understand, even though her brain were stimulated a hundred-fold. She saw how greatly it was to the advantage of the young of her kind that they should receive (as it were) an insurance policy from the human race, giving to each of them at the least a few months of happy carefree life, rather than that they should be exposed to the savage chances of the wilds, to precarious uncertainties of food and climate, and to the decimations of a hundred accidents. She saw at once that men would still have been able to kill pigs, had they done nothing to protect and cherish. When she learnt the almost incredible millions which are maintained in a princely indolence, she saw that the world was theirs, and that the greed and stupidity of mankind had been successfully exploited by the farsighted cunning of her kind. When the Professor explained that, though the majority of any litter might be destined to an early end, yet it frequently happened that the best among them would be selected to remain alive and continue the generations, and that she herself was one who had been so favored, it seemed a particularly admirable arrangement, of which she approved most heartily.
The Professor was somewhat disconcerted by the uncertainty with which her mind perceived that the human race has made itself subservient to her own, until he recollected that she was a pig still, though she might be a very intelligent one, and that her conclusions might naturally be influenced by this deficiency.
V
Professor Borthin, having no star-domed Studio of Contemplation in which to ponder, was pacing one of the longer corridors of Buckingham Palace. He was thirty-two, the youngest and most brilliant member of the Council of Twenty-One. A man of restless, drug-stimulated energy, he found that he could think best when his legs were moving.
He had a deep contempt for President Brisket, who had been allowed his position through the paltry claim of seniority (senility would have been a better word!) when it had been decided that the scientists should assert their power. What was Brisket? A sentimentalist. A dreamer. A man knowing no more mathematics than a nineteenth-century schoolgirl.
Even the occasion of the revolution had been an absurdity. What did it matter if women ate turnips? Or prussic acid? Most men and women were of no value, except for experimental purposes.
Now this brain-grafting… . He wanted a dozen babies of each sex, every month for a year, if the experiment were to be carried out with sufficient variations to make it interesting. Two or three hundred children’s bodies growing up with the brains of dogs…
Two or three hundred bodies of dogs directed by the brains of children. It was fascinating in its possibilities. And some of the brains could be transferred back after a time… .
And the old fool had delayed permission! It was to be “discussed at the Council.”
But there would be something else to be discussed at the Council. There would be a surprise for Brisket… Or did he guess it? “Space lying curved in the arms of Time.” That had been his expression when he had been perorating at the last meeting. Drivelling old fool! Did he not know that Space and Time is one and indissoluble?
He had spoken as though Time had pre-existed Space, and the heavy lids of Professor Sturmie’s eyes had lifted for a moment, and surveyed him with a puzzled wonder. He didn’t often show his ignorance in that assembly by talking outside the limits of his own Homology.
Even to the untrained mind to attempt imagination of Space without Time, or of Time without Space, should be enough to show its absurdity. Even Einstein’s elementary speculations of sixty years ago had passed the bounds of such childishness. He had roused Professor Sturmie to bring up the subject. Sturmie cared for no one, if his own subjects were left alone, but he had a gift of sarcasm, which had made him dreaded in controversy. He could be trusted to make the President look the fool he was. And when that had happened, what influence would he have left?
After that episode, he would ask for an order for the children he needed. If it were refused… . ? He would claim a vote. It was the kind of point on which he would be sure to get it.
Then he would suggest the propriety of resignation. Probably, after that, there would be swift deaths on the Council. Well, if so, he had his own secret powers. He would not be unready. Thirty years ago, Queen Hermione had presented Buckingham Palace to the nation (perhaps not very willingly) as a home for South American monkeys whose gland-extractions were required to increase the virility of members of the House of Commons. Professor Borthin ceased his activities in the corridor. He went to look at the monkeys.
VI
The silent occupant of the Studio of Contemplation was not unaware of his danger.
He had regretted that florescence of oratory the moment that he had met the sardonic glance of Professor Sturmie’s heavy eyes, as they had been lifted toward him.
Professor Sturmie seldom looked, or spoke, or voted.
His attendants wheeled his chair into position at the Council table, and he sat there, his hands motionless before him, his face a blank passivity, till the proceedings ended.
But he was held in a very great respect. He was supposed to know more on each of his colleagues’ subjects than they knew themselves.
Twenty years ago, as Principal of the Birmingham University, it had become known that, in case of sudden indisposition, he could take the place of any of his professors, and lecture brilliantly on their own subjects at a moment’s notice. There had been plots to test this capacity, but he had always been equal to them.
If he should now be roused to attack the intellectual eminence of the President, that gentleman knew that the assault could be delivered from no deadlier quarter.
He knew that there were other members of the Council whose knowledge both of Physics and Mathematics was greater than his own. There was nothing in that. Each man specialized, and was supreme in his own dominion. But he was not expected to talk dogmatic fallacies upon his neighbors’ subjects. And the position of a President was different from that of others. He, of all men, must not be open to ridicule.
But, after all, it had only hastened the conflict, which was inevitable. Borthin meant to rule, and the difference was not of men only. It was one of fundamental principles. Professor Brisket had never been known as a sentimentalist. He would pour human blood on the altars of Science as readily as he would have sacrificed a mangel-wurzel. He had not hesitated to give the order which had evaporated Bristol. But he believed, in a vague way, that all he did was for the Higher Good of Humanity.
Professor Borthin had no such illusions, and no such object. For the Higher Good of Humanity he did not care a bea
n. He worshipped Science for its own sake, and it was its own justification.
To him, President Brisket was a sentimentalist, and an obstruction, and the time had come to remove him.
The two men were thus of one mind as to the necessity for removing the other. They were united in decision that the time had come. They were agreed as to the time and place of the conflict. They were alike in thinking that the first step must be to discredit the adversary before the Council. They only differed in the fact that the younger man was the attacker, that he fought from a less vulnerable situation, and that he was confident of success, whereas his older and more cautious opponent was aware of being forced to give battle on ground which he had not chosen, and was very far from comfortable as to the defense he could offer, or the strength of the counter-attack which he must be prepared to deliver… .
And yet his mind held to the point that Space and Time were not identical. They were not merely two aspects of one quality. There was an absolute difference. But how could he prove it in a way which would convince the Council, and confound his opponents? Of the difference, he was convinced. Of his own random metaphor—of the pre-existence of Time—he was much less confident.
He reflected that Space is motionless. It remains. It must have been—always. Full or empty, it must have been there. Timeless, perhaps, but there. Was this not the very opposite of the idea which he had advanced so randomly?
Must have been, if it had no conscious occupants? Yes, surely. Then how about Time? A condition of Time of which there had never been, nor would be, conscious knowledge vexed his mind with a lack of reality. He was less sure.
Supposing that there were two separate realms of consciousness, not adjoining. Would not the unconscious interval be a Space, although it had no conscious occupant? Was it so in itself, or was it made such by the facts of the conscious realms which were contiguous to it? But he had first postulated that Space… . He became aware that he was speculating vaguely, whereas the thoughts of Professor Sturmie on such a subject would be clear and sure, and his words decisive.
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