What other form could there be beyond that of the termite? I was interested enough to wonder, in spite of being the victim. As far as I could imagine, the termite was the last stage of evolution. But I was wrong. Quite wrong.
All signs of a termite body disappeared—the claws, the appendages, the stalked eyes, the antennae. Instead, I began to shrink with terrific speed and changed into something which, in comparison with normal standards, must have been—and still is—microscopically small. I wondered for a moment if the ultimate man was destined to descend into the microcosm to escape the rigors of a dead world. Then I grasped at the simple but astounding truth.
I had become a bacterium, a rod-like flagellum to be exact, and therefore endowed with the power of movement.
Dale Cavendish must have been aware of this also through the thought-recorder, but just the same he permitted me to come into the laboratory again. In fact I don’t think he could help doing so, for I gathered that his apparatus only worked for a certain period, and then automatically stopped until a new pattern was set.
But this time I had Dale Cavendish where I wanted him!
As I returned to the laboratory I was beyond his visual range. He was a Colossus staring blankly at the apparently empty plate of the instrument. To me, the laboratory was gigantic and out of focus. Whether or not he had switched off the thought-recorder I don’t know, because the power of hearing had ceased for me. I don’t think that I could really see either, but in truth sensed everything by vibratory waves, an accomplishment that is normal to a lowly earthworm, and even more so to a bacterium.
I moved through the air of the laboratory as an invisible speck, and Cavendish, struggling to discover where I might be, made no effort to leave the laboratory. This suited me, for I had the chance at last to strike back for the things he had done to me.
As I moved, I realized why I had become a bacterium. In the last stages of earth’s life, cold must grip it—a dead sun, a frozen world, all normal signs of life gone—except bacteria! Some forms of bacteria can survive and multiply in the zero of space and the torrid heat of boiling waters. In a word, the toughest form of life, the last to die, and the hardest to kill.
And here was I—sentient, with the knowledge of a man, consumed by only one thing, the longing for vengeance. At will I could become a saprophyte and do inestimable good for Dale Cavendish’s constitution; or I could become a parasite and destroy him little by little. The choice was mine.
It was at this point, some time after I had merged back into the laboratory, that I think he must have switched on the thought-recorder to gain some idea of what I was thinking, for a dull resonant booming filled the laboratory. At my tiny size and working by vibratory senses only, the sounds didn’t have any meaning for me. Not that I was much troubled. No matter what Cavendish learned of my thoughts he couldn’t see me, and that was the point.
As I moved through the air I saw his gigantic face filling all the void. First I beheld intense interest, presumably as he listened to the reactions I had experienced in changing from a termite into a mobile bacterium; then gradually the look changed to one of deep fear as he realized I was somewhere in the laboratory, invisible, waiting for the chance to get at him.
Presently the booming noises ceased and he glanced anxiously about him.
I alighted gently on a crease of his laboratory smock and waited to see what he’d do next. He left the laboratory and went into the house. I was floating in the air near to him as he bathed himself thoroughly in disinfectant, presumably with the idea of making himself free from all taint of microbial dust.
It was amusing, and pretty futile! He had turned me into an invisible foe, and now he was desperately afraid of me. But at least he was scientist enough to know that I was beaten until he cut himself or sustained some slight scratch, which would give me access to his bloodstream.
As it happened many days passed, and in this time he remained either in the house or in the laboratory, growing more and more confident as nothing happened to him. But from the thought-recorder he knew that I was still hovering, waiting.
With everything being, to me, on such a vast scale I could not judge properly how he occupied his time in the laboratory, but it seemed that he was making endless notes on the villainous experiment he had carried out, and was evidently determined to cash in on the facts he had learned from me.
All this time he was careful to avoid causing himself injury, particularly when shaving, and I in the meantime had to sustain myself by consuming vegetable matter. Then one morning he made his mistake! In lifting a test-tube from its rack he caught it accidentally against the edge of the bench and the glass top splintered in his hand. Immediately blood welled.
His frantic efforts to disinfect the cut and swathe it rapidly in bandages were amusing to me. I hovered and still waited—for the blood to cease flowing. Then with my microscopic size I passed through the bandaging and torn flesh and became absorbed into his bloodstream. I became a parasite, a devouring, deadly parasite, breaking down healthy tissue at the fastest possible speed.
In an hour he knew he was doomed, though being within him I was not conscious of his actions. It was only when he began to cease moving that I emerged again from the selfsame cut by which I had entered. I found him lying on the floor with three men around him. I could not tell what they were saying, but I was quite satisfied that Dale Cavendish was close to death.
I suppose the thought-recorder will reveal everything that has happened, for I saw Cavendish motion towards it. What will happen to his invention I don’t know, but possibly with all the facts laid bare by the thought-recorder it will be used by scientists with a less sadistic turn of mind for investigation into the mysteries of Time’s future patternings.
As for me…. These are my last thoughts to be imprinted and played back over that machine. I have left behind me the world of Man, Superman, and Termite, and because of it have become emancipated. I can travel space, and to the stars themselves. I can plumb the deepest oceans and pass through the hottest fires.
I can go where I will, an indestructible bacterium, invisible to the eye of man, a dispenser of justice if I desire, or equally a giver of benefits.
I am that rare thing—a bacterium with the intellect of a modern man. In a way that compensates me a little for my lost birthright because, being a bacterium, I no longer have the emotions of man. Ellen, my laboratory job, the human pursuit of happiness, all gone, unregretted. Dale Cavendish gave me one thing he never intended to give me—the key to the infinite.
MILES TO GO, by Sheila Finch
Wheeling up to the START in the wintry dawn, he feels a dizzying rush of nervous excitement and spiking fear. He wills his bunching muscles to relax, hands—palms already hot in leather gloves—to unclench. He breathes deeply of cold, Pacific air, drawing in energy.
He is the silent center of jittery activity. Wheelers lean toward each other, slapping warmth into cold arms. Women talk in brief spurts together, voices brittle. Stretching tight leg muscles. Waiting. Runners churn around him, a shimmering kaleidoscope against the city skyline. He recognizes many of them. Race gypsies, veterans from all the marathons across the nation and across the globe.
He stretches his head from side to side, working on tension in his neck. A TV camera pans over to his lightweight, three-wheeled racing chair. Adrenaline floods. He raises two fingers in a victory sign. The silver eye pauses, sweeps on.
Murmur of voices drops away.
Two minutes and three seconds to go.
* * * *
The day was warm for early January, and the city seemed to have sprouted a more elegant skyline in the year Jeff Brandeis had been in Europe. He eased his van into a handicapped slot outside the office of the Long Beach Marathon and took a deep breath, dispelling the empty sensation in his stomach that had been there since he landed at LAX two days ago.
“Well, hello, Champ!” a woman cooed. “Good to see you!”
Jeff waved. Strangers were alw
ays recognizing him. Good feeling, being back home. Been away too long. Problem was, after breaking records in a string of races from Oxford to Cannes, he’d been too popular with a couple of French actresses. One, with long blonde hair, had been eager to show him around Paris after dark.
Life was good to champions. A far cry from the early days when his mother fixed him up with a friend’s daughter, a do-gooder who got off on the inconvenience of dating a guy in a chair. Her idea of a swell time was to stir the sugar in his coffee, as if he’d lost the use of his hands instead of his legs.
He shut the car door and swiveled the chair. Inside the office, he saw they’d hung a large collection of marathon photographs on the white wall, several of him crossing the FINISH in previous years. He was in even better form now. Some new training tactics he’d figured out with a couple of European racers, a new aerodynamic wrinkle for the chair from a former Italian auto designer.
Athletics, even the wheeled variety, was a young man’s game, and the years were beginning to pile on. The next couple were crucial. He had plans to hammer his own record so hard it’d take anybody else a decade to catch up. Something his mother could think about without tears.
Meg Lowenthal glanced up as the door banged behind him. He admired her expensive-looking yellow linen suit, the deep neckline revealing cleavage, the way her pertly cut coppery hair bounced on her shoulder as she moved. He’d always been more attracted by a woman’s hair than by her face, the thicker and longer the better.
He wheeled up to her desk. “Hey, gorgeous.”
“Jeff! I didn’t know you were in town. Give me a minute here.…” She turned back to the computer.
“Take your time. I’m enjoying the view.”
“Sexist pig,” she said.
He grinned. She’d liked it enough to hop into bed with him one time after a race. “Just got home. Came right over to register.”
“Oh? We thought you might not want to race.”
He gripped the chair’s arm-rests. “Who told you that?”
“Well—you were out of the country, but we thought.…”
She looked as if she were about to say something else, then changed her mind.
Jeff banged a fist on her desk, rattling pencils. “Look. I want to register. You going to tell me I can’t?”
The door at the back of the office opened and a middle-aged man in a gray Armani suit stood frowning. Phil Zukowski made his money from a car dealership in Signal Hill, but organizing the marathon was his passion. When he saw who it was, Zukowski came quickly forward, hand outstretched.
“Brandeis. A pleasure to see you, Champ.”
“What’s this about, Zukowski?”
“That orthopedics guy at UCLA that’s been in the news,” Zukowski said, frowning. “Dorkins? Dorsey? He called here trying to find you, so we thought—”
“I was in France.” He’d seen a report about Schwann cell research on CNN. The blonde French actress had pretended to get all excited for him. The hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach came back.
“Cannes, right? A whole minute better than your own world record.” Zukowski picked up a mug by the slick gray Mister Coffee pot. “Want some coffee, Champ?”
Jeff shook his head.
“You know this guy personally, don’t you?”
“Tommy Dorseter. He was my surgeon. Played baseball at Cal State—but before my time. He was good, could’ve played professionally. Went to med school instead.” While Jeff had gone on to a series of dead-end jobs and a serious accident, but he didn’t say that. “What’s it got to do with me racing? I’m ready to roll.”
Zukowski gave him a thoughtful look. “We’re always delighted to have you, Jeff. You’re a superior athlete. The champ.”
“Right. Give me the entry form.”
“We just thought—Doctor Dorseter must want—”
Zukowski squirmed under Jeff’s gaze. Meg opened a drawer and handed him an entry form. He jerked the chair round, headed for the narrow doorway, and found it blocked by a tiny woman in a wheelchair that seemed two sizes too big.
Carrie Stevens had short, baby-fine, light brown hair. Delicate featured, she wore a pink warm-up suit embroidered with small flowers. He’d known Carrie for several years; her fragile appearance disguised a determined racer, though she’d never taken the sport as seriously as he had.
Carrie’s glance flicked from Jeff to Zukowski and back again, taking it in. “You look like you need a break. Want to go for coffee?”
He’d taken her out for coffee or a movie a couple of times, before his fame had brought lookers like Meg Lowenthal around, but they’d remained friends. “Sure. Why not?”
“There’s a new place opened on the pier since you’ve been gone,” she said. “Let’s catch up.”
Half an hour later, they sat outside the coffee bar on the pier beside an overgrown fern that seemed about to make a break from ceramic captivity. The breeze off the water was sharp and clean like crystal. He stirred Sweet n’ Low into his coffee mug as Carrie talked, barely listening to her stories about other racers, thinking about Dorseter.
Tommy’s interest in orthopedics had been spinal cord injuries long before Jeff’s accident. Prostheses were good and getting better all the time—Jeff knew a couple of amputees who raced—but the docs couldn’t seem to fix severed cords. Schwann cell transplants, CNN had reported, looked like they might change that.
“That doctor from UCLA was asking about you, couple of weeks ago,” Carrie said.
“Does the whole goddamn city know my business?”
She startled at his tone. “I was in the office when he called, Jeff. I’m not racing much any more, but I drop by once in a while to keep in touch. That’s all. I’m not trying to intrude.”
“Got nothing to do with me!”
“Well, I thought—”
She broke off and stared out at the ocean, her cheeks showing a faint pink. A gull landed on the rail beside his chair, stared insolently at him for a second. He flicked a finger and it flapped away. It wasn’t Carrie’s fault, but he didn’t want to think about Dorseter or his work.
“Snake oil,” he said. “Cold fusion. Perpetual motion.”
“I don’t think so.” She turned back to him, her face a mask he couldn’t read. “There were a couple of articles on Dorseter in the L.A. Times. You ought to take a look.”
“Not interested.”
“Haven’t you ever thought what it might be like if they could give you back your legs?”
“No.”
He could tell from her expression she didn’t believe him. They’d always been upfront with each other, but this wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, not even with her.
The breeze off the ocean had turned cold. He pulled up the collar of the black Italian leather jacket the French actress had given him, remembering a phone call soon after he’d won his first marathon.
* * * *
“Animal results show great promise, Jeff,” Tommy Dorseter had said. “Someday you’ll be able to throw away your chair!”
“What if I don’t want to?” he’d said.
“Don’t want to?” Dorseter repeated. “Why the hell would you want to be handicapped if you didn’t have to?”
* * * *
It was ironic, the way he looked at it. The chair had freed him from the handicaps of his youth—no talent and mediocre looks—replacing his early lack of success with fame and a fan club of good-looking women. Not even counting the enormous high he got from racing.
“What’s so difficult about the concept?” Carrie asked. “People get artificial hearts when they need them. And kidney transplants are commonplace. Why not a fix for legs that don’t work?”
“The word is ‘need.’ I don’t.”
He pulled money out of his wallet, snagged a passing waitress, and got into a thing about the bill. Easier than answering her question.
* * * *
The race officials start the wheelers five minutes before the runn
ers, as usual. He does not need the other competitors, never has. He aims only to beat his own best time in each race.
The minute he starts rolling, something begins to grow that he calls the Race Mind, blotting out all thought except what he needs to move swiftly and smoothly down the course, knitting together man and chair.
For the first few miles, his concentration is on action, the powerful muscles working in his arms, strong fingers rhythmically turning the shining, slender-spoked wheels so that man and machine find a synthesis of efficient motion. He is aware of a background world where sun sparks water below the bridge as he heads over it, the cool breeze slides past his brow, gulls pace him then fall away, spectators along Shoreline Drive wave him on.
A cop on a motorcycle salutes.
* * * *
The answering machine blinked notice of messages from Maia and Jen that had come in while he was out. Aspiring models, his personal groupies welcoming him home. He knew the real reason behind his appeal for them. He was a photo-op, good for publicity. But it was a two-way street. His bed never needed an electric blanket, and there were no strings attached to the transaction.
The third message still waiting was from Tommy Dorseter. What he needed right now was a shot of reality, not some medical fantasy. He grabbed the phone and punched in Salvador Mendez’s number.
Sunlight reflecting off the bay streamed through open French windows leading onto his balcony. Race money, a Pepsi endorsement, a line of racing gloves he’d designed were paying for this condo unit. Without racing, he’d have been stuck working another dead-end job, maybe selling cars at Zukowski’s dealership in Signal Hill, living in a bachelor apartment with furniture from the Salvation Army thrift shop. Or at home with his mother where the furniture was better but the pity worse.
“Sal? Hey, amigo! How much am I gonna beat you by this year?” The Barrio Bear was one of the few who could make a race interesting for him.
Yondering Page 21
