Avon Science Fiction Reader 2

by Unknown Author

  In the deep blackness of one starry night, Jo-Ad gathered the members of his tribe together and explained that they were to go forth in the morning upon a great adventure. He bade them pack their goods upon all the available camels. Then, with Mo-Ad, he went to the Box.

  For a while he did nothing but stand silently in the darkness staring at the sky. Mo-Ad, by his side, grew restless.

  “Look, my son,” cried Jo-Ad suddenly, pointing to a dim red star slowly rising from the horizon. “That is the planet Mai’s. It was the old God of War. He was a powerful God, but ever stronger was Jupiter, the mightiest of them all. Observe, Mo-Ad, the great blue planet far above. That is the planet Jupiter. And tomorrow, the King of the Gods will resume his sway.

  He drew from beneath his garments a simple one-stringed musical instrument, stepped to the small, crude telescope connected to the prisms and sighted along its length, bringing the barrel into line with the blue planet. With a free hand he opened the shutter. Then, raising his instrument he poised himself in the cold desert air and drew a short bow across the single string.

  “Now,” he breathed. And as the squeaky note died away, a faint tinkle sounded on the air.

  Jo-Ad dropped the crude violin and with his son’s aid unscrewed the top of the Box. Fie peered into its depths once, and heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction.

  “We shall wait, Mo-Ad, for the rising of the sun,” he said.

  The Superperfect Bride

  by Bob Olsen

  Plastic Surgery made vast strides during the Second World War, when it came into general use for the repair of wounded soldiers and civilians.

  It has come to be an accepted thing, this branch of medical science which was originated primarily to appease the vanity of wealthy women.

  A new nose, an uplifted chin, an erased scar were the incentive—all in the name of vanity. In this story something like a Frankenstein’s creation theme has been, diverted to beauty’s cause . . . with amusing and piquant results.

  HOW would you like to marry a woman who is absolutely perfect in face and form?” asked Doctor Goddard.

  “Is there such a woman?” Broderick doubted.

  “Judge for yourself.” He pressed a button; and, as if operated by the invisible hands of spirits, the green curtains at the end of the room parted and swayed open.

  Astounded beyond measure by the unexpected sight which met his eyes, Broderick sat for a moment of pulseless rapture; then, a sudden throbbing of arteries, he leaned forward, his eyes bound as if by invisible wires to the female form which the open curtain had disclosed.

  She was nude, and yet not naked, since the heavy profusion of lustrous yellow hair, which fell to her knees, clothed her in a garment more modest than a bathing suit.

  Held as if by some mesmeric power, Broderick remained seated until the curtains mysteriously and silently fell together. Then he rose to his feet, and, with the steps of a somnambulist, faltered toward Goddard.

  “Open the curtains again, please! I didn’t have time—Oh, please let me see her again. Won’t you let me push the button myself?”

  “Go ahead, but don’t blame me for what happens.”

  At Broderick’s touch the green curtains again swayed open. A cry of disappointment escaped from his lips—the alcove beyond was empty.

  “Be patient, importunate youth,” Goddard interposed. “You shall see her again in half an hour. Perhaps you may even be permitted to kiss her hand. Only give her time to dress. And now about the answer to your question? Do you think there is such a thing as a perfect woman?”

  “Perfect? She is superperfect! I’ve never seen anything in sculpture or painting to compare with her. It is impossible to believe that such a lovely creature could have been born. She must have been created, full-grown, by a God who models with flesh.”

  “You are right,” said Goddard. “She was not born, hut created; and 1 am her creator.”

  “You her creator? What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. I made her what she is. Shall I tell you how I did it? It may be some time before Eve is ready.”

  “Yes, yes, tell me, I beg of you.”

  “As you perspicuously remarked a moment ago, it is impossible for a perfect being to be born. Nature produces many handsome things but none of them are absolutely flawless. Go into the garden, and select the prettiest blossom you can find. A careful examination convinces you that it is absolutely perfect, but scrutinize it through the penetrating lens of a microscope, and you discover countless blemishes, and irregularities of outline, which would bar it completely from the realm of artistic perfection.

  “As with the tiny flower, so with the big things in the world of beauty. Gaze upon a wonderful landscape, so stupendous, so enchanting that, to the casual observer, it seems the utter climax of perfection, but the discerning eyes of the trained aesthete would find it lacking in unity, balance and harmony. As a scene it may be beautiful; but as a picture it is full of faults of composition, exaggeration in coloring, incongruities of structure and over-vividness of detail.

  “No artist dares to paint a landscape exactly as he sees it. His mission is to select, to modify, to recombine, and thus, from the parts which nature offers him, to construct a complete, unified, beautiful whole.

  “Poe brings out this idea in his story called ‘The Domain of Arnheim.’ You’ve read it? No? Well, you ought to. It’s a masterpiece of descriptive diction. It tells about a man with the soul of an artist and a poet, the fortune of a Croesus, and a fervid passion for happiness. He employed a portion of his great wealth in constructing a garden, in which every individual nook and vista offered to the eyes of the observer a beautiful and artistically perfect picture. This he accomplished through an exalted form of landscape gardening, using all the individual units just as they occurred in nature, but eliminating recombining, rearranging and supplementing according to the absolute laws of art.

  “The wealthy landscape gardener regarded this as the realization of the highest ideal of beauty. I do not agree. To my mind, aesthetic perfection can only be attained by a single unified object, which is small enough to be taken in with a solitary glance, and yet rich in infinite details of form and coloring, so that the eye, while keeping the lovely whole ever focused on the retina, is constantly discovering new elements of beauty to admire. Of all individual objects in the universe there is none so capable of variation of beauty and ugliness as the human body, especially the body of a woman.

  “For centuries, sculptors and artists have striven to delineate human forms of consummate beauty, yet none has fully succeeded. The nearest approaches to perfection have been achieved by those who used composite models, combining the face of one with the torso of another and the limbs of a third.

  “Even with this method, the results produced have been far from faultless. Witness, for instance, the learned criticism of the classic example of feminine grace, the statue of the Venus de’ Medici. Edwin Chadwick, a noted scientist and connoisseur, says that the Venus de’ Medici is lacking in two most important attributes of human beauty—health and mentality. Her chest is too narrow, indicating insufficient development of the lungs; her limbs are without evidence of due training of the muscles; and her cranium and face are deficient in all traits of intellect.

  “Were it possible for the sculptor to produce a flawless model of a woman’s figure, he is still woefully handicapped since he can only represent form, without color or any other attribute of the living being. The painter has the advantage of being able to impart the hues of nature. By skilful shading he also gives his flat canvas a third dimension, suggesting solidness, and elegance of contour,

  “But neither the painting nor the statue can depict one of the most important attributes of living beauty, namely motion. To be perfectly beautiful, a creation must have the breath of life, and the power of locomotion. Byron was right when he said:

  “I’ve seen more living beauty, ripe and real Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal.”

>   “He forgot, though, the fact, of which you seem cognizant, that it is impossible for blind nature to produce anything which possesses complete and faultless pulchritude. Unlike a poet, the perfect Venus must be made, not born.

  “It is to the creation of this lofty ideal of a living, moving, intelligent woman, absolutely lovely in body and mind, that I have dedicated my lifetime of artistic and scientific research and my entire fortune. You have just seen in Eve the realization of this great ambition.”

  He paused a moment to observe the effect of his discourse on his young listener. Broderick had followed him with a fluctuating, petulant interest. Now he eagerly cried, “You said I might see her again;—that I might kiss her hand.”

  “Yes, yes; but pray be patient. She’s not half ready yet to receive you. Aren’t you interested in the process of her creation?”

  “Indeed I am, but only let me see her for a moment, then I’ll gladly listen to you.”

  Slightly offended, Goddard lapsed into a moody silence.

  Broderick got up and paced the length of, the floor three successive times <—then exclaimed, “For God’s sake, speak. I can’t stand this suspense. Tell me more about Eve.”

  “Please be seated and compose yourself. You want to know how I-accomplished this great and wonderful task? Hasn’t a possible means suggested itself to you? I was obliged to waste a great deal of time in futile study, observation and experiment before I arrived at the right solution.

  “At first I thought I could encompass my purpose through eugenics, which is nothing more than the application to the human race of familiar rules, which have been practiced for centuries in the scientific breeding of other animals. But the fault with this method is that, although it is possible to develop strongly some peculiar or characteristic variation, it is not so easy to remove completely those irregularities which make an organism imperfect.

  “Take a specific instance. Let us assume that we have found a woman whose only flaw is a small nose. We may mate her with a man who is nearly perfect except for a nose which is a trifle larger than it should be. From this union we might expect to produce a child with a well-proportioned nose, but we can have no assurance that the progeny may not have a nose which is either larger than its father’s or smaller than its mother’s. Then, too, the matter of sex variation introduces an element of uncertainty; and, worst of all, experiments of this sort require an inordinate amount of time, besides being attended by overwhelming difficulties, the nature of which you can readily surmise.”

  Broderick became restless again. “Yes, but Eve,” he rudely interrupted.

  “I’m coming to her in just a minute. She is what might be called a synthetic woman; she was made by combining the complete living parts of no less than twelve different women.”

  Aghast, Broderick stared at him. “I don’t understand you,” he stammered.

  “You must have heard of bone grafting, homoplastic transplantation, and other marvels of modern surgery. Perhaps you are familiar with some of my attainments along that line.”

  “I remember reading about a girl whom you treated after her face w^s badly burned. Didn’t you cover her cheek with the skin taken from her thighs?”

  “Yes. That is a very simple operation. Those involving the transplanting of organs and limbs are much more difficult, yet not impossible to the surgeon who knows his trade. As early as 1908, Debert succeeded in grafting the lower leg of one dog to the thigh of another, in such a way that it appeared perfectly normal. It was even before that time that Lexer, using the method of juxtaposition, transplanted the entire knee joint of a child. But more wonderful still is the work of Alexis Carrel, who, you know, invented a method of joining large blood vessels by clamping them to stop the flow of blood and then sewing them together with silk thread. I have conducted a large number of experiments on animals and human beings, and have improved the methods of Lexer,- Debert and Carrel.

  “But I am more of an artist than a surgeon. Surgery is my vocation and art my avocation. It therefore occurred to me that by combining my artistic taste and my surgical skill, I could model in flesh and hones, just as the sculptor models in clay. Taking another hint from the artist, I resolved to create a living woman of unsurpassed beauty, by joining together parts which, though taken from imperfect individuals, were themselves free from flaw.

  “Of course it was necessary that the greater part of my composite woman be taken from one body, since it is of course extremely difficult and dangerous to make many alterations in the so-called vital portions of the human anatomy—the head and the torso. My first task, therefore, was to find a woman who embodied perfection in these essential parts.

  “I finally discovered, in the person of a young woman for whom I set a broken leg, all the qualities which I required. By good fortune, she, like yourself, was an orphan with no near relatives living. She had an independent income of about eighteen hundred dollars a year. A well-known university had granted her a bachelor’s degree, although she was only seventeen years old. Her interests were mainly for art, literature, and music, but she had also done work in science and philosophy. She was very fond of all forms of outdoor sport, in fact it was while skating that she sustained the injury which first brought her to me.

  “Her torso, her neck and her head were absolutely perfect, although the other parts of her body were susceptible to improvement. You may fancy the delicacy with which I broached my purpose to her. Finally, by appealing to her devotion to art, and to the feminine ambition to surpass all others in beauty, I won her consent. She became my adopted daughter, and the heiress to my entire estate.

  “I began by providing Eve with a new head of hair. Her own hair was pretty enough—a glossy amber brown,—light and fluffy,—but bobbed, as is the case with nearly all women today. The scalp she now wears used to belong to a Norwegian servant girl, from whom I bought it for five thousand dollars, giving her Eve’s hair in exchange. When Ingemar recovered and found that she still had a full head of growing tresses, she was immeasurably pleased. She said her long golden hair had always been too much of a bother to her anyway, and she liked her new hair better.

  “In a similar way, I exchanged Eve’s imperfect parts for flawless members from other girls, who consented to the transfer for considerations varying from one to twenty thousand dollars. Her ears belong to an English girl, and her lips used to grace a French beauty—but her nose is her own; I merely remodeled it a trifle, reducing its size by removing portions from the inside.

  “I got her left arm from a girl who is an expert swimmer, and her right from one who loves tennis, but hadn’t played enough to overdevelop it. Two dancers, chosen from among five hundred chorus girls, supplied her legs, at ten thousand each. I found it easier to induce two women to trade each a leg, than to get one to take the risk of sacrificing both limbs. Besides, it very rarely happens that both arms or both legs of any one person are perfect mates.

  “The feet belonging to this pair of legs I could not use. They were too deformed by the combined effects of tight shoes and walking on the toes. It was exceedingly difficult to find two perfectly formed feet. Those accustomed to being imprisoned in modern shoes were cramped and abnormal, while the feet of European peasant girls who had always gone barefooted were too coarse and large. I solved the problem by selecting a girl who had always worn sensible shoes, and having her go barefooted for two months before I operated on her.

  “I had the hardest job in obtaining a perfect right hand. Her left hand I bought from a masseuse, who was willing to sell her other one also, but I couldn’t use it on account of a tiny scar on her little finger. Finally I found a perfect mate to her left hand on the person of a musician. She refused to sell her hand at any price, and I actually had to kidnap her. When she discovered that I intended to take her hand by force, she agreed to submit voluntarily for twenty thousand dollars. Four months after the operation, she was able to play the piano as well as ever. It was just six weeks ago that I put the finishing touches
to my masterpiece. Now Eve is completely perfect.”

  “You speak of exchanging member for member,” said Broderick, “I don’t understand how you can do that.”

  “My assistant, Doctor Mann, and I work together. Fie removes the member from Eve while I am separating the corresponding part from the other woman. Every incision and cut made by me is reproduced with mathematical exactitude by him, so that the surfaces of the severed portions are precisely identical in outline. Then, while the members are still warm and living, they are exchanged and attached by methods with which every surgeon is familiar. While I am fastening the new part to Eve’s body, Doctor Mann performs a similar operation on the other girl. In a month, both have complete and perfect use of their new limbs.”

  “But surely, all this horrible cutting and slashing must leave some marks,”

  “Why so? Haven’t you ever cut yourself with a razor, and watched the; wound heal? In a week or two, the skin over the injured place cannot he distinguished from the rest of your face. It is thus that the skin grows over the places where the parts are joined together. You shall see for yourself. Eve must be ready by now.” He pushed the button, and once more the curtains spread apart.

  The woman who stood in the opening was attired in the flowing white draperies of Greek antiquity. Except for light, corded sandals her feet were bare. Her hair was parted in the middle, and was gathered in a high roll at the back of her head, from which fell a thick cluster of curls. It seemed a perfect picture.

  At a gesture from Goddard, she stepped forth, every movement a reflection of superb elegance and grace, combined with a singular suggestion of alertness and power.

  “Eve,” said Goddard. “Let me present Mr. Charles Broderick.”

  She inclined her head slightly, and held out the faultlessly manicured hand of the masseuse. Broderick took it as if it were a piece of priceless, fragile china. The mere contact of her warm, magnetic fingers sent through his frame a thrill such as he had never before experienced.