Brain Wave

by Poul Anderson

  He sighed and resumed his morning chores. The animals all seemed fidgety today. And damn if his own head didn’t feel funny. He remembered his own panic of two nights before, and the odd way he’d been thinking ever since. Maybe there was some kind of fever going around.

  Well—he’d ask somebody about it later. There was work to do today, plowing in the north forty that had just been cleared. All the tractors were busy cultivating, so he’d have to take a team of horses.

  That was all right. Brock liked animals, he had always understood them and got along with them better than with people. Not that the people had been mean to him, anyway for a long while now. The kids used to tease him, back when he was a kid too, and then later there’d been some trouble with cars, and a couple of girls had got scared also and he’d been beaten up by the brother of one of them. But that was years back. Mr. Rossman had told him carefully what he could do and could not do, kind of taken him over, and things had been all right since then. Now he could walk into the tavern when he was in town and have a beer like anybody else, and the men said hello.

  He stood for a minute, wondering why he should be thinking about this when he knew it so well, and why it should hurt him the way it did. I’m all right, he thought. I’m not so smart, maybe, but I’m strong. Mr. Rossman says he ain’t got a better farm hand nor me.

  He shrugged and entered the barn to get out the horses. He was a young man, of medium height but heavy-set and muscular, with coarse strong features and a round, crew-cut, red-haired head. His blue denim clothes were shabby but clean; Mrs. Bergen, the wife of the general superintendent in whose cottage he had a room, looked after such details for him.

  The barn was big and gloomy, full of the strong rich smells of hay and horses. The brawny Percherons stamped and snorted, restless as he harnessed them. Funny—they were always so calm before. “So, so, steady, boy. Steady, Tom. Whoa, there, Jerry. Easy, easy.” They quieted a little and he led them out and hitched them to a post while he went into the shed after the plow.

  His dog Joe came frisking around him, a tall Irish setter whose coat was like gold and copper in the sun. Joe was really Mr. Rossman’s, of course, but Brock had taken care of him since he was a pup and it was always Brock whom he followed and loved. “Down, boy, down. What the hell’s got into yuh, anyway? Take it easy, will yuh?”

  The estate lay green around him, the farm buildings on one side, the cottages of the help screened off by trees on another, the many acres of woods behind. There was a lot of lawn and orchard and garden between this farming part and the big white house of the owner, a house which had been mostly empty since Mr. Rossman’s daughters had married and his wife had died. He was there now, though, spending a few weeks here in upper New York State with his flowers. Brock wondered why a millionaire like Mr. Rossman wanted to putter around growing roses, even if he was getting old.

  The shed door creaked open and Brock went in and took the big plow and wheeled it out, grunting a little with the effort. Not many men could drag it out themselves, he thought with a flicker of pride. He chuckled as he saw how the horses stamped at the sight. Horses were lazy beasts, they’d never work if they could get out of it.

  He shoved the plow around behind them, carried the tongue forward, and hitched it on. With a deft motion, he twirled the reins loose from the post, took his seat, and shook the lines across the broad rumps. “Giddap!”

  They just stood, moving their feet

  “Giddap there, I say!”

  Tom began backing. “Whoa! Whoa!” Brock took the loose end of the reins and snapped it with whistling force. Tom grunted and put one huge hoof on the tongue. It broke across.

  For a long moment, Brock sat there, finding no words. Then he shook his red head. “It’s a ac-ci-dent,” he said aloud. The morning seemed very quiet all of a sudden. “It’s a ac-ci-dent.”

  There was a spare tongue in the shed. He fetched it and some tools, and began doggedly removing the broken one.

  “Hi, there! Stop! Stop, I say!”

  Brock looked up. The squealing and grunting were like a blow. He saw a black streak go by, and then another and another—The pigs were loose!

  “Joe!” he yelled, even then wondering a little at how quickly he reacted. “Go get ’em, Joe! Round ’em up, boy!”

  The dog was off like burnished lightning. He got ahead of the lead sow and snapped at her. She grunted, turning aside, and he darted after the next. Stan Wilmer came running from the direction of the pen. His face was white.

  Brock ran to intercept another pig, turning it, but a fourth one slipped aside and was lost in the woods. It took several confused minutes to chase the majority back into the pen; a number were gone.

  Wilmer stood gasping. His voice was raw. “I saw it,” he groaned. “Oh, my God, I saw it. It ain’t possible.”

  Brock blew out his cheeks and wiped his face.

  “You hear me?” Wilmer grasped his arm. “I saw it, I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes. Those pigs opened the gate themselves.”

  “Naw!” Brock felt his mouth falling open.

  “I tell you, I saw it! One of ’em stood up on her hind legs and nosed the latch up. She did it all by herself. And the others were crowding right behind her. Oh, no, no, no!”

  Joe came out of the woods, driving a pig before him with sardonic barks. She seemed to give up after a minute and trotted quietly toward the pen. Wilmer turned like a machine and opened the gate again and let her go in.

  “Good boy!” Brock patted the silken head that nuzzled against him. “Smart dog!”

  “Too God damned smart.” Wilmer narrowed his eyes. “Did a dog ever make like that before?”

  “Sure,” said Brock uncertainly.

  Joe got off his haunches and went back into the woods.

  “I’ll bet he’s going after another pig.” There was a kind of horror in Wilmer’s voice.

  “Sure. He’s a smart dog, he is.”

  “I’m going to see Bill Bergen about this.” Wilmer turned on his heel. Brock looked after him, shrugged heavy shoulders, and went back to his own task. By the time he finished it, Joe had rounded up two more pigs and brought them back, and was mounting guard at the gate of the pen.

  “Good fellow,” said Brock. “I’ll see yuh get a bone for this.” He hitched Tom and Jerry, who had been standing at their ease. “All right, yuh bums, let’s go. Giddap!”

  Slowly, the horses backed. “Hey!” screamed Brock.

  This time they didn’t stop with the tongue. Very carefully, they walked onto the plow itself and bent its iron frame with their weight and broke off the coulter. Brock felt his throat dry.

  “No,” he mumbled.

  Wilmer nearly had a fit when he learned about the horses. Bergen only stood there, whistling tunelessly. “I don’t know.” He scratched his sandy head. “Tell you what. We’ll call off all work having to do with animals, except feeding and milking, of course. Padlock every gate and have somebody check all our fence lines. I’ll see the old man about this.”

  “Me, I’m gonna carry a gun,” said Wilmer.

  “Well, it might not be a bad idea,” said Bergen.

  Archie Brock was assigned to look at one section, a four-mile line enclosing the woods. He took Joe, who gamboled merrily in his wake, and went off glad to be alone for a change.

  How still the forest was! Sunlight slanted down through green unstirring leaves, throwing a dapple on the warm brown shadows. The sky was utterly blue overhead, no clouds, no wind. His feet scrunched dully on an occasional clod or stone, he brushed against a twig and it scratched very faintly along his clothes, otherwise the land was altogether silent. The birds seemed to have quieted down all at once, no squirrels were in sight, even the sheep had withdrawn into the inner woods. He thought uneasily that somehow the whole green world had a waiting feel to it.

  Like before a storm, maybe?

  He could see how people would be scared if the animals started getting smarter. If they were really smart, wou
ld they keep on letting humans lock them up and work them and castrate them and kill and skin and eat them? Suppose Tom and Jerry, now—But they were so gentle!

  And—wait—weren’t the people getting smarter too? It seemed like in the last couple of days they’d been talking more, and it wasn’t all about the weather and the neighbors either, it was about things like who was going to win the next election and why a rear-engine drive was better in a car. They’d always talked like that now and then, sure, but not so much, and they hadn’t had so much to say, either. Even Mrs. Bergen, he’d seen her reading a magazine, and all she ever did before in her spare time was watch TV.

  I’m getting smarter too!

  The knowledge was like a thunderclap. He stood there for a long while, not moving, and Joe came up and sniffed his hand in a puzzled way.

  I’m getting smarter.

  Sure—it had to be. The way he’d been wondering lately, and remembering things, and speaking out when he’d never said anything much before—what else could it be? All the world was getting smarter.

  I can read, he told himself. Not very good, but they did teach me the al-pha-bet, and I can read a comic book. Maybe I can read a real book now.

  Books had the answers to what he was suddenly wondering about, things like the sun and moon and stars, why there was winter and summer, why they had wars and Presidents and who lived on the other side of the world and—

  He shook his head, unable to grasp the wilderness that rose up inside him and spread till it covered creation further than he could see. He’d never wondered before. Things just happened and were forgotten again. But—He looked at his hands, marveling. Who am I? What am I doing here?

  There was a boiling in him. He leaned his head against the cool trunk of a tree, listening to the blood roar in his ears. Please, God, let it be real. Please make me like other people.

  After a while he fought it down and went on, checking the fence as he had been told.

  In the evening, after chores, he put on a clean suit and went up to the big house. Mr. Rossman was sitting on the porch, smoking a pipe and turning the pages of a book over in his thin fingers, not really seeing it. Brock paused timidly, cap in hand, till the owner looked up and spied him.

  “Oh, hello, Archie,” he said in his soft voice. “How are you tonight?”

  “I’m all right, thank you.” Brock twisted the cap between his stumpy hands and shifted from one foot to another. “Please, can I see you for a minute?”

  “Why, of course. Come on in.” Mr. Rossman laid his book aside and sat smoking while Brock opened the screen door and walked over to him. “Here, take a chair.”

  “That’s all right, thanks. I—” Brock ran his tongue across dry lips. “I’d just like to ask you ’bout something.”

  “Ask away, Archie.” Mr. Rossman leaned back. He was a tall spare man, his face thinly carved, proud under its kindness of the moment, his hair white. Brock’s parents had been tenants of his, and when it became plain that their son would never amount to anything, he had taken charge of the boy. “Everything okay?”

  “Well, it’s about, uh, about this change here.”

  “Eh?” Rossman’s gaze sharpened. “What change?”

  “You know. The animals getting smart and uppity.”

  “Oh, yes. That.” Rossman blew a cloud of smoke. “Tell me, Archie, have you noticed any change in yourself?”

  “Yes, I, uh, well, I think maybe I have.”

  Rossman nodded. “You wouldn’t have come here if you hadn’t changed.”

  “What’s happening, Mr. Rossman? What’s gone wrong?”

  “I don’t know, Archie. Nobody knows.” The old man looked out into a gathering blue twilight. “Are you so sure it’s wrong, though? Maybe something is finally going right.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “No. Nobody knows.” Rossman’s pale blue-veined hand slapped the newspaper on the table beside him. “There are hints here. The knowledge is creeping out. I’m sure much more is known, but the government has suppressed the information for fear of a panic.” He grinned with a certain viciousness. “As if a world-wide phenomenon could be kept secret! But they’ll hang on to their stupidity to the very end in Washington.”

  “But, Mr. Rossman—” Brock lifted his hands and let them fall again. “What can we do?”

  “Wait. Wait and see. I’m going to the city soon, to find out for myself—those pet brains of mine at the Institute should—”

  “You’re leaving?”

  Rossman shook his head, smiling. “Poor Archie. There’s a horror in being helpless, isn’t there? I sometimes think that’s why men fear death—not because of oblivion, but because it’s foredoomed, there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Even fatalism is a refuge from that, in a way—But I digress, don’t I?”

  He sat smoking for a long while. The summer dusk chirred and murmured around them. “Yes,” he said at last, “I feel it in myself too. And it’s not altogether pleasant. Not just the nervousness and the nightmares—that’s merely physiological, I suppose—but the thoughts. I’ve always imagined myself as a quick, capable, logical thinker. Now something is coming to life within me that I don’t understand at all. Sometimes my whole life seems to have been a petty and meaningless scramble. And yet I thought I’d served my family and my country well.” He smiled once more. “I do hope I’ll see the end of this, though. It should be interesting!”

  Tears stung Brock’s eyes. “What can I do?”

  “Do? Live. Live from day to day. What else can a man do?” Rossman got up and put his hand on Brock’s shoulder. “But keep on thinking. Keep your thinking close to the ground, where it belongs. Don’t ever trade your liberty for another man’s offer to do your thinking and make your mistakes for you. I had to play the feudal lord with you, Archie, but it may be that that’s no longer necessary.”

  Brock didn’t understand most of it. But it seemed Mr. Rossman was telling him to be cheerful, that this wasn’t such a bad thing after all. “I though maybe I could borrow some books,” he said humbly. “I’d like to see if I can read them now.”

  “Why, of course, Archie. Come on into the library. I’ll see if I can find something suitable for you to begin no—”

  CHAPTER 4

  Selections from the New York Times, June 23:

  PRESIDENT DENIES DANGER IN

  BRAIN SPEEDUP

  ‘Keep Cool, Stay on Job,’ Advises

  White House—No Harm

  To Humans in Change

  U. S. Scientists Working On

  Problem—Expect Answer Soon

  FALLING STOCK MARKET WORRIES

  WALL STREET

  Declining Sales Bring Down

  Stock Market and Prices

  U. S. In Danger of Recession,

  Says Economist

  CHINESE TROOPS MUTINY

  Communist Government Declares

  Emergency

  NEW RELIGION FOUNDED IN LOS

  ANGELES

  Sawyer Proclaims Self ‘The Third Ba’al’

  —Thousands Attend Mass Meeting

  FESSENDEN CALLS FOR WORLD GOVERNMENT

  Iowa Isolationist Reverses Stand in

  Senate Speech

  JOHNSON SAYS WORLD GOVERNMENT

  IMPRACTICAL AT PRESENT TIME

  Oregon Senator Reverses Former

  Stand

  REBELLION IN UPSTATE HOME FOR FEEBLE-MINDED

  RIOT IN ALABAMA

  Conference.

  Everybody was working late, and it was ten o’clock before the meeting which Corinth had invited to his place was ready. Sheila had insisted on putting out her usual buffet of sandwiches and coffee; afterward she sat in a corner, talking quietly with Sarah Mandelbaum. Their eyes strayed occasionally to their husbands, who were playing chess, and there was a creeping fear in the gaze.

  Corinth was playing better than he had ever done before. Usually he and Mandelbaum were pretty evenly matched, the physicist’s slow careful strategy
offsetting the unionist’s nerve-racking bravura. But tonight the younger man was too distracted. He made schemes that would have delighted Capablanca, but Mandelbaum saw through them and slashed barbarically past his defenses. Corinth sighed at last and leaned back.

  “I resign,” he said. “It’d be mate in, uh, seven moves.”

  “Not so.” Mandelbaum pointed a gnarled finger at king’s bishop. “If you moved him over here, and then—”

  “Oh, yes, you’re right. No matter. I’m just not in the mood. What’s keeping Nat?”

  “He’ll be along. Take it easy.” Mandelbaum removed himself to an armchair and began stuffing a big-bowled pipe.

  “I don’t see how you can sit there like that when—”

  “When a world’s falling to pieces around my ears? Look, Pete, it’s been falling apart as long as I can remember. So far, in this particular episode, no guns have come out.”

  “They may do so yet.” Corinth got up and stood looking out the window, hands crossed behind his back and shoulders slumped. The restless glimmer of city light etched him against darkness. “Don’t you see, Felix, this new factor—if we survive it at all—changes the whole basis of human life? Our society was built by and for one sort of man. Now man himself is becoming something else.”

  “I doubt it.” The noise of a match, struck against Mandelbaum’s shoe, was startlingly loud. “We’re still the same old animal.”

  “What was your I.Q. before the change?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Never took a test?”

  “Oh, sure, they made me take one now and then, to get this or that job, but I never asked for the result. What’s I.Q. except the score on an I.Q. test?”

  “It’s more than that. It measures the ability to handle data, grasp and create abstractions—”

  “If you’re a Caucasian of West European-American cultural background. That’s who the test was designed for, Pete. A Kalahari bushman would laugh if he knew it omitted water-finding ability. That’s more important to him than the ability to juggle numbers. Me, I don’t underrate the logic and visualization aspect of personality, but I don’t have your touching faith in it, either. There’s more to a man than that, and a garage mechanic may be a better survivor type than a mathematician.”