by John Burke
“In itself,” he said eagerly, “this opens up magnificent possibilities. Suppose that we could delay or prolong that period in which the body presumably remains dead while the heart is alive—then we’d have a living body with only the barest life spark present. Think what that would mean when it came to performing major surgery! It would save hundreds of lives, reduce shock to a minimum . . . no loss of blood . . .” He was beside himself with joy. “Victor, the medical federation meets in Berne next month. Can we have our paper ready by then?”
At our feet the dog stirred. It shuddered along its whole length and then lazily lifted its head. As we watched, it thumped its tail twice. Then it began to stagger to its feet.
“Do you think we can?” Paul persisted.
“We could,” I said, “but we’re not going to.”
“But why not? There isn’t another meeting of this scale for another year. Why wait that long?”
I was conscious of a twinge of disappointment. He had been a faithful ally and had shirked nothing, but now that success was within our grasp he showed himself too naïve in his enthusiasm. What we had done so far was nothing to what we could yet do. We had only just started. The door was open: now was the time to go through and find what lay beyond. I had had my own moments of impatience, but these were now conquered. I knew what came next and I knew that it required care and concentration. We had discovered the source of life itself and had used it to restore a creature that was dead. It was a tremendous discovery which was not ready to be shared. We must move on to the next stage.
“It’s not enough just to bring a dead animal back to life,” I said. The dog sniffed at me and then went to Paul, who patted it affectionately as though he had owned it for years. “We must create from the beginning. We must build up our own creature—build it up from nothing, if necessary. Otherwise we have accomplished only half the task we set ourselves.”
“Build?” He was baffled. “Build what?”
“The most complex thing known to man,” I said. “Man himself. Let’s not concern ourselves with side issues such as operational techniques. We must create a human being.”
“Victor, this has gone to your head. Let’s talk tomorrow and—”
“A man with perfect physique,” I said. “With the mature brain of a genius. Everything planned and perfect. We can do it. Don’t you see?”
In all these years I had seen no indication that he was anything but a devoted man of science. Now he revealed unsuspected doubts—the doubts of an ordinary superstitious mortal.
“What you’re saying is madness—a revolt against nature. Such a thing can end only in evil.”
“Come now, Paul.” I forced myself to be patient with him. “You haven’t shown any scruples up to now. As for revolting against nature, haven’t we done so already and succeeded? Isn’t a thing that’s dead supposed to be dead for all time? Yet we brought it back to life.”
The dog confirmed this by licking his hand. Paul looked down. The rasp of that rough tongue seemed to convince him more than my words did. He nodded to himself.
I went on: “We hold in the palms of our hands such secrets as have never been dreamed of. Nature puts up her own barriers to confine the scope of man, but over and over again these barriers have been surmounted or thrust farther back. We have pushed them back. We are in a great tradition, Paul. There’s nothing to stop us now.”
With that wry smile I knew so well, admitting rueful defeat, he asked: “What do you want to do?”
“First,” I said, “we need the framework—the body. Whatever adaptations may be necessary, that basic material is our starting point. Last week they hanged a man in Inglestadt. He was a highwayman who’d been terrorizing the countryside for months. As a warning to others his body has been left on a gibbet just outside the town. It’ll stay there until it rots . . . or until it’s stolen.”
For a moment I thought Paul was about to protest again. Then he raised his glass. We were partners again in our splendid enterprise.
It would have suited me very well to ride out at once and claim the body of the robber, but we had worked deep into the night and were both exhausted. Paul made up a comfortable bed for the dog from an old blanket in the corner of the laboratory, and then we made our own way to bed. I lay awake for a long time, too tired and, at the same time, too ecstatic to sleep.
The following day my thoughts were occupied entirely by the next crucial step. Rising late, I checked that the dog was still alive and healthy, and decided that in a day or two it must be turned loose. Let it go back to its startled owners if it wished! Having a dead dog concealed in my house was no great problem; having a live one padding about the place would certainly arouse some conjecture. I wondered, with excitement rather than apprehension, how we would cope with the problem of a newly created man when that arose.
Justine tried to fondle me as I passed along the first-floor landing during the course of the afternoon. I brushed her off. She was growing much too forward for my liking. She belonged to the darkness and to the hours of my choice: I was disturbed to see signs of a brash familiarity and even arrogance in her manner.
The rebuff brought a dark frown to that usually pert, provocative face. Then she laughed none too agreeably.
“You’ll be more friendly tonight, I’ll be bound.”
“Tonight I’m busy,” I said.
“Busy?” She was alert at once. “You and your friend are bringing village girls into the house—is that it?”
“No, Justine,” I said. “No. We shall be working. And now go and do the same.”
The sulky pout of her lower lip, so entrancing at the right moment, now had the sinister quality of a threat. But she still knew the sound of an order when she heard it in my voice. She flounced away.
She was beautiful—yet not, deplorable as it may seem to some, as beautiful in my eyes as the corpse that swung from the gibbet by the roadside that night.
Paul and I took a horse and cart by a roundabout route to the scene of the execution. We had a ladder in the cart, and it was a matter of minutes to set this up and for me to climb up and cut through the rope from which dangled the robber, twisting gently in the cool night breeze. The body fell neatly into the cart, where Paul straightened it out and covered it with sacking. We drove back to the house.
In the brightness of the laboratory the dead rogue was not an attractive sight. I was delighted to have him, but far from impressed by his appearance. The birds hadn’t wasted any time: they had started on his eyes and then demolished one side of his face.
The head was of no use anyway. My idea was to create a perfect human being, and it had never been part of the plan that we should use the defective head and brain of a subnormal personality. I reached for a knife and turned the body over on the table.
“What are you going to do?” asked Paul.
I showed him. Our recent experiments had given me some surgical skill, and it was a comparatively simple matter to cut off the head of the corpse. Once I glanced up to see if Paul was interested in my anatomical knowledge, and caught him with a mixture of horror and amazement on his face.
With the same knife I sheared off a piece of sacking and wrapped the head in it. I held it away from me so that blood would not seep through and drop on to my clothes, and then I crossed the laboratory and dropped the head into the acid tank. The empty eye sockets yawned at me as the head rolled over and settled on the bottom.
It would not take long before skin and bone were eaten away. Less time than it would have taken the birds. In a few minutes there would be no trace.
“Now, Paul”—I had to jar him out of his trance—“a hand with his clothes, if you please.”
I was eager to see the condition of the rest of the body. Paul was rather fastidious about it all, and I sensed his reluctance as we stripped the filthy rags from the stinking cadaver. To me this was still a glorious object, not because of its present deplorable state but because of its potentialities.
Tog
ether we washed down the body and then wrapped it in bandages from head to toe . . . or, rather, from neck to toe. As we lifted it into the specially prepared tank, I could not help shuddering. My shudders were different from Paul’s: his were those of a squeamish sentimentalist; mine arose from aesthetic considerations. The brute’s hands were really too coarse to be contemplated. With such clod-hopping hands he could hardly have been anything other than a robber, except perhaps a gorilla.
We lowered the swathed form into the fluid and I studied the splayed fingers and veinous discoloration with mounting distaste. This was not how I had visualized my creation. But I had been prepared for deformities and the need for alterations. A head, new limbs—carefully chosen, they would contribute to the final unity of which I would be master.
Paul said: “Victor, I don’t think we should continue with this. We should wait and discuss our findings with the Federation. If anything—”
“Hands,” I said. I wanted him to concentrate on the essential things and forget his ludicrous scruples. “Where shall we find the right hands?”
“Listen to me, Victor.”
But I had no intention of listening. I was not to be deterred. After so many frustrations, everything was going well for us now. Only a coward would turn back. I hurried him out of the laboratory and sent him off to bed with instructions to lie awake and think about the difficulties presented to us by this unsuitable corpse. I tried to make a joke of it, but his usual reluctant smile was not forthcoming.
In the morning I still knew that I was right. And among my correspondence was an item which I could take only as an omen. It was the printed announcement of the death of Bardello, the world’s greatest sculptor, in Dresden. He had been a great friend of my father, who had helped him with two or three commissions early in his career. A memorial service was to be held tomorrow. It would undoubtedly be a magnificent affair, complete with florid eulogies, and I decided that I would not go; then, after a brief reflection, I decided that I would go.
It would be a tragedy should the hands of the most gifted sculptor of our time be left to rot below ground.
There was another communication announcing a death. This was less formal. It was a letter from my cousin Elizabeth telling me that her mother, my Aunt Sophie, had passed on. To this funeral ceremony I was also invited. I could not combine the two of them, and I knew which was the more important to me. I therefore wrote to Elizabeth before I set out for Dresden, expressing my grief at my aunt’s death and regretting that it would be impossible for me to attend the interment, dearly as I should have loved to do so. I also invited Elizabeth to come and stay with me. It would be a good thing to have her in the house: it had been taken for granted from our childhood that we would one day marry, and if this were made tactfully clear to Justine it would go some way to diluting that arrogance of hers. Besides, it was time I married. With so many more absorbing problems in my mind, I devoted little time to the running of the household, and it would be a good thing for the staff to have a woman in the place organizing such matters.
Now I was in a hurry to leave. There was no time to explain every detail to Paul, and in any case I felt it would be wiser not to tell him too much in advance.
“Better not touch our friend in the laboratory while I’m gone,” I said. “Let him rest in peace while he can.”
And then I left. Paul was bewildered by the speed of all this. If he thought to ask why I was going to Dresden, it was not until after I had gone.
The business took me longer than I had anticipated. I had to proceed from one little bit of bribery to another—and the more protracted the operation, the more danger there was of someone talking. The pomp surrounding the occasion did not help. One might almost have thought that a reigning monarch had died. At last, however, when the fuss had died down and the attention of the public turned from the dead Bardello to some new fad, I was able to accomplish my mission. At dead of night two men went out and returned with the hands of Bardello.
I hurried back to Switzerland.
I tried to imagine Paul’s face when I broke the news to him. But more than that, I tried to imagine the corpse in the tank and how very different it would look when these magnificent, sensitive hands had been grafted to its arms.
The last mile was the longest. I urged the coachman on. With a tiring journey behind me I was nevertheless eager to get to work at once. If it meant staying up all night I wanted to set things in train.
With the precious parcel under my arm I marched across the hall and threw open the door of the salon. I was very nearly tempted to unwrap the parcel and throw the hands down triumphantly before Paul. I was glad I had restrained myself, for he was not alone. A beautiful young woman was sitting by the window. As I burst in she was saying:
“Yes, I’ve come to live here. This is to be my home.”
“Live here?” gasped Paul. “But that’s . . .”
Then they both turned towards me.
“Victor.” Elizabeth rose and crossed the room. She was as graceful as I had predicted she would be. Her beauty had the fragile yet firm quality of fine porcelain, but whereas porcelain is fixed, set, hard-surfaced, she was alive and volatile.
“I’m glad you got here safely,” I said. We shook hands very formally. I fancy she expected me to kiss her cheek, but I was already thinking and moving beyond her. “Paul, you must come and see what I’ve got. A treasure, I assure you—a real treasure!”
Elizabeth fell back a step, disappointed. I gave her a quick smile and she tried to seem at ease. My social graces had perhaps suffered in the years of seclusion and devotion to the task in hand. With Justine I had needed no social graces. For this reason as well it would be good to have my cousin here. With Elizabeth I could learn again: she would, I flattered myself, find me a charming companion when I chose to be so.
But now there were more urgent demands on my time.
“We’ll see you at dinner, my dear,” I said.
Paul glanced at her as though unsure of his own responsibility—whether to stay and provide her with social chit-chat or whether to come with me.
I left him in no doubt. I said: “Shall we go to the laboratory, Paul?”
With an apologetic smile he left Elizabeth and followed me up the stairs. When we were in the laboratory I indicated that he should lock the door, and then I unwrapped the parcel.
“What about these? Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”
He started as the long, powerful fingers were revealed. Yet even as he stared at them there was a certain remoteness in his manner. He appeared to have something more important on his mind. But what could be more important than this?
“Where did you get them?” he asked abstractedly.
I told him, without giving too circumstantial an account of the methods I had employed. When I had finished he said:
“Victor, do you realize what this means?”
“It means,” I said, “that our friend in the tank will be reborn with the finest hands ever possessed by any man.”
“I was referring to the arrival of your cousin. We can’t continue with this experiment—not here, anyway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Elizabeth. She might find out.”
“What if she does?” I could see no cause for alarm in this.
“She’s young. Her mind will be incapable of standing up to such a shock. Victor, you don’t realize the horror of what you’re doing. At first I was blind to it myself.”
“And now?”
“While you were away I decided that I would not continue with this experiment. I hope I can convince you that I’m right, and make you change your mind, too.”
His chance of doing that was small. I tried to make him see reason. “In six months’ time you’ll rejoice in the fact that you helped me present this achievement to the world. You’ll become as famous as I will.”
“No, Victor,” he said. “Infamous. I won’t help you any more. And I beseech you to g
ive this up—if not for your own sake, then for the sake of that girl.”
It was evident that my delightful cousin had made a strong impression on him. I had not realized that he could be so susceptible. In an endeavor to shake him out of this mood I said:
“Come along, Paul—help me to graft these hands on. It will be fascinating to see how they take.”
He made no move to follow me to the tank. “Can’t you understand, I’m not going to help you any more. And I shall try to make Elizabeth leave here.”
He was really disappointingly naïve. With his bourgeois background, he could, of course, not understand how such matters were arranged in families like ours. Elizabeth would listen to me rather than to him, and she would certainly not leave here. There were some explanations which would soon have to be made to Paul; but at this moment I was in no mood for dissertations of that kind. I said:
“If you really mean that you’re not going to help me, you’d better leave me alone.”
He went to the door, then hesitated.
“Victor . . .”
“If I’m to work on my own,” I said, “I shan’t have time to spare for dinner. Every hour that’s wasted means a possible deterioration in these hands. Make my excuses to Elizabeth, will you?”
He went out. I took off my jacket and turned towards the bandaged shape in the tank. I half expected Paul to return. How could he possibly resist? But he didn’t come back.
I wondered what he and Elizabeth would find to talk about.
3
It took me the better part of two hours to make the first attachment and submerge it in the tank. The speeded-up revivification of the tissues brought about by the fluid would now establish a firmer growth, and in due course the magnetic process would stimulate the entire organism. But that must wait: there were many faults yet to be corrected in this body.
