A Century of Science Fiction

by Damon Knight (ed. )

  The more I thought of it, the more it seemed reasonable to me to hope, and the more my resolution hardened. The day came when it was unshakable, when I confided it to my parents. Neither one nor the other understood much of it, but in the end both gave in to repeated entreaties: I obtained permission to go to Amsterdam, free to return if fortune should not favor me.

  One morning, I left.

  6.

  From Zwartendam to Amsterdam is a matter of a hundred kilometers or thereabouts. I covered that distance easily in two hours, without any other adventure than the extreme surprise of those going and coming to see me run so swiftly, and a few crowds at the edges of the villages and towns I skirted. To make sure of my direction, I spoke two or three times to solitary old people. My sense of orientation, which is excellent, did the rest.

  It was about nine o’clock when I reached Amsterdam. I entered the great city resolutely and walked along its beautiful, dreaming canals, where quiet merchant fleets dwell. I did not attract as much attention as I had feared. I walked quickly, among busy people, enduring here and there the gibes of some young street Arabs. Nevertheless, I did not decide to stop. I wandered here and there through the city, until at last I resolved to enter a tavern on one of the quays of the Heerengracht. It was a peaceful spot; the magnificent canal stretched, full of life, between cool rows of trees; and among the Moedigen which I saw moving about on its banks it seemed to me that I perceived a new species. After some hesitation, I crossed the sill of the tavern, and addressing myself to the publican as slowly as I could, I begged him to be kind enough to direct me to a hospital.

  The landlord looked at me with amazement, suspicion and curiosity; took his huge pipe out of his mouth, put it back in after several attempts, and at last said, “You’re from the colonies, I suppose?”

  Since it was perfectly useless to contradict him, I answered, “Just so!”

  He seemed delighted at his own shrewdness. He asked me another question: “Maybe you come from that part of Borneo where no one has ever been?”

  “Exactly right!”

  I had spoken too swiftly: his eyes grew round.

  “Exactly right,” I repeated more slowly.

  The landlord smiled with satisfaction. “You can hardly speak Dutch, can you? So, it’s a hospital you want. No doubt you’re sick?”

  “Yes.”

  Patrons were gathering around. It was whispered already that I was an anthropophagus from Borneo; nevertheless, they looked at me with much more curiosity than aversion. People were running in from the street. I became nervous and uneasy. I kept my composure nonetheless and said, coughing, “I am very sick!”

  “Just like the monkeys from that country,” said a very fat man benevolently. “The Netherlands kills them!”

  “What a funny skin!” added another.

  “And how does he see?” asked a third, pointing to my eyes.

  The ring moved closer, encircling me with a hundred curious stares, and still newcomers were crowding into the room.

  “How tall he is!”

  In truth, I was a full head taller than the biggest of them.

  “And thin!”

  “This anthropophagy doesn’t seem to nourish them very well!”

  Not all the voices were spiteful. A few sympathetic persons protected me:

  “Don’t crowd so—he’s sick!”

  “Come, friend, courage!” said the fat man, remarking my nervousness. “I’ll lead you to a hospital myself.”

  He took me by the arm and set about elbowing the crowd aside, calling, “Way for an invalid!”

  Dutch crowds are not very fierce. They let us pass, but they went with us. We walked along the canal, followed by a compact multitude, and people cried out, “It’s a cannibal from Borneo!”

  At length we reached a hospital. It was the visiting hour. I was taken to an intern, a young man with blue spectacles, who greeted me peevishly. My companion said to him, “He’s a savage from the colonies.”

  “What, a savage!” cried the other.

  He took off his spectacles to look at me. Surprise held him motionless for a moment. He asked me brusquely, “Can you see?”

  “I see very well.”

  I had spoken too swiftly.

  “It’s his accent,” said the fat man proudly. “Once more, friend.”

  I repeated it and made myself understood.

  “Those aren’t human eyes,” murmured the student. “And the color! Is that the color of your race?”

  Then I said, with a terrible effort to slow myself down, “I have come to show myself to a scientist.”

  “Then you’re not ill?”

  “No.”

  “And you come from Borneo?”

  “No.” .

  “Where are you from, then?”

  “From Zwartendam, near Duisburg.”

  “Why, then, does this man claim you’re from Borneo?” “I didn’t want to contradict him.”

  “And you wish to see a scientist?”

  “Yes ”

  “Why?”

  ‘To be studied.”

  “So as to earn money?”

  “No, for nothing.”

  “You’re not a pauper? A beggar?”

  “No!”

  “What makes you want to be studied?”

  “My constitution—”

  But again, in spite of my efforts, I had spoken too swiftly. I had to repeat myself.

  “Are you sure you can see me?” he asked, staring at me. “Your eyes are like horn.”

  “I see very well.”

  And, moving to left and right, I snatched things up, put them down, threw them in the air and caught them again. “Extraordinary!” said the young man.

  His softened voice, almost friendly, filled me with hope. “See here,” he said at last, “I really think Dr. van den Heuvel might be interested in your case. I’ll go and inform him. Wait in the next room. And, by the way—I forgot—you’re not ill, after all?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Good. Wait—go in there. The doctor won’t be long.” I found myself seated among monsters preserved in alcohol: fetuses, infants with bestial shapes, colossal batrachians, vaguely anthropomorphic saurians.

  This is well chosen for my waiting room, I thought. Am I not a candidate for one of these brandy-filled sepulchers?

  7.

  When Dr. van den Heuvel appeared, emotion overcame me. I had the thrill of the Promised Land—the joy of reaching it; the dread of being banished. The doctor, with his great bald forehead, the analyst’s penetrating look, the mouth soft and yet stubborn, examined me in silence. As always, my excessive thinness, my great stature, my horny eyes, my violet color, caused him astonishment.

  “You say you wish to be studied?” he asked at length.

  I answered forcefully, almost violently, “Yes!”

  He smiled with an approving air and asked me the usual question: “Do you see all right, with those eyes?”

  “Very well. I can even see through wood, clouds—”

  But I had spoken too fast. He glanced at me uneasily. I began again, sweating great drops: “I can even see through wood, clouds—”

  “Really! That would be extraordinary. Well, then! What do you see through the door there?” He pointed to a closed door.

  “A big library with windows ... a carved table . . .” “Really!” he repeated, stunned.

  My breast swelled; a deep stillness entered my soul.

  The scientist remained silent for a few seconds. Then: “You speak with some difficulty.”

  “Otherwise I should speak too rapidly! I cannot speak slowly.”

  “Well, then, speak a little as you do naturally.” Accordingly I told him the story of my entry into Amsterdam. He listened to me with an extreme attention, an air of intelligent observation, which I had never before encountered among my fellows. He understood nothing of what I said, but he showed the keenness of his intellect.

  “If I am not mistaken, you spe
ak fifteen to twenty syllables a second, that is to say three or four times more than the human ear can distinguish. Your voice, in addition, is much higher than anything I have ever heard in the way of human voices. Your excessively rapid gestures are well suited to your speech. Your whole constitution is probably more rapid than ours.”

  “I run,” I said, “faster than a greyhound. I write—”

  “Ah!” he interrupted. “Let us see your writing.”

  I scrawled some words on a tablet which he offered me, the first few fairly legible, the rest more and more scrambled, abbreviated.

  “Perfect!” he said, and a certain pleasure was mingled with his surprise. “I really think I must congratulate myself on this meeting. Certainly it should be very interesting to study you.”

  “It is my dearest, my only, desire!”

  “And mine, naturally. Science . . .”

  He seemed preoccupied, musing. He finished by saying, “If only we could find an easy way of communication.”

  He walked back and forth, his brows knotted. Suddenly: “What a dolt I am! You must learn shorthand, of course! Hm! . . . Hm!” A cheerful expression spread over his face. “And I’ve forgotten the phonograph—the perfect confidant! All that’s needed is to revolve it more slowly in the reproduction than in the recording. It’s agreed: you shall stay with me while you are in Amsterdam!” ‘

  The joy of a fulfilled vocation, the delight of ceasing to spend vain and sterile days! Aware of the intelligent personality of the doctor, against this scientific background, I felt a delicious well-being; the melancholy of my spiritual solitude, the sorrow for my lost talents, the pariah’s long misery that had weighed me down for so many years, all vanished, evaporated in the sensation of a new life, a real life, a saved destiny!

  8.

  Beginning the following day, the doctor made all the necessary arrangements. He wrote to my parents; he sent me to a professor of stenography and obtained some phonographs. As he was quite rich and entirely devoted to science, there was no experiment which he could not undertake, and my vision, my hearing, my musculature, the color of my skin, were submitted to scrupulous investigations, from which he drew more and more enthusiasm, crying, “This verges on the miraculous!”

  I very well understood, after the first few days, how important it was to go about things methodically—from the simple to the complex, from the slightly abnormal to the wonderfully abnormal. Thus I had recourse to a little legerdemain, of which I made no secret to the doctor: that is, I revealed my abilities to him only one at a time.

  The quickness of my perceptions and movements drew his attention first. He was able to convince himself that the subtlety of my hearing was in proportion to the swiftness of my speech. Graduated trials of the most fugitive sounds, which I imitated with ease, and the words of ten or fifteen persons all talking at once, which I distinguished perfectly, demonstrated this point beyond question. My vision proved no less swift; comparative tests between my ability to resolve the movement of a galloping horse, or an insect in flight, and the same ability of an apparatus for taking instantaneous photographs, proved all in favor of my eye.

  As for perceptions of ordinary things, simultaneous movements of a group of people, of children playing, the motion of machines, bits of rubble thrown in the air or little balls tossed into an alley, to be counted in flight—they amazed the doctor’s family and friends.

  My running in the big garden, my twenty-meter jumps, my instantaneous swiftness to pick up objects or put them back, were admired still more, not by the doctor, but by those around him. And it was an ever renewed pleasure for the wife and children of my host, while walking in the fields, to see me outstrip a horseman at full gallop or follow the flight of any swallow; in truth, there was no thoroughbred but I could give it a start of two-thirds the distance, whatever it might be, nor any bird I could not easily overtake.

  As for the doctor, more and more satisfied with the results of his experiments, he described me thus: “A human being, endowed in all his movements with a swiftness incomparably superior, not merely to that of other humans, but also to that of all known animals. This swiftness, found in the most minute constituents of his body as well as in the whole organism, makes him an entity so distinct from the remainder of creation that he merits a special place in the animal kingdom for himself alone. As for the curious structure of his eyes, as well as the skin’s violet color, these must be considered simply the earmarks of this special condition.”

  Tests being made of my muscular system, it proved in no way remarkable, unless for its excessive leanness. Neither did my ears yield any particular information; nor, for that matter, did my skin—except, of course, for its pigmentation. As for my dark hair, a purplish black in color, it was fine as spiderweb, and the doctor made a minute examination of it.

  “One would need to dissect you!” he often told me, laughing.

  Thus time passed easily. I had quickly learned to write in shorthand, thanks to my intense desire and to the natural aptitude I showed for this method of rapid transcription, into which, by the way, I introduced several new abbreviations. I began to make notes, which my stenographer transcribed; for the rest, we had phonographs built, according to the doctor’s special design, which proved perfectly suited to reproduce my voice at a lower speed.

  At length my host’s confidence in me became complete. During the first few weeks he had not been able to avoid the suspicion—a very natural one—that my peculiar abilities might be accompanied by some mental abnormality, some cerebral derangement. This anxiety once put aside, our relations became perfectly cordial, and I think, as fascinating for one as for the other.

  We made analytic tests of my ability to see through a great number of “opaque” substances; and of the dark coloration which water, glass or quartz takes on for me at certain thicknesses. It will be recalled that I can see clearly through wood, leaves, clouds and many other substances; that I can barely make out the bottom of a pool of water half a meter deep; and that a window, though transparent, is less so to me than to the average person and has a rather dark color. A thick piece of glass appears blackish to me. The doctor convinced himself at leisure of all these singularities—astonished above all to see me make out the stars on cloudy nights.

  Only then did I begin to tell him that colors too present themselves differently to me. Experience established beyond doubt that red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo are perfectly invisible to me, like infrared or ultraviolet to a normal eye. On the other hand, I was able to show that I perceive violet, and beyond violet a range of colors—a spectrum at least double that which extends from the red to the violet.*

  * Quartz gives me a spectrum of about eight colors: the longest violet and the seven succeeding colors in the ultraviolet. But there remain about eight more colors which are not refracted by quartz, and which are refracted more or less by other substances.

  This amazed the doctor more than all the rest. His study of it was long and painstaking; it was conducted, besides, with enormous cunning. In this accomplished experimenter’s hands, it became the source of subtle discoveries in the order of sciences as they are ranked by humanity; it gave him the key to far-ranging phenomena of magnetism, of chemical affinities, of induction; it guided him toward new conceptions of physiology. To know that a given metal shows a series of unknown tints, variable according to the pressure, the temperature, the electric charge, that the most rarefied gases have distinct colors, even at small depths; to learn of the infinite tonal richness of objects which appear more or less black, whereas they present a more magnificent spectrum in the ultraviolet than that of all known colors; to know, finally, the possible variations in unknown hues of an electric circuit, the bark of a tree, the skin of a man, in a day, an hour, a minute—the use that an ingenious scientist might make of such ideas can readily be imagined.

  We worked patiently for a whole year without my mentioning the Moedigen. I wished to convince my host absolutely, give him coun
tless proofs of my visual faculties, before daring the supreme confidence. At length, the time came when I felt I could reveal everything.

  9.

  It happened in a mild autumn full of clouds, which rolled across the vault of the sky for a week without shedding a drop of rain. One morning van den Heuvel and I were walking in the garden. The doctor was silent, completely absorbed in his speculations, of which I was the principal subject. At the far end, he began to speak:

  “It’s a nice thing to dream about, anyhow: to see through clouds, pierce through to the ether, whereas we, blind as we are . . .”

  “If the sky were all I saw!” I answered.

  “Oh, yes—the whole world, so different . . .”

  “Much more different even than I’ve told you!”

  “How’s that?” he cried with an avid curiosity. “Have you been hiding something from me?”

  “The most important thing!”

  He stood facing me, staring at me fixedly, in real distress, in which some element of the mystical seemed to be blended.

  “Yes, the most important thing!”

  We had come near the house, and I dashed in to ask for a phonograph. The instrument that was brought to me was an advanced model, highly perfected by my friend, and could record a long speech; the servant put it down on the stone table where the doctor and his family took coffee on mild summer evenings. A miracle of exact, fine construction, the device lent itself admirably to recording casual talks. Our dialogue went on, therefore, almost like an ordinary conversation.

  “Yes, I’ve hidden the main thing from you, because I wanted your complete confidence first—and even now, after all the discoveries you’ve made about my organism, I am afraid you won’t find it easy to believe me, at least to begin with.”