Silence fell again, save for the steady march of their feet along the dripping monolite pavements and the freezing wind. Here and there, as they advanced, Workers appeared like phantoms and vanished again. Darkness and chaos were over the city. The real seat of the revolution lay underground, where Workers and Duty Officers alike had fled to escape the elements.
Eventually they reached the Controlling Building, and clambered up the steps into the wide hall. There was nobody in sight.
The main office door was closed, but not locked—just as Carfax had left it. Clarke could feel the probings of that deadly mind as he swung the door wide and stepped into the gloom of the great office. Abruptly something soft yet resistant slammed against his feet so that he stumbled, almost dropping the projector. Behind him he heard Brenda Charteris utter a gasp of sick horror.
Strewn across the floor were the twisted bodies of perhaps a dozen Workers, men and women, most of them still clutching weapons of some kind. As their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, Clarke’s party realised the grisly implications. Desperate Workers had tried to storm the Arbiter’s citadel, only to be forced to destroy one another by the Arbiter’s telepathic commands.
They could feel the same thing now.
“Concentrate against it, all of you!” Clarke ordered, and intense strain was evident even in his voice. “I have the power of five brains, but I am fighting twelve!”
Momentarily he could not get beyond the threshold of the room in which the Arbiter stood. Fear had the Workers in its grip as that incredible mind, the force of twelve brains in one, was fighting them, battering, flooding them with an insane desire to run to a window and jump.
In the space of two minutes every member of the party began to collapse. Brenda Charteris made a mighty struggle to combat the awful flow of power from the machine, but failing, she sank down unconscious upon the floor. Boyd Turner and the others followed suit rapidly.
Only Sherman Clarke remained standing, his feet a little apart, the projector held rigidly in front of him. His eyes burned with a queer inner fire, and down came his thick eyebrows into a sharp V. He took a step forward, jerkily and clumsily, as though with colossal effort...then another. Then his mind reacted to a sudden change in the thoughts of the Arbiter—fear!
The Arbiter had read his mind, knew the purpose of the equipment he carried with him. It struck then with all the devouring, inhuman mental power it possessed.
Clarke reeled backwards, anguish tearing through his skull.... Still clinging to the last shreds of consciousness, he continued his silent struggle against that flood of mental destruction, shaking visibly against the dim grey of the window in his titanic efforts. His face was streaming with perspiration. With a creeping, leaden movement his hand moved to the switch of the apparatus.
He dropped to one knee, gasping. The switch moved—Clarke fell his length on the floor as there was a faint spark in the darkness and a violet beam fanned outwards towards that metallic monstrosity. Instantly there was sound—an unholy cracking and creaking of a myriad interstices of matter unlocking themselves, the twisting and whirling of atomic orbits, the bending of sub-atomic matter itself into new planes.
The vast mind-power weakened, became terror-stricken. The metallic side-plates crumbled outwardly away from the Arbiter, lenses tinkled and smashed on the floor. The supporting pillars collapsed, and that hideous mind-sense went out like a fused bulb as with a smothered explosion the central brain pan gave way. As the Arbiter came down in metallic ruins, shards of metal and wiring were flung out like gunshot.
Clarke jerked with convulsive agony as his chest was transfixed by a flying fragment of metal. Through the mists of pain that assailed him as his life-blood seeped away, a languorous sense of hope suffused his mind.
He knew that he was dying. It was better, perhaps.... Men such as he had become were not yet for this world.
Humanity could rebuild. A new leader would emerge. That woman—what was her name? Iris Weigh? She could write for the people and—and show them what they ought to have. That architect would redesign the city. Differently. No more overburdening power.
Weakly Clarke’s mind reached across the room. The others lay there, scattered amongst the corpses of those who had come before them. But they were only unconscious. They still lived. For an instant Clarke’s mind touched the consciousness of Brenda Charteris. A sense of regret stole over him. She had loved him, then.
The emotion passed. Humanity remained—and that was all that mattered. And he—he would soon be with that cosmic consciousness he had only recently discovered....
It was very still and dark.
HE NEVER SLEPT
My own particular participation in that which follows is slight. Merely for the purpose of verification, should you desire it, I state that my name is Richard Finsbury, and that I am a Londoner born and bred. At any time you may reach me at the Royal College Hospital, London.
I am, in truth, merely the chronicler of a diary, left solely to my discretion by Dr. Jason Veldor, the renowned psychologist, and perhaps at one time the most sought-after men on mental troubles that ever graced the grey confines of London.
His diary presents a tale as bizarre and extraordinary as any I have yet encountered, but as I personally knew Dr. Veldor extremely well, had witnessed practically all his experiments, and knew him for what he was—an iron-willed, courageous, upright man—I do not for one moment dare to presume that he wrote a single word of falsehood. First let me relate the few events that led up to the final passing into my hands pf his amazing diary.
It was, as I remember, a bleak and miserable day in November when an urgent letter reached me at the College Hospital. It was from Veldor himself, whom I had seen only at infrequent intervals since I had studied medicine under him, and was, I think, his favourite pupil. Without hesitation, my work at that time not being of an exacting nature, I went to his home in Kensington. I remember, as I looked at the worn steps, thinking how many times I had gone up and down them in my days of study.
Walmsley, the manservant, let me in, and in a moment I was in Dr. Veldor’s cosy study, and gazing once more on that pleasant but compelling face.
He was almost bald and possessed a remarkably high forehead, while beneath it were his unforgettable, dark-blue, almost hypnotic eyes, magnified slightly by large, gold-rimmed glasses. The hooked, eagle-like nose, downwardly curved thin mouth, and outjutting undimpled chin, all betokened the man of dogmatism and great will power. I never once angered the doctor, nor do I think it would have been a very safe procedure to do so.
“Ah, Richard,” he said, using as always my Christian name, “I hope you will forgive me for upsetting your work with my letter, but really I have discovered something extremely interesting; indeed, I ventured to think quite unheard-of as yet in the annals of science.” He waved me to a chair and went on with hardly a pause. “You know, Richard, I have always looked upon you as something very close to a son. Your views and ideals are very closely allied to mine. You know that?” His big, magnetic eyes looked into mine.
“Of course, sir,” I answered, helping myself to a cigarette from the box he pushed across the paper-littered desk. “Everything you do is of the greatest interest to me. After all, not every young medical student in London can call the great Dr. Veldor his friend.”
He laughed slightly. “Forget my fame, Richard—forget everything save the fact that I am going to talk to you as man to man. I have great faith in you, my boy—faith that one day you will take up scientific medicine where I leave it off. It is because I may leave off a trifle sooner than is normal that I have sent for you.”
I started at that. “But, sir, you don’t mean that—”
He waved me into silence with a big, powerful hand. “I am going to undertake an experiment that may endanger my life, Richard. I am going to make an experiment which, if successful, will mean in the future a healthier and far less frightened humanity.”
“But if the experiment is so i
nimical to life, why can’t you find somebody else to experiment on?” I asked anxiously. “Somebody who is not famous, who is not so much needed as you are.”
The powerful chin expanded in width as he smiled grimly. “I am not afraid to do to myself what I would do to others,” he replied gravely, and looked at me solemnly for a space. Then, alert again: “Besides, I doubt if anybody else would be able to do what I have in mind. In case anything should happen to me, Richard, you will take sole possession of this diary here”—he laid his hand on a thick black volume at his elbow—“and the remainder of my scientific apparatus, money, et cetera, will be disposed of according to my will. You understand that?”
“Quite, sir, but I don’t like the way you’re talking. I don’t want to lose you!”
“You may not,” he answered slowly. “I can’t be sure,” and I silently marvelled at the cool way he deliberated his chances of surviving death. “In any case, sacrifice is always the keynote of scientific progress. To come to my point, Richard, I have for many years been very disgusted with the fact that all the human race—indeed every living organism—must waste a third of its life in sleep. Think what a race we’d be if we never slept!” His big eyes glowed strangely as he uttered the words.
I pondered on that. Certainly it was an unusual idea.
“Sleep and dreams are closely allied,” he went on, clasping his hands and looking at me broodingly. “We waste half our lives because we cannot control the dreams of our sleeping selves; we do not understand what use to put them to. There is a something beyond sleep, Richard, that I am going to unearth. I am going to explore a dream!”
“That sounds like a fairy tale, sir,” I ventured.
But he shook his great head. “Not a fairy tale, Richard—scientific fact. My aim is to find a way to end the need of sleep, and to determine thoroughly what happens during the period when the brain or the will no longer controls the movements of the body. I do not believe, like Freud, that dreams are suppressed desires, nor do I altogether concur with the views of Fortnum-Roscoe. It is my own belief that dreams are the experiences of another character, allied maybe by some other dimension, with one’s own three-dimensional consciousness. At will, or sometimes unbidden, these dream states—this other unknown self—controls the consciousness.
“Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous author, if you recollect, used to place himself in a condition of self-suggestion before he went to sleep. The resultant effects, dreams, were so vivid that many times they provided sequences in his books, You will find that fact in his book Across the Plains, Richard, if you are ever minded to read it. Very interesting. In other instances we have dreams occasioned by pure hypnotism, which are always more vivid than those of a more normal nature.
“Again, it seems to be the memory furthest from our waking thoughts, the one with the seemingly greatest gap from the mundane, that is the most vivid. That is a mystery that interests me, Richard. Always, though, there is some reason for a dream—some of the reasons quite natural, but others entirely unexplained. Whence come these sleep figments? And why should it be necessary to sleep in order to bring them into being?
“I am confident that they are but the manifestations of some other self, a self that is a real entity and yet untouchable from our waking dimension. An entity that exists in our waking hours in the guise of something subconscious—by which we might explain such things as sixth sense, intuition, and so forth—and in sleep as a dream. Richard, I am going to find out for myself.”
“Granting that you succeed, sir, how will this benefit the human race?” I asked.
“If the real source of a dream can be discovered, it can be uprooted or at least allayed in its intensity, and dreams and nightmares need no longer terrorize and impair the lives of some sleeping souls. A dream can, and does, kill at times. Again, I have solved how to stop sleep, without seeming injury, and if a continued spell of sleeplessness brings no untoward effects, I hope in time to make a sleepless race. The only thing I fear is that my delving into the unknown may bring about my death. There again, Richard, we have the evidence of that something—intuition, premonition, call it what you will. I have a strange feeling that one cannot look into the gulf without being destroyed. Don’t ask me why; I can’t explain it. On the other hand, it; is perhaps only my fancy,” he added in a quiet voice, but his tone did not deceive me.
“You say you have solved how to stop sleep?” I asked.
“Yes; that was not so difficult. Sleep is, of course, brought about by the clogging of the brain with waste and impure products. The real root of the whole trouble is insufficient or used-up oxygen in the blood. This impure blood, on reaching the brain, brings about a deadening effect, and a condition very much akin to a false death is brought about.
“The chemical compound I used to overcome the conditions contains two ingredients. One is the organic compound known as protein, pure protein, if I may use the term, altered and doctored by my own methods so that it makes up for the energy lost during the day’s activities, and gives a fresh supply of energy to the system. The other ingredient is my own discovery. It is a mineral substance containing a high percentage of oxygen in a quasi-gaseous form. This, when mixed with protein, produces a blue-looking liquid, and has the power of stopping all desire to sleep, without any consequent loss of mental power or nerve strain, as might be occasioned by a powerful drug or stimulant. I have called this stuff ‘Veldoris’.
“It has an incredible fascination,” he went on reminiscently, “like opium or cocaine in its attraction. That’s the only trouble. I have will enough to break my love for it—at present—but certainly something will have to the done to lessen its incredible potency before I offer it to the world. The weak-willed would very soon go under. Richard, you wouldn’t think I hadn’t slept for a week, would you? You wouldn’t think I’ve been working day and night for that time?”
This came as a surprise to me. He looked as fresh and active as he had always done, and I unhesitatingly told him so.
“So you see, Richard, Veldoris works perfectly. So much for that. My next move is a trifle more complicated. It consists of being asleep—yet awake. I have invented a machine that throws beams of various colours and merges them into one another by a slowly rotating disk of different-coloured glasses—a kind of vastly improved limelight.
“Now colours, as you know, under certain conditions can produce various mental effects, if you allow your will to be governed by them. An insidious green will make you feel sick in time; a restful, hazy heliotrope will make you feel contented and drowsy; a glaring red will keep you wide awake and turn you feverish—and so on. But a combination of all the colours of the spectrum, so to speak, will produce hypnosis—self-hypnosis—if you gaze into the combination long enough. Just the same as sound rhythm can kill you or raise you to heights of sheer, ungovernable ecstasy.
“In sound—although this has nothing to do with my apparatus—your heart unconsciously keeps time with rhythm. If you allowed yourself to be so governed, an organ striking a very deep note—and gradually becoming slower and slower—could kíll you. Your heart would stop. Hence the slowness of a funeral march—the ancients knew a thing or two, Richard! Hence also the gay swiftness of a dance band, that keeps your heart beating fast and makes you feel exhilarated. But I wander from my subject.
“The concentrated gazing into the swirling mass of colours I have devised produces in time a waking sleep. To all intents and purposes the will ceases to be centralized in the brain; no longer does it control the limbs. What happens is that the body does go to sleep, and the controlling brain also; but that something in the mind, the subconscious, or whatever you care to call it, keeps awake, partly by the action of Veldoris, and partly by the colour effects.
“Hence a dream becomes a waking reality, controlled entirely by the subconscious, brought from the normal hazy indefinability into sheer, concrete fact. Just like the somnambulist who walks along a cliff edge, yet whose controlling subconscious mind
is fixed upon something in his dream—something light years away from his mundane position—which makes him quite unable to recognize his deadly danger. Hence, as the fear of his danger is removed, so is the danger itself no longer imminent to him. He comes back safely.
“Have you ever thought, Richard, how few sleepwalkers meet their deaths? Well, tonight I am going to explore a dream. If I succeed, I shall return and try again and again until I have gathered enough information on the subject to find a way of ridding humanity of the plague of nightmares and so on. I shall communicate with you again in a week’s time. If you do not hear anything from me by then, Richard, come and look for me of your own accord. Here is the key to the front door, in case Walmsley should not be in or anything similar happens.”
He handed the key to me very solemnly. I was accustomed to his short dismissals and matter-of-fact way of ending a subject.
I left him shortly after that, much puzzled, and also worried lest I should lose him, for I loved him as a friend and counselor.
* * * *
Six days of the specified week passed by, and I heard nothing from him. Then on the sixth night I had a dream, a dream of such astounding vividness, so clear, so lifelike, that I woke up with a violent start, shaking in every limb. Distinctly I had seen Dr. Veldor, strangely changed somehow, gesticulating and waving his arms at me from some faintly lighted darkness. I heard his voice—but that also was unaccountably different from his normal tones, as also was his manner. He was reviling me, cursing me, screaming threats and abuses upon me. So awful was the force of his rage and anger, so menacing did he appear as he suddenly seemed to come toward me, I awoke.
I did not need anything to tell me that something was wrong. I threw on my clothes and tore downstairs into the hall of the house where I lodged. I had a questioning shout from my landlady and a dim vision of her—a round face topped with a nightcap peering round her door jamb—then I was out in the cold air of the London night. At full speed I streaked down the high roads, through alleyways and back streets, until at last, utterly breathless, I reached the doctor’s home.
Rule of the Brains Page 7
