The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

by John W. Campbell Jr.

  “Not a bit,” said Methuen. “I think my original theory was right: that the electrical resistance of the gaps between human neurons is already as low as it can be, so the Methuen injections won’t have any appreciable effect on a human being. Sorry, Johnny, but I’m afraid your boss won’t become any great genius as a result of trying a dose of his own medicine.”

  The Methuen treatment had raised Johnny’s intelligence from that of a normal black bear to that of—or more exactly to the equivalent of that of—a human being. It had enabled him to carry out those spectacular coups in the Virgin Islands and the Central Park Zoo. It had also worked on a number of other animals in the said zoo, with regrettable results.

  Johnny grumbled in his urso-American accent: “Stirr, I don’t sink it is smart to teach a crass when you are furr of zat stuff. You never know—”

  But they had arrived. The class comprised a handful of grave graduate students, on whom Johnny’s distraction factor had little effect.

  Ira Methuen was not a good lecturer. He put in too many uh’s and er’s, and tended to mumble. Besides, Psychobiology 100 was an elementary survey, and Johnny was pretty well up in the field himself. So he settled himself to a view of the Grove Street Cemetery across the street, and to melancholy reflections on the short life span of his species compared with that of men.

  “Ouch!”

  R. H. Wimpus, B.S., ‘68, jerked his backbone from its normally nonchalant arc into a quivering reflex curve. His eyes were wide with mute indignation.

  Methuen was saying: “—whereupon it was discovered that the… uh… paralysis of the pes resulting from excision of the corresponding motor area of the cortex was much more lasting among the Simiidae than among the other catarrhine primates; that it was more lasting among these than among the platyrrhines—Mr. Wimpus?”

  “Nothing,” said Wimpus. “I’m sorry.”

  “And that the platyrrhines, in turn, suffered more than the lemuroids and tarsioids. When—”

  “Unh!” Another graduate student jerked upright. While Methuen paused with his mouth open, a third man picked a small object off the floor and held it up.

  “Really, gentlemen,” said Methuen, “I thought you’d outgrown such amusements as shooting rubber bands at each other. As I was saying when—”

  Wimpus gave another grunt and jerk. He glared about him. Methuen tried to get his lecture going again. But, as rubber bands from nowhere continued to sting the necks and ears of the listeners, the classroom organization visibly disintegrated like a lump of sugar in a cup of weak tea.

  Johnny had put on his spectacles and was peering about the room. But he was no more successful than the others in locating the source of the bombardment.

  He slid off his chair and shuffled over to the light switch. The daylight through the windows left the rear end of the classroom dark. As soon as the lights went on, the source of the elastics was obvious. A couple of the graduates pounced on a small wooden box on the shelf beside the projector.

  The box gave out a faint whir, and spat rubber bands through a slit, one every few seconds. They brought it up and opened it on Methuen’s lecture table. Inside was a mass of machinery apparently made of the parts of a couple of alarm clocks and a lot of hand-whittled wooden cams and things.

  “My, my,” said Methuen. “A most ingenious contraption, isn’t it?”

  The machine ran down with a click. While they were still examining it, the bell rang.

  Methuen looked out the window. A September rain was coming up. Ira Methuen pulled on his topcoat and his rubbers and took his umbrella from the corner. He never wore a hat. He went out and headed down Prospect Street, Johnny padding behind.

  “Hi!” said a young man, a fat young man in need of a haircut. “Got any news for us, Professor Methuen?”

  “I’m afraid not, Bruce,” replied Methuen. “Unless you call Ford’s giant mouse news.”

  “What? What giant mouse?”

  “Dr. Ford has produced a three-hundred-pound mouse by orthogonal mutation. He had to alter its morphological characteristics—”

  “Its what?”

  “Its shape, to you. He had to alter it to make it possible for it to live—”

  “Where? Where is it?”

  “Osborn Labs. If—” But Bruce Inglehart was gone up the hill toward the science buildings. Methuen continued: “With no war on, and New Haven as dead a town as it always has been, they have to come to us for news, I suppose. Come on, Johnny. Getting garrulous in my old age.”

  A passing dog went crazy at the sight of Johnny, snarling and yelping. Johnny ignored it. They entered Woodbridge Hall.

  Dr. Wendell Cook, president of Yale University, had Methuen sent in at once. Johnny, excluded from the sanctum, went up to the president’s secretary. He stood up and put his paws on her desk. He leered—you have to see a bear leer to know how it is done—and said: “How about it, kid?”

  Miss Prescott, an unmistakable Boston spinster, smiled at him. “Suttinly, Johnny. Just a moment.” She finished typing a letter, opened a drawer, and took out a copy of Hecht’s “Fantazius Mallare.” This she gave Johnny. He curled up on the floor, adjusted his glasses, and read.

  After a while he looked up, saying: “Miss Prescott, I am halfway srough zis, and I stirr don’t see why zey cawr it obscene. I sink it is just durr. Can’t you get me a rearry dirty book?”

  “Well, really, Johnny, I don’t run a pornography shop, you know. Most people find that quite strong enough.”

  Johnny sighed. “Peopre get excited over ze funnies’ sings.”

  Meanwhile, Methuen was closeted with Cook and Dalrymple, the prospective endower, in another of those interminable and indecisive conferences. R. Hanscom Dalrymple looked like a statue that the sculptor had never gotten around to finishing. The only expression the steel chairman ever allowed himself was a canny, secretive smile. Cook and Methuen had a feeling he was playing them on the end of a long and well-knit fish line made of U. S. Federal Reserve notes. It was not because he wasn’t willing to part with the damned endowment, but because he enjoyed the sensation of power over these oh-so-educated men. And in the actual world, one doesn’t lose one’s temper and tell Croesus what to do with his loot. One says: “Yes, Mr. Dalrymple. My, my, that is a brilliant suggestion, Mr. Dalrymple! Why didn’t we think of it ourselves?” Cook and Methuen were both old hands at this game. Methuen, though otherwise he considered Wendell Cook a pompous ass, admired the president’s endowment-snagging ability. After all, wasn’t Yale University named after a retired merchant on the basis of a gift of five hundred and sixty-two pounds twelve shillings?

  “Say, Dr. Cook,” said Dalrymple, “why don’t you come over to the Taft and have lunch on me for a change? You, too, Professor Methuen.”

  The academics murmured their delight and pulled on their rubbers. On the way out Dalrymple paused to scratch Johnny behind the ears. Johnny put his book away, keeping the title on the cover out of sight, and restrained himself from snapping at the steel man’s hand. Dalrymple meant well enough, but Johnny did not like people to take such liberties with his person.

  So three men and a bear slopped down College Street. Cook paused now and then, ignoring the sprinkle, to make studied gestures toward one or another of the units of the great soufflé of Georgian and Collegiate Gothic architecture. He explained this and that. Dalrymple merely smiled his blank little smile.

  Johnny, plodding behind, was the first to notice that passing undergraduates were pausing to stare at the president’s feet. The word “feet” is meant literally. For Cook’s rubbers were rapidly changing into a pair of enormous pink bare feet.

  Cook himself was quite unconscious of it, until quite a group of undergraduates had collected. These gave forth the catarrhal snorts of men trying unsuccessfully not to laugh. By the time Cook had followed their stares and looked down, the metamorphosis was complete. That he should be startled was only natural. The feet were startling enough. His face gradually matched the feet i
n redness, making a cheerful note of color in the gray landscape.

  R. Hanscom Dalrymple lost his reserve for once. His howls did nothing to save prexy’s now-apoplectic face. Cook finally stooped and pulled off the rubbers. It transpired that the feet had been painted on the outside of the rubbers and covered over with lampblack. The rain had washed the lampblack off.

  Wendell Cook resumed his walk to the Hotel Taft in gloomy silence. He held the offensive rubbers between thumb and finger as if they were something unclean and loathsome. He wondered who had done this dastardly deed. There hadn’t been any undergraduates in his office for some days, but you never wanted to underestimate the ingenuity of undergraduates. He noticed that Ira Methuen was wearing rubbers of the same size and make as his own. But he put suspicion in that direction out of his mind before it had fully formed. Certainly Methuen wouldn’t play practical jokes with Dalrymple around, when he’d be the head of the new Department of Biophysics when—if—Dalrymple came through with the endowment.

  The next man to suspect that the Yale campus was undergoing a severe pixilation was John Dugan, the tall thin one of the two campus cops. He was passing Christ Church—which is so veddy high-church Episcopal that they refer to Charles I of England as St. Charles the Martyr—on his way to his lair in Phelps Tower. A still small voice spoke in his ear: “Beware, John Dugan! Your sins will find you out!”

  Dugan jumped and looked around. The voice repeated its message. There was nobody within fifty feet of Dugan. Moreover, he could not think of any really serious sins he had committed lately. The only people in sight were a few undergraduates and Professor Methuen’s educated black bear, trailing after his boss as usual. There was nothing for John Dugan to suspect but his own sanity.

  R. Hanscom Dalrymple was a bit surprised at the grim earnestness of the professors in putting away their respective shares of the James Pierpont dinner. They were staying the eternal gnaw of hunger that afflicts those who depend on a college commissary for sustenance. Many of them suspected a conspiracy among college cooks to see that the razor edge wasn’t taken off students’ and instructors’ intellects by overfeeding. They knew that conditions were much the same in most colleges.

  Dalrymple sipped his coffee and looked at his notes. Presently Cook would get up and say a few pleasant nothings. Then he would announce Dalrymple’s endowment, which was to be spent in building a Dalrymple Biophysical Laboratory and setting up a new department. Everybody would applaud and agree that biophysics had floated in the void between the domains of the departments of zoology, psychology, and the physiological sciences long enough. Then Dalrymple would get up and clear his throat and say—though in much more dignified language: “Shucks, fellas, it really isn’t nothing.”

  Dr. Wendell Cook duly got up, beamed out over the ranked shirt fronts, and said his pleasant nothings. The professors exchanged nervous looks when he showed signs of going off into his favorite oration, there-is-no-conflict-between-science-and-religion. They had heard it before.

  He was well launched into Version 3A of this homily, when he began to turn blue in the face. It was not the dark purplish-gray called loosely “blue” that appears on the faces of stranglees, but a bright, cheerful cobalt. Now, such a color is all very well in a painting of a ship sailing under a clear blue sky, or in the uniform of a movie-theater doorman. But it is distinctly out of place in the face of a college president. Or so felt the professors. They leaned this way and that, their boiled shirts bulging, popping and gaping as they did so, and whispered.

  Cook frowned and continued. He was observed to sniff the air as if he smelled something. Those at the speakers’ table detected a slight smell of acetone. But that seemed hardly an adequate explanation of the robin’s-egg hue of their prexy’s face. The color was now quite solid on the face proper. It ran up into the area where Cook’s hair would have been if he had had some. His collar showed a trace of it, too.

  Cook, on his part, had no idea of why the members of his audience were swaying in their seats like saplings in a gale and whispering. He thought it very rude of them. But his frowns had no effect. So presently he cut Version 3A short. He announced the endowment in concise, businesslike terms, and paused for the expected thunder of applause.

  There was none. To be exact, there was a feeble patter that nobody in his right mind would call a thunder of anything.

  Cook looked at R. Hanscom Dalrymple, hoping that the steel man would not be insulted. Dalrymple’s face showed nothing. Cook assumed that this was part of his general reserve. The truth was that Dalrymple was too curious about the blue face to notice the lack of applause. When Cook introduced him to the audience, it took him some seconds to pull himself together.

  He started rather lamely: “Gentlemen and members of the Yale faculty… uh… I mean, of course, you’re all gentlemen… I am reminded of a story about the poultry farmer who got married—I mean, I’m not reminded of that story, but the one about the divinity student who died and went to—” Here Dalrymple caught the eye of the dean of the divinity school. He tacked again: “Maybe I’d… uh… better tell the one about the Scotchman who got lost on his way home and—”

  It was not a bad story, as such things go. But it got practically no laughter. Instead, the professors began swaying, like a roomful of boiled-shirted Eastern ascetics at their prayers, and whispering again.

  Dalrymple could put two and two together. He leaned over and hissed into Cook’s ear: “Is there anything wrong with me?”

  “Yes, your face has turned green.”

  “Green?”

  “Bright green. Like grass. Nice young grass.”

  “Well, you might like to know that yours is blue.”

  Both men felt their faces. There was no doubt; they were masked with coatings of some sort of paint, still wet.

  Dalrymple whispered: “What kind of gag is this?”

  “I don’t know. Better finish your speech.”

  Dalrymple tried. But his thoughts were scattered beyond recovery. He made a few remarks about how glad he was to be there amid the elms and ivy and traditions of old Eli, and sat down. His face looked rougher-hewn than ever. If a joke had been played on him—well, he hadn’t signed any checks yet.

  The lieutenant governor of the State of Connecticut was next on the list. Cook shot a question at him. He mumbled: “But if I’m going to turn a funny color when I get up—”

  The question of whether his honor should speak was never satisfactorily settled. For at that moment a thing appeared on one end of the speakers’ table. It was a beast the size of a St. Bernard. It looked rather the way a common bat would look if, instead of wings, it had arms with disk-shaped pads on the ends of the fingers. Its eyes were as big around as luncheon plates.

  There was commotion. The speaker sitting nearest the thing fell over backward. The lieutenant governor crossed himself. An English zoologist put on his glasses and said: “By Jove, a spectral tarsier! But a bit large, what?”

  A natural-sized tarsier would fit in your hand comfortably, and is rather cute if a bit spooky. But a tarsier the size of this one is not the kind of thing one can glance at and then go on reading the adventures of Alley Oop. It breaks one’s train of thought. It disconcerts one. It may give one the screaming meemies.

  This tarsier walked gravely down the twenty feet of table. The diners were too busy going away from there to observe that it upset no tumblers and kicked no ashtrays about; that it was, in fact, slightly transparent. At the other end of the table it vanished.

  Johnny Black’s curiosity wrestled with his better judgment. His curiosity told him that all these odd happenings had taken place in the presence of Ira Methuen. Therefore, Ira Methuen was at least a promising suspect. “So what?” said his better judgment. “He’s the only man you have a real affection for. If you learned that he was the pixie in the case, you wouldn’t expose him, would you? Better keep your muzzle out of this.”

  But in the end his curiosity won, as usual. The wonder was that h
is better judgment kept on trying.

  He got hold of Bruce Inglehart. The young reporter had a reputation for discretion.

  Johnny explained: “He gave himserf ze Messuen treatment—you know, ze spinar injection—to see what it would do to a man. Zat was a week ago. Should have worked by now. But he says it had no effec’. Maybe not. But day after ze dose, awr zese sings start happening. Very eraborate jokes. Kind a crazy scientific genius would do. If it’s him, I mus’ stop him before he makes rear troubre. You wirr he’p me?”

  “Sure, Johnny. Shake on it.” Johnny extended his paw.

  It was two nights later that Durfee Hall caught fire. Yale had been discussing the erasure of this singularly ugly and useless building for forty years. It had been vacant for some time, except for the bursar’s office in the basement.

  About ten o’clock an undergraduate noticed little red tongues of flame crawling up the roof. He gave the alarm at once. The New Haven fire department was not to be blamed for the fact that the fire spread as fast as if the building had been soaked in kerosene. By the time they, and about a thousand spectators, had arrived, the whole center of the building was going up with a fine roar and crackle. The assistant bursar bravely dashed into the building and reappeared with an armful of papers, which later turned out to be a pile of quite useless examination forms. The fire department squirted enough water onto the burning section to put out Mount Vesuvius. Some of them climbed ladders at the ends of the building to chop holes in the roof.

  The water seemed to have no effect. So the fire department called for some more apparatus, connected up more hoses, and squirted more water. The undergraduates yelled:

  “Rah, rah, fire department! Rah, rah, fire! Go get ‘em, department! Hold that line, fire!”

  Johnny Black bumped into Bruce Inglehart, who was dodging about in the crowd with a pad and pencil, trying to get information for his New Haven Courier. Inglehart asked Johnny whether he knew anything.