Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy, and Horror

by David Henry Keller

  The majority believed that the treatment was highly tonic, to a great degree stimulative and restorative, but it could not be any thing permanent; and the marked improvement could only be considered as a temporary change. Only the future could determine whether other doses of the serum would be equally potent. All felt that nothing but benefit had resulted from the first dose, but several raised the point that it might result in drug addiction. Would the individual be able to live without a constantly increasing dose?

  The President went back to Washington, met with his Cabinet, and, as a result of that conference, invited one hundred of the leaders of American politics to come to Washington. This list included Senators, Representatives, Governors, Mayors of seven of the largest cities, and six of the silent advisors of the Administration. The selection was carefully made. Not a man was invited who was not in absolute control of his district, and not one of the hundred was in good health. They ruled now; but in ten years the majority would be dead, merely historical names fast passing into oblivion.

  The invitation was carefully worded. The President invited them to meet with him to consider a matter important to the economic welfare of the Nation. Up to the time he began to address them, the majority of his guests believed that the subject to be discussed was purely of a financial nature. He lost no time in telling them the real reason.

  The meeting was held in the Green Room of the White House. Present were the President, his Cabinet, Vice President, the one hundred invited conferees, and Biddle, the man of mystery.

  "You have all been reading," began the President, "of the work done at Farview Prison, Ohio, by the Governor of that State. Over fourteen hundred prisoners were given a single dose of a serum, and the effect on their general health and mentality studied by a carefully selected corps of experts. As you know, I made a trip to Farview Prison, and personally investigated this experiment. As a result, I conferred with the inventor of this serum, Mr. Biddle, and secured from him a promise that he would neither perform any more mass experiments, nor capitalize his discovery till I had a chance to consider it from a national standpoint. It appears that the maximum improvement is reached in thirty days following the giving of the serum. My thought was that one month from today I would call a special session of Congress to provide for the control of this discovery, provided we can make satisfactory arrangements with its owner. Up to the present time, every great discovery leading to improvement of the lives of our people has passed into the control of private corporations. I am told that, for three generations, the obstetrical forceps remained the secret of one family, and during that time, thousands of women died in childbirth who would have been saved had every physician known the use of the forceps. Steam, electricity, the telegraph, telephone, and radio, are all controlled and operated by private capital. Insulin was given to the diabetics of the world by its discoverers, but that is one of the few exceptions to the rule.

  "I am going to bring the entire problem to the attention of Congress. In the meantime, it is of importance to us, as leaders of national thought, to have a first hand observation of the use of the new drug and its powers. Only by this method can we properly determine the matters pertaining to its universal use in this nation. I have asked you here, not only because you are leaders of your communities and can sway public opinion, but also because I have reason to feel that you are all sick men. My advisers tell me that few of the men in this room will be alive at the expiration of ten years. Thus you are admirable subjects for demonstrating the power of this drug. Mr. Biddle has everything ready to give all of you an intravenous injection. I am not offering you something I am afraid of myself; I am not asking you to do a thing I will not do.

  "Gentlemen, I am giving you a secret that, unless something is done soon, will no longer be a secret. Grant died of cancer, Cleveland was operated on for cancer, and I have been treated by radium for over a year for cancer. It has been a discouraging year. A week ago, my medical advisers told me that, at the most, I would die in six months. At Farview I saw a case similar to mine who was considered to be completely cured thirty days after he received one dose of the serum.

  "You are all sick men. I am not asking you to give the diagnosis. This is going to be a gift to you, and not a cold-blooded experiment. You know what is wrong, and you will know if you are benefited. I am suffering from cancer, and I am going to ask Mr. Biddle to give me the first injection. I am going to have him give it to me in front of you. There will not be, as far as we are concerned, any secrecy. After I am treated, I am going to have a dose given to my dear friend, the Vice President. After that, the line forms on the left. You can take it or leave it. Think it over, talk it over, come to a decision. All I ask of you is a gentleman's promise of secrecy. It will not help the stock market to know that I have cancer, and that the Vice President has angina pectoris and may die at any moment. Mr. Biddle, will you proceed? Which arm?"

  There was an air of resistance in the group. Whisperings of disapproval and negativeness. Ignorance of medical matters made the average man fear the procedure. The thought of allowing an unknown drug to be introduced into the veins was a difficult one to face. Biddle had given the serum to the President and Vice President, but no one stepped forward to be the third. Suddenly, a little dog walked slowly up to the table leading a blind man. The dog was a seeing friend; the man, Goresome, the sightless leader of Montana.

  "Was there a blind man among those convicts?" he asked.

  "There was," Biddle answered.

  "What happened to him?"

  "I will answer that," interrupted the President. "I saw the man. I talked with the eye specialist who studied his case. He had perfect vision by the end of twenty days."

  "That is enough," replied Goresome. "This little guide of mine kept urging me to move. For twelve years he has guided me, and not made one mistake. I was born blind. I would like to see the sunshine before I die. Give me the needle."

  "No man from the West has any more courage than a New Yorker," exclaimed a Senator from that State. "I have been only half a man since I had my stroke. I want to be the next man after Goresome."

  That started a general movement. At the end, only six men remained untreated. Silent, critical, cool, determined, they refused to be swayed by the group movement.

  "Come back to Washington at the end of thirty days, Gentlemen," concluded the President, "and let us at that time determine what is best for the Nation."

  "One minute, Mr. President," shouted one of the untreated six. "What does Mr. Biddle get out of this?"

  "You answer that, Mr. Biddle," whispered the President.

  "Nothing!" said Biddle. "If the serum is of any value, I am willing to give it to the nation."

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "I have a sick son."

  "Have you given him the serum? Have you taken it yourself?"

  "The answer to both questions is NO."

  "Why?"

  "I do not care to discuss that. It is personal."

  "Are you sure you know what the serum will do?"

  "No."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I mean that I am not sure of all it will do. I only know a part of its power."

  "Be honest with us. You say it makes the blind see, the criminal an honest man; it cures cancer, heart disease, and every disease man can have. You admit that. If it can do all that, what else can it be asked to do? What other powers do you think it might have?"

  "I do not know."

  "Have you any suspicions?"

  "Yes, but I will not say what they are. Anything else?"

  "No. You have said enough."

  "Just one word more. Gentlemen," said the President. "If Congress, in the special session, passes the legislation I will ask for, Mr. Biddle has promised to address a joint session of the Senate and the House, and at that time explain the theory of the serum and give the formula to a selected group of scientists and physicians. He tells me that it is easily and cheaply made. He assures me
that he wishes to make a gift of it to the nation. But he feels that its general use must be safeguarded by wise and effective laws. I want to thank those of you who have helped me by personally giving Mr. Biddle a chance to demonstrate the merits of his serum. I am not in any way blaming the six gentlemen who refused to experiment with an unknown drug. Good night, and good luck to all of you."

  THE SIX CONSPIRATORS

  THE SIX who had refused to take the serum met that night in a Baltimore Hotel. It would be interesting if it could be written into the record that these six were powerful but corrupt politicians, that they were the recipients of large sums from the racketeers of the underworld, that they saw in the serum of Biddle the destruction of all forms of vice. But such was not the case.

  The six men were clean cut, respectable, hard-headed business men who considered political office simply as a necessary adjunct to their business. They were the majority stockholders in some of the largest corporations in the United States, and their main interests were life insurance, accident insurance, drug manufacturing, bonding hospitals, and the higher education of the youth of America. One of them was the president of a large university.

  The reason for the meeting was not too much disbelief in the experiments of Biddle, but too great a belief. They saw, perhaps more clearly than any other six men in America, what the general use of his serum would result in. They sat around a table with their coats off and their shirt sleeves rolled up. They wanted to think.

  The University man started the discussion: "I will imagine that I represent the higher education, not only of one university, but of the nation. We pay much of our expenses from the income on our endowments. That money is invested mainly in life insurance companies and railroads. The railroads have been hard hit. If the life insurance companies collapse, every college in America will have to close. There would hardly be enough money to pay the janitors, let alone the professors. I am not going to do your thinking for you, but I am going to ask each of you to imagine what effect the general use of the Biddle Serum will have on the business of the life insurance companies. Also the companies who are doing accident insurance.

  "And here is the second thing I ask you to think about. What two departments of every university are the best attended after the plain A.B. or B.S. groups? The answer is law and medicine. Why do our young men study law and medicine? Because they expect to make a living. Now one more question: Suppose the Biddle Serum works the way the inventor thinks it will, what will happen to the practice of law and medicine?

  "I do not like to admit it, but the practice of law depends on the weaknesses of men's souls, and the practice of medicine depends on the weaknesses of their bodies. That must be evident to all of us. There are over one hundred and forty million persons in the United States, and every day millions of them break some law and have to have the help of lawyers, and every day millions of them break some law of health and have to appeal to the medical profession. I tell you that thirty days after the Biddle Serum is given to all of these people, the income of these two professions will cease, and the lawyers and doctors will be on the streets selling apples and holding out tin cups for sweet charity. No one will want to be a student of these professions. Our law and medical schools will close their doors. Who will want to study medicine for ten years at the cost of fifteen thousand dollars when any disease can be cured by a single injection of a simple serum that can be made by the barrel by any manufacturing chemist? The millions invested in our hospitals will not yield one cent of income. Every drug company in America will go out of business over night. There will be no more surgical instruments sold. It looks bad to me."

  The other five remained in stolid, stodgy silence. At last Winston Manning almost cracked the spell of quiet thinking. He had been Secretary of the Treasury under a former President. He was said to be one of the ten richest men in America.

  "I guess that is all so. At least, the conclusions are correct once the premises are granted. There is another thing that is disturbing me more than the tottering of our universities.

  "Our Government is essentially one that is ruled by the classes for the masses. It is highly political. Ever since it was founded, the common people have supported it in taxes, and the rulers have lived on those taxes. At times, the farmer, the little laborer, the poor white collar man, have had a hard time to.get along; but so far they have not done much because they have had no great and outstanding leadership. If they had the right kind of leaders, they would tear the present political machinery to pieces; and out of the ruins they would build a government that was sympathetic to the little man, the forgotten man, who does little except work like a dog, live as best he can, and pay taxes.

  "Keep that in mind. For the time being, forget the cases of cancer and blindness and kidney disease that are said to have been cured by the Biddle Serum. Think what it has done to the souls of the people who have taken that serum, think of the changes it has made in their personality. Take the case of the taxi dancer in New York City. Of course, the Purple Flash did not give her right name, but I bet the facts concerning her are absolutely true. Then consider the reports of the psychologists and sociologists who studied those fourteen hundred convicts in Farview. Take the simple statement of the hard boiled Warden. Take the strong words he gave to the press. 'I have known many of these men for years. Since the giving of the serum, they have changed so for the better that I would trust any of them in any way. I am seriously considering approaching the Governor of Ohio with the suggestion that these men be released from prison and given one more chance to rehabilitate themselves.' Does it not seem that in some way this serum enables men to think more clearly, to live more cleanly, to follow more accurately the teaching of the Golden Rule?

  "Today you saw over a hundred of the leading politicians in the United States step up and take that serum. I know those men. You know them. Outside of Welfare Watkins, who is an emotional, idealistic, assinine sort of a person, I would not trust one of that bunch with a five cent piece. They would take the pennies from a dead man's eye, and rob a starving infant of his bottle of milk. They have had charge of the Government Cow for years, and they have milked that cow dry. They know every trick to deceive and rob the public. And in their way, they are as criminal as the men of Farview ever dreamed of being, only they were too smart to be caught.

  "They took the serum. The President was smart. He wants to come up for another term. He thinks that if he gives the populace free health they will vote for him. He never said a word to those men about curing their souls, but he was very anxious to give them healthy bodies, so they could repay him with their gratitude. Perhaps they will. He may have overlooked what the damned drug would do to their souls. But I tell you this: if the serum works on those politicians in the same way it worked on those criminals, they will come back to Congress representing the common people, and having the interests of the forgotten man at heart; and at the next election both the Democratic and the Republican Parties will be killed, and the country will cease to have a political rule, but will be governed solely in the interests of the people. That will mean the death of every large corporation in America. Laugh about that if you can."

  Again the sextette remained quiet. At last, a Bishop broke the silence. He was a combination of priest and politician, and once had swayed a national election by an appeal to religious prejudice.

  "Biddle knows more about this serum than he is saying," the clergyman whispered. "You have talked about the fall of universities and political parties, but there is something more serious. Suppose he is right in his claim of being able to cure the bodies of mankind? Suppose the sick became well and the well stay well? How are people going to die? Are they going to die? What is going to happen if they don't die? Every religion in the world is based on the fear and hope of eternity—the fear of Hell, and the hope of Paradise. But how can there be a future, if there is no end of the present?

  "Our religious life will smash, our churches close, the contributions to the
support of the clergy come to an end."

  "You take it too seriously, Bishop," laughed the university president. "Biddle never said he could give the people immortality. He does not think so, and no one else thinks so."

  "I know he did not say so," argued the Bishop, "but he did say that he was not sure just what power the serum held. Even suppose that death does come. His serum robs the world of sin, and I cannot see how the Church would function were it not for sin. I understand his subconscious thought, and it is one I have had to combat for years; the idea that there is no sin, only disease, and that all crimes are simply symptoms of an abnormal body or mind; that if the disease could be discovered and cured, the symptoms would disappear and the patient cease to be a criminal. I have had an army physician argue that a cocaine fiend was simply a sick man, like a case of typhoid fever. Now, if all wickedness in the world can be done away with just by giving every person a dose of the Biddle Serum, what is going to be the future of the Church?"

  "It is growing late," growled one of the men. "What is the answer? We cannot get anywhere by talking about the immortality of the soul and the philosophy of crime and religion. What are we going to do about it?"

  "We have to see Biddle, and buy the secret of the serum from him!" demanded the Bishop.

  "Suppose he won't sell?"

  "He will, if we find out his price."

  "But he may be honest."

  "Then there is only one thing to do," sighed the university professor. "We will talk to him kindly. We will show him where he is wrong. We will persuade him that the best thing is to form a company for the manufacture and distribution of his drug. We will tell him that he can be president of the company. Tell him anything. Pay him anything he asks. Money, power, reputation, a trip to Europe to demonstrate the drug.

  "We will do that little thing. If he refuses to listen to us, we will have to take him out for a ride!"

  "Why, Professor!" exclaimed the politician.