A Century of Science Fiction

by Damon Knight

  “It depends on how you define death.” Cornelius drew hard on his cigar, needing anything that might steady him. His tone grew purposely dry of emotion.

  “Look here. Consider the data. Joe, now: a creature with a brain of human capacity, but without a mind—a perfect Lockean tabula rasa for Anglesey’s psibeam to write on. We deduced, correctly enough—if very belatedly—that when enough had been written, there would be a personality. But the question was, whose? Because, I suppose, of normal human fear of the unknown, we assumed that any personality in so alien a body had to be monstrous. Therefore it must be hostile to Anglesey, must be swamping him—”

  The door opened. Both men jerked to their feet.

  The chief surgeon shook his head. “No use. Typical deep-shock traumata, close to terminus now. If we had better facilities, maybe . .

  “No,” said Cornelius. “You cannot save a man who has decided not to live any more.”

  “I know.” The doctor removed his mask. “I need a cigarette. Who’s got one?” His hands shook a little as he accepted it from Viken.

  “But how could he—decide—anything?” choked the physicist. “He’s been unconscious ever since Jan pulled him away from that . . . that thing.”

  “It was decided before then,” said Cornelius. “As a matter of fact, that hulk in there on the operating table no longer has a mind. I know. I was there.” He shuddered a little. A stiff shot of tranquilizer was all that held nightmare away from him. Later he would have to have that memory exorcised.

  The doctor took a long drag of smoke, held it in his lungs a moment, and exhaled gustily. “I guess this winds up the project.” he said. “We’ll never get another esman.”

  “I’ll say we won’t.” Viken’s tone sounded rusty. “I’m going to smash that devil’s engine myself.”

  “Hold on a minute!” exclaimed Cornelius. “Don’t you understand? This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning!”

  “I’d better get back,” said the doctor. He stubbed out his cigarette and went through the door. It closed behind him with a deathlike quietness.

  “What do you mean?” Viken said it as if erecting a barrier.

  “Won’t you understand?” roared Cornelius. “Joe has all Anglesey’s habits, thoughts, memories, prejudices, interests. Oh, yes, the different body and the different environment— they do cause some changes, but no more than any man might undergo on Earth. If you were suddenly cured of a wasting disease, wouldn’t you maybe get a little boisterous and rough? There is nothing abnormal in it. Nor is it abnormal to want to stay healthy—no? Do you see?”

  Viken sat down. He spent a while without speaking.

  Then, enormously slow and careful: “Do you mean Joe is Ed?”

  “Or Ed is Joe. Whatever you like. He calls himself Joe now, I think—as a symbol of freedom—but he is still himself. What is the ego but continuity of existence?

  “He himself did not fully understand this. He only knew— he told me, and I should have believed him—that on Jupiter he was strong and happy. Why did the K tube oscillate? A hysterical symptom! Anglesey’s subconscious was not afraid to stay on Jupiter—it was afraid to come back!

  “And then, today, I listened in. By now, his whole self was focused on Joe. That is, the primary source of libido was Joe’s virile body, not Anglesey’s sick one. This meant a different pattern of impulses—not too alien to pass the filters, but alien enough to set up interference. So he felt my presence. And he saw the truth, just as I did.

  “Do you know the last emotion I felt as Joe threw me out of his mind? Not anger any more. He plays rough, him, but all he had room to feel was joy.

  “I knew how strong a personality Anglesey has! Whatever made me think an overgrown child brain like Joe’s could override it? In there, the doctors—bah! They’re trying to salvage a hulk which has been shed because it is useless!”

  Cornelius stopped. His throat was quite raw from talking. He paced the floor, rolled cigar smoke around his mouth but did not draw it any farther in.

  When a few minutes had passed, Viken said cautiously,

  “All right. You should know—as you said, you were there. But what do we do now? How do we get in touch with Ed? Will he even be interested in contacting us?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” said Cornelius. “He is still himself, ' remember. Now that he has none of the cripple’s frustration, he should be more amiable. When the novelty of his new . friends wears off, he will want someone who can talk to him as an equal.”

  “And precisely who will operate another pseudo?” asked Viken sarcastically. “I’m quite happy with this skinny frame of mine, thank you!”

  “Was Anglesey the only hopeless cripple on Earth?” asked Cornelius quietly.

  Viken gaped at him.

  “And there are aging men, too,” went on the psionicist, half to himself. “Someday, my friend, when you and I feel the years close in, and so much we would like to learn— maybe we too would enjoy an extra lifetime in a Jovian body.” He nodded at his cigar. “A hard, lusty, stormy kind of life, granted—dangerous, brawling, violent—but life as no human, perhaps, has lived it since the days of Elizabeth the First. Oh, yes, there will be small trouble finding Jovians.”

  He turned his head as the surgeon came out again.

  “Well?” croaked Viken.

  The doctor sat down. “It’s finished,” he said.

  They waited for a moment, awkwardly.

  “Odd,” said the doctor. He groped after a cigarette he didn’t have. Silently, Viken offered him one. “Odd. I’ve seen these cases before. People who simply resign from life. This is the first one I ever saw that went out smiling—smiling all the time.”

  7.

  MARVELOUS

  INVENTIONS

  Mark Twain, perhaps the only authentic literary genius America has produced, was a literary volcano from his thirty-seventh to his seventy-fourth year. He wrote novels, travel books, essays, diatribes, letters, memoirs. He wrote realistic contemporary fiction, historical fiction (probably his weakest line, though he loved it best), satiric fantasy, and science fiction. His A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is a rigorously worked-out story of extrapolation, on a theme L. Sprague de Camp was later to use in Lest Darkness Fall: What happens when a modern man, thrown back in time, tries to change history?

  And here is a story, first published in Century, November 1898, in which Twain forecast an invention whose large staring eye you have probably turned off in order to read this book.

  FROM THE

  LONDON TIMES OF 1904

  BY MARK TWAIN

  Chicago, April 1, 1904.

  I resume by cable-telephone where I left off yesterday. For many hours, now, this vast city—along with the rest of the globe, of course—has talked of nothing but the extraordinary episode mentioned in my last report. In accordance with your instructions, I will now trace the romance from its beginnings down to the culmination of yesterday—or today; call it which you like. By an odd chance, I was a personal actor in a part of this drama myself. The opening scene plays in Vienna. Date, one o’clock in the morning, March 31, 1898. I had spent the evening at a social entertainment. About midnight I went away, in company with the military attaches of the British, Italian, and American embassies, to finish with a late smoke. This function had been appointed to take place in the house of Lieutenant Hillyer, the third attaché mentioned in the above list. When we arrived there we found several visitors in the room: young Szczepanik;* Mr. K., his financial backer; Mr. W., the latter’s secretary; and Lieutenant Clayton of the United States army.

  * Pronounced (approximately) Zepannik.

  War was at that time threatening between Spain and our country, and Lieutenant Clayton had been sent to Europe on military business. I was well acquainted with young Szczepanik and his two friends, and I knew Mr. Clayton slightly. I had met him at West Point years before, when he was a cadet. It was when General Merritt was superintendent. He had the reputation of being
an able officer, and also of being quick-tempered and plain-spoken.

  This smoking-party had been gathered together partly for business. This business was to consider the availability of the telelectroscope for military service. It sounds oddly enough now, but it is nevertheless true that at that time the invention was not taken seriously by anyone except its inventor. Even his financial supporter regarded it merely as a curious and interesting toy. Indeed, he was so convinced of this that he had actually postponed its use by the general world to the end of the dying century by granting a two years’ exclusive lease of it to a syndicate, whose intent was to exploit it at the Paris World’s Fair.

  When we entered the smoking-room we found Lieutenant Clayton and Szczepanik engaged in a warm talk over the telelectroscope in the German tongue. Clayton was saying:

  “Well, you know my opinion of it, anyway!” And he brought his fist down with emphasis upon the table.

  “And I do not value it,” retorted the young inventor, with provoking calmness of tone and manner.

  Clayton turned to Mr. K., and said: ‘I cannot see why you are wasting money on this toy. In my opinion, the day will never come when it will do a farthing’s worth of real service for any human being.”

  “That may be; yes, that may be; still, I have put the money in it, and am content. I think, myself, that it is only a toy; but Szczepanik claims more for it, and I know him well enough to believe that he can see farther than I can—either with his telelectroscpe or without it.”

  The soft answer did not cool Clayton down; it seemed only to irritate him the more; and he repeated and emphasized his conviction that the invention would never do any man a farthing’s worth of real service. He even made it a “brass” farthing, this time. Then he laid an English farthing on the table, and added:

  “Take that, Mr. K., and put it away; and if ever the tele-lectroscope does any man an actual service—mind, a real service—please mail it to me as a reminder, and I will take back what I have been saying. Will you?”

  “I will.” And Mr. K. put the coin in his pocket.

  Mr. Clayton now turned toward Szczepanik, and began with a taunt—a taunt which did not reach a finish; Szczepanik interrupted it with a hardy retort, and followed this with a blow. There was a brisk fight for a moment or two; then the attaches separated the men.

  The scene now changes to Chicago. Time, the autumn of 1901. As soon as the Paris contract released the telelectro-scope, it was delivered to public use, and was soon connected with the telephonic systems of the whole world. The improved “limitless-distance” telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable, too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues.

  By and by Szczepanik arrived in Chicago. Clayton (now captain) was serving in that military department at the time. The two men resumed the Viennese quarrel of 1898. On three different occasions they quarreled, and were separated by witnesses. Then came an interval of two months, during which time Szczepanik was not seen by any of his friends, and it was at first supposed that he had gone off on a sightseeing tour and would soon be heard from. But no; no word came from him. Then it was supposed that he had returned to Europe. Still, time drifted on, and he was not heard from.

  Nobody was troubled, for he was like most inventors and other kinds of poets, and went and came in a capricious way, and often without notice.

  Now comes the tragedy. On the 29th of December, in a dark and unused compartment of the cellar under Captain Clayton’s house, a corpse was discovered by one of Clayton’s maid-servants. It was easily identified as Szczepanik’s. The man had died by violence. Clayton was arrested, indicted, and brought to trial, charged with this murder. The evidence against him was perfect in every detail, and absolutely unassailable. Clayton admitted this himself. He said that a reasonable man could not examine this testimony with a dispassionate mind and not be convinced by it; yet the man would be in error, nevertheless. Clayton swore that he did not commit the murder, and that he had had nothing to do with it.

  As your readers will remember, he was condemned to death. He had numerous and powerful friends, and they worked hard to save him, for none of them doubted the truth of his assertion. I did what little I could to help, for I had long since become a close friend of his, and thought I knew that it was not in his character to inveigle an enemy into a corner and assassinate him. During 1902 and 1903 he was several times reprieved by the governor; he was reprieved once more in the beginning of the present year, and the execution-day postponed to March 31.

  The governor’s situation has been embarrassing, from the day of the condemnation, because of the fact that Clayton’s wife is the governor’s niece. The marriage took place in 1899, when Clayton was thirty-four and the girl twenty-three, and has been a happy one. There is one child, a little girl three years old. Pity for the poor mother and child kept the mouths of grumblers closed at first; but this could not last forever— for in America politics has a hand in everything—and by and by the governor’s political opponents began to call attention to his delay in allowing the law to take its course. These hints have grown more and more frequent of late, and more and more pronounced. As a natural result, his own party grew nervous. Its leaders began to visit Springfield and hold long private conferences with him. He was now between two fires. On the one hand, his niece was imploring him to pardon her husband; on the other were the leaders, insisting that he stand to his plain duty as chief magistrate of the State, and place no further bar to Clayton’s execution. Duty won in the struggle, and the governor gave his word that he would not again respite the condemned man. This was two weeks ago. Mrs. Clayton now said:

  “Now that you have given your word, my last hope is gone, for I know you will never go back from it. But you have done the best you could for John, and I have no reproaches for you. You love him, and you love me, and we both know that if you could honorably save him, you would do it. I will go to him now, and be what help I can to him, and get what comfort I may out of the few days that are left to us before the night comes which will have no end for me in life. You will be with me that day? You will not let me bear it alone?”

  “I will take you to him myself, poor child, and I will be near you to the last.”

  By the governor’s command, Clayton was now allowed every indulgence he might ask for which could interest his mind and soften the hardships of his imprisonment. His wife and child spent the days with him; I was his companion by night. He was removed from the narrow cell which he had occupied during such a dreary stretch of time, and given the chief warden’s roomy and comfortable quarters. His mind was always busy with the catastrophe of his life, and with the slaughtered inventor, and he now took the fancy that he would like to have the telelectroscope and divert his mind with it. He had his wish. The connection was made with the international telephone-station, and day by day, and night by night, he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and realized that by grace of this marvelous instrument he was almost as free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars. He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in this amusement. I sat in his parlor and read and smoked, and the nights were very quiet £nd reposefully sociable, and I found them pleasant. Now and then I would hear him say, “Give me Yedo”; next, “Give me Hong-Kong”; next, “Give me Melbourne.” And I smoked on, and read in comfort, while he wandered about the remote under-world, where the sun was shining in the sky, and the people were at their daily work. Sometimes the talk that came from those far regions through the microphone attachment interested me, and 1 listened.

  Yesterday—I keep calling it yesterday, which is quite natural for certain reasons—the instrument remained unused, and that, also, was natural, for it was the eve of the execution-day. It was spent in tears and lamentations and farewells. The governor and the wife and child remained until
a quarter past eleven at night, and the scenes I witnessed were pitiful to see. The execution was to take place at four in the morning. A little after eleven a sound of hammering broke out upon the still night, and there was a glare of light, and the child cried out, “What is that, papa?” and ran to the window before she could be stopped, and clapped her small hands, and said: “Oh, come and see, mama;—such a pretty thing they are making!” The mother knew—and fainted. It was the gallows!

  She was carried away to her lodging, poor woman, and Clayton and I were alone—alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting ones; they harmonized with the situation and the conditions: the boom and thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the dying down into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now and then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes; and always the muffled and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in the courtyard. After an age of this, another sound—far off, and coming smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest—a bell tolling twelve! Another age, and it tolled again. By and by, again. A dreary, long interval after this, then the spectral sound floated to us once more—one, two, three; and this time we caught our breath: sixty minutes of life left!

  Clayton rose, and stood by the window, and looked up into the black sky, and listened to the thrashing sleet and the piping wind; then he said: “That a dying man’s last of earth should be—this!” After a little he said: “I must see the sun again—the sun!” and the next moment he was feverishly calling: “China! Give me China—Peking!”