Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (102 page)

“Thanks,” Graham responded, smiling. He studied his companion. “By the way, what’s your other name?”

“Art.”

“Thanks, Art,” he corrected.

Their careful search of Dakin’s place revealed nothing worthy of note; no last, dramatic message, no hidden jottings, no feature that could be considered in any way abnormal. As a route to the solution of their indefinable puzzle, it was somewhat of a dead end.

Discovering the late scientist’s original and crude model of his vernier, Wohl amused himself by projecting its standard stereoscopic cube upon a small screen. Twiddling the micrometer focusing screw that controlled the cube’s perspective, he made the geometrical skeleton flat enough to appear almost two-dimensional, then deep enough to resemble an apparently endless tunnel.

“Cute!” he murmured.

Graham came out of a back room holding a small, nearly empty vial of iodine in his fingers.

“I looked for this on another hunch. It was in his medicine chest along with enough patent cure-alls to stock a drugstore. Dakin always was something of a hypochondriac.” He put the vial on the table, surveyed it morosely. “So that means exactly nothing.” His dissatisfied glance went round the room. “We’re only losing time in this place. I want to see Doctor Fawcett, at the State Asylum. Can you run me there?”

“I’ll phone first.” Using Dakin’s instrument, he talked to his station, cut off, said to Graham, “There will be no autopsy on Dakin. They can’t dissect pulp!” He put away the vernier, pocketed the vial, opened the door. “Come on. Let’s have a look at your asylum—some day it may be home, sweet home!”

Darkness was a shroud over the Hudson. A sullen moon scowled down through ragged clouds. Incongruously, a distant neon repeatedly flashed its message in blood-red letters fifty feet high: BEER HERE. Observing it, Wohl subconsciously licked his lips. Fidgeting on the sidewalk, they waited for the gyrocar which Wohl had ordered over the phone.

The machine hummed down the street, its long floodlight blazing. Wohl met it, said to the uniformed driver, “I’ll take her myself. We’re going to Albany.”

Climbing into the seat, he waited until Graham had plumped beside him, eased the machine forward.

Graham said to him, warningly, “We're in a hurry—but not that much.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Please, I'd like to get there in one lump. I don’t function so well in several parts.”

“Nobody functions so well when you get after them. Are you a stockholder in the local graveyard?” Wohl’s beefy face quirked. “There’s one comfort about hanging around with you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll die with my boots on.

Graham smiled, said nothing. The car picked up speed. Twenty minutes later he was hugging the rail as they cornered. Still he said nothing. They pelted northward, reached Albany in hours—good going even for Wohl.

“This is well outside my official stamping-ground,” Wohl commented, as they pulled up outside their destination. “So far as I’m concerned. I’m off duty. You’ve merely brought a friend along.”

The new State Asylum sprawled its severe, ultra-modern architecture over a square mile of former parkland. It was very evident that Doctor Fawcett was the leading light in its administration.

He was a skinny little runt, all dome and duck’s feet, his top-heavy features triangular as they sloped in toward a pointed goatee beard, his damn-you eyes snapping behind rimless pince-nez.

His small form even smaller behind a desk that looked the size of a field, he sat stiffly upright, wagged Graham’s copy of Webb’s jottings. When he spoke it was with the assertive air of one whose every wish is a command, whose every opinion is the essence of pure reason.

“A most interesting revelation of my poor friend Webb’s mental condition. Very sad, very sad!” Unhooking his pince-nez, he used them to tap the paper and emphasize his pontifications. “I suspected him of having an obsession, but must confess that I did not realize he’d become so completely unbalanced.”

“What made you suspicious?” Graham asked.

“I am a chess enthusiast. So was Webb. Our friendship rested solely upon our mutual fondness for the game. We had little else in common. Webb was entirely a physicist whose work had not the slightest relation to mental diseases; nevertheless, he showed a sudden and avid interest in the subject. At his own request, I permitted him to visit this asylum and observe some of our patients.”

“Ah!” Graham leaned forward. “Did he give any reason for this sudden interest?”

“He did not offer one, nor did I ask for one,” replied Doctor Fawcett, dryly. “The patients who interested him most were those with consistent delusions coupled to a persecution complex. He concentrated particularly upon the schizophrenics.”

“And what may those be?” put in Wohl, innocently.

Doctor Fawcett raised his brows. “Persons suffering from schizophrenia, of course.”

“I'm still no wiser,” Wohl persisted.

With an expression of ineffable patience, Doctor Fawcett said, “They are schizoid egocentrics.”

Making a gesture of defeat, Wohl growled, “A nut’s a nut whether in fancy dress or otherwise.”

Fawcett eyed him with distaste. “I perceive you are a creature of dogmatic preconceptions.”

“I’m a cop,” Wohl informed, blinking. “And I know when I’m being given the runaround.”

“You must pardon our ignorance, doctor,” Graham chipped in smoothly. “Could you explain in less technical terms?”

“Schizophrenics,” answered Fawcett, speaking as one speaks to a child, “are persons suffering from a special type of mental disease which, a century ago, was known as dementia praecox. They have a split personality the dominant one of which lives in a world of fantasy that seems infinitely more real than the world of reality. While many forms of dementia are characterized by hallucinations which vary both in strength and detail, the fantastic world of the schizophrenic is vivid and unvarying. To put it in as elementary a manner as possible, he always has the same nightmare.”

“I see,” commenced Graham, doubtfully.

Putting on his glasses with meticulous care, Fawcett stood up. “I will let you see one of the inmates in whom Webb is interested.”

Showing them through the door, he conducted them along a series of passages to the asylum’s east wing. Here, he reached a group of cells, stopped outside one, gestured.

They peered cautiously through a small, barred opening, saw a naked man. He was standing by his bed, his thin legs braced apart, his unnaturally distended abdomen thrust out. The sufferer’s ghastly eyes were fixed upon his own stomach with unwavering and hellish concentration.

Fawcett whispered rapidly, “It is a peculiarity of schizophrenia that the victim often strikes a pose, sometimes obscene, which he can maintain without stirring for a period of time impossible to the normal human being. They have phases when they become living statues, often repulsively. This particular case is a typical poseur. His stricken mind has convinced itself that he has a live dog inside his abdomen, and he spends hours watching for a sign of movement.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Graham, shocked.

“A characteristic delusion, I assure you,” said Fawcett, professionally unmoved. He looked through the bars as if academically considering a pinned moth. “It was Webb’s irrational comments about this case that made me think him a little eccentric.”

“What was Webb’s reaction?” Graham glanced again into the cell, turned his eyes thankfully away. The thought in his mind was the same as that in Wohl’s— but for the grace of fate, there go I!

“He was fascinated by this patient, and he said to me ‘Fawcett, that poor devil has been prodded around by unseen medical students. He is mutilated trash tossed aside by supervivisectionists.’” Fawcett stroked his beard, registered tolerant amusement. “Melodramatic but completely illogical.”

A shudder ran through Graham’s muscular frame. Despite iron nerves, he felt sick. Wohl’s face, too, was pale, and both sensed the same inward relief when Fawcett led the way back to the office.

“I asked Webb what the deuce he meant,” Doctor Fawcett continued, quite unperturbed, “but he only laughed a little unpleasantly and quoted that adage about when ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise. A week later he phoned me in a state of considerable excitement and asked if I could get him data concerning the incidence of goiter in imbeciles.”

“Did you get it?”

“Yes.” Fawcett dived down behind his huge desk, slid open a drawer, came up with a paper. “I had it here ready for him. Since he’s dead, the information comes too late.” He flipped the paper across to Graham.

“Why,” Graham exclaimed, looking it over, “this states that there is not one case of goiter among the two thousand inmates of this asylum. Reports from other asylums give it as unknown or exceedingly rare.

“Which doesn’t mean anything. It’s evidence only of the negative fact that imbeciles are not very susceptible to a disease which isn’t common.” He glanced at Wohl, his tones slightly acid. “When a disease isn’t common, it’s because not many people are susceptible to it. Probably the same data applies to any two thousand bus drivers, or paint salesmen—or cops.

“When I catch goiter, I’ll tell you,” promised Wohl, surlily.

“What causes goiter?” Graham put in.

Fawcett said, promptly, “A deficiency of iodine.”

Iodine! Graham and Wohl exchanged startled glances before the former asked, “Has a superfluity of iodine anything to do with imbecility?”

His goatee wagging, Fawcett laughed openly. “If it did, there would be a great proportion of idiots among seafaring folk who eat foods rich in iodine.”

A message burned into Graham’s mind, red-hot. Wohl’s face betrayed the fact that he’d got it also. A message from the illogical dead.

Sailors are notoriously susceptible.

Susceptible to what? To illusions and to maritime superstitions based upon illusions?—the sea serpent, the sirens, the Flying Dutchman, mermaids, and the bleached, bloated, soul-clutching things whose clammy faces bob and wail in the moonlit wake?

Must extend the notion, and get data showing how seaboard dwellers compare with country folk.

Displaying a forced casualness, Graham retrieved Webb’s notes from the desk. “Thanks, doctor. You’ve been a great help.”

“Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if I can be of further assistance,” Fawcett advised. “If you do eventually arrive at the root cause of poor Webb’s condition, I’d appreciate the details.” His short laugh was more chilling than apologetic. “Every competent analysis of a delusion is a valuable contribution to knowledge of the whole.”

They returned to New York as fast as they had left, their cogitating silence being broken only once when Wohl remarked, “The entire affair suggests an epidemic of temporary insanity among scientists whose brains have been overworked.” Graham grunted, offered no comment.

“Genius is akin to madness,” persisted Wohl, determined to bolster his theory. “Besides, knowledge can’t go on increasing forever without some of the best minds giving way when they strain to encompass the lot.”

“No scientist tries to learn the lot. Knowledge already is far too much for any one mind, and that is why every scientist is a specialist in his own field though he may be an ignoramus about things totally outside the scope of his own work.”

Ir was Wohl’s turn to grunt. Concentrating on his driving with no better results at the sharpest corners, he voiced not another word until he arrived at Graham’s address. Then he dropped his passenger with a brief, “See you in the morning, Bill,” and hummed away.

The morning was bright, symbolic of a new day that brought early developments. Graham was standing before his mirror, his electric shaver whirring busily, when the telephone shrilled. The youth in the visor eyed him and said, “Mr. Graham?”

“Yes, I’m Graham.”

“This is the Smithsonian,” responded the other. “Mr. Harriman had a message for you late last night but was not able to get in touch with you.”

“I was in Albany. What’s the message?”

“Mr. Harriman said to tell you he has been to all the news agencies, and finds they’ve reported the deaths of eighteen scientists within the last five weeks. Seven of them were foreigners, and eleven American. The number is about six times the average, as the news agencies rarely report more than three per month.”

“Eighteen!” ejaculated Graham. He studied the face picked up by the faraway scanner. “Have you got their names?”

“Yes.” The youth dictated them while Graham copied them down. He gave their respective nationalities. “Anything more, sir?”

“Please convey my thanks to Mr. Harriman and ask him to phone me at the office when convenient.”

“Very well, Mr. Graham.” The youth disconnected, left him pondering deeply.

“Eighteen!”

On the other side of the room the telenews receiver’s gong chimed softly. Crossing to it, he raised the lid, exposed the press-replica screen which, in his apparatus, was licensed for the
New York Sun’s
transmissions.

The
Sun’s
early morning edition began to roll at sedate reading-pace across the screen while he watched it with part of his mind elsewhere. Presently, his eyes sharpened and his concentration returned as another headline appeared.

Scientist’s Death Dive

Professor Samuel
C.
Dakin, Fifty-Two Years Old, William Street Physicist, Took the Grand Intersection Humpback in His Sports Gyrocar Last Evening, and Plunged to His Death at More Than a Hundred Miles an Hour.

The report continued to half-column length, included a photograph of the wreck, several references to “this departed genius,” and stated that the police were looking into the cause of the tragedy. It concluded with a comment to the effect that this was the third successive death of a New York scientist since the previous morning, “those of Professor Walter Mayo and Doctor Irwin Webb having been detailed yesterday in our evening edition.”

From the automatic-record locker beneath the screen, Graham extracted his photographic copy of the
Sun’s
evening issue. Mayo’s and Webb’s cases were in juxtaposition; the former headed:
Mayo Falls from Martin;
and the latter:
Another Scientist Dies.
Both reports were superficial, revealing nothing more except that “the police are investigating.”