Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (289 page)

She stood perfectly immobile and silent, as if I were still speaking. “All right,” she said at last. “All right, yes…yes. Don’t.”

Her apparent calm deceived me completely; I smiled with relief.

“That’s right, laugh. Why shouldn’t you? You have no feelings, no more than you have an intelligence. You are an oaf, a clod, a real bumpkin. Standing there with a silly grin on your face. Oh, I hate you! How I hate you!”

She wept, she shrilled, she rushed at me and then turned away, crying she hadn’t meant it, not a word of it. She cajoled, begging forgiveness for all she’d said, tearfully promising to control herself after this, moaning that she needed me, and finally, when I didn’t repulse her, exclaiming it was her love for me which tormented her so and drove her to such scenes. It was a wretched, degrading moment, and not the least of its wretchedness and degradation was that I recognized the erotic value of her abjection. Detachedly I might pity, fear, or be repelled; at the same time I had to admit her sudden humility was exciting.

Perhaps this storm changed our relationship for the better, or at least eased the constraint between us. At any rate it was after this she began speaking to me of her work, putting us on a friendlier, less furious plane. I learned now how completely garbled was my notion of what she was doing.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines!” she cried. “How utterly absurd!”

“All right. I didn’t know.”

“My work is theoretical. I’m not a vulgar mechanic.”

“All right, all right.”

“I’m going to show that time and space are aspects of the same entity.”

“All right,” I said, thinking of something else.

“What is time?”

“Uh?…Dear Barbara, since I don’t know anything I can slide gracefully out of that one. I couldn’t even begin to define time.”

“Oh, you could probably define it all right—in terms of itself. I’m not dealing with definitions but concepts.”

“All right, conceive.”

“Hodge, like all stuffy people your levity is ponderous.”

“Excuse me. Go ahead.”

“Time is an aspect.”

“So you mentioned. I once knew a man who said it was an illusion. And another who said it was a serpent with its tail in its mouth.”

“Mysticism.” The contempt with which she spoke the word brought a sudden image of Roger Tyss saying “metaphysics” with much the same inflection. “Time, matter, space, and energy are all aspects of the cosmic entity. Interchangeable aspects. Theoretically it should be possible to translate matter into terms of energy and space into terms of time; matter-energy into space-time.”

“It sounds so simple I’m ashamed of myself.”

“To put it so crudely the explanation is misleading: suppose matter is resolved into its component…”

“Atoms?” I suggested, since she seemed at loss for a word.

“No, atoms are already too individualized, too separate. Something more fundamental than atoms. We have no word because we can’t quite grasp the concept yet. Essence, perhaps, or the theological ‘spirit.’ If matter . .

“A man?”

“Man, turnip, or chemical compound,” she answered impatiently; “if resolved into its essence it can presumably be reassembled, another wrong word, at another point of the time-space fabric.”

“You mean…like yesterday?”

“No—and yes. What is ‘yesterday’? A thing? An aspect? An idea? Or a relationship? Oh, words are useless things; even with mathematical symbols you can hardly…But someday I’ll establish it. Or lay the groundwork for my successors. Or the successors of my successors.”

I nodded. Midbin was at least half right; Barbara was emotionally sick. For what was this “theory” of hers but the rationalization of a daydream, the daydream of discovering a process for reaching back through time to injure her dead mother and so steal all of her father’s affections?

XIV.

MIDBIN’S EXPERIMENT

At the next meeting of the fellows Midbin asked an appropriation for experimental work and the help of Haven members in the project. Since the extent of both requests was modest, their granting would ordinarily have been a formality. But Barbara asked politely if Dr. Midbin wouldn’t like to elaborate a little on the purposes of his experiment.

I knew her manner was a danger signal. Nevertheless Midbin merely answered good-humoredly that he proposed to test a theory of whether an emotionally induced physical handicap could be cured by re-creating in the subject’s mind the shock which had caused—to use a loose, inaccurate term—the impediment.

“I thought so. He wants to waste the Haven’s money and time on a little tart he’s having an affair with while important work is held up for lack of funds.”

One of the women called out, “Oh, Barbara, no,” and there were exclamations of disapproval. I saw Kimi Agati look steadfastly down in embarrassment. Mr. Haggerwells, after trying unsuccessfully to hold Barbara’s eye, said, “I must apologize for my daughter—”

“It’s all right,” interrupted Midbin. “I understand Barbara’s notions. I’m sure no one here really thinks there is anything improper between the girl and me. Outside of this, Barbara’s original question seems quite in order. Quite in order. Briefly, as most of you know, I’ve been trying to restore speech to a subject who lost it—again I use an inaccurate term for convenience—during an afflicting experience. Preliminary explorations indicate good probability of satisfactory response to my proposed method, which is simply to employ a kinematic camera like those used to make entertainment tinugraphs—”

“He wants to turn the Haven into a tinugraph mill with the fellows as mummers!”

“Only this once, Barbara, only this once. Not regularly, not as routine.”

At this point her father insisted the request be voted on without any more discussion. I was tempted to vote with Barbara, the only dissident, for I foresaw Midbin’s tinugraph would undoubtedly rely heavily on cooperation from me, but I didn’t have the courage. Instead I merely abstained, like Midbin himself and Ace.

The first effect of Midbin’s program was to free me from obligation, for he decided there was no point continuing the sessions with the dumb girl as before. All his time was taken up anyway with photography—no one at the Haven had specialized in it—kinematic theory, the art of pantomime, and the relative merit of different makes of cameras, all manufactured abroad.

The girl, who had never lost her tenseness and apprehension during the interviews, nevertheless clung to the habit of being escorted to Midbin’s workroom. Since it was impossible to convey to her that the sessions were temporarily suspended, she appeared regularly, always in a dress with which she had taken manifest pains, and there was little I could do but walk her to Midbin’s and back. I was acutely conscious of the ridiculousness of these parades and expectant of retribution from Barbara afterward, so I was to some extent relieved when Midbin finally made his decision and procured camera and film.

Now I had to set the exact scene where the holdup had taken place, not an easy thing to do, for one rise looks much like another at twilight and all look differently in daylight. Then I had to approximate the original conditions as nearly as possible. Here Midbin was partially foiled by the limitations of his medium, being forced to use the camera in full sunlight instead of at dusk.

I dressed and instructed the actors in their parts, rehearsing and directing them throughout. The only immunity I got was Midbin’s concession that I needn’t play the role of myself, since in my early part of spectator I would be hidden anyway and the succor was omitted as irrelevant to the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself did nothing but tend the camera.

Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product and certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended to show it. After some hesitation Midbin had decided not to make a phonoto, feeling the use of sound would add no value and considerable expense, so the film didn’t even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately for whatever involuntary professional pride was involved, no one was present at the first showing but the girl and me, Ace to work the magic lantern, and Midbin.

In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave— after the first minutes—such an astonishing illusion that when one of the horsemen rode toward the camera we all reflexively shrank back. Despite its amateurishness the tinugraph seemed an artistic success to us, but it was no triumph in justifying its existence. The girl reacted no differently than she had toward the drawings; if anything her response was less satisfactory. The inarticulate noises ran the same scale from dismay to terror; nothing new was added. Nevertheless Midbin, his adam’s apple working joyously up and down, slapped Ace and me on the back, predicting he’d have her talking like a politician before the year was out.

I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there was no discernible difference between one showing and the next. The boring routine continued day after day, and so absolute was Midbin’s confidence that we were not too astonished after some weeks when, at the moment “Don Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained unconscious for some time.

After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin only rubbed his palms together—that the constraint on her tongue would be suddenly and entirely lifted. It wasn’t, but a few showings later, at the same crucial point, she screamed. It was a genuine scream, clear and piercing, bearing small resemblance to the strangling noises we were accustomed to. Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could have voiced that full, shrill cry.

Pursuing another of his theories, he soon gave up the idea of helping her express the words in her mind in Spanish. Instead he concentrated on teaching her English. His method was primitive, consisting of pointing solemnly to objects and repeating their names in an artificial monotone.

“She’ll have an odd way of speaking,” remarked Ace; “all nouns, singular nouns at that, said with a mouthful of pebbles. I can just imagine the happy day: ‘Man chair wall girl floor,’ and you bubbling back, ‘Carpet ceiling earth grass.’

“I’ll supply the verbs as needed,” said Midbin; “first things first.”

She must have been paying at least as much attention to our conversation as to his instruction for, unexpectedly, one day she pointed to me and said quite clearly, “Hodge…Hodge…”

I was discomposed, but not with the same vexation I had felt at her habit of seeking me out and following me around. There was a faint, bashful pleasure, and a feeling of gratitude for such steadfastness.

She must have had some grounding in English, for while she utilized the nouns Midbin had supplied, she soon added, tentatively and questioningly, a verb or adjective here and there. “I…walk…?” Ace’s fear of her acquiring Midbin’s dead inflection was groundless; her voice was low and charmingly modulated; we were enchanted listening to her elementary groping among words.

Conversation or questioning was as yet impossible. Midbin’s “What is your name?” brought forth no response save a puzzled look and a momentary sinking back into dullness. But several weeks later she touched her breast and said shyly, “Catalina.”

Her memory, then, was not impaired, at least not totally. There was no way of telling yet what she remembered and what self-protection had forced her to forget, for direct questions seldom brought satisfactory answers at this stage. Facts concerning herself she gave out sporadically and without relation to our curiosity.

Her name was Catalina Garcia; she was the much younger sister of Dona Maria Escobar, with whom she lived. So far as she knew she had no other relatives. She did not want to go back to school; they had taught her to sew, they had been kind, but she had not been happy there. Please—we would not send her away from Haggershaven, would we?

Midbin acted now like a fond parent who was both proud of his child’s accomplishments and fearful lest she be not quite ready to leave his solicitous care. He was far from satisfied at restoring her speech; he probed and searched, seeking to know what she had thought and felt during the long months of muteness.

“I do not know, truly I do not know,” she protested toward the end of one of these examinations. “I would say, yes; sometimes I knew you were talking to me, or Hodge.” Here she looked at me steadily for an instant, to make me feel both remorseful and proud. “But it was like someone talking a long way off, so I never quite understood, nor was even sure it was I who was being spoken to. Often—at least it seemed often, perhaps it was not— often, I tried to speak, to beg you to tell me if you were real people talking to me or just part of a dream. That was very bad, because when no words came I was more afraid than ever, and when I was afraid the dream became darker and darker.”

Afterward, looking cool and fresh and strangely assured, she came upon me while I was cultivating young corn. A few weeks earlier I would have known she had sought me out; now it might be an accident.

“But I knew more surely when it was you who spoke, Hodge,” she said abruptly. “In my dream you were the most real.” Then she walked tranquilly away.

Barbara, who had studiedly said nothing further about what Midbin was doing, commented one day, apparently without rancor, “So Oliver appears to have proved a theory. How nice for you.”

“What do you mean?” I inquired guardedly. “How is it nice for me?”

“Why, you won’t have to chaperone the silly girl all over anymore. She can ask her way around now.”

“Oh yes, that’s right,” I mumbled.

“And we won’t have to quarrel over her anymore,” she concluded.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s right.”

Mr. Haggerwells again communicated with the Spanish diplomats, recalling his original telegram and mentioning the aloof reply. He was answered in person by an official who acted as though he himself had composed the disclaiming response. Perhaps he had, for he made it quite clear that only devotion to duty made it possible to deal at all with such savages as inhabited the United States.