The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (31 page)

Kreynborg had suggested, humorously, that Jimmy play them. As a curiosity, Jimmy had done it. And out of the phonograph came barkings! The heavy
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
of a big dog, and then the excited, yelping uproar of a dog much smaller. The brain-cells attached to the pituitary gland held stored-away auditory memories of the dog to whom the gland had belonged. And through some stimulation not yet understandable, those memory-neurones were repeating their stored contents at more or less irregular intervals.

“That,” said Jimmy reservedly, “may be important some day. In criminology, perhaps. I don’t know. I’ve got to do a lot more work before I can publish anything on it.” Then he added: “But your wild idea of a disembodied ego, an extra intelligence, hasn’t turned out. The first dog acted queerly, but the last didn’t.”

Dorothy said soberly: “I still think what I thought at that time. Look here, Jimmy! You could do the revival experiment yourself, couldn’t you?”

“I dare say,” said Jimmy.

“On a human being?”

“Better than on a dog. Carl showed me how. He’s going to instruct a lot of surgeons and their assistants, in hopes it will turn out useful in some operation or other, and prove its worth.”

“Perhaps that was his idea,” said Dorothy gravely. “But I doubt it. He wanted me to marry him, you know.”

“Yes. He told me.”

“And, Jimmy, Carl isn’t—brilliant like you are.” As Jimmy grinned at her, she insisted, “Don’t be modest, Jimmy! He’s got a good mind. A sound one. But he isn’t brilliant. And, Jimmy—he knows it.

And after that reading of yours, that showed the dog four times as intelligent as a man for a while…”

Jimmy looked down indulgently. Then he took her meaning. He started. She nodded again.

“He’s been making experiments we don’t know anything about.”

“But he wouldn’t try—what you’re hinting!” said Jimmy harshly.

“I’m afraid he might,” said Dorothy. “He’d risk anything to be a really great scientist, since he can’t have me. And if he’s taught you his technic of revival for use on a human being—”

“Confound!” said Jimmy, uneasily. “I hope you’re wrong! Good Lord—”

“I’m right,” said Dorothy. “I’m sure I’m right. I’m so sure, that to stop him I—I—Jimmy—would you like to marry me tomorrow?”

“Dorothy! You know it! But what’s that got to do with Carl?”

“If we went away, together, he couldn’t try what I know he’s planning. Not until he’d trained somebody else. And we could work out something, with time to think in, that would stop him altogether.”

Jimmy drew a deep breath. His hand on her arm tightened.

Someone came running from the dance-floor.
“Cottrell! Mr. Cottrell! Mr. Cottrell! Mr. Cottrell!”

“Here!” said Jimmy. “What’s the matter?”

“A phone call, sir,” panted the waiter. “Someone calling for you, sir, and saying it’s a matter of life and death, sir!”

Dorothy caught her breath.

“Jimmy! He’s done it!”

But Jimmy was sprinting for the telephone. Dorothy, dead-white, came after him as fast as she could. He left her behind, and when she reached the phone he was in the act of slamming down the receiver.

“The car,” he said crisply. “He did do it, Dorothy! Left suicide notes, a dictaphone record, and everything else necessary! Come on!”

He half-lifted her from the ground in his haste. He swept her with him to the car. He fumbled in the key, backed out, and went streaking down the road with the cool night-wind beating on the front of his shirt.

“There’s a blanket in the back,” he said coldly. “We didn’t get your wraps. Put it around you.”

Dorothy obeyed. Her teeth were chattering, but not from cold.

“J-Jimmy! Tell me!”

“He’s mailed suicide notes to the police,” said Jimmy icily, “explaining what he planned to do. Explaining that he was going to call me, and start the experiment the instant I answered. He had it figured out just how long it should take us to get there. He’ll be just barely dead. The epinephrine is ready, laid out. Everything’s all set to revive him.”

Dorothy wailed: “But—J-Jimmy…”

Jimmy went around a corner on two wheels.

“What else can I do?” he demanded savagely. “What else
can
I do?”

“N-nothing,” said Dorothy faintly, but I’m—frightened!”

Jimmy braked frantically, swung out of the way of a dark parked car, and jammed down the accelerator again.

“I’ve been—thinking,” said Dorothy in a whisper. “That extra intelligence without any body might—might know things. It couldn’t take his body, ordinarily, but it might read what he knew. It—it would know that he’d prepared everything. It—knew what was in the ethyl-chloride bottle. It—”

“I’ve got to try to revive him,” said Jimmy grimly. “I’ll jump out at the laboratory. You take the car, get to a phone somewhere, and get an ambulance. Cops, if you like.”

The car sped on through the night. Miles and minutes passed together, both of them horribly long. The motor hummed under the hood. Wind whipped at them. Dorothy’s teeth chattered again.

I’m going to stay with you!” she said fiercely after a long time. “With you!”

The laboratory appeared, far, far ahead. It was dark. No, one window glowed.

“Carl’s lab,” said Jimmy. If I hurry maybe—”

The brakes screamed as he stopped. The car skidded over the gravel drive. It stopped and he tumbled out, racing instantly up the steps. Dorothy gathered up her long evening skirt and ran after him. The door was unlocked and swung ajar. Kreynborg had seen to that. Up one flight of steps. Two.

His hair disheveled, Jimmy stared down at the body of Kreynborg. It lay upon the operating table, stripped to the waist, in readiness for the treatment he had taught Jimmy to administer. The epinephrine was already in the hypodermic, whose point rested in an antiseptic solution.

A note in Kreynborg’s handwriting lay beside it.

Dear Jimmy: Here’s luck! But if it doesn’t work, don’t worry! It’s my fault, and I’ve arranged things so you won’t be blamed.

Carl

“No pulse,” said Jimmy grimly. “Of course no respiration. But I’ve got a chance.”

He picked up the needle. He chose the great vein Kreynborg had pointed out upon his own body. He chose the exact spot Kreynborg had indicated. Dorothy said constrainedly:

“I’m turning on the meters, Jimmy.”

Jimmy began the massage. It would take time. He did not dare look up. Twice he glanced at Kreynborg’s face. It was placid, was serene, was infinitely restful and at peace. Kreynborg was dead, as the dog had been dead. The dog had been revived. Kreynborg might be.

“The meters are registering, Jimmy,” said Dorothy unsteadily. She turned another switch. That second switch connected the recording devices. A humming sound arose. After the first trial of playing the phonograph record, Jimmy had attached a sound-box to play the record immediately the writing-needle recorded it. The barks from the memory-cells of the specimen-jar were heard, then, only the fraction of a second after they were recorded.

No use yet awhile,” said Jimmy, very grimly. It takes time to get things going. I have to work the stuff along the vein, so enough of it will contract to prime the heart.”

* * * *

The humming sound continued. Jimmy massaged the body of his friend, forcing the fluid down the line of the great vein so that the heart would become gorged with blood and contract convulsively, so beginning a cycle of self-excitation.

The phonograph sound-box said tinnily,
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
There was a pause. The excited, hysterical barkings of a small, dog followed.

Jimmy said between his teeth: “Carl had the culture-jar in here. The receptor’s focused on it. Bring it over here, Dorothy.”

He massaged, along the line of the great vein. He heard Dorothy stir. Then a tinny voice:
“Jimmy! Jimmy! For heaven’s sake—”

Dorothy made an inarticulate sound in her throat; Jimmy jerked his head about. She had, at first, forgotten the receptor. Now she had reached out her hand to take it away from the culture-jar. And now she stood gray-faced, pointing. The receptor-unit was focused upon the culture-jar. And Kreynborg’s voice came from it!

“Don’t revive my body, Jimmy! Don’t revive my body! Something strong and terrible seized me as I—came out. It is very strong and very evil, Jimmy! I am sealed in these memory-cells, and it takes all my strength to use them to send my voice through them. The Thing is evil, Jimmy! Don’t let it live in my body! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”

There was a sudden, abrupt pause. The sound-box said,
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
followed by the hysterical barking of a smaller dog.

Jimmy found himself massaging automatically. Sweat stood out on his face.

The sound-box chattered again:
“It put me into this! It is stronger than I am! I cannot ever leave these brain-cells again until they die! Kill me, Jimmy! But don’t revive my body! The Thing is in it, Jimmy! The extra intelligence!”

Jimmy massaged automatically. Dorothy said hoarsely: “You hear, Jimmy! Stop! You must stop!”

Jimmy said more hoarsely still: “I’m—trying to! I can’t!” The sweat formed in droplets on his forehead. “It is—physical contact, perhaps. Take a stick. Something! Hit my hands! Knock them away!”

Instead, Dorothy threw both her arms about his neck and flung her weight against him. He staggered, thrown off his balance. They fell to the floor together. They stared at each other, gasping.

The tinny voice wailed above them:

“I cannot leave these memory-cells while they live, and they may live forever! Don’t let the Thing have my body, Jimmy! Let my body die! It’s evil, Jimmy! It’s evil—”

Jimmy got to his feet. His face was gray. He deliberately picked up the receptor-unit. He moved it to the still motionless body which had been Kreynborg’s. He touched it to the frontal bone. He listened.

* * * *

Dorothy covered her ears with her hands and cowered to the floor. Because they heard the thoughts in Kreynborg’s brain. And it was not Kreynborg thinking. It was Something else which was using Kreynborg’s brain, and filled with a riotous glee, a horrible exultation as Kreynborg’s body fought its way back to life and strength. And the things the Something was thinking.

Dorothy cowered to the floor. Jimmy snapped off the switch so he could no longer hear them. He picked up the hypodermic.

He went with a precarious steadiness to the shelf of chemicals and drugs. He filled the hypodermic.

He turned back to the operating table, and the heart that had been Kreynborg’s was beating steadily, now. Kreynborg’s body no longer needed massage or help. It was coming back to life muscle by muscle and limb by limb. The heart throbbed visibly in Kreynborg’s bony chest.

His jaws clamped tight, his eyes hard as stone, Jimmy stopped the beating of that heart.

There was a horrible, convulsive movement of the body on the table. It stirred. It sat up. Its eyes opened—and they were not Kreynborg’s eyes. They were human only in construction. The light that glowed in them was sheer horror to look at. The arms moved. The hands curved, to rend and tear.

Jimmy faced it desperately: “Too late!” he said through utterly stiff lips. “You can’t do it! Not with Kreynborg’s body!”

The Thing—which had been Kreynborg—uttered a cry which was inhuman in its unspeakable rage and hatred. And as it cried, it stiffened. The light of horror faded from its eyes. Kreynborg’s body fell back upon the table.

Jimmy rinsed out the hypodermic and partly refilled it with epinephrine before the police arrived. He listened again to the sounds that came from the sound-box when the receptor was focussed on the culture-jar. Then he smashed the culture-jar. And it was so entirely clear that Kreynborg had tried an experiment in revival, forcing Jimmy to help by telling him only too late, that there was absolutely no question of anything but a coroner’s verdict of “unintentional suicide.” And Jimmy took Dorothy home.

“I don’t know what it was,” he said tonelessly, as he very carefully turned a corner. “If you want to be fanciful, you can say it was an intelligence from some other set of dimensions that couldn’t transfer to ours physically, so tried to do it—psychologically. Or maybe Kreynborg was right, and a brain that has been revived after being deprived of its ego for a certain length of time has—well—brain fever.”

“I heard Carl,” she said unsteadily. “He—he was in the culture-jar. Why don’t you say the extra intelligence was a—devil?”

“I have a scientific prejudice,” said Jimmy, “against explanations which involve the supernatural. It makes for mental laziness, and the results of such thinking are matters of faith rather than reason, and—and—”

“What?”

“I’m too much afraid it’s true.”

Then Dorothy said brokenly: “But poor Carl—he—”

“You didn’t listen at the last,” said Jimmy awkwardly. “Carl’s all right. The Thing bad no more power to harm him when I smashed the jar. He said so. And he knew.”