Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (2 page)

 
          
 
"Then," replied Rockwell, "if
I’m wrong, perhaps I am, I'll die. But it doesn't worry me in the least."

 
          
 
He turned back to Smith and went on with his
work.

 
          
 
A bell. A bell. Two bells, two bells. A dozen
bells, a hundred bells. Ten thousand and a million clangorous, hammering metal
dinning bells. All born at once in the silence, squalling, screaming, hurting
echoes, bruising ears!

 
          
 
Ringing, chanting with loud and soft, tenor
and bass, low and high voices. Great-armed clappers knocking the shells and
ripping air with the thrusting din of sound!

 
          
 
With all those bells ringing, Smith could not
immediately know where he was. He knew that he could not see, because his
eyelids were sealed tight, knew he could not speak because his lips had grown
together. His ears were clamped shut, but the bells hammered nevertheless.

 
          
 
He could not see. But yes, yes, he could, and
it was like inside a small dark red cavern, as if his eyes were turned inward
upon his skull. And Smith tried to twist his tongue, and suddenly, trying to
scream, he knew his tongue was gone, that the place where it used to be was
vacant, an itching spot that wanted a tongue but couldn't have it just now.

 
          
 
No tongue. Strange. Why? Smith tried to stop
the bells. They ceased, blessing him with a silence that wrapped him up in a
cold blanket. Things were happening. Happening.

 
          
 
Smith tried to twitch a finger, but he had no
control. A foot, a leg, a toe, his head, everything. Nothing moved. Torso,
limbs—immovable, frozen in a concrete coffin.

 
          
 
A moment later came the dread discovery that
he was no longer breathing. Not with his lungs, anyway.

 
          
 
"BECAUSE I HAVE NO LUNGS!" he
screamed. Inwardly he screamed and that mental scream was drowned, webbed,
clotted, and journeyed drowsily down in a red, dark tide. A red drowsy tide
that sleepily swathed the scream, garroted it, took it all away, making Smith
rest easier.

 
          
 
I am not afraid, he thought. I understand that
which I do not understand. I understand that I do not fear, yet know not the
reason.

 
          
 
No tongue, no nose, no lungs.

 
          
 
But they would come later. Yes, they would.
Things were—happening.

 
          
 
Through the pores of his shelled body air
slid, like rain needling each portion of him, giving life. Breathing through a
billion gills, breathing oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and carbon dioxide,
and using it all. Wondering. Was his heart still beating?

 
          
 
But yes, it was beating. Slow, slow, slow. A
red dim susurrance, a flood, a river surging around him, slow, slower, slower.
So nice.

 
          
 
So restful.

 
          
 
The jigsaw pieces fitted together faster as
the days drifted into weeks. McGuire helped. A retired surgeon-medico, he'd
been Rockwell's secretary for a number of years. Not much help, but good
company.

 
          
 
Rockwell noted that McGuire joked gruffly
about Smith, nervously; and a lot. Trying to be calm. But one day McGuire
stopped, thought it over, and drawled, "Hey, it just came to me! Smith's
alive. He should be dead. But he's alive. Good God!"

 
          
 
Rockwell laughed. "What in blazes do you
think I'm working on? I'm bringing an X-ray machine out next week so I can find
out what's going on inside Smith's shell." Rockwell jabbed with a hypo
needle. It broke on the hard shell.

 
          
 
Rockwell tried another needle, and another,
until finally he punctured, drew blood, and placed the slides under the
microscope for study. Hours later he calmly shoved a serum test under McGuire's
red nose, and spoke quickly.

 
          
 
"Lord, I can't believe it. His blood's
germicidal. I dropped a streptococci colony into it and the strep was
annihilated in eight seconds! You could inject every known disease into Smith
and he'd destroy them all, thrive on them!"

 
          
 
It was only a matter of hours until other
discoveries. It kept Rockwell sleepless, tossing at night, wondering,
theorizing the titanic ideas over and over. For instance—

 
          
 
Hartley'd fed Smith so many cc's of blood-food
every day of his illness until recently. NONE OF THAT FOOD HAD EVER BEEN
ELIMINATED. All of it had been stored, not in bulk-fats, but in a perfectly
abnormal solution, an x-liquid contained in high concentrate form in Smith's
blood. An ounce of it would keep a man well fed for three days. This x-liquid
circulated through the body until it was actually needed, when it was seized
upon and used. More serviceable than fat. Much more!

 
          
 
Rockwell glowed with his discovery. Smith had
enough x-liquid stored in him to last months and months more. Self-sustaining.

 
          
 
McGuire, when told, contemplated his paunch
sadly.

 
          
 
"I wish I stored my food that way."

 
          
 
That wasn't all. Smith needed little air. What
air he had he seemed to acquire by an osmotic process through his skin. And he
used every molecule of it. No waste.

 
          
 
"And," finished Rockwell,
"eventually Smith's heart might even take vacations from beating,
entirely!"

 
          
 
"Then he'd be dead," said McGuire.

 
          
 
“To you and I, yes. To Smith—maybe. Just
maybe. Think of it, McGuire. Collectively, in Smith, we have a self-purifying
blood stream demanding no replenishment but an interior one for months, having
little breakdown and no elimination of wastes whatsoever because every molecule
is utilized, self-evolving, and fatal to any and all microbic life. All this,
and Hartley speaks of degeneration!"

           
 
Hartley was irritated when he heard of the
discoveries. But he still insisted that Smith was degenerating. Dangerous.

 
          
 
McGuire tossed his two cents in. "How do
we know that this isn't some super microscopic disease that annihilates all
other bacteria while it works on its victim. After all—malarial fever is
sometimes used surgically to cure syphilis; why not a new bacillus that
conquers all?"

 
          
 
"Good point,” said Rockwell. "But
we're not sick, are we?"

 
          
 
"It may have to incubate in our
bodies."

 
          
 
"A typical old-fashioned doctor's
response. No matter what happens to a man, he's 'sick'—if he varies from the
norm. That's your idea, Hartley," declared Rockwell, "not mine.
Doctors aren't satisfied unless they diagnose and label each case. Well, I
think that Smith's healthy; so healthy you're afraid of him.”

 
          
 
"You're crazy," said McGuire.

 
          
 
"Maybe. But I don't think Smith needs
medical interference. He's working out his own salvation. You believe he's
degenerating. I say he's growing.'*

 
          
 
"Look at Smith's skin," complained
McGuire.

 
          
 
"Sheep in wolfs clothing. Outside, the
hard, brittle epidermis. Inside, ordered regrowth, change. Why? I'm on the
verge of knowing. These changes inside Smith are so violent that they need a
shell to protect their action. And as for you. Hartley, answer me truthfully,
when you were young, were you afraid of insects, spiders, things like
that?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"There you are. A phobia. A phobia you
use against Smith. That explains your distaste for Smith's change."

 
          
 
In the following weeks, Rockwell went back
over Smith's life carefully. He visited the electronics lab where Smith had
been employed and fallen ill. He probed the room where Smith had spent the
first weeks of his "illness" with Hartley in attendance. He examined
the machinery there. Something about radiations

 
          
 
While he was away from the sanitarium,
Rockwell locked Smith tightly, and had McGuire guard the door in case Hartley
got any unusual ideas.

 
          
 
The details of Smith's twenty-three years were
simple. He had worked for five years in the electronics lab, experimenting. He
had never been seriously sick in his life.

 
          
 
And as the days went by Rockwell took long
walks in the dry-wash near the sanitarium, alone. It gave him time to think and
solidify the incredible theory that was becoming a unit in his brain.

 
          
 
And one afternoon he paused by a
night-blooming jasmine outside the sanitarium, reached up, smiling, and plucked
a dark shining object off of a high branch. He looked at the object and tucked
it in his pocket. Then he walked into the sanitarium.

 
          
 
He summoned McGuire in off the veranda.
McGuire came. Hartley trailed behind, threatening, complaining. The three of
them sat in the living quarters of the building.

 
          
 
Rockwell told them.

 
          
 
"Smith's not diseased. Germs can't live
in him. He's not inhabited by banshees or weird monsters who've ‘taken over'
his body. I mention this to show I've left no stone untouched. I reject all
normal diagnoses of Smith. I offer the most important, the most easily accepted
possibility of—delayed hereditary mutation."

 
          
 
"Mutation?" McGuire's voice was
funny.

 
          
 
Rockwell held up the shiny dark object in the
light.

 
          
 
“I found this on a bush in the garden. It'll
illustrate my theory to perfection. After studying Smith's symptoms, examining
his laboratory, and considering several of these"—he twirled the dark
object in his fingers— "I'm certain. It's metamorphosis. It's
regeneration, change, mutation after birth. Here. Catch. This is Smith."

 
          
 
He tossed the object to Hartley. Hartley
caught it.

 
          
 
"This is the chrysalis of a caterpillar,"
said Hartley.

 
          
 
Rockwell nodded. "Yes, it is."

 
          
 
"You don't mean to infer that Smith's a—
chrysalis?”

 
          
 
“I'm positive of it," replied Rockwell.

 
          
 
Rockwell stood over Smith's body in the
darkness of evening. Hartley and McGuire sat across the patient's room, quiet,
listening. Rockwell touched Smith softly. "Suppose that there's more to
life than just being born, living seventy years, and dying. Suppose there's one
more great step up in man's existence, and Smith has been the first of us to
make that step.

 
          
 
"Looking at a caterpillar, we see what we
consider a static object. But it changes to a butterfly. Why? There are no
final theories explaining it. It's progress, mainly. The pertinent thing is
that a supposedly unchangeable object weaves itself into an intermediary
object, wholly unrecognizable, a chrysalis, and emerges a butterfly. Outwardly
the chrysalis looks dead. This is misdirection. Smith has misdirected us, you
see. Outwardly, dead. Inwardly, fluids whirlpool, reconstruct, rush about with
wild purpose. From grub to mosquito, from caterpillar to butterfly, from Smith
to—?"