Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (3 page)

 
          
 
"Smith a chrysalis?" McGuire laughed
heavily.

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"Humans don't work that way."

 
          
 
"Stop it, McGuire. This evolutionary
step's too great for your comprehension. Examine this body and tell me anything
else. Skin, eyes, breathing, blood flow. Weeks of assimilating food for his
brittle hibernation. Why did he eat all that food, why did he need that
x-liquid in his body except for his metamorphosis? And the cause of it all
was—eradiations. Hard radiations from Smith's laboratory equipment. Planned or
accidental I don't know. It touched some part of his essential gene-structure,
some part of the evolutionary structure of man that wasn't scheduled for
working for thousands of years yet, perhaps."

 
          
 
"Do you think that some day all
men—?"

 
          
 
"The maggot doesn't stay in the stagnant
pond, the grub in the soil, or the caterpillar on a cabbage leaf. They change,
spreading across space in waves.

 
          
 
"Smith's the answer to the problem 'What
happens next for man, where do we go from here?' We're faced with the blank
wall of the universe and the fatality of living in that universe, and man as he
is today is not prepared to go against the universe. The least exertion tires
man, overwork kills his heart, disease his body. Maybe Smith will be prepared
to answer the philosophers' problem of life's purpose. Maybe he can give it new
purpose.

 
          
 
"Why, we're just petty insects, all of
us, fighting on a pinhead planet. Man isn't meant to remain here and be sick
and small and weak, but he hasn't discovered the secret of the greater
knowledge yet.

 
          
 
"But—change man. Build your perfect man.
Your— your superman, if you like. Eliminate petty mentality, give him complete
physiological, neurological, psychological control of himself: give him clear,
incisive channels of thought, give him an indefatigable blood stream, a body
that can go months without outside food, that can adjust to any climate
anywhere and kill any disease. Release man from the shackles of flesh and flesh
misery and then he's no longer a poor, petty little man afraid to dream because
he knows his frail body stands between him and the fulfillment of dreams, then
he's ready to wage war, the only war worth waging—the conflict of man reborn
and the whole confounded universe!"

 
          
 
Breathless, voice hoarse, heart pounding,
Rockwell tensed over Smith, placed his hands admiringly, firmly on the cold
length of the chrysalis and shut his eyes. The power and drive and belief in
Smith surged through him. He was right. He was right. He knew he was right. He
opened his eyes and looked at McGuire and Hartley who were mere shadows in the
dim shielded light of the room.

 
          
 
After a silence of several seconds. Hartley
snuffed out his cigarette. "I don't believe that theory."

 
          
 
McGuire said, "How do you know Smith's
not just a mess of jelly inside? Did you X-ray him?"

 
          
 
"I couldn't risk it, it might interfere
with his change, like the sunlight did."

 
          
 
"So he's going to be a superman? What
will he look like?"

 
          
 
"We'll wait and see."

 
          
 
"Do you think he can hear us talking
about him now?”

 
          
 
"Whether or not he can, there's one thing
certain— we're sharing a secret we weren't intended to know. Smith didn't plan
on myself and McGuire entering the case. He had to make the most of it. But a
superman doesn't like people to know about him. Humans have a nasty way of
being envious, jealous, and hateful. Smith knew he wouldn't be safe if found
out. Maybe that explains your hatred, too. Hartley."

 
          
 
They all remained silent, listening. Nothing
sounded. Rockwell's blood whispered in his temples, that was all. There was
Smith, no longer Smith, a container labeled Smith, its contents unknown.

 
          
 
"If what you say is true," said
Hartley, "then indeed we should destroy him. Think of the power over the
world he would have. And if it affects his brain as I think it will affect
it—he'll try to kill us when he escapes because we are the only ones who know
about him. He'll hate us for prying."

 
          
 
Rockwell said it easily. "I'm not
afraid."

 
          
 
Hartley remained silent. His breathing was
harsh and loud in the room.

 
          
 
Rockwell came around the table, gesturing.

 
          
 
"I think we'd better say good-night now,
don't you?”

 
          
 
The thin rain swallowed Hartley's car.
Rockwell closed the door, instructed McGuire to sleep downstairs tonight on a
cot fronting Smith's room, and then he walked upstairs to bed.

 
          
 
Undressing, he had time to conjure over all
the unbelievable events of the passing weeks. A superman. Why not? Efficiency,
strength—

 
          
 
He slipped into bed.

 
          
 
When. When does Smith emerge from his
chrysalis? When?

 
          
 
The rain drizzled quietly on the roof of the
sanitarium.

 
          
 
McGuire lay in the middle of the sound of rain
and the earthquaking of thunder, slumbering on the cot, breathing heavy
breaths. Somewhere, a door creaked, but McGuire breathed on. Wind gusted down
the hall.

 
          
 
McGuire granted and rolled over. A door closed
softly and the wind ceased.

 
          
 
Footsteps tread softly on the deep carpeting.
Slow footsteps, aware and alert and ready. Footsteps. McGuire blinked his eyes
and opened them.

 
          
 
In the dim light a figure stood over him.

 
          
 
Upstairs, a single light m the hall thrust
down a yellow shaft near McGuire's cot.

 
          
 
An odor of crashed insect filled the air. A
hand moved. A voice started to speak.

 
          
 
McGuire screamed.

 
          
 
Because the hand that moved into the light was
green.

 
          
 
Green.

 
          
 
"Smith!''

 
          
 
McGuire flung himself ponderously down the
hall, yelling.

 
          
 
"He's walking! He can't walk, but he's
walking!"

 
          
 
The door rammed open under McGuire's bulk.
Wind and rain shrieked in around him and he was gone into the storm, babbling.

 
          
 
In the hall, the figure was motionless.
Upstairs a door opened swiftly and Rockwell ran down the steps. The green hand
moved back out of the light behind the figure's back.

 
          
 
"Who is it?" Rockwell paused
halfway.

 
          
 
The figure stepped into the light.

 
          
 
Rockwell's eyes narrowed.

 
          
 
"Hartley! What are you doing back
here?"

 
          
 
"Something happened," said Hartley.
"You'd better get McGuire. He ran out in the rain babbling like a
fool."

 
          
 
Rockwell kept his thoughts to himself. He
searched Hartley swiftly with one glance and then ran down the hall and out
into the cold wind.

 
          
 
"McGuire! McGuire, come back you
idiot!" The rain fell on Rockwell's body as he ran. He found McGuire about
a hundred yards from the sanitarium, blubbering,

 
          
 
"Smith—Smith's walking .. ."
"Nonsense. Hartley came back, that's all."

 
          
 
"I saw a green hand. It moved.”

 
          
 
"You dreamed."

 
          
 
"No. No." McGuire's face was flabby
pale, with water on it. "I saw a green hand, believe me. Why did Hartley
come back? He—"

 
          
 
At the mention of Hartley's name, full
comprehension came smashing to Rockwell. Fear leaped through his mind, a mad
blur of warning, a jagged edge of silent screaming for help.

 
          
 
"Hartley!"

 
          
 
Shoving McGuire abruptly aside, Rockwell
twisted and leaped back toward the sanitarium, shouting. Into the hall, down
the hall—

 
          
 
Smith's door was broken open.

 
          
 
Gun in hand, Hartley was in the center of the
room. He turned at the noise of Rockwell's running. They both moved
simultaneously. Hartley fired his gun and Rockwell pulled the light switch.

 
          
 
Darkness. Flame blew across the room,
profiling Smith's rigid body like a flash photo. Rockwell jumped at the flame.
Even as he jumped, shocked deep, realizing why Hartley had returned. In that
instant before the lights blinked out Rockwell had a glimpse of Hartley's
fingers.

 
          
 
They were a brittle mottled green.

 
          
 
Fists then. And Hartley collapsing as the
lights came on, and McGuire, dripping wet at the door, shook out the words,
"Is—is Smith killed?"

 
          
 
Smith wasn't harmed. The shot had passed over
him.

 
          
 
"This fool, this fool," cried
Rockwell, standing over Hartley's numbed shape. "Greatest case in history
and he tries to destroy it!"

 
          
 
Hartley came around, slowly. "I should've
known. Smith warned you."

 
          
 
"Nonsense, he—" Rockwell stopped,
amazed. Yes. That sudden premonition crashing into his mind. Yes. Then he
glared at Hartley. "Upstairs with you. You're being locked in for the
night. McGuire, you, too. So you can watch him."

 
          
 
McGuire croaked. "Hartley's hand. Look at
it. It's green. It was Hartley in the hall—not Smith!"

 
          
 
Hartley stared at his fingers. "Pretty,
isn't it?" he said, bitterly. "I was in range of those radiations for
a long time at the start of Smith's illness. I'm going to be a—creature—like
Smith. It's been this way for several days. I kept it hidden. I tried not to
say anything. Tonight, I couldn't stand it any longer, and I came back to
destroy Smith for what he's done to me ..."

 
          
 
A dry noise racked, dryly, splitting the air.
The three of them froze.