Brain Wave (3 page)

“Whew! What a day!” She ran a strong slim hand across her hair, sleeking it down, and smiled wearily at them. “Everybody and his Uncle Oscar is having trouble, and all of them are wishing it on me. Gertie threw a tantrum—”

“Huh?” Corinth regarded her in some dismay. He’d been counting on the big computer to solve his equations that day. “What’s wrong?”

“Only God and Gertie know, and neither one is telling. Allanbee ran a routine test this morning, and it came out wrong. Not much, but enough to throw off anybody that needed precise answers. He’s been digging into her ever since, trying to find the trouble, so far without luck. And I have to reschedule everybody!”

“Very strange,” murmured Lewis.

“Then different instruments, especially in the physics and chemistry sections, are a little crazy. Murchison’s polarimeter has an error of—oh, something horrible like one tenth of one per cent, I don’t know.”

“Izzat so?” Lewis leaned forward, thrusting his jaw out above the dishes. “Maybe it’s not my neurones but my instruments that’re off whack—No, can’t be. Not that much. It must be something in the cells themselves—but how can I measure that if the gadgets are all awry?” He broke into vigorous German profanity, though his eyes remained alight.

“Lots of the boys have come up with brave new projects all at once, too,” went on Helga. “They want immediate use of things like the big centrifuge, and blow their tops when I tell them to wait their turn.”

“All today, eh?” Corinth pushed his dessert aside and took out a cigarette. “ ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Alice.” His eyes widened, and the hand that struck a match shook ever so faintly. “Nat, I wonder—”

“A general phenomenon?” Lewis nodded, holding excitement in check with an effort. “Could be, could be. We’d certainly better find out.”

“What’re you talking about?” asked Helga.

“Things.” Corinth explained while she finished eating.
Lewis sat quietly back, blowing cigar fumes and withdrawn into himself.

“Hm.” Helga tapped the table with a long, unpainted fingernail. “Sounds—interesting. Are all nerve cells, including those in our own brains, suddenly being speeded up?”

“It’s more basic than that,” said Corinth. “Something may have happened to—what? Electrochemical phenomena? How should I know? Let’s not go off the deep end till we’ve investigated this.”

“Yeah. I’ll leave it to you.” Helga took out a cigarette for herself and inhaled deeply. “I can think of a few obvious things to check up on—but it’s your child.” She turned again to smile at Corinth, the gentle smile she saved for a very few. “Apropos, how’s Sheila?”

“Oh, fine, fine. How’s yourself?”

“I’m okay.” There was a listlessness in her answer.

“You must come over to our place sometime for dinner.” It was a small strain to carry on polite conversation, when his mind was yelling to be at this new problem. “We haven’t seen you in quite a while. Bring the new boy friend if you want, whoever he is.”

“Jim? Oh, him. I gave him the sack last week. But I’ll come over, sure.” She got up. “Back to the oars, mates. See you.”

Corinth regarded her as she strode toward the cashier’s desk. Almost in spite of himself—his thoughts were shooting off in all directions today—he murmured: “I wonder why she can’t keep a man. She’s good-looking and intelligent enough.”

“She doesn’t want to,” said Lewis shortly.

“No, I suppose not. She’s turned cold since I knew her in Minneapolis. Why?”

Lewis shrugged.

“I think you know,” said Corinth. “You’ve always understood women better than you had any right to. And she likes you better than anyone else around here, I think.”

“We both go for music,” said Lewis. It was his opinion that none had been written since 1900. “And we both know how to keep our mouths shut.”

“Okay, okay,” laughed Corinth. He got up. “I’m for
the lab again. Hate to scrap the phase analyzer, but this new business—” Pausing: “Look, let’s get hold of the others and divide up the labor, huh? Everybody check something. It won’t take long then.”

Lewis nodded curtly and followed him out.

   By evening the results were in. As Corinth looked at the figures, his interest lost way to a coldness rising within him. He felt suddenly how small and helpless a thing he was.

Electromagnetic phenomena were changed.

It wasn’t much, but the very fact that the supposedly eternal constants of nature had shifted was enough to crash a hundred philosophies into dust. The subtlety of the problem held something elemental. How do you remeasure the basic factors when your measuring devices have themselves changed?

Well, there were ways. There are no absolutes in this universe, everything exists in relation to everything else, and it was the fact that certain data had altered relatively to others which was significant.

Corinth had been working on the determination of electrical constants. For the metals they were the same, or nearly the same, as before, but the resistivity and permittivity of insulators had changed measurably—they had become slightly better conductors.

Except in the precision apparatus, such as Gertie the computer, the change in electromagnetic characteristics was not enough to make any noticeable difference. But the most complex and delicately balanced mechanism known to man is the living cell; and the neurone is the most highly evolved and specialized of all cells—particularly that variety of neurones found in the human cerebral cortex. And here the change was felt. The minute electrical impulses which represented neural functioning—sense awareness, motor reaction, thought itself—were flowing more rapidly, more intensely.

And the change might just have begun.

Helga shivered. “I need a drink,” she said. “Bad.”

“I know a bar,” said Lewis. “I’ll join you in one before coming back to work some more. How about you, Pete?”

“I’m going home,” said the physicist. “Have fun.” His words were flat.

He walked out, hardly aware of the darkened lobby and the late hour. To the others, this was still something bright and new and wonderful; but he couldn’t keep from thinking that perhaps, in one huge careless swipe, the universe was about to snuff out all the race of man. What would the effect be on a living body—?

Well, they’d done about all they could for now. They’d checked as much as possible. Helga had gotten in touch with the Bureau of Standards in Washington and notified them. She gathered, from what the man there said, that a few other laboratories, spotted throughout the country, had also reported anomalies.
Tomorrow
, thought Corinth,
they’ll really start hearing about it
.

Outside—the scene was still New York at evening—hardly changed, perhaps just a little quieter than it should be. He bought a newspaper at the corner and glanced at it as he stood there. Was he wrong, or had a subtle difference crept in, a more literate phrasing, something individual that broke through the copyrcader’s barriers because the copyreader himself had changed without knowing it? But there was no mention of the great cause, that was too big and too new yet, nor had the old story altered—war, unrest, suspicion, fear and hate and greed, a sick world crumbling.

He was suddenly aware that he had read through the
Times’
crowded front page in about ten minutes. He shoved the newspaper into a pocket and hastened toward the subway.

THERE was trouble everywhere. An indignant yell in the morning brought Archie Brock running to the chicken house, where Stan Wilmer had set down a bucket of feed to shake his fist at the world.

“Look a’ that!” he cried. “Just look!”

Brock craned his neck through the door and whistled. The place was a mess. A couple of bloody-feathered corpses were sprawled on the straw, a few other hens cackled nervously on the roosts, and that was all. The rest were gone.

“Looks like foxes got in when somebody left the door open,” said Brock.

“Yeah.” Wilmer swallowed his rage in a noisy gulp. “Some stinking son of a—”

Brock remembered that Wilmer was in charge of the hen house, but decided not to mention it. The other man recalled it himself and paused, scowling.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I checked the place last night as usual, before going to bed, and I’ll swear the door was closed and hooked like it always is. Five years I been here and never had any trouble.”

“So maybe somebody opened the door later on, after dark, huh?”

“Yeah. A chicken thief. Though it’s funny the dogs didn’t bark—I never heard of any human being coming here without them yapping.” Wilmer shrugged bitterly. “Well, anyway, somebody did open the door.”

“And then later on foxes got in.” Brock turned one of the dead hens over with his toe. “And maybe had to run for it when one of the dogs came sniffing around, and left these.”

“And most of the birds wandered out into the woods.
It’ll take a week to catch ’em—all that live. Oh, Judas!” Wilmer stormed out of the chicken house, forgetting to close the door. Brock did it for him, vaguely surprised that he had remembered to do so.

He sighed and resumed his morning chores. The animals all seemed fidgety today. And damn if his own head didn’t feel funny. He remembered his own panic of two nights before, and the odd way he’d been thinking ever since. Maybe there was some kind of fever going around.

Well—he’d ask somebody about it later. There was work to do today, plowing in the north forty that had just been cleared. All the tractors were busy cultivating, so he’d have to take a team of horses.

That was all right. Brock liked animals, he had always understood them and got along with them better than with people. Not that the people had been mean to him, anyway for a long while now. The kids used to tease him, back when he was a kid too, and then later there’d been some trouble with cars, and a couple of girls had got scared also and he’d been beaten up by the brother of one of them. But that was years back. Mr. Rossman had told him carefully what he could do and could not do, kind of taken him over, and things had been all right since then. Now he could walk into the tavern when he was in town and have a beer like anybody else, and the men said hello.

He stood for a minute, wondering why he should be thinking about this when he knew it so well, and why it should hurt him the way it did.
I’m all right
, he thought.
I’m not so smart, maybe, but I’m strong. Mr. Rossman says he ain’t got a better farm hand nor me
.

He shrugged and entered the barn to get out the horses. He was a young man, of medium height but heavy-set and muscular, with coarse strong features and a round, crew-cut, red-haired head. His blue denim clothes were shabby but clean; Mrs. Bergen, the wife of the general superintendent in whose cottage he had a room, looked after such details for him.

The barn was big and gloomy, full of the strong rich smells of hay and horses. The brawny Percherons stamped and snorted, restless as he harnessed them. Funny—they were always so calm before. “So, so, steady, boy. Steady,
Tom. Whoa, there, Jerry. Easy, easy.” They quieted a little and he led them out and hitched them to a post while he went into the shed after the plow.

His dog Joe came frisking around him, a tall Irish setter whose coat was like gold and copper in the sun. Joe was really Mr. Rossman’s, of course, but Brock had taken care of him since he was a pup and it was always Brock whom he followed and loved. “Down, boy, down. What the hell’s got into yuh, anyway? Take it easy, will yuh?”

The estate lay green around him, the farm buildings on one side, the cottages of the help screened off by trees on another, the many acres of woods behind. There was a lot of lawn and orchard and garden between this farming part and the big white house of the owner, a house which had been mostly empty since Mr. Rossman’s daughters had married and his wife had died. He was there now, though, spending a few weeks here in upper New York State with his flowers. Brock wondered why a millionaire like Mr. Rossman wanted to putter around growing roses, even if he was getting old.

The shed door creaked open and Brock went in and took the big plow and wheeled it out, grunting a little with the effort. Not many men could drag it out themselves, he thought with a flicker of pride. He chuckled as he saw how the horses stamped at the sight. Horses were lazy beasts, they’d never work if they could get out of it.

He shoved the plow around behind them, carried the tongue forward, and hitched it on. With a deft motion, he twirled the reins loose from the post, took his seat, and shook the lines across the broad rumps. “Giddap!”

They just stood, moving their feet

“Giddap there, I say!”

Tom began backing. “Whoa! Whoa!” Brock took the loose end of the reins and snapped it with whistling force. Tom grunted and put one huge hoof on the tongue. It broke across.

For a long moment, Brock sat there, finding no words. Then he shook his red head. “It’s a ac-ci-dent,” he said aloud. The morning seemed very quiet all of a sudden. “It’s a ac-ci-dent.”

There was a spare tongue in the shed. He fetched it and
some tools, and began doggedly removing the broken one.

“Hi, there! Stop! Stop, I say!”

Brock looked up. The squealing and grunting were like a blow. He saw a black streak go by, and then another and another—The pigs were loose!

“Joe!” he yelled, even then wondering a little at how quickly he reacted. “Go get ’em, Joe! Round ’em up, boy!”

The dog was off like burnished lightning. He got ahead of the lead sow and snapped at her. She grunted, turning aside, and he darted after the next. Stan Wilmer came running from the direction of the pen. His face was white.

Brock ran to intercept another pig, turning it, but a fourth one slipped aside and was lost in the woods. It took several confused minutes to chase the majority back into the pen; a number were gone.

Wilmer stood gasping. His voice was raw. “I saw it,” he groaned. “Oh, my God, I saw it. It ain’t possible.”

Brock blew out his cheeks and wiped his face.

“You hear me?” Wilmer grasped his arm. “I saw it, I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes. Those pigs opened the gate themselves.”