Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition (24 page)

Just as every day brings news of more armaments pulverized by dynamopsychism, so has it brought rumors of the professor’s whereabouts. During last week alone, three publications
carried articles proving variously that he was hiding in an Inca ruin in the Andes, in the sewers of Paris, and in the unexplored lower chambers of Carlsbad Caverns. Knowing the man, I am inclined to regard such hiding places as unnecessarily romantic and uncomfortable. While there are numerous persons eager to kill him, there must be millions who would care for him and hide him. I like to think that he is in the home of such a person.

One thing is certain: at this writing, Professor Barnhouse is not dead. Barnhouse static jammed broadcasts not ten minutes ago. In the eighteen months since his disappearance, he has been reported dead some half-dozen times. Each report has stemmed from the death of an unidentified man resembling the professor, during a period free of the static. The first three reports were followed at once by renewed talk of rearmament and recourse to war. The saber-rattlers have learned how imprudent premature celebrations of the professor’s demise can be.

Many a stouthearted patriot has found himself prone in the tangled bunting and timbers of a smashed reviewing stand, seconds after having announced that the arch-tyranny of Barnhouse was at an end. But those who would make war if they could, in every country in the world, wait in sullen silence for what must come—the passing of Professor Barnhouse.

·    ·    ·

To ask how much longer the professor will live is to ask how much longer we must wait for the blessings of another world war. He is of short-lived stock: his mother lived to be fifty-three, his father to be forty-nine; and the life-spans of his grandparents on both sides were of the same order. He might be expected to live, then, for perhaps fifteen years more, if he can remain hidden from his enemies. When one considers the number and vigor of these enemies, however, fifteen years seems an extraordinary length of time, which might better be revised to fifteen days, hours, or minutes.

The professor knows that he cannot live much longer. I say this because of the message left in my mailbox on Christmas Eve. Unsigned, typewritten on a soiled scrap of paper, the note consisted of ten sentences. The first nine of these, each a bewildering tangle of psychological jargon and references to obscure texts, made no sense to me at first reading. The tenth, unlike the rest, was simply constructed and contained no large words—but its irrational content made it the most puzzling and bizarre sentence of all. I nearly threw the note away, thinking it a colleague’s warped notion of a practical joke. For some reason, though, I added it to the clutter on top of my desk, which included, among other mementos, the professor’s dice.

It took me several weeks to realize that the message really meant something, that the first nine sentences, when unsnarled, could be taken as instructions. The tenth still told me nothing. It was only last night that I discovered how it fitted in with the rest. The sentence appeared in my thoughts last night, while I was toying absently with the professor’s dice.

I promised to have this report on its way to the publishers today. In view of what has happened, I am obliged to break that promise, or release the report incomplete. The delay will not be a long one, for one of the few blessings accorded a bachelor like myself is the ability to move quickly from one abode to another, or from one way of life to another. What property I want to take with me can be packed in a few hours. Fortunately, I am not without substantial private means, which may take as long as a week to realize in liquid and anonymous form. When this is done, I shall mail the report.

I have just returned from a visit to my doctor, who tells me my health is excellent. I am young, and, with any luck at all, I shall live to a ripe old age indeed, for my family on both sides is noted for longevity.

Briefly, I propose to vanish.

Sooner or later, Professor Barnhouse must die. But long before then I shall be ready. So, to the saber-rattlers of today—and
even, I hope, of tomorrow—I say: Be advised. Barnhouse will die. But not the Barnhouse Effect.

Last night, I tried once more to follow the oblique instructions on the scrap of paper. I took the professor’s dice, and then, with the last, nightmarish sentence flitting through my mind, I rolled fifty consecutive sevens.

Good-by.

(1950)

L
ADIES AND GENTLEMEN
of the Federal Communications Commission, I appreciate this opportunity to testify on the subject before you.

I’m sorry—or maybe “heartsick” is the word—that news has leaked out about it. But now that word is getting around and coming to your official notice, I might as well tell the story straight and pray to God that I can convince you that America doesn’t want what we discovered.

I won’t deny that all three of us—Lew Harrison, the radio announcer, Dr. Fred Bockman, the physicist, and myself, a sociology professor—found peace of mind. We did. And I won’t say it’s wrong for people to seek peace of mind. But if somebody thinks he wants peace of mind the way we found it, he’d be well advised to seek coronary thrombosis instead.

Lew, Fred, and I found peace of mind by sitting in easy chairs and turning on a gadget the size of a table-model television set. No herbs, no golden rule, no muscle control, no sticking our noses in other people’s troubles to forget our own; no hobbies, Taoism, push-ups or contemplation of a lotus. The gadget is, I think, what a lot of people vaguely foresaw as the crowning achievement of civilization: an electronic something-or-other, cheap, easily mass-produced, that can, at the flick of a switch, provide tranquillity. I see you have one here.

My first brush with synthetic peace of mind was six months ago. It was also then that I got to know Lew Harrison,
I’m sorry to say. Lew is chief announcer of our town’s only radio station. He makes his living with his loud mouth, and I’d be surprised if it were anyone but he who brought this matter to your attention.

Lew has, along with about thirty other shows, a weekly science program. Every week he gets some professor from Wyandotte College and interviews him about his particular field. Well, six months ago Lew worked up a program around a young dreamer and faculty friend of mine, Dr. Fred Bockman. I gave Fred a lift to the radio station, and he invited me to come on in and watch. For the heck of it, I did.

Fred Bockman is thirty and looks eighteen. Life has left no marks on him, because he hasn’t paid much attention to it. What he pays most of his attention to, and what Lew Harrison wanted to interview him about, is this eight-ton umbrella of his that he listens to the stars with. It’s a big radio antenna rigged up on a telescope mount. The way I understand it, instead of looking at the stars through a telescope, he aims this thing out in space and picks up radio signals coming from different heavenly bodies.

Of course, there aren’t people running radio stations out there. It’s just that many of the heavenly bodies pour out a lot of energy and some of it can be picked up in the radio-frequency band. One good thing Fred’s rig does is to spot stars hidden from telescopes by big clouds of cosmic dust. Radio signals from them get through the clouds to Fred’s antenna.

That isn’t all the outfit can do, and, in his interview with Fred, Lew Harrison saved the most exciting part until the end of the program. “That’s very interesting, Dr. Bockman,” Lew said. “Tell me, has your radio telescope turned up anything else about the universe that hasn’t been revealed by ordinary light telescopes?”

This was the snapper. “Yes, it has,” Fred said. “We’ve found about fifty spots in space,
not hidden by cosmic dust
, that give off powerful radio signals. Yet no heavenly bodies at all seem to be there.”

“Well!” Lew said in mock surprise. “I should say that
is
something! Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in radio history, we bring you the noise from Dr. Bockman’s mysterious voids.” They had strung a line out to Fred’s antenna on the campus. Lew waved to the engineer to switch in the signals coming from it. “Ladies and gentlemen, the voice of nothingness!”

The noise wasn’t much to hear—a wavering hiss, more like a leaking tire than anything else. It was supposed to be on the air for five seconds. When the engineer switched it off, Fred and I were inexplicably grinning like idiots. I felt relaxed and tingling. Lew Harrison looked as though he’d stumbled into the dressing room at the Copacabana. He glanced at the studio clock, appalled. The monotonous hiss had been on the air for five minutes! If the engineer’s cuff hadn’t accidentally caught on the switch, it might be on yet.

Fred laughed nervously, and Lew hunted for his place in the script. “The hiss from nowhere,” Lew said. “Dr. Bockman, has anyone proposed a name for these interesting voids?”

“No,” Fred said. “At the present time they have neither a name nor an explanation.”

The voids the hiss came from have still to be explained, but I’ve suggested a name for them that shows plans of sticking: “Bockman’s Euphoria.” We may not know what the voids are, but we know what they do, so the name’s a good one. Euphoria, since it means a sense of buoyancy and well-being, is really the only word that will do.

·    ·    ·

After the broadcast, Fred, Lew, and I were cordial to one another to the point of being maudlin.

“I can’t remember when a broadcast has been such a pleasure,” Lew said. Sincerity is not his forte, yet he meant it.

“It’s been one of the most memorable experiences of my life,” Fred said, looking puzzled. “Extraordinarily pleasant.”

We were all embarrassed by the emotion we felt, and
parted company in bafflement and haste. I hurried home for a drink, only to walk into the middle of another unsettling experience.

The house was quiet, and I made two trips through it before discovering that I was not alone. My wife, Susan, a good and lovable woman who prides herself on feeding her family well and on time, was lying on the couch, staring dreamily at the ceiling. “Honey,” I said tentatively, “I’m home. It’s suppertime.”

“Fred Bockman was on the radio today,” she said in a faraway voice.

“I know. I was with him in the studio.”

“He was out of this world,” she sighed. “Simply out of this world. That noise from space—when he turned that on, everything just seemed to drop away from me. I’ve been lying here, just trying to get over it.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, biting my lip. “Well, guess I’d better round up Eddie.” Eddie is my ten-year-old son, and captain of an apparently invincible neighborhood baseball team.

“Save your strength, Pop,” said a small voice from the shadows.

“You home? What’s the matter? Game called off on account of atomic attack?”

“Nope. We finished eight innings.”

“Beating ’em so bad they didn’t want to go on, eh?”

“Uh, they were doing pretty good. Score was tied, and they had two men on and two outs.” He talked as though he were recounting a dream. “And then,” he said, his eyes widening, “everybody kind of lost interest, just wandered off. I came home and found the old lady curled up here, so I lay down on the floor.”

“Why?” I asked incredulously.

“Pop,” Eddie said thoughtfully, “I’m damned if I know.”

“Eddie!” his mother said.

“Mom,” Eddie said, “I’m damned if
you
know either.”

I was damned if anybody could explain it, but I had a
nagging hunch. I dialed Fred Bockman’s number. “Fred, am I getting you up from dinner?”

“I wish you were,” Fred said. “Not a scrap to eat in the house, and I let Marion have the car today so she could do the marketing. Now she’s trying to find a grocery open.”

“Couldn’t get the car started, eh?”

“Sure she got the car started,” said Fred. “She even got to the market. Then she felt so good she walked right out of the place again.” Fred sounded depressed. “I guess it’s a woman’s privilege to change her mind, but it’s the lying that hurts.”

“Marion lied? I don’t believe it.”

“She tried to tell me everybody wandered out of the market with her—clerks and all.”

“Fred,” I said, “I’ve got news for you. Can I drive out right after supper?”

When I arrived at Fred Bockman’s farm, he was staring, dumbfounded, at the evening paper.

“The whole town went nuts!” Fred said. “For no reason at all, all the cars pulled up to the curb like there was a hook and ladder going by. Says here people shut up in the middle of sentences and stayed that way for five minutes. Hundreds wandered around in the cold in their shirt-sleeves, grinning like toothpaste ads.” He rattled the paper. “This
is
what you wanted to talk to me about?”

I nodded. “It all happened when that noise was being broadcast, and I thought maybe—”

“The odds are about one in a million that there’s any maybe about it,” said Fred. “The time checks to the second.”

“But most people weren’t listening to the program.”

“They didn’t have to listen, if my theory’s right. We took those faint signals from space, amplified them about a thousand times, and rebroadcast them. Anybody within reach of the transmitter would get a good dose of the stepped-up radiations, whether he wanted to or not.” He shrugged. “Apparently that’s like walking past a field of burning marijuana.”

“How come you never felt the effect at work?”

“Because I never amplified and rebroadcast the signals. The radio station’s transmitter is what really put the sock into them.”

“So what’re you going to do next?”

Fred looked surprised. “Do? What is there to do but report it in some suitable journal?”

·    ·    ·

Without a preliminary knock, the front door burst open and Lew Harrison, florid and panting, swept into the room and removed his great polo coat with a bullfighterlike flourish. “You’re cutting him in on it, too?” he demanded, pointing at me.

Fred blinked at him. “In on what?”

“The millions,” Lew said. “The billions.”

“Wonderful,” Fred said. “What are you talking about?”