Читать книгу A Million Years to Conquer - Henry Kuttner - Страница 5

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On August 7, 1924, an eight-year-old boy caused a panic in a Des Moines theater.

His name was Stephen Court. He had been born to a theatrical family of mediocre talent—the Crazy Courts, they were billed. The act was a combination of gags, dances and humorous songs. Stephen traveled with his parents on tour, when they played one-night stands and small vaudeville circuits. In 1924, vaudeville had not yet been killed by the films. It was the beginning of the Jazz Age.

Stephen was so remarkably intelligent, even as a child, that he was soon incorporated into the act as a "mental wizard." He wore a miniature cap and gown, and was introduced by his parents at the end of their turn.

"Any date—ask him any historical date, my friends, and he will answer! The gentleman in the third row. What do you want to know?"

And Stephen would answer accurately. When did Columbus discover America? When was the Magna Charta signed? When was the Battle of Hastings? When was Lafayette born?

"Mathematical questions? You, there—"

Stephen would answer. Mathematics was no riddle for him, neither dates nor algebra. The value of pi? He knew it. Formulas and equations slipped glibly from his tongue. He stood on the stage in the spotlight, his small face impassive, a small, dark-haired child with curiously luminous brown eyes, and answered all questions.

He read omnivorously every book he could manage to obtain. He was coldly unemotional, which distressed his mother, and he hid his thoughts well.

Then, on that August night, his life suddenly changed.

The act was almost over. The audience was applauding wildly. The Courts stood on each side of the boy, bowing. And Stephen stood motionless, his strange, glowing eyes staring out into the gloom of the theater.

"Take your bows, kid," Court hissed from the side of his mouth.

But the boy didn't answer. There was an odd tensity in his rigid posture. His expressionless face seemed strained. Only in his eyes was there life, and a terrible fire.

In the theater, a whisper grew to a murmur and the applause died. Then the murmur swelled to a restrained roar, until someone screamed:

"Fire!"

The elder Court glanced around quickly. He could see no signs of smoke or flame. But he made a quick gesture, and the orchestra leader struck up a tune. Hastily the man and woman went into a routine tap dance.

"Steve!" Court said urgently. "Join in!"

But Stephen just stood there, and through the theater the roar rose to individual screams of panic. The audience no longer watched the stage. They sprang up and fought their way to the exits, cursing, pushing, crowding.

Nothing could stop it. By sheer luck no one was killed. But in ten minutes the theater was empty—and there had been no sign of a fire.

In his dressing room, Court looked queerly at his son.

"What was wrong with you tonight, kid?" he asked, as he removed grease-paint from his face with cold cream.

"Nothing," Stephen said abstractedly.

"Something funny about the whole thing. There wasn't any fire."

Stephen sat on a chair, his legs swinging idly.

"That magician we played with last week—" he began.

"Yeah?"

"I got some ideas from him."

"Well?" his father urged.

"I watched him when he hypnotized a man from the audience. That's all it was. I hypnotized the entire audience tonight."

"Oh, cut it out," Curt said, grinning.

"It's true! The conditions were right. Everyone's attention was focused on me, I made them think there was a fire."

When Court turned and looked at the boy, he had an odd feeling that this was not his son sitting opposite him. The round face was childish, but the eyes were not. They were cold, watchful, direct.

Court laughed without much conviction.

"You're crazy," he said, turning back to the light-rimmed mirror.

"Maybe I am," Stephen said lightly. "I want to go to school. Will you send me?"

"I can't afford it. Anyway, you're too big an attraction. Maybe we can manage later."

Stephen did not argue. He rose and went toward his mother's dressing room, but he did not enter. Instead, he turned and left the theater.

He had determined to run away.

Stephen already knew that his brain was far superior to the average. It was as yet unformed, requiring knowledge and capable training. Those he could never get through his parents. He felt no sorrow or pity on leaving them. His cool intellect combined with the natural cruelty of childhood to make him unemotional, passionlessly logical.

But Stephen needed money, and his youth was a handicap. No one would employ a child, he knew, except perhaps as a newsboy. Moreover, he had to outwit his parents, who would certainly search for their son.

Strangely there was nothing pathetic about Stephen's small figure as he trudged along the dark street. His iron singleness of purpose and his ruthless will gave him a certain incongruous dignity. He walked swiftly to the railroad station.

On the way he passed a speakeasy. A man was lying in the gutter before the door, an unshaven derelict, grizzled of hair and with worn, dissolute features. He was mumbling drunkenly and striving helplessly to rise.

Stephen paused to watch. Attracted by the silent gaze, the man looked up. As the two glances met, inflexible purpose grew in the boy's pale face.

"Wanna—drink," the derelict mumbled. "Gotta. They won't give old Sammy a drink."

Stephen's eyes again grew luminous. They seemed to bore into the watery eyes of the hobo, probing, commanding.

"Eh?" the drunkard asked blankly, and his voice died off uncertainly as he staggered erect.

Stephen gripped his arm, and the two went down the street. In a dark doorway they paused. The foggy, half-wrecked brain of the tramp was no match for Stephen's hypnotic powers. Sammy listened as the boy talked.

"You're catching a freight out of town. You're taking me with you. Do you understand?"

"Eh?" Sammy asked vaguely.

In a monotonous voice the boy repeated his commands. When the drunkard finally understood, the two headed for the railway station.

Stephen's plans were made. To all appearance, he was a mere child. He could not possibly have fulfilled his desires alone. The authorities would have returned him to his parents, or he would have been sent to a school as a public charge. What man could recognize in a young boy an already blossoming genius. Stephen's super-mentality was seriously handicapped by his immaturity.

He needed a guardian, purely nominal, to satisfy the prejudices of the world. Through Sammy he could act. Sammy would be his tongue, his hands, his legal representative. Men would be willing to deal with Sammy, where they would have laughed at a child. But first the tramp would have to be metamorphosed into a "useful citizen."

That night, they rode in a chilly box-car, headed east. Hour after hour Stephen worked on the brain of his captive. Sammy must be his eyes, his hands, his provider.

Once Sammy had been a mechanic, he revealed under Stephen's relentless probing. The train rolled on through the darkness, the wheels beating a clicking threnody toward the East.

Stephen's task was not easy, for the habits of years had weakened Sammy's body and mind. He was a confirmed tramp, lazy, and content to follow the call of his wanderlust. But always Stephen drove him on, arguing, commanding, convincing. Hypnosis played a large part in the boy's ultimate success.

Sammy got a job, much against his will, and washed dishes in a cheap restaurant for a few weeks. He shaved daily and consistently drank less. Meanwhile Stephen waited, but he did not wait in idleness. He spent his days visiting automobile agencies and studying the machines. At night he crouched in a cheap tenement room, sketching and designing. Finally he spoke to Sammy.

"I want you to get another job. You will be a mechanic in an automobile factory." He watched Sammy's reaction.

"Aw, I can't Steve," the man protested. "They wouldn't even look at me. Let's hit the road again, huh?"

"Show them these," Stephen ordered, extending a sheaf of closely written papers and drawings. "They'll give you a job."

At first the foreman told Sammy to get out, after a glance at his red-rimmed eyes and weak, worn face. But the papers were a magic password. The foreman pondered over them, bewilderedly scrutinized Sammy, and went off to confer with one of the managers.

"The man's good!" he blurted. "He doesn't look it, but he's an expert mechanic, just the kind of man we need. Look at these improvements he's worked out! This wiring change will save us thousands annually. And this gear ratio. It's new, but it might work. I think—"

"Send him in," the manager said hastily.

Sammy got his job. Actually he wasn't much good, but every month or two he would show up with some new improvement, some unexpected invention that got him raises instead of dismissal. Of course Stephen was responsible for all this. He had adopted Sammy.

Stephen saw to it that they moved to a more convenient apartment, and now he went to school. Needing surprisingly little sleep, he spent most of his time studying. There was so much to learn, and so little time! To acquire the knowledge he wanted, he needed more and more money to pay for tutoring and equipment.

The years passed with a peaceful lack of haste. Sammy drank little now, and took a great deal of interest in his work. But he was still a tramp at heart, eternally longing for the open road. Sometimes he would try to slip away, but Stephen was always too watchful.

At last the boy was ready for the next step. It was then early in 1927. After months of arduous toil, he had completed several inventions which he thought valuable. He had Sammy patent them, and then market them to the highest bidders.

The result was more money than Stephen had expected. He made Sammy resign his job, and the two of them retired to a country house. He brought along several tutors, and had a compact, modern laboratory set up. When more money was required, the boy would putter around for awhile. Inevitably he emerged with a new formula that increased the already large annual income.

Tutors changed as Stephen grew older and learned more. He attended college for a year, but found he could apply his mind better at home. He needed a larger headquarters, though. So they moved to Wisconsin and bought a huge old mansion, which he had renovated.

His quest for knowledge seemed endless, yet he did not neglect his health. He went for long walks and exercised mightily.

When finally he grew to manhood, he was a magnificent specimen, strong, well-formed and handsome. But always, save for a few occasional lapses, he was coldly unemotional.

Once he had detectives locate his parents, and anonymously arranged to provide a large annual income for them. But he would not see either his father or mother.

"They would mean emotional crises," he told Sammy. "There would be unnecessary arguments. By this time they have forgotten me, anyway. That's certain."

"Think so?" Sammy muttered, chewing on the stem of his ancient pipe. His nut-brown, wrinkled face looked rather puzzled under his stiff crop of white hair. "Well, I never did think you was human, Stevie."

He shook his head, put the pipe away, and pottered off in search of one of his rare drinks. Stephen returned to his work.

What was the purpose of these years of intensive study? He scarcely knew. His mind was a vessel to be filled with the clear, exhilarating liquor of knowledge. As Sammy's system craved alcohol, so Stephen's brain thirsted for wisdom. Study and experiment were to him a precious delight that approached actual ecstasy. As an athlete gets keen pleasure from the exercise of his well-trained body, so Stephen exulted in the exercise of his mind.

Unimaginable eons before, in the teeming seas of a primeval world, life-forms had fed their blind hunger. That was appetite of the flesh.

Stephen's hunger was the appetite of the mind. But it also made him blind, in a different way. He was a godlike man, and he was, by ordinary standards, unhuman.

By 1941 he was the greatest scientist in the world.