Читать книгу Other Eyes Watching - John Russell Fearn - Страница 4

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For six weeks and more Douglas Ashfield had little real awareness of what was going on around him. People came and went like so many phantoms in the midst of chaotic dreams. It was only by degrees that he realized the truth—that he was in a nursing home, that three of his ribs, an arm, and a leg were broken, that he had had concussion and complications. But the powers of modern surgery had saved him. He was commencing to mend.

Then at last the clouds of his illness began to evaporate. Weak but rational he was permitted his first visitor—Mason Brooks. The scientist looked unusually harassed as he drew up a chair to the bedside.

“To say that I owe you an apology sounds idiotic,” he commented, as Douglas fixed his eyes on him. “I should have had more sense. I’d worked it out by mathematics but had never made a practical test.”

“These things happen sometimes,” Douglas muttered, without resentment. In fact he was rather surprised to find the physicist so penitent.

“I escaped the worst,” Brooks went on moodily. “I ducked behind a machine and got nothing worse than deep cuts and a few abrasions. You’re okay now and will soon be about again. But—”

He stopped, fingering his lower lip.

“It isn’t—Vera?” Douglas asked sharply, realizing that her name had not been mentioned so far. “She wasn’t—killed?”

“No, not that.” Brooks got to his feet under an uncontrollable agitation. “She’s alive—quite alive. In fact to look at her you wouldn’t notice much difference. Face unmarked, body the same, only—you’d better see her,” he finished, as though the subject were too much for him to handle alone.

He crossed to the door, opened it and reached outside. Douglas lay watching fixedly as the girl was led into the room. As Brooks had said she appeared no different—except for one thing. She was wearing large, deep blue glass goggles and moving uncertainly even through her brother held her arm.

Presently, as Douglas’ horrified eyes bored at her, she reached the bedside. Her hands felt along the coverlet quickly, then she gave a little sigh of relief as Douglas’ grip closed upon them. Carefully Brooks guided her into the chair, then he stood looking down on her morosely.

“I’m glad you’re all right, Doug,” she whispered, her voice hardly audible. “I was so afraid you might die.”

“But you!” he cried. “What in the name of Heaven is wrong?”

“I can see through solid walls,” Vera said (CHAP. III)

“She’s blind!” Brooks said abruptly, and Vera’s lips tightened at the brutal frankness of it. “The explosion did it. Pieces of metal struck her in the eyes but missed her face. There was nothing for it but to remove the eyes entirely in case the metal fragments worked into the brain and caused death. Mercifully her face is unscarred.”

“I’d sooner have died,” the girl muttered. “What’s the use of going on living in the dark? Why couldn’t it have been anything else but this?” she burst out passionately. “I wouldn’t have minded losing an arm, or a leg. They can be replaced. But to me, to whom the whole essence of life lies in movement and change, to be condemned to blindness is unbearable!”

Her voice stopped and the room was very quiet. Then she spoke again, with a half smile.

“Forget it!” she said. “I’m all right now. Just gets me down when I think of it. I’m no quitter. But now and again I do get frightened of the blackness.”

Douglas stroked her slender hands gently, his eyes fixed on her pale distressed face.

“Would you mind taking the glasses off?” he asked quietly. “I’m an oculist, remember.”

“I know, but even you can’t repair what isn’t there.” The girl paused suddenly with a little catching of her breath. “Or can you?” she whispered. “I’ve just remembered that you said something on that awful day about artificial eyes.”

“Take the glasses off,” Douglas insisted.

She fingered behind her ears and her brother turned away and looked through the window. What regard he had for his sister was revealed more in that action than by anything else.

Had he not been an oculist first and a lover second, Douglas too would probably have looked away. But he didn’t. He fixed his gaze on the empty, tightly closed eyelids where the girl’s eyes had been.

He studied the bluish spottlings where metal fragments had been driven deep above her eyebrows and at the edges of her temples. Then with an infinite delicacy his fingerends passed over the hollow eyelids. Finally he sat back.

“All right,” he said. “Put them back.”

“Pretty dreadful, isn’t it?” the girl sighed, adjusting the goggles on the bridge of her nose.

Douglas did not answer for a moment. Presently he spoke slowly.

“I want you to take her home, Mason, and look after her well. I have to get myself right at the earliest possible moment. Then I will tackle the problem exclusively. There may be a cure. In fact there has got to be! Vera can’t go through the rest of her life in total darkness, not in this modern age.”

Brooks put a protecting arm round his sister’s shoulders as she got up.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “What’s the use of raising false hopes? This isn’t just eye trouble. The eyes themselves have gone!”

“But the sockets are undamaged,” Douglas answered. “To put it more plainly, the scaffolding is still in good shape. I think I can create artificial eyes, and I’ve thought so for years. Now I must turn that thought into a fact!”

Brooks hesitated. Finally he gave an incredulous smile.

“Well, get yourself better anyway,” he said. “Then we’ll talk again. Come on, Vera—this way!”

Douglas clasped her hand again, and watched as she was led from the room. He lay scowling for a while, before jabbing the bell button. From the nurse he ordered paper and pencil in such a fierce voice that she had inner fears for her safety.

The terrific stimulus of the tragedy he had witnessed got Douglas on his feet again in record time. Even before this he had spent every waking hour scribbling notes, making computations, testing theories, and discarding them.

The first thing he did upon returning to his home was to catch up to date on his practise—which took him a fortnight—and then he closed down for a month for so-called health reasons.

This done, he sent for Mason and Vera Brooks, summoning them to his surgery address where he had better opportunity for using his equipment.

“I think this is a waste of time,” the physicist said, after he had settled the girl in a chair. “There’s nothing you can do for my sister.”

“I insist that there is!” Douglas declared, pacing up and down. “When I was in the nursing home I admit that I had my doubts. But I’ve worked out the final details since then. Just take a look at this.”

He switched on a floodlamp and motioned Brooks to a table directly under it. Delicately held in a platinum claw, adjustable by set screws and pinions, was what appeared to be a human eyeball.

“Notice!” Douglas ordered, and switched the light off for a moment. Then when he flooded it on again the eye’s artificial pupil contracted sharply.

“Hmm—pretty good,” the physicist admitted.

“It’s more than that,” Douglas retorted. “It’s perfect! This eye is made primarily of mitonex plastic molded at two hundred F. That means it does not become solid and hard but retains the soft elasticity of the normal human eyeball. In front, of a different grade of mitonex and approaching the normal focusing curve of the human eye, is a plastic cornea, and behind it the lens itself.

“The iris was the easiest part. It’s made on the principle of a camera iris, so delicately sprung that the action of light photons striking it cause it to contract. When light in excess ceases to strike it expands to the point considered normal. The iris itself contains pigment, as does the human eye.”

Douglas stopped for a moment and searched the scientist’s lean, tense face.

“I tell you, Mason, I’ve reproduced here everything the human eye possesses! A human being can be duplicated in any case, for the body contains no chemicals which a laboratory cannot produce. By the same token I’ve reproduced an eye—the vitreous humor, the aqueous humor, the choroid coat, the sclerotic coat, everything.”

“Including the retina and optic nerve?” Brooks asked, still unconvinced.

Douglas nodded.

“Including those! The retina is simply the spreading out of a mass of nerve fibers forming the optic nerve itself, at the back of the eye. The optic nerve is only a carrier of sensation, the same as an electric wire carries current.

“You can see it here—this fine golden thread with a copper core. The thread reproduces the optic nerve with all the details of the natural one. So you see, nothing is missing.”

“And you think it can give sight?” Brooks asked.

“I’m convinced of it.”

“Nevertheless I’m going to correct this dangerous illusion, much as I want Vera to have her sight back!” Brooks’ face had become grim. “You ought to know, as even a layman does, that the eye itself does not see. Put this in Vera’s head and she’ll still be stark blind.”

“If it were unconnected, yes,” Douglas agreed. “But the power of sight is situated in the cortex of the occipital lobe of the brain. The excitations there produced give rise to visual sensation.

“Connect the nerves of this artificial eye—or rather of both of them since I have this eye in duplicate—to the right parts of the brain and vision is assured!”

The physicist became silent, the corners of his mouth dragged down. Vera got out of the chair and found her way to the table.

“This all sounds rather wonderful to me,” she said. “I wish I could see this eye you’re talking about.”

“The thing’s too wonderful!” Brooks declared harshly. “The very operation itself would be extremely dangerous. You admit that, Doug?”

“It would, yes,” he assented. “But don’t forget that I am an ophthalmic surgeon and have tackled similar difficult jobs—and succeeded. I believe I could succeed here, too, and if so a new era in optics would be upon us.”

“If!” Brooks echoed. “That implies a doubt. No, Douglas, you are not going to turn my sister into a guinea pig because of a bright idea you have. I won’t allow it!”

“You won’t allow it!” Vera exclaimed. “I’ve some say in this, remember. I’m the one who can’t see, not you. I’m all for it. Anyway, if it fails I’ll be no worse off and I shall know where I stand.”

“I will not allow you to do it,” her brother snapped. “I’ve never yet made a decision on your behalf which proved wrong. And I say that this is too risky.”

“Don’t you think you owe Vera a chance to get her sight back?” Douglas asked quietly. “But for you and your experiment she wouldn’t be blind anyway.”

The physicist tightened his lips.

“I’m of age, and I’m going to risk it,” Vera decided finally. “Name the day and the hour, Doug, and I’ll be here.”

“If you do attempt this operation, Douglas, I’ll bring the whole Ophthalmic Council down on your head,” Brooks declared. “That isn’t viciousness. It’s plain commonsense. I know Vera is desperate, but I won’t allow her to risk her life on an experiment which may prove fatal.

“In a year or two maybe perfection will be assured and other people will have taken the first blows. Certainly Vera won’t! If the Ophthalmic Council learns what you are doing without their full sanction, it will mean you’re sunk! You know that.”

Douglas drummed his fingers on the table, his face set.

“It’s up to Vera, not you,” he said at length.

“Fix your day and let me know,” the girl answered.

“Vera, don’t be such a fool!” Brooks gripped her arm.

“I’m not a fool. You don’t comprehend what I’m enduring. You are not wandering round in total darkness as I am. Do you realize that it is nearly three months since I saw a ray of light? Groping for everything, bumping into things, unable to see how I look? I can’t bear it much longer. I’d sooner die than stay blind. I’m going to take the risk and be hanged to you.”

Brooks eyed her for a moment, then his jaw squared.

“We’ll talk it over,” he decided, leading her to the door. “And I’d advise you to think again too, Douglas.”

“Sorry!” He opened the door. “It’s up to Vera.”

He kissed her gently, gripped her hand, and watched her and her brother go off down the corridor. Closing the door quietly he stood thinking, rubbing his chin with restless fingers.