Читать книгу The New Adam - Stanley G. Weinbaum - Страница 5

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HIGH SCHOOL. A larger world wherein it was far easier to walk alone. Classes under various teachers and with various associates, and freedom from the prying glare of prolonged intimacy. Edmond was half content.

He was now a slender quiet lad of fourteen, of about average height. His features were beginning to betray a youthful ascetic saturninity and his rare smiles seemed almost sneers, foreshadowing a sort of demoniac beauty to come. Boys disliked him, and girls ignored him; he made no advances to either and quietly repulsed casual attempts at companionship.

The work itself weighted very lightly upon him; he had not lost his miraculous facility nor infallible memory. His two study periods sufficed to complete any form-work his courses required, and he disregarded the rest. He had, therefore, ample leisure for a rigid regime of introspection he was following. For more than a year the youth had been examining his own mind.

The realization of his difference had become a certainty; evidence abounded in his reading, in his associates, in the very manner of the school's teaching. He had two minds, equal and independent, capable each in itself of pursuing a train of thought. He could read with half his being and dream idly with his other self; or on occasion, he could fuse his twin mentalities, focus both on the same point as a single unit, and reason with a lucidity and insight that might have amazed his instructors. He could read with astonishing facility, garnering the contents of half a page of print in an instant's glance, or he could deal with the simple quadratics of high school algebra without the need of chalk or pencil. Yet he never flaunted these abilities; he pursued his accustomed path, never volunteering, never correcting, watching the blond Paul perform pridefully, and holding silently a secret contempt.

In his second year, little Vanny arrived, with her glowing black braids of hair; Paul walked with her in the halls in a manner mature as befits a sophomore in high school, and she still smiled at Edmond when they met. He noted a shade of distraction in her face, and recalled that her father had died during the summer.

In the house on Kenmore, the senescent John smoked on in his library. His little block of motor shares had multiplied itself into a respectable nest-egg; he had given up his practice for a quiet existence in the shade. He refused to own an automobile, berated the rumbling of the distant 'L', and read the conservative Daily News. A war in Europe was two years old, and a white-haired philanthrope had sailed to get the soldiers out of the trenches by Christmas. A president was re-elected after a race so close that victory hung in the balance for several days.

Edmond and his father got along well enough. Old John was satisfied with his son's quiet reserve and asocial bent; it seemed to him a sign of industry and serious mind. And Edmond was content to have his leisure undisturbed; the two spent their evenings reading, and seldom spoke. Berkeley and Hume were back on the shelves, and John was plodding through the great Critique and Edmond, finding novels of little interest, was perusing page by page the volumes of the Britannica. He absorbed information with a sponge-like memory that retained everything, but as yet the influx was unclassified and random, for the practical and theoretical had no differences in his small experience. Thus the older man absorbed a flood of philosophy with no retaining walls of knowledge, and the younger accumulated loose bricks of knowledge that enclosed no philosophy.

The years rolled on tail-to-trunk like an elephants' parade. Edmond entered Northwestern University, and here found a privacy almost as profound as that of his early youth. A war had been fought and finished without disturbing the curious household other than the mild vicissitudes of meatless days, Hooverizing, and Liberty Bonds. The stormy aftermath was over the world, and the decade of Youth was in its inception.

Edmond chose a medical course, and settled into a routine of home-to- class. The campus was just beyond the city limits, and he made the trip by street-car since old John still held steadfastly to his refusal of motor cars. His first year's sojourn in the College of Medicine was but a repetition of high school. Paul was there, majoring in English; occasionally they passed on the campus with casual nods, and Edmond had his father Professor Varney in an English lecture course. He was not greatly interested in any of his freshman studies; they were simply requirements to be put by since his pre-medic course permitted little latitude for choice. However, he mastered French with considerable facility.

In his second year, he derived some enjoyment from an elective course in Physics under Professor Albert Stein. The brilliant little Jewish savant was already famous; his measurements of electrons were beginning to open up vistas looking to the unknown. Behind his near-sighted eyes and slightly accented speech, Edmond perceived a mind alert and intuitive, an intellect that thought in lesser degree almost as he did himself.

And that year Vanny appeared again, and that was also the year that old John died. Edmond was twenty, a slender young man with strange amber eyes. His grim Uncle Edward became his guardian for the year remaining until his majority, and managed the not-too-extensive estate with a grumbling astuteness. Edmond lived on at the house on Kenmore, and Magda, grown plump and ruddy, ran the house as she had done for twenty years.

So Edmond drifted on, a slim saturnine figure, toying with knowledge in those incredible minds he possessed. He read voluminously in every field save fiction. Learning came to him with a consummate ease. He moved through the University like a lonely, flaming-eyed spirit, coming and going in solitude and scarcely ever addressed outside the classroom. Only Evanne Marten, grown very lovely with her glistening black mop of hair, tossed him an occasional word of greeting.

He was not yet really lonely. He watched the panorama of city and college, and was fairly content with his own company. There still grew in him the sense of superiority, of contempt for these single-minded beings about him. To see only one side of anything! To be unable to toss thoughts back and forth within one's self, never to know the strange conceptions that are beyond expression in language! No wonder they herded together for company!

Then he was twenty-one, and assumed the management of his resources. His income was sufficient for comfort; he made few changes in old John's investments. However, he purchased a long grey roadster of rather expensive make; there was something about mechanical excellence that pleased his curious character. He drove the machine with almost miraculous dexterity, slipping through traffic like wind through grain. His slim, tentacular fingers seemed especially designed for the management of machinery, and the thrill of driving was as intense as if he used his own muscles. Sometimes he drove to the open country, selecting unpatrolled dirt roads, and here drove at breath-taking speed, pitting his skill against the vagaries of the terrain.

His courses neared completion. Toward the end, the queer Edmond was somewhat less content; a sense of futility oppressed him, and he perceived no outlet anywhere for his energies. The curious being was lonely.

'I am enclosed in a viscid mist,' he reflected. 'Knowledge is a barren thing, since I see no closer to its end than the dullest of these about me.' And his other mind replied, 'This conclusion is unwarranted since hitherto I have made no attempt to attain happiness, but have let my fortunes drift without plan to the beckonings of chance.'

Thereafter he formed a plan. His degree was granted and he departed, making no effort to serve as an interne, since he did not wish to practice. An experiment awaited him that he relished; if happiness could be reduced to formula, he meant so to reduce it, solving at least for himself the elusive mystery.

Yet an unusual sense of sadness pursued him; he endured the graduation exercises in a somber silence. After the return to his home, he put away his car, and wandered aimlessly westward, past the decrepit school of his early youth, past the house that had been Vanney's home, past the high school now empty for the summer's recess. The half-deserted summer streets seemed sterile and melancholy; he was lonely.

Before him spread the glass fronts of a business street. A group of half a dozen persons clustered before the window of one—a pet shop. A glance revealed the attraction—the gambols and grimaces of a small monkey. Edmond paused for a moment; an impulse stirred him. He entered the shop, emerging in a moment bearing a paper-wrapped cage. The group filtered away as the attraction vanished.

'Here is my companion,' thought Edmond, 'and my defense against loneliness. At least he will be as understanding as any among these who watched him.'

He bore the chattering little animal to the house on Kenmore.

'Your name,' he said, 'shall be Homo, after the being who apes you less successfully than you him.' He smiled as the creature chattered in reply. 'My friend,' he continued, 'your sympathy and intelligence shall aid me in my appointed task.'

The monkey Homo chattered and grimaced, and rattled the bars of his flimsy cage; Edmund slipped the catch, and the little being pushed open the door, bounding with tree-born agility to Edmond's knee. There he sat in patent enjoyment of his liberty, while his strange master watched him with an expression almost of amusement, finding in his antics a momentary release from his own somber nature. The youth toyed with his unusual emotion of pleasure, reflecting, 'This creature, unthinking and happy, may direct my quest, who am thinking and therefore unhappy; let me see whether I can complete the circle, and in the pursuit of knowledge find happiness.' Thus Edmond entered upon his search.