It should have been routine. Nothing could go wrong. The anode and the cathode were behaving perfectly. The meters and dials were recording accurately. A faint effervescence stirred in the chemical solution.
There was a subtle change in the speed - the experiment seemed to freeze in its tracks - the stream of gentle bubbles hovered motionless. Something inexplicable was appearing in the solution. The scientist peered harder at the vessel...It couldn't be...It was impossible...It was incredible...but it had happened!
A woman's face smiled at him from the depths of the glass tank! But the face was translucent, he could see tank and solution despite its contours.
"Hello, Earthman," said the face from Nowhere.
He clapped a hand to his forehead and collapsed insensible. When he came to, the experiment was back to normal. What had happened? Was it all in his mind? Or had he really made contact with an alien?
Release date:
August 28, 2014
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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“AND where do you think you’re going?” Milly Grimwood had a voice like a parrot, an old bald parrot. Funny thought Taraconda Grimwood, how voices always carry mental images with them; of latter years Milly’s had sounded more like a bald parrot than anything else. He shut his eyes, and could almost imagine the unfortunate bird. Yet it wasn’t a bird, it was a woman. A woman! That made him laugh. It was a sour, bitter joke, and the laugh was on him. She had been a woman about forty years ago, when he married her. She was now a shrew. Worse than a shrew, a slut. Too old for a slut—he tried to think of something worse. A harridan, perhaps? Yes, that vaguely fitted Milly. A woman who had made a strange god of the house that had once been a home.
A woman who had turned life into existence, and then existence into hell. He couldn’t remember when she hadn’t said anything that hadn’t been a criticism, for the last ten or fifteen years.
If he was quiet he was sulking. If he talked he was talking nonsense. If he raised his voice he was being unkind. If he expressed an opinion about anything, it was in direct opposition to everything that Milly said, or thought, and that of course, according to Milly, was done deliberately. So Taraconda Grimwood had shrunk inside himself. Had retreated into his own mind until he was just a zombie. At least, only a zombie at home—correction, he told himself, in the house that he lived in. The word ‘home’ had a mocking ring. Milly used the word incessantly. It was part of her vocabulary.
She was constantly prattling about it in that bald-parrot voice of hers. Constantly talking about new covers, new cushions, new furniture. New this, that and the other. Making the museum-cum-art-gallery-cum-furnishing-exhibition even less livable-in than it was.
Taraconda donned his soft floppy, shapeless, old felt hat. It seemed somehow to fit his personality. His hand was hovering on the latch.
“I asked a civil question and I want a civil answer,” croaked the parrot voice. He glanced back over his shoulder. Milly was dusting something that was absolutely innocent of dust. She was always doing that.
“I’m going out,” said Grimwood quietly.
“That’s right! Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. Wasting your money on drink when I need it for the home!”
“What can you possibly need for this place that you haven’t already got in duplicate or triplicate,” said Grimwood bitterly.
“There you go, criticising again! I try to make everything nice for you.”
“Oh, go to blazes,” said Taraconda under his breath, opened the door quickly and slammed it again behind him. That slam was his one protest against an environment that had long since crushed the last vestige of spirit out of him.
He walked out into the street. He had no idea where he was going. He might, he thought, go back to the university and set up some of tomorrow’s experiments. He had a highly competent assistant for whom there was very little to do, simply because lecturer Grimwood set up most of his own experiments. There was no need for him to do so. The chief of the science faculty told him there was no need for him to do so.
“There is no need for you to do all this extra work. You have a perfectly competent assistant who is paid for the job.”
Grimwood had explained as best he could that he liked to set up his own experiments, that he implied no criticism whatsoever of his assistant—a taciturn individual who did the job extremely well—when there was anything left for him to do. There was little else he could say.
Taraconda was not a talkative individual who could bleat his troubles out on the principal’s shoulder. The Principal wasn’t that kind of a man, so he just made feeble excuses, but he knew that deep down they understood, for the subject had never been raised again.
The streets between his house and the university laboratory where he did his demonstrating and lecturing were so familiar that he hardly noticed them.
He knew every stone, every stick, every gate, every lamp-post, every pillar-box, every telephone kiosk. He knew every shop. And he knew everyone who frequented the street. The changing faces of students. The unchanging faces of the ivy-covered professors in their ivy-covered walls. He laughed as he thought of himself as an ivy-covered lecturer in an ivy-covered laboratory. Doing ivy-covered experiments to amuse ivy-covered students… It was a good expression—‘ivy-covered’—he thought. So motionless that even the plants can grow over us. It’s as though we were dead. Even the gay vibrant life of the student fraternity seemed to have no impact or effect on poor old Grimwood.
He thought of himself as ‘Poor old Grimwood’, a kind of unfunny little man. Pathetic, full of pathos. A man for whom life held no present and less future. And the dim memory of a past that had once been filled with hope. But that hope had soured long, long ago. It had soured, turned bitter on itself and finally died. …
The memory of it now was like a gangrenous sore in his mind. He didn’t like to think about the hope that he had once had. He didn’t like to think too much about the past. Taraconda Grimwood was a Number One sized failure. A complete failure, an utter failure, and an absolute failure.
He was such an abject failure that the magnitude of his failure was perhaps the nearest he had ever come to succeeding. He had failed magnificently!
Mind you, his students passed their examinations, but who ever lectured they would pass. I go over the syllabus again and again, and unless they are complete and utter morons, they must finally imbibe some of the knowledge that I am giving them. He wondered if the knowledge after all, was worth giving. He remembered the old maxim that he had used to class after class for years—“Now that you are doing university level science electronics, ladies and gentlemen your first task is to forget everything you have learnt before. Because as you advance in physics you must learn to forget the elementary principles which are still misguidedly taught in elementary educational establishments.”
It had given him certain satisfaction when he had first used those lines to see the effect that his bombshell had had. The more jocular types had laughed until they had realised that he was telling the truth. And yet, was it the truth? It was and it wasn’t, he realised. There were certain basic, fundamental tenets that were taught in schools that might have some basic bearing and value to university level science students, but speaking generally, most of the stuff he taught and demonstrated cut through Newtonian physics. It was a whole new field, a whole new branch, and yet, without that elementary work there was nothing to build on. It was as though one had to build two towers. The half-knowledge of preliminary science was a jumping-off ground for the finger stuff upon which Taraconda lectured.
He kicked a pebble, an inoffensive pebble, that had had the temerity to get in his way. Something deep down within his subconscious wished that it had been Milly’s head. He repressed the thought. For Taraconda was not a violent man. … The mere thought of violence sent a shudder through his feeble, podgy little frame.
He conjured up a mental image of himself as he walked through those over-familiar streets, a tired, grey man, doing a tired grey job. Thinning hair, straggling moustache. Drooping eyes, drooping face. Hang-dog expression. Quiet emotionless, ambitionless. Rather like an empty beer bottle floating down the canal of life. And life was a singularly foul-smelling foetid, and turgid canal. Life held no pleasures any more. Life held nothing that was worth having, and yet he retreated from all thoughts of suicide. After all, the dim vagueness that was life, was not so unbearably unpleasant. He was about ninety per cent sure that man was nothing more nor less than an intelligent animal, and that when death came it came with a kind of merciful oblivion. He knew that the 90-odd chemical elements, some of which comprised his frail, useless, worn-out body would go back into the vast cosmos of nature. He knew that bits that had once been him would go back and become bits and compounds of other things.
He thought about various things that composed the bio-chemical lump that was Taraconda Grimwood. They were not very impressive pieces.
He found another small pebble and this time, instead of kicking it carelessly into the gutter he sent it along the pavement in a series of short jerks, accompanying each jerk with the muttered name of a chemical element. ‘Argon’ the pebble skidded across three paving stones and ricochetted from a wall. ‘Actinium’ this time he gave it a slight tap with his left foot and watched it skid over one paving stone, ‘silver, aluminium’ This time he kicked the pebble in a straight-forward direction. ‘Americium’ another kick—‘arsenic’—that was a pleasant thought! It reminded him of Milly. But again the thought was a purely sub-conscious one. The psychological repression mechanism that made him a non-violent man forced it far, far down below his consciousness. ‘Astadine’, ‘gold’. Gold set off another train of thought in his mind. The difference that a little gold would have made. The gold that Milly had poured into new furniture, new curtains, new wall paper, new mats, new rugs, new linoleum. Always something new for the blasted house. And for what? To impress the empty-headed feminine gas bags that Milly called friends! Friends! Empty, stupid word. What could he have done with some gold? Started a new life somewhere. Changed his name. Changed his identity. If only he could have been a man of action. If only he could have got away from Milly. But what was the use? ‘Boron’, ‘barium,’ ‘beryllium’, ‘bismuth’… again and a. . .
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