Memoirs of a Space Traveler it-2 Read online

  “Monster,” I said quietly. “Do you realise what you have done? But wait" — I felt a sudden relief — “human consciousness cannot be reproduced. If your wife lives, walks, and thinks, this crystal contains, at most, a copy of her, and is not the real —”

  “Yes,” replied Decantor, squinting at the white package, “you are completely right. It is impossible to create the soul of a living person. That would be nonsense, a paradoxical absurdity. He who exists obviously exists only once. Continuation can be realized only at the moment of death. But the process of determining the precise neurological pattern of the person whose soul I produce destroys, in any case, the living brain.”

  “You… you killed your wife?”

  “I gave her eternal life.” He drew himself up. “But that has nothing to do with the subject under discussion. It is a matter, if you like, between my wife" — he indicated the package — “and me, and the law. We are talking about something altogether different.”

  For a while I was speechless. I reached out and touched the package with my fingertips; it was wrapped in thick paper and was quite heavy, as if containing lead.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else. Suppose I give you the funds you ask for. Do you honestly believe you will find one person willing to let himself be killed so that his soul can suffer unimaginable torment for all eternity, deprived even of the mercy of suicide?”

  “Death does indeed present a difficulty,” Decantor admitted after a brief pause. I noticed that his dark eye was more hazel than brown. “But, to start with, we can count on such categories of people as the terminally ill, or those weary of life, old people physically infirm but in complete possession of their faculties…”

  “Death is not the worst option compared to the immortality you propose,” I muttered.

  Decantor smiled again.

  “I will tell you something that may strike you as funny,” he said. The right side of his face remained serious. “I personally have never felt the need to possess a soul or the need for eternal existence. But mankind has lived by this dream for thousands of years. I have studied the subject a long time, Mr. Tichy. All religion is based on one thing: the promise of life everlasting, the hope of surviving the grave. I offer that, Mr. Tichy. I offer eternal life. The certainty of existence when the last particle of the body has crumbled into dust. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” I replied, “it is not. You yourself said that it would be an immortality without the body, without the body’s energies, pleasures, experiences…”

  “You repeat yourself. I can show you the sacred writings of all the religions, the works of philosophers, the songs of poets, summae theologicae, prayers, legends — I have found in them little concerning the eternal life of the body. They slight the body, scorn it, even. The soul — its infinite existence — that has been the goal and hope. The soul as the antithesis and antagonist of the body, as liberation from physical suffering, sudden danger, illness and decrepitude, from the struggle to satisfy the demands of the gradually disintegrating furnace called the organism as it smolders and burns out. No one has ever proclaimed the immortality of the body. The soul alone was to be saved. I, Decantor, have saved it for eternity. I have fulfilled the dream — not mine, but all humanity’s…”

  “I understand,” I broke in. “Decantor, in a sense you are right. But right only in that your discovery has demonstrated — today to me, tomorrow perhaps to the world — that the soul is unnecessary; that the immortality treated in the sacred books, gospels, korans, Babylonian epics, vedas, and folk tales you cite is of no use to man. Anyone faced with the eternity you are ready to bestow on him will feel, I guarantee you, what I feel: the greatest aversion and fear. The thought that your promise could become my fate horrifies me. So, then, you have proved that humanity has been deluding itself for thousands of years. You have shattered that delusion.”

  “You mean, no one will need my soul?” he asked in a suddenly wooden voice.

  “I am sure of it. How can you think otherwise? Decantor! Would you want it? After all, you are human, too!”

  “I already told you. I never felt the need for immortality. I believed, however, that that was my particular aberration, that humanity was of a different opinion. I wanted to satisfy others, not myself. I sought a problem that would be among the most difficult, one worthy of my abilities. I found it and solved it. In this respect, it was a personal thing; from an intellectual point of view, the problem interested me solely as a specific task to be tackled using the proper technology and resources. I took literally what the greatest thinkers in history had written. Tichy — you must have read of it. The fear of cessation, of the end, of consciousness suffering destruction at the time of its greatest richness, when it is ready to bear its finest fruits… at the end of a long life… They all repeated this. Their dream was to commune — with eternity. I have created that communion. Tichy, perhaps they … ? Perhaps the most outstanding individuals? The geniuses… ?”

  I shook my head. “You can try, but I doubt that even one… No, impossible.”

  “But why?” he asked, and for the first time his voice trembled. “You think it is not… worth anything to anyone? That no one will want it? How can that be?”

  “That’s how it is,” I said.

  “Let’s not be hasty,” he implored. “Tichy, everything is still in my hands. I can adapt, alter… I can endow the soul with artificial senses. Of course, that would bar it from eternity, but if the senses are so important to them… the ears, the eyes…”

  “And what would those eyes see?” I asked.

  He was silent.

  “The freezing of Earth… the collapse of the galaxies… the death of the stars in black infinity, isn’t that so?” I said slowly.

  He was silent.

  “People do not want immortality,” I continued. “They simply do not want to die. They want to live, Decantor. They want to feel the ground beneath their feet, see the clouds overhead, love other people, be with them, and think. Nothing more. Everything that has been said beyond that is a lie. An unconscious lie. I doubt that many would want to hear you out as patiently as I have. Don’t even think of getting customers.”

  Decantor stood motionless for a moment, staring at the white package in front of him on the desk. Suddenly he picked it up and, with a slight nod to me, headed for the door.

  “Decantor!” I cried. He stopped at the threshold. “What are you going to do with that?”

  “Nothing,” he answered coldly.

  “Please… come back. One moment more. We can’t leave it like this.”

  Gentlemen, I do not know whether he was a great scientist, but a great scoundrel he definitely was. I will not describe the haggling that followed. I had to do it. I knew that if I let him go, even if I found out later that he had lied to me and everything he said had been a fiction from beginning to end, even so, at the bottom of my soul, my flesh-and-blood soul, would burn the thought that somewhere, in some junk-filled desk, in a drawer stuffed with papers, a human mind might be resting, the living consciousness of the unfortunate woman he had killed. And, as if killing her were not enough, he had bestowed upon her the most terrible thing, the most terrible, I repeat, for nothing can compare with the horror of being condemned to solitude for all eternity. The word, of course, is beyond our comprehension. When you return home, try lying down in a dark room, so that no sound or ray of light reaches you, and close your eyes and imagine that you will go on like that, in utter silence, without any, without even the slightest change, for a day and night, and then for another day; imagine that weeks, months, years, even centuries will go by. Imagine, furthermore, that your brain has been subjected to a treatment that makes escape into madness impossible. The thought of a person condemned to such torment, in comparison with which all the images of hell are a trifle, spurred me during our grim bargaining. I intended to destroy the box, of course. The sum he asked — gentlemen, let’s skip the details. I will say thi
s much: all my life I have considered myself a skinflint. If I doubt that today, it is because… but enough. In short: it was not a payment, it was everything I had at the time. Money… yes. We counted it. Then he told me to turn out the light. In the darkness there was first a tearing of paper; suddenly, on a square white background (the cotton lining of the box) there appeared, like a lambent jewel, a faint glow. As I grew accustomed to the darkness, it seemed to shine with a stronger, blue light. Then, feeling his uneven, heavy breathing on my neck, I leaned over, grasped the hammer I had ready, and with a single blow —

  Gentlemen, I believe he was telling the truth. Because as I struck my hand failed me, and I only glanced the oval crystal slightly… but even so it went out. In a split second something occurred like a microscopic, noiseless explosion; a myriad of violet dust motes whirled as if in panic and disappeared. The room became pitch-dark. Decantor said in a hollow voice:

  “You needn’t hit it again, Mr. Tichy… The deed is done.”

  He took it from my hands, and I believed him then, for I had visible proof. Besides, I knew. How, I could not say. I turned on the light, and we looked at each other, blinded, like two criminals. He stuffed both pockets of his overcoat with the bank notes and left without a word.

  I never saw him again and do not know what became of him — of the inventor of the immortal soul that I killed.

  III

  Only once did I see the man I am going to talk about. You would shudder at the sight of him. He was a hunchbacked freak of indeterminate age, with a face that seemed loose, so full of wrinkles and folds was its skin. In addition one of his neck muscles was shorter than the other and kept his head to one side, as if he had started out to look at his own hump but changed his mind in the middle. I say nothing new in asserting that intelligence rarely goes hand in hand with beauty, but he, the very image of deformity, arousing revulsion more than pity, should certainly have been a genius. Though even as a genius he would have frightened people by appearing in their midst. Now then, Zazul… His name was Zazul. I had heard about his horrible experiments a long time before. The issue was something of a cause célèbre in its day, thanks to the press. The Antivivisection League brought an action against him, but nothing came of it. He wriggled out of it somehow. He was a professor, but in name only; he could not lecture because he stuttered. He would in fact lose his voice whenever he grew excited, which happened frequently. He did not come to me, no. He was not that sort. He would rather have died than turn to anyone. What happened was that I lost my way in the woods during an excursion outside of town. I had actually been enjoying this until suddenly it began to rain. I thought I’d wait it out under a tree, but the rain did not let up. The sky clouded over completely and I decided to look for shelter.

  Running from tree to tree, and soaked to the skin, I came out onto a gravel path, which led to a road long unused and overgrown with weeds. The road went to an estate surrounded by a wall. On the gate, once painted green but now rusty, hung a wood sign with the barely legible inscription BEWARE OF THE DOG. I was not eager to encounter a vicious animal, but with the rain I had no choice; so, cutting a hefty stick from a nearby bush to arm myself, I tackled the gate. I say “tackled” because I had to strain every muscle before it opened, finally, with an infernal creaking. I found myself in a garden so choked with weeds that it was hard to tell where the paths were. Far in the rear, behind trees swaying in the rain, stood a high, dark house with a steep roof. Three upstairs windows, covered by white shades, were lit. It was still early, but darkening clouds scudded across the sky. At forty or fifty paces from the house I noticed two rows of trees flanking the approach to the veranda. White cedars, graveyard cedars. The occupant of this house, I thought, must have a gloomy disposition. I saw no dog, however, despite the warning on the gate. I went up the steps and, partly shielded from the rain by the lintel, rang the bell. The tinkle within was answered by a dead silence. After a long while I rang again, with the same result; so I began to knock, then pounded more and more vigorously. Only then did I hear shuffling steps come from the interior of the house and an unpleasant, raspy voice ask: “Who’s there?”

  I gave my name, in the faint hope that it might not be unknown. The person seemed to deliberate. Finally, a chain rattled, heavy bolts were pushed aside, and there, in the light of a chandelier high above the hallway, stood a near-dwarf. I recognized him, although I had seen his picture only once — I forget where, but the picture would have been hard to forget. The man was almost bald. On the side of his skull, above the ear, ran a bright-red scar like a saber gash. Gold pince-nez sat crookedly on his nose. He blinked as if he had just emerged from the dark. I apologized, using the formulas customary in such circumstances, then fell silent. He remained in front of me, as if not intending to let me one step farther into that large, dark, silent house.

  “You are Zazul, Professor Zazul, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “How do you know me?” he growled.

  I made some trite remark to the effect that it was hard not to know such an outstanding scientist.

  He received this with a scornful sneer on his froglike lips.

  “A storm?” he said, for I had mentioned it. “I hear it. So? Go somewhere else.”

  I said that I understood perfectly and had no intention of disturbing him. A chair or a stool in the hall would do; I would wait out the worst of the storm and be on my way.

  The rain had really started coming down in buckets. Standing in the high hall as if at the bottom of a huge shell, I heard it pelt the house on all sides. It made an alarming racket.

  “A chair?” he said. I might have asked for a golden throne. “A chair, really! I have no chair for you, Mr. Tichy. No chair to spare. I think, yes, I think it would be best for both of us if you left.”

  Looking over my shoulder into the garden — the door was still open — I saw that the trees, bushes, everything had merged into one mass that shook violently in the wind and the streams of water. My eyes returned to the hunchback. I had encountered rudeness in my life, but never anything like this. I began to lose my temper. Dispensing with the social amenities, I said:

  “I’ll leave if you can throw me out. But I warn you, I am no weakling.”

  “What?” he screeched. “The gall! How dare you, in my own house!”

  “You have provoked me,” I replied icily. And added, in my anger and because of his grating voice, “There are some kinds of behavior, Zazul, for which a man can be thrashed even in his own house!”

  “Scoundrel!” he shrieked, even louder.

  I seized his arm, which felt as though it had been whittled from a rotten branch, and hissed: “I will not tolerate abuse. Understand? One more insult and you will remember me as long as you live!”

  For a second or two it seemed that we really would come to blows, and I felt shame — how could I raise my hand against a hunchback? Then the unexpected happened. The professor stepped back, freed his arm from my grip, and, with his head twisted even lower, accentuating the hump, began to giggle in a revolting, high-pitched voice. As if I had regaled him with a rare joke.

  “Well, well,” he said, taking off his pince-nez. “You are a tough one, Tichy.”

  With the tip of a long, nicotine-stained finger he wiped a tear from his eye.

  “Good,” he rasped. “I like that. Can’t stand manners, mealy-mouthed talk, but you said what you thought. I hate you, you hate me, fine, we’re even, everything’s clear. You can follow me. Yes, Tichy, you surprised me…”

  And, chattering in this vein, he took me up a creaky wooden staircase dark with age. It went up around a huge square hall, paneled with bare wood. I remained silent, and when we reached the second floor Zazul said:

  “Tichy, I can’t afford parlors and guest rooms; you can see that. I sleep among my specimens, yes, eat, live with them. Come in, and don’t talk too much.”

  The room he ushered me into was the one whose three windows were shaded with sheets of paper, paper once white but no
w extremely dirty, spotted with grease and innumerable crushed flies. The windowsills were black with dead flies. When I closed the door, I noticed comma-shaped marks and dried, bloody insect fragments on it, as though Zazul had been under siege here by all the Hymenoptera. Before I had time to wonder at this, I noticed the other peculiarities of the room. In the middle stood a table, actually two sawhorses with ordinary, roughly planed boards between them; books, papers, and yellowed bones were piled there. But the strangest thing about the room was the walls. Large, crudely constructed shelves held rows of thick bottles and jars; opposite the window, in the space where the shelves broke off, was an enormous glass tank resembling an aquarium the size of a cabinet — resembling, rather, a transparent sarcophagus. The upper half of the tank was covered by a carelessly thrown dirty rag whose tattered ends hung halfway down the glass. But what I saw in the lower, uncovered half made me freeze.

  All the jars and bottles contained a blue, cloudy liquid, as in an anatomical museum where various organs are preserved in embalming fluid. The tank was the same type of container, only of enormous size. In its murky depths, which glimmered with a bluish light, two shadows a few centimeters above the bottom rocked back and forth extremely slowly, with the motion of an infinitely patient pendulum. To my horror I recognized these shadows as human legs in alcohol-soaked trousers.

  I stood petrified. Zazul did not move, did not make a sound. When my eyes went to his face, I saw that he was very pleased. My outrage, my revulsion delighted him. He held his hands clasped on his chest, as if in prayer, and chuckled with satisfaction.

  “What’s the meaning of this, Zazul?” I said in a choking voice. “What is it?”

  He turned his back to me, and his hump, so horrible and pointed (looking at it, I feared that the jacket stretched over it would tear), swayed in time with his steps. He sat down in a chair that had an open back (that piece of furniture made me shudder) and suddenly said, with apparent indifference, even weariness: