The Great Gray Plague by Raymond F. Jones (classic literature books .TXT) 📕

Jim Ellerbee nodded agreement.

"When we got there," Fenwick went on, "we saw that the front door of the house was open as if the storm had blown it in. We called Sam, but he didn't answer, so we went on in. Things were a mess. We thought it was because of the storm, but then we saw that drawers and shelves seemed to have been opened hastily and cleaned out. Some things had been dropped on the floor, but most of the stuff was just gone.

"It was that way all through the house. Sam's bed hadn't been disturbed. He had either not slept in it, or had gone to the trouble of making it up even though he left the rest of the house in a mess."

"Sounds like the place might have been broken into," said Baker. "Didn't you notify the sheriff?"

"Not after we'd seen what was outside, in back."

"What was that?"

"We wanted to see the silo after the lightning had struck it. Jim said he'd always been curious about that silo. It was one of the best in the county, but Sam never used it. He used a pit.

"When we went out, all the cows were bellowing. They hadn't been milked. Sam did all his own work. Jim called his own man to come and take care of Sam's cows. Then we had a close look at the silo. It had split like a banana peel opening up. It hardly seemed as if a bolt of lightning could have caused it. We climbed over the broken pieces to look inside. It was still warm in there. At least six hours after lightning—or whatever had struck it, the concrete was still warm. The bottom and several feet of the sides of the silo were covered with a glassy glaze."

"No lightning bolt did that."

"We know that now," said Fenwick. "But I had seen the flash of it myself. Then I remembered that in my groggy condition that morning something had seemed wrong about that flash of lightning. Instead of a jagged tree of lightning that formed instantly, it had seemed like a thin thread of light striking upward. I thought I must be getting bleary-eyed and tried to forget it. In the silo, I remembered. I told Jim.

"We went back through the house once more. In Sam's bedroom, as if accidently dropped and kicked partway under the bed, I found this. Take a look!"

Fenwick held out a small book. It had covers and pages as did any ordinary book. But when Baker's fingers touched the book, something chilled his backbone.

The material had the feel and appearance of white leather—yet Baker had the insane impression that the cells of that leather still formed a living substance. He opened the pages. Their substance was as foreign as that of the cover. The message—printing, or whatever it might be called—consisted of patterned rows of dots, pin-head size, in color. It reminded him of computer tape cut to some character code. He had the impression that an eye might scan those pages and react as swiftly as a tape-fed computer.

Baker closed the book. "Nothing more?" he asked Fenwick.

"Nothing. We thought maybe you had found out something else when he worked to save your life."

Baker kept his eyes on the ceiling. "I found out a few things," he said. "I could scarcely believe they were true. I have to believe after hearing your story."

"What did you find?"

"Sam Atkins came from—somewhere else. He went back in the ship he had hidden in the silo."

"Where did he come from? What was he doing here?"

"I don't know the name of the world he was from or where it is located. Somewhere in this galaxy, is about all I can deduce from my impressions. He was here on a scientific mission, a sociological study. He was responsible for the crystals. I suppose you know that by now?" Baker glanced at Ellerbee.

Jim Ellerbee nodded. "I suspected for a long time that I was being led, but I couldn't understand it. I thought I was doing the research that produced the crystals, but Sam would drop a hint or a suggestion every once in a while, that would lead off on the right track and produce something fantastic. He knew where we were going, ahead of time. He led me to believe that we were exploring together. Do you know why he did this?"

"Yes," said Baker. "It was part of his project. The project consisted of a study of human reaction to scientific processes which our scientific culture considered impossible. He was interested in measuring our flexibility and reaction to such introductions."

Baker smiled grimly. "We sure gave him his money's worth, didn't we! We really reacted when he brought out his little cubes. I'd like to read the report he writes up!"

"Why did he leave so suddenly?" asked Fenwick. "Was he through?"

"No, that's the bad part of it. My reaction to the crystals was a shock that sent me into a suicidal action—"

Fenwick stared at him, shocked. "You didn't—"

"But I did," said Baker calmly. "All very subconsciously, of course, but I did try to commit suicide. The crystals triggered it. I'll explain how in a minute, but since Sam Atkins was an ethical being he felt the responsibility for what had happened to me. He had to reveal himself to the extent of saving my life—and helping me to change so that the suicidal drive would not appear again. He did this, but it revealed too much of himself and destroyed the chance of completing his program. When he gets back home, he's really going to catch hell for lousing up the works. It's too bad."

Jim Ellerbee let out a long breath. "Sam Atkins—somebody from another world—it doesn't seem possible. What things he could have taught us if he'd stayed!"

Fenwick wondered why it had to have been Baker to receive this knowledge. Baker, the High Priest of the Fixed Position, the ambassador of Established Authority. Why couldn't Sam Atkins—or whatever his real name might be—have whispered just a few words of light to a man willing to listen and profit? His bowels felt sick with the impact of opportunity forever lost.

"How did the crystals trigger a suicidal reaction?" asked Fenwick finally, as if to make conversation more than anything else.

Baker's face seemed to glow. "That's the really important thing I learned from Sam. I learned that about me—about all of us. It's hard to explain. I experienced it—but you can only hear about it."

"We're listening," said Fenwick dully.

"I saw a picture of a lathe in a magazine a few months ago," said Baker slowly. "You can buy one of these lathes for $174,000, if you want one. It's a pretty fancy job. The lathe remembers what it does once, and afterwards can do it again without any instructions.

"The lathe has a magnetic tape memory. The operator cuts the first piece on the lathe, and the tape records all the operations necessary for that production. After that, the operator needs only to insert the metal stock and press the start button.

"There could be a million memories in storage, and the lathe could draw on any one of them to repeat what it had done before at any time in its history."

"I don't see what this has got to do with Sam and you," said Fenwick.

Baker ignored him. "A long time ago a bit of life came into existence. It had no memory, because it was the first. But it faced the universe and made decisions. That's the difference between life and nonlife. Did you know that, Fenwick? The capacity to make decisions without pre-programming. The lathe is not alive because it must be pre-programmed by the operator. We used to say that reproduction was the criterion of life, but the lathe could be pre-programmed to build a duplicate of itself, complete with existing memories, if that were desired, but that would not make it a living thing.

"Spontaneous decision. A single cell can make a simple binary choice. Maybe nothing more complex than to be or not to be. The decision may be conditioned by lethal circumstances that permit only a 'not' decision. Nevertheless, a decision is made, and the cell shuts down its life processes in the very instant of death. They are not shut down for it.

"In the beginning, the first bit of life faced the world and made decisions, and memory came into being. The structures of giant protein molecules shifted slightly in those first cells and became a memory of decisions and encounters. The cells split and became new pairs carrying in each part giant patterned molecules of the same structure. These were memory tapes that grew and divided and spread among all life until they carried un-numbered billions of memories.

"Molecular tapes. Genes. The memory of life on earth, since the beginning. Each new piece of life that springs from parent life comes equipped with vast libraries of molecular tapes recording the experiences of life since the beginning.

"Life forms as complex as mammals could not exist without this tape library to draw upon. The bodily mechanisms could not function if they came into existence without the taped memories out of the ages, explaining why each organ was developed and how it should function. Sometimes, part of the tapes are missing, and the organism, if it endures, must live without instructions for some function. One human lifetime is too infinitesimally small to relearn procedures that have taken aeons to develop.

"Just as the lathe operator has a choice of tapes which will cause the lathe to function in different ways, so does new life have a choice. The accumulated instructions and wisdom of the whole race may be available, except for those tapes which have been lost or destroyed through the ages. New life has a choice from that vast library of tapes. In its inexperience, it relies on the parentage for the selection of many proven combinations, and so we conclude certain characteristics are 'dominant' or 'inherited,' but we haven't been able to discover the slightest reason why this is so.

"A selection of things other than color of eyes, the height of growth to be attained, the shape of the body must also be made. A choice of modes of facing the exterior world, a choice of stratagems to be used in attaining survival and security in that world, must be made.

"And there is one other important factor: Mammalian life is created in a universe where only life exists. The mammal in the womb does not know of the existence of the external universe. Somewhere, sometime, the first awareness of this external universe arises. In the womb. Outside the womb. Early in fetal life, or late. When and where this awareness comes is an individual matter. But when it comes, it arrives with lethal impact.

"Awareness brings a million sensory invasions—chemical, physical, extrasensory—none of them understood, all of them terrifying.

"This terrible fear that arises in this moment of awareness and non-understanding is almost sufficient to cause a choice of death rather than life at this point. Only because of the developed toughness, acquired through the aeons, does the majority of mammalian life choose to continue.

"In this moment, choices must be made as to