The Jovian Jest
_By Lilith Lorraine_
_The object shot forth another tentacle._]
[Sidenote: There came to our pigmy planet a radiant wanderer with amessage--and a jest--from the vasty universe.]
Consternation reigned in Elsnore village when the Nameless Thing wasdiscovered in Farmer Burns' corn-patch. When the rumor began to gaincredence that it was some sort of meteor from inter-stellar space,reporters, scientists and college professors flocked to the scene,desirous of prying off particles for analysis. But they soondiscovered that the Thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed atnight with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it waspractically weightless, since it had embedded itself in the soft sandscarcely more than a few inches.
By the time the first group of newspapermen and scientists had reachedthe farm, another phenomenon was plainly observable. The Thing wasgrowing!
Farmer Burns, with an eye to profit, had already built a picket fencearound his starry visitor and was charging admission. He also flatlyrefused to permit the chipping off of specimens or even the touchingof the object. His attitude was severely criticized, but he stubbornlyclung to the theory that possession is nine points in law.
* * * * *
It was Professor Ralston of Princewell who, on the third day after thefall of the meteor, remarked upon its growth. His colleagues crowdedaround him as he pointed out this peculiarity, and soon theydiscovered another factor--pulsation!
Larger than a small balloon, and gradually, almost imperceptiblyexpanding, with its viscid transparency shot through with opalescentlights, the Thing lay there in the deepening twilight and palpablyshivered. As darkness descended, a sort of hellish radiance began toooze from it. I say hellish, because there is no other word todescribe that spectral, sulphurous emanation.
As the hangers-on around the pickets shudderingly shrank away from theweird light that was streaming out to them and tinting their faceswith a ghastly, greenish pallor, Farmer Burns' small boy, moved bysome imp of perversity, did a characteristically childish thing. Hepicked up a good-sized stone and flung it straight at the namelessmass!
* * * * *
Instead of veering off and falling to the ground as from an impactwith metal, the stone sank right through the surface of the Thing asinto a pool of protoplastic slime. When it reached the central core ofthe object, a more abundant life suddenly leaped and pulsed fromcenter to circumference. Visible waves of sentient color circled roundthe solid stone. Stabbing swords of light leaped forth from them,piercing the stone, crumbling it, absorbing it. When it was gone, onlya red spot, like a bloodshot eye, throbbed eerily where it had been.
Before the now thoroughly mystified crowd had time to remark upon thisinexplicable disintegration, a more horrible manifestation occurred.The Thing, as though thoroughly awakened and vitalized by its unusualfare, was putting forth a tentacle. Right from the top of theshivering globe it pushed, sluggishly weaving and prescient of doom.Wavering, it hung for a moment, turning, twisting, groping. Finally itshot straight outward swift as a rattler's strike!
Before the closely packed crowd could give room for escape, it hadcircled the neck of the nearest bystander, Bill Jones, a cattleman,and jerked him, writhing and screaming, into the reddish core.Stupefied with soul-chilling terror, with their mass-consciousnesspractically annihilated before a deed with which their minds couldmake no association, the crowd could only gasp in sobbing unison andawait the outcome.
* * * * *
The absorption of the stone had taught them what to expect, and for amoment it seemed that their worst anticipations were to be realised. Thesluggish currents circled through the Thing, swirling the victim's body tothe center. The giant tentacle drew back into the globe and became itselfa current. The concentric circles merged--tightened--became one gleamingcord that encircled the helpless prey. From the inner circumference ofthis cord shot forth, not the swords of light that had powdered the stoneto atoms, but myriads of radiant tentacles that gripped and cupped thebody in a thousand places.
Suddenly the tentacles withdrew themselves, all save the ones thatgrasped the head. These seemed to tighten their pressure--to swell andpulse with a grayish substance that was flowing from the cups into thecord and from the cord into the body of the mass. Yes, it was agrayish something, a smokelike Essence that was being drawn from thecranial cavity. Bill Jones was no longer screaming and gibbering, butwas stiff with the rigidity of stone. Notwithstanding, there was novisible mark upon his body; his flesh seemed unharmed.
Swiftly came the awful climax. The waving tentacles withdrewthemselves, the body of Bill Jones lost its rigidity, a heaving motionfrom the center of the Thing propelled its cargo to the surface--andBill Jones stepped out!
Yes, he stepped out and stood for a moment staring straight ahead,staring at nothing, glassily. Every person in the shivering, paralysedgroup knew instinctively that something unthinkable had happened tohim. Something had transpired, something hitherto possible only in theabysmal spaces of the Other Side of Things. Finally he turned andfaced the nameless object, raising his arm stiffly, automatically, asin a military salute. Then he turned and walked jerkily, mindlessly,round and round the globe like a wooden soldier marching. Meanwhilethe Thing lay quiescent--gorged!
* * * * *
Professor Ralston was the first to find his voice. In fact, ProfessorRalston was always finding his voice in the most unexpected places.But this time it had caught a chill. It was trembling.
"Gentlemen," he began, looking down academically upon the motley crowdas though doubting the aptitude of his salutation. "Fellow-citizens,"he corrected, "the phenomenon we have just witnessed is, to the laymind, inexplicable. To me--and to my honorable colleagues (added as anafterthought) it is quite clear. Quite clear, indeed. We have beforeus a specimen, a perfect specimen, I might say, of a--of a--"
He stammered in the presence of the unnamable. His hesitancy causedthe rapt attention of the throng that was waiting breathlessly for anexplanation, to flicker back to the inexplicable. In the fraction of asecond that their gaze had been diverted from the Thing to theprofessor, the object had shot forth another tentacle, gripping himround the neck and choking off his sentence with a horrid rasp thatsounded like a death rattle.
Needless to say, the revolting process that had turned Bill Jonesfrom a human being into a mindless automaton was repeated withProfessor Ralston. It happened as before, too rapidly forintervention, too suddenly for the minds of the onlookers to shake offthe paralysis of an unprecedented nightmare. But when the victim wasthrown to the surface, when he stepped out, drained of the grayishsmokelike essence, a tentacle still gripped his neck and anotherrested directly on top of his head. This latter tentacle, instead ofabsorbing _from_ him, visibly poured into him what resembled athreadlike stream of violet light.
* * * * *
Facing the cowering audience with eyes staring glassily, still in thegrip of the unknowable, Professor Ralston did an unbelievable thing.He resumed his lecture at the exact point of interruption! But hespoke with the tonelessness of a machine, a machine that pulsed to thewill of a dictator, inhuman and inexorable!
"What you see before you," the Voice continued--the Voice that nolonger echoed the thoughts of the professor--"is what you would callan amoeba, a giant amoeba. It is I--this amoeba, who am addressingyou--children of an alien universe. It is I, who through this capturedinstrument of expression, whose queer language you can understand, amexplaining my presence on your planet. I pour my thoughts into thisspecialised brain-box which I have previously drained of its meagerthought-content." (Here the "honorable colleagues" nudged each othergleefully.) "I have so drained it for the purpose of analysis and thatthe flow of my own ideas may pass from my mind to yours unimpeded byany distortion that might otherwise be caused by their conflict withthe thoughts of this individua
l.
"First I absorbed the brain-content of this being whom you call BillJones, but I found his mental instrument unavailable. It wastechnically untrained in the use of your words that would best conveymy meaning. He possesses more of what you would call 'innateintelligence,' but he has not perfected the mechanical brain throughwhose operation this innate intelligence can be transmitted to othersand, applied for practical advantage.
* * * * *
"Now this creature that I am using is, as you might say, full of soundwithout meaning. His brain is a lumber-room in which he has hoarded aconglomeration of clever and appropriate word-forms with which todisguise the paucity of his ideas, with which to express nothing! Yetthe very abundance of the material in his storeroom furnishes adiscriminating mind with excellent tools for the transportation of itsideas into other minds.
"Know, then, that I am not here by accident. I am a Space Wanderer, anexplorer from a super-universe whose evolution has proceeded withoutvariation along the line of your amoeba. Your evolution, as I perceivefrom an analysis of the brain-content of your professor, _began_ itsunfoldment in somewhat the same manner as our own. But in your smallersystem, less perfectly adjusted than our own to the cosmic mechanism,a series of cataclysms occurred. In fact, your planetary system wasitself the result of a catastrophe, or of what might have been acatastrophe, had the two great suns collided whose near approachcaused the wrenching off of your planets. From this colossal accident,rare, indeed, in the annals of the stars, an endless chain ofaccidents was born, a chain of which this specimen, this professor,and the species that he represents, is one of the weakest links.
"Your infinite variety of species is directly due to the variety ofadaptations necessitated by this train of accidents. In thesuper-universe from which I come, such derangements of the celestialmachinery simply do not happen. For this reason, our evolution hasunfolded harmoniously along one line of development, whereas yourshas branched out into diversified and grotesque expressions of theLife-Principle. Your so-called highest manifestation of thisprinciple, namely, your own species, is characterized by a greatnumber of specialized organs. Through this very specialization offunctions, however, you have forfeited your individual immortality,and it has come about that only your life-stream is immortal. Theprimal cell is inherently immortal, but death follows in the wake ofspecialization.
* * * * *
"We, the beings of this amoeba universe, are individually immortal. Wehave no highly specialized organs to break down under the stress ofenvironment. When we want an organ, we create it. When it has servedits purpose, we withdraw it into ourselves. We reach out our tentaclesand draw to ourselves whatsoever we desire. Should a tentacle bedestroyed, we can put forth another.
"Our universe is beautiful beyond the dreams of your most inspiredpoets. Whereas your landscapes, though lovely, are stationary,unchangeable except through herculean efforts, ours are Protean,eternally changing. With our own substance, we build our minarets oflight, piercing the aura of infinity. At the bidding of our wills wecreate, preserve, destroy--only to build again more gloriously.
"We draw our sustenance from the primates, as do your plants, and weconstantly replace the electronic base of these primates with our ownemanations, in much the same manner as your nitrogenous plantsrevitalize your soil.
"While we create and withdraw organs at will, we have nothing tocorrespond to your five senses. We derive knowledge through one senseonly, or, shall I say, a super-sense? We see and hear and touch andtaste and smell and feel and know, not through any one organ, butthrough our whole structure. The homogeneous force of ouromni-substance subjects the plural world to the processing of apowerful unity.
* * * * *
"We can dissolve our bodies at will, retaining only the permanent atomof our being, the seed of life dropped on the soil of our planet byInfinite Intelligence. We can propel this indestructible seed on lightrays through the depths of space. We can visit the farthest universewith the velocity of light, since light is our conveyance. In reachingyour little world, I have consumed a million years, for my world is amillion light-years distant: yet to my race a million years is as oneof your days.
"On arrival at any given destination, we can build our bodies from theelements of the foreign planet. We attain our knowledge of conditionson any given planet by absorbing the thought-content of the brains ofa few representative members of its dominant race. Every well-balancedmind contains the experience of the race, the essence of the wisdomthat the race-soul has gained during its residence in matter. We makethis knowledge a part of our own thought-content, and thus theUniverse lies like an open book before us.
"At the end of a given experiment in thought absorption, we return theborrowed mind-stuff to the brain of its possessor. We reward oursubject for his momentary discomfiture by pouring into his body oursplendid vitality. This lengthens his life expectancy immeasurably, byliterally burning from his system the germs of actual or incipientills that contaminate the blood-stream.
* * * * *
"This, I believe, will conclude my explanation, an explanation to whichyou, as a race in whom intelligence is beginning to dawn, are entitled.But you have a long road to travel yet. Your thought-channels arepitifully blocked and criss-crossed with nonsensical and inhibitorycomplexes that stand in the way of true progress. But you will work thisout, for the Divine Spark that pulses through us of the Larger Universe,pulses also through you. That spark, once lighted, can never beextinguished, can never be swallowed up again in the primeval slime.
"There is nothing more that I can learn from you--nothing that I canteach you at this stage of your evolution. I have but one message togive you, one thought to leave with you--forge on! You are on thepath, the stars are over you, their light is flashing into your soulsthe slogan of the Federated Suns beyond the frontiers of your littlewarring worlds. Forge on!"
The Voice died out like the chiming of a great bell receding intoimmeasurable distance. The supercilious tones of the professor hadyielded to the sweetness and the light of the Greater Mind whoseinstrument he had momentarily become. It was charged at the last witha golden resonance that seemed to echo down vast spaceless corridorsbeyond the furthermost outposts of time.
* * * * *
As the Voice faded out into a sacramental silence, the strangelyassorted throng, moved by a common impulse, lowered their heads asthough in prayer. The great globe pulsed and shimmered throughout itssentient depths like a sea of liquid jewels. Then the tentacle thatgrasped the professor drew him back toward the scintillating nucleus.Simultaneously another arm reached out and grasped Bill Jones, who,during the strange lecture, had ceased his wooden soldier marching andhad stood stiffly at attention.
The bodies of both men within the nucleus were encircled once more bythe single current. From it again put forth the tentacles, cuppingtheir heads, but the smokelike essence flowed back to them this time,and with it flowed a tiny threadlike stream of violet light. Then camethe heaving motion when the shimmering currents caught the two men andtossed them forth unharmed but visibly dowered with the radiance ofmore abundant life. Their faces were positively glowing and their eyeswere illuminated by a light that was surely not of earth.
Then, before the very eyes of the marveling people, the great globebegan to dwindle. The jeweled lights intensified, concentrated,merged, until at last remained only a single spot no larger than apin-head, but whose radiance was, notwithstanding, searing,excruciating. Then the spot leaped up--up into the heavens, whirling,dipping and circling as in a gesture of farewell, and finally soaringinto invisibility with the blinding speed of light.
* * * * *
The whole wildly improbable occurrence might have been dismissed as aqueer case of mass delusion, for such cases are not unknown tohistory, had it not been followed by a convincing aftermath.
The culmination of a series of startling coincidences, both ridiculousand tragic, at last brought men face to face with an incontestablefact: namely, that Bill Jones had emerged from his fiery baptismendowed with the thought-expressing facilities of Professor Ralston,while the professor was forced to struggle along with the meagereducational appliances of Bill Jones!
In this ironic manner the Space-Wanderer had left unquestionable proofof his visit by rendering a tribute to "innate intelligence" andplaying a Jovian Jest upon an educated fool--a neat transposition.
A Columbus from a vaster, kindlier universe had paused for a moment tolearn the story of our pigmy system. He had brought us a message fromthe outermost citadels of life and had flashed out again on his aeonicvoyage from everlasting unto everlasting.
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