The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum Part 33

The Fortune slid over the green swells, northward toward New Zealand. Carver grinned as he sprawled in a deck chair. Halburton was still gazing reluctantly at the line of blue that was Austin Island.

"Buck up, Vance," Carver chuckled. "You couldn't cla.s.sify that flora in a hundred years, and if you could, what'd be the good.

of it? There's just one of each, anyway."

"I'd give two toes and a finger to try," said Halburton. "You had the better part of three days there, and might have had more if you- hadn't winged Malloa. They'd have gone home to the Chathams sure, if your shot hadn't got his arm. That's the only reason they made for Macquarie."

"And lucky for me they did. Your fire scared off the cats." "The cats, eh? Would you mind going over the thing again, Alan? It's so crazy that I haven't got it all yet."

"Sure. Just pay attention to teacher and you'll catch on." He grinned. "Frankly, at first I hadn't a glimmering of an idea myself. The whole island seemed insane. No two living things alike! Just one of each genus, and all unknown genera at that. I didn't get a single clue until after I met Lilith. Then I no-ticed that she differentiated by smell. She told good fruits from poisonous ones by the smell, and she even identified that first cat-thing I shot by smell. She'd eat that because it was an enemy, but she wouldn't touch the dog-things I shot from her pack."

"So what?" asked Halburton, frowning.

"Well, smell is a chemical sense. It's much more fundamen-tal than outward form, because the chemical functioning of an organism depends on its glands. I began to suspect right then that the fundamental nature of all the living things on Austin Island was just the same as anywhere else. It wasn't the nature that was changed, but just the form. See?"

"Not a bit."

"You will. You know what chromosomes are, of course. They're the carriers of heredity, or rather, according to Weiss-man, they carry the genes that carry the determinants that carry heredity. A human being has forty-eight chromosomes, of which he gets twenty-four from each parent."

"So," said Halburton, "has a tomato."

"Yes, but a tomato's forty-eight chromosomes carry a dif-ferent heredity, else one could cross a human being with a to-mato. But to return to the subject, all variations in individuals come about from the manner in which chance shuffles these forty-eight chromosomes with their load of determinants. That puts a pretty definite limit on the possible variations.

"For instance, eye color has been located on one of thegenes on the third pair of chromosomes.

a.s.suming that this gene contains twice as many brown-eye determinants as blue-eye ones, the chances are two to one that the child of whatever man or woman owns that particular chromosome will be brown-eyed-if his mate has no marked bias either way. See?"

"I know all that. Get along to Ambrose Callan and his note-book."

"Coming to it. Now remember that these determinants carry all heredity, and that includes shape, size, intelligence, character, coloring-everything. People-or plants and ani-mals-can vary in the vast number of ways in which it is pos-sible to combine forty-eight chromosomes with their cargo of genes and determinants. But that number is not infinite. There are limits, limits to size, to coloring, to intelligence.

No-body ever saw a human race with sky-blue hair, for instance."

"n.o.body'd ever want to!" grunted Halburton.

"And," proceeded Carver, "that is because there are no blue-hair determinants in human chromosomes. But-and here comes Callan's idea-suppose we could increase the number of chromosomes in a given ovum. What then? In hu-mans or tomatoes, if, instead of forty-eight, there were four hundred eighty, the possible range of variation would be ten times as great as it is now.

"In size, for instance, instead of the present possible varia-tion of about two and a half feet, they might vary twenty-five feet! And in shape-a man might resemble almost anything! That is, almost anything within the range of the mammalian orders. And in intelligence-" He paused thoughtfully.

"But how," cut in Halburton, "did Callan propose to ac-complish the feat of inserting extrachromosomes? Chromo-somes themselves are microscopic; genes are barely visible under the highest magnification, and n.o.body ever saw a de-terminant."

"I don't know how," said Carver gravely. "Part of his notes crumbled to dust, and the description of his method must have gone with those pages. Morgan uses hard radiations, but his object and his results are both different. He doesn't change the number of chromosomes."

He hesitated. "I think Callan used a combination of radia-tion and injection," he resumed. "I don't know. All I know is that he stayed on Austin four or five years, and that he came with only his wife. That part of his notes is clear enough. He began treating the vegetation near his shack, and some cats and dogs he had brought. Then he discovered that the thing was spreading like a disease."

"Spreading?" echoed Halburton.

"Of course. Every tree he treated strewed multi-chromo-somed pollen to the wind, and as for the cats- Anyway, the aberrant pollen fertilized normal seeds, and the result was an-other freak, a seed with the normal number of chromosomes from one parent and ten times as many from the other. The variations were endless. You know how swiftly kauri and tree ferns grow, and these had a possible speed of growth ten times as great.

"The freaks overran the island, smothering out the normal growths. And Callan's radiations, and perhaps his injections, too, affected Austin Island's indigenous life-the rats, the bats. They began to produce mutants. He came in 1918, and by the time he realized his own tragedy, Austin was an is-land of freaks where no child resembled its parents save by the merest chance."

"His own tragedy? What do you mean?'

"Well, Callan was a biologist, not an expert in radiation. I don't know exactly what happened.

Exposure to X-rays for long periods produces burns, ulcers, malignancies. Maybe Callan didn't take proper precautions to s.h.i.+eld his device, or maybe he was using a radiation of peculiarly irritating quality.

Anyway, his wife sickened first an ulcer that turned cancer-ous.

"He had a radio-a wireless, rather, in 1921-and he sum-moned his sloop from the Chathams. It sank off that coral spit, and Callan, growing desperate, succeeded somehow in breaking his wireless. He was no electrician, you see.

"Those were troubled days, after the close of the War. With Callan's sloop sunk, no one knew exactly what had be-come of him, and after a while he was forgotten. When his wife died, he buried her; but when he died there was no one to bury him. The descendants of what had been his cats took care of him, and that was that."

"Yeah? What about Lilith?"

"Yes," said Carver soberly. "What about her? When I be-gan to suspect the secret of Austin Island, that worried me. Was Lilith really quite human? Was she, too, infected by thetaint of variation, so that her children might vary as widely as the offspring of the-cats? She spoke not a word of any language I knew-or I thought so, anyway-and I simply couldn't fit her in. But Callan's diary and notes did it for me."

"How?"

"She's the daughter of the captain of Callan's sloop, whom he rescued when it was wrecked on the coral point. She was five years old then, which makes her almost twenty now. As for language-well, perhaps I should have recognized the few halting words she recalled. Cm on, for instance, was comment -that is, 'how?' And pah bo was simply pas bon, not good. That's what she said about the poisonous fruit. And lay shot was les chats, for somehow she remembered, or sensed, that the creatures from the eastern end were cats.

"About her, for fifteen years, centered the dog creatures, who despite their form were, after all, dogs by nature, and loyal to their mistress. And between the two groups was eter-nal warfare."

"But are you sure Lilith escaped the taint?"

"Her name's Lucienne," mused Carver, "but I think I prefer Lilith." He smiled at the slim figure clad in a pair of Jame-son's trousers and his own s.h.i.+rt, standing there in the stern looking back at Austin. "Yes, I'm sure. When she was cast on the island, Callan had already destroyed the device that had slain his wifeand was about to kill him. He wrecked his equip-ment completely, knowing that in the course of time the freaks he had created were doomed."

"Doomed?"

"Yes. The normal strains, hardened by evolution, are stronger. They're already appearing around the edges of the island, and some day Austin will betray no more peculiarities than any other remote islet.

Nature always reclaims her own."

Stanley G. Weinbaum: A Personal Recollection.

I FIRST MET Stanley Grauman Weinbaum in April, 1935.

A newspaper story was responsible. On April 5, my eight-eenth birthday, the Milwaukee Journal published a somewhat gaudy feature article headed MILWAUKEE YOUTH WRITES HORROR TALES, SELLS 'EM. A few days later, the Milwaukee youth-me-was invited to attend a meeting of the Fictioneers.

The Fictioners was an informal organization of profes-sional writers, meeting biweekly at the homes of members as a sort of literary mutual-aid society. Rules for the gather-ing were simple: no guest speakers, no women, no alcohol, no reading of ma.n.u.scripts. But members did discuss their stories and story problems in open forum, seeking criticism, correction and contributions from their colleagues. It worked then and still does-with the male-chauvinist att.i.tude long-since abandoned, the Fictioneers continue as a working writ-ers' group today.

Naturally I was excited by the invitation. In that primitive era we were brainwashed into believing adults were some-how more mature and sophisticated than the average teen-ager. And though I had been selling stories to Weird Tales for nine months and had corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth for the past two years, I had never met a real live author in the flesh.

Once, in Chicago, I'd met half an author-Otto Binder, who collabo-rated with his brother Earl under the pseudonym Eando (E&O) Binder. But a roomful of whole authors? The mind boggled at the prospect.

And when I actually encountered the Fictioneers I was overwhelmed to discover several science-fiction writers within their ranks: Raymond A. Palmer, later the editor of Amazing and Fantastic Adventures; Roger Sherman h.o.a.r, who wrote under the name of Ralph Milne Farley; Arthur Tofte, who is still writing. And Stanley Weinbaum.

I was so busy inspecting the Fictioneers I overlooked the possibility that they might be inspecting me.

G.o.d knows what they saw, but it resulted in an invitation to become a regular member and mingle as an equal with elderly men in their thirties or even forties.

Stanley Weinbaum was, at that time, thirty-two years old. Dark-haired, personable, with a ready smile and a soft Louis-ville-acquired drawl, he was very much my idea of what a professional writer should be.

Weinbaum had majored in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Years later I became a friend of his former cla.s.smate, Jack Lippert, who reminisced fondly of Stan's companions.h.i.+p during their student days. But aside from the scientific background it afforded him, Weinbaum made little use of his educational major. For several years fol-lowing his marriage, I believe, he managed motion-picture theaters. Here he apparently became hooked, as I had, on films. Seeing the stories flickering across the screen stimulated a desire to create stories of his own.

Another stimulus-for Weinbaum, myself, the rest of the Fictioneers, and approximately 20,000,000 other writers and would-be writers at the time-was the Depression. Dur-ing this period, pulp magazines flourished-usually at the ex-pense of their contributors. With a few notable exceptions, rates were pegged at 1 a word for the average scrivener. There were some 2 and 3 markets, but these were more than counterbalanced by the 0 or even Vs markets, many of which paid only on publication or at gunpoint. So writing for a living was rather a grim business, and it was under these conditions that Stanley Weinbaum and the rest of the Fiction-eers met by night and plotted to make a living.Weinbaum had written and sold several novel-length ro-mances, which were serialized for daily publication by a newspaper syndicate. He then branched out into science fic-tion as a field more compatible with his talent. In less than a year his work had won him recognition in science-fiction cir-cles-which were then about the circ.u.mference of a dime. Nevertheless, Weinbaum's abilities far surpa.s.sed the limita-tions of the field. And like myself, he had come to the atten-tion of the Fictioneers.

As a co-conspirator now, I quickly became part of the group. In this capacity I was privileged to be present when Weinbaum outlined story ideas-and to comment, criticize or contribute changes to them. It would be an easy ego-trip, to-day, to imply or even a.s.sert that something I said in those 1933 sessions helped shape the final form of "Proteus Island," "The Mad Moon," or "s.h.i.+fting Seas." But I was a teen-age novice at the time, and the truth of the matter is that I merely listened. Listened, and learned.

I wasn't a reporter; I made no attempt to memorize any-thing that was said. The why of it was more important than the what. As a result there are no verbatim quotes forthcom-ing.

But I do know that Stanley Weinbaum told his tales almost as well in person as in print. He had a true storyteller's pres-ence and dramatic delivery, and he seemed to enjoy the reac-tions of his audience.

Actually, his plots were usually well worked out in advance; all that might be needed was some re-finement or embellishment of detail. Aside from Ralph Milne Farley, no one in the group was competent to a.s.sess the scien-tific content of his work. As a result, Weinbaum's questions usually concerned characterizations-ways to build credibility in his nonhumans as well as his humans. His weird animals were delightfully described; once he hit on a consistent moti-vation for their activities, they came alive instantly.

Weinbaum, as I recall, seemed much more fond of his ex-tra-terrestrials than he was of his earthlings, and rightly so. Only in his longer works did he attempt full-scale portraits of romanticized human characters; in his short stories there's surely no hero or heroine half as memorable as his aliens. And listening to his fantastic creations evolve was an object lesson in the art of inducing empathy.

This, of course, was Stanley Weinbaum's greatest contribu-tion to science fiction. He introduced empathy to the field. In an era of rising racial, religious and nationalistic discord soon to culminate in a global war, Weinbaum somehow found the courage and the creativity to present-without plea or preachment-the case for brotherhood. And not just the brotherhood of man, but the kins.h.i.+p common to all living things. There was nothing overt about it and surely nothing mawkish; if anything, Weinbaum made his point humorously. But once it was made and understood, science fiction would never be the same again. In empathy he had found the weapon to destroy the Bug-Eyed Monster, once and for all.

All this I admired, and much more.

Somehow, in spite of the vast fourteen-year gulf between our ages, Stan and I immediately established a friends.h.i.+p which extended beyond the fraternity of the biweekly meet-ings.

To begin with, we discovered mutual interests. We were both devotees of James Branch Cabell.

Cabell, chiefly known for his novel Jurgen, which had created a scandal because of its alleged prurient content way back in 1920, had since fallen into disfavor. But he was the author of many fantasies, and Stan and I had read them all. We welcomed the opportunity to compare notes and reactions, and soon we were meeting on a weekly basis for general discussions and visiting.

Stan and his wife Marge lived less than two miles away from me in a pleasant upper flat on Oakland Avenue, so get-ting together was no problem. And as we did so, I learned that he had a secret ambition-he wanted to write for Weird Tales!

Thus far the formula for acceptance had eluded him, and he asked for my suggestions. After the effect of this flattery had faded and I returned to consciousness, I recommended that he try something new.

Stan's brilliantly original science fiction often sparkled with humorous touches. Why not inject .

such humor into a fantasy story, a la Cabell? There had been precious little humor in Weird Tales during the first dozen or so years of its existence, but editor Farnsworth Wright had a Rahelasian wit and perhaps now was the time for a light touch.

Stan agreed, but there were certain obstacles to overcome first. He had just entered into a collaborative venture with Ralph Milne Farley. The two of them were also meeting weekly forscience-fiction story conferences. On several occa-sions I sat in on these sessions, but there was no opportunity to discuss other projects.

In addition, Stan had to continue producing work under both his own byline and that of a new nom de plume, John Jesse!

As a further complication, he was already being pushed in the direction of the slicks, as the then numerous female-and-family-oriented magazines were called. These publications paid astronomical rates by Depression standards. Collier's, for example, offered $1,000 every week for a short-short story or just about double the price some science-fiction maga-zines would pay for an entire fifty-thousand-word novel.

So writing for Weird Tales would be a labor of love and a matter of personal satisfaction rather than professional ad-vancement. But Stan a.s.sured me he was going to sell a yarn there yet, come what may.

What came was throat irritation-a medical consultation-a tonsillectomy-and a recuperation period marred by recur-rent hoa.r.s.eness and coughing spells. When I saw him during this time he no longer chain-smoked, and instead of restlessly pacing the floor as he developed a story-line he was content to sit quietly in the living room and talk about future projects.

I still remember the husky voice, vibrant with excitement, reciting the plots of several intended novels.

Stan was begin-ning to realize that the science-fiction markets of 1935 had se-vere restrictions: he'd broken taboos regarding style and concept, but there seemed to be little opportunity to tamper with content. Stan was a lover of fantasy and a born romantic -now he'd hit upon a way to combine the fantastic with ro-mance.

Romance was to be the chief ingredient of Three Who Danced, the story of three teen-age girls attending their high school senior prom in a small midwestern town on a bitterly cold winter night. At this time Edward, Prince of Wales, was perhaps the world's most publicized and popular bachelor, the dream prince of every female in a day when no woman had yet ad Libbed. It was Stan's notion that the Prince, traveling across the country by train on a good-will visit, finds himself stranded overnight by a snowstorm in this little town on the night of the dance. For lack of other amus.e.m.e.nt he is per-suaded by his impromptu host, the local mayor, to attend the senior prom. Here he dances in turn with the three girls-and by so doing, irrevocably alters each one's life.

He waltzes with the belle of the ball, the prom queen, and this so expands her already-inflated ego that she decides to run off and seek a Hollywood career. Her grandiose self-delu-sions lead to inevitable tragedy.

The second girl, a wallflower and ugly duckling, chosen by the Prince as a dancing-partner in a moment of perceptive pity, finds popularity and self-confidence. She becomes ful-filled and successful as a result of her three-minute whirl in his arms.

The Prince's third partner, engaged to a local hoy and with prospects of a happy marriage, falls madly in love with ltd-ward. Her schoolgirl infatuation prompts her to break the en-gagement and follow the Prince, thinking he returns her affection. When she learns otherwise, she's completely crushed and contemplates suicide, but he quietly resolves the problem and restores her to her predestined role in life.

The second novel, which may or may not have been called Faaainc, a.s.suredly had a heroine by that name. It was inspired by a poem-was it Swinburne'

s?-in which G.o.d and the Devil throw dice for human souls.

Stan's story would open with just such a situation as its prologue. The two antagonists-the Power of Light and the Power of Darkness-engage in an eternal argument as to who holds dominion over mankind. It is the Devil's contention that he controls the destinies of those on earth-heaven can wait, Ind If he only had an equal opportunity to compete, he'd Ittin the allegiance of human beings every time.

To settle the dispute once and for all, they agree on a wager. Selecting a soul at random at its moment of birth, they will engage in an all-out contest to win it for their own.

The soul selected is that of Faustine, a girl born to an average family in average circ.u.mstances. But, thanks to the wager, she herself is far from average. Both G.o.d and the Devil visit upon her everything they can possibly conceive as an nonce on her future, each striving to outdo the other.

If G.o.d grants her beauty, the Devil embellishes it with tears. G.o.d offers her intelligence; the Devilconfers cun-ning. G.o.d gives her courage; the Devil makes her reckless.

During childhood and adolescence the psychic struggle continues-both powers attempting to influence Faustine's ac-tions and outlook-getting her in and out of sc.r.a.pes, setting trips and snares and temptations and opportunities for re-demption.

The time comes when Faustine is ready for marriage. G.o.d and the Devil each send a suitor, realizing that his influence and her choice will finally determine her salvation or d.a.m.na-tion. The Devil's choice is a handsome clergyman. G.o.d's choice, of course, is an atheist scientist.

And then...

And then, Stanley Weinbaum's health declined. There were Consultations and treatments, enforced rest periods. He no longer attended Fictioneer meetings; I saw him less frequently at home, then not at all.

Just before year's end he was dead, of throat cancer, at the age of thirty-three.

He never wrote the novels, never even had a chance to write a story for Weird Tales. One can only speculate as to what might have happened had he been spared to continue his creative career in the slicks-and in mainstream literature.

As it is, we must be content with his lasting legacy to the field of science fiction, where in the cruelly short span of a year and a half his imaginatively intelligent innovations helped reshape the form and direction of the genre.

To those who were privileged to know him, Stanley Wein-baum left another bequest-the persisting memory of a charming, witty, gentle and gracious friend.

ROBERT BLOCH.