“Bits of protoplasm, Arbuthnot. Life cells. And all the scientists in the world, with their most cunning microscopes and reagents, cannot isolate one of them and say whether it would have developed into a rear-admiral or a cucumber; an elephant or a moth; a theologian or a toadstool! Am I right?”
The physician half smiled.
“With certain reservations you are perfectly correct,” he admitted.
“One step separates me from divinity,” Slade remarked. “I haven’t yet actually created a life cell, but I stand on the threshold. And then — what?”
“Many have stood on the threshold a long time, Slade. With the eggs of seaurchins and—”
“Grammar school stuff! Piffle!! I tell you, in less than a year, probably within three months, I can from inorganic substances form a living cell. Then, having the power of creating and destroying life, I shall emerge, the lone pioneer, the first human being to rise to godship. And I don’t dare. I tell you, I am afraid! What of? I don’t know. Not of anything that can happen to this wreck of a body. Not of any hell-and-damnation stuff. Not of pure annihilation. But I am horribly afraid — of something. So much so that I am withholding my foot just as I lift it to take that final step that divides men and gods.”
“I think you are perfectly right,” Arbuthnot assented in soothing tones. “I’d feel the same way about it myself!”
Slade stared at him for a moment before his yellow face broke into a myriad of little wrinkles, and his voice into cracked laughter.
“You’re only a little fellow in your profession, after all! You think I’m demented — even now you’re figuring on how to keep me quiet till you can get a message to the Psychopathic Hospital.”
The alienist went mottled-red. It was precisely what he was thinking — but he was a man of great dignity, and hated to be mocked even by a lunatic.
“You’ve no right to say that,” he parried. “I simply agreed with you.”
“Well — even alienists know enough not to contradict their patients, don’t they? You didn’t dispute that chap when he told you he had a glass heart! Humor us, my learned friend. Humor us!”
Instantly dropping his banter, he leaned forward, his voice falling to a whisper.
“What would you say if I told you that I could take any life cell and make of it what I choose? What are the determining factors? Light — heat — moisture — food — what we term in general, environment.”
He touched a thick, leather-bound book on the table.
“Here are the formulae, all worked out. What will you, my good Arbuthnot? An oak tree, or a lizard? A pretty girl, or a serpent — or, if you like, both in one?”
He rose jerkily, and beckoned his visitor to follow him into the other room.
Arbuthnot, now thoroughly on his guard against any sudden violence directed by Slade against either of them, followed him into a room twice as long as the other, and fitted up as a laboratory.
Even in his anxiety, the extraordinary neatness and order of the room caught his notice. There was none of the litter familiar to such places presided over by man, with only vestigial housekeeping instincts. Brass and nickel were gleaming. Test tubes, glass jars, stood in racks or on shelves. Rows of labeled bottles were not sticky or stained by escaping drops of their own contents. Tables, floor, walls, showed no trace of dust or grime. A tall three-leaved screen cut off one end of the long room, which was lighted from a sky-light, it being too early to turn on any of the numerous incandescents.
Slade crossed over to where, apparently, a huge steel safe was set in the wall, and opened the thick door. It swung easily and noiselessly upon its oiled pinions, revealing a closet the height of a tall man, with a perforated disc upon the floor, and a grill of shining rods extending to the top. Overhead was an oblong box thickly wound with heavy copper wire. A number of dials, indicators and gauges were attached to a heavy plate screwed to the inside of the door. Slade turned to the silent physician.
“This is my lethal chamber,” he explained. “One who enters this steel chest and throws this switch, ceases to exist. He disappears. More scientifically, since in our universe nothing can be destroyed, he is transmuted into material not identifiable by our imperfect senses. Simply open the door five minutes after I enter, and you will see. Or rather, you will not see!”
Arbuthnot made an involuntary step toward the other, who smiled and closed the heavy door.
“Do not be alarmed! I have other things to show you.”
He pointed out a few of the ingenious contrivances in the laboratory, calling especial attention to his electric incinerator and showing his guest how, by turning a small lever, a globular furnace became white hot in a minute or two. Anything placed therein would shrivel almost instantly to ashes.
“And now for the real exhibit,” he said, leading Arbuthnot to the far end of the room and around the screen which he had noted on entering.
III
Late afternoon had set in; and the dusk revealed nothing but a long row of square glass cases standing upon a trestle and emanating a sickly greenish light in the afterglow which slanted down through the skylight.
Slade switched on some incandescents.
Details leaped out at Arbuthnot. He noted that some of the glass tanks contained a fluid, while others were dry. Electric wires were connected with each, and thermometers indicated their interior heat. Faint stirrings — a little scraping on the sand of one of the dry containers — indicated some sort of life within. Slade touched his sleeve and directed him to the end of the row.
Peering within, the alienist made out some creature which he could not identify, nor even classify as plant or animal. It swayed gently in the water, its eight or nine inches erect, with a bulbous head and a suggestion of human features; but its limbs were like some unwholesome plant, with twigs for hands and feet. It seemed rooted in a yellowish-gray clay at the bottom of the tank. Little bubbles rose continuously from its mouth.
“Part man — part seaweed,” observed Slade. “What do you think of it?”
Arbuthnot bent closely over the stagnant water. A feeling of horror crept through his veins like iced water. The homunculus turned its head — if it was a head — upward, and its eyes, whitish and without expression, seemed to look through the viscous fluid into his own. A rudimentary nose — a wide mouth — sessile ears — these he made out before the thing seemed to take fright and slithered down to burrow into the clay in which its lower limbs were rooted.
Without a comment Arbuthnot permitted himself to be led to the next tank.
Here was, unquestionably, a miniature woman. Beautiful and shapely as a fairy, with perfect breasts and an exquisite little head swaying upon a slender neck, her skin shimmered silvery-green in the water. Arbuthnot turned deathly sick as he saw that below the waist she — it — was seemingly a slimy eel!
Concerning the occupants of the other glass boxes he retained only a jangled sense of hideous and unclassifiable monstrosities. There were serpents that were part vegetable; plants that mocked humanity. There were other things that fascinated by a sort of loathsome beauty. Sickened to the soul, he was dragged back to a consciousness of the present by the low-pitched voice of John Slade, whose presence he had forgotten.
“I don’t suppose that I can possibly explain my feelings toward these little creatures. We have no adjectives, no similes for it — because it isn’t a human emotion. I am the first man ever to know it. There is nothing of sex in it, you see; nothing comparable to love of wife, or parents, or offspring. It is the yearning of the creator over the people he has created. God feels it, I suppose, for us; but in depicting God’s love we grope for words and say that he cares for us as a father for his son.”