The Ordeal of Professor Klein
L. Sprague de Camp
Much of the earliest science fiction was satirical and meant to point a moral about current conditions, such as "Gulliver's Travels." Another form was the story dealing with science, but based upon some kind of horror, such as "Frankenstein." Today, these stories are rather rare, and a combination of the two is almost unheard of. Frankly, we're somewhat puzzled as to the reason, since L. Sprague de Camp proves that it can be done. We particularly want to know how the readers feel about this story, and whether they'd like to see more.
The grim and horrible fate that betook Professor Klein in the Eldritch vaults of Kterem astounded the world. It shouldn't have been too surprising, though. It is already threatening most of us—even today!
There has been much loose talk about Dr. Alphonse Klein's mental illness and its connection with our expedition last year to the city of Gdoz on the planet 61 Cygni A VI, or Kterem to use a native name. Irresponsible journalists and rumor-mongers have spoken and written rashly of hereditary taints and instabilities, of horrors in this lost city too frightful for mere human beings to contemplate, and of the subtle effect of the poisons with which the amiable natives anoint their arrows.
There have been speculations to the effect that Dr. Klein read a mouldering inscription at Gdoz whose dreadful prophecies unseated his reason. The surmises have even hinted darkly that Dr. Klein's nervous breakdown was somehow brought on by his assistant; that, for instance, this assistant stole, for his own felonious purposes, a priceless manuscript to the search for which Dr. Klein had devoted a lifetime of work...
As that assistant, it is therefore incumbent upon me to set the record straight. First be it understood that this is no sensational horror-story but a sober record of the Klein-O'Gorman expedition. And while our experience was certainly trying and disconcerting enough, and contributed without doubt to Dr. Klein's unfortunate indisposition, the use of such highly colored terms as "horrible" and "ghastly" betoken a hopelessly unscientific approach to the question and will therefore be most rigorously eschewed.
The reason that I have not made these events public before this is that I was forbidden to do so by my contractual relationship with Dr. Klein.
Some years ago Dr. Alphonse François Klein retired from academic work as a professor of paleography at the University of London to devote his entire time to exploration and paleographic research. Though by frugal living and shrewd investment policies he had amassed a modest competence in addition to his pension, he nevertheless found it necessary to defray the cost of his expeditions by such means as are open to professional explorers: the publication of books and articles and the delivery of lectures.
As is customary in such cases, he required any assistants who accompanied him to agree as a condition of their employment that they would not, for a specified period after their return to Terra, deliver lectures or sell books or articles about the subject expedition without his express permission. This precaution was necessary to prevent unscrupulous or over-enthusiastic assistants from competing directly with the Doctor and thereby depriving him of the means for continuing his exploratory career. Inasmuch as the stipend which he paid his assistants came from the money that he earned in this manner, the restriction cannot be considered unfair, especially as Dr. Klein has always been most generous in his interpretation of this clause in his contracts.
Upon returning to Terra and proceeding as I had planned to take my Doctorate of Philosophy, I should in the normal course of events have observed the restrictions of the contract without cavail. However, as a result of the aforementioned speculations and rumors, I found myself handicapped in the employment of my talents. I therefore visited Dr. Klein in the sanitarium where he resides to ask for a waiver of the no-publicity clause so that I could explain the true cause of our misfortune.
When I was shown into his room he seemed quite lucid. He rose and greeted me warmly: a tall man of middle age, with a stooped posture, a shuffling walk, and a deeply-lined face beneath receding gray hair worn rather long. Though his manner is superficially vague he misses little. He has one slight but disconcerting peculiarity: being an Alsatian by birth, he speaks English sometimes with a French and sometimes with a German accent, depending upon which language he happens to be thinking in.
"How are you, Barney my boy?" he exclaimed heartily, and then told the male nurse: "You may go, Withers. I have matters to discuss with my colleague Mr. —it is Doctor now, is it not? —Dr. O'Gorman."
The male nurse rose, but scarcely had he left the room when an alarming change took place in Dr. Klein's manner. He leaped to the wash-stand, snatched up the bar of soap lying thereon, and rushed towards me brandishing this object and screaming, "Soap! Soap! Soap!"
Inferring from my unfortunate colleague's gestures that his intent was to force the bar down my throat, I grasped his wrists and restrained him until professional help arrived. I could do this because, though half a head shorter than Dr. Klein, I am heavier than he, not to mention considerably younger. When the attendants had subdued the distraught paleographer I withdrew to consider my situation.
This seemed discouraging indeed until I learned that a guardian had been appointed for Dr. Klein pending the completion of his cure. I accordingly visited this guardian, an old friend of
Dr. Klein named Professor Le Sage, and made arrangements with him for the publication of this article with the understanding that the proceeds of its sale should be paid to him in trust for Dr. Klein. I am reliably informed that Dr. Klein's cure, though reasonably certain, is likely to take at least another nine months to a year, and I cannot afford to wait that long before setting the true facts of the case before the public and more especially before my professional colleagues.
When we first planned this project, Dr. Klein explained the purpose of the expedition: "Barney," he said, "this will the biggest thing in my line in years be! This Kamzhik, whom I met in Sveho, has been to Gdoz, through the country of the Znaci and back again with a whole skin. And there, in the ruins of the royal library of the Hrata Empire, he swears he saw a manuscript written in both the Skhoji script and the Hrata Pictographic."
"Yes?" I said, for being a biologist I am a bit hazy on the finer distinctions of paleography. Klein explained:
"No authentic history has survived from the Hrata Empire; nothing, that is, but a scattering of legends comparable to our own Charlemagne and Trojan cycles and probably about as historical. Many ruins of the Hrata Age bear inscriptions in what is taken to be a pictographic signary, but nobody can read it. There are also a few inscriptions and manuscripts from the end of the Hrata period, before the barbarians like the Znaci overthrew them, in the phonetic Skhoji writing. We can read this all right, but we have yet to find a bilingual inscription comparable to the Rosetta Stone or the Behistun Inscription to serve as a key."
I asked: "But the Hrata language survives, doesn't it? So why can't we be matching the known words of it with the pictures until we find a meaningful combination?"
"Because it would forever take, the number of possible combinations being astronomical, and when you got your meaningful combination you would have no means of checking it. It is believed that the signary is partly ideographic and partly syllabic, but even that is not certain. There have been a few surmises as to the meaning of some of the pictographs. This one, for instance." He opened a monograph on the subject and pointed to something that looked like a pregnant lizard."This is thought by Le Sage to mean the syllable shi, but I think it more likely that it stands for the syllable psa and also the word psaloan, 'maybe'."