Final Reckonings (6 page)

Footsteps. A shadow. And then —

"Delighted to see you!" Sebastian Barsac embraced his friend in the French fashion and began to make Gallic noises of enthusiasm.

"Welcome to Castle Barsac," said the little man. "You are tired after your long march from the railroad station, no? I will show you to your room — servants I do not retain. And after a shower we shall talk. Yes?"

Up the winding stairs, pursued by a babble of incoherent conversation, Doctor Jerome toiled, bags in hand. He found his oak-paneled chambers, was instructed in the mysteries of the antique mechanical shower arrangement; then was left to bathe and dress.

He had no time to marshal his impressions. It was not until later — after a surprisingly good dinner in a small apartment downstairs — that Jerome was able to sit back and appraise his host.

They retired to a parlor, lit cigars, and sat back before the grateful warmth emanating from the stone fireplace, where a blaze rose to push back the shadows in the room. Doctor Jerome's fatigue had lifted, and he felt stimulated, alert.

As Sebastian Barsac began to discuss his recent work, Jerome took the opportunity to scrutinize his friend.

Little Barsac had aged, definitely. He was fat, but flabby rather than rolypoly. The dark hair had receded on his domed forehead, and his myopic eyes peered from spectacles of increased thickness. Despite verbal enthusiasm, the little lord of Castle Barsac seemed oddly languid in his physical movements. But from his talk, Doctor Jerome recognized that Barsac's spirit was unchanged.

The words began to form a pattern in Jerome's mind — a pattern holding a meaning he did not understand.

"So you can see what I have been doing these nine years past. All of my life since I left the Sorbonne has been devoted to one end — discovering the linkage between man and animal through the alteration of cell structure in the brain. It is an evolutionary process wherein the cycle occurs in the lifespan of the individual animal. And my key? My key is simple. It lies in the recognition of one fact — that the human soul is divisible."

"What is all this?" Doctor Jerome interrupted. "I don't see what you're driving at, Barsac. Where's the connection between biology, alteration of cell structure in the brain, and evolution? And what part does a divisible human soul play in all this?"

"I will be blunt, my friend. I believe that human characteristics can be transferred to animals by means of mechanical hypnosis. I believe that portions of the human soul essence or psyche can be transmitted from man to animal — and that the animal will then begin to ascend the evolutionary scale. In a word, the animal will show
human
characteristics."

Doctor Jerome scowled.

"In the nine years that you've been dabbling in this unscientific romanticism here in your castle retreat, a new word has come into being to describe your kind, Barsac," he said. "The word is 'Kinky.' And that's what I think of you, and that's what I think of your theory."

"Theory?" Barsac smiled. "It is
more
than a theory."

"It's preposterous!" Jerome interrupted. "To begin with, your statement about the human soul being divisible. I defy you to
show
me a human soul let alone prove that you can cut it in half."

"I cannot show you one, I grant," said Barsac.

"Then what about your mechanical hypnosis? I've never heard it explained."

"I cannot explain it."

"And what, in an animal,
are
human characteristics? What is your basis of measurement?"

"I do not know."

"Then how do you expect me to understand your ideas?"

Sebastian Barsac rose. His face was pale, despite the fire's ruddy glow.

"I cannot show you a human soul," he murmured, "but I can show you what happens to animals when they possess part of one.

"I cannot explain mechanical hypnosis, but I can show you the machine I use to hypnotize myself and the animals in order to transfer a portion of my soul.

"I cannot measure the human characteristics of the animals undergoing my treatment, but I can show you what they look like and let you judge.

"Even then you may not
understand
my ideas — but you will see that I am actually carrying them out!"

By this time, Doctor Jerome had also risen to his feet. "You mean you've been transferring your soul to an animal body?"

Sebastian Barsac shrugged. "I have been transferring
part
of what I call my soul to the bodies of many animals," he amended.

"But you can't — it's biologically impossible. It defies the laws of reality!"

Behind the bulging spectacles, Barsac's eyes gleamed oddly.

"What is reality and who makes its laws?" he mocked. "Come, and see for yourself the success of my experiments."

He led the way across the chamber, down the hall, and up the great circular staircase. They reached the second floor on which Jerome's room lay, but did not pause. Selecting a panel switch from the open box on the wall, Barsac threw it and illumined the upper stairs. They began to climb again.

And all the while Barsac was talking, talking. "You have seen the gods of ancient Egypt?" he said. "The anthropomorphic stone figures with the bodies of men and the heads of animals? You have heard the legend of the werewolf, of lycanthropic changes whereby man becomes beast and beast becomes man?

"Fables, all fables. And yet behind the fables lurked a truth. The truth lurks no longer, for I have found it. The seat of evolution lies in the soul, and in the soul's human instrument of expression, the brain. We have grafted cellular structures of one body onto another—why not graft portions of one soul to another? Hypnosis is the key to transference, as I have said.

"All this I have learned by much thought, much experimentation. I have worked for nine years, perfecting techniques and methodology. Many times I failed. To my laboratory I had brought animals, hundreds of animals. Many of them died. I procured others, working endlessly toward one goal. I have paid the price, myself, dying a thousand mental deaths with the failure of each mistaken attempt. Even a physical price I have paid. A monkey—
sale cochon
! — took from me my finger. So."

Barsac paused and held up his left hand in a dramatic gesture to reveal the stump where his left thumb was missing.

Then he smiled. "But it is not my wounds of battle I wish to display to you — it is the fruits of victory. Come."

They had reached the topmost tower at last. Doctor Jerome gazed down the dizzying spiral of the stairs they had ascended, then turned his head forward as Barsac unlocked the paneled door of his laboratory and gestured him inside.

The click of a wall switch heralded the coming of light. Doctor Jerome entered and stood dazzled in the doorway.

Set in the moldering tower of the old castle was a spacious, white-tiled, completely modern laboratory unit. A great outer room, filled with electrical equipment, was displayed before him. All of the appurtenances necessary to microbiology were ranged on shelves and cabinets.

"Does it please you, Jerome?" asked Barsac. "It was not easy to assemble this, no. The very tiles were transported up the steep mountain passways to the castle, and the shipping of each bit of equipment was costly. But behold — is it not a perfect spot in which to work?"

Doctor Jerome nodded, absently. His inward thoughts were tinged with definite envy. Barsac here was squandering his genius and his wealth on this crazy dabbling, and he had every scientific luxury at his command, while he, Jerome, a capable scientist with a sound outlook, had nothing; no job, no future, nothing to work with. It wasn't right, it wasn't just. And yet —

"Even an electrical plant," Barsac was exclaiming. "We manufacture our own power here, you see. Look around. All is of the finest! Or perhaps you are eager to see what I promised to show you?"

Doctor Jerome nodded again. He couldn't stand the sight of this spotless laboratory because of the jealousy it aroused. He wanted to get it over with, get out of here.

Now Barsac opened the door of a second room, beyond. It was nearly as large as the first, but the walls were untiled. The original castle stones lent startling contrast to the great gleaming metal cabinet which dominated the center of the chamber.

"This room I had not the heart to change," Barsac explained. "It is here, according to family tradition, that my great-great-grandfather conducted his experiments in alchemy. He was a sorceror."

"So is his great-great-grandson," Doctor Jerome murmured.

"You refer to the machine?" Barsac stepped over and opened the metal door in the side of the cabinet. Within the large exposed area was a chair, fastened with clamps from which led a number of convoluted tubes and metal valves which in turn were fastened to a switchboard bearing an imposing number of dials and levers.

The chair faced a glass prism — a window in the metal that had the general appearance of a gigantic lens. Before this prism was a wheel of radiating wires, so fine as to be almost transparent. Various tubes from the chair led to the tips of the wires at different points of the wheel rim.

"This is not magic but science," Barsac said. "You see before you the mechanical hypnotic device I have perfected.

"The human subject is seated in the chair, so. The attachments are made, the adjustments calculated. The cabinet is closed. The power is turned on—to be automatically generated for a time span set beforehand. The subject gazes into the prism. The wires before the prism revolve and various arcs are actuated across its surface. Mechanical hypnosis results — and then, by means of electrical impulse, something of the life essence, the soul itself, is released. It flows through the glass prism, a vital force, and impinges upon the animal subjects set before the cabinet in the focal range of the glass. The animals receive the essence and — change. The transference is complete. Something of the human goes into the animals. By graduating the focal range I can work with a dozen animals at once. Naturally, each experiment drains my strength and taxes my vitality."

"It taxes my credulity," Doctor Jerome interjected.

Barsac shrugged dolefully. "Very well. I could explain minutely the workings of my machine, but I see you demand visual proof of its work. Come with me."

The third door was opened and Doctor Jerome stood in the last chamber.

It was hot in here, and a sharp scent smote his nostrils. An animal reek permeated the bare room. Lining the walls were cages — dozens of cages. Some held rats, some white mice, and there was tier upon tier of glass containers housing guinea pigs. Rats squealed, mice squeaked, and guinea pigs chittered.

"Experimental subjects," Barsac commented. "Alas, the supply is continuously being exhausted. I work on batches of twenty or more at once. You see, not all animals are — responsive — to the treatment. Out of one batch I could hope for two or three — reactions. That is, until recently. Then I began to find that almost all of my subjects showed changes."

Barsac moved toward the fourth wall, where no cages loomed. Here were shelves filled with jars. Preserving jars, Doctor Jerome decided.

He moved closer for another look, but Barsac turned. He halted him, left hand on Jeromes shoulder, so that Doctor Jerome looked down upon the trembling stump where the thumb had been.

"I shall only permit you to gaze upon the last experiments," Barsac whispered. "I could show you dogs with human legs, mice with human skulls and no tails, monkeys that are hairless and possessed of human faces. But you would mock at me and say they were freaks, hybrids — or tell me I could produce monstrosities by using infrared or gamma rays.

"So I shall show you my last experimental results only. The ones that prove not only that human characteristics can be transferred to animals — but that my characteristics have been transferred. The transference of my
mental
powers cannot be measured. I shall let you judge the
physical
results only.

"Perhaps they will not excite you very much, these creatures of mine. They are not as grotesque as the earlier ones, but the reproduction of an exact characteristic excites me more than the semianthropomorphic structures in the earlier bodies. It shows me that I am on the right track at last. My next step will produce not creatures that are changed and dead, but creatures changed and living. I — "

"Show me!" Doctor Jerome commanded.

"You will not be impressed," Barsac insisted. 'They are only rats and you may not even notice — "

"Show me!"

"Then, look."

Barsac stepped aside and Doctor Jerome gazed down at the jars. The bodies of twenty rats floated in the preserving fluid. Jerome stared. They were rats and only rats — their dead gray bodies were unchanged. Barsac was mad, quite mad.

And then Doctor Jerome saw it. He stared at one rat and saw the left forepaw that was not a forepaw — but a tiny hand!

He stared at the other rats in the other jars and saw that each left forepaw was alike. Each forepaw was like a human hand —
like the left hand of Sebastian Barsac on which the thumb was missing
!

Something was climbing the ivy outside the castle walls. Something was peering through the castle window — peering with little red-rimmed eyes that held a light of gleeful and atrocious floating. Something chuckled as it scrambled through the open window and dropped to the floor of the castle bedroom on tiny paws; paws that scraped and padded as they advanced toward the great bed.

Suddenly Jerome felt it crawling up the counterpane. He writhed and twisted, striking out with his hands to dislodge it; but the creature crawled upward, and now he could hear it chuckling in a voice that was a shrill mockery of human laughter.

Then its head rose on a level with Jeromes eyes, and he saw it — saw the furry figure, the monkeylike body and the mannikin-head of a witch's familiar — saw and recognized the hideous little monster for what it was . . . an animal, but with Barsac's face!

He screamed, then, and knew without any further indication that the creature was not alone.