Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition (23 page)

“You an overseas veteran?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Not much left over there, is there?” He frowned. “Enjoy the last war?”

“No, sir.”

“Look like another war to you?”

“Kind of, sir.”

“What can be done about it?”

I shrugged. “Looks pretty hopeless.”

He peered at me intently. “Know anything about international law, the U.N., and all that?”

“Only what I pick up from the papers.”

“Same here,” he sighed. He showed me a fat scrapbook packed with newspaper clippings. “Never used to pay any attention to international politics. Now I study them the way I used to study rats in mazes. Everybody tells me the same thing—‘Looks hopeless.’ ”

“Nothing short of a miracle—” I began.

“Believe in magic?” he asked sharply. The professor fished two dice from his vest pocket. “I will try to roll twos,” he said. He rolled twos three times in a row. “One chance in about 47,000 of that happening. There’s a miracle for you.” He beamed for an instant, then brought the interview to an end, remarking that he had a class which had begun ten minutes ago.

He was not quick to take me into his confidence, and he said no more about his trick with the dice. I assumed they were loaded, and forgot about them. He set me the task of watching male rats cross electrified metal strips to get to food or female rats—an experiment that had been done to everyone’s satisfaction in the nineteen-thirties. As though the pointlessness of my work were not bad enough, the professor annoyed me further with irrelevant questions. His favorites were: “Think we should
have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?” and “Think every new piece of scientific information is a good thing for humanity?”

·    ·    ·

However, I did not feel put upon for long. “Give those poor animals a holiday,” he said one morning, after I had been with him only a month. “I wish you’d help me look into a more interesting problem—namely, my sanity.”

I returned the rats to their cages.

“What you must do is simple,” he said, speaking softly. “Watch the inkwell on my desk. If you see nothing happen to it, say so, and I’ll go quietly—relieved, I might add—to the nearest sanitarium.”

I nodded uncertainly.

He locked the laboratory door and drew the blinds, so that we were in twilight for a moment. “I’m odd, I know,” he said. “It’s fear of myself that’s made me odd.”

“I’ve found you somewhat eccentric, perhaps, but certainly not—”

“If nothing happens to that inkwell, ‘crazy as a bedbug’ is the only description of me that will do,” he interrupted, turning on the overhead lights. His eyes narrowed. “To give you an idea of how crazy, I’ll tell you what’s been running through my mind when I should have been sleeping. I think maybe I can save the world. I think maybe I can make every nation a
have
nation, and do away with war for good. I think maybe I can clear roads through jungles, irrigate deserts, build dams overnight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Watch the inkwell!”

Dutifully and fearfully I watched. A high-pitched humming seemed to come from the inkwell; then it began to vibrate alarmingly, and finally to bound about the top of the desk, making two noisy circuits. It stopped, hummed again, glowed red, then popped in splinters with a blue-green flash.

Perhaps my hair stood on end. The professor laughed gently. “Magnets?” I managed to say at last.

“Wish to heaven it were magnets,” he murmured. It was then that he told me of dynamopsychism. He knew only that there was such a force; he could not explain it. “It’s me and me alone—and it’s awful.”

“I’d say it was amazing and wonderful!” I cried.

“If all I could do was make inkwells dance, I’d be tickled silly with the whole business.” He shrugged disconsolately. “But I’m no toy, my boy. If you like, we can drive around the neighborhood, and I’ll show you what I mean.” He told me about pulverized boulders, shattered oaks, and abandoned farm buildings demolished within a fifty-mile radius of the campus. “Did every bit of it sitting right here, just thinking—not even thinking hard.”

He scratched his head nervously. “I have never dared to concentrate as hard as I can for fear of the damage I might do. I’m to the point where a mere whim is a blockbuster.” There was a depressing pause. “Up until a few days ago, I’ve thought it best to keep my secret for fear of what use it might be put to,” he continued. “Now I realize that I haven’t any more right to it than a man has a right to own an atomic bomb.”

He fumbled through a heap of papers. “This says about all that needs to be said, I think.” He handed me a draft of a letter to the Secretary of State.

“I have no idea what will happen next,” said the professor.

·    ·    ·

There followed three months of perpetual nightmare, wherein the nation’s political and military great came at all hours to watch the professor’s tricks.

We were quartered in an old mansion near Charlottesville, Virginia, to which we had been whisked five days after the letter was mailed. Surrounded by barbed wire and twenty guards, we were labeled “Project Wishing Well,” and were classified as Top Secret.

For companionship we had General Honus Barker and the State Department’s William K. Cuthrell. For the professor’s talk of peace-through-plenty they had indulgent smiles and much discourse on practical measures and realistic thinking. So treated, the professor, who had at first been almost meek, progressed in a matter of weeks toward stubbornness.

He had agreed to reveal the thought train by means of which he aligned his mind into a dynamopsychic transmitter. But, under Cuthrell’s and Barker’s nagging to do so, he began to hedge. At first he declared that the information could be passed on simply by word of mouth. Later he said that it would have to be written up in a long report. Finally, at dinner one night, just after General Barker had read the secret orders for Operation Brainstorm, the professor announced, “The report may take as long as five years to write.” He looked fiercely at the general. “Maybe twenty.”

The dismay occasioned by this flat announcement was offset somewhat by the exciting anticipation of Operation Brainstorm. The general was in a holiday mood. “The target ships are on their way to the Caroline Islands at this very moment,” he declared ecstatically. “One hundred and twenty of them! At the same time, ten V-2s are being readied for firing in New Mexico, and fifty radio-controlled jet bombers are being equipped for a mock attack on the Aleutians. Just think of it!” Happily he reviewed his orders. “At exactly 1100 hours next Wednesday, I will give you the order to
concentrate;
and you,
professor, will think as hard as you can about sinking the target ships, destroying the V-2s before they hit the ground, and knocking down bombers before they reach the Aleutians! Think you can handle it?”

The professor turned gray and closed his eyes. “As I told you before, my friend, I don’t know what I can do.” He added bitterly, “As for this Operation Brainstorm, I was never consulted about it, and it strikes me as childish and insanely expensive.”

General Barker bridled. “Sir,” he said, “your field is psychology, and I wouldn’t presume to give you advice in that field. Mine is national defense. I have had thirty years of experience and success, Professor, and I’ll ask you not to criticize my judgment.”

The professor appealed to Mr. Cuthrell. “Look,” he pleaded, “isn’t it war and military matters we’re all trying to get rid of? Wouldn’t it be a whole lot more significant and lots cheaper for me to try moving cloud masses into drought areas, and things like that? I admit I know next to nothing about international politics, but it seems reasonable to suppose that nobody would want to fight wars if there were enough of everything to go around. Mr. Cuthrell, I’d like to try running generators where there isn’t any coal or water power, irrigating deserts, and so on. Why, you could figure out what each country needs to make the most of its resources, and I could give it to them without costing American taxpayers a penny.”

“Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom,” said the general heavily.

Mr. Cuthrell threw the general a look of mild distaste. “Unfortunately, the general is right in his own way,” he said. “I wish to heaven the world were ready for ideals like yours, but it simply isn’t. We aren’t surrounded by brothers, but by enemies. It isn’t a lack of food or resources that has us on the brink of war—it’s a struggle for power. Who’s going to be in charge of the world, our kind of people or theirs?”

The professor nodded in reluctant agreement and arose
from the table. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen. You are, after all, better qualified to judge what is best for the country. I’ll do whatever you say.” He turned to me. “Don’t forget to wind the restricted clock and put the confidential cat out,” he said gloomily, and ascended the stairs to his bedroom.

·    ·    ·

For reasons of national security, Operation Brainstorm was carried on without the knowledge of the American citizenry which was paying the bill. The observers, technicians, and military men involved in the activity knew that a test was under way—a test of what, they had no idea. Only thirty-seven key men, myself included, knew what was afoot.

In Virginia, the day for Operation Brainstorm was unseasonably cool. Inside, a log fire crackled in the fireplace, and the flames were reflected in the polished metal cabinets that lined the living room. All that remained of the room’s lovely old furniture was a Victorian love seat, set squarely in the center of the floor, facing three television receivers. One long bench had been brought in for the ten of us privileged to watch. The television screens showed, from left to right, the stretch of desert which was the rocket target, the guinea-pig fleet, and a section of the Aleutian sky through which the radio-controlled bomber formation would roar.

Ninety minutes before H-hour the radios announced that the rockets were ready, that the observation ships had backed away to what was thought to be a safe distance, and that the bombers were on their way. The small Virginia audience lined up on the bench in order of rank, smoked a great deal, and said little. Professor Barnhouse was in his bedroom. General Barker bustled about the house like a woman preparing Thanksgiving dinner for twenty.

At ten minutes before H-hour the general came in, shepherding the professor before him. The professor was comfortably attired in sneakers, gray flannels, a blue sweater, and a white shirt open at the neck. The two of them sat side by side
on the love seat. The general was rigid and perspiring; the professor was cheerful. He looked at each of the screens, lighted a cigarette and settled back.

“Bombers sighted!” cried the Aleutian observers.

“Rockets away!” barked the New Mexico radio operator.

All of us looked quickly at the big electric clock over the mantel, while the professor, a half-smile on his face, continued to watch the television sets. In hollow tones, the general counted away the seconds remaining. “Five … four … three … two … one …
Concentrate!
”

Professor Barnhouse closed his eyes, pursed his lips, and stroked his temples. He held the position for a minute. The television images were scrambled, and the radio signals were drowned in the din of Barnhouse static. The professor sighed, opened his eyes, and smiled confidently.

“Did you give it everything you had?” asked the general dubiously.

“I was wide open,” the professor replied.

The television images pulled themselves together, and mingled cries of amazement came over the radios tuned to the observers. The Aleutian sky was streaked with the smoke trails of bombers screaming down in flames. Simultaneously, there appeared high over the rocket target a cluster of white puffs, followed by faint thunder.

General Barker shook his head happily. “By George!” he crowed. “Well, sir, by George, by George, by George!”

“Look!” shouted the admiral seated next to me. “The fleet—it wasn’t touched!”

“The guns seem to be drooping,” said Mr. Cuthrell.

We left the bench and clustered about the television set to examine the damage more closely. What Mr. Cuthrell had said was true. The ships’ guns curved downward, their muzzles resting on the steel decks. We in Virginia were making such a hullabaloo that it was impossible to hear the radio reports. We were so engrossed, in fact, that we didn’t miss the professor
until two short snarls of Barnhouse static shocked us into sudden silence. The radios went dead.

We looked around apprehensively. The professor was gone. A harassed guard threw open the front door from the outside to yell that the professor had escaped. He brandished his pistol in the direction of the gates, which hung open, limp and twisted. In the distance, a speeding government station wagon topped a ridge and dropped from sight into the valley beyond. The air was filled with choking smoke, for every vehicle on the grounds was ablaze. Pursuit was impossible.

“What in God’s name got into him?” bellowed the general.

Mr. Cuthrell, who had rushed out onto the front porch, now slouched back into the room, reading a penciled note as he came. He thrust the note into my hands. “The good man left this billet-doux under the door knocker. Perhaps our young friend here will be kind enough to read it to you gentlemen, while I take a restful walk through the woods.”

“Gentlemen,”
I read aloud,
“as the first superweapon with a conscience, I am removing myself from your national defense stockpile. Setting a new precedent in the behavior of ordnance, I have humane reasons for going off. A. Barnhouse.”

·    ·    ·

Since that day, of course, the professor has been systematically destroying the world’s armaments, until there is now little with which to equip an army other than rocks and sharp sticks. His activities haven’t exactly resulted in peace, but have, rather, precipitated a bloodless and entertaining sort of war that might be called the “War of the Tattletales.” Every nation is flooded with enemy agents whose sole mission is to locate military equipment, which is promptly wrecked when it is brought to the professor’s attention in the press.