Dark Recess E-Book

George O. Smith

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 84

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Clifford Maculay was the one man who could explain the curious shift in the universe, which was far more than the academic matter it seemed to be. But Maculay had been "cured", and was no longer interested....

There are two basic ways to treat personality difficulties. One: change the personality. Two: remove the psychic blocks which are at the root of the trouble. The first method may be simpler, in some cases, and may be accomplished without apparent harm. But what if an individual's worth to society is so entangled with his personality troubles that when you change the latter, the former disappears, too?

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

DARK RECESS, by George O. Smith

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

DARK RECESS,by George O. Smith

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2023 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Future, July 1951.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

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INTRODUCTION,by John Betancourt

George Oliver Smith (1911–1981) was an American science fiction author. He should not be confused with the prolific George H. Smith, another American author who also published (among other things) a significant body of science fiction work.

Smith primarily wrote work set in space, including the novels Operation Interstellar (1950), Lost in Space (1959), and Troubled Star (1957). However, he is remembered chiefly for two works: the “Venus Equilateral” series of short stories about a communications station in space, designed to relay messages between Earth and Venus, and the novel The Fourth “R” (also published as The Brain Machine), about an education device that creates a five-year-old super-boy, who must escape those who wish to capture him long enough to grow up an extract his revenge.

Most of the “Venus Equilateral” stories were collected in Venus Equilateral (1947), a small press hardcover. In 1976, the complete series was assembled in The Complete Venus Equilateral. It’s an outstanding classic that holds up surprisingly well.

The title of The Fourth “R” is, of course, a play on the “3 Rs” of education—reading, ’riting, and ’rithmatic—but what that fourth “R” is, I will leave you to discover.

Smith was most active as a writer in the Golden Age of the 1940s and 1950s, with his primary market in the 1940s being the top magazine in the field—John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. Many authors make bad career moves, and Smith was no different—in 1949, editor Campbell’s first wife, Doña, left Campbell for Smith. Of course, that affected what had been an excellent author/editor working relationship. Smith did not appear again in Astounding until 1959, after a decade has passed. In the meantime, he published fiction in other magazines, like Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, and began writing books.

After 1960, Smith’s job began making more demands on his time, and his output dropped. He was given the First Fandom Hall of Fame award in 1980 and remained a member of the literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov’s fictional group of mystery-solvers, the Black Widowers.

Dark Recess originally appeared in the July 1951 issue of the classic science fiction magazine Future.

CHAPTER 1

Clifford Maculay reacted instantly to the doctor’s question; he became half-angry, completely indignant.

Doctor Hanson smiled. “You’re not angry at the question,” he said quietly; “you’re not even surprised that a man of seventy should ask such a question. What you are indignant about is that your mind denies such a need. Cliff, you’re trying to run your body with your brain.”

“Naturally. So what has my love life—?”

“You’ve got glands too,” remarked Hanson. “And some of them are damned important to mental balance.”

Maculay sat forward on the chair, tense and alert. He was not accustomed to being browbeaten; Maculay gave the orders and other people jumped. Now that he was on the receiving end of the deal, he was preparing for the battle of wits. But Hanson had seen many such men in forty-odd years of medicine. Hanson did not see Maculay the Mind; he saw a man of thirty-eight, soft from lack of exercise, underweight from the constant burning away of nervous energy. He saw a fine physical machine being run into an early grave or a sanatorium, because the mind behind those sharp blue eyes was too damned ignorant to understand that it could not trade the worn-out body for a new model with white sidewall tires, automatic defroster, and long-playing record attachment.

“Relax,” said Hanson; “I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Good. Now let’s get down to business.”

“Exactly what do you want?”

Maculay pondered for a moment. “Do you understand variable-matrix radiation mechanics?”

“Probably as little as you know synaptic pressure theory.”

“That’s the trouble. I can’t explain in detail what I want. I can only explain by analogy. Look, Doc, for eight years I’ve been experimenting with some mathematics along an entirely new field of theory. Indications are that gross matter can exceed the velocity of light under certain conditions; but in attempting to define these conditions by mathematical formulation I’ve hit a snag.”

“What manner of snag?”

Cliff leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He was physically relaxed, now, but only Doctor Hanson could hazard a guess as to how much of this man’s metabolism went into the job of keeping that big brain in high gear.

“Physical matter cannot, of course, exceed the speed of light in universal space. However, normal space is no longer normal when it is warped by electrostatic fields, electromagnetic flux, or gravitational lines. These universal effects produce a warping of physical space to such an extent that the warped area is no longer a part of, or connected in any way with the universal space we know. It becomes a small island of separate space which may be accelerated or retarded. That’s the snag, Doctor.”

“I don’t see it.”

“I always end up with one equation that has two answers. Theoretically, one must be real and one must be imaginary, somewhat like the solution to a simple quadratic; in that case you can disregard the answer that tells you that you are confronted with a minus quantity of mass, for instance, and you can select the positive quantity as being correct with neither difficulty nor ambiguity. In this case, being more complex by far, I find two roots indicating a positive and negative space, mutually inimical. And, what causes the trouble is the fact that the determinant depends upon the development of a negative-gravitic field.”

“Well—?”

Maculay laughed bitterly. “This is sheer nonsense; like dividing by zero.”

Hanson shrugged. “So?”

“Obviously I have made an error.”

Doctor Hanson again shrugged, wondering what the man was getting at. Electrical engineers confronted with a tough problem in vector analysis consulted other electrical engineers; they did not bring their unruly vectors to a psychiatrist or physician and hope to have them solved. They came to medicine and psychiatry when they began trying to integrate and plot the rhythmic sway of their secretary’s hips, or began to see the outline of a woman’s lips in the catenary of a suspension bridge.

“Obviously,” nodded Hanson.

“So here it is again, Doctor. I’ve been back and forth across my equations for the past eleven months and always come back to the same errata.”

“But what can I do?”

“Someone must check my equations—someone who is viewing them as a competent, but unbiased, observer.”

“An excellent idea.”

Maculay spread helpless hands wide. “I sound like an egomaniac,” he said, “but there is no other man on earth who can follow my mathematics but I.”

“Not even the thirteen fellows who understand Einstein?”

Maculay snorted. “Understood,” he said emphasizing the last syllable. “Einstein was difficult when first made public; nowadays there are plenty of men who know more about Einstein’s theories than the man himself. In my own case it is similar. No other man has had a chance to study my theories; I have a few adherents who try to follow them, but they have not the full time to put to the job and so they are far behind. Besides, I’d trust none of them.”

“I see.”

“Ergo, Doc, what I say is this: You are to hypnotize me. You are to give me a post-hypnotic suggestion that I am to forget the error in my calculations, that I am to recheck them carefully and completely, without knowing that some factor in them is in error. Then and only then can I locate it; as soon as I locate this error, I am to remember everything.”

“Supposing your mathematics is not in error but is entirely correct—suppose no error truly exists?”

“There is that possibility; but if the paradox is true, I will have at least been forced to forget that I once believed an error existed. But I must check this math as a competent and unbiassed observer.”

“That can be done.”

“Good; now let’s get going and let’s have no more nonsense about my glands.”

“This I can do; I will help you.”

Maculay relaxed while the doctor produced his hypnoscope and set it up on the table. With Maculay’s cooperation, he was in the hypnotic trance in a matter of seconds.

* * * *

Doctor Hanson looked at the man. This was probably the first time that the entire man had relaxed, mind and body, in years. But Hanson did not see the point: Maculay may have run into a mathematical paradox, but it was not of honest mathematics. Figures do not lie, but liars can figure; it is more than possible that a brain will introduce an error in order that the facts of the case be unrecognized. Hanson nodded quietly. Man was mind and glands and body and appetite, bones, hide, and ulcers. If a sick mind can produce a sickness of the body, the reverse is true. Cliff’s error was not in his mathematics; it was in his life.

Of all the things Maculay needed, more work along the same line with no relaxation was not among the list. What Maculay needed—or would eventually get in a sanatorium—was a long period of relaxation. Fun and games; a bit of competition; a hangover, and the sheer physical delight of wrapping an arm about the slender waist of a female and swaying to and fro to the rhythmic beat of tomtoms and the howl of a well beaten clarinet.

At seventy, Jay Hanson had learned the impatience of youth. Maculay had a lot of time to finish his equations. Scissor a year of Maculay’s life and he could then finish this; let him go on as he was and he would burn himself out at a mere fifty.

He looked at Maculay seriously. “You have been working too hard,” he said.

The reply came instantly, like the echo of an automaton.