Renaissance, p.1
Renaissance, page 1
RENAISSENCE
by
A. E. van Vogt
NEL Books are published by
New English Library Limited from
Barnard s Inn, Holborn,
London EC1N 2JR.
chapter one
Physicist Grayson heard the peculiar, tiny clicking sound twice in rapid order.
Ping... ping - like that.
Very faint.
But what followed was instantly unmistakable. The print he was reading blurred.
Grayson shook his head, impatiently, and drew the contract closer to his glasses. Spots danced all over the page. He sighed, leaned back, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw the problem.
In each lens of his spectacles, there was a crack horizontally across the transparent 'glass,' exactly at the pupil level.
He was mildly startled. What an odd coincidence. Both lenses broken within - he now remembered the pings, and realized that that must have been the moment - within a half-second of each other. Being statistically oriented, he considered very briefly the probability of such a simultaneous breakage. The figures that leaped to his mind were so astronomical, and, of course, impossible, that he gave it up.
Silently, now, he removed the derelict spectacles and laid them on the desk. Foggily, next, he searched in one of the drawers, and found a spool of transparent tape - it was, naturally, one of the perfect type manufactured by Haskett Laboratories for specific scientific applications. It had not previously occurred to him to utilize the tape for spectacle repair; and, obviously, he would only use it for that unscheduled purpose until he could obtain a new pair from his eye doctor.
As promised in fine print on the tape holder, the task of repair required instants only. Whereupon, he replaced the tape in the desk, the glasses on his nose - as the door opened and Miss Haskett walked in.
It was her usual vital entrance. She smiled, and said, 'Do you have a moment, Dr Grayson?' With that, her repertoire of pep was gone. She sank into a chair. And waited with an air of death about her.
Grayson studied the owner of the Haskett Laboratories from behind his glasses. As he did so, an astonishing thought passed through his mind. It occurred to him that he ought to feel guilty about Miss Haskett. Her lonely life cried out wordlessly for love and affection. And who else should answer that call but the man whom she had confirmed as chief scientist when she inherited the business from her late aunt? Theirs was an office relationship, of course. But it had involved just about all of her adult life.
Grayson cleared his throat, suddenly uneasy at the thoughts he was having. In fact, he was so intent on what had happened, he didn't notice the incongruity of what he did next.
He said, 'Uh, Miss Haskett.'
What he did not realize was the assertiveness of his tone. As if he were the employer, and she the employee. And she was evidently not thinking, either, or was off somewhere mentally. For she said in an absent tone: 'Yes, Doctor?'
'What's the name of the eye specialist we use for our male staff?'
'Burr. Dr Aaron Burr.'
Grayson nodded. He remembered it now. His impression that it was an easy name to remember, was correct. He would forget it again, of course.
He realized that his thought had shifted back to Miss Haskett. 'What do you do in your spare time?' he asked.
'Oh - various things.' She seemed more alert, suddenly.
'Do you read?'
'Sometimes.'
'Go to the movies?'
'Occasionally.'
Grayson hesitated. The first awareness was coming about what he was doing: asking personal questions of his employer. He had not done that in all their previous association. And he was startled.
Inside him, the withdrawal process was beginning. At which point the woman volunteered, 'I live in a condominium complex.'
Grayson was startled by the tremendousness of the informa-ation. 'Alone?' he asked.
A mist of color came into her cheeks. She straightened in her chair. Then: 'Alone,' she said firmly. And thereafter she did not look at him.
Grayson was silent. He had a feel for tragedy, real or imaginary. He was imagining that she had deliberately roused herself out of thirty-eight years of shyness to tell him that she had the facilities for an affair - a place of her own.
Grayson sighed. He was married, however drably. And he couldn't take the risk of his analysis being wrong. It would be a little ridiculous if he lost his job or got his face slapped, or -worst of all - was hauled before an Utt commissioner. He was incapable of evaluating all of the consequences of that last.
Thinking of that, shaken by that, he said aloud, urgently, 'Uh, Miss Haskett, I seem to have damaged my spectacles. And I'm sure I don't have to tell you that for a male nothing is more important. So if you'll just wait with what you were going to tell me—'
Miss Haskett stood up. 'It was about an order,' she said. 'It can wait.' Suddenly brisk, suddenly vital again, she added, 'Why don't I just have Miss Broman call Dr Burr, and make an appointment for you?'
'Uh, thank you,' said Peter Grayson, Ph.D., physicist, vice-president of the Haskett Manufacturing Laboratories. He spoke in an absentminded tone of voice, because he was watching Miss Haskett as she went to the door. It occurred to him for the first time in their long business life together that she had a most excellent figure.
As the door closed, he jumped a little. And realized that he had had a forbidden male-type feeling; and that he should be experiencing a strong guilt reaction.
But what he actually felt was a fear of being found out.
Trembling, he sat there in his private office in the scientific administration section of Haskett Laboratories—
Sat at his special, beautiful oak desk—
And he began to feel better, because he decided that he was not really in danger. The way he reasoned it, the dialogue of Miss Haskett and himself was now gone into that voiceless universe of all the forgotten - because unrecorded - conversations between, and among, human beings.
—She lives alone with her servants, he thought. So she will never mention it.
—And I certainly won't.
His anxiety began to fade.
After all, his momentary lapse was behind him, and was receding further into the past with each instant that went by.
He suspected that what had happened had to do with the cracked lenses of his spectacles.
The possibility was genuinely amazing to Grayson. Could it be that the Utt were right… ? On their arrival on earth forty years before, the alien Utt had looked over the human condition, and had diagnosed that the problems of mankind were all traceable to the human male.
From their height of total scientific superiority, they accordingly decreed that every male must take a certain drug at puberty - or later. This drug rendered the individual male nearsighted.
Whereupon, optometrists and other qualified professionals, following Utt specifications, fitted men with spectacles that were ever so slightly rose-tinted. Something else must have been in them, also. Because the lenses of these spectacles, it was said, barred tiny portions of the visible spectrum from stimulating the male optic nerve.
Aside from requiring that all property be owned by women, plus certain transport limitations, and that women were not allowed to take scientific training - an unexplained restriction - that was the only direct Utt interference in human affairs.
What bothered Grayson was that he had secretly dismissed the Utt analysis. He rejected, in short, the Utt concept that men were the villains of earth's tormented history. He had even begun to doubt the history. It all seemed farfetched. And sort of made up.
Suddenly, he wasn't so sure.
He was still thinking about it when Miss Haskett knocked discreetly, and entered. An unfortunate thing occurred. Presumably, she gave him information about his appointment.
But Grayson heard only the sound of her voice, and none of the words.
His trouble was, he was intently observing that she was, in fact, a good-looking woman. Totally absorbed, he watched her leave the room. And it was only after she was gone that he thought, startled: When did she say?
He was alarmed now. The situation which he had thought solved had an unsuspected aftereffect. It could - it seemed to -repeat with each visual contact.
He thought: Surely, I'm a little old for this kind of thing.
Having had that realization, he sat blank for a while. Gradually, a curiosity came - about himself. For a perverse reason, it was years since he had really looked at Peter Grayson. The reason was, he had a mirror in the wall of his office behind him, into which those invited into this inner sanctum could glance surreptitiously while they discussed laboratory business with him.
It had always amused Grayson that buyers of Haskett products could seemingly be hypnotized by their own images in the mirror. Thus confused, they often agreed to contracts that were in his company's favor. (He justified his progressive perfecting of the method by the fact that he, personally, gained nothing from it.)
Satisfied, he clicked on the intercom to Miss Haskett's secretary. 'Uh, Miss Broman, will you repeat that information about my appointment with Dr Burr? It seems to have slipped my mind.' :
To his considerable satisfaction, the secretary's voice came clearly with the statement that the appointment was for twelve o'clock noon the next day.
Miss Broman, having imparted this welcome bit of information, added quickly, 'AndDr Grayson, one more thing—'
She paused. And Grayson said, 'Yes?'
The se cretary said, as if to herself, 'Oh, here it is.' Then: 'Miss Haskett asked me to tell you that the address of her condominium apartment is 1818 Mendelian Drive.'
Long pause. Finally: 'Uh, Miss Broman, see that my appointments for the'day are canceled,' Grayson croaked. 'And tell Miss Haskett I won't be in this afternoon. When I go, I'll be leaving by a rear exit,'
He broke the connection. And, after a while, he was pleased to realize that he had kept his wits about him. Because, first, by deciding so promptly to go home, and, second, of course, by going to the side door, he would neatly evade passing Miss Haskett's office in the front of the building.
On the bus - that was one of the transport limitations, men were not allowed to drive; an automobile was considered by the Utt to be a violence-potential instrument - he realized unhappily that his situation was not good at all. In his mind's ear, he kept hearing a feminine sweetness that had been in Miss Broman's voice as she gave him Miss Haskett's address.
One hope remained, he realized. After the lenses were repaired, he presumed that his perceptual ability to hear a female voice with such responsive sensitivity would also rectify.
In short, he would cease to be vulnerable to the unsuspected madness which, he realized, had been lurking inside his skin exactly as the Utt had unerringly observed in human males at the time of their arrival on earth.
chapter two
Mila was not in when Grayson walked into the house. Which surprised him, vaguely. Somehow, he'd always had the impression from her that she never went anywhere during the daytime.
Probably out shopping, he thought. Satisfied with that explanation, he put any considerations of his wife's activity out of his mind.
Straight to his bedroom he went. Placed his spectacles in the drawer of his night table, and lay down. The Utt law required a man to wear his eyeglasses even while he was in bed - but, obviously, to do so with a pair of broken lenses would be tempting further damage.
Surprisingly, he slept. And awakened to the realization that a distant door had opened and shut. Mila, he presumed. There was a silence. He pictured her looking at his hat and cane, where he had left them in the hall, and becoming aware that he was home.
He visualized her instant unpleasant reaction to the realization that he was in the house.
But it was an hour before the door opened, and the rather tall, but slightly stooped woman who had been his wife for over thirty long years came in and stood over him.
'And what is it now?' she said in her attacking tone of voice.
It was nearly eight years since his last illness and twenty-two years back to the previous time when he had stayed home after having hurt his hip in a severe fall - and in each instance he had remained in bed exactly one day. Yet he perceived that in her mind the intervening years were as nothing compared to the mental anguish she had endured from his unwanted presence during those two twenty-four-hour periods.
Grayson sighed. For the first time he had the glimmer of the enormous effect the Utt decision about men had had on wives.
When man had been named as the earth troublemaker, every married woman became Mrs Unchallengeable.
Hastily, Grayson told her about his glasses breaking. He was parting his lips to describe how he had temporarily repaired them - when he became aware of a strong chemical odor.
He wrinkled his nose in distaste. 'What's that?' he said.
There was no reply. But an amazing thing happened. The shadowy figure, which had towered above him, sank down beside the bed. Though it was difficult to see the details, Grayson had the distinct impression that his wife was on her knees.
And the odor was - if possible - even stronger.
Grayson sat up. 'Mila! What's the matter?'
'Don't hurt me!' It was a whisper.
What stopped all immediate overt response by Grayson -his impulse to leap out of bed, his confusion, his feeling that he must instantly go to her aid for something that wasn't clear -was the realization that the odor was a human body smell.
Mila's!
From his early laboratory experiments with animals, memory wafted a startling explanation. A female animal in heat had several times affected him unpleasantly. So much so that, finally, realizing that glandular exudations were actually too much for his sensitive nose, he had abandoned his primary interest in biology, and had gone over to the objective world of physics.
This smell now was like that animal smell then.
… A woman in a profound state of sexual stimulation—
He lay back… She sees I'm not wearing the glasses that keep a man tamed.
Because his brain always worked rapidly, he waited because he was curious. Then he waited, because if he told her after such a delay, there was no knowing what berserk state of mind she would go into.
Vaguely, he recalled the theory of such matters. The legend was that a few minutes after a man took off his glasses, then-effect wore off. His office experience with Miss Haskett had certainly proved that.
He was assuming, of course, that the broken lenses were the equivalent of no-glasses—
After the first few minutes - went on the legend - a male without glasses, progressively became more aggressive, unreasoning, capable of violence.
—To Mila, after an afternoon of no glasses (as she believes), I must be in some final stage of male insanity.
For her it must be as frightening as meeting suddenly some wild animal: a tiger, a snake, a crocodile, a shark!
As these, rapid thoughts completed, the woman beside the bed spoke once more, again in a whisper. 'What do you want me to do? I'll do anything you say. Just don't hurt me.'
'Take a bath,' said Grayson, wrinkling his nose again, 'and, of course, you won't be hurt as long as' - he hesitated momentarily startled by his own temerity, but the words came anyway - 'as long as you do what I say.'
The woman came to her feet with alacrity. 'I'll be right back,' she mumbled. Her walk, as she headed for the hall door, was not steady. But she made it. There was the somewhat prolonged moment when she opened the door itself, and the brightness from beyond flooded through. Then the door closed.
Her bedroom was on the far side of the house from his, a choice of location she had made years ago. Because of the distance, it was always a little difficult to know what faucet she was using - Was she washing her face, or was she under the shower?
Grayson deduced from their dialogue, as the faint water sounds began, that she was taking a bath. He also assumed that she would now have time to recover her good sense. He recalled, uneasily, that a woman who felt herself threatened by a man could ask for instant help.
Yet when the door to his room opened again, he wasn't quite sure what state she was in. She wore her robe; that he was able to detect even with his weak vision. But - what else was not clear.
She came over to the bed, took off her robe, and lay down naked beside him. For long moments the surprise of that was a blankness. Then he felt himself automatically hardening, resisting.
For this woman there was no response in him. Thirty years of abuse tightened the muscles around his heart, and put a cold lump in his lower abdomen - Grayson was mildly surprised at the intensity of his resistance. Normally, he didn't feel that strongly. He recognized that he was aware for the first time of his true feeling.
—I could probably strangle this creature, he thought grimly.
That shocked him. Male violence really does exist, he admitted to himself.
Yet he was fieetingly recalling their sexual past. Several times each year, Mila would go out with certain female companions, and they would all get drunk. Somewhere about 2 a.m. on such occasions, she would show up in his room, an obscene creature with a tendency to throw up, and demand that he engage in the sex act.
Naturally, and anxiously, he had always come through for her, while she laughed, and belched, and on occasion spat in his face.
In the morning - or, rather, the evening following such a carousel - when he returned from work, she showed no apparent memory of the event.
—But he didn't want her at such times, and he didn't want her now.
'Has Rosie said when dinner will be ready?' Grayson asked, stiffly.
'She said we could eat anytime we wanted to,' came the small voice from the bed.
