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diff --git a/35879-0.txt b/35879-0.txt index 3602a25..a2b3315 100644 --- a/35879-0.txt +++ b/35879-0.txt @@ -1,25 +1,4 @@ - THE ROTIFERS - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost -no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Title: The Rotifers - -Author: Robert Abernathy - -Release Date: April 16, 2011 [EBook #35879] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROTIFERS *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35879 *** Produced by Frank van Drogen, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. @@ -671,377 +650,4 @@ slowly, wearily, up the path toward the house. Fiction March 1953. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Title: The Rotifers - -Author: Robert Abernathy - -Release Date: April 16, 2011 [EBook #35879] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROTIFERS *** - - - - -Produced by Frank van Drogen, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. - - - - - - THE ROTIFERS - - BY Robert Abernathy - - _Beneath the stagnant water shadowed by water lilies Harry found - the fascinating world of the rotifers--but it was their world, - and they resented intrusion._ - - _Illustrated by Virgil Finlay_ - -Henry Chatham knelt by the brink of his garden pond, a glass fish bowl -cupped in his thin, nervous hands. Carefully he dipped the bowl into the -green-scummed water and, moving it gently, let trailing streamers of -submerged water weeds drift into it. Then he picked up the old scissors -he had laid on the bank, and clipped the stems of the floating plants, -getting as much of them as he could in the container. - -When he righted the bowl and got stiffly to his feet, it contained, he -thought hopefully, a fair cross-section of fresh-water plankton. He was -pleased with himself for remembering that term from the book he had -studied assiduously for the last few nights in order to be able to cope -with Harry's inevitable questions. - -There was even a shiny black water beetle doing insane circles on the -surface of the water in the fish bowl. At sight of the insect, the eyes -of the twelve-year-old boy, who had been standing by in silent -expectation, widened with interest. - -"What's that thing, Dad?" he asked excitedly. "What's that crazy bug?" - -"I don't know its scientific name, I'm afraid," said Henry Chatham. "But -when I was a boy we used to call them whirligig beetles." - -"He doesn't seem to think he has enough room in the bowl," said Harry -thoughtfully. "Maybe we better put him back in the pond, Dad." - -"I thought you might want to look at him through the microscope," the -father said in some surprise. - -"I think we ought to put him back," insisted Harry. Mr. Chatham held the -dripping bowl obligingly. Harry's hand, a thin boy's hand with narrow -sensitive fingers, hovered over the water, and when the beetle paused -for a moment in its gyrations, made a dive for it. - -But the whirligig beetle saw the hand coming, and, quicker than a wink, -plunged under the water and scooted rapidly to the very bottom of the -bowl. - -Harry's young face was rueful; he wiped his wet hand on his trousers. "I -guess he wants to stay," he supposed. - -The two went up the garden path together and into the house, Mr. Chatham -bearing the fish bowl before him like a votive offering. Harry's mother -met them at the door, brandishing an old towel. - -"Here," she said firmly, "you wipe that thing off before you bring it in -the house. And don't drip any of that dirty pond water on my good -carpet." - -"It's not dirty," said Henry Chatham. "It's just full of life, plants -and animals too small for the eye to see. But Harry's going to see them -with his microscope." He accepted the towel and wiped the water and -slime from the outside of the bowl; then, in the living-room, he set it -beside an open window, where the life-giving summer sun slanted in and -fell on the green plants. - - ---- - -The brand-new microscope stood nearby, in a good light. It was an -expensive microscope, no toy for a child, and it magnified four hundred -diameters. Henry Chatham had bought it because he believed that his only -son showed a desire to peer into the mysteries of smallness, and so far -Harry had not disappointed him; he had been ecstatic over the -instrument. Together they had compared hairs from their two heads, had -seen the point of a fine sewing needle made to look like the tip of a -crowbar by the lowest power of the microscope, had made grains of salt -look like discarded chunks of glass brick, had captured a house-fly and -marvelled at its clawed hairy feet, its great red faceted eyes, and the -delicate veining and fringing of its wings. - -Harry was staring at the bowl of pond water in a sort of fascination. -"Are there germs in the water, Dad? Mother says pond water is full of -germs." - -"I suppose so," answered Mr. Chatham, somewhat embarrassed. The book on -microscopic fresh-water fauna had been explicit about _Paramecium_ and -_Euglena_, diatomes and rhizopods, but it had failed to mention anything -so vulgar as germs. But he supposed that which the book called Protozoa, -the one-celled animalcules, were the same as germs. - -He said, "To look at things in water like this, you want to use a -well-slide. It tells how to fix one in the instruction book." - -He let Harry find the glass slide with a cup ground into it, and another -smooth slip of glass to cover it. Then he half-showed, half-told him how -to scrape gently along the bottom sides of the drifting leaves, to -capture the teeming life that dwelt there in the slime. When the boy -understood, his young hands were quickly more skillful than his -father's; they filled the well with a few drops of water that was -promisingly green and murky. - -Already Harry knew how to adjust the lighting mirror under the stage of -the microscope and turn the focusing screws. He did so, bent intently -over the eyepiece, squinting down the polished barrel in the happy -expectation of wonders. - -Henry Chatham's eyes wandered to the fish bowl, where the whirligig -beetle had come to the top again and was describing intricate patterns -among the water plants. He looked back to his son, and saw that Harry -had ceased to turn the screws and instead was just looking--looking with -a rapt, delicious fixity. His hands lay loosely clenched on the table -top, and he hardly seemed to breathe. Only once or twice his lips moved -as if to shape an exclamation that was snatched away by some new vision. - -"Have you got it, Harry?" asked his father after two or three minutes -during which the boy did not move. - -Harry took a last long look, then glanced up, blinking slightly. - -"You look, Dad!" he exclaimed warmly. "It's--it's like a garden in the -water, full of funny little people!" - -Mr. Chatham, not reluctantly, bent to gaze into the eyepiece. This was -new to him too, and instantly he saw the aptness of Harry's simile. -There was a garden there, of weird, green, transparent stalks composed -of plainly visible cells fastened end to end, with globules and bladders -like fruits or seed-pods attached to them, floating among them; and in -the garden the strange little people swam to and fro, or clung with odd -appendages to the stalks and branches. Their bodies were transparent -like the plants, and in them were pulsing hearts and other organs -plainly visible. They looked a little like sea horses with pointed -tails, but their heads were different, small and rounded, with big, -dark, glistening eyes. - -All at once Mr. Chatham realized that Harry was speaking to him, still -in high excitement. - -"What are they, Dad?" he begged to know. - -His father straightened up and shook his head puzzledly. "I don't know, -Harry," he answered slowly, casting about in his memory. He seemed to -remember a microphotograph of a creature like those in the book he had -studied, but the name that had gone with it eluded him. He had worked as -an accountant for so many years that his memory was all for figures now. - -He bent over once more to immerse his eyes and mind in the green -water-garden on the slide. The little creatures swam to and fro as -before, growing hazy and dwindling or swelling as they swam out of the -narrow focus of the lens; he gazed at those who paused in sharp -definition, and saw that, although he had at first seen no visible means -of propulsion, each creature bore about its head a halo of thread-like, -flickering cilia that lashed the water and drew it forward, for all the -world like an airplane propeller or a rapidly turning wheel. - -"I know what they are!" exclaimed Henry Chatham, turning to his son with -an almost boyish excitement. "They're rotifers! That means -'wheel-bearers', and they were called that because to the first -scientists who saw them it looked like they swam with wheels." - -Harry had got down the book and was leafing through the pages. He looked -up seriously. "Here they are," he said. "Here's a picture that looks -almost like the ones in our pond water." - -"Let's see," said his father. They looked at the pictures and -descriptions of the Rotifera; there was a good deal of concrete -information on the habits and physiology of these odd and complex little -animals who live their swarming lives in the shallow, stagnant waters of -the Earth. It said that they were much more highly organized than -Protozoa, having a discernible heart, brain, digestive system, and -nervous system, and that their reproduction was by means of two sexes -like that of the higher orders. Beyond that, they were a mystery; their -relationship to other life-forms remained shrouded in doubt. - -"You've got something interesting there," said Henry Chatham with -satisfaction. "Maybe you'll find out something about them that nobody -knows yet." - -He was pleased when Harry spent all the rest of that Sunday afternoon -peering into the microscope, watching the rotifers, and even more -pleased when the boy found a pencil and paper and tried, in an -amateurish way, to draw and describe what he saw in the green -water-garden. - -Beyond a doubt, Henry thought, here was a hobby that had captured Harry -as nothing else ever had. - - ---- - -Mrs. Chatham was not so pleased. When her husband laid down his evening -paper and went into the kitchen for a drink of water, she cornered him -and hissed at him: "I told you you had no business buying Harry a thing -like that! If he keeps on at this rate, he'll wear his eyes out in no -time." - -Henry Chatham set down his water glass and looked straight at his wife. -"Sally, Harry's eyes are young and he's using them to learn with. You've -never been much worried over me, using my eyes up eight hours a day, -five days a week, over a blind-alley bookkeeping job." - -He left her angrily silent and went back to his paper. He would lower -the paper every now and then to watch Harry, in his corner of the -living-room, bowed obliviously over the microscope and the secret life -of the rotifers. - -Once the boy glanced up from his periodic drawing and asked, with the -air of one who proposes a pondered question: "Dad, if you look through a -microscope the wrong way is it a telescope?" - -Mr. Chatham lowered his paper and bit his underlip. "I don't think -so--no, I don't know. When you look through a microscope, it makes -things seem closer--one way, that is; if you looked the other way, it -would probably make them seem farther off. What did you want to know -for?" - -"Oh--nothing," Harry turned back to his work. As if on after-thought, he -explained, "I was wondering if the rotifers could see me when I'm -looking at them." - -Mr. Chatham laughed, a little nervously, because the strange fancies -which his son sometimes voiced upset his ordered mind. Remembering the -dark glistening eyes of the rotifers he had seen, however, he could -recognize whence this question had stemmed. - -At dusk, Harry insisted on setting up the substage lamp which had been -bought with the microscope, and by whose light he could go on looking -until his bedtime, when his father helped him arrange a wick to feed the -little glass-covered well in the slide so it would not dry up before -morning. It was unwillingly, and only after his mother's strenuous -complaints, that the boy went to bed at ten o'clock. - -In the following days his interest became more and more intense. He -spent long hours, almost without moving, watching the rotifers. For the -little animals had become the sole object which he desired to study -under the microscope, and even his father found it difficult to -understand such an enthusiasm. - -During the long hours at the office to which he commuted, Henry Chatham -often found the vision of his son, absorbed with the invisible world -that the microscope had opened to him, coming between him and the -columns in the ledgers. And sometimes, too, he envisioned the dim green -water-garden where the little things swam to and fro, and a strangeness -filled his thoughts. - -On Wednesday evening, he glanced at the fish bowl and noticed that the -water beetle, the whirligig beetle, was missing. Casually, he asked his -son about it. - -"I had to get rid of him," said the boy with a trace of uneasiness in -his manner. "I took him out and squashed him." - -"Why did you have to do that?" - -"He was eating the rotifers and their eggs," said Harry, with what -seemed to be a touch of remembered anger at the beetle. He glanced -toward his work-table, where three or four well-slides with small green -pools under their glass covers now rested in addition to the one that -was under the microscope. - -"How did you find out he was eating them?" inquired Mr. Chatham, feeling -a warmth of pride at the thought that Harry had discovered such a -scientific fact for himself. - -The boy hesitated oddly. "I--I looked it up in the book," he answered. - -His father masked his faint disappointment. "That's fine," he said. "I -guess you find out more about them all the time." - -"Uh-huh," admitted Harry, turning back to his table. - -There was undoubtedly something a little strange about Harry's manner; -and now Mr. Chatham realized that it had been two days since Harry had -asked him to "Quick, take a look!" at the newest wonder he had -discovered. With this thought teasing at his mind, the father walked -casually over to the table where his son sat hunched and, looking down -at the litter of slides and papers--some of which were covered with -figures and scribblings of which he could make nothing. He said -diffidently, "How about a look?" - -Harry glanced up as if startled. He was silent a moment; then he slid -reluctantly from his chair and said, "All right." - -Mr. Chatham sat down and bent over the microscope. Puzzled and a little -hurt, he twirled the focusing vernier and peered into the eyepiece, -looking down once more into the green water world of the rotifers. - - ---- - -There was a swarm of them under the lens, and they swam lazily to and -fro, their cilia beating like miniature propellers. Their dark eyes -stared, wet and glistening; they drifted in the motionless water, and -clung with sucker-like pseudo-feet to the tangled plant stems. - -Then, as he almost looked away, one of them detached itself from the -group and swam upward, toward him, growing larger and blurring as it -rose out of the focus of the microscope. The last thing that remained -defined, before it became a shapeless gray blob and vanished, was the -dark blotches of the great cold eyes, seeming to stare full at -him--cold, motionless, but alive. - -It was a curious experience. Henry Chatham drew suddenly back from the -eyepiece, with an involuntary shudder that he could not explain to -himself. He said haltingly, "They look interesting." - -"Sure, Dad," said Harry. He moved to occupy the chair again, and his -dark young head bowed once more over the microscope. His father walked -back across the room and sank gratefully into his arm-chair--after all, -it had been a hard day at the office. He watched Harry work the focusing -screws as if trying to find something, then take his pencil and begin to -write quickly and impatiently. - -It was with a guilty feeling of prying that, after Harry had been sent -reluctantly to bed, Henry Chatham took a tentative look at those papers -which lay in apparent disorder on his son's work table. He frowned -uncomprehendingly at the things that were written there; it was neither -mathematics nor language, but many of the scribblings were jumbles of -letters and figures. It looked like code, and he remembered that less -than a year ago, Harry had been passionately interested in cryptography, -and had shown what his father, at least, believed to be a considerable -aptitude for such things.... But what did cryptography have to do with -microscopy, or codes with--rotifers? - -Nowhere did there seem to be a key, but there were occasional words and -phrases jotted into the margins of some of the sheets. Mr. Chatham read -these, and learned nothing. "Can't dry up, but they can," said one. -"Beds of germs," said another. And in the corner of one sheet, "1--Yes. -2--No." The only thing that looked like a translation was the note: -"rty34pr is the pond." - -Mr. Chatham shook his head bewilderedly, replacing the sheets carefully -as they had been. Why should Harry want to keep notes on his scientific -hobby in code? he wondered, rationalizing even as he wondered. He went -to bed still puzzling, but it did not keep him from sleeping, for he was -tired. - -Then, only the next evening, his wife maneuvered to get him alone with -her and burst out passionately: - -"Henry, I told you that microscope was going to ruin Harry's eyesight! I -was watching him today when he didn't know I was watching him, and I saw -him winking and blinking right while he kept on looking into the thing. -I was minded to stop him then and there, but I want you to assert _your_ -authority with him and tell him he can't go on." - -Henry Chatham passed one nervous hand over his own aching eyes. He asked -mildly, "Are you sure it wasn't just your imagination, Sally? After all, -a person blinks quite normally, you know." - -"It was not my imagination!" snapped Mrs. Chatham. "I know the symptoms -of eyestrain when I see them, I guess. You'll have to stop Harry using -that thing so much, or else be prepared to buy him glasses." - -"All right, Sally," said Mr. Chatham wearily. "I'll see if I can't -persuade him to be a little more moderate." - -He went slowly into the living-room. At the moment, Harry was not using -the microscope; instead, he seemed to be studying one of his cryptic -pages of notes. As his father entered, he looked up sharply and swiftly -laid the sheet down--face down. - -Perhaps it wasn't all Sally's imagination; the boy did look nervous, and -there was a drawn, white look to his thin young face. His father said -gently, "Harry, Mother tells me she saw you blinking, as if your eyes -were tired, when you were looking into the microscope today. You know if -you look too much, it can be a strain on your sight." - -Harry nodded quickly, too quickly, perhaps. "Yes, Dad," he said. "I read -that in the book. It says there that if you close the eye you're looking -with for a little while, it rests you and your eyes don't get tired. So -I was practising that this afternoon. Mother must have been watching me -then, and got the wrong idea." - -"Oh," said Henry Chatham. "Well, it's good that you're trying to be -careful. But you've got your mother worried, and that's not so good. I -wish, myself, that you wouldn't spend all your time with the microscope. -Don't you ever play baseball with the fellows any more?" - -"I haven't got time," said the boy, with a curious stubborn twist to his -mouth. "I can't right now, Dad." He glanced toward the microscope. - -"Your rotifers won't die if you leave them alone for a while. And if -they do, there'll always be a new crop." - -"But I'd lose track of them," said Harry strangely. "Their lives are so -short--they live so awfully fast. You don't know how fast they live." - -"I've seen them," answered his father. "I guess they're fast, all -right." He did not know quite what to make of it all, so he settled -himself in his chair with his paper. - -But that night, after Harry had gone later than usual to bed, he stirred -himself to take down the book that dealt with life in pond-water. There -was a memory pricking at his mind; the memory of the water beetle, which -Harry had killed because, he said, he was eating the rotifers and their -eggs. And the boy had said he had found that fact in the book. - -Mr. Chatham turned through the book; he read, with aching eyes, all that -it said about rotifers. He searched for information on the beetle, and -found there was a whole family of whirligig beetles. There was some -material here on the characteristics and habits of the Gyrinidae, but -nowhere did it mention the devouring of rotifers or their eggs among -their customs. - -He tried the topical index, but there was no help there. - -Harry must have lied, thought his father with a whirling head. But why, -why in God's name should he say he'd looked a thing up in the book when -he must have found it out for himself, the hard way? There was no sense -in it. He went back to the book, convinced that, sleepy as he was, he -must have missed a point. The information simply wasn't there. - -He got to his feet and crossed the room to Harry's work table; he -switched on the light over it and stood looking down at the pages of -mystic notations. There were more pages now, quite a few. But none of -them seemed to mean anything. The earlier pictures of rotifers which -Harry had drawn had given way entirely to mysterious figures. - -Then the simple explanation occurred to him, and he switched off the -light with a deep feeling of relief. Harry hadn't really _known_ that -the water beetle ate rotifers; he had just suspected it. And, with his -boy's respect for fair play, he had hesitated to admit that he had -executed the beetle merely on suspicion. - -That didn't take the lie away, but it removed the mystery at least. - - ---- - -Henry Chatham slept badly that night and dreamed distorted dreams. But -when the alarm clock shrilled in the gray of morning, jarring him awake, -the dream in which he had been immersed skittered away to the back of -his mind, out of knowing, and sat there leering at him with strange, -dark, glistening eyes. - -He dressed, washed the flat morning taste out of his mouth with coffee, -and took his way to his train and the ten-minute ride into the city. On -the way there, instead of snatching a look at the morning paper, he sat -still in his seat, head bowed, trying to recapture the dream whose -vanishing made him uneasy. He was superstitious about dreams in an -up-to-date way, believing them not warnings from some Beyond outside -himself, but from a subsconscious more knowing than the waking conscious -mind. - -During the morning his work went slowly, for he kept pausing, sometimes -in the midst of totalling a column of figures, to grasp at some mocking -half-memory of that dream. At last, elbows on his desk, staring -unseeingly at the clock on the wall, in the midst of the subdued murmur -of the office, his mind went back to Harry, dark head bowed motionless -over the barrel of his microscope, looking, always looking into the pale -green water-gardens and the unseen lives of the beings that.... - -All at once it came to him, the dream he had dreamed. _He_ had been -bending over the microscope, _he_ had been looking into the unseen -world, and the horror of what he had seen gripped him now and brought -out the chill sweat on his body. - -For he had seen his son there in the clouded water, among the twisted -glassy plants, his face turned upward and eyes wide in the agonized -appeal of the drowning; and bubbles rising, fading. But around him had -been a swarm of the weird creatures, and they had been dragging him -down, down, blurring out of focus, and their great dark eyes glistening -wetly, coldly.... - -He was sitting rigid at his desk, his work forgotten; all at once he saw -the clock and noticed with a start that it was already eleven a.m. A -fear he could not define seized on him, and his hand reached -spasmodically for the telephone on his desk. - -But before he touched it, it began ringing. - -After a moment's paralysis, he picked up the receiver. It was his wife's -voice that came shrilly over the wires. - -"Henry!" she cried. "Is that you?" - -"Hello, Sally," he said with stiff lips. Her voice as she answered -seemed to come nearer and go farther away, and he realized that his hand -holding the instrument was shaking. - -"Henry, you've got to come home right now. Harry's sick. He's got a high -fever, and he's been asking for you." - -He moistened his lips and said, "I'll be right home. I'll take a taxi." - -"Hurry!" she exclaimed. "He's been saying queer things. I think he's -delirious." She paused, and added, "And it's all the fault of that -microscope _you_ bought him!" - -"I'll be right home," he repeated dully. - - ---- - -His wife was not at the door to meet him; she must be upstairs, in -Harry's bedroom. He paused in the living room and glanced toward the -table that bore the microscope; the black, gleaming thing still stood -there, but he did not see any of the slides, and the papers were piled -neatly together to one side. His eyes fell on the fish bowl; it was -empty, clean and shining. He knew Harry hadn't done those things; that -was Sally's neatness. - -Abruptly, instead of going straight up the stairs, he moved to the table -and looked down at the pile of papers. The one on top was almost blank; -on it was written several times: rty34pr ... rty34pr.... His memory for -figure combinations served him; he remembered what had been written on -another page: "rty34pr is the pond." - -That made him think of the pond, lying quiescent under its green scum -and trailing plants at the end of the garden. A step on the stair jerked -him around. - -It was his wife, of course. She said in a voice sharp-edged with -apprehension: "What are you doing down here? Harry wants you. The doctor -hasn't come; I phoned him just before I called you, but he hasn't come." - -He did not answer. Instead he gestured at the pile of papers, the empty -fish bowl, an imperative question in his face. - -"I threw that dirty water back in the pond. It's probably what he caught -something from. And he was breaking himself down, humping over that -thing. It's _your_ fault, for getting it for him. Are you coming?" She -glared coldly at him, turning back to the stairway. - -"I'm coming," he said heavily, and followed her upstairs. - -Harry lay back in his bed, a low mound under the covers. His head was -propped against a single pillow, and his eyes were half-closed, the lids -swollen-looking, his face hotly flushed. He was breathing slowly as if -asleep. - -But as his father entered the room, he opened his eyes as if with an -effort, fixed them on him, said, "Dad ... I've got to tell you." - -Mr. Chatham took the chair by the bedside, quietly, leaving his wife to -stand. He asked, "About what, Harry?" - -"About--things." The boy's eyes shifted to his mother, at the foot of -his bed. "I don't want to talk to her. _She_ thinks it's just fever. But -you'll understand." - -Henry Chatham lifted his gaze to meet his wife's. "Maybe you'd better go -downstairs and wait for the doctor, Sally." - -She looked hard at him, then turned abruptly to go out. "All right," she -said in a thin voice, and closed the door softly behind her. - -"Now what did you want to tell me, Harry?" - -"About _them_ ... the rotifers," the boy said. His eyes had drifted -half-shut again but his voice was clear. "They did it to me ... on -purpose." - -"Did _what_?" - -"I don't know.... They used one of their cultures. They've got all -kinds: beds of germs, under the leaves in the water. They've been -growing new kinds, that will be worse than anything that ever was -before.... They live so fast, they work so fast." - -Henry Chatham was silent, leaning forward beside the bed. - -"It was only a little while, before I found out they knew about me. I -could see them through my microscope, but they could see me too.... And -they kept signaling, swimming and turning.... I won't tell you how to -talk to them, because nobody ought to talk to them ever again. Because -they find out more than they tell.... They know about us, now, and they -hate us. They never knew before--that there was anybody but them.... So -they want to kill us all." - -"But why should they want to do that?" asked the father, as gently as he -could. He kept telling himself, "He's delirious. It's like Sally says, -he's been wearing himself out, thinking too much about--the rotifers. -But the doctor will be here pretty soon, the doctor will know what to -do." - -"They don't like knowing that they aren't the only ones on Earth that -can think. I expect people would be the same way." - -"But they're such little things, Harry. They can't hurt us at all." - -The boy's eyes opened wide, shadowed with terror and fever. "I told you, -Dad--They're growing germs, millions and billions of them, _new_ -ones.... And they kept telling me to take them back to the pond, so they -could tell all the rest, and they could all start getting ready--for -war." - -He remembered the shapes that swam and crept in the green water gardens, -with whirling cilia and great, cold, glistening eyes. And he remembered -the clean, empty fish bowl in the window downstairs. - -"Don't let them, Dad," said Harry convulsively. "You've got to kill them -all. The ones here and the ones in the pond. You've got to kill them -good--because they don't mind being killed, and they lay lots of eggs, -and their eggs can stand almost anything, even drying up. _And the eggs -remember what the old ones knew._" - -"Don't worry," said Henry Chatham quickly. He grasped his son's hand, a -hot limp hand that had slipped from under the coverlet. "We'll stop -them. We'll drain the pond." - -"That's swell," whispered the boy, his energy fading again. "I ought to -have told you before, Dad--but first I was afraid you'd laugh, and -then--I was just ... afraid...." - -His voice drifted away. And his father, looking down at the flushed -face, saw that he seemed asleep. Well, that was better than the sick -delirium--saying such strange, wild things-- - -Downstairs the doctor was saying harshly, "All right. All right. But -let's have a look at the patient." - -Henry Chatham came quietly downstairs; he greeted the doctor briefly, -and did not follow him to Harry's bedroom. - -When he was left alone in the room, he went to the window and stood -looking down at the microscope. He could not rid his head of -strangeness: A window between two worlds, our world and that of the -infinitely small, a window that looks both ways. - -After a time, he went through the kitchen and let himself out the back -door, into the noonday sunlight. - -He followed the garden path, between the weed-grown beds of vegetables, -until he came to the edge of the little pond. It lay there quiet in the -sunlight, green-scummed and walled with stiff rank grass, a lone -dragonfly swooping and wheeling above it. The image of all the stagnant -waters, the fertile breeding-places of strange life, with which it was -joined in the end by the tortuous hidden channels, the oozing pores of -the Earth. - -And it seemed to him then that he glimpsed something, a hitherto unseen -miasma, rising above the pool and darkening the sunlight ever so little. -A dream, a shadow--the shadow of the alien dream of things hidden in -smallness, the dark dream of the rotifers. - -The dragonfly, having seized a bright-winged fly that was sporting over -the pond, descended heavily through the sunlit air and came to rest on a -broad lily pad. Henry Chatham was suddenly afraid. He turned and walked -slowly, wearily, up the path toward the house. - - - *END* - - - - _Transcribers note_: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science -Fiction March 1953. 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-
-.. meta::
- :PG.Id: 35879
- :PG.Title: The Rotifers
- :PG.Released: 2011-04-16
- :PG.Rights: Public Domain
- :PG.Producer: Frank van Drogen
- :PG.Producer: Greg Weeks
- :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
- :DC.Creator: Robert Abernathy
- :DC.Title: The Rotifers
- :DC.Language: en
- :DC.Created: 1953
- :coverpage: images/cover.jpg
-
-
-
-================================
- THE ROTIFERS
-================================
-
-.. _pg-header:
-
-.. container::
- :class: pgheader
-
- .. style:: paragraph
- :class: noindent
-
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
- almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
- re-use it under the terms of the `Project Gutenberg License`_
- included with this eBook or online at
- http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-
- |
-
- .. _pg-machine-header:
-
- .. container::
-
- Title: The Rotifers
-
- Author: Robert Abernathy
-
- Release Date: April 16, 2011 [EBook #35879]
-
- Language: English
-
- Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
- |
-
- .. _pg-start-line:
-
- \*\*\* START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROTIFERS \*\*\*
-
- |
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- .. _pg-produced-by:
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- Produced by Frank van Drogen, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
-
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-.. role:: xl
- :class: x-large
-
-.. role:: small-caps
- :class: small-caps
-
-.. class:: center
-
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-.. image:: images/cover.jpg
- :align: center
-
-..
-
-
-
- | :xl:`THE ROTIFERS`
- |
- | BY Robert Abernathy
- |
- | *Beneath the stagnant water shadowed by water lilies Harry found the fascinating world of the rotifers—but it was their world, and they resented intrusion.*
-
-
-
- *Illustrated by Virgil Finlay*
-
-
-
-Henry Chatham knelt by
-the brink of his garden pond,
-a glass fish bowl cupped in his thin,
-nervous hands. Carefully he dipped
-the bowl into the green-scummed
-water and, moving it gently, let
-trailing streamers of submerged
-water weeds drift into it. Then he
-picked up the old scissors he had
-laid on the bank, and clipped the
-stems of the floating plants, getting
-as much of them as he could in the
-container.
-
-When he righted the bowl and
-got stiffly to his feet, it contained, he
-thought hopefully, a fair cross-section
-of fresh-water plankton. He
-was pleased with himself for remembering
-that term from the book
-he had studied assiduously for the
-last few nights in order to be able
-to cope with Harry's inevitable
-questions.
-
-There was even a shiny black
-water beetle doing insane circles on
-the surface of the water in the fish
-bowl. At sight of the insect, the eyes
-of the twelve-year-old boy, who
-had been standing by in silent expectation,
-widened with interest.
-
-"What's that thing, Dad?" he
-asked excitedly. "What's that crazy
-bug?"
-
-"I don't know its scientific name,
-I'm afraid," said Henry Chatham.
-"But when I was a boy we used to
-call them whirligig beetles."
-
-"He doesn't seem to think he has
-enough room in the bowl," said
-Harry thoughtfully. "Maybe we
-better put him back in the pond,
-Dad."
-
-"I thought you might want to
-look at him through the microscope,"
-the father said in some surprise.
-
-"I think we ought to put him
-back," insisted Harry.
-Mr. Chatham held the dripping
-bowl obligingly. Harry's hand, a
-thin boy's hand with narrow sensitive
-fingers, hovered over the water,
-and when the beetle paused for a
-moment in its gyrations, made a
-dive for it.
-
-.. image:: images/im1.jpg
- :align: center
-
-But the whirligig beetle saw the
-hand coming, and, quicker than a
-wink, plunged under the water and
-scooted rapidly to the very bottom
-of the bowl.
-
-Harry's young face was rueful;
-he wiped his wet hand on his trousers.
-"I guess he wants to stay," he
-supposed.
-
-The two went up the garden
-path together and into the house,
-Mr. Chatham bearing the fish bowl
-before him like a votive offering.
-Harry's mother met them at the
-door, brandishing an old towel.
-
-"Here," she said firmly, "you
-wipe that thing off before you bring
-it in the house. And don't drip any
-of that dirty pond water on my good
-carpet."
-
-"It's not dirty," said Henry Chatham.
-"It's just full of life, plants
-and animals too small for the eye
-to see. But Harry's going to see
-them with his microscope." He accepted
-the towel and wiped the
-water and slime from the outside of
-the bowl; then, in the living-room,
-he set it beside an open window,
-where the life-giving summer sun
-slanted in and fell on the green
-plants.
-
-----
-
-The brand-new microscope
-stood nearby, in a good light. It
-was an expensive microscope, no
-toy for a child, and it magnified
-four hundred diameters. Henry
-Chatham had bought it because he
-believed that his only son showed a
-desire to peer into the mysteries of
-smallness, and so far Harry had not
-disappointed him; he had been ecstatic
-over the instrument. Together
-they had compared hairs from their
-two heads, had seen the point of a
-fine sewing needle made to look
-like the tip of a crowbar by the
-lowest power of the microscope,
-had made grains of salt look like
-discarded chunks of glass brick, had
-captured a house-fly and marvelled
-at its clawed hairy feet, its great
-red faceted eyes, and the delicate
-veining and fringing of its wings.
-
-Harry was staring at the bowl of
-pond water in a sort of fascination.
-"Are there germs in the water,
-Dad? Mother says pond water is
-full of germs."
-
-"I suppose so," answered Mr.
-Chatham, somewhat embarrassed.
-The book on microscopic fresh-water
-fauna had been explicit about
-*Paramecium* and *Euglena*, diatomes
-and rhizopods, but it had
-failed to mention anything so vulgar
-as germs. But he supposed that
-which the book called Protozoa, the
-one-celled animalcules, were the
-same as germs.
-
-He said, "To look at things in
-water like this, you want to use a
-well-slide. It tells how to fix one in
-the instruction book."
-
-He let Harry find the glass slide
-with a cup ground into it, and another
-smooth slip of glass to cover
-it. Then he half-showed, half-told
-him how to scrape gently along the
-bottom sides of the drifting leaves,
-to capture the teeming life that
-dwelt there in the slime. When the
-boy understood, his young hands
-were quickly more skillful than his
-father's; they filled the well with a
-few drops of water that was promisingly
-green and murky.
-
-Already Harry knew how to adjust
-the lighting mirror under the
-stage of the microscope and turn
-the focusing screws. He did so, bent
-intently over the eyepiece, squinting
-down the polished barrel in the
-happy expectation of wonders.
-
-Henry Chatham's eyes wandered
-to the fish bowl, where the whirligig
-beetle had come to the top again
-and was describing intricate patterns
-among the water plants. He
-looked back to his son, and saw that
-Harry had ceased to turn the screws
-and instead was just looking—looking
-with a rapt, delicious fixity.
-His hands lay loosely clenched on
-the table top, and he hardly seemed
-to breathe. Only once or twice his
-lips moved as if to shape an exclamation
-that was snatched away
-by some new vision.
-
-"Have you got it, Harry?" asked
-his father after two or three minutes
-during which the boy did not move.
-
-Harry took a last long look, then
-glanced up, blinking slightly.
-
-"You look, Dad!" he exclaimed
-warmly. "It's—it's like a garden in
-the water, full of funny little people!"
-
-Mr. Chatham, not reluctantly,
-bent to gaze into the eyepiece. This
-was new to him too, and instantly
-he saw the aptness of Harry's simile.
-There was a garden there, of weird,
-green, transparent stalks composed
-of plainly visible cells fastened end
-to end, with globules and bladders
-like fruits or seed-pods attached to
-them, floating among them; and in
-the garden the strange little people
-swam to and fro, or clung with odd
-appendages to the stalks and
-branches. Their bodies were transparent
-like the plants, and in them
-were pulsing hearts and other organs
-plainly visible. They looked a
-little like sea horses with pointed
-tails, but their heads were different,
-small and rounded, with big, dark,
-glistening eyes.
-
-All at once Mr. Chatham realized
-that Harry was speaking to
-him, still in high excitement.
-
-"What are they, Dad?" he
-begged to know.
-
-His father straightened up and
-shook his head puzzledly. "I don't
-know, Harry," he answered slowly,
-casting about in his memory. He
-seemed to remember a microphotograph
-of a creature like those in the
-book he had studied, but the name
-that had gone with it eluded him.
-He had worked as an accountant
-for so many years that his memory
-was all for figures now.
-
-He bent over once more to immerse
-his eyes and mind in the
-green water-garden on the slide.
-The little creatures swam to and
-fro as before, growing hazy and
-dwindling or swelling as they swam
-out of the narrow focus of the lens;
-he gazed at those who paused in
-sharp definition, and saw that, although
-he had at first seen no visible
-means of propulsion, each creature
-bore about its head a halo of
-thread-like, flickering cilia that
-lashed the water and drew it forward,
-for all the world like an airplane
-propeller or a rapidly turning
-wheel.
-
-"I know what they are!" exclaimed
-Henry Chatham, turning
-to his son with an almost boyish excitement.
-"They're rotifers! That
-means 'wheel-bearers', and they
-were called that because to the first
-scientists who saw them it looked
-like they swam with wheels."
-
-Harry had got down the book
-and was leafing through the pages.
-He looked up seriously. "Here they
-are," he said. "Here's a picture
-that looks almost like the ones in
-our pond water."
-
-"Let's see," said his father. They
-looked at the pictures and descriptions
-of the Rotifera; there was a
-good deal of concrete information
-on the habits and physiology of
-these odd and complex little animals
-who live their swarming lives
-in the shallow, stagnant waters of
-the Earth. It said that they were
-much more highly organized than
-Protozoa, having a discernible
-heart, brain, digestive system, and
-nervous system, and that their reproduction
-was by means of two
-sexes like that of the higher orders.
-Beyond that, they were a mystery;
-their relationship to other life-forms
-remained shrouded in doubt.
-
-"You've got something interesting
-there," said Henry Chatham
-with satisfaction. "Maybe you'll
-find out something about them that
-nobody knows yet."
-
-He was pleased when Harry
-spent all the rest of that Sunday
-afternoon peering into the microscope,
-watching the rotifers, and
-even more pleased when the boy
-found a pencil and paper and tried,
-in an amateurish way, to draw and
-describe what he saw in the green
-water-garden.
-
-Beyond a doubt, Henry thought,
-here was a hobby that had captured
-Harry as nothing else ever had.
-
-----
-
-Mrs. Chatham was not so
-pleased. When her husband
-laid down his evening paper and
-went into the kitchen for a drink of
-water, she cornered him and hissed
-at him: "I told you you had no
-business buying Harry a thing like
-that! If he keeps on at this rate,
-he'll wear his eyes out in no time."
-
-Henry Chatham set down his
-water glass and looked straight at
-his wife. "Sally, Harry's eyes are
-young and he's using them to learn
-with. You've never been much worried
-over me, using my eyes up
-eight hours a day, five days a week,
-over a blind-alley bookkeeping job."
-
-He left her angrily silent and
-went back to his paper. He would
-lower the paper every now and then
-to watch Harry, in his corner of the
-living-room, bowed obliviously over
-the microscope and the secret life
-of the rotifers.
-
-Once the boy glanced up from
-his periodic drawing and asked,
-with the air of one who proposes a
-pondered question: "Dad, if you
-look through a microscope the
-wrong way is it a telescope?"
-
-Mr. Chatham lowered his paper
-and bit his underlip. "I don't think
-so—no, I don't know. When you
-look through a microscope, it
-makes things seem closer—one way,
-that is; if you looked the other way,
-it would probably make them seem
-farther off. What did you want to
-know for?"
-
-"Oh—nothing," Harry turned
-back to his work. As if on after-thought,
-he explained, "I was wondering
-if the rotifers could see me
-when I'm looking at them."
-
-Mr. Chatham laughed, a little
-nervously, because the strange
-fancies which his son sometimes
-voiced upset his ordered mind. Remembering
-the dark glistening eyes
-of the rotifers he had seen, however,
-he could recognize whence
-this question had stemmed.
-
-At dusk, Harry insisted on setting
-up the substage lamp which
-had been bought with the microscope,
-and by whose light he could
-go on looking until his bedtime,
-when his father helped him arrange
-a wick to feed the little glass-covered
-well in the slide so it would
-not dry up before morning. It was
-unwillingly, and only after his
-mother's strenuous complaints, that
-the boy went to bed at ten o'clock.
-
-In the following days his interest
-became more and more intense. He
-spent long hours, almost without
-moving, watching the rotifers. For
-the little animals had become the
-sole object which he desired to
-study under the microscope, and
-even his father found it difficult to
-understand such an enthusiasm.
-
-During the long hours at the office
-to which he commuted, Henry
-Chatham often found the vision of
-his son, absorbed with the invisible
-world that the microscope had
-opened to him, coming between
-him and the columns in the ledgers.
-And sometimes, too, he envisioned
-the dim green water-garden where
-the little things swam to and fro,
-and a strangeness filled his thoughts.
-
-On Wednesday evening, he
-glanced at the fish bowl and noticed
-that the water beetle, the
-whirligig beetle, was missing. Casually,
-he asked his son about it.
-
-"I had to get rid of him," said
-the boy with a trace of uneasiness
-in his manner. "I took him out and
-squashed him."
-
-"Why did you have to do that?"
-
-"He was eating the rotifers and
-their eggs," said Harry, with what
-seemed to be a touch of remembered
-anger at the beetle. He
-glanced toward his work-table,
-where three or four well-slides with
-small green pools under their glass
-covers now rested in addition to the
-one that was under the microscope.
-
-"How did you find out he was
-eating them?" inquired Mr. Chatham,
-feeling a warmth of pride at
-the thought that Harry had discovered
-such a scientific fact for himself.
-
-The boy hesitated oddly. "I—I
-looked it up in the book," he answered.
-
-His father masked his faint disappointment.
-"That's fine," he
-said. "I guess you find out more
-about them all the time."
-
-"Uh-huh," admitted Harry, turning
-back to his table.
-
-There was undoubtedly something
-a little strange about Harry's
-manner; and now Mr. Chatham
-realized that it had been two days
-since Harry had asked him to
-"Quick, take a look!" at the newest
-wonder he had discovered. With
-this thought teasing at his mind,
-the father walked casually over to
-the table where his son sat hunched
-and, looking down at the litter of
-slides and papers—some of which
-were covered with figures and scribblings
-of which he could make nothing.
-He said diffidently, "How
-about a look?"
-
-Harry glanced up as if startled.
-He was silent a moment; then he
-slid reluctantly from his chair and
-said, "All right."
-
-Mr. Chatham sat down and bent
-over the microscope. Puzzled and
-a little hurt, he twirled the focusing
-vernier and peered into the eyepiece,
-looking down once more into
-the green water world of the rotifers.
-
-----
-
-There was a swarm of them
-under the lens, and they swam
-lazily to and fro, their cilia beating
-like miniature propellers. Their
-dark eyes stared, wet and glistening;
-they drifted in the motionless
-water, and clung with sucker-like
-pseudo-feet to the tangled plant
-stems.
-
-Then, as he almost looked away,
-one of them detached itself from
-the group and swam upward, toward
-him, growing larger and blurring
-as it rose out of the focus of the
-microscope. The last thing that remained
-defined, before it became a
-shapeless gray blob and vanished,
-was the dark blotches of the great
-cold eyes, seeming to stare full at
-him—cold, motionless, but alive.
-
-It was a curious experience.
-Henry Chatham drew suddenly
-back from the eyepiece, with an involuntary
-shudder that he could not
-explain to himself. He said haltingly,
-"They look interesting."
-
-"Sure, Dad," said Harry. He
-moved to occupy the chair again,
-and his dark young head bowed
-once more over the microscope. His
-father walked back across the room
-and sank gratefully into his arm-chair—after
-all, it had been a hard
-day at the office. He watched Harry
-work the focusing screws as if trying
-to find something, then take his
-pencil and begin to write quickly
-and impatiently.
-
-It was with a guilty feeling of
-prying that, after Harry had been
-sent reluctantly to bed, Henry Chatham
-took a tentative look at those
-papers which lay in apparent disorder
-on his son's work table. He
-frowned uncomprehendingly at the
-things that were written there; it
-was neither mathematics nor language,
-but many of the scribblings
-were jumbles of letters and figures.
-It looked like code, and he remembered
-that less than a year ago,
-Harry had been passionately interested
-in cryptography, and had
-shown what his father, at least, believed
-to be a considerable aptitude
-for such things.... But what did
-cryptography have to do with
-microscopy, or codes with—rotifers?
-
-Nowhere did there seem to be a
-key, but there were occasional
-words and phrases jotted into the
-margins of some of the sheets. Mr.
-Chatham read these, and learned
-nothing. "Can't dry up, but they
-can," said one. "Beds of germs,"
-said another. And in the corner of
-one sheet, "1—Yes. 2—No." The
-only thing that looked like a translation
-was the note: "rty34pr is the
-pond."
-
-Mr. Chatham shook his head bewilderedly,
-replacing the sheets
-carefully as they had been. Why
-should Harry want to keep notes on
-his scientific hobby in code? he
-wondered, rationalizing even as he
-wondered. He went to bed still
-puzzling, but it did not keep him
-from sleeping, for he was tired.
-
-Then, only the next evening, his
-wife maneuvered to get him alone
-with her and burst out passionately:
-
-"Henry, I told you that microscope
-was going to ruin Harry's
-eyesight! I was watching him today
-when he didn't know I was watching
-him, and I saw him winking
-and blinking right while he kept on
-looking into the thing. I was
-minded to stop him then and there,
-but I want you to assert *your* authority
-with him and tell him he
-can't go on."
-
-Henry Chatham passed one nervous
-hand over his own aching eyes.
-He asked mildly, "Are you sure it
-wasn't just your imagination, Sally?
-After all, a person blinks quite normally,
-you know."
-
-"It was not my imagination!"
-snapped Mrs. Chatham. "I know
-the symptoms of eyestrain when I
-see them, I guess. You'll have to
-stop Harry using that thing so
-much, or else be prepared to buy
-him glasses."
-
-"All right, Sally," said Mr. Chatham
-wearily. "I'll see if I can't persuade
-him to be a little more moderate."
-
-He went slowly into the living-room.
-At the moment, Harry was
-not using the microscope; instead,
-he seemed to be studying one of his
-cryptic pages of notes. As his father
-entered, he looked up sharply and
-swiftly laid the sheet down—face
-down.
-
-Perhaps it wasn't all Sally's imagination;
-the boy did look nervous,
-and there was a drawn, white look
-to his thin young face. His father
-said gently, "Harry, Mother tells
-me she saw you blinking, as if your
-eyes were tired, when you were
-looking into the microscope today.
-You know if you look too much, it
-can be a strain on your sight."
-
-Harry nodded quickly, too quickly,
-perhaps. "Yes, Dad," he said. "I
-read that in the book. It says there
-that if you close the eye you're looking
-with for a little while, it rests
-you and your eyes don't get tired.
-So I was practising that this afternoon.
-Mother must have been
-watching me then, and got the
-wrong idea."
-
-"Oh," said Henry Chatham.
-"Well, it's good that you're trying
-to be careful. But you've got your
-mother worried, and that's not so
-good. I wish, myself, that you
-wouldn't spend all your time with
-the microscope. Don't you ever
-play baseball with the fellows any
-more?"
-
-"I haven't got time," said the
-boy, with a curious stubborn twist
-to his mouth. "I can't right now,
-Dad." He glanced toward the
-microscope.
-
-"Your rotifers won't die if you
-leave them alone for a while. And
-if they do, there'll always be a new
-crop."
-
-"But I'd lose track of them," said
-Harry strangely. "Their lives are so
-short—they live so awfully fast. You
-don't know how fast they live."
-
-"I've seen them," answered his
-father. "I guess they're fast, all
-right." He did not know quite what
-to make of it all, so he settled himself
-in his chair with his paper.
-
-But that night, after Harry had
-gone later than usual to bed, he
-stirred himself to take down the
-book that dealt with life in pond-water.
-There was a memory pricking
-at his mind; the memory of the
-water beetle, which Harry had
-killed because, he said, he was eating
-the rotifers and their eggs. And
-the boy had said he had found that
-fact in the book.
-
-Mr. Chatham turned through the
-book; he read, with aching eyes, all
-that it said about rotifers. He
-searched for information on the
-beetle, and found there was a whole
-family of whirligig beetles. There
-was some material here on the characteristics
-and habits of the Gyrinidae,
-but nowhere did it mention the
-devouring of rotifers or their eggs
-among their customs.
-
-He tried the topical index, but
-there was no help there.
-
-Harry must have lied, thought his
-father with a whirling head. But
-why, why in God's name should he
-say he'd looked a thing up in the
-book when he must have found it
-out for himself, the hard way?
-There was no sense in it. He went
-back to the book, convinced that,
-sleepy as he was, he must have
-missed a point. The information
-simply wasn't there.
-
-He got to his feet and crossed the
-room to Harry's work table; he
-switched on the light over it and
-stood looking down at the pages of
-mystic notations. There were more
-pages now, quite a few. But none
-of them seemed to mean anything.
-The earlier pictures of rotifers
-which Harry had drawn had given
-way entirely to mysterious figures.
-
-Then the simple explanation occurred
-to him, and he switched off
-the light with a deep feeling of relief.
-Harry hadn't really *known*
-that the water beetle ate rotifers;
-he had just suspected it. And, with
-his boy's respect for fair play, he
-had hesitated to admit that he had
-executed the beetle merely on suspicion.
-
-That didn't take the lie away, but
-it removed the mystery at least.
-
-----
-
-Henry Chatham slept badly
-that night and dreamed distorted
-dreams. But when the alarm
-clock shrilled in the gray of morning,
-jarring him awake, the dream
-in which he had been immersed
-skittered away to the back of his
-mind, out of knowing, and sat there
-leering at him with strange, dark,
-glistening eyes.
-
-He dressed, washed the flat
-morning taste out of his mouth with
-coffee, and took his way to his train
-and the ten-minute ride into the
-city. On the way there, instead of
-snatching a look at the morning paper,
-he sat still in his seat, head
-bowed, trying to recapture the
-dream whose vanishing made him
-uneasy. He was superstitious about
-dreams in an up-to-date way, believing
-them not warnings from
-some Beyond outside himself, but
-from a subsconscious more knowing
-than the waking conscious mind.
-
-During the morning his work
-went slowly, for he kept pausing,
-sometimes in the midst of totalling
-a column of figures, to grasp at
-some mocking half-memory of that
-dream. At last, elbows on his desk,
-staring unseeingly at the clock on
-the wall, in the midst of the subdued
-murmur of the office, his mind
-went back to Harry, dark head
-bowed motionless over the barrel of
-his microscope, looking, always
-looking into the pale green water-gardens
-and the unseen lives of the
-beings that....
-
-All at once it came to him, the
-dream he had dreamed. *He* had
-been bending over the microscope,
-*he* had been looking into the unseen
-world, and the horror of what
-he had seen gripped him now and
-brought out the chill sweat on his
-body.
-
-For he had seen his son there in
-the clouded water, among the
-twisted glassy plants, his face turned
-upward and eyes wide in the agonized
-appeal of the drowning; and
-bubbles rising, fading. But around
-him had been a swarm of the weird
-creatures, and they had been dragging
-him down, down, blurring out
-of focus, and their great dark eyes
-glistening wetly, coldly....
-
-He was sitting rigid at his desk,
-his work forgotten; all at once he
-saw the clock and noticed with a
-start that it was already eleven a.m.
-A fear he could not define seized on
-him, and his hand reached spasmodically
-for the telephone on his
-desk.
-
-But before he touched it, it began
-ringing.
-
-After a moment's paralysis, he
-picked up the receiver. It was his
-wife's voice that came shrilly over
-the wires.
-
-"Henry!" she cried. "Is that
-you?"
-
-"Hello, Sally," he said with stiff
-lips. Her voice as she answered
-seemed to come nearer and go farther
-away, and he realized that his
-hand holding the instrument was
-shaking.
-
-"Henry, you've got to come home
-right now. Harry's sick. He's got a
-high fever, and he's been asking for
-you."
-
-He moistened his lips and said,
-"I'll be right home. I'll take a taxi."
-
-"Hurry!" she exclaimed. "He's
-been saying queer things. I think
-he's delirious." She paused, and
-added, "And it's all the fault of that
-microscope *you* bought him!"
-
-"I'll be right home," he repeated
-dully.
-
-----
-
-His wife was not at the door
-to meet him; she must be upstairs,
-in Harry's bedroom. He
-paused in the living room and
-glanced toward the table that bore
-the microscope; the black, gleaming
-thing still stood there, but he
-did not see any of the slides, and
-the papers were piled neatly together
-to one side. His eyes fell on
-the fish bowl; it was empty, clean
-and shining. He knew Harry hadn't
-done those things; that was Sally's
-neatness.
-
-Abruptly, instead of going
-straight up the stairs, he moved to
-the table and looked down at the
-pile of papers. The one on top was
-almost blank; on it was written several
-times: rty34pr ... rty34pr....
-His memory for figure combinations
-served him; he remembered what
-had been written on another page:
-"rty34pr is the pond."
-
-That made him think of the
-pond, lying quiescent under its
-green scum and trailing plants at
-the end of the garden. A step on the
-stair jerked him around.
-
-It was his wife, of course. She
-said in a voice sharp-edged with apprehension:
-"What are you doing
-down here? Harry wants you. The
-doctor hasn't come; I phoned him
-just before I called you, but he
-hasn't come."
-
-He did not answer. Instead he
-gestured at the pile of papers, the
-empty fish bowl, an imperative
-question in his face.
-
-"I threw that dirty water back in
-the pond. It's probably what he
-caught something from. And he
-was breaking himself down, humping
-over that thing. It's *your* fault,
-for getting it for him. Are you coming?"
-She glared coldly at him,
-turning back to the stairway.
-
-"I'm coming," he said heavily,
-and followed her upstairs.
-
-Harry lay back in his bed, a low
-mound under the covers. His head
-was propped against a single pillow,
-and his eyes were half-closed, the
-lids swollen-looking, his face hotly
-flushed. He was breathing slowly as
-if asleep.
-
-But as his father entered the
-room, he opened his eyes as if with
-an effort, fixed them on him, said,
-"Dad ... I've got to tell you."
-
-Mr. Chatham took the chair by
-the bedside, quietly, leaving his wife
-to stand. He asked, "About what,
-Harry?"
-
-"About—things." The boy's eyes
-shifted to his mother, at the foot of
-his bed. "I don't want to talk to
-her. *She* thinks it's just fever. But
-you'll understand."
-
-Henry Chatham lifted his gaze to
-meet his wife's. "Maybe you'd better
-go downstairs and wait for the
-doctor, Sally."
-
-She looked hard at him, then
-turned abruptly to go out. "All
-right," she said in a thin voice, and
-closed the door softly behind her.
-
-"Now what did you want to tell
-me, Harry?"
-
-"About *them* ... the rotifers,"
-the boy said. His eyes had drifted
-half-shut again but his voice was
-clear. "They did it to me ... on
-purpose."
-
-"Did *what*?"
-
-"I don't know.... They used one
-of their cultures. They've got all
-kinds: beds of germs, under the
-leaves in the water. They've been
-growing new kinds, that will be
-worse than anything that ever was
-before.... They live so fast, they
-work so fast."
-
-Henry Chatham was silent, leaning
-forward beside the bed.
-
-"It was only a little while, before
-I found out they knew about me. I
-could see them through my microscope,
-but they could see me too....
-And they kept signaling, swimming
-and turning.... I won't tell you how
-to talk to them, because nobody
-ought to talk to them ever again.
-Because they find out more than
-they tell.... They know about us,
-now, and they hate us. They never
-knew before—that there was anybody
-but them.... So they want to
-kill us all."
-
-"But why should they want to do
-that?" asked the father, as gently as
-he could. He kept telling himself,
-"He's delirious. It's like Sally says,
-he's been wearing himself out,
-thinking too much about—the rotifers.
-But the doctor will be here
-pretty soon, the doctor will know
-what to do."
-
-"They don't like knowing that
-they aren't the only ones on Earth
-that can think. I expect people
-would be the same way."
-
-"But they're such little things,
-Harry. They can't hurt us at all."
-
-The boy's eyes opened wide,
-shadowed with terror and fever. "I
-told you, Dad—They're growing
-germs, millions and billions of them,
-*new* ones.... And they kept telling
-me to take them back to the pond,
-so they could tell all the rest, and
-they could all start getting ready—for
-war."
-
-He remembered the shapes that
-swam and crept in the green water
-gardens, with whirling cilia and
-great, cold, glistening eyes. And he
-remembered the clean, empty fish
-bowl in the window downstairs.
-
-"Don't let them, Dad," said
-Harry convulsively. "You've got to
-kill them all. The ones here and the
-ones in the pond. You've got to kill
-them good—because they don't
-mind being killed, and they lay lots
-of eggs, and their eggs can stand almost
-anything, even drying up. *And
-the eggs remember what the old
-ones knew.*"
-
-"Don't worry," said Henry Chatham
-quickly. He grasped his son's
-hand, a hot limp hand that had
-slipped from under the coverlet.
-"We'll stop them. We'll drain the
-pond."
-
-"That's swell," whispered the
-boy, his energy fading again. "I
-ought to have told you before, Dad—but
-first I was afraid you'd laugh,
-and then—I was just ... afraid...."
-
-His voice drifted away. And his
-father, looking down at the flushed
-face, saw that he seemed asleep.
-Well, that was better than the sick
-delirium—saying such strange, wild
-things—
-
-Downstairs the doctor was saying
-harshly, "All right. All right. But
-let's have a look at the patient."
-
-Henry Chatham came quietly
-downstairs; he greeted the doctor
-briefly, and did not follow him to
-Harry's bedroom.
-
-When he was left alone in the
-room, he went to the window and
-stood looking down at the microscope.
-He could not rid his head of
-strangeness: A window between
-two worlds, our world and that of
-the infinitely small, a window that
-looks both ways.
-
-After a time, he went through the
-kitchen and let himself out the back
-door, into the noonday sunlight.
-
-He followed the garden path, between
-the weed-grown beds of vegetables,
-until he came to the edge of
-the little pond. It lay there quiet in
-the sunlight, green-scummed and
-walled with stiff rank grass, a lone
-dragonfly swooping and wheeling
-above it. The image of all the stagnant
-waters, the fertile breeding-places
-of strange life, with which it
-was joined in the end by the tortuous
-hidden channels, the oozing
-pores of the Earth.
-
-And it seemed to him then that
-he glimpsed something, a hitherto
-unseen miasma, rising above the
-pool and darkening the sunlight
-ever so little. A dream, a shadow—the
-shadow of the alien dream of
-things hidden in smallness, the dark
-dream of the rotifers.
-
-The dragonfly, having seized a
-bright-winged fly that was sporting
-over the pond, descended heavily
-through the sunlit air and came to
-rest on a broad lily pad. Henry
-Chatham was suddenly afraid. He
-turned and walked slowly, wearily,
-up the path toward the house.
-
-
-
-.. class:: center
-
- **END**
-
-
- | :small-caps:`Transcribers note`: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction March 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
-
-|
-|
-|
-|
-|
-
-.. _pg_end_line:
-
-\*\*\* END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROTIFERS \*\*\*
-
-.. backmatter::
-
-.. toc-entry::
- :depth: 0
-
-.. _pg-footer:
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diff --git a/35879-rst/images/cover.jpg b/35879-rst/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 5309d98..0000000 --- a/35879-rst/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/35879-rst/images/im1.jpg b/35879-rst/images/im1.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 3c639ae..0000000 --- a/35879-rst/images/im1.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/35879.txt b/35879.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c57f709..0000000 --- a/35879.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1056 +0,0 @@ - THE ROTIFERS - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost -no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Title: The Rotifers - -Author: Robert Abernathy - -Release Date: April 16, 2011 [EBook #35879] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: US-ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROTIFERS *** - - - - -Produced by Frank van Drogen, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. - - - - - - THE ROTIFERS - - BY Robert Abernathy - - _Beneath the stagnant water shadowed by water lilies Harry found - the fascinating world of the rotifers--but it was their world, - and they resented intrusion._ - - _Illustrated by Virgil Finlay_ - -Henry Chatham knelt by the brink of his garden pond, a glass fish bowl -cupped in his thin, nervous hands. Carefully he dipped the bowl into the -green-scummed water and, moving it gently, let trailing streamers of -submerged water weeds drift into it. Then he picked up the old scissors -he had laid on the bank, and clipped the stems of the floating plants, -getting as much of them as he could in the container. - -When he righted the bowl and got stiffly to his feet, it contained, he -thought hopefully, a fair cross-section of fresh-water plankton. He was -pleased with himself for remembering that term from the book he had -studied assiduously for the last few nights in order to be able to cope -with Harry's inevitable questions. - -There was even a shiny black water beetle doing insane circles on the -surface of the water in the fish bowl. At sight of the insect, the eyes -of the twelve-year-old boy, who had been standing by in silent -expectation, widened with interest. - -"What's that thing, Dad?" he asked excitedly. "What's that crazy bug?" - -"I don't know its scientific name, I'm afraid," said Henry Chatham. "But -when I was a boy we used to call them whirligig beetles." - -"He doesn't seem to think he has enough room in the bowl," said Harry -thoughtfully. "Maybe we better put him back in the pond, Dad." - -"I thought you might want to look at him through the microscope," the -father said in some surprise. - -"I think we ought to put him back," insisted Harry. Mr. Chatham held the -dripping bowl obligingly. Harry's hand, a thin boy's hand with narrow -sensitive fingers, hovered over the water, and when the beetle paused -for a moment in its gyrations, made a dive for it. - -But the whirligig beetle saw the hand coming, and, quicker than a wink, -plunged under the water and scooted rapidly to the very bottom of the -bowl. - -Harry's young face was rueful; he wiped his wet hand on his trousers. "I -guess he wants to stay," he supposed. - -The two went up the garden path together and into the house, Mr. Chatham -bearing the fish bowl before him like a votive offering. Harry's mother -met them at the door, brandishing an old towel. - -"Here," she said firmly, "you wipe that thing off before you bring it in -the house. And don't drip any of that dirty pond water on my good -carpet." - -"It's not dirty," said Henry Chatham. "It's just full of life, plants -and animals too small for the eye to see. But Harry's going to see them -with his microscope." He accepted the towel and wiped the water and -slime from the outside of the bowl; then, in the living-room, he set it -beside an open window, where the life-giving summer sun slanted in and -fell on the green plants. - - ---- - -The brand-new microscope stood nearby, in a good light. It was an -expensive microscope, no toy for a child, and it magnified four hundred -diameters. Henry Chatham had bought it because he believed that his only -son showed a desire to peer into the mysteries of smallness, and so far -Harry had not disappointed him; he had been ecstatic over the -instrument. Together they had compared hairs from their two heads, had -seen the point of a fine sewing needle made to look like the tip of a -crowbar by the lowest power of the microscope, had made grains of salt -look like discarded chunks of glass brick, had captured a house-fly and -marvelled at its clawed hairy feet, its great red faceted eyes, and the -delicate veining and fringing of its wings. - -Harry was staring at the bowl of pond water in a sort of fascination. -"Are there germs in the water, Dad? Mother says pond water is full of -germs." - -"I suppose so," answered Mr. Chatham, somewhat embarrassed. The book on -microscopic fresh-water fauna had been explicit about _Paramecium_ and -_Euglena_, diatomes and rhizopods, but it had failed to mention anything -so vulgar as germs. But he supposed that which the book called Protozoa, -the one-celled animalcules, were the same as germs. - -He said, "To look at things in water like this, you want to use a -well-slide. It tells how to fix one in the instruction book." - -He let Harry find the glass slide with a cup ground into it, and another -smooth slip of glass to cover it. Then he half-showed, half-told him how -to scrape gently along the bottom sides of the drifting leaves, to -capture the teeming life that dwelt there in the slime. When the boy -understood, his young hands were quickly more skillful than his -father's; they filled the well with a few drops of water that was -promisingly green and murky. - -Already Harry knew how to adjust the lighting mirror under the stage of -the microscope and turn the focusing screws. He did so, bent intently -over the eyepiece, squinting down the polished barrel in the happy -expectation of wonders. - -Henry Chatham's eyes wandered to the fish bowl, where the whirligig -beetle had come to the top again and was describing intricate patterns -among the water plants. He looked back to his son, and saw that Harry -had ceased to turn the screws and instead was just looking--looking with -a rapt, delicious fixity. His hands lay loosely clenched on the table -top, and he hardly seemed to breathe. Only once or twice his lips moved -as if to shape an exclamation that was snatched away by some new vision. - -"Have you got it, Harry?" asked his father after two or three minutes -during which the boy did not move. - -Harry took a last long look, then glanced up, blinking slightly. - -"You look, Dad!" he exclaimed warmly. "It's--it's like a garden in the -water, full of funny little people!" - -Mr. Chatham, not reluctantly, bent to gaze into the eyepiece. This was -new to him too, and instantly he saw the aptness of Harry's simile. -There was a garden there, of weird, green, transparent stalks composed -of plainly visible cells fastened end to end, with globules and bladders -like fruits or seed-pods attached to them, floating among them; and in -the garden the strange little people swam to and fro, or clung with odd -appendages to the stalks and branches. Their bodies were transparent -like the plants, and in them were pulsing hearts and other organs -plainly visible. They looked a little like sea horses with pointed -tails, but their heads were different, small and rounded, with big, -dark, glistening eyes. - -All at once Mr. Chatham realized that Harry was speaking to him, still -in high excitement. - -"What are they, Dad?" he begged to know. - -His father straightened up and shook his head puzzledly. "I don't know, -Harry," he answered slowly, casting about in his memory. He seemed to -remember a microphotograph of a creature like those in the book he had -studied, but the name that had gone with it eluded him. He had worked as -an accountant for so many years that his memory was all for figures now. - -He bent over once more to immerse his eyes and mind in the green -water-garden on the slide. The little creatures swam to and fro as -before, growing hazy and dwindling or swelling as they swam out of the -narrow focus of the lens; he gazed at those who paused in sharp -definition, and saw that, although he had at first seen no visible means -of propulsion, each creature bore about its head a halo of thread-like, -flickering cilia that lashed the water and drew it forward, for all the -world like an airplane propeller or a rapidly turning wheel. - -"I know what they are!" exclaimed Henry Chatham, turning to his son with -an almost boyish excitement. "They're rotifers! That means -'wheel-bearers', and they were called that because to the first -scientists who saw them it looked like they swam with wheels." - -Harry had got down the book and was leafing through the pages. He looked -up seriously. "Here they are," he said. "Here's a picture that looks -almost like the ones in our pond water." - -"Let's see," said his father. They looked at the pictures and -descriptions of the Rotifera; there was a good deal of concrete -information on the habits and physiology of these odd and complex little -animals who live their swarming lives in the shallow, stagnant waters of -the Earth. It said that they were much more highly organized than -Protozoa, having a discernible heart, brain, digestive system, and -nervous system, and that their reproduction was by means of two sexes -like that of the higher orders. Beyond that, they were a mystery; their -relationship to other life-forms remained shrouded in doubt. - -"You've got something interesting there," said Henry Chatham with -satisfaction. "Maybe you'll find out something about them that nobody -knows yet." - -He was pleased when Harry spent all the rest of that Sunday afternoon -peering into the microscope, watching the rotifers, and even more -pleased when the boy found a pencil and paper and tried, in an -amateurish way, to draw and describe what he saw in the green -water-garden. - -Beyond a doubt, Henry thought, here was a hobby that had captured Harry -as nothing else ever had. - - ---- - -Mrs. Chatham was not so pleased. When her husband laid down his evening -paper and went into the kitchen for a drink of water, she cornered him -and hissed at him: "I told you you had no business buying Harry a thing -like that! If he keeps on at this rate, he'll wear his eyes out in no -time." - -Henry Chatham set down his water glass and looked straight at his wife. -"Sally, Harry's eyes are young and he's using them to learn with. You've -never been much worried over me, using my eyes up eight hours a day, -five days a week, over a blind-alley bookkeeping job." - -He left her angrily silent and went back to his paper. He would lower -the paper every now and then to watch Harry, in his corner of the -living-room, bowed obliviously over the microscope and the secret life -of the rotifers. - -Once the boy glanced up from his periodic drawing and asked, with the -air of one who proposes a pondered question: "Dad, if you look through a -microscope the wrong way is it a telescope?" - -Mr. Chatham lowered his paper and bit his underlip. "I don't think -so--no, I don't know. When you look through a microscope, it makes -things seem closer--one way, that is; if you looked the other way, it -would probably make them seem farther off. What did you want to know -for?" - -"Oh--nothing," Harry turned back to his work. As if on after-thought, he -explained, "I was wondering if the rotifers could see me when I'm -looking at them." - -Mr. Chatham laughed, a little nervously, because the strange fancies -which his son sometimes voiced upset his ordered mind. Remembering the -dark glistening eyes of the rotifers he had seen, however, he could -recognize whence this question had stemmed. - -At dusk, Harry insisted on setting up the substage lamp which had been -bought with the microscope, and by whose light he could go on looking -until his bedtime, when his father helped him arrange a wick to feed the -little glass-covered well in the slide so it would not dry up before -morning. It was unwillingly, and only after his mother's strenuous -complaints, that the boy went to bed at ten o'clock. - -In the following days his interest became more and more intense. He -spent long hours, almost without moving, watching the rotifers. For the -little animals had become the sole object which he desired to study -under the microscope, and even his father found it difficult to -understand such an enthusiasm. - -During the long hours at the office to which he commuted, Henry Chatham -often found the vision of his son, absorbed with the invisible world -that the microscope had opened to him, coming between him and the -columns in the ledgers. And sometimes, too, he envisioned the dim green -water-garden where the little things swam to and fro, and a strangeness -filled his thoughts. - -On Wednesday evening, he glanced at the fish bowl and noticed that the -water beetle, the whirligig beetle, was missing. Casually, he asked his -son about it. - -"I had to get rid of him," said the boy with a trace of uneasiness in -his manner. "I took him out and squashed him." - -"Why did you have to do that?" - -"He was eating the rotifers and their eggs," said Harry, with what -seemed to be a touch of remembered anger at the beetle. He glanced -toward his work-table, where three or four well-slides with small green -pools under their glass covers now rested in addition to the one that -was under the microscope. - -"How did you find out he was eating them?" inquired Mr. Chatham, feeling -a warmth of pride at the thought that Harry had discovered such a -scientific fact for himself. - -The boy hesitated oddly. "I--I looked it up in the book," he answered. - -His father masked his faint disappointment. "That's fine," he said. "I -guess you find out more about them all the time." - -"Uh-huh," admitted Harry, turning back to his table. - -There was undoubtedly something a little strange about Harry's manner; -and now Mr. Chatham realized that it had been two days since Harry had -asked him to "Quick, take a look!" at the newest wonder he had -discovered. With this thought teasing at his mind, the father walked -casually over to the table where his son sat hunched and, looking down -at the litter of slides and papers--some of which were covered with -figures and scribblings of which he could make nothing. He said -diffidently, "How about a look?" - -Harry glanced up as if startled. He was silent a moment; then he slid -reluctantly from his chair and said, "All right." - -Mr. Chatham sat down and bent over the microscope. Puzzled and a little -hurt, he twirled the focusing vernier and peered into the eyepiece, -looking down once more into the green water world of the rotifers. - - ---- - -There was a swarm of them under the lens, and they swam lazily to and -fro, their cilia beating like miniature propellers. Their dark eyes -stared, wet and glistening; they drifted in the motionless water, and -clung with sucker-like pseudo-feet to the tangled plant stems. - -Then, as he almost looked away, one of them detached itself from the -group and swam upward, toward him, growing larger and blurring as it -rose out of the focus of the microscope. The last thing that remained -defined, before it became a shapeless gray blob and vanished, was the -dark blotches of the great cold eyes, seeming to stare full at -him--cold, motionless, but alive. - -It was a curious experience. Henry Chatham drew suddenly back from the -eyepiece, with an involuntary shudder that he could not explain to -himself. He said haltingly, "They look interesting." - -"Sure, Dad," said Harry. He moved to occupy the chair again, and his -dark young head bowed once more over the microscope. His father walked -back across the room and sank gratefully into his arm-chair--after all, -it had been a hard day at the office. He watched Harry work the focusing -screws as if trying to find something, then take his pencil and begin to -write quickly and impatiently. - -It was with a guilty feeling of prying that, after Harry had been sent -reluctantly to bed, Henry Chatham took a tentative look at those papers -which lay in apparent disorder on his son's work table. He frowned -uncomprehendingly at the things that were written there; it was neither -mathematics nor language, but many of the scribblings were jumbles of -letters and figures. It looked like code, and he remembered that less -than a year ago, Harry had been passionately interested in cryptography, -and had shown what his father, at least, believed to be a considerable -aptitude for such things.... But what did cryptography have to do with -microscopy, or codes with--rotifers? - -Nowhere did there seem to be a key, but there were occasional words and -phrases jotted into the margins of some of the sheets. Mr. Chatham read -these, and learned nothing. "Can't dry up, but they can," said one. -"Beds of germs," said another. And in the corner of one sheet, "1--Yes. -2--No." The only thing that looked like a translation was the note: -"rty34pr is the pond." - -Mr. Chatham shook his head bewilderedly, replacing the sheets carefully -as they had been. Why should Harry want to keep notes on his scientific -hobby in code? he wondered, rationalizing even as he wondered. He went -to bed still puzzling, but it did not keep him from sleeping, for he was -tired. - -Then, only the next evening, his wife maneuvered to get him alone with -her and burst out passionately: - -"Henry, I told you that microscope was going to ruin Harry's eyesight! I -was watching him today when he didn't know I was watching him, and I saw -him winking and blinking right while he kept on looking into the thing. -I was minded to stop him then and there, but I want you to assert _your_ -authority with him and tell him he can't go on." - -Henry Chatham passed one nervous hand over his own aching eyes. He asked -mildly, "Are you sure it wasn't just your imagination, Sally? After all, -a person blinks quite normally, you know." - -"It was not my imagination!" snapped Mrs. Chatham. "I know the symptoms -of eyestrain when I see them, I guess. You'll have to stop Harry using -that thing so much, or else be prepared to buy him glasses." - -"All right, Sally," said Mr. Chatham wearily. "I'll see if I can't -persuade him to be a little more moderate." - -He went slowly into the living-room. At the moment, Harry was not using -the microscope; instead, he seemed to be studying one of his cryptic -pages of notes. As his father entered, he looked up sharply and swiftly -laid the sheet down--face down. - -Perhaps it wasn't all Sally's imagination; the boy did look nervous, and -there was a drawn, white look to his thin young face. His father said -gently, "Harry, Mother tells me she saw you blinking, as if your eyes -were tired, when you were looking into the microscope today. You know if -you look too much, it can be a strain on your sight." - -Harry nodded quickly, too quickly, perhaps. "Yes, Dad," he said. "I read -that in the book. It says there that if you close the eye you're looking -with for a little while, it rests you and your eyes don't get tired. So -I was practising that this afternoon. Mother must have been watching me -then, and got the wrong idea." - -"Oh," said Henry Chatham. "Well, it's good that you're trying to be -careful. But you've got your mother worried, and that's not so good. I -wish, myself, that you wouldn't spend all your time with the microscope. -Don't you ever play baseball with the fellows any more?" - -"I haven't got time," said the boy, with a curious stubborn twist to his -mouth. "I can't right now, Dad." He glanced toward the microscope. - -"Your rotifers won't die if you leave them alone for a while. And if -they do, there'll always be a new crop." - -"But I'd lose track of them," said Harry strangely. "Their lives are so -short--they live so awfully fast. You don't know how fast they live." - -"I've seen them," answered his father. "I guess they're fast, all -right." He did not know quite what to make of it all, so he settled -himself in his chair with his paper. - -But that night, after Harry had gone later than usual to bed, he stirred -himself to take down the book that dealt with life in pond-water. There -was a memory pricking at his mind; the memory of the water beetle, which -Harry had killed because, he said, he was eating the rotifers and their -eggs. And the boy had said he had found that fact in the book. - -Mr. Chatham turned through the book; he read, with aching eyes, all that -it said about rotifers. He searched for information on the beetle, and -found there was a whole family of whirligig beetles. There was some -material here on the characteristics and habits of the Gyrinidae, but -nowhere did it mention the devouring of rotifers or their eggs among -their customs. - -He tried the topical index, but there was no help there. - -Harry must have lied, thought his father with a whirling head. But why, -why in God's name should he say he'd looked a thing up in the book when -he must have found it out for himself, the hard way? There was no sense -in it. He went back to the book, convinced that, sleepy as he was, he -must have missed a point. The information simply wasn't there. - -He got to his feet and crossed the room to Harry's work table; he -switched on the light over it and stood looking down at the pages of -mystic notations. There were more pages now, quite a few. But none of -them seemed to mean anything. The earlier pictures of rotifers which -Harry had drawn had given way entirely to mysterious figures. - -Then the simple explanation occurred to him, and he switched off the -light with a deep feeling of relief. Harry hadn't really _known_ that -the water beetle ate rotifers; he had just suspected it. And, with his -boy's respect for fair play, he had hesitated to admit that he had -executed the beetle merely on suspicion. - -That didn't take the lie away, but it removed the mystery at least. - - ---- - -Henry Chatham slept badly that night and dreamed distorted dreams. But -when the alarm clock shrilled in the gray of morning, jarring him awake, -the dream in which he had been immersed skittered away to the back of -his mind, out of knowing, and sat there leering at him with strange, -dark, glistening eyes. - -He dressed, washed the flat morning taste out of his mouth with coffee, -and took his way to his train and the ten-minute ride into the city. On -the way there, instead of snatching a look at the morning paper, he sat -still in his seat, head bowed, trying to recapture the dream whose -vanishing made him uneasy. He was superstitious about dreams in an -up-to-date way, believing them not warnings from some Beyond outside -himself, but from a subsconscious more knowing than the waking conscious -mind. - -During the morning his work went slowly, for he kept pausing, sometimes -in the midst of totalling a column of figures, to grasp at some mocking -half-memory of that dream. At last, elbows on his desk, staring -unseeingly at the clock on the wall, in the midst of the subdued murmur -of the office, his mind went back to Harry, dark head bowed motionless -over the barrel of his microscope, looking, always looking into the pale -green water-gardens and the unseen lives of the beings that.... - -All at once it came to him, the dream he had dreamed. _He_ had been -bending over the microscope, _he_ had been looking into the unseen -world, and the horror of what he had seen gripped him now and brought -out the chill sweat on his body. - -For he had seen his son there in the clouded water, among the twisted -glassy plants, his face turned upward and eyes wide in the agonized -appeal of the drowning; and bubbles rising, fading. But around him had -been a swarm of the weird creatures, and they had been dragging him -down, down, blurring out of focus, and their great dark eyes glistening -wetly, coldly.... - -He was sitting rigid at his desk, his work forgotten; all at once he saw -the clock and noticed with a start that it was already eleven a.m. A -fear he could not define seized on him, and his hand reached -spasmodically for the telephone on his desk. - -But before he touched it, it began ringing. - -After a moment's paralysis, he picked up the receiver. It was his wife's -voice that came shrilly over the wires. - -"Henry!" she cried. "Is that you?" - -"Hello, Sally," he said with stiff lips. Her voice as she answered -seemed to come nearer and go farther away, and he realized that his hand -holding the instrument was shaking. - -"Henry, you've got to come home right now. Harry's sick. He's got a high -fever, and he's been asking for you." - -He moistened his lips and said, "I'll be right home. I'll take a taxi." - -"Hurry!" she exclaimed. "He's been saying queer things. I think he's -delirious." She paused, and added, "And it's all the fault of that -microscope _you_ bought him!" - -"I'll be right home," he repeated dully. - - ---- - -His wife was not at the door to meet him; she must be upstairs, in -Harry's bedroom. He paused in the living room and glanced toward the -table that bore the microscope; the black, gleaming thing still stood -there, but he did not see any of the slides, and the papers were piled -neatly together to one side. His eyes fell on the fish bowl; it was -empty, clean and shining. He knew Harry hadn't done those things; that -was Sally's neatness. - -Abruptly, instead of going straight up the stairs, he moved to the table -and looked down at the pile of papers. The one on top was almost blank; -on it was written several times: rty34pr ... rty34pr.... His memory for -figure combinations served him; he remembered what had been written on -another page: "rty34pr is the pond." - -That made him think of the pond, lying quiescent under its green scum -and trailing plants at the end of the garden. A step on the stair jerked -him around. - -It was his wife, of course. She said in a voice sharp-edged with -apprehension: "What are you doing down here? Harry wants you. The doctor -hasn't come; I phoned him just before I called you, but he hasn't come." - -He did not answer. Instead he gestured at the pile of papers, the empty -fish bowl, an imperative question in his face. - -"I threw that dirty water back in the pond. It's probably what he caught -something from. And he was breaking himself down, humping over that -thing. It's _your_ fault, for getting it for him. Are you coming?" She -glared coldly at him, turning back to the stairway. - -"I'm coming," he said heavily, and followed her upstairs. - -Harry lay back in his bed, a low mound under the covers. His head was -propped against a single pillow, and his eyes were half-closed, the lids -swollen-looking, his face hotly flushed. He was breathing slowly as if -asleep. - -But as his father entered the room, he opened his eyes as if with an -effort, fixed them on him, said, "Dad ... I've got to tell you." - -Mr. Chatham took the chair by the bedside, quietly, leaving his wife to -stand. He asked, "About what, Harry?" - -"About--things." The boy's eyes shifted to his mother, at the foot of -his bed. "I don't want to talk to her. _She_ thinks it's just fever. But -you'll understand." - -Henry Chatham lifted his gaze to meet his wife's. "Maybe you'd better go -downstairs and wait for the doctor, Sally." - -She looked hard at him, then turned abruptly to go out. "All right," she -said in a thin voice, and closed the door softly behind her. - -"Now what did you want to tell me, Harry?" - -"About _them_ ... the rotifers," the boy said. His eyes had drifted -half-shut again but his voice was clear. "They did it to me ... on -purpose." - -"Did _what_?" - -"I don't know.... They used one of their cultures. They've got all -kinds: beds of germs, under the leaves in the water. They've been -growing new kinds, that will be worse than anything that ever was -before.... They live so fast, they work so fast." - -Henry Chatham was silent, leaning forward beside the bed. - -"It was only a little while, before I found out they knew about me. I -could see them through my microscope, but they could see me too.... And -they kept signaling, swimming and turning.... I won't tell you how to -talk to them, because nobody ought to talk to them ever again. Because -they find out more than they tell.... They know about us, now, and they -hate us. They never knew before--that there was anybody but them.... So -they want to kill us all." - -"But why should they want to do that?" asked the father, as gently as he -could. He kept telling himself, "He's delirious. It's like Sally says, -he's been wearing himself out, thinking too much about--the rotifers. -But the doctor will be here pretty soon, the doctor will know what to -do." - -"They don't like knowing that they aren't the only ones on Earth that -can think. I expect people would be the same way." - -"But they're such little things, Harry. They can't hurt us at all." - -The boy's eyes opened wide, shadowed with terror and fever. "I told you, -Dad--They're growing germs, millions and billions of them, _new_ -ones.... And they kept telling me to take them back to the pond, so they -could tell all the rest, and they could all start getting ready--for -war." - -He remembered the shapes that swam and crept in the green water gardens, -with whirling cilia and great, cold, glistening eyes. And he remembered -the clean, empty fish bowl in the window downstairs. - -"Don't let them, Dad," said Harry convulsively. "You've got to kill them -all. The ones here and the ones in the pond. You've got to kill them -good--because they don't mind being killed, and they lay lots of eggs, -and their eggs can stand almost anything, even drying up. _And the eggs -remember what the old ones knew._" - -"Don't worry," said Henry Chatham quickly. He grasped his son's hand, a -hot limp hand that had slipped from under the coverlet. "We'll stop -them. We'll drain the pond." - -"That's swell," whispered the boy, his energy fading again. "I ought to -have told you before, Dad--but first I was afraid you'd laugh, and -then--I was just ... afraid...." - -His voice drifted away. And his father, looking down at the flushed -face, saw that he seemed asleep. Well, that was better than the sick -delirium--saying such strange, wild things-- - -Downstairs the doctor was saying harshly, "All right. All right. But -let's have a look at the patient." - -Henry Chatham came quietly downstairs; he greeted the doctor briefly, -and did not follow him to Harry's bedroom. - -When he was left alone in the room, he went to the window and stood -looking down at the microscope. He could not rid his head of -strangeness: A window between two worlds, our world and that of the -infinitely small, a window that looks both ways. - -After a time, he went through the kitchen and let himself out the back -door, into the noonday sunlight. - -He followed the garden path, between the weed-grown beds of vegetables, -until he came to the edge of the little pond. It lay there quiet in the -sunlight, green-scummed and walled with stiff rank grass, a lone -dragonfly swooping and wheeling above it. The image of all the stagnant -waters, the fertile breeding-places of strange life, with which it was -joined in the end by the tortuous hidden channels, the oozing pores of -the Earth. - -And it seemed to him then that he glimpsed something, a hitherto unseen -miasma, rising above the pool and darkening the sunlight ever so little. -A dream, a shadow--the shadow of the alien dream of things hidden in -smallness, the dark dream of the rotifers. - -The dragonfly, having seized a bright-winged fly that was sporting over -the pond, descended heavily through the sunlit air and came to rest on a -broad lily pad. Henry Chatham was suddenly afraid. He turned and walked -slowly, wearily, up the path toward the house. - - - *END* - - - - _Transcribers note_: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science -Fiction March 1953. 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