John had been sitting on the corner of my writing-table. He got up suddenly and walked to the window. “Thank God for light,” he said, looking at the grey sky. “If there was some one who could understand, I could tell it all and be rid of it, perhaps. But half-telling it just makes it all come welling up again. And some say there’s no Hell!”
He remained silent for some time, looking out of the window. Then he said, “Look at that cormorant, He’s got a conger fatter than his own neck.” I came up beside him, and we watched the fish writhing and lashing. Sometimes bird and prey disappeared together under water. Once the conger got away, but was speedily recovered. After many failures, the cormorant caught it by the head, and swallowed it, slick, so that nothing was to be seen of it but its tail, and a huge swelling in the bird’s neck.
“And now,” said John, “he’ll be digested. That’s what nearly happened to me. I felt my whole mind being disintegrated by the digestive juices of that Satanic young mollusc. I don’t know what happened next, I remember seeing a perfectly diabolic expression on the kid’s face; and then I must have saved myself somehow, for presently I found myself lying on the grass some way from the house, alone and in a cold sweat. The very sight of the house in the distance gave me the creeps. I couldn’t think. I kept seeing that infantile grin of hate, and turning stupid again. After a while I realized I was cold, so I got up and walked toward the little bay where the boats were, Presently I began to ask myself what sort of a devil this baby Satan really was. Was he one of ‘us,’ or something quite different? But there was very little doubt in my mind, actually. Of course he was one of us, and probably a much mightier one than either J. J. or myself. But everything had gone wrong with him, from conception onwards. His body had failed him, and was tormenting him, and his mind was as crippled as his body, and his parents were quite unable to give him a fair chance. So the only self-expression possible to him was hate. And he had specialized in hate pretty thoroughly. But the oddest thing about it all was this. The further I got away from the experience, the more clearly it was borne in on me that his ecstasy of hate was really quite self-detached. He wasn’t hating for himself. He hated himself as much as me. He hated everything, including hate. And he hated it all with a sort of sacred fervour. And why? Because, as I begin to discover, there’s a sort of minute, blazing star of worship right down in the pit of his hell. He sees everything from the side of eternity just as clearly as I do, perhaps more clearly; but—how shall I put it?—he conceives his part in the picture to be the devil’s part, and he’s playing it with a combination of passion and detachment like a great artist, and for the glory of God, if you understand what I mean. And he’s right. It’s the only thing he can do, and he does it with style. I take off my hat to him, in spite of everything. But it’s pretty ghastly, really. Think of the life he’s living; just like an infant’s, and with his powers! I dare say he’ll manage to find some trick for blowing up the whole planet some day, if he lives much longer. And there’s another thing. I’ve got to keep a sharp look out or he’ll catch me again. He can reach me anywhere, in Australia or Patagonia. God! I can feel him now! Give me another apple, and let’s talk about something else.”
Crunching his second Cox, John became calm again. Presently he went on with his narrative. “I haven’t done much since that affair. It took me some time to get my mind straight, and then I felt depressed about the chances of ever finding any one anywhere that was really my sort and yet also sane. But after ten days or so I began the search again. I found an old gipsy woman who was a sort of half-baked one of ‘us.’ But she’s always having fits. She tells fortunes, and perhaps has some sort of glimpses of the future. But she’s as old as the hills, and cares for nothing but fortune-telling and rum. Yet she’s quite definitely one of us, up to a point; not intellectually, though she has the reputation of being damnably cunning, but in insight. She sees things on their eternal side all right, though not very steadily. Then there are several others in asylums, quite hopeless. And a hermaphrodite adolescent in a sort of home for ineurables. And a man doing a life-sentence for murder. I fancy he might have been the real thing if he hadn’t had a bit of his skull knocked in when he was a kid. Then there’s a lightning calculator, but he doesn’t seem to be anything else. He’s not really one of us at all, but he’s got just one of the essential factors in his make up. Well, that’s all there is of Homo superior in these islands.”
John began pacing the room, quickly, methodically, like a polar bear in its cage. Suddenly he stopped, and clenched his fists and cried out, “Cattle! Cattle! A whole world of cattle! My God, how they stink!” He stared at the wall. Then he sighed, and turning to me he said, “Sorry, Fido, old man! That was a lapse. What do you say to a walk before lunch?”
CHAPTER XIV
ENGINEERING PROBLEMS
NOT long after John told me of his efforts to make contact with other supernormals he took me into his confidence about his plans for the future. We were in the subterranean workshop. He was absorbed in a new invention, a sort of generator-accumulator, he said. His bench was covered with test-tubes, jars, bits of metal, bottles, insulated wires, voltmeters, lumps of stone. He was so intent on his work that I said, “I believe you’re regressing to childhood. This sort to thing has got hold of you again and made you forget all about—Scotland.”
“No, you’re wrong,” he said. “This gadget is an important part of my plan. When I have finished this test I’ll tell you.” Silently he proceeded with the experiment. Presently, with a little shout of triumph, he said, “Got it this time!”
Over a cup of coffee we discussed his plans. He was determined to search the whole world in the hope of discovering a few others of his kind, and of suitable age for joining with him in the founding of a little colony of supcrnormals in some remote part of the earth. In order to do this without loss of time, he said, he must have an ocean-going yacht and a small aeroplane, or flying machine of some kind, which could be stowed on the yacht. When I protested that he knew nothing about flying and less about designing planes, he replied, “Oh yes, I do. I learned to fly yesterday.” It seems he had managed to persuade a certain brilliant young airman to give him not only a joy-ride but a long spell in control of the machine. “Once you get the feel of it,” he said, “it’s easy enough. I landed twice, and took off twice, and did a few stunts. But of course there’s a good deal more to learn. As for designing, I’m on the job already, and on the yacht design too. But a lot depends on this new gadget. I can’t explain it very well. At least, I can explain, in a way, but you just won’t believe it. I’ve been looking into nuclear chemistry lately, and in the light of my Scotch experiences an idea struck me. Probably even you know (though you have a genius for keeping out of touch with science) that there’s the hell of a lot of energy locked up in every atomic nucleus, and that the reason why you can’t release it is that the unlocking would take a fantastically powerful electric current, to overcome the forces that hold the electrons and protons, and so on, together. Well, I’ve found a much handier key. But it’s not a physical key at all but a psychical one. It’s no use trying to overcome those terrific interlocking forces. You must just abolish them for the time being; send them to sleep, so to speak. The interlocking forces, and the disruptive forces too, are just the spontaneous urges of the basic physical units, call them electrons and protons, if you like. What I do, then, is to hypnotize the little devils so that they go limp for a moment and loosen their grip on one another. Then when they wake up they barge about in hilarious freedom, and all you have to do is to see that their barging drives your machinery.”