A voice from a loudspeaker in the wall said, “I am sorry to detain you, but there is reason to think you have undergone a recent deviation from the optional development pattern. In a few minutes I will arrive in person to provide counseling; while you are waiting it may be useful for us to review what is meant by ‘optimal development.’ Look at the projection.
“In infancy the child first feels affection for its mother, the provider of warmth and food . . .” There was a door at the other end of the room, and Paul swung a heavy chair against it, making a din that almost drowned out the droning speaker.
“Later one’s peer group becomes, for a time, all-important—or nearly so. The boys and girls you see are attending a model school in Armstrong. Notice that no tint is used to mask the black of space above their airtent.”
The lock burst from the door frame, but a remotely actuated hydraulic cylinder snapped it shut each time a blow from the chair drove it open. Paul slammed his shoulder against it, and before it could close again put his knee where the shattered bolt socket had been. A chrome-plated steel rod as thick as a finger had dropped from the chair when his blows had smashed the wood and plastic holding it; after a moment of incomprehension, Janie dropped the dead boy, wedged the rod between the door and the jamb, and slipped through. He was following her when the rod lifted, and the door swung shut on his foot.
He screamed and screamed again, and then, in the echoing silence that followed, heard the loudspeaker mumbling about education, and Janie’s sobbing, indrawn breath. Through the crack between the door and the frame, the two-centimeter space held in existence by what remained of his right foot, he could see the livid face and blind, malevolent eyes of the dead boy, whose will still held the steel rod suspended in air. “Die,” Paul shouted at him. “Die! You’re dead!” The rod came crashing down.
“This young woman,” the loudspeaker said, “has chosen the profession of medicine. She will be a physician, and she says now that she was born for that. She will spend the remainder of her life in relieving the agonies of disease.”
Several minutes passed before Paul could make Janie understand what it was she had to do.
“After her five years’ training in basic medical techniques, she will specialize in surgery for another three years before—”
It took Janie a long time to bite through his Achilles tendon; when it was over, she began to tear at the ligaments that held the bones of the tarsus to the leg. Over the pain he could feel the hot tears washing the blood from his foot.
Ever since this story appeared, I have been getting heat for my spelling of werewolf. I reverted to the original spelling to point up the meaning of the word: “manwolf.” We would be more apt to say “wolfman,” though the ideas conveyed are distinctly different. Our werewolf is a man who becomes a wolf. The manwolf envisioned by the Anglos and Saxons was a man to be feared as wolves were feared, and for the same reasons.
Wer was the original Anglo-Saxon word for the male of the human species. (Man designated a human being. We see the ghostly traces of this when we say, for example, that Molly Pitcher manned a gun at Monmouth.) I wanted the old original import, and so titled the story you have just read as I did.
The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton
Each day Lame Hans sits with his knees against the bars, playing chess with the machine. Though I have seen the game often, I have never learned to play, but I watch them as I sweep. It is a beautiful game, and Lame Hans has told me of its beginnings in the great ages now past; for that reason I always feel a sympathy toward the little pawns with their pencils and wrenches and plain clothing, each figure representing many generations of those whose labor built the great bishops that split the skies in the days of the old wars.
I feel pity for Lame Hans also. He talks to me when I bring his food, and sometimes when I am cleaning the jail. Let me tell you his story, as I have learned it in the many days since the police drew poor Gretchen out and laid her in the dust of the street. Lame Hans would never tell you himself—for all that big, bulging head, his tongue is slow and halting when he speaks of his own affairs.
It was last summer during the truce that the showman’s cart was driven into our village. For a month not a drop of rain had fallen; each day at noon Father Karl rang the church bells and women went in to pray for rain for their husbands’ crops. After dark, many of these same women met to form lines and circles on the slopes of the Schlossberg, the mountain that was once a great building. The lines and circles are supposed to influence the Weatherwatchers, whose winking lights pass so swiftly through the starry sky. For myself, I do not believe it. What men ever made a machine that could see a few old women on the mountainside at night?
So it was when the cart of Herr Heitzmann the mountebank came. The sun was down, but the street still so hot that the dogs would not bark for fear of fainting, and the dust rolled away from the wheels in waves, like grain when foxes run through the fields.
This cart was shorter than a farm wagon, but very high, with such a roof as a house has. The sides had been painted, and even I, who do not play, but have so often watched Albricht the moneylender play Father Karl, or Dr. Eckardt play Burgermeister Landsteiner, recognized the mighty figures of the Queen-Computers who lead the armies of the field of squares into battle, and the haughty King-Generals who command and, if they fall, bring down all.
A small, bent man drove. He had a head large enough for a giant—that was Lame Hans, but I paid little attention to him, not knowing that he and I would be companions here in the jail where I work. Beside him sat Heitzmann the mountebank, and it was he who took one’s eyes, which was as he intended. He was tall and thin, with a sharp chin and a large nose and snapping black eyes. He had velvet trousers and a fine hat which sweat had stained around the band, and long locks of dark hair that hung from under it at odd angles so that one knew he used the finger comb when he woke, as drunkards do who find themselves beneath a bench. When the small man brought the cart through the inn-yard gate, I rose from my seat on the jail steps and went across to the inn parlor. And it was a fortunate thing I did so, because it was in this way that I chanced to see the famous game between the brass machine and Professor Baumeister.
Haven’t I mentioned Professor Baumeister before? Have you not noticed that in a village such as ours there are always a dozen celebrities? Always a man who is strong (with us that is Willi Schacht, the smith’s apprentice), one who eats a great deal, a learned man like Dr. Eckardt, a ladies’ man, and so on. But for all these people to be properly admired, there must also be a distinguished visitor to whom to point them out, and here in Oder Spree that is Professor Baumeister, because our village lies midway between the university and Fürstenwalde, and it is here that he spends the night whenever he journeys from one to the other, much to the enrichment of Scheer the innkeeper. The fact of the matter is that Professor Baumeister has become one of our celebrities himself, only by spending the night here so often. With his broad brown beard and fine coat and tall hat and leather riding breeches, he gives the parlor of our inn the air of a gentlemen’s club.
I have heard that it is often the case that the beginning of the greatest drama is as casual as any commonplace event. So it was that night. The inn was full of off-duty soldiers drinking beer, and because of the heat all the windows were thrown open, though a dozen candles were burning. Professor Baumeister was deep in conversation with Dr. Eckardt: something about the war. Herr Heitzmann the mountebank—though I did not know what to call him then—had already gotten his half liter when I came in, and was standing at the bar.