“I know that,” Garth Jan flushed angrily. “You are impolite to remind me of it.”
“I have no choice. You acknowledged the gratitude you owe me in actual words, back on Earth. I demand the chance to possess this mysterious sense you keep so secret-in the name of this acknowledged gratitude. Can you refuse now?”
“You know I can’t,” was the gloomy response. “I hesitated only for your own sake.”
The Martian rose and held out his hand gravely, “You have me by the neck, Lincoln. It is done. Afterwards, though, I owe you nothing more. This will pay my debt of gratitude. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” The two shook hands and Lincoln Fields continued in an entirely different tone. “We’re still friends, though, aren’t we? This little altercation won’t spoil things?”
“I hope not. Come! Join me at the evening meal and we can discuss the time and place of your-er-five minutes.”
Lincoln Fields tried hard to down the faint nervousness that filled him as he waited in Garth Jan’s private “concert”-room. He felt a sudden desire to laugh as the thought came to him that he felt exactly as he usually did in a dentist’s waiting room.
He lit his tenth cigarette, puffed twice and threw it away, “You’re doing this very elaborately, Garth.”
The Martian shrugged, “You have only five minutes so I might as well see to it that they are put to the best possible use. You’re going to ‘hear’ part of a portwem , which is to our sense what a great symphony (is that the word?) is to sound.”
“Have we much longer to wait? The suspense, to be trite, is terrible.”
“We’re waiting for Novi Lon, who is to play the portwem , and for Done Vol. my private physician. They’ll be along soon.”
Fields wandered onto the low dais that occupied the center of the room and regarded the intricate mechanism thereupon with curious interest. The fore-part was encased in gleaming aluminum leaving exposed only seven tiers of shining black knobs above and five large white pedals below. Behind, however, it lay open, and within there ran crossings and recrossings of finer wires in incredibly complicated paths.
“A curious thing, this,” remarked the Earthman.
The Martian joined him on the dais, “It’s an expensive instrument. It cost me ten thousand Martian credits.”
“How does it work?”
“Not so differently from a Terrestrial piano. Each of the upper knobs controls a different electric circuit. Singly and together an expert portwem player could, by manipulating the knobs, form any conceivable pattern of electric current. The pedals below control the strength of the current.”
Fields nodded absently and ran his fingers over the knobs at random. Idly, he noticed the small galvanometer located just above the keys kick violently each time he depressed a knob. Aside from that, he sensed nothing.
“Is the instrument really playing?”
The Martian smiled, “Yes, it is. And a set of unbelievably atrocious discords too.”
He took a seat before the instrument and with a murmured “Here’s howl” his fingers skimmed rapidly and accurately over the gleaming buttons.
The sound of a reedy Martian voice crying out in strident accents broke in upon him, and Garth Jan ceased in sudden embarrassment. “This is Novi Lon,” he said hastily to Fields, “As usual, he does not like my playing.”
Fields rose to meet the newcomer. He was bent of shoulder and evidently of great age. A fine tracing of wrinkles, especially about eyes and mouth, covered his face.
“So this is the young Earthman,” he cried, in strongly-accented English. “I disapprove your rashness but sympathize with your desire to attend a portwem . It is a great pity you can own our sense for no more than five minutes. Without it no one can truly be said to live.”
Garth Jan laughed, “He exaggerates, Lincoln. He’s one of the greatest musicians of Mars, and thinks anyone doomed to damnation who would not rather attend a portwem than breathe.” He hugged the older man warmly, “He was my teacher in my youth and many were the long hours in which he struggled to teach me the proper combination of circuits.”
“And I have failed after all, you dunce,” snapped the old Martian. “I heard your attempt at playing as I entered. You still have not learned the proper fortgass combination. You were desecrating the soul of the great Bar Damn. My pupil! Bah! It is a disgrace!”
The entrance of the third Martian, Done Vol, prevented Novi Lon from continuing his tirade. Garth, glad of the reprieve, approached the physician hastily.
“Is all ready?”
“Yes,” growled Vol surlily, “and a particularly uninteresting experiment this will be. We know all the results beforehand.” His eyes fell upon the Earthman, whom he eyed contemptuously. “Is this the one who wishes to be inoculated?”
Lincoln Fields nodded eagerly and felt his throat and mouth go dry suddenly. He eyed the newcomer uncertainly and felt uneasy at the sight of a tiny bottle of clear liquid and a hypodermic which the physician had extracted from a case he was carrying.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded.
“He’ll merely inoculate you. It’ll take a second,” Garth Jan assured him. “You see, the sense-organs in this case are several groups of cells in the cortex of the brain. They are activated by a hormone, a synthetic preparation of which is used to stimulate the dormant cells of the occasional Martian who is born-er-’blind.’ You’ll receive the same treatment.”
“Oh!-then Earthmen possess those cortex cells?”
“In a very rudimentary state. The concentrated hormone will activate them, but only for five minutes. After that time, they are literally blown out as a result of their unwonted activity. After that, they can’t be re-activated under any circumstances.”
Done Vol completed his last-minute preparations and approached Fields. Without a word. Fields extended his right arm and the hypodermic plunged in.
With the operation completed, the Terrestrial waited a moment or two and then essayed a shaky laugh, “I don’t feel any change.”
“You won’t for about ten minutes,” explained Garth. -”It takes time. Just sit back and relax. Novi Lon has begun Bar Damn’s ‘Canals in the Desert’-it is my favorite-and when the hormone begins its work you will find yourself in the middle of things.”
Now that the die was cast irrevocably. Fields found himself stonily calm. Novi Lon played furiously, and Garth Jan, at the Earthman’s right, was already lost in the composition. Even Done Vol, the fussy doctor, had forgotten his peevishness for the nonce.
Fields snickered under his breath. The Martians listened attentively but to him the room was devoid of sound and- almost-of all other sensation as well. What-no, it was impossible, of course-but what if it were just an elaborate practical joke? He stirred uneasily and put the thought from his mind angrily.
The minutes passed; Novi Lon’s fingers flew; Garth Jan’s expression was one of unfeigned delight.
Then Lincoln Fields blinked his eyes rapidly. For a moment a nimbus of color seemed to surround the musician and his instrument. He couldn’t identify it-but it was there. It grew and spread until the room was full of it. Other hues came to join it and still others. They wove and wavered; expanding and contracting; changing with lightning speed and yet staying the same. Intricate patterns of brilliant tints formed and faded, beating in silent bursts of color upon the young man’s eyeballs.
Simultaneously, there came the impression of sound. From a whisper it rose into a glorious, ringing shout that wavered up and down the scale in quivering tremolos. He seemed to hear every instrument from fife to bass viol simultaneously, and yet, paradoxically, each rang in his ear in solitary clearness.
And together with this, there came the more subtle sensation of odor. From a suspicion, a mere trace, it waxed into a phantasmal field of flowers. Delicate spicy scents followed each other in ever stronger succession; in gentle wafts of pleasure.
Yet all this was nothing. Fields knew that. Somehow, he knew that what he saw, heard, and smelt were mere delusions -mirages of a brain that frantically attempted to interpret an entirely new conception in the old, familiar ways.
Gradually, the colors and the sounds and the scents died. His brain was beginning to realize that that which beat upon it was something hitherto unexperienced. The effect of the hormone became stronger, and suddenly-in one burst-Fields realized what it was he sensed.
He didn’t see it-nor hear it-nor smell it-nor taste it- nor feel it. He knew what it was but he couldn’t think of the word for it. Slowly, he realized that there wasn’t any word for it. Even more slowly, he realized that there wasn’t even any concept for it.
Yet he knew what it was.
There beat upon his brain something that consisted of pure waves of enjoyment-something that lifted him out of himself and pitched him headlong into a universe unknown to him earlier. He was falling through an endless eternity of- something. It wasn’t sound or sight but it was-something. Something that enfolded him and hid his surroundings from him-that’s what it was. It was endless and infinite in its variety, and with each crashing wave, he glimpsed a farther horizon, and the wonderful cloak of sensation became thicker-and softer-and more beautiful.
Then came the discord. Like a little crack at first-marring a perfect beauty. Then spreading and branching and growing wider, until, finally, if split apart thunderously-though without a sound.