MAN’S WORLD (12)
By:
September 21, 2024
HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Charlotte Haldane’s 1926 proto-sf novel Man’s World for HILOBROW’s readers. Written by an author married to one of the world’s most prominent eugenics advocates, this ambivalent adventure anticipates both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale. When a young woman rebels against her conditioning, can she break free? Reissued in 2024 (with a new introduction by Philippa Levine) by the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE series.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: INTRO | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25.
A PEOPLE UNBOUND
cont.
‘So you’ve never been to a Miracle House before? ‘ asked Bruce, as he and Nicolette set out together for the House of the Sick.
‘No. I’m very pleased to come,’ — but she would have been pleased to go anywhere with Bruce, for she also felt the spell of his jovial intelligence and vitality.
‘I shall be interested in your impressions. I don’t often get the chance of taking a novice, and, of course, this is rather my own pet show. By the way, I found out something funny to-day. Did you ever know that there was once a worldwide so-called religious organization called “The Salvation Army”?’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it from Christopher. They were, apparently, on intimate terms with devils, and made a great rival organization to the Catholic Church on confession.’
‘The amusing point, I think, is that our propagandists nearly chose the same name before they decided on the Gay Company. I suppose in the old days religion did really absorb all the best publicity names, as well as being the only civil organization founded on a military model, like the Company.’
They now had reached the House of the Sick, which stood in its own large grounds, well away from all other dwelling-places. Not far from it was a circular building, in somewhat the same relationship to it as are some of the ancient baptisteries to their cathedrals.
‘You mustn’t think,’ said Bruce, ‘because the Miracle House is next to the House of the Sick that you are going to see anything pathological. The whole point about Miracle Houses is to show people ordinary normal physiology — what their insides look like, and how they work. Of course, at the very beginning, when they got their name, they were chiefly used for public performances on private soldiers in the Company — sick people. But those shows are not so popular now, because we are on a different emotional plane; disease is considered an enemy to be fought by private and officer — and ordinary people uninterested in medicine or surgery are rather bored with it. But when it comes to normal functions of the body or mind it is quite different. Come along.’
The circular building was quite small. About five hundred people could be placed in its rising tiers of seats, facing a revolving stage. By the sides of and behind this were dressing-rooms, sterilizing-rooms, and others containing instruments and apparatus. The interior was beautifully decorated with emblems of the Gay Company of Stalwarts; pictures, historical and allegorical, depicting scenes from its record, and one or two pieces of statuary flanking the stage. From time to time automatic sprays filled the air with delightful and antibacterial perfume.
A cinematograph screen ran behind the entire length of the stage. The house was full, for this afternoon’s programme was expected to be particularly thrilling. Bruce was constantly greeting friends, but Nicolette had no interest in them. A bell rang, conversation died away, and a voice addressed the audience.
‘We are going to show you this afternoon,’ it said, ‘some experiments which may make clear to you the functions of the cerebral cortex. The subject will only be locally anaesthetized. If he feels any pain he will tell us so, but it should be unlikely. We are first of all going to open his head and expose the brain. You will see everything very plainly on the screen by means of the epidiascope. At certain points of the experiment it will be necessary for us to inform you of what we are going to do without the subject’s knowledge, and the words will not be spoken, but will appear on the screen.’
‘Who is the subject?’ Nicolette asked.
‘Well, names are not announced, you know; it’s a Company rule. I can’t tell you till they arrive.’
The stage was now set revolving, and there were wheeled into view several people. In a comfortable chair with a head-rest reclined a young, sturdily built man whose most prominent feature was bright red hair. The operator and two assistants adjusted the chair, while the communicator, whose voice had been heard off-stage, prepared to work the epidiascope and the microphone. Between the operating chair and the screen was the complete electrical equipment necessary for the tests. On one side of the stage was a smallish black box fitted with innumerable stops.
‘Now then,’ said Bruce to Nicolette, as one of the assistants attached an electrode — rather like a pad on a long wire — to the red-haired man’s chest, and another prepared the anasthetic, ‘we are going to see a fine show. The subject is Larssen, and the operator Carlier. They are both first-rate men, and generally work together.’
The red-haired man now appeared on the screen, and Nicolette saw that he was not red-haired at all. They pulled off the red rubber cap from his head, which was completely shaven, and then wiped it with ether. The anesthetic was run into the skin, and Carlier began to prick his colleague’s head with needles until he received the smiling reply, ‘No sensation.’ Deftly he then cut through the skin, exposing the skull.
The anæsthetic was again administered, and Nicolette watched with admiration as the deft fingers of Carlier manipulated a small but rapidly buzzing circular saw, which cut swiftly down until he turned back a flap of bone and skin, and a small part of the brain on the left side of the head was revealed.
‘Why is there no bleeding?’ Nicolette asked Bruce, with her eyes on the screen. Larssen appeared perfectly comfortable, and was joking with the men holding the flap of bone and skin in warm towels in Ringer’s solution.
‘They ran in adrenalin with the anasthetic,’ answered Bruce. ‘Bleeding would obstruct the view.’
The communicator then spoke quietly into a tube in his hand, and his words appeared in rapid writing on the screen.
‘We are going to stimulate the centres controlling the movements of the right arm.’
Carlier took a small electrode and moved it gently about on the exposed brain. Suddenly Larssen raised his right arm, the control of which had now passed beyond his will. As the electrode dictated the arm obeyed, until a smaller implement was substituted, by means of which the middle finger was made to perform antics similar to those previously carried out by the whole arm.
‘How are you feeling?’ they saw Carlier ask, and almost simultaneously read the words on the screen:
‘Pretty unpleasant… numb or tickly feeling… no pain,’ came the answer, and ‘carry on.’
‘We are now going to stop him talking,’ flashed the communicator; ‘that is to say, we will shut down the action of the centres controlling his speech muscles.’ The electrode was moved a little further downwards. At the same time an assistant held up to Larssen his own photograph, with the question: ‘What is this?’ While the answer could be read in his eyes, his mouth was unable to form it; the electrode was removed — instantly there came his voice through the microphone, clear and strong, course; what a rotten one! My photograph, of course; what a rotten one!’
‘Now we will inhibit recognition; we are going to interfere with his thinking arrangements.’
‘Watch this carefully,’ said Bruce to Nicolette, whose eyes did not leave the screen as she nodded.
‘It’s the star turn.’
‘What would Christopher think of it, I wonder?’
The question inevitably came to her mind, but there was no time to ponder it. Again the electrode was moved, and Larssen was shown a rabbit, to the accompaniment of a roar of delight from the audience. Every face smiled, except that of Larssen. His showed only the pathetic effort, the sadly puzzled look seen on the faces of victims of aphasia. And the laughter quickly subsided as it sank into them that the man with the electrode was deliberately preventing this man from thinking, and that this man in the chair, this Larssen, would not think until the moment came when he would be released. Still, he was making the effort and the tension broke into another ripple of laughter as, his strenuous endeavour ended, he bravely muttered: ‘Think… cow…,’
After this they fitted on to his brain a caplike object, from which a multitude of fine wires ran to the box with the keyboard. Carlier went to this apparatus, and sat down before it.
‘Now,’ announced the communicator, we are — or rather members of the audience who wish to are — going to make him think of something. But don’t be long about it.’
A young man at the end of Nicolette’s row got up and went to a speaking tube similar to that held bythe communicator. There flashed on the screen, ‘Think of a girl’; the audience, careful to indicate nothing to the subject, giggled softly. Carlier glanced swiftly at the screen, smiled, flashed in his turn ‘Too easy,’ and began manipulating his keyboard.
Larssen, wearing the headpiece, had during this short interval been reclining with closed eyes in his chair. Now he began to manifest signs of growing emotion; first he drummed a little with his fingers, clenched each hand loosely, unclenched, fidgeted; he half-opened his eyes, and eyes and mouth smiled; slowly the lips smiled and very gradually pouted to kissing shape; his arms rose from his sides, were stretched before him, and the sound of a series of little kisses was heard quite distinctly by the audience. Carlier thought it time to switch off; the experiment was unequivocally positive; and as soon as Larssen was released the audience broke into irrepressible laughter and applause.
‘That,’ said Carlier, was pretty simple. We will try something a little more difficult, though, as the technique of this experiment is only in its early stages, we cannot expect complete success.’
On to the screen came ‘Make him think of a green square.’
This time there was a longish pause ere Larssen gave any reaction; then, in answer to Carlier’s encouraging ‘What are you thinking of? there came the slow answer: ‘What in the world is that out on my right? … It looks like a sort of box, and keeps changing colour from green to purple….’ Carlier concentrated on the keyboard – then, from Larssen: ‘Now it’s a steady green … not quite … square… rectangle… about fifty per cent. longer than broad….’
Next — ‘Think of 483…’ The same procedure; Larssen and Carlier both now images of concentration; Larssen’s eyes were shut; you could see the sweat running down Carlier’s face as his fingers played with the stops of his miraculous keyboard; at last from Larssen: ’47 … no, wait… 48… 48… 3… no, I can’t do it.’
‘That’s all.’ Whilst the stage revolved, taking Larssen away to be sewn up, the voice sounded again:
‘There will be no more demonstrations this afternoon. But we can give you a good televistic view of the night sky of the southern hemisphere, with Barronda’s comet. As you know, there is an eclipse of the moon on there just now, and the comet will look rather well, we expect, by the side of the coppery moon.’
But Bruce, not wishing to overload Nicolette with impressions, led the way out. She followed him meekly; the Miracle House had more than fulfilled her expectations; but now she wanted to think it out; to wonder what on earth Christopher would have said to it all!
Nicolette, without in the least precisely realizing the cause of it, enjoyed a new and delightful contentment when she was with Bruce. His influence on her virginal mind was akin to that of dry, full sunshine on her growing body. She found hispersonality pervasive, and gave herself without reservation. She responded warmly to the purely physical stimulation of his company. The booming of his deep voice, with its occasionally slurred intonations, the slow and yet expressive gestures of his hands, the narrowing of his eyelids when he sought a definite phrase; his laugh, his frown, the carriage of his body and his intense virility; all these contented her fully. She had not once thought about Bruce, but from the moment when he had loomed into view by the swimming pool, had taken him for granted.
All the time they were together he had flung facts and information at her. He had the schoolmasterish quality of his type in a remarkable degree. Herein he differed profoundly from Christopher, who, impatient of scientific accuracy of thought, looked on facts as dry mental bread and was always eager to enrich them with the butter of fancy. Nicolette had been born a disciple; she was acutely sensitive and responsive to personal influences of all kinds, and her love and admiration grew always in proportion to the power of the mind that bent itself towards her own.
A great deal of Bruce’s information was more or less incomprehensible to her; he had the habit of assuming that every one with whom he shared an experience possessed a priori his own vast knowledge of science. Nicolette, listening to him, felt more than once like a small child of old legend trotting breathlessly along by the side of a giant in seven-leagued boots; it became as exciting as a race to endeavour to keep up with him, and she was satisfied if she could more or less master the general outline of his argument, while the infinite detail flashed past her.
Bruce also was pleased. Already at twenty-five his unusual ability had forced him into more or less constant contact with men many years his seniors. In his day it was taken for granted that a young man should be able more or less to measure his own powers against those of his contemporaries, and Bruce, with his keen and scientifically trained judgment, had yet to meet the man of his own age to whom he could forfeit his self-respect. Women had so far played no part at all in his mental development. A number of attractive and expert entertainers had, since his seventeenth year, adequately slaked the thirst of his physical passions. He had mated several times, and on one occasion had experienced a short but fairly intense sentimental affection; for none of his children had he so far known a more than decorous friendliness. The son of his dreams had not yet been given him; the son for whose mother he longed to feel deep and permanent love.
Bruce summed up Nicolette to himself as ‘a charming little creature.’ He was devoted to Anna, robust, practical, physically courageous, and healthily sensual, but for Nicolette he now felt a big-brotherly emotion that delighted him by the protective instincts it aroused. She was not in the least fragile, yet to him she appeared of flower-like delicacy; her skin, her hair, her hands and feet all seemed of finer texture and moulding than those of any girl or woman he had hitherto encountered. The eager plasticity of her mind aroused in him the wonder and joy of a sculptor who feels beneath his fingers the perfect clay from which to fashion his masterpiece, and in his pleasure at these discoveries he tended to consider her both as more childish and more intelligent than she was, overlooking the influence of Christopher’s whetting personality. To know Nicolette without Christopher was like seeing the reflection of the rainbow in the pool.
At the end of her stay Bruce had promised himself a long visit to Nucleus as a reward for his serious work of the next few months. Nicolette had only remembered her brother when it had seemed to her that a certain phrase of Bruce’s would have particularly pleased him; of her own future and of its various implications she had not thought once. Their conversation had been continuously impersonal; yet at the journey’s end, unperceived, a new road had opened before them both.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.