9 Tales of Space and Time Read online

  Mrs. Murdock was still thinking and she wanted time to organize her thoughts, so she asked, “What’s a catalyst?” She hardly listened while the doctor explained that a catalyst is an agent that facilitates a chemical reaction without participation in the reaction itself. “It sort of introduces and joins two substances without becoming friendly or joining with either of them.” He added jocosely, “Like a minister at a wedding.”

  Mrs. Murdock asked, “I wonder what it would be worth to Sally?”

  “Oh give her some and we’ll pay her next time.”

  Mrs. Murdock had other ideas but she did not express them. “Put some of it in a bottle and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Sally’s son, Abraham Burns, was indeed a moron. Although the lad was sixteen years old, he had the intelligence of a six-year-old. According to law he had to attend school until he reached the age of eighteen, so he had been put in an ungraded room to vegetate until he could be discharged into the world to make his dim way as best he could.

  The day after his mother had given him a teaspoonful of the purple medicine, he disappeared from school.

  For two weeks he was nowhere to be found. During this time his mother was frantic. She rightly blamed Dr. and Mrs. Murdock for his disappearance. Mrs. Murdock blamed her husband, who forsook his laboratory for his office, not so much for the money, but more to escape his wife’s sharp tongue.

  When Abraham returned to his home, he was hungry and tired but there was a new look in his eyes.

  “Where you been?” his mother demanded.

  “Library,” the boy replied as he gulped down his cornbread and boiled pork. “Can I have some more pork, ma?”

  His mother gave him another serving. “What you been doin’ in the library? Do you know the law’s been around here looking for you?”

  “Law don’t bother me none,” he replied with a laugh. “I’m goin’ to school this afternoon and when I get there, I’m goin’ to give that old principal a piece of my mind. The idea of him puttin’ me in an ungraded room! Why I’m smarter than he’ll ever dream of bein’.”

  Sally had never heard her son talk like this. Somehow it frightened her and she felt chills run up her legs and down her back.

  “No good your talking like white folks,” she said. “Mind what you say to that principal or you’ll get in trouble.”

  When Sally came to work for the Murdocks the following Thursday, she was beside herself with excitement. “God bless you, Dr. Murdock,” she said over and over. “I’ll work for you free the rest of my life. You don’t know what you’ve done for my boy.”

  What Dr. Murdock had done for her boy seemed no less than a miracle. Abraham had indeed seen the principal but he did not get into trouble. Instead, he was given a battery of psychological tests which, the psychologist said, indicated that the boy was a near-genius. He was also given tests in English, history, spelling, arithmetic, and other subjects and as a result of his performance, he was promoted from the ungraded room to the tenth grade.

  “Well, that’s fine,” said Mrs. Murdock who was thinking that she would be spared the necessity of asking the doctor for eight dollars and fifty cents every Thursday. “That’s just fine, Sally, and you won’t have to work for us the rest of your life without pay. If you just come here every Thursday for a year, we’ll feel that you’ve paid us in full.” She turned to her husband. “You better take a dose of that medicine yourself,” she said.

  Dr. Murdock did, but whether he had already reached his peak of intelligence or whether some other cause was operative, he did not know. At any rate he saw no change in himself.

  He gave the medicine to his patients but the results were disappointing. Why, he wondered, had it worked so well on Abraham Bums and upon no one else? He set out to investigate, much to the disgust of Mrs. Murdock who resented the time this took away from his practice.

  Dr. Murdock decided to give his medicine to a second and a third colored moron. Again the results were astounding. One teaspoonful of the purple liquid changed the moron into a near-genius.

  “It works on Negroes but not on white people,” he said. “There must be something present in Negro blood which is absent from white blood, and it is this something, this x-factor, which unites with my compound to make them intelligent. But what can this x-factor be?”

  The question did not interest Mrs. Murdock, but nevertheless she thought she saw possibilities in Dr. Murdock’s compound.

  “There should be a good market for this,” she said. “There are lots of stupid colored people and you should get at least a thousand dollars for everyone you help. People are more stupid than you think. Especially, colored people.”

  Dr. Murdock shook his head. “That’s not the way medicine is practiced,” he told her. “In the first place, we doctors do not patent our discoveries, nor do we keep them secret. We give them freely to the world.”

  “A fine idea,” Mrs. Murdock sneered, “and in the meantime who supports the doctor’s wife and children?”

  Dr. Murdock could not answer this one, so he evaded the question by observing that they had no children and for a time the argument turned upon the question as to who was to blame. Finally, Dr. Murdock returned to the subject nearest his heart. “I can’t publicize this discovery,” he said. “It would defeat my purpose. Not just the colored peoples of this earth but all people must be made intelligent. The world has become so complicated,” he continued as he warmed up to his favorite topic, “that mankind lacks the intelligence to create and repair its social machinery. In other words, people are too dumb to govern themselves and smart men are too evil to be entrusted with the government of their fellows. Democracy is the answer, but democracy cannot succeed until all men are intelligent.” Mrs. Murdock interrupted his soliloquy. “You just don’t want me to have anything,” she said. “Here I live in this damned old shack without even a washing machine and all you worry about is social machinery. A lot of good that does me.”

  “I do worry about you,” Dr. Murdock insisted. “All right. Suppose I gave this compound to the black races. How long, do you suppose, could you hire Sally? With this drug,” and here he held up his purple compound, “the blacks would dominate the earth. No white boy would have a chance to get into medical school, into law school, or to study engineering. The blacks would run everything. And Sally, why, you’d be working for Sally instead of Sally working for you. Don’t tell me I don’t think about you.”

  The thought of working for Sally made Mrs. Murdock shudder. She hated Negroes.

  Furthermore, she knew from her twenty years of experience as Dr. Murdock’s wife that it would be useless to argue with him. He would never commercialize his compound by selling it to Negroes.

  “Well, to hell with it, then,” she exclaimed. Defeated, she slammed the door as she left the room.

  Dr. Murdock followed her to the kitchen. “Do you know what I’m going to do?” he asked her.

  “Go to work?” Mrs. Murdock asked, half sneeringly and half hopefully.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to invent a compound which will make the white race intelligent. Compound B.”

  “And in the meantime,” Mrs. Murdock asked with exasperation which she controlled only by clenching her fists, “And in the meantime will you please tell me how we’re going to live?”

  The question of how Dr. Murdock was going to finance his research involved a few months of acrimonious discussion between himself and his wife.

  Dr. Murdock was convinced that Negro blood contained an x-factor which, uniting with his compound, transformed them into geniuses. He was determined to discover this x-factor, and to do so, he would have to study the composition of Negro blood. But where and how? He confided his problem to his wife. Eventually, it was she who hit upon a practical solution.

  Both of them had been graduated from an Evangelical college which supported a medical school. Both the college and medical school had been created for the purpose of training missionarie
s. This fact occurred to Mrs. Murdock during one of her long, sleepless nights and in the morning she said to her husband, “We’re going to be missionaries. You can live with your colored people and practice medicine for free. But we’re going to be paid out of the missionary funds. Then you can fool around with your damn Compound B all you like. And the fewer patients you have, the better I’ll like it.”

  Mrs. Murdock was a determined woman and not without resources in persuasion. It was through her efforts that Dr. and Mrs. Murdock found themselves in Sydney, Australia, waiting for the ship which was to take them to the Mantu Islands to bring religion and medicine to the heathens and an opportunity for research to Dr. Max Murdock.

  On the deck of the Dutch tramp steamer, Mrs. Clara Murdock contemplated her future with ever-increasing anxiety. Had she done the right thing in uprooting her husband by taking him to the South Pacific to continue his search for Compound B? Were they on another wild goose chase?

  She remembered the time when her husband had brought up his idea for making Compound A, the one which had cured Abraham Burns of feeble-mindedness. He had exclaimed, “This will save the world. Everyone will be superintelligent. No more stupidity anywhere. You’ll be rich. You’ll be able to do anything you want to do.” That was fifteen years ago, and she had fallen into the trap. Money, fame, power—these were the baits at which she always snapped. And now, fifteen years later, she was as far from wealth, fame, and power as she always had been. She was the wife of an obscure missionary doctor, on her way to the Mantu settlements and to God knows what hardships.

  They had come so close to success in Compound A, the one which turned a lot of ordinary chemicals into the compound that could make geniuses out of Negro morons. Why couldn’t he have hit upon a drug that would work on white folk?

  Sweating in the deck chair under the tropical sun, she fell into her favorite fantasy, the one in which she had a million dollars and an assured income of fifty thousand dollars a year. She saw herself presiding over a beautiful home, complete with servants, a large electric freezer and a heated swimming pool. What entertaining she would do! What celebrities in bathing suits would bask in the California sunshine, reclining on gaily colored deck chairs arranged with calculated casualness in her friendly patio. Would she serve cocktails? Of course. Not that she would drink, but why be narrow-minded? Narrowmindedness is the only luxury that a millionaire cannot afford.

  But how to get the million dollars? Mrs. Murdock turned from her fantasy to purposive planning. First: let Dr. Max Murdock invent his Compound B. Second: form a nonprofit corporation, a foundation, and turn the brain-producing medicine over to the nonprofit corporation. By doing this, all profits from its sale would be tax-free. Mrs. Murdock had studied accounting and business administration while at college; she understood the trickeries and shady by-passes of finance. Finally, she, Mrs. Max Murdock, would be the president of the nonprofit corporation; and as president she would get a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year for life. Dr. Max Murdock would also receive a large salary and have a beautiful laboratory in which to continue his research work. Away from home, of course.

  She sighed. It was a beautiful dream, a beautiful iridescent soap bubble, but it all hung upon that old Compound B, as a beautiful iridescent soap bubble hangs upon an ugly clay pipe. Could Dr. Murdock create the clay pipe?

  And what about the Mantus? What were they like? Would they allow the Murdocks to live in peace and quiet so that Dr. Murdock could put together the pipe upon which her soap bubble must depend? The remark made by the booking agent in Sydney had disquieted her. She decided to find out more about these black heathens from the captain of this Dutch tramp steamer on which she was traveling. He had done business with them for years. He ought to know.

  “They are very honest,” the captain told her. “They are trained from infancy never to touch anything that belongs to another person. On all this earth, and I’ve been around, you can depend on that, I’ve never found more honest, reliable people. Why, do you know,” he went on, “they can’t stand being in debt. Do something for one of them and he can’t stand it until he does something of equal value for you.”

  Mrs. Murdock nodded her head understanding. “I don’t like to be under obligation to anyone, myself,” she confided. “Of course, I don’t like to be taken for a sucker, either,” she added.

  The captain did not like Mrs. Murdock’s autobiographical interpolation; it interrupted his chain of thought. If she had been a pretty, young woman it would be different. The autobiography of an attractive woman furnishes the would-be seducer with cues, indications as to what to do or say next. The captain looked at Mrs. Murdock while she was talking and he reflected that twenty years earlier things might have been different. At this late day he wanted none of her comments about herself.

  “They are very moral, too,” he went on. “No hanky-panky. The girls are all virtuous and the people, men and women, are very prudish. Taboo, you know. Marriage with them is all business. The parents arrange the marriages for their children and exchange property. Marriage with them gets to be a kind of business alliance between families. They don’t go for any romantic nonsense.”

  “What do they do for a living?”

  “Traders, mostly. Be careful of them; they’ll trade you out of your eyeteeth. They have about two hundred settlements where they set up stores. They buy and sell to the other Melanesian tribes. Sometimes they buy land and work plantations. The Mantus are landlords and overseers; the more primitive Melanesians do the work. They are practically European in their outlook. All they care about is money and property and getting ahead.”

  Mrs. Murdock felt relieved. “I think I’ll like them even if they are black,” she said. “I was afraid that they’d be quite uncivilized. After all, they can’t help being black.”

  The Murdocks had been established in their tropical island home for seven months and during that time much had happened to confuse and worry Mrs. Murdock. Now, seated before her portable typewriter and making her first report to the Board of Missions, she hardly knew what to tell and what not to tell the Missionary Board. From the veranda she could see the sparkling Pacific through the grove of coconut palms which surrounded the house. Peace and calm lay all about her but there was no peace and calm in Clara Murdock’s mind.

  “The Mantus are very hospitable people,” she wrote, “and they are most grateful for the medical services of Dr. Murdock. Within a week after we arrived, they selected a beautiful building site for our mission and built us a most suitable place in which to live and work for their salvation.” The Missionary Board would be glad to know this, she reflected and then she exclaimed out loud, “What a lie!”

  What really happened was this. When their belongings in many trunks and crates were put ashore, Paytone, the richest man on the island, approached them to ask their purpose in coming to the islands. When they told him that their intention was to bring the blessings of modern medicine and science to the Mantus, Paytone observed that their services would not be in demand and that they, the Murdocks, would not be able to earn a living. Fortunately, Mrs. Murdock had been prepared by the Dutch steamer captain for just such a reception. She replied that they possessed independent means and were prepared to pay their own way. At once, the black man became conciliatory and even obsequious. “Like a real estate salesman in Los Angeles,” Mrs. Murdock told her husband.

  Paytone and Mrs. Murdock were quick to reach an understanding, and as they did so, they discovered that despite their difference in color, they were kindred spirits. Paytone was a short, thick-set Melanesian. His shoulders were broad; his chest was barrel-shaped; and although he was forty-five years old, his arms and legs were as heavily muscled as an American wrestler. His features, while not fine, were not coarse. Mrs. Murdock reflected that if he were not black, she could like him, he looked so like an American business executive. He had worked in Australia during his adolescence and young manhood and spoke English with only a slight Australian accent. Mr
s. Murdock soon found herself enjoying her business relationship with him.

  Together they found a home site in a palm grove on a hilltop overlooking the Pacific. Paytone would not sell, but agreed to rent the property and build a house after Mrs. Murdock’s specifications. Mrs. Murdock was delighted. That very afternoon a group of Melanesians brought bamboo and lumber to the site; within three days the house was completed and their goods were moved in.

  Paytone had carried out his part of the bargain with scrupulous exactness. Dr. Murdock had his laboratory, complete with shelves and tables. Mrs. Murdock had her kitchen equipped with kerosene stove and kerosene-activated refrigerator. These two pieces of equipment fascinated Paytone, who inspected their every detail. He took more than a builder’s casual interest in the house and its furnishings.

  Mrs. Murdock returned her attention to the letter she was trying to write. The Dutch tramp steamer would arrive any day now; she must make herself finish it.

  “Dr. Murdock has discovered a medicine which makes these blacks much more intelligent,” she wrote. “He treated the son of the richest man in the Islands, one Paytone. The results were astounding. Paytone demanded some of this medicine for himself, and ever since he received it, he has been a different man.”

  At least this much, she reflected, was true. Paytone had vainly tried to put his own business sense into the thick head of his youngest son, but the boy’s skull was simply impenetrable. But after taking one teaspoonful of Compound A, the boy took to business as a fly to honey.

  Paytone had been delighted. Consistent with his attitude of not being able to tolerate an obligation, he insisted on the Murdocks’ living rent-free in the home he had built for them. He also inquired into the cost of a dose of this purple liquid for himself. Payment in sago and yams was agreed upon and Paytone was given two teaspoonsful of the purple liquid. The following day he asked Mrs. Murdock to teach him to read and write.