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The Talking Brain
(Continued)
—and they were as before. He defended himself through the speaking tube, but it was useless. Again and again he tried. Alterations in the position and temperature of the head—soothing or even narcotic solutions gave no relief. In his intervals of sanity Vinton had complained that he was being tortured; had bewailed his helplessness. Days went by—weeks—months. Colleagues, accustomed to regard Murtha as a solitary, saw his strangeness and a few even offered sympathy or aid; but he put them off. He grew gaunt, could neither eat nor sleep, was equally tormented in his laboratory or away from it, and lived near to madness with his grisly guest. I think the placid waxen features must have been worst of all—with their staring, indifferent eyes behind which his victim and his judge spoke out in endless alternate prayer and invective—the face without feeling, hiding hell. One thought alone sustained him and stayed his hand from making an end—he would wait for my return. Somehow I would solve the problem.
Speaking to the Dead Vinton
He rose and led me to the laboratory. The banked apparatus lined the wall. At one end was the figure, from which wires and capillary wicks and tubes led outward. He strode over and lifted the top of the head, so that I saw the gray mass soft within. I turned away. The wax lid, with its well-combed hair, closed down. I wiped my forehead, which was cold and wet.
Murtha put the speaking tube into my hand, and I asked hoarsely, "Vinton, are you in pain? What can I do for you?" The instrument chattered, and Murtha translated in a low voice, "Thank God you have come. He promised to release me now. This place is more terrible than you can know. Set me free. Kill me or let him kill me. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now.
Murtha's notebook was out, and as he spoke he took down the words. Later I learned that he had there every word the telegraph key had uttered—the most cruel indictment any man ever wrote of himself. He was a scientist still, through all the strange workings which through habit he still regarded as his great experiment. No emotion could shake him utterly out of his old self.
The whole thing stunned me. I tried to imagine how it would seem to be a disembodied mind, apart from the obedient creature of bone and muscle that served me. I tried to understand the man whose passion for his work, whose curious callousness, whose inherent cruelty—which was it?—could let him use this boy so, and keep him so. It was too much.
"He asks me for thought!" the machine was saying. "How can I think?" He told me before he put me here that in my body I should suffer so that fancy would be impossible. I am suffering, I have suffered so I cannot think. He is a devil. Let him kill me." The letters ran together into meaningless rattle.
Then I roused at last. "Finish what you started," I said. "Kill him!" He raised his arms over his head as if to ward off my look. "I will—I will," he cried, "But—that will be murder!"
It was ten times murder to keep him there.
Is It Murder?
He stumbled across the room, grasped a laboratory bottle, raised the sleek cover of the head and poured the contents in. The telegraph key fell silent.
We looked at each other. He walked past me to the laboratory door, and then fell into the chair beside the fireplace. I followed slowly, and sat a long time looking at the flames. We were both relaxed. He seemed visibly to grow larger, stronger, now that the fearful load was gone; but when next he spoke it was in a whisper, and I answered him the same way.
"Well—what are you going to do?"
"I don't know, Murtha. Of course you must be insane"
"No, I'm not," he interrupted angrily, "I should have gone crazy if I hadn't told you—but now I have it is all right. I understand what that means—it is a familiar enough psychological phenomenon. No one can forgive himself—we have to have help, even the strongest. But now I am better. I am as sane as you are." He was in fact marvelously recovered.
"But Murtha—why in God's name did you keep him so long? Why did you wait for me?"
"I wanted a witness to science—a man who knew my work and would vouch for my notes. I wanted you to
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