Brain Wave (7 page)

Food Riots in Paris, Dublin,
Rome, Hong Kong

Shipping Approaches Complete Standstill
as Thousands of Workers Quit

THIRD BA’AL CULT REVOLTS IN LOS ANGELES

National Guard Demoralized
Fanatics Seize Key Points-
Street Fighting Continues

N Y. City Hall Warns of Local
Activities of Cultists

TIGER KILLS ATTENDANT, ESCAPES
FROM BRONX ZOO

Police Issue Warning, Organize Hunt

Authorities Consider Shooting All Formidable
Specimens

FRESH RIOTING FEARED IN HARLEM

Police Chief: ‘Yesterday’s Affair
Only a Beginning’—Mounting Panic
Seems Impossible to Halt

PSYCHIATRIST SAYS MAN CHANGED
‘BEYOND COMPREHENSION’

Kearnes of Bellevue: ‘Unpredictable Results
of Neural Speedup Make Old Data and Methods
of Control Invalid—Impossible Even to
Guess Ultimate Outcome’

They had no issue the following day; there was no newsprint to be had.

   Brock thought it was strange to be left in charge of the estate. But a lot of funny things had been happening lately.

First Mr. Rossman had gone. Then, the very next day, Stan Wilmer had been attacked by the pigs when he went in to feed them. They charged him, grunting and squealing, stamping him down under their heavy bodies, and several had to be shot before they left him. Most had rushed the fence then, hitting it together and breaking through and disappearing into the woods. Wilmer was pretty badly hurt and had to be taken to the hospital; he swore he’d never come back. Two of the hands had quit the same day.

Brock was in too much of a daze, too full of the change within himself, to care. He didn’t have much to do, anyway, now that all work except the most essential was suspended. He looked after the animals, careful to treat them well and to wear a gun at his hip, and had little trouble. Joe was always beside him. The rest of the time he sat
around reading, or just with his chin in his hand to think.

Bill Bergen called him in a couple of days after the pig episode. The overseer didn’t seem to have changed much, not outwardly. He was still tall and sandy and slow-spoken, with the same toothpick worried between his lips, the same squinted pale eyes. But he spoke even more slowly and cautiously than he had done before to Brock—or did it only seem that way?

“Well, Archie,” he said, “Smith just quit.”

Brock shifted from one foot to another, looking at the floor.

“Said he wanted to go to college. I couldn’t talk him out of it.” Bergen’s voice held a faintly amused contempt. “The idiot. There won’t be any more colleges in another month. That leaves just you and my wife and Voss and me.”

“Kind of short-handed,” mumbled Brock, feeling he ought to say something.

“One man can do the bare essentials if he must,” said Bergen. “Lucky it’s summer. The horses and cows can stay out of doors, which saves barn cleaning.”

“How about the crops?”

“Not much to do there yet. To hell with them, anyway.”

Brock stared upward. In all his years on the place, Bergen had been the steadiest and hardest worker they had.

“You’ve gotten smart like the rest of us, haven’t you, Archie?” asked Bergen. “I daresay you’re about up to normal now—are-change normal, I mean. And it isn’t over. You’ll get brighter yet.”

Brock’s face grew hot.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything personal. You’re a good man.” He sat for a moment fiddling with the papers on his desk. Then: “Archie, you’re in charge here now.”

“Huh?”

“I’m leaving too.”

“But, Bill—you can’t—”

“Can and will, Archie.” Bergen stood up. “You know, my wife always wanted to travel, and I have some things to think out. Never mind what they are, it’s something I’ve puzzled over for many years and now I believe I see an answer. We’re taking our car and heading west.”

“But—but—Mr. Rossman—he’s de-pen-ding on you, Bill—”

“I’m afraid that there are more important things in life than Mr. Rossman’s country retreat,” said Bergen evenly. “You can handle the place all right, even if Voss leaves too.”

Fright and bewilderment lashed into scorn: “Scared of the animals, huh?”

“Why, no, Archie. Always remember that you’re still brighter than they are, and what’s more important, you have hands. A gun will stop anything.” Bergen walked over to the window and looked out. It was a bright windy day with sunlight torn in the restless branches of trees. “As a matter of fact,” he went on in the same gentle, remote tone, “a farm is safer than any other place I can think of. If the production and distribution systems break down, as they may, you’ll still have something to eat. But my wife and I aren’t getting any younger. I’ve been a steady, sober, conscientious man all my life. Now I wonder what all the fuss and the lost years were about.”

He turned his back. “Good-by, Archie.” It was a command.

Brock went out into the yard, shaking his head and muttering to himself. Joe whined uneasily and nuzzled his palm. He ruffled the golden fur and sat down on a bench and put his head in his hands.

The trouble is
, he thought,
that while the animals and I got smarter, so did everybody else. God in Heaven—what sort of things are going on inside Bill Bergen’s skull?

It was a terrifying concept. The speed and scope and sharpness of his own mind were suddenly cruel. He dared not think what a normal human might be like by now.

Only it was hard to realize. Bergen hadn’t become a god. His eyes didn’t blaze, his voice was not vibrant and resolute, he didn’t start building great engines that flamed and roared. He was still a tall stoop-shouldered man with a weary face, a patient drawl, nothing else. The trees were still green, a bird chattered behind a rosebush, a fly rested cobalt-blue on the arm of the bench.

Brock remembered, vaguely, sermons from the few times he had been in church. The end of the world—was the sky
going to open up, would the angels pour down the vials of wrath on a shaking land, and would God appear to judge the sons of man? He listened for the noise of great galloping hoofs, but there was only the wind in the trees.

That was the worst of it. The sky didn’t care. The Earth went on turning through an endlessness of dark and silence, and what happened in the thin scum seething over its crust didn’t matter.

Nobody cared. It wasn’t important.

Brock looked at his scuffed shoes and then at the strong hairy hands between his knees. They seemed impossibly alien, the hands of a stranger.
Sweet Jesus
, he thought,
is this really happening to me?

He grabbed Joe by the ruffed neck and held him close. Suddenly he had a wild need for a woman, someone to hold him and talk to him and block out the loneliness of the sky.

He got up, sweat cold on his body, and walked over to the Bergens’ cottage. It was his now, he supposed.

Voss was a young fellow, a kid from town who wasn’t very bright and hadn’t been able to find any other employment. He looked moodily up from a book as the other man entered the small living room.

“Well,” said Brock, “Bill just quit.”

“I know. What’re we gonna do?” Voss was scared and weak and willing to surrender leadership. Bergen must have foreseen that. The sense of responsibility was strengthening.

“Well be all right if we stay here,” said Brock. “Just wait it out, keep going, that’s all.”

“The animals—”

“You got a gun, don’t you? Anyway, they’ll know when they’re well off. Just be careful, always lock the gates behind you, treat ’em good—”

“I’m not gonna wait on any damn animals,” said Voss sullenly.

“That you are, though.” Brock went over to the icebox and took out two cans of beer and opened them.

“Look here, I’m smarter than you are, and—”

“And I’m stronger’n you. If you don’t like it, you can
quit. I’m staying.” Brock gave Voss one can and tilted the other to his mouth.

“Look,” he said after a moment, “I know those animals. They’re mostly habit. They’ll stick around because they don’t know any better and because we feed ’em and because—uh—respect for man has been drilled into ’em. There ain’t no bears or wolves in the woods, nothing that can give us trouble except maybe the pigs. Me, I’d be more scared to be in a city.”

“How come?” Despite himself, Voss was overmastered. He laid down the book and took up his beer. Brock glanced at the title:
Night of Passion
, in a two-bit edition. Voss might have gained a better mind, but that didn’t change him otherwise. He just didn’t want to think.

“The people,” said Brock. “Christ knows what they’ll do.” He went over to the radio and turned it on and presently got a newscast. It didn’t mean much to him; mostly it was about the new brain power, but the words were strung together in a way that didn’t make a lot of sense. The voice sounded frightened, though.

After lunch, Brock decided to take a scout through the woods and see if he couldn’t locate the pigs and find out what they were up to. They worried him more than he would admit. Pigs had always been smarter than most people knew. They might also get to thinking about the stores of feed kept on a farm watched by only two men.