Children of the Gods by D. D. Sharp

Author:D. D. Sharp [Sharp, D. D.]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-03-07T17:11:51.359000+00:00

HE SPOKE of the cyclotron, claiming for it the power to contrive even greater paradoxes of testimony. Electronic ions were the true god, he assured me with great solemnity. They were the thing in itself, the absolute, the creative. His voice grew tense, hoarse, excitedly uncontrolled as he leaned forward as to confide in me.

"Certain bombardments from the cyclotron window can alter atomic structures, change copper into an element that is as pliant as human flesh. In this state it absorbs nourishment. It screams like a child at the lash of a whip. If I hit it and come near, it recoils with whimpering vibrations that run like ripples across its metallic face. You can make your own conclusions as to whether or not it has any of our five senses, or a sixth sense, or is sentient like living tissue. Sometimes I am convinced it understands and fears me. It seems to regard me as an unnatural master and wonders what I have in my bag of tricks it has not yet guessed."

"Flesh can feel," I said. "Flesh is ash, phosphorous, nitrogen. They do not feel nor reason, until arranged in certain proportions within the cranial box. Why not copper, then?"

"That is what I must know," he iterated. "I'd bombard my own flesh until it became frozen as steel, if I were able to record the process."

I wondered then if he had not discovered the fourth dimension where unpredictable miracles exist. No wonder Aneeya was alarmed. She had seen him in action surrounded by the massive towers of magnetic iron and the squat chamber that impelled such sinister velocities. Her fear-swept face came so vividly to my imagination it seemed as though she had entered the room.

Dean Carmody's bloodshot eyeballs close to mine brought me back to reality. Bulging from slowly lifting lids they were as unhuman and pallid as the rest of the big, egg-shaped cranium so abnormally massive under its scanty web of hair.

"Aneeya," I demanded with boldness born of fear. "Why did you not bring her tonight?" The pallid lids lowered slightly as his greenish pupils bored me like searchlights following a fugitive in darkness.

"What do you think of her?" he asked. "There is affinity between you, isn't there, an irresistible tug like that of magnetite upon iron?"

He was crafty. He thought to rip wide open my thoughts, my anxieties. But I could be as smart as he. I avoided his question, and quickly swung the conversation back to Fiske and the absurdity of cohesion. For a long time I did not see Aneeya, nor did her father return to my room. But I saw him many times walking across the campus late in the evening, his bare head silhouetted against the night sky. Was crime upon his thoughts as he passed his colleagues without nod or recognition?

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