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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
"_Wonderful! The World's Unparalleled Upside-Down Man_!"]
Disowned
By Victor Endersby
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The tragic misadventure of a man to whom the sky became anappalling abyss, drawing him ever upward.]
The sky sagged downward, bellying blackly with a sudden summer rain,giving me a vision of catching my train in sodden clothing after theshort-cut across the fields, which I was taking in company with mybrother Tristan and his fiancee.
The sullen atmosphere ripped apart with an electric glare; our earsquivered to the throbbing sky, while huge drops, jarred loose from theair by the thunder-impact, splattered sluggishly, heavily, about us.Little breezes swept out from the storm center, lifting the undersidesof the long grass leaves to view in waves of lighter green. Icomplained peevishly.
"Ah, mop up!" said Tristan. "You've plenty of time, and there's thebig oak! It's as dry under there as a cave!"
"I think that'll be fun!" twittered Alice. "To wait out athunder-storm under a tree!"
"Under a tree?" I said. "Hardly! I'm not hankering to furnish myselfas an exhibit on the physiological effects of a lightning stroke--no,sir!"
"Rats!" said Tristan. "All that's a fairy-tale--trees being dangerousin a thunder-storm!"
* * * * *
The rain now beat through our thin summer clothing, as Tristan seizedAlice's hand and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followedthem at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had beenonly half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercisedan odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluidcoursing through my shriveling nerve-channels grew unpleasantly vivid.
Suddenly I knew I was not going under that tree. I stopped dead,pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing downthe back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather crackedfrom embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice beganto twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to knowwhether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, wemight belong to the piscine tribe all right, but not to thatdecorative branch thereof. To be frank, he used the term "suckers."Feeling exceptionally foolish, I planted myself doggedly in thesoaking grass as Alice turned to dash for the tree.
Then the thing happened; the thing which to this hour makes the fabricof space with its unknown forces seem an insecure and eery garment forthe body of man. Over the slight rise beyond the tree, as the aircrackled, roared and shook under the thunder-blasts, there appeared anobject moving in long, leisurely bounds, drifting before the wind, andtouching the ground lightly each time. It was about eighteen inches indiameter, globular, glowing with coruscating fires, red, green, andyellow; a thing of unearthly and wholly sinister beauty.
Alice poised with one foot half raised, and shrieked at Tristan, halfterrified, half elated at the sight. He wheeled quickly, there underthe tree, and slowly backed away as the thing drifted in to keep himcompany in his shelter. We could not see his face, but there was astiffness to his figure indicating something like fear. Suddenlythings I had read rose into my memory. This was one of those objectsvariously called "fire-balls," "globe-lightning," "meteors," and thelike.
I also recalled the deadly explosive potencies said to be sometimespossessed by such entities, and called out frantically:
"Tristan! Don't touch it! Get away quickly, but don't disturb theair!"
He heard me and, as the object wavered about in the comparative calmunder the tree, drifting closer to him, started to obey. But itsuddenly approached his face, and seized with a reckless terror, hesnatched off his hat and batted at it as one would at a pestilent bee.Instantly there was a blinding glare, a stunning detonation, and aviolent air-wave which threw me clear off my feet and to the ground. Isat up blindly with my vision full of opalescent lights and my earsringing, unable to hear, see, or think.
* * * * *
Slowly my senses came back; I saw Alice struggling upright in thegrass before me. She cast a quick glance toward the tree, then, stillon her knees, covered her face and shuddered. For a long time, itseemed, I gazed toward the tree without sight conveying any mentaleffect whatever. Quite aside from my dazed state, the thing was toobizarre; it gave no foothold to experience for the erection ofunderstanding.
My brother's body lay, or hung, or rested--what term could describeit?--with his stomach across the _under_ side of a large limb a fewfeet above where he had stood. He was doubled up like a hairpin, hisabdomen pressed tightly up against this bough, and his arms, legs andhead extended stiffly, straightly, skyward.
Getting my scattered faculties and discoordinate limbs together, Imade my way to the tree, the gruesome thought entering my mind thatTristan's body had been transfixed by some downward-pointing snag asit was blown up against the limb, and that the strange stiffness ofhis limbs was due to some ghastly sudden rigor mortis brought on byelectric shock. Dazed with horror and grief, I reached up to hisclothing and pulled gently, braced for the shock of the falling body.It remained immovable against the bough. A harder tug brought noresults either. Gathering up all my courage against the vision of thesupposed snag tearing its rough length out of the poor flesh, I leapedup, grasping the body about chest and hips, and hung. It came loose atonce, without any tearing resistance such as I had expected, butmanifesting a strong elastic pull upward, as though some one werepulling it with a rope; as I dropped back to the ground with it, theupward resistance remained unchanged. Nearly disorganized entirely bythis phenomenon, it occurred to me that his belt or some of hisclothing was still caught, and I jerked sidewise to pull it loose. Itdid not loosen, but I found myself suddenly out from under the tree,my brother dragging upward from my arms until my toes almost left theground. And there was obviously no connection between him and thetree--or between him and anything else but myself, for that matter. Atthis I went weak; my arms relaxed despite my will, and an incrediblefact happened: I found the body sliding skyward through my futilegrasp. Desperately I got my hands clasped together about his wrist,this last grip almost lifting me from the earth; his legs andremaining arm streamed fantastically skyward. Through the haze whichseemed to be finally drowning my amazed and tortured soul, I knew thatmy fingers were slipping through one another, and that in anotherinstant my brother would be gone. Gone--where? Why and how?
* * * * *
There was a sudden shriek, and the impact of a frantic body againstmine, as Alice, whom I had quite forgotten, made a skyward runningjump and clasped the arm frantically to her bosom with both her own.With vast relief, I loosed my cramped fingers--only to feel her silkengarments begin to slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinctthan sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that!As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waitingdumbly for the next move--quite _non compos_ by this time, I think.
"Quick, Jim!" she shrieked. "Quick, under the tree! I can't hold himlong!"
Very glad indeed to be told what to do, I obeyed. Under her directionwe got the body under a low limb and wedged up against it, where withour feet both now on the ground, we balanced it with little effort.Feverishly, once more at her initiative, we took off our belts andstrapped it firmly; whereupon we collapsed in one another's
arms,shuddering, beneath it.
The blase reader may consider that we here manifested the charactersof sensitive weaklings. But let him undergo the like! Thesupernatural, or seemingly so, has always had power to chill thehottest blood. And here was an invisible horror reaching out of thesky for its prey, without any of the ameliorating trite features whichwould temper an encounter with the alleged phenomena of ghostland.
For a time we sat under that fatal tree listening to the dreary drenchof rain pouring off the leaves, quivering nerve-shaken to thethunderclaps. Lacking one another, we had gone mad; it was thebeginning of a mutual dependence in the face of the unprecedented,which was to grow to something greater during the bizarre days tofollow.
There was no need of words for each of us to know that the other wasstruggling frantically for a little rational light on the _outre_catastrophe in which we were entangled.
It never once occurred to us that my brother might still bealive--until a long shuddering groan sounded above us. In combinedhorror and joy we sprang up. He was twisting weakly in the belts,muttering deliriously. We unfastened him and pulled him to the ground,where I sat on his knees while she pressed down on his shoulders, andso kept him recumbent, both horrified at the insistent lift of hisbody under us.
She kissed him frantically and stroked his cheeks, I feeling utterlywithout resource. He grew stronger, muttered wildly, and his eyesopened, staring upward through the tree limbs. He became silent, andstiffened, gazing fixedly upward with a horror in his wild blue gazewhich chilled our blood. What did he see there--what dire other-worldthing dragging him into the depths of space? Shortly his eyes closed,and he ceased to mutter.
* * * * *
I took his legs under my arms--the storm was clearing now--and we setout for home with gruesomely buoyant steps, the insistent pullremaining steady. Would it increase? We gazed upward with terrifiedeyes, becoming calmer by degree as conditions remained unchanged.
When the country house loomed near across the last field, Alicefaltered:
"Jim, we can't take him right in like this!"
I stopped.
"Why not?"
"Oh, because--because--it's too ridiculously awful. I don't know justhow to say it--oh, can't you see it yourself?"
In a dim way, I saw it. No cultured person cares to be made a centerof public interest, unless on grounds of respect. To come walking inin this fashion, buoyed balloon-like by the body of this loved one,and before the members of a frivolous, gaping house party--ah, even Icould imagine the mingled horror and derision, the hysterics among thewomen, perhaps. Nor would it stop there. Rumors--and heaven only knowswhat distortions such rumors might undergo, having their source in theincredible--would range our social circle like wildfire. And thenewspapers, for our families are established and known--no, itwouldn't go.
I tied Tristan to a stile and called up Jack Briggs, our host, from aneighboring house, explained briefly that Tristan had met with anaccident, asked him to say nothing, and explained where to bring themachine. In ten minutes he had maneuvered the heavy sedan across therough wet fields. And then we had another problem on our hands: to letJack into what had happened without shocking him into uselessness. Itwas not until we got him to test Tristan's eery buoyancy with his ownhands that we were able to make him understand the real nature of ourproblem. And after that, his comments remained largely gibberish forsome time. However, he was even quicker than we were to see the needfor secrecy--he had vivid visions of the political capital whichopposing newspapers would make of any such occurrence at hisparty--and so we arranged a plan. According to which we drove to theback of the house, explained to the curious who rushed out thatTristan had been injured by a stroke of lightning, and rushed theclosely wrapped form up to his room, feeling a great relief at havingsomething solid between us and the sky. While Jack went downstairs todismiss the party as courteously as possible, Alice and I tied mybrother to the bed with trunk straps. Whereupon the bed and patientplumped lightly but decisively against the ceiling as soon as weremoved our weight. While we gazed upward open mouthed, Jack returned.His faculties were recovering better than ours, probably because hisaffections were not so involved, and he gave the answer at once.
"Ah, hell!" said he. "Pull the damn bed down and spike it to thefloor!" This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation.Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was sufferingseverely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partialelectrocution. So we called up Dr. Grosnoff in the nearest town.
* * * * *
Grosnoff after our brief but disingenuous explanation, threw off thebed covers in a business-like way, then straightened up grimly.
"And may I ask," he said with sarcastic politeness, "since when astrait-jacket has become first-aid for a case of lightning stroke?"
"He was delirious," I stammered.
"Delirious my eye! He's as quiet as a lamb. And you've tied him downso tightly that the straps are cutting right into him! Of allthe--the--" He stopped, evidently feeling words futile, and before wecould make an effective attempt to stop him, whipped out a knife andcut the straps. Tristan's unfortunate body instantly crashed againstthe ceiling, smashing the lathing and plaster, and remaining halfembedded in the ruins. A low cry of pain rose from Alice. Dr. Grosnoffstaggered to a chair and sat down, his eyes fixed on the ceiling witha steady stare--the odd caricature of a man coolly studying aninteresting phenomenon.
My brother appeared to be aroused by the shock, struggling about inhis embedment, and finally sat up. Up? _Down_, I mean. Then he_stood_, _on the ceiling_, and began to walk! His nose had beenbruised by the impact, and I noticed with uncomprehending wonder thatthe blood moved slowly _upward_ over his lip. He saw the window, andwalked across the ceiling to it upside down. There he pushed the topof the window down and leaned out, gazing up into the sky with somesort of fascination. Instantly he crouched on the ceiling, hiding hiseyes, while the house rang with shriek after shriek of mortal terror,speeding the packing of the parting guests. Alice seized my arm, herfingers cutting painfully into the flesh.
"Jim," she screamed. "I see it now--don't you? His gravity's allchanged around--he weighs _up_! He thinks the sky's _under_ him!"
The human mind is so constructed that merely to name a thing oddlysmooths its unwonted outlines to the grasp of the mind; the conceptionof a simple reversal of my brother's weight, I think, saved us allfrom the padded cell. That made it so commonplace, such an everydaysort of thing, likely to happen to anybody. The ordinary phenomenon ofgravitation is no whit more mysterious, in all truth, than that whichwe were now witnessing--but we are born to _it_!
* * * * *
Dr. Grosnoff recovered in a manner which showed considerable caliber.
"Well," he grunted, "that being the case, we'd best be looking afterhim. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns,psychasthenia--that's going to be a long-drawn affair--bruises, maybea little concussion, and possibly internal injury--that was equivalentto a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, and I'll neverforgive myself if.... Get me a chair!"
With infinite care and reassuring words, the big doctor with our helppulled my brother down, the latter frantically begging us not to lethim "fall" again. Holding him securely on the bed and trying toreassure him, Grosnoff said:
"Straps and ropes won't do. His whole weight hangs in them--they'llcut him unmercifully. Take a sheet, tie the corners with ropes, andlet him lie in that like a hammock!"
It took many reassurances as to the strength of this arrangementbefore Tristan was at comparative peace. Dr. Grosnoff effected anexamination by slacking off the ropes until Tristan lay a couple offeet clear of the bed, then himself lay on the mattress face up,prodding the patient over.
The examination concluded, he informed us that Tristan's symptoms weresimply those of a general physical shock such as would be expected inthe case of a man standing close to the cente
r of an explosion, thoughfrom our description of the affair he could not understand how mybrother had survived at all. The glimmering of an explanation of thisdid not come until a long time afterward. So far as physical conditionwas concerned, Tristan might expect to recover fully in a matter ofweeks. Mentally--the doctor was not so sure. The boy had gone througha terrible experience, and one which was still continuing--mightcontinue no one knew how long. We were, said the doctor, up against atrick played by the great Sphinx, Nature, and one which, so far as heknew, had never before taken place in the history of all mankind.
"There is faintly taking shape in my mind," he said, "the beginning ofa theory as to how it came about. But it is a theory having manyramifications and involving much in several lines of science, withmost of which I am but little acquainted. For the present I have nomore to say than that if a theory of causation can be worked out, itwill be the first step toward cure. But--it may be the only step.Don't build hopes!"
Looking Alice and me over carefully, he gave us a each a nervesedative and departed, leaving us with the feeling that here was a manof considerably wider learning than might be expected of a small-towndoctor. In point of fact, we learned that this was the case. Thespecialist has been described as a "man who knows more and more aboutless and less." In Dr. Grosnoff's mind, the "less and less" outweighedthe "more and more."
* * * * *
Tristan grew stronger physically; mentally, he was intelligent enoughto help us and himself by keeping his mind as much as possible off hiscondition, sometimes by sheer force of will. Meantime, Dr. Grosnoff,realizing that his patient could not be kept forever tied in bed,