Part 1

DARK RECESS

By George O. Smith

(author of "The World-Mover")

FEATURE NOVEL OF COSMIC SECRETS

Clifford Maculay was the one man who could explain the curious shift in the universe, which was far more than the academic matter it seemed to be. But Maculay had been "cured", and was no longer interested....

There are two basic ways to treat personality difficulties. One: change the personality. Two: remove the psychic blocks which are at the root of the trouble. The first method may be simpler, in some cases, and may be accomplished without apparent harm. But what if an individual's worth to society is so entangled with his personality troubles that when you change the latter, the former disappears, too?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Future combined with Science Fiction Stories July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

1

Clifford Maculay reacted instantly to the doctor's question; he became half-angry, completely indignant.

Doctor Hanson smiled. "You're not angry at the question," he said quietly; "you're not even surprised that a man of seventy should ask such a question. What you are indignant about is that your mind denies such a need. Cliff, you're trying to run your body with your brain."

"Naturally. So what has my love life--?"

"You've got glands too," remarked Hanson. "And some of them are damned important to mental balance."

Maculay sat forward on the chair, tense and alert. He was not accustomed to being browbeaten; Maculay gave the orders and other people jumped. Now that he was on the receiving end of the deal, he was preparing for the battle of wits. But Hanson had seen many such men in forty-odd years of medicine. Hanson did not see Maculay the Mind; he saw a man of thirty-eight, soft from lack of exercise, underweight from the constant burning away of nervous energy. He saw a fine physical machine being run into an early grave or a sanatorium, because the mind behind those sharp blue eyes was too damned ignorant to understand that it could not trade the worn-out body for a new model with white sidewall tires, automatic defroster, and long-playing record attachment.

"Relax," said Hanson; "I'm not going to argue with you."

"Good. Now let's get down to business."

"Exactly what do you want?"

Maculay pondered for a moment. "Do you understand variable-matrix radiation mechanics?"

"Probably as little as you know synaptic pressure theory."

"That's the trouble. I can't explain in detail what I want. I can only explain by analogy. Look, Doc, for eight years I've been experimenting with some mathematics along an entirely new field of theory. Indications are that gross matter can exceed the velocity of light under certain conditions; but in attempting to define these conditions by mathematical formulation I've hit a snag."

"What manner of snag?"

Cliff leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He was physically relaxed, now, but only Doctor Hanson could hazard a guess as to how much of this man's metabolism went into the job of keeping that big brain in high gear.

"Physical matter cannot, of course, exceed the speed of light in universal space. However, normal space is no longer normal when it is warped by electrostatic fields, electromagnetic flux, or gravitational lines. These universal effects produce a warping of physical space to such an extent that the warped area is no longer a part of, or connected in any way with the universal space we know. It becomes a small island of separate space which may be accelerated or retarded. That's the snag, Doctor."

"I don't see it."

"I always end up with one equation that has two answers. Theoretically, one must be real and one must be imaginary, somewhat like the solution to a simple quadratic; in that case you can disregard the answer that tells you that you are confronted with a minus quantity of mass, for instance, and you can select the positive quantity as being correct with neither difficulty nor ambiguity. In this case, being more complex by far, I find two roots indicating a positive and negative space, mutually inimical. And, what causes the trouble is the fact that the determinant depends upon the development of a negative-gravitic field."

"Well--?"

Maculay laughed bitterly. "This is sheer nonsense; like dividing by zero."

Hanson shrugged. "So?"

"Obviously I have made an error."

* * * * *

Doctor Hanson again shrugged, wondering what the man was getting at. Electrical engineers confronted with a tough problem in vector analysis consulted other electrical engineers; they did not bring their unruly vectors to a psychiatrist or physician and hope to have them solved. They came to medicine and psychiatry when they began trying to integrate and plot the rhythmic sway of their secretary's hips, or began to see the outline of a woman's lips in the catenary of a suspension bridge.

"Obviously," nodded Hanson.

"So here it is again, Doctor. I've been back and forth across my equations for the past eleven months and always come back to the same errata."

"But what can I do?"

"Someone must check my equations--someone who is viewing them as a competent, but unbiased, observer."

"An excellent idea."

Maculay spread helpless hands wide. "I sound like an egomaniac," he said, "but there is no other man on earth who can follow my mathematics but I."

"Not even the thirteen fellows who understand Einstein?"

Maculay snorted. "Understood," he said emphasizing the last syllable. "Einstein was difficult when first made public; nowadays there are plenty of men who know more about Einstein's theories than the man himself. In my own case it is similar. No other man has had a chance to study my theories; I have a few adherents who try to follow them, but they have not the full time to put to the job and so they are far behind. Besides, I'd trust none of them."

"I see."

"Ergo, Doc, what I say is this: You are to hypnotize me. You are to give me a post-hypnotic suggestion that I am to forget the error in my calculations, that I am to recheck them carefully and completely, without knowing that some factor in them is in error. Then and only then can I locate it; as soon as I locate this error, I am to remember everything."

"Supposing your mathematics is not in error but is entirely correct--suppose no error truly exists?"

"There is that possibility; but if the paradox is true, I will have at least been forced to forget that I once believed an error existed. But I must check this math as a competent and unbiassed observer."

"That can be done."

"Good; now let's get going and let's have no more nonsense about my glands."

"This I can do; I will help you."

Maculay relaxed while the doctor produced his hypnoscope and set it up on the table. With Maculay's cooperation, he was in the hypnotic trance in a matter of seconds.

* * * * *

Doctor Hanson looked at the man. This was probably the first time that the entire man had relaxed, mind and body, in years. But Hanson did not see the point: Maculay may have run into a mathematical paradox, but it was not of honest mathematics. Figures do not lie, but liars can figure; it is more than possible that a brain will introduce an error in order that the facts of the case be unrecognized. Hanson nodded quietly. Man was mind and glands and body and appetite, bones, hide, and ulcers. If a sick mind can produce a sickness of the body, the reverse is true. Cliff's error was not in his mathematics; it was in his life.

Of all the things Maculay needed, more work along the same line with no relaxation was not among the list. What Maculay needed--or would eventually get in a sanatorium--was a long period of relaxation. Fun and games; a bit of competition; a hangover, and the sheer physical delight of wrapping an arm about the slender waist of a female and swaying to and fro to the rhythmic beat of tomtoms and the howl of a well beaten clarinet.

At seventy, Jay Hanson had learned the impatience of youth. Maculay had a lot of time to finish his equations. Scissor a year of Maculay's life and he could then finish this; let him go on as he was and he would burn himself out at a mere fifty.

He looked at Maculay seriously. "You have been working too hard," he said.

The reply came instantly, like the echo of an automaton.

Hanson nodded to himself. It was obvious; when the burning drive of that demanding brain was stilled, the subconscious recognized the fact that Maculay was working too hard.

"Maculay's Equations are in error," said the doctor.

Cliff Maculay stirred, shook his head, and began to disagree violently. Then he relaxed, since he had come there to solve an error; but he had become tense again.

Hanson shook his head unhappily; this was going to take time and effort. He must take this conversion slowly, since it was apparent that the slightest touch upon dangerous ground would trigger the big brain into reaction and perhaps undo in the space of a second the work of several hours.

Gradually, prying and working, Hanson began to elicit information from Maculay. Bits of character traits, an impulse suppressed, an attitude formed in youth, an impediment created to shut out the demands of normal living, desires for this and wants for that. Hanson looked at them clinically, then either reversed them or let them stand, depending upon their possible affect. Each phase took time; it is not simple to take a man who has never held a billiard cue and make him believe that excellence at the pool table is an evidence of a sharp eye and fine coordination instead of the result of a misspent youth. And Cliff's attitude towards women was troublesome. His mother, the youthful reading of too much of King Arthur, or Lord knew what, had given Maculay the odd idea that a woman was a sort of goddess, not to be touched by the hand of clod-like man. To reverse this attitude towards a more practical attitude was difficult, since the reversion must not be complete. Hanson did not want Cliff to reverse completely, to the other extreme, where the man would go out and start treating women like galley slaves, punching bags, or chattels--which, in fact, was about the way Maculay had expected to be treated.

Hanson took a brief rest from the hard job, by recalling and telling Maculay every risque story he could remember.

Then he was at it again, prying and probing, and reversing Maculay's attitude on gambling, liquor, tobacco, and politics. He made a slight revision on Cliff's idea of proper dress; the physicist had a horror of appearing dirty, even when engaged in the dirtiest of jobs. With some effort the doctor convinced Maculay that a mechanic emerging from beneath a car with a face full of grime was not automatically an undesirable character, either to men or women. The crux of the matter was whether he liked that condition of dirt or not.

* * * * *

With a number of factors accomplished, Hanson took a deep breath, felt his pulse, counted his heartbeat and respiration, and fished for a pill from his desk and swallowed it quickly before he went on. The hardest part was to come.

Cliff took himself seriously, far too seriously. With delicate verbal barbs, Hanson began to poke fun at some of the imbecilities of pedantic reasoning. Maculay offered resistance at first, but Hanson worked him over the ground carefully, pointing out that Maculay, the only man in the world capable of understanding the variable-matrix wave mechanics, was in no position to snort at his fellow man. After all, Gertrude Stein had once gained great popularity on the theory that no one could understand her and therefore she must be sheer genius. Eventually he had Cliff laughing over an old limerick:

_The wonderful family Stein, There's Gert, and there's Ep, and there's Ein. Gert's poems are bunk; Ep's statues are junk, And nobody understands Ein._

Hanson worked over Maculay's Equations with a bit of acid humor. In third person, he had Maculay chuckling over the physicist who worked for years on some mathematics that did not come out even. Gradually, the doctor convinced his patient that he was not Clifford Maculay, the renowned abstract mathematician, but Maculay's nephew--the black sheep of the family--who viewed the brainy members with as much distaste as they viewed him. Young Cliff had often been mistaken for his brilliant uncle, and found this funny, since he felt himself smarter than his namesake; he, young Cliff, had fun whereas his uncle had only hard work to show for his life. Actually, any pondering of his uncle's work made young Cliff sick to his stomach, and he was glad to ignore such things; the whole theory was so much stupidity.

And for one year, Clifford Maculay, physicist, would be as different from his former self as was possible without breaking the law to bits.

"At the end of this year, you will return to your apartment in Washington, take a good night's sleep, and awaken as Doctor Clifford Maculay. Then, and only then will you remember; and you will realize furthermore that this job of relaxation has been forced upon you for your own good. You will then be able to solve the error in your calculations."

Hanson paused for a moment, pondering as to the advisability of giving the hypnotized physicist a key-word to bring him out of the post-hypnotic suggestion. But Doctor Hanson was seventy years old; he knew all too well that a year from this moment he might be dead and gone. He viewed it calmly, but not disinterestedly, and decided against a key-word; it only introduced a conflicting factor.

Let the man awaken of his own accord.

Then he awakened Maculay, who sat back in his chair with a chuckle, reached for a cigarette from the box on Hanson's desk, and puffed at it with relish.

"How do you feel?" asked the doctor.

"Like a million," said Maculay.

"Good. Come back in one year. I'll have my girl make an appointment. For now, we're all finished."

* * * * *

Doctor Hanson stood and watched Maculay head for the door; the physicist's step had a certain bounce, curtailed by the fact that the unused muscles of his body were not used to the catlike stride of the completely balanced, healthy man. A few days of that sort of bounce and Maculay would have it. The door closed exuberantly and Cliff was on his way to a one-year binge.

He paused once outside of the doctor's office. Ava Longacre was bent over some notes, and Cliff viewed her contemplatively. She stood up and smiled at him. It was a sort of professional smile, the kind she gave all of the doctor's visitors; it made no difference to Ava whether the visitor were seventy or seventeen. She gave each of them the same dry smile.

Cliff crossed the office in a quick stride and put both hands on her shoulders. He drew her forward, felt her instant stiffening relax; with a cheerful upsurge of spirit he put an arm around her, tilted her face upward with his free hand and kissed her. He felt her yield to him, press against him softly, then respond.

Cliff knew he could have her, but in that moment he also knew that he really did not want her. Ava was a bit over thirty; she had a quiet, mature quality--good-looking, but far past the radiant flush of youth. A hard-working woman, efficient, intelligent, Hanson's nurse, medical aide, and receptionist, did not offer the fun and frivolity that Cliff Maculay sought.

He stepped back and smiled down at her. "Nice," he said with a chuckle. Then he kissed her again, lightly on the mouth, turned, and left the office.

Her cheeks burning, Ava Longacre stamped into Hanson's office.

"What goes on?" she demanded. "What on earth did you do to that man?"

"Why?"

"He came in here like the proverbial absent-minded professor, his eyes blank and sort of muttering to himself about radiation mechanics or the like. He didn't even look at me."

"Then?"

"On his way out he sort of grabbed me and kissed me."

Hanson nodded appreciatively. "You liked it?" he chuckled.

Ava sat down, landing in the chair with a thud. "When a man puts a hand on me and my knees turn to jelly," she said quietly, "I oscillate madly between hating his guts and wanting him to try it again. That sort of thing would play hell with a girl's morals."

"Shucks," chuckled Hanson. "I've just violated all of the rules of medicine. I've just treated a man against his will--and turned an introvert inside out."

"You sure did," nodded Ava.

"He'll be back again in a year--and normal, then."

"But how do you turn an introvert inside out?"

"Reverse his sense of values."

"But--"

"His memory pattern? That's difficult. To make him more or less stable for that year, I sort of tampered with his memory on a temporary basis, also. He thinks he is all sorts of things that he has never been--but has probably wanted to be from time to time."

"Is that why he kissed me?"

"Partly. But you're the woman he should have when normal, not as he is now. That's--"

"So you gave him a false memory, complete with a lot of details to explain just about every possible question, hey?"

"Yep."

"And just how was this background furnished?" she demanded.

"Remember it is only temporary and need not be complete. Just sufficient to justify its being."

"Don't quibble."

Hanson laughed. "Well, when a man of seventy starts to furnish a bit of background for a youth of thirty-odd, what better than a few true experiences from the old man's past."

Ava Longacre snorted. "I'll bet you were a hellion in your youth," she snapped. "And in your old age you're a nasty old lecher."

Hanson squinted at her. "I wish I were forty again," he leered. "But worry not, m'lady. Maybe the basic idea was mine, but Maculay kissed you on his own account. And I commend his taste."

Ava uttered a single, explosive "Oh!" and stalked out angrily, slamming the door behind her. She leaned against the hardwood panels and listened to the roar of Hanson's laughter die in a slow gurgle. She pegged it properly as part hysteria; the hours of hard mental effort spent on Maculay would have taken a lot of pep out of the Old Boy, and he would then clutch at anything remotely amusing and make an uproariously funny incident out of it. But this was not funny.

She remembered Maculay's hand on her, and her body went supple against the door. Then by sheer mental effort she snapped her head erect and walked from the door, determined to forget it.

Ava did not recognize the fact that for hours, days, or months--and perhaps forever--she might be telling herself that it was a good thing to forget about.

2

The _Island Princess_ took off on schedule, arrowed into the blackness of space, and set her nose-sight on Venus. She was forty hours a-space when it happened. And the _Island Princess_ was one of the four spacecraft close enough to the thing to have its presence recorded in the celestial globe.

It came with a roar of sound from the radio, which eliminated all communications instantly, and continued on a diminishing power for an hour until it fell below the cosmic noise level. It appeared in the celestial globe as an ebon shaft; measurements made it a half mile in diameter but extending from beyond the range of the globe in both directions. It was as straight as it could be. On the other ships, the same facts were noted.

Upon the several planets of the solar system, cosmic-ray counters went crazy. Showers of unprecedented violence bathed the solar system in a raging torrent of high-energy particles. The showers continued, diminishing in intensity as time went on; the slower particles arriving last, of course.

But the one thing that caused consternation throughout the entire solar system was a sickening _shift_. Spacecraft and planet gave a tiny, queasy slip, sort of like a heavy man who has just trod upon a grape. Things move according to their mass and according to their distance from the black shaft of energy. On planets, it was just enough to cause fear; the most infinitesimal waver in the constant course of the planets awakens racial fear. In spacecraft, the shift was more violent, but here people were prepared for a bit of wobble.

The auroras flamed bright for an hour; as soon as the shift had shaken the wits out of every human in the solar system, the big observatories set their big glasses on the fixed stars and consulted quadrant-protractors to ascertain what the shift had done. On photographic plates of operating telescopes, the shift was barely noticeable upon the images of brighter stars. The dimmer ones had danced aside and back too swiftly for the emulsion to register. But it had been a swift jiggle up and back; now things were as they had been once more save for the big mystery that caused the radio lanes to buzz, and made men ask their neighbors what it could have been.

* * * * *

Captain Bardell of the _Island Princess_ went to the salon after the radio had told him what little could be told about the incident. He told the passengers what he knew as a matter of interest, and because they had been as close to the phenomenon as any other human being.

Cliff Maculay, bent back across the bar with his elbows hooked over the edge and a glass in his right hand, chuckled amusedly.

"But this isn't funny," complained a comely woman in a strapless gown at his left.

"Dorothy, darling, you're wrong," he laughed.

"I suppose you know what it is?" came the cynical reply from the red-head on Cliff's right.

"Helen, that 'thing' was a manifestation of the application of variable-matrix wave mechanics to intrinsic space by the real and/or unreal roots of negative space."

"That's utter gibberish."

Maculay laughed. "Verily," he chuckled. "But my revered Uncle Clifford will--about now--be telling the world the same thing in about the same incomprehensible collection of dictionary fodder."

Captain Bardell heard, and came to stand before Maculay. "Clifford?" he said uncertainly. "Clifford Maculay?"

"Right name but the wrong character," said Maculay, sipping from his glass. "Doctor Clifford is the genius in the family; Cliff, the nephew, has only genius for getting into mischief without getting into trouble about it. To each his own," he chanted, lifting his glass in a toast.

Bardell was openly disappointed. "I'd hoped you might give us an idea of what was going on."

Maculay turned, rapped the bar with the heel of his glass to get attention, and then turned back to the captain. "I can," he said cheerfully. "But do you have the faintest idea of why nephew was relegated to the Outer Darkness?"

Everybody, listening to Cliff, shook their collective heads.

Maculay laughed. "They had me studying under him for years. Doctor Maculay is a slave driver and a martinet. Cigarettes, liquor, and wild women are annoying things that detract from the single-purposedness of life. Doctor Maculay is the kind of duck who would rather work overtime than make frolic with a dame--and he expects everybody who works with him to do the same. He also pays them accordingly, since a small room, a sterile diet, and a minimum of clothing are all that is necessary for any man dedicated to science."

"So?" asked Bardell, a bit angry at this man for belittling one of the solar system's greatest minds.

"So Cliff, the ne'er-do-well, used to take a few of Uncle Clifford's well-flanged ideas, add a character, stir well with a villain and a dame, and emerge regularly with a bit of science fiction. I was Ed Lomax, one of Larimore's cover names until John used the right name instead of the pseudonym, and people started to write fan letters to Clifford Maculay, MM, PhD, et al. Shortly afterwards I was out of a job."