Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

With a sudden clarity he realized that, to regain his youth, it was not so much a new body which would be needed; that which he had would serve his purpose well enough, could it only throw off the appearances of thinning hair and growing corpulence, which disguised it from the youth around it; it was a new youth of the soul, an intervening Lethe, which would be needed... He had made no discovery in that direction. Physically, youth might continue, but, as the millenniums passed — even the centuries...

VII

He made efforts to regain the standpoint of his own youth, that he might explore its differences. He became absent-minded in reminiscence... He used to write poetry then. He had not done anything quite so foolish for many years. All the same, he had done it rather well. The only weak point was that the poems were usually left unfinished. It was so much easier to get the first lines. The memories of youth moved him to the old impulse. With a sudden keen recovery of emotion he remembered his first meeting with Molly... the picnic under the trees... the first shy kiss on her shoulder... That was before he had gone to college... He had always been loyal to her, and she to him... He was not of the shallower sort of those that change lightly... He loved her now as he had loved her then — but oh! the world between...

I can not stand where once I stood. It takes a life to learn
That none may steer his course to shear the trail of light astern.

That was well expressed. He would have written those lines down twenty years ago. He would have intended to make them into a complete poem. But he knew better now. He knew that they would never be finished. He knew so much — about himself, and others. He even knew his own weaknesses.

That was the trouble. The inexperience of youth was something which could never be recovered, and the experience of age was no substitute. He realized that to abolish age is to abolish youth also.

Seeing this, his mind startled itself with a further possibility — might it be equally true to say that to abolish death would be to abolish life? In a moment’s vision he saw life and death in a conflict from which each wins recurrent victory: he saw them interdependent, and this strife as the condition on which they both existed...

VIII

He imagined his discovery applied to the vegetable world; an oak tree in perpetual vigor... Would there be no place left for fruit-time and harvest? For the young growths of spring? There was the question of food — corn must still be grown for food, and mown down in due season — or perhaps there might be developed roots of a continuing vigor? But the question of food was not merely a human one. All life grew by feeding upon the life around it.

This was fundamental. It had an aspect of cruel rapacity, seeming inconsistent with the idea of a beneficent God. Yet if there be mortality at all, there can be no better end to the outworn or defeated body than to support the vigor of a new life... His mind stooped, bewildered once again before the stupendous nature of the change which his discovery must bring to the earth’s economy.

Perhaps the question was too great for one man to face. Would it not be well to announce his discovery, and for some small committee of selected men to consider whether it should be used?... But he knew that there would be no such question in the minds of men. They might doubt its advantages for other men, for alien races, for animal or vegetable creations, but for themselves there would be no doubt at all.

It was true that he might withhold the discovery itself, and merely announce that he possessed it, but even that announcement (if it were believed) might rouse an excitement that he could not estimate... He imagined himself mobbed, beaten, even tortured, till he should consent to reveal it to a frantic world...

Pacing the laboratory restlessly, distracted with such thoughts as these, afraid to meet the reproaches of his wife, who could not understand why he was changed and aging so rapidly, so that he had acquired a habit of remaining there till it should be time to go out on his daily round, he regarded the rat, now running up the bars of his cage in a restless and tireless activity, with sudden hatred. He would kill the loathsome thing, and forget the horror he had discovered. Perhaps he might enjoy life once again...

He looked at his watch, and was startled to see that it was half an hour after the usual time at which he set out on his daily round — and he had a consultation with Sir William Brett at 10:30. He went out hurriedly.

IX