The Hypnoglyph Read online

  The Hypnoglyph

  John Anthony (John Ciardi)

  The Magazine of F&SF, v.5, No. 1, 07/53, pp. 25-32

  Jaris held the object cupped in his hand while his thumb stroked the small hollow in its polished side. "It's really the prize of my collection," he said, "but there isn't any real name for it. I call it the hypnoglyph."

  "Hypnoglyph?" Maddick said, putting down a superbly rick-racked Venusian opal the size of a goose egg.

  Jaris smiled at the younger man. "Hypnoglyph," he said. "Here, take a look at it."

  Maddick held it in his palm stroking it softly, letting his thumb run gently over the little hollow. "This, the prize of your collection?" he said. "Why, it's nothing but a chunk of wood."

  "A man," Jaris said, "may be described as not much more than a chunk of meat, but he has some unusual properties."

  Maddick, his thumb still stroking the little hollow, swept his eye over the treasure room. "I'll say he has. I've never in my life seen more property in one room."

  Jaris' voice gently brushed aside the edge of greed in the younger man's voice. "It has not been the longest life to date. Perhaps it even has something left to learn."

  Maddick flushed a moment, then pursed his lips almost imperceptibly and shrugged. "Well, what's it for?" he said. He held the thing in front of him and watched his fingers stroke it.

  Jaris chuckled again. "It's for exactly what you're doing. The thing is irresistible. Once you've picked it up, your thumb just automatically strokes that little hollow, and it just automatically hates to stop stroking."

  Maddick's voice took on the tone that the very young reserve for humoring the very old. "It's a pleasant gadget," he said. "But why the rather pretentious name?"

  "Pretentious?" Jaris said. "I had simply thought of it as descriptive. The thing actually is hypnotic." He smiled watching Maddick's fingers still playing with the thing. "You may recall a sculptor named Gainsdale who fooled with such things toward the end of the twentieth century. He founded a school of sculpture called Tropism."

  Maddick shrugged, still absorbed in the object. "Everyone and his brother started a school of something back there; I guess I missed that one."

  "It was an interesting theory," Jaris said, picking up an Arcturian space-crystal and watching the play of light rays from it. "He argued -- soundly enough as I see it -- that the surface of every organism has certain innate tactile responses. A cat innately likes to be stroked in certain ways. A heliotrope innately moves to face the light."

  "And the leg," Maddick quipped, "innately likes to be pulled. So far we've covered some basic facts about tropism with a small t. What of it?"

  "It isn't the facts so much as the application that's interesting," Jaris said, ignoring the younger man's rudeness. "Gainsdale simply carried his awareness of tropism farther than any one had before. Anyone on earth at least. He argued that every surface of the body innately responds to certain shapes and textures and he set out to carve objects that -- as he put it -- made the bodily surfaces innately happy. He made objects for rubbing up and down the neck, objects for rubbing across the forehead. He even claimed he could cure headaches that way."

  "That's nothing but old Chinese medicine," Maddick said. "I bought an eighth century talisman for rubbing out rheumatism just last week. Curio stuff."

  "Gainsdale must certainly have known the Oriental glyptics," Jaris agreed, "but he was trying to systematize the idea behind them into a series of principles. He took a fling at reviving the Japanese netsuke, those polished hand-pieces the old Samurais dangled from their belts. But Gainsdale wanted to carve for the whole body. He tried psychic jewelry at one point and designed bracelets that innately pleased the arm. For a while he got to designing chairs that were irresistible to the buttocks."

  "Quite an art," Maddick said, turning the object in his hand, working the little hollow around and around in his fist and then bringing it back to where his thumb could stroke along the tiny hollow. "You might say he got right down to fundaments." He smiled at Jaris as if looking for acknowledgment of his wit, but found no response there.

  "He was, in fact, quite a man," Jaris said seriously. "Maybe the chairs and buttocks gave him the idea but after that he got to experimenting with gimmicks that would preserve sexual potency. The League of Something or Other made him stop that, but it is worth noting that his last child was born when he was 84."

  Maddick leered. "At last -- a practical application!"

  Jaris looked down at Maddick's hand still stroking the hypnoglyph, the fingers moving as if they had entered a life of their own. "After that," he said, ignoring Maddick's still lingering leer, "he got to designing sleeping blocks -- wooden pillows something like the Japanese porcelain block, but molded to give the head pleasure. He claimed it produced good dreams. But most of all he sculptured for the hand, just as the Japanese carvers of talismans finally settled on the netsuke for their definitive work. After all the hand is not only the natural tactile organ in one sense; it also has the kind of mobility that can respond to texture and mass most pleasurably."

  Jaris put down the space-crystal and stood watching Maddick's hand. "Just as you're doing," he said. "Gainsdale was after the object the human hand could not resist."

  Maddick looked down at the thing in his hand, the fingers working over it as if they were alone with it somewhere apart from the arm and mind they grew from. "I must say it is pleasant," he said. "But isn't all this just a bit far-fetched? You'd hardly argue that pleasure is absolutely irresistible. If we have no control over our lust for pleasure why aren't we strangling one another for the pleasure of stroking this thing?"

  "Maybe," Jaris said gently, "because I want less than you do."

  Maddick let his eyes sweep the treasure room. "Maybe you can damn well afford to," he said, and for a moment there was no suavity in his voice. He seemed to be aware of the gaffe himself, for he changed the subject immediately. "But I thought you collected nothing but extraterrestrial stuff. How come this?"

  "That," said Jaris, "is the curious coincidence. Or one of the curious coincidences. The one you're holding is extraterrestrial."

  "And the other curious coincidences?" Maddick said.

  Jaris lit one of his poisonous cheroots. "I might as well begin at the beginning," he said through the smoke.

  "Something told me there was a story coming," Maddick said. "You collectors are all alike. I've never known one that wasn't a yarn spinner. I think it's the real reason for the collection."

  Jaris smiled. "A professional disease. Do we collect so we can tell yarns, or tell yarns so we can collect? Maybe if I tell the yarn well enough I'll collect you. Well, sit down and I'll do my best: a new audience, a new opportunity."

  He waved Maddick into an elaborately carved bone chair, placed the humidor, the drug sachets, and a decanter of Danubian brandy within easy reach of him, and sat down behind the desk with a wave of the hand that told Maddick to help himself.

  "I suppose," he said after that pause-before-the-yarn that no story teller can omit, "I suppose one of the reasons I prize the thing is because I got it on my last blast into deep space. As you see," he added, waving his hand about him lightly, "I made the mistake of coming back rich, and it killed the wanderlust. Now I'm earthbound by my own avidity."

  Maddick sat stroking the smooth little hollow with his thumb. "Being filthy rich is hardly the worst fate imaginable, I should think."

  But Jaris' mind was on his story. "I'd been prospecting for space-crystals out toward Deneb Kaitos," he continued, "and I'd really struck bonanza, an asteroid belt just popping with the luscious things. We had the ship bulging with enough of them to buy Terra twice over, and we were starting back when we found that Deneb Kaitos had a planetary system. There had b
een several expeditions out that way before with no mention of the system and we had been so busy hauling in space-crystals that we hadn't been doing much looking. But I realized then that what I had thought was just an asteroid belt was really a broken-up planet orbiting around its sun. With the fragments running about 8 per cent pure diamond it was no wonder we'd hit the mother lode of them all.

  "We ran a quick survey on the system and decided to put into DK-8 for the specimen run-over and life-forms data. DK-6 gave some indications of life-forms but hardly enough to be worth the extra stop. DK-8, on the other hand, ran high. So high it looked like a good chance for Federation Prize Money. With a ship load of space-crystals, even a million Units seemed small change, but it would be a kick to turn up a new Intelligence Group. The Columbus complex, you know.

  "At any rate we put into DK-8, and that's where I got that thing you're holding. On DK-8 it's a hunting implement."

  Maddick looked puzzled. "Hunting," he said. "You mean the way David got Goliath? Zingo?"

  "No," Jaris said. "It's not a missile. It's a snare. The natives set them out and trap animals with them."

  Still stroking it, Maddick looked at the gadget. "Oh come now," he said. "You mean they just set them out, wait for termites to invade, and then eat the termites? That kind of snare?"

  Jaris' voice stiffened for an instant. "There are queerer things than that in space." Then his voice softened. "You're young yet," he said. "You have time enough. That gadget, for instance: you wouldn't believe a culture was founded on it. You're not ready to believe."

  Maddick's smile said: "Well, after all you can't expect me to swallow this stuff, can you?" Aloud he said, "A yarn's a yarn. Let's have it."

  "Yes," Jaris said, "I suppose it is incredible. In a way, that's what space is: the constant recurrence of the incredible. After a while you forget what a norm is. Then you're a space hand." He looked off a moment across the shining collection around him. "DK-8, for example. Once the indicator told us to expect intelligence, it was no surprise to come on side-humans. By that time it had been universally established that you can expect intelligence only in primate and quasi-primate forms. Unless you've got the prehensile hand and the supraorbital arch there's just no way for intelligence to get started. A monkey develops a hook for swinging through the trees and an eye for measuring distances between leaps and he's fitted for his environment. But it just happens that the hand is good for picking things up and the eye is good for looking at them closely, and pretty soon the monkey is picking things up and examining them and beginning to get ideas. And pretty soon he s beginning to use tools. An ungulate couldn't use a tool in a billion years; he has nothing to hold it with. There's no reason why there mightn't be some sort of lizard intelligence I suppose, except that it just doesn't seem to happen. Probably too low-grade a nervous system."

  Jaris suddenly caught himself, realizing that his voice had been running away with the enthusiasm of his argument. "I really haven't been back very long," he said with a smile. "That's the sort of argument that gets hot in space." His voice softened again. "I was saying we weren't much surprised to come on side-humans once we'd got an intelligence indication. . . ."

  "Odd that I've never heard of it," Maddick said. "I keep pretty well posted on that sort of thing. And surely a really close siding -- "

  "The fact is," Jaris said, interrupting in his turn, "we didn't make a report."

  Maddick's voice sharpened with surprise. "Good heavens, man, and you're telling me? What on earth's to keep me from turning you over to Federation Space Base and getting your mind picked for it?" Once again his eyes swept the treasure room as if running an inventory and his lips pursed shrewdly for an instant. Then his voice loosened. "If I believed you, that is."

  Jaris leaned back in his chair as if buried in thought and for a moment his voice seemed to be coming up from a cave shaft. "It doesn't really matter," he said. "And besides," he added with a smile, his voice growing near again, "you don't, as you say, believe me."

  Maddick looked down at his hand still stroking the polished sides of the gadget. The thumb snaked out over the little polished dimple. In up and back, in, up and back. Without raising his head, he raised his eyes to meet Jaris'. "Should I?" he said. Once more his eyes flicked over the treasure room, resting longest on the cabinet of space-crystals.

  Jaris noted his look and smiled. "I've often thought myself what a lovely target I'd make for a blackmailer."

  Maddick looked away quickly. "If the blackmailer could believe you."

  Jaris smiled. "Always that doubt," he said. "What would you say if I told you the siding was so close that Terrans can mate with DKs?"

  Maddick paused a long minute before answering, his eyes fixed on the thing in his hand, watching his fingers curl about and stroke it. He shook his head as if putting something out of his mind. "I seem to be beyond surprises at this point, Strangely, I believe you. And strangely, I know I should be arguing that it's impossible."

  Suddenly his voice flared up, "Look here," he said, "what is all this rigmarole?" Again his voice calmed abruptly. "All right. Yes, sure. I believe you. I'm crazy, God knows, but I believe you."

  "Enough to turn me in?"

  Maddick flushed without answering.

  "I'm afraid they'd only tell you it's impossible," Jaris said. "Pity too," he added wearily. "As I was saying I'd be such lush pickings for a blackmailer." He paused a moment, then added gently, "Don't worry about it, son."

  Maddick's voice did not rise to anger. He looked down at his hand still stroking the thing. "Is that a threat?" he said indifferently.

  Jaris shook his head. "A regret," he said. He blew out a cloud of smoke and spoke again more brightly. "Besides, all the arguments against its being possible are too sound. Life forms can mate across some of the branches of divergent evolution if the species are related by some reasonably proximate common ancestor. The lion and the tiger, for instance, or the horse and the jackass. But it doesn't work for convergent evolution. You can evolve a species somewhere in space that resembles man, and with space enough and time enough you can evolve a lot of them, but the chemistry and physiology of egg and sperm are too tricky to come close enough without a common ancestor. Nevertheless Terrans can mate with DK women, and have mated with, them. That may sound incredible, said in this room, but after a while you find nothing is incredible in deep space."

  "Deep space," Maddick said softly. His voice sounded as if it were stroking the words with the same sensuous pleasure his fingers found in stroking the polished thing in his hand.

  Jaris caught the movement of his voice and nodded. "You've time yet. You'll get there. But to get back to DK-8. The only real difference between DKs and humans is the hair and the skin structure. DK-8 has a dense and tropical atmosphere. It's rather high in CO2 and perpetually misty. The sun's rays have a hard time getting through the atmosphere. Also the planet is all-tropical. Consequently the animal life from which the DKs evolved never had to develop a fur covering. Hair is unknown on the planet. Instead, the DK life-forms developed a skin structure extremely sensitive to whatever diffused sun rays they can get. The skin is soft and pallid as a slug's. If a DK were exposed to the direct rays of Sol for a few minutes, he'd die of sunburn."

  Jaris held up the cheroot before him and blew a puff of smoke over its lit end. "Nature," he said, "always has a trick of trying to deal two cards at once. The prehensile hand developed for one reason and became useful for something else. Just so, the DK's tremendously sensitive skin developed originally to absorb the most possible sun, but became in time the basis for a tremendously developed tactile sense.

  "That goes for the lower animals too. Their tropisms are fantastically dominant over their other responses. Once an animal starts stroking one of those gadgets as you're doing, it simply cannot stop."

  Maddick smiled and looked at his hand without answering. The polished sides of the thing gleamed dully, and his thumb ran down into and over the little hollow. Down into and over.
Down into and over.

  "You might almost say," Jaris continued, "that the DKs have developed a tactile science to a degree unknown to us. The energy we have put into a tool culture, they have put into a tactile culture. It isn't a highly developed society in our terms: a rigid tribal matriarchy with a few basic tools that only the women are permitted to operate, and at that only a special clan of the women. The other women lounge about on delicately arranged hill terraces and just lie motionless soaking up sun energy or working up a little voodoo mostly based on hypnotism and tactile gratification."

  His voice grew softer and slightly distant. "As you might expect, they grow incredibly obese. At first it seemed repulsive to see them lying so. But on DK-8 obesity is really a survival characteristic. It makes for more surface to absorb sun energy. And the women have such perfect control of their skin surfaces that their bodies remain strangely well-proportioned."

  He leaned back and almost closed his eyes. "Amazing control," he half whispered. Then suddenly he chuckled. "But you're probably wondering how they work such hard wood so perfectly with practically no tools. If you look closely you'll find that what you're holding is really grainless. Actually it isn't wood at all, but a kind of huge seed, something like an avocado nut. As you know, you can carve a fresh avocado nut almost as easily as you mold clay, but when you let it dry, it becomes extremely hard. Extremely hard."