|
The Sound Machine
It was a warm summer evening and Klausner walked I
quickly through the front gate and around the side of the
house and into the garden at the back. He went on down the
garden until he came to a wooden shed and he unlocked the
door, went inside and closed the door behind him.
The interior of the shed was an unpainted room. Against
one wall, on the left, there was a long wooden workbench and
on it, among a littering of wires and batteries and small
sharp tools, there stood a black box about three feet long,
the shape of a child's coffin.
Klausner moved across the room to the box. The top of the
box was open and he bent down and began to poke and peer
inside it among a mass of different-coloured wires and
silver tubes. He picked up a piece of paper that lay beside
the box, studied it carefully, put it down, peered inside
the box and started running his fingers along the wires,
tugging gently at them to test the connections, glancing
back at the paper, then into the box, then at the paper
again, checking each wire. He did this for perhaps an hour.
Then he put a hand around to the front of the box where
there were three dials and he began to twiddle them,
watching at the same time the movement of the mechanism
inside the box. All the while he kept speaking softly to
himself, nodding his head, smiling sometimes, his hands
always moving, the fingers moving swiftly, deftly, inside
the box, his mouth twisting into curious shapes when a thing
was delicate or difficult to do, saying, "Yes... Yes ... And
now this one... Yes ... Yes. But is this right? Is it -
where's my diagram? ... Ah, yes ... Of course ... Yes, yes
... That's right ... And now ... Good ... Good... Yes...
Yes, yes, yes." His concentration was intense; his movements
were quick; there was an air of urgency about the way he
worked, of breathlessness, of strong suppressed excitement.
Suddenly, lie heard footsteps on the gravel path outside
and he straightened and turned swiftly as the door opened
and a tall man came in. It was Scott. It was only Scott, the
doctor.
"Well, well, well," the Doctor said. "So this is where
you hide yourself in the evenings."
"Hello, Scott," Klausner said.
"I happened to be passing," the doctor told him, "so I
dropped in to see how you were. There was no one in the
house, so I came on clown here. How's that throat of yours
been behaving?"
"It's all right. It's fine."
"Now I'm here I might as well have a look at it."
"Please don't trouble. I'm quite cured. I'm fine."
The doctor began to feel the tension in the room. He
looked at the black box on the bench; then lie looked at the
man. "You've got your hat on," he said.
"Oh, have I?" Klausner reached up, removed the hat and
put it on the bench.
The doctor came up closer and bent clown to look into the
box. "What's this?" he said. "Making a radio?"
"No, just fooling around." "It's got rather
complicated-looking innards."
"Yes." Klausner seemed tense and distracted.
"What is it?" the doctor asked. "It's rather a
frightening- looking thing, isn't it?"
"It's just an idea."
"Yes?"
"It has to do with sound, that's all."
"Good heavens, man! Don't you get enough of that sort of
thing all day in your work?"
"I like sound."
"So it seems," the doctor went to the door, turned and
said, "Well, I won't disturb you. Glad your throat's not
worrying you any more." But lie kept standing there looking
at the box, intrigued by the remarkable complexity of its
inside, curious to know what this strange patient of his was up
to. "What's it really for?" he asked. "You've made me
inquisitive.
Klausner looked down at the box, then at the doctor and
he reached up and began gently to scratch the lobe of his
right ear. There was a pause. The doctor stood by the door,
waiting, smiling.
"All right, I'll tell you, if you're interested." There
was another pause and the doctor could see that Klausner was
having trouble about how to begin.
He was shifting from one foot to the other, tugging at
the lobe of his ear,. looking at this feet and then at last,
slowly, he said, "Well, it's like this ... the theory is
very simple really. The human ear ... You know that it can't
hear everything. There are sounds that are so low-pitched or
so high-pitched that it can't hear them."
"Yes," the doctor said. "Yes."
"Well, speaking very roughly, any note so high that it
has more than fifteen thousand vibrations a second - we
can't hear it. Dogs have better ears than us. You know you
can buy a whistle whose note is so high-pitched that you
can't hear it at all. But a dog can hear it."
"Yes, I've seen one," the doctor said.
"Of course, you have. And up the scale, higher than the
note of that whistle, there is another note - a vibration if
you like, but I prefer to think of it as a note. You can'
hear that one either. And above that there is another and
another rising right up the scale for ever and ever and
ever, an endless succession of notes ... an infinity of
notes ... there is a note - if only our ears could hear it -
so high that it vibrates a million times a second ... and
another a million times as high as that ... and on and on,
higher and higher, as far as numbers go, which is ...
infinity ... eternity ... beyond the stars."
Klausner was becoming more animated every moment. He was
a small, frail man, nervous and twitchy, with always moving
hands. His large head inclined towards his left shoulder as
though his neck were not quite strong enough to support it
rigidly. His face was smooth and pale, almost white and the
pale-grey eyes that blinked and peered from behind a pair of
steel spectacles were bewildered, unfocused, remote. He was
a frail, nervous, twitchy little man, a moth of a man,
dreamy and distracted; suddenly fluttering and animated; and
now the doctor, looking at that strange pale face and those
pale-grey eyes, felt that somehow there was about this
little person a quality of distance, of immense immeasurable
distance, as though the mind were far away from where the
body was.
The doctor waited for him to go on. Klausner sighed and
clasped his hands tightly together. "I believe," he said,
speaking more slowly now, "that there is a whole world of
sound about us all the time that we cannot hear. It is
possible that up there in those high-pitched inaudible*
regions there is a new exciting music being made, with
subtle harmonies and fierce grinding discords, a music so
powerful that it would drive us mad if only our ears were
tuned to hear the sound of it. There may he anything ... for
all we know there may ---"
"Yes," the doctor said. "But it's not very probable."
"Why not? Why not?" Klausner pointed to a fly sitting on
a small roll of copper wire on the workbench. "You see that
fly? What sort of a noise is that fly making now? None -
that one can hear. But for all we know the creature may he
whistling like mad on a very high note, or barking or
croaking or singing a song. It's got a mouth, hasn't it?
It's got a throat!"
The doctor looked at the fly and he smiled. He was still
standing by the door with his hands on the doorknob. "Well,"
he said, "so you're going to check up on that?"
"Some time ago," Klausner said, "I made a simple
instrument that proved to me the existence of many odd
inaudible sounds. Often I have sat and watched the needle of
my instrument recording the presence of sound vibrations in
the air when I myself could hear nothing. And those are the
sounds I want to listen to. I want to know where they come
from and who or what is making them."
"And that machine on the table there," the doctor said,
"is that going to allow you to hear these noises?"
"It may. Who knows? So far, I've had no luck. But I've
made some changes in it and tonight I'm ready for another
trial. This machine," he said, touching it with his hands,
"is designed to pick up sound vibrations that are too
high-pitched for reception by the human ear and to convert
them to a scale of audible tones. I tune it in, almost like
a radio."
"How d'you mean?"
"It isn't complicated. Say I wish to listen to the squeak
of a bat. That's a fairly high-pitched sound - about thirty
thousand vibrations a second. The average human ear can't
quite hear it. Now, if there were a hat flying around this
room and I tune in to thirty thousand on my machine, I would
hear the squeaking of that bat very clear. I would even hear
the correct note - F sharp, or B flat, or whatever it might
be - but merely at a much lower pitch. Don't you
understand?"
The doctor looked at the long, black coffin-box. "And
you're going to try it tonight?"
"Yes."
"Well. I wish you luck." He glanced at his watch. "My
goodness!" he said. "I must fly. Goodbye and thank you for
telling me. I must call again some time and find out what
happened." The doctor went out and closed the door behind
him.
For a while longer, Klausner fussed about with the wires
in the black box; then he straightened up and in a soft
excited whisper said, "Now, we'll try again .... We'll take
it out into the garden this time ... and then perhaps ...
perhaps ... the reception will be better. Lift it up now ...
carefully .... Oh, my God, it's heavy!" He carried the box
to the door, found that he couldn't open the door without
putting it down, carried it back, put it on the bench,
opened the door and then carried it with some difficulty
into the garden. He placed the box carefully on a small
wooden table that stood on the lawn. He returned to the shed
and fetched a pair of earphones. He plugged the ...
To be continue |
