The Rotifers Page 2

found a pencil and paper and tried, in anamateurish way, to draw and describe what he saw in the greenwater-garden.

  Beyond a doubt, Henry thought, here was a hobby that had captured Harryas nothing else ever had.

  ----

  Mrs. Chatham was not so pleased. When her husband laid down his eveningpaper and went into the kitchen for a drink of water, she cornered himand hissed at him: "I told you you had no business buying Harry a thinglike that! If he keeps on at this rate, he'll wear his eyes out in notime."

  Henry Chatham set down his water glass and looked straight at his wife."Sally, Harry's eyes are young and he's using them to learn with. You'venever been much worried over me, using my eyes up eight hours a day,five days a week, over a blind-alley bookkeeping job."

  He left her angrily silent and went back to his paper. He would lowerthe paper every now and then to watch Harry, in his corner of theliving-room, bowed obliviously over the microscope and the secret lifeof the rotifers.

  Once the boy glanced up from his periodic drawing and asked, with theair of one who proposes a pondered question: "Dad, if you look through amicroscope the wrong way is it a telescope?"

  Mr. Chatham lowered his paper and bit his underlip. "I don't thinkso--no, I don't know. When you look through a microscope, it makesthings seem closer--one way, that is; if you looked the other way, itwould probably make them seem farther off. What did you want to knowfor?"

  "Oh--nothing," Harry turned back to his work. As if on after-thought, heexplained, "I was wondering if the rotifers could see me when I'mlooking at them."

  Mr. Chatham laughed, a little nervously, because the strange fancieswhich his son sometimes voiced upset his ordered mind. Remembering thedark glistening eyes of the rotifers he had seen, however, he couldrecognize whence this question had stemmed.

  At dusk, Harry insisted on setting up the substage lamp which had beenbought with the microscope, and by whose light he could go on lookinguntil his bedtime, when his father helped him arrange a wick to feed thelittle glass-covered well in the slide so it would not dry up beforemorning. It was unwillingly, and only after his mother's strenuouscomplaints, that the boy went to bed at ten o'clock.

  In the following days his interest became more and more intense. Hespent long hours, almost without moving, watching the rotifers. For thelittle animals had become the sole object which he desired to studyunder the microscope, and even his father found it difficult tounderstand such an enthusiasm.

  During the long hours at the office to which he commuted, Henry Chathamoften found the vision of his son, absorbed with the invisible worldthat the microscope had opened to him, coming between him and thecolumns in the ledgers. And sometimes, too, he envisioned the dim greenwater-garden where the little things swam to and fro, and a strangenessfilled his thoughts.

  On Wednesday evening, he glanced at the fish bowl and noticed that thewater beetle, the whirligig beetle, was missing. Casually, he asked hisson about it.

  "I had to get rid of him," said the boy with a trace of uneasiness inhis manner. "I took him out and squashed him."

  "Why did you have to do that?"

  "He was eating the rotifers and their eggs," said Harry, with whatseemed to be a touch of remembered anger at the beetle. He glancedtoward his work-table, where three or four well-slides with small greenpools under their glass covers now rested in addition to the one thatwas under the microscope.

  "How did you find out he was eating them?" inquired Mr. Chatham, feelinga warmth of pride at the thought that Harry had discovered such ascientific fact for himself.

  The boy hesitated oddly. "I--I looked it up in the book," he answered.

  His father masked his faint disappointment. "That's fine," he said. "Iguess you find out more about them all the time."

  "Uh-huh," admitted Harry, turning back to his table.

  There was undoubtedly something a little strange about Harry's manner;and now Mr. Chatham realized that it had been two days since Harry hadasked him to "Quick, take a look!" at the newest wonder he haddiscovered. With this thought teasing at his mind, the father walkedcasually over to the table where his son sat hunched and, looking downat the litter of slides and papers--some of which were covered withfigures and scribblings of which he could make nothing. He saiddiffidently, "How about a look?"

  Harry glanced up as if startled. He was silent a moment; then he slidreluctantly from his chair and said, "All right."

  Mr. Chatham sat down and bent over the microscope. Puzzled and a littlehurt, he twirled the focusing vernier and peered into the eyepiece,looking down once more into the green water world of the rotifers.

  ----

  There was a swarm of them under the lens, and they swam lazily to andfro, their cilia beating like miniature propellers. Their dark eyesstared, wet and glistening; they drifted in the motionless water, andclung with sucker-like pseudo-feet to the tangled plant stems.

  Then, as he almost looked away, one of them detached itself from thegroup and swam upward, toward him, growing larger and blurring as itrose out of the focus of the microscope. The last thing that remaineddefined, before it became a shapeless gray blob and vanished, was thedark blotches of the great cold eyes, seeming to stare full athim--cold, motionless, but alive.

  It was a curious experience. Henry Chatham drew suddenly back from theeyepiece, with an involuntary shudder that he could not explain tohimself. He said haltingly, "They look interesting."

  "Sure, Dad," said Harry. He moved to occupy the chair again, and hisdark young head bowed once more over the microscope. His father walkedback across the room and sank gratefully into his arm-chair--after all,it had been a hard day at the office. He watched Harry work the focusingscrews as if trying to find something, then take his pencil and begin towrite quickly and impatiently.

  It was with a guilty feeling of prying that, after Harry had been sentreluctantly to bed, Henry Chatham took a tentative look at those paperswhich lay in apparent disorder on his son's work table. He frowneduncomprehendingly at the things that were written there; it was neithermathematics nor language, but many of the scribblings were jumbles ofletters and figures. It looked like code, and he remembered that lessthan a year ago, Harry had been passionately interested in cryptography,and had shown what his father, at least, believed to be a considerableaptitude for such things.... But what did cryptography have to do withmicroscopy, or codes with--rotifers?

  Nowhere did there seem to be a key, but there were occasional words andphrases jotted into the margins of some of the sheets. Mr. Chatham readthese, and learned nothing. "Can't dry up, but they can," said one."Beds of germs," said another. And in the corner of one sheet, "1--Yes.2--No." The only thing that looked like a translation was the note:"rty34pr is the pond."

  Mr. Chatham shook his head bewilderedly, replacing the sheets carefullyas they had been. Why should Harry want to keep notes on his scientifichobby in code? he wondered, rationalizing even as he wondered. He wentto bed still puzzling, but it did not keep him from sleeping, for he wastired.

  Then, only the next evening, his wife maneuvered to get him alone withher and burst out passionately:

  "Henry, I told you that microscope was going to ruin Harry's eyesight! Iwas watching him today when he didn't know I was watching him, and I sawhim winking and blinking right while he kept on looking into the thing.I was minded to stop him then and there, but I want you to assert _your_authority with him and tell him he can't go on."

  Henry Chatham passed one nervous hand over his own aching eyes. He askedmildly, "Are you sure it wasn't just your imagination, Sally? After all,a person blinks quite normally, you know."

  "It was not my imagination!" snapped Mrs. Chatham. "I know the symptomsof eyestrain when I see them, I guess. You'll have to stop Harry usingthat thing so much, or else be prepared to buy him glasses."

  "All right, Sally," said Mr. Chatham wearily. "I'll see if I can'tpersuade him to be a little more moderate."

>   He went slowly into the living-room. At the moment, Harry was not usingthe microscope; instead, he seemed to be studying one of his crypticpages of notes. As his father entered, he looked up sharply and swiftlylaid the sheet down--face down.

  Perhaps it wasn't all Sally's imagination; the boy did look nervous, andthere was a drawn, white look to his thin young face. His father saidgently, "Harry, Mother tells me she saw you blinking, as if your eyeswere tired, when you were looking into the microscope today. You know ifyou look too much, it can be a strain on your sight."

  Harry nodded quickly, too quickly, perhaps. "Yes, Dad," he said. "I readthat in the book. It says there that if you close the eye you're lookingwith for a little while,