The Rotifers Read online

it rests you and your eyes don't get tired. SoI was practising that this afternoon. Mother must have been watching methen, and got the wrong idea."

  "Oh," said Henry Chatham. "Well, it's good that you're trying to becareful. But you've got your mother worried, and that's not so good. Iwish, myself, that you wouldn't spend all your time with the microscope.Don't you ever play baseball with the fellows any more?"

  "I haven't got time," said the boy, with a curious stubborn twist to hismouth. "I can't right now, Dad." He glanced toward the microscope.

  "Your rotifers won't die if you leave them alone for a while. And ifthey do, there'll always be a new crop."

  "But I'd lose track of them," said Harry strangely. "Their lives are soshort--they live so awfully fast. You don't know how fast they live."

  "I've seen them," answered his father. "I guess they're fast, allright." He did not know quite what to make of it all, so he settledhimself in his chair with his paper.

  But that night, after Harry had gone later than usual to bed, he stirredhimself to take down the book that dealt with life in pond-water. Therewas a memory pricking at his mind; the memory of the water beetle, whichHarry had killed because, he said, he was eating the rotifers and theireggs. And the boy had said he had found that fact in the book.

  Mr. Chatham turned through the book; he read, with aching eyes, all thatit said about rotifers. He searched for information on the beetle, andfound there was a whole family of whirligig beetles. There was somematerial here on the characteristics and habits of the Gyrinidae, butnowhere did it mention the devouring of rotifers or their eggs amongtheir customs.

  He tried the topical index, but there was no help there.

  Harry must have lied, thought his father with a whirling head. But why,why in God's name should he say he'd looked a thing up in the book whenhe must have found it out for himself, the hard way? There was no sensein it. He went back to the book, convinced that, sleepy as he was, hemust have missed a point. The information simply wasn't there.

  He got to his feet and crossed the room to Harry's work table; heswitched on the light over it and stood looking down at the pages ofmystic notations. There were more pages now, quite a few. But none ofthem seemed to mean anything. The earlier pictures of rotifers whichHarry had drawn had given way entirely to mysterious figures.

  Then the simple explanation occurred to him, and he switched off thelight with a deep feeling of relief. Harry hadn't really _known_ thatthe water beetle ate rotifers; he had just suspected it. And, with hisboy's respect for fair play, he had hesitated to admit that he hadexecuted the beetle merely on suspicion.

  That didn't take the lie away, but it removed the mystery at least.

  ----

  Henry Chatham slept badly that night and dreamed distorted dreams. Butwhen the alarm clock shrilled in the gray of morning, jarring him awake,the dream in which he had been immersed skittered away to the back ofhis mind, out of knowing, and sat there leering at him with strange,dark, glistening eyes.

  He dressed, washed the flat morning taste out of his mouth with coffee,and took his way to his train and the ten-minute ride into the city. Onthe way there, instead of snatching a look at the morning paper, he satstill in his seat, head bowed, trying to recapture the dream whosevanishing made him uneasy. He was superstitious about dreams in anup-to-date way, believing them not warnings from some Beyond outsidehimself, but from a subsconscious more knowing than the waking consciousmind.

  During the morning his work went slowly, for he kept pausing, sometimesin the midst of totalling a column of figures, to grasp at some mockinghalf-memory of that dream. At last, elbows on his desk, staringunseeingly at the clock on the wall, in the midst of the subdued murmurof the office, his mind went back to Harry, dark head bowed motionlessover the barrel of his microscope, looking, always looking into the palegreen water-gardens and the unseen lives of the beings that....

  All at once it came to him, the dream he had dreamed. _He_ had beenbending over the microscope, _he_ had been looking into the unseenworld, and the horror of what he had seen gripped him now and broughtout the chill sweat on his body.

  For he had seen his son there in the clouded water, among the twistedglassy plants, his face turned upward and eyes wide in the agonizedappeal of the drowning; and bubbles rising, fading. But around him hadbeen a swarm of the weird creatures, and they had been dragging himdown, down, blurring out of focus, and their great dark eyes glisteningwetly, coldly....

  He was sitting rigid at his desk, his work forgotten; all at once he sawthe clock and noticed with a start that it was already eleven a.m. Afear he could not define seized on him, and his hand reachedspasmodically for the telephone on his desk.

  But before he touched it, it began ringing.

  After a moment's paralysis, he picked up the receiver. It was his wife'svoice that came shrilly over the wires.

  "Henry!" she cried. "Is that you?"

  "Hello, Sally," he said with stiff lips. Her voice as she answeredseemed to come nearer and go farther away, and he realized that his handholding the instrument was shaking.

  "Henry, you've got to come home right now. Harry's sick. He's got a highfever, and he's been asking for you."

  He moistened his lips and said, "I'll be right home. I'll take a taxi."

  "Hurry!" she exclaimed. "He's been saying queer things. I think he'sdelirious." She paused, and added, "And it's all the fault of thatmicroscope _you_ bought him!"

  "I'll be right home," he repeated dully.

  ----

  His wife was not at the door to meet him; she must be upstairs, inHarry's bedroom. He paused in the living room and glanced toward thetable that bore the microscope; the black, gleaming thing still stoodthere, but he did not see any of the slides, and the papers were piledneatly together to one side. His eyes fell on the fish bowl; it wasempty, clean and shining. He knew Harry hadn't done those things; thatwas Sally's neatness.

  Abruptly, instead of going straight up the stairs, he moved to the tableand looked down at the pile of papers. The one on top was almost blank;on it was written several times: rty34pr ... rty34pr.... His memory forfigure combinations served him; he remembered what had been written onanother page: "rty34pr is the pond."

  That made him think of the pond, lying quiescent under its green scumand trailing plants at the end of the garden. A step on the stair jerkedhim around.

  It was his wife, of course. She said in a voice sharp-edged withapprehension: "What are you doing down here? Harry wants you. The doctorhasn't come; I phoned him just before I called you, but he hasn't come."

  He did not answer. Instead he gestured at the pile of papers, the emptyfish bowl, an imperative question in his face.

  "I threw that dirty water back in the pond. It's probably what he caughtsomething from. And he was breaking himself down, humping over thatthing. It's _your_ fault, for getting it for him. Are you coming?" Sheglared coldly at him, turning back to the stairway.

  "I'm coming," he said heavily, and followed her upstairs.

  Harry lay back in his bed, a low mound under the covers. His head waspropped against a single pillow, and his eyes were half-closed, the lidsswollen-looking, his face hotly flushed. He was breathing slowly as ifasleep.

  But as his father entered the room, he opened his eyes as if with aneffort, fixed them on him, said, "Dad ... I've got to tell you."

  Mr. Chatham took the chair by the bedside, quietly, leaving his wife tostand. He asked, "About what, Harry?"

  "About--things." The boy's eyes shifted to his mother, at the foot ofhis bed. "I don't want to talk to her. _She_ thinks it's just fever. Butyou'll understand."

  Henry Chatham lifted his gaze to meet his wife's. "Maybe you'd better godownstairs and wait for the doctor, Sally."

  She looked hard at him, then turned abruptly to go out. "All right," shesaid in a thin voice, and closed the door softly behind her.

  "Now what did you want to tell me,
Harry?"

  "About _them_ ... the rotifers," the boy said. His eyes had driftedhalf-shut again but his voice was clear. "They did it to me ... onpurpose."

  "Did _what_?"

  "I don't know.... They used one of their cultures. They've got allkinds: beds of germs, under the leaves in the water. They've beengrowing new kinds, that will be worse than anything that ever wasbefore.... They live so fast, they work so fast."

  Henry Chatham was silent, leaning forward beside the bed.

  "It was only a little while, before I found out they knew about me. Icould see them through my microscope, but they