Stanley Weinbaum: The Circle of Zero

'But eternity, Jack! In eternity that one chance out of all those trillions must happen — must happen!'

I was floored. I stared at Yvonne's pale and lovely features, then at the glistening old eyes of Aurore de Neant.

'You win,' I said with a long sigh. 'But what of it? This is still nineteen twenty-nine, and our money's still sunk in a very sick securities market.'

' Money !' he groaned. 'Don't you see? That memory we started from — that sense of having done a thing before — that's a memory out of the infinitely remote future. If only — if only one could remember clearly! But I have a way.' His voice rose suddenly to a shrill scream. 'Yes, I have a way!'

Wild eyes glared at me. I said, 'A way to remember our former incarnations?' One had to humour the old professor. 'To remember — the future?'

'Yes! Reincarnation!' His voice crackled wildly. Re-in-carnatione , which is Latin for "by the thing in the carnation", but it wasn't a carnation — it was an apple tree. The carnation is dianthus carophyllus , which proved that the Hottentots plant carnations on the graves of their ancestors, whence the expression "nipped in the bud". If carnations grow on apple trees — '

'Father!' cut in Yvonne sharply. 'You're tired!' Her voice softened. 'Come. You're going to bed.'

'Yes,' he cackled. 'To a bed of carnations.'

Some evenings later Aurore de Neant reverted to the same topic. He was clear enough as to where he had left off.

'So in this millennially dead past,' he began suddenly, 'there was a year nineteen twenty-nine and two fools named Anders and de Neant, who invested their money in what are sarcastically called securities. There was a clown's panic, and their money vanished.' He leered fantastically at me.

'Wouldn't it be nice if they could remember what happened in, say, the months from December, nineteen twenty-nine, to June, nineteen thirty — next year?' His voice was suddenly whining. 'They could get their money back then!'

I humoured him. 'If they could remember.'

They can!' he blazed. 'They can!'

'How?'

His voice dropped to a confidential softness. 'Hypnotism! You studied Morbid Psychology under me, didn't you, Jack? Yes — I remember.'

'But, hypnotism!' I objected. 'Every psychiatrist uses that in his treatments and no one has remembered a previous incarnation or anything like it.'

'No. They're fools, these doctors and psychiatrists. Listen — do you remember the three stages of the hypnotic state as you learned them?'

'Yes. Somnambulism, lethargy, catalepsy.'

'Right. In the first the subject speaks, answers questions. In the second he sleeps deeply. In the third, catalepsy, he is rigid, stiff, so that he can be laid across two chairs, sat on — all that nonsense.'

'I remember. What of it?'

He grinned bleakly. 'In the first stage the subject remembers everything that ever happened during his life. His subconscious mind is dominant and that never forgets. Correct?'

'So we were taught.'

He leaned tensely forward. 'In the second stage, lethargy, my theory is that he remembers everything that happened in his other lives! He remembers the future!'

'Huh? Why doesn't someone do it, then?'

'He remembers while he sleeps. He forgets when he wakes. That's why. But I believe that with proper training he can learn to remember.'

'And you're going to try?'

'Not I. I know too little of finance. I wouldn't know how to interpret my memories.'

'Who, then?'

'You!' He jabbed that long finger against me.

I was thoroughly startled. 'Me? Oh, no! Not a chance of it!'

'Jack,' he said querulously, 'didn't you study hypnotism in my course? Didn't you learn how harmless it is? You know what tommy-rot the idea is of one mind dominating another. You know the subject really hypnotizes himself, that no one can hypnotize an unwilling person. Then what are you afraid of?'

'I — well,' I didn't know what to answer.

I'm not afraid,' I said grimly. 'I just don't like it.'

'You're afraid!'

'I'm not!'

'You are!' He was growing excited.

It was at that moment that Yvonne's footsteps sounded in the hall. His eyes glittered. He looked at me with a sinister hint of cunning.

'I dislike cowards,' he whispered. His voice rose. 'So does Yvonne!'

The girl entered, perceiving his excitement. 'Oh!' she frowned. 'Why do you have to take these theories so to heart, father?'

'Theories?' he screeched. 'Yes! I have a theory that when you walk you stand still and the sidewalk moves back. No — then the sidewalk moves back. No — then the sidewalk would split if two people walked towards each other — or maybe it's elastic. Of course it's elastic! That's why the last mile is the longest. It's been stretched!'

Yvonne got him to bed.

Well, he talked me into it. I don't know how much was due to my own credulity and how much to Yvonne's solemn dark eyes. I half-believed the professor by the time he'd spent another evening in argument but I think the clincher was his veiled threat to forbid Yvonne my company. She'd have obeyed him if it killed her. She was from New Orleans too, you see, and of Creole blood.

I won't describe that troublesome course of training. One has to develop the hypnotic habit. It's like any other habit, and must be formed slowly. Contrary to the popular opinion morons and people of low intelligence can't ever do it. It takes real concentration — the whole knack of it is the ability to concentrate one's attention — and I don't mean the hypnotist, either.

I mean the subject. The hypnotist hasn't a thing to do with it except to furnish the necessary suggestion by murmuring, 'Sleep — sleep — sleep — sleep…' And even that isn't necessary once you learn the trick of it.

I spent half-an-hour or more nearly every evening, learning that trick. It was tedious and a dozen times I became thoroughly disgusted and swore to have no more to do with the farce. But always, after the half-hour's humouring of de Neant, there was Yvonne, and boredom vanished. As a sort of reward, I suppose, the old man took to leaving us alone. And we used our time, I'll wager, to better purpose than he used his.

But I began to learn, little by little. Came a time, after three weeks of tedium, when I was able to cast myself into a light somnambulistic state. I remember how the glitter of the cheap stone in Professor de Neant's ring grew until it filled the world and how his voice, mechanically dull, murmured like the waves in my ears. I remember everything that transpired during those minutes, even his query, 'Are you sleeping?' and my automatic reply, 'Yes.'

By the end of November we had mastered the second state of lethargy and then — I don't know why, but a sort of enthusiasm for the madness took hold of me. Business was at a standstill. I grew tired of facing customers to whom I had sold bonds at a par that were now worth fifty or less and trying to explain why. After a while I began to drop in on the professor during the afternoon and we went through the insane routine again and again.

Yvonne comprehended only a part of the bizarre scheme. She was never in the room during our half-hour trials and knew only vaguely that we were involved in some sort of experiment which was to restore our lost money. I don't suppose she had much faith in it but she always indulged her father.

It was early in December that I began to remember things. Dim and formless things at first — sensations that utterly eluded the rigities of words. I tried to express them to de Neant but it was hopeless.

'A circular feeling,' I'd say. 'No — not exactly — a sense of spiral — not that, either. Roundness — I can't recall it now. It slips away.'