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    Brain Wave
    Brain Wave
    Brain Wave
    Ebook228 pages3 hours

    Brain Wave

    By Poul Anderson

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    From the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author: “A panoramic story of what happens to a world gone super intelligent” (Astounding Science Fiction).
     
    With “wonderfully logical detail . . . exciting storytelling and moving characterization” (Anthony Boucher), science fiction master Poul Anderson explores what happens when the next stage of evolution is thrust upon humanity and animals. As Earth passes out of a magnetic field that has suppressed intelligence for eons, the mental capacity for all mammals increases exponentially, radically changing the structures of society.
     
    A mentally impaired farm worker finds himself capable of more delicate and intelligent thoughts than he ever dreamed. A young boy on holiday manages to discern the foundations of calculus before breakfast. Animals that were seen as livestock and pets can now communicate clearly with their owners and one another. And an already brilliant physics researcher now uses his boundless intellect to bring humankind to the stars—even as his wife plunges into an existential crisis. For all of them, the world will never be the same . . .
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateSep 18, 2018
    ISBN9781504053679
    Author

    Poul Anderson

    Poul Anderson (1926–2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his “hard” science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and “fantasy with rivets,” he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or “Wanderer,” Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle.

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    Reviews for Brain Wave

    3.5/5

    166 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      USA, New York, ca 1955Indeholder kapitlerne "Det begynder ...", "Besynderligere og besynderligere", "Dyrenes oprør", "Rædselen", "Vi er alene, Joe", "Det nye menneske", "Den talende gorilla", "Forbundsfæller", "Den følsomme", "Rumskibet", "At dræbe sine venner", "På rejse i universet", "Livet begynder", "Hjemme igen", "Kvinden".Jorden bevæger sig udenfor et kegleformet felt, der udgår fra mælkevejens centrum. Feltet har de sidste 60 millioner år virket svagt hæmmende på en række natur"konstanter". Den akkumulerede virkning af at hæmningen nu er væk er størst på komplicerede kemiske systemer som fx celler og i særdeleshed nerveceller. Over en periode på nogle dage bliver alle folk pludseligt meget kvikkere og de højere dyr ligeså. Folk, der før har været sinker, bliver nu som normale folk var før. Husdyr begynder at lukke slåer og båse op og stikke af.En landbrugsmedhjælper Archie Brock går fra at have svært ved at køre bil til at tænke over hvor langt væk stjernerne er. Archies arbejdsgiver John Rossman tager afsted, fordi han ikke længere kan se meningen med at spilde tiden på sin fritidsgård. Archie bliver tilbage og holder gården ved lige. En kanin fanget i en fælde finder ud af at slippe ud. Højt begavede folk som fysikeren Peter Corinth, der er gift med den almindeligt begavede Sheila, finder at de selv er i stand til at tænke superavancerede tanker, som deres ægtefæller slet ikke forstår. En hel del bliver grebet af en ny religiøs sekt "Tredie Baal".Sheila forstår ikke engang de tanker, der opstår i hendes eget hoved og bliver syg af det. Takket være den avancerede lægekunst bliver hun rask, men med en IQ som før forandringen.Peter Corinth og kollegaen Nat Lewis tager en tur i det første hastigt byggede FTL rumskib og tænker sig ikke helt om. Derfor kommer de indenfor det hæmmende felt igen og har en skræmmende tur indtil de kommer ud igen og kan forstå hvordan de styrer rumskibet.Archie Brock er stadig udenfor det nye samfund, der langsomt tegner sig, men i stedet for at indgå som et lille tandhjul, vil han hellere være herre i eget hus og han får et lille landbrug til at køre med hjælp fra sin meget kloge hund Joe, to tilløbne chimpanser Jimmy og Mehitabel, en elefant Jumbo og en tidligere åndssvag. Men Archie er den klogeste i husholdningen og han kan næsten ikke klare at slagte får, selv om han ved at de ikke er blevet bevidste på samme måde som hestene og grisene.Administratoren Felix Mandelbaum er med til at organisere verden igen efter forandringen. Manuelt arbejde er ikke i høj kurs, så automatisering er en stor del af løsningen. Men de virkeligt begavede vil noget mere og de bliver ikke på Jorden. Deres rejser i FTL rumskibene har vist at der er masser af liv på andre kloder, men at der ikke ser ud til at være nogen på et højere stadie end menneskene.Så de vil ikke være guder eller bestemme over andre, men gerne af og til give en hjælpende hånd.Sheila ender med at søge til Archie, for Peter har forandret sig alt for meget i forhold til hende.Glimrende ide til en historie og tilpas med forklaringer til at det virker overbevisende, i alt fald så længe man sidder med bogen i hånden.
    • 3/5
      I thought this was a book from the late 70's and was surprised to find it dates originally to 1954. The concept of the story is really out there - all life on earth has had intelligence suppressed because of a field the solar system has been passing through while we rotate around the galaxy. Now we are moving out of it and then, one day, it no longer is influencing the planet. This is intelligently written science fiction from the golden age. The story clearly is set in the 50's and it feels 50ish but tries I think to rise above that to a more modern way - the 50's elements seen from now are like reading historical fiction whereas the story itself tries to stretch to bigger ideas. It can't quite do that since among other things it has a guy smoking a cigar on a starship. The story plays out better than I expected as mankind worldwide (and animalkind worldwide!) deals with a huge growing boost in intelligence. There was a lot of gobbledygook here and there and the attempts for a scientific explanation of why intelligence had been suppressed was pretty silly to me. What I liked were some of the personal stories of how people reacted to a changed mental state and how the world was going to change. This part of the book, the bulk of it, was hit and miss - the story revolving around the man attempting to keep running a farm I liked a lot - glimpses of other people were intriguing - the New York City stuff, and the central focus on a particular scientist pretty much not interesting at all.We could have a lot of fun with animals throwing off the yoke and taking on man. There is a bit of fun like that but the story primarily goes other ways. So there's no rise of the rats, or insect takeovers or good dogs gone bad. This book gets an OK from me. I did like the ending.
    • 5/5
      "The speed of light as measured may only be a local phenomena." The Earth moves out of a field that retarded intelligence, raising the intelligence level of every thinking creature, including Man. Anderson explores the pros and cons of increased reasoning power, as domestic animals leave their pens, and society collapses. The weakest point is the portrayal of the now beyond measurement intelligent humans; even Anderson has trouble trying to envision how these beings might act. Still a classic of science fiction.
    • 4/5
      There was so much potential here that never quite came to be. For instance, the animal intelligence could have been played out more. Also, transitions were almost non-existent. You would follow one character, then go onto another, then come back to the first at a later time with no explanation of whatever came of the previous scenario. The concept was interesting enough that It kept my attention, which is hard to do these days.
    • 4/5
      Posit a galactic field that reduced our ability to think. We develop our intelligence & technology under the influence of that field & then we move out from under its influence. Suddenly everyone on the planet doubles their IQ. What would happen to our civilization, to the everyday people? That's the basis that Anderson uses for this book & it's well done.
    • 4/5
      A quick, fun read with a fairly original premise (at least, one that hasn't been done to death). My chief complaint is that I wanted to know more; I feel as though we hardly get to know the characters, and that there are some potentially very interesting pieces of information that we are not privy to. On the one hand, if the biggest complaint about a book is that there isn't enough of it, most authors would gladly take that. On the other, On the other, since we hardly know these characters, it's hard to care about them, or to get very engrossed in the story.There was potential here; the book is by no means bad, but it could have been quite good.
    • 4/5
      A cosmic event causes the co-inhabitants of planet earth to leap suddenly forward in intelligence. Everyone is suddenly stratspherically smarter, even the animals. How would society cope if everyone were suddenly a genius, and the dumb beasts of burden no longer dumb. Would society as you know it tear itself apart and descend into anarchy. . . . can there be any future for a world of super-intelligent beings?The writing style has dated somewhat, however this remains a fascinating classic of science fiction.
    • 4/5
      This book may be dated but its questions are not.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite stories of all time. Read it as a teenager. Re-read it with a girlfriend I wanted to share it with a decade later. I want to re-read it again just thinking about it -- soon. I wish there were a sequel that went into more depth with some of the characters (both human and animal).
    • 4/5
      I'd first heard of Brain Wave via a reference in Stephen King's The Tommyknockers. Once I heard the synopsis for this book, I just had to read it. What if overnight, every living being on the Earth got smarter?The book opens with a rabbit reasoning its way out of a trap. Animals figure out that they don't like their place in the food chain. Everybody working a menial job decides it is beneath them and society collapses.I was very impressed with the book. Anderson examines the good and the bad ramifications of super-intelligence. Not everybody sees it as a boon. Not every psyche is stable enough to handle the change. It would have been so easy to use super intelligence as an excuse to write a Utopian novel, but that is not at all what the author does. Instead, he follows several characters to give a more panoramic view of the changes that take place.My only disappointment with the book was that it seemed too short. The book clocks in at a hundred and sixty-five pages, but the ideas in the book really deserved more space to spread out. I put that down to the time the book was published (mid-fifties) rather than lack of vision on Poul Anderson's part.Very much worth a read. A clever and well written book that leaves you with some things to ponder. It's a shame this book isn't more well known.
    • 5/5
      As an earlier reviewer mentioned, the premise, that everyone and every animal on earth, suddenly finds themselves exponentially smarter, could have been an excuse to write a Utopian novel. Instead, Anderson explores the pressures placed on society both from the intellectual below, as those that once performed menial labour now finding it impossible to tolerate, and from above, as those that were already highly intelligent find themselves losing their humanity.Either of these scenarios could in turn have been the plot of mediocre dystopian novel; but instead everyone muddles along surprisingly realistically. While most of the characters lack the depth that this premise deserved, the depiction of Archie Brock, a retarded man now raised to what was formerly genius level (in particular, the opening scene, when he realizes how far away the stars must be), raise the book to the level of a masterpiece.
    • 4/5
      I read this many years ago during a week-long vacation at my grandma's, and I recall sneaking out every afternoon to the library to read another chapter or two. I was a teenager, so I can't vouch for the quality of the writing with my current understanding, but I can say that the core of the story has remained with me until today, and every now and then I recall aspects of it. It was a fascinating read.

      If a more modern reference may help others what to expect, I could say that the short story "Understand" by Ted Chiang (of "Story of Your Life"/"Arrival" fame) was quite reminiscent of this book, for me.
    • 3/5
      When the earth emerges from an inter-galactic inhibitor field that had slowed neural activity and limited intelligence for earthly life forms for millions of years, everyone starts getting crazy-smart. Farm animals get too clever for fences, people of below-average intelligence attain high-level genius IQs, and people of normal and above-average intelligence...well, they get a little too smart for their own good. This story raises some interesting questions about what it means to be human, and the importance of intelligence relative to other human qualities. Overall, though, I found the premise much more compelling than the actual execution. The characters are all so thin that it's hard to care much about what happens to them. Moral: Maybe inhumanly clever and logical people don't make for such a great novel.
    • 5/5
      What happens if all brains (human and animal) started functioning on an enhanced level, overnight? Who will survive? And who cannot survive? This story is so "large" in concept that it begs for an expansion that probably will never be written. It's been 14 years since I last read it, and at least 40 since I first read it, and it's even more intriguing now than ever. I can't comprehend how it only rates an average of 3.5 star.
    • 2/5
      I have got to start checking publication dates. There are some interesting questions to think about in book, but they are wrapped in a story, the bulk of which reads as so dated, sexist, and from a very limited and privileged point of view, that I found it difficult to slog through.
    • 5/5
      Fun read about a world where suddenly every creature becomes a factor more intelligent. More than science this novel is about culture and society. How do animals of varying intelligence, and humans from different backgrounds, react? How does this change the relationship between humans and animals? Does civilized society become more structured or disordered? What happens to science, philosophy and religion?These are the questions Brain Wave asks, and they are important ones. At less than 200 pages and always captivating, this novel could easily have been extended. As it is, I still consider it a remarkable work by a great storyteller.

    Book preview

    Brain Wave - Poul Anderson

    Anderson_BrainWave.jpg

    Brain Wave

    Poul Anderson

    To Karen, of course

    CHAPTER ONE

    The trap had closed at sundown. In the last red light, the rabbit had battered himself against its walls until fear and numbness ached home and he crouched shaken by the flutterings of his own heart. Otherwise there was no motion in him as night and the stars came. But when the moon rose, its light was caught icily in his great eyes, and he looked through shadows to the forest.

    His vision was not made to focus closely, but after a while it fell on the entrance to the trap. It had snapped down on him when he entered, and then there had been only the flat bruising beat of himself against the wood. Now slowly, straining through the white unreal haze of moon light, he recalled a memory of the gate falling, and he squeaked ever so faintly with terror. For the gate was there now, solid and sullen against the breathing forest, and yet it had been up and had come thunking down, and this now—then doubleness was something the rabbit had never known before.

    The moon rose higher, swinging through a sky full of stars. An owl hooted, and the rabbit froze into movelessness as its wings ghosted overhead. There was fear and bewilderment and a new kind of pain in the owl’s voice, too. Presently it was gone, and only the many little murmurs and smells of night were around him. And he sat for a long time looking at the gate and remembering how it had fallen.

    The moon began to fall too, into a paling western heaven.

    Perhaps the rabbit wept a little, in his own way. A dawn which was as yet only a mist in the dark limned the bars of the trap against grey trees. And there was a crossbar low on the gate.

    Slowly, very slowly, the rabbit inched across until he was at the entrance. He shrank from the thing which had clamped him in. It smelled of man. Then he nosed it, feeling dew cold and wet on his muzzle. It did not stir. But it had fallen down.

    The rabbit crouched, bracing his shoulders against the crossbar. He strained then, heaving upward, and the wood shivered. The rabbit’s breath came fast and sharp, whistling between his teeth, and he tried again. The gate moved upward in its grooves, and the rabbit bolted free.

    For an instant he poised wildly. The sinking moon was a blind dazzle in his eyes. The gate smacked back into place, and he turned and fled.

    Archie Brock had been out late grubbing stumps in the north forty. Mr. Rossman wanted them all pulled by Wednesday so he could get the plowing started in his new field, and promised Brock extra pay if he would see to it. So Brock took some dinner out with him and worked till it got too dark to see. Then he started walking the three miles home, because they didn’t let him use the jeep or a truck.

    He was tired without thinking of it, aching a little and wishing he had a nice tall beer. But mostly he didn’t think at all, just picked them up and laid them down, and the road slid away behind him. There were dark woods on either side, throwing long shadows across the moon-whitened dust, and he heard the noise of crickets chirring and once there was an owl. Have to take a gun and get that owl before he swiped some chickens. Mr. Rossman didn’t mind if Brock hunted.

    It was funny the way he kept thinking things tonight. Usually he just went along, especially when he was as tired as now, but—maybe it was the moon—he kept remembering bits of things, and words sort of formed themselves in his head like someone was talking. He thought about his bed and how nice it would have been to drive home from work; only of course he got sort of mixed up when driving, and there’d been a couple of smashups. Funny he should have done that, because all at once it didn’t seem so hard: just a few signals to learn, and you kept your eyes open, and that was all.

    The sound of his feet was hollow on the road. He breathed deeply, drawing a cool night into his lungs, and looked upward, away from the moon. The stars were sure big and bright tonight.

    Another memory come back to him, somebody had said the stars were like the sun only farther away. It hadn’t made much sense then. But maybe it was so, like a light was a small thing till you got up close and then maybe it was very big. Only if the stars were as big as the sun, they’d have to be awful far away.

    He stopped dead, feeling a sudden cold run through him. Jesus God! How far up the stars were!

    The earth seemed to fall away underfoot, he was hanging on to a tiny rock that spun crazily through an everlasting darkness, and the great stars burned and roared around him, so far up that he whimpered with knowing it.

    He began to run.

    The boy rose early, even if it was summer and no school and breakfast wouldn’t be for a while yet. The street and the town outside his windows looked very clean and bright in the young sunshine. A single truck clattered down the road and a man in blue denim walked towards the creamery carrying a lunch pail, otherwise it was as if he had the whole world to himself. His father was already off to work, and Mom liked to go back to bed for an hour after fixing his breakfast, and Sis was still asleep, so the boy was all alone in the house.

    His friend was coming over and they’d go fishing, but first he wanted to get some more done on his model plane. He washed as thoroughly as you could ask a ten-year-old to, snatched a roll from the pantry, and went back to his room and the littered table there. The plane was going to be a real beauty, a Shooting Star with a C02 cartridge to make a jet. Only somehow, this morning it didn’t look as good as it had last night. He wished he could make a real jet motor for it.

    He sighed, pushing the work away, and took a sheet of paper. He’d always liked to doodle around with numbers, and one of the teachers had taught him a little about algebra. Some of the fellows had called him teacher’s pet for that, till he licked them, but it was real interesting, not just like learning multiplication tables. Here you made the numbers and letters do something. The teacher said that if he really wanted to build spaceships when he grew up, he’d have to learn lots of math.

    He started drawing some graphs. The different kinds of equations made different pictures. It was fun to see how x=ky+c made a straight line while x2+y2=c was always a circle. Only how if you changed one of the x’s, made it equal 3 instead of 2? What would happen to the y in the meantime? He’d never thought of that before!

    He grasped the pencil tightly, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. You had to kind of sneak up on the x and the y, change one of them just a weeny little bit, and then—

    He was well on the way to inventing differential calculus when his mother called him down to breakfast.

    CHAPTER TWO

    Peter Corinth came out of the shower, still singing vigorously, to find Sheila busy frying bacon and eggs. He ruffled her soft brown hair up, kissing her on the neck, and she turned to smile at him.

    She looks like an angel and cooks like an angel, he said.

    Why, Pete, she answered, you never—

    Never could find words, he agreed. But it’s gospel truth, me love. He bent over the pan, inhaling the crisp odor with a contented sigh. I have a hunch this is one of those days when everything will go right, he said. "A bit of Hubris for which the gods will doubtless visit a Nemesis on me. Ate: Gertie, the slut, will burn out a tube. But you’ll amend it all."

    Hubris, Nemesis, Ate. A tiny frown creased her broad clear forehead. You’ve used those words before, Pete. What do they mean?

    He blinked at her. Two years after marriage, he was still far gone in love with his wife, and as she stood there his heart turned over within him. She was kind and merry and beautiful and she could cook—but she was nothing of an intellectual, and when his friends came over she sat quietly back, taking no part in the conversation. What do you care? he asked.

    I was just wondering, she said.

    He went into the bedroom and began dressing, leaving the door open so he could explain the basis of Greek tragedy. It was much too bright a morning to dwell on so somber a theme, but she listened closely, with an occasional question. When he came out, she smiled and went over to him.

    You dear clumsy physicist, she said. You’re the only man I ever knew who could put on a suit straight from the cleaners and make it look like you’d been fixing a car in it. She adjusted his tie and pulled down the rumpled coat. He ran a hand through his black hair, immediately reducing it to unkemptness, and followed her to the kitchenette table. A whiff of steam from the coffee­pot fogged his horn-rimmed glasses, and he took them off and polished them on his necktie. His lean, broken-nosed face looked different without them—younger, perhaps, only the thirty-three years which was his actual age.

    It came to me just when I woke up, he said as he buttered his toast. I must have a well-trained subconscious after all.

    You mean the solution to your problem? asked Sheila.

    He nodded, too absorbed to consider what her query meant. She usually just let him run on, saying yes and no in the right places but not really listening. To her, his work was altogether mysterious. He had sometimes thought she lived in child’s world, with nothing very well known but all of it bright and strange.

    I’ve been trying to build a phase analyzer for intermolecular resonance bonds in crystal structure, he said. Well, no matter. The thing is, I’ve been plugging along for the past few weeks, trying to design a circuit which would do what I wanted, and was baffled. Then I woke up just this morning with an idea that might work. Let’s see— His eyes looked beyond her and he ate without tasting. Sheila laughed, very softly.

    I may be late tonight, he said at the door. If this new idea of mine pans out, I may not want to break off work till—Lord knows when. I’ll call you.

    Okay, honey. Good hunting.

    When he was gone, Sheila stood for a moment smiling after him. Pete was a—well, she was just lucky, that was all. She’d never really appreciated how lucky, but this morning seemed different, somehow. Everything stood out sharp and clear, as if she were up in the Western mountains her husband loved so well.

    She hummed to herself as she washed the dishes and straightened up the apartment. Memory slid through her, the small-town Pennsylvania girlhood, the business college, her coming to New York four years ago to take a clerical job at the office of a family acquaintance. Dear God, but she had been unsuited for that kind of life! One party and boy friend after another, everybody fast-talking, jerky-moving, carefully hard-boiled and knowing, the expensive and market-wise crowd where she always had to be on her guard—All right, she’d married Pete on the rebound, after Bill walked out calling her a stupid—never mind. But she’d always liked the shy, quiet man, and she had been on the rebound from a whole concept of living.

    So I’m stodgy now, she told herself, and glad of it, too.

    An ordinary housewifely existence, nothing more spectacular than a few friends in for beer and talk, going to church now and then while Pete, the agnostic, slept late; vacation trips in New England or the Rocky Mountains; plans of having a kid soon—who wanted more? Her friends before had always been ready for a good laugh at the shibboleth-ridden boredom which was bourgeois existence: but when you got right down to it, they had only traded one routine and one set of catchwords for another, and seemed to have lost something of reality into the bargain.

    Sheila shook her head, puzzled. It wasn’t like her to go daydreaming this way. Her thoughts even sounded different, somehow.

    She finished the housework and looked about her. Normally she relaxed for a while before lunch with one of the pocket mysteries which were her prime vice; afterwards there was some shopping to do, maybe a stroll in the park, maybe a visit to or from some woman friend, and then supper to fix and Pete to expect. But today—

    She picked up the detective story she had planned to read. For a moment the bright cover rested between uncertain fingers, and she almost sat down with it. Then, shaking her head, she laid it back and went over to the crowded bookshelf, took out Pete’s worn copy of Lord Jim, and returned to the armchair. Midafternoon came before she realized that she had forgotten all about lunch.

    Corinth met Felix Mandelbaum in the elevator going down. They were that rare combination, neighbors in a New York apartment building who had become close friends. Sheila, with her small-town background, had insisted on getting to know everyone on their own floor at least, and Corinth had been glad of it in the case of the Mandelbaums. Sarah was a plump, quiet, retiring Hausfrau sort, pleasant but not colorful; her husband was a horse of quite another shade.

    Felix Mandelbaum had been born fifty years ago in the noise and dirt and sweatshops of the lower East Side, and life had been kicking him around ever since; but he kicked back, with a huge enjoyment. He’d been everything from itinerant fruit picker to skilled machinist and O.S.S. operative overseas, during the war—where his talent for languages and people must have come in handy. His career as a labor organizer ran parallel, from the old Wobblies to the comparative respectability of his present job: officially executive secretary of a local union, actually a roving trouble shooter with considerable voice in national councils. Not that he had been a radical since his twenties; he said he’d seen radicalism from the inside, and that was enough for any sane man. Indeed, he claimed to be one of the last true conservatives—only, to conserve, you had to prune and graft and adjust. He was self-educated, but widely read, with more capacity for life than anyone else of Corinth’s circle except possibly Nat Lewis. Fun to know.

    Hello, said the physicist. You’re late today.

    Not exactly. Mandelbaum’s voice was a harsh New York tone, fast and clipped. He was a small, wiry, grey-haired man, with a gnarled beaky face and intense dark eyes. I woke up with an idea. A reorganization plan. Amazing nobody’s thought of it yet. It’d halve the paper work. So I’ve been outlining a chart.

    Corinth shook his head dolefully. By now, Felix, you should know that Americans are too fond of paper work to give up one sheet, he said.

    You haven’t seen Europeans, grunted Mandelbaum.

    You know, said Corinth, it’s funny you should’ve had your idea just today. (Remind me to get the details from you later, it sounds interesting.) I woke up with the solution to a problem that’s been bedeviling me for the past month.

    Hm? Mandelbaum pounced on the fact, you could almost see him turning it over in his hands, sniffing it, and laying it aside. Odd. It was a dismissal.

    The elevator stopped and they parted company. Corinth took the subway as usual. He was currently between cars; in this town, it just didn’t pay to own one. He noticed vaguely that the train was quieter than ordinarily. People were less hurried and unmannerly, they seemed thoughtful. He glanced at the newspapers, wondering with a gulp if it had started, but there was nothing really sensational—except maybe for that local bit about a dog, kept

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