“Our senses,” he said, “are much more reliable than the brain that interprets them. We probably all see, and hear, and smell alike, but no two brains interpret in the same way. Try to describe to me your sensations when you looked into the stone.”
“Almost a brain-storm,” said Ommony. “A rush of thoughts that seemed to have no connection with one another. Something like modern politics or listening in on the radio when there’s loads of interference, only more exasperating—more personal—more inside yourself, as it were.”
Chutter Chand nodded confirmation. “Can you describe the thoughts, Ommonee? Do they take the form of words?”
“No. Pictures. But pictures of a sort I’ve never seen, even in dreams. Rather horrible. They appear to mean something, but the mind can’t grasp them. They’re broken off suddenly—begin nowhere and end nowhere.”
Chutter Chand nodded again. “Our experiences tally. You will notice that the stone is broken off; it also begins nowhere and ends nowhere. I have measured it carefully; from calculation of the curvature it is possible to surmise that it may have been broken off from an ellipsoid having a major axis of seventeen feet. That would be an immense mass of jade weighing very many tons; and if the whole were as perfect as this fragment, it would be a marvel such as we in our day have not seen. I suspect it to have qualities more remarkable than those of radium, and I think—although, mind you, this is now conjecture—that if we could find the original ellipsoid from which this piece was broken we would possess the open sesame to—well—to laws and facts of nature, the mere contemplation of which would fill all the lunatic asylums! I have never been so thrilled by anything in all my life.”
But Ommony was not thrilled. He had seen men go mad from exploring without landmarks into the unknown. He laughed cynically.
“ ‘We fools of nature,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘so horridly to shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls!’ I’d rather wipe out the asylums.”
“Or live in one, Sahib, and leave the lunatics outside! Shakespeare knew nothing of the atomic construction of the universe. We have advanced since his day—in some respects. Has it occurred to you to wonder how this stone acquired such remarkable qualities? No! You merely wonder at it. But observe:
“You have seen a pudding stirred? The stupidest cook in the world can pour ingredients into a basin and stir them with water until they become something compounded, that does not in the least resemble any one of the component parts. Is that not so? The same fool bakes what he has mixed. A chemical process takes place, and behold! the idiot has wrought a miracle. Again, there is almost no resemblance to what the mixture was before. It even tastes and smells quite differently. It looks different. Its specific gravity is changed. Its properties are altered. It is now digestible. It decomposes at a different speed. It has lost some of the original qualities that went into the mixture, and has taken on others that apparently were not there before the chemical process began.
“You can see the same thing in a foundry, where they mix zinc with copper and produce brass, and the brass has qualities that neither zinc nor copper appears to contain. A deaf and dumb man, knowing neither writing nor arithmetic, could produce brass from zinc and copper. A savage, who never saw an abstraction, can produce wine from grapes. Good. Now listen, Sahib: