BEYOND THE ULTRA-VIOLET

You better take your money back, mister. Thanks a lot but—no thanks. I wasn't panhandling, my hat fell off and I was trying to find it on the sidewalk. Thanks again for finding it for me but I think I could have managed. And, no offense, but I can find my way all right without being led.

You're surprised that I'm rather young, huh? Well, youth isn't a crime and anyways, twenty-four can be either young or old, depending on who you're talking to. But I know what you mean. I'm rather young for being blind, isn't that it? Most blind people you see on the streets are the old ones, the shabby ones with the pleading faces and the hat with the lead pencils in it or maybe a tin cup and a violin. Sorry to disappoint you but I guess I'm not the type.

Sure, I know—you were only trying to help. You probably think I'm bitter because I can't see your world and all the wonderful things in it. Well, it's a long story but that's not the punch line. I might be bitter but not for the reasons you might think. Up until two weeks ago I could see as well as you. And you couldn't call what happened "losing" my sight. Not exactly.

So you're curious. You want to hear the rest of it. And you're sure it's not just out of sympathy. Well, all right. There's a bar in the next block where we can get a booth and a couple of beers.

Now look, I don't need to be led! You don't need eyes to find your way to a bar on a hot summer day like this. It's toward the end of the block, just a few steps further.... Right here. There's a booth in the back where nobody will bother us for a while.

Okay, make mine the same and here's half a dollar to pay for them. Don't worry, I've got money enough to keep me in beer and pretzels for a long time. Nobody could accuse the professor of being stingy with the university funds when he paid me off.

It began about six months ago. I was in my third year at college, studying physics under Professor Martin. Maybe you've seen Martin around the campus—a rather thin guy with a face like the Rock of Gibraltar. One of the few profs who can still sound enthusiastic about their subject after twenty years of teaching it.

The unit we were studying at the time was the one on light and physical optics, primarily a study of the spectrum stretching from x-rays beyond the ultra-violet to the visible spectrum, down to the infra-red and radio waves and the short waves used in television and radar. I had been absent from class a week and on my return the professor invited me to dinner. After the dishes had been cleared away he leaned back in his chair and lit what I took to be his usual after dinner cigar.

"I like to meet my students informally, Charles," he began. "Sorry that your wife couldn't come but I understand she's ... well...." He let the sentence trail off.

I sat there feeling rather sick. It's one of those things you hope everybody has heard about so you don't have to explain, to sit and take their looks of pity and sympathy. Apparently the professor hadn't heard. "I'm sorry," I said. "I thought you knew. Both Alice and the baby died."

The hand he held his cigar in quivered a little. "I'm sorry," he said, and mercifully dropped it there. Then he changed the subject to the one he had in mind when he had asked me to dinner.

"Light, Charles, is such a large subject—and, comparatively speaking, so little is known about it. But perhaps—perhaps I know more than most. And if you wish, you can too. Would you like to see the world you live in, Charles? Not just the one tenth of one percent that they call the visible spectrum, but all of it, the whole glorious universe of light?"

He took me into his confidence on his favorite research project, an attempt to see wavelengths other than those in the visible spectrum. His enthusiasm was catching and there wasn't much hesitation. I signed the paper releasing the university from all responsibility in case of an "accident." So easy to sign one's life away—though it wasn't actually my life, only my eyesight.

The treatments began immediately. First, adaptation of vision to a dark room, like those used for flyers during the war. Then the drops of black liquid that the professor had invented, slowly spreading over the eyes, subtly altering the rods and cones of the retina, the nerve endings sensitive to light.

And I began to live in a gradually fading world. Have you ever wondered what it's like to go blind? The increasing dusk and darkness around the edges of your vision, the little errors and mistakes that begin to crop up in everyday life. Your blunder over a stool that you didn't quite see, your snubbing someone on the street whom you didn't recognize in time, the gradual awareness among your friends that something was wrong with your eyes and their crude attempts to make it "easier" for you.

For to all intents and purposes I was going blind. My "range" of vision remained the same but it was shifting down the scale. The first colors to fade out of my vision were violet and blue and their tints. The sky overhead gradually became colorless, magazine covers began to lose their appeal and slip into a bleak blending of yellows and reds. Then slowly, the other colors began to grow dim and less distinct until finally even red had faded from my sight.

But there were other colors that replaced them. Brilliant, scintillating colors that made seeing an adventure.

Describe them to you? How could you describe "red" and "green" to a person who was blind from birth? How can I describe iridescent and vliosheen to you? Do you think you could understand? Do you think you could "see" what I mean?

Oh, I could still get around in your world. I could still "see" people. All objects radiate heat, even ice. As an object's temperature goes up, the wavelength of the radiation given off goes up to the infra-red, then into the visible. I could tell how hot water was by looking at it. I could see people by the heat they gave off, glowing figures moving down the street and around the lab!

And still my range of vision shifted. Down to short waves and radio waves, the language of international communication, the wavelengths that continents and countries speak to each other in. Do you know how beautiful the aerial of your radio is, the different waves running down it like ripples across a pond? Have you ever seen the glorious pool of light around a radio broadcasting station? Have you ever marveled at the thin, trailing filaments of color tangling in the nest of television antennas that the city carries on its rooftops?

The professor was worried, for along with losing my sight of this world, I began to lose interest in it. A truly blind man wouldn't for he has nothing to replace vision with, he's still bound to the commonplace globe. He can improve his hearing or his sense of touch, but nothing replaces his sight. It was different with me. I was seeing something far more interesting than the dull, mundane world.

They fixed a cot up for me in the laboratory; an experiment like myself was far too important to risk on the streets. Even then, I'd bump into tables or smash lab apparatus. I suppose an important experiment like I was should have taken care of itself, sort of like a self-lubricating motor. I'd cost the university lots of money and I suppose I should have watched out for their investment—though I was probably the only one who didn't care what happened to me.

There finally came a day when my eyes didn't change. I had reached a sticking point. The end of the spectrum? The professor said he didn't think so.

I didn't think so either for just beyond my range of vision seemed a hint of something else. I caught "glimpses" of something—I couldn't make out exactly what. There seemed to be vague suggestions of form and color and life, indistinct figures that capered and grimaced just beyond my view. There was nothing definite, nothing that I could draw a picture of and describe like you could an automobile or a building. There were just suggestions, a feeling of something more. There was a hint of life in the masses of winking light that beckoned and burned.

The next day the professor brought my eyes back to normal. Familiar objects had a sudden fascination that quickly faded when I had regained normal vision for an hour or so. It was a prosaic world once again. Radios and aerials were just—cabinets of wood and plastic and glass tubes and strips of rusty wire and metal.

I wasn't sure the experiment was over. I asked the professor if there was anything that would take me further along the scale, beyond, perhaps, even the spectrum as we knew it.

He twisted his hands nervously behind his back and walked over and looked out the laboratory window. "I could do it for you, Charles, but I'm not sure that I could bring you back. Your eyes would be stranded in that world of yours. You could never look at ours again."

He turned from the window and faced me.

"Why don't you forget it for a few weeks and then come back here and if you still want to, we'll continue the experiment."

I agreed and left. I spent the next two weeks doing nothing but looking at our world. Do you think you really appreciate your sight? If you knew you had but a few weeks of sight left, what would you do with it? Visit famous landmarks? See the country? If you thought about it, I think you'd do the same as I did. I began to enjoy what was close at hand, the surroundings I had lived in. Everyday sights held a certain fascination for me. The stark black and white mosaic of a city at the tag end of winter; the sheer, raucous color of the magazines at your local newsstand; the smooth patterns of hues and tints in a department store window display.

And how much do you appreciate springtime? The few weeks of the year when the city loses its look of drabness and little plots of grass and flowers add color to it—like brilliant strips of cloth in a dirty patchwork quilt. Then there were the kids roller skating down the sidewalks, the girls' pigtails flying and the boys' knickers flapping in the breeze. And later on, in the business blocks, the soft glow of neon against the swirling fog of a warm spring night.

That was the last spring I'll ever see. I'll be able to smell the flowers and feel the warmth of the sun and run my fingers through the green grass. But I'll never see it again.

After the few weeks were up I returned to the professor—still curious about what lay beyond the spectrum limits. There were the eye washes and the drops and then the heavy strips of white cloth wrapped around my head, keeping your world out and bounding mine with a rim of black. My last look at the world was of some kids playing in the city streets, and some bread crumbs spread out on the window sill for the birds. After that a quick view of the lab—a jungle of glass retorts and vats filled with oily chemicals—and a closeup of Professor Martin's gnarled hands holding the bandages for my eyes.

I lay on the cot in the lab for the next few days, listening to your world and feeling it and remembering it; the good and the bad, the adventuresome and the dull. I could hear the newsboy hawking his papers and the shouts of the kids and the clatter of the main street trolley. I could smell the factory smoke and the heavy, animal odor drifting up from the stockyards. I could hear the people in the lab and Professor Martin scurrying about, asking me how I felt, and toward the end, telling me that in a few hours the bandages would come off.

Two weeks ago the professor came into the lab and started tearing at the adhesive, stripping away the layers of white cloth. Even when he had the bandages all the way off, I kept my eyes closed, almost afraid to open them.

My eyes had to focus first. Everything was so damned brilliant and indistinct. Then my sight cleared and suddenly everything was very plain.

Well, that's about it. There isn't much more to tell. It hasn't been too boring to listen to me for fifteen minutes, has it? I can tell you haven't been too bored because you haven't touched your beer, have you? It's getting warm—and you know what they say about warm beer....

What did I see? You really want to know, don't you?

Well, I've tried to rationalize it and explain it and I suppose I can, in a dim way. Put it this way: I'm totally blind now. What's bright to you is black to me. But I'm not bitter because I can't see your world. And I can't describe to you what I saw because, you see, I don't remember. Perhaps it's merciful, I don't know. I can only guess from what the professor told me.

Professor Martin had stripped the bandages from my eyes and he and a few assistants saw my eyes blur and finally focus on something in a different world from theirs. And then, before I fainted, I screamed the one word that none of them would ever forget.

"ALICE!"