The Mathematicians - Arthur Feldman

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mathematicians by Arthur Feldman. We gave this story to
a very competent and very pretty gal artist. We said,
read this carefully, dream on it, and come up with
an illustration. A week later, she returned with a finished

(00:20):
drawing the hero. She said, we did a double take. Hey,
that's not the hero. She looked us straight in the eye.
Can you prove it? She had us? We couldn't. And
she left hurdly to go home and cook dinner for
her family. And what were they having? Frog legs? What

(00:44):
else they were in the garden? Now, soe, said Xenia
Hawkins to her nine year old daughter. Quit fluttering around,
and Papa will tell you a story. Zoe settled down
in the hand, A true story, Papa. It all happened

(01:05):
exactly like I'm going to tell you, said Drake Hawkins,
pinching Zoe's rosy cheek. Now, two and eleven years ago,
in nineteen eighty five, figuring by the earthly calendar of
that time, a tribe of beans from the dog star
Sirius invaded the earth. What did these beans look like? Father?

(01:26):
Like humans? And many many respects. They each had two arms,
two legs, and all the other organs and humans are
endowed with. Wasn't there any difference at all between the
star beings and the humans, Papa? There was the newcomers.
Each and all had a pair of wings covered with
green feathers growing from their shoulders, and long purple tails.

(01:50):
How many of these beans were their father, exactly three
million and forty one male adults and three females adults.
These creatures first appeared on Earth on the island of
Sardinia in five weeks time. They were the masters of
the entire globe. Didn't there earthlanes fight back? Papa? The

(02:14):
humans warred against the invaders using bullets, ordinary bombs, super
atom bombs, and gases. What were those things like, father, Oh,
they've passed out of existence long ago. Ammunition they were called.
The humans fought each other with such things, and not

(02:35):
with ideas like we do now, Father, No, with guns,
just like I told you. But the invaders were immune
to the ammunition. What does it immune mean? Proof against harm?
Then humans tried germs and bacteria against the star beings.

(02:57):
What were those things? Tiny tiny bugs that the humans
tried to inject into the bodies of the invaders to
make them sicken and die, but the bugs had no
effect at all in the star beings. Go on, Papa,
these beans overran all Earth. Go on from there. You

(03:18):
must know. These newcomers were vastly more intelligent than the earthlanes.
In fact, the invaders were the greatest mathematicians in the system.
What's the system? What does mathematician mean? The Milky Way?
A mathematician is one who is good at figuring, weighing, measuring,

(03:41):
clever with numbers. Well, then, Father, the invaders killed off
all their earthlanes. Not all, they killed many, but many
others were enslaved. Just as the humans had used horses
and cattle, the newcomers so used the humans they made
workers out of some others they slaughtered for food, Papa,

(04:05):
What sort of language did These star beings talk? Very
simple language, but the humans were never able to master it.
So the invaders, being so much smarter, mastered all the
languages of the globe. What did the earthlanes call the
invader's father and bills? Half angels half devils? Then, Papa,

(04:33):
Everything was peaceful on Earth until after the anvils enslaved
the humans for a little while. Then some of the
most daring of the humans led by a man named
no All, escaped into the interior of Greenland. This know
All was a psychiatrist, the foremost on earth. What's a psychiatrist?

(04:57):
A dealer in ideas? Then he was very rich. He'd
been the richest human on earth. After some profound thought,
Noell figured a way to rid the earth of the anvils.
How Papa he perfected a method called the Noah hughes
Ilinski of imbuing these a bit above the child's understanding dreams.

(05:22):
What does imbuing mean, no, Mama said, So you filled them?
I understand what? Papa interrupt So know All continued. Drake
filled the anvils with human feelings such as love, hate, ambition, jealousy, malice, envy, despair, hope, fear, shame,

(05:43):
and so on. Very soon the anvils were acting like humans,
and in ten days, terrible civil wars wiped out the
anvil's population by two thirds. Then Papa the anvils finally
killed off each other, almost until among them a being
named Zalibar, full of saintliness and persuasion, preached the Brotherhood

(06:07):
of all Anvils. The invaders quickly converted, quit their quarrels
and earthlings were even more enslaved. Oh Papa, weren't Noah
and his followers in Greenland awfully sad the way things
had turned out? For a while, then Noah came up
with the final payoff. Is that slang, Papa payoff? Yes,

(06:34):
the coup de grasse, the ace in a hole that
he'd saved if all else failed. I understand, Papa, the
idea that would out trump anything the other side had
to offer. What was it, Father, What did they have? Huh?
Noell imbued the anvils with nostalgia? What is nostalgia? Homesickness?

(07:01):
Oh Papa wasn't know all smart? That meant the anvils
were all filled with desire to fly back to the
star from where they had started exactly. So, one day
all the anvils, an immense army, flapping their great green wings,
assembled into black hills of North America, and at a
given signal, they all rose up from Earth, and all

(07:24):
the humans chanted glory, glory, the day of our deliverance. So, then, Father,
all the anvils flew away from Earth. Not all, there
were two child anvils, one male and one female, aged
two years, who had been born on Earth and They
started off with all the other anvils and flew up

(07:45):
into the sky. But when they reached the upper limits
of the stratosphere, they hesitated, turned tail, and fluttered back
to Earth, where they'd been born. Their names were Zizzo
and Zizza. It happened to Sizzo and Sissa. Papa, well,
like all the anvils, they were great mathematicians, so they multiplied.

(08:08):
Oh Papa laughed, Zoe flapping her wings excitedly. That was
a very nice story. End of The Mathematician by Arthur
Feldman