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Acolyte, v. 2, issue 4, whole no. 8, Fall 1944
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ERVOOL FRITZ LEIBER JR. Ervool made his way up the great lightless stair to look at thedead realm of ice and stars Had a scientist of our age been able to get a glimpse of Ervool he would have classified him as a horrifyingly unique freak of human birth. There was the central eye, so large and strangely filmed as to keep one from noticing the two tiny, heavily lidded sub-eyes that flanked it. Below the eye was the delicate, poignantly lipped mouth through which Ervool also breathed. Short neck, squat body and limbs were muffled in a thick napped, neutral colored garment. The eight fingers on the thumbless hands were more like nicely jointed claws. The bare feet were without toes. But, more than all these special features, an anomalous quality of the skin of Ervool would have baffled and made avid for closer view that hypothetical, timeless scientist of our day and age. However, the great circular, stone hewn stair with its round, long echoing well was without light and an observer would only have heard the quick breathing of Ervool and the disturbingly sharp, glasslike sound of his footstepes. Had a scientist of our age been able to spend some little time with Ervool he would have become less sure that Ervool was a freak. The toeless feet were strangely boned -- and hooved with a flexible horny substance. The clawlike fingers were exceedingly precise and delicate in their movements. The central eye was all to nicely accomodated for by facial bone-structure to seem the freak extra-eye of an engulfed twin. These facts, taken in conjunction with many others -- such as the absolute absence of hair -- would slowly and unwillingly but inevitably led the hypothetical scientist to an astonishing conclusion; indeed, the obvious utility and concatenation of Ervool's freakin features could have but one explanation: Ervool belonged to a different species, a completely differentiated offshoot or developement of the animal man. And this was true - for no human of our day had hand in the hewing of that great lightless stair or in the shaping of the miles-deep caverns from which Ervool slowly clambered to the long deserted, frozen outer world. Nor were those caverns, except for small part, the work even of Ervool's people andtheir forebears. Had that hypothetical scientist of our day been a man with great powers of observation and analytic scope, he would no sooner have decided that Ervool belonged to a different and later species than be would have begun to fear that a much more tremendous problem had fallen to him. In short, he would have become aware that Ervool's vestigial organs were "all wrong". The central eye had remnant of a filmy sub-eyelid; the finger-claws had remnants of connecting webs; the hairless skin showed -- not traces of hair follicles -- but traces of scales. Further examination would have brought to light other corroborating features, and strangest of all, a set of green-tinged lumps around each wrist. Their symmetrical arrangement and the spiral whorl of veins that covered each one would seem to preclude the possibility of their being any kind of diseased growth--and Ervool did not seem to benefit by them in any way. But -- if they were vestigial organs-- they were vestiges of no organ any physiologist, zoologist, or paleontologist ever saw or postulated. The hypothetical scientist would have been staggered, thrilled, and in no common way awed by the conclusion toward which this new set of data pointed; he would have searched his mind for altenate explanations, he would carefully have reviewed and
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ERVOOL FRITZ LEIBER JR. Ervool made his way up the great lightless stair to look at thedead realm of ice and stars Had a scientist of our age been able to get a glimpse of Ervool he would have classified him as a horrifyingly unique freak of human birth. There was the central eye, so large and strangely filmed as to keep one from noticing the two tiny, heavily lidded sub-eyes that flanked it. Below the eye was the delicate, poignantly lipped mouth through which Ervool also breathed. Short neck, squat body and limbs were muffled in a thick napped, neutral colored garment. The eight fingers on the thumbless hands were more like nicely jointed claws. The bare feet were without toes. But, more than all these special features, an anomalous quality of the skin of Ervool would have baffled and made avid for closer view that hypothetical, timeless scientist of our day and age. However, the great circular, stone hewn stair with its round, long echoing well was without light and an observer would only have heard the quick breathing of Ervool and the disturbingly sharp, glasslike sound of his footstepes. Had a scientist of our age been able to spend some little time with Ervool he would have become less sure that Ervool was a freak. The toeless feet were strangely boned -- and hooved with a flexible horny substance. The clawlike fingers were exceedingly precise and delicate in their movements. The central eye was all to nicely accomodated for by facial bone-structure to seem the freak extra-eye of an engulfed twin. These facts, taken in conjunction with many others -- such as the absolute absence of hair -- would slowly and unwillingly but inevitably led the hypothetical scientist to an astonishing conclusion; indeed, the obvious utility and concatenation of Ervool's freakin features could have but one explanation: Ervool belonged to a different species, a completely differentiated offshoot or developement of the animal man. And this was true - for no human of our day had hand in the hewing of that great lightless stair or in the shaping of the miles-deep caverns from which Ervool slowly clambered to the long deserted, frozen outer world. Nor were those caverns, except for small part, the work even of Ervool's people andtheir forebears. Had that hypothetical scientist of our day been a man with great powers of observation and analytic scope, he would no sooner have decided that Ervool belonged to a different and later species than be would have begun to fear that a much more tremendous problem had fallen to him. In short, he would have become aware that Ervool's vestigial organs were "all wrong". The central eye had remnant of a filmy sub-eyelid; the finger-claws had remnants of connecting webs; the hairless skin showed -- not traces of hair follicles -- but traces of scales. Further examination would have brought to light other corroborating features, and strangest of all, a set of green-tinged lumps around each wrist. Their symmetrical arrangement and the spiral whorl of veins that covered each one would seem to preclude the possibility of their being any kind of diseased growth--and Ervool did not seem to benefit by them in any way. But -- if they were vestigial organs-- they were vestiges of no organ any physiologist, zoologist, or paleontologist ever saw or postulated. The hypothetical scientist would have been staggered, thrilled, and in no common way awed by the conclusion toward which this new set of data pointed; he would have searched his mind for altenate explanations, he would carefully have reviewed and
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