Henry Wentworth Akeley and the Outer Ones

Henry Wentworth Akeley’s connection to the Outside Beings is framed as an apparent alliance whose most intimate details remain uncertain. A mechanical speaker expects Akeley to travel with him among the beings, yet the night’s evidence turns that invitation into a question of identity: a cylinder bears Akeley’s name, his familiar garments lie discarded, and remarkably exact constructions of his face and hands are found in his chair.

The beings in regional memory

Accounts of the beings precede the apparent alliance by generations. Local explanations differ: Puritan settlers interpreted them through the language of the devil, while people with Celtic traditions associated them with malign fairies and little people. Pennacook traditions offered a different account, describing the Winged Ones as beings from the Great Bear who maintained earthly outposts to mine a stone unavailable elsewhere. They were said to return to their own stars with these loads, to harm people who approached or spied on them, and to bring their own food rather than eat earthly animals or plants.

The traditions also give the beings a way of communicating that later becomes crucial to Wilmarth’s recognition. They were said to understand human languages but not to use a language of their own, instead speaking with their heads, whose changing colours conveyed meaning. Other stories described buzzing voices imitating human speech, claw-prints around farmhouse windows, disappearances, and attempts to establish secret outposts. These reports do not establish Akeley’s part in the beings’ activities, but they make the later buzzing voices and the prospect of travel beyond Earth legible against a long history of wary, fragmentary contact.

A promised journey

During the conversation with Albert N. Wilmarth, a voice speaking through electronic vibrators presents its speaker as a human ally of the beings. The speaker says that his brain is in a cylinder and that his body is undergoing treatment inside Round Hill, about a mile and a half away. He describes having met the beings in the Himalayas and having helped them in return for extraordinary experiences. His claim that he has visited thirty-seven celestial bodies, including places beyond the galaxy and the known cosmos, makes the proposed relationship with Akeley part of a much larger system of travel made possible by removing and preserving human brains.

The speaker expects Akeley’s company on an imminent journey across the void and invites Wilmarth to join them. He presents the transition as painless, with sensation continued mechanically and sleep following the disconnection of the electrodes. The offer makes Akeley appear not simply to have encountered the beings, but to be accepted among those who travel with them. Still, this is the speaker’s account, not independent confirmation of Akeley’s consent or of the identity of the person represented by the machine. The invitation’s reassuring promises therefore coexist with the disturbing possibility that human participation has been made difficult to distinguish from bodily removal and mechanical preservation.

Voices and uncertain identities

Later, Wilmarth hears a conference in the study. He recognizes two voices as the Outside Beings’ characteristic buzzing, and identifies another as the metallic, expressionless utterance of a speech machine connected to a detached brain. Two human voices are also present, one belonging to Noyes. The gathering brings human and nonhuman speakers into the same room, but it does not settle which intelligence is speaking through the machine, whether it is the same speaker who addressed Wilmarth earlier, or what Akeley’s exact role in the meeting is.

When Wilmarth enters the dark study, the chair where he expects to find Akeley is empty. The old dressing-gown, yellow scarf, and foot-bandages lie discarded nearby; the odour and vibration he had associated with Akeley are gone. On the table he sees a fresh, shiny cylinder marked with Akeley’s name, together with sight and hearing attachments and a speech machine ready to be connected. He reasons that the enclosed brain could perceive his flashlight and movements, but does not activate the apparatus. The cylinder is a potent sign of Akeley’s possible transformation, yet the evidence available to Wilmarth does not let him question it directly.

The face and hands

The objects in the chair make the uncertainty more terrible rather than resolving it. They are described as ingenious constructions, equipped with metallic clamps intended to attach to organic developments; Wilmarth hopes they are waxwork, while fearing that they are something more. Their likeness to Akeley is exact down to subtle detail: they are his face and hands, or so perfectly resemble them that the distinction between imitation and identity collapses for the witness. The possibility that they are a crafted disguise cannot be ruled out, but neither does it explain the named cylinder or the discarded clothing.

The relationship thus ends in evidence of contact without a secure account of what happened to Akeley. He may have been preparing to travel with the beings, or the scene may indicate that his appearance and bodily presence have been appropriated while his brain remains in the cylinder. The story withholds the test that might have clarified the matter: Wilmarth leaves the speech machine unconnected and later regrets not asking it to speak. The beings’ promised fellowship is consequently inseparable from the fear that alliance, captivity, and impersonation may look much the same from outside.