“Aren’t you going to invest in anything?” Edgarson asked.
“Of course I am,” Fals said.
“I’m buying a block of Heemstl limited.”
Edgarson went over to Business Statistics—now his bible—and looked up the concern. The book gave it a 75 percent probability of a sizeable loss during the cycle.
“What the hell are you buying that for?” Edgar son asked.
“Well,” Fals said, “They need some more operating capital. Young concern, you know. I figure—”
“Please stop, you weary me,” Edgarson said. Fals looked even more sullen and left.
What could you do, Edgarson asked himself. Of course you had to have people investing in poor stocks. Not everyone can get rich. And it was very noble of the Pori fans, to support their failing businesses. But what could you do with people like that?
Take their money, he told himself.
The next months were feverish ones for Edgarson. It was necessary to buy at exactly the right time, sell at the right time. The Pori fan stock market was like an orchestra. Delicacy in timing had to be observed, to get everything possible out of it.
Edgarson’s businesses spread.
He didn’t have much time for Hetta during these months.
Building a great fortune was absorbing, night-and-day work. But he figured he would make it all up to her later.
Besides, she thought he was wonderful.
With the cycle nearing its end, Edgarson planned out his procedure for the hiatus. During the year gap, new predictions would be assembled and published. But Edgarson wasn’t going to be caught napping.
Most of his businesses he felt, were bound to bridge the gap between cycle B and A. They were sound concerns with high probability ratings. But he wanted to be sure, so he sold his fluctuating wildcat stocks and put money in farms, city real estate, hotels, parks, government bonds, anything that looked sound.
He put excess profits in the banks. It was possible, he supposed, for a ninety-five-percent-good bank to go busted. But not five of them! Not ten of them!
“I’ve got a good tip for you,” his brother-in-law said, two days before the end of the cycle. “Buy some Verstt. Buy it big.”
Upon looking it up, Edgarson discovered that Verstt was on the verge of receivership. He looked at Fals coldly. The Porifan probably resented his presence here. Didn’t approve of the way he was cleaning up the cash, and wanted to slow him down.
“I’ll think it over,” Edgarson said, ushering Fals to the door.
How could you argue with an idiot?
The day came, ending Cycle B. Edgarson spent the morning at his telephones, waiting for news.
The phone rang.
“Yes?” Edgarson asked.
“Sir, Markinson company stock dropping.”
Edgarson smiled, and put down the telephone. Markinson had been a good investment. He’d ride any loss down. After he got through this depression—if that was what it was—he’d have ten more years to recoup in. And then he’d get out!
Take a lot, leave a little, that was his motto.
The telephones started ringing constantly. More of his businesses were failing, dropping, going bankrupt. The bottom had dropped out of manufacturing. Iron ore was slag on the market, Mines were worthless.
Still, Edgarson wasn’t alarmed. There was still real estate, farms, insurance, waterways, federal projects—
A telephone call informed him that his largest farm had burned to the ground, crops and all.
“Good,” Edgarson said. “Collect the insurance.”
Another call informed him that his chief insurance company had gone bankrupt, as had its underwriters.
Edgarson started to sweat. He was having a few bad breaks, but—
It did go on. Telephones rang night and day. The banks started to fail! One after another, Edgarson’s gilt-edged concerns dwindled and dropped. And the damndest things happened to Edgarson’s other concerns.
Farms were burnt to the ground, roads were flooded, canals were exploded. People were hurt on his line, and sued. Tornadoes hit, earthquakes followed. Dams built to last a century burst. Buildings collapsed.
Coincidence, Edgarson told him, holding on to his morale with a death-like grip.
Then the federal government announced that it would go into temporary receivership, if anyone would take it.
That killed a few more of Edgarson’s billions.
It made depressions in the belt-group seem like mild prosperity.
It took just under a month to strip Edgarson of most of his holdings. Too numb to think, he stumbled into Fals’ library. His wife was there, curled up in a corner. Evidently she was depressive again. Fals was standing, arms folded across his chest, staring at him self-righteously.
“What happened?” Edgarson croaked.
“During the hiatus,” Fals told him, “All odds are reversed.”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t you know that?” Fals said. “I thought you were a big finance man.”
“Give,” Edgarson said.
“How do you think the statisticians get their figures?” Fals told him. “If the major predictions came true all the time, they’d be one hundred percent. During the. gap, everything that was below fifty percent probability—and therefore never came about—obtains.”
“Gah,” said Edgarson.
“Look, suppose you wanted certain odds to average out, as they must. Something is ninety percent certain. It works out one hundred percent of the time for ten years. In order for the prediction of ninety percent to be right, it would have to be ten percent wrong for ten years, or 100 percent wrong for one year.
“Understand? If a business is ninety percent sure of success for the ten year cycle, it has to be 100 percent sure of failure for that year. It must fail.”
“Say it again,” Edgarson mumbled.
“I think you understand it now,” Fals said. “That’s why all of us buy low-probability stocks during the cycle’. They work out fine during the gap.”
“Oh, Lord,” Edgarson said, and sat down.
“You didn’t think your stocks would go up forever, did you?” Fals asked.
Edgarson had thought just that. Or rather, he had taken it for granted. Logically, he knew Fals was right. On other planets, odds are constantly averaging. Not on Porif. Here, everything went one way or the other. Ten years, during which time all the highs obtained. Then a year, during which the former lows obtained.
Of course, it averaged quite nicely. But what a way to do it!
He was dimly aware that Fals had left the room.
Somewhere a telephone was ringing.
“Yeh?” Edgarson said, taking it on the library extension. He listened for a while, then hung up.
He had just been informed that he was several billion dollars in debt, largely due to marginal buying.
On Porif they had prisons for irresponsible bankruptcies.
“Well,” Edgarson said, “I guess I’ll just have to—”
“Stand still, damn you,” Hetta said, getting to her feet. She was holding a pistol in both hands.
It was an old, chemically operated revolver, of a sort that civilized nations hadn’t used in centuries. But it was as capable of killing as a more modern arm.
“Oh, how I hate you,” Hetta said, in her flamboyant style. “I hate everyone, but you the worst. Stand still!”
Edgarson was calculating the odds against his jumping out the library window safely. Unfortunately he didn’t have a book handy to give him the figures.
“I’m going to shoot you in the stomach,” Hetta said, with a smile that made his flesh crawl. “I want to see you die slowly.”
That did it. Hetta’s seven percent instability was coming out, exactly as the minor odds against tornadoes, floods and earthquakes had come out. She was a murderess!
No wonder, Edgarson thought, she had been so easy to marry.
“Stop swaying,” Hetta said, taking careful aim.
Edgarson crashed through the window, the explosion of the gun deafening him. He didn’t stop to see whether he was dead or not, but ran full tilt for the spaceport.
He hoped the odds were in his favor.
“O.K., space rat,” the grinning young officer said. “Out you go.” He pushed Edgarson down the gangplank.
“Where am I?” Edgarson asked. He had climbed aboard the ship before an irate mob seized him. The captain had taken him one stop, but no further.
“What’s it matter?” the officer asked, prodding him.
“If you would consider taking me to a civilized port—” Edgarson began.
The port slammed behind him.
Well, this is the end, he told himself. This was the end of the road, the absolute blank wall. Here he was, on another backwoods planet. He’d never get off this one. Might as well commit suicide.
“Hello,” someone said. Edgarson looked up. In front of him was a green skinned native. On each of his three arms the native wore a bracelet of what looked like platinum. In each bracelet was what looked like a gigantic diamond.
The native was wheeling a wheelbarrow filled with dirt. The wheelbarrow seemed to be made of solid gold.
“How do you do, friend?” Edgarson said, walking up to the native and smiling.
ASK A FOOLISH QUESTION
It’s well established now that the way you put a question often determines not only the answer you*11 get, but the type of answer possible. So . . . a mechanical answerer, geared to produce the ultimate revelations in reference to anything you want to know, might have unsuspected limitations.
ANSWERER was built to last as long as was necessary—which was quite long, as some races judge time, and not long at all, according to others. But to Answerer, it was just long enough.
As to size, Answerer was large to some and small to others. He could be viewed as complex, although some believed that he was really very simple.
Answerer knew that he was as he should be. Above and beyond all else, he was The Answerer. He Knew.
Of the race that built him, the less said the better. They also Knew, and never said whether they found the knowledge pleasant.
They built Answerer as a service to less-sophisticated races, and departed in a unique manner. Where they went only Answerer knows.
Because Answerer knows everything.
Upon his planet, circling his sun, Answerer sat. Duration continued, long, as some judge duration, short as others judge it. But as it should be, to Answerer.
Within him were the Answers. He knew the nature of things, and why things are as they are, and what they are, and what it all means.
Answerer could answer anything, provided it was a legitimate question. And he wanted to! He was eager to!
How else should an Answerer be?
What else should an Answerer do?
So he waited for creatures to come and ask.
“How do you feel, sir?” Morran asked, floating gently over to the old man.
“Better,” Lingman said, trying to smile. No-weight was a vast relief. Even though Morran had expended an enormous amount of fuel, getting into space under minimum acceleration, Lingman’s feeble heart hadn’t liked it. Lingman’s heart had balked and sulked, pounded angrily against the brittle rib-case, hesitated and sped up. It seemed for a time as though Lingman’s heart was going to stop, out of sheer pique.
But no-weight was a vast relief, and the feeble heart was going again.
Morran had no such problems. His strong body was built for strain and stress. He wouldn’t experience them on this trip, not if he expected old Lingman to live.
“I’m going to live,” Lingman muttered, in answer to the unspoken question. “Long enough to find out.” Morran touched the controls, and the ship slipped into sub-space like an eel into oil.
“We’ll find out,” Morran murmured. He helped the old man unstrap himself. “We’re going to find the Answerer!”
Lingman nodded at his young partner. They had been reassuring themselves for years. Originally it had been Lingman’s project. Then Morran, graduating from Cal Tech, had joined him. Together they had traced the rumors across the solar system. The legends of an ancient humanoid race who had known the answer to all things, and who had built Answerer and departed.
“Think of it,” Morran said. “The answer to everything!” A physicist, Morran had many questions to ask Answerer. The expanding universe; the binding force of atomic nuclei; novae and supernovae; planetary formation; red shift, relativity and a thousand others.
“Yes,” Lingman said. He pulled himself to the vision plate and looked out on the bleak prairie of the illusory sub-space. He was a biologist and an old man. He had two questions.
What is life?
What is death?
AFTER a particularly-long period of hunting purple, Lek and his friends gathered to talk. Purple always ran thin in the neighborhood of multiple-cluster stars—why, no one knew—so talk was definitely in order.
“Do you know,” Lek said, “I think I’ll hunt up this Answerer.” Lek spoke the Ollgrat language now, the language of imminent decision.
“Why?” Ilm asked him, in the Hvest tongue of light banter. “Why do you want to know things? Isn’t the job of gathering purple enough for you?”
“No,” Lek said, still speaking the language of imminent decision. “It is not.” The great job of Lek and his kind was the gathering of purple. They found purple imbedded in many parts of the fabric of space, minute quantities of it. Slowly, they were building a huge mound of it. What the mound was for, no one knew.
“I suppose you’ll ask him what purple is?” Ilm asked, pushing a star out of his way and lying down.
“I will,” Lek said. “We have continued in ignorance too long. We must know the true nature of purple, and its meaning in the scheme of things. We must know why it governs our lives.” For this speech Lek switched to Ilgret, the language of incipient-knowledge.
Ilm and the others didn’t try to argue, even in the tongue of arguments. They knew that the knowledge was important. Ever since the dawn of time, Lek, Ilm and the others had gathered purple. Now it was time to know the ultimate answers to the universe—what purple was, and what the mound was for.
And of course, there was the Answerer to tell them. Everyone had heard of the Answerer, built by a race not unlike themselves, now long departed.
“Will you ask him anything else?” Ilm asked Lek.
“I don’t know,” Lek said. “Perhaps I’ll ask about the stars. There’s really nothing else important.” Since Lek and his brothers had lived since the dawn of time, they didn’t consider death. And since their numbers were always the same, they didn’t consider the question of life.
But purple? And the mound?
“I go!” Lek shouted, in the vernacular of decision-to-fact.
“Good fortune!” his brothers shouted back, in the jargon of greatest-friendship.
Lek strode off, leaping from star to star.
Alone on his little planet, Answerer sat, waiting for the Questioners. Occasionally he mumbled the answers to himself. This was his privilege. He Knew.
But he waited, and the time was neither too long nor too short, for any of the creatures of space to come and ask.
THERE were eighteen of them, gathered in one place.
“I invoke the rule of eighteen,” cried one. And another appeared, who had never before been, born by the rule of eighteen.
“We must go to the Answerer,” one cried. “Our lives are governed by the rule of eighteen. Where there are eighteen, there will be nineteen. Why is this so?”
No one could answer.
“Where am I?” asked the newborn nineteenth. One took him aside for instruction.
That left seventeen. A stable number.
“And we must find out,” cried another, “Why all places are different, although there is no distance.”
That was the problem. One is here. Then one is there. Just like that, no mov
ement, no reason. And yet, without moving, one is in another place.
“The stars are cold,” one cried.
“Why?”
“We must go to the Answerer.”
For they had heard the legends, knew the tales. “Once there was a race, a good deal like us, and they Knew—and they told Answerer. Then they departed to where there is no place, but much distance.”
“How do we get there?” the newborn nineteenth cried, filled now with knowledge.
“We go.” And eighteen of them vanished. One was left. Moodily he stared at the tremendous spread of an icy star, then he too vanished.
“Those old legends are true,” Morran gasped. “There it is.”
They had come out of sub-space at the place the legends told of, and before them was a star unlike any other star. Morran invented a classification for it, but it didn’t matter. There was no other like it.
Swinging around the star was a planet, and this too was unlike any other planet. Morran invented reasons, but they didn’t matter. This planet was the only one.
“Strap yourself in, sir,” Morran said. “I’ll land as gently as I can.”
Lek came to Answerer, striding swiftly from star to star. He lifted Answerer in his hand and looked at him.
“So you are Answerer,” he said.
“Yes,” Answerer said.
“Then tell me,” Lek said, settling himself comfortably in a gap between the stars, “Tell me what I am.”
“A partiality,” Answerer said. “An indication.”
“Come now,” Lek muttered, his pride hurt. “You can do better than that. Now then. The purpose of my kind is to gather purple, and to build a mound of it. Can you tell me the real meaning of this?”
“Your question is without meaning,” Answerer said. He knew what purple actually was, and what the mound was for. But the explanation was concealed in a greater explanation. Without this, Lek’s question was inexplicable, and Lek had failed to ask the real question.
Lek asked other questions, and Answerer was unable to answer them. Lek viewed things through his specialized eyes, extracted a part of the truth and refused to see more. How to tell a blind man the sensation of green?
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