"Progress satisfactory."
Perhaps it was the basic differences between the masculine and the feminine psyche which lengthened the therapy; perhaps there were just more cells to be re-educated. Or perhaps it was the additional facts which Joe had fed into Bossy. Facts about psionics, which he hoped would be fed into the patient's mind to condition him to the shock of unshielded normal minds.
Whatever the reason, it was the twelfth day before Bossy, without any buildup, fanfare, or pyrotechnics of any kind, made her announcement.
"Project completed.” Bossy lacked showmanship.
But Steve Flynn did not. The release of every electrode from Carney's pulse points was played up as if it were world shaking. For that crucial moment necessary in catering to psychotically frustrated womanhood, the view of the cameras was obscured by the doctors hovering around; and when the public saw him again, the towel which had been draped across Carney's body had been replaced by a pair of conventional shorts.
The cameras were focused fully upon his face when he opened his eyes. There was no daze in them. Their first expression was one of amusement, a glinting flicker of mischief. Aided by Billings he sat up and looked about him. His eyes found Joe.
"Hi, fella,” he said. They were his first words.
It was all close enough to stock plot number X672, Patient Regains Consciousness after Critical Illness, for the public to understand it. The public cried, it laughed, it shouted, it rang bells, blew whistles, got drunk, enjoyed itself in a national spontaneous Mardi Gras.
With a flourish Steve Flynn provided slacks, an open-throated sports shirt, socks and shoes. To take away the last vestige of an unkempt look, a barber began to cut Carney's hair. The rust colored hair shaped into a bristling snappy style favored by the hot young bloods of the day.
Carney accepted it all, quietly and pliably. He was impassive except for a tiny crinkle of humor at the corners of his eyes.
In the days to follow twenty million young men would be diligently practicing before their mirrors to get that same spontaneous crinkle of good humor.
"Are you able to talk to us?” Steve Flynn asked Carney.
Again there was that questioning flicker of eyes toward Joe.
"Of course,” Carney answered after the briefest of hesitations.
He endured the process of milking the situation for all the ham drama there was in it which TV considers so necessary to public enjoyment of its programs. Yes, he felt wonderful. Yes, he was very happy and grateful for his restored youth. No, it had not been unpleasant or painful. Yes, he remembered everything which had gone on. No, he didn't realize it had been twelve days; it seemed to be over in an instant, and yet it had seemed to go on for all eternity. No, he had never doubted it would be a success. Yes there were times when it had been difficult to comprehend Bossy, it was all so different from what he had believed; but he had been willing to listen. Yes, he would say the willingness to listen was a vital factor. Yes, of course he expected to resume his friendship with Mabel.
"No,” he answered to a more direct question. “There is no question of a romance between Mabel and me. Mabel has already found the one she loves, my best friend over there-Joe Carter."
Like Bossy, he seemed to lack showmanship. It was said so quietly, almost tossed away, that even Steve failed to grasp the import of it all at once. Then, frantically, Steve waved the camera to focus on Joe. Here was news as important as Carney's revival. Mabel was in love!
The cameras focused over where Joe sat. It was the first time that Joe Carter had come fully into the eye of the public.
Out of camera range for the moment, Carney allowed his lips to broaden into a delighted grin.
"Come on, Joe,” he flashed psionically. “Take it like a man. That's what you told me to do, when I asked if I should answer those stupid questions."
Joe's face was controlled, but he flashed back an answer.
"Very well-Geoffrey-Mortimonte."
Carney burst into a soundless chuckle.
"You are good,” he conceded. “I thought the little secret of my fancy names was known only to Bossy and me."
"I'll make it Jeff,” Joe promised, while he continued to nod and smile into the impertinent cameras. “And let's keep Carney as a last name. You're public property now, and there's no use confusing people."
The public, who had thought its cup was full, found the cup now running over. Here was stock situation Faithful Friend-Girl-Lover. Would there be a juicy triangle? Crime and tragedy of passion? Who knew what uncontrolled fires of terror this rejuvenation would unleash?
The public licked its lips in anticipation.
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CHAPTER XXIV
The public's cup was not the only vessel full and overflowing.
For the first time, Joe had found both love and companionship. For the first time, in a lifetime of bottomless loneliness, there were those of his own species with whom he could communicate. Denied love before, because he could not reconcile himself to the normal mind, first he had been given Mabel.
But Mabel was wise. Even before she had gone into Bossy, she knew that no woman could fill all of a man's life, that her relationship to him was compartmentalized, that the woman who tries to monopolize both love and companionship usually winds up with neither. She did not pretend to fill more than a woman's place in Joe's life.
In the instant recognition when Carney came out of Bossy, an instantaneous bond of masculine companionship even while Jeff was still on the table attached to the lead controls into Bossy, the last ache of Joe's chronic loneliness was eased and stilled.
Jeff, too, would need love, but not yet. In time there would be other women who could surrender their values to Bossy's corrections. The three of them, Mabel and Jeff and Joe, knew with complete certainty that the public would be denied its anticipated scandal, and could somehow survive without it.
The days passed. The schedule of television appearances began to slacken. The three were allowed occasional moments to themselves. Mabel and Jeff were public property. Joe, whose place in the total scheme of Bossy was still known only to Billings and Hoskins, although suspected by Kennedy and Flynn, was a minor bit of public property by virtue of his love affair with Mabel.
The psionic communion the three of them shared was completely beyond the level of news releases. True, around the Clinic, there was considerable wonder at the way Mabel and Jeff adopted Joe, some sly comment about the secret reasons for the inseparability of the three, some recalling of Mabel's past life and criticism of Bossy that such things were not cured-but no comprehension.
There was a healthier concern, too, over the fact that the three of them began to slip away from the Clinic. Superintendent Jones admonished them with a shaking finger, and Steve Flynn portrayed the horrors of being mobbed by an admiring public; but to all questions and admonishments, Joe made a simple reply: “They need to get out and contact some of the world at first hand. We do not hold with the prevailing theory of psychology that the way to understand man is to shut oneself off from him in an ivory tower. We think the way to understand men is to look at them."
It was more than that, of course. Bossy, with the material given her by Joe, had done an excellent job of preparing Carney against the shock of raw and unshielded human motivations. His reactions were amused and healthy.
But Mabel, unprepared because Joe had not realized what a shock sudden esperance would bring, still needed further therapy. Her background helped, of course. Her knowledge had been wide and deep. But even in such a house, as under the questioning of the most skilled psychologist, mankind still conceals more than it reveals.
And there was still another reason for their occasional escape from the Clinic. It was a healing therapy for Joe, too, that he should now be able to walk the same streets in full companionship which he had walked in such complete loneliness, shut off from all others because there had been no others. A man likes and needs to take his new love and his new friend
to see the places he has known, to see them again through fresh, delighted eyes, to show the beauty and to lessen the memory of ugliness.
They were young.
Most often they took the car which Kennedy had placed at Joe's disposal, and went down from the hills into Berkeley. They had no difficulty in blurring their features for anyone who looked closely, and easily passed as three students from the adjoining campus of the University of California; they were regarded by the townspeople as just three more specimens of the ten thousand examples of learned brainlessness.
All around them, wherever they walked, was the clamor of man's thoughts about immortality. In the fashion of a catch phrase which unaccountably sweeps the country, everyone knew that only five per cent of human beings were worth perpetuating.
At a bus stop, two homeward-bound businessmen were being practical about the whole problem.
"The thing we've gotta watch,” one of them said, “is to see that some bunch of subversives don't get control of this thing. What we need is a committee of sound-thinking people in each community to decide on who should get immortal."
"Yeah,” the other agreed instantly. “You know as well as I do that only about five per cent of any community take hold of their responsibilities. The rest are dead weight."
"Yeah, that's been proved by statistics. Now you take you and me, Henry. We're successful businessmen. How many people can make the grade? Only about five per cent! And you and me, we gotta cany all the rest of the people on our backs.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the university, and saw three students, coming down the sidewalk toward him. He lowered his voice:
"And I don't mean just employees, either. You take all them high and mighty professors up there. Where would they be if us businessmen didn't carry them on our backs?"
Henry pursed his lips judiciously.
"Well, you're right, Harry. But we gotta be big about this thing. Can't afford to be narrow-minded and not see the other fellow's point of view. Takes all kinds of people to make a world you know."
"Oh, sure, sure, Henry. But on the other hand birds of a feather flock together and too many cooks spoil the soup. When you boil it all down there's still only about five per cent of the people that aren't completely worthless."
They fell silent as the three young people came within earshot.
Mabel and Joe both gasped at the sudden spasm of laughing mischief which flooded Jeff's mind.
"No, Jeff,” Joe murmured aloud. “Don't."
But Jeff lacked Joe's lifetime of caution and concealment. He spoke just loudly enough to be overheard, and in the learned accents of the scholar which practical men find so insufferable.
"I tell you we must be careful who is allowed immortality. Some attention must be given to the appearance of the human race."
He seemed to become conscious that the two men were watching them.
The three passed the two on the sidewalk. Each group was silent so as not to be eavesdropped upon. Each group eyed the other with a compound of contemptuous and amused hostility which usually separates one generation from another.
"Think what the human race would look like'” Jeff continued, still in earshot, “if a couple of tubs of lard like those two were given immortality to seed the earth with broadbottomed, pot-bellied kids!"
Mabel gasped and staggered under the impact of the wave of choleric fury which swept over them. Even Jeff was silenced. Mabel drew a deep breath and straightened.
"Your therapy is pretty strenuous, Jeff,” she said. “A couple of days ago I couldn't have taken a blast like that."
Jeff's concern washed over her, healing, soothing.
"I didn't think about the effect of their reaction on you, Mabel,” he said contritely. “I was just testing to see just how big about it all they were capable of being when they made their selections. In their minds they had already summed us up and rejected us, you know."
"I'm glad to know I can take it,” Mabel said.
"Yes,” Joe agreed silently. “So am I. Let's turn this corner wide open, without testing first. Try to stay wide open. I'll be there."
* * * *
They turned the corner-wide open. The visual scene and the psionic scene both lay in clear view.
A car, driven by a scholarly old gentleman, had just pulled past the pumps of the service station and over to the door of the garage at one side. The motor was missing, would the mechanic please look into it? The mechanic lifted the hood, and saw that one of the wires from the distributor cap had worked loose. Well of all the stupid old goats. Naturally that spark plug wouldn't fire without any juice getting to it! He curbed the impulse to flare up in disgust at the helplessness of drivers in general. All the guy had to do was lift the hood and look!
But that was human beings for you. Ninety-five per cent of them wouldn't know a piston ring from a fan belt. If it weren't for the five per cent of guys like himself, guys who knew what made motors tick, the whole civilization would come to a stop. No matter how mechanized things got, it still boiled down to five per cent of the people carrying the other ninety-five per cent on their backs!
Interplayed with his thoughts was the great excitement in the old man's mind. He was on his way up to the University with an unmistakable connecting link between the Tu'un and the Sung Dynasty in Chinese Art. He was filled with elation at this long sought discovery. He could hardly contain his impatience at the delay, but his visit would be a long one and last far into the night; a night of exhilarating discussion. And if that pesty motor got worse he might be left afoot. The mechanic was still bent over the frame of the car, fiddling with wires.
The old gentleman tasted the triumph of saying to the mechanic, “I have just discovered the connecting link between—” The awe which would fill the man's face!
Then realization. The mechanic probably wouldn't even recognize a Ming piece, much less a Tu'un! Like the simple peasants of China, beasts of toil and burden, living only to sleep, to eat, to procreate their own misery.
It was only about five per cent of mankind which carried the lamp of knowledge and kept it glowing! Only five per cent to carry the other ninety-five per cent on their backs. He unconsciously straightened his back, as if to shift the load, make it easier to bear.
* * * *
From the window of his third-floor walk-up across the street, a middle-aged writer looked down on the scene below him. Gradually his eyes focused on the three students, the mechanic and the old man. His thoughts left his space scout still fighting the controls of his ship to keep from being pulled into the sun, and, instead, analyzed the people below him in terms of his possible reading public. It would be a miracle if more than one of these belonged to the elite five per cent who read his stuff.
What a tragedy, what a horrible condemnation of the human race. Ninety-five per cent of the culture lagged far behind, as much as a quarter to a half century. Only five per cent were capable of speculating about a new idea, looking to the future, harbingers of progress. Five per cent who had to carry the rest of the culture on their backs, otherwise man would never progress at all!
Jeff could not resist the temptation. He shafted a thought into the writer's mind.
"The trouble is,” the writer said aloud to himself in the way writers have, “ninety-five per cent of the people think in terms of single values. But what about multiple values?"
At first the words made no sense to him, also characteristic of writers, then he rushed over to his typewriter. He was triumphant at the breadth, the incredible vastness, of his inspiration. He tore the half finished page of space opera out of his machine. With nervous haste he threaded in a new page. He poised his fingers.
He did not write.
He picked up the pages of the half finished story from his desk. He did not even need to glance through them to know they were already out of date. His pseudo science analysis was no more than some tricky applications of thin single values. He tore the manuscript across and threw the pieces in the wastebasket.
He poised his fingers over the keyboard again. But no sentences formed into his mind to flow through his fingers. What would happen to his popularity with his audience if he implied that the beloved scientific method was a single value, only one way of interpreting reality? Were the disciples of science sufficiently scientific to question their own articles of faith? And what did he mean, even by these questions? He felt his inspiration slipping away from him in chaos and confusion.
He got up and walked over to the window where he had first felt his inspiration. Of course it wasn't superstition. But then, what about superstition? Had superstition ever been investigated in terms of multivalued logic? How could each man be so positive that his path, and only his, was the road to comprehension?
He gasped his exasperation and concentrated on the scene of reality. The elderly man was driving out of the garage. The mechanic was putting five dollars into the cash drawer. Odd, how he knew the denomination of that bill with such certainty! The three students had reached the corner of the block, and were turning it. Odd, that there seemed to be some connection between them and the inspiration he had just felt. Association of ideas, of course. They had been within his vision range when he had thought of the concept; therefore the concept was associated with them. Elementary psychology, nothing mysterious about it at all.
But then, wasn't that explaining things in terms of single values and dismissing the thought as solved?
The inspiration flooded him again, and the writer was appalled. What if each of those people down there on the street represented the only worthwhile five per cent?
What if, to them, he, an acknowledged brilliant writer in idea speculation, were merely one of the worthless ninety-five per cent? He walked slowly over to his typewriter and sat down again. But he did not write anything-not yet.
"Instant acceptance of an idea is as self-defeating as instant rejection,” he mumbled, and wondered where the words came from. “The implications of multi-values cannot be mastered in five seconds."
They'd Rather Be Right, or The Forever Machine Page 16