Spectrum 5 - [Anthology]

by Kingsley Amis

  He spent a long time examining the fractionating set-up in the centre of the room. He spotted the pad of computations left there and drew an old envelope from his pocket and did some comparison scribbling.

  In the electronics room he turned to look through the doorway. ‘Why would any man want two such laboratories as these?’

  His inspection was much more thorough than that of any of the others, including Martin Nagle. Berk supposed that Mart and many of the others would be back, but Dykstra was going through with a fine-toothed comb the first time.

  He poked through the machine shop. ‘Well equipped,’ he muttered, ‘for a man who likes to tinker.’

  But he was highly impressed by the computer room. He examined the settings of the instruments and the chart papers. He opened every desk drawer and shuffled through the scattering of papers inside.

  Red-faced, he turned to Berk. ‘This is absurd! Certainly there would be charts, papers, or something showing the man’s calculations. These instruments are not here for show; they’ve obviously been used. Someone has removed the computational material from this room!’

  ‘It’s just as we found it,’ said Berk. ‘We don’t understand it any better than you.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Dykstra flatly.

  The reaction of the physicist to the library was the thing Berk was most interested in. He let Dykstra look at will over the strange and exotic collection of volumes.

  At first Dykstra reacted like a suddenly caged animal. He ran from the shelves of mythology, got a glance at the section on astrology, hurried from there to the books on faith-healing, and made a spiral turn that brought him up against the region of material on East Indian philosophy.

  ‘What is this,’ he bellowed hoarsely, ‘a joke?’

  The pudgy figure seemed to swell visibly with indignation.

  ‘The next room would interest you most, perhaps,’ said Berk.

  Dykstra almost ran through the adjoining door as if escaping some devil with whom he had come face to face. Then, catching sight of the titles here, he began to breathe easily and with an audible sighing of relief. He was among friends.

  With an air of reference, he took down a worn copy of Weyl’s Space Time Matter, and a reissue of the relativity papers.

  ‘It isn’t possible,’ he murmured, ‘that Dunning owned and understood both of these libraries.’

  ‘He understood and conquered gravity,’ said Berk. ‘And this is the last of the clues we have to show you.’

  Dykstra put the books carefully back on the shelves. ‘I don’t like it.’ He glanced back to the other room as if it were a place of terror.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ he murmured. ’Anti-gravity! Whoever heard of such a thing? And how could it come out of a place like this?’

  * * * *

  IV

  That afternoon, they met again in conference. There was agreement that they would tackle the problem. Only Professor Dykstra exhibited a continuing belligerence towards the affair, yet he made no move to withdraw.

  Full cooperation of military facilities was pledged by the representatives of the services. The centre of investigation was to be at ONR, however, with branching research wherever needed.

  No one had conceived even a tentative starting point which he cared to discuss with his colleagues. Most of them had spent the morning re-reading the relativity papers and staring at the ceiling of their respective offices. They agreed to work as loosely or as closely as the problem demanded. Until some working programme could be initiated by some of them, it was decided to hold daily seminars to try to spark each other into creative thought.

  A minor honour came to Mart in his election as chairman of the seminar. It gave him uneasiness because he was junior in age and profession to all of them. But his eminence in electro-fields made him a likely coordinator of the project.

  Mart selected a representative sample from the occult section of Dunning’s library and took it to his own office. He settled down amid an aura of astrology, spiritualism, mysticism, religion, sunspot data, and levitation. He had no specific purpose, only to expose his own mind to the atmosphere in which Dunning had operated. Dunning had found the goal. The tracks he walked in had to be located, no matter where they were picked up.

  Some of the stuff was boring, much could be nothing but sheer delusion. Yet his dogged pursuit left him intrigued by some of the material.

  The reports on poltergeism at Leander Castle near London, for example. They were well reported. Independent cross references verified each other very well. The works on levitation were far more difficult to credit. There was a hodgepodge about purification of the body and the soul, of reaching assorted states of exaltation above the ordinary degree of mortal.

  Yet levitation had occurred, according to reports of witnesses who might not be considered too unreliable.

  And what did this have to do with religion - in which Dunning had had tremendous interest, to judge by the notations he made?

  There were miracles in religion, Mart reflected.

  Anti-gravity was a miracle.

  Miracle: that which is considered impossible and which cannot be duplicated by the observers, even after it has been seen.

  In scientific law there is a difference. It can be applied by anyone with sufficient IQ. But the worker of miracles does not come out of the laboratory or halls of learning.

  He rises spontaneously out of the mountains or out of the wilderness, and gathers novices who seek with all their hearts to equal the Master. But they never do. Always there is a difference. The magic of miracles seems unteachable. It has its own spontaneous majesty, or is nothing but old-fashioned hoodwinking. There seemed, to Mart, no in-between.

  Anti-gravity.

  Was it natural law, or miracle? Had Dunning found the bridge that made only a single category of the two? Or was he a performer of miracles, whose art could not be taught, but would arise spontaneously, full blown?

  Mart slammed the books shut and pushed them to the rear of the desk. He pulled a scratch pad out of the drawer and began pencilling furiously the basic Einstein equations.

  By the end of the first week there was little to report. The daily seminars had been held, but outside of re-educating each other in the exotic concepts of the relativity world they had achieved nothing.

  Or so it seemed to Mart. Keyes seemed quite pleased, however, and Berk mentioned that they should be congratulated on their progress. As if they had taken a major step forward in merely meeting and agreeing to undertake the project.

  And maybe they had, Mart thought.

  He found himself in difficulty as chairman of the seminar. Invariably, in such a group there is a member who undertakes to educate his colleagues anew in all the basic sciences. In this case, it was made doubly difficult because the self-appointed instructor was Professor Dykstra.

  That he was capable of teaching them a good deal, there was no question. But on the Saturday at the end of this first week he arose with a particularly triumphant expression and strode to the blackboard, where he began scrawling his barely legible chicken marks.

  ‘I have achieved the thing for which I have been looking, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I am able to show that no such instrument as we have had described to us is possible without a violation of Dr Einstein’s postulate of equivalence. If we admit the correctness of this postulate - as we all do, of course - then you will see from Equation One that—-’

  Mart stared at - and through - the equations that Dykstra had scrawled. He listened with half an ear. It looked and sounded all right. But something had to be done about Dykstra.

  Dykstra was wrong - even with his equations being right. Where was it, thought Mart. It was something you couldn’t name or scarcely define. Maybe it was in the feeling that Keyes talked about, the feeling that goes all through you down to your toes. He knew what Dykstra’s feeling was, all right. It touched him like the proximity of a thousand-ton refrigeration unit going full blast. Dykst
ra thought they were fools to be monkeying with this project, and remained with it only because he considered it his solemn duty to show them this irrefutable fact.

  He was dragging the feet of the whole group. But in spite of him, all the rest were pulling in the other direction, Mart knew. In this week, they had all achieved an acceptance of the validity of Dunning’s accomplishment. And that, after all, was something of an achievement, he decided.

  In Mart’s vision, the equations on the board became surrounded by fuzzy signs of the Zodiac. Dykstra had completed his argument and Mart stood up.

  ‘Since you have presented us with such elegant proof of your thesis, doctor,’ he said, ‘and since we have all become aware of the reality of Dunning’s accomplishment, the only conclusion we can make is that the basic premise is at fault. I would say you have submitted very excellent reasons for doubting the validity of the postulate of equivalence!’

  Dykstra stood a moment as if he could not believe his ears. He turned to his seat indecisively as if trying to make up his mind to ignore or answer the statement. Finally, he grew red and his body seemed to swell as he faced Mart.

  ‘My dear Dr Nagle, if there is anyone in this room who does not understand that the postulate of equivalence has been established beyond any possibility of refutation I would suggest that he resign from this project immediately!’

  Mart restrained a grin, but warmed to his subject. He had no purpose but to needle Dykstra, and yet—

  ‘Seriously, doctor - and I throw this out to all of you: what would happen if the postulate of equivalence were not true?

  ‘You’ve been as shocked as I by the items from Dunning’s library, but I would like to ask: what is the significance of the postulate of equivalence in the accomplishment of the medium who is able to rise unsupported from a couch, in what is certainly a well authenticated instance of levitation?

  ‘Why is the literature of the East so full of material on levitation? I think Dunning asked that question and got some sensible answers. If the postulate of equivalence doesn’t fit those answers, perhaps we had better re-examine the postulate. As a matter of fact, if we ever expect to duplicate Dunning’s work, we will have to examine every postulate we’ve got that pertains in any way to gravity.’

  Professor Dykstra abandoned what he considered had become a disorderly argument. He resumed his seat with a grandiose appeal to the equations on the board.

  Unexpectedly, Jennings, a thin dry man from Cal Tech, took the floor.

  ‘I agree wholeheartedly with Dr Nagle,’ he said. ‘Something has been happening to me this past week. I see it in most of you, also, whether you are aware of it or not.

  ‘By the age of forty the average research physicist seems to acquire an intuitive ability to fend off anything that doesn’t jibe with the laws as he knows them.

  ‘Then we become heads of departments while the younger fellows come along and assimilate the data that didn’t fit in our generation, and get credited with the discoveries we have passed over.

  ‘We seem to establish a sort of gateway in our minds, floodgates if you will, through which the mass of physical universe data flows. As we become older and more learned we adjust the setting of this gate to the point where nothing new can be trapped behind it. We cling to that which we had in our youth and abruptly we are creatures of history.

  ‘I feel the experiences of the past week have jarred my mental floodgates on their very hinges. Once more, I feel able to accept and retain data which I have not encountered before. I think Dr Nagle is right. We have to re-examine all we have learned to this point concerning gravity. If any factors of East Indian lore or spiritualism prove relevant, I do not think physics will be shattered to its foundations if we assimilate such data.

  ‘We cannot escape the fact that one man solved anti-gravity. Eight days ago not one of us would have admitted the possibility. Today we are charged with the responsibility of moving forward in time and catching up with it.’

  Mart was tired after that seminar. It became a stormy affair. There seemed a kind of anger submerged not far below the surface of each of them. An anger at themselves for having been on the wrong track for so long, a kind of diffused rage at the whole physical universe for playing such tricks when asked a straightforward question.

  More than one had balked at Mart’s drastic suggestion. Sanders had said,’... and there can be no revision of the postulate of equivalence. Any data which indicates it automatically leaves the observer of that data suspect.’

  Mart called Kenneth Berkeley’s office as soon as the seminar was ended.

  ‘Hi, Berk,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah - how’s it coming? I’ve been wanting to get over your way the last couple of days. I haven’t noticed any of you boys moving out into the machine shops yet. I suppose you are still in the paper-work stage.’

  ‘We haven’t got there, yet,’ muttered Mart. ‘I have more important things than anti-gravity to discuss with you. How are you set up for a couple of days’ fishing?’

  ‘Fishing? I could probably make it. All work and no play and that sort of thing - I don’t need to remind you, of course, of the need for top speed on this Project Levitation—’

  ‘I’m going fishing,’ said Mart. ‘You coming along or not?’

  ‘I’m coming. I can get the loan of a cabin on the best trout stream the other side of Fulton’s Fish Market. When will you be ready?’

  ‘I’ll have to rent some gear. If you know a good place, I can be ready in an hour and we can pick it up on the way.’

  ‘I’ll have to check my own gear, provided Judith hasn’t thrown it out in the last three years since I used it. It’s about a two hundred mile drive. We can make it by midnight.’

  Mart and Berk had done a good deal of fishing together one summer following their Junior year. They had spent much of that year and all of the summer settling the abstruse problems of the Universe with quite divergent results.

  At the end of the summer Mart had been of the total conviction that life was wholly soluble in terms of the external world. If a man had something good and useful to do in shaping the world to his own dream, he would be a sane and happy man.

  Berk had arrived at the opposite pole in the conviction that man’s life lay within the thin shelter of his own skin. Now each of them had moved a good way towards the other’s camp.

  Mart thought of this as they drove through the night. He reminded Berk of it.

  ‘If the world were as college Juniors see it, all our troubles would be over,’ said Berk. ‘There is probably no time in a man’s life when he is so completely of a single-minded point of view.’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s Dykstra. He hasn’t changed an opinion since he was a Junior. He’s going to prove Dunning didn’t have anti-gravity or bust. He knows it can’t be done.’

  ‘How about the others?’

  ‘This week has been a period of metamorphosis. They’ve changed. We’re where we can do some work, now.’

  There was a caretaker on the property Berk had borrowed. He had things ready when the two men arrived. Mart determined to put everything connected with ONR out of his mind while he was there. He sat down and wrote a letter home, which helped in that direction.

  In the morning he arose in the clear mountain air, and to the enormous song of birds in the pines beyond the house, and he felt that he had truly forgotten all else but this. The smell of bacon and eggs floated in from the kitchen as he met Berk outside the door.

  ‘It’s nice to know a psychologist who knows a millionaire. Could we have had breakfast in bed if we had ordered it?’

  Berk laughed. ‘Not on your life. Wait till Joe gets you out in the woods. Then you’ll see how much coddling you’ll get.’

  ‘Let’s not take him along,’ said Mart. ‘I’d like to be alone as much as possible.’

  ‘Sure. Joe won’t mind. He’s the one who knows all the good fishing holes, though—’

  ‘The fish don’t matter,’ said Mart
.

  The forest was moist with dew, and the pre-dawn chill remained in the ravines through which they descended towards the river. It was still shadowed by the mountains here, and quiet except for the few birds who had not abandoned its grey light for the pink-tipped hills above.

  Mart knew at once that this was what he needed. He donned the hip boots and tested the spring of the new glass rod he had rented.

  ‘I guess I’m old-fashioned,’ he said. ‘I like the feel of the old ones better.’

  ‘I’m still using mine,’ said Berk. ‘Matter of fact, I believe it’s the same one I had the last summer we were together.’

  They sloshed out into the water a little way above a quiet pool. It wasn’t wide enough for both of them there, so Mart moved along upstream. ‘Some guy published an article the other day,’ he said, ‘in which he claimed the average time of catching a fish in a stream like this is two hours and nineteen minutes. Didn’t we do better than that?’