“Maybe I ought to answer him myself,” said Hockley, “since I predicted that this would occur, and that we ought to make a trial run before turning our collective gray matter over to the Rykes.”
A chorus of approval and nodding heads gave him the go ahead.
“The Senator is quite right in saying that we few are not alone in our concern in this matter,” he said. “But the Senator intends to imply a major difference between us scientists and the rest of mankind. This is his error.
“Every member of Mankind who is concerned about the Universe in which he lives, is a scientist. You need to understand what a scientist is — and you can say no more than that he is a human being trying to solve the problem of understanding his Universe, immediate or remote. He is concerned about the inanimate worlds, his own personality, his fellow men — and the interweaving relationships among all these factors. We professional scientists are no strange species, alien to our race. Our only difference is perhaps that we undertake more problems than does the average of our fellow men, and of a more complex kind. That is all.
“The essence of our science is a relentless personal yearning to know and understand the Universe. And in that, the scientist must not be forbidden to ask whatever question occurs to him. The moment we put any restraint upon our fields of inquiry, or set bounds to the realms of our mental aspirations, our science ceases to exist and becomes a mere opportunist technology.”
Markham stood up, his face red with exasperation and rage. “No one is trying to limit you! Why is that so unfathomable to your minds? You are being offered a boundless expanse, and you continue to make inane complaints of limitations. The Rykes have been over all the territory you insist on exploring. They can tell you the number of pretty pebbles and empty shells that lie there. You are like children insistent upon exploring every shadowy corner and peering behind every useless bush on a walk through the forest.
“Such is to be expected of a child, but not of an adult, who is capable of taking the word of one who has been there before!”
“There are two things wrong with your argument,” said Hockley. “First of all, there is no essential difference between the learning of a child who must indeed explore the dark corners and strange growths by which he passes —there is no difference between this and the probing of the scientist, who must explore the Universe with his own senses and with his own instruments, without taking another’s word that there is nothing there worth seeing.
“Secondly, the Rykes themselves are badly in error in asserting that they have been along the way ahead of us. They have not. In all their fields of science they have limited themselves badly to one narrow field of probability. They have taken a narrow path stretching between magnificent vistas on either side of them, and have deliberately ignored all that was beyond the path and on the inviting side trails.”
“Is there anything wrong with that?” demanded Markham. “If you undertake a journey you don’t weave in and out of every possible path that leads in every direction opposed to your destination. You take the direct route. Or at least ordinary people do.”
“Scientists do, too,” said Hockley, “when they take a journey. Professional science is not a journey, however. It’s an exploration.
“There is a great deal wrong with what the Rykes have done. They have assumed, and would have us likewise assume, that there is a certain very specific future toward which we are all moving. This future is built out of the discoveries they have made about the Universe. It is made of the system of mathematics they have developed, which exclude Dr. Silvers’ cherished Legrandian Equations. It excludes the world in which exist Dr. Carmen’s series of unique compounds.
“The Rykes have built a wonderful, workable world of serenity, beauty, scientific consistency, and economic adjustment. They have eliminated enormous amounts of chaos which Earthmen continue to suffer.
“But we do not want what the Rykes have obtained — if we have to pay their price for it.”
“Then you are complete fools,” said Markham. “Fortunately, you cannot and will not speak for all of Earth.”
Hockley paced back and forth a half dozen steps, his eyes on the floor. “I think we do — and can — speak for all our people,” he said. “Remember, I said that all men are scientists in the final analysis. I am very certain that no Earthman who truly understood the situation would want to face the future which the Rykes hold out to us.”
“And why not?” demanded Markham.
“Because there are too many possible futures. We refuse to march down a single narrow trail to the golden future. That’s what the Rykes would have us do. But they are wrong. It would be like taking a trip through a galaxy at speeds faster than light — and claiming to have seen the galaxy. What the Rykes have obtained is genuine and good, but what they have not obtained is perhaps far better and of greater worth.”
“How can you know such an absurd thing?”
“We can’t — not for sure,” said Hockley. “Not until we go there and see for ourselves, step by step. But we aren’t going to be confined to the Rykes’ narrow trail. We are going on a broad path to take in as many byways as we can possibly find. We’ll explore every probability we come to, and look behind every bush and under every pebble.
“We will move together, the thousands and the millions of us, simultaneously, interacting with one another, exchanging data. Most certainly, many will end up in blind alleys. Some will find data that seems the ultimate truth at one point and pure deception at another. Who can tell ahead of time which of these multiple paths we should take? Certainly not the Rykes, who have bypassed most of them!
“It doesn’t matter that many paths lead to failure — not as long as we remain in communication with each other. In the end we will find the best possible future for us. But there is no one future, only a multitude of possible futures. We must have the right to build the one that best fits our own kind.”
“Is that more important than achieving immediately a more peaceful, unified, and secure society?” said Markham.
“Infinitely more important!” said Hockley.
“It is fortunate at least, then, that you are in no position to implement these insane beliefs of yours. The Ryke program was offered to Earth, and it shall be accepted on behalf of Earth. You may be sure of a very poor hearing when you try to present these notions back home.”
“You jump to conclusions, Senator,” said Hockley with mild confidence. “Why do you suppose I proposed this trip if I did not believe I could do something about the situation? I assure you that we did not come just to see the sights.”
Markham’s jaw slacked and his face became white. “What do you mean? You haven’t dared to try to alienate the Rykes — “
“I mean that there is a great deal we can do about the situation. Now that the sentiments of my colleagues parallel my own I’m sure they agree that we must effectively and finally spike any possibility of Earth’s becoming involved in this Ryke nonsense.”
“You wouldn’t dare! — even if you could — “
“We can, and we dare,” said Hockley. “When we return to Earth we shall have to report that the Rykes have refused to admit Earth to their program. We shall report that we made every effort to obtain an agreement with them, but it was in vain. If anyone wishes to verify the report, the Rykes themselves will say that this is quite true: they cannot possibly consider Earth as a participant. If you contend that an offer was once made, you will not find the Rykes offering much support since they will be very busily denying that we are remotely qualified.”
“The Rykes are hardly ones to meekly submit to any idiotic plan of that kind.”
“They can’t help it — if we demonstrate that we are quite unqualified to participate.”
“You — you — “
“It will not be difficult,” said Hockley. “The Rykes have set up a perfect teacher-pupil situation, with all the false assumptions that go with it. There is at least one absolutely positive way to
disintegrate such a situation. The testimony of several thousand years’ failure of our various educational systems indicates that there are quite a variety of lesser ways also —“Perhaps you are aware of the experiences and techniques commonly employed on Earth by white men in their efforts to educate the aborigine. The first procedure is to do away with the tribal medicine men, ignore their lore and learning. Get them to give up the magic words and their pots of foul-smelling liquids, abandon their ritual dances and take up the white man’s great wisdom.
“We have done this time after time, only to learn decades later that the natives once knew much of anesthetics and healing drugs, and had genuine powers to communicate in ways the white man can’t duplicate.
“But once in a long while a group of aborigines show more spunk than the average. They refuse to give up their medicine men, their magic and their hard-earned lore accumulated over generations and centuries. Instead of giving these things up they insist on the white man’s learning these mysteries in preference to his nonsensical and ineffective magic. They completely frustrate the situation, and if they persist they finally destroy the white man as an educator. He is forced to conclude that the ignorant savages are unreachable.
“It is an infallible technique and one that we shall employ. Dr.
Silvers will undertake to teach his mathematical lecturer in the approaches to the Legrandian Equations. He will speculate long and noisily on the geometry which potentially lies in this mathematical system. Dr. Carmen will ellucidate at great length on the properties of the chain of chemicals he has been advised to abandon.
“Each of us has at least one line of research the Rykes would have us give up. That is the very thing we shall insist on having investigated. We shall teach them these things and prove Earthmen to be an unlearned, unreachable band of aborigines who refuse to pursue the single path to glory and light, but insist on following every devious byway and searching every darkness that lies beside the path.
“It ought to do the trick. I estimate it should not be more than a week before we are on our way back home, labeled by the Rykes as utterly hopeless material for their enlightenment.”
The senators seemed momentarily appalled and speechless, but they recovered shortly and had a considerable amount of high-flown oratory to distribute on the subject. The scientists, however, were comparatively quiet, but on their faces was a subdued glee that Hockley had to admit was little short of fiendish. It was composed, he thought, of all the gloating anticipations of all the schoolboys who had ever put a thumbtack on the teacher’s chair.
* * * *
Hockley was somewhat off in his prediction. It was actually a mere five days after the beginning of the Earthmen’s campaign that the Rykes gave them up and put them firmly aboard a vessel bound for home. The Rykes were apologetic but firm in admitting they had made a sorry mistake, that Earthmen would have to go their own hopeless way while the Rykes led the rest of the Universe toward enlightenment and glory.
Hockley, Showalter, and Silvers watched the planet drop away beneath them. Hockley could not help feeling sympathetic toward the Rykes. “I wonder what will happen,” he said slowly, “when they crash headlong into an impassable barrier on that beautiful, straight road of theirs. I wonder if they’ll ever have enough guts to turn aside?”
“I doubt it,” said Showalter. “They’ll probably curl up and call it a day.”
Silvers shook his head as if to ward off an oppressive vision. “That shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” he said. “They’ve got too much. They’ve achieved too much, in spite of their limitations. I wonder if there isn’t some way we could help them?”
THE PERSON FROM PORLOCK
Borge, the chief engineer of Intercontinental, glanced down at the blue-backed folder in his hand. Then he looked at the strained face of Reg Stone, his top engineer.
“It’s no use,” said Borge. “We’re canceling the project. Millen’s report is negative. He finds the BW effect impossible of practical application. You can read the details, yourself.”
“Canceling—!” Rag Stone half rose from his chair. “But chief, you can’t do that. Millen’s crazy. What can he prove with only a little math and no experimental data? I’m right on the edge of success. If I could just make you see it!”
_”I have_ seen it. I can’t see anything that warrants our pouring out another twenty-five thousand bucks after the hundred and fifty your project has already cost the company.”
“Twenty, then. Even fifteen might do it. Borge, if you don’t let me go on with this you’re passing up the biggest development of the century. Some other outfit with more guts and imagination and less respect for high-priced opinion in pretty folders is going to come through with it. Teleportation is in the bag—all we’ve got to do is lift it out!”
“Majestic and Carruthers Electric have both canceled their projects on it. Professor Merrill Hanford, who assisted Bots-Wellton in the original research, says that the BW effect will never be anything of more than academic interest.”
“Hanford!” Reg exploded. “He’s jealous because he doesn’t have the brains to produce a discovery of that magnitude. Bots-Wellton himself says that his effect will eventually make it possible to eliminate all other means of freight transport and most passenger stuff except that which is merely for pleasure.”
“All of which is very well,” said Borge, “except that it doesn’t work outside of an insignificant laboratory demonstration.”
“Insignificant! The actual transfer of six milligrams of silver over a distance of ten feet is hardly insignificant. As for Millen’s math, we haven’t got the right tools to handle this.”
“I was speaking from an engineering standpoint. Of course, the effect is of interest in a purely scientific way, but it is of no use to us. Millen’s math proves it. Take this copy and see for yourself. I’m sorry, Reg, but that’s the final word on it.”
Reg Stone rose slowly, his big hands resting against the glass-topped desk. “I see. I’ll just have to forget it then, I guess.”
“I’m afraid so.” Borge rose and extended his hand. “You’ve been working too hard on this thing. Why don’t you take a couple of days off? By then we’ll have your next assignment lined up. And no hard feelings over this Bots-Wellton effect business?”
“Oh, no—sure not,” Reg said absently.
He strode out of the office and back to the lab where the elaborate equipment of his teleport project was strewn in chaotic piles over benches and lined up in racks and panels.
A hundred thousand dollars worth of beautiful junk, he thought. He slumped in a chair before the vast, complex panels. This cancellation was the fitting climax to the delays, misfortunes, and accidents that had dogged the project since it began.
From the first, everyone except a few members of the Engineering Committee and Reg himself had been against it. Borge considered it a waste of time and money. The other engineers referred to it as Stone’s Folly.
And within Reg himself there was that smothering, frustrated, indefinable sensation which he couldn’t name.
It was a premonition of failure, and there had been a thousand and one incidents to support it. From the first day, when one of his lab assistants fell and broke a precious surge amplifier, the project seemed to have been hexed. No day passed but that materials seemed mysteriously missing or blueprints turned up with the wrong specifications on them. He’d tried six incompetent junior engineers before the last one, a brilliant chap named Spence, who seemed to be the only one of the lot who knew a lighthouse tube from a stub support.
With men and materials continually snafu it was almost as if someone had deliberately sabotaged the whole project.
He caught himself up with a short, bitter laugh. The little men in white coats would be after him if he kept up that line of thought.
He passed a hand over his eyes. How tired he was! He hadn’t realized until now what a tremendous peak of tension he had reached. He felt it in the faint trembling of hi
s fingers, the pressure behind his eyeballs.
His disappointment and anger slowly settled like a vortex about Carl Millen, the consulting physicist who’d reported negatively when Borge insisted to the Engineering Committee that they get outside opinion on the practicability of BW utilization.
The cool, implacable Millen, however, could hardly be the object of anything as personal as anger. Yet, strangely enough, he had been the object of Reg Stone’s friendship ever since the two of them were in engineering school together.
What each of them found in the other would have been hard to put into words, but there was some complementary view of opposite worlds which each seemed able to see through the other’s eyes.
As for Millen’s report on the BW project—Reg knew it had been utterly impersonal and rendered as Carl Millen saw it, though the two of them had often discussed it in heated argument in the past. But the very impersonality of Millen’s point of view made the maintenance of his anger impossible for Reg.
But never in his life had he wanted anything so much as he wanted to be the one to develop the Bots-Wellton effect from a mere laboratory demonstration to a system able to transport millions of tons of freight over thousands of miles without material agent of transfer.
Now he was cut off right at the pockets. He felt at loose ends. It was a panicky feeling. For months on end he had been working at top capacity. He seemed to have suddenly dropped into a vacuum.
He debated handing in his resignation and going to some company that would let him develop the project. But who would? Majestic and Carruthers, two of the largest outfits, had pulled out, Borge had said. Who else would pick it up?
There was one other possibility, he thought breathlessly. Reg Stone could take it over!
Why not? He had a beautifully equipped backyard lab and machine shop. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment from the project would have to be junked by Intercontinental. Reg felt sure Borge would let him buy it as junk.
Sunday is Three Thousand Years Away and Other SF Classics Page 22