Master of None

by Neil Goble

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Dave Lovelace, Stephen Blundelland the Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net

  MASTER OF NONE

  BY NEIL GOBLE

  The advantages of specialization are so obvious that, today, we don't even know how to recognize a competent syncretist!

  Freddy the Fish glanced at the folded newspaper beside him on the bench.A little one-column headline caught his eye:

  MYSTERIOUS SIGNALS FROM OUTER SPACE

  "Probably from Cygnus," he said.

  Freddy mashed a peanut, popped the meat into his mouth, and tossed theshell to the curb in front of his bench. He munched and idly watched twosparrows arguing over the discarded delicacy; the victor flitted to thehead of a statue, let go a triumphant dropping onto the marble nose, andhopped to a nearby branch.

  "Serves him right," Freddy said. He yawned and rubbed the stubble on hischin. Not yet long enough for scissors, he decided. He pulled his feetup on the bench, twisting in an effort to get comfortable. The sun wasin his eyes, so he reclaimed the discarded newspaper and spread it overhis face. His eyes momentarily focused on MYSTERIOUS SIGNALS FROM OUTERSPACE, right over his nose.

  "Sure, Cygnus," he muttered, and closed his eyes and dropped off tosleep.

  When he was awakened, it was by an excited hand shaking his shoulder anda panting, "Freddy! Freddy! Lookit the Extra just came out!"

  Freddy slowly sat up, ascertained the identity of the intruder and thefact that the sun was setting, and said, "Good evening, Willy. Pleasestop rattling that paper in my face."

  "But just read it, Freddy," Willy shrieked, waving the paper sofrantically that Freddy couldn't make out the big black headline."'Positive contact from another planet,' the guy was yellin'. They putout an Extra so I snitched one from the boy. Read it to me, huh, Freddy?I'm dyin' o' curious."

  "So give it here and I'll read it for you. Quit shakin' it or you'lltear it all up," Freddy snorted.

  "Read it to me, huh, Freddy," Willy said, handing over the paper. "Idon't know no one else that reads so good."

  Freddy studied the headline and the first paragraph silently, thenwhistled lightly and lowered the paper.

  "Y'know, Willy," he said, "the last thing I read before I dropped off awhile ago was about these signals. But the funny thing is, I'd justassumed they were from Cygnus."

  "What's a Cygnus, Freddy?" Willy asked, still pop-eyed. "A smoke? Adame? Or you mean like from Hunger?"

  "Cygnus, my boy," Freddy explained patronizingly, "is a constellationwithin which there are two colliding galaxies. These colliding galaxiesproduce the most powerful electromagnetic radiations in the universe--anundecillion watts!"

  "What's an undecillion?"

  "An undecillion is ten raised to the 36th power," Freddy sighed, fearingthat he wasn't getting through to Willy.

  "No foolin'? What's a watt ... aw, you're pullin' my leg again, Freddy,talkin' riddles. Where'd ya ever learn to talk that way anyhow!"

  "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Georgia Tech, Oklahoma. Picked up alittle here, a little there," Freddy said, reflecting on hisindiscriminate past.

  "Aw, cut it out, Freddy! C'mon, read it to me. Betcha can't! Where'd yasay it was from? Cygnus?"

  "Not Cygnus. Ganymede." Freddy cleared his throat and rattled thenewspaper authoritatively. "Washington: White House sources declaredtoday that intelligent beings on a Jupiter moon have contacted theUnited States government. While the contents of the message have beenmade secret, the White House emphasized the message was friendly."

  Freddy continued, "The signals, which were intercepted yesterday, weredecoded this morning by a team of government scientists andcryptographers who had been at the task all night. While officials werenoncommittal about the nature of the message contained in the signals,they declared, 'We are authorized to state that the received message wasfriendly and appears to represent a sincere attempt by another race ofintelligent beings to contact the people of Earth. A reply message isbeing formulated.' Officials further explained that the possibility ofthe signal's being a hoax has been thoroughly investigated and thatthere is no doubt whatsoever that the message is a genuine interspatialcommunication from intelligent beings on Ganymede. Ganymede is one oftwelve moons of the planet Jupiter, and is larger than the planetMercury."

  Freddy stopped.

  "Ain't there any more?" Willy whined.

  "The rest of it is about how far away Ganymede is, and its relativedensity and mass and stuff. You wouldn't be interested, Willy."

  "Oh. I guess not." Willy helped himself to a peanut. "What's it mean,Freddy?"

  "Nothing much, Willy. Just that there's people somewhere besides here onEarth, and they called us on the phone."

  "Whadd'ya know about that!" Willy gasped. "I didn't even know they wasother people!" He stared with disbelief at the paper.

  "I don't suppose anyone knew."

  "How d'ya suppose they knew?" Willy asked. "I mean, that we was here, ifwe didn't know they was there?"

  "I've been wondering about that, Willy. You know that last rocket weshot?"

  "From Cape Carnival you mean?"

  "Yeh. It was supposed to go into orbit around Jupiter. I wouldn't besurprised if maybe it didn't land on Ganymede; the people there couldhave examined it, figured out where it came from, and then radioed us onthe same frequency the rocket transmitter used. Paper doesn't say that,of course, but it's a reasonable hypothesis."

  "Freddy, I think you must be a genius or sumpin'."

  Freddy smiled and stretched out to sleep again as Willy wandered off,staring blankly at the newspaper.

  * * * * *

  Carlton Jones, America's Number One personnel specialist, scowled at thepamphlet on his desk.

  SECRET, it said in big red letters across the top and bottom. SpecialInstructions for Operation Space Case, said the smaller letters acrossthe middle of the top sheet.

  "Now I ask you, Dwindle," Jones said to his clerkish aide, "where, inthis worldful of specialists, am I going to find someone with awell-rounded education? Much less one who'll take a chance on a flierlike this?"

  "Gosh, Mr. Jones, I just wouldn't know," Dwindle blinked. "Have youtried looking through your files?"

  "Have I tried looking through my files," Jones sighed, looking at theceiling light. "Dwindle, my files include every gainfully employedperson in the United States of America and its possessions. Millions ofthem. One doesn't just browse through the files looking for things."

  "Oh," Dwindle said. "I'm kinda new at this specialty," he explained.

  "Yes, Dwindle. However," Jones continued, "one does make IBM runouts tofind things."

  "Hey, that's great!" Dwindle said, brightening. "Why don't you trymaking an IBM runout?"

  "I did, Dwindle. Please let me finish? Our instructions call for findinga person with a well-rounded education. More specifically, a person whois capable of intelligently discussing and explaining some two dozenmajor 'fields of knowledge.' Plus, of course, at least a passingacquaintance with some one or two hundred minor fields of knowledge.

  "So I set Mathematics into the IBM sorter. Mathematics is one of themajor fields of knowledge, you see."

  "Yeh," Dwindle acknowledged.

  "So I took the few million mathematicians' cards which I got--goodmathematicians and bad mathematicians, but at least people who can gettheir decimals in the right place. I set the IBM sorter for Biology, andran the mathematicians' cards through. So I got several thousandmathematician-biologists."

  "That's pretty sharp!" Dwindle exclaimed with a twinkle. "Whoeverthought of that!"

  "Please, Dwindle," Jones moaned, pressing his palms to his eyes. "Next Isorted according to Geology. Three hundred cards came through. Three
hundred people in America who know their math, biology and geology!"

  "That doesn't sound like so many to me," Dwindle said hesitantly, as ifwondering what there was to get so excited about.

  "And of those three hundred, do you know how many understand, evenvaguely, Electronics? Twelve. And of those twelve, guess how many havean adequate background in History and Anthropology? Much less anunderstanding of eighteen other