What Thin Partitions

by Mark Clifton

  "Of course not,” I said. I vaguely wondered what the term “other things” might cover. But I was past normal curiosity about anything. I didn't bother to ask.

  "Swami's prescience is irregular,” he said. “Your idea of increasing psi powers through hypnotism has its limits."

  In these hectic months I had completely forgotten my intent to attempt hypnotism on psi. Apparently Logart hadn't.

  "We don't know what we may need before we come to matter again,” he went on.

  "Of course not,” I agreed.

  "So it's well to have plenty of molecules on hand,” he said.

  "Of course,” I said. As if from forgotten childhood there came the memory of a fairy story about Little Three-Eyes, “Little table appear,” she would say, and there would be a table laden with all the delicacies a hungry child can visualize. “Little table go away,” she would say when she had eaten, and that took care of the automatic dishwasher problem. Three-Eyes? The third eye a psisense organ? The story founded on fact in some dim past? At the moment, it seemed to make their human needs all easy of fulfillment.

  At the moment I didn't realize I was in a complete daze to the point that I would have readily agreed that when they grew hungry all they'd have to do is slice off a piece of the green-cheese moon.

  The alloy bricks were completed and stacked in the “basement” until only corridors remained. The workmen doing it seemed never to have had any curiosity. Our Public Relations Department had failed completely with the Press, and the Press had settled in their own minds that the whole thing was a hoax. A congressional committee had promised to investigate the Pentagon's folly.

  By now everyone had ceased to be curious. This was not unexpected on the part of the public. Conditioned by newspapers and television commentators to a new shock at least every three days, they responded by losing interest in anything after about three days. But it was surprising that those of us deeply involved should stop questioning.

  I remember one curious conversation around this time. I didn't give it enough reflection at the time, possibly because it was with Swami, whose attitudes and opinions I respected least.

  He came into my office with a sort of hang-dog look on his face and said he wanted to talk with me, to explain something to me.

  "I don't-none of us want you to feel hurt,” he said. “Afterwards."

  "Afterwards what?” I asked.

  "After this is all over."

  "What am I not to feel hurt about?"

  "Even explaining it is going to hurt you."

  "Look, fellow,” I said with a slight exasperation. “I've been at this game of dealing with human beings for a long time. I've been insulted in just about ever way the mind of man can conceive. I've been lied to, cheated, double-crossed, lied about, and had the truth told about me. I've survived. I expect I can survive what you have to say."

  "I suppose,” he said slowly, “you've got a vocabulary of around twenty-five thousand words."

  "More or less, perhaps,” I conceded.

  "And an equally large vocabulary of word combinations, and then another block of phrase combinations, so that all told you're probably capable of around a hundred thousand concepts. Say a hundred thousand for the sake of argument."

  "For the sake of argument,” I agreed.

  "Suppose you found yourself living with a band of great apes who have a vocabulary of grunts, growls, roars, whistles, and chest beatings that number up to a hundred concepts. The ratio is a thousand to one, isn't it?"

  I started to tell him he should have been a mathematician, but the look of sadness in his big black eyes stopped me.

  "But for all your disproportionate ratio of concepts,” he said, “you can still be hurt, get sick, feel a mosquito bite, get too cold, too hot, too hungry. You can only communicate to the limit of their hundred concepts. They judge you within these hundred concepts. They have no way of knowing or appreciating this vast number you can't communicate. To them you are a pretty worthless creature. You can't overpower them in a fight, you don't take an interest in their she-apes and fight over them, you don't try to become master of the herd because it wouldn't interest you, you don't appreciate the delicacies of the grubs to be found under the bark of rotting trees; you're puny, sickly, and obviously you are also cowardly by their standards."

  "But I've got a hundred thousand concepts-which makes me superior to them,” I said.

  "No,” he disagreed. “Not superior, because what standard are you going by? Theirs, or yours""

  "Different then,” I said.

  "Different,” he answered. “That's the point. Now suppose you found a group of human beings, your equals. Suppose you found a way to escape from the tribe of apes, to set up a community of human beings, so that your hundred thousand concepts had value. More important, so that you could start using them, and all they mean. Wouldn't you do it?"

  "We're talking about psi, of course,” I said, “and I see the analogy. But suppose the apes recognized my difference, recognized that I could think in areas denied to them. Suppose, for example, they saw the relation of the rotting tree to a supply of grubs under its bark. Suppose they tried to use my extra concepts, asked me to figure out a way to make more trees fall so there could be more grubs?"

  "Would you really care?” he asked. “All right, suppose they invented another grunt which was a recognition of your difference. So now they've got a vocabulary of a hundred and one concepts. As against your hundred thousand, would it make much difference to you?"

  "Look, Swami,” I said earnestly. “I've been trying to understand your psi talents. Not just to recognize them, but to understand them. All of them. I'm trying to find a way to bring them under scientific scrutiny, to work out an approach to the natural laws governing them, measure them, control them, predict them. They're real, they work-somewhere, in some way, they are a part of natural law. Man can understand natural law, if he tries. That's science."

  He shook his head.

  "A long time ago,” he said, “we had a conversation along this line. I was offended then, and scared. I gave you some metaphysical mumbo jumbo. But my feelings, my psi feelings if you will, were sound. Maybe I can express it better this time. The flaw lies in what you call scientific method. Yes, psi is a part of natural law, but scientific method, as you conceive it, can't get hold of it. There has to be ... There has to be..."

  He paused. Obviously he was trying to find a grunt, whistle, or chest thump which was in my vocabulary.

  "Let's go to another analogy,” he said.

  "Let's,” I agreed.

  "Suppose an ancient Greek philosopher met up with a modern solar scientist. Suppose this ancient Greek said to the solar scientist. ‘Tell me about the sun.’ The solar scientist starts sketching in his basic knowledge of the sun. ‘No, no!’ the ancient Greek objects. ‘Don't give me all that vague and mystical mumbo jumbo. That doesn't mean anything to me. Tell me how many wheels Apollo's chariot has, how many horses draw it across the sky, what metal the chariot is made of, what its dimensions are, what figures are embossed on its doors. Be scientific, man!’ What could the solar scientist say?"

  "In short,” I said, “our science, in trying to measure psi, get a description of it, is like trying to measure a chariot that doesn't exist, driven by a god who doesn't exist."

  "Yes."

  "But psi does exist."

  "The sun exists,” he said. “It is the framework of approach to knowledge, to measurement that is wrong. Man couldn't learn anything more about the sun until he quit thinking in terms of Apollo's chariot."

  It was an impasse. I couldn't give up my scientific approach to knowledge-any more than the ancient Greek could give up his certainty that Apollo drove his chariot across the sky.

  * * * *

  As I say, I remembered the conversation, but I didn't reflect on it enough. I interpreted it as just Swami wanting to talk to somebody, maybe build up his stock in my eyes since, obviously, I respected Jennie and George more than
I did him. I didn't realize at the time that it was a kind of valedictory-from all of them.

  I was much more concerned with the pressures of details that were weighing me down, and I fear my main reaction at the moment was irritation at the twenty minutes he'd taken up when other things were much more urgent.

  Urgencies, for example, such as the details of their mass wedding. It didn't occur to me until much later that almost a year had passed since their announcement that they were going to get married-Annie and Swami, the boys and their girls. I'd not thought much about it, and if I did have a vague wonder now and then, I'd put the delay down to their being under white-hot pressures, too.

  At any rate the multiple wedding finally did come off. Somehow the responsibility for that, too, got around to my office. But as usual., Sara was more capable of handling it than I would have been. I had only to officiate at the reception afterwards. The boys’ parents were all there, the first time I'd met them; but somehow even they managed to pass the buck, and it was as if all these were my children.

  After the reception, I had hardly enough energy left in me to stagger into my apartment. I was utterly exhausted and in a slight fever.

  "Did anybody think to make arrangements for their honeymoons"” I heard myself mumbling as I lay down across the bed to gather enough energy to get up and undress.

  I fell asleep patiently telling myself that Sara would take care of it.

  I was awakened by the telephone on the stand beside my bed, and with that dim realization that it had been ringing for a long time. Through grainy eyelids I could see outside my window that it was a bleak gray dawn. I hadn't bothered to snap off my light, pull down my shade, and I was still dressed.

  "Aw for ... Why don't you look up the right number?” I grumbled into the phone when I finally managed to reach out and claw it off its stand.

  "Ralph! Ralph! Don't hang up. This is Henry!"

  Old Stone Face's granite voice blasted me a little more awake.

  "Yes, Henry,” I groaned without that brisk, glad alertness righthand men are expected to feel on any occasion.

  "The ship's gone,” he said. “Just got a call from Plant Security. Meet you there."

  There was a crash in my ear as he slammed down the phone. Well, at least I didn't have to dress. A slept-in tuxedo was just fine for going out to hunt a misplaced spaceship.

  * * * *

  Henry and I pulled into the executives’ parking section at the same time, and both of us spilled out of our cars and started running toward the spaceship hangar. A little knot of watchmen, security police, maintenance men had gathered at the doorway. They stepped back as we puffed our way up to the door and came to a halt. Yes, the spaceship was gone. The ceiling of the hangar was neatly folded back, as planned, to let the pink clouds and blue sky show through.

  "Some honeymoon,” I said to Henry.

  "You think they'd have taken their wives?” he asked me.

  "You think they'd have chosen this particular morning for a routine test run?” I asked him.

  "You think they'd have risked their wives before they tested it?” he asked.

  "You think they weren't absolutely sure of what they were doing all along?” I asked.

  We weren't bothering to answer each other.

  "We'd better check the laboratory. Logart's been sleeping there lately,” Henry said. “Those kids could have taken it up as a lark, you know.” He shook his head angrily. “This younger generation!” he grumbled.

  The little knot of employees, who had been crowding the doorway behind us, stepped back again and let us get out. They looked at us curiously, to see what we would do now. Executives were supposed to be able to handle anything, even spaceships that disappear.

  We walked over toward the laboratory building that never had been straightened on its foundations. Neither of us seemed to be in a great hurry now. We went up on the porch and knocked politely at the door. We waited. No one answered our knock. There was no sound of movement inside. I tried the latch, and the door swung open without any trouble.

  We peered into the hallway, and the house looked just as I remembered it when we bought it from its previous residents. As we stepped inside, I saw an envelope on the hall table. I looked at the front and saw it was addressed to me. I picked it up and carried it with me as we searched the house. There were no occupants, of course.

  As we went from room to room a most peculiar realization came to me. In spite of my weariness, my lethargy was gone. I no longer felt numbly swept along in currents I could not understand or control. I was back to a state of mind I remembered, a state of being awake, and already the events of the last few months had the haze of a remembered dream.

  "You feel unusually sharp this morning, Henry?” I asked as we left the service porch area. He looked at me quickly.

  "First I thought I was losing my grip because I got so I didn't care what was happening in building the spaceship,” he said. “Then I got so I didn't care that I didn't care."

  "Me too,” I said. “Now I feel awake again."

  "Me too,” he said. Then added cryptically, “That Logart!"

  We came into the living room. The chairs and divan were as neatly placed as in any home-Annie's work, no doubt. I hadn't been admitted to the house, but Annie had!

  "This envelope is addressed to me,” I said.

  "Well, open it,” Henry said.

  We sat down in chairs, and I slipped a page out of the unsealed envelope. It was all neatly typed out. I had expected it to start with some such cliche as “When you read this, we will be gone,” but Logart, whose signature was at the bottom, hadn't wasted words on the trivially obvious. I started reading aloud for Henry's benefit.

  * * * *

  "A man can grow only so tall,” Logart began. “After that, he can merely grow fat. As with a man, so with a culture of man. When a culture has more to lose than to gain in trying to realize a dream, it is the dream that dies. When a culture starts walking backward into the future, with its eyes fixed on the past, the culture dies.

  "A youth must leave his home and the parents who bore and cherished him or suffer the consequences of being never more than were his parents. History is full of the migrations of such youth groups. Youth groups with a dream that can only be realized where there is room for a dream to grow.

  "Sorry you couldn't go with its, Kennedy. You tried. We tried. But what would life be like for you in a framework you could never share, where all your dependable patterns are no longer true, where till your wisdom of coping with people avails you nothing? For all your sympathy, you never quite believed that psi is an entirely different framework. You were always trying to make it conform to your already fixed notions of what truth must be.

  "All of us will remember you with deep gratitude, for you brought together a critical psi mass. It needed only me to arrange the parts into its dynamic potential. Jennie, Swami and George were, in a sense, your psi children. Be glad you gave them a good start.

  "Somewhere, out among the stars, where there is room to grow, we will form a colony, and then a culture based in psi. Give its your blessing, and wish its luck.

  "Logart."

  * * * *

  I looked up at Old Stone Face. He looked back at me.

  "Too bad, Ralph,” he said. He had helped, too. It was a disappointment that Logart had not given him credit. That Logart! “Well,” he said finally, as if squaring his shoulders. “First thing is to get some breakfast. Next thing is to get that sluggish Public Relations Department waked up and working on some handouts for the Press, who, I guess, will sort of wake up now, too. Next thing is to try to explain all this to the Pentagon, and how come we didn't stop them from taking the spaceship. Then there's Congress to explain to, why we used all that money they urged us to take. After all that's boiled down, and reflected itself in the voting machines, we still got computers to make."

  "Why?” I asked.

  "Now you took here, Ralphie, my boy,” he said and shook his
finger at me. It shocked me into an upright position. He didn't seem to notice, because his eyes were veiled as if he were looking into a far distance. “That Logart didn't have a corner on new frameworks. Maybe he's right about the old folks having grown too set in their ways to change, but there'll be other wild and independent children who want something different. You'll see.

  "But first things first. Let's go get some breakfast."

  We walked over to the plant cafeteria which does a brisk breakfast business in men whose wives are too lazy to get up and see them off to work properly. There was a hush over the room, so still that the inadvertent clink of a spoon against a coffeecup sounded like a gong. The story had spread.

  The sight of Henry and me, at one end of a long and otherwise empty table, calmly eating our stacks of hotcakes seemed to restore some confidence. If we could eat, then things might not be so bad. Henry had calculated the effect; and I should have, because that's my job. The cafeteria noise picked up until it reached normal, and provided a mask for the sound of our voices.

  "Look here,” Henry pointed a spoon at me. “Don't you give up. You were on the right track. It still takes unusual people to do unusual things. Don't sit around and sulk just because your unusual people did something unusual. You better get used to that. Remember that."

  I stared down into the remaining syrup in the bottom of my plate.

  Yes, I would remember. There might be other unusual people sometime in the future, but I could never forget Jennie, Swami, George. Logart was right. Now in remembrance and reflection, they were like children of mine. Children who, in the perfectly normal course of growing up, had been attracted to a fascinating stranger for Logart would always remain a stranger in my inability to comprehend him-to go out into the world, the universe, to make their own way apart from my protection, to build a new kind of life which I could never share.

  But they had not taken everything. They'd left me something precious-remembrance, and reflection.

  THE END