Gold

by Isaac Asimov

  “You mean you scare them,” blurted out Sam, “so that it’s not likely to happen. And they don’t tell you if it does happen. But I wasn’t scared.”

  Gentry shook his head. “I’m sorry you weren’t, if that was what it would have taken you to keep from seeing things.”

  “I wasn’t seeing things. At least, not things that weren’t there.”

  “How do you intend to argue with a television cassette, which will show you staring at nothing?”

  “Sir, what I saw was not opaque. It was smoky, actually; foggy, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. It looked as a hallucination might look, not as reality. But the television set would have seen even smoke.”

  “Maybe not, sir. My mind must have been focused to see it more clearly. It was probably less clear to the camera than to me.”

  “It focused your mind, did it?” Gentry stood up, and he sounded rather sad. “That’s an admission of hallucination. I’m really sorry, Sam, because you are clearly intelligent, and the Central Computer rated you highly, but we can’t use you.”

  “Will you be sending me home, sir?”

  “Yes, but why should that matter? You didn’t particularly want to come here.”

  “I want to stay here now.”

  “But I’m afraid you cannot.”

  “You can’t just send me home. Don’t I get a hearing?”

  “You certainly can, if you insist, but in that case, the proceedings will be official and will go on your record, so that you won’t get another apprenticeship anywhere. As it is, if you are sent back unofficially, as better suited to an apprenticeship in neurophysiology, you might get that, and be better off, actually, than you are now.”

  “I don’t want that. I want a hearing—before the Commander.”

  “Oh, no. Not the Commander. He can’t be bothered with that.”

  “It must be the Commander,” said Sam, with desperate force, “or this Project will fail.”

  “Unless the Commander gives you a hearing? Why do you say that? Come, you are forcing me to think that you are unstable in ways other than those involved with hallucinations.”

  “Sir.” The words were tumbling out of Sam’s mouth now. “The Commander is ill—they know that even on Earth—and if he gets too ill to work, this Project will fail. I did not see a hallucination and the proof is that I know why he is ill and how he can be cured.”

  “You’re not helping yourself,” said Gentry.

  “If you send me away, I tell you the Project will fail. Can it hurt to let me see the Commander? All I ask is five minutes.”

  “Five minutes? What if he refuses?”

  “Ask him, sir. Tell him that I say the same thing that caused his depression can remove it.”

  “No, I don’t think I’ll tell him that. But I’ll ask him if he’ll see you.”

  The Commander was a thin man, not very tall. His eyes were a deep blue and they looked tired.

  His voice was very soft, a little low-pitched, definitely weary.

  “You’re the one who saw the hallucination?”

  “It was not a hallucination, Commander. It was real. So was the one you saw, Commander.” If that did not get him thrown out, Sam thought, he might have a chance. He felt his elbow tightening on his hamper again. He still had it with him.

  The Commander seemed to wince. “The one I saw?”

  “Yes, Commander. It said it had hurt one person. They had to try with you because you were the Commander, and they…did damage.”

  The Commander ignored that and said, “Did you ever have any mental problems before you came here?”

  “No, Commander. You can consult my Central Computer record.”

  Sam thought: He must have had problems, but they let it go because he’s a genius and they had to have him.

  Then he thought: Was that my own idea? Or had it been put there?

  The Commander was speaking. Sam had almost missed it. He said, “What you saw can’t be real. There is no intelligent life-form on this planet.”

  “Yes, sir. There is.”

  “Oh? And no one ever discovered it till you came here, and in three days you did the job?” The Commander smiled very briefly. “I’m afraid I have no choice but to—”

  “Wait, Commander,” said Sam, in a strangled voice. “We know about the intelligent life-form. It’s the insects, the little flying things.”

  “You say the insects are intelligent?”

  “Not an individual insect by itself, but they fit together when they want to, like little jigsaw pieces. They can do it in any way they want. And when they do, their nervous systems fit together, too, and build up. A lot of them together are intelligent.”

  The Commander’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s an interesting idea, anyway. Almost crazy enough to be true. How did you come to that conclusion, young man?”

  “By observation, sir. Everywhere I walked, I disturbed the insects in the grass and they flew about in all directions. But once the cow started to form, and I walked toward it, there was nothing to see or hear. The insects were gone. They had gathered together in front of me and they weren’t in the grass anymore. That’s how I knew.”

  “You talked with a cow?”

  “It was a cow at first, because that’s what I thought of. But they had it wrong, so they switched and came together to form a human being—me.”

  “You?” And then, in a lower voice, “Well, that fits anyway.”

  “Did you see it that way, too, Commander?”

  The Commander ignored that. “And when it shaped itself like you, it could talk as you did? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, Commander. The talking was in my mind.”

  “Telepathy?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And what did it say to you, or think to you?”

  “It wanted us to refrain from disturbing this planet. It wanted us not to take it over.” Sam was all but holding his breath. The interview had lasted more than five minutes already, and the Commander was making no move to put an end to it, to send him home.

  “Quite impossible.”

  “Why, Commander?”

  “Any other base will double and triple the expense. We’re having enough trouble getting grants as it is. Fortunately, it is all a hallucination, young man, and the problem does not arise.” He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked at Sam without really focusing on him. “I’m sorry, young man. You will be sent back—officially.”

  Sam gambled again. “We can’t afford to ignore the insects, Commander. They have a lot to give us.”

  The Commander had raised his hand halfway as though about to give a signal. He paused long enough to say, “Really? What do they have that they can give us?”

  “The one thing more important than energy, Commander. An understanding of the brain.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can demonstrate it. I have them here.” Sam seized his hamper and swung it forward onto the desk.

  “What’s that?”

  Sam did not answer in words. He opened the hamper, and a softly whirring, smoky cloud appeared.

  The Commander rose suddenly and cried out. He lifted his hand high and an alarm bell sounded.

  Through the door came Gentry, and others behind him. Sam felt himself seized by the arms, and then a kind of stunned and motionless silence prevailed in the room.

  The smoke was condensing, wavering, taking on the shape of a Head, a thin head, with high cheekbones, a smooth forehead and receding hairline. It had the appearance of the Commander.

  “I’m seeing things,” croaked the Commander.

  Sam said, “We’re all seeing the same thing, aren’t we?” He wriggled and was released.

  Gentry said in a low voice, “Mass hysteria.”

  “No,” said Sam, “it’s real.” He reached toward the Head in midair, and brought back his finger with a tiny insect on it. He flicked it and it could just barely be seen making its way back to
its companions.

  No one moved.

  Sam said, “Head, do you see the problem with the Commander’s mind?”

  Sam had the brief vision of a snarl in an otherwise smooth curve, but it vanished and left nothing behind. It was not something that could be easily put into human thought. He hoped the others experienced that quick snarl. Yes, they had. He knew it.

  The Commander said, “There is no problem.”

  Sam said, “Can you adjust it, Head?”

  Of course, they could not. It was not right to invade a mind.

  Sam said, “Commander, give permission.”

  The Commander put his hands to his eyes and muttered something Sam did not make out. Then he said, clearly, “It’s a nightmare, but I’ve been in one since—Whatever must be done, I give permission.”

  Nothing happened.

  Or nothing seemed to happen.

  And then slowly, little by little, the Commander’s face lit in a smile.

  He said, just above a whisper. “Astonishing. I’m watching a sun rise. It’s been cold night for so long, and now I feel the warmth again.” His voice rose high. “I feel wonderful.”

  The Head deformed at that point, turned into a vague, pulsing fog, then formed a curving, narrowing arrow that sped into the hamper. Sam snapped it shut.

  He said, “Commander, have I your permission to restore these little insect-things to their own world?”

  “Yes, yes,” said the Commander, dismissing that with a wave of his hand. “Gentry, call a meeting. We’ve got to change all our plans.”

  Sam had been escorted outside the Dome by a stolid guard and had then been confined to his quarters for the rest of the day.

  It was late when Gentry entered, stared at him thoughtfully, and said, “That was an amazing demonstration of yours. The entire incident has been fed into the Central Computer and we now have a double project—neutron-star energy and neurophysiology. I doubt that there will be any question about pouring money into this project now. And we’ll have a group of neurophysiologists arriving eventually. Until then you’re going to be working with those little things and you’ll probably end up the most important person here.”

  Sam said, “But will we leave their world to them?”

  Gentry said, “We’ll have to if we expect to get anything out of them, won’t we? The Commander thinks we’re going to build elaborate settlements in orbit about this world and shift all operations to them except for a skeleton crew in this Dome to maintain direct contact with the insects—or whatever we’ll decide to call them. It will cost a great deal of money, and take time and labor, but it’s going to be worth it. No one will question that.”

  Sam said “Good!”

  Gentry stared at him again, longer and more thoughtfully than before.

  “My boy,” he said, “it seems that what happened came about because you did not fear the supposed hallucination. Your mind remained open, and that was the whole difference. Why was that? Why weren’t you afraid?”

  Sam flushed. “I’m not sure, sir. As I look back on it, though, it seemed to me I was puzzled as to why I was sent here. I had been doing my best to study neurophysiology through my computerized courses, and I knew very little about astrophysics. The Central Computer had my record, all of it, the full details of everything I had ever studied and I couldn’t imagine why I had been sent here.

  “Then, when you first mentioned the hallucinations, I thought, ‘That must be it. I was sent here to look into it.’ I just made up my mind that was the thing I had to do. I had no time to be afraid, Dr. Gentry. I had a problem to solve and I—I had faith in the Central Computer. It wouldn’t have sent me here, if I weren’t up to it.”

  Gentry shook his head. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t have had that much faith in that machine. But they say faith can move mountains, and I guess it did in this case.”

  The Instability

  Professor Firebrenner had explained it carefully. “Time-perception depends on the structure of the Universe. When the Universe is expanding, we experience time as going forward; when it is contracting, we experience it going backward. If we could somehow force the Universe to be in stasis, neither expanding nor contracting, time would stand still.”

  “But you can’t put the Universe in stasis,” said Mr. Atkins, fascinated.

  “I can put a little portion of the Universe in stasis, however,” said the professor. “Just enough to hold a ship. Time will stand still and we can move forward or backward at will and the entire trip will last less than an instant. But all the parts of the Universe will move while we stand still, while we are nailed to the fabric of the Universe. The Earth moves about the Sun, the Sun moves about the core of the Galaxy, the Galaxy moves about some center of gravity, all the Galaxies move.

  “I calculated those motions and I find that 27.5 million years in the future, a red dwarf star will occupy the position our Sun does now. If we go 27.5 million years into the future, in less than an instant that red dwarf star will be near our spaceship and we can come home after studying it a bit.”

  Atkins said, “Can that be done?”

  “I’ve sent experimental animals through time, but I can’t make them automatically return. If you and I go, we can then manipulate the controls so that we can return.”

  “And you want me along?”

  “Of course. There should be two. Two people would be more easily believed than one alone. Come, it will be an incredible adventure.”

  Atkins inspected the ship. It was a 2217 Glennfusion model and looked beautiful.

  “Suppose,” he said, “that it lands inside the red dwarf star.”

  “It won’t,” said the professor, “but if it does, that’s the chance we take.”

  “But when we get back, the Sun and Earth will have moved on. We’ll be in space.”

  “Of course, but how far can the Sun and Earth move in the few hours it will take us to observe the star? With this ship we will catch up to our beloved planet. Are you ready, Mr. Atkins?”

  “Ready,” sighed Atkins.

  Professor Firebrenner made the necessary adjustments and nailed the ship to the fabric of the Universe while 27.5 million years passed. And then, in less than a flash, time began to move forward again in the usual way, and everything in the Universe moved forward with it.

  Through the viewing port of their ship, Professor Firebrenner and Mr. Atkins could see the small orb of the red dwarf star.

  The professor smiled. “You and I, Atkins,” he said, “are the first ever to see, close at hand, any star other than our own Sun.”

  They remained two-and-a-half hours during which they photographed the star and its spectrum and as many neighboring stars as they could, made special coronagraphic observations, tested the chemical composition of the interstellar gas, and then Professor Firebrenner said, rather reluctantly, “I think we had better go home now.”

  Again, the controls were adjusted and the ship was nailed to the fabric of the Universe. They went 27.5 million years into the past, and in less than a flash, they were back where they started.

  Space was black. There was nothing.

  Atkins said, “What happened? Where are the Earth and Sun?”

  The professor frowned. He said, “Going back in time must be different. The entire Universe must have moved.”

  “Where could it move?”

  “I don’t know. Other objects shift position within the Universe, but the Universe as a whole must move in an upper-dimensional direction. We are here in the absolute vacuum, in primeval Chaos.”

  “But we’re here. It’s not primeval Chaos anymore.”

  “Exactly. That means we’ve introduced an instability at this place where we exist, and that means—”

  Even as he said that, a Big Bang obliterated them. A new Universe came into being and began to expand.

  Alexander the God

  Alexander Hoskins grew seriously interested in computers at the age of fourteen and quickly realized that he was
interested in nothing much else.

  His teachers encouraged him and excused him from classes in order that he might concentrate on this hobby of his. His father, who worked for IBM, encouraged him, too, got him some necessary equipment and explained some knotty points to him.

  Alexander built his own computer in a room above the garage, programmed and reprogrammed it and, at the age of sixteen, could no longer find a book that told him anything he didn’t know about computers. Nor could he find a book that dealt with some of the things he had found out entirely on his own.

  He thought about it deeply and decided not to tell his father of some of the things his computer could do. Already, the boy had become aware that the greatest conqueror of ancient times had been Alexander the Great, and Alexander felt his own name was no accident.

  Alexander was particularly interested in computer memory and worked out systems for cramming data into volume—much data into little volume. With each improvement, he squeezed more and more data into less and less volume.

  Solemnly, he then named his computer Bucephalus, after the faithful horse of Alexander the Great, the horse who had carried him through all his triumphant battles.

  There were computers that could accept spoken commands and give spoken responses, but none could do it as well as Bucephalus. There were also computers that could scan and store the written word, but none could do it as well as Bucephalus. Alexander tested this by having Bucephalus scan the Encyclopedia Britannica and store it all in its memory.

  By the time he was eighteen, Alexander had established an information-handling business for students and small businessmen and had become self-supporting. He moved into his own apartment in the city and was from that point on independent of his parents.

  In his own apartment he could remove the earphone attachment. With privacy, he could speak to Bucephalus openly, though he carefully adjusted the computer’s voice to low intensity. He did not want neighbors to wonder who was in the apartment with him.