Profession

by Isaac Asimov

  George watched as eagerly as the rest, glancing from one contestant to the next, observing how this one had removed the cover from his microspectrograph with deft strokes of a small instrument; how that one was peering into the face of the thing; how still a third was setting his alloy bar into its holder; and how a fourth adjusted a vernier with such small touches that he seemed momentarily frozen.

  Trevelyan was as absorbed as the rest. George had no wav of telling how he was doing.

  The notice board over Contestant Seventeen flashed: Focus plate out of adjustment.

  The audience cheered wildly.

  Contestant Seventeen might be right and he might, of course, be wrong. If the latter, he would have to correct his diagnosis later and lose time. Or he might never correct his diagnosis and be unable to complete his analysis or, worse still, end with a completely wrong analysis.

  Never mind. For the moment, the audience cheered.

  Other boards lit up. George watched for Board Twelve. That came on finally: “Sample holder off-center. New clamp depresser needed.”

  An attendant went running to him with a new part. If Trevelyan was wrong, it would mean useless delay. Nor would the time elapsed in waiting for the part be deducted. George found himself holding his breath.

  Results were beginning to go up on Board Seventeen, in gleaming letters: aluminum, 41.2649; magnesium, 22.1914; copper, 10.1001.

  Here and there, other boards began sprouting figures.

  The audience was in bedlam.

  George wondered how the contestants could work in such pandemonium, then wondered if that were not even a good thing. A first-class technician should work best under pressure.

  Seventeen rose from his place as his board went red-rimmed to signify completion. Four was only two seconds behind him. Another, then another.

  Trevelyan was still working, the minor constituents of his alloy bar still unreported. With nearly all contestants standing, Trevelyan finally rose, also. Then, tailing off, Five rose, and received an ironic cheer.

  It wasn’t over. Official announcements were naturally delayed. Time elapsed was something, but accuracy was just as important. And not all diagnoses were of equal difficulty. A dozen factors had to be weighed.

  Finally, the announcer’s voice sounded, “Winner in the time of four minutes and twelve seconds, diagnosis correct, analysis correct within an average of zero point seven parts per hundred thousand, Contestant Number—Seventeen, Henry Anton Schmidt of—”

  What followed was drowned in the screaming. Number Eight was next and then Four, whose good time was spoiled by a five part in ten thousand error in the niobium figure. Twelve was never mentioned. He was an also-ran.

  George made his way through the crowd to the Contestant’s Door and found a large clot of humanity ahead of him. There would be weeping relatives (joy or sorrow, depending) to greet them, newsmen to interview the top-scorers, or the home-town boys, autograph hounds, publicity seekers and the just plain curious. Girls, too, who might hope to catch the eye of a top-scorer, almost certainly headed for Novia (or perhaps a low-scorer who needed consolation and had the cash to afford it).

  George hung back. He saw no one he knew. With San Francisco so far from home, it seemed pretty safe to assume that there would be no relatives to condole with Trev on the spot.

  Contestants emerged, smiling weakly, nodding at shouts of approval. Policemen kept the crowds far enough away to allow a lane for walking. Each high-scorer drew a portion of the crowd off with him, like a magnet pushing through a mound of iron filings.

  When Trevelyan walked out, scarcely anyone was left, (George felt somehow that he had delayed coming out until just that had come to pass.) There was a cigarette in his dour mouth and he turned, eyes downcast, to walk off.

  It was the first hint of home George had had in what was almost a year and a half and seemed almost a decade and a half. He was almost amazed that Trevelyan hadn’t aged, that he was the same Trev he had last seen.

  George sprang forward. “Trev!”

  Trevelyan spun about, astonished. He stared at George and then his hand shot out “George Platen, what the devil—”

  And almost as soon as the look of pleasure had crossed his face, it left. His hand dropped before George had quite the chance of seizing it.

  “Were you in there?” A curt jerk of Trev’s head indicated the hall.

  “I was.”

  ’To see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t do so well, did I?” He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, staring off to the street, where the emerging crowd was slowly eddying and finding its way into skimmers, while new lines were forming for the next scheduled Olympics.

  Trevelyan said heavily, “So what? It’s only the second time I missed. Novia can go shove after the deal I got today. There are planets that would jump at me fast enough—But, listen, I haven’t seen you since Education Day. Where did you go? Your folks said you were on special assignment but gave no details and you never wrote. You might have written.”

  “I should have,” said George uneasily. “Anyway, I came to say I was sorry the way things went just now.”

  “Don’t be,” said Trevelyan. “I told you. Novia can go shove—At that I should have known. They’ve been saying for weeks that the Beeman machine would be used. All the wise money was on Beeman machines. The damned Education tapes they ran through me were for Henslers and who uses Henslers? The worlds in the Go-man Cluster if you want to call them worlds. Wasn’t that a nice deal they gave me?”

  “Can’t you complain to—”

  “Don’t be a fool. They’ll tell me my brain was built for Henslers. Go argue. Everything went wrong. I was the only one who had to send out for a piece of equipment. Notice that?”

  “They deducted the time for that, though.”

  “Sure, but I lost time wondering if I could be right in my diagnosis when I noticed there wasn’t any clamp depresser in the parts they had supplied. They don’t deduct for that. If it had been a Hensler, I would have known I was right. How could I match up then? The top winner was a San Franciscan. So were three of the next four. And the fifth guy was from Los Angeles. They get big-city Educational tapes. The best available. Beeman spectrographs and all. How do I compete with them? I came all the way out here just to get a chance at a Novian-sponsored Olympics in my classification and I might just as well have stayed home. I knew it, I tell you, and that settles it. Novia isn’t the only chunk of rock in space. Of all the damned—”

  He wasn’t speaking to George. He wasn’t speaking to anyone. He was just uncorked and frothing. George realized that.

  George said, “If you knew in advance that the Beemans were going to be used, couldn’t you have studied up on them?”

  “They weren’t in my tapes, I tell you,”

  “You could have read—books.”

  The last word had tailed off under Trevelyan’s suddenly sharp look.

  Trevelyan said, “Are you trying to make a big laugh out of this? You think this is funny? How do you expect me to read some book and try to memorize enough to match someone else who knows.”

  “I thought—”

  “You try it. You try—” Then, suddenly, “What’s your profession, by the way?” He sounded thoroughly hostile.

  “Well—”

  “Come on, now. If you’re going to be a wise guy with me, let’s see what you’ve done. You’re still on Earth, I notice, so you’re not a Computer Programmer and your special assignment can’t be much.”

  George said, “Listen, Trev, I’m late for an appointment.” He backed away, trying to smile.

  “No, you don’t.” Trevelyan reached out fiercely, catching hold of George’s jacket. “You answer my question. Why are you afraid to tell me? What is it with you? Don’t come here rubbing a bad showing in my face, George, unless you can take it, too. Do you hear me?”

  He was shaking George in frenzy and they were struggling and swaying across the floor, wh
en the Voice of Doom struck George’s ear in the form of a policeman’s outraged call.

  “All right now. All right. Break it up.”

  George’s heart turned to lead and lurched sickeningly. The policeman would be taking names, asking to see identity cards, and George lacked one. He would be questioned and his lack of profession would show at once; and before Trevelyan, too, who ached with the pain of the drubbing he had taken and would spread the news back home as a salve for his own hurt feelings.

  George couldn’t stand that. He broke away from Trevelyan and made to run, but the policeman’s heavy hand was on his shoulder. “Hold on, there. Let’s see your identity card.”

  Trevelyan was fumbling for his, saying harshly, “I’m Armand Trevelyan, Metallurgist, Nonferrous. I was just competing in the Olympics. You better find out about him, though, officer.”

  George faced the two, lips dry and throat thickened past speech.

  Another voice sounded, quiet, well-mannered. “Officer. One moment.”

  The policeman stepped back. “Yes, sir?”

  “This young man is my guest. What is the trouble?”

  George looked about in wild surprise. It was the gray-haired man who had been sitting next to him. Gray-hair nodded benignly at George.

  Guest? Was he mad?

  The policeman was saying, “These two were creating a disturbance, sir.”

  “Any criminal charges? Any damages?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, then, I’ll be responsible.” He presented a small card to the policeman’s view and the latter stepped back at once.

  Trevelyan began indignantly, “Hold on, now—” but the policeman turned on him.

  “All right, now. Got any charges?”

  “I just—”

  “On your way. The rest of you—move on.” A sizable crowd had gathered, which now, reluctantly, unknotted itself and raveled away.

  George let himself be led to a skimmer but balked at entering.

  He said, “Thank you, but I’m not your guest.” (Could it be a ridiculous case of mistaken identity?)

  But Gray-hair smiled and said, “You weren’t but you are now. Let me introduce myself, I’m Ladislas Ingenescu, Registered Historian.”

  “But—”

  “Come, you will come to no harm, I assure you. After all, I only wanted to spare you some trouble with a policeman.”

  “But why?”

  “Do you want a reason? Well, then, say that we’re honorary towns-mates, you and I. We both shouted for the same man, remember, and we townspeople must stick together, even if the tie is only honorary. Eh?”

  And George, completely unsure of this man, Ingenescu, and of himself as well, found himself inside the skimmer. Before he could make up his mind that he ought to get off again, they were off the ground.

  He thought confusedly: The man has some status. The policeman deferred to him.

  He was almost forgetting that his real purpose here in San Francisco was not to find Trevelyan but to find some person with enough influence to force a reappraisal of his own capacity of Education.

  It could be that Ingenescu was such a man. And right in George’s lap.

  Everything could be working out fine—fine. Yet it sounded hollow in his thought. He was uneasy.

  During the short skimmer-hop, Ingenescu kept up an even flow of small-talk, pointing out the landmarks of the city, reminiscing about past Olympics he had seen. George, who paid just enough attention to make vague sounds during the pauses, watched the route of flight anxiously.

  Would they head for one of the shield-openings and leave the city altogether?

  The skimmer landed at the roof-entry of a hotel and, as he alighted, Ingenescu said, “I hope you’ll eat dinner with me in my room?”

  George said, “Yes,” and grinned unaffectedly. He was just beginning to realize the gap left within him by a missing lunch.

  Ingenescu let George eat in silence. Night closed in and the wall lights went on automatically. (George thought: I’ve been on my own almost twenty-four hours.)

  And then over the coffee, Ingenescu finally spoke again. He said, “You’ve been acting as though you think I intend you harm.”

  George reddened, put down his cup and tried to deny it, but the older man laughed and shook his head.

  “It’s so. I’ve been watching you closely since I first saw you and I think I know a great deal about you now.”

  George half rose in horror.

  Ingenescu said, “But sit down. I only want to help you.”

  George sat down but his thoughts were in a whirl. If the old man knew who he was, why had he not left him to the policeman? On the other hand, why should he volunteer help?

  Ingenescu said, “You want to know why I should want to help you? Oh, don’t look alarmed. I can’t read minds. It’s just that my training enables me to judge the little reactions that give minds away, you see. Do you understand that?”

  George shook his head.

  Ingenescu said, “Consider my first sight of you. You were waiting in line to watch an Olympics, and your micro-reactions didn’t match what you were doing. The expression of your face was wrong, the action of your hands was wrong. It meant that something, in general, was wrong, and the interesting thing was that, whatever it was, it was nothing common, nothing obvious. Perhaps, I thought, it was something of which your own conscious mind was unaware.

  “I couldn’t help but follow you, sit next to you. I followed you again when you left and eavesdropped on the conversation between your friend and yourself. After that, well, you were far too interesting an object of study—I’m sorry if that sounds cold-blooded—for me to allow you to be taken off by a policeman.—Now tell me, what is it that troubles you?”

  George was in an agony of indecision. If this was a trap, why should it be such an indirect, roundabout one? And he had to turn to someone. He had come to the city to find help and here was help being offered. Perhaps what was wrong was that it was being offered. It came too easy.

  Ingenescu said, “Of course, what you tell me as a Social Scientist is a privileged communication. Do you know what that means?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It means, it would be dishonorable for me to repeat what you say to anyone for any purpose. Moreover no one has the legal right to compel me to repeat it.”

  George said, with sudden suspicion, “I thought you were a Historian.”

  “So I am.”

  “Just now you said you were a Social Scientist.”

  Ingenescu broke into loud laughter and apologized for it when he could talk. “I’m sorry, young man, I shouldn’t laugh, and I wasn’t really laughing at you. I was laughing at Earth and its emphasis on physical science, and the practical segments of it at that. I’ll bet you can rattle off every subdivision of construction technology or mechanical engineering and yet you’re a blank on social science.”

  “Well, then what is social science?”

  “Social science studies groups of human beings and there are many high-specialized branches to it, just as there are to zoology, for instance. For instance, there are Culturists, who study the mechanics of cultures, their growth, development, and decay. Cultures,” he added, forestalling a question, “are all the aspects of a way of life. For instance it includes the way we make our living, the things we enjoy and believe, what we consider good and bad and so on. Do you understand?”

  “I think I do.”

  “An Economist—not an Economic Statistician, now, but an Economist—specializes in the study of the way a culture supplies the bodily needs of its individual members. A psychologist specializes in the individual member of a society and how he is affected by the society. A Futurist specializes in planning the future course of a society, and a Historian—That’s where I come in, now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A Historian specializes in the past development of our own society and of societies with other cultures.”

  George found him
self interested. “Was it different in the past?”

  “I should say it was. Until a thousand years ago, there was no Education; not what we call Education, at least.”

  George said, “I know. People learned in bits and pieces out of books.”

  “Why, how do you know this?”

  “I’ve heard it said,” said George cautiously. Then, “Is there any use in worrying about what’s happened long ago? I mean, it’s all done with, isn’t it?”

  “It’s never done with, my boy. The past explains the present. For instance, why is our Educational system what it is?”

  George stirred restlessly. The man kept bringing the subject back to that. He said snappishly, “Because it’s best.”

  “Ah, but why is it best? Now you listen to me for one moment and I’ll explain. Then you can tell me if there is any use in history. Even before interstellar travel was developed—” He broke off at the look of complete astonishment on George’s face. “Well, did you think we always had it?”

  “I never gave it any thought, sir.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. But there was a time, four or five thousand years ago when mankind was confined to the surface of Earth. Even then, his culture had grown quite technological and his numbers had increased to the point where any failure in technology would have meant mass starvation and disease. To maintain the technological level and advance it in the face of an increasing population, more and more technicians and scientists had to be trained, and yet, as science advanced, it took longer and longer to train them.

  “As first interplanetary and then interstellar travel was developed, the problem grew more acute. In fact, actual colonization of extra-Solar planets was impossible for about fifteen hundred years because of lack of properly trained men.

  “The turning point came when the mechanics of the storage of knowledge within the brain was worked out. Once that had been done, it became possible to devise Educational tapes that would modify the mechanics in such a way as to place within the mind a body of knowledge ready-made so to speak. But you know about that.