by Tom Boardman
Thormin carried on for two solid hours. Apparently he was an astronomical expert for all his questions bore more or less on that subject. He wanted details of distances, velocities, solar classifications, planetary conditions and a host of similar items. Willingly Hillder answered all that he could, pleaded ignorance with regard to the rest.
Eventually Thormin sat down and concentrated on his notes in the manner of one absorbed in fundamental truth. He was succeeded by a hard-eyed individual named Grasud who for the last half-hour had been fidgeting with impatience.
“Is your vessel the most recent example of its type?”
“No.”
“There are better models?”
“Yes,” agreed Hillder.
“Very much better?”
“I wouldn’t know, not having been assigned one yet.”
“Strange, is it not,” said Grasud pointedly, “that an old-type ship should discover us while superior ones have failed to do so?”
“Not at all. It was sheer luck. I happened to head this way. Other scouts, in old or new ships, boosted other ways. How many directions are there in deep space? How many radii can be extended from a sphere?”
“Not being a mathematician, I—”
“If you were a mathematician,” Hillder interrupted, “you would know that the number works out at 2n.” He glanced over the audience, added in tutorial manner. “The factor of two being determined by the demonstrable fact that a radius is half a diameter and 2n being defined as the smallest number that makes one boggle.”
Grasud boggled as he tried to conceive it, gave it up, said, “Therefore the total number of your exploring vessels is of equal magnitude?”
“No. We don’t have to probe in every direction. It is necessary only to make for visible stars.”
“Well, aren’t there stars in every direction?”
“If distance is disregarded, yes. But one does not disregard distance. One makes for the nearest yet-unexplored solar systems and thus cuts down repeated jaunts to a reasonable number.”
“You are evading the issue,” said Grasud. “How many ships of your type are in actual operation?”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty?” He made it sound an anti-climax. “Is that all?”
“It’s enough, isn’t it? How long do you expect us to keep antiquated models in service?”
“I am not asking about out-of-date vessels. How many scout-ships of all types are functioning?”
“Really I don’t know. I doubt whether anyone knows. In addition to Earth’s fleets some of the most advanced colonies are running expeditions of their own. What’s more, a couple of allied life-forms have learned things from us, caught the fever and started poking around. We can no more take a complete census of ships than we can of people.”
Accepting that without argument, Grasud went on, “Your vessel is not large by our standards. Doubtless you have others of greater mass.” He leaned forward, gazed fixedly. “What is the comparative size of your biggest ship?”
“The largest I’ve seen was the battleship Lance. Forty times the mass of my boat.”
“How many people does it carry?”
“It has a crew numbering more than six hundred but at a pinch it can transport three times that.”
“So you know of at least one ship with an emergency capacity of about two thousand?”
“Yes.”
More murmurings and fidgetings among the audience. Disregarding them, Grasud carried on with the air of one determined to learn the worst.
“You have other battleships of equal size?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. If I did, I’d tell you. Sorry.”
“You may have some even bigger?”
“That is quite possible,” Hillder conceded. “If so, I haven’t seen one yet. But that means nothing. One can go through a lifetime and not see everything. If you calculate the number of seeable things in existence, deduct the number already viewed, the remainder represents the number yet to be seen. And if you study them at the rate of one per second it would require…”
“I am not interested,” snapped Grasud, refusing to be bollixed by alien argument.
“You should be,” said Hillder. “Because infinity minus umpteen millions leaves infinity. Which means that you can take the part from the whole and leave the whole still intact. You can eat your cake and have it. Can’t you?”
Grasud flopped into his seat, spoke moodily to the oldster. “I seek information, not a blatant denial of logic. His talk confuses me. Let Shahding have him.”
Coming up warily, Shahding started on the subject of weapons, their design, mode of operation, range and effectiveness. He stuck with determination to this single line of inquiry and avoided all temptations to be side-tracked. His questions were astute and penetrating. Hillder answered all he could, freely, without hesitation.
“So,” commented Shahding, towards the finish, “it seems that you put your trust in force-fields, certain rays that paralyse the nervous system, bacteriological techniques, demonstrations of number and strength, and a good deal of persuasiveness. Your science of ballistics cannot be advanced after so much neglect.”
“It could never advance,” said Hillder. “That’s why we abandoned it. We dropped fiddling around with bows and arrows for the same reason. No initial thrust can outpace a continuous and prolonged one. Thus far and no farther shalt thou go.” Then he added by way of speculative afterthought, “Anyway, it can be shown that no bullet can overtake a running man.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Shahding, having once ducked a couple of slugs himself.
“By the time the bullet has reached the man’s point of departure the man has retreated,” said Hillder. “The bullet then has to cover that extra distance but finds the man has retreated farther. It covers that too, only to find that again the man is not there. And so on and so on.”
“The lead is reduced each successive time until it ceases to exist,” Shahding scoffed.
“Each successive advance occupies a finite length of time no matter how small,” Hillder pointed out. “You cannot divide and subdivide a fraction to produce zero. The series is infinite. An infinite series of finite time-periods totals an infinite time. Work it out for yourself. The bullet does not hit the man because it cannot get to him.”
The reaction showed that the audience had never encountered this argument before or concocted anything like it of their own accord. None were stupid enough to accept it as serious assertion of fact. All were sufficiently intelligent to recognize it as logical or pseudo-logical denial of something self-evident and demonstrably true.
Forthwith they started hunting for the flaw in this alien reasoning, discussing it between themselves so noisily that perforce Shahding stood in silence waiting for a break. He posed like a dummy for ten minutes while the row rose to a crescendo. A group in the front semi-circle left their seats, kneeled and commenced drawing diagrams on the floor while arguing vociferously and with some heat. A couple of Vards in the back tier showed signs of coming to blows.
Finally the oldster, Shahding, and two others bellowed a united, “Quiet!”
The investigatory commission settled down with reluctance, still muttering, gesturing, showing each other sketches on pieces of paper. Shahding fixed ireful attention on Hinder, opened his mouth in readiness to resume.
Beating him to it, Hillder said casually, “It sounds silly, doesn’t it? But anything is possible, anything at all. A man can marry his widow’s sister.”
“Impossible,” declared Shahding, able to dispose of that without abstruse calculations. “He must be dead for her to have the status of a widow.”
“A man married a woman who died. He then married her sister. He died. Wasn’t his first wife his widow’s sister?”
Shahding shouted, “I am not here to be tricked by the tortuous squirmings of an alien mind,” He sat down hard, fumed a bit, said to his neighbour, “All right,
Kadina, you can have him arid welcome.”
Confident and self-assured, Kadina stood up, gazed authoritatively around. He was tall for a Vard, wore well-cut uniform with crimson epaulettes and crimson-handed sleeves. For the first time in a while there was silence. Satisfied with the effect he had produced, he faced Hillder, spoke in tones deeper, less squeaky than any heard so far.
“Apart from the petty problems with which it has amused you to baffle my compatriots,” he began in oily manner, “you have given candid, unhesitating answers to our questions. You have provided much information that is useful from the military viewpoint.”
“I am glad you appreciate it,” said Hillder.
“We do. Very much so,” Kadina bestowed a craggy smile that looked sinister. “However, there is one matter that needs clarifying.”
“What is that?”
“If the present situation were reversed, if a lone Vard-scout was subject to intensive cross-examination by an assembly of your life-form, and if he surrendered information as willingly as you have done…” He let it die out while his eyes hardened, then growled, “We would consider him a traitor to his kind. The penalty would be death.”
“How fortunate I am not to be a Vard,” said Hillder.
“Do not congratulate yourself too early,” Kadina retorted. “A death sentence is meaningless only to those already under such a sentence.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I am wondering whether you are a major criminal seeking sanctuary among us. There may be some other reason. Whatever it is, you do not hesitate to betray your own kind.” He put on the same smile again. “It would be nice to know why you have been so cooperative.”
“That’s ah easy one,” Hillder said, smiling back in a way that Kadina did not like. “I am a consistent liar.”
With that, he left his seat and walked boldly to the exit. The guards led him to his cell.
He was there three days, eating regular meals and enjoying them with irritating gusto, amusing himself writing figures in a little pocketbook, as happy as a legendary space-scout named Larry. At the end of that time a ruminative Vard paid a visit.
“I am Bulak. Perhaps you remember me. I was seated at the end of the second row when you were before the commission.”
“Four hundred were there,” Hillder reminded. “I cannot recall all of them. Only the ones who suffered.” He pushed forward a chair, “But never mind. Sit down and put your feet up—if you do have feet inside those funny-looking boots. What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have come for some reason, surely?”
Bulak looked mournful. “I’m a refugee from the fog.”
“What fog?”
“The one you’ve spread all over the place.” He rubbed a fur-coated ear, examined his fingers, stared at the wall, “The commission’s main purpose was to determine relative standards of intelligence, to settle the prime question of whether your kind’s cleverness is less than, greater than or equal to our own. Upon that and that alone depends our reaction to contact with another space-conqueror.”
“I did my best to help, didn’t I?”
“Help?” echoed Bulak as if it were a new and strange word. “Help? Do you call it that? The true test should he that of whether your logic has been extended farther than has ours, whether your premises have been developed to more advanced conclusions.”
“Well?”
“You ended up by trampling all over the laws of logic. A bullet cannot kill anybody. After three days fifty of them are still arguing about it and this morning one of them proved that a person cannot climb a ladder. Friends have fallen out, relatives are starting to hate the sight of each other. The remaining three-hundred-fifty are in little better state.”
“What’s troubling them?” inquired Hillder with interest.
“They are debating veracity with everything but brickbats,” Bulak informed, somewhat as if compelled to mention an obscene subject, “You are a consistent liar. Therefore the statement itself must be a lie. Therefore you are not a consistent liar. The conclusion is that you can be a consistent liar only by not being a consistent liar. Yet you cannot be a consistent liar without being consistent.”
“That’s bad,” Hillder sympathized.
“It’s worse,” Bulak gave back, “Because if you really are a consistent liar—which logically is a self-contradiction—none of your evidence is worth a sack of rotten muna-seeds. If you have told us the truth all the way through then your final claim to be a liar must also be true. But if you are a consistent liar then none of it is true.”
“Take a deep breath,” advised Hillder.
“But,” continued Bulak, taking a deep breath, “since that final statement must be untrue all the rest may be true.” A wild look came into his eyes and he started waving his arms around. “But the claim to consistency makes it impossible for any statement to be assessed as either true or untrue because, on analysis, there is an unresolvable contradiction that…”
“Now, now,” said Hillder, patting his shoulder, “It is only natural that the lower should be confused by the higher. The trouble is that you’re not yet advanced far enough. Your thinking remains a little primitive.” He hesitated, added with the air of making a daring guess, “In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if you still think logically.”
“In the name of the Big Sun,” exclaimed Bulak, “how else can we think?”
“Like us,” said Hillder. “When you’re mentally developed.” He strolled twice around the cell, said by way of musing afterthought, “Right now you couldn’t cope with the problem of why a mouse when it spins.”
“Why a mouse when it spins?” parroted Bulak, letting his jaw hang down.
“Or let’s try an easier one, a problem any Earth-child could tackle.”
“Such as what?”
“By definition an island is a body of land entirely surrounded by water?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Then let us suppose that the whole of this planet’s northern hemisphere is land and all the southern hemisphere is water. Is the northern half an island? Or is the southern half a lake?”
Bulak gave it five minutes’ thought. Then he drew a circle on a sheet of paper, divided it, shaded the top half and contemplated the result. In the end he pocketed the paper and got to his feet.
“Some of them would gladly cut your throat but for the possibility that your kind may have a shrewd idea where you are and be capable of retribution. Others would send you home with honours but for the risk of bowing to inferiors.”
“They’ll have to make up their minds some day,” Hillder commented, refusing to show concern about which way it went.
“Meanwhile,” Bulak continued morbidly, “we’ve had a look over your ship which may be old or new according to whether or not you have lied about it. We can see everything but the engines and remote controls, everything but the things that matter. To determine whether they’re superior to ours we’d have to pull the vessel apart, ruining it and making you a prisoner.”
“Well, what’s stopping you?”
“The fact that you may be bait. If your kind has great power and is looking for trouble they’ll need a pretext. Our victimization of you would provide it. The spark that fires the powder-barrel.” He made a gesture of futility. “What can one do when working utterly in the dark?”
“One could try settling the question of whether a green leaf remains a green leaf in complete absence of light.”
“I have had enough,” declared Bulak, making for the door. “I have had more than enough. An island or a lake? Who cares? I am going to see Mordafa.”
With that he departed, working his fingers around while the fur quivered on his face. A couple of guards peered through the bars in the uneasy manner of those deputed to keep watch upon a dangerous maniac.
Mordafa turned up next day in the mid-afternoon. He was a thin, elderly, and somewhat wizened specimen with incongruously y
outhful eyes. Accepting a seat, he studied Hillder, spoke with smooth deliberation.
“From what! have heard, from all that I have been told, I deduce a basic rule applying to life-forms deemed intelligent.”
“You deduce it?”
“I have to. There is no choice about the matter. All the life-forms we have discovered so far have not been truly intelligent. Some have been superficially so but not genuinely so. It is obvious that you have had experiences that may come to us sooner or later but have not arrived yet. In that respect we may have been fortunate seeing that the results of such contact are highly speculative. There’s just no way of telling.”
“And what is this rule?”
“That the governing body of any life-form such as ours will be composed of power-lovers rather than of specialists.”
“Well isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately, it is. Government falls into the hands of those with desire for authority and escapes those with other interests.” He paused, went on, “That is not to say that those who govern us are stupid. They are quite clever in their own particular field of mass-organization. But by the same token they are pathetically ignorant of other fields. Knowing this, your tactic is to take advantage of their ignorance. The weakness of authority is that it cannot be diminished and retain strength. To play upon ignorance is to dull the voice of command.”
“Hm!” Hillder surveyed him with mounting respect. “You’re the first one I’ve encountered who can see beyond the end of his nose.”
“Thank you,” said Mordafa. “Now the very fact that you have taken the risk of landing here alone, and followed it up by confusing our leaders, proves that your kind has developed a technique for a given set of conditions and, in all probability, a series of techniques for various conditions.”
“Go on,” urged Hillder.
“Such techniques must be created empirically rather than theoretically,” Mordafa continued. “In other words, they result from many experiences, the correcting of many errors, the search for workability, the effort to gain maximum results from minimum output.” He glanced at the other. “Am I correct so far?”