The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories Page 42

  Lounging at the table were Abel Cooley and his friend James. “Ah, here’s the prospectors back from Odfars,” said Cooley.

  Tom Hand limped forward. His eyes were red, there was alcohol on his breath, and a series of black and blue bruises showed on one side of his face. “Well, young fellow,” he said to Milke in a thick voice, “what’ll it be?”

  “First, we need a new assay tent.”

  From the table by the window came a chuckle. James called out in his jocular baritone, “Three-legged Joe maybe tried to bunk in with you?”

  Milke made a noncommittal gesture; Paskell sucked at his pipe.

  Tom Hand said, “Pick up your tent out on the loading platform. What else?”

  “A set of assay reagents.” Milke handed over a list.

  Tom Hand looked at them from under his eyebrows. “You boys still going out prospecting?”

  “Certainly. Why not?”

  “I should think maybe you had a bellyful.”

  Milke shrugged. “Odfars wasn’t too bad. We never expected an easy life from prospecting. Joe gave us a pretty hard time, but we took care of him.”

  Hand leaned forward, red eyes blinking. “What’s that?”

  “We don’t mind letting it out. We’ve got everything in sight sewed up and recorded.”

  Abel Cooley said, “You took care of Joe, did you? Talk him to death maybe?”

  “No. He’s still alive. We’ve got him where he can’t get away. A research team from the Institute is coming out to look him over.”

  James stepped forward. “You’ve got him where he can’t get away? I’ve seen Joe break out of a net of two-inch cable like it was string. We blasted a mountain down on top of his cave. Twenty minutes later he pushes his way out…Now you tell me you’ve got him where he can’t get away.”

  “Right,” murmured Paskell. “Exactly right.”

  Milke turned to Tom Hand. “Give us about a hundred gallons of hydrogen peroxide, two hundred gallons of alcohol.”

  “We’ve got to keep Joe alive,” Paskell told James.

  Abel Cooley snorted. “Hogwash.”

  Tom Hand shrugged, turned away into the recesses of his shop.

  James said, in an oil-smooth voice, “Suppose you break down and tell us just what you did to poor old Three-legged Joe.”

  “Why not?” said Paskell. “But I’m warning you—stay away from him.”

  “Never mind the jokes…I’m still listening.”

  “Well, first we electrocuted Joe. It stunned him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We couldn’t kill him or tie him—so while he was still twitching, we threw grapples around his leg, hoisted him twenty miles out into space and gave him an orbit around Odfars. That’s where he is now—alive and well and feeling rather foolish, I should imagine.”

  James pulled at his chin. He looked at Abel Cooley. “What do you think, Abel?” he asked. Abel Cooley snorted, looked out the window.

  James sat down by the table. “Yes,” he said heavily, “Three-legged Joe is feeling rather foolish, I expect.”

  “About like the rest of you birds,” came Tom Hand’s voice from behind the shelves.

  Four Hundred Blackbirds

  I

  At the sight of the green-and-black uniform, the guard stiffened, stepped forward, a hand at his weapon.

  Director Edvard Schmidt of the Institute said, “It’s all right, Leon. Open up.”

  The guard hesitated, bristling at the short square man in the alien regalia.

  “Open up,” said the director, without heat, as if he had already passed through the same emotions.

  The guard complied with a shrug, returning stare for flinty stare as the uniformed man passed in.

  Beyond the wall, the director and his guest faced a number of white buildings irregularly placed on a grassy compound. Director Schmidt gestured with a lean old hand. “Undoubtedly the smallest, least pretentious national research station in the world.”

  The man in uniform turned him a quick look, pitiless rather than hostile. “And probably the farthest advanced.”

  When Director Schmidt made a deprecatory murmur, the visitor said with a meaningful smile: “You Suaredes have enjoyed the benefits of a neutrality many years; you have not expended your brainpower on tactics and military subservience.”

  The sallow lines of Director Schmidt’s face momentarily deepened. “True enough,” he said bitterly, “we have been content inside our own borders; we don’t want to rule the earth. Our ways of life may seem peculiar, but they suit us. And we do not dragoon others into step.”

  The man in uniform smiled slightly. “An eloquent speech, Director. However, I am uninterested in your doctrine; I consider it a relic of the past. A change has come over the world—and in the future I advise a discipline upon your emotions as rigid as that which you impose on your intellect.”

  Director Schmidt said nothing. He looked over and beyond the walls of the Institute to the face of Mt. Hellenbraun, where great green firs rose staunchly, where snow lay golden-quiet in the slanting afternoon sun. Here was the spirit of Suare, a tradition which the general and his kind seemed unable to understand.

  The general continued. “You must know from your work in the fields of science that all knowledge evolves, gathers strength. We of Moltroy are applying newly-discovered methods of control to our people, to our future, and ultimately the future of the world. Fanatics, extremists, individualists—” he rolled the words “—they are today like dinosaurs in the Stone Age, creatures marooned in unsympathetic times.”

  The director turned his head slowly, with an effort looked into the eyes of the soldier Zoltan Vec. Zoltan Vec stared back into the old man’s eyes, indifferent, faintly amused. He jerked his shaven head. “Come, let us view your famous center of learning.”

  Director Schmidt sighed. In regard to this, there was no argument; he had his orders.

  “What will you examine first?”

  Zoltan Vec consulted a notebook. “Your physics department.”

  Director Schmidt shook his head. “There is none.”

  The general said, “What?” Then, coldly: “Impossible.”

  “We do not lop knowledge into discrete segments, like links of sausage,” the director told him. “Few of our men are specialists.”

  Zoltan Vec rubbed his heavy chin. “I do not understand your methods. Would you not achieve firmer results with better organization? Here—you have a problem: you classify it, you assign it to the man best acquainted with the field. In the army, I would never put a man trained in fusing-rockets to piloting a Jugger-tank. Why should a chemist be allowed to dabble in physics or biology?”

  Director Schmidt had recovered his detachment. “The fields are closely related; there is no longer any such creature as a chemist.”

  Zoltan Vec shook his black-thatched head. “There are chemists in Moltroy. I spoke to one yesterday; he is working on a material that will coagulate mud to a solid. He told me himself he was a chemist.”

  The director smiled coolly. “Doubtless, then, you have chemists in Moltroy. But here we have none.”

  Zoltan Vec regarded the thin old man with sudden suspicion. “Your orders were explicit—to conduct me through the laboratory; to assist me without hindrance or reservation.”

  Director Schmidt now reflected that non-committal cooperation might have been wiser, since eventual humiliation, of one sort or another, was inevitable…Perhaps he could preserve a little face.

  “I have no reservations. I speak to you with perfect freedom. The hindrances, if such they exist, are in your understanding of our methods—and are possibly due, I may add, to your training, your viewpoint.”

  “Enough!” barked Zoltan Vec in a loud harsh voice. “I demand to be taken to your physics department. First I will inspect your newest nucleonic techniques.”

  “This way,” said Director Schmidt. Zoltan Vec marched after with the air of a man who has crushed an opposing force.

  S
chmidt rapped on a door, opened it. “Good afternoon, Louis.” He gestured to the soldier. “Here,” drily, “we have General Zoltan Vec of the Moltroy Army. General Vec, Louis Maisan.”

  Vec nodded, glanced around the room. “And where is your equipment?”

  “Equipment?” Louis Maisan shook a bald head. “We have little here. It is well known that most of our work is theoretical.”

  Zoltan Vec pointed to a litter of papers. “What do you do there?”

  Maisan regarded him with raised eyebrows. “May I inquire your interest?”

  Director Schmidt raised a hand. “We have orders, Louis.”

  “Orders, orders,” growled Maisan. “The word itself is an indignity…” He jerked an arm at the papers. “The papers are the property of the Institute, and subject to orders; I am not. Inspect the papers as thoroughly as you wish, but please do not trouble me with your questions.”

  Zoltan Vec wordlessly strode forward, took up a clip of papers, held them at arms-length. After a moment he turned with a puzzled frown to the director. “Just what is this gibberish?”

  “Louis Maisan is calculating the angular velocities of mesons in several non-physical dimensions…You might say he is determining how fast mesons turn themselves inside out.”

  Zoltan Vec returned the papers slowly to the table, made a note in a small book. Tucking the notebook in his pocket he swung a long slow glance around the room—blackboards, desks, Louis Maisan’s indifferent profile, Director Schmidt, impassive, watchful.

  “You may conduct me, if you will. I wish to interview every man in your employ; I have a list here which I will check against.”

  They entered a long cool room smelling of formaldehyde. A low bench along one wall, under a line of green-glass windows, held thousands of cotton-stoppered flasks. Three men sat at microscopes, rapt, like ants at a drop of syrup, only occasionally one moving or speaking in a low tone. They paid General Vec and the director little heed.

  Zoltan Vec’s voice seemed needlessly brusque. “And here?”

  “We are studying photosynthesis—using radioactive tracers, atom-substitution, other techniques. The flasks contain solutions in some of which we hope to duplicate photosynthesis.”

  “Which means you will be able to make food from air and water?”

  “Oh, ultimately perhaps…At the moment, we’d be satisfied with a trace of hydrocarbon.”

  Zoltan Vec turned away. “At our plant in the Morispill mountains we grow two thousand tons of protein yeast a day. Think of it! Rations for the entire army! Will your process ever equal that record?”

  “Never,” declared the director.

  “If I were you,” said Zoltan Vec, “I would discontinue the study; it is clearly not so practical as the yeast process.”

  The director paused at a door, whose panel bore a playful caricature in blue crayon, the square root of negative one representing each eye. “In here are a group of mathematicians.” He laid a hand on the knob, looked back at Vec quizzically. “Would their studies interest you?”

  A sudden braying arose within, an excited hubbub. Director Schmidt frowned. Zoltan Vec stood watching with an intent gleam in his eye. “What are they so excited about?”

  Director Schmidt shrugged, opened the door. A tall young man with a pink face and wild black hair, stalking back and forth with a glass of wine in his hand, waved vehemently. “It is so beautiful, so simple, even as Fermat described…Edvard!—Edvard!—” to Director Schmidt. “Today we are part of history! The discovery of the century!”

  Zoltan Vec was abreast of Schmidt now. “What’s this? What’s this?”

  “Fermat’s lost solution! ‘It is impossible to partition a cube into two cubes,’ said Fermat, ‘I have discovered a truly wonderful proof of this,’ said Fermat, but the margin was too narrow to hold it! Today I scribbled it in an instant! Now,” and the tall young man drank his wine, “when they say Fermat, Euler, Gauss, Riemann, they will also say—” he beat his chest “—Jevinsky.”

  The director rubbed his chin. “You have checked for values of n above 14,000?”

  Jevinsky waved his glass jubilantly. “No need! It is a general solution!”

  “My congratulations!” came the sardonic compliments of General Zoltan Vec. He turned to the director. “Let us go on.”

  Director Schmidt hesitated. “This evening we will check together,” he told Jevinsky. “In the meantime, don’t call the press. In fact, better tell no one. We can’t have the Institute in an uproar for nothing.”

  Jevinsky nodded, settled like a great crane on a bench, began munching a slab of cheese.

  II

  Schmidt joined Zoltan Vec beyond the door. “A genius, that Jevinsky. Still young, unpolished, but one of our best men.”

  The soldier said nothing, but marched at Schmidt’s side, thinking his own thoughts. They crossed a court, entered an area around which a long low building curved like a U.

  “Our newest addition,” said Schmidt. “We still have some vacancies…Archaeology. Here is a specialist, General—a man after your own heart; his job will occupy him the rest of his life.”

  Zoltan Vec gazed through the half-opened door at the frail gray man, who at the moment was leaning back in his chair, smoking a pipe.

  “He seems to be enjoying life,” was the general’s dour comment. “Indeed, no one connected with the Institute appears to take it seriously. In Moltroy men earn their pay.” He nodded within. “What’s his job?”

  Schmidt said coldly, “He is reconstructing the language of the Neolithic European.”

  Zoltan Vec snorted. “An idle man lost in dreams—at government expense. In Moltroy he would be assigned work in the shoe combine.”

  Director Schmidt glanced outside to a flag riding the west wind, a flag blue, green and white. “Here in Suare, where we have no army, you, General, might likewise find yourself at a job ill-suited to your capabilities—a bouncer in a cheap cabaret, a horse trainer…”

  General Zoltan Vec halted in mid-stride, searched Director Schmidt’s lean old face with narrow eyes.

  “Well, General?” inquired Schmidt. “What is it?”

  Zoltan Vec said, “Let us continue.”

  They rounded a corner, crossed the compound to a large white building.

  “This is our life-sciences building—biology, psychology, and the like.”

  They entered a large bright room, unoccupied. “In here,” said Schmidt, “Professor Luka and his son, Dr. John Luka, of Midland University, are probing the consciousness of single-celled animals. The amoeba, they find, can see various colors, can hear, smell, detect warmth and cold. They wish to ascertain his awareness of this world.”

  Zoltan Vec stared a moment across the top of his notebook. “Just what can these men hope to gain by their studies? A thousand and one things we need more than such…such…”

  “Tomfoolery?” suggested Schmidt. “Is that the word? Suppose you learned that germs were able to choose between men as to which it desired to attack? Suppose a germ, face to face with a Moltroy soldier, turned away and instead infected a Federate?”

  Zoltan Vec stood with eyebrows knitted, a dubious twist to his hard dark mouth. “Are these things possible? Is that what your laboratory is actually engaged in—germ warfare?”

  “By no means,” said Schmidt. “You express skepticism as to the value of the Lukas’ research; I indicated a line along which these studies might conceivably lead.”

  The general slowly turned away, wrote at some length in his notebook. Then: “Are you conducting any other investigations of this type?”

  “Bacterial warfare? No,” said Schmidt. “We have some rather interesting psychosomatic studies in progress, one of which might be termed a vast projection of the Lukas’ work.”

  General Zoltan Vec endeavored to grasp the idea. “How is that?”

  “Step through here,” and Schmidt pushed through a stainless steel swinging door. Zoltan Vec, close at his heels, saw a room of gray metal lined
with benches and surgical equipment. A pair of white pallets occupied the center of the room, and a pair of young men, very quiet, lay on these.

  Abel Ruan stood between the pallets, a thin wispy man somewhere between youth and middle-age. He was sand-colored; his head was long and bald; his long thin nose supported a pair of rimless glasses. He jerked a glance at his visitors, then returned to the two lying asleep.

  Schmidt and the general watched a moment. The general, seeing little of interest, showed signs of impatience. Schmidt appeared not to notice, but said behind his hand: “Abel Ruan is an extremely brilliant scientist, ingenious, resourceful. At the moment he is endeavoring to link the brains of two men through their spinal cords.”

  “Toward what end?” demanded Zoltan Vec flatly. “Another tour de force? Or is there some significance to his efforts?”

  Abel Ruan’s hearing was acute. “General,” he said, without turning his head, “I am an extremely fortunate man.”

  Zoltan Vec inspected him a moment before replying. “How is that?”

  “I am obsessed by many curiosities. They would nag me, make my life intolerable, if the Suarede government were not paying me to satisfy them.”

  “How will all this—” Zoltan Vec gestured abruptly “—make you the wiser?”

  “I have wondered many times if one man sees the world in the same shapes, the same colors as another man. Would the color Franz calls ‘red’ evoke an entirely different sensation in Jean’s mind—if Jean could experience Franz’s mental pictures? If so, when I couple Franz’s eyes to Jean’s brain, Jean will experience a wonderful sensation, for he will be seeing colors heretofore unimaginable, shapes previously beyond his conjecture. He will be living in a world utterly new and strange.”

  “Humph,” said Zoltan Vec. “Very interesting. And how—” here he grinned humorlessly “—will the Suarede government profit by Jean’s amazement?”

  Abel Ruan stretched his thin freckled arms, pushed the glasses up the bridge of his big nose. “We shall never know—since, unfortunately, contact between the two men is impossible to maintain.”