Beyond This Horizon

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Probably a blind alley-"

HAMILTON FELIX took his son into the city the next day. There were men attached to the Great Research who knew much more about such things than either he or Phyllis; he wished them to examine the boy. He took Theobald to his office, supplied him with a scroll and a reader, a dodge that would tie him to one spot almost as effectively as if he were chained down, and called Jacobstein Ray by telephone. Jacobstein was in charge of a team investigating telepathy and related phenomena.

He explained to Jake that he was unable to leave his own office at the moment. Could Jake drop over, or was he tied up? Jake could and would; he arrived a few minutes later. The two men stepped into an adjoining room, out of earshot of the child. Felix explained what had taken place on the beach and suggested that Jake look into it.

Jake was willing and interested. "But don't expect too much from it," he cautioned. "We've demonstrated telepathy in young children time and again, under circumstances which made it a statistical certainty that they were receiving information by no known physical means. But there was never any control in the business, the child was never able to explain what was going on, and the ability faded away to nothing as the child grew up and became more coherent. It seems to shrivel away just like the thymus gland."

Hamilton looked alert. "Thymus gland? Any correlation?"

"Why, no. I just used that as a figure of speech."

"Mightn't there be?"

"It seems most unlikely."

"Everything about this business seems most unlikely. How about putting a crew on it? A good biostatician and one of your operators?"

"I will if you wish."

"Good. I'll stat an open voucher to your office. It's probably a blind alley, but you never know!"

Let us add that it was a blind alley. Nothing ever came of it, but a slight addition to the enormous mass of negative information constituting the main body of scientific knowledge.

Felix and Jake went back into the room where Theobald sat reading. They seated themselves first, in order to be on the same level as the child, and Felix performed the introduction with proper attention to the enormous and vulnerable dignity of a child. He then said:

"Look, sport, Dad wants you to go with Jake and help him with some things for an hour or so. How about it?"

"Why?"

That was a tough one. With less-than-adult minds it had been found to be optimum procedure to keep them from knowing the purpose of the experimentation. "Jake wants to find out some things about the way your mind works. He'll talk with you about it. Well... will you help him?"

Theobald thought about it.

"It will be a favor to Dad." Phyllis could have warned him against that approach. Theobald had been rather slow in reaching the degree of social integration necessary to appreciate the cool pleasure of conferring benefits on others.

"Will you do me a favor?" he countered.

"What do you want?"

"A flop-eared buck." The boy had been raising rabbits, with some adult assistance; but his grandiose plans, if unchecked, would have resulted in their entire home being given over to fat, furry rodents. Nevertheless, Hamilton was somewhat relieved to find the favor desired was no larger.

"Sure thing, sport. You could have had one anyhow."

Theobald made no answer, but stood up, signifying his willingness to get on with it.

After they had gone Hamilton considered the matter for a moment. A new buck rabbit was all right; he did not mind that as much as he would have minded a new doe. But something had to be done fairly soon, or else his garden would have to be abandoned.

Theobald seemed to be working out, with the busy and wholehearted collaboration of his rabbits, an interesting but entirely erroneous neo-Mendelian concept of inherited characteristics. Why, he wanted to know, did white bunnies sometimes have brown babies? Felix pointed out that a brown buck had figured in the matter, but soon bogged down, and turned the matter over to Mordan-accepting as inevitable the loss of face involved. Theobald, he knew, was quite capable now of being interested in the get of a flop-eared buck.

The boy had formulated an interesting, but decidedly specialized, arithmetic to keep his records of rabbits, based on the proposition that one plus one equals at least five. Hamilton had discovered it by finding symbols in the boy's rabbit note book with which he was unfamiliar. Theobald boredly interpreted them for him.

Hamilton showed the records to Monroe-Alpha the next time Monroe-Alpha and Marion showed up at his home. He had regarded it as an amusing and insignificant joke, but Clifford took it with his usual dead seriousness. "Isn't it about time you started him on arithmetic?"

"Why, I don't think so. He is a little young for it-he's hardly well into mathematical analysis." Theobald had been led into mathematical symbology by the conventional route of generalized geometry, analysis, and the calculi. Naturally, he had not been confronted with the tedious, inane, and specialized mnemonics of practical arithmetic-he was hardly more than a baby.

"I don't think he is too young for it. I had devised a substitute for positional notation when I was about his age. I imagine he can take it, if you don't ask him to memorize operation tables." Monroe-Alpha was unaware that the child had an eidetic memory and Hamilton passed the matter by. He had no intention of telling Monroe-Alpha anything about Theobald's genetic background. While custom did not actually forbid such discussion, good taste, he felt, did. Let the boy alone, let him keep his private life private. He and Phyllis knew, the geneticists involved had to know, the Planners had had to know since this was a star line. Even that he regretted, for it had brought such intrusions as the visit of that old hag Carvala.

Theobald himself would know nothing, or very little, of his ancestral background until he was a grown man. He might not inquire into it, or have it brought to his attention, until he reached something around the age Felix had been when Mordan called Felix's attention to his own racial significance.

It was better so. The pattern of a man's inherited characteristics was racially important and inescapable anyhow, but too much knowledge of it, too much thinking about it, could be suffocating to the individual. Look at Cliff-damned near went off the beam entirely just from thinking about his great-grandparents. Well, Marion had fixed that.

No, it was not good to talk too much about such things. He himself had talked too much a short time before, and had been sorry ever since. He had been telling Mordan his own point of view about Phyllis having any more children-after the baby girl to come, of course. Phyllis and he had not yet come to agreement about it; Mordan had backed up Phyllis. "I would like for you two to have at least four children, preferably six. More would be better but we probably would not have time enough to select properly for that many."

Hamilton almost exploded. "It seems to me that you make plans awfully easy-for other people. I haven't noticed you doing your bit. You are pretty much of a star line yourself- how come? Is this a one-way proposition?"

Mordan had kept his serenity. "I have not refrained. My plasm is on deposit, and available if wanted. Every moderator in the country saw my chart, in the usual course of routine."

"The fact remains that you haven't done much personally about children."

"No. No, that is true. Martha and I have so many, many children in our district, and so many yet to come, that we hardly have time to concentrate on one."

From the peculiar phraseology Hamilton gained a sudden bit of insight. "Say, you and Martha are married-aren't you?"

"Yes. For twenty-three years."

"Well, then ... but, why-"

"We can't," Mordan said flatly, with just a shade less than his usual calm. "She's a mutation ... sterile."

Hamilton's ears still burned to think that his big mouth had maneuvered his friend into making such a naked disclosure. He had never guessed the relationship; Martha never called Claude anything but "chief"; they used no words of endearment, nor let it creep otherwise into their manner. Still, it explained a lot of things-the rapport-like co-operation between the technician and the synthesist, the fact that Mordan had shifted to genetics after starting a brilliant career in social administration, his intense and fatherly interest in his charges.

He realized with a slight shock that Claude and Martha were as much parents of Theobald as were Phyllis and himself-foster parents, godparents. Mediator parents might be the right term. They were mediator parents to hundreds of thousands, he didn't know how many.

But this wasn't getting his work done-and he would have to go home early today, because of Theobald. He turned to his desk. A memorandum caught his eye-from himself to himself. Hmmm ... he would have to get after that. Better talk to Carruthers. He swung around toward the phone.

"Chief?"

"Yes, Felix."

"I was talking with Doctor Thorgsen the other day, and I got an idea-may not be much in it."

"Give." Way out on far Pluto, the weather is cold. The temperature rarely rises above eighteen degrees centigrade absolute even on the side toward the sun. And that refers to high noon in the open sunlight. Much of the machinery of the observatories is exposed to this intense cold. Machinery that will work on Terra will not work on Pluto, and vice versa. The laws of physics seem to be invariable but the characteristics of materials change with changes in temperature- consider ice and water, a mild example.

Lubricating oil is a dry powder at such temperatures. Steel isn't steel. The exploring scientists had to devise new technologies before Pluto could be conquered.

Not only for mobiles but for stabiles as well-such as electrical equipment. Electrical equipment depends on, among other factors, the resistance characteristics of conductors; extreme cold greatly lowers the electrical resistance of metals. At thirteen degrees centigrade absolute lead becomes a superconductor with no resistance whatsoever. An electric current induced in such lead seems to go on forever, without damping.

There are many other such peculiarities. Hamilton did not go into them-it was a sure thing that a brilliant synthesist such as his chief had all the gross facts about such matters. The main fact was this: Pluto was a natural laboratory for low temperature research, not only for the benefit of the observatories but for every other purpose.

One of the classic difficulties of science has to do with the fact that a research man can always think of things he wants to measure before instruments for the purpose have been devised. Genetics remained practically at a standstill for a century before ultramicroscopy reached the point where genes could really be seen. But the peculiar qualities of superconductors and near superconductors gave physicists an opportunity, using such chilled metals in new instruments, to build gadgets which would detect phenomena more subtle than ever before detected.

Thorgsen and his colleagues had stellar bolometers so accurate and so sensitive as to make the readings of earlier instruments look like a casual horseback guess. He claimed to be able to measure the heat from a flushed cheek at ten parsecs. The colony on Pluto even had an electromagnetic radiation receiver which would-sometimes-enable them to receive messages from Terra, if the Great Egg smiled and everyone kept their fingers crossed.

But telepathy, if it was anything physical at all-whatever "physical" may mean!-should be detectable by some sort of a gadget. That the gadget would need to be extremely sensitive seemed a foregone conclusion; therefore, Pluto seemed a likely place to develop one.

There was even some hope to go on. An instrument-Hamilton did not remember what it had been-had been perfected there, had worked satisfactorily, and then had performed very erratically indeed-when the two who had perfected it attempted to demonstrate it in the presence of a crowd of colleagues. It seemed sensitive to living people.

To living people. Equivalent masses, of blood temperature and similar radiating surfaces, did not upset it. But it grew querulous in the presence of human beings. It was dubbed a "Life Detector"; the director of the colony saw possibilities in it and instigated further research.

Hamilton's point to Carruthers was this: might not the so-called life detector be something that was sensitive to whatever it was they called telepathy? Carruthers thought it possible. Would it not then be advisable to instigate research along that line on Terra? Decidedly. Or would it be better to send a team out to Pluto, where low temperature research was so much more handy? Go ahead on both lines, of course.

Hamilton pointed out that it would be a year and a half until the next regular ship to Pluto. "Never mind that," Carruthers said. "Plan to send a special. The Board will stand for it."

Hamilton cleared the phone, turned it to recording, and spoke for several minutes, giving instructions to two of his bright young assistants. He referred to his next point of agenda.

In digging back into the literature of the race it had been noted that the borderline subjects of the human spirit with which he was now dealing had once occupied much more of the attention of the race than now was the case. Spiritism, apparitions, reports of the dead appearing in dreams with messages which checked out, "Ghosties, and Ghoulies, and things that go Flop in the Dark" had once obsessed the attention of many. Much of the mass of pseudo-data seemed to be psychopathic. But not all of it. This chap Flammarion, for example, a professional astronomer (or was he an astrologer?-there used to be such, he knew, before space flight was developed)-anyhow, a man with his head screwed on tight, a man with a basic appreciation for the scientific method even in those dark ages. Flammarion had collected an enormous amount of data, which, if even one per cent of it was true, proved survival of the ego after the physical death beyond any reasonable doubt.

It gave him a lift just to read about it.

Hamilton knew that the loose stories of bygone days did not constitute evidence of the first order, but some of it, after examination by psychiatric semanticians, could be used as evidence of the second order. In any case, the experience of the past might give many a valuable clue for further research. The hardest part of this aspect of the Great Research was to know where to start looking.

There were a couple of old books, for example, by a man named Doon, or Dunn, or something of the sort-the changes in speech symbols made the name uncertain-who had tediously collected records of forerunner dreams for more than a quarter of a century. But he had died, no one had followed up his work, and it had been forgotten. Never mind-Dunn's patience would be vindicated; over ten thousand careful men, in addition to their other activities, made a practice of recording their dreams immediately on wakening, before speaking to anyone or even getting out of bed. If dreams ever opened a window to the future, the matter would be settled, conclusively.

Hamilton himself tried to keep such records. Unfortunately, he rarely dreamed. No matter-others did, and he was in touch with them.

The old books Hamilton wished to have perused were mostly obscure and few translations had ever been made; idiom presented a hazard. There were scholars of comparative lingo, of course, but even for them the job was difficult. Fortunately, there was immediately at hand a man who could read Anglish of the year 1926 and for at least the century preceding that date-a particularly rich century for such research, as the scientific method was beginning to be appreciated by some but the interest in such matters was still high-Smith John Darlington-or J. Darlington Smith, as he preferred to be called. Hamilton had co-opted him. Smith did not want to do it. He was very busy with his feetball industry-he had three associations of ten battle groups each, and a fourth forming. His business was booming; he was in a fair way to becoming as rich as he wanted to be, and he disliked to spare the time.

But he would do it-if the man who gave him his start in business insisted. Felix insisted.

Felix telephoned him next. "Hello, Jack,"

"Howdy, Felix."

"Do you have any more for me?"

"I've a stock of spools shoulder high."

"Good. Tube them over, will you?"

"Sure. Say, Felix, this stuff is awful, most of it."

"I don't doubt it. But think how much ore must be refined to produce a gram of native radium. Well, I'll clear now."

"Wait a minute, Felix. I got into a jam last night. I wonder if you could give me some advice."

"Certainly. Give." It appeared that Smith, who, in spite of his financial success, was a brassarded man and technically a control natural, had inadvertently given offense to an armed citizen by refusing to give way automatically in a public place. The citizen had lectured Smith on etiquette. Smith had never fully adjusted himself to the customs of a different culture; he had done a most urbane thing-he had struck the citizen with his closed fist, knocking him down and bloodying his nose. Naturally, there was the deuce to pay, and all big bills.

The citizen's next friend had called the following morning and presented Smith with a formal challenge. Smith must either accept and shoot it out, apologize acceptably, or be evicted from the city bodily by the citizen and his friends, with monitors looking on to see that the customs were maintained.

"What ought I to do?"

"I would advise you to apologize." Hamilton saw no way out of it; to advise him to fight was to suggest suicide. Hamilton had no scruples about suicide, but he judged correctly that Smith preferred to live.

"But I can't do that-what do you think I am, a nigger?"

"I don't understand what you mean. What has your color to do with it?"

"Oh, never mind. But I can't apologize, Felix. I was ahead of him in line. Honest I was."

"But you were brassarded."

"But ... Look, Felix, I want to shoot it out with him. Will you act for me?"

"I will if you request it. He'll kill you, you know."

"Maybe not. I might happen to beat him to the draw."

"Not in a set duel you won't. The guns are cross-connected. Your gun won't burn until the referee flashes the signal."

"I'm fairly fast."

"You're outclassed. You don't play feetball yourself you know. And you know why."

Smith knew. He had planned to play, as well as manage and coach, when the enterprise was started. A few encounters with the men he had hired soon convinced him that an athlete of his own period was below average in this present period. In particular his reflexes were late. He bit his lip and said nothing.

"You sit tight," said Felix, "and don't go out of your apartment. I'll do a little calling and see what can be worked out."

The next friend was polite but regretful. Awfully sorry not to oblige Master Hamilton but he was acting under instructions. Could Master Hamilton speak with his principal? Now, really, that was hardly procedure. But he admitted that the circumstances were unusual-give him a few minutes, then he would phone back.

Hamilton received permission to speak to the principal; called him. No, the challenge could not be lifted-and the conversation was strictly under the rose. Procedure, you know. He was willing to accept a formal apology; he did not really wish to kill the man.

Hamilton explained that Smith would not accept the humiliation-could not, because of his psychological background. He was a barbarian and simply could not see things from a gentleman's point of view. Hamilton identified Smith as the Man from the Past.

The principal nodded. "I know that now. Had I known that before, I would have ignored his rudeness-treated him as a child. But I didn't know. And now, in view of what he did-well, my dear sir, I can hardly ignore it, can I?"

Hamilton conceded that he was entitled to satisfaction, but suggested it would make him publicly unpopular to kill Smith. "He is rather a public darling, you know. I am inclined to think that many will regard it as murder to force him to fight."

The citizen had thought of that. Rather a dilemma, wasn't it?

"How would you like to combat him physically-punish him the way he damaged you, only more so?"

"Really, my dear sir!"

"Just an idea," said Hamilton. "You might think about it. May we have three days grace?"

"More, if you like. I told you I was not anxious to push it to a duel. I simply want to curb his manners. One might run into him anywhere."

Hamilton let it go, and called Mordan, a common thing when he was puzzled. "What do you think I ought to do, Claude?"

"Well, there is no real reason why you should not let him go ahead and get himself killed. Individually, it's his life; socially, he's no loss."

"You forget that I am using him as a translator. Besides, I rather like him. He is pathetically gallant in the face of a world he does not understand."

"Mmm ... well, in that case, we'll try to find a solution."

"Do you know, Claude," Felix said seriously, "I am beginning to have my doubts about this whole custom. Maybe I'm getting old, but, while it's lots of fun for a bachelor to go swaggering around town, it looks a little different to me now. I've even thought of assuming the brassard."

"Oh, no, Felix, you mustn't do that!"

"Why not? A lot of people do."

"It's not for you. The brassard is an admission of defeat, an acknowledgement of inferiority."

"What of it? I'd still be myself. I don't care what people think."

"You're mistaken, son. To believe that you can live free of your cultural matrix is one of the easiest fallacies and has some of the worst consequences. You are part of your group whether you like it or not, and you are bound by its customs."

"But they're only customs!"

"Don't belittle customs. It is easier to change Mendelian characteristics than it is to change customs. If you try to ignore them, they bind you when you least expect it."

"But dammit! How can there be any progress if we don't break customs?"

"Don't break them-avoid them. Take them into your considerations, examine how they work, and make them serve you. You don't need to disarm yourself to stay out of fights. If you did you would get into fights-I know you!-the way Smith did. An armed man need not fight. I haven't drawn my gun for more years than I can remember."

"Come to think about it, I haven't pulled mine in four years or more."

"That's the idea. But don't assume that the custom of going armed is useless. Customs always have a reason behind them, sometimes good, sometimes bad. This is a good one."

"Why do you say that? I used to think so, but I have my doubts now."

"Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That's a personal evaluation only. But gun-fighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It's a good thing.

"Of course," he continued, "our combativeness has to do with our ancestry and our history." Hamilton nodded; he knew that Mordan referred to the Second Genetic War. "But we have preserved that inheritance intentionally. The Planners would not stop the wearing of arms if they could."

"Maybe so," Felix answered slowly, "but it does seem like there ought to be a better way to do it. This way is pretty sloppy. Sometimes the bystanders get burned."

"The alert ones don't," Mordan pointed out. "But don't expect human institutions to be efficient. They never have been; it is a mistake to think that they can be made so-in this millennium or the next."

"Why not?"

"Because we are sloppy, individually-and therefore collectively. Look at a cageful of monkeys, at your next opportunity. Watch how they do things and listen to them chatter. You'll find it instructive. You'll understand humans better."

Felix grinned. "I think I see what you mean. But what am I to do about Smith?"

"If he gets out of this, I think he had better wear a gun after this. Perhaps you can impress on him then that his life will depend on the softness of his words. But for the present-I know this chap he challenged. Suppose you suggest me as referee."

"Are you going to let them fight?"

"In my own way. I think I can arrange for them to fight barehanded." Mordan had delved back into his encyclopedic memory and had come put with a fact that Hamilton would not fully appreciate. Smith had come from a decadent period in which handfighting had become stylized as fist fighting, No doubt he was adept in it. It was necessary for one not to use the gun with which he was adept; it was equitable that the other not use fists, were he adept in their use. So Mordan wished to referee that he might define the rules.

It is not necessary to give overmuch attention to that rather unimportant and uncolorful little man, J. Darlington Smith. Hamilton was forced to withdraw as next friend, since Carruthers needed him at the time, and did not therefore see the encounter. He learned of it first by discovering that Smith was immobilized in an infirmary, suffering from some rather unusual wounds. But he did not quite lose the sight of his left eye and his other damages were mostly gone in a couple of weeks.

All of which happened some days later than the conversation with Mordan.

Hamilton turned back to his work. There were various little matters to attend to. One team of researchers in particular belonged to him alone. He had noticed when he was a boy that a physical object, especially a metallic one, brought near to his forehead above the bridge of the nose seemed to produce some sort of a response inside the head, not connected, apparently, with the physiological senses. He had not thought of it for many years, until the Great Research had caused him to think of such things. Was it real, or was it imagination? It was a mere tightening of the nerves, an uneasy feeling, but distinct and different from any other sensation. Did other people have it? What caused it? Did it mean anything?

He mentioned it to Carruthers who had said, "Well, don't stand there speculating about it. Put a crew to work on it." He had. They had already discovered that the feeling was not uncommon but rarely talked about. It was such a little thing and hard to define. Subjects had been found who had it in a more marked degree than most-Hamilton ceased being a subject for experimentation himself.

He called the crew leader. "Anything new, George?"

"Yes and no. We have found a chap who can distinguish between different metals nearly eighty per cent of the time, and between wood and metal every time. But we are still no nearer finding out what makes it tick."

"Need anything?"

"No."

"Call me if you need me. Helpful Felix the Cheerful Cherub."

"Okay."

It must not be supposed that Hamilton Felix was very important to the Great Research. He was not the only idea man that Carruthers had, not by several offices. It is probable that the Great Research would have gone on in much the same fashion, even during his lifetime, even if he had not been co-opted. But it would not have gone in quite the same way.

But it is hard to evaluate the relative importance of individuals. Who was the more important?-the First Tyrant of Madagascar, or the nameless peasant who assassinated him? Felix's work had some effect. So did that of each of the eight-thousand-odd other individuals who took part at one time or another in the Great Research.

Jacobstein Ray called back before he could turn his mind to other matters. "Felix? You can come over and take your young hopeful away, if you will."

"Fine. What sort of results?"

"Maddening. He started out with seven correct answers in a row, then he blew up completely. Results no better than random-until he stopped answering at all."

"Oh, he did, did he?" remarked Hamilton, thinking of a certain flop-eared buck.

"Yes indeed. Went limp on us. I'd as leave try to stuff a snake down a hole."

"Well, we'll try another day. Meanwhile I'll attend to him."

"I'd enjoy helping you," Jake said wistfully.

Theobald was just sitting, doing less than nothing, when Felix came in. "Hello, sport. Ready to go home?"

"Yes."

Felix waited until they were in the family car and the pilot set on home before bracing him. "Ray tells me you didn't help him very well."

Theobald twisted a string around his finger. He concentrated on it.

"Well, how about it? Did you, or didn't you?"

"He wanted me to play some stupid games," the child stated. "No sense to them."

"So you quit?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you told me you would help?"

"I didn't say I would."

Felix thought back. The child was probably right-he could not remember. But he had had a feeling of contract, the "meeting of minds."

"Seems to me there was mention of a flop-eared rabbit."

"But," Theobald pointed out, "you said I could have it anyhow. You told me so!"

The rest of the trip home was mostly silence.