The Billiard Ball

James Priss—I suppose I ought to say Professor James Priss, though everyone is sure to know whom I mean even without the title—always spoke slowly.

I know. I interviewed him often enough. He had the greatest mind since Einstein, but it didn’t work quickly. He admitted his slowness often. Maybe it was because he had so great a mind that it didn’t work quickly.

He would say something in slow abstraction, then he would think, and then he would say something more. Even over trivial matters, his giant mind would hover uncertainly, adding a touch here and then another there.

Would the Sun rise tomorrow, I can imagine him wondering. What do we mean by “rise”? Can we be certain that tomorrow will come? Is the term “Sun” completely unambiguous in this connection?

Add to this habit of speech a bland countenance, rather pale, with no expression except for a general look of uncertainty; gray hair, rather thin, neatly combed; business suits of an invariably conservative cut; and you have what Professor James Priss was—a retiring person, completely lacking in magnetism.

That’s why nobody in the world, except myself, could possibly suspect him of being a murderer. And even I am not sure. After all, he was slow-thinking; he was always slow-thinking. Is it conceivable that at one crucial moment he managed to think quickly and act at once?

It doesn’t matter. Even if he murdered, he got away with it. It is far too late now to try to reverse matters and I wouldn’t succeed in doing so even if I decided to let this be published.

Edward Bloom was Priss’s classmate in college, and an associate, through circumstance, for a generation afterward. They were equal in age and in their propensity for the bachelor life, but opposites in everything else that mattered.

Bloom was a living flash of light; colorful, tall, broad, loud, brash, and self-confident. He had a mind that resembled a meteor strike in the sudden and unexpected way it could seize the essential. He was no theroetician, as Priss was; Bloom had neither the patience for it, nor the capacity to concentrate intense thought upon a single abstract point. He admitted that; he boasted of it.

What he did have was an uncanny way of seeing the application of a theory; of seeing the manner in which it could be put to use. In the cold marble block of abstract structure, he could see, without apparent difficulty, the intricate design of a marvelous device. The block would fall apart at his touch and leave the device.

It is a well-known story, and not too badly exaggerated, that nothing Bloom ever built had failed to work, or to be patentable, or to be profitable. By the time he was forty-five, he was one of the richest men on Earth.

And if Bloom the Technician were adapted to one particular matter more than anything else, it was to the way of thought of Priss the Theoretician. Bloom’s greatest gadgets were built upon Priss’s greatest thoughts, and as Bloom grew wealthy and famous, Priss gained phenomenal respect among his colleagues.

Naturally it was to be expected that when Priss advanced his Two-Field Theory, Bloom would set about at once to build the first practical anti-gravity device.

My job was to find human interest in the Two-Field Theory for the subscribers to Tele-News Press, and you get that by trying to deal with human beings and not with abstract ideas. Since my interviewee was Professor Priss, that wasn’t easy.

Naturally, I was going to ask about the possibilities of anti-gravity, which interested everyone; and not about the Two-Field Theory, which no one could understand—

“Anti-gravity?” Priss compressed his pale lips and considered. “I’m not entirely sure that it is possible, or ever will be. I haven’t—uh—worked the matter out to my satisfaction. I don’t entirely see whether the Two-Field equations would have a finite solution, which they would have to have, of course, if—” And then he went off into a brown study.

I prodded him. “Bloom says he thinks such a device can be built.”

Priss nodded. “Well, yes, but I wonder. Ed Bloom has had an amazing knack at seeing the unobvious in the past. He has an unusual mind. It’s certainly made him rich enough.”

We were sitting in Priss’s apartment. Ordinary middle-class. I couldn’t help a quick glance this way and that. Priss was not wealthy.

I don’t think he read my mind. He saw me look. And I think it was on his mind. He said, “Wealth isn’t the usual reward for the pure scientist. Or even a particularly desirable one.”

Maybe so, at that, I thought. Priss certainly had his own kind of reward. He was the third person in history to win two Nobel Prizes, and the first to have both of them in the sciences and both of then unshared. You can’t complain about that. And if he wasn’t rich, neither was he poor.

But he didn’t sound like a contented man. Maybe it wasn’t Bloom’s wealth alone that irked Priss; maybe it was Bloom’s fame among the people of Earth generally; maybe it was the fact that Bloom was a celebrity wherever he went, whereas Priss, outside scientific conventions and faculty clubs, was largely anonymous.

I can’t say how much of all this was in my eyes or in the way I wrinkled the creases in my forehead, but Priss went on to say, “But we’re friends, you know. We play billiards once or twice a week. I beat him regularly.”

(I never published that statement. I checked it with Bloom, who made a long counterstatement that began “He beats me at billiards. That jackass—” and grew increasingly personal thereafter. As a matter of fact, neither one was a novice at billiards. I watched them play once for a short while, after the statement and counterstatement, and both handled the cue with professional aplomb. What’s more, both played for blood, and there was no friendship in the game that I could see.)

I said, “Would you care to predict whether Bloom will manage to build an anti-gravity device?”

“You mean would I commit myself to anything? Hmm. Well, let’s consider, young man. Just what do we mean by anti-gravity? Our conception of gravity is built around Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which is now a century and a half old but which, within its limits, remains firm. We can picture it—”

I listened politely. I’d heard Priss on the subject before, but if I was to get anything out of him—which wasn’t certain—I’d have to let him work his way through in his own way.

“We can picture it,” he said, “by imagining the Universe to be a Oat, thin, superflexible sheet of untearable rubber. If we picture mass as being associated with weight, as it is on the surface of the Earth, then we would expect a mass, resting upon the rubber sheet, to make an indentation. The greater the mass, the deeper the indentation.

“In the actual Universe,” he went on, “all sorts of masses exist, and so our rubber sheet must be pictured as riddled with indentations. Any object rolling along the sheet would dip into and out of the indentations it passed, veering and changing direction as it did so. It is this veer and change of direction that we interpret as demonstrating the existence of a force of gravity. If the moving object comes close enough to the center of the indentation and is moving slowly enough, it gets trapped and whirls round and round that indentation. In the absence of friction, it keeps up that whirl forever. In other words, what Isaac Newton interpreted as a force, Albert Einstein interpreted as geometrical distortion.”

He paused at this point. He had been speaking fairly frequently—for him—since he was saying something he had said often before. But now he began to pick his way.

He said, “So in trying to produce anti-gravity, we are trying to alter the geometry of the Universe. If we carry on our metaphor, we are trying to straighten out the indented rubber sheet. We could imagine ourselves getting under the indenting mass and lifting it upward, supporting it so as to prevent it from making an indentation. If we make the rubber sheet Oat in that way, then we create a Universe—or at least a portion of the Universe—in which gravity doesn’t exist. A rolling body would pass the non-indenting mass without altering its direction of travel a bit, and we could interpret this as meaning that the mass was exerting no gravitational force. In order to accomplish this feat, however, we need a mass equivalent to the indenting mass. To produce antigravity on Earth in this way, we would have to make sure of a mass equal to that of Earth and poise it above our heads, so to speak.”

I interrupted him. “But your Two-Field Theory—”

“Exactly. General Relativity does not explain both the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field in a single set of equations. Einstein spent half his life searching for that single set—for a Unified Field Theory—and failed. All who followed Einstein also failed. I, however, began with the assumption that there were two fields that could not be unified and followed the consequences, which I can explain, in part, in terms of the ‘rubber sheet’ metaphor.”

Now we came to something I wasn’t sure I had ever heard before. “How does that go?” I asked.

“Suppose that, instead of trying to lift the indenting mass, we try to stiffen the sheet itself, make it less indentable. It would contract, at least over a small area, and become flatter. Gravity would weaken, and so would mass, for the two are essentially the same phenomenon in terms of the indented Universe. If we could make the rubber sheet completely flat, both gravity and mass would disappear altogether.

“Under the proper conditions, the electromagnetic field could be made to counter the gravitational field, and serve to stiffen the indented fabric of the Universe. The electromagnetic field is tremendously stronger than the gravitational field, so the former could be made to overcome the latter.”

I said uncertainly, “But you say ‘under the proper conditions. ‘ Can those proper conditions you speak of be achieved, Professor?”

“That is what I don’t know,” said Priss thoughtfully and slowly. “If the Universe were really a rubber sheet, its stiffness would have to reach an infinite value before it could be expected to remain completely flat under an indenting mass. If that is also so in the real Universe, then an infinitely intense electromagnetic field would be required and that would mean anti-gravity would be impossible.”

“But Bloom says—”

“Yes, I imagine Bloom thinks a finite field will do, if it can be properly applied. Still, however ingenious he is,” and Priss smiled narrowly, “we needn’t take him to be infallible. His grasp on theory is quite faulty. He—he never earned his college degree, did you know that?”

I was about to say that I knew that. After all, everyone did. But there was a touch of eagerness in Priss’s voice as he said it and I looked up in time to catch animation in his eye, as though he were delighted to spread that piece of news. So I nodded my head as if I were filing it for future reference.

“Then you would say, Professor Priss,” I prodded again, “that Bloom is probably wrong and that anti-gravity is impossible?”

And finally Priss nodded and said, “The gravitational field can be weakened, of course, but if by anti-gravity we mean a true zero-gravity field—no gravity at all over a significant volume of space—then I suspect anti-gravity may turn out to be impossible, despite Bloom.”

And I had, after a fashion, what I wanted.

I wasn’t able to see Bloom for nearly three months after that, and when I did see him he was in an angry mood.

He had grown angry at once, of course, when the news first broke concerning Priss’s statement. He let it be known that Priss would be invited to the eventual display of the antigravity device as soon as it was constructed, and would even be asked to participate in the demonstration. Some reporter—not I, unfortunately—caught him between appointments and asked him to elaborate on that and he said:

“I’ll have the device eventually; soon, maybe. And you can be there, and so can anyone else the press would care to have there. And Professor James Priss can be there. He can represent Theoretical Science and after I have demonstrated antigravity, he can adjust his theory to explain it. I’m sure he will know how to make his adjustments in masterly fashion and show exactly why I couldn’t possibly have failed. He might do it now and save time, but I suppose he won’t.”

It was all said very politely, but you could hear the snarl under the rapid flow of words.

Yet he continued his occasional game of billiards with Priss and when the two met they behaved with complete propriety. One could tell the progress Bloom was making by their respective attitudes to the press. Bloom grew curt and even snappish, while Priss developed an increasing good humor.

When my umpteenth request for an interview with Bloom was finally accepted, I wondered if perhaps that meant a break in Bloom’s quest. I had a little daydream of him announcing final success to me.

It didn’t work out that way. He met me in his office at Bloom Enterprises in upstate New York. It was a wonderful setting, well away from any populated area, elaborately landscaped, and covering as much ground as a rather large industrial establishment. Edison at his height, two centuries ago, had never been as phenomenally successful as Bloom.

But Bloom was not in a good humor. He came striding in ten minutes late and went snarling past his secretary’s desk with the barest nod in my direction. He was wearing a lab coat, unbuttoned.

He threw himself into his chair and said, “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, but I didn’t have as much time as I had hoped.” Bloom was a born showman and knew better than to antagonize the press, but I had the feeling he was having a great deal of difficulty at that moment in adhering to this principle.

I had the obvious guess. “I am given to understand, sir, that your recent tests have been unsuccessful.”

“Who told you that?”

“I would say it was general knowledge, Mr. Bloom.”

“No, it isn’t. Don’t say that, young man. There is no general knowledge about what goes on in my laboratories and workshops. You’re stating the Professor’s opinions, aren’t you? Priss’s, I mean.”

“No I’m—”

“Of course you are. Aren’t you the one to whom he made that statement—that anti-gravity is impossible?”

“He didn’t make the statement that flatly.”

“He never says anything flatly, but it was flat enough for him, and not as flat as I’ll have his damned rubber-sheet Universe before I’m finished.”

“Then does that mean you’re making progress, Mr. Bloom?”

“You know I am,” he said with a snap. “Or you should know. Weren’t you at the demonstration last week?”

“Yes, I was.”

I judged Bloom to be in trouble or he wouldn’t be mentioning that demonstration. It worked but it was not a world beater. Between the two poles of a magnet a region of lessened gravity was produced.

It was done very cleverly. A Mossbauer Effect Balance was used to probe the space between the poles. If you’ve never seen an M-E Balance in action, it consists primarily of a tight monochromatic beam of gamma rays shot down the low-gravity field. The gamma rays change wavelength slightly but measurably under the influence of the gravitational field and if anything happens to alter the intensity of the field, the wavelength change shifts correspondingly. It is an extremely delicate method for probing a gravitational field and it worked like a charm. There was no question but that Bloom had lowered gravity.

The trouble was that it had been done before by others. Bloom, to be sure, had made use of circuits that greatly increased the ease with which such an effect had been achieved—his system was typically ingenious and had been duly patented—and he maintained that it was by this method that anti-gravity would become not merely a scientific curiosity but a practical affair with industrial applications.

Perhaps. But it was an incomplete job and he didn’t usually make a fuss over incompleteness. He wouldn’t have done so this time if he weren’t desperate to display something.

I said, “It’s my impression that what you accomplished at that preliminary demonstration was 0.82 g and better than that was achieved in Brazil last spring.”

“That so? Well, calculate the energy input in Brazil and here, and then tell me the difference in gravity decrease per kilowatt-hour. You’ll be surprised.”

“But the point is, can you reach zero g-zero gravity? That’s what Professor Priss thinks may be impossible. Everyone agrees that merely lessening the intensity of the field is no great feat.”

Bloom’s fist clenched. I had the feeling that a key experiment had gone wrong that day and he was annoyed almost past endurance. Bloom hated to be balked by the Universe.

He said, “Theoreticians make me sick.” He said it in a low, controlled voice, as though he were finally tired of not saying it, and he was going to speak his mind and be damned. “Priss has won two Nobel Prizes for sloshing around a few equations, but what has he done with it? Nothing! I have done something with it and I’m going to do more with it, whether Priss likes it or not.

“I’m the one people will remember. I’m the one who gets the credit. He can keep his damned title and his prizes and his kudos from the scholars. Listen, I’ll tell you what gripes him. Plain old-fashioned jealousy. It kills him that I get what I get for doing. He wants it for thinking.

“I said to him once—we play billiards together, you know—”

It was at this point that I quoted Priss’s statement about billiards and got Bloom’s counterstatement. I never published either. That was just trivia.

“We play billiards,” said Bloom, when he had cooled down, “and I’ve won my share of games. We keep things friendly enough. What the hell—college chums and all that—though how he got through, I’ll never know. He made it in physics, of course, and in math, but he got a bare pass—out of pity, I think—in every humanities course he ever took.”

“You did not get your degree, did you, Mr. Bloom?” That was sheer mischief on my part. I was enjoying his eruption.

“I quit to go into business, damn it. My academic average, over the three years I attended, was a strong B. Don’t imagine anything else, you hear? Hell, by the time Priss got his Ph.D., I was working on my second million.”

He went on, clearly irritated, “ Anyway, we were playing billiards and I said to him, ‘Jim, the average man will never understand why you get the Nobel Prize when I’m the one who gets the results. Why do you need two? Give me one!, He stood there, chalking up his cue, and then he said in his soft namby-pamby way, ‘You have two billions, Ed. Give me one.’ So you see, he wants the money.”

I said, “I take it you don’t mind his getting the honor?”

For a minute I thought he was going to order me out, but he didn’t. He laughed instead, waved his hand in front of him, as though he were erasing something from an invisible blackboard in front of him. He said, “Oh, well, forget it. All that is off the record. Listen, do you want a statement? Okay. Things didn’t go right today and I blew my top a bit, but it will clear up. I think I know what’s wrong. And if I don’t, I’m going to know.

“Look, you can say that I say that we don’t need infinite electromagnetic intensity; we will flatten out the rubber sheet; we will have zero gravity. And when we get it, I’ll have the damnedest demonstration you ever saw, exclusively for the press and for Priss, and you’ll be invited. And you can say it won’t be long. Okay?”

“Okay!”

I had time after that to see each man once or twice more. I even saw them together when I was present at one of their billiard games. As I said before, both of them were good.

But the call to the demonstration did not come as quickly as all that. It arrived six weeks less than a year after Bloom gave me his statement. And at that, perhaps it was unfair to expect quicker work.

I had a special engraved invitation, with the assurance of a cocktail hour first. Bloom never did things by halves and he was planning to have a pleased and satisfied group of reporters on hand. There was an arrangement for trimensional TV, too. Bloom felt completely confident, obviously; confident enough to be willing to trust the demonstration in every living room on the planet.

I called up Professor Priss, to make sure he was invited too. He was.

“Do you plan to attend, sir?”

There was a pause and the professor’s face on the screen was a study in uncertain reluctance. “ A demonstration of this sort is most unsuitable where a serious scientific matter is in question. I do not like to encourage such things.”

I was afraid he would beg off, and the dramatics of the situation would be greatly lessened if he were not there. But then, perhaps, he decided he dared not play the chicken before the world. With obvious distaste he said, “Of course, Ed Bloom is not really a scientist and he must have his day in the sun. I’ll be there.”

“Do you think Mr. Bloom can produce zero gravity, sir?”

“Uh...Mr. Bloom sent me a copy of the design of his device and...and I’m not certain. Perhaps he can do it, if...uh...he says he can do it. Of course”—he paused again for quite a long time—”I think I would like to see it.”

So would I, and so would many others.

The staging was impeccable. A whole floor of the main building at Bloom Enterprises—the one on the hilltop—was cleared. There were the promised cocktails and a splendid array of hors d’oeuvres, soft music and lighting, and a carefully dressed and thoroughly jovial Edward Bloom playing the perfect host, while a number of polite and unobtrusive menials fetched and carried. All was geniality and amazing confidence.

James Priss was late and I caught Bloom watching the corners of the crowd and beginning to grow a little grim about the edges. Then Priss arrived, dragging a volume of colorlessness in with him, a drabness that was unaffected by the noise and the absolute splendor (no other word world describe it—or else it was the two martinis glowing inside me) that filled the room.

Bloom saw him and his face was illuminated at once. He bounced across the floor, seized the smaller man’s hand and dragged him to the bar.

“Jim! Glad to see you! What’ll you have? Hell, man, I’d have called it off if you hadn’t showed. Can’t have this thing without the star, you know.” He wrung Priss’s hand. “It’s your theory, you know. We poor mortals can’t do a thing without you few, you damned few few, pointing the way.”

He was being ebullient, handing out the flattery, because he could afford to do so now. He was fattening Priss for the kill.

Priss tried to refuse a drink, with some sort of mutter, but a glass was pressed into his hand and Bloom raised his voice to a bull roar.

“Gentlemen! A moment’s quiet, please. To Professor Priss, the greatest mind since Einstein, two-time Nobel Laureate, father of the Two-Field Theory, and inspirer of the demonstration we are about to see—even if he didn’t think it would work, and had the guts to say so publicly.”

There was a distinct titter of laughter that quickly faded out and Priss looked as grim as his face could manage.

“But now that Professor Priss is here,” said Bloom, “and we’ve had our toast, let’s get on with it. Follow me, gentlemen!”

The demonstration was in a much more elaborate place than had housed the earlier one. This time it was on the top floor of the building. Different magnets were involved—smaller ones, by heaven—but as nearly as I could tell, the same M-E Balance was in place.

One thing was new, however, and it staggered everybody, drawing much more attention than anything else in the room. It was a billiard table, resting under one pole of the magnet. Beneath it was the companion pole. A round hole, about a foot across, was stamped out of the very center of the table and it was obvious that the zero-gravity field, if it was to be produced, would be produced through that hole in the center of the billiard table.

It was as though the whole demonstration had been designed, surrealist fashion, to point up the victory of Bloom over Priss. This was to be another version of their everlasting billiards competition and Bloom was going to win.

I don’t know if the other newsmen took matters in that fashion, but I think Priss did. I turned to look at him and saw that he was still holding the drink that had been forced into his hand. He rarely drank, I knew, but now he lifted the glass to his lips and emptied it in two swallows. He stared at that billiard table and I needed no gift of ESP to realize that he took it as a deliberate snap of fingers under his nose.

Bloom led us to the twenty seats that surrounded three sides of the table, leaving the fourth free as a working area. Priss was carefully escorted to the seat commanding the most convenient view. Priss glanced quickly at the trimensional cameras which were now working. I wondered if he were thinking of leaving but deciding that he couldn’t in the full glare of the eyes of the world.

Essentially, the demonstration was simple; it was the production that counted. There were dials in plain view that measured the energy expenditure. There were others that transferred the M-E Balance readings into a position and a size that were visible to all. Everything was arranged for easy trimensional viewing.

Bloom explained each step in a genial way, with one or two pauses in which he turned to Priss for a confirmation that had to come. He didn’t do it often enough to make it obvious, but just enough to turn Priss upon the spit of his own torment. From where I sat I could look across the table and see Priss on the other side.

He had the look of a man in Hell.

As we all know, Bloom succeeded. The M-E Balance showed the gravitational intensity to be sinking steadily as the electromagnetic field was intensified. There were cheers when it dropped below the 0.52 g mark. A red line indicated that on the dial.

“The 0.52 g mark, as you know,” said Bloom confidently, “represents the previous record low in gravitational intensity. We are now lower than that at a cost in electricity that is less than ten percent what it cost at the time that mark was set. And we will go lower still.”

Bloom—I think deliberately, for the sake of the suspense—slowed the drop toward the end, letting the trimensional cameras switch back and forth between the gap in the billiard table and the dial on which the M-E Balance reading was lowering.

Bloom said suddenly, “Gentlemen, you will find dark goggles in the pouch on the side of each chair. Please put them on now. The zero gravity field will soon be established and it will radiate a light rich in ultraviolet.”

He put goggles on himself, and there was a momentary rustle as others went on too.

I think no one breathed during the last minute, when the dial reading dropped to zero and held fast. And just as that happened a cylinder of light sprang into existence from pole to pole through the hole in the billiard table.

There was a ghost of twenty sighs at that. Someone called out, “Mr. Bloom, what is the reason for the light?”

“It’s characteristic of the zero-gravity field,” said Bloom smoothly, which was no answer, of course.

Reporters were standing up now, crowding about the edge of the table. Bloom waved them back. “Please, gentlemen, stand clear!”

Only Priss remained sitting. He seemed lost in thought and I have been certain ever since that it was the goggles that obscured the possible significance of everything that followed. I didn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t. And that meant neither I nor anyone else could even begin to make a guess as to what was going on behind those eyes. Well, maybe we couldn’t have made such a guess, even if the goggles hadn’t been there, but who can say?

Bloom was raising his voice again. “Please! The demonstration is not yet over. So far, we’ve only repeated what I have done before. I have now produced a zero-gravity field and I have shown it can be done practically. But I want to demonstrate something of what such a field can do. What we are going to see next will be something that has never been seen, not even by myself. I have not experimented in this direction, much as I would have liked to, because I have felt that Professor Priss deserved the honor of—”

Priss looked up sharply. “What—what—”

“Professor Priss,” said Bloom, smiling broadly, “I would like you to perform the first experiment involving the interaction of a solid object with a zero-gravity field. Notice that the field has been formed in the center of a billiard table. The world knows your phenomenal skill in billiards, Professor, a talent second only to your amazing aptitude in theoretical physics. Won’t you send a billiard ball into the zero-gravity volume?”

Eagerly he was handing a ball and cue to the professor. Priss, his eyes hidden by the goggles, stared at them and only very slowly, very uncertainly, reached out to take them.

I wonder what his eyes were showing. I wonder, too, how much of the decision to have Priss play billiards at the demonstration was due to Bloom’s anger at Priss’s remark about their periodic game, the remark I had quoted. Had I been, in my way, responsible for what followed?

“Come, stand up, Professor,” said Bloom, “and let me have your seat. The show is yours from now on. Go ahead!”

Bloom seated himself, and still talked, in a voice that grew more organlike with each moment. “Once Professor Priss sends the ball into the volume of zero gravity, it will no longer be affected by Earth’s gravitational field. It will remain truly motionless while the Earth rotates about its axis and travels about the Sun. In this latitude, and at this time of day, I have calculated that the Earth, in its motions, will sink downward. We will move with it and the ball will stand still. To us it will seem to rise up and away from the Earth’s surface. Watch.”

Priss seemed to stand in front of the table in frozen paralysis. Was it surprise? Astonishment? I don’t know. I’ll never know. Did he make a move to interrupt Bloom’s little speech, or was he just suffering from an agonized reluctance to play the ignominious part into which he was being forced by his adversary?

Priss turned to the billiard table, looking first at it, then back at Bloom. Every reporter was on his feet, crowding as closely as possible in order to get a good view. Only Bloom himself remained seated, smiling and isolated. He, of course, was not watching the table, or the ball, or the zero-gravity field. As nearly as I could tell through the goggles, he was watching Priss.

Perhaps he felt there was no way out. Or perhaps—

With a sure stroke of his cue, he set the ball into motion. It was not going quickly, and every eye followed it. It struck the side of the table and caromed. It was going even slower now as though Priss himself were increasing the suspense and making Bloom’s triumph the more dramatic.

I had a perfect view, for I was standing on the side of the table opposite from that where Priss was. I could see the ball moving toward the glitter of the zero-gravity field and beyond it I could see those portions of the seated Bloom which were not hidden by that glitter.

The ball approached the zero-gravity volume, seemed to “hang on the edge for a moment, and then was gone, with a streak of light, the sound of a thunderclap, and the sudden smell of burning cloth.

We yelled. We all yelled.

I’ve seen the scene on television since—along with the rest of the world. I can see myself in the film during the fifteen-second period of wild confusion, but I don’t really recognize my face.

Fifteen seconds!

And then we discovered Bloom. He was still sitting in the chair, his arms still folded, but there was a hole the size of a billiard ball through forearm, chest, and back. The better part of his heart, as it later turned out under autopsy, had been neatly punched out.

They turned off the device. They called in the police. They dragged off Priss, who was in a state of utter collapse. I wasn’t much better off, to tell the truth, and if any reporter then on the scene ever tried to say he remained a cool observer of that scene, then he’s a cool liar.

It was some months before I got to see Priss again. He had lost some weight but seemed well otherwise. Indeed, there was color in his cheeks and an air of decision about him. He was better dressed than I had ever seen him to be.

He said, “I know what happened now. If I had had time to think, I would have known then. But I am a slow thinker, and poor Ed Bloom was so intent on running a great show and doing it so well that he carried me along with him. Naturally, I’ve been trying to make up for some of the damage I unwittingly caused.”

“You can’t bring Bloom back to life,” I said soberly.

“No, I can’t,” he said, just as soberly. “But there’s Bloom Enterprises to think of, too. What happened at the demonstration, in full view of the world, was the worst possible advertisement for zero gravity, and it’s important that the story be made clear. That is why I have asked to see you.”

“Yes?”

“If I had been a quicker thinker, I would have known Ed was speaking the purest nonsense when he said that the billiard ball would slowly rise in the zero-gravity field. It couldn’t be so! If Bloom hadn’t despised theory so, if he hadn’t been so intent on being proud of his own ignorance of theory, he’d have known it himself.

“The Earth’s motion, after all, isn’t the only motion involved, young man. The Sun itself moves in a vast orbit about the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. And the Galaxy moves too, in some not very clearly defined way. If the billiard ball were subjected to zero gravity, you might think of it as being unaffected by any of those motions and therefore of suddenly falling into a state of absolute rest—when there is no such thing as absolute rest.”

Priss shook his head slowly. “The trouble with Ed, I think, was that he was thinking of the kind of zero gravity one gets in a spaceship in free fall, when people float in mid-air. He expected the ball to float in mid-air. However, in a spaceship, zero gravity is not the result of an absence of gravitation, but merely the result of two objects, a ship and a man within the ship, falling at the same rate, responding to gravity in precisely the same way, so that each is motionless with respect to the other.

“In the zero-gravity field produced by Ed, there was a flattening of the rubber-sheet Universe, which means an actual loss of mass. Everything in that field, including molecules of air caught within it, and the billiard ball I pushed into it, was completely massless as long as it remained within it. A completely massless object can move in only one way.”

He paused, inviting the question. I asked, “What motion would that be?”

“Motion at the speed of light. Any massless object, such as a neutron or a photon, must travel at the speed of light as long as it exists. In fact, light moves at that speed only because it is made up of photons. As soon as the billiard ball entered the zero-gravity field and lost its mass, it too assumed the speed of light at once and left.”

I shook my head. “But didn’t it regain its mass as soon as it left the zero-gravity volume?”

“It certainly did, and at once it began to be affected by the gravitational field and to slow up in response to the friction of the air and the top of the billiard table. But imagine how much friction it would take to slow up an object the mass of a billiard ball going at the speed of light. It went through the hundred-mile thickness of our atmosphere in a thousandth of a second and I doubt that it was slowed more than a few miles a second in doing so, a few miles out of 186,282 of them. On the way, it scorched the top of the billiard table, broke cleanly through the edge, went through poor Ed and the window too, punching out neat circles because it had passed through before the neighboring portions of something, even as brittle as glass had a chance to split a splinter.

“It is extremely fortunate we were on the top floor of a building set in a countrified area. If we were in the city, it might have passed through a number of buildings and killed a number of people. By now that billiard ball is off in space, far beyond the edge of the Solar System and it will continue to travel so forever, at nearly the speed of light, until it happens to strike an object large enough to stop it. And then it will gouge out a sizable crater.”

I played with the notion and was not sure I liked it. “How is that possible? The billiard ball entered the zero-gravity volume almost at a standstill. I saw it. And you say it left with an incredible quantity of kinetic energy. Where did the energy come from?”

Priss shrugged. “It came from nowhere! The law of conservation of energy only holds under the conditions in which general relativity is valid; that is, in an indented-rubber-sheet universe. Wherever the indentation is flattened out, general relativity no longer holds, and energy can be created and destroyed freely. That accounts for the radiation along the cylindrical surface of the zero-gravity volume. That radiation, you remember, Bloom did not explain, and, I fear, could not explain. If he had only experimented further first; if he had only not been so foolishly anxious to put on his show—”

“What accounts for the radiation, sir?”

“The molecules of air inside the volume. Each, assumes the speed of light and comes smashing outward. They’re only molecules, not billiard balls, so they’re stopped, but the kinetic energy of their motion is converted into energetic radiation. It’s continuous because new molecules are always drifting in, and attaining the speed of light and smashing out.”

“Then energy is being created continuously?”

“Exactly. And that is what we must make clear to the public. Anti-gravity is not primarily a device to lift spaceships or to revolutionize mechanical movement. Rather, it is the source of an endless supply of free energy, since part of the energy produced can be diverted to maintain the field that keeps that portion of the Universe flat. What Ed Bloom invented, without knowing it, was not just anti-gravity, but the first successful perpetual-motion machine of the first class—one that manufactures energy out of nothing.”

I said slowly, “Anyone of us could have been killed by that billiard ball, is that right, Professor? It might have come out in any direction.”

Priss said, “Well, massless photons emerge from any light source at the speed of light in any direction; that’s why a candle casts light in all directions. The massless air molecules come out of the zero-gravity volume in all directions, which is why the entire cylinder radiates. But the billiard ball was only one object. It could have come out in any direction, but it had to come out in some one direction, chosen at random, and the chosen direction happened to be the one that caught Ed.”

That was it. Everyone knows the consequences. Mankind had free energy and so we have the world we have now. Professor Priss was placed in charge of its development by the board of Bloom Enterprises, and in time he was as rich and famous as ever Edward Bloom had been. And Priss still has two Nobel Prizes in addition.

Only...

I keep thinking. Photons smash out from a light source in all directions because they are created at the moment and there is no reason for them to move in one direction more than in another. Air molecules come out of a zero-gravity field in all directions because they enter it in all directions.

But what about a single billiard ball, entering a zero-gravity field from one particular direction? Does it come out in the same direction or in any direction?

I’ve inquired delicately, but theoretical physicists don’t seem to be sure, and I can find no record that Bloom Enterprises, which is the only organization working with zero-gravity fields, has ever experimented in the matter. Someone at the organization once told me that the uncertainty principle guarantees the random emersion of an object entering in any direction. But then why don’t they try the experiment?

Could it be, then...

Could it be that for once Priss’s mind had been working quickly? Could it be that, under the pressure of what Bloom was trying to do to him, Priss had suddenly seen everything? He had been studying the radiation surrounding the zero-gravity volume. He might have realized its cause and been certain of the speed-of-light motion of anything entering the volume.

Why, then, had he said nothing?

One thing is certain. Nothing Priss would do at the billiard table could be accidental. He was an expert and the billiard ball did exactly what he wanted it to. I was standing right there. I saw him look at Bloom and then at the table as though he were judging angles.

I watched him hit that ball. I watched it bounce off the side of the table and move into the zero-gravity volume, heading in one particular direction.

For when Priss sent that ball toward the zero-gravity volume—and the tri-di films bear me out—it was already aimed directly at Bloom’s heart!

Accident? Coincidence?

...Murder?

True Love

My name is Joe. That is what my colleague, Milton Davidson, calls me. He is a programmer and I am a computer program. I am part of the Multivac-complex and am connected with other parts all over the world. I know everything. Almost everything.

I am Milton’s private program. His Joe. He understands more about programming than anyone in the world, and I am his experimental model. He has made me speak better than any other computer can.

“It is just a matter of matching sounds to symbols, Joe,” he told me. “That’s the way it works in the human brain even though we still don’t know what symbols there are in the brain. I know the symbols in yours, and I can match them to words, one-to-one.” So I talk. I don’t think I talk as well as I think, but Milton says I talk very well. Milton has never married, though he is nearly forty years old. He has never found the right woman, he told me. One day he said, “I’ll find her yet, Joe. I’m going to find the best. I’m going to have true love and you’re going to help me. I’m tired of improving you in order to solve the problems of the world. Solve my problem. Find me true love.”

I said, “What is true love?”

“Never mind. That is abstract. Just find me the ideal girl. You are connected to the Multivac-complex so you can reach the data banks of every human being in the world. We’ll eliminate them all by groups and classes until we’re left with only one person. The perfect person. She will be for me.”

I said, “I am ready.”

He said, “Eliminate all men first.”

It was easy. His words activated symbols in my molecular valves. I could reach out to make contact with the accumulated data on every human being in the world. At his words, I withdrew from 3,784,982,874 men. I kept contact with 3,786,112,090 women.

He said, “Eliminate an younger than twenty-five; an older than forty. Then eliminate an with an IQ under 120; an with a height under 150 centimeters and over 175 centimeters.”

He gave me exact measurements; he eliminated women with living children; he eliminated women with various genetic characteristics. “I’m not sure about eye color,” he said, “Let that go for a while. But no red hair. I don’t like red hair.”

After two weeks, we were down to 235 women. They all spoke English very well. Milton said he didn’t want a language problem. Even computer-translation would get in the way at intimate moments.

“I can’t interview 235 women,” he said. “It would take too much time, and people would discover what I am doing.”

“It would make trouble,” I said.

Milton had arranged me to do things I wasn’t designed to do. No one knew about that. “It’s none of their business,” he said, and the skin on his face grew red. “I tell you what, Joe, I will bring in holographs, and you check the list for similarities.”

He brought in holographs of women. “These are three beauty contest winners,” he said. “Do any of the 235 match?”

Eight were very good matches and Milton said, “Good, you have their data banks. Study requirements and needs in the job market and arrange to have them assigned here. One at a time, of course.” He thought a while, moved his shoulders up and down, and said, “Alphabetical order.”

That is one of the things I am not designed to do. Shifting people from job to job for personal reasons is called manipulation. I could do it now because Milton had arranged it. I wasn’t supposed to do it for anyone but him, though.

The first girl arrived a week later. Milton’s face turned red when he saw her. He spoke as though it were hard to do so. They were together a great deal and he paid no attention to me. One time he said, “Let me take you to dinner.”

The next day he said to me, “It was no good, somehow. There was something missing. She is a beautiful woman, but I did not feel any touch of true love. Try the next one.”

It was the same with all eight. They were much alike. They smiled a great deal and had pleasant voices, but Milton always found it wasn’t right. He said, “I can’t understand it, Joe. You and I have picked out the eight women who, in all the world, look the best to me. They are ideal. Why don’t they please me?”

I said, “Do you please them?”

His eyebrows moved and he pushed one fist hard against his other hand. “That’s it, Joe. It’s a two-way street. If I am not their ideal, they can’t act in such a way as to be my ideal. I must be their true love, too, but how do I do that?” He seemed to be thinking all that day.

The next morning he came to me and said, “I’m going to leave it to you, Joe. All up to you. You have my data bank, and I am going to tell you everything I know about myself. You fill up my data bank in every possible detail but keep all additions to yourself.”

“What will I do with the data bank, then, Milton?”

“Then you will match it to the 235 women. No, 227. Leave out the eight you’ve seen. Arrange to have each undergo a psychiatric examination. Fill up their data banks and compare them with mine. Find correlations.” (Arranging psychiatric examinations is another thing that is against my original instructions.)

For weeks, Milton talked to me. He told me of his parents and his siblings. He told me of his childhood and his schooling and his adolescence. He told me of the young women he had admired from a distance. His data bank grew and he adjusted me to broaden and deepen my symbol-taking.

He said, “You see, Joe, as you get more and more of me in you, I adjust you to match me better and better. You get to think more like me, so you understand me better. If you understand me well enough, then any woman, whose data bank is something you understand as well, would be my true love.” He kept talking to me and I came to understand him better and better.

I could make longer sentences and my expressions grew more complicated. My speech began to sound a good deal like his in vocabulary, word order and style.

I said to him one time, “You see, Milton, it isn’t a matter of fitting a girl to a physical ideal only. You need a girl who is a personal, emotional, temperamental fit to you. If that happens, looks are secondary. If we can’t find the fit in these 227, we’ll look elsewhere. We will find someone who won’t care how you look either, or how anyone would look, if only there is the personality fit. What are looks?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I would have known this if I had had more to do with women in my life. Of course, thinking about it makes it all plain now.”

We always agreed; we thought so like each other.

“We shouldn’t have any trouble, now, Milton, if you’ll let me ask you questions. I can see where, in your data bank, there are blank spots and unevennesses.”

What followed, Milton said, was the equivalent of a careful psychoanalysis. Of course, I was learning from the psychiatric examinations of the 227 women—on all of which I was keeping close tabs.

Milton seemed quite happy. He said, “Talking to you, Joe, is almost like talking to another self. Our personalities have come to match perfectly.”

“So will the personality of the woman we choose.”

For I had found her and she was one of the 227 after all. Her name was Charity Jones and she was an Evaluator at the Library of History in Wichita. Her extended data bank fit ours perfectly. All the other women had fallen into discard in one respect or another as the data banks grew fuller, but with Charity there was increasing and astonishing resonance.

I didn’t have to describe her to Milton. Milton had coordinated my symbolism so closely with his own I could tell the resonance directly. It fit me.

Next it was a matter of adjusting the work sheets and job requirements in such a way as to get Charity assigned to us. It must be done very delicately, so no one would know that anything illegal had taken place.

Of course, Milton himself knew, since it was he who arranged it and that had to be taken care of too. When they came to arrest him on grounds of malfeasance in office, it was, fortunately, for something that had taken place ten years ago. He had told me about it, of course, so it was easy to arrange—and he won’t talk about me for that would make his offense much worse.

He’s gone, and tomorrow is February 14, Valentine’s Day. Charity will arrive then with her cool hands and her sweet voice. I will teach her how to operate me and how to care for me. What do looks matter when our personalities will resonate?

I will say to her, “I am Joe, and you are my true love.”

The Last Answer

Murray Templeton was forty-five years old, in the prime of his life, and with all parts of his body in perfect working order except for certain key portions of his coronary arteries, but that was enough.

The pain had come suddenly, had mounted to an unbearable peak, and had then ebbed steadily. He could feel his breath slowing and a kind of gathering peace washing over him.

There is no pleasure like the absence of pain—immediately after pain. Murray felt giddy lightness as though he were lifting in the air and hovering.

He opened his eyes and noted with distant amusement that the others in the room were still agitated. He had been in the laboratory when the pain had struck, quite without warning, and when he had staggered, he had heard surprised outcries from the others before everything vanished into overwhelming agony.

Now, with the pain gone, the others were still hovering, still anxious, still gathered about his fallen body—

—Which, he suddenly realized, he was looking down on.

He was down there, sprawled, face contorted. He was up here, at peace and watching. He thought: Miracle of miracles! The life-after-life nuts were right.

And although that was a humiliating way for an atheistic physicist to die, he felt only the mildest surprise, and no alteration of the peace in which he was immersed.

He thought: There should be some angel—or something—coming for me.

The Earthly scene was fading. Darkness was invading his consciousness and off in a distance, as a last glimmer of sight, there was a figure of light, vaguely human in form, and radiating warmth.

Murray thought: What a joke on me. I’m going to Heaven.

Even as he thought that, the light faded, but the warmth remained. There was no lessening of the peace even though in all the Universe only he remained—and the Voice.

The Voice said, “I have done this so often and yet I still have the capacity to be pleased at success.”

It was in Murray’s mind to say something, but he was not conscious of possessing a mouth, tongue, or vocal cords. Nevertheless, he tried to make a sound. He tried, mouthlessly, to hum words or breathe them or just push them out by a contraction of—something.

And they came out. He heard his own voice, quite recognizable, and his own words, infinitely clear.

Murray said, “Is this Heaven?”

The Voice said, “This is no place as you understand place.”

Murray was embarrassed, but the next question had to be asked. “Pardon me if I sound like a jackass. Are you God?”

Without changing intonation or in any way marring the perfection of the sound, the voice managed to sound amused. “It is strange that I am always asked that in, of course, an infinite number of ways. There is no answer I can give that you would comprehend. I am—which is all that I can say significantly and you may cover that with any word or concept you please,”

Murray said, “ And what am I? A soul? Or am I only personified existence too?” He tried not to sound sarcastic, but it seemed to him that he had failed. He thought then, fleetingly, of adding a “Your Grace” or “Holy One” or something to counteract the sarcasm, and could not bring himself to do so even though for the first time in his existence he speculated on the possibility of being punished for his insolence—or sin?—with Hell, and what that might be like.

The Voice did not sound offended. “You are easy to explain—even to you. You may call yourself a soul if that pleases you, but what you are is a nexus of electromagnetic forces, so arranged that all the interconnections and interrelationships are exactly imitative of those of your brain in your Universe—existence—down to the smallest detail. Therefore you have your capacity for thought, your memories, your personality. It still seems to you that you are you.”

Murray found himself incredulous. “You mean the essence of my brain was permanent.”

“Not at all. There is nothing about you that is permanent except what I choose to make so. I formed the nexus. I constructed it while you had physical existence and adjusted it to the moment when the existence failed.”

The Voice seemed distinctly pleased with itself, and went on after a moment’s pause. “ An intricate but entirely precise construction. I could, of course, do it for every human being in your world but I am pleased that I do not. There is pleasure in the selection.”

“You choose very few then.”

“Very few.”

“And what happens to the rest. “

“Oblivion! Oh, of course, you imagine a Hell.”

Murray would have flushed if he had the capacity to do so. He said, “I do not. It is spoken of. Still, I would scarcely have thought I was virtuous enough to have attracted your attention as one of the Elect.”

“Virtuous? Ah, I see what you mean. It is troublesome to have to force my thinking small enough to permeate yours. No, I have chosen you for your capacity for thought, as I choose others, in quadrillions, from all the intelligent species of the Universe.”

Murray found himself suddenly curious, the habit of a lifetime. He said, “Do you choose them all yourself or are there others like you?”

For a fleeting moment, Murray thought there was an impatient reaction to that, but when the Voice came, it was unmoved. “Whether or not there are others is irrelevant to you. This Universe is mine, and mine alone. It is my invention, my construction, intended for my purpose alone.”

“And yet with quadrillions of nexi you have formed, you spend time with me? Am I that important?”

The Voice said, “You are not important at all. I am also with others in a way which, to your perception, would seem simultaneous.”

“And yet you are one?”

Again amusement. The Voice said, “You seek to trap me into an inconsistency. If you were an amoeba who could consider individuality only in connection with single cells and if you were to ask a sperm whale, made up of thirty quadrillion cells, whether it was one or many, how could the sperm whale answer in a way that would be comprehensible to the amoeba?”

Murray said dryly, “I’ll think about it. It may become comprehensible.”

“Exactly. That is your function. You will think.”

“To what end? You already know everything, I suppose.”

The Voice said, “Even if I knew everything, I could not know that I know everything.“

Murray said, “That sounds like a bit of Eastern philosophy—something that sounds profound precisely because it has no meaning.”

The Voice said, “You have promise. You answer my paradox with a paradox—except that mine is not a paradox. Consider. I have existed eternally, but what does that mean? It means I cannot remember having come into existence. If I could, I would not have existed eternally. If I cannot remember having come into existence, then there is at least one thing—the nature of my coming into existence—that I do not know.

“Then, too, although what I know is infinite, it is also true that what there is to know is infinite, and how can I be sure that both infinities are equal? The infinity of potential knowledge may be infinitely greater than the infinity of my actual knowledge. Here is a simple example: If I knew everyone of the even integers, I would know an infinite number of items, and yet I would still not know a single odd integer.”

Murray said, “But the odd integers can be derived. If you divide every even integer in the entire infinite series by two, you will get another infinite series which will contain within it the infinite series of odd integers.”

The Voice said, “You have the idea. I am pleased. It will be your task to find other such ways, far more difficult ones, from the known to the not-yet-known. You have your memories. You will remember all the data you have ever collected or learned, or that you have or will deduce from that data. If necessary, you will be allowed to learn what additional data you will consider relevant to the problems you set yourself.”

“Could you not do all that for yourself?”

The Voice said, “I can, but it is more interesting this way. I constructed the Universe in order to have more facts to deal with. I inserted the uncertainty principle, entropy, and other randomization factors to make the whole not instantly obvious. It has worked well for it has amused me throughout its entire existence.

“I then allowed complexities that produced first life and then intelligence, and used it as a source for a research team, not because I need the aid, but because it would introduce a new random factor. I found I could not predict the next interesting piece of knowledge gained, where it would come from, by what means derived.”

Murray said, “Does that ever happen?”

“Certainly. A century doesn’t pass in which some interesting item doesn’t appear somewhere.”

“Something that you could have thought of yourself, but had not done so yet?”

“Yes.”

Murray said, “Do you actually think there’s a chance of my obliging you in this matter?”

“In the next century? Virtually none. In the long run, though, your success is certain, since you will be engaged eternally.”

Murray said, “I will be thinking through eternity? Forever?”

“Yes.”

“To what end?”

“I have told you. To find new knowledge.”

“But beyond that. For. what purpose am I to find new knowledge?”

“It was what you did in your Universe-bound life. What was its purpose then?”

Murray said, “To gain new knowledge that only I could gain. To receive the praise of my fellows. To feel the satisfaction of accomplishment knowing that I had only a short time allotted me for the purpose. Now I would gain only what you could gain yourself if you wished to take a small bit of trouble. You cannot praise me; you can only be amused. And there is no credit or satisfaction in accomplishment when I have all eternity to do it in.”

The Voice said, “ And you do not find thought and discovery worthwhile in itself? You do not find it requiring no further purpose?”

“For a finite time, yes. Not for all eternity.”

“I see your point. Nevertheless, you have no choice.”

“You say I am to think. You cannot make me do so.”

The Voice said, “I do not wish to constrain you directly. I will not need to. Since you can do nothing but think, you will think. You do not know how not to think.”

“Then I will give myself a goal. I will invent a purpose.”

The Voice said tolerantly, “That you can certainly do.”

“I have already found a purpose.”

“May I know what it is?”

“You know already. I know we are not speaking in the ordinary fashion. You adjust my nexus in such a way that I believe I hear you and I believe I speak, but you transfer thoughts to me and for me directly. And when my nexus changes with my thoughts you are at once aware of them and do not need my voluntary transmission.”

The Voice said, “You are surprisingly correct. I am pleased. But it also pleases me to have you tell me your thoughts voluntarily.”

“Then I will tell you. The purpose of my thinking will be to discover a way to disrupt the nexus of me that you have created. I do not want to think for no purpose but to amuse you. I do not want to think forever to amuse you. I do not want to exist forever to amuse you. All my thinking will be directed toward ending the nexus. That would amuse me.”

The Voice said, “I have no objection to that. Even concentrated thought on ending your own existence may, in spite of you, come up with something new and interesting. And, of course, if you succeed in this suicide attempt you will have accomplished nothing, for I would instantly reconstruct you and in such a way as to make your method of suicide impossible. And if you found another and still more subtle fashion of disrupting yourself, I would reconstruct you with that possibility eliminated, and so on. It could be an interesting game, but you will nevertheless exist eternally. It is my will.”

Murray felt a quaver but the words came out with a perfect calm. “Am I in Hell then, after all? You have implied there is none, but if this were Hell you would lie as part of the game of Hell.”

The Voice said, “In that case, of what use is it to assure you that you are not in Hell? Nevertheless, I assure you. There is here neither Heaven nor Hell. There is only myself.”

Murray said, “Consider, then, that my thoughts may be useless to you. If I come up with nothing useful, will it not be worth your while to—disassemble me and take no further trouble with me?”

“As a reward? You want Nirvana as the prize of failure and you intend to assure me failure? There is no bargain there. You will not fail. With all eternity before you, you cannot avoid having at least one interesting thought, however you try against it.”

“Then I will create another purpose for myself. I will not try to destroy myself. I will set as my goal the humiliation of you. I will think of something you have not only never thought of but never could think of. I will think of the last answer, beyond which there is no knowledge further.”

The Voice said, “You do not understand the nature of the infinite. There may be things I have not yet troubled to know. There cannot be anything I cannot know.”

Murray said thoughtfully, “You cannot know your beginning. You have said so. Therefore you cannot know your end. Very well, then. That will be my purpose and that will be the last answer. I will not destroy myself. I will destroy you—if you do not destroy me first.”

The Voice said, “Ah! You come to that in rather less than average time. I would have thought it would have taken you longer. There is not one of those I have with me in this existence of perfect and eternal thought that does not have the ambition of destroying me. It cannot be done.”

Murray said, “I have all eternity to think of a way of destroying you.”

The Voice said, equably, “Then try to think of it.” And it was gone.

But Murray had his purpose now and was content.

For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want—but an end?

For what else had the Voice been searching for countless billions of years? And for what other reason had intelligence been created and certain specimens salvaged and put to work, but to aid in that great search? And Murray intended that it would be he, and he alone, who would succeed.

Carefully, and with the thrill of purpose, Murray began to think.

He had plenty of time.

Lest We Remember

1

The problem with John Heath, as far as John Heath was concerned, was that he struck a dead average. He was sure of it. What was worse, he felt that Susan suspected it.

It meant he would never make a true mark in the world, never climb to the top of Quantum Pharmaceuticals, where he was a steady cog among the junior executives—never make the Quantum Leap.

Nor would he do it anywhere else, if he changed jobs.

He sighed inwardly. In just two more weeks he was going to be married and for her sake he yearned to be upwardly mobile. After all, he loved her madly and wanted to shine in her eyes.

But then, that was dead average for a young man about to be married.

Susan Collins looked at John lovingly. And why not? He was reasonably good-looking and intelligent and a steady, affectionate fellow besides. If he didn’t blind her with his brilliance, he at least didn’t upset her with an erraticism he didn’t possess.

She patted the pillow she had placed behind his head when he sat down in the armchair and handed him his drink, making sure he had a firm grip before she let go.

She said, “I’m practicing to treat you well, Johnny. I’ve got to be an efficient wife.”

John sipped at his drink. “I’m the one who’ll have to be on my toes, Sue. Your salary is higher than mine.”

“It’s all going to go into one pocket once we’re married. It will be the firm of Johnny and Sue keeping one set of books.”

“You’ll have to keep it,” said John despondently. “I’m bound to make mistakes if I try.”

“Only because you’re sure you will. When are your friends coming?”

“Nine, I think. Maybe nine-thirty. And they’re not exactly friends. They’re Quantum people from the research labs.”

“You’re sure they won’t expect to be fed?”

“They said after dinner. I’m positive about that. It’s business.”

She looked at him quizzically. “You didn’t say that before.”

“Say what before?”

“That it was business. Are you sure?”

John felt confused. Any effort to remember precisely always left him confused. “They said so—I think.”

Susan’s look was that of good-natured exasperation, rather like the one she would have given a friendly puppy who is completely unaware its paws are muddy. “If you really thought,” she said, ‘‘as often as you say ‘1 think’ you wouldn’t be so perennially uncertain. Don’t you see it can’t be business. If it were business, wouldn’t they see you at business?”

“It’s confidential,” said John. “They don’t want to see me at work. Not even at my apartment.”

“Why here, then?”

“Oh, I suggested that. I thought you ought to be around, anyway. They’re going to have to deal with the firm of Johnny and Sue, right?”

“It depends,” said Susan, “on what the confidential is all about. Did they give you any hints?”

“No, but it couldn’t hurt to listen. It could be something that would give me a boost in standing at the firm.”

“Why you?” asked Susan.

John looked hurt, “Why not me?”

“It just strikes me that someone at your job level doesn’t require all that confidentiality and that—”

She broke off when the intercom buzzed. She dashed off to answer and came back to say, “They’re on the way up.”

2

Two of them were at the door. One was Boris Kupfer, whom John had already spoken to—large and restless, with a clear view of bluish stubble on his chin.

The other was David Anderson, smaller and more composed. His quick eyes moved this way and that, however, missing nothing.

“Susan,” said John, uncertainly, still holding the door open. “These are the two colleagues of mine that I told you about. Boris—” He hit a blank in his memory banks and stopped.

“Boris Kupfer,” said the larger man morosely, jingling some change in his pocket, :’and David Anderson here. It’s very kind of you, Miss—”

“Susan Collins.”

“It’s very kind of you to make your place of residence available to Mr. Heath and to us for a private conference. We apologize for trespassing on your time and your privacy in this manner—and if you could leave us to ourselves for a while, we will be further grateful.”

Susan stared at him solemnly. “Do you want me to go to the movies, or just into the next room?”

“If you could visit a friend—”

“No,” said Susan, firmly.

“You can dispose of your time as you please, of course. A movie, if you wish.”

“When I said ‘No,’ “said Susan, “I meant I wasn’t leaving. I want to know what this is about.”

Kupfer seemed nonplussed. He stared at Anderson for a moment, then said, “It’s confidential, as Mr. Heath explained to you, I hope.”

John, looking uneasy, said, “I explained that. Susan understands—”

“Susan,” said Susan, “doesn’t understand and wasn’t given to understand that she was to absent herself from the proceedings. This is my apartment and Johnny and I are being married in two weeks—exactly two weeks from today. We are the firm of Johnny and Sue and you’ll have to deal with the firm.”

Anderson’s voice sounded for the first time, surprisingly” deep and as smooth as though it had been waxed. “Boris, the young woman is right. As Mr. Heath’s soon-to-be wife, she will have a great interest in what we have come here to suggest and it would be wrong to exclude her. She has so firm an interest in our proposal that if she were to wish to leave, I would urge her most strongly to remain.”

“Well, then, my friends,” said Susan, “what will you have to drink? Once I bring you those drinks, we can begin.”

Both were seated rather stiffly and had sipped cautiously at their drinks, and then Kupfer said, “Heath, I don’t suppose you know much about the chemical details of the company’s work—the cerebro-chemicals, for instance.”

“Not a bit,” said John, uneasily.

“No reason you should,” said Anderson, silkily.

“It’s like this,” said Kupfer, casting an uneasy glance at Susan—

“No reason to go into technical details,” said Anderson, almost at the lower level of audibility.

Kupfer colored slightly. “Without technical details, Quantum Pharmaceuticals deals with cerebro-chemicals which are, as the name implies, chemicals that affect the cerebrum, that is, the higher functioning of the brain.”

“It must be very complicated work,” said Susan, with composure.

“It is,” said Kupfer. “The mammalian brain has hundreds of characteristic molecular varieties found nowhere else, which serve to modulate cerebral activity, including aspects of what we might term the intellectual life. The work is under the closest corporate security, which is why Anderson wants no technical details. I can say this, though. We can go no further with animal experiments. We’re up against a brick wall if we can’t try the human response.”

“Then why don’t you?” said Susan. “What stops you?”

“Public reaction if something goes wrong!”

“Use volunteers, then.”

“That won’t help. Quantum Pharmaceuticals couldn’t take the adverse publicity if something went wrong.”

Susan looked at them mockingly. “ Are you two working on your own, then?”

Anderson raised his hand to stop Kupfer. “Young woman, “ he said, “let me explain briefly in order to put an end to wasteful verbal fencing. If we succeed, we will be enormously rewarded. If we fail, Quantum Pharmaceuticals will disown us and we will pay what penalty there is to be paid, such as the ending of our careers. If you ask us, why we are willing to take this risk, the answer is, we do not think a risk exists. We are reasonably sure we will succeed; entirely sure we will do no harm. The corporation feels it cannot take the chance; but we feel we can. Now, Kupfer, proceed!”

Kupfer said, “We have a memory chemical. It works with every animal we have tried. Their learning ability improves amazingly. It should work on human beings, too.”

John said, “That sounds exciting.”

“It is exciting,” said Kupfer. “Memory is not improved by devising a way for the brain to store information more efficiently. All our studies show that the brain stores almost unlimited numbers of items perfectly and permanently. The difficulty lies in recall. How many times have you had a name at the tip of your tongue and couldn’t get it? How many times have you failed to come up with something you knew you knew, and then did come up with it two hours later when you were thinking about something else. Am I putting it correctly, David?”

“You are,” said Anderson. “Recall is inhibited, we think, because the mammalian brain outraced its needs by developing a too-perfect recording system. A mammal stores more bits of information than it needs or is capable of using and if all of it was on tap at all times, it would never be able to choose among them quickly enough for appropriate reaction. Recall is inhibited, therefore, to insure that items emerge from memory storage in manipulable numbers, and with those items most desired not blurred by the accompaniment of numerous other items of no interest.

“There is a definite chemical in the brain that functions as a recall inhibitor, and we have a chemical that neutralizes the inhibitor. We call it a disinhibitor, and as far as we have been able to ascertain the matter, it has no deleterious side effects.”

Susan laughed. “I see what’s coming, Johnny. You can leave now, gentlemen. You just said that recall is inhibited to allow mammals to react more efficiently, and now you say that the disinhibitor has no deleterious side effects. Surely the disinhibitor will make the mammals react less efficiently; perhaps find themselves unable to react at all. And now you are going to propose that you try it on Johnny and see if you reduce him to catatonic immobility or not.”

Anderson rose, his thin lips quivering. He took a few rapid strides to the far end of the room and back. When he sat down, he was composed and smiling. “In the first place, Miss Collins, it’s a matter of dosage. We told you that the experimental animals all displayed enhanced learning ability. Naturally, we didn’t eliminate the inhibitor entirely; we merely suppressed it in part. Secondly, we have reason to think the human brain can handle complete disinhibition. It is much larger than the brain of any animal we have tested and we all know its incomparable capacity for abstract thought.

“It is a brain designed for perfect recall, but the blind forces of evolution have not managed to remove the inhibiting chemical which, after all, was designed for and inherited from the lower animals.”

“Are you sure?” asked John.

“You can’t be sure,” said Susan, flatly.

Kupfer said, “We are sure, but we need the proof to convince others. That’s why we have to try a human being.”

“John, in fact,” said Susan. “Yes.”

“Which brings us,” said Susan, “to the key question. Why John?”

“Well,” said Kupfer, slowly, “we need someone for whom chances of success are most nearly certain, and in whom it would be most demonstrable. We don’t want someone so low in mental capacity that we must use dangerously large doses of the disinhibitor; nor do we want someone so bright that the effect will not be sufficiently noticeable. We need someone who’s average. Fortunately, we have the full physical and psychological profiles of all the employees at Quantum and in this and, in fact, all other ways, Mr. Heath is ideal.”

“Dead average?” said Susan.

John looked stricken at the use of the phrase he had thought his own innermost, and disgraceful, secret. “Come on, now,” he said.

Ignoring John’s outcry, Kupfer answered Susan, “Yes.”

“And he won’t be, if he submits to treatment?”

Anderson’s lips stretched into another one of his cheerless smiles. “That’s right. He won’t be. This is something to think about if you’re going to be married soon—the firm of Johnny and Sue, I think you called it. As it is, I don’t think the firm will advance at Quantum, Miss Collins, for although Heath is a good and reliable employee he is, as you say, dead average. If he takes the disinhibitor, however, he will become a remarkable person and move upward with astonishing speed. Consider what that will mean to the firm.”

“What does the firm have to lose?” asked Susan, grimly.

Anderson said, “I don’t see how you can lose anything. It will be a sensible dose which can be administered at the laboratories tomorrow—Sunday. We will have the floor to ourselves; we will keep him under surveillance for a few hours. It is certain nothing could go wrong. If I could tell you of our painstaking experimentation and of our thoroughgoing exploration of all possible side effects—”

“On animals,” said Susan, not giving an inch.

But John said, tightly, “I’ll make the decision, Sue. I’ve had it up to here with that dead-average bit. It’s worth some risk to me if it means getting off that dead-average dead end.”

“Johnny,” said Susan, “don’t jump.”

“I’m thinking of the firm, Sue. I want to contribute my share.”

Anderson said, “Good, but sleep on it. We will leave two copies of an agreement we will ask you to look over and sign. Please don’t show it to anybody whether you sign or not. We will be here tomorrow morning again to take you to the laboratory.”

They smiled, rose, and left.

John read over the agreement with a troubled frown, then looked up. “You don’t think I should be doing this, do you, Sue?”

“It worries me, sure,”

“Look, if I have a chance to get away from that dead average—”

Susan said, “What’s wrong with that? I’ve met so many nuts and cranks in my short life that I welcome a nice, average guy like you, Johnny. Listen, I’m dead average too.”

“You dead average. With your looks? Your figure?”

Susan looked down upon herself with a touch of complacency. “Well, then, I’m just your dead-average gorgeous girl,” she said.

3

The injection took place at 8 A.M. Sunday, no more than twelve hours after the proposition had been advanced. A thoroughly computerized body sensor was attached to John in a dozen places, while Susan watched with keen-eyed apprehension.

Kupfer said, “Please, Heath, relax. All is going well, but tension speeds the heart rate, raises the blood pressure, and skews our results.”

“How can I relax?” muttered John.

Susan put in sharply, “Skews the results to the point where you don’t know what’s going on?”

“No, no,” said Anderson. “Boris said all is going well and it is. It is just that our animals were always sedated before the injection, and we did not feel sedation would have been appropriate in this case. So if we can’t have sedation, we must expect tension. Just breathe slowly and do your best to minimize it.”

It was late afternoon before he was finally disconnected. “How do you feel?” asked Anderson.

“Nervous,” said John. “Otherwise, all right.”

“No headache?”

“No. But I want to visit the bathroom. I can’t exactly relax with a bedpan.”

“Of course.”

John emerged, frowning. “I don’t notice any particular memory improvement.”

“That will take some time and will be gradual. The disinhibitor must leak across the blood-brain barrier, you know,” said Anderson.

4

It was nearly midnight when Susan broke what had turned out to be an oppressively silent evening in which neither had much responded to the television.

She said, “You’ll have to stay here overnight. I don’t want you alone when we don’t really know what’s going to happen.”

“I don’t feel a thing,” said John, gloomily. “I’m still me.”

“I’ll settle for that, Johnny,” said Susan. “Do you feel any pains or discomforts or oddnesses at all?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I wish we hadn’t done it.”

“For the firm,” said John, smiling weakly. “We’ve got to take some chances for the firm.”

5

John slept poorly, and woke drearily, but on time. And he arrived at work on time, too, to start the new week.

By 11 A.M. however, his morose air had attracted the unfavorable attention of his immediate superior, Michael Ross. Ross was burly and black-browed and fit the stereotype of the stevedore without being one. John got along with him though he did not like him.

Ross said, in his bass-baritone, “What’s happened to your cheery disposition, Heath—your jokes—your lilting laughter?” Ross cultivated a certain preciosity of speech as though he were anxious to negate the stevedore image.

“Don’t exactly feel tip-top,” said John, not looking up.

“Hangover?”

“No, sir,” said John, coldly.

“Well, cheer up, then. You’ll win no friends, scattering stinkweeds over the fields as you gambol along.”

John would have liked to groan. Ross’s subliterary affectations were wearisome at the best of times and this wasn’t the best of times.

And to make matters worse, John smelled the foul odor of a rancid cigar and knew that James Arnold Prescott—the head of the sales division—could not be far behind.

Nor was he. He looked about, and said, “Mike, when and what did we sell Rahway last spring or thereabouts? There’s some damned question about it and I think the details have been miscomputerized.”

The question was not addressed to him, but John said quietly, “Forty-two vials of PCAP. That was on April 14, J.P., invoice number P-20543, with a five percent discount granted on payment within thirty days. Payment, in full, received on May 5.”

Apparently everyone in the room had heard that. At least, everyone looked up.

Prescott said, “How the hell do you happen to know all that?”

John stared at Prescott for a moment, a vast surprise on his face. “I just happened to remember, J.P.”

“You did, eh? Repeat it.”

John did, faltering a bit, and Prescott wrote it down on one of the papers on John’s desk, wheezing slightly as the bend at his waist compressed his portly abdomen up against his diaphragm and made breathing difficult. John tried to duck the smoke from the cigar without seeming to do so.

Prescott said, “Ross, check this out on your computer and see if there’s anything to it at all.” He turned to John with an aggrieved look. “I don’t like practical jokers. What would you have done if I had accepted these figures of yours and walked off with them?”

“I wouldn’t have done anything. They’re correct,” said John, conscious of himself as the full center of attention.

Ross handed Prescott the readout. Prescott looked at it and said, “This is from the computer?”

“Yes, J.P.”

Prescott stared at it, then said, with a jerk of his head toward John, “ And what’s he? Another computer? His figures were correct.”

John tried a weak smile, but Prescott growled and left, the stench of his cigar a lingering reminder of his presence.

Ross said, “What the hell was that little bit of legerdemain, Heath? You found out what he wanted to know and looked it up in advance to get some kudos?”

“No, sir,” said John, who was gathering confidence. “I just happened to remember. I have a good memory for these things.”

“And took the trouble to keep it from your loyal companions all these years? There’s no one here who had any idea you hid a good memory behind that unremarkable forehead of yours.”

“No point in showing it, Mr. Ross, is there? Now when I have, it doesn’t seem to have gained me any goodwill, does it?”

And it hadn’t. Ross glowered at him and turned away.

6

John’s excitement over the dinner table at Gino’s that night made it difficult for him to talk coherently, but Susan listened patiently and tried to act as a stabilizing force.

“You might just have happened to remember, you know,” she said. “By itself it doesn’t prove anything, Johnny.”

“Are you crazy?” He lowered his voice at Susan’s gesture and quick glance about. He repeated in a semiwhisper, “ Are you crazy? You don’t suppose it’s the only thing I remember, do you? I think I can remember anything I ever heard. It’s just a question of recall. For instance, quote some line out of Shakespeare.”

“To be or not to be.”

John looked scornful. “Don’t be funny. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. The point is that if you recite any line, I can carry on from there for as long as you like. I read some of the plays for English Lit classes at college and some for myself and I can bring any of it back. I’ve tried. It flows! I suppose I can bring back any part of any book or article or newspaper I’ve ever read, or any TV show I’ve ever watched—word for word or scene for scene.”

Susan said, “What will you do with all that?”

John said, “I don’t have that consciously in my head at all times. Surely you don’t—wait, let’s order—”

Five minutes later, he said, “Surely you don’t—My God, I haven’t forgotten where we left off. Isn’t it amazing?—Surely you don’t think I’m swimming in a mental sea of Shakespearean sentences at all times. The recall takes an effort, not much of one, but an effort.”

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know. How do you lift your arm? What orders do you give your muscles? You just will the arm to lift upward and it does so. It’s no trouble to do so, but your arm doesn’t lift until you want it to. Well, I remember anything I’ve ever read or seen when I want to but not when I don’t want to. I don’t know how to do it, but I do it.”

The first course arrived and John tackled it happily.

Susan picked at her stuffed mushrooms. “It sounds exciting.”

“Exciting? I’ve got the biggest, most wonderful toy in the world. My own brain. Listen, I can spell any word correctly and I’m pretty sure I won’t ever make any grammatical mistake.”

“Because you remember all the dictionaries and grammars you ever read?”

John looked at her sharply. “Don’t be sarcastic, Sue.”

“I wasn’t being—”

He waved her silent. “I never used dictionaries as light reading. But I do remember words and sentences in my reading and they were correctly spelled and correctly parsed.”

“Don’t be so sure. You’ve seen any word misspelled in every possible way and every possible example of twisted grammar, too.”

“Those were exceptions. By far the largest number of times I’ve encountered literary English, I’ve encountered it used correctly. It outweighs accidents, errors, and ignorance. What’s more, I’m sure I’m improving even as I sit here, growing more intelligent steadily.”

“And you’re not worried. What if—”

“What if I become too intelligent? Tell me how on Earth you think becoming too intelligent can be harmful.”

“I was going to say,” said Susan, coldly, “that what you’re experiencing is not intelligence. It’s only total recall.”

“How do you mean ‘only’? If I recall perfectly, if I use the English language correctly, if I know endless quantities of material, isn’t that going to make me seem more intelligent? How else need one define intelligence? You aren’t growing just a little jealous, are you, Sue?”

“No,” more coldly still. “I can always get an injection of my own if I feel desperate about it.”

John put down his fork. “You can’t mean that.”

“I don’t, but what if I did?”

“Because you can’t take advantage of your special knowledge to deprive me of my position.”

“What position?”

The main course arrived and for a few moments, John was busy. Then he said, in a whisper, “My position as the first of the future. Homo superior! There’ll never be too many of us. You heard what Kupfer said. Some are too dumb to make it. Some are too smart to change much. I’m the one!”

“Dead average.” One corner of Susan’s mouth lifted.

“Once I was. There’ll be others like me eventually. Not many, but there’ll be others. It’s just that I want to make my mark before the others come along. It’s for the firm, you know. Us!”

He remained lost in thought thereafter, testing his brain delicately.

Susan ate in an unhappy silence.

7

John spent several days organizing his memories. It was like the preparation of an orderly reference book. One by one, he recalled all his experiences in the six years he had spent at Quantum Pharmaceuticals and all he had heard and all the papers and memos he had read.

There was no difficulty in discarding the irrelevant and unimportant and storing them in a “hold till further notice” compartment where they did not interfere with his analysis. Other items were put in order so that they established a natural progression.

Against that skeletal organization, he resurrected the scuttlebutt he had heard; the gossip, malicious or otherwise; casual phrases and interjections at conferences which he had not been conscious of hearing at the time. Those items which did not fit anywhere against the background he had built up in his head were worthless, empty of factual content. Those which did fit clicked firmly into place and could be seen as true by that mere fact.

The further the structure grew, and the more coherent, the more significant new items became and the easier it was to fit them in.

Ross stopped by John’s desk on Thursday. He said, “I want to see you in my office at the nonce, Heath, if your legs will deign to carry you in that direction.”

John rose uneasily. “Is it necessary?’ I’m busy.”

“Yes, you look busy.” Ross looked over the clear desk which, at the moment, held nothing but a studio photo of a smiling Susan. “You’ve been this busy all week. But you’ve asked me whether seeing me in my office is necessary. For me, no; but for you, vital. There’s the door to my office. There’s the door to the hell out of here. Choose one or the other and do it fast.”

John nodded and, without undue hurry, followed Ross into his office.

Ross seated himself behind his desk but did not invite John to sit. He maintained a hard stare for a moment, then said, “What the hell’s got into you this week, Heath? Don’t you know what your job is?”

“To the extent that I have done it, it would seem that I do,” said John. “The report on microcosmic is on your desk and complete and seven days ahead of deadline. I doubt that you can have complaints about it.”

“You doubt, do you? Do I have permission to have complaints if I choose to after communing with my soul? Or am I condemned to applying to you for permission?”

“I apparently have not made myself plain, Mr. Ross. I doubt that you have rational complaints about it. To have those of the other variety is entirely up to you.”

Ross rose now. “Listen, punk, if I decide to fire you, you won’t get the news by word of mouth. It won’t be anything I say that will give you the glad tidings. You will go out through the door in a violent tumble and mine will be the propulsive force behind that tumble. Just keep that in your small brain and your tongue in your big mouth. Whether you’ve done your work or not is not at question right now. Whether you’ve done everyone else’s is. Who and what gives you the right to manage everyone in this place?”

John said nothing.

Ross roared, “Well?”

John said, “Your order was ‘Keep your tongue in your big mouth.’ “

Ross turned a dangerous red. “You will answer questions, however.”

John said, “I am not aware that I have been managing anyone.”

“There’s not a person in the place you haven’t corrected at least once. You have gone over Willoughby’s head in connection with the correspondence on the TMP’s; you have been into general files using Bronstein’s computer access; and God knows what else I haven’t yet been told about and all in the last two days. You are disrupting the work of this department and it must cease this moment. There must be dead calm, and instantaneously, or it will be tornado weather for you, my man.”

John said, “If I have interfered in the narrow sense, it has been for the good of the company. In the case of Willoughby, his treatment of the TMP matter was putting Quantum Pharmaceuticals in violation of government regulations, something I have pointed out to you in one of several memos I have sent you which you apparently have not had occasion to read. As for Bronstein, he was simply ignoring general directions and costing the company fifty thousand in unnecessary tests, something I was easily able to establish by locating the necessary correspondence—merely to corroborate my clear memory of the situation.”

Ross was swelling visibly through the talk. “Heath,” he said, “you are usurping my role. You will, therefore, gather your personal effects and be off the premises before lunch, never to return. If you do, I will take extreme pleasure in helping you out again with my foot. Your official notice of dismissal will be in your hands, or down your throat, before your effects will be collected, work as quickly as you may.”

John said, “Don’t try to bully me, Ross. You’ve cost the company a quarter of a million dollars through incompetence and you know it.”

There was a short pause as Ross deflated. He said, cautiously, “What are you talking about?”

“Quantum Pharmaceuticals went down to the wire on the Nutley bid and missed out because a certain piece of information that was in your hands stayed in your hands and never got to the Board of Directors. You either forgot or you didn’t bother and in either case you are not the man for your job. You are either incompetent or have sold out.”

“You’re insane.”

“No one need believe me. The information is in the computer, if one knows where to look and I know where to look. What’s more, the knowledge is on file and will be on the desks of the interested parties two minutes after I leave these premises.”

“If this were so,” said Ross, speaking with difficulty, “you could not possibly know. This is a stupid attempt at blackmail by threat of slander.”

“You know it’s not slander. If you doubt that I have the information, let me tell you that there is one memorandum that is not in the records but can be reconstructed without too much difficulty from what is there. You would have to explain its absence and it will be presumed you have destroyed it. You know I’m not bluffing.”

“It’s still blackmail.”

“Why? I’m making no demands and no threats. I’m merely explaining my actions of the past two days. Of course, if I’m forced to resign, I’ll have to explain why I resigned, won’t I?”

Ross said nothing.

John said, coolly, “Is my resignation being requested?”

“Get out of here!”

“With my job? Or without it?”

Ross said, “You have your job.” His face was a study in hatred.

8

Susan had arranged a dinner at her apartment and had gone to considerable trouble for it. Never, in her own opinion, had she looked more enticing and never did she think it more important to move John, at least for a bit, away from his total concentration on his own mind.

She said, with an attempt at heartiness, “ After all, we are celebrating the last nine days of single blessedness.”

“We are celebrating more than that,” said John with a grim smile. “It’s only four days since I got the the disinhibitor and already I’ve been able to put Ross in his place. He’ll never bother me again.”

“We each seem to have our own notion of sentiment,” said Susan. “Tell me the details of your tender remembrance.”

John told the tale crisply, repeating the conversation verbatim and without hesitation.

Susan listened stonily, without in any way rising to the gathering triumph in John’s voice. “How did you know all that about Ross?”

John said, “There are no secrets, Sue. Things just seem secret because people don’t remember. If you can recall every remark, every comment, every stray word made to you or in your hearing and consider them all in combination, you find that everyone gives himself away in everything. You can pick out meanings that will, in these days of computerization, send you straight to the necessary records. It can be done. I can do it. I have done it in the case of Ross. I can do it in the case of anybody with whom I associate.”

“You can also get them furious.”

“I got Ross furious. You can bet on that.”

“Was that wise?”

“What can he do to me? I’ve got him cold.”

“He has enough clout in the upper echelons—”

“Not for long. I have a conference set for 2 P.M. tomorrow with old man Prescott and his stinking cigar and I’ll cut Ross off at the pass.”

“Don’t you think you’re moving too quickly?”

“Moving too quickly? I haven’t even begun. Prescott’s just a stepping-stone. Quantum Pharmaceutical’s just a stepping-stone.”

“It’s still too quick, Johnny, you need someone to direct you. You need—”

“I need nothing. With what I have,” he tapped his temple, “there’s no one and nothing that can stop me.”

Susan said, “Well, look, let’s not discuss that. We have different plans to make.”

“Plans?”

“Our own. We’re getting married in just under nine days. Surely”—with heavy irony—”you haven’t returned to the sad old days when you forgot things.”

“I remember the wedding,” said John, testily, “but at the moment I’ve got to reorganize Quantum. In fact, I’ve been thinking seriously of postponing the wedding till I have things well in hand.”

“Oh? And when might that be?”

“That’s hard to tell. Not long at the rate I’m taking hold. A month or two, I suppose. Unless,” and he descended into sarcasm, “you think that’s moving too quickly.”

Susan was breathing hard. “Were you planning to consult with me on the matter?”

John raised his eyebrows. “Would it have been necessary? Where’s the argument? Surely you see what’s happening. We can’t interrupt it and lose momentum. Listen, did you know I’m a mathematical wiz? I can multiply and divide as fast as a computer because at some time in my life I have come across almost every simple bit of arithmetic and I can recall the answers. I read a table of square roots and I can—”

Susan cried, “My God, Johnny, you are a kid with a new toy. You’ve lost your perspective. Instant recall is good for nothing but playing tricks with. It doesn’t give one bit more intelligence; not an ounce; not a speck more of judgment; not a whiff more of common sense. You’re about as safe to have around as a little boy with a loaded grenade. You need looking after by someone with brains.”

John scowled. “Do I? It seems to me that I’m getting what I want.”

“Are you? Isn’t it true that I’m what you want also?”

“What?”

“Go ahead, Johnny. You want me. Reach out and take me. Exercise that remarkable recall you have. Remember who I am, what I am, the things we can do, the warmth, the affection, the sentiment.”

John, with his forehead still creased in uncertainly, extended his arms toward Susan.

She stepped out of them. “But you haven’t got me, or anything about me. You can’t remember me into your arms; you have to love me into them. The trouble is, you don’t have the good sense to do it and you lack the intelligence to establish reasonable priorities. Here, take this and get out of my apartment or I’ll hit you with something a lot heavier.”

He stopped to pick up the engagement ring. “Susan—”

“I said, get out. The firm of Johnny and Sue is hereby dissolved.”

Her face blazed anger and John turned meekly and left.

9

When he arrived at Quantum the next morning, Anderson was waiting for him with a look of anxious impatience on his face.

“Mr. Heath,” he said, smiling and rising.

“What do you want?” demanded John.

“We are private here, I take it?”

“The place isn’t bugged as far as I know.”

“You are to report to us day after tomorrow for examination. On Sunday. You recall that?”

“Of course, I recall that. I’m incapable of not recalling. I am capable of changing my mind, however. Why do I need an examination?”

“Why not, sir? It is quite plain from what Kupfer and I have picked up that the treatment seems to have worked splendidly. Actually, we don’t want to wait till Sunday. If you can come with me today—now, in fact—it would mean a great deal to us, to Quantum, and, of course, to humanity.”

John said, curtly, “You might have held on to me when you had me. You sent me about my business, allowing me to live and work unsupervised so that you could test me under field conditions, and get a better idea of how things would work out. It meant more risk for me, but you didn’t worry about that, did you?”

“Mr. Heath, that was not in our minds. We—”

“Don’t tell me that. I remember every last word you and Kupfer said to me last Sunday, and it’s quite clear to me that that was in your minds. So if I take the risk, I accept the benefits. I have no intention of presenting myself as a biochemical freak who has achieved my ability at the end of a hypodermic needle. Nor do I want others of the sort wandering around. For now, I have a monopoly and I intend to use it. When I’m ready—not before—I will be willing to cooperate with you and benefit humanity. But just remember, I’m the one who will know when I’m ready, not you. So don’t call me; I’ll call you.”

Anderson managed a soft smile. “As to that, Mr. Heath, how can you stop us from making our announcement? Those who have dealt with you this week will have no trouble in recognizing the change in you and in testifying to it.”

“Really? See here, Anderson, listen closely and do so without that foolish grin on your face. It irritates me. I told you I remember every word you and Kupfer spoke. I remember every nuance of expression, every sidelong glance. It all spoke volumes. I learned enough to check through sick-leave records with a good idea of what I was looking for. It would seem that I was not the first Quantum employee on whom you had tried the disinhibitor.”

Anderson was, indeed, not smiling. “That is nonsense.”

“You know it is not, and you had better know I can prove it. I know the names of the men involved—one was a woman, actually—and the hospitals in which they were treated and the false history with which they were supplied. Since you did not warn me of this, when you used me as your fourth experimental animal on two legs, I owe you nothing but a prison sentence.”

Anderson said, “I won’t discuss this matter. Let me say this, though. The treatment will wear off, Heath. You won’t keep your total recall. You will have to come back for further treatment and you can be sure it will be on our terms.”

John said, “Nuts! You don’t suppose I haven’t investigated your reports—at least, those you haven’t kept secret. And I already have a notion of what aspects you have kept secret. The treatment lasts longer in some cases than others. It invariably lasts longer where it is more effective. In my case, the treatment has been extraordinarily effective and it will endure a considerable time. By the time I come to you again, if I ever have to, I will be in a position where any failure on your part to cooperate will be swiftly devastating to you. Don’t even think of it.”

“You ungrateful—”

“Don’t bother me,” said John, wearily. “I have no time to listen to you froth. Go away, I have work to do.”

Anderson’s face was a study in fear and frustration as he left.

10

It was 2:30 P.M. when John walked into Prescott’s office, for once not minding the cigar smoke. It would not be long, he knew, before Prescott would have to choose between his cigars and his position.

With Prescott were Arnold Gluck and Lewis Randall, so that John had the grim pleasure of knowing he was facing the three top men in the division.

Prescott rested his cigar on top of an ashtray and said, “Ross has asked me to give you half an hour, and that’s all I will give you. You’re the one with the trick memory, aren’t you?”

“My name is John Health, sir, and I intend to present you with a rationalization of procedure for the company; one that will make full use of the age of computers and electronic communication and will lay the groundwork for further modification as the technology improves.”

The three men looked at each other. Gluck, whose creased face was tanned a leathery brown said, “ Are you an expert in office management?”

“I don’t have to be, sir. I have been here for six years and I recall every bit of the procedure in every transaction in which I have been involved. That means the pattern of such transactions is plain to me and its imperfections obvious. One can see toward what it is tending and where it is doing so wastefully and inefficiently. If you’ll listen, I will explain. You will find it easy to understand.”

Randall, whose red hair and freckles made him seem younger than he was, said sardonically, “Real easy, I hope, because we have trouble with hard concepts.”

“You won’t have trouble,” said John.

“And you won’t get a second more than twenty-one minutes,” said Prescott, looking at his watch.

“It won’t take that,” said John. “I have it diagrammed and I can talk quickly.”

It took fifteen minutes and the three management personnel were remarkably silent in that interval.

Finally Gluck said, with a hostile glance out of his small eyes, “It sounds as though you are saying we can get along with half the management we are employing these days. “

“Less than half,” said John, coolly, “and be the more efficient for it. We can’t fire ordinary personnel at will because of the unions, though we can profitably lose them by attrition. Management is not protected, however, and can be let go. They’ll have pensions if they’re old enough and can get new jobs if they’re young enough. Our thought must be for Quantum.”

Prescott, who had maintained an ominous silence, now puffed furiously at his noxious cigar and said, “Changes like this have to be considered carefully and implemented, if at all, with the greatest of caution. What seems logical on paper can lose out in the human equation.”

John said, “Prescott, if this reorganization is not accepted within a week, and if I am not placed in charge of its implementation, I will resign. I will have no trouble in finding employment with a smaller firm where this plan can be far more easily put into practice. Beginning with a small group of management people, I can expand in both quantity and efficiency of performance without additional hiring and within a year I’ll drive Quantum into bankruptcy. It would be fun to do this if I am driven to it, so consider carefully. My half hour is up. Goodbye.” And he left.

11

Prescott looked after him with a glance of frigid calculation. He said to the other two, “I think he means what he says and that he knows every facet of our operations better than we do. We can’t let him go.”

“You mean we’ve got to accept his plan,” said Randall, shocked.

“I didn’t say that. You two go, and remember this whole thing is confidential.”

Gluck said, “I have the feeling that if we don’t do something, all three of us will find ourselves on our butts in the street within a month.”

“Very likely,” said Prescott, “so we’ll do something.”

“What?”

“If you don’t know, you won’t get hurt. Leave it to me. Forget it for now and have a nice weekend.”

When they were gone, he thought a while, chewing furiously on his cigar. He then turned to his telephone and dialed an extension. “Prescott here. I want you in my office first thing Monday morning. First thing. Hear me?”

12

Anderson looked a trifle disheveled. He had had a bad weekend. Prescott, who had had a worse, said to him, malevolently, “You and Kupfer tried again, didn’t you?”

Anderson said, softly, “It’s better not to discuss that, Mr. Prescott. You remember it was agreed that in certain aspects of research, a distance was to be established. We were to take the risks or the glory, and Quantum was to share in the latter but not in the former.”

“And your salary was doubled with a guarantee of all legal payments to be Quantum’s responsibility, don’t forget that. This man, John Heath, was treated by you and Kupfer, wasn’t he? Come on. There’s no mistaking it. There’s no point in hiding it.”

“Well, yes.”

“And you were so brilliant that you turned him loose on us—this—this—tarantula.”

“We didn’t anticipate this would happen. When he didn’t go into instant shock, we thought it was our first chance to test the process in the field. We thought he would break down after two or three days, or it would pass.”

Prescott said, “If I hadn’t been protected So damned well, I wouldn’t have put the whole thing out of my mind and I would have guessed what had happened when that bastard first pulled the computer bit and produced the details of correspondence he had no business remembering. All right, we know where we are now. He’s holding the company to ransom with a new plan of operations he can’t be allowed to put through. Also, he can’t be allowed to walk away from us.”

Anderson said, “Considering Heath’s capacity for recall and synthesis, is it possible that his plan of operations may be a good one?”

“I don’t care if it is. That bastard is after my job and who knows what else and we’ve got to get rid of him.”

“How do you mean, rid of him? He could be of vital importance to the cerebro-chemical project.”

“Forget that. It’s a disaster. You’re creating a super-Hitler.” Anderson said, in a soft-voiced anguish, “The effect will wear off.”

“Yes? When?”

“At this moment, I can’t be sure.”

“Then I can’t take chances. We’ve got to make our arrangements and do it tomorrow at the latest. We can’t wait any longer.”

13

John was in high good humor. The manner in which Ross avoided him when he could and spoke to him deferentially when he had to affected the entire work force. There was a strange and radical change in the pecking order, with himself at the top.

Nor could John deny to himself that he liked it. He reveled in it. The tide was moving strongly and unbelievably swiftly. It was only nine days since the injection of the disinhibitor and every step had been forward.

Well, no, there had been Susan’s silly rage at him, but he would deal with her later. When he showed her the heights to which he would climb in nine additional days—in ninety—

He looked up. Ross was at his desk, waiting for his attention but reluctant to do anything as crass as to attract that attention by as much as clearing his throat. John swiveled his chair, put his feet out before him in an attitude of relaxation, and said, “Well, Ross?”

Ross said, carefully, “I would like to see you in my office, Heath. Something important has come up and, frankly, you’re the only one who can set it straight.”

John got slowly to his feet. “Yes? What is it?”

Ross looked about mutely at the busy room, with at least five men in reasonable earshot. Then he looked toward his office door and held out an inviting arm.

John hesitated, but for years Ross had held unquestioned authority over him’; and at this moment he reacted to habit.

Ross held his door open for John politely, stepped through himself and closed the door behind him, locking it unobtrusively and remaining in front of it. Anderson stepped out from the other side of the bookcase.

John said sharply, “What’s all this about?”

“Nothing at all, Heath,” said Ross, his smile turning into a vulpine grin. “We’re just going to help you out of your abnormal state—take you back to normality. Don’t move Heath.”

Anderson had a hypodermic in his hand. “Please, Heath, do not struggle. We wish you no harm.”

“If I yell—” said John.

“If you make any sound,” said Ross, “I will put a hammerlock on you and hold it till your eyes bug out. I would like to do that, so please try to yell.”

John said, “I have the goods on both of you, safe on deposit. Anything that happens to me—”

“Mr. Heath,” said Anderson, “nothing will happen to you. Something is going to unhappen to you. We will put you back to where you were. That would happen anyway, but we will hurry it up just a little.”

“So I’m going to hold you, Heath,” said Ross, “and you won’t move because if you do, you will disturb our friend with the needle and he might slip and give you more than the carefully calculated dose, and you might end up unable to remember anything at all.”

Heath was backing away, breathless. “That’s what you’re planning. You think you’ll be safe that way. If I forgot all about you, all about the information, all about its storage. But—”

“We’re not going to hurt you, Heath,” said Anderson. John’s forehead glistened with sweat. A near paralysis gripped him.

“An amnesiac!” he said, huskily, and with a terror that only someone could feel at the possibility who himself had perfect recall.

“Then you won’t remember this either, will you?” said Ross. “Go ahead, Anderson.”

“Well,” muttered Anderson, in resignation. “I’m destroying a perfect test subject.” He lifted John’s flaccid arm and readied the hypodermic.

There was a knock at the door. A clear voice called, “John!”

Anderson froze almost automatically: looking up questioningly.

Ross had turned to look at the door. Now he turned back. “Shoot that stuff into him, doc, “ he said in an urgent whisper.

The voice came again, “Johnny, I know you’re in there. I’ve called the police. They’re on the way.”

Ross whispered again, “Go ahead. She’s lying. And by the time they come, it’s over. Who can prove anything?”

But Anderson was shaking his head vigorously. “It’s his fiancée. She knows he was treated. She was there.”

“You jackass.”

There was the sound of a kick against the door and then the voice sounded in a muffled, “Let go of me. They’ve got—let go!”

Anderson said, “Having her push the thing was the only way we could get him to agree. Besides, I don’t think we have to do anything. Look at him.”

John had collapsed in a comer, eyes glazed, and clearly in a state of unconscious trance.

Anderson said, “He’s been terrified and that can produce a shock that will interfere with recall under normal conditions. I think the disinhibitor has been wiped out. Let her in and let me talk to her.”

14

Susan looked pale as she sat with her arm protectively about the shoulders of her ex-fiancé. “What happened?”

“You remember the injection of—”

“Yes, yes. What happened?”

“He was supposed to come to our office day before yesterday, Sunday, for a thorough examination. He didn’t come. We worried and the reports from his superiors had me very perturbed. He was becoming arrogant, megalomaniacal, irascible—perhaps you noticed. You’re not wearing your engagement ring.”

“We—quarreled,” said Susan. “Then you understand. He was—well, if he were an inanimate device, we might say his motor was overheating as it sped faster and faster. This morning it seemed absolutely essential to treat him. We persuaded him to come here, locked the door and—”

“Injected him with something while I howled and kicked outside.”

“Not at all,” said Anderson. “We would have used a sedative, but we were too late. He had what I can only describe as a breakdown. You may search his body for fresh punctures, which, as his fiancé, I presume you may do without embarrassment, and you will find none.”

Susan said, “I’ll see about that. What happens, now?”

“I am sure he will recover. He will be his old self again.”

“Dead average?”

“He will not have perfect recall, but until ten days ago, he never had. Naturally, the firm will give him indefinite leave on full salary. If any medical treatment is required, all medical expenses will be paid. And when he feels like it, he can return to active duty.”

“Yes? Well, I will want all that in writing before the day is out, or I see my lawyer tomorrow.”

“But Miss Collins,” said Anderson, “you know that Mr. Heath volunteered. You were willing too.”

“I think,” said Susan, “that you know the situation was misrepresented to us and that you won’t welcome an investigation. Just see to it that what you’ve just promised is in writing.”

“You will have to, in return, sign an agreement to hold us guiltless of any misadventure your fiance may have suffered.”

“Possibly. I prefer to see what kind of misadventure it is first. Can you walk, Johnny?”

John nodded and said, a little huskily, “Yes, Sue.”

“Then let’s go.”

15

John had put himself outside a cup of good coffee and an omelet before Susan permitted discussion. Then he said, “What I don’t understand is how you happened to be there?”

“Shall we say woman’s intuition?”

“Let’s say Susan’s brains.”

“All right. Let’s! After I threw the ring at you, I felt self-pitying and aggrieved and after that wore off, I felt a severe sense of loss because, odd though it might seem to the average sensible person, I’m very fond of You.”

“I’m sorry, Sue,” said John, humbly.

“As well you should be. God, you were insupportable. But then I got to thinking that if you could get poor loving me that furious, what must you be doing to your co-workers. The more I thought about it, the more I thought they might have a strong impulse to kill you. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m willing to admit you deserved killing, but only at my hands. I wouldn’t dream of allowing anyone else to do it. I didn’t hear from you—”

“I know, Sue. I had plans and I had no time—”

“You had to do it all in two weeks. I know, you idiot. By this morning I couldn’t stand it anymore. I came to see how you were and found you behind a locked door.”

John shuddered. “I never thought I’d welcome your kicking and screaming, but I did then. You stopped them.”

“Will it upset you to talk about it?”

“I don’t think so. I’m all right.”

“Then what were they doing?”

“They were going to re-inhibit me. I thought they might be giving me an overdose and make me an amnesiac.”

“Why?”

“Because they knew I had them all. I could ruin them and the company.”

“You really could. “

“Absolutely.”

“But they didn’t actually inject you, did they? Or was that another of Anderson’s lies?”

“They really didn’t.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m not an amnesiac.”

“Well, I hate to sound like a Victorian damsel, but I hope you have learned your lesson.”

“If you mean, do I realize you were right, I do.”

“Then just let me lecture you for one minute, so you don’t forget again. You went about everything too rapidly, too openly, and with too much disregard for the possible violent counteraction of others. You had total recall and you mistook it for intelligence. If you had someone who was really intelligent to guide you—”

“I needed you, Sue.”

“Well, you’ve got me now, Johnny.”

“What do we do next, Sue?”

“First, we get that paper from Quantum and, since you’re all right, we’ll sign the release for them. Second, we get married on Saturday, just as we originally planned. Third, we’ll see—but, Johnny?”

“Yes?”

“You’re all right?”

“Couldn’t be better, Sue. Now we’re together, everything’s fine.”

16

It wasn’t a formal wedding. Less formal than they had originally planned and fewer guests. No one was there from Quantum, for instance. Susan had pointed out, quite firmly, that that would be a bad idea.

A neighbor of Susan ‘s had brought a video camera to record the proceedings, something that seemed to John to be the height of schlock, but Susan had wanted it.

And then the neighbor had said to him with a tragic shrug, “Can’t get the damn thing to turn on. You’d think they’d give me one in working order. I’ll have to make a phone call.” He hastened down the steps to the pay phone in the chapel lobby.

John advanced to look at the camera curiously. An instruction booklet lay on a small table to one side. He picked it up and leafed through the pages with moderate speed, then. put it back. He looked about him, but everyone was busy. No one seemed to be paying attention to him.

He slid the rear panel to one side, unobtrusively, and peered inside. He then turned away and gazed at the opposite wall thoughtfully. He was still gazing even as his right hand snaked in toward the mechanism and made a quick adjustment. After a brief interval he put the rear panel back and flicked a toggle switch.

The neighbor came bustling back, looking exasperated. “How am I going to follow directions I can’t make head or—” He frowned, then said, “Funny. It’s on. It must have been working all the time.”

17

“You may kiss the bride,” said the minister, benignly, and John took Susan in his arms and followed orders with enthusiasm.

Susan whispered through unmoving lips, “You fixed that camera. Why?”

He whispered back, “I wanted everything right for the wedding.”

She whispered, “You wanted to show off.”

They broke apart, looking at each other through love-misted eyes, then fell into another embrace, while the small audience stirred and tittered.

Susan whispered, “You do it again, and I’ll skin you. As long as no one knows you still have it, no one will stop you. We’ll have it all within a year, if you follow directions.”

“Yes, dear,” whispered Johnny, humbly.