What Thin Partitions (20 page)

I still thought it was because I was too busy!

The hull of the spaceship was well on its way to taking form before I realized-that in the midst of all my headaches, there had not been the nuisance of trying to find a zillion experts. Now no matter how much of a genius a man may be, he can't know everything. A genius, perhaps more than anybody else, would want experts around if for no more than to check his work. It took me quite a while to realize that there was such a radical departure from all previous concepts of space flight that experts would simply be still more nuisance.

Well, George was the one who had to fly it. Let him plan it.

There was the nuisance also of trying to explain to our Public Relations Department, so they could explain to the Press, why the designs of a certain animated-cartoon manufacturer were not being followed in building our spaceship. No one else seemed to care whether Public Relations, and the Press, got an answer to this important question.

But how could I explain that maybe a cartoonist didn't really know everything there was to know about designing a real spaceship? The public would never accept that. They had already accepted the cartoon design, and that was what they expected to see. They were paying for it, weren't they?

How could I explain something I didn't understand myself? For it didn't look like a spaceship to me, either. If anything, it more closely resembled a small apartment building!

One entered what was obviously a basement. You mean to tell me that small space off to the side is going to be the entire control room? Yes, I can see these are storage bins and closets, but if this thing should work won't you want to take it to the Moon? Maybe Mars and Venus? Where are you going to store enough food, and oxygen, and water? To say nothing of the thousand other necessities? Or, I suppose this is only a test model"

None of the answers Logart gave me were satisfactory. All seemed to boil down to not worrying my pretty little head about it. As for power units, well, Jennie really didn't take up much room, did she? There was a twinkle in his eye as he asked it, so I knew he was kidding. I hoped.

There was a shaft running upward, through the center of the ceiling, but no elevator in it. A small flight of metal stairs wound around the open shaft, for ordinary people, like myself, to climb to the upper decks. On the first floor there were five apartments, small but as comfortably and completely equipped as a good house trailer. The second floor had an additional five apartments, and that was all.

This was a spaceship?

I preferred not to think about it. Of course I knew it wasn't going to be powered by any such thing as Jennie sitting over in a corner and psiing earnestly. Dr. Auerbach had already completed one large cylinder, about the size of a thirty-gallon water heater, and had delivered it to the laboratory building which Logart had demanded.

I didn't have to wonder very long whether Jennie and Swami, under Logart's specialized teaching, could make the cylinders work.

It was one mid-morning when I was on my way over from our regular plant to the section housing the space ship. Over to my right I saw the one-time residence, now Logart's laboratory, lift up off its foundations and float about a foot into the air. There was the rending sound of torn masonry, torn plumbing and sewer pipes, electrical wiring. Water started gushing out of the pipes, and as I ran toward the building, I remember being thankful there were no gas lines.

The house settled back down slowly, but not quite straight, on its foundations. I ran up to the front door and pounded frantically on the panel. After a moment, Logart came and opened the door a mere crack.

"Yes?” he asked, as if I were a house-to-house salesman.

"It floated up into the air,” I gasped.

"Yes?” There was still a question in his voice. What did I want?

"It broke your watermains’ sewer connections, electrical wiring,” I said lamely.

"Oh, yes,” he answered a little absently.” I suppose it did. Would you be good enough to get them fixed, Kennedy"” he asked. He closed the door.

More nuisance.

A little later that morning, I saw the lift truck go over to the laboratory, and pick up the cylinder which had now been shunted out on the porch. From the way it lifted, I knew the cylinder was now inert. I didn't ask how it got out on the porch. There were five husky young men, besides Swami and Logart, in that building. I was sure they could have managed to get it out on the porch ... somehow.

The lift truck carried the cylinder over to the ship-I still kept thinking of it as a compact apartment building-and installed it in a rack on the north wall of the basement. There were similar racks on each of the other three walls, and Auerbach was completing, on order, three more such cylinders. I supposed there was some psientific reason for it. I had given up inquiring about it.

By now I was in a state of perpetual shock, partly from overwork and overworry about too many nuisances, partly because I understood just enough to understand that I didn't know anything at all.

Such items, for example, as:

Logart had insisted on a special formula of metal alloy to be made up in bars about the size of bricks. The idea seemed to be to pack as many molecules in as small a space as possible. I ventured, one day, to ask what they were for.

"Jennie-Swami's powers are limited,” Logart said, a little sadly I thought. “They need molecules of some kind; can't make food, water, other things, out of nothing."

"Of course not,” I said. I vaguely wondered what the term “other things” might cover. But I was past normal curiosity about anything. I didn't bother to ask.

"Swami's prescience is irregular,” he said. “Your idea of increasing psi powers through hypnotism has its limits."

In these hectic months I had completely forgotten my intent to attempt hypnotism on psi. Apparently Logart hadn't.

"We don't know what we may need before we come to matter again,” he went on.

"Of course not,” I agreed.

"So it's well to have plenty of molecules on hand,” he said.

"Of course,” I said. As if from forgotten childhood there came the memory of a fairy story about Little Three-Eyes, “Little table appear,” she would say, and there would be a table laden with all the delicacies a hungry child can visualize. “Little table go away,” she would say when she had eaten, and that took care of the automatic dishwasher problem. Three-Eyes? The third eye a psisense organ? The story founded on fact in some dim past? At the moment, it seemed to make their human needs all easy of fulfillment.

At the moment I didn't realize I was in a complete daze to the point that I would have readily agreed that when they grew hungry all they'd have to do is slice off a piece of the green-cheese moon.

The alloy bricks were completed and stacked in the “basement” until only corridors remained. The workmen doing it seemed never to have had any curiosity. Our Public Relations Department had failed completely with the Press, and the Press had settled in their own minds that the whole thing was a hoax. A congressional committee had promised to investigate the Pentagon's folly.

By now everyone had ceased to be curious. This was not unexpected on the part of the public. Conditioned by newspapers and television commentators to a new shock at least every three days, they responded by losing interest in anything after about three days. But it was surprising that those of us deeply involved should stop questioning.

I remember one curious conversation around this time. I didn't give it enough reflection at the time, possibly because it was with Swami, whose attitudes and opinions I respected least.

He came into my office with a sort of hang-dog look on his face and said he wanted to talk with me, to explain something to me.

"I don't-none of us want you to feel hurt,” he said. “Afterwards."

"Afterwards what?” I asked.

"After this is all over."

"What am I not to feel hurt about?"

"Even explaining it is going to hurt you."

"Look, fellow,” I said with a slight exasperation. “I've been at this game of dealing with human beings for a long time. I've been insulted in just about ever way the mind of man can conceive. I've been lied to, cheated, double-crossed, lied about, and had the truth told about me. I've survived. I expect I can survive what you have to say."

"I suppose,” he said slowly, “you've got a vocabulary of around twenty-five thousand words."

"More or less, perhaps,” I conceded.

"And an equally large vocabulary of word combinations, and then another block of phrase combinations, so that all told you're probably capable of around a hundred thousand concepts. Say a hundred thousand for the sake of argument."

"For the sake of argument,” I agreed.

"Suppose you found yourself living with a band of great apes who have a vocabulary of grunts, growls, roars, whistles, and chest beatings that number up to a hundred concepts. The ratio is a thousand to one, isn't it?"

I started to tell him he should have been a mathematician, but the look of sadness in his big black eyes stopped me.

"But for all your disproportionate ratio of concepts,” he said, “you can still be hurt, get sick, feel a mosquito bite, get too cold, too hot, too hungry. You can only communicate to the limit of their hundred concepts. They judge you within these hundred concepts. They have no way of knowing or appreciating this vast number you can't communicate. To them you are a pretty worthless creature. You can't overpower them in a fight, you don't take an interest in their she-apes and fight over them, you don't try to become master of the herd because it wouldn't interest you, you don't appreciate the delicacies of the grubs to be found under the bark of rotting trees; you're puny, sickly, and obviously you are also cowardly by their standards."

"But I've got a hundred thousand concepts-which makes me superior to them,” I said.

"No,” he disagreed. “Not superior, because what standard are you going by? Theirs, or yours""

"Different then,” I said.

"Different,” he answered. “That's the point. Now suppose you found a group of human beings, your equals. Suppose you found a way to escape from the tribe of apes, to set up a community of human beings, so that your hundred thousand concepts had value. More important, so that you could start using them, and all they mean. Wouldn't you do it?"

"We're talking about psi, of course,” I said, “and I see the analogy. But suppose the apes recognized my difference, recognized that I could think in areas denied to them. Suppose, for example, they saw the relation of the rotting tree to a supply of grubs under its bark. Suppose they tried to use my extra concepts, asked me to figure out a way to make more trees fall so there could be more grubs?"

"Would you really care?” he asked. “All right, suppose they invented another grunt which was a recognition of your difference. So now they've got a vocabulary of a hundred and one concepts. As against your hundred thousand, would it make much difference to you?"

"Look, Swami,” I said earnestly. “I've been trying to understand your psi talents. Not just to recognize them, but to understand them. All of them. I'm trying to find a way to bring them under scientific scrutiny, to work out an approach to the natural laws governing them, measure them, control them, predict them. They're real, they work-somewhere, in some way, they are a part of natural law. Man can understand natural law, if he tries. That's science."

He shook his head.

"A long time ago,” he said, “we had a conversation along this line. I was offended then, and scared. I gave you some metaphysical mumbo jumbo. But my feelings, my psi feelings if you will, were sound. Maybe I can express it better this time. The flaw lies in what you call scientific method. Yes, psi is a part of natural law, but scientific method, as you conceive it, can't get hold of it. There has to be ... There has to be..."

He paused. Obviously he was trying to find a grunt, whistle, or chest thump which was in my vocabulary.

"Let's go to another analogy,” he said.

"Let's,” I agreed.

"Suppose an ancient Greek philosopher met up with a modern solar scientist. Suppose this ancient Greek said to the solar scientist. ‘Tell me about the sun.’ The solar scientist starts sketching in his basic knowledge of the sun. ‘No, no!’ the ancient Greek objects. ‘Don't give me all that vague and mystical mumbo jumbo. That doesn't mean anything to me. Tell me how many wheels Apollo's chariot has, how many horses draw it across the sky, what metal the chariot is made of, what its dimensions are, what figures are embossed on its doors. Be scientific, man!’ What could the solar scientist say?"

"In short,” I said, “our science, in trying to measure psi, get a description of it, is like trying to measure a chariot that doesn't exist, driven by a god who doesn't exist."

"Yes."

"But psi does exist."

"The sun exists,” he said. “It is the framework of approach to knowledge, to measurement that is wrong. Man couldn't learn anything more about the sun until he quit thinking in terms of Apollo's chariot."

It was an impasse. I couldn't give up my scientific approach to knowledge-any more than the ancient Greek could give up his certainty that Apollo drove his chariot across the sky.

As I say, I remembered the conversation, but I didn't reflect on it enough. I interpreted it as just Swami wanting to talk to somebody, maybe build up his stock in my eyes since, obviously, I respected Jennie and George more than I did him. I didn't realize at the time that it was a kind of valedictory-from all of them.

I was much more concerned with the pressures of details that were weighing me down, and I fear my main reaction at the moment was irritation at the twenty minutes he'd taken up when other things were much more urgent.

Urgencies, for example, such as the details of their mass wedding. It didn't occur to me until much later that almost a year had passed since their announcement that they were going to get married-Annie and Swami, the boys and their girls. I'd not thought much about it, and if I did have a vague wonder now and then, I'd put the delay down to their being under white-hot pressures, too.