A Touch of Infinity (2 page)

“Not Brooklyn. Not even Staten Island. The kid would have turned up by now. It's damn peculiar that you put the thing together and now you can't tell me what it's supposed to do.”

“I know what it's supposed to do,” Hepplemeyer said apologetically. “It's supposed to bend space.”

“Does it?”

“Probably.”

“I have four policemen who are willing to go through the hoop—volunteers. Would you agree?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Space is a peculiar thing, or perhaps not a thing at all,” the professor replied, with the difficulty a scientist always has when he attempts to verbalize an abstraction to the satisfaction of a layman. “Space is not something we understand.”

“We've been to the moon.”

“Exactly. It's an uncomfortable place. Suppose the boy is on the moon.”

“Is he?”

“I don't know. He could be on Mars. Or he could be a million miles short of Mars. I would not want to subject four policemen to that.”

So with the simple ingeniousness or ingenuousness of a people who love animals, they put a dog through the loop. It disappeared.

For the next few weeks, a police guard was placed around the hoop day and night, while the professor spent most of his days in court and most of his evenings with his lawyers. He found time, however, to meet with the mayor three times.

New York City was blessed with a mayor whose problems were almost matched by his personality, his wit, and imagination. If Professor Hepplemeyer dreamed of space and infinity, the Mayor dreamed as consistently of ecology, garbage, and finances. Thus it is not to be wondered at that the Mayor came up with a notion that promised to change history.

“We try it with a single garbage truck,” the Mayor begged Hepplemeyer. “If it works, it might mean a third Nobel Prize.”

“I don't want another Nobel Prize. I didn't deserve the first two. My guilts are sufficient.”

“I can persuade the Board of Estimate to pay the damages on the Silverman case.”

“Poor boy—will the Board of Estimate take care of my guilt?”

“It will make you a millionaire.”

“The last thing I want to be.”

“It's your obligation to mankind,” the Mayor insisted.

“The college will never permit it.”

“I can fix it with Columbia,” the Mayor said.

“It's obscene,” Hepplemeyer said desperately. And then he surrendered, and the following day a loaded garbage truck backed up across the campus to the hoop.

It does not take much to make a happening in Fun City, and since it is also asserted that there is nothing so potent as an idea whose time has come, the Mayor's brilliant notion spread through the city like wildfire. Not only were the network cameras there, not only the local and national press, not only ten or twelve thousand students and other curious city folk, but also the kind of international press that usually turns out only for major international events. Which this was, for certainly the talent for producing garbage was generic to mankind and perhaps the major function of mankind, as G.B.S. had once indelicately remarked; and certainly the disposal of the said garbage was a problem all mankind shared.

So the cameras whirred, and fifty million eyes were glued to television screens as the big Sanitation truck backed into position. As a historical note, we remember that Ralph Vecchio was the driver and Tony Andamano his assistant. Andamano stood in the iris of history, so to speak, directing Vecchio calmly and efficiently:

“Come back, Ralphy—a little more—just cut it a little. Nice and easy. Come back. Come back. You got another twelve, fourteen inches. Slow—great. Hold it there. All right.”

Professor Hepplemeyer stood by the Mayor, muttering under his breath as the dumping mechanism reared the great body back on its haunches—and then the garbage began to pour through the hoop. Not a sound was heard from the crowd as the first flood of garbage poured through the hoop; but then, when the garbage disappeared into infinity or Mars or space or another galaxy, such a shout of triumph went up as was eminently proper to the salvation of the human race.

Heroes were made that day. The Mayor was a hero. Tony Andamano was a hero. Ralph Vecchio was a hero. But above all, Professor Hepplemeyer, whose fame was matched only by his gloom, was a hero. How to list his honors? By a special act of Congress, the Congressional Medal of Ecology was created; Hepplemeyer got it. He was made a Kentucky Colonel and an honorary citizen of Japan and Great Britain. Japan immediately offered him ten million dollars for a single hoop, an overall contract of a billion dollars for one hundred hoops. Honorary degrees came from sixteen universities, and the city of Chicago upped Japan's offer to twelve million dollars for a single hoop. With this, the bidding between and among the cities of the United States became frantic, with Detroit topping the list with an offer of one hundred million dollars for the first—or second, to put it properly—hoop constructed by Hepplemeyer. Germany asked for the principle, not the hoop, only the principle behind it, and for this they were ready to pay half a billion marks, gently reminding the professor that the mark was generally preferred to the dollar.

At breakfast, Hepplemeyer's wife reminded him that the dentist's bill was due, twelve hundred dollars for his new brace.

“We only have seven hundred and twenty-two dollars in the bank.” The professor sighed. “Perhaps we should take a loan.”

“No, no. No indeed. You are putting me on,” his wife said.

The professor, a quarter of a century behind in his slang, observed her with some bewilderment.

“The German offer,” she said. “You don't even have to build the wretched thing. All they want is the principle.”

“I have often wondered whether it is not ignorance after all but rather devotion to the principle of duality that is responsible for mankind's aggravation.”

“What?”

“Duality.”

“Do you like the eggs? I got them at the Pioneer supermarket. They're seven cents cheaper, grade A.”

“Very good,” the professor said.

“What on earth is duality?”

“Everything—the way we think. Good and bad. Right and wrong. Black and white. My shirt, your shirt. My country, your country. It's the way we think. We never think of one, of a whole, of a unit. The universe is outside of us. It never occurs to us that we are it.”

“I don't truly follow you,” his wife replied patiently, “but does that mean you're not going to build any more hoops?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Which means you are sure.”

“No, it only means that I am not sure. I have to think about it.”

His wife rose from the table, and the professor asked her where she was going.

“I'm not sure. I'm either going to have a migraine headache or jump out of the window. I have to think about it too.”

The only one who was absolutely and unswervingly sure of himself was the Mayor of New York City. For eight years he had been dealing with unsolvable problems, and there was no group in the city, whether a trade union, neighborhood organization, consumers' group, or Boy Scout troop which had not selected him as the whipping boy. At long last his seared back showed some signs of healing, and his dedication to the hoop was such that he would have armed his citizenry and thrown up barricades if anyone attempted to touch it or interfere with it. Police stood shoulder to shoulder around it, and morning, evening, noon, and night an endless procession of garbage trucks backed across the Columbia College quadrangle to the hoop, emptying their garbage.

So much for the moment. But the lights burned late in the offices of the City Planners as they sat over their drawing boards and blueprints, working out a system for all sewers to empty into the hoop. It was a high moment indeed, not blighted one iota by the pleas of the mayors of Yonkers, Jersey City, and Hackensack to get into the act.

The Mayor stood firm. There was not one hour in the twenty-four hours of any given day, not one minute in the sixty minutes that comprise an hour, when a garbage truck was not backing up to the hoop and discharging its cargo. Tony Andamano, appointed to the position of inspector, had a permanent position at the hoop, with a staff of assistants to see that the garbage was properly discharged into infinity.

Of course, it was only to be expected that there would be a mounting pressure, first local, then nationwide, then worldwide, for the hoop to be taken apart and minutely reproduced. The Japanese, so long expert at reproducing and improving anything the West put together, were the first to introduce that motion into the United Nations, and they were followed by half a hundred other nations. But the Mayor had already had his quiet talk with Hepplemeyer, more or less as follows, if Hepplemeyer's memoirs are to be trusted:

“I want it straight and simple, Professor. If they take it apart, can they reproduce it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they don't know the mathematics. It's not an automobile transmission, not at all.”

“Naturally. Is there any chance that they can reproduce it?”

“Who knows?”

“I presume that you do,” the Mayor said. “Could you reproduce it?”

“I made it.”

“Will you?”

“Perhaps. I have been thinking about it.”

“It's a month now.”

“I think slowly,” the professor said.

Whereupon the Mayor issued his historic statement, namely: “Any attempt to interfere with the operation of the hoop will be considered as a basic attack upon the constitutional property rights of the City of New York, and will be resisted with every device, legal and otherwise, that the city has at its disposal.”

The commentators immediately launched into a discussion of what the Mayor meant by otherwise, while the Governor, never beloved of the Mayor, filed suit in the Federal Court in behalf of all the municipalities of New York State. NASA, meanwhile, scoffing at the suggestion that there were scientific secrets unsolvable, turned its vast battery of electronic brains onto the problem; and the Russians predicted that they would have their own hoop within sixty days. Only the Chinese appeared to chuckle with amusement, since most of their garbage was recycled into an organic mulch and they were too poor and too thrifty to be overconcerned with the problem. But the Chinese were too far away for their chuckles to mollify Americans, and the tide of anger rose day by day. From hero and eccentric, Professor Hepplemeyer was fast becoming scientific public enemy number one. He was now publicly accused of being a Communist, a madman, an egomaniac, and a murderer to boot.

“It is uncomfortable,” Hepplemeyer admitted to his wife; since he eschewed press conferences and television appearances, his admissions and anxieties usually took place over the breakfast table.

“I have known for thirty years how stubborn you are. Now, at least, the whole world knows.”

“No, it's not stubbornness. As I said, it's a matter of duality.”

“Everyone else thinks it's a matter of garbage. You still haven't paid the dentist bill. It's four months overdue now. Dr. Steinman is suing us.”

“Come, now. Dentists don't sue.”

“He says that potentially you are the richest man on earth, and that justifies his suit.”

The professor was scribbling on his napkin. “Remarkable,” he said. “Do you know how much garbage they've poured into the hoop already?”

“Do you know that you could have a royalty on every pound? A lawyer called today who wants to represent—”

“Over a million tons,” he interrupted. “Imagine, over a million tons of garbage. What wonderful creatures we are! For centuries philosophers sought a teleological explanation for mankind, and it never occurred to any of them that we are garbage makers, no more, no less.”

“He mentioned a royalty of five cents a ton.”

“Over a million tons,” the professor said thoughtfully. “I wonder where it is.”

It was three weeks later to the day, at five-twenty in the morning, that the first crack appeared in the asphalt paving of Wall Street. It was the sort of ragged fissure that is not uncommon in the miles of city streets, nothing to arouse notice, much less alarm, except that in this case it was not static. Between five-twenty and eight-twenty, it doubled in length, and the asphalt lips of the street had parted a full inch. The escaping smell caught the notice of the crowds hurrying to work, and word went around that there was a gas leak.

By ten o'clock, the Con Edison trucks were on the scene, checking the major valves, and by eleven, the police had roped off the street, and the lips of the crack, which now extended across the entire street, were at least eight inches apart. There was talk of an earthquake, yet when contacted, Fordham University reported that the seismograph showed nothing unusual—oh, perhaps some very slight tremors, but nothing unusual enough to be called an earthquake.

When the streets filled for the noon lunch break, a very distinct and rancid smell filled the narrow cavern, so heavy and unpleasant that half a dozen more sensitive stomachs upchucked; and by one o'clock, the lips of the crack were over a foot wide, water mains had broken, and Con Edison had to cut its high-voltage lines. At two-ten, the first garbage appeared.

The first garbage just oozed out of the cut, but within the hour the break was three feet wide, buildings had begun to slip and show cracks and shower bricks, and the garbage was pouring into Wall Street like lava from an erupting volcano. The offices closed, the office workers fled, brokers, bankers, and secretaries alike wading through the garbage. In spite of all the efforts of the police and the fire department, in spite of the heroic rescues of the police helicopter teams, eight people were lost in the garbage or trapped in one of the buildings; and by five o'clock the garbage was ten stories high in Wall Street and pouring into Broadway at one end and onto the East River Drive at the other. Now, like a primal volcano, the dams burst, and for an hour the garbage fell on lower Manhattan as once the ashes had fallen on Pompeii.