Desperate Games (8 page)

That morning Fawell found in his post the report that Zarratoff had sent to him from France. He immediately entrusted all the other letters to a secretary, and, alone in his presidential office, he started to read the document which he had been waiting for impatiently.

It was almost two years since the Ministry of Leisure Activities had undertaken the education of humanity, but the scope of the task was such that this period of time was not sufficient to assess the results.

An immense network of scientific culture embraced the world. Almost everywhere grand institutions had been set up, with amphitheatres which were sufficiently numerous and vast, that, by a skilfully organized rota, entire populations of towns and country areas could be seated in them in the course of one day. And they had libraries containing, in thousands of copies of books, everything that was needed to elevate the mind, from the rudiments of the sciences to the most up-to-date and most complex theories.

These centres were equally endowed with a considerable number of study rooms, micro-films, projection equipment and televisions, which allowed everyone to become familiar with infinite aspects of the universe. In laboratories equipped with the most modern instruments, each student could do their own experiments on atoms, causing them to split, follow the magic whirling of particles through betatrons and cyclotrons, and measure with extremely sensitive pieces of apparatus the periods of several billionths of a second which separate the birth and death of certain mesons.

The material funds required by the education department were truly gigantic. Even with the world’s wealth at their disposal, the government had had to work new wonders of ingenuity and rationalisation to find the necessary resources. But the goal
was worth the effort and the best brains had been successfully employed in the task.

The essential thing, of course, had not been neglected: an army of professors, masters and assistants, all highly qualified, had been mobilised and put at the disposal of the world’s students. Many of them had therefore to interrupt important research. They resigned themselves to the fact, when Fawell convinced them that there was no more urgent task and no higher duty than to pass on their knowledge to all, so that humanity, transformed into a breeding-ground for scholars, could realize its destiny. As the most qualified ones, the members of the government, could not, however, leave their posts, the President had decided that they would visit the new centres periodically, as advisers and inspectors, and could take advantage of their stay to hold high-level conferences in their special fields.

This is what Zarratoff, who was still in France, was doing, at one of the most important centres of astronomical studies. Fawell had asked him to convey his first impressions to him personally as soon as possible. He read the first report eagerly.

The first part concerned the setting up of the centre and the organisation of studies. Zarratoff found nothing in particular to criticise about these. Considerable effort had been taken, as everywhere, to make working conditions easier for the multitude of students, who flocked there each day, and sometimes came from remote regions. Networks of trains, airplanes and helicopters ensured fast and regular transport. All this functioned without a hitch. There was a large amount of equipment of the best quality. Several observatories with powerful telescopes and the most modern optical instruments allowed everyone to view distant worlds, photograph them and analyse the spectra and concentration of waves which mysterious and sometimes obscure bodies are constantly emitting into space. Both masters and their assistants were competent and dedicated.

Fawell passed rapidly over these achievements, which he already knew about, and his face grew sombre as he read what followed. Zarratoff expressed it in the following way:

‘“A lack of enthusiasm.” Betty would say,’ Fawell murmured bitterly, ‘Our worst enemy.’

‘At least one person will be satisfied with this lecture,’ Fawell commented in a low voice.

But the end of the report seemed to demonstrate that Zarratoff was not the only one to be pleased with his account, and the President’s forehead gradually cleared when he read the optimistic conclusion.

Fawell put the letter down again and remained pensive for a long time.

‘Passion and doing it justice,’ he murmured. ‘He’s right, as far as teaching is concerned. Zarratoff can do it, but few masters can. Far too many tend to present a very narrow view of their subject.

After having thought about the matter again, he judged that the moment had arrived when the highest scientific authorities should make their contributions. Yranne had just left for China for a tour like that of the astronomer. Absorbed with his duties and his presidential responsibilities, Fawell had not yet been able to plan any programme for himself. He reproached himself for neglecting it, and decided straight away to visit a centre for physics which had been established near New York and to deliver a lecture there. Postponing all his presidential duties, he began to prepare his topic immediately.

‘Read it,’ said Fawell.

An hour before, he had received the second report from Zarratoff and had asked Betty to come to his office, feeling the need to discuss it with her.

‘What’s the matter, Fawell?’ she asked, looking at him. ‘You look worried. Is it not as encouraging as the first?’

‘Read it,’ the President repeated, with a gloomy expression.

Betty read obediently, in a low voice.

‘“…I started with the vision with which I finished my previous lecture: the expanding universe, a body in which every molecule is moving away from every other molecule, and every galaxy from every other galaxy at a speed which is proportional to the distance which separates them. I thought it was a good idea to stress, in a way which I hope was striking, the
paradoxical, wonderful character, almost like a miracle, of this phenomenon.

‘“Well, feeling that they had a correct view of reality before them, I was able to tackle the problems which concern us, to enable them to have a sense of their importance and scale. First, going backwards against the flow of time, I talked to them in the following way, using the language of logic, which is the mother of creative imagination:

‘“If these galaxies are moving away from each other in this way today, it is clear that in a period before ours, they were closer together. If we go back far into the past, we will discover a body whose molecules have not yet been separated by great abysses of space. And if we go back even further in time, as far as our imagination will take us, we shall see these archipelagos very near to each other, pressed up close to each other, stars crashing against stars, atoms against atoms, in a universe which is strangely limited, with a remarkable concentration of matter, and of a density such that a cubic centimetre of this primitive magma could weigh some hundred million metric tons!

‘“In this way I attempted, by the use of suggestive images, to make the magic of our origins come alive again. It seems to me that no one can remain insensitive to the evocation of such phenomena. In fact no one breathed a word. This silence, which I interpreted as a sign of reverence, seemed to me to augur well, and, with my forehead bathed in sweat from my own emotion and from my efforts at communicating it to them, I was now convinced that the sublimation of interest predicted by Wells was being produced before my very eyes.

‘“I had taken them back in this way to the beginning of time. So I allowed myself to develop somewhat some of the theories which have been influenced by this hypothesis. I brought up Lemaître’s primitive atom, about which I quoted several phrases, suitable to encourage enthusiasm by virtue of its poetry, such as the following: ‘The evolution of the world
can be compared to a firework that has just died out. A few red fuses, ashes and some puffs of smoke. Standing on a little bit of grit which has cooled down a little bit more, we watch suns gently fading away and try to reconstruct the vanished splendour of worlds being formed.’
5
With this I noticed a kind of tremor in the amphitheatre, which managed to convince me that I had succeeded in stimulating their minds. So I mentioned briefly the improvements made by modern cosmologists which supported Lemaître’s hypothesis.

‘“After following the flow of time back to its source, I invited them to let themselves be carried along by it, to overtake it and direct their imagination towards the future. I showed them how galaxies were moving away from each other, more and more, faster and faster, so much so that the speed of this flight makes it impossible for us to receive the faintest signal from those galaxies which reach the final point: the speed of radiation. I pointed out to them that, in all probability, this had already happened to about ninety-nine per cent of galaxies, so that, even if techniques of astronomical observation had been perfected to an ideal degree, and even if our instruments lacked any defects, we could only observe one per cent of the total volume of the Universe, and this proportion was diminishing with each passing second. At this point I remained silent, feeling anxious myself at what I had evoked, as I wished them to be too when faced with the dramatic urgency of our situation: if we do not hurry, if science and technology do not progress by giant leaps, then we shall only be able to contemplate an infinitesimally small part of creation!

‘“Of course I related this expansion, this instability, to the brilliant ideas of Einstein and enabled them to perceive something of the majestic spatio-temporal edifice constructed by him, as well as the proliferation of theories based on his concepts. I concluded with a spectacular tableau of a pulsating universe, with contraction following dilation, until it returns to a state of phenomenal concentration, followed by a new explosion
marking the origin of another period of time and giving birth to another cycle…

‘“The sighs of a mythical heart, the heart of Divinity!… The comparison is to be found in Poe’s
Eureka
, the last pages of which I read to them. Perhaps I should apologise, but this cosmological poem has always inspired intense emotion in me. This has not been weakened by the dreadful commentaries made on the topic of Poe’s work by asses and one she-ass, and which I tried hard to communicate to them. Basing his ideas on inaccurate observations of his time, and being ignorant of all Einstein’s theories and of the expansion of the universe, as well as invoking laws of physics which were partially false, and using a sequence of imperfect reasoning, by what magic spell could Poe have come to a conception of creation which seems probable today to some of our greatest scholars? I let them reflect on this paradox.

‘“I can assure you, my dear friend, that I did everything I could to inspire them a little with the passion that animates us. I finished with a final quotation, the words of Einstein himself, ‘The cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.’

‘“This is what I did. I finished exhausted, but confident and full of hope. And yet…”’

‘So far,’ Betty commented, ‘I don’t see what makes you so sullen. It seems to me that his lecture was skilful, magisterial in the best sense of the word, imbued certainly with a certain mysticism, but we know Zarratoff: he has the soul of a poet. For the goal that we are pursuing, that does not seem to me to be a failing. What do you find fault with in it?’

‘Me? Nothing at all. Like you I consider his account to be excellent, even very fine. In fact I was enthusiastic about it from start to finish, although I knew the essential ideas in advance. As would many of our colleagues.’

‘But that would not have been the case for the others, would it?’

‘Finish reading,’ Fawell murmured, in a deeply despondent way.

‘“And yet, my dear friend,”’ continued Zarratoff, ‘“I have to report quite a painful incident, which left me with a rather unpleasant impression.

‘“I had left the amphitheatre, which was full to bursting, and where I had been received by applause, which, I can assure you, had nothing obligatory about it. Everyone looked at me with a bright expression. In two lectures, each three hours in length, I was pleased to have revived the atmosphere in the centre. I was even more hopeful when, half an hour later, after resting because I was out of breath, I had gone to the reception room, where I found a delegation of members of my audience. I had in fact told them that I would be there, ready to answer any questions that they might have for me.

‘“As I could not receive a large crowd, I asked them to collect their questions together and to send one or several delegates. There were about a dozen, who were probably representative of all the students. All seemed impatient to see me.

‘“I observed them closely, while congratulating them on their enthusiasm. As far as I could judge, they belonged to classes which were very different from those of the former society: workers, bosses, housewives, women of the world, ranging in age from sixteen to sixty. I rubbed my hands in appreciation of their diversity. Their faces seemed to me to be imbued with a fervour tinged with a kind of anxiety, which I attributed to mental tension due to being confronted by the new perspectives that I had shown them, and to the fear of letting some important detail escape them or of inadvertently going down the path of error…’”

‘I came to know that state of mind when I was a student,’ Betty commented.

‘Zarratoff knew it also. If he hadn’t known it, he wouldn’t have talked of it in that way. I have also known it, as have many
others among us,’ Fawell said in a dull voice. ‘Even nowadays I sometimes spend sleepless nights, bothered by such anxiety. Continue.’

‘“The first to speak must have been about fifty years old. He had the vigorous manner of a man used to having responsibilities. In fact, as I found out later, he used to belong to the class of directors, and, even after the revolution, he was considered worthy of holding an important post. He had a clear, practical mind, and he has been very useful to us in coordinating transport between different remote regions.

‘“However he started to speak to me with the timidity of a young schoolboy.

‘“‘Master,’ he said, ‘my question is probably evidence of great ignorance, but… I would like to know.’

‘“At that point his voice trembled and he paused for a moment. I asked him to continue quite openly, saying that curiosity and the thirst for knowledge would absolve him of any kind of stupidity in advance. So he continued with greater confidence:

‘“‘It’s like this. It’s a question which has been worrying me for a long time and the answer to it is probably quite clear to you, Master. I’d like to know if the reigning planet…’

‘“‘The
reigning
planet?’ I interrupted, taken aback.

‘“‘Sometimes it’s called
ruling
,’ he said. ‘I would like to know if the influence of the ruling planet when it’s in the
ascendant
can be affected when it is in conjunction with one of the galaxies which fill the sky and which you sketched out in such a wonderful tableau.’

‘“I leave you to imagine, my dear friend, my concern, when, after a few moments of astonishment, I realised what he was thinking about: horoscopes and astrology. It was the only aspect of the subject which had fascinated him. I had no time to reply to him. There was already a woman, a woman this time from a humble background, who was pushing her way through the
rows of people. She prostrated herself in front of me before nervously spreading out on the floor a sheet of paper covered with diagrams. She begged me to examine it and tell her if the horoscope of her birth was correct. She had had it made by a renowned astrologist, but she guessed, after having listened to me, that there must be more things in the heavens than astrologers were aware of, and that a scholar like me could predict her fate with greater certainty and in more detail.

‘“And all the others were in the same state of mind, that is to say that their brains were crammed full to bursting, infested with ‘houses’, ‘luminaries’, ‘ascendants’, ‘themes’ and with ‘signs’ of good or bad fortune. Horoscopes were the only topic which, without the word ever being mentioned, they considered worthy of deeper explanation by me. They all started talking at once, waving diagrams around and subjecting me to a mass of crazy and anxious questions concerning shameless tall stories with which charlatans used to nurture the hopes of the people in former times. They used these stories to acquire considerable influence over the masses, an influence which, my experience seems to prove, has not diminished since the scientific revolution. That was the reason for the bright expressions and the trembling that I had noticed. They were expecting me to complement or correct the predictions of sorcerers!

‘“I leave it to you, my dear friend, to interpret this incident in a suitable way. I am too disturbed this evening to do it myself.

‘“There are only a few things left for me to add. I tried to regain my calm and make them aware of their folly. I invoked the arguments which you know and which we know to be irrefutable. They listened to me politely, without interrupting me, but it was clear that I was gradually losing the prestige that my eloquence might have gained for me. Personally, as I became aware of the abyss that separated us, I did not feel very persuasive. When I stopped speaking, the man who had spoken first said to me, shaking his head:

‘“‘Anyway, such a person probably died in the third month of the year, as his horoscope predicted.’

‘“There was no point in citing calculations concerning probability to him. I finished by leaving the group and they withdrew with their heads down, leaving me disheartened…”’

‘And there you have it,’ said Fawell. ‘Do you understand now why you do not find me in a triumphant mood?’

He seemed to be so confused that she avoided all criticism and tried to comfort him.

‘Don’t you think that perhaps diversions of this sort are necessary?’ she said.

And she quoted some remarks by Kepler: ‘If someone had not had the credulous hope of being able to read the future in the heavens, would you have ever been wise enough to study astronomy for its own sake?’ But Fawell’s disappointment was so great that nothing was able to dispel his bad mood.

‘An abyss between them and us, is what Zarratoff wrote!’

‘It’s only one point of view though. Another sounding could yield a more encouraging result.’

‘I myself have made another sounding,’ said Fawell, becoming even grimmer. ‘I also gave a lecture. I chose a very broad topic: the structure and unity of matter. I don’t want to repeat what I said in my class to you, but I can assure you that, like Zarratoff, I called on all my resources to stimulate at least some interest, not to say passion… It was a classic class, but I tried to spice it up, showing them the great divisions in matter, molecules, atoms and finally its unity, matter being made up, in the final analysis, solely of particles which are completely alike… They understood the last point well enough, oh they understood it all right!

‘Again like Zarratoff I made myself available after the class. And like him, I was glad to see quite a large number come to me as a delegation. And do you know the one question which they put to me? All of them, the same one?’