MacRoscope (19 page)

“Interference!” she said, seeing it. “To prevent someone else’s program from getting through!”

“That’s the way I figure it. Must be something pretty valuable, to warrant all that trouble.”

“Yes. But it could be something philosophic or long-range. We need an immediate remedy. Something impossible, like an inertial nullifier or instantaneous transport — and that simply isn’t going to happen.”

“I thought I’d give it a try.”

Thus they oriented on Neptune, economy route. It was as good a long-range destination as any. As the vessel turned and began its steady drive toward the sun — actually a cometlike ellipse that would carry it within the orbit of Mercury and out again into space — Ivo gave it his try. He did not need to be concerned about the irregular shifts and pauses in acceleration (designed to confuse the pursuit) because the destroyer was everywhere, always in focus.

No, the alien signal was not difficult to locate. He knew its frequency — or, more aptly, its quality — and it was easier to drift into it than to avoid it. But he felt the perspiration on his body as he aligned the great receptor and allowed the pattern to develop. It was death he was toying with: the potential death of his mind, and perhaps with it, his body.

It came: the same devastating series whose terminus abolished intellect. The pictures built rapidly into symbolic concepts, the concepts into meaning…

Why did it always hit in sequence? Even if it were a recorded, endlessly repeating program, one would expect to pick it up randomly, beginning in the middle or at the end as often as at the introduction. How could it act on the recipient in the ordered manner it did, no matter when he peeked?

He broke the contact with a convulsion of the fingers that threw him far into the static of fringe reception and waited a few seconds. Then he approached again.

The sequence picked up at the beginning, but not as it had been before. This was even faster, spinning through constructions at the maximum rate he could assimilate them. It was as though it were a review of familiar material — as indeed it was.

Startled, he broke again, glad that at least his prior experience had given him the strength to cut it off in mid-showing. Could it be adjusted to him, personally? A signal fifteen thousand years in the transition? The notion was ridiculous!

He reconnected — and the review was so swift as to be perfunctory. Then, as he reached the point at which he had cut it off the first time, it slowed, and a more sedate series resumed. This was, however, still faster than the version he had seen at the station.

Once more he broke, alarmed by the implication as much as by the deadly series. This was not, could not be a recording in any normal sense. It was more like a — a programmed text. A series of lessons embodying their own feedback so that the pupil could constantly check himself and rethink his errors. Inanimate, yet governed by the capability of the student. Such a text was the closest approach of the printed word to an animate teacher, just as a programmed machine-instructor approached sentience without consciousness. It was the
student’s
burgeoning comprehension of the material that animated the machine or text and gave the illusion of awareness.

Strange that this had not occurred to him before! Yet it was implicit in the groundwork for the program. One had to comprehend the distinction between—

What a mind-expanding thing this was! Already the concepts of the program were spilling over into his human framework. The concepts were real, they were relevant, to himself and to the universe. Philosophy, psychology — even astrology were assuming new significance for him, as he fitted their postulates into his increasing comprehension.

“Afra,” he said, closing his eyes to the fascinating sequence.

She was there. “Yes, Ivo.”

“Is it possible to — to say something in such a way that it — that all possible—”

“That it applies to many situations?” she suggested, trying to help him.

“No. To
all
situations. I mean, so it is true no matter how you use it. True for a person, true for a rock, true for a smell, true for an idea—”

“Figuratively, perhaps. ‘Good’ might apply to all of these, or ‘unusual.’ But those are subjective values—”

“Yes! Involving the student. But objective too, so that everyone agrees. Everyone who understands.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, Ivo. It is impossible to have complete agreement while retaining individuality. The two are contradictory.”

“Not — personality. In learning framework. In comprehension. So anyone who understands — this — can understand anything. By applying the guidelines. A — a programmed mind, I think.”

“That almost sounds like the Unified Field Theory extended to cover psychology.”

“I don’t know. What does—”

“Albert Einstein’s lifework. He spent his last twenty-five years trying to reduce the physical laws of the universe to a unified formulation. In this way gravity, magnetism and atomic interactions could all be derived as special cases of the basic statement. The practical applications of such a system would be immense.”

“So that the theorems of one could be adapted to any other?”

“I believe so, if you thought of it that way.”

“Like adapting astronomy to human psychology? And to music and art and love?”

“I really don’t—” Once more the pause that portended trouble. “Are you taking up Harold’s line?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, the macroscope has it.”

“The Unified Field? Are you sure?”

“The whole thing. The set of concepts that apply to our entire experience, whoever or whatever we are.”

She pondered before answering. “That might be the key to the universe, Ivo.”

“No. It’s the mind-destroyer concept. I don’t quite follow it all yet, but a few more runthroughs—”

“Stop!” she cried. “Stay away from that!”

Was the anguish in her voice for him, or for the fate of the macroscope if he should fail? “I don’t mean that I’ll ride it to the… end. Just far enough to—”

“Just far enough to get hooked. Find some other way. Circle around it. Leapfrog it.”

“I can’t. I have to comprehend before I can go on. Otherwise I won’t be able to apply those advanced concepts.”

“Advanced con — Mindlessness!”

“I see it now. Things our species has never dreamed of. Concepts that supersede our realities. But I have to nullify this — this destructive aspect first, or I can never move on.”

“Ivo, you can’t control a fire by cooking yourself in it. You have to handle it remotely, never actually touching. The — the others tried to bathe in it—”

“I don’t think the information
has
to destroy. It’s many-faceted. If I can come at the right angle—”

“Ivo,” she said persuasively, and her voice gave him adolescent shivers. “Ivo, did you have to comprehend the mathematical theory of the sprouts game before you could win the tournament?”

“No. That’s — I just see the right course a step at a time, like a road through a forest, and I win. I don’t know anything about the math, really.”

“Then why do you feel you have to comprehend the destroyer? Isn’t it enough to know what to avoid and to pass it by, a step at a time? Think of it as a bad move, Ivo. A tantalizing but losing strategy. Skip it and go on to the next.”

He thought about it. “I suppose I could do that.”

“Just hold off the comprehension. Blind yourself to the fire. Shield your mind so that you can get beyond it.”

“Yes, I think I can. But everything I pick up on that basis — it will be like wiring a radio together from a diagram, without knowing anything about its principle of operation. Connect Lead A to Terminal B. It isn’t true knowledge.”

“Not many of us have true knowledge, Ivo. One of the things about civilization is that it is far too complex for every person to master every trade. We must skim the surface of things, we must turn dials, we must memorize procedures without thinking — we exist upon derivatives, yet it is enough. We have to accept the fact that none of us will ever or can ever grasp more than a tiny fraction of the knowledge and nature of our culture. It isn’t
necessary
to comprehend — just to accept.”

Again he marveled. Was this the sharp-tongued woman who had so recently bickered sarcastically with Groton? Which facet reflected the essence of her?

But all he said was: “Schön could comprehend.”

“You resent him, I know — just as I sometimes resented Brad. But such feelings are pointless. Each of us has to accept his place in the scheme of life, or the entire structure will collapse. Each of us has to be like Sandburg’s nail.”

“Whose nail?”

“The great nail that holds the skyscraper together. It seems a lowly task, but it is just as important as that of the pinnacle.”

“So I’m as important as Schön?”

“Of course, Ivo.”

“Even though Schön might bring Brad back, while I certainly can’t?”

There was no sound from her, and he was immediately sorry he had said it.

After what seemed like a very long time she spoke. “I’m sorry. I was mouthing platitudes. I’m not as objective as my preachments.”

He had liked the platitude better than the fact. “I’ll — I think I can get some of the information. Whatever it is. Without understanding it. I’ll try, anyway.”

“Thank you, Ivo.”

But she made him take a break then, while she saw about changing Brad’s soiled clothing again and feeding him: with a spoon, as with a baby. “I can do that,” Beatryx offered, but Afra would not give up the task.

Then the four of them ate: cold concentrates from the supplies. It was a somber occasion, since no one expected any real breakthrough via the macroscope and Brad’s presence morbidly illustrated the danger in trying. The flight from the torus had been a spectacular gesture, but unrealistic. How could they physically escape from physical pursuit, however much theory they might attain? Their equipment could do it, but not their frail bodies.

Ivo, rested, took up the goggles and controls once more. He knew he had some exceedingly intricate maneuvering to do, because the mind-destroyer was a monstrous sun drawing him into its inferno. He had to approach it, and skirt it, and travel beyond — without getting burned.

In much the same fashion, the group of them had to approach and skirt the sun, on the way to Neptune, while avoiding the opposite menace of the UN pursuit. Another common denominator.

The symbolic patterns formed, leaping through the deadly sequence. Now if only he could follow their import without committing himself to the full denouement—

If he could only, somehow, find a way to survive a sustained ten gravities acceleration, so that they could outrun the robot—

To obtain the answer without absorbing the meaning. To use the voltage without being electrocuted. To remain selectively ignorant. To draw the honey without getting stung.

Again and again he broke the contact, feeling too great a comprehension. The progression was so logical! Every step widened his horizons, prepared him for the one ahead, and induced a savage taste for completion. It was a siren call, luring him in though he knew it was disaster… Yet he was gaining on it, developing, if not an immunity, a resistive callus in his brain. Each approach brought him farther without plumbing the uncontrolled depths. The trick was to keep control of his own reception, to keep it braked, not let the alien program take over entirely. He was becoming automatically blind to key portions, building a barrier—

And it had him. The immense gravity of that conceptual body caught him before he could break again and drew him into itself irresistibly. He knew too much! He had skirted too close, become too familiar, so that his slower intelligence had overcome the cognitive inhibition. He could not draw back from the pyre of that denouement.

Down, unable anymore to resist…

And the universe exploded.

That act of friendship had been enough: he survived, when he would have died. It was as though he had passed through purgatory and been exonerated after almost succumbing; his vision of Hell was behind him.

Though not at all well, he left the ship and set off for home on foot. It was a long walk from the Virginia coast to Macon, Georgia. He arrived March 15, 1865, to spend three months convalescing from St. Anthony’s. Fire.

And in that time of personal recovery from the physical misery of headaches, vomiting, chills and fever, his emotions suffered blows as well. Macon fell to the Union army under General Wilson on April 20, and too soon thereafter President Jefferson Davis himself was taken in the same vicinity. Hope dwindled and expired; the war was lost.

Gussie Lamar, the girl he loved, married a wealthy older man. True, Ginna Hankins remained, but somehow his passion for her had abated. The seemingly carefree days of youth were gone; the war had done for youth.

He wrote poetry through the pain in his joints, and knew even as he applied it tediously to paper that it was not good to express his distress in such fashion. Poetry, like music, reflected beauty, and with his hot reddened skin and swollen and blistered flesh he could feel little affinity for beauty. Unable to work constructively, he boarded for a time at Wesleyan College.

He recovered — but not completely. The consumption had taken hold upon his lung and ravaged it, never to let go entirely. It tightened its cruel grip when he attempted to tutor again, forcing him to give that up also, though he was desperately in need of the money. At last he joined his brother as bookkeeper at the Exchange Hotel, and gained a satisfactory if mundane livelihood.

Reconstruction was upon the land. Unjust laws and corrupt government fomented civic stagnation. Law had largely broken down. The phenomenal expectations of a nation had degenerated into apathy and despair.

Yet gradually his personal fortune improved. The New York literary weekly,
Round Table
, printed some of his poetry and encouraged him, giving him literary success of a sort. And in the spring of 1867 the Rev. R. J. Scott, editor of
Scott’s Monthly
, checked into the hotel. This was an opportunity not to be allowed to pass unchallenged.