The Gods Themselves (28 page)

"And have you shown it to Barron?"

"No, I haven't. And if I do, I expect Neville to reject it. He'll say the results are marginal. He'll say I've made an error. He'll say that I haven't taken all factors into account. He'll say I've used inadequate controls. . . . What he'll really be saying is that he wants the Electron Pump and won't give it up."

"You mean there's no way out."

"Of course there is, but not the direct way. Not Lamont's way."

"What's that?"

"Lament's solution is to force abandonment of the Pump, but you can't just move backward. You can't push the chicken back into the egg, wine back into the grape, the boy back into the womb. If you want the baby to let go of your watch, you don't just try to explain that he ought to do it—you offer him something he would rather have."

"And what's that?",

"Ah, that's where I'm not so sure. I do have an idea, a simple idea—perhaps too simple to work—based on the quite obvious fact that the number two is ridiculous and can't exist."

There was a silence that lasted for a minute or so and then Selene, her voice as absorbed as his, said, "Let me guess your meaning."

"I don't know that I have any," said Denison.

"Let me guess, anyway. It could make sense to suppose that our own Universe is the only one that can exist or does exist, because it is the only one we live in and directly experience. Once, however, evidence arises that there is a second Universe as well, the one we call the para-Universe, then it becomes absolutely ridiculous to suppose that there are two and only two Universes. If a second Universe can exist, then an infinite number can. Between one and the infinite in cases such as these, there are no sensible numbers. Not only two, but any finite number, is ridiculous and can't exist."

Denison said, "That's exactly my reas—" And silence fell again.

Denison heaved himself into a sitting position and looked down on the suit-encased girl. He said, "I think we had better go back to town."

She said, "I was just guessing."

He said, "No, you weren't. Whatever it was, it wasn’t
just
guessing."

11

Barron Neville stared at her, quite speechless for a while. She looked calmly back at him. Her window panorama had been changed again. One of .them now showed the Earth, a little more than half full.

Finally, he said, "Why?"

She said, "It was an accident, really, I saw the point and I was too enthusiastic not to speak. I should have told you days ago but I was afraid your reaction would be exactly what it is."

"So he knows. You
fool!"

She frowned. "What does he know? Only what he would have guessed sooner or later—that I'm not really a tourist guide—that I'm your Intuitionist. An Intuitionist who knows no mathematics, for heaven's sake. So what if he knows that? What does it matter if I have intuition? How many times have you told me that my intuition has no value till it is backed by mathematical rigor and experimental observation? How many times have you told me that the most compelling intuition could be wrong? Well, then, what value will he place on mere Intuitionism?"

Neville grew white, but Selene couldn't tell whether that was out of anger or apprehension. He said, "You're different. Hasn't your intuition always proved right? When you were sure of it?"

"Ah, but he doesn't know that, does he?"

"He'll guess it. He'll see Gottstein."

"What will he tell Gottstein? He still has1no idea of what we're really after."

"Doesn't he?"

"No." She had stood up, walked away. Now she turned to him and shouted,
” No!
It's cheap of you to imply that I would betray you and the rest. If you don't accept my integrity then accept my common sense. There's no point in telling them. What's the use of it to them, or to us, if we're all going to be destroyed?"

"Oh, please, Selene!" Neville waved his hand in disgust "Not that."

"No. You listen. He talked to me and described his work. You hide me like a secret weapon. You tell me that I'm more valuable than any instrument or any ordinary scientist. You play your games of conspiracy, insisting that everyone must continue to think me a tourist guide and nothing more so that my great talents will always be available to the Lunarites. To
you.
And what do you accomplish?"

"We have you, haven't we? How long do you suppose you would have remained free, if they—"

"You keep saying things nice that But who's been imprisoned? Who's been stopped? Where is the "evidence of the great conspiracy you see all around you? The Earth-men keep you and your team from their large instruments much more because you goad them into it than out of any malice on their part. And that's done us good, rather than harm, since it's forced us to invent other instruments that are more subtle."

"Based on
your
theoretical insight, Selene."

Selene smiled. "I know. Ben was very complimentary about them."

"You and your Ben." What the
hell do
you want with that miserable Earthie?"

"He's an Immigrant. And what I want is information. Do you give me any? You're so damned afraid 111 be caught, you don't dare let me be seen talking to any physicist; only you, and you're my— For that reason only, probably."

"Now, Selene." He tried to manage a soothing tone, but there was far too much impatience to it.

"No, I don't care about that really. You've told me I have this one task and I've tried to concentrate on it and sometimes I think I have it, mathematics or not. I can visualize it; the kind of thing that must be done—and then it slips away. But what's the use of it, when the Pump will destroy us all anyway. . . . Haven't I told you I distrusted the exchange of field intensities?"

Neville said, "I'll ask you again. Are you ready to tell me that the Pump
will
destroy us? Never mind might, never mind 'could'; never mind anything but 'will.' "

Selene shook her head angrily. "I can't. It's so marginal. I can't say it will. But isn't a simple 'might' sufficient in such a case?"

"Oh, Lord."

"Don't turn up your eyes. Don’t
sneer!
You've never tested the matter. I told you how it might be tested."

"You were never this worried about it till you started listening to this Earthie of yours."

"He's an Immigrant. Aren't you going to test it?"

"No! I told you your suggestions were impractical. You're not an experimentalist, and what looks good in your mind doesn't necessarily work in the real world of instruments, of randomness, and of uncertainty."

"The so-called real world of your
laboratory."
Her face was flushed and angry and she held her clenched fists at chin-level. "You waste so much time trying to get a vacuum good enough—There's a vacuum up there, up
there
on the surface where I'm pointing, with temperatures that, at times, are halfway down toward absolute zero. Why don't you try experiments on the surface?"

"It would have been useless."

"How do you
know?
You just won't try. Ben Denison tried. He took the trouble to devise a system he could use on the surface and he set it up when he went to inspect the Solar batteries. He wanted you to come and you wouldn't. Do you remember? It was a very simple thing, something even I could describe to you now that it's been described to me. He ran it at day-temperatures and again at night-temperatures and that was enough to guide him to a new line of research with the Pionizer."

"How simple you make it sound."

"How simple it
is.
Once he found out I was an Intuitionist, he talked to me as you never did. He explained his reasons for thinking that the strengthening of the strong nuclear interaction is indeed accumulating catastrophically in the neighborhood of Earth. It will only be a few years before the Sun explodes and sends the strengthening, in ripples—"

"No, no, no,
no"
shouted Neville. "I’ve seen his results and I'm not impressed."

"You’ve
seen
them?"

"Yes, of course. Do you suppose I let him work in our laboratories without making sure I know what he's doing? I've seen his results and they're worth
nothing.
He deals with tiny deviations that are well within the experimental error. If he wants to believe that those deviations have significance and if you want to believe them, go ahead. But no amount of belief will make them have that significance if, in fact, they don't."

"What do
you
want to believe, Barron?"

"I want the truth."

"But haven't you decided in advance what the truth must be by your own gospel? You want the Pump Station of the Moon, don't you, so that you need have nothing to do with the surface; and anything that might prevent that is not the truth—by definition."

"I won't argue with you. I want the Pump Station, and even more—I want the other. One's no good without the other. Are you sure you haven't—"

"I haven't."

"Will you?"

Selene whirled on him again, her feet tapping rapidly on the ground in such a way as to keep her bobbing in the air to the tune of an angry clatter.

"I won't tell him anything," she said, "but I must have more information. You have no information for me, but he may have; or he may get it with the experiments you won't do. I've got to talk to him and find out what he is going to find out. If you get between him and me, you'll never have what you want. And you needn't fear his getting it before I do. He's too used to Earth thinking; he won't make that last step. I will."

"All right. And don't forget the difference between Earth and Moon, either. This is your world; you have no other. This man, Denison, this Ben, this
Immigrant,
having come from Earth to the Moon, can, if he chooses, return from Moon to Earth. You can never go to the Earth; never. You are a Lunarite forever."

"A Moon-maiden," said Selene, derisively.

"No maiden," said Neville. "Though you may have to wait a long while before I confirm the matter once again."

She seemed unmoved at that.

He said, "And about this big danger of explosion. If the risk involved in changing the basic constants of a Universe is so great, why haven't the para-men, who are so far advanced beyond us in technology, stopped Pumping?"

And he left.

She faced the closed door with bunched jaw muscles. Then she said, "Because conditions are different for them and for us, you incredible jerk." But she was speaking to herself; he was gone.

She kicked the lever that let down her bed, threw herself into it and seethed. How much closer was she now to the real object for which Barren and those others had now been aiming for years?

No closer.

Energy! Everyone searched for energy! The magic word! The cornucopia! The one key to universal plenty! ... And yet energy wasn't all.

If one found energy, one could find the other, too. If one found the key to energy, the key to the other would be obvious. She
knew
the key to the other would be obvious if she could but grasp some subtle point that would appear obvious the moment it was grasped. (Good heavens, she had been so infected by Barren's chronic suspicion that even in her thoughts she was calling it "the other.")

No Earthman would get that subtle point because no Earthman had reason to look for it.

Ben Denison would find it for her, then, without finding it for himself.

Except that— If the Universe was to be destroyed, what did anything matter?

12

Denison tried to beat down his self-consciousness. Time and again, he made a groping motion as though to hitch upward the pants he wasn't wearing. He wore only sandals and the barest of briefs, which were uncomfortably tight And, of course, he carried the blanket

Selene, who was similarly accoutered, laughed. "Now, Ben, there's nothing wrong with your bare body, barring a certain flabbiness. It's perfectly in fashion here. In fact, take off your briefs if they're binding you."

"No!" muttered Denison. He shifted the blanket so that it draped over his abdomen and she snatched it from him.

She said, "Now give me that thing. What kind of a Lunarite will you make if you bring your Earth Puritanism here? You
know
that prudery is only the other side of prurience. The words are even on the same page in the dictionary."

"I have to get used to it, Selene."

"You might start by looking at me once in awhile, without having your glance slide off me as though I were coated with oil. You look at other women quite efficiently, I notice."

"If I look at you—"

"Then you'll seem too interested and you'll be embarrassed. But if you look hard, you'll get used to it, and you'll stop noticing. Look, I’ll stand still and you stare. Ill take off my briefs."

Denison groaned, "Selene, there are people all around and you're making intolerable fun of me. Please keep walking and let me get used to the situation."

"All right, but I hope you notice the people who pass us don't look at us."

"They don't look at
you.
They look at me all right. They've probably never seen so old-looking and ill-shaped a person."

"They probably haven't," agreed Selene, cheerfully, "but they'll just have to get used to it."

Denison walked on in misery, conscious of every gray hair on his chest and of every quiver of his paunch. It was only when the passageway thinned out and the people passing them were fewer in number that he began to feel a certain relief.

He looked about him curiously now, not as aware of Selene's conical breasts as he had been, nor of her smooth thighs. The corridor seemed endless.

"How far have we come?" he asked.

"Are you tired?" Selene was contrite. "We could have taken a scooter. I forget you're from Earth."

"I should hope you do. Isn't that the ideal for an immigrant? I'm not the least bit tired. Hardly the least bit tired at any rate. What I am is a little cold."

"Purely your imagination, Ben," said Selene, firmly. "You just think you ought to feel cold because so much of you is bare. Put it out of your head."