The Meddlers (44 page)

“Not America. Yugoslavia.”

“Yugo—? But that’s part of the bloc of—”

“I don’t care what its political color is. It’s a country where funds are available for constructive science of the sort I want to do. Where hard-working men are allowed to work, and helped to work, and not held back by the stupid little fears of the uninformed, where—”

“Where politics and science work together,” someone said softly in the momentary hush that had fallen.

“Where ideas are given room to grow, and science is valued as it should be,” George snapped. “Where facts and the proof of them can be demonstrated properly, and not buried in a mass of emotionalism masquerading as public concern. I’ve said before, I don’t give a damn about political ideas. Only about science. That’s what I’m here for, that’s what I exist for, and all that matters to me from here on is that I be allowed to get on with my work in peace. And I have no doubt whatsoever that the day will come when you will bitterly regret, you people who condemn what you don’t understand because you are afraid of truths too big for you, you will bitterly regret the loss of what I and men like me could have given to you.”

“But even there—even there, won’t the fact that you have failed with the project you started here mean something? Won’t they see the failure was caused because you didn’t take enough account of the human aspects of the thing, and—”

“Failure?” He raised his head and stared at them, letting his eyes move across their faces, recognizing but not touched by the expressions of revulsion, of anger, of fear and dislike, or pity and frank loathing that invested them.

“Failure? How can it be regarded as a failure? I have learned a vital fact. I know what must not happen next time.”