Adolescents Only
Page 6
finding them within his grasp.
"It's all crazy!" David cried. "We don't really use gold, anyway, in oureconomy. Why can't we just forget it, and go on using dollars the way weused to?"
"Because people are fools," Elvin said.
"Or, perhaps, just children," David replied. He stood up, stretching, sothat his muscles rippled beneath his plaid shirt. "Well, we better getthat wire, Don, and go back to work."
* * * * *
After the twins had left, Elvin went up to his room to bathe. His mindskipped pleasantly over the delightful and limitless possibilities ofhis new understanding. The whole thing, of course, hinged on hisapproach. But, after all, that shouldn't be hard; they were stillchildren emotionally. Five years of teaching had demonstrated, to hissatisfaction, that he could handle any adolescent.
He began to dress. The clothes he had worn that day were streaked andtorn. He took his second suit out of the closet. As he hung the coatover the back of his desk chair, he heard metal strike against the wood.It was the coat he had worn on Friday night, when he found the rocket;in the pocket was the strip of metal that had been sealed over thecylinder of colored spheres.
He held it in his hand again. It was the first time the full surface ofthe metal had touched his skin. As he had before, he felt the sensationof jumbled words flooding his mind, but now the feeling was moreintense. He could not put the metal down. Instead he dropped into hisdesk chair and his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the pattern of tiny,translucent globes that dotted the surface of the metal. The heat of hisbody produced a chemical reaction; one by one the little globesexploded.
Pictures filled Elvin's mind, of cities, machines, towering stacks ofbooks. These dissolved, and he saw planets whirling on the blackemptiness of space around the glowing disk of a red sun. There was acataclysmic splatter of light as the sun exploded, and slashing flameshot out to destroy its circling planets. That picture, too, disappearedand he was staring at a gray nothingness while an emotional voice spoketo him deep within his brain.
"_To the intelligent life form, on the Third Planet, System K, Greetingsfrom the dying world of Dyran. You have located our rocket from thehypnotichord built into the fins, and, by opening it, you havedemonstrated a condition of rationality that we are able to help. Wespeak to you now through hypnotic pictures which you are translatinginto the symbology of your own society. Our astronomers predict that ourplanetary system will shortly be destroyed, because our sun is dying. Itis useless for us to try to escape, for no world that we can find withinthe limits of our telescope has the particular combination ofatmospheric gases which we need in order to live. The only sky-body thatwe have ever studied that gives any indication of higher life forms isyours. To you, then, we send the substance of our knowledge, the lawsand principles that we have developed over a period of two million yearssince our recorded history began. We could have sent our machines, ourlibraries of records, yet the chance that you would not comprehend themalone is too great. Instead we send our learning capsules, which we usein the instruction of our young. Break the container which is sealedinto this rocket and consume one of the colored spheres. It is,basically, a stimulant to the cerebral cortex of any reasoning animalwhich already has a memory of the past and a concept of the future. Longago we discovered that, unaided, the mind will function with only asmall portion of its specialized cells. This stimulant forces consciousactivity upon all parts of the cortex; in the process of stimulation,your brain will receive the full knowledge of basic principles which weourselves have developed. We send you fifty of these only, but it willbe enough. You have not, on your planet, the material with which to makeadditional capsules for your people, but you will not need them. Thefifty who learn from these will become teachers for the rest. Carry onfor us the culture that we have made on the dying world of Dyran._"
* * * * *
The gray mist faded and Elvin stood up. He felt refreshed, alert; hismind bubbled again with schemes. He looked at the bottle of coloredspheres still standing on his desk, and he knew they were no more thanbubble gum or candy. On Friday night, while he telephoned, the tenthgraders at the Schermerhorn party had started their bubble gum contest,but instead of gum they had by accident absorbed the accumulatedknowledge of Dyran, a culture more than three hundred times as old asthe earth's!
It was overwhelmingly clear what had happened after that. Thirtyadolescents, suddenly possessing more knowledge than the world had everknown, had run riot, playing with hypnotism, the transmutation ofmatter, the Law of Degravitation, the fourth dimensional transpositionof whole city blocks. Within two days their energetic curiosity, theiradolescent love of excitement and experiment, had thrown the world intocrisis. By this time, Elvin concluded, they would be terrified by afeeling of immense guilt, ready to be told what to do to make amends.
It was up to him to be the one who did the telling. If, at the sametime, he could get his hands on one of the learning capsules--theprospect was so dazzling it left him breathless.
He slipped out to the boys' workshop back of the garage. When he knockedon the door, Donald opened it two inches and quickly tried to close itagain. But Elvin thrust his hand over the latch.
"No, Donald," he said sternly. "This time you don't get away with it.You see, I know what happened when you ate the spheres."
The door creaked open. Elvin walked into the workshop, where all thirtyof the tenth graders were gathered around the littered work table. Therocket was there, and they were studying the tiny motor. In a corner wasa hastily constructed forge; three girls were working with it, turningout curved strips of metal, which a boy was machining on the metallathe. In the center of the shop was a tall, gleaming bar of metal,surrounded by a network of wires and fastened to a wooden base made froman orange crate.
"You're cooking up some more surprises for us?" Elvin asked.
"No," Donald replied solemnly. "We're ashamed of--"
"As, indeed, you should be."
"We're doing our best to put everything back the way it was," MabelTravis said. "Honestly, Mr. Elvin."
"It won't help much; the damage is already done."
"But it can be undone. We've already fixed up part of it."
"Yes," David Schermerhorn cut in anxiously. "When Don and I came backthis morning, the first thing we did was bring back the bank. Ourmachine's kind of crude, Mr. Elvin, so we couldn't get it right atfirst. I guess we picked up a castle or something in between; but that'sall right, now. And the gold--well, we're going to turn it back togravel again tonight." He gestured toward the bar of metal.
"We can work from the edge of our field," David pointed out. "The wholedesert will change at once, the way it did last night."
"And what will you do with all the people on it?"
"It won't hurt them."
"But when they find their gold is gravel, you'll have a majorcatastrophe on your hands."
Marilyn bit her lip. "That's why we haven't done anything yet. We don'twant anybody to get hurt but--"
"So you've considered that at last." The more Elvin rubbed in the guilt,he reasoned, the more secure he would make himself.
"We could just transpose the whole area," Charles suggested. "We'veconsidered that, too. Maybe in pieces, Mr. Elvin. You know, an acre ortwo to Australia, another to Germany, another to England. That couldn'tcause much more than local riots."
"But the men would be mighty uncomfortable for a while."
"The only trouble is, our machines are so crude; we've had to build themout of scraps. And something could go wrong. We might try to send someof the mob to China, and end up putting them in the Pacific, or maybeback in time."
"You've done enough tampering," Elvin declared. "I won't help you atall, unless you promise to leave everything as it is. You have to putyourselves in a position to help the world, not destroy it."
* * * * *
Elvin had injected just the right tone of nobility into his voice. Thet
hirty adolescents consulted together in whispers. Then David asked,
"What do you want us to do, Mr. Elvin?"
"Let me act as your representative. I'll go to Washington and talk toresponsible men in the government; I'll try to see the presidenthimself. We should set up a scientific foundation for you, where you'llhave the equipment you need and where your experiments won't do the restof us any harm. But, if I'm to convince anybody, I'm going to have to dosome tall talking. If you had one of the capsules left--"
"No, Mr. Elvin; they're all gone." David was not looking at him, andElvin knew he was lying; but this was not the occasion to make an issueof