NINE TOMORROWS Tales of the Near Future

by Isaac Asimov

  Staring at that one, he tapped a neatly kept fingernail on the desk.

  With a certain reluctance, he went to call on Dr. Paul Kristow of the Atomic Energy Commission.

  Dr. Kristow listened to the matter with a stony expression. He lifted a little finger occasionally to dab at his bulbous nose and remove a nonexistent speck. His hair was iron gray, thinning and cut short. He might as well have been bald.

  He said, “No, I never heard of any Russian Zebatinsky. But then, I never heard of the American one either.”

  “Well,” Brand scratched at his hairline over one temple and said slowly, “I don’t think there’s anything to this, but I don’t like to drop it too soon. I have a young lieutenant on my tail and you know what they can be like. I don’t want to do anything that will drive him to a Congressional committee. Besides, the fact is that one of the Russian Zebatinsky fellows, Mikhail Andreyevich Zebatinsky, is a nuclear physicist. Are you sure you never heard of him?”

  “Mikhail Andreyevich Zebatinsky? No—No, I never did. Not that that proves anything.”

  “I could say it was coincidence, but you know that would be piling it a trifle high. One Zebatinsky here and one Zebatinsky there, both nuclear physicists, and the one here suddenly changes his name to Sebatinsky, and goes around anxious about it, too. He won’t allow misspelling. He says, emphatically, ‘Spell my name with an S.’ It all just fits well enough to make my spy-conscious lieutenant begin to look a little too good.—And another peculiar thing is that the Russian Zebatinsky dropped out of sight just about a year ago.”

  Dr. Kristow said stolidly, “Executed!”

  “He might have been. Ordinarily, I would even assume so, though the Russians are not more foolish than we are and don’t kill any nuclear physicist they can avoid killing. The thing is there’s another reason why a nuclear physicist, of all people, might suddenly disappear. I don’t have to tell you.”

  “Crash research; top secret. I take it that’s what you mean. Do you believe that’s it?”

  “Put it together with everything else, add in the lieutenant’s intuition, and I just begin to wonder.”

  “Give me that biography.” Dr. Kristow reached for the sheet of paper and read it over twice. He shook his head. Then he said, “I’ll check this in Nuclear Abstracts.”

  Nuclear Abstracts lined one wall of Dr. Kristow’s study in neat little boxes, each filled with its squares of microfilm.

  The A.E.C. man used his projector on the indices while Brand watched with what patience he could muster.

  Dr. Kristow muttered, “A Mikhail Zebatinsky authored or co-authored half a dozen papers in the Soviet journals in the last half dozen years. We’ll get out the abstracts and maybe we can make something out of it. I doubt it.”

  A selector nipped out the appropriate squares. Dr. Kristow lined them up, ran them through the projector, and by degrees an expression of odd intentness crossed his face. He said, “That’s odd.”

  Brand said, “What’s odd?”

  Dr. Kristow sat back. “I’d rather not say just yet. Can you get me a list of other nuclear physicists who have dropped out of sight in the Soviet Union hi the last year?”

  “You mean you see something?”

  “Not really. Not if I were just looking at any one of these papers. It’s just that looking at all of them and knowing that this man may be on a crash research program and, on top of that, having you putting suspicions in my head—” He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  Brand said earnestly, “I wish you’d say what’s on your mind. We may as well be foolish about this together.”

  “If you feel that way—It’s just possible this man may have been inching toward gamma-ray reflection.”

  “And the significance?”

  “If a reflecting shield against gamma rays could be devised, individual shelters could be built to protect against fallout. It’s fallout that’s the real danger, you know. A hydrogen bomb might destroy a city but the fallout could slow-kill the population over a strip thousands of miles long and hundreds wide.”

  Brand said quickly, “Are we doing any work on this?”

  “No.”

  “And if they get it and we don’t, they can destroy the United States in toto at the cost of, say, ten cities, after they have their shelter program completed.”

  “That’s far in the future.—And, what are we getting in a hurrah about? All this is built on one man changing one letter in his name.”

  “All right, I’m insane,” said Brand. “But I don’t leave the matter at this point. Not at this point. I’ll get you your list of disappearing nuclear physicists if I have to go to Moscow to get it.”

  He got the list. They went through all the research papers authored by any of them. They called a full meeting of the Commission, then of the nuclear brains of the nation. Dr. Kristow walked out of an all night session, finally, part of which the President himself had attended.

  Brand met him. Both looked haggard and in need of sleep.

  Brand said, “Well?”

  Kristow nodded. “Most agree. Some are doubtful even yet, but most agree.”

  “How about you? Are you sure?”

  “I’m far from sure, but let me put it this way. It’s easier to believe that the Soviets are working on a gamma-ray shield than to believe that all the data we’ve uncovered has no interconnection.”

  “Has it been decided that we’re to go on shield research, too?”

  “Yes.” Kristow’s hand went back over his short, bristly hair, making a dry, whispery sound. “We’re going to give it everything we’ve got. Knowing the papers written by the men who disappeared, we can get right on their heels.

  We may even beat them to it. —Of course, they’ll find out we’re working on it.”

  “Let them,” said Brand. “Let them. It will keep them from attacking. I don’t see any percentage in selling ten of our cities just to get ten of theirs—if we’re both protected and they’re too dumb to know that”

  “But not too soon. We don’t want them finding out too soon. What about the American Zebatinsky-Sebatinsky?”

  Brand looked solemn and shook his head. “There’s nothing to connect him with any of this even yet. Hell, we’ve looked. I agree with you, of course. He’s in a sensitive spot where he is now and we can’t afford to keep him there even if he’s in the clear.”

  “We can’t kick him out just like that, either, or the Russians will start wondering.”

  “Do you have any suggestions?”

  They were walking down the long corridor toward the distant elevator in the emptiness of four in the morning.

  Dr. Kristow said, “I’ve looked into his work. He’s a good man, better than most, and not happy in his job, either. He hasn’t the temperament for teamwork.”

  “So?”

  “But he is the type for an academic job. If we can arrange to have a large university offer him a chair in physics, I think he would take it gladly. There would be enough nonsensitive areas to keep him occupied; we would be able to keep him in close view; and it would be a natural development. The Russians might not start scratching their heads. What do you think?”

  Brand nodded. “It’s an idea. Even sounds good. I’ll put it up to the chief.”

  They stepped into the elevator and Brand allowed himself to wonder about it all. What an ending to what had started with one letter of a name.

  Marshall Sebatinsky could hardly talk. He said to his wife, “I swear I don’t see how this happened. I wouldn’t have thought they knew me from a meson detector.

  —Good Lord, Sophie, Associate Professor of Physics at Princeton. Think of it.”

  Sophie said, “Do you suppose it was your talk at the A.P.S. meetings?”

  “I don’t see how. It was a thoroughly uninspired paper once everyone in the division was done hacking at it.” He snapped his fingers. “It must have been Princeton that was investigating me. That’s it. You know all those forms I’ve been filling out in the las
t six months; those interviews they wouldn’t explain. Honestly, I was beginning to think I was under suspicion as a subversive.—It was Princeton investigating me. They’re thorough.”

  “Maybe it was your name,” said Sophie. “I mean the change.”

  “Watch me now. My professional life will be my own finally. I’ll make my mark. Once I have a chance to do my work without—” He stopped and turned to look at his wife. “My name! You mean the S.”

  “You didn’t get the offer till after you changed your name, did you?”

  “Not till long after. No, that part’s just coincidence. I’ve told you before Sophie, it was just a case of throwing out fifty dollars to please you. Lord, what a fool I’ve felt all these months insisting on that stupid S.”

  Sophie was instantly on the defensive. “I didn’t make you do it, Marshall. I suggested it but I didn’t nag you about it. Don’t say I did. Besides, it did turn out well. I’m sure it was the name that did this.”

  Sebatinsky smiled indulgently. “Now that’s superstition.”

  “I don’t care what you call it, but you’re not changing your name back.”

  “Well, no, I suppose not. I’ve had so much trouble getting them to spell my name with an S, that the thought of making everyone move back is more than I want to face. Maybe I ought to change my name to Jones, eh?” He laughed almost hysterically.

  But Sophie didn’t. “You leave it alone.”

  “Oh, all right, I’m just joking. —Tell you what. I’ll step down to that old fellow’s place one of these days and tell him everything worked out and slip him another tenner. Will that satisfy you?”

  He was exuberant enough to do so the next week. He assumed no disguise this time. He wore his glasses and his ordinary suit and was minus a hat.

  He was even humming as he approached the store front and stepped to one side to allow a weary, sour-faced woman to maneuver her twin baby carriage past.

  He put his hand on the door handle and his thumb on the iron latch. The latch didn’t give to his thumb’s downward pressure. The door was locked.

  The dusty, dim card with “Numerologist” on it was gone, now that he looked. Another sign, printed and beginning to yellow and curl with the sunlight, said “To let.”

  Sebatinsky shrugged. That was that. He had tried to do the right thing.

  Haround, happily divested of corporeal excrescence, capered happily and his energy vortices glowed a dim purple over cubic hypermiles. He said, “Have I won? Have I won?”

  Mestack was withdrawn, his vortices almost a sphere of light in hyperspace. “I haven’t calculated it yet.”

  “Well, go ahead. You won’t change the results any by taking a long time.—Wowf, it’s a relief to get back into clean energy. It took me a microcycle of time as a corporeal body; a nearly used-up one, too. But it was worth it to show you.”

  Mestack said, “All right, I admit you stopped a nuclear war on the planet.”

  “Is that or is that not a Class A effect?”

  “It is a Class A effect. Of course it is.”

  “All right. Now check and see if I didn’t get that Class A effect with a Class F stimulus. I changed one letter of one name.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, never mind. It’s all there. I’ve worked it out for you.”

  Mestack said reluctantly, “I yield. A Class F stimulus.”

  “Then I win. Admit it.”

  “Neither one of us will win when the Watchman gets a look at this.”

  Haround, who had been an elderly numerologist on Earth and was still somewhat unsettled with relief at no longer being one, said, “You weren’t worried about that when you made the bet.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be fool enough to go through with it.”

  “Heat-waste! Besides, why worry? The Watchman will never detect a Class F stimulus.”

  “Maybe not, but he’ll detect a Class A effect. Those corporeals will still be around after a dozen microcycles. The Watchman will notice that.”

  “The trouble with you, Mestack, is that you don’t want to pay off. You’re stalling.”

  “I’ll pay. But just wait till the Watchman finds out we’ve been working on an unassigned problem and made an unallowed-for change. Of course, if we—” He paused.

  Haround said, “All right, we’ll change it back. He’ll never know.”

  There was a crafty glow to Mestack’s brightening energy pattern. “You’ll need another Class F stimulus if you expect him not to notice.”

  Haround hesitated. “I can do it.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I could.”

  “Would you be willing to bet on that, too?” Jubilation was creeping into Mestack’s radiations.

  “Sure,” said the goaded Haround. “I’ll put those corporeals right back where they were and the Watchman will never know the difference.”

  Mestack followed through his advantage. “Suspend the first bet, then. Triple the stakes on the second.”

  The mounting eagerness of the gamble caught at Haround, too. “All right, I’m game. Triple the stakes.”

  “Done, then!”

  “Done.”

  THE LAST QUESTION

  The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

  Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face—miles and miles of face—of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

  Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. —So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac’s.

  For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth’s poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

  But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

  The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and nipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.

  Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

  They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.

  “It’s amazing when you think of it,” said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. “All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever
and forever and forever.”

  Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. “Not forever,” he said.

  “Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert.”

  “That’s not forever.”

  “All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?”

  Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. ‘Twenty billion years isn’t forever.”

  “Well, it will last our time, won’t it?”

  “So would the coal and uranium.”

  “All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can’t do that on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t have to ask Multivac. I know that.”

  “Then stop running down what Multivac’s done for us,” said Adell, blazing up. “It did all right.”

  “Who says it didn’t? What I say is that a sun won’t last forever. That’s all I’m saying. We’re safe for twenty billion years, but then what?” Lupov pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. “And don’t say we’ll switch to another sun.”

  There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov’s eyes slowly closed. They rested.

  Then Lupov’s eyes snapped open. “You’re thinking we’ll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not thinking.”

  “Sure you are. You’re weak on logic, that’s the trouble with you. You’re like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn’t worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one.”

  “I get it,” said Adell. “Don’t shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too.”