by Mark Clifton
Billings was a little glad when Joe finished his work and left the room. He realized he had been stupid. He had had an instrument at his hand, a delicately tuned instrument capable of picking up facts far beyond the range of his own senses, Joe, a telepath, and he had chosen to ignore the readings of the instrument, to depend upon his own crude and dull senses. The guilt of his stupidity weighed heavily upon him. He was glad that Joe did not like to look into the mind of a normal. He hoped Joe had not looked too deeply into his. The vague discomfort he felt when Joe was around was heightened now.
He sat behind his desk, alone, and reflected with profound disappointment upon scientists, collectively and individuality, himself included. They could tear apart the atom and milk it of its strength, they could reconstruct the molecules of nature and improve upon them, they could design instruments far beyond the range of man’s senses, solve the riddles of the universe, and, yes, reconstruct the very processes of thought.
Yet they were powerless against the most ignorant of men. Against the most primitive flares of superstition and dread of the unknown, they had no defense. Weakly, in such a situation, they would try to explain, to reason, to appeal to rationality and logic—against minds preset against all explanations, never having learned reason, alien to rationality and logic.
Was this intelligence? To use against one’s most bitter foe a weapon which they knew, in advance, would not touch him?
And knowing that, knowing the potential of it which is always present, still they said with impatient superiority, “Spell us no evil consequences of our acts. We are tired of hearing about doom.”
A fresh newspaper, a regular city daily, had been laid on his desk. He pulled it toward him, flipped open its pages, and looked at another cartoon of himself. Yes, it was signed by young Tyler—but a glance showed it had not been drawn by him.
And suddenly he knew where the central leak had been. Young Tyler had been in the thick of everything; but young Tyler was a violent and arrogant young man. He seemed to thrive on trouble, to generate it, to know that in mischief or crime itself his father would rescue him. Billings had been blind to that potential, too.
The central figure in the cartoon, himself, was drawn in massive impressiveness, almost Michelangelo in treatment, dressed in classical flowing robes, holding Bossy up in one hand, and surrounded by a glowing nimbus. The cartoon needed no title nor identification.
Every expert line of it was innuendo—Billings’ pretense at nobility, transcendency. Every expert line revealed the blasphemy. In it was the age-old message that it was forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge, to reach for the stars. In it was the stern admonitions driven into the innermost fiber of almost every child’s being.
“You’re too young to know! Keep your hands off of that! Mother and Daddy know best! That’s none of your business! That’s over your head! Wait till you’re older! That’s too deep for you to understand!”
The message of defeat, weakness, dependency upon higher authority, driven in day by day and hour by hour into the child’s basic structure of reaction. And to offset that solid bedrock, a few mumbling teachers said occasionally that the child should think for himself.
It was no wonder that there was a suppressed desire in most small boys’ hearts to bum down the schoolhouse which tried to make them learn, when their whole world and all that was safe in it had been composed of not learning. When the very act of knowing, meant punishment. “You know better than to do a thing like that, young man!” And the obvious conclusion drawn by the child, “If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t be punished.”
What could be done when the very act of knowing brought penalty?
In anger, Billings crumbled the paper and threw it in the wastebasket. It occurred to him that, in like manner, he had just crumpled his whole life and thrown that, too, in the wastebasket. He leaned forward and flipped on his desk radio. He listened, almost without comprehension, to a trained and professional rabble-rouser shouting into a microphone, down in the village below.
“…Torn stone from stone…so that we may wipe out this evil from our midst… Let us not wait for others to show us our duty…let us march upon it…now…”
“What a miserable string of worn-out clichés,” Billings murmured in amusement. Then he realized, with a shock, they were talking about Hoxworth University.
He flipped off the switch, cupped his chin in his fingers, and stared at the wall.
Well, let them come. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He smiled in self-scorn when he realized he could say this because he was quite sure they would not come, that reason would prevail, always prevail.
How unrealistic can a man get? What guarantee was there that they would not come? Had man’s basic nature changed since yesterday? What had happened before would happen again, in endless repetition. The cycle would repeat itself.
Primitive man, who knows no step taken beyond that of his father’s—the bright and courageous dawn of reason—the rise to a comprehension beyond that of his father’s—the brief hesitation at the height of the cycle when sanity and rationality soared—the beginning of the downward curve of revolt against sanity and rationality—the retrogression of comprehension—the final dying embers of reason—and, again, the primitive man who knows no step taken beyond that of his father’s.
The circle was endless, enduring on and on for a million years now since dawn man emerged. It would endure on and on for—
How long?
Was there no solution? Was man doomed to follow in the circle endlessly, like a two-dimensional animal bounded by a carelessly thrown thread, unable to conceive of a third dimension whereby it might change direction and crawl upward?
Was Joe’s idea the right one? That man was just biding his time, slowly evolving, that psionics would mark the next stage, that it was a spiral and not a circle? He must talk further with Joe about this. Now, for the first time, perhaps, he was prepared to listen to something he had not thought of himself. Had he been like the kind of scientist he scorned, refusing to listen to anything which did not fit in with his already formed conceptions?
Outside his windows, the elm trees rustled in the rising breeze of night. It had grown quite dark. Yet, there in the distance down the hill, was the glow of a light. It was a flickering, leaping, orange light, in the direction of the library park. The light grew brighter in the darkness—as if flames were mounting. Faintly, on the rising wind, there came the murmur of a crowd noise.
He wondered, idly, what the occasion was among the villagers, what they were celebrating, what was the reason for such a huge bonfire. For some strange reason, the placard lines leaped into his consciousness. He connected the lines, the bonfire, with the radio speech.
His head slumped forward on the desk.
He did not hear the door open, or see Joe’s grin fade to quick concern. Quickly Joe darted across the room, felt Billings’ pulse, put his ear to Billings’ chest and heard the heart still beat.
“Just fainted,” Joe said to Hoskins, who had come in behind him. “We’ll have to carry him. We can’t wait any longer.”
“Fool thing to delay this long,” Hoskins grumbled. “Don’t know why you stalled, Joe.”
“He had to grow up,” Joe said cryptically, and began massaging the flesh at the back of Billing’s neck.
Billings came out of his shock coma at the handling, and stiffened his head.
“That’s better,” Joe grinned. “Come on. Let’s get him out of here. We’ve got work to do. Science isn’t licked yet, not by any means.” He turned to Hoskins. “You sure you’ve smuggled all of Bossy’s parts out of here safely?”
“Sure, I’m sure,” Hoskins grinned back at him. “You sure you’ve got a safe hiding place for us?”
“Sure, I’m sure,” Joe said.
Billings stood up then, and suddenly he was quite strong.
“All right, Joe.” Billings shook his head dazedly. “Making a mistake isn’t too bad, I guess—if you live lo
ng enough to learn from it, and do something about it. Science has had a lot of knowledge, but mighty little understanding.
“Let’s go find out what that is.”
About the Authors: Mark Clifton is the author of a number of highly regarded science fiction stories and novels including Eight Keys to Eden and When They Come From Space. His career was tragically cut off in mid-flight by his unexpected death in the mid 1960s. He is perhaps best known for his series of stories in Analog/Astounding about Ralph Kennedy, government psychologist, and his humorous encounters with people possessing psychic abilities, beginning with “Sense From Thought Divide.”
Frank Riley is a syndicated travel columnist and editor for the Los Angeles Times, an editor of Los Angeles magazine and the host of his own local radio program. He is also the author of the highly acclaimed “Father Anton Dymek” mysteries. They’d Rather Be Right is his only work of book-length science fiction.
